This story was produced in partnership with hankycode magazine, an LGBTQ history publication.

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Before the internet went mainstream in 1994, gay men looking for their next hookup would cruise in parks, rest stops and bathhouses. For more meaningful connection, they’d use phone lines, send letters and even place ads in the newspaper.

But over the last 32 years, the internet has transformed cruising and hookup culture. Websites, chat rooms and apps now dominate, with the online gay hookup and dating industry valued at $1.5 billion as of 2024.

Here, we will highlight the impact 20 notable sites and apps have had on gay cruising culture.

1994

Mark Elderkin and his husband, Jeff Bennett, found Gay.com. A few years later, the site launches with a java-based chat system that features virtual chat rooms like “LA Men 4 Men 18-24.” Over the years, the site grows in popularity by offering a combination of chat rooms, member profiles, message boards and editorial content. A 1998 list of daily chat sessions on the site include “Parent Chat,” “Must See TV,” “Vegetarian Potluck” and “Bisexual Men Chat.”

In 2005, San Jose Mercury News rank Gay.com as the most popular online gay personals site in the U.S.

1995

Craig Newmark launches Craigslist, which begins as an email list and then becomes a website the following year. From 2001 to 2009, the platform had a section titled “erotic services,” in which people openly advertised paid sex. In 2009, that section changed to “adult services,” which had stricter screening.

The section was ultimately removed from the site following a group of state attorneys general saying there wasn’t enough protection against illegal ads that promoted prostitution.

None of this, however, stopped people from using the site to cruise and meet sexual partners; the “personals” section was utilized for this purpose. The men seeking men category—which was removed alongside the personals section as a whole in 2018—included a wide range of personal ads utilizing shorthand to indicate the kind of sex they were looking for: BB indicated bareback, or condomless sex; DL indicated down low, for men who were closeted; and PNP indicated Party and Play, for those who wanted to use drugs, typically crystal meth, and have sex.

1999

Salon publishes an article describing AOL as the “bathhouse of the internet.” By 2000, approximately 20% of AOL’s 21 million users are gay, and the men-for-men (M4M) chat rooms are particularly popular. Most chat rooms are organized by city, so members can enter chat rooms like “SacramentoM4M,” where they can then view profiles of guys near them. Instant messages and private chat rooms—where men exchange naked photos and coordinate hookups—are also incredibly popular.

1999

Squirt.org launches as a sex-positive cruising network that consists of user-generated content including cam shows, videos and written smut known as “cocktales.” The site caters to gay and bisexual men and includes user profiles and suggestions for places guys can meet-up to hookup, including bathhouses, rest areas and parks. Earlier this year, Squirt released a mobile dating app, that they say includes “unlimited chats and no geographic restrictions, making it an essential gay dating app for travel and meeting guys abroad, or finding members nearby on your grid.”

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1999

A gay couple, Gary Frisch and Henry Badenhorst, launch Gaydar after a failed attempt to try and help their friend find a boyfriend. Badenhorst said, “We put him on Excite [a search engine], which had a dating section where you could upload a picture. But it took two weeks for him to get a response, so we said that we were sure we could create something specifically for the gay market.” Setting the site apart were webpages for each user known as “profiles,” which have now become standard in online dating.

1999

Recon, a hookup site focused on gay and bisexual men interested in fetish wear, launches. On the site, you can find men interested in BDSM, leather, alternative play and more. In 2010, Recon launches an app that uses GPS to show nearby men. Similar to the site, the app focuses on leather, rubber, BDSM and kink. Recon has held global fetish events in cities worldwide, including Berlin, Paris, London and Chicago.

2001

Fridae, a gay web portal created by scientist Stuart Koe, launches. The site has a stated goal of “Empowering gay Asia.”

Even though Koe is Singaporean, Fridae registers as a Hong Kong-based website to avoid scrutiny from the Singaporean government since homosexuality was illegal at the time. In addition to being a space to find hookups and dates, the site includes gay-related marketing, HIV information and community development opportunities. In 2015, Fridae is acquired by DragonStack.

2001

Jonathan Crutchley and Larry Basile launch Manhunt.net in Boston. The duo had initially started in the gay telephone chat line business. But after noticing a downturn in 2000, they pivoted to the internet. By 2002, 10,000 men from greater Boston had joined Manhunt seeking hookups and dates. The same year, a paid option is introduced and the company expands into other U.S. cities.

2002

Jens Schmidt launches GayRomeo, which quickly becomes the go-to dating and hookup site for gay and bisexual men in Germany. It later expands through Europe and eventually goes global. In 2011, it’s rebranded to PlanetRomeo due to censorship of the word “gay” in many countries. And in 2021, Planetromeo.com becomes Romeo.com.

2003

Convergent Ideas, LLC launches Adam4Adam, a site designed for hookups, as well as dating and even friendships amongst gay and bisexual men. Over time, the platform collaborates with organizations to promote LGBTQ rights and health awareness, highlighting safe sex, mental health and HIV awareness. In 2005, San Jose Mercury News ranks Adam4Adam as the second most popular online gay personals site in the U.S., after Gay.com.

2004

OkCupid launches, and by 2012, becomes a major dating app. Notably, OkCupid is the first dating site to expand gender and sexual orientation identifiers: In 2014, it introduces 22 gender and 13 orientation options, including pangender, homoflexible and Two Spirit. By 2021, it offers 60 identifiers after working with the Human Rights Campaign.

2004

Backpage.com launches. The classified ads site includes categories such as “personals” and “adult services.” The site is used by many LGBTQ sex workers. In 2018, U.S. law enforcement agencies seize and shut down the site in an effort to combat forced prostitution and child exploitation.

2009

Joel Simkhai launches Grindr, an app that uses iPhone satellite location data to help men find sexual partners nearby. It becomes the first iPhone app to combine dating and sex with geolocation. The use of location data changes the game for gay hookup culture, combining elements of old-school cruising with the modern digital age. Grindr allows users to filter for what they call “tribes,” which include bears, twinks, jocks and more. The Grindr grid allows users to see men in order of proximity, presented as a grid of bodies, often including faceless photos that lean into traditional anonymous cruising culture.

As Grindr’s site says, “Our mission is clear: become the Global Gayborhood in Your Pocket, so wherever life takes you, the community, support, and opportunities that move us and our business forward are never more than a tap away. … Grindr has grown into the world’s largest network for gay, bi, trans, and queer adults.” In 2022, Grindr would go public, and it is currently valued at $2.74 billion.

2009

Chatroulette is launched by Andrey Ternovskiy, a 17-year-old student from Moscow. The site allows users to anonymously video chat with users worldwide. The site quickly becomes used by men as a way for cyber sex and mutual masturbation.

2010

Johnny Skandros and Eric Silverberg launch SCRUFF, a Grindr competitor that targets LGBTQ men. In 2013, when SCRUFF 4 launched with many new features, it became one of the first social apps to include a transgender community profile and search option.

2012

Sean Rad and Justin Mateen launch Tinder. The most groundbreaking feature is the ability to swipe right on profiles you’re interested in and swipe left for those you dislike.

2012

Ma Baoli founds China’s first gay dating app, Blued, as a successor to an LGBTQ-focused online forum he had started in the 2000s called Danlan.org. Over time, the app expands internationally after its domestic market starts facing challenges due to state controls of LGBTQ media as well as competition from newer, trendier apps. Last year, Apple removed Blued from China’s app store, saying the move was “based on an order” from the Cyberspace Administration of China.

2018

The gay hookup site Sniffies launches. Leaning into historical cruising culture, the app shows a live updated GPS map, providing a simple way for men to find quick sexual encounters. The site says that it is “a map-based app for gay, bi, trans, and curious cruisers.”

Unlike similar sites or apps, users don’t have to set up an account or provide an email address. The site also allows users to invite others to private sex parties or notify them of their presence in public locations like parks and gyms. Another distinction is that nudes can be used as profile photos, and those nudes then show up on the interactive map users reference when seeking a hookup.

2018

Following the removal of Craigslist’s “personals,” DoubleList launches as an alternative. The personals website is a space for people seeking dating or hookups to connect. In addition, DoubleList has various categories as a simple way for LGBTQ folks to connect.

2023

Archer by Match Group launches, with the goal of creating a “social-first” dating experience for gay, bisexual and queer men. The app combines functions of both a dating app and a social media site. In its first year, the app is downloaded over 685,000 times. However, just three years after its founding, its director of brand marketing and communications announces that it will be shutting down.

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This story contains descriptions of suicide and self-harm. If you or someone you know needs support, resources are available here.

What Uncloseted’s Investigation Found:

• Strength in Weakness (SIW) says it does not practice conversion therapy. But 24 former participants and people close to the ministry described teachings centered on suppressing LGBTQ identity and behavior through celibacy, heterosexual relationships and lifelong resistance to same-sex attraction.

• The ministry has a global reach. SIW says it has worked with thousands of people across 58 countries, while Uncloseted Media identified appearances by the ministry’s founder, Guy Hammond, in at least 31 U.S. states and 20 other countries.

• Former participants describe serious harm. Survivors of SIW told Uncloseted they experienced shame, isolation, depression and suicidal thoughts while following SIW’s teachings; one former participant died by suicide after leaving the ministry.

• SIW continues operating even where conversion therapy is banned. Experts say its religious framing and rejection of promises to make people straight have helped it avoid the scrutiny faced by more traditional conversion therapy programs.

At 17 years old, Sami Tacher remembers standing atop a parking garage outside Seattle and staring down at the pavement.

They had been trying for five years to suppress their attraction to men. At 15, Tacher had found Strength in Weakness, a Christian ministry that purported to teach people experiencing “same-sex attraction” how to resist those desires. To Tacher, who had grown up believing that being gay would destroy their relationship with God and devastate their family, SIW felt like an answer.

Two years later, Tacher says, they could no longer imagine how they were supposed to live the rest of their life.

“I just stood up there and waited,” Tacher told Uncloseted Media. “I went there several times.” What stopped them, they say, was thinking about the burden their death would place on their family.

“So I’ll just sacrifice everything and stay in the program,” they remember deciding.

They would remain in SIW for years as a teenager and young adult, becoming friends with the organization’s founder, Guy Hammond, and helping promote the very teachings Tacher now believes were destroying them.

“I just didn’t see my way out,” Tacher says. “I was miserable and shrinking inside [and] constantly denying myself … but I was holding on. And in the eyes of Strength in Weakness, I was succeeding.”

SIW is a ministry closely embedded within the International Churches of Christ (ICOC), according to former ICOC leadership, a global network of congregations that some former members describe as a cult because of its rigid hierarchy and control over members’ lives. SIW’s founder, a 63-year-old self-described “homosexually attracted Christian” man named Guy Hammond, has been recounted within the ICOC as “the Jesus of gay people.” He teaches that people who experience so-called same-sex attraction should remain celibate or pursue heterosexual relationships while resisting desires the church considers sinful.

In a statement emailed to Uncloseted Media, the ICOC says, “We are not, and never have been, a cult. Members join and leave our fellowship at will and we make no attempt to prevent people from leaving or finding other places to worship.”

Since its founding in 2006, SIW says it has worked with thousands of people across 58 countries, and Hammond says he has taught more than 100,000 people worldwide. While the ministry insists it does not practice conversion therapy, interviews with 24 former participants and their loved ones reveal a global program built around suppressing LGBTQ identity and behavior. Former participants—who entered the program in their teens and early 20s—described years of shame, isolation, depression and suicidal ideation.

“Any effort to suppress someone’s gender or sexuality falls under the umbrella of conversion therapy,” says Lucas Wilson, a researcher who studies conversion practices within white Christian nationalist movements. “Pushing people to remain celibate or pushing people into mixed-orientation marriages are conversion practices.”

The Conversion Therapy Loophole

While Hammond doesn’t describe his practice as conversion therapy, he has said that he is extracting people from the “gay world.”

“If you want to convert somebody from the gay world, you’re going to do that not by bashing and putting down homosexuality,” Hammond said in a service at the Johannesburg Church of Christ in South Africa. “You have to do it by lifting up Christ.”

Still, SIW is firm that it is not a conversion therapy practice. In its terms of use, all members must agree to the following:

“I understand that Strength in Weakness Ministries … does not support conversion therapy and does not use conversion therapy in any manner. It is not the goal … to have any person change or alter their sexual attraction or identity.”

In an emailed statement to Uncloseted Media, Hammond says: “We strongly condemn conversion therapy. Strength in Weakness does not practice, promote, or endorse it. Neither my staff nor I have ever promised or taught that someone’s same-gender attractions would change or disappear. I am myself a same-sex attracted Christian man. I neither seek nor feel any need to change my sexual orientation. I do not believe a person’s worth before God is determined by their sexual orientation or the attractions they experience.”

Wilson says that when an organization uses this denial tactic, it relies on “mental and rhetorical gymnastics” to create “a more palatable public-facing image.”

“It’s a matter of optics,” he says. “These are folks who know that the general population, even those who are in the Christian bubbles, know or have heard of conversion therapy and know that it has been unilaterally condemned within scientific and professional communities. … They don’t want to be labeled as a conversion therapy organization because … people will discredit them, even those within controlled Christian spaces.”

Meigan Whitcomb, a 26-year-old former ICOC member from Los Angeles, says Hammond’s teachings shaped how she understood her attraction to women long before she identified as queer. Whitcomb, who now identifies as pansexual, first heard Hammond speak when she was around 13. She’d watch him speak at church events, national conferences and in videos played by the church.

“Nobody saw it as conversion therapy,” she says. “Because they’re not trying to change them from being gay. It’s OK that they’re gay. They just can’t act on it. And that’s the little loophole.”

In practice, Whitcomb says, people labeled as same-sex attracted, or “SSA,” were expected to either marry someone of the opposite sex or remain single. “It felt like they would just walk around with a scarlet letter on their chest,” she says.

In SIW’s programming, members read Hammond’s books, attend conferences and gender-separated support groups, complete worksheets and participate in forums through the website. If deemed necessary, they will receive individual counsel from Hammond.

One SIW counseling article, for example, encourages men to “confidently pursue” their “heterosexual goals.” In another SIW guide called “HELP! My Roommate is Gay!” Hammond instructs roommates of gay congregants to question them about when they were last “involved in homosexuality,” identify people in the home who might cause them to “struggle,” avoid walking around “naked or half dressed,” and involve church leadership if the person is “just not repenting.”

“I believe every person is created in the image of God and deserves dignity, kindness, and respect, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity,” Hammond wrote in his email to Uncloseted Media. “Many LGBTQ+ people do not share our ministry’s biblical convictions regarding sexuality, and we respect their freedom to live according to their own beliefs.”

A former participant of SIW sent Uncloseted a May 2023 recorded conversation with a person who contacted SIW seeking information about the ministry in which an SIW volunteer staff member describes how its support groups monitor members’ sexual behavior, relationships and “purity,” including masturbation, pornography, hookups and emotional attachments to other men.

During the same conversation, the volunteer describes SIW helping a man who had decided to dissolve his marriage to another man and return to the church. “We supported him in that,” the volunteer says. “We walked through it with him, Bibled with him, navigated with him through this [dissolution] of his marriage.”

“It has this appearance of liberation,” says Wilson. “But over time, people realize that this is not a free space. There are a lot of conditions on these people’s love for them. They have to follow the program … and then you realize that it’s conversion therapy under a different name.”

Behind SIW’s Denial

While SIW rejects the conversion therapy label, Tacher says the effects of SIW’s programming were damaging to their mental health.

“It developed into a deep anxiety for me,” they say. “My whole universe was making sure same-sex attraction doesn’t happen. I will ruin my life and my family’s lives and there’s no coming back.”

Behind those teachings is a network of influences that stretches well beyond SIW. Hammond has longstanding ties to some of the movement’s most prominent practitioners and organizations.

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He wrote a glowing review for a book by Michael Rosebush, who practiced conversion therapy over the phone and was previously affiliated with Focus on the Family, a prominent anti-gay group. Hammond wrote that he was Rosebush’s “former client” and that the book was full of “sensible guidance” that he received while “under his care.” Hammond also wrote in a blog post, “I acknowledge that I am not a Reparative Therapist, but that does not mean I do not have tremendous respect of that theory and therapy.”

In 2010, Rosebush was listed on SIW’s website as a member of its counseling staff.

Additionally, SIW’s former associate director, pastor Kris Boyer, has been involved with Outpost Ministries. In an article from SIW obtained from a survivor, Boyer described Outpost as a “non-denominational ex-gay ministry.” And the ministry was among the original members of Exodus International, the former umbrella organization of the ex-gay movement, which was shut down in 2013 after its leader issued a public apology to the LGBTQ community “for the pain and hurt many of [them] have experienced” as a result of the ministry’s conversion efforts.

In 2010, Boyer addressed the Presbyterian Church General Assembly in opposition to the ordination of noncelibate gay clergy, presenting his own life as evidence of the “possibility of change.”

Boyer did not respond to a request for comment.

The Adolescents Hammond Called Peers

Beyond the relations to past conversion therapy organizations, Hammond’s teachings were especially personal for some of the young men who came under his influence.

“How do you repent of attraction? I don’t know,” Hammond says of his sexuality. “But I can repent of what I do with my attractions in my mind and with my body.”

Hammond, who grew up in Windsor, Canada, had a rough childhood: His parents’ relationship was tumultuous; his father, a pastor, had multiple suicide attempts; and he was molested by an older man—all of which he presents as context for him developing “same-sex attraction.”

“Being attracted to people of the same gender was not something I woke up one day and decided,” he says in “Finding Guy,” a documentary about his life. “I remember lying in bed at night, looking up at the ceiling, considering how little the world seemed to think of me.”

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In an article on the SIW website, Hammond writes that his male clients experiencing same-sex attraction begin by completing “an extremely thorough questionnaire about their sexuality” that asks them to reflect on their development between ages 11 and 17, including whether they had less body hair, smaller muscles or a “smaller penis size” than other boys their age. Hammond then claims that “an astounding 69% of the SSA male clients responded ‘yes’!”

According to Doug Haldeman, a psychotherapist and clinical psychologist who has worked with hundreds of conversion therapy survivors, these disclosures can be “traumatizing” for youth.

“For adolescents, it can just be humiliating, especially in the context of some kind of a homophobic treatment program that they don’t feel like they’ve got any choice to participate in,” Haldeman told Uncloseted Media.

Daniel Aste, a 33-year-old philanthropic adviser, says he felt uncomfortable with the details he was pressured to reveal to Hammond when he was in the program in his early 20s.

While studying in Geneva, Switzerland, Aste helped the local ICOC congregation build its campus ministry. At the time, he was struggling with his gay identity. So he began weekly Skype meetings with Hammond.

“It was pretty similar to any sort of talk therapy, except I don’t know if the guy has credentials to do that,” Aste says. “[Hammond] would also share about his dark past. … He really pushed me to be very explicit in the details of my purity mess-ups.”

Aste felt pressure to describe his lust, attractions and any actions he took in great detail, like the types of acts he did or the exact thoughts or fantasies he was having. “I always had this lingering question of, is it a normal Christian confession or is there some sort of gratification that [Hammond] is getting from me going into such detail? … I always had a kind of icky feeling.”

Aste says Hammond taught him to build his life around avoiding sexual sin. Hammond would warn him against sharing a hotel room with another man at church conferences, even though members commonly did this to save money.

It left him feeling isolated, deeply ashamed, self-loathing and constantly self-surveilling.

“I became almost frantic in searching for the tool that would help me suppress my homosexuality.”

Tacher, now 31, had a similar experience. They were raised in a prominent ICOC family near Seattle and began recognizing their attraction to men at 12. After a church camp counselor introduced them to SIW, Tacher spent nearly seven years trying to suppress their sexuality. They paid roughly $35 on Jan. 17, 2011, as an annual fee to access SIW’s website, and began completing their daily Bible exercises.

“I would stay on the [SIW] chat forum for hours and hours each night,” Tacher says. “I was waiting for a friend, someone who understood and felt the way I did, and believed what I did. But no one came.”

At 15 years old, Tacher caught Hammond’s attention, they say, especially because they were the son of ICOC elders—a high position in the church hierarchy—and had never “kissed a boy.” It wasn’t long before Hammond recruited Tacher to make content tailored for SIW’s younger audiences.

“I would talk about my struggles, confess sin and talk about the relationships I was building with other men in the church,” says Tacher, adding that they spoke roughly monthly for an hour or more about their sexuality, relationships with other men, “purity” and what boundaries they should set in their life.

Looking back, Tacher describes their relationship with Hammond as “inappropriate.”

“I don’t think adults you don’t know well should be having these conversations with you about your sexuality,” Tacher says. “He tried to treat it like some kind of peer-to-peer relationship with a 17-year-old.”

Tacher says some of the details that Hammond shared during their talks were from his own youth.

As a young adult in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Hammond says he lived a “double life” where he’d attend church and try to appear happy while secretly returning to his boyfriend and seeking sex with men he met in gym locker rooms, parked cars and other cruising spots. Hammond recalls spending “hundreds of hours” searching for “love … connection and … significance,” while feeling that a “gaping hole” inside him could not be filled.

But in 1986, Hammond says he was convinced by a minister in Toronto to confess his so-called sins and repent. He says the minister told him, “If you refuse to be transparent with your life and you are not willing to repent of whatever sinful activity [that] you are involved in, then there is nothing I can do to help you.” From that day on, Hammond says he never again engaged sexually with men. He’d go on to marry a woman who became deeply involved with the ministry before she passed away in 2018.

“His advice was always to run away,” Tacher says. “Stay as far away from attractive people as you possibly can.”

Tacher says that Hammond told them that even thinking another man was attractive was sinful—and, like every other sin, equivalent to driving another nail through Jesus’ hands.

When the Only Options Are Sin or Death

While Tacher remembers speaking to participants who were as young as 12 years old, Hammond describes the decision to participate in SIW as one made freely by the individual.

In his emailed statement to Uncloseted Media, Hammond emphasizes that SIW serves only adults who voluntarily seek its support. “Strength in Weakness exists solely for adults who, with that same freedom of choice, voluntarily seek support in living according to their Christian convictions surrounding their sexuality and faith.”

“You’re free to live however you want, but you are not free to choose your own consequences,” Hammond says in one sermon. “The cost of following Jesus is high, but the cost of not following Jesus—that’s higher.”

But Haldeman says, “[In] the many religious communities and homophobic communities that conversion therapy survivors come from—there is no such thing as no coercion. … Almost all of the survivors I ever dealt with really felt like they didn’t have much of a choice. They could either give up everything that they had ever known, or they could give up themselves.”

Whitcomb says that, as a teenager, rejecting Hammond’s framework did not feel like an option. “Acceptance in the church was everything,” she says. Being labeled distant, weak or outside the group could mean losing the attention and relationships she had grown up depending on.

“I wanted to kill myself,” Tacher says. They recall one time sitting in their car in the parking lot holding a shattered glass bottle to their wrist, trembling. “It was only a primal urge keeping me alive. Nothing else mattered. … I was filled with such disgust and shame.”

A majority of the survivors interviewed by Uncloseted Media say they experienced suicidal thoughts either while participating in SIW or while trying to process the effects of the program. And not everyone lived long enough to heal.

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Less than two years after Dezi Redler, a nonbinary 31-year-old, left SIW, their partner Nathan Udall woke up to a gunshot.

“I ran downstairs, I didn’t see them anywhere, and then I found them in the bathroom,” Udall told Uncloseted Media. “I called 911 and tried to do CPR on them, but it was too late.”

Dezi was dealing with severe mental health challenges after being in SIW for six years as a “poster child” for detransition, according to former members of Hammond’s program.

Upon joining the Orlando Church of Christ in 2009, Dezi believed they needed to detransition to follow the Bible. They cut their “beautiful red hair” and resumed presenting as a man, according to their mother, Leslie Redler. The Orlando Church of Christ did not respond to a request for comment.

Not long after, Hammond visited the church and met Dezi. In 2014, according to Leslie, he approached them about joining SIW’s volunteer staff and asked if they’d publicly share their detransition story.

“We were extremely worried,” Leslie, who was not religious herself and didn’t raise Dezi in the church, told Uncloseted Media. “They had worked so hard to become Dezi. … I was very worried that severe depression would arise. … I knew how they struggled [as a teenager before transitioning] and was very much concerned that if they abandoned their self-beliefs, things were not going to go well.”

Dezi became a prominent speaker in SIW’s transgender ministry—even while publicly acknowledging that their transgender feelings had not disappeared, they wrote in an article for Douglas Jacoby, a bible teaching website, that “it is with daily self-denial that I choose to live as God intended: in a male gender role and not romantically involved with other men.” Former SIW members remember Redler speaking about how painful it was to live in a detransitioned body while asserting that closeness to God made that pain worthwhile.

But after six years of practicing self-denial through SIW, Dezi’s depression worsened and severe OCD symptoms began surfacing, to the point where they wore gloves wherever they went. According to Leslie, they sought professional help from a psychologist and says this ultimately helped in identifying that living as a man—and continually denying their gender identity—was a major contributing factor to the deterioration of Dezi’s mental health.

Leslie says Dezi searched for other explanations, including a consult with a neurologist, but “there were no answers other than stop denying yourself.”

According to Udall, Dezi left the ministry in 2020 when they realized that “this is even worse [than before]. This is not what I want.”

After leaving SIW, Dezi began living openly as nonbinary. During the pandemic, Leslie says they spent hours playing Yahtzee over Zoom with her and their dad, went hiking in the California mountains, and shared years of scuba-diving trips with her. Leslie remembers Dezi as her “best dive buddy.”

“Everyone loved [Dezi]. … They were loving and kind and sweet and giving,” Udall, who was living with Dezi when they died, told Uncloseted Media. “I was completely in love with them. … I was ready to spend the rest of my life with them.”

Research suggests the danger of self-harm can remain acute even after someone leaves conversion therapy. A 2026 Trevor Project analysis found that 35% of LGBTQ young people whose most recent exposure to conversion therapy occurred within the previous year reported attempting suicide and 61% experienced suicidal ideation. While that number decreases over time, it is still disproportionately high in the following years after leaving conversion therapy programs.

“The things that they went through to finally get to be Dezi … to then try to erase all that when the feelings are still there, yes, I absolutely believe that that was the entirety of it,” Leslie says, referring to how much more depressed Dezi was while in the SIW program.

Leslie says that while members and leaders of the Orlando church reached out after Dezi’s death, Hammond never contacted the family.

“It [was] odd—hurtful—that he wouldn’t have reached out, given how much time and love and devotion [Dezi] gave to that ministry,” she says.

Leslie does not believe Hammond deliberately coerced or brainwashed Dezi, and she does not blame the Orlando church, whose leaders had warned Dezi not to detransition unless they were certain. But she now sees SIW’s teachings as a form of conversion therapy.

“Do I think it’s wrong? Yes,” she says. “I never thought about it as conversion therapy in the way traditional [conversion therapy] is, but it is. It really is.”

Former members of SIW, including Tacher and Whitcomb, told Uncloseted Media that they were uncomfortable with the way Dezi was treated. Whitcomb says she remembers SIW leaders placing intense attention on Dezi’s transition and detransition and turning their deeply personal experience into a public display.

She also remembers SIW’s response to Dezi’s death as troubling, saying leadership continued using their deadname and incorrect pronouns and framed their death as a consequence of sin. She says she returned to the SIW website after learning of Dezi’s death and found that material featuring them had been removed.

“It was disturbing, the way they handled it,” Whitcomb told Uncloseted Media. “You use them as a poster child for this, and then when they’re struggling, or when they are no longer serving your purpose, you just eradicate their memory.”

How Hammond Became so Influential

The experiences of Dezi, Tacher and others raise a larger question: How did Hammond, a man with no clinical training, become one of the most influential voices on sexuality and gender inside a global church network?

While SIW started as a website aimed at providing support for “same-sex attracted” people, Hammond says it ballooned to hundreds of members in a matter of weeks. This success, Hammond says, told him that he “had a new mission in life.”

But despite gaining the support of some prominent figures in the ICOC, many church leaders were wary of Hammond. Even as he affirmed that gay acts are sinful, his sympathy towards “same-sex attracted” people was controversial. Tania Diaz, a former leader at the Boston Church of Christ, says the male leaders had a hyper-masculine reputation and viewed Hammond, who is relatively soft-spoken, as “pathetic.”

But as the broader culture shifted to be supportive of LGBTQ people, Diaz says ICOC leaders began to realize they needed to respond and looked to Hammond.

“Young people were asking questions, and at least [Hammond’s messaging] doesn’t sound as dangerous as … those false churches who dare to put a rainbow flag outside of their buildings,” Diaz told Uncloseted Media. “So even though it was strange and pathetic … at least he had some answers that wouldn’t allow them to lose control.”

The Boston ICOC did not respond to a request for comment. In an email sent to Uncloseted, the ICOC’s media response team wrote that “the ICOC believes that all people should be treated with dignity and care and that Jesus is ‘full of grace and truth.’ We also believe in the biblical sexual ethic and make that clear to all people before they choose to join.”

Over time, SIW’s influence grew throughout the ICOC. Diaz says that when the Boston Church of Christ, one of ICOC’s oldest and most influential branches, formally endorsed SIW around 2015, it was a major boon for Hammond. Churches would pay him hundreds or thousands of dollars to visit virtually or in person, often in response to a congregant being outed. He’d host talks, sermons and week- or weekend-long events promoting his ministry. While they were initially focused on “same-sex attracted” men, SIW would later open ministries focused on gay women, transgender people and the parents of LGBTQ children.

As Hammond’s popularity grew, he became the ICOC’s de facto thought leader on LGBTQ issues; one SIW survivor says he was treated like “the Jesus of gay people.” And other church members began to spread his teachings and practices independently.

In their statement, the ICOC addresses the organization’s decentralized nature: “For the past 20 years, the ICOC fellowship of churches has been just that - a fellowship of independent churches sharing the collective goal to know God and make him known. While we cooperate on efforts to serve the poor and share Christ with a hurting world, there is no governing body of our individual churches. … we do not have any implicit authority to respond formally on behalf of any individual church or our fellowship of churches. As such, we cannot speak to the actions of individual leaders in these churches and certainly will not speak directly about the members or children of members.”

SIW’s Ripple Effect

When Andy Stowers Forest was outed as bisexual to his community at CrossWay Church in Tallahassee, Florida, during college, he had never met Hammond and wasn’t an SIW member. But for two years, his church’s leadership pushed him into parts of SIW’s program, including reading and discussing books and other materials by Hammond and engaging in some of the repression practices he advocates for.

“They’re essentially having the college group leaders and disciplers do conversion therapy that they’ve learned half-ass from [Hammond], who came and did a weekend conference,” Forest told Uncloseted Media. “The deliberate effort that’s being made by the ICOC is not just to allow Guy Hammond to do this, it’s to empower people who frankly have much less media training to carry on his lessons.”

In their statement, the ICOC’s media response team says, “We wish to be clear at the outset: Strength in Weakness Ministries is not an organization of the International Churches of Christ. SIW is an independent ministry founded and directed by Guy Hammond.”

Years after leaving the church, when Forest realized he was trans, he found himself still coming back to what he had been taught by the church: that queerness was a sinful part of the self that had to be cut away, like in Matthew 5:30: “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.”

“You have to kind of excise this part of yourself,” Forest recalls learning. “And if you successfully excise this part of yourself, then you yourself don’t have to go to hell.”

