We Are Currently Living Through the Absolute Worst ‘Groundhog Day’ Reboot
Creep of the Week
By D’Anne Witkowski
On Sunday, June 22, I received an email from the Detroit Free Press at 8:09 a.m. with the subject line, “U.S. Bombs Iraq.” At 8:11 a.m., I received another email with the subject line, “CORRECTION: U.S. bombs Iran.”
I truly cannot stop thinking about this. This blunder from the largest newspaper in Michigan is so emblematic of where we are as a country right now. Inside this typo is a portal into U.S. foreign policy: all the rush and recklessness that surely led up to Trump making this decision. The striking ignorance so many Americans have about both countries. How many, including the president, could point to each one on a map? How many Americans, including the president, see Iran as just another country full of brown people whose lives frankly don’t matter that much? Just like the people of Palestine, the people of Afghanistan, the people of Iraq. Certainly their lives are not as rich and vibrant and meaningful as the lives of the Americans who, in their infinite wisdom, elected Trump to be president. Again.
I make a conscious effort to be anti-racist, recognizing that I, like every white person in this country, was born and raised surrounded by racism and that I am surrounded by it still. It is not enough for me or any white person to simply say, “I’m not racist” — or worse, “I don’t see color.” That isn’t doing any work or taking any kind of responsibility. Thus, we hear some of the most racist people saying things like, “I haven’t got a racist bone in my body.” And perhaps they’re right, but only because racism isn’t a signal from a rogue femur. It’s much more insidious.
When I sent a screenshot of the back-to-back Free Press emails to my sister, she called it “a time machine error.” And she is not wrong. It’s like we’re in 2003 again listening to a president lie to us in order to justify war.
And just as in 2003, this is all happening against a backdrop of fierce opposition to LGBTQ+ people and our rights.
In 2003, the Marriage Protection Amendment was introduced for the second time (the first being the year before), seeking to amend the country’s constitution to forever bar same-sex couples from getting married. President Bush voiced his support. This harmful amendment was introduced and debated endlessly for years, finally being snuffed out by the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell decision, one that could very likely be overturned by the same Court that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Also, same-sex marriage became legal in Canada in 2003 and Michael Stark and Michael Leshner were the first couple to legally marry there. According to a 2023 CBC article, “After 42 years together — 20 as a married couple — the two still very much enjoy each other’s company, whether that’s making raspberry pancakes, discussing the news over a cup of tea or travelling abroad.” The couple finds the attacks on LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S. today “quite scary.” As they should.
2003 was also the year of the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down the many laws nationwide that criminalized queer sex and the year the Massachusetts Supreme Court struck down its ban on marriage equality. Legal marriages began in the state the next year.
As you can see, 2003 was kind of a big deal for the LGBTQ+ civil rights fight. But if you’ve been paying attention to what’s happening now, it’s hard not to see how, historically, 22 years is not long ago at all.
In 2003, we were invading Iraq searching for non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” while the nation debated whether two people of the same sex could actually love each other and even if they could, whether they should be afforded the same legal protections as heterosexual couples.
In 2025, we’ve bombed Iran under the pretense of them building nukes while the nation debates whether transgender people should be allowed to exist at all, actively pursuing policies that make it harder for them to just live their daily lives.
As Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr said in the way-olden days, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
It is easy to feel hopeless. I remember how hopeless I felt in 2003. I honestly didn’t think I would ever be able to get legally married in my lifetime. I did not think things would get better.
But they did. Not in every way. But I was able to marry my wife, be put on her insurance when I had cancer and give our son two legal moms.
These are the things I remind myself of when I watch the country hurtling into a backwards time vortex. These are the things that I hold onto tightly to keep from being sucked into that hopeless past. It’s hard and my fingers hurt. But I’m trying my best.
D'Anne Witkowski is a writer living in Michigan with her wife and son. She has been writing about LGBTQ+ politics for more than two decades. Read more of D’Anne’s work for Pride Source here.