In celebration of Pride Week, more than five thousand LGBTQ+ activistsconverged on Mexico City’s Zócalo to form the world’s largest human LGBT flag. Under a shower of rain and brandishing vibrant umbrellas, the colorful formation draped the historic Plaza de la Constitución, capturing global attention and shattering previous records.
Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada joined the crowd led the choreography. She said during the event that “Mexico City is and will continue to be the city of rights and freedoms. This monumental image we draw with our bodies and colors will be a powerful message to the country and the world. Mexico City is the capital of pride, diversity, peace, and transformation.”
Organized by the government of Mexico City, the event, the largest of its kind in Mexican history, lasted two hours, starting at 10:30 am, on June 22, with participants moving in unison to the rhythm of the song ‘A quién le importa’ by Alaska y Dinarama. The event was recorded via drone, and the images and videos went viral on social media, with many expressing their surprise at the event not being canceled due to the weather. In a powerful display of resilience and resourcefulness, the activists dealt with unexpected rain by bringing umbrellas corresponding to their color in the giant flag to do the performance.
Mexico City has long been fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, making homosexuality legal in 1871 under French occupation. Mexico City was also the first Latin American city to legalize same-sex marriage in 2009. However, the Frente de Liberación Homosexual, founded in 1971 by Nancy Cárdenas, was Mexico’s first gay liberation movement, had to operate clandestinely under repressive political conditions.
Across Latin America, trans and non-binary people still face high levels of violence, and Mexico has one of the highest trans murder rates in the world. In 2022, more than 95% of homicides in Mexico went unpunished. For the murders of transgender women, the figure is thought to be even higher. City officials passed a landmark transfemicide law in July 2024, with murders targeting trans people carrying a prison sentence of up to 70 years.
The visual performance was part of the city’s Pride Month programming and served as a prelude to the annual Mexico City Pride March, which will take place on Saturday, June 28. In recent years, the march has drawn crowds of over 1 million, making it one of the largest Pride celebrations in Latin America.
Atlanta police said Tuesday that three men and a juvenile could face hate crimes charges after they pulled down LGBTQ pride flags and cut them up at an intersection known as the center of the city’s LGBTQ community.
Police say they got calls at 1:40 a.m. Tuesday morning that six males were causing a disturbance near the corner of Piedmont Avenue and 10th Street, an intersection in the city’s Midtown neighborhood that is painted with rainbow crosswalks to honor its importance in Atlanta’s LGBTQ community.
The men coordinated their plan and drove to Atlanta from their locations northwest of the city, police said. Officers are still looking for two of the six people who they believe took part.
Investigators initially told news outlets that the men had pulled down flags outside Blake’s on the Park, a bar near the intersection, cutting them up with a knife and taking videos of what they were doing. The males fled from police on motorized scooters, investigators said, with officers catching and arresting four of them.
“They’re in the middle of the street popping wheelies, tearing up flags,” a man said in a 911 call that police released.
Two 18-year-olds and a 17-year-old from Dallas, Georgia, were taken into custody, in addition to a 16-year-old from Taylorsville. Police said all four were also charged with obstruction, criminal damage to property, conspiracy, and prowling. Georgia is one of three states where 17-year-old criminal suspects are automatically charged as adults.
Police said they have also cited the 16-year-old’s father for failing to supervise his son.
A prosecutor would have to decide whether to ask a judge or jury to add additional penalties to any conviction. Georgia’s hate crime law, passed in 2020, allows a court to impose additional prison time or fines when a judge or jury finds that a crime was motivated by the victim’s race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation or other characteristics.
“As far as it being labeled a hate crime, that’s still under investigation,” Atlanta police Sgt. Brandon Hayes said at a Tuesday news conference. “We’re still looking at all avenues as far as how that charge will possibly come about.”
A phone call Tuesday to the bar, in operation since 1988, went unanswered.
The arrests come at the end of what is marked as Pride Month in many places, although Atlanta’s main festival is held in October.
In 2022, police arrested a man who they said had twice painted swastikas on the rainbow crosswalks. The crosswalks were first painted in 2015 and were made permanent in 2017 to memorialize the 49 people who were killed in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida.
In October, a Fulton County grand jury indicted a Pennsylvania man, saying he had vandalized booths and defecated on a pride flag at a Global Black Pride event in Atlanta in August.
Earlier this month, the Defense Department told transgender service members that they had to choose whether they would voluntarily or involuntarily separate from the military.
Four trans service members who are now in the process of separating said nothing about their decisions feels voluntary at all.
“Nobody feels like this is voluntary,” said Emily Shilling, a commander in the Navy and the president of SPARTA, a nonprofit group that advocates for trans service members. “This is coercion. This is under duress.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order a week into his administration prohibiting trans people from enlisting or serving in the military. Trans service members sued, and a federal judge temporarily blocked the order from taking effect. Then, last month, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to enforce the order. Days later, the Defense Department issued guidance requiring active duty service members to voluntarily self-identify as having been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, which is the distress that results from a misalignment between one’s birth sex and gender identity, by June 6 and reserve service members to self-identify by July 7.
