In an era marked by escalating political hostility, targeted legislative rollbacks, and surging hate-fueled violence, LGBTQ+ individuals face an urgent and sobering imperative: self-defense. Across the United States, queer lives are increasingly endangered not just by interpersonal bigotry, but by systems that fail, or outright refuse to protect them. In this climate, the act of owning a firearm is not a political stunt. It is, for many queer people, an existential necessity.

Although gun ownership is often stereotyped as a conservative domain, a growing number of queer and trans individuals are reclaiming the right to bear arms; not to dominate, but to defend. The mainstream debate too often casts the federal Second Amendment and state gun rights as synonymous with reactionary politics. But for marginalized communities, especially those historically abandoned by police, the right to self-defense is not just constitutional, it is life-saving.

The numbers reinforce this stark reality. Data from the Williams Institute at UCLA reveals that queer people are more than five times more likely to experience violent victimization than their non-queer peers. Transgender individuals are at even greater risk, facing a staggering victimization rate of 93.7 per 1,000 people, compared to 21.1 per 1,000 among non-queer individuals. Black LGBTQ+ people in particular face some of the highest rates of hate-motivated violence, revealing the dangerous convergence of racism, queerphobia, and transphobia in American society.

The 2016 massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, where 49 predominantly Latinx/Latino queer people were murdered remains one of the most horrific reminders of how queer spaces are often the targets of deadly hate. Yet the violence has not abated. According to Them. magazine, 75% of transgender homicides in 2020 involved firearms used against them, with Black trans women disproportionately affected. Despite these facts, federal protections remain weak, and police responses are often indifferent, hostile, or retraumatizing.

In response, a growing network of queer and trans people have turned to community-based defense organizations that reject both right-wing extremism and state neglect. The Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), founded in 2018, promotes the idea that working-class and marginalized people deserve the tools and training to protect themselves. It is explicitly anti-fascist, anti-racist, and inclusive. As of mid-2019, roughly one-third of the SRA’s 2,000 members identified as queer, with specifically 8% identifying as transgender. Since the 2024 election cycle and the resurgence of far-right organizing, that number has more than tripled. The John Brown Gun Club (JBGC), another leftist formation, provides armed community defense at Pride marches, drag events, and anti-racist demonstrations, filling a critical gap left by state institutions that often fail to protect queer bodies.

These organizations don’t glorify violence. They promote harm reduction. They offer firearm safety classes, de-escalation training, and mutual aid, not paramilitary cosplay. Their existence serves a purpose more essential than politics: ensuring that no one is left defenseless against fascist aggression or hate-driven attacks. When institutions fail, the community must provide its own shield.

The rise in queer firearm ownership reflects a broader cultural shift. One that rejects the monopolization of armed protection by conservatives, law enforcement, and the military. It is a reclaiming of autonomy, of bodily sovereignty, of the right to survive. It says plainly: queer and trans lives are not expendable. They are not negotiable. They are worth defending.

In a world where systemic violence targets us at every intersection, queer and trans firearm ownership is not a fringe movement, it is a moral response to lived danger. This is not about glorifying guns. It is about refusing to die quietly. It is about the fundamental human right to safety, dignity, and resistance. As Malcolm X said, “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a human, you take it.”

So, too, must queer and trans people, especially those left behind by both government and mainstream queer institutions, and assert that their lives will not be bargained for, but protected. The people must not beg for safety. They must be ready to defend it.

Max Micallef is an activist and writer based in Upstate New York.

I thought of titling this “A long way from WorldPride” to contrast the struggles of displaced LGBTQ+ people in Kenya with the recent celebrations in Washington. But that would miss the real story.

The United States is facing a concerted right-wing effort to erase and disenfranchise minorities in the name of fighting “wokeness,” a term used to disrespect the diversity of America’s population. The phrase “DEI hires” [referring to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives] is used mockingly to pretend that no person of color or other minority is ever qualified for any job.

Meanwhile, my friend Rosamel, a trans woman who runs a safe house in Nairobi, is the very embodiment of pride under pressure. The two-dozen residents of the house include several orphaned children of queer folk. After Rosamel was hospitalized for days due to an injury and tetanus, the children have taken to sleeping next to her and following her around because they are afraid of losing her.

If that is not family, there is none. Those who use the claim that God created two and only two sexes as justification for denying legal protections to gender-non-conforming people need to take off their blinders and see the greater complexity of God’s creation.

Whether right-wing culture warriors recognize it or not, God created intersex people and people whose brain chemistry tells them their gender is different from what was assigned at birth.

The phrase “biological males” is routinely used by people on the right in a way that reduces biology to genitalia. Perhaps even more egregiously, many in the news media uncritically accept the right-wing vocabulary.

Thus our struggle continues. We still have work to do to build and honor what many good people of faith call the Beloved Community.

I attended the WorldPride Human Rights Conference in Washington featuring delegates from across the globe. Being surrounded by so many smart, dedicated activists was invigorating despite my suffering from stress and lack of sleep.

