LGBTQ+ community faces uncertainty after Trump’s victory

The day after Election Day, the Eastern PA Transgender Equity Project saw the number of people requesting their services increase from five to over 70. 

As of Nov. 25, Corinne Goodwin, the nonprofit’s president, said they’ve received at least 20 requests per day since then.

A 2021 study from the National Library of Medicine linked Donald Trump’s presidency from 2016 to 2020 to an increase in reported distress among LGBTQ+ adults. Stress levels for LGBTQ+ adults increased from 7.7% before his term to between 12% and 14% afterward, while stress levels for non-LGBTQ+ adults remained stable at approximately 5%. 

Scott Gordon, a board member of the Eastern PA Transgender Equity Project, said he thinks this was a result of the Trump administration’s policies.

These include the ban of transgender people in the military, the appointment of Supreme Court justices who hold anti-LGBTQ+ views and the administration’s opposition to the Equality Act, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. In 2021, the Equality Act passed in the House — where the Democratic Party retained their majority — but not the Senate — where the Democratic Party held the majority, but seats were occupied by 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats and two Independents.

This rise in harmful legislation targeting transgender people has persisted since Trump’s first term and into Joe Biden’s presidency. The Trans Legislation Tracker, a research organization that monitors bills affecting gender-diverse people, has found that the number of anti-transgender bills introduced each year continues to increase.

In 2015, 26 anti-transgender rights bills were introduced at the state and federal level. Fourteen of these focused on bathroom access, three pertained to sports and two regarded healthcare. 

In 2024, 664 anti-transgender rights bills have been introduced as of Dec. 2. Of these, 199 relate to education, 184 target healthcare, 61 focus on transgender people in sports and 29 address bathroom use.  

Rev. Goudy is a pastor at the Metropolitan Community Church, which primarily serves LGBTQ+ individuals in the Lehigh Valley.  

They said they have seen members of their congregation take extra legal measures to protect themselves, their family and their property because they fear they could lose their rights. This has included drawing up wills, setting up power of attorney and establishing healthcare power of attorney. 

“There are concerns about what is ahead,” Goudy said. “We’ve discovered in the past few years that what we thought was settled law was not settled law.” 

Gordon said people protect themselves through the Eastern PA Transgender Equity Project, which offers legal and financial services, including a program that creates a will with the click of a button.

Chloe Cole-Wilson, the director of Lehigh Valley Youth House’s Silk program, said she’s seen young LGBTQ+ people worry about how a second Trump presidency will affect their future. 

The Silk program serves young LGBTQ+ people ages 14 to 23, educating them about healthy relationships, hosting community events and providing STI testing, according to the program website. 

Cole-Wilson said the young people who use Silk’s resources experienced heightened racial- and LGBTQ+-centered tensions during the 2024 presidential campaigns. 

She said political advertisements young people saw online and on TV that targeted transgender people and immigration policy caused this increase. This year, Pennsylvania saw the most political advertising spending of any swing state with $1.2 billion dollars spent, according to NPR. 

Cole-Wilson said the increased negative attention on these groups in the media has led to the same hostile rhetoric entering popular culture. 

With young people spending an average of 4.8 hours a day on social media, according to a 2023 Gallup poll, they exhaust a significant amount of time interacting with this harmful rhetoric. 

“It’s really apparent that our young people need a space to feel safe and have different kinds of conversations,” Cole-Wilson said. “Social media is such a beautiful space to find community, but it can be a really toxic space where our young people compare themselves to what they are seeing online and hear this racist, homophobic and transphobic rhetoric.” 

Goodwin said this rhetoric has led to the increase in violence and threats against transgender people. 

According to the Human Rights Campaign, violence against transgender people spiked after the 2020 election and has continued to grow since. 

Cole-Wilson said these fears run rampant in the young people she interacts with. However, she said there’s hope in the community building and advocacy work being done in the Lehigh Valley and Pennsylvania. 

In 2024, Lehigh County passed a non-discrimination ordinance that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation, among other things. 

Cole-Wilson said this ordinance was passed through the work of activists like Liz Bradbury, the co-founder of the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. 

“There are really awesome advocates out there,” she said. “I just tell our young people, ‘We got you, and we are going to make sure that these services stay.’” 

Goudy said in today’s political landscape, it’s essential for LGBTQ+ people to have spaces where they can connect with others. 

To meet this need, they said the Metropolitan Community Church hosts worship service, spiritual formation classes and a coffee hour. 

Goudy said the role of the Metropolitan church is to foster spiritual connection and remind people there are progressive, LGBTQ+affirming churches, even though many people use faith as a justification for homophobic and transphobic rhetoric. 

Hope for the future of LGBTQ± people’s rights lies in maintaining belief and supporting LGBTQ+ nonprofits through volunteering and donations, Cole-Wilson said, especially as organizations fear they might lose federal funding.

She said legal systems take time, during which there’s an opportunity to create change through advocacy work. 

Goodwin said it’s important to remember transgender people have found a way to take care of each other for hundreds of years, and opportunities for the LGBTQ+ community to do so exist today. 

“They can try to make our lives more difficult — they likely will make our lives more difficult,” Goodwin said. “But we have always survived by finding our chosen family and community and making sure that we are taking care of each other.”