A Texas man was arrested Tuesday (24 March) after repainting rainbow Pride crosswalks in Dallas that were removed Monday (23 March) under a state mandate.
Mason Whiteside was detained shortly before 3:30 AM Tuesday, after police officers saw him using chalk and spray paint to restore the designs in areas like Oak Lawn, a historic LGBTQ+ neighbourhood.
The removals began earlier this week after the Texas Department of Transportation enforced an October 2025 directive from Governor Greg Abbott requiring cities to remove non-standard road markings, arguing they could pose safety risks.
Whiteside was taken into custody over an unrelated, years-old traffic violation and paid to be released the following morning.
Speaking with The Dallas Morning News on 24 March after his arrest, he criticised the broader crackdown on LGBTQ+ and racial justice symbols, warning “How much longer until it’s not just crosswalks? Until they take our spaces, our actual spaces? There are a series of dominoes that could fall.”
The incident comes amid a wider national push to remove Pride and Black Lives Matter street art, with similar actions taking place in cities across the US.
Despite the risks, Whiteside made clear he has no intention of backing down. “Every single time they try to take it away,” he said, “I’m going to put it right back.”
Barbara Vick had long been a regular donor at the San Diego Blood Bank, but during a routine visit one day in 1983, she noticed something different. As she thumbed through the standard paperwork, Vick paused on a new memo informing donors that “men who have sex with men” were now banned from giving blood.
A lesbian and member of the Women’s Caucus within the LGBTQ+ group, the San Diego Democratic Club, Vick was no stranger to the era’s escalating AIDS epidemic. The private nature of the San Diego Blood Bank allowed individuals and organizations to create blood funds that specific groups could draw from. AIDS patients frequently needed access to the limited blood supply, which Vick knew would only grow smaller now that even fewer people were allowed to donate.
Vick thought about a private blood fund run by one of her former employers and the many conversations she’s had with other club members about how to support people with AIDS. A new thought emerged: What if Vick and her peers organized their own blood drive and created a fund for folks with AIDS to ensure their continued access?
“I went back to the group and said, ‘Hey, what do you think about a blood drive?’ Simple origins,” Vick told LGBTQ Nation. “We honestly thought if we could get 30 people to show up, it would be a success. We didn’t have grandiose plans, and we certainly weren’t thinking of making history.”
Nevertheless, the organization that came to be known as The San Diego Blood Sisters is now embedded in American LGBTQ+ History through both its own work and the advocacy efforts it inspired across the country. Today, the Blood Sisters’ legacy underscores the enduring importance of intracommunity advocacy, especially in the most dire of times.
A way you could give of yourself
| Provided by Barbara Vick
By 1983, it was becoming impossible to ignore the heightened threat of AIDS. This new reality felt especially heavy for men in the LGBTQ+ community, who were helplessly witnessing peers fall ill and living with constant fear that they may be next.
Information about AIDS and its transmission was still limited, though it was generally understood that lesbians and other queer women were not among the most vulnerable groups.
The growing public perception of AIDS as a “gay disease” and the lack of federal funds to address the epidemic brought mounting fear to the community. Congress didn’t approve funding for AIDS research and treatment until July 1983 – despite the CDC releasing its first official report on the mysterious illness in 1981 – leaving queer men across the country with a growing sense of alienation and helplessness.
“If straights had more brains, or were less bigoted against gays, they would see that, as with hepatitis B, gay men are again doing their suffering for them, revealing this disease to them,” wrote Larry Karmer for a March 1983 article in the New York Native. “They can use us as guinea pigs to discover the cure to AIDS before it hits them, which most medical authorities are still convinced will be happening shortly in increasing numbers.”
At the time, 25 states still criminalized homosexuality, and it would take another year before researchers identified HIV as the cause of AIDS. It would also be two more years before antibody screening tests were licensed to detect infection.
In short, the community needed help.
Vick joined forces with fellow Democratic Club members Sue Biegeleisen and Nicolette Ibarra to organize the inaugural blood drive. She said it simply felt like the right thing to do.
She also noted that at the time, women were even more economically disadvantaged and largely didn’t have extra finances to contribute. “So, how can you help? I think a blood drive was very appealing on many different levels to women, because it was a way that you could give of yourself. There were a lot of people that probably were blood donors or were open to being a blood donor.”
The founding members of the San Diego Blood Sisters started spreading the word. Vick nodded to the clever marketing materials, some designs playing off Rosie the Riveter and her flexed arm, and another reminiscent of the Superman logo.
Vick planned the drive for a Saturday and assumed there would be no need for extra help. It took place at the San Diego Blood Bank on Upas Street in Hillcrest on July 16, 1983, and far exceeded Vick’s initial estimate of 30 donors. Nearly 200 women showed up and gave more than 130 donations.
“The lesbians kind of took over the waiting room,” Vick said. “It was kind of the place to be that Saturday, because there were so many people there. There wasn’t enough seating for people, so you had people sitting on the arm of a chair with another person in the chair. People knew each other, and it was really a great time for the people that donated. We were just kind of blown away.”
The power of our community
| Provided by Barbara Vick
The drive later gained national attention, with key LGBTQ+ groups like the National Gay Task Force (now the National LGBTQ Task Force) praising the Blood Sisters’ efforts. Queer women across the country saw the outpouring of support in San Diego and sought to organize blood drives in their own communities. In turn, the Blood Sisters put together a “how-to” guide for others.
“It was amazing, successful, and very inspiring,” Vick said. She noted the drive’s lasting impact in subsequent years and its role in unifying the community. All the while, the Blood Sisters admired other innovative ideas to cover potential gaps, like a service to care for pets of people lost to AIDS and others centering on food delivery or additional patient care needs.
