When talking with otherwise really smart young people, I am amazed how little knowledge many of them have about the fight for human rights in the United States. Our country was founded by white men, who didn’t think about giving full rights to Black Americans, women, the LGBTQ community (what they knew of it, or called it). They wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But that referred to all white men, and intentionally didn’t mention women. For 250 years, the country has been trying to make up for that, and making progress in fits and starts. We have yet to fully succeed. Today the felon, and his fascist aides, in the White House, are working daily to take us backwards. 

For that reason alone, it is important for younger generations to understand the fight for human rights, know who was fighting for those rights, and understand it is an ongoing fight. Often, when listening to some millennials speak, one would think the world began with them. They either forgot, or never learned, about all those who fought for the rights they now have. I realize this was true for previous generations as well. In 2016 I co-hosted a fundraiser for Pete Buttigieg during his run for president. He is an undeniably brilliant guy. Yet when he spoke of marriage equality, he just thanked Justice Kennedy for it. I reminded him after he spoke, while it’s nice to thank Kennedy for his vote, it shouldn’t be done without acknowledging the many activists who worked for decades, to get to the point that allowed Kennedy to cast that vote. In the same way it was clear to me during the Hillary Clinton campaign for president, many young women didn’t understand the work many of their own mothers had done, to fight for their right to control their own healthcare, and women’s rights in general. They took for granted the rights they had. Now, after losing some of them, many will realize the fight for their rights is never-ending. 

When I speak to younger members of the LGBTQ community, I am amazed how many don’t know the history of the AIDS epidemic, many thinking it was always a disease you could deal with by taking medication. They don’t understand the work so many activists did to bring attention to this devastating disease, and get the healthcare so many needed. Those like Cleve Jones, Larry Kramer, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and so many others. Recently, I realized how many young women don’t know the names of Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug — women who fought for their rights. And this is just recent history, no less knowing about the Suffragettes, the strong women who fought for their right to vote. I’ve met young women who don’t know what the ERA is, and others who think it passed. Many don’t know the nation couldn’t get 38 states to approve an amendment to include them in the Constitution. The same for young members of the LGBTQ community who don’t know what the Equality Act is. Others think it passed, and are shocked when told it didn’t and in 27 states, they can be married on Sunday, and kicked out of their home, and fired from their job, on Monday. They don’t know names like Frank Kameny, Harvey Milk, Barney Frank, or the history of the Mattachine Society, or the Stonewall Riots.

Our current president is trying to wipe out all this history, and reverse any progress that has been made. Knowing this, it makes it even more important for school systems across the nation to fight to educate our children. We should ensure no child can graduate high school, without taking a course called “The 250-year fight for human rights in the United States.” They need to understand the history, and learn about the people who fought for their rights. They need to know how far we have come in 250 years, and understand, as we begin the next 250, how far we still have to go, to ensure real, full equality, for all.

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.

Fifteen years ago this month, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” took effect. At the time, the importance of the change was obvious: gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans would no longer have to hide who they were to wear the uniform. What was harder to see was what would follow: a generation of LGBTQ veterans able to carry their service openly into American civic life.

Earlier this month, Alaska state Rep. Andrew Gray, an Army veteran, stood before the Anchorage Assembly and asked the city to recognize Sept. 20 as LGBTQ Veterans Day.

His former command sergeant major, Mike Grunst, followed him to the microphone. A 35-year veteran who had served in combat, Grunst called troops who had served while hiding who they were “the bravest I have ever served with.”

Then Denise Sudbeck stepped forward. A Vietnam-era Navy veteran, she thanked the country for the privilege of serving and asked that the next generation have the same chance.

The Assembly approved the recognition.

Nothing about the scene required a new vocabulary. A veteran made a request of his community. A commander vouched for those who served beside him. Another veteran asked that younger Americans inherit the opportunity she valued. They entered the civic record simply as veterans.

That identity can do more than win recognition.

