“Is that for yellow pride?” a man sneered at Seiya in the middle of Ptown’s tea dance, referring to a yellow bandanna he was wearing around his neck.
It wasn’t the first time Seiya, a 33-year-old gay Asian American, had experienced racism from other queer men. Years earlier at Rage, a now-closed gay club in West Hollywood, another white man asked him what he was doing there.
“It’s not Gameboi night,” the man said to him, referring to the Asian-themed weekly party the venue hosted.
Photo courtesy of Seiya.
“That was really the first time that I really felt some sort of divide,” Seiya told Uncloseted Media. “We’re already such a marginalized community, and then to just marginalize even further; it was just really disappointing.”
Seiya’s experience isn’t unique. A 2022 report from The Trevor Project found that more than half of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) LGBTQ youth reported discrimination based on their race and/or ethnicity in 2021. And another study from the Williams Institute found that nearly one in five AAPI LGBTQ adults do not feel safe in the U.S.
This discrimination is a silent epidemic, according to Gene Lim, a researcher at the Australian Research Center for Sex, Health and Society.
“There’s a lot of shame around experiencing sexual racism, on top of the fact that it’s an inherently distressing situation,” Lim told Uncloseted Media. “That congeals into a sense of isolation.”
Feelings of exclusion take a mental health toll: 40% of AAPI youth seriously considered suicide in the U.S. in 2021, and 16% attempted it.
Photo by Cody Kinsfather.
Seiya says he’s carried those instances of racism with him and that they’ve impacted his self-perception in queer spaces.
“[It gave] this sense of otherness and discomfort whenever I was in a predominantly white space. It’s still something I deal with to this day.”
Danny Maiuri, a 41-year-old queer Korean American man, says he’s conscious of his racial identity when he visits Fire Island, a popular gay vacation spot on Long Island, N.Y.
“I remember times just getting asked the really basic ‘Where are you from?’ And I just kind of explained, ‘I live in New York,’ and then you get the ‘But like, were you born here?’”
Sexual racism—or discrimination in romantic partner selection—is most common among men who have sex with men (MSM), according to Thomas Le, an assistant professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College.
“A lot of what Asian American men report in the U.S. is some ostracization because of the elevation of white men, and masculinity and muscularity being prized,” Le told Uncloseted Media.
Lim says this fixation on whiteness stems from racialized hierarchies in queer spaces, where Eurocentric features are often favored over Asian features.
“Asian MSM [must] navigate a sexual field where the hierarchy of desire is really racialized,” Lim told Uncloseted Media. “And they can feel disadvantaged in a way that is insurmountable.”
Nineteenth-century immigration laws and cultural norms in the U.S. excluded Asian American men from participating in male-dominant professions like mining and field work. Instead, they assumed roles typically associated with women.
This segregation fomented in the American mind an image of the Asian man as feminine and has translated into the racist stereotypes about body image and dating preferences of gay men.
Asian men are often assumed to be bottoms or twinks or to have small penis sizes because of this emasculated image. And a 2011 analysis on race-based partner preferences among MSM found that Asian men were preferred by 12% of participants, a dramatic drop off from preferences for white and Black men, preferred by 52% and 48% of participants, respectively.
Racist Stereotypes and the Media’s White Beauty Standard
In American media, Hollywood has reproduced caricatures of Asian people for years. Long Duk Dong, the Asian character in “Sixteen Candles,” was portrayed as sexually inept. Leslie Chow’s diction in “The Hangover” is heavily accented, and his nudity is the punchline of a joke with the implicationthat Asian men are sexually inferior.
While media representations have shifted away from overtly racist caricatures, and have even centered queer Asian male relationships like in Boys’ Love anime, the absence of Asian portrayals in the media and the abundance of white characters have shaped attraction among a generation of queer people.
Le says white, muscular men dominated popular media and defined what it meant to be attractive through the 1990s and 2000s.
“Representation is really important … it has this really understated effect on the erotic habitus for a lot of queer men,” says Lim, referring to the learned component of sexual desire. “A lot of queer Asian men do grow up implicitly measuring themselves against a Eurocentric standard.”
This experience was a reality for Filipino American Kalaya’an Mendoza in college.
Growing up in a majority non-white neighborhood in San Jose, Calif., Mendoza had never compared himself with white people. But at UC Santa Barbara, a school where AAPI people composed less than one-fifth of the undergraduate student body, Mendoza remembers attempting to fit in by adhering to white beauty standards.
“[I was] trying to be as American as possible and not to be seen as the other, not to be seen as a perpetual foreigner,” Mendoza, now 46, told Uncloseted Media. “No matter how much I tried and no matter how many times I bleached my hair, no matter how many blue contacts I bought—I would never be white.”
“I just remember feeling extremely depressed,” he says. “I almost dropped out.”
The pressure to assimilate to a white beauty standard is also ingrained in porn.
“Pornography is generally one kind of common avenue for young queer men to explore sexuality,” says Le. “Some develop racialized attractions based on that.”
White actors are far more frequently cast in porn than actors of color. Because of that, many queer men hold white people as the beauty standard.
This is what Mendoza discovered when he attempted to decolonize his dating preferences, which he describes as unlearning his racial biases shaped by colonialism. He says he questioned why he was so attracted to whiteness even though he grew up around people of color. “A lot of that was, quite frankly, because of the sexualized media or the porn.”
Seiya says he has experienced racism working in the porn industry.
“They just automatically assume that I am a bottom or submissive because I am Asian,” he says. “I just find it demoralizing and very limiting.”
Sex and Dating
When it comes to dating, queer Asian men often find it difficult to decipher if they are being seen for who they are or if they are being fetishized.
Dating apps compound these effects. The design of most platforms are such that users must make quick judgments based on minimal information on a user’s profile. Because of this, Lim says many users fall upon their prejudices.
As a way to receive more matches or chats, some Asian men attempt to fit into stereotypes that paint them as effeminate, such as the “lady boy” or the “femme boy.”
“Gay men do this all the time, they try to embody an archetype,” says Lim. “And an archetype is fertile ground for someone to project their own fantasies onto.”
Maiuri says he constantly questions whether his sexual interactions are shaped by his own desires or if he’s assuming a role based on preconceived notions.
He feels that many men assume that “all Asian men are bottoms and submissive,” and he constantly asks himself, “Am I fulfilling this role because this is what I actually enjoy? Or was this something that was just put on me and I’ve adapted to?”
Although gay culture remains white-centric, there are signs of change.
“A lot of queer Asian American men actually are creating their own communities,” says Le. “[They’re] really being intentional about finding a community with other queer men of color.”
Mendoza says that finding other queer people of color at college helped him to cultivate a positive self-image.
“That’s why, quite frankly, I feel like I’m alive today,” he says.
Maiuri says that while often criticized as a boogeyman of the mental health crisis, social media is actually having positive effects in facilitating connections between young men of similar experiences and slowly providing more examples of queer Asian men.
“The good part of it has been that connection and kind of finding identity and finding examples online for some folks to find ways to navigate [their] identity,” says Maiuri.
Seiya has come a long way from that weekend in Provincetown. He recently returned to the gay vacation hotspot for its fifth annual Frolic Weekend, a queer men of color takeover event.
“That was really special to recontextualize the space for myself,” Seiya says. “We deserve to take up space instead of shrinking ourselves.”
At 16 years old, Jose Alfaro remembers being trapped in a dimly lit room and told to give a naked stranger a massage and “let him do what he wants.”
“I was terrified and I had a bodily reaction of tremor, just shaking uncontrollably,” Alfaro, now 34, told Uncloseted Media. “I felt cold, even though I wasn’t cold. I didn’t know what to do when I’m in a room with two adult men and the door is locked.”
Alfaro, who was raised in the small, conservative town of Navasota, Texas, says he was given the choice of conversion therapy or living on the streets after he came out to his parents. In search of a male mentor, he leaned on relationships with older men he met online for acceptance and for basic needs, including a place to live.
He started messaging with Jason Gandy, a 31-year-old he met on Gay.com. Gandy began by asking Alfaro questions about his day and telling him he cared about him and wanted to be his friend.
“He showed a tremendous amount of sympathy and presented this world of luxury and wealth, and said that he wanted to support me and take care of me,” Alfaro says.
Alfaro, who was sleeping on a friend’s couch, “didn’t know where else to go,” so he began meeting with Gandy and subsequently moved into his place. Over time, Gandy exploited Alfaro to dozens of men for sex.
“Clients were allowed to do whatever they wanted to me,” he says. “I was uncomfortable, traumatized, and at many times very, very violently hurt. I was terrified and in pain, but too afraid to leave. I didn’t know where I would go.”
It wasn’t until Alfaro was an adult and reflected on what happened that he realized he had been trafficked.
“The adults say this is normal, they’re making me feel like this is okay,” he remembers thinking. “I was just trying to find ways to mentally accept it, especially without a way out.”
In 2018, a federal jury convicted Gandy on four counts of sex trafficking of minors, and he is currently serving a 30-year sentence.
While LGBTQ youth make up a disproportionate share of both homeless and trafficked populations, the experiences of queer boys are often unseen, dismissed, or mislabeled. A 2023 report says that boys represent the “fastest-growing segment of identified human trafficking victims.”
While research is limited—especially due to underreporting—some reports say it is possible that almost half of sex trafficking survivors are boys. But as of 2025, there is only one safe house in the U.S. for men, and zero for boys under 18.
“Boys are less likely to come forward because of the stigma and because they don’t think there’s help available,” Bob Williams, the founder of that safe house, told Uncloseted Media. “People have no clue. People don’t understand that boys are victims, too.”
Why Boys Are at Risk
Sex trafficking is the crime of using violence, fraud, or coercion to force someone into commercial sex acts, often controlling their lives. According to Polaris, a leading anti-trafficking organization, LGBTQ people are seen as particularly vulnerable to being trafficked due to bias and discrimination and often a deeper desperation for a job or housing, which “gives traffickers an opening to step in and pretend to be the answer to a problem.”
While sex trafficking reportedly affects women more, these numbers likely don’t paint the full picture. Boys or men who are victims of sexual violence are less likely than girls or women to self-identify, partially due to societal messaging about being tough.
Jonathan Doucette, hotline training and development manager at Polaris, says that gay boys struggle with fitting into traditional masculinity and may feel even more shame.
“I was silenced by society long before I was silenced by my trafficker,” Alfaro says. “Society tells me something’s wrong with me because I’m gay. Society tells me something is wrong with me because I am not masculine enough. And so therefore, I’m the problem and no one is going to help me.”
After Alfaro moved in with Gandy, he remembers being placed on a strict regimen of working out twice a day and eating only greens and healthy protein. Alfaro was allowed a phone upon request to “get his parents off his back” and earned the privilege to walk around the block alone.
Once Alfaro was in “good enough” shape, Gandy proposed that he start working at his massage business with him, which was a cover for sexually exploiting boys under 18.
Gandy would put up ads of Alfaro on his own website and taught him how to post on Craigslist to get clients and “earn money.” He told Alfaro that he would be in trouble if anyone found out because he was a minor.
After three months of being forced to have anal sex, be fondled, and give oral sex to over 50 men, Alfaro escaped, leaving in the middle of the night while Gandy was asleep.
But where was he going to go?
Why Boys Are Overlooked
According to a 2013 report by Every Child Protected Against Trafficking, law enforcement has “little understanding” of commercially sexually exploited boys. For example, they believe boys are not pimped and therefore not in need of services.
“We’re led to believe that men are perpetrators and women are victims,” says Steven Procopio, a clinical social worker who works with male survivors. “We don’t have a national dialogue like women have.… There’s a lot of gender bias when it comes to trafficking survivors and a great deal of homophobia. People are not looking out for it.”
