Ways LGBTQ+ Folks Can Fight Trump 2.0
I want to share a few ways I’ve been moving forward recently. The muscle memory of resisting Trump 1.0 is coming back as we face the fresh hell of Trump 2.0. Accepting the reality of where we are has helped me mobilize and start to look for the helpers. We may not be in the majority, but we are not powerless. Our rights haven’t been completely stripped away—yet.
Here are the helpers I’ve found, guiding me from darkness to action:
Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor at Boston College, has a Substack, Letters from an American, that’s been helping me keep track of the news. Yesterday, when credibly accused sex trafficker Matt Gaetz was announced as Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, I knew I had to turn off news pop-up notifications on my phone. Moves like these are designed to outrage and exhaust us. Even Republican Senators were dumbstruck by this one. I know I need to keep working and functioning through the day, so I can’t get sucked into rage spirals daily—that’s exactly what the right wants.
Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack offers a focused digest of current events that helps make sense of the news with historical context. It also highlights nuances, like why MAGA is outraged that Senator Thune was voted Senate Majority Leader by secret ballot. Let the Republican infighting begin and continue! Heather cites her sources and advocates for living in REALITY. You can check her out as a guest on Stacey Abrams’ new podcast, Assembly Required. And always, Stacey Abrams—be sure to subscribe to Assembly Required. She literally wrote the books on fighting voter suppression.
Indivisible.org—Their guide for 2025 is out, and they’re factoring in all the right’s horrific announced plans. It’s a guidebook on how to find or create community to organize wherever you are. I’ve already received action items from my local Indivisible chapter this morning. Sign up at Indivisible.org for a playbook on how we can gum up the works and do our part to slow down and block Trump’s Project 2025 agenda at every opportunity.
Robin Maril’s podcast, The Future Is Queer, is an invaluable guide on how LGBTQ+ folks can stay in the conversation, fight back, and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, not give up any ground. We have rights, and we need to know what they are and how to use them.
Your local library is a fantastic resource for understanding these times and the history that led us here. Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny is essential, but I recently downloaded the audiobook of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s Fascism: A Warning from my library’s app, Libby. Audiobooks and digital books are available immediately at your local library—use this service you’re already paying for with your tax dollars!
The Human Rights Campaign hosted a call last night that fired me up to keep going. They provide information on how to get involved with LGBTQ+ advocacy wherever you live.
I also got a message from someone I used to know, asking if I was a “normal gay guy,” like J.D. Vance mentioned, and not one of those who wants to “chemically castrate five-year-olds.” This kind of language is infuriating. Vance talked about the left “chemically castrating five-year-olds” as though it were fact. Let me be clear: this is NOT happening.
This rhetoric is a brutal attempt to divide gays and lesbians from trans and nonbinary folks—and it’s dangerous for all of us.
First, no one is chemically castrating five-year-olds, and no gender reassignment surgeries are happening in schools. The right wants to abolish the Department of Education, yet they also push the idea that school staff, struggling to get basic supplies, are somehow performing surgeries costing tens of thousands of dollars. It’s absurd.
As for me, I’m standing with my queer friends across the entire rainbow alphabet. Trans women like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera led the queer liberation movement at Stonewall in 1969. We are nothing without the trans folks who have been on the frontlines from the beginning. If any gay, white men think throwing trans folks under the bus will save them—think again. You’re on the menu for eradication too when the right needs a new boogeyman—they’re already calling you groomers and pedophiles. They should look at their own nominee for Attorney General…
And hey, House of Representatives, go ahead and release the report from Gaetz’s sex trafficking investigation. Thanks!
