National
Key senator says hold off on ‘Don’t Ask’ repeal
Ben Nelson wants to wait, follow guidance from Gates
Sen. Ben Nelson, right, talks with U.S. Army General David Petraeus. Nelson this week said he would vote against a legislative effort to overturn "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." (Photo courtesy of Nelson’s office)
Sen. Ben Nelson, right, talks with U.S. Army General David Petraeus. Nelson this week said he would vote against a legislative effort to overturn “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” (Photo courtesy of Nelson’s office)
A key U.S. senator has told the Blade that he opposes repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” at this time.
In a brief exchange on Capitol Hill, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said Tuesday he would vote against an effort next week to overturn the law. He said he wants to adhere to guidance from Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen on holding off on repeal.
Asked whether he would vote in favor of a repeal measure, Nelson replied, “No, I want to follow with the advice and the suggestions of Secretary of Defense Gates to have the study that is underway right now before we make that final decision — because it’s not a question of ‘whether,’ it’s a question of ‘how.’”
A vote on repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as part of major defense budget legislation could take place next week during the Senate Armed Services Committee markup of the fiscal year 2011 defense authorization bill. Markup proceedings are scheduled to begin May 26 and are closed to the public.
It remains unclear whether there are enough votes on the committee to make repeal part of the legislation. Mustering enough votes to repeal the statute could be a challenge for opponents of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” following Nelson’s comments.
Repeal efforts were complicated last month after Gates released a letter to Congress saying he would “strongly oppose” repeal before the Pentagon completes at year’s end its study on the issue. Since then, supporters of repeal — including Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) — have advocated for a compromise in which Congress would vote now to repeal the law but delay implementation of repeal until 2011.
Asked whether he would be open to such a measure, Nelson appeared to be unaware that such an approach to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has been under consideration, but was reluctant to support the idea.
“I don’t know,” Nelson said. “I haven’t seen that legislation. I know there’s probably some support for that, but I think it’s been made pretty clear by Secretary Gates that we shouldn’t take any action until the study is completed, and that’s my position. That’s where I’m going to stay.”
Nelson’s statements came as a disappointment to people who had identified him as an uncommitted vote on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” that could be moved in favor of repeal this year.
He was among six senators that LGBT organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign, had lobbied through a grassroots campaign to vote in favor of repeal. The other five are Sens. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), Scott Brown (R-Mass.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), and Jim Webb (D-Va.).
Alex Nicholson, executive director of Servicemembers United, said Ben Nelson is only one of the six key senators and estimated that only two or three votes from those six are needed to advance repeal.
“If Sen. Nelson is entrenching himself that hard on that side of the vote, then I think he risks putting himself down on the wrong side of history,” Nicholson said. “That’s something he’s going to have to live with for the rest of his career, and that’s going to be part of his legacy.”
Nicholson said Nelson’s apparent unfamiliarity with delayed implementation legislation could mean that high-level discussions with him on moving forward with that plan hadn’t yet occurred.
‘Don’t Ask’ opponents push on
Even with Nelson representing a “no” vote on repeal during the committee vote, supporters of ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” are moving forward with plans for a vote next week during the committee markup.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), the sponsor of standalone repeal legislation in the Senate, told the Blade that supporters of repeal are “working hard” to find a way forward for passage in the committee.
“Obviously, we were set back somewhat from the letter by Secretary Gates, but we’re talking to every member of the committee,” he said. “We have some, I think, creative ideas about how to deal with … concerns that Secretary Gates expressed.”
Lieberman said he’s uncertain if the votes are there for passage, but noted that “it’s important to get this done this year.”
Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), another member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a strong proponent of repeal, said he doesn’t think anyone knows whether the votes are there in the committee for repeal, but he’s “feeling guardedly optimistic” about the prospects.
“It’s crucial that we take this opportunity to lift it,” he said. “There’s different ideas about how to best work with the Pentagon on this approach, but I still think you could study and repeal.”
Nicholson said he thinks supporters “have a really good shot” at getting the two or three votes necessary to win repeal during Senate markup next week.
“It’s really going to come down to some of the one-on-one conversations that Levin and Lieberman are having this week with their colleagues on the committee,” he said.
In the wake of the Gates letter, many repeal supporters see pushing forward with delayed implementation legislation as the optimal path for a successful vote on ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” this year.
Lieberman said supporters are looking at alternatives, including a bill “to enact repeal, but have it not be this year, to have it not be effective until either sometime next year” or until the Pentagon working group issues a certification of its study.
