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The road to DADT repeal — remember their names

‘Maybe not in my lifetime, but we are going to win in the end’

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4 years ago

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Lt. Dan Choi handcuffs himself to the White House fence in 2010. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

“Maybe not in my lifetime, but we are going to win in the end.” – Air Force TSgt. Leonard Matlovich, Sept. 19, 1975.

The road to repeal of the codified charade known colloquially as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT), masquerading as something different than the Pentagon policy ban dating to World War II, was long and built by many hands. While a straight-identified Congress and president were necessary to reach the destination, LGBT Americans made it happen. But “DADT Speak” can unintentionally erase the some 100,000 discharged before its creation. The following focuses on some of the First Volunteers; those very few service members who chose to risk their careers by outing themselves, putting faces to the ban, without which it would still be destroying lives.

In March 1974, Leonard Matlovich was the happiest he’d ever been in his life. It had taken him until he was 30, and surviving thoughts of suicide-by-war and direct suicide, to finally accept and embrace that he was gay, and now he had a job that he loved: Race Relations Instructor for the Air Force. He was so good in this job that he was sent around the country to train other instructors. An African-American fellow instructor said that, “He has the classroom in the palm of his hand.” 

His department chief wrote, “As a Race Relations Instructor there is none better. His mastery of group dynamics and group facilitation has enabled him to conduct seminar after seminar around the difficult and sensitive subject of race relations without incident. He should be promoted to Master Sergeant well ahead of his contemporaries.” 

And then he read an interview with Frank Kameny in the Air Force Times.

World War II veteran Frank Kameny had a genius IQ and Harvard Ph.D. in astronomy. Hired by the Army Map Service (AMS) in 1957, his dream of being one of the first astronauts, in fact, his entire scientific career, crashed and burned when the AMS learned he was gay. LGBs were already banned in the military; now, per Republican President Dwight Eisenhower’s Executive Order banning “sexual perversion” among civilian federal employees, he was fired five months later, and, worse, blackballed from employment by any other federal agency or private company or university receiving federal funding.

Unaffiliated with any gay group, he did what no other fired gay person had done. Eight years before Stonewall, he appealed his case against the Secretary of the Army to the Supreme Court in a self-penned brief whose eloquent fury still stuns today.

“The government’s regulations, policies, practices and procedures, as applied in the instant case to petitioner specifically, and as applied to homosexuals generally [including in the military], are a stench in the nostrils of decent people, an offense against morality, an abandonment of reason, an affront to human dignity, an improper restraint upon proper freedom and liberty, a disgrace to any civilized society, and a violation of all that this nation stands for. These policies, practices, procedures, and regulation have gone too long unquestioned, and too long unexamined by the courts.”

Yale Law School professor William Eskridge, Jr., later called it revolutionary, “the birth of Gaylegal Equality Arguments”; and Frank “the Rosa Parks and the Martin Luther King and the Thurgood Marshall of the gay rights movement.”

In a “court of last appeal” letter to newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy in May 1961, two months after the Court refused to hear his case, Kameny, still on his own, also denounced “the policies, practices, and official attitudes of the military” and “less-than-fully-honorable discharges.”

That November he cofounded the militant Mattachine Society of Washington (MSW; not a chapter of original Mattachine) whose four missions included challenging military homophobia— 29 years before the creation of the first national group dedicated to fighting the ban, and 32 years before its codification into DADT.

MSW’s unprecedented three pickets of the White House in 1965 included signs protesting the ban, and he led a picket at the Pentagon itself. 

 “STOP Wasting Taxpayers Money on Hunts for HOMOSEXUALS.” “65,000 Homosexual Sailors DEMAND NEW NAVY POLICY.” “Quarter Million Homosexual American Servicemen & Women Protest Armed Services Policies.” “15 Million U.S. Homosexuals Protest Treatment by Armed Forces.”

That year the Navy alone kicked out at least 1,365—some 100 more than all the branches kicked out in the worst year under DADT. 

The ban was the subject of the first same day, nationally coordinated gay rights protests in 1966. Frank led another Pentagon picket then flew to New York City to lead a protest there. He was essentially the only non-lawyer source of help for LGB service members trying to avoid being kicked out or at least be granted an Honorable Discharge characterization. 

Since at least 1964, he’d been looking for a “perfect test case” — a service member with a clean record willing to out themselves and fight the ban in court. Leonard Matlovich read that in the Air Force Times and called him describing his three tours in Vietnam, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and outstanding performance ratings. After a number of meetings, Leonard agreed to carry the banner, coming out on the front page of The New York Times and on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite on Memorial Day 1975.

The response was seismic, rippling from the Times to the Kokomo, Indiana, Tribune and around the world. So unlike the mainstream concept of a gay male one reporter asked him if he was really gay. The effect was magnified when he appeared in uniform on the cover of Time magazine with the bold, black caption “I Am a Homosexual”—putting a face on the ban for millions for the first time. Gay historian Nathaniel Frank, author of the definitive book on the evolution of DADT, “Unfriendly Fire,” said, “it began a national discussion on gay rights.” 

Accounts of his four-day discharge hearing filled newspapers and TV screens. When the Air Force board couldn’t see past “Homosexual” to the perfect airman, they recommended his discharge; Leonard telling the crush of reporters outside: “Maybe not in my lifetime, but we are going to win in the end.” He failed to overturn the ban, but a 1981 Pentagon mandate that, barring extenuating circumstances such as sex on base, all discharge characterizations for gays should be Honorable can be linked to his case. No one imagined how short his lifetime would be, but he filled it fighting for gay equality. Frank was the lead honorary pallbearer, walking by the horse-drawn caisson carrying his body in 1988, and today his grave in Washington’s Congressional Cemetery with its iconic gravestone is a place of pilgrimage next to a Veterans Administration cenotaph for Frank.

“Exemplary” Army Reserve Drill Instructor Miriam Ben-Shalom was honorably discharged in 1976 after refusing to deny she was a lesbian during questioning about her criticizing the discharge of Leonard Matlovich. In 1980, a federal judge ruled that her discharge violated the First, Fifth, and Ninth amendments of the Constitution—the first court ruling that the ban was unconstitutional and 30 years before the ruling against DADT in the Log Cabin Republicans challenge—and ordered her reinstated. The Army simply ignored the order for seven years; until a Circuit Court forced them to return her to duty. But they refused to allow her to reenlist at the end of that period of service. 

The Supreme Court refused to hear her appeal in February 1990. Three months later, she and five other veterans founded Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Veterans of America, the first such national lobby group; today American Veterans for Equal Rights (AVER). She and several other veterans were arrested at the White House in 1993 protesting the ban’s refashioning as DADT. She was arrested there again in 2010 protesting President Obama’s slow walk on repeal along with eight fellow veterans and four civilians including myself.

Sgt. Perry Watkins’ 16-year adventure in the U.S. Army began when Lyndon Johnson was president and would not end until George Bush père sat in the Oval Office. It spanned the globe, sometimes a comedy, sometimes a tragedy. It was sometimes even a musical comedy—but it was always, just as the ban itself, nonsensical; here ignoring that he was gay, there trying to kick him out because he was gay. Year after year, time after time, he demanded justice; and, in the end, it was his own truth that set him free—the truth he had told from the very beginning, during his draft physical in 1967 when he was 19 and checked the box indicating “homosexual tendencies.” 

The first gay African-American soldier to make headlines, while the Army ignored a court order to reinstate Miriam, in May 1982, Watkins also became the first out gay service member returned to duty by a court. But he was kicked out again, and, eventually, the Supreme Court let a lower court ruling stand that he should be reinstated in the name of fairness. Like Leonard, for whom he was an honorary pallbearer in 1988, he chose a settlement; passing himself in 1996. 

Petty Officer Keith Meinhold, a certified Master Training Specialist teaching sonar crews on P-3 Orion aircraft how to hunt submarines outed himself on ABC’s World News Tonight on May 19, 1992. Formerly recognized as “Aircrew Instructor of the Year,” his usually perfect performance ratings drop. Without any evidence, they claimed knowledge of his sexual orientation had “adversely affected his performance of duty and adversely affected the good order and discipline.” Though given an honorable discharge he sued and was ordered reinstated. Overall, his return was met positively, and his crew continued to win new awards. He retired four years later with full military honors, naval band music, a Navy Achievement Medal, and a 60-foot American flag.

Purposely coinciding with Meinhold’s coming out the same day, 25-year old Navy Lieutenant Junior Grade Tracy Thorne, first in his class in flight training, outed himself on “Nightline.” A bombardier-navigator flying A6 Intruders, like a ship on a roiling sea, his status repeatedly changed due to the unknowns of what might happen—or not—to the ban following Bill Clinton’s possible election, then election. He joined a five-week, 32-city cross-country veterans bus Tour of Duty to try to drum up public support for an end to the ban. He testified against the ban before the Senate Armed Services Committee — homophobic Sen. Sam Nunn’s dog and pony show where he was jeered by 1,000 sailors and Marines. To wild applause and laughter, infamous racist Sen. Strom Thurmond told him, “Your lifestyle is not normal. It’s not normal for a man to want to be with a man or a woman with a woman. Have you considered getting help from a medical or psychiatric standpoint?” He filed a lawsuit in 1994 and returned to active duty with the stipulation that the Navy could attempt to discharge him under DADT. In 1995, he was discharged. He sued again; his challenge ending when the Supreme Court refused to hear his case.

Their high-profile outings were planned to coincide with the same-day introduction of the long forgotten end-the-ban Military Freedom Act of 1992. Popular war hero and chair of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell’s statements to Congress killed not only that bill but crippled Bill Clinton’s intentions even before he had the party’s nomination. Powell: “Skin color is a benign, non-behavioral characteristic. Sexual orientation is perhaps the most profound of human behavioral characteristics.” His disingenuous, pseudo intellectual way of saying, “they choose to be gay so it’s not a civil rights issue.”

Navy Reserve Lieutenant Zoe Dunning outed herself at a Jan. 16, 1993, rally in support of Keith Meinhold. She was allowed to stay in after convincing a board that “status” did not equal “conduct” — a finding immediately forbidden in future cases by the Pentagon. By retirement in 2007, she’d risen to the rank of commander, having served openly for more than 13 years. In December 2010, as co-chair of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) Board of Governors, she was invited to stand next to the president as he signed the provisional DADT repeal bill. Co-founder Dixon Osburn just released “Mission Possible,” his account of the crucial role SLDN played in ending the ban.

Former Marine of the Year Sergeant Justin Elzie had served 10 years when he outed himself on “World News Tonight” on Jan. 29, 1993. The Corps reneged on their existing approval for his early separation in April with benefits, moving to honorably discharge him immediately with none. He testified to Congress in support of ending the policy ban. A judge ordered he be retained until his legal challenge was resolved. He eventually settled out of court, receiving the early retirement bonus after having served as an out gay Marine for four more years during which he was recommended for promotion three times. He was one of our 13 arrested at the White House in November 2010 demanding DADT repeal.

Twenty-three-year old Desert Storm veteran and former Sixth Army Soldier of the Year Joe Zuniga outed himself at a huge event honoring gay military activists the night before the April 1993 March on Washington, including Meinhold and Thorne. “The roar was deafening. People cried. People hugged each other.” – The Washington Post. The next morning the three joined the veterans’ contingent in the march with hundreds of thousands.

Conversely, his Army command was enraged, discharging him, however honorably, in record time—in less than a month. They also brutally demoted him from Sergeant to Specialist after falsely accusing him of wearing a decoration he had not earned. His battalion commander melodramatically threw newspapers in which his story had appeared into a trashcan during his administrative hearing. But he continued to speak out all across America, and appeared in the historic first national gay TV ad; created for the Campaign for Military Service, an ad hoc group representing multiple existing gay groups hoping to offset the rabidly homophobic campaign of those in and out of the Democratic-controlled Congress determined to prevent President Bill Clinton from ending the ban. He also travelled the country and TV newsrooms trying to promote public support.

Army First Lieutenant and Iraq veteran Dan Choi came out on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on March 19, 2009, resulting in his discharge in June 2010. Far from just another came-out-on-TV story, Dan was the first Asian-American to become a leader in the anti-ban movement, and shook that movement when he began to engage in nonviolent direct action in the second year of the Obama administration after the president broke his promise to start working with Congress to end DADT when he took office. Dan allied with new direct action group GetEQUAL, and a small but growing number of people joined him in handcuffing themselves to the White House fence (including transgender veteran Autumn Sandeen); each time growing more media coverage, never more critical than in November 2010 when word went round that the repeal provision bill, stalled in the lame duck Congress, was going to be withdrawn likely damning the chance for repeal for years. Republicans would take over the House in 2011.

I have no proof that the action Dan led that month, joined by Miriam, Justin, et al., helped salvage the bill and, thus, repeal. I can only say that I am proud to have been next to them; one wrist handcuffed to the White House fence behind me; and holding Leonard’s Time magazine cover aloft with my free hand.

“Remember your roots, your history, and the forebears’ shoulders on which you stand.” – Marion Wright Edelman. 

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Commentary

America’s detransition: The far-right’s coordinated attack on climate policy and trans rights

Progress framed as ‘mistake that must be undone’

Published

2 weeks ago

on

April 7, 2025

By

Beach erosion in Fire Island Pines, N.Y. The far-right has launched a coordinated attack on climate policy and transgender rights. (Photo courtesy of Savannah Farrell / Actum)

What if the far-right’s endgame isn’t just stopping progress, but erasing it altogether? From banning trans healthcare to reversing climate policies, they aren’t just resisting change — they’re trying to force the world back into an imaginary past that never existed.

Across climate policy and trans rights, the right isn’t just opposing change — it’s actively detransitioning America, unraveling progress under the guise of “common sense” and “restoring order.” But this isn’t just about ideology. It’s about power.

From pulling out of the Paris Agreement to banning gender-affirming healthcare, the right has perfected a political strategy that frames progress as a mistake that must be undone. Whether it’s climate action or trans visibility, any step toward justice is framed as dangerous, unnatural, and in need of correction.

And if we look closer, these attacks aren’t just similar — they are deeply connected. By comparing the right’s climate rollbacks and its war on trans rights, we can see a broader strategy at work: One that fuels fear, manufactures doubt, and ultimately serves the interests of those already in control.

The fight isn’t just about policy. It’s about who gets to belong in the future.

The manufactured crisis: Who profits from reversal?

To justify rolling back both trans rights and climate protections, the right leans on manufactured crises — presenting change as a dangerous social experiment gone wrong. And the most effective way to do that? Weaponizing doubt.

Take climate change. Despite overwhelming scientific consensus, climate denialists cherry-pick uncertainties — using rare instances of changing climate models to cast doubt on the entire field.

Similarly, the right has latched onto detransition stories, amplifying a handful of cases where individuals regret transitioning to suggest that all trans people will regret their identities.

By focusing on individual regret rather than systemic realities, these movements create the illusion that climate action and trans healthcare are harmful mistakes rather than necessary progress. The message is clear: We must “correct” these wrongs by detransitioning the country back to a time before this supposed damage occurred.

But who actually benefits from this rollback?

  • Fossil fuel companies profit from climate skepticism, ensuring we remain dependent on dirty energy.
  • Right-wing politicians fundraise off anti-trans fearmongering while avoiding economic issues that might actually improve people’s lives.

By making people believe they are “fighting back” against elites, the right obscures the actual elites profiting from this manufactured outrage.

The spectacle: Turning trans lives and climate policy into distractions

None of this would work without media spectacle. Right-wing politicians and media outlets know that the most effective way to keep people from questioning power is to keep them emotionally invested in a performance.

Take the far right’s obsession with trans youth. They flood the airwaves with panic over puberty blockers, despite the fact that gender-affirming care is exceedingly rare.

A peer-reviewed study analyzing private insurance claims found that out of more than 5 million adolescents ages 8 to 17, only 926 received puberty blockers and 1,927 received hormone therapy between 2018 and 2022.

Similarly, climate policies are attacked as elitist schemes to control the working class — painting green energy initiatives as an attack on personal freedom, just as gender-affirming care is framed as an attack on children.

By shifting the focus onto symbolic enemies — the “radical trans activist” or the “climate elitist” — the right gives people someone to hate while avoiding the real sources of economic and environmental crisis.

And this isn’t just a cultural strategy. It’s a business model.

Capitalism is in the business of creating problems, then selling solutions.

Both strategies ensure that nothing actually changes, while making people feel like they’re participating in a fight for freedom.

It’s a distraction, and it’s working.

Nature as a battleground: The far-right’s fear of fluidity

At its core, the war on trans people and the war on climate action stem from the same fear: The fear of change.

Queer ecology tells us that nature itself is fluid, adaptive, and in constant transition. Yet, the far-right insists on rigid, binary categories:

  • Man/Woman.
  • Fossil Fuels/Renewables.
  • Traditional/Disruptive.

In both cases, fluidity is framed as unnatural — something that must be controlled through political intervention.

But what’s truly unnatural? The attempt to freeze society in time. The climate has always changed. Gender has always been fluid. The far-right isn’t defending nature — they’re defending control.

The far-right’s detransition obsession mirrors climate rollbacks

Capitalism is not interested in actual progress — it only cares about control.

The obsession with detransition mirrors climate rollbacks in that both are framed as necessary corrections to a mistake.

But the goal isn’t returning to a real past. It’s about constructing a version of the past that justifies present oppression.

Neither of these rollbacks is accidental. They are part of a deliberate strategy of control — one that tells us that progress is always temporary and can always be reversed.

Who owns the future?

If we allow the right to detransition America, we risk a world where progress is always reversible, and power remains in the hands of those who benefit from disorder and fear.

The real question isn’t whether these issues are linked — it’s why they were ever separated to begin with. The fights for climate justice and trans rights are one and the same:

  • A fight against the illusion of permanence.
  • A fight against manufactured crisis and controlled reversal.
  • A fight for a future that actually belongs to all of us.

So what do we do?

  • We must refuse to accept their manufactured doubt — trans rights and climate action are not mistakes that need fixing.
  • We must reject their false nostalgia — there is no past to return to, only a future to create.
  • And most importantly, we must recognize that these struggles are connected.

If we fail to see this, we risk allowing reactionary forces to shape the future. But if we understand their playbook, we can disrupt the spectacle and refuse to let them dictate what comes next.

Because this fight isn’t about going back. It’s about moving forward — and making sure no one can take that future away.

Cody Hays is a Ph.D. student at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School, researching media psychology, public understanding of science, and digital misinformation, with a focus on ideological worldviews; they are a Graduate Research Fellow in the MIDaS and Views and Values Labs, executive editor of the Journal of Public Interest Communications, and a nonprofit communications strategist with over a decade of experience in combating disinformation and mobilizing action.

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Commentary

History of D.C. Pride: 1995-2007, a time of growth and inclusion

Rainbow History Project plans expansive WorldPride exhibit

Published

3 weeks ago

on

April 4, 2025

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The Gay Men's Chorus of Washington performs at the Lesbian and Gay Freedom Festival on March 18, 1995. (Washington Blade archive photo by Clint Steib)

In conjunction with WorldPride 2025 the Rainbow History Project is creating an exhibit on the evolution of Pride: “Pickets, Protests, and Parades: The History of Gay Pride in Washington.” In “Freedom on America’s Main Streets,” we discuss how during the 1990s the LGBTQ communities became more prominent across all areas of American life, the circumstances of moving official Pride activities to Pennsylvania Avenue, and the origin of the name “Capital Pride.”

Throughout the 1990s, LGBTQ visibility increased significantly in American society. The LGBTQ community’s presence extended beyond news coverage of AIDS activism, with members participating in various social movements. Gay Black men joined the Million Man March in 1995, carrying banners and signs proclaiming “Black by Birth, Gay by God, Proud by Choice.” Lesbians led abortion-rights rallies, LGBTQ Asians joined Lunar New Year parades, and LGBTQ Latinos marched in Fiesta DC.

Once again, financial difficulties around Pride activities led to the dissolution of the Gay and Lesbian Pride of Washington as an organization and the gay arts and culture non-profit One in Ten took over organizing Pride. One in Ten’s mission was not solely Pride planning, but rather year round activities, including an attempt to make an LGBTQ history museum. Due to the explosion of activities, the crowd sizes, and the growing concerns around feelings of exclusion brought on by the neighborhood’s identity as a primarily gay white male space, in 1995, One in Ten moved the Pride parade and festival out of Dupont Circle to Freedom Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue. 

Although the struggle for bisexual visibility had successfully added the B to the 1993 March on Washington, the push to add Trans and Queer identities to Gay Pride’s name was not yet successful; Pride was reborn as The Freedom Festival. Two years later, in 1997, the Whitman-Walker Clinic became not just a sponsor but also a co-organizer to alleviate some of the organizational and financial challenges. It was during this time that the event was officially renamed Capital Pride.

The name change sparked debate within the community. Frank Kameny, who had organized the 1965 pickets, harshly criticized the new name, arguing that it “certainly provides not an inkling of what we really mean: Pride that we are Gay.” He lamented that the name change “represents Gay shame.” However, others celebrated the inclusivity of the new name. L. A. Nash, a self-identified lesbian, wrote, “Gay is good—Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender is far better.” Elke Martin further supported the change, stating, “A name is your identity, it gives you legitimacy and a seat at the table.” Capital Pride’s official name was now “Capital Pride Festival: A Celebration of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Community and Friends.”

In April 2000, the Millennium March on Washington highlighted divisions within the gay civil rights movement. Unlike previous grassroots marches organized by local activists, this event was orchestrated by national organizations like the Human Rights Campaign. However, its Millennium Pride Festival was by far the largest event with major headliners performing, including Garth Brooks and Pet Shop Boys. Critics argued that these events represented a corporatization of activism that sidelined political demands and local groups struggling for recognition.

In 2001, Capital Pride events were attracting 100,000 attendees. The festival was held on Pennsylvania Avenue with the U.S. Capitol in the background of the main stage. This location, often referred to as “America’s Main Street,” symbolized a significant visibility boost for the LGBTQ community. However, the Washington Post failed to cover the event beyond a simple listing in its events calendar. The outrage that ensued led Capital Pride director Robert York to state: “This is the biggest and best Pride we’ve had, and it is important to see it covered other than in the gay press.”

It wasn’t until 2007, however, that SaVanna Wanzer, a trans woman of color and Capital Pride board member, successfully established Capital Trans Pride. “The transgender community needs its own event,” Wanzer stated, “rather than just using us as entertainment. That’s all we’ve been allowed to do.” Trans Pride’s creation was a significant step toward greater inclusivity within the LGBTQ community.

Our WorldPride 2025 exhibit, “Pickets, Protests, and Parades: The History of Gay Pride in Washington,” will be installed on Freedom Plaza on May 17 to coincide with DC Trans Pride. We need your help to make it happen.

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On this Transgender Day of Visibility, we can’t allow this administration to erase us

All people deserve to have our experiences included in the story of this country

Published

3 weeks ago

on

March 31, 2025

By

The transgender Pride flag drawn near the entrance to the Stonewall National Monument in New York on March 13, 2025. The National Park Service has removed transgender-specific references from the Stonewall National Monument's website. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

By KELLAN BAKER | Since 2009, the world has observed Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV) each March 31. The importance of ‘visibility’ feels especially significant this year, not only as a trans person but for me as a researcher whose career has been centered on equity and inclusion for transgender people. My work over the past 16 years, which has focused on advancing fairness, access, and transparency in health care for gender diverse populations, could not have prepared me for the speed and cruelty at which the Trump administration has worked to literally erase transgender people from public life.  

From banning transgender people from serving openly in the military, blocking access to best practice medical care, and making it all but impossible for us to obtain accurate identification documents that match our gender, the impact of these attacks will be felt for years to come. As a scientist dedicated to fostering the health and wellbeing of diverse communities, I am particularly devastated by the intentional destruction of the federal research infrastructure and statistical systems that are intended to ensure the accurate and comprehensive collection of data on the full diversity of the U.S. population.   

