Pete Hegseth likes to puff out his chest and wrap himself in the flag, replete with his eye-rolling star-spangled banner pocket square. His entire act is so phony, so immature, so beyond the realm of what gentlemen should be.
He screams “warrior,” but in reality he is weak, and weak on innumerable levels.
Hegseth tosses around phrases like “warrior ethos” as if he has a trademark on courage, sacrifice, and honor. But make no mistake, Hegseth, Donald Trump’sclueless Defense secretary and longtime right-wing provocateur, is not a warrior by any measure of what a warrior should be.
He is a coward. He is cruel. He is inhumane. Those who scream from the top of their lungs what they think of themselves, are usually the complete opposite. That describes the straw man that is Hegseth.
And his decision to remove Harvey Milk’s name from a U.S. Navy ship, during Pride Month no less, proves it. This is a family-friendly media outlet, but you can only imagine the expletive I would like to use to describe the horrible Hegseth. Let’s just put it this way: How petty can you be to remove the name of someone from a ship because you don’t like the fact that he was gay?
Let’s talk about real courage. Harvey Milk was a Navy veteran, serving his country honorably for four years as a diving officer aboard the USS Kittiwakeduring the Korean War and after. He was discharged at a time when gay people were not even allowed to exist openly in the armed forces, let alone serve.
He was given an “other than honorable” discharge for being gay. He did not hide who he was, and that took real courage, particularly during that era. Milk would not cower.
Still, Milk returned to civilian life not bitter but determined to fight, not with weapons but with words, ideals, and public service. He had fortitude.
Milk had a good life in New York but moved to San Francisco and decided to run for public office, not once or twice, but three times before finally winning a seat on the Board of Supervisors in 1977. Milk wasn’t a glutton for punishment. He was a picture of perseverance.
He did it openly as a gay man, at a time when to do so meant enduring a barrage of threats, slurs, and very real danger. He didn’t have a corporate PAC or a media empire behind him. He didn’t have bodyguards. He had guts. And he won.
And let me just say he had more guts than the soulless Hegseth would ever hope to have, but I digress.
Milk’s victory wasn’t just a personal triumph. It ignited a movement. His election inspired LGBTQ+ people across the country to come out, organize, and believe for the first time that they, too, could hold office, have a voice, and demand their rights.
He wasn’t just a politician. He was a symbol of hope. And for that, he paid the ultimate price. He was gunned down in cold blood in his own City Hall office just 11 months into his term.
Harvey Milk is a hero, a real honest to goodness hero..His bravery has been chronicled in books, documentaries, and the Oscar-winning film Milk, where Sean Penn’s portrayal captured the real stakes Harvey faced every day. Milk stood up for what was right when doing so could get you killed. That’s what a warrior looks like.
Now let’s look at the pathetic person that is Pete Hegseth, who will never hope to have a flattering book, documentary or movie about him. At best, maybe he’ll have his name someday etched into a prison wall.
This is a man whose resume reads more like a string of scandals than a record of service. Yes, he served in the military, but he’s best known for his post-service career as a Fox News host specializing in culture war tantrums and grievance politics.
Hegseth’s name has been tied to allegations of sexual harassment, infidelity, and alcohol-fueled misconduct. His recent tirade at the Pentagon, where he lashed out at reporters for their coverage of the military operation in Iran, was pure theater, a hysterical hissy fit.
This is not a man defending the troops. This is a man defending his ego. Can you imagine, for a moment, previous Defense secretaries, like Lloyd Austin, James Mattis, Leon Panetta, and Robert Gates doing something like that? Never! They were gentlemen with decorum. Hegseth is a rogue with indecorum.
And now, to score cheap points with the MAGA base, Hegseth has decided to erase the name USNS Harvey Milk. He says naming the ship after Milk was a “woke mistake.” But he’s lying. This is not about a name. It’s about Hegseth’s larger project to roll back LGBTQ+ inclusion in the military. And if you want my opinion, his goal to kick queers out for good!
He’s already moving to reimpose Trump-era bans on transgender service members. Make no mistake, removing Milk’s name is the opening salvo in a war against queer service members. Why does the madly, self-obsessed egomaniac hate queers so much?
Hegseth’s move is also a gut punch to every LGBTQ+ person who has ever served or who is serving this country with dignity, integrity, and pride. What are they supposed to think now? That their service is less valuable? That their sacrifices mean less? That their lives don’t count?
The truth is, Pete Hegseth could never hope to match the moral courage of Harvey Milk. Hegseth bullies from a podium. Milk stood his ground in the face of hate, knowing full well it might cost him his life. Hegseth panders to bigots, and the bigot in chief Donald Trump. Milk stood for the marginalized. Hegseth thinks valor is about bluster. Milk showed us it’s about conviction.
You can take a name off a ship, but you can’t erase a legacy. Harvey Milk’s name is etched into the history of this nation. Into the hearts of millions of LGBTQ+ Americans. Into the minds of those who still believe public service is about lifting others, not tearing them down.
Harvey Milk is an icon. Pete Hegseth is an idiot.
Milk once said, “Hope will never be silent.” The only thing we can hope for is that someday soon, Hegseth goes silent.
When I arrived in the UK six years ago as an asylum seeker, I was stunned by how LGBTQI+ friendly the country seemed. Compared to Ukraine and Russia – where I had previously lived – it felt almost like time travel.
I’ve known I was trans since I was four years old. But it was only here, in the UK, at the age of 24, that I finally felt safe enough to come out.
Since then, much has changed. The political climate has shifted. Laws have shifted.
In 2015, the annual Rainbow Map and Index by ILGA-Europe ranked the UK as the most LGBTQI+ friendly country in Europe. But in the latest rankings released on 14 May, the UK has fallen to 22nd place, with an overall score of just 46 per cent. That makes it the second-worst performer on LGBTQI+ rights in Western Europe and Scandinavia.
This drop isn’t abstract – it reflects growing hostility, dangerous rhetoric, and policies that especially target trans people.
The recent Supreme Court ruling that defines “woman” as “biological woman” under equality law is a particularly cruel institutional decision. Its consequences for trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people may not even be fully visible yet – but they will be far-reaching.
Transmasculine people like me may soon be under direct attack as well. And then, as history shows, the broader LGBTQI+ community often follows. For people already facing multiple forms of oppression – like refugees and people seeking asylum – the danger is even greater.
So as Pride Month begins, we must ask ourselves: What does Pride mean right now? How did we get here—and where do we go from here? What does this mean for LGBTQI+ refugees in particular, and why is it important for the community in general?
You may like to watch
The Cass Review: a turning point
I knew something was deeply wrong when the Cass Review was published in April 2024, and the NHS began blocking transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming care.
Outside the LGBTQI+ community, few people seemed to care. Even many liberals and left-leaning voices accepted it as “reasonable”.
But this decision has already caused immense harm. The review was widely criticised by both UK and international experts, but the damage was swift – especially for transgender kids. As a former trans child myself, I know the mental health cost of being denied gender-affirming care. I still live with that impact today.
And it always starts the same way: The first attacks come for LGBTQI+ youth, because they are not taken seriously because they are considered to be “too immature” to think for themselves. Just like refugees, who are seen as “barbarians” from less developed societies.
Those at the intersection suffer the most.
A dangerous shift in politics
Despite its history as a progressive party, many trans activists now say Labour is doing more harm to LGBTQI+ people than recent Tory governments.
