America’s 250th celebration is not what most of us anticipated. Fifty years ago, as a much more united United States celebrated its bicentennial, President Gerald Ford rang the Bicentennial Bell in Philadelphia. The Smithsonian held a Festival of American Folklife. The French president presented a light show at Mount Vernon and Queen Elizabeth visited the country. Tens of thousands of bicentennial events were celebrated across the country. 

This year, with a felonious president, America celebrates with a UFC fight on the White House grounds and a grand prix race around the National Mall. Times sure have changed.

For America’s LGBTQ community, the news is slightly better. Back in 1976, just after Stonewall and before AIDS, the movement for equality was gaining steam. Who could have imagined then all the progress we would see over the next 50 years? From an openly gay presidential candidate winning the Iowa caucuses, to national marriage equality, to a transgender member of Congress, it’s been quite a ride. 

But the reality of 2026 is that an aggrieved minority of voters — manipulated by social media, algorithms, and misinformation — elected a dangerous con man to the presidency who is determined to destroy all that made America “great” in the first place: our Constitution, our rule of law, separation of powers, and freedoms of speech, press, and assembly.

It’s all being systematically dismantled now, as laid out in Project 2025. None of this should surprise anyone who paid attention in 2024: not the destruction of the East Wing or the recision of abortion access. And not the undoing of LGBTQ rights.

When Hillary Clinton was anointed the Democratic nominee for president in 2016, many questioned why we needed queer spaces like bars, clubs, and even LGBTQ media outlets like the Blade. The assumption then was that President Obama had ushered in a new era of LGBTQ equality and that Hillary would cement those gains. The war was over. Some LGBTQ advocacy groups even closed their doors, in our community’s own “Mission Accomplished” moment. Then Trump won. 

Although Trump’s worst impulses were blunted in his first term by dedicated non-political federal workers, more moderate Cabinet picks, and ultimately by the distraction of COVID, his second term is a full-scale disaster. Trump’s attacks on the transgender community keep coming, from a reinstated military ban to restrictions on everything from playing sports to accessing affirming healthcare.  

It’s a harsh reminder that our progress is not cemented or guaranteed and sadly the LGBTQ community must forever remain on high alert. Our legislative wins in recent years are often framed as “protections,” but the reality is that no law or president can protect us from anything. Not from schoolyard bullies. Not from discriminatory bosses. Not from racist, transphobic presidents. Our pro-LGBTQ laws give us recourse but not protection. And they require a sustained fight across generations to preserve and expand them. 

That’s one of the lessons from our recent setbacks. Nothing is promised. We must always fight on. The hard work of my generation and the generations before us led to tremendous progress that many of us couldn’t have envisioned.

Part of the American promise is that through hard work and resiliency anything is possible. That is largely still true. The current setbacks can be overcome. Executive orders can be rewritten. The East Wing can be rebuilt. Decency and rule of law can return. But it will require the dedication and hard work of a new generation of activists, lawmakers, jurists, donors, artists, and everyday citizens doing the right thing to ensure the American Dream survives for another 250 years. 

So we must brush off these setbacks. Read our own history to rediscover how we got here to learn the way back. Embrace new ideas and technologies as a younger generation steps up. 

Remember that in the preamble to the Constitution, our founders specifically highlighted the need to establish “justice” in America. That fight for justice continues.

Kevin Naff is editor of the Washington Blade. Reach him at [email protected]. 

If you were told about a gay general leading soldiers during the Revolutionary War, you’d think it’s the fictional plot of the next steamy arthouse movie coming to a theater near you.

But it’s not fictional –– that’s the story of Baron Friedrich von Steuben. LGBTQ relationships and identities existed in the colonial era, they just looked a little different.

Stories like these shaped the modern LGBTQ community, but rarely get told with the depth they deserve. Mark Segal, activist and founder of the Philadelphia Gay News, said it’s vital for queer history to be taught, especially as America’s 250th birthday approaches.