“Stuff like that really moved me; I would see it and think, ‘Oh, wow, what a wonderful idea,’” Vick said. “I’m not saying that that was lesbian driven; I’m just saying that there just was a great outpouring of support within the community. It was an example of the power of our community and how we rally around each other.”
Looking back on that time, Vick feels a mix of complex emotions: the power of showing up for one another, the joy of shared LGBTQ+ community during a time of strife, and the surreal brutality of unrelenting grief.
“There are many memories and representations of that time and many, many, many losses,” Vick said. “It’s really hard to describe… This wiped out almost a generation of healthy young, vibrant men.”
The Blood Sisters and others helped bridge the gap in those initial years, aiding community members overwhelmed by unknowns and compounded by a slow response from those best equipped to help.
The group hosted 12 total drives between 1983 and 1992 before the organization was ultimately dissolved in 1993. Eventually, research and administrative efforts amped up. Through the ‘80s and ‘90s, our collective knowledge of HIV and AIDS expanded rapidly, but it wasn’t until 1996 that the number of Americans dying from AIDS each year began to decline.
In retrospect, the Blood Sisters’ actions underscore the political prejudice and inaction of those early days. The persisting impact lies in their courage and compassion during a time of crisis.
Blood is a life force
| Provided by Barbara Vick
As LGBTQ+ folks face a slew of new challenges today, Vick still finds solace in community. She’s currently part of a gay feminist chorus, composed of both queer women and allies. That feeling of belonging to something, that sense of unconditional community support, is just as important today as it was back then, she said.
As bad as things were under the Reagan Administration in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, Vick said, “it’s mild compared to the insanity of today.”
Vick still resides in San Diego, where she’s frequently reminded of the prevailing impact of the group she co-founded all those years ago. She’s one of numerous Blood Sisters still in the city.
She often ponders why the Blood Sisters are remembered to this extent, when there were so many others who may have provided even more support at the time. It was just an idea, one that “transcends us and kind of has a place in history,” she said.
Blood is a life force, and the act of sharing it to support one another reflects the lengths to which we will go for our own community, Vick said. Our ability to continue showing up for each other, embracing pride and community in times of both triumph and struggle, reflects the magic of LGBTQ+ people – and a grit that is crucial as we navigate yet another trying time.
“I can validate that things have never been as bad in my lifetime as the political climate today, but I don’t buy that it’s going to last,” Vick said. “It’s a really hard time that we’re living through – and all the more reason to be there for one another right now.”
A transgender woman is suing a Michigan homeless shelter, alleging that coworkers harassed her and that management’s insufficient interventions left her unable to return to work.
Devion Morgan filed a claim at the Washtenaw County 22nd Circuit Court against the Washtenaw County Shelter Association for alleged workplace harassment and discrimination based on how she identifies. She’s seeking $25,000 plus legal costs. The association runs the Robert J. Delonis Center, where she worked.
Morgan filed the lawsuit at the beginning of March, emphasizing discriminatory remarks allegedly made by her coworkers regarding her gender identity, MLive reports. The complaint includes claims regarding how the shelter management responded to her work situation and her use of paid time off.
According to the outlet, she became a full-time operational specialist at the downtown Ann Arbor shelter in May 2025 after working there for seven months as a seasonal and part-time employee.
Morgan claims that during her time there, some of the other employees used derogatory language against her, outed her as trans to other employees, and refused to acknowledge or properly use her preferred pronouns. Morgan says she reported the behavior to managers and higher management, but claims her complaints went unanswered and that managers did not remedy the situation. Morgan also alleges that taking paid time off resulted in harassment, leading eventually to the involvement of a union representative.
According to MLive, she says that a few months after starting her position, a coworker alerted her to an email circulating that contained accusations against her and discussed her identity. According to the complaint, she brought the allegations to the facility’s board’s attention in December, telling them she “feared for her safety.”
The complaint states that the board took some action, including an investigation into the email, employee training, and an apology to Morgan.
According to Morgan, she “has not been able to return to her job and has experienced elevated blood pressure, PTSD, and depression,” the lawsuit states.
Morgan claims the shelter acted in violation of Michigan’s Civil Rights Act by discriminating against her gender identity.
The shelter’s executive director responded to the lawsuit with a statement. “We don’t tolerate any kind of harassment or discrimination at the shelter association,” said Nicole Adelman. “We will engage in the court process as required by the court rules.”
Morgan’s attorney did not respond to MLive’s request for comment.
Kentucky is on track to pass a new bill that would declare transgender people mentally ill and ban trans teachers from working.
State senator Gex Williams proposed the amendment to House Bill 759, which relates to teacher certification.
The amendment itself does not mention trans people specifically, but would forbid the certification of teachers who have been diagnosed with or treated for any “disorder that is excluded from the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990”.
The ADA sets out a list of “disorders” that are not protected by law, including “gender identity disorders”. Other listed disorders include transexualism, pedophilia, kleptomania, compulsive gambling and voyeurism, amongst others.
Speaking to the Herald-Leader on 9 March, Williams said: “Those who continue to promote such transitions and gender confusion or are themselves confused should not have teaching certificates giving them the privilege of having care, custody and control of Kentucky’s most valuable asset, our children.”
The amendment will also require doctors licensed in Kentucky to “diagnose the disorders [excluded from the ADA] based on the disorder definitions in the DSM III”.
This means doctors will need to utilise outdated terms like “transexualism” and “gender identity disorder” instead of gender dysphoria and reclassify being trans as a mental illness for the first time since 2013.
