By Ashley Rogers
Philadelphia, PA
Trump and the right are on the offensive against LGBTQ+ rights. This Pride month we need to make Pride a protest and expand the fight against the Trump regime. The first four months of Trump’s second term as president saw a barrage of attacks against LGBTQ+ people, and transgender people in particular. Trump’s executive orders include: revoking federal funding for providers of gender-affirming care for people under 19 years of age; prohibiting gender-affirming care for transgender people in federal prisons and immigration detention centers; banning transgender people from the military; ordering that passports and other legal documents must reflect transgender people’s sex “at conception”; ordering schools that receive federal funding to stop transgender students from using their correct restrooms, names, or pronouns; blocking transgender students from participating in women’s sports; and declaring that the federal government only recognizes two sexes, male and female.
Though many of these orders have been blocked by court rulings, many institutions have nevertheless complied. A number of hospitals, including Penn State Health and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, have ended gender-affirming care for minors following Trump’s executive order. The Nebraska body governing high school sports in the state announced it would be complying with the ban on transgender athletes “until further notice.” Trump has recently threatened to revoke federal funding for a California high school over a transgender athlete who recently qualified for the state championships, stating that he will be “ordering local authorities, if necessary, to not allow” the student to participate in the state championships. He has also threatened federal funding for the entire state of Maine over a similar issue.
Targeting Transgender Youth
Trump’s attacks on transgender people have been matched by vile rhetoric during the election and his term so far, against what he calls “transgender insanity.” Trump’s first address to Congress spent eight minutes – 1,500 words – targeting LGBTQ+ people. The address included a demand that “Congress […] pass a bill permanently banning and criminalizing sex changes on children and forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body” and that teachers encouraging transgender students to use their correct names and pronouns were engaging in a “form of child abuse.” He promised that his orders will help get “wokeness” out of schools; “Wokeness is trouble. Wokeness is bad. It’s gone.”
The Trump administration has focused its offensive on transgender youth. This mirrors attacks made on gay people during the 1980s and 1990s, framing opposition to gay rights as “protecting children from the gay lifestyle.” Rhetoric opposing gender-affirming care for minors paints it as “common sense” that children shouldn’t be able to make these decisions about their own lives, even though every major US medical group including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association supports these treatments. The Department of Health and Human Services, under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has put out a report on transgender healthcare which runs completely counter to the accepted medical consensus, attempting to provide justification for denying gender-affirming care for trans youth. Yet these attacks on transgender youth are only a Trojan horse for attacks on transgender people as a whole. Provisions in Trump’s “big beautiful bill” banning Medicaid coverage for youth gender-affirming care were recently changed to ban Medicaid coverage for all gender-affirming care, as well as adding a provision that no longer requires Affordable Care Act insurance plans to cover gender-affirming care for adults.
The executive orders and bills being put forward under Trump’s second term are just a continuation of the assault on LGBTQ+ rights started during Trump’s first term and continued by state legislatures around the country during Biden’s administration. “Don’t Say Gay” bills, anti-LGBTQ+ book bans, and bans on transgender athletes over the past few years have paved the way for Trump’s anti-trans agenda.
Trump Regime Tries for Divide and Rule
The targeting of LGBTQ+ people by Trump is part of the “divide and rule” tactics employed by his administration. Trump was elected on the promise that his presidency would improve the lives of the average US worker. But despite his “outsider” pretensions, Trump is yet another representative of the capitalist class that – acting through both Republican and Democratic parties – has sacrificed the living standards and wages of the working class for its own profits.
Trump tries to direct workers’ attention at oppressed communities like LGBTQ+ people and immigrants as if they are somehow responsible for the problems that working people are facing under capitalism. His hope is that workers will be too distracted fighting against each other to notice as he slashes government programs, lowers taxes on the rich while raising taxes on the poor, and leads the privatization of government agencies. “Trump’s reconciliation bill will raise taxes on Americans earning under $15,000 in 2027. By 2029 and going forward, the legislation will continue to increase taxes on those individuals, as well Americans earning between $15,000 and $30,000. […] From 2027 to 2033, Americans earning under $30,000 are expected to pay collectively nearly $18 billion more in taxes. At the same time, individuals who earn more than $1 million will collectively receive tax cuts totaling $242 billion.” [Rolling Stone, May 18th 2025] He is assisted in this agenda by the Democratic Party who, though they often correctly decry his rhetoric against oppressed groups, continue to wage the same war against the working class where and when they’re in power.
