The Mormon church updated its official principles to remind transgendermembers they will only be recognized in rituals by their “biological sex at birth.”
The update to the General Handbook of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not mark a formal change in doctrine, but it offers more detailed guidance on how gender transition affects eligibility for temple participation.
“Worthy members who do not pursue surgical, medical, or social transition away from their biological sex at birth may receive a temple recommend and temple ordinances,” the handbook reads. That follows a prior update to church doctrine in 2020 that reflected a crackdown on transgender identity. It’s a doubling down that has offended ex-Mormons, already driven from positions in the church based on their identity.
“This is specifically focusing on a very narrow exception to the point of vindictiveness, codifying the exception to the exception,” Laurie Lee Hall, a former stake president excommunicated from the church, told The Salt Lake Tribune.
Church leaders have continued to emphasize that transgender people are welcome in regular worship services. “All of Heavenly Father’s children are welcome at church,” the church says on its website.
The handbook also outlines a pathway for those who detransition. “Members who have taken steps to transition and then transition back to their biological sex at birth and are worthy and committed to keeping God’s commandments may receive [temple rituals],” the update states.
The change to the official text of the organization comes as the LDS Church has wrestled openly with LGBTQ+ tolerance. The update reflects the church’s broader approach to LGBTQ+ members: encouraging participation in congregational life while restricting access to certain rites. The faith allows gay and lesbian members to attend and serve in some capacities, but continues to teach that same-sex marriages are a sin.
The handbook also encourages bishops to work with members on a case-by-case basis with “sensitivity and Christlike love,” and advises those experiencing questions about gender identity to seek guidance from church leaders.
When Pornhub released its most-watched categories of 2025, queer-themed content held the top two spots: “Lesbian” was the most viewed category and “Transgender” was the second most viewed, up five spots from 2024.
The global appetite for LGBTQ adult content is increasing in tandem with the explosion of AI porn. Over the last year, Google searches for “AI porn generators” have steadily climbed, with one site receiving 8.57 million visitors in January. But unlike porn made up of real people, AI porn is largely unregulated, opening the door for the exploitation of queer bodies.
“More often than not, AI-generated pornography falls under this umbrella of ‘non photo-realistic media,’ or ‘non hyper-realistic adult content,’ not unlike illustration,” Aurélie Petit, a postdoctoral researcher at the Quebec research chair on French-language artificial intelligence and digital technologies, told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “And the moment you don’t know how to address this kind of content, then you don’t know what to do with a big part of AI adult productions.”
Though there have been steps taken to regulate the AI porn industry, there is still a long way to go. Last year, Congress passed the TAKE IT DOWN Act, which bans the publication of intimate, non-consensual images in the U.S., including AI-generated images. And the sharing of these images, known as deepfakes, is now a felony in Tennessee.
But much of AI porn isn’t based on one person’s likeness. Rather, it’s generated from a vast database of preexisting content used to teach the AI model. So any user who wants to create porn can simply ask an AI model to create their dream scenario, and—in a matter of minutes—a video to their liking that depicts realistic people is created.
“There’s a very real concern that some of the worst types of content on the internet—hateful content, non-consensual content of children … those exist on the internet, and we cannot verify that data sets [used to power AI algorithms] don’t include those images,” says Miranda Wei, postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy.
Outside of deepfakes, U.S. laws leave AI-generated porn in a legal gray area, often varying by state or municipality. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill cracking down on deepfakes and requiring AI-generated content to be watermarked. But there is yet to be consistent policy across the board on how to legislate AI porn.
“When you have real people, or images that look like real people, we understand harm,” says Petit. “But most platforms do not know what to do. … It’s really a legal blur, a policy blur.”
Depictions of Trans Women
Because transphobic people make up a significant chunk of porn consumers, mainstream trans porn is often designed in a way that leans into prejudice. Videos using slurs or harmful tropes perform well on porn websites, and Google trends show that searches for “tranny porn” and “shemale porn” remain high. On Reddit, the largest trans-related subreddit is r/traps, a porn-sharing group named after a derogatory term that describes trans women as “traps” for cis men.
“[The internet] is still often reflecting a very heteronormative mindset. … Those preexisting biases for what kinds of content exists on the internet informs the data that is fed into those AI models,” Wei told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES.
