Photo: Canva. Design by Sam Donndelinger.Subscribe nowIn 2022, on the set of one of the many made-for-TV romance movies that are shot every year, the crew was producing a scene where the supporting casta lesbian couplehave their first dance at the wedding of their dreams. As the music swells, the couple shares a chaste kiss and their families erupt in applause.In the few holiday movies that feature queer characters, producers often avoid including moments that display same-sex intimacy. These networks typically like to dip their toe in the pond, a director of holiday romance films told Uncloseted Media. They want to check off a box in terms of including a queer storyline, but they don't want to go so far as to see characters kiss because that typically does not sell as well to the more Christian-based networks, he says, noting that production companies shoot the movies first and then pitch them to various networks.This director, who asked to remain on background to avoid jeopardizing future opportunities, had advocated to include the lesbian peck and felt it was wrong to omit it. It didn't make sense from a filmmaking standpoint, from a directorial standpoint, and it didn't make sense from a narrative standpoint. I made the argument that it's a bit strange to see a couple go through their first dance and then at the end they just pull away from each other. And so I convinced them to let me shoot the kiss.But after they shot the scene, the movie was packaged [without the peck] in order to sell it to as many domestic and international streaming services and networks as possible. The film was eventually sold to multiple vendors.The omission of any display of LGBTQ intimacy is far from surprising in the over $500 million holiday movie industry. While in recent years, there has been some queer representation on networks like The Hallmark Channel, made-for-TV holiday movies still overwhelmingly depict heterosexual romance.But even with these progressive steps, The Great American Family Channel (GAF)a new major player in the holiday movie industryis making bank by seemingly refusing to include any queer representation. Uncloseted Media was not able to find one openly LGBTQ character in any of their 71 holiday movies over the last four years.This year, GAF signed a multi-year deal with actor Mario Lopez with a focus to showcase diverse talent in front of the camera. Despite this, in the 18 original Christmas films they released this season, there is once again not a single queer storyline that Uncloseted was able to identify.They've carved out some real estate which is defined by some very old school notions of family values. And it's not being announced directly, says Robert Thompson, Director of The Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. Thompson says that the channels refusal to create inclusive stories is a silent declaration of a certain brand.Subscribe nowHow it BeganThe birth of GAF came shortly after a 2019 scandal at The Hallmark Channel, when the far-right group One Million Moms started a petition to keep Hallmark family-friendly after they aired a commercial featuring a lesbian couple. Hallmark decided to succumb to the pressure and discontinue the ad; a decision that was met with outrage from LGBTQ viewers.After this, Hallmark reversed its decision, put the ad back up and pledged to better represent the LGBTQ community. One month later, Hallmarks CEO Bill Abbott stepped down.After his departure, Hallmark started including more LGBTQ storylines in their holiday films, upsetting fans and spurring a wave of online backlash.As this outrage became widespread, Abbott co-founded Great American Media, the parent company of GAF. Over the next year, he would be joined by a swath of former Hallmark executives and actors.Abbott took what was a country music channel and rebranded it into a faith-based, family-friendly lifestyle channel. As part of this rebrand, Abbott decided to create original made-for-TV holiday films that, unlike Hallmark, would focus on a more traditional view of the holidays. There will always be a segment of the population that just wants to be able to not have to fast forward through something or feel uncomfortable when theyre watching with their kids, Abbott said in an interview this year.Since GAF officially launched in September 2021, its holiday programming has focused on the traditional and religious roots of Christmas and the family. But their definition of these sacred institutions seems to exist in an LGBTQ-free world. Abbott and GAF did not respond to Uncloseted Medias request for comment.Why Queer Representation MattersWhile the effect of holiday films on societal progress might feel minimal, research has shown that queer representation on TV has the ability to move the needle on the publics perception of LGBTQ people. A 2020 GLAAD Media study found that 48% of respondents who had been exposed to LGBTQ people in the media say they are more accepting of gay and lesbian people, when compared to the respondents who had not recently seen any queer people on their screens.I live in an extremely progressive and diverse and colorful place, says the director, who lives in Toronto, the most diverse city in the world. But I think there are many, many places in the states that are not that way, he says, noting that the majority of holiday movies are shot in Canada. I think that there are young men and women and trans folks who are terrified to speak about their own truth and it does nothing for those people if the living room that they inhabit is filled with that content.Where the Controversy BeganPhoto: Gage Skidmore via FlickrGAF captured attention and controversy in 2022 when Candace Cameron Bure, former Full House star, left Hallmark, and promised fans that their new programming would focus on traditional marriage instead of LGBTQ stories.Her comments received intense backlash from fans and the LGBTQ community and caused former GAF actor Neal Bledsoe to leave the channel, writing in a statement that the thought that my work could be used to deliberately discriminate against anyone horrifies and infuriates me.In response, CEO Abbott distanced GAF from Bures comments, stating that her views do not reflect the companys and that GAF [doesnt] have an agenda either way. Its not in the faith-and-family playbook to have agendas that are either pro or anti, he said in an interview with Variety.Still, total exclusion of LGBTQ characters has meant big business for Abbotts network. Many holiday movie fans were thrilled with this shift and turned to GAF to escape the queer representation on Hallmark and other similar channels. In the Great American Family Fan Community Facebook Group with over 150,000 members, fans voiced homophobia and expressed their gratitude for GAFs exclusion of queer characters.Forcing Hallmark into the alphabet group lifestyle programming is criminal, wrote one user. Time to take a stand and preserve the sanctity of the natural family order in as many areas of life that we can, the same user added. Another user wrote about their passion for GAFs movies: I love this channel and also I dont want to look at 2 men or 2 women kissing. Its just not Gods way. Each post garnered over 600 likes and over 200 comments.Uncloseted Media reached the users who posted in the community but did not receive a response.In addition, members of the community have criticized GAF when they aired a RuPauls Drag Race ad and an LGBTQ-themed commercial about PrEP, an HIV prevention drug that has been integral to ending the epidemic. One user commented asking if GAF has removed the very non-family friendly AIDS drug ad with 2 men kissing. GAF responded on Instagram, saying Unfortunately, we dont have any control over local commercials, and we sincerely apologize.Family ValuesWhile GAFs audience is still fractional to Hallmarks 737,000 primetime viewers, the Christian alternative still averages 173,000 viewers in the coveted slot and is the 41st most popular channel on TV.They have identified and carved out a core audience, says Thompson.They know that if they watch [holiday films] here, theyre not going to have to confront all of the kinds of stories that they're hearing elsewhere and that they're clutching their pearls over, Thompson told Uncloseted Media.The so-called family values brand that GAF has been capitalizing on is one that has been popular on TV for upwards of a century: the white picket fence, Leave it to Beaver, 2.5 children type.They were always nuclear families, a husband and wife, in their first marriage [with] a couple of kids Because it was such a predominant presence it became the mythical idea of what a family was, says Thompson. Great American Media markets itself heavily as a family-friendly organization. In its company blurb, the word family appears in nearly every single sentence, sometimes more than once.Jason Wrench, a professor of communication and media at the State University of New York, says the move toward family values is indicative of a bigger goal: national Christianity. They have this desire to go back to something that never actually existed, he says. They've created a fantasy of what the past was or even how this country was founded.Uncloseted Media is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support LGBTQ-focused journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.GAF movie scripts are flooded with Biblical language and the channel airs Bible quotes before many ad breaks. By doing this and by excluding queer characters, GAF has earned media and marketing. In the past few years, Focus on the Family, a powerful anti-LGBTQ lobbying group, has written in support of GAF in numerous articles. And earlier this year, Abbott spoke about GAF on a podcast by The Daily Signal, a conservative media organization founded by The Heritage Foundation, who wrote Project 2025.Holiday Movies and American PoliticsWhile holiday movies may ostensibly seem disconnected from politics, Wrench believes theyre linked. Since the legalization of gay marriage in 2015, far-right organizations have been collaborating to promote a narrative that excludes same-sex couples. They are moving the pieces on their chessboard, Wrench told Uncloseted Media. I think sometimes it's hard for us because we're seeing it in the moment and we don't see how this has been strategic.In todays political climate, the notion of returning to traditional families like the ones promoted on GAF has taken center stage. Project 2025, the 920-page document that was written by 140 former Trump administration officials, suggests that policies that support LGBTQ equity should be repealed and replaced by policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families.Media Fragmentation and Echo ChambersThe popularity of GAF may be attributed to the fragmentation of media in recent years. It used to be that there were three television stations that had more actual control over what was shown to the public, says Wrench.The lack of TV options meant shows that aired on the three networks had serious impact. When All in the Familywhich was watched by over 20 million people each weekdecided to include the first-ever gay sitcom character in 1971, it had a seismic effect on Americas perception of gay people. And in 1997, when Ellen DeGeneres came out on her self-titled sitcom, it was watched by more than 42 million people and was the highest-rated episode of the show.Television and popular culture was very good at licking the envelope shut on progressive issues because once it happened on a television show in the network era, it wasn't an argument anymore, says Thompson.But today, people can look elsewhere when a channels programming doesnt match their beliefs. [There are] an infinity of places where people can go to find the claims of affirmations that they need, says Thompson.In this new media ecosystem, polarization has become profitable and media corporations have taken notice. Its not only the holiday film industry that is capitalizing off existing in an echo chamber. The news, pop culture, science and podcasts are often fragmented along partisan lines. Now, if you have a large enough population that doesnt want to expose themselves to anything queer oriented, if a company sees that as a business model to make more money, theyre going to do that, says Wrench.The director of the film with the lesbian peck that never made it to your screen says GAFs echo chamber only widens the gap between peoples varying beliefs about LGBTQ issues. It doesnt help parents develop any sort of understanding and it doesnt challenge their perspective on diversity and on queerness, he says, noting that less than 40% of LGBTQ youth consider their homes affirming.Queer Exclusion Becomes Big BusinessBut he says that the market of traditional values is too big for GAF to pass up on. It really does all come down to the money, he says.The audience for these films is a middle-aged Christian woman who just wants to pour herself a glass of Chardonnay and forget about all the pain in the world.The exclusion of queer characters from GAF movies is occurring in parallel with a recent shift of U.S. corporations abandoning Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and LGBTQ initiatives under pressure from right-wing outrage. For months, big-name corporations like Harley-Davidson, Bud Light and Walmart have folded under pressure from conservative influencers who have started campaigns calling for divestment from inclusive practices. And even this month, Disney removed a transgender storyline from an animated streaming series prior to its release, with a spokesperson for the company telling The Hollywood Reporter that when it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.There are definitely companies that have caught the rainbow and gone with it because it was socially appropriate, says Wrench. Those companies will become more hesitant as the pressure from these groups becomes louder. Its not that they represent the majority of America, its just that theyre really loud.In the last year, even Hallmark has pulled back in their LGBTQ programming. In the more than 30 original Hallmark holiday films airing in primetime this year, Uncloseted Media was not able to identify any that feature a main queer storyline. The channel has also fallen short of incorporating trans and gender nonconforming characters into their films. Hallmark did not respond to Uncloseted Medias request for comment.Whether GAF says it out loud, they have found a niche by creating a holiday story that is rooted in heteronormativity where viewers can enjoy a world where queer people dont exist. And its paying off: last year, GAF saw a 76% rise in viewership and announced it is TVs fastest-growing network.Additional reporting by Hope PisoniIf objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

Video edited by E E OliverSubscribe nowLGBTQ Americans and their families and friends have been concerned with the legal implications of the incoming Trump administration. When Trump takes office on January 20th, what does he actually have the power to do to LGBTQ rights from a legal perspective? To help our audience better understand what is and isnt possible, we called fellow Substacker of . Geidner has 15 years of experience covering the Supreme Court and the American legal system. He also has extensive political reporting experience, having covered aspects of the past three presidential administrations from D.C. Watch the full interview above or read the transcript here:Spencer Macnaughton: So today we're here with Chris Geidner, fellow Substacker who founded Law Dork. Chris has covered the Supreme Court and the American legal system for nearly 15 years and is formally the legal editor at BuzzFeed News. Chris, thanks so much for chatting with me and with Uncloseted Media today.Chris Geidner: Of course.Spencer Macnaughton: Fabulous. So what we want to talk about and, you know, really use your expertise with is what Trump and, you know, a public and trifecta can and can't do when it comes to LGBTQ rights and the law in his second term. What are you have your eye on most in terms of what the next Trump administration can and can't do as it relates to LGBTQ rights from a legal POV?Chris Geidner: Yeah, I mean, I think like first, like just big picture, the first thing to think about when we are looking at what's going to happen in about a month is that the reality is that any action needs to actually be implemented. And so, and that might seem like it's a stupid statement, but that's probably one of the most important things that we learned from the first Trump administration is that you really need to watch beyond the vibes and see what's actually being proposed, what's actually being put in place, what's actually going to happen. And so because of that, I think one of the most important things going into January 20th is the reality that's always true in Washington, that personnel is policy. And that who gets in different positions matters a lot. And I think one of the most notable examples of that is that for all of his troubling positions in some ways, a lot of the concern from the right about RFK's nomination for HHS secretary is that he is not a right winger is that he's pro choice and while he certainly had some some certainly not left wing positions and some right wing positions on trans issues, on gay issues, on HIV /AIDS. He is also certainly not one of them. It's not like a Stephen Miller type being put into that position. And that's obviously, HHS is one of the areas where I mean, where gay people historically have had the most interactions since the AIDS crisis and where right now in this moment of dealing with efforts to restrict medical care for trans people where trans people are going to be very focused. And so I do think that the reality is that depending on who's in what position in what agency could dramatically change what sort of results we get. I think that another area where that is surprisingly true is basically everyone other than Pam Bondi in the leadership of the Justice Department, the two junior people, the number two and number three in the Justice Department are Trump's former defense lawyers, but they're that, they're criminal defense lawyers, they're not, they are not right-wing advocates, they are not far-right people. And that's also true for his pick for Solicitor General. There are certainly problems in DOJ picked. You've got Harmeet Dhillon, his pick for the Civil Rights Division, who does have a record of representing detransitioners, of attempting to challenge the woke agenda in court, and we certainly have confirmed would be open to prioritizing aspects of the civil rights division for their focus that are not going to be to the benefit of LGBTQ people. So that would be out. You have this question of what he's going to do on day one in the military with regards to transgender people, with regards to medical care.Uncloseted Media is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Spencer Macnaughton: What do you think we can expect from the Supreme Court?Chris Geidner: We don't know. I mean, we don't know what's gonna happen with the Skrmetti, the transgender care case that oral arguments were held earlier in December and whether the Trump administration, because it was technically a request from the Justice Department to hear that case that the court took and whether or not the Trump administration will try to get that petition dismissed in January. There's all sorts of complications because there was also a request from the it plaintiffs so the justices could just replace the one petition with the other so it's not clear but the point is that it could be confusing and confusion and chaos is not good for people who are dependent on healthcare whether it be trans care whether it be prep whether it be cancer screenings whether it be mental health screenings for all of these things, the main concern that I have about the first six months of the Trump administration will be slipshod decisions that are poorly understood and poorly implemented that then lead to immediate litigation that then has everything up in the air and confused for six or seven months.Spencer Macnaughton: And I mean, when we're talking about, you know, Trump's first day in office or Trump's first few months in office and, you know, what is he gonna care about? I mean, if we looked at his campaign, you know, he says we need to eradicate transgender insanity, get rid of left-wing gender insanity, all these kinds of promises, right? I mean, why wouldn't he push that Supreme Court case as far along as possible and take away trans rights. Like if you were, you know, a trans kid, a trans person or a family member what would you be genuinely concerned about from a legal perspective right now?Chris Geidner: The first concern is if states taking anti-trans provisions are upheld. The second, even greater concern would be if there's an effort to stop pro-trans states from taking pro-trans transactions. The equivalent of that that is something that's been discussed a lot. So it's easy to to discuss is like, if there would be an effort to ban Mifepristone nationwide.Spencer Macnaughton: Like in super basic terms, if Trump comes in on day one and says, I want gender affirming care gone for trans kids, I don't want trans girls playing in sports, you know, I want gender affirming care gone for trans adults. How much power does he have if he says do it for people to actually do it and get it done?Chris Geidner: A lot of it would take legislation and as of now right now you you have You would need 60 votes in the Senate for legislation but if they include it somehow in reconciliation, which is a budget process, so they tie like spending funding to it, that only takes a majority vote. And that's something that Democrats use successfully to get programs and the first Trump administration use successfully to get programs through is by tying them to spending somehow. And so that would be the strongest way is obviously to pass legislation, which then could be challenged and would be challenged in court, but that would be the strongest way. The second way would be to sort of do the opposite of what the Biden administration was trying to do, to do something like under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 that provide sex discrimination protection in education is to say that the Biden administration passed a rule that said that in accordance with like the principles of the Supreme Court decision in Bostock that said that in employment discrimination, sex discrimination includes sexual orientation and gender identity. The Biden administration said sex discrimination in Title IX should be treated the same way. And what you could see from the Trump administration, they could withdraw the rule so you would get rid of the rule itself. But in order to propose an alternative role, they would need to go through another whole process of notice and comment that would take time. But when they do that, they could propose a rule that said that sex under Title IX is only referring to biological sex and basically take some of language from some of the different state sports bands and stuff like that.Spencer Macnaughton: When you listen to the rhetoric though of Trump and of Mike Johnson and all these people, you would imagine that doing exactly what you just described would be top of mind for them, based on what they said.Chris Geidner: I don't think anything is top of mind of Trump. Donald Trump would say whatever he needed to to win the election. My bottom line take on Donald Trump is that, like he is going to do what he thinks is right at the moment, what he thinks will win him the most applause at the moment and often based on the last person in the room with him. I mean, we learned that, I had literally written that one weekend after his election this time. And then like three days later, Matt Gitz was announced as his attorney general pick. And then the day after that, we found out that the reason why he was Trump's pick is because he was on a flight back from Florida to DC with Gates and with somebody else who was pushing for him. And so it was literally the last person in the room with him was why he made his decision. And so in that sense, there's almost in a Trump administration and even greater the personnel is policy because sometimes literally the personnel who that's in the Oval Office will be the policy. And so to that extent, if you have certain far-right people who get into positions, that will potentially lead to some really bad policies for LGBTQ people. The bigger problem, I think, in a Trump era is from two groups. It's from the fact that no matter what, the Republicans writ large Mike decide is the right path forward, the most reasonable anti-abortion and most reasonable anti-LGBTQ positions. There will be a deep red state that has a far right governor that has a strong right legislature that is both houses are super majority Republican and they will pass a much more extreme bill that will be signed into law that will then go to court that will then be challenged and or that will then become a model for other states that will then become a national problem, which then sometimes if those look too popular, Trump will then pick them up and start doing them himself. Mike Johnson believes it 100%. The fact that we have a house speaker who is following Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace is horrifying, but like what's even more horrifying is that that's not politics for him. That is his position. That is where he came from. That is the job he held before he was a member of Congress. And so, like, for him, it's real. And he will definitely try to do things. They could definitely implement the equivalent of a rule that says that education, federal education funding could be withheld if you do not adhere to a definition of sex that is based on biological sex in education. So that that could effectively ban trans kids from using restrooms in schools, locker rooms.Spencer Macnaughton: I mean, at this moment in time, Trump is super tight with Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. You know, they were just at the football game together the other day kind of thing, right? And, you know, Johnson has said that homosexuals are the dark harbinger of chaos. And that, you know, has compared, you know, gay marriage to letting people marry their pets.Chris Geidner: Yeah, I mean, to be clear, if Donald Trump decides to like become Mike Johnson's toady, then LGBTQ people are in deep trouble. But I think there's a reality that that has not been the experience throughout the past 10 years of the Trump era in public life. Like, eventually Mike Johnson is going to make Donald Trump angry and Donald Trump is going to say, "Why is this loon ruining my agenda?" I do think that that is more protective right now of gay and lesbian people than it is of transgender people. I mean, like, if you just look functionally, I think the fact that, like, we're going to have a married treasure secretary, gay marriage treasury secretary who has children is like, makes it seem pretty likely that Donald Trump is not going to try to roll back Obergefell. Seeing that there won't be lower people, there won't be far right red states with Republican trifectas who won't do it. And that won't mean that there's not interest in some lower courts in doing it.Spencer Macnaughton: We report a lot on religion and a lot on religious exemptions and how people use religion, freedom of religion laws, right? What are your biggest concerns about if those religious exemption laws are expanded for LGBTQ folks?Chris Geidner: Yeah, I mean, the fact of the matter is that a narrow religious exemption is generally pretty reasonable and protects everyone and keeps people safe, keeps people happy. when you have very broad exemptions, they can essentially eat the non-discrimination provision. And this was the concern out of 303 Creative last term, or two terms ago now at the Supreme Court about the woman who allegedly wanted to start making wedding websites, but hadn't, but might have, and might have someday gotten a gay couple who wanted her to make a website, but wouldn't, she wouldn't wanna do it. And the Supreme Court said that the non-discrimination law that she should have an exemption to that, that she should have a religious exemption into that and while that might seem that it could be narrow, I don't know if you remember like in the immediate aftermath of that, there was like a hairdresser in Michigan that put up a sign saying like, I don't do lesbian haircuts or something like that.Spencer Macnaughton: Well, that's what I find really interesting what you just said is that the super red states that introduced these perhaps extremely anti-LGBTQs and state legislatures, if they bubble up and keep going up the courts and Trump thinks they're cool and invogue and popular, that could be dangerous.Chris Geidner: Yeah, oh, that absolutely is, like it literally looks like an epidemic spread of the, what was it, 2021, where the Arkansas ban passed over the governor's veto. And then 2022, the Alabama one passed. And then 2023, you had the explosion.Spencer Macnaughton: Do you think anything could be different from like the 2016 Trump administration to now? Do you kind of imagine he'll approach LGBTQ at all differently. I mean, his rhetoric, this election cycle has been more aggressive, I would say. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely been more aggressive. They definitely, they went all in on the anti -trans ads. Like, I definitely think that they will do something with at least trans sports. They're going to try to do something with sports. I think that they think that that's clearly the thing that's pulling best for them. The other thing that I would be concerned about that we're seeing already reports out of the UK on is that, when you do ban gender affirming care for minors that they're that providers get concerned even about adult provision of care. That some providers just say, like, "Why would I put myself in this position?" And sometimes it's, I mean, obviously there are some providers who are going to do it no matter what, who this is their purpose. I mean, just like we're seeing with abortion care. But you certainly are going to have large providers that they're like, this is a business decision that we have 25 trans patients a year of our 5 ,000 patients and we have 250 employees.Spencer Macnaughton: We've seen a lot of headlines of, you know, same-sex couples running to get married out of fear of Trump 2 .0 kind of thing. Is that necessary? What are your thoughts on that?Chris Geidner: I mean, I don't think it's ever bad to protect your rights. Second, I am no one's lawyer listening to this. I mean, I think that there is a reality that there probably will be far right efforts to push back and lay the groundwork. I mean, one, I don't think they have the votes on this courts to do that. I don't know if there's an interest. You look at polling, there doesn't seem to be any, I mean, if anything, it continues improving. I'm more worried for individuals being targeted by far -right policies from far-right states trying to implement laws that sometimes will even be applied exterritorially and then litigation aimed at having nationwide effect.Spencer Macnaughton: What are examples of what you could see the more extreme cases being in those deep red, totally red states?Chris Geidner: We've seen examples out of Florida and Texas that could just get more extreme. I mean, Florida has already limited provision of adult gender affirming care. They have put in place restrictions that make it more difficult, that require additional appointments, require fewer providers being able to actually provide the care. We have seen efforts by both Paxton and Andrew Bailey, the Attorney General of Missouri, to investigate nonprofits, media entities. They are going after, both are going after media matters for their reporting on Twitter, X, Elon, advertising Nazis, all of the above. You have seen Paxton has specifically gone after PFLAG trying to get lists of their members, donors. We have seen various versions of efforts to limit books in schools. That certainly could expand.Subscribe nowSpencer Macnaughton: A lot of people are really afraid in the LGBTQ community about Trump 2 .0, about the laws, you know, and I think you've given fantastic context to clarify a lot of things for them. Is there anything they can do proactively now that might, you know, help mitigate, you know, their rights in case Trump decides to do things that could, you know, strip them.Chris Geidner: I mean, certainly handling passport changes for trans people. I mean, certainly handling passport changes for trans people now is smart. Getting any trans documents that need to be changed in place as soon as you can is smart. I do think to the extent that people want to, same-sex couples want to feel protected. If you're already engaged, make your parents happy and just finish it and get it done, I don't think that's, I don't think that is harmful and I think it is an added protection. I mean, it's no different than like saying you should have a will. Like, if there is a legal document that you could have to make your life more secure, you should have it. But stepping back, I actually think the most important thing to do is not to lose hope and to be engaged. That the way that these changes happen are by people being engaged. We should have more trans people on school boards. We should have more trans people in legislatures having that that presence matters. And so I think trans people, gay people, LGBTQ people, people being proactively, aggressively defensive, and transparent and supportive, and demanding of their right and our rights to exist is important. To the extent that there are places where there are already bad laws in place, to the extent that there are bad changes that are going to come, that is he first step in reversing that. People who are feeling safe right now, be there for the people who aren't feeling safe.Spencer Macnaughton: Amen, fair enough, yeah um I was gonna say you definitely are a law dork.Chris Geidner: I am.Spencer Macnaughton: This is such important and helpful context for all our audience so super grateful for your time and thank you so much.Chris Geidner: Thank you.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

