Christopher Wiggins

Lambda Legal is taking its fight from the courtroom to the digital stage. With its new national campaign, “All Rise,” the nation’s oldest LGBTQ+ legal advocacy organization is turning a familiar courtroom command into a rallying cry — and a fundraising lifeline. The campaign, built around short- and long-form videos, paid digital ads, and a coordinated influencer blitz rolling out during LGBTQ+ History Month, is designed to keep Lambda Legal’s lawyers in courtrooms across the country as the Trump administration accelerates efforts to roll back hard-won rights.

Backed by creators including Under The Desk News, Rose Montoya, Pattie Gonia, Isaias Hernandez, Blair Imani, Jesse Sullivan, and Chella Man, All Rise blends grassroots donor outreach with emotional storytelling. It marks Lambda Legal’s largest digital awareness push to date and a call for unity and urgency from a group describing itself as the LGBTQ+ community’s “last line of defense.”

For more than five decades, the legal nonprofit has fought in courtrooms for LGBTQ+ people and those living with HIV. But in the second term of the Trumpadministration, which has banned gender-affirming care for trans minors, restricted diversity programs, and barred transgender people from militaryservice, the group’s work has become existential.

“This is a break-the-glass moment,” Kevin Jennings, Lambda Legal’s CEO, told The Advocate in an interview. “Everybody needs to throw everything at this right now. Their agenda is nothing less than the destruction of our democracy as we’ve known it.”

A movement facing its reckoning

Lambda Legal’s message arrives amid an unprecedented wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Nearly 2,000 bills have been introduced nationwide over the past two years, and more than 200 have been enacted into law. “We’ve lost the White House, we’ve lost Congress,” Jennings said. “The courts are our only recourse at this point.”

So far, the organization has sued the Trump administration six times and won four cases. Two remain pending. “We could end up six for six,” Jennings said.

According to Lambda Legal’s “Tracking Trump” case tracker, the group currently has six open cases against the administration targeting transgender rights, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and health care. The tracker also notes two preliminary injunctions granted in active cases regarding transgender service members and health care coverage.

The tracker reaffirms Lambda Legal’s long-term success rate: the organization reports an 86 percent win rate against the first Trump administration.

Related: HRC, Lambda Legal sue to stop Trump’s transgender military ban

“There’s reason to be hopeful, but don’t be optimistic,” Jennings said. “Optimism assumes it’ll just get better by itself. Our only hope is if people rise together and fight back.”

This is not a rhetorical flourish. In June, Lambda Legal announced the largest fundraising campaign in LGBTQ+ history — $285 million raised through its “Unstoppable Future” initiative. The haul exceeded its goal by more than $100 million, with $80 million in cash on hand and $200 million in long-term commitments. Nearly all of it came from individual donors, not corporations. The infusion allowed the group to expand its legal staff by more than 40 percent.

Jennings described that surge of support as a message to those seeking to dismantle equality: “We will not go back.”

Turning a legal command into a moral imperative

To bring that defiance to life, Lambda Legal turned to Jason Keehn, founder of the mission-driven agency Accompany Creative. Keehn, whose firm was named Ad Age’s Purpose-Led Small Agency of the Year in 2024, said he approached “All Rise” as both a creative brief and a civic duty.

“The phrase has urgency,” Keehn told The Advocate. “It’s about standing up for all of us within the LGBTQ+ community, but also about what happens next if we don’t. Human rights are being eroded, and the message is: you’re next.”

Related: LGBTQ+ groups face alarming funding crisis as Republican anti-trans attacks mount, new report finds

Rather than rely on the anxious tone familiar in political advertising, Keehn said he and his team sought to inspire without numbing audiences. “We didn’t want to add to the toxic negative swirl,” he said. “You can’t be lighthearted about what’s happening, but we also don’t need more messages freaking people out. The better choice is to shine a light on what we can be.”

A portrait of the community under fire and a message of hope

Directed by queer filmmaker Lucio Castro, the campaign features trans military members, trans youth, LGBTQ+ families, and attorneys who represent them in court. “You see lawyers saying directly to the camera, ‘I’m fighting for you every day,’” Keehn said. “That makes the work tangible.”

The videos — some only six seconds long, others a full cinematic arc — are designed for the realities of the modern attention economy. “You need something thumb-stopping on Instagram and something that stays with people longer,” Keehn said. “It all has to ladder up to one big idea.”

The campaign’s insistence on hope, not as sentiment but as strategy, distinguishes it from the darker, fear-based tones that often dominate political messaging. Jennings calls this a deliberate choice. “The ultimate goal of our opponents is to make people feel hopeless,” he said. “Because if you have no hope, you won’t fight.”

Keehn agreed. “Civil rights aren’t just about voting or hiring practices,” he said. “They’re about how we choose to spend our energy and use our talents, and this is our way of doing that.”

For Lambda Legal, the campaign is not an aesthetic exercise but a call to arms. 

