Opinions
Kamala Harris is not perfect, but far better than Donald Trump
Republican ticket has voiced support for Vladimir Putin

As a Ukrainian child, I’ve been obsessed with American politics.
I was 13 when I was following my first American presidential election, avidly reading Russian Newsweek and watching the discussion about the debates between Barack Obama and John McCain on Savik Shuster’s political talk show on Ukrainian television.
Obama and Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, were the only Democrat politicians I liked in my “Republican” teenage years. And while I respected Brzezinski for his anti-Soviet views, my sympathy toward Barack Obama was personal.
At 13, I didn’t have words to describe myself as an autistic or trans* person, but I had a feeling that there is something deeply unusual about me. I was cruelly bullied among peers for being “weird.” I knew the history of the American Civil Rights Movement much better than any stories about Eastern European activism, and the idea that a Black man could become the president of the United States while millions of Americans still remember segregation gave me some hope about the possibility of social change.
Now with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on the ballot this year, I have a particular feeling of deja vu.
If Kamala wins, she will definitely become a role model — not just for girls all around the world but also because she is a Black woman — for people from other minorities, including folks who are living on the intersection of discrimination. Moreover, because she is an outstanding supporter for LGBT+ rights, her victory could be crucial for the LGBT+ community globally, because of American cultural and financial influence.
It is not just her role as an inspirational model that is interesting to me in the context of the coming election, but also the way the election and its outcome is affecting the situation in Eastern Europe and beyond.
The role of American culture
It is not particularly unusual that a Ukrainian child like me was deeply into American politics.
My classmates were less politicized than me, but some of my peers in school liked politics, and teachers often commented on the news. As weird as it could sound for an ordinary American citizen, the 2008 U.S. presidential election was no less popular in Donetsk, Ukraine, than the Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004-2005.
That’s right, ordinary Ukranians cared about the American situation no less than their own, maybe even more. American culture is extremely prominent globally — my Ukrainian and Russian peers who weren’t into politics were into American stuff like Kardashian shows and Hollywood blockbusters.
I think the average American should think a little bit more about the level of influence that American culture and political situation has in this world.
When I was an LGBT+ activist in Russia, I didn’t hear much about the Soviets who were put into prisons for being gay, or the Russian Empire’s history of queerness. On queer events we mostly spoke about the Stonewall riots, the HIV epidemic in the U.S., and San Francisco’s LGBT+ community during the Harvey Milk era.
When activists in St. Petersburg and Kyiv were talking about racism, they spoke about Dr. Martin Luther King and the Black Lives Matter movement, not about Russia’s persecutions of Chechens and Crimean Tatars. In “feminist schools,” the new generation of girls learned about intersectionality from Kimberly Krenshow’s speeches about PoC Americans.
Of course, it partly happened because post-Soviet activists lack the ability to think about their own political situation — Soviet people for years didn’t have any opportunity to participate in politics. Soviet dissidents looked to the West for inspiration, and Soviet officials for finding something that they could criticize to better fit in the party.
But this obsession with the U.S. is not limited to Eastern Europe.
In the Middle East, for example, terrorist groups like the so-called Islamic State even based a significant part of their propaganda on Western memes; making Hollywood-style videos, using American mass-culture references, and deliberately hiring Western supporters — “muhajirin” or immigrants — for media work.
American political and social culture is simply creating cultural trends.
This is why Kamala Harris could really change the perspective of a girl from a PoC background, and bring inspiration to marginalized people. Also, in the age when pro-Donald Trump’s QAnons conspiracy went global, a Trump victory would make far-right ideas much more mainstream.
Russian-Ukrainian war: Beyond the queer context
The situation is actually more complex than it may seem from the first glance.
If we are speaking about the Russian-Ukrainian war, we need to understand that right from the beginning of this war, Russia used anti-LGBT+ bigotry to justify its military aggression.
For example, the Russian Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the biggest and most prominent Christian church in Russia, was saying that the war in Ukraine happened because “people in Donbas do not want to have gay Pride.” We need to remember that at the same time Russia brutally bombed civilians in Donbas region, destroying schools and maternity wards.
The situation with schools is particularly “interesting.”
The governor of St. Petersburg’s region, Alexander Beglov, was saying that the Russian soldiers knew what they were fighting for after they saw gender-neutral toilets in Ukrainian schools.
