Felon47's LGBTQIAA+ Erasure
Pretending that LGBTQIA+ folks don't exist doesn't make us not exist. It just makes us more determined than ever to achieve equality.
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For decades, Felon47’s favorite hobby seems to have been blatant cruelty to disenfranchised segments of the population. Whether it’s immigrants, Black folks, people with disabilities, indigenous people, or members of the LGBTQIA+ community, Felon47 loves to use them as punching bags. (And, yes, I’m intentionally using the full “LBGTQIA+” throughout this post just to piss off the MAGAs, who just love to whine about how many letters they have to memorize.)
Amidst the international chaos created by Felon47’s accusations that Ukraine was the aggressor and the cause of the war in Ukraine, amidst the DOGE idiocy undermining the federal workforce, it becomes harder to notice the very real damage doing to real people that results from the universal transphobia and homophobia in the Republican Party and from too few vocal defenders of LGBTQIA+ folks among the ranks of the Democrats.
Felon47’s and the Republican Party’s actions to make LGBTQIA+ people invisible range from the sweeping and costly to the petty and downright cruel. Make no mistake: These actions would not be possible without the complete buy-in of the entire GOP.
Felon47 can pretend not to be homophobic or transphobic by pointing to wealthy right-wing LGBTQIA+ folks in his orbit who value their own power and their personal well-being above all else and who abandon any sense of community. Homocons like Peter Thiel, Scott Bessent, and Caitlyn Jenner provide Felon47 with what he thinks is cover for his homophobia, in the same way that accommodationists like Herman Cain and Ben Carson have provided Felon47 cover for his deeply-rooted racism.
Within the first 30 days of Felon47’s time in office, his actions have ranged from the life-altering (and even life-ending) to the petty. Here are just a few:
From the very first day, Felon47 made it plain that he was targeting trans folks. In his inaugural address, he said “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.” This was followed by an Executive Order declaring the same, as if this ignorant wannabe monarch can change reality with a decree.
Felon47’s cronies have scrubbed (and are continuing to scrub) federal government websites of any and all LGBTQIA+ information. They’re especially targeting information about trans folks.
Also among the websites scrubbed of LGBTQIA+ information was the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website. Decades of HIV-related information have been scrubbed. While much of that information may still be available from other non-government sites, this literal erasure is another example of Felon47’s institutionalized homophobia. This action also tells both patients and medical professionals that they can no longer rely on the CDC as an unbiased and comprehensive resources for medical information.
Perhaps the most insulting attempt at erasure online has been the removal of trans people from National Park Service page on Stonewall National Monument. Trans women were at the forefront of the rebellion, having reached their boiling point as the result of being on the receiving end of the hatred, harassment, and abuse by police. The word “Stonewall” would not have become synonymous with the gay rights movement without the trans folks who literally put their lives on the line in June of 1969.
The pettiest of Felon47’s erasure attempts has been the cancellation of the D.C. Gay Men’s Chorus performance at the Kennedy Center, shortly after he had installed himself as the chair of the Kennedy Center. But fear not. Felon47 has proven time and again that, when you think he’s reached the lowest possible depths of pettiness, he can always go lower.
Felon47 issued an Executive Order banning trans folks from the U.S. military. He tried the same thing during his previous time in office, but multiple legal challenges and actions taken by the Biden administration prevented the ban from going into effect. Aside from the transphobia that undergirds this EO, it’s also a waste of taxpayer dollars — dollars that have been spent training and developing the trans military members.
Felon47’s January 28 Executive Order attempts to ban gender affirming care for trans youths. The UCLA School of Law Williams Institute describes the impact of such a ban:
“Although President Trump’s executive order describes gender-affirming care as ‘junk science,’ access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth is supported by a consensus of major medical associations in the U.S. The order does not acknowledge any benefits of gender-affirming care, instead making unsubstantiated statements of widespread harm and disregarding decades of science that form the foundation of the services that are currently available to transgender youth.”
— Impact of Ban on Gender-Affirming Care on Transgender Minors, Jan. 2025
Joe Kent, the white nationalist conspiracy theorist and Felon47 loyalist who ran twice for Congress using hatefully anti-trans advertising (and lost twice), is now Felon47’s nominee for the Director of the National Counter Terrorism Center. More proof that Felon47 values loyalty to him and his cruel beliefs and policies more than he values science, decency, and — just as important — what voters actually want.
What Felon47 hasn’t taken into account is the degree to which LGBTQIA+ people have dealt with bullies and haters our whole lives. Every speck of progress that we have made in the quest for equality is the result of years of work in the trenches, marches, community organizing, court challenges, and legislative lobbying. He has drastically underestimated the resolve that the LGBTQIA+ community has. We have lots of experience being on the losing side of these fights — and then continuing those fights right up until we win.
LGBTQIA+ folks will be around long after Felon47 has breathed his last pathetic breath. We’re not about to disappear just because some ego-bloated criminal con artist and his gang of cronies are trying to frighten us into invisibility.