The group has a long history of fighting against LGBTQIA+ rights.

Last month, it was reported that the Supreme Court will formally consider a petition for a case calling on them to overturn their 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, the historic ruling that made gay marriage legal nationwide. The petition comes from former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who has made headlines and been embroiled in legal battles since she refused to sign marriage licenses for gay couples.

While Davis has been fighting against gay marriage since it was made legal, her lawyers have been doing it for longer. Davis is being represented by Liberty Counsel, a far-right Christian legal group and Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQIA+ hate group.

Since its inception in 1989, the group has opposed gay rights causes, including fighting against gay marriage, the legalisation of homosexuality and bans on conversion therapy. In one instance, the group’s Facebook cover photo referenced the Bible verse Leviticus 20:13, which reads, “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

When asked about the cover photo, the group responded in an email that “Liberty Counsel has never promoted or condoned the killing of anyone or asked anyone to ‘like’ any quote about killing gays.”

Experts say Liberty Counsel is arguably more powerful than ever in 2025, fueled by publicity from Davis’ case and the opportunity to capitalize on a moment when American politics are stacked toward the right-wing—something that could upend gay marriage.

“The alignments will never be as favorable as they are at this moment,” Anne Nelson, author of “Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right,” told Uncloseted Media. “That’s why they’re going for broke.”

History

Liberty Counsel was founded by preacher turned lawyer Mat Staver and his wife Anita.

Mat Staver, who now serves as the chairman, senior pastor and primary spokesperson for the group, authored the 2004 book “Same-sex Marriage: Putting Every Household at Risk,” where he wrote that “homosexuality is rooted in fractured emotions” and “a common thread in virtually every case is some sort of sexual or emotional brokenness.”

While the organization started operations solely in Florida, Mat Staver told the Orlando Sentinel shortly after Liberty Counsel launched that the group “would be a Christian antithesis to the ACLU” and that he “always felt the Lord calling [him] to combine [ministry and law] together.”

Liberty Counsel was active throughout the 1990s, with a focus on First Amendment cases, but Staver and his group didn’t gain national attention until 1994, when he argued before the Supreme Court for a case that challenged the constitutionality of a Florida court ruling that barred anti-abortion protests outside of a clinic. Some parts of the ruling were successfully overturned while others remained in place.

After that, the group built up a reputation for taking up cases related to religion in schools and other public institutions, including one instance where they threatened a lawsuit against one school for changing the lyrics of a Christmas song in a school play.

Attacking Gay Rights

After the turn of the century, Liberty Counsel became more active on gay issues. In 2003, they filed an amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas, the case that decriminalized gay sex nationwide, arguing in favor of state laws banning it by saying that “deregulating human sexual relations will erode the institution of marriage.”

When California was taken to court over Proposition 8, a 2008 state constitutional amendment that sought to ban gay marriage in the state, Liberty Counsel attempted to be among the lawyers defending it. The group publicly criticized fellow far-right Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom for, in their view, arguing the case poorly.

One lawyer for Liberty Counsel also disagreed with legal positions taken by one pro-Prop 8 lawyer, who reportedly refused to argue that homosexuality is an “illness or disorder.” In their amicus brief in support of the proposition, Liberty Counsel argued that homosexuality “presents serious physical, emotional, mental, and other health-related risks.”

And in 2015, just months before the Obergefell ruling, the group offered to represent Alabama judges who refused to perform gay marriages after a state ban was overturned.

Once gay marriage became legal nationwide, Liberty Counsel took up Kim Davis’ case, which brought them more media attention than ever before.

“Kim Davis was a boon to Liberty Counsel,” says Peter Montgomery, research director at People for the American Way, an advocacy group aimed at challenging the far right. “[She] got them a huge amount of publicity, and I think they’ve really grown since they first took up her case.”

Much of the earned media from the Davis case, however, was negative. Liberty Counsel received criticism for encouraging Davis to continue refusing gay marriage licenses in violation of a court order. And even a Fox News panel of legal experts called Davis a “hypocrite” and Mat Staver’s legal arguments “stunningly obtuse” and “ridiculously stupid.”

In an email to Uncloseted Media, Liberty Counsel took issue with criticism of the group’s past litigation, writing that “[they] have 40 wins [they] briefed or argued at the US Supreme Court, including a 9-0 win in Shurtleff v. City of Boston.”

Liberty Counsel has created their own media, including a daily 11-minute radio broadcast, Faith and Freedom. Launched in 2010, the program is syndicated on 145 stations across the country and frequently contains anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric, including assertions that LGBTQIA+ inclusive policies in the Boy Scouts create “a playground for pedophiles”; that gay people “know intuitively that what they are doing is immoral, unnatural, and self-destructive”; and that gay people are “not controlled by reason,” but rather “controlled by … lust.”

And after being boosted in popularity by Kim Davis, a 2016 CBS News investigation found that the group had worked with lawmakers in at least 20 states to author anti-LBGTQ bills, including trans bathroom bans.

“They’re pretty much anti-LGBT in every way you can be,” Montgomery told Uncloseted Media. “Staver is pretty shameless in lying about gay people and the laws.”

Why Now?

Davis’ case has fallen in and out of public attention over the years, with the Supreme Court rejecting a previous petition in 2020. Despite this, Liberty Counsel has remained confident in the case’s potential to upend gay marriage. In 2023, the group told their supporters in an email that they planned to use Davis’ case to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell. These comments came a year after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas expressed interest in reconsidering Obergefell in his opinion on the case that overturned Roe v. Wade.

“[The far right have] been working for decades to get their pieces in place, so at this particular moment, looking at the chessboard, they’ve got a critical mass of conservative states with Republicans in the state house, they’ve got the White House, they’ve got both houses of Congress, and they’ve got a majority on the Supreme Court,” says Nelson. “In a year, that could change.”

Increasing Notoriety

Montgomery says that Liberty Counsel’s popularity and influence has been on the rise since the start of the pandemic, when the group gained traction by opposing restrictions on churches meeting during COVID lockdowns. During this period, Staver claimed that COVID-19 vaccines are designed to “prevent people from procreating.”

“One of the ways that [Staver] has boosted his visibility and influence was riding that parade, which a number of people on the religious right did, and took advantage of the resentment of public health restrictions,” says Montgomery.

Since then, the group has falsely claimed that the Respect for Marriage Act “would allow pedophiles to marry children,” and Staver wrote in a newsletter that “the LGBTQ agenda seeks nothing less than to eliminate all religious freedom rights that might make them feel bad about their choices.”

In the meantime, affiliates of the group have been cozying up to the Supreme Court. In 2022, a representative of the Liberty Counsel-owned D.C. ministry Faith & Liberty was caught bragging about praying with Supreme Court justices just weeks after the court overturned Roe v. Wade. Staver told Rolling Stone these allegations are “entirely untrue.”

In his majority opinion on the case, Justice Alito cited an amicus brief filed by Liberty Counsel where the group argues that “the birth control and abortion movements are racist and eugenic.”

Part of a Bigger Picture

Liberty Counsel’s website reports that it generated nearly $28 million in revenue between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024. While their internal team has roughly 40 employees listed on LinkedIn, they have claimed to have anywhere from 90 to 700 affiliate attorneys across the country. Some of the group’s larger and more consistent donors reportedly include fracking baron Farris Wilks; the Christian TV network Good Life Broadcasting; and Liberty University, where Staver previously worked as dean of the law school.

“The big Christian nationalist and plutocratic donors understand that the Supreme Court, and the judiciary in general, are central to their aims … so over the past few decades they spent enormous sums grooming and promoting candidates for the judiciary whose interpretation of the law is favorable to their interests,” Katherine Stewart, an author and expert on religious nationalism, told Uncloseted Media in an email. “Liberty Counsel has successfully positioned itself as one of the players in that space. It only picks up a slice from the total pie, but the pie is so well-funded that even a slice is rich indeed.”

Beyond this, Liberty Counsel is affiliated with a number of other right-wing groups, several of which operate directly under the group’s umbrella. Staver holds leadership positions in other conservative groups, including Salt & Light Council and National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference—the former of which has been outspokenly anti-LGBTQIA+. Liberty Counsel is also a member of the Remnant Alliance, a coalition of groups known for coordinating to elect Christian nationalist candidates to local school boards. A leaked membership directory from 2020 also listed Staver as a member of the Council for National Policy, a secretive group that includes Republican politicians and major leaders of Christian right organizations, though Staver told Uncloseted Media that Liberty Counsel and the Council for National Policy are not affiliated.

Nelson says connections like these allow different groups on the far right to coordinate together on anti-LGBTQIA+ policies.
“They’ll have coordinated messaging about whatever campaign they’re launching at the moment. And it’s highly coordinated, as in the same story, the same language, the same spokespeople. It’s really quite impressive. And so all of a sudden there’ll be a story that will just erupt.”

The Council for National Policy did not respond to a request for comment.

When Liberty Counsel filed its most recent petition for Davis’ case to the Supreme Court, multiple right-wing media outlets whose leadership have been members of the Council for National Policy quickly covered the story with a favorable spin, including Salem Media Group, the Washington Times and WorldNetDaily. And earlier this year, Staver networked at the National Religious Broadcasters conference, where he discussed plans to overturn Obergefell.

Montgomery says that this coordination is especially powerful because different groups are able to influence different spheres. For example, while Liberty Counsel pressures the courts, a group like Salt & Light Council works to activate supporters in ministry.

“They have this broader vision of wanting to change the culture and change the country,” he says. “They are all different approaches to moving the country in the direction they want: courts, legislative advocacy, lobbying, organizing, and media outreach.”

Nelson says the far right’s recent legal success is thanks in part to the influx of right-wing judges since the start of Trump’s first term.

“It’s worked initially with trying to get local and political opposition to these laws, and it’s linked to getting the appointments of judges who’ve had to pass a litmus test,” she says. “And then [their strategy involves] mounting the lawsuits, starting usually at the state level and working their way up the court system, specializing in states where they believe they’ll have sympathetic judges. … It’s gaming [the system].”

In an email to Uncloseted Media, Liberty Counsel says this characterization does not describe their litigation strategy.

What Does This Mean for Marriage Equality?

Despite all of this, many legal experts believe that this latest challenge to marriage equality is a long shot. Liberty Counsel’s arguments were largely rejected by a federal appeals court panel earlier this year, and several of the justices have shown little to no interest in revisiting Obergefell. Just this month, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that the right to marriage is “fundamental” and called for people to “tune … out” concerns about gay marriage being overturned.

However, given the current political moment, Nelson says that the threat to Obergefell should not be underestimated.

“This long-range strategy is coming to fruition and a lot of the pieces are in place,” she says. “Under the current circumstances, with the current judiciary, they’ve got a reasonable chance of allowing states to ban same-sex marriages on a state level with an eye towards eventually banning it [on a nationwide level] in the future.”

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The Supreme Court is expected to decide this fall whether they will formally take up a case that is asking them to reverse their decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.

WORDS BY NICO DIALESANDRO AND HOPE PISONI, UNCLOSETED MEDIA

In the U.S. today, there are over 800,000 married gay couples. And 67% of Americans say they support marriage equality, including 50% of Republicans.

Despite this, many of the groups that fought to prevent the Obergefell ruling are now ramping up their ongoing fight to overturn it.

If Obergefell were overturned, it could become illegal for gay couples to marry in the 32 states that still have bans on the books. As the Supreme Court mulls over whether or not to take a case asking them to overturn the historic ruling, we’ve documented every step that has been taken in the past five years to threaten gay marriage in the U.S.

Oct. 5, 2020

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) rejects a petition to hear former Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis’ appeal in Ermold v. Davis, a case brought by a same-sex couple after Davis denied them a marriage license in 2015. Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, writes that the Obergefell ruling has “ruinous consequences for religious liberty” and that it “enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots.” They express their desire to see Obergefell overturned, writing that SCOTUS “has created a problem that only it can fix.”

