Voters in two states won by Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election have been revealed to watch gay porn much more often than the national average, according a study by Pornhub.
The porn site’s latest Pride Insights research revealed that North Dakota topped the charts in terms of hours of gay porn watched in the past year, with Wyoming not far behind. Both are notorious for implementing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and both have Republican governors.
North Dakota’s proportion of gay porn fans seemingly exceeded the national average by 43 per cent, and Wyoming by 29 per cent. Other states with a higher-than-average interest included Vermont, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania.
The research gave an insight into the top states for gay porn viewership. (PornHub)
When it comes to top categories, Wyoming viewers were big fans of men with big…. well, you know! California, South Dakota, Alaska and Iowa residents had the same tastes. North Dakotans, meanwhile, much preferred twink porn as did people in Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon.
North Dakota, The Roughrider State, can crown itself king of the daddies, because more people there watched daddy porn than in any other state. Wyoming was the top state for military-related adult videos.
By way of comparison, Democratic strongholds Oregon and California had lower-than-average viewership figures, with -16 per cent and -4 per cent respectively. However, Delaware – also a “blue” state – was well above the average (+30 per cent), the figures showed.
Since 1989, the LGBT Life Center in Norfolk, VA has built up what CEO Stacie Walls calls a “test and treat” model. For every patient that walked through the doors of their HIV clinic after working up the courage to get tested, there had been the promise that, if they tested positive, all they’d need to do to get treatment is walk down the hallway.
But since the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to HIV funding took place earlier this year, that’s no longer the case. “The grant money that pays for people who are uninsured is the grant money that they have canceled,” Walls told Uncloseted Media. “That’s so disheartening and scary and goes against everything that we’ve ever wanted to embrace as a nonprofit service agency.”
With these cuts, staff now have to send uninsured patients to the next nearest community HIV program in Hampton, a 30-minute drive away. Walls says they’ve already had to transfer 19 existing patients, including some of their frequent client base of low-income LGBTQ people of color, who are disproportionatelyimpacted by the virus. While the center has been able to shift to covering at least their initial treatment appointment, they are unable to cover further care, and Walls says that even this is not sustainable.
The LGBT Life Center in Norfolk, VA. Photo courtesy: Corey Mohr.
The LGBT Life Center is just one of the many U.S.-based HIV organizations and programs that have fallen victim to the billions of dollars worth of cuts by Trump and his newly created Department of Government Efficiency.
HIV funding has been hit particularly hard: Uncloseted Media estimates that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has terminated more than $1 billion worth of grants to HIV-related research.¹ In addition, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has terminated 71% of all global HIV grants, and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has been the subject of temporary suspension and major proposed cuts.
Additional cuts are also on the horizon, with the Trump administration’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 calling for the closure of all Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) HIV programs.
The effects of these cuts are deadly. Researchers estimatethat PEPFAR’s funding freeze alone may already be associated with more than 60,000 deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, and numerous experts say that the entire global health system could be upended if the administration’s HIV cuts continue as planned. Mathematical models show that the worst-case scenario is apocalyptic: nearly 11 million deaths, 3 million new infections, and an infection rate outpacing the virus’s peak in the 1990s.
“This is not something that’s just a matter of the scientists losing funding; the community is losing funding, and in the long term, losing ground in the fight against HIV,” says Noam Ross, executive director at research nonprofit rOpenSci.
The Domestic Impact
Cuts to HIV funding in the U.S. have been a significant casualty of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce spending and attack Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Researchers behind Grant Watch, an independent third-party database of grants terminated by the NIH and the National Science Foundation, have identified HIV-related funding as one of the most common targets for termination. As of June 17, Uncloseted Media has calculated roughly $1.353 billion in HIV-related terminations in Grant Watch’s NIH database, accounting for more than a third of the $3.7 billion in recorded NIH cuts overall.
List of terminated HIV-related grants in Grant Watch’s database.
“They’re certainly casting an enormously wide net in this,” says Ross, who is also Grant Watch’s co-developer. “It doesn’t matter that they’re not explicitly saying that ‘it’s a war on HIV’ because if they’re gonna have a war on sexual minorities and transgender people, it’s a war on HIV too.”
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has explicitly told HIV groups across the country that funding was cut because they believe health research for LGBTQ people and racial minorities is unscientific. Researchers across the country have received letters and emails from the NIH with nearly identical statements informing them of their grant terminations:
“Research programs based primarily on artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”
One of the programs subjected to cuts is the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network (ATN), an HIV program that has been active since 2001. Its goal is to prevent, diagnose and treat HIV in young people.
Research under ATN’s umbrella has seen promising developments, including progress towards a product that could combine PrEP and birth control into one pill as well as new methods for reducing HIV transmission in young men who use stimulants. Despite this, NIH cut $15 million worth of grants to ATN because of its focus on high-risk LGBTQ youth populations. The program’s funds were later restored, but only after ATN agreed to cut off a study on transgender youth of color.
“There are particular issues around Black women, LGBTQ people, [and] the type of treatment that they need … that’s the social side of medicine, which is a very important part of medicine—it’s not just molecules, it’s people,” Ross says, adding that grantees focused on “delivery and participation and how to keep people in care,” such as programs that help vulnerable populations stay on PrEP or undetectable folks maintain their antiretroviral therapy regimen, are “very undervalued by [the] administration.”
“So that stuff feels like it’s faster to get canceled,” he says.
Rowan Martin-Hughes, senior research fellow at the Burnet Institute in Australia, says cutting programs that support prevention and long-term treatment is dangerous.
“With other infectious diseases, you treat people and then they’re recovered; with HIV, people require lifetime treatment,” he told Uncloseted Media. “Most of those people infected with HIV are still alive, and if you take treatment away from them, many people will die. And because treatment is also the best form of preventing transmission, many millions of additional infections will occur.”