Were a month and a day away from President-elect Donald Trumps inauguration. This past weekend, I appeared on MSNBCs Ayman Mohyeldin Reports to discuss Uncloseteds latest investigation into Kristen Waggoner.I popped up on the network shortly after ABC News agreed to pay Trump more than $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit. Trump sued the network after George Stephanopoulos falsely said in an interview that Trump had been found liable for rape (when he was actually found liable for sexual abuse).Since then, Trump has called the press corrupt and has threatened more lawsuits. And hes already taken action: In a news conference on Monday, Trump announced hed be suing the Des Moines Registeran Iowa paper that was founded in 1860, and that has lost 70% of its Sunday circulation since 2018 and now has just under 40,000 readers. He is suing them over a poll they released on November 2 that predicted Kamala Harris would win.I will admit, its very scary and intimidating stuff when you have someone with the power of the Presidents office threatening lawsuits and actually executing them against tiny and local news organizations. Lets be real: Trump could run Uncloseted into the ground if he really wanted to. With that said, we wont (and for the sake of our democracy, we cant) tweak our coverage or mission even a degree to the left or right to avoid retaliation. All we can do is present the truth and rely on the principles of journalism. Aymans final question was how Uncloseted Media plans to cover the Trump administration. I stand by my response:We plan on covering Trump just like we investigate any person, piece of power, piece of legislation, or amount of money that is important to scrutinize. We define balance not along partisan lines. Balance is not a Republican soundbite and a Democratic soundbite divided by two. Its following the money and the facts and giving a definition of balance thats rooted in methodologically sound, evidence-based research. So were gonna get the receipts, the timelines, the screenshots and tell it like it is. Were not gonna shy away from these stories Trump and the administration need to be checked more than ever.Subscribe nowYou may have noticed on our Instagram page or elsewhere that weve been collaborating with Gay Times, a leading global LGBTQ media brand. We are thrilled to announce that we are turning these collabs into an official partnership. The content partnership sees Uncloseted Medias investigative journalism broadcast across GAY TIMES media platforms that reach tens of millions of LGBTQ consumers each month, with GAY TIMES promoting Uncloseted Media to its existing audience. The organizations have already reached over a million consumers under the agreement during its pilot phase over the last four weeks. Check out the full press release here. Huge shoutout to our fantastic advisory board member, Angela Earl, who helped spearhead the partnership. We are looking forward to working with Gay Times CEO Tag Warner and his entire team as we get set for all our 2025 coverage. Rep. Nancy Mace's position on LGBTQ community appears to have changed (ABC News)Rep. Nancy Mace has faced significant backlash for her anti-transgender rhetoric, including efforts to ban transgender women from using women's restrooms at the U.S. Capitol and using a slur against protesters. Pete Hegseth, Trumps Defense pick, says allowing gay troops to serve openly reflects a Marxist agenda (CNN)He has expressed regret over the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," arguing that changes allowing LGBTQ+ individuals and women in combat roles undermine military effectiveness in favor of social justice. Gay Democrat is lone LGBTQ vote in Congress for anti-trans national defense bill (The Advocate)Rep. Chris Pappas, the only out LGBTQ lawmaker supporting the recently passed $895.2 billion National Defense Authorization Act, faces backlash for backing a bill that prohibits Tricare from covering gender-affirming care for transgender children of military service members. This weekend, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting: This weekend, we dive into the story of The Great American Family channel, where holiday cheer appears to be crafted to exclude queer representation. What could Trump 2.0 mean for LGBTQ rights, public policy, and the future of equality in America? I interview fellow Substacker a renowned legal expert known as , to break down the potential legal and social implications of this pivotal political shift.Thanks for reading! And feel free to email me with questions, complaints, tips or story ideas! Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chiefspencer@unclosetedmedia.comIf objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

By: Anne Marshall-ChalmersThis story was originally published by The War Horse, a nonprofit newsroom educating the public on the military.Photo illustration by Hrisanthi PickettSubscribe nowOn weekends, Staff Sgt. Todd VanCantfort, an armed forces police officer in San Antonio, Texas, targeted gay bars in search of anyone in the military. One time, at the direction of his supervisor, he ditched his light blue and navy uniform to dress gay. He chose tight jeans, cowboy boots, and an open button-down shirt, advertising a burst of chest hair.It was 1985. San Antonio was dotted with several military installations and even more bars, many of them rowdy dance clubs where VanCantfort would break up fights or drive slurring servicemembers back to base.At the gay clubs, though, his orders were clearround up anyone in the military and turn them in, so leadership could kick them out.Victimizing the people for no reason, is how VanCantfort now describes it.Todd VanCantfort was a member of the San Antonio Armed Forces Police Department in the mid-80s. (Photo courtesy of Todd VanCantfort)Forty years later, those witch hunts sound archaic. But they cast a long shadow over a military still struggling to make amendsand now serve as a reminder of a disturbing legacy as Donald Trump returns to the White House next year. His now-embattled choice to lead the defense department, Fox News host and former National Guard soldier Pete Hegseth, has declared a war on woke.Hes railed against women in combat, transgender rights, and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts that he insists have demoralized troops and weakened our fighting forces. Whether the controversial Hegseth is confirmed or not, his nomination has rekindled the question of who is welcome to serve in the United States military. And Trumps ties to the authors of Project 2025, a conservative and controversial blueprint for his second term, adds to the uncertainty.For those caught up in the witch hunts that rooted out LGBTQ service members, the disgrace is everlasting.I dont know how to explain to somebody what it feels like when your own military that you volunteered to fight for your country doesnt want you, says Elaine Rodriguez, who was outed as a lesbian and kicked out of the Navy in 1991. She still mourns the military career taken from her and the self-worth that never fully rebounded.Elaine Rodriguezpictured with her mother, Maria,was 23 when she left their Florida home for Navy boot camp. (Photo courtesy of Elaine Rodriguez)Stories like Rodriguezs have recently inspired pardons and other actions by the White House and the Defense Department. But, as The War Horse has reported, those efforts have benefitted only a fraction of the tens of thousands of gay and lesbian veterans who were kicked out. Still, advocates hoped that the small gains made under President Biden would lead to more sweeping action. That now seems unlikely.Its not exactly deja vu, said Rodriguez, now 58 and living in Jacksonville, Florida, but it is scary that once again people who want to serve may be forbidden from doing so, much like in the 1980s.She and VanCantfort are sharing their stories with The War Horsefrom opposite sides of the witch huntsto shed light on a painful and calculating discriminatory past that they say must not be forgotten.Uncloseted Media is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.How The Raids Went DownVanCantfort, now retired and living outside Washington, D.C., was among a cadre of police officers, criminal investigators, commanders, and JAGs across the globe who executed the militarys anti-gay policies that stretched from the 1950s through the repeal of dont ask, dont tell in 2011 and resulted in the dismissal of about 100,000 servicemembers.In those days, when the staff sergeant pulled up to a gay club, it often would unfold like this:Intimidate the crowd just by walking in, ask for the military IDs of people they recognized or suspected were in the military, and haul those folks back to their base, outing them to their commander. License plates with military decals in the parking lot were jotted down and reported.On occasion, though, things went sideways. One night, he remembers arriving with two or three other officers at a smoke-filled country western lesbian bar on the outskirts of San Antonio. When they entered, the twangy band stopped playing. The lights popped on.Someonethe bar ownerbarked into the mic, telling her patrons to protect their friends in uniform.The women stood shoulder to shoulder, forming a wall, allowing any scared service member to flee through a back exit. Because most of the women in the bar were civilians, they knew the armed forces police wouldnt arrest them. They inched so close to VanCantfort, he could feel their anger and their message was clearget the fuck out; leave us alone.Making Her Family ProudIn December 1989, Elaine Rodriguez joined the Navy, following in the footsteps of her Navy veteran father and her older brother, a Marine.Elaine Rodriguez appears serious and focused in her official boot camp photo. (Photo courtesy of Elaine Rodriguez)She was 23 when she left her hometown of Jacksonville, Florida, to begin boot camp in Orlando, Florida.In her official boot camp photo, she appears so serious that she almost scowls. The militarys strict rules, she says, were a shock to the system. But she enduredIm not a quitteronly landing in trouble once for giggling with a friend during physical training.When boot camp graduation day finally arrived, her family came to Orlando to celebrate. Rodriguezs father beamed in the family photos. It was the proudest Rodriguez had ever seen him. From Orlando, Rodriguez went to Naval Station Great Lakes in Illinois to train as an electricians mate.Having grown up in a protective, Catholic, Puerto Rican family, Rodriguez was on her own in the Navy for the first time and loved the independence. I was doing my own thing, she says. I was happy. I guess I could compare it to going to college but getting paid.The Rodriguez family celebrated with Elaine during her boot camp graduation in Orlando. Left photo, Elaine, center, with her dad, Pablo, and older brother, Paul. It was the proudest shed ever seen her father, she said. Right photo, from left to right, her younger brother, Philip, their mother, Maria, and her older brother, Paul. (Photos courtesy of Elaine Rodriguez)She made friends easily. She studied when she had to and stayed out late at bars when she wanted. Before the military, she had imagined that at some point, shed find a husband and have kids.In Great Lakes, away from her home state of Florida, unexpected feelings found the space to emerge. Am I gay? shed wonder.Origins of the Militarys Witch HuntsWhen VanCantfort gets going on his military career, hes a fast talker, and on a humid September day in Washington, D.C., hes a conveyor belt of memories. He starts in the early 80s when he was a military dog handler (13 dogs, many bites) and winds up in Germany and then Greece during the first Gulf War when hes helping secure military facilities and receiving slaps on the wrist for his hard-charging, eff-the-bureaucracy-and-get-it-done attitude.Staff Sgt. Todd VanCantfort sometime in the late 80s. (Photo courtesy of Todd VanCantfort)His tales, however, lose color and momentum when the era of anti-gay stuff in San Antonio surfaces. His manner becomes careful, even procedural. The 80s were the era of the new AIDS epidemic and a conservative, Reagan-era Defense Department. In 1981, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger made discharge mandatory for gay service members, solidifying a practice that had already been established but was inconsistent among the branches.The militarys anti-gay policy dates back to World War Is Articles of War, which implemented a ban that prohibited gay sex. And in 1951, the Uniform Code of Military Justice outlawed sodomy with Article 125a ban on oral and anal sexwhich resulted in gay and lesbian service members being pushed out and occasionally prosecuted. Its unclear how many gay service members were court-martialed, and in September, The War Horse filed a lawsuit to compel the branches to turn over those records.In the years after World War II, the military sought to expel some of the hundreds of thousands of women who had enlisted as part of The Womens Army Corps or WAC (originally the Womens Army Auxiliary Corps or WAAC) and the term witch hunt emerged.Wartime posters promoted the role of women in the Army Auxiliary Corps (Courtesy of U.S. Army)Details of a few of those witch hunts are spelled out in formerly classified documents from 1950-1951 that The War Horse learned had been anonymously surrendered to a museum in Hawaii.In a December 1950 memo, for instance, a military investigator focuses on an insidious female ring that military leaders believed was introducing homosexuality to new WAC trainees at Fort Lee, Virginia. The homosexual road is not only down, it is always a continuous road from the first homosexual act to the end of the roadthe brutal sex crime, a different investigator later wrote.A modus operandi document described how investigators compiled allegations and rumors, secured and maintained an informant system, inspected mail, and interrogated and polygraph-tested women in the ranks.Women soldiers admitted under interrogation to letting loose just like their male counterpartsdrunken nights, parties. A few reported suspicions of certain women being that way. Others reported that they had witnessed women petting or kissing or involved in a lovers quarrel.Nobody got off easy. In a document that included notes from a meeting between an Army colonel and a general, a colonel wrote: The Army would build a case against the guilty that will STICK.Once classified documents spell out the examples of witch hunts in the early 1950s with the Armys Womens Auxiliary Corps. (Courtesy of Honokaa Heritage Center)Sticky Note Waiting on Her DoorWithin a year of enlisting, Rodriguez was on track to become an electricians mate. One afternoon, right before Labor Day weekend in 1990, she was heading to a night class when a lieutenant commander came into a common area of the barracks with an order: If the women knew of any homosexual activity, they better report it.This visit came a few years after a notorious witch hunt involving Marines at Parris Island. Almost half of the 246 women in a unit were questioned. Sixty-five of them subsequently were pushed out of the Marines.Elaine Rodriguez studies in the barracks at Naval Station Great Lakes. (Photo courtesy of Elaine Rodriguez)But Rodriguez wasnt too worried. She wasnt going to narc on anyone. A few weeks passed and she assumed the whole thing would blow over.However, one night, when she returned from a class, she was told she had to go to the Navys on-base legal department. A stern superior in uniform was waiting for her. He grilled her about alleged homosexual activity that he had heard about.He said, This isnt a witch hunt, Rodriguez recalls. And in my mind, I said, Well, I didnt say it was. So it must be. It was the first time she had ever even heard that phrase.Rodriguez denied going out to gay bars and being attracted to women, and he let her go. She put the ordeal behind her and looked forward to shipping out to her first duty station in Hawaii.A few weeks later, though, a sticky note on her door told her to go to the Naval Investigative Service. She headed to the NIS building. The walk was short, but dread warped time into a long and withering few minutes.When she got there, two Naval investigators knew everything. Her girlfriend? A civilian named Marty. Her favorite gay bar? Rivers Edge. Overwhelmed and crying, Rodriguez confessed.I was in shock. The only thing that had ever happened to me prior to this was a speeding ticket, she says. I literally felt like a criminal.The Navy kicked her out with an other than honorable dischargea common practice that not only marred the records of thousands of service members but denied them access to veterans benefits such as health care and the G.I. Bill. Rodriguezs commander wrote in her exit paperwork that her behavior is not compatible with the lifestyle of a service member and will not be tolerated. The governing body that determines whether a servicemember deserves being kicked out, decided she had committed a serious offense. And with that, the Navy emptied out her plan for the future.Silence Proves the Safest BetRodriguez isnt sure how investigators gathered intimate details about her. This was before cell phones and social media. She suspects either someone in her unit ratted her out or someone spotted her at Rivers Edge, the gay club outside Chicago.VanCantfort knows that both scenarios are probable. In the early 1980s, in San Antonio, the Armed Forces disciplinary control board would create the list of bars he and his fellow officers had to scope out on weekends.He also remembers times when service members who were in trouble would offer intel (with or without evidence) on gays and lesbians in uniform in exchange for a lighter punishment.It creates a whole class of people that are victimized with no way to get help, he says, because the system is so secured against them.Its why gay people in the military lived quiet, closeted lives, the sword of Damocles hanging above them should they share the truth even with close friends. In a system built entirely on power imbalance, silence proved the safest bet.VanCantfort said he learned all of this a few months into his enlistment at 19 years old.One night after a barracks party, with a few beers in him, he crawled into bed. At some point, he stirred awake and found someone standing in the dark beside his bed. The man, who VanCantfort recognized as living in the barracks, was naked.Shocked, VanCantfort recalls stammeringHow did you get in my room? Get the fuck out.He had honed scrappy fighting skills as a kid growing up poor in Texas and Massachusetts. He attended a dozen schools and didnt flinch at throwing a punch or insult to defend himself.As the man moved toward the bed, VanCantfort said he fought him off. For weeks, though, the man taunted VanCantfort, daring him to report the attempted assault. Making sure I understood, he would flip the story and claim I was a fag and was trying to hit on him, VanCantfort recalls. So he stayed quiet.A couple of years later, as an armed forces police officer engaging in witch hunts, VanCantfort stepped into a role that gave him all the power.Little Changes Under Dont Ask, Dont TellAfter Rodriguez learned in late 1990 that she was getting kicked out with an other than honorable discharge, the news spread around Great Lakes. Stares and slurs followed her for the 45 days it took to process her discharge. Sailors taunted her with catcalls. Take her out back, theyd say. She was assigned to clean the barracks.One day, a female sailor in the barracks called outRodriguez!and demanded that she repair something in her room. Rodriguez walked in, and the woman shut the door and sexually assaulted her.Rodriguez never told anyone. Who would believe her?Homophobia was rampant in the early 90s and continued into the dont ask, dont tell era, which ended in 2011. President Obama repealed the policy, which was intended as a compromise to an outright ban on gays in uniform, allowing them to serve as long as they kept it hidden. Witch hunts slowed, but did not disappear.Flanked by members of Congress and then-Vice President Joe Biden, President Obama signs the act repealing dont ask, dont tell. (Photo by Chuck Kennedy of the White House)Since then, the Pentagon has invited gay and lesbian service members who were discriminated against to apply for a discharge upgrade, an often cumbersome process that only about 1,700 service members have pursued, according to the Defense Department. Most have received an upgrade.In October, the Pentagon announced that it had identified 820 veterans who were kicked out of the military because of their sexual orientation under dont ask, dont tell, and that those veterans would now receive honorable discharges.And over the summer, President Biden announced pardons for gay and lesbian veterans who were convicted in a military court for consensual sex. But as The War Horse has reported, the narrow confines of the pardon exclude thousands of gay and lesbian veterans who were forced out of the military but didnt wind up in court. As of November, only 14 veterans had applied.Dixon Osburn, an attorney who helped orchestrate the repeal of dont ask, dont tell in 2011 supports all this federal action, but says gay service members who were kicked out in the 90s and earlier, like Rodriguez, often dont have records that clearly indicate the true nature of their dismissal from the military.This leaves the Department of Defense with a tricky choice. Are you just going to carte blanche, get rid of all the derogatory records, because the system is so flawed? Osburn says. That might be the easiest thing to do, but the military, I think, is trying to be exacting and making sure that they dont overturn appropriately recorded bad conduct.Osburn and other advocates dont know what to expect from President-elect Trump when it comes to reparations for veterans kicked out of the military because of their sexual orientation.Hegseth provided some clues during an interview that aired just two days after the election on The Shawn Ryan Show, a podcast hosted by a former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor. The dumbest phrase on planet Earth in the military is our diversity is our strength, Hegseth said, pumping his book The War on Warriors.He lamented the militarys slide into wokeness, beginning, he said, under President Clinton with the tinkering of dont ask, dont tell and really accelerating, he said, under President Obama. He talked about frequent conversations with veterans and active-duty service members complaining that standards are dropping, the woke stuff is everywhere, and telling him, I feel like Im walking on eggshells.About a week later, Trump announced he was tapping Hegseth to lead the military. But as controversy swirled around Hegseths character, reports surfaced Wednesday that Trump is considering another veteran with a well-established track record of policies decried by the LGBTQ communities: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.Didnt Want to Be GayAccording to Department of Defense statistics, a majority of gay and lesbian servicemembers who were kicked out before 2011 were quietly discharged with an honorable or general discharge.Rodriguez wasnt as lucky.After the Navy booted her with an other than honorable discharge, she returned home to Jacksonville and lied to her family, telling them a fistfight led to her dismissal. I didnt want to be gay, she says. I started dating a guy. I would hide my paperwork, my DD 214, and everything, I would hide it under my mattress.She tried to become a detective. But a police academy wouldnt accept her because of the commission of a serious offense on her record. She eventually got work at a medical supply company, which shes grateful for, but its not the career she wanted. She also, eventually, confessed to her family that she was gay, and thats the reason the Navy disposed of her.For three decades she largely kept her past military service to herself, ashamed of her short time in uniform and her unceremonious exit. About 21 years ago, though, at the urging of her family, she decided shed try to get her discharge upgraded. Military review boards denied her upgrade application three times for various reasons, including her admission of lying all those years ago. But with the help of a lawyer, earlier this year Rodriguez finally received an honorable discharge.Its bittersweet, she says.Her parents have died, and she cant share her victory with them. Rodriguez turned 58 in November. Her childhood dream of becoming a cop after religiously watching the tough New York female officers on Cagney and Lacey is long gone.In the last two years, her fight to get that honorable discharge has revived old memories she thought she had wiped away, like the sexual assault. In the last year, she has had trouble falling asleep. She started relying on alcohol to doze off and is now on medication to cut that craving.In the middle of the night, her wife will occasionally find her in the fetal position with blankets over her head.I dont like to say they screwed up my life, Rodriguez says, referring to the Navy. But they screwed up my life.Whats Next After Trumps Victory?Rodriguez and VanCantfort have never met. But when The War Horse told her about the former military police officer who participated in witch hunts, she was taken aback. Why would he do it? She wondered.I just cant even imagine having that type of job, Rodriguez said. I actually feel bad for him.At the time, VanCantfort was young and following orders. Even back then, he said, he disagreed, but disobeying was not an option.Thats insubordination, he says. And thats grounds for getting kicked out of AFPD [Armed Forces Police Department] as well as not getting any other good assignments.After a year with the San Antonio Armed Forces Police, VanCantfort left the witch hunts behind for a new assignment. He ascended in the military, eventually retiring as a master sergeant. His license plate reads USAF 23, honoring the 23 years he spent in the Air Force. And outside of the military, he compiled nearly two decades as a cop and intelligence expert.After retiring from the Department of Homeland Security in 2018, VanCantfort now volunteers his time with organizations to build safe neighborhoods and investigate cold cases. (Photo courtesy of Todd VanCantfort)VanCantfort, 61, is not a big feelings guy and speaks matter-of-factly. When asked how he believes a Trump presidency will impact a woke, more inclusive service, he offers a belief he repeats often: Anyone who is mentally and physically fit to commit themselves to their country should have the chance. And the military should stick to being nonpartisan.The Trump transition team did not respond to questions about whether the new administration plans to keep Bidens pardons for convicted gay veterans intact, or eliminate policies it considers woke. It also failed to respond on whether the Trump White House will reinstate a ban on trans servicemembers enlisting. According to a recent Newsweek article no decision has been made on a potential trans ban.On the day after Trumps victory, Rodriguez decided to display her honorable discharge for the first time on Facebook. In the post, she congratulated Trump voters while thanking Presidents Biden and Obama for trying to right the wrongs of the past. If it werent for them, I would not be getting what I deserve as well as many others, she wrote.Elaine Rodriguez shared her Honorable Discharge on Facebook the day after the election. (Facebook)Some of her Trump-voting friends liked the post, and perhaps that shouldve heartened her that the chorus of anti-woke talk will soften now that the election is over.She cant help but worry, though, for one of her male cousins who is in the Army and married to a man. And when her wife wants to hold her hand or kiss in public, she still looks around, paranoid, worried that the affection is somehow wrong. Something to be punished.This War Horse investigation was reported by Anne Marshall-Chalmers, edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

Photo courtesy of U.P. Nguyen. Design by Sam DonndelingerEditors note: This article includes mention of suicide and contains details about those who have attempted to take their own lives. If you are having thoughts of suicide, or are concerned that someone you know may be, resources are available here.In 2020, U.P. Nguyen called her mom in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with a secret she had kept for 23 years.Mom, Im gay.Her mom responded in Vietnamese, Nguyens native language.[She] said I was going to hell and that she wasnt sure what they did to deserve a daughter like me, Nguyen, a 26-year-old running coach and data engineer living in Boston and New York, told Uncloseted Media. Just thinking about it makes me tear up.Before the end of the call, Nguyens mother told her she was cut out of the will.Subscribe nowNguyen usually goes home to celebrate Christmas with her deeply religious parents, who have voted for President-elect Donald Trump three consecutive times, but she wont return this year.Photo courtesy of U.P. NguyenI don't really want to spend the holidays moping by myself, she told Uncloseted Media. I'm heartbroken. Ill miss a lot of things about being home. Ill miss my siblings. But I feel like I need to not go.Nguyens parents did not respond to Uncloseted Medias request for comment.Nguyens experience highlights a broader issue many LGBTQ people face: the struggle for family acceptance during the holidays. In the U.S., less than 40% of LGBTQ youth consider their homes affirming and over a quarter report daily tensions.Family rejection takes a significant mental health toll: LGBTQ people who experience high levels of rejection from their families are eight times more likely to attempt suicide.The pervasive familial rejection of queer people is a public health crisis and the severity of it is often downplayed. The lack of support from the family is contributing to despair, lack of hope, thoughts of taking their lives, substance abuse, and various other kinds of risks, says Caitlin Ryan, director of the Family Acceptance Project, a research and education initiative aimed at spreading awareness for LGBTQ family acceptance and mental health.Ryan, who co-founded the project in 2002, says that until her organization started this research, no one knew that there were a whole set of behaviors that were related to family acceptance and mental health [for LGBTQ people]. And even today, research is limited.For Nguyen, her parents rejection often makes her feel angry. Im pissed off, she says. A lot of my friends have it simpler.She says this rejection manifests in the everyday interactions that others take for granted. I was FaceTiming my mom and I was trying to show her that I was at my girlfriend's house I handed the phone over to her, and then my mom immediately hung up. It felt awful.Photo Credit: Family Acceptance ProjectWhile many LGBTQ folks feel this rejection daily, the holidays often amplify feelings of loneliness for those estranged from their families. Sixty-six percent of people report feeling lonely during the holidays, and 64% of individuals with mental health conditions say the season worsens their state, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.LGBTQ people throughout time have lived in a world that wasn't supportive, that often discriminated against them and was rejecting and victimizing. And so support is essential, says Ryan.Robin, who grew up in Southern California, says their upbringing was full of rejection because of their fathers treatment of them, their past partners and the LGBTQ community at large.The expectation has generally been that for the holiday seasons, everyone who has moved away from our hometown will come back and spend a few days there, says Robin, 26, who moved to northern California and asked to use a pseudonym out of a fear of blowback from their dad. I've done that once in the past five years and was very reluctant to do so.Robin, who is not going home this holiday, says that their father was harsh towards their transgender partner when they both visited him.My dad took that opportunity to interrogate her about her identity and ask what kind of hormones she was on and what kind of surgeries she had gotten, they told Uncloseted Media. He does not use my correct name unless I specifically insist, which I have to do every sentence. I have not heard him gender me correctly once.According to Ryan, the tactics used by Robins father contribute to mental health deterioration. Rejection behaviors all focus on trying to change, prevent, deny or minimize someone's LGBTQ identity, Ryan says. That includes behaviors like blaming your child when others mistreat them because of their LGBTQ identity, not talking about their identity, pressuring them to be more or less masculine or feminine, not using their appropriate name, misgendering them, and so on.Research has found that when trans youth could have their chosen name used, there was a more than 70% decrease in severe depressive symptoms and a 65% decrease in suicide attempts. This is startling when you think that this is just about using someone's name, says Ryan.I want to be speaking up against these things, and I often do. And my impression is that that disturbs the peace of the holidays, Robin says. There is this unspoken agreement that we will tolerate it, but I am no longer afraid of ruining a relationship by bringing these things up because I see that relationship as being over already.Since Nguyen came out four years ago, she says going home for the holidays is difficult. Im gay, Im the only one who moved away from home, and so Im definitely the topic of gossip when I visit, she says. Its often like, Whoa. I feel pretty scrutinized.What Robin and Nguyen are describing is the conflict that many LGBTQ children feel towards their parents: the pull to be themselves authentically, clashing with a desire to keep relationships with their parents intact, with silence as the glue.Uncloseted Media is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.When we're in environments where we don't feel like ourselves, it creates a sense of avoidance, says Rebecca Schlegal, professor of psychology at Texas University, whose research focuses on authenticity and well-being. But when you're talking about family, what a conflict, right? Our impulse is going to be to approach family. But when you're getting signals that you don't fit, you're going to feel like you need to avoid. And so that's going to arouse a sense of conflict within the self.According to Schlegels research, when people are allowed to be themselves and feel accepted, their well-being skyrockets. Authenticity is associated with every mental health outcome that we've ever looked at. It's bigger than a typical effect that we see in social psychology, she says.Photo courtesy of U.P. NguyenFor Nguyen, the rejection manifests in acute mental health struggles. It feels like deep sadness, she says. Like, Man, Why is this happening to me? Why cant good things happen to me? And I feel lethargic and its hard for me to move, like literally move and get off the couch or out of bed.She says the worst experience was in 2022, shortly after she and her girlfriend broke up and she chose to go home to her family for Christmas. My ex had hosted me for the holidays for the [three] years we were dating and I didnt have to go back home. I was like, Wow, this is really nice. Like, this is what it's like to have a family that is supportive. So the double gut punch of losing my [girlfriend] and then needing to deal with all the homophobia and toughness of home was terrible for my mental health.In an advisory released last year by U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, isolation and loneliness are as bad for your health as smoking every day. It can also increase your risk of mental health conditions, stroke, heart disease and even premature death.Theres often a perception that people are always the answer to not feeling alone. [But] sometimes they're the cause, Sam Carr, loneliness researcher at the University of Bath, told Uncloseted Media. If you have to be somebody else with your family, that means the real you is hidden. So even when you do go back home, you feel lonely because your family requires you to be something different. If you live your whole life that way, you've essentially lived a very lonely existence. The world hasn't seen you.Somewhere in between my high school self and now I've tasted freedom and what its like to be fully myself, fully out, fully existing, Nguyen says. When I'm at home, I feel like I have to put on a mask or I have to censor myself because my parents and I have very differing opinions, and I dont want to spend the whole time I visit fighting, so I just don't say a lot of things. Even though Im out, it feels very closeted.Research has found that more than a quarter of Americans are estranged from family members and that differences over political views are among the leading causes of those estrangements.Many queer people are profoundly distressed and even feel betrayed by their family members this election, says Linda Hsieh, a life coach and therapist who works with LGBTQ clients. Individuals may be thinking, How could you not vote to support me? I'm part of the family.Mary, a 26-year-old trans woman originally from Hawaii who wished to remain anonymous to not further fracture her relationship with her parents, spent this Thanksgiving at home in Oregon with her conservative evangelical family.I don't want to go back any time soon, she says. My father is a Trump supporter, and we've had lots of fights about it.Mary knew she was trans from the age of 12 but kept it to herself for over a decade before coming out to her family in 2022. Since then, her family avoids addressing her name and tries to act as though nothing happened and nothing changed.Her aunt has refused to let her see her niece and nephew, citing concerns about confusing the children because of her identity. I dont think its right to treat my identity as another potential source of conflict. I miss them deeply.Subscribe nowDuring Thanksgiving dinner, it was tense. My grandparents wouldn't look at me, and they would talk around my name so they didnt have to say it, she says. When politics came up, she felt outnumbered. I felt like I couldn't speak. Mary says it has impacted her mental health. Whenever I visit Oregon, I feel an old depression set back in and it makes me antsy to return home to Los Angeles where I don't often feel that same caged animal sadness.Nguyen, who is the first-born daughter of her Vietnamese refugee family, says that she understands where her parents are coming from, but she disagrees. They think that I'm going into battle because they are very religious, and it was tough to be queer in their world growing up. But I think they don't quite understand that it's different now.Research published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine insists that there must be a change. The study reveals a powerful intervention to suicide prevention among LGBTQ people: love. According to the longitudinal study on suicide ideation, social support from family and friends is the most protective factor for at-risk youth.We found that when there were high levels of these supportive behaviors, there were extremely low levels of suicidality, depression, substance abuse, very high levels of self-esteem, high levels of overall health and well-being, positive social connections, and having people who care about you and support you overall, Ryan says.She emphasizes that solutions to family rejection dont require parents to abandon their religious beliefs or political values but instead focus on practical behavioral changes. They just need to modify their behaviors in ways that show love.Ryan's approach involves guiding families through small, actionable steps, such as using their childs chosen name and pronouns. She also encourages families to take part in educational programs that explain the impact of rejecting behaviors.Its about meeting the family where they are at, says Ryan. Most of these families want their kids to be happy and healthy. When they see the data about how much pain the rejection is causing them, they change. They want to keep their families together.Photo courtesy of U.P. NyguenThis holiday, Nyguyen is feeling conflicted about not going home. Sometimes I get lonely, she says. Ive been quite lucky to have had an incredible support network around me. When I came out and was rejected by my parents, I was immediately embraced by other loved ones. I had a stable tech job and a roof over my head, far from family, so the damage was mostly limited to feeling cast out by the ones who were supposed to love me the most.Nguyen has been in therapy for years and says that it has done wonders for how she processes her familial relationships. Theyre not the easiest, but theyre mine, and I get to choose whether or not I want them. I will always love my family and want to honor what they gave me, and I'm still deciding how to do that in a way that doesn't make me go crazy.If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Hotline. Other support hotlines.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

