Thursday, June 26 marks the tenth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that cleared the way for the freedom to marry for same-sex couples nationwide.
A new report from The Williams Institute finds that the Obergefell ruling ”has had the most profound impact on the South. From 2014 to 2023, the percentage of cohabiting same-sex couples who were married grew by 21% in the South (38% to 59%), 16% in the West (46% to 62%), 15% in the Midwest (41% to 55%), and by 11% in the Northeast (50% to 60%).” A majority of Southern states (AL, AR, GA, KY, LA, MS, TN, TX) still had bans in place prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying until Obergefell, and every other Southern state (FL, NC, SC, VA, WV) had only stopped enforcing their bans 8 months prior to the ruling.
Overall, the Williams Institute found that, as of June 2025, there are an estimated 823,000 married same-sex couples in the United States, more than double the number of married same-sex couples in June 2015 when Obergefell was decided. These couples are raising nearly 300,000 children (299,000).
An additional recent report from The Williams Institute also found that the largest economic impact of allowing same-sex couples to marry was felt in the Southeast. An estimated $2.3 billion was spent on weddings between same-sex couples in the Southeast, around 40% of the estimated $5.9 billion total nationwide spending on weddings between same-sex couples from 2015 through 2025.
On Wednesday, June 25, 2025, the Campaign for Southern Equality will join with partner organizations in Alabama to mark the tenth anniversary; Alabama was one of the last states to continue to fight against marriage for same-sex couples, even passing a law attempting to stop issuing marriage licenses to any couple at all. The event, ”10 Years of the Freedom to Marry: Love Will Always Win,” will be held at the Birmingham Museum of Art, in partnership with Central Alabama Pride and Alabama Equality. Speakers include former U.S. Senator Doug Jones; Freedom to Marry founder and 2025 Presidential Citizens Medal recipient Evan Wolfson; Campaign for Southern Equality’s Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara; Rev. Carmarion Anderson; Michael Rudulph, husband to Alabama’s only out LGBTQ+ lawmaker Neil Rafferty; and others. Learn more about the event here.
Polling in support of the freedom to marry remains at historic highs. There is majority support in every single state, according to 2025 PRRI data, ranging from a low of 50% support in Arkansas to 68% support in Virginia. Recent polling from just this month released by Centerline Liberties and Project Right Side found that public support is strongly bipartisan; 56% of Republicans said they supported allowing same-sex couples to marry, and 63% of Republicans said they believe a person who supports same-sex couples marrying can still be considered a Republican.
In the years leading up to the Obergefell ruling, the Campaign for Southern Equality pioneered the “We Do” campaign, in which couples requested marriage licenses in Southern states, provoking denials and shining a light on the urgent need for federal action on the freedom to marry. The effort, from 2011-2015, was the largest sustained campaign around marriage equality in the South, taking place at a time when many predicted it would be decades before the freedom to marry would be achieved in the region. The Campaign for Southern Equality was proud to be a part of lawsuits that brought the freedom to marry to North Carolina and Mississippi.
Adam Polaski, Communications & Political Director of Freedom to Marry, said today:
“Ten years ago, laws on marriage for same-sex couples were finally settled — and over the past decade, Americans have moved on, with the decision becoming deeply ingrained in our country and culture. The freedom to marry has helped millions of Americans take care of each other, build stability, and plan for the future. Nowhere is that clearer than in the South, where hundreds of thousands of people are leading lives that are strengthened by the freedom to marry. As we celebrate this tenth anniversary, our team is proud to have been a part of this historic movement, and we will continue working toward the lived and legal equality of LGBTQ+ people all across the South.
The Campaign for Southern Equality has helped hundreds of same-sex couples and their families share their stories about why marriage matters to them over the past ten years and beyond. If you are looking to connect with a same-sex couple or family member for your coverage of the Obergefell anniversary, please reach out to adam@southernequality.org.
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Based in Asheville, NC, the Campaign for Southern Equality promotes full LGBTQ equality across the South. Our work is rooted in commitments to equity in race, gender, and class. Through our Trans Youth Emergency Project we provide logistical and financial support directly to the families of trans youth who are impacted by anti-transgender healthcare bans in the South. www.southernequality.org
In this rapidly changing landscape, MAP’s LGBTQ Equality Maps provide a detailed snapshot of the current state of LGBTQ laws and policies in the United States. See below for a listing of state level policy changes, plus MAP’s bill tracking and policy research updates, as of June 20, 2025.
▸▸ State Policy Updates Parental opt-out/opt-in for LGBTQ-related curriculumSee our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here.
May 1: Montana enacted a new law requiring parents to opt children in to LGBTQ-inclusive content in schools. It expands the previous law allowing parents to opt children out. It applies to all grades K-12 and will not go into effect until July 1.
Bans on transgender people’s use of bathrooms and facilitiesSee our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here.
There are now 19 states with a law or policy banning transgender people from using bathrooms according to their gender identity in various government-owned settings. Now, more than 1 in 4 (26%) transgender people nationwide live under some form of these policies.
May 1: North Dakota expanded its existing K-12 bathroom ban by adding new penalties and enforcements. Originally, the state’s 2023 ban had no penalties defined, but this 2025 law allows for complaints to be submitted against schools, for the state attorney general to take action via investigations or enforcement against schools, and for up to a $2,500 penalty for each violation of the ban. May 12: Arizona’s governor vetoed a K-12 bathroom ban. May 13: Oklahoma expanded its existing K-12 bathroom ban to also apply to state-owned prisons and correctional facilities. May 16: In Montana, a court granted a preliminary injunction, blocking enforcement of the state’s bathroom ban for the remainder of the ongoing lawsuit. This built on an earlier, temporary block of the bathroom ban. June 3: South Carolina renewed its existing K-12 bathroom ban. Because the ban was originally passed as part of the state’s annual budget, it must be renewed annually to remain in effect.
“Shield” or “refuge” laws protecting transgender health careSee our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here.May 12: Washington state expanded its existing shield law, adding new privacy protections. Read more details here.May 13: Vermont expanded its existing shield law in multiple ways. Read more details here.May 16 and May 23: Colorado enacted two new bills, expanding existing protections in multiple ways, including new privacy protections related to testosterone prescriptions.
Repealing HIV criminalization lawsSee our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here.May 20: Maryland fully repealed its HIV criminalization law, becoming the second state this year to do so after North Dakota in March.
Confirmatory adoptionSee our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here.May 23: Vermont became the 10th state with a confirmatory adoption process, a policy that helps protect the legal rights of many kinds of families, including LGBTQ families. Read more details here.June 3: Nevada became the 11th state to offer confirmatory adoption.