“One of the issues that is very sad in our community is that we don’t look at our own history,” Segal said. “If we look at our own history, we will realize very quickly that we’ve been a part of the fiber of this nation for many years. We’re people who created this nation.”

Segal’s point is prevalent even when just walking around D.C. In Lafayette Park, you’ll find a statue of von Steuben and a plaque listing his wartime accomplishments.

The identities of those in the colonial era of America paved the road toward acceptance and community, but not without brutal punishments, well-kept secrets and different social values.

From romantic friendships to openly gay marriages, here’s an overview of what an 18th century LGBTQ community looked like

Identity and sexuality in colonial America

LGBTQ relationships, though not labelled with modern terms, came in all shapes and sizes during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Some engaged in same-sex sexual or romantic relationships without being able to label their feelings. Others engaged in acts, such as two men walking arm in arm, that modern society would label as queer but at the time were viewed as socially acceptable.

These acts may be labeled as queer today, but Tyler Putman, manager of gallery interpretation at the Museum of the American Revolution, said the colossal difference in social expectations of the 18th century doesn’t mean that people of that time would agree.

“If you live in a society where the labels are different, you can think about yourself and become different things just because these are the things available,” Putman said. “We know that people had sex with people of the same sex in the 18th century, but many of those people probably would not have identified as being unusual or queer because they were living in a world that they constructed that had a whole different set of expectations.”

Queerness was also prevalent among soldiers. During the Revolutionary War, there’s one known case of a soldier being prosecuted for “attempting to commit sodomy” named Frederick Enslin. However, Putman said it’s likely many more cases occurred during the war since soldiers were living in close quarters for eight years.

Some kept their same-sex relationships shrouded in secrecy to avoid retaliation. Others, especially after the Revolutionary War, engaged in “romantic friendships.” These friendships weren’t seen as queer, but their tenderness and vulnerability has given historians an insight into how they resembled LGBTQ relationships during this time.

Men in romantic friendships would share the same bed, write flattering letters to one another and spend their days together. They would typically then take wives and start families. They’d still remain distant friends with one another, but their relationships would begin to strain as their duties as husbands took over.

These relationships were acceptable due to the differing social standards. Putman said that people today can identify the queerness of romantic friendships because of how engrained the LGBTQ community is in modern society. During the 18th century, there weren’t as many social stipulations for how men’s friendships could look.

Another reason for the acceptance of romantic friendships, as well as homosexual tendencies, was from social oblivion. In the modern sense, Segal said everyone has that “crazy aunt” or “eccentric uncle” that no one gives much thought about. Those who expressed modern queer tendencies during the 18th century were seen as just that –– unique characters that no one questioned.

Furthermore, family members or close friends who did discover these secret relationships didn’t want to make it public due to the severe consequences of openly queer relationships or sexual activity. They found it best to turn a blind eye to it.

Depending on which colony or state one lived in, punishments for same-sex relationships or sexual intercourse –– and even heterosexual anal intercourse or masturbation –– could lead to castration, banishment, or the death penalty.

Colonial queerness didn’t only present itself as physical intimacy and sexuality, as some didn’t conform to social gender expectations. In lesbian relationships, it was common for one partner to dress and pass as a man, with some even joining the army in a male disguise.

Beyond understanding the prevalence of LGBTQ relationships in the colonial era, Segal said knowing the icons and figures of the time is crucial in giving life to these historical accounts and inspiring youth to accept themselves.

“I never want to see a young LGBT person go through what I did growing up, feeling the way that we all did, that society will abandon us, that we won’t be able to have the position in society that we want to have,” Segal said. “That goes down to various professions. LGBT youth who want to go into the military, shouldn’t they know about Leonard Matlovich? Shouldn’t they know about von Steuben?”

Icons who shaped LGBTQ America

The list of queer icons pre- and post-Revolutionary War is extensive, but it fails to paint the full spectrum of identity and sexuality during this time. 