Following a session on 28 March, Senate Republican leadership put the bill on the consent orders for 31 March, which is a fast-tracked process meant for “uncontroversial bills”, Transitics reported.
This fast track means that the bill will be voted on without being debated beforehand. It will be passed as default if no other Senators oppose Williams’ amendments.
Throughout history, autocratic regimes, especially authoritarian or populist ones on the far left and the far right, have demonized what they have determined to represent their nations’ “internal enemies,” foes who, if left to thrive, would undermine the security and very existence of these societies.
Regimes have done this to consolidate and expand its power, to divert attention away from misdeeds and failed economic and social policy initiatives, to justify repressive tactics, to stifle critical thinking, and to create a more pliant and obedient population.
Though the processes of marginalizing and isolating these purported internal enemies vary by case and political objectives, some common patterns, nonetheless, have emerged.
Propaganda campaigns manipulate the narratives, which emphasize dehumanization, stereotyping, and scapegoating of targeted groups.
The Gnomon Wise Research Institute discusses the realities of “dehumanization,” writing, “Dehumanization, as a psychological and socio-political process, represents one of the most destructive phenomena in human history. It involves the denial of attributes that define individuals or social groups as human, thereby devaluing their moral status and legitimizing violence and cruelty against them.”
Professor Nicholas Haslam of Melbourne University has identified two specific forms of dehumanization exploited by authoritarian regimes.
The first of these he terms “animalistic dehumanization,” which represents the targeted group as lacking uniquely human traits such as rationality, morality, self-control, and a culture. Stripping away these attributes from groups presents them as lower forms of life: as rats, monkeys, pigs, disease-bearing insects, as primitive and dangerous creatures to be exterminated. Or they are seen as physically and psychologically diseased, or as delusional.
Attached to this group often are disease-related images, presenting target groups as “tumors,” “viruses,” or “infections” that threaten the health of the individual and the overall body politic. This “animalistic” dehumanizing narrative is intended to inspire fear, disgust, and danger of contamination.
| Shutterstock
On the other hand, “mechanistic dehumanization,” Haslam’s second form, characterizes the group and individuals as lacking in essential aspects of human nature, like individuality, emotions, and empathy. Group members are conceived as objects without souls; they are machines or mindless robots lacking an interior consciousness, human feelings, or individuality.
This form of dehumanization portrays these supposed internal enemies as the personification of pure evil, as “immoral,” “domestic terrorists,” “Devil worshipers,” “agents of foreign governments,” without a sense of morality.
Using propaganda efforts throughout the overall process of dehumanization, the world is seen through the binary lens of good versus evil, right versus wrong, patriot versus traitor, us versus them. The result is a polarized, divided population that the regime can more easily control.
Following intensive systematic propaganda campaigns that articulate real and perceived threats posed by these “internal enemies,” an element or stage not included in the extant literature but one I consider as significant comprises the reliance by governments on the enactment of laws and other statutes curbing the civil and human rights of individuals within the groups targeted by the regime.
What follows are summaries of two comparative case studies: the first profiling the propaganda narratives of the German Nazis and their initial laws against Germany’s internal Jewish population. The second involves the dehumanizing propaganda campaigns currently circulating in the United States as well as a sampling of actual and proposed laws against transgender communities on the state and national levels.
How Nazis vilified Jewish people as Germany’s “internal enemies“
Dehumanization Campaigns
A clear and extreme example of a dehumanization strategy and laws opposing a targeted internal group was crafted in the regime of fascist Germany. Among other groups, including homosexuals, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, people with disabilities, communists, socialists, non-Aryan immigrants, and others, the Nazis singled out Jews as their primary objects of propaganda.
I use the term “objects” quite deliberately since these campaigns attempted to depict Jews as objects of scorn in attempting to deny them personal agency in defining themselves. As we know, the Nazis used contrived “racial” arguments as its philosophical cornerstone for justification in their persecutions of Jews, as well as most people of color and people with disabilities.
Nazis considered Jews and others as descendants of inferior “racial stands.” Nazi leadership argued vehemently that Jews were polluting the so-called “Aryan race.” They forced Jews to wear the yellow Star of David as a signifying marker, since to the Nazis, yellow represented a sign of “race pollution.”
A 1943 German anti-Semitic poster. ‘Der ist Schuld am Kriege!’ translates to ‘The war is his fault!’ The finger points accusingly at a Jewish man, depicted as rich and scheming, with a large nose, hands speckled with blood, and a yellow star (the Nazi symbol forced upon Jewish people). | Shutterstock
The Nazi regime capitalized and extended millennia of anti-Jewish antisemitic tropes that have depicted the Jewish people in multiple negative ways. A partial list includes:
Jews as Killers of God
In Service of / Fathered by the Devil
Host Desecrators
Poisoners of Drinking Wells & Transmitters of Diseases
Usurers
Ritual Murderers & Abusers of Christian Children
Forced Circumcisers of Non-Jews
Judaism as an Immature or Inadequate Religious Consciousness
They are Clannish
An Alien “Race”
Wanderers / “Stateless”
Holders of Dual / Multiple Loyalties
Proselytizers to Judaism
Freedom-Killing Communists and Socialists
Super Capitalists
Sexually Perverse
Oversexed or Sexually-Frigid Females
Lecherous Males of Christian Women
Feminized and Non-Athletic Males
Controller of World Economic Systems
Greedy for Wealth
Financially Cheap and Cheaters
Controllers of the Media
Exaggerators of the Extent of Anti-Jewish Oppression
Exploiters of the Oppressed
Under the direction of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, the regime used every means at its disposal to portray Jews in dehumanizing ways: by weaponizing grievance against the harsh realities brought about by the Treaty of Versailles (the international treaty negotiated by the winners of World War I to punishment Germany for its aggression in the conflict), for crime, and for severe economic privation.
