When the U.S. Supreme Court commences proceedings Tuesday to hear oral arguments over whether a Colorado therapist can offer “conversion therapy” to queer youth, the stakes are far greater than one state’s law.
Chiles v. Salazar, a challenge to Colorado’s ban on ‘conversion therapy for minors, is about whether the highest court in the land will once again choose bigotry over humanity and call it constitutional.
And it will likely do it based on a lie. The Alliance Defending Freedom, which is defending conversion therapy in the case, is accused of misquoting and misrepresenting a 2016 study by scholars Lisa Diamond and Clifford Rosky.
In light of all this, I’m not sure why the court is wasting its time listening to oral arguments when the result will be a foregone conclusion. This is all a dog and pony show, a sham, by the six conservative justices to somehow show that they can remain “unbiased,” which is a joke with tragic consequences.
Conversion therapy is not in any way therapy. It is psychological torture masquerading as religion, marketed as “healing,” and has historically been inflicted on queer people under the guise of saving their souls. It sure as hell doesn’t save them — it destroys them.
It was born in the 19th century from the same pseudoscientific junk that justified lobotomies and “hysteria” diagnoses. Doctors prescribed hypnosis, electroshock, even chemical castration to “cure” homosexuality. They failed, of course, not because they lacked technique, but because there was never anything to cure.
By the late 20th century, the medical community condemned conversion therapy as quackery and abuse. Virtually every medical group in the country is opposed to conversion therapy.
But members of the sanctimonious religious right keep shoving it down victims’ throats. In their warped logic, with the cross as their shield, they call it “free speech.” And Tuesday, before a Supreme Court dominated by Christian fundamentalists, that twisted argument will get its day.
I can see Justices Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Thomas behind the curtain snickering and salivating at their chance to trash opponents of conversion therapy, who will likely point out the life-threatening danger of this so-called free speech.
This case really asks whether a therapist should be allowed to inflict emotional and psychological trauma on LGBTQ+ youth in the name of religion. Under this court, the answer will almost certainly be yes. Unambiguously yes. Glory hallelujah yes.
This pseudo court functions less as a judicial branc, and more like Donald Trump’s black-robed bullies and rubber stampers. Case after case, the 6–3 majority has given Trump everything he’s wanted: immunity shields, deregulation, trampling voting rights, and weaponizing government agencies.
This court doesn’t interpret the Constitution. That’s another one of its repeated lies. It sees its mission as enforcing a cultural and religious crusade while making Trump emperor and king.
And LGBTQ+ Americans have been in its crosshairs from day one. And we will continue to be through this upcoming term. While the court paves the way for Trump to become a dictator, it will piously try to tear down rights and precedent.
This court has consistently ruled against LGBTQ+ plaintiffs, framing discrimination as “religious freedom.” It said states can ban gender-affirming care for youth and sided with business owners who claim their “faith” allows them to deny service to queer customers.
Justices Thomas and Alito have openly telegraphed their desire to revisit, read overturn, Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. They’ve described it as a “mistake,” a “threat to religious liberty,” and a decision that “should be corrected.” Corrected, in their eyes, means erased, done away with, put in the dustbin of history.
And that’s the ideological platform on which Tuesday’s case will be decided. It’s not about the law. It’s not about science. And it’s most certainly not about human decency. It’s about the court’s divine entitlement and the belief that Christian conservatives are owed special protection to impose their beliefs on others.
Enter Kaly Chiles, the therapist at the center of the conversion therapy case, who wants to impose her beliefs and her destructive logic on impressionable queer youth.
It’s grotesque. Immoral. And it’s dangerous.
Ask Andrew Hartzler, president of the Missouri Young Democrats and a survivor of conversion therapy. At 14, after he came out to his parents, they sent him to a so-called counselor in Kansas City three times a week.
He says the sessions “put me in a suffocating box” where he was taught that every thought or feeling he had about another boy was a sign of sin. “If I was walking down the street and noticed a guy who caught my eye,” he recalled, “I was told it meant I wasn’t praying enough or reading the Bible enough.”
A former library director in Wyoming has won $700,000 in a settlement after she was fired for refusing to remove books containing content about sexual health and LGBTQ+ identities.
Terri Lesley, director of Campbell County Public Library, was removed from her position in July, 2023 after 27 years of service when the Campbell County library board voted four to one to fire her. The board had pushed for two years to convince Lesley to remove the collection of books, which some had claimed were inappropriate for minors.
Under the settlement, Lesley has agreed to drop her lawsuit against the state, though a separate lawsuit she has filed against the three individuals who challenged the books will move foward.
“I do feel vindicated. It’s been a rough road, but I will never regret standing up for the First Amendment,” Lesley said, via The Associated Press.
Some of the books Lesley refused to remove included Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison, This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson, How Do You Make a Baby by Anna Fiske, Doing It by Hannah Witton, Sex is a Funny Word by Corey Silverberg, and Dating and Sex: A Guide for the 21st Century Teen Boy by Andrew P. Smiler.
Lesley’s firing came not long after the library board voted in October, 2022 to leave the American Library Association, a group that promotes libraries, and the Wyoming Library Association, its state chapter.
Books bans were at a record high two years ago when Lesley was fired — a record that has since been broken. During the 2024-2025 school year, PEN America recorded 6,870 instances of book bans across 23 states and 87 public school districts, affecting 3,752 titles. They represented the work of 2,308 authors, 243 illustrators, and 38 translators.
