California Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing criticism from LGBTQ+ advocates after his press office used Grindr as a punchline in posts targeting conservative commentator Benny Johnson—the latest controversy for the governor, who is widely seen as positioning himself for a potential 2028 presidential run.
The backlash comes amid broader unease among LGBTQ+ leaders over Newsom’s recent comments urging Democrats to be more “culturally normal” and to spend less time on “pronouns” and “identity politics,” remarks critics say echo language historically used to marginalize LGBTQ+ people.
What happened
The controversy stems from a series of social media posts by Newsom’s press office during an ongoing dispute with Johnson.
In January, after Johnson said he planned to travel to California to investigate alleged fraud, Newsom’s office responded, “We’ll make sure Grindr servers are ready…”
The exchange escalated again last week, when Newsom’s office replied to a post about Johnson’s television appearance: “We got a call from Grindr after this and said your team was their biggest users. Congrats!”
The March posts renewed attention on earlier messaging. In August, Newsom’s press office had also replied to a conservative rapper, writing, “bro, we get it but he’s not interested… stick to Grindr.”
The posts circulated widely.
Why critics say it matters
For many LGBTQ+ observers, the issue is not intent but impact.
If being on Grindr is the punchline, critics argue, the joke depends on the premise that being gay is something embarrassing or shameful—reinforcing stigma at a time when LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender Americans, are at the center of national political fights.
Writers at Themargued that using Grindr references this way amounts to “calling people gay as an insult,” something they noted is “still bad no matter who says it.”
The criticism is sharpened by Newsom’s history. As mayor of San Francisco, he issued thousands of same-sex marriage licenses in 2004, helping catalyze the national movement that culminated in Obergefell v. Hodges. For critics, that legacy now sits in uneasy tension with rhetoric they see as echoing older, stigmatizing tropes.
In a recent interview with journalist Katie Couric, Newsom was pressed on criticism from transgender advocates who feel he is “throwing trans people under the bus” and treating them as a political liability. Newsom rejected that characterization, pointing to what he described as a record of signing some of the most expansive transgender rights laws in the country, while also reiterating concerns about fairness in competitive sports.
The exchange followed criticism from California’s Legislative LGBTQ Caucus over his remarks about “cultural normalcy” and pronouns.
A mural honoring a slain Ukrainian refugee at a Rhode Island gay bar has been halted after revelations that it is part of a controversial national campaign reportedly backed by Elon Musk, prompting objections from Providence’s out mayor and sparking backlash within the LGBTQ+ community.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley’s office told a local NBC affiliate, WJAR, that he wants the building-sized painting of Iryna Zarutska — a Ukrainian stabbed to death on a Charlotte, North Carolina light rail train last year — to be removed. Artist Ian Gaudreau had largely completed the mural painted on the side of the gay bar The Dark Lady before the owners called for the project to be abruptly stopped last week amid growing controversy.
What began as a memorial has quickly turned into a political lightning rod.
Zarutska’s murder became a rallying cry for national conservatives, with President Donald Trump even spotlighting the crime during his State of the Union address. He pointed to the incident to criticize Democrats on crime policies; suspect Decarlos Brown has been arrested multiple times before, including for a murder (though Trump also wrongly said Brown, a Charlotte native, was an undocumented immigrant).
Gaudrau said the mural, in his eyes, stood as a chance to depoliticize Zarutska’s death.
“As the artist, I’m very saddened to hear that the mayor is calling for the artwork to be removed before I was allowed to finish speaking. I would like everyone to know that the artwork is meant to combat the idea of it being used for a political agenda. I want the mural to humanize Iryna,” Gaudrau said.
But the controversy arose because the painting was part of a national campaign backed by a $1 million donation from Musk. The plan is to create murals of Zarutska in cities across the United States. Intercom CEO Eoghan McCabe, a Trump donor and supporter, announced the effort in an X post last year, when he also pledged $500,000.
“I am offering $500k in $10k grants to paint murals of the face of Iryna Zarutska in prominent U.S. city locations,” McCabe wrote.
Local outrage over the motivations behind the mural campaign prompted bar owners to pause the project. City officials previously told NBC the art project had not been properly authorized.
“The mural currently being installed at 19 Snow St. has not been commissioned or funded by the City of Providence. At this time, neither the property owner or the artist has registered the work with the City,” read an email to the WJAR.
The Dark Lady owners issued a statement to local media last week on the decision to stop the mural’s production.
“This specific mural was created for our community to honor Iryna’s memory, mental wellness, LGBTQIA+ rights, immigration, the war, unity, and anti-Trump policies. The project is temporarily paused,” reads a statement from bar owners Randy and Buck.
“We will be releasing the final rendering of the project to the public for the TRUE meaning to be understood. We’re sorry for the chaos this has caused. We are progressive Democrats, we do not support Donald Trump or politics of division, and our values are deeply rooted in inclusion, equality, and respect.”
The bar issued another statement on the matter last week, available on Reddit.
“We are sincerely apologetic for the chaos and division this has brought to our community. Any of you who know us personally-even for just five minutes— realize that the illicit intentions being portrayed here are completely false. For decades, we have supported, protected, and served this community. That hasn’t changed-and it won’t. Our record speaks for itself,” the owners wrote.
“The mural on our building was created for one reason: remembrance. It honors Iryna— a life taken too soon, as so many others have. It was never intended to be political. The narrative being created about this is wrong, and it is deeply disappointing and concerning to see a memorial misunderstood, judged, and turned into something divisive,” the statement continued.
Amid a torrent of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and a national political climate increasingly defined by fear and distortion, Evan Low has come to an unsettling realization: What the country is living through right now is not normal.