A quick search for “AI trans porn” produces countless generated images of hyper-feminine trans women with unrealistically large penises, often the same length as their torsos. Other videos show trans women being penetrated by men with penises so large that, in real life, they would inevitably cause physical harm.
“When they say trans, you need to really understand it’s trans women, and a trans woman who still has a penis … it’s really a fetishization of trans women pre-operation,” Petit says.
One of Google’s first search results for “AI trans porn” is for CreateAIShemale. On the site, users can build a trans woman from a wide variety of options. They can choose her age, the size of her breasts, butt and penis, and select from nearly 70 modifiers including “bimbo,” “spanked, hand print,” “impregnation” and “pony cock.” The site also lists 42 options for “race,” with strange inclusions such as “goblin” and “green skin.”
On a separate but similar site, the owners write: “Your fantasy, your rules. With Trans AI customization, you can design every detail of your AI companion—from physical characteristics and outfits to voice tone and personality traits. … Our shemale AI models can generate images and videos on demand, making your interactions more vivid and exciting. … Shemale AI makes it possible instantly.”
Brandon Robinson, associate professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Riverside, says these infinite customization options are concerning: “[It] can further the objectification of trans women, as it treats them as just sex objects that can be changed and customized to one’s own likes and desires,” they say. “It also erases that trans women are real, actual human beings, with their own wants, needs, and desires.”
Beyond the fetishization lies a celebration of violence against trans women. A quick search yields videos with headlines that include “AI Generated Shemale Getting Destroyed by a Massive Dick.”
Robinson says these depictions exacerbate preexisting stereotypes. “A lot of men come into dating or hooking up with trans women with these stereotypes.”
Screenshot from PornHub.
Depictions of Gay Men
While deepfake laws in the U.S. now offer some protection, AI porn that isn’t based on one person’s likeness is harder to prosecute. And that’s concerning when you look at the global appetite for gay porn. In 2025, Pornhub reported that “femboy” and “twink” were the site’s two most searched for gay terms. And “Femboy Fixation” was one of the top five trends that defined 2025, with searches for “cute femboy” and “sexy femboy” up 79% and 93%, respectively.
What’s concerning is that AI has the ability to produce depictions of categories—which are code words for skinny, younger men—that take it to the next level. Many AI-generated depictions of these men show very thin, often emaciated, bodies. “It’s giving very unrealistic body ideas,” Robinson told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “And we know that there’s a history of eating disorders and body dysmorphia within the gay community.”
Screenshot from PornHub.
Depictions of children in AI porn is another space that has opened the door for bad-faith actors. A 2026 issue brief from UNICEF found that across 11 countries, at least 1.2 million children reported having had their images manipulated into sexually explicit deepfakes through AI tools in the past year. And while there have been regulations on deepfakes, groups devoted to creating twink and femboy AI porn can create videos that depict youthful, small bodies, potentially making content that blurs the lines between adult content and child pornography.
While some may find it hard to believe that something as sinister and criminalized as child pornography could be informing AI models, Wei says it’s happening. “Using Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) is definitely not legal. It is awful. But lots of illegal things still happen,” she says. “People do use generative AI to generate AI CSAM, because the models have probably ingested CSAM before.”
Screenshot from PornHub.
Lesbian Porn and AI
Unrealistic depictions of lesbian sex are also popping up in AI porn. One AI-generated lesbian porn video shows a woman licking semen out of another woman’s vagina—inserting an invisible male presence into sex between women.
Another disturbing part of AI’s representation of lesbians has to do with how it often makes women look identical. In one AI-generated image, two lesbians in matching black bikinis sit on the beach. Their haircuts, facial features and bodies are the same. Through these kinds of images, AI risks encouraging viewers to overlook women’s individuality or—worse—lean into the fetish of incest.
In addition, many of the AI-generated depictions of women are feminine, extremely thin, white, and often have unrealistically large breasts and butts. While these attributes are already sought after in conventional porn, AI generators have the ability to produce depictions of women with impossible body proportions.
“[AI porn] maintains unrealistic beauty standards that most people can’t conform or live up to but also it pushes most people out of being seen as desirable and beautiful,” says Robinson.
The Impact on the Viewer
AI-generated porn can be harmful for those who watch it, especially for young people: Pornography is already highly addictive, with one study finding a 91% increase in pornography consumption since 2000. Another study found that between 17-24% of adolescents have experienced a dependency on AI.