“I think Secretary Gates was really talking about he doesn’t want us to do this until the rank-and-file military has had a chance to be heard,” Lieberman said. “So we’re trying to find a way to take legislative action this year, but still respect the opinions of the military and maybe delay the implementation until sometime next year.”
Lieberman said a number of different ideas are being discussed among committee members, but delayed implementation legislation “seems to be the one that commands the most support.”
Also noting that delayed implementation could have traction is Udall, who said such a bill is “one of the ideas” being discussed.
“That still remains my preferred course,” he said. “In other words, you would make it very clear the law is repealed, and then you put in place the timeframe by which you implement the changes that are necessary.”
Despite this push and work toward a compromise, the six targeted members of the Senate Armed Services Committee have been reluctant to endorse repeal publicly, although none of these six have been as explicit as Ben Nelson in their opposition.
Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) has maintained on several occasions the importance of the Pentagon study as a means to inform Congress on how to approach repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Asked this week whether he’s made a decision on how he’ll vote should an amendment come before him, Webb replied, “I think we need to respect the process that Secretary Gates and Adm. Mullen put in place.”
Webb had a similar response when asked whether his position would be any different for delayed implementation legislation.
“I think we should honor the process that they’ve put in place,” Webb said. “I think people should understand that it’s a pretty significant historical event in terms of what Adm. Mullen said during that hearing in February.”
The offices of Bill Nelson and Bayh sent statements to the Blade that were similarly non-committal in how the senators would vote. The statements were virtually identical to those the offices sent to the Blade last month.
Dan McLaughlin, spokesperson for Bill Nelson, said the senator is “inclined” to support repeal, but “wants to see Secretary Gates’ study on how it would impact the military.”
In a statement, Bayh said his “personal belief” is that people serving their country in the armed forces “ought to be able to serve it openly,” but noted that he wants military leaders to be able to speak up on this issue.
“President Obama is absolutely right to solicit the input and support of his top military commanders about the effects of repealing the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy,” he said. “I will make a final decision after receiving the input of our top commanders.”
Some of the targeted senators were staying mum this week on how they’d vote should an amendment come before them. Byrd’s office declined to comment in response to a Blade inquiry on the issue. Brown’s office didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
Obama MIA in repeal effort?
As supporters of repeal work to gather support, one notable absence among those lending a hand is President Barack Obama.
Repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was one of Obama’s campaign promises, but a number of senators say the White House hasn’t contacted them to move them one way or the other on the issue.
In public statements on the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” issue, the White House has consistently refrained from saying Obama supports attaching repeal as part of the defense authorization bill.
Asked whether the White House is being helpful in building support, Lieberman suggested the president could be playing a greater role.
“I mean, they’re obviously for this, so we need their help,” he said.
Nicholson said he didn’t know if the White House had been helpful in moving senators in favor of repeal, but noted that he hasn’t “seen any evidence of that, certainly.”
Each of the targeted senators to whom the Blade spoke said they had not heard from the White House or the Pentagon on the issue.
Asked whether the White House or the Pentagon had contacted him to influence his vote on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Ben Nelson replied, “No, no.”
Jessica Smith, a Webb spokesperson, echoed those remarks in response to a Blade inquiry.
“As for the White House or the Pentagon contacting our office?” she said. “I don’t believe so.”
Similarly, McLaughlin said he doesn’t believe the White House or the Pentagon has contacted Bill Nelson to inform his vote on the issue.
“To my knowledge, neither the White House nor the Pentagon has recently contacted Bill about this issue,” McLaughlin said.
A White House spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to the Blade’s request for comment on why Obama hasn’t reached out to the senators.
The White House
Trump tells Fox News he won the ‘gay vote’ — but polls tell a different story
Trump falsely claims LGBTQ support on Fox despite polling showing overwhelming opposition.
President Donald Trump claimed he won the “gay vote” in 2024, despite evidence showing otherwise.
While appearing by phone on Fox News’s panel show “The Five” on Thursday, Trump falsely claimed he performed particularly well among gay voters while discussing the ongoing war in Iran — a conflict he initiated without formal congressional approval.
“Now I think I did very well with the gay vote, OK? I even played the gay national anthem as my walk-off, OK?” Trump said on air.
“And I think it probably helped me. But I did great. No Republican’s ever gotten the gay vote like I did and I’m very proud of it, I think it’s great. Perhaps it’s because I’m from New York City, I don’t know…”
His claim contradicts 2024 polling from NBC News, which found that the GOP presidential ticket captured fewer than 1 in 5 LGBTQ male voters — a figure that may also include bisexual and transgender men. Trump’s support among LGBTQ female voters was even lower, at just 8%.