Labour is even continuing the particularly dangerous for LGBTQI+ people anti-immigration policies introduced under Rishi Sunak. Prime minister Keir Starmer recently said the UK is considering sending rejected people seeking safety to third countries.
As someone who has worked with LGBTQI+ refugees globally, I can say: This is extremely risky for trans people.
Trans people seeking asylum already face daily harassment, even within refugee communities. Most third countries lack the legal protections they need. Deportation could cut them off from hormone therapy or vital healthcare.
And all this is happening as far-right movements gain more support. The rise of the transphobic, anti-migrant Reform Party, the far-right riots last summer, and increasing global conservatism are life-threatening for LGBTQI+ refugees.
“It should be not about past victories, but present dangers,” Ayman Eckford writes (Ayman Eckford)
Sometimes the threat is physical – being attacked for looking non-White and gender non-conforming. Sometimes it’s quieter but just as harmful – denial of healthcare, legal protections, or safety.
As an expert by experience for the mental health charity Rethink, I know how hard it is to access therapy even for cisgender, straight British people.
Now imagine being a trans person seeking asylum. You’re under constant pressure, facing daily dehumanization – and if you finally reach out for help?
The therapist might be transphobic. Or xenophobic. Or both.
Maybe you can’t fully express yourself in English.
Maybe the waiting list is too long.
In the end, the suicide risk for trans and LGBTQI+ refugees is terrifyingly high. And still, much of the broader LGBTQI+ movement stays silent.
Pride as Protest: What Must Be Done
So what does it mean to celebrate Pride in this context?
In recent years, Pride has become a celebration – of victories, of corporate support, of police apologies. But we must remember: Pride was born as a protest. Today, it must return to its roots. It must be about resistance.
It should be not about past victories, but present dangers.
Not “love is love,” but “the lives of our queer and trans siblings are at risk.”
I know that for many people — even some within the LGBTQI+ community — lives like mine don’t matter.
But history shows us: The erosion of human rights always begins with minorities.
Just as the attacks on trans kids marked the start of broader attacks on LGBTQI+ people in the UK, the targeting of trans refugees and LGBTQI+ people seeking sanctuary is not the end of the story of oppression —it’s only the beginning. But we may change this story, and this is what Pride Month should be about.
When the Supreme Court issued its 88-page long judgement that the legal definition of ‘sex’ is based on ‘biology’, gender critical lobbying group and controversially registered charity LGB Alliance declared it was a “landmark for lesbian rights in the UK”.
“This matters greatly to LGB people,” CEO Kate Barker said of the ruling. “It is especially important to lesbians, because the definition of lesbian is directly linked to the definition of woman.”
Barker – who once claimed a singular drag queen carrying the Olympic torch demonstrated the “erasure of woman in all spheres of public life” – went on to say the ruling “marks a watershed for women and, in particular, lesbians who have seen their rights and identities undermined over the last decade”.
Despite Supreme Court judge Lord Hodge specifically counseling against certain factions “reading this judgement as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another,” gender critical activists view the outcome of the Supreme Court case as a decisive victory for all women over so-called ‘gender ideology’.
However, in the days and weeks that have followed the Supreme Court ruling, it has quickly become clear that many women who are not trans – who are in the court’s definition born as ‘biological women’, identify as women and women and live their lives as women – will likely be disadvantaged by the court’s decision because they do not fit into narrow, often white and western, definitions of what constitutes as ‘woman’.
Transgender people and their allies stage a protest march in Westminster in support of trans rights following this week’s UK Supreme Court unanimous ruling that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex, in London, United Kingdom on April 19, 2025. (Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Sparked by a trans-inclusive definition of womanhood in Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 – which sought to diversity the number of women on public boards in the devolved nation – the Supreme Court decisionwas the culmination of a years-long legal battle between gender critical Scottish group For Women Scotland (FWS) and the Scottish government about how the protected characteristic of ‘sex’ is defined and applied in the 2010 Equality Act.
After traversing many different appeal processes, the case finally ended at the UK’s highest court and concluded the definition does not include trans people.
“The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex,” Lord Hodge said in his oral reading of the ruling.
The decision is expected to have wide-ranging implications for the trans community, as well as organisations, public bodies and services who may be forced to update their policies on single-sex spaces, inclusion and discrimination. Some, including the Football Association and the England and Wales Cricket Board, have already taken steps to bar trans women from taking part in female matches.
In the wake of the ruling, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) – the UK’s equalities watchdog – issued interim guidance which said single-sex spaces must be based on biology whereby a trans woman must not be allowed to use a female toilet and a trans man not allowed to use a male one. However, the guidance also adds that, in “some circumstances,” trans women should also be banned from the men’s facilities and trans men from women’s facilities.
When asked to clarify this point by the BBC, the EHRC directed the broadcaster to a section of the Supreme Court ruling which states trans men could be excluded from women’s facilities “where reasonable objection is taken to their presence, for example because the gender reassignment process has given them a masculine appearance or attributes to which reasonable objection might be taken” in the context of a female-only space, such as a toilet.
In essence, when a trans man looks, well, too much like a man (because he is one) or when a trans woman looks, well, too much like a woman (because she is one), they can be totally excluded from gendered spaces and be forced to only use a unisex facility – assuming one is available.
If the circumstances which would see trans men – who are defined by the court ruling as ‘biologically female’ – banned from female toilets is all about ‘masculine appearance’, then where does this leave masculine, cis women?
Whilst the Supreme Court case is supposedly about ‘protecting’ the interests of all women, this exception – in itself – shows there is only interest in protecting certain kinds of women. Namely, women who ‘look’ like women: traditionally feminine women with long hair, hips and visible breasts, who dress and talk and walk in a way that is ‘expected’ of women and who have no trouble moving through the world as one.
By contrast, there are plenty of other women out there who constantly have their gender and presentation policed by strangers for not fitting into the narrow and misogynistic definitions of what a woman should be. Women who are tall, have short hair, broad shoulders and square jawlines. Women who wear clothes from the men’s section and have deep voices and body hair. Women who are “incorrectly female,” Hannah Gadsby famously said.
Writing for Refinery29 in 2022, Yassine Senghor exemplifies this as “a dark-skinned Black, fat, masculine-presenting dyke with a shaved head who tends to lean towards clothing gendered as men’s” and said she has always been told she is “doing ‘woman’ wrong”. Similarly, in a different article for the publication, architect Martha said she has been made to feel that she is “failing at womanhood” and even when she presented more femininely was questioned about her gender.
Such slim definitions of what is correct or incorrect womanhood rooted in patriarchal beauty standards are – ironically enough – what feminists have actually spent decades fighting against, so that women have the choice about whether or not they want to shave their legs, wear make-up or put on dresses or *gasp* trousers.
The Supreme Court ruling will, very likely, cause butch and masculine lesbians to face increased harassment in single-sex female spaces simply because of how they present themselves. This is not a fictitious, dystopian musing by one dyke about the rights of others in her community, this is something we have already seen – and are continuing to see – when it comes to women do not fit into the confindes of traditional femininity and gender.
For Lesbian Visibility Week, which came a week after the Supreme Court’s decision, Labour MP Kate Osborne said she is “frequently misgendered”because of how she looks and expressed concern it will only get worse going forward.
“I note that Ministers said yesterday that there will be guidance regarding the Supreme Court verdict. That decision will have a huge impact on my life, on many other cis lesbians and, indeed, on heterosexual women,” Osborne told fellow MPs. “I suspect that I will get challenged even more now when accessing facilities. The impact on my life will be problematic, but the impact on my trans siblings’ lives will be significantly worse.”
