This Pride Month, defending democracy means defending trans rights. As anti-trans laws surge and political attacks escalate, the rollback of LGBTQIA+ freedoms is becoming a core strategy of authoritarianism both in the US and abroad.
In private conversations, Democratic lawmakers will tell you that their Republican colleagues’ vicious campaign against transgender Americans is not driven by any real convictions. That while the issue has dominated right-wing talking points for the last several years, it is neither religious, nor ideological, nor particularly reflective of the concerns of conservative voters.
It is, however, a highly effective attention-seeking tactic. One that helps elected officials—like the Republican Congressman who insists on misgendering US Congresswoman Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender elected official in the House of Representatives—draw the eyeballs and donations of their constituents in fundraising emails.
The cynical strategy also paid off when Trump’s election campaign flooded the pre-election airwaves with an anti-trans ad: “Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” Never mind that 81% of Americans—including 93% of Trump supporters—listed the economy as their top issue; the anti-trans ad became one of the most viewed and talked about commercials of the entire campaign.
Today, attacking the transgender community is one of the right wing’s most effective mobilization tools. It fires up the conservative base, unsettles moderates, distracts from the lack of real policy solutions, and frames Democrats as out of touch with mainstream America. It also serves as a case study in how the MAGA right seeks to weaponize the federal government to roll back democratic rights—at home and abroad.
Backsliding after decades of progress
June is Pride Month, with celebrations in the US and in queer communities across the world. Fifty-six years after the Stonewall Riots in 1969, the American LGBTQ community is once again at the heart of a national battle over equality.
Since the 1960s, Americans have become increasingly supportive of the queer community. The AIDS crisis of the 1980s pushed many LGBTQ+ people to come out and demand federal HIV funding and broader inclusion. In the decades that followed, the fight for marriage equality became the movement’s central issue, culminating in a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2015 and federal legislation in 2022.
By 2023, 71% of Americans supported marriage equality, and 76% backed anti-discrimination protections in housing, employment, and public services.
But the virulent wave of anti-trans rhetoric and legislation is undermining the progress that has been made. New research shows that Americans are increasingly in favor of restrictions on trans rights and that support for broader LGBTQ+ equality, including same-sex marriage, is beginning to decline.
While the wave of anti-trans ads may have shifted some votes on the margins to Trump, it is the larger impact on public discourse that continues to reverberate. As one high-level LGBTQ+ strategist recently confided, “I think [the ad] significantly increased anti-trans sentiment among the general public.”
Trans Issues have become a right-wing mobilization tactic
The current campaign against transgender rights distorts the realities on the ground. Only .5% of American adults identify as transgender—approximately 1.3 Million people in a country of more than 340 Million. In fact, only about a third of Americans report even knowing a transgender person. It is an issue that has no relevance to most Americans’ daily lives. It did not appear in any of the countless surveys of voter concerns.
But trans rights have proven enormously relevant—and useful—for the right-wing. After the Supreme Court granted a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in 2015, Republican party strategists looked desperately for another issue that could mobilize their voters with the same emotional force. Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, was quoted in the New York Times: “We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking about...And we threw everything at the wall.”
What Schilling and other right-wing activists landed on was trans rights. Americans’ lack of familiarity with trans issues and the community’s relative lack of visibility has created a perfect storm for misinformation and bigotry.
Creating local laboratories for anti-trans policies
Right-wing activists have been highly strategic in seeding anti-trans policies at the local level, where the issue is framed as endangering children and infringing on parents’ rights. Republican states, cities and school districts have proposed and passed hundreds of bills in support of “concerned parents.” They have banned books with LGBTQ+ characters and storylines from school libraries and curricula. Dozens of state laws now bar trans students from using bathrooms or joining sports teams that align with their gender identity—despite little evidence of harm caused by their inclusion, and ample evidence that these laws endanger trans youths’ mental health and physical safety.
In 2022, Florida became the first state to revive AIDS-era school censorship laws, passing the notorious “Don’t Say Gay” law to prohibit classroom discussions about sexual orientation or gender identity. A second law went further, prohibiting the use of pronouns that do not align with a person’s assigned sex at birth. All together, since 2022, 10 other states have passed similar laws.
More than half of all US states have banned gender affirming care for trans youth—directly contradicting the recommendations of all major medical organizations. A major Supreme Court case this term will decide on the legality of the bans and may well legitimize the steady rollback of legal rights and protections.