After that, the guidance said, the military will find trans service members who didn’t self-identify through medical readiness programs and begin involuntarily separating them. Affected service members “are eligible for an array of benefits,” the guidance said, including separation pay, “which will be higher for those who self-identify and agree to a voluntary separation.”
However, many details are still unknown, such as what benefits trans service members will be able to access and whether they will all receive honorable discharges. It’s also unclear how many service members will be affected. Just over 4,000 transgender people currently serve in the military, according to Defense Department data, and the department said last month that about 1,000 trans service members have begun the separation process from the military after voluntarily identifying themselves. The department said Tuesday that it does not have an updated number of affected service members.
“Characterization of service will be honorable except where the Service member’s record otherwise warrants a lower characterization,” a U.S. Defense official said in a statement to NBC News. “Military Services will follow normal processes for administrative separation.”
The four trans service members who spoke to NBC News all emphasized that they are speaking in their personal capacity and not on behalf of their respective branches. The biggest question they all face is what comes next.
Bree Fram
On June 30, 2016, the day then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that transgender people could serve openly in the military, Bree Fram, who was then a major in the Air Force, came out to her teammates in an email as a trans woman and then went to burn off her nerves at the gym.
Col. Bree Fram served for 22 years and said she planned to serve “for many years to come” because she loved her job.Courtesy Bree Fram
When she returned to her desk later, she said her colleagues approached her one by one, shook her hand, and told her a version of “It’s an honor to serve with you.”
Fram, who is 46 and now a colonel for the U.S. Space Force at the Pentagon, said that scene repeated earlier this month with leaders from other branches of the military when she told them it would be her last meeting with them. An officer sitting next to her asked where she was going, and she said, “I’m being placed on administrative leave because I don’t meet this administration’s standards for military excellence and readiness.”
Fram said there was a moment of silence before it seemed like her colleagues realized which policy she was referring to — because, she said, trans service members don’t “walk into a room and lead with our identity.”
“I walk into a room and someone sees a colonel, and they see the uniform, and they see all the things that represents about my experience and my expertise,” said Fram, who is one of the highest-ranking out trans officials in the military.
Then, Fram said her colleagues walked over, one by one, and shook her hand and said, again, that it had been an honor to serve with her.
Fram, who served for 22 years until she was placed on administrative leave on June 6, was the director of requirements integration for the Space Force. She helped to identify future technological capabilities the military will need and provided those to developers who built them. She said she planned to serve “for many years to come,” because she loved her job and the team that she worked with.
Fram said she doesn’t know what she’ll do next, but she expects she’ll work in public service.
“I believe in this country, even though it may not believe in me right now,” Fram said. “The oath I swore and the ideals that are embedded in the Constitution still matter to me, and I believe they are worth fighting for.”
Sam Rodriguez
Sam Rodriguez, 38, was recently commissioned as a Medical Service Corps officer in the Navy and was supposed to begin officer training school and then a two-year clinical fellowship in San Diego to become a licensed clinical social worker. However, about a week after the Supreme Court decision allowing the trans military ban to take effect, Rodriguez, who uses they/them pronouns, said the Navy canceled those orders.
Lt. Junior Grade Sam Rodriguez, left, with Lt. Rae Timberlake, center, and Parker Moore, an electronics technician in nuclear power, right. All three of them are trans and nonbinary service members in the Navy.Courtesy Sam Rodriguez
“It was really gut-wrenching to receive that news,” Rodriguez said. They enlisted in 2015 and planned to serve for 15 or 20 years, when they would’ve left the Navy as an experienced licensed social worker. However, now they will leave with their master’s degree in social work, and they will have to look for an employer who is willing to provide supervision for them to receive their clinical license, which will be more difficult.
They submitted their resignation earlier this month and requested a separation date in the fall. They said they don’t think they’ll be able to find an entry-level job as a civilian that’s going to match their current salary, housing allowance, health care benefits and the stipend that they and their wife get to pay for child care for their two children.
They plan to move their family from San Diego to Washington, D.C., so they can become more involved in policy advocacy. Outside of work, they are a board member and membership director for SPARTA.
“People need to realize that this is a national security issue,” Rodriguez said, pointing to research from the Modern Military Association of America, an advocacy group for LGBTQ military members and veterans, which found that 73% of trans service members have between 12 and 21 years of experience.
“We’re not going to be one-for-one swapped tomorrow, and some people it will take two decades to replace,” they said.
Emily Shilling
Shilling, 42, is the highest-ranking out trans person in the Navy after having served for nearly two decades, including in over 60 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. She was also one of the lead plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the administration’s ban.
After Trump was elected, she requested to retire in the fall. Her intention was to rescind that retirement because she expected that the ban on trans troops serving would be blocked, but with the policy taking effect, her last day was June 12, and she will officially retire in September.