Bans on medical care for transgender youthSee our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here, including a chronology and details on effective dates, exceptions, lawsuits, and more.
There are now 27 states with a ban or restriction on medically necessary, prescribed health care for transgender youth. Now 2 in 5 (40%) transgender youth live in states with these bans. However, lawsuits have been filed against the bans in at least 18 of these states.
May 13: In Montana, a court ruled that the state’s ban on medically necessary care was unconstitutional under state law — meaning the ruling is not affected by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Skrmetti — striking down the state’s ban. The state may yet appeal.May 28: A new lawsuit was filed against the ban in Kansas. Now there are at least 18 active lawsuits against state bans on medically necessary care for transgender youth. May 30: Following the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, Missouri banned abortion statewide. In November 2024, Missouri voters overturned that ban at the ballot box, making abortion legal again in the state.
But this May, the Missouri legislature disregarded the will of voters and initiated a ballot measure to ban abortion once again — and this time, to ban medically necessary health care for transgender youth at the same time. Even though Missouri already bans this health care for minors, this new ballot initiative would enshrine the ban into the state’s constitution (if successful).
The measure, currently known as HJR 73, is scheduled to appear on the November 2026 midterm ballot, and it will be the first statewide ballot initiative explicitly targeting transgender health care, as well as the first statewide ballot initiative that explicitly combines both abortion rights and transgender medical care.
SCOTUS Update: U.S. v. SkrmettiLast week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in United States v. Skrmetti, upholding Tennessee’s ban on healthcare for transgender youth. This is a devastating ruling for transgender youth, their families, and their doctors across the country. The Court has failed to protect families’ freedoms and offered a green light for politicians’ continued efforts to control access to essential medical care.
It’s important, however, to remember that even after today’s decision, transgender young people will still be able to receive care in the states that have not banned it. We must protect access to this care in the states where it is available, resist efforts to restrict funding or insurance coverage, work to overturn bans, and ensure that no such bans are passed in other states. Families and doctors should be making these health care decisions — not politicians.
Medicaid coverage of transgender-related health careSee our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here.June 11: Iowa banned its Medicaid program from covering medically necessary healthcare for transgender people, regardless of age. Previously, the state was under court order to provide such coverage, as excluding the coverage was against the state’s transgender-inclusive civil rights law. However, this past February, the state removed gender identity nondiscrimination protections from its civil rights law, and now the state has also banned coverage of Medicaid benefits.
Conversion “therapy” lawsSee our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here.June 3: As part of South Carolina’s state budget, the state enacted a first of its kind law withholding state funds from any municipality that has a local-level law protecting minors against the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion “therapy.” The state’s capital, Columbia, is the only city in the state with these protections, so this law effectively directly targets Columbia and threatens to withhold nearly $4 million in state funding from the city unless they repeal their ordinance protecting youth.June 17: Under this threat, the Columbia City Council voted to repeal the ordinance, though the repeal will need to be voted on a second time before it becomes official. That second vote has not yet been scheduled, and for now the local law remains in effect.
Gender-neutral “X” markers on birth certificatesSee our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here.June 3: Puerto Rico will become the 18th state or territory (including D.C.) to allow a gender-neutral “X” marker on birth certificates. This court ruling will become final and binding in 30 days unless appealed, and then the state’s birth certificate registry will need to update its system before the option will be available to the public.
Bans on transgender kids playing school sportsSee our Equality Map here and our supporting citations and additional information here, including a chronology of laws and vetoes, a breakdown of grade applicability, and further analyses.
There are now 29 states that ban transgender students from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity. More than 2 in 5 (42%) transgender youth live in states with these bans.June 4: Nebraska became the 29th state with a ban on transgender youth’s participation in school sports. It applies to K-12 and higher education and will go into effect on July 1.
Changes in MAP’s Policy Tally categorizationsSee our Overall, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity Policy Tally maps here, summarizing states’ scores across all the 50+ laws and policies we track.South Carolina’s new law targeting local level conversion “therapy” protections dropped the state to “Negative” on our Sexual Orientation Tally. It was already “Negative” on both our Overall and Gender Identity Tallies.
▸▸ MAP’s LGBTQ Equality Bill TrackerTo continue highlighting trends across the country, included below are our current bill tracking counts for anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures.Note that these counts may differ from other organizations or public counts for a variety of reasons, and this work is greatly facilitated by the work of other organizations including the ACLU, Trans Formations Project, and the Equality Federation and their member state groups.
As of June 20, 2025, MAP is tracking over 715 anti-LGBTQ bills across 49 states – i.e., every state but Vermont.
▸▸ MAP Policy Research UpdatesMore and more religious exemption laws have been enacted across the country in recent years. As a result, MAP’s policy team has revised and expanded the Equality Maps that track these laws for easier viewing and better understanding.
Click above or below to view our newly organized Equality Maps:
Child welfare religious exemptions map shows states that permit child-placing agencies to refuse to place and provide services to children and families, including LGBTQ people and others, if doing so conflicts with their religious beliefs.
Medical providers religious exemptions map shows states that permit medical providers to refuse to serve LGBTQ people and others, if doing so conflicts with the provider’s (or provider’s employer’s) religious beliefs.
Marriage-related religious exemptions map shows two different kinds of marriage-related exemptions: those that permit private businesses to deny wedding-related services to same-sex couples, and those that permit public employees (such as those issuing wedding licenses) to refuse to work with couples of whose marriage they disapprove.
“Religious Freedom Restoration Acts” (RFRA) map shows states that permit people, churches, non-profit organizations, and sometimes corporations to seek exemptions from state laws that they say burden their religious beliefs. The individual person or organization must seek out an exemption, such as through court proceedings; this is distinct from the other types of exemptions above, which instead grant a blanket license to discriminate to any child welfare service provider, medical provider, or other depending on the focus on the bill.
To schedule an interview with a MAP researcher or for questions, please contact Dana Juniel at dana@mapresearch.org.
On Tuesday, Democrats in Washington, D.C., elected U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia of California as the new ranking member of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, making him the first out gay immigrant to lead the party on one of Congress’ most powerful and combative panels.
House Democrats made the announcement official in a post on X, formerly Twitter, shortly before 11 a.m. Eastern. “House Democrats elect @RepRobertGarcia the Ranking Member of the @OversightDems,” they wrote.
At 47, Garcia is not just the youngest Democrat to lead a major committee — he’s also one of the most outspoken. A former Long Beach mayor, an immigrant from Peru, and an unapologetically queer political figure, Garcia has repeatedly called out far-right extremism and Trump-era authoritarianism. Now, he steps into one of the party’s most high-profile roles at a time when the Oversight Committee has become a central theater for Republican grievance politics.