Low, the president and CEO of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund and Victory Institute and a former California state lawmaker, had just returned from Creating Change, the annual gathering of LGBTQ+ advocates and organizers hosted by the National LGBTQ Task Force in January. The conversations, he said, were less about inspiration than confirmation that the scope, coordination, and intensity of attacks on LGBTQ+ people have crossed into something new.
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“Being in a room together helps confirm that what we’re seeing isn’t normal,” Low says. “And that matters, because it shapes how we respond.”
The scale of the backlash helps explain the urgency. In 2025 alone, lawmakers introduced more than 600 anti-LGBTQ+ bills nationwide, according to tracking by the American Civil Liberties Union, the majority aimed at transgender people and often framed around children, schools, and health care. In the first 29 days of 2026, state legislatures introduced 366 additional anti-LGBTQ+ bills, ACLU data shows. The effort spans statehouses, courts, school boards, and federal agencies, and advocates describe it as a coordinated attempt not simply to roll back rights but to narrow who is permitted to exist openly in public life.
For much of the past decade, LGBTQ+ political organizing has been largely defensive, stopping the worst bills, preserving fragile gains, limiting harm. Heading into the 2026 midterm elections, Low argues, that posture is no longer sufficient.
“We didn’t ask to be in the crosshairs,” he says. “But now that we are, the response has to be power.”
Evan Low speaking at event in Los Angeles, CaliforniaRodin Eckenroth/Getty Images for CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment)
That shift is already under way. Victory Fund is tracking what it describes as a record number of queer and trans candidates running at every level of government in 2026. More than 80 LGBTQ+ candidates are seeking federal office this cycle, according to Victory’s internal tracking, alongside hundreds more running for state and local seats. Particularly notable is the rise in transgender candidates, many of whom entered politics after being pushed out of public institutions, including the military and state agencies.
When Victory Institute launched a pilot training program specifically for transgender candidates, it offered 15 slots. Nearly 60 people applied.
“That tells you something important,” Low says. “People are not retreating. They’re stepping forward.”
Crucially, those candidates are not running single-issue campaigns. Transgender candidates, Low says, consistently center on the same concerns that drive voters across the political spectrum: affordability, infrastructure, health care, and public safety. Identity, he emphasizes, is not the platform — lived experience is the lens.
That approach aligns with what political strategists at Fight for Our Rights, a PAC focused on defeating anti-LGBTQ+ lawmakers, say their data shows. After reviewing election cycles from Kansas to Kentucky to Pennsylvania, the group has reached a blunt conclusion: Campaigns built on anti-trans panic tend to falter when voters are offered a credible alternative.
“Voters care about kitchen-table issues,” says Chris Maggiano, a Fight For Our Rights board member and veteran strategist who previously worked on the fight for marriage equality. “They see these attacks as distractions.”
Post-election research conducted by Fight for Our Rights, in partnership with polling and messaging firms, found that while anti-trans rhetoric can be emotionally evocative, it rarely ranks as a decisive factor at the ballot box. Even voters who express discomfort with transgender inclusion in sports or schools overwhelmingly prioritize economic stability, health care access, and education when choosing candidates. Many also view government intervention in transgender people’s lives as overreach — a perception sharpened after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 abortion decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Recent elections illustrate the pattern.
In Kansas, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly faced sustained anti-trans advertising tied to her veto of a sports ban. She addressed the attacks briefly, labeled them dishonest, and returned to a message focused on schools and grocery prices. Kelly won reelection, outperforming President Joe Biden’s 2020 margins in every county in the state, according to Fight for Our Rights’ analysis.
Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky countered millions of dollars in anti-trans attack ads by grounding his campaign in economic recovery, disaster response, and a moral argument rooted in faith. Voters rewarded him with another term.
At the state legislative level, Fight for Our Rights backed a challenger who unseated Iowa Senate President Jake Chapman, a leading proponent of “groomer” rhetoric, by avoiding culture-war traps and focusing on everyday concerns. Similar dynamics played out in Pennsylvania school board races, where voters dismantled far-right majorities after two years of book bans and restrictions targeting LGBTQ+ students.
The lesson, Maggiano says, is not that anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric has vanished, but that it carries a political cost when confronted directly.
“If you don’t respond, the lies stick,” he says. “But when you call them out and pivot to what actually matters, voters move with you.”
Those lessons were reinforced in Virginia in 2025, when Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the governorship (she’s the first woman to hold the position) in a decisive victory that many strategists now view as an early signal for 2026. Spanberger rejected fear-based messaging around transgender people that defined much of her opponent’s campaign, instead emphasizing affordability, health care, and pragmatic governance. She won over suburban and independent voters.
Her inauguration underscored the broader implications of that approach. As she took office alongside a diverse slate of statewide leaders looking on, including out transgender state Sen. Danica Roem, Spanberger invoked Virginia’s civil rights history and called on residents to “stand shoulder to shoulder” despite disagreement.
None of this, advocates caution, guarantees success. In deeply gerrymandered districts or low-turnout primaries, anti-LGBTQ+ messaging can still shape outcomes, particularly when paired with voter suppression or disinformation. Electoral strategy alone cannot undo structural barriers. But the data suggest that fear-based campaigns are far less durable than their architects assume and are increasingly vulnerable when challenged.
For LGBTQ+ advocates, that reality sharpens the stakes heading into 2026. With control of Congress in play and anti-LGBTQ+ policy increasingly concentrated at the state level, the midterms represent a structural inflection point. The question is no longer whether representation matters, but whether enough of it can be built quickly enough to blunt the backlash.