Emily Shilling is the highest-ranking out trans person in the Navy.Leah Millis / Reuters
“I am deeply heartbroken that this is how my career has ended, but also deeply proud of what I’ve done,” Shilling said. “I lived my dream. I did everything I ever wanted to in the Navy and I did it honorably, and I stood proud. I might be getting out of the Navy, but it’s not me quitting this fight. I’m just choosing to take on this fight in a different way.”
Shilling said the Navy invested $40 million in training her, and as a result she has many desirable skills and has already accepted an offer to work in defense technologies and advanced development. However, she said her story is rare among trans service members, thousands of whom will be looking for private sector jobs for the first time.
Shilling said the lawsuit against the ban will return to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for a hearing in October, but by that time, most trans service members will be out of the military.
“The irreparable harm is done now,” she said.
Alex Shaffer
Alex Shaffer, 48, joined the military as a combat medic in the Oregon Army National Guard in 2007. His mentors in the guard convinced him to go to school to become a physician’s assistant, and he now also works in a private family practice as a PA.
Alex Shaffer, center, with two of the soldiers who are part of the platoon he oversaw.Courtesy Alex Shaffer
“In all of the military, it’s a family,” Shaffer said of what he’s enjoyed about serving in the guard.
Shaffer said he planned to stay in the guard “until I could no longer physically serve or they kicked me out for being too old.” He was in the process of trying to commission as an officer. However, his last drill was June 7, because he began the process to medically separate from the National Guard as a result of the ban. (The National Guard only provides retirement benefits to service members if a medical evaluation board deems them physically unfit for duty.)
“I’m devastated,” Shaffer said. “It’s a loss of identity to me. I’ve been a soldier for so long, and it’s a part of who I am.”
Anne Isabella Coombes, a 67-year-old transgender female swimmer, swam topless with her breasts exposed at the Cornwall County Masters swim meet as a protest to being forced to compete with cisgender men by Swim England, the UK’s governing body overseeing the country’s competitive swimming.
Swim England told Coombes she was no longer eligible to compete in the women’s category, despite her doing so in 2022 and 2023. So the organization placed her in a new “open” category where trans female and nonbinary competitors swim against cis men. Swim England replaced its men’s category with its open category starting in September 2023, to “negate… post-puberty transgender females[‘]… biological level of performance advantage post-transition,” the organization wrote.
“It is widely recognised that fairness of competition must be protected and Swim England believes the creation of open and female categories is the best way to achieve this,” the organization said upon announcing the new policy. “The updated policy ensures there are entry-level competitive opportunities for transgender people to participate in the majority of our disciplines within their gender identity.”
When Coombes asked what she’d be required to wear during swim meets in the “open” category, Swim England informed her that she would “need to wear a female swimming costume despite having to compete with the men, which ‘outs’ me as a woman who is transgender,” she told The Reading Chronicle.
“I explained to the person on the phone that they are not allowed to do that, and he didn’t have an answer,” she added, saying that the swimsuit requirement compelled her to stop competitively swimming until 2025. She only resumed in order to protest Swim England’s policies, which say that competitors’ swimwear must be in “good moral taste.”
She said the organization told her that she can swim in a men’s swimsuit without having to ask in advance for a referee’s permission, but that the referee can disqualify her if they choose.
“Deciding on whether exposing my breasts is in ‘good moral taste’ or whether I need to cover them up so that ‘those involved in competitive swimming are appropriately safeguarded’ is an entirely subjective decision of the referee,” she told the aforementioned company.
“In other words, I could turn up to the competition and run the risk of not being able to compete in whichever costume I intend to wear,” she continued. “No other swimmer has this concern. These regulations also mean that Swim England is treating me as a male by default.”
The Reading Chronicle didn’t say whether the referee disqualified her for her protest.
“I’m trying to show the world that this policy isn’t thought through, and it’s meant to hit trans people and nobody else,” she said. “I want to make it clear through this protest that trans people are not a threat when it comes to sport. We aren’t winning everything, and if we started to, then I would be first in line to discuss other options. Right now, it is a non-issue.”
Numerous competitive sports’ governing bodies have recently changed their policies to ban trans women from competing against cis women in the name of fairness — despite previously having policies that allowed trans athletes using hormone therapy to compete with members of their own gender identity.
Critics of these policies say that they mostly harm female athletes who could be subjected to invasive medical investigations in order to prove their gender. Critics also say that these policy changes add to social stigma that vilifies trans female athletes as a threat to women’s rights and do nothing to address the sexism, abuse, and lack of funding that actually harm cis female athletes.
Coombes said she has been protesting against the recent UK high court rulingthat the legal definition of a woman under the country’s 2010 Equality Act is based on “biological sex.” Though the court has said that trans women still have anti-discrimination protections under the law, the UK Human Rights Commission said in a confusing “guidance” that trans women can be excluded from “women-only” spaces in hospitals, shops, and restaurants, and trans men can be excluded from “men-only” spaces.
Coombes has spoken at protests against the ruling and told the aforementioned publication, “Most trans people just want to get on with their lives and be treated as the gender they are. But unfortunately, given what the Supreme Court has done, we need to stand up and say ‘I’m trans, I exist, and you’re not going to silence me.’ Existence is resistance.”
The average LGBTQ+ or intersex household made just 85 cents for every dollar earned by those in other categories in 2024, says a new report from the Center for American Progress.
“Over the course of a year, those 15 lost cents add up, amounting to about $12,600 in lost income per year for the average LGBTQI+ household,” says the CAP report, which was published as a column on CAP’s website Tuesday for LGBTQI+ Equal Pay Awareness Day. “That is more than the average household spends on food and gasoline in an entire year.”
Discrimination may be a reason for the gap, CAP notes. “In 2024, approximately a quarter of LGBTQI+ people reported experiencing discrimination in the workplace, compared with 16 percent of non-LGBTQI+ people,” according to the report. Also, LGBTQI+ people who responded to CAP’s LGBTQI+ Community Survey tended to be younger than non-LGBTQI+ people in the survey, and earnings tend to increase with age.
“With the Trump administration rolling back protections against discrimination and harassment in the workplace, it is likely that this income gap will worsen for most protected classes, including LGBTQI+ people,” the CAP researchers predict. “The intersection of [sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics] and racial demographics further drives up wage gaps for LGBTQI+ households. Among LGBTQI+ people of color, the average household made just 74 cents for every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic, non-LGBTQI+ households in 2024.”
Transgender and women’s households also had large wage gaps. “Transgender or nonbinary households made just 70 cents for every dollar made by non-LGBTQI+ households, equating to $24,800 per year in lost income,” the researchers note.
“Among LGBTQI+ women-headed households, the gap is even larger, at 52 percent, amounting to nearly $40,000 in annual losses,” the study adds.
The report’s analysis includes data from a nationally representative group of 3,360 people over age 18, 1,703 of whom identify as LGBTQI+. It was conducted in partnership with nonpartisan research group NORC at the University of Chicago.
“While our data on its own can’t explain the forces that create these wage gaps, we know the intersecting dynamics of sexism, racism, and discrimination likely play a key role,” Sara Estep, economist for the Women’s Initiative at CAP and coauthor of the report, said in a press release. “At the same time, the Trump administration has defanged many of the agencies tasked with enforcing existing nondiscrimination laws and addressing these issues.”
“When enforcement against discrimination is lacking, it harms LGBTQI+ folks and threatens their lifelong economic stability,” added Haley Norris, policy analyst for LGBTQI+ Policy at CAP and coauthor of the column. “People with intersecting marginalized identities experience worse workplace discrimination and tend to suffer larger disparities in household income. The Trump administration’s rollback of nondiscrimination laws is going to hit these people the hardest.”
Over the past five years, corporate America has abandoned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices en masse, with the crusade to roll back these efforts only ramping up since Trump’s reelection.
While it may seem like there are many forces behind these proposals, they were all submitted by the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank commonly referred to as the National Center.
Although not very well known, they are effective: Since receiving their proposals, half of the companies listed above have watered down or abandoned their DEI practices, with Apple, JPMorganChase, Costco, Kroger and Coca-Cola standing firm.
And although the National Center has been trying to dismantle DEI for nearly two decades, they’re experiencing enormous success today due to the rise of the conservative crusade against “woke capitalism” and so-called “viewpoint discrimination.”
Jason Stahl, a historian and researcher specializing in right-wing think tanks and populism in the U.S., says the National Center’s newfound success reflects a renewed desire for socially conservative populist movements. “Think tanks prime themselves to respond to the American political culture in a populist way and to present themselves as for the people.”
“We’ve got Flint, Michigan without clean drinking water, we’ve got the flooding that occurred in Appalachia and North Carolina, we’ve got the fires in California and in Hawaii. Why aren’t we talking about all this?” he says. “Politics should be about the improvement of people’s lives,” but dominant powers in the U.S., including the National Center, want people to be fighting over DEI—a debate that detracts “from the material reality of people’s lives.”
How the National Center Is so Effective
Through shareholder proposals, the National Center—along with anyone who owns a high enough stake in a publicly traded company—can attempt to influence its governance.
In their proposal to Apple, the National Center submitted a “Request to Cease DEI Efforts,” writing, “Apple likely has over 50,000 [employees] who are potentially victims of this type of discrimination.” In their proposal to Alphabet, Google’s parent company, they came after the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index (CEI), calling it “hyper-partisan, divisive and increasingly radical.” Their supporting statement included disinformation about transgender people, claiming the HRC uses the CEI “to force [corporations] to do the political bidding of radical activists, which seek to sow gender confusion in youth, encourage permanent surgical procedures on confused and vulnerable teens, and effectively eliminate girls’ and women’s sports and bathrooms.”
And in their proposal to Goldman Sachs, they requested a “Racial Discrimination Audit,” citing a Supreme Court case that alleged Harvard University’s affirmative action policies discriminated against white students.
