Commentary
LGBTQ people must oppose Trump SCOTUS nominee
A voting record to the right of every current justice except Thomas
Shannon Minter is the longtime legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR).
On July 9, President Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Kennedy, who authored the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision and a number of other landmark LGBT rights cases, was an occasional swing vote on the Supreme Court. Though he almost always sided with the conservative justices, sometimes he voted with liberal Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor on civil rights issues, including those affecting LGBTQ people.
By all measures, Brett Kavanaugh is considerably more conservative, ideological, and partisan than Justice Kennedy. When President George W. Bush nominated him to the D.C. Court of Appeals in 2003, his confirmation took three years because of his expressed partisanship. Additionally, in a rare move in 2006, the American Bar Association downgraded Kavanaugh’s ranking based on interviews with more than 90 fellow judges and colleagues who described him as “less than adequate,” “sanctimonious,” “insulated,” and “immovable and very stubborn.” A recent study by political scientist Lee Epstein found that Kavanaugh’s voting record tilted him to the right of every current justice except Clarence Thomas.
If confirmed by the Senate, Kavanaugh would tilt an already conservative court to the far right. LGBTQ people need to urge the Senate to do everything within its power to prevent his nomination. Here’s why:
Kavanaugh supports virtually unchecked executive power. From barring Muslim immigrants to separating children from their parents at the border, Trump has repeatedly taken reckless and precipitous actions that blatantly violate constitutional and humanitarian norms. But Kavanaugh’s record suggests that he will fail to subject Trump’s policies—including those targeting LGBTQ people and other vulnerable groups—to meaningful judicial review.
Kavanaugh co-authored the 1998 Starr Report that described President Bill Clinton’s sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky in salacious detail and reportedly strongly urged Special Counsel Ken Starr to use those details to embarrass Clinton during a grand jury investigation and to get an impeachment.
Kavanaugh has since completely reversed course. He now says a sitting president should be immune from any civil suits, criminal investigation, or criminal prosecutions. More broadly, his decisions indicate that he has an extremely expansive view of executive power and might well uphold even policies that violate constitutional rights if the president claims they are necessary to combat terrorism or for other national security reasons.
The Family Research Council, one of the most venomous anti-LGBTQ groups in our country, loves him. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated FRC as a hate group because it promotes bias against LGBTQ people. In 2005, FRC strongly supported Kavanaugh’s nomination to the D.C. Court of Appeals and, more recently, applauded his nomination to replace Justice Kennedy, vowing to work with Trump and senators to secure his confirmation.
Kavanaugh believes religion can be used to discriminate. In the recent Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission case, the Supreme Court affirmed the importance of anti-LGBTQ discrimination protections and rejected religion as a basis for discrimination. The court held that the government “can protect gay persons, just as it can protect other classes of individuals, in acquiring whatever products and services they choose on the same terms and conditions as are offered to other members of the public.” At the same time, the court did not unequivocally resolve the question of whether businesses can ever invoke religious liberty or free speech to justify denying services to LGBTQ customers.
Meanwhile, several states have passed laws permitting taxpayer funded adoption agencies to deny services to anyone, including same-sex couples, based on their religious beliefs, and legal challenges to these laws are likely. The determination of the conservative majority in the House of Representatives to pass “license to discriminate” measures underscores the need for a balanced court that will enforce the Constitution’s commitment to equality for all.
There are strong reasons for concern that a Justice Kavanaugh would vote to permit religious-based discrimination. FRC president Tony Perkins has praised Kavanaugh for his opposition to what Perkins terms a “growing assault on religious freedom.” As an attorney in private practice, Kavanaugh supported student-led prayers at public high schools and the use of taxpayer funds for religious schools. As a judge on the D.C. Circuit, Kavanaugh wrote that an employer should be able to deny contraceptive coverage based on the employer’s religious beliefs.
Kavanaugh is willing to diminish our most fundamental Constitutional rights.
Last year, in Garza v. Hargan, Kavanaugh dissented from an appellate court decision allowing a 17-year-old detainee in a Texas immigration facility to obtain an abortion after she was raped. Kavanaugh’s dissent showed a shocking disregard for the young woman’s constitutional right to control her own reproductive choices. This decision should give the LGBTQ community and other vulnerable communities serious pause about his commitment to preventing the erosion of fundamental Constitutional rights and upholding justice and equality for all.
New LGBT issues are likely to come before the Supreme Court and a Justice Kavanaugh could put the rights of our community at risk. This is a time to speak out and take action. It is critical for the future of our community and others that we urge senators to use every tool available to them to oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Today, on World AIDS Day, we honor the resilience, courage, and dignity of people living with HIV everywhere especially refugees, asylum seekers, and queer displaced communities across East Africa and the world.