White LGBTQ voters favored Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump by a margin of 82% to 16%, while LGBTQ voters of color backed Harris by an even wider 91% to 5%.
Trump also used the appearance to criticize “Gays for Palestine,” saying: “Look at ‘Gays for Palestine’… they kill gays, they kill them instantly, they throw them off buildings, and I’m saying, ‘Who are the gays for Palestine?’”
He further pointed to his campaign’s use of the song “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People — which he has repeatedly described as a “gay national anthem” — noting that it was frequently used as a walk-off song at rallies, as an indication that he and his campaign were supported by the gay community. The track, long associated with camp and hyper-masculine gay imagery, became a staple of Trump campaign events.
The Village People were later booked to perform at Turning Point USA’s inaugural ball celebrating Trump’s second inauguration. Lead singer Victor Willis previously criticized Trump’s use of the song dating back to 2020 and considered legal action to block it, but ultimately said there was “not much he can do about it.” He later acknowledged the renewed exposure was “beneficial” and “good for business,” boosting the song’s popularity and chart performance.
Despite Trump’s claims of strong support from gay voters, polling has consistently shown otherwise — even as several prominent gay men have held roles in or around his orbit, sometimes dubbed the “A-gays.” These include Richard Grenell, former executive director of the Kennedy Center and Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg; Department of Energy official Charles T. Moran; and longtime supporter Peter Thiel, co-founder and CEO of Palantir.
His efforts to portray himself as aligned with the gay community stand in conflict with policies advanced under his leadership. These include removing LGBTQ-related data from State Department reports, attempting to narrowly redefine gender identity in federal policy, restricting access to gender-affirming health care, and rolling back anti-discrimination protections. His administration also rescinded initiatives focused on LGBTQ health equity, data collection, and nondiscrimination in health care and education — moves advocates say contribute to stigma and worsen mental health outcomes.
Additionally, some HIV programs and community health centers have lost funding from the federal government after supporting initiatives inclusive of transgender people as a direct result of Trump-Vance policies.
National
Anti-trans visa ruling echoes Nazi regime destroying trans documents
Trump administration escalates attacks on queer community
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security earlier this month released its third Red Flag Alert for the United States about the Trump administration’s anti-trans legislation. As the Lemkin Institute shared in the press release, “the Administration has moved from identifying transgender people as as threat to the family and to the nation’s military prowess to claiming that transgender people constitute a cosmic threat to the spiritual health of the nation and the great direct threat to the US national security in the world.”
The news came the same day that the State Department issued a new rule, “Enhancing Vetting and Combatting Fraud in the Immigrant Visa Program.” Under this new guidance, all visa applicants are required to disclose their “biological sex at birth” during all stages of the process, “even if that differs from the sex listed on the applicant’s foreign passport or identifying documentation.”
This rule also orders that applicants to the green card lottery program share their passport information, so in knowingly collecting passport information that the agency knows will not match a person’s biological sex at birth, it’s creating grounds to deny trans peoples’ biases on the basis of “fraud,” Aleksandra Vaca of Transitics explains.
As is written in the new ruling, “the Department is replacing ‘gender’ with ‘sex’ in accordance with E.O. 14168, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, which provides that the term ‘sex’ shall refer to an individual’s sex at birth. Only male and female sex options are available for entrants completing the Diversity Visa entry form.”
Along with outright denying the existence of nonbinary, genderqueer and gender expansive people, this policy creates a precedence for trans people to be stripped of their visas and deported because under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(C)(i), any foreigner found to have obtained or possess a visa “by fraud or willfully misrepresenting a material fact” will have their visa revoked and face deportation.
By requesting information on “biological sex at birth,” the State Department is forcing a mismatch between documents and enabling officials to accuse trans, nonbinary, and gender expansive immigrants of fraud. Thus, trans and nonbinary immigrants can have their visas revoked and can be deported, and information gathered from immigrants during the visa request process can be added to federal databases and used by immigration authorities, including ICE agents.
With the Supreme Court’s decision this past year allowing ICE officers to use racial profiling, Vaca argues that “now, The Trump administration has given ICE the reason it needs. Under this rule, ICE agents now have the enforcement rationale to assert that trans people–especially those belonging to racial minority groups–are more likely than cis people to have ‘misrepresented’ themselves during the visa process, and therefore, are more likely to enter the country ‘unlawfully.’”