While the Goldman proposal failed, with just 2% of shares voting in its favor, the company still dropped their diversity and inclusion policies. But even these losses are often considered wins by the National Center, who have said that “the true aim of these proposals is to negotiate with companies and convince them to amend their equal employment opportunity policies to add protections against viewpoint discrimination.”
R.G. Cravens, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, says the anti-DEI movement is part of a bigger campaign to maintain the status quo in corporate America. “A lot of the rhetoric the hard right uses to describe DEI is based on racist and white supremacist narratives about people of color. For example, saying that DEI means unqualified people get jobs, they mean people of color who aren’t qualified to hold positions,” he says. “DEI policies are designed to interrupt systemic inequalities, and they do a lot beyond just what the hard right tends to caricature them as doing.”
In principle, DEI is meant to close wage and opportunity gaps in the workforce. LGBTQ workers earn 90 cents to every dollar earned by the average American worker, and women make 85 cents to every dollar earned by men. Meanwhile, Black and Latino workers make 24% and 28% less than white workers, respectively. Trans women, who are the most demonized in the crusade against DEI, earn just 60 cents on the dollar compared to the typical American worker.
Mary Wrenn, a professor of economics specializing in capitalism and neoliberalism at the University of Cambridge, says the crusade against DEI uses a similar strategy to that used against the civil rights movement of the 1960s. “There were a lot of economists and politicians who said that we should not force desegregation because the free market will take care of it. Of course that’s not true: We had to have legislation in order for the cultural and social spheres to catch up.”
The National Center’s Free Enterprise Project and the Rise of Stefan Padfield
While the anti-DEI movement has only gained momentum in the last few years, the National Center has been around since 1982, when Amy Moritz Ridenour, a former campaign coordinator for Ronald Reagan, founded it.
In the 1990s, they successfully campaigned against the Clinton healthcare plan that would have provided universal healthcare to all Americans. Throughout the early 2000s, they campaigned to limit the amount that businesses which knowingly sold deadly asbestos products must pay in compensation to victims.
One of the National Center’s major initiatives is the Free Enterprise Project (FEP). Launched in 2007, they claim the FEP is “the original and premier opponent of the woke takeover of American corporate life and defender of true capitalism.”
Through the years, the FEP has campaigned against attacks on conservatives, pharmaceutical company support for the Affordable Care Act, and government initiatives to cap corporate carbon dioxide emissions.
But in recent years, the FEP’s focus has been to use shareholder activism to force a shift in corporate America. In 2021, they launched the Stop Corporate Tyranny coalition, which aims to “[expose] the Left’s nearly completed takeover of corporate America” and provide “resources and tools for everyday Americans to fight back against the Left’s woke and censoring mob in the corporate [world].”
The National Center’s funders include anti-LGBTQ hate groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom; religious donor-advised funds like National Christian Foundation; mainstream charitable funds like Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard Charitable; and corporations such as ExxonMobil.
“Free enterprise is just a mask for social conservatism because they want small government, but only with respect to business—they don’t want it with respect to people’s lives,” Wrenn told Uncloseted Media. “It’s about controlling the cultural conversation and our social norms, and that’s very tied up with white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism as an economic means by which to forward their personal agendas,” says Wrenn.
Stahl says President Trump’s positioning as a right-wing populist plays well into the National Center’s strategy. “They’re populist projects that say the liberals are out of touch and against your values. Over the decades, the messaging is the same but different issues get plugged in and we’re seeing this really come to its full flowering because [of] Trump,” he told Uncloseted Media.
In 2023,Stefan Padfield joined the FEP, quickly becoming the deputy director. The following year, the project convinced the U.S. Court of Appeals to overturn a Nasdaq board diversity rule that had required any Nasdaq-listed companies have—or explain why they don’t have—at least two “diverse” directors, including at least one woman and at least one other person who identifies as an underrepresented minority.
Padfield has also penned articles for RealClearMarkets, such as “A Question for Goldman Sachs: What Is a Woman?” in which he claims, “Transgenderism is one of the most divisive issues today,” reducing trans women to men who “become [women] simply by saying so.”
In an email to Uncloseted Media, Padfield says he has “no disdain for trans people or the wider LGBTQ community.” He says he wants to see all people have equal opportunities for maximum flourishing. “Having said that, if someone claims, for example, that they need to be permitted to surgically mutilate minors behind the backs of their parents in order to feel affirmed in their belief that children can be born in the wrong body, then I will be on the side of those defending those children.¹”
The Belief That America Should Be Governed as a Christian Theocracy
The National Center’s mission is reflective of a larger network of conservatives who claim to be protecting so-called viewpoint diversity. Last year, they launched an app to help shareholders identify conservative proposals that would help “hold woke corporations accountable.” The app also provided users with “neutrality v. wokeness” ratings of certain companies.