Many advocates and lawmakers are pushing back against the cuts. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Boston ruled that the NIH’s DEI-related grant terminations—including many HIV programs—are illegally racist and discriminatory toward LGBTQ people, saying that in his four decades as a judge, he had “never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable.” HHS officials say they will consider an appeal.
NIH is far from the only agency issuing massive cuts to HIV. The CDC has terminated large grants to numerous HIV clinics across the country, including a $746,000 cut to Los Angeles-based St. John’s Well Child and Family Center and a whopping $6.3 million termination to the LGBT Life Center in Norfolk. Walls says it’s not just their treatment model that’s taken a hit—the center had to cancel 16 free mobile testing events in June alone, which she fears could cause many more people to contract the virus without knowing, contributing to its spread.
“When we’re out in the community in our mobile testing van, it’s super convenient for people. We’re parked there, they can just walk through, get their test and keep on going, and so that is a low-barrier way to test,” says Walls, who says that easy access is critical for low-income LGBTQ people of color. “[Without it], thousands of people that we test every month or every year are not going to be tested.”
The Vaccine Impact
DEI isn’t the only reason the government has given for HIV-related cuts. The Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD), a consortium of researchers at Scripps Research and Duke University, was informed last month that, after seven years of funding from NIH, their grant would be terminated next year.
Dennis Burton, the program’s director, says they are close to a major breakthrough, with promising technology based on broadly neutralizing antibodies that can disable thousands of different strains of HIV being nearly ready for clinical trials in humans. But without NIH funding, the project may be unable to continue.
“It would put back the development of an HIV vaccine by a decade or longer,” Burton told Uncloseted Media. “We begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel … it’s just the wrong time to stop.”
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A senior NIH official told the New York Times that “NIH expects to be shifting its focus toward using currently available approaches to eliminate HIV/AIDS.”
And while Burton says that existing HIV treatment medicine like antiretroviral therapies is “a miracle,” the decision to jettison vaccine research in its favor is misguided.
“The drugs are fantastic … but they’re expensive and people have to take them—the great thing about a good vaccine is that with one or a limited number of shots you can get lifelong prevention,” says Burton. “We want people to live without the fear of HIV, and vaccines are the proven way of preventing viral infections and viral disease.”
The Global Impact
The most sweeping cuts to HIV funding have been to foreign aid. On his first day in office, Trump ordered a 90-day freeze on all foreign aid funding as well as a stop-work order for PEPFAR. While Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver to continue some critical operations, department memos specifically prohibited funding for PrEP for all populations except pregnant and breastfeeding women.
Photo: Screenshot/ DW News
This move, coupled with the dissolution of USAID and a proposal to cut an additional $1.9 billion from PEPFAR in the FY26 budget request compared to the prior year, has created a perfect storm with staggering results.
The PEPFAR Impact Tracker, a project by Boston University infectious disease modeler Brooke Nichols, estimates that over 60,000 adults and over 6,000 children have died due to PEPFAR-related disruptions between January 24 and June 17. And a survey conducted over the first week of the stop-work order found that 86% of PEPFAR recipient organizations reported that their patients would lose access to HIV treatment within the next month, more than 60% had already laid off staff, and 36% had to shut down their organizations.
The impact hits the hardest in sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the highest HIV concentration, accounting for an estimated 67% of HIV positive individuals globally as of 2021. Numerous long-running and influential LGBTQ health clinics in South Africa have been forced to close, and an investigation by The Independent found that communities in Uganda and Zimbabwe are rapidly being torn apart as more people risk death from lack of access to HIV treatment due to the cuts.
Numerous LGBTQ people told the Daily Sun, a South African digital newspaper, that the closure of long-running clinics like Engage Men’s Health in Johannesburg and Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute was devastating.
“I take PrEP, but you can’t go to any clinic as a queer person and ask for it without people looking at you weirdly,” one trans person told the Daily Sun. “At the trans clinic, it was different. Everything was smooth, everything flowed.”
The U.S. has historically been the biggest contributor to fighting HIV, accounting for more than 70% of international funding, but they’re not the only ones making cuts. Following Trump’s example, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced 6 billion pounds in funding cuts to foreign aid, including HIV, and France and Germany also announced multi-billion euro cuts.
“HIV has received a lot more funding than any other health area,” says John Stover, vice president for modeling and analysis at Avenir Health. “So it’s a likely target just because the money is so large.”
Martin-Hughes of the Burnet Institute thinks these cuts are dangerous for the entire global health system. He co-authored a study modeling the potential impacts of HIV funding cuts from the major global funders, and the results are grim.
In the worst-case scenario, where PEPFAR is discontinued with no replacement or mitigation alongside the proposed cuts from the top five biggest-spending countries, the study projects that there could be nearly 11 million new infections and nearly 3 million deaths by 2030, which would raise the annual infection rate higher than its 3.3 million peak in 1995.
This is not necessarily the most likely scenario, as PEPFAR is expected to be reinstated in at least some form. However, even the most optimistic estimates show that substantial cuts like the one proposed in the Trump administration’s FY26 budget could still put an end to 15 years of declining infection and death rates—especially since prevention and testing would likely be sacrificed first.
“The world has made really amazing progress on HIV,” Martin-Hughes told Uncloseted Media. “That kind of increase [in infections and death rates would be] a major reversal.” He says that major foreign aid cuts would leave programs for at-risk populations, such as gay and bisexual men, trans women, sex workers and people who inject drugs, particularly vulnerable to being shut down.
Cuts to PEPFAR, a program started by Republican president George W. Bush in 2003, have been controversial even among Republicans, with Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins publicly opposing them. While many researchers and policymakers advocate for funding and leadership on HIV to shift away from foreign aid and more towards local governments, Stover and other experts argue that that transition can only be possible with support from PEPFAR in the interim.
“Overall, we all have a vision of more local ownership and control over the resources and how they’re allocated,” Stover says. “[But] it takes time to make this transition, so it’s gonna be practically impossible if funding is just cut off abruptly.”