For readers exhausted by the pace of bad news, Low offers guidance that has become Victory’s organizing mantra: “Don’t get mad. Get elected.”
“There is no cavalry coming,” he says. “We are it.”
While it’s widely believed that cruising culture has existed for hundreds of years, the official term emerged in the 1960s as gay slang referring to a discreet method of men seeking out anonymous same-sex encounters in parks, bathrooms, waterfronts, bathhouses and other such places. Here are 23 key moments that shaped cruising culture in the United States.
1842
While a homosexual subculture is growing in New York City, the general public still refers to gay people as “sodomites,” as the word “homosexual” isn’t coined until 1868. Newspapers regularly publish articles calling out and expressing their disgust of suspected sodomites.
One reader writes a letter to the New York City sporting male weekly newspaper, The Flash, about how he tried to catch a sodomite in the act of what is now considered cruising:
“He met me … at the corner of Broadway and Howard street. … I thought to myself I would see how far he would go. After taking some indecent liberties with me, too indecent to be committed to type, he asked me to walk around the corner on Howard street.”
A letter to the editor of The Flash from 1842. Photo by the American Antiquarian Society.
1903
The first recorded raid of a gay bathhouse in New York City leads to the detainment of 60 men and the arrest of 14. The Russian and Turkish bathhouse, in the basement of the Ariston Hotel, was a free space for gay men to express themselves sexually and to cruise in a safer environment. Police reportedly spied on the bathhouse for weeks leading up to the raid.
1910s
Since at least the 1910s, Washington Square Park has been a popular gay cruising spot. It became so well-known that the 1917 song “The Greenwich Village Epic” contains the line, “Fairyland’s not far from Washington Square.” According to the NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites Project, “The west side of the park, along the fence, was the major cruising area and was referred to as ‘the Meat Rack.’”
1918
The San Francisco Police Department’s Morals Squad, which focuses on prostitution, and the military police begin to survey two residences where men who met cruising in public would go for private sexual encounters. For at least 10 days, any men who entered were locked in rooms for questioning until they provided confessions which included divulging the names of friends who engaged in gay sex as well as surrendering personal address books. The National Parks Service wrote of the event:
“Eleven men were initially arrested. A second wave of arrests soon followed. … All in all, over 30 civilians and six soldiers found themselves behind bars.”
1919
The Navy learns that some of their sailors are engaging in homosexual activity in Newport, Rhode Island. Waterfronts have historically been prime cruising spots because they are often isolated at night. Mid-level Navy official Ervin Arnold has a personal mission to remove homosexuals from the Navy by sending sailors out to seduce and entrap them. This becomes known as the Newport sex scandal.
According to The New York Times, “On May 1, 1919, the Foster court of inquiry … declared that sufficient evidence had been gathered to court-martial fifteen of the arrested sailors. They remained behind bars all summer and were tried in the fall, at which time some were released and others sentenced.”
1920s
The lawn at the north end of the Ramble in Central Park becomes such a popular cruising spot that it is known as “The Fruited Plain.” According to historian George Chauncey:
“The enormous presence of gay men in the parks prompted a sharp response from the police. They regularly sent plainclothesmen to cruising areas to entrap men; in the grounds around the Central Park zoo in the first half of 1921 alone, they made thirty-three arrests.”
The Ramble in the 1950s. Photo courtesy of the LGBT Community Center National History Archive.
Mid-20th Century
At the request of sexologist and biologist Alfred Kinsey, Samuel Steward documents his hookups in what he titles “Stud File.” The metal file box contains 746 index notecards—each one detailing a different hookup. The cards include partners’ physical details, meeting dates, sexual acts and a collection of donated pubic hair from 54 different men.
Fire Island Pines and Cherry Grove are established as gay enclaves on New York’s Fire Island. The spaces are connected by a cruising area also known as “the Meat Rack,” which becomes famous as a safe haven for repressed homosexuals to fully express and experience their sexuality.
The Brooklyn Heights Promenade becomes one of the most well-known gay cruising areas in New York City. According to an article in the Brooklyn Heights Press, “It is a well-known tacit fact that after nine o’clock on a mild evening many persons quit the Promenade and leave it to the homosexuals.”
1955
Boise, Idaho, becomes the center of a sex scandal as three men are arrestedand accused of performing homosexual acts. The situation spirals into a gay hysteria, exposing an underground homosexual community in Boise that includes sex workers as well as family men in heterosexual marriages. Over 1,000 people are interrogated and 15 are convicted.
1962
Officers target popular cruising spots—including bathrooms, Alumni Halls and the Michigan Union—at the University of Michigan. They arrest 30 men on homosexual or accosting charges. Captain Walter E. Krasny tells The Ann Arbor News:
“While many arrests have occurred in University buildings our men will also be checking playground areas and public gathering spots where it is felt homosexuals might meet.”
1966
New York City Mayor John Lindsay begins to crackdown on “honky tonks, promenading perverts … homosexuals and prostitutes” in Times Square.
1968
The Continental Baths opens in the basement of the Ansonia Hotel in New York City. Steve Ostrow, an icon of gay night life, transforms the dilapidated basement into a Roman-themed bathhouse, which eventually would include a disco room and a DJ booth. Continental Baths is one of many bathhouses thriving in the Post-Stonewall, Pre-AIDS years. The bathhouse combines sex, socializing and entertainment. It boasts an impressive list of attendees, including Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger and Alfred Hitchcock. The bathhouse would shut down in 1976.
A Continental Baths advertisement. Photo by Fire Island Pines Historical Society.
