In authoritarianism, dictators come for LGBTQ+ people first. Here’s why.

Legal Abuse of Power

One of the ways the Trump administration’s abuse of power has been most evident is through its legal actions.

On Jan. 20, Trump signed 26 executive orders, the most signed by any president on their first day. Since then, he’s penned hundreds of additional executive orders—more than President Joe Biden signed during his entire four-year term. In many cases, he bypassed Congress in the process, leaving elected legislators on the sidelines.

Many of these actions have been in an effort to roll back LGBTQ rights. Trump has used executive orders to ban transgender people from serving in the military, limit participation of transgender students in school sports, and direct federal agencies to recognize only two sexes.

He’s also slashed HIV funding at a staggering rate. Uncloseted Media estimates that the National Institutes of Health has terminated more than $1 billion worth of grants to HIV-related research, including 71% of all global HIV grants.

It was these cuts that prompted Brooklynite Jeffrey Cipriano to turn out to protest. “The specific reason that I’m protesting is actually on the shirt I’m wearing,” says Cipriano, referring to his red “This is what an HIV advocate looks like” t-shirt.

“My best friend works for an organization called AIDS United. … His job is to travel the country and help people get AIDS medication, specifically trans and unhoused community members. But his job is at risk,” he says. “The end outcome of his work is that people who have issues in their lives have the issues resolved, and that’s going away under the current administration.”

Executive orders are based on powers granted to the president by the U.S. Constitution or by Congressional statutes. The president cannot use an executive order to create new laws or spend money unless Congress has authorized it. They are meant to direct how existing laws are implemented. But Trump has ignored democratic norms, often filling agencies with loyal supporters, using orders to go after political opponents, and pushing the limits of what the law allows.

In some cases, he has moved illegally. “The President is directing various executive branch officials to adopt policy that has either not yet been adopted by Congress or is in violation of existing statutory law,” says Jodi Short, professor of law at UC Law San Francisco. “The analogy to a king and what has troubled many about this presidency is the sheer consolidation of executive branch power in one individual.”

Short’s colleague, Dave Owen, agrees. “Illegality has been rampant,” he told Uncloseted Media in an email. “People are often cynical about the government, and they might think what Trump’s doing is nothing new. But most of the time, the executive branch takes the law seriously, and both legal constraints and norms of good governance matter,” he wrote. He says that through history, there’s been “a lot more integrity and a lot less lawlessness than most people realize.”

“This administration has broken with those traditions,” he adds.

Revolt Against Executive Orders

Many Americans have recognized this. A survey from April found that 85% of Americans agreed or strongly agreed that the president should obey federal court rulings even if he doesn’t like them.

In response to Trump’s overreach, more than 460 legal challenges have been filed across the country challenging his executive actions. One of these is a federal lawsuit by Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation that challenges the constitutionality of the Trump administration’s ban on military service by transgender people. Another lawsuit challenges Trump’s order directing federal agencies to withhold funds from medical providers and institutions that provide gender-affirming medical treatments for people under 19.

Both of those lawsuits are one reason 17-year-old Zoe Boik came out to protest with her friends and her dad. “Obviously, I’m disappointed and kind of helpless because there’s nothing I can directly do to change or impact anything that’s going on,” says Boik, who identifies as pansexual and gender fluid and is not legally allowed to vote.

Boik—who was seven years old when Trump announced his run for presidency in 2015—says she’s doing a research paper on Trump’s trans military ban and is frustrated because she sees it as inexplicable discrimination. “They’re not letting trans people serve… which doesn’t make any sense.”

LGBTQ Rights and Democratic Backsliding

This type of blatant discrimination is often a key sign of a country moving closer to authoritarianism and away from democracy. According to a 2023 research paper by Shaw and his colleagues, anti-LGBTQ stigma may contribute “to the erosion of democratic norms and institutions.”

The paper found that when a country with relatively high acceptance of LGBTQ rights introduces anti-LGBTQ legislation, it clashes with what most people believe and can weaken public trust in democracy, deepen political divides, and make it easier for populist or extremist movements to gain power.

“The level of acceptance of LGBTQ people is closely associated with the strength of democracy in a country,” Shaw says. “In some cases, we even saw that rising anti-LGBTQ rhetoric or policies preceded a broader decline in democracy.”

