On November 6, 2024, LGBTQ+ people woke up to a dark new world.

Donald Trump had just been reelected after being the center of one career-ending scandal after another for what felt like every week for almost a decade. His win raised a lot of questions: Why were so many people willing to set aside his obvious lack of qualifications? Did most of America really support the policies that he sold throughout the campaign, like mass deportation and ending transgender people’s rights? How far will he go to enact his less popular policies?

How many people would he hurt along the way? How many lives would he harm – or end – because he can’t understand the realities of people’s lives and because of the cruel people he would put in positions of power?

Kamala Harris is a fairly normal politician, as well as a charismatic, smart, and driven woman who had a knack for being relatable and who ran a competent but brief campaign that tacked to the center.

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She was widely seen as running for the second term of a president who was, by objective measures, successful. President Joe Biden ended the war in Afghanistan. He gave Ukraine a fighting chance when invaded by Russia without sending American troops. He managed to avoid a recession at the price of brief – and fairly mild, by world standards – inflation. Unemployment went down and inflation-adjusted wages went up across the economic spectrum. He got several large pieces of legislation passed, including the biggest anti-climate change legislation in history.

And, relevant to this publication, his administration was the most pro-LGBTQ+ administration ever.

But the twice impeached, convicted felon, admitted rapist, and adjudicated sex abuser whose mental faculties were clearly failing at his advanced age won anyway. More Americans voted for him than did for Harris – albeit by a small margin – and now we have to prepare for the consequences.

Some would throw up their hands and say that the American people deserve to face the consequences of their decision this past November, but those consequences will not be born equally. While all signs point to LGBTQ+ people voting strongly against him, he has promised an even harsher anti-LGBTQ+ administration than the first time around, without even the safeguards of one Democratic congressional chamber to blunt the impact.

January marks the launch of LGBTQ Nation’s first monthly edition. Entitled “Only when it’s dark enough can you see the stars,” it’s focused on questions like these. Questions about how we got here, interrogating what broke in American society, how hatred for our community became a centerpiece of Trump’s campaign. Questions about survival, about how LGBTQ+ people can access their rights as government officials take them away, about how to deal with a culture that has become emboldened in its attacks against us. And questions about how to prevent this from happening again in future elections.

The cover story of this edition is our yearly “Queer State of the Union” series, where LGBTQ Nation editors and writers sit down with leaders in activism, politics, and thought to discuss the state of LGBTQ+ rights and what people in the community can expect this year. In the first interview of this series, journalist Nico Lang talked to trans rights activist Sydney Duncan about the wide array of attacks on trans youth that could occur this year.

“Only when it’s dark enough can you see the stars” is a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, where he discussed how he would answer the question, “Which age would you like to live in?” if God asked him. He describes a few historical periods but says that his answer would be “just a few years in the second half of the 20th century.”

“Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up,” Dr. King said. “The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That’s a strange statement.”

“But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding.”

Many were reminded of the quote recently when Harris brought it up in her concession speech.

“I know many people feel that we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case,” she said. “But here’s the thing. America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a billion, brilliant stars, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth, and service.”

The interview with Duncan will be published shortly. You can follow the January Edition of LGBTQ Nation as it is published here.

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