Since the start of Donald Trump’s second presidential term, Uncloseted Media has been checking in every 100 days to document each move in the administration’s ongoing and relentless attack on the LGBTQ community. These last few months have continued the trend of each 100 days being worse than the last. Trump has weaponized the assassination of Charlie Kirk to put an even bigger target on trans Americans, and he has been testing out new rhetoric, claiming that Democrats want “transgender for everybody,” a line he’s now used so many times that we couldn’t include every reference. With that in mind, here’s the administration’s complete track record on LGBTQ issues from days 201-300.
Aug. 9, 2025
Trump announces that he is nominating Department of State spokesperson Tammy Bruce as deputy ambassador to the United Nations. Bruce, an out lesbian, opposes transgender health care for minors and claims LGBTQ Pride commercials “really do damage to the gay and lesbian community.”
Aug. 11, 2025
During a public safety press conference, Trump orders the National Guardto deploy in Washington, D.C., claiming it will curb crime despite it being down. While doing so, he attacks the LGBTQ community, saying, “That’s why [Democrats] want men playing in women’s sports, that’s why they want transgender for everybody. Everybody, transgender.”
Aug. 12, 2025
Trump orders a review of the Smithsonian Institution to determine whether it aligns with his administration’s standards. He targets the museum’s exhibits on transgender athletes, ballroom drag and the evolution of LGBTQ identities, as well as a painting of a Black trans statue of Liberty—that was later withdrawn by the artist—in the National Portrait Library.
The same day, the State Department releases a revised 2024 Human Rights Report that omits references to LGBTQ people and erases mentions of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The report also removes critiques of governments for mistreating LGBTQ communities. For example, it removes information about Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ laws that encourage citizens to report their LGBTQ neighbors and that ban depictions of homosexuality or gender transition in schools or the media.
Aug. 14, 2025
The Department of Education (DOE) launches an investigation into four Kansas school districts, accusing them of violating Title IX as they “permit students to participate in sports and access intimate facilities based on ’gender identity’ rather than biological sex.”
Aug. 15, 2025
Budget cuts stemming from Trump’s federal workforce reductions eliminate $600,000 in funding for the D.C. Office of LGBTQ Affairs for 2026.
The same day, the administration announces plans to eliminate gender-affirming care from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program starting in 2026, cutting coverage for over 8 million people. The policy would block access to hormones and surgeries for federal workers and their families.
Aug. 20, 2025
The media reports on court filings that reveal that the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued subpoenas to hospitals for private medical records of LGBTQ patients 18 and younger. The DOJ requests billing data, communication with drug manufacturers, Social Security numbers and recordings from providers who treat gender non-conforming minors. Doctors across the country report threats and fear government retaliation.
“The subpoena is a breathtakingly invasive government overreach. … It’s specifically and strategically designed to intimidate health care providers and health care institutions into abandoning their patients,” says Jennifer L. Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD law, an LGBTQ legal group and civil rights organization.
Aug. 21, 2025
The White House publishes a list of 20 Smithsonian exhibits deemed “objectionable,” including many that highlight LGBTQ and non-white artists. Targeted works include the American History Museum’s LGBTQ+ exhibit that explores queer and disabled identities, as well as a Title IX anniversary display featuring transgender athletes.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cuts $12 million of federal funding for California’s “Personal Responsibility Education Program,” which provides sex education to teens. HHS officials cite the state’s refusal to remove lessons on so-called “radical gender ideology.”
The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) upholds an executive order which directs the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to cut more than 1,700 grants, nearly 200 of which provide funding for HIV/AIDS.
The New York Times reports that the Trump administration will withhold more than half of the congressionally appropriated $6 billion for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Experts say the cuts threaten HIV/AIDS services worldwide, as the Kenyan HIV/AIDs network NEPHAK announces layoffs and closures of health centers.
Aug. 23, 2025
ICE violently detains Brazilian trans woman Alice Correia Barbosa, later announcing plans to deport her.
Aug. 26, 2025
The administration warns U.S. states and territories that they will lose federal funding for sex education unless they “remove all references to gender ideology.” Forty-six states and D.C. receive letters ordering the purge of all “gender ideology” content within 60 days.
Aug. 28, 2025
The DOE orders Denver Public Schools to replace gender-neutral restrooms with sex-designated facilities within 10 days. If they don’t comply, the DOE suggests they will lose federal funding.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tells Fox News that the HHS is studying whether gender-transition medications or antidepressants cause violence, citing a church shooting in Minneapolis by a transgender woman. Research shows no such connection, and nearly all mass shootings are committed by cisgender men.
Aug. 29, 2025
In an interview with the Daily Caller, a right-wing opinion website, Trump baselessly claims that banning transgender troops improves military readiness. He falsely links transgender identities to violence and repeats debunked claims about gender-affirming care.
The Harvard Crimson posts Dean David J. Deming’s announcement that the university will no longer host programming for specific races or identity groups, signaling deeper cuts to diversity efforts. The move follows Trump’s demands that Harvard dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs or lose billions in federal research funding. Since Trump took office, Harvard has removed DEI language, closed identity-based offices and folded LGBTQ, women’s and minority programs into a single “Harvard Foundation.”
On a podcast with former George W. Bush special assistant Scott Jennings, Trump conflates crime with support for transgender people, saying Democrats are “fighting for criminals, just like they fought for transgender for everybody … all these crazy things.”
Sept. 3, 2025
After a settlement requiring the administration to restore health and science information to federal websites, HHS officials tell the Associated Press that they remain “committed to its mission of removing radical gender and DEI ideology from federal programs.” The reversal follows an executive order meant to eliminate the term “gender” from policies and delete public health pages about pregnancy risks, opioid addiction and AIDS.
During an Oval Office meeting with Polish President Karol Nawrocki, Trump once again says Democrats “gave us things like men playing in women’s sports, open borders for everybody, transgender for everybody.”
In response to the Minneapolis mass shooting, CNN reports that the DOJ is considering restricting transgender Americans’ Second Amendment rights by building off of Trump’s trans military ban and using it as justification for a firearm ban—something that would only be possible by declaring them mentally “defective.” The proposal sparks backlash from the National Rifle Association, who says in a statement that they “will not support … sweeping gun bans that arbitrarily strip law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights without due process.”
A Maine principals’ group challenges a subpoena from the DOJ that seeks athletic rosters statewide as part of the administration’s effort to ban transgender students from sports. The group argues the request would expose private student information unrelated to the case.
A federal appeals panel upholds an injunction blocking the Trump administration’s plan to deny accurate passports to transgender and nonbinary Americans. Judges rule the government failed to show how inclusive passports violate federal law. In its decision, the court writes:
“Based on the named plaintiffs’ affidavits and the expert declarations submitted by the plaintiffs, the district court made factual findings that the plaintiffs will suffer a variety of immediate and irreparable harms from the present enforcement of the challenged policy, including ‘a greater risk of experiencing harassment and violence’ while traveling abroad.”
Sept. 5, 2025
CNN uncovers years of homophobic and misogynistic posts by E.J. Antoni, Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Antoni, an economist at the Heritage Foundation, contributor to Project 2025 and a “bystander” on Jan. 6, has repeatedly mocked LGBTQ people and journalists and appears to have been running an X account where he posted that “there is only one sexual orientation – everything else is a disorientation.” The administration would withdraw his nomination Sept. 30.
Sept. 8, 2025
Three military families sue the Department of Defense after the Trump administration’s ban on transgender health care. “This is a sweeping reversal of military health policy and a betrayal of military families who have sacrificed for our country,” says Sarah Austin, staff attorney at GLAD Law.
Speaking to the Religious Liberty Commission, Trump rambles, “On day one of my administration, I signed an executive order to slash federal funding for any school that pushes transgender insanity on our youth.” He goes on to falsely claim that some states can force children to transition without the parents knowing.
Sept. 9, 2025
A federal judge blocks the administration’s attempt to subpoena medical records of transgender minors at Boston Children’s Hospital. The court finds that:
“The Administration has been explicit about its disapproval of the transgender community and its aim to end GAC [gender-affirming care]. … It is abundantly clear that the true purpose of issuing the subpoena is to interfere with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ right to protect GAC within its borders, to harass and intimidate BCH to stop providing such care, and to dissuade patients from seeking such care.”
Sept. 11, 2025
The Wall Street Journal publishes a leaked Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives memo which falsely claims that shell casings found near the scene of Kirk’s murder were engraved with expressions of“transgender and anti-fascist ideology.”
Sept. 12, 2025
The DOJ removes a study from its website showing that far-right extremists have killed more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group. The archived report disappears two days after anti-LGBTQconservative Charlie Kirk is assassinated.
Sept. 15, 2025
In a press conference, Trump says he would “have no problem” removing Pride flags from Washington, D.C. streets after Brian Glenn, a far-right content creator, says that “a lot of people are very threatened by this flag.” Glenn attempts to paint the Progress Pride flag as the “transtifa” flag and suggests that “if you can label them a domestic terrorist group, in all reality, you could take that flag down.”
Trump acknowledges legal limits under free speech law but adds, “I think you probably could. Again, you’ll be sued, and it’s okay. I’ve been sued before a couple of times.”
Liberty Counsel, the legal group representing Kim Davis’ latest push for the Supreme Court to overturn gay marriage, wants to reshape American society in a far-right Christian image—one in which LGBTQ people are excluded. They’ve been fighting LGBTQ rights for years, from Lawrence v. Texasto Proposition 8 to Obergefell. Along the way, they’ve claimed that gay people “know intuitively that what they are doing is immoral, unnatural, and self-destructive” and that they are “not controlled by reason,” but rather by “lust.”
While the brunt of their work focuses on right-wing litigation, their efforts don’t stop there.
An Uncloseted Media investigation has uncovered that Liberty Counsel operates as an umbrella organization that has either founded or heavily supported a large network of affiliated organizations working to pursue far-right Christian politics by influencing key American institutions.
“What I compare it to are gears in a machine, and each one serves a different purpose,” Anne Nelson, author of “Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right,” told Uncloseted Media.
These groups use education to spread far-right Christian doctrine, they galvanize churches to become activist hubs and they work behind the scenes to influence Supreme Court justices and other government officials.
All of these groups, many of which are frequently referred to as “ministries,” share the enthusiastic support of Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver and the common goals of fighting against LGBTQ rights, cracking down on abortion, influencing American law and politics and more.
“This array of ‘ministries’ reflects the varied fronts in the religious right’s war against LGBTQ Americans and our freedom,” says Peter Montgomery, research director at People for the American Way, an advocacy group aimed at challenging the far right. He says that this network strategically works in tandem to drum up support among congregations and conservative women and to influence American media, courts and schools.
To make sense of these dizzying connections, we spoke with key experts…
… and we dug into the group’s that are part of Liberty Counsel’s expansive network. Here’s what we found about each of them:
1. Liberty Counsel Action
Screenshot from Liberty Counsel Action.
Liberty Counsel Action is a companion to Liberty Counsel. While the two groups are formally distinct and have slightly different leadership, Mat Staver is chairman for both groups, and they have very similar website architecture. The primary distinction is that Liberty Counsel is registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, a designation for religious and charitable organizations, while Liberty Counsel Action is a 501(c)(4), a designation for social welfare groups. While the designations are similar, donations to 501(c)(3) organizations are tax-deductible, but the groups cannot endorse or donate to political campaigns. Meanwhile, donations to 501(c)(4) organizations are not tax-deductible, but they can donate to and endorse candidates.
Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
Montgomery says it’s a fairly common strategy for organizations to maintain different groups like this. While Liberty Counsel is able to bring in more money due to tax incentives for donors, Liberty Counsel Action can freely engage in political advocacy.
Some of the group’s campaigns include fighting the Equality Act and calling for Congress to investigate pro-Palestinian student organizations. One of their initiatives this year has been drafting “Abortion in Our Water,” a report that outlines how abortion pills are polluting U.S. water supplies, a claim that environmental scientists have rejected. They’re also currently pushing for Republicans not to “cave to the Schumer Shakedown,” a nickname they’ve used for the ongoing government shutdown
For more direct political action, Liberty Counsel Action also had a super PACwhich spent nearly $70,000 on opposing Barack Obama’s reelection.
