Southern Baptists plan to vote this week on acting to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage 10 years ago this month. The step is part of a growing effort by evangelicals nationwide to reverse Obergefell, and coincides with a renewed campaign in state legislatures to challenge the widely accepted view that same-sex marriage has become an established civil right.
While the Southern Baptist Convention has long opposed gay marriage, the vote at its annual meeting in Dallas will be the first time that the largest Protestant denomination in America will ask representatives of its tens of thousands of member churches to work to end it. Conservative Christian activists hope to build on their movement’s success in overturning Roe v. Wade.
Read the full article. The resolution was authored by Andrew Walker [photo], an “ethicist” with the Southern Baptist Convention. The organization was founded in 1845 after churches in northern states objected to slavery.
June is Pride Month, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) stands with our fellow Americans honoring the invaluable contributions and sacrifices of all who have served our nation, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) veterans.
VFW honors LGBTQ veteransIt is estimated that there are a little more than 1 million LGBTQ veterans in the United States. They are among us, counted with us and are one of the less than 1% of us who serve or have served our great nation.
Our veterans, regardless of their background or identity, have stepped forward to protect our country, bravely defending the freedoms we all cherish. Their dedication, courage and selfless commitment are foundational to our nation’s strength and security.
The VFW believes that the bond forged in service transcends all differences. Our mission remains steadfast: to foster camaraderie among veterans, to advocate for their earned benefits, and to perpetuate the memory and history of our fallen brothers and sisters-in-arms.
We are dedicated to ensuring that every veteran feels valued and has access to the resources and community they deserve.
This June, the VFW encourages all Americans to reflect on the diverse tapestry of service members and veterans who have contributed to our nation’s defense. It is through recognizing and valuing the service of all who have served that we truly uphold the ideals of liberty and justice for everyone.
The more than 1.4 million members of the VFW and its Auxiliary salute all LGBTQ veterans, past, present, and future, and say “thank you” for your service to our great nation.
Legislators in Texas have passed a bill requiring a person’s sex assigned at birth rather than their gender identity for official state documents and records.
House Bill 229, entitled “Relating to general definitions for and collection of governmental information regarding biological sex” or the Women’s Rights Bill, passed the state Senate on a party-line vote of 20 to 11 late Wednesday night. The bill passed the House by a vote of 87 to 56 on May 12.
“A governmental entity that collects vital statistics information that identifies the sex of an individual for the purpose of complying with antidiscrimination laws or for the purpose of gathering public health, crime, economic, or other data shall identify each individual as either male or female,” the text of the approved bill reads.
The bill specifically defines male and female for official state government purposes as sex assigned at birth rather than gender identity.
“‘Female’ and ‘woman’ mean an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova,” the text of the bill continues, adding “‘Male’ and ‘man’ mean an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female.”
The bill adds there are reasons for separating gender along a binary definition.
“There are legitimate reasons to distinguish between the sexes with respect to athletics, prisons and other correctional facilities, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, locker rooms, restrooms, and other areas where biology, safety, or privacy are implicated,” the bill reads.
In March, it was revealed that the Texas Department of Public Safety recorded every time a resident requested to update their gender on their driver’s licenses online. The gathered data also included people who inquired about the process via phone or in person.
Also in March, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton directed state agencies to ignore court orders on gender changes that conflicted with state law.
The bill now heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for his signature or veto. It’s most likely that he will sign it.
But no American leader has ever been as diligent in trying to crush higher education as Donald Trump. In particular, he has singled out Harvard, the nation’s most prestigious university, for punishment. Last week alone, Trump threatened to pull $3 billion in research funding from Harvard to send to vocational schools, issued an order intended to prevent the university from enrolling international students and directed the federal government to find “alternative vendors” for $100 million in contracts to the school.
“Harvard’s got to behave themselves,” he said. “Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they’re doing is getting in deeper and deeper and deeper.”
Trump is saying that he is the country, and Harvard disrespects him because it won’t cave to his demands. Indeed, the school has taken a hard line against the president’s autocratic efforts, going to court and, so far, succeeding in at least temporarily stopping some of Trump‘s wishes.