Democratic Party Won’t Protect LGBTQ+ People
Many of Trump’s orders directly target protections put in place by Biden’s administration via executive order. Biden’s Executive Order 13988, which extended existing legal protections to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation, was rolled back by Trump within hours of entering office. Biden rolled back Trump’s first order banning transgender people in the military, which Trump in turn reinstated with a new ban. Biden’s reliance on executive orders allowed for easy wins for his administration, but meant very little when they could be rolled back with the stroke of a pen by Trump. Much like Roe v. Wade, the failure to even attempt to enshrine these protections into law made their overturn inevitable.
Yet even the meager protections in place under Biden never addressed the systemic oppression of LGBTQ+ people. Making discrimination illegal doesn’t stop it from happening. Allowing transgender people to once again join the military under Biden was championed as a win for LGBTQ+ rights, but the ability to serve as cannon fodder for the US government’s military misadventures around the world is cold comfort. And while Democrats have, in recent history, paid lip service to the idea of legal protections, this is a recent development for a party that in the 1990s and 2000s considered protections for transgender people to be “too radical” and sought to divide trans rights from the rights of the rest of the LGBTQ+ community.
But the Democratic Party’s token support for LGBTQ+ rights isn’t set in stone. Following Harris’s loss in the 2024 election, Democratic congressmen Tom Suozzi and Seth Moulton said the loss was a result of Harris “pandering to the far-left” because she didn’t oppose “boys […] playing in girls’ sports.” Recently, the Democrat governor of California Gavin Newsom, as well as Democrat senator Ruben Gallego, came out against transgender athletes participating in girls’ sports. What support there is for transgender rights in the Democratic Party is based on a cynical estimation of what positions will gain them more votes – and they are perfectly happy to throw trans people under the bus if they think that position is becoming more popular.
LGBTQ+ Rights are Workers’ Rights
Both corporate parties want to portray LGBTQ+ people as having issues and demands that are unique and perhaps even at odds with those of the working class as a whole. But the biggest issues that LGBTQ+ people face are ones they have in common with other workers. LGBTQ+ workers need higher wages – 22% live under the poverty line, as do 16% of their straight and cisgender counterparts. The average LGBTQ+ worker receives 89 cents for every dollar earned by the average US worker – or just 60 cents on the dollar for the average trans woman worker. 47% of LGBTQ+ people have also faced discrimination at work. Ending the oppression of LGBTQ+ workers means demanding increased wages and better workplace protections.
Addressing the housing crisis is another key demand to end LGBTQ+ oppression. 17% of LGBTQ+ people have been homeless at some point in their lives, with 8% of transgender people experiencing homelessness in just the last year. Over half of all workers who rent pay more than a third of their income in rent, and 76% of all US workers are seeing the affordability of housing getting worse in their communities. Ending the oppression of LGBTQ+ workers means demanding rent control measures to address skyrocketing rent and public housing programs to provide housing for all.
Healthcare also contributes to LGBTQ+ oppression. The cost of healthcare is a big barrier to access: LGBTQ+ people are 31% more likely to be on Medicaid than their non-LGBTQ+ counterparts, and 29% report trouble paying medical bills, as do 25% of non-LGBTQ+ people. Support from both parties for the for-profit healthcare system has made healthcare harder and harder to access for all workers. The growth in healthcare costs has outpaced inflation nearly every year, contributing to the over $220 billion in medical debt held by workers around the country. Ending the oppression of LGBTQ+ workers means demanding free, universal healthcare.
Pride is a Protest
These demands – better wages and workplace protections, rent control, public housing, universal healthcare – are demands that will help all workers. Though the capitalist class attempts to pit oppressed groups against each other, claiming their interests are opposed, we have more to gain by joining together to fight for these improvements that all workers need. LGBTQ+ workers would benefit from mass unionization efforts and militant union campaigns for more jobs, improved wages and benefits, etc. The labor movement, which is enjoying record popularity, has an important role to play in mobilizing its members to help defend LGBTQ+ workers. When one section of the working class is successfully isolated and targeted, it creates an opening which the capitalists can use to weaken the working class as a whole.
The mass protests against Trump need to join with Pride protests to demand LGBTQ+ rights, healthcare, and housing needs. Pride began as a protest with the Stonewall Riots in June 1969 in New York City:
The Stonewall Riots were far from the first moment of resistance from the LGBTQ+ community against police and state violence—even just a few years before in 1966, the Compton’s Cafeteria Riots were fought over similar issues, but without as lasting of an impact. What really separated Stonewall from previous actions was the movement that was born out of it—one uniting organized and unorganized LGBTQ+ people, socialists, members of the Black Panthers and Young Lords, and other working people in the ongoing battle against police violence.
Though Pride has become a corporate-sponsored party in many places, Pride needs to get political, return to its roots as a protest, and fight against the attacks on the LGBTQ+ community from the Trump administration.
Independent Socialist Group 