A loss of federal funds has forced Puerto Rico’s largest LGBTQ organization to scale back its work on the island.

Waves Ahead earlier this year lost upwards of $200,000 for a restorative justice program that the Justice Department funded through a three-year grant.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has also rescinded a $170,000 annual grant that Waves Ahead used to sustain Soraya’s House, a transitional housing program for LGBTQ people in Cabo Rojo, a municipality in Puerto Rico’s southwest coast. Puerto Rico’s Women’s Advocate Office, known by the acronym OPM, earlier this year also denied Waves Ahead’s application to receive more funding for its work to combat anti-LGBTQ violence.

OPM distributes STOP (Services, Training, Officers, and Prosecutors) Violence Against Women Formula Program funds it receives from the Justice Department to grant recipients in Puerto Rico.

Waves Ahead Executive Director Wilfred Labiosa during an interview with El Nuevo Día, a Puerto Rican newspaper, last month said his organization between October 2023 and January 2025 received more than $110,000 from OPM. (The Trump-Vance administration took office on Jan. 20. Puerto Rico Gov. Jenniffer González Colón, a Republican who supports President Donald Trump, took office on Jan. 2.)

Labiosa during an interview with the Washington Blade said Waves Ahead has lost 60 percent of its total budget.

The cuts have forced Waves Ahead to close its community center in Loíza, a municipality that is roughly 20 miles east of San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital. Waves Ahead has also had to curtail its restorative justice program that it operates with the Puerto Rico Cultural Center in Chicago.

Community centers continue to operate in San Juan, Cabo Rojo, Maunabo, and Isabela.

“People were really gaining a lot of skills. People were really involved,” Labiosa told the Blade.

“That was just pulled like a big band-aid right off the skin,” he said, referring to when he learned the Justice Department had rescinded the grant.

Waves Ahead Executive Director Wilfred Labiosa and volunteers bring food, water and other relief supplies to Iluminada, an 86-year-old resident of Vieques, Puerto Rico, on Jan. 31, 2018. Hurricane Maria a few months earlier devastated the U.S. commonwealth. (Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)

Labiosa told the Blade the White House’s anti-LGBTQ policies and stance against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs likely contributed to the loss of federal funds.

He noted Waves Ahead lost its HUD funding, even though it was “on the list.”

“People here in Puerto Rico started to receive all the award letters, and all of a sudden we didn’t receive ours,” said Labiosa.

He told the Blade that Waves Ahead is one of two HUD grant recipients in Puerto Rico with LGBTQ-specific language in their profile, but “it is the only organization that has its mission and programming focused on LGBT homeless and people who needed transitional housing.”

“When we approached HUD and approached the local agent of HUD here … they all said, oh, we’re not sure what happened,” said Labiosa. “We tried to meet with everybody involved, but HUD never gave us a phone call. They just sent us an email saying you didn’t answer this question. The question was answered. It was something pitiful.”

Neither HUD nor the Justice Department have responded to the Blade’s request for comment.

Waves Ahead, meanwhile, has turned to the Puerto Rican diaspora in the mainland U.S. and private foundations for support. Labiosa noted local organizations and businesses have also given Waves Ahead money.

Waves Ahead on Giving Tuesday raised $2,778.

“We continue hands on and moving forward,” said Labiosa.

The government of Puerto Rico has made a clear decision: to turn its back on part of its own people. There are no technical excuses or legal arguments that can disguise what is really happening.

The temporary suspension of the “X” gender marker on birth certificates is a deliberate act of erasure. It is a modern form of exclusion, masked as a defense of the “rule of law.” But let’s be clear: what is being defended here is not justice — it’s the power of a few to impose their fear on the freedom of many.

The federal court order issued by Judge María Antongiorgi Jordán didn’t force anyone into anything. It didn’t erase existing categories or require anyone to identify as nonbinary. It simply allowed those who have never had a truthful box to check on a government form to finally exist legally. But the moment that option challenged the comfort of binary thinking, the entire state apparatus was mobilized against it.