Garcia’s election follows the death of Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, who led Democrats on the committee until stepping down this spring amid cancer treatment. With Connolly’s passing in May, Democrats faced a pivotal choice: maintain the old guard or signal a generational shift. They chose the latter. Garcia’s office did not immediately respond to The Advocate’s request for comment.
Garcia secured the Steering Committee’s recommendation on the first ballot — a surprise to many — and swept the full caucus vote after Reps. Kweisi Mfume of Maryland and Jasmine Crockett of Texas withdrew from the race. His final challenger, acting ranking member, Massachusetts Rep. Stephen Lynch, was unable to match the momentum behind Garcia’s bid.
It wasn’t just about age. Garcia framed his candidacy around lived experience and executive skill, pointing to his tenure running a port city during a global pandemic and his confrontations with far-right members in committee hearings. He positioned himself not just as a fighter but as someone who was already in the ring.
Garcia is the only Democrat who sits on every committee far-right Georgia U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene does. He’s matched her culture-war provocations with fact-based, often viral, rebukes. When Greene brandished nude photos of Hunter Biden during a 2023 hearing, Garcia responded in February with an image of Elon Musk — deadpan calling it a “dick pic” — to spotlight hypocrisy and the spectacle that Oversight had become under GOP control during a Department of Government Efficiency subcommittee hearing.
Earlier this year, he led a fact-finding trip to El Salvador to investigate the deportation of gay asylum-seeker Andry Hernández Romero to the CECOT mega-prison after Romero came to the United States legally to attend an appointment the U.S. government gave him. In May, Garcia appealed to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to request a sign of life to send to Romero’s mother, but Noem refused to engage.
Born in Lima and raised in Southern California, Garcia became a citizen in his twenties, earned a doctorate in education, and eventually became Long Beach’s first out LGBTQ+ mayor. When he arrived in Congress in 2023, he was the first out gay immigrant elected to the House. Now, in his second term, he holds one of the chamber’s most visible Democratic roles.
Garcia will serve as a counter to the Oversight agenda of Republican Chair U.S. Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, who has utilized the committee to advance investigations aligned with President Donald Trump’s political interests, including attacks on former President Joe Biden’s family, public health officials, transgender students, and federal workers.
LGBTQ+ political leaders immediately celebrated the vote as a watershed moment. The Human Rights Campaign issued congratulations on social media. Equality PAC — co-chaired by gay New York Rep. Ritchie Torres and gay House Veterans’ Affairs Ranking Member Rep. Mark Takano of California — said Garcia’s election was both an institutional milestone and a powerful symbol of what pro-equality leadership can look like.
In a statement, Takano and Torres said Garcia’s new role “marks an historic achievement and a powerful moment for LGBTQ representation in Congress,” noting that he joins lesbianMinnesota U.S. Rep. Angie Craig, the ranking member on the House Agriculture Committee and Takano as one of three openly LGBTQ+ members now leading Democrats on House committees.
They added that Oversight “plays a critical role in holding Trump and his administration accountable, protecting democracy, and defending the rights and freedoms of all Americans,” and that Garcia “has been a fearless voice for truth and justice.”
Members of Australia’s national field hockey team have sported rainbow socks to mark Pride month – and support a gay teammate.
Davis Atkin was accidentally outed as gay to his coach at the University of Canberra by a team psychologist in 2021. The following year he told Outsports: “Last year, I was in a pretty dark place.”
The midfielder has now played for the Kookaburras 20 times, including in the 4-3 win over England in an FIH Pro League game on Saturday. A photo of the team posted on Instagram revealed they were all wearing Pride rainbow socks.
Atkin told Hockey Australia: “I said to the boys this morning that I really appreciate everyone being as inclusive as they are, and this was as simple as wearing socks. It paves the way for other people to follow that journey as a high-performance athlete.
“If I had grown up and seen my heroes run out in rainbow socks, that would have been immense, showing me that people at the top level are like me.”
Now 24, Atkin also posed with a Pride flag around his shoulders, and captioned the photo: “Being able to run out on to the pitch with Pride socks together as a team was something truly special. The inclusivity, the support and the joy in this group made it all feel surreal.
“You can’t be what you can’t see, and even something as simple as rainbow socks can be a powerful sign to someone out there that they are seen, valid and belong.”
In November 2023, at the United Nations in New York City, the Political Network for Values held its fifth Transatlantic Summit event.
The conference was called “Affirming universal human rights: Uniting Cultures for life, family, and fundamental freedoms.” It was attended by a variety of far-right Christian groups that have historically advocated for anti-LGBTQ policies.
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One of those groups is Alliance Defending Freedom. At the conference, Emilie Kao, the group’s senior counsel and vice president of advocacy strategy, took the floor to express her outrage that a Finnish doctor was put on trial for referring to homosexuality as “a developmental disorder,” “a shame and a sin” and as a form of “genetic degeneration.”
“Thank God she was unanimously acquitted,” said Kao.
Austin Ruse, president of the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), who has supported laws that would criminalize homosexual behavior and has also said that hard left people that run modern universities should be “taken out and shot,” spoke about some of his group’s recent accomplishments. “There is no redefinition of the family because we stopped them. Sexual orientation and gender identity has never become a category of nondiscrimination in international law, because we have stopped them,” he said.
Kao, C-Fam and ADF did not respond to requests for comment. Ruse disputed that he called for the criminalization of gay sex, saying that he was only offering “a hypothetical.” He added that he has “never advocated that anyone be taken out and shot.”
The access and influence of these anti-LGBTQ groups inside the UN isn’t limited to this summit. Both hold what’s known as Special Consultative status at the UN. And they’re not the only ones.
In a months-long investigation, Uncloseted Media found that at least six Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)-designated anti-LGBTQ hate groups hold this coveted status, which is granted by the UN’s Economic and Social Council.
“What’s astounding is I’m not sure anybody’s ever produced a list,” says Heidi Beirich, who oversaw SPLC’s annual designation of hate groups from 2012 to 2019. “These organizations have been stealthily inserting themselves into bodies whose beliefs they don’t share for years,” she told Uncloseted Media.
“Many of these organizations don’t even believe in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” she says.
Special Consultative Status—which is held by more than 5000 groups—gives members unique access to the UN and its subsidiary bodies, to the various human rights mechanisms of the organization and to special events organized by the President of the General Assembly.
The UN did not respond to repeated interview requests as well as requests for comment.
“You have access to member states, right? So I think the danger of all of this is access to the members who make decisions on resolutions. Who make UN policy,” says Gillian Kane, director of global policy and research at Ipas, a non-governmental organization that focuses on advancing gender equity and reducing the harm of U.S. foreign policy.
