The Trump administration has issued a new rule for airlines requiring an end to gender demarcations besides male or female.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol issued a new rule, citing an executive order signed by President Donald Trump the first day of his new term. The regulation demands carriers to update guidance for their Advance Passenger Information System, or APIS. Under Democratic President Joe Biden, airlines could note passenger gender with as male, female or other, but can no longer afford that recognition to genders outside the binary.
“Existing APIS regulatory language provides that ‘M’ or ‘F’ (M=Male; F=Female) sex markers are to be accepted in the transmission. However, CBP systems had previously accepted characters other than ‘M’ or ‘F’ without returning an error response or requiring resubmission,” the new rule states.
“Effective July 14, 2025, air carriers will have an informed compliance period of 90-days where values other than ‘M’ or ‘F’ in the sex field will not require resubmission. After the compliance period, APIS will begin returning a resubmit or ‘X response’ which indicates insufficient information requiring resubmission, when values other than ‘M’ or ‘F’ are submitted in the sex field.”
That means as of October 12, airlines will no longer be able to submit an alternative gender. The change also makes clear if airlines submit a male or female designation that is different than anything submitted on the original travel document, the carrier won’t face any type of penalties.
Airlines who face questions must call up CBP offices in Honolulu, Miami or New York, depending on the region.
Of note, the ACLU challenged Trump’s order in February, and a judge in June issued an injunction requiring the State Department to issue passports and other travel documents with alternative gender markers. The State Department is continuing to fight in court for the right to revoke or replace those documents and require male or female designations on every form.
But CBP is part of the Department of Homeland Security, and has authority over any international flights to and from the United States.
A CBP spokesperson acknowledged to The Guardian that the gender marker on any traveler’s documents “is not criteria for an applicant’s admission into the U.S.”
The Terminal Tower, “Cleveland’s Signature Skyscraper,” beamed purple for the second straight year in support of LGBTQ youth and against bullying.
Photo: Super Nina Photography
It is the first landmark in Ohio to participate in Spirit Day, and the skyline this year expanded the purple output, with the nearby Beaux Arts post office plaza also lighting its columns, reflections in the mirrored new headquarters of Sherwin Williams, and additional purple illuminating the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Photo: Super Nina Photography
The 98-year-old, 52-story, 708-foot-tall Terminal Tower is “Cleveland’s most potent symbol,” Cleveland Historical Society notes, connecting thousands of miles of rail lines and centering industrial innovation and civic pride. Lighting infrastructure by Vincent Lighting ensures that the Tower is lit in different colors each night to bring visibility and representation to hundreds of nonprofit organizations, causes, and Cleveland’s beloved sports teams every year.
Northeast Ohio’s LGBTQ community is celebrating additional recent milestones for equality with Ohio’s first county-wide passage of a bill to ban harmful conversion practices on LGBTQ youth, the passage of a Gender Freedom resolution by the Lakewood City Council that protects private health care data and deprioritizes police investigations into best practice health care, the first full-time city staff employee appointed liaison to the LGBTQ community, Carey Gibbons, and the passage this week of the CROWN Act, which bans discrimination based on hair texture and style.
Photo: Super Nina Photography
LGBTQ advocacy organizations around Northeast Ohio also participated in Spirit Day, including TransOhio and the LGBT Center, which is celebrating its 50th year.
“It is more important than ever that LGBTQ youth know they have a world of support out here for them. LGBTQ people are here to stay, our spirit is unstoppable, and we are overjoyed to again see this profound representation in the Great Lakes and greater Midwest,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis.
Alice Austen, far left, and other members of The Darned Club on Oct. 29, 1891.Courtesy Collection of Alice Austen House
Born into Victorian tradition in 1866, Alice Austen enjoyed a position in Staten Island society that gave her freedom to pursue what she dubbed “the larky life,” a whirlwind of fashionable gatherings and mischief that challenged social norms. But it was the gift of a wooden box camera from her uncle — and a chance meeting in the Catskills — that set the course for how Austen would be remembered beyond Gilded days: as one of America’s earliest and most adventurous women photographers and for her relationship with Gertrude Tate, which spanned more than half a century.
Though her father abandoned her mother when she was an infant, Austen enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle with extended family in their home called Clear Comfort, overlooking the coastline of the New York City borough of Staten Island. She perfected imagery of her natural surroundings, social doings and “the sporting society set” in a darkroom fashioned from a closet. Her photos serve as a portal to the Gilded Age, with images of the annual regatta, boathouse bathers, charity balls and lawn tennis, a sport newly open to women who were too restricted by corsets to actually run for the ball.
A self-portrait of Alice Austen on the front porch of Clear Comfort in 1892.Courtesy Collection of Alice Austen House
When cycling took off, so did Austen, similarly constrained by long skirts that could catch in the spokes; even so, with heavy camera equipment mounted on her bicycle, she ferried to Manhattan, where she famously documented turn-of-the-century urban life, enshrining the likes of street sweepers, rag pickers, egg sellers and messengers to gelatin print — producing her 1896 “Street Types of New York” portfolio.
As adept at arranging portraiture as igniting flash powder over a night bloom of flowering cactus, Austen also delighted in making gender-bending exposures of female friends. Nicknamed “The Darned Club,” they posed in undergarments with cigarettes, men’s suits with fake mustaches and together in bed in Victorian nighties.
“She was in a period where she and her friends were really embracing this concept of the ‘New Woman,’” said Victoria Munro, executive director of the Alice Austen House, the original Austen residence, which also serves as a museum and exhibition space.
“She created clubs with these new activities that women were able to do, unchaperoned by men — and they were safe spaces for her and her circle of women friends who were, many of them lesbian, able to be together and have fun and really celebrate,” Munro said. “There was also a certain amount of freedom in the 1880s and 1890s, because women weren’t yet considered to even have a sexuality … so they weren’t even suspected of this kind of perceived bad behavior.”