The following day, Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal group and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)-designated hate group, announces their intent to file a petition with the Supreme Court to “address Obergefell” after Davis’ case moves to a trial court.

Nov. 5, 2020

Nevada overturns an 18-year-old ban on same-sex marriage, making it the first state to enshrine gay couples’ right to marry in their constitution. Nevadans vote 62% in favor of the reversal.

“It feels good that we let the voters decide,” Equality Nevada President Chris Davin told NBC News. “The people said this, not judges or lawmakers. This was direct democracy—it’s how everything should be,” he said, adding that the LGBTQIA+ community wants something concrete to protect same-sex marriage in case “the federal level ever revokes it—which is what a lot of folks are worried about with the new Supreme Court.”

June 17, 2021

SCOTUS rules in favor of Catholic Social Services (CSS), which sued the city of Philadelphia for ending its foster-care placement contract with CSS because of their refusal to certify same-sex couples as foster parents. The ruling, which states that Philadelphia’s termination of CSS’s contract violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, provides a carve-out to Obergefell.

June 24, 2022

Roe v. Wade is overturned. In a concurring opinion with the majority, Thomas sets his eyes on Obergefell and Lawrence v. Texas—a ruling that in essence legalized gay sex. He writes that the Court should reconsider those cases since they used similar arguments to Roe v. Wade.

“[W]e should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous.’”

Despite Thomas’ opinion, the majority explicitly states that “[n]othing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

Dec. 13, 2022

President Joe Biden signs the Respect For Marriage Act into law. This solidifies federal and interstate recognition of same-sex marriages even if Obergefell is overturned. The law is a backstop to the attacks on same-sex marriage.

Dec. 19, 2022

In a response to the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act, SPLC-designated anti-LGBTQIA+ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) says that “the chances of the Supreme Court overturning Obergefell are (unfortunately) slim to none.”

June 30, 2023

SCOTUS rules 6-3 that Colorado cannot force a website designer, who is represented by ADF, to create wedding websites for same-sex couples. The Court says doing so would violate the designer’s First Amendment right to free speech because her work is considered creative expression. This decision narrows how public-accommodation laws apply and creates another carve-out for Obergefell to be overturned.

Sept. 13, 2023

After a court ruling holds Kim Davis liable for damages to gay couples who she refused to sign marriage licenses for, Liberty Counsel discusses the potential to appeal the case up to the Supreme Court and use it to argue for Obergefell to be overturned.

July 8, 2024

The GOP’s national party platform, Make America Great Again!, drops explicit anti-Obergefell language from its plank. Despite this, the fight to overturn same-sex marriage continues to heat up.

Jan. 22, 2025

Tennessee lawmakers introduce a bill that would allow for “covenant marriages,” an explicitly religious form of marriage license that can only be given to a man and a woman and does not allow for divorce in most circumstances. Covenant marriages already exist in Arizona, Arkansas and Louisiana. Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri have recently introduced similar bills.

Jan. 27, 2025

Idaho’s House of Representatives passes a resolution calling on the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell. The resolution was drafted by MassResistance, a far right group that wrote a book called “The Health Hazards of Homosexuality” and that has 24 chapters around the world. One of their newest chapters is in Kenya, where the group says it holds trainings for youth to “resist the LGBT agenda” in schools.

The Idaho resolution would go on to create a domino effect. Lawmakers in Michigan, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota introduce similar measures in their states asking SCOTUS to overturn Obergefell.

Republican Rep. Josh Schriver, who introduced the resolution in Michigan, had previously posted to X: “Make gay marriage illegal again. This is not remotely controversial, nor extreme.”

June 10, 2025

At the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), a national meeting of more than 10,000 church representatives from America’s largest Protestant denomination, the convention’s resolutions committee introduces a resolution calling on lawmakers and SCOTUS to overturn laws and court rulings, “including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God’s design for marriage and family.”

SBC delegates overwhelmingly vote in favor of a gay marriage ban as well as the reversal of Obergefell.

June 12, 2025

Liberty Counsel releases a statement titled “Obergefell ‘Marriage’ Opinion Must Be Overturned.” The group’s founder and chairman, Mathew Staver, says:

“The U.S. Constitution provides no foundation for ‘same-sex marriage.’ Obergefell was wrongly decided whereby the Court created a right that is nowhere to be found in the text. We will petition the U.S. Supreme Court because Kim Davis’ case underscores why the High Court should overturn Obergefell v. Hodges. Obergefell threatens the religious liberty of Americans who believe that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.”

June 23, 2025

ADF publishes an article titled “Despite 10 Years of Obergefell, Kids Still Need a Mother and Father.” The article outwardly condemns gay marriage as bad for children, marking the group’s most explicit statement of opposition to the ruling in years. Weeks later, the group’s vice president of appellate advocacy publishes an essay arguing a similar premise.

July 24, 2025

Kim Davis files a petition asking SCOTUS to revisit and overturn Obergefell, saying the case was wrongfully decided. The petition will need just four votes from the justices to be heard by the Court.

Aug. 15, 2025

On a podcast, Hillary Clinton expresses her concern that Obergefell will be overturned:

“American voters, and to some extent the American media, don’t understand how many years the Republicans have been working in order to get us to this point. … It took 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade. … The Supreme Court will hear a case about gay marriage; my prediction is they will do to gay marriage what they did to abortion—they will send it back to the states. … Anybody in a committed relationship out there in the LGBTQ community, you ought to consider getting married because I don’t think they’ll undo existing marriages, but I fear they will undo the national right.”

Sept. 7, 2025

In an interview with CBS News, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett argues SCOTUS rulings should not be based on “opinion polls” and that the Court should not be imposing its own values on the American people.

Fall 2025

In fall 2025, SCOTUS is expected to decide whether or not it will revisit Obergefell. If it grants a review, oral arguments will likely be heard in spring 2026 with a decision by late June 2026, during Pride Month.

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As a key face of America’s far right, Owens has repeatedly spewed antisemitic and anti-LGBTQIA+ vitriol.

WORDS BY NICO DIALESANDRO AND ESTEBAN CORONA, UNCLOSETED MEDIA

Candace Owens is a case study in how people can change. In 2015, she was the CEO of a now-defunct website that published blog posts about Trump’s small penis and the “bat-shit-crazy antics of the Republican Tea Party.”

She later had ambitions to create a website that would out online bullies, which was seen by many as an attempt to dox people. But in response, Owens was doxed by her critics, and she blamed liberals, saying the situation made her “[become] a conservative overnight.”

Since then, Owens has become a key figure of the far right and is now embroiled in a lawsuit with Emmanuel Macron and his wife.

As a face of American hate, here’s Owens’ complete track record as it relates to LGBTQIA+ people and other minority groups.

July 28, 2017

In a video on her YouTube channel, Owens expresses her support for the Trump administration’s trans military ban, saying, “I cannot think of anybody’s emotional capabilities that are more unstable than somebody that is transitioning from a male to a female.”

April 18, 2018

In a speech at a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) event, Owens says, “There’s an ideological civil war happening. Black people that are focused on their past and shouting about slavery and Black people that are focused on their futures.” At the time, Owens was the communications director for TPUSA.

April 20, 2018

Owens writes on X that Black Lives Matter protesters are “a bunch of whiny toddlers, pretending to be oppressed for attention.”

On Joe Rogan’s podcast, Owens says, “I fully support gay marriage” when asked for an opinion she holds that differs from classic conservatism.

July 7, 2018

In an anti-Muslim and anti-immigration rant on X, Owens says, “Europe will fall and become a Muslim majority continent by 2050.”

Dec. 11, 2018

At a private launch party for Turning Point UK, Owens says she doesn’t have “any problems at all with the word nationalism” and believes the term has been unfairly tainted by Adolf Hitler.

“If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK fine. The problem is that… he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German, everybody to look a different way. That’s not, to me, that’s not nationalism.”

Dec. 18, 2018

Owens tweets, “Trans women competing in Miss Universe pageants and in sports competitions makes a complete and utter mockery of modern feminism,” adding that “men [referring to trans women] now have an avenue to slowly take over and dominate everything — so long as they ‘self-identify’ as women.”

March 3, 2019

Owens begins hosting a podcast for Prager University, a right-wing media group known for spreading misinformation about trans health care and for advocating against Pride Month. In her work, she says Black people had better lives under Jim Crow, defends American slavery, decries feminism and describes the so-called “transgender lobby” as “vicious and dangerous.”

March 15, 2019

Two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, are attacked by a white supremacist and 51 people are killed. The shooter names Owens as a prime influence while parroting far-right conspiracy theories of white genocide. Owens responds on X with an “LOL!” and denies her influence: “I’ve never created any content espousing my views on the 2nd Amendment or Islam.”

April 9, 2019

Following the Christchurch shootings, the House Judiciary Committee holds a hearing on the global resurgence of white nationalism. Republican minority leaders select Owens to speak as a witness. Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu plays a video of Owens’ Hitler comments, which the senior vice president of the Anti-Defamation League says feeds white nationalist ideology.

June 23, 2019

Owens hosts Mario Lopez on her PragerU show, where he calls it “dangerous” for parents to affirm trans identities of their children at a young age.

PFLAG responds to Lopez’s comments on X and offers him help understanding “what being #transgender means.”

While Lopez would go on to apologize for his statements, Owens posts that “sick” leftists publicly bullied him into it.

Nov. 20, 2019

Owens belittles Transgender Day of Remembrance. She asks, “Is there a black on black crime Remembrance Day? I’m thinking if 331 trans people annually warrants a whole day — but yet 125 black people were shot this week in Chicago alone, we might be up for like, a whole year of remembrance. To mourn our lost siblings: most of them men.”

Dec. 30, 2019

Actress and activist Jameela Jamil cancels a planned appearance of Owens on her podcast, saying that her appearance would make trans employees feel “unsafe.”

Feb. 27, 2020

On Glenn Beck’s podcast, Owens goes on a transphobic rant:

“I’m so outwardly spoken against the trans movement… That is one of the most dangerous things that’s happening right now. Weakening men, turning men into women. It is an evil thing that’s happening right now with the trans movement.”

Sept. 6, 2020

Owens calls the “trans movement” “actually satanic” in a segment of PragerU’s “The Candace Owens Show.”

Nov. 14, 2020

Owens attacks Harry Styles on X for wearing a dress on the cover of Vogue.

Harry Styles defended by fans after Candace Owens dissed him for wearing a dress on the cover of Vogue. pic.twitter.com/eNgVEIJKm5

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) November 16, 2020

Aug. 26, 2021

On her podcast, Owens says that former NBA superstar Dwyane Wade’s then-13-year-old daughter Zaya is transgender because of Wade’s failures as a father.

“His son now says that he is a woman… Your child learned this behaviour because there was an absence of masculinity in that child’s life and that makes sense for a basketball player.”

March 31, 2022

The Walt Disney Company posts a statement opposing Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. In response, Owens brands the company as “child groomers and pedophiles” and urges a Disney boycott.

April 5, 2022

Owens frames gay marriage as a “slippery slope” enabling the moral decline of America.

May 25, 2022

In the days after a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 21 people, 4chan users spread images that falsely claim the perpetrator was transgender. Owens accuses the shooter of “cross-dressing” and being “mentally disturbed and abused.”

Later that day, a 17-year-old trans girl is attacked in El Paso, Texas. The girl says the men grabbed her and said she is “perverting kids” and a “mental health freak.”

June 15, 2022

Owens goes on a homophobic and transphobic rant about Pride Month:

“I think it should be called shame month. It’s absolute debauchery. Adults are getting behind this narrative so they can have a woke T-shirt on and say ‘I love my children.’ They should have their children taken away from them because it’s child abuse.”