Just this week, across the pond, in the United States, a number of headlines were dedicated to an incident involving lesbian woman Ansley Baker who was removed from a female toilet in a Boston hotel by a male security guard after being accused of being ‘a man’ by other women in the facility. The irony that it was a male security guard who banged on the cubical door and removed her when her shorts were not fully done up has not been lost on most in the LGBTQ+ community, it must be noted.
Baker is certainly not the first, nor will she likely be the last, lesbian to face such treatment, with other incidents from recent years including the partner of children’s author Jessica Walton and poet Eloise Stonborough, whilst Martha told R29 she has “some kind of confrontation or experience in a public bathroom every few months” after starting to present in a more butch way.
But, tight confines and strict parameters of what constitutes correct womanliness and the social punishments inflicted when broken are not solely restricted to masculine lesbians, straight women too have subject to such policing.
In 2023, the pregnant girlfriend of Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel actor Erin Darke, was transvestigated by anti-trans pundits on social media because she happens to be taller than Radcliffe and have certain facial features. Transvesigation refers to conspiracy theories that falsely claim individuals, typically women, are transgender and are hiding their “true” gender identity, with Drake accused of ‘secretly being trans’. Transvesitigations are entirely rooted in warped, deeply misogynistic and racist, views of femininity and gender.
Similarly, Olympic boxer Imane Khelif – who was thrust into the centre of a gender storm during the Paris Games – was accused of ‘being a man’ despite the fact she, and Olympic bosses, clarified she is not nor has ever identified as trans. In fact in Algeria, where Khelif hails from, gender-affirming care is banned and public gender non-conformity has the potential to be prosecuted as “indecent” under the 1966 penal code. However, people failed to engage the grey matter in their brains and the conspiracy persisted because, according to the wisdom of users on X/Twitter, Khelif has a strong nose, muscles, is tall and has hairs on her knuckles, so must be male.
Other cis women who are seemingly not woman enough according to transphobes include rugby icon Ilona Maher, tennis legend Serena Williams and former first lady Michelle Obama. Why? Again, because their bodies have dared to exist outside of patriarchal beauty standards, defined and controlled by the the male gaze.
As organisations, public bodies and services across the UK look set to draw up fresh guidelines in response to the Supreme Court ruling we will all do well to remember that gender policing does far, far more harm than ever does any good. At best it can be an irritant for women who move through the world everyday in a more masculine presentation, at its worst it poses an inherent threat to the people such an ill-thought out ruling is supposed to protect; putting woman who do not conform at risk of harassment, abuse and vigliante justice.
As Hannah Gadsby explained when she described herself as being ‘incorrectly female’, she was beaten up for being visibly lesbian and accepted that was what she was worth, because that is what the world told her.
“He beat the shit out of me and nobody stopped him. And I didn’t report that to the police and I did not take myself to the hospital and I should have. And you know why I didn’t? Because I thought that is all I was worth,” she explained during her stand up show Nanette. “And that was not homophobia pure and simple, people, that was gendered. If I’d have been feminine, that would not have happened. I am incorrectly female, I am incorrect, and that is a punishable offence.”
At its heart gender policing just proves – just like their views on the beautiful diversity of gender are narrow – the views of bigots on womanhood are equally as restrictive.
I run hot and cold with Bill Maher. Personally, I prefer John Oliver or Stephen Colbert. Yes, Maher has his moments reveling in provocation, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
I remember when he tangled with National Review Editor Rich Lowry about January 6 last fall before the election and the fact that Lowry was voting for Donald Trump. It dumbfounded me, and still does, that people can condemn Trump for January 6, trash him as undemocratic, and then go out on Election Day and pull the lever for him. Maher called out Lowry’s hypocrisy.
But last week Maher proved his hypocrisy and his obtuseness. After being invited to dinner at the White House, Maher emerged not just impressed but charmed. Yes, charmed, as if he’d just spent an evening with Trump akin to Smithers doddering around and supplicating to Montgomery Burns on The Simpsons. Both fawning over a man who treats others like garbage.
In recounting the evening to the New York Post, Maher gushed that Trump was “fun” and “generous,” even touting the “sweet” gift he received. “And I know that as I say that, millions of liberal sphincters just tightened,” Maher quipped.
Well, Bill, in this instance, you are the sphincter.
That might sound crude, but I have a synonym in mind that’s better — begins with an a and ends in an e. Because while Maher is patting himself on the back for being iconoclastic and unpredictable, he’s doing exactly what Trump wants, and that is normalizing a man who is not only inherently dangerous but who wreaks havoc on innocent lives and democracy.
I’ve spoken to many people who’ve known Trump personally, and every one of them, including Mary Trump, Anthony Scaramucci, and the author of Apprentice in Wonderland, Ramin Setoodeh, who met with Trump nine times. They all told me the same thing. In person, Donald Trump can be disarmingly charming.
That’s his greatest con. He knows how to smile just enough, compliment you just right, and make you feel special. But it’s a trick. A mask. Because behind that charade is a man bent on destruction who only cares about one thing — himself.
Maher was duped, like so many others. He’s no different than House Republicans who lick Trump’s feet, tech CEOs and Wall Street titans who fear a Truth Social tantrum, and big law firms that are scrambling to be extorted by the “Dear Leader.”
Maher’s fatal mistake wasn’t going to dinner. It was giving the impression, publicly and gleefully, that Trump is harmless. Even fun. Because Trump is neither. In just three months since returning to office, he has launched an all-out assault against decency and empathy. Trump has never been decent and never cared about anyone but himself..
Trump has already signed legislation that slashes Medicare and Medicaid with the recent stopgap spending bill. These are two lifelines for the poor and elderly, and the cuts come while proposing yet another round of tax breaks for the ultrawealthy. If you’re rich, you’re popping champagne. If you’re sick, disabled, or aging in poverty? Unlike Maher, you won’t be invited to the White House.
He has gutted DEI programs across the federal government, targeting racial equity initiatives, LGBTQ+ protections, and disability access. He has directed agencies to erase the word “transgender” from official documents. He’s not just trying to suppress an identity, he’s trying to wipe transgender people from existence.
Internationally, his cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development are decimating lifesaving programs. Particularly in Africa, where funding for HIV and AIDS treatment and prevention has been drastically slashed. UNAIDS estimatesthat just a 10 percent drop in international funding could result in over 500,000 additional AIDS-related deaths per year. Trump’s cuts aren’t just heartless. They’re lethal.
Meanwhile, he has used the full power of the presidency to target and ruin private citizens. Just last week, Trump signed executive orders targeting two officials from his first term, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor. They dared to tell the truth about the first term.
These aren’t just symbolic acts. Trump’s rhetoric and executive vendettas lead directly to death threats, financial ruin, and lives lived in hiding. Krebs and Taylor, like so many others, now must live with security threats, legal bills, and fear. They aren’t billionaires. They can’t buy safety. Maher can. He won’t lose a moment of sleep if Trump ever turns on him.
And yet Maher dismisses Trump’s monstrous record as if it were a punch line. He waves off the racist birtherism Trump peddled for years, the calls for a Muslim ban, the mocking of a disabled journalist, the infamous “shithole countries” remark, the praise for white supremacists in Charlottesville. The sexual assault allegations? The encouragement of political violence? The cozying up to dictators?