Wei finds this troubling because much of how AI porn is generated is a black box. “From a consumer standpoint, you don’t really have the ability to audit how this tool was made,” she says.
Because of this, users may unknowingly consume media that is based off of abusive imagery or even child pornography. This is because the massive amount of data that tech companies use to feed their AI models is gathered from across the internet, making it impossible for individuals to vet each piece of information. “It feels more risky to use it when you don’t know who created [the AI porn], what their intentions were, or how they collected the data that was used to make it.”
Wei says what’s most concerning is that the data that tech companies use to feed their AI models is not always publicly available. “Large tech companies can be very protective of where they get their data. That is part of their business,” she says. “The scale at which these data sets are being collected means that you cannot have a human manually go through and verify that every piece collected was consensual [or] that a queer person was accurately depicted.”
What Can be Done?
Some popular generative AI models say there are safety regulations in place. ChatGPT’s website states that the model cannot be used for the creation of “illicit activities” or “sexual violence.” But Petit says that bad-faith actors may still succeed in skirting regulation. “There’s so many AI generators, and there’s people whose entire game is to break the generation,” she says. “You can tweak it more and more and can make the AI do something it doesn’t want.”
In one Reddit thread, a user of Elon Musk’s Grok expressed frustration about newly developed moderation making it harder to generate explicit images. In response, another user seemingly confirmed they were able to find a workaround: “Right now I’m generating realistic videos of completely naked men with tentacles and fluids and non-con sex talk and moans and it works great,” the user wrote.
The potential for nefarious uses of AI came to light when it was revealed that, starting in December 2025, Grok produced and shared upwards of 1.8 million sexualized images of women over the course of nine days. “As we’ve seen with Grok and the numerous scandals over the past few years, the ability to stop an AI model from creating explicit imagery of someone is … unsolved,” Wei says.
Wei doesn’t have a bulletproof solution. “I’m not necessarily aware of a universal technique that could prevent, 100% of the time, the creation of images of other people,” she says.
There are, however, strategies that help safeguard AI models. For example, red teaming, which consists of prompting an AI model to generate illicit content, is an ethical tool companies can use to spot regulatory weaknesses. “[It’s] a way to adversarially test, to attack a model and see if it can do harmful things which you are trying to prevent it from doing,” says Wei.
With some companies like Google employing hackers to red team in hopes of identifying security concerns, Wei thinks other AI companies should do the same.
Another approach lies in public model cards, which are small files accompanying AI models that provide information about the data the model was trained on, as well as the AI’s intended use and limitations. Both of these methods are in pursuit of transparency, which Wei sees as necessary to safer AI use. “There should be a way to make technologies safe when people want to use them. … Transparency is needed in order to make progress on safety issues, but that’s again, ongoing.”
In the meantime, Wei says that “tech companies and lawmakers need to step up” and implement greater regulation around AI porn. “Effective regulation also needs the input of people who already have lived experience with pornography, like sex workers and adult actors, and anyone who would be depicted in this imagery.”
A Seattle man has been sentenced to seven years in prison for a violent hate crime attack against a transgender woman in the city’s University District.
Andre Karlow was convicted on Friday (13 March) of a second-degree assault and committing a hate crime for attacking Andie Holcepl in March 2025.
Holcepl testified that she encountered Karlow and several other men while walking to a Seattle Mariners opening day game.
Prosecutors said Karlow shouted insults and called her a “drag queen” before punching her in the mouth when she attempted to record the harassment.
Witnesses said multiple attackers then punched and kicked her while shouting anti-transgender slurs.
Holcepl suffered broken teeth, facial injuries, and a brain bleed before escaping to a restaurant for help.
Jurors determined the assault met Washington state’s legal definition of a hate crime, concluding Holcepl was targeted because of her gender identity.
During sentencing in King County Superior Court, prosecutors also referenced a recorded jail call in which Karlow said: “If I didn’t hate trans people before, I do now, absolutely. I think that Donald Trump should kill them all. Get them out of here. They’re weird.”
Assistant prosecutor Yessenia Manzo told the court that attacks like the one on Holcepl reinforce fears many transgender people feel about their safety in public spaces.