Montgomery says having these different branches allows Liberty Counsel to achieve more diverse control in politics and the law.
“Some of [their goals] they can achieve through the courts, some of it is gonna be through political advocacy. So then you start an advocacy affiliate, and then you start a PAC because you want to elect people who can help you get this vision of the country,” he says.
2. Faith and Liberty
Screenshot from Faith and Liberty.
Founded in 1995, Faith and Liberty—originally named Faith and Action—is a Washington, D.C. based Christian ministry that has historically courted Supreme Court justices and other government officials behind closed doors. The group’s former president, Rev. Rob Schenck, decided to leave the Christian right in 2016 after the movement’s embrace of then-candidate Donald Trump compounded his growing doubts about the ideology.
“MAGA I don’t even define as Christianity anymore,” Schenck told Uncloseted Media. “It’s an apostasy—it’s a defection from the Christian faith. It is, in fact, the diametric opposite of what Jesus taught and modeled.”
Schenck says that the group would host dinners, prayers and other meetings with conservative politicians and Supreme Court justices including Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and the late Antonin Scalia, where they would encourage the justices to adopt more radical rhetoric and policies.
“We would tell [the justices] over and over again: The people love you when you are bold and uncompromising and unapologetic, so be strong—we are with you, we’re behind you,” Schenck says, adding that his former organization was internally nicknamed the “Ministry of Emboldenment.”
Other activities of the ministry included outreach to young people at colleges and youth programs with an eye toward recruiting future right-wing political and judicial figures. This included hosting events and offering internships for conservative teenagers in the U.S. Capitol.
Schenck says attendees of these events would discuss how the federal government works, “meet the conservative justices, sit in on cases relevant to our Christian conservative agenda, and attend lectures about the judicial branch sponsored by the Supreme Court Historical Society.” Schenck says he later saw many of these individuals in the Capitol, and that the group encouraged their federal judge contacts to prioritize graduates from conservative Christian universities for clerkships and other staff positions.
While Schenck intended to dismantle Faith and Action following his shift in beliefs, he allowed the group to be acquired by Liberty Counsel in 2018 after pressure from the board and donors.
In 2022, Rolling Stone reported that Schenck’s successor—Peggy Nienaber—was caught on a hot mic bragging about praying with Supreme Court justices prior to their decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which cited a brief filed by Liberty Counsel. Staver told Rolling Stone that these allegations are “entirely untrue.”
Schenck says Nienaber—who was his deputy when he led the company—always had a great ability to get into rooms with America’s key lawmakers.
“Peggy was very good at what she did, and she was particularly skilled at gaining access to people who had all kinds of defensive measures to protect them from the public … or from people that they did not want to entertain,” he says. “It would shock me if Mat [Staver] did not deploy her for those purposes, and I do know she had well-established relationships inside the Supreme Court, certainly inside … the Republican sides of both houses [of Congress].”
In an email to Uncloseted Media, Liberty Counsel says, “Mat Staver has not spoken to Rob Schenck since 2017, and he has no knowledge of what Peggy Nienaber does and what she does now is vastly different than what she did when she worked for him. … It is preposterous to think a Supreme Court Justice can be influenced. We have no such agenda. We do litigate in the courts and have been successful at all levels by advocating for correct legal principles.”
3. The Salt and Light Council
The Salt and Light Council trains U.S. pastors on how to start a “Biblical Citizenship Ministry” at their churches. These ministries are meant to encourage congregations to engage in politics to “defend and promote life, natural marriage, [and] our constitutional and religious liberties.” The group was founded in 2008 by Dran Reese, and it became a ministry of Liberty Counsel in 2013. While the group now appears to operate independently, Staver remains chairmanof its board.
Pastors who sign up to start a Biblical Citizenship Ministry pick someone from their congregation to lead it, send them to attend The Salt and Light Council’s trainings and then receive two topics a week to bring to their congregants, with the group also promising legal support from Liberty Counsel for these pastors.
Salt and Light chapters, which now exist at over 120 churches and synagogues in 30 states, are frequently active in anti-LGBTQ activism: Reese has been caught spreading false stories about sexual harassment by trans girls in bathrooms, and the group has fought to protest Drag Queen Story Hoursand cancel LGBTQ-friendly book fairs.
Perhaps most influentially, the group is a part of the Remnant Alliance, a Texas-based coalition of far-right Christian groups that have been collaborating to swing school board elections and implement policies such as LGBTQ book bans across the state.
Montgomery says the group’s decentralized model allows them to operate on a surprisingly efficient budget.
“[It] doesn’t have a huge budget, doesn’t have a huge staff, because it’s mostly about encouraging local churches to start their own chapters and do their own thing,” he says. “The council provides them with resources, like brochures on issues or voter guides.”
4. We Impact the Nation (WIN)
Screenshot from We Impact the Nation.
Founded in 2005 as Women Impacting the Nation, this group is a project of Boca Raton-based conservative activist Sue Trombino. Prior to its rebranding to We Impact the Nation in 2024, the group became a project of Liberty Counsel for a few years beginning in 2011.
WIN founder Sue Trombino on Newsmax in 2015 (Newsmax).
During this time, Liberty Counsel sponsored WIN’s annualconference called “For Such a Time as This,” featuring scripture readings and baptism and offering renewed commitments to faith and service.
As recently as September, WIN distributed copies of “Take Back America,” a book written by Staver that argues that “God is the foundation of good government and national prosperity” and that “we need God in America again.”
Today, the group hosts talks, conferences and local chapter meetings with the goal of activating women to be conservative activists. They are most active in Southeast Florida, where they host monthly meetings and were a significant player in the campaign which defeated a constitutional amendment that would have protected abortion in the state.
The group has also historically been active in spreading anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, advocating for bathroom bans as early as 2013, arguing against conversion therapy bans, and calling forfunding to be cut to groups that disobey Trump’s executive orders against “gender ideology.”
5. Covenant Journey Academy
Screenshot via Covenant Journey Academy.
Covenant Journey Academy is an online K-12 school that incorporates Christianity into its curricula. Founded by Staver and launched by Liberty Counsel in 2023, the group targets parents who want to homeschool their kids and is billed as an alternative to “woke” public schools. The academy is now accredited in its home state of Florida and is even eligible for a state scholarship program.
Each of the academy’s courses features what they call “Biblical Integration.”
One Bible class for middle schoolers called Lightbearerspromises that students will “learn how to apply their Christian faith to every area of life and study” and covers topics such as “abortion, apologetics, cults, evolution, feminism, homosexuality, naturalism, moral relativism, pluralism, relationships, and socialism.” Staver haspromotedCovenant Journey Academy as a way for parents to avoid “LGBT propaganda” and “LGBTQ grooming.”
6. New Revolution
Screenshot via New Revolution Facebook.
New Revolution is a publishing service owned by Liberty Counsel that helps produce media for Christian organizations.
The group has published a book depicting foundational sex researcher Alfred Kinsey as a “mad scientist” and “pervert extraordinaire;” and Kim Davis’ memoir, which they say “goes behind the scenes to reveal how God gave this unlikely candidate a platform to defend marriage and religious freedom.”
In February, they advertised their services to other far-right groups at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention.
7. National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC)
Screenshot via NHCLC.
NHCLC is an organization that represents Hispanic Christian churches, with
Every month, Xian Brooks heads to Range USA in Louisville to practice his shot.
“We can talk about ‘community’ and ‘showing up for each other’ all day, but when it matters most, you only have yourself, and you need to be able to count on that [to defend yourself],” Brooks, a 42-year-old who was born and raised in Kentucky, told Queer Kentucky and Uncloseted Media.
Xian Brooks. Photo by Natosha Via for Uncloseted Media and Queer Kentucky.
Like many other trans people of color in the red and rural state of Kentucky, Brooks recognizes that he’s more likely to be a target of violence because of his gender identity and the color of his skin.
That’s in part because of the history the state has when it comes to gun violence. In 2023, for example, Zachee Imanitwitaho—known to her friends as Zachee—was shot and killed outside of the JBS Foods plant where she worked in Louisville. The gunman and Zachee’s coworker, Edilberto Lores-Reyes, confessed to killing her.
While Reyes’ official motive remains unknown, Zachee’s killing represents an alarming trend: a sharp increase in anti-trans violence.
In those six years, 73% of the victims were killed with a gun.
Despite these numbers, the rhetoric and policies of the federal government paint trans people as perpetrators of gun violence. Within hours of the killing of far-right Trump ally and anti-LGBTQ activist Charlie Kirk, rumors circulated that a transgender person was responsible. In the aftermath, conservatives, including South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, called for the institutionalization of trans people.
And after the mass shooting in Minneapolis in August that killed two children, it was reported that the Justice Department was discussing stripping gun rights away from trans people. However, the National Rifle Association pushed back, saying they will not “support any policy proposals that implement sweeping gun bans that arbitrarily strip law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights.”
This swath of misinformation has put trans people on edge as Americans have been manipulated to view them as a threat to their safety. And it’s causing many trans people in Kentucky to arm up or find other ways to defend themselves.
Steve Drayton, a founding member of Pink Pistols of the Bluegrass, a Lexington, Kentucky chapter of the national LGBTQ gun rights group, says he has seen an increase in trans members in the months since Kirk was killed.
“It brought the focus back onto the transgender community, and not rightfully so,” he told Queer Kentucky and Uncloseted Media.
“If only we put this kind of focus on every other type of murder. They’re taking a group of individuals and painting them as awful people, which they’re not. They’re educated, they’re teachers, they’re firefighters, they’re human beings. They’re wives, they’re husbands.”
While the false narrative around trans people as disproportionately likely to commit gun violence was already simmering in America, Kirk’s murder took it to a boil. Trump-affiliated conservative groups like The Oversight Project, a venture incubated by the Heritage Foundation, have urged the Federal Bureau of Investigation to create a new category of terrorism called “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism.” And a Trump executive order from September designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist group.
In the order, Trump references the gender identity of trans terrorists but never of cisgender terrorists, describing “a transgender Antifa terrorist,” “a deranged transgender individual” and “a transgender individual whose manifesto included plans to ‘kill Donald Trump.’”
Photo by Natosha Via for Uncloseted Media and Queer Kentucky.
“I’ve gotten a lot more tense,” says Brooks. “I’m more distrustful, and my head is on a swivel more. I always know where the exits are when I go somewhere.”
Brooks says he started carrying his Taurus G2C instead of keeping it at his home in 2018 after two Black people were gunned down and killed because of their race at a Kroger in suburban Louisville.
“Miss Vicki was my mom’s neighbor,” says Brooks, referring to one of the victims. “During [the altercation], there was a person in the parking lot that had a firearm that tried to neutralize the threat. If I had taken my mom to the grocery store that day, my firearm would have been locked up and not with me.”
Brooks grew up in Louisville’s West End in the Shawnee neighborhood, which experiences a disproportionate amount of violence.
Photo by Natosha Via for Uncloseted Media and Queer Kentucky.
“A lot of us were taught to fear guns because a lot of people’s family members were dying by guns,” he says. “It was taught that guns were not toys. We couldn’t have water guns, pop guns or even [play] finger guns.”
But as a Black trans man in today’s political climate, Brooks made the decision to start carrying.
While he says his race causes him to fear for his safety the most, his fears of violence due to his trans identity have been increasing since the 2024 presidential election.
“Nothing is hypothetical anymore,” he says. “I don’t think anybody should be too comfortable.”
That’s part of the reason Brooks is now advocating for gun safety and education for trans people and people of color. While Brooks isn’t a licensed educator, he feels he has no choice but to help and wishes politicians weren’t fueling a climate that is putting his community in danger. “I’m down to take any Black or trans person to the gun range on me. Let’s go. … We can talk about gun safety and teach you what to expect.”
Sarah Moore, senior manager of news and research at GLAAD and lead for the group’s ALERT Desk, which tracks anti-LGBTQ extremism, says that more than half of reports to the desk from June 2024 to June 2025 involved anti-trans incidents.
“It’s coming out in both violent and nonviolent actions,” Moore told Uncloseted Media and Queer Kentucky. “Whether that be protests, online harassment or actual acts of violence against the community, as well as the legislation that we’re seeing that’s attempting to govern trans people’s bodies and lives.”