The Nazi high command argued that Germany lost WWI because of its internal enemies: the Jews. Nazi campaigns of “moral, racial, and sexual purity” led to an intense and violent campaign against Jews and other groups, which ended in the Holocaust: the murder of an estimated 6 million Jews (equal to two-thirds of European Jewry, and one-third of the entire worldwide Jewish population).
In his book The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda, historian David Welch discovered that Nazi propaganda focused on simplified, emotional, and repetitive messages. They transformed the notion that the Jewish people were a religious or ethnic group into what they portrayed as a biological threat – as vermin, race polluters, as an infection – that threatened the Aryan race and the very existence of German culture and nationhood.
The Nazis used the descriptive terminology of Untermensch to further establish Jewish sub-human status. This gave the regime legitimacy in passing anti-Jewish laws that led to incarceration, enslavement, and eventually to mass murder.
How Nazi laws criminalized Jewish existence & love
Jewish were forced to wear a yellow Star of David as a tool of humiliation, segregation and dehumanization in Nazi Germany | Shutterstock
The Nazi high command passed two distinct laws targeting German Jews in September 1935. Jointly known as the Nuremberg Laws, they exemplified the racial theories foundational to Nazi ideology. Separately they were branded as the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor.
In the terms of the Reich Citizenship Law and several additional government pronouncements, the only people who could be classified as true Germany citizens were those of “German or kindred blood.”
The Law decreed that Jews were a separate race from Germans as defined by birth and by blood. People with three or more Jewish grandparents, even if they had never practiced religion or had converted to Christianity, were classified by law as being among the Jewish race and were, therefore, excluded from German citizenship.
The law included the additional complication of defining German residents as neither German nor Jewish if they had only one or two Jewish grandparents. Nazis termed people in this category as “mixed-raced” (known as Mischlinge). Though they were initially permitted some of the rights of “racial” Germans, these benefits were increasingly restricted and then fully denied by subsequent legislation.
The second Nuremberg Law, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, barred marriage between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. It also criminalized sexual relations between them. These relations were labeled as “race defilement” (rassenschande).
The law also forbade all Jews from employing female German maids under the age of 45. This provision was drafted under the assumption that Jewish men would force German maids into sexual relations thereby committing race defilement. Ultimately, thousands of people were convicted of this crime and many were imprisoned in concentration camps.
How the U.S. right wing vilified trans people as the nation’s “internal enemies”
A transgender protestor holds a sign during a demonstration on the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia | Shutterstock
Dehumanizing Campaigns
As fascists have scapegoated and targeted Jews and other groups, neo-fascists in the United States and other Western countries are targeting immigrants of color, Muslims, Jews, homosexuals, transgender people, communists, socialists, and all progressives, labeling them as being the causes of all the evils of their nations.
The U.S. political right-wing has spread and capitalized on anti-transgender transphobic tropes that have depicted trans people in multiple negative ways. A partial list includes:
Being transgender is merely a fad, a stage they are going through, comes about by peer pressure, it is a form of rebellion against parents and society
They prey on women and children in public bathrooms
They are psychologically confused and mentally ill
They all want puberty blockers, hormones, and transition surgeries
They are attention-seekers
They are incapable of maintaining meaningful relationships
They are spreaders of so-called “gender ideology,” which if allowed to continue, will destroy Western civilization
They are the result of bad parenting
They attempt to recruit young people into their “lifestyle”
They hate themselves and their bodies
Children cannot be transgender because it only occurs at puberty
All transgender people are prostitutes and hustlers
They threaten the safety and privacy of women and children
They identities are an erotic kink or sexual fetish
Since the Bible says that God made men and women, then transgender people don’t exist. Anyone who claims otherwise sins in the face of God.
Anti-Transgender Laws
Donald Trump’s actions by scapegoating and stereotyping targeted groups are intended to harden his appeal of his base of support for his failed policies and increasingly failing presidency.
President Joe Biden, shortly after taking office, signed an executive order allowing transgender troops to serve openly in the U.S. military.
Last May, however, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration has the right to enforce its executive order of January 20, 2025 (which went into effect on February 26), upholding a Department of Defense policy prohibiting transgender people from serving in the U.S. military.
Serving in the nation’s military has been one of the markers of citizenship in the United States. In denying transgender people the ability to serve their country virtually denies them their full citizenship rights.
| Shutterstock
Donald Trump, amid his self-proclaimed “retribution” campaign, has specifically targeted members of the transgender community in his efforts to completely erase their existence from the human community. (No doubt he would attempt to wipe out gender diversity within non-human species if he could.)
Trump signed a mean-spirited and petty presidential executive order in his attempt to rewrite history by expunging trans activism and trans lives. The order demanded that transgender people be deleted from New York’s Stonewall Inn National Monument website, developed by the National Park Service. The acronym that once read LGBTQ+ has been reduced to LGB, standing for lesbian, gay, and bisexual.
During his short second regime (reich), another of Trump’s executive orders bans trans athletes from school and professional sports, from using the public facilities of their choice, and from choosing to have gender-affirming procedures to maintain their bodily autonomy because, according to Trump, “there are only two genders: male and female.” All else, to Trump, contradicts the “natural” world.
Government documents, including passports, visas, and employee records, can only show “male” or “female.” The government will no longer pay for trans-related health care, such as for government employees, military personnel, or federal prisoners.