For many, living with HIV is not just a health journey it is a journey of navigating stigma, borders, laws, discrimination, and survival.
Yet even in the face of displacement, uncertainty, and exclusion, queer people living with HIV continue to rise, thrive, advocate, and build community against all odds.
To every displaced person living with HIV:
• Your strength inspires us.
• Your story matters.
• You are worthy of safety, compassion, and the full right to health.
• You deserve a world where borders do not determine access to treatment, where identity does not determine dignity, and where your existence is celebrated not criminalized.
Let today be a reminder that:
• HIV is not a crime.
• Queer identity is not a crime.
• Seeking safety is not a crime.
• Stigma has no place in our communities.
• Access to treatment, care, and protection is a human right.
As we reflect, we must recommit ourselves to building systems that protect not punish displaced queer people living with HIV. We must amplify their voices, invest in inclusive healthcare, and fight the inequalities that fuel vulnerability.
Hope is stronger when we build it together.
Let’s continue to uplift, empower, and walk alongside those whose journeys are too often unheard.
Today we remember.
Today we stand together.
Today we renew hope.
Abraham Junior lives in the Gorom Refugee Settlement in South Sudan.
Commentary
Perfection is a lie and vulnerability is the new strength
Rebuilding life and business after profound struggles
I grew up an overweight, gay Black boy in West Baltimore, so I know what it feels like not to fit into a world that was not really made for you. When I was 18, my mother passed from congestive heart failure, and fitness became a sanctuary for my mental health rather than just a place to build my body. That is the line I open most speeches with when people ask who I am and why I started SWEAT DC.
The truth is that little boy never really left me.
Even now, at 42 years old, standing 6 feet 3 inches and 225 pounds as a fitness business owner, I still carry the fears, judgments, and insecurities of that broken kid. Many of us do. We grow into new seasons of life, but the messages we absorbed when we were young linger and shape the stories we tell ourselves. My lack of confidence growing up pushed me to chase perfection as I aged. So, of course, I ended up in Washington, D.C., which I lovingly call the most perfection obsessed city in the world.
Chances are that if you are reading this, you feel some of that too.
D.C. is a place where your resume walks through the door before you do, where degrees, salaries, and the perfect body feel like unspoken expectations. In the age of social media, the pressure is even louder. We are all scrolling through each other’s highlight reels, comparing our behind the scenes to someone else’s curated moment. And I am not above it. I have posted the perfect photo with the inspirational “God did it again” caption when I am feeling great and then gone completely quiet when life feels heavy. I am guilty of loving being the strong friend while hating to admit that sometimes I am the friend who needs support.
We are all caught in a system that teaches us perfection or nothing at all. But what I know for sure now is this: Perfection is a lie and vulnerability is the new strength.
When I first stepped into leadership, trying to be the perfect CEO, I found Brené Brown’s book, “Daring Greatly” and immediately grabbed onto the idea that vulnerability is strength. I wanted to create a community at SWEAT where people felt safe enough to be real. Staff, members, partners, everyone. “Welcome Home” became our motto for a reason. Our mission is to create a world where everyone feels confident in their skin.
But in my effort to build that world for others, I forgot to build it for myself.
Since launching SWEAT as a pop up fundraiser in 2015, opening our first brick and mortar in 2017, surviving COVID, reemerging and scaling, and now preparing to open our fifth location in Shaw in February 2026, life has been full. Along the way, I went from having a tight trainer six pack to gaining nearly 50 pounds as a stressed out entrepreneur. I lost my father. I underwent hip replacement surgery. I left a relationship that looked fine on paper but was not right. I took on extra jobs to keep the business alive. I battled alcoholism. I faced depression and loneliness. There are more stories than I can fit in one piece.
But the hardest battle was the one in my head. I judged myself for not having the body I once had. I asked myself how I could lead a fitness company if I was not in perfect shape. I asked myself how I could be a gay man in this city and not look the way I used to.
Then came the healing.
A fraternity brother said to me on the phone, “G, you have to forgive yourself.” It stopped me in my tracks. I had never considered forgiving myself. I only knew how to push harder, chase more, and hide the cracks. When we hung up, I cried. That moment opened something in me. I realized I had not neglected my body. I had held my life and my business together the best way I knew how through unimaginable seasons.
I stopped shaming myself for not looking like my past. I started honoring the new ways I had proven I was strong.
So here is what I want to offer anyone who is in that dark space now. Give yourself the same grace you give everyone else. Love yourself through every phase, not just the shiny ones. Recognize growth even when growth simply means you are still here.