“You have four assets: your voice, your vote, your time, and your money,” Jennings said. “Some people can write checks. Some people can march. Some people can sue — that’s what we do. Just figure out what you can do and do it.”

Jennings often returns to a simple, chilling analogy. “They picked on trans people first,” he said. “Just like the Nazis picked on Jews.”

It is a warning, not hyperbole — a reminder that authoritarianism rarely begins with mass repression. It starts with tolerated cruelty.

“Hope is not optimism,” Jennings said. “Hope is the belief that if we fight, things might get better. But we have to fight.”

Watch one of the All Rise campaign’s videos below.

– YouTube www.youtube.com

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to consider whether to hear a challenge that could reopen the question of who can get married. The challenge to marriage equality is being brought by Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who in 2015 defied a federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

As SCOTUSblog reports, the justices will privately discuss Davis’s petition on November 7. Davis, who was briefly jailed a decade ago after citing “God’s authority” in refusing to issue licenses to a gay couple, is now asking the high court not only to reverse her loss in the lower courts but to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision that established a constitutional right to marry for same-sex couples nationwide.

A Gallup poll from May 2024 found that 69 percent of U.S. adults support legal same-sex marriage—close to the record high of 71 percent. Sixty-four percent said same-sex relations are morally acceptable. Support remains strongest among Democrats at 83 percent and independents at 74 percent, while only 46 percent of Republicans back marriage equality, reflecting the enduring partisan divide.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit rejected Davis’s claim that her refusal was protected by religious freedom, ruling that she acted as a government official, not a private citizen. A jury had previously awarded $50,000 each to the couple, David Moore and David Ermold, who were denied a license.

Several members of the court have recently commented on the 2015 marriage equality ruling, offering clues to how they might view Davis’s petition. Justice Clarence Thomas has long urged the court to revisit major decisions, such as Obergefell v. Hodges, arguing in a concurrence in the court’s 2022 Dobbs ruling that struck down Roe v. Wade, that such rulings expand constitutional rights beyond what the framers intended. He and Justice Samuel Alito have both raised concerns that Obergefell diminished protections for people who oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett recently noted in an interview with The New York Times that marriage equality now carries “very concrete reliance interest,” meaning millions of Americans have built their lives and legal relationships around it. In her September book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution, Barrett described the “rights to marry” as “fundamental,” Newsweek reports.

According to SCOTUSblog, if the justices decline to take up the case, that decision could be announced as soon as November 10. But if they agree to hear it, the case would mark the court’s most direct confrontation with Obergefell in years and a potentially seismic moment for LGBTQ+ rights in the post-Roejudicial era. If the court agrees to hear it, oral arguments could be scheduled for the spring, with a decision possible by June. If the justices decline to take up the case, the lower-court rulings against Davis will stand.

A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, has ordered the Pentagon to restore nearly 600 books and reinstate lessons on race, gender, and identity in schoolsserving military families, ruling that the Trump administration’s restrictions on classroom content likely violated students’ First Amendment rights.

In a 44-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles concluded that the Department of Defense Education Activity removed books and altered curricula in ways that suppressed certain viewpoints and deprived students of access to ideas about race and gender. She found that the department’s actions caused real harm and were likely motivated by viewpoint discrimination. The ruling requires the Pentagon to immediately return the banned books and halt further removals while the case continues.

The case, E.K. v. Department of Defense Education Activity, was brought by 12 students from military families at DoDEA schools in Virginia, Kentucky, Italy, and Japan. The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Virginia, and the ACLU of Kentucky, challenged the agency’s enforcement of three Trump executive orders issued in January that directed federal institutions to remove references to “gender ideology” and “divisive equity concepts.”

Giles wrote that public school libraries are “loci of intellectual freedom,” quoting the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in Board of Education v. Pico to emphasize that students must be free to “inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding.” She found that DoDEA’s process for removing books was opaque and inconsistent, noting that officials failed to provide clear records of which titles had been withdrawn or why. The judge also criticized the department for refusing to disclose information about the censorship campaign, writing that it was unconstitutional to limit access to information and then fault the plaintiffs for not having proof of the government’s actions.

The ruling rejected the Pentagon’s claim that the removals constituted “government speech,” a legal doctrine that shields official communications from First Amendment scrutiny. Giles said that viewing school libraries as expressions of government ideology conflicts with the long-standing purpose of those institutions as spaces for academic freedom and voluntary inquiry. She warned that expanding the government speech doctrine to cover book removals in public schools would pose “dangerous” risks to intellectual freedom.

DoDEA operates 161 accredited schools across 11 countries, seven U.S. states, Guam, and Puerto Rico, educating roughly 67,000 children of active-duty service members and civilian Defense Department employees. The system, among the most diverse and high-performing in the nation, consistently ranks near the top of U.S. public school systems in reading and math proficiency.