So for the Kremlin, it is much better to kill children than to let them be queers, and Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, is known not just for his outstanding homophobic and transphobic views, but also for his support of Vladimir Putin. Despite all the pompousness of this statement, Trump and his administration de facto support genocide of queer people.
Kamala Harris has had her own problems with Eastern Europe.
For example, in my opinion, her relationship with Russia is too-centered around the Russian opposition, some of whom are Russian-supremacist, and she lacks understanding of intersectionality and colonial history of Eastern Europe and Northern Caucasus. That was obvious during prisoner exchange this past summer when the U.S. and Germany released Russian killer Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in a German prison for killing Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Chechen refugee who fought against Russian aggression in his homeland. The family of the victim wasn’t informed and Zelimkhan’s wife didn’t have an opportunity to react to the situation or participate in negotiations. German authorities and the Biden administration during the exchange didn’t ask Russia to release any Chechen political prisoners from Russian prisons.
The Khangoshvili case was extremely prominent for the Chechen community and could be compared to the George Floyd murder for Black Americans. So Krasikov’s release made Chechen communities in the U.S. and Europe believe in Kamala’s xenophobic tendencies. It is especially true after the long history of ignoring of Russia kidnapping and torture of Chechen civilians, and the fact that prominent Democrats, including Joe Biden, spoke about Chechnya only or mostly in a context of persecution of LGBT+ people.
When I spoke with Chechen activists about it, some of them started to believe a kind of a “gay lobby” conspiracy because of this situation, while others like to point out that it was under Russian authorities when gay people began to disappear in Chechnya. Before Russia’s occupation of Chechnya in 2000, private sexual lives was just a taboo topic, and any idea of “spying” on someone because the person could be gay, or reading private messages was considered an abomination. Western officials at the same time mostly believed Russian activists who are quite xenophobic, and made it all look like a problem of Chechen culture, not a direct result of Russian politics in Chechnya where people could be kidnapped and tortured literally for anything, from listening to a prohibited music to making a political joke on social media. Chechen Americans became alienated from Republicans because of their Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments, and they are also alienated from Democrats. And the situation has worsened because Russian authorities often kidnap Chechen refugee-activists’ relatives in Chechnya, forcing Chechen in the West, including American Chechens to be quiet, and nobody in American politics is addressing the problem.
This is not just a Chechen issue.
American Democrats for years were collaborating mostly with civil society activists from the Russian opposition, ignoring Crimea Tatars, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Georgians, and other people from post-Soviet states. They, while not deliberately, supported Russian propaganda that said the entire Eastern Bloc is one big “Mother Russia,” so they have a lot to work with.
Even though Democrats had their own issues, Republicans were making the same mistakes, and showing their open bigotry.
The stakes are now higher than before. Donald Trump is not just xenophobic and homophobic but also known for his collaborations with Vladimir Putin’s regime that committed horrendous war crimes in Chechnya, Syria, Libya, Mali, and, finally, Ukraine.
Americans could choose a convicted sex predator who had ties with a genocidal regime in Russia, or they could choose the imperfect, but ready-to-learn first female American president who would make the world more acceptable in the eyes of those who live overseas.
Ayman Eckford is a freelance journalist, and an autistic ADHDer transgender person who understands that they are trans* since they were 3-years-old.
Opinions
TRAITOR: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has blood on his hands
Nation’s highest-ranking gay public official is a MAGA sell out

It’s an odd dichotomy: President Trump appoints the highest-ranking openly gay government official in history in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, yet he launches cruel attacks on transgender Americans.
Make no mistake: Those attacks are claiming lives. Trans people are killing themselves. I know of one trans person who died by suicide on Election Night, overwhelmed by fear of the incoming administration. Trump’s attacks have driven trans Americans and their families to flee the country and move to Canada, as the Blade has reported.
None of this is hypothetical or melodramatic. It’s real life and happening everywhere.
And so when Bessent was confirmed as Treasury Secretary, I wrote an op-ed urging him to educate Trump about the plight of trans Americans and the destructiveness of the attacks on the community. I waited 90 days for some sign that Bessent has a heart or at least a modicum of decency but sadly, I must report that he does not.
The attacks on the LGBTQ community under Trump keep coming. Last week’s news that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is planning to retire the national 988 crisis lifeline for LGBTQ youth on Oct. 1 is just the latest evidence that this administration doesn’t just dislike us — they want us dead.
