Just because June is over, it doesn’t mean we stop commemorating Pride. It’s actually more important to not contain our celebration to one singular month, and we must stay vigilant and vocal as much as we can. Discovery+’s The Book of Queer is a vibrant, hilarious, and course-correcting docuseries when it comes to queer history, and it teaches about our pasts in an entirely new way. Creator and Executive Producer ,Eric Cervini (author of The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. The United States of America), was eager to bring the hidden truths to light and encourage an entirely new audience to discover just how queer the world really was (and is). There is an odd specificity to the way that some right-wing politicians have been attacking queer spaces in the last few months. Going after drag queens for reading to children in a library is a waste of time, if you ask me. The Book of Queer didn’t arrive just in time for this year’s Pride, but it’s a reminder to those conservative groups that we have been around for decades. Being our and proud is not a new phenomenon and it’s not a trend. “We started the show when things were bad, but they weren’t horrendous. We’ve always been under attack in this country, but have we had a U-Haul full of men with weapons trying to attack? No. In some parts of the world, yes. Not everywhere. Discovery+ is trying to get this in front of as many people as possible–including straight folks–and Breitbart and Newsmax are breathlessly covering this show. They are trolling us in the comment sections. I think it’s because it flies in the face of their central thesis which is there is a new phenomenon of queer and trans people teaching these things. They think we are trying to “convert” the children. Twenty percent of Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ+, and that is unprecedented. What is not unprecedented is our existence. They are trying to argue that this is wholly new, and our show proves that we have been here and queer since the dawn of humanity. You can’t have both. Either Abraham Lincoln was sleeping with more men then women or to be gay is a new phenomenon that needs to be extinguished. That is, in my opinion, is why bigots are freaking out. You can’t be making this political argument without this concrete proof that some of the most celebrated people in history were queer or trans.”