I’ve written extensively about Trump’s manipulative appeal. I’ve talked to Mary Trump, who knows the pathology firsthand, and Scaramucci, who confessed to how quickly and easily he got swept up before realizing the nightmare. Setoodeh chronicled Trump’s obsession with media and fame, and his desperate need to control every narrative.
That’s what makes moments like Maher’s dinner so dangerous. Trump lives for this kind of PR. He doesn’t need your vote, just your platform. He’ll use your kindness as a cudgel against your values. And he’s doing it now.
Here’s what Maher misses entirely: When Trump ruins someone’s life, it’s not entertainment. When he cuts programs, people die. When he targets minorities, children lose access to food, housing, and medicine. When he tries to erase a transgender person, their mental health suffers incredibly. When he tweets about private citizens, they’re forced into hiding. This isn’t funny. It’s fascism. It’s real.
Bill Maher went to dinner and came back with a gift. I hope it was worth it, because the rest of us are still counting the cost and bracing for the impending impact of Trump’s “gifts” to us.
So no, Bill, it’s not “millions of liberal sphincters” tightening. It’s millions of Americans tightening their grip on survival, health care, civil rights, and hope while you wine and dine at a fancy dinner with the man who wants to take it all away.
Rebecca Denison expected to have a short life. She’d acquired HIV as a college student in the 1980s, she told the audience at an infectious disease conference in San Francisco earlier this month, and got an official diagnosis in 1990. “Back then,” she said matter-of-factly, “It was understood we were all going to die.” Within six years, that all changed. A new generation of drugs called protease inhibitors, when combined with other drugs, made the virus virtually undetectable in people with HIV, giving them a much greater chance of living to old age.
“Your work saved my life,” Denison, now an advocate for HIV-positive women, told the room.
She’s not alone. Over the last three decades, the development of preventative medicines along with better testing and treatment have cut new annual HIV infections by a staggering 60 percent globally. Now, a strategy of taking drugs before an HIV encounter—pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP—can reduce the risk of transmission during sex by up to 99%.
Then, last year, scientists unveiled another, critical development: In a clinical trial of more than 5,000 girls and young women in Africa, a twice-annual shot called lenacapavir, administered as PrEP, blocked HIV infection for 100 percent of the more than 2,000 participants who’d received it. Shortly after, in a 3,000-person, multi-gender study across seven countries, 99.9% of participants who got lenacapavirdid not acquire HIV. A drug that worked this well (and required an injection just once every six months, no less) had never been seen before.
“It’s like, ‘Oh my god,’ we might have this tool that can really put an end to HIV.”Anna Katomski, a former program analyst at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
“I was sobbing,” Anna Katomski, a former program analyst at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), recalls when she first saw the results presented at a conference. Lenacapavir isn’t a vaccine; such a thing has eluded scientists for decades. But as Science put it in an article naming the drug its 2024 “Breakthrough of the Year,” it may be the “next best thing”—a long-lasting, injectable, highly efficacious preventative. “There was just such a feeling of optimism,” Katomski says, adding, “It’s like, ‘Oh my god,’ we might have this tool that can really put an end to HIV.”
But now, that’s all at risk. As Denison warned in her speech at the conference in San Francisco, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who once said that HIV was caused by the “gay lifestyle” and “poppers,” now heads the Department of Health and Human Services;thousands of government workers, including Katomski, have seen their jobs terminated or funding cut; and the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, shuttered USAID, a decision that officialssay will hamper the country’s ability to fight malaria, polio, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and other diseases across the world. The clawbacks don’t end there: Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration is considering cutting funds at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for domestic HIV prevention, too.
Particularly worrisome for HIV researchers is the threat to PEPFAR — the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — a program created in 2003 by Republican President George W. Bush to bring HIV treatments to the world, largely delivered through USAID. On January 20, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to “reevaluate and realign” the country’s foreign aid policies and called for a 90-day review of related programs. Shortly after, the Trump administration ordered the shutdown of operations at USAID, including work on PEPFAR. The administration has since backtracked, issuing a waiver allowing some PEPFAR programs to continue, including PrEP for pregnant and lactating women, but not for other “key populations” like LGBTQI people and sex workers, says Nidhi Bouri, the former deputy assistant administrator for Global Health at USAID. With foreign aid now under review through April 19, PEPFAR’s future is unclear.
This is a program that, throughout its 20-plus-year history, has saved an estimated 26 million lives. “It is the greatest act of humanity in the history of fighting infectious diseases that the world has ever known,” former PEPFAR head John Nkengasong recently told Science magazine.
Without a renewal of US aid, the world could see more than six times more new HIV infections by 2029.
So, what would it mean to walk away from this great act of humanity? In short, says Monica Gandhi, who directs the University of California, San Francisco-Bay Area Center for AIDS Research, it would be a “disaster.” Without a renewal of US aid, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima told the Associated Press last month, the world could see more than six times more new HIV infections by 2029, and a ten-fold increase in deaths to more than six million. Quite literally, it’s death by a thousand cuts.
Gandhi also worries about the possibility of HIV gaining resistance to drugs. As she explains, effectively treating HIV requires daily, combination antiretroviral drugs. Without reliable access to clinics and aid, she warns, people may try to stretch their pill supply, taking medicine less often or sharing with family members. “If you do this kind of rationing, what it leads to is drug resistance.”
And PEPFAR isn’t the only HIV program at risk. Several high-profile studies have also shut down in response to Trump’s order. One set of trials known as the MATRIX Study,a $125 million endeavor funded by USAID, was designed to evaluate new HIV prevention products for women, including a dissolvable vaginal film, dissolvable vaginal insert, and a vaginal ring meant to prevent pregnancy and HIV transmission. Catherine Chappell, an assistant professor and OB/GYN at the University of Pittsburgh who helped lead the trial for the vaginal ring, says Trump’s order meant her Phase I clinical trial was abruptly ended mid-data-collection. “We had participants in South Africa that still had these [placebo] rings in their vaginas,” she says. Chappell worries that dropping the study midway through could have “irreparably damaged” researchers’ relationship with the community. “It is just completely unethical,” she says.
Similarly, Katomski, the former USAID analyst, had been in the midst of data analysis on the MOSAIC study, a three-part trial intended to evaluate various forms of PrEP (oral, injectable, and vaginal ring) in women and girls. When the study stopped, so did Katomski and her colleagues’ analysis and data dissemination to partners and participants. “It not only is such a violation of ethics codes that we follow as researchers,” she says, “but also, from a scientific standpoint, it’s just such a waste of US taxpayers’ dollars.” Before losing her job at USAID, Katomski’s research division was considering trials for lenacapavir, the 2024 “breakthrough” drug. “All of that’s just been cut off,” she says.
It’s unclear how, exactly, this recent shift in priorities happened. Over the last 20 years, PEPFAR has seen wide, bipartisan support. In a 2023 op-ed published in The Hill, a group of senators, including Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump’s most vocal supporters, urged the reauthorization of PEPFAR, writing, “We must come together once again to reauthorize PEPFAR and work to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. Now is the time to remind the world what American leadership can accomplish when we put our minds and hearts to it.” Even former Sen. Marco Rubio, now Trump’s Secretary of State—who oversaw the purging ofUSAID—praised the agency’s work on “more than two dozen occasions” over the years, according to fact-checking site PolitiFact, “from hurricane relief to battling infectious diseases to aiding refugees.”