In Brazil, for example, early democratic gains coincided with rising LGBTQ acceptance, including legal recognition of same-sex unions and workplace protections. But as populist President Jair Bolsonaro came into power in 2019, he began questioning—without evidence—the security of Brazil’s voting systems, saying he would only lose his re-election campaign if there were fraud. He was also accused of trying to intervene in operations held by the Federal Police about the alleged criminal conduct of his sons, and he told his ministers that he had the power and he would interfere—without exception—in all cabinet ministries. At the same time, LGBTQ protections were rolled back, and schools and civil society faced censorship, suggesting that falling LGBTQ acceptance may have “preceded Brazil’s democratic erosion,” according to Shaw’s paper. In September of this year, Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a military coup.

Another example is Poland’s democracy weakening since 2015 under the Law and Justice Party, which consolidated power by undermining the Constitutional Tribunal, installing loyal judges, and restricting independent media. Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric became central to the party’s nationalist platform, fueling the creation of nearly 100 “LGBT ideology-free zones,” inciting violence against LGBTQ individuals, and stymying legal recourse through politicized courts.

When it comes to LGBTQ rights, Trump has mimicked the moves of these leaders even though most of his constituents don’t want it: A 2022 survey from the Public Religion Research Institute found that 80% of Americans favor laws that would protect LGBTQ people against discrimination.

“The definition of an authoritarian system is a system where power is consolidated in one individual whose power is unchecked by any other institution. And I fear that in certain domains, that’s the direction in which this administration is trying to move us,” says Short. “I think it’s incredibly dangerous.”

Attacks on Higher Education

Another common tool in the authoritarian playbook is attacking higher education.

In the U.S., Trump has done just that by pressuring top universities to get rid of their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs and inclusive policies for transgender athletes, which he has called “ideological capture.” If they don’t obey, Trump has threatened to freeze millions of dollars in funding.

While many universities are rejecting Trump’s demands, others are experiencing a chilling effect, changing their policies before the administration tries to hold up funds.

“I’m here because I’m angry and I feel that we aren’t angry enough,” Maddy Everlith, a sophomore gender studies major at Pace University, told Uncloseted Media as she marched with her friends. “Being a woman of color in America and having so many intersectional identities is also what affects me.… I want to stand up and advocate for other people.”

Everlith’s university responded to Trump’s threats in September by renaming its DEI office to the “Division of Opportunity and Institutional Excellence.”

“I am beyond horrified how quickly our university was willing to bend the knee on this decision,” Austin Chappelle, a senior at Pace, told the student newspaper. This change comes in the midst of uncertainty under the Trump administration, which has already caused many LGBTQ students to feel uneasy on campus.

Scapegoating Transgender People

Beyond the laws and policies lies a vile rhetoric used to scapegoat trans Americans. During the 2024 federal election campaigns, Trump spent roughly $215 million on anti-trans ads, more than five times as much as he spent on ads focused on the economy. In addition, he’s monstrified the community, saying, “These people are sick. They are deranged.” He’s also said Democrats are “pushing the transgender cult” on children and has aligned with groups trying to designate transgender Americans as terrorists.

“It’s part of an electoral strategy to try to mobilize right-wing voters to distract from other sorts of political or economic scandals,” Shaw says, adding that this tactic is another way to gain power.

The pain of this rhetoric has affected millions of trans Americans and allies alike, including Lars Kindem, a 64-year-old retired pilot from Minnesota who was marching to support his transgender sister.

“What Trump has done is he’s taken people that haven’t done anything wrong and has turned them into scapegoats,” he says, adding that Trump’s language is “hateful, petty, mean, and hurtful.”

He says his sister and her partner are having issues getting the correct gender markers issued on their passports. Because of the Trump administration’s treatment of the community, they are making plans to move to Denmark, where “there’s a lot more acceptance.”

Christian Nationalism

This scapegoating has played into the hands of Trump’s voter base of white evangelical Protestants, the only major Christian denomination in the U.S. in which a majority believes society has gone too far in accepting transgender people.

Since 2020, Trump has increasingly embraced Christian nationalism in his rhetoric and imagery. He’s sold Bibles, created a federal task force on anti-Christian bias, and been intrinsically linked to Project 2025, the 920-page plan calling for the establishment of a government imbued with “biblical principles” and run by a president who holds sweeping executive powers.

Experts say that “a strong authoritarian streak” runs through conservative Christianity. A 2023 study found that supporters of Christian nationalism tend to support obedience to authority and the idea of authoritarian leaders who are willing to break the rules. Nearly half of Christian nationalists support the notion of an authoritarian leader.

“They are trying to use the language of Christianity, but they are abusing it and misusing it constantly,” Rev. Chris Shelton, a gay pastor at the protest, told Uncloseted Media. “Our faith is all about reaching out to the marginalized, reaching out to the people who are ostracized by society and embracing them and offering love and welcome and a sense of dignity and worth. And to see any human being’s worth being denied is just a mockery of our faith.”