Pride Society Magazine, Puerto Rico’s only LGBTQ media outlet, covered this development in an article titled “Gobierno de Puerto Rico paraliza la X” or “Puerto Rico’s government paralyzes the X.” More importantly, it echoed the voices of those most affected. The LGBTQ+ Federation of Puerto Rico didn’t mince words: the government is spending public money and resources to block a right that has already been validated by the courts. This is not about process or caution — it’s about obstruction. Federation leaders called it exactly what it is: a political move rooted in prejudice, fear, and a desire to appease the most conservative sectors of society.

This isn’t a technical delay. This is a statement of values. It says if your identity doesn’t fit our categories, you don’t exist. If your truth challenges the status quo, you will be denied.

The “X” on a birth certificate doesn’t impose anything. It doesn’t threaten anyone. What it does is allow people to live with dignity, without being forced to lie every time they’re asked to show their ID. That minimal recognition is now being denied, not by accident, but by design.

And it fits perfectly within a broader, dangerous trend — at both the federal and local level. Across the U.S. and Puerto Rico, we are witnessing a calculated rollback of LGBTQ rights, particularly those affecting trans and nonbinary people. What was once progress is now treated as threat. What was once affirmed is now litigated into oblivion. And while legal teams argue and politicians posture, people are being erased in real time.

This has nothing to do with parties, religions, or ideology. It’s about human dignity. It’s about the right to be seen and named for who you truly are. Those who celebrate this suspension are not protecting society — they are upholding a system of exclusion that punishes anyone who dares to be different.

The Pride Society Magazine article is more than just a news story. It is a record of resistance. It documents the courage of those who speak up when institutions stay silent. It reminds us that dignity cannot be postponed, and existence cannot be debated.

The truth is simple: the “X” is not the problem. The real problem is a system that cannot stand to admit that people come in more than two categories. A system that would rather halt a form than recognize a life.

And if we allow that system to keep winning, soon there won’t be any boxes left to check, because we will have allowed ourselves to be erased completely.

Some dates split a nation’s soul in two. July 16, 2025, will be one of them for Puerto Rico. That day, Gov. Jenniffer González signed Senate Bill 350 into law — now known as Law 63-2025 — and what she signed wasn’t just a piece of legislation. It was abandonment.

Abandonment of trans youth. Abandonment of loving families. Abandonment of medical professionals who offer care with science and compassion. With the law in hand, the state left us utterly alone.

Law 63-2025 bans all gender-affirming medical care for individuals under 21-years-old. But it doesn’t stop there. It criminalizes the very act of accompanying someone with love and professional integrity on their journey to live authentically. Parents, doctors, therapists, social workers — now all face the threat of up to 15 years in prison, a $50,000 fine, and permanent loss of licenses. Medicine is no longer a right. Providing care has become a crime.

This is not an isolated case. Puerto Rico is now part of a growing wave of reactionary policies sweeping across the United States and the world. A crusade against diversity, cloaked in false morality, aimed at controlling bodies and erasing identities through legislation.

Here on the island, this law was passed despite the warnings of the medical community. Despite families begging to be heard. Despite the secretary of health himself stating that there is no medical crisis that justifies such legislation. The government’s response was clear: facts don’t matter. What matters is control.

Perhaps the most painful betrayal of all is the attack on the constitutional right of families to decide what’s best for their children. Parental rights — protected by both national constitutions and international human rights treaties — were trampled without hesitation. The state claimed it knows better than love. Better than science. Better than home.

What does this mean in real life?

A trans teenager can no longer access medical care. A mother could be arrested for supporting her child. A therapist must stay silent or risk everything. Fear, silence, and anguish become the new language of adolescence.

They say this law “protects minors.” But what it truly does is push them toward despair. It denies them access to their identity, to mental health care, to hope. What it protects is not people — but prejudice.

And yet, here we are. Not defeated. Not silenced. But standing tall, knowing that history doesn’t end with a signature. Resistance cannot be outlawed. Dignity cannot be repealed.

Puerto Rico has a memory of struggle that refuses to fade. We’ve raised our voices against colonialism, injustice, and marginalization. This time will be no different. Human rights advocates, compassionate faith communities, courageous families, and ethical professionals will not back down.

The governor may have signed a law, but she did not sign away our voice.

We are not leaving. We will not abandon our youth.

Trans youth are not alone, even if their government tries to make them feel that way.