May 16, 2023

Owens compares being transgender to having cancer:

“Yes, it’s an ill[ness], it’s a cancer and we should fight it. But it is not an ideology that can survive itself because, well, it can’t reproduce.”

June 9, 2023

YouTube suspends Owens’ YouTube account for comments that violate their hate speech policy.

July 14, 2023

On her podcast, Owens says that homosexuality is a “social contagion.” A few days later, she blames gay men for pedophilia in the church.

“It is gay men that are abusing children… The issue is that we have homosexual men that have invaded [the Catholic Church].”

Jan. 4, 2024

In the wake of a school shooting in Iowa — where the perpetrator used he/they pronouns on social media — Owens posts to X that “the entire LGBTQ movement brought with it a sexual plague on our society.”

Feb. 14, 2024

In an Instagram post, Owens accuses what she describes as “political Jews” of inventing anti-Semitism as a manipulation tool.

March 7, 2024

While defending antisemitic remarks by Kanye West, Owens claims there is a ring of “quite sinister” Jews that is conspiring to keep their voices silenced.

March 22, 2024

Owens stops working at The Daily Wire and soon starts posting more frequently on her YouTube channel, which currently has 4.58 million subscribers. Her videos, which often garner millions of views, are aggressively anti-LGBTQIA+. She says her project is meant to clear the name of convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein.

June 14, 2024

On her show, Owens claims that the U.S. is “held hostage by Israel” and suggests the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was behind the assassination of JFK.

July 12, 2024

In an exchange with Don Lemon, Owens blames “perverts” for what she calls the redefinition of words, lamenting that she can no longer use the word “faggot” as it is seen as hateful — while using it several times. When asked if she believes same-sex marriage is a sin, she says yes.

“Yes, you’re sinning… You are in a sinful relationship. I actually don’t believe marriage can be between two men,” she tells Lemon.

Aug. 28, 2024

Owens claims TikTok is socially engineering men to be gay:

“Women are being socially engineered to hate men, and men are being socially engineered to be gay… They’re just making men more and more effeminate, encouraging effeminate behaviour.”

Sept. 9, 2024

Owens’ YouTube channel is suspended for a week and demonetised for violating hate‑speech policies, with one cited video being an interview with Kanye West in which she spread the antisemitic trope that Jews control the media.

Oct. 15, 2024

Owens’ former boss, Dennis Prager, publicly releases a letter he privately sent to Owens after she failed to respond. He admonishes her for her repeated antisemitic attacks that Israel was founded as a haven for pedophiles by Jews who committed ritualistic killings of Christian children, as well as claims that Jews were responsible for violence against Catholics.

Dec. 3, 2024

Owens falsely accuses Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy of being a “homosexual” in a post expressing her support for Russia.

Jan. 22, 2025

Following a school shooting in Tennessee, Owens is again named as an influence in the shooter’s manifesto.

French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron have filed a defamation lawsuit against Candace Owens.

The lawsuit seeks damages from Owens for spreading allegations about the couple, including that the First Lady was born male. pic.twitter.com/4pPKjwHK0P

— Pop Base (@PopBase) July 23, 2025

July 23, 2025

French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron file a defamation lawsuit against Owens, likely because of her multi‑part series, Becoming Brigitte. The series falsely claims Mrs. Macron is secretly transgender. The Macrons say that Owens has made money from her lies, selling T-shirts mocking the First Lady.

The Macrons hire Tom Clare, the lawyer who represented Dominion Voting Systems in defamation cases against Fox News, as their attorney.

This lawsuit comes despite Trump allegedly asking Owens to stop.

Aug. 5, 2025

After the lawsuit is filed, Owens makes a $300,000 bet with Piers Morgan on live TV that Brigitte Macron “was born a man”.

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From dating profiles that request “No Asians” to racist comments in night clubs, the gay community doesn’t feel inclusive for many Asian American men.

WORDS BY JAKE ANGELO, UNCLOSETED MEDIA
PHOTO COURTESY OF CODY SEIYA
DESIGN BY SAM DONNDELINGER

Cody Seiya did not feel welcome in Provincetown.

“Is that for yellow pride?” a man sneered at Seiya in the middle of Ptown’s tea dance, referring to a yellow bandanna he was wearing around his neck.

It wasn’t the first time Seiya, a 33-year-old gay Asian American, had experienced racism from other queer men. Years earlier at Rage, a now-closed gay club in West Hollywood, another white man asked him what he was doing there.

“It’s not Gameboi night,” the man said to him, referring to the Asian-themed weekly party the venue hosted.

“That was really the first time that I really felt some sort of divide,” Seiya told Uncloseted Media. “We’re already such a marginalized community, and then to just marginalize even further; it was just really disappointing.”

Seiya’s experience isn’t unique. A 2022 report from The Trevor Project found that more than half of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) LGBTQIA+ youth reported discrimination based on their race and/or ethnicity in 2021. And another study from the Williams Institute found that nearly one in five AAPI LGBTQIA+ adults do not feel safe in the U.S.

This discrimination is a silent epidemic, according to Gene Lim, a researcher at the Australian Research Center for Sex, Health and Society.

“There’s a lot of shame around experiencing sexual racism, on top of the fact that it’s an inherently distressing situation,” Lim told Uncloseted Media. “That congeals into a sense of isolation.”

Feelings of exclusion take a mental health toll: 40% of AAPI youth seriously considered suicide in the U.S. in 2021, and 16% attempted it.

Seiya says he’s carried those instances of racism with him and that they’ve impacted his self-perception in queer spaces.

“[It gave] this sense of otherness and discomfort whenever I was in a predominantly white space. It’s still something I deal with to this day.”

Danny Maiuri, a 41-year-old queer Korean American man, says he’s conscious of his racial identity when he visits Fire Island, a popular gay vacation spot on Long Island, N.Y.

“I remember times just getting asked the really basic ‘Where are you from?’ And I just kind of explained, ‘I live in New York,’ and then you get the ‘But like, were you born here?’”A Long History of Racism

Racism toward Asian people has permeated American society since the first Chinese immigrants arrived in California in the 1800s.

Sexual racism—or discrimination in romantic partner selection—is most common among men who have sex with men (MSM), according to Thomas Le, an assistant professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College.

“A lot of what Asian American men report in the U.S. is some ostracization because of the elevation of white men, and masculinity and muscularity being prized,” Le told Uncloseted Media.

Lim says this fixation on whiteness stems from racialized hierarchies in queer spaces, where Eurocentric features are often favored over Asian features.

“Asian MSM [must] navigate a sexual field where the hierarchy of desire is really racialized,” Lim told Uncloseted Media. “And they can feel disadvantaged in a way that is insurmountable.”

Nineteenth-century immigration laws and cultural norms in the U.S. excluded Asian American men from participating in male-dominant professions like mining and field work. Instead, they assumed roles typically associated with women.

This segregation fomented in the American mind an image of the Asian man as feminine and has translated into the racist stereotypes about body image and dating preferences of gay men.

Asian men are often assumed to be bottoms or twinks or to have small penis sizes because of this emasculated image. And a 2011 analysis on race-based partner preferences among MSM found that Asian men were preferred by 12% of participants, a dramatic drop off from preferences for white and Black men, preferred by 52% and 48% of participants, respectively.

Photo by Cody Kinsfather

Racist Stereotypes and the Media’s White Beauty Standard

In American media, Hollywood has reproduced caricatures of Asian people for years. Long Duk Dong, the Asian character in “Sixteen Candles,” was portrayed as sexually inept. Leslie Chow’s diction in “The Hangover” is heavily accented, and his nudity is the punchline of a joke with the implication that Asian men are sexually inferior.

While media representations have shifted away from overtly racist caricatures, and have even centered queer Asian male relationships like in Boys’ Love anime, the absence of Asian portrayals in the media and the abundance of white characters have shaped attraction among a generation of queer people.

Le says white, muscular men dominated popular media and defined what it meant to be attractive through the 1990s and 2000s.

“Representation is really important … it has this really understated effect on the erotic habitus for a lot of queer men,” says Lim, referring to the learned component of sexual desire. “A lot of queer Asian men do grow up implicitly measuring themselves against a Eurocentric standard.”

This experience was a reality for Filipino American Kalaya’an Mendoza in college.

Growing up in a majority non-white neighborhood in San Jose, Calif., Mendoza had never compared himself with white people. But at UC Santa Barbara, a school where AAPI people composed less than one-fifth of the undergraduate student body, Mendoza remembers attempting to fit in by adhering to white beauty standards.

Photo courtesy of Seiya

“[I was] trying to be as American as possible and not to be seen as the other, not to be seen as a perpetual foreigner,” Mendoza, now 46, told Uncloseted Media. “No matter how much I tried and no matter how many times I bleached my hair, no matter how many blue contacts I bought—I would never be white.”

“I just remember feeling extremely depressed,” he says. “I almost dropped out.”

The pressure to assimilate to a white beauty standard is also ingrained in porn.

“Pornography is generally one kind of common avenue for young queer men to explore sexuality,” says Le. “Some develop racialized attractions based on that.”

White actors are far more frequently cast in porn than actors of color. Because of that, many queer men hold white people as the beauty standard.

This is what Mendoza discovered when he attempted to decolonize his dating preferences, which he describes as unlearning his racial biases shaped by colonialism. He says he questioned why he was so attracted to whiteness even though he grew up around people of color. “A lot of that was, quite frankly, because of the sexualized media or the porn.”

Seiya says he has experienced racism working in the porn industry.

“They just automatically assume that I am a bottom or submissive because I am Asian,” he says. “I just find it demoralizing and very limiting.”

Sex and Dating

When it comes to dating, queer Asian men often find it difficult to decipher if they are being seen for who they are or if they are being fetishized.

Dating apps compound these effects. The design of most platforms are such that users must make quick judgments based on minimal information on a user’s profile. Because of this, Lim says many users fall upon their prejudices.

As a way to receive more matches or chats, some Asian men attempt to fit into stereotypes that paint them as effeminate, such as the “lady boy” or the “femme boy.”

“Gay men do this all the time, they try to embody an archetype,” says Lim. “And an archetype is fertile ground for someone to project their own fantasies onto.”

Maiuri says he constantly questions whether his sexual interactions are shaped by his own desires or if he’s assuming a role based on preconceived notions.

Photo by Cody Kinsfather

He feels that many men assume that “all Asian men are bottoms and submissive,” and he constantly asks himself, “Am I fulfilling this role because this is what I actually enjoy? Or was this something that was just put on me and I’ve adapted to?”

Although gay culture remains white-centric, there are signs of change.

“A lot of queer Asian American men actually are creating their own communities,” says Le. “[They’re] really being intentional about finding a community with other queer men of color.”

Mendoza says that finding other queer people of color at college helped him to cultivate a positive self-image.

“That’s why, quite frankly, I feel like I’m alive today,” he says.

Maiuri says that while often criticized as a boogeyman of the mental health crisis, social media is actually having positive effects in facilitating connections between young men of similar experiences and slowly providing more examples of queer Asian men.

“The good part of it has been that connection and kind of finding identity and finding examples online for some folks to find ways to navigate [their] identity,” says Maiuri.

Seiya has come a long way from that weekend in Provincetown. He recently returned to the gay vacation hotspot for its fifth annual Frolic Weekend, a queer men of color takeover event.
“That was really special to recontextualize the space for myself,” Seiya says. “We deserve to take up space instead of shrinking ourselves.”

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In his second 100 days, Trump’s relentless attack against the LGBTQIA+ community has intensified.