Under the current administration, resources have been buried even further underground. The executive order that restricts federally funded websites from using language related to sex or gender forced Polaris to remove references to gender from parts of its website.
“It hasn’t changed anything in how we meet survivors on the hotline or how we train people,” Doucette told Uncloseted Media. “But it makes people feel even less welcome. It is certainly not a good thing for queer boys looking for help.… They don’t see themselves listed [or represented].”
“I was so ashamed,” John-Michael Lander, an author and keynote speaker from Ohio, told Uncloseted Media. “I thought it was my fault, and I didn’t know how to come forward. … I would wear the same thing every day at school and not shower just to get someone to check on me [but] no one did.”
Lander was groomed and trafficked throughout high school. In a 2021 testimony, he says his mentors in the swim world, which included a doctor and a lawyer, reached out and built trust with his mother in an effort to control him.
“[The lawyer] would manage the money and pay the diving costs in alignment with the legalities to keep my amateur status. He indicated that he knew other professionals who wanted to help and provide the family with their expertise.”
These men were leading a trafficking circle, which led to Lander, at 14, being exploited into sex for the first time with a 60-year-old man at a motel.
“I had never had sex with anybody,” he says. “I was really scared. And I remember I froze, I couldn’t move. And it was like I left my body.”
Every weekend for four years, Lander remembers being driven to Columbus, Ohio, and “auctioned” off with other young teenagers in white Speedos on stage while men walked around the room. They would be sold for the weekend and the men could do what they wanted.
Lander says the culture of sports and masculinity made it hard to talk about because people expected him to “be tough.”
“It seems hard for the public to understand how a coach or person in power could sexually abuse a male athlete,” Lander says. “Many men think that they can handle it and push the experience aside, and ‘get over it.’”
“There’s toxic masculinity in our culture where if you do express vulnerable feelings as a boy when you’re growing up, you’re… met with hostility or anger from people in your life,” says Doucette. “The stigma can just be so large that survivors might feel like [they] have to take care of this by themselves.”
“I felt so isolated,” says Lander. “When I finally told my mom what was happening, she looked at me and she slapped me across the face and said, ‘It’s not nice to make lies about people. If this person or these people were doing this, you must have caused it.’”
So Lander stayed silent.
Why Boys Don’t Get Help
When boys muster the courage to come forward, they often don’t receive the resources they need.
Jesse Leon experienced this after he was trafficked from 11 to 14 by a shopkeeper who locked him in the backroom of a convenience store and sexually abused him. He eventually brought in other men who were allowed to drug Leon and do whatever they wanted sexually.
“Sometimes it’d be just somebody who wanted to do oral sex on me. Sometimes it would be more,” Leon told Uncloseted Media. “[The shop owner] threatened that if I didn’t return … he would find out where I live and kill me and kill my family.”
He says that messaging about masculinity, especially coming from a Latino household, where machismo culture encourages boys to be tough and take care of their family at all costs, made him go back every day.
At 14, Leon was addicted to hard drugs and severely traumatized. After three years of being trafficked, he got into a bloody fight at school because he was “seeing the faces of all the men” who were abusing him. The school reported it, and the state sent him a therapist for weekly talk therapy. But he needed much more support.
“She never once recommended drug and alcohol treatment, even though she knew I was addicted,” he says. “No one from the state ever followed up. Once I was handed off, they assumed that because I was in therapy that I was getting the resources I needed. No one checked in with me and when my mom asked for a translator or a therapist who could speak Spanish, they said no.”
Leon says that he feels he was overlooked because he was a boy. “Males can’t be victimized,” he says. “There’s still a belief that males are perpetrators, they’re not victims. There’s no safe space for men to destigmatize reaching out for help. You deal with it, it happens, you move on.”
A 2023 report found significant gaps in recognizing and responding to trauma in boys who are experiencing or are at risk of sexual exploitation. While many indicators of trafficking are consistent across genders, boys often express trauma through externalizing behaviors such as aggression, defiance, anger, or bullying—responses that are frequently misinterpreted by providers as delinquency or behavioral disorders like ADHD, rather than signs of victimization.
“Law enforcement just doesn’t realize that this is happening,” says Williams. “If we can’t help these young boys, they face a lifetime of addiction, prison, or death.”
Because male survivors often don’t self-identify due to stigma, homophobia, and mistrust of authority, Williams says that professionals must be trained to recognize nonverbal cues and build trust over time. Effective training also requires confronting gender bias; challenging the myth that trafficking is only a women’s issue; and creating safe, affirming spaces for male victims to disclose.
Almost 20 years later, Alfaro is still recovering. He now works full-time in advocacy, centering on spreading awareness on the domestic trafficking of minors and underscoring the importance of increasing resources for marginalized communities and—in particular—queer boys.
“I did not know what resources were,” he says. “I didn’t really think that there was anything that could help me. … I don’t want anyone to feel like that ever again.”
This story was originally published in Uncloseted Media. For all their LGBTQ-focused journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at UnclosetedMedia.com.
Growing up, Kenzie remembers dragging her feet as her mom sent her to American Heritage Girls (AHG) programs.
“I describe it as Girl Scouts but indoctrination,” says Kenzie, a 20-year-old dance major from Oklahoma.
“Ever since I was little, I always knew I was queer; different from the people around me. … [In the eyes of AHG staff] it felt wrong to be feminine, but also wrong to be masculine.”
AHG and Trail Life USA—a similar organization for boys—havetroops in all 50 states and more than 110,000 members. They teach kids that homosexuality is sinful and that anything outside the gender binary is wrong. The messaging is often provided by anti-LGBTQ hate groups, like Focus on the Family, which still promotes so-called conversion therapy.
“AHG and Trail Life’s fixation on ‘sexual immorality’ reinforces a theology that punishes non-heterosexual, non-monogamous, non-cis lives,” says Fernando Salinas-Quiroz, an assistant professor at Tufts University who specializes in child study and human development.
“LGBTQ-exclusive policies don’t just harm the kids they shut out—they send a loud, damaging message to the kids inside, too,” they say. “It’s awful. But more than that, it’s strategic. These policies are not accidents—they are deliberate projects to maintain a binary, heteronormative, Christian nationalist order.”
These changes were too much for Patti Garibay, a devout conservative Christian who, in 1995, founded AHG as a Christian alternative.
Almost 20 years later, in 2013, AHG leadership helped launch Trail Life USA, the conservative Christian alternative to the Boy Scouts which was created after the organization announced that they would allow openly gay members.
John Stemberger, who was chairman of the board at Trail Life when it was founded, said in a 2024 interview of the Boy Scouts’ decision to allow gay members that “they’re going to allow an openly gay boy to decide who he’s gonna unilaterally sleep with. … This absolutely creates a radical increase of boy-on-boy contact.”
John Stemberger discusses the Boy Scouts’ inclusion of gay youth.
Salinas-Quiroz thinks the Christian hypersexualization of kids is concerning. “Suggesting that a gay boy choosing a tentmate is a threat isn’t just homophobic: It sexualizes queer presence, equates intimacy with danger, and teaches all kids to see desire, affection, and identity through a lens of fear.”
Exclusionary Membership Policies
This fear is baked into all of AHG’s and Trail Life’s policies. AHG’s membership policy says, “All biological girls of any color, race, national origin and socioeconomic status … are invited to be members of [AHG].” The term “biological girls” is a transphobic dog whistle which implies a person’s “real” sex can only be either male or female—denying the reality of transgender and intersex people.
“They’re ignoring both the scientific evidence and the lived experiences of so many of us,” says Salinas-Quiroz.
American Heritage Girls logo.
Trail Life’s handbook states, “[A]ny sexual activity outside the context of the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman is sinful. … We grant membership to adults and youth who do not engage in or promote sexual immorality of any kind.”
Homophobia and Transphobia in the Form of Strict Gender Roles
Kenzie remembers AHG “prepping us to be good mothers one day, like learning how to sew. … Activities that would make us good and pure Christian girls.” She says they didn’t do much outdoors. “You don’t need to be playing a ton outside, that’s what boys do,” they would tell her.
“I remember from a young age hearing, ‘This will make you a good housewife, a good mom.’ Who’s to say I want to get married? Who’s to say I want to have children?” says Kenzie, who only felt comfortable using her first name because she isn’t out to her family. “It felt like [AHG was] putting us in a very gendered box.”
Being forced to conform to the gender binary is also true over at Trail Life. “No matter what our culture says, boys and girls are different,” reads one blog post by Trail Life entitled “Letting Boys be Boys in a ‘Toxic’ Culture.”
“Discussions about ‘toxic masculinity,’ a blurring of gender lines, fewer and fewer fathers in the home, and the watering down or extinction of programs that train and equip boys to become men have left too many boys frustrated, fearful, and floundering in their struggle to understand what it means to be a man.”
At Trail Life, even though women are allowed to assist a troop, only men can become leaders “so that they can show the boys what it is like to be a man,” according to another blog post. “You need men to instill masculinity into boys, helping show them how to become a man.”
What Do They Teach?
Both AHG and Trail Life provide resources for parents and carers of young people that serve to bolster their anti-LGBTQ teachings.
In 2020, Trail Life—which operates as a ministry—partnered with two Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate groups: the Alliance Defending Freedom and Focus on the Family. The groups presented a webinar for troop leaders and connected officials that explored “religious freedom, child safety and gender confusion.”
“We need to know there is not an LGBT community. … So don’t think that any of us have to be respectful of the LGBT community,” Glenn Stanton, director of Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family, said during the webinar.
Stanton also used the discussion to promote conversion therapy resources from Focus on the Family’s partner organizations for those who “struggle with unwanted same-sex attractions.”
“Same-sex feelings and all that is rooted in just pure political ideology, [and] those things have to be resisted,” he told pastors and ministry leaders on the webinar.
Screenshot from Focus on the Family’s presentation at the Trail Life Protect Your Ministry Summit.
In 2022, AHG self-published an e-book called “A Raising Godly Girls Guide to Gender and Identity,” aimed at supporting parents whose children are questioning their gender or experiencing gender dysphoria. The book—written by an unnamed author—undermines and denies the reality of transgender and gender-diverse identities.
The cover of AHG’s book, A Raising Godly Girls Guide to Gender & Identity.
In the founder’s note, Garibay writes, “For centuries, the beauty of God-given femininity has been under attack, its definition debated, [and] its behavior contested. … Today, it has gone one step further to claim an embrace of non-binary sexual identity.”
The anonymous authors define so-called “Biblical femininity” as “the core essence of every woman … relational, nurturing, and vulnerable beings.” They suggest that readers who know someone “struggling with confusion” should encourage them to go through conversion therapy by “[seeking] the professional clinical and spiritual care of a Christian counselor and … find[ing] healing.”
“This narrative may be cloaked in spiritual language, but its function is deeply political: It teaches girls that their value lies in submission, emotional labor and supporting others—particularly men—rather than in discovering who they are on their own terms,” says Salinas-Quiroz. “These [gender] roles aren’t natural—they’re socially constructed and often steeped in colonial, white-supremacist and Christian nationalist ideals.”
Rgg Gender And Identity E Book For Media4.19MB ∙ PDF file
Trail Life’s counterpart book, Raising Godly Boys, teaches a patriarchal view of masculinity—one that requires men to view care as feminine and positions women as less capable. “Women, for the most part, may not be the strong, action-oriented, stoic risk-takers men are. There is beauty and intention in these differences.”
“What [Trail Life] really means is that boys must perform a very specific kind of masculinity—one tied to dominance, emotional suppression and patriarchal authority. … These messages don’t just harm [queer] youth,” says Salinas-Quiroz. “They also limit cis children, especially those who don’t see themselves reflected in these rigid templates.”