The Darned Club members Alice Austen, Julia Martin and Julia Bredt dressed up on Oct. 15, 1891Courtesy Collection of Alice Austen House
Austen enjoyed the affections of multiple women with “decided longings in that direction,” including the amorous athlete Daisy Elliott. Elliott’s letters left little doubt about Austen’s sapphic leanings. “There is a good deal more between the lines than in them,” Elliott wrote Austen. “Read as much as you care to, and you will not be mistaken … ”
It was a romance doomed to fail, however: That same year, 1897, Austen met Tate.
Despite existing in “a very repressive, heteronormative culture,” as Munro described it, the two summered in Europe, attended the Metropolitan Opera and maintained exclusive memberships, including to the Staten Island Garden Club, which Austen founded. Tate moved in with Austen in 1917.
Bonnie Yochelson, author of “Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen,” speculates that their social conservatism and staying close to high society in their activities were protective.
“Alice’s friends knew her for decades, and they loved her. Tate was delightful and very capable. They were accepted as a couple,” Yochelson said.
Alice Austen and Gertrude Tate in a rowboat in Scotland in 1903.Courtesy Collection of Alice Austen House
But when the 1929 stock market crash caught Austen in the crosshairs, her financial standing plummeted. Though the surrounding waterfront became industrialized, she refused to sell Clear Comfort, and she took out a mortgage not for daily expenses, but to holiday with Tate. Austen sold family heirlooms, and Tate taught dance. Foreclosure was inevitable, though they stayed on as caretakers — opening a tea room with a view of passing ships, until the frailties of age made the enterprise unsustainable.
In 1945, Austen and Tate, then in their 70s, were evicted for good.
Remarkably, the women managed to stay on the exclusive Social Register for years.
“There’s no question that they had friends, and some of their friends did abandon them as they fell on hard times,” Yochelson said. “But many people were very loyal to them … and they continued to pay their membership at a time when they were sufficiently poor that they couldn’t necessarily pay their electric bill.”
A group of friends with tennis racquets on Aug. 5, 1886.Courtesy Collection of Alice Austen House
Austen sold her last remaining possessions to a junk dealer for $600. A preservationist at heart, she gave thousands of plates, negatives and personal treasures to an acquaintance, Loring McMillen, director of the Staten Island Historical Society (now Historic Richmond Town), who declared the women “not broken in spirit but broken in health and finance.”
Austen and Tate lived together in a small apartment until Austen’s arthritis proved too debilitating. When they were forced to separate, Tate moved to her sister’s home in Queens, New York, and Austen to a home for the aged — and eventually, at age 84, a literal poor farm. Ever devoted, Tate visited Austen regularly at the Staten Island Farm Colony.
But the 7,500 photos and negatives Austen entrusted to the Historical Society would prove a saving grace, and they would ensure her place as an eminent documentarian of a changing landscape in the immigration era.
Alice Austen, seated, and Gertrude Tate in 1944.Courtesy Collection of Alice Austen House
In 1950, a Life magazine editor came upon Austen’s photos of 19th century American life — and learned she was alive. Life ran a story the following year, and Austen got a fee that allowed her to take up residence with a private caregiver.
Weeks after publication, the Staten Island Historical Society hosted “Alice Austen Day.” Overwhelmed and delighted to see the first public showing of her work at age 85, Austen attended with Tate and 300 guests. “I’d be taking these pictures myself if I were 100 years younger,” Austen quipped.
In June, because of Austen’s worsening condition and a bureaucratic glitch, plans were being set in motion to move her to Welfare Island, then a location of public institutions for the aged and infirm. She would not make the journey. On June 9, 1952, Tate was preparing to make the trip from Queens to visit when the phone rang: Austen had been wheeled to the nursing home porch and simply passed away, quietly bathed in morning sunlight.
Austen was buried at Staten Island’s Moravian Cemetery. Tate died 10 years later, at 91. Her family denied her wish to be buried with Austen.
The Alice Austen House Museum today.Courtesy Collection of Alice Austen House
The couple could not have foreseen that across the decades and into a new millennium, future strangers would be moved to advocate for recognition of their devotion: from a 1994 Lesbian Avengers protest against institutional resistance to naming the pair as more than “friends” to Munro’s mission to ensure Tate’s name is discoverable in archival metadata, given a name beyond “unknown woman.”
Their story is housed within the clapboard and stone of their historic residence, now the Alice Austen House and a nationally designated site of LGBTQ history. Today, a visitor enters to find Tate’s portrait in her rightful place in family tree documentation on the wall.
“It is imperative that we center her queerness and her identity and that we celebrate this beautiful, beautiful love story,” Munro said. “People have now come back and visited the Alice Austen House and wept because they’re so happy to see this visibility.”
The owner of an LGBTQ+ bar and grill in Alabama that was forced to close down after officials denied its liquor and entertainment licenses has filed a lawsuit against the town for discrimination.
Thomas Fuller, who owned Crossroads Bar and Grill, asserts that the Town of Rockford “effectively singled [him] out because of his sexual orientation, deprived him of equal protection under the law, and forced him to close his business,” according to the lawsuit filed in September in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama Northern Division.
After obtaining a business and an ABC Board liquor license in 2023, Fuller was scheduled to meet with the town council in July to request a local liquor license. This is “the same letter of approval that was issued to other businesses in Rockford,” the suit claims.
At the meeting, council members questioned Fuller about “the type of business he ran, his hours of operation, and alcohol-to-food sales ratios— requirements that were not imposed on similarly situated heterosexual-owned businesses.” His request was then pushed to the next month’s meeting.
In the meantime, Fuller scheduled a drag show at the bar, and posted advertisements for it. Rockford’s Town Council then issued him a cease-and-desist letter, claiming that a drag show was “in violation of any license Crossroads obtained” and forcing him to cancel the show. At the August meeting, the council denied his liquor license.
“Crossroads was the only business in Rockford that was denied a liquor license. The Town Council questioned Plaintiff’s character and morals during the meeting,” the lawsuit states. “However, other businesses, owned and operated by heterosexual individuals, were permitted to host live performances without objection from Rockford’s Town Council. Specifically, other businesses in Rockford had live entertainment such as live music and karaoke without being issued any such cease-and-desist letter.”