Cuts on All Sides
Walls says cuts are also happening at the state level. Virginia’s Republican governor Glenn Youngkin slashed hundreds of thousands of dollars for HIV programs, and Walls’ center recently lost multiple corporate donors, including Target, due to pressure from the Trump administration to roll back their DEI efforts.
She says that the fear of backlash for supporting LGBTQ initiatives is so pervasive that even some of their continued donors are now requesting that their contributions remain anonymous.
“Now, if Target was to advertise that they were giving money to the LGBTQ community center in their neighborhood or city, they would have consequences from the administration or even shoppers,” she says. “They’re not gonna take that risk.”
Meanwhile, Walls says the LGBT Life Center is staying afloat thanks to the local community stepping up, with an unprecedented number of people signing up to be volunteers and local restaurants and other businesses providing their assistance, whether that’s by participating in citywide fundraising events or offering to help paint the clinic.
“It is amazing to see, and I know that through all of this the community will help carry us through, because we have brought value to this community for 36 years and I feel confident that people see value in our services,” she says.
Still, experts, advocates and infectious disease modelers agree if HIV funding doesn’t continue, the effects will be devastating.
“I think it’s hard for people to look at these numbers and not feel like it’s important to prioritize,” says Martin-Hughes. “There needs to be, to avert these worst-case scenarios, sufficient funding for those programs.”
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JD Vance has become the most blocked account on Bluesky just two days after joining the social media platform.
The vice president signed up for the site, a competitor of X/Twitter, on Wednesday. Vance used his first post to mock transgender people by sharing part of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion in U.S. v. Skrmetti, in which he incorrectly said that gender-affirming care relies on “questionable evidence.”
“Hello Bluesky, I’ve been told this app has become the place to go for common sense political discussion and analysis,” Vance wrote. “So I’m thrilled to be here to engage with all of you.”
Within just one day, Vance became the most blocked account on Bluesky, according to Clearsky, the platform’s unofficial data tracker. As of publishing, Vance has been blocked by over 117,500 accounts, more than 29,000 of which blocked him in the past 24 hours. He has only gained 10,000 followers since joining the site.
The title formerly belonged to anti-trans journalist Jesse Singal, whom GLAAD has criticized for spreading misinformation harmful to LGBTQ+ people. It took 12 days for Singal to become the most blocked account, with users even starting a petition asking the site to remove his account. He is currently blocked by over 81,000 people.
“The only thing I’ve ever accomplished in my life, gone, all because being vice president wasn’t enough for JD Vance — he needed more,” Singal recently posted on X/Twitter in response to the news. “We are in hell.”
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Wednesday that Tennessee‘s law banning gender-affirming care for trans youth – while allowing the same treatments for youth who aren’t trans – does not constitute sex-based discrimination, and therefore does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
In the snippet of his opinion shared by Vance, Thomas asserted that the Court should not listen to “so-called experts,” accusing medical professionals of allowing “ideology to influence their medical guidance.” He then falsely claimed that “there is no medical consensus on how best to treat gender dysphoria in children.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued in her dissenting opinion that the law explicitly discriminates on the basis of both sex and gender, as it “expressly classifies on the basis of sex and transgender status,” since “male (but not female) adolescents can receive medicines that help them look like boys, and female (but not male) adolescents can receive medicines that help them look like girls.”
The decision “does irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause and invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight,” Sotomayor wrote. “It also authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them. Because there is no constitutional justification for that result, I dissent.”
Back on Bluesky, Vance was met with , with one person asking, “Why pick such a polarizing issue if you want to have a real discussion, and why not something relevant to more Americans?”
To which another replied, “It’s only a polarizing issue because ignorant bigoted child abusing superstitious sadists like Vance want to pretend that they know more than doctors.”
Earlier this month, the Defense Department told transgender service members that they had to choose whether they would voluntarily or involuntarily separate from the military.
Four trans service members who are now in the process of separating said nothing about their decisions feels voluntary at all.
“Nobody feels like this is voluntary,” said Emily Shilling, a commander in the Navy and the president of SPARTA, a nonprofit group that advocates for trans service members. “This is coercion. This is under duress.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order a week into his administration prohibiting trans people from enlisting or serving in the military. Trans service members sued, and a federal judge temporarily blocked the order from taking effect. Then, last month, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to enforce the order. Days later, the Defense Department issued guidance requiring active duty service members to voluntarily self-identify as having been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, which is the distress that results from a misalignment between one’s birth sex and gender identity, by June 6 and reserve service members to self-identify by July 7.
After that, the guidance said, the military will find trans service members who didn’t self-identify through medical readiness programs and begin involuntarily separating them. Affected service members “are eligible for an array of benefits,” the guidance said, including separation pay, “which will be higher for those who self-identify and agree to a voluntary separation.”
However, many details are still unknown, such as what benefits trans service members will be able to access and whether they will all receive honorable discharges. It’s also unclear how many service members will be affected. Just over 4,000 transgender people currently serve in the military, according to Defense Department data, and the department said last month that about 1,000 trans service members have begun the separation process from the military after voluntarily identifying themselves. The department said Tuesday that it does not have an updated number of affected service members.
“Characterization of service will be honorable except where the Service member’s record otherwise warrants a lower characterization,” a U.S. Defense official said in a statement to NBC News. “Military Services will follow normal processes for administrative separation.”
The four trans service members who spoke to NBC News all emphasized that they are speaking in their personal capacity and not on behalf of their respective branches. The biggest question they all face is what comes next.
Bree Fram
On June 30, 2016, the day then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that transgender people could serve openly in the military, Bree Fram, who was then a major in the Air Force, came out to her teammates in an email as a trans woman and then went to burn off her nerves at the gym.
Col. Bree Fram served for 22 years and said she planned to serve “for many years to come” because she loved her job.Courtesy Bree Fram
When she returned to her desk later, she said her colleagues approached her one by one, shook her hand, and told her a version of “It’s an honor to serve with you.”
