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We assembled 5 LGBTQ+ leaders to learn about the Queer State of the Union. Here’s what they said.
January 25 2025, 08:15

When the results rolled in on November 5, many of us felt sadness, fear, and rage at the results. The LGBTQ+ community was one of the few demographics that did not swing to the GOP, but we will still bear the brunt of the country’s far-right shift.

For the last three years, in LGBTQ Nation’s Queer State of the Union series, we have sought out LGBTQ+ thought leaders, elected officials, organizers, artists, and activists for tough and energizing conversations about the issues that are most important to us, and a candid look at the challenges ahead.

And the challenge is clear: the country is no longer being led by the most pro-LGBTQ+ president in the nation’s history but by someone elected into office on the back of a massive campaign targeting our community.

This year’s edition of Queer State of the Union assesses the current state of the LGBTQ+ equality movement, offers calls to action for what comes next, and, most importantly, gives us hope.

Insights for the LGBTQ+ community

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Alex Bollinger
Editor-in-Chief


Rep. Mark Pocan is hoping for a “Republican with a conscience.” “Charlatan” Nancy Mace isn’t it.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI)
Representative Mark Pocan (D-WI). Photo illustration by Kyle Neal.

“We have to be in the action stage,” says Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI). “Anger and grieving have to be in the back window, and we have to be moving forward.”

It’s important to take Pocan’s description of a “Republican who has a conscience” with some precision. When asked about Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who mounted a campaign to ban trans women from using the women’s facilities at the Capitol just after it became clear that Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) would be the first transgender person in Congress, Pocan’s words were withering.

“She’s clearly a fragile, somewhat broken human being,” Pocan said of Mace. “To tweet 300 times in three days about any subject, right? Anyone who does that, I think they really need to have a couple of conversations with people close to them about what’s going on.” — Read the full interview here.


Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD
GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. Photo illustration by Kyle Neal.

Who owns the truth? GLAAD’s Sarah Kate Ellis on resisting the second Trump administration

As Donald Trump ascends to the presidency once more, Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of the queer media watchdog organization GLAAD, is watching American media very closely. “Who owns the media owns politics,” she tells LGBTQ Nation.

“The media ecosystem is evolving, and I think that we, as a community and as a society, have to take a really close look at that,” says Ellis. “The [social media] algorithm plays to hate, and we have to figure out how to make the algorithm play to honesty and truth.” 

But she stresses that average Americans, no matter whether they consume legacy or new media, still have a key role to play in helping support the most marginalized queer people in the years ahead. “Everybody has a platform now, and everybody has a voice,” Ellis says, “I always say what’s most important is … to ensure that you’re bringing LGBTQ voices to that table and representing the community.” — Read the full interview here.


Alejandra Caraballo
Alejandra Caraballo. Photo illustration by Kyle Neal.

Alejandra Caraballo explains Donald Trump’s “fundamental miscalculation”

“There’s almost no depth of cruelty that will deter immigration,” Alejandra Caraballo, who has worked extensively with LGBTQ+ immigrants and asylum seekers and is currently a clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, tells LGBTQ Nation. “The conditions in a lot of countries are so dire… It’s life or death for them, and a life of fear and tolerating cruelty is still one where you have a life.”   

The next four years won’t be pretty, but Caraballo does believe there may be some light on the other side.

“I fundamentally believe our society is at an impasse. I don’t think this kind of far-right populist authoritarianism is durable.” In the meantime, Caraballo suggests finding community and holding it tightly.

“Community and each other is how we’re going to get through all of this, and having empathy and loving other people is the most important value in the face of fascism.”  — Read the full interview here.


Civil rights leader David Johns is fighting to reclaim the future for Black & queer America

David Johns
Dr. David Johns, CEO and Executive Director of the National Black Justice Collective. Photo illustration by Kyle Neal for LGBTQ Nation.

“Culture wars are manufactured to drive wedges” within coalitions working toward shared progressive goals, Johns said, and to “spur misinformation and disinformation, to have people believing their privilege protects them from the assaults that so many of us have experienced,” says Dr. David Johns, CEO and Executive Director of the National Black Justice Collective

Johns has found access behind the velvet ropes of electoral or corporate power in his work with NBJC and in previous policy roles in Congress and the White House when the balance of power was less hostile. He’s continuing to encourage high-placed allies and accomplices to the mission of equal rights to redouble their commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion, to think about and center the morality of their decisions rather than their short-term political expediency. 

But more than anything, Johns keeps coming back to the basics: investing in and shoring up community and a commitment to seeking and sharing truth, especially through stories.

“If we don’t do this better together, then we all suffer the consequences, and so many of us will die,” Johns warned. “… We have better odds of surviving this hunger game if we all go together. And so my hope is that that lesson from our ancestors would be a compelling one.” — Read the full interview here.


Donald Trump is targeting trans rights. Sydney Duncan is fighting back.

Sydney Duncan
Sydney Duncan

In looking ahead to the new Trump term, Sydney Duncan, senior counsel for Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE), says that it may be a matter for Republicans to throw everything they can against the wall and see what sticks. “All indications are that they are going to take a lot of shots at the trans community,” she says. “They have both houses of Congress, so we’re expecting some bad legislation on top of that. We expect a tidal wave. We’re going to be slammed.”

Although early signs indicate that the Supreme Court is likely to uphold Tennessee’s law targeting trans youth health care, Duncan remains hopeful that a “rubber band effect” is imminent: that after years of attacks on the very existence of trans people, the momentum will reverse. 

But while the community awaits its own sea change in public opinion, Duncan maintains that trans people will continue to persist the same way that they always have.

“Every day, I see people waking up, living their best lives, and refusing to be any other way than the way they are,” says Duncan. “I think that’s beautiful. I think it’s so radical and empowering. Watching that gives me hope. Nobody’s saying, ‘I’ll just give up and go back to the way it was.’ They’re saying, ‘Hell no.’ — Read the full interview here.

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