Members of Macon’s LGBTQ community gathered inside The Tubman Museum of African American Art, History, and Culture on June 5 to celebrate the start of Pride season and the induction of three local advocates at the forefront of activism, art, and education who have contributed significantly to LGBTQ visibility and progress.
Portraits of Marques Redd, co-founder and co-executive director of Rainbow Serpent, Richard Frazier, artistic and executive director of Theatre Macon, and Dr. Thomas Bullington, senior lecturer of English and Liberal Arts at Mercer University, were among 21 influential Macon LGBTQ leaders featured in the Pioneers and Trailblazers exhibit. Created in partnership with Storytellers Macon, inductees also shared their journeys of self-acceptance and advocacy throughout the evening.
Richard Frazier shares his story as a theatre professional in Macon and his journey toward self-acceptance as a gay man of mixed-race heritage during the Pioneers and Trailblazers Photo History Exhibit. (Image: Darian Aaron)
“We’ve been doing this exhibit for the past four years,” said DeMarcus Beckham, co-founder and special events chair of Macon Pride. “Each year, we add two to three individuals who we feel have contributed not just to Macon but our region’s history and the preservation of our communities’ civil rights.”
Since 2019, Macon Pride has hosted its annual Pride festival during the last week of September, and this year, the tradition will continue in addition to special programming throughout the month of June. For inductee Richard Frazier, the availability of multiple events created specifically for LGBTQ Maconites and their allies not only represents a thriving queer community but also creates a different narrative of life as a queer person in a small Southern town.
“Macon is an interesting community because it is a small town, but it’s not a small town in the way that I think people think it is,” Frazier said. “The culture here and the amount of emphasis that our community places on the arts and on creating community for everybody really sets it apart, I think, from most small towns, specifically in Georgia. It has a big city feel where you never know who you’ll get to meet, but it also has this lovely sense of community,” he said.
Multimedia artist and scholar Marques Redd shares his story of reconciling his sexuality with his faith and the affirmation he received through discovering untold stories of queerness in art during the Pioneers and Trailblazers Photo History Exhibit. (Image: Darian Aaron)
Macon native and inductee Marques Redd works to advance Black LGBTQ culture by exploring multimedia art, traditional African spirituality, and emerging tech. He tells GLAAD that the existence of an organization like Macon Pride would have significantly impacted his life during his formative years.
“When I was growing up, such an organization did not exist, and I think that really left a gap for people and the community,” Redd said. “There were no obvious places where people could turn for support, community, help, or fellowship.”
This year and every year going forward, Beckham says organizers want to be intentional about Macon Pride being an organization available to the community every day of the year.
Attendees inside the atrium of the Tubman Museum for Macon Pride’s Pioneer & Trailblazers Photo History Exhibit. (Image: Darian Aaron)
“Having local Pride, there’s a responsibility to show that we have a community here,” Beckham said. “We will hold space. We are your doctors, we are your lawyers, we are the people who are your community servants.”
Like Redd, whose family owned the now-closed Miracles Art Gallery in the 1990s, which housed one of the largest collections of Black art in the Southeast, in addition to his LGBTQ portrait, Redd has also curated a special exhibit of his family’s impressive Black art collection on the second level of the Tubman Museum simply titled “Miracles.”
“Multiple parts of my life are coming together in such a beautiful way, and I’m just excited to share this with everybody,” Redd said.
Beckham beams when discussing the Tubman Museum’s support of the queer community by hosting the LGBTQ photo exhibit and the opportunity provided in the space to celebrate the intersecting identities of the artists and art within its walls.
“To host an event in one of the largest African American museums in the southeast is baffling,” he said. “People will be able to see community spaces like this opening up for [LGBTQ] individuals and for us to have those conversations about intersectionality.”
Inductee Richard Frazier tells GLAAD that the evening was a reminder “to keep spreading love and to keep creating spaces where people feel safe and welcome,” specifically in places where the opposite experience is often expected.
“You can be your most authentic self even in this small town, and you don’t have to go somewhere else to be a part of a larger community or a safe space,” Frazier said. That’s something that I’ve really appreciated about what Macon Pride has done.
Dr. Thomas Bullington poses with a “Shade” fan before the start of Macon Pride’s Pioneer & Trailblazers Photo History Exhibit. (Image: Darian Aaron)
“This goes beyond anything that I could have imagined as a child and a young teenager,” Redd said. “It’s really thrilling to see, and it shows that times are changing. It’s taken community-wide pressure and organizing to make this happen, and I think it shows the power of what we can do when we all come together.”
At least six more Pride-related events are scheduled in Macon in June before more than 4,000 attendees from over 13 different counties in Georgia descend on Macon for the major Pride celebration. Beckham wants folks to know that Pride in Macon is more than “standing on a float dancing to Lady Gaga songs.”
“It’s an opportunity to find resources in your community and to find connections with other people like you,” he said. “But [it’s an opportunity] also to challenge norms because we are here. We have always been here and will continue to hold up space. And as long as there’s breath in my lungs, Macon Pride will exist, and we will have a community here.”
The New York Times’ coverage of transgender people and issues has been critiqued for years by trans people, the broader LGBTQ community, and allies. Now instead of directly addressing the critiques, meeting with the community harmed by the coverage, or forthrightly fixing its errors in reporting and news gathering, the Times is deploying its most distrusted and discredited reporters in a new project designed to profit off its inaccurate and biased coverage.
The project is a multi-episode podcast on transgender health care that was repeatedly shopped around by the Times’ sales office, with “sponsorship opportunities” in the tens of thousands of dollars. The podcast promos say the episodes will explore the “political fight” around essential health care for transgender people. The promos did not say if the Times would acknowledgehow Times coverage fueled the “political fight,” or how its stories are repeatedly cited to justify harmful policies and legislation that criminalizes the care and bans access to it.
Transgender contributors for the New York Times and advocacy groups have tried for years to get the Times to listen to the community it is covering and harming; to hire transgender people on its staff; and to stop its inaccurate, biased reporting. The Times continues to perpetuate the same mistakes and the same harm:
Reporters have betrayed the trust of LGBTQ families who regret speaking with the Times. The Times’ most popular podcast, The Daily, issued a call out to listeners last week asking for their experiences with transgender health care, which suggests the new podcast project did not have the audio needed from the people whose opinions matter most.
The Times continues to recycle its inaccurate and biased reporting to support preconceived notions and its fully misguided commitment to inaccurate “both sides” journalism. A recent story managed to quote transgender legal experts and medical providers (trans voices in stories about trans people are rare in the Times’ reporting), but was backfilled by several paragraphs of inaccurate previous reporting, including unchallenged anti-trans voices.
The Times’ coverage has been cited by multiple anti-LGBTQ politicians to justify legalizing discrimination and criminalizing support for transgender people, a fact the Times itself has never covered. A recent example: a wildly inaccurate and graphic Department of Justice memo seeking to criminalize health care providers included as its number one citation an inflammatory article from the New York Times boosting the debunked theory about the rise in transgender youth, alongside dubious sources including The New York Post, Fox News, and error and animus-filled documents from the Trump White House.
When there is news of legitimate research and reports that support medically necessary, mainstream care, and detail the benefits of it, the Times has failed to cover it. The Times has covered Utah’s legislative attacks against the transgender community in more than half a dozen stories, but did not cover the Utah legislature’s study finding that transgender health care benefits trans youth.