Forest tried. But suppressing his transness did not make it disappear. The night before his 22nd birthday, his roommate was out of town, and Florida’s July heat had knocked out the power on his phone and computer. He reflected on his own queerness, and Hammond’s teachings kept echoing in his mind: “Everybody’s been telling me that there’s something wrong with me, and now I’m seeing that they were right.”

One concern weighed heavily on his mind. While Hammond has declined to take a public stance on the exact cause of homosexual attraction or trans identity, he and his ministry have published articles and given talks that suggest that sexual abuse received as a child may be a factor in its development. In one article, Hammond lists abuse received as a child as a relevant factor “that may have contributed to a man’s [same-sex attraction].”

Forest, who says he was sexually abused as a child, says that prevailing belief in the church made it harder for him to talk about both his queerness and the abuse he received.

“There was this fear of ‘If I come out, then people will, for the wrong reason, rightly infer that this terrible thing happened to me,’” Forest says.

He felt like he didn’t have any options. So he took what he describes as a lethal dose of pills and blacked out. Three hours later, he returned to consciousness, surprised to find himself alive. Believing this was a sign that the church’s teachings “did not work,” the same night, he came out to his best friend and began transitioning.

CrossWay Church did not respond to a request for comment. In his statement, Hammond says, “I have read the accounts you have reported, and I take them very seriously. It genuinely pains me that anyone would come away from their involvement with our ministry feeling hurt or harmed.”

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Impact Beyond the US

Hammond is a prolific speaker, but Forest says his stardom within the ICOC has spread far beyond the U.S. and Canada. Uncloseted Media spoke with Cecilia, a former member of SIW’s parent ministry from Mexico, who requested to use a pseudonym because her son is not out.

While SIW’s presence in the country has been minimal, with Hammond only making a few visits to Mexico City, its impact is far-reaching. Cecilia’s home city of Merida is 800 miles away from Mexico City, so she never met Hammond. But the clout that he had gained internationally was so impactful that when she found out her son was gay, other members at her church sent her to SIW.

“He became very famous across all our churches,” she told Uncloseted Media. “At that time, I thought we needed some help, and there wasn’t any available help because there was no Spanish ministry here. So someone told us about [SIW].”

She paid for a membership and joined the parents’ ministry, attending meetings which she says were usually full of parents crying about how their children were going to go to hell. They’d discuss rules they could put in place to get their children to repress their queerness. She would make her son—then 13 years old— keep his queerness private, having him take down LGBTQ-related social media posts and erase drawings of pride flags from his notebook. Other parents would ban their children from having sleepovers or from coming out at all.

“Some parents … felt we were kind of liberal for letting him [come out] to other people,” she told Uncloseted Media.

Selling ‘Strength’ Around the World

Today, Hammond is pushing his ministry all over the world. He’s spent a chunk of 2026 touring six countries in Africa, including South Africa, where he preached that “real freedom comes from having the spiritual strength to say no when we realize that the activity is outside the lines of what God intended.” In Nigeria in March, he preached that people should show compassion for gay people even though “you cannot embrace and celebrate homosexuality and follow Jesus” and it “is something that must be repented of.”

Over the past two years, he’s also conducted workshops in Rio de Janeiro and Berlin. Uncloseted Media was able to identify appearances by Hammond in at least 31 U.S. states and in 20 other countries.

These appearances can be expensive—a three-day workshop will run a host church $3,000 plus coverage for flights and hotel, while individual classes cost $700 in person or $500 online per hour.

Unlike similar organizations, SIW is a for-profit corporation based in Ontario, Canada. But that hasn’t stopped it from seeking tax-deductible donations in the U.S.—on its website, it instructs Americans who want to donate to funnel the money through the South Florida Church of Christ, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

That’s not its only revenue stream, either. SIW memberships cost nearly $70 per year for individuals and nearly $100 for couples, with additional charges for those seeking counseling sessions from Hammond or other ministers. The ministry also sells courses for church leaders at about $360 a pop, and for individual church members at about $47. And on top of that, Hammond has also had multiple book deals and has been awarded sizable grants from wealthier ICOC branches, including one of up to $20,000 from New York Church of Christ.

Aste says that as a “poor student,” 20% of his income went toward his sessions with Hammond because he felt he “had to.” His understanding was that Hammond’s philosophy was “you will be more invested in your recovery if you have to pay for it.”

This financial burden is in line with reports about ICOC’s practices in general. Lawsuits against the churches have alleged that members were pressured to donate as much as 10% of their income to their churches—a burden that allegedly drove some to depression or even suicide.

How SIW Has Escaped Scrutiny

Conversion therapy has been the subject of public outcry, including a ban on the practice in SIW’s home country of Canada. But Wilson, who is based in Toronto, says specific practitioners still often fly under the radar.

“We know that there are still organizations practicing conversion therapy,” he says. “I know specific churches still practicing [it].”

One reason for this may be that survivors often take years to recognize that what was presented to them as discipleship, biblical counseling or spiritual guidance was conversion therapy.

“Most people who have gone through conversion therapy are either too young to actually come forward … they’re still within the fold, or they don’t even realize that they’re survivors,” Wilson says.

For a long time, that was the case for Erin Cuff, a licensed mental health professional and therapist who was a participant in SIW in 2018. She attended a small virtual group each week for women.

For Cuff, now out of the program and married to her wife in Virginia, she struggled with whether to apply the term conversion therapy to her own experience because popular depictions of the practice often center on electric shocks, physical abuse or explicit promises to make a gay person straight. SIW did not always resemble those programs.

Still, she says, “Whenever I watch a documentary about conversion therapy, I think, ‘That’s what I went through.’” She says the absence of physical violence does not erase the shame or the effort to prevent queer people from living according to their sexuality.

“People are free to disagree with our theology,” Hammond wrote in his email. “What I strongly reject is the characterization of Strength in Weakness presented in these accounts. The picture presented is simply not truthful. It does not accurately represent what I have taught, what our ministry has stood for, or how we have practiced our ministry.”

When the Promise Falls Apart

With time, more people have begun to realize how the program has harmed them—and as a result, many have left.

According to Tacher, after Hammond’s wife passed away, his gentle, charismatic and positive demeanor faltered. “He comes in with this gusto of like, ‘Everything’s good,’” says Tacher, who lived with chronic pain for years after leaving SIW, which they understood as a physical manifestation of trauma. “But he also seems incredibly lonely. I think there’s a part of him that wishes he had somebody to take care of him.”

For parents, the breaking point often came when the church’s teachings collided with the reality of what they were doing to their children.

Nadine, a former ICOC leader, saw that process firsthand after her daughter came out about a decade ago. Since Nadine was a prominent leader, the immediate response was that her daughter should speak with Hammond. Because of the family’s standing in the church, Hammond flew to Seattle to meet with her daughter. “A lot of my generation are fooled by him,” she told Uncloseted Media. “Because when he speaks publicly, or when he talks to parents, he is very different from the way he talks about things in private. … He is actually very tightly wound.”

Nadine, who asked to go by her first name only for safety concerns, ultimately left the church and became an outspoken critic of its treatment of LGBTQ members and of SIW’s conversion tactics. “I couldn’t be part of a church where all of this was happening, all the spiritual abuse was going on and no one’s talking about it. … I couldn’t sleep at night.”

Her decision also helped other ICOC parents reconsider what they had been taught. Former members say their parents’ friendship with Nadine contributed to eventually recognizing that preserving a relationship with their kids mattered more than enforcing the church’s rules.

Years after leaving the ICOC, Andy Stowers Forest has been living openly as a transgender man. He now lives in Chile, recently traveled to Argentina for top surgery and runs a small nonprofit that has helped 25 transgender people obtain accurate identity documents.

He still thinks of the lives lost and the harm caused, especially the death of Redler, and wants to share his story and the story of others. That’s why in late 2022, he and a group of other survivors began collecting data and information on Guy Hammond and his activities, much of which was shared with Uncloseted Media for this article.

“I can’t make [Redler] alive,” Forest says. “But I can save this data. It was literally the only thing I could do when I was so angry.”

Even after all the harm Hammond has allegedly caused so many LGBTQ people, Forest says that he pities him.

“I would want him to know, even though I hate him, how much time I have spent crying for him,” Forest says. “Because as difficult as he made my life, as close as his teachings came to ending it, he is infinitely sadder than anything about coming out and accepting myself ever could be. And I am so deeply sad for the way he has allowed his own life … to be manipulated for something so tragic.”

Tacher agrees. After spending years believing that queerness would destroy their life, they now see things differently.

“What was dangerous was the lie I was told about it,” they say. “I am just getting comfortable being angry because I loved [that community]. I would have done anything for those people. I was willing to suppress my sexuality for that. I was willing to bleed.”

Their advice to others who are healing from conversion therapy is that recovery is worth it. “It gets better if you’re willing to be very, very strong, but you are strong. You’re actually probably stronger than those who don’t understand. … And they can’t take that away.”

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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In 2015, when I got off the ferry to share a mattress with three friends in a small Fire Island Pines (FIP) share house, I was excited for all the things you’d imagine a 20-something New York gay would have on his mind: parties, hot guys, my first tea dance and the idea of being voluntarily trapped on an island with no cars and hundreds of gay men.

At the time, what I didn’t realize was that I was stepping onto an island that is marked by an undeniably rich LGBTQ history; an island that represents queer advocacy, philanthropy and standing up to fight whenever the community faces adversity.

As years passed, I didn’t know much about it. But as we got closer to Uncloseted Media’s first-ever FIP fundraiser—which took place on Saturday—I wanted to understand the symbolism of having an event like this on such historic land. So we dug in and found a swath of rich history, which inspired my team and me as we prepared for the event. Here is a very non-exhaustive list of facts I learned:

• FIP has been known as a safe haven for gay people since the 1920s. It has hosted iconic gay historical figures like author Truman Capote, who wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s while staying there in 1957; and theater director Frank Carrington, who lived there from 1927 until his death in 1975.

• Lambda Legal, one of the leading LGBTQ advocacy groups in the U.S., was born out of a poolside chat on FIP in 1973.

  • And last month, James Dale and David Lam hosted the nonprofit’s 48th (!) fundraiser on the island.

• In 1985, an FIP event raised over $200,000 for HIV/AIDS research during one of the worst periods of the epidemic.

• Since 2023, FIP has been the destination of the annual Doll Invasion, an event that gives trans people, who are underrepresented on the island, a chance to visit and celebrate for free while raising money for trans advocacy organizations.

At our event, which was generously hosted by our founding sponsors and friends Paul and Dalip, I felt intense gratitude for the people around me.

Dale, who famously sued the Boy Scouts of America in 1992 after he was kicked out for being gay, introduced me and spoke about the importance of truth in an era where there is so much misinformation. And Andy Tobias, another friend and mentor as well as the former treasurer for the Democratic National Committee, led a call to action where he encouraged folks to support our work at a time when the freedom of the press and the queer community are under unprecedented attack.

We raised awareness about our journalism and wound up bringing in $45,000—inching us closer to our $50,000 goal. But what was most memorable were the rich conversations I had with folks like Dale, Tobias and other community leaders like Jim Pepper and Ward Auerbach, who have worked for decades to set the stage so folks in my generation can continue to fight for queer rights in all spheres. I am filled with gratitude and inspired to continue working with my team to pursue the truth and to produce investigative journalism that uncovers the systems of injustice that are working to undermine our rights.

Thank you to all who showed up to support us! Uncloseted Media is proud to become a new piece in the island’s storied history.

See photos of the event here:

Photos

And if you’d still like to donate, you can do so here:

Donate to Uncloseted Media

Special thanks to:

• Paul, Dalip and their entire team, who helped make the event such a success

• Our host committee:

  • Andy Tobias, James Dale, Todd Sears, Bill Kapfer, Eric Baker, Gabriel Bedoya, Andrew Kirtzman, Timothy Warmath, Michael Fernandez and Gaby Neves

• Our entire advisory board, including Mike Burke, Niall Keane and Angela Earl, who attended the event.

• The entire Uncloseted Media staff

• As mentioned, we are $5,000 away from our $50K goal for our Fire Island fundraiser and are auctioning off a 5-night stay at Fontainebleau Miami Beach ($5,000 value) — donated to us by Spencer Jenkins, a friend of Uncloseted and the former Editor-In-Chief of Queer Kentucky.

  • Enjoy a 19th-floor room in Trésor Tower with partial ocean and downtown skyline views, steps away from LIV and Soho House. Your stay is fully comped; housekeeping or a checkout cleaning fee is extra. There are some blackout dates (shown above) and use is preferred by EOY 2026. Reach out if interested!

• I was on Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Secular Spotlight Podcast to talk about my recent interview with Doug Wilson, Pete Hegseth’s pastor who believes homosexuality should be illegal.

• Trans couple ‘beaten by mob for using bathroom’ arrested instead of their alleged attackers (PinkNews)

  • The couple said they were brutally assaulted by a mob outside a public restroom.

• Meet the man who is a step closer to being 1st openly transgender person to swim across all 5 Great Lakes (CBC)

  • 30-year-old Lev Goldberg is raising funds and speaking up for 2SLGBTQ+ youth, one front crawl stroke at a time.

• Violent homophobic attack in Manhattan leaves two men injured (Gay City News)

  • The NYPD is searching for two men who allegedly voiced anti-LGBTQ slurs and violently attacked two other men — one of whom needed hospitalization — in Manhattan late last month.

• Lauren Boebert calls LGBTQ+ people “groomers.” Her son was just arrested for child sex abuse. (LGBTQ Nation)

  • “I love my son,” she said after learning of the shocking criminal charges against him.

• Enes Kanter Freedom declares for 2027 WNBA Draft (The Hill)

  • His desire to play in the league follows controversy amongst some players, several of whom have welcomed transgender women to be part of a WNBA team.

Over the next week, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting:

• 🆕 SATURDAY: In an exclusive investigation, Sam Donndelinger and Hope Pisoni pull back the curtain on Strength In Weakness, an international ministry that claims to counsel Christians who experience “same-sex attractions.” While it has distanced itself from conversion therapy, Sam and Hope spoke with over 20 people close to the ministry, and found that former members were pushed into behaviors and ideologies that led many to suicidal ideation and in one case, completed suicide.

• 🆕 TUESDAY: Over time, gay hookups have shifted from cruising and chance encounters in public spaces to become centered around online platforms like Grindr and Sniffies. But how did that change happen? Rebecca from Hankycode documents the full history.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to email me with questions, complaints and story ideas!

Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chief — spencer@unclosetedmedia.com

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

Donate now

Design by Soph Holland. Photos by Lauren Bishop, the White House and Daniel Torok.

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This story was produced with the support of MISTR, a telehealth platform offering free online access to PrEP, DoxyPEP, STI testing, Hepatitis C testing and treatment and long-term HIV care across the U.S. MISTR did not have any editorial input into the content of this story.

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis is one of the foremost LGBTQ health professionals in the U.S. In November 2020, the waning months of Trump’s first term, he was appointed director of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Through part of his tenure with the Biden administration, he also served as the deputy response coordinator for mpox at the White House as well as the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

While he continued a lot of this work after Biden left office, he didn’t last long under Trump 2.0. In August 2025, Daskalakis resigned from the CDC over the direction that health policy had taken under Trump and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

In his resignation letter, which garnered widespread attention, he said he was “unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.” He cited changes to the CDC’s immunization schedule, a lack of scientific communication from HHS leadership and the growing influence of anti-vaccine sentiments in the department.

A year after his resignation, we wanted to hear from Daskalakis, who is now serving as chief medical officer of the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, an LGBTQ health clinic in New York City. In this episode of “UNCLOSETED with Spencer Macnaughton,” Daskalakis speaks about his time working for the Trump administration, the erosion of scientific rigor under RFK Jr. and the troubling future for HIV and LGBTQ healthcare in the U.S.

Watch the full interview above or read the transcript here:

Spencer Macnaughton: Hi everyone, welcome back to UNCLOSETED with me, Spencer Macnaughton. Today, I’m speaking with Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the chief medical officer at Callen-Lorde and the former director of the Division of HIV and AIDS at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Daskalakis worked for the CDC under President Biden and under President Trump during his second term, but he resigned in August 2025, alleging that the center became a place that generated policies that were not reflective of scientific reality. Demetre, thanks so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.

Demetre Daskalakis: Thanks Spencer, great to be here.

SM: I wanna get right into it because you interestingly worked at the CDC under Biden and under Trump. I wanna know the difference, your day-to-day job and kind of the environment and the climate at the CDC. What did you do when Biden was president and how did that change when Trump took office?

DD: There was a palpable change in what it was like to be at the CDC. There were things about the Biden administration that you could always criticize. But the one thing that you couldn’t criticize was that in that administration, I would say that 80% of my day was actually doing science and public health. When the administration changed, the effect was that, as a career scientist at CDC, it felt as if we were on a hijacked plane. So we were doing the science, we were doing the epidemiology, we were preparing all the briefings to be able to communicate to the new administration’s political appointees. And it was crickets. We were put deeper into this expert echo chamber where we were doing the data and doing the work. And frankly, no one was listening. Decisions were being made like a hijacker in a cockpit without any sort of feedback from anyone on the airplane. So maybe you think that you’re going to Alaska, but the hijackers are taking you wherever they wanna take you and you’re just on that plane. So it felt a lot different.

SM: Well and can you give me a specific example of something like that?

DD: Sure, I think, probably, the most exemplary of how odd it was to be there was the day that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a change in the adolescent vaccine schedule for COVID-19 as well as the schedule for vaccines for pregnant people for COVID-19. I was sitting in a meeting with CDC leadership and I had people texting me saying, “Hey, Demetre, did you all change the COVID vaccine schedule?” and I was in charge of COVID. And I said, “No, I haven’t changed a thing. No one’s changed anything.” And then the next thing was a video that was posted on X that was Secretary Kennedy with Dr. Makary and Dr. Bhattacharya standing doing a two-minute long video announcing that they changed the schedule for COVID-19 vaccine unbeknownst to any scientist at CDC. And Spencer, just to sort of add another dimension to that, when we reached back over to HHS to say, “Hey, we just saw this video, what is going on?” Their response was, “You need to change the vaccine schedule based on the video,” and I’ve been doing government for a while and I was like, “I can’t change anything without paper. I need to see what you want, not just sort of watch a 30-second long video and try to extrapolate from your words.” Sure enough, they sent us like three sheets of paper that were completely different than what they said on the video. And so then the chaos continued to ensue to figure out what they actually wanted. And so they changed the vaccine schedule for the country without actually having any communication with the scientists that were responsible for COVID-19 surveillance, for vaccine surveillance and for vaccine policy. We had no idea it was coming. We learned about it on X. When we asked, we said, “You know what? OK, thanks, we got it. Can you send us the justification, the analysis that you did to prove that this is the thing to do?” And they just said no.

SM: They just said no?

DD: We’ve never seen it. CDC to this day—no one at CDC has in fact ever seen the justification in the memo that generated a decision to change the national COVID-19 vaccine schedule. And so that’s what it felt like being at CDC. Like you were doing the work and no one cared.

SM: And are there theories as to where this new mandate came from? Where did RFK Jr. decide to do this? Is this just his personal beliefs? Who is he listening to, do you guys think?

DD: Yeah, I mean, Children’s Health Defense is who he listens to. They’re the Rolls-Royce of anti-vaccine organizations. It was created by RFK Jr. It’s his brain child. And for a while, he was the whatever the head leader is. And so routinely, when we were curious what our day was going to be like in terms of requests from the secretary’s office, we would go on the X account at Children’s Health Defense and see what they were chattering about. And then sure enough, we would often get the exact request that we would expect based on what we were seeing there. So it’s my opinion, though I can’t prove it, that the briefings that he was getting and the guidance that he was getting was coming from these external anti-vaccine operatives. Because we certainly never briefed him, in my time there, which was from January until August when I quit. The man has never been briefed by a scientist in my center about measles, COVID, childhood vaccination, you name it. Yet he felt very confident going on the media making very definitive declarative sentences and statements around this that were not based on any reference to the experts that actually were doing the science.

SM: And I think like for the people watching, because there’s so much misinformation, especially health misinformation out there right now and some people might be thinking, “Well, why am I supposed to trust Demetre and the folks at the CDC over RFK Jr.?” So explain, in layman’s terms, why those two worlds are very different and why there is actual processes to come up with these protocols in typical environments like the CDC would have been pre-Trump 2.0.

DD: Sure. RFK Jr. is an anti-vaccine operative, and he has been so for decades. And so you know the information that he has been sharing around vaccines has frankly been right out of the sort of the anti-vaccine playbook, which frankly, he wrote. He’s written several books that we reviewed actually, before he started, so we could figure out how to best work with him, that really focus on some pretty important mis- and disinformation. I think that there’s a series of things that he said about many vaccines. Measles vaccines containing fetal parts; that’s untrue. Measles vaccine being more deadly than the measles infection; again unsubstantiated, not true. So your secretary of health is someone who has been trying to dismantle the vaccine infrastructure now for decades. And now he has the keys to the kingdom where he’s able to do it.

SM: And you wrote in your resignation letter that you are, quote, “unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and that are designed to hurt rather than improve the public’s health.” Super bold statement and obviously there’s a lot to unpack there. We just spoke a little bit about vaccines, but as it relates to health issues that disproportionately affect LGBTQ people, like HIV and AIDS, gender-affirming care, so many other things we could talk about. When you were in CDC under Trump, what was that experience like? Any stories to share?

DD: You know, I think from the HIV perspective, you know, it is very clear that, in the second Trump administration, that they have a pretty extreme disdain for anyone who is not a cisgender white male. And so that I think is very clear across the board. And so I think what we were seeing at CDC was a devaluing of the work that is pivotal in preventing HIV. So let’s go back in a time machine. Trump won, they actually launched the “Ending the HIV Epidemic Program,” which was a very aggressive program that was designed to drive down the HIV epidemic by 2030 so that we could, in effect, end the HIV epidemic by having fewer new infections in the country meaning that we’re going to at some point extinguish rather than continue.

SM: And you like that, I’m guessing.

DD: Oh, yeah, it’s a great idea. Like, you have the technology, you just have to have the political will to be able to get HIV under better control. And so January 20th, 2025, rolls around and the political will gets fully pulled out from under us. And so, when the president’s budget comes out, they pretty much zero out HIV prevention. And then Congress said, you can’t zero out HIV prevention. So they took it back. The next budget that’s been released for 2027, they almost zeroed it out again. And so it’s like, you know, beyond the ideology, which you can also talk about, the president’s budget is a moral document that tells you what the president and the executive branch values. Read between the lines. They do not value this. And like, you know, from the perspective of LGBTQ folks, there’s a lot of threats to our health. But HIV is one that is clear and present and that we have the technology to stop. I’ll also give one more story, which is after my time. So when Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was elevated to the position of the acting CDC director, he stood in front of the CDC staff and he said that one of the highest priorities that he had was ending the HIV epidemic because of the availability of long acting injectable drugs that could either treat or prevent HIV. Moments later, the president released their president’s budget for 2027, slashing the entire budget for CDC’s HIV program. You can’t end HIV if you don’t have a program to give out the drug.

SM: Right, and what do you think is behind that, slashing all of it? Is it just homophobes in Trump’s ear? Do you have any theories or any evidence that suggests why they did this?

DD: It is literally this narrative that HIV is just “too woke.” My favorite use of the word.

SM: That’s literally what you think it is.

DD: I don’t think it is; that’s what it is, that is literally the words that are spoken around the HIV mission.

SM: Have you heard that though? Tell me who said it and where’d you hear it?

DD: These are words that have come out of leadership from HHS. Right? I mean, that’s the bottom line. It’s too woke, too much LGBT, too much transgender, it’s just too woke. And so it doesn’t comport to the ideological mission of the second Trump administration, given that they need to sort of speak to a base that is energized by anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, right? So there are going to be people within the administration who know that HIV is a good thing to take care of. But they need to make it look like they’re not supporting these populations that they have created so much stigma and disdain among some people in the U.S.

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SM: Publicly, I haven’t heard anyone say HIV is too woke. Is there somebody—are these in private meetings? Like, who did you hear say it if you’re comfortable sharing?

DD: The HIV budget was first cut by DOGE. They laid off everybody. Why? Because the way that DOGE works was using AI, identifying the words they don’t like, all the woke words. And guess where all the woke words were?

SM: Right.

DD: In HIV. So like, it’s not subtle. There’s no interest in supporting those populations. And you know, it is a rare twist of policy to see a government that decides that they’re going to completely erase a population, like transgender people, by saying that we’re going to no longer gather data about them. So forget about the funding out the door to make sure that transgender folks get the services that they need. But like CDC can—and actually almost all of the government agencies have had to remove the things that they would use to be able to assess the burden of diseases in transgender people. Even in my vaccine universe where I was most recently, we have a national immunization survey that I published on during COVID, where we reviewed how LGBTQ communities were accessing the COVID vaccine. And I was able to slice the data into transgender, cisgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual. They removed those questions by the order of the president. So now no one knows. So they’re erasing the data related to our community.

SM: And we did an investigation last June about the staggering scale of the administration’s HIV cuts, which amounted to over $1 billion from the National Institutes of Health and more from other agencies at the time. How has the landscape changed since then? Has it gotten worse? Have the cuts continued? And also, what are the actual tangible effects of these that we’re already seeing on the ground?

DD: So there’s a couple of things. So the new president’s budget takes the CDC HIV domestic endeavor from about a billion dollar endeavor to a $220 million endeavor. That is a substantial cut. Eighty percent of the money that I am talking about goes out the door straight to jurisdictions to be able to actually do the HIV programming at the front line. That is also the money that the jurisdictions use to do surveillance, to be able to measure how we’re doing with HIV. So the landscape from the perspective of the president’s budget is more destruction. Ultimately, my hope is that, just like last year, Congress will say, well, that’s foolish and say, no, you can’t do that, which is what our budget process is in the United States. But there’s more threats that we need to worry about. Just yesterday, comments closed on a new rule from the OMB, Office of Management and Budget. And that rule allows political [appointees] to decide what money goes out the door regardless of what Congress thinks. So the reality is that even if Congress says, “No, no, you can’t cut this funding, we’re not going to listen to the president’s budget,” the executive branch and the political appointees may be able to stop the money from going out the door anyway. That may mean that Congress will put money in HIV, the money won’t be spent because the politicals won’t let it go out. And that looks to Congress like underspending. And what does Congress do when they see underspending in subsequent budget years? They cut the money.

SM: Wow.

DD: And so there is a pretty nefarious effort to dismantle the HIV endeavor in the United States.

SM: Yeah, and we’ve done a lot of stories on how queer people of color and the Bible Belt need PrEP access the most and have the biggest difficulty in accessing it. There’s so many stories that the HIV and AIDS crisis is not over at all, right? Earlier this year, you said that, quote, “if we don’t change the present in terms of how we’re fighting HIV and AIDs, I think we’re going to be put into a time machine back to the early 1990s.”

DD: Totally.

SM: I mean, that’s a really bold statement. Tell me what you mean by that.

DD: Yeah, so a couple of things. It’s not just about HIV funding, like a very large number, and I can’t remember the percentage, but it’s a large number of people living with HIV are insured by Medicaid.

SM: Right.

DD: There is a massive cut that is going to happen that will affect people living with HIV. There are new work requirements that are going to make it difficult for some people with HIV to maintain their Medicaid. There are new documentation requirements with recertifying your Medicaid every six months, which will mean some of those people will either lose and come back to insurance, really creating a lot of havoc and instability.

SM: And just so I can understand, if people go off Medicaid, that might mean they’re not getting the medication they need to stay undetectable, which could then create more spread of the virus. Is that a major concern?

DD: So that’s exactly right. So if you’re not on insurance that’s stable and then, all of a sudden, you have like one month or two months off of your medicines, that means that your viral load can become detectable again. It’s more likely to transmit and your immune system is going to suffer and going on and off meds, on and off, on and off, could even potentially lead to resistance in the long term, which means that people may lose some of their easier treatment options. So the impact on Medicaid is going to hit HIV, we have flat funded Ryan White that has gotten within the cost of medicines, the cost of care, by flat funding something for many years, you’re in effect cutting it because of inflation. And so lots of places have had to create a lot of limits on Ryan White, which is the safety net funding that supports uninsured people living with HIV. And if that’s not there, then there’s people that are not going to be able to access meds. And then, you cut all the prevention funding, which also supports people living with HIV but is also cutting off half of the cycle of care that we have and saying, “Well if you’re a Black gay man or trans woman in the south, we’re going to cut the funding to the organizations that support you to be able to access pre-exposure prophylaxis.”

SM: Wow. And when you say 1990s, make that tangible for us. What do you foresee? If nothing changes, what do you actually see happening to the spread of this virus?

DD: So the trends that we have seen in people, fewer people getting HIV, will reverse. We will have more people getting the virus. We’ll have fewer people who are accessing pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP, which means that they will be more at risk for infection. We’ll have fewer people getting treatment, which means that you’ll also see cases of way more advanced disease. Oh, and they also transmit the virus. Lastly, when you create so much stigma, like this administration is doing toward our community, are you going to go to the government to get your HIV care and services or anyone who’s funded by the government when they’re also trying to erase you and potentially worse? So we’re going into a time machine backwards, both in stigma as well as in access. And that is actually an unconscionable place to be in 2026.

SM: Anything else you heard while you were at the CDC or through the people working there that would shed more light onto their perspective about HIV and AIDS?

DD: Yeah, I feel like there are just so much words that don’t match actions. Like I said, the notion that the person who was acting as CDC director said one of his top priorities is ending the HIV epidemic. And then every budget for HIV gets slashed, whether it’s prevention treatment or research, like it doesn’t really jive, right?

SM: Hypocrisy.

DD: It is Orwellian doublespeak. It is beyond hypocrisy. It is purposeful propaganda and it’s dangerous. The peace created in the HIV space is a fragile one. There’s been decades of stigma and decades of populations that have felt ignored. Let me tell you, I’m living in New York now and, like, I have a perspective because I was in the deep south in Atlanta. Let me tell you, stigma is the thing that kills people, along with access problems. Literally, the administration is creating active stigma and access problems, so we’re going to have a really tough road unless this course is reversed.

SM: And we couldn’t find any data since Trump was reelected that really could tell the story about what’s happening to HIV and AIDS rates. I believe it’s going up in New York, but correct me if I’m wrong. Do we know anything nationally about what is happening right now?

DD: Yeah. There are some data that were released that really reflects, I think, up to 2024. And so, I think unfortunately, the ramifications of what is happening are not going to be ones that we’re going to detect in very easy real time because disease surveillance lags behind, especially in HIV. It could very well be that we are not gonna see a lot of impact until two, three years after all of the Medicaid slashes are done, after whatever happens to CDC’s HIV prevention division. And by then, we may be in a different administration. But definitely, for those of us who’ve done the work for decades, everything is moving in a direction that would imply that we are about to see some pretty bad stuff happen.

SM: Wow. Pivoting to another bright topic, we spoke earlier about the erasure of LGBTQ data inside the CDC and the public, us, we’ve seen headlines like, “The CDC Has Removed Databases From Their Website on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.” What else did you see? But also, some people might think, “Eh, it’s data, why do we need it, what does it matter?” Why is this important? And what did you see?

DD: On gender identity, there are whole webpages that have been removed or edited that no longer reflect the science or the reality of the diseases that they’re supposed to communicate about. Like you can’t really [talk about] HIV and STIs, without talking about gender identity. It’s not really easy to do some of the maternal fetal health even, without talking about gender. There is an ideology driven change in what’s coming out of CDC, which unfortunately means that there’s organizations that are respected that have overtly said that you can’t trust that website anymore. What’s next? Is the thing that you have to worry about. Cause right now the target seems to be, at least in the LGBTQ side of the world, transgender folks. I mean, the HIV surveillance data that was released recently doesn’t talk at all about gender identity and transgender folks are overrepresented in the HIV epidemic. And so now a transgender woman isn’t visible in the data.

SM: And why does that matter? Why is that a bad thing?

DD: It’s like you’re flying blind if you lose parts of the data. It’s kind of like trying to drive a car and only being able to see what gear you’re in without seeing the speedometer. You don’t have the full data, so you’re like, “I think I’m going around 25 miles per hour, but I don’t know. Am I going faster? Am I going slower? I don’t know.”

SM: I bet, too, when you need funding for things that are focused on disproportionate minorities who are affected by certain diseases, a lot of the time you’ll leverage that data to get the funding and now you can’t do that.

DD: Not even leverage. That’s how you generate—like, you have to prove that you need it. And so if I can’t prove that I need it, in effect, what you’re doing is saying, “I no longer value this community,” right? I’m not going to invest in you because I don’t think that your life is worth it. In simple terms, that’s what that means.

SM: Should Americans trust the CDC right now?

DD: It is such a complex question. CDC scientists who are working on the inside are great. But you know, my analogy at the beginning of our talk, I think it holds true. They’re on a hijacked plane. And some of the decisions that are being made at CDC and some of the ways that information are being communicated is highly suspect. There was a study of the vaccine effectiveness of COVID vaccine that the acting CDC director just said, “Yeah, we’re not going to publish it” because he criticized the science. Subsequently, our respected medical journal reviewed that same article and published it because the science was very high quality.

SM: Well, I mean, it sounds like a hard no for trusting the CDC.

DD: Yeah. I have so many mixed feelings on this.

SM: What’s holding you back?

DD: When you cannot trust the federal government’s communication, you need to look somewhere. So I tend to say that in this current era, that I would more trust your medical provider and your local health department, local state, city health department more than I would trust what’s coming out from CDC because all of those people have now been given another job on top of their regular job, and that other job is that they have to be the sort of air traffic controller to be able to communicate well to people what’s actually true versus what is coming out of CDC that’s ideology. So they’re looking at the website themselves, they’re looking at the data and very often are putting out their own recommendations and analysis because they have to sort of quarterback like the craziness at CDC.

SM: Wow. You are obviously the chief medical officer at Callen-Lorde, and as we know, the Trump administration has been slamming Callen-Lorde and other New York City hospitals for continuing to provide gender-affirming care to minors, to trans minors. What’s it been like weathering that storm, especially in New York City?

DD: This part feels a lot like what it felt like to be at CDC. Instead of doing the good work, we have to manage these principles, these folks at HHS, these folks in the administration that really don’t have business in interfering in the care that is provided to patients and is agreed upon by the patient and their parents. We shout out the Mamdani administration and they’re amazing. But we also need to shout out like the state attorney general’s office, who has been so pivotal in making sure that these life affirming services are maintained, and that we are weathering the storm that continues to be thrown at us. So I think it’s that, but then also, our patients are suffering, right? It is hard to be a trans person anywhere in the United States right now. Because again, it’s like the government is saying they don’t value your care and don’t value your life. And so it’s a really hard time trying to pursue this care. But at the end of the day, so much energy is being taken away from taking care of patients and dealing with policy decisions and lawyers and all of this other stuff that just gets in the way of the care.

SM: I think a lot about the kind of silent effects of all of this, of coming after LGBTQ healthcare at large. I mean, you’ve been in this space for decades, right? There’s gotta be more insidious spin-off effects that happen in terms of the public’s understanding of LGBTQ health. What are your thoughts there? What do you think is happening from all of this? I know you mentioned stigma before, but what else? What are the things we might not be seeing in the headlines?

DD: Our population is being sort of villainized or demonized. So I feel like that’s sort of what you’re seeing. People are talking about trans folks in sports when they may not know any trans people. It’s just this abstraction of who we are, and I think that you know it really will have downstream effects because at some point there’s gonna be the moment of like, “Hey we need you to trust us we’re the government” When I was doing mpox at the White House, it was all about being a trusted messenger to the population so that they trusted what we were doing to be able to help end the outbreak or at least to control it. So imagine now if all of a sudden CDC gets up and says like, “Hey transgender folks, there’s an outbreak in your population and here’s what we want you to do.” Are they going to listen? Would you listen?

SM: Right, wow.

DD: And that’s not going to go away. That’s not gonna be like, “Oh, everything has changed. We have midterm elections, we have a new administration and everything’s going to be hunky dory.” It’s like moments of impact that create decades of trauma. And so, I think that we are going to have a really hard path forward to be able to get LGBTQ people, frankly, to trust public health.

SM: Wow, that’s a really interesting thing that I hadn’t thought about that much. What other health issues that disproportionately affect LGBTQ people are you concerned about as it relates to what the Trump administration has done since its second term began?

DD: Spencer, when I was in New York City, and I think that’s where we met, I put out guidance for COVID for sexually active people. And so when I was working in mpox, I was involved in also creating guidance that was very frank, just like what I did in New York City around mpox. And they just took it down.

SM: Wow, they just took it down.

DD: If you didn’t download it, it’s just been taken off. The HHS spokesperson, when I asked why it was taken down, said that it didn’t have adequate scientific review and was pulled down. So that’s a lie. It actually went through a full scientific review at CDC. It was reviewed by the mpox team. It was reviewed by the sexually transmitted infection folks, by the HIV folks. It was fully reviewed, it was scientifically sound, and they just took it down because they didn’t like it because it was too woke.

SM: Wow. Wow.

DD: And that’s what we’re up against. No scientist wanted to take that down. That was a fully political decision. And so, like, what are you going to point to if you have highly sexually active people who are at risk for mpox? Are you going to point to abstinence? Didn’t work for HIV and it won’t work for mpox.

SM: Well, you said something earlier, “moments of impact that create decades of trauma.” Obviously, it’s at least expected that Trump will leave office in 2028, right? What’s the road to getting an American public that, an LGBTQ American public, that trusts the CDC, that trusts these institutions, that had a reputation that was relatively trustworthy up until the last two years.

DD: Yeah. I mean, I think that the way that you gain trust is by proving that you deserve it. Right? So as a former government official and as an LGBTQ leader and an LGBTQ person, y’all got some work to do to prove it.

SM: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

DD: And that means really centering equity again and centering data and evidence and getting rid of this public policy by vibes, which is what all of this is.

SM: Public policy by vibes.

DD: Totally. The vibe is that if you attack LGBTQ people, you’re going to do better in some parts of the country with your voter base.

SM: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

DD: Great. That’s probably true. That kills people. And that’s not what Americans do. That’s not what Americans should do. But that is what America is currently doing. Unless we change course.

SM: OK, well, I think that’s a good place to end. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, thanks so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.

DD: Spencer, thanks for having me.

SM: And to get all our investigative journalism, go to unclosetedmedia.com or subscribe to our YouTube page or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Additional reporting by Hope Pisoni

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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Since 2020, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has made headlines for a series of sweeping decisions that have rolled back rights for women and LGBTQ people. They’ve ruled to allow abortion bans in 13 states and bans on trans athletes in 27 states. And this year, Colorado overturned its ban on conversion therapy for minors.

What headlines tend to miss, though, is that all of these decisions were won by the same legal group: Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). Labeled as an anti-LGBTQ hate group and active in over 80 countries, ADF is a conservative Christian legal powerhouse, having fought relentlessly against abortion, gay marriage and trans healthcare since its inception in 1994.

Boasting alumni and affiliates such as Mike Johnson, Amy Coney Barrett, Josh Hawley and Ken Starr, the group has been involved in at least 80 SCOTUS victories and directly represented parties in 20 of them, including the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Here is every move ADF has made on LGBTQ issues since it was founded 32 years ago.

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Jan. 31, 1994

ADF, then called Alliance Defense Fund, is introduced to the public at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Washington, D.C., as a Christian counter to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Alan Sears, co-author of “The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today” and former federal prosecutor under the Reagan Administration, is named president and CEO. James Dobson, the founder of Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group Focus on the Family, is a co-founder, along with several other conservative Christian men.

June 29, 1995

In a 5-4 decision, SCOTUS rules in Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia that state universities may not withhold funding from religious student publications. ADF provides financial backing to Wide Awake: A Christian Perspective, the campus magazine at the center of the lawsuit.

The case becomes an early model for ADF’s strategy of financing carefully selected cases with the goal of establishing nationwide precedent concerning the expansion of religious rights that override anti-discrimination policies.

1997

ADF establishes its Allied Attorney network, which recruits and trains Christian attorneys in constitutional law. The network allows ADF to participate in substantially more litigation than it could when it relied on in-house staff.

Today, there are over 5,000 attorneys within the network who are directed to “provide pro bono, dedicated service to the Body of Christ” and “to fight boldly for Generational Wins on five fronts—religious freedom, the sanctity of life, free speech, marriage and family, and parental rights.” These attorneys have included shareholders in the biggest law firms in the country; former Attorneys General Kevin Clarkson of Alaska and Timothy Fox of Montana; director of the Office of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice Kerri Kupec; and some federal judges.

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2000

ADF launches the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, a summer internship program that provides legal training for Christian law students. Blackstone’s curriculum includes Sears’ “The Homosexual Agenda” and “The ACLU vs. America: Exposing the Agenda to Redefine Moral Values.”

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., have both worked for Blackstone in the past.

June 28, 2000

In Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, SCOTUS decides 5-4 that the Boy Scouts have a constitutional right to bar gay people from serving as troop leaders. ADF helps fund and coordinate amicus briefs supporting the Boy Scouts.

June 26, 2003

In a 6-3 decision, SCOTUS strikes down sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas. Before the ruling, ADF files an amicus brief in support of Texas, writing that banning same-sex conduct is a matter of rational public health policy and that “same-sex behavior is not like a racial classification when it comes to establishing equal protection claims.” The filing argues that the nature of anal sex is a further argument for the ban:

“One reason that men who have sex with men are at high risk of STDs is the nature of anal sex. … The nature of the anus and rectum and the trauma that may accompany receptive anal sex makes anal sex an efficient mode of transmitting disease.”

April 14, 2005

In response to the “Day of Silence,” a campaign created in 1996 to spread awareness about the bullying LGBTQ students face, ADF launches “Day of Truth,” an annual campaign that encourages Christian students to express opposition to homosexuality at school. ADF provides students with talking points to portray opposition to homosexuality as a matter of religious freedom. Current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, then an ADF attorney, says at the time of being gay: “You can call it sinful or destructive — ultimately it’s both.”

2008

ADF launches ADF International (ADFI), a legal group conducting targeted advocacy in major international institutions. Currently, ADFI says it has 662 open matters, 40 wins at the European Court of Human Rights and more than an 80% success rate. Central to their agenda is opposition to abortion, marriage equality, trans rights and legalization of gay sex.

Nov. 4, 2008

In a blow to gay rights, California voters approve Proposition 8, amending the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. ADF is a central legal participant in the campaign.

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June 28, 2010

In Christian Legal Society Chapter v. Martinez, SCOTUS rules that public schools can require student organizations to accept all applicants in order to be eligible for official school recognition and funding. ADF represents a student group that requires all officers and voting members to take a mandatory faith statement and bans “unrepentant homosexual conduct.”

Jan. 18, 2012

In an interview with the National Catholic Register, Sears is asked about why he believes the so-called homosexual agenda poses a threat. In response, he says:

“Because no compromise is possible with the agenda, and those who advocate the agenda want to not only stop all disagreement — they want to punish anyone who does. It’s a form of totalitarianism.”

Feb. 7, 2012

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a lower court decision that Prop 8 is unconstitutional. The court holds that California could not grant same-sex couples the right to marry and then withdraw that right without a legitimate governmental justification. ADF appeals the decision and the case is renamed Hollingsworth v. Perry.

Four months later, the Ninth Circuit denies the appeal to rehear the case and ADF appeals to SCOTUS, having run the gauntlet of lower-court processes. This ability to play the long game is central to ADF’s future successes.

July 9, 2012

ADF changes its name from Alliance Defense Fund to Alliance Defending Freedom. Sears says, “Our mission remains the same — defending religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and marriage and family. … The emphasis remains on the word ‘alliance.’”

July 19, 2012

Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins, an engaged gay couple, visit Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, to place an order for their wedding. But the owner, Jack Phillips, denies the request, citing his religious opposition to gay marriage. The couple files a discrimination complaint under Colorado’s public-accommodations law, and ADF represents Phillips in court. ADF argues that Phillips is an artist and that free expression is uniquely tied to his business. This becomes key to ADF’s future legal battles, claiming an inextricable link between speech, faith and services provided.

Sept. 4, 2012

ADF lawyers give oral arguments at the European Court of Human Rights in Ladele and McFarlane v. United Kingdom, a case where a marriage registrar and couples’ counselor were disciplined for refusing certain services to gay couples. The court rules against both of them the following year, representing a loss for ADF and a win for gay rights in the U.K.

Dec. 11, 2012

In Ward v. Polite, graduate counseling student Julea Ward at Eastern Michigan University refuses to provide counseling to a client who requested it for their gay relationship. Ward says she refused to see the client because the issue conflicted with her Christian beliefs. After she is expelled from the graduate program, she sues the school. ADF represents Ward and the case is settled out of court.

June 26, 2013

SCOTUS hands down two landmark decisions in the fight for marriage equality. In Hollingsworth v. Perry, they rule 5-4 that Prop 8’s proponents lack standing to appeal the district court’s decision to strike down the measure. The ruling ends ADF’s attempt to preserve Prop 8 and allows gay marriages to resume in California.

June 30, 2014

In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, SCOTUS rules 5-4 that for-profit companies can deny employees health coverage for contraception they’d otherwise be entitled to based on the owner’s religious beliefs. ADF represents Conestoga Wood Specialties, whose case is consolidated with Hobby Lobby’s.

The ruling strengthens the legal principle underlying ADF’s LGBTQ work: that religious objections may entitle private entities to exemptions from generally applicable federal requirements.

Aug. 11, 2014

ADF sends an email to the American College of Pediatricians, another SPLC-designated hate group, requesting that they produce research that could help support anti-trans litigation. It requests support for several arguments that would later become its key talking points:

• “Substantiate the psychological harm that can befall both sexes (but girls/women especially) by having their right to bodily privacy invaded by males.”

• “Substantiate that it is normal during adolescence for children to go through a phase when they identify (to some degree) with the opposite sex.”

• “Substantiate the physiological differences between males and females as they relate to sports.”

• “For those who have undergone hormone therapy and genital change surgery, a paper that says they are no happier (and perhaps worse off if the research supports it) even though they took these drastic measures.”

• “Biological/medical paper on the many differences (brain, anatomy, physiology, etc) between the sexes from the earliest stages of human development and moving forward. This would help substantiate the point that a person’s brain is not and cannot be hard-wired to be an opposite sex than the sex his or her chromosomes, DNA, and anatomy say he or she is.”

Adf Model Legislation

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Feb. 4, 2015

ADF drafts the Student Physical Privacy Act, a piece of model legislation that serves as the basis for trans bathroom bans across the country. Bills with language closely mirroring their legislation would later be introduced in several states, including Kansas, North Carolina, Nevada and Minnesota.

June 26, 2015

SCOTUS rules 5-4 in Obergefell v. Hodges that gay marriage is legal nationwide. ADF is not involved in the case but files an amicus brief with the Alabama Attorney General’s office in favor of upholding the ban. After the ruling, ADF Senior Legal Counsel Jim Campbell issues a statement:

“The Supreme Court has stripped all Americans of our freedom to debate and decide marriage policy through the democratic process.”

2016

ADF pays Women’s Liberation Front, an SPLC-designated hate group masquerading as a feminist organization, $15,000 to fund their lawsuit against the Obama administration’s trans-inclusive Title IX reform. Its financial support would increase to $50,000 by 2021.

May 12, 2016

ADF provides legal defense for an art and calligraphy company in Brush & Nib Studio v. City of Phoenix. It argues that Phoenix’s anti-discrimination ordinance infringes on the owners’ free speech and would force them to promote events, such as gay weddings, that conflict with their faith. In September 2019, Arizona’s Supreme Court rules in favor of the owners.

Sept. 7, 2016

ADF files a lawsuit on behalf of students and parents challenging a Minnesota school district’s policy that allows a transgender girl to use the girls’ locker room. The case is part of ADF’s broader attempt to establish that trans-inclusive school policies violate Title IX.

Sept. 20, 2016

ADF files a lawsuit on behalf of Lorie Smith, a Christian website designer who says Colorado laws protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination infringe on her right to free speech as an artist. Smith had never been asked to make a website for a gay wedding but was seeking a preenforcement lawsuit against the public-accommodations law. Much like Masterpiece Cakeshop, ADF exhausts all legal avenues and eventually works the case up to the Supreme Court.

Jan. 10, 2017

Michael Farris becomes ADF’s second president and CEO. Farris, a lawyer, founded the Home School Legal Defense Association and has a long history of advocating for expansive parental rights and conservative Christian influence in education. In 2003, he filed an amicus brief with ADF in favor of criminalizing gay sex. In 2020, he was involved in Trump’s attempt to block the results of the election.

June 4, 2018

SCOTUS rules 7-2 in favor of Masterpiece Cakeshop, finding that the business can discriminate against gay couples. The ruling allows business owners to refuse providing services to gay couples if doing so goes against their faith.

Jan. 23, 2019

ADF files Schwartz v. City of New York on behalf of an Orthodox Jewish psychotherapist challenging New York City’s prohibition on conversion therapy. ADF characterizes the ordinance as a censorship of voluntary conversations between adults. Shortly after the New York City Council repeals the counseling prohibition, ADF drops the lawsuit.

June 18, 2019

ADF files a complaint with the Department of Education on behalf of four track and field student athletes in Connecticut who allege that the state’s sports policy, which allows transgender athletes to compete on teams that correspond to their gender identity, violates Title IX.

The case becomes the centerpiece of ADF’s national “Save Women’s Sports” campaign, which aims to remove trans girls and women from female sports. The case is ongoing and on trajectory to land before SCOTUS.

Aug. 23, 2019

ADF serves as lead counsel in Telescope Media Group v. Lucero. The case concerns two “Bible-believing Christians” who say their devotion to Christ is central to their video and film production company. The lawsuit is preemptive in nature as the company has not been asked to create any content that would violate the owners’ faith. The Eighth Circuit rules that the videographers’ work constitutes protected speech and that they can deny services to gay people.

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March 30, 2020

Idaho passes the nation’s first ban on trans women and girls in sports. ADF helps draft the legislation. A 2021 investigation by USA Today would later find that legislators in 28 states introduced bills with language taken from Idaho’s bill or from model legislation by ADF. At the time, more than half the bills seeking to ban trans athletes included an element from ADF’s legislation.

June 15, 2020

ADF defends R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. EEOC before SCOTUS. It represents a funeral-home owner who fired an employee after she disclosed that she was transgender.

ADF argues that Title VII’s prohibition on discrimination “because of sex” does not encompass gender identity and that requiring the funeral-home owner to employ a trans woman who followed the women’s dress code would violate his religious beliefs. The case consolidates with Bostock v. Clayton County and in a 6-3 decision, the court finds that the firing violates Title VII.

Following the loss, ADF posts advice for churches and ministries moving forward, including a section titled “What can I do to better protect my church or ministry?”

April 14, 2022

ADF wins a $400,000 settlement for Nicholas Meriwether from Shawnee State University.

Meriwether was a professor who had received a warning from the school for refusing to respect a trans student’s pronouns.

Sept. 5, 2022

ADF files Chiles v. Salazar on behalf of a Colorado Christian counselor who wants to challenge a state law prohibiting licensed professionals from practicing conversion therapy on minors. Kaley Chiles has not been disciplined under the law; rather, the case is a preenforcement challenge asserting that talk conversion therapy is protected speech.

Sept. 7, 2022

In New Hope Family Services v. Poole, ADF represents a faith-based adoption agency that had a policy that exclusively placed children with married mother-father couples. The court rules in their favor, allowing the adoption agency to continue their exclusionary practices. The next year, New York state agrees to pay them $250,000 in a settlement.

Oct. 1, 2022

Farris steps down as president and CEO, and Kristen Waggoner takes his place. Waggoner has worked with ADF since 2013, and the organization has won 19 cases under her leadership. Waggoner has advocated for conversion therapy to help “overcome same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria.”

June 30, 2023

SCOTUS rules 6–3 in favor of ADF’s client in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, holding that Colorado law cannot compel a designer to create wedding websites for same-sex couples because doing so would be against their faith.

Oct. 3, 2023

The Waukesha County Circuit Court in Wisconsin rules in favor of an ADF lawsuit aimed at forcing a local school district to out trans kids to their parents.

April 19, 2024

The Biden administration issues revised Title IX regulations stating that discrimination based on sex includes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. ADF joins Republican-led states and school systems to challenge the revised rule. It argues that the regulation threatens sex-separated facilities and sports and compels students and employees to affirm transgender identities. In January 2025, the regulations are struck down by a federal court, marking another ADF win.

Feb. 7, 2025

ADF and Missouri’s attorney general sue Kansas City and Jackson County on behalf of religious counselors challenging local conversion therapy bans.

June 18, 2025

SCOTUS rules 6-3 in United States v. Skrmetti that Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors does not violate the Equal Protection Clause. ADF is not party to the lawsuit but submits an amicus brief supporting the ban.

June 27, 2025

In Mahmoud v. Taylor, SCOTUS rules 6–3 that parents challenging LGBTQ-inclusive elementary school books are entitled to excuse their children from lessons that include such materials. ADF files an amicus brief supporting the parents.

Sept. 3, 2025

ADF sues Massachusetts on behalf of two families who say state foster care rules require them to affirm children’s LGBTQ identities and support gender transition-related decisions that contradict their religious beliefs. Two months later, Massachusetts drops the foster care mandate and ADF drops its lawsuit.

March 31, 2026

In Chiles v. Salazar, SCOTUS rules 8-1 that Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors cannot be applied to licensed talk therapists. This effectively legalizes conversion talk therapy for children. The decision threatens to overturn similar restrictions in more than 20 states and D.C.

June 30, 2026

SCOTUS rules 6-3 in ADF’s favor in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, two cases challenging the constitutionality of state bans on trans women and girls in sports. The court upholds bans in Idaho and West Virginia, which ADF had been litigating in support of since 2020 and 2021, respectively.

Additional reporting by Hope Pisoni.

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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This story was produced with the support of MISTR, a telehealth platform offering free online access to PrEP, DoxyPEP, STI testing, Hepatitis C testing and treatment and long-term HIV care across the U.S. MISTR did not have any editorial input into the content of this story.

When you think about gay hookup culture in New York City, many things come to mind: nightclubs and dive bars in Hell’s Kitchen and Bushwick, circuit parties, the second floor of the Eagle in Chelsea or logging onto Grindr to talk to hundreds of headless torsos in a one-mile radius.

But one thing that is essentially nonexistent in the Big Apple is the gay bathhouse. And for a queer-friendly city in 2026, that is abnormal. You have Steamworks, a chain that’s been called the “emblem of queer empowerment,” in Toronto, Seattle, Chicago and Berkeley, Calif. And in Paris, London, Hong Kong, Melbourne and so many other big cities, gay men flock to bathhouses after the club.

So when State Senator Erik Bottcher called me the other day to tell me he and Assemblymember Tony Simone were introducing a new bill to repeal an over 40-year ban on adult bathhouses in New York, I was surprised—frankly, I didn’t even know there was a ban. At the same time, I finally had the answer to the question I’d been asking myself for 12 years: How in the world are there no frequented bathhouses in this extremely gay city?

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Bottcher and Simone’s answer is simple: They had been banned during the HIV/AIDS crisis in a purported attempt to fight the spread of the disease. “Those emergency measures were adopted at a time when little was known about HIV/AIDS and before the development of effective treatment, PrEP, PEP, routine HIV testing, and many of the prevention strategies that have transformed public health over the past four decades,” their press release about the bill states. “While the public health landscape has changed dramatically, New York’s regulations have not.”

For those who have never explored a bathhouse, they typically feel like a labyrinth of saunas, steam rooms, dark rooms and glory holes. Dozens of men walk around nude or in just a towel, looking for casual fun with an anonymous guy—or six.

Perry Halkitis, the Dean of Rutgers School of Public Health, says the ban is rooted in stigma. “This legislation is a welcome step forward,” he texted me. “Unfortunately, outdated laws and policies such as this—and, even more importantly, HIV criminalization laws that remain on the books in many states—are relics of a time when HIV was a very different disease. We must continue the work of dismantling these policies.”

Bathhouses have a long and storied history in the U.S., dating back to the 19th and early 20th centuries, when they were built in lower-income communities to promote good hygiene. By the 1950s and 60s, bathhouses largely had become rendezvous spots for gay men, prompting occasional raids because gay sex was still criminalized. And by the 1970s, there were nearly 200 gay bathhouses in cities across the country.

New York State passed its ban on bathhouses as sex venues in 1985, at a time when there were 16,458 HIV/AIDS infections in the U.S. and more than half of those infections were fatal. New York City officials warned establishment owners to “ban ‘dangerous sex’ or be put out of business.” Around this time, several other jurisdictions known for having large gay communities—including San Francisco, Los Angeles County, Miami-Dade County and Minneapolis—passed similar laws.

Only now, four decades later, are we starting to see these bans overturned. Bottcher and Simone’s bill is being introduced after Minneapolis recently repealed its 38-year ban. And San Francisco has also moved away from straight-up bans, implementing regulations that allow bathhouses to operate. However, LA and Miami’s bans remain on the books.

Halkitis says these reversals are overdue: “It is long past time for our laws and social policies to catch up with the extraordinary biomedical advances that have transformed HIV into a manageable chronic condition for those with access to effective treatment,” he says. “Too often, these policies have been rooted not in science or public health, but in fear, stigma, and, in many cases, homophobia.”

• This Saturday, we’ll be holding our first-ever Fire Island fundraiser, graciously hosted by our friends and founding sponsors Paul Austin and Dalip. Hope to see you there! RSVP Here: https://partiful.com/e/RS8gNGYhyrUadeelq32I

• Last week, I was on Under the Desk News with V Spehar! We talked about Uncloseted’s recent reporting on Pete Hegseth’s pastor Doug Wilson and on Prairieland defendant Autumn Hill. Thanks so much, V, for having me on!

• I was also invited on CUNY TV’s “A Slice of New York.” So grateful to be invited onto the show! My excerpt, where I talk about nonprofit news and Uncloseted Media’s work, starts around 21:30.

• After court order, Michigan to stop enforcing ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ youth (MLive)

  • U.S. District Court Judge Jane Beckering issued an order July 30 that settles a lawsuit challenging Michigan’s ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ youth.

• Inside the Secretive Boards Deciding Trans Troops’ Fate (The New York Times)

  • The Pentagon is relying on closed-door hearings to kick out transgender service members. An Army Reserve lawyer is one of the few who have seen how they really work.

• New York State lawmakers propose bill to fully legalize bathhouses again (Gay City News)

  • Following similar moves in cities like San Francisco and Minneapolis, two out gay state lawmakers are introducing legislation to lift AIDS-era restrictions on gay bathhouses in New York State and make them legal once again — a move that could pave the way for a massive, “world-class” venue spanning more than 10,000 square feet.

• “They did nothing”: Lesbian couple brutally attacked & left with brain damage (LGBTQ Nation)

  • Instead of intervening, casino security allegedly filmed the assault on their phones, the couple’s lawsuit states.

• Lindsey’s sister Darline Graham spews transphobia in her first political ad (LGBTQ Nation)

  • Trump endorsed her. That may not be enough to get her elected, state Republicans say.

Over the next week, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting:

• 🆕 SATURDAY: Alliance Defending Freedom is one of the biggest and most consequential players on the Christian far-right. They helped overturn Roe v. Wade, ended Colorado’s conversion therapy ban and helped orchestrate the rise of anti-trans politics in the U.S. Nico DiAlesandro breaks down the long, storied history of the leading opponent of LGBTQ rights.

• 🆕 TUESDAY: In our next podcast episode, I speak with Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the Chief Medical Officer at Callen-Lorde and the former director of the division of HIV and AIDS prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Daskalakis worked for the CDC under President Biden and President Trump during his second term, but he resigned last year, alleging that the CDC became a place that generated policies that were not reflective of scientific reality.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to email me with questions, complaints and story ideas!

Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chief — spencer@unclosetedmedia.com

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Lindsey Graham, who passed away on July 11 at 71 years old, served in the Senate for 23 years and garnered a reputation for his hawkish views and hardline anti-LGBTQ beliefs.

Years before his death, rumors swirled as allegations surfaced about the Republican senator engaging with male sex workers. The public and the media underscored the hypocrisy of the senator publicly working to roll back LGBTQ rights while allegedly engaging in queer sex behind closed doors.

In this episode of “UNCLOSETED with Spencer Macnaughton,” Taylor Snider, a trans woman and former sex worker, says Graham was a former client. She says Graham’s team threatened her to prevent her from going public in 2020 and calls him the “leader of the circus” when it comes to hypocritical homophobia and transphobia coming from the government. She talks in detail about the sexual exchange between her and Graham, reveals that she’s had other “sitting members of Congress” as clients, and speaks about the broader issue of down-low conservative men in American politics who are “actively working to push anti-LGBT legislation.”

Watch the full interview above or read the transcript here:

Spencer Macnaughton: Hi, everyone! Welcome back to UNCLOSETED with me, Spencer Macnaughton. Today, I’m speaking with Taylor Snider, a trans woman and former sex worker who recently shared her account of an encounter that she says occurred in 2015 with the late Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina known for his close allyship to President Donald Trump and his support for anti-LGBTQ policies. Since his death, multiple sex workers, including Snider, have come forward. Today, she’s here to share her story. Taylor, thanks so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.

Taylor Snider: Of course, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

SM: You spoke out shortly after Senator Lindsey Graham passed away on July 11th. First, tell me why you decided to speak out at this time.

TS: Of course. When I found out the senator passed away, I was on vacation with my family. And I woke up one morning—I think it was the day after he passed away—and I just opened up my Instagram feed to a flurry of posts regarding the senator. The posts that really inspired me to speak about or just talk about this late senator this time around was there was another trans woman, her name’s Jamie, and she had shared her story. And so when she was talking about her experience, I was like, “I have a lot to input here.” Because this is not the first time I’ve actually talked about this. I’ve talked about this at least five or six times over the last 11 years. And every other time that I have tried to bring it up, I’ve either been silenced, shut down or no one really takes it seriously and they just think I’m lying or I’m making something up. But now that the late senator has passed away, it’s like now everyone cares. So that’s why I decided to come forward because everyone else was speaking about it and he passed away, and I really didn’t see no imminent threat anymore.

The Encounter

SM: For our viewers who haven’t heard anything about your story, can you walk us through in granular detail how Lindsey Graham found you and how you guys connected for the encounter? I believe it was in 2015?

TS: It was in 2015, yes. So it was the very first time that I had ever visited Washington, D.C., and I posted an advertisement on an escort website. The late senator got in contact with me, he contacted me from a Google voice number. It’s not very uncommon to get texts or calls from people like that and for them to be discreet. So he texted me, we had some back and forth chat, we made a plan. I was staying at the Washington Hilton in Dupont Circle. When he arrived to the hotel, everything was really normal to me. It was very standard, nothing stood out. So he came in, nothing raised a red flag, he was in and out within maybe like 30, 35 minutes and then he went about his merry way. You know, I always wrap up an encounter with someone and I basically would always say, like, small talk, “What else do you have going on for today?” or “Anything exciting?” And he just said, “No, I just gotta go back to work,” very casual about it. And I didn’t think anything of it. I just thought he was just some horny old guy.

SM: What do you think about your advertisement on Eros drew Lindsey Graham to you? You shared some text messages with the number that he was allegedly texting you from and in those texts, he allegedly asked you, “Are you a top or a bottom?” and he told you he was a bottom before you guys met. So is it fair that he was looking to bottom in his pursuit for an encounter with a sex worker?

TS: Absolutely. So I’m very much an open book, and yeah. I topped Lindsey Graham down, and I’m sorry if that sounds vulgar. But like, it just is what it is.

SM: And during this, because I think getting to this accountability beat, the Trump administration has slashed an unprecedented amount of HIV prevention funding, STI related funding, LGBTQ healthcare funding. Did he talk about safe sex? Did he ask for a condom to be worn? Did he mention if he was on PrEP, if you were on PrEP, did any of that happen or no?

TS: Of course one was, yeah, one was absolutely worn. That’s—

SM: No, I just know, because PrEP was widely available, all that kind thing. You know, some people…

TS: Again, this was back in 2015 and this was also an experience that was very normal. And when it comes to normal, normal means protection. It feels like you’re reading from a script almost. For a sex worker, a lot of these experiences are quite repetitive.

SM: OK, so relatively normal encounter, you’re not probably thinking too much of it.

TS: No.

SM: He winds up paying you $400. How did he give you that?

TS: He gave it to me in cash. Back in 2015, you know, the standards were much different for sex workers, especially trans sex workers. So that was very much the norm, just getting $400 in exchange for services like that.

SM: Take us to the moment where you realize, “Oh, wow, this is a politician. This is Lindsey Graham.”

TS: So I was traveling from Washington, D.C., to New York, and I was with a girlfriend at the time. We were at the bar and they had CNN on. I’m watching this TV and all of the sudden, he pops his little face up on the TV on CNN. And I see a senator, Lindsey Graham, Republican. And it’s talking about the Tea Party. This was like maybe a week and a half, maybe a week after seeing me, and he’s talking about running for president in the Tea Party. And so I’m just like, “OK, he’s running for president.” I really didn’t think much of it. I very much value discretion and keeping things professional, so I just kinda let it lie. I’ve seen a lot of celebrities and high profile people without even signing an NDA. And I can talk about them all day long, but I’m not going to because there’s a trust that is built at a certain point. And so I kind of let it lie. I didn’t think anything of it. But then as time continued to go on after that, months and years preceding that, it was when I started to learn more about his policies and his principles and the things that he believed in and the things that he was preaching, and that’s when he was starting to push more for the anti-trans bathroom laws in North Carolina. He’s a big reason why you have to sign an affidavit now in order to even get a passport with an “F” on it. Like when I had to renew my passport, I had to sign an affidavit that acknowledged that I was not genetically born a woman because of things that he has cosigned. Same thing if we go to Florida. If I go to Florida, I technically have to use the men’s room. So in situations like that, I was like, “Wow, you’re a really big hypocrite,” and then seeing all the other stuff that Sean Harding and all these other people were posting at the time, that’s what made me get the gall to move forward and try to talk about my story.

‘It’s About Accountability’

SM: And I want to read, just for our viewers, a few things from Lindsey Graham’s track record on LGBTQ issues, just so they’re fully aware and then get you to speak more on this.

TS: Of course.

SM: So Lindsey Graham, he does indeed have a pretty brutal track record on LGBTQ issues. In 2006, he voted in support of a constitutional amendment that would have restricted marriage to between one man and one woman. After gay marriage became legal in 2015, he said, “I am a proud defender of traditional marriage.” And in 2022, he told CNN he would oppose the Respect for Marriage Act and later reiterated that states should decide the issue of marriage. As you know, he’s also opposed transgender rights and supported restrictions on gender affirming care, on trans athletes, on limits to bathroom access and on other accommodations. And up until his death, he was one of Trump’s closest allies who has waged a relentless and unprecedented war against the trans community. Tell me. It’s been 11 years, right? As you kept seeing these things come forward with Lindsey Graham, you’re a trans woman and you know the hypocrisy having had that experience. How does that affect you on an emotional, personal level?

TS: I think being a trans woman and being a sex worker as well has given me the ability to possess an insane amount of resilience and an insane of amount of numbing as well, as fucked up as that might sound. But it’s so true. I’ve gone throughout a majority of my life being ignored, being dismissed, being discounted, being not taken seriously. So when I hear things like this and when I experience things like this, it’s like, “OK, another day.” So it’s refreshing to see people have a little bit of interest these days, especially now. But also it’s like, how long is this going to last? Are you actually going to continue to listen?

SM: And some people may say, “Why do you come out? What’s the point of this? He’s passed on,” that kind of thing. Before we went on camera, you said it’s all about accountability. Tell me more about what you mean by that.

TS: It is about accountability. It’s so funny because a couple weeks before the senator passed away, I was actually talking quite a bit about not having much tolerance for conservative men anymore. And there was another person that was recently outed by another trans woman who was a political streamer; his name was Chud the Builder. There was a woman, a trans woman, who basically outed him and he was a very rampant Trump supporter and it stirred up a conversation. I was like, you know what, I’m over entertaining these down-low conservative people. I’m like, you’re gonna want to lay in bed with me in private, but then vote against my rights in public? Make it make sense. That’s absolutely asinine. Nobody cares what your preferences are. Nobody cares what you’re attracted to. Where the line in the sand is drawn is when you are actively working to push anti-LGBT legislation when you’re over in private on your hands and knees with us. That’s a problem. That’s a problem entirely. I’ll say right now, like I know a lot of people who work in politics that are not Republican that see me all the time. But the thing about them, they’re not voting against my rights as a human.

SM: Right, and that’s the big difference for you. If this were a politician who was voting in favor of trans rights, you wouldn’t be coming forward and, frankly, we wouldn’t be interviewing you because it’s not newsworthy at that point.

TS: Exactly.

The Threat

SM: I want to touch on that a little bit more, but let’s start a little bit more at that moment in 2020 because this picked up big headlines. So you referenced it earlier that in 2020, adult video performer Sean Harding wrote on Twitter that, quote, “There is a homophobic Republican senator who is no better than Trump who keeps passing legislation that is damaging to the LGBT and minority communities. Every sex worker I know has been hired by this man. Wondering if enough of us spoke out if that could get him out of office.” A few days later another anonymous sex worker shared similar allegations but very shortly after that, everything kind of went away. There were lawyers actually posting on Twitter that “I’ll offer you pro bono services” to sex workers who wanted to come and essentially try Lindsey Graham. This made national headlines. Tell me about your involvement in this and why you think it ultimately went away?

TS: Well that wasn’t my involvement. I didn’t have the lawyers, I wasn’t directly speaking with Sean Harding or any of the other sex workers either. I was seeing all this stuff and so I had reached out to someone else who—so me being a trans woman, it’s a very small world in the trans community. And so I have other friends who, back in the day, back in 2015, they had sold their stories regarding sleeping with celebrities. Very salacious-esque type stories, not really like situations like this. It was like, you know, ooh, celebrity husband.

SM: Tabloid journalism kind of thing.

TS: Exactly. So the woman that helped facilitate them getting their stories out there was also helping me with Senator Lindsey Graham. And we were trying to get an account of all of my stuff. This is when I was digging for the text messages. This is when I was making phone calls to the Washington Hilton trying to see if I could gain surveillance footage of the late senator entering the hotel at the agreed time that he was supposed to come. So the problem with that was, when this was all happening, it was COVID, it was 2020. All the hotels were shut down. And so trying to call a hotel, trying to speak with security and gain access to 5-year-old surveillance footage was near impossible. So it didn’t matter. I was able to pull what we had and we were able to get a really ironclad timeline of the late senator being in D.C. at the exact same time as I was. And I had my text messages. That’s what I had. So we got everything together and then I got a phone call before I’m about to go on a flight, like about a week before we were about to really start to push this story out to the masses. And then when that happened, I still boarded the plane even though I was as nervous as ever. And I got to Seattle, I landed, I went right to my room, took all my ads down, locked my door and did not see anyone new. I just kept a really low profile. I can only assume that I wasn’t the only one who was threatened or silenced or intimidated, because after that happened, like you said, nothing ever really came of it. And it was a big conversation that was being had and it just kind of went radio silent.

SM: Mm-hmm.

TS: I’m assuming it was for a situation very similar to what I experienced.

SM: And it’s a blocked caller and they’re calling you saying what exactly? And what reason do you have to believe it was related to Lindsey Graham?

TS: Well, it was the only thing that was pertinent in my life that I would have been threatened for, one. And then two, the person on the other line said, “If you move forward with your story, watch your back.” What story? The only one I’m actually talking about of relevance was that one, so. And at the time, the woman who was helping me facilitate, she was already putting her feelers out there. So I can only assume that someone else, working in media, picked up on the story and relayed the information to whoever was working with Lindsey Graham or Lindsey Graham himself. And that is what inspired a phone call to me.

SM: Did you talk to the person or did they literally just pick up, threaten and hang up?

TS: Very that.

SM: Very that, OK. Who was your person trying to sell the story to and how much did they think you could have gotten for it?

TS: Her name was Gina. She was going to start the bidding at around 50,000, and she was going to continue to push for more, and that was just based on one media outlet. Like I said, one of the friends that she helped facilitate sell a story for, with the earnings that my friend made, she was able to buy a home.

SM: Wow, and where’d they sell that story to?

TS: TMZ, everywhere. My friend was on the cover of Us Weekly, like it was all over the place.

The Bigger Picture

SM: Wow! Interesting. I want to talk a little bit more broadly about this conversation around accountability. You might have seen that on a recent podcast episode, the “I’ve Had It” podcast, Hunter Biden said, quote, “Everybody knows there’s this closeted gay mafia, largely Republican, that exists in Washington, D.C., and everybody knows every single one of them who is gay.” What do you think about this? Is there a broader picture here beyond Lindsey Graham in politics?

TS: I think it’s even more broad than just politics. I think it’s a worldwide issue. I absolutely do believe that it is an issue amongst conservatives, amongst Republicans and amongst people in the church and just in society in general. I feel like society has been conditioned to believe that there’s only one way to live. And then people fall victim to that, and they get trapped in this mentality. And it’s unfortunate because it just ruins a lot of lives too. So I absolutely think that there is an issue with just being in the closet and projecting your own insecurities onto an entire group of people, absolutely. I mean some of the biggest homophobes and some of the biggest people who do a hate crime are undercover, down-low homosexuals.

SM: Right. Have you had clients who are other Republican politicians or conservative influencers, people in this space?

TS: I mean, of course. I’ve seen a multitude of people. I’ve seen a few other people that have been sitting members of Congress that were a little bit more conservative leaning, but like I said, I’m not ever going to out them because when it comes to oppressing a people, Senator Lindsey Graham takes the cake.

SM: But you’ve seen other Republican sitting members of Congress?

TS: Yeah, but I’m not gonna touch on that much more.

SM: No, that’s understood. But I think it’s interesting to know that. Are there any kind of consistent themes in what they like, how they engage with you, when there are these conservative folks.

TS: The Senator Lindsey Graham experience, that’s not the norm. Like even though there were no red flags raised, that’s not the norm. Most people just want to have a relaxed experience and most men want to assert their manliness, their dominance. So yeah, if you get my drift.

SM: Totally. And I have to ask, you know, if you have been with other sitting members of Congress who are Republican, who are part of that party right now in America, are likely preaching transphobia, why won’t you out them right now?

TS: Because Senator Lindsey Graham is the leader of the circus. So even though he’s dead now, like, no, this guy takes the cake. And if Trump were the one seeing me, you know, he’d take the cake. So at a certain point it’s like, they’re not the ones leading the conversation here. Senator Lindsey Graham was.

SM: Is there also, I would imagine, an element of risk to you outing people who are still alive too, yes?

TS: Sure, these people aren’t dead. Absolutely, no, yeah, I’m not gonna risk that. I’m not gonna risk the livelihood of my own business. But at the end of the day, I’m not going to risk what I’ve done for myself to go ahead and out other people that are still living, that aren’t even leading the conversation on things like this.

SM: What else can we do? Because I’m thinking about that word accountability that you mentioned earlier, right? Like, there’s obviously more Lindsey Grahams out there who are doing similar things and really rolling back the lives of trans people in America right now, doing things to make their lives almost unlivable in certain instances.

TS: I think about it like this: I have had conversations with clients in the past who are more conservative, more Republican, very proud about it too. And I just sit there and I talk with them. Have a real genuine conversation with someone, especially if you’re someone like me. If you’re trans, if you’re a queer person, have a conversation with the people that are choosing to lay with you in private but vote against you in public. Most people are actually quite on board. I mean, there are even Log Cabin Republicans. So the reason why there’s so many people like this is because I feel like they’re more fiscally conservative. They’re trying to protect their own interests. And so I can’t sit there and say that I don’t understand that either. But also, there is a moral point where, like, are you really going to jeopardize an entire group of people’s rights and quality of life just so that you can save a couple bucks on your taxes? Kiss my ass.

SM: This is all super interesting. We did an investigation into the connection between Republicans and trans porn, and we found that Mark Robins—I want to know why you’re laughing when I get to the end of this question.

TS: Because it’s true! I mean, it’s just, the porn is just out of control.

SM: So we found that Mark Robinson, who was a gubernatorial candidate to be the governor of North Carolina. And he has compared LGBTQ people to maggots, flies and filth. And it was discovered by CNN that he does have an affinity for trans porn.

TS: Oh I love that.

SM: And in 2022, data from lawsuit.org found that searches for transgender porn are most popular in red states like Texas, Georgia and Kentucky, all of which are predominately Republican and among the most active agents in the recent wave of anti-trans legislation. It sounds like this does not surprise you.

TS: No, of course not. Some of my best clients were from red states.

SM: What is behind that? Like such intense transphobia and an affinity, a romantic interest or a sexual interest in things like trans porn.

TS: They’re a product of their own environment. I mean, take a look around. When you have your entire society shoving the Bible down your throat, conservative family principles down your throat and that’s just perceived as the norm. I think all humans have this desire to just be normal—

SM: And fit in.

TS: And fit in, right. As simple as that sounds, I feel like every single human has that desire and that craving. And so when you live in places like Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, where these narratives are pushed like normal conversation. When you are a little different, it just makes it that much more difficult and that much more of a struggle. Who wants to have a life full of struggle? I certainly didn’t want a life full of struggle, but in order to live in my truth, I had to just walk through the flames. Unfortunately, most people just don’t have the panache to live in their truth and that’s a shame. So there’s going to be a lot of unhappy people out there.

SM: Mm-hmm. Well, and it’s interesting. I mean, Lindsey Graham, he identified as a Southern Baptist and even spoke at a Baptist church a week before his death. And as you probably know, just as recently as last year, a group of Southern Baptist delegates called for the reversal of the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage. And I mean I don’t have to tell you what the Southern Baptist church has to say about trans folks. Does any part of you have empathy for Lindsey Graham and how closeted he must have been.

TS: It’d be so horrible for me to not have a little bit of empathy. I mean, just based on watching him over these last 11 years since I saw him, it’s really difficult to not have a bit of compassion for someone that is just, like really going through it. I’m gonna sit here and say I can’t even imagine what that’s gotta be like because he was already heavy into politics before he met me. Who’s to say that he maybe didn’t discover things about himself after he had established his career? It’s like, what do you do in circumstances like that? That’s gotta be really difficult. And so that’s why I’m trying my best not to be so judgmental and so salacious with this story. But also, there does still need to be accountability.

Trans Rights in Danger

SM: As a trans woman right now, you know, I have trans friends who have moved. I just had a trans friend who moved to Berlin with her wife because it just got so dangerous, she said, to live [here]. Can you tell me what the existence in America is like for trans people right now from your perspective as a trans woman? And how has it changed in Trump 2.0?

TS: Well, let me tell you this first, my perspective as a trans woman is going to be substantially different from a majority of my other trans sisters and brothers. So first of all, because one, I’m privileged as absolute hell. I’m pretty and I’m white. Those are three things that a majority of trans people do not have. But for the majority of the trans people that do live here, yeah, I can’t possibly imagine navigating the world right now.

SM: How has life changed because of the decisions American politicians have made since Trump 2.0?

TS: Um, well, I mean, even if there were no laws being changed, even if trans people were not in politics and written in bills, just a simple discourse amongst people in general, like that right there is more damaging than any law that will ever be put into effect. I think with all of this publicity that the trans community is getting, it opens us up for being attacked more. You know, you look at people like Erika Kirk and Turning Point, they’re calling on their people to start a war with us in some weird type of way. And so that’s really intimidating. And it makes me feel like, Oh my gosh, like, do I need to, you know, strap up even more? Like I own several guns, so it’s like, do I need to get a flamethrower too? Like, what else do I need to do? I don’t like having to navigate that. It’s all, it’s not really so much the laws. It’s really people feeling like they’re entitled to get away with treating people like us like garbage, just because people in power are having an opinion about us. That’s what’s scary, because at the end of the day, these are the people that we’re existing with on a day-to-day basis, walking in the streets with these people. At any moment, who knows, there’s a psycho that could just come up and just, you know.

SM: And obviously also, you know, the language and the rhetoric, a lot of it is coming from the Trump administration. I mean, he said so many times in his campaign and on the campaign trail, we need to quote, “get rid of transgender insanity,” whatever that means, right? And recently in his counterterrorism strategy, he actually, he didn’t reference white supremacy or far-right extremism as a terrorist threat, but he did reference radical pro-transgender anarchists, whatever that means. I mean, that must be scary for you. As we know, there is no credible evidence that shows that trans people are disproportionately likely to commit terrorist attacks, but they’re misinforming the public by including this in a counterterrorism strategy. I think it’s just breathtaking to even say it, to be honest.

TS: I’m very proud to be an American. I still believe in all the good that can come out of this country. You know, I still think that there is opportunity to correct a lot of things here. And I think if we actually sit and listen to each other and take the time to actually have some of these conversations and actually listen with open ears and open minds and open hearts, then maybe something will actually change.

SM: What would you say if Lindsey Graham were still here and you could say something to him, what would you want to say to him?

TS: Sending you a hug, boo.

SM: Amen. Last follow-up question. We’re in a time, and this is one of the reasons I started Uncloseted Media to be honest, because I saw a problem. Upwards of 40% of LGBTQ kids seriously considered suicide in the last year. That number is even higher for trans kids, right? So to the congresspeople, or the politicians who may be going to vote in one way and then doing something completely hypocritical behind closed doors. Do you have any message for them, for the people who are still here doing this?

TS: Take a look in the mirror and really think about what it is you’re doing. Because it’s not making much sense. Like really do some soul searching. You need help. I suggest therapy too.

SM: Some critics may argue that you’re only speaking out now because he’s no longer here to counterargue your story and that this could be a good opportunity to maybe sell the story or even write a book. Who knows? What would you say to those kinds of critics?

TS: I mean, you know, no, I’m not really looking for opportunity. The motive from the jump was always accountability. You know, like I said, I really don’t need the money. Yeah, no. This is really all about accountability.

SM: I feel like that’s a good place to leave it off. Taylor Snider, thank you so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.

TS: Yes, thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.

SM: And if you liked that episode and want more of our investigative journalism, subscribe to unclosetedmedia.com or find us wherever you get your podcasts.

The office of Lindsey Graham did not reply to a request for comment.

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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This story was produced with the support of MISTR, a telehealth platform offering free online access to PrEP, DoxyPEP, STI testing, Hepatitis C testing and treatment and long-term HIV care across the U.S. MISTR did not have any editorial input into the content of this story.

In 2019, when Marcus was 22 years old, he asked his family doctor for PrEP—a medication that prevents HIV from transmitting through sex.

“My friends and I heard about PrEP during Pride, and all the ads said ‘talk to your family doctor,’” Marcus told Uncloseted Media. “So that’s what I did.”

PrEP has been approved for HIV prevention in Canada since 2016—and America’s Food and Drug Administration did so in 2012. However, Marcus says his doctor had never heard of the medication.

“He basically told me to be patient while he did some research and said I should use condoms,” he says.

Just months later, though, Marcus was sexually assaulted. After developing all the early flu-like symptoms of HIV, he asked for a test from the same doctor. Instead, he says he left with a flu shot recommendation. It was only after demanding an HIV test a month later that he learned he was positive.

“I felt like another statistic—a gay man who moves to the city, gets sexually assaulted, gets HIV,” says Marcus, who asked to use a pseudonym because of HIV stigma.

Marcus’ doctor’s lack of knowledge surrounding PrEP is one of many factors that may explain a new surge in HIV among young gay Canadian men. Last week, Canada’s federal government released new estimates that there was a 23% increase in HIV infections between 2022 and 2024. And per the most recent public health data from 2024, gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men make up more than a third of new transmissions, with 25- to 29-year-old men having the highest rate of HIV diagnoses.

“Canada has all the tools it needs to end the HIV epidemic,” says Brook Biggin, director of policy and education at the Community-Based Research Centre (CBRC)—a nonprofit dedicated to improving the health of LGBTQ Canadians. “Despite this, Canada’s government has failed to turn the tide on HIV.”

Insufficient Federal Funds

Biggin says the biggest factor fueling this new surge is a lack of funding. CBRC told Uncloseted Media that the federal government—which oversees the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and is responsible for the nation’s HIV response—has kept HIV funding at about $75 million CAD since 2004, not adjusting for inflation. This is a mere 5% of PHAC’s roughly $1.5 billion 2024-25 budget.

This has resulted in fewer services to combat the virus. Earlier this year, Canada’s oldest HIV organization, the AIDS Committee of Toronto, permanently closed its doors. They cited government funds being frozen at $3 million for more than six years, despite rising costs, as part of the reason for the closure.

And Biggin is concerned that additional funds will be taken away.

“It’s no secret that the current government is looking for ways to save the Canadian taxpayer money, that includes reviewing different grants and contributions,” he says. “We’ve heard whispers from a variety of sources that community-based HIV funding is on that list.”

Biggin says multiple public service officials from within PHAC have told him that the two major HIV funding streams—the HIV and Hepatitis C Community Action Fund and the Harm Reduction Fund—are on the chopping block, with the government looking to merge and lower the streams from their collective sum.

To preempt such a move, Biggin’s organization launched a letter-writing campaign in July to dissuade politicians from allowing money for HIV to be allocated elsewhere. “Canada has all the tools it needs to end the HIV epidemic. … Despite this, [it] has failed to turn the tide on HIV,” the organization wrote in a post about the campaign. “Cutting community-based HIV funding puts decades of progress at risk.”

A spokesperson from PHAC told Uncloseted Media that the government is “implementing operational efficiencies and a targeted recalibration of its grants and contributions programs” which includes “consolidating existing programs into broader funding streams to improve efficiency and impact.” They would not confirm nor deny that the streams would be merged or reduced, saying instead that “the future of PHAC funding programs will be shared as decisions are finalized.”

While Biggin supports reducing inefficiencies, he says, “This is achieved through careful collaboration, not a wholesale reduction, dilution or merging of HIV funding.”

Instead, Biggin wants the government to meet the moment.

“We have all the tools, but it requires investment. And if Canada was serious about ending the HIV epidemic, it would leverage this opportunity by doubling down, investing more and going the extra mile,” he says.

Why the Lack of Funds May Be Fueling Higher HIV Rates

Amid funding challenges, there has also been a rollback of HIV-related education in some Canadian schools.

For example, last year Alberta’s conservative government mandated that teachers get all sexual education lessons, worksheets and learning materials approved by the education ministry. Only three of roughly 200 pre-approved sexual health materials explicitly deal with HIV, and they are from 2011 and 2019.

“It’s actually become a challenge to access sex ed resources in real life,” says Shamin Mohamed Jr., founder of LetsStopAIDS, a national organization dedicated to engaging young people in the struggle to end HIV. “Political efforts that try to prevent discussions on gender identity and sexual orientation can make it very difficult for teachers to step in and teach something that could change a student’s life.”

This erosion of sex ed may be contributing to a decrease in safe sex practices.

A 2023 study found that nearly 70% of queer and trans men who would benefit from PrEP have never taken it. And a 2026 study commissioned by LetsStopAIDS found that consistent condom use among young Canadians has collapsed from 53% in 2020 to 24% in 2025—and that about half of all sexually-active 18- to 24-year-olds have never had an HIV or other STI test.

Mohamed says that while there are dozens of online resources about HIV, the young people he talks to want to spend less time on the internet, not more.

“We’re dealing with a generation that grew up for most of their lives online,” he says. “Some may have gone through their entire high school or postsecondary through COVID, so you now have a generation that’s thriving for in-person experiences.”

In addition, young people can’t always trust what they come across online: A 2021 study found that 90.5% of health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic came from the internet.

That’s why LetsStopAIDS goes into schools and conducts in-person workshops with students—including role play that directly reflects what young people are telling them about their social and sexual lives.

Unfortunately, Mohamed and his team don’t have the finances to reach as many students as they once did. “A lack of government funding, along with a challenging grassroots environment, has made it difficult to sustain some of our programming.”

He uses the example of subsidized travel and accommodation for young people from the Prairies or Northern Ontario to attend their annual conference in Toronto, which trains youth on how to go back into their communities and educate their peers on HIV. This year, they won’t be able to offer any such support.

“Because of that, there will be less diverse voices in the room,” says Mohamed. “This is how you suffocate youth leadership.”

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International Students

Even if organizations like Mohamed’s could reach all high school students, migrants and temporary residents—which include many international students—represented two-thirds of the new HIV diagnoses in Canada in 2023.

“We’re not providing them with any support when they get here, especially not culturally competent support,” says David, the program lead at HYPE, an Ontario-based support and education program for and led by HIV-positive people ages 18 to 29.

David, who asked Uncloseted Media not to use his last name due to the ongoing criminalization of HIV nondisclosure, sees international students come through his programs all the time.

“For Canada in particular, we have a very international student body who are coming almost exclusively from backgrounds that are much more culturally conservative and often have access to fewer sexual health assets,” he says. By the end of the 2025 academic year, Canada hosted nearly 700,000 international students—nearly half of whom came from India or China, countries where open discussions of sexuality are often considered taboo and where gay marriage is illegal.

“There’s still a lot of stigma on the gay community back home,” says Yunyi Gu, a Chinese immigrant who helps Mandarin-speaking international students in Toronto understand their HIV risk. “And when you try to find information on Chinese social media, it’s always negative, or taken down.” Gu estimates as many as 40% of the LGBTQ students he’s worked with in the last three years are not out in their home country.

Think of a newcomer’s first time in Toronto’s gay village: In a 3-block radius, there are two bathhouses and a dozen clubs, some of which feature glory holes or darkrooms. The novelty of these experiences, coupled with a lack of prior sex ed, may lead to rash decisions like condomless sex without PrEP with anonymous partners—prime conditions for contracting HIV.

Reaching Newcomer Communities

Cultural differences can exacerbate HIV risk even after one’s education is finished, says Ower Alexander Oberto—a care manager at the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation (PWA Toronto).

Oberto, an HIV-positive immigrant from Venezuela, helps newcomers navigate the health and immigration systems. He says young professionals may come to Canada for work, but soon discover the abundance of dating and hookup apps like Grindr, Sniffies and Scruff. “We don’t have these back home—and suddenly to have sex is as easy as making an order on Uber Eats,” Oberto told Uncloseted Media.

Some of the HIV-positive people he works with—many from regions where gay apps are blocked, like China and parts of the Middle East—didn’t use a condom simply because they were asked not to.

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Oscar Aldana—a fellow Venezuelan immigrant Oberto met through his work with PWA Toronto—felt he was doing everything right as a young gay man in Toronto.

“I come from a small town, so seeing myself in a big city … at only 22—I thought I was too young to be in a relationship and I wanted to explore,” says Aldana.

He says he took pride in taking care of his sexual health, getting tested for STIs every three months. He always wore a condom, unless his partner was on PrEP or was undetectable, meaning the amount of the virus in their blood was so low that they couldn’t pass it on. He even kept a running list of every hookup he had in case he tested positive for common STIs like chlamydia or gonorrhea and needed to notify them.

So in the fall of 2021, when Aldana went in for a routine STI test, he was shocked to hear he was HIV positive. At 27 years old, he remembers standing in the clinic he’d been to dozens of times, coming to this alarming realization.

“I was pissed, but I take responsibility for not being on PrEP and not using condoms.”

Part of Oberto’s work is helping newcomers, who may not be fluent in conversational English, understand the importance of the medicines as well as medical distinctions—such as the difference between PrEP and DoxyPEP, a medication that can reduce the risk of transmitting some STIs like syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea but not HIV. It’s why community organizations like PWA Toronto are trying to offer more HIV resources in different languages. Oberto himself speaks four, a helpful tool for engaging people on their own terms.

But at the end of the day, it comes back to money.

“It’s all about the investment in the sector—when you don’t provide resources, we have to shut down programs,” says Oberto, referencing a PWA Toronto initiative where he and his colleagues would go into bathhouses to hand out condoms and sexual health information being shut down. “When those funds disappear, it makes it more difficult to fight back.”

Marcus agrees that ending the spread of HIV in Canada is about the money. He references community organizations that do webinars and go into clinics to provide toolkits about PrEP and other interventions, the likes of which may have educated Marcus’ doctor sooner. But the work of on-the-ground organizations relies on public funding.

“Everything HIV-related, it needs government support,” says Marcus. “No more cuts.”

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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At around 10 p.m. local time on Saturday night, a man plowed through pedestrians blocks away from the closing celebration of Berlin’s Christopher Street Day, Germany’s annual Pride festival. After crashing into a tree, he continued the attack, killing a Polish woman and injuring 31 others.

The following evening, authorities tracked down the alleged attacker—21-year-old Abdul Ballout—and shot him after he approached them with a bladed weapon. He died at the scene.

Ballout, a German citizen born into a family with Lebanese roots, had been known to authorities for years. Officials say domestic intelligence had monitored him online since 2022, and prosecutors later established that he posted ISIS propaganda in 2024 and attempted to travel to Syria to join the group in 2025. After the Pride attack, investigators found an apparent claim-of-responsibility video in which he pledged allegiance to ISIS.

Ballout had prior convictions from a schoolyard assault and a robbery in 2019 and 2020. In 2024, he posted Islamic State propaganda on Instagram. And last year, he attempted to reach territory where he believed he could join the Islamic State.

On May 12, 2025 a Berlin court convicted Ballout of preparing a serious act endangering the state and offenses involving material from a prohibited organization. He received a sentence of one year and 10 months under juvenile law. The day after, he was then classified as a high-risk individual.