Heidi Beirich, the vice president and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, says that “the LGBTQ community is the prime target of modern authoritarian regimes.”

“For Christian nationalists, attacking LGBTQ rights is the first pillar in destroying civil rights for all. This has happened in countries like Hungary and Poland as authoritarianism consolidated, and now it’s happening here,” Beirich told Uncloseted Media.

Moving Forward

As the country bleeds toward authoritarianism, LGBTQ protestors are encouraging people to use their voice, something the queer community is familiar with doing: One 2012 survey found that queer folks are 20 times more likely to be active in liberal social movements than their straight, cis counterparts.

“It is imperative that people continue to pay attention,” Short says. “There is so much going on, a lot of it is disturbing and intense, and there’s such a strong impulse to look away. But we have to engage in political action and resist inappropriate assertions of authority and continue to show up and vote for our democracy.”

17-year-old Zoe Boik is ready. She remembers being in second grade and crying the day after Trump won his first election in 2016. She couldn’t believe how he could lead the country despite “all the bad things he said.”

Boik can’t wait until the midterm elections, when she will be 18 and finally able to vote. “If we don’t vote, then our voices won’t be heard,” she says.

Despite this, she’s also concerned about her freedom to exercise that right being jeopardized.

“My fears about Trump don’t stem specifically from me being queer, but from his authoritarianism as a whole,” she says. “I am scared about how far he will move into dictatorship, [and] my biggest fear is that our right to vote will be compromised, leaving us no recourse.”

October 23, 2025 0

Donald Trump ends LGBTQ+ health programs under the cover of the shutdown

Antifa expert at Rutgers University flees US amid death threats

The president was sued for deleting “radical” LGBTQ+ webpages. He just lost.

House Republicans file bill to bar trans students from bathrooms, sports teams

Americans seeking refugee status in Canada have spiked since Donald Trump’s return to office

States must ax transgender references from sex ed or risk losing funds, Trump admin says

U.S. Air Force to deny retirement pay for transgender troops being separated from service

Separation process has hit some bumps

The move comes after the Pentagon was given permission in early May by the Supreme Court to move forward with a ban on all transgender troops serving in the military. Days later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a policy that would offer currently openly serving transgender troops the option to either volunteer to leave and take a large, one-time separation payout or be involuntarily separated at later date.

A Pentagon official told reporters in May that they viewed the policy as treating “anyone impacted by it with dignity and respect.”

However, in late July, transgender troops told Military.com that they were finding the entire separation process, which has included reverting their service records back to their birth gender, “dehumanizing” or “open cruelty.”

Shannon Leary, a lawyer who represents LGBTQ+ people in employment discrimination cases, says she expects lawsuits to challenge Thursday’s decision. “It seems quite arbitrary on its face and cruel,” she said. “These military members have dedicated their lives to serving our country.”

Normally, Leary said, when early retirement is offered in the military, it’s available to all members who have served over 15 years. She said she expects other service branches to follow the Air Force’s path.

One Air Force service member says he’s ‘devastated’

Logan Ireland, a master sergeant in the U.S. Air Force who has 15 years of service, including a deployment to Afghanistan, is one of the airmen impacted by the policy. “I feel betrayed and devastated by the news,” he said.

Ireland said he was told that his retirement was being denied on Wednesday when his chain of command, “with tears in their eyes,” told him the news.

Officials have said that as of Dec. 9, 2024, there were 4,240 troops diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” on active duty, National Guard and Reserve. Pentagon officials have decided to use the condition and its diagnosis as the main way to identify troops who are trans.

However, the two are not an exact match — not every transgender person has the condition. As a result, there is an understanding that the actual number of transgender people within the military’s roughly 2 million troops may be higher.

Under the latest policy, active duty troops had until June 6 to voluntarily identify themselves and receive a payout while troops in the National Guard and Reserve had until July 7. Pentagon officials previously told reporters that they plan to lean on commanders and existing annual medical screenings to find any transgender service members who do not come forward.

August 8, 2025 0

State Department Removes Anti-LGBTQ+ Violence From Human Rights Report Draft

Congressional coalition demands wellness check on gay makeup artist held in torture camp

*This is reported by LGBTQ Nation.

Out gay Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) talked to LGBTQ Nation about a new letter signed by a coalition of 50 other Democratic congress members demanding that the State Department conduct a wellness check on Andry José Hernández Romero, an openly gay 32-year-old Venezuelan makeup artist who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on March 15 despite legally applying for asylum in the U.S. after fleeing anti-gay persecution in his home country.

