June is Pride Month. It has been Pride Month, in the sense of a widely recognized cultural designation, since the 1990s. It involves rainbow flags, parades, corporate logos that revert to their normal colors on July 1, and the basic acknowledgment that LGBTQ+ people exist and that their existence is worth a month. Several Republican governors have decided this is unacceptable and have responded with official proclamations declaring the month something else.
Fidelity Month in some states. Nuclear Family Month in others. Strong Families Month in others. These are real government documents, with official seals and gubernatorial signatures, issued apparently in the belief that declaring a competing month will accomplish something, when in practice what it accomplishes is giving media outlets something to write about and leaving the Pride Month events entirely undisturbed.
Nuclear Family Month deserves particular examination. The nuclear family, as the dominant American household arrangement, peaked around 1960 and has declined in every demographic category every decade since. The share of U.S. households consisting of a married couple with children has been falling for 65 years. Issuing a proclamation in its honor is the governing equivalent of declaring January Rotary Phone Appreciation Month. The rotary phone was excellent. It is also gone, and a proclamation will not bring it back.
The underlying argument about family formation and child outcomes is genuine and worth having. The data on stability and two-parent households is real and frequently ignored by the left, and pointing to it is legitimate. None of that requires an official state document renaming a month that still exists and will still exist on July 1 after the proclamation has been filed and forgotten.
The governors who signed these proclamations did not change what happens in their states in June. They changed what their press secretaries tweeted.
When the official government response to a cultural moment you dislike is a document nobody will read renaming a month that continues to exist, what exactly has been governed?
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