“We hope at least that it sends a message to other library districts, other states, other counties, that the First Amendment is alive and strong and that our values against discrimination also remain alive and strong,” said Lesley’s attorney, Iris Halpern. “These are public entities, they’re government officials, they need to keep in mind their constitutional obligations.”
You don’t feel secure in your masculinity,” Sam Nieves remembers his licensed therapist telling him at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. “Go grab a Playboy and find a way to enjoy it,” the Mormon therapist told him.
“He told me I can’t be straight if I don’t go fishing with my dad,” says Nieves, who was 20 at the time. “He told me I needed to play more sports, listen to country music, stuff like that. He told me something was wrong with me.”
After these sessions, which lasted about a year and a half, Nieves started experiencing crippling shame and self-loathing. He eventually developed excruciating migraines and memory loss.
“My therapist just helped me find better ways to help me to hate myself,” Nieves, now 41 and living in Seattle, Washington, told Uncloseted Media.
Sam Nieves as a young adult. Photo courtesy of Nieves.
Fourteen countries have a national conversion therapy ban, while many more have state or provincial bans. In the U.S., religious leaders can practice nationwide, though licensed therapists are not allowed to apply it to kids in 23 states.
While research around torture and mental health consistently suggests the practice should be banned, almost 700,000 LGBT adults have received conversion therapy at some point in their lives, including about 350,000 who received it as adolescents.
Despite all of this, on Oct. 7 the Supreme Court heard arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, a case that challenges Colorado’s conversion therapy ban and—if overturned—would have implications for the rest of the states with bans in place.
While the verdict will likely not be announced until June, the court seems poised to overturn it, suggesting that restrictions on therapists might violate the First Amendment’s free-speech clause.
“I’m emotionally devastated for the children who will lose the protections we fought so hard to give them,” says Nieves.
Conversion Therapy and Self-Hate
Unlike many young Americans who are forced into the practice by their parents, Nieves—who was raised Mormon—opted to see a conversion therapist because his church community said that if he didn’t change his sexuality, he was letting them down.
“I actively didn’t want to be attracted to guys,” he says. “And so it was always this confusing, gaslighting situation where they would tell me to stop being gay, even if I wasn’t doing anything. I was trying really hard not to. That’s when [the church] referred me to conversion therapy.”
Sam Nieves in his 20s. Courtesy of Nieves.
Nieves’ therapist insisted that his mom was too overbearing and his dad was not actively parenting, causing him to be gay. As his therapist continued to recommend that he engage in stereotypically masculine activities, he began to withdraw, cutting off friendships and avoiding community gatherings. His Mormon upbringing had taught him to feel shame, but conversion therapy solidified it.
“Conversion therapy gave me validation for why I hate myself. It was just building on top of what the church had already taught me,” he says.
Nieves became depressed and eventually developed a mild type of dissociative identity disorder (DID), where he experienced one persona that carried shame and recognized he was gay, and another that tried to act straight. Headaches and mental fog were persistent. Thoughts of ending his life flickered through his mind.
“It was just nonstop, massive disassociation,” he says. “There was the Straight Sam and the Gay Sam. And the whole time, everyone was telling me Satan was working on me because something inside me was trying to be gay. So it was insane making. They were making me clinically insane.”
According to medical experts, repeated trauma like medical procedures, war, human trafficking, conversion therapy and terrorism can cause DID when it overwhelms a child’s ability to cope, causing their sense of self to fragment into distinct identity states as a survival mechanism. The trauma disrupts the normal integration of self, leading to symptoms like memory gaps, dissociation and distinct personality states.
When Hunter Mattison, a 29-year-old queer woman now living in Washington, was subjected to conversion therapy from her church and parents, she developed DID.
Raised in rural Idaho and immersed in an Independent Fundamental Baptist church that condemned queerness as sinful, the constant fear and shame brought on by her church’s conversion therapy program fractured her sense of self. She attributes her condition to repeated trauma that caused her brain to wall off painful memories.
“I didn’t know how to handle it other than just to check out,” Mattison told Uncloseted Media. “I still have a lot of memory gaps from the conversion therapy because of how intense it was. … Once I didn’t have the restraints of that church anymore, the memories started to return.”
Fear, Shame and Suicidal Ideation
Similar to Nieves and Mattison, Addy Sakler, who grew up in a conservative Protestant community in Ohio, says conversion therapy was “slowly killing” her.
“I figured I liked girls in kindergarten but did not have the language to describe it,” she told Uncloseted Media.
Sakler knew she wouldn’t be accepted at her church, so she put herself in conversion therapy throughout her young adulthood.
But it didn’t work. Sakler remembers the first sneaking moments of affection between grad school classes with her first crush. But after each kiss, the joy was followed by shame.
“We’d feel a lot of guilt and break up and immediately go repent,” she says. Both women were part of a church ministry that promised to “pray away the gay,” a 12-week program of lessons and deliverance sessions meant to convert them to heterosexuality. Instead, Sakler says, it nearly destroyed her.
Addy Sakler and her boyfriend before she came out. Photo courtesy of Sakler.
“I felt like a zombie walking around. I was depressed and I tried to commit suicide,” she says. “I was in the hospital for a month, two different times. It created a lot of trauma.”
Sakler says she was white knuckling it, trying to get through life as a “shell of a person.” She began cutting, hitting and hating herself because of the rejection from her church community.
Addy Sakler as an adult. Courtesy of Sakler.
“You believe what they’re saying. They’re telling you you’re broken and to be right with God you have to be heterosexual and if you’re not changing, then you’re being attacked by Satan.”