Cravens says that “viewpoint discrimination” has replaced “political correctness” as conservative buzzwords. “It’s this innocuous-sounding phrase like ‘We need to protect First Amendment speech and maintain pluralism’ … [this false notion] that conservatives and people who oppose anti-racist policies and LGBTQ-inclusive policies are discriminated against. But that is so reductionist because it ignores how white people have claimed and maintained power against communities of color through wealth inequality, racist corporate policies and banking practices,” he says.
He says there’s a rhetorical connection shared across these groups that Christian supremacists have been using for decades. “You say you’re concerned about children and trying to strengthen the family—that’s a totally different kind of marketing than ‘We are evangelicals and we’re here to take over.’ It’s been described as a stealth communication strategy to articulate the same message in secular terms in an effort to reach all Americans.”
What This Means for LGBTQ People
The National Center’s successes have a very real impact on LGBTQ communities. “I think they risk losing their jobs ultimately,” says Cravens. “One of the goals is to drive queer people back into a closet and dismantle any notion that it’s okay to be [openly] queer. They want to turn a group of people toxic so they won’t get service, they won’t get jobs and they won’t be part of society anymore.”
While powerful institutions try to sow division, advocates say it’s critical the LGBTQ community works together to push back against organizations like the National Center.
“It’s always been a minefield,” says Ben Greene, a transgender inclusion consultant and author of Good Queer News.
Greene urges LGBTQ people to stick together. “[We] are going to be our best antidote to [DEI setbacks]. ‘You had a bad experience?’ That needs to go on Glassdoor or your local LGBTQ social media page.” It is going to be an increasingly hard time but there is incredible solidarity between the LGBTQ community and other marginalized groups. “We can’t write off those little moments because that is what will get us out of this,” he says.
Cravens underscores the need for corporate America to have a backbone to push back against organizations like the National Center in an effort to create fair and inclusive workplaces. “A lot of companies advise against anti-DEI shareholder proposals already because they know it’s irresponsible and unprofitable to try to turn back the clock on civil rights. … They should recognize that there is value in diversity and vote down these policies inspired by hateful ideologies.”
A report on the largest survey ever of trans Americans’ health was released on Wednesday, June 11, and its findings reaffirmed what many academics, health care providers and trans people already know: gender-affirming care saves and improves lives, but transphobia often dissuades people from pursuing or continuing it when they need it most.
Over 84,000 trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people aged 18 and up responded to the 2022 U.S. Transgender Survey, spearheaded by Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE). Of respondents who had transitioned, 9 percent had gone back to living as their sex assigned at birth at some point in their lives, at least for a short while — but in almost every single case, the reason was anti-trans discrimination from one’s family, friends, or community.
“Social and structural explanations dominated the reasons why respondents reported going back to living in their sex assigned at birth at some point,” the report found. “Only 4% of people who went back to living in their sex assigned at birth for a while cited that their reason was because they realized that gender transition was not for them. When considering all respondents who had transitioned, this number equates to only 0.36%.”
Meanwhile, respondents who received gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) or gender-affirming surgery overwhelmingly reported feeling “more satisfied” with their lives, 98 percent and 97 percent, respectively.
This watershed report contradicts the popular narrative being circulated by mainstream media, far-right politicians, and anti-trans groups that transgender people are “detransitioning” en masse due to life-shattering “transition regret.” In reality, it shows gender diverse people are living rich and vibrant lives, so long as they are provided the space, support, and care they need from their health care providers and communities.
The survey found a trans person’s overall health and wellbeing also heavily depend upon rates of familial support, a factor that has a profound influence over a trans person’s lifetime experience of suicidality.
The survey has been released in increments as researchers at A4TE wade through the unprecedented amounts of data from trans people who lent their voice to the project. It is a much-needed, comprehensive overview of the challenges — and victories — seen in trans health care since the prior iteration of the study. The report is especially vital considering the Trump Administration moved to remove transgender people from the U.S. Census and other government websites, rendering trans communities potentially invisible, and robbing researchers of crucial data informing public policy decisions.
“Having real concrete and rigorous data about the realities of trans people’s day-to-day lives is also a vital part of dispelling all of those assumptions and stereotypes that plague the public discourse about our community,” said Olivia Hunt, A4TE’s Director of Federal Policy, during a press briefing this week.
The report also touched upon trans people’s access to health care, which increased between 2015 and 2022; the quality of care, as trust between doctors and trans patients has improved; disparities between trans people across racial groups, which showed trans people of color are generally more prone to experience discrimination compared to white trans people; and the mental health challenges facing the trans community, as 44 percent of respondents met the criteria for serious psychological distress, compared to less than 4 percent of the general U.S. population.
Many of these issues have likely been exacerbated since the data was collected. The lead-up to President Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office incited a new wave of anti-trans animus, impeding access to care and stirring up transphobic vitriol and harassment.
“From 2015 to 2022, state-level policy environments became more protective in some ways for trans people; however, in 2022 alone, when the USTS was administered, 315 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced across the country, many of which harm trans and nonbinary people’s access to healthcare, participation in sports, access to public facilities, or other facets of public life,” the report says.