Kane, who attended the November Summit, says this status “legitimizes these groups” who have clear track records that conflict with the core principles of the UN, like the promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
“There’s nothing subtle about what they do. They hate gays and they’re unapologetic to go after it,” Kane told Uncloseted Media.
Many of these groups have been around for decades, advocating against the LGBTQ community. Kao’s group, ADF, published a press release titled “ADF increases global impact with new status at United Nations” when they were granted consultative status in 2010. “ADF can now have a say when UN treaties and conventions are drafted that directly impact religious liberty and important matters related to the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family,” the release said. It goes on to say that “ADF will now be able to monitor and provide input on matters” affecting religious freedoms.
Screenshot / Southern Poverty Law Center.
The group, which consists of hundreds of lawyers in the U.S. and around the globe, was founded in 1994 by Alan Sears, who co-authored “The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today.”Since then, they have advocated at the state and federal levels for laws that promote conversion therapy and that would ban gays from serving in the military. In addition, they’ve testified in favor of laws that would strip transgender folks of the right to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity, that would prevent them from changing the name on their birth certificate and that would ban their access to gender affirming healthcare.
Screenshot / UN
They have also been effective globally through their international arm, ADF International. In 2012 in Jamaica, they advocated for the retention of a law that criminalizes gay sex. That law remains in effect. And in 2013, members of ADF worked to defend a Belize statute that makes anyone engaging in LGBTQ sex subject to a punishment of up to 10 years in prison.
The other groups—which include the Howard Center for Family Religion and Society (now known as the International Organization for Family), Family Research Council, the Association of United Families International and the American Family Association of New York—all have similar track records.
“We put them on the hate list because they demonize the entire LGBTQ population in derogatory, dehumanizing language, just like the Klan would with Black people or Jewish people,” says Beirich, now the co-founder and chief strategy officer at the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.
“People in the Christian right who have long demonized the LGBTQ community have political power in this country, and it’s more normalized to hate queer people than to hate Black people for no damn good reason. Which is what we’re talking about. So it’s the biblically informed aspect of it that somehow legitimizes it,” says Beirich, who adds that she has “absolutely no idea” how these groups secured this status.
So how do these groups get here? While they all conform to basic principles required for Special Consultative Status, such as being a registered nonprofit and having specialized expertise on issues relevant to the UN, they are also expected to act in conformity with “the spirit, purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,” which specifically states that members must promote and encourage respect for human rights, take action “to strengthen universal peace” and—specifically for members with consultative status—must promote policies that encourage “social progress.”
Neil Datta, the executive director for the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, says part of the reason these groups are granted this status is due to overworked civil servants who work for the NGO Branch of the UN and are in charge of a preliminary screening of these applicants.
Richard Koek / Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken.
“The folks reviewing these applications are not necessarily thematic experts on anything. So they’re tasked with a very dry job of processing different applications that come in, and very legitimately won’t know what all of these different groups are,” he says. “Imagine you had 15 climate groups applying and one didn’t believe in climate change. It’s not necessarily that easy to understand.”
Datta says it can be even harder to identify anti-LGBTQ groups because they often operate under the guise of protecting the family or the rights of the child.
“These groups have very nice names that aren’t obviously anti-LGBTQ. And so the people reviewing these applications may not be able to pick up on some of the subtleties,” he told Uncloseted Media.
In addition, Datta says these groups use “very clever vocabulary” that sounds well-meaning. But really, they are weaponizing this language to penetrate powerful institutions like the UN. “In reality, they’re using religious freedom as a fig leaf for hate speech.”
“But if you know your Catholic social doctrine, then you will recognize [this vocabulary] immediately.” Datta says common dog whistles such as “common good” or “human dignity” and “in favor of life [or] of the family” are used almost exclusivelyto limit the human rights of others, “usually in sexuality and reproduction.”
Datta says these “codewords” are another reason these groups go unnoticed within the UN. For example, during a three hour meeting at the November Transatlantic Summit event, participants used the term “human dignity” over 30 times.
After they get through the preliminary screening by UN civil servants, their application is reviewed by the NGO Committee—which meets twice a year—to decide who they will recommend for Special Consultative Status. After review, the recommended organizations are presented to ECOSOC for their final decision.
This committee includes 19 countries, including multiple countries that have extremely hostile policies against LGBTQ people, like Algeria, where homosexual activity is punishable by up to two years in prison; and Eritrea, where homosexuality is illegal and can be punished with jail time.
“It honestly depends on who’s sitting on that committee. So if you have countries that already have anti-LGBTQ policies in place, they’re going to be friendly to inviting these groups in and approving their status,” says Kane.
Once these groups officially gain this status, they use religious freedom as a justification for promoting policies and laws that limit the rights of LGBTQ people through the UN apparatus.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights does not yet explicitly protect folks who are discriminated against for their sexual orientation or gender identity. This lack of protection has given anti-LGBTQ groups leverage in their arguments to roll back the rights of LGBTQ folks.
Inside the UN, there are efforts to change this. In 2019, the Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect published a Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech that outlines what constitutes hate speech and how to combat it. In it, they describe hate speech “as any kind of communication in speech, writing or behavior, that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, color, descent, gender or other identity factor.”
Unsurprisingly, this new guidance is opposed by the anti-LGBTQ hate groups. At the Political Network for Values Transatlantic Summit in November, ADF’s Kao said current hate speech laws protect too many different groups of people and in doing so infringe on religious freedom laws. “Who can possibly know what would fall under such an expansive definition of hate?” she said. “These laws give a veto to any offended person, allowing them to censor their neighbors.”
Beirich disagrees. “You can’t use religion as a foil for harming communities and tearing into their civil and human rights. I don’t care,” she says, adding that the Ku Klux Klan has weaponized religion as a means to discriminate against Black people since it was founded in 1865.
“It’s one thing to live your life however you want to live it biblically inspired. It’s a different thing to have that affect other people,” says Beirich. “Keep your views to yourself.”
As these groups continue to operate inside the UN, what can be done? Datta says NGOs applying for Special Consultative Status should be subject to more rigorous background checks, where an independent body thoroughly examines the track record of applicants.
“What are the positions … of these organizations and what have they actually done?” says Datta. “What other things have they done which could be seen as having undermined human rights—the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights?”
He says using an independent body for this review would reduce the potential of political influences in the decision-making process.
As for those who already have Special Consultative Status, their status can be revoked if they don’t “conform at all times to the principles governing the establishment.”
Beirich feels strongly that this should happen swiftly for all six anti-LGBTQ groups that currently hold this status. “The United Nations should revoke the consultative status of people who stand opposed to the Universal Declaration. It shouldn’t stand for policies that are rolling back human rights—it’s absurd.”
