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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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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The world’s richest man and Trump’s “First Buddy” is no ally to the LGBTQ community.

WORDS NICO DIALESANDRO

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

​Elon Musk, the richest person in the world and the entrepreneur behind PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX and X, has become one of the most powerful – and polarising – figures in American politics. Since Trump took office, Musk has ascended to the (self-titled) position of “first buddy” and is now seen by many as the second person in charge of the nation.

While Musk still holds the title of senior advisor to Trump and the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Trump has recently told his inner circle that Musk will leave soon.

Despite this, Musk’s power and influence remain massive. Here’s his complete track record on LGBTQIA+ issues.

CEO Elon Musk

Oct. 19, 2017

Jorge Ferro, a former assembly line worker at Tesla, sues the company for wrongful termination. He alleges that the Musk-owned company ignored his reports of homophobic harassment at work and that his firing was retaliatory. Ferro says a manager told him to “watch [his] back” after telling him his clothing was “gay tight.”

After Ferro files a second harassment report, he says an HR representative took his badge, saying that he had “an injury” that prevented him from working and that there’s “no place for handicapped people at Tesla.” In response, Ferro’s attorney describes the decision as “revolting” and says that “this is classic ‘blame the victim.’”

Tesla asserts that third-party companies hired both Ferro and the manager involved and that Tesla took appropriate action to separate the two individuals.

During the same month, Tesla is sued by three Black former employees for racial harassment and discrimination. The three men claim their time at Tesla was like a “scene straight from the Jim Crow era.”

July 24, 2020

Elon Musk posts various tweets that mock the use of pronouns, writing, “Pronouns suck.” He follows this up on Dec. 14, 2020 by posting a meme that suggests people who post their pronouns in their bios are oppressive.

After receiving backlash to his posts, Musk tweets: “I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an esthetic [sic] nightmare.” He later reposts a Tesla tweet from 2020 that says the company is “Very proud to have scored 100/100 for the fourth year in a row in LGBTQ equality,” in reference to the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.

June 21, 2022

At 18 years old, Musk’s daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, files a petition with the Los Angeles County Superior Court in Santa Monica to change her name and receive a new birth certificate so that she may legally transition. At this time, she begins publicly distancing herself from Musk, saying she no longer wants to “be related to [her] biological father in any way, shape or form.”

Oct. 11, 2022

Musk blames his estrangement from Wilson on “neo-Marxist” influences from his daughter’s university. In an interview with the Financial Times, he says, “It’s full-on communism …  and a general sentiment that if you’re rich, you’re evil. … [The relationship] may change, but I have very good relationships with all the other [children]. Can’t win them all.”

Musk Buys Twitter

Nov. 1, 2022

Montclair State University publishes a study that compares hate speech on Twitter before and after Elon Musk buys it. In the week leading up to Musk’s acquisition of the company, tweets using hateful terms including insults on race, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation never rise above 84 instances an hour. But in the first twelve hours after Musk acquires the company, these terms are posted nearly 400 times an hour.

Oct. 30, 2022

When Paul Pelosi, the husband of former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, suffers a fractured skull after being attacked in his San Francisco home by a hammer-wielding man, Musk tweets unfounded allegations about the incident to his 112 million followers. “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” he tweets, implying that Pelosi and the perpetrator are gay lovers. In the post, Musk cites the Santa Monica Observer, a far-right news outlet that regularly publishes false and misleading information. Musk has since deleted the post.

In an interview with CNN, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticises Musk’s rhetoric, saying, “It’s really sad for the country that people of [such] high visibility would separate themselves from the facts and the truth in such a blatant way. It is traumatising to those affected by it. They don’t care about that, obviously, but it’s destructive to the unity that we want to have in our country.”

Nov. 21, 2022

Musk reinstates X accounts previously banned for engaging in antisemitic, homophobic, transphobic and racist harassment campaigns. This includes Andrew Tate, a manfluencer who has compared gay people to invasive, poisonous aliens and said the only way to avoid the normalisation of trans people is a draft for WWIII. It also includes Alex Jones, who, in a now-deleted post from 2015, said that the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling “opens the door for pedo [sic] politicians.”