The Times leadership has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the harms and impact of its reporting. Publisher AG Sulzberger told shareholders in April that he believes the reporting has been “fair and respectful.” Spokespeople and staff have claimed it is “empathetic.” These are not words the transgender community and families use to describe the coverage, nor reflect how they feel about it.
In 2022, The Times dedicated more than 15,000 words’ worth of front-page stories “asking whether care and support for young trans people might be going too far or too fast.”
A 2024 Media Matters and GLAAD analysis found that a majority (66%) of Times news stories about trans people did not include even one trans voice. This problem continues on the Opinion page, where columnists who are not trans or queer are regularly given numerous columns to denigrate transgender youth and their right to best-practice healthcare which is supported by every major medical association.
The Timesobscures sources’ identities, leading readers to believe a source is simply an “everyday person,” when they in fact are working directly with anti-trans activists and extremist organizations.
The Times leads with an outsized focus on so-called “regret” for gender-affirming healthcare, when the reality is, the regret rate for knee surgery is higher than gender-affirming care. Notably, puberty blockers, which have been used for decades in non-transgender kids, are portrayed as dangerous for transgender kids, despite being backed by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and more. The Times has interviewed Dr. Hilary Cass of the UK, amplifying the false accusation that U.S. medical associations are overly political, yet failed to challenge or note her direct cooperation with Florida Governor DeSantis’s administration and its harmful and inaccurate testimony to support state medical care bans.
Families with trans kids regret speaking to the Times. Multiple families have come forward to express their regret in speaking with the Times and call out the fact that their personal stories were spun and twisted including a family member who says the Times used their audio without their permission. One parent says the Times captured audio from them outside a courtroom, which the reporter knew was a public space and therefore fair game for the Times’ purposes, further poisoning the Times’ reputation with unwilling sources.
On February 15, 2023, after years of unsuccessful behind-the-scenes conversations with Times journalists, a coalition of more than 100 LGBTQ organizations, leaders, and notables, sent an open letter to the Times calling out the paper’s coverage of trans people for what it is: biased and inaccurate. The coalition letter called for the paper to stop printing biased stories immediately, meet with leaders from the trans community within two months, and hire four trans journalists within six months. Two years later, the coalition has yet to directly hear from the Times, and none of the asks have been met. The Times has not found just 30 minutes in the past two years to simply speak with trans leaders. The coalition has offered multiple times to set up the meeting. In 2024,the Times hired one transgender columnist at the Opinion page.
That same day in 2023, in a wholly separate effort, more than 180 of the Times’own freelance contributors signed on to a separate letter, imploring the Times to change course with its biased trans reporting. As news of the contributors’ letter grew, more than 1,200 Times contributors, and even Times staffers, in addition to 34,000 media workers signed on too. It was reported that at least some of these journalists were reprimanded by the Timesafter publicly critiquing the coverage.
The coalition of 100+ LGBTQ organizations, leaders, and notables continues to call out biased, inaccurate coverage of transgender people, regularly speaking out on social and earned media, as well as via mobile billboards in front of the Times’ headquarters. In 2024, the largest LGBTQ organization in Missouri issued an Action Alert warning community members to not speak to the New York Times, highlighting the regret local families felt after speaking to Times reporter Azeen Ghorayshi.
In 2025, the documentaryHeightened Scrutiny continues to call out the Times’ biased, inaccurate coverage of transgender people. Premiering at Sundance this year, the film includes interviews with journalists who are transgender and journalists who are not transgender, including Jelani Cobb, Dean of the Columbia Journalism School. The documentary features Chase Strangio of the ACLU, the first out transgender lawyer to argue before the Supreme Court, in a case now before the Court that will determine whether Tennessee’s ban on essential health care should continue—despite the same care prescribed to cisgender (non-transgender) patients without limitation. Strangio describes the new and alarming practice of inaccurate news coverage being used as citations in legal documents and briefs, including the most harmful coverage of the New York Times.
GLAAD has announced the findings of its fifth annual Social Media Safety Index (SMSI), an annual report on LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression online.
The in-depth report analyzes six major social media platforms — TikTok, YouTube, X, and Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, and Threads — across 14 indicators that address a range of issues affecting LGBTQ people online including data privacy, content moderation, workforce diversity, and more. All companies are failing to meet basic standards across most safety metrics on the SMSI scorecard.
Offering a quantitative ranking and also highlighting LGBTQ safety policy rollbacks from major platforms, the report is a wake-up call for tech leaders and employees at major platforms and for all of Silicon Valley.
As the report shows, rollbacks from some companies eerily mirror recent changes to federal websites and communications that were implemented by the Trump administration from Project 2025 (notably, Project 2025 calls for “deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity.”)
In January, YouTube quietly removed “gender identity” from the list of protected characteristics in its hate speech policy, and Meta removed major components of its hate speech policy protections for LGBTQ people, including adding language expressly stating it is now allowed to refer to LGBTQ people as “abnormal” and “mentally ill.” In its policy revision, Meta also uses the terms “homosexuality” and “transgenderism” — a well-known, right-wing anti-trans trope — in reference to LGBTQ people.
Although YouTube claims that “our hate speech policies haven’t changed,” it is an objective fact that, sometime between January 29th and February 6th, the company removed “gender identity and expression” from its list of protected characteristics (the change is visible here in the current and archived policy page). The SMSI report calls out this unprecedented break from best practices in the field of trust and safety, stating that: “YouTube should reverse this dangerous policy change and update its Hate Speech policy to expressly include gender identity and expression as a protected characteristic.”
These shifts — among others — undermine the safety of LGBTQ people and other historically marginalized groups, who are uniquely vulnerable to hate, harassment, and discrimination online and off.
All companies are failing to meet basic standards across most safety metrics on the SMSI scorecard. Out of a possible 100, the platforms received the following scores:
“At a time when real-world violence and harassment against LGBTQ people is on the rise, social media companies are profiting from the flames of anti-LGBTQ hate instead of ensuring the basic safety of LGBTQ users,” said GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. “These low scores should terrify anyone who cares about creating safer, more inclusive online spaces.”
The quantitative methodology of GLAAD’s Platform Scorecard was created in partnership with Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) and research consultant Andrea Hackl. This year, GLAAD introduced a new scoring methodology that generated numeric ratings for each platform with regard to LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression. The Platform Scorecard focuses on the existence of policies, and does not measure the enforcement of those policies. The 2025 scores are not directly comparable to the 2024 scores due to extensive revising of the Scorecard methodology.
The Social Media Safety Index includes specific findings and recommendations for each company, and calls on companies to urgently and tangibly prioritize LGBTQ safety. The report also highlights the volume of online anti-trans hate, harassment, and disinformation that has skyrocketed in the past year, a trend that GLAAD has qualitatively examined in the SMSI report.
Alongside these rollbacks in LGBTQ protections online, GLAAD’s Anti-LGBTQ Extremism Reporting Tracker has shown a distinct upwards trend in offline anti-LGBTQ incidents in recent years. These include both criminal and non-criminal instances of harassment, vandalism, and assault motivated by anti-LGBTQ hate.
Social media platforms are vitally important for LGBTQ people, as spaces where we connect, learn, and find community. Although today’s social media landscape does indeed look dire, it is heartening that some platforms have implemented positive initiatives in the past year. For Pride month in 2024, TikTok created their LGBTQIA+ TikTok Visionary Voices List and YouTube offered the Celebrate Pride on YouTube LGBTQ creators spotlight. In this current moment, as LGBTQ people face unprecedented attacks on our civil and human rights, now is the time for all companies to stand up for inclusive values and provide LGBTQ communities with the safety protections we need, and the celebratory and affirming messages we deserve.