The ostensible reason for Trump’s attacks on Harvard and other higher education institutions is that the universities are hotbeds of antisemitism. The administration points to pro-Palestinian protests on campuses last year. While many of the protests were peaceful, some were marked by antisemitic incidents.However, it wasn’t always clear whether those behind those incidents were students.
Trump himself dined at Mar-a-Lago with notorious antisemite and white supremacist Nick Fuentes in 2022. Fuentes has said that “perfidious Jews” should be executed. He showed up at the dinner as a friend of Kanye “Ye” West, who has said he likes Hitler and “loves Nazis.” After the dinner, Trump said he wasn’t aware of who Fuentes was at the time and that the dinner was “quick and uneventful.”
What the administration is doing is simply looking for an excuse. Moreover, the attacks on universities, along with those on the nation’s leading law firms, serve as a kind of proof of concept.
The administration has taken on the most powerful institutions in the country, knowing that if it can make them bend to its will, then everyone else will have to. While the administration could undertake an investigation and, based on the results, penalize Harvard for violating civil rights protections for Jewish students, it has decided simply to punish Harvard as harshly as possible without any legal process. Should Trump succeed in this effort, that is very bad news for LGBTQ+ organizations.
“If the government can coerce the richest school in America without due process, it can crush a community college—or a civil-liberties nonprofit—without batting an eyelid,” Greg Lukianoff, the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), wrote in The Atlantic.
There are already hints that Republicans would like nothing more than to pull the tax-exempt status of nonprofits they don’t like. A measure in the budget bill in Congress would have allowed that to happen for any nonprofit that supported a terrorist organization. The language was ultimately pulled from the bill, but the vague language was an indication that it would be a cudgel for the right to brandish against any group it didn’t like.
More importantly, Trump has also threatened to pull Harvard’s tax-exempt status. He doesn’t have the legal authority to do that, of course, but that won’t stop him. There’s nothing the right would like more than to start pulling the tax-exempt status of lots of organizations, including (if not especially) LGBTQ+ groups.
Even if Trump chickens out about looking at tax-exempt status, that doesn’t mean the administration can’t try other means to attack its opponents. It could initiate investigations, such as the one that Trump has called for against ActBlue, the Democrats’ biggest fundraising operation. The investigations are time-consuming, costly, and designed to beat the victim into submission.
Or the administration could go the religious liberty route. It could argue that some particular activity that an LGBTQ+ nonprofit engages in infringes on the rights of conservative Christians. As far-fetched as that may be, a court battle would be brutal. It’s one thing to be sued by another group. It’s an entirely different issue to have the U.S. Department of Justice put you in its crosshairs.
None of these has happened yet, and perhaps, with any luck, never will. At present, Trump is too focused on the whales to bother with smaller fry. Right now, the administration seems to think that if it can make an example of premier institutions, everyone else will fall in line.
A student-athlete who was banned from graduating with her classmates after she came out in a social media post is suing her high school, local NBC and ABC affiliates WSMV and WTVC report.
Morgan Armstrong was a senior at Tennessee Christian Preparatory School (TCPS), a private Christian school in Chattanooga. She played on the school’s basketball team and earned her diploma.
Then she came out.
“Cats outta the bag,” Armstrong wrote in the post dated April 23, according to court documents obtained by WTVC. The post contained pictures of Armstrong with her girlfriend, including the pair kissing.
Armstrong subsequently posted a separate comment urging others to like and comment on the post.
“go like and comment on my post guys bc if no one on my socials knew I was gay then they sure as hell do now so this is a big thing tbh, also I’m kinda scared about the facebook comments bc I have some ruthless trump supporting “jesus” mfs on there,” Armstrong wrote in the comment.
Following the post and comment, Armstrong and her family were summoned to the school and told that she was suspended and prevented from further school activities.