According to the Trans Legislation Tracker, there have been 286 anti-trans laws passed in the U.S. since 2022, with 122 of them passing in 2025. In Kentucky alone, there have been five laws passed this year on top of the infamous Senate Bill 150 from 2023, which bans gender-affirming care for minors, implements anti-LGBTQ censorship in Kentucky schools and prohibits trans students from using bathrooms and facilities that match their gender identity.
Moore says there is “a very direct correlation to these acts of [anti-trans] violence” and the political rhetoric and policies of the U.S. government.
She says that earlier this year in Seattle, a trans woman was attacked by a group of men while walking down the street. While they were assaulting her, they were yelling slurs and shouting “Semper Fi,” the official motto of the United States Marine Corps. The woman asked them why they were attacking her and explained to them that she was a military veteran. “Trump kicked people like you out of the military,” the men responded.
“We’re seeing examples like that where people will actually cite directly these acts of federal or state-level legislation as part of their justification for acts of violence against the community,” says Moore.
When Trump took office last year, Alex, a 32-year-old trans man in Louisville, Kentucky, who requested anonymity because of safety concerns, says he purchased a second gun because he saw his community becoming the “scapegoat to all of America’s problems.”
“Now, I have taken a self-defense course, conceal carry my firearm, keep those kitty ear knuckle things on my keychain, and have a knife,” he told Queer Kentucky and Uncloseted Media. “I always know at least two or three ways to exit any situation I am in.”
Unlike Brooks, Alex chooses to carry in situations that he deems are more dangerous, like when he travels rural Kentucky with his trans wife.
“Getting sideways glances from people [in a small town Walmart] who can see that I’m somewhere on the queer spectrum—I carry in case they were to follow me to my car and/or pick a fight,” he says. “Additionally, if they don’t clock me, but were to clock my partner and if someone decided to start trouble there, that would not be tolerated.”
The Trump administration’s portrayal that Alex and other trans people in Kentucky are more likely to commit acts of violence is simply false. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 5,748 mass shooting incidents in the U.S. between Jan. 1, 2013 and Sept. 15, 2025. Of those, just 0.1%of them—or five in total—involved a trans shooter.
According to a 2021 study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, transgender people are more than four times as likely as cisgender people to experience violent victimization, including rape, sexual assault and aggravated or simple assault.
Alex was raped when he was 26 and says the trauma of the situation compels him to prepare for future victimization. “We are a means to an end,” he says. “It’s very disheartening and I work every day to not internalize their ideas about me. We are not dangerous, we are not wasted space, we just want to exist and be safe.”
Julie, a 33-year-old Louisville transgender woman who requested to use only her first name for safety reasons, agrees. Since 2021, she has carried a concealed weapon. She says fear of transgender people is nothing new.
“They’ve been scared of us the whole time and also, people are scared of guns,” she says. “So if you take the boogeyman, which is trans people right now, and then you say they have guns and they’re shooting at Christian people. You know what I mean? That’s what it is.”
Julie says transgender people are peaceful and wishes the politicians would leave them alone. She says that if a transgender person, or anyone, is buying a gun out of emotional fear and feels afraid to leave the house, they should check in with themselves or reconsider the purchase.
Photo by Natosha Via for Uncloseted Media and Queer Kentucky.
“The last option is to point a gun at somebody. It’s the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth option. Before you draw your gun, you can always reason with somebody, and you can always reason with them after you draw your gun,” she says. “You can reason with them while you’re pointing, but you cannot reason with somebody after you shoot them. And that is very important to think about.”
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On November 6, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that she would be retiring after 38 years serving as the representative for the district that encompasses San Francisco.
Since she was first elected in 1987, Pelosi has been one of the most consistent voices in support of LGBTQ rights, speaking out about the AIDS crisis and marching for gay rights during a period of heightened stigma and supporting gay marriage long before the majority of her party. In recent years, as increasing numbers of Democrats have stepped back or flipped their stances on trans rights, Pelosi has remained firm, pushing for the party to hold the line against anti-LGBTQ policies and pledging to fight gender-affirming care bans.
As Pelosi gets set to retire in January 2027, we took a look back through her LGBTQ advocacy.
Congressperson (1987 – 2002)
June 2, 1987
Pelosi is elected to Congress in a special election. In her primary, she defeats Harry Britt, a city supervisor for San Francisco and a gay activist.
June 9, 1987
Pelosi mentions the AIDS crisis in her first speech on the House floor. “We’re very proud of the Fifth Congressional District and its leadership for peace, for environmental protection, for equal rights, for rights of individual freedom. And now we must take the leadership of course in the crisis of AIDS, and I look forward to working with you on that,” she says.
Oct. 11, 1987
Pelosi at the Second National March on Washington. Photo by Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi helps secure permits to display the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. She sews her own patch for Susan “Susie” Piracci Roggio, the flower girl in her wedding who died of AIDSat age 30.
That same day, Pelosi marches in the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The march calls for legal recognition of same-sex relationships, for more HIV/AIDS funding from the federal government and for the repeal of laws that make sodomy illegal.
March 1, 1989
Pelosi cosponsors the Housing and Community Development Act of 1990, which created the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) program. HOPWA gives grant funding to communities, states and nonprofits for projects that benefit low-income people living with HIV/AIDS. Pelosi has supported subsequent funding of HOPWA in the 35 years since its passage.
March 6, 1990
Pelosi (left) and Elizabeth Taylor (right) testify before a congressional committee. Photo by Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi testifies for HIV/AIDS funding with actor and philanthropist Elizabeth Taylor in front of the Committee on the Budget’s Task Force on Human Resources. “We have striven for what is best for the patient and what is best for the budget and frequently they are the same,” she tells the committee.
Pelosi votes against the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993, which codified a travel ban for immigrants and foreign nationals living with HIV/AIDS.
Sept. 29, 1993
Pelosi votes in favor of the 1994 Defense Authorization Act, which codified the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) military policy created under the Clinton Administration that forced gay members of the military to remain in the closet while serving. The law reads:
“The prohibition against homosexual conduct is a longstanding element of military law that continues to be necessary in the unique circumstances of military service. … The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.”
Pelosi votes for the bill despite opposing DADT and later speaks in favor of its repeal on the House floor, calling on Clinton “to act definitively to lift the ban that keeps patriotic Americans from serving in the U.S. Armed Forces because of their sexual orientation.” She goes on to say that “‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ doesn’t contribute to our national security and it contravenes our American values.”
July 12, 1996
Pelosi votes against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which established marriage “as only a legal union between one man and one woman.” She votes in the minority of Democrats, with 118 voting in favor and 65 voting against.
Pelosi votes against a proposed constitutional amendment that would have restricted marriage to be between one man and one woman. She would vote against the same amendment again in 2006.
Speaker of the House (2007-2011)
Sept. 28, 2007
Pelosi releases a statement endorsing a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) which had been controversially amended to include discrimination protections for sexual orientation but not gender identity. “While I personally favor legislation that would include gender identity, the new ENDA legislation … has the best prospects for success on the House floor. I will continue to push for legislation, including language on gender identity, to expand and make our laws more reflective of the diverse society in which we live.”
Pelosi’s support for the amended version attracts criticism, with nearly 300 LGBTQ rights organizations signing a letter to her opposing the move. No version of the bill makes it to the Senate floor.
May 15, 2008
Pelosi releases a statement supporting the California Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the state’s gay marriage ban. In reference to Proposition 8, she writes that she opposes “any ballot measure that would write discrimination into the State Constitution.”
Oct. 28, 2009
President Obama signs the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which was developed in response to the murders of two gay men, into law. Pelosi strongly supports the bill, and Obama calls her “a champion of this legislation.”
Oct. 30, 2009
Under Pelosi’s leadership as speaker of the House, HIV is removed from the list of communicable diseases that prevent foreign nationals from entering the U.S.
“With the end of the HIV/AIDS travel ban, the United States will close the door on an era of intolerance. This discriminatory policy has done nothing to protect public health, and it is inconsistent with the values that have made our nation great,” Pelosi writes in a press release.
March 21, 2010
Under Pelosi’s speakership, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passes the House by a slim margin. The ACA helps fill significant gaps in health care coverage for LGBTQ Americans.
Dec. 22, 2010
Retired Navy Cmdr. Zoe Dunning, Pelosi and former Navy Petty Officer Joseph Rocha celebrate the repeal of DADT. Photo by Nancy Pelosi.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is formally repealed with Pelosi serving as a key figurein pushing for the repeal. “Repealing the discriminatory ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy will honor the service and sacrifice of all who dedicated their lives to protecting the American people. … I urge my colleagues to end discrimination wherever it exists in our country,” Pelosi says on the House floor right before the policy was repealed.
Democratic Party House Leader (2011-2019)
June 24, 2014
Pelosi receives a Congressional Global Champion Award from the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) for her work. “Leader Pelosi has been a friend and partner of the … Foundation from its earliest days,” writes Chip Lyons, president and CEO of EGPAF. “Here in the capital of the United States, the Ryan White Care Act was passed in 1991, with the solid support of Leader Pelosi. It was a watershed moment in the fight against AIDS.”
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Oct. 17, 2014
Pelosi endorses openly transgender military service members. A spokesperson for her office says, “Leader Pelosi believes there is no place for discrimination in the U.S. Armed Forces, including on the basis of gender identity.”
June 26, 2015
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) rules in favor of Obergefell v. Hodges, legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. Pelosi’s office issues a press release in support of the ruling:
“This decision is about creating a future where loving, committed families are able to live with dignity. This is about freedom. This is about love. … This decision is a declaration of our deepest held values and our hope for a better America. … We must continue the fight for the full protections that are long overdue for LGBT Americans.”
July 13, 2017
Pelosi and her party help defeat an amendment to the defense authorization bill that would have banned coverage of gender affirming care for transgender troops.
July 26, 2017
In response to Trump’s first attempted ban on transgender people serving in the military, Pelosi speaks at a press conference:
“It is a cruel and arbitrary decision designed to humiliate transgender Americans who have stepped forward to serve and defend our country. The President’s allegations of tremendous – tremendous – medical cost are bold-faced lies: a ludicrous pretense for his hateful campaign against these brave men and women in uniform and those who have become veterans.”
As the internet becomes an increasingly powerful incubator for extremist ideas, young men are finding themselves drawn into online ecosystems that blur the lines between memes, masculinity and hate.
Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than left-wing or Islamist extremists, and studiesindicate that right-wing extremist violence has been responsible for approximately 75% to 80% of U.S. domestic terrorism fatalities since 2001. In 2025, online radicalization has become more hidden and widespread, with extremists using encrypted apps, gaming communities and private chatrooms to recruit and groom young people. These platforms make it increasingly difficult to detect or intervene, allowing hate-filled and violent ideologies to spread unchecked.
Anthony Siteman, a senior at Quinnipiac University studying political science and public relations, has spent his undergrad researching how radicalization spreads through digital spaces—and even went undercover in extremist chat rooms to understand it firsthand.
As a white cis straight man, the rhetoric of hate he uncovered made him realize the urgency of developing communication strategies that can deradicalize his peers at a time when ideologies in extremist circles that promote violence against LGBTQ people are penetrating deeper into the minds of young American men.
Watch the video or read the transcript below.
Spencer Macnaughton: Hi everyone, today I am speaking with Anthony Siteman a senior political science and public relations student at Quinnipiac University, whose work specializes in online radicalization, and he even went undercover inside some of these groups as part of that work. Anthony, thank you so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.
Anthony Siteman: Thank you, Spencer, for having me here.
SM: So you specialize in online radicalization. What got you interested in that? Because I think it’s a big problem in the United States right now. And a lot of the time it’s actually young white men around your age, likely, who are the perpetrators of this.
AS: Yeah, well, you said it right there. Since I’m a young white male and I’m from a suburban Massachusetts town that is mainly white people. So I’ve been around it my whole life and I’ve always wondered why are these people having the views that they have?
SM: Tell me some of the things you saw in your friend groups that was concerning for you in terms of social media.