Key Findings of the 2025 SMSI include:
Recent hate speech policy rollbacks from Meta and YouTube present grave threats to safety and are harmful to LGBTQ people on these platforms.
Platforms are largely failing to mitigate harmful anti-LGBTQ hate and disinformation that violates their own policies.
Platforms disproportionately suppress LGBTQ content, via removal, demonetization, and forms of shadowbanning.
Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and disinformation on social media has been shown to lead to offline harms.
Social media companies continue to withhold meaningful transparency about content moderation, algorithms, data protection, and data privacy practices.
GLAAD’s Key Recommendations:
Strengthen and enforce (or restore) existing policies and mitigationsthat protect LGBTQ people and others from hate, harassment, and misinformation; while also reducing suppression of legitimate LGBTQ expression.
Improve moderation by providing mandatory training for all content moderators (including those employed by contractors) focused on LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression; and moderate across all languages, cultural contexts, and regions. AI systems should be used to flag for human review, not for automated removals.
Work with independent researchers to provide meaningful transparency about content moderation, community guidelines, development and use of AI and algorithms, and enforcement reports.
Respect data privacy. Platforms should reduce the amount of data they collect, infer, and retain, and cease the practice of targeted surveillance advertising, including the use of algorithmic content recommender systems, and other incursions on user privacy.
Promote and incentivize civil discourse including working with creators and proactively messaging expectations for user behavior, such as respecting platform hate and harassment policies.
GLAAD’s SMSI Platform Scorecard draws on RDR’s standard methodology to produce numeric ratings for each platform with regard to LGBTQ safety. This year, GLAAD added elements addressing emerging threats to LGBTQ people online as well as an indicator regarding content that promotes so-called “conversion therapy,” a practice that has been banned in 23 states and condemned by all major medical, psychiatric, and psychological organizations.
GLAAD and other monitoring organizations repeatedly encounter failures in enforcement of a company’s own guidelines for content moderation, including hate speech and harassment policies.
Specific LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression issues identified in the SMSI include: Inadequate content moderation and problems with policy development and enforcement (including failure to mitigate anti-LGBTQ content and over-moderation of LGBTQ users); harmful algorithms and lack of algorithmic transparency; inadequate transparency and user controls around data privacy; an overall lack of transparency and accountability across the industry, among many other issues — all of which disproportionately impact LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities.
“We need to hold the line — as tech companies are taking unprecedented leaps backwards, we remain firm in advocating for basic best practices that protect the safety of LGBTQ people on these platforms,” said GLAAD’s Senior Director of Social Media Safety Jenni Olson. “This is not normal. Our communities deserve to live in a world that does not generate or profit off of hate.”
About the GLAAD Social Media Safety Program As the leading national LGBTQ media advocacy organization, GLAAD is working every day to hold tech companies and social media platforms accountable and to secure safe online spaces for LGBTQ people. The GLAAD Social Media Safety Program produces the highly-respected annual Social Media Safety Index (SMSI)and researches, monitors, and reports on a variety of issues facing LGBTQ social media users — with a focus on safety, privacy, and expression.
If you own stocks in your retirement or investment accounts, annual meeting notices will fill your inbox each spring – and if you’re like most of us, you likely don’t pay them much attention. These notices or “proxy statements” are pretty dense documents, providing financial results and more but they are also your chance to vote as an owner on the policies and actions of these companies. Think of it as shareholder democracy. Each year, you have a say in who leads the company and in what direction.
As our corporations become bigger and more powerful, their actions have ever larger impacts on our lives – who gets hired and promoted, how our planet is treated and how representative corporate leadership is of our communities and concerns. And while we’ve been skipping those annual meeting votes, activists who oppose our rights have been paying attention.
Since the 1970s, when groups of shareholders pressed companies they had invested in to divest from South African apartheid, climate, human rights and workers rights advocates have followed their lead. Shareholders have the right to submit proposals to their companies asking for transparency and changes in policies that will lead to better practices and better profitability.
Recently, right wing groups have adopted similar methods to try to force companies to turn back progress. In our current chaotic political climate, they have put us all at risk. One of their tools have been these very same shareholder proposals combined with often vicious lobbying campaigns that can intimidate corporate managers into surrendering and bring harm to our communities.
The good news is that investors have already been pushing back this year at some early annual meetings such as Apple, Disney, Levi’s and Costco, voting in large majorities to protect employment equity and inclusion.
At John Deere & Co (NYSE:DE) where management has given in to anti-LGBTQ activists’ demands, investors sent a loud and clear message. 98.7% of shareholders voted down an anti-DEI proposal from a right wing organization.
Now it’s your chance to help.
It’s easy but powerful. If you own shares, your broker or bank will send you a notice in your mail or email announcing the annual meeting and including a ballot. The Proxy Bulletin they provide will include copies of the shareholder proposals and a company response to each. They’ll also list candidates for the Board of Directors. The ballot will give you instructions to safely cast your vote online or by mail. (The high drama of Succession style annual meetings are mostly a thing of the past.) Once you take a look at the candidates and the proposals, simply check off your preferences and submit your vote.
Among this year’s proposals, shareholders at Lowe’s, Tractor Supply and Best Buy are being asked to vote on an LGBTQ+ Nondiscrimination Report. These three proposals have been submitted by the AFL-CIO and “urge the Board of Directors to prepare a report on the Company’s efforts to prevent harassment and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.” The proposals note the documented benefits to companies that do not discriminate and on the Tractor Supply filing, they comment “Transgender people are as likely to live in rural areas as cisgender people, and face the same levels of discrimination as in non-rural areas. Public opinion survey research has found that rural identified respondents are broadly supportive of LGBTQ+ rights.”
Proposals such as these are one very effective way to counter the false claims that companies should back away from the concerns of the communities where they operate. As Andy Behar, CEO of As You Sow noted: “Shareholders understand that diversity and inclusion are material to profitable growth. Anyone who’s looking at the data, which the companies and shareholders are, comes to the conclusion that greater diversity leads to financial outperformance.”
There are a total of 354 such shareholder proposals this year addressing human rights, diversity and inclusion, climate change and good governance for publicly traded companies. Votes like the ones at Costco or Deere speak directly to the Board members where we invest. And on those ballots, we can also vote for or against the Board members themselves. Our votes may not always add up to the impressive totals we’ve seen above, but those Board members notice when investors’ votes show up.
Don’t own individual stocks? Have a mutual fund 401K or other pension? Email your fund manager and let them know you want your investments to support our rights and a better future. Remember as investors we are the owners and expect to be heard.
If you would like more information on this year’s shareholder proposals, you can download ICCR’s Proxy Resolutions And Voting Guide, which lists a large selection of companies. proposals and proposal filers. If you want to dig deeper, As You Sow and Proxy Impact publish a Proxy Preview each year with information on trends in proposals and this year, discusses the attempts by the new administration’s SEC to limit shareholder rights.
Before returning to the White House 100 days ago, Donald Trump was already the president with the most anti-LGBTQ actions to his name in United States history. His first administration was marred by: arguing and losing at the U.S. Supreme Court for the right to discriminate against LGBTQ employees; signing laws that undercut anti-discriminatory protections for LGBTQ contractors; deploying federal agencies to exclude and discriminate against transgender people seeking health care and housing, as well as baselessly banning transgender troops; and hundreds of other actions.
