It is looking like after an initial shock with how Donald Trump is targeting trans Americans, the LGBTQ community and our allies are fighting back. The following are just a few of the many fights across the nation against Trump's bigotry.
From The Advocate on Friday:
The LGBTQ+ community is continuing to challenge the Trump administration’s latest executive orders targeting LGBTQ+ rights in court. The San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Los Angeles LGBT Center, and several other California advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The complaint, brought in partnership with Lambda Legal, argues that the orders violate the First and Fifth Amendments and unlawfully threaten the existence of programs that provide life-saving services to marginalized communities.
“These executive orders aren’t just policy shifts; they are existential threats to our mission,” said Dr. Tyler TerMeer, CEO of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, a lead plaintiff in the case, in an interview with The Advocate on Friday. “They dismantle decades of progress, undermine public trust, and directly endanger the lives of the communities we serve.”
At issue are orders signed by President Donald Trump that erase federal recognition of transgender and nonbinary people, gut diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and strip funding from organizations that serve LGBTQ+ communities and people of color. The administration has instructed federal agencies to defund organizations that “promote gender ideology” and to rescind DEI-based grants, moves that civil rights groups say amount to censorship and discrimination.
And that came a week after a huge protest near the National Park Service’s website for the Stonewall National Monument. According to CNN:
After the words “transgender” and “queer” were removed from the National Park Service’s website for the Stonewall National Monument, a landmark of the LGBTQ pride movement in New York City, protesters filled nearby Christopher Park Friday with a simple message: “You can’t erase us.” The message was scrawled in chalk on the pavement surrounding the park and reflected on the posters demonstrators waved and in the messages from speakers.
“The trans and drag community have always been part of the LGBTQ community,” Steven Love Menendez, a longtime volunteer at the Stonewall Monument, told CNN Friday. “So now for the federal government to try to erase trans from our community makes absolutely no sense.”
Protesters waving trans and rainbow flags and holding banners with messages like “Silence = Death” – a consciousness-raising slogan from the AIDS crisis – and “Erasure is Annihilation” filled the park Friday, spilling out onto the surrounding street. The word “transgender” also appeared written in chalk on the National Parks Service’s “Stonewall National Monument” sign outside Christopher Park.
The demonstration comes after the term “LGBTQ+” was shortened to “LGB” on the NPS web page late this week, according to an archived version of the page. There are no more references to transgender people on the web page – despite what activists and historians say were trans activists’ key contributions to the Stonewall Uprising and the larger LGBTQ rights movement.
The event included government officials and Congressional leaders such as Rep. Jerry Nadler and New York City Council member Erik Bottcher
And on Feb 14, a federal judge temporarily paused Trump's executive order banning federal support of gender-affirming care for trans youth. This has led to several hospitals across the country either resuming or refusing cease giving gender-affirming care for trans youth, including the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, The University of Virginia’s hospital, the Children’s Hospital Colorado, the Prisma Community Care in Phoenix.
We have a long road ahead and there will be many victories and defeats. However, take comfort in the fact that the LGBTQ community isn't going to take Trump's actions laying down. You come after one of us, then you will deal with all of us.
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