Justin Wee for Uncloseted Media / NRD for Unsplash Editor's note: This story deals with topics such as eating disorders and self harm which may be distressing for some readers. If you need help with an eating disorder, resources can be found at The National Eating Disorders Association. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts or a mental health crisis, call or text Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988.On a hazy morning in April 2022, Daniel-Jos Cyan opens his deserted fridge to find a single piece of moldy mozzarella cheese. He holds it up to the light and, knowing he has to eat something, goes against his better judgment and takes a bite.Subscribe nowI would go a long time without eating because I thought it would help me lose weight. And then I had to eat at some point because I wasn't physically well, Cyan, a 27-year-old living in the Bronx, told Uncloseted Media. Even looking in the fridge can cause me to shut down.Cyan, who wound up getting food poisoning from eating the cheese, struggles with an eating disorder. And hes not alone. 7 in 10 transgender people aged 18-24 experience an eating disorder. These disorders are so pervasive in the LGBTQ community that the Biden administration earlier this month awarded a multi-million dollar grant to psychologists pioneering identity-affirming eating disorder treatment for LGBTQ people.Trans men experience even higher rates of eating disorders than their female counterparts and the highest rates of any demographic group, according to a 2023 study from the National Library of Medicine. Experts say trans people disproportionately struggle with eating disorders because they face body dysmorphia, societal stigma, and a deep desire for control amidst a world that often feels hostile and invalidating. For trans men, this is compounded by the gendered expectations of being raised as a girl, and thenonce they transitionthe isolation and stigma that men who experience eating disorders often face.According to a guide for providers who treat trans patients, trans men may develop an eating disorder in a quest to look more masculine by reducing curves and breast size, and lose their period. By engaging in eating disorder behaviors and modifying their bodies, their goal is to appear more masculine as an intent to reduce gender dysphoria and distress, Anne Marie OMelia writes in the guide. Eating disorders are rooted in control, Lydia Rhino, program director at The Eating Disorder Foundation, told Uncloseted Media. Its scary to be a trans person in the United States. When theres no safety or acceptance in a lot of places, eating disorders are a way to express, I can't control what other people are doing outside of me, but I can control this.In 2024, trans rights are under attack. President-elect Donald Trump won the White House largely on a campaign of anti-trans rhetoric with ads announcing his opponent, Kamala Harris, as being for They/Them, while President Trump is for You. In addition, there are hundreds of anti-trans bills sweeping through state legislatures, and last month Speaker of the House Mike Johnson banned transgender women from using restrooms that match their gender identity on Capitol Hill.On top of political animus and transphobia, Rhino says body dysmorphia also plays a role, and it is not surprising trans men are the most susceptible group. If you have lived in a body that does not feel like yours, where people have identified you one way, and you know that it didn't feel accurate, why would your body be something that you respect and treat well?, says Rhino.Eating disorders can be the management of gender dysphoria, they numb out emotions and give you something different to focus on so you're not thinking about the transphobia you're experiencing, and for a lot of people, they change the [way your body looks] without using hormones or surgery because they can slow puberty, Emmy Johnson, a therapist who specializes in LGBTQ people with eating disorders, told Uncloseted Media.Justin Wee for Uncloseted MediaCyan has restricted his food intake and binged for nearly 20 years. I have struggled in my relationship to food since childhood. When I was in the fifth grade, I was heavily teased and bullied by my peers, my teachers and my family for my weight, he says, adding that this made him learn to hate himself.I counted calories, I avoided meals, and food became equal to fatness and that, to me, was one of the worst things you could be, he says. Food became a thing for survival. I ate because being hungry would make me physically sick. I always thought I had some sort of anorexia, but according to a nutritionist Im seeing, its called binge-restrict eating disorder.Natalie Allen, an eating disorder therapist at Toronto Psychology and Wellness Group, says that one of the reasons people raised as girls statistically experience more eating disorders than cisgender men is because of socialization. [People assigned female at birth] have historically received a lot more pressure to maintain specific physical beauty standards and ideals, she says.Justin Wee for Uncloseted MediaI didn't have a boyhood. I had a girlhood. Thats how I was taught to understand my body and food, because there were these impossible beauty standards of what it meant to be a girl, says Cyan. Subscribe nowHe remembers sitting on his couch at nine years old and watching Girl Code on MTV where they suggested viewers chew ice cubes and imagine them as food as a diet tip. I was like, This feels like the right thing, and maybe I could finally lose weight.There's just so much pressure to fit into a role, Rhino says. So it's one area that a trans person can be like, If I can change my body and make my body look this way, then I can communicate to people that this is who I am, and how I identify. A lot of it has to do with the social pressure to fit into a box.As Cyan went through puberty and his body began to change, his disorder escalated and was at its worst as a teenager. I would spend the entire day not eating and waiting to see how long I could go before I fainted, he says. [Passing out] was a goal of mine. But I thought to have an eating disorder, I had to be underweight, so it must not be that.Part of the barrier to recovery for trans men are the societal expectations of what kinds of people experience eating disorders. We have a problem understanding the problem of eating disorders in the United States, Doreen Marshall, executive director of the National Eating Disorder Association, told Uncloseted Media. Most people assume those impacted are young, white, thin, and female. [But] only 6% of people who struggle with eating disorders are clinically underweight. When somebody who is not that model then has to navigate recovery in the real world, they're also having to navigate this landscape that doesn't see them as a person who is impacted.Cisgender, white women are the most likely to be asked about eating disorders by their doctors and receive treatment. Men have reported struggling to feel understood by therapists, feeling unwanted in the treatment environment and that their concerns are not taken into account. This means a lot of menand especially trans menare left untreated.If I am a trans person seeking treatment, even the providers I go to may carry some of that bias, says Marshall. That bias ultimately impacts whether I get care or not.Cyan experienced this bias when he was seeking gender-affirming care two years ago. When he went into the doctor to get evaluated for top surgery revision, his surgeon told him that he would not operate on him unless he lost weight and gave him no recommendations on how to do it.I didn't realize how big of a trigger it would be until I spiraled and spent the entire year restricting myself from eating until I wound up binging. My doctor had no idea I was already struggling with an eating disorder.Cyan found it easier to be open about his eating disorder when he was feminine presenting, but since he transitioned, he gets nervous talking about it. I feel like its taken less seriously because I look like a man, and its more embarrassing to have to deal with it as a man. When I was considering my gender, I always thought men don't have to care about what they look like. But that was not the case.Cyan says men are held to standards of fitness and pressure to be strong in a certain way.Uncloseted Media is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.There's a sense of fitness that is still expected when it comes to peak masculinity. Its to be muscular and strong and I thought thats what I needed to be.Justin Wee for Uncloseted MediaAfter Cyan got food poisoning from the expired cheese last year, he realized he needed to seek care. It was scary for me I felt alone because I didn't know how to have conversations about it.Eating disorders by nature are isolating, says Adee Levinstein, nutrition manager at The Eating Recovery Center. And being part of the trans community can also feel very isolating in our current world. She says it makes sense that they overlap.According to Johnson, the therapist who works with transgender folks, gender-affirming healthcare can help trans people struggling with eating disorders. I have seen how motivating it is for patients to receive gender-affirming care, they say. A lot of eating disorder recovery is about exploring and developing identity, and affirming gender identity is a critical part of that.When trans men receive gender-affirming care, studies point to a reduction in eating disorder behaviors. Another 2019 study found that when gender is affirmed and gender dysphoria is reduced, eating disorder symptoms decrease.Eating disorder recovery is not easy. Five decades of literature suggest that fewer than half of adults with eating disorders will recover.Johnson says that getting to the root of the problem, whether it is control, body image, body dysmorphia, or external factors, is essential. Recovery is not linear, they say. If you are not ready to pursue recovery, you still deserve support and we want to help you stay alive and reduce the harm that the eating disorder is causing you.Justin Wee for Uncloseted MediaFor Cyan, his recovery was complicated after he was told he had to lose weight in order to receive top surgery revision. He wound up opting for bariatric surgerywhich reduces the size of the stomach and changes the digestive system. This allowed him to feel more connected to his body.The newfound connection also helped him begin to recover from his eating disorder. Beyond the surgery, he has been in therapy for years, seeing a nutritionist, and also uses support groups online that help with recovery. I'm surprised with how much I ended up relying on groups. Many folks will remind me, You need to eat frequently, and that's how you end up a healthy weight, meeting your protein numbers and your hydration levels, not restricting yourself.Subscribe nowEarlier this summer, Cyan started up the burner in his kitchen for the first time in his new apartment. He grilled salmon and air-fried vegetables.While he still has the occasional thought of disordered eating, his relationship to food is improving. Im actually starting to enjoy cooking again, he says. My relationship with food is different. For so long, eating was something that I had to force myself to do because of how the eating disorder worked. Now that my self-esteem is higher, Im more decisive about the food that I'm putting into my body. At times, I still feel the need to binge or completely not eat, but mostly Im doing okay.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

Subscribe nowby Blair Miller, Daily MontananTransgender rights protesters outside the Montana State Capitol on Monday, April 24 2023. (Photo by Blair Miller, Daily Montanan) TNow that the states appeal of the preliminary injunction, which has been in place since September 2023, has been resolved, the full case will continue to trial in Missoula County District Court to determine whether Senate Bill 99 is unconstitutional.I will never understand why my representatives are working to strip me of my rights and the rights of other transgender kids, one of the plaintiffs, Phoebe Cross, a 17-year-old transgender boy, said in a statement. Just living as a trans teenager is difficult enough, the last thing me and my peers need is to have our rights taken away.Six of seven justices signed on to the majority opinion, written by Justice Beth Baker. Justices Laurie McKinnon and Ingrid Gustafson wrote a concurring opinion in which they criticized the court for not deciding some of the state constitutions equal protection clause claims at hand, including whether discrimination on the basis of transgender status constitutes sex discrimination.Justice Jim Rice concurred that SB 99 should be enjoined, except for a portion that prohibits Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care since there is no current federal mandate that Medicaid fund such care.Plaintiffs in the case include Molly and Paul Cross, of Bozeman, and their transgender son, Phoebe, and Jane and John Doe, who joined the suit on behalf of their 16-year-old transgender daughter. They also include two medical providers of gender-affirming care. Another plaintiff in the case was dismissed in September after turning 18, according to court filings.Defendants include the State of Montana, Gov. Greg Gianforte, Attorney General Austin Knudsen, the boards of nursing and medical examiners, the Department of Public Health and Human Services and its director, Charlie Brereton.The state appealed Missoula County District Court Judge Jason Markss decision to issue a preliminary injunction on the claims that the plaintiffs did not have standing to challenge the bill and that the district court had erred in issuing the preliminary injunction against the entire bill. In September 2023, Marks found that the plaintiffs were at risk of facing severe psychological distress if they were blocked from receiving gender-affirming care.Subscribe nowIn response to the Supreme Courts decision Wednesday, Gianforte, a Republican, said he was deeply disappointed the injunction was upheld pending the trial.Children who struggle with gender identity deserve love, compassion, and respect. They deserve no ridicule, animus, or seclusion, the governor said in a written statement. They are entitled to protection, not exploitation. While their young minds and bodies are still developing, they should not be subjected to experimental and permanent, life-altering medical and surgical procedures.During the district court hearing and in briefs, the plaintiffs submitted expert witness reports showing that the use of puberty-delaying medications and gender-affirming hormone therapy were World Professional Association for Transgender Health standards of care for treating gender dysphoria, and that surgery is rarely recommended under those same standards, the Supreme Court noted.The bill, established as the Montana Youth Protection Act, bans the use of things like puberty blockers and surgeries, generally called gender-affirming care by medical professionals, for Montana youth experiencing gender dysphoria, a condition where a person feels their biological sex does not match their identity. The bill also would open medical professionals who perform any gender-affirming care outlined in the bill to potential discipline by the licensing board, including a one-year suspension of their license.The measure also allows a parent or guardian of a child to sue a medical professional for damages and does not allow Medicaid or childrens health insurance program money to go back to families for reimbursement.The court found the plaintiffs do have standing because the state had already conceded that Phoebe Cross had standing during the district court hearing, and precedent says that if one plaintiff has standing, a claim can proceed. Further, the court wrote, the medical-professional plaintiffs face a threat to their ability to practice medicine under the law, which the court said was a concrete injury.On whether the district court erred in ordering a preliminary injunction based on the plaintiffs privacy claim under the Montana Constitution, the court agreed with the district courts analysis that the Supreme Courts 1999 finding in Armstrong vs. State applied.Though the State has a compelling interest in safeguarding the physical and psychological wellbeing of a minor, a statute implicating their privacy rights must be narrowly tailored to serve that interest, the court wrote. SB 99 affords no room for decision-making by a patient in consultation with their doctors and parents. The statute is a complete ban, prohibiting individualized care tailored to the needs of each patient based on the exercise of professional medical judgment and informed consent.The majority opinion goes on to say that the district court had not abused its discretion when it found that the plaintiffs had made an adequate preliminary showing of harm to warrant the preservation of their rights in status quo pending a full trial.Filings before the Supreme Court from both sides of the case cited similar and ongoing cases moving forward throughout the country, including at the U.S. Supreme Court, surrounding the Equal Protection Clauses in both the U.S. and Montana constitutions including orders and opinions that have happened since the district court hearing last year.But the state Supreme Court said the district courts conclusions based solely on Montanas privacy protections were sufficient to uphold the preliminary injunction and that the parties would be able to fully brief and use expert witnesses to make their full argument during a district court trial.McKinnons concurrence, which Gustafson joined, said while there is still much to be litigated in the rest of the case, the full court ignored the equal protection arguments from both sides and left the parties and the district court without necessary guidance on questions of law entirely appropriate for this Court to address at this juncture.She said most of the two sides arguments involve equal protection issues surrounding the nature of sex and class discrimination that would apply only under Montanas constitution and not necessarily under the federal clause. McKinnon wrote that with the U.S. Supreme Court considering a similar case under the federal constitution, the district court in Missoula deserves guidance on which hurdles the plaintiffs would need to clear to succeed on their claim of discrimination on the basis of sex.By declining to engage with this question now, we leave this critical definition open to lock-stepping by complicity in whatever direction the United States Supreme Court decides to take, McKinnon wrote. This Court should take the opportunity to clearly state that discrimination based on sex as explicitly contained in the equal protection clause includes discrimination on the basis of transgender status.Incoming Senate President Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, said in a statement that the court had sided with liberals at the expense of common sense.Children should not be undergoing irreversible, life-altering transgender procedures, Regier said. The Montana Legislature will keep fighting for Montanans against this woke craziness and keep fighting to rein in our out-of-control branch of government.Lambda Legal Counsel Kell Olson, from one of the law firms representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement that the Montana Supreme Court understands the danger of the state interfering with critical healthcare.Because Montanas constitutional protections are even stronger than their federal counterparts, transgender youth in Montana can sleep easier tonight knowing that they can continue to thrive for now, without this looming threat hanging over their heads, Olson said in a statement.Editors note: This story has been updated to include more detail on McKinnons concurrence and a statement from incoming Senate President Matt Regier.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

Uncloseted Media launched three months ago, and its been a wild ride. Since its been a (relatively!) slow news week for LGBTQ issues, I thought Id use this newsletter to pull back the curtain about our ultimate goals. Trust in media is at an all-time low and I think thats partly because news organizations dont pull back the curtain and divulge their goals and strategies to their audience.Subscribe nowFor those who are interested, our raison-d'tre is to be your go-to source for rigorous, trustworthy, nonpartisan, LGBTQ-focused journalism. And yeswe admit itin 2024, that is really damn hard to pull off! We are committed to providing you with journalism that has the sophistication and gravitas that 60 Minutes is famous for as well as the edginess and willingness to go there that Vice had in its heyday. We wont shy away from controversial or taboo topics and we wont avoid subject areas that may be critical to the LGBTQ community.A major goal for Uncloseted is to get our stories beyond LGBTQ echo chambers and in front of all Americans who may not be seeking queer-specific news. Parents in the Midwest who may not be inherently homo/transphobic but dont feel they have a trustworthy source for queer news. Pastors in the Bible Belt who may be looking for religious materials to help them understand the LGBTQ experience but dont know where to find it. We have a multi-pronged strategy on how we plan to do this and will be sharing with you some updates about this in the coming weeks.Until then, feel free to reach out if you want to get involved or help amplify our journalism.Subscribe nowHouse poised to pass massive defense bill with ban on gender-affirming care for transgender kids (NBC)The GOP provision has sparked an outcry from the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, who has vowed to vote no on the NDAA.Donald Trump appoints anti-trans lawyer to lead Civil Rights Division at DOJ (LGBTQ NATION)Harmeet Dhillon, a prominent election denier, has a history of anti-woke and anti-LGBTQ activism.She Sued Over Transgender Conversion Therapy, a First for China (The New York Times)Linger won a settlement payout from the hospital, where she was held for three months against her will and subjected to electroshock therapy.Making Sense of the Gay Internet On the Day We Discovered Luigi Mangione (Them)The instant memeification of Mangione has led to unverified information and deceptive dupes about the suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter.PinkNews bosses accused of sexual misconduct (BBC)The couple who run PinkNews, the world's largest LGBTQ news website, have been accused by staff of multiple incidents of sexual misconduct.LGBTQ advocates ask leadership to torpedo Kids Online Safety Act (The Hill)Advocates for the LGBTQ community asked Democratic congressional leaders to reject the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), arguing Monday that it could stifle access to important information online.LGBTQ Americans stockpile meds and make plans to move after Trumps win (The Washington Post) Some LGBTQ people are anxiously preparing for what they fear will be a rollback of their rights.Gay pro tennis player comes out, is in a relationship with his hunky actor boyfriend (Out Sports)Brazils Joao Lucas Reis da Silva has come out publicly as gay while active on the mens pro-ATP Tour, sharing a message to his boyfriend.This weekend, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting: Transgender men experience eating disorders at higher rates than any other demographic group, yet their struggles are under-researched and underreported. Sam Donndelinger follows Daniel-Jos Cyan on his journey with eating disorder recovery and gender-affirming care. Only half of LGBTQ kids feel accepted by their families. Alarmingly, those rejected by their families are eight times more likely to commit suicide. What will they do for the holidays? This weekend we investigate how rejection of queer family members is a public health crisis and should be treated as such. Youll hear from three different people making the tough decision of whether or not to go home for the holidays. Thanks for reading! And feel free to email me with questions, complaints, tips or story ideas! Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chiefspencer@unclosetedmedia.comIf objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted MediaUncloseted Media is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

By Orion RummlerThis article was originally published by the 19th, a nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy.Photo by Adedire Abiodun from PexelsSubscribe nowIf you or a loved one are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.When the presidential race was called for Donald Trump in the early hours of Wednesday, calls and texts to a leading LGBTQ youth suicide prevention organization exploded in a massive outpouring of anxiety over the election results.The Trevor Project saw an overall 700 percent increase in calls, texts and chats compared to prior weeks. The organization offers a lifeline via phone, online chat or text to LGBTQ youth who struggle with thoughts of depression, self-harm or suicide while navigating coming out to their families or facing discrimination. Right now, the services are experiencing long hold times at an especially vulnerable time for LGBTQ people.LGBTQ youth are afraid, confused and anxious about the outcome of the election in these conversations, a spokesperson for the Trevor Project said. Their crisis services usually focus on supporting the mental health of queer and trans youth from ages 13 to 24 while they navigate relationships, gender identity and coming out. Now, the vast majority of young LGBTQ Americans are seeking emergency help due to what they described in text and chat messages to the helpline as election anxiety.These pleas for help are not happening in a vacuum. They are the result of a political environment that has brought transphobia into the political mainstream, especially from Trumps campaign. The former presidents campaign spent over $20 million on ads portraying trans people as harmful to society or attacking Vice President Kamala Harris support of trans people. Trump has pledged to enact extreme anti-LGBTQ policies in his second term, such as attempting to charge teachers with sex discrimination for affirming students gender identities. Some of his proposals mimic state anti-LGBTQ laws that have gone into effect in the past few years.Those state laws and the vitriolic rhetoric surrounding them have been steadily eroding the mental health of LGBTQ youth. Prior research from the Trevor Project, in partnership with the polling firm Morning Consult, found that state proposals restricting the rights of LGBT+ youth in schools, sports and doctors offices negatively affect their mental health. New research by the Trevor Project, published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, found that state laws targeting transgender people caused trans and nonbinary youth to be more likely to attempt suicide within the past year.The spike in crisis services outreach is alarming, said Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project. But, Black added, the organization is not surprised that the wave of anti-LGBTQ policies of the past few years continues to harm young peoples mental health. The current political environment in the U.S. is heavy, but it is so important for LGBTQ young people to know that they do not have to shoulder this weight alone, Black said.LGBTQ young people: your life matters, and you were born to live it, Black added.The Trevor Project encourages LGBTQ youth to take a break from news and social media, silencing notifications when trying to relax and finding community wherever possible, whether in person or online. Additional resources include calling the Trans Lifeline, which has specific resources and upcoming meetings for those dealing with post-election grief; texting hotlines such as THRIVE Lifeline and Steve Fund; calling the LGBT National Youth Talkline; or reaching out to a counselor through the Crisis Text Line.Another way to seek help when in crisis or contemplating suicide is by reaching out to a trusted friend, community or family member.Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ legal group, has compiled a list of state-level resources for LGBTQ youth, including mentorship programs and community centers. To connect with new friends and discuss shared hobbies, Q Chat Space offers an online community for LGBTQ teenagers. Parents of LGBTQ youth looking for supportive spaces can find state and local PFLAG chapters across the country, or join virtual meetings.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, consider upgrading and become a paid or founding subscriber.