It’s unlikely AHG’s or Trail Life’s LGBTQ-exclusive membership policies will face a legal challenge anytime soon. Both groups have some protection because of a 2000 Supreme Court ruling which upheld the Boy Scouts’ First Amendment right to exclude an assistant scoutmaster after learning he was “an avowed homosexual and gay rights activist.”
There is, however, a new, more inclusive option that’s gaining momentum. Founded in 2014 after Michael Brown and Eric Garner were killed by police officers, the Radical Monarchs is an alternative scouting organization for girls and gender-expansive youth, rooted in social justice and aimed specifically at girls of color to provide kids with a place where difference is celebrated, not disciplined.
Radical Monarchs badge.
“Rather than asking how to raise boys into men and girls into women, we should be asking how to raise young people into whole compassionate human beings. This requires spaces rooted in trust, exploration and self-determination—not segregation and control,” says Salinas-Quiroz.
“Children know who they are. Our job is to listen, affirm and make space for that knowing to grow.”
Kenzie says she’s done “a lot of unpacking” after her years at AHG and her Christian upbringing and says she’s now at peace. “If I could just be a straight cis woman and the ideal Christian girl it would make my life a hell of a lot easier, but I can’t push that into myself.”
The American Heritage Girls and Trail Life USA did not respond to Uncloseted Media’s request for comment.
Back in April, Uncloseted Media documented every move President Donald Trump made on LGBTQ issues in his first 100 days and uncovered a relentless and unprecedented attack against the community. That attack has only intensified. Here’s the Trump administration’s complete track record from days 101-200.
May 1, 2025
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) publishes “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices,” a 409‑page report promoting “gender exploratory therapy.” The report’s nine authors are left anonymous in a move experts have called unusual. MIT philosophy professor Alex Byrne would later come forward as one of the authors, drawing criticism for his lack of medical expertise. Medical experts and advocacy groups criticize the review as biased, misleading and akin to conversion therapy.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) cuts more than $800 million in research grants meant to study the health of LGBTQ people. The cuts abandon studies of cancers and viruses and setback efforts to defeat a resurgence of sexually transmitted infections, according to an analysis of federal data by The New York Times. They also eliminate swaths of medical research on diseases that disproportionately afflict LGBTQ people.
In termination letters, the NIH justifies the cuts by telling scientists that their work “no longer effectuates agency priorities.” In some cases, they say the research had been “based on gender identity,” which gave rise to “unscientific” results that ignored “biological realities.”
May 5, 2025
The Department of Justice (DOJ) removes all references to gender or gender identity from at least four federal surveys. The changes will make it nearly impossible to monitor crimes and other forms of violence experienced by transgender people.
May 7, 2025
The Supreme Court rules that President Trump’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military can go into effect immediately while the courts decide a final outcome. Alaina Kupec, a retired transgender U.S. Navy lieutenant, says the decision punishes people who are qualified and want to serve the country. “[This is] a really dark day for our country where basically we’re allowed to discriminate against a class of people.”
May 27, 2025
Trump threatens to withhold federal funding, “maybe permanently,” if California does not prevent high school junior AB Hernandez, a transgender track and field athlete, from competing in state finals. California would reject Trump’s demands, and Hernandez would go on to compete.
May 30, 2025
NIH cuts funding for the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development, a consortium of researchers from Duke University and Scripps Research. Researchers say that the program was close to a breakthrough and that the cuts could set HIV vaccine research back by as much as a decade.
June 2025
Trump does not acknowledge Pride month. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavittsays, “There are no plans for a proclamation for the month of June, but I can tell you this president is very proud to be a president for all Americans, regardless of race, religion or creed,” notably leaving out the LGBTQ community and never using the word “Pride.”
June 3, 2025
Photo by Ted Sahl.
The Trump administration’s Department of Defense removes LGBTQ icon Harvey Milk’s name from a U.S. naval vessel and plans to rename it. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggests ships should not honor civil rights leaders, saying, “People want to be proud of the ship they’re sailing in.” One defense official says Hegseth intentionally did this at the beginning of Pride Month.
Trump’s military ban goes into full force and the involuntary separation of transgender service members begins. Those who did not identify themselves will have their medical records surveyed and be involuntarilyseparated if it is discovered that they are trans.
June 9, 2025
NIH staffers issue the Bethesda declaration, stating that the Trump administration has forced the NIH to “[politicize] research by halting high-quality, peer reviewed grants and contracts” as well as “[censor] critical research” on subjects including health disparities, health impacts of climate change and gender identity. The declaration has been signed by at least 484 staffers.
NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya would later push back, saying the cuts align with the president’s agenda. “Making America healthy again involves deprioritizing research that doesn’t have a chance of making America healthy, [such as] a lot of ideological research.”
June 17, 2025
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) announces that the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline will shutter LGBTQ youth services on July 17, with the Trump administration saying the program promotes “radical gender ideology” without parental consent. In the announcement, SAMHSA notably drops the “T” in their references to the “LBG+” community.
The same day, a White House spokesperson attacks a federal judge’s ruling to block the Trump administration from disallowing transgender and intersex Americans to obtain passports aligned with their gender identity, calling it an attempt to “push radical gender ideology.” The judge rules that Trump’s executive order likely violates the Fifth Amendment as it discriminates on the basis of sex.
Reid Solomon-Lane, a transgender man and a plaintiff in Orr v. Trump, responds to the attacks: “I thought that 18 years after transitioning, I would be able to live my life in safety. … Now, as a married father of three … if my passport were to reflect a sex designation that is inconsistent with who I am, I would be forcibly outed every time I used [it] for travel or identification, causing potential harm to my safety and my family’s safety.”
June 18, 2025
In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court rules in favor of United States v. Skrmetti, upholding Tennessee’s SB1 law, which bans gender-affirming care for minors. As a result, 25 statewide bans on gender-affirming care remain in effect.
In an interview with Uncloseted Media, five trans youth speak out about the decision, with one saying, “Lawmakers don’t need to be involved in my doctor visits. … They’ve got a lane and they should stay in it.”
That same day, the acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission admits at her confirmation hearing that transgender workers are protected under civil rights laws. Despite this, she defends dropping lawsuits on their behalf, saying the agency must follow Trump’s executive orders.
June 30, 2025
The Trump administration withholds nearly $7 billion in school funding as it investigates whether the funds support undocumented students or LGBTQ-inclusive education.
But after pressure led by Democratic Congresswoman Alma S. Adams, Trump administration officials would later announce that they will release the funds.
June 2025
Responding to Trump’s executive order that bans gender-affirming care for people younger than 19, major health networks and many regional centers begin suspending care. The lines drawn are arbitrary. At Stanford, patients as old as 18 are affected. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) announces that in July they will begin cutting off care for patients as old as 25. CHLA states that they were left with “no viable alternative” because they could not risk any cuts to their federal funding.
July 2, 2025
HHS orders teen pregnancy prevention programs to exclude LGBTQ content or lose federal funding, despite data showing higher pregnancy rates among LGBTQ teens. The directive affects 73 organizations.
July 4, 2025
Trump signs his “Big Beautiful Bill” into law. The sweeping package of tax breaks that largely benefits the wealthy includes major funding cuts to HIV and LGBTQ health care, as well as a number of support programs that disproportionately serve queer people.
July 9, 2025
The DOJ subpoenas over 20 health clinics and doctors for providing gender-affirming care to minors. A former DOJ official calls the move “highly unusual.”
July 10, 2025
Screenshot of Stonewall Website.
Mentions of bisexuals and bisexuality are removed from several parts of the National Park Service’s website on the Stonewall National Monument, though some would later be restored. This comes five months after mentions of trans people were erased.
July 17, 2025
Genna Brown used an LGBTQ crisis hotline for the first time when she was 10 years old. Photo by Kaoly Gutierrez for Uncloseted Media.
The Trump administration officially shuts down the LGBTQ-specific option on the 988 youth suicide hotline. Notably, there are no plans to shut down theother targeted hotline options, including the Veterans Crisis Line, the Spanish Language Line and the Native and Strong Lifeline.
Arden, who called when they were 16, told Uncloseted Media, “If it weren’t for the hotline, I would have killed myself.”
July 18, 2025
State Department officials tell the Guardian that nearly $10 million in U.S.-funded contraceptives, purchased for now-defunct foreign aid programs, are set to be destroyed after being unable to find any “eligible buyers,” in part due to a gag rule reinstated and expanded by Trump that bansfunding to overseas reproductive health, family planning and HIV-prevention programs as well as LGBTQ health initiatives. The contraceptives are currently being stored in a Belgian warehouse until their eventual demise, with the Washington Post reporting that, as of April, the stock included over 26 million condoms, millions of birth control packets, hundreds of thousands of contraceptive implants, nearly 2 million injectable contraceptive doses and more than 50,000 vials of HIV-prevention medication.
That same day, a federal judge issues a preliminary injunction against a law requiring clergy in Washington State to report child abuse disclosed during confession, finding the law likely violates the First Amendment by forcing priests to choose between their religious vows and civil obligations. The ruling, which upholds the absolute confidentiality of confession, follows the Trump administration’s DOJ joining a lawsuit on the side of the plaintiffs the month prior.
July 21, 2025
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee bans transgender women from competing in women’s Olympic sports. The committee claims they have an “obligation to comply with federal expectations,” citing Trump’s executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”
July 22, 2025
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) dismisses abuse allegations from Andry Hernández Romero, a gay Venezuelan makeup artist the Trump administration deported to an El Salvadoran maximum-security prison, where he spent 125 days. Hernández Romero reports torture, sexual assault and other inhumane treatment. DHS labels him and others as “criminal, illegal gang members,” despite his clean record and lawful attempt to seek asylum in the U.S.
July 24, 2025
American painter Amy Sherald cancels a Smithsonian art show after the institution attempts to remove her painting “Trans Forming Liberty” that depicts a transgender woman as the Statue of Liberty. Sherald speculates that the Smithsonian’s decision was motivated in part by “institutional fear” of an anti-trans political climate.
Sixteen states and the District of Columbia sue the Trump administration for its attempts to institute a de facto national ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. “The federal government is running a cruel and targeted harassment campaign against providers who offer lawful, lifesaving care to children,” writes New York Attorney General Letitia James.
After two years of living with tuberculosis (TB), 38-year-old Selina Kimuto’s condition is worse than ever. A single mother living in Kibera—Nairobi’s biggest slum—Kimuto had been receiving medication to treat her infection. But in June, her hospital told her that they wouldn’t be able to give her any more until October, due to severe shortages caused by the sudden pull-out of U.S. foreign aid.
Since then, Kimuto’s condition has rapidly deteriorated.
Photo by Brian Otieno Storitellah for Uncloseted Media.
“I’ve really tried, but I can’t do it alone, to wash even my own clothes by myself,” Kimuto told Uncloseted Media. “Even the housework, I’m not doing it by myself. Sometimes I have to call my neighbors to come and help me.”
Kimuto’s medication had been funded in part by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the U.S. foreign aid program that has been a leading force in the global fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic since it was launched by President George W. Bush in 2003.
But on day one of President Donald Trump’s second term, the program was hit with a stop-work order and a complete funding freeze on all foreign aid. While limited services have been restored, the State Department is reportedlydrafting a plan to shut down the program in its entirety, with some countries getting as little as two years’ notice before a complete withdrawal of services.
In June, Uncloseted Media reported that a cessation of PEPFAR funding could cause as many as 3 million preventable HIV/AIDS related deaths and 11 million new infections. But the impacts cut much deeper, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and other heavily impacted countries like Haiti and Ukraine.
In Kenya, HIV funding from the U.S. in fiscal year 2024 totaled $307.9 million, equivalent to almost a third of the country’s entire domestic health spending that year. In addition to HIV/AIDS, that money supports TB treatment, women’s and children’s health care, and even the electronic record-keeping for health systems as a whole.
“Health care is dependent on that aspect of the foreign aid to be able to function,” says Dr. Davji Atellah, secretary general of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union. “A big population is affected, and it means that living conditions must change.”
The Impact on Tuberculosis
Like in many other countries, Kenya’s HIV care is integrated with care for TB because it is a very common infection for people whose immune systems have been weakened by AIDS. PEPFAR funding frequently supported efforts against both epidemics.
Over 23,000 Kenyans are estimated to have died of TB in 2023, with 124,000 cases overall. Dr. Atellah says that there has been a lot of fear in Kimuto’s neighborhood, where TB is particularly prevalent and medications are becoming harder to access.
TB can weaken the lungs, leading to chest pain, weight loss, fever and hemoptysis, or the coughing up of blood. When left untreated, it can be deadly.
Photo by Brian Otieno Storitellah for Uncloseted Media.
Since losing access to the TB medication Rifampicin, Kimuto—who also lives with HIV—now vomits frequently and has been too weak to do her usual work of selling vegetables and cleaning clothes, leaving her short on money, food and rent.
Photo by Brian Otieno Storitellah for Uncloseted Media.
“They told me in the hospital that they were under a shortage of the medicines,” she says. “They were telling us that the drugs were coming from outside the country, so it stopped.”
Anisha Parambi, an OB-GYN at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, says that Kimuto’s situation is common and that patients who previously could pick up their medication once a month now need to come twice as often as the hospital has been forced to ration supplies.
“Often they’re able to see less patients than they used to see because they don’t have the staff or resources,” Parambi told Uncloseted Media.
Women and Kids in the Crossfire
In addition to TB care, the Trump administration’s cuts are especially affecting women and children. PEPFAR previously supplied 24% of Kenya’s contraceptives, with its disappearance leaving a void which has led to shortages and heightened risks of unintended pregnancies. While some women’s health services, such as cervical cancer screenings, were reauthorized in February, local NGOs have reported that even these services have experienced disruptions and lack of funds.
In 2024, PEPFAR provided care to over 1.3 million survivors of gender-based violence, including rape kits, STI testing and PrEP. Multiple Kenyan sources told Uncloseted Media that these and other social programs had been disrupted since the start of Trump’s second term.
Photo by Brian Otieno Storitellah for Uncloseted Media.
Last year in Kenya, 127 femicides were reported, the most since the country started recording in 2016. The problem has only gotten worse now that gender-based violence programs are closing down: Kenya’s National Police Service reported that 129 women were killed from January to March of this year.
David Oduor knows this better than most. He says his mother suffered abuse and was treated “like an animal,” “beat” and “insulted.” He says the stress caused his mother to suffer from strokes, blood clots and heart failure. She ultimately passed away from complications with the conditions.
He now runs Joy Hope, an orphanage in Kibera, where he says that 90% of the kids he sees live with single moms due to gender-based violence. His organizations have worked to provide counseling for survivors and hold discussions to spread awareness in the community, and he says that the disappearance of aid organizations has made the weight they carry heavier.
Photo by Brian Otieno Storitellah for Uncloseted Media.
At the end of 2024, PEPFAR estimated that they were supporting nutritional, educational and psychosocial services for 6.6 million orphans, vulnerable children and their caregivers in 55 countries
Photo by Brian Otieno Storitellah for Uncloseted Media.
“These children are innocent, so we are just chipping in to help them,” Oduor told Uncloseted Media. “It is really really difficult, and it’s a burden, and we need some people to stand with us.”
The Kenyan government has had its own plan since 2023 to tackle what it calls the “triple threat”: adolescent STI infections, teen pregnancy, and sexual and gender-based violence. While the program had seen some success through providing education and community events for teenagers, one epidemiologist who spoke with Uncloseted Media says that the sudden loss of PEPFAR funding has made it challenging to market itself.
“You can’t bring teenagers together and not have something fun for them—they won’t turn up,” he says. “You have to have a bit of entertainment, or some refreshments, or some skit they can listen to, videos they can watch. All these have been hampered … so we are having challenges with bringing these teenagers together in a forum where … you can actually educate them on how to avert gender-based violence.”
In addition to medication, PEPFAR funding is estimated to have supported and trained 342,000 health workers as of 2024. But the cuts have had devastating effects on employment. In Kenya, roughly 54,000 people lost their jobs just over a month into Trump’s second term due to the U.S. foreign aid freeze.
“In a population of 56 million, when over 50,000 jobs are being lost, then there is a serious problem in terms of the population’s access to health care,” says Dr. Atellah, whose union has been scrambling to get laid-off workers new jobs. “Those who remain in services will be extremely overwhelmed, and therefore there is a need to ensure that there are alternative plans.”
One Kenyan epidemiologist, who specializes in treating especially difficult cases of HIV/AIDS, told Uncloseted Media that he’s been unable to find employment for months after being fired by a health care NGO. He says it’s because the Kenyan government rarely hires specialists, instead focusing on primary care doctors.
“You have to contend with just working as a general doctor, of which the government does not have enough slots for you,” he says. “So you work part-time in a few private health care facilities just to try as much as possible to bring food to the table.”
He says that because HIV and TB specialists like him are getting fired, patients with these conditions are being sent to general providers who aren’t trained to deal with these viruses.
He says this has caused intense disarray: Patients are being prescribed the wrong regimens; difficult and resistant cases are going unnoticed; people are falling out of care; and higher viral loads are contributing to more deaths.
“There’s no individualized care anymore, so the patients are running away from care, and some of them, if they stop taking their medication, they get sick at home,” he says.
The epidemiologist adds that it’s hard to know the scale of the epidemics because shortages and service reductions have limited the number of people who can get tested, often excluding the worst cases and thus skewing the data.
In addition, PEPFAR programs typically use their own information systems to manage health care data. But because these record-keeping systems are managed by the U.S., disruptions to PEPFAR are causing countries to lose access.
That happened in Kenya in March, when government officials reported that they had lost access to several health information systems, including those that track the spread of infectious diseases, vaccine stocks and even patients’ electronic health records. While the cloud storage for the systems has been restored, funding cuts have made it unreliable, with some facilities resorting to using paper documents.
Without good record keeping, “You’re blindly treating the patient, you don’t know the challenges, you’re starting from afresh,” says the epidemiologist. “The quality of care you’re going to offer the client is going to be heavily affected.”
Dr. Atellah says the Kenyan government may have to start developing a new system—a very real risk given that the State Department plans to defund billions of dollars in electronic record keeping despite the fact that, by their own admission, these systems “are in nearly every case unlikely to be financially sustained by the country government.”
Dr. Atellah says that the Trump administration’s removal of aid is disastrous for Kenya. He adds that Kenya’s dependency on the U.S. is so intense and the country’s government has been relatively slow and ineffective in their response, which exposes the flaws and corruption in their health system as a whole.
He says the Kenyan government should put more support into public health, PEPFAR or not, noting that the pilferage of public funds is one reason this isn’t happening.
“The Trump administration has said ‘America first,’ and therefore the time has come for the [Kenyan] government to put Kenya first,” says Dr. Atellah. “And there’s no possibility to do that if the access to health care for the over 2 million [people] living with HIV and over 100,000 people living with TB are not covered.”
Despite this, Dr. Atellah and the experts who spoke with Uncloseted Media agree that the Trump administration’s sudden and rapid cessation of aid is not a solution. In April, a group of 18 global public health experts published a policy proposaladvocating for a five-year plan to transition the leadership on the fight against HIV from the U.S. to the most impacted countries’ governments. But according to the State Department’s plans, PEPFAR would end in most countries in two to four years.
Photo by Brian Otieno Storitellah for Uncloseted Media.
The sudden cuts continue to be felt by Selina Kimuto in the Kibera Slums, whose condition is deteriorating because she can no longer access the appropriate amount of medication that can help her manage her TB, leaving her unemployed and struggling financially, physically and emotionally.
“The place that I stay right now, I’m really struggling to pay my rentals—when I get it, I try to at least pay it, but most of the time I don’t get it, so all I’m asking for is for you to help me.”
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Earlier this year, 16-year-old AB Hernandez became the target of nationwide hate and harassment when the president of a local school board publicly doxxed the track and field athlete and outed her as transgender. Right-wing activists misgendered her and called her mom “evil;” swarms of adults showed up to heckle her at games; Charlie Kirk pushed state governor Gavin Newsom to condemn her; and President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from California over her participation.
While transgender athletes are very rare, this type of harassment towards them is playing out across the country and internationally. A trans girl was harassedat a soccer game in Bow, New Hampshire, by adult protestors wearing XX/XY armbands, representing an anti-trans sports clothing brand. And in British Columbia, a 9-year-old cis girl was accosted by a grown man who accused her of being trans and demanded that she prove her sex to him.
While research into the relative athletic capabilities of trans and cis women is ongoing, far-right groups, including the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Leadership Institute, have been putting hate before science to turn the public against trans athletes since at least 2014. And it’s working.
Laws, rules or regulations currently ban trans athletes from competing in sports consistent with their gender identity in 29 states, with 21 beginning the ban in kindergarten. The majority-conservative Supreme Court announcedthis month that it’ll be taking on the question of the constitutionality of the bans. Meanwhile, the federal government is pressuringstates without bans to change their policies in compliance with a Trump executive order that attempts to institute a nationwide ban.
Trump signs an executive order calling for bans on trans women and girls from women’s sports. Photo by: The White House.
These bans have been successful in part because of a toxic and ruthless ecosystem of far-right influencers, like Riley Gaines, who have formed entire careers around attacking trans athletes by prioritizing hate and misinformation.
“So much of what we see … just seems like it’s wrapped up in really hateful and negative messages that aren’t good for anyone,” says Mary Fry, a professor of sport and exercise psychology at the University of Kansas. “We’re creating issues where maybe we don’t need to.”
Harassment and Mental Health
Grace McKenzie has been deeply affected by these hate campaigns. A lifelong athlete, McKenzie has stayed healthy by playing multiple sports where she’s met “amazing people.” Shortly after she transitioned in 2018, she was thrilled when she was invited to join a women’s rugby team at the afterparty of a Lesbians Who Tech conference.
Grace McKenzie. Photo courtesy of McKenzie.
“Rugby became my home, it was my first queer community, it was the space where I really discovered my own womanhood,” McKenzie told Uncloseted Media. “I could be the sometimes-masculine, soft-feminine person who play[s] rugby and loves sports.”
But that started to change in 2019, when McKenzie and others on her team started to hear rumors that World Rugby was considering a ban on trans athletes. Fearing the loss of her community, she started a petition that racked up 25,000 signatures—but it wasn’t enough, and the ban took effect in 2020.
As anti-trans rhetoric in sports has ramped up, McKenzie says she’s had soul-crushing breakdowns that have left her “sobbing uncontrollably and unconsolably.”
“It would be these waves of such intense despair and rage—it was like going through grief for five years,” she says. “I have to wake up every single day and read about another state or another group of people who say that they don’t want me to exist.”
While McKenzie says she’s found the strength to keep playing where she can, sports psychologist Erin Ayala has seen clients leave sports altogether due to the hate toward trans athletes.
“It can be really difficult when they feel like they’re doing everything right … and they still don’t belong,” says Ayala, the founder of the Minnesota-based Skadi Sport Psychology, a therapy clinic for competitive athletes. “Depression can be really high. They don’t have the strength to keep fighting to show up. And then that can further damage their mental health because they’re not getting the exercise and that sense of social support and community.”