When Fuller reapplied for an entertainment license “so that he could offer entertainment at Crossroads and sell alcohol,” he was denied again by the city council in September, which also “revoked the transfer of the ABC Board Alcohol License.” Because of the denials, the suit claims that Fuller was “unable to play music, show sporting events on televisions, or offer any other entertainment at Crossroads. This was fatal to his business.”
“Plaintiff reasonably believes that Rockford’s denial of the licenses was motivated by animus toward Plaintiff’s sexual orientation,” the filing continues. “Rockford had historically granted identical approvals to businesses owned and operated by heterosexual individuals without delay or objection … Only after Plaintiff, an openly homosexual man, sought to open Crossroads did the Rockford’s Town Council begin to impose heightened scrutiny and new licensing requirements.”
“The only meaningful difference between Plaintiff and those establishments was Plaintiff’s identity as a homosexual man and his willingness to host LGBTQ-friendly entertainment,” it adds.
Fuller is seeking a trial by jury to determine damages. The Town of Rockford has been issued a court summons as of October 15, which it has 21 days to respond to.
Major changes are underway in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood, where crews began removing the city’s rainbow crosswalks early Monday morning. The colorful crossings, long considered a symbol of Pride and unity, are being stripped away following a directive from Governor Greg Abbott. By sunrise, two of the four rainbow crosswalks at Westheimer and Taft had already been removed. The removal comes after days of tension, protests, and frustration within the community.
The decision follows Abbott’s call to remove what he described as “political ideologies” from roadways — guidance that traces back to a federal directive from the Trump administration earlier this year. Several protesters were arrested early Monday after standing in the roadway to block crews from removing the paint. Many residents and advocates also spent the night chalking nearby sidewalks and leaving Pride flags and flowers — a show of defiance and love they say will continue even after the paint is gone.
A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, has ordered the Pentagon to restore nearly 600 books and reinstate lessons on race, gender, and identity in schoolsserving military families, ruling that the Trump administration’s restrictions on classroom content likely violated students’ First Amendment rights.
In a 44-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles concluded that the Department of Defense Education Activity removed books and altered curricula in ways that suppressed certain viewpoints and deprived students of access to ideas about race and gender. She found that the department’s actions caused real harm and were likely motivated by viewpoint discrimination. The ruling requires the Pentagon to immediately return the banned books and halt further removals while the case continues.
The case, E.K. v. Department of Defense Education Activity, was brought by 12 students from military families at DoDEA schools in Virginia, Kentucky, Italy, and Japan. The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Virginia, and the ACLU of Kentucky, challenged the agency’s enforcement of three Trump executive orders issued in January that directed federal institutions to remove references to “gender ideology” and “divisive equity concepts.”
Giles wrote that public school libraries are “loci of intellectual freedom,” quoting the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision in Board of Education v. Pico to emphasize that students must be free to “inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding.” She found that DoDEA’s process for removing books was opaque and inconsistent, noting that officials failed to provide clear records of which titles had been withdrawn or why. The judge also criticized the department for refusing to disclose information about the censorship campaign, writing that it was unconstitutional to limit access to information and then fault the plaintiffs for not having proof of the government’s actions.
The ruling rejected the Pentagon’s claim that the removals constituted “government speech,” a legal doctrine that shields official communications from First Amendment scrutiny. Giles said that viewing school libraries as expressions of government ideology conflicts with the long-standing purpose of those institutions as spaces for academic freedom and voluntary inquiry. She warned that expanding the government speech doctrine to cover book removals in public schools would pose “dangerous” risks to intellectual freedom.
DoDEA operates 161 accredited schools across 11 countries, seven U.S. states, Guam, and Puerto Rico, educating roughly 67,000 children of active-duty service members and civilian Defense Department employees. The system, among the most diverse and high-performing in the nation, consistently ranks near the top of U.S. public school systems in reading and math proficiency.
As The Advocate previously reported, DoDEA began pulling materials shortly after Trump’s executive orders took effect, instructing school administrators to “quarantine” any books or lessons that could be seen as promoting “gender ideology” or “discriminatory equity ideology.” The removals included books and curricula addressing slavery, women’s rights, Native American history, LGBTQ+ identities, and sexual health education, along with sections of the Advanced Placement Psychology course.
The ACLU said Monday’s ruling restores constitutional protections that had been stripped away from students in military-run schools. “This is an important victory for students in DoDEA schools and anyone who values full libraries and vibrant classrooms,” Emerson Sykes, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a press release. “The censorship taking place in DoDEA schools as a result of these executive orders was astonishing in its scope and scale, and we couldn’t be more pleased that the court has vindicated the First Amendment rights of the students this has impacted.”
Corey Shapiro, legal director for the ACLU of Kentucky, said, “Removing books from school libraries just because this administration doesn’t like the content is censorship, plain and simple. The materials removed are clearly age-appropriate and are only offensive to those who are afraid of a free-thinking population.”
Matt Callahan, senior supervising attorney at the ACLU of Virginia, said the ruling affirms that “government can’t scrub references to race and gender from public school libraries and classrooms just because the Trump administration doesn’t like certain viewpoints on those topics.”
While the injunction applies only to the five schools attended by the plaintiffs — Crossroads Elementary in Quantico, Virginia; Barsanti Elementary in Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Aviano Middle-High in Italy; and Stollars Elementary and Edgren Middle High in Japan — the decision could have far-reaching implications for schools on military bases worldwide.
Giles wrote that students in federally operated schools are entitled to the same constitutional protections as those in civilian public schools. She ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and DoDEA Director Beth Schiavino-Narvaez to comply immediately.
Mink Tyner says some people call her a “helicopter parent” because of how protective she is over her kids. Despite this, she wasn’t concerned about bringing her daughter, then 14, to the Indian River County, Florida, school board meeting in August 2023, where they were discussing changes to the state’s curriculum relating to race and slavery.
That’s why she was shocked when she saw community members at the podium reading excerpts of sexual content from books.