The first 100 days of his second administration have been bolstered by an agenda supplied by Project 2025, a plan for a rightwing takeover of the federal government led by the Heritage Foundation, that advocates for government policies reflecting a conservative Christian perspective, opposition to LGBTQ rights, restrictions on reproductive freedom, and the privileging of Christianity over other faiths.
“The start of this Administration has revealed an aggressively unAmerican agenda that has destabilized the economy, threatened personal freedoms, and attempted to censor accurate information and history,” said GLAAD President and CEO, Sarah Kate Ellis.
GLAAD has documented at least 255 attacks against LGBTQ people in policy and rhetoric since Trump took office on January 20th, adding to the 224 overall during the last nine years.
Among his first official acts was to sign executive orders targeting transgender people, spreading harmful and inaccurate rhetoric that ignores the existence of intersex people and centuries of gender diverse people across world cultures.
nominated vocally anti-LGBTQ advisors to his cabinet and other key positions
celebrated discriminating against transgender students
eliminated protections for LGBTQ people in federal policy
censored accurate LGBTQ history and resources from government sites, including removing “transgender” from the National Park’s Stonewall National Monument Site, flagging content by keyword searching “gay,” “trans,” and “transgender,” including a photo of the historic WWII plane the Enola Gay and an Army engineer with the last name of Gay, and attempted to eliminate two dozen words from external communications including “woman,” “disabled” and “elderly”
attempted to defund HIV research
arrested a gay asylum seeker without cause—among two hundred other unlawful and unconstitutional arrests and removals to a prison in El Salvador
attempted deep cuts to programs supporting LGBTQ people domestically and abroad
Trump’s address to Congress in March included 1,500 words targeting LGBTQ people (for a duration of eight minutes), and the remarks appeared near the top of his historically long speech, at the 15-minute mark. By contrast, Trump’s focus on jobs and affordability came in at 975 words. A mere nine seconds comprised the subject of jobs, specifically about forcing federal workers back to the office.
Andry Hernandez Romero, a gay makeup artist who came to the United States last year in search of asylum, is one of 238 Venezuelan migrants who were flown from the U.S. to a maximum security prison in El Salvador (Photo: Wilinton Barco/Reuters)
Despite losses in court blocking illegal attempts to hold funding for hospitals and providers, the Trump administration continues to spread inaccurate and inflammatory rhetoric about essential health care for transgender people, including adding a “disclaimer” to Health and Human Services websites. The administration was ordered to restore data and other accurate scientific information about HIV and about LGBTQ people to sites for the CDC, FDA and Health and Human Services. It continues to baselessly threaten to criminalize care providers who prescribe longstanding best practices care to trans youth and adults. Every major medical association supports health care for transgender people and youth: statements here.
Rule of Law Holding, For Now
Additional executive orders about LGBTQ people have been blocked in federal court as unconstitutional and overtly discriminatory. GLAAD President and CEO, Sarah Kate Ellis says, “LGBTQ organizations, alongside allies, have worked through the courts to uphold the Constitution and protect the fundamental rights that every American values: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thanks to the strong response from both the courts and the public, many of these attempts have been stopped. Moving forward, it’s essential that all Americans continue to remind our elected officials that their duty is to prioritize the health, safety, and success of every person they serve.”
U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes issued a nationwide preliminary injunctionblocking implementation of the transgender military ban, holding that the ban undermines national security, is likely unconstitutional, and calling it “soaked with animus.” The Trump administration could offer no evidence to support its claims that being transgender conflicts with ability to serve, but is appealing the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile the Defense Department announced it will continue offering medical care for transgender service members.
Nicolas Talbott, a transgender second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve, is a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military. Photo credit: Michael McElroy / Signal Akron
Executive order to end birthright citizenship: BLOCKED
Executive order to restrict access to gender-affirming health care for people under 19: BLOCKED
Executive order to expand fast-track deportations without due process: SUED
Executive order to shut down asylum at the border: SUED
Executive order to restrict gender-affirming care in federal prisons: SUED
Executive order to ban accurate passports for trans and intersex people: PARTIALLY BLOCKED– the judge ruling “The Executive Order and Passport Policy are based on irrational prejudice toward transgender Americans and therefore offend our Nation’s constitutional commitment to equal protection for all Americans.”
A threat to illegally withhold funding to schools that support diverse students was also blocked, with the judge noting the threat “is not warranted and plaintiffs’ rights are of profound import.”
ACLU also filed suit on behalf of students going to schools on military bases that saw books banned and removed recognition of cultural awareness dates including Pride month, Black History Month, Women’s History Month and Hispanic American Heritage Month, a violation of students’ First Amendment rights.
Additional research:
LGBTQ and ally legal groups filed at least 22 and counting complaints against the Trump administration’s executive orders, some within hours of executive orders being signed
Wisconsin voters sent a clear message to the administration and its biggest donor, Elon Musk, rejecting anti-trans campaign ads and texts, to elect Susan Crawford to the state Supreme Court.
Out LGBTQ and ally lawmakers moved to protect basic liberties and rights as well as block harmful and illegal executive action. Arizona’s Attorney General Kris Mayes, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, and dozens of ally AGs have moved to stop the illegal attempt to ban essential health care for transgender people, end illegal and destructive actions from the so-called DOGE and protect taxpayer data and privacy, stop illegal impoundment of funds for health research and other Congressionally-appropriated funds for the arts and libraries.
Every Democratic U.S. Senator voted to block a measure to advance a harmful sports ban for transgender people. All but two Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted against the House’s sports ban. Republican members of the Montana House joined a vote to reject a harmful measure targeting transgender people and their families.
Braidwood about required coverage in the Affordable Care Act for HIV prevention medication and other preventive health care coverage currently mandated
Since June 1, 2022, GLAAD’s ALERT Desk has tracked 150+ anti-LGBTQ incidents targeting affirming faith-based communities in the US. These include 54 cases of vandalism, 38 cases of threats and harassment, 37 protests, 7 attempted arsons, 3 assaults, and 2 bomb threats.
For the access to the full dataset, please contact press@glaad.org.
This is an update to GLAAD’s original reporting in early 2024, showing 60+ anti-LGBTQ+ incidents targeting religious institutions. Since then, more than 90 incidents have come to light.
Nearly half of all LGBTQ Americans (48%) are religiously affiliated, according to a 2023 PRRI poll. This same study found that strong majorities of all Americans, including most people of faith, support nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ individuals.
Notable Anti-LGBTQ Incidents Targeting Affirming Religious Communities
3/9/25: Multiple people made death threats against the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Park Ridge, New Jersey, after the local Moms for Liberty chapter posted about the church’s Pride flag and falsely claimed it supported “pedophilia.” One of the threats claimed that the church must be punished “with gasoline and a match.”
1/22/25: Multiple people sent death threats to Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde at the Episcopal Diocese of Washington D.C., following her sermon during President Trump’s inauguration where she called for mercy on LGBTQ and immigrant people.
9/7/24: A person vandalized the Pride-themed walkway leading to the Immanuel Congregational Church in Hartford, Connecticut. The graffiti read: “Fuck f****ts,” and occurred a week prior to the church’s Pride event.
8/17/24: A person tore down a Pride flag at the home of a local rabbi in South Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania, and blew it up with fireworks. They then x’d out the word “gay” on the flag with spray paint.