WORDS BY NICO DIALESANDRO, UNCLOSETED MEDIA
PHOTO BY THE WHITE HOUSE

Back in April, Uncloseted Media documented every move President Donald Trump made on LGBTQIA+ issues in his first 100 days and uncovered a relentless and unprecedented attack against the community. That attack has only intensified. Here’s the Trump administration’s complete track record from days 101-200.

May 1, 2025

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) publishes “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices,” a 409‑page report promoting “gender exploratory therapy.” The report’s nine authors are left anonymous in a move experts have called unusual. MIT philosophy professor Alex Byrne would later come forward as one of the authors, drawing criticism for his lack of medical expertise. Medical experts and advocacy groups criticize the review as biased, misleading and akin to conversion therapy.

May 4, 2025

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) cuts more than $800 million in research grants meant to study the health of LGBTQIA+ people. The cuts abandon studies of cancers and viruses and setback efforts to defeat a resurgence of sexually transmitted infections, according to an analysis of federal data by The New York Times. They also eliminate swaths of medical research on diseases that disproportionately afflict LGBTQ people.

In termination letters, the NIH justifies the cuts by telling scientists that their work “no longer effectuates agency priorities.” In some cases, they say the research had been “based on gender identity,” which gave rise to “unscientific” results that ignored “biological realities.”

May 5, 2025

The Department of Justice (DOJ) removes all references to gender or gender identity from at least four federal surveys. The changes will make it nearly impossible to monitor crimes and other forms of violence experienced by transgender people.

May 7, 2025

The Supreme Court rules that President Trump’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military can go into effect immediately while the courts decide a final outcome. Alaina Kupec, a retired transgender U.S. Navy lieutenant, says the decision punishes people who are qualified and want to serve the country. “[This is] a really dark day for our country where basically we’re allowed to discriminate against a class of people.”

May 27, 2025

Trump threatens to withhold federal funding, “maybe permanently,” if California does not prevent high school junior AB Hernandez, a transgender track and field athlete, from competing in state finals. California would reject Trump’s demands, and Hernandez would go on to compete.

May 30, 2025

NIH cuts funding for the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development, a consortium of researchers from Duke University and Scripps Research. Researchers say that the program was close to a breakthrough and that the cuts could set HIV vaccine research back by as much as a decade.

June 2025

Trump does not acknowledge Pride month. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says, “There are no plans for a proclamation for the month of June, but I can tell you this president is very proud to be a president for all Americans, regardless of race, religion or creed,” notably leaving out the LGBTQIA+ community and never using the word “Pride.”

June 3, 2025

The Trump administration’s Department of Defense removes LGBTQIA+ icon Harvey Milk’s name from a U.S. naval vessel and plans to rename it. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggests ships should not honor civil rights leaders, saying, “People want to be proud of the ship they’re sailing in.” One defense official says Hegseth intentionally did this at the beginning of Pride Month.

June 6, 2025

Trump’s military ban goes into full force and the involuntary separation of transgender service members begins. Those who did not identify themselves will have their medical records surveyed and be involuntarily separated if it is discovered that they are trans.

June 9, 2025

NIH staffers issue the Bethesda declaration, stating that the Trump administration has forced the NIH to “[politicize] research by halting high-quality, peer reviewed grants and contracts” as well as “[censor] critical research” on subjects including health disparities, health impacts of climate change and gender identity. The declaration has been signed by at least 484 staffers.

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya would later push back, saying the cuts align with the president’s agenda. “Making America healthy again involves deprioritizing research that doesn’t have a chance of making America healthy, [such as] a lot of ideological research.”

June 17, 2025

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) announces that the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline will shutter LGBTQIA+ youth services on July 17, with the Trump administration saying the program promotes “radical gender ideology” without parental consent. In the announcement, SAMHSA notably drops the “T” in their references to the “LBG+” community.

The same day, a White House spokesperson attacks a federal judge’s ruling to block the Trump administration from disallowing transgender and intersex Americans to obtain passports aligned with their gender identity, calling it an attempt to “push radical gender ideology.” The judge rules that Trump’s executive order likely violates the Fifth Amendment as it discriminates on the basis of sex.

Reid Solomon-Lane, a transgender man and a plaintiff in Orr v. Trump, responds to the attacks: “I thought that 18 years after transitioning, I would be able to live my life in safety. … Now, as a married father of three … if my passport were to reflect a sex designation that is inconsistent with who I am, I would be forcibly outed every time I used [it] for travel or identification, causing potential harm to my safety and my family’s safety.”

June 18, 2025

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court rules in favor of United States v. Skrmetti, upholding Tennessee’s SB1 law, which bans gender-affirming care for minors. As a result, 25 statewide bans on gender-affirming care remain in effect.

In an interview with Uncloseted Media, five trans youth speak out about the decision, with one saying, “Lawmakers don’t need to be involved in my doctor visits. … They’ve got a lane and they should stay in it.”

That same day, the acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission admits at her confirmation hearing that transgender workers are protected under civil rights laws. Despite this, she defends dropping lawsuits on their behalf, saying the agency must follow Trump’s executive orders.

June 30, 2025

The Trump administration withholds nearly $7 billion in school funding as it investigates whether the funds support undocumented students or LGBTQIA+-inclusive education.

But after pressure led by Democratic Congresswoman Alma S. Adams, Trump administration officials would later announce that they will release the funds.

June 2025

Responding to Trump’s executive order that bans gender-affirming care for people younger than 19, major health networks and many regional centers begin suspending care. The lines drawn are arbitrary. At Stanford, patients as old as 18 are affected. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) announces that in July they will begin cutting off care for patients as old as 25. CHLA states that they were left with “no viable alternative” because they could not risk any cuts to their federal funding.

July 2, 2025

HHS orders teen pregnancy prevention programs to exclude LGBTQIA+ content or lose federal funding, despite data showing higher pregnancy rates among LGBTQIA+ teens. The directive affects 73 organizations.

July 4, 2025

Trump signs his “Big Beautiful Bill” into law. The sweeping package of tax breaks that largely benefits the wealthy includes major funding cuts to HIV and LGBTQIA+ health care, as well as a number of support programs that disproportionately serve queer people.

July 9, 2025

The DOJ subpoenas over 20 health clinics and doctors for providing gender-affirming care to minors. A former DOJ official calls the move “highly unusual.”

July 10, 2025

Mentions of bisexuals and bisexuality are removed from several parts of the National Park Service’s website on the Stonewall National Monument, though some would later be restored. This comes five months after mentions of trans people were erased.

July 17, 2025

The Trump administration officially shuts down the LGBTQIA+ specific option on the 988 youth suicide hotline. Notably, there are no plans to shut down the other targeted hotline options, including the Veterans Crisis Line, the Spanish Language Line and the Native and Strong Lifeline.

Arden, who called when they were 16, told Uncloseted Media, “If it weren’t for the hotline, I would have killed myself.”

July 18, 2025

State Department officials tell the Guardian that nearly $10 million in U.S.-funded contraceptives, purchased for now-defunct foreign aid programs, are set to be destroyed after being unable to find any “eligible buyers,” in part due to a gag rule reinstated and expanded by Trump that bans funding to overseas reproductive health, family planning and HIV-prevention programs as well as LGBTQIA+ health initiatives. The contraceptives are currently being stored in a Belgian warehouse until their eventual demise, with the Washington Post reporting that, as of April, the stock included over 26 million condoms, millions of birth control packets, hundreds of thousands of contraceptive implants, nearly 2 million injectable contraceptive doses and more than 50,000 vials of HIV-prevention medication.

That same day, a federal judge issues a preliminary injunction against a law requiring clergy in Washington State to report child abuse disclosed during confession, finding the law likely violates the First Amendment by forcing priests to choose between their religious vows and civil obligations. The ruling, which upholds the absolute confidentiality of confession, follows the Trump administration’s DOJ joining a lawsuit on the side of the plaintiffs the month prior.

July 21, 2025

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee bans transgender women from competing in women’s Olympic sports. The committee claims they have an “obligation to comply with federal expectations,” citing Trump’s executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”

July 22, 2025

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) dismisses abuse allegations from Andry Hernández Romero, a gay Venezuelan makeup artist the Trump administration deported to an El Salvadoran maximum-security prison, where he spent 125 days. Hernández Romero reports torture, sexual assault and other inhumane treatment. DHS labels him and others as “criminal, illegal gang members,” despite his clean record and lawful attempt to seek asylum in the U.S.

July 24, 2025

American painter Amy Sherald cancels a Smithsonian art show after the institution attempts to remove her painting “Trans Forming Liberty” that depicts a transgender woman as the Statue of Liberty. Sherald speculates that the Smithsonian’s decision was motivated in part by “institutional fear” of an anti-trans political climate.

Aug. 1, 2025

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia sue the Trump administration for its attempts to institute a de facto national ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. “The federal government is running a cruel and targeted harassment campaign against providers who offer lawful, lifesaving care to children,” writes New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Additional reporting by Esteban Corona

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There are zero openly gay and bi men actively competing in America’s top pro sports leagues. What’s keeping the closet door shut?

WORDS BY BENJAMIN LAND AND SPENCER MACNAUGHTON

THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON UNCLOSETED MEDIA A NEW INVESTIGATIVE LGBTQIA+ FOCUSSED NEWS PUBLICATION.

When Jason Collins came out in a 2013 Sports Illustrated cover story, he broke down the long-sealed closet in men’s sports by becoming the first openly gay active player in any major league sport. President Barack Obama called him to offer his support, saying he “couldn’t be prouder,” and Oprah Winfrey called him “a pioneer.”

“By not having to hide who I am, just being able to live an authentic life, there’s something powerful about being the one to out yourself and step forward and speak your truth,” Collins told Uncloseted Media. “There’s no greater feeling.”

Many thought that Collins’ announcement would lead to a slew of men coming out in professional sports; commentators called it a “tipping point” and the moment “when things really changed.” But 12 years later, the silence is deafening. Today, there are zero active openly gay or bisexual players in the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS, PGA and ATP.

What makes these numbers particularly shocking is that more than 1 in 5 Gen Z adults in the United States identify as LGBTQ. “It is a legit claim that the last closet for men is sports, especially in the North American context,” says Charlene Weaving, a professor of gender studies at St. Francis Xavier University. “If you look at sport[s], it’s as if what’s happening in society is amplified. Sports is the worst place for sexism and homophobia. … There’s so much pressure to adhere to a heterosexual persona.”

So what’s keeping the closet door shut?

Coaching Can Help or Hurt

One key element in men’s sports that can help or hinder someone from coming out is the mentors who surround them.

“The coaches create the culture, right? What you say, what you allow [in] your locker room, that’s all on us,” says Anthony Nicodemo, a gay high school basketball coach in Westchester, New York.

He says he intentionally uses LGBTQ-inclusive language with his team to signal that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. “If we had a game on Saturday morning and it’s Friday night, I’d say, ‘Hey go home with your boyfriend or girlfriend tonight, stay in.’ My kids would laugh, of course, but then after I said it a couple times, they didn’t even blink,” he says. “If there was a gay kid on my team, that gay kid knows that he’s welcome.”

A 2016 study by the Journal of Sport and Health Science found that gay and bisexual male teen athletes feel particularly unwelcome when playing in formal sporting environments where there are coaches. The study also found that they were more likely to play on an informal team without a coach, which would lessen their chances of becoming a professional athlete.

“The hope is that you’re going to create inclusive environments that are ultimately going to allow those kids to get to the point in society where we feel comfortable with them coming out and eventually playing at the professional level,” says Nicodemo, who worked with Collins at the Pride Center’s LGBTQ inclusion basketball clinic in San Antonio this March.