1970s
The handkerchief code, which helps men discretely express their sexual interests, originates during the gold rush era at a time when San Francisco’s male population is growing dramatically. Since the vast majority of the population is male, men have to dance together at social events. Some men wear blue bandanas to signify they will take the male part of the dance, while others wear red to signify they will take the female part.
Color Codes from Bob Damron’s Address Book (1980).
As years pass, the code takes on new life as a way to covertly signify sexual interests. In 1980, Bob Damron’s Address Book includes a section that details how a light blue handkerchief worn on the left means the individual wants a “69’er” and a mustard handkerchief worn on the right signifies “Wants 8″+.” This system helps revolutionize the cruising process by giving men the ability to nonverbally and discreetly communicate their sexual desires.
1971
For decades, gay men cruise by posting vague personal ads in select newspapers. They intentionally use language that does not out them, but that signifies their intentions to other gay men. For example, mentioning massages or being a masseuse is common. In 1971, The New York Times reports that there are internal divisions at The Village Voice about whether to keep running the ads.
1978
A gang of men with bats beat up men who they think are gay at the Ramble. Six men are seriously injured. Three men are convicted for the attacks.
1993
Gay.net, one of the first online chat systems, launches. The site—which would later merge with Gay.com—adds an online component to cruising and offers men the ability to seek out anonymous sexual encounters without some of the risks of in-person cruising. Users start in the main chat room sending flirty but innocuous messages and then often move into a private chat room.
1995
Craigslist is founded and eventually becomes a go-to site where people post ads for a variety of things, including hookups. Craigslist would shut down its personal section in 2018, following Congress’ passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act.
1999
Gay dating sites continue to grow. Gaydar is initially a desktop-only site designed to connect gay and bisexual men worldwide for relationships, hookups and friendships. An editor for Buzzfeed, Patrick Strudwick, tells the BBC: “It was the forerunner to Facebook. The idea [that] an individual would have their own page, it was entirely novel.”
2009
Grindr launches as one of the first geosocial apps for gay men. The site also allows users to filter by age, body type and so-called tribes that include twink, bear and jock. Since then, similar apps like SCRUFF and Jack’d have entered the space, but Grindr remains the largest and most popular.
2018
Equinox gym faces a lawsuit when a customer at New York City’s Flatiron location says that three men masturbated in front of him in the steam room. The customer reported the incident to the front desk, who allegedly did not take action nor revoke the men’s memberships. The case is still ongoing and the suit now includes 11 people who were allegedly “sexually assaulted, attacked [or subjected to] indecent exposure” in Equinox steam rooms.
Sniffies is founded as a web-based map showing nearby users looking to cruise. The site allows users to chat, view profiles and share explicit photos. In May 2025, Apple removes the app from the App Store. The removal is said to be temporary, but remains in place as of this article’s publication date.
2025
Since the summer of 2025, over 200 people are arrested at a Penn Station bathroom for “public lewdness.” New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal tells Out that these arrests “harken back to the dark days of trapping gay men and other members of the community in public spaces like restrooms.” These arrests indicate that while traditional cruising is still popular, it’s also still being monitored by law enforcement.
NASCAR indefinitely suspended Kaulig Racing driver Daniel Dye after he mocked another driver with a homophobic remark during a livestream, triggering swift disciplinary action from both his team and the sanctioning body.
The sanctioning body announced the suspension on Tuesday, saying Dye violated a rule prohibiting members from making public statements that “criticize, ridicule, or otherwise disparage” someone based on characteristics, including sexual orientation.
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The move happened after Dye, in a livestream on social media, insinuated an IndyCar driver in Florida had a “gay” voice before mocking it online.
As soon as I start doing a David Malukas gay voice, I hit a gold (card, in the pack). So let’s keep it going – Daniel Dye
The racing authority took action after Kaulig Racing suspended Dye from the team.
Dye made the remarks during a trading-card-unpacking stream on the Whatnot platform. There, he insulted driver David Malukas after meeting him in Florida, according to The Athletic. He then imitated Malukas, mocking the pitch of Malukas’s voice.
“As soon as I start doing a David Malukas gay voice, I hit a gold (card, in the pack). So let’s keep it going,” he said.
Dye races in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, while Malukas finished second in the Indianapolis 500 last year. Dye currently sits at No. 13 in the Truck Series standings.
After the remarks drew attention, Dye issued a public apology to Malukas.
“I didn’t think enough before I spoke, and I in no way meant any harm,” the 22-year-old said as part of a lengthy statement. “I know that intention does not erase impact, and I need to do better.”
He also wrote, “I chose my words poorly, and I understand why it upset people. I’m sorry to anyone who was offended.”
Dye added, “I have some close friends in the LGBTQ+ community who I would never want to feel less of themselves because of what I said, and that’s exactly why I should hold myself to a higher standard.”
Research suggests those kinds of remarks are not just casual insults, but reflect deeper patterns of bias tied to how people perceive voices. A 2017 study in Archives of Sexual Behavior found that listeners routinely make assumptions about a person’s identity and character based on whether their voice sounds “gay” or “straight,” even when no information about sexual orientation is provided.
The study found that those perceptions can carry real consequences. Participants were more likely to assign stereotypically feminine traits to men with “gay-sounding” voices and were less likely to see them as suitable for leadership roles or to want to interact with them socially, highlighting how something as subtle as vocal tone can trigger stereotyping and discrimination.
NASCAR said Dye must undergo sensitivity training before he will be allowed to return to any sanctioned competition. The controversy comes amid a broader pattern of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric surfacing across sports from current and former athletes.
This week, former NHL player Ron Duguay drew backlash after blaming the New York Rangers’ loss on “bad mojo” tied to the team’s Pride Night, suggesting a pregame celebration featuring a rainbow flag contributed to the defeat. He later deleted the post in response to criticism but did not apologize, instead continuing to amplify coverage of the controversy online, according toOutsports.