AS: Yeah, so my concern is that anytime they open up social media, they’re believing anything that they see. And it’s mainly just, you know, “Oh my god, look at what President Biden’s doing. Oh my god. Look at what the Democrats are doing.” For example, when I first moved to campus, I lived with eight guys, all white guys. And you know just getting to know them and seeing what their views are. It just seems like… One is that they’re not even politically active. They don’t understand what’s going on around the world. So they will just believe whatever they’re seeing without doing any research into it.
SM:Did you notice that when they start seeing a certain kind of content, it just keeps going more and more and more of that down a rabbit hole?
AS: 100%. For example, Nick Fuentes. He’s really been blowing up on people’s algorithms. And one time, just a couple of weeks ago, one of my friends was screen sharing his TikTok to the TV and every single post was just Nick Fuentes’.
SM: What do you think of that?
AS: It’s not good. We use these social media platforms every day and we expect them to be so good and great, but they’re really shaping the way we view things, the way that we see things, by pushing these algorithms. When I was doing the research into this—I obviously don’t support any of this stuff—trying to search about radicalization, it would damage my algorithm so much because everything I started getting was pro-Trump, pro-Trump or pro-Republican or just anti-Democrats.
SM: So interesting. And why do you think, especially for like young bros, really, you know, like something about the Nick Fuenteses, about the Andrew Tates, about these people does resonate with your demographic. Why do you think that is in 2025?
AS: I just think that it’s because those conversations, what Andrew Tate or Nick Fuentes are saying, is sometimes what kids my age just talk about. And for them to hear it from someone that has some sort of status, some sort of fame, money? That it just really resonates with them because usually you only hear [those] conversations just with a group of teenagers and them talking amongst themselves. So when they hear that someone with some influence is saying the same things as them, it really pushes them to really believe what they’re saying.
SM: I’m gonna sound like a geriatric millennial here, but meme culture and the idea of the cool effect, like there’s something cool and edgy about these guys, I think, to a lot of young men in America. What do you think is up there?
AS: Yeah, yeah, that’s a good question. For example, Andrew Tate, he says like, “This is how to be a man. If you wanna be a man, this is how you gotta treat people, this is how you gotta view things. You gotta look at life this way.” Same thing with Nick Fuentes. [He’s] saying like, “If you really care about the white race, if you care about America, then you should be protecting it through these beliefs,” which is just white nationalism.
SM: Growing up in the last 20 years, if I look at what’s happened, there’s been a lot of progress for LGBTQ rights, women’s rights. So I would think that Gen Z guys would be way more sympathetic to women and LGBTQ people, but that’s not necessarily the case. For a lot of guys, it’s gone the opposite direction. What do you think’s behind that?
AS: Despite what progress this country has made or progress around the world, they put this lifestyle out to people and it’s like, “If you follow what I’m doing, what I’m saying, what I’m believing in, then you will get this lifestyle.” People are so influenced by them because no one else [is] saying these things. If you’re saying the stuff that Nick Fuentes or Andrew Tate are saying online you’re going to get “canceled” or you’re just not going to get a following. But since they already have that following, they’re allowed to say that stuff, and then people will fall for it.
SM: Right. Wow. Really interesting. And then there’s obviously the Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tates, but then there is a lot deeper radicalization as well that can happen. So tell me about your research project. What was it and what did you set out to do?
AS: Yeah, so my research was just focusing on radicalization on social media platforms. I originally started with just Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok. But the most I could really find is just the people we were just talking about: Tate, Fuentes. So I realized that, yes, they’re monitored to a degree. They still have these hateful people on it, but there isn’t so much radicalization. That’s when I started to go to other platforms like Telegram. I went on Discord. When I was on those apps, then that’s when I was able to find like these more secret groups of people who have all the same opinions and views. But since Discord and Telegram, for example, those are channel-only apps. So you can’t just like, you don’t have profiles. And that’s when I started finding the real radicalization.
SM: And tell me what you mean by that. What do you mean by real radicalization?
AS: So yeah, when I view radicalization, I view it as when people are believing in extremist beliefs and then start using violence or support violence to achieve them. So in those apps, they’re always blaming someone. It’s never their fault. It’s always “us versus them.” And what makes Telegram so useful for these people is that all the messages are encrypted so that it’s hard for them to get leaked or for them to get out there. It’s all basically anonymous.
SM: What were some of the messages or the consistent themes you noticed in these message boards on Telegram?
AS: Yeah, so when I was looking at them mainly, it was before the 2024 election and a lot of the messaging was like, “Democrats, they’re fraud. They’re all illegal. They support all of these bad causes.”
SM: You said that your definition of radicalization is when it gets to a level where there’s violence involved, right? Did you see some of that in Telegram?
AS: Yes, obviously it wasn’t like physical violence, but there’s a lot of people saying, you know, very hateful things, like “Burn all Jews” or “We should send them to the gas chambers.” What they did utilize a lot are memes of these violent events. So, for example, if they have a murder video… because you can access LiveLeak videos online and some of these channels, they would meme them.
SM: What does that mean? To meme a video that’s live of somebody getting murdered?
AS: So for example, there’s a game called Call of Duty and they release trailers for it, obviously. And they took a shooting video at a mosque in New Zealand where over like 50 people died. And they took the clips from that shooting and put it in like a trailer format.
SM: What is the impetus for people doing that with that shooting? Is it Islamophobia? Is it just people being idiots?
AS: I thinkthey just have too much time on their hands. I think that they do wanna instill fear in people and they wanna just take bad events and turn it into something that is “cool.” So I think they wanna do it to just create some more fear and be like, “Look at what we can do.”
SM: And you referenced something that actually just came out of the news today, that there was a big, I think, Telegram leak where young Republican leaders were using hundreds of racist and anti-LGBTQ slurs in a group chat, as well as jokes about slavery and rape. Why do you think it’s just so pervasive, that level of hate? Among, you know, groups that are seemingly just part of the GOP Young People’s Club. And how do you think American politics has played into that? Because obviously, President Trump’s rhetoric is pretty rough sometimes, too. Do you think because it comes from the top, that green lights it for young men in America at large?
AS: Yeah, I think since Trump has [come] into office, he has kind of sent politics down to a very low level where you can kind of say whatever you want, do whatever you want. Since his rhetoric is so bad, it just stoops everyone to such a low level.
SM: What do you think are the groups that we should be most concerned about right now? Because I know you did some research on the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups. What should people be worried about based on what you found in your research?
AS: It can be anyone, it really can. Anyone can be an extremist, anyone could be radicalized. But if I had to say one group, it would just have to be white nationalists. It would have to be white nationalists who believe that America is losing its white identity, that they need to fight to come back, to fight to get their place back in this country.
SM: And why do you think that?
AS: Because just from my research of what I’ve done, they contribute to 75% of extremist-related killings. In the past, about 10 years, there’s been around 440 killings, and yeah, they account for 75% of them. So they are the majority of people who are committing these extremist acts in this country.
SM: Which groups right now are you most concerned about, if any?
AS: I would say the Proud Boys, despite what they say now that they’re not racist and that they’re accepting of all people, yes they are still [an] issue. When I was in their Telegrams, they have chapters all over this country and all over the world, frankly. They have chapters in New Zealand, Australia, all the European countries. So they’re pretty prevalent everywhere. One concern I’m thinking, too, is the rise of Nazis again. I’ve seen that with a lot of Jewish hate and with the rhetoric towards Jewish people now, especially with the war.
SM: And you see that being played out, that kind of anti-Semitic hate in these channels on Telegram.
AS: It’s a mix. I feel like that’s a place where it has split these extremists because there’s the extremists who side with Israel and then there’s extremists who side with Palestine. So I feel like that issue really split them in a way.
SM: When I was doing my work in far-right extremism, there were those groups, there were groups like the Michigan Militia and the Boogaloo Boys, et cetera. But a lot of it was, to your point, decentralized groups. And one of those white supremacists said it was fragmented into a million little pieces as lone wolves. Are you concerned about individuals specifically and the idea of lone wolf acts of radicalization or terrorism?
AS: Yes, because they can be anonymous in that way if they’re not tied to any group and if they are just logging on to their computer sending out hate messages, sending out fake disinformation and all this other stuff? Then yes, it is an issue with these decentralized groups. It’s hard to stop decentralized groups because you don’t know where they’re coming from. You don’t know what platform they’re going to move to next. You don’t know if they’re not even meeting on these social media platforms and they have a secret society where they meet in person somewhere. So it’s hard to really track them. No one uses a real name. No one’s using pictures of themselves. It’s all just them hiding behind a username or hiding behind just a profile.
SM: And they’re probably using things like VPNs and like you said, encrypted messaging. So it’s very hard to track where they are.
AS: Yeah, and one thing I’ve noticed too is that some of these extremists, they’re not even from America. They utilize bots a lot. They utilize taking people’s information and making profiles for them. Especially older people, because as you know, 60-, 70-, 80-year-olds aren’t going to be on apps like X. Sure, there are some. But they’re going to get their information stolen and used on those apps and they won’t even know about it. And so when you see Twitter threads of this elderly woman just arguing why Democrats are so bad, a lot of the time it’s not an elderly woman. It’s someone behind the screen or it’s just a bot running the account.
SM:That’s really interesting. So you think that’s pretty prevalent? These fake kind of older Americans are just patriots, if you will, being run by other types of people.
AS: Yeah, a hundred percent, and I like that you said the word “patriots” because that’s always the word that they have in the bio, like, “American Patriot, U.S. veteran for 20 years,” and you can really tell too because they start like responding to all the same posts with the same message, or they start reposting the same image in all these other threads. So there’s ways to tell, but a normal person isn’t going to go through this person’s profile and figure it out.
SM: What are the main, kind of, rhetorical devices, things you have noticed as it relates to the LGBTQ community and how people are coming after that demographic group in these channels of radicalization?
AS: Yeah, like you said with the pedophilia a lot of like I saw was that “oh LGBTQ people are grooming these kids.” That they want these kids to be in drag shows and just the normal rhetoric that has been being said for the past eight years that we obviously know isn’t true. Mainly about LGBTQ individuals grooming the younger generation to try to pull them into their sickness. And that’s another word too is that they use the word illness, sickness, that they’re not right.
SM: And how prevalent is that? There’s a lot of that, I would guess.
AS:Yeah, so some of the things I saw since it was June, it was a pride month, and they would post on June 1st “Happy groomer awareness month.”
Meme of LGBTQ groomers found online. Courtesy of Siteman.
SM:That’s interesting. What else are you concerned about with artificial intelligence and radicalization? I mean, you’ve mentioned that a few times and that does sound a little scary when you put it like that.
AS: With artificial intelligence, you can get it to say whatever you want and you can get it to post whatever you want. So for example, they could have accounts that are just literally run by AI and spread just such nasty, nasty rhetoric and it’s not gonna get tied back to anyone because it’s AI running the account. They could have someone, just a fake persona on it. But there’s not going to be many repercussions for the account saying it since it’s run by AI.
SM: Super interesting and you know, we’re talking a lot about rhetoric here, right? Why is that still concerning though when it comes to something more violent and actually committing acts of violence and, God forbid, a mass shooting or a terrorist attack or something like that?
AS: Yeah, that rhetoric itself, it’s damaging. Because even though people may not act on it, [they] hear that and internalize it. And if people are in a bad spot, maybe they will act on that type of stuff.
SM: Will you ever see, do you ever see people actually threatening violence in Telegram and saying, “Let’s do event X?”
AS: I would say yes, but they were obviously empty threats, to me at least. I could tell that they would say stuff like, “Let’s go to the streets. Let’s go to a pride parade and go blow it up.”
SM:What about the rhetoric around women specifically and queer women?
AS: They treat women as just [an] extension to the man. That women [are] good only if they listen to you and do everything that you say. The only good thing I heard them say about women is that they give birth to children.
SM: The trans community, specifically, has really been under attack by the politicians in this country, and after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the rhetoric about who the murderer was, even though there was no evidence that the perpetrator was trans, was grossly tied to transgender people. Even though, again, no evidence. What do you make of all of that?
AS:I think that that whole rhetoric came out just because they just wanted someone to blame that wasn’t themselves.