The University District assault was not the only case tied to Karlow. In 2024, he punched a transgender fare ambassador working for Sound Transit after being asked to verify his fare at a station.
A jury convicted him of fourth-degree assault in that case but did not reach a verdict on a hate crime charge.
According to reports, Karlow appeared largely remorseless during sentencing proceedings as the judge imposed an 84-month prison term for the 2025 attack.
Graham Platner, the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate who is trying to unseat Maine’s longtime Senator Susan Collins (R), recently said that Republicans have attacked transgender rights as part of an “invented culture-war scare” to distract from economic issues (namely, taxing billionaires). A similar point was recently made by state Rep. and U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico (D-TX).
Platner – who has had several of his own scandals – made his comments last week while speaking to Slate’s Death, Sex, and Money podcast. The podcast hosts mentioned how Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) refused to comply with President Donald Trump’s demand that Maine ban all trans female athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports.
Subsequently, Illinois-based conservative billionaire Richard Uihlein donated $800,000 to a state ballot initiative to enact Trump’s ban. EqualityMaine, GLAD Law and the Maine Women’s Lobby called Uihlein’s effort a “cynical attempt by one of the richest people in the world to manipulate voters” and said the initiative would “increase bullying and harassment and cost local schools millions of dollars for construction and litigation.”
In the podcast, Platner said, “The anti-trans campaign in Maine [is] funded by an out-of-state billionaire to make sure that we have this discussion and we don’t talk about raising his taxes.”
“I think there are, like, two trans kids that compete in high school sports in Maine,” Platner continued. “There are 40,000 Mainers who are going to lose health care because of the lack of the Affordable Care Act extension. One of those things seems very important and real to me. One of them seems like an invented culture-war scare to keep people divided.”
Platner added that, as a high school wrestler, he had competed against cisgender female opponents, and said, “There was no uproar… I’m sorry – I cannot take it seriously.”
Talarico made similar comments in a March 9 MS NOW interview in which he said that, since winning Texas’ Democratic Senate primary, national media interviewers have not asked him about the cost of housing or prescription drugs, adding, “The only thing the media wants to ask me about are trans athletes.”
“The only minority destroying this country is the billionaires,” Talarico said. Trans people are 1% of the population. Undocumented people are 1% of the population. Muslims are 1% of the population. We are all focused on the wrong 1%. Trans people aren’t taking away our healthcare. Undocumented people aren’t defunding our schools. Muslims aren’t cutting taxes for themselves and their rich friends – it’s the billionaires and their puppet politicians. And so we need, not only the media but all of us, need to focus on the real problem at hand.”
Talarico and Platner’s responses mark a departure from Democratic politicians who voiced support for trans sports bans in the face of Republican anti-trans attacks during the 2024 election campaign. During that campaign, Republicans spent at least $215 million on anti-trans attack ads, including accusing Democrats of supporting “boys competing against girls,” a crude reference to the issue.
Republicans have largely framed the issue as one of the inherent fairness of sports competition (even though studies suggest that trans athletes have no inherent advantages over cis competitors, and may even have comparable disadvantages) and of protecting the safety and dignity of women’s spaces (furthering transphobic tropes that vilify trans people as a threat to women and girls).
During the 2024 election season, failed Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred’s opponent, incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), hammered Allred on trans rights. In response, Allred went on defense, issuing an ad that said in part, “Let me be clear: I don’t want boys playing girls’ sports or any of this ridiculous stuff that Ted Cruz is saying.”
Trans journalist Erin Reed called Allred’s response “ill-advised.” Cruz ended up beating him by nearly 10 points.
Shortly after Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump, two House Democrats, Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Seth Moulton (D-MA), also voiced support for anti-trans sports bans, even though both had previously opposed anti-trans legislation and supported legislation to protect trans rights.
Similarly, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) recently said that he supports trans equality in everything but sports. The prospective 2028 Democratic presidential candidate has previously signed many pieces of pro-trans legislation.
A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to turn over the evidence behind its restrictions on transgendermilitary service members, while laying the groundwork for a potential class action that could extend the case’s protections to transgender troops across the armed forces.
The hearing in Talbott v. United States had originally been scheduled to take place in person at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C. But Judge Ana Reyes moved the proceeding online due to forecasts of widespread severe weather across the capital region.