In September 2025, the National Conservatism Conference hosted a meeting of America’s biggest right wing players in Washington, D.C. Some notable attendees included the Alliance Defending Freedom’s (ADF) president Kristen Waggoner, Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, and U.S. representatives and government officials, including Tulsi Gabbard and Sebastian Gorka.
On the evening of its second day, Katy Faust took the stage: “We, as a country, have to do what no other country has dared. We retake marriage on behalf of children. … A massive coalition spearheaded by my nonprofit … aims to do exactly that,” Faust, the founder of Them Before Us—a 501(c)(3) whose goal is “defending children’s right to their mother and father”—told the crowd.
A video of her speech would later be uploaded to YouTube with the title: “How Obergefell Commodified Children.”
Four months later, and just two months after the Supreme Court rejected a case aimed at overturning Obergefell, Faust launched the Greater Than Campaign, a coalition of at least 47 anti-LGBTQ organizations united to reinvigorate the fight to end gay marriage.
Faust has advocated against gay marriage for over a decade, declaring in 2021 that she and her organization, which the Southern Poverty Law Center designates as an anti-LGBTQ hate group, “have a very modest goal of a total global takeover of all conversations around marriage and family.” Since entering the spotlight during the Obergefell v. Hodges case in 2015, she’s pushed her own vision of the anti-marriage equality movement.
“We think that children’s rights should supersede the desires, the agendas, the identities, the feelings of adults, and that requires that everybody, single, married, gay, straight, fertile and infertile conform to those fundamental rights,” Faust told Uncloseted Media. “When Obergefell passed … we centered something else. We centered adult validation and adult identity.”
While Faust’s rhetoric may sound less overtly hateful than that of others on the far-right, many of her policy goals are similar.
“[Her] rhetoric can be difficult to refute because she uses progressive rights language to advance a regressive, evangelical agenda,” says R.L. Stollar, a child liberation theologian and children’s rights advocate. “It sounds good on the surface, but it’s just sugar-coating. You have to look beneath the rhetoric at her policy ideas to understand the danger.”
Faust has been mentored, employed and thrust into the spotlight by well-connected leaders in America’s far-right Christian and anti-LGBTQ spaces. After facing numerous setbacks, the anti-marriage equality movement has anointed her as its leader and is following her strategies.
“There actually has not been any kind of organization or coordination,” Faust says. “I know you guys think that there’s some big right-wing bogeyman. There really never has been, but this is. This is the organized effort that you guys suspected existed, but really never had.”
“And everybody came together because we all understand that children are being victimized in this culture,” she says, adding that there are actually 100 organizations involved in the campaign and that they “just don’t have everyone listed on the website.”
Early Activism – AskTheBigot
Faust’s activism began in 2012 when she started an anonymous blog called AskTheBigot.
The blog’s stated mission is, in part, “to debunk the perception that those opposing gay marriage do so only because they are hateful, fearful (homophobic) or ignorant.”
After being doxxed by pro-LGBTQ bloggers in 2014, Faust decided to continue posting publicly. In a later article called “Thank You for Doxxing Me,” Faust writes that the incident “multiplied [her] platform a hundredfold.”
The Witherspoon Institute
Faust’s profile would be boosted by the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative think tank that has been influential in fighting gay marriage since its founding in 2003. Witherspoon’s founder and president helped lead a campaign by the National Organization for Marriage to artificially “raise the costs of identifying with gay marriage” by associating it with pedophilia and threats to children.
In the lead-up to Obergefell v. Hodges, Witherspoon published multiplearticlesby Faust in their journal, and Faust later said in an interview that she was mentored by the institute’s co-founder Robert George and executive director Ryan Anderson.
At Witherspoon, Faust got a job designing the teen version of CanaVox, a project of the institute that “hosts reading groupsto study and discuss the beauty of marriage as one man, one woman, for life.” She also hosted CanaVox’s “Dear Katy” video series, where she answered questions from readers and viewers, advising them to not attend family members’ gay weddings and to teach their kids that “transgenderism is very similar to anorexia.”
When one viewer, Alice, asked about their teenage children’s friends coming out as bisexual, Faust said that “even if teens only experiment with same-sex foreplay, say with kissing, it can rewire their brain to develop a deeper inclination towards same-sex intimate activity. This experimentation is a slippery slope to high-risk sex.”
Faust Gains Notoriety
As Faust rose to greater notoriety, she began to be cited as an expert on the marriage debate. She wrote amicus briefs in cases litigating gay marriage, including Obergefell; got an op-ed in USA Today; and spoke against gay marriage in Australia and at the Taipei Marriage Rally in Taiwan.
ADF, the Christian legal group currently fighting to overturnColorado’s ban on conversion therapy, featured her in a paneland a video after discovering her articles for Witherspoon.
Using this momentum, she founded Them Before Us. Since launching in 2018, the group has submitted amicus briefs in multiple cases, including one opposing LGBTQ-inclusive birth certificates. They’ve also produced media aimed at turning public opinion against gay marriage, including a curriculum for equipping churches to “defend the rights of children.”
The group also pushes for anti-LGBTQ policies in the corporate space. Last year, they published a set of Human Resources guidelines for companies designed to exclude LGBTQ families. They recommend that companies refuse to cover artificial fertilization and gender-affirming care and deny parental benefits to gay couples, claiming that “same-sex couples can not furnish a child with the gender-diverse parenting that maximizes child development and satisfies the child’s longing for maternal and paternal love.”