AS: These people are obviously not hearing trans voices. They don’t know any trans voices. They don’t know trans people. They just totally deny their existence. So they just want someone to blame. And it’s probably the easiest for them to blame because that’s what they’ve been using for the past like six years. That “trans are grooming people in libraries, trans are going to the bathrooms” and insane people all that stuff. So it’s just kind of their scapegoat.
SM: I think a lot of it does come down to conceptions of masculinity and bro culture. You talk a lot about communicative devices to kind of push back against this. What else can be done among men in this country to tamp down on that rhetoric, to make it not as cool?
AS: If you hear friends who talk like this, you have to have a conversation with them. And I know that’s what everyone says, but seriously. From what I’ve seen with my friends who have been somewhat radicalized, the best way to get to them is to just sit down and talk to them and just go through everything that they’re saying. Like, you know this isn’t true. You know this isn’t right.
SM:I think a lot of guys might be listening to this being like, “That sounds so hard.” So do you have an example of a conversation you’ve had that you felt has actually worked?
AS: Don’t make them ever feel stupid like, “Oh like why the hell would you believe that?” So you don’t want to be like, “You can’t look at this, you can’t view this.” You just have to be like, “I understand what you’re trying to say. I understand how you got to this view. But you have to understand that this isn’t the full story.” If you find a common ground between the issue that both of you can actually agree on, that’s a good start because it gives you that ability to be like, “You know what, maybe we aren’t that different after all.” And that’s something I’ve really found out like talking with people that claim they’re on the right is that when they start talking and they start saying what they actually believe and how they view things, they sound a lot more left than actual right; they just want to be right because of what you’re saying, that bro culture. Like, “Oh men are on the right and girls are on the left.”
SM: Do you think there is a stereotype that being liberal in America right now is feminine?
AS:Yeah, a hundred percent. 100%. I mean, obviously, I disagree with that. Like I go to a private school and it’s like 90% white. And I remember like when Trump won, it was like, like no liberal wussies allowed. There’s a connotation that if you’re liberal, you’re a loser.
SM: That’s so interesting.
AS: Which obviously isn’t true, and I think that the only reason why they really connect with the Republican Party right now is one, that they fall for a lot of the manipulation and tactics they’re using. But also that the right uses the American flag and the symbols of [patriotism] in America much more than the left does, so for someone who actually fought for the country, they’re more likely to go on the right because they’re more like American flags and country music. Whereas the left, you don’t really see that.
SM: So interesting. What else can we do? Because I think it’s such a big problem in this country getting, honestly, your demographic, 21-year-old white straight men, to be less radical. You can be whatever political party you want, but like, can you leave the radicalization at the door? How do you get people to do that?
AS: Yeah, it is hard. And that’s what I’m still trying to figure out right now. I just did some work looking at counter-radicalization, which is like, for example, there’s a program called ExitUSA where they do private mentoring one-on-one. And that really helps someone. But the issue with that is that people who are radicalized, it’s not easy for them to admit that they’re radicalized. So those are great resources for people that are willing to make that change. But as of right now, it’s hard and that’s why I think talking is just the best thing, just talking to people and just really, like, understand what their views are.
SM:You’re in a group of bros, let’s say a frat party, let’s make it super stereotypical, and everyone else is just spitting transphobia. I would be nervous to interject. How do you intervene in a way that doesn’t make you literally wanna disintegrate?
AS: For me I’d just be like, “Yo, think before you talk. One of these people among us could be transgender. You don’t know what you’re saying and how it affects people, and I know you’re trying to be cool, but you know let’s be respectful.” Because if they’re willing to stoop that low to talk all this hate about one group, then I can stoop that low, and I know that’s maybe not the best tactic but I mean it has worked for me. It really puts them in perspective. It puts them in their place.
SM: I do think the word “cool” is like a big word that I keep thinking about in this conversation, that people think it’s cool to be transphobic or it’s cool to be misogynistic, right? How do we change what young American guys think is cool?
AS: I think it has to come from up top from our leaders allowing this rhetoric to begin with, because it’s like they allow these people to just think that these things are okay to say because their own people are saying it. Yeah, once we have two parties that can just really understand that what these people are saying is not okay, and if they hear these acts of violence or [this] bad language that they go to take action and be like, “This is not okay” to all of their supporters. A good way to help my generation understand it is put on the debate between Obama and Mitt Romney, they’re just so cordial. It’s like, it hasn’t always been like this. You can be on two opposite sides and you can still love each other and still be friends.
SM: And you really haven’t grown up at all with that type of political discourse because when Trump came down that escalator in 2016, you were 12.
AS: Yeah, yeah.
SM: Which is wild to think about. Anthony Siteman, thank you so much for your research in this important space of online radicalization and for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today. I really appreciate it.
AS: Of course. Thank you, Spencer. It has been great being on here. Thank you so much.
This year’s mayoral race in New York City is shaping up to be the most-watched and most consequential local election in the country. Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman and Democratic Socialist who cleanly won the Democratic primary earlier this year and maintains a double-digit lead in the polls, is facing off against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the primary.
Analysts argue that this race could have significant implications for the future of the Democratic Party. If Mamdani wins, it will represent New Yorkers’ desire for a politician who leans further left than the party’s traditional values.
These implications extend to LGBTQ rights as well, as discourse surrounding trans people has permeated discussions of the party’s future since last year’s presidential loss.
With that in mind, here are both candidates’ track records on LGBTQ issues.
Andrew Cuomo allegedly runs a whisper campaignduring his father Mario’s run for New York City mayor against Ed Koch. He uses the slogan “Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo,” referencing Koch’s sexuality. Koch never publicly came out as gay and denied it until his death, but it was known in his personal circle that he was.
“The signs said, VOTE FOR CUOMO, NOT THE HOMO. Andrew says he didn’t do it, and I believe him.”
June 24, 2011
Cuomo signs the Marriage Equality Act into law, legalizing same-sex marriage and making New York the sixth state—and the largest, at the time—to pass marriage equality. The passage of the law is considered a win for gay rights. In a press statement, Cuomo says:
“New York has finally torn down the barrier that has prevented same-sex couples from exercising the freedom to marry and from receiving the fundamental protections that so many couples and families take for granted. … With the world watching, the Legislature, by a bipartisan vote, has said that all New Yorkers are equal under the law.”
June 26, 2011
Two days after signing the Marriage Equality Act, Cuomo marches in NYC Pride and is met with adoration and fanfare. He would continue to be a figure at NYC Pride for the next eight years, but since 2019 has no public record of attending.
Dec. 11, 2014
Cuomo announces regulatory guidelines to help trans people receive equal access to health insurance coverage. The new rules no longer allow insurance companies to deny medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria. The move comes before similar federal protections are introduced in 2015 under the Affordable Care Act, positioning New York ahead of national policy on trans health care.
March 31, 2015
Cuomo bans non-essential state-funded travel to Indiana after the state passes the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The act enables anti-LGBTQ discrimination by saying that being forced to serve queer customers is a burden on their religious beliefs. Cuomo would lift the banApril 4, saying he believes changes made to the law will keep it from being used to discriminate against gay people. The next year, Cuomo would impose a similar travel ban for North Carolina because of their trans bathroom ban.
Oct. 22, 2015
Cuomo issues an executive order that expands discrimination protection regulations to include gender identity, transgender status and gender dysphoria. The move is praised by the American Civil Liberties Union:
“With this executive action, Gov. Cuomo has made it clear that his administration is committed to protecting transgender and gender nonconforming people in New York State. … These clear legal protections go a long way toward allowing transgender New Yorkers to enjoy dignity, respect and access to opportunity in New York.”
Jan. 25, 2019
Cuomo signs two pro-LGBTQ bills into law. The first bans conversion therapy for minors by licensed practitioners and bans insurers from covering the discredited practice. The second, known as the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), amends the state’s Human Rights Law to ban anti-trans discrimination.
“The Supreme Court says you can discriminate against transgender in the military,” Cuomo says in a statement. “We say today—no you can’t. You cannot discriminate against people by gender identity, period.”
June 30, 2019
Cuomo signs a law banning the “gay and trans panic” legal defense in New York. The law eliminates a long-established loophole in hate crime trials that allowed lawyers to argue that a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity could cause a suspect to fly into a sudden violent frenzy such that they hurt or kill the victim. New York is the eighth state to ban the defense.
Enter Mamdani
Feb. 2, 2021
Zohran Mamdani on his first day as state assemblyman. Photo by @Zohrankmamdani/Instagram.
In his first session as a House Representative for New York’s 36th district, Zohran Mamdani backs the repeal of the “Walking While Trans” law, which was disproportionately used to target trans women of color under the guise of curbing sex work. In the 1970s, “wearing a skirt,” “waving at a car” and “standing somewhere other than a bus stop or taxi stand” were viewed under the law as probable cause for arrest.
That same day, Cuomo signs the repeal of portions of the law and says:
“For too long trans people have been unfairly targeted and disproportionately policed for innocent, lawful conduct based solely on their appearance. Repealing the archaic ‘walking while trans’ ban is a critical step toward reforming our policing system and reducing the harassment and criminalization transgender people face simply for being themselves. New York has always led the nation on LGBTQ rights, and we will continue that fight until we achieve true equality.”
Feb. 15, 2021
The Child-Parent Security Act, which Cuomo signed into law in 2020, goes into effect. The law legalizes compensation for gestational surrogacy, opening new paths to parenthood for both LGBTQ and heterosexual couples alike.
Feb. 17, 2021
Mamdani co-sponsors the Gender Recognition Act, which would make it easier for trans and nonbinary folks to change their gender on official government documents. It would also give them the option to choose a gender-neutral marker of “X” instead of the male/female binary and options for gender-neutral parent language on birth certificates.
Feb. 24, 2021
Cuomo is announced as the recipient of the LGBT Bar of New York’s “Community Vision Award” for his “distinguished record of service to the LGBTQ community, including a sustained commitment to achieving equal rights for all members of our community.” Just hours later, a former staffer publishes a story detailing Cuomo’s history of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior.
In reaction, Cuomo is stripped of his award and barred from attending the gala.
Cuomo, April 6, 2021. Photo by New York National Guard.
In an investigation following allegations of sexual assault and workplace mistreatment by Cuomo, The New York Times reports that the governor allegedly told a male official in 2019: “You’d be a good-looking tr*nny if you get a good set of tits.”
In response to the allegation, a member of Cuomo’s team says, “He would never make a comment so vile.”
June 24, 2021
Cuomo signs the Gender Recognition Act—co-sponsored by Mamdani—into law. This is one of Cuomo’s last legislative moves before his resignation Aug. 24, 2021.
June 10, 2023
Mamdani votes for New York’s gender-affirming care “shield law” that protects providers, patients and medical records from hostile out-of-state actions. The bill is then signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul. Mamdani’s vote underscores his opposition to red-state crackdowns on trans health care.
Oct. 23, 2024
Mamdani writes an op-ed for the Queens Daily Eagle in support of Proposal 1, a state constitutional amendment which bans discrimination “based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability and sex—including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.” The amendment also introduces legal protections for housing discrimination against LGBTQ people. The following month, Prop 1 passes into law.
Feb. 8, 2025
Mamdani attends a rally for trans youth in New York City’s Union Square and says he is there “to stand up for these children” as attempts to bangender-affirming care spread across the country.
“You need not even know a trans New Yorker to stand up for trans New Yorkers. … This is a trial of all of us to see who we are willing to give up. And our answer is no one.”
March 11, 2025
Gothamist reports that Cuomo hires anti-LGBTQ activist Kristofer Graham to be his campaign treasurer. Graham worked for the Coalition to Protect Kids, a group aimed at defeating Prop 1. Before that, he worked for theSave Our State PAC on Republican Lee Zeldin’s 2022 gubernatorial campaign, which also peddledhomophobia and transphobia.
The decision provokes backlash among former Cuomo allies. Tyler Hack, a trans rights activist and the executive director of the Christopher Street Project, says:
“Cuomo is signaling that trans rights are negotiable to him. … The only takeaway we can make from that is that it’s not an accident.”
Cuomo marches in the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn, September 2025. Photo by Marco.