December 2022

Musk falsely suggests that Yoel Roth, a gay Jewish man who was Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, promoted pedophilia in his academic research.

These claims trigger a wave of homophobic harassment and threats against Roth. Fox News’s Laura Ingraham claims Roth stood “with the deviancy,” while Ben Shapiro falsely alleges Roth encouraged Grindr access for teens.

The harassment escalates to the point where Roth and his family flee and sell their home after the Daily Mail publishes that they live in San Francisco.

June 21, 2023

In a post on X, Musk labels “cis” and “cisgender” as slurs. He adds that “repeated, targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive, at minimum, temporary suspensions.”

Shortly after Musk’s post, X begins restricting accounts attempting to post the terms and notifies them of the following: “This post contains language that may be considered a slur by X and could be used in a harmful manner in violation of our rules.”

July 22, 2024

In an interview with Jordan Peterson for the right-wing media outlet The Daily Wire, Musk deadnames and misgenders his transgender daughter, claiming he was “tricked” into letting her get gender-affirming medical care as a teenager and referring to her as “dead.”

He says this is why he “vows to destroy the woke mind virus.” In response, Wilson tells NBC News that Musk is lying about her upbringing and says he was an absent father who harassed her for being too feminine. “He was cold. He’s very quick to anger. He is uncaring and narcissistic. … I was in fourth grade. We went on this road trip … and he was constantly yelling at me viciously because my voice was too high. It was cruel.”

Special Government Employee and Trump’s “First Buddy”

Dec. 28, 2024

Musk writes an op-ed for the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, where he expresses support for the country’s far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD). The party is deeply anti-LGBTQIA+: opposing same-sex marriage and gender-affirming care for trans people; supporting abolishing the position of a federal government commissioner on queer rights; and voting for bans on the use of gender-neutral language in schools. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk writes.

March 6, 2025

The Department of Government Efficiency, run by Musk, announces the termination of a handful of research grants by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), many of which fund scientific research related to gender-affirming healthcare, HIV prevention and studies focused on AIDS. One researcher is notified in an email from NIH that says the agency no longer supports “research based on gender identity.”

March 2025

In an interview with Teen Vogue, Wilson criticises her father for mischaracterising her in Walter Isaacson’s biography as being an angry, rebellious child influenced by Marxism.

She clarifies that she is not a Marxist, reveals she has not spoken to her father since 2020, and describes him as “a pathetic man-child.”

Musk indirectly responds to the Teen Vogue interview by baselessly and repeatedly claiming transgender people are violent due to hormone replacement therapy.

In direct response to Musk deadnaming her on X, Vivian uses a popular quote from RuPaul’s Drag Race, stating, “I look pretty good for a dead bitch.”

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In January, Idaho introduced a resolution that is now one of at least 9 measures trying to chip away at same-sex marriage across the US. A notoriously anti-LGBTQIA+ group says they’re behind the push.

WORDS HOPE PISONI, IAN MAX STEVENSON AND SPENCER MACNAUGHTON
ADDITIONAL REPORTING SAM DONNDELINGER

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

THIS STORY WAS PRODUCED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE IDAHO STATESMAN, A BOISE, IDAHO NEWSPAPER THAT HAS BEEN AROUND SINCE 1864.

Idaho lawmakers were met in late January by a House committee hearing room full of constituents stating their beliefs about the institution of marriage – and who it should extend to. After testimonies from nearly two dozen people, the last to speak joined the hearing remotely and thanked Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, for bringing forward a resolution to challenge the legality of same-sex marriages and ask the US Supreme Court to overturn the decade-old landmark ruling that granted it.

Arthur Schaper, field director for a group called MassResistance, told the committee that activists at his international organisation had brought forward similar resolutions in North Dakota, Montana, Michigan and Wyoming and that state lawmakers had been “taking it up.” As of this week, at least nine states have proposed measures to roll back same-sex marriage.

