Millions of people will gather on Sunday for the New York City Pride March, packing the streets of Manhattan for a celebration amid the most hostile political environment for L.G.B.T.Q. Americans in decades.
The march commemorates the 1969 Stonewall riots, which are widely seen as giving rise to the modern L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement. That effort, over many years, has increased public support for L.G.B.T.Q. people, but the movement has begun to falter badly in the face of opposition from the Supreme Court, the Trump administration and even some Democrats.
Pride celebrations have always been equal parts party and protest, and those who planned to march on Sunday said that filling the streets with rainbow flags and colorful floats was now more important than ever as the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people come under increasing attack.
Stacy Lentz, an owner of the Stonewall Inn, where the 1969 riots took place, and the chief executive of an affiliated nonprofit, said she thought L.G.B.T.Q. people and their supporters needed “to get back to the roots of Pride and what happened at Stonewall because our rights are under attack in a way we haven’t been in decades.”
“I have had young folks ask me, ‘What do you think it was like back then? How do you think people felt to be fighting for their rights?’” she said. “I tell them we’ve never been closer to that time then we are right now. We all need to pick up the torch.”
The New York march is the largest of its kind in the United States, with 75,000 participants and roughly two million spectators, according to organizers. It is also broadcast on network television, a testament to how much public support for L.G.B.T.Q. people has grown over a generation.
But backlash against L.G.B.T.Q. rights has increased since same-sex marriage became legal nationwide almost exactly 10 years ago. The fallout has mainly, though not solely, affected transgender people.
“The gay and lesbian movement succeeded beyond the expectations of the founders,” said David K. Johnson, a professor of history at the University of South Florida. “But now trans people are the most vulnerable members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community, which is why I think sometimes using the term L.G.B.T.Q. actually obscures more than it explains.”
Over the last three years, Americans have become more supportive of laws that limit transgender rights, according to the Pew Research Center. A majority of adults now support laws that ban gender-affirming care for minors and require trans people to play on sports teams based on their sex at birth.
A poll released by Gallup in May showed that 54 percent of Americans — up from 51 percent four years ago — said that it was morally wrong to change one’s gender. The share of Americans who said that homosexuality was morally wrong had risen much further, from 25 percent in 2022 to 33 percent in 2025.
“As my grandma used to say, ‘Now we are hustling backward,’” said Sean Ebony Coleman, the founder and chief executive of Destination Tomorrow, an L.G.B.T.Q. center in the Bronx.
Transgender individuals and their allies have been hit hard by the anti-diversity fervor of the Trump administration, which spent heavily on campaign ads attacking trans people in the months leading up to last year’s presidential election.
Soon after President Trump took office, he issued a series of executive orders seeking to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and limit the rights of transgender individuals.
One order barred federal contractors or those that received federal grant money from making use of D.E.I. policies. That set off a confusing scramble in the private sector, leading many corporations to cut back or cancel their donations to Pride events in New York and around the country.
Another executive order barred openly transgender people from serving in the military, while another stated that the federal government would recognize only two unchangeable sexes — male and female — and banned the use of federal funds for the promotion of “gender ideology,” a term whose legal definition is unclear.
All the orders have been challenged in court, but they have severely harmed the nation’s L.G.B.T.Q. organizations, many of which rely on federal grants to provide social services to older adults, young people or those struggling with issues like substance abuse or homelessness.
The administration has also canceled roughly $800 million worth of grants on topics related to L.G.B.T.Q. people, a move that has devastated research programs focused on L.G.B.T.Q. health.
The amount of canceled funds was wildly out of proportion to the number of L.G.B.T.Q. people in the United States. Roughly half of all the research funding canceled by the administration was dedicated to the health of L.G.B.T.Q. individuals, who make up around 10 percent of the population.
The ban on “gender ideology” and D.E.I. has also led to a number of symbolic affronts. In February, the National Park Service removed references to trans people from the web pages of the Stonewall National Monument. And last week, the U.S. Navy renamed a ship that had honored Harvey Milk, one of the country’s first openly gay elected officials, who was assassinated in 1978.
The L.G.B.T.Q. movement has also suffered a series of Supreme Court defeats in recent weeks. The court ruled that the Trump administration could begin enforcing a ban on transgender troops in the military. It upheld the rights of parents to withdraw their children from public schools when L.G.B.T.Q. themes are discussed. It sided with a heterosexual woman who claimed her gay co-workers had discriminated against her. And it upheld a ban on gender-affirming care for young people.
The parade is also the occasion for ideological fights within the movement itself.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch criticized organizers over their decision to bar the Gay Officers Action League from fully participating in this year’s parade. She said that the organizers had refused to allow officers to carry guns, which she said are an integral part of their dress uniform.
It is the “height of hypocrisy to request the security and protection of thousands of armed, uniformed police officers for the march on Sunday and then ban from that event the very officers that proudly represent your community,” Commissioner Tisch wrote in a letter on Saturday that was shared with The New York Times.
“In a year when LGBTQ+ rights are under siege in ways we had thought were behind us, this is the time to stand together, not to splinter.”
She and members of the group plan to protest their exclusion at 11 a.m. near the parade route, according to a department news release.
Police and corrections officers had been banned from marching as a group at Pride since 2021 in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests and widespread criticism of violence by law enforcement officers.
Maia Coleman contributed reporting.
Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region.
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