“I hate lights out now because my D has a mind of its own,” one woman read. Then a man came up and read, “When Doris had just turned 11, her current stepfather started having sex with her.” And a third person read, “He took a long long time peeling off my jeans and T-shirt, pink bra and panties, and a longer time stroking and kissing me.”
The meeting had turned into more of a stunt led by protestors affiliated with the local chapter of Moms for Liberty (M4L), a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated far-right extremist group.
“I’m not gonna have my kid in here listening to these adults doing this shit,” Tyner remembers thinking.
She took her daughter out of the room and pleaded with security to intervene, but they refused. So she spoke up to disrupt the meeting herself, only for security from the Sheriff’s office—who told Uncloseted Media their deputies responded “appropriately and in accordance with established procedures”—to escort her out.
As she was leaving, conservative pastor John Amanchukwu, who had attended the meeting with M4L, confronted her while recording a video that he would later post to X calling her “demonic” and lashing out about her being pro-LGBTQ: “You’re okay with DEI. … You’re okay with Pride Month. You’re okay with the rainbow flag. You’re okay with all that junk,” he yelled. Tyner responded by calling him a “fucking weirdo” and walked out.
That video opened a floodgate of harassment that tormented Tyner and her family for years: She received insults, accusations of pedophilia, and persistent threats of violence from a Facebook account displaying the name CURTIS COUSINS who called her a “fent-using fat fucking dyke” and told her she deserved to have “a potato peeler peel her clit right off to the bone.”
“I never know if this week or 10 years from now somebody’s gonna show up [to my business] based on some kind of misinformation that Moms for Liberty started about me [or] want to harm me and my family,” Tyner, who owns a tattoo shop, told Uncloseted Media.
Indian River County is home to one of the first of M4L’s 320 chapters nationwide. The group’s annual summit is this weekend and will feature a variety of politicians with anti-LGBTQ track records, including Oklahoma’s former state superintendent Ryan Walters, who made headlines for making anti-trans comments after the death of 16-year-old trans teen Nex Benedict. Last year, conservative heavyweights spoke at the event, including President Trump, Tulsi Gabbard and Sebastian Gorka.
Over the last four years, M4L have built a reputation for chaos and controversy. Members have made the news for quoting Hitler, stripping at a school board meeting and offering bounties to report teachers who teach about “critical race theory.”
At one point in Indian River County, close allies of M4L made up a majority of the school board where they pressured the district to ban scores of books, many of which contain LGBTQ themes, and reverse a racial equity policy—all while harassing, doxing and defaming their adversaries.
Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science from the University of Massachusetts, says what’s playing out in Indian River County is a microcosm for so many other chapters across the country.
“[The media are] falling like suckers for this story that they’re a grassroots moms organization. They are not, they are connected to … the far right establishment,” he says. “And that’s become … more and more apparent. So this whole grassroots thing is hogwash.”
Beginnings
Moms for Liberty was founded in Florida in 2021 by three current and former school board members: Tiffany Justice, Tina Descovich and Bridget Ziegler, the latter of whom has since left the group after being involved in a sex scandal wherein her husband allegedly prowled local bars to solicit women for threesomes.
Shortly after M4L launched, Justice tapped Jennifer Pippin, who had made a name for herself for leading activism against COVID-19 restrictions, to lead the chapter for her home county, Indian River.
While the anti-mask circles that would later be folded into M4L always had a conservative lean, multiple county residents told Uncloseted Media that the group’s discriminatory views were not initially apparent.
Tyner, a lesbian who identifies as politically independent, actually felt welcomed by the group when she worked with them on their anti-mask mandate advocacy. However, that changed as M4L’s focus turned towards opposing LGBTQ inclusion measures in schools.
“Once they organized and got the appearance of a grassroots start … and many people in the community that were siding with them, it’s like they took the steering wheel and they just steered another direction,” she says.
When Tyner began speaking up against this rhetoric, she says she was blocked from the group’s Facebook pages. But as she continued to oppose them publicly, Justice offered to meet with her to address her concerns.
Over breakfast at a local cafe, Tyner says Justice gave her a “scripted” response in the hopes of winning back her support. She even invited Tyner to an M4L chapter meeting. However, Tyner declined as the meeting was allegedly to be hosted by a community member who had made an online post suggesting necrophilia and pedophilia are part of the LGBTQ umbrella.
“I was like, ‘Alright, this is not a good or a safe movement,” says Tyner.
Justice did not respond to a request for comment. In an email, Pippin told Uncloseted Media that M4L have “members and members children that are LGB in [their] chapter and across the country.”
Another local parent, who requested anonymity due to concerns about his job security, says while he’d initially been on board with M4L’s parental rights advocacy, he ran into conflict with the group when they started opposing the school district’s racial equity policies and tried to ban books with antiracist themes, including Ibram X. Kendi’s “Antiracist Baby”and “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You.” Like Tyner, he says he was approached by Justice and Pippin to win him over again but was ultimately unconvinced.
After he split from M4L, he began publicly criticizing the group’s book bans. In retaliation, some M4L members accused him of supporting pedophiles.
When he reached out to Pippin to ask for the people making such accusations against him to be held accountable, he says she waved him off—all while blocking him on social media and accusing him of “bullying.” He also says that she doxed him after another dispute—a major factor in his decision to remain anonymous.
“Her response to me basically was ‘free speech,’ ‘we don’t control what our members say.’ And I’m like, ‘But Jennifer, you know me, and you know I’m not a pedophile, and this is unacceptable,’” he told Uncloseted Media.
Building Political Power
Efforts to ban LGBTQ and racial justice-related books in schools are part of M4L’s national ammo that helped them quickly explode in popularity.
Cunningham says M4L were boosted by high-profile connections on the right. Ziegler and Descovich both served as presidents of the Florida Coalition of School Board Members, a group billed as a conservative alternative to the Florida School Board Association. Ziegler’s husband, Christian, was vice chairman of Florida’s Republican Party at the time and worked as a media surrogate for the Trump campaign in 2016.