We are only nine days out from the election and it has been a whirlwind.Families and friends are divided and angry with each other. Psychiatrists are advising LGBTQ people to avoid Trump-supporting relatives over the holidays. The Trevor Project, a leading LGBTQ youth suicide prevention organization, has reported a 700% increase in calls, texts and chat messages. There has been infighting among democrats about whether the partys position on transgender rights is part of the reason Harris lost.Many LGBTQ peopleespecially those in the transgender communityare afraid for their lives as President-Elect Trumpwho has vowed to crackdown on transgender insanitygets set to take office for a second term.In the last week, Trump has nominated Kristi Noem, who disagreed with the Obergefell decision to legalize same-sex marriage, for Homeland Security secretary. He also nominated Marco Rubio, who scored a 0 out of 100 on the Human Rights Campaigns Congressional Scorecard, in part because he has called the Respect for Marriage Actwhich requires the federal government to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages a stupid waste of time. Other appointees include Fox News host Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary andmost controversiallyFlorida Representative Matt Gaetz, who has been investigated over allegations of sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girla federal probe that ultimately did not yield criminal charges.All of this is happening alongside the beginning of Transgender Awareness Week, a seven-day event leading up to the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which memorializes victims of transphobic violence.At Uncloseted Media, we are working extremely hard to provide you with crucial journalism that examines Americas anti-LGBTQ ecosystem and holds people and power accountable. We welcome all our new subscribers and hope youll continue to spread the word.Subscribe nowI hope everyone has a great rest of their week. As always, do reach out with tips, leads, or just to say hello.Thanks!Spencer Macnaughton | Editor-in-chief, Uncloseted MediaSubscribe nowAccording to exit polls, 86% of LGBTQ people and 91% of Black women voted for Harris. In our latest story, Sam Donndelinger and I spoke with six queer women of color from different pockets of the U.S. They share their immediate reactions to the election results and reflect on America, a country where a man has held the seat of president for 248 years since the nation was founded in 1776. One of the most salient quotes came from 88-year-old Mary Midgett, a Black lesbian in San Francisco. A whole lot of youngsters [of color] are thrown in jail because they're felons, but theres this white politician, he's a felon and he's going to run the country. Crisis Calls from LGBTQ Youth Spiked by 700 Percent after Election Day (Originally published in The 19th)Trump Loses Ground With LGBTQ Voters (The Hill)Unlike many other demographic groups, LGBTQ voters shifted away from former President Trump at the polls this year, casting their ballots overwhelmingly for Vice President Harris and in higher numbers than for President Biden in 2020, according to exit polls.Some Democrats Blame Partys Position On Transgender Rights In Part For Harris Loss (NBC News)Republicans spent millions attacking Democrats on transgender rights. Some say thats one reason why Harris lost.What Trump's Win Means for LGBTQ+ Rights (TIME)As the reality of President-elect Donald Trumps victory begins to settle, LGBTQ+ rights groups and individuals are grappling with the realities of what that meansespecially now that he has a GOP-majority Senate to back him on his policies.LGBTQ Candidates Saw Big Election Wins, With Several Historic Victories (NBC)Historic firsts include a transgender candidate elected to Congress, a Black gay man elected to the Georgia legislature and a trans person elected to the Hawaii House.LGBTQ Youth React After Trump Wins the 2024 Presidential Election: "We Have to Keep Going" (Teen Vogue)We passed the 2,000 subscriber threshold. We are so grateful to all the new subscribers who are pouring in, as were just a little more than two months post-launch. Were especially grateful to our paid subscribers for supporting our work. The need for rigorous LGBTQ-focused journalism is more important than ever and some of you are saying that in your messages to us:This weekend, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting: The 13% According to exit polls, at least 13% of LGBTQ people voted for Trump. Abbie Thompson and I interviewed six of them from across the country to learn about why they feel President-elect Trump can truly Make America Great Again. Republicans spent nearly $215 million in ads targeting the trans community this election cycle. Why was this an effective strategy in pushing Trump to victory? Hope Pisoni and I speak to policy experts, Trump voters, and Trumps former Deputy Press Secretary to understand why the Trump campaign spent more on anti-trans ads than any on any other issue. We explore if and how this strategy helped him win.Thanks for reading! And feel free to email me with questions, complaints, tips and story ideas! Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chiefspencer@unclosetedmedia.comIf objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

By Candice Norwood, Shefali Luthra, Orion Rummler, Amanda BeckerThis article was originally published by the 19th, a nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy.Photo credit Gage SkidmoreSubscribe nowPresident-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he picked Rep. Matt Gaetz to serve as his attorney general, a choice that could put the Florida Republican in charge of the federal department that investigated him over sex trafficking accusations and ultimately decided not to bring charges.He is a Champion for the Constitution and the Rule of Law, Trump said in a statement. Matt will root out the systemic corruption at DOJ, and return the Department to its true mission of fighting Crime, and upholding our Democracy and Constitution.Gaetz is one of several allies in Congress that Trump has picked for Cabinet-level positions.As attorney general, Gaetz will be tasked with leading the Justice Department, which oversees federal investigations meant to ensure that government agencies uphold civil rights; that police departments are held accountable for misconduct; and that federal crimes, such as those committed in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, receive proper prosecution.House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday that Gaetz said he would resign his House seat immediately. Gaetz had been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations of sexual misconduct. Responding to reporters questions about news of the nomination, House Ethics Chairman Michael Guest had said that the investigation would not continue if Gaetz was no longer a member of Congress.Last year, the Department of Justice concluded its own probe into sex trafficking allegations and announced that it would not bring criminal charges against Gaetz. In 2021, federal prosecutors began investigating whether Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and paid for her travel after a probe into his close associate, Joel Greenberg, led to sex trafficking charges against Greenberg. In 2022, Greenberg pleaded guilty to six federal crimes, including sex trafficking, stalking, wire fraud and identity theft, and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.Gaetz, 42, has served in the House since 2017 and was previously a state legislator for six years. He graduated from William & Mary Law School and worked in private practice at a firm before launching his political career.Gaetzs nomination will likely be controversial even in the GOP-controlled Senate, which confirms presidential nominees. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who generally takes the position that presidents deserve the right to staff their own administrations, said Wednesday she was shocked by Gaetz nomination. Collins is one of just two or three swing Republican votes, and any nominee will need at least 50 senators to be confirmed.Trump has pushed for the Senate to embrace recess appointments, which essentially allow a president and majority leader to avoid the confirmation process. Senate Republicans on Wednesday picked Sen. John Thune of South Dakota as the majority leader. Thune expressed openness to using recess appointments, though he also emphasized the Senates role in the confirmation process and said he wanted committees to hold confirmation hearings.Reproductive issuesThe attorney general could influence pressing questions of abortion policy, such as whether to enforce the 1800s anti-obscenity law known as the Comstock Act, which abortion opponents believe could be used to ban the mailing of abortion pills or even to ban abortion entirely. The current Department of Justice has not endorsed this view.Gaetz has not publicly weighed in on the Comstock Act, and notably, he did not sign onto an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court by a group of congressional Republicans that endorsed reviving the measure.But as a member of Congress, Gaetz has opposed abortion rights, earning an A+ rating from the anti-abortion advocacy group SBA Pro-Life America. He voted against a bill that would have protected the right to contraception and in 2021 co-sponsored a proposed national ban on abortions after cardiac activity can be detected, typically around six weeks of pregnancy.Gaetz did not sign onto a bill proposed the next year in September 2022, months after the overturn of Roe v. Wade sparked national outcry that would have outlawed abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.That same year, he suggested that women advocating for reproductive rights protections were too unattractive to become pregnant, let alone need abortions. At a conference in Florida, he said, Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.LGBTQ issuesThe Justice Department under the Biden administration took an active role in supporting LGBTQ advocates, primarily through friend of the court briefs in cases defending gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Under Trump, this approach will likely be flipped on its head particularly with Gaetz leading the agency.In Congress, Gaetz has opposed federal LGBTQ protections such as the Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in various areas of public life, and the Respect for Marriage Act, a law signed by President Joe Biden to protect LGBTQ marriage. Last year, he backed legislation to prevent school athletic programs from allowing trans girls to compete in girls sports.During Trumps first term, Gaetz celebrated the former presidents ban on transgender people serving in the military and during Trumps 2024 campaign, Gaetz leaned into rhetoric portraying trans people, particularly nonbinary or gender nonconforming people, as antithetical to Americas identity.At the Republican National Convention, where multiple speakers verbally attacked transgender people, Gaetz reflected on Trumps first term as a time when we were richer, inflation was low, and there were two genders. Uncloseted Media is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.After Trump made baseless claims on the campaign trail that U.S. schools are clandestinely performing gender-affirming surgeries on children, Gaetz appeared to support those unfounded claims, saying that parents in places like California and Washington state are at risk of losing parental rights.Criminal justice issuesAs a congressman, Gaetz has praised law enforcement and denounced some legislative efforts by Democrats to hold officers accountable for misconduct, signaling how he will consider these issues as attorney general. Though he has expressed interest in meaningful reform, he has accused Democrats of pushing an anti-police narrative.In the aftermath of the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a White police officer who knelt on his neck for nine minutes, Gaetz stated, While I think we can fine tune elements to ensure we dont defund the police, that we dont make our communities less safe, I do think there is not a legitimate defense of chokeholds, of lynching or bad cops that get shuttled around. Two years later, however, he voted against a bill that sought to provide de-escalation training to officers.Many of Gaetz concerns about public safety center around promoting misleading claims about crime rates in urban areas and unfounded connections between immigration and crime. In 2019, he stated that a proposed bill that sought to require background checks for guns would not stop violent crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, but that a wall, a barrier on the southern border may have. This year, he introduced the Allocating Liability to Illegal Entrants in National Courts (ALIEN) Act to allow federal judges to award damages to victims harmed by undocumented immigrants. The measure stalled and did not receive a vote.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, consider upgrading and become a paid or founding subscriber.

Photos courtesy of Vitelli, Scarcella, Lynch and Oakes. Design by Sam Donndelinger.On Nov. 5th, Donald Trump was elected as Americas 47th U.S. president. More than 76 million Americans voted for him, including 60% of men and 53% of white women.Subscribe nowDespite this turnout, an overwhelming 86% of LGBTQ people voted for Kamala Harris, compared to just 13% for Trump. Harris actually had a stronger performance among LGBTQ voters than any other candidate in the last five elections.Trump ran on a campaign of transphobia. He spent more money on anti-trans ads than on any other issue and he repeatedly vowed to crack down on transgender insanity. Since his win, he has nominated aggressively anti-LGBTQ cabinet members, including Marco Rubio, who has called the Respect for Marriage Act a stupid waste of time, and Kristi Noem, who disagreed with the Obergefell decision to legalize same-sex marriage.Why, then, did an estimated 1.5 million LGBTQ-identifying Americans think Trump was the better candidate for U.S. President? Uncloseted Media spoke with five gay and lesbian Trump supporters to find out.Courtesy of Andy Blalock. Blalock, right, with his husband.Andy Blalock, 41, Huntsville, AlabamaAndy Blalock believes Donald Trump transformed the Republican party to be more inclusive. The party of joy, he told Uncloseted Media. He references Trumps appointment of Richard Grenell as the first openly gay person to a cabinet-level position and that during his first term, he didnt touch gay marriage.In August, Blalock launched the Huntsville chapter for the Log Cabin Republicans, a national advocacy organization that aims to educate Republicans about LGBTQ issues. They view LGBTQ issues as a settled matter. What rights do we not have right now? he says. I can get whatever job I want. I married my life partner, the man of my dreams. Under Trump, my business was booming. My First and Second Amendment rights were protected, he says.As an eighth-grade teacher, Blalock supports some of the many anti-LGBTQ bills that recently passed into law, including Floridas Parental Rights in Education bill, better known as the Dont Say Gay bill, which prohibits teachers from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in the classroom.You should not be teaching that, says Blalock, who lives on a horse ranch with his husband. Have whatever pronouns you want. But I was brought up to have proper English, and I'm not going to say they if it doesnt apply as they, Im gonna say he or she.Trump has lied about kids going to school and coming back with sex changes. But in Blalocks interpretive thoughts, he says what Trump meant is that kids are finding out about gender pronouns, sex changes, and girls wanting to be cats and boys wanting to act like dogs [at school].Blalock believes kids should learn about LGBTQ issues through counseling services and only when they have parental permissionwhich is difficult for the 45% of LGBTQ kids who reported wanting mental health care but were concerned about obtaining consent from their parents.We shouldn't be grooming children, he says.Courtesy of Arielle Scarcella.Arielle Scarcella, 38, Miami, FloridaThe idea that teachers and Democrats are grooming and indoctrinating children has become a widespread conspiracy theory that has been perpetuated on social media platforms like X, which is the source of information Arielle Scarcella trusts the most. I don't really follow any news outlets. I just follow accounts that will post videos without any manipulation to them, she told Uncloseted Media.She believes President Joe Biden is a creep. I think hes legitimately probably a P-word, says Scarcella, a 38-year-old lesbian who moved to Miami from New York City a few years ago.I think there's videos that prove it, she says, referencing clipsof President Biden sniffing kids. The Associated Press found these claims to be false because the sniffing sounds were added to the original video.Hes still creepy, Scarcella says in response to the AP article and points to other examples.Misinformation was hard to clamp down on this election cycle after Republican attorneys general and other lawmakers led a yearslong campaign aimed at forcing social media companies to platform falsehoods and hate speech.Americans were flooded with misleading information about transgender issues, among other topics. Elon Musk, who donated more than $130 million to the Trump campaign, posted election misinformation multiple times, including one instance where he falsely stated that Michigan was committing mass voter fraud. The post was viewed more than 32 million times.Scarcellawho trusts information from social media creators more than mainstream news outletshas become an influencer in her own right. On Instagram, she posts videos to her roughly 103,000 followers where she mocks teachers who ask their students for their pronouns and uses racist language where she describes Harris as not even, like, full Black and as Black at different times of the day depending on what state shes giving a speech. Scarcella says she had to come out as a Trump supporter. Dating is difficult, she says. People call me every name under the book. Transphobic, homophobic. She says this is particularly difficult because people that have been my type tend to lean very left.Photo courtesy of Vitelli via @realdonaldtrump/InstagramMelissa Vitelli, 37, Brooklyn, New YorkMany Trump-supporting LGBTQ people have faced stigma because of their political beliefs. Melissa Vitelli is no exception.A day after the election, Vitelli posted a video of herself in Trump merchandise alongside her wife. Shortly after, she remembers some of her 400,000 TikTok followers attacking her in the comments: I can't wait till your marriage is invalid, I can't wait till you lose all your rights, and I can't wait till she leaves you.Vitelli, a devout Trump supporter since 2016, says before she met her wife she experienced stigma in the lesbian dating pool. She remembers a 12-hour date that was quickly soured when politics came up. Since meeting her wife, who wrote in Bernie Sanders this election, they have had to navigate their political differences. We'll talk about issues and we often meet in the middle. I feel like a lot of the country would be so much better off if they just started talking, because at the end of the day, most of us want the same thing, she told Uncloseted Media.Vitelli and her wifes inter-political marriage is a rarity in todays climate. Only 3.6% of marriages are between Democrats and Republicans.Still, they support each other. I never forced her to love [Trump] because she never forced me to hate him, she says.Uncloseted Media is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support rigorous LGBTQ-focused journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.As a woman living in Brooklyn, Vitelli believes the influx of undocumented immigrants is jeopardizing her safety. It's these 30-year-old men coming here without families who don't necessarily respect women in their culture, she says. I should feel safe in my own country,Trump has said he would protect women whether [they] like it or not. He has at least 26 allegations of sexual misconduct and rape, including one instance where he was found liable in court.Despite this, Vitelli feels safe at Trump rallies. She says that as a lesbian, she can be herself and no one will think shes anything but equal. And thats how I want to feel as an American, she says.Trumps LGBTQ voter strategy involved attacking the transgender community and focusing only on gays and lesbians. We have been completely hijacked by the "TQIA+" movement, she says. Realistically, I think that the 13% that voted for Trump just want to live and let live And that's who I identify with.Courtesy of Jason Oakes.Jason Oakes, 25, Ashburn, Virginia25-year-old self-described health nut Jason Oakes never could have imagined voting for Trump until this year. Trump isn't my favorite politician because he's more of a businessman. There are parts of [him] I don't really like. He's a bit unprofessional, Oakes told Uncloseted Media.It was Trumps ally and newly appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that swayed him.I agree with a lot of the stuff [Kennedy] says about ultra-processed foods, the stuff that's in them is terrible. I work out a lot and I also try to eat super healthy and stick to Whole Foods. And for that reason, I don't really want the chemicals, additives, all that stuff in there going into my body.While Oakes acknowledges that Kennedy has had some controversies, such as his anti-vaccine activism, he writes them off as out there opinions.Kennedy has said that 100% of the first thousand people who died of AIDS were addicted to poppers and were part of a gay lifestyle, and thinks that kids are being made trans from exposure to chemicals in the environment, equating them to frogs in a lab.Despite this, Oakes is reassured that under a Trump administration, his rights as a gay man are safe. He would also speak on things like equal rights, saying marriage is here to stay. I'm not going to touch it. You're free to marry whoever you want without the government getting involved. It helped ease some of my anxieties about it, he says.Keith Lynch, left, with his husband. Courtesy of Lynch.Keith Lynch, 33, Flower Mound, Texas33-year-old gay police officer Keith Lynch voted for Trump because he thinks hes better on economic policy and law and order. He remembers in 2020, at the height of the pandemic and the George Floyd protests, feeling abandoned by New York City, where he was living and working at the time.They didn't give [us] enough resources to help mitigate the protests, Lynch told Uncloseted Media, adding that he remembers colleagues having bricks and glass bottles thrown at them.Even though Trump was president at the time, Lynch thought it was disgusting that Kamala Harris called the protests mostly peaceful and critically important to what became known as a racial reckoning in the U.S. He voted for Trump because of his pledge to "launch the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America" because he believes undocumented immigrants are creating more crime, something that a 2024 study from the National Institute of Justice proved false. The study found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate for property crimes.In addition to immigration issues, Lynchlike 93% of Trump supporterssays economic policy was a very important factor to his vote. He points to Trump mentioning that he was considering exempting police officers from federal income taxation.He remembers during the pandemic banking on a raise that never materialized and his husband being out of a job. It's an embarrassing issue. I couldn't afford a fucking cup of coffee, he says. I did buy some space heaters just to keep us warm.As inflation ramped up, it got to the point where it was like, this marriage is going to fail. Everything that I built is crumbling. Lynch was forced to declare bankruptcy in February 2023 and he and his husband left New York and moved to Flower Mound, Texas, where he got another job as a police officer.As a proud Puerto Rican, Lynch brushes off Tony Hinchcliffe's comment at Trumps Madison Square Garden rally where he called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage," as shock comedy.He says media bias is another reason he voted for Trump. Is [Trump] an asshole? Of course. But there's nothing worse than being lied to on a grand scale.While Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims in his first term, Lynch says, The American public as a whole, is kind of over the bullshit. Like, feed us the truth.Additional reporting by Sam DonndelingerIf objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, consider upgrading and become a paid or founding subscriber.Subscribe now

Data: AdImpact via The Bulwark and Gallup. Design by Sam Donndelinger.Subscribe nowWhen Lil Miss Hot Mess conducted a drag story hour at a library in Los Angeles, she never expected to be the face of a multimillion-dollar Republican ad campaign. In a 2022 ad for Marco Rubios Senate reelection campaign, footage of Lil Miss Hot Mess reading to children is overlaid by Rubios voice: The radical left will destroy children if we dont stop them.They indoctrinate children, try to turn boys into girls, says Rubio, now Trumps nominee for secretary of State.It's a really frustrating and disempowering feeling to have your image twisted in such a hateful and disingenuous way to sell someone else's agenda, Lil Miss Hot Mess, who asked to use her stage name for safety reasons, told Uncloseted Media.Whether Lil Miss Hot Mess likes it or not, she was one of the influential faces that spurred a movement of GOP ads that targeted the transgender community. Since that ad aired, Republicans have made attacking the trans community a key strategy, spending roughly $215 million in the 2024 election cycle, more than $29 million of which was spent on the presidential race alone.The Trump campaign, which was the first to ever run an anti-trans attack ad in a presidential general election, spent more on anti-trans advertising than any other issue in the months leading up to the election. His campaign spent more than twice as much on anti-trans ads than on ads about immigration and more than five times as much than on ads focused on the economy, which was the most important issue to registered voters, according to a September poll from Gallup.Chart via The Bulwark. Out of the 22 issues Gallup asked voters about, trans issues ranked last, with 36% of them saying they were not important. And an October survey found that over 60% of Republicans and nearly half of Democrats think both parties should focus less on trans issues.Why, then, did these ads likely resonate with many of the roughly 76.4 million Americans who voted Donald Trump in as the 47th president of the United States?1. Abortion In DisguiseIn 2022, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, Republicans wound up paying the price in the November midterms, where the Democrats took the Senate in what became known as a red wave that wasnt.Republicans in this election cycle still hadn't found their footing on the messaging for abortion. So focusing on transgender issues allowed them to point to an area of the culture wars where theyre ahead, says Don Haider-Markel, professor of political science at the University of Kansas.The advantage for the Trump campaign was you could mobilize social conservatives with this advertising because the same groups that dont like trans people oppose abortion rights, and you can talk to them without saying abortion, says Jami Taylor, professor of political science and public administration at the University of Toledo in Ohio, adding that this messaging likely activated conservative Christians to turn out.While just 57% of Republicans say abortion should be illegal, more than eight in ten Republicans say gender is determined by sex at birth.Its the same issue. My body, my rights, Haider-Markel told Uncloseted Media. It fits this broader message that men can police gender and bodies, and that's the way it should be.2. Targeting Young MenHaider-Markel believes these ads were also an attempt to target younger mena demographic Trump wonwho are looking to solidify their identity. He thinks this is part of the reason Trumps team bought ad space during football games, which are disproportionately viewed by men.Uncloseted Media is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.As we've seen over the past several years since Covid, there is a bit of a crisis of masculinity amongst young men, says Haider-Markel. What it means to be a man in 2024 doesn't seem so coherent.One way to assert themselves and gain control over their environment is by claiming a certain kind of masculinity, he says. Beating down on trans folks and pushing back against the nature of more fluid gender identity is all part of that, he says, adding that this beatdown helps men lift themselves up.Haider-Markel believes these ads are part of a narrative that asserts a traditional masculinity where the man is the primary breadwinner. He points to Vice President-elect J.D. Vance suggesting women should reconsider going into the workplace and him questioning womens worth if they are childless cat ladies.3. Airing Ads About Trans Sports During FootballGOP ads targeting the transgender community aired more than 30,000 times, according to data from AdImpact, with a particular focus on NFL and college football broadcast audiences in swing states.One ad, which included the slogan, Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you, focused on trans women in sports, saying, Kamala even supports letting biological men compete against our girls in their sports.Screenshot via Donald J. Trump YouTube.Hogan Gidley, who served as White House deputy press secretary for the Trump administration from 2019 to 2020, thinks this messaging was extremely smart. Youre watching people who are six foot five, 275 pounds, running 440s, going I dont want my 110 pound daughter out there, Gidley told Uncloseted Media.While there have been less than a handful of instances of trans people playing in major league sports, Gidley thinks these ads hit on something people care about from an emotional and a practical standpoint.According to a 2022 Marist poll, 61% of Americans dont think trans people should be able to play on a sports team that matches their gender identity. The reality is, on many trans issues, Republicans are much closer to the median voter than Democrats, says Taylor, who is trans and believes that a second Trump term is an 11 out of 10 when it comes to the threat to her community.Gidley believes ads focusing on trans women in sports were a key reason 53% of white women voted for Trump and why he increased his support among women by 7% when compared to 2020.He says many parents are concerned that their daughters will lose their chances of college sports scholarships because trans women will take their place. When a man comes in and takes their spot and hurts their chances, that became a real problem, I think, for a lot of women, says Gidley, who misgendered trans folks throughout the interview. They may not have said that publicly, but they realize that was a bridge way too far and something they couldn't support.Despite this purported interest in protecting women, many facets of Trumps campaign were sexist. Elon Musks super PAC published a video to X calling Harris the C-word. And Trumpwho nominated conservative justices to the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade and has at least 26 allegations of sexual misconduct and rape, including one instance where he was found liable in courtsaid he would protect women whether [they] like it or not.Haider-Markel believes the biggest losers in this election were young women, trans and cis alike.4. Three For One: Using Anti-Trans Ads to Focus On Multiple IssuesAndrew Flores, an associate professor of government at American University whose research focuses on how public policies affect LGBTQ people, says many of Trumps anti-trans ads hit on multiple issues. One of the most popular ads highlighted Harris former support for taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for prison inmates in the United States.Screenshot via @realDonaldTrump Instagram.This isn't just a quote-unquote anti-trans ad. It's also about the public use of money and also about the carceral state and kind of what people think health care should look like for people who are convicted of crimes, says Flores, noting that the ad was also very racialized.Subscribe nowIts not just the small percentage that make up the trans community in this country; its the cascading effect they have on so many other areas that make this problematic, says Gidley, formerly of the Trump administration.5. Republicans Pounced On Dems Lack Of Message The Harris campaign strategically did not talk about [trans issues], says Flores. I think that might have been a miscalculation.Flores, who is skeptical that these ads had a significant impact on the election results, says Democrats may have seen their stance on transgender issues as a weakness. And that might have also been a part of the political calculus of the Trump campaign to emphasize that, he says. If you're going to run away from these topics then [Republicans] get to control and dominate the narrative and frame you in a particular way. And if you just refuse to defend it, then you're allowing them to craft the argument.They haven't had a clear answer on this issue since it's been in the public sphere since around 2015, other than just to say being transphobic is bad, says Haider-Markel.In an October interview with NBC, Harris said she would not put herself in the place of doctors who should make the decision in terms of what is medically necessary regarding trans healthcare. I believe we should follow the law, she said.Since the election, there has been infighting amongst Democrats about whether their stance on transgender issues cost them. Rep. Tom Suozzi said Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left, and I dont think biological boys should be playing in girls sports, and Rep. Seth Moulton set off a firestorm of criticism for similar comments.Haider-Markel says this takeaway is misguided, and that the focus should be on broadening the coalition and having a response to this anti-trans messaging.If you provide people with even a paragraph describing what we mean by transgender, you end up with greater support and greater positive feelings towards transgender people, he says, adding that Democrats were hurt more by a lack of messaging to working-class and middle-class voters on economic issues.Post-election polling by research group GQR found that opposition on trans issues ranked very low among reasons people voted against Harris, with most citing the economy and immigration as top concerns. 6. Dont Forget About Transphobia And FearTransphobia in the U.S. has been on the rise. Anti-trans hate crimes have spiked dramatically over the last five years, and over 660 anti-trans bills have been proposed in state legislatures this year alone, 45 of which have already passed into law. In 2023, 48% of trans women and 56% of trans men under 24 seriously considered suicide.These ads arent helping. An October study by Ground Media found that people were less likely to be supportive of trans people or trans rights after being exposed to Trumps anti-trans advertising. Additionally, the legislative attacks these ads support have been shown to negatively impact trans peoples mental health.Jami Taylor of the University of Toledo says shes never seen an onslaught like this directed at a particular community regarding political ads targeting a marginalized group.I really wonder whether or not Democrats are going to move away from us, says Taylor, adding that there needs to be greater efforts to improve public opinion on the trans community.I'm extremely privileged and I am probably going to be okay regardless of what happens, says Taylor. I lived most of my life already. So I can accept it. I'm not some 18-year-old who is worried about the future. My future is a bit less than 20 years, so I don't have to worry about this for the next 60 years of my life. I worry more about those people than myself.Additional reporting by Sam DonndelingerIf objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