7/28/24: A person stole Pride flags and left anti-LGBTQ letters at two churches in Natick, Massachusetts. At First Congregational Church and Christ Lutheran Church, multiple Pride flags were damaged and replaced with a banner that read: “Jesus is King.”
6/17/24: A person was arrested for planning a mass murder targeting LGBTQ people, religious institutions, hospitals, schools, and supermarkets in Owosso, Michigan. Police reported that they found an Israeli flag in the suspect’s home with the words “anti-Jew f****t killer” and “death to you all.”
Despite the fear these incidents aim to inspire, they instead shed light on the heroic figures at the head of these groundbreaking and affirming faith-based communities. The ALERT Desk sat down with leaders from across the religious spectrum to speak about their experiences with anti-LGBTQ hate and how they overcome it to serve all people.
Photo by Rev. Mark Suriano, First Congregation United Church of Christ in Park Ridge, NJ
“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
These are the words that Rev. Mark Suriano used to open his sermon at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, the Sunday after his church received death threats regarding their Pride flag.
Rev. Suriano continued: “I have always loved [this] quote from Martin Luther King Jr., in theory. When he speaks of ‘an inescapable network of mutuality’ and ‘a single garment of destiny,’ my heart has always warmed. But this past week, I, for the first time, had the most palpable sense of these ideas in action… It was a weekend of terror, grief, and [exhaustion.] But, in the midst of all that, the outpouring of support far surpassed the hateful and violent rhetoric against us.”
“I remain emotional about this physical manifestation of the ‘inescapable network of mutuality’ and the ‘seamless garment of destiny’ of which Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke. I also am overwhelmed by the beautiful truth that what affects one of us directly affects all of us indirectly.”
Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ECLA) echoed Rev. Suriano’s sentiments. “Bullying and discrimination have no place in the body of Christ, but, sadly, reminders are still needed. Jesus’ command that we love one another does not come with a caveat about who we are to love. Recent acts of violence at churches that affirm the LGBTQIA+ community and the congregations’ supportive ministries must not be tolerated. As a church, we must be even more committed to lifting up the dignity, safety and humanity of our LGBTQIA+ siblings or we will be worse off as a church and as a nation.”
Rev. Terri Steed Pierce, an out pastor at the Joy Metropolitan Community Church in Orlando, Florida, has faced her fair share of hate, including demonstrators trying to disrupt her Sunday service in recent weeks. She summed it up neatly: “We say ‘all people are welcome here,’ but all behaviors aren’t and that means those that come with hate… Those who have a problem with that can take it up with Jesus.”
Photo by the Sikh LGBTQIA+ Oral History Project,“Becoming Boundless: How LGBTQIA+ Sikhs Negotiate Duality through Sikhi in an Ego-driven, Binary World”
prabhdeep singh kehal leads the Sikh LGBTQIA+ Oral History Project and has seen firsthand the power of having religious leaders condemn anti-LGBTQ hate. “Working with LGBTQIA+ Sikh voices is an honor and one of the most rewarding experiences I have had in my life,” says kehal. “In a time when governments are using LGBTQIA+ communities as fodder to consolidate their own conservative, theocratic agendas, it is queer and trans affirming spaces that keep the energy to fight back going. And that is why politicians and conservatives target the places of safety for which we have fought to create – within and outside faith-based spaces.”
“Faith leaders are at an important position in challenging these pathologizing, theocratic interpretations of LGBTQIA+ lives because ‘God’ is being used again to turn an entire group of people into a target for those already in power… Their voices and positions are needed and that is why they are being targeted, because affirming and supporting faith leaders are able to speak back against claims that the Divine advocates for harming LGBTQIA+ beings.”
Ravjot Mehek Singh, a queer Sikh activist and award-winning filmmaker, added on: “As a Sikh in post 9/11 America, the racist attacks I experienced growing up in a predominantly White community left me traumatized and in doubt of my own identity. With my queerness, I get attacked oftentimes by my own community of conservative Sikhs, especially online where I am constantly doxxed and my videos collect thousands of hateful, violent comments. Because of my intersectional identity, I switch between facing threats from Americans and my own community – creating an often endless loop of hate… But Sikhi was founded to include all people regardless of gender or social standing, and I hope that the work I do alongside other brilliant advocates helps push for that equality to be acknowledged in its truest form.”
“There is no right way to be queer, there is no right way to be Sikh, there is no right way to be American, and anyone who tries to silence the way you exist in this world is a victim that is unable to comprehend the incredible multitudes that you contain. There is no rulebook to existing as oneself, so pursue all the things that make you feel whole.”
Photo by Michael Currie/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
As President & CEO of Keshet, a national LGBTQ Jewish organization, Idit Klein knows all too well what it’s like to be at the intersection of communities under attack. “It has been an especially painful and complex time for American Jews in the wake of the October 7th Hamas attacks, the ensuing bloodshed and suffering in Israel and Gaza, and rising antisemitism here in the U.S. It also is an increasingly dangerous time for LGBTQ+ people as we face growing attacks on our rights and protections across the country. Against this backdrop, Keshet believes that remaining connected to each other across identities and movements is more important than ever.”
“As an organization committed to the full equality of LGBTQ+ Jews, we know that we cannot ever separate these parts of ourselves,” said Klein. “We work for a world free of homophobia, transphobia, and antisemitism. We work to find meaning and strength in this painful moment as many of us navigate rupture, uncertainty, and fear, whether in political spaces in our Jewish communities, and/or LGBTQ+ spaces.”
Keshet’s Bay Area Education and Training Manager Rabbi Eliana Kayelle spoke powerfully to how LGBTQ Jews can find hope in these challenging times. “As a trans queer Jew this moment has me feeling the legacy of resilience deep in my bones. I’m thinking about Jewish ancestors. Miriam who, while under Pharaoh’s rule, held onto hope, planning for liberation by crafting instruments she would eventually use to dance out of Mitzrayim. Emma Goldman and Hannah Arendt, who remind me of the importance of action even when circumstances look bleak. These ancestors remind me that hope is not false optimism — it’s the desperate and powerful force that lives in our guts, the feeling that can move us to fight to repair a broken world.”
“I’m holding onto queer and trans ancestors and changemakers, especially trans women of color, drag queens and butches, who laid the groundwork for the queer liberation movement. The ones who became leaders because they had to. It is because of their work that I can shout: ‘I am here and I’m not going anywhere no matter how hard you try!’ I think of Miss Major Griffin-Gracy saying: ‘I don’t need their permission to exist; I exist in spite of them…we have a history, we have a reason to be here. We have a purpose.’ And I think: Yes.”
Photo by Romy Arroyo Fernandez/NurPhoto via Getty Images
As President of Inter-Intra Community, Malik Johnson ministers to incarcerated Muslims, including those who identify as LGBTQ. “Someone might write in and say, ‘I’m a gay man who wants to be a part of the Muslim community in my [prison] facility, but I cannot because the others said that you cannot be gay and Muslim, and they will not let me pray with them. I feel very isolated from people and from the religion itself.’ Another might ask me, ‘What does it say in the Quran about me being trans?’”
“The beautiful thing is that the Quran doesn’t mention how queer a person has to be or not be to be sentenced to a heaven or a hell,” Johnson stated. “Instead the Quran relays [its message] in terms of action. What are your actions? What are you doing with your life? How are you treating other people?”
“Everyone has their own interpretation of what the Quran could mean. So I instead respond [to these questions] by addressing the heart. The first thing I say is ‘you matter.’ I say, ‘Thank you so much for calling or writing in. You are the most important part of this community. You mean so much. You’re very special. You’re worth something. If for no one else, you mean something to me. I love you and your Creator loves you. Because if your Creator didn’t love you, then they would not have created you and they would not have brought us together.’”