“This political landscape has only worsened since the administration of the 2022 USTS, with the introduction of 571 anti-LGBTQ nationwide in 2023 and 489 in 2024,” it continues. “At the time of writing, data on trans and nonbinary people has been erased from federal health surveys. As funding for LGBTQ research is stripped away, the USTS has become an ever more critical resource on the lived experiences of trans and nonbinary people.”
Nonetheless, trans life and trans joy have persisted, as testimonies featured in the U.S. Trans Survey demonstrate.
“I have thrived in the past 12 months in transition, I have a genuine smile on my face most days & laugh with genuine joy,” wrote Charlotte, a trans woman, in her survey response. “I have grown into the woman I was meant to be.”
And as Roo, a nonbinary person, wrote: “Once I learned what it meant to be trans, I never looked back. I traded in my Regina George-esque life for a future with a balding head and a predisposition for a beer gut. I’ve never been more happy to be alive—every single day. ”
Wedding spending by same-sex couples and their out-of-state guests has boosted state and local economies by approximately $5.9 billion over the past 10 years, a new study has found.
There are an estimated 823,000 same-sex couples in the U.S., according to a recent report from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, and more than 591,000 have married since the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized marriage equality nationwide. About 80 percent of married couples (473,000 couples) celebrated with a wedding or other events.
At the average $8,546 spent per wedding, these couples have spent approximately $4.9 billion on their celebrations, with an estimated 22.2 million guests in attendance. Among them, 7.6 million guests traveled from out-of-state, generating an additional economic boost of nearly $1 billion over the past 10 years.
Same-sex couples’ weddings have also generated an estimated $432.2 million in state and local sales tax revenue — enough to support an estimated 41,300 jobs for one year.
The boost from Obergefell has been felt across U.S., with the biggest boost surprisingly seen in the regions with the least out LGBTQ+ residents. Approximately $2.3 billion of the wedding spending occurred in the South, $1.7 billion in the West, $1 billion in the Midwest, and $900 million in the Northeast.
“Marriage equality has had a significant impact on the lives and well-being of same-sex couples in the U.S.,” said lead author Christy Mallory, Interim Executive Director and Legal Director at the Williams Institute. “Additionally, it has offered a substantial financial benefit to businesses as well as state and local governments.”
Nine states have recently introduced resolutions asking the Supreme Court to reconsider Obergefell, citing state constitutional amendments banning marriage between same-sex couples that were nullified. None have yet passed, and even if they were to, the resolutions are nonbinding — meaning they carry no legal weight, and the court is not obligated to hear them.
While the Supreme Court has made no official move to reconsider marriage equality, some justices have voiced opposition to Obergefell even after the ruling. When the court overturned the national right to an abortion in Roe v. Wade, Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion at the time that the court should also revisit and overrule decisions that prevent state restrictions on contraception, marriage equality, sodomy, and other private consensual sex acts, calling the rulings “demonstrably erroneous.”
If the Supreme Court reverses Obergefell , marriages between same-sex couples will still be recognized federally under the Respect for Marriage Act. Signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022, the act mandates that the federal government recognizes same-sex and interracial marriages, and that all states recognize those performed in other states. However, the act does not require states to allow marriages between same-sex couples.
A coalition of local educators and LGBTQ+ organizations in California are unveiling 10 new LGBTQ+ history lessons for the state’s K-12 public school classrooms under the theme “Pride, Resistance, Joy: Teaching Intersectional LGBTQ+ Stories of California and Beyond.”
While the lessons will be unveiled on Thursday, they’ll align with the state’s 2011 Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act, a law that requires public schools to include the historical contributions of LGBTQ+ Americans in history lessons and classroom textbooks.
Lesson plan materials provided by the aforementioned organizations show that one kindergarten lesson will explore, “What are some ways we can show how to be a strong community member?” An 8th-grade U.S. History lesson plan will ask, “To what extent did historical figures agree or disagree with ‘all men are created equal’ during their activism?”
A 9th-grade Ethnic Studies lesson plan will ask, “What role did community organizations play in supporting queer AAPI [Asian-American and Pacific Islander] people in the 1980s and 1990s?” A 12th-grade U.S. Government lesson plan will ask, “How did LGBTQ+ immigrants push for more inclusive immigration policies in the 1970s and 1980s?”
The currently available lesson plans for high schoolers include ones about queer activist and poet Audre Lorde, AIDS & HIV activism, gay racial civil rights organizer Bayard Rustin, queerness in 1920s and 1930s Hollywood, trailblazing San Francisco politcian Harvey Milk, the removal of homosexuality as a classified mental disorder, transgender-inclusive German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, how urbanization affected alternative family structures, and other topics.
In a statement, Trevor Ladner, Director of Education Programs at One Institute said, “The FAIR Education Act affirms students’ right to study the pride, resistance, and joy of LGBTQ+ history and culture. These lesson plans equip K-12 teachers with standards-aligned resources and effective practices to teach intersectional LGBTQ+ histories,”
Peta Lindsay, Associate Director of the UCLA History-Geography Project said, “LGBTQ+ students, teachers, and families are essential members of our communities, and LGBTQ+ history is an essential part of our shared history. Every student deserves access to empowering LGBTQ+ history in schools.”