Nicodemo says we need more role models like Brian Burke, the former president of hockey operations for the Pittsburgh Penguins. After Burke’s gay son passed away in a car accident in 2010, he made it his mission to explicitly advocate for gay men competing in pro hockey. “If you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community, you are welcome with the Pittsburgh Penguins,” he said at a 2021 Pittsburgh Pride Revolution March. “You’re welcome to come to our games, you’re welcome to play for our team, you’re welcome to work on our staff. You are welcome.”

Research suggests all players want to participate in more inclusive environments. A 2021 study evaluated college coaches who identified as LGBTQ, as allies, or as anti-LGBTQ. In every context, students preferred coaches who embraced nondiscrimination, choosing the ally and the LGBTQ coach over the anti-LGBTQ coach.

Despite this, Nicodemo says he may be an anomaly when it comes to LGBTQ-inclusive coaches. In fact, a 2015 study concluded that the United States was the most homophobic country in the world when it comes to sports and 80% of the study’s participants reported witnessing or experiencing homophobia in U.S. sports.

Just this week, the Wake Forest men’s baseball coach Tom Walter issued an apology after cameras caught him using an apparent homophobic slur during an NCAA game.

“There’s a lot of homophobia in our society. There is a lot of homophobia still in sports, in particular, male sports,” says Collins. “We still have a lot of work to do as far as creating those environments that those athletes do feel comfortable to step forward [in] and share who they are. It’s about education and letting them know it’s okay to say, ‘I am gay,’ ‘I am bisexual.’ You know, you name it, but it’s okay. It’s okay to speak your truth.”

Are the Leagues Pulling Their Weight?

Beyond the coaches are the leagues. While some of them have taken steps to create inclusive environments, others have gone in a different direction by rolling back their LGBTQ-inclusive policies amid attacks on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). In March, the MLB removed references to their “Diversity Pipeline Program,” which outlined their diversity-focused hiring initiatives, from their website.

This may have been in response to external pressure. In October 2023, the conservative public interest organization America First Legal, which was founded by Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, filed a formal complaint against the MLB, blasting the league’s diversity pipeline and related initiatives as blatant examples of racial and sexist discrimination against white men.

And in 2023, the NHL banned all LGBTQ symbols from uniforms after a handful of players refused to participate in Pride Nights.

While the ban was lifted after pushback from sponsors, players and fans, Nicodemo believes it sent the wrong message to young male players. “I believe wholeheartedly that Pride nights save lives. I think [about] a gay kid that is watching hockey at home and seeing the rainbow flag and how important that is,” he says. “Gay kids need to see people representing pride. When I was coaching before COVID, when we used to actually wear suits when we coached, I wore a rainbow lapel in every game just to show it was okay.”

Some men’s leagues have done more to promote inclusivity. NBA Cares, the social justice arm of the league’s charitable programming, has prioritized including gay youth and men in their initiatives. Nicodemo has worked with NBA Cares, and Collins has contributed as an ambassador.

“This is very important for coaches, for those people in leadership positions, to think about as far as, ‘How do I get the best possible version of my athlete?’ … One way you do that is by creating a team environment where everyone feels safe,” says Collins.

Homophobia and Misogyny in the Men’s Locker Room

Unlike men’s leagues, women’s leagues are more accepting of LGBTQ players. Billie Jean King, Brittney Griner and Abby Wambach are some of the many women who have thrived while competing as openly gay athletes.

“In the WNBA, [it’s] not an issue,” says Nicodemo, referencing that 29% of active WNBA players are openly lesbian.

Homophobia is more common among men. And in the locker room, it isn’t always easy to spot, as it often masks itself in homoeroticism.

“Two male athletes will kiss each other on the lips. And that’s considered to be love and appreciation that you scored that big goal. ‘I’m gonna kiss you and it’s not at all viewed to be perceived to be gay and the grabbing of the bums or the testicle area.’ This idea of showering together, slapping towels, that’s all considered to be like part of men’s sport,” says Weaving. “So it’s this idea where players can be as ‘gay’ as they want and in the context of the field or the locker room, they’re not perceived to be gay. But if they were to act that way outside of that sporting context, then they’re considered to be.”

Collins says this gender divide may be because of sexism and toxic masculinity. This kind of performative homoeroticism is only socially acceptable because it’s understood to be ironic—a joke that relies on not actually being gay. When the behavior slips beyond the bounds of “just joking,” it exposes an undercurrent of homophobia masked as camaraderie.

The Financial Cost of Coming Out: Something to Gain or Lose?

Beyond all these pressures lies a monetary component for athletes who are considering opening the closet door while still in uniform. Cyd Zeigler, the cofounder of Outsports, wrote in a 2024 article that he knows “for a fact that agents have told gay athletes to stay in the closet” and that his “best answer has pointed to the agents and managers whose livelihoods depend on athletes maximizing their earning potential in just a few years.”

Weaving agrees. “The general managers and the owners have more traditionally homophobic, sexist thinking. They believe [LGBTQ players] will harm viewership,” she says. “It’s still taboo where athletes fear repercussions, predominantly, around sponsorships.”

The fear of losing out on money may be misguided. The first day Jason Collins’ number 98 jersey became available on the NBA website, one year after he came out, it was the top seller of all active NBA players. Carl Nassib’s jersey became a top seller on the NFL’s official online marketplace when he came out in 2021. And Michael Sam, the first gay NFL player, had the second-highest selling jersey in his 2014 rookie class of more than 250 draftees.

The Trump Effect on the Last Closet

Perhaps the biggest factor keeping men in the closet is America’s current political climate, where the Trump administration and corporate America have abandoned DEI and so-called “woke” initiatives.

The Trump administration has also erased many references to LGBTQ people from government websites, and at least nine states have introduced measures to overturn marriage equality.

“The Trump administration asks districts to sign attestations to say that they’re not going to do DEI work in schools. That could be a pride flag hanging in the classroom,” says Nicodemo. “If you’re not creating an inclusive environment for these kids, then these kids are never going to feel comfortable coming out.”

What Can Be Done?

As all these factors create a challenging environment for men to feel safe coming out in sports.

Collins says what could move the needle the most is an increase in role models who will make young athletes feel like they’re competing in a safe environment. “It definitely got to very dark, lonely places because I felt like I was going through this alone,” he says. “When I was younger, I was constantly looking for those role models, of people who have sort of been down this path,” he says.

Weaving agrees and says that a lack of LGBTQ-inclusive coaches can be more than just a deterrent for student-athletes seeking to grow their career.

“For many children, it doesn’t only make things uncomfortable, it can push them out of sports altogether,” she says. “Coaches play a big role. Youth sport is the starting point. If you can create positive environments, inclusive cultures at that level, it continues and helps to shift the pro culture.”

Collins remains hopeful that there will be more visibility of gay men in professional sports but underscores the need for role models to step up.

“If you’re a coach or if you’re an athletic director or even a headmaster out of school, you have to seek out help. You have to bring other organizations who have expertise. And it can be as simple as a 30- to 60-minute conversation, but at least you’re laying the groundwork down for educating those players, educating those athletes,” says Collins, a two-time NBA championship finalist who married his partner last month.

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Uncloseted Media interviews attendees from each WorldPride event through history, from London to Madrid.

WORDS SAM DONNDELINGER, HOPE PISONI, EMMA PAIDRA

ADDITIONAL REPORTING SOPH KRISTEN AND NICO DIALESSANDRO

FACT-CHECKING AMANDA DONNDELINGER

WorldPride DC, which is expected to bring as many as 3 million visitors and $700 million to the city’s economy, began on May 17 and will culminate on June 8 with a march.

This is the ninth WorldPride and has already garnered controversy as it takes place in America’s capital city, where the Trump administration has dismantled LGBTQ rights and made relentless attacks against the queer community. Many countries have issued travel advisories for trans people visiting the U.S., and WorldPride organisers have cautioned international trans folks from attending. Despite this, hundreds of thousands of people will celebrate and protest over the next two weeks.

The eight WorldPride events that have taken place over the last 25 years have all included challenges and triumphs. Here’s a look at each of them through the lens of attendees who experienced it.

The first WorldPride was held in Rome, the capital of Italy and home of the Vatican. The location was important: Italy was—and still is—among the weakest countries in Western Europe for LGBTQ rights, with gay marriage and non-binary gender markers still unrecognised today.

The weeklong Pride was held in July during the Catholic Church’s Great Jubilee. Pope John Paul II was outraged, calling it an “offence to the Christian values of a city that is so dear to the hearts of Catholics throughout the world” and adding that homosexual attendees are “intrinsically disordered.” The Vatican even convinced the city government to withdraw its promise of $200,000 in financial support for the event. While the money was eventually returned due to backlash, the city still removed all of its official branding.

Despite this, the event was a huge success.

“It was beautiful,” Renato Sabbadini, who helped organise the event, told Uncloseted Media.

Sabbadini, who was in his twenties when he helped organise the event, says that while previous Rome Prides drew 10,000-20,000 people, WorldPride brought in 700,000 people—so many that they couldn’t all fit into the march’s destination, the ancient Roman chariot-racing stadium known as Circo Massimo.

Sabbadini was a board member for the Italian LGBTQ rights group Arcigay and had helped draft the initial proposal for WorldPride. He was proud of what his work accomplished, both in size and in impact. He was most emotional seeing the sheer number of non-LGBTQ people who turned up to show that Italy was ready for change.

“The Italian population, for the first time, wanted somehow to assert the fact that Italy was no longer a country that could be considered simply as a sort of colony of the Vatican, but it was a secular country with its own consciousness and values,” Sabbadini says.

Six years later, the second WorldPride was held in Jerusalem. The location—a holy site for Judaism, Christianity and Islam—was once again chosen by WorldPride’s international and official organisers to protest religious and state discrimination against the LGBTQ community. The region was also a controversial choice.

While Israel is seen as the most progressive country for LGBTQ rights in this region, the Middle East is still home to many hostile countries, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Yemen, where you can be killed if found engaging in “homosexual acts.”

The march was postponed twice, first due to Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza and later because of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War. Leaders of all three major Abrahamic religions opposed the event, saying that it would create the impression that homosexuality is acceptable. “They are creating a deep and terrible sorrow that is unbearable,” Shlomo Amar, Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi, said in a news conference.

Abdel Aziz Bukhari, a Sufi sheik, added, “We can’t permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty. This is very ugly and very nasty to have these people come to Jerusalem.”

While the event eventually took place in November, it was boycotted by many LGBTQ rights organisations in protest of Israel’s occupation in Palestine and invasion of Lebanon.

Deeg Gold, a boycott organiser, says that the attention garnered by the boycott helped spread awareness about LGBTQ Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activism. They say it also helped popularise the term “pinkwashing,” which is now frequently used to describe the practice of using LGBTQ-friendly aesthetics for profit without actually supporting the community.

“It brought, for the first time, an international awareness that there are a lot of queers in Palestine.”

At London’s WorldPride in 2012, the global LGBTQ community was still facing significant legal and social challenges. 40% of UN Member States still criminalised same-sex sexual acts. The event, which featured a march with 25,000 participants, aimed to confront these injustices by celebrating progress and highlighting the work still left to do.

The event also opened new doors for inclusivity, including for 42-year-old mathematician Michael Doré, who organised the first-ever Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) Conference.

“There have been attempts before at having big events, but WorldPride really [made it happen],” Doré told Uncloseted Media.

The one-day conference brought together roughly 100 attendees from across the globe and included a keynote titled “Asexuality BC (Before Cake),” which traced the early development of the asexual (ACE) movement and highlighted the intersections between asexuality and non-binary identities.

“The usual argument is that ACEs are not really oppressed,” says Doré. “ACE is just about not wanting to have sex or not wanting a relationship. I disagree with it. A lot of what ACEs go through is actually similar to the wider LGBTQ movement … [such as] feeling broken and feeling the orientation is not going to live up to other people’s expectations.”