For nearly 15 years, Sakler attended conversion therapy conferences across the country, including one put on by the now dissolved Exodus International.
According to the Williams Institute, LGBTQ adults who have undergone conversion therapy have nearly twice the odds of attempting suicide and 92% greater odds of lifetime suicidal ideation compared to those who haven’t. Among LGBTQ youth, the numbers are higher, with 27% of those who experienced conversion therapy attempting suicide in the past year.
In addition, survivors experience disproportionately high rates of depression, PTSD and substance abuse. According to the findings from one Stanford Medicine study, the psychological harm caused by conversion therapy mirrors that of other severe traumas known to cause PTSD—like sexual or physical assault, the loss of someone close, or even experiences of war and torture.
Isolation and Families Torn Apart
When Curtis Lopez-Galloway told his parents he was gay at 16, they drove him two hours away from his house in southern Illinois to a conversion therapist who used the sessions to berate him for not trying hard enough to change into “the man that God wanted” him to be.
Curtis Lopez-Galloway as a teenager. Photo courtesy of Lopez-Galloway.
Lopez-Galloway remembers being told that his attractions to other men were a symptom of a deeper lack of masculinity, that he needed to “study women to understand what kind of man he was supposed to be” and that he should “bounce his eyes, and change his thoughts to something else whenever he begins to have an attraction toward a male.”
Curtis Lopez-Galloway’s treatment plan, courtesy of Lopez-Galloway.
He was given a treatment plan that involved limiting time with LGBTQ affirming friends, reading articles designed to redirect his attractions, and practicing what the therapist called “male characteristic activities,” such as taking charge and asserting control. He told his therapist that his marker of when things would be better was “life [going] back to normal.”
The therapist also worked with his parents, telling them they had failed by allowing the “gay agenda” to threaten their family and “let the devil get into the house.”
Lopez-Galloway, who now runs the Conversion Therapy Survivor Network, a nonprofit that connects survivors of the practice, recalls frustration and shame spilling into screaming matches that tore his family apart. “My parents were miserable, I was miserable, and we would just take it out on each other,” he says. “I went to [my therapist] for six months, and he just abused me and made life worse. It pushed me deeper into the closet and made me anxious and depressed.”
Curtis Lopez-Galloway as a teenager. Courtesy of Lopez-Galloway.
“[My therapist] would use therapeutic ideas but twist them in a way that was trying to change sexuality. … He would try to manipulate me in that sort of way and really broke me down as a person,” says Lopez-Galloway.
We reached out to the center Lopez-Galloway went to for treatment but they did not respond to a request for comment. Lopez-Galloway says his parents now acknowledge the harm the therapy caused, and he says their relationship has improved.
For many survivors of conversion therapy, the trauma can last a lifetime.
Even 21 years later, Nieves still gets triggered. He dropped out of college during his last semester of counseling school because the practices were too similar to those manipulated and weaponized by his therapist. “The hardest part was fighting … to no longer be suicidal every single day,” he says. “I would say that’s the hardest part. … It’s the suicidality that you fight with once it’s over. “
Nieves and Mattison have both found support in Lopez-Galloway’s survivor network, where they meet weekly and heal together in community. Sakler has found healing in therapy for PTSD, and has found acceptance with her wife and her queer community in Sacramento, California.
Despite this, the trauma often requires undoing self-hatred and discovering self-worth.
“[We’re] constantly saying, ‘We don’t know who we are,’” Nieves says. “We don’t know how to enjoy life. We don’t know what the meaning of life is. We’re like The Walking Dead. Because just like how you break a horse, they broke our spirits. They told us everything about us was wrong and we needed to conform. But no matter what we did, we couldn’t conform.”
Even with these survivors’ experiences, along with countless testimonies from other Americans over decades, the Supreme Court looks poised to overturn Colorado’s ban, with multiple justices describing it as “viewpoint discrimination.”
Nieves strongly disagrees and advises kids who are experiencing conversion therapy right now to stay strong and ask for help when possible. “This may very well be the most difficult time of your life. For many of you, it’s going to feel like a living hell, and you may even pray for death every night. I know this, because this is how [I] felt too,” he says. “Often, [conversion therapists] break other laws. If you think someone might be breaking the law during your conversion therapy, please seek out a trusted adult and let them know,” he says.
Above all, Nieves tells kids to push through no matter what. “It can and will get better if you promise yourself that you deserve authentic joy, free of lies and coercion. Community is out there waiting for you, if you can just hold on for one more day, one more hour, or even just for one more minute.”
As the federal government shutdown enters its 12th day on Sunday, the Trumpadministration has implemented a comprehensive purge of the federal public health workforce, laying off thousands of employees at the Department of Health and Human Services, including at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The cuts have dismantled critical programs in family planning, LGBTQ+ and adolescent health, and infectious disease surveillance, leaving experts warning that the United States is entering the viral respiratory infection season flying blind.
The Office of Management and Budget confirmed “substantial” reductions in force across multiple agencies.
OMB Director Russ Vought, who announced “The RIFs have begun” on X, formerly Twitter, said the cuts represent a shift from traditional furloughs to permanent terminations. In his post, Vought made clear the purge is broad: “These are RIFs, not furloughs.”
Reuters reports that between 1,100 and 1,200 HHS employees have already been fired, with more layoffs expected next week. At the CDC, entire divisions, including those overseeing epidemiology, global health, and the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the agency’s flagship public-health bulletin, were dissolved. One senior scientist told Time that the CDC “is not functional.”