When federal policy abruptly ended the careers of transgender servicemembers this year, veterans and servicemembers in California began asking a practical question: What happens when those Americans come home?

Republican Assemblyman Jeff Gonzalez, a Marine combat veteran, began one hearing with questions about transgender military service. He listened as veterans explained how the military handles medical care and deployment case by case.

Then the discussion turned to separation.

“I don’t wanna see any veteran homeless,” Gonzalez said. Before the hearing ended, he was asking: “How can I help? How can I understand? How can I be a good advocate?”

The legislation that followed would provide housing, employment and transition assistance to discharged servicemembers. Republican state Sen. Shannon Grove spoke for it. The Senate passed it 32 to 0.

Americans have plainly not settled their disagreements over transgender people. Nor should military service be a prerequisite for rights that belong to every citizen.

But military service creates relationships that are difficult to reduce to the abstractions of the culture war. Before a legislature, “the transgender issue” can become a veteran who deployed, an officer who led troops, or the person who once stood beside you.

The political question changes because the human relationship has already changed.

The pattern is beginning to appear across the country. Kansas is among the states recognizing LGBTQ Veterans Day for the first time this year. New York and Virginia are pursuing broader state-level programs for LGBTQ veterans.

Sept. 20 is deliberate. On that day in 2011, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ended.

We usually remember repeal for what LGBTQ Americans gained: the ability to serve openly. Fifteen years later, we can also see what the country gained.

A gay veteran can stand before his local government beside the commander who once led him. A transgender servicemember can sit before a legislator who begins with doubts and ends by asking how he can help. A veteran from an older generation can ask her neighbors to give those who follow her the same chance to serve.

This is citizenship in practice.

The enduring legacy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal is not only that Americans were finally allowed to serve openly. It is also what they can now build after coming home.

Earlier this month, 44-year-old Ousman Ceesay allegedly shot two people in the parking lot of Venture-N, a well-known gay bar in Tucson, Ariz. Both victims — Vincent Anthony Siquerioes and Cameron Davis Capara — died at the scene. Police discovered a list of several LGBTQ businesses on Ceesay’s person, and evidence points to how Ceesay confronted Siquerios and Capara in the bar’s parking lot before killing them. According to a news release, police are investigating the incident as a hate crime. 

The event was reminiscent of the 2022 Club Q shooting and the Pulse nightclub shooting, where Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people and wounded more than 50 more at the gay nightclub in Orlando. Survivors and the wider queer community recognized the 10th anniversary of the shooting this past June 12. As the queer community grieved another shooting targeting LGBTQ safe spaces this month, some members of the LGBTQ community are raising the call for gun reform as a key step to protect LGBTQ rights. 

Gun violence is a major issue for the LGBTQ community. LGBTQ people are more than twice as likely to be the victims of violent crime than straight and cisgender people, with one in five hate crimes in the United States motivated by queer phobia. This means that LGBTQ folks are more likely to be violently attacked by a stranger compared to their cisgender, straight counterparts. In school settings, 29% of transgender youth and 16% of gay and lesbian youth have been threatened or injured with a weapon, compared to 7% of cisgender youth. 

There is an ongoing epidemic of gun violence injuring and killing trans women of color in the United States today. One study by the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety identified that the number of trans people who were murdered in the U.S. doubled between 2017 and 2021, increasing 93% in that time period. Everytown for Gun Safety recognizes that these aren’t even the actual numbers as many trans people are misgendered or deadnamed by the police, media, or their families so their deaths are not incorporated into these numbers and tied to systemic gun violence against the wider LGBTQ community.

As a community with higher rates of self harm and suicide, easy access to firearms increases the risk that a suicide attempt will end in death. This does not mean that LGBTQ people are mentally ill, a popular far right talking point. LGBTQ people are not more likely to experience suicidal ideations and die by suicide not because they are LGBTQ but because of the stigma surrounding their identities. LGBTQ young people are more than four times likely than their non-LGBTQ peers to attempt suicide, and the Trevor Project estimates that 1.8 million LGBTQ people between the ages of 13 and 24 consider suicide in the United States.  