Reyes granted in part the plaintiffs’ request to move the case forward and denied, for now, a government motion seeking to halt proceedings while the litigation continues on appeal.
In an electronic order issued after the hearing, the judge directed the government to produce, by April 30, the certified administrative record underlying the policy, as well as the internal materials and evidence officials relied on in crafting the restrictions. She also ordered the government to provide the same documents it is producing in a related case, Shilling v. United States, pending in federal court in Washington state.
At the same time, Reyes set a schedule for a briefing on whether the case should proceed as a class action representing transgender service members more broadly. The parties must propose a briefing schedule by March 20, with arguments on class certification to conclude by June 12. A hearing on the issue is expected the week of June 29.
The lawsuit was filed by transgender service members and prospective recruits who say the administration’s policy, which treats sex as fixed at birth for military service and restricts many transgender people from serving, violates constitutional protections against discrimination.
Reyes previously issued a preliminary injunction nationwide blocking the policy. The administration appealed that ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where the matter remains pending.
During the hearing, Reyes also suggested that government lawyers should notify the appellate court about a key development in the case. She pointed to earlier representations by the Justice Department during arguments at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that no transgender service members had yet been separated from the military under the policy. Reyes said that if separation notices have since been issued, as the plaintiffs’ attorneys indicated, the government should inform the court of the change. Lawyers for the transgender plaintiffs had accused the DOJ of misleading the appeals court when one of the attorneys told judges that nobody had been separated from the armed services under the policy.
Monday’s hearing unfolded largely as a procedural check-in, but Reyes repeatedly pressed lawyers about why the plaintiffs waited months to ask the court to move the litigation forward while the appeal continued.
She also raised questions about how the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year in Trump v. CASA, Inc. could affect the scope of relief available in the case. That ruling has been interpreted as limiting when federal judges may issue nationwide remedies, potentially requiring plaintiffs to proceed as a certified class if they seek broad relief.
Without class certification, Reyes suggested, the court could be limited to granting relief only to the specific plaintiffs before it. Even so, lawyers representing the transgender service members said the hearing marked a meaningful step toward resolving the legality of the policy.
“Today was a meaningful step forward for transgender service members challenging the ban,” Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ+ Rights and lead co-counsel on the case, told The Advocate after the hearing.
“Judge Reyes indicated initial support for potentially certifying a class of transgender service members, a measure that could provide the protection needed for transgender troops and their families,” Minter said. “She also ordered the government to produce any initial evidence that they claim supports the ban. Despite posturing from this administration, the question of whether this ban can move forward is far from settled.”
A major ‘DIY’ hormone resource website appears to have closed just days after being targeted by right-wing and gender-critical media outlets.
HRT Cafe, a grassroots database of tutorials, resources, and information on hormone replacement therapy (HRT), closed its doors earlier this week.
The website, which was maintained by a small, anonymous group of developers, was considered one of the biggest resources for ‘DIY’ HRT in the UK.
‘DIY’ HRT, also known as self-medicating, is the practice of obtaining and administering medication with minimal or no medical oversight. It is considered a last resort to accessing gender-affirming care. It is not illegal to possess non-controlled hormones for personal use without a prescription in the UK.
The practice has become increasingly common among trans adults in the UK given the decades-long wait times in accessing gender-affirming care through the NHS and the immense financial barriers in accessing private prescriptions, which can cost hundreds in monthly fees. A 2022 report from TransActual estimated that around 25 per cent of the UK trans adult community had self-medicated at some point during their transition.
Hormones have been increasingly difficult to access in the UK. (Getty)
HRT Cafe provided educational resources on various masculinising and feminising gender-affirming medications, clarifying safety considerations and side effects for each medication. It also maintained a list of online vendors providing each medication.
Developers shuttered the site unexpectedly earlier this week. No official statement has been published, only that its developers were no longer accepting donations.
Its closure came just days after a number of right-wing news outlets, including The Daily Signal, published articles on ‘DIY’ vendors citing HRT Cafe and other resource sites. Gender-critical pundits also posted on social media to suggest this was just the first step in getting additional resource sites shut down.
While several LGBTQ+ and trans non-profits advise against self-medicating, warning of potential harm due to contamination from unregulated vendors, several members of the community have said it is the last feasible way for them to access the potentially life-saving medication.
