News
LGBTQ Trump supporters tiptoe away from president after U.S. Capitol attack
One-time won’t commit to forcibly removing Trump from office
In the aftermath of the assault on the U.S. Capitol instigated by President Trump, his one-time LGBTQ supporters are now distancing themselves from him without outright renouncing their previous support.
Many LGBTQ Trump supporters didn’t respond to the Washington Blade’s request for comment. Others condemned the violence at the U.S. Capitol, but sought to artfully distance themselves from Trump while minimizing their previous support for him as an incumbent president running for re-election in 2020.
One-time Trump supporters — amid talk of Trump being forced to resign, impeached and removed from office or being stripped of the presidency through never-before invoked powers of executive officers under the 25th Amendment — wouldn’t commit to supporting any of those outcomes.
Charles Moran, managing director of Log Cabin Republicans, condemned the assault on the U.S. Capitol as “a dark day in the current chapter of American history,” but compared it to racial unrest of 2020 and said “it brought into the new year the anger and violence that we experienced only recently in the summer of 2020.”
“That said, the violence and un-American acts committed yesterday by those who stormed the Capitol building were completely unacceptable and those who took part in trying to forcefully stop our democracy from working should be identified, arrested, tried and punished to the fullest extent of the law,” Moran said, “Full stop, no exceptions.”
Moran said Log Cabin Republicans, which endorsed Trump in the 2020 election, learned from the success it enjoyed in increasing the LGBTQ vote for the Republican presidential nominee (according to exit polls) but said those efforts were never about Trump himself.
“While the gay left has had a deranged obsession with Donald Trump, our movement has never been about one man,” Moran said. “We can and will achieve continued success, with or without Donald Trump.”
Moran also side-stepped the issue of what should happen with Trump amid talk of removing him from office before end of his presidential term.
“President Trump’s last day in office will be January 20, when Vice President Biden will be sworn into office,” Moran said. “I don’t know what President Trump will do next. The Republican Party today, however, is transformed, and I think for the better.”
Chad Felix Greene, who wrote a self-published book “Without Context,” disputing each of the LGBTQ media watchdog GLAAD’s accounts of anti-LGBTQ attacks by Trump, told the Blade the assault on the Capitol was “an act of domestic terrorism and should not be tolerated.”
“The right has attracted a population of people that think anarchy and obscenity are political activism,” Greene added. “White supremacists, antisemites and other assorted idiots latched onto the MAGA movement because it was rebellious and counter culture and controversial.”
Greene said he lost his respect for Trump “when he began behaving as a conspiratorial voice leading his followers into madness,” and is now looking to Mike Pence for leadership, despite the vice president’s long anti-LGBTQ record.
“While I appreciated [Trump’s] policies as a leader, he proved himself to be a threat to everything we built over the last four years over his ego,” Greene added. “Pence is the perfect mirror image of this. Consistent. Calm. Trustworthy and a man of integrity. He’s not the face of what MAGA became as an aggressive and passionate movement. He reminded us of what good Republican and conservative leadership can be.”
Greene said he expects Trump to “leave office” and “won’t support” him in future political efforts, but at the same time doesn’t back efforts to forcibly remove the president from office before the end of his term.
“Honestly it’s in two weeks,” Greene said. “He reluctantly gave a statement on an orderly exit. I think current efforts at removing him are political and short-sighted. We’ve completely forgotten the stimulus and vaccine rollout that needs attention. Trump is done. Further political theater seems petty and unnecessary to me.”
Dan Innis, a Republican former New Hampshire state senator who supported Trump and after the 2020 election said on Twitter he wouldn’t accept the results, told the Blade the assault on the U.S. Capitol was “very sad,” but wouldn’t give up his previous position.
“My concerns about the validity of the election remain,” Innis said. “If the election was fair, and I hope it was, show us. Why the secrecy? If there is nothing to hide, don’t hide it. However, given yesterday’s events, we will never know the truth about the election. As a result, millions of Americans, me included, will forever doubt the integrity of the American election process.”
Innis also sought to minimize Trump as a leader of the conservative movement, adding “vanquishing” him “will not change my views, or the views of those millions” who don’t trust the nation’s leaders and institutions.
“Trump was nothing but a figurehead of a larger movement, and that movement is not going to just go away just because Trump goes away,” Innis said. “If the Democrats, including Joe Biden, think that is going to happen, I think they will be surprised.”