March 27, 2025
Cuomo does not participate in a mayoral candidate forum hosted by four LGBTQ groups, including The Stonewall Democratic Club of NYC, NYC Pride and Power, Equality New York and Lambda Independent Democrats. His absence further alienates him from New York’s LGBTQ community.
April 29, 2025
Cuomo is snubbed by LGBTQ advocacy groups, including the Jim Owles Liberal LGBT Club, Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn and the Stonewall Democratic Club of NYC, as they use the city’s rank choice format to list Brad Lander, Mamdani, Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos. Several groups give Mamdani endorsements. All of them leave Cuomo off the list entirely. The head of Jim Owles credits Cuomo for his past but says he is “unsuitable to be mayor.”
“The gay community is smart. We’re not going to support Cuomo’s baggage. He’s not progressive by any stretch of the imagination.”
Mamdani speaks at Caveat Comedy Festival, May 25, 2025. Photo by Bryan Berlin.
May 22, 2025
Mamdani announces a protection plan for LGBTQ New Yorkers that includes a $65 million investment for gender-affirming care. The plan also proposes the creation of an Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs to “expand and centralize the services, programs, and support LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers need across housing, employment and more.” Mamdani says NYC will become a sanctuary city in an effort to “strengthen and uphold the rights of queer and trans New Yorkers.”
June 1, 2025
Cuomo posts a video celebrating Pride and his past achievements for LGBTQ people. Along with the video is the caption:
“Happy Pride Month! I am forever proud of the work my Administration did in the fight for LGBTQ equality. I will always stand with our LGBTQ community and fight for equality and fairness for every New Yorker.”
Despite this, Cuomo does not attend NYC Pride while Mamdani does.
June 23, 2025
Queer and Jewish influencer Matt Bernstein—known online as mattxiv—endorses Mamdani. This is one of many endorsements Mamdani has received among Gen Z voters and influencers. In one Instagram post, Bernstein writes:
“We need democratic leaders who will tax billionaires, not sell their souls to them. We need democratic leaders who will stand up for the rights of immigrants and LGBTQ people, not throw us under the bus. We need Zohran.”
Mink Tyner says some people call her a “helicopter parent” because of how protective she is over her kids. Despite this, she wasn’t concerned about bringing her daughter, then 14, to the Indian River County, Florida, school board meeting in August 2023, where they were discussing changes to the state’s curriculum relating to race and slavery.
That’s why she was shocked when she saw community members at the podium reading excerpts of sexual content from books.
“I hate lights out now because my D has a mind of its own,” one woman read. Then a man came up and read, “When Doris had just turned 11, her current stepfather started having sex with her.” And a third person read, “He took a long long time peeling off my jeans and T-shirt, pink bra and panties, and a longer time stroking and kissing me.”
The meeting had turned into more of a stunt led by protestors affiliated with the local chapter of Moms for Liberty (M4L), a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated far-right extremist group.
“I’m not gonna have my kid in here listening to these adults doing this shit,” Tyner remembers thinking.
She took her daughter out of the room and pleaded with security to intervene, but they refused. So she spoke up to disrupt the meeting herself, only for security from the Sheriff’s office—who told Uncloseted Media their deputies responded “appropriately and in accordance with established procedures”—to escort her out.
As she was leaving, conservative pastor John Amanchukwu, who had attended the meeting with M4L, confronted her while recording a video that he would later post to X calling her “demonic” and lashing out about her being pro-LGBTQ: “You’re okay with DEI. … You’re okay with Pride Month. You’re okay with the rainbow flag. You’re okay with all that junk,” he yelled. Tyner responded by calling him a “fucking weirdo” and walked out.
That video opened a floodgate of harassment that tormented Tyner and her family for years: She received insults, accusations of pedophilia, and persistent threats of violence from a Facebook account displaying the name CURTIS COUSINS who called her a “fent-using fat fucking dyke” and told her she deserved to have “a potato peeler peel her clit right off to the bone.”
“I never know if this week or 10 years from now somebody’s gonna show up [to my business] based on some kind of misinformation that Moms for Liberty started about me [or] want to harm me and my family,” Tyner, who owns a tattoo shop, told Uncloseted Media.
Indian River County is home to one of the first of M4L’s 320 chapters nationwide. The group’s annual summit is this weekend and will feature a variety of politicians with anti-LGBTQ track records, including Oklahoma’s former state superintendent Ryan Walters, who made headlines for making anti-trans comments after the death of 16-year-old trans teen Nex Benedict. Last year, conservative heavyweights spoke at the event, including President Trump, Tulsi Gabbard and Sebastian Gorka.
Over the last four years, M4L have built a reputation for chaos and controversy. Members have made the news for quoting Hitler, stripping at a school board meeting and offering bounties to report teachers who teach about “critical race theory.”
At one point in Indian River County, close allies of M4L made up a majority of the school board where they pressured the district to ban scores of books, many of which contain LGBTQ themes, and reverse a racial equity policy—all while harassing, doxing and defaming their adversaries.
Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science from the University of Massachusetts, says what’s playing out in Indian River County is a microcosm for so many other chapters across the country.
“[The media are] falling like suckers for this story that they’re a grassroots moms organization. They are not, they are connected to … the far right establishment,” he says. “And that’s become … more and more apparent. So this whole grassroots thing is hogwash.”
Beginnings
Moms for Liberty was founded in Florida in 2021 by three current and former school board members: Tiffany Justice, Tina Descovich and Bridget Ziegler, the latter of whom has since left the group after being involved in a sex scandal wherein her husband allegedly prowled local bars to solicit women for threesomes.
Shortly after M4L launched, Justice tapped Jennifer Pippin, who had made a name for herself for leading activism against COVID-19 restrictions, to lead the chapter for her home county, Indian River.
While the anti-mask circles that would later be folded into M4L always had a conservative lean, multiple county residents told Uncloseted Media that the group’s discriminatory views were not initially apparent.
Tyner, a lesbian who identifies as politically independent, actually felt welcomed by the group when she worked with them on their anti-mask mandate advocacy. However, that changed as M4L’s focus turned towards opposing LGBTQ inclusion measures in schools.
“Once they organized and got the appearance of a grassroots start … and many people in the community that were siding with them, it’s like they took the steering wheel and they just steered another direction,” she says.
When Tyner began speaking up against this rhetoric, she says she was blocked from the group’s Facebook pages. But as she continued to oppose them publicly, Justice offered to meet with her to address her concerns.
Over breakfast at a local cafe, Tyner says Justice gave her a “scripted” response in the hopes of winning back her support. She even invited Tyner to an M4L chapter meeting. However, Tyner declined as the meeting was allegedly to be hosted by a community member who had made an online post suggesting necrophilia and pedophilia are part of the LGBTQ umbrella.
“I was like, ‘Alright, this is not a good or a safe movement,” says Tyner.
Justice did not respond to a request for comment. In an email, Pippin told Uncloseted Media that M4L have “members and members children that are LGB in [their] chapter and across the country.”
Another local parent, who requested anonymity due to concerns about his job security, says while he’d initially been on board with M4L’s parental rights advocacy, he ran into conflict with the group when they started opposing the school district’s racial equity policies and tried to ban books with antiracist themes, including Ibram X. Kendi’s “Antiracist Baby”and “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You.” Like Tyner, he says he was approached by Justice and Pippin to win him over again but was ultimately unconvinced.
After he split from M4L, he began publicly criticizing the group’s book bans. In retaliation, some M4L members accused him of supporting pedophiles.
When he reached out to Pippin to ask for the people making such accusations against him to be held accountable, he says she waved him off—all while blocking him on social media and accusing him of “bullying.” He also says that she doxed him after another dispute—a major factor in his decision to remain anonymous.
“Her response to me basically was ‘free speech,’ ‘we don’t control what our members say.’ And I’m like, ‘But Jennifer, you know me, and you know I’m not a pedophile, and this is unacceptable,’” he told Uncloseted Media.
Building Political Power
Efforts to ban LGBTQ and racial justice-related books in schools are part of M4L’s national ammo that helped them quickly explode in popularity.
Cunningham says M4L were boosted by high-profile connections on the right. Ziegler and Descovich both served as presidents of the Florida Coalition of School Board Members, a group billed as a conservative alternative to the Florida School Board Association. Ziegler’s husband, Christian, was vice chairman of Florida’s Republican Party at the time and worked as a media surrogate for the Trump campaign in 2016.
Since their launch, M4L have had their conferences and events sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute; were directly advisedby Leadership Institute founder Morton Blackwell; and were a part of Project 2025’s advisory board. And this summer, Justice was hired as executive vice president of Heritage Action.
In 2022, the Indian River County chapter leveraged this influence to carve out power in local government: They got two close allies, Jacqueline Rosario and Dr. Gene Posca, elected to the school board, and they developed closerelationships with the Ron DeSantis-backed county sheriff Eric Flowers. Pippin was even appointed by Florida’s Department of Education to a statewide workgroup to develop compliance training for Florida’s classroom censorship policies, including the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law.
As M4L became notorious for pushing exclusionary measures in schools, some officials—including school board member Peggy Jones—criticized the group. In retaliation, Jones reportedly received so many death threats that the district had to increase security detail at all school events where she was present.
In the midst of increasing chaos surrounding M4L, the group mounted a campaign of hundreds of requests to ban books containing “sexual content.”
While some librarians continued to hold the majority of books where bans were unsuccessful, M4L convinced Flowers to investigate one school library, alleging that keeping the books on the shelf could constitute a sex crime. While the investigation found that no crime had been committed, Flowers concluded that “we do not feel that this content is appropriate for young children,” putting even further pressure on local librarians.
Pippin at the school board meeting in August 2023. Photo via YouTube.
This kind of direct action proved very effective. Even the reading protest where Tyner was escorted out won them 34 additional book bans from a unanimous board vote.
“You can’t deny that the kind of tactics that they have have been useful,” Cunningham says. “Some of the places they’ve taken over, [including] Sarasota County, where Bridget Ziegler was on the board, became much more conservative over the past few years.”
Silencing Opposition
In addition to school board meetings, the group has a track record of trolling progressive events. Tyner and the anonymous parent remember an incidentwhere a group of M4L members showed up to a local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) meeting that had been organized to discuss plans for opposition against new state regulations that required classes to portray slavery in a more positive light. Tyner says white M4L members attempted to shout down NAACP speakers, with one member allegedly using the n-word. Thomas Kenny, a M4L member who was at the event, said this “did not happen” and that one of their members using the n-word is “an absolute lie.”
Cunningham says these disruptions are part of M4L’s playbook. He pointed to the example of Jennifer Jenkins, the liberal school board member who unseated Tina Descovich in neighboring Brevard County, who says protestors spurred by M4L have turned up outside her home calling her a pedophile and burning “FU” in her lawn.
“They [use the] same kind of tactics … over and over again,” says Cunningham.
Chapter leader Jennifer Pippin has mastered those tactics, becoming widely known as one of the most influential book banners in the country. She’s also made headlines for filing a complaint against the Kilted Mermaid, a Vero Beach wine bar, alleging that they had hosted an all-ages drag event with sexual content, which the bar owner denies. M4L rallied against the bar online, spamming the posts of one of the bar’s drag performers, telling the queen to “stay away from children.” This stunt caught the attention of Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier, who launched an investigation and issued subpoenas for video recordings of the bar on the day of the event as well as identifying documents for employees and performers.
Pippin has also claimed to be a nurse, despite no public records showing that she has a license, and appeared on the antisemitic and homophobic far-right news website TruNews, where she claimed, without evidence, that anti-M4L activists have been killing pets and livestock owned by the group’s members.
Fear
Tyner and the other anonymous parent both say that they’ve had to take a step back from the school board and local activism because of the toxic environment M4L have created.
“It’s been turned into such a circus,” Tyner says.
In the meantime, things have gotten worse for the LGBTQ community in Indian River County, and in Florida overall, between the “Don’t Say Gay” law and anti-LGBTQ legislation that requires teachers to deadname trans students unless they have signed parental permission slips. The anonymous parent says he’s watched many of the LGBTQ people in his life, including one of his own children, who is a teacher, leave the state due to the hostile environment.
“It’s not safe for a lot of people,” he says.