As the Williams Institute shows, this makes gun violence a serious public health concern for the queer community. As Dr. David Hemenway, co-author of a 2016 study published in the American Journal of Medicine said, “differences in overall suicide rates across cities, states, and regions in the United States are best explained not by differences in mental health, suicide ideation, or even suicide attempts, but by availability of firearms.”

Gun violence is also a major queer issue given that trans and gender expansive individuals are at greater risk of experiencing intimate partner violence. Compared to the 35% of straight women who experience intimate partner violence, 44% of lesbian and 61% of bisexual women report experiencing rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner. This number is also higher for bisexual men (37% of whom experience intimate partner violence compared to 29% of straight men). This number is much higher for trans folks; more than half of people surveyed reported some form of intimate partner violence, according to a 2015 survey. 

During the second Trump administration, ongoing legal attacks on LGBTQ rights, executive orders that deny the existence and protections of trans, nonbinary, and gender expansive individuals, and virulent opposition to and disbanding and defunding of DEI initiatives, LGBTQ employee resource groups, queer history collections, exhibitions, and education, LGBTQ representation in libraries and school settings, and the firing of federal workers allegedly because they are queer — realizing a new Lavender Scare — have emboldened violent homophobes.

After the Club Q shooting, Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, explained that “the rhetoric and the legislative attempts to erase transgender people sends a signal that violence toward us is tolerated.” This has become even more dire after a 2025 White House memo prioritized identifying “radically pro-transgender” groups as national security threats, in line with the Heritage Foundation’s plan to designate trans people terrorists. In response, Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici shared, “the Trump administration’s endorsement and proliferation of hateful and violent rhetoric against the trans community is putting lives at risk,” particularly the push to label trans people and their allies as terrorists. 

As Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva said on the House Floor following this latest tragedy, “when that [anti-LGBTQ+] hate is combined with easy access to firearms, the consequences can be deadly. I am sick and tired of Congress refusing to lift a finger to protect our communities while, every day, dozens of people are shot and killed across the country.”

A 2018 survey shows that the wider LGBTQ community supports gun reform — with 93% of lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults supporting background checks and 72% opposing legislation and procedural changes that make it easier to obtain concealed weapon permits. This is not to say that the wider LGBTQ community opposes gun ownership. In fact, a growing cohort of LGBTQ individuals and other members of minority and marginalized groups are investigating gun training and ownership to protect themselves. Part of their motivation is not just protecting themselves against perpetrators of hate-motivated gun violence but also against state and federal agents that are increasingly attacking the LGBTQ community.

After the shooting, Tucson police increased their presence at other LGBTQ businesses in the city, but locals expressed concern that this would alienate some LGBTQ patrons, especially queer and trans patrons of color, and might also lead to further violence knowing that police continue to be instigators in and perpetrators of queer phobic violence. A Williams Institute study published this past year highlighted how LGBTQ people, especially queer people of color, LGBTQ youth, and trans and gender expansive individuals experience higher rates of profiling, discrimination, harassment, and entrapment from law enforcement. 

This is one of the reasons that police presence at Pride events continue to be controversial, as community members remember how the police were the major antagonists at the Stonewall and Compton’s Cafeteria riots. The LGBTQ rights movement came to be largely because queer and trans people of color fought back against violent police harassment and abuse. 

As someone who was traumatized by active shooter drills in elementary, middle, and high school, I am exhausted and heartbroken by continued gun violence and politicians’ refusal to consider and take action through gun reform legislation. Whether intentional or not, their hesitation to discuss and address this issue publicly and to use their political power to prevent future shootings communicates to LGBTQ+ people that they do not care about us. With gun violence disproportionately affecting our community, their silence and inaction is a form of queer phobic violence itself allowing tragedies like Tucson to continue happening. 

(If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources. You are not alone.) 

Emma Cieslik is a D.C.-based museum worker and public historian.