Samathy, a 29-year-old trans woman in the UK, told PinkNews last year that self-medicating was the only viable way to continue transitioning after her GP revoked her prescription without warning.
“I’d much rather enjoy being treated for my NHS-diagnosed medical condition by an NHS doctor,” she said. “History shows us that removing people’s access to healthcare does not remove the need for it.”
Several GPs have abruptly cancelled prescriptions for trans adult patients over the past few years over a claimed “lack of expertise.”
Clinical psychologist Dr Aidan Kelly criticised the claim, saying that its justification ignored the purpose of shared-care agreements, which sees specialists provide clinical guidance to GPs.
“GPs have expertise in prescribing hormones, they do it for cis people all the time,” he said to PinkNews in May last year.
It also comes as NHS England announced an evidence review into the effects of hormones on transgender adults, leading to concerns on whether access could be under threat.
The U.S. Department of State has finalized a new immigration rule requiring visa applicants to identify their sex assigned at birth. Advocates warn that the change will expose transgender and nonbinary travelers to scrutiny, delays, visa denials, or deportation if their documents do not align with the Trump administration’s definition of sex.
The regulation, published Wednesday in the Federal Register, updates federal immigration procedures to align with an executive order issued by President Donald Trump last year directing agencies to recognize sex as a fixed biological classification and remove references to gender identity from federal policy.
Under the new rule, visa and immigration systems will record sex assigned at birth rather than gender identity and recognize only male or female classifications. The policy applies to visa processing and immigration records maintained by the State Department, including applications for programs such as the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program.
The policy follows other immigration actions by the Trump administration targeting transgender travelers. In 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued guidance barring transgender women athletes from receivingcertain “extraordinary ability” visas used by elite performers and competitors entering the United States, arguing that participation in women’s sports could count against applicants seeking those visas.
For transgender and nonbinary travelers, particularly those whose passports reflect gender markers that differ from their sex assigned at birth, the policy could create bureaucratic conflicts between identity documents and federal immigration records. Such discrepancies could carry heightened consequences amid the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement posture, where inconsistencies in official documents can trigger additional vetting or allegations of misrepresentation during visa adjudication.
State Department guidance allows consular officers to request proof of sex at birth and potentially deny visas if they suspect a mismatch between gender identity and sex assigned at birth.
Immigration attorneys warn that information recorded during visa adjudication can be transferred to federal enforcement databases used by immigration authorities, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Discrepancies between identity documents and government records can later surface during border inspections, asylum screenings, or removal proceedings.
President Donald Trump has pursued an aggressive immigration crackdown that has already placed LGBTQ+ migrants at risk of deportation to hostile countries. In recent cases reported by The Advocate, attorneys warned that gay and transgender asylum seekers have faced removal or threatened deportation to places such as Uganda and Iran, where homosexuality is criminalized and punishable by imprisonment or even death.
Immigration attorney Bekah Wolf of the American Immigration Council told The Advocate that some of these cases are “textbook asylum cases,” involving people fleeing countries where “who they are is criminalized and punishable by torture or death.”
Several countries now issue passports with nonbinary “X” gender markers or allow people to legally change their gender on identity documents. The U.S. rule forces officials to override those markers or treat discrepancies between documents as potential misrepresentation, triggering additional scrutiny during visa processing.
The immigration rule is part of a broader effort across federal agencies to implement the executive order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which directs agencies to define sex as an immutable classification and revise policies that recognize gender identity.
“The Trump administration’s new rule allowing DHS and ICE to scrutinize and potentially deny visas and immigration benefits to people based on perceived ‘gender identity fraud’ is the administration’s latest political attack on America’s transgender community,” Sean Ebony Coleman, founder and CEO of Destination Tomorrow, a national LGBTQ+ nonprofit, said in a statement to The Advocate.
“While framed as an immigration measure, this rule builds on the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict recognition of gender identity and limit access to personal government documents,” Coleman said. “Policies like this create harm and open the door to profiling, harassment, and discrimination against transgender people, including U.S. citizens.”
Destination Tomorrow is a Bronx-founded organization that provides housing, workforce development, health services, and other support programs for LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender and gender-nonconforming communities.
“Transgender people deserve to live openly and safely without government actions that turn identity into a reason for suspicion, exclusion, or unequal treatment under the law,” Coleman said.