“You’re giving authority back to that person when you ask questions of them. Take someone who is trans. They have their dead name, that they used pre-transition, and they have their living name or preferred name. If that person is incarcerated, their dead name is continuously said to them. But if someone were to say, ‘What’s the name that you would like to be called?,’ it gives a symbol of hope and understanding and compassion. It gives back to that person so now that person is the authority in themselves. And that’s powerful. The best way to have autonomy is to name yourself.”
As we enter the holy season for those of so many faiths – from the end of Ramadan and Passover, to the start of Easter and Vaisakhi – let us remember these courageous leaders, who recognize our shared humanity and advocate for the importance of our diverse identities in fighting hate for all. In the words of the Interfaith Alliance, “While there are a variety of theological understandings of human sexuality and gender, we can all unite around the belief that nobody should fear for their safety or face discrimination based on who they love or who they are.”
The Supreme Court of the United States is scheduled to hear oral arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor on Tuesday, April 22, 2025.
Mahmoud v. Taylor is about a small number of LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books included in the classrooms of Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools. The books were chosen and evaluated by education professionals. Six parents (three couples) sued the school district board of education claiming their religious freedom was violated by not having an option to opt out their children from classrooms where the books might be part of curriculum, including when offered as nonmandatory supplemental learning materials.
Context to know and report:
In 2022, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in Maryland expanded their curriculum book collection with nine inclusive picture books for children. An MCPS committee selected the titles and completed the necessary evaluation forms, which were then reviewed by a content supervisor, according to district protocol.
The school board stated in legal filings, “the books are made available for individual reading, classroom read-alouds, and other educational activities designed to foster and enhance literacy skills.
A district official said the books were to be integrated “into the curriculum in the same way that other books are used, namely, to put them on a shelf for students to find on their own; to recommend a book to a student who would enjoy it; to offer the books as an option for literature circles, book clubs, or paired reading groups; or to use them as a read aloud.”
The district’s communications director, Jessica Baxter, said the books tell “joyful stories of folks who happen to be part of the LGBTQ+ community,” and that they “celebrate and positively portray LGBTQ+ identities.”
Three couples filed a lawsuit against MCPS in 2023, objecting to the books and claiming the district infringed on their religious rights by not allowing them to opt out their children from potential exposure to the books.
The plaintiffs are represented by Becket, formerly known as Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a legal group with an anti-LGBTQ history that includes representing a school that fired a 15-year veteran teacher for being gay and marrying her partner of 25 years. Southern Poverty Law Center describes Becket as a “hardline” group that promotes legislation and lawsuits to justify anti-gay discrimination. Becket has also vigorously pursued banning access to abortion and access to contraception.
People of faith support LGBTQ people and equality, and LGBTQ people are also people of faith. 67% of adult Americans say being LGBTQ should be accepted by society, including 59% of religiously-affiliated adults.
Two-thirds of U.S. Catholics, Protestants and other Christians oppose using religious beliefs as an excuse to discriminate against LGBTQ people.
24% of all LGBTQ parents live in the Northeast U.S., which encompasses Maryland. 31% live in the U.S. South. Approximately 5 million children in the U.S. are being raised by an LGBTQ parent. 20% of LGBTQ people in Maryland are raising children.
PEN America has documented more than 16,000 book bans in public schools nationwide since 2021, predominantly targeting books by and about LGBTQ people and books about people of color and race and racism. In its latest report Cover to Cover in February, the organization found 29% of all banned titles during the 2023-2024 school year featured LGBTQ+ characters, people, or themes.
PEN America has tracked tactics used to ban books across the country. Religious freedom arguments are the latest way to try to get books, especially with LGBTQ themes and characters, banned. Mahmoud v. Taylor has the potential to dramatically escalate book bans across the country by giving legal cover to discriminatory censorship, particularly targeting LGBTQ narratives.
The American Library Association (ALA) tracked414 book ban attempts against public school and library materials, encompassing 1,128 unique titles, in the first eight months of 2024.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the plaintiffs’ appeal after their requests to force the school district to provide opt outs while the case was being litigated lost in both the lower federal trial and appellate court. Federal Court of Appeals Judge Steven Agee noted there was no “evidentiary link showing that the Storybooks are being implemented in a way that directly or indirectly coerces the Parents or their children to believe or act contrary to their religious faith.”
The Supreme Court reached out to take this case at a very early stage and potentially decide it on a group of parents’ claims despite the fact that the case had not yet proceeded to the point where there was a record of how the books were actually being used in the classroom.
The authors and illustrators of books at issue in this lawsuit issued a statement in support of inclusive books: “We stand in support of the Montgomery County School District. We oppose censoring or segregating books, like ours, that feature LGBTQ+ people. All families deserve to be seen and heard. To act otherwise is harmful and sends a devastating message to students: that their lives and families are so offensive and dangerous that they can’t even be discussed in school.”
The books include the picture book Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, a celebration of family featuring a girl who finds that her favorite uncle’s marriage means she’s gaining another uncle, not losing one. The book was selected as a best picture book honoree by Kirkus Reviews. Author Sarah Brannen told Mombian’s Dana Rudolph: “Children need to see themselves in books. The books in the lawsuit need to be in the school and accessible to all the children in the school, without interference… we all know by now that banning books is the first step toward banning people.”
The authors of Jacob’s Room to Choose (about making schools and restrooms safe for all children) wrote in Time: “We believe that people have a fundamental right to practice and express their faith, but not when it harms others. Allowing families to opt their children out of reading our books hurts the children whose lives and families are reflected in those books. “Opt-out” policies starkly communicate to classrooms of children that behaving decently to all human beings is optional and tells kids who are different that they and their families don’t merit the respect of all their classmates.”
There has been prior precedent in the federal circuit courts ruling in favor of access to inclusive books. For example, in 2008, The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by two Lexington, Mass., couples, leaving in place a First Circuit Court of Appeals decision that, like four other federal circuit courts of appeals, held that participation in public school instruction cannot alone burden the right to free exercise of religion absent some “coercive effect.” The First Court held that merely exposing a child to ideas that conflict with the religious beliefs of their parents “does not inhibit the parent from instructing the child differently.”
Opt-out policies are costly for taxpayers, student education, and schools: “The administrative burden of having to notify parents, collect their responses, answer any questions they may have about the material, and determine what the opted-out students will do during class time when the LGBTQ books are read may dissuade schools from including LGBTQ books in the first place.”
Center for American Progress: Book bans “require tens of thousands of hours from teachers, librarians, and administrators to review the books and implement a system of censorship—all at a time when school resources are already stretched thin, and states across the country are facing teacher and staff shortages.”
First Book Research & Insights: A poll of 1,500 teachers and librarians revealed “book bans are negatively impacting their ability to teach,” undermine their expertise, and “contribute to a sense of erasing people and history.” Of the respondents, “72 percent noted that when students’ access to books is restricted, their reading engagement declines.”
EveryLibrary Institute: Polling and surveys reveal “a significant majority of the public opposes book bans, with a substantial majority of voters in some surveys supporting state legislation to protect individuals’ rights to read freely. Some surveys show that as many as three-quarters of voters believe that ensuring people have access to diverse books is essential. More than half of Americans appear to feel that book bans infringe on their right to make decisions for their children.”
