Each June, Pride Month turns our public spaces into sites of celebration and remembrance. But Pride is not just a cultural event; it is a constitutional exercise. At its core, Pride embodies the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment: speech, assembly, press, and petition.
Expressive acts of defiance wrote the history of LGBTQ+ rights in America. The Stonewall uprising of 1969 stands as a defining moment for expressive conduct, regarded as a crucial historical day in the fight for equality and a protest against government repression. Nearly every step forward since then has come about not from government action, but from people using the tools protected by the First Amendment. Marches, independent media, civil society campaigns, art, and entertainment—these expressive actions have enabled our society to have important conversations and paved the way for legal recognition.
No example better reflects this relationship than how LGBTQ+ publications such as the Philadelphia Gay News played critical roles in disseminating life-saving information during the AIDS crisis. When the Child Online Protection Act sought, amongst other things, to silence LGBTQ+ websites and publications under the guise of morality and protecting minors, federal courts struck down most of those provisions as unconstitutional on the grounds that the law unnecessarily burdens adults' constitutional right to receive information.