Fram, who is 46 and now a colonel for the U.S. Space Force at the Pentagon, said that scene repeated earlier this month with leaders from other branches of the military when she told them it would be her last meeting with them. An officer sitting next to her asked where she was going, and she said, “I’m being placed on administrative leave because I don’t meet this administration’s standards for military excellence and readiness.”
Fram said there was a moment of silence before it seemed like her colleagues realized which policy she was referring to — because, she said, trans service members don’t “walk into a room and lead with our identity.”
“I walk into a room and someone sees a colonel, and they see the uniform, and they see all the things that represents about my experience and my expertise,” said Fram, who is one of the highest-ranking out trans officials in the military.
Then, Fram said her colleagues walked over, one by one, and shook her hand and said, again, that it had been an honor to serve with her.
Fram, who served for 22 years until she was placed on administrative leave on June 6, was the director of requirements integration for the Space Force. She helped to identify future technological capabilities the military will need and provided those to developers who built them. She said she planned to serve “for many years to come,” because she loved her job and the team that she worked with.
Fram said she doesn’t know what she’ll do next, but she expects she’ll work in public service.
“I believe in this country, even though it may not believe in me right now,” Fram said. “The oath I swore and the ideals that are embedded in the Constitution still matter to me, and I believe they are worth fighting for.”
Sam Rodriguez
Sam Rodriguez, 38, was recently commissioned as a Medical Service Corps officer in the Navy and was supposed to begin officer training school and then a two-year clinical fellowship in San Diego to become a licensed clinical social worker. However, about a week after the Supreme Court decision allowing the trans military ban to take effect, Rodriguez, who uses they/them pronouns, said the Navy canceled those orders.
Lt. Junior Grade Sam Rodriguez, left, with Lt. Rae Timberlake, center, and Parker Moore, an electronics technician in nuclear power, right. All three of them are trans and nonbinary service members in the Navy.Courtesy Sam Rodriguez
“It was really gut-wrenching to receive that news,” Rodriguez said. They enlisted in 2015 and planned to serve for 15 or 20 years, when they would’ve left the Navy as an experienced licensed social worker. However, now they will leave with their master’s degree in social work, and they will have to look for an employer who is willing to provide supervision for them to receive their clinical license, which will be more difficult.
They submitted their resignation earlier this month and requested a separation date in the fall. They said they don’t think they’ll be able to find an entry-level job as a civilian that’s going to match their current salary, housing allowance, health care benefits and the stipend that they and their wife get to pay for child care for their two children.
They plan to move their family from San Diego to Washington, D.C., so they can become more involved in policy advocacy. Outside of work, they are a board member and membership director for SPARTA.
“People need to realize that this is a national security issue,” Rodriguez said, pointing to research from the Modern Military Association of America, an advocacy group for LGBTQ military members and veterans, which found that 73% of trans service members have between 12 and 21 years of experience.
“We’re not going to be one-for-one swapped tomorrow, and some people it will take two decades to replace,” they said.
Emily Shilling
Shilling, 42, is the highest-ranking out trans person in the Navy after having served for nearly two decades, including in over 60 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. She was also one of the lead plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the administration’s ban.
After Trump was elected, she requested to retire in the fall. Her intention was to rescind that retirement because she expected that the ban on trans troops serving would be blocked, but with the policy taking effect, her last day was June 12, and she will officially retire in September.
Emily Shilling is the highest-ranking out trans person in the Navy.Leah Millis / Reuters
“I am deeply heartbroken that this is how my career has ended, but also deeply proud of what I’ve done,” Shilling said. “I lived my dream. I did everything I ever wanted to in the Navy and I did it honorably, and I stood proud. I might be getting out of the Navy, but it’s not me quitting this fight. I’m just choosing to take on this fight in a different way.”
Shilling said the Navy invested $40 million in training her, and as a result she has many desirable skills and has already accepted an offer to work in defense technologies and advanced development. However, she said her story is rare among trans service members, thousands of whom will be looking for private sector jobs for the first time.
Shilling said the lawsuit against the ban will return to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for a hearing in October, but by that time, most trans service members will be out of the military.
“The irreparable harm is done now,” she said.
Alex Shaffer
Alex Shaffer, 48, joined the military as a combat medic in the Oregon Army National Guard in 2007. His mentors in the guard convinced him to go to school to become a physician’s assistant, and he now also works in a private family practice as a PA.
Alex Shaffer, center, with two of the soldiers who are part of the platoon he oversaw.Courtesy Alex Shaffer
“In all of the military, it’s a family,” Shaffer said of what he’s enjoyed about serving in the guard.
Shaffer said he planned to stay in the guard “until I could no longer physically serve or they kicked me out for being too old.” He was in the process of trying to commission as an officer. However, his last drill was June 7, because he began the process to medically separate from the National Guard as a result of the ban. (The National Guard only provides retirement benefits to service members if a medical evaluation board deems them physically unfit for duty.)
“I’m devastated,” Shaffer said. “It’s a loss of identity to me. I’ve been a soldier for so long, and it’s a part of who I am.”
Over the past five years, corporate America has abandoned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices en masse, with the crusade to roll back these efforts only ramping up since Trump’s reelection.
While it may seem like there are many forces behind these proposals, they were all submitted by the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank commonly referred to as the National Center.
Although not very well known, they are effective: Since receiving their proposals, half of the companies listed above have watered down or abandoned their DEI practices, with Apple, JPMorganChase, Costco, Kroger and Coca-Cola standing firm.
And although the National Center has been trying to dismantle DEI for nearly two decades, they’re experiencing enormous success today due to the rise of the conservative crusade against “woke capitalism” and so-called “viewpoint discrimination.”