In short, after decades of research, science delivered the most effective, preventative HIV drugs the world has ever seen—and the US is throwing up its hands and abandoning efforts to share them with those most in need. That isn’t just a moral failing, experts say, it also goes against the country’s self-interest. For decades, officials have seen foreign disease prevention as a form of “soft power”—it engenders trust within the global community, while ensuring fewer infections both abroad and ultimately, at home. “When you prevent disease transmission, whether that be HIV, whether that be tuberculosis, whether that be malaria, in one area of the world,” Katomski says, “it prevents that disease from coming back to the United States.”
All of this is to say, now is a uniquely bad time to walk away from HIV research and aid. As Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told conference attendees via video in San Francisco, “We can end the global HIV epidemic. We have the resources to do so.”
“Now is not the time to pull back,” he said, “for history will judge us harshly if we squander the opportunity that is before us.”
Freedom has never been a passive gift. It is a fight we carry forward, generation after generation.
Living in Alabama, I’m aware that every right we enjoy was won by the people—not simply granted by lawmakers. Black elders in Montgomery remind us that the Montgomery Bus Boycott wasn’t just a symbolic protest—it was 381 days of relentless organizing, sacrifice, and resistance. These histories are blueprints for our movements today, and we need them now more than ever.
As a volunteer for Montgomery Pride United, I have witnessed how the LGBTQ movement is sustained by elders who survived bar crackdowns, led revolutionary marches, and endured the HIV/AIDS crisis. And now, we’re seeing the state of Alabama work to intentionally suppress this crucial history.
On the federal level, under the current Administration, LGBTQ people are facing an aggressive, coordinated effort to censor our stories and restrict equal access to public life. Currently, 456 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced across the United States. Here’s what is at stake in Alabama:
House Bill 4 introduces the vague term “gender-oriented conduct” into the state obscenity law—an intentional tactic to ban books about queer and trans people from public libraries.
House Bill 67 is a drag ban also designed to target and criminalize innocent trans people for simply existing in schools or libraries.
House Bill 244 expands “Don’t Say Gay” through 12th grade, further isolating queer and trans youth while censoring free speech, LGBTQ history, and the contributions of queer and trans leaders from classrooms.
House Bill 246, the “Pronoun Bill,” would prohibit public school, college, and university employees from using a student’s name or pronouns without explicit written parental permission.
The inaccurate and harmful act ignoring the existence of intersex, transgender, and nonbinary people , was recently signed by Governor Ivey. It enshrines medically inaccurate definitions of “male” and “female”and aims to block people from their own accurate identity documents and justifies bathroom restrictions that are vague and dangerously enforced. This bill takes effect on October 1.
Anti-LGBTQ bills have emboldened extremists on the ground in Alabama.
These bills are not just targeting LGBTQ people, they are a direct attack on First Amendment freedoms. When Alabama lawmakers passed an anti-DEI law last year, a Black Student Union was forced to give up its meeting space, excluding Black students from necessary and safe places to find community. These actions are part of a broader strategy to roll back civil rights and silence those who challenge systemic oppression. In 2023, lawmakers threatened the Alabama Department of Archives and History’s budget for inviting Invisible Histories, a community archive organization, to present a lecture on Alabama’s rich, and too often untold, LGBTQ History.
Image via Instagram @montgomeryprideunited
Since 2024, we have seen an increase in challenged and banned books across public libraries – including The Pronoun Book, The Meaning of Pride, The Hate U Give, and Being You: a First Conversation about Gender. Our local LGBTQ community center, managed by Montgomery Pride United, has also heard from many queer teens that they fear repercussions by teachers and students alike for being themselves. This onslaught of oppressive laws is meant to make life harder for queer and transgender people in the state.
But here’s what lawmakers fail to understand: LGBTQ people are not leaving Alabama. No amount of hateful legislation will erase us. We are active in our communities, schools, churches, and in every facet of public life across the state. Our history is our power. And right now, lawmakers are not just trying to ban books—they are trying to deny we exist online and in real life. You can help ensure this never happens by joining the collective effort to preserve LGBTQ histories, both digitally and physically, by signing up with Invisible Histories, a community-based archive working with LGBTQ organizations across the South to protect the legacy of LGBTQ Alabamians and help safeguard the online records of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs set to be eliminated because of the President’s executive order.
An attendee pictured in rainbow colored angel wings at Renaissance City Pride in Florence, AL. (Credit: Darian Aaron)
We’ve survived attacks against LGBTQ people before, and this time, we have the tools to protect our history. Our elders were battle-tested, building movements from the ground up and laying the foundation for the social progress we no longer can take for granted. It is our turn to ensure their wisdom and resilience are imparted to future generations. LGBTQ Alabamians shouldn’t have to leave home to thrive, and those intent on making life intolerable for the most marginalized in our state should never be in the majority.
Jose Vazquez (they/them) organizes in Montgomery, Alabama, via South Florida. They are on the founding team of the Bayard Rustin Community Center, the only LGBTQ space and thrift store in central Alabama, and on the Board of Invisible Histories, a community-based archive.
Each March, we have the opportunity to examine the contributions of women throughout history and honor those who inspire us. As an advocate working to get more LGBTQ+ people elected to public office, I have the privilege of supporting many incredible leaders in their campaigns and beyond, including many inspiring women.
As we look back on the milestones in our movement for equitable representation, LGBTQ+ women have much to celebrate.
The first successful out LGBTQ+ candidate in American (and possibly world) history was Kathy Kozachenko, who won local office in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as a third-party candidate in 1974. The first out LGBTQ+ state legislator was a woman, Elaine Noble, who won her seat in the Massachusetts House in 1974 as well. All three out LGBTQ+ people who have served in the U.S. Senate have been women. As executives, lesbians and bi women have served as governors of three states and have been elected mayor in cities like Chicago, Houston, Madison, Tampa and Seattle. And in recent years, we’ve made even more progress in Congress, with the first out trans representative, the first Native, Black and Latina women in the House, and many more state-level “firsts”– all LGBTQ+ women.
Running for office as an out queer woman brings many challenges, and we must all do our part to give extra support to the women leaders in our communities. Based on survey research conducted by LGBTQ+ Victory Institute and Loyola Marymount University, LGBTQ+ women are more likely to be discouraged from running for office than their gay and bi men counterparts – even more so for transgender women candidates. The research also found that LGBTQ+ women seeking public office faced attacks on their appearance and clothing at an alarming rate and that women are more likely to be undermined by the media.
LGBTQ+ women making history this year
Many people are unaware that various jurisdictions in the U.S. hold elections every year and that nearly every month there is an election taking place. Working for an organization that endorses candidates for offices large and small and in states, territories and tribal governments across the country, I see firsthand the impact our candidates have when they win their elections and take office. These women are often our community’s fiercest champions, and we need even more of them to win and fight for us. Even though we’re only three months into this election year, there are already dozens of women candidates for state and local office who have been endorsed by LGBTQ+ Victory Fund and deserve our support.
From major cities to small villages, LGBTQ+ women are running for mayor – a role that touches the daily lives of each of their constituents. In San Antonio, Texas, former Air Force official Gina Ortiz Jones is running to bring down the cost of housing and increase opportunities for workers in her hometown. In Downington, Pennsylvania, scientist and businesswoman Erica Deuso – who has broad community support in her race – could make history as the first out trans person elected to executive office in state history.