By Kate SosinThis article was originally published by the 19th, a nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. This story was published in partnership withThem.Photos by Canva // Design by Sam DonndelingerSubscribe nowReached by phone in the days following the election, LGBTQ movement leaders promised they are more prepared than ever to face off against a second Trump administration.Were ready, said Heron Greenesmith, deputy director of policy at the Transgender Law Center, a civil rights organization. We did extensive scenario planning, internal and external. We did safety planning internally. We did scenario planning with partners, cross movement, inter movement, trans specific, LGBT.For transgender Americans, the moment feels particularly vulnerable. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to end what he has termed transgender insanity and cut Medicaid and Medicare funding to health providers offering gender-affirming health care on his first day in office.The result is that many trans Americans are reeling, feeling that the country has elected a man set on wiping them off the face of the earth.Responding to the election, Sarah Warbelows voice broke.Theres so much love, she said. Love is still out there, and that is not what this election was about.Warbelow isnt transgender. But her daughter is. And as the vice president of legal for the nations largest LGBTQ rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign, Warbelow will be tasked with shoring up protections for queer Americans as Trump retakes office.Warbelows tone turned from teary to defiant as she talked about a slew of political ads attacking transgender Americans, many of them run by Trump and his surrogates. They dont represent the feelings of the nation, she said.A majority of voters found the anti-trans advertisements were just mean-spirited, she said.But Kierra Johnson, president of the National LGBTQ Task Force, one of the communitys largest organizations focused on field organizing and political change, said 2024 is nothing like 2016 when Trump was first elected.The strategies are already in motion across movements, Johnson said.Yes, we should be worried, Johnson said, adding that Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump term written by his former advisors, makes extremely concerning suggestions about how to approach LGBTQ rights. They put it in black and white. If we dont take that as serious, then thats on us. Whether they execute or not, thats something else.Advocates said there are a number of things trans people can do immediately to protect their rights and safety before January. Heres how the nations LGBTQ leaders feel things will go in the top policy areas impacting trans people and how trans folks can prepare ahead of January 2025.Subscribe nowIdentification and gender markersFor people who need updated gender markers on their identification or have already obtained them, Greenesmith advised looking at state laws first if there are questions.The laws in your state will impact a lot of everything else, including whether or not you can get your name and gender changed to match, Greenesmith said.Some have expressed fears that having an X gender marker on a drivers license or passport instead of the formerly standard M or F will make them a target in the new administration. Advocates advise that deciding on a gender marker is an incredibly personal decision. Some noted that removing the X might make one feel safer, but would be unlikely to erase the paper trail of a gender marker change in government records. In other words, if a trans person was trying to change a marker to conceal their gender identity from the federal government, updating gender markers would likely have minimal impact.Advocates for Transgender Equality has a full ID resources library with a state-by-state drop-down menu, as does Trans Lifeline, to help people navigate local laws. Both are nonprofit civil rights organizations.The 19th will continue to provide guidance on IDs, documents and other paperwork as organizations release it.Freedom to bePerhaps the greatest fear many trans people have is that simply being transgender will be criminalized. While experts acknowledge that its reasonable to be scared, they expressed that the federal government doesnt have the same resources states have to target transgender people individually on the basis of identity alone.When you look at the data and the polling, despite what people are pontificating about at this moment, the American public supports the existence of transgender people, Warbelow said. Because Trump has shown himself to be incredibly fickle, its difficult to know at this point exactly what his plans are for carrying out his campaign promises. That said, Warbelow believes that the president-elect does care, on some level, about his popularity with the public.Warbelow also believes that the administration does not have the levers to target transgender people in the ways that states have aimed to criminalize transgender life.Greenesmith is quick to add that worst-case scenario fears are already a reality for many of the most marginalized queer people.This is why we cant catastrophize at this moment, because catastrophization is white supremacy, they said. All the things that White people fear, Black people, Indigenous folks, migrants have been facing for centuries.Andrea Jenkins, a Minneapolis City Council member who made history as the first out Black trans woman elected to public office in the United States, said that for Black trans women, that also means coming together and rising up.What I will say to my sisters out there is we got to stand strong, she said. Weve got to organize. Weve got to build systems of support for each other.MovingAs some trans people consider relocating, its not easy for people to just do that, said Jamison Green, veteran trans organizer and health expert.Whether people are considering a move out of the country, or out of state, advocates acknowledge that the laws impacting trans lives in real ways differ from place to place. The 19th will be reporting more deeply on these options in the weeks to come, but Green advises that people in states with trans-friendly laws will be far safer than states with anti-trans laws, if they are able to get to affirming states because so many of the policies impacting trans lives are decided at a state level.No matter what, get connected to community, he said.Organizations on the ground are ready to greet those who do need to move, said Jax Gonzalez, political director at LGBTQ statewide equality organization One Colorado.We know that we are a sanctuary state, and that there are many families who have been coming here from Oklahoma, Florida, Arkansas, Texas, you name it, Missouri, Gonzalez said. We want to ensure that those folks who do come here, that were doing everything that we can to ensure that they are protected and can thrive in community.Health careTrump has vowed to cut off federal funding to health providers offering gender-affirming care to transgender people via executive order. Many fear this will mean the end of gender-affirming care like hormones, puberty blockers and surgeries for transgender people on Trumps first day in office.Before panicking, experts advise that this will be logistically complicated for the administration to pull off. For one, transgender people are protected by the Supreme Courts 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County decision, which ruled that gender discrimination and sex discrimination are one in the same, meaning if the government barred gender-affirming care for a trans man, it would have to outlaw that same care (testosterone) for a cisgender man.Further, Green said the feasibility of the federal government tracking everyones prescriptions would get complicated quickly.The volume of prescriptions that are written in this country, it would be very difficult and time-consuming and costly to track at a federal level.State controls would have more access, he added. Some people have worried that the administration could threaten pharmacists, especially when it comes to prescriptions for testosterone, which is a schedule III class drug. Off-label use would not be allowed. Green, again, thinks this would be challenging for the administration.Most drugs are used off label, and thats a fact, he added. Medicine is an extremely complex field. Its an art as well as a science this is why we license doctors to use their medical judgment in applying the chemistry of pharmaceuticals to their patients to help them.Further, Trump attempted to gut transgender health care protections in the Affordable Care Act during his first term. The fight over those protections wound through the courts, and the repeal was finalized in 2020, only to be reversed by President Joe Biden, another rule-making process and fight that took four years.In short, advocates said its difficult to anticipate how health care policy will play out. But whatever happens is not likely to happen immediately, and all major medical associations back gender-affirming care for transgender people.Green said there is cause for concern.But I think we have to not just roll over and let them do it, he said. Whatever, they think theyre going to do, we have to stay fighting for peoples health and rights and social safety.Marriage and family planningMarriage will not immediately be at risk in the new administration because of legal precedent and a 2022 law passed by Congress called the Respect for Marriage Act, which requires states to recognize LGBTQ marriages already performed, even those from out of state.If something changes in the future, there will still be time to get married, said Warbelow. That is not something the Trump administration has the power to undo it any immediate termStill, a couple of Supreme Court justices have expressed interest in overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 ruling that established nationwide marriage equality.Advocates advise that for LGBTQ people who want to marry, now is not a bad time to do it.I think people need to do everything they can to fortify their families and their finances, period, said Johnson, adding that this can be applied to marriages, adoptions, powers of attorney or wills.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, consider upgrading and become a paid or founding subscriber.

Hello all! Yesterday was Trans Day of Remembrance, and unfortunately, it was marked by transphobia on Capitol Hill. On Monday, Rep. Nancy Mace (Republican, South Carolina) announced that she is introducing a measure to amend a House rule to prohibit transgender women from using womens bathrooms at the Capitol.When Mace was asked if she would speak with Sarah McBride, the Delaware Democrat who is set to become the first openly transgender member of Congress, about the matter, she said, No, Sarah McBride doesnt get a say.In response, McBride said: This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing. As if McBride hadnt been through enough, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson called a press conference on Tuesday to affirm that he does not believe women can be transgender. For anybody who doesnt know my well-established record on this issue let me be unequivocally clear: A man is a man and a woman is a woman, and a man cannot become a woman, Johnson, who has a history of comparing gay marriage to giving pets and pedophiles the right to marry, told reporters. As we inch closer to a second Trump presidency, the next four years are likely going to be turbulent at best for the LGBTQ community. Uncloseted Media will continue to check power and call hate for what it is. Check out our recent coverage and whats next here:Subscribe nowRepublican introduces anti-transgender bathroom resolution at Capitol after first transgender woman elected to Congress (CNN)A House Republican is pushing to ban transgender women from womens restrooms at the US Capitol, two weeks after history was made with the election of Americas first openly transgender person to Congress.Offensive, racist texts now being sent to high-schoolers, Latinos and LGBTQ community, FBI says (NBC News) The agency said that reports have grown since last week when Black people were targeted with messages from anonymous phone numbers.Nex Benedict's school failed students, investigation finds (USA Today)The public school district in Oklahoma came under scrutiny this year after an LGBTQ teen died of an overdose following targeted bullying.Indiana ban on gender transition treatment for minors upheld by U.S. appeals court (NBC News) The use of puberty blockers and hormones to treat children with gender dysphoria has been banned or restricted in 26 states.Gay and bisexual people vape at significantly higher rates, surgeon general's report finds (NBC News)Nearly 38% of gay, lesbian and bisexual U.S. adults have smoked e-cigarettes, compared with 16.5% of their straight counterparts, a new report found.In honor of Trans Day of Remembrance, we put together a page that features all our trans coverage since our Sept. 3 launch. Take a look here. As of yesterday, were on Bluesky! Give us a follow: https://bsky.app/profile/unclosetedmedia.bsky.socialThis weekend, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting: In the past ten years, the number of labiaplasty surgeries has exploded in popularity, increasing by more than 250% between 2013 and 2023.On Saturday, well publish a piece by Sam Donndelinger that looks at the concept of the so-called Barbie Vulva, and its impact on body image. On Sunday, were pulling back the curtain into how the election has sowed division between queer people and their families. Sage, a nonbinary 23-year-old, is upset with their mom, Vickey Hoffman, because she voted for Trump. We tracked down a psychotherapist to mediate a conversation between the family dyad in an effort to get them talking ahead of the holidays. Call it experimental journalism but being a fly on the wall for this conversation was very interesting. Thanks for reading! And feel free to email me with questions, complaints, tips and story ideas! Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chiefspencer@unclosetedmedia.comIf objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

By Shefali Luthra, Sara Luterman, Orion RummlerThis article was originally published by the 19th, a nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy.Photo by Gage Skidmore.Subscribe nowPresident-Elect Donald Trump intends to nominate anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services.The Safety and Health of all Americans is the most important role of any Administration, and HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country, Trump wrote in an email and on his platform, TruthSocial, on Thursday.The ascent of Kennedy, who became a top Trump adviser during the 2024 campaign, has sparked widespread concern among the public health community, who fear his fringe views could undo decades of progress against the spread of infectious diseases. HHS will have vast power to influence policy areas including health insurance and availability, disease monitoring and prevention, abortion access, contraceptive care, disability rights and LGBTQ health. The department oversees agencies such as the Administration for Children and Families, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration.Kennedy, who touts a Make America Healthy Again agenda, has said as a presidential candidate and as an adviser to Trump that he wants to redirect the federal health apparatus to focus on areas such as regulating seed oils, which he has called toxic despite research showing their health benefits. He has inflated the risks of COVID-19 vaccines and pediatricians fear that his strident anti-vaccination views could particularly endanger kids.In 2007, Kennedy founded the Childrens Health Defense Fund, initially called the World Mercury Project. Misinformation spread by the organization and other anti-vaccine groups was linked to a 2018 measles outbreak in American Samoa, which led to 83 deaths.The Childrens Health Defense Fund has consistently targeted mothers and Black Americans in their messaging groups experts say are more likely to experience vaccine hesitancy due to negative historical and personal experiences with medical care.On the campaign trail, Trump promised he would let Kennedy go wild on health singling out women in particular as people whose healthcare access could be affected.Ahead of the election, Kennedy said one of Trumps first acts in the White House would be to advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water. Kennedy has also described fluoride as poison. Fluoride has been added to American water systems for decades, a practice that the American Dental Association estimates has reduced tooth decay by about 25 percent.Though Republicans control the Senate, its not clear if Kennedy will be confirmed. Earlier this week, Republican senators would not answer questions about whether he had their support, the health publication STAT News reported. Trump has pushed for the Senate to use a process called recess appointments, in which he and Senate Majority Leader John Thune could pick Trumps Cabinet without Senate approval.It is unclear how much or how quickly Kennedy will be able to implement any of these changes without action from Congress. However, some federal workers are already planning to leave, according to NBC. While there wasnt much employee turnover between the Obama and first Trump administrations, there is concern about what Kennedy might mean for public health and their careers.What we dont really need at HHS is more medical expertise. What we need is an expertise on decoupling the agency from institutional corruption. Because its the corruption that has distorted the science, Kennedy said during a September 30 Town Hall in Philadelphia.Subscribe nowAbortion opponents have argued that a Trump administration HHS should be used to institute national restrictions for instance, leveraging the FDA to restrict access to mifepristone, one of the medications used in most abortions, or to even undo its approval altogether. Other HHS subsidiaries could also influence access to the procedure. Under Trumps previous administration, the Office of Refugee Resettlement sought to deny abortions to immigrants in its custody.On abortion specifically, Kennedy has been inconsistent. When running for president as an independent candidate, Kennedy suggested he opposed banning abortion before fetal viability, the standard protected by the now-overturned Roe v. Wade. Earlier in his campaign, when still running as a Democrat, Kennedy had endorsed banning the procedure after the first trimester of pregnancy before walking back those remarks.Theres no question that we need a pro-life HHS secretary, and of course, we have concerns about him, Marjorie Dannenfelser, head of the anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, told the news outlet Semafor.Kennedy has also not publicly spoken about contraception. Under President Joe Biden, the health department has expanded access to birth control, approving the first-ever over-the-counter hormonal birth control pill and pushing to enforce Affordable Care Act regulations that require health insurance to cover approved methods.Kennedys opposition to gender-affirming care for transgender minors, as well as misinformation that he has spread about LGBTQ youth and HIV/AIDS, signals a sharp reversal from how the HHS has approached health care for LGBTQ people under Biden.Kennedy opposes gender-affirming care for minors, which largely refers to puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy. He has inaccurately portrayed puberty blockers, which temporarily delay the hormones that cause kids to go through puberty, as repurposed castration drugs. In May, he stated that people with gender dysphoria or who want to change their gender deserve compassion and respect while adding that these terribly consequential procedures should be deferred till adulthood.False claims and conspiracies shared by Kennedy involving LGBTQ people include theories that the use of poppers, a recreational drug frequently used in gay nightlife, was a significant factor in the disease progression for the first AIDS victims of the early 1980s. He also suggested that sexual identification and gender confusion among minors is caused by man-made chemicals in water or the environment.In Project 2025, the policy blueprint for a second Trump administration offered by the conservative Heritage Foundation, most of the proposed anti-LGBTQ policies would be executed through HHS. These policies proposed by Project 2025which Trump has disavowed any part in, despite at least 60 percent of its contributors being linked to the president-elect include protecting adoption and foster care services that refuse to work with LGBTQ married couples and to redirect federal funds to support a biblically based definition of family. Although it remains to be seen whether the Trump administration will follow the suggestions in Project 2025s playbook, whoever leads the HHS will have an outsized role in shaping the next four years for LGBTQ Americans.Under the Biden administration, HHS advocated for trans youth to access gender-affirming care. As states across the country banned that care, the agency encouraged health care providers who were kept from providing it to file complaints with the agencys office for civil rights. The administration undid rulemaking put in place by the first Trump administration that excluded trans people from nondiscrimination protections in the Affordable Care Act.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, consider upgrading and become a paid or founding subscriber.

Photo via Canva. Design by Sam DonndelingerSubscribe nowSophie Sandberg remembers standing in her bedroom, holding a mirror between her legs, trying to get a clear look at the shape of her vulva.It wasnt how it was supposed to look, she told Uncloseted Media. And it wasnt attractive. There were different colors. And being 14 at the time, I thought that was weird.While Sandberg didnt have a clear picture of what a vulva, the external part of the female genitals often mistaken as the vagina, was supposed to look like, she knew it wasnt what she saw in the mirror. The image I had was more like a womans smooth crotch area but not the actual labia.Sandberg, now a 28-year-old social justice activist, is describing the so-called Barbie Vulva, a term coined by urogynecologist Dr. Red Alinsod in 2005.Dr. Alinsod invented the term after he saw a rise in demands for the Barbie Doll Vagina procedure, where patients wanted their vulva to resemble that of a Barbie Dolls crotch area: smooth, no hair, very flat, and most importantly, with no labia showing so only a slit remains.Since most vulvas dont look like this, many who desire a Barbie Vulva elect to have a labiaplasty surgery, where the labia minora, the flaps of skin on either side of the vaginal opening, are trimmed. Over the last decade, elective labiaplasty surgeries have exploded in popularity, increasing by more than 250%.Photo by charlesdeluvio on UnsplashA 2023 study found that unrealistic body standards modeled within porn and on social media are to blame for a new generation of individuals who are getting labiaplasties to achieve the Barbie Vulva. The report surveyed 1030 individuals about their attitudes toward their genitalia. Almost a quarter of respondents between ages 18 and 24 said they felt anxious, unhappy, or embarrassed about how their labia looked, while 35% said they associated it with negative words like weird, disgusting, or ugly.The vulva is a taboo and a private part of the body, Lynn Enright, author of the book Vagina: A Re-Education, told Uncloseted Media. We don't talk about vulvas except in a sexualized way. Teenage girls especially are subjected to this.When I was 14, I remember Googling the surgery, says Kaitlyn Morris, a 24-year-old grad student in Boston. I was just a kid, and I was like, Oh, [my vulva] is not normal. I was super insecure. You see porn and models and they only show one type of genitalia. If you deviate from the norm, you feel bad.Jade Womack, who got labiaplasty surgery in 2023, says that she has been insecure about the size of her labia since she was a kid. I've been struggling with body image problems since I was 13, she says. After I had my daughter, it got worse. [My labia] was very large and very long.Womack says that shes relatively happy with the results. One labia is still a little bit larger than the other, and theres a little hole in one labia from the procedure, which bothers me, she says. So its not perfect, but its a lot better than before.Labiaplasty surgeries dont come without risk. Because part of the labia is removed, unhappy patients cant reverse poor outcomes. People will come to me sometimes if they got it done at another place and ask, Doc, can you fix it? says Dr. Ronald Blatt, labiaplasty surgeon at the Manhattan Center for Gynecology, adding that about 80% of his patients get the surgery for cosmetic reasons. But the trim method cuts off everything. Theres nothing left to fix.In addition to irreversible results, labiaplasty surgeries can permanently damage nerve endings in the vulva. I have no judgment for anybody who does their research and gets the facts of this elective surgery and what results after the scar tissue heals, says sex educator Elizabeth Wood. But there's a whole industry of repairs for botched surgeries.Wood says that people who receive the surgery can experience less pleasure from sex after recovery because plastic surgeons may not save the nerves. Many vulva owners report numbness, lack of sensation, and inability to climax, she says. I want people to know how delightfully involved the labia is in sexual arousal. It is the most pleasurable center in our body, rich with 10,000 nerve endings, and we just keep losing them because of these surgeries, she says, noting that there are only about 4,000 nerve endings in the penis.I would rather help support somebody to fall in love with their vulva rather than cutting it and dismissing it and potentially ruining their sex lives.Even without the surgery, Wood says the body image distress some have about the appearance of their vulva can make it harder to receive pleasure. According to the Genital Self-Esteem Scale, confidence in your genitals is directly related to pleasure during sex. The more distress and discomfort you have with the appearance of your labia, the more sexual distress you have, says Wood.Sophie Sandberg says that her perception of her vulva changed how she had sex. I did not enjoy people going down on me because I was worried they would look at my vagina, she says. It impacted my idea of myself as desirable and attractive. I still wanted to have sex with people and give them pleasure, but I had trouble receiving it for myself. There were points where I wanted to just slice it off.The lack of vulva diversity in the media and porn sets unrealistic expectations for men. One 2015 study found that 51% of men say the appearance of a womans labia influences their desire to have sex with them.When Sandberg was in high school, a guy she hooked up with told his friends thathe didn't want to sleep with her because her vagina was ugly.He said he'd rather just make out with another girl instead of having sex with me because he was not attracted to my vagina, she says. Shortly after that, I looked at it and was like, Oh my God. It is so ugly and not how its supposed to look.Our language used to talk about penises and vulvas convey powerful messages, Al Vernacchio, a high school sexuality educator in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, told Uncloseted Media. Our society suggests that people with penises should be proud of them and see them as signs of power and masculinity, he says. Societal messages about vulvas can convey negative messages about them being overly complex, mysterious, ugly, smelly, and even dangerous Too many people, especially young people, may internalize these messages and relate to their own bodies accordingly.In his sex education classes, Vernacchio makes a point of showing a diverse range of bodies. In the best case, lessons about genitals should highlight the great diversity between and among them, he says.Different is normal andDifferent does not mean better or worse are messages that should be highlighted.Lynn Enright, author of the book Vagina: A Re-Education, says media exposure is one of the most influential factors in womens decisions to undergo labiaplasty. If you don't know what vulvas look like and the vulvas you see are in mainstream porn, where the performers may have had labiaplasty or have labia that are quite symmetrical, it leaves people vulnerable to feelings of inadequacy or shame.Dee Hartman, a sex educator and co-founder of VulvaLove, says, The only thing normal about a vulva is its diversity no two labia are alike, even in one person. Just like your right and left hands are different, your labia are different sizes. Your ears are different sizes, and your eyes are shaped differently.Subscribe for rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism. In order to unravel the intense shame around vulva appearance, representation is crucial. More representation would decrease the rate of [elective] labiaplasties and improve genital self-esteem, Wood says, noting that most women struggle to label diagrams of vagina anatomy. Most of the people who suffer from this shame suffer in silence because we just don't talk enough about sex.Courtesy of Sophie Sandberg.Sandberg felt societal pressures come undone when she started seeing more representation from The Vulva Gallery, an online social art movement. Its a representation of vastly different pubes, colors, labia, and normalizing all of it, she says. Seeing different skin conditions or different things represented on Instagram was really helpful to know that everyone is loveable, no matter what you look like.Photo via The Vulva GalleryI wanted to create a body of work to show that normal doesnt exist, says Sam Hil Atalanta, the creator of The Vulva Gallery. The gallery aims to raise awareness around body diversity by sharing personal stories and portraits of real peoples vulvas and providing information on anatomy and sexual health. I wanted to make sure that any person who is insecure has access to a body of work that shows diversity, and theyll be able to find a vulva that they feel represented by.We all have a role to play in building vulva pride, says Vernacchio. We have to consider what we think about vulvas and what we say about them. We have to counter messages that vulvas are weaker [and less worthy] than penises.When you see yourself, you know you belong, and theres so much power to that, says Atalanta, whose Vulva Gallery has nearly 750,000 Instagram followers.You think that there are people just like me, even when I have a crooked nose, a flat butt, or a certain type of labia. Thats part of the diversity that is out there, and its gorgeous and important and reminds you not to worry.Sandberg, who was recently diagnosed with lichen sclerosis, a condition that causes patchy, discolored, thin skin and pain around the vulva, says that for a long time she didnt seek a diagnosis or care because she was ashamed of how she looked. I was so afraid of going to a gynecologist because I was worried they would say it looked weird or something, she says. Seeing different skin conditions of the vulva represented in the Vulva Gallery was really helpful to me. It reminds me everyone is loveable, no matter what stuff you have going on or what you look like. And it makes me grateful that I am taking care of myself now because for so long, I was ashamed of how my vulva looked. If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