That’s according to recently published research from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law that looks at the impact of the June 26, 2015, Supreme Court ruling. The academic institution figures that there are roughly 823,000 queer married couples in the U.S. today, double the number at the end of 2014, the last full year when states could bar same-sex unions.
Before the court decision made clear that same-sex couples in every state had a constitutional right to wed a partner regardless of gender, many states, particularly in the South, prohibited such marriages. Thanks to that, the percentage of cohabitating same-sex couples who were married in the South jumped by 21 percent after the ruling, compared to a 16 percent leap in the West, a 15 percent jump in the Midwest and just an 11 percent spike in the Northeast, where many states allowed gay couples to marry before the ruling.
As a demonstration of the significance of the court decision, about 59 percent of all cohabiting same-sex couples in the country are now married, according to the Williams Institute. Wedded couples made up a majority of cohabiting same-sex couples every year since 2016, the first full year when the decision was in effect nationwide.
The decision also significantly impacted the makeup of modern families. Over 300,000 U.S. children are now being raised by married same-sex couples.
But the data also shows the number of families under threat as a growing number of right-wing politicians push to reverse marriage protection. Indeed, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas made clear he’d be willing to overturnObergefell if given the chance when a conservative majority tossed the 50-year-old Roe v. Wade decision.
The Williams Institute noted that 433,000 married couples — and 305,000 unmarried ones — still live in states with laws banning marriage equality on the books. Those bans cannot be enforced because of Obergefell, but would immediately go into effect if the conservative majority brushed the decade-old decision aside.
A survey found 80 percent of same-sex couples were concerned about an overturning of the decision, with 41 percent “very concerned.” About 25 percent of couples have already taken steps to preserve their family, whether that means speeding up marriage, securing second-parent adoptions, or relocating to a state without laws on the books.
But for the moment, love remains the chief reason 93 percent of same-sex couples wed, while 74 percent list companionship and 75 percent cite legal protections. Wedded bliss brings mental health rewards as well, with 83 percent saying it improves a sense of safety and security, 75 percent proclaiming it boosts life satisfaction, and 67 percent saying it helps relationship stability.
All these gay weddings also brought a financial boon to states, whether they have bans on the books or not. Spending on same-sex weddings provides a $5.9 billion boost to economies across the country, generating $432.2 million in state and local taxes.
Voters in two states won by Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election have been revealed to watch gay porn much more often than the national average, according a study by Pornhub.
The porn site’s latest Pride Insights research revealed that North Dakota topped the charts in terms of hours of gay porn watched in the past year, with Wyoming not far behind. Both are notorious for implementing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and both have Republican governors.
North Dakota’s proportion of gay porn fans seemingly exceeded the national average by 43 per cent, and Wyoming by 29 per cent. Other states with a higher-than-average interest included Vermont, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania.
The research gave an insight into the top states for gay porn viewership. (PornHub)
When it comes to top categories, Wyoming viewers were big fans of men with big…. well, you know! California, South Dakota, Alaska and Iowa residents had the same tastes. North Dakotans, meanwhile, much preferred twink porn as did people in Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon.
North Dakota, The Roughrider State, can crown itself king of the daddies, because more people there watched daddy porn than in any other state. Wyoming was the top state for military-related adult videos.
By way of comparison, Democratic strongholds Oregon and California had lower-than-average viewership figures, with -16 per cent and -4 per cent respectively. However, Delaware – also a “blue” state – was well above the average (+30 per cent), the figures showed.
Nightlife has long been a tool for queer communities in America to find each other, celebrate identity and feel accepted. In rural and urban areas alike, gay bars provide an enlightening—if imperfect—window into understanding the health and culture of America’s LGBTQ population.
In a first-of-its-kind analysis, Uncloseted Media mapped every single LGBTQ nightlife location in the U.S. The data is based on a 2023 census of gay bars and clubs by sociologist and Oberlin College professor Greggor Mattson and was updated in 2025 by Columbia Journalism School graduate students Dan O’Connor and Tory Lysik¹.
The findings reveal unexpected trends that inform us about the state of the American gay bar and—more broadly–queer culture in the U.S. Here they are:
1. There are gay bars in every state except Wyoming and North Dakota
LGBTQ bars and clubs by state
Data as of May 2025
Unsurprisingly, states with large cities tend to have the most LGBTQ nightlife. California takes the top spot with 128 gay bars and Texas comes in at a distant second with 67.
New York is third, with 61 bars, followed closely by Florida’s 59 bars. Illinois rounds out the top five with 40 bars.
Montana, South Dakota, Kansas, New Mexico and Vermont have just one gay bar. Wyoming and North Dakota have none. For someone in northwestern North Dakota, it would take over 7 hours of driving across roughly 500 miles to reach Club David, the nearest gay bar in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. If they have a passport handy and are short on time, they could make the four-hour trek north of the border to Q Nightclub and Lounge in Regina, Saskatchewan.
For Wyoming, advocates say the state’s conservative values are not the main reason there’s no gay bar. Quite simply, “Demand is limited in a state of half a million people spread out over almost 100,000 square miles,” Sara Burlingame, who serves as Wyoming Equality’s executive director, told Uncloseted Media.
Despite this, she says there are still options. Bars in Laramie, the state’s main college town, host occasional drag nights and other queer-focused events. Other people leave the state entirely, flocking to Salt Lake City or Denver.
“For generations, if you were LGBTQ and you didn’t want the struggle of the legislature fighting over whether you should have rights or not, or churches preaching against you, or someone who was raised to believe that they should be violent towards you … You graduated high school, and then you got the hell out of dodge,” says Burlingame. And when queer people leave, demand for gay nightlife declines further.
2. When you control LGBTQ nightlife per capita, different results emerge
LGBTQ bars per one million residents
While California has the most gay bars, Delaware, DC, and Rhode Island have the greatest number of bars for their populations. Utah, Kansas, New Jersey and New Mexico have the fewest
D.C. has the most gay bars per capita, with 13 bars serving a population of slightly more than 1 million residents.
Delaware comes in second, with roughly 700,000 residents and six bars, four of which are in the resort town of Rehoboth Beach, a popular gay travel destination.
Hawaii, with 5.53 gay bars per million residents, comes in third. The islands blend the classic gay bar with Indigenous Polynesian motifs. Hula’s Bar and Lei Stand is one of the state’s eight gay bars and has served locals and tourists alike for over 50 years.
Rhode Island comes in fourth with 5.39 gay bars per million people, and Louisiana rounds out the top five.