Schaper defended the resolution with discredited claims about homosexuality, which the country’s major medical organisations agree is a normal part of human sexuality.

“People are born Black, Hispanic, or otherwise,” Schaper said. “They are not born homosexual.”

Schaper declined Uncloseted Media’s request for an interview and did not respond to a list of questions sent via email.

A Three-Decade History of Fighting Against LGBTQIA+ Rights

The Idaho resolution was drafted by MassResistance, a far-right Christian organisation that has been fighting against LGBTQIA+ rights since it formed 30 years ago. The group is one of the most openly extreme anti-LGBTQIA+ groups among the far right, advertising itself as “engag[ing] in issues and events that most other conservative groups are afraid to touch” and boasting about writing resolutions like the one passed in the Idaho House.

“MassResistance has drafted text for state legislature resolutions that call on the US Supreme Court to reverse its infamous and illegitimate Obergefell ruling,” the group shared on its website in January, referencing Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark decision by the Supreme Court to legalise same-sex marriage.

It also has criticised Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQIA+ hate groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and Family Research Council for their “polite opposition to the latest left-wing lunacy” and stated that “rather than being truthful and confrontational, too many pro-family groups want to be seen as ‘reasonable’ and ‘not extreme.’” In addition to its anti-LGBTQIA+ activism on home turf, MassResistance works to roll back queer rights globally, with chapters in Africa, South America, the Caribbean and beyond.

Justin R. Ellis, a criminologist at the University of Newcastle in Australia who has written about anti-LGBTQIA+ movements and groups, including MassResistance, said that the successes of groups like ADF in rolling back some LGBTQIA+ rights is exactly what allows MassResistance to take the spotlight.

“Them coming out with their framing and their litigation and their hostility toward queer issues emboldens other groups like MassResistance to go, ‘Hang on, we’re gonna go bolder,’” Ellis said in a video interview.

MassResistance’s effort to overturn same-sex marriage is the latest in a long list of campaigns in which the group has worked to pass anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation, from book bans to gender-marker restrictions, in state and local governments across the country and even abroad.

How MassResistance Grew Beyond its Massachusetts Roots

MassResistance was founded in 1995 in Massachusetts under the name “Parents’ Rights Coalition” by local activist Brian Camenker. After getting his start in activism as an outspoken opponent of LGBTQIA+ inclusive sex education in schools, Camenker quickly led the group’s first major campaign: drafting and lobbying for state legislation that required schools to notify parents and allow them to opt out of sex education for their children. The group emphasised that doing so would allow parents to ensure their children don’t learn about “homosexuality” or so-called “transgenderism.” The campaign was successful, and the bill passed into state law in 1996.

After the Massachusetts Supreme Court made the state the first in the US to legalise same-sex marriage in 2004, the group shifted its focus to fighting that decision. The group temporarily changed its name to the Article 8 Alliance, referencing part of the Massachusetts Constitution that outlines the impeachment of judges. Under this new identity, the group filed state legislation to impeach all of the justices who supported Massachusetts’ pro-same-sex-marriage ruling and to outlaw the unions under state law. None of the bills the group wrote were successful.

Despite this, after rebranding back to MassResistance in 2006, the group continued to write legislation opposed to LGBTQIA+ inclusion until at least 2017. In one bill from 2011, the group sought to repeal an anti-bullying law because of its protections for LGBTQIA+ students.

During this period, the Southern Poverty Law Center designated MassResistance a hate group, in part because it labeled Boston Pride a “depraved” display that featured “a great deal of obviously disturbed, dysfunctional, and extremely self-centered people.”

In the mid-2010s, MassResistance expanded its focus to the national stage. Its first out-of-state chapter opened in 2014 in Virginia. In 2016, Schaper launched a chapter in California. And in 2020, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who MassResistance has said worked closely with members of its Georgia chapter, was elected to the US House of Representatives.

By 2022, the free speech advocacy group PEN America identified at least 16 MassResistance chapters in the US, with several more international chapters. PEN America also identified MassResistance as one of the most active groups in the national push to ban books with LGBTQIA+ content from schools and libraries.