Since their launch, M4L have had their conferences and events sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute; were directly advisedby Leadership Institute founder Morton Blackwell; and were a part of Project 2025’s advisory board. And this summer, Justice was hired as executive vice president of Heritage Action.
In 2022, the Indian River County chapter leveraged this influence to carve out power in local government: They got two close allies, Jacqueline Rosario and Dr. Gene Posca, elected to the school board, and they developed closerelationships with the Ron DeSantis-backed county sheriff Eric Flowers. Pippin was even appointed by Florida’s Department of Education to a statewide workgroup to develop compliance training for Florida’s classroom censorship policies, including the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law.
As M4L became notorious for pushing exclusionary measures in schools, some officials—including school board member Peggy Jones—criticized the group. In retaliation, Jones reportedly received so many death threats that the district had to increase security detail at all school events where she was present.
In the midst of increasing chaos surrounding M4L, the group mounted a campaign of hundreds of requests to ban books containing “sexual content.”
While some librarians continued to hold the majority of books where bans were unsuccessful, M4L convinced Flowers to investigate one school library, alleging that keeping the books on the shelf could constitute a sex crime. While the investigation found that no crime had been committed, Flowers concluded that “we do not feel that this content is appropriate for young children,” putting even further pressure on local librarians.
Pippin at the school board meeting in August 2023. Photo via YouTube.
This kind of direct action proved very effective. Even the reading protest where Tyner was escorted out won them 34 additional book bans from a unanimous board vote.
“You can’t deny that the kind of tactics that they have have been useful,” Cunningham says. “Some of the places they’ve taken over, [including] Sarasota County, where Bridget Ziegler was on the board, became much more conservative over the past few years.”
Silencing Opposition
In addition to school board meetings, the group has a track record of trolling progressive events. Tyner and the anonymous parent remember an incidentwhere a group of M4L members showed up to a local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) meeting that had been organized to discuss plans for opposition against new state regulations that required classes to portray slavery in a more positive light. Tyner says white M4L members attempted to shout down NAACP speakers, with one member allegedly using the n-word. Thomas Kenny, a M4L member who was at the event, said this “did not happen” and that one of their members using the n-word is “an absolute lie.”
Cunningham says these disruptions are part of M4L’s playbook. He pointed to the example of Jennifer Jenkins, the liberal school board member who unseated Tina Descovich in neighboring Brevard County, who says protestors spurred by M4L have turned up outside her home calling her a pedophile and burning “FU” in her lawn.
“They [use the] same kind of tactics … over and over again,” says Cunningham.
Chapter leader Jennifer Pippin has mastered those tactics, becoming widely known as one of the most influential book banners in the country. She’s also made headlines for filing a complaint against the Kilted Mermaid, a Vero Beach wine bar, alleging that they had hosted an all-ages drag event with sexual content, which the bar owner denies. M4L rallied against the bar online, spamming the posts of one of the bar’s drag performers, telling the queen to “stay away from children.” This stunt caught the attention of Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier, who launched an investigation and issued subpoenas for video recordings of the bar on the day of the event as well as identifying documents for employees and performers.
Pippin has also claimed to be a nurse, despite no public records showing that she has a license, and appeared on the antisemitic and homophobic far-right news website TruNews, where she claimed, without evidence, that anti-M4L activists have been killing pets and livestock owned by the group’s members.
Fear
Tyner and the other anonymous parent both say that they’ve had to take a step back from the school board and local activism because of the toxic environment M4L have created.
“It’s been turned into such a circus,” Tyner says.
In the meantime, things have gotten worse for the LGBTQ community in Indian River County, and in Florida overall, between the “Don’t Say Gay” law and anti-LGBTQ legislation that requires teachers to deadname trans students unless they have signed parental permission slips. The anonymous parent says he’s watched many of the LGBTQ people in his life, including one of his own children, who is a teacher, leave the state due to the hostile environment.
“It’s not safe for a lot of people,” he says.
Greener Pastures?
Despite all of this, a sea change may be on the horizon. A 2024 Brookings report found that the success rates of M4L-endorsed candidates were on the decline, and in Indian River County’s elections last year, both of M4L’s school board candidates lost. With the continued controversies of the Trump administration and the growing popularity of groups that oppose M4L’s ideology, Cunningham feels the tide may be turning for M4L’s influence in Indian River County and across America.
“In school board races, the Moms for Liberty label is toxic, so try to not get attached to that,” he says. “They’ve had quite an impact … I don’t wanna downplay that. But in terms of popular appeal and growth, I think it’s much more limited than it is portrayed.”
“Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go,” protestors chanted in the middle of Times Square, among a sea of signs that read “love reigns not kings,” “gays against faux-king Trump,” “we stand with … our trans family” and “the future is coming.”
On Saturday, independent analysts estimated that the No Kings March drew between 5 and 8 million people, and organizers say over 7 million people attended 2,700 events across all 50 states. The event, which was organized to push against the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S., was the largest single-day protest in America since 1970.
Over 100,000 New Yorkers marched in all five boroughs in NYC on Saturday. Photo by Jelinda Montes.
Among the crowd were countless LGBTQ people, fighting back against an administration that has introduced a litany of anti-LGBTQ executive ordersand used vile rhetoric to denigrate queer people. This backsliding of LGBTQ rights, according to experts, has a deep connection to authoritarianism, with research showing that when governments weaken protections for queer and trans people, they often turn to broader democratic institutions next.
“Threats to democratic institutions and threats to LGBTQ rights are mutually reinforcing, generating a vicious cycle that strengthens authoritarian control,” Ari Shaw, director of International Programs at the Williams Institute, told Uncloseted Media. “Increased persecution of minority groups, including LGBTI people, is itself evidence of democratic backsliding by indicating the erosion of liberal democratic norms [meant to protect] minority rights.”
Legal Abuse of Power
One of the ways the Trump administration’s abuse of power has been most evident is through its legal actions.
He’s also slashed HIV funding at a staggering rate. Uncloseted Media estimates that the National Institutes of Health has terminated more than $1 billion worth of grants to HIV-related research, including 71% of all global HIV grants.
