As someone who’s spent a career working to ensure LGBTQ+ people are represented in politics, welcomed in public life, and protected under law, I know how powerful visibility can be. I’ve also seen what happens when that visibility is denied — especially to those at the intersection of marginalized identities.

That’s why, as WorldPride arrives in Washington, D.C., I’m filled with both pride and a sense of deep responsibility.

WorldPride isn’t just a parade. It’s a global platform — a moment when the world’s eyes will be on our city. It’s an opportunity to model what queer liberation should look like: bold, inclusive, principled, and expansive.

But I’m also hearing, more and more, from LGBTQ Jews who aren’t sure they’ll be safe to show up.

Since Oct. 7, antisemitism has surged around the globe — including in progressive and queer spaces. We saw it last week when two Israeli embassy workers were killed in a shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum. Across the country, Jewish LGBTQ people are being asked to choose between parts of who they are. I’ve seen groups disinvited from Pride events for displaying a Jewish star. I’ve heard from friends who are now afraid to wear religious symbols in LGBTQ spaces. And I’ve witnessed silence from movement leaders when antisemitism appears — cloaked in politics, but no less dangerous.

As a gay Jewish man, I know how that erasure feels. And I know what it looks like to be told you’re welcome only if you agree to leave part of yourself at the door.

WorldPride in D.C. must not send that message.

This is our city. And this is our chance to lead. We can’t just be proud — we have to be accountable. We have to ensure that Pride is truly a space for all of us, including LGBTQ Jews who carry grief, identity, and history that may not always align neatly with dominant narratives.

That means taking action. It means working with groups like A Wider Bridge to make sure Jewish LGBTQ people are included at every level of planning. It means briefing security teams and marshals to protect—not police—those who show up with Jewish symbols. It means being clear that antisemitism, like all forms of hate, has no place at Pride.

It also means recognizing how deeply intertwined Jewish history is with queer liberation. From Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials, to countless Jewish LGBTQ activists who’ve helped shape movements from Stonewall to marriage equality, Jewish LGBTQ individuals have long been integral to our progress. Erasing their Jewishness erases our history and undermines our future.

We must reject purity tests that ask queer Jews to disavow who they are in order to be accepted. Such demands not only isolate LGBTQ Jews but weaken the solidarity that has been foundational to our collective progress.

To the organizers of WorldPride: You have the power to set the tone for the world. Use it to uplift — not exclude. Bring in diverse Jewish voices, especially Mizrahi, Sephardi, trans, and queer Jews of color. Make space for their grief. Honor their joy. Ensure their safety. And publicly affirm their presence, making clear that visibility at Pride includes the visibility of Jewish symbols, experiences, and identities.

To my fellow LGBTQ leaders: We’ve long said our movement must be inclusive. That must include Jews. Period. Inclusivity isn’t conditional. It means standing unequivocally against antisemitism, even — and especially — when it’s difficult or uncomfortable.

And to LGBTQ Jews: Don’t sit this one out. I understand the hesitation, the exhaustion, and the fear. But this moment calls for courage, too. You belong in every rainbow-colored corner of this movement. Wear your stars. Carry your flags. Share your stories and reclaim your visibility. Show up as your whole self.

WorldPride is here. Let’s make it a beacon — not just of celebration, but of courage, complexity, and true community. Let’s show the world a Pride that doesn’t just speak of solidarity but embodies it fully, unequivocally, and joyfully for every LGBTQ person — including Jews.

Marty Rouse is a renowned D.C. LGBTQ activist. He served for decades at the Human Rights Campaign and the Victory Fund.

Antisemitism, racism, and Islamophobia, are terrible things to have to deal with, and we must all always speak out and reject them. But the reality is, as a proud, Jewish, gay man, living in Washington, D.C. today, I am more afraid of Donald ‘felon’ Trump, his Nazi sympathizing co-president Elon Musk, his own Joseph Goebbels, Stephen Miller; and his Cabinet flunkies like Homeland Security’s Kristi Noem and State Department’s Marco Rubio, than I am of any legal college demonstration. Mind you, I say legal.

We live in a world where Trump has made all kinds of outrageous behavior acceptable. He has dined with white nationalists, said there are fine people on both sides in his first comments when the Charlottesville riots occurred. Today, Trump sits with terrorists in Qatar, accepting a plane as a bribe, and negotiates with terrorists like Hamas. This is the world Donald Trump has created. That is what I fear the most. It is a world where Donald Trump has made it acceptable for racists, homophobes, sexists, antisemites, and Islamophobes to spout their hate in the public square.

This past year I published my memoir, and wrote about being a first generation American. My parents came here to escape the Nazis — my father from Germany, and my mother from Austria. My father joined the American Army and went back to fight the Germans. His parents were gassed in Auschwitz. I understood from them and their friends, what antisemitism was. But I grew up in a Jewish community in New York City, and as I wrote in my book, never felt any of it myself until I was 13 on a trip through the Midwest and was called a ‘Kike’ and had to ask someone what that meant.