Faust distinguishes herself from other anti-marriage equality activists with her softer rhetoric towards gay people, often crediting her friendlier tone to her own family connections. Her mother and father divorced when she was 10, after which her mother began a long-term relationship with another woman.
In the article that put her on ADF’s radar, Faust introduces herself as “the child of a loving gay parent” and says, “My parents’ divorce has been the most traumatic event in my thirty-eight years of life.”
“It’s traumatic because your mother and father are not living in the same house anymore, and you’re only gonna get 50% of each one,” she says. “And thankfully, my mother and her partner had a lot of stability. I didn’t necessarily have that at my father’s house.”
Where Did Greater Than Come From?
Faust began pitching the campaign that would become Greater Than last June, presenting it as an alternative strategy to that of the far-right Christian legal group Liberty Counsel, who unsuccessfully represented Kim Davis last year in an effort to overturn Obergefell.
Unlike Liberty Counsel, Faust’s focus is on turning public opinion against gay marriage and passing state laws that could “create the kind of live issue that the justices could then rule on”—the same strategy used to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“It’s taking a cue from the anti-abortion movement,” says Peter Montgomery, research director at People for the American Way. “They built public support in red states to get laws passed that dramatically restricted or banned women’s access to abortion, knowing that then those laws would be challenged and would give the right-wing court a chance to overturn it.”
When the court declined to take up Liberty Counsel’s case, Faust wrote an op-edarguing that the effort failed because Davis was the “wrong victim,” and the case was asking the “wrong question.”
“This is a problem that the marriage debate has had for a long time,” Faust says. “The reality is, adults are not victims of bad marriage policy—children are victims of bad marriage policy, and it is their perspective and their voice that needs to be central to the conversation.”
A list of Greater Than’s allies from their website.
Other far-right groups seem to agree. Faust told the North Carolina Family Policy Council, “When I reached out to major national organizations, state level policy organizations, individual influencers, I’d say 90% said, ‘Yeah, let’s do this. Let’s do it right now, and let’s do it with all our might.’”
Many members of the Greater Than campaign have expressed extreme anti-LGBTQ views. Focus on the Family is known for promoting conversion therapy and has described same-sex attraction as a “preventable and treatable condition,” and Liberty Counsel has said that gay people are “not controlled by reason,” but rather by “lust.”
“Their message and their mission is not my mission,” Faust says, adding that there’s “no way” she’s going to denounce them. “I am not there to approve of everything that they say, but everybody in that coalition believes that children have a right to their mother and father.”
What Does the Research Say?
One of Faust and Greater Than’s core arguments to overturn Obergefell is that same-sex parenting is harmful because children intuitively long for both motherly and fatherly love, which she claims are impossible for same-sex couples to provide.
“I had been working with kids for 20 years when the gay marriage debate started raging. … I have never yet met a kid that did not care whether or not their mother or father loved them or was in their life. At minimum they were curious,” she says. “That kind of loss or rejection or separation created a lifelong wound that they were still struggling to overcome.”
To prove this, she frequently cites the New Family Structures Study, a 2012 study by sociologist Mark Regnerus that was primarily funded by $700,000 in grants from the Witherspoon Institute.
“Good research is expensive,” says Faust.
The institute’s president at the time wrote that the study was designed to “settle the question in the forum of public debate about what kinds of family arrangement are best for society” and that he was “confident that the traditional understanding of marriage will be vindicated by this study.”
Since publication, the study’s results have been called into question by researchers. Marc Musick, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas-Austin, conducted a review of the study’s methodology and concluded that it “is fundamentally flawed … and should largely be disregarded.”
Otherpublications argue that the study’s methodology fails to control for childhood family instability and that most of the negative impacts it associates with same-sex parenting are actually attributable to that instability.
“Why do we cite Regnerus? Because he has really good methodology,” Faust says.
Faust also references work by sociologist Paul Sullins, whose work includes a retracted paper that claimed to demonstrate the success of conversion therapy.
There is a swath of research disputing her arguments: Comprehensive systematic reviews from the U.K. and Australia analyzing data from over 30 years have shown that parents’ sexual orientations are not a significant determining factor for the quality of a child’s development.
“We have already, in our international human rights standards, very clear standards that family means much more than just men and women, just this single type of family,” says Bia Galli, senior policy and advocacy advisor at Ipas, an international reproductive justice organization. “The distortion that if family is not like that, it will cause damage to children—this is complete nonsense and lacks completely scientific evidence.”
A man who coerced gay men on dating apps and defrauded them for a total of £28,488 has been sentenced to three years in prison.
Between July 2022 and November 2024, 26-year-old Thomas Godden was found to have tricked three men into thinking they were in romantic relationships with him.
He then exploited them to send him money for what they thought were day-to-day costs, travel expenses and more, and ensured them that he would repay them. One of the men he victimised sent him more than £26,000.
An investigation carried out by the City of London Police found that Godden used Tinder and Bumble to target his victims, presenting himself as a gay man looking to get into a serious relationship.
Unbeknownst to his victims, Godden is heterosexual and was already in a relationship at the time.
Detective Constable Melissa Morgan, who works on the Fraud Operations team for the City of London Police, said of the case: “Godden deliberately targeted men who were seeking companionship and a genuine emotional connection. He abused their trust, manipulated their vulnerabilities and caused significant financial and emotional harm.”
She continued: “This was a calculated pattern of offending, not a misunderstanding or a civil dispute, but a clear case of fraud by false representation.”
When the victims challenged Godden about repaying the money, he became “hostile, made excuses, or threatened to cut off contact”, according to a statement from the City of London Police. In some instances, he “used emotional blackmail, including threats of self-harm, to maintain control and continue receiving funds”.