She hugged the other organiser and said, “You are the first other asexual person I’ve met in my life!”

“She was so excited to be there, and said it was the one day in her life she felt she could be herself.”

Building off the momentum from London, WorldPride returned just two years later to Toronto, which is seen as one of the most LGBTQ-friendly cities in the world. It’s also the largest city in Canada, one of the strongest countries in the world for LGBTQ rights.

Kalyn Heffernan, the 38-year-old frontwoman for the queer and disabled hip-hop group Wheelchair Sports Camp, performed at the march alongside Tangled Arts, an organisation that promotes disabled artists.

“It was a big deal to … get to play at WorldPride in Toronto—pretty amazing,” Heffernan told Uncloseted Media.

Heffernan lives with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, a disease where bones break easily. She actively advocates for queer disabled folks—who, she notes, were integral to the origins of Pride. She says the fight for LGBTQ rights must also include accessibility, intersectionality and justice for all bodies and identities.

She adds that she doesn’t feel like Pride represents the disabled community like it has in the past, in part because of all “the corporate backing.”

While Heffernan had some mixed feelings about Toronto’s WorldPride, like for the large police presence at the march—which she finds “antithetical” to the LGBTQ movement’s radical history—she says she was grateful for the opportunity and for what Pride represents, especially as LGBTQ rights continue to be under attack.

Three years later, under the banner of “Viva la Vida,” or “Live Life” for non-Spanish speakers, WorldPride Madrid brought an estimated 3 million people into the heart of Chueca, the city’s historic LGBTQ neighborhood.

From early grassroots activism to becoming one of the first countries to legalise same-sex marriage in 2005, Spain has emerged as one of the world’s most progressive nations when it comes to LGBTQ rights.

“It was a very fun, very cool environment,” says Justin Seymour, a straight man and staunch ally from Lafayette, Indiana.

Seymour, who was in Spain to visit his then-partner’s family, says his first Pride experience was unexpectedly welcoming. “One guy I spoke with was like, ‘Oh, you’re straight?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And he goes, ‘Well, that’s too bad.’ So, I felt very welcome.”

What stood out to him most was the atmosphere of inclusivity, one that he had never seen in his conservative hometown. “There were small details. … They changed the lights to be two women walking. That was totally unnecessary but very cool,” he says. “One of the major buildings in Madrid had the pride flag draped over it. Everybody seemed really supportive and [to be] having a good time.”

He says that straight people have something to learn from Pride.

Seymour also thinks straight people should embrace any discomfort they feel around Pride. “Being a straight white guy, you kind of get to do whatever you want. You’re welcome anywhere,” he says. “Being in the minority, that’s not normal [for us] and can be uncomfortable. But it’s important to lean into.”

Seymour recommends that everyone go to Pride. “Getting a little uncomfortable and trying to get to know people and ask questions is crucial,” he says, referring to the fact that studies show how interacting with members of different groups can reduce prejudice and lead to more empathy and understanding. “It’s educating yourself. It’s a good way of getting rid of your ignorance, and getting familiar with the community in and of itself.”

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, WorldPride 2019 took place in New York City.

The 1969 riots were a notable turning point for LGBTQ rights. They began as a protest in response to police raids at the Stonewall Inn, a historic gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village. One year later, the first Pride marches would be held in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago to commemorate the riots.

Due to the grassroots nature of the riots, the commercialisation of WorldPride was a source of tension. As a result, the Reclaim Pride Coalition organised the Queer Liberation March, an alternative Pride that rejected corporate sponsorship and police presence. While the Queer Liberation March was initially made up of 8,000 people, it grew to 45,000 that same day.

Stacy Lentz, the co-owner of The Stonewall Inn, says WorldPride’s “energy and emotion was one of resilience.”

Lentz, a lesbian originally from Kansas, says that many attendees were touched by the event’s historical significance.

“There was so much unity,” she says. “There was everyone together, everyone celebrating, millions of people. … The city was just electrified that year.”

Lentz says the energy inside Stonewall was palpable. “We had Taylor Swift come and perform at the bar, singing ‘Shake It Off’ with Jesse Tyler Ferguson. … I joked that I couldn’t even get into my own bar that weekend.”

Flash forward two years to Copenhagen and Malmö’s joint Pride in 2021. The theme, “#YouAreIncluded,” took place in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and emphasised human rights for all people, regardless of “sexuality, gender identity, race, religion, appearance, economic status, nationality, refugee status, health, HIV status—or any other factor.”

“Copenhagen really rolled out the red carpet for Pride. I’ve never seen so many rainbow flags in my life,” Victor Yates, a writer and educator, told Uncloseted Media. “Not only did I feel safe, but I felt welcomed to the city. It was such a beautiful experience because even people who weren’t participating in Pride wanted to experience what was happening.”

Denmark is recognised as one of the most LGBTQ-friendly countries on earth and was the first to grant the right for same-sex couples to enter into registered partnerships in 1989.

Yates, a Black gay man, grew up in Florida, where he was afraid of attending Pride events. “In Jacksonville, I never saw representations of positive queer images. There were always billboards about not having an abortion and that being gay is a sin. … And because of this, I grew up not wanting to attend Pride events.”

He remembers riding the bus in the early 2000s and passing a Pride event in the park. “The bus driver commented, ‘Where’s the police when you need them?’ And it just took me aback,” he says. “This isn’t the 60s, this isn’t the 50s. We’re living in a modern time where we have modern ideas, but there are still some people who believe that queer people should be arrested for just living their life authentically.”

Yates’ experience in Copenhagen transformed his understanding of what Pride could be. “I was like, ‘This is magical,’” he says.

Yates says part of the unity he felt was because of the planning that went into the event.

“There were active conversations about how to welcome people to Copenhagen Pride. And I felt like every building, every organisation, participated. Every encounter that I had with someone who was local was pleasant. I didn’t feel othered while I was there.”

In 2023, Sydney, Australia hosted WorldPride, after the country released a “rainbow birth certificate” in 2022, where citizens could opt to not list their gender.

But despite these political advances, there was controversy around high ticket prices, with the Sydney WorldPride organisation receiving backlash for the whopping $1,497 they charged for three-day passes.

Alan Maurice, a South-Asian gay man living in Sydney, has fond memories of marching across the Sydney Harbor Bridge. “We don’t often get an opportunity here in Sydney to close off a main artery and turn it into this big rainbow march,” he told Uncloseted Media. “There were queers and allies and all kinds of people went and crossed. And so that was a wonderful feeling.”

Though Maurice enjoyed his time at WorldPride, he felt there was a lack of South-Asian representation at the event. “The Indian subcontinent’s got billions of people, so there’s a pretty large percentage of queer people. Not a single person was invited to present or speak during the Human Rights part of it … so that was really disappointing,” he says. Despite this, Maurice left WorldPride feeling the event had strengthened the LGBTQ community.

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Americans are “constantly shedding data.” What does that mean for LGBTQIA+ people under the current administration?

THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON UNCLOSETED MEDIA A NEW INVESTIGATIVE LGBTQIA+ FOCUSSED NEWS PUBLICATION.

WORDS TIMI SOTIRE

The average American spends over three hours on their phone every day, and nearly half of U.S. teens say they’re on the Internet almost “constantly.”

While most of us understand that not all of our data is private, the scope of how much U.S. government agencies can access is overwhelming: Internet history, private messages, health information, political affiliation and phone location data are all up for grabs.

“We are constantly shedding data as we go about our daily lives,” says Lisa Femia, staff attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights advocacy group. She says with no comprehensive Federal data privacy law, there’s little legal protection surrounding our digital rights.

This lack of regulation has unique implications for LGBTQ people, especially under the current Trump administration. In March 2025, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis removed protections for LGBTQ identities from its restrictions on gathering intelligence. That means queer people are no longer a protected class when it comes to surveillance efforts.

This occurred off the back of Trump’s January Executive Order, “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” that attempts to ban trans kids’ access to healthcare. In addition, laws banning gender-affirming care have passed in at least 24 states across the country, creating a perfect storm for the government to use digital surveillance to capture folks trying to access what advocates describe as “lifesaving” treatment.

“When our identities are being criminalized or stigmatized, record keeping, if it’s not done well, can be a massive, massive tool for oppression,” says Shae Gardner, policy director at the LGBT Technology Institute.

So what capabilities do law enforcement agencies and the government have when it comes to monitoring LGBTQ folks looking for resources like gender-affirming care? What are the implications for trans youth who are seeking this care out of state? And what can you do to protect yourself?

Data Brokers

One alarming way third parties—including marketers, scammers, private investigators, tech companies, retailers and law enforcement—can access your digital footprint is through data brokers. These businesses exist solely to collect individuals’ online data to sell for profit. They have access to highly sensitive data from companies, apps and websites that collect information on people. They also indirectly gather data from public records such as voting registries. In the U.S., their work is virtually unregulated.

“Data brokers can access our home addresses, telephone numbers, political preferences, location data, online purchases and much more,” says Gardner. “Users don’t even know that their data is available to be sold.”

There may be up to 5,000 data brokers globally, and out of the top 23 data brokerage companies in the world, 17 are in the U.S. These brokers have profiles on millions of Americans.

Through third-party apps, they can even access our health data, putting our sensitive medical information at risk. For example, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, privacy experts were concerned that data collected by Flo, the period tracking app, could be misused, given its history of passing the health details of its users to third parties.

Because of this, Femia says it’s becoming “harder and harder for people to get the care they need, the support they need, or be who they are, without leaving a trail that a hostile law enforcement agency or state government or federal government could use to target them.”

In some cases, the government has used the “Data Broker Loophole”—a gap in the Electronics Communications Privacy Act—to bypass legal requirements of obtaining warrants and subpoenas for data and instead purchasing it directly from private brokers. In Trump’s first term, it was discovered that his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bought cellphone location data to detect possible illegal border crossings.

One data broker, Babel Street, created a tool named Locate X—used by the Secret Service and DHS—which gathers smartphone location data to monitor people worldwide without a warrant. In practice, this is meant to help the government track serious criminal activities. But with increasing animus towards the trans community, it could potentially be used to track the movements of doctors working at gender-affirming care clinics or trans people seeking care.

It’s not a federal agent following you home anymore. It’s someone tracking your location on your phone,” says Gardner.
While there are no documented instances of the government using this data surveillance to track folks looking for trans healthcare, that’s not the case when it comes to reproductive healthcare. In 2023, an Idaho woman and her son were charged with taking the son’s girlfriend to Oregon to get an abortion, using her cellphone location data as evidence.

And in 2024, one company used location data broker Near Intelligence to track people’s visits to nearly 600 Planned Parenthood locations across 48 states and sold the data to feed a massive anti-abortion ad campaign funded by Veritas Society, a pro-life activist group.

On a now-deleted page on the organization’s website, they proudly cite that they use Near Intelligence’s advanced digital technology known as “Polygonning” to “identify and capture the cell phone ID’s of women that are coming and going from Planned Parenthood and similar locations. We then reach these women on apps, social feeds and websites like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat with pro-life content and messaging.”

Education

In addition to data brokers, American kids are being monitored when they use computers provided by their schools. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) reported an increase in surveillance software to monitor online activity on school-owned devices. In fact, 81% of teachers reported that their schools use some form of monitoring software and 71% reported it being used on school-issued devices, allowing schools to survey children outside of teaching hours.

“These tools provide teachers and schools with the ability to … view students’ email, messaging, and social media content, view the contents of their screens in real time, and other monitoring functionality,” CDT reports.

While companies like GoGuardian claim to use their surveillance tools to mitigate potential security threats and monitor students’ mental health, privacy experts warn that these tools put children in homo/transphobic states at risk of their data being weaponized by their educators and law enforcement.