That was the story of Andraya Yearwood, who made national headlines in high school when she and another trans girl placed first and second in Connecticut’s high school track competitions. The vitriol directed at her was intense: Parents circulated petitions to have her banned; crowds cheered for her disqualification; the anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom launched a lawsuit against the state for letting her play; and she faced a torrent of transphobic and racist harassment.
“It’s a very shitty experience,” Yearwood, now 23, told Uncloseted Media.
Fearing more harassment, she quit running in college.
“I understood that collegiate athletics is on a much larger and much more visible scale. … I just didn’t want to go through all that again for the next four years,” she says. “Track obviously meant a lot to me, and to have to let that go was difficult.”
It’s understandable that Yearwood and other trans athletes struggle when they have to ditch their favorite sport. A litany of research demonstrates that playing sports fosters camaraderie and teamwork and improves mental and physical health. Since trans people disproportionately struggle from poor mental health, social isolation and suicidality, these benefits can be especially crucial.
“In some of these cases, kids have been participating with a peer group for years, and then rules were made and all of a sudden they’re pulled away,” says Fry. “It’s a hard world to be a trans individual in, so it’d be easy to feel lonely and separated.”
Caught in the Crossfire
The anti-trans attacks in sports are also affecting cis women. Ayala, a competitive cyclist, remembers one race where she and her trans friend both made the podium. When photos of the event were posted on Facebook, people accused her of being trans, and she was added to a “list of males who have competed in female sports” maintained by Save Women’s Sports.
Ayala isn’t alone. Numerous cis female athletes have been “transvestigated,” or accused of being trans, including Serena Williams and Brittney Griner. During the 2024 Paris Olympics, Donald Trump and Elon Musk publicly accused Algerian boxer Imane Khelif of being trans after her gold medal win, as part of a wave of online hate against her. She would later file a cyberbullying complaint against Musk’s X.
While women of all races have been targeted, Black women have faced harsher scrutiny due to stereotypes that portray them as more masculine.
Yearwood remembers posts that would fixate on her muscle definition and compare her to LeBron James.
“I think that is attributed to the overall hyper-masculinization and de-feminization of Black women, and I know that’s a lot more prevalent for Black trans women,” she says. “It made it easier to come for us in the way that they did.”
Joanna Harper, a post-doctoral scholar at Oregon Health & Science University and one of the world’s leading researchers on the subject, says that the jury is still out on whether the differences in athletic performance between trans and cis women are significant enough to warrant policy changes.
“People want simple solutions, they want things to be black and white, they want good guys and bad guys,” Harper says, adding that the loudest voices against trans women’s participation do not actually care about what the science says.
“This idea that trans women are bigger than cis women, therefore it can’t be fair, is a very simple idea, and so it is definitely one that people who want to create trans people as villains have pushed.”
Even Harper herself has been the victim of the far-right’s anti-trans attacks. Earlier this year, she was featured in a New York Times article where she discussed a study she was working on with funding from Nike into the effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on adolescents’ athletic performance.
Riley Gaines and OutKick founder Clay Travis attack Harper’s study on X.
“That Nike chose to fund a study on trans athletes doesn’t actually say that they’re supporting trans athletes. They’re merely supporting research looking into the capabilities of trans athletes,” Harper says. “You don’t know what the research will show until you get the data … but the haters don’t want any data coming out that doesn’t support what they want to say.”
Harper says this anti-trans fervor and HRT bans are making it more difficult to conduct studies in the first place.
And while the far-right argues that they are “protecting women’s sports” in their war on trans athletes, multiple athletes and experts told Uncloseted Media that this distracts from bigger issues in women’s sports, including sexualharassment by coaches and a lack of funding.
“If the real goal was to help women’s sports, they would try to increase funding [and] support for athletes,” says Harper, noting that women’s sports receive half as much money as men’s sports at the Division I collegiate level. “But that’s not what they’re doing, and it becomes pretty evident the real motivation behind these people.”
Since Trump’s reelection, Grace McKenzie has somewhat resigned herself to the likelihood of attacks on trans people getting worse. Despite this, she finds hope in building community with other trans athletes, such as the New York City-based trans basketball league Basketdolls.
“If that’s the legacy that [the anti-trans movement] wants to leave behind, good for them,” McKenzie says. “Our legacy is going to be one about hope, and collective solidarity, and mutual aid, and I would much rather be on that side of the fence.”
Meanwhile, Fry remains hopeful that conflicts can be resolved and that trans people may be able to find a place in sports over time.
“If we could all have more positive conversations and not create such a hateful environment around this issue, it would just benefit everyone.”
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In a family friend’s front yard at around 11 years old, Elle Setiya remembers listening in on her dad’s conversation with Alex Byrne, a philosophy professor at MIT. She recalls Byrne airing his grievances to her dad—who heads up the philosophy department—about the growing trans rights movement.
“Can someone really just say they’re a woman and that’s it? Whatever happened to biological sex?” she remembers Byrne saying.
“I felt it personally in a way that I wasn’t expecting to, because it brought up the feelings of discomfort around my presentation,” Setiya, now 18, told Uncloseted Media. “It did make [transitioning] a little bit harder.”
At the time, Setiya, who would come out to her parents at 14 years old, had no idea that Byrne would go on to apply his perspective in his work with the Trump administration.
In May, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services released a 409-page report titled “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices,” which criticizes gender-affirming care for minors and argues for the benefits of Gender-Exploratory Therapy, a model which manyexperts have compared to conversion therapy because the practice encourages patients to attribute feelings of gender dysphoria to other causes. The report suggests that gender dysphoria could be the result of undiagnosed autism, borderline personality disorder or childhood trauma.
The report, prompted by an executive order that cracks down on gender-affirming care for minors, was fast-tracked to the public before it finished peer review and kept its nine authors anonymous “to protect them from intimidation tactics and undue pressure campaigns.” After its release, it was criticized by numerousleadingmedical organizations.
Ashley’s post (via Bluesky).
After the report was published, bioethicist and University of Alberta law professor Florence Ashley posted a thread noting that names matching those of Byrne and two consultants employed by the consulting firm Guidehouse appeared in the report files’ metadata.
While Byrne initially declined to comment about his role in the report, he wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post last month in which he identifies himself as one of the authors and accuses critics of the report of “shaming [and] ostracizing.”
“We all stand to benefit from free and open inquiry, in medicine. … That does not mean elevating crackpots or taking wild conspiracy theories seriously. It means that objections should be made using arguments and data,” Byrne wrote.
Since Byrne’s name first appeared, students and colleagues at MIT have expressed concern that Byrne, who claims to support the right of “transgender people to live free from discrimination,” would work with an administration that opposes trans rights.
But beyond that, Ashley told Uncloseted Media that “the fact that Alex Byrne is not somebody who has relevant expertise is certainly concerning” when it comes to the report’s legitimacy.
Who Is Alex Byrne?
Byrne has worked as a professor in MIT’s philosophy department since 1995and specializes in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. He wouldn’t take up the philosophy of gender until a 2018 article where he argues that sex should be understood as binary.
From there, Byrne’s focus on gender would increase. In 2023, he published “Trouble with Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions.” The book was rejected by Oxford University Press because peer reviewers felt it did not cover its subject in “a sufficiently serious and respectful way.”
Despite this, Byrne often spoke in support of trans rights. A philosopher of gender—who spoke with Uncloseted Media on background—doesn’t think Byrne is “out to get anyone.” They say, “[This] is why it’s so sad. … I do think that he’s trying to speak the truth, but his perspective on the truth is somewhat limited,” adding that Byrne’s initial work was not well-informed, though this would improve over time.
While Byrne’s knowledge may be lacking, his work has had impact. His 2019 critique of gender identity was referenced in an amicus brief supporting Florida’s ban on trans health care for minors. An expert witness for the Women’s Liberation Front referenced Byrne at the end of a declaration attempting to force trans women into men’s prisons. And Byrne has given talksat conferences held by Genspect, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified as an anti-LGBTQ hate group.
While many wonder why a philosopher would contribute to a report on trans health care, Byrne has argued that “philosophy overlaps with medical ethics.”
Despite this, Ashley says there’s still a problem: Byrne is not an ethicist.
“While it is true that philosophy plays a really central role in bioethics, that is only relevant insofar as the philosopher in question has the relevant expertise and background,” they say. “Philosophical expertise is not just randomly interchangeable, as much as a lot of philosophers would like to think so.”
Since Byrne’s focus pivoted to gender, Setiya remembers hearing him talk about trans issues at family dinners.
“He liked to do this thing where he would say … ‘I want to speak more about it in terms of theory and ideas rather than more controversial political areas,’” she says.
Setiya remembers reading excerpts of Byrne’s book and one line standing out because it went against his “apolitical” rhetoric: “Revolutions devour their own children, and the gender revolution is no exception.”
“It was hurtful, because it felt like it was being done from a very detached perspective,” she says. “The ideas were being presented in a way that implied that it wasn’t impacting people’s everyday lives and was just an abstract theory. Even as somebody who did not fully know at the time who [I] was or hadn’t fully come to terms with it yet, that rhetoric definitely had a negative effect on how I viewed myself.”
Critics of the Report
Byrne has said that “the hostile response to the review by medical groups and practitioners underscores why it was necessary.”
But experts say their key concerns aren’t political but rather methodological. Ashley says that the report’s public release without the completion of peer review, its anonymous authors and its five-month turnaround are all unusual.
By comparison, the similarly controversial Cass Review took four years to be published, and it identified its primary author from the beginning.
“It takes way longer than that to do a systematic review of evidence,” says Ashley. “This indicates that it was probably rushed quite a bit.”
Beyond the methodological flaws, there are political biases. While the report claims not to be a policy recommendation, it was commissioned by Trump—who has railed against the trans community—in an effort to ban gender-affirming care for minors nationwide.
Even though Byrne has said he’s not a fan of the Trump administration, the philosopher of gender says it’s unwise to work with them in good faith.
“Being able to [work with people on the other side of the aisle] is, in principle, okay, but in this particular case, when it comes to Trump, it just goes into the misinformation sphere, and it’s not clear how any of it is going to be used,” they say.
The report’s citations include publications by a number of researchers involved with anti-LGBTQ hate groups who are trying to dismantle gay and trans rights in the U.S. and abroad, including Alliance Defending Freedom-funded psychiatrist James Cantor and Dr. Quentin Van Meter, former president of the American College of Pediatricians.
Student Pushback at MIT
The Stata Center, which houses MIT’s Department of Linguistics and Philosophy (Lucy Li).
All of this prompted a group of MIT Philosophy students to write an open letter titled “Dear Professor Byrne,” where they condemned him for working with the Trump administration. The letter had over 200 signatures, including professors and students from MIT and other universities.
“We have been making an effort … to be a place where trans-inclusive thought can flourish,” says Katie Zhou, a graduate student at MIT Philosophy who signed the letter. “It is disappointing to see this be overshadowed by this one guy.”
“MIT cannot claim to be accepting or friendly to LGBT people while letting its professors collaborate with the Trump administration to kill LGBT kids,” another MIT grad student told Uncloseted Media.
In an email, MIT wrote that they respect “that there is a range of views across our community … and as a general practice, [they] do not comment on the individually held and freely expressed views of any particular community member.”
In a written response, Byrne called the letter “inimical to the mission of the university” and accused it of attempting to chill dissent against gender-affirming care.
But multiple people at MIT Philosophy say that Byrne has had opportunities to engage in dialogue about gender. Zhou says Byrne attended numerous open forums about gender identity, including a 2024 workshop which brought together activists and scholars, though she says he didn’t speak. He also attended a queer and trans theory reading group run by Zhou, where he “mostly just sat there quietly,” occasionally asking a question.