In addition, all transgender women incarcerated in federal prisons he ordered thrown into men’s prison facilities, despite multiple court rulings blocking the president’s policy.
In another of Trump’s orders, the federal government will no longer even recognize the existence of trans people and will prevent federal funds from funding any programs that do so.
The order says, “Federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology” and it directs the Bureau of Prisons to revise its policies to ensure that federal inmates do not receive “any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”
| file
Secretary of State Marco Rubio banned Rainbow flags from flying at U.S. embassies.
The Trump administration, as was the case in other authoritarian regimes throughout history, have attempted to limit the bodily autonomy of women, trans, intersex, and lesbian, gay, and bisexual people for the purpose of attempting to control their minds and to limit their social power.
In 2026, anti-trans bills continue to be introduced across the country. These bills include anything from excluding trans people from receiving basic healthcare services, excluding them from classifications in civil and human rights protections, excluding them from participation in sports activities and teams other than those matching their sex assigned at birth, and excluding them from using public facilities other than those matching their birth sex. This exclusion from education, from legal recognition, and from social institutions, in fact, excludes them from the right to exist in civil society.
For example, Kansas Senate Bill 244 (2026), known as the “Women’s Bill of Rights,” defines “gender” as biological sex at birth for state law. It requires public building bathrooms and locker rooms to be separated by sex assigned at birth, and it mandates that all state agencies invalidate and reissue driver’s licenses and birth certificates to adhere to this definition.
Another example, WI AB100 is the Wisconsin legislature’s bill passed into law in 2025 that specifically restricts transgender athletes from participating on teams that are not aligned with their assigned birth sex.
According to the new law: “The bill defines “sex” as the sex determined at birth by a physician and reflected on the birth certificate. The bill also requires an educational institution to prohibit a male pupil from 1) participating on an athletic team or in an athletic sport designated for females and 2) using a locker room designated for females. Finally, the bill requires the educational institution to notify pupils and parents if an educational institution intends to change a designation for an athletic team or sport.”
“History doesn’t repeat but echoes”: There are no “superfluous people”
The acclaimed pioneer of discussions about totalitarianism, political responsibility, and the nature of evil is Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), a German Jewish historian and philosopher. Her work focuses on the nature of political life. She explicitly explores the concepts of power, action, and totalitarianism, the latter defined as:
“a novel form of government characterized by the combination of terror and logicality, aiming to dominate and terrorize human beings from within, not just suppress political opponents. She emphasized its reliance on ideology, isolation of individuals, and the concept of ‘superfluous people’, where individuals are reduced to their bodies and deemed expendable.”
Arendt’s notion of “superfluous people” informs us how totalitarian regimes diminish and cheapen human life to mere bodies for the purpose of rejecting and disposing of them without any moral significance.
The often-quoted expression that “history doesn’t repeat but echoes” (often cited as “history rhymes”) proposes that though literal events rarely reappear, comparable patterns, themes, and human behaviors re-emerge over time. This notion highlights the point that studying the past affords us with insights into current developments and issues and alerts us to identify warning signs while learning from past mistakes.
The United States, by targeting members of our transgender communities and other marginalized groups, is treading down the path of our past mistakes.
City leaders in San Antonio plans will unveil new rainbow sidewalks as part of a Pride celebration this week. The act comes even as Texas cracks down on other decorated walkways across the Lone Star State.
The sidewalks will be unveiled in San Antonio’s Pride Cultural Heritage District, which encompasses the North Main Avenue corridor and includes several historically significant establishments serving the LGBTQ+ community.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the removal of crosswalks at the intersection of Main Avenue and Evergreen Street. But officials have since completed repairs to the walkways and expanded the design to include the colors of the transgenderflag, according to San Antonio CBS affiliate KENS.
Michael Rendon, chairman of San Antonio’s LGBTQIA advisory board, spoke to the news station and said it remained vital to visibly represent the city’s diversity.
“In 2026, there’s certain individuals, certain people of our community that still feel unwelcome and unsafe,” Rendon said. “This strip represents a place where people can come from the LGBTQ community and our allies and come and celebrate, build community. It’s a space where we can come together, be ourselves, and welcome everyone from our community.”
But Abbott’s administration hasn’t let up on its anti-color crackdown. Just this week, Dallas removed a rainbow crosswalk at Cedar Springs Road and Oak Lawn Avenue, in the heart of the city’s LGBTQ+ district, following demands by the Texas Department of Transportation. Shortly after, police arrested a man who attempted to repaint the rainbow patterns in the roadway.
The elimination of that crosswalk was the first step in removing 30 Pride or Black Lives Matter-themed crosswalks in South Dallas.
Texas’ actions followed directives issued last year by U.S. Transportation Secretary and former Real World cast member Sean Duffy, who has insisteddecorated sidewalks represent road hazards. Shortly after being appointed to his Cabinet post by President Donald Trump, Duffy sent a letter to governors in every state urging the removal of certain “distractions” from non-arterial roadways.
Several Republican governors whose states include large LGBTQ communities proved eager to start painting over the multi-colored walkways. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis even ordered the removal of a memorial crosswalk at the site of the 2016 Pulse massacre.
In Miami Beach, city officials recently rebuilt a rainbow crosswalk inside a public park after the state forced the removal of a roadway version, relocating the symbol to a space under local control rather than abandoning it altogether, WPLG reports.
The new installation repurposes materials from the original Ocean Drive crosswalk, which state crews dismantled as part of a broader crackdown on street art. Rather than scrap the landmark entirely, Miami Beach leaders opted to preserve it as a permanent feature in a park setting.