In addition to Wyoming and North Dakota, there are six states with fewer than one gay bar per million people. Alabama, with 5 gay bars, has just 0.97 bars per million people. New Jersey, just outside two of the country’s largest queer nightlife hubs in New York City and Philadelphia, has just 0.53 bars per million residents. And Kansas comes in last place with just 0.34 gay bars per million residents.
3. Most bars are in urban areas, but don’t count out rural queers
LGBTQ bars by county
Data as of May 2025
Mapping the bars by county shows a concentration around the largest cities. Los Angeles County, New York County (Manhattan) and Cook County (Chicago) stand out. But so do counties with smaller cities, including Columbus, El Paso and Salt Lake.
266 of the country’s 750 gay bars were in the 20 most populous counties. That means roughly 35.5% of the nation’s gay bars exist in an area with just 18.5% of the U.S. population.
The map reveals that there are large swathes of the Mountain West that lack any dedicated spaces for gay nightlife. Stathis Yeros, a historian and designer who has traveled the country researching queer spaces, says rural LGBTQ folks are used to this and are willing to drive long distances to visit a queer watering hole.
“What I have found in the places I visited is that [the] separation between urban and rural doesn’t quite exist in a big part of the U.S.,” he says. “You can go to an event in Atlanta, and you can go back to your house in the outskirts of Birmingham.”
4. In big cities, neighborhood bars struggle to compete with gayborhood bars
Most of the 45 NYC gay bars are concentrated in a few neighborhoods
Hell’s Kitchen, the West Village, Williamsburg and Harlem are hotspots while the Bronx and Staten Island have no gay nightlife spots 0 1 2 3 4+
Even in areas famous for their nightlife, access to queer spaces can be uneven. Only three of New York City’s five boroughs have a single queer bar.
Manhattan, with its storied gayborhoods like the West Village, Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen and Harlem, is home to 36 gay bars. In Hell’s Kitchen, a 15-minute walk with only small detours away from 9th Avenue could bring you past 10 gay bars.
Brooklyn is home to five gay bars, and Queens has four, but the Bronx and Staten Island have zero. When the Bronx lost its last gay bar in 2023, its owner told the Bronx Times, “It’s just difficult when you’re up against Manhattan.”
The Manhattan pull may explain New Jersey’s small gay bar scene. The state has two gay bars in Jersey City, one in suburban Bergen County and two on the shore.
Similar patterns can be seen in Chicago and Los Angeles, with nearly all of Chicago’s gay bars in the city’s Northeast, while Southern California has clusters in West Hollywood, Long Beach and Palm Springs.
“Gay bars have been concentrating,” says Greggor Mattson, the sociologist whose team first collected the census data on gay bars nationwide. “Think about the possibilities of barhopping versus going to a single bar.”
5. Blue states tend to have more gay bars, but the correlation is not strong
States that voted blue in 2024 have more gay bars per person
But the correlation is weaker than you may expect, hover over each dot to find your state
While an imperfect measure of a state’s political leaning, there is a moderate correlation between Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential vote share and the number of gay bars. D.C., where Harris got just over 90% of the vote, has the most gay bars for its population. And she earned the smallest vote share in bar-less Wyoming.
But the data also reveals several hotspots in conservative states. Ohio, which voted 55% for Trump in 2024 and swung red, has 33 gay bars and beet red Louisiana has 22 bars, mostly around New Orleans.
That suggests little impact of party politics on gay bars, even though 86% of LGBTQ voters cast their ballot for Harris, according to one exit poll.
6. Lesbian bars and POC-focused queer bars are harder to find
Lesbian bars across the country
Data as of May 2025 0 1 2 3+
Many bars continue to draw crowds of white gay men, while bars catering to people of color (POC), queer women and trans folks are rare.
“There are now individuals, increasingly, who identify as LGBTQ+ who don’t necessarily feel safe or empowered or that they are with others like themselves when they walk through the doors of a gay bar,” says Amin Ghaziani, an urban sexualities researcher at the University of British Columbia.
Mattson’s data found that while 66% of LGBTQ bars appear to cater to both men and women, 24% cater primarily to men.
Bars catering mostly to queer women are rare. Per 2025 numbers from the Lesbian Bar Project, there are 36 lesbian bars across the country—that’s just 4.8% of all queer bars. And per Mattson’s data, just 6.6% of queer bars catered to POC.
7. Bars are important—but there’s so much to queer culture
Those without a gay bar in town don’t necessarily need a watering hole to find community. Every August in Wyoming, over 500 queer people from across the Mountain West flock to Medicine Bow National Forest for “Rendezvous,” a five-day LGBTQ campout.
Every August, hundreds flock to Wyoming Equality’s Rendezvous campout. (Courtesy of Sara Burlingame)
Burlingame of Wyoming Equality says the unique character of her state’s queer community sometimes surprises outsiders given its overlap with the area’s outdoorsy and gun-toting culture. “LGBTQ Wyomingites are still Wyomingites,” she says.
Queer communities across the country are shaped by politics, geography, distinct histories and circumstances, making nationwide generalizations impossible. Yeros, who has spent time researching queer spaces in the South, emphasizes that each community has its own story.
“What happens in Atlanta is not necessarily the same as what happen[s] in New Orleans,” he says. “It’s certainly not the same as what happens in San Francisco or New York or Chicago.”
Texas is being sued over its “Don’t Say Gay” law that not only bans discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms, but goes even further by completely outlawing LGBTQ+ student clubs.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) announced Monday that they will be filing a lawsuit against Senate Bill 12. Signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday, the law is scheduled to take effect September 1 and be implemented in the 2025-2026 school year.
S.B. 12 flatly states that “a school district or open-enrollment charter school may not authorize or sponsor a student club based on sexual orientation or gender identity.” The law bans all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, which it incorrectly defines as “differential treatment” based on race.
The bill also contains a forced outing policy “prohibiting an employee of the district from assisting a student enrolled in the district with social transitioning,” which it defines as “a person’s transition from the person’s biological sex at birth to the opposite biological sex through the adoption of a different name, different pronouns, or other expressions of gender that deny or encourage a denial of the person’s biological sex at birth.”
“This ban on education harms Texas schools by shutting down important discussions and programs that mention race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation,” Brian Klosterboer, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement. “Students should be free to learn about themselves and the world around them, but S.B. 12 aims to punish kids for being who they are and ban teachers from supporting them. It sends the false message that Black, Brown, LGBTQIA+, and other students don’t belong in the classroom or in our state.”
The law is similar to Florida‘s colloquially named “Don’t Say Gay” bill which prohibited public school staff from discussing LGBTQ+ identities in any capacity. Texas’ S.B. 12 states that “a school district, open-enrollment charter school, or district or charter school employee may not provide or allow a third party to provide instruction, guidance, activities, or programming regarding sexual orientation or gender identity to students enrolled in prekindergarten through 12th grade.”