“I’m worried that he could try to push a narrative where we in the department are silencing him, and I just wanted to say for the record that we’ve worked very hard to have spaces where these issues can be discussed openly,” says Zhou.
A grad student at MIT told Uncloseted Media that they felt frustrated with the disconnect between Byrne’s interactions with trans students on campus and his online rhetoric.
“He’ll go online and post this rant about trans people and trans philosophy, and the next day he’ll walk past me in the hallway like nothing happened.”
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Setiya says she never felt comfortable broaching the subject of gender with Byrne. “I think that if I did try and get into a conversation with him, he would intellectualize things and he would maneuver the conversation in a way that would make me sound uneducated or not fully prepared,” she says. “He has a very sarcastic and sardonic way of approaching things … and if [he] gets a response, [he] can just use that moment to be like, ‘Wow, look at how unhinged these trans activists are.’”
Another MIT student added that keeping up with people like Byrne who pontificate on theories about trans people’s existence is exhausting.
“We don’t have time to go through every poorly conducted study and rebut the pseudoscience point-by-point,” they told Uncloseted Media. “He has the time to generate these bad arguments, and there’s no stakes in it for him, there’s no emotional toll, there’s no consequences if he’s wrong.”
Byrne declined to be interviewed for this story and did not respond to a request for comment.
Moving Forward
The report’s findings are already having impact. The anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom has begun citing the report to promote their numerous lawsuits supporting anti-trans legislation. The group’s president, Kristen Waggoner, stated that the report “should lead to the closure of every gender clinic in America” and that “doctors who perpetrate these experiments on children should lose their medical licenses and be sued.”
Ashley says the report’s publication helps legitimize the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on gender-affirming care under the veneer of science.
“They’re not so much seeking to convince people who already disagree with them, as much as try[ing] to make the people that already agree with them feel heard and validated, and they’re telling the moderates who low-key dislike trans people but are having trouble justifying it to themselves, ‘I hear you, and you are correct.’”
The philosopher of gender, who admired Byrne’s work prior to his shift to gender politics, expressed disappointment that he had taken this path.
“Alex is someone who is a very committed person and wants to think hard about hard questions,” they say. “More than angry, I just feel really sad. … Why did he go down this road? What’s at stake for him? I just don’t understand.”
Elle Setiya, who has known Byrne since she was young, says the report has increased her own fear as a young trans woman and her fear for trans and queer youth in the U.S.
“To feel like their government doesn’t value them and is actively working against them. It just takes a toll on you, I think.”
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When Arden was 16, they called a suicide crisis hotline “thinking their life was over.”
They were in an abusive relationship, regularly self-harming, and felt that nothing was helping. “It was terrifying,” they told Uncloseted Media.
“If it weren’t for the hotline, I would have killed myself.”
Since that day, Arden, now 24 years old and living in Brooklyn, has used various crisis helplines. When the 988 national suicide prevention hotline launched a “Press 3” option in 2022 for LGBTQ youth, they immediately started using the resource.
Arden, who identifies as nonbinary, says the LGBTQ hotline workers “respected their identity” and were understanding that they are not a woman. “It was really affirming for a very troubling time in my life.”
Since then, Arden has “Pressed 3” more times than they can remember, seeking help for everything from dealing with the loss of their friend, who died by suicide, to “stupid cliquey gay people stuff.”
“I remember when my friend had killed himself and I was dealing with a lot. I called them and they talked to me for over an hour because I was really upset,” they say. “When I called the hotline, it was a last resort. I was really at my wits’ end.”
Arden—whose last call to the lifeline was two weeks ago—is one of 1.3 million callers and chatters the LGBTQ youth hotline has served since it launched, according to federal data. The legislation that greenlit the national program, signed by Trump in 2020 during his first term, explicitly recognized that LGBTQ youth are more than “4 times more likely to contemplate suicide than their peers, with 1 in 5 LGBTQ youth and more than 1 in 3 transgender youth reporting attempting suicide.”
Photo by Kaoly Gutierrez for Uncloseted Media.
This new option to “Press 3” allowed queer youth in crisis the ability to directly connect with counselors from a set of specialized LGBTQ crisis centers. These counselors are trained in cultural competency and often bring lived experience, providing identity‑affirming, empathetic support for challenges like coming out, discrimination or mental health crises.
Despite the hotline’s success, the Trump administration announced last month that they would be shutting it down on July 17, claiming that the service had run out of congressionally directed funding. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration said in an email to Uncloseted Media that “continued funding of the Press 3 option threatened to put the entire 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in danger of massive reductions in service.”
“This is absolutely a mistake,” a suicide prevention call center director told Uncloseted Media. “We are concerned that this will result in increased suicide rates for LGBTQ youth.”
Why We Need Option 3
The director’s concern is supported by a 2022 research brief that found that queer college students with access to LGBTQ-specific services were 44% less likely to attempt suicide than those without it. Research also shows that a hotline specific to LGBTQ services increases the likelihood of queer youth calling.
“It’s true for any direct service,” Harmony Rhoades, associate research professor of sociology at Washington University, told Uncloseted Media. “People who are in substance use recovery want to work with people who’ve gone through recovery themselves because they understand what that experience is. Culturally, there is not a lot of understanding of the specific experiences of someone who is LGBTQ and without specific training, a crisis counselor isn’t going to be able to know the language that’s going to feel affirming.”
Gemma Brown near High Point, North Carolina. Photo by Kaoly Gutierrez for Uncloseted Media.
“Connecting with someone who gets it was really helpful. … Because at home, I was so isolated and I didn’t really interact with other queer people,” says Gemma Brown, who used the Trevor Project’s chat function at 10 years old.
“I was an extremely self-loathing, suicidal kid who was under the impression that God hated me and I was gonna burn in hell for eternity,” Brown, now 15 and living in High Point, North Carolina, told Uncloseted Media.
“I only used the chat feature because I was scared my parents would hear me. We shared a wall,” she says. “I was spiraling really bad. I’d just realized I was crushing on girls, and I thought I was going to burn in hell for all eternity because that is what we are taught.”
Raised in a Southern Baptist Church, Brown never felt safe at home, where her father would regularly spit slurs like “faggots” and “queers.” At church, every sermon was about Sodom and Gomorrah or about how “real love” only existed between a man and a woman.
“I grew up knowing the number one thing not to be was one of the ‘dirty queers,’” she says. “I kept thinking, I can kill myself now and go to hell, or live longer and still go to hell. I used to have panic attacks at 9, 10 years old, just thinking about burning in hell perpetually.”
Brown remembers Caitlin, the chat counselor who helped her, being the first ever to tell her that queer love was valid.
“She told me she’d been with her girlfriend for seven years. I didn’t even believe queer people could be happy. … It broke my brain in the best possible way,” says Brown, who is now out and proud to her parents, who have come around, and to most of her friends on social media.
Gemma and her Mom, Melanie. Photo by Kaoly Guttierez for Uncloseted Media.
Arden had a similar experience. “The queer line is better than the regular line,” they say. “I feel like it’s less like going through a checklist on the queer line.”
As a survivor of sexual assault, Arden says knowing that the counselors on the other line were trained in LGBTQ-specific trauma made it easier to reach out for help. “My voice doesn’t pass per se but they still respected my identity,” they say.
LGBTQ-specific resources for youth are critical, with 41% seriously considering suicide in 2024. In addition, queer youth are disproportionately affected by a litany of mental health issues and trauma, including physical and sexual assault, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, bullying and addiction.
“It’s not like we’re cherry-picking some random group,” says Rhoades. “If we are going to fund [suicide prevention], there is no reason we should do it inefficiently by not effectively targeting the people who need it most. So yes, they need specific suicide prevention services.”
While the hotline focuses on LGBTQ youth, they don’t turn away adults who need help. Joshua Dial, 36, says that when he called 988, he was often connected to the LGBTQ youth hotline after mentioning that he’s gay.
“I always walked away feeling better after I called,” he says. “There have been times when I spoke to the regular 988 crisis people, and they helped too. But they didn’t understand quite as much.”
Dial, a Lutheran who lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma, says he wasn’t always comfortable being open about his sexual orientation to his religious community and that the only way to meet other gay people was on hook-up and dating apps, which he notes are “not for emotional support.”
“I wouldn’t be talking to my pastor about getting on Grindr. I can’t go to my pastor and tell them what I did last weekend,” he says.
Photo courtesy of Dial.
Dial, who was raised to believe that homosexuality is a sin, has experienced depression since the age of 16 and has also struggled with bipolar disorder, addiction and PTSD. “My addiction was getting worse, and the only constant was that the line was always available,” he says. “I didn’t have any other options, but I knew that if I called the hotline, I would get help.”
Dial says the emotional support he received through these phone calls kept him from self-harm and suicide. “There are times when I called that number and was this close to taking a handful of pills, this close to slitting my wrist, this close to buying a gun to shoot myself. And I talked to those people, and they not only understood, but they gave me the empowerment of knowing that someone had my back.”
How Cutting Option 3 Affects the Whole System
While the cuts are only meant to affect the hotline’s support for LGBTQ youth, crisis center employees say they’ll impact the entire 988 network.
“This being rifted does very much mean less capacity for 988 as a whole,” says the suicide prevention call center director. “Everyone will be affected.”
“When the LGBTQ hotline opened up, it really lowered the volume on the mainstream counselors,” a 988 hotline counselor in Washington state told Uncloseted Media. “It seemed really helpful, and I didn’t get a lot of LGBTQ chats after that point.”
The counselor at the Washington state center says they are about to lay off 42 counselors from their LGBTQ hotline. They say these roles won’t be replaced on the main 988 line due to a hiring freeze. Because of this, counselors expect the number of calls they receive to double, which could dramatically increase wait times. The Washington state center did not respond to a request for comment.
Even without the cuts, wait times are an issue. A 17-year-old caller from Virginia says that even the 10 minutes they had to wait for their call to be answered were painful. “I was worried that nobody would want to talk to me. I was just feeling hopeless,” they say. “There’s this one resource that I’m supposed to be able to have access to 24/7, but it just isn’t as accessible as it should be. For some people, those 10 minutes are crucial.”
In a 2009 study of 82 patients referred to a psychiatric university hospital after a suicide attempt, nearly half reported that the period between their first thought of suicide and their actual attempt had lasted 10 minutes or less, underscoring how shorter wait times can be a matter of life and death.
“If we are not able to catch someone during the time that suicidal thoughts have appeared and intervene as quickly as possible, they could start figuring out how they’re going to kill themselves and make it happen,” says the suicide prevention call center director. “And a lot of folks have access to means that can result in instant death like firearms.”
What Can Be Done?
With the “Press 3” option gone, Rhoades worries that the current spate of anti-LGBTQ legislation and hateful rhetoric toward the community will affect how counselors without queer-specific training will provide care.
“We’re living in an unprecedented time where anti-LGBTQ hatred is being normalized,” she says. “It absolutely affects how young people are treated. And it filters down to crisis counselors.”
As Congress and the Trump administration prepare to shut down “Press 3” on July 17 in an effort to save money, many believe that it will have the reverse effect.
“They just want these people to die. … That’s the message I got,” says a hotline operator in Washington state, adding that the administration is “not looking at the bigger picture.”
Arden says they wouldn’t be here today without the line’s support. “I’ve been struggling for a long time in my life [with] self-harm and I’ve been clean almost two years now,” they say. “I would definitely not be clean if it weren’t for the hotline and I would probably hurt myself again.”