Within HHS, the fallout has been particularly severe. A former senior Biden administration official told The Advocate that the Office of Population Affairs, which administered the nation’s Title X family-planning network, teen-pregnancy prevention, and LGBTQ+ health initiatives, was eliminated entirely. “This wasn’t a budget decision — it was ideological,” the former official said. “These are the programs that centered reproductive and queer health, and now they’re gone.”
Adrian Shanker, who served as deputy assistant secretary for health policy and senior adviser on LGBTQ+ health equity under the Biden administration, told The Advocate the cuts “are devastating” for both federal employees and the American public.
“This new reduction in force is devastating, certainly for the dedicated public health workers who have contributed countless years to advancing the health and well-being of the American people, and certainly don’t deserve to be political pawns in the Trump administration’s shutdown games,” Shanker said. He added that the Office of Population Affairs had provided funding for sex education programs benefiting LGBTQ+ youth and that its elimination “leaves us more vulnerable to health inequities and worsened health outcomes.”
He noted that this marks “the first time that the office itself is being cut” rather than its programs being politicized. In recent weeks, the administration has rolled back support for state grants that included transgender people. “It’s not a small cut — it’s actually the entire office,” Shanker said. “Without these people in place, it’s unlikely that a lot of these programs will be able to continue even after the government reopens.”
These layoffs come just weeks after the CDC’s collapse in leadership. In August, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, then director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, resigned in protest, telling The Advocate that “the CDC you knew is over.” His departure followed the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez, who clashed with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy and scientific independence. Daskalakis said the “firewall between science and ideology” had already broken down, an assessment many public-health veterans now say was prophetic.
Other senior scientists, including Debra Houry and Daniel Jernigan, also resigned this summer, warned that the administration was undermining evidence-based policymaking.
“They have cut so deep into the muscle of CDC that it will not be able to deliver on routine or emergency situations. I fear it has been damaged beyond repair. We need to prepare for the next incarnation of public health,” Daskalakis told The Advocate on Saturday.
The American Federation of Government Employees has filed lalwsuit to block the firings, arguing that mass layoffs during a shutdown violate civil-service protections. Democratic lawmakers have called the cuts an abuse of executive power.
Since November 2024—and especially in the months since the beginning of President Trump’s second term—anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has increased, violence has escalated, and legislation, executive orders, and other targeted actions have drastically altered the lives of LGBTQ people, especially transgender people. Survey findings from the Movement Advancement Project and NORC show that the majority of LGBTQ adults report harm, mistreatment, and other negative experiences since the 2024 presidential election.
To better understand the impacts of the extraordinarily difficult and stressful political environment, this nationally representative survey provides a critical snapshot into the experiences, concerns, and dramatic life changes LGBTQ people have taken to protect themselves or their families since the November 2024 election. It also shows that LGBTQ people reported increasing their efforts to participate in or protect their community in the face of anti-LGBTQ politics or laws.
The Majority of LGBTQ People, and Even Higher Numbers of Transgender People, Have Made Major Life Decisions Due to Recent LGBTQ-Related Politics Since November 2024, the majority (57%) of LGBTQ people—including 84% of transgender and nonbinary people—have made significant life decisions or taken steps in response to LGBTQ-related politics or laws as seen in Figure 1. These include considering or actually moving to a different state; considering or actually finding a different job; attempting to update legal name or gender markers on identity documents; crossing state lines to receive medical care, and much more.
Figure 1
These are remarkably sobering findings that reflect the fear, anxiety, and uncertainty that many LGBTQ people and their families across the country are currently facing—and the very real and difficult choices about their lives that they are being forced to consider. This is especially true given the relatively short period of time considered by the survey (November 2024 to June 2025), suggesting that as political attacks on LGBTQ people continue, these numbers may grow even higher.
Although 43% of transgender people—and 25% of all LGBTQ people—have considered moving to a different state, a shocking 9% of transgender people report they’ve actually moved to a different state since November 2024, as have five percent (5%) of all LGBTQ people.
The Majority of LGBTQ People Report Discrimination and Harassment Since the November 2024 Election As shown in Figure 2 below, the motivation for the life decisions and other steps LGBTQ people report taking due to LGBTQ-related politics are well-founded: 60% of LGBTQ people, including 82% of transgender and nonbinary people, report that they or an immediate family member have had at least one negative experience related to being LGBTQ since the November 2024 election.
Survey findings also show a clear relationship between LGBTQ respondents’ approval of how their state government is handling LGBTQ issues and the state’s actual LGBTQ policies, as seen in the figure below.
Figure 7
The majority of LGBTQ people—and, consistently, even higher rates of transgender and nonbinary people—reported significant and often negative impacts across the board, such as making major life decisions due to LGBTQ-related laws or politics, experiencing harassment or discrimination, harm to their mental health or overall well-being, and much more.
As political attacks on LGBTQ people by federal, state, and local governments continue, it is likely that these impacts will only accumulate. While the survey illustrates some of the many ways LGBTQ people are taking action to protect not only themselves but also their broader community, it is vital that people beyond LGBTQ people join in these efforts to protect their LGBTQ neighbors, friends, and family members, and to stop the ongoing attacks on LGBTQ people.