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
GLAAD offers the Book Bans: A Guide for Community Response and Actiontoolkit to inform the public about book challenges. This resource includes guidance on ways to organize, engage with the media, and prepare for public hearings.
The American Library Association (ALA) website features a banned books portal to share their research and data on book bans, spotlight each year’s most challenged books, and offer book résumés to help people in their efforts to defend the right to read.
PEN America tracks book bans in schools throughout the country and shares their findings in a report. Banned in the USA: Beyond the Shelves details the efforts to remove books from school libraries, shows where book challenges are occurring, and explores the subject matter of censored titles. PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans lists books banned in the 2023-24 school year.
The National Coalition Against Censorship’s Youth Censorship Database of K–12 student censorship incidents includes book challenges in schools and libraries, as well as censorship of student art, journalism, and other types of student expression in schools.
Voters in Wisconsin have elected two candidates who support LGBTQ equality in the state’s hotly contested Spring Election. Susan Crawford was elevated to the state Supreme Court and Jill Underly will return as State Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Both candidates defeated opponents and campaign ads that targeted LGBTQ people, including a late surge of ads and text messages that baselessly spread fear about transgender people.
The Grio also reports that voters in La Crosse, Wisconsin, made history on Tuesday when they elected the city’s first Black and first out gay mayor, Shaundel Washington-Spivey.
La Crosse Mayor-elect Shaundel Washington-Spivey via WXOW
A high number of voters turned out, with reports that polling places needed to print more ballots to accommodate. The race was billed as a “litmus test,” ABC News reported, for voters to “get the chance to weigh in on President Donald Trump’s agenda,” and express their opinion on the actions of Trump’s billionaire donor and “DOGE” leader Elon Musk.
Musk and related political action committees contributed more than $20million to Brad Schimel’s campaign, making this the most expensive judicial race in history. Musk personally campaigned in Wisconsin to offer two voters one million dollars each.
Crawford’s election secures a pro-equality majority on the court, which could decide on abortion access, voting rights, and accurately representative voting districts for the state legislature.
Crawford defeated Brad Schimel by 10 percent (55% and over 1,300,000 votes / 45% and over 1,050,000 votes). Crawford spoke out against Musk’s attempts to influence the election. “I’ve got to tell you, as a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world,” Crawford said. “And we won.”
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly beat Brittany Kinser by five percent (52.9% and over 1,100,000 votes / 47.1% and over 1,000,000 votes). Underly spoke in support of LGBTQ students during the campaign: “Schools should be inclusive spaces where all students feel safe, supported and able to fully participate in extracurricular activities. Excluding transgender students from sports not only harms their mental health and well-being but also goes against the principles of fairness and equal opportunity in education.” Kinser had campaigned to exclude trans students from school sports, and advocated for private school vouchers that compete for funding with public schools.
Jill Underly; photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner
“These results are a victory for LGBTQ+ rights in Wisconsin, and a victory for every Wisconsinite as we build a more fair, more inclusive state,” said Abigail Swetz, Executive Director of Fair Wisconsin.
“They show a strong commitment to a Wisconsin that lives up to our state motto “Forward.” Thank you, Wisconsin, for voting for equality and against the cynical use of our LGBTQ+ community as political pawns.”
“Wisconsin voters spoke out on behalf of LGBTQ people and for future elections to be fair and free of interference from self-serving billionaires,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said.
“Lies and fearmongering about transgender people do not win elections. Wisconsin sent a message of support for the health and safety of each person, and reaffirmed that every vote and every voter matters.”
“Susan Crawford’s victory is a rejection of extremism and a clear message that Wisconsinites want to protect our civil liberties, reproductive rights, and environment,” said Milwaukee LGBTQ activist and GLAAD Media Institute Alumni Kat Klawes.
Kat Klawes
“Voters turned out in historic numbers, so many that some polling places ran out of ballots because they know what’s at stake: the right to control our own bodies, breathe clean air and live in a democracy where every vote truly counts.”
Approximately 207,000 LGBTQ people live in Wisconsin. Due to a varying patchwork of local laws, only 21% of Wisconsin’s population is protected from discrimination based on gender identity, with 12% partially protected in limited areas such as employment, housing, or public accommodations.
“The identities we hold matter, and while race is a social construct, at the end of the day, who we are in our lived existence needs to be understood, appreciated and respected for what it is,” LaCrosse’s newly elected mayor said.
“I just look forward to making sure that we bring this community together across difference, across socio-economic status, across race, gender, sexual orientation, all of those things to ensure that we truly build a community that’s for everybody.”
Welcome to the latest edition of Heroes of the Resistance — GLAAD’s ongoing series highlighting positive changemakers for the LGBTQ community at a time of challenge and uncertainty.
In a significant recent victory, Senate Democrats came together unanimously to halt legislation at the federal level that would have banned federally-funded schools from allowing transgender girls to participate in sports, calling it a distraction intended to harm a small group of people. The bill, pushed forward by Republicans, had mirrored a dangerous executive order issued by President Trump that perpetuates myths and disinformation about transgender Americans. GLAAD’s fact sheet on transgender people in sports is here, outlining facts versus myths and the truth about commonly asked questions.
In Minnesota, lawmakers rejected a bill that also would have banned transgender girls from playing school sports. The defeat of the bill came as advocates spoke out about its discriminatory nature and slippery slope in harming not just transgender girls, but all girls who play sports. “This bill creates a path for intense scrutiny and harassment for the 200,000 Minnesota girls who currently play sports ages 5 to 18,” said Rep. Julie Greene, DFL-Edina, dispelling the misconception that banning transgender girls from sports would somehow make sports more safe for cisgender girls. “This bill puts all girls at risk,” she concludes. The Minnesota High School League has allowed transgender students to participate on teams for a decade without incident. Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison agrees with killing the bill and fighting any federal effort to interfere in Minnesota’s human rights law, which Ellison says supersedes any attempt by the federal government to roll back protections for trans students.
Rev. Terri Burnor protests at the Minnesota State Capitol / Ellen Schmidt, MPR News
In Montana, out transgender state representatives Zooey Zephyr and SJ Howell gave impassioned speeches on the House floor early this month in opposition to two extreme bills that would have removed transgender youth from their families and banned certain types of expression and participation at Pride marches and drag shows. “I am here to stand before the body and say that my life is not a fetish,” said Representative Zephyr, in response to disrespectful comments by the bill’s sponsor about transgender people. “When I go to walk [my son] to school, that’s not a lascivious display. That is not a fetish. That is my family.”
An impressive 29 Republicans broke party ranks in order to support the defeat of the bills. Representative Sherry Essman, a Republican, rose to defend Rep. Zephyr and chastised the bill’s sponsor. ‘I’m speaking as a parent and a grandmother. And I’m very emotional because I know the representative in seat 20 is also a parent. No matter what you think of that, she is doing her best to raise a child. I did my best to raise my children as I saw fit, and I’m taking it for granted that my children are going to raise my grandchildren as they see fit,’ she said.
“Everybody in here talks about how important parental rights are. I want to tell you, in addition to parental rights, parental responsibility is also important. And if you can’t trust a decent parent to decide where and when their kids should see what, then we have a bigger problem. … “Trust the parents to do what’s right, and stop these crazy bills that are a waste of time. They’re a waste of energy,” said Essman.
These steps forward represent the power of conversations, organizing, and efforts to build understanding around transgender people and LGB people more broadly. These efforts have also led to victories against Trump’s executive orders that blatantly discriminate against LGBTQ people, immigrants, women, and people of color.