The development of LGBTQ+ inclusive-curriculum under California’s FAIR Act
The landmark legislation, the first of its kind in the nation, was introduced by then-State Sen. Mark Leno (D), and signed into law by then-Gov. Jerry Brown(D).
Historian Don Romesburg, the lead scholar who worked with advocacy organizations to pass the act, served as director of a committee to develop the act’s original curriculum framework.
Romesburg and his committee of 20 scholars — all who specialize in different areas of LGBTQ+, U.S. and world history — went line-by-line through the state’s curriculum and suggested ways to incorporate LGBTQ+ material based on current research and age-appropriateness. Their framework didn’t just include famous LGBT historical figures but also encouraged students to think critically about family structures, gender roles, and institutional oppressions throughout time.
The current framework has students in the 2nd grade social studies classes learning how LGBTQ+ families exist alongside families with adoptive parents, step-parents, and parents who are immigrants. In 4th-grade California history, students learn about famous 19th-century stagecoach driver Charley Parkhurst, a western pioneer who lived and dressed as a man but was discovered after death to have been assigned a female gender at birth
“This is great time for critical thinking,” Romesburg said, “to get people to think about birth-assigned gender and why someone would dress like [a man] in the Gold Rush era of the West.”
In 5th grade Early American history classes, some lessons emphasize how two-spirit shamans and multi-parent families in indigenous American tribes changed as a result of colonization. In 8th grade, students of 19th-century U.S. history discuss how Black people and women forged their own families in response to slavery and industrialization.
Social science electives for 9th graders include mentions of famous lesbian and bisexual women in, and ethnic studies classes mention famous queer people of color. Modern world history classes for 10th graders cover the persecution of gay people during the Holocaust.
The 11th grade modern U.S. history classes look at the evolution of modern LGBTQ+ communities throughout history (like during the Harlem Renaissance, WWII, and the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s). They also cover the persecution of sexual and gender minorities by the medical community, the U.S. military, the U.S. government, the religious right, and throughout the AIDS epidemic and current LGBTQ+ court cases.
Over the years, the state train educators about how to incorporate LGBTQ+ material into their classes and to advocate for textbook and educational material providers to create LGBTQ+-inclusive materials. California is a huge text book market and has a huge influence on the rest of the country’s textbook materials, so textbook producers have a strong financial incentive to create textbooks in line with California’s new standards, standards that will likely affect the textbooks of smaller states around the U.S..
As for claims of “sexual brainwashing”, Romesburg said, “It’s a contemporary reality that there’s an modern LGBT rights movement and that LGBT people exist. You don’t have to take a political view on whether you approve of that to know that it has a history and that history is something that all students should have access to.”
He added, “One of the things that’s most exciting is there are many educators in California that have been eager to include LGBT content in their teaching, but they haven’t know how. And this gives them a roadmap in a substantial way to do this in elementary, middle and high school. It’s utterly transformative and truly history-making.”
The transgender flags that usually adorn the Stonewall National Monument in New York City during Pride Month were missing this year, so some New Yorkers are taking matters into their own hands.
During June, Pride flags are placed around the park’s fence. They usually include a mixture of rainbow LGBTQ+ flags, transgender flags and progress flags, which have stripes to include communities of color.
Photographer and advocate Steven Love Menendez said he created and won federal approval for the installation nine years ago. Within a few years, the National Park Service was picking up the tab, buying and installing flags, including trans ones.
Pride flags fly in the wind at the Stonewall National Monument in Manhattan’s West Village on June 19, 2023 in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images
This year, however, Menendez said the National Park Service told him to change the protocol.
“I was told … only the traditional rainbow flag would be displayed this year,” he said.
Now, no transgender or progress flags are among the 250 rainbow flags installed around the park.
“It’s a terrible action for them to take,” Menendez said.
“I used to be listed as an LGBTQ activist, and now it says ‘Steven Menendez, LGB activist,'” Menendez said. “They took out the Q and the T.”
“I’m not going to stand by and watch us be erased from our own history”
Many visiting the monument said they are opposed to the change.
“I think it’s absurd. I think it’s petty,” said Willa Kingsford, a tourist from Portland.
“It’s horrible. They’re changing all of our history,” Los Angeles resident Patty Carter said.
Jay Edinin, of Queens, brought his own transgender flag to the monument.
“I’m not going to stand by and watch us be erased from our own history, from our own communities, and from the visibility that we desperately need right now,” he said.
The transgender flags that usually adorn the Stonewall National Monument in New York City during Pride Month were missing this year, so some New Yorkers are taking matters into their own hands. CBS News New York
He is not the only one bringing unauthorized flags to the park. A number of trans flags were seen planted in the soil.
National Park Service workers at the park told CBS News New York they are not authorized to speak on this subject. CBS News New York reached out by phone and email to the National Park Service and has not yet heard back.