Photo D-Kleine / Alicia Brand / Design by Sam DonndelingerSubscribe nowWe are less than three weeks out from the election, and the holiday season is in full swing. American families across the country are divided, many in conflicts that have led to complete silence. 32% of U.S. adults said the political climate has caused familial strain.For many LGBTQ people, the stakes of the election results were high. President-elect Donald Trump led his campaign with anti-trans attack ads and transphobia. His key slogan, Kamala is for They/Them, President Trump is For You, was a jab at the nonbinary community. And Project 2025, which was written with the help of 140 former members of the Trump administration, suggests America returns to a traditional definition of the family. After Election Day, LGBTQ youth calls to one mental health crisis line spiked by 700 percent.Many folks sounded off on social media with their concerns:Sage Rosiello, a 23-year-old nonbinary person, and their mom, Vickey Hoffman, are best friends who spoke every day before the election. But after Sage learned that Vickey voted for Trump, they felt betrayed. Since then, the pair has gone completely silent, aside from arguments about whether the Trump administration will roll back Sage and their fiances rights as well as the rights of the LGBTQ community at large.With Sage and Vickeys permission, Uncloseted Media reached out to Elise Robinson, a psychotherapist and Licensed Clinical Social Worker in New Jersey, who agreed to mediate a conversation.Robinsonwho regularly works with queer peoplesays Sage and Vickeys situation is not unique. We find that election years tend to really bring [family conflict] to the forefront, she says, adding that queer people today have less patience for ignorance is bliss when it comes to LGBTQ issues. Subscribe for LGBTQ-focused journalism.The following is a condensed transcript of the conversation held between Elise, Vickey and Sage. Please note that this was not an official therapy session but a moderated conversation to support Vickey and Sages relationship ahead of the holiday season.Zoom call with Elise, Vickey, and SageElise Robinson: I want to start by asking you guys the reason for coming together today. What is your hope?Sage Rosiello: I guess my hope is that I get the parental support and not just the feeling of being wrong and feeling of judgment.Vickey Hoffman: I was asked to be here because apparently I'm not supportive of something. Yeah, that's it.Sage: I've expressed some concerns about the election, and I know that it is a big topic. I mean, realistically, we cant really agree to disagree on human rights, but I'm coming from this as my rights. I have said this before, but there is a federal law that prevents discrimination against LGBTQ people.1 And that has been talked about going away. It would impact me. It's been giving me a lot of mental health problems. Its been giving the community and people who I care about many problems and we're trying to support each other. My fiance and I are trying to support each other. So we think about these things and how it would impact us and what could potentially happen if we didn't have rights in every state.Elise: Vickey, what are you hearing from Sage right now?Vickey: I have never disregarded any of her2 concerns. Sage brought this concern up to me when there wasnt anything I could do about it. She failed to tell me these things. We used to speak every single day, and this concern was never a subject. And then after the fact, when she found out how I voted, she decided that she was going to be mad at me when there was no discussion ever attempted to be had. If this were such an existential thing for her, why are we having this conversation when it's too late?It's not that I don't support her relationship or her rights because I do 100% and I've expressed this to her, that if anything were to ever come up that threatened her rights, I would be the first person marching against it. In my eyes, she loses any right to be upset with me about what I did in the election booth when she didn't have these conversations that she should have had with me. That's it.Elise: I would love for you guys to speak to one another on how you define support, because I hear you both using that word.Vickey:My idea of support is being willing to have her back in case any negativity was to come her way.Sage: My idea of support isn't future, potential, maybe support. It's right now support and no judgmental comments or you're wrong. More of Hey, I hear you.Vickey: You didn't say this until after. When there's nothing that can be done. Period. I get annoyed with your anger at me when there's nothing further that can be done. But now you think that I'm not supporting you.Sage: Okay. Can I finish my thought? Because you interjected, I was not done.Vickey: Finish.Sage: To say that I have never brought up concerns about LGBTQ rights is not true. I always talk about it, 24/7. It's a topic that comes up because I am a part of said community and every once in a while I like to check on if I have rights still just in case. Its a topic that's been brought up since I came out with most of the family.Vickey: Well, I did go look, and the alleged rights that you could possibly lose have to do with Project 2025,3 which the president has renounced on multiple occasions. The frantic worry about this is just fear-mongering into the LGBTQ community and getting everyone wound up about something that's never going to happen.Elise: Sage, if you could share a little bit more about the feelings coming up for you.Sage: Well, I am feeling fearful because of everything I've read.Elise: And when it comes to the feelings with your mom?Sage: It feels attacking, you know. Words like fear-mongering.Elise: Okay. I'm going to ask you to speak directly to your mom and be a little more specific.Sage: I don't feel supported when I see long novels being sent to me saying how I'm wrong. I want more, like, softer words than, You're wrong. Here's why. I don't really want to be fact-checked by my mom.Elise: So just to reiterate that for your mom here. It sounds like being listened to is what you're describing.Sage: Yeah. Like, listened to, and understood.Elise: Vickey, please go ahead.Vickey: So basically, the gist I'm getting is that I must concede that only her viewpoint is valid because it makes her feel a certain type of way. Even though it may be mistaken, I have to disregard any information counter to what the other party is feeling because of Sages feelings. And I don't operate that way. There's fear and anxiety being had and I have told her that I do understand. However, the fear may be overblown due to a lot of activism surrounding this election that has aimed to cause fear. And it has been successful because you are seeing the work of a successful fear campaign on my daughter. There is no bill in Congress being pushed for this. So I have trouble supporting something that is not currently happening. All I can do is offer my support in case it does happen. Yes. I believe she's fearful. Yes, I believe she has anxiety. But unless she takes steps to realize that there's no boogeyman coming for her, then I don't know what to do.Elise: Such a big difference I'm hearing about what's actually happening versus what I'm hearing when Sage talks about their feelings. And those are happening in real time. And that's the support Im hearing Sage ask for. Is that accurate?Sage: Yeah, it's pretty accurate.Vickey: I understand that you have this fear. And as a mother, I am trying to help you quell that fear. And I'm trying to give you reassurance to reduce your fear. These things are not even at the start of any process. I love you. You are my heart. (Tears). And I don't want you to feel this way. But that's why I'm telling you reasons why you shouldn't be fearful.Elise: So, Vickey, some of your protectiveness is that you don't want Sage to experience fear because you know how hard that is. Is that some of what you're saying right now?Vickey: Yes. And I realize she is experiencing fear. And I might come off a little off balance when I'm trying to express that to her. She doesn't need to be fearful. Maybe I'm not articulating it correctly or it's just not coming off as smoothly as I would like. What I'm trying to do is give her reasons to reduce the level of fear. Not disregard it. All I can offer you are words of support. That's all I can do. And I'm willing to do it. And aside from running over to you and just grabbing a hold of you and trying to protect you, which I can't do. This is all I've got.Sage: (Tears). Okay. Well. See, you're crying, now I'm crying.Vickey: It's hereditary.Sage: I know that no one is doing anything right now, but as a person in the community, I'm always a little bit fearful of the future. I'm always fearful of my rights. Somebody who is not in the community doesn't really have to be worried about that all the time, but I know it will personally affect me. I'm always thinking about it. There are many people in the community who always think about it. So it's always in there.Elise: And so speaking just for yourself, Sage, when your mom says these things about being there in this way and understanding your fear right now, if you could focus just on yourself for this moment.Sage: I hear that. But I don't know. It's just hard to take in because of everything else that's been said.Elise: In other words, some of what you were hearing from your mom invalidates other things you're hearing from her and some of that invalidation being about who you are as a person?Sage: Yeah, it's kind of like, I support you, but I love you, but There really shouldn't be a but. Don't tell me why I'm wrong. Maybe just be there.Elise: Vickey, what do you hear from Sage, as they say that?Vickey: Well, what I hear is that she doesn't want me to say or do anything. Just sit there and listen to her. But if I respond in a supportive way, she complains that I'm not supportive enough.Sage: I don't want abrasive language. I don't want, Hey, you're wrong, when I already feel low because that puts me lower. Because it's not just this election that makes me feel fearful for my rights. I'm always like that. The whole community is always thinking about it.Elise: Does this new world kind of make it more of a reality?Sage: Yeah, it does.Elise: Vickey, I want to give you space to be able to respond.Vickey: All I can do as a mother is verbally say that I support you and that you can come to me at any time and talk to me about anything. But when you're talking over text, inflection is lost. You don't know how the person is speaking.Elise: How would you guys feel about maybe committing to phone calls or something other than text to continue on some of these conversations?Vickey: That's fine. I'm perfectly fine with that.Elise: Do you feel like that would have an impact?Sage: Yeah (tears). I'm sorryElise: Nothing to be sorry for. This is an emotional conversation. You're okay. What's something you would like to say to your mom right now?Sage: I don't know. I feel like I said a lot.Vickey and Sage try to mend their fractured relationship. Video edited by Em Oliver. Vickey: I'll say something. I want you to know that I love you. There is no force in this universe that could ever make me not love you. With that love comes my unwavering support. Because you are my child. And I think for future reference, when we have such important conversations, they need to be heard and not read because a lot of messaging gets lost in a text. So in the future, we need to spend more time talking because I don't like you being mad at me. Because I love you. I want you to know that I love you. And nothing on this planet could make me not love you.Sage: Yeah, I love you too.Subscribe for rigorous, LGBTQ focused journalism:After this conversation, Uncloseted Media checked in with Sage and Vickey. Sage has been feeling eh since the session and hasnt talked to their mom. They dont plan on seeing Vickey over the Thanksgiving holiday. [The session] helped me see exactly what kind of person she is by not listening to me.Vickey says she texted Sage after the session saying that she loves them (however, Sage told Uncloseted Media they didnt receive this text). If she wants to behave in a way that makes me the enemy, thats her decision. And Im just going to live my life, says Vickey, adding that Sage wouldnt be unwelcome for Thanksgiving. Elise Robinson says shes rooting for Sage and Vickey and adds that opening the door for communication is key to healing. We cant get anywhere if we are not willing to listen. That is the starting place, and it is so important. We can uncover so much when we go from there, and [opening the conversation] is one of the hardest parts.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media1Sage is referencing Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, when the Supreme Court held that firing individuals because of their sexual orientation or transgender status violates Title VIIs prohibition on discrimination because of sex. 2While Sage has expressed to their mom that they are nonbinary and use they/them pronouns, Vickey referred to Sage with the pronouns she/her throughout the conversation. After the interview, Vickey told Uncloseted Media, Its habit. This is a recent development with her. And she hasnt expressed that it bothers her.3For a full explainer about how Project 2025 could affect LGBTQ rights, read our story about it here.

By Kevin Richert, IdahoEdNews.org.This story was originally posted on IdahoEdNews.orgPhoto by Gary Milner.Subscribe nowThis story was originally posted on IdahoEdNews.orgA dozen plaintiffs including a Utah State University volleyball player are taking an ongoing transgender athletics dispute to a federal court.A lawsuit was filed Wednesday against San Jos State University, which, according to previous court filings, has a transgender athlete on its womens volleyball roster. The suit also targets the Mountain West Conference, saying the athletic conference hastily and quietly adopted a transgender athletics policy the same day Boise State announced it would not play a match against San Jos State.Boise State was the first of four Mountain West schools to forfeit matches with San Jos State. Boise State announced its first forfeit on Sept. 27, one day before a scheduled road match.According to the lawsuit, the Mountain West added a transgender participation policy on Sept. 27. The policy says, in part, that any team that refuses to play against an opponent with a transgender athlete shall be deemed to have forfeited the contest.The conferences policy, and its timing, was an attempt to penalize the Boise State University womens volleyball team members for speaking out, according to the lawsuit, which asks a federal judge to throw out the policy.But the timing of the policy could be open to dispute, as the Idaho Statesman reported Thursday. According to emails provided to the Statesman and Idaho EdNews, the conference says it has had a transgender participation policy in place since August 2022.Subscribe nowThe 132-page lawsuit also sheds some additional light on Boise States Sept. 27 forfeit.Behind the scenes the Boise State University womens volleyball players and administrators had been pushing for the Boise State University Team not to play the SJSU Team due to concerns over competitive fairness and athlete safety, the lawsuit says.As Idaho EdNews reported in October, Boise State athletics officials had discussed a possible forfeit for several days leading up to the decision. Boise State couched the forfeit as a university leadership decision, and has said nothing about whether players had a say in the matter.Eleven players and a coach are plaintiffs in the lawsuit including Boise State players Kiersten Van Kirk and Katelyn Van Kirk, two sisters from Bozeman, Mont. The plaintiffs include San Jos State assistant coach Melissa Batie-Smoose, current San Jos State player Brooke Slusser and former San Jos State player Elle Patterson. Plaintiffs also come from the three other Mountain West schools that have forfeited matches this season: Utah State University, the University of Nevada and the University of Wyoming.Boise State deferred comment on the lawsuit to the Mountain West Conference. The conference did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The lawsuit is supported and, to at least some degree, bankrolled by the Independent Council on Womens Sports, or ICONS, a Nevada-based group that opposes allowing transgender athletes to compete in womens sports. The group says transgender athletes have an unfair physical advantage over female athletes an argument made at length in Wednesdays lawsuit.The disregard for the fairness and safety of female athletes by the MWC and SJSU is unacceptable, ICONS co-founder Marshi Smith said in a news release Wednesday.As EdNews has previously reported, ICONS was one of several national groups that lobbied Boise State to forfeit its Sept. 27 match. ICONS contacted university President Marlene Tromp directly on Sept. 24. Boise State has said the external lobbying did not factor in its decision to forfeit.In all, Mountain West schools have now forfeited six matches with San Jos State, including a Boise State home match that had been scheduled for Nov. 21.The spate of forfeits mandated by the Mountain Wests transgender participation policy has padded San Jos States record and has penalized Boise State and other teams, the lawsuit says. This alters the Mountain Wests standings heading into the conferences postseason tournament later this month; six of the conferences 11 teams qualify for the tournament.In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs want the court to void all of San Jos States wins, or reverse the forfeits. They also seek a declaration that any male student-athlete is ineligible to compete in womens volleyball in the MWC and on the San Jos State University womens volleyball team.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

By: Megan HenryThis article was originally published in Ohio Capital Journal. Photo by Kameleon007 from Getty Images SignatureOhio Gov. Mike DeWine has signed a bill into law banning transgender students from using school bathrooms and locker rooms that match up with their gender identity.The law requires people at Ohio K-12 schools and universities use the restroom that aligns with their gender assigned at birth. It also bans students from sharing overnight accommodations with people of the opposite sex from their assigned sex at birth at K-12 schools.This does not prevent a school from having single-occupancy facilities and does not apply to someone helping a person with a disability or a child younger than 10 years old being assisted by a parent, guardian or family member.The law will take effect 90 days after DeWine signed the bill.A lawsuit is expected to be filed against this. The Ohio Capital Journal interviewed a Cleveland attorney over the summer about potential legal challenges with the bill, such as who would police such a policy?Several transgender Ohioans, allies and educators called on DeWine to veto the bill. The Ohio Capital Journal recently talked to a family who plans on moving out of Ohio because of anti-transgender legislation at the Statehouse.The bathroom ban (House Bill 183) was added to a bill that revises College Credit Plus (Senate Bill 104) in the eleventh hour of a House Session at the end of June before the lawmakers went on an extended break.Subscribe nowThe Ohio Senate concurred with the changes made to S.B. 104 during their first session back from break.State Reps. Beth Lear, R-Galena, and Adam Bird, R-New Richmond, introduced H.B. 183. State Sen. Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, introduced S.B. 104.About 3% of high school students identify as transgender, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The American Medical Association officially opposes policies preventing transgender individuals from accessing basic human services and public facilities consistent with gender identity.Slightly more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth in Ohio considered suicide in 2022, according to the Trevor Project.About a third of LGBTQ students were prevented from using the bathroom that aligned with their gender and slightly more than a quarter were stopped from using the locker room that aligned with their gender, according to Ohios 2021 state snapshot by GLSEN, which examines the school experiences of LGBTQ middle and high school students.Forty-two percent of transgender and nonbinary students were unable to use the bathroom that aligned with their gender and 36% couldnt use the locker room that aligned with their gender, according to the Ohio GLSEN report.Transgender youth who cant use the bathroom that aligns with their gender are at a greater risk of sexual violence, according to a 2019 study published in the journal Pediatrics.Other states with transgender bathroom bansArkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Florida, and Utah have laws that ban transgender people from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity in schools.Florida, Oklahoma, Idaho, and Tennessees laws have all been challenged. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit blocked Idahos law last year.North Carolina made history in 2016 by becoming the first state to ban bathroom access to transgender people. The law was quickly appealed in 2017 and settled in federal court in 2019, but the state ended up losing hundreds of millions of dollars as the NBA All-Star Game and NCAA events were moved out of state.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

Happy Thanksgiving to all our American subscribers! Today is meant to be a day to reflect on the blessings of the last year. When it comes to the queer community, there actually is a lot to be grateful for. Its been 51 years since homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness; nine years since gay marriage was legalized in the U.S.; and two days since the U.S. Health and Human Services announced that people living with HIV can now receive kidney and liver transplants.With that said, this week has been another flurry of tough headlines, particularly for the trans community. A report found that President-elect Donald Trump plans to kick trans people out of the military (again), though his transition team dismissed the claim. And Republican Governor of Ohio Mike DeWine signed a bill into law that bans transgender students from using restrooms or locker rooms that match their gender identity. In addition, Walmart confirmed that its ending some of its diversity initiatives and removing some LGBTQ-related merchandise.On top of this, 34% of LGBTQ people have moved away from family to escape discrimination, leaving many queer people to fend for themselves over Thanksgiving. Em Oliver and I took to the streets on Tuesday and spoke with one nonbinary 18-year-old from Tennessee who isnt out to their parents and has decided not to go home for Thanksgiving. You can watch the clip on our TikTok channel (and give us a follow while youre at it ;)).I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday, no matter where you are and who youre celebrating with.Subscribe nowWalmart Pulls Back on DEI Efforts, Removes Some LGBTQ Merchandise (CNBC)Walmart is reducing its diversity programs and has removed some LGBTQ-themed merchandise amid customer feedback.Khalid Comes Out as Gay (USA Today)Singer Khalid publicly announced his identity, emphasizing authenticity in his music and life.Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine Signs Transgender Bills into Law (Ohio Capital Journal)The law requires people in Ohio K-12 schools and universities use the restroom that aligns with their sex assigned at birth. It also bans students from sharing overnight accommodations with people of the opposite sex from their assigned sex at birth in K-12 schools.Trump's Transgender Military Policy Faces Renewed Scrutiny (The Independent) The controversial ban on transgender military service resurfaces in debates about inclusivity.President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has dismissed a report that he plans to remove all transgender people from serving in the U.S. military. (via Newsweek)Trump's Latest Pick for His Wildly Anti-LGBTQ+ Cabinet is a Gay Billionaire (Them)Donald Trump has nominated gay billionaire Scott Bessent to serve as secretary of the Department of the Treasury, making Bessent the first openly gay person to take on this position. Welcome Nico DiAlesandro! Nico is Uncloseted Medias newest intern. With a degree in National Security and Intelligence and experience investigating alt-right violence, Nico is a great addition to our growing team. Keep your eyes peeled for his first byline this weekend!We passed 2,000 followers on Instagram! On our page, you can find a roundup of our coverage as usual, as well as breaking LGBTQ news. Give us a follow if youre looking to stay up to date.This weekend, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting: Most people know that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has a horrific track record when it comes to LGBTQ rights. But we wanted to put it all together. Johnsons complete track record on LGBTQ issues drops this Saturday. Kristen K. Waggoner, the woman who helped overturn Roe v. Wade and President and CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom, is coming for LGBTQ rights. Find out how in the profile that we will release this Sunday. Thanks for reading! And feel free to email me with questions, complaints, tips and story ideas! Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chiefspencer@unclosetedmedia.comIf objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

Photo: Office of Speaker Mike JohnsonSpeaker of the House Mike Johnson is second in line to the President of the United States and one of the most powerful politicians in the U.S. He has said his faith informs everything he does. Heres a comprehensive track record of Johnsons comments and actions related to the LGBTQ community.Subscribe nowLegal Career 2002Johnson starts working as an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian legal juggernaut co-founded in 1994 by Alan Sears, the co-author of The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today. ADF is a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group that has litigated and lobbied against marriage equality and anti-LGBTQ discrimination laws, and in favor of conversion therapy.2003While working at ADF, Johnson and his team give legal advice to Exodus International, a Christian organization founded in 1976 with the explicit aim of turning gay people straight through conversion therapy. Their methods include prayer, religious counseling, chastity, gender conformity training, participation in support groups, deliverance sessions through spiritual warfare and prayer, and aversion therapy techniques. In 2013, Exodus shuts down and apologizes to the gay community, stating that they have been imprisoned [by] a worldview thats neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical.Feb. 2003In an amicus brief, Johnson supports the criminalization of gay sex in Lawrence v Texas.Johnson says authorities have legitimate grounds to proscribe same-sex deviate intercourse, and that In closing these bedroom doors they have opened a Pandoras box.He goes on to write that Homosexuals do not meet the criteria for a suspect class under the equal protection clause because they are neither disadvantaged nor identified on the basis of immutable characteristics, as all are capable of changing their abnormal lifestyles.Screenshot via Newspapers.comUncloseted Media is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.July, 2003Johnson publishes an op-ed in one of Louisianas oldest newspapers, where he admonishes the Supreme Court for overturning Lawrence v. Texas. He argues that states have a right to control the sexual activity of consenting adults if they are the same biological sex.July, 2004In another 2004 column, Johnson writes: "Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.2004-2012Johnson sits on the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Southern Baptist Church has issued policy statements that God's plan for marriage and sexual intimacy is a lifetime relationship of one man and one woman. They reject homosexuality and say that women are not eligible to serve as pastors. Since 1992, the national convention has "disfellowshipped" various churches that support LGBTQ inclusion.Sept. 2004Johnson writes another op-ed in the Shreveport Times where he defends Louisianas decision to ban same-sex marriage, and suggests it could lead to people marrying their cats and dogs or give pedophiles the right to marry children. He adds that allowing same-sex marriage could be the downfall of the democratic system.Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural and, the studies clearly show, are ultimately harmful and costly for everyone Society cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle. If we change marriage for this tiny, modern minority, we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles, and others will be next in line to claim equal protection. They already are. There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet.April, 2005 On Day of Silence, a nationwide campaign which combats anti-gay bias in schools across the U.S., Johnson says, in regard to the event, that you can call it sinful or destructive [but] ultimately its both.Johnson and ADF create a counterprotest called Day of Truth, where they distribute T-shirts emblazoned with "The Truth Cannot be Silenced" and express their refusal to support what they deem "detrimental personal and social behavior," in reference to homosexuality.The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network criticize the counterprotest. In response, Johnson says, "No one is for bullying and harassment. But that's cloaking their real message -- that homosexuality is good for society."July, 2005In another editorial titled Sexual Orientation Move Should be Opposed, Johnson argues that the city of Shreveport, LA, should not adopt policies that would include sexual orientation and gender identity under the city's employment nondiscrimination policies.He writes, Your race, creed, and sex are what you are, while homosexuality and cross-dressing are things you do This is a free country, but we dont give special protections for every persons bizarre choices.2007Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, Illinois, tells a student she cant wear a shirt that says "BE HAPPY, NOT GAY" after a Day of Silence supporting gay rights. The school allows her to wear a shirt opposing homosexuality but requires a less derogatory message, like "Be happy, be straight."ADF lawyers argue this violated the students free-speech rights, but a federal judge rules the school can restrict the message to promote tolerance. Johnson, as an attorney for ADF, criticizes the decision as illogical: Certainly the First Amendment has got to protect negative statements as well.2008Johnson tells a radio host that, Some credit the fall of Rome to not only the deprivation of the society and the loss of morals, but also to the rampant homosexual behavior that was condoned by the society.Feb., 2009In an Exodus International article titled Question Homosexuality, Johnson defends the Day of Truth counter protests: "Day of Truth students have the same constitutional right to express their viewpoint as any other student Unfortunately, despite using buzzwords like "tolerance" and "diversity," many schools have censored students who want to peacefully express a Christian viewpoint.July, 2013Johnson represents Louisiana in a case where a same-sex couple who legally married in California sought to have their marriage recognized by the state of Louisiana and the ability for one plaintiff to legally adopt the biological son of her partner. The couple ultimately won the case in 2015.July, 2015Johnson defends Louisianas ban on allowing same-sex couples to jointly file state income taxes and to register two parents on birth certificates.Sept., 2016 Johnson gives a statement to the Louisiana Baptist Message, a Southern Baptist newspaper, on his faith and its effect on his politics: Ive been out on the front lines of the culture war defending religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and biblical values, including the defense of traditional marriage, and other ideals like these when theyve been under assault.Representative Mike JohnsonJan., 2017Johnson is sworn into office as a member of Congress.July, 2017In an operating agreement for Onward Christian Counseling Services LLC signed and notarized by Mike Johnson, he and his wife Kelly say:We believe, and the Bible teaches, that any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, pornography or any attempt to change ones sex, or disagreement with ones biological sex, is sinful and offensive to God.Office of Representative Mike Johnson - FacebookThe Liberty WayStudent Honor Code 2024-2025 422KB PDF fileDownloadDownload2018Johnson becomes an adjunct professor at Liberty University, the worlds largest evangelical college, which asks students to sign an honor code known as The Liberty Way that prohibits any expression of LGBTQ identity. Examples of behavior that violate the honor code include:Romantic displays of affection with a member of the same sex (e.g., hand-holding, kissing, dating, etc.),Actions confirming the denial of biological birth sex (e.g., asking to be referred to by pronouns inconsistent with ones birth sex, using restrooms and changing facilities reserved for persons other than ones birth sex, etc.)Dont Say Gay Act Pdf42.6KB PDF fileDownloadDownloadSept., 2022Johnson and 32 other Republican members of Congress introduce the Stop the Sexualization of Children Actviewed by many as a national Dont Say Gay bill.Speaking on his podcast, Johnson tells his wife, [The bill] will make it unlawful to use even one penny of federal funds to develop, implement, facilitate or be a purveyor of any of these sexually oriented programs.March, 2023Johnson receives the True Blue award from Family Research Council (FRC)a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate groupfor his "100% Voting Record on FRC Action's 2022 Scorecard. FRC President Tony Perkins says Johnson "courageously stood strong against dangerous, freedom-eroding laws like the Equality Act and (Dis)Respect for Marriage Act.Photo by Office of Representative Mike Johnson/FacebookMay, 2023Johnson says on his podcast that shopping at Target, which stocks Pride merchandise, is not honoring God and that they would not want to be at Target when rapture happens.He adds that, The foundations of our country are crumbling And its on vivid display now every week. And the big thing this week is the hubbub over Target stores and how theyve just gone apparently all in on this woke agenda.Later in the podcast, Johnson says that anyone who is worried about the health, the mental stability, the well-being of children would be offended by the Pride displays at Target, falsely claiming that Target partnered with Satanic companies. He adds that this is all a sign of how darkness has encroached on America. He cites statistics about the prevalence of teen suicide ideation and blames the LGBTQ+-whatever agenda.The following month, Target faces significant backlash and reported employee harassment, including bomb threats because of their Pride-themed merchandise. June 2023Again on his podcast, Johnson says: Thursday was June 1st, marked the beginning of Pride Month in the U.S. You know, and that's the LGBTQ agenda. Why is there an entire month dedicated to normalize and legalize the ideology and behavior of such a small minority while stigmatizing and criminalizing those who disagree? Why are groups who ridicule biblical morality elevated by popular culture and those who support it are denigrated?Johnson and Betsy DeVos discussing Title IX in relation to women's sports. Photo: Office of Speaker Mike Johnson - X.comJuly 2023At a July 2023 hearing on transgender youth, Johnson speaks out against allowing children to receive gender-affirming care, saying: "Our American legal system recognizes the important public interest in protecting children from abuse and physical harm. He also co-sponsors legislation that would make it a felony to provide opposite-sex hormones or gender-affirming surgeries to minors.Subscribe nowHouse Speaker Mike Johnson Oct., 2023In an interview with Jim Garlow, a former pastor who was a member of Trumps faith advisory board, Johnson says, faith in our institutions is the lowest its ever been and noted that church attendance had dropped below 50%. Johnson cites statistics about high school students sexual orientation, saying that one-quarter of high school students in 2021 identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, questioning or other. Were losing the country, Johnson concludes.Johnson speaks to reporters about his well established record on transgender issues. Nov., 2024Taking direct aim at Sarah McBride, the first elected openly transgender member of Congress, Johnson bars transgender people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity. He states that, For anybody who doesnt know my well-established record on this issue let me be unequivocally clear: A man is a man and a woman is a woman, and a man cannot become a woman.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