The original crosswalk had become a widely recognized symbol of the city’s LGBTQ+ community before its sudden removal, which drew backlash from residents and local officials who said it erased a piece of cultural history.
In St. Petersburg, city leaders installed a series of rainbow-colored bike racks after being forced to remove Pride crosswalks, using other forms of public art to comply with state rules while maintaining a visible show of support.
Other localities have also fought back across the country. Atlanta leaders, for example, affirmed it would leave a prominent rainbow crosswalk in place in Georgia.
The San Antonio crosswalks will be unveiled in a special ceremony on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. CDT.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Monday that it is suing Minnesota and the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) for allowing transgender girls and women to play on school sports teams matching their gender identity. The case, filed in the Minnesota District Court, is just the Trump administration’s latest attempt to impose a nationwide ban on trans student-athletes (without congressional approval) by harassing and blackmailing states into dropping their trans-inclusive policies.
The DOJ claims that schools with trans-inclusive sports policies violate Title IX, the federal law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex in education. President Joe Biden’s administration said the law forbids anti-trans discrimination, since it’s impossible to discriminate against someone’s gender identity without also taking their sex at birth into account. However, the current administration says trans-inclusive sports policies are discriminatory because they violate the privacy, dignity, and possible awards of cisgender girls and women in sports.
The MSHSL board voted in December 2014 to allow trans students to participate in athletics and fine arts based on their gender identity. The policy took place at the start of the 2015-2016 school year. The first Trump administration allowed this, and similar policies in other states, to continue without any opposition during his first presidential term.
“The Trump Administration does not tolerate flawed state policies that ignore biological reality and unfairly undermine girls on the playing field,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in the DOJ’s announcement of its lawsuit, according to The Hill. “This Department of Justice is proud to partner with HHS [the Department of Health and Human Services] and the Department of Education to protect our girls in Minnesota and across the country.”
The DOJ says federal funding could be withheld from the state if it is found to have violated Title IX or if it refuses to abide by the Trump administration’s executive orders banning trans girls and women from participating in girls’ and women’s sports. Minnesota’s Department of Education receives $2.98 billion from the U.S. Department of Education (ED), and $42.6 million from the Department Health and Human Services (HHS), according to the DOJ.
In its 45-page filing, the DOJ said it wants Minnesota schools to repeal all trans-inclusive sports policies, “maintain sex-separated intimate spaces” in sports facilities, to file compliance reports for the next five years showing the state’s adoption of the administration’s transphobic policies, and to establish a system to “compensate female athletes who have been denied equal athletic opportunities,” Politico reported.
In response, Keith Ellison, the attorney general for Minnesota, said, “Donald Trump is currently facing an unpopular war that he launched, rising gas prices, massive health insurance price hikes, and a partial government shutdown caused in part by his ICE agents killing two Minnesotans in broad daylight. It is astonishing that any president would try to target, shame, and harass children just trying to be themselves, let alone a president with so many actual problems to address.”
Last year, Ellison filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for pledging to pull federal funding over the state’s trans-inclusive policies. The case is still being processed through the judicial system.
“This new suit is just a sad attempt to get attention over something that’s already been in litigation for months,” Ellison added. “I will continue to stand up to the Trump administration and do everything in my power to stop them from bullying vulnerable children in Minnesota.”
In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order to block federal funding for schools that allow trans girls and women to participate in school sports as their authentic selves, and the order told the DOJ to prosecute schools that allow trans students to play sports.
Last September, the ED’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that its investigation found that Minnesota had violated Title IX. Last December, Minnesota’s state educational agency and high school sports authority rejected the Trump administration’s proposed resolution agreement and negotiations over the matter.
The administration has sued Maine in a separate legal action to get the state to stop letting trans students participate in school sports. It has also sued Californiafor the same reasons.
Currently, 29 U.S. states have laws or policies banning trans girls and women from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity.
Members of the Ohio House voted Wednesday to advance the state’s ban on public drag and gender performance.
Ohio House Bill (HB) 249 – which received three committee hearings rife with anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-transgender disinformation – will now head to the Senate. The bill passed the House by a vote of 63-30, largely along party lines: Rep. Jamie Callender (R-Concord) broke ranks to vote against the bill.
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Public performances that meet the definition of obscenity are already banned under Ohio law.
Anti-LGBTQ+ language in the bill would disproportionately affect LGBTQ+ performers, heavily restricting “performers or entertainers who exhibit a gender identity that is different from the performer’s or entertainer’s biological sex using clothing, makeup, prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts, or other physical markers …”
Additionally, a separate section of the bill that substitutes the phrase “private part” for “private area” would also help criminalize trans and gender non-conforming people who use gendered public facilities during daily life.
HB 249’s primary sponsor – conservative Christian Rep. Josh Williams (R-Oregon) – said the bill would stop transgender Ohioans from using gendered public facilities like locker rooms to change their clothing.
Williams repeatedly referenced an anti-transgender incident that occurred at a YMCA in Xenia, Ohio, in which a transgender person was sued after she attempted to change her clothing in a gendered communal locker room.
The incident was not part of a drag or gender performance.
Ultimately, a judge found the transgender person not guilty of public indecency. However, both Williams and David Mahan – policy executive director for Columbus-based anti-LGBTQ+ hate group the Center for Christian Virtue (CCV)– said the bill would prevent judges from ruling that way in future cases.
The bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Angie King (R-Celina), discussed the lawsuit at length ahead of the full House vote.
