Jean Lewandowski is a retired special needs teacher. She lives in Nashua.

It’s time again to celebrate Pride Month and all the benefits joining the LGBTQ+ community has brought us as parents and grandparents. Our joys have only grown in the past year, as we celebrate holidays, birthdays, and plain old lazy Sundays with our family.

But our worries are growing, too. On May 31, someone posted a cartoon showing a dam labeled June 1 with a wall of rainbow-colored water above it and a peaceful little town below. Once again, June is almost over, and we haven’t drowned in a deluge of pride. In fact, even after 50 years of progress in winning civil rights, the “gay agenda” has failed to produce any of the horrors foretold by propagandists. And yet the Supreme Court and the Republican Party seem determined that the sanctity of our family will go the way of reproductive freedom.

Why is this happening again? Public Religion Research Institute CEO Melissa Deckman recently reported that support has steadily increased in nearly all religious denominations for LGBTQ+ rights since 1970. Data from their annual surveys suggest that as it’s become safer for people to “come out,” more of us have come to realize we’ve known and loved LGBTQ+ people all our lives.

However, Ms. Deckman also reports that in 2023, “for the first time support fell for key policies regarding LGBTQ rights, backing for same-sex marriage dropped two percentage points, [and] support for non-discrimination protections dropped four points.” There were significant declines among Republicans, while Democrats’ support was stable. “… you see many Republican leaders in red states really trying to amp up the volume…on LGBTQ rights, and really trying to claw back some of those rights across the country.”

It’s common for a privileged faction that wants to seize or retain power to amp up the propaganda. The rise of Nazism in Germany after World War I was fueled by blaming Jews, the LGBTQ+ community, and non-“Aryans” for the suffering caused by the war. These same groups have been victims of scapegoating throughout America’s history. The McCarthy Era’s “lavender scare,” “gay-bashing,” police raids, and discrimination in employment, housing, and every other aspect of civic life were legal or at least tolerated. During that period, at least 10,000 people, facing imprisonment or financial and social ruin took their own lives.

The GOP has become a minority party, so it needs its scapegoats back. Some elected officials are using dehumanizing rhetoric and conspiracy theories to justify attacks on LGBTQ+ rights. The Supreme Court has signaled its intention to end marriage equality, and Donald Trump has promised to sign executive orders rescinding federal protections for transgender military service members, workplace equality, and health care protections for transgender people.

This isn’t just campaign rhetoric; it’s spelled out in Project 2025, the GOP’s 800-page-long playbook. One of its four pillars is to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life.” Everything is couched in patriotic language, like “inalienable right of self-direction,” but it’s clear by page five that it doesn’t mean families like ours. It calls for eliminating all reference to gender identity and sexual orientation from federal statutes protecting civil rights. It calls those who support LGBTQ+ rights “child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women.” It calls all publications referring to us as “pornography,” for publishers to be imprisoned, and for “distributers” like educators and librarians to be labeled sex offenders. This opens up a McCarthy-esque world where we could be accused of being predators for reading a book that includes two moms with our grandchildren.

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The Heritage Foundation, which produced the document, has its vigilantes standing by. Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes recently called on young people to “get involved in…American Moment or Project 2025 or the Trump campaign….Trump wins, we got to fill up the White House with groypers.” Groypers self-identify as anti-LGBTQ+, antisemitic, white nationalist neo-Nazis. Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes tells his followers to join Project 2025.

In New Hampshire, GOP lawmakers again pledged to “recognize marriage as the legal and sacred union between one man and one woman,” and House Speaker Packard declared May “Natural Families Month.” Exactly what does that mean? If the GOP gets its way, it means our daughter and daughter-in-law’s 15-year marriage would not be recognized in New Hampshire. The short trip from their home to ours would mean crossing into hostile territory, where their legal status as spouses and parents could be denied. Our annual Christmas tree decorating party and end–of–summer weekends would be joys of the past. These are this GOP’s “family values.”

No one is safe from a political movement anchored in exclusion, dehumanization, and threats of force and fueled by vicious propaganda. The battle to deprive power to this radicalized party and to protect ourselves and those we love belongs to us all.