The school claimed the comment was “vulgar and disrespectful” and “produced the wrong perception of who Tennessee Christian is and what we represent, Christ.” The letter said the comment, not the post, “reflected on the institution, faculty, staff, alumni, and students in the most negative possible way.”
The letter also contained a threat that “records of posts and messages will be forwarded to colleges and universities as part of a comprehensive student file.”
“I was shocked and then I went to anger,” Monica Armstrong, Morgan’s mother, told WSMV.
In her lawsuit, Armstrong claims she was not talking about folks at school but “members of Morgan’s own family with whom she was connected on social media – people who, in Morgan’s view, profess but do not practice Christian principles of love, acceptance, and compassion.”
Armstrong is claiming the school violated its policies on suspensions, noting that she received a far harsher penalty for a first-time violation, as well as breach of contract.
The school’s 2024-2025 Parent-Student Handbook appears to apply a blanket agreement between the student and the school regarding social media activity.
Students at the school agree to a set of rules about their social media posts to “TCPS-sponsored sites or other websites or social media (including but not limited to Text messages, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.,).”
“Students who choose to post editorial content to websites or other forms of media (texts, Instagram, Facebook, etc.) must ensure that their submission does not reflect poorly upon the school nor violate behavioral guidelines as outlined in the school Parent and Student handbook,” the handbook states.
School administrators issued a statement denying the allegations in the lawsuit.
“Tennessee Christian Preparatory School firmly rejects the misleading allegations outlined in a recent lawsuit supposedly filed against the school. As of 11:00 AM on May 22, we have yet to be served with process for the alleged lawsuit. The administration and Board of Trustees express deep disappointment over the inaccuracies contained in the alleged filing by Daniel A. Horwitz with Horwitz Law in Nashville. Despite this supposed legal dispute, Tennessee Christian remains fully committed to delivering Morgan Armstrong’s diploma. Our goal continues to be the academic and personal success of each student, even in the face of conflict or disagreement. We wish Morgan Armstrong the very best as she continues her academics in college.”
Armstrong is asking that her school records be cleared of the incident, that the school refrain from “sabotaging Morgon’s college admissions process,” and that she and her parents be awarded unspecified compensation for monetary losses.
She and her family staged a mini-protest outside the school on the graduation night.
“It was difficult having to stand across the street knowing that the people I’ve grown up with for the last four years were able to walk across the stage and I wasn’t allowed to,” Armstrong told WSMV.
The school follows a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible and Christianity. The handbook classifies same-sex sexual relations on the same level as sex with animals and incest.
“We believe that any form of sexual immorality (including adultery, fornication, homosexual behavior, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, and use of pornography) is sinful and offensive to God,” the handbook states.
J.K. Rowling is using her wealth attained from the Harry Potter series to create an organization dedicated to removing transgender people’s rights “in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces.”
The author announced in a Saturday post to X, formerly Twitter, that she would be founding the J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund, using her personal fortune. The website for the group states that it “offers legal funding support to individuals and organisations fighting to retain women’s sex-based rights in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces.”
“I looked into all options and a private fund is the most efficient, streamlined way for me to do this,” she said. “Lots of people are offering to contribute, which I truly appreciate, but there are many other women’s rights orgs that could do with the money, so donate away, just not to me!”
It is not the first time Rowling has used her over $1 billion net worth to influence legal cases involving so-called women’s sex-based rights — a dog whistle used by herself and other anti-trans activists to exclude trans people from public spaces and reduce women to their genitals.
Rowling donated £70,000 (roughly $88,200) to the anti-trans group For Women Scotland in 2024 after it lost its challenge to a 2018 Scottish law that legally recognized trans women as women. The group appealed its case to the U.K. Supreme Court, which ruled last month that trans women aren’t considered women under the nation’s Equality Act.
Rowling responded to the decision by posting a picture of her having a drink and smoking a cigar, with the text “I love it when a plan comes together.” The post was widely criticized, including by The Mandalorian and The Last of Us star Pedro Pascal, who called it serious “Voldemort villain s—” and referred to Rowling as a “heinous loser.”
Pascal, whose younger sister Lux is trans, urged his followers to not “buy a single Harry Potter thing ever,” including by boycotting the upcoming HBO series and attractions at Universal Studios theme parks.
“It’s time to tell these corporations that transphobia loses money,” he said.
The current presidential administration has ended funding for the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD), a move that researchers say will likely set efforts to end HIV globally back by a decade.
The two teams leading the $258 million vaccine program at Duke University and the Scripps Research Institute were informed of the move on Friday, May 30, by officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), The New York Times and CBS News reported. A senior NIH official told the Times that the agency’s leadership had reviewed the program and “does not support it moving forward.”
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has also instructed NIH not to fund HIV vaccine research in the next fiscal year, with some exceptions, CBS News said.
An HIV vaccine has proved elusive, both aforementioned news outlets reported. But Dennis Burton, an immunology professor with the Scripps team, told CBS that researchers have “begun to see light at the end of the tunnel after many years of research.”
“This is a terrible time to cut it off. We’re beginning to get close. We’re getting good results out of clinical trials,” Burton said.
“The HIV pandemìc will never be ended without a vaccine, so kìlling research on one will end up kìlling people,” John Moore, an HIV researcher at Weill Cornell Medical in New York, told the Times. “The NIH’s multiyear investment in advanced vaccine technologies shouldn’t be abandoned on a whim like this.”
While a senior NIH official told the Times that the agency expects to shift its focus away from vaccine research and “toward using currently available approaches to eliminate HIV/AIDS,” the president’s second-term administration has essentially reversed course on the president’s first-term plan to end HIV by 2030.
Following the president’s January executive order calling for a 90-day hold on all U.S. foreign aid, the administration shut down United States Agency for International Development’s operations, including those of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPRAR). In February, the State Department backtracked slightly, announcing that the program to prevent HIV in low- and middle-income foreign countries could provide PrEP medications to pregnant and breastfeeding women, but not to LGBTQ+ people and other high-risk groups for contracting HIV.
HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard told CBS News that “critical HIV/AIDS programs will continue” under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s proposed new agency, the “Administration for a Healthy America.” But as the Times notes, details about the new agency are scarce.
Meanwhile, Scripps Research’s Burton warned that shutting down crucial HIV vaccine research would have consequences that linger for years, even if a subsequent administration were to restore funding. “This is a setback of probably a decade for HIV vaccine research,” he told CBS.
While the Times notes that clinical trials based on CHAVD’s work may continue if NIH continues funding for its HIV Vaccine Trial Network, a spokesperson for pharmaceutical and biotech company Moderna said that the agency also paused funding for its own clinical trial for an HIV vaccine last week. Mitchell Warren, executive director of the HIV prevention organization AVAC, warned that even if funding for clinical trials is maintained, research out of the Duke and Scripps programs is crucial to developing vaccine candidates for those trials.
“As they take a wrecking ball to HIV treatment & prevention, they’re now ending the work to create an HIV vaccine,” California state Sen. Scott Wiener (D) wrote in a Bluesky post responding to the news of the CHAVD funding cut. The current presidential administration, he added, “truly [doesn’t] care if HIV surges. They don’t care if people die.”
Both chambers of the Texas Legislature have passed a bill banning students from forming LGBTQ+-focused clubs like GSAs in schools and have sent it to the governor’s desk.
Democratic lawmakers denounced the bill, S.B. 12.
“The real monsters are not kids trying to figure out who they are,” said state Rep. Gene Wu (D). “The monsters are not the teachers who love them and encourage them and support them. They are not the books that provide them with some amount of comfort and information. The real monsters are here.”
“This bill is hate,” said out state Rep. Erin Zwiener (D). “This is one of the most nakedly hateful bills we have had on the floor of this House.”
Republicans, though, claimed that LGBTQ+-supportive clubs are “sexualizing” children.
“We’re not going to allow gay clubs, and we’re not going to allow straight clubs,” said state Rep. Jeff Leach (R). “We shouldn’t be sexualizing our kids in public schools, period. And we shouldn’t have clubs based on sex.”
S.B. 12 bills itself as a “Bill of Parental Rights” and also restricts diversity initiatives in public schools and requires more parental notification when it comes to mental and physical health in schools.
It’s unclear how S.B. 12 will survive legal challenges because the federal Equal Access Act requires federally funded public secondary schools to provide equal access to extracurricular student clubs. While that law was passed in 1984 because Christian activists worried that schools might stop Bible clubs from meeting, it has long been used by GSAs to protect their right to meet on school campuses.
GSAs – Gay-Straight Alliances or Gender-Sexuality Alliances – have been targeted by conservatives ever since they were first formed in the 1980s.
In the late 1990s, when Salt Lake City tried to shut down a local school’s GSA, and, when they were told they were legally required to give all clubs equal access to school resources, the school board decided to cancel all extracurricular clubs just to stop the GSA, which eventually led to a federal lawsuit. A federal judge ruled that the school district had violated the Equal Access Act and students’ First Amendment rights, which resulted in the district allowing the GSA to meet again.
S.B. 12 is one of five anti-LGBTQ+ bills that the Texas Legislature is considering this session. H.B. 229 defines men and women based on gamete size and requires state documents to only list a person’s sex assigned at birth. It has been passed by both chambers of the Texas Legislature. Trans rights advocates said that this could out people against their will, exposing them to the possibility of discrimination.
S.B. 1257 requires insurance companies to cover “detransition” care, which is gender-affirming care for people who are transitioning back to living as the gender associated with their sex assigned at birth. Detransitioners have been central in recent years to conservatives’ understanding of transgender people and take an outsized role in their minds; studies have shown that few trans people detransition and that, in most cases, detransitioning is temporary.
The Texas Legislature also passed that bill.
H.B. 1106 redefines “abuse” and “neglect” to say that misgendering a child or not using their current name is not a form of child abuse. Democrats denounced the bill, saying that parental rejection is often used to abuse children and that the bill would take away protections from LGBTQ+ youth.
“This bill tells LGBTQIA+ kids across Texas that their pain doesn’t count — that being dismissed, misnamed, or denied support isn’t just tolerated, it’s protected by law,” said Texas Freedom Network Political Director Rocío Fierro-Pérez in a statement. “H.B. 1106 dresses up rejection as a right. But the truth is, when lawmakers carve out space for families to ignore who their kids are, they’re creating a shield for cruelty. Wrapped in the language of ‘parental rights,’ H.B. 1106 invites rejection and erasure into the home and labels it as care. When lawmakers vote to strip away recognition and affirmation from young people who need it most, they are endorsing harm.”
This bill has been passed by the Texas House of Representatives.
S.B. 1188 requires all medical records to include a person’s sex assigned at birth.
“Health care is a human right, and to be able to have a doctor who respects who you are should be mandatory,” said out state Rep. Jolanda Jones (D). “This bill, as it’s currently written, if it doesn’t allow me to put in my medical records who I am, will negatively affect the doctor-patient relationship.”
This bill was passed by the Texas House of Representatives, but it hasn’t passed the Texas Senate.
Bigots in the Utah cities of Providence and North Logan celebrated the first day of Pride Month by leaving anti-gay and white supremacist messages in front of homes with pro-LGBTQ+ displays.
North Logan homeowner Ryan Thorell, whose family displayed pro-LGBTQ+ signs outside of their home, found several posters stapled to nearby utility poles facing his house — the posters said “White power,” “man plus woman,” and had homophobic slurs, he told KSL-TV. He called the signs “very targeting and inflammatory,” and said that he took down 17 similar signs around his neighborhood, each facing homes that had LGBTQ+ flags and signs outside.
“It made me feel like our community is under some sort of attack,” he told the news station. “It made me nervous for the kids in my neighborhood. It’s one of the most affected community groups of our youth in our state. And these kids are very vulnerable to this sort of thing.”