Hernández Romero legally entered the U.S. last year via San Diego and passed a credible fear interview for his official asylum process but was arrested by ICE two days before his scheduled court hearing. For the last 86 days, he has been imprisoned at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), an El Salvador prison known for its human rights abuses. The letter’s signatories are demanding that the State Department facilitate his access to legal counsel and immediately facilitate his release, having presented no evidence of any crimes or wrongdoing.

Romero’s family and lawyers have had no contact with him in more than a month,” the letter states. “His mother does not even know whether he is alive. Given both the well-documented concerns about conditions at CECOT and the history of anti-LGBTQI+ persecution in El Salvador, there is serious cause for concern about Mr. Hernández Romero’s well-being.”

Romero was among 260 Venezuelans accused by the presidential administration of being members of Tren de Aragua, a terrorist group. A disgraced former police sergeant’s report accused Hernández Romero of having crown tattoos associated with the transnational Tren de Aragua gang. But both the Venezuelan government and Hernández Romero’s lawyer have said he has no connections whatsoever to the gang, and his family has said that his crown tattoos are in honor of his hometown’s annual Three Kings Day festival.

“The idea that our country said, ‘Come to your asylum appointment,’ and then we send him to a country he’s not even from — and we’re unwilling to check how he’s doing — is so wrong, and more people need to know Andrew’s story,” Garcia told LGBTQ Nation. “Our Constitution is clear that both citizens and non-U.S. citizens in the United States have a right to due process, and he has never even had a chance to see a judge or for anyone to rule. No one can prove that he was gang-affiliated, because he was not. He was described as a very sweet and gentle person by his family, and we just need to bring attention to his case.”

On April 21, Garcia and three other Congress members sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Ambassador William Duncan, urging them to confirm Hernández Romero’s safety through a wellness check inside CECOT. That month, Garcia visited El Salvador with a delegation of three other Democratic lawmakers. Though the delegation met with U.S. Embassy officials, the ambassador, and human rights advocates, they weren’t allowed to see Hernández Romero.

In a May 14 hearing, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem refused Garcia’s request to let Romero’s mother know if he’s still alive — Noem callously claimed that prison is outside of her “jurisdiction” and told Garcia to ask the President or the Salvadoran government instead.

Political pundits have noted that the administration could proactively negotiate for Hernández Romero’s release but has so far refused to. In late May, a federal judge dismissed Hernández Romero’s asylum case, making it even harder to ensure his return to the United States. Hernández Romero’s deportation violated his constitutional rights to due process and his sexual orientation puts him at grave risk inside CECOT, Garcia says.

While Garcia admits that the State Department ignored his first letter, he told LGBTQ Nation, “With this [new] letter … a much broader coalition of folks are signed on, and so we’re hopeful that that continues to get more attention.”

The new letter’s signatories include Garcia and other out Democratic Congress members including Rep. Mark Takano (CA), Rep. Becca Balint (VT), Rep. Mark Pocan (WI), Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE), and notable congressional allies like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI), Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), and Sen. Adam Schiff (CA).

Garcia added that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been actively involved with Hernández Romero’s legal team and hopes to pressure the administration to ensure that Hernández Romero is still alive.

Though LGBTQ+ people from all over the world have long come to the U.S. for the freedom to live authentically as themselves, Garcia acknowledges that queer would-be asylum seekers are currently scared and don’t see the U.S. as a place of refuge at the moment.

As an immigrant to the U.S. himself, Garcia told LGBTQ Nation, “What’s important is that the United States fight for folks that fight for a country that can still be welcoming of other people…. Our asylum system right now is broken and it we need to get back to a place where asylum is done as it has been in the U.S. We have a history in this country of welcoming people that are being persecuted in other countries, and that seems to be not the case right now, and I think it’s really horrible to see.”

Garcia has warned that — by kidnapping Hernández Romero and other undocumented immigrants off U.S. streets — the president has violated due process, the Constitution, and democratic norms in an attempt to intimidate immigrant communities. Federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court have agreed, demanding that the administration return some detainees stateside and provide greater transparency about its immigration processes and possible defiance of court orders.

“If they’re going to break the Constitution, to illegally take someone that was in an asylum process to a foreign country, then that means that they’re going to continue to break due process, and that means that everyone is at risk in our country,” Garcia told LGBTQ Nation. “I think it’s a slippery slope — now we know that U.S. citizens have been deported, [including] children without any sort of due process. So this is only going to get more difficult if people aren’t engaged.”

“I think Pride Month, especially in Andrea’s case, provides an opportunity for more folks to hear his story,” he added.