Jason Stahl, a historian and researcher specializing in right-wing think tanks and populism in the U.S., says the National Center’s newfound success reflects a renewed desire for socially conservative populist movements. “Think tanks prime themselves to respond to the American political culture in a populist way and to present themselves as for the people.”
“We’ve got Flint, Michigan without clean drinking water, we’ve got the flooding that occurred in Appalachia and North Carolina, we’ve got the fires in California and in Hawaii. Why aren’t we talking about all this?” he says. “Politics should be about the improvement of people’s lives,” but dominant powers in the U.S., including the National Center, want people to be fighting over DEI—a debate that detracts “from the material reality of people’s lives.”
How the National Center Is so Effective
Through shareholder proposals, the National Center—along with anyone who owns a high enough stake in a publicly traded company—can attempt to influence its governance.
In their proposal to Apple, the National Center submitted a “Request to Cease DEI Efforts,” writing, “Apple likely has over 50,000 [employees] who are potentially victims of this type of discrimination.” In their proposal to Alphabet, Google’s parent company, they came after the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index (CEI), calling it “hyper-partisan, divisive and increasingly radical.” Their supporting statement included disinformation about transgender people, claiming the HRC uses the CEI “to force [corporations] to do the political bidding of radical activists, which seek to sow gender confusion in youth, encourage permanent surgical procedures on confused and vulnerable teens, and effectively eliminate girls’ and women’s sports and bathrooms.”
And in their proposal to Goldman Sachs, they requested a “Racial Discrimination Audit,” citing a Supreme Court case that alleged Harvard University’s affirmative action policies discriminated against white students.
While the Goldman proposal failed, with just 2% of shares voting in its favor, the company still dropped their diversity and inclusion policies. But even these losses are often considered wins by the National Center, who have said that “the true aim of these proposals is to negotiate with companies and convince them to amend their equal employment opportunity policies to add protections against viewpoint discrimination.”
R.G. Cravens, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, says the anti-DEI movement is part of a bigger campaign to maintain the status quo in corporate America. “A lot of the rhetoric the hard right uses to describe DEI is based on racist and white supremacist narratives about people of color. For example, saying that DEI means unqualified people get jobs, they mean people of color who aren’t qualified to hold positions,” he says. “DEI policies are designed to interrupt systemic inequalities, and they do a lot beyond just what the hard right tends to caricature them as doing.”
In principle, DEI is meant to close wage and opportunity gaps in the workforce. LGBTQ workers earn 90 cents to every dollar earned by the average American worker, and women make 85 cents to every dollar earned by men. Meanwhile, Black and Latino workers make 24% and 28% less than white workers, respectively. Trans women, who are the most demonized in the crusade against DEI, earn just 60 cents on the dollar compared to the typical American worker.
Mary Wrenn, a professor of economics specializing in capitalism and neoliberalism at the University of Cambridge, says the crusade against DEI uses a similar strategy to that used against the civil rights movement of the 1960s. “There were a lot of economists and politicians who said that we should not force desegregation because the free market will take care of it. Of course that’s not true: We had to have legislation in order for the cultural and social spheres to catch up.”
The National Center’s Free Enterprise Project and the Rise of Stefan Padfield
While the anti-DEI movement has only gained momentum in the last few years, the National Center has been around since 1982, when Amy Moritz Ridenour, a former campaign coordinator for Ronald Reagan, founded it.
In the 1990s, they successfully campaigned against the Clinton healthcare plan that would have provided universal healthcare to all Americans. Throughout the early 2000s, they campaigned to limit the amount that businesses which knowingly sold deadly asbestos products must pay in compensation to victims.
One of the National Center’s major initiatives is the Free Enterprise Project (FEP). Launched in 2007, they claim the FEP is “the original and premier opponent of the woke takeover of American corporate life and defender of true capitalism.”
Through the years, the FEP has campaigned against attacks on conservatives, pharmaceutical company support for the Affordable Care Act, and government initiatives to cap corporate carbon dioxide emissions.
But in recent years, the FEP’s focus has been to use shareholder activism to force a shift in corporate America. In 2021, they launched the Stop Corporate Tyranny coalition, which aims to “[expose] the Left’s nearly completed takeover of corporate America” and provide “resources and tools for everyday Americans to fight back against the Left’s woke and censoring mob in the corporate [world].”
The National Center’s funders include anti-LGBTQ hate groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom; religious donor-advised funds like National Christian Foundation; mainstream charitable funds like Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard Charitable; and corporations such as ExxonMobil.
“Free enterprise is just a mask for social conservatism because they want small government, but only with respect to business—they don’t want it with respect to people’s lives,” Wrenn told Uncloseted Media. “It’s about controlling the cultural conversation and our social norms, and that’s very tied up with white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism as an economic means by which to forward their personal agendas,” says Wrenn.
Stahl says President Trump’s positioning as a right-wing populist plays well into the National Center’s strategy. “They’re populist projects that say the liberals are out of touch and against your values. Over the decades, the messaging is the same but different issues get plugged in and we’re seeing this really come to its full flowering because [of] Trump,” he told Uncloseted Media.
In 2023,Stefan Padfield joined the FEP, quickly becoming the deputy director. The following year, the project convinced the U.S. Court of Appeals to overturn a Nasdaq board diversity rule that had required any Nasdaq-listed companies have—or explain why they don’t have—at least two “diverse” directors, including at least one woman and at least one other person who identifies as an underrepresented minority.
Padfield has also penned articles for RealClearMarkets, such as “A Question for Goldman Sachs: What Is a Woman?” in which he claims, “Transgenderism is one of the most divisive issues today,” reducing trans women to men who “become [women] simply by saying so.”