Meanwhile, Providence resident Dayne Teigeler and his neighbors found numerous Ziploc bags containing rocks and pamphlets entitled, “It’s okay to be white,” and “Straight Pride.” Both phrases are used as reactions to anti-racist and racial justice advocates as well as LGBTQ+ Pride events, respectively.
Some of the Ziploc bags were thrown into neighbors’ yards, and others were found in the street. The pamphlets and aforementioned posters both contained URLs leading to the same website of a white supremacist organization.
“It definitely sounded like a more coordinated effort that this was to be done all at once,” Teigeler said. “Maybe because it is the start of Pride Month, that effort was stepped up by this organization to do this, and several places were hit all at the same time.”
The North Park police chief said it will investigate the incident with the Cache County Sheriff’s Office. Officers are now seeking images to help identify the perpetrators. The county attorney’s office will decide whether to file charges.
“This kind of thing does not divide us,” Teigeler said. “It makes us come together to come against this kind of hate speech and this kind of feeling in the community, as we want our community to be a safe spot.”
Over the past year, GLAAD’s ALERT Desk tracked 208 incidents specifically targeting Pride flags and other symbols of the LGBTQ community, down 25% from the desk’s 2023-24 data.
People march in the 2024 San Diego Pride Parade.Daniel Knighton / Getty Images
For many European gays, the festive Eurovision Song Contest each May marks the unofficial kickoff to the global Pride season.
As usual, there were soaring highlights and scandalous lowlights among the competing Eurovision nations at the 2025 edition of the contest in Basel, Switzerland, this month. But another country was on the lips of many queer jet-setters this year: the United States, with its spate of new anti-trans and anti-immigrant policies that are causing some LGBTQ travelers to reconsider their upcoming American itineraries.
SeveralEuropean countries, including Denmark, Finland and Germany, have issued official cautions for LGBTQ travelers visiting the U.S., particularly those with an “X” gender listed on their passport. Meanwhile, out of concerns for participant safety, Canada’s leading LGBTQ rights group, Egale Canada, pulled out of participation in WorldPride DC, and the African Human Rights Coalitionhas called for a boycott of this edition of the international Pride event, coordinated by InterPride and usually held every two years.
“It doesn’t feel right to at the moment,” Karl Krause told NBC News at Eurovision in Basel, referring to travel to the U.S. Krause, who is German by birth, lives in Amsterdam with his Dutch partner, Daan Colijn, and together they are travel-focused content creators known to their followers as Couple of Men. In 2021, Lonely Planet awarded them its first Best in Travel LGBTIQ Storyteller Award, a nod to their work for the LGBTQ community.
Daan Colijn and Karl Krause during Fort Lauderdale Pride in 2023.Couple of Men
“As gay men traveling to the U.S., we are probably still the more privileged part of the community,” Krause said. “But we had some interesting conversations recently in Bilbao with a trans person who was like, ‘I cannot, I literally cannot travel to the U.S., because I have no idea how they would receive my diverse passport, if I would be put in detention or whatever. I have my little daughter — I’m not going to risk any of this.’”
Krause said that was the moment he realized that while he and Colijn as gay men may not yet be feeling the full effects of the Trump administration’s policies, they were already having an impact on other travelers within the LGBTQ community.
“So how can we in good feeling promote this destination?” he asked. “How can I send a trans friend or nonbinary friend and try to inspire them to go to the U.S. when they are in what’s supposed to be the best time of their year, to spend in a country where they don’t feel safe?”
Colijn added that he and Krause want to send their followers “somewhere where they are safe, where they feel welcome.”
“At the moment, of course a lot of people will still feel very, very welcome in the majority of America — a lot of places are still the same, or maybe even trying to do better. But we just want to be careful in what we are supporting,” Colijn said.
John Tanzella, president and CEO ofthe International LGBTQ+ Travel Association, or IGLTA, told NBC News that such concerns are commonplace this year.