Greener Pastures?
Despite all of this, a sea change may be on the horizon. A 2024 Brookings report found that the success rates of M4L-endorsed candidates were on the decline, and in Indian River County’s elections last year, both of M4L’s school board candidates lost. With the continued controversies of the Trump administration and the growing popularity of groups that oppose M4L’s ideology, Cunningham feels the tide may be turning for M4L’s influence in Indian River County and across America.
“In school board races, the Moms for Liberty label is toxic, so try to not get attached to that,” he says. “They’ve had quite an impact … I don’t wanna downplay that. But in terms of popular appeal and growth, I think it’s much more limited than it is portrayed.”
You don’t feel secure in your masculinity,” Sam Nieves remembers his licensed therapist telling him at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. “Go grab a Playboy and find a way to enjoy it,” the Mormon therapist told him.
“He told me I can’t be straight if I don’t go fishing with my dad,” says Nieves, who was 20 at the time. “He told me I needed to play more sports, listen to country music, stuff like that. He told me something was wrong with me.”
After these sessions, which lasted about a year and a half, Nieves started experiencing crippling shame and self-loathing. He eventually developed excruciating migraines and memory loss.
“My therapist just helped me find better ways to help me to hate myself,” Nieves, now 41 and living in Seattle, Washington, told Uncloseted Media.
Sam Nieves as a young adult. Photo courtesy of Nieves.
Fourteen countries have a national conversion therapy ban, while many more have state or provincial bans. In the U.S., religious leaders can practice nationwide, though licensed therapists are not allowed to apply it to kids in 23 states.
While research around torture and mental health consistently suggests the practice should be banned, almost 700,000 LGBT adults have received conversion therapy at some point in their lives, including about 350,000 who received it as adolescents.
Despite all of this, on Oct. 7 the Supreme Court heard arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, a case that challenges Colorado’s conversion therapy ban and—if overturned—would have implications for the rest of the states with bans in place.
While the verdict will likely not be announced until June, the court seems poised to overturn it, suggesting that restrictions on therapists might violate the First Amendment’s free-speech clause.
“I’m emotionally devastated for the children who will lose the protections we fought so hard to give them,” says Nieves.
Conversion Therapy and Self-Hate
Unlike many young Americans who are forced into the practice by their parents, Nieves—who was raised Mormon—opted to see a conversion therapist because his church community said that if he didn’t change his sexuality, he was letting them down.
“I actively didn’t want to be attracted to guys,” he says. “And so it was always this confusing, gaslighting situation where they would tell me to stop being gay, even if I wasn’t doing anything. I was trying really hard not to. That’s when [the church] referred me to conversion therapy.”
Sam Nieves in his 20s. Courtesy of Nieves.
Nieves’ therapist insisted that his mom was too overbearing and his dad was not actively parenting, causing him to be gay. As his therapist continued to recommend that he engage in stereotypically masculine activities, he began to withdraw, cutting off friendships and avoiding community gatherings. His Mormon upbringing had taught him to feel shame, but conversion therapy solidified it.
“Conversion therapy gave me validation for why I hate myself. It was just building on top of what the church had already taught me,” he says.
Nieves became depressed and eventually developed a mild type of dissociative identity disorder (DID), where he experienced one persona that carried shame and recognized he was gay, and another that tried to act straight. Headaches and mental fog were persistent. Thoughts of ending his life flickered through his mind.
“It was just nonstop, massive disassociation,” he says. “There was the Straight Sam and the Gay Sam. And the whole time, everyone was telling me Satan was working on me because something inside me was trying to be gay. So it was insane making. They were making me clinically insane.”
According to medical experts, repeated trauma like medical procedures, war, human trafficking, conversion therapy and terrorism can cause DID when it overwhelms a child’s ability to cope, causing their sense of self to fragment into distinct identity states as a survival mechanism. The trauma disrupts the normal integration of self, leading to symptoms like memory gaps, dissociation and distinct personality states.
When Hunter Mattison, a 29-year-old queer woman now living in Washington, was subjected to conversion therapy from her church and parents, she developed DID.
Raised in rural Idaho and immersed in an Independent Fundamental Baptist church that condemned queerness as sinful, the constant fear and shame brought on by her church’s conversion therapy program fractured her sense of self. She attributes her condition to repeated trauma that caused her brain to wall off painful memories.
“I didn’t know how to handle it other than just to check out,” Mattison told Uncloseted Media. “I still have a lot of memory gaps from the conversion therapy because of how intense it was. … Once I didn’t have the restraints of that church anymore, the memories started to return.”
Fear, Shame and Suicidal Ideation
Similar to Nieves and Mattison, Addy Sakler, who grew up in a conservative Protestant community in Ohio, says conversion therapy was “slowly killing” her.
“I figured I liked girls in kindergarten but did not have the language to describe it,” she told Uncloseted Media.
Sakler knew she wouldn’t be accepted at her church, so she put herself in conversion therapy throughout her young adulthood.
But it didn’t work. Sakler remembers the first sneaking moments of affection between grad school classes with her first crush. But after each kiss, the joy was followed by shame.
“We’d feel a lot of guilt and break up and immediately go repent,” she says. Both women were part of a church ministry that promised to “pray away the gay,” a 12-week program of lessons and deliverance sessions meant to convert them to heterosexuality. Instead, Sakler says, it nearly destroyed her.
Addy Sakler and her boyfriend before she came out. Photo courtesy of Sakler.
“I felt like a zombie walking around. I was depressed and I tried to commit suicide,” she says. “I was in the hospital for a month, two different times. It created a lot of trauma.”
Sakler says she was white knuckling it, trying to get through life as a “shell of a person.” She began cutting, hitting and hating herself because of the rejection from her church community.
Addy Sakler as an adult. Courtesy of Sakler.
“You believe what they’re saying. They’re telling you you’re broken and to be right with God you have to be heterosexual and if you’re not changing, then you’re being attacked by Satan.”
For nearly 15 years, Sakler attended conversion therapy conferences across the country, including one put on by the now dissolved Exodus International.
According to the Williams Institute, LGBTQ adults who have undergone conversion therapy have nearly twice the odds of attempting suicide and 92% greater odds of lifetime suicidal ideation compared to those who haven’t. Among LGBTQ youth, the numbers are higher, with 27% of those who experienced conversion therapy attempting suicide in the past year.
In addition, survivors experience disproportionately high rates of depression, PTSD and substance abuse. According to the findings from one Stanford Medicine study, the psychological harm caused by conversion therapy mirrors that of other severe traumas known to cause PTSD—like sexual or physical assault, the loss of someone close, or even experiences of war and torture.
Isolation and Families Torn Apart
When Curtis Lopez-Galloway told his parents he was gay at 16, they drove him two hours away from his house in southern Illinois to a conversion therapist who used the sessions to berate him for not trying hard enough to change into “the man that God wanted” him to be.
Curtis Lopez-Galloway as a teenager. Photo courtesy of Lopez-Galloway.
Lopez-Galloway remembers being told that his attractions to other men were a symptom of a deeper lack of masculinity, that he needed to “study women to understand what kind of man he was supposed to be” and that he should “bounce his eyes, and change his thoughts to something else whenever he begins to have an attraction toward a male.”
Curtis Lopez-Galloway’s treatment plan, courtesy of Lopez-Galloway.
He was given a treatment plan that involved limiting time with LGBTQ affirming friends, reading articles designed to redirect his attractions, and practicing what the therapist called “male characteristic activities,” such as taking charge and asserting control. He told his therapist that his marker of when things would be better was “life [going] back to normal.”
The therapist also worked with his parents, telling them they had failed by allowing the “gay agenda” to threaten their family and “let the devil get into the house.”
Lopez-Galloway, who now runs the Conversion Therapy Survivor Network, a nonprofit that connects survivors of the practice, recalls frustration and shame spilling into screaming matches that tore his family apart. “My parents were miserable, I was miserable, and we would just take it out on each other,” he says. “I went to [my therapist] for six months, and he just abused me and made life worse. It pushed me deeper into the closet and made me anxious and depressed.”
Curtis Lopez-Galloway as a teenager. Courtesy of Lopez-Galloway.
“[My therapist] would use therapeutic ideas but twist them in a way that was trying to change sexuality. … He would try to manipulate me in that sort of way and really broke me down as a person,” says Lopez-Galloway.
We reached out to the center Lopez-Galloway went to for treatment but they did not respond to a request for comment. Lopez-Galloway says his parents now acknowledge the harm the therapy caused, and he says their relationship has improved.
For many survivors of conversion therapy, the trauma can last a lifetime.
Even 21 years later, Nieves still gets triggered. He dropped out of college during his last semester of counseling school because the practices were too similar to those manipulated and weaponized by his therapist. “The hardest part was fighting … to no longer be suicidal every single day,” he says. “I would say that’s the hardest part. … It’s the suicidality that you fight with once it’s over. “
Nieves and Mattison have both found support in Lopez-Galloway’s survivor network, where they meet weekly and heal together in community. Sakler has found healing in therapy for PTSD, and has found acceptance with her wife and her queer community in Sacramento, California.
Despite this, the trauma often requires undoing self-hatred and discovering self-worth.
“[We’re] constantly saying, ‘We don’t know who we are,’” Nieves says. “We don’t know how to enjoy life. We don’t know what the meaning of life is. We’re like The Walking Dead. Because just like how you break a horse, they broke our spirits. They told us everything about us was wrong and we needed to conform. But no matter what we did, we couldn’t conform.”
Even with these survivors’ experiences, along with countless testimonies from other Americans over decades, the Supreme Court looks poised to overturn Colorado’s ban, with multiple justices describing it as “viewpoint discrimination.”
Nieves strongly disagrees and advises kids who are experiencing conversion therapy right now to stay strong and ask for help when possible. “This may very well be the most difficult time of your life. For many of you, it’s going to feel like a living hell, and you may even pray for death every night. I know this, because this is how [I] felt too,” he says. “Often, [conversion therapists] break other laws. If you think someone might be breaking the law during your conversion therapy, please seek out a trusted adult and let them know,” he says.
Above all, Nieves tells kids to push through no matter what. “It can and will get better if you promise yourself that you deserve authentic joy, free of lies and coercion. Community is out there waiting for you, if you can just hold on for one more day, one more hour, or even just for one more minute.”
Robby Starbuck has built his reputation by attacking LGBTQ inclusion. He’s created a documentary called “The War on Children,” where he promotes the debunked conspiracy theory that suggests pesticides are turning your kids gay. He’s argued that Democrats are pro-trans because they want to allow men to follow women and girls in bathrooms. And he’s said that it’s “grooming for adults to have kids carry trans flags at a soccer game.”
But in the last year, Starbuck has become notorious as a key face of America’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) movement, leading boycott campaigns on social media. He’s successfully pressured corporations, including Tractor Supply, John Deere and Harley-Davidson, to cut down on their DEI programs and withdraw support for Pride events.
Despite having no background in artificial intelligence or content policy, Starbuck has now been brought in by Meta as an AI consultant. To resolve a defamation lawsuit made public in August, the company agreed to bring on the right-wing influencer to advise its AI systems on “political bias” and to reduce the risk of misinformation generated by its chatbot, which was the basis of the lawsuit.
“Meta and Robby Starbuck will work collaboratively in the coming months to continue to find ways to address issues of ideological and political bias,” Starbuck and Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan shared in a joint statement.
This move signaled an alarming retreat from the company’s previous effortsto protect queer voices and also signaled a legitimization of narratives that have long sought to erase them.
And it wasn’t an isolated move. It was part of a systematic dismantling of digital civil-rights protections, with consequences that extend far beyond our screens.
Hate Speech Overhaul
In January, Meta—which has a net worth of nearly $1.8 trillion—overhauled its hate-speech policies, allowing language once flagged as harmful to be tolerated under the guise of protecting “discourse.”
“We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality,” the revised policy guidelines outlined.
This move doesn’t expand free expression; it legitimizes dehumanization. When platforms allow harmful language to flourish under the banner of neutrality or so-called viewpoint diversity, they create environments where targeted marginalized groups are bullied and silenced online. And it may already be happening: Human rights organizations warn that this shift has opened the door to allowing rhetoric portraying LGBTQ people as “abnormal” or “mentally ill.”