Brown Piccolantonio told lawmakers the removal of the language would “[clarify] that the bill is not meant to target anyone with an appearance that does not match their sex assigned at birth by simply removing the language about dressing in a manner inconsistent with ‘biological sex.’”
In 2023, lawmakers in Arkansas gutted a similar drag ban bill, heavily amending it to exclude language targeting performers who exhibit gender identities different from the sex assigned to them at birth “using clothing, makeup, or other accessories that are traditionally worn by members of and are meant to exaggerate the gender identity of the performer’s opposite sex.”
Williams told fellow lawmakers the portion of the legislation that targets LGBTQ+ Ohioans is an important part of the bill’s purpose.
“I’m in opposition to the amendment,” Williams said. “This amendment subverts the intentions of the bill’s sponsors. It undermines the specific obscene and child endangerment acts we are trying to legislate out.”
The House Judiciary Committee passed the bill, delivering it to the Ohio House for a full vote the same afternoon. Later – before the full House – Williams seemingly called transgender people who use communal public facilities to change their clothing “perverts” while discussing the Xenia lawsuit a second time.
“As long as I’m alive, I’m going to prevent perverts from exposing kids to obscene material,” Williams said.
“This bill takes regular, everyday activities and turns them into potential crimes, based on whether somebody else might be offended by what other people are wearing,” Steward said via a written statement. “This bill gives government the unacceptable power to police what people wear.”
“Drag is just the beginning,” Steward added. “Attacks against drag performers and transgender people, like so many bills that restrict LGBTQ+ visibility, have multiple consequences that endanger fundamental freedoms and safety.”
Rep. Dontavious L. Jarrells (D-Columbus) rose in stark opposition to the bill, noting his own experience navigating anti-Black legislation.
“This bill is not about children,” Jarrells said. “This is about the dehumanization of people who do not look like me.”
“This bill literally singles out people who are trans, those who are gender non-conforming, and basically calls into question, ‘Should you exist in the public eye?’ That is the reality of this bill,” he added. “When you talk about what this bill really is, it is an attack on human lives.”
The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund on Monday endorsed 35 candidates across 19 states, expanding its push to build LGBTQ+ political power as rights face renewed challenges in the 2026 election cycle.
At a glance, the list reads like a catalog of local and state races, city councils, county commissions, statehouses, and a mayoral bid in Reno. But taken together, it sketches a deliberate effort to seed LGBTQ+ representation throughout the machinery of the American government at a moment when that presence is being tested and, in some places, rolled back.
The March endorsements bring the group’s total for the 2026 cycle to 163 candidates nationwide, an expanding bench that reflects years of investment in building a pipeline from local office to national influence.
That long-game approach has taken on new urgency. Evan Low, in a recent interview with The Advocate, described the coming elections as a stress test for LGBTQ+ political power, unfolding amid a climate of fear, distortion, and an unprecedented wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
He has been making that case for months. In December, at the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute’s International LGBTQ+ Leaders Conference, where former President Joe Biden was honored for what organizers called his administration’s “historic leadership” on LGBTQ+ equality, Low described the moment as one of “urgency and hope,” even as the community faces “laser-focused” efforts to “legislate us out of existence.”
In Connecticut, State Treasurer Erick Russell, the first out gay Black man elected to statewide office in the United States, is seeking to continue a tenure the Victory Fund describes as steady and fiscally grounded. In Illinois, Precious Brady-Davis, the first Black out trans woman elected to public office in Cook County history, is running for reelection as a commissioner on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago after building a profile around environmental policy and public health.
Elsewhere, the races are more local, but no less telling. Nevadan Devon Reese, a Reno city councilmember, is running for mayor on a platform rooted in downtown revitalization, community policing, and addressing the high cost of living. In North Carolina, State Rep. Deb Butler remains a fixture in legislative fights over equality measures. And in Wisconsin, Madison Common Councilmember Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford is running for the State Assembly’s 76th District, a race that, if she wins, would make her the first transgender person elected to the Wisconsin Legislature.
The geography is as notable as the candidates. The slate stretches across states where LGBTQ+ rights are broadly protected and those where they are actively contested, with Texas and Tennessee alongside California and New York.
To earn the Victory Fund’s endorsement, candidates must be out as LGBTQ+, support equality and bodily autonomy, and demonstrate a viable path to victory. Founded in 1991, the Victory Fund has helped elect thousands of LGBTQ+ candidates. That success has reshaped American politics in ways that now feel almost taken for granted.
And yet, as Low suggested in both his interview and at the December gathering, the question facing 2026 is not simply how many candidates run, but whether the political conditions that made their rise possible are beginning to erode.
Even though the Supreme Court is currently considering Chiles v. Salazar, a case that could overturn the bans on conversion therapy for minors currently in place in 27 states, longtime LGBTQ+ activist Wayne Besen says these bans don’t stop a majority of those who actually offer services to change people’s sexual orientation or gender identity: namely, unlicensed religious counselors and life coaches working with so-called ex-LGBTQ+ organizations.
“The term ban is inaccurate,” Besen told LGBTQ Nation. “Show me: Show me one conversion therapist who has been put out of business because of these laws.”
Besen is executive director of Truth Wins Out, an organization that combats anti-LGBTQ+ religious extremism and misinformation. He’s also the author of two books covering the history of conversion therapy and ministries that offer it, and he argues that he personally has helped shut down more major conversion therapy organizations — by helping expose their pseudoscientific methods and the hypocritical actions of their closeted leaders — than any state laws have.
These state laws are mostly “symbolic,” Besen said, and only address 5% to 10% of the people actually offering conversion therapy.