Jeffrey Cipriano at the NYC No Kings protest Saturday. Photo by Jelinda Montes.
It was these cuts that prompted Brooklynite Jeffrey Cipriano to turn out to protest. “The specific reason that I’m protesting is actually on the shirt I’m wearing,” says Cipriano.
“My best friend works for an organization called AIDS United. … His job is to travel the country and help people get AIDS medication, specifically trans and unhoused community members. But his job is at risk,” he says. “The end outcome of his work is that people who have issues in their lives have the issues resolved and that’s going away under the current administration.”
Executive orders are based on powers granted to the president by the U.S. Constitution or by Congressional statutes. The president cannot use an executive order to create new laws or spend money unless Congress has authorized it. They are meant to direct how existing laws are implemented. But Trump has ignored democratic norms, often filling agencies with loyal supporters, using orders to go after political opponents and pushing the limits of what the law allows.
In some cases, he has moved illegally. “The President is directing various executive branch officials to adopt policy that has either not yet been adopted by Congress or is in violation of existing statutory law,” says Jodi Short, professor of law at UC Law San Francisco. “The analogy to a king and what has troubled many about this presidency is the sheer consolidation of executive branch power in one individual.”
Short’s colleague, Dave Owen, agrees. “Illegality has been rampant,” he told Uncloseted Media in an email. “People are often cynical about the government, and they might think what Trump’s doing is nothing new. But most of the time, the executive branch takes the law seriously, and both legal constraints and norms of good governance matter,” he wrote. He says that through history, there’s been “a lot more integrity and a lot less lawlessness than most people realize.”
“This administration has broken with those traditions,” he adds.
Revolt Against Executive Orders
Many Americans have recognized this. A survey from April found that 85% of Americans agreed or strongly agreed that the president should obey federal court rulings even if he doesn’t like them.
In response to Trump’s overreach, more than 460 legal challenges have been filed across the country challenging his executive actions. One of these is a federal lawsuit by Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation that challenges the constitutionality of the Trump administration’s ban on military service by transgender people. Another lawsuit challenges Trump’s order directing federal agencies to withhold funds from medical providers and institutions that provide gender-affirming medical treatments for people under 19.
Zoe Boik and her father, Derik, protesting on Saturday. Photo by Sean Robinson.
Both of those lawsuits are one reason 17-year-old Zoe Boik came out to protest with her friends and her dad. “Obviously, I’m disappointed and kind of helpless because there’s nothing I can directly do to change or impact anything that’s going on,” says Boik, who identifies as pansexual and gender fluid and is not legally allowed to vote.
Boik—who was seven years old when Trump announced his run for presidency in 2015—says she’s doing a research paper on Trump’s trans military ban and is frustrated because she sees it as inexplicable discrimination. “They’re not letting trans people serve … which doesn’t make any sense.”
Zoe as a child with her dad, Derik. Photo courtesy of Boik.
LGBTQ Rights and Democratic Backsliding
This type of blatant discrimination is often a key sign of a country moving closer to authoritarianism and away from democracy. According to a 2023 research paper by Shaw and his colleagues, anti-LGBTQ stigma may contribute “to the erosion of democratic norms and institutions.”
The paper found that when a country with relatively high acceptance of LGBTQ rights introduces anti-LGBTQ legislation, it clashes with what most people believe and can weaken public trust in democracy, deepen political divides and make it easier for populist or extremist movements to gain power.
“The level of acceptance of LGBTQ people is closely associated with the strength of democracy in a country,” Shaw says. “In some cases, we even saw that rising anti-LGBTQ rhetoric or policies preceded a broader decline in democracy.”
In Brazil, for example, early democratic gains coincided with rising LGBTQ acceptance, including legal recognition of same-sex unions and workplace protections. But as populist President Jair Bolsonaro came into power in 2019, he began questioning—without evidence—the security of Brazil’s voting systems, saying he would only lose his re-election campaign if there were fraud. He was also accused of trying to intervene in operations held by the Federal Police about the alleged criminal conduct of his sons, and he toldhis ministers that he had the power and he would interfere—without exception—in all cabinet ministries. At the same time, LGBTQ protections were rolled back, and schools and civil society faced censorship, suggesting that falling LGBTQ acceptance may have “preceded Brazil’s democratic erosion,” according to Shaw’s paper. In September of this year, Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a military coup.
Another example is Poland’s democracy weakening since 2015 under the Law and Justice Party, which consolidated power by undermining the Constitutional Tribunal, installing loyal judges and restricting independent media. Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric became central to the party’s nationalist platform, fueling the creation of nearly 100 “LGBT ideology free zones,” inciting violence against LGBTQ individuals and stymying legal recourse through politicized courts.
When it comes to LGBTQ rights, Trump has mimicked the moves of these leaders even though most of his constituents don’t want it: A 2022 survey from the Public Religion Research Institute found that 80% of Americans favor laws that would protect LGBTQ people against discrimination.
“The definition of an authoritarian system is a system where power is consolidated in one individual whose power is unchecked by any other institution. And I fear that in certain domains, that’s the direction in which this administration is trying to move us,” says Short. “I think it’s incredibly dangerous.”
While many universities are rejecting Trump’s demands, others are experiencing a chilling effect, changing their policies before the administration tries to hold up funds.
James Revson, Maddy Everlith and Shay Wingate holding their signs at the No Kings protest. Photo by Jelinda Montes.
“I’m here because I’m angry and I feel that we aren’t angry enough,” Maddy Everlith, a sophomore gender studies major at Pace University, told Uncloseted Media as she marched with her friends. “Being a woman of color in America and having so many intersectional identities is also what affects me. … I want to stand up and advocate for other people.”
Everlith’s university responded to Trump’s threats in September by renaming its DEI office to the “Division of Opportunity and Institutional Excellence.”
“I am beyond horrified how quickly our university was willing to bend the knee on this decision,” Austin Chappelle, a senior at Pace, told the student newspaper. This change comes in the midst of uncertainty under the Trump administration, which has already caused many LGBTQ students to feel uneasy on campus.