And after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, transphobia proliferated, with one user writing in the immediate aftermath: “If the first suspect isn’t a democratic lgbtq trans/fag then you’re looking in the wrong spot. Wow I despise that group of humans.”
As a tech founder who has built companies that bring people together online while ensuring those spaces remain safe and welcoming, I understand where priorities should lie when it comes to the user experience. I’m also aware that that experience can become dangerous for users if companies don’t feel like they have an ethical responsibility to protect their most vulnerable users.
In the first paragraph of Meta’s Corporate Human Rights Policy, the company says one of their principles is to “keep people safe” on their platform: “We recognize all people are equal in dignity and rights. We are all equally entitled to our human rights, without discrimination. Human rights are interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.”
The policy also states that the company is committed to respecting human rights, including those outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was officially adopted by the United Nations. According to the U.N., “discrimination against LGBTI people undermines the human rights principles outlined” in that declaration.
As Zuckerberg and Meta dismantle the safeguards for LGBTQ users and greenlight discrimination against transgender people, they are quite literally not practicing what they preach.
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LGBTQ Censorship and Erasure
In addition to the policy shifts, Meta’s supposed neutral moderation has created an alarming false equivalency between the moderation of hate speech and of LGBTQ-affirming language.
For months, posts and content using LGBTQ hashtags—including #LGBTQ, #Gay, #Lesbian and #Transgender—were hidden from teen searches on Instagram, effectively erasing queer visibility from discovery, untilUser Magexposed the practice and pressed the company for an explanation. Meta later walked back the restrictions, calling them an error. “These search terms and hashtags were mistakenly restricted,” a company spokesperson said.
Other instances of LGBTQ erasure were intentional. In January, Pride decorations and queer themes in Messenger—such as the trans and nonbinary chat themes—quietly disappeared. To some, this may seem insignificant. But for our community, especially LGBTQ kids—nearly 40% of whom seriously considered suicide in the last year—the disappearance of these features sent a symbolic message that queer expression is expendable when corporate priorities shift.
Dismantling DEI and Ditching Independent Fact Checkers
Inside the company, the same backpedaling is underway. In January, Meta dismantled its DEI programs. The company eliminated its entire DEI team; ended hiring practices that ensured diverse candidates were considered for open positions; shut down equity and inclusion training programs; and terminated its supplier diversity program that sourced from diverse-owned businesses.
Without internal accountability, external protections inevitably weaken. When companies eliminate the voices that champion vulnerable populations from within, decisions increasingly reflect only majority perspectives.
Another safeguard to fall was in January, when Meta cut ties with independent fact-checkers and weakened moderation frameworks by ending proactive enforcement and raising the threshold for content removal—tools that once slowed the spread of misinformation, hate and violence. “Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.,” Zuckerberg said in a videoexplaining the changes.
Without them, disinformation targeting LGBTQ people now circulates faster and wider. In fact, leaked training materials from Meta show that comments like “Trans people are freaks” and “Gays are not normal” are among specific content they would now allow to proliferate online.
LGBTQ advocacy organizations have documented the fallout. According to GLAAD’s 2025 Make Meta Safe report, 75% of LGBTQ users reported seeing more harmful content on Meta platforms since these changes.
Unfortunately, Meta’s new rules are part of a wider trend among other tech giants that signifies a broader shrinking of digital civil rights protections. By February, YouTube had removed “gender identity and expression” from its list of protected characteristics in its hate speech policy. And Google eliminated all diversity hiring targets and, in March, scrubbed mentions of diversity from its responsible AI team webpage.
The human stakes are enormous. For many in our community—especially those in hostile environments—social media represents one of the few spaces where they can connect with others and express themselves without fear.
Meta’s changes don’t just affect online discourse; they impact real access to safety and support. Queer-owned businesses that relied on Meta’s advertising tools to reach LGBTQ customers are left navigating uncertain policies. Queer kids discovering their identity are encountering fewer affirming voices and more hostile rhetoric. Trans individuals searching for community find their lifelines weakened.
Rights secured after decades of struggle can be unraveled quickly when massive companies like Meta shift their priorities. Gains that once felt permanent can be undone in a matter of months.
The LGBTQ community has fought too hard to see their digital rights undone by corporate settlements and backroom policy changes. We know that true neutrality doesn’t mean treating all speech as equal—it means recognizing that some speech seeks to silence vulnerable citizens.
We’ve seen this before, from separate but equal policies that claimed neutrality while enforcing segregation; to McCarthyism-era institutions that purged dissenting voices in the name of balance; to media “objectivity” that erased queer voices during the AIDS crisis.
While the medium has changed, the playbook remains the same. And our response must be to stand up, speak out and demand accountability.
This means pressuring Meta through public campaigns, supporting LGBTQ content creators whose reach has been diminished, and pushing for transparent moderation policies. It means calling out right-wing dog whistles like “neutrality” and “viewpoint diversity” for what they are—a convenient masquerade for corporate policies that discriminate against and attack marginalized groups.
Following the assassination of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) co-founder Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, there’s been significant posthumous discussion about who he was and what he left behind. President Trump and the Republican Party have described him as a martyr, making his funeral into a 200,000-person event comparable to those of deceased presidents, while calling for retribution against the “radical left” and trans people, despite the fact that the man who killed him is cisgender and his political affiliation is unclear.
Some liberals have mourned Kirk, casting him as a champion of civil dialogue. Meanwhile, critics of his often hateful beliefs have faced repercussions, with retaliatory firings of educators, writers and reporters.
Given the volume of discussion about Kirk and his legacy surrounding LGBTQ issues, Uncloseted Media decided to assemble the receipts. Here’s a track record of Kirk and TPUSA’s actions and statements on the queer community.
Oct. 4, 2016
TPUSA co-founder Charlie Kirk publishes a manifesto that outlines the group’s vision and political strategy, where he complains that “personal and overall freedom” are being lost in “exchange for ‘micro’ freedoms like taxpayer-funded contraception and gay marriage.”
He writes that TPUSA’s strategy is inspired by what he describes as the LGBT movement:
“We are using the same message delivery methods and many of the same organizing tactics. They use social media, rallies, and pop-culture messaging, just like we do. Despite our very different agendas, there is no question we have adapted our movements into the times in which we live.”
Kirk also references Jonathan Haidt, a professor of ethical leadership at New York University Stern School of Business, who has likened being a conservative graduate student on campus today to being a closeted gay student in the 1980s.
Nov. 21, 2016
Screenshot of Professor Watchlist.
TPUSA launches the Professor Watchlist, a database cataloging “anti-conservative” college professors. Many targeted professors later face harassment. A gay professor says that when they were placed on the watchlist, they began receiving anti-LGBTQ emails on their work account. And a tenured professor at the University of Florida who was placed on the watchlist and tagged with sharing a “racial ideology” says that all four professors at her university who are on the watchlist are either a person of color or someone who identifies as LGBTQ.
TPUSA co-hosts an event with College Republicans at CU Boulder called “Why Ugly People Hate Me.” The event features far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who was in the middle of his Dangerous Faggot Tour which challenged “political correctness” on college campuses. Yiannopoulos claims to be an “ex-gay,” born-again Christian who “demoted” his husband to “housemate.”
April 25, 2018
Kirk at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2018. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
A Huffington Post report finds that Shialee Grooman, then TPUSA’s national field director, had a long history of racist and homophobic posts, including one that read, “Okay. All of you are f*ggots.” In a statement to HuffPost, Kirk says Grooman is a “former employee,” and TPUSA issues a company-wide memo announcing social media background checks and offers to assist employees in making their social media posts less public.
Nov. 22, 2019
At a TPUSA event called “Culture War” in Florida, Kirk addresses a heckler who accuses him of betraying conservatism by tolerating gay and transgender individuals and warns of a slippery slope to normalizing pedophilia. Kirk tweets, “I believe marriage is one man one woman biblically” but goes on to say that he doesn’t think gay people should be excluded from the conservative movement.
Sept. 14, 2020
TPUSA launches TPUSA LIVE, a new media hub that they say provides “daily conservative content” that includes “hot takes, opinions, and reactions to breaking news.”
Other articles include transphobic headlines inspired by conspiracy theories that trans women are actually male creeps trying to invade women’s spaces. Some headlines include:
TPUSA launches the School Board Watchlist, modeled after their Professor Watchlist, to monitor high school officials they deem too progressive. The watchlist now seems to be defunct.
Oct. 14, 2021
Kirk publishes an op-ed titled “On Sexual Anarchy” that is rife with anti-LGBTQ animus. He writes:
“The facts that there are only two genders; that transgenderism and gender ‘fluidity’ are lies that hurt people and abuse kids; and that God’s good, loving, and joyful ideal for our lives is for a man and woman to be joined in a lifelong marriage covenant—these are all under official opprobrium in 2021.”
Feb. 18, 2022
A University of South Carolina student posts screenshots of racist and homophobic messages from two group chats affiliated with the school’s TPUSA chapter. The president of the chapter later releases a video apology, saying that “these remarks have no place being made in our organization,” though this video would later be taken down.
On his podcast, Kirk says: “[Gay people] are not happy just having marriage. Instead, they now want to corrupt your children.”
In another episode the following week, Kirk falsely links trans people to inflation.
“There’s a direct connection to inflation and the trans issue. You say, ‘Charlie, come on. They couldn’t be further apart.’ No, they’re exactly the same. They’re the same in this aspect—when you believe that men can become women, why wouldn’t you also believe that you could print wealth?”
June 2022
Drew Hernandez, host of TPUSA FRONTLINE on YouTube, spends Pride Month calling LGBTQ people “mentally ill” and dubs it “groomer month.” Hernandez also says parents who bring their children to Pride events should be arrested. Months later, YouTube would remove the videos.
July 6, 2022
On his podcast, Kirk rejects a previous perspective he held: “There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication. It’s a fiction. It’s not in the Constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.”
Oct. 12, 2022
The Student Government Association at Maryland’s Towson University formally condemns the university’s TPUSA chapter after leaked messagesshow the group’s members allegedly using racist, homophobic and ableist slurs. Some of the messages refer to Pride Month as “f*ggot month” and the monkeypox outbreak as the “f*ggot virus.”
Feb. 17, 2023
Discussing trans women in women’s bathrooms, Kirk says, “These people are sick. … I blame the decline of American men. … Someone should’ve just took care of it the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s or 60s.” Journalist Erin Reed, whose reporting focuses on the trans community, responds to Kirk’s remarks by saying he is “openly calling for the lynching of transgender individuals.”
May 28, 2023
Kirk defends TPUSA’s partnership with Shawn Bergstrand, a registered sex offender who served time in federal prison for attempted “coercion and enticement” after trying to persuade “a minor female” to “engage in sexual activity.”
He defends Bergstrand on X and simultaneously attacks Target for selling Pride merchandise: “I’m told … that he’s a nice person who did something wrong over a decade ago, and unlike Target, he repented and the experience led him to his faith. Good for him. That’s the Gospel.”
Sept. 11, 2023
In a speech, Kirk describes transgender people as a “throbbing middle finger to God” and trans swimmer Lia Thomas as “an abomination to God.”
Oct. 11, 2023
David Boyles, an instructor at Arizona State University, posts a photo of his injuries on Instagram. Photo courtesy of David Boyles.
A TPUSA-affiliated crew assault David Boyles, a queer Arizona State University professor who teaches English and is a co-founder of Drag Story Hour Arizona. The crew shouts accusations about drag shows and sexuality, “accusing [him] personally of pedophilia and hating America,” and ultimately shove him to the ground after he tries to block their camera from recording. Campus police say they investigated the interaction as a “potential bias or prejudicially motivated incident.” Both suspects would plead guilty in court. The professor had been featured on TPUSA’s Professor Watchlist in part for teaching an LGBTQ-themed class on pop culture and politics.
In a debate, Kirk says, “I believe marriage is between one man and one woman, but if you ask me do I have hate in my heart for somebody that doesn’t choose the [heteronormative] lifestyle … of course not.”
April 1, 2024
Kirk calls for gender-affirming clinics to be banned: “We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor.”
