Pride Month Muted For Michigan House LGBTQ+ Caucus With Republicans Back In Charge

Michigan Advance

June 26, 2025

For state Rep. Jason Morgan, an openly gay Democrat from Ann Arbor, the vibrant celebration of love and inclusion that defines Pride Month felt duller this year in the Michigan House of Representatives.

The House has yet to take a vote on or pass a resolution acknowledging Pride Month in June, as it has in the past two years when Democrats controlled all levers of state government. There are no Pride flags flying from the flagpoles on Capitol grounds, nor are any flying from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office in the Romney Building that sits across the street.

In an interview with Michigan Advance, Morgan said that the month felt muted in some regard – both at the national scale but also here at home, and in the halls of power where he works each day.

“Now that Republicans are in charge at the federal level and here in the Michigan House, it really feels like there’s a concerted effort to roll back LGBTQ+ rights and protections,” Morgan said. “It feels like there is pressure being applied to businesses and organizations and universities to roll back commonsense efforts to support diversity and LGBTQ+ people.”

Adding to that sense of retrenchment is the fact that the House hasn’t acknowledged Pride Month yet, even as Morgan tried mightily over the last few months to make it happen and in a timely fashion.

Rep. Jason Morgan (D-Ann Arbor) smiles following a reading of a Pride Month recognition resolution his caucus hoped would come up for a vote even after the House of Representatives’ GOP leadership said it would not entertain the motion on Thursday, June 26 | Photo by Ben Solis/Michigan Advance

Morgan told The Advance that a Pride Month resolution with exclusively Democratic co-sponsors was submitted on Wednesday. The last day of session before Pride Month ends is Thursday, and Morgan hoped that it would come up for a vote then.

A vote on Thursday would also be symbolic, as it marks the 10th anniversary of Obergefel v. Hodges, the landmark case that allowed same-sex marriage nationwide.

But House leadership on Thursday said it would not come up for a vote, moving House Democrats to gather on the Capitol steps to read the resolution aloud.

The process to get a Pride resolution to the floor, however, started in March, with Morgan’s office sending the same resolution that was passed last year to the office of state Rep. John Fitzgerald (D-Wyoming), the House’s minority floor leader, which then sent the resolution for edits and approval to the office of House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) in late May.

Morgan said despite some back and forth from the two offices, he and his colleagues – who were pushing to have Pride Month acknowledged by the House earlier in the month than later – never got a clear answer on whether the resolution language was approved, if edits were needed or if it would ever reach the floor.

Morgan on Wednesday said that he at least hoped to get it up on the board for a vote Thursday before the clock winds down.

“All we are asking from the Speaker’s office is to pass the same resolution that passed under Republican and Democratic legislatures before to let our LGBTQ+ Michiganders know that we acknowledge them, welcome them and continue to celebrate living as who they are in our state,” Morgan said.

During a regularly scheduled news briefing on Wednesday with Capitol news reporters, the Advance asked Hall if the House was going to allow a vote on a Pride Month recognition resolution before the month ends.

Hall emphatically said no. When asked if there was a reason, Hall started to move on from the question, but kept coming back to it, adding that he didn’t believe a resolution had actually been introduced.

When he was told by an Advance reporter that Morgan’s office had been working with his office to get it finalized, Hall returned to his initial answer: no, even if it was introduced, it would not be taken up for a vote.

Morgan, following Hall’s news conference, said that at least now he had an answer from the speaker’s office.

State Rep. Laurie Pohutsky (D-Livonia), who is openly bisexual, said in an interview that she was not surprised House Republicans stalled the resolution, and that it was to be expected.

“Rep. Morgan has been trying to work in good faith with them, and it’s not really been reciprocated,” she said. “What I can say is that, very clearly, folks who were loud and proud [as allies] back in 2019 don’t seem to have that same level of enthusiasm and support, and that’s disappointing.”