“It’s part of an electoral strategy to try to mobilize right-wing voters to distract from other sorts of political or economic scandals,” Shaw says, adding that this tactic is another way to gain power.
Lars Kindem protesting for his trans sister at the No Kings protest. Photo by Sean Robinson.
The pain of this rhetoric has affected millions of trans Americans and allies alike, including Lars Kindem, a 64-year-old retired pilot from Minnesota who was marching to support his transgender sister.
“What Trump has done is he’s taken people that haven’t done anything wrong and has turned them into scapegoats,” he says, adding that Trump’s language is “hateful, petty, mean and hurtful.”
He says his sister and her partner are having issues getting the correct gender markers issued on their passports. Because of the Trump administration’s treatment of the community, they are making plans to move to Denmark, where “there’s a lot more acceptance.”
Christian Nationalism
This scapegoating has played into the hands of Trump’s voter base of white evangelical Protestants, the only major Christian denomination in the U.S. in which a majority believes society has gone too far in accepting transgender people.
Since 2020, Trump has increasingly embraced Christian nationalism in his rhetoric and imagery. He’s sold Bibles, created a federal task force on anti-Christian bias and been intrinsically linked to Project 2025, the 920-page plan calling for the establishment of a government imbued with “biblical principles” and run by a president who holds sweeping executive powers.
Experts say that “a strong authoritarian streak” runs through conservative Christianity. A 2023 study found that supporters of Christian nationalism tend to support obedience to authority and the idea of authoritarian leaders who are willing to break the rules. Nearly half of Christian nationalists support the notion of an authoritarian leader.
“They are trying to use the language of Christianity, but they are abusing it and misusing it constantly,” Rev. Chris Shelton, a gay pastor at the protest, told Uncloseted Media. “Our faith is all about reaching out to the marginalized, reaching out to the people who are ostracized by society and embracing them and offering love and welcome and a sense of dignity and worth. And to see any human being’s worth being denied is just a mockery of our faith.”
Rev. Chris Shelton marched in Saturday’s NYC protest. Photo by Sean Robinson.
Heidi Beirich, the vice president and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, says that “the LGBTQ community is the prime target of modern authoritarian regimes.”
“For Christian nationalists, attacking LGBTQ rights is the first pillar in destroying civil rights for all. This has happened in countries like Hungary and Poland as authoritarianism consolidated and now it’s happening here,” Beirich told Uncloseted Media.
Moving Forward
As the country bleeds toward authoritarianism, LGBTQ protestors are encouraging people to use their voice, something the queer community is familiar with doing: One 2012 survey found that queer folks are 20 times more likely to be active in liberal social movements than their straight, cis counterparts.
“It is imperative that people continue to pay attention,” Short says. “There is so much going on, a lot of it is disturbing and intense, and there’s such a strong impulse to look away. But we have to engage in political action and resist inappropriate assertions of authority and continue to show up and vote for our democracy.”
17-year-old Zoe Boik is ready. She remembers being in second grade and crying the day after Trump won his first election in 2016. She couldn’t believe how he could lead the country despite “all the bad things he said.”
Boik can’t wait until the midterm elections, when she will be 18 and finally able to vote. “If we don’t vote, then our voices won’t be heard,” she says.
Despite this, she’s also concerned about her freedom to exercise that right being jeopardized.
“My fears about Trump don’t stem specifically from me being queer, but from his authoritarianism as a whole,” she says. “I am scared about how far he will move into dictatorship, [and] my biggest fear is that our right to vote will be compromised, leaving us no recourse.”
LGBTQ+ youth in the United States already had poor mental health — but it’s only gotten worse in the past two years.
Mental health crises among LGBTQ+ youth have recently risen significantly, according to a new report from The Trevor Project, with anxiety symptoms climbing from 57 percent to 68 percent, depressive symptoms increasing from 48 percent to 54 percent, and suicidal ideation growing from 41 percent to 47 percent. While past-year suicide attempts declined from 11 percent to 7 percent, the rate remains higher than national estimates for cisgender heterosexual youth.
“While many of the findings in this study are devastating, they are not surprising,” said Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project. “LGBTQ+ young people in this country continue to face elevated levels of stigma and political rhetoric, which take a serious toll on their mental health and well-being.”
Transgender and nonbinary youth ages 13 to 17 reported the poorest mental health and highest risk for suicide, being nearly twice as likely to report anxiety (70 percent vs. 42 percent ) and suicidal ideation (53 percent vs. 28 percent ) compared to cisgender peers.
In the past year, one-third of all participants reported being physically harassed or threatened because of their sexual orientation, and two-fifths of trans and nonbinary respondents said they were harassed or threatened because of their gender identity. Over half of all participants (55 percent) said they have been discriminated against because of their sexual orientation, and over two-thirds of trans and nonbinary respondents (66 percent) experienced discrimination based on their gender identity.
Black said that the report’s findings “allow us to clearly and unequivocally document what we know to be true: the manner in which LGBTQ+ youth are treated in this country harms their health and risks their lives, and it is only getting worse.”
“I hope that lawmakers, community leaders, and youth-serving professionals take stock of these research findings, and join our efforts to support the health and safety of LGBTQ+ young people across the country,” he concluded.
If you or someone you know needs mental health support, please call, text, or chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or visit988lifeline.org for 24/7 access to free and confidential services. Trans Lifeline, designed for transgender or gender-nonconforming people, can be reached at (877) 565-8860. The lifeline also provides resources to help with other crises, such as domestic violence situations. The Trevor Project Lifeline, for LGBTQ+ youth (ages 24 and younger), can be reached at (866) 488-7386. Users can also access chat services at TheTrevorProject.org/Help or text START to 678678.
When the high school basketball coach and social studies teacher came out in a groundbreaking 2013 interview, the threats got so bad that the school hired undercover cops to attend his games.
But the influx of hate didn’t stop his advocacy. It didn’t stop him from becoming a regular contributor to Outsports or from posting videos celebrating Pride and inclusion. Hate didn’t stop him from speaking out as the MAGA movement gained traction and began to come for queer educators, and it didn’t stop him from loudly supporting trans kids.