Elsewhere across the country, women are stepping up to lead in their communities. Environmental justice advocate Charlene Wang is running for Oakland City Council to ensure growth and sustainability go hand-in-hand. Downstate in San Diego County, Imperial Beach Mayor Poloma Aguirre is running to represent the concerns of over 700,000 constituents as a county supervisor for District 1. In Madison, Wisconsin – where lesbian Satya Rhodes-Conway serves as mayor – Carmella Glenn is running to add important LGBTQ+ representation to the city council, where she’ll fight for more opportunities for constituents affected by bias in the criminal justice system.
As culture wars continue to rage over schools and libraries, LGBTQ+ Victory Fund candidates are answering the call to fight disinformation and work to create inclusive school districts and library systems all around the country. Candidates like Vanessa Abundiz, Emily Gilbert, Alena Hansen, Elana Jacobs and Ali Muldrow all are running for key seats on school or library district boards and deserve our support.
Now more than ever, we must double down on our efforts to elect LGBTQ+ candidates – and especially queer and trans women – to offices big and small. It’s often said that if you’re not at the table, then you’re on the menu. With hostility against our community growing in statehouses around the country and now the White House, I urge you to join the fight to ensure our voices are heard in the halls of power.
It’s a Thursday night or a Sunday afternoon, and you’re sitting on your couch with your phone in your hand.
What are you going to do?
That’s the question at the heart of a loneliness crisis that’s overwhelmed the LGBTQ+ community.
The rise of social media and “the apps,” a wave of bar closings during the COVID pandemic, and a hostile political environment have conspired to produce a sense of dread for gay Americans that still has a lot of us sheltering in place — alone together.
But the obstacles keeping us apart in real life are giving way to a connection revival.
Three years after the pandemic, more bars are opening. Movie theater attendance is up. Restaurants are bustling, and people are reassessing the value of living their lives online.
And politics are galvanizing the LGBTQ+ community.
“Look, just being gay, or lesbian, or trans, or in drag is in and of itself a political act, because they have made it that way,” says Daniel Narcicio, owner of Red Eye bar in New York and a longtime promoter. “Being yourself is inherently political when people in power are telling you that what you are is wrong. Being out, literally in a club or figuratively out of the closet, is a political act.”
Buffeted by an onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, Grindr, gentrification, and pandemic lockdowns, the gay bar is reemerging as a center of LGBTQ+ community, reimagined as a more inclusive space and primed for protest.
Mario Diaz at his Sunday party Hot Dog at El Cid in Silver Lake | Mario Diaz Presents
“They are and have always been our homes away from home,” says Mario Diaz, a club king in Los Angeles who hosts Hot Dog Sundays at El Cid in Silver Lake. “And to those of us that have been disowned by our blood families, simply our home. So they are essential. Community is crucial. And spaces for celebration are indispensable. This is what life is all about: connection and love.”
And Diaz adds, “If history has taught us anything, it’s that no one parties like the oppressed.”
Part of hooking up is the eye contact and that excruciating second between when you look down and look away and then look back to see if he’s looking back at you. But if you’re looking at your phone, you miss out on that.Sociology Professor Greggor Mattson
Gay bars took a hit
History can also teach us something about the gay bar business, and the political context they operate in.
“It is certainly the case that in 2017, gay bar owners said they saw a surge of patrons who had become complacent during the Obama years and rediscovered their need to find a place to gather together,” says Greggor Mattson, professor and chair of Sociology at Oberlin College in Ohio, who chronicled the state of gay bars across the United States in his 2023 book, Who Needs Gay Bars?
“I would never say that Trump is good for gay bar business because he’s so bad for members of our community,” Mattson adds, but history looks like it’s repeating itself.
By Mattson’s count, there are just over 800 gay bars operating across the United States (he visited several hundred in his cross-country research), and 2023 was the first year there had been an increase since 1997.
Many closed during the pandemic lockdowns and never recovered. Others fell victim to gentrification and redevelopment — the scrappy dive bars in low-rent neighborhoods that appealed to low-income regulars, slumming tourists, and real estate speculators alike.
Related:
One example of pandemic resilience is Troop 429 in Norwalk, Connecticut, which managed to weather the COVID lockdowns by gaming the system.
“They were quite creative,” Mattson says. “Bars were closed, but retail was an essential business that was allowed to stay open. So they partnered with a record store and turned the bar into a record store where you could buy cocktails. That kept them open and allowed them to survive through COVID.”
Other bars partnered with food trucks, and some jurisdictions loosened rules around outdoor drinking, turning parking lots into open-air beer gardens.
At The Raven in Anchorage, Alaska, staff took it upon themselves to keep a voluntary log of everyone who came to the bar.
“When one of their patrons reported that they had tested positive for COVID, they called everyone to let them know. They were using skills they had honed during the AIDS crisis for community care. And in that way, I think gay bars may have had an advantage over other communities’ bars because this was not our first pandemic.”
The problem with phones
While lockdowns disappeared with the pandemic, Grindr still haunts the gay bar.
“Everything is different in bars because of phones,” says Mattson.
“One of the questions I was always asking owners who had been in the business for a while was, ‘What’s changed?’ And they all said people are worse conversationalists, and they don’t know how to be fun at the bar because we are all so used to when we feel borderline-uncomfortable whipping out our phone and looking down. And as you know, part of hooking up is the eye contact and that excruciating second between when you look down and look away and then look back to see if he’s looking back at you. But if you’re looking at your phone, you miss out on that.”
To be queer in my lifetime has consistently been a life on the fringe in a society full of judgment and shame. This is why our spaces are so important. LA promoter Mario Diaz
Worse than that, phones wielded in community spaces like gay bars are a sign of the addictive quality of the apps that users are glued to.
“To the extent that social media apps are driven by algorithms that are meant to get people to spend more time on them, I don’t think that we can trust they would be good for mental health,” says John Pachankis, the David R Kessler professor of Public Health and Psychiatry at Yale University.
“They keep people, straight or gay, out of the real world and into a world that’s built to be addictive, and addictive in ways that rely on self/other comparisons, self-evaluation, and ultimately feeling inferior,” Pachankis says.
Those symptoms can plague anyone who spends time on social media, but it might be particularly damaging to the mental health of LGBTQ+ people — because they’re set up for it.
“Probably the two biggest drivers of the mental health disparity affecting LGBT people happen at an early age,” Pachankis says.
“LGBTQ people are disproportionately exposed to parental non-acceptance and to peer rejection or bullying, and we know that those two types of stressors are targeted to an important aspect of who one is. They are evaluative and shame-inducing and are about the most stressful events and experiences that people can have. That sets people up for later mental health risk.”
Even in crowded places, our phones can keep us apart | Shutterstock
Ironically enough, there’s a good chance that the guy at the bar who’s looking away during a “borderline-uncomfortable” moment is on Grindr, simultaneously widening his selection of potential dates, shutting down the ones in front of him, and sparking a stressor unique to queer men.
“Research does show that to the extent that gay and bisexual men, for example, experience stressors from within the gay community, their mental health is particularly likely to suffer with outcomes like depressed mood, body image disturbance, and even sexual risk-taking,” Pachankis says.
“All is not lost,” though, says Mattson.
“As a teacher of young people, young people are vaguely aware of what they’re missing. And I think it’s incumbent on queer elders, particularly people older than 32, who now count as queer elders, to keep the art of witty bar side banter alive and to help people put their phones away,” he says.
“Some of the bar owners and some of the bartenders are really skilled at this like they are at the front lines of holding on to our humor,” Mattson explains. “There was one bar owner who said he instructed his bartenders to take people’s phones and that they could only have them back after they had introduced themselves to a stranger, and that sometimes they would get so involved that they would forget to get their phones back.”