LGBTQ Crisis Helplines Still Available:
The Franklin County Youth Psychiatric Crisis Line: 614-722-1800
The Huckleberry House for youth experiencing homelessness also offers a teen crisis shelter helpline: 614-294-5553
The Trevor Project has a crisis hotline: 1-866-488-7386
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Senior White House adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has played a central role in shaping policies in both Trump administrations. He had a key role in the first Muslim travel ban, the first trans military ban and various initiatives to erode the rights of trans students. In Trump 2.0, Miller has either written or edited all of the more than 160 executive orders the president has signed so far.
In 2021, Miller—who is not a lawyer—founded America First Legal (AFL), a right-wing organization designed to fight the so-called “woke agenda” in courtrooms across the U.S. AFL’s goal is to function as a legal battering ram against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights and immigration. The group has rapidly become a key player in the broader conservative movement, launching over a hundred lawsuits, complaints and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to serve as the Trump administration’s legal attack dog. AFL actively “forum shops,” filing lawsuits in spaces where judges have shown conservative leanings.
Here are the key moves AFL has made on LGBTQ issues.
April 6, 2021
Miller launches AFL. In a statement, he describes his vision for the organization:
“America First Legal is the long-awaited answer to the ACLU. We are committed to an unwavering defense of true equality under law, national borders and sovereignty, freedom of speech and religion, classical values and virtues, the sanctity of life and centrality of family, and our timeless legal and constitutional heritage. Through relentless litigation and oversight we will protect America First, Last, and Always.”
Aug. 25, 2021
AFL filesa lawsuit on behalf of two Texas doctors against Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra. The doctors object to an HHS notice that states that a law that bars “sex” discrimination in federally-funded health care also protects LGBTQ people from discrimination. The doctors say that this could pressure them to administer or refer patients to gender-affirming treatments they oppose. In December 2024, the case is thrown out due to lack of standing.
AFL files a formal civil rights complaint against Morgan Stanley, claiming the company’s Freshman Enhancement Program, which aimed to help minorities overcome systemic barriers of entry into the financial field, was racist and sexist against white men. Morgan Stanley would quietly shutterthe program in 2024.
July 2022
A month after Roe v. Wade is overturned, AFL files civil rights complaints against Dick’s Sporting Goods and Lyft for company policies that help employees pay for travel expenses related to out-of-state abortions.
Oct. 26, 2022
In the lead up to the midterm elections, AFL sends out mailers to Spanish-speaking voters that accuse “Joe Biden and his allies on the left” of “indoctrinating your children,” and “[i]njecting young children with female hormones given to sex offenders to cause sterilization.” The mailers also include an altered photo of Dr. Rachel Levine, falsely writing that she promotes the “chemical and surgical castration of boys and girls.”
Photo by Denver Post.
Jan. 25, 2023
AFL sues the West Shore School District of Pennsylvania, alleging their Social Emotional Learning curriculum violates parents’ rights to their children’s moral and religious education because there was no option to opt out. AFL took particular issue with the curriculum’s “virtues and values.” The court would side with AFL.
April 2023
AFL files a federal civil rights complaint against Anheuser-Busch and requests that an investigation take place for their hiring, promoting and job-training employment practices. The complaint is filed in part because of a recent Bud Light marketing campaign that featured transgender actress and influencer Dylan Mulvaney. AFL would file nearly identical complaints against McDonald’s, BlackRock and Mars.
Photo by w_lemay.
April 21, 2023
AFL is listed on the advisory board for Project 2025—the 920-page policy blueprint that recommends overturning a variety of LGBTQ rights. Miller later has AFL removed because of negative attention.
May-August 2023
AFL files a barrage of lawsuits, complaints and FOIA requests against a litany of companies, including Microsoft, Unilever, Nordstrom, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Kellogg’s for their DEI initiatives. In a FOIA request, they claim Microsoft purposefully laid off natural-born citizens in favor of hiring foreign workers who they can pay a lower wage. For the complaint against Unilever, they took issue with the language in their application process that says, “Where legally possible, we consider racial and ethnic diversity in our recruitment.”
Sept. 6, 2023
AFL sues the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) on behalf of a white man who alleges he was forced to report to an inexperienced Black employee as a result of AICP’s Double the Line program. AFL claims that the program, which aimed to help people of color overcome barriers of entry in the entertainment industry, is racist toward white people. In a statement, AFL wrote:
“For many decades, New York and Federal law have prohibited discrimination based on race, color, national origin, and sex. The Defendants, with their morally twisted “woke” view that racism, bigotry, and sexism actually are perfectly fine … have arrogantly declared themselves above the law. … The Defendants here, and the entertainment industry more generally, will soon find out that the cost of racialist virtue signaling has gone up.“
Oct. 5, 2023
AFL files a federal civil rights complaint against the MLB’s diversity programs, claiming these policies unlawfully favor women and Black and Brown people.
In March 2025, the MLB removes all mentions of diversity from their website and releases a statement saying: “We are in the process of evaluating our programs for any modifications to eligibility criteria that are needed to ensure our programs are compliant with federal law as they continue forward.”
While the MLB did not cite the complaint, some speculated that the league may have bowed to AFL and Trump’s demands to avoid having their antitrust legal exemption revoked.
AFL would later hit other sporting leagues with similar complaints, including the NFL and NASCAR.
Oct. 19, 2023
AFL sues New York University on behalf of a first-year law student, who baselessly claims the university discriminates against white men when selecting members and editors for the Law Review. “Law review editors take heed. Any subordination of academic merit to ‘diversity’ considerations when selecting members or articles will be met with a lawsuit,” AFL says in a statement.
Nov. 1, 2023
AFL files federal civil rights complaints againstAmerican Airlines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines for corporate DEI initiatives that aim to promote minorities so that company leadership is more representative of their customers. A year later, allthreeairlines would ground their DEI hiring practices.
Nov. 20, 2023
AFL sues Mesa Public Schools and their superintendent, alleging that teachers and administrators are “encouraging and assisting students to identify as members of the opposite sex without notifying parents” and helping with the “facilitation of sex transition.” Legal advisers concluded the district’s policies comply with state law, and leadership says no medical transition is involved whatsoever.
Dec. 19, 2023
Just in time for the holidays, AFL files federal civil rights complaints against Mattel and Hasbro for their DEI practices that are “promoting a radical LGBT+ agenda.” America’s biggest toy companies had sought diverse leadership through their DEI initiatives that helped gender, racial and sexual minorities overcome systemic barriers in the corporate world. But AFL sees that as unfairly tipping the scales away from white men.
Feb. 29, 2024
A script coordinator files a lawsuit with AFL against CBS/Paramount, alleging he was blocked from advancing at the company due to their DEI quotas. The lawsuit accuses the network of discriminating against straight white men. After a year, CBS and Paramount would settle by dismantling diversity hiring targets and pledging to assess future hires on merit.
AFL teams up with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to sue the Biden administration over its revised Title IX guidance that bars schools from discriminating against transgender students. “Biden’s new Title IX regulation is a vile obscenity: it forces women and girls to share locker rooms and restrooms with men. It forces them to call a he, a she, and to pretend in every way that a man is a woman, humiliating, degrading, and erasing women,” Miller says in a statement.
Photo by Gage Skidmore.
June 21, 2024
In a narrow ruling, eight employers that AFL represented in 2021 are no longer legally required to provide no-cost coverage for certain types of preventative care, including PrEP for HIV. This opens the door for larger lawsuits, which paves the way for more employers to claim that covering healthcare that disproportionately affects LGBTQ people could violatetheir religiously held beliefs, such as the idea that homosexuality is a sin.
Sept. 18, 2024
AFL files a lawsuit against California Governor Gavin Newsom for signing a bill into law that makes it harder for schools and educators to disclose a student’s LGBTQ identity to their parents. The law also allocates funding for services such as counseling for LGBTQ youth and the development of anti-harassment policies in schools.
December 2024
AFL files an amicus brief in support of Marlean Ames, a white, straight Ohio woman, who claims she was passed over for two promotions that were given to less qualified gay co-workers and that the bar to prove “reverse discrimination” is too high. The case was taken to the Supreme Court and—in June—ruled in Ames’ favor in a unanimous decision.
Feb. 12, 2025
AFL sues the Trans-Siberian Orchestra on behalf of Jessica Featherston, a lighting technician who alleges she was removed from the orchestra after reporting a transgender woman for sexual harassment when she was in the women’s locker room.
AFL and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sue Target. They allege that the retail giant’s corporate board put shareholders at unnecessary financial risk due to the loss of profits from DEI initiatives and the impact of LGBTQ activists, which they claim hurts the company’s bottom line.
Photo by Office of the Attorney General, State of Florida.
Feb. 24, 2025
AFL formally requests that the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs begin investigating federal contractors who are disobeying Trump’s 2025 executive order that aims to end DEI initiatives.
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On June 18, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The 6-3 ruling is expected to have a broad impact as 24 other states have already enacted similar laws, which bar puberty blockers, hormone therapy (HRT) and gender transition surgeries for trans youth.
Uncloseted Media wanted to pass the microphone to the kids and young adults who could be directly affected by SCOTUS’ decision. So we called up Romana, Zavier, Ray, Dylan and Samuel—who are all receiving some form of gender-affirming care—to get their reaction to the decision.
Watch the full interview above or read the transcript here:
Spencer: Hi everyone, I am here with five trans kids and young adults from across the United States. Guys, thank you so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.
All: Thank you for having us.
Spencer: Last week, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in a landmark case that prohibits health care providers [and] doctors from administering gender-affirming care to minors. That includes puberty blockers and HRT. I want to know, where were you guys when you heard the news and what was your reaction to that?
Samuel: So I’ve been following this case since November. I think the ruling’s ridiculous. I think it’ll kill kids.
Spencer: When you say this ruling is going to kill kids, that is a really bold statement. Why do you say that?
Samuel: It’s a bold statement. The care that enables so many people to live their lives. I think taking that possibility away from people who need it is incredibly cruel and short-sighted.
Romana: Ifelt disgusted, especially since I think [it’s] just from [the] hate. And I know people who gender-affirming care has saved the life of as teenagers. And I think every kid should be able to have that. And also, this ruling makes me scared that a state might try to ban trans care for adults.
Spencer: It could be a slippery slope.
Romana: Yeah,definitely.
Spencer: When you think about your future as a trans person without the care, what does that look like for you? Why is that so devastating?
Dylan: Because there’s not one.
Samuel: Yeah.
Spencer: Unpack that a little bit more. Why? Like, why do you think there is not one?
Photo courtesy of Dylan Brandt.
Dylan: Personally, now that I have had [testosterone] for almost five years, there would be no way that I would be able to lose everything that I have worked so hard for… And go back to living a life that was not me.
Spencer: Would you compare it to, like, if I were being forced to live as a woman every single day? Is it the exact same thing to you?
Dylan: Absolutely.I mean, if you were forced to be living [as] a woman and you, that was not something that you wanted? Absolutely.
Samuel: I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. When I was younger, it almost killed me then. I couldn’t do it now. I think they’d have to kill me to force me to stop transitioning because it saved my life. I think living as myself, living as Sam, as a man, is so integral to who I am. For somebody to even try to force me to stop that would include stopping me entirely, if that makes sense.
Spencer: Okay, let’s talk about Donald Trump. Trump has tasked several federal agencies to police and ultimately stop gender-affirming care for minors, which he has equated to child abuse and child sexual mutilation. He’s also falsely stated that kids are going to school and coming back with sex changes. I wanna know, as a trans kid, what would you say if you could talk to President Trump right now?