“I know how to handle it,” he told LGBTQ Nation. “I don’t get rattled.”
But for the first time, a few weeks ago, he did.
A pair of right-wing influencers, Corey DeAngelis and Chaya Raichik (who goes by Libs of TikTok on social media), reposted one of Nicodemo’s videos in which he proudly hangs a sign in his classroom that declares, “Fascists Fear Teachers.”
And for the first time in over a decade of being out, Nicodemo went private on social media.
“This one got so nutty,” he said, referencing the tidal wave of slurs and hostility the posts provoked. “When the Libs of TikTok people start, they’re actually dangerous.” The only thing that kept the backlash at all tempered, he said, was that Raichik tagged his district rather than his personal profiles.
The right-wing fury over gay educators today feels different than it used to, Nicodemo said, so much so that, if he were still closeted, he’s not sure he would even come out in this climate.
“I would be worried of the blowback in some of the communities by the one or two parents that would create madness,” he said. While of course that madness existed a decade ago, he said people today feel “more emboldened… to attack.”
He recalled the horrendous voicemails left for his superintendent after DeAngelis posted the contact information and wondered what it takes for someone to call and complain about a teacher they had never met at a school they had no connection to.
“I don’t know if there’s anything that would prompt me to do that,” he said.
But after the haters moved on to something else, as they always do, he was able to make his accounts public again and resume his work as a fierce defender for inclusion.
“I can take the hits, I’m okay,” he said. “But I’m saddened, and I’m fearful for my people in our community who can’t, who don’t have the support of an administration or don’t have the ability to handle these kinds of attacks… Which is what these people ultimately want. They want us to be quiet, and they want to make us disappear.”
The perfect poster
“This is the perfect poster for a social studies classroom,” Nicodemo excitedly says in the video that started it all. He explains that the words are a reference to gay American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten’s new book, Why Fascists Fear Teachers, and he explains that fascists fear free thought and critical thinking skills.
He does not once mention today’s Republican Party or the current president. Instead, he discusses how the phrase applies to so much of the history he covers in class.
“Throughout history, the first group of people that fascists have attacked are educators,” he says. “People like Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, some of the worst people in world history were fascists, and they attacked us educators first.”
He also mentioned that he has many other signs in the room, including the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
A few weeks after Nicodemo posted the video, DeAngelis found it. The influencer zeroed in on the Progress Pride flag Nicodemo wore around his neck, though he called it a “trans flag.”
In follow-up posts, he shared screenshots of the coach’s social media handles, his school’s athletic page, and the contact information for his principal and superintendent.
Once Nicodemo locked his accounts, DeAngelis posted a link to the coach’s Facebook cover photo and let followers know it was still open for comments. Sure enough, comments on the photo of Nicodemo and his team celebrating a victory call the coach “evil,” “creep,” “jerk,” and “pedo groomer.”
DeAngelis’ treatment of Nicodemo seems to have followed a template. DeAngelis posts to X dozens of times per day, reposting videos and comments from educators with whom he disagrees. Meanwhile, he actively encourages followers to harass them.
“He tweets, and then every person that retweets him, he retweets,” Nicodemo explained. “So he basically figures out how to control the algorithm.”
The hypocrisy at the heart of it all
Nicodemo finds DeAngelis’ behavior especially disheartening, considering that last year, he admitted to appearing in gay adult videos.
DeAngelis claimed the videos’ producers were “deceptive” and “lured” him into performing under the guise of making fitness videos. He was fired from his senior fellowship at the American Federation for Children (AFC), an anti-LGBTQ+ “school choice” organization, and has since had to crawl his way back into the good graces of right-wing media.
DeAngelis is a huge champion of school choice, which calls for redirecting taxpayer money to fund private for-profit schools, a major goal of anti-LGBTQ+ Christian conservatives. Such schools can reject students for any reason and operate largely without government oversight that would ensure their adherence to federal nondiscrimination laws. He also helped draft the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
DeAngelis told Fox News that public schools are “focusing more on the LGBTs than the ABCs,” a statement echoing a right-wing claim that accepting LGBTQ+ students and opposing anti-LGBTQ+ bullying in schools degrades the quality of public education.
In the past, he alluded to the adult videos, calling himself “a victim of poor decisions and poor influences” and said he now uses the experience as “the fuel that fires me to save young people from being put in the same position I was put in and to help parents protect their children.”
But Nicodemo sees it as good old-fashioned hypocrisy.
“He goes after gay teachers all day and all night… I don’t think there’s a bigger hypocrisy than that.”
“He’s trying to reassert himself into his movement and hoping, I think, that people forget the fact” that he did those videos. “So he crucifies gay teachers.”
The lack of integrity, he said, is what gets him the most. “People who are dabbling in the LGBTQ+ community when it’s convenient for them financially, then coming out against LGBTQ educators… It drives me up the wall a little bit. These people need to be held accountable for this.”
Stick to the facts
It’s a complex time to be a history teacher, when truth itself has been put on trial, and one never knows who might be recording or which parents’ wrath they might incur just for doing their job.
But Nicodemo believes there’s a way forward. “When you teach the truth, you’re going to be okay,” he said.
He added that teachers in blue states or with supportive administrations that are not puppets of folks from the likes of Moms for Liberty need to speak up for the teachers who can’t. It’s one of the main reasons he keeps posting.
“There’s so much misinformation out there. I try to stick to the facts.”
Doing so, he said, is one antidote to the many lies out there that mislead voters. “You get into this almost deep fake of what reality is, and I think we have to have people on the other side, our community specifically, that are willing to push back and share our side of the way things are.”
Despite the risks, he said it’s all worth it.
“We need people who are willing to fight because they want us to be silent and they want us to not be here.”
If he goes away, then DeAngelis wins. All DeAngelis wanted, Nicodemo said, was for him to get fired or “shut up” and lose his platform.
But Nicodemo only has one thing to say to that: “It didn’t work.”