This would enable ICE agents to target trans individuals specifically for being trans. If the goal of this were unclear, a day later the Trump administration released its statement for Women’s History Month 2026, writing that “we are keeping men out of women’s sports, enforcing Title IX as it was originally written and ensuring colleges preserve–and, where possible, expand–scholarships and roster opportunities for female athletes. We are restoring public safety and upholding the rule of law in every city so women, children, and families can feel safe and secure.”
And this is not the first time that ICE has targeted and harmed trans and nonbinary immigrants. Last June, Vera reported that ICE is not including trans people in detection in their public reports, and back in 2020, AFSC reported that trans people held in ICE detention faced “dreadful, ugly” conditions.
While it seems like a new development in Trump’s anti-trans escalation, it echoes a deeply upsetting history of denying and destroying transgender people’s documents following members of the Nazi party seizing power in 1933.
In the early 20th century, Weimar, Germany was an epicenter for gender affirming care with Maganus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science. One of the first book burnings of the rising Nazi regime destroyed the Institute’s extensive clinical records and library on trans health and history by Nazi students and stormtroopers. In doing so, the Nazis effectively destroyed the world’s first trans health clinic and one of the richest and most comprehensive collective of information about trans healthcare.
Similarly, the Nazi government invalidated or refused to recognize what was called “transvestite passes,” or passing certificates that allowed trans people to avoid arrest under Paragraph 175 which prohibited cross-dressing. During the Weimar Republic — the regime that preceded the Third Reich — recognized and affirmed the identities of trans people (in limited ways) with specific documentation that helped prevent them from arrest. Invalidating and disregarding these passes allowed police and Nazi officials to target trans people and harass, extort and arrest them, and the record of passes themselves helped officials target trans people.
The changes to visa guidelines — alongside Kansas’s move to revoke trans drivers’ licenses last month — is reflective of this escalation of violence against trans people during the Nazi’s rise to power, which scholars like Dr. Laurie Marhoefer is just beginning to uncover. And along with the revocation of identification documents this past week, a recent Fourth Circuit Court ruled that states can deny Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming surgery.
The Fourth Circuit Court decision affirmed the Supreme Court’s decision in Skrmetti, which ruled that bans on gender affirming healthcare for young people are constitutional. This ruling extends this ban to include adult healthcare bans, allowing West Virginia’s exclusion of Medicaid coverage for adult gender affirming healthcare to take full effect. Even more upsetting was what the ruling itself said, calling gender affirming healthcare “dangerous.”
As was written in the Fourth Circuit Opinion, “it’s not irrational for a legislature to encourage citizens ‘to appreciate their sex’ and not ‘become disdainful of their sex’ by refusing to fund experimental procedures that may have the opposite effect.”
In reality, what this ruling and the opinion reflect, is the next step in government regulation and oversight over marginalized peoples’ bodies. From the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which removed federal protection of access to abortion, this next step represents the denial of people’s access to vital, lifesaving care–and to be clear, gender affirming care is not just for trans, nonbinary, and intersex people. It’s a dangerous escalation and one that echoes previous violence against trans people under fascist regimes; the Lemkin Institute is right to raise concern.
Pennsylvania
Pa. House passes bill to codify marriage equality in state law
Governor supports gay state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta’s measure
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill that would codify marriage equality in state law.
House Bill 1800 passed by a 127-72 vote margin. Twenty-six Republicans voted for the measure.
The Republican-controlled Pennsylvania Senate will now consider the bill that state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D-Philadelphia), who is the first openly gay person of color elected to the state’s General Assembly, introduced. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro supports the measure.
“Here in Pennsylvania, we believe in your freedom to marry who you love,” said Shapiro on Wednesday. “Today, the House has stepped up to protect that right.”
BREAKING: The Pennsylvania House just passed @RepKenyatta's bill to codify marriage equality into law in PA — and they did it with broad bipartisan support.
— Governor Josh Shapiro (@GovernorShapiro) March 25, 2026
Here in Pennsylvania, we believe in your freedom to marry who you love. Today, the House has stepped up to protect that…
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Anti-trans visa ruling echoes Nazi regime destroying trans documents
Japanese Supreme Court to consider marriage equality
The outrage economy is not the LGBTQ community
Calendar: March 27-April 2
Trans Day of Visibility events planned
Virginia General Assembly’s 2026 legislative session ends
Markwayne Mullin confirmed as next DHS secretary
Gay man murdered in Va.