For questions, please contact Dana Juniel at dana@mapresearch.org. # # # MAP’s mission is to provide independent and rigorous research, insight and communications that help speed equality and opportunity for all. MAP works to ensure that all people have a fair chance to pursue health and happiness, earn a living, take care of the ones they love, be safe in their communities, and participate in civic life. www.mapresearch.org
Robby Starbuck has built his reputation by attacking LGBTQ inclusion. He’s created a documentary called “The War on Children,” where he promotes the debunked conspiracy theory that suggests pesticides are turning your kids gay. He’s argued that Democrats are pro-trans because they want to allow men to follow women and girls in bathrooms. And he’s said that it’s “grooming for adults to have kids carry trans flags at a soccer game.”
But in the last year, Starbuck has become notorious as a key face of America’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) movement, leading boycott campaigns on social media. He’s successfully pressured corporations, including Tractor Supply, John Deere and Harley-Davidson, to cut down on their DEI programs and withdraw support for Pride events.
Despite having no background in artificial intelligence or content policy, Starbuck has now been brought in by Meta as an AI consultant. To resolve a defamation lawsuit made public in August, the company agreed to bring on the right-wing influencer to advise its AI systems on “political bias” and to reduce the risk of misinformation generated by its chatbot, which was the basis of the lawsuit.
“Meta and Robby Starbuck will work collaboratively in the coming months to continue to find ways to address issues of ideological and political bias,” Starbuck and Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan shared in a joint statement.
This move signaled an alarming retreat from the company’s previous effortsto protect queer voices and also signaled a legitimization of narratives that have long sought to erase them.
And it wasn’t an isolated move. It was part of a systematic dismantling of digital civil-rights protections, with consequences that extend far beyond our screens.
Hate Speech Overhaul
In January, Meta—which has a net worth of nearly $1.8 trillion—overhauled its hate-speech policies, allowing language once flagged as harmful to be tolerated under the guise of protecting “discourse.”
“We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality,” the revised policy guidelines outlined.
This move doesn’t expand free expression; it legitimizes dehumanization. When platforms allow harmful language to flourish under the banner of neutrality or so-called viewpoint diversity, they create environments where targeted marginalized groups are bullied and silenced online. And it may already be happening: Human rights organizations warn that this shift has opened the door to allowing rhetoric portraying LGBTQ people as “abnormal” or “mentally ill.”
And after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, transphobia proliferated, with one user writing in the immediate aftermath: “If the first suspect isn’t a democratic lgbtq trans/fag then you’re looking in the wrong spot. Wow I despise that group of humans.”
As a tech founder who has built companies that bring people together online while ensuring those spaces remain safe and welcoming, I understand where priorities should lie when it comes to the user experience. I’m also aware that that experience can become dangerous for users if companies don’t feel like they have an ethical responsibility to protect their most vulnerable users.
In the first paragraph of Meta’s Corporate Human Rights Policy, the company says one of their principles is to “keep people safe” on their platform: “We recognize all people are equal in dignity and rights. We are all equally entitled to our human rights, without discrimination. Human rights are interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.”
The policy also states that the company is committed to respecting human rights, including those outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was officially adopted by the United Nations. According to the U.N., “discrimination against LGBTI people undermines the human rights principles outlined” in that declaration.
As Zuckerberg and Meta dismantle the safeguards for LGBTQ users and greenlight discrimination against transgender people, they are quite literally not practicing what they preach.
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LGBTQ Censorship and Erasure
In addition to the policy shifts, Meta’s supposed neutral moderation has created an alarming false equivalency between the moderation of hate speech and of LGBTQ-affirming language.
For months, posts and content using LGBTQ hashtags—including #LGBTQ, #Gay, #Lesbian and #Transgender—were hidden from teen searches on Instagram, effectively erasing queer visibility from discovery, untilUser Magexposed the practice and pressed the company for an explanation. Meta later walked back the restrictions, calling them an error. “These search terms and hashtags were mistakenly restricted,” a company spokesperson said.
Other instances of LGBTQ erasure were intentional. In January, Pride decorations and queer themes in Messenger—such as the trans and nonbinary chat themes—quietly disappeared. To some, this may seem insignificant. But for our community, especially LGBTQ kids—nearly 40% of whom seriously considered suicide in the last year—the disappearance of these features sent a symbolic message that queer expression is expendable when corporate priorities shift.
Dismantling DEI and Ditching Independent Fact Checkers
Inside the company, the same backpedaling is underway. In January, Meta dismantled its DEI programs. The company eliminated its entire DEI team; ended hiring practices that ensured diverse candidates were considered for open positions; shut down equity and inclusion training programs; and terminated its supplier diversity program that sourced from diverse-owned businesses.
Without internal accountability, external protections inevitably weaken. When companies eliminate the voices that champion vulnerable populations from within, decisions increasingly reflect only majority perspectives.
Another safeguard to fall was in January, when Meta cut ties with independent fact-checkers and weakened moderation frameworks by ending proactive enforcement and raising the threshold for content removal—tools that once slowed the spread of misinformation, hate and violence. “Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.,” Zuckerberg said in a videoexplaining the changes.
Without them, disinformation targeting LGBTQ people now circulates faster and wider. In fact, leaked training materials from Meta show that comments like “Trans people are freaks” and “Gays are not normal” are among specific content they would now allow to proliferate online.
LGBTQ advocacy organizations have documented the fallout. According to GLAAD’s 2025 Make Meta Safe report, 75% of LGBTQ users reported seeing more harmful content on Meta platforms since these changes.