When I created SWEAT, I hoped to build a home where people felt worthy just as they are, mostly because I needed that home too. My mission now is to carry that message beyond our walls and into the city I love. To build a STRONGER DC.
Because strength is not perfection. Strength is learning to love an imperfect you.
With love and gratitude, Coach G.
Gerard Burley, also known as Coach G, is a D.C.-based fitness entrepreneur.
Commentary
Elusive safety: what new global data reveals about gender, violence, and erasure
Movements against gender equality, lack of human rights data contributing factors.
“My identity could be revealed, people can say whatever they want [online] without consequences. [Hormone replacement therapy] is illegal here so I’m just waiting to find a way to get out of here.”
-Anonymous respondent to the 2024 F&M Global Barometers LGBTQI+ Perception Index from Iraq, self-identified as a transgender woman and lesbian
As the campaign for 16 Days Against Gender-Based Violence begins, it is a reminder that gender-based violence (GBV) — both on– and offline — not only impacts women and girls but everyone who has been harmed or abused because of their gender or perceived gender. New research from the Franklin & Marshall (F&M) Global Barometers and its report A Growing Backlash: Quantifying the Experiences of LGBTQI+ People, 2022-2024 starkly show trends of declining safety among LGBTQI+ persons around the world.
This erosion of safety is accelerated by movements against gender equality and the disappearance of credible human rights data and reporting. The fight against GBV means understanding all people’s lived realities, including those of LGBTQI+ people, alongside the rights we continue to fight for.
We partnered together while at USAID and Franklin & Marshall College to expand the research and evidence base to better understand GBV against LGBTQI+ persons through the F&M Global Barometers. The collection of barometers tracks the legal rights and lived experiences of LGBTQI+ persons from 204 countries and territories from 2011 to the present. With more than a decade of data, it allows us to see how rights have progressed and receded as well as the gaps between legal protections and lived experiences of discrimination and violence.
This year’s data reveals alarming trends that highlight how fear and violence are, at its root, gendered phenomena that affect anyone who transgresses traditional gender norms.
LGBTQI+ people feel less safe
Nearly two-thirds of countries experienced a decline in their score on the F&M Global Barometers LGBTQI+ Perception Index (GBPI) from 2022-2024. This represents a five percent drop in global safety scores in just two years. With almost 70 percent of countries receiving an “F” grade on the GBPI, this suggests a global crisis in actual human rights protections for LGBTQI+ people.
Backsliding on LGBTQI+ human rights is happening everywhere, even in politically stable, established democracies with human rights protections for LGBTQI+ people. Countries in Western Europe and the Americas experienced the greatest negative GBPI score changes globally, 74 and 67 percent, respectively. Transgender people globally reported the highest likelihood of violence, while trans women and intersex people reported the highest levels of feeling very unsafe or unsafe simply because of who they are.
Taboo of gender equality
Before this current administration dismantled USAID, I helped create an LGBTQI+ inclusive whole-of-government strategy to prevent and respond to GBV that highlighted the unique forms of GBV against LGBTQI+ persons. This included so-called ‘corrective’ rape related to actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression” and so-called ‘conversion’ therapy practices that seek to change or suppress a person’s gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or sex characteristics. These efforts helped connect the dots in understanding that LGBTQI+ violence is rooted in the same systems of inequality and power imbalances as the broader spectrum of GBV against women and girls.
Losing data and accountability
Data that helps better understand GBV against LGBTQI+ persons is also disappearing. Again, the dismantling of USAID meant a treasure trove of research and reports on LGBTQI+ rights have been lost. Earlier this year, the US Department of State removed LGBTQI+ reporting from its annual Human Rights Reports. These played a critical role in providing credible sources for civil society, researchers, and policymakers to track abuses and advocate for change.
If violence isn’t documented, it’s easier for governments to deny it even exists and harder for us to hold governments accountable. Yet when systems of accountability work, governments and civil society can utilize data in international forums like the UN Universal Periodic Review, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Sustainable Development Goals to assess progress and compliance and call for governments to improve protections.
All may not be lost if other countries and donors fill the void by supporting independent data collection and reporting efforts like the F&M Global Barometers and other academic and civil society monitoring. Such efforts are essential to the fight against GBV: The data helps show that the path toward safety, equality, and justice is within our reach if we’re unafraid of truth and visibility of those most marginalized and impacted.
Jay Gilliam (he/him/his) was the Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator at USAID and is a member of the Global Outreach Advisory Council of the F&M Global Barometers.
Susan Dicklitch-Nelson (she/her/hers) is the founder of the F&M Global Barometers and Professor of Government at Franklin & Marshall College.
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