Despite this, he was still released under supervision. The court justified the decision by saying they took into account the nine months Ballout had already spent detained in Germany and Lebanon, his confession and his claimed departure from Islamic State ideology.

Still, prosecutors appealed and argued for a longer sentence.

According to to a joint investigation by Süddeutsche Zeitung, NDR and WDR, media reports, police monitored Ballout while he was out in the world through observation teams, telephone monitoring and placing a camera at the entrance to his residence.

He was also required to attend a deradicalization program. But one of the program’s leaders told CBS News on Monday that Ballout was about to be disqualified because staff believed his efforts to change his extreme ideology were insincere and his cooperation appeared “fake”. That has fueled questions about whether warning signs from the program were acted upon aggressively enough.

At Uncloseted, we talk a lot about Christian extremism and less so about Islamic extremism. But this is still a problem as it relates to violence against the queer community.

ISIS and its global branches have carried out thousands of attacks worldwide since the group formed, with annual tracking showing peaks exceeding 2,700 in 2021. Jihadist terrorism has resurged in Europe from the unusually low levels recorded several years ago, with Germany experiencing the most completed attacks. ISIS remains the world’s deadliest and most geographically dispersed extremist network in the world.

The queer community is not immune to this: In the 2016 Pulse Nightclub Shooting, where an armed gunman killed 49 people at an Orlando gay nightclub, the perpetrator pledged allegiance to ISIS during the attack. In October 2020, a convicted ISIS propagandist targeted two male tourists in Germany after seeing them hold hands, killing one and seriously injuring the other. And in June 2023, Austrian authorities disrupted a suspected ISIS-inspired plot against Vienna’s Rainbow Parade, arresting three young men who allegedly discussed attacking attendees.

ISIS has also directly persecuted and murdered people accused of homosexuality in territories it controlled, including the 2015 public execution of two men in Palmyra, Syria, where the victims were thrown from a building as part of the group’s broader campaign of killings against men accused of same-sex relationships.

The politicization of religious extremism often fractures our ability to have meaningful conversations about how to effectively fight back against it. Partisan talking heads get into a “both sides” war, accusing each other of being Christian-haters, Islamophobes or antisemites. But in cases of unquestionable terrorism, we should all be able to work together and toward solutions that can effectively push back against one of the world’s biggest problems.

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• Investigators find apparent claim of responsibility after Berlin Pride attack (Associated Press)

  • German investigators found a video that appears to show the suspected attacker pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group. Authorities say the 21-year-old drove a van into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride festival and attacked people with a machete, killing a Polish woman and injuring 31 others.

• Trump officials launch probe of 2 school districts over alleged testosterone vials, kissing exercise (Associated Press)

  • The Department of Education is investigating Denver Public Schools over allegations that a teacher required same-sex students to kiss and a Washington state district after testosterone vials appeared in a Pride Month display. The administration framed the probes as parental-rights enforcement amid its broader scrutiny of schools that accommodate LGBTQ+ and transgender students.

• ‘We can’t even walk through the streets’: women arrested for kissing in public on life under Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ+ law (The Guardian)

  • Wendy Faith and Alesi Diana Denise were released after spending five months in custody over allegations that they engaged in same-sex activity after reportedly kissing in public. Although the proceedings were discontinued, the women said they continue to face trauma, threats, financial hardship and rejection from their families.

• Pride organizers vow to march in Romanian city that has blocked event four years in a row (The Guardian)

  • Organizers in Oradea said they would proceed with a Pride march after local authorities rejected more than 100 proposed routes, marking the fourth consecutive year the event was denied permission. More than 150 organizations from 30 countries warned that the repeated restrictions represent a threat to peaceful assembly and democratic rights.

Over the next week, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting:

• 🆕 TUESDAY: HIV rates are rising among young people in Canada—even as prevention and treatment have become more effective. Experts point to gaps in sex education, testing and access to care, along with stigma that continues to keep many young people from getting the help they need.

• 🆕 SATURDAY: On the next episode of "UNCLOSETED" with Spencer Macnaughton, I speak to Taylor Snider, a trans woman and former sex worker who recently shared her account of an encounter that she says occurred in 2015 with the late Senator Lindsey Graham, who was known for his allyship to Trump and his support of anti-LGBTQ policies. Since his death, multiple sex workers, including Snider, have come forward.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to email me with questions, complaints and story ideas!

Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chief — spencer@unclosetedmedia.com

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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“UNCLOSETED with Spencer Macnaughton” is a new podcast by Uncloseted Media, an investigative LGBTQ-focused nonprofit news publication. Follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. YouTube // Spotify // Apple

On July 4, 2025, over a dozen people held a protest outside of the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, around 40 miles away from Dallas. It was a noise demonstration, a type of protest that uses loud noisemakers—which in this case included fireworks—as a form of civil disruption. As the night went on, tensions escalated as some protestors broke off and committed several acts of vandalism, eventually leading police officers to arrive on the scene. Soon after that, unknown assailants fired several shots at the officers, with the Justice Department reporting that one of them was struck non-fatally in the neck area. Authorities later argued that the shot that hit the officer was fired by a protester named Champagne Song.

Autumn Hill attended the protest but says she left hours before shots were fired. But that didn’t stop the police from raiding her home and arresting her for alleged involvement with the protest, identifying her as a suspect on the charges of terrorism.

Then, in October, the Trump administration got involved, accusing Hill and eight other defendants—three of whom, including Hill, are trans—of being “Antifa terrorists” and “Antifa Cell operatives.”

Hill and her co-defendants were charged with providing material support for terrorists. In a press release, the DOJ wrote that “This is the first sentencing of defendants affiliated with Antifa.” This comes after Trump signed an executive order in September 2025 declaring antifa as a terrorist organization.

Despite the administration’s claims, there is no unified organization called antifa, a name which refers to a decentralized movement based on militant opposition to fascism. And despite no evidence suggesting trans people are disproportionately likely to commit acts of terrorism, the Trump administration in May unveiled a new counterterrorism strategy to highlight “radically pro-transgender” people as a threat.

Hill was convicted for riot, providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to use and carry an explosive—namely the fireworks used at the protest. She has been sentenced to 50 years in prison. That’s more than double the sentences of former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes, who were key leaders in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. While Hill and her co-defendants are appealing the case, legal experts are sounding the alarm that these unusually harsh sentences could set a precedent for strict crackdowns on freedom of speech and assembly.

Since her arrest, Hill has been incarcerated in men’s facilities. Now, staring down half a century in prison, she gives her first on-camera interview from the Johnson County Jail in Texas, where she maintains that the federal government’s narrative about her is false and that she believes she is a “political prisoner.”

Read the interview transcript here:

Spencer Macnaughton: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to UNCLOSTED with me, Spencer Macnaughton. Today, I’m here with Autumn Hill, one of the defendants in the Prairieland case, where the Trump administration has accused several anti-ICE protesters of being part of a so-called “antifa cell.” Hill was sentenced to 50 years in prison for her alleged involvement in a protest where a police officer was shot while she was not in attendance. Today, she’s speaking with me from Johnson County Jail in Texas. Autumn, thanks so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.

Autumn Hill: Well, it’s great to be here, Spencer. I’ve never been interviewed before in a video visit like this. So, this’ll be a first time.

SM: People have seen headlines, you know, the outside world has commented a lot on this. But I want to hear from you and your account of what happened and why are you where you are right now, facing a possible sentence of up to 50 years?

AH: So the night of July 4, some friends and I protested at the Prairieland detention center in Alvarado, Texas, and we did what’s called a noise demonstration, which is a pretty typical form of protest. You know, you show up outside of a building where something is going on that you and your friends might disagree with, and you make a lot of noise to signal your presence and dissent. So, you know, fireworks and megaphones and bells and whistles and all that are extremely common. But my goal was to let the people inside, the detainees, know, “Hey, we’re here, we know that you are there, you haven’t been forgotten, and we understand that what is happening to you is unjust.” That all went well. And I actually left before any of the violence occurred. A correctional officer came outside and asked us to disperse and we did. And so I ended up going home in a separate vehicle, and I didn’t know anything about the violence that had occurred until later that evening. We had been waiting for my housemate and co-defendant Meagan Morris to return home from the protest. And when she didn’t for several hours, we started to look at the reporting from Alvarado and the first that I learned that any violence had occurred was from a report that there had been an officer-involved shooting outside of the Prairieland Detention Center.

SM: But you had left at this point? You had fully cleared the premises before that happened, before the shooting took place, you had gone home?

AH: Yes, it was hours before I learned about any violence. It was in the early hours of the next morning I learned about it from the reporting, and I was arrested the next day.

Note: Per the trial transcript, all parties agree that Hill left the premises at some point that night and was not present by the time arrests occurred. The defense claims that Hill was not in attendance when the shots were fired. Witnesses from both the FBI and the Alvarado police department were unable to produce any evidence to the contrary and as such did not directly dispute whether Hill was there when the shots were fired.

SM: Wow, and I assume you read the reporting at night, and you’re thinking, “I’m not gonna get in trouble for this, there’s nothing that I’ve done.” So you slept well, eventually? Is that fair?

AH: I did not actually sleep super well, you know. I knew that there was evidence of my presence because of the fact that I go work in that van all the time, I realized like, “Oh my god, I left my purse in the van.” And you know, I went to sleep, but I was like, “Oh my god. They are going to come arrest me because of this, because of my ID in the car.” And so I kind of spent the next day in anticipation of this raid that actually ended up happening. It was a huge surprise to me, though, when I was, you know, charged with terrorism. We figured that if there were going to be, you know, if anybody was gonna be charged with anything from that night, it would probably be just trespassing maybe. But then when everybody was charged with terrorism, that was a huge surprise.

The FBI Raid

SM: There have been details in various publications about what was involved in that raid. We want to hear from you. Can you give me, in granular detail, if you’re comfortable, describe the raid as it occurred from your perspective?

AH: Sure. We heard a loud bang from the opposite end of the house from where I was sitting. And I was like, “What’s going on?” And I remember, you know, my girlfriend, Shelby—I’m polyamorous, my wife, Lydia, and I live at the Big Gay House—and Shelby was like, “We’re being raided by the FBI.” And so, you know, the next few minutes were just kind of chaos, you know, we heard them knock down the front door; they brought along a big vehicle with like a battering ram mounted on the front, and they didn’t, they by no means had to knock down the front door. It wasn’t even locked. You know, this was a no-knock raid on our house. They flew a drone in the front door after they knocked it down, and they ordered us to come out. So I came to the front door in nothing but a red dress, you know, my house clothes, and walked out to, like, 11 rifles pointed at me, and I just remember thinking, “Oh my god, if I am not extremely careful, I’m gonna die right here, right now. They are gonna shoot me if they think that I’m gonna do anything other than follow their orders.”

SM: What are they ordering you to do? There’s 12 rifles pointed at your face, at your front doorstep. What are they saying to you?

AH: So they’re ordering me to stay where I am, and then they’re ordering the person in the red dress to come forward, and then I’m walking toward these, you know, tactically armed and armored police officers. They order me to turn around and walk backward toward them, and then they put me in handcuffs, and then they sit me on the pavement, you know, outside of my house and they leave me there for like 30 minutes under guard.

SM: Explain what the Big Gay House is, why are you calling it that? And who else was with you and then subsequently arrested in that moment?

AH: So the Big Gay House is our home in South Dallas. It’s the house of primarily Meagan Morris and her friend Taylor who went in to buy the house together a handful of years ago. And they did so always with the intention of providing shelter to housing insecure queer people and especially the trans people. I met Meagan and Co. through just the activist community. We became close friends and ultimately I started dating first Shelby and then Meagan who are also partners.

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The Charges

SM: The charges against you are for rioting, for material support to terrorists and for conspiracy to use and carry an explosive. What are your responses to that when you hear that? Because the way you describe to me, that doesn’t really match up to your story. Are those false accusations?

AH: Those are false accusations, yes. So as you may know, the Trump administration for most of 2020 and then starting up again immediately during Trump two has tried to create a narrative that there is this shadowy terrorist conspiracy from the left called “antifa.” You know, in NSPM-7, they describe it as like a anti-Christian, anti-American, you know, radical, transgenderist organization. And this became their characterization of, like, the George Floyd uprising, for example. The Trump administration characterized the George Floyd rebellions as being kind of primarily provoked by antifa. And antifa to me is just anti-fascist. And it’s a disorganized collection of different kinds of leftists, and even like some people in the center, who kind of do what I would describe as an organic, immune response to the presence of fascist violence in American communities.

SM: And just to be clear, if you’re a member of antifa, you’re not violent.

AH: There’s no membership in antifa. They want to create a narrative of leftist political violence as being as much or more of a problem in the United States than, you know, right-wing stochastic terrorism. You know, they want to create a false equivalency which the data shows just doesn’t exist.

SM: And what about conspiracy to carry and use an explosive? Where did they even get that from?

AH: So that is on the basis of online conversations in an app called Signal, where, you know, defendants discussed bringing fireworks to the noise demonstration. And they say that the intent the whole time, the prosecutions say, was to riot, was to destroy government property, and was to use these fireworks as explosives.

SM: And just to be clear, it was Champagne Song, I believe, who did shoot an officer, is that correct?

AH: That’s still unclear. Champagne Song has certainly been characterized by the government as the shooter, but I think the evidence for that is still pretty weak from my perspective, and the counternarrative that I have heard talked about by lawyers throughout the trial, has been the idea that Champagne may have actually fired into the ground during the altercation, and that there was never actually any intent to harm the police officer. I wasn’t there. I can’t speak to it. I saw some blurry footage where it was very unclear to me what actually happened, but I am friends with Champagne and I’ll tell you what I have told people the entire time that we have been locked up, which is that Champagne is one of the most calm, level-headed and principled people I know. And I never believed for a minute leading up to the trial that they had attempted to murder someone in cold blood.

SM: And if you found out that Champagne had attempted to do that, you would of course denounce it, I would assume.

AH: Yeah, I mean like attempting to murder somebody in cold blood is, you know, it’s not my style. I see violent struggle as primarily being something that happens in self-defense for people of conscience.

Note: All parties in the trial agreed that Song was one of the people who fired shots. The fact that is in dispute is whether Song fired the shots in an attempt to murder the officer who was shot. The defense claims that Song was only attempting to intimidate the officers rather than to kill them. The prosecution disagrees.

A 50-Year Sentence

SM: How do they communicate the sentence? And what do they tell you the grounds for this sentence is based off of?

AH: Well, so, the sentencing, skipping to the sentencing leaves out a whole year of sitting in jail and sitting through the trial. I learned actually through the, I believe through the law library in Johnson County Jail, that if I’m convicted of all of the crimes that the federal government, you know, puts up on me, I’m looking at actually 30 to 90 as the range. That’s the information that I have when I decide that I’m gonna go, I’m going to take this to trial, is knowing that, you know, if I’m found guilty of everything, I’m looking at 30 to 90.

SM: Tell me about the last year. So, you know, from that raid until now, take me inside what your life has been like in prison.

AH: So for the first roughly 80 days of my imprisonment, I was here in Johnson County Jail, and I was in what’s called administrative segregation or SEG for short. SEG is used both for disciplinary purposes and also to separate members of the jail population who are considered to be particularly vulnerable or high risk. I was never given any reason for my separate housing other than my charges. And so I spent 80 days in what is effectively solitary confinement. These cells are very small, like the size of a bathroom, right? So you’ve got like a bunk, you’ve got a little table, and you’ve got a shower and a toilet, and you basically live in a bathroom. And so, I was physically alone. You can shout to other people in SEG through the vents or through the bean chute, that’s the shoot where they feed you, where they pass you your trays and your mail and such through. But you’re alone. So for the first week, I didn’t have any contact with the outside world. And so it was finally Friday when Lydia came to visit me. And that was the first time I actually knew that Lydia hadn’t been arrested. Like I figured that if they were gonna come raid the Big Gay House, you know, they were just going to arrest everybody. So like, I didn’t know if Shelby had her freedom. I didn’t know if Lydia had her freedom, and I was like thinking to myself, because the fluorescent lights are always on and my wife has like really bad sensitivity issues because of, cause she’s disabled, you know, I was like, “Oh my god, if Lydia is in a cell like this, she’s gonna go crazy. Like she’s not gonna be able to handle it.” And as soon as I saw Lydia, you know, I just, I burst into tears because I just knew, thank God she’s safe. She’s all right. You know, and I knew if Lydia is going to be okay, I can do this.

SM: Were you aware that a few weeks ago, Trump released a new counterterrorism strategy where he labeled certain trans folks as a terrorist threat and didn’t include white supremacists or far-right extremists in that report?

AH: I hadn’t heard of that, but that doesn’t surprise me, that’s consistent with his character.

Targeted Because She’s Trans?

SM: You believe you were targeted specifically because of your gender identity, specifically because you’re trans?

AH: Right, yeah, I think that that’s a part of it, for sure. But obviously not everybody who is a part of the Prairieland, you know, defendants is trans, right? There are autistic people, there are, you know, there are people of Mexican descent, there are women, and, you know, it’s a diverse group of people, but all of whom are part of, I would say, some marginalized underclass.

SM: And tell me about the judge.

AH: The trial judge is actually a man named Mark Pittman. Pittman is a Trump appointee, and throughout our trial, I would say he made rulings which [were] very nakedly preferential to the prosecution. You know, the the easiest example that I can see that is just very, very glaring, is on the first day of our trial, Pittman declared a mistrial on the basis of the fact that one of the defense attorneys was wearing a shirt to celebrate the lives of civil rights advocates like Shirley Chisholm and Martin Luther King Jr., and he said that he, on the basis of her wearing this T-shirt, Pittman said that this was a trial about political protest, and on the basis of that, he could find no other remedy for the bias that it could potentially have on the jury, than to declare a mistrial. You know, then he moved the trial to a different courtroom, and we came back a week later, and there was a great big mural of the Texas Rangers on the back wall of the courtroom in the area where the jury panel sits, and, you know we pointed out like, “Hey, you know, Texas Rangers are going to be prosecutorial witnesses in this case, and you have this great big propaganda mural for the Texas Rangers on the back wall, isn’t that gonna bias the jury in favor of the state?” And he said, “Well no, we can easily remedy that by asking the jury if they can put aside their biases and not be influenced by that.” He’s confirmed to have had an ex-parte meeting with William Barr, Bill Barr, who you may remember as Trump one’s attorney general and the principal architect of Trump one’s attempt to, you know, terrorify antifa. He said that he gave William Barr a tour of the courthouse during the trial, and ultimately, in spite of the fact that he sat through the whole trial, saw all of the evidence and, you know, made kind of grumbling noises about what he saw, he never explicitly said he believed that the case had been overcharged, but he definitely made grumbling noises about the way that the state had charged the case. He ultimately decided to give everyone a maximum sentence.

SM: Take me inside your mind when you’re learning about this sentence being 50 years in prison.

AH: My basic assumption was, you know, the judge had obviously made his mind up about our guilt before the trial even began, and so it didn’t take me by surprise at all when I actually was sentenced to 50 years in the Bureau of Prisons. I knew, like, this is about making an example, this is about creating a narrative that, you know, anyone who resists the Trump administration’s agenda of mass deportation, is going to be made an example of, is gonna be treated this way, that if you stand up, if you speak out, we will bury you. I knew that that was what this was about the entire time that we were going to trial, and it was why I said from the very beginning, “I’m not gonna plea to anything.” You know, like they offered us plea deals, you know, we could have signed to 15 years for material support for terrorism. And I took the risk that I took of, you know, going to trial because I was like, I’m not going to create evidence of this non-existent terrorist conspiracy. That goes against everything I believe in.

The Jury’s Decision

SM: How do you think, how did they manage to convince a jury to believe this? Like, what were the things that you heard that kind of got them to this?

AH: We are not entirely clear on that. Some observers said that, you know, several of the jury members were in tears when they delivered the verdict. There are reports of, like, violent arguing or even screams coming from the jury room during the, you know, during the jury deliberations. There has been a lot of talk amongst the defense team that you know there may have been what’s referred to as “forced trading” in the jury deliberations. It was immediately before spring break and, you know, maybe some people thought we were all innocent of everything, maybe some people all thought we were all guilty of everything, and they could all agree that the most important thing was that they get to go home and have their entire spring break uninterrupted.

The prosecution’s entire strategy revolved around introducing stickers and zines that are created by, you know, various members of different leftist communities, especially propaganda related to the term ACAB. A-C-A-B is short for “All cops are bastards,” which is a slogan that’s very common among anti-authoritarians in the United States of America. This idea that, you know, the American justice system, the American incarceration system is a relic of slavery in the United States.

SM: And just to be clear, they’re introducing kind of swag stickers of “ACAB,” but that is essentially, in America, freedom of speech. I mean—

AH: That’s protected speech.

SM: That’s protected—

AH: They introduced this, and they said, “You know, we find these zines that are very anti-authoritarian and this is evidence,” they say, “of a shared ideology between the co-defendants that proves that they want to commit violence against the police and that was their motivation in going to the Prairieland Detention Center.”

Convicted in a Deep Red State

SM: Wow. And when you think about the jury, you’re in Texas, correct? In Texas, a deep red state. And if you think about the intensity of transphobia in America right now, I imagine you’re wondering if this jury was gonna be completely fair to you?

AH: I definitely feared the idea that, you know, we could get a jury that was just going to, you know, see trans people and say, you know, “Your honor, tranny 50 years,” right? I was surprised by the quality of the jury panels that we got. I don’t feel like anybody there found me guilty, particularly because I am trans.

SM: How long do you imagine you’ll be there? And are you working with a lawyer or anyone to try and reduce the sentence?

AH: So we’re going to take our case before the Fifth Circuit, and if necessary, all the way to the Supreme Court. It’s probably going to be about two years before our case is appealed before the Fifth Circuit. Now, I will say I personally don’t have a lot of hope that the Fifth Circuit is going to set everybody free and, you know, say that this is obviously unjust. So many of those Fifth Circuit justices are Trump appointees. And I think that it is absolutely within the realm of possibility that they just shut down our appeal as a favor to the president. So—

SM: Why would they do that as a favor to the president, do you think? Why do you think Trump would see that as an assist for him?

AH: Because the president, you know, tweeted directly about us. Our case is the first case in United States history where any defendant has been successfully tried and convicted as part of a, like, an antifa-related thing, right? The Justice Department said, “This is the first time we have put antifa behind bars,” basically. But not in those exact words, right? But this is a part of the president’s agenda, you know, to create this narrative of left-wing terrorism, you know, basically in order to be able to prosecute political dissent against him. So I think that, like, if the Fifth Circuit were to overturn this case, which is the first of hundreds, right? The Justice Department has tried to go after, you know, people from Stop Cop City, you know, people from Minnesota and the George Floyd rebellions, and say like, “These people are antifa,” and hundreds of such cases have been shut down. Ours is the first such case to have made it all the way to conviction and sentencing, and that’s because of the fact that they were able to get such a conservative judge, such a conservative prosecutor, and have it tried in such a conservative district, right? In other jurisdictions, this would have been thrown out as a matter of law, but it’s thanks to the fixing of Mark Pittman and the pressure that the prosecutor Sean Smith’s superiors put on him to take this case all the way to trial, that that is what happened and I am here today.

SM: Wow.

AH: I find myself often thinking, like, “Wow, I really hit the jackpot on this one. This is not how I thought my life was going to go.”

‘A Political Prisoner’

SM: And from your perspective, you’ve done nothing wrong. And if what you’re saying is true, you do not deserve to be there. Do you consider yourself a political prisoner?

AH: I absolutely consider myself a political prisoner. I think that it’s clear that I’ve been incarcerated for political reasons. I think that it’s clear that we were tried for political reasons and that, you know, the judge who sentenced me, Reed O’Connor, who was a different man than the trial judge Mark Pittman, also sentenced people for political reasons. You know, that Mark Pittman and Reed O’Connor made it clear that they believe that, you know this sentence, it sends a message to other people who they say “share an ideology that justifies political violence.”

Note: In court notes, there are reports that Judge Reed O’Connor stated that he “wants to send a message to anyone else with similar ideology.”

SM: And when you see, when you absorb this, you know, ruling, 50 years in prison for you, how does that make you feel when you see Trump’s sweeping pardons of the January 6 rioters, for example?

AH: The president of the United States has consistently demonstrated himself to be a man who rewards sycophants and who uses the systems of government to retaliate against his perceived enemies.

SM: Tell me just so the folks know, where are you being housed right now? And is it a men’s prison, a woman’s prison or a coed prison?

AH: So I’m being housed in a men’s facility. I actually haven’t started serving my sentence in the Bureau of Prisons. I am being held in Johnson County Jail, awaiting state charge, you know, awaiting the resolution of my state charges. I’m actually being held under my birth name. I had my name legally changed by a court order in 2023, but the government prosecuted me under my birth name in spite of that. So even now, you know guards refer to me by my birth name instead of my legal name.

The Only Woman in a Men’s Jail

SM: Tell me what it’s been like as maybe the only woman in that jail surrounded by men.

AH: In FMC Fort Worth, which was where we waited, you know, pretrial, in pretrial detention for about the first week. It was pretty scary. The prison system has a reputation that everybody knows for being a rape-friendly environment. And we didn’t have to be scared of that at all as it turned out. There was one hairy encounter with a guy who went by Detroit, who put a lot of pressure on Meagan to have sex with him. But other than that, you know, everyone was very respectful to us. Here in Johnson County Jail, I would say also the people here are respectful to me, they’re friendly to me. They still don’t really necessarily understand me as a woman. You know, I had a conversation with probably my most conservative cellmate here, a guy named Zach, where I was like, you know, “I want you to think about me as a woman, and I want you to treat me as a woman.” And he was very taken aback by that.

SM: Our fantastic reporter, Hope Pisoni did a really impressive investigation where she spoke to folks, and discovered that the Bureau of Prisons is ignoring an injunction and denying trans incarcerated folks gender-affirming healthcare. What’s that been like for you?

AH: I was able to get HRT the entire time, but it was in FMC Fort Worth, and actually I’ve been able to keep my HRT the entire time that I’ve been in jail.

SM: What has this been like for you from a mental perspective? How has it affected your state of mind? Like I can’t imagine this has been easy, and through this interview to me, you’ve come across as kind of chill.

AH: You know, I’m a pretty spiritual person, pretty philosophical person. When I am in a situation where no action is likely to lead to an acceptable outcome, I take no action. And to a certain extent, I do not believe in 50 years. I don’t. Maybe I’m in denial but I still kind of don’t believe that I’m actually going to serve out this whole sentence and I think there’s a little reason for optimism in that regard. There is a big movement of support for a political pardon for us from the next Democratic president of the United States. My mother told me that my father said that the next time a Democratic president is in office, he’s going to write him a letter to ask for a pardon for me. And that was the first positive interaction that I’ve had with my dad in five years. And when I heard that, I just burst into tears and, like, just became hysterical for five minutes because it was just the perfection of the absurdity of the time to me. My arch-conservative father, who I can’t really stand to be in the same room as right now because of his transphobia, that he would do this thing, right, like appeal to a Democratic president on my behalf. And it really shows this bipartisan sentiment that this is obviously unjust, this is obviously political. You know, if this arch-conservative and I can find common ground over the belief that this is a political persecution, I think that there’s a very strong chance for some future good thing to come our way out of that.

Hill’s Message to Trump

SM: The Trump administration has labeled you as a terrorist. If you could say something to the Trump administration, to Trump himself, what would you want to say?

AH: I would say, “What you’re trying to do is foolish. History shows us that when you try to oppress a popular movement by imprisoning their heroes and valorizing the people who oppress them, all you do is build momentum for the people who want to undo your political administration.”

SM: Is there anything else I didn’t ask you that you want to get out, that you wanna say in this context? Obviously, people will see this and I know you have limited connection to the outside world.

AH: I would say the same thing that I’ve said before, which is: Be brave. We’ve been accused of being terrorists, but terror is the power that this administration wants to ply in order to keep people quiet, in order to keep people content. Fear of incarceration, fear of homelessness, you know, it’s this fear, this fear that we’re going to lose our privileges, that we are going to use our comfort, that keeps people docile, keeps people from speaking the truth. Don’t be afraid.

SM: Well, that’s a really interesting place to end on. Autumn Hill, calling me and Uncloseted Media from Johnson County Jail in Texas. Thank you so much for speaking with us today, we really, really appreciate it.

AH: Yeah, no problem. I’m really happy to be here, Spencer. It was nice to meet you and really great to have this conversation.

SM: And if you liked that episode and wanted to get all of our investigative journalism, subscribe to unclosetedmedia.com, our YouTube page, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Additional reporting by Soph Holland and Bella Sayegh

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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In October 2025, Amanda Hunt remembers watching as countless books at Oak Run Middle School in New Braunfels, Texas, were removed from her library. Students walked in and saw more empty shelves and fewer stories they had once been able to check out.

“Every day, they’re like, ‘More boxes? More books to get rid of? More books to pull?’” Hunt, who was the lead librarian at the time, told Uncloseted Media.

That month, Hunt says the New Braunfels Independent School District (ISD) had temporarily closed all four of its secondary-school libraries to audit its collections and assess whether they were in accordance with Senate Bill 13 (SB13), a Texas censorship law that took effect in September 2025. Thousands of books were moved, restricted or removed.

For Hunt, who had spent more than 14 years helping students find books, the assignment felt like a betrayal of everything a librarian was supposed to do. “What kind of librarian takes books out of kids’ hands?” says Hunt, who attended Oak Run Middle School as a student and whose dad worked there as a sixth-grade reading teacher.

SB13 prohibits “indecent content” and content that portrays “sexual or excretory organs or activities in a way that is patently offensive.” But the vagueness of the bill’s language, according to advocates, has led to the banning of many LGBTQ books, including “Boy Erased,” which is about a gay man’s challenges in conversion therapy, “Juneteenth” and “The Art of Drag,” a picture book about the history of drag. As of February 2026, New Braunfels ISD has removed over 600 books from its high schools and aged up over 800 books from middle schools, according to public information requests obtained from the Texas Freedom to Read Project.

Jennifer Cousins, co-founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, a parent-led nonprofit dedicated to defending students’ access to information and fighting education censorship, says removing inclusive books tells already marginalized children that their experiences do not belong in school.

“Being able to read these books in school is a way for them to feel seen, to feel community, even if it’s just through pages,” Cousins told Uncloseted Media. “When you take that away from them, that further isolates them. … You’re making an already marginalized community more unsafe.”

How Texas Libraries Became Political Battlegrounds

The fight in New Braunfels did not begin with SB13.

In 2021, Republican lawmaker Matt Krause made a list of roughly 850 books and asked schools to tell him whether they carry them. Many of the books addressed racial and LGBTQ themes. Krause said he was examining materials that could make students feel “discomfort, guilt, [or] anguish” because of their race or sex. Some of the books on his list included “LGBT Families,” “The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to their Younger Selves” and “The Underground Guide to Teenage Sexuality: An Essential Handbook for Today’s Teens and Parents.”

PEN America, a nonprofit that protects free expression and celebrates literature in the U.S., described the inquiry as “menacing and wrongheaded” and warned that it risked trampling students’ right to access information.

That same year, Texas passed HB3979, a bill that restricts discussions of race and racism in public school classrooms. Together, the measures helped turn classrooms and libraries into political battlegrounds, with conservative officials and so-called parents’ rights groups increasingly scrutinizing books about marginalized communities.