The investigation also found that Godden used the dating apps solely to procure money, and that his internet search history included questions like: ‘Can you go to jail for romance scamming?’ and ‘Can you go to the police if someone owes you money?’
Godden pleaded guilty to three charges of fraud by false representation in December 2025 and was sentenced to three years in prison on 17 February 2026 at Canterbury Crown Court.
A spokesperson for Bumble said: “We are deeply concerned about anyone taking advantage of our community, and are saddened to hear of these experiences. The safety of our members is our top priority and fraudulent activity is not tolerated on Bumble.”
On February 19, 2026, the Federal Bureau of Prisons issued a new policy on the “Management of Inmates with Gender Dysphoria.” The title sounds clinical. The reality is brutal: the federal government has now officially placed itself in the business of punishing transgender people for being who they are, by withdrawing their medical care, confiscating their personal belongings, and subjecting them to forced psychological treatment. It is, in every meaningful sense, a blueprint for a government-run conversion therapy program, one targeting thousands of incarcerated people who have nowhere to turn.
NCLR condemns this policy in the strongest possible terms. For now, a federal court order is blocking its enforcement, and we are committed to ensuring it stays that way. But the policy itself is a declaration of intent, and we are calling on everyone, not just those who are transgender, not just those who have loved ones in prison, to recognize what it represents and to oppose it.
What the policy actually does
The BOP policy does three things that, taken together, constitute a systematic program of forced psychological coercion.
First, it categorically bans hormone therapy for any transgender inmate not already receiving it. For those who are receiving it, the policy mandates a forced tapering and discontinuation, a medically and psychologically dangerous process that deprives people of care they may have received for years or even decades. There is no medical justification for this. Hormone therapy for gender dysphoria is established, evidence-based care endorsed by every major medical and psychiatric organization in the United States.
Second, the policy strips transgender inmates of social accommodations, the items, including clothing and personal care products, that allow them to live as who they are. Under the new policy, the BOP will not only stop providing these items but will “remove or confiscate” them from people who already have them. For a transgender person, these items are not accessories; they are the difference between basic dignity and daily humiliation. Confiscating them is not treatment. It is punishment.
Third — and this is where the conversion therapy framework becomes unmistakable — the policy substitutes psychotherapy specifically directed at reducing gender dysphoria symptoms, combined with psychotropic medication, for the evidence-based care that was previously available. The policy instructs clinicians to treat being transgender as a mental disorder to be “cured” through conversion therapy, contrary to decades of medical research and practice.
A court order is currently blocking enforcement, but the threat is real
The BOP did not issue this policy in a legal vacuum. On June 3, 2025, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction in Kingdom v. Trump, requiring the BOP to continue providing hormone therapy and social accommodations to transgender inmates under the policy that existed before the administration’s January 2025 executive order. That injunction remains in force.
The BOP’s own General Counsel acknowledged the injunction in the memorandum accompanying the new policy, instructing prison officials that the BOP “remains obligated to comply” with it even as it issues this new policy. That acknowledgment is notable: the BOP is formalizing a policy that a federal court has already found unlawful, with the clear intent to enforce it at the first opportunity.
This is conversion therapy. Full stop.
NCLR has been fighting conversion therapy since 1993. We launched Born Perfect to end these practices, and we have seen this playbook before. Conversion therapy is not defined by the use of any particular technique. It is defined by its goal: to punish and pressure a person into suppressing their sexual orientation or transgender status.
The BOP policy meets that definition exactly. It punitively withdraws medical care. It subjects people to therapy designed to force them to suppress and deny who they are. It uses psychotropic medication as a coercive tool in that process. And it forces people to wear clothing and conform to grooming standards that contradict who they are, while they are imprisoned and cannot leave.
A person in a free-world clinical setting can walk out. A person in federal prison cannot. The coercive power of the state is at its maximum inside a prison cell, and the BOP is deploying that power against some of the most vulnerable people in the country.
Part of a catastrophic pattern
The BOP policy did not emerge from nowhere. It is one piece of a coordinated, comprehensive federal campaign to eliminate health care for transgender people.
The administration has expelled transgender service members from the military and stripped their health care. It has eliminated health care for transgender federal employees. Proposed HHS rules would cut Medicaid and Medicare funding to hospitals and providers that offer health care to transgender youth, effectively ending this care by bankrupting anyone who provides it.
The chilling effect of this environment is already causing providers to end care for transgender adults even without any law requiring them to do so: Vanderbilt University Medical Center recently announced it will no longer offer surgical care to transgender adults, and community health clinics that serve low-income patients are quietly ending hormone therapy for transgender adults, citing fear of federal retaliation. Subpoenas have been issued to health care institutions for patient data. And the FBI has run public tip campaigns inviting people to report providers of transgender health care.
What we are witnessing is the systematic dismantling of every pathway through which transgender people access medically necessary care in prisons, in the military, in federal health care programs, and increasingly in the private sector. The BOP policy is the most visible and perhaps the most naked expression of this agenda, but it is not an isolated act. It is a test — a test of whether the courts will stop it, whether the public will demand accountability, and whether people with power to protect transgender lives will use it.
Why everyone should care
If you are not transgender and do not have a transgender loved one in federal prison, it might be easy to experience this as someone else’s emergency. It is not.
The government’s authority to impose psychological coercion on incarcerated people, to withhold medical care in order to punish someone for who they are, and to forcibly confiscate personal items to strip a person of their dignity does not stop at the transgender community. The same legal framework that permits the BOP to do this to transgender people can be deployed against anyone the state decides is a suitable target. The power being claimed here, that the government can use its custody of a person to punish them for who they are, is a power without principled limits.