Club impresario Nardicio has a different strategy for keeping his customers offline.
“Just last week, I threw my infamous Nardi Gras party and had a 15-person marching band come through at midnight,” he says. “And I can tell you, no one at the club was on Grindr. They were living for it.”
I will say that with everything that has happened since Trump’s come into office, I have seen even more support for what we are doing and more excitement for what we are doing.Rikki’s Women’s Sports Bar co-creator Sara Yergovich
Broadening gay bars’ appeal
Smaller gay bars, though, have had to come up with other strategies to bring customers in, despite the lure of the apps — by broadening their appeal.
“Owners of bear bars or leather bars would ask me, you know, ‘What should we be doing?’” says Mattson. “I directed them to lesbian bars because lesbian bars have been doing this now for almost 30 years. Every lesbian bar that I interviewed was open to everybody.”
Lesbian bars experienced decades of decline before a bounce back following the pandemic. There were over 200 women’s bars in the 1980s, and fewer than 20 by the start of the pandemic. Since then, the Lesbian Bar Project counts 34 lesbian bars up and running across the U.S.
That number will bump up to 35 with the May opening of Rikki’s Women’s Sports Bar in San Francisco’s Castro District.
“Our definition of women’s sports is broad and all-encompassing,” says Danielle Thoe, one of Rikki’s co-owners. “It’s hard to fit that in just a couple sentences when you’re describing the space and what we’re building, but I think that welcoming aspect is really important,” she says.
To live a free and joyful life as a queer person is the ultimate act of resistance.LA promoter Mario Diaz
“Sports have a different connection,” says Sara Yergovich, Thoe’s business partner. “They’re a different way to connect with people. We’re very community-based, and as long as they want to support women’s sports, everyone is welcome.”
The pair say politics have worked their way into Rikki’s even before the bar’s opening.
“I will say that with everything that has happened since Trump’s come into office, I have seen even more support for what we are doing and more excitement for what we are doing,” Yergovich says. “It feels like people have kind of latched onto this as, you know, maybe bad things are happening, but there are some good things that are happening, too, and trying to really hold on to that.”
“Trans athletes belong in sports,” says Thoe. “They are some of our investors, our backers, our community members, and so that’s something that we’ll really look to highlight and make clear as we continue to get up and running.”
The resistance is alive and well at the gay bar
Nardicio’s New York bar is highlighting its resistance, as well, in gestures subtler than a marching band.
“Take for instance, at Red Eye, we recently got an ‘A’ from the health department ’cause we keep it clean behind the bar. We took that ‘A,’ put it in the window and proudly put a ‘G’ and a ‘Y’ next to it, so it says ‘GAY’ boldly in our window. We aren’t backing down. It’s in your face. We’re here, we’re queer, and we keep a spotless bar!”
Daniel Nardicio at his Red Eye nightclub in New York | Daniel Nardicio
“I think many of us learned a few lessons in lockdown,” says LA promoter Diaz. “Lessons about what’s really important in life. About the importance of human connection. Lessons on how short and unpredictable life can be.”
“To be queer in my lifetime has consistently been a life on the fringe in a society full of judgment and shame,” Diaz says. “This is why our spaces are so important. We need these places to survive and hold onto our joy. To live a free and joyful life as a queer person is the ultimate act of resistance. The moment we lose that, we lose the fight.”
“When people tell me, ‘We don’t need gay bars anymore,’ I ask them how they felt when they first went back to a restaurant after the COVID lockdowns, and they rhapsodize about how amazing it was to be out in public and to see people,” says Mattson.
“And I said, for queer people, we still need that. Even if we lived in a perfect world that was perfectly accepting, we are still a minority. We are still often raised by very lovely straight people, but who can’t be there for us in all the ways that we need. So we’re always going to need places where we can gather together. And there’s something deeply human about our need to be around other humans.”
“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.”-Holocaust survivor, social justice writer, and activist Elie Wiesel in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on Dec. 10, 1986.
Elie Wiesel’s words are as true today as they were the day he delivered them, as in many ways, our world today mirrors the rising tide of fascism in Europe and the United States from the 1920s through the 1940s.
I write this on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, exactly one week after the second inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States. Over the past decade, Trump and his MAGA legions have relocated the extremist right-wing political fringes from the margins to the mainstream.
With “Stand Back and Stand By” as his not-so-coded battle cry, Trump has empowered his white nationalist Christian soldier “brown shirts” as the literal and figurative head of his sword, puncturing and slashing a Constitutional order that he swore to “support and defend.” His “strongman” alpha male tactics of intimidation, threats, and bullying are the means by which he uses to control and beat his detractors and opponents into submission, both domestically and internationally.
Behind closed doors, several Republican senators and representatives have anonymously expressed concern and even scorn for his policies and nominees to fill offices in his administration. Very few of them, however, have shown the backbone to publicly oppose him over his threats to campaign against them in the next election cycle. Trump also employs the power of social media to attack and shame anyone who stands in his way.
Following the Trump-led insurrection upon the Capitol building in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, some Republican members of Congress publicly broke with Trump and severely criticized his actions that day.
Unfortunately, people like Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and former Representative and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) retracted their critical statements and traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago seaside resort to bend a knee and figuratively kiss the tacky gold ring on Trump’s finger in penance for their transgressions. Their supposed spines turned out to merely be melting ice in the Florida sun.
On an international level, Trump’s means of intimidation include threats of imposing tariffs and violating existing treaties. On the day of his inauguration, for example, Trump signed an executive order removing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords and also rescinded U.S. membership in the United Nations’ World Health Organization.
In his valiant attempt to enforce ethical standards on how other countries should “repatriate” undocumented immigrants back to their native Colombia, President Gustavo Petro barred two U.S. military cargo aircraft from landing in his country. Gustavo expressed his displeasure that the use of these planes treats his citizens as if they were criminals.
Under previous administrations, including that of Biden, deportations were conducted through commercial passenger planes, which Gustavo claimed was more appropriate and humane.
Trump reacted by immediately imposing a 25% tariff, which would rise to 50% after one week. He also instructed a travel ban from Colombia to the United States and canceled visas for Colombian officials. In addition, he called for heightened US Customs and Border Protection inspections on all Colombian nationals and cargo on the grounds of national security, and he imposed US Treasury-enforced banking and financial restrictions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
Initially, President Gustavo responded by imposing a 25% tariff on US products coming into Colombia but soon felt that for him to protect the interests of his country, he had to submit to Trump’s terms of allowing military aircraft to transport Colombian nationals.
In recent administrations, the U.S. had relatively good relations with the Colombian government through ongoing open diplomatic channels. But our wannabe autocratic dictator believes he does not need to use diplomacy or compromise with any international leader.
During Trump’s first term in office (and even today), some leaders used the psychological tactic of complimenting and flattering his fragile ego to avoid any consequences stemming from his wrath.
We can all be encouraged by a stirring speech in front of the European Union Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, one day following Trump’s second inaugural address. Here in its entirety are the words of Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, Irish Labour Party politician and member of the European Parliament:
“Yesterday, we witnessed the inauguration of a man whose ideology embodies everything the EU was founded to reject. The EU cannot just stand for our values when it is easy. It matters most when it comes at a cost. And standing up to Trump will come with a cost. But it is much less than letting this poison win.”