The book ban efforts followed MassResistance publishing in 2017 its own book, The Health Hazards of Homosexuality, which claimed to compile scientific evidence that supported a ban on homosexuality. The 600-page book touts endorsements from various anti-LGBTQIA+ activists, including Michelle Cretella, former executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group known for publishing and spreading specious science about LGBTQIA+ people.

The book rails against “the coarsening of our culture that has accompanied the normalisation of homosexuality” and makes numerous false or misleading scientific claims. For example, it cites statistics indicating higher rates of mental or physical illness among LGBTQIA+ people as evidence of innate risks despite many experts agreeing that discrimination and lack of resources are more accurate explanatory factors.

Where Does the Funding Come From?

According to IRS filings, MassResistance has received thousands of dollars from several donor-advised funds. They include the National Christian Foundation and Arthur G. Jaros Sr. and Dawn L. Jaros Charitable Trust – both of which financially support other far-right groups, including the ADF and the Heritage Foundation, the group behind Project 2025.

Uncloseted Media and the Idaho Statesman also identified IRS forms for the Parents Education Foundation, a group run by Camenker and listed as “related” to MassResistance. Despite little to no public presence, on its most recent IRS filing from 2023, the organisation reported revenue of $211,123, much of which was sourced via donations from large conservative donors and other mainstream donor-advised funds.

The Parents Education Foundation lists Dr. Paul Church as a director. Church is a urologist who was fired from a Boston hospital in 2015 for likening a Pride event to a chosen social agenda, Fox News reported. MassResistance supported Church in his fight against the hospital, and, in 2017, he provided an expert endorsement in The Health Hazards of Homosexuality.

MassResistance Makes Inroads Into Idaho

The current Idaho resolution is not the first instance where MassResistance has worked with the state’s legislators. In a collection of emails leaked by former conservative activist Elisa Rae Shupe, who died by suicide earlier this year, Uncloseted Media found correspondence from 2020 between Schaper and former Idaho state Rep. Julianne Young, R-Blackfoot, who testified in favour of the anti-Obergefell resolution. Young discussed developing an anti-trans bill that would forbid changing gender markers on state birth certificates. The bill became law in Idaho in 2020.

“We are still going after the governor, though, to make sure that he signs or at least allow[s] the bills to become law,” Schaper told Young in one email.

“MassResistance does send emails. They were looking for people to testify, but I did not make those arrangements with them deliberately. I let them know I would contact the bill’s sponsor,” Young told Uncloseted Media in reference to the 2025 anti-Obergefell resolution, which she says she supports. “It’s a correct principle to allow those decisions to be made by the states and not by a single unelected panel of judges.”

When asked if she takes issue with any of MassResistance’s stances on gay issues, Young said, “It’s probably not an issue that I have a relevant opinion on.”

Idaho has been home to some of MassResistance’s government targets. In 2023, activists from its state chapter and other anti-LGBTQA+ groups successfully campaigned to elect a majority of far-right candidates onto Kootenai County’s Community Library Network board. The board has since enacted multiple policies restricting minors’ access to LGBTQIA+ content and libraries in general.

At the 2023 Rexburg Pride Event in East Idaho, counter-protestors from Idaho MassResistance, led at the time by former Rep. Ron Nate, R-Rexburg, had physical confrontations with attendees. The spectacle caused police to heighten security and some organisations to pull out of the event the following year. MassResistance made a less conspicuous appearance in 2024. Nate did not respond to Uncloseted Media’s request for comment.

Ellis, the professor who writes about anti-LGBTQIA+ movements including MassResistance, said that coordinating these kinds of local attacks on the LGBTQIA+ community and other marginalised groups has become much easier with social media.

“One of the things that groups such as MassResistance can do is, through their online networks, coordinate protests against Drag Queen Story Time childhood literacy events, for example, and now same-sex marriage, and what they do is get people in other jurisdictions to go to those locations and protest in person,” he said. “Through social media, you can coordinate ideologically aligned individuals quickly and cheaply.”