The distancing from Trump corresponds to the growing list of administration aides resigning in the aftermath of the assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Among them was Tyler Goodspeed, who’s gay and was acting chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, who resigned Thursday. “The events of yesterday made my position no longer tenable,” Goodspeed was quoted as saying to the New York Times.
But several other LGBTQ officials with ties to Trump had little to say for themselves and didn’t respond to the Blade’s request for comment. Among them was Richard Grenell, who was the face of LGBTQ outreach for Trump’s re-election. Although Grenell condemned the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Twitter as it was unfolding, by the next day his focus shifted to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Iran, Big Tech and the media, but not Trump.
Brandon Straka, the gay conservative who founded the “Walk Away” movement and was among the speakers at the “Stop the Steal” rally that led to the assault on the U.S. Capitol also didn’t respond to the Blade’s request for comment.
After the assault, Straka posted on Twitter a one-hour video skirting the violence and expressing outrage at the rioters and issued a call to “completely gut the conservative movement and start again.” On Friday, Straka indignantly tweeted about Facebook disabling the “Walk Away” campaign on the social media platform.
Also not responding to the Blade was Gregory Angelo, who cheered Trump on after stepping down as head of the Log Cabin Republicans and later took a job at the Trump White House; and Rob Smith, a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” activist who later became a chief spokesperson for the pro-Trump student group Turning Point USA.
Other LGBTQ conservatives who spoke to the Blade, but didn’t support Trump for re-election in 2020, weren’t shy about saying the assault on the U.S. Capitol confirmed their fears about him.
Brad Polumbo, a D.C.-based conservative journalist and host of the podcast “Breaking Brad,” said the Trump administration yielded good policy — including for LGBTQ people, despite Trump’s anti-LGBTQ reputation — but the recent events proved him right.
“The crazed mob attack on the Capitol and President Trump’s denial of the election results that fomented it, for me, vindicate the decision to never get on board the Trump train,” Polumbo said. “From tax cuts to deregulation to the confirmation of several excellent Supreme Court justices to Middle East peace deals and an unprecedented openness to gay Americans, there are many successes gay conservatives like me can take away from the Trump presidency. But recent events have also served as a painful reminder to LGBT conservatives, and all conservatives, really, that policy aside, our leaders’ character matters.”
Jennifer Williams, a New Jersey-based Republican transgender advocate who challenged Trump over his supporters using anti-trans campaign tactics that ended up failing in the 2020 election, denounced the assault on the U.S. Capitol.
“The people who stormed and violently entered the Capitol to disrupt yesterday’s election certification acted not as Americans, but as vandals to democracy,” Williams said. “Every single one of the perpetrators should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. These people did not act as Republicans, because what they did is not in the spirit of what Republicans stand for or how we conduct ourselves. However, that is the least of my worries. I fear our children seeing our country as they saw it yesterday.”
Williams, who said the results of the 2020 election are clear, issued a clarion call that the time has come for Trump to step down before the end of his term, or that officials should do the job for him.
“President Trump should consider stepping down and/or ceding his day-to-day authority to Vice President Pence for these last few days in order to restore a sense of peace to our country,” Williams said. “The president and his son — after using strong anti-transgender and vulgar language in his own speech — encouraged the protesters to march on our Capitol building. That is unconscionable and every American, liberal or conservative and LGBTQ or not, must recognize this. We are a country of laws and freedom, not anarchy and mob rule.”
2026 Midterm Elections
Ken Paxton wins Texas Republican primary runoff
LGBTQ rights opponent will face Democrat James Talarico in November
Attorney General Ken Paxton won the Republican Senate primary in Texas on Tuesday, ousting incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.
Paxton won the primary against the four-term incumbent in large part due to President Donald Trump’s endorsement. Despite Cornyn voting with Trump more than 90 percent of the time, political insiders say being supportive isn’t enough to win Trump’s endorsement anymore — Republican candidates need to embrace the full MAGA image, something Paxton has done.
Paxton has served as Texas attorney general since 2015 and, before that, worked as a Texas state representative. He has approached both roles with what LGBTQ activists call a “consistently Anti-LGBTQ+ Record.” Following the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges — the case that made same-sex marriage the law of the land — Paxton advised Texas county clerks they could refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples on religious grounds.
His anti-LGBTQ crusade doesn’t stop at fighting against marriage equality.
