In 2023, the Human Rights Campaign issued a stark and unprecedented warning to LGBTQ+ people, declaring a national “state of emergency” for queer and trans people. The message from HRC and president Kelley Robinson was succinct: “We have officially declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States for the first time following an unprecedented and dangerous spike in anti-LGBTQ+ legislative assaults sweeping state houses this year.”
HRC continued, “More than 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been signed into law this year alone, more than doubling last year’s number, which was previously the worst year on record. Our community is in danger, but we won’t stop fighting back — not now, not ever.”
HRC’s warning came with a guidebook on how to maintain safety and where it was most safe and least safe to be LGBTQ in America.
It was a daunting message about the position of queer and trans people’s safety in their own country.
In 2024, nothing improved — rather the issues that prompted that warning were exacerbated by presidential campaign rhetoric and the ongoing fights in the states over LGBTQ+ civil rights and civil liberties. There was also an increase in book bans nationally and in the days after the election, the FBI began an investigation into texts threatening Latino and LGBTQ+ people.
The quest for the GOP nomination
Over a dozen Republicans ran for president in 2024 trying to unseat the ascendancy of Donald Trump. The top seeds — former UN Ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, billionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott all ran decidedly anti-LGBTQ campaigns, with DeSantis and Ramaswamy making those issues signatures to their campaign rhetoric and raising them in consistently more contentious debates.
DeSantis was expected to be the rising star of a next generation of GOP leadership. The Florida governor had devised the “Don’t Say Gay” laws that had galvanized Republican lawmakers nationally and triggered a plethora of copycat bills throughout the states, including many blue and purple states, like Pennsylvania.
But DeSantis failed to gain traction after a series of lackluster debate performances, while Haley’s calm and seemingly moderate perspective led her to subsume the race and look like a true generational alternative to Trump. It wasn’t until the Super Tuesday races in March that Haley — the last competitor standing — decided to suspend her campaign, leaving Trump, who had never attended a single debate, as the de facto nominee.
Trump’s campaign pivots on trans issues
In the final months of the presidential election, when Vice President Kamala Harris had replaced President Joe Biden as the candidate — a change that had galvanized youth voters and women — Trump resorted to lies about Harris’s candidacy. In October, Trump devoted more than a third of his advertising budget to ads claiming Harris was so dedicated to trans issues, she had abandoned all other constituencies. The tagline to the ads was “Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you.”
At his rallies and in interviews, Trump also repeatedly stated — falsely — that schools were performing gender reassignment surgeries without parental consent.
The focus on these points was intended to lure in Black and Latino men and suburban women. Post-election polls showed it may have done exactly that, as Trump won over a significant portion of those pivotal voting blocs, deciding the election in key swing states like Pennsylvania.
Project 2025: The plan to rewrite America
During the campaign, Trump attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, but in recent weeks he has nominated some of the architects of the text and it’s apparent he intends to implement every page of it. Funded by the right-wing think tank, The Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a policy primer authored by more than 400 conservative experts from various disciplines. It has been published as a book: “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says, “Project 2025 is a federal policy agenda and blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch authored and published by former Trump administration officials in partnership with The Heritage Foundation, a longstanding conservative think tank that opposes abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, immigrants’ rights, and racial equity. Project 2025’s largest publication, ‘Mandate For Leadership,’ is a 920-page manual for reorganizing the entire federal government agency by agency to serve a conservative agenda.”
Mixed rulings from SCOTUS on LGBTQ+ issues
There were several cases before the Supreme Court involving LGBTQ+ issues on which the SCOTUS ruled in various ways, most often returning cases back to the lower courts.
The most pivotal case was heard on Dec. 4. The case of United States v. Skrmetti, which involves the Constitution’s equal protection clause, a key provision of the 14th Amendment. The SCOTUS had agreed to hear the legal challenge last June.
The case was brought by the United States Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, Tennessee families and a medical provider against a 2023 Tennessee state law, S.B. 1, banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. This case is historic in that it is the first time the SCOTUS will rule on the constitutionality of statewide bans to such care and could have the same impact as Bostock v. Clayton County, which argued for trans inclusion in sex discrimination cases involving employment.
United States v. Skrmetti was initially brought by Samantha and Brian Williams of Nashville, Tennessee and their 15-year-old transgender daughter, two other plaintiff families filing anonymously, and Memphis-based medical doctor Dr. Susan Lacy. All are challenging a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for transgender people under 18.
Tennessee is one of more than two dozen states that, over the past three years, have enacted laws that ban puberty blockers, hormones and other treatments for minors seeking gender-affirming care. Many families, including the ones involved in the Tennessee case, have been forced to travel out of state to maintain the health care of their trans children.
A decision will be made in 2025.
Nancy Mace v. Sarah McBride
Nancy Mace (R-SC1) was the first woman to graduate from The Citadel’s Corps of Cadets program in 1999. In 2020, Mace was the first Republican woman elected to Congress from South Carolina.
In addition to being a voice for conservative women, Mace was largely pro-LGBTQ+. In 2021, the Washington Examiner wrote that Mace “is a supporter of both religious liberty and gay marriage.”
Mace told the Examiner, “I strongly support LGBTQ rights and equality. No one should be discriminated against.” While Mace opposed the Equality Act, she co-sponsored a Republican alternative called the Fairness for All Act.
Mace was one of only 31 Republicans to vote for the LGBTQ Business Equal Credit Enforcement and Investment Act. Mace was the sole Republican to sponsor H.R.5776 — Serving Our LGBTQ Veterans Act — legislation establishing a Center for LGBTQ Veterans within the Department of Veterans Affairs.
In July 2022, Mace was among 47 Republican representatives who voted in favor of the Respect for Marriage Act, which protects existing same-sex and interracial marriages.
Then on Nov. 18, in a seeming refutation of her prior stance on LGBTQ+ rights, Mace introduced a resolution to ban trans people from using bathrooms other than those of their sex assigned at birth in the U.S. Capitol. While initially equivocating on the issue, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson agreed with Mace’s bill and banned transgender people from using the bathrooms matching their gender identities.
The move by Mace was devised as a singular attack on Sarah McBride, the Delaware Democrat who is the first out trans person elected to Congress. Mace made and posted videos on her Twitter/X account discussing the issue and at one point tweeted over 500 times about it in one 36-hour period.
McBride was circumspect and professional, refusing to be baited into a fight about her own identity and personal safety, maintaining that Delawareans had elected her in a landslide to represent them and she intended to do just that.
But Mace’s assault has been a brutal hallmark of the GOP Congress and a stain on the fairness with which members should be treating each other. And while Democrats in both the House and Senate were outraged and supported McBride unconditionally, the bill was voted into law.
More LGBTQ+ people in office
One upbeat note for LGBTQ+ people was delivered by the Victory Fund, a political organization that tracks and supports LGBTQ+ candidates for elected office. The organization issued a report noting “more diversity among LGBTQ+ candidates in 2024 as well as a 14.1% growth in LGBTQ+ candidates on the ballot. LGBTQ+ candidates ran in 49 of the 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington D.C.
Nebraska was the only state with no LGBTQ+ candidates in 2024, California had the most with 198 LGBTQ+ candidates running.
At least 1,017 out LGBTQ+ candidates ran for election this year, a 1.1% increase compared with 2020, according to the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund. Of the total number of LGBTQ+ candidates, 668 made it to the general election.LGBTQ+ candidates saw big election wins, with several historic victories. Those historic firsts included a transgender candidate elected to Congress, a Black gay man elected to the Georgia legislature and a trans person elected to the Hawaii House.