In an email to Uncloseted Media, Padfield says he has “no disdain for trans people or the wider LGBTQ community.” He says he wants to see all people have equal opportunities for maximum flourishing. “Having said that, if someone claims, for example, that they need to be permitted to surgically mutilate minors behind the backs of their parents in order to feel affirmed in their belief that children can be born in the wrong body, then I will be on the side of those defending those children.¹”
The Belief That America Should Be Governed as a Christian Theocracy
The National Center’s mission is reflective of a larger network of conservatives who claim to be protecting so-called viewpoint diversity. Last year, they launched an app to help shareholders identify conservative proposals that would help “hold woke corporations accountable.” The app also provided users with “neutrality v. wokeness” ratings of certain companies.
Cravens says that “viewpoint discrimination” has replaced “political correctness” as conservative buzzwords. “It’s this innocuous-sounding phrase like ‘We need to protect First Amendment speech and maintain pluralism’ … [this false notion] that conservatives and people who oppose anti-racist policies and LGBTQ-inclusive policies are discriminated against. But that is so reductionist because it ignores how white people have claimed and maintained power against communities of color through wealth inequality, racist corporate policies and banking practices,” he says.
He says there’s a rhetorical connection shared across these groups that Christian supremacists have been using for decades. “You say you’re concerned about children and trying to strengthen the family—that’s a totally different kind of marketing than ‘We are evangelicals and we’re here to take over.’ It’s been described as a stealth communication strategy to articulate the same message in secular terms in an effort to reach all Americans.”
What This Means for LGBTQ People
The National Center’s successes have a very real impact on LGBTQ communities. “I think they risk losing their jobs ultimately,” says Cravens. “One of the goals is to drive queer people back into a closet and dismantle any notion that it’s okay to be [openly] queer. They want to turn a group of people toxic so they won’t get service, they won’t get jobs and they won’t be part of society anymore.”
While powerful institutions try to sow division, advocates say it’s critical the LGBTQ community works together to push back against organizations like the National Center.
“It’s always been a minefield,” says Ben Greene, a transgender inclusion consultant and author of Good Queer News.
Greene urges LGBTQ people to stick together. “[We] are going to be our best antidote to [DEI setbacks]. ‘You had a bad experience?’ That needs to go on Glassdoor or your local LGBTQ social media page.” It is going to be an increasingly hard time but there is incredible solidarity between the LGBTQ community and other marginalized groups. “We can’t write off those little moments because that is what will get us out of this,” he says.
Cravens underscores the need for corporate America to have a backbone to push back against organizations like the National Center in an effort to create fair and inclusive workplaces. “A lot of companies advise against anti-DEI shareholder proposals already because they know it’s irresponsible and unprofitable to try to turn back the clock on civil rights. … They should recognize that there is value in diversity and vote down these policies inspired by hateful ideologies.”
A report on the largest survey ever of trans Americans’ health was released on Wednesday, June 11, and its findings reaffirmed what many academics, health care providers and trans people already know: gender-affirming care saves and improves lives, but transphobia often dissuades people from pursuing or continuing it when they need it most.
Over 84,000 trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people aged 18 and up responded to the 2022 U.S. Transgender Survey, spearheaded by Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE). Of respondents who had transitioned, 9 percent had gone back to living as their sex assigned at birth at some point in their lives, at least for a short while — but in almost every single case, the reason was anti-trans discrimination from one’s family, friends, or community.
“Social and structural explanations dominated the reasons why respondents reported going back to living in their sex assigned at birth at some point,” the report found. “Only 4% of people who went back to living in their sex assigned at birth for a while cited that their reason was because they realized that gender transition was not for them. When considering all respondents who had transitioned, this number equates to only 0.36%.”
Meanwhile, respondents who received gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) or gender-affirming surgery overwhelmingly reported feeling “more satisfied” with their lives, 98 percent and 97 percent, respectively.
This watershed report contradicts the popular narrative being circulated by mainstream media, far-right politicians, and anti-trans groups that transgender people are “detransitioning” en masse due to life-shattering “transition regret.” In reality, it shows gender diverse people are living rich and vibrant lives, so long as they are provided the space, support, and care they need from their health care providers and communities.
The survey found a trans person’s overall health and wellbeing also heavily depend upon rates of familial support, a factor that has a profound influence over a trans person’s lifetime experience of suicidality.
The survey has been released in increments as researchers at A4TE wade through the unprecedented amounts of data from trans people who lent their voice to the project. It is a much-needed, comprehensive overview of the challenges — and victories — seen in trans health care since the prior iteration of the study. The report is especially vital considering the Trump Administration moved to remove transgender people from the U.S. Census and other government websites, rendering trans communities potentially invisible, and robbing researchers of crucial data informing public policy decisions.
“Having real concrete and rigorous data about the realities of trans people’s day-to-day lives is also a vital part of dispelling all of those assumptions and stereotypes that plague the public discourse about our community,” said Olivia Hunt, A4TE’s Director of Federal Policy, during a press briefing this week.
The report also touched upon trans people’s access to health care, which increased between 2015 and 2022; the quality of care, as trust between doctors and trans patients has improved; disparities between trans people across racial groups, which showed trans people of color are generally more prone to experience discrimination compared to white trans people; and the mental health challenges facing the trans community, as 44 percent of respondents met the criteria for serious psychological distress, compared to less than 4 percent of the general U.S. population.
Many of these issues have likely been exacerbated since the data was collected. The lead-up to President Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office incited a new wave of anti-trans animus, impeding access to care and stirring up transphobic vitriol and harassment.
“From 2015 to 2022, state-level policy environments became more protective in some ways for trans people; however, in 2022 alone, when the USTS was administered, 315 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced across the country, many of which harm trans and nonbinary people’s access to healthcare, participation in sports, access to public facilities, or other facets of public life,” the report says.
“This political landscape has only worsened since the administration of the 2022 USTS, with the introduction of 571 anti-LGBTQ nationwide in 2023 and 489 in 2024,” it continues. “At the time of writing, data on trans and nonbinary people has been erased from federal health surveys. As funding for LGBTQ research is stripped away, the USTS has become an ever more critical resource on the lived experiences of trans and nonbinary people.”