In 2023, EFF found that GoGuardian software in the Lake Travis Independent School District in Texas flagged over 75 websites with the terms “transgender,” “LGBT,” “gay,” “homosexual,” “non-binary” or “queer” in the URL. Websites that were flagged included the Wikipedia pages for the Transgender Rights Movement and for the portrayal of transgender people in film; an article from The Guardian about transgender history; and a page about the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C.

In addition to blocking kids from visiting LGBTQ-themed websites, states like Alabama have passed bills that require school personnel to inform parents if a minor expresses a gender identity that is inconsistent with their biological sex. School personnel can enforce these bills through the surveillance of school-owned devices.

“It’s going to disproportionately affect kids who are middle or low-income, kids who don’t have the resources to have their own private iPad or laptop,” says Manis. In states where gender-affirming care for kids is illegal, questions also arise surrounding what will be done with the data—will it be used to discipline the child or even shared with law enforcement?

Manis says this software turns schools into another branch of America’s invasive surveillance apparatus. “It’s very difficult for those programs to stop flagging LGBTQ students even if they want to. It’s the first place conservative, anti-trans or anti-LGBTQ districts can go to [for evidence],” she says.

Medical Records

Beyond the classroom, the medical information of child and adult patients is at risk of being compromised.

“Medical records give you a patient’s name, prescriptions, doctor’s name, practice name, everything that you need to launch an investigation or prosecution. Same thing for prescription records. Pharmacy’s prescription records will tell you who wrote a prescription, when it was filled, who filled it,” says Manis.

While patients speak frankly with their doctors based on confidentiality, there have been instances where local governments—and even doctors—have violated patients’ right to medical privacy in the name of criminal prosecutions.

In 2023, Dr. Eithan Haim, a Dallas surgeon, leaked sensitive data about children receiving transition-related care at Texas Children’s Hospital to a conservative activist who published the documents in a magazine.

Although what Dr. Haim did was illegal, the Department of Justice dropped their charges against him in January, the same week Trump passed the EO banning gender-affirming care for trans kids.

Additionally, in 2023, Vanderbilt University Medical Center handed over records for more than 100 current and former patients seeking transgender health care to Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti as part of an investigation into possible violations of the Tennessee Medicaid False Claims Act.

“It’s a terrifying precedent because it works, even though it shouldn’t,” says Manis.

HIPAA laws permit disclosures of protected health information if they are made to prevent a serious and imminent threat to health or safety, creating a loophole for local governments to work around. “The loophole is large enough that when a law enforcement agency comes knocking at a hospital’s door and asks for medical records in connection with an ongoing investigation, states typically cooperate.”

In other words, if the Trump administration wanted to come for patients, there’s a model to follow, and HIPAA laws may not protect you.

Camera Surveillance

On top of all of this, automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are “commonplace” in policing. ALPRs are camera systems that capture the license plate data of passing vehicles. Nearly 90% of sheriff’s offices with more than 500 sworn deputies use ALPRs, as well as every single police department that serves over 1 million people.

“No specific federal legislative framework exists that governs federal law enforcement use of ALPRs,” according to a 2024 report by the Library of Congress. That means law enforcement agencies can access the data, store it for as long as they need, and officers are not required to demonstrate probable cause before accessing it.

A 2013 report by the American Civil Liberties Union found that license plate readers check plate numbers against “hot lists”—plates that have been uploaded to the system—to alert a law enforcement agency if a match appears. According to EFF, the data is often managed by private companies and data brokers.

In 2024, it was revealed that Sacramento authorities were collecting license plate data and sharing it with law enforcement agencies in other states. In their investigation, the Sacramento County Grand Jury expressed concern that the “data could be used to track individuals based on immigration status, place of worship, employment locations, or visits to places such as gun stores or hospitals. Particularly troubling was the potential sharing of ALPR data with other states whose citizens travel to California to seek an abortion, which has been banned or severely restricted in their home states.”

“By using camera footage surveillance, you can track where people are going and you might see a person going to a clinic, or to an LGBTQ center and use that to aid an out-of-state prosecution saying a parent let their kid get gender-affirming care,” Femia says.

How Can You Maintain Your Privacy?

Despite the various ways you can be monitored, experts say individuals can protect themselves from digital surveillance by using encrypted messaging apps like Signal and more secure search engines like DuckDuckGo. They also recommend using Virtual Private Networks to encrypt your Internet traffic. Finally, they recommend turning your phone off when going to protests or other LGBTQ-themed events so data brokers can’t track your location.

But there’s only so much individuals can do. “It’s really important that we don’t fall into the trap of thinking that this is our fault and our problem to solve, or that you can protect your privacy just by changing some settings on your phone,” says Evan Greer, director of digital advocacy group Fight for the Future. “We need to fight for policies that protect people. … The reality is, this is a collective societal problem, and it should be addressed at a broad scale by enacting policies that protect people’s basic human rights.”

States like California and New York are passing shield laws to protect individuals and cement themselves as data sanctuary states. These laws give consumers more control over the personal information that businesses collect about them and limit the disclosure of their personal data to out-of-state entities.

But “the way data travels doesn’t respect state lines. So the idea that there are differing protections once you hit a state border is kind of silly,” Gardner says. “Any time the states, no matter how well-intentioned, are attempting to build data protections, they’re doing it on a wobbly table that really doesn’t have a base because there are [no comprehensive federal protections].”

Greer cites the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation as an aspirational framework for the U.S. It’s a law enforced in 2018 that grants individuals the right to their personal data.

“What we really, really need is federal privacy protections. We need to enshrine rights to gender-affirming care in federal law. That’s the only thing that would truly protect trans and non-binary Americans. It doesn’t look like we’re gonna get that in the short run,” says Manis.

**For more information on how to control your data, the Digital Defense Fund has a presentation here.

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Trans musician Bells Larsen recorded half his new album with his pre-transition voice and the other half with his voice after transition.

THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON UNCLOSETED MEDIA A NEW INVESTIGATIVE LGBTQIA+ FOCUSSED NEWS PUBLICATION.

WORDS SHARLA STEINMAN

On “Blurring Time,” the title track to Bells Larsen’s latest album, listeners hear the song sway between a high, female-sounding voice, and a low, male-sounding voice. “It’s not as simple as either or. I am both and I’m more, most of all I’m unsure,” Larsen recites.

While the song may sound like it was recorded by two different artists, this isn’t a duet.

It’s entirely sung by Larsen, who uses his voice to tell the story of his sophomore album, released last month.

Larsen says the album serves as a farewell gift to his past self and a welcome home to his new life as a proud trans man. “I very much shaped my transition around this album,” the 27-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter told Uncloseted Media.

Larsen meticulously planned the album around his gender transition. He recorded half the album before going on testosterone and the other half after, hence the different-sounding voices throughout the nine songs.

He says marrying his two realities was important for him as a storyteller. “A lot of trans narratives focus on either the before or the after, and not a lot of holding the two together,” he says.

And a 2018 study in the Language and Linguistics Compass found that vocal cues are an important factor in categorising someone’s gender, “making the voice an enormously important aspect of gender presentation, particularly for those who are transitioning.”

“It was always something that was very important to me – having a voice that matches my body,” says Alaina Kupec, founder and President of GRACE, a trans-focused nonprofit. “As soon as I spoke, if the sound didn’t match the appearance, then the incongruence was very challenging,” she told Uncloseted Media.

Like Larsen, many trans men change their voice by taking testosterone, which causes a thickening of the vocal cords and creates a deeper-sounding voice.

But for transgender women, estrogen does not change their voice. That’s why there’s a growing industry of coaches who help people with this aspect of the transition.

Voice teacher Brittani Farrell compares relearning how to use your voice after a gender transition to “relearning how to walk with a prosthesis after having your leg amputated.”

Farrell, who has worked with many transgender clients, says gender-affirming voice lessons can be anywhere from a week-long to a lifelong commitment. She’s worked with clients who have a good ear, motor skills, and singing instincts and can make significant progress in a few sessions, while other clients may need upwards of 30 sessions.

“It has to do with somatic awareness,” Farrell told Uncloseted Media. “It can be helpful to have maintenance for years, just to have someone to check in with, but if you step away from it, you’ll lose some of the function.”

Farrell says gender-affirming voice lessons can be physically and mentally challenging for clients, adding that many trans people lack the needed connection to their bodies as they transition. She uses a variety of vocal exercises to help her clients with pitch, resonance and weight, which can all be used to modify the perceived gender of a voice.

“Sometimes it’s kind of trippy because I find that I can’t necessarily always use my voice in the way that I used to, or the way I want to.”

When going through her transition in 2013, Kupec worked with Colorado-based voice coach Kathe Perez to change the pitch of her voice. She took four, 60-minute private lessons. Outside of class, there was lots of homework, where she’d have to work on her pitch, frequency and intonation. She also had to learn how to emphasise certain words and phrases, and practise speaking from the top of her voice box instead of using her chest voice.

Kupec says the lessons were effective. “I’d say 90% of the time, nobody ever thinks of my voice as anything other than a female voice. … Occasionally, if I have a cold or if I’m just not focusing on it too much, it can get a little bit on the lower side,” she says, adding that she experiences the most difficulty keeping her pitch high.

Although Kupec is rarely misgendered, she worries about the physical safety of trans women when their voice doesn’t match their appearance.

“Especially in today’s horrible environment for the transgender community, I really worry for women who do get read because of their voices, and that it could put them at risk of physical danger.”

Transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime.

Although Kupec’s insurance covered her initial diagnostic lesson, she ended up paying $1,000 for her four sessions with Perez. For people who cannot afford a vocal coach, there are various free and low-cost resources available, such as follow-along videos. Olivia Flanigan, a San Francisco-based gender-affirming voice teacher, offers free lessons on YouTube where she explains, for example, different ways to relieve tension in the throat which can help clients feminize their voice with less strain.

Beyond voice lessons, transgender women can also opt for vocal feminisation surgery. One of the most successful vocal procedures is called Wendler glottoplasty, which reduces the vibrational surface of vocal cords, resulting in a slightly higher pitch.

More trans people are opting for these surgeries. Between 2016 and 2019, the number of gender-affirming surgeries performed in the U.S. nearly tripled.

Despite this growth, it’s expensive: Most insurance providers do not cover vocal feminisation surgery and the procedure can cost between $5,000 and $9,000.

In addition to taking testosterone, Bells Larsen also worked with a Toronto-based voice coach. Over the course of a year, they worked on his breathing, differentiating his head and chest voice and his singing range.

“Sometimes it’s kind of trippy because I find that I can’t necessarily always use my voice in the way that I used to, or the way I want to,” says Larsen, adding that he went from an alto to a baritone singer and that his voice dropped about an octave.

Larsen says during his vocal transition process, he found solace in remembering Justin Bieber’s post-puberty journey, where the pop phenom had to lean on a vocal coach to relearn how to use his new adult voice.

“Having my voice change so rapidly in a way that was kind of beyond my control, but simultaneously within my control really forced me to regard my voice as an instrument for potentially the first time in my life”

“I’m a big belieber,” Larsen says. “Justin was a great singer before, and I think he’s a great singer now. Why shouldn’t I be able to do the same?”

Larsen says that when he started posting snippets of his album on TikTok and Instagram, viewers were taken aback when they realised both voices were his. “I was so lost for a second… this is amazing!!” one user commented on TikTok, where Larsen has nearly 20,000 followers and over 300,000 likes, just enough to call himself “lowercase v viral.”

While many facets of the voice have to do with biology, social factors are also at play. Lal Zimman, the author of the 2018 study and a linguistics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says the voice has many characteristics that can be perceived as feminine or masculine, much of which have “nothing to do with physiology.” He says many of the gendered voice stereotypes people make, such as gay men having a “lispy s,” are really just based on how people learn to speak and the voices they are surrounded by.

