“He played a game of exclusion,” said Jasper Liem, executive director of The Attic Youth Center, about president-elect Donald Trump’s campaign.
“I think it’s realistic to be afraid and to be nervous and anxious. And I think that we can take a beat to take care of ourselves,” they emphasized. “But we also can not let that fear overwhelm us. We can’t let it paralyze us.”
Liem underlined that The Attic is open with all of its typical programming and support groups happening as planned — but that doesn’t mean Liem and other youth leaders are ignoring their feelings or hiding them from queer kids. Liem believes it’s important for young people to see the adults in their lives processing through election stress — openly experiencing and sharing about the complex emotions that arise and modeling how to best get through them in a healthy way.
“We’re just taking this one day at a time too,” they said. “I think one of the most dangerous things for young, LGBTQ folks — and really any of us — is feeling alone. The reality is that none of us are alone right now.”
Liem is also worried about what will happen to the Department of Education, which Trump has vowed to disband. Fortunately, many of the ideas Trump has floated during the campaign — including agenda items listed in Project 2025 — might be more difficult to actually implement than his team perceives.
This likely result is a lot of litigation — as attempts to change government systems or create more barriers for LGBTQ+ equality will be argued in court. This is already happening — with some state laws currently awaiting decisions by the Supreme Court. A few important decisions regarding LGBTQ+ issues are likely to be made by the end of the year.
Liem hopes these types of processes will buy time for LGBTQ+ leaders and organizations to strategize before proposals and campaign promises turn into real policies.
The Attic doesn’t receive much federal funding, but Liem said the organization could be affected by policy changes. For instance, they worry that LGBTQ+ organizations could be excluded from nonprofit status — creating additional financial constraints. They also wonder if some organizations will feel forced to take quieter and less visible approaches to advocacy, education and support.
Rhetoric of the past made Liem feel that trans people were more forgotten or pushed aside than actively treated as enemies — but today, that’s changed. There’s a “palpable anti-trans agenda,” they said. Trans people have even been otherized within LGBTQ+ spaces.
“But what else do we do but fight for our existence?” they added, noting that the LGBTQ+ community must learn to better hear and center the experiences of its most marginalized people. “We’re at a point in our movement where we realize we have to do this together. We can’t afford not to move together as a group.”
Kids showing up to The Attic have been worried about losing access to gender-affirming healthcare. It’s one of the top concerns on their minds.
“It really wasn’t until 2017 in Pennsylvania that insurance, even Medicaid, had to cover gender-affirming care — even hormones,” Liem said, underlining that some trans-specific progress has been especially recent and is fragile.
“For LGBTQ+ folks and other marginalized folks, the Biden/Harris administration really helped to advance health and health equity, which we know lags significantly,” said Sarah Rosso, executive director of Hugh Lane Wellness Foundation — a health-oriented organization serving LGBTQ+ youth and adults and those living with HIV/AIDS in the Pittsburgh area.
“From a public health approach and perspective, some of the most important policies and practice updates and changes to ensure people could get healthcare, could receive trauma-informed care, could receive care that was important to their identities and experiences — that’s what we saw them try to move the needle on,” they said.
Rosso mentioned that some of the tangible progress included easing the burden on access to information by removing links to LGBTQ+ resources and other information from government websites.
They now expect the incoming administration to shift away from health equity in government policies and practices — making it more difficult for people to access information, for instance, as was seen early on during Trump’s previous years in charge. They also expect the needs of the community to be deprioritized in terms of budgets and funding to programs — shifting how much local organizations need to lean on donors or other financial sources to continue operating.
As they prepare for these changes, Rosso said the organization is facing “unanswered questions and uncertainty about what’s coming next” — but that everyone is still focused on safeguarding the services they offer and protecting the marginalized communities they serve.
“We’re committed to finding solutions,” they emphasized, noting that now is the time to invest more significantly in state and local efforts to ensure protections can be implemented in as many places in Pennsylvania as possible.
Corinne Goodwin, founder and executive director of Eastern PA Trans Equity Project, lives in Lehigh Valley — which has a national reputation as the “swingiest of all the swing districts,” she described. It recently just flipped red — just months after the county recently passed the most inclusive nondiscrimination ordinance in the state.
She wants LGBTQ+ people to remain informed about the power of local actions by learning about what’s happening in municipalities, counties and school districts — as local policies make an impact on everyday lives, sometimes even more than federal decisions.
Goodwin worries that anti-trans rhetoric is not just a conservative problem. It might be negatively impacting Democrats and left-leaning people — as she’s seen some blame the loss of the election on the Harris/Walz campaign’s LGBTQ+ support. She worries this kind of misinformation could negatively impact Democratic decision-makers in Harrisburg who worry about their own vulnerability in reelection.
Her organization — which hosts 17 support groups across 34 counties and typically serves about 1200 people via information lines every year — has recently seen an uptick in need. Historically, about five to eight people call in per day seeking resources — but this has increased to about 70 contacts per day. Ongoing support groups have seen a 20% increase in attendance and a virtual post-election support group saw over 100 attendees.
“The result of the election has put a lot of our community members into a real state of emotional crisis,” Goodwin said. “Especially for younger people, this can feel like the end of the world.”
“The benefit of being a 65-year-old lady is that I remember what the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s were like — the early 2000s,” she added. “We made so much progress — and what has really happened here is that we’re regressing back to where we were in the early 2000s. So for many people in our community, we can see that we survived before and we’re going to survive this again.”
“We are going to be out and proud in visibly organizing. We will not go into any closet,” said Jason Landau Goodman — a longtime, statewide LGBTQ+ policy advocate. “While some of us will need to do whatever is necessary to stay safe, for those who are able to be in the movement to save and protect lives, I believe we need to be all in.”
“We are mobilizing to unite LGBTQ community organizations like never before. There will be more coordinated statewide efforts,” they underlined. “We are stronger as LGBTQ Pennsylvanians when we work together.”
Landau Goodman and other LGBTQ+ leaders are currently leading town halls across the state, educating the public about issues LGBTQ+ Pennsylvanians face and introducing communities to various local, statewide and national efforts for LGBTQ+ progress.
Another force for good is The Pennsylvania Coalition — a group of approximately 55 organizations that formed nearly five years ago in part to help LGBTQ+ and allied leaders across the state work more closely with each other. With less than 24 hours notice, more than a third of the coalition members gathered for an emergency meeting and nearly all of them are now engaged in conversations about next steps.
Landau Goodman explained that while Project 2025 lays out plans that will be harmful to LGBTQ+ people, changes to state protections are less likely and it’s possible to advocate for stronger approaches to LGBTQ+ equity.
They noted that LGBTQ+ lives only seem to come up in the American consciousness in the context of divisive elections — in the dichotomy of an us vs. them mentality. They want to see more public education efforts that focus on the humanity of LGBTQ+ people.
“We need more people to understand LGBTQ people as their neighbors and respected community members and perceived less as outsiders against them in a culture war,” Landau Goodman said.
“We can’t give up,” they underlined. “This is our country and these are our neighborhoods.”