Nonetheless, trans life and trans joy have persisted, as testimonies featured in the U.S. Trans Survey demonstrate.
“I have thrived in the past 12 months in transition, I have a genuine smile on my face most days & laugh with genuine joy,” wrote Charlotte, a trans woman, in her survey response. “I have grown into the woman I was meant to be.”
And as Roo, a nonbinary person, wrote: “Once I learned what it meant to be trans, I never looked back. I traded in my Regina George-esque life for a future with a balding head and a predisposition for a beer gut. I’ve never been more happy to be alive—every single day. ”
Wedding spending by same-sex couples and their out-of-state guests has boosted state and local economies by approximately $5.9 billion over the past 10 years, a new study has found.
There are an estimated 823,000 same-sex couples in the U.S., according to a recent report from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, and more than 591,000 have married since the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized marriage equality nationwide. About 80 percent of married couples (473,000 couples) celebrated with a wedding or other events.
At the average $8,546 spent per wedding, these couples have spent approximately $4.9 billion on their celebrations, with an estimated 22.2 million guests in attendance. Among them, 7.6 million guests traveled from out-of-state, generating an additional economic boost of nearly $1 billion over the past 10 years.
Same-sex couples’ weddings have also generated an estimated $432.2 million in state and local sales tax revenue — enough to support an estimated 41,300 jobs for one year.
The boost from Obergefell has been felt across U.S., with the biggest boost surprisingly seen in the regions with the least out LGBTQ+ residents. Approximately $2.3 billion of the wedding spending occurred in the South, $1.7 billion in the West, $1 billion in the Midwest, and $900 million in the Northeast.
“Marriage equality has had a significant impact on the lives and well-being of same-sex couples in the U.S.,” said lead author Christy Mallory, Interim Executive Director and Legal Director at the Williams Institute. “Additionally, it has offered a substantial financial benefit to businesses as well as state and local governments.”
Nine states have recently introduced resolutions asking the Supreme Court to reconsider Obergefell, citing state constitutional amendments banning marriage between same-sex couples that were nullified. None have yet passed, and even if they were to, the resolutions are nonbinding — meaning they carry no legal weight, and the court is not obligated to hear them.
While the Supreme Court has made no official move to reconsider marriage equality, some justices have voiced opposition to Obergefell even after the ruling. When the court overturned the national right to an abortion in Roe v. Wade, Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion at the time that the court should also revisit and overrule decisions that prevent state restrictions on contraception, marriage equality, sodomy, and other private consensual sex acts, calling the rulings “demonstrably erroneous.”
If the Supreme Court reverses Obergefell , marriages between same-sex couples will still be recognized federally under the Respect for Marriage Act. Signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022, the act mandates that the federal government recognizes same-sex and interracial marriages, and that all states recognize those performed in other states. However, the act does not require states to allow marriages between same-sex couples.
An alarming amount of LGBTQ+ seniors are living in poverty — but it doesn’t have to be this way.
One in five U.S. households led by people over 50 have no retirement savings, according to a recent report from the Milken Institute and SAGE, and 61 percent of American elders — those ages 65 and older — say that they worry about not having enough financial resources to support themselves in later life.
This fear is felt even more strongly by LGBTQ+ elders, about 40 percent of whom are living below the federal poverty line. Compared to the rest of the population, their poverty rates can be between 20 and 40 percent higher than their heterosexual and cisgender peers.
This is due to several factors, including “lifetime earnings that might be lower, economic discrimination, and lower homeownership rates,” says Caitlin MacLean, managing director of innovative finance at the Milken Institute and one of the report authors. LGBTQ+ people are also more likely to be denied loans and to live alone in single-income homes.
“Long-term care is extremely expensive as we age, and 50 percent of the LGBTQ+ population falls into the ‘very low income’ level determined by area median income, making it very difficult to even afford subsidized housing and care, let alone market-rate options,” MacLean tells The Advocate. “This further exacerbates the lack of economic opportunity for LGBTQ+ older adults.”
One of the most straightforward ways to address this crisis is to fund affordable, LGBTQ+-affirming elder housing programs, which can be done through social bonds, impact investment funds, or prize funds. Additionally, affirming programming, workforce training, and inclusive design improvements can be added to existing services.
While government incentives may not be available, especially in places with anti-LGBTQ+ laws, MacLean says “even states that have discriminatory policies often have cities that have their own ability to issue debt or build housing or design funding incentives that are at a local level and therefore more flexible.”
It’s not just state or local governments that can act — MacLean stresses that financial institutions, private investors, and corporations can also take initiative. Even individuals could do something “as simple as volunteering time at housing that already exists for older adults.”
“Necessity drives innovation, so we are hopeful that individuals in communities across the country will see the growing need we have for affordable and affirming housing and care for older adults,” MacLean says. “We hope that each person can find a way to become a champion for designing, funding or advocating for this type of service and supports.”
“Everyone can do something to be a champion for LGBTQ+ older adults,” she adds. “Now more than ever, we need people who are willing to step up and stand up for long-term solutions for a healthier, thriving community.”
Converse has long been known for its fantastic Pride collections. The iconic shoe brand has celebrated Pride Month with rainbow footwear every year since 2015.
This year, the company is celebrating its 10-year anniversary of showing its Pride. “Converse has always stood with the bold, the daring, and the unapologetic,” the website says. “For our 2025 ‘Proud to Be’ celebration, we’re not looking back, we’re lighting the way forward towards a future of love and joy for everyone.”
The brand also invited members of past Pride campaigns to write love letters to their future selves.
2025 Converse Pride Collection
“I know that you are somewhere creating the life you’ve always dreamed of,” writes Xavier.
“I hope to look back and see a world where I no longer need to justify my existence,” says Allié.
Ayo writes, “I hope that you never forget the magic of black queer and trans existence.”
The letters are also highlighted in a powerful ad.