For Hunt, the escalation in New Braunfels made clear that the dispute “wasn’t really about the books. … It was about silencing voices. It was about taking books out that they didn’t understand, regardless of the impact that it had on students.”

As rumors circulated about why the libraries had temporarily closed, misinformation swirled among students. Hunt heard students claim that the district was banning “Harry Potter,” “The Diary of Anne Frank” and even “Charlotte’s Web.” Other students repeated allegations that the library offered pornography.

Librarians had to repeatedly explain what was and was not being removed.

Hunt says SB13’s broad language gave New Braunfels officials significant latitude to go further than neighboring districts. While the law does not explicitly prohibit books with LGBTQ characters or themes, she says some officials treated all queer content as inherently sexual.

“For some people, they believe that LGBTQ content is the same as sexually explicit content,” Hunt says. “And they’re not.”

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An Algorithm Decided Which Books Stayed

New Braunfels officials did not rely solely on librarians to determine which books complied with SB13.

Hunt says the district uploaded its library collections into spreadsheets and sent them to its technology director, who ran the titles through AI tools designed to identify objectionable material.

“They decided to create their own AI robot that was going to go through every book in our collection,” Hunt says. She says the district took language from SB13, entered it into a model similar to ChatGPT and instructed it to search for books that might violate the law.

Hunt says the system repeatedly made mistakes, flagging books based on Goodreads reviews rather than content. “Anybody can go on and write like, ‘I hate this book because X, Y and Z.’ It is going to flag it.”

Despite those errors, the district continued to use AI. The results were sent back to librarians, who reviewed the flagged books and alerted administrators to errors, though Hunt says their judgment did not ultimately determine what remained on the shelves.

“[The software] ended up having the final say,” she says. “It ended up being the end-all, be-all, deciding what books were pulled or removed, moved up or taken off an order list.”

New Braunfels ISD did not respond to Uncloseted Media’s request for comment.

Demoted and Doxed

All of this frustration led Hunt to start posting her grievances on social media. “[The school board] did not like how much I hated book banning and censorship,” she says.

Around this time, Hunt learned she had been demoted to a regular librarian after years of serving as the lead.

“It got to the point where my district was like, ‘We don’t want you associated with us at all. Don’t mention us. … If you go to post, know you are representing our district.’ I was put in this box of what I could and [couldn’t] say. They’re my employer and I understand that.”

In addition to being demoted, Hunt says she was “doxed online three separate times.”

She says she was harassed by a mom who targeted her support of LGBTQ content at the library. Another parent protested against her promotion of LGBTQ-themed books at a school board meeting for having “Last Night at the Telegraph Club,” a book about two girls falling in love in 1950s San Francisco, in the library.

“It ended up turning into [the mom] filing a grievance against me to get me fired,” Hunt says. “In addition to me trying to fight to keep the books in the library, I was also dealing with [personal attacks] against my livelihood, against my job and against my character.”

She says the school supported her “0%” through this whole process. “They did not stand up for librarians. They did not support us. They did not take a stand against the school board and what they were trying to do. We were left out in the cold.”

Hunt says that even an LGBTQ-friendly club she ran, known as Alphabet Soup, was shut down by the school due to complaints and non-compliance with Senate Bill 12, another Texas bill that prohibits LGBTQ clubs in schools. “They made me get rid of that because a parent had found an old flier that had rainbow colors,” she says. “I have a particular student that really took that hard because she had been a member of that club since she was in sixth grade.”

Why It Matters

Hunt says the most frustrating part of SB13 is the impact it’s having on kids who are looking for belonging. She recalls a student who was questioning his sexuality and being bullied. She says she handed the student “You Brought Me The Ocean,” a graphic novel about two male characters who fall in love and one of them has magical aquatic powers.

The student later emailed her and wrote, “You saw me when no one else did and because of you I feel like I can actually be myself.”

“He is thriving now and living his true authentic life,” says Hunt.

Stories like his are why Hunt refuses to stay silent. But the stress has taken a toll: After being demoted and subjected to months of investigations and public attacks, she left New Braunfels ISD for a librarian position at a nearby school.

“They have been nothing but supportive and welcoming,” Hunt says. In her new school, she says challenges based solely on the presence of LGBTQ characters are immediately rejected.

Still, leaving the school she was essentially born and raised in was painful. “Leaving them was the hardest thing ever,” she says. “I never thought I would leave my district. I never thought anything like this would ever happen to me.”

Hunt plans to continue speaking publicly about banned books in her state. Earlier this month, she launched “The Library Stage,” a podcast about censorship, education and the pressures librarians face across Texas.

“My heart is always with the students,” she says. “I have had students tell me a book that I recommended saved their life. That is the kind of impact that librarians are making all over the nation and all over the world.”

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Donate to Uncloseted Media

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Earlier this month, hundreds of people filled a conference room in San Diego. These included Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Assistant Secretary of health Admiral Brian Christine, OpenAI executive Dean Ball and the attorneys general of West Virginia and Idaho.

They all came together for Alliance Defending Freedom’s (ADF) 2026 Summit. The Christian legal group, also a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group, described the event as a “gathering of leaders from many different spheres, including law, public policy, media, business, education, and Christian leadership.”

Johnson—who has said that “homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural and … society cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle”—was a featured speaker.

In his speech, he seemed unconcerned with the separation of church and state: “It is so encouraging to Kelly and I to be among friends and fellow warriors for this cause and people who understand that God is not done with America yet. … ADF’s on the very tip of the spear, front line, defending those very truths and keeping the door open for the spread of the Gospel. This is our moment. I’m telling you, I believe the next season … is going to be the greatest season of this Ministry since its inception.”

That ministry is one that has espoused aggressively anti-LGBTQ views since its inception in the early 1990s. It was co-founded by a group of evangelical men, including Alan Sears, who co-authored a book called “The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today.” Since then, ADF has opposed gay marriage and supported bans on gay sex and on gender-affirming care for minors.

After helping overturn Roe v. Wade, ADF lawyers have led key victories at the Supreme Court (SCOTUS). In 303 Creative v. Elenis, SCOTUS ruled that a website designer could refuse service to gay weddings. And this year they convinced the Court to overturn Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy and to uphold state laws in West Virginia and Idaho that ban trans girls from playing on girls’ sports teams.

At the summit, ADF President Kristen Waggoner, who has promoted conversion therapists and consistently misgenders trans people, interviewed these states’ attorneys general. “The lawyers who were defending women’s sports were among the best I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey told Waggoner.

Similar to Johnson, Trump’s Assistant Secretary of Health Admiral Christine showed his commitment to governing based on conservative Christianity. He gave a Bible-thumping speech against gender transition and trans healthcare, saying that it “contradicts … the deeper moral order that is woven into creation itself. For Genesis 1:27 informs us that God created man in his own image. … Male and female” He also said the “complementary relationship between man and woman is divine” and advocated for youth with gender dysphoria to receive care from a pastor.

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All of these remarks from politicians made me think of the interview I published earlier this week with Pete Hegseth’s pastor, Doug Wilson (you can watch it below). He wants a Christian theocracy in America and told me that: both the perpetrator and the victim should be disciplined in some cases of marital rape; that transgender people are “sad;” that execution is justifiable for certain homosexual acts; and that gay sex should be illegal.

The ADF Summit is glossy and polished. And while its messaging may be less explicit than Pastor Wilson’s, the track record of the organizations shows they have the exact same desires. They’re just deeply strategic in what they say and when and how they say it.

I believe the political power players who attended this year’s summit know this. They know they are endorsing an organization whose members have essentially called for the illegalization of most—if not all—forms of queer behavior and presentation.

In the last few years, these perspectives have become increasingly embedded in the highest rooms of the federal government and they have been effective in stripping away LGBTQ rights. Pastor Wilson, who just installed a full-time pastor in Washington, D.C. to lead services, says there are 10 to 20 government officials who align with his church’s ideology.

It is vital for Americans to keep their eyes wide open to the ultimate goal of groups like ADF: to create a United States that leaves LGBTQ people without rights and that pushes us back in the closet.

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• Idaho pushed anti-trans laws for years. Then a teen died. (NBC)

  • The life and death of May Pollard, 16, provides a window into the tragic effect that legislation and political rhetoric have had on trans people in America.

• 2nd trans woman says “hungry fiend” Lindsey Graham paid her for sex (LGBTQ Nation)

  • “This transphobic, homophobic man can rot in hell,” she said.

• Florida Republican lawmaker found liable for sexually harassing male staffers, faces resignation calls (The Advocate)

  • Florida Democrats are demanding that Rep. Fabian Basabe resign after a jury awarded $450,000 to two former staffers.

• He shot & paralyzed his queer neighbor after weeks of harassment. Now he’s paying the price. (LGBTQ Nation)

  • “You will, indeed, have a long time to think about what you did,” the victim wrote.

• Hunter Biden Says A Closeted Gay Mafia Runs Washington And He Calls It The Closetocracy (DNA Magazine)

  • Speaking on the I’ve Had It podcast on 18 July 2026, the former president’s son said the country’s biggest problem is not the oligarchy but what he calls the “closetocracy”, a closeted gay mafia that he claims is largely Republican and operates in Washington DC.

Over the next week, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting:

• 🆕 COMING SOON: In her first video interview from the Johnson County Jail in Texas, I speak with Autumn Hill, one of the defendants in the Prairieland case. Hill was accused of being part of an “Antifa cell” and sentenced to 50 years in prison for her involvement in an anti-ICE protest last year, where a police officer was shot while she was not in attendance. We talk about her arrest, the mistreatment she’s faced as a trans woman held in men’s facilities and her thoughts on a trial many have decried as unfair and extreme.

• 🆕 COMING SOON: Canada has all the tools to end the HIV epidemic. But in recent years, infections have risen by 15% in Canada, with men under 30 driving new transmissions. Kevin Hurren investigates why.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to email me with questions, complaints and story ideas!

Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chief — spencer@unclosetedmedia.com

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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This story includes references to sexual abuse. Viewer/reader discretion is advised.

In February, Doug Wilson made headlines after giving a sermon at the Pentagon as part of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s monthly Christian worship service. Wilson, the lead pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, holds a number of controversial views: He believes the U.S. should become a Christian theocracy, married women shouldn’t have the right to vote and gay sex should be illegal.

In his first interview with an LGBTQ publication, Wilson talks about his connections to Hegseth and others in the Trump administration. He estimates that 10 to 20 people in the government are aligned with his radical ideology. He explains that he thinks trans people are “sad,” certain elements of his idea of “homosexual behavior” should be punishable by execution and in certain cases of marital rape, both parties should be disciplined.

“UNCLOSETED with Spencer Macnaughton” is a new podcast by Uncloseted Media, an investigative LGBTQ-focused nonprofit news publication. Follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. YouTube // Spotify // Apple

Watch the full interview above or read the transcript here:

Spencer Macnaughton: Hi everyone. Welcome back to UNCLOSETED with me, Spencer Macnaughton. Today, I’m speaking with Doug Wilson, the lead pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and an increasingly prominent figure in conservative Christianity. Wilson has recently attracted national attention for his connection to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as his controversial beliefs, which many say align with Christian nationalism, and include denying married women the right to vote and banning gay sex nationwide. Here, he sits down with Uncloseted for his first ever interview with an LGBTQ news outlet. Pastor Wilson, thanks so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.

Doug Wilson: You’re most welcome. Thanks for inviting me.

Embedded with Hegseth and the Trump Administration

SM: Great. So first, you’ve made a lot of headlines this year in particular because in February, you were a guest pastor for the Pentagon’s newly instituted monthly Christian worship service, where you prayed alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Hegseth closed the prayer by putting his hand on your shoulder. That’s pretty, kind of, major to get that high up in the federal government. How did you develop your relationship with Hegseth and subsequently get invited to this very high-level prayer?

DW: I’ll give you a telescope version of that. Before Pete Hegseth was the secretary of war, he was with Fox News. He was involved in making a documentary on the state of education in America and met a friend of mine, David Goodwin, who is the CEO of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, which is an organization I founded. He was so impressed by that kind of education that he moved to Tennessee to enroll his kids in a school like this, but he was still working for Fox. So he’d fly into Tennessee on Sundays, and the only church that was open in the afternoon was a CREC church, which is the denomination that I’m in. And after he was appointed as secretary of war, He moved to D.C., and I was in the Nashville area and filled the pulpit at that church, Pilgrim Hill Church. And as it happened, the Hegseths were back in Nashville. I met him there at church and we visited for a few minutes. And then we planted a church service in Washington, D.C., a little over a year ago, so he’s been coming to that church service. I’ve met him a couple of times there in D.C., and of course, I met with him when he invited me to the Pentagon. But that’s the extent of our meetings, like three times, maybe four.

SM: There’s reports that he considers you his spiritual adviser. What does that mean exactly?

DW: I’m not a policy adviser. But it would be the sort of thing where, if he were in some sort of newspaper conflagration over something or other, I’m functioning currently in a pastoral role. As it happens, this coming Sunday, the Washington, D.C., church service is going to be installing a pastor there. So for the first year or so, our church here in Moscow was supplying, sending and recruiting people to come and preach there, but they will have a full-time pastor starting this next Sunday.

SM: Wow. And you’ve spoken about how, you know, although President Donald Trump is not an evangelical by any stretch, you said, quote, “his administration is full of them.” So how many folks in his administration do you reckon are aligned with your church and might attend the church service that you guys are putting on in D.C.?

DW: I do know that if Kamala had been elected, the White House would have been pretty evangelical-free. She would not have been hiring people like me. But the Trump administration just has quite a few conservative Christians working there. And in our D.C. church service, there are a number of people that are either working for the government, you know, they’re assigned to the Pentagon, or they have roles in the administration.

SM: More than 10, more than 20? Roughly, how many would you say?

DW: Boy, I would say between 10 and 20.

SM: Wow, in the actual administration?

DW: I would say between 10 and 20 in the government.

SM: In the government, got it. And who else in addition to Hegseth would be part of that?

DW: Sure, no major players at the cabinet level or anything like that. And as for the people who are the next tier or two tiers down from that, I’d rather not say because I don’t want to ruin their day.

SM: You think it would ruin their day if you said who they are?

DW: Yeah, basically. For example, I did an interview with NPR. When the NPR video segment dropped, our church secretaries [had] to not answer the phone for three days.

SM: Wow. Why?

DW: Because they don’t want to be vilified.

Back in the Closet, Boys

SM: Understood. So yes, obviously, we’re an LGBTQ publication. Is this the first LGBTQ publication you’ve done an interview with?

DW: I believe that is… I think that’s fair, yes.

SM: Cool. So obviously we’re going to focus on some of the things you’ve said in that realm, right?

DW: Right.

SM: And one of the things you’ve said is that there should be anti-sodomy laws and other prohibition on sexual behavior in all 50 states. So sodomy obviously gets thrown around as a buzzword. What do you mean exactly by that when you said it should be illegalized? Are we talking about anal intercourse between two men or what exactly do we mean by sodomy?

DW: Right. Let me make a distinction and then back up and then answer your question. The distinction is there’s a difference between politics, which is the art of the possible: What proposals am I proposing right now? And secondly, what is my sketch of an ideal Christian republic 250 years from now? Those are two separate things.

SM: Even if it’s 250 years from now, what specifically do you mean by that? Like what becomes illegal when it comes to sodomy laws?

DW: OK. I would regard sodomy as male-to-male intercourse, anal intercourse or oral intercourse.

SM: Would hand jobs count or just anal and oral?

DW: No, between two men, between two men.

SM: Hand jobs as well.

DW: Hand jobs, oral sex and anal intercourse—

SM: Got it.

DW: —would be sodomy. In the old order, the legal definitions of sodomy would have included oral foreplay between a married heterosexual couple, right? So, I think that there were definitions of sodomy that went beyond scripture.

SM: So you’re OK with heterosexual people in oral foreplay or those sorts of things if they’re married?

DW: Yeah.

SM: And then what about women-on-women lovers? Like is oral sex OK for them under these laws or no?

DW: Well, “OK” is too loosey.

SM: Yeah, but in your ideal world 250 years from now, would that be illegal across all 50 states?

DW: No, and this is going to be interesting, because I’m a Bible guy. If you go through the Law of Moses, you won’t find any legal prescription of lesbianism. This brings us up against the difference between a sin and a crime, right? There are things that are manifestly sinful for every Bible-believing Christian, which I believe ought not to be criminal. You don’t have any penalty in the Old Testament attached to lesbian behavior. It would have been considered a sin, a form of sexual immorality, but not criminal.

SM: Got it. So then in your ideal world, gay men engaging in sexual behavior would be illegal under sodomy laws across all 50 states. You’ve mentioned, though, that you wouldn’t want it to be too heavily enforced because you don’t want to create a, quote, “sexual Gestapo.” So how exactly would this be enforced?

DW: Well, I would say that the main enforcement mechanism would be social expectations and a withholding of societal approval. It would be sort of “back in the closet, boys,” not because of fear of legal retribution, but because this is simply not done.

SM: But that’s different than what you’ve said in the past. You said sodomy laws, right? So would it be illegal, or are you kind of walking back?

DW: No, I’m not walking it back. I think it ought to be that society needs to express its disapproval of this behavior in law.

SM: So then if it’s a law, what’s the punishment if somebody makes that act, which would be illegal? What would the punishment be?

DW: So the punishment would vary. I’m reluctant to give the government excess powers of invading private homes.

SM: OK, so just theoretically, I get caught having sex with my boyfriend, what happens to me? What is the punishment?

DW: In the 1980s, there was a movement called Christian Reconstruction. And the Christian Reconstructionists wanted to take the Old Testament law, sort of with a grappling hook, and bring it over and drop it down on modern society. And that would mean the maximum penalty there for homosexual behavior would be execution. And so there were debates among the Reconstructionists of: “Do we have to stone the homosexuals?” And there were some people saying, “Well, firing squads are OK because they’re throwing very tiny stones at a high rate of speed,” but they were talking about execution. In that debate back then, I pointed out that King Asa and King Jehoshaphat in the Old Testament closed the bathhouses, and they exiled the sodomites from the land. And their behavior is praised in the text. That told me that execution, although a lawful penalty for homosexual behavior, was not the minimum penalty; it was the maximum penalty.

SM: And do you believe that still, that in your eyes the maximum penalty for homosexual behavior in an ideal world, in Pastor Wilson’s ideal world, would be execution?

DW: Yeah.

SM: You do?

DW: Yeah, if you ask me: “Could you ever envision a homosexual crime of any nature being visited with the death penalty?” Yes, I could.

SM: You, in other words, want to create a law where—a real law, in this country eventually—where the maximum penalty for me having sex with my boyfriend would be my execution? I just want to make sure that’s clear.

DW: No, no, no. That’s why I wanted to finish this scenario. I do want to create a society where the maximum penalty for a Roman Catholic priest molesting or raping an altar boy is solved and addressed with a tall tree and a short rope.

SM: Right, that’s pedophilia though, which is of course different than homosexuality.

DW: Well, it’s a species of homosexual behavior. So let’s say it’s a Roman Catholic priest and a 15-year-old boy. Or there’s all kinds of variations of human behavior. But there are homosexual crimes that are egregious enough that I would want to execute the person for.

SM: So you see pedophilia as an element of homosexuality, is that right?

DW: Yeah, if we’re talking about the alphabet people. Right?

SM: You’re referencing LGBTQ community?

DW: LGBTQ+. What’s under the plus?

SM: Not pedophilia. Would you consider adding a “P”? Do you think a P is meant into that umbrella of LGBTQ?

DW: Absolutely.

SM: You do? Because you conflate lesbians and gay people with, like, kind of akin to pedophiles. People who rape children?

DW: I don’t think that I’m making that association. I think the LGBTQ+ acronym, that whole chain, is sort of a sexual alliance of people who are defying traditional biblical norms. And pedophilia is one of those things that defies those norms.

SM: Do you see two men having sex as equally sinful as a man raping a girl?

DW: Yeah, they’re both violations of God’s law.

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Conversion Therapy

SM: Obviously, if you’re seeing both of these as sinful, pedophilia and homosexuality, this is a very big concern for you, I would imagine, in society, right? So I wanted to ask, you know, in March, I’m sure you’ve been following this, the Supreme Court overturned Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy. And you’ve called Canada’s conversion therapy ban a, quote, “wretched and misbegotten law.”

DW: I did.

SM: In your church, right, as the lead pastor, if somebody comes to you saying, “I’m attracted to the same sex,” should they be allowed to go through conversion therapy? And if so, what is the most effective form of conversion therapy in your eyes?

DW: I’m a pastor of hundreds of people, and I’m a pastor to people whose sexual temptations are homosexual. I’ve counseled people in that position and have seen them arrive at victory over those temptations.

SM: I see it based on the science and, you know, methodologically sound evidence-based research, it is a discredited practice, but I want to know from your perspective, what works?

DW: So what works is Jesus Christ. So Jesus Christ forgives sin, and Jesus Christ empowers us to overcome sin.

SM: In layman’s terms, if you can, right? Are you just saying pray? Or is there more to it? Like what else—do you give them assignments? Do you give them homework? Are there things they need to do? Or is it simply just pray, pray, pray, pray, pray?

DW: Yeah, it would be easy to sort of dismiss what I’m saying as sort of “pray the gay away.” So when I’m counseling someone who is struggling with this and wants out, one of the places I start is with that person’s relationship with his father, that person’s relationship with his mother, that person’s upbringing. “Do you have a healthy relationship with your father? Do you hate your mother?” You know, it’s not like, “What do you do when you’re horny?” If you just start there, you’re healing the wound lightly, basically.

SM: Have you ever experienced same-sex attraction?

DW: Uh, no.

SM: Never?

DW: No.

SM: No. Got it. And so when they come, right, if say somebody comes to you and says, “Pastor Wilson, Pastor Wilson, I am experiencing this and I love your church, but I’m happy, I have a boyfriend.” Do they stay in the church, or what happens?

DW: Such a person would not be allowed to become a member. But such a person would be welcome to attend as often as they wanted. You’re welcome to attend, but if you were a member, there’s a commitment to becoming a member and that commitment means living as a Christian is obligated by the Bible to live.

The Path to Ending Obergefell

SM: Got it. And OK, so Obergefell, yes, I know you wanted to talk about that, because you said in the here and now, that’s something that you would want overturned.

DW: One of the reasons I would go to Obergefell as one of the action points is I think that that is actually a possibility. Just like Roe was overturned, I think Obergefell could be overturned and it might be a matter of as few as two Supreme Court justices.

SM: When you’re in D.C. or when you’re helping with prayer with Hegseth or other folks in the administration, are there rumblings that there’s a possibility that that’s within reach?

DW: Yeah, I’ve not had any conversations like that with administration officials, but I have certainly written a lot about it and I know that I’m read by people in powerful places.

SM: Of course, because if they align with you ideologically, then they must want that too, I would imagine, if they share the same belief systems as you, no?

DW: I’m not plotting with administration officials to make a move on Obergefell, but I am very vocal about it. So I think repealing Obergefell is an attainable goal in our current climate.

SM: When it comes to the legal issue behind it. What would be the kind of roadmap to overturn it?

DW: I think there’d have to be an increased number of conservative Christians in the Senate. You would have to have trained, capable judges who were evangelical Christians, who had been operating at lower courts, who were in a position to be nominated to that position and survive the character assassination battle, you know? Before, Senate confirmations, hearings were all about abortion. I think the next ones will be about Obergefell.

SM: You do?

DW: Yeah, I do. I think that that is going to be the issue. And so if you have more Christians in the Senate, if you have Christian men nominated, and the Senate has the kind of people who don’t fold under pressure, then it is a doable thing.

Trans People Are ‘Sad’

SM: Mm-hmm. All an interesting perspective. You’ve spoken less about transgender people.

DW: Yeah.

SM: I wanna know your thoughts. In your ideal world, what would happen to people who are trans? Do they have a place in society? What’s your view?

DW: Yeah, this is… no way to talk about it without talking about it. I think transgenderism is simply sad. I don’t think that it should be elevated to a category given equal carved-out rights. I think this should be treated with love and compassion and help, counseling.

SM: About 1% of the population identifies as trans and the vast majority of those people, once they get past stigma, live their lives healthily and happily, so I’m unclear what your issue is with it.

DW: The man is the image and glory of God, and the woman is the glory of the man. I believe God created us in such a way as to reflect his glory. And the transsexual movement, I think, is a movement away from that glory. And so when I see people who are… just… well…

SM: You can be candid. Be candid.

DW: I don’t want to give offense.

SM: You won’t offend, go ahead.

DW: So when I see people who are tatted up and pierced, dog collar, it’s hard for me to not see self-loathing.

SM: But what connection do those folks have to trans folks? I mean, that’s a different kind of, you know, I have a lot of trans friends, none of them are wearing those things.

DW: Well, I’m glad you’re more fortunate.

SM: Do you have a lot of trans friends who do wear those things?

DW: No, I have, I encounter people out in the community, and I have a pastor’s eye, right? And one of the things I can identify and see and greatly sympathize with is people who are miserable and they’re trying to… “Maybe this’ll work. Maybe this will give me a sense of who I really am.”

SM: Do you think trans people are dangerous? I mean, Trump recently included radical transgender folks in his counter-terrorism strategy. Do you have concern there?

DW: We’ve seen many instances of transsexual violence over the last few years. That doesn’t mean that all transsexuals are violent, but a disproportionate number of the violent episodes are coming from transsexual individuals.

SM: And I think a lot of the data that actually shows when you look at things like school shootings, the disproportionate number of cisgender people are perpetrating those, actually white cisgender men are the most common and disproportionately more likely even when you break it down per percentage of the population.

Disempowering Women

SM: Obviously we’re an LGBTQ publication, but we do stories on women too, right? And you’ve been in the news for your belief systems around women. I wanna know just more generally, what role do women have in society for you? In your world, should they be allowed to be anything they want? Doctors? Lawyers? Should they be allowed to serve in the military? How do they place in society in your view?

DW: Yeah, I don’t think there should be any legal barrier to women getting a medical degree, getting a law degree. But I don’t think there should be a legal barrier to women being in the military.

SM: Can they be in combat?

DW: No, that’s the one place I would limit them. I’d say women should be kept away from combat roles. I don’t think women ought to be put in front lines.

SM: Why not?

DW: Because I served on a submarine, a couple of submarines, and I just can’t get inside the head of the person who thought that was a good idea.

SM: Why? Just you don’t think women are as capable in that area?

DW: No, I think that if you have women on board a submarine, and we went to sea a couple of times, submerged for two and a half months, you’ve got 130 people locked up in this steel tube under the water for two and a half months. You put three women on board. That’s like, “Why shouldn’t I throw catnip into the pack of cats?”

SM: Well, there’s going to be gay people in the submarine too.

DW: Yeah. That’s another problem.

SM: And tell me, I have read a few things like, “Women should submit to men, obey their husband, obey their father.” What exact role do women have as it relates to their relationship with men? Men should be the head of the household? Clear up what you mean by women’s role in that dynamic.

DW: The Bible requires women, “A woman should submit,” Paul says, “to her own husband.” And what that means, my wife is submissive to me, but what that means is she doesn’t have to submit to all the other men.

SM: Say a wife and a husband are together and the wife says, “I want to go to med school and become a doctor.” And the husband says, “Nope, I want you to stay home and be with the kids.” Should she stay home?

DW: Yeah.

SM: She should. OK. Because she submits to the husband?

DW: Because she submits to the husband. Let’s say this is a counseling case for us, and the wife wants to do something and the husband has said, “No, I really don’t want you to do that.” We would say, “You married him and you vowed before God and witnesses that you would follow and obey him. And this is one of those cases where he’s made a decision and it’s a lawful decision and you should submit to it.”

Sexual Abuse

SM: When it comes to sex, right? Like, say the man says, “I want to make another baby with you tonight.” And the woman says, “No, I don’t want to. I don’t want to do this right now.” Should he still do it if he wants to? Should she still submit if she doesn’t want to have sex that night?

DW: No, I would say, basically, marital rape is wrong. So if he forces himself on her and rapes her, then I believe that that’s a sin.

SM: If he raped her, how would he be disciplined? Would you call authorities or would you deal with it internally?

DW: It would depend on the nature of it. It would, you know, it would depend on, a violent rape? Yes.

SM: You would call the police?

DW: What’s that?

SM: You would call the police?

DW: Yeah.

SM: What does a nonviolent rape look like?

DW: Oh, let’s say she just says, “I really don’t want to. I’m not into this. I don’t want to, please don’t treat me this way.” But he says “Too bad.” You know, he’s just being a boar. He’s being awful. And someone like that should be disciplined by the church, but there was no crime.

SM: And what line is there, like, she should just “give in,” right? Is she allowed to say no to the husband? Or should she just submit?

DW: Here’s why it’s a gray area.

SM: And it’s a gray area in terms of, you might not consider it a violent rape. For many people, it is not a gray area, no means no. And I think that’s the kind of understanding we have societally at this point in America, but perhaps, is it a gray area for you, I guess, is what I’m trying to ask.

DW: No, let’s say she’s had an absolute horrendous day, is fried, just is exhausted and she says, “Honey, I really, please, please no.” Does she have the right to do that? Absolutely, yes, she has the right to do that. Does she have the right to cut him off for six months? No.

SM: She doesn’t?

DW: No. So if she says, if that situation came to us, and the husband said, “Here’s the thing, we’ve been married for five years and we’ve not had sex for the last six months, and she just won’t.” Right? In this situation, she’s got the problem. And we’d address it like, “Look, we have to talk, you’re married, you need to act like you’re married.”

SM: So in month six, if she is in a space where she doesn’t want to have sex, and he rapes her, is that justified because she, in your view, has held out for too long?

DW: It’s not justified, but neither is her behavior justified. So that would, basically what you’d have there is a marital mess. And both of them sinning against each other.

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SM: And when something like that happens, what’s the discipline you give to both the man and the woman in that case?

DW: We would say we want you to start coming in for weekly counseling, and we want you to agree that the end goal of this counseling is for you to be back together as husband and wife, living together, having sexual relations, the way a normal couple would.

SM: OK, got it. And there have been numerous accusations of sexual abuse at your church. And I’ll read them, I wanna let you respond, but when 14-year-old Natalie Greenfield reported sexual abuse by Jamin Wight to the police, there are allegations that you pushed for him to get lenient treatment. And you’ve officiated the marriage of Steven Sitler, who was arrested for sexual contact with a minor and later admitted to being sexually stimulated by his baby. When a man commits a rape in your church, like this, what happens? Walk me through exactly what happens, because obviously this is a pervasive issue in conservative Christian churches across the United States, and there have been these reports at your church. So what happens when you find out a man has committed a rape?

DW: Oh, what you do is call the cops.

SM: How many times have you called the cops, would you say, for issues of sexual abuse or rape?

DW: Oh. Maybe five?

SM: And how many times would you say a woman has said no, whether it’s that six month thing or some other thing, where you deal with it internally?

DW: No, the one accusation that’s out there about marital rape is an accusation that is coming from a stone-cold liar.

SM: So, you deny those allegations that have been...

DW: Yeah, I deny that we’ve ever sanctioned marital rape. That’s just flatly false.

SM: How many instances have there been when a woman has alleged or a child has alleged that they’re experiencing some form of sexual assault or S.A. where you deal with it internally?

DW: I can’t think of any.