Photo by Pavlo Kolotenko / Photosmash for Getty. Design by Sam Donndelinger. Subscribe nowIn 2008, Lucas Wilson moved to Lynchburg, VA to attend Liberty University for an evangelical education.Wilson knew he was gay from the age of four. But as he got closer to religion, he remembers being taught that his queerness was something to fix. He says his time at Liberty Universitythe worlds largest evangelical college, which asks students to sign an honor code that prohibits any expression of LGBTQ identitywas awful. Honest to goodness, I dont think Ive met such mean-spirited, nasty, nasty people in my life, he told Uncloseted Media.In 2021, nine years after Wilson graduated from Liberty, he joined a lawsuit alongside 39 other LGBTQ-identifying plaintiffs who also attended religious colleges. The lawsuitconvened by the Religious Exemption Accountability Project against the U.S. Department of Educationalleged that publicly-funded religious universities are unlawfully using religious exemptions to Title IX as a justification to discriminate against LGBTQ people. Eliminating discrimination that targets LGBTQI+ students is a critical part of the Departments mission," the Department of Education said in their motion to dismiss, arguing that the complaints should be transferred to regional departments or dismissed. Amongst the legal defense was Kristen K. Waggoner, CEO and President of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative Christian legal advocacy group and a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group.Wilson, now 34, says he went to individual conversion therapy sessions with one Pastor on campus and also attended the universitys conversion therapy group known at the time as Band of Brothers. I was meeting with this pastor once a week and he was telling me, You're doing a good job, you're on the right trackyou're going to overcome this, he says. And so I always had this hope, this twisted hope that I was going to be able to be straight.The Pastor and Liberty University did not respond to Uncloseted Medias request for comment.At the end of August this year, Waggoner and her team succeeded in getting the case dismissed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, meaning that those with experiences like Wilsons didnt have a case. Title IXs religious exemption does not violate the First Amendments Establishment Clause, the Courts opinion states. Meet Kristen WaggonerWaggoner is a legal powerhouse in Americas conservative Christian landscape and is used to getting her way in the courtroom. She is renowned for her role in Dobbs v. Jackson which, in 2022, led the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, rolling back abortion rights in over 14 states. Mississippis 15-week abortion banfor which Jackson Womens Health Organization sued the stateis based on a model bill penned by ADF.In a statement following the decision, Waggoner said the ruling was a major victory for unborn children and their mothers, and that today is a day of celebration, but the battle continues, as states either respect or shirk their responsibility to protect the life and health of women and children.On top of Waggoners work in rolling back womens access to reproductive healthcare, she has over a decade of experience fighting against LGBTQ rights. She has argued three winning cases in the Supreme Court, and been counsel of record for at least six anti-LGBTQ cases over the span of ten years. As Vice President of Legal and now CEO of ADF, Waggoners employees are voicing support or testifying in favor of dozens of anti-LGBTQ cases currently sweeping through state legislatures.Waggoner is a new generation of effectiveness, says Michelle Nickerson, a Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago. She can very professionally and with great political savvy and knowledge of the law advance ideas that would set us back decades, that would make this world very hostile to [the LGBTQ community].Uncloseted Media reached out to Waggoner multiple times for an interview and for comment. She did not respond.As the country edges closer to a Republican trifecta, Waggoners power could become even more pronounced. She has been slated by some for a Supreme Court justice nomination from President-elect Donald Trump. [Even] if she's not on the court herself, the courts will be a lot more friendly than they already are, Mary Ziegler, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at UC Davis, told Uncloseted Media. And so arguments that [Waggoner and] ADF make will be much more feasible.Waggoners Early DaysGrowing up, Waggoner was influenced by her fatherPastor Clint Behrendswho was superintendent of Cedar Park Christian Schools, an Assemblies of God Pentecostal congregation in Bothell, WA. By the age of 12, she said that she had decided to become a lawyer to protect our First Amendment freedoms to help people live out [their] religious convictions in the public square, adding that these freedoms and our right to exercise them does not depend on cultural popularity or political power.For a year in the late 90s, Waggoner clerked for the Washington Supreme Court Justice Richard B. Sanders, a member of the Libertarian party who voted to uphold a ban on gay marriage. In 1998, Waggoner began practicing law for Elis, Li & McKinstry with a focus on religious freedom. She worked there for 15 years until 2013 when she joined ADF as Senior Vice President of their U.S. Legal Division. From there, she worked her way up to become the organization's first female CEO and President.ADF is a notoriously anti-LGBTQ Christian legal group. It was co-founded in 1994 by Alan Sears, who co-authored The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today. With over 450 staff and over 4,800 network attorneys around the world, ADF has litigated and lobbied against marriage equality and anti-LGBTQ discrimination laws, and in favor of conversion therapy, and of removing trans peoples access to bathrooms or trans kids' access to gender-affirming healthcare.The group also has an international branch, ADF International, which holds Special Consultative Status within the United Nations. Their litigation spans beyond U.S. soil. They have voiced support or testified in favor of anti-LGBTQ bills in Eastern Europe and Caribbean countries, and in Belize, where they defended a law that attempted to keep in place the criminalization of gay sex.ADF did not respond to a request for comment.Success At The Supreme CourtUpon joining ADF in 2013, Waggoner used freedom of speech laws to defend a Washington-based florist after the store owner refused to supply flowers for a gay couples wedding. Shortly after, she defended Jack Phillips in the infamous Masterpiece Cakeshop case that made national headlines. Waggoner argued that Phillips' religious expression was denied after he refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court and in a 7-2 decision, Waggoner won.These laws are being used against real people, creative professionals who simply want to live peacefully and consistently and create custom work that is consistent with their religious beliefs, Waggoner said in an interview with ABC News in 2016.A few years later, in 2023, Waggoner won another Supreme Court case involving a Colorado-based designer who didnt want to produce a wedding website for a gay couple. However, The New Republic later uncovered that Stewart, the man named in the case, was actually heterosexual and never even requested a website. If somebodys pulled my information, as some kind of supporting information or documentation, somebodys falsified that, Stewart told TNR. Im married; I have a childIm not really sure where that came from. But somebodys using false information in a Supreme Court filing document, he added.Despite Stewarts claims, the ruling was not overturned and Waggoners wins at the Supreme Court set a new legal precedent when it comes to business owners having the right to use religious freedom to refuse services to gay people.[Waggoner] is just a really damn good lawyer, says Ziegler. Her M.O. has become the choice between pragmatism and absolutism, she says, adding that Waggoner straddles being realistic with the types of cases she pursues and the strategies she uses to litigate them with her ultimate goals of rolling back LGBTQ protections at large.[But] since Dobbs, shes become more aggressive, Ziegler adds.Using Mainstream Media as a Vehicle for Her MessageIn 2018, Waggoner continued to move up ADFs ladder and added Senior Vice President of Communications to her title. She started popping up as a legal expert on cable and network news like ABC, CNN and Fox, and even daytime talk shows like The View, moving her argument beyond the courtroom and into the public eye. This gave Waggoner a key to a door out of the conservative Christian echo chamber and an ability to communicate to the mainstream American public thatwithin First Amendment lawit is acceptable to discriminate against LGBTQ people based on religious beliefs.Uncloseted Media is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Even before her title change, Waggoner spoke in 2016 to George Stephanopoulos on ABC News This Week, which has an audience of roughly 2.5 million. She defended efforts in North Carolina to exclude trans women from womens bathrooms, citing safety concerns for cisgender women and girls. This is a common sense provision that would restrict men from accessing girls' locker rooms, Waggoner told Stephanopoulous, misgendering trans girls and women throughout the interview and being left unchecked by the host. We don't want to have to undress in front of someone who is of the opposite biological sex.Promoting Conversion TherapyAfter Waggoners successful Supreme Court run, she went on to defend Brian Tingley, a Washington State-based Christian therapist who challenged a law that disciplines healthcare providers for practicing conversion therapy.In this instance, Waggoner didnt win. In 2021, a judge dismissed the case, upholding Washington state laws that protect LGBTQ youth from exposure to serious harms caused by conversion therapy. The law was struck down again in 2022, when the judge ruled that healthcare providers should not be able to treat gay children by telling them that they are the abomination [they] had heard about in Sunday school."Outside of the courtroom, Waggoner has advocated for conversion therapists, promoting them in a 2021 public speech as a legitimate option to help people overcome same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria and live consistent with the beliefs of their faith.Waggoner cited Dr. David Schwartz as a good option for conversion therapy. Dr. Schwartz, a Brooklyn-based orthodox Jewish psychiatrist, sued the state of New York for passing local laws that prevented him from conversion therapy. ADF represented him in the case. In 2020, New York repealed the counseling ban and Schwartz and his attorneys dropped the case.For Lucas Wilson and Andrew Hartzler, another gay man who was a plaintiff in the lawsuit against religious colleges that was defended by Waggoner, conversion therapy was nothing short of a nightmare.Hartlzer says he experienced six weeks of conversion therapy at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which left him walking around like a zombie and getting really depressed, being in [his] room crying. Oral Roberts University did not respond to Uncloseted Medias request for comment.I was taught that if you like someone of the same sex your relationship with Jesus is not as strong as it needs to be, Hartzler told Uncloseted Media.Waggoners Shift to Rolling Back Trans RightsOver the past few years, Waggoner has increasingly shifted focus to legislation focused on rolling back transgender rights. In an interview last year with The New Yorker, she said the ADFs next priority is fighting the radical gender-identity ideology infiltrating the law. She said she doesnt believe in transgender identity, only in gender dysphoria, adding, I believe there are people who are uncomfortable in their bodies.In 2019, ADF initiated their first suit aimed at banning trans girls from competing on sports teams that match their gender identity. From there, they have appealed two cases to the Supreme Court: B.P.J. v. West Virginia State Board of Education and Hecox v. Little, saying that it is not fair for men to compete in womens sports, again misgendering trans women.In 2020, they brought a casewhich is still ongoingagainst the Connecticut Association of Schools and two trans student athletes, targeting the inclusion of transgender girls in girls athletics. It is so painful that people not only want to tear down my successes, but take down the laws and policies that protect people like me, Andraya Yearwood said in a statement at the time of filing, I will never stop being me! I will never stop running!In the case, for which Waggoner was counsel of record until April 2024, ADF attempted to have a judge removed when he told Waggoner and her team that deliberately and repeatedly misgendering trans people is bullying.Subscribe for LGBTQ-focused journalism.In 2021, ADF helped draft Floridas so-called Dont Say Gay bill, which passed into law, prohibiting any classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity. Other states have adopted ADF-drafted legislation restricting gender-affirming care for minors.Last year, Waggoner said liberal government officials are threatening to set up a new kind of police stateone in which dissenters who believe that marriage can involve only a man and a woman are forced to salute the rainbow flags flying outside every town hall, in which teachers are required to indoctrinate children into the belief that gender is not binary, and in which shelters for battered women must make room for trans women.Waggoner Goes Beyond AmericaOn Oct. 16, 2024, Waggoner broadened her reach and addressed delegates at the United Nations in a meeting convened by ADF International and the Permanent Mission of Paraguay about the inclusion of trans women and girls in sports. In her speech, she called it a violation to allow trans women into womens intimate space. Waggoner cites a boycott of the San Jose State womens volleyball team claiming that, The womens team was forced to allow a biological male [referring to a trans woman] on the team, prompting some to raise serious concerns about their own physical safety.Kristen Waggoner Speaks at UN Event on Womens SportsWhen it comes to trans women, Waggoner leans on her role as a mother and identity as a cisgender woman. What [Waggoner] manages to do by describing trans women as men is to claim that shes representing victims, people who have less power, says Nickerson. So much about feminism is about male violencephysical and otherwiseand so if she can describe trans women as men who are trying to access women, and if she can do it without yellingshes going to win so many people over who see her as a voice of reason. says Nickerson, adding that this is a weaponization of feminism.Waggoners Next MoveSince President-Elect Trumps first term, Waggoner and ADF have benefited from a heavily conservative court system.Ziegler says that ADFs successive wins, particularly at the Supreme Court, have made the group bolder in the cases they will bring before a judge. If you have the Supreme Court, you dont need to convince Congress, she says. This allows ADF to push for cases that may not be as popular with the American public, putting marriage equality, reproductive rights and trans rights at greater risk.It is since Waggoners tenure that ADF has pushed into reproductive rights. Ziegler says the group is now one of the biggest players in litigation around contraception and IVF, while remaining the biggest anti-LGBTQ player.Right now, you have to see [reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights] as related, because the people who are trying to change policy through the courts are pursuing things that way.Its not likely Trump will nominate Waggoner to the Supreme Court, mainly on account of her not having any prior judicial experience. It would be easier for her to follow the kind of Amy Coney-Barrett path, says Ziegler, where shes nominated to a federal courtfor a little bit before subsequently receiving a SCOTUS nomination.In the meantime, Ziegler expects Trump to appoint a ton of conservative judges that will play in Waggoner and ADFs favor. In Trumps first term, he appointed more than 200 judges to the federal bench, including nearly as many powerful federal appeals court judges in four years as Barack Obama appointed in eight.So I think what's next for Waggoner is to take advantage of that. If she's not on the court herself, the courts will be a lot more friendly [to her] than they already are.Additional reporting by Spencer Macnaughton and Sam Donndelinger.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

(Getty Images)By: Orion Rummler, Grace PanettaThis story was originally published by the 19th. Subscribe nowCongress has a long list of pressing priorities including funding the federal government to prevent a shutdown that it is likely to put off until 2025. One new item packed on that to-do list: legislation introduced by GOP Rep. Nancy Mace to ban transgender women from womens restrooms, and transgender men from mens restrooms, on any federal property.The South Carolina lawmaker proposed this bill after launching a campaign to remove newly-elected Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware from womens restrooms on Capitol Hill. After House Speaker Mike Johnson announced a rule that effectively matched her initial proposal, Mace expanded her proposed bill to restrict the ability of all trans Americans to use restrooms, locker rooms or changing rooms on federal property across the country.If passed into law, how would such a bill be enforced, and what would be the consequences? And what is the atmosphere like right now for transgender lobbyists and advocates who work on the Hill? The 19th spoke with multiple experts to find out.Where would such a law apply?Such a far-reaching law would mean widespread discrimination against all transgender people, experts say, although Maces rhetoric has singled out trans women. It would have the potential to expose trans and nonbinary people to harassment and discrimination at national parks, courthouses, IRS buildings like taxpayer assistance centers, Social Security Administration offices, and some post offices and Native American lands.If enforceable, this federal ban would exclude trans people from spaces that are meant to be among the most accessible to Americans, said Kelly Dittmar, an associate professor of political science at Rutgers-Camden University and the director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP).I would assume in this case, were talking about Smithsonians and other federal buildings, museums, landmarks, things that should be accessible to the population in part because they are government funded or run, she said.The language in Maces proposed bill would restrict bathroom access in any building, land, or other real property owned, leased, or occupied by any department, agency, or instrumentality of the United States (including the Department of Defense and the United States Postal Service), or any other instrumentality wholly owned by the United States, or by any department or agency of the District of Columbia or any territory or possession of the United States.As the Washington Post reports, this proposal would likely impact the public libraries, recreation centers, and public schools of Washington, D.C. which is home to a large population of LGBTQ residents and is slated to host World Pride in 2025.How likely is it that this ban will become law?Maces bill is unlikely to advance until the new Congress is sworn in this January, as the Senate is currently adjourned until December 2, and members are preoccupied with major defense and agricultural measures. When and if this bill does come into play, it would have to overcome a potential filibuster by Senate Democrats, despite Republicans holding a majority in each chamber. It is also unclear how much support Mace holds for this bill among Republicans.How would this law be enforced?There are no details in Maces proposal about how nationwide restrictions on trans Americans bathroom use would be enforced, and her office did not respond to a request for comment. To understand what such a ban would look like in practice, experts point to state bathroom bans that have percolated, and largely failed to become law, since 2015.These state bathroom bans provide few, if any details about how they would be enforced because they dont need to private citizens are often meant to be the enforcers, said Logan Casey, director of policy research at the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit that tracks LGBTQ legislation.The way that the laws are de facto enforced is often through the emboldening of private individuals to police other peoples bathroom use, he said. Theres no written enforcement because the proponents of these bills know that just by talking about this, let alone enacting these laws, that they are emboldening individual people themselves to enforce these bathroom bans.A recent example that takes this formula to an extreme can be seen in Odessa, Texas. A new expansion of the West Texas towns ordinance allows individual citizens to sue transgender people caught using bathrooms that match their gender identity and seek no less than $10,000 in damages, per the Texas Tribune.Deputizing private citizens to enforce this kind of law enables high rates of harassment and violence against transgender people as well as cisgender people, Casey said, particularly women who do not conform to traditional ideas of femininity.Whats going on at Capitol Hill? Are trans people banned from bathrooms there?All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms are reserved for individuals of that biological sex, Johnson said in a statement on Wednesday. The policy appears to apply to all transgender people working at the Hill or simply visiting the building complex. Johnsons office did not respond to a request for comment confirming this.Johnsons statement also does not explain how the new policy will be enforced. Maces original bill proposed that the House sergeant-at-arms would enforce a bathroom ban, but Johnsons announcement made no such reference. His office did not respond to a request for comment on the new rule.Without any clarity on enforcement, trans lobbyists and advocates like Caius Willingham, a senior policy analyst at Advocates for Trans Equality, are forced to wait and see whether they will be policed for trying to do their jobs and what the consequences of noncompliance could be. Unlike members of Congress, these employees dont have access to private facilities and when working on the Hill, alternative options are few and far between.The Capitol grounds are massive. Some buildings dont even have a single, single-occupancy bathroom. So practically, if Im going to spend the day on the Hill meeting with legislators and staff, which is core to my job, I may have to be strategic about what bathrooms I use, he said. I might have to run outside, to find a restroom outside the Capitol building.The broader implications of a federal bathroom ban would essentially extend this ban to all of D.C., he said, considering how many people work in federal buildings.Is this legal?Within the courts, there has been a split in opinions: Last year, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Florida policy banning transgender students from using bathrooms that match their gender identity. However, in 2021, the Supreme Court handed a win to trans advocates by keeping in place a 4th U.S. Circuit Court decision that found a Virginia bathroom ban unconstitutional.Across the country, two states Utah and Florida ban trans people from using bathrooms and facilities that match their gender identity in all government-owned buildings, K-12 schools, and colleges, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Breaking that law is a criminal offense in Utah and Florida. Seven other states have passed laws restricting trans Americans bathroom usage only in K-12 schools.Article I of the Constitution gives Congress broad jurisdiction over its own internal rules and procedures. But Maces proposed federal bathroom ban could run afoul of recent Supreme Court precedent, said Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia. The majority opinion in the Supreme Courts 2020 decision in Bostock vs. Clayton County, authored by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, ruled that discrimination on the basis of sexuality or gender identity constitutes unconstitutional sex discrimination.I dont think theyve looked at this in light of the law whatsoever, Comstock said. So I think this is just an embarrassing stunt which does raise attention to the challenges and discrimination faced by transgender Americans.Subscribe nowWho is actually endangered by trans people using the bathroom?Research shows that trans people, not cisgender people, are actually the ones who experience violence and discrimination when using the restroom.The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found that many trans people avoid public restrooms out of fear of how they may be treated. 26 percent of over 27,000 respondents said that in the previous year, they had been denied access to restrooms, had their presence in a restroom questioned, or were verbally harassed, physically attacked or sexually assaulted in a restroom.Research from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, in 2018 found that expanding non-discrimination laws to include transgender people does not affect the number or frequency of criminal incidents in restrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms. While Mace and other Republican lawmakers have claimed that banning trans women from womens restrooms will protect women, empirical evidence does not show that including trans people actually leads to safety or privacy incidents.Willingham said that when he worked in the House as a legislative assistant to Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington from 2021 to 2023, his identity as a transgender person was never made an issue. He watched as members of Congress would share transphobic rhetoric at hearings and floor debates and then treat him, an actual trans person, with respect. It was a jarring experience.Its really frustrating to see things go backwards in Congress, he said. My experience working even across the aisle was extremely positive.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

By: Orion Rummler, Grace PanettaThis story was originally published by the 19th. People stand outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)Subscribe nowFor the first time, the Supreme Court on Wednesday will consider a states authority to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth and whether such a ban constitutes sex discrimination. Oral arguments for United States v. Skrmetti, a case focused on Tennessees right to ban such health care for minors, will give new insights into the justices thinking around gender-affirming care for trans youth at a time when that care is banned across the country and is expected to come under fire during a second Trump administration.The issue at the core of this case is whether banning a certain kind of health care for just one group transgender youth violates the 14th Amendments equal protection clause by discriminating based on sex. Laws that make sex-based classifications are subject to a more rigorous legal review to determine their constitutionality, and it would be difficult for Tennessees law to survive that scrutiny.What will happen at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, and whats next? The 19th has followed this case from the beginning and explains it here.Subscribe nowWhat will happen during oral arguments?Oral arguments will last approximately one hour. The majority of that time will be dedicated to attorneys answering the justices questions, not rehashing each point of the case so far. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, representing the United States, will be allotted 15 minutes to make the best legal case and answer those questions, as will the attorneys for the ACLU and Lambda Legal who are respondents in support of the trans adolescents and their families, who are challenging to ban. The Tennessee attorney generals office will have 30 minutes to do the same.Based on previously filed briefs, the solicitor general, alongside attorneys from the ACLU and Lambda Legal, will argue Wednesday that Tennnessees gender-affirming care ban for minors is sex discrimination and that the Supreme Court should vacate the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit decision that allowed the ban to take hold.On the opposing side, the office of Tennessees attorney general will argue that the Supreme Court should affirm the 6th Circuit decision, which held that the gender-affirming care ban has nothing to do with sex, and that it does not target trans people.Columbia Law Schools Center for Gender and Sexuality Law expects the justices to push both parties to explain why Tennnessees gender-affirming care ban is or is not making a sex-based classification, and for the justices to disagree about the potential influence of abortion rights cases, like Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, on the case. The ways that the justices describe cisgender and transgender youth is also a point of interest for legal experts.How did we get here?This case began in April 2023 as L.W. v. Skrmetti, when the ACLU and Lambda Legal sued Tennessee via the states attorney general Jonathan Skrmetti to block the states health care ban. Attorneys filed the lawsuit on behalf of Samantha and Brian Williams of Nashville, and their teenage daughter, alongside two other families of transgender youth and Dr. Susan Lacy, a Memphis-based gynecologist who has provided gender-affirming care to adults and minors in the state.In July 2023, a three-judge panel on the 6th Circuit allowed Tennessees ban to take effect, blocking the statewide preliminary injunction that had been put in place by U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson. After the full circuit court upheld the opinion, Lambda Legal and the ACLU appealed to the Supreme Court and the Biden administration joined the case. The high court accepted the case at the end of its last term in June.When will the Supreme Court make a decision? What could the outcomes be?Following oral arguments, the justices will meet to decide the case and write the opinion of the court typically accompanied by a dissenting opinion. That decision is expected to be handed down toward the very end of the courts term in June 2025. Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLUs LGBT & HIV Project and a counsel of record in his case, outlined potential outcomes from the Supreme Court during a Monday press briefing.The outcome that were hoping for is that the Supreme Court recognizes that this is a law that draws distinctions based on sex, and therefore, under its long-standing precedent, the right standard of review is heightened scrutiny, and the court should therefore send it back down for the lower court to apply that standard, Strangio said.However, there is a chance that the justices could choose to get more involved, he added. Instead of sending this case back to the lower courts with a mandate to apply more rigorous legal scrutiny one that Tennessees law is unlikely to survive the justices could decide that the law is unconstitutional, or vice versa, on their own.How could this case impact trans people more broadly?The precedent set in this case will impact ongoing legal battles surrounding gender-affirming care bans across the country. Depending on the breadth of the justices final decision, and how far the court is willing to stretch its ruling that overturned federal abortion rights, this case has the potential to imperil transgender Americans ability to access health care, as well as the ability of all Americans to make decisions about their health.What the state of Tennessee is arguing is really dangerous for any person who has any sort of medical condition, Ezra Young, a civil rights lawyer and constitutional scholar, previously told The 19th. Tennessee is dictating what medical treatments people should or should not be allowed to have, Young said; that goes well beyond states authority to regulate medicine, specifically because giving health care to trans people is not a public health concern.While arguing that Tennessees gender-affirming care ban warrants heightened scrutiny because it discriminates against transgender people, Prelogar warned that the justices decision in this case could have large-scale consequences for transgender Americans. Transgender individuals are a discrete minority accounting for roughly one percent of the population. Their transgender status bears no relation to their ability to contribute to society, yet they face a wave of hostile legislation targeting them in all areas of life. And that wave will undoubtedly grow if this Court holds that laws discriminating against transgender Americans which could include, for example, laws prohibiting them from adopting children or becoming licensed as teachers warrant only the most deferential review under the Equal Protection Clause, Prelogar wrote.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