Unfortunately, Meta’s new rules are part of a wider trend among other tech giants that signifies a broader shrinking of digital civil rights protections. By February, YouTube had removed “gender identity and expression” from its list of protected characteristics in its hate speech policy. And Google eliminated all diversity hiring targets and, in March, scrubbed mentions of diversity from its responsible AI team webpage.
The human stakes are enormous. For many in our community—especially those in hostile environments—social media represents one of the few spaces where they can connect with others and express themselves without fear.
Meta’s changes don’t just affect online discourse; they impact real access to safety and support. Queer-owned businesses that relied on Meta’s advertising tools to reach LGBTQ customers are left navigating uncertain policies. Queer kids discovering their identity are encountering fewer affirming voices and more hostile rhetoric. Trans individuals searching for community find their lifelines weakened.
Rights secured after decades of struggle can be unraveled quickly when massive companies like Meta shift their priorities. Gains that once felt permanent can be undone in a matter of months.
The LGBTQ community has fought too hard to see their digital rights undone by corporate settlements and backroom policy changes. We know that true neutrality doesn’t mean treating all speech as equal—it means recognizing that some speech seeks to silence vulnerable citizens.
We’ve seen this before, from separate but equal policies that claimed neutrality while enforcing segregation; to McCarthyism-era institutions that purged dissenting voices in the name of balance; to media “objectivity” that erased queer voices during the AIDS crisis.
While the medium has changed, the playbook remains the same. And our response must be to stand up, speak out and demand accountability.
This means pressuring Meta through public campaigns, supporting LGBTQ content creators whose reach has been diminished, and pushing for transparent moderation policies. It means calling out right-wing dog whistles like “neutrality” and “viewpoint diversity” for what they are—a convenient masquerade for corporate policies that discriminate against and attack marginalized groups.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of a parental rights activist who dubiously claims her child’s middle school helped her child secretly transition. She has now petitioned the Supreme Court to take her case.
Twenty-one additional state attorneys general have signed the brief in support of January Littlejohn, who, in 2022, sued the Leon County School District and staff members at Deer Lake Middle School for allowing her 13-year-old child to use they/them pronouns and go by the “masculine” nickname “J” without informing her.
J began exploring their gender identity during the 2020-21 school year. At the time, the school district was using a 2018 guide that warned outing a student to their parents poses a risk to the student’s well-being. It allowed for a support plan that gave students a say in whether or not they want to be outed to their parents. J chose not to be.
Uthmeier’s brief claims government officials across the United States “are fundamentally altering the upbringing of children and keeping parents in the dark.”
“Dizzying numbers of school districts and a growing number of states have passed similar ‘secret transition’ laws and ordinances without any concerns for parental rights,” the brief states. Utheier is referring to policies that ban the forced outing of students to their parents.
These policies do not involve schools encouraging students to be trans or transition, but rather to support any students who willingly communicate that their gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth and to allow the student to choose when to share that private information with their parents. For some students with anti-trans parents, telling them could be dangerous.
The brief also decries the concept of social transitioning and negates the existence of trans identities altogether, stating that a parent’s right to decide what’s best for their child, “is only more pressing when the ideology pushed by the schools ignores basic reality about the two sexes and further confuses innocent and impressionable children.”
Littlejohn’s case was a major motivation for the passage of Florida’s infamous Don’t Say Gay bill, which severely limited the way LGBTQ+ issues could be addressed in classrooms and which also inspired copycat legislation across the country.
Supporters of the Don’t Say Gay law use stories like Littlejohn’s to argue that schools are violating parents’ rights by teaching that LGBTQ+ people exist – which conservatives have been calling “grooming” – or by somehow forcing kids to be transgender. They argue that the law is required to stop schools from exposing children to ideas that their parents don’t agree with, and they use stories like Littlejohn’s to show that this is a problem.
But there is one problem: Littlejohn’s story may not be true.
While there isn’t much public information about her case, emails that have been made public quite clearly show that Littlejohn, in fact, asked the school to use they/them pronouns for her nonbinary child.
“This has been an incredibly difficult situation for our family and her father and I are trying to be as supportive as we can,” she wrote in an email obtained by CNN. “She is currently identifying as non-binary. She would like to go by the new name [redacted] and prefers the pronouns they/them. We have not changed her name at home yet, but I told her if she wants to go by the name [redacted] with her teachers, I won’t stop her.”
The teacher asked if she could share the email with other teachers.
In a later email, Littlejohn wrote: “Whatever you think is best or [redacted] can handle it herself.”
“This gender situation has thrown us for a loop. I sincerely appreciate your support. I’m going to let her take the lead on this,” she wrote in another email from the same day.
Nevertheless, Littlejohn, a registered Republican, eventually sued the school district in this case. She claims that school officials met with her child and created a Transgender/Gender Nonconforming Student Support Plan in accordance with district policy without consulting her. Leon County Schools, the district Littlejohn’s child is in, said that fewer than 10 students of the 33,000 in the district have such a support plan.
A spokesperson for the district said that they thought they were working “with clear communication” from Littlejohn, but then “outside entities became involved.” The “outside entities” they referred to include the Child & Parental Rights Campaign (CPRC), an anti-transgender legal organization based in Georgia that’s representing Littlejohn in the lawsuit.
Littlejohn has since been a vocal trans rights opponent and aligned herself with hate groups like Florida-made Moms for Liberty.
In March, a federal court upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss her suit.
The school officials named in the case “did not force the Littlejohns’ child to do anything at all,” Judge Robin S. Rosenbaum of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote. “And perhaps most importantly, defendants did not act with intent to injure. To the contrary, they sought to help the child.”
