“Executive Orders Are Not Laws. . .They Can Be Undone Quite Easily”

The first thing that any visitor to Channyn Lynne Parker’s office in Chicago will notice is an “ancestral altar.” It is a long table, covered in white cloth, displaying black-and-white photos of “lost heroes”: dissidents and rebels such as Baynard Rustin, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha Johnson, and Nikki Giovanni, who devoted their lives to the pursuit of truth, social justice, and freedom. As the first Black woman of trans-experience CEO of Equality Illinois, Parker lives and labors in their lineage. 

Equality Illinois is the state’s oldest and largest advocacy organization dedicated to defending the rights of LGBTQ+ people. It also promotes the protection of reproductive and voting rights, while striving to enhance civic engagement.  

In her keynote address at the Equality Illinois fundraising gala on January 31, Parker called for resistance to the backlash unfolding against the progress that Rustin, Rivera, Johnson, Giovanni, and countless others who enlisted in the rights-based movements of the 1960s, ’70s, and later decades made possible. With Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker in the audience, she also underlined the need for coalition politics.  

I recently interviewed Parker about the assault on LGBTQ+ people, the dangers of Donald Trump’s administration, and why militant progressives are wrong to insist on, as she put it, “burning everything down when you are furthest from the exit.” This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. 

DM: What are the challenges of organizing and advocating for LGBTQ people now, given the poisonous political climate? 

CLP: One of the challenges is the call coming from inside the house. On this side of the fence, we are so starved for justice that we often look at the fragments as opposed to the big picture. Of course, the fragments add up to the larger picture, but we have to figure out the incremental steps toward the goal. One of the problems is that we, on the left, don’t decide what our big-picture agenda, our collective goal, is. Number two, obviously, is that there is a great deal of opposition against us—a very powerful opposition, well-funded and well-organized. They’ve strategized for this moment for many years. They’ve taken incremental steps because they do get aligned on a large, collective agenda.  

Also, LGBTQ people have many executive orders that we’ve been protected by, but executive orders are not laws, and what we’re seeing is that they can be undone quite easily. We didn’t take the necessary time to think about how many of our so-called rights were executive orders and fragile.  

Finally, there is a lack of voter and civic engagement. We do a lot of things on autopilot, placing our lives in the hands of elected officials without doing enough to challenge them. 

DM: What were some of those incremental steps opposition took that led the country to arrive at a moment of backlash against LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, immigrant rights, and democracy more broadly? 

CLP: It came from where it always comes from, white supremacy. When I say, “white supremacy,” I don’t mean only skin tone. I mean a system that indoctrinates one group against another and keeps one group too blind to see that they are much more part of the other group than they believe themselves to be. White supremacy thrives on unmerited privilege. It is interesting how Trump officials say things like, “DEI gives unfair advantages,” when these are people who don’t actually want to compete. They don’t want different types of people to challenge their privileges. So, they want to unravel rights. They want to unravel the policies and take down the guardrails in place to give other people opportunities—not unwarranted opportunities, but opportunities to use their talents, skills, and knowledge to make this a better country. And there is a comfort that derives from their supremacy, because they think, “No matter how bad it gets for me, at least I’ll have that.” 

[Barack] Obama’s presidency intensified this thinking, because they perceived it as a crushing blow to their supremacy.  

DM: What are the advantages of doing your work in a blue state, and what are the drawbacks? 

CLP: The positives are that we are in a state that is well-protected through our Illinois constitution, which guarantees rights that the Trump administration is targeting right now. We have a very strong governor who protects us from federal overreach. We have state representatives and members of Congress who do a good job of pushing back against the nasty stuff. We are a safe state in terms of women’s reproductive health access and gender-affirming care. We see what is happening in Florida. They are taking away advanced medicines from people with HIV/AIDS who do not have private insurance. Illinois still has a good safety net.  

The drawback is that we rely too heavily on being a blue, or “safe,” state. We see voter disengagement based on this idea of, “Oh, we already know who is going to win.” That’s good until it’s not.  