As The Advocate previously reported, DoDEA began pulling materials shortly after Trump’s executive orders took effect, instructing school administrators to “quarantine” any books or lessons that could be seen as promoting “gender ideology” or “discriminatory equity ideology.” The removals included books and curricula addressing slavery, women’s rights, Native American history, LGBTQ+ identities, and sexual health education, along with sections of the Advanced Placement Psychology course.

The ACLU said Monday’s ruling restores constitutional protections that had been stripped away from students in military-run schools. “This is an important victory for students in DoDEA schools and anyone who values full libraries and vibrant classrooms,” Emerson Sykes, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a press release. “The censorship taking place in DoDEA schools as a result of these executive orders was astonishing in its scope and scale, and we couldn’t be more pleased that the court has vindicated the First Amendment rights of the students this has impacted.”

Corey Shapiro, legal director for the ACLU of Kentucky, said, “Removing books from school libraries just because this administration doesn’t like the content is censorship, plain and simple. The materials removed are clearly age-appropriate and are only offensive to those who are afraid of a free-thinking population.”

Matt Callahan, senior supervising attorney at the ACLU of Virginia, said the ruling affirms that “government can’t scrub references to race and gender from public school libraries and classrooms just because the Trump administration doesn’t like certain viewpoints on those topics.”

While the injunction applies only to the five schools attended by the plaintiffs — Crossroads Elementary in Quantico, Virginia; Barsanti Elementary in Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Aviano Middle-High in Italy; and Stollars Elementary and Edgren Middle High in Japan — the decision could have far-reaching implications for schools on military bases worldwide.

Giles wrote that students in federally operated schools are entitled to the same constitutional protections as those in civilian public schools. She ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and DoDEA Director Beth Schiavino-Narvaez to comply immediately.

NBC News has laid off about 150 employees, roughly 7 percent of its newsroom, and dissolved its dedicated editorial teams covering Black, Latino, Asian American, and LGBTQ+ communities, according to The Wrap. The Advocateconfirmed the firings through a source who was affected by the cuts.

The move is part of a reorganization that separates MSNBC from NBC News under a new entity called Versant. Executives described the decision as an efficiency measure to eliminate overlap and streamline operations across NBCUniversal’s news division. But it also dismantles the network’s identity-based teams: NBC BLK, NBC Latino, NBC Asian America, and NBC Out.

NBC News confirmed that while some roles were eliminated, its specialized reporting units, or “verticals,” will continue operating and draw on contributions from the wider newsroom. Several affected staffers are being reassigned to other editorial positions, where their expertise would be applied, according to a person familiar with the restructuring. 

Stories about those communities will now be integrated into the more general daily reporting. Critics, however, warn that such integration often results in fewer stories and diminished focus on marginalized voices.

Rich Ferraro, GLAAD’s chief communications officer and an executive producer of the GLAAD Media Awards, called the move “part of a dangerous pattern of mainstream media outlets choosing to lose trusted and talented journalists who focus on important LGBTQ news that otherwise is under-reported or not reported at all.” He added that “the talented journalists at NBC Out consistently lead with impact and accuracy,” noting that the vertical’s reporting had “earned the trust of LGBTQ Americans and our allies to report on news with care, precision, and impact.”

“This is a terrible and poorly-timed loss for journalism and for our democracy,” Ferraro said, urging support for LGBTQ journalists whose work “our community and companies and foundations should urgently help fund.”

NBC Out most recently received a GLAAD Media Award for “Friends Remember Nex Benedict, Oklahoma Student Who Died After School Fight, as ‘Fiery Kid,’”reported by Jo Yurcaba.

The change arrives after a period of turbulence within NBC and its affiliates, as MSNBC began being spun off into its own entity. In February, Rachel Maddowpublicly rebuked MSNBC’s leadership for canceling programs hosted by Joy Reid and Alex Wagner, both of whom are nonwhite. Maddow condemned the network for eliminating its nonwhite prime-time hosts, calling the move “indefensible” and voicing deep concern for staff and morale. 

In May, MSNBC, which will be rebranded MS NOW, launched The Weekend show featuring Jonathan Capehart, Eugene Daniels, and Jackie Alemany—Capehart and Daniels being out gay Black men—raising expectations for new paths in diversity and inclusion in mainstream cable news. Now, the dismantling of the identity desks at NBC Universal, MSNBC’s former parent company, stands in stark contrast to that recent momentum.

NBC Out, launched in 2016, was the first major broadcast vertical devoted to LGBTQ+ issues and helped bring national attention to queer and trans lives beyond Pride Month. Similarly, NBC BLK, NBC Latino, and NBC Asian America provided nuanced reporting on race, culture, and representation that rarely appeared elsewhere in network news.

The layoffs reflect a broader contraction in U.S. media, where outlets are cutting diversity and identity desks amid economic strain and political backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Gannett, Disney, and Condé Nast have made similar reductions in recent months.

NBC has not publicly commented beyond confirming the reorganization.