The final session at the conference was a conversation with the Congressional Equality Caucus. One of the panelists, Rep. Becca Balint (D) of Vermont, said, regarding right-wing threats to roll back LGBTQ+ progress, that she is a glass-half-full kind of person.

She is right. We could easily sink into despair, given the aggressive attacks on our community. But we must not let the haters rob us of our joy nor deflect us from our purpose.

Before the panel began, I spoke with moderator Eugene Daniels of MSNBC, an openly gay journalist who is president of the White House Correspondents Association. I thanked him for his fearlessness and excellence.

A friend told me that he didn’t care to emulate Eugene’s fashion-forward style nor his use nail polish. But my point in praising Eugene is not that all of us should try to be him. We are a diverse people. It is rather his poise and self-confidence that deserve emulation.

Eugene’s mother told him when he was younger, “You belong in whatever room you find yourself.” Yes.

The threats to LGBTQ+ people around the globe are real and daunting. But we have one another, and the examples set by those who came before us. We also have the wisdom of those children in Nairobi, who needed no one to tell them who loves and cares for them.

I raised money to pay for repairs to the safe house, and for the walking sticks Rosamel required after her injury. The need among these displaced people is always greater than the capacity of the handful of donors. More non-governmental organizations are needed to help those forced to flee their homes and countries because of unscrupulous politicians and clergy who scapegoat them for problems they had no part in causing.

Eugene Daniels was motivated to come out after the Pulse Nightclub murders in 2016. He didn’t want to die with no one knowing his true self.

By contrast, Utah state legislator Trevor Lee (R) backs HB 77, a measure to ban Pride flags in schools and local government buildings, with an amendment allowing Nazi and Confederate flags for “educational purposes.”

We must join forces to beat back the evil nonsense currently proliferating.

To find role models, we have only to look around us and around the world. Rosamel and Eugene did not wait for permission to step up and lead.

To quote a wise ancient man whose teaching is routinely ignored by the hatemongers on the so-called Christian right: “Go thou and do likewise.”

Richard J. Rosendall is a D.C.-based writer and former president of the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance.

I am sure I will be called heartless after people read this column. But I have come to believe that if you are sick, or old, maybe you should not run for Congress. We now have three open Democratic seats in the House of Representatives. They are open because two members over 70, who had been diagnosed with cancer before the election, decided they had to run anyway. They won, but have since passed away early in their term. The other death was a congressperson who decided it was appropriate to run for his first term at the age of 70. 

I understand what being older means, and also what a cancer diagnosis is. I am fortunate and have survived three different cancers. It is also true, anyone, at any age, can die. Just listen to Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) who told her constituents they will die anyway so why worry about her voting to cut their Medicaid. But seriously, these three men should definitely have considered not running. They should have allowed a younger man, or woman, to run for what are considered safe Democratic seats. Just recently, Speaker Johnson got his ‘beautiful bill,’ actually a really disgusting bill, the one the felon in the White House is asking Congress to pass, through the House by only one vote. Just think if we had three more votes against it. 

Again, each of those seats is considered pretty safe for Democrats. In recent years we have seen Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) hold onto her seat for much too long, and then there is the Republican congresswoman who was still in the House but missing votes, who they found was living in an assisted senior living center. Her son admitted she had issues with dementia. I have to mention here, it’s not only members of Congress, but those in statehouses, and even presidents, who need to know when it is time to move on. 

Running while ill is not a new phenomenon. I first saw this back in 1972, when Congressman William Fitz Ryan (D-N.Y.) had his district combined with that of Congresswoman Bella S. Abzug (D-N.Y.), based on the 1970 census. Bella decided to challenge him in the primary, and he decided to run even though he had cancer, hiding how serious it was. He won the primary against her, and then died before the general election. Bella became the Democratic candidate and won the election. There were those at the time who accused her of killing him by running against him. An outrageous accusation, the facts being he should never have run. So again, this is not something new. But I believe if Democrats want to attract more young people into politics, we need to think about this. In 2018, I wrote about term limits and retirement at 80 for the Congress and the Supreme Court. I still believe that. I am not mentioning names here, as I believe it is really a very personal thing for those who run for office. How they see their life after serving, if they are running for reelection, or what they think they can accomplish at an older age if they get elected for the first time.

Some may have read the column I wrote recently chastising David Hogg for how he is handling his PAC. I don’t disagree with his vision of supporting young people to run for state legislatures, and the Congress. I am all for that. My problem with David is how he is doing it. 

We live in a difficult world, and the felon in the White House, his MAGA cult, and his sycophants in Congress, are only making things more difficult for everyone. My generation of Democrats has done many good things, and we have moved the country forward in many ways. Until Trump, we were moving forward on equality, and climate change, among so many other issues. We recognize we have a global economy, and that is good. But it is clear we have left many things undone, and faced a backlash, which brought us Trump and his MAGA cult. 

So, today we need the younger generation, who are inheriting this world, to step up and take a role in running it. We need to be willing to step aside when it’s time. We can act as advisers and supporters for the younger generation. We can help them raise funds, and work to get them elected. We should always be available if they ask for help, but it is time we got out of their way when it comes to running for elective office. 

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