The Trump administration's "divide and conquer" approach to LGBTQ rights

CBS News

8 hours ago

In Marsha P. Johnson's final interview before her death in 1992, the activist later recognized as an icon of the movement that preceded LGBTQ rights in the United States explained why she, a transgender woman, championed a cause that often excluded her.
"I've been walking for gay rights all these years," Johnson said, referencing early Pride marches in a conversation that appears in a 2012 documentary about her life. "Because you never completely have your rights, one person, until you all have your rights."
Since then, social and political wins over time grew to encompass everyone represented by the acronym LGBTQ, which stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer. But that's become less true in recent years, as lawmakers in Tennessee, Texas and a number of other states repeatedly pushed legislation to restrict access to gender-affirming care, bathrooms and sports teams for transgender people.
Anti-trans sentiment was central to President Trump's 2024 campaign, LGBTQ advocates say, and it followed him into office. Many of his directives this term have closely mirrored Project 2025, a conservative policy agenda that explicitly prioritizes eroding LGBTQ rights.
A "divide and conquer" approach
From health care bans, to sports bans, bathroom bans, a military ban and attempts to erase non-binary gender pronouns from the federal system, Mr. Trump's most conspicuous threats to LGBTQ rights specifically target trans people, a pattern that has drawn accusations of scapegoating from his critics, given that trans people make up an estimated 1% or less of the U.S. population.
LGBTQ advocates also see it as a tactic to sow division in the community.
"Donald Trump ran for president on an age-old platform of divide and conquer," said Brandon Wolf, the national press secretary at the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy organization. "Inside the LGBTQ+ community, Donald Trump ran his campaign saying, I'm not targeting all LGBTQ+ people, just the trans people, and if you sacrifice that community, perhaps you will be spared."
While polling data showed most LGBTQ voters didn't choose to elect him, Mr. Trump has gained increasingly loud support from a faction of gay conservatives who disavow the "radical LGBT left" and insist his policies aren't at odds with their personal freedoms.
When the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration announced the upcoming termination of part of its 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline dedicated to helping LGBTQ youth, the gay conservative group Log Cabin Republicans called related media coverage "fake news."
On TikTok, a small but popular band of conservative gay influencers post videos to similarly defend Mr. Trump's record. "Rights I've lost in Trump's America as a gay man," reads the caption of one of them, followed by an empty list numbered 1 through 5. In the comments section of another, a TikTok user responded to a thread outlining the current administration's anti-LGBTQ actions by saying, "None of that has anything to do with us being gay."
Trump's orders
On Inauguration Day, Mr. Trump declared in his televised address to the American public that "only two genders," male and female, would be recognized going forward by the federal government. He signed an executive order to enforce that within hours of being sworn in.
Titled "Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government," the wide-ranging order included instructions for the State Department to prohibit trans people from using gender markers that reflect their identities on official documents, like passports, and instead require that those markers align with the document holders' reproductive organs "at conception."
"The Trump administration's passport policy attacks the foundations of the right to privacy and the freedom for all people to live their lives safely and with dignity," said Jessie Rossman, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Massachusetts, which has made headway in a lawsuit aiming to reverse the new rule, in a statement. "We will continue to fight to stop this unlawful policy once and for all."
Like many of Mr. Trump's executive orders, that one has faced steep challenges in the courts, and legal experts say its long-term applicability is uncertain as some elements contradict the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which codified discrimination protections for all LGBTQ employees under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The same conflict exists in Mr. Trump's orders to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, in which he instructed federal departments to "correct" what he called a "misapplication" of the Bostock ruling in their policies.
Their uncertain futures aside, LGBTQ advocacy and rights groups feel those policies and others have already reaped consequences on the community at large — "the predictable result," said Wolf, "of a divide and conquer campaign."
In response to Mr. Trump's directive to end "radical indoctrination in K-12 schools," the Department of Defense banned books with themes involving gender identity, sexual orientation and race from its schools for children in military families, which receive federal funding, according to a separate lawsuit filed by the ACLU. A textbook focused on LGBTQ figures in American history was tossed out under the ban.