“They have large loopholes for religious practitioners that you could drive a Mack truck through,” he said, noting the exceptions these laws provide for religious expression and free speech.
“Symbolism matters, and when people see there’s a ban, it does lower the stature of the practice,” he conceded, but he also believes these laws are mostly ineffective.
“The most powerful and active ex-gay conversion organization in the country, if not the world, The Changed Movement, is based in Redding, California, which is a state that supposedly bans it,” he explained, noting that the group can operate because it presents itself as a religious group.
State laws against conversion therapy are also especially “obsolete” in the internet age, when a parent can enroll their child in a conversion therapy program located outside the U.S. with just a few clicks, Besen said.
Contemporary support for conversion therapy is tied up in a larger international Christian nationalist movement that involves U.S. anti-LGBTQ+ organizations that queer activists have been fighting for decades — like the American Family Association, the Claremont Institute, the Family Research Council, and other groups that supported Project 2025, the president’s blueprint for his second term that seeks eradication of LGBTQ+ civil rights at the federal level — but also reaches to other far-right groups in Britain, Hungary, Africa, and elsewhere, he added.
Some states have prohibited conversion therapy by using consumer fraud laws, essentially shutting down paid businesses that violate state regulatory business statutes by using false advertising to market harmful and ineffective services. Such a law in New Jersey was used to shut down Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) in 2015. Besen, working with the Southern Poverty Law Center, convinced a unanimous jury that the group was liable for consumer fraud. A judge ordered the group to permanently close, and it has been defunct ever since.
But while consumer fraud laws effectively get around free speech and religious expression loopholes, they require much more time and money, Besen said, because prosecutors must first collect extensive evidence, find witnesses, and then go to trial.
If we lose this case in the Supreme Court, I would urge people not to get too depressed over it, because conversion therapy didn’t work in the past, it doesn’t work today, and it will never work in the future.Wayne Besen
Major LGBTQ+ groups like the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Trevor Project have raised money and public support for state laws against conversion therapy. But Besen feels they should have changed tactics in 2020 after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the case of Otto v. City of Boca Raton that local ordinances against conversion therapy for minors are unconstitutional. While other circuit courts affirmed that such laws are constitutional because they only regulate professional conduct of licensed professionals, the 11th Circuit held that these laws unconstitutionally restrict free speech protected under the First Amendment.
“The writing was on the wall at this point,” Besen said. “For six more years, we’re talking about bans, when it was obvious to anybody with any political knowledge whatsoever that the courts were changing — that Trump stuffed the courts with MAGA, including the Supreme Court — that the world changed, and that this was very likely to all be overturned by the Supreme Court.”
Protestors outside the Supreme Court during oral arguments for United States v. Skrmetti | Courtesy of The Trevor Project
If the Court does overturn the state laws, something that Besen says seems very likely, he believes activists will have to revert to tactics that worked to publicly discredit conversion therapists during the early 2000s: close monitoring of these groups and increasing visibility and messaging through social media to help expose their leaders as hypocrites who make outrageous and untrue claims that publicly discredit them.
Such tactics helped expose closeted ex-gay leaders like John Paulk, George Rekers, and Alan Chambers and led their organizations to be widely mocked online and on late-night shows, and for their organizations to either disband or reorganize under new names.
“If we lose this case in the Supreme Court, I would urge people not to get too depressed over it, because conversion therapy didn’t work in the past, it doesn’t work today, and it will never work in the future,” Besen said.
Leading activists need to get together with the biggest organizations that have money and decide what we’re going to fight for and what we’re going to retreat on and make some real decisions at this point, because I think that’s what’s killing us.Wayne Besen
A Supreme Court loss “will be fairly or unfairly seen as a setback and a reversal in rights, even though the possible impact isn’t going to be very strong,” he added, voicing hope that a loss could serve to mobilize people against the growing threat of Christian nationalism.
Besen acknowledges that the conversion therapy landscape has changed somewhat with Republicans’ national crusade to eradicate trans people out of existence and to legitimize “gender exploratory therapy,” an anti-trans form of conversion therapy, by encouraging medical and mental health professionals to administer it to trans youth.
“This is a whole different, much more difficult messaging challenge for our community, and we have not come to a consistent place with it right now,” Besen said, noting that it’s an emotionally charged issue involving young people, detransitioners, and an American public that is largely opposed to trans people participating in sports or using restrooms that align with their gender identity.
“There hasn’t been great, cohesive messaging on that… but it’s going to have to come from some major organizations that have to pull it together, like The [National LGBTQ+] Task Force, HRC [the Human Rights Campaign] and GLAAD,” he said.
“We’re in the worst possible position right now, where we’re not fighting hard like we did, for example, for marriage equality,” he continued. “Leading activists need to get together with the biggest organizations that have money and decide what we’re going to fight for and what we’re going to retreat on [regarding messaging around sports, gender-affirming care, workplace and education discrimination, and other trans rights], and make some real decisions at this point, because I think that’s what’s killing us… You have to make a decision right now. We’re just stuck in between, and until that decision is made, we’re going to continue to lose.”
In the meantime, Besen encourages survivors of conversion therapy to keep speaking out, for social media users to share their stories, for allies to join political organizations that oppose conversion therapy, and for everyone to aggressively stay involved and fighting because history has shown “there is no finish line,” that anti-LGBTQ+ forces are “always going to try and come back,” and that Christian nationalists controlling our federal government are trying to impose a future that monitors and controls people’s sexual behavior.
“They just cannot win under any circumstances,” Besen said. “People need to understand that and fight for their lives, because that’s what’s on the line, that’s what our opponents want for us.”