Paxton has repeatedly demanded medical records for transgender youth in multiple states — including Texas, Georgia, and Washington — in hopes of making the practice illegal. His anti-trans actions go far past medical records. Paxton issued an opinion barring trans Texans from changing the sex on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates, claiming any changes made were “unlawfully altered,” and helped the DOJ reach an agreement with a Texas’s children’s hospital for providing minors gender-affirming care, eventually leading to a 10 million dollar settlement. He also authored a non-legally binding opinion equating gender-affirming healthcare for youth to child abuse.
In addition to his long history of anti-LGBTQ policy in the Lone Star State, Paxton is no stranger to controversy.
Multiple impeachment efforts brought against him in the state House of Representatives for “abuse of office” — with the state Senate later acquitting him — allegations that he used his office to assist large campaign donors, namely Nate Paul, and a widely publicized separation from his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, all impacted his run for the U.S. Senate seat — but not enough to keep him from the office.
Lynne Bowman, vice president of campaigns at the Human Rights Campaign, issued a statement following the announcement of Paxton’s primary win.
“Texans have a clear choice this fall, and an opportunity to reject failed policies that hurt all families,” Bowman sent to the Blade via email. “Ken Paxton is so out of step that he has fought to undercut marriage equality and spent time demanding personal medical records for young people who do not even live in Texas, all while becoming the most corrupt politician in America. The more than 2 million Equality Voters in Texas will send him packing.”
Paxton will face off against Democratic hopeful and vocal Trump critic James Talarico in the fall.
Talarico, who won the Democratic primary in April against Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, has been a vocal supporter of LGBTQ rights, citing his ministry work as the source of his support for the community.
The race for Texas’s Senate seat will be decided on Nov. 3.
China
China’s top court acknowledges anti-LGBTQ discrimination
Postgraduate student petitioned for legal clarification
China’s Supreme People’s Court on May 8 issued a rare response to a petition involving LGBTQ discrimination.
In a surprising response; it discussed sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. The response also mentioned workplace discrimination, public humiliation, and school bullying, language considered uncommon from China’s legal system.
The response stemmed from a proposal submitted by a postgraduate student in Qingdao through China’s xinfang petition system on March 25, urging the court to establish clearer judicial standards against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Six weeks later, the Supreme People’s Court Research Office issued a written reply.
The Research Office is an internal legal and policy body within the Supreme People’s Court. It studies legal issues, drafts judicial guidance, and responds to legal inquiries submitted through official channels. Its responses do not carry the same legal weight as a judicial interpretation or court ruling.
“The opinions and suggestions you raised are of great value,” reads a translated version of the Supreme People’s Court Research Office response. “In order to thoroughly implement the Constitution, Civil Code, Employment Promotion Law and other legal provisions, and effectively protect citizens’ personality rights from infringement, the Supreme People’s Court has guided local courts at all levels to handle a number of related cases, and through typical cases and other forms has clarified adjudication rules.”
The response stated that courts may determine public insults, defamation and, discriminatory conduct targeting sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression as infringement of personality rights. It also said employers treating individuals differently in hiring, employment, transfer or dismissal based on those characteristics could face employment discrimination claims. Schools could also bear legal responsibility for improper discipline or bullying involving students based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, according to the response.
“It’s not a systematic change from the authorities recognizing LGBTQ rights,” said Renn Hao, an LGBTQ activist in China. “However, it’s an informal statement from the Supreme Court. According to a scholar researching LGBTQ legal cases in China, courts are recognizing more cases involving LGBTQ discrimination and same-sex partners through their verdicts.”
China decriminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations in 1997 and removed homosexuality from the country’s list of mental disorders four years later. Chinese law, however, does not recognize same-sex relationships.
Public advocacy involving LGBTQ issues also remains tightly controlled. Authorities in recent years have continued restricting community organizing, public events, and online expression involving sexual minorities.
Discussions involving LGBTQ issues are also frequently censored on Chinese social media platforms.
Activists and advocacy groups say Chinese authorities in recent years have removed online content, shut down LGBTQ student group accounts and restricted public discussion involving sexual minority issues. After the Supreme People’s Court response began circulating online, related posts and articles were also removed from some Chinese platforms.
“It may still be too early to fully assess the long-term impact, as this development has only just happened and the situation is still unfolding,” said Xiaogang Wei, a Beijing-based LGBTQ rights activist, filmmaker, and founder of the China Rainbow Collective Foundation. “Although the reply is not legally binding, it represents a rare form of institutional acknowledgment of SOGIE-related discrimination in China. For Chinese LGBTQ people and advocates, this could become a meaningful reference point for future legal advocacy, public communication, and community awareness.”
Wei said the rapid removal of related posts and articles limited the development’s broader public impact and underscored how fragile LGBTQ visibility remains in China.
“This is why we believe it is important to continue sharing verified information and ensuring that this development is not erased from public understanding,” Wei said.
Chinese courts in recent years have also heard a number of LGBTQ-related employment discrimination cases, despite the absence of explicit nationwide protections based on sexual orientation or gender identity. In one notable case, the Supreme People’s Court in 2018 formally recognized “equal employment rights disputes” as a legal cause of action, allowing some discrimination-related cases to proceed through the courts.
Chinese courts have previously handled several LGBTQ-related disputes involving employment discrimination, custody, and so-called conversion therapy. In 2024, a Beijing court drew attention after recognizing visitation rights for a child involving a same sex couple, a decision activists described as a milestone for LGBTQ families in China.
District of Columbia
Man accused of threatening to shoot D.C. bar employee after making anti-gay slurs
May 24 incident took place near Black Pride events on U Street
D.C. police on Sunday, May 24, at around 4:20 p.m. arrested a Maryland man for allegedly threatening to shoot an employee while using anti-gay slurs at Ben’s Next Door restaurant and bar at 1211 U St., N.W.
According to a statement released by police and a police incident report, the arrested man, identified as Delonte Fraley, 32, of Accokeek, Md., made the threats after the employee told a bartender not to serve the man alcohol.
“The suspect overheard the employee and threatened to shoot the employee and used homophobic slurs against the employee,” the police statement says. “When the employee left the restaurant for the day, the suspect was standing near the employee’s vehicle,” it says.
“The employee returned to the restaurant and called the police,” the statement continues. “The suspect was apprehended by responding officers,” it says.
The police statement says the arresting officers charged Fraley with Felony Threats (Hate/Bias).
D.C. Superior Court records show prosecutors with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C., which prosecutes D.C. criminal cases, escalated the charge to Threatening to Injure or Kidnap a Person (Bias-Related Hate Crime).
The incident occurred during Memorial Day weekend when thousands of visitors and D.C. area LGBTQ advocates and supporters were attending D.C. Black Pride events held in locations across the city, including Black Pride parties hosted by LGBTQ bars in the U Street entertainment area near Ben’s Next Door.
Among the nearby LGBTQ bars hosting D.C. Black Pride events were Nellie’s Sports Bar and Thurst Lounge. Ben’s Next Door is located next to the popular longtime U Street eatery Ben’s Chili Bowl.
Court records show that Judge Robert R. Rigsby at a May 25 presentment hearing released Fraley on personal recognizance with a stay-away order — the details of which were not publicly disclosed pending a June 4 preliminary hearing.
A more detailed arrest affidavit filed in court by D.C. police says Fraley allegedly confronted the employee at Ben’s Next Door with anti-gay slurs on the day prior to his arrest.
“The complainant told the defendant that because he used homophobic slurs towards himself previously on May 23, 2026, and his hostess, as well as making threats to the complainant and calling him a faggot, he was unable to stay in the establishment,” the affidavit states.
It adds, “The defendant became irate stating, ‘I know where your Tesla is at. See me outside faggot, I will slap your ass’ and ‘I will shoot your ass.’” The affidavit says the complainant confirmed to police the Tesla referred to by Fraley was his vehicle. It says as the victim walked toward his car after getting off work, he saw Fraley standing directly in front of the car.
“The complainant stated he felt unsafe while the defendant was standing in front of his vehicle because he felt the defendant was capable of carrying out those threats,” says the affidavit. It says the victim then decided to return to the restaurant and call police without the defendant having seen him.
“The defendant was placed under arrest for Felony Threats Hate/Bias and was transported to the Third District Station for processing,” the affidavit concludes.
It couldn’t immediately be determined whether the victim identifies as LGBTQ or whether any of the Ben’s Next Door patrons had been involved with D.C. Black Pride.
“Established in 2008, Ben’s Next Door is a family-owned and operated restaurant and bar on U Street, Northwest in Washington, D.C.,” a statement on its website says. “As a Black-owned establishment, it’s our goal to deliver a warm, welcoming, familiar, and communal vibe to all guests,” the statement says.
Ken Paxton wins Texas Republican primary runoff
China’s top court acknowledges anti-LGBTQ discrimination
Man accused of threatening to shoot D.C. bar employee after making anti-gay slurs
Bree Fram’s congressional campaign ends but her fight continues