“I am done with the niceties from EU leaders to Trump while his techno buddies call for our laws to be undermined. I am done with the Taoiseach of Ireland, with our historic understanding of immigration and oppression, promoting Trump’s golf links in County Clare in response to his inauguration. And I am done with the so-called “strong men” who, if they had to live for one day in the shoes of an immigrant, a woman, or a transgender person, would quiver with fear.”
“Anyone who believes the founding principles of the EU should be appalled with what we witnessed yesterday. I am appalled, so I resist, and Europe must resist because our history demands it.”
Trump’s enablers, both domestic and international, need to take strength from people like Ríordáin and from Episcopal Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde of the U.S. National Cathedral in Washington, DC, who, during her inaugural sermon, implored Trump to “find compassion” and “have mercy” on LGBTQ+ people and immigrants.
While hardly veiled or clandestine and not as dramatic as the covert partisan legions under Nazi occupation, there are literally millions of good, hard-working people throughout the world laboring diligently to turn back the Christian white supremacist neo-Nazi nativist tide we are currently witnessing.
Resistance movements have surfaced throughout the planet in an attempt to depose autocratic leaders in countries like Israel, Turkey, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Mainland China, Russia, Hungary, and Poland.
The Trumpian age must be understood as a national wake-up call, one that has set off a blaring siren, an alert to those who have not previously counted themselves among the throngs of progressive political activists.
Let’s return to the poignant wisdom of Elie Wiesel: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
Bullies fall when others act. We, the people, will act, and Trump will fall.
Pride may look different this year than those of recent memory.
With the return of the Trump presidency, companies abandoning DEI, and the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, the sociocultural wars in the U.S. are having many LGBTQ+-led nonprofits gasping for air. I see this moment as an opportunity, as hopeful as I am.
It’s time to rethink how our community interacts with the nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC). The relationship between governments and private philanthropy has gradually transformed nonprofit organizations into intermediaries that manage rather than solve social issues. Far too often, this structure has created a dependency on external funding, limiting the scope of radical change and prioritizing funders’ interests over the needs of the communities being served.
For years, we’ve been told that our liberation was best served on a silver platter at the annual fundraising banquet, where high-level donors in designer suits and gowns clinked glasses as slideshows showcasing LGBTQ+ youth smiling or serious faces at organized group meetings. We built an entire infrastructure around the generosity of those who could afford to fund our fight. And yet, in a moment where queer and trans rights are under attack, when book bans and bathroom bills flood state legislatures, and when even our safest spaces feel precarious, we find ourselves facing a harsh reality.
The money is drying up.
This week, two of the nation’s leading LGBTQ+ advocacy groups announced layoffs: Human Rights Campaign, expected to lay off 20% of its staff; and GLSEN, planning to “resize” as it restructures and rebrands the organization—and it’s only February. These changes at a pivotal moment signal a systemic problem. We placed too many of our eggs in the baskets of benevolent benefactors and seasonal corporate allies, some of whom have pledged allegiance to the flag of Trump’s anti-DEI policies, instead of building sustainable models that center our own socioeconomic power. As companies scale back their commitments and nonprofits struggle to keep the lights on, we must ask ourselves a vital question.
Did we invest too much faith in a system never meant to last?
For the last decade, we saw major brands wrap themselves in rainbows every June, eager to prove their LGBTQ+ bona fides with splashy campaigns, donations, and limited-edition merchandise. But behind the scenes, these same companies were donating to the campaign of anti-LGBTQ+ politicians and treating corporate diversity programs like PR stunts—and sometimes, we have to call out a stunt queen. Now that right-wing pressure has made “wokeness” and “DEI” a dirty word in corporate boardrooms, the pendulum is swinging back with a vengeance. The dollars and support that once flowed so freely are being reallocated, redirected, or outright cut as they pull the plug on their initiatives.
Meanwhile, the nonprofits meant to be our safety net have been caught in the cycle of dependence on these fleeting resources. Grants, sponsorships, and major donations & gifts shape the priorities of LGBTQ+ advocacy, sometimes more than the needs of the communities these organizations serve. Some grassroots leaders have long argued these leading queer groups prioritized palatable, fundable issues over the less marketable realities of queer survival: sex work decriminalization, empowering organizing, or direct cash assistance for the most vulnerable in our increasingly vulnerable community. But now, as the purse string tightens, we’re seeing just how fragile this queer nonprofit industrial complex is.
When budgets get cut, it’s the most marginalized members of our community who feel the brunt of it. Programs serving Black and Brown trans individuals, unhoused LGBTQ+ youth, and low-income queer families may be on the chopping block. These organizations hire those historically facing financial uncertainty, and layoffs come with the dire concerns of having to navigate a country that is increasingly looking at them through cross-hairs.
So, where does that leave us? If nonprofits, as they currently stand, continue to downsize and restructure with limited resources, what comes next?
A New Model for LGBTQ+ Advocacy
From Charity to Mutual Aid
First, we must shift our focus from charity to mutual aid and cooperative economic models. The pandemic showed us the power of direct giving, community-driven and community-led support networks, and redistributive models that cut out the middlemen and got resources directly into the hands of those who needed them. We saw trans-led funds distribute relief, mutual aid groups provide food and medical supplies without bureaucratic red tape, and community members offer resources in ways that were faster and more effective than traditional nonprofits.
Instead of waiting for a savior in the form of a Fortune 500 company or a millionaire donor, we should invest in systems that allow us to care for each other.
Some grassroots initiatives include a network of community fridges to provide free food for neighbors in need. Nikki Aye
Economic Empowerment as Activism
Second, we need to reclaim the means of production. Economic empowerment has to be at the forefront of the next wave of LGBTQ+ activism. Queer co-ops, businesses, and community land trusts can create stability where philanthropy falls short. (Yes, economic empowerment also means reminding brands who turn their backs on the power of our purse through boycotts.) We should seek to channel queer labor into structures that don’t depend heavily on generosity from those who show up like an estranged parent with presents. Let’s build institutions that belong to us and serve us without any strings attached.
Redefining Success
This leads me to my final thought: redefining what success looks like regarding LGBTQ+ advocacy work. Is the measurement solely based on a glossy report, or is it showcasing how an organization has changed lives outside the traditional nonprofit framework? Is it by ensuring big-named donors get the shiny press release and top billing at an event, or is it by thanking the many who contributed to the cause without asking for a tax write-off receipt? If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that the quest for queer liberation has never been rooted in institutions alone.
It has thrived in underground networks, chosen families, and the radical act of caring for one another when no one else would.
The collapse of the queer nonprofit industrial complex is not a tragedy but a wake-up call. It’s time to build a system that cannot be dismantled by shifting political tides or corporate support. Our future must be built on our own terms, with our own resources, and for our own people. Because true liberation has never been granted from above.
It has always been forged from within.
Marie-Adélina de la Ferrière is the Community Editor at equalpride, the publisher of The Advocate, and holds a Master’s degree in History and a Master’s Certificate in Public & Arts Administration from SUNY Brockport. With nearly two decades in the nonprofit sector, she has worked with organizations ranging from childhood development agencies to arts and cultural institutions. This year, she joined the Board of Rainbow Seniors Roc, a local nonprofit that serves as an advocacy and social group for LGBTQ+ individuals aged 50 and over.
Voices is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from the LGBTQ+ and Allied community. Visit advocate.com/submit to learn more about submission guidelines. We welcome your thoughts and feedback on any of our stories. Email us at voices@equalpride.com. Views expressed in Voices stories are those of the guest writers, columnists and editors, and do not directly represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, equalpride.