MassResistance has taken credit on its website for the Idaho resolution carried by Rep. Scott. The group noted that an Idaho House member “offered to spearhead” the resolution this year but did not name the lawmaker.

In response to a public records request, Scott reported she had no communications with MassResistance, and she declined to respond to a question from a Statesman reporter about whether she worked with the group.

In an interview on The Ranch Podcast in early February, Scott said she was first approached about opposing same-sex marriage in the Legislature eight years ago. She said she was looking through a list of ideas for legislation over the summer and decided to “push [same-sex marriage] up to the top this year.”

Scott’s resolution states that the Obergefell decision is an “overreach” from the US Supreme Court, which should leave marriage laws to the states. However, it also asks the Supreme Court to “restore the natural definition of marriage, a union of one man and one woman.”

On the podcast, she underscored her perspective on gay marriage. “Don’t force me to say that that’s a marriage, because in my eyes that’s an abomination to God,” she said, noting that she would support creating a legal relationship between LGBTQIA+ couples that would provide them with the legal rights of marriage.

MassResistance’s International Footprint

MassResistance also advocates against LGBTQIA+ rights around the world. On its website, the group claims to have worked with activists from at least 24 countries and territories, including Mexico, Brazil, Croatia, Nigeria, Taiwan and Australia. Last year, the group started a new chapter in Kenya, where it reported on its website that it was holding trainings for youth to “resist the LGBT agenda” in schools.

In many of these countries, the group circulates a video by Camenker titled “What ‘gay marriage’ did to Massachusetts.” The video has been converted into booklets, which have been translated and circulated in Mexico, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and more.

“Once same-sex marriage gets a foothold, society becomes more oppressive, hammering citizens with the force of law. The judicial system becomes more radical and arrogant, and politicians become more cowardly. And once that concept is institutionalised, other boundaries on sexual behaviours continue to fall,” Camenker says in the video. “The push for gay marriage is really about putting the legal stamp of approval on homosexuality and forcing its acceptance on otherwise unwilling citizens and on our social, commercial, and political institutions. To those of you where this is being threatened, do not wait – it is absolutely necessary for you to call, write, and even visit your elected officials. They must feel your outrage.”

Camenker did not respond to Uncloseted Media’s request for comment.

Some of MassResistence’s more noteworthy interventions abroad include helping keep anti-sodomy laws on the books in Sri Lanka and supporting propaganda campaigns against the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Taiwan. In the latter case, the group said that Schaper spoke directly with a representative of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party and was invited to a party event in the US over the course of the campaign.

In Ghana, meanwhile, MassResistance has collaborated with Freedom International, an organisation that congratulated Uganda for its anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation that threatens life in prison for consensual same-sex relations, to start anti-LGBTQIA+ youth clubs in secondary schools.

“[Africa] is the land of opportunity when it comes to restricting LGBTQ rights,” Wendy Via, president and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told Uncloseted Media. “There are a lot of huge worldwide groups with lots of money who are working on the same thing, and they also come at it from a Christian point of view.”

MassResistance’s Plans Span Far Beyond Idaho

The future of Scott’s resolution in Idaho is uncertain. It passed the Idaho House in a 46-24 vote in late January. Before a vote on the Senate floor, the legislation must advance out of a Senate committee. But the committee’s chairman, Sen. Jim Guthrie, R-McCammon, told the Statesman he is not sure whether he will allow a hearing.

“The public has weighed in, and it’s been pretty one-sided in terms of, ‘Why are we doing this?’” he said.

Guthrie said he expects to meet with Scott to discuss her resolution before deciding whether to hold a hearing, but he acknowledged his own concerns.

“The effect of it could be pretty harmful to a lot of people, making them feel for whatever reason that they don’t belong. … I just don’t see the benefit being greater than the hurt,” Guthrie added, noting that it could “tear people’s lives apart.”

Via said MassResistance’s goal is to overturn Obergefell and starting in deep-red pockets of the country is a trial run.

“The little, tiny resolution in Idaho, it’s like the butterfly wings,” she said.

Editor’s note: Dr. Paul Church could not be reached for comment.

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