She agreed with Morgan’s assessment that this year in particular feels like the step forward gains of the last six years have taken two steps back.

The House, under GOP control this year, has passed anti-transgender legislation, including House Bill 4066 and House Bill 4469, aimed at prohibiting transgender girls from joining girls’ interscholastic sports.

State Rep. Rylee Linting (R-Wyandotte) speaks outside the Michigan State Capitol Building in support of legislation to ban transgender girls from female school sports teams on May 15, 2025. | Photo: Anna Liz Nichols/Michigan Advance

While the bills have zero chance of making it past the Democratic-controlled Michigan Senate or being signed by Whitmer, Morgan said Democrats would have never put that legislation forward, or even come up for a vote, if they still had control of the House.

There was also House Resolution 28, sponsored in February by arch-conservative state Rep. Josh Schriver (R-Oxford), condemning the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow same-sex marriage. That remains in the House Government Operations Committee, which is typically where bills and resolutions go to die.

Coupled with Republicans controlling each lever of the federal government, and many of them openly anti-LGBTQ+, the high tide of progress feels a bit like it’s beginning to roll back.

Some members of the community have also noticed that no Pride flags are hanging from state buildings this year. Whitmer hung a Pride flag from her office in the Romney Building in 2019 the year after she was elected to the high office, but has not done so since.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had Pride flags hoisted on the Romney Building for the first time in 2019, June 16, 2019 | Susan J. Demas/Michigan Advance

A Whitmer spokesperson said that she has flown the flag outside the governor’s residence in Lansing since 2020, and that it was flying outside her home this week when the Advance inquired about the Romney Building.

The Capitol grounds and what flags fly inside or outside the building is in the purview of the Michigan Capitol Commission and not the governor or legislative leadership.

Messages sent by the Advance requesting an interview with the Capitol Commission or its staff about whether it planned to honor Pride by flying the LGBTQ+ flag were not returned.

The House has a flagpole on the roof of its wing of the chamber, but a Pride flag is unlikely to fly from that pole this week before Pride Month ends.

State Rep. Dylan Wegela (D-Garden City), an LGBTQ+ ally, said in an interview that “Rainbow Capitalism” was a driving force of why so many corporations and businesses appeared as allies in recent years, with products adorned in Pride colors, but dialed back once the political climate changed.

“Because we have a fascist in the White House and Republicans that are pushing culture wars and not equal rights, corporations have found it easier to back away from their LGBTQ+ stances,” Wegela said. “I think we can’t speak for the community, but as an ally, I think it’s important that corporations adopt standards of human rights at all times, not just when it’s convenient for the profit margins.”

State Sen. Jeremy Moss (D-Southfield), the first openly gay member of the state Senate, said the fight to have Pride recognized this year in the House harkened back to his fight with former Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey (R-Clarklake) over the Senate’s recognition.

Moss told the Advance that Shirkey allowed it to go up for a vote and it passed one year, but then the next year, leadership said they wouldn’t be doing that again.

If House Republicans go the same route, Moss said it would be a sad state of affairs.

“Really, it takes me back to serving in a pre-marriage equality era, and I’m just dismayed about it,” Moss said. “I think we are all fortunate that we still have a very strong, pro-equality majority in the Senate, so any [anti-LGBTQ+ action] they put up in the House is a non-starter in the state Senate. Which is great, but not for the seven of us in our caucus.”

He warned that could be part of the difference for Democrats fighting to take back the House and retain the Senate come election time, as Moss believed that the Shirkey Senate’s anti-LGBTQ+ stance was one factor that helped propel Democrats to the current Senate majority.

As to the change in the atmosphere this June, Moss said the feeling was palpable for LGBTQ+ Michiganders.

“I think the community really gets it, and I think we are prepared to fight like our lives depend on it,” Moss said. “In many cases, they do, as we’ve seen with the recent anti-transgender ruling from the Supreme Court. It’s a new era. It’s a very big reminder that the progress that was made is very fragile.”

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