“Ending the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline’s LGBTQ+ youth specialized services will not just strip away access from millions of LGBTQ+ kids and teens — it will put their lives at risk,” Trevor Project CEO Jaymes Black said in a statement.
The service for LGBTQ youth has received 1.3 million calls, texts, or chats since its debut, with an average of 2,100 contacts per day in February.
Make no mistake: cutting this service will kill young LGBTQ people.
Just a couple of weeks earlier, Trump’s administration announced the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy would be gutted.
“In a matter of just a couple days, we are losing our nation’s ability to prevent HIV,” said HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute Executive Director Carl Schmid.
And prior to that, Trump issued a series of executive orders targeting the trans community — restricting access to affirming healthcare, banning trans service members from the military, barring trans women and girls from playing sports, eliminating the “X” gender marker on passports, and barring students assigned male at birth from using women’s restrooms.
Let’s be very clear: When you deny someone the ability to use the bathroom, you deny their humanity.
So back to Scott Bessent, the billionaire hedge fund manager now running our economy into the ground. As many Trump protesters have noted: silence is complicity. And Bessent has been silent on all of these horrific attacks on trans Americans and their basic humanity. He is spineless and a traitor to the LGBTQ community.
Bessent runs the U.S. Treasury and reportedly has Trump’s ear on all matters related to the economy. He could easily push Trump in a better, more compassionate direction, yet there is no evidence he has done that.
“The LGBTQ+ community is counting on openly LGBTQ+ nominees like Scott Bessent to step up for the community,” said Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson after the inauguration. Sadly, it’s become clear we cannot count on Bessent. As I wrote in January, Trump likes his queer people gay, white, cis, rich, and obedient.
Bessent has ignored the Blade’s interview requests. (And after this is published, I have no illusions he will change his mind.) The mainstream media, increasingly cowed by Trump, have failed to ask Bessent even the most basic questions about his views on trans equality and Trump’s attacks.
As a member of the LGBTQ community, Bessent has a responsibility to at least speak up on behalf of trans people who are suffering. But Republicans today have lost their spines. They genuflect before their Dear Leader, line their own pockets, and leave the rest of us to deal with the consequences.
The crisis is real. People are dying. Trans people especially are suffering. The rest of us must do what we can to mitigate that suffering and to speak out in defense of our trans friends.
Kevin Naff is editor of the Washington Blade. Reach him at [email protected].
Opinions
Congressional Equality Caucus should participate in WorldPride
Make bold statement about our commitment to LGBTQ rights

The Trump administration, by its actions, has already hurt WorldPride. By attacking trans people, they have gotten many nations to suggest to trans citizens they not come to the United States. Canada’s queer group has said it is advising its people not to come. It is sad in so many ways. But despite what the felon in the White House is doing, WorldPride will be a success. It can be a time to not only have fun, but to make a point to the administration and the world. What was the old saying, “We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going anywhere, so get used to it.” The LGBTQ community in the United States has made great strides since Stonewall in 1969, and there is no way we are going back into the closet.
One way we can make a strong statement is if every member of the Congressional Equality Caucus would come out and join hands with constituents from their state, who are coming to D.C. for WorldPride. Together, they can take a stand for equality. Together, they can make a statement about our country to the world; that the United States values and supports its LGBTQ community.
This year from May 17-June, we are anticipating huge crowds in Washington, D.C. for WorldPride. Let us together make sure they are all safe and that they have an exciting and fun time while here. But at the same time we should use this gathering to speak out, for our community here, and the LGBTQ community around the world.
We must show the felon in the White House, and his MAGA acolytes in Congress, and around the nation, all those who would keep us down, we can, and will, stand up for ourselves. We are only willing to move one way, and that is forward toward full equality. Many years ago, during the early fight for recognition of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, there was an event staged by the group ACT UP, called ‘hands around the White House.’ It is time to stage something like that again.