Hey all!Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Now that the holiday season is in full swing, so is the Supreme Court. Yesterday, for the first time ever, the SCOTUS justices heard arguments about whether a state has the authority to ban gender-affirming care for trans kids and whether a ban like this constitutes sex discrimination. After more than two hours of oral arguments, the SCOTUS appeared likely to back the ban, which would be a huge blow for transgender rights in the U.S. ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio, the first openly trans lawyer to argue in front of the Supreme Court, represented the kids and their parents. Strangiowho I was honored to speak alongside on MSNBC a few months agoargued that a ban on gender-affirming medical treatments like the use of prepubertal blockers and hormones have been permitted for a very long time to treat minors suffering from other conditions like endometriosis or early-onset puberty. Many far-right lawmakers and politicians have falsely equated gender-affirming healthcare with kids receiving bottom surgery (which very rarely happens for children in the U.S.). One of the most outlandish claims was when President-elect Trump claimed kids are going to school and coming home with sex changes. I understand that the issue of gender-affirming care for kids isin some respectscomplex and nuanced and I dont claim to be an expert. What I do think about when reflecting on this debate are the trans kids Ive met through my reporting. I think about Dylan Brandt, the 15-year-old trans boy in Arkansas who I played ping-pong with in his basement before we interviewed him for a 60 Minutes+ segment about why he was suing his states attorney general for trying to ban his access to testosterone. Then theres Andrew Bostad, another Arkansas trans teen who was navigating his first relationship when we met in 2021. There was Matthew, a trans boy in Florida I met during a Nickelodeon segment who was elated because he had just started to receive puberty blockers and told me they significantly reduced his struggle with suicidal ideation. Theres Luna, a young trans woman who I met eight years ago in California when I was filming a French documentary (shes now working at Disney, andaccording to her Dadfootloose and fancy free). And Joe Maldonado, whom I filmed making history when I documented him becoming the first openly trans kid to attend a Boy Scout meeting.Every single trans kid Ive spent time with has been confident and undoubtedly sure about their gender identity. And years later, none of them have changed their minds. They have wanted gender-affirming healthcare more than anything and have all told me on and off camera that the medications, alongside the talk therapy, have dramatically improved their mental health, self-esteem and self worth. Theres no doubt that this is a serious and complex debate and is something we should handle with care. But as the SCOTUS deliberates this decision, I really, really, hope the justices will listen to what the trans kids have to say.Subscribe nowLGBTQ Americans and the 2024 election: "I don't feel welcome here." (CBS NEWS)With increasing concerns over potential rollbacks of protections and rights for marginalized communities, advocates emphasize the urgent need to address the implications of Trump's alignment with right-wing groups and their agenda as the political landscape shifts.Takeaways from the historic transgender care arguments at the Supreme Court (CNN)Trans teen pleads with SCOTUS to strike down Tennessees gender-affirming care ban ahead of landmark hearing (Advocate)In the landmark Supreme Court case U.S. v. Skrmetti, 16-year-old transgender girl L.W. from Tennessee challenges a state law banning gender-affirming medical care for minors, arguing it discriminates based on sex and infringes on parental rights. A dozen Moscow clubgoers found guilty after anti-LGBTQ 'propaganda' raids (NBC)The club patrons were found guilty of petty hooliganism and put under administrative arrest as punishment.First transgender attorney to argue before the Supreme Court, challenging health care ban for minors (AP News)We set a Giving Tuesday goal of $2,000 and are still a few hundred bucks away from reaching it. If you have the means and are interested in supporting our work, you can here: https://secure.qgiv.com/for/unclosettedmediaIm honored to speak tonight as GRACEs special guest about Uncloseteds recent coverage as well as this weeks SCOTUS arguments. I will speak with Alaina Kupec, GRACEs founder, who created the nonprofit in an effort to change the hearts and minds of Americas movable middle when it comes to trans issues.We passed 3,000 subscribers yesterday! We are growing quickly and are so grateful for your support! Share Uncloseted with your friends so we can keep up this momentum.We partnered with The Stonewall Inn on World AIDS Day. Weve also been rolling out posts on our Instagram that highlight some of the voices we interviewed for our stories about how Black and Brown people in the South struggle to access HIV-prevention medication like PrEP.Photo: Parker Boyce-MichelsThis weekend, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting: Transgender men have the highest rates of eating disorders than any other community, and yet their struggles are under-researched and underreported. Sam Donndelinger follows Daniel-Jos Cyan in his journey with eating disorder recovery and gender-affirming care. In an essay by my Mom (yes! my actual Mom!), she writes about the importance of parental acceptance of LGBTQ kids during the holiday season. Thanks for reading! And feel free to email me with questions, complaints, tips or story ideas! Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chiefspencer@unclosetedmedia.comIf objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted MediaUncloseted Media is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Video edited by E E OliverSubscribe nowThis week, the debate surrounding gender-affirming healthcare (GAC) for trans kids took center stage after The Supreme Court seemed very likely to uphold Tennessee's ban on GAC for minors. For roughly two and half hours on Wednesday, lawyers offered oral arguments, and the justices debated whether states could prevent trans kids from using puberty blockers and hormone therapy. The conservative justices, 6 of 9 of whom lean conservative, repeatedly suggested that laws surrounding GAC for minors are best left in the hands of state legislatures.Since the arguments, dozens of protesters on both sides of the debate have rallied outside the courthouse in Washington, D.C.One of the key moments from the arguments was when Chief Justice John Robertswho has been described as a more moderate conservativesaid, It seems to me that it is something where we are extraordinarily bereft of expertise.As the media reacted to the news, countless talking heads with little to no experience in the science and research arena of trans healthcare started popping up on cable news and social media to weigh in. Coleman Hughes, a fellow at the conservative think tank The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, who has very little experience studying trans issues, was invited to opine about the science on CNN News Night with Abby Phillip. In a lead segment, he debated with trans advocates and cited studies, where he was positioned as the other side of the debate.The vast majority of Americans are deeply uneducated on the nuances of gender-affirming healthcare. Many cannot define it or think that it solely means bottom surgeries (which are very rarely performed on trans youth).To help our audience better understand what we know (and dont know) about what the research says regarding GAC and trans kids, we called fellow Substacker , an epidemiologist and scientific fact-checker who has done deep reporting and analysis of the research that exists in this area. Watch the full interview above. Full Transcript:Spencer Macnaughton: Hi, everyone. Spencer MacNaughton here. I'm the founder and editor in chief of Unclosed Media. I am here with Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Wollongong, and an epidemiologist who writes a substack called the Health Nerd. After the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the ban on gender-affirming healthcare for minors in the state of Tennessee, we wanted to get Gideon's perspective from an epidemiological point of view on what we know and don't know as it relates to the science and research behind gender-affirming care as it relates to kids. Gideon, thank you so much for chatting with us. You know, to a lot of Americans and people beyond there, they hear gender-affirming healthcare as kind of almost like a buzzword, but couldn't really define it if they tried, right? Could you possibly tell our audience what is gender-affirming healthcare exactly for kids?Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz: It is any care provided by clinicians to people who are questioning their gender or having issues with their gender assigned at birth. And that can span, or it does span, everything from just counseling to recommendations for social transition to medication and, for adults, sometimes surgical interventions as well.SM: Like, broad strokes, what do we know about gender-affirming healthcare for kids and what do we not know? What do we have left to learn?GMK: So that's a really complicated question. There are some aspects of gender-affirming care where we basically don't know anything. So there's no data currently on whether psychological interventions are beneficial. There are very, very few studies on whether counseling actually does anything per se. It's really hard to know just because we assume that such things are helpful, but it's very hard to know because we haven't really studied it. The field as a whole is very new. Almost all of the studies have been published since 2010, and that's in part because the definition of, the clinical definitions changed quite substantially in 2013. So prior to 2013, a clinician would diagnose someone with Gender Identity Disorder, and that was a very strict diagnosis and it was also a mental health issue, was seen as a mental health problem. And in the noughties, there was a big shift away from that and it moved to a gender dysphoria as the clinical problem, and gender dysphoria has no bearing on someone's identity. It is simply about whether the gender that they feel themselves to be matches the gender that they are presenting at, presenting as rather. But things that we have more evidence for are the impact of puberty blockers and hormone therapy. So puberty blockers are usually given to children around the ages of 12 or 13 who are experiencing parts of puberty, irreversible aspects of puberty, like deepening of the voice or growing breasts, and who don't want to experience those things and who experience having significant discomfort from those aspects of puberty. And they are a reversible pause.SM: Completely reversible, right?GMK: There are some questions in terms of completely because it does to some extent depend on your definition, but broadly reversible, yes. If you stop taking the drugs, you can continue puberty as normal. The question about reversibility becomes more complex when you take into account the further treatment. So if you go on puberty blockers and then you go on hormones, hormones are largely or substantially irreversible. Some aspects of hormone therapy are reversible, but some are not. And if you've taken puberty blockers, then the changes up till then would not be reversible. So it's a somewhat complex question, but broadly speaking, if you take puberty blockers for a year and then you stop taking them, yes, just go back to having a pretty normal puberty.SM: In the US, you know, we have a lot of people who, you know, a lot of far right or, you know, right wing, even President-elect Donald Trump, who will equate, you know, puberty blockers with essentially kind of like surgeries, like, equating those things as the same thing, really, right? But I know that Chase Strangio, he's the first openly trans lawyer who argued in the Supreme Court case. He argued that puberty blockers, for example, are for the most part, like you say, completely reversible, but B. they've been used for decades on teen girls or tween girls assigned female at birth for things like precocious puberty, like these are not new drugs, puberty blockers. Is that fair to say?GMK: That's very true, yes. So there are some arguments against using puberty blockers that say we have no idea what their long term impact on neurological development is. And that makes very little sense to me because, yes, we have been using them for decades for children with precocious puberty, and if they had these extremely negative impacts on neurological development, that would probably show up. We would know about that. So, yeah, we know a fair bit about the risks: there are some relatively minor issues with bone health, when you take puberty blockers, that you have to be aware of, and there are a few other side effects. Some people get headaches. But broadly speaking, we do know pretty much what the drugs do and how they work.SM: And then a lot of, you know, folks again, politicians a lot of the time in the U.S. say that, you know, kids are going for sex changes, gender confirmation surgery, bottom surgeries, really, right? But that is not happening all that much, if really at all. Do you know much about that?GMK: So as far as I'm aware, particularly in the US, the numbers don't support that argument. There are vanishingly few surgeries on people under the age of 18. The number of children for whom there is any surgery recorded, any genital surgery recorded, is fewer than 50. And where there are potentially surgeries happening, they are almost exclusively limited to teenagers who are aged 17.SM: You published a series of articles about the Cass Review, which is, as you know, many of us know, the biggest and perhaps most controversial review of healthcare for trans kids. Trans healthcare groups like WPATH have argued that its recommendations could severely restrict access to physical healthcare for trans youth, while some groups, including medical organizations and advocacy groups, have praised some parts of the report while criticizing others for drawing too far-reaching conclusions. Curious, like, how do you, as an epidemiologist who really dug in there, how do you summarize the findings?GMK: I think it's a very interesting document because, as I wrote in my articles about the Cass Review, the primary findings, the argument in the Cass Review, is that there is insufficient evidence to recommend things like puberty blockers and hormones, and that instead the government of the United Kingdom should rely on the psychological treatment until they run randomized clinical trials investigating puberty blockers and hormones for younger people. The stuff about puberty blockers and hormones was a very significant departure from what the UK had been doing up till then. And I think the issue that I had when I looked into the Cass Review in detail was basically that there were kind of two standards for evidence. Evidence that supported gender-affirming care was given a very, very careful interrogation, was treated very harshly. That evidence was considered to be suspect and they focused really deeply. But evidence that did not support gender-affirming care was pretty much just passed through and then entered into the document. So one example is that there was someone who theorized a single psychiatrist in Germany wrote an opinion piece, essentially an academic op-ed, saying that they thought that pornography could be influencing cisgender girls to become transgender boys. The document doesn't cite any evidence. It's just some one person's opinion, one German person's opinion. And that person works for an anti-treatment organization. So they identify themselves as someone who is recommending against treatment. That document is cited uncritically in the Cass Review. The Cass Review simply says that some clinicians believe that pornography may be influencing people's decision to be trans. So where it comes to evidence that kind of doesn't support gender-affirming care, the Cass Review basically just says any evidence will do, but the evidence for puberty blockers, that has to be interrogated. Every single study is carefully pulled apart. They were very, very harsh on that sort of evidence.SM: And what do you attribute that to? I mean, as an epidemiologist, when you get in the weeds of them interrogating one part of it really intensely, but not so much the other part. How do you explain that out? Why does that happen?GMK: I don't like to talk about people's motivations. All I can say is that if you read the document, you find that the recommendations don't line up with the evidence in many respects. If you read the document, the implicit recommendation is that children in the United Kingdom should not get any medical care for transition, they should only get psychological care. But psychological care was the part of transgender healthcare that the reviewers themselves, the actual people working on this, found to be the least convincing in terms of evidence, had the fewest studies of any area. So it's this weird juxtaposition where they say we have to rely on evidence except when it comes to actual treatment decisions.SM: So the recommendations per the Cass Report don't line up with what we know from the studies and the research that exists right now in terms of what's effective when it comes to gender-affirming healthcare.GMK: Yeah. And more importantly, I suppose, it doesn't line up with the evidence that they themselves put together.SM: So interesting. And another controversial topic, right, you know, detransitioning, and a lot of folks will say, who are against gender-affirming healthcare, will say that, you know, social contagion on YouTube and progressive teachers and different forces like this are, you know, creating a social contagion that's causing more kids to falsely say they are trans, right? What do we know about that?GMK: Yeah, I think if you look at the data, detransition or detransition and regret are complex because people, detransition is defined in many different ways. It's defined sometimes as people who stop identifying as transgender, but sometimes it's defined as people who stop identifying as trans but identify as non-binary are sometimes included, but sometimes not included in the definition. When you are doing a research project, you have to define it relatively specifically so that you can know what you're talking about. And in the research, yeah, detransition is defined in many different ways. So I think what the data suggests is firstly, detransition is very uncommon. Depending on the study you're looking at, the highest estimate anywhere is 30%, and that's from a study in the United States. That study found that 30% of adults it was about 34% of adults and about 28% or 26% of children who were taking puberty blockers or hormones, getting them through their parents or partners healthcare stopped getting those medications through their healthcare.SM: That's a high number.GMK: So that's relatively high. The thing about it, though, is it's not really an estimate of detransition, because there are many reasons why people may stop using their parents or partners healthcare even when it's free. They may move away. They may split up. They may fall out with their parents. They may decide that they just want to, even though it's more expensive, they want to break out on their own and pay for their own healthcare. They may want a different plan or want medications that aren't covered by that plan. You know, there's, yes, some portion of that is probably people who stopped taking the meds because they didn't want to anymore, but there's also many other reasons why they may have stopped taking the meds. There's a study in the Netherlands where they followed children who were taking puberty blockers up as adults up to their mid-twenties. And they found that nearly all, it was about 95%, of those children continued taking puberty blockers and then hormones as adults. So I think we can say with a fair deal of certainty that at least as far as medical treatment goes, the majority of children who medically transition at this point in time do not detransition as adults. And then regret, which is the other side of the coin, is complex. So if you ask people whether they regret their transition, somewhere between 10 and 20% will say they do. But if you hone in on that number, there was a study by Jack Turban and some colleagues where they analyzed a large dataset of survey responses from transgender people. And if you look at that study, the main reasons that people give for regretting their transition are related to factors that are external to themselves. So they transitioned and they lost their job, they transitioned and their parents didn't support it and that was very problematic for their mental health. And I think, so the Turban study found, I think, 13.8% said that they regretted transitioning to some extent, and most of those people regretted because other people were not supportive.SM: Factors that we don't even know exist, probably. I mean, I feel like in 2024, we're so far from having, you know, respect and acceptance of trans people in general, at least in American society, right? So if you think about gay guys, or gay people, right, you know, 30 years ago, a lot of people run back into the closet, right? So that could be even another factor that could play into that maybe.GMK: Yeah, it's, I mean, that's basically I think what the Turban study showed, is that when people talk about regretting their transition, the majority of the regret seems to come from what other people say about it and not so much from the changes that happened to them or how they feel about themselves.SM: How much do you think misinformation is playing into people's understandings as it relates to gender-affirming healthcare for trans kids right now?GMK: Oh, I think quite a lot. I mean, the rapid onset gender dysphoria issue is a rather remarkable case. I mean, the entire idea of rapid onset gender dysphoria is based on a handful of surveys of people who inhabit anti-trans Reddit forums and websites. And it is the only attempt at establishing a diagnosis that I'm aware of where we, where people have interviewed anonymous Internet trolls to try and figure out what is some sort of medical problem. The fact that that is, even that it's a term that's even discussed, is remarkable, especially given how terrible the scientific papers on this question are. So, yeah, I think misinformation does play into it quite a lot.SM: What is rapid onset gender dysphoria and how did it become mainstream? Because it is relatively a mainstream term now.GMK: So rapid onset gender dysphoria is the concept that children who have, teens primarily, who have never before had any experience of gender dysphoria and never expressed, specifically expressed to their parents a desire to be a different gender, all of a sudden, after going online, decide that they are trans. One of the things that makes rapid gender dysphoria pseudoscientific, in my opinion, rapid onset gender dysphoria rather, is that there is no definition of what the word rapid means. Usually that would be the, you know, the first part of defining a condition like this. We say acute onset X means that it's happened quickly. And we usually define that as like within a week. The acute period of Covid-19 is usually defined as the first month or two of Covid. So there's specific time periods that you would expect rapid to be. But it's not. It's just the parents think that it was quick. And the way that, so the idea of rapid onset gender dysphoria is basically that this social contagion idea that you touched on, they're not trans and they go online, they meet people online who convince them that they're trans, they go on Tumblr or TikTok or whatever. There is no evidence that this happens. The only evidence for the diagnosis of ROGD is a series of papers where the authors posted links to surveys on the r/detrans subreddit, and there are a few anti-transgender websites, websites that say that transgender people don't exist, so they posted links on those websites to recruit people who claim to be the parents of transgender teens and who claim that sometimes this transition was rapid. There are so many holes in that process. Firstly, they're all anonymous. There's no verification that these were actually, that these people are actually parents, never mind that they are parents of transgender youth. So you don't know how many of the people responding to your survey actually have children who are trans. There's no strict definition of rapid that I've seen in this research. So they just say, you know, was it a quick process, did it seem overly quick? And that isn't scientific. The next issue is that they don't have any information from the children. So the parents' perception of this experience may be rapid. The parents may say, oh, they went online and a month later they were trans. The children may have been feeling that way for years. So what you would really need to do is identify a group of children who were trans and ask the children and the parents how long before they transitioned did they start experiencing feelings of being the wrong gender. And that would give you some information on how quickly it happened. And then you would have to find a sample of children who are cisgender and see how many of them became trans, eventually came out as trans, and how many of them, and how quickly that happened. And then you might be able to say, well, some group of them were rapid, quote unquote. But the research that's been done so far to establish this diagnosis is just terrible.SM: And I get frustrated even hearing you explain that, because I think, you know, for even me, a journalist who researches this quite a bit, I'm not an epidemiologist, but I know how to research things. And it is tricky to separate fact from fiction here, right? So for parents or American citizens who are trying to find really strong research, what are kind of tips you'd offer them to be able to say, this is legitimate research, this is good? Because I think there's so many people in the U.S. and beyond who just genuinely and honestly don't understand what's trustworthy these days.GMK: I think that's a very difficult question because it takes time and effort and expertise to properly appraise scientific research. It's very easy to be misled by studies if you don't have the right training and experience. So if you just go online and someone sends you a link to a study that's been published, you may be convinced of things that aren't true because they've misunderstood the research, because the research is garbage, all sorts of things. I think when it comes to study appraisal and knowing what research is good, you kind of do need an expert.SM: Why do you think it's so damn hard to have these conversations? People don't want to have them in the media in general. You know, it's like pouring gasoline on a fire sometimes. Why do so many people avoid having these conversations about gender-affirming healthcare?GMK: I think particularly in the United States, it's because of the politicized elements of the discussion. Because really, when you're talking about gender-affirming care for trans youth, you are talking about a tiny, tiny group of people. The number of children who access gender-affirming care of any kind in the United States, I think the most recent estimate I have seen is that it was somewhere in the region of 0.2% of children. So generally the estimates are that about 1% of people between the ages of ten and 17 identify as trans. Below the age of ten, kids tend not to express, the numbers are so low that they're hard to measure. The actual issue that we're talking about is incredibly minor. And I don't mean to be blas about people's experience. I just mean that there is no reason why we should be having a huge national or international debate about this issue. It's really just a matter for healthcare professionals and patients, in my opinion. The three biggest killers of children in the United States are guns, automobiles and drugs. And yet gender-affirming care is one of the biggest media discussions. And how often do you see an article about car safety in the New York Times?SM: Very interesting. Yeah. Based on what you know about the research and everything you've studied, do you think gender-affirming care should be illegal for trans kids?GMK: No, I don't think making it illegal is likely to help the situation. But I also don't know enough about the ban or the Supreme Court decision to give you a strong opinion on what they're actually doing.SM: Well, they ban blockers, hormones, bottom surgeries, all of those things.GMK: So that's similar to the United Kingdom, which I do know a fair bit about. And I think that the decision to do so in the UK is not based on good evidence. I think that banning treatment leaves people with only one choice, which is to see a psychologist or a counselor about their gender dysphoria. And we know that there's basically no evidence around that at all. So basically what you're doing is throwing out all of the evidence that we've gathered so far on medication, saying we don't like that data, and giving people only one option, which is the least well-evidenced option.Additional reporting by Sophie Holland.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

by: Eve CrawfordPhoto courtesy: Eve CrawfordSubscribe nowOn the first day of December, as I decorated the house, sent out invitations for my Christmas Eve get-together for neighbors and friends, and used my blow dryer to dust off our fake tree, a sense of monotony descended on me. The routine of Christmas, of repeated traditions, seemed to melt into each other; one year becoming indistinguishable from the next. It felt as though the meaning of the holiday was getting lost in the overeating, the fatigue, and the spending of the season.But as I tied another bow onto the tree, I felt myself smile. Not this year. This year something was happening that would take me back to the soul of the season. My son, Spencer, who is in his mid-thirties and the editor-in-chief and founder ofthis very publication, will be bringing his partner, Sean, home for Christmas week. And the thought of that brought me joy.Sean grew up in rural Virginia in a deeply religious family that views homosexuality as a sin. At 17, he left home and moved to New York City to make a life for himself. A year later, on a phone call with his mom, he summoned the courage to tell her he was gay. She started crying and couldnt stop. On his next visit home, she said to him, You might as well have died in a car accident.As I adjusted the lights on the tree, I thought about the greater LGBTQ community at this vulnerable time of year. 34% of LGBTQ people have moved away from family to escape discrimination. 52% have few or no close family or friends they can ask for help and support. And more than 57% of LGBTQ youth have experienced at least one negative or rejecting experience from a parent. I thought about Sean, whose Mom told Uncloseted Media over text that his assertions about her rejection are incorrect but that she believes in the word of God and that God says the act of homosexuality is a sin.I thought back to the AIDS epidemic, of the many men who were struck down by the disease and of how someeven in my circle of theatre friends were more frightened of having to come out to their parents than of dying.In 1987, I helped look after my dear friend Tony in the last months of his battle with the disease. On the day he died, I went over to sit with his partner until the doctor arrived to sign the death certificate. When he got there, I will never forget the painful phone call he had to make to Tonys elderly, Catholic mother in England. She not only had no idea Tony was sick, but she had no idea that Tony was gay. As I sat, head bowed, studying the pattern on Tonys Turkish rug, all I could hear was the doctors side of the conversation. But the poor womans shock and confusion at the end of the line was palpable.He died of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, the doctor repeated.Pause.Then, He died of AIDS.There was a long pause as the doctor listened.At last, he said gently, Yes, you can call it cancer if you like.With Tony, left, and Spencers Dad, Ross Macnaughton, right. Photo courtesy: Eve CrawfordI wonder about the thousands of parents who lost their children in that war. If they could have them back, even for one day, would they give two hoots if they were gay?But even in these so-called enlightened times, LGBTQ friends of all ages have shared with me the various responses they received from their parents when they came out to them. You have been struck by lightning, You can change, or, You are dead to me.Uncloseted Media is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.How are they spending the holiday season? I wondered. What heartache and loss both parents and children must be feeling in this so-called season of love.My son Spencer and I never came close to estrangement. But when he came out to me at eight years old, I struggled to accept the truth of his courageous declaration. Thats just because your brother calls you that, I said, handing him a Kleenex to wipe away the tears. (In those days, boys called everything gay.) Fast forward seven years when he told me a second time, and I did it again. Maybe you dont know right now. At your age, theres confusion about all sorts of things. It took him a third time at 16 for me to finally hear him. This, despite my friendship with Tony and despite the fact that I am an actor and a Liberal! Last Mothers Day, I wrote an article for MSNBC about the stages I had to work through to arrive at acceptance. First came the denial: Was he just going through a stage? Then came the guilt: Was it my fault? Followed by the shame: How will my frail, elderly parents react? None of their many grandchildren were gay. And finally, the fear: What prejudice and danger will he face?Of course, none of these issues were really about Spencer. They were all about me. The guilt and the denial are laughable to me now. As if I had anything to do with my sons sexual orientation.Take it from me this holiday season: If a child tells you they are gay, believe them. That truth is as real as the color of their eyes. And when you hear those conspiracy theories about how kids are becoming gay or transgender through social contagion on YouTube or through the teachings of progressive teachers, treat them with the ridicule they deserve.As for the shame related to how my parents would have reacted, a paradoxical memory recently came to me. Both my parents regularly attended the Anglican church. Yet in the last five years of his life, my father, who died in 2006 at ninety years of age, stopped going. I attributed this to his increasing frailty. But after he died, I mentioned this in conversation with my mom and her response gobsmacked me. Oh heavens no! Thats not why he quit. He quit because he was furious with our church for not accepting gay marriage!Spencer, left, with my Dad, right. Photo courtesy: Eve CrawfordBoth my parents died without knowing Spencer was gay. Yet maybe they did. I have a feeling if I told them today, their response would be, And?As for the fear regarding my sons well-being? Yes, to an extent that was true. But more to the point was my own desperate need to hang on to what had been my vision for his future: The woman he would marry. The children he would have (my grandchildren!)So, what has all this got to do with the upcoming holiday season? If I could make one wish for all the parents out there who are struggling to accept their childs queer identity, it would be to let go. Let go of all of it: the denial, the guilt, the shame and the fear.And yes, even let go of your religious beliefs surrounding homosexuality.After all, isnt the most overwhelming message about Jesus birth one of love? And isnt love, at its fullest, unconditional? Isnt it about acceptance, without prerequisites and expectations?Shakespeare nailed it when he wrote, Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.Photo courtesy: Eve CrawfordWhen I finally surrendered my own fear and resistance about my vision of how my sons life should be, it was as though every muscle in my body let go.What I didnt expect was the joy that followed. Of fully connecting with my son. Of fully sharing the laughter, the tears, the challenges of both our lives.My only regret was the eight lost years of that joyous and authentic connection.None of us know how much time we have left in our precious life. So, this is my Christmas wish: For any parent out there imprisoned by the heartache of loss, pick up the phone and call your child while you still can. You only have to say two words.Come home.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media