Putman said studying the historical influence of figures modern society would define as queer is difficult because sexuality isn’t something you can easily identify in paintings as you would race or gender. There needs to be documentation in order to draw those connections.

This means that the history of queer African Americans during the colonial era has mostly gone unrecorded since they were largely held as slaves or servants during this period, according to Putman.

One of the few recorded examples of an African American challenging gender expectations was Cathay Williams, who dressed as a man and joined the army. She was eventually caught and honorably discharged, but later joined an all-Black regiment that would become part of the Buffalo Soldiers.

Women like Deborah Sampson and Anna Maria Lane also subverted gender expectations by dressing as males and joining the army.

The journals, letters and court records are what historians have to piece together to reveal what an 18th century LGBTQ community looked like.

Letters reveal the romantic friendship of Charles Sumner, who had romantic friendships with Henry Longfellow and Samuel Howe in 1837. Both eventually got married, leaving Sumner feeling isolated.

Before marrying, Howe wrote to Sumner: “I find my heart yearning more and more for something to love even more than I love you my dear Sumner: but till I find it let me be all yours.”

Sumner was encouraged by Howe and Longfellow to get married, but he never found a relationship or marriage that lasted long term. Instead, he spent his days wallowing and yearning for the time he used to spend with the two men.

During the Revolutionary War, at a time when the American army was low on food and morale, a Prussian military man was called into help. Baron Friedrich von Steuben was allegedly dismissed from the Prussian military for homosexuality. Benjamin Franklin recommended von Steuben to George Washington, downplaying rumors of his sexuality.

After fleeing his home country, von Steuben accepted Franklin’s proposal and joined the military to whip the undisciplined men back into shape. Both Franklin and Washington knew of von Steuben’s sexuality, but found it irrelevant to his military qualifications.

Von Steuben also threw sexually charged parties to socialize with troops, with one party requiring the men not to show up in a “whole pair of breeches.” He grew close to two other men, William North and Benjamin Walker, with whom he legally adopted upon returning home so he could live with them. Von Steuben stands today as one of the earliest examples of a somewhat openly gay man in this era, and receives little mainstream recognition for turning the war around.

“George Washington made it clear: without von Steuben, there would be no United States of America,” Segal said.

Sylvia Drake and Charity Bryant were the rare queer couple who lived openly without punishment. The pair ran a successful tailoring business and were recognized as a married couple by the community. They lived together and assumed traditional roles of husband and wife. When Bryant died in 1851, Drake wore all black as a widow would.

Thomas(ine) Hall’s situation was a bit more complex. Presumed to be an intersex person by historians, Hall was raised as a girl. They joined the English army dressed as a man before moving to colonial Virginia years later. Hall lived as both a man and woman throughout their life, alternating between the name Thomas and Thomasine.

Their identity caused confusion in the community where they lived. Inspections were done on their body to determine their gender, often with inconclusive results. After Hall testified that they had lived as both man and woman, they didn’t face the punishments others sought for them. Rather, they were ordered to wear the clothing of each gender, including the breeches and shirt of a man and the cap and apron of a woman.

Though they didn’t know it at the time, each of these figures played a key role in defining gender and sexuality as we know them today. That’s the significance of a community learning its history, according to Segal.

Segal said learning about the LGBTQ community’s role in shaping the nation is more than just gaining knowledge; it’s a way for those in the community, especially youth, to feel seen and understand that their identity doesn’t hinder their ability to find long-term love or make a difference in the world.

“Many LGBT youth don’t think that they could grow up and have love for a lifetime,” Segal said. “If we show them that they could have the life that they wanted to have, they will feel more comfortable in their skin.”

Back in February of 2025, I wrote a piece for “Hyperallergic”about the importance of museums stepping up for their LGBTQ+ staff. As a queer public historian and D.C.-based museum worker, I was right to be concerned. Over the last three years, censorship of LGBTQ+ history, culture, and art has exploded in the museum field, largely as a result of the current administration’s push to mold history to heterosexual, cisgender norms. 