As to being gay, I knew I was, even though I didn’t understand it, when I was 12. I could, and did hide that, until I was 34. I then came out in D.C., which turned out to be an easy place to come out. But it was near the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and that made you very careful. You were told not to have your insurance company pay for a blood test, so God forbid, people would think you were gay, or worse if you did test positive. There was rampant discrimination and fear regarding HIV/AIDS at the time. I know I lost at least two jobs because I was gay, yet luckily, neither of those impacted my career in the long run. I became a gay activist, fought for my community, and things got better. I had worked for Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.), sponsor of the first Equality Act, before I came out, and met many gay people who were very supportive and became lifelong friends.

Today, Donald Trump, literally through his actions, threatens the lives of trans persons. While we are celebrating WorldPride in D.C., which as a city is a very welcoming place for the LGBTQ community, countries around the globe have told their citizens to be on alert if they come here. The United States is on their watch list for unsafe travel because of Trump’s actions.

When Donald Trump was elected the first time, his racism, homophobia, sexism, and Islamophobia immediately came to the fore. It had a negative impact on the culture in our country. It actually changed the culture, and that, and he, have only gotten worse over time. Today, Trump and his MAGA minions, are truly frightening. Again, trans people are afraid and antisemitism and Islamophobia are rampant in our nation.

Trump tries to blame it on some foreign students, but reality is, it is his doing. He and his MAGA cult. They are the ones I fear, not a graduate student at Columbia who supports Palestinians. It is the Netanyahu government in Israel that is making things worse. Yes, Hamas must be defeated as they promote genocide against the Jewish people in Israel. But the Israeli government starving millions of Palestinian people in Gaza, who are not Hamas, is not helping anyone. It simply creates more antisemitism. Trump going back and forth on his support of Netanyahu, and then saying he wants to displace every Palestinian from their home in Gaza to build a resort, creates more antisemitism. Trump is the guilty one, not the Columbia student who speaks out for his Palestinian family.

Where this will end, I do not know. But my heart breaks for the two innocent Israeli diplomats recently killed on the streets of D.C. by a terrorist who basically was given permission to act out by what Trump is doing in the world. What he did was vile, and he should end up in jail for the rest of his life. Everyone needs to speak out every day, and say antisemitism is unacceptable, and must be stopped. I never want to see Germany in 1939 replicated here. But that is what Trump and his MAGA cult are doing. They threaten everyone who they disagree with, and seek vengeance for suspected slights. They are literally trying to destroy our democracy. By what they are doing they give the terrorist who ended the lives of that beautiful young Jewish couple in D.C., implicit permission to act. Because if a president can act like a criminal, why can’t he?

We are all stuck for the moment, suffering in Trump’s alternate universe, where it’s OK to lie and insult foreign leaders who are your guests in the White House. Where it’s OK to lie and say you have a beautiful bill that won’t add to the deficit when it’s actually a disgusting bill that will add $4 trillion to the deficit. Where it’s OK to screw the poor and make the rich richer. Where you can scapegoat trans people and make their lives hell. Where you can invite racist South Africans into our country, and send legally here Venezuelans back home, to maybe face death. Where it is OK to take grift from Qatar in the form of a $400 million plane that will cost the American taxpayer over a billion dollars to retrofit for your sorry lying ass to use. That is the Trump alternate universe we all currently live in. 

But as this alternate universe begins to unravel, I have a gut feeling the American people, or at least enough to make a difference, will wake up one morning and say ‘we’ve had it with you and your MAGA cult’ and finally rebel. My hope is they do it in time for the 2026 mid-term elections. By then there will be very few Americans who themselves, have a friend, or relative, who have not been negatively impacted from the actions taken in Trump’s alternate universe. They, or someone they know, will have lost their job. They will have lost their healthcare, or know someone who did, or find their rural hospital has closed. They or someone they know will have trouble applying for Social Security because their local office has been closed. They will know a veteran who can’t access their healthcare, because they were fired, or their VA hospital has fired so many care givers. They will see their grocery bill go up, and all the Christmas gifts they hoped to buy for their children become unaffordable because of Trump’s tariffs. They will see their rent rise, and have no recourse but to find the money to pay it, or lose their home. They will be told they can no longer get their annual flu or COVID vaccination, and even if they could, their health insurance will no longer pay for it, and that is if they still have health insurance. Their prayers for a cure for their own, a relative, or friends’ illness; cancer, Alzheimer’s, MS, or HIV/AIDS, will have been dashed, as in Trump’s alternative universe all the research looking for those cures has been defunded. 

They will wake up one morning to a nightmare realizing Trump lied to them. That he has appointed the biggest collection of incompetent fools ever to run the government. They will finally understand it’s not the government that is bad, but rather Trump and his MAGA minions. They will see too late that in Trump’s alternate universes it was OK to fire the people at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) so we no longer get predictions of hurricanes and tornadoes, which allowed communities to get advance warning. Then when they hit and create havoc and death, people will find out in Trump’s alternate universe the Federal Emergency and Management Administration (FEMA) has been defunded, so there is no help for them to rebuild their lives. 

I believe that one morning people will wake up to reality, and realize that yes, President Biden was diminished and should have said earlier he wouldn’t run for a second term. But their lives