SM: None?

DW: No, if you’re talking about a self-report of, if a child told me that “I’m being molested,” I wouldn’t ever sit on that.

SM: OK, and have you heard reports from other people where they say a child’s been molested and you didn’t sit on that?

DW: Yeah, so I’m going to make up an example, OK?

SM: Oh, no, no. No, I’m just curious. Like, have there been other bystanders or people in the church who have told you this child may be being molested, where you haven’t reported it?

DW: Oh no, what you want to do is follow up on it. You want to check and you know, is there something to this? Is the person reporting to you a rumor or something that they, “I saw them in the grocery store and the girl looked unhappy.” Is there anything to it? If there’s anything to it, you pursue it. You should be all over it.

SM: But are there instances where people have suggested this could be happening?

DW: And then we did nothing? No.

SM: Yeah. No?

DW: No.

SM: No. OK.

DW: Basically, we have an aggressive stance toward this thing. Reports to the contrary, notwithstanding. This is an area where we are lied about routinely.

SM: You have you mentioned the reputation that your church has of, you know, sexual assault or child molestation? Why do you think that exists?

DW: Well, because we’re the size of a small town. And these accusations have come up over the course of like 30 years. I would put a…

SM: But a lot of small towns don’t have accusations associated with them like that.

DW: Let’s put it this way. I saw a bumper sticker once in my grandma’s hometown in Nebraska. “You don’t see much in a small town, but what you hear makes up for it.” The human race is messed up and sexual misbehavior is a big part of that mess.

SM: Why do you think it disproportionately happens in conservative Christian communities?

DW: I think that’s false. I don’t think it disproportionately happens.

SM: You don’t?

DW: I don’t.

SM: So the statistics are just kind of false?

DW: Yeah. Yeah.

SM: One of my last questions, and thank you so much for your time—

DW: You’re welcome.

SM: —is, you know, I’m obviously an openly gay man. I have a boyfriend, we have sex, right? I don’t believe I’m gonna change at all as time goes on. In your view, where am I going? What happens to me?

DW: So, as an evangelical Christian, I believe that the only way to salvation is through Jesus Christ, through looking to him in his death, burial and resurrection. And the sin that you’re committing is homosexual sin. And so I believe that you are spiritually lost, excluded from heaven, and I believe they’re only ultimately two destinations: heaven and hell. So to be fair and perfectly honest and not trying to be rude, but I think you’re lost.

SM: And I’m going to hell.

DW: Apart from repentance, right.

SM: Got it. In a society that gives men so much power, do you ever get concerned that giving men power over women, does it not put them at greater risk of being abused? What happens when there’s no stop gaps and you have powerful men at the top who aren’t helping women who are struggling? Because that does happen a lot.

DW: If you have a patriarchal society, then you are creating the possibility that certain powerful men will abuse their position. Right, that’s true.

SM: Of course, yeah.

DW: OK, so I’m not disputing that. What I would argue is the way you deal with that, the most effective way to deal with that, how do you guard against evil men, predatory men? Well, you need good men to be protectors. So, I believe that fathers and brothers and pastors and elders should be a line of protection around their women.

SM: Obviously that doesn’t happen in a lot of instances. So if women don’t have their own voice and don’t have an outlet, what’s their recourse if the man who’s in charge of protecting them has failed? Like what should they do?

DW: Right.

SM: If they’re in one of these insular communities where the men in charge thinks it’s OK to abuse them.

DW: That’s a terrible dilemma. And I’ve seen it, right? I’ve seen women who need protection from their protector. I have seen that. But you don’t fix the problem by making women dependent upon a federal agency. Now what happens when they need-

SM: What if you just gave women more power and didn’t have it where they have to submit to the men?

DW: Who gives them the power?

SM: I mean a lot of spaces in society see men and women as equal and don’t ask them to submit to their husbands in this way.

DW: Yeah, but they do ask them to submit to them, right? In other words, you have structures in society. And these structures in society, if they say we’re going to stipulate that men and women are equal here, that’s just a statement, that’s just a proposition, that’s just words unless you police it. And somebody’s got to be the police.

SM: But the police should never be women.

DW: Yeah, because they won’t be able to do the job. Problem is, those women are going to be defeated. Men are aggressive, stronger than women. If it came to it, they wouldn’t, they’d be able to… It won’t be an effective defense so if you had… Let’s say we elected a woman president and she said, “As my first act I want the entire Secret Service detail that accompanies me all time, I’m the first woman president, I want all the Secret Service detail to be women also.” The assassins are going to say, you know, “Good job. Ha! Just made my day.”

SM: Yeah, we’ve been on for an hour and 15. So grateful for your time.

DW: You’re welcome.

SM: And we’re an objective news publication. And I think I can objectively say that I believe you’re homophobic, transphobic and sexist. Why should I think anything differently after this phone call?

DW: If your worldview is correct, then absolutely, that’s what I am. I don’t regard myself as homophobic by the standards of scripture at all. According to the standards of the sexual revolution, yeah, I’m homophobic and transphobic. You’ve never met anybody worse.

SM: I think that’s a perfect place to leave it. Pastor Doug Wilson, I really do appreciate you coming on and speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.

DW: Right, thanks for having me.

SM: And if you liked that episode and want more of our journalism, go to unclosetedmedia.com or find us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Additional reporting by Sophie Holland and Bella Sayegh.

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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On a June night in rural North Carolina, dozens of campers sat around the fire as a counselor asked them to close their eyes.

“Picture a place where you feel completely safe,” they were told. “Think about what it looks like and how it feels, what you can hear, smell and taste.”

When they were invited to share what they had imagined, one camper described sitting in a circle with other trans people. It was dark. Trees surrounded them. Mosquitoes buzzed.

“‘That place is here, and this is the place where I feel safe,’” Jacob Hofheimer, one of the camp’s founders, recalled the camper saying. “It got all of us.”

For many of the 8- to 17-year-olds who attend Transcending Adolescence, the weeklong summer camp offers a reprieve from the calculations they have to make in their day-to-day lives: Who knows they are trans? Who can be trusted? Which bathroom can they legally use?

At a time when 40% of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, and 90% of LGBTQ youth reported that recent anti-LGBTQ laws, policies and debates cause them stress or anxiety, those questions never disappear. But at this camp, young people are given space to ask them openly and to a community that understands why they need to.

“It really made me smile knowing that there’s a lot of people out there like me,” Ruby, a 12-year-old camper, told Uncloseted Media. “I’m putting myself out there, I’m being myself and no one judges me.”

Origins

Transcending Adolescence was founded in 2019 by Jacob and his wife Chrissy Hofheimer. The trans married couple wanted to create a camp for queer kids in America’s South, where affirming resources can be difficult to find.

Surrounded by thick woods and the backdrop of the Appalachian Mountains, campers swim, tie-dye shirts, complete ropes courses, roast marshmallows and perform in shows. They also gather for conversations about healthy relationships, medical care, legal rights, bathroom anxiety, coming out, misgendering, depression, substance use and self-esteem.

“A huge part of it is that every single person there is trans or gender diverse, including the staff,” says Rory Sowers, a 19-year-old junior counselor from Florida. “That’s just something that you don’t get to experience a lot, especially as a young trans person.”

Sowers first attended Transcending Adolescence as a camper during its inaugural year in 2021. He returned three times before becoming a junior counselor.

“There’s so much that trans folks have to worry about just going about their day-to-day lives, especially living in the South,” Sowers says. “I was able to come into myself a lot more when I didn’t have all of those anxieties on my back.”

A Place to Be ‘Just Ruby’

For 12-year-old Ruby, pre-camp anxiety was intense.

When she attended camp in June of last year, it was the first time traveling to another state without her parents.

“I was nervous about having someone there not really understanding me … and not really accepting me,” says Ruby, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy.

Outside camp, Ruby worries about how other people perceive her, according to her mom, Kate, whose name has also been changed. She says her daughter has to consider a litany of questions cis kids don’t have to worry about: “‘What if someone finds out? Are they looking at me? Do I look the part?’ … All these thoughts go through her head every single day.”

Before camp, Ruby had been struggling so intensely that her family had questioned whether it might feel easier for her “not to be who she was,” Kate says. Ruby had faced bullying in school, prompting her family to withdraw her and homeschool her for the remainder of fifth grade.

“I couldn’t really go anywhere without picking [at] myself because I was anxious,” Ruby says.

But when she arrived at camp, a lot of Ruby’s anxiety subsided. She didn’t have to introduce herself through the lens of being trans. She could just be herself: a funny, theatrical, outgoing 12-year-old who likes Beyoncé, improvises rap battles and wants to be in the center of dance shows.

“She can just go there and just be [Ruby],” Kate says. “[Being trans] is only a little piece of her. There’s so much more to her, and she’s able to do that for the whole week. … It was completely life-changing for her.”

Research suggests that spaces like Transcending Adolescence can have powerful mental health effects.

Young people tend to fare better when they feel they belong and have access to peers and adults who understand them. In one small study from 2021, participants of a six-day LGBTQ summer camp reported increased resilience, self-esteem and quality of life. Focus groups indicated that transgender and nonbinary campers found an affirming environment that offered social opportunities they had been unable to find elsewhere.

Though this environment can be transformative, it’s intimidating at first for some. Jacob remembers asking one camper from Texas his pronouns during medical check-in, and the boy responding that he used “guy pronouns” because he “was a guy.”

Jacob recalled him being closed off and leery of the “hippie-dippy nonsense.”

But on the second-to-last night, Jacob overheard him speaking with a fellow camper.

“‘When I first came here, I thought that I was a disgusting, mutilated pig and an alien, and nobody would ever love me because I’m trans,’” Jacob recalls the camper saying. “‘And now I know that being trans doesn’t make me disgusting. It’s actually a beautiful thing.’”

He later texted Jacob to say the camp had given him confidence during the school year.

“‘Half the time, I forget that I’m trans,’” Jacob remembers him writing. “‘I’m just a guy. I’m just me.’”

“Finding places where you literally see yourself and can be seen by others for who you are is important during adolescence. It’s a human need,” Stephen Russell, professor of social and family dynamics at Arizona State University, told Uncloseted Media. “For trans youth, especially those who may not feel fully accepted at school, at home or in their faith communities, a camp where their identity isn’t something they have to navigate or defend, but is simply centered as part of who they are, can be transformative.”

Filling the Gaps

The Hofheimer’s know that these spaces can transform the mental health of trans youth because they experienced it firsthand when they met while working as lifeguards at a summer camp for young queer people in New Hampshire.

The camp was doing important work, Jacob says, but many of its attendees came from privileged families in New England and other parts of the country where affirming programs were more accessible. Far fewer came from places such as Florida, Georgia and Texas.

That’s why, for the location of the camp, they intentionally chose North Carolina, a state that has laws on the books that exclude trans girls from participating in sports, restrict the instruction of LGBTQ topics in schools and ban gender-affirming care for trans youth.

“Access is really, really important,” Chrissy says, adding that while the camp costs $1,975 for the week, they offer robust financial aid, including a $1,500 “no questions asked” subsidized rate for families who can’t afford it.

At the camp, the staff educates campers about anti-trans laws, coming out and how to have conversations with their doctors about gender-affirming care.

“The kids want to talk about this stuff,” Jacob says. “That was the gap that we identified.”

For Chrissy, baking education into the camp’s programming is personal: When she was transitioning as a young adult, accessing informed medical care was difficult. During consultations, doctors either quoted prices she could not afford or refused to treat her. One told her that they did not “put boobs on men.”

Desperate to change her chest, Chrissy turned to a friend who had undergone illegal silicone injections without an apparent complication. She received what she believed were similar injections in Florida.

But the substance wasn’t silicone, she says, and it hardened and became intertwined with her breast tissue. Seventeen years later, Chrissy underwent a double mastectomy to fix the damage.

This experience became one of the driving forces behind the camp’s educational work.

“Accurate information might have changed the course of my life,” Chrissy says.

To provide information that breaks out of the TikTok and Reddit misinformation bubble many campers exist in at home, Chrissy and Jacob bring in experts and host nightly fireside chats.

Each night, campers gather around for structured conversations about the nuances of being trans. They talk about coping with misgendering, managing bathroom anxiety, identifying red and green flags in relationships, asking for help and caring for their mental health.

Jacob, who is a certified nurse practitioner, helps answer questions about gender-affirming care. A trans attorney explains policies affecting campers in different states and separates the practical effects of those laws from incomplete information and political fearmongering.

“It made me think about the people who I tell I am trans to and what I have to do to make sure I feel comfortable telling them,” Ruby says. “It let me think about all these questions I had but didn’t really know how to ask.”

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Building What Comes Next

Chrissy hopes the results from the camp’s program will eventually be replicated across the country.

For now, roughly 30 campers come together for one week each summer. Some arrive unhappy about being sent to camp. But by the final day, Sowers says, those same campers are often crying because they do not want to leave.

They return home to the same schools, states and political climates where they have to decide when it is safe to disclose their identities and how to respond when someone does not understand them.

But at camp, Ruby, among the other campers, found a weeklong respite and saw trans adults who were not merely surviving but building careers, relationships and communities.

“After the camp, I really haven’t been talking about how I feel insecure that I’m trans,” Ruby says. “I can’t wait to go back and see the people I met and [meet] new friends.”

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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On Sunday, the office of Lindsey Graham reported that the Republican senator and Trump ally from South Carolina died “from a brief and sudden illness.” The office said that the preliminary cause of death was a rupture of his aorta due to a hardening of his arteries.

Since then, many folks in the LGBTQ community, including a large number of Uncloseted followers, have—for better or worse—celebrated the senator’s death. When we posted the news on our Instagram page on Sunday, our followers commented:

• “Maybe he rest in hell”—this one got 194 likes.

• “She made sure to wait until Pride was over.”

• “And just like that the world is a better place.”

These responses are fueled by allegations that the senator lived as a closeted gay man while supporting policies that would roll back LGBTQ rights. In 2006, he voted in support of a constitutional amendment that would have restricted marriage to only being between one man and one woman. After gay marriage became legal across the U.S. in 2015, he said “I am a proud defender of traditional marriage.” And in 2022, he told CNN he would oppose the Respect for Marriage Act and later reiterated that states should decide the issue of marriage.

Outside the Washington, D.C. rumor mill, there wasn’t much evidence that Graham could be gay until 2020, when adult video performer Sean Harding wrote on Twitter that “There is a homophobic republican senator who is no better than Trump who keeps passing legislation that is damaging to the lgbt and minority communities. Every sex worker I know has been hired by this man. Wondering if enough of us spoke out if that could get him out of office?”

Harding followed up with another post, writing “If you’d be willing to stand with me against LG please let me know,” and, “So far I have two individuals who would be willing to go public and support my claims. Anyone else?”

A few days later, another anonymous sex worker came forward and made similar allegations.

But after that, there was silence, with some believing these sex workers were slapped with non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). And while at least one lawyer took to Twitter saying that he’d “be more than happy to read the NDAs and look for loopholes. For free!” nobody else came forward.

That is until earlier this week, when author Jesse James Rose posted to her Instagram that Graham had paid her for sex work prior to her gender transition. Rose wrote that “Most of you know him as the homophobic senator from South Carolina but to me he will always be the man who paid a twinky pre-transition college student a fat stack of cash to do unspeakable things to him in a hotel room while he wore red lingerie.”

This dynamic has created a complicated question for LGBTQ people: Is it appropriate to posthumously celebrate the death of a man who railed against our community and used his position of power to make our lives less equitable and less safe? Is it even more fair to criticize him if he was living a secret queer life?

Or should we go high and give his track record on LGBTQ issues a positive spin now that he’s no longer with us?

In a time where social media feels like a breeding ground for angertainment, I’ll admit that the immediacy of the response to his death at first felt intense.

At the same time, I knew I didn’t want to send thoughts or prayers to a man who tried to rip my rights away.

If the alleged NDAs that Graham handed his sex workers were legitimate, they likely evaporated after his death. So now really may be the first time people can speak their truth and offer an accurate window into the absurd hypocrisy between Graham’s public and private life.

For that, I think it’s fair game to speak candidly about the story he may have worked hard to muzzle while he was here.

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• I had a great time at the NYC Substack Bestsellers party on Tuesday evening. It was great to meet so many amazing and interesting Substackers!

• After 30,000 public comments were submitted, the Department of Health and Human Services this week abandoned a proposed rule that would have denied Medicare and Medicaid funding to hospitals which provide gender-affirming care for minors following. One of the comments, from Advocates for Trans Equality, cited our article on Alex Byrne, an anti-trans philosopher who was one of the authors of the Department’s report on pediatric gender dysphoria.

• Trump administration caves to public pressure after avalanche of opposition to anti-trans hospital rule (The Advocate)

  • More than 30,000 public comments helped derail an HHS proposal that threatened funding for hospitals providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth.

• In Viral Post, Author Jesse James Rose Opens Up About Anti-LGBTQ+ Senator Lindsey Graham Allegedly Hiring Her for Sex Work (Them)

  • Rose alleged, with a hand-raising emoji, that Graham paid a “twinky pre-transition college student a fat stack of cash” for a meetup.

• West Hollywood’s Lowering of Flags for Lindsey Graham Sparks Backlash from LGBTQ+ Community (WeHo Times)

• Mexico’s first out gay mayor shot & killed while getting ice cream in Guadalajara (LGBTQ Nation)

  • The former mayor was also reportedly under investigation for alleged fraud, though his family members believe the accusations were a political hit job.

Over the next week, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting:

• 🆕 SATURDAY: On the next episode of “UNCLOSETED, with Spencer Macnaughton,” I interview Doug Wilson, the lead pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho and an increasingly prominent figure in conservative Christianity. Wilson, who believes gay sex should be illegal and married women shouldn’t vote, says he has 10-20 followers working in the Trump administration, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

• 🆕 TUESDAY: For one week, trans kids can stop explaining themselves and simply be kids. Inside Transcending Adolescence, campers find community, confidence and something many have struggled to imagine: a future where they can thrive. This piece by Sam Donndelinger takes a deep dive into the camp and how it helps support trans youth across the U.S.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to email me with questions, complaints and story ideas!

Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chief — spencer@unclosetedmedia.com

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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Jordan Korgood has come a long way. In 2023, she says she ran into financial difficulties while studying at Northeastern University in Boston and ended up unhoused. Ordinary shelters are hotbeds of discrimination and mistreatment for trans women like her, and the only trans shelter was full. So for five months, she slept in her car, in public libraries and anywhere she could find in order to continue her studies and campus activism.

Korgood, now 24, started a bid in March for a seat on Massachusetts Governor’s Council, a state board tasked with approving judicial candidates. Despite running against an incumbent who has been in office for 41 years, she secured key endorsements from local Democrats and racked up more than 7,000 Instagram followers, the equivalent of nearly one-tenth of primary voters during the last election cycle.

But last month, her momentum was ripped away. It started when Ronald Iacobucci, one of her opponents, noticed that she was still registered to vote in the 2024 election with an old New York address. He proceeded to file an objection with the state, alleging that Korgood didn’t meet the five-year residency requirement. While Korgood has lived in Massachusetts since 2019, she didn’t have a valid address to register in the state while she was unhoused. So she used her mother’s address, where she had lived before moving.

In an email to Uncloseted Media, Iacobucci wrote: “Because serious questions have arisen concerning compliance with those requirements, an objection was appropriate so the matter can be reviewed through the lawful process established by the Commonwealth. This objection was nothing personal, it was always about the integrity of the process.”

While most residency challenges like this fail in Massachusetts, the State Ballot Law Commission disqualified Korgood on June 18. While she initially attempted to appeal the decision, the financial and logistical burden became too much—she estimates it drained about 40% of her campaign funds. So on July 10, Korgood suspended her campaign.

“I am incredibly frustrated that this is what I have to do at this point,” Korgood told Uncloseted Media. “I’ve spent thousands of hours, I’ve sacrificed my own mental health, my social life, friendships, my professional aspirations and advancement to work on this campaign, and this is how they’re ruling.”

“These are cherry-picking remote issues to target specific individuals,” Eliot Tracz, assistant professor of law at New England Law Boston, told Uncloseted Media. “They’re legitimate laws, but what they’re looking for is a selective application.”

Korgood isn’t the only trans candidate facing barriers. While a 2025 report by the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute found that transgender representation among elected officials has increased by over 700% since 2017, candidates still face major hurdles.

Uncloseted Media found examples of transgender candidates running for public office in Ohio and Michigan who have been threatened with disqualification over challenges to their eligibility. Often, the challenges come from their primary opponents: fellow Democrats.

“It should be voters, not political opponents, who decide who represents them,” Daniel Hernandez, vice president of political programs at the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, a nonprofit supporting queer candidates for public office, told Uncloseted Media. “This is not a legitimate way to fight—if you have a disagreement on policy, that’s one thing, but to try and target trans people just because of who they are is completely unacceptable, especially in a Democratic primary.”

A Growing Strategy

The first widely publicized eligibility challenge against a trans candidate Uncloseted Media identified took place in Stark County, Ohio, in 2024. The Stark County Board of Elections, which has the same chairman as the county’s Democratic Party, disqualified Vanessa Joy, a trans woman who was running for a seat in the state legislature. The board cited an obscure state law requiring candidates who changed their name in the last five years to list their former name on candidacy petitions—in Joy’s case, her deadname.

“The original spirit of the law I kind of agree with,” Joy told Uncloseted Media. “But there’s hardly any information about this law ever being enforced.”

Days later, Arienne Childrey and Bobbie Arnold, two other trans candidates, had their eligibility challenged based on this law. While both candidates were cleared to run, that wasn’t the case for Joy, who never made it on the ballot.

Tom Sutton, a political science professor at Baldwin Wallace University, told Spectrum News 1 he had never seen this law enforced in his 30 years of study. At the time, the relevant forms didn’t include a space to list former names, an omission that has since been corrected.

“The only way to find out about it was to dig deep into all of the additional documents on their website,” says Joy. “They used this law against me.”

Similar challenges cropped up in Michigan this year. Joanna Whaley, a trans woman running for a seat in the state legislature, faced a legal complaint from her Democratic primary opponent Frank Liberati, who claimed in April that she should have filed campaign paperwork under her deadname.

“Because both the original and amended affidavits of identity filed by ‘Joanna Michelle Whaley’ contain FALSE statements, she/he cannot be certified to appear on the August 4, 2026 primary election ballot,” the complaint argues.

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The county clerk denied the challenge, which deadnames Whaley, because she had legally changed her name. Liberati’s complaint was widely condemned, with the Michigan Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus calling it “meritless” and “transphobic.”

“It completely backfired on him,” Whaley told Uncloseted Media. “We tripled our cash on hand within a week because of the support that we’ve gotten from our community, and actually are in a stronger position now to win this race.”

While Whaley benefited from the challenge, that’s not the norm. Toni Mua, a trans woman running for a seat in the Michigan legislature, received a complaint from political activist Robert Davis in April who alleged that she also should have run under her deadname.

One of Mua’s opponents, Democrat Arthur Harrington, had discussed the challenge with Davis before it was filed, according to DeNiro Jones, Harrington’s former campaign manager. Jones told Uncloseted Media he sat in on a meeting between the two where they discussed the plan.

Jones also sent Uncloseted Media a screenshot of what he says is a text thread that Harrington sent him. In the screenshot, Davis tells Harrington, “The transgender candidate will be eliminated,” and Harrington responds that “Toni also won’t have the money to fight it.” Those texts were from April 22, two days before Davis filed the challenge.

In an email to Uncloseted Media, Davis called this story “baseless and meritless” and referred to Mua as “an illegitimate candidate seeking attention.”

“A candidate who happens to identify as transgender clearly violated Michigan Election Law and should not have been allowed to appear on the ballot,” Davis wrote. “A person’s sexual orientation nor identity played no part in the litigation seeking to have the person who filed a false affidavit of identity properly removed from the ballot.”

Arthur Harrington did not reply to multiple requests for comment. But in a June statement to Michigan Advance, he denied allegations that he was involved in Davis’ challenge.

These legal fights cost a lot. Korgood paid her lawyer $5,000. And while Mua defeated her challenge, she also had to use an estimated 40% of her campaign funds, or $10,000, to fight it.

In its opinion rejecting Davis’ challenge of Mua’s candidacy, the state court of appeals wrote, “Plaintiff misreads the statute … The Court of Claims did not err by concluding that Mua complied with the law or that the Wayne County Clerk did not err in rejecting plaintiff’s challenge.”

“I had to leave my job to run for this open seat,” Mua told Uncloseted Media. “It truly pisses me off, because [Democrats] have always said that they were better than this, and it’s showing truly where their support lies.”

Quinn Allred, executive director at Let Us Lead, a youth-focused voting rights nonprofit, finds these eligibility challenges from Democrats “despicable.”

“Instead of saying ‘trans people shouldn’t be running,’ [they’re entering] into this respectability politics and saying ‘oh, it’s actually because the names don’t match up, or it’s because of this residency law,’” Allred told Uncloseted Media. “[It’s a] special brand of cowardice that it takes for a Democrat to target a queer person who is also running for office.”

Uneven Enforcement

While challenges to candidates’ residency aren’t uncommon in Massachusetts, they usually fail, according to Western Mass Politics & Insight, a long-running blog by local political and legal analysts.

The blog says most officials with authority over elections have a “great reluctance … to remove an individual from the ballot.” This makes Korgood’s removal unusual.

And while the State Ballot Law Commission says it considers many factors when determining a candidate’s residency and “no factor standing alone can be dispositive,” it largely cited Korgood’s voter registration in its decision despite other evidence that supports her eligibility, including apartment leases and membership in city programs.

“While there’s an undertone of legitimacy to some of those claims, it’s very selective,” Tracz says. “Most of us, when we move to a new state, don’t bother to go through the process of getting rid of our registration to vote in the prior state.”

Throughout history, Massachusetts candidates who faced similar challenges have been left on the ballot. These include former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who received a tax credit in Utah reserved for primary residences, and Brockton, Mass., mayoral candidate Hamilton Rodrigues, who had gotten his voter registration in Brockton removed and hadn’t voted in the city for over 10 years.

Months after Joy’s disqualification in Ohio, the Mahoning County Board of Elections struck down a similar challenge against Republican Tex Fischer, a cisgender man who changed his legal name. They allowed him to stay on the ballot.

Tracz says a judge would likely find selective enforcement like this questionable.

“[That rule is] applicable to any candidate, and the question then becomes ‘Is this only being enforced against a select group of candidates?’” he says. “Why are we only investigating a specific type of candidate? I think that will give some courts pause.”

Making Existing Challenges Worse

Trans candidates face hurdles beyond eligibility challenges. A June report from the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute found that nearly two-thirds of LGBTQ candidates face in-person harassment and nearly 80% of them face online harassment.

“Whether it’s threats of violence, coordinated harassment campaigns, attempts to remove people from the ballot, the cumulative effect is the same: public service becoming more difficult and less accessible to the LGBTQ community,” says Hernandez of the Victory Fund.

Whaley says the increased attention from Liberati’s challenge brought even more harassment her way. She says she reports death threats to the police weekly and has a security detail at every public appearance. Security has become her second-largest campaign expense, and for good reason; in October, her team intervened when a man wearing a Make America Great Again hat followed her around with a gun at a No Kings rally.

“At the end of the day, I want to get home to tuck my kids in bed,” Whaley says. “We could be using that money for other things, but we’re having to use it to just keep me alive.”

Eligibility challenges distract from the candidates’ policies. Childrey remembers one woman telling her she couldn’t vote for her because she’s “only about the rainbow people.”

“Most of what [I’m] talking about is affordability, funding for our public schools ... bread and butter issues,” Childrey told Uncloseted Media. “There is an assumption, because we’re trans, that that’s all it is.”

Barriers also pile up intersectionally. Nearly one-one-third of trans people experience homelessness at some point in their lives, a rate eight times higher than the general population. This means barriers for unhoused people disproportionately affect trans candidates.

“Trans youth, trans people of color, students, those who are unhoused like [Korgood] was, or who are disabled or low-income—those barriers only compound,” Allred says.

What Could Change?

Zein Murib, a political science professor at Fordham University, says these incidents demonstrate the need for more leniency with official documentation, arguing that a candidate’s deadname or legal sex aren’t relevant information. Today, 45 states accept common-law names, or the name a person uses in everyday life regardless of their ID, for other legal procedures, and Whaley says this should apply to campaigns as well.

Besides these policy changes, Allred says LGBTQ advocacy groups should allocate more funds to defend trans candidates from eligibility challenges. And Hernandez says that more people should condemn these tactics and show support for those targeted.

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“We need to make sure that we set the expectation that everyone … is rejecting these tactics that are disproportionately burdening our trans candidates,” he says. “We have to call it out when we see it, and we have to make sure that we are not just letting candidates fight these fights themselves.”

Mua says that she doesn’t see a future for herself or other trans people with the Democrats unless the party stands up for them. “I refuse to put myself into a party where I don’t see my safety and protection being vital.”

While Korgood says she is saddened by this outcome, she doesn’t intend for her political career to end.

“I’m incredibly proud of what we were able to accomplish, and while I am beyond disappointed and frustrated that this is how this is ending, I am so grateful that I earned the support and the attention of thousands of people in this race.”

Uncloseted Media also reached out to the Stark and Mahoning County Boards of Elections as well as the office of the Secretary of State in Ohio. None replied. Uncloseted Media also attempted to reach out to the Massachusetts State Ballot Law Commission, but was unable to obtain their contact information prior to publication.

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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This story was written in partnership with Gay Times Magazine.

After spending the first 82 years of her life keeping her trans identity a secret, Sandra Kaye finally came out last year. But it wasn’t long before Kaye—a lifelong Republican who lives in Texas—found herself dealing with tension between her gender and her political views. A conversation with a left-leaning friend led Kaye to feel confused and unsure about her longstanding affiliation with the GOP.

“[My friend] has always been a little bit left, and I’ve always been a little bit right. So she asked me a question one day: How can I be trans and a Republican?” Kaye told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “I was not prepared for that question.”

Since this conversation, Kaye has moved further towards the center and now considers herself an independent. However, she is still proudly conservative, and voted in Texas’ Republican primary on March 3.

Kaye is in the small minority of trans people who hold conservative views.

According to a 2022 survey conducted by KFF and The Washington Post, 10% of trans U.S. adults identify as Republican. These numbers are likely continuing to dwindle as the Republican party pushes transphobic rhetoric and policies. During the 2024 presidential election, Trump and the GOP spent more than $215 million on anti-trans ads. And as president, he has eliminated the federal recognition of transgender identities and introduced a counterterrorism strategy that vows to crack down on “radically pro-transgender” extremists.

Still, some trans Americans stand by their conservative beliefs.

“When you get right down to it, I don’t think the Republican Party itself is anti-trans. I think the anti-trans comes from Donny Boy,” says Kaye, referring to Trump.

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For These Trans Women, Voting Conservative Makes Sense

Kamryn Wilson, a 25-year-old trans woman in Iowa, also holds right-wing beliefs. She is a member of Young America’s Foundation (YAF), an organization dedicated to helping young conservatives spread right-wing values on university campuses. Sen. Ted Cruz has spoken at YAF events, and the organization’s president, Scott Walker, has a track record of supporting anti-LGBTQ policy.