All together, there were more than 1000 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced into state legislatures in the last two years, with 125 passing into law in 14 states—a legislative assault that led the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ civil rights organization in the country, to declare a national state of emergency last year.
Civil rights experts emphasize the carefully orchestrated nature of these decentralized initiatives. Major right-wing funders have poured millions into school board races and state-level campaigns, fueling the appearance of a “grassroots” anti-trans movement that serves to bolster a robust, right-wing mobilization effort.
Trump has given state-led anti-trans campaigns the full force and backing of the White House
On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order mandating changing the federal definition of gender to exclude transgender identities. The change has implications for every aspect of federal policy and marked the beginning of a national onslaught.
Since then, the administration has sought to end all federal funding for gender-affirming healthcare, including for the millions of Americans on Medicare and Medicaid. It has required all federal agencies to end their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices, as well as the removal of the term from all programs and policies, even calling for investigations into private companies’ DEI initiatives.
Trump has threatened to withdraw federal funding from schools that allow transgender female athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports teams—going so far as to sue Maine’s Democratic Governor for refusing to enforce the ban.
In one of his most controversial acts, Trump banned transgender service members—both those seeking to enlist and those already serving—from the military. As of June 6, more than 1000 transgender service members had been forced to “voluntarily” separate from the military, including troops who were on active deployment.
Throughout, the administration has waged an active disinformation war, describing lifesaving healthcare for trans youth as “chemical and surgical mutilation” akin to female genital mutilation, and aggressively censoring LGBTQ history and resources from government sites.
The American right is empowering a global attack on civil liberties and human rights
The next years promise to be uniquely painful for trans people in this country and globally. Rates of suicide and self-harm, as well as incidents of hate crimes—already high in the trans community—will increase in response to the harmful political rhetoric emanating from the White House.
In Europe, Slovakian President Robert Fico has taken inspiration from the Trump Administration, proposing a constitutional amendment to recognize only two genders. Hungarian Prime Minister Orban similarly referenced that “the world has changed and different winds are blowing in Washington” as part of his decision to ban Budapest pride.
Globally, the Trump Administration’s dismantling of foreign aid has eliminated funding for LGBTQ organizations and for HIV/AIDS public health initiatives, as well as for democratic civil society groups, across the globe. The US has forbidden its embassies and consulates to fly Pride flags or participate in Pride events and heaped praise on countries like Saudi Arabia that criminalize queer people.
As Nyke Slawik, a Member of the Bundestag and queer policy envoy for the German Greens, says: “This global attack on trans rights is not just stripping rights away from trans people. If these insane bathroom bills are introduced and women with short haircuts or women who look androgynous are dragged out of women’s restrooms because people think they are trans, this is an attack on not just trans people, but on women’s rights and basic equality. If the Hungarian parliament passes a law prohibiting pride events nationally, that is an attack on the freedom of expression and assembly, not only an attack on queer people.”
In short: the anti-trans campaign is an effective tool to chip away at civil liberties, human rights, and the democratic institutions that protect a free and open society.
Queer communities are core to democratic resistance
This month’s World Pride celebrations made clear that American civil society understands the interconnected nature of the democratic threat. Major civil rights groups like the ACLU and Lambda Legal are coordinating across issues to lead strategic litigation against the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legal actions. The Human Rights Campaign is working tirelessly behind the scenes to block harmful legislation, while international networks like the Global Equality Caucus are building cross-border alliances. Capital Pride organizers described their decision to hold World Pride in Washington, DC—despite the Trump administration’s actions—as a deliberate act of defiance: celebration as protest, in the true spirit of Stonewall.
As seasoned activists of the movement know, there are lessons to be learned from past fights. In a strategy that leans into empathy and believes in most people’s capacity for change, LGBTQ+ organizations are refocusing their efforts on storytelling—humanizing the fight for trans rights through individual faces and narratives, just as they once did to shift public perception of gay and lesbian love. That approach helped defeat a well-organized right-wing campaign by changing hearts and minds—and advocates hope it can do so again.
If the movement is successful, it will not only protect trans people. It will also push back against the Trump administration’s dismantling of democratic norms and the toxic masculinity driving today’s global authoritarian movements.
Want to learn more? These are some of the leading organizations working on trans rights in the US: