LGBTQ groups call on Democrats to 'do more' to protect their rights 

LGBTQ rights groups are asking the Democratic Party to “do more” to protect the rights of gay and transgender Americans in the face of threats from the Trump administration and a growing divide within the party over issues like transgender athletes in school sports. 

“With increasing frequency and intensity, the LGBTQ+ community is being targeted substantively as well as rhetorically, in campaigns, state legislatures, Congress and from every corner of the Trump administration,” leaders of nine national and state LGBTQ advocacy groups wrote Monday in a letter to the Democratic National Committee. 

A flurry of executive orders signed by President Trump since his return to office in January explicitly target transgender people, including one that denies transgender identities altogether. Other orders, which federal agencies have since moved to enforce, aim to prohibit trans people from serving openly in the military, block trans athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports, restrict access to accurate identity documents and slash federal support for gender-affirming care for youth. 

References to transgender people and historical figures since January have been scrubbed from government websites, including web pages for the Stonewall National Monument in New York. The Associated Press reported last week that references to the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan were flagged for removal from Defense Department websites, seemingly because its name includes the word “gay.” 

At the state level, lawmakers this year have already introduced more than 450 bills that threaten to roll back LGBTQ rights, according to the ACLU. Iowa last month became the first state to strike anti-discrimination protections for transgender people from its civil rights code, and several GOP-led states are considering resolutions calling on the Supreme Court to revisit its landmark 2015 ruling on marriage equality. 

“Elected Democratic officials have pushed back, voted no, exercised their veto authority, and stood up as champions for LGBTQ+ people, and particularly for the transgender community,” leaders of groups including the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD and Advocates for Trans Equality wrote in Monday’s letter. “We recognize and appreciate those efforts. But the party’s leaders simply must do more.” 

“Some have suggested a strategy of appeasement: that compromising with a little bit of discrimination against a particularly misunderstood and powerless segment of our community could satisfy anti-equality opponents,” they added. “We have fought these same opponents for decades, in state houses, in Congress, and at the ballot box, and we can say unequivocally that this strategy will not work.” 

Some Democrats grappled with the party’s broad support for transgender rights in the aftermath of the November elections, and a growing share has appeared more open to supporting efforts to ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports — an issue at the forefront of Trump and Republicans’ 2024 campaigns. 

Democratic Reps. Tom Suozzi (N.Y.) and Seth Moulton (Mass.) broke from their party on the issue in the days following the election, telling the New York Times in separate interviews that trans athletes should not be allowed to compete on female sports teams. In January, Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar, both of Texas, were the only Democrats to side with Republicans in voting to pass legislation to ban trans student-athletes from girls’ and women’s sports. 

That bill, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, was eventually thwarted by Democrats in the Senate. 

In the debut episode of his podcast last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), a likely contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, said he agreed with conservative activist and commentator Charlie Kirk that transgender athletes participating in girls’ and women’s sports is “deeply unfair.” 

A February New York Times/Ipsos poll found that 79 percent of surveyed Americans believe trans athletes should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports, and a recent Pew Research Center survey found that Americans have grown more supportive of policies restricting trans rights overall. 

More than half of Americans in the same survey, however, said they support policies that protect transgender people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces. 

“We can acknowledge that Americans of good faith, including our political leaders, don’t always have a full understanding of people who are different from them, and the LGBTQ+ community is not exempt,” LGBTQ leaders wrote in Monday’s letter. “It is okay to be a person, with good intentions, who doesn’t have all the answers - and we are here to provide support as political leaders and the public come to a conversation in which they seek to better understand our community. But it is unacceptable to the undersigned organizations -- representing millions of Americans across the country -- for prominent Democrats to give cover to anti-LGBTQ+ arguments.” 

“The future of the Democratic Party must be one that believes in the civil rights and freedoms of all, and shows up for communities who are the target of misinformation, hate and bullying from extremist actors,” they wrote.