“Even if the Littlejohns felt that defendants’ efforts to help their child were misguided or wrong, the mere fact that the school officials acted contrary to the Littlejohns’ wishes does not mean that their conduct ‘shocks the conscience’ in a constitutional sense,” Rosenbaum wrote.
In a concurring opinion, Judge Kevin C. Newsom said he considered the actions taken by the school district officials “shameful.” But the question at hand, he wrote, was “whether it was unconstitutional.”
“If I were a legislator, I’d vote to change the policy that enabled the defendants’ efforts to keep the Littlejohns in the dark,” he wrote. “But — and it’s a big but — judges aren’t just politicians in robes, and they don’t (or certainly shouldn’t) just vote their personal preferences.”
Anti-LGBTQ+ right-wing activists are notorious for getting annoyed about almost anything, and the latest addition to the ever-growing list is the Gender Unicorn diagram.
Don’t believe that they’ll get annoyed about anything? Buckle up: we’ve got receipts.
A Christmas advert featuring Black actress Adjoa Andoh as Mrs. Claus, that saw her use they/them pronouns to refer to someone, also sparked the wrath of anti-LGBTQ+ figures, who called it out for being “woke”.
Countless brands, big and small, from Target to Tesco to Tampax, have also faced boycott calls from the right-wing community. But the latest outrage among the group is the realisation of the Gender Unicorn.
What is the Gender Unicorn diagram?
The Gender Unicorn (https://transstudent.org/gender/)
Simply put, the Gender Unicorn Diagram is a graphic that helps people understand the differences between gender identity, gender expression, sex, and attraction.
The graphic, created by Trans Student Educational Resources – a youth-led organisation dedicated to ensuring education is inclusive for all – shows a unicorn on the left-hand side with symbols on that are explained on the right-hand side.
Gender identity, shown on the unicorn through a rainbow-filled thought bubble, is explained as female/woman/girl, male/man/boy, or other gender(s). The diagram also breaks down gender expression, sex assigned at birth, physical attraction, and emotional attraction into distinct categories.
Underneath the definitions of each are further explained. Gender expression/presentation is explained as: “The physical manifestation of one’s gender identity through clothing, hairstyle, voice, body shape, etc. Many transgender people seek to make their gender expression (how they look) match their gender identity (who they are), rather than their sex assigned at birth.”
Why are so many right-wingers annoyed about it?
A quick search of the term “Gender Unicorn” on social media platforms such as X bring up various videos from right-wingers hitting out at the graphic.
Another commented of the graphic: “One person’s ‘innocuous teaching tool’ is many other people’s insidious grooming material.”
Right-wingers annoyance towards the graphic mimics political moves. The US government has demanded almost every state in the US remove sex education materials referencing trans and non-binary people.
San Diego City Councilmember Marni von Wilpert says her decision to run for Congress is rooted in urgency rather than ambition. For the bisexualDemocrat, challenging Republican Rep. Darrell Issa in California’s 48th District is about preserving American democracy and safeguarding rights she believes are under threat in Donald Trump’s second presidency.
“I’m watching things that I’ve built my career on, my life on, be crushed by President Trump,” von Wilpert told The Advocate in a recent interview. “As a young woman in this fight, I’ve lost my rights under Roe v. Wade after Trump was elected the first time, and as an LGBTQ woman, I’m worried about losing my rights to equality under the law. That’s why I decided to jump in and fight.”
A career built on service
Von Wilpert, 42, brings a résumé that spans international service, civil rights advocacy, and labor policy. A University of California, Berkeley, graduate in peace and conflict studies and a Fordham Law alumna, she served in the Peace Corps in Botswana to combat the African HIV and AIDS crisis. After law school, she launched a legal clinic with the Mississippi Center for Justice to represent individuals facing discrimination because they have HIV, and later clerked for Judge James Graves Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
She went on to work in the appellate branch of the National Labor Relations Board and on Capitol Hill with Virginia U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, contributing to labor legislation, including the PRO Act, which sought to protect workers’ right to organize. As associate labor counsel at the Economic Policy Institute, she advanced workers’ rights. Returning to California, she served as a deputy city attorney in San Diego, where she litigated consumer protection and environmental cases.
That mix of international, federal, and local work, she says, has prepared her for a national fight. “Watching everything that I’ve built, helping workers, helping women, doing international diplomacy, it’s all being crumbled by the Trump administration,” she said.
Living as an out bisexual candidate
Von Wilpert recognized the risks of running in a time of heightened political violence. “Living our lives as LGBTQ individuals has always, unfortunately, been a brave act in America,” she said. “When I was first coming out as openly bisexual, I got a lot of people questioning whether or not I should be in politics anymore, whether I was fit to lead.”
She added that courage is not optional. “If we want to keep our rights, and I want to keep my right to marry who I want to marry and have the rights of equality under the law, I have to step up and fight,” she said. “And if we don’t do it now, with what Darrell Issa and Donald Trump and all the hard-right Republicans are doing to our country, I don’t know what democracy we might have left to fight for three years from now.”
Her visibility, she said, matters for the next generation. She said that after speaking at a recent Young Democrats event in San Diego, a teenager told her how meaningful it was to see von Wilpert and her girlfriend in politics. “Right now love feels like a revolutionary word because we are being told to hate ourselves and to hate our neighbors,” she said. “The antidote to hate is not tolerance, it’s love.”
