A Second Trump Term Would Be Hell for LGBTQ People

A Second Trump Term Would Be Hell for LGBTQ People
The former president's allies laid out their plan in "Project 2025."

PARKER MOLLOY
FEB 14, 2024

Hello, all. Parker here.

Like a lot of LGBTQ people, I’ve been a bit worried about what, exactly, a second Trump administration would mean for my basic rights and ability to live my life in peace. And while the Biden administration has let me down in a number of ways, the playbook being drawn up for a future Trump administration, called Project 2025, is outright terrifying for LGBTQ people.

The very first page of the 920-page Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership” bemoans the “toxic normalization of transgenderism,” and a few pages later includes the phrase, “Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology” that “has no claim to First Amendment protections.” For one, being transgender is not an “ideology,” and information about trans people's existence is not pornography. Still, the Project 2025 document uses this definition before calling for the imprisonment of people who “produce and distribute” this "pornography.”

The document outlines ways the government can effectively ignore the Supreme Court’s landmark Bostock v. Clayton County ruling, which found that employers can’t discriminate against someone “simply for being homosexual or transgender.” In another portion, it explains how Trump could essentially legalize medical discrimination against LGBTQ people. The list goes on and on.

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Block also tells me that part of the strategy will likely be for a second Trump Administration and its allies to go after cities and states with strong legal protections against LGBTQ discrimination and make the argument that those policies are preempted by federal law, which will be interpreted through the administration and conservative courts as being anti-LGBTQ. The result of this will be a country without “safe” states for LGBTQ people.