Florida was forced to overturn several key aspects of its “Don’t Say Gay” law in March of last year after reaching a settlement in a lawsuit brought by LGBTQ+ advocates. The settlement clarified that the law does not forbid conversations about LGBTQ+ individuals, nor does it block the implementation of anti-bullying initiatives based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Additionally, it does not prohibit the formation of Gay-Straight Alliance groups or other LGBTQ+ student clubs.
“S.B. 12 seeks to erase students’ identities and make it impossible for teachers, parents, and volunteers to tell the truth about the history and diversity of our state,” said Cameron Samuels, executive director for SEAT. “State leaders have been in the business of manufacturing problems that don’t exist – such as stoking fear against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – to ignore the solutions that students need and deserve. And barring student organizations and teachers from supporting LGBTQIA+ young people, particularly trans and nonbinary students, is inflicting even more harm and making our schools unsafe and unjust.”
“As students, Texas must not exclude us from the narrative or decision-making in curricula,” Samuels continued. “We are here to ensure that inclusive public education is a cornerstone to our state’s pluralistic and multicultural democracy.”
Since 1989, the LGBT Life Center in Norfolk, VA has built up what CEO Stacie Walls calls a “test and treat” model. For every patient that walked through the doors of their HIV clinic after working up the courage to get tested, there had been the promise that, if they tested positive, all they’d need to do to get treatment is walk down the hallway.
But since the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to HIV funding took place earlier this year, that’s no longer the case. “The grant money that pays for people who are uninsured is the grant money that they have canceled,” Walls told Uncloseted Media. “That’s so disheartening and scary and goes against everything that we’ve ever wanted to embrace as a nonprofit service agency.”
With these cuts, staff now have to send uninsured patients to the next nearest community HIV program in Hampton, a 30-minute drive away. Walls says they’ve already had to transfer 19 existing patients, including some of their frequent client base of low-income LGBTQ people of color, who are disproportionatelyimpacted by the virus. While the center has been able to shift to covering at least their initial treatment appointment, they are unable to cover further care, and Walls says that even this is not sustainable.
The LGBT Life Center in Norfolk, VA. Photo courtesy: Corey Mohr.
The LGBT Life Center is just one of the many U.S.-based HIV organizations and programs that have fallen victim to the billions of dollars worth of cuts by Trump and his newly created Department of Government Efficiency.
HIV funding has been hit particularly hard: Uncloseted Media estimates that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has terminated more than $1 billion worth of grants to HIV-related research.¹ In addition, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has terminated 71% of all global HIV grants, and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has been the subject of temporary suspension and major proposed cuts.
Additional cuts are also on the horizon, with the Trump administration’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 calling for the closure of all Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) HIV programs.
The effects of these cuts are deadly. Researchers estimatethat PEPFAR’s funding freeze alone may already be associated with more than 60,000 deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, and numerous experts say that the entire global health system could be upended if the administration’s HIV cuts continue as planned. Mathematical models show that the worst-case scenario is apocalyptic: nearly 11 million deaths, 3 million new infections, and an infection rate outpacing the virus’s peak in the 1990s.
“This is not something that’s just a matter of the scientists losing funding; the community is losing funding, and in the long term, losing ground in the fight against HIV,” says Noam Ross, executive director at research nonprofit rOpenSci.
The Domestic Impact
Cuts to HIV funding in the U.S. have been a significant casualty of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce spending and attack Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Researchers behind Grant Watch, an independent third-party database of grants terminated by the NIH and the National Science Foundation, have identified HIV-related funding as one of the most common targets for termination. As of June 17, Uncloseted Media has calculated roughly $1.353 billion in HIV-related terminations in Grant Watch’s NIH database, accounting for more than a third of the $3.7 billion in recorded NIH cuts overall.
List of terminated HIV-related grants in Grant Watch’s database.
“They’re certainly casting an enormously wide net in this,” says Ross, who is also Grant Watch’s co-developer. “It doesn’t matter that they’re not explicitly saying that ‘it’s a war on HIV’ because if they’re gonna have a war on sexual minorities and transgender people, it’s a war on HIV too.”
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has explicitly told HIV groups across the country that funding was cut because they believe health research for LGBTQ people and racial minorities is unscientific. Researchers across the country have received letters and emails from the NIH with nearly identical statements informing them of their grant terminations:
“Research programs based primarily on artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”
One of the programs subjected to cuts is the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network (ATN), an HIV program that has been active since 2001. Its goal is to prevent, diagnose and treat HIV in young people.
Research under ATN’s umbrella has seen promising developments, including progress towards a product that could combine PrEP and birth control into one pill as well as new methods for reducing HIV transmission in young men who use stimulants. Despite this, NIH cut $15 million worth of grants to ATN because of its focus on high-risk LGBTQ youth populations. The program’s funds were later restored, but only after ATN agreed to cut off a study on transgender youth of color.
“There are particular issues around Black women, LGBTQ people, [and] the type of treatment that they need … that’s the social side of medicine, which is a very important part of medicine—it’s not just molecules, it’s people,” Ross says, adding that grantees focused on “delivery and participation and how to keep people in care,” such as programs that help vulnerable populations stay on PrEP or undetectable folks maintain their antiretroviral therapy regimen, are “very undervalued by [the] administration.”
“So that stuff feels like it’s faster to get canceled,” he says.
Rowan Martin-Hughes, senior research fellow at the Burnet Institute in Australia, says cutting programs that support prevention and long-term treatment is dangerous.
“With other infectious diseases, you treat people and then they’re recovered; with HIV, people require lifetime treatment,” he told Uncloseted Media. “Most of those people infected with HIV are still alive, and if you take treatment away from them, many people will die. And because treatment is also the best form of preventing transmission, many millions of additional infections will occur.”
Many advocates and lawmakers are pushing back against the cuts. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Boston ruled that the NIH’s DEI-related grant terminations—including many HIV programs—are illegally racist and discriminatory toward LGBTQ people, saying that in his four decades as a judge, he had “never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable.” HHS officials say they will consider an appeal.
NIH is far from the only agency issuing massive cuts to HIV. The CDC has terminated large grants to numerous HIV clinics across the country, including a $746,000 cut to Los Angeles-based St. John’s Well Child and Family Center and a whopping $6.3 million termination to the LGBT Life Center in Norfolk. Walls says it’s not just their treatment model that’s taken a hit—the center had to cancel 16 free mobile testing events in June alone, which she fears could cause many more people to contract the virus without knowing, contributing to its spread.
