This second term of the Trump administration has been brutal in so many ways. For the LGBTQ+ community, it has meant a year of relentless legal and social attacks — scapegoating transgender people, pushing laws meant to strip us of our rights, and attempting to erase us altogether. The daily weight of it all can feel overwhelming.

As an older lesbian, it’s heartbreaking to witness such a coordinated and malicious effort to undo decades of progress – progress I saw, fought for, and experienced us win firsthand. And yet, the more I sit with what’s happening, the clearer the bigger picture becomes. No matter how desperately this administration and its supporters try to keep us down, they will fail. We have endured before. We will endure again. And it will continue, overall, to get better.

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But before I lean too hard into optimism and play the role of Pollyanna, it’s worth sharing a bit of my background.

I grew up as a deeply closeted lesbian in the late 1970s, a time when the thought of two people of the same sex showing even the smallest public affection was unimaginable. Visibility came with real consequences: Ridicule was almost guaranteed, and few dared to be publicly out and proud. Before 1973, the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) actually considered homosexuality a disorder. It wasn’t completely removed until 1987.

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I remained firmly in the closet through most of my youth and well into young adulthood, finally coming at age twenty-six. I learned to perform – to talk about boys, to act interested, to play a role that never, in a million years, fit. During those years, fear was my constant companion. I lived in a state of vigilance, terrified that someone might uncover my secret.

But even worse was the loneliness, the crushing, suffocating loneliness. Any attraction I felt for other girls had to be carried in silence.

There is a special kind of heart-wrenching pain that comes from living a lie. Even into my mid-twenties, I kept trying to convince myself that maybe, just maybe, I could be ‘normal’, like everyone else, and not a ‘gross lesbian’, a phrase I’d heard echoed for years. I told myself that my attraction to women was just some strange hormonal phase, something that would eventually pass.

Yet no matter how hard I tried to convince myself, each night still ended the same way—in tears. I ached to be loved and accepted for who I was, not judged for who I was drawn to. It was a quiet, grinding isolation, the kind that wears you down day by day, and one I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Dark thoughts lingered at the edges of my mind, tempting me with the idea of escape. I had no one to talk to, no one I felt I could trust during that time, and the loneliness was exhausting. More than once, I came dangerously close to giving in to the darkness.

It wasn’t until college in the 1990s that I met my first love, and everything began to change. I came out, found community, and slowly started shedding years of internalized homophobia and self-hatred. For the first time, the pain I felt no longer came from within; it came from the world around me. I realized then that I wasn’t the problem, and neither was my LGBTQ+ community. We were whole and worthy exactly as we were. The real harm was the homophobia and transphobia imposed from the outside.

Over the next couple of decades, I lived out and proud, continually fighting for equality and basic rights while witnessing both progress and fierce backlash. I lived through the AIDS crisis, watching President Reagan dismiss it as the “gay plague” and largely ignore the devastation. I watched the nation grapple with the horror of Matthew Shepard’s torture and death; Oregon’s Ballot Measures 9 and 13—thinly veiled as “No Special Rights”—which attacked our community under the slogan “Protect Our Children”; and the rape and murder of Brandon Teena, a transgender man, in 1993.

Yet alongside the setbacks, there has been remarkable progress: the first gay pride parade in 1972; ACT UP’s fearless activism in the 1980s; and the Clinton administration’s executive order barring discrimination based on sexual orientation in the federal workplace. In 1997, I watched Ellen come out on national television and felt, for the first time, publicly seen. The first Transgender Day of Remembrance followed in 1999. In 2004, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon became the first same-sex couple married in San Francisco, and in 2015, marriage equality was finally recognized nationwide. In 2020, the Supreme Court affirmed federal employment protections for LGBTQ+ workers, and in the years since, LGBTQ+ leaders have continued to break barriers in public office—including in my home state of Oregon, which elected the nation’s first openly lesbian governor in 2022.

So many positive moments—some monumental, others quiet—have unfolded over the years. Taken together, they form a clear trajectory forward. Even when the pace slows, we are still moving in the right direction.

Which brings me to the present moment. Under the Trump administration, the barrage of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and rhetoric has been relentless, clearly aimed at dragging us backward. Decades of hard-won progress, both legal and cultural, are being challenged with a deeply unsettling speed and aggression.

History feels as though it is repeating itself, as backlash once again follows progress. Transgender rights are being rolled back at an alarming pace as some lawmakers urge the Supreme Court to reconsider same-sex marriage. At the same time, LGBTQ+ people are being pushed out of public life – removed from government webpages, targeted by “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, and even erased symbolically, as seen in the removal of all references to trans people at the Stonewall National Monument.

Make no mistake: This administration is determined to force us back into the closet and to criminalize our existence, both subtly and overtly. But despite this coordinated effort, I remain confident that the public will not accept a return to the past. Most Americans do not see LGBTQ+ people as the enemy, no matter how aggressively that narrative is pushed. Progress may slow. Backlash may grow louder. But the direction of history has not changed, and it will not stop here.

There was a time when I truly believed I would not survive what I was going through – those painful, lonely years spent in the closet, followed by coming out into a world that was still deeply unaccepting of LGBTQ+ people. But decades later, my life tells a very different story. I am a successful business owner, surrounded by a strong and loving community of friends and family. In my youth and ignorance, I never could have imagined that life could get this much better. But it did.

For younger queer generations who have not yet experienced years of being treated as abnormal or less than, I want you to know it does get better. You are not alone. You have a community, even if right now it’s just one or two people you trust. Find them. Confide in them. Talk about what you’re feeling. And if you can’t find someone you feel safe talking to, there are organizations and online resources created to support you and help guide you through difficult moments. 

Since I can’t go back in time to offer comfort to my younger self, I offer it now to today’s younger LGBTQ+ generation. There is nothing wrong with you. You belong here. This is your country too, and you deserve to live openly and safely within it.

I know how dark it can feel when those in power try to convince you otherwise.

But even now, I believe that despite the backlash and the fear, it will get better. Because we are still here, and we always have been.

Shaley Howard is the author of “Excuse Me, Sir! Memoir of a Butch,” which received the IPPY Silver Award for excellence in 2024. She’s a small-business owner and an award-winning activist in Portland, Oregon.

If this story affected you, just know you are not alone. The Trans Lifeline Hotline offers support to trans/nonbinary people struggling with mental health from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. PST Monday-Friday. Call (877) 565-8860 to be connected to a trans/nonbinary peer operator and receive full anonymity and confidentiality. The Trevor Project Lifeline, for LGBTQ+ youth ages 24 and younger, can be reached at (866) 488-7386.

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