Rep. Zephyr and Rep. Howell / Brittany Peterson, AP
Since Trump took office, multiple federal judges of all political affiliations have blocked enforcement and/or struck down these orders on the merits. Four federal judges to date have blocked Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship in the country. Two federal courts have blocked his ban on lifesaving health care for transgender youth 19 years old and younger; and another judge has blocked the dangerous transfer of transgender women inmates to male prisons that would have aligned with Trump’s effort to erase transgender people from federal law. A preliminary injunction has been issued against Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders seeking to eliminate important progress for marginalized communities.
Most recently, a federal court granted a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of Trump’s executive order targeting transgender service members. In the opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes stated that “thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed—some risking their lives—to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the Military Ban seeks to deny them.” Judge Reyes held that banning transgender service members from the military violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution because it is discrimination based on transgender status and sex; and because “it is soaked in animus.”Judge Reyes continued: “Its language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact.”
In Massachusetts, the city of Worcester approved a measure declaring the second-largest city in Massachusetts a sanctuary city for the transgender community. The move came in response to Trump’s executive order attempting to administratively erase transgender people under federal law. “I don’t care what your beliefs are, but to take the word ‘transgender’ out of the vocabulary in the federal government is just plain wrong,” Mayor Joseph Petty said. This makes Worcester at least the third city in the U.S. to pass such a measure.
In a sign of proactive movement in Washington State, Governor Bob Ferguson announced a new policy to speed up the efficiency of document changes for transgender and nonbinary people, which previously could take up to ten months: “Very proud to announce the Department of Health will now process all requests to change gender designation on birth certificates within three business days.”
The Rev. Dr. Mark Suriano, pastor at the First Congregational Church UCC in Park Ridge, New Jersey, didn’t hesitate to speak out in support of the full breadth of his community in a letter to the Central Atlantic Conference United Church of Christ following inflammatory comments and threats to his congregation spurred by online harassment from the so-called Moms for LIberty – a designated hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center and a long history of anti-LGBTQ extremism documented by GLAAD. In his letter, Rev. Suriano quoted the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Despite the hateful incident on his congregants, Rev. Suriano expressed hope and gratitude for his community coming together stronger than ever. “I remain emotional about this physical manifestation of the ‘inescapable network of mutuality’ and the ‘seamless garment of destiny’ of which Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke. I also am overwhelmed by the beautiful truth that what affects one of us directly affects all of us indirectly,” he expressed.
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Newark, New Jersey LGBTQ activists are organizing to heal their city from redlining – the systematic denial of services, like mortgages, insurance, and other financial services, often based on race or ethnicity – and environmental discrimination to build a healthy, clean, and affordable place where bodily autonomy is never in question.
These local leaders understand the convergence between environmental justice and queer liberation and seek to educate others on how queer-centered action unlocks freedoms and possibilities for all.
The City of Newark, home to state schools Rutgers University and a State University of New Jersey campus, has a majority Black, Brown, immigrant, LGBTQ and low-income population.
This population has experienced escalation in raids (some deemed illegal by residents and the city’s mayor) by U.S. Immigration and Enforcement (ICE), but also bears the ongoing burden of neighboring toxic waste facilities including three power plants, with a fourth power plant looming over residents of the 26 sq mi city.
Local activists are scheduled to host a protest against the backup power plant March 13 at the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission at 10:30 a.m.
From a national perspective, The Trump Administration has slashed well-established environmental justice policies. The Administration also instructed agencies to eliminate environmental justice-related roles in tandem with the reversal of diversity, equity and inclusion policy, AP News reported.
The GLAAD Media Institute – GLAAD’s training, research, and consulting division of the organization – traveled to Newark to discuss with local leaders their top community priorities for year.
Right now, the environment and its impact on quality of life is their main concern.
“Fighting for LGBTQ rights in Newark in terms of environmental justice, in terms of housing justice, it makes a lot of sense to me because we are the communities that have been segregated to one of the last affordable places to live in the country.” JV Valladolid, environmental justice organizer for Ironbound Community Corporation said.
“Unfortunately we are also communities that are living in the historical lines of redlining, which means a lot of toxic sites have been placed right in our neighborhoods,” Valladolid continued.
Historically, redlining has resulted the divesting of neighborhoods often populated by low-income communities by coloring out “dangerous-to-invest-in” areas in red. While the practice is outlawed today, redlining’s effects linger in major cities throughout the country. Newark is one of those cities, and holds the great burden of holding the entire state on its shoulders.
Valladolid aims to relieve that tension with a variety of coalition partners.
Next to Valladolid stood Ironbound Community Corporation’s Environmental Policy Analyst Chloe Desir who says she fights for LGBTQ people because she and Valladolid are LGBTQ people, but also because LGBTQ people among Brown, Black, disabled, and low income communities “are the same people that have been fighting [these] same fights for decades.”
Desir calls Newark a melting pot where people from all over the world come together to find ways to support themselves, their at-large community, and families.
“Newark is definitely a microcosm of this country,” Desir said as a result. “Newark and especially in the Ironbound, we are predominantly a foreign born city and community, so that means we have so many different people coming in from different walks of life and different identities that contribute to the community.”
Desir said these contributions to Newark, and the Ironbound, look like building art scenes, culture, and coalition. For example, Newark LGBTQ Film Festival spoke to GLAAD about their work in the community. Going to public school GSA’s (Gender and Sexuality Alliance) to talk to youth about screenings, and opportunities to work in expanding Black, Brown, and LGBTQ representation in film.
Director of the Newark LGBTQ Film Festival Denise Hinds says joy is imperative to the justice she and people like Valladolid and Desir are fighting for. She says that is why representation in the media is also important. The film festival materialized during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has flourished ever since.
“LGBTQ folks in Newark really needed something that spoke to them about who they were, and what they were about,” Hinds said. “We don’t see a lot of representation in films on a regular basis, especially films that focus on queer BIPOC folks. That was our dream, to be able to bring these films to Newark, and really throughout New Jersey, but really focusing on the folks in Newark and really focusing on something they can see themselves in.”
Hinds says it means so much to bring joy to LGBTQ youth in Newark. Additionally, the director is excited to continue building community among Newark’s LGBTQ youth with their annual film festival starting in the first week of May.
Like Valladolid, and many of the youth Hinds works with, LGBTQ Activist and history-making journalist Steven McCoy was born and raised in Newark, and like the Newark LGBTQ Film Festival, he works as a change agent through his nonprofit Spoken Heroes. His organization has a mission to “empower and support disabled grade school and college students by providing them with essential resources” throughout Newark and the country.
McCoy, presumably the world’s first deaf and blind Black journalist, founded Spoken Heroes after years of discrimination and ableism as a result of Usher Syndrome, a retinal eye disease which led McCoy to experience blindness and hearing loss, McCoy told GLAAD.
He still lives in Newark, and he wouldn’t move anywhere else, even when he felt the city didn’t support him.
“I love where Newark is headed because there’s so much growth than where it was before. I used to feel that Newark did not support me,” McCoy said. But once he left and returned, he found it his mission to stay and keep investing in the city that raised him.
“But what pushed me to now, at this point, to get involved more when it comes to the LGBT community, it’s because now I have students who are queer or trans,” McCoy continued. “It’s my responsibility to make sure that I’m educating myself and that I’m able to communicate with them efficiently, and make them feel absolutely included.”