“When we’re out in the community in our mobile testing van, it’s super convenient for people. We’re parked there, they can just walk through, get their test and keep on going, and so that is a low-barrier way to test,” says Walls, who says that easy access is critical for low-income LGBTQ people of color. “[Without it], thousands of people that we test every month or every year are not going to be tested.”
The Vaccine Impact
DEI isn’t the only reason the government has given for HIV-related cuts. The Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD), a consortium of researchers at Scripps Research and Duke University, was informed last month that, after seven years of funding from NIH, their grant would be terminated next year.
Dennis Burton, the program’s director, says they are close to a major breakthrough, with promising technology based on broadly neutralizing antibodies that can disable thousands of different strains of HIV being nearly ready for clinical trials in humans. But without NIH funding, the project may be unable to continue.
“It would put back the development of an HIV vaccine by a decade or longer,” Burton told Uncloseted Media. “We begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel … it’s just the wrong time to stop.”
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A senior NIH official told the New York Times that “NIH expects to be shifting its focus toward using currently available approaches to eliminate HIV/AIDS.”
And while Burton says that existing HIV treatment medicine like antiretroviral therapies is “a miracle,” the decision to jettison vaccine research in its favor is misguided.
“The drugs are fantastic … but they’re expensive and people have to take them—the great thing about a good vaccine is that with one or a limited number of shots you can get lifelong prevention,” says Burton. “We want people to live without the fear of HIV, and vaccines are the proven way of preventing viral infections and viral disease.”
The Global Impact
The most sweeping cuts to HIV funding have been to foreign aid. On his first day in office, Trump ordered a 90-day freeze on all foreign aid funding as well as a stop-work order for PEPFAR. While Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver to continue some critical operations, department memos specifically prohibited funding for PrEP for all populations except pregnant and breastfeeding women.
Photo: Screenshot/ DW News
This move, coupled with the dissolution of USAID and a proposal to cut an additional $1.9 billion from PEPFAR in the FY26 budget request compared to the prior year, has created a perfect storm with staggering results.
The PEPFAR Impact Tracker, a project by Boston University infectious disease modeler Brooke Nichols, estimates that over 60,000 adults and over 6,000 children have died due to PEPFAR-related disruptions between January 24 and June 17. And a survey conducted over the first week of the stop-work order found that 86% of PEPFAR recipient organizations reported that their patients would lose access to HIV treatment within the next month, more than 60% had already laid off staff, and 36% had to shut down their organizations.
The impact hits the hardest in sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the highest HIV concentration, accounting for an estimated 67% of HIV positive individuals globally as of 2021. Numerous long-running and influential LGBTQ health clinics in South Africa have been forced to close, and an investigation by The Independent found that communities in Uganda and Zimbabwe are rapidly being torn apart as more people risk death from lack of access to HIV treatment due to the cuts.
Numerous LGBTQ people told the Daily Sun, a South African digital newspaper, that the closure of long-running clinics like Engage Men’s Health in Johannesburg and Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute was devastating.
“I take PrEP, but you can’t go to any clinic as a queer person and ask for it without people looking at you weirdly,” one trans person told the Daily Sun. “At the trans clinic, it was different. Everything was smooth, everything flowed.”
The U.S. has historically been the biggest contributor to fighting HIV, accounting for more than 70% of international funding, but they’re not the only ones making cuts. Following Trump’s example, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced 6 billion pounds in funding cuts to foreign aid, including HIV, and France and Germany also announced multi-billion euro cuts.
“HIV has received a lot more funding than any other health area,” says John Stover, vice president for modeling and analysis at Avenir Health. “So it’s a likely target just because the money is so large.”
Martin-Hughes of the Burnet Institute thinks these cuts are dangerous for the entire global health system. He co-authored a study modeling the potential impacts of HIV funding cuts from the major global funders, and the results are grim.
In the worst-case scenario, where PEPFAR is discontinued with no replacement or mitigation alongside the proposed cuts from the top five biggest-spending countries, the study projects that there could be nearly 11 million new infections and nearly 3 million deaths by 2030, which would raise the annual infection rate higher than its 3.3 million peak in 1995.
This is not necessarily the most likely scenario, as PEPFAR is expected to be reinstated in at least some form. However, even the most optimistic estimates show that substantial cuts like the one proposed in the Trump administration’s FY26 budget could still put an end to 15 years of declining infection and death rates—especially since prevention and testing would likely be sacrificed first.
“The world has made really amazing progress on HIV,” Martin-Hughes told Uncloseted Media. “That kind of increase [in infections and death rates would be] a major reversal.” He says that major foreign aid cuts would leave programs for at-risk populations, such as gay and bisexual men, trans women, sex workers and people who inject drugs, particularly vulnerable to being shut down.
Cuts to PEPFAR, a program started by Republican president George W. Bush in 2003, have been controversial even among Republicans, with Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins publicly opposing them. While many researchers and policymakers advocate for funding and leadership on HIV to shift away from foreign aid and more towards local governments, Stover and other experts argue that that transition can only be possible with support from PEPFAR in the interim.
“Overall, we all have a vision of more local ownership and control over the resources and how they’re allocated,” Stover says. “[But] it takes time to make this transition, so it’s gonna be practically impossible if funding is just cut off abruptly.”
Cuts on All Sides
Walls says cuts are also happening at the state level. Virginia’s Republican governor Glenn Youngkin slashed hundreds of thousands of dollars for HIV programs, and Walls’ center recently lost multiple corporate donors, including Target, due to pressure from the Trump administration to roll back their DEI efforts.
She says that the fear of backlash for supporting LGBTQ initiatives is so pervasive that even some of their continued donors are now requesting that their contributions remain anonymous.
“Now, if Target was to advertise that they were giving money to the LGBTQ community center in their neighborhood or city, they would have consequences from the administration or even shoppers,” she says. “They’re not gonna take that risk.”
Meanwhile, Walls says the LGBT Life Center is staying afloat thanks to the local community stepping up, with an unprecedented number of people signing up to be volunteers and local restaurants and other businesses providing their assistance, whether that’s by participating in citywide fundraising events or offering to help paint the clinic.
“It is amazing to see, and I know that through all of this the community will help carry us through, because we have brought value to this community for 36 years and I feel confident that people see value in our services,” she says.
Still, experts, advocates and infectious disease modelers agree if HIV funding doesn’t continue, the effects will be devastating.
“I think it’s hard for people to look at these numbers and not feel like it’s important to prioritize,” says Martin-Hughes. “There needs to be, to avert these worst-case scenarios, sufficient funding for those programs.”
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We must protect access to this care in the states where it is available, resist efforts to restrict funding or insurance coverage, work to overturn bans, and ensure that no such bans are passed in other states. Families and doctors should be making these health care decisions — not politicians.
