The following piece is an opinion and does not reflect the views of The Eagle and its staff. All opinions are edited for grammar, style and argument structure and fact-checked, but the opinions are the writer’s own.
Queer people do not disappear when a link breaks. But this breakage does not happen out of nowhere; the erasure of a marginalized group must be set into motion by a powerful force. In the case of LGBTQ+ people, President Donald Trump has been enemy number one.
On day one of his second term, Trump signed an executive order called “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” In the order, he called former President Joe Biden’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs “illegal and immoral discrimination programs,” arguing that “Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect.”
Many of Trump’s actions are purportedly for the benefit of all Americans, rather than the marginalized people who benefit from DEI programs specifically tailored to their identities because they have historically been set back by oppressive systems. However, the actions that have followed this executive order seem to represent the idea that Trump and his administration do not care whether queer people live or die.
Following the order, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed HIV-related content from its website as a part of the mass removal of gender-related language by the agency. Employees received messages to remove anything related to “gender ideology” under a fast-approaching deadline. Though not all HIV-related pages included gender terminology, employees said they took more than necessary down to meet the deadline.
A federal judge ordered the CDC to temporarily restore the pages after a petition by Doctors for America, arguing that the deletion put “everyday Americans and most acutely, underprivileged Americans” at risk. Nevertheless, any limits on information put people at risk. I do not doubt that Trump could easily defeat such a court order with ease and force the CDC to remove this pertinent information once more.
Approximately 1.2 million Americans have HIV according to the CDC, and most importantly, in this case, roughly 13 percent of them don’t know they have it. So, since over one in ten people are unaware or undiagnosed, publicly available information is essential. The virus disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic people, gay and bisexual men and transgender people. Experts say that Trump’s efforts to ban DEI will curb the CDC’s work addressing the specific challenges of these marginalized groups, because acknowledging and addressing these disparities is necessary for the work to be effective.
It should come as no surprise that Trump and his administration are actively working against the health of queer people. During his first term, he created the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division through the Department of Health and Human Services, allowing healthcare providers to more easily deny people medical care based on religious values.
According to the American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics, “Justice dictates that physicians provide care to all who need it, and it is illegal for a physician to refuse services based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.” However, it soon after notes that there are no clear answers to whether “an ethic of care demand[s] that a physician accept every patient.” A pinnacle of most religions is to love thy neighbor, and the ultimate act of love is to provide someone with a healthy life when that is your job in the first place.
Trans people have been at the forefront of Trump’s anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry in his second term. The aforementioned executive order also allowed for other deletions of important trans and queer history.
Most notable to me was the removal of several references to queer and trans people from the Stonewall National Monument’s website. The website previously referred to the queer community as it is commonly called — LGBTQ+ — but now only refers to the group as LGB, seemingly erasing the significance of trans and overall queer groups. Trans activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera led what the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative correctly calls “the resistance we now celebrate as the foundation of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.” The movement would not be the same without them.
The International Travel page of the United States Department of State website made a similar move by incorrectly referring to the community as “LGB,” despite maintaining the point that queer “travelers can face special challenges abroad. Laws and attitudes in some countries may affect safety and ease of travel.” It is concerning that the website’s authors can acknowledge that these dangers exist for queer people while traveling abroad, but they do not seem to care about the fact that the dangers exist for trans people too.
As a queer person and as someone who knows that those in my community are human and deserving of respect, empathy and care, my first reaction to this erasure is to lose hope. Anti-queer and trans rhetoric by the Trump administration is being accompanied by real anti-LGBTQ+ policy, often directly targeting trans communities.
Though it is a loss for LGBTQ+ people to be excluded from government resources, especially when our health and livelihood depend on it, queer people and our allies should acknowledge that we have the resources to spread information about our lives and causes without the help of a homophobic and transphobic administration. I find it comforting to remember that nothing lasts forever. Though the tangible anti-queer policy by the Trump administration will set our movements back, we have the power to continue fighting, and love will always win.
Quinn Volpe is a junior in the School of Communication and Kogod School of Business and the assistant opinion editor for The Eagle.
This article was edited by Alana Parker and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Olivia Citarella, Emma Brown and Nicole Kariuki.