Ray: It’s kind of painful to hear the same argument that he pulls out of his asshole every single time just because he wants to weaponize the fact that we’re a marginalized community and people are afraid of us because they don’t understand so his tactic to basically throw people off is to make us look like we’re indoctrinating kids. We’re coming back from school with surgeries. Which, by the way, you don’t just go to school and be like, “Ah, yes, I would like a surgery please.”
Spencer: Do you guys feel sometimes like you’re being used by adults as political pawns?
Ray: All the time!
Dylan: Yeah, I have been fighting this fight for so long that I’m not even necessarily surprised by what’s said anymore. I think that if I could say something directly to Trump, it wouldn’t be very nice. Because at this point I’m done being nice. At this point I’m just mad, because it has gotten to a point where they’re toying with people’s lives. They are toying with people’s lives making us look like monsters for their political gain. Because if they have people on their side that think that we are everything that they say they are, people are gonna believe ‘em.
Spencer: Especially when most Americans have never even met a trans person before.
Dylan: Absolutely.
Spencer: And trans people represent, as far as we know, less than one percent of the overall population.
Romana: I feel like a political pawn, because there’s so much talk about trans people and so much legislation passed around it and it just feels like we’re being used as a scapegoat and just someone to put the blame on and hate on in society. If I could say something to President Trump, I would proudly say something like, “Just leave us alone.”
Photo courtesy of Romana.
Spencer: It’s hard for me to square away why [Trump] would make trans issues the number one platform of [his] campaign when it’s such a small percentage of the population. It doesn’t really make sense mathematically.
Samuel: I think to your point, it’s exactly because it’s a small area of the population. For a lot of these politicians, the hate is real. But to some extent, it’s like we are the issue they can use right now because we’re such a small community that we’re targetable. It’s the small size of the transgender community and the lack of education that the general public has that is what drives being able to target this group.
Spencer: I think there’s a lot of misinformation in the United States about what gender-affirming health care actually is. So tell me what gender-affirming health care means to you and how did you make the decision to get on it?
Dylan: It took me a really long time to realize or to put words to how I was feeling. And once I did, I spoke with my primary doctor who referred me to the gender spectrum clinic in Little Rock. And I went, had my first appointment with them. And that was a six-month process where you meet with those doctors multiple times. You have to be in therapy. You have to get a psychiatric evaluation to make sure that you are doing this for the right reason. And when I tell people that they’re like, “Oh! I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that there was a process,” and I [would say], “Yeah, I’m not just walking in and saying, ‘Hey can I have it?’” And then with my top surgery too. I had to have been in therapy. I had to get letters of recommendation. I had to get it signed off, basically, by multiple people.
Gender-affirming care, to me, is hope. I graduated last year, and I never thought that I would make it to graduation, and the only reason that I did is because of my gender-affirming care. I’ve been on testosterone for almost five years, and even up until four years ago I was just so unhappy with the way that I looked, with the way I felt. I didn’t want to go out, I didn’t want to go do anything, and now I do.
Sam: I think I resonate with everything Dylan said, from the length of the process to the sort of life-saving benefits. I don’t think I would have made it to 18 without starting care at 14 when I did. I was just so uncomfortable, but the process is long. I think it was two years because my parents weren’t really sure about care at first.
Spencer: I think one of the critiques a lot of adults in this country have on gender-affirming care is that there are irreversible impacts, right? And for things like testosterone, like there are things like facial hair, for example, that you can’t fully go back on, right? Was that decision hard to make when you know that sometimes there will be elements of this that could be not completely reversible?
Photo courtesy of Samuel.
Sam: I can see why it would be a hard decision for a lot of people and I think in some ways that’s like why there’s so many safety checks and it’s also why maybe my parents were so. You know, like…
Spencer: Cautious?
Sam: Nervous, yeah. Especially because they were like, oh, you know my daughter now, you’re no longer my daughter and that was a huge adjustment. But for me, as long as I’ve been out, I’ve known that this is what I wanted to do. Like once I had the language to be able to say, “Yeah, I’m trans,” and knew that that was the path I wanted to go down. So in the end, after considering everything, it wasn’t really a hard decision.
Spencer: And Zavier, you are 11. A lot younger than everyone else on this panel, and it sounds like you are taking blockers, which to any Americans watching are completely reversible and have been given to cisgender girls for things like precocious puberty for decades. Zavier, what does gender-affirming care mean to you?
Photo courtesy of Zavier.
Zavier: Well, when I was 3 years old, I came out and I was wanting to be trans. Once I got older, my parents, they put me on blockers and let me take medicine for it.
Spencer: A lot of people, adults particularly, would say, how could a kid ever know at 3 that they’re trans? What would you say to that? How did you know?
Zavier: I just saw people. I just thought about wanting to be trans and I’ve wanted to be trans ever since.
Spencer: And you’ve always felt like a boy?
Zavier: Yeah.
Spencer: And Ray, how about you? When did you kind of know you were trans or start having feelings that you could be trans and what’s the process for you been like to get on gender-affirming care?
Ray: I’ve known since I was like 6, 7-ish. I’ve always wanted to be the dad, always wanted to be a king. I didn’t want to be a queen, none of that. It took about seven to eight months of doctors visits. First we had to make sure my mental health was good. So they prescribed me like Strattera and other types of medicines to help elevate my levels and stuff. And then they eventually put me on testosterone.
Spencer: And how has that been for you, the transformation? Has that felt good?
Ray Oh, I feel like myself now, finally! I feel like everybody in this call or this meeting feels like themself after they finally take their hormones.
Spencer: So for me, a cisgender gay boy growing up, I’d want to wear my mom’s clothes and kind of act like a girl and do different things that would tap into my femininity. But there’s never been a question that I could be a trans woman, right? What do you think is the difference between how you guys feel versus how I feel about wanting to explore my gender?
Dylan: So in my house, I’ve had both. You know, my brother is a 17-year-old gay man. And when he was little, he did. He put on my dresses and my mom’s high heels and boots and everything. And so we had that, and then we had me. From the time I could dress myself wanting strictly jeans and t-shirts, and nobody was allowed to touch my hair. And there is so much of a difference. My brother was exploring that, and I don’t want to say exploring that as in a hobby, and I was exploring it more as a lifestyle. That sounds wrong to me. But that’s the best way I can explain it.
Spencer: A big difference could be comparing it to some gay guys [who] like to dress up in drag on Halloween. You want Halloween to be every single day for the rest of your life.
Dylan: My entire life, yes, yes.
Spencer: Take me more into your mind about the feelings of wellness, of health, if you are able to live as your gender identity.
Photo courtesy of Dylan.
Dylan: The validation started the moment I cut my hair off. I mean, from that moment, I opened the door for somebody. It was, “Thank you, sir.” We went out to eat with my mom, me and my brother. “What do you boys want?” I mean it was right off the bat. And that’s honestly what made me realize that’s who I was supposed to be, because it made me feel so good. I mean, even to this day, somebody calling me sir or any form of male affirmation, anything, makes me feel so good. Just knowing that these random people in the deep south have no clue who they’re talking to. And if they did, their reaction would be way different. But the fact that these country hicks in the Deep South, who I know voted for Trump, are calling me sir or bub or anything? Makes me feel so good about myself knowing that they have no idea.
Spencer: And Zavier, how about you? You’re the youngest, why is it important for you to transition at such a young age?
Zavier: When I was growing up and people would call me a girl, I would just not feel like I was a girl. And when they said that I would just be like, “No,” inside my head.
Spencer: And do you play on the boys sports teams and do you use the boys bathroom?
Zavier: I do use the boys bathroom and my parents are signing me up for kickboxing.
Spencer: Love it, that’s super cool, yeah. And you feel great since you’ve transitioned. Is there ever any regret or feeling like, “I wanna go back to living as a girl?” No? And that would be the case for everyone here is my sense, right? No regret, no sense of de-transitioning, anything like that, yeah? Do you guys find that when you meet people and actually have conversations with them about who you are and why you need this care, hearts and minds are changed, does that help?
Sam: Yeah.
Spencer: You’re shaking your heads. Yeah, go ahead.
Dylan: [In my] School, everybody knew, I live in a small town. It wasn’t a secret. Even the 60 Minutes episode, I mean, you have no idea how many people watched that and came to me and said, “I am so sorry. I never thought about it the way that you put it. I didn’t understand until I watched that.” Like there were so many people in my school and work that [60 Minutes] truly changed the way that they thought about the transgender community. People have this pre-idea of what the transgender community is. And it’s just not, at all, how it actually is. And you don’t know that until you speak with somebody that is living it.
Spencer: And to your point on misinformation, I mean, if you turn on Fox News, which is the most watched cable news channel in this country right now, misinformation is rampant. There are comparisons that gender-affirming care is literally just bottom surgeries or so-called general mutilation. What do you think those media portrayals of trans kids and gender-affirming care for trans kids does to the mindset of Americans as they see you guys?
Dylan: They see that people are talking about giving 7-year-olds bottom surgery at school. Yeah, that could be scary to somebody that doesn’t understand. You see that, and your brain automatically goes to, “Oh, that’s not right. They can’t do that. That’s not right.”
Spencer: But that’s not happening.
Dylan: That’s not happening, absolutely. But, you see that as somebody that doesn’t know for sure that that’s not happening. And I mean, yeah, I don’t blame them for being like, “Oh, we have to stop this.” But it’s that misinformation of people saying, “Oh this is happening” when it’s not. So they’re scaring people for no reason.
Romana: I definitely agree that they make it sound really scary. And I’ve met people who’ve thought that way. I think the news really paints trans children especially as victims of being trans, which isn’t true. Or like, you’re being groomed into it, which doesn’t happen.
Spencer: Zavier, as an 11-year-old, have you even had conversations about surgeries or anything like that?
Zavier: The answer is no, because I’m only 11 years old, and I started the blockers about a year ago. So, since I’m 11 years old and you usually get surgeries at like 17 or 18, maybe. Nobody’s talked about it to me. Because if I change my mind, which I probably won’t, it’s in like six, seven years.
Spencer: Right, and you started on blockers because it gives you more time to delay puberty so you can still give yourself time to make up your mind. Right? And that’s something that I’m assuming you’re exploring with your family and your doctor to decide what’s best for you, is that right?
Zavier: Yeah.
Spencer: Ray, is it okay if I speak about the experience we had in South Carolina?
Ray: Yeah.
Spencer: Okay, well, we came to film an episode on conservative-minded dads. May your dad rest in peace, I know he passed away, and I’m so sorry about that. When we were filming with your dad, who was a military veteran, who was kind of a redneck—can I say that? From Georgia. I remember him saying to me, “This is completely against Republican ideology, get the government the hell out of my child’s doctor’s office.” Do you guys have anything to say about why it’s all Republicans coming after trans health care when it really is completely opposite to how conservatives see government intervention in family health care and parents’ rights?
Ray: Republicans are really bad at realizing that everything is not their business. We have HIPAA for a reason. They don’t seem to grasp the concept that they don’t to be in everybody’s lives. They feel like they have to protect these children, even though they’re not really protecting them.
Spencer: Is it fair to say that like gender-affirming care can be complicated and it can be nuanced and we need to have conversations about nuance by this but it’s tough to have those when you have people just attacking, attacking, attacking?
Samuel: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s medicine and all medicine is complex. Doctors and patients and their families are more qualified than politicians.
Photo courtesy of Ray.
Ray: Politicians, they don’t have like a degree in anything to be able to say, “Oh, this is bad.” Like they’ve never done the research. They do not have a qualification. Until I see them have an MD, they don’t have any qualifications to say anything. And I do believe research should be done. I mean, everything has so many different symptoms for every different person. I believe research is very important.
Dylan: Lawmakers don’t need to be involved in my doctor visits. They have no right. They have no knowledge. I just… They’ve got a lane and they should stay in it.