Marni von WilpertCourtesy Pictured
Affordability & stopping gun violence are top issues
Von Wilpert grounds her campaign in issues facing San Diego and Riverside counties. “The thing I hear the most about from my constituents is how everyone is grappling with the cost of living,” she said. On the City Council, she helped launch a teacher down-payment assistance program after realizing that many educators earned too much to qualify for affordable housing but too little to save for a home.
“I got my first selfie from a teacher in front of her front door with her baby and her husband,” she recalled. “She said, ‘Marni, I taught in San Diego for 10 years. We were about to leave, but we stayed because of the grant, and we can live in San Diego now.’ That’s what this is about — keeping people in the communities they serve.”
She contrasts that record with Issa’s. “My vision is that we live in a beautiful region in Southern California that celebrates everyone in our region,” she said. “Issa wants to demonize immigrants, tear apart government, and undo every gun safety law. That’s not who we are.”
In July, Issa and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik introduced the Modern Firearm Safety Act, which would prohibit states from requiring handgun manufacturers to adopt certain safety features, such as loaded chamber indicators, magazine disconnect mechanisms, and microstamping, and prevent states from enforcing handgun roster laws.
Von Wilpert authored California’s first law banning untraceable ghost guns — firearms assembled from kits or parts without serial numbers — a measure that faced legal challenge from local gun groups and the National Rifle Association.
Her local ghost gun legislation anticipated a broader fight: the U.S. Supreme Court in 2025 upheld a federal rule regulating ghost gun kits, ruling 7–2 that the Gun Control Act allows the agency to treat weapon-parts kits and incomplete frames or receivers as firearms under certain conditions.
LGBTQ+ candidates
Her run aligns with national momentum: The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund and Victory Institute report that record numbers of queer candidates are seeking office. More than 1,200 LGBTQ+ people are running at all levels of government this cycle, a sharp increase from previous years.
Asked if she saw herself as part of a broader political wave, von Wilpert was emphatic: “We are the movement. This generation of LGBTQ folks is taking the torch from the people who gave us the ability to have a voice ourselves. The people at Stonewall didn’t give up. The marchers in Selma didn’t give up. Now it’s our turn.”
She described sitting on her couch with her girlfriend, debating whether to run. “She’s in law enforcement, and we were debating whose job is more dangerous at this point. But we said, you know what, if they didn’t give up then, we can’t give up now either.”
Responding to anti-trans attacks
Von Wilpert also addressed the wave of anti-transgender ads appearing across the country. “I believe that trans rights are human rights,” she said. “The attack on trans people is nothing new; it’s just the latest version of hate we’ve seen.”
She likened the debate to past resistance to women in the military. “We were hearing, ‘Where will the women shower? What hair products will they want?’ Now it’s bathrooms and clothing for trans people. It’s the same hate, just a different version.”
On sports, she called government intervention a distraction. “I don’t believe government should be regulating sports. Let the sports agencies regulate. It’s a red herring,” she said.
Redistricting temporarily
The race is also shaped by Proposition 50, a Democratic-backed measure to redraw California’s lines in response to GOP gerrymandering in Texas, where Republicans hope to gain five seats. Von Wilpert admitted unease but said Democrats could not “gamble with our future.”
She added that the change is temporary until the 2030 census restores independent redistricting.
Von Wilpert is one of at least five Democrats running, including immigration attorney Curtis Morrison and musician Albert Mora.
Away from politics, von Wilpert describes herself as a “huge foodie,” especially for Mexican cuisine, and a devoted yoga practitioner. She and her girlfriend share a home with two cats and a dog. Laughing, she joked about one of their quirks. “I love cilantro, but it tastes like soap to my girlfriend. So I get all the cilantro,” she said.
Kevin is a mission-driven leader and innovative change agent with more than 20 years of experience advancing nonprofit organizations. He brings with him a proven track record of strengthening financial sustainability, building high-impact partnerships, and guiding organizations through pivotal moments of growth and change.
Most recently, Kevin served as Development Director at the California Council on Science and Technology, where he built the organization’s first comprehensive development infrastructure. Prior to that, he led Meals on Wheels Sacramento County, where he expanded the budget from $5 million to $12.5 million in under two years. Kevin has also held executive leadership roles at Rainbow Community Center, California Coalition for Youth, and other organizations serving vulnerable communities.
“We are thrilled to welcome Kevin to Face to Face,” said Andres Correa, Board President. “His depth of experience, proven leadership, and unwavering commitment to community health and equity will ensure we continue to deliver vital services while expanding our impact in HIV prevention, care, and harm reduction across Sonoma County.
Kevin’s community involvement includes serving on the board of Sonoma Family Meal and previously leading Meals on Wheels California as Board President. He is also the recipient of several distinguished honors, including Comstock’s Young Professionals 2022 Honoree, Sacramento Business Journal’s 40 Under 40, and the Sacramento LGBT Community Center’s Pride Award.
“I am honored to join Face to Face and continue its legacy of service and advocacy,” said Kevin McAllister. “This work is about saving lives, restoring hope, and standing alongside our community in the fight against overdose and health inequities. Each year, Sonoma County loses an average of 121 people to accidental overdose. These are not statistics. They are our children, parents, neighbors, and friends. At Face to Face, harm reduction is at the heart of our work, provided both in our offices and through mobile outreach across the county. In 2024, our efforts were tied to nearly 3,000 reported overdose reversals, a number that represents only a fraction of our true impact. Each reversal represents a life saved, a family spared unbearable loss, and a community strengthened by care and compassion.”
