The Same Playbook

How the anti-gay and anti-trans panic mirror each other

This Pride Month, there's been a looming fear over all festivities and within everyone I've talked to. Seemingly every day, there is a new development in the Trump administration targeting the LGBTQ+ community—everything from rescinding Title IX policies to the removal of transgender military personnel and transgender bathroom bans. It's becoming more difficult, and in some states, impossible to change gender markers on identifying documents, and the list goes on. These new policies are instilling fear and have already led to violence. As a peer-reviewed study by The Trevor Project shows, there is an increase of up to 72% in suicide attempts in nonbinary and transgender youth due to anti-transgender laws.

Witnessing the current onslaught I can't help but think of LGBTQ+ people who came before us who dealt with violence, the loss of jobs and their lives being destroyed for being queer. I think of the countless brave individuals who spoke out, raised awareness, protested and helped give us the Pride Month we have today. I often reflect on how deeply indebted I am to our queer ancestors and queer elders who are still with us today. Learning what they went through and how they fought back in the hardest times inspires me to do the same.

Much of what's happening today isn't new—it's the same playbook that's been used for many decades, repurposed for today's day and age. Today, I want to explore just a few of the ways that this anti-trans sentiment parallels anti-gay rhetoric from previous decades.

Bathroom Bans

Throughout the country, states are passing bans on transgender individuals using bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, etc. These bans are justified by claiming it's to protect children and/or women. But as GLSEN found, "60 percent of transgender students report having been prohibited from using the bathroom or locker room that aligns with their gender identity. Over three-quarters (76 percent) of transgender students felt unsafe at school because of their gender, and transgender people (specifically trans girls and women) are at very high risk of experiencing violence throughout their lives, starting even before adolescence. While these bills are designed to ensure 'student safety,' they stigmatize transgender students, putting them more in harm's way."

Another common support of these laws is the idea that allowing transgender people in bathrooms that align with their gender identity will cause male predators to go into women's restrooms. But the reality is that if someone is a predator, they're going to try to commit crimes whether they've been 'allowed' or not. In 2014, a Des Moines police department spokesman told Media Matters, "I doubt that's gonna encourage the behavior. If the behavior's there, [sexual predators are] gonna behave as they're gonna behave no matter what the laws are."

These arguments being used to ban people from bathrooms are nothing new. Following World War II, a very similar predator myth was created by cisgender, straight, white people. They said that "gay people used public restrooms to solicit sex and molest children.” As Vox reported, “Because public restrooms were often places gay men could pick up other gay men during the 1950s and later (often referred to as "cruising"), pamphlets and films such as Boys Beware depicted gay men as mentally ill and sick. From this narrative emerged a growing hysteria that public restrooms were unsafe spaces for children." As with today, this fear-mongering wasn't based in fact, but it succeeded in instilling hatred.

Military Bans

During Donald Trump’s first term on August 25, 2017, he signed the Presidential Memorandum on Military Service by Transgender Individuals, which was intended to ban transgender individuals from serving in the armed forces. However, it was postponed by four injunctions until January 22, 2019, when the United States Supreme Court allowed the ban to take place. Then, on January 25, 2021, President Joe Biden revoked the transgender military ban.

Now that Trump is back in office, his administration is once again seeking to ban transgender individuals from the military. The Supreme Court ruled in Shilling v. Trump to allow Trump to proceed with an executive order to bar transgender individuals from the military (some litigation regarding the underlying policy is continuing to play out in the lower court). As of right now, active-duty transgender military personnel have 30 days to leave service, and reservists have 60 days. Following the deadlines, the Pentagon will involuntarily separate service members who remain.

This targeted harassment of hard-working service members isn't anything new. Until 1993, the United States military barred any lesbian, bisexual, or gay individuals from service. Things shifted slightly in 1993 when President Bill Clinton signed into law 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' which allowed lesbian, bisexual, and gay people to serve as long as they didn't disclose their sexuality. From then until 2010, queer individuals in the military had to hide key aspects of their identity in order to serve their country. In 2010, two federal courts found the ban unconstitutional. Consequently, President Barack Obama signed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, which stipulated that as of September 20, 2011, the restrictions on LGBTQ+ service members were ended.

The transgender military ban, in many ways, seems to parallel the LGBTQ+ military bans and restrictions of decades past. It's also important to note that according to a 2015 Rand study of over 16,000 service members, only 5.8% of them identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. The statistics of transgender service members are far lower. As Newsweek reported, "A 2021 Department of Defence Office of People Analytics report on Workplace and Gender Relations of Military Members which surveyed 98,690 members, found that 0.4 percent identified as transgender, and 1.2 percent whose sex as birth did not match their current gender identity."

This is an incredibly small minority that is being targeted, and it's worth noting that the vast majority of Americans don't support this policy. Gallup found that 58% of Americans support allowing openly transgender individuals to serve in the military.

As I noted in my Project 2025 Fact Check and Analysis last summer—Palm Center, a research center based at San Francisco State University, had an advisory panel in 2014 that released a report saying, "We determined not only that there is no compelling medical reason for the [transgender] ban, but also that the ban itself is an expensive, damaging and unfair barrier to health care access for the approximately 15,450 transgender personnel who serve currently in the active, Guard and reserve components. Medical regulations requiring the discharge of transgender personnel are inconsistent with how the military regulates all other medical and psychological conditions, and transgender-related conditions appear to be the only gender-related conditions that require discharge irrespective of fitness for duty."

Politics Over Science

Throughout the last few years, politicians have latched onto transgender people, attacking them at every turn while not basing any of their claims on science. This past election cycle that continued on a massive scale, Republican politicians spent almost $215M on anti-trans television ads. These ads aren't factual—instead, attacking everything from transgender people competing in sports by saying that biological men are competing in women's sports, condemning 'wokeness' and accusing political opponents of 'groomer propaganda.' However, there isn't a factual basis for these claims; they are simply being used as a way to cause fear and division.

While I don't have time to debunk every incorrect claim made by these politicians, I do think it's important to note that much of the transgender 'debate' is playing out in politics, and it's vital to look to those who are experts, and the experts have made their stance quite clear. Every major medical organization, including the American Academy of Pediatrics,American Psychiatric Association, and the American Medical Association, supports age-appropriate, gender-affirming care. As I noted in one of my Project 2025 Analysis and Fact Check articles, "If people truly care about protecting children, they would listen to the experts—the medical professionals, the mental healthcare providers, the researchers, the parents, and the children themselves—rather than trying to make it harder for already vulnerable kids to access healthcare."

This politicization of medical care isn't anything new. In fact, Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr, who President George W. Bush nominated to be Surgeon General in 2007 (though he wasn't confirmed as the Senate didn't vote on it due to controversy), wrote an article in 1991 in which he condemned homosexuality as being unnatural and unhealthy. As ABC News noted in 2007, "Doctors who reviewed the paper derided it as prioritizing political ideology over science." Almost two decades later, the same issue is happening—political ideology is consistently being put above science, which is harming transgender Americans.

These parallels can be bleak—it can be discouraging to see history repeat itself or, at the very least, parallel past events. However, at the same time, I truly believe that knowledge is power – it's essential to understand where this rhetoric is coming from and to recognize that what is currently happening isn't based on fact or science. It's also essential to study this to see how the queer community united together to support one another as well as to protest and overcome harmful assumptions and dangerous politics. As a queer community, we've been here before, we are made for times like this. This pride month, I have the utmost faith that regardless of what this administration throws at us, we will emerge from this united and stronger than ever.

Graphic by: Sienna Parmelee