DM: You mentioned Governor Pritzker. He might run for president. Do you have any thoughts? 

CLP: I think he certainly has the right posture. He’s well-funded, and it is going to take someone who is well-funded for the good to go against people who are well-funded for the bad. 

DM: Some progressives would say that “well-funded” is a criticism. In your speech at the Equality Illinois gala, you mentioned a problem with those who insist on nothing but the “most virtuous program.” It seems that you are trying to introduce a little more pragmatism into the progressive discourse. Why? 

CLP: That’s exactly what I’m doing. We can’t forsake the world we live in for the world that we want to see. We know that elections take money. We know that getting people on the airwaves takes money. In a perfect world, it would be as simple as becoming aware of who the best person is and voting for them. But in this world, how will that best person’s voice even be heard? We don’t have 100 percent, well-informed civic engagement. Candidates are introduced to the community through the media, and the media costs.  

Now, are billionaires the problem? Well, a system that allows people to horde billions of dollars that could otherwise go to the public good certainly is a problem. Until that changes, this is where we are at. So, we have to move toward the world we want to see. But, burning it all down when you’re furthest from the exit certainly isn’t the way to go. 

DM: What about Rahm Emanuel? 

CLP: What I admire about both of them is that they are both very vocal in their opposition to Trump. We need leaders who are strategic but also unafraid to give the middle finger to the folks who most deserve it. It is a shame, but our society loves reality TV, and that affects our form of political engagement. Gone are the days of carefully reading political analysis. Gone are the days of Walter Cronkite. Gone are the days of issue-based debates. We now pick presidents the way we pick a prom queen, largely because we are not educated about how public policy and legislation work, and we are overly emotionally driven. So, I do think that Rahm Emanuel can strike an emotional chord.  

DM: Back to Equality Illinois, what are the main issues confronting LGBTQ people? 

CLP: The rollback of our rights. There are bans in certain areas around trans people’s care and the expression of trans identities. We are skirting on a precipice where it could become damn-near illegal to be trans. What’s next? Gay marriage? Interracial marriage? Birth control? We’ve already seen the overturn of Roe v. Wade.  

I was recently talking to a dear friend who is a Chicago alderman. He’s a heterosexual, and I said to him, “Let’s think about gender-affirming care. You see young, transgender people who want medical intervention to stop their puberty. Let’s say that becomes illegal. What happens when you need to stop a precocious puberty for a cisgender child?” 

He said, “It’s funny you say that, because my son is actually going through a precocious puberty right now.”  

You can’t take away one without the other. 

DM: What you are describing is similar to what has happened with women’s health care. In states that have criminalized abortion, women with a dangerous pregnancy have had difficulty getting care; women have been investigated and prosecuted for miscarriages.  

CLP: I don’t think the Trump administration is as reckless as some people want to believe. I think that they are fine with certain folks dying. They have a natural selection ideology. They exposed that during the pandemic when they said, Let the virus burn through, and we’ll have natural immunity. Where would that have left people with disabilities and chronic illnesses? And the poor neighborhoods where people don’t have access to good health care? 

DM: What are the rights that you most fear Trump might roll back? 

CLP: Voting rights. What we fear most right now is election interference. It’s not even so much that they could pick up a ballot box and confiscate the ballots, as they are signaling that they might do with the recent raid in Georgia. If they send ICE to the polling places, they will not only intimidate voters, lowering participation, but if they find even one person there who cannot vote, they will claim voter fraud, and assault the integrity of the election, and voting rights more widely. They don’t want a free and fair election because the majority of the people in this country don’t want what they are trying to implement. 

DM: What is your advice to someone who opposes the horrific backslide but feels powerless to stop it? 

CLP: Educate people where you can, even if that means your immediate circle. When you have factual information, share it with friends and family. Go to town halls. Go to political meetings and protests. You should support organizations like Equality Illinois. Vote and donate to candidates who are making positive changes. But you can also have an educational effect on the people who know and trust you.  

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