“It’s about how you learn to speak and how you continue to use what you’ve learned throughout your lifetime,” Zimman told Uncloseted Media. “When you look at the whole picture of a ‘female’ or ‘male’ voice, you’re really looking at a lot of different characteristics that can be combined in different ways.”

As for Larsen, he’s excited to start performing “Blurring Time” across Canada. He cancelled his U.S. tour last month after finding out he was no longer eligible to apply for a Visa because his changed passport matches his gender identity.

“The world in which I wrote and recorded this music, and the world in which I’m releasing it, are two completely different worlds,” Larsen told Uncloseted Media.

Despite the political turbulence, Larsen is ready to show off his new voice to the world. “Having my voice change so rapidly in a way that was kind of beyond my control, but simultaneously within my control really forced me to regard my voice as an instrument for potentially the first time in my life,” Larsen told Uncloseted Media.

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Eighty-three percent of queer women reported birthing complications. From systemic bias to outdated medical policies, lesbians face a maternal health system that was never designed with them in mind.

In January, a lesbian couple from New Jersey had a labor playlist picked out, electronic candles ready to go and an “atmosphere” they wanted to create while birthing their first child. They were eager and “not at all worried.”

But Amy and Jessica say their plans for a smooth birth went out the window when a routine check-up turned into a harrowing eight-day hospital stay. “It was awful. It was horrendous,” Amy, the birthing mother, told Uncloseted Media.

At 37 weeks pregnant following in vitro fertilization (IVF), the couple, who asked to use pseudonyms because they are considering litigation against the hospital, was told that the birthing mother needed to have her labour induced immediately due to high blood pressure. After three days of failed induction, doctors performed an emergency C-section during which she haemorrhaged and lost four litres of blood. The doctors eventually had to remove her uterus to “save her life.”

“We did research later and found out that induction medication and IVF both increase the risk of haemorrhage. It just felt like no one was listening to us or informing us,” says Jessica.

“If pregnancy were a men’s health field, this wouldn’t be happening,” Amy says. “You think of medicine now and it’s so modernised and there are so many technologies, but there is something so lacking in women’s health care.”

According to a 2022 study in the Association of American Medical Colleges, more than half of queer women reported that the quality of their experience with pregnancy, birth and postpartum care was impacted by bias or discrimination, compared to 35% of heterosexual people. In addition, 83% of queer women reported birthing complications compared to 63% of their heterosexual counterparts. Queer women also have higher rates of stillbirths, miscarriages and premature births.

“Female-bodied people have been ignored in medicine for so long, and taking on the queer identity makes it worse,” says Marea Goodman, midwife and founder of PregnantTogether, an LGBTQIA+ focused midwife practice. “Clinics arose out of a need to support heterosexual people who are experiencing infertility and for many years queer folks were barred from accessing fertility care. They’re just not for creative family structures.”

The American healthcare system was not built for queer women

While roughly 59% of bisexual women and 31% of lesbians give birth in their lifetime, bringing tens of thousands of babies into the world each year, the healthcare system is hard for them to navigate.

A 2022 study found that LGBTQIA+ couples are more afraid of childbirth than heterosexual couples. And it’s not just the pregnancy itself that is scary. According to Anna Malmquist, one of the authors of the study and a researcher at Sweden’s Linköping University, there are many concerns queer women face when walking into a hospital.

“‘What if they misgender me?’” she says. “‘What if they don’t recognise my partner as my partner? What if they don’t respect my pronouns? I cannot just go away and seek care somewhere else, because the baby has to come out.’ So the minority stress becomes a second layer added to these bodily fears.”

One reason queer women may face these concerns is that medical school curricula often fall short in teaching prospective physicians about LGBTQIA+ reproductive health.

One study reported that the median instructional time on all LGBTQIA+ topics was just 11 hours across four years, with many programs failing to address disparities faced by lesbian patients in accessing prenatal care and family planning services. In a 2021 study, half of OB-GYN residents reported feeling unprepared to care for lesbian or bisexual patients and 92% desired more education on how to provide healthcare to LGBTQIA+ patients.

This lack of education can result in queer women feeling out of place. “Walking down the halls of my clinic, all of the stock art of couples was white and heterosexual, nothing queer, and the literature all said ‘mom and dad,’” says Angela Thompson, a Verizon IT tech from Columbia, South Carolina.

Alyssa and Sam Darling delivered their first child in 2019 in Los Angeles.

When they went back to the delivery ward after the birth to do a routine check-up with their child, one of the nurses at the door stopped Alyssa, the non-birthing partner.

“She physically put her hand on my chest and stopped me, and said, ‘It’s parents only,’” she remembers. “The baby was my eggs, so biologically mine. … It was just so confusing. … We were exhausted, we just wanted to go home, and it was the last thing we wanted to deal with.”

“It’s like you’re having to come out time and time again,” Sam adds. “And for some people, that can be extremely triggering.”

Beyond that, Alyssa is listed as “father” on both of her children’s birth certificates because there wasn’t a place to write a second mother.

Since 2017, married same-sex parents in the U.S. have had the right to write both their names on their child’s birth certificate. However, the federal government’s standard birth certificate application form hasn’t been revised since 2003, leaving the sections as “mother” and “father.” To amend this, it’s on the respective hospital to file additional paperwork.

“I asked them what to do, and the nurse was like, ‘Well, you put the father’s information,’ and I was like, ‘We’re a two-mom couple, she doesn’t have a dad.’ And she’s like, ‘We’re gonna need dad’s information.’ And I’m like, ‘But there is no dad.’”

Alyssa circled the option at the bottom of the certificate to be listed as “parent” instead of father, but due to a clerical error, the certificate she received in the mail still says “Father: Alyssa Darling.”

The physical toll of discrimination and hate

“The experience of the mother during pregnancy directly impacts the health of the infant,” says Bethany Everett, adjunct associate professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Utah. “Tending to mothers is a critical period for public health interventions if we want to improve population health at large.”

While research around queer pregnancy is limited, a 2022 study found that lesbian women living in states with stronger legal protections for sexual minorities had better birth outcomes, including higher birth weights and lower rates of preterm births, compared to those in states without such protections. Conversely, the study found no significant difference in birth outcomes between heterosexual women in states with and without sexual minority protections.

“If you can be fired because you’re gay or you can’t be legally recognised in your partnership, those things impact your real quality of life,” says Everett. “And those forms of stigma and discrimination can negatively impact the health of the pregnant woman and translate to the health of the foetus.”

“Long-term exposure to distress and discrimination results in chronic inflammation and immune dysfunction,” she says. “It’s not about the person, it’s about the environment that they’re giving birth in.”

Angela Thompson remembers not holding hands with her wife when she was visibly pregnant. “We have felt uncomfortable in public, especially in more rural areas after the [Presidential] Election,” Thompson says. “Once, we were at a restaurant in Myrtle Beach, and we weren’t holding hands or sitting next to each other, but people still gave us dirty looks. It’s stressful.”

Unfortunately, providers aren’t always immune to stigma and homophobia. As of 2022, more than one in eight LGBTQIA+ people live in states where doctors, nurses and other health care professionals can legally refuse to treat them.

This translates to negative health outcomes for queer women in the delivery room.

According to a 2023 survey, LGBTQIA+ people were twice as likely to experience medical gaslighting compared to their cis and heterosexual counterparts. When asked to agree with the following statement, “My doctor listens to me when I express concerns about treatments and prescriptions,” 49% of queer respondents agreed compared to 61% of straight and cis respondents.

Thompson’s son was underweight at birth and two weeks early. After an emergency C-section, the baby didn’t cry, which was alarming to the nurses.

“There was not enough of the cord connected to the placenta which meant he wasn’t getting as much nutrients toward the end of the pregnancy, which is why he couldn’t tolerate labour,” she says. “They don’t know how they missed it. I had concerns about it and I told them to check it earlier but they either missed it [or didn’t check].”

“The whole process feels very disjointed,” says Amy, the birthing mother in New Jersey. “I wish I had been given more information about the risks because this is an IVF baby.”

The couple says that they found out later that IVF pregnancies are at higher risk of haemorrhaging, which also becomes a greater risk when under induction medication like Amy was.

The same care but more expensive: insurance exclusion

In addition to not feeling heard, the financial burden of IVF is another stressor that disproportionately affects queer women. A single cycle costs between $15,000 to $30,000, and only 21 states and D.C. have insurance laws that mandate coverage of fertility treatments. One study found that for two-thirds of patients, it takes six or more IVF cycles for a successful pregnancy. That means it can easily cost $100,000 for one pregnancy.

“Insurance coverage and IVF language is an example of just how heteronormative our family building infrastructure still is and how we throw up these barriers for queer folks,” says Abbie Goldberg, professor of psychology at Clark University, noting that only eight states have policies that are inclusive of LGBTQIA+ parents due to language of their policy and requirements for the definition of “infertile.”

Shanell Crymes-Lincoln had to switch employers to obtain insurance that would cover IVF for her and her wife.

“It was astronomical without insurance,” Crymes-Lincoln, who lives in Toledo, Ohio, told Uncloseted Media.

“It was between using our savings for a baby or a house, and we wanted to do everything possible to not have to pay out of pocket.”

Religion and race

Crymes-Lincoln is currently pregnant with her and her wife Nesi’s second child. While the couple’s first experience with an LGBTQIA+ friendly doctor was positive, with Nesi being able to catch the baby, they are nervous about their new provider who works out of a Catholic hospital.

“Everything went smoothly [with our first baby’s doctor] … But then my insurance carrier dropped that entire medical clinic altogether, and we only have two medical clinics in this area.”

Both women say they feel more on edge at their new clinic because it features “Mother Teresa statues, prayers and things that are exclusive to certain groups.”

“I feel like you’re going to judge me based on your religious thoughts. I don’t feel comfortable displaying affection with my wife, or even calling her my wife there,” says Crymes-Lincoln, who dreamed of “being a mom” as a kid. “We’re worried our birth plan won’t be respected here.”

At their first appointment, Crymes-Lincoln felt like her questions were being “brushed off.”

“It could be because of my race, it could be because of my sexual orientation,” she says. “I’m just worried about the birth, being a Black woman and being a lesbian, we tend to get overlooked.”

“Combined is a whammy,” she says, noting that Black women in the US are more than three times likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than their white counterparts.

Mothers just want to be heard

Above all, mothers just want providers who listen to them.

“Just don’t assume,” Sam Darling says. “There was one instance when I was pregnant where a nurse asked if my wife was my sister. It was really awkward. I think healthcare in general needs to do better for LGBTQIA+ community members. Have a pronoun section on intake forms, and ask about your [patient’s] sexual orientation.”

As a practitioner focused on LGBTQIA+ folks, Marea Goodman says representation is essential. “When you go into a fertility clinic and you don’t see any other families that look like yours, it can be a really isolating experience.”

In Goodman’s practice, there’s a strong emphasis on prioritising the parents’ emotional experience. For instance, Goodman allows the birthing mother’s partner to push the syringe during the insemination, an intentional choice to honour the grief that can arise from not being able to conceive privately at home.

Goodman suggests small changes in the system to make queer women feel more supported. “I don’t think it’s too hard to improve this. If there’s one photo in the office of a queer couple, that will make a difference. I think if everyone in the office, including front desk personnel, had training, it would go a long way.”

Goodman also suggests having a list of organisations where folks can connect with other LGBTQIA+ families looking to conceive.

“People feel alone. People feel isolated. People don’t see themselves reflected, and society doesn’t do that for us,” Goodman says. “We have to create spaces that do. That’s what changes everything.”

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The post Why lesbians face a maternal healthcare crisis appeared first on GAY TIMES.