A Memphis-area tech consultant with a background in mutual aid and LGBTQ+ advocacy is now trying her hand at county government. If successful, Lena Chipman would be the first out trans person elected to public office in western Tennessee, according to her campaign team.
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Chipman, a Democrat, is running for a seat on the Shelby County Board of Commissioners representing District 13, centered around East Memphis. Chipman told The Advocate her campaign is focused on community well-being and fighting back against policies enacted at the state and federal levels that she considers harmful.
“I’m not running to be more of the same. I’m not running to be a centrist Democrat who doesn’t make any changes.” Chipman said. “I want to solve the big problems. I want to create big impact.”
From corporate offices to community organizing
For Chipman, making a difference begins with channeling lessons from their professional and personal life. For starters, Chipman has lived in Shelby County since 1985. Close familiarity with the area and its needs makes for more effective leadership, they said.
Chipman also points to their background in the tech industry. After earning a graduate degree from the University of Memphis, they rose through the ranks and became a senior executive at a Fortune 500 company, they said.
“It gives me a lot of background in: How do you negotiate complex systems?” Chipman said. “How do you solve problems when you have multiple competing stakeholders that all want different things?”
Outside the corporate world, Chipman said they became involved in mutual aid efforts decades ago, but expanded their advocacy after coming out as transgender about four years ago. “It became really apparent that if I didn’t get out there and help do the work, then it wasn’t going to get done,” they said.
Chipman would be the first out trans person elected to public office in western Tennessee.Photo courtesy of the Lena Chipman for County Commission 13 campaign
Putting beliefs into practice
Chipman became involved with local nonprofits and LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, even delivering remarks outside Memphis City Hall at a pro-trans-rights demonstration organized by LGBTQ+ activist groups in 2023.
Chipman hopes to combine these experiences into a county commission platform focused on effective management and community uplift. That means better local transit, a stronger social safety net, and local protection against policies passed by higher levels of government, they said.
One proposal would give Shelby County at least partial oversight of the Memphis Area Transit Authority, which currently operates under city leadership. Chipman said regional oversight could help expand service to communities that are currently harder to reach.
“When you don’t have an effective transit system, it touches all the different problems that you have inside of the county,” Chipman said. “Lack of transit drives poverty. … It affects even things like education. If your kid has no easy way to get around the city, then now you have incurred the cost.”
Chipman also supports expanding bus transit infrastructure, subsidized internships connected to union jobs, improved support for people attending pretrial and probation appointments, and a publicly funded motorsports venue intended to reduce illegal drag racing on county roads.
“All of these things have worked together to fight poverty,” they said.
Out in public office
Chipman’s campaign comes at a time when trans people across the United States, and especially in Southern states like Tennessee, face threats to their health care, employment, and even daily lives. If elected, Chipman would be just the second out trans person elected in Tennessee, following the election of Olivia Hill to local office in Nashville in 2023.
But Chipman said her campaign would be stronger precisely because she is not part of the “status quo.”
“This office gives you a megaphone. The moment you are in any form of political office, you have a voice that is louder,” Chipman said. “This voice gives me the ability to advocate.”
Chipman said LGBTQ+ rights would figure prominently in her work as a county commissioner. They suggested providing tax incentives to developers who build properties with non-gendered facilities, in light of statelaws restricting trans people from accessing the bathrooms that align with their gender.
With Shelby County’s primary municipal election set for May 5, Chipman said they hope their message resonates with voters across the district.
“I’m not running because I want to be in office, [or] because we need trans people in office. We do, but that’s not why I’m doing this,” Chipman said. “I’m doing this because I’ve seen the challenges that Shelby County has. … And we need people who are willing to actually change things.”
An editor who worked on the animated film The Bad Guys 2 is suing two major entertainment companies behind the project — DreamWorks Animation and NBCUniversal Media — alleging anti-trans discrimination during the film’s production.
Parker Goldsmith, who is transgender, filed a lawsuit against the companies in California state court last week, alongside several people who worked on the film, including former editor John Venzon.
Goldsmith alleges that throughout production, Venzon repeatedly subjected them to harassment related to their gender identity. According to the complaint, Venzon used Goldsmith’s deadname, sent them unsolicited memes about transgender people, asked invasive questions about their medical transition and personal life, and made sexually inappropriate remarks.