Meanwhile, corporations scrambling to comply with anti-DEI orders eliminated or scaled back their partnerships with Pride celebrations around the country after Mr. Trump's takeover of the Kennedy Center in February forced WorldPride organizers to regroup because events were either canceled or relocated from the venue. And, in May, the Human Rights Campaign issued a memo warning that Mr. Trump's "big, beautiful bill," a "skinny" budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year, would cut $2.67 billion in federal funding from programs that support LGBTQ people.
Among its most urgent concerns were the administration's plans to significantly downsize public health programs for HIV/AIDS prevention as well as Justice Department programs that investigate anti-LGBTQ hate crimes, in addition to sweeping cuts to resources for the trans community.
Asked where LGBTQ rights stand under the Trump administration, a White House spokesperson pointed to Mr. Trump's past appointments of openly gay judges and officials such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in addition to two initiatives during his first term to decriminalize homosexuality globally and end the HIV epidemic by 2030, although his 2026 budget proposal would hamper that.
"President Trump's historic reelection and the overall MAGA movement is a big tent welcome for all and home to a large swath of the American people," said the spokesperson, Harrison Fields, in a statement. "The President continues to foster a national pride that should be celebrated daily, and he is honored to serve all Americans. The American people voted for a return to common sense, and the President is delivering on every campaign promise supported by 77 million voters and is ushering in our Golden Age."
"An anti-LGBTQ administration"
In addition to tangible policies, advocates say that attitudes toward LGBTQ people from the nation's highest office are contributing to higher incidences of violence against LGBTQ people and likely foreshadow harms still to come.
"Overall, it is clearly an anti-LGBTQ administration," said Sarah-Kate Ellis, the president and chief operating officer at the LGBTQ media organization GLAAD. "And I think that they are consistently signaling that they want to roll back all of our hard-won rights."
Mr. Trump and those in his orbit have repeatedly cast LGBTQ people and activities in a negative light. While announcing leadership shifts at the Kennedy Center in February, the president penned a social media post that pledged, in capital letters, to ensure the arts forum would no longer host drag shows "or other anti-American propaganda." His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, later said the country needs "less LGBTQ graduate majors" in an interview on Fox News criticizing Harvard University.
According to advocates and academics, the administration frequently relies on political strategies to marginalize trans people that have been used against other groups in the past. The term "groomers," for example, is a historically anti-gay trope, and "gender ideology" originally demonized feminism.
There were also notable moments of silence from the Trump administration, which did not acknowledge Pride Month, even as a global Pride festival took place for several weeks between May and June in Washington, D.C. LGBTQ people say that wasn't necessarily a surprise after watching their visibility decline in national forums this year, starting with mentions of "lesbian," "bisexual," "gay," "transgender," "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" being scrubbed from the White House website the day after Mr. Trump's inauguration, in a flashback to his first term.
References to trans people disappeared around the same time from the website for the Stonewall National Monument, considered the birthplace of gay liberation, in a move that sparked particular outcry. Marcia P. Johnson was among the pioneering trans activists who remain named on the site despite that change.
Where do LGBTQ rights stand in America?
Advocates for LGBTQ rights and others in the community say they're wary of what may come next. Echoing discourse that has persisted online since Mr. Trump's campaign, Ellis said she expects a right-wing push to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage, is imminent.
"Our view on this is that they will continually attack our community and find any way to dismantle our community," she said, of the right-wing forces propelling Mr. Trump. "They've only focused on trans people because they are such a small population and so marginalized. But they will go after our marriages. They will go after our families. It has always been the anti-LGBTQ movement at the center of this."
At least nine state legislatures have introduced bills to reverse the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling since Mr. Trump returned to Washington. Earlier this month, the Southern Baptist Convention voted overwhelmingly to pass a resolution that calls for the same. LGBTQ advocates emphasize that marriage equality is settled law, and research from Gallup and GLAAD demonstrate that a vast majority of Americans continue to support it. But some still worry the path to overturning Obergefell could be akin to the one that led to the fall of Roe v. Wade, which kept abortion legal for 50 years before Trump-appointed justices tipped the Supreme Court bench and struck it down.