The 2025 Converse Pride shop includes two t-shirts and 15 unique sneaker designs – including rainbow flames, zebra stripes, and rainbow soles. There is also an option to create your own custom pride shoes, with gradients available depicting colors of the trans, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, and nonbinary flags.
2025 Converse Pride Collection
The company also puts its money where its mouth is, partnering with organizations like It Gets Better, the Ali Forney Center, and the Boston Alliance of LGBTQ+ Youth to provide annual grants. Since 2015, the website says, Converse has pledged and donated almost $3.4 million to LGBTQ+ organizations around the world.
On January 7, 2025, Meta announced sweeping rollbacks to its content moderation policies across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads — ending third-party fact-checking in the U.S. and weakening its hate-speech policies worldwide. Additionally, the company announced that it would halt “proactive” enforcement of some policies on harmful content, notably hate speech. As noted in GLAAD’s 2025 Social Media Safety Index, the rollbacks include new exceptions expressly allowing anti-LGBTQ hate speech, such as stating that LGBTQ people are “abnormal” and “mentally ill,” as well as Meta’s own use of anti-LGBTQ language (referring to LGBTQ people using the terms “homosexuality” and “transgenderism” in its updated hate speech policy).
In the absence of data from Meta itself, GLAAD partnered with UltraViolet and All Out to survey more than 7,000 active users from 86 countries — focusing on people who Meta defines as belonging to protected characteristic groups — to understand how these policy shifts have affected their experience online. The findings are both stark and deeply concerning: since the rollbacks, users report a sharp rise in hateful content, increased self-censorship, and a pervasive sense of vulnerability. The survey is part of a larger campaign, called Make Meta Safe.
Survey Methodology We conducted a mixed-methods survey in English and in Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian, and French, reaching individuals targeted by hate on the basis of protected characteristics (i.e. race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, religion, national origin, and serious disease). Recruitment was done organically — via email and social-media outreach through co-sponsoring organizations — to ensure that our sample reflected communities most at risk. After cleaning for duplicates, respondents shared quantitative ratings and qualitative testimony about their experiences since January 2025.
Key Findings at a Glance
1 in 6 respondents report being the victim of some type of gender-based or sexual violence on Meta platforms.
92% are concerned about harmful content increasing since the rollbacks.
72% see more hate targeting protected groups.
92% feel less protected from being exposed to or targeted by harmful content.
Over 25% say they have been targeted directly with hate or harassment.
66% have witnessed harmful content in their feeds.
77% feel less safe expressing themselves freely on Meta platforms.
Hate on the Rise When asked if harmful content had increased, 75% of LGBTQ respondents, 76% of women, and 78% of people of color said “yes.” One user, who is trans and nonbinary, reported, “Violence against me has skyrocketed since January. I live in daily fear.” Another shared:
“I rarely see friends’ posts now — my feed is filled with obscene manipulated images, commercial ads, and transphobic, sexist, violent comments, even under kitten videos. Death threats are not removed, even when reported.”
Erosion of Safety and Free Expression Ninety-two percent of all respondents say they feel less protected from being exposed to or targeted by harmful content. Among LGBTQ people, notably transgender people, there are stories of targeted harassment:
“I recently saw someone state they wished all transgender people would die by suicide — 41% to become 100%. When I told them how awful that was, they called me a transphobic slur.”
“One night I reported at least 10 comments directly inciting violence towards the LGBT community. Facebook responded within less than a minute saying that the comments were investigated and they didn’t see anything wrong, and [they] kept the comments up.”
“I recently posted information about my transition and someone responded with a picture of a noose.”
A full 77% say they now feel less safe expressing themselves following the policy changes. One respondent noted:
“There are times when I am afraid to comment on a post because of the violence expressed by others in their [comments].”
Gender-Based and Sexual Violence Online Alarmingly, 27% of LGBTQ respondents and 35% of people of color report that they have been the direct targets of gender-based or sexual violence online. Examples include doxxing, stalking, threats of physical harm, and rape threats. As one survivor of digital stalking put it:
“Weaponizing technology to threaten, harass, and silence me has transformed my online existence into a battleground of fear.”
Global Impact, Local Harms While the majority of respondents are from the U.S., U.K., and Canada, voices from the Global South underscore that unchecked hate online can — and does — translate to violence offline. In Colombia, users spoke of renewed attacks on trans people in the wake of Sara Millerey González’s murder, whose brutal killing was filmed and circulated on social media. Where LGBTQ lives are already marginalized or criminalized, these policy rollbacks risk endangering us even more.
Why This Matters Meta produces quarterly reports on the prevalence of harmful content and content labeled as false by fact-checkers. In its most recent report published last month, the company stated that, from January – April 2025, “violating content largely remained unchanged for most problem areas.”
But it’s important to note: those numbers are based solely on internal data and remain opaque to outside scrutiny. Our survey centers the lived experiences of users themselves, revealing that weakened policies have not led to, as Meta claims, “more speech and fewer mistakes” — but rather to a more hostile environment for those already most vulnerable.
A Call to Action Everyone deserves online spaces where they can connect, communicate, and organize without fear of harassment, threats, or dehumanization. GLAAD, UltraViolet, and All Out therefore urge Meta to:
Commission an independent third-party review of the impact of the January 2025 policy changes, centering user experiences.
Reinstate robust hate-speech protections for all historically marginalized groups, including LGBTQ people.
Restore third-party fact-checking and proactive enforcement mechanisms globally.
Engage civil-society stakeholders in future policy deliberations, ensuring that human-rights perspectives shape content-moderation standards.
The data is clear: since Meta’s draconian rollbacks, harmful content has surged, user safety has plummeted, and freedom of expression for marginalized communities hangs in the balance. We call on Mark Zuckerberg and Meta’s leadership to reverse course — restoring the guardrails that make social media a place for community and expression, not only for the broad range of marginalized communities who are so directly experiencing these harms, but for everyone.
Read the full survey report and detailed findings at makemetasafe.org.