It’s historical revisionist violence that seeks to erase the fact that LGBTQ+ people have existed since — and even before — the founding of the United States. Before colonists first stepped foot on Indigenous land, Two Spirit people who held and expressed both masculine and feminine roles and attributes were celebrated as sacred, tethered to the divine through their third gender. 

In early European settlements, LGBTQ+ people carved out space for themselves and their expressions, including Thomasina Hall, a 17th-century intersex colonist who immigrated to colonial Virginia; The Public Universal Friend that shed all pronouns and lived as a genderless religious leader in early Rhode Island; and Deborah Sampson, a Massachusetts colonist who like several other women dressed as a man to serve in the Continental Army.

Queer and trans people have been part of this country’s fabric since the beginning, and histories of affirmation and celebration among Indigenous communities predate colonial landing and violence on Turtle Island, a name that many Indigenous peoples call North America. Queer existence and affirmation is much older than the 250 years we will celebrate on July 4.  

Perhaps this is what threatens the Trump administration, which issued an Executive Order on his inauguration day denying the existence of intersex, nonbinary, and trans people, and in March 2025, issued another titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” that targeted the Smithsonian’s inclusion of LGBTQ+ histories in their telling of the story of the United States.

It is our very existence as ancestors, as not just passengers but actors in transformative American history, that angers an administration so eager to view LGBTQ+ people as “new.” Because the deeper, the richer our histories are known, the harder it is to discredit our existence, our identities, our fight for legal recognition and protection.

But whatever the reason, Trump’s campaign has deeply affected American cultural and historical institutions over the past three years. In February 2025, D.C.’s Art Museum of the Americas canceled “Nature’s Wild With Andil Gosine” scheduled to open in March. While the museum did not say why, some of Gosine’s work scheduled for inclusion reflected on LGBTQ+ identity and activism in the Caribbean, and that same month, the National Park Service erased mentions of transgender people from their website describing the Stonewall Uprising.  

Exhibition titles and content have also been changed, obscured, sanitized. In February 2025, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art changed its traveling exhibition of work by women, queer and trans artists, changing the title that was originally “transfeminisms.” Just four months later, the Art Institute of Chicago changed the title of an exhibition of Gustave Caillebotte’s work and removed discussions of gender and sexuality from the wall text. Amy Sherald cancelled her groundbreaking exhibition “American Sublime”at the National Portrait Gallery. 

And finally, this past February, a Pride flag was removed from the Stonewall National Monument after a directive from the Trump administration. Later that month, protesters re-raised the flag, and in April of this year, the National Park Service agreed to restore the Pride flag at the Stonewall National Memorial and keep it up permanently.   

Historians now recognize this rush of censorship in the early 2020s as the “rainbow panic,” first coined by historian Wendy Rouse in her piece published in July 2025.

And LGBTQ+ galleries, library, archives, and museum (GLAM) workers are feeling the heat, as discourse surrounding censorship of art and artifacts reflects GLAM institutions’ push to erase LGBTQ+ stories, language, and people from not just exhibitions but also the wider museum field — from censorship and erasure of our histories to the firing of and discrimination against LGBTQ+ federal workers, federal agencies have denied our existence, cut off lifesaving care for LGBTQ+ people, and ordered the termination of employee community resource groups. 

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary, I want to issue a call-to-action not only to continue to fight for our histories but to recognize the queer and trans history workers who preserve and share the stories that tether us to our ancestors. It is because of them, it is because of us, that people know Thomasina, The Public Universal Friend, and Deborah’s names. 

But I also want to affirm that despite the efforts of institutions to censor and sacrifice our histories in order to appease this administration, LGBTQ+ histories have and are surviving. A Pride flag waves in front of the Stonewall Inn, LGBTQ+ historical material still remains safe in large-scale and grassroots archives, and queer art still hangs in federal galleries. Ours, like many marginalized communities, is a history delayed, not denied — and one that refuses to be erased and silenced on the nation’s birthday. 

Emma Cieslik is a museum worker and public historian.