With all the attacks on the trans community, and as threats to the entire LGBTQ community continue, we need to stand together, and stay strong. We need to join with everyone else who is fighting back against the felon, and his Nazi sympathizing co-president, in the White House. To join in the demonstrations, fight back, and not fall for the distractions meant to take us from our goals. Those goals must include defeating every Republican in elections in 2025, and taking back Congress in 2026. I say every Republican, only because today there is no longer a rational Republican Party. That party has become a MAGA Party, or ‘Cult of Trump.’ That is sad, but it’s true. It is not up to Democrats, or independents, to change the Republican Party; it is up to us to ensure their defeat until they change themselves.
Until then we must work hard to elect Democrats across the nation. From school board, to county council, from statehouse to Congress. For the LGBTQ community that is the only way we will move forward on equality. It is the only way we can defeat those who want to ban books about our lives, and try to force us back in the closet. We must say a resounding NO to that.
We must vote for Democrats because history shows us, any other vote, a vote for a third party, helps Republicans win. The reality, like it or not, is today there are only two parties that can win a general election. Yes, in a few rare districts, a third party has won. But this is rare and let’s not take the chance of that happening if there isn’t a history in your state, or district, or community, where it happened in the past. Be smart! While you may not like everything the Democratic Party stands for, it has proven, its members stand for the rights of the LGBTQ community. The incredible progress since Stonewall has been because the Democratic Party has worked with the activists in our midst, to make that progress. Let’s not give up now and move backwards with the MAGA Party. Together, let’s retake our government, and continue to move forward until we have full equality. That must be the goal we join hands for, and pledge to work toward.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.

With legislation making it more difficult for transgender and gender non-conforming people to change their passports and other documents, it is now a race against the clock to change as many of them as possible.
Trans Maryland and Advocates for Trans Equality are among the groups that offer workshops and online resources.
Here’s how I did it in Maryland:
A letter from your primary care provider
The first thing you’ll need to get any of this rolling is a document from your primary care provider that shows proof of hormone therapy, gender incongruence, or both. In my experience, this is important to have prior to getting anything started because some states require some sort of proof in order to certify the change.
Some courts may need a therapist’s letter as well, but it depends on what state you live in. With this document, you’ll be able to bring it to the respective offices and it will give a valid reason for you to get your desired gender marker.
A court order
The next thing you will need is a court order that recognizes your gender identity. It is a precaution just to avoid any wasted time or confusion at any offices going forward. You will go to the circuit court website for what state/county you reside in and find a document that is a petition to change your gender. Here is an example from Maryland.
You will print that document and fill out the petition for your respective titles with or without a name change and take it to the Circuit Court. Some courts may require the appointment. There, you will present the petition and letter and pay a fee — Maryland’s fee is $165, however there are fee waivers for those that apply. After, you will wait some weeks for the court order to show up.
Social Security card
Unfortunately, as of January 2025, the Social Security Administration has ceased any gender changes in their system. As with the fight for passports reflecting the holder’s proper gender identity, the Human Rights Campaign and the American Civil Liberties Union may bring a case to regain access in the future.
Identity card/driver’s license
After getting your primary care letter and court order, make a standard appointment for Identification Services at the local DMV and bring the paperwork. Though the Maryland Court’s website says there is no need to get a court order to change any documents, the clerk at the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration (Maryland’s DMV) stressed that I needed the updated Social Security card changed in order to get an updated ID.
I was able to get it changed prior to the Trump-Vance administration, however given the current circumstances, if there is any pushback from any clerk or official who say they require a Social Security card, very adamantly cite the official gov website if applicable, and use the court order, despite the fact you should not need one to get your ID updated.
Birth certificate
Should all have gone well with the ID, the last document to amend is the birth certificate.
Unfortunately, this may be the most difficult document that you are able to amend because it must be done within your home state and some states, such as Oklahoma, Florida, Tennessee, and Texas, have already banned altering birth certificates.
In D.C., where I changed my own, there have been no known issues or legislation passed for changing the name and gender marker on the document. You will search your state government websites for the vital records department, find a Gender Designation Application and fill out the necessary information. The D.C. application is here:
On D.C.’s application, you must sign the document in front of a notary in order for it to be valid. Several mail offices, such as UPS, offer notary services for relatively cheap. Upon getting the application notarized, you can bring all documents you have already updated along with the court order and primary care letter to an appointment at the vital records office. All the previous work done should make this fairly easy if you are in a state that hasn’t made heavy strides to halt the process.
All in all, with about a month of your time, about $300, and a state that supports your right to self-actualization, you should still be able to change most of your documents.
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