“We’ve heard from travelers feeling uncertain about visiting the U.S., especially trans and gender-diverse individuals,” he said. “These decisions are often driven by concerns about safety, treatment at the border and access to affirming health care. Some have canceled their trips. Many others are still coming, but they’re being more selective about where they go.”
Nicoló Manfredini, an Italian trans man living in Valencia, Spain, said he was recently able to enter the U.S. without incident thanks to having an “M” marker on his passport, but the government’s anti-trans policies currently make America a place he would rather not visit again.
“Originally I had planned to go to WorldPride, but not now,” he said.
Given the current environment in the U.S., Manfredini added, he said he would only travel to the U.S. if he had to do so for work.
Even American gender-diverse people are adjusting their travel plans because of Trump administration policies, according to a study released earlier this month by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. Of the more than 300 transgender, nonbinary and other gender-diverse people surveyed, 70% said they are less likely to go on vacation to U.S. states they view as less trans-affirming.
Krause said that despite usually attending at least one and sometimes several U.S. Pride events every year, this year will be different.
“We were actually planning to go to Washington, D.C., for WorldPride, but this is off the table for us … How safe can we be in Washington? Just saying that scares me a little bit,” he said, noting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was particularly concerning. “I don’t know what is going on there now and who is coming, and I don’t feel safe with the idea that I’m going there and I’m walking and maybe there is a mob [coming] from whatever direction.”
Capital Pride Alliance, the organizers behind WorldPride DC, which started earlier this month and continues through June 8, did not respond to requests for comment from NBC News, but the event’s website details security protocols and includes a passport advisory for transgender and nonbinary travelers.
Sahand Miraminy, director of operations for Capital Pride Alliance, told The Washington Post this week that security measures at WorldPride DC will include weapons screening at the entrance to the street festival June 7 and 8, which will also be fenced in.
In addition to the local and federal “agency support that we have, we also hire private security and have many forms of safety measures and surveillance that we may not share at all times with the public,” he said, “but there are certainly conversations that we’re having with those agencies on a weekly basis.”
Organizers at NYC Pride, arguably the most globally popular of U.S. Pride events each year and held like most big cities during Pride Month in June, are also stepping up security plans for 2025.
“NYC Pride has contracted a private firm with vast experience managing LGBTQIA+ events to lead on-site security,” spokesperson Kevin Kilbride said. “Given the size and visibility of our events, NYC Pride is monitored and secured by municipal agencies at every level of government to protect our freedom of expression and ensure a safe space for our community.”
A reveler looking out a window during the 2023 Pride Parade in in New York City. David Dee Delgado / Reuters file
Tanzella said that since safety is unfortunately never guaranteed for the LGBTQ community, careful planning is more essential than ever for LGBTQ travelers coming to the U.S. this year.
“Research destinations with strong reputations for inclusion and visible LGBTQ+ support,” he advised. “Connect with local LGBTQ+ organizations for on-the-ground insights, stay informed about local laws and current events, and have a plan for accessing affirming health care if needed. Most importantly, prioritize places where you feel respected and supported.”
Cities and states with long-standing reputations for LGBTQ inclusivity are getting more attention, Tanzella added.
“In this climate, a destination’s visible commitment to inclusion through its policies, community engagement, and public support truly matters,” he said.
In October, the IGLTA will host its annual global convention in Palm Springs, California, a destination Colijn said he and Krause can and will enthusiastically visit.
“We were there just last year, and we felt how amazing and welcome and how much old queer culture is there,” he said. “So of course we want to go there, and we can fully tell people to go there. Unless of course we might get in trouble at the border.”
Krause, however, noted that he and Colijn still haven’t booked their Palm Springs trip just yet, because they fear that under the Trump administration “everything can change overnight.”
“There is no long-term planning,” he said.
Kilbride said he understands the need global queer travelers feel to exhibit caution this year, but he said he believes Pride remains one of the most powerful tools in the collective struggle for equality.
“We stand with the international LGBTIA+ community, particularly our trans and nonbinary siblings,” he said. “But we also believe the fight for our community is more important now than ever. We need to show up big to make it clear: We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going anywhere.”