The lawsuit describes the behavior as “severe, pervasive, and unwelcome harassment” that created a hostile work environment during the production of the DreamWorks sequel.
Goldsmith also alleges that Venzon frequently singled them out in front of coworkers by discussing their pronouns and gender identity and asking personal questions about their transition. In some instances, the complaint says, Venzon asked intrusive questions about hormone treatment and made jokes about transgender bodies.
According to the filing, Goldsmith reported the conduct to supervisors multiple times before eventually escalating the issue to human resources.
Venzon was fired from the film in March 2024, Law360 reported. By that point, Goldsmith had already begun working remotely on the film after raising concerns with human resources, according to the lawsuit.
But the lawsuit alleges that the workplace environment did not improve after complaining. Goldsmith says coworkers and supervisors continued to discuss the HR investigation openly and to mock references to human resources that circulated among staff, creating what the lawsuit describes as a “retaliatory environment.”
Goldsmith continued working on The Bad Guys 2 until the production wrapped in May 2025. However, the lawsuit alleges that after reporting the harassment, the companies stopped offering them new work opportunities despite multiple openings for which they were qualified.
Goldsmith is seeking compensation for emotional distress, punitive damages, and other losses. The lawsuit also asks the court to require the companies to discipline responsible managers and provide specialized workplace training to employees involved in the production.
Media representatives for the two companies did not immediately return The Advocate’s requests for comment.
An attorney for Goldsmith said the case comes down to “their right to work in an environment free from harassment and hostility based on sex, gender, gender identity, and gender expression.”
“The entertainment industry has long struggled with these issues,” wrote attorney Eliot Rushovich in an email to The Advocate. “Even though speaking up can carry real professional risks, our client felt these rights were too important to remain silent.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is set to sign an executive order today at the Brooklyn Community Pride Center in Crown Heights that will officially establish the first-ever Mayor’s Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs. Mamdani will also appoint attorney Taylor Brown as the office’s inaugural director, making her the first transgender person in history to lead a New York City office or agency.
Mamdani wrote in a statement shared with Out and The Advocate, “New York City is proud of its LGBTQIA+ community and will refuse to deny healthcare, safety, or dignity to anyone on the basis of their identity. With Taylor Brown as Director of the new Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs, the city’s queer community will not only be celebrated, but protected at every turn.”
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“New York has given me everything — life-saving health care, education, a home, a career, my chosen family, and a life of purpose. I am so proud to serve this city as the inaugural Director of the Mayor’s Office for LGBTQIA+ Affairs,” Brown said in a statement. “I will work every day to ensure that the doors of New York City remain open to all and to continue New York City’s legacy as a beacon of opportunity and hope for those who have been ignored, discriminated against, and intentionally excluded.”
“I look forward to working across agencies to ensure that we are protecting the LGBTQIA+ community from hostile actors that do not share New York City’s values,” Brown added. “Thank you to Mayor Mamdani, Deputy Mayor Su, and Commissioner Attah-Mensah, whom I look forward to working alongside, for this extraordinary opportunity to serve the people of New York.”
Who is Taylor Brown?
Brown’s career has centered on the advancement of constitutional and statutory civil rights protections for transgender people across the country, with a particular focus on health care equity and access, prisoner rights, education, and employment.
Prior to this new role, Brown served as an assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s Office.
What will the New York City Mayor’s Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs do?
The Mayor’s Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs has been designed as a centralizing force in municipal government to oversee and coordinate resources and initiatives concerning LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers.
The office will also be tasked with enforcing equality guidelines, helping ensure that discrimination based on gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation does not occur in other city agencies.
In addition, the new office will absorb theNYC Unity Project — the existing city initiative that coordinates services for LGBTQ+ New Yorkers — and is committed to expanding it.
Why is this move from Mayor Mamdani significant?
The historic move not only marks an institutional shift for the city but also highlights Mamdani’s commitment to the LGBTQ+ community. This draws a stark contrast with other Democrats at a timewhen the Democratic Party is being urged to “do more” for queer people.
In recent months, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has also come under fire —repeatedly — for comments abouttransgender athletes and the usage of pronouns, arguing that the Democratic Party should be more “culturally normal” during an interview withCNN.