Though Wilson believes there are transphobic voices within the Republican Party, she does not see them as fundamental to the ideology of the GOP. “The conservative party is not a party that is designed to hate trans people,” Wilson told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “There are people in higher-up positions in the [GOP] that are not fond of trans people, and they voice those opinions very loudly. But it is not a consistent [ideology].”

Wilson thinks concerns that Trump is curtailing trans rights are overblown. She believes the president is exclusively concerned with trans people on the far left, who she sees as having a tendency to exaggerate. “He’s coming for a subset of the trans community. The same people that have constantly said that misgendering someone is violence are the same people saying Trump is coming after [them],” she says. “Trump is coming after far-leftism.”

Though Wilson believes Trump’s threats are overblown, the president has passed a litany of anti-trans policies. These include banning trans and nonbinary people from military service, removing the T from LGBT on government websites and banning trans people from receiving passports with the correct gender marker.

Despite this, Wilson says she hasn’t faced significant hardship under the Trump administration. “Nothing of note has really happened to my rights.”

While Wilson may feel protected under Trump, a 2024 survey of trans Americans found that 42% had taken steps to legally protect themselves following the 2024 presidential election. Meanwhile, 83% had increased concerns about their mental health.

As a right-leaning trans woman, Wilson believes she is able to influence those around her who may be skeptical about trans people.

“I find that they tend to listen to someone like me a lot better, not because I’m bowing down to them, but because I can share ideas with them,” she says, adding that people who have doubts about trans rights are misguided. “It’s not really transphobia that is going around, it’s trans stereotypes that are being inflated by these hyper-vocal groups, and that’s where conservatives get these ideas of what the LGBT community in general is about.”

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Wilson feels that some trans women are spreading misleading and harmful perceptions of the community. “A lot of people on the left love to over-embellish things and make it seem like anyone that has any sort of opposition to trans people is immediately this bigoted transphobe,” she says.

They Don’t Always Agree with Trump

Though Kaye voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, she says she did so “under duress” and was never fully a Trump supporter.

Her vote was instead a response to her wariness of the left. “I am of the anti-communist age. That was drilled in my head for years and years and years,” she says. “It’s still there, and I still believe it. I could not vote for Joe Biden.”

When the 2024 election came around, Kaye saw the same “communist” messaging from Kamala Harris. “When we got around to the young lady that ran this last time, all I could hear coming out of her mouth was communist leanings,” she says. While Biden and Harris are not communists, Kaye’s views reflect a popular right-wing political tactic involving painting those on the left as such.

Despite having voted for Trump twice, Kaye does not support the administration’s crackdown on immigration. “We should not have the SS out there grouping people,” she says, comparing ICE to Schutzstaffel, a major Nazi paramilitary group abbreviated as SS. “The leadership of the United States is so close to the fascism of Germany and World War II. It is downright scary.”

A key issue fueling Kaye’s and Wilson’s conservatism lies in access to guns, which both women believe are critical to their freedom and self-defense. “You’ve got people on the far left who do not want you to be able to defend yourself,” says Kaye, who is a former firearms instructor. “I believe in the Second Amendment.”

Wilson believes guns are necessary in order for Americans to keep their governments in check. “I’m an American. Our nation was founded on the idea that we have the ability to stand up to our own governments, and we cannot [do that] if we are not equipped,” she says.

In April, the Trump administration proposed a rule which would make it harder for trans people to access guns by requiring them to list their assigned sex at birth on purchase paperwork. The National Rifle Association publicly opposed an earlier version of the rule, which would have classified trans people as mentally ill and thus banned them from owning guns outright.

While most of the trans people Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES spoke with for this article weren’t outright Trumpers, they were all conservative. Barbara Minney, a 73-year-old trans woman in Ohio who has doubts about Trump, describes herself as a “conservative/moderate/common-sense transsexual woman.”

“I was 63 when I transitioned, and when you transition that late in life, most of your core beliefs and values have been ingrained over that period of time. It’s hard to change those beliefs and values … after suddenly becoming part of a new community,” says Minney. After voting for Trump in 2016 and 2020, Minney chose not to vote in 2024 because of pressure she felt from Democrats in her life.

Without that influence, she says she likely would have voted for Trump in part because of his immigration policy. “I believe that people who came into this country illegally committed a criminal act and should be dealt with,” she says.

Still, Minney doesn’t like the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric from the administration.

“But he does have LGBTQ people as part of his cabinet, so I respect that,” she says. “Trump sends a lot of mixed messages, and it’s hard to read and understand what his true thoughts are.”

How Do They View Trans Rights?

Minney’s views on trans rights differ from the majority of trans women. “I always describe myself as a transgender woman. I’m not just a woman, because I understand that I’m not a woman,” explains Minney. “I present as one. I am perceived as one, but deep down, I know that I will always be different.”

Alaina Kupec, a former Republican and the current leader of Gender Research Advisory Council + Education, a trans advocacy nonprofit, says that while she understands people like Minney’s desire to “give space” to cisgender women, other trans people shouldn’t be expected to view themselves the same way.

“If she wants to identify that way for herself, she’s entitled to that perspective,” Kupec, a Navy veteran, told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “I don’t think that she can use that same rationale for anybody else outside of herself, because the community is so broad. … I don’t think that it’s correct to say that any woman who is transgender is any less of a woman.”

Minney also differs from most trans people when it comes to policies surrounding bathrooms. While she does use women’s restrooms and locker rooms, she understands if some cisgender women don’t feel comfortable in her presence. “I believe that we have to be mindful of the spaces that women want to preserve for themselves,” Minney told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “I would respect their desire to have a biological women-only space.”

Similarly to Minney, Wilson believes transgender people should be able to use bathrooms that correspond to their gender, but she thinks this access should only be granted to trans people who “pass,” meaning their appearance is perceived as aligning with their gender.

“People that have been transitioning for one to three years, then we can talk about using the women’s restroom. Those people start to have more estrogen in their system than testosterone, and they tend to live life very femininely,” she says.

Because Wilson herself is early in her transition, she chooses to use the men’s restroom. “I think that there should be a passability line,” she says. “I started HRT about a month and a half ago. I’m nowhere near that line yet.”

Kupec says that, while she respects Wilson’s decision, the notion of passing is too complex and subjective to impose on other people. She also says that inviting legal regulation on such an issue is actually antithetical to the traditional conservative value of small government.

“If she doesn’t feel safe going into a women’s restroom, then she should not go into a women’s restroom, and any trans person should have that same autonomy to make that decision for themselves based on their situation and their personal feeling of safety,” Kupec says. “I don’t think there’s a litmus test that you can put out there that’s a line in the sand because everyone’s going to be different. … By arbitrarily putting lines in the sand, you’re inviting more regulation into something that common sense could take care of anyway.”

Another area in which Wilson is likely to disagree with other trans women lies in access to gender-affirming care. “That’s something that I think [Trump] has done really well is up the age for puberty blockers to 19. Personally, I still think it should be older than that.”

Despite Trump having barred federal funding for youth gender-affirming care, a study published in 2022 found that such care has been associated with lower odds of depression and suicidality in American children.

Backlash From Others in the LGBTQ Community

Wilson says she faces backlash “all the time, literally every single day” from others in the LGBTQ community for her political views. She says being conservative has made it hard to get past a first date; a recent phone call with a crush didn’t pan out after Wilson mentioned her political affiliation.

“We had a call and we talked for an hour, and at the end, I had mentioned something about being Republican. It went from ‘She seems very interested in me,’ to ‘Now she’s becoming very standoffish,’” Wilson remembers.

Wilson has also been banned from various online LGBTQ communities after revealing her politics. “I’ve had people literally kick me out of Reddit communities, Discord communities, Twitter communities, Facebook, you name it, all of the above because I have political views that differ from others.”

Minney says she has learned to stay quiet about her politics in queer spaces. “I very rarely talk about my political beliefs. But when I did, I was called a monster, an enemy of humanity, and other names that I can’t even repeat,” she says.

Minney believes many trans conservatives stay quiet about their beliefs and questions the extent to which she is a political minority. “I think that you would be surprised at the number of transgender women and men who identify themselves as conservative,” she says. “There are probably more of us than you would think.”

Kupec has a different outlook. She says that while it may be true that some trans people hold conservative beliefs but keep it to themselves for fear of backlash, many, including herself, have been pushed away from American conservatism because of the Republican Party’s mounting transphobia.

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“I am an independent who used to be a Republican until Republicans went away from their true conservative values and started getting involved with issues that personally affect me and my ability to live my life freely,” Kupec says. “Government doesn’t have a place in the bedroom and doesn’t have a need to regulate everything, which is not what we’re seeing in today’s Republican Party and what some people call conservatism.”

Additional Reporting by Hope Pisoni

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For my newsletter this week, I wanted to take a deeper look into Patriot Front, the white nationalist group that made headlines last weekend with huge rallies across Washington, D.C. One photo, taken by a Reuters journalist, displayed a Black woman on the subway surrounded by dozens of anonymous Patriot Front members.

As I read into what happened, it made me think of my years of reporting on far-right extremism. What are they thinking right now? And how has the landscape of far-right extremism and white supremacy changed in the last 10 years?

I opened my phone, searched through my contacts and found “Brien KKK.”

James says he joined the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in his teens after attending a high school that was “80% Black.” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, he then co-founded the Vinlanders Social Club, a coalition of regional skinhead groups known for racist violence. He also participated in numerous white nationalist rallies over his multiple decades in the far-right movement. And in the summer of 2011, the Vinlanders held a white power concert, entitled “Plunder and Pillage,” which reportedly drew more than 50 skinheads to Ohio from around the country.

While James no longer considers himself a white nationalist or a skinhead and has since left the KKK, he is still a member of the Proud Boys, a far-right militia group most infamous for being one of the biggest players in the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol.

James makes it clear that the Proud Boys and Patriot Front have different ideologies: The former denies that it is a white supremacist group, for example. Still, both groups have been known to organize and attend protests, often violent ones, against pride and drag events. In this interview with Uncloseted Media’s Editor in Chief Spencer Macnaughton, James offers insight into where far-right extremism in America is today and how those following the ideology view the LGBTQ community.

Press play to listen to Spencer’s interview with Proud Boy Brien James.

Listen to the full interview above or read the transcript here:

Spencer Macnaughton: When we met, you were, I believe, with the KKK, is that correct?

Brien James: No, I had been in my past, which is, I guess. I was in the KKK as a teenager, I’m 50 years old.

SM: Wow, 50 years old now. And how did you get in the KKK originally, and how do you see the Ku Klux Klan having morphed and where are they now? I feel like I haven’t heard of them that much these days.

BJ: I don’t think they’ve existed for quite some time, not that I know of.

SM: Because I remember 10 years ago, I attended like a 200 person cross and swastika burning with the KKK to document, but today, do you hear much about them?

BJ: No. The last guy I knew that was active was a guy named Jeff Berry here in Indiana. He was the one that would go to the courthouse and be on the talk shows and get a lot of publicity. I’m sure there’s like a few guys somewhere in some town, saying, “Yeah we’re the Ku Klux Klan,” but I haven’t heard or seen any of them any more than you do. When you interviewed me, I think I had just started American Guard, but I’m in Proud Boys now.

SM: Oh, you’re in Proud Boys. OK, cool. And how’s that going?

BJ: Oh, fine. I’ve been… let’s see, I’ve been in Proud Boys for like eight years.

SM: Eight years. OK, yeah, tell me a little about that.

BJ: Proud Boys is just kind of right wing. It’s multi-ethnic, so it’s not a racial group. And there’s been plenty in the news about Proud Boys and what’s going on the last several years. It was kind of a pro-Trump thing. It kind of started when Trump was running for president the first time. There were a lot of rallies and events and stuff that were being attacked by antifa on the left, and before I joined, those guys kind of decided to go out and start defending or showing up and being kind of a counterbalance at those events, and it just kind of grew out from there.

SM: Got it. And obviously there’s a lot of headlines of political violence and all that kind of stuff. Do you guys engage in that?

BJ: Yeah. I mean, we engage in it from a defensive position. But that’s the way it gets written up, sure.

SM: Did you see everything that went down with Patriot Front this weekend in Washington, D.C., for Independence Day?

BJ: Just in the news, I just saw that they had a march and gave a speech.

SM: Got it. Yeah. What are your thoughts on them?

BJ: I don’t know them real well, or know a lot about them. I think I’m involved in some chats with them on Telegram that are centered around, like, working out or jiu jitsu or whatever. They’re not necessarily political, but that’s the only real interaction I’ve had with most of their members. It seems like a typical kind of white nationalist thing to me. I don’t know anything that particularly stands out about them. They do their marches, and they do their… I think they put up flyers and stickers and stuff, it all seems kind of innocuous, to be honest.

SM: And when I was with you 10 years ago, I remember, like, the KKK and the various other kind of white nationalist, white supremacist organizations, they had kind of fragmented where there was almost like beef between the groups. How would you describe it now?

BJ: From what I understand, it’s a completely different movement now. The younger people have decided to kind of go in a different direction, so you’ve got Patriot Front and the active clubs that mainly go out and kind of just do their own thing. Like, Proud Boys went out to events and met the left in the streets and tried to be like a counterbalance or counterprotest or so and so forth. Or we did a lot of stuff where we went to drag queen story hour, so Patriot Front just goes out and on their own and says, “OK, we had this march, we showed up, we showed people who we are, we got in the news, and then we went home.” And then you’ve got these active clubs, which they did, they’re big into working out, boxing, jiu jitsu, all this stuff. So compared to what it was when I was doing it, 20, 30 years ago, it seems to be a completely different strategy. They’re more private, and they’re just delivering their message, and then kind of leaving it at that. They seem less confrontational than what we were. As far as fragmenting and infighting. I guess I don’t see as much of that. But I’m not as close to it as I would have been back then. But as far as what you can see as an outsider, it seems like they’ve got a better handle on that than people did 20, 30 years ago.

SM: And the thing that confuses me, I don’t understand the mix. Because you see these active clubs, or even Patriot Front, and they post these videos of them doing jiu jitsu or getting really involved in martial arts. How do you explain that? It feels kind of random, the connection between white nationalism and jiu jitsu.

BJ: You know, I have sons that are in that age group. I think there’s an overall feeling that if you’re making physical improvements on yourself, that you’re making improvements all around. At the same time [they’re] training, preparing, conditioning for whatever may come. I mean, I think wherever someone stands on the political spectrum, I think everybody has the sense that maybe things in the world aren’t going in the right direction, so their response to that is to get themselves as physically prepared as possible.

SM: Got it. What do you think is the fear that they have, like that so many folks are training for? Do you think there’s an overarching concern that “event X” could happen?

BJ: Like I said, I think everybody has a feeling that things are headed in a direction where there could be more hostility or more conflict of some type. I think that the general feeling in the world is that there’s more and more conflict, more and more division, more and more room for something to come about that would cause men to have to be more prepared and formidable.

SM: I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but are you implying these groups as white nationalist groups, are you thinking like a race war or not?

BJ: I have no idea how it would play out, to be honest. I think the biggest direct concern for everyone I know that would span, what we call the right or the far right that’s not racial, is called civic nationalists. So, from civic nationalists all the way to white nationalists, I think people are concerned with the direction our government’s going more than anything. And then, on a street level, I don’t know that there’s an increase in racial incidents, but there’s definitely an increase in the reporting of them. We have so much more access to information now that it does make people feel like it’s just more dangerous to be alive.

SM: And what do you guys think about Trump? Because Trump released a new counterterrorism strategy and Biden said that white supremacism was the number one terrorism threat, right? And then Trump released a new terrorism strategy but didn’t even mention white supremacism or far-right extremism, so he doesn’t seem to think it’s as big of a deal. What are your thoughts on all that? How do you feel about what Trump’s doing?

BJ: From my perspective, obviously, I don’t see how the numbers would bear out that white supremacy is anywhere near the threat that the left makes it out to be. I think it’s pretty easy to dig into statistics and see that that’s not the case. So I think that was just something that Biden and the left does to get their voters fired up.

Note: According to a study in Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society: “since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives.”

SM: Got it. I think I mentioned to you before, obviously we’ll have differences here, but we do an LGBTQ publication, right? So you mentioned that you, as a Proud Boy, you guys would show up at drag queen story hours and that kind of thing. What’s the point of that from your perspective? Like, what are you trying to get out of that when you guys head to a drag queen story hour?

BJ: Well, we only have a problem with the ones where they invite kids. We don’t really care—matter of fact, Proud Boys has members that are gay. But we don’t really care that they’re having the events, as long as there’s not children there. It just became a thing where it was really tied in with, and it still is. We just had one that we got canceled in Florida. Florida made a law that you can’t have a drag show—not a Pride event, but an actual drag show—with children there. So they’re so determined to bring children to these events that they were trying to get around it and hold one on private land at a ranch down there called the 2K Ranch. So when we find out these things are going on, we basically call them up and let them know, “Hey, make it all adults, we got no problem with it. Otherwise, we’re going to be there. You’re going to be in the news, we’re going to make it out in person, protest, you’re going to have problems.” We got a yearly event shut down from a group called NARSOL—National Association Reforming for Reforming Sex Offender Laws. And this is all kind of under the LGBTQ umbrella. They try to remove the laws, they try to remove the sex offender registry. They try to remove the laws that keep sex offenders from living by schools and parks. They try to go after the law that makes you have to show ID if an adult wants to take a kid on an airplane and take him out of the country, so for us it’s all one big thing that’s kind of tied together, but hidden under this LGBTQ umbrella.

Note: The group James is referencing is National Assoc. for Rational Sexual Offense Laws (NARSOL).

SM: But that’s where I get confused, to me there’s zero link between sex offenders and LGBTQ people. Do you agree with that, or do you feel like there’s a link between LGBTQ people and sex offenders?

BJ: No, I don’t agree with that. To me, it’s the entire LGBTQ movement is always creeping towards trying to normalize pedophilia, in my opinion.

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SM: Wow, OK. I mean, I would strongly disagree with that. I find there’s a lack of evidence for that, but definitely curious why you think that. Why do you think it’s creeping towards pedophilia, the LGBTQ movement?

BJ: A good example is the fact with these grooming shows, we call them, the drag queen shows, they refuse to leave children out of it. They’re not going to old folks’ homes or anywhere else to try to cheer people up.

SM: No, no. They do. There are examples.

BJ: They’re obsessed with doing this for children.

SM: But I guess I’m missing, not trying to be confrontational, but I don’t understand.

BJ: It’s obviously very personal by the tone of your voice, but that’s OK.

SM: Well…

BJ: I don’t mind telling someone what I think.

SM: I appreciate you talking to me, but I don’t understand. I guess I’m genuinely, taking the emotion out of it, confused. If a drag queen is coming to read a storybook to a set of kids and it’s innocuous and they’re reading a children’s book, I mean, I just don’t really see the problem, right? And Proud Boys, for example, in California, showed up and a lot of the parents there were concerned. They said that you guys totally freaked out the kids and were extremely aggressive. So I’m wondering, like, is there an argument that maybe you guys are scaring the kids more than the drag queen reading the storybook.

BJ: Well, let me ask you this: If I showed you video clips that we’ve accumulated of drag queens where there are children dancing suggestively, partially or fully nude, if I showed you gay Pride parades where there are adults nude in front of children, would you just accept the point at that, would that be enough, or would you just continue to fucking twist it and argue?

SM: Well, I guess I’m wondering—

BJ: Because I can produce those videos.

SM: I guess I’m wondering, when you’re totally freaking out the kids from the parents?

BJ: What if I produce those videos? Would that be the end of the argument that this is innocuous, or?

SM: Send me them, definitely. I think they’re anomalous, but I don’t want to get in a tit for tat. I guess my question is: Is showing up with more intimidation tactics the right move? Is that genuinely, do you think that’s the… this is obviously something you believe is a problem. Do you think that tactic is the right tactic?

BJ: Well, for every time that you’ve heard that we’ve shown up, that’s not our preferred outcome or preferred tactic. For every time that it’s made the news that we’ve showed up, there’s been 10, 20, 50 times that we’ve simply made a phone call and said, “Hey, keep this adults only, and you won’t see us or hear from us.” And then they do, so that’s our preferred outcome.

SM: Got it. And then, which groups would you say in 2026 are the most prolific? Which are the most popular and have the most status in this movement? Would it be Patriot Front? Would it be Proud Boys? Who are the leaders these days?

BJ: Well, Proud Boys and Patriot Front are two different movements. They don’t really accept each other or approve of each other, associate with each other very much. But I would say in the white nationalist movement, it’s definitely Patriot Front, and then the individual, probably Nick Fuentes would be the closest thing to the white nationalist movement that it has to a leader.

SM: And it’s so interesting that, you don’t think through history that presidents have really kind of aligned themselves at all with, or at least they haven’t tried to publicly align themselves with white nationalists. But Trump, obviously, I believe invited him to Mar-a-Lago and this kind of thing. What’s your take on that? Is Trump signaling, “I’m down for this, I’m OK with this sort of thing,” or “I stand with this,” even? What are your thoughts there?

BJ: There have been all sorts of presidents that were aligned with white nationalism in one degree or another. I think some of them were members of the Ku Klux Klan, so I’m not sure what your preface there was.—

SM: Yeah, no, fair, fair. But I guess in 2026 to align that closely, you know, if you look at recent history, people at least explicitly publicly wouldn’t align themselves that closely. So I don’t know, maybe you have nothing to say, but I’m just curious, if there’s any takeaways you have from that public showing of support? He’s obviously said, and I believe closer to 2020, “Proud Boys, [stand back and] stand by,” like all of that messaging, is there any kind of thoughts you have on all of that?

BJ: Yeah, I think given the relationship that we had with politicians on the right in 2016, I think the Proud Boys… a lot of those were Republican politicians genuinely had a good opinion of us and they wouldn’t have any reason not to. I mean, we’re basically just coming to events and keeping their attendees from being attacked. Now, as more and more pressure came down on them, the more mainstream people, the Fox News crowd, and even Trump, to some extent, denounced Proud Boys. He did come through and pardon all of the J6 people when he got reelected, which was something that he had promised people behind the scenes. And I’ll be honest, I don’t think people thought it was really going to come through, but it did, you know? I’m not real happy with his policies and his relationship with Israel or this new war with Iran, and I think that’s the general feeling, probably of like Proud Boys and civic nationalists as well as white nationalists. I think you know it’s just— I don’t know, I don’t know what it’s like to be him or be in his shoes, but he’s probably in a really rough place, support-wise, at this stage.

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SM: And obviously, you know, your leader, the Proud Boys’ leader, Enrique Tarrio, was pardoned by President Trump after he received the 22-year prison sentence in 2023 for seditious conspiracy related to the January 6 Capitol attacks. People were really upset about that. They thought he was leading the charge. What are your thoughts on that? That Trump pardoned the leader, Enrique Tarrio?

BJ: Personally, I don’t have a good relationship with Enrique, because prior to January 6, it was discovered that he had been a federal informant himself on a criminal case before Proud Boys was created. So on a personal level, I don’t deal with anyone who has that type of history, or basically he had got himself in criminal trouble a long time ago and told on every random person he could find to try to get a lesser—or to successfully get a sentence reduction. So we had parted ways then, and he hasn’t officially been the leader of the Proud Boys since all that happened, but I do feel like for the most part, most of those people that were there, I feel like they were overcharged or overzealously prosecuted, and I am glad they are pardoned.

SM: Mhm, then just back to the LGBTQ thing a little bit. Obviously, you know I run an LGBTQ publication here, right? I’m gay myself, right? What are your thoughts on us? And I won’t take it personally. Do you see us as committing a sin? Do you see us as bleeding toward pedophilia? What are your thoughts on gay people and LGBTQ people?

BJ: So, we have a handful of gay guys in Proud Boys. I look at it as a personal decision, as long as it’s kept between consenting adults. I think the vast majority of straight males, if they were honest, don’t really understand it, or on some level, find it gross or unnatural. But the bottom line is people can do whatever they want. Someone might have some other sexual fetish or preference or something that I don’t agree with, that you know, that can’t become their entire identity. The problem is, in my opinion, and in the opinion of most people on the right, and that would include, like, gay Proud Boys, [is] the LGBTQ movement in general is very heavily connected to the left, and it does become their identity, their politics, their religion. Where it crosses from annoying into a place where we feel like it’s a threat, again, is when it starts coming on to children. You know, the trans thing. We have a huge problem with the trans thing. I think if someone’s going through issues in their teenage years and they’re not sure about their identity. Now we’re in this place where we’re putting people on hormones and recommending them for surgery, basically doing permanent life-altering things to fix what might be a temporary teenage problem that every human being goes through. When I look at that, it makes so little sense and seems so irresponsible that I can’t help but see sinister motives behind it. Because all you hear from the left or from the LGBTQ community, is that “Oh, we’re saving their lives. If we don’t do this. They’re going to kill themselves.” You wouldn’t deal with any other manifestation of teenage angst in that way. So everything to me involved in the left wing larger part of the movement, I definitely see evidence that it’s geared towards pedophilia, and I find it disgusting,

Note: While research is developing and exact statistics vary, the vast majority of trans people do not cease their transition, with detransition rates in more recent studies usually being 10% or less.

SM: But I guess when you look at the actual data and the number of LGBTQ people that are engaged in pedophilia, there’s zero connection to the fact that they’re disproportionately likely to do that. Actually, if you look at conservative Christian denominations in the evangelical church, they’re far, far more likely—pastors, priests, church leaders—to commit acts of child rape and of pedophilia. So I guess I’m confused why you would focus on LGBTQ communities when the belly of the beast seems to be in these church communities in the United States.

BJ: Yeah, I don’t have that information in front of me. If I saw churches saying, “Hey, you know, we’re all straight and we, we want to make sure that—”

SM: But you’re not seeing countless headlines coming out about pedophilia and the church among Church leaders?

BJ: I’ve seen the Catholic stuff, you know. I haven’t looked into it recently.

SM: Evangelical, Southern Baptist, non-denominational, I mean, it’s omnipresent, no?

BJ: No. I’m not a church guy, and that’s nothing that’s come up in front of me. But, like I said, if there were events at church talking about, “Hey, we’re going to sexualize children,” or “We need to explain to them, man, we should explain to young girls how to give a good BJ.” You know, if I saw anything like that, I would be just [as] against it as I am this. But this is what comes up in the news. This is what, you know, Indianapolis has a huge gay population, and it’s, you know, when it was going hot and heavy before we kind of got things worked out to where they know where we stand—

SM: What news sources are you looking at? Because I mean, you’d honestly have to be blind not to see the headlines about the Church.

BJ: Like, molestation?

SM: Yeah, molestation, child rape, like, you know, priests, pastors.

BJ: What’s the last big story of… I’ve seen the Catholic things, they’re almost like a meme, but I haven’t seen anything lately from anyone. What’s the last major story of the Baptist Church raping some kids?

SM: There’s a lot. There’s the one from the Houston Chronicle. They did about a 20-year investigation into it, and then there’s a lot of kind of one-offs. I can send you some articles after this, but it’s definitely a big, big problem. Yeah, I’m just surprised you haven’t seen it.

BJ: Like I am aware that exists, but I’m not aware of anything currently ongoing where they’re still doing it, they’re still proud of it in a way where I could go out and take action against it. Anybody ask me, I’ll be like, “Hey, don’t send your kids to Catholic Church.”

SM: Yeah, yeah, got it. OK, OK. And then this is all interesting. And then—

BJ: I could pull up the NUVO, like I could pull up the alternative paper in my town on a weekly basis and see a drag brunch at a bar where they’re saying, “Bring your kids out.”

SM: Yeah, but a drag brunch at a bar is different than a headline about a pastor raping a child.

BJ: Sure.

SM: That’s completely different. I mean, it’s a drag queen reading a story to kids versus a pastor raping a child.

BJ: And for the record, I work against NARSOL, which is a group that is specifically trying to change the laws to hide sex offenders, but I also work with a local group here, which is ran by a young Black dude that sets these predators up and catches them. I work with other local groups that basically find predators who have failed to register and puts that information on Facebook so people know where they’re at. So, I mean, of everything I could be involved in politically, that’s the one that I think does the most good.

SM: Got it. And you mentioned earlier that you think a lot of the politicians might not mind it, because you all come out, the Proud Boys come out and try and keep everyone safe, especially from the other side. Who are you guys looking for? Who are the, I guess I don’t know if you call them enemies, but the other people when you go to these rallies and you want to keep people safe?

BJ: This kind of died out, like once Biden became president. I think these things are tied to funding. Well, I know they are, because I’ve seen the massive buses that bring people in like 2020, but it was antifa, mostly. The guys that wore all black and go up and [unintelligible], but that’s kind of… you don’t see them anymore. If you go to the No King’s Protest now, it’s like white boomers, you know? I think the antifa comes out when it’s being paid to come out, and that seems so dried up.

SM: What’s next for Proud Boys? What do you guys have cooking? What’s the next thing and are there any kind of current mission-focused goals you guys have for the rest of 2026? As we’re getting close to the midterms, obviously, that’ll be big.

BJ: Well, we’re disenfranchised with politics, like almost everybody is right now on the right and left, to be honest. But we’re engaged fully with working against this NARSOL organization. They’ve got some lawsuits against us and going forward, we’re trying to monitor and possibly shut down their events.

SM: OK, interesting. And you mentioned you’re not related to Patriot Front, is there beef between Patriot Front? Like, do you disagree with some of the things they do?

BJ: Yeah, obviously we have members that aren’t white, so they’re not real happy with that.

SM: Mhm. How do you guys view race? How do you see race?

BJ: I mean, that would be up to each individual person, but obviously in my mind, America has been a multi-racial country, well, from the beginning, since its founding. And you know, there are things that point to, OK it was founded with this European culture or this or that. But the bottom line, the problem I run into when I left the racial movement, the problem I run into with racial is currently, because I’ve had a discussion with the leader of Patriot Front from before, many, many years ago.

SM: Thomas Rousseau, yeah.

BJ: Yeah, they have a platform that says, basically, you know, no non-white person is a quote-unquote “real American.” Well, I mean, the first guy killed in the Revolutionary War was Black, so at every point our white ancestors had the opportunity to probably make this a whiter or an all-white country, and they failed to do so. When they took land from the Indians, they didn’t expel them all the way out. They carved out a place for them. When we took five or six states from Mexico, we didn’t expel them. They carved out a place for them. When they wanted the railroads built, they brought in Chinese. When they wanted cotton, they brought in Africans, so on and so forth. And that continues to this day. So, there are a lot of racial issues in this country, I think some of them are legitimate, especially between the fact that the culturally Blacks and whites just can’t seem to align, no matter how much time goes by and how much money gets spent on it, but at the same time, whatever’s going to come about, whatever solution’s going to come about, I mean, we have to have to play the hand we’re dealt, and the more people that want to help, the better. I think the racial movements are isolating themselves entirely too much, not only by pitting all the other races against them, but the amount of white people who will also never support them when they have that platform is pretty staggering.

SM: You were obviously once a member of the Ku Klux Klan, you mentioned you joined in the, in your late teens, now you’re 50 years old. Do you still believe we’re in a white supremacist nation?

BJ: No, quite the opposite.

SM: What changed you? What made you change?

BJ: Well, when I was in the Ku Klux Klan, I wouldn’t believe that we’re in a white supremacist nation. I believed that the nation was the opposite, and that we had to defend ourselves. Like, if it was a white supremacist nation, no one’s gonna join a white supremacist group, they wouldn’t have to.