The importance of data cannot be understated. This makes the efforts by the federal government to remove survey questions, erase variables from key data sets, and stifle research even more alarming. By simultaneously removing access to existing datasets, removing gender (and other key measures, such as sexual orientation, race, and disability) from key surveys, terminating federal funding for research projects that include trans people, and censoring research projects at federal data centers, this administration’s goal is to erase the lived experiences of trans people – with the idea that if we don’t exist in data and in research, the federal government can claim that we don’t exist at all.  

Just in the past two months, we’ve seen a rapid decimation of the inclusion of transgender people in federal research and their visibility in the federal statistical system.  

Data sets that included gender measures have disappeared from federal websites. Critical data sets used by federal and state policymakers, public health staff, and researchers, such as the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS), were removed from the CDC website in response to a Trump executive order that made it the policy of the administration to recognize only two sexes, male and female. Although some datasets have been put back up, gender variables have been removed.  

Surveys that had asked about gender identity no longer do. Claiming that the removal of gender identity measures from key national surveys such as the American Housing Survey, Household Pulse Survey, and National Health Interview Survey were “non-substantial,” the Trump administration has essentially skipped the extensive notice and public comment process that is required to make these types of changes—the same process that were used to add gender identity (and sexual orientation) measures.  

In addition, attempts to exclude trans people and other communities facing disparities from surveys will result in a lack of large enough sample sizes to conduct quality data analysis, while reducing any chance of analyzing racial and ethnic differences among trans people. 

Hundreds of grants supporting inclusive research have been terminated. The unprecedented move of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to terminate research grants that include transgender people is just one example of this administration’s rush to eliminate funding from active scientific projects. In many cases, similar agencies are also now required to remove gender identity measures from federally supported surveys. Prominent trans health researchers have watched as their research portfolios are halted, work stopped, staff laid off, and participants left without care. 

At the Institute for Health Research & Policy at Whitman-Walker, for example, we have already had seven studies terminated, with a financial impact that exceeds $3 million. One of these cancelled grants was a multi-year, longitudinal study in partnership with the George Washington University to explore the impact of structural racism and anti-LGBTQ bias on HIV risk among young queer and trans people of color nationwide. The notices of termination for this and other awards clearly spell out the administration’s disdain for groundbreaking research that seeks to understand and address health disparities related to LGBTQ populations, particularly trans people. 

Censoring research. As seen with recent changes implemented by the CDC, the censorship of gender-related terms on federal websites and scientific publications is intended to further the erasure of evidence detailing the disparities faced by LGBTQ people. 

On a day dedicated to honoring the lives and contributions of trans people, the impact that these egregious actions will ultimately have on the health and wellbeing of trans and nonbinary people is chilling. Without access to this knowledge, researchers will not be able to examine the repercussions of the harmful policies put forth by this administration and many states across the country, including bans and restrictions that negatively impact trans people’s physical and mental health, economic security, and educational outcomes. 

Although there has been an effort by non-government entities to collect and store previously collected data prior to the Trump administration’s purges, state surveys, private research firms, and academics cannot fill the void left by the federal government’s decision to halt data inclusion. Ensuring that public entities and researchers can continue to use these datasets is only one piece of the puzzle being taken on by groups such as the Data Rescue Project and repositories like Data Lumos. Work also continues thanks to the efforts of the U.S. Trans Survey, the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), and the important research and analysis of both Gallup and The Pew Research Center. Yet, gaps still exist due to threats of federal funding cuts to organizations committed to safeguarding inclusive data assets in the wake of the administration’s continued assault on trans rights.   

This administration suggests that removing one of the only tools available for identifying an entire population of people is a “non-substantial” action. This not only questions the intelligence of the American people but is a direct insult to trans folks everywhere. All people deserve to be counted and to have our experiences included in the story of this country. Transgender people have always been a part of this country, and even if our nation’s surveys choose to exclude us, we continue to exist—authentically, unapologetically, and forever visible.    

Kellan Baker, Ph.D., M.P.H, M.A., is executive director of the Institute for Health Research & Policy at Whitman-Walker.

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