This is also an Eighth Amendment case. The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. For thirty years, courts have recognized that denying medically necessary care to incarcerated people constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. If the government can redefine what counts as “medically necessary” based solely on the political preferences of whoever is in power, stripping courts of the ability to independently evaluate that question, then the Eighth Amendment’s protection of every person is weakened.
Beyond the constitutional stakes, this policy is medically dangerous. Abrupt discontinuation of hormone therapy can cause serious physiological and psychological harm. The policy’s own text acknowledges this, which is why it includes provisions for “tapering” in some cases, but the framework is designed around cessation rather than care. If this policy is enforced, people will be harmed. Some of those harms will be irreversible. And the institution proposing to do this is a federal agency with custody over human beings.
If you believe that government power over imprisoned people should have limits, that the state should not be in the business of forcing people to be someone they are not through the systematic withdrawal of medical care and coercive “therapy,” then this policy should alarm you regardless of how you feel about any other aspect of this debate.
What NCLR is doing
NCLR is closely monitoring compliance with the preliminary injunction in Kingdom v. Trump and working with our partners to ensure that transgender inmates receive the protections the court has ordered. We are representing incarcerated transgender people in a companion case challenging this administration’s attempt to force transgender women to be exposed to rape and sexual assault in male prisons. And we are working to ensure that every person in BOP custody affected by this policy knows their rights.
We will also keep the public informed. The BOP issued this policy and hoped it would pass quietly into the bureaucratic record. It will not. Every provision of this policy, the denial of necessary medical care, the confiscation of personal items, and the coercive “therapy” regime, is a federal constitutional violation. This policy was issued in the dark. We will litigate it in the light, and we will win.
Shannon Minter is the Legal Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR). He has litigated on behalf of LGBTQ+ rights for more than thirty years.
Delegates at the United Nations 70th annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) overwhelmingly voted against considering a proposal by the U.S. to adopt an anti-trans definition of “gender.”
On March 19, the final day of the nine-day conference, the U.S. introduced a resolution calling on U.N. member states to officially define “gender” as referring only to men and women. The resolution claimed that the landmark Beijing Declaration on women’s rights, adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, already defined gender as “referring to men and women.”
But a letter from the progressive Women’s Rights Caucus circulated among delegates last week noted that the commission did not adopt a specific definition of “gender” in 1995, Devex reported. Cristal Downing of the International Crisis Group said that at the time, member states “agreed to disagree” on interpretations of the word.
“They were more comfortable with leaving the term open to interpretation than they were with any attempt to create a shared definition,” Downing said, according to PassBlue.
Speaking to Devex, Jennifer Rauch, global advocacy officer at Fòs Feminista, accused the U.S. of being “willing to lie” to “push forward their own gender ideology onto people in the U.N. system.”
During last Thursday’s final CSW session at the U.N. Headquarters in New York City, the representative from Belgium said that the U.S. resolution was “factually incorrect as it misquotes and contradicts Annex IV of the Fourth World Conference on Women, and attempts to rewrite what was carefully agreed and reflected in Beijing over 30 years ago.”
On behalf of 25 other member states, Belgium called for a “no action motion” to block the proposal. Pakistan and Chile were the only two member states to vote with the U.S. against the motion, with 23 countries voting to block the anti-trans proposal and 17 abstaining.
“It was a huge moment of the world telling the U.S. that it stops here,” María Paula Perdomo of the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Outright International told Devex. “We follow the rules, and if you want to bring this, do it appropriately, do it with due process, and bring it with truth.”
But as PassBlue notes, some of the 17 countries that abstained said they’d done so only on procedural grounds. Italy’s representative said that while they agreed with Belgium that the U.S. had failed to seek other member states’ input and had not circulated the proposal until the last minute, the country agrees with the interpretation of “gender” as “referring exclusively to male, female, binary based on sex at birth.”
The failed resolution came after the U.S. also failed at the beginning of the conference to introduce amendments to the conference’s agreed conclusions. Those amendments included the redefinition of gender, along with others that align with the current presidential administration’s positions on gender equality, DEI, reproductive rights, climate change, and digital regulation. After CSW delegates voted against the amendments, the U.S. forced a vote on the agreed conclusions, marking the first time in the conference’s 70-year history that the document was not adopted by consensus. The U.S. was the only member state to vote against the agreed conclusions, which represent CSW’s priorities and guidelines on gender equality and justice for the world community.
Trans immigrants in the US could find themselves barred due to a new rule coming into play on April 10.
The rule would mean immigration officers could revoke the visas of those with green cards or who are applying if they do not share their “biological sex at birth”.
According to an update to the Federal Register, the amendments to the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, is an attempt to “improve the integrity of, and combat fraud in, the program”.
When the new rule comes into force, applicants will be made to provide passport documentation and upload a scan of the biographic and signature page.
The word “gender” has been replaced with “sex”, with applicants made to state their “biological sex at birth” regardless of whether it differs from current documentation they may hold.
As per GCN, the new rule comes after an executive order from the Trump administration, as part of the “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” order.
It states: “The term ‘sex’ shall refer to an individual’s sex at birth. Only male and female sex options are available for entrants completing the Diversity Visa entry form.
“The marker reflected in the ‘sex’ field on any visa application, including the entry form, should match the applicant’s biological sex at birth, even if that differs from the sex listed on the applicant’s foreign passport or other identifying documentation.”
It’s feared that if a trans applicant does not provide their “biological sex at birth” on the forms, they’ll have their visas revoked as it may be deemed fraudelent.
Worryingly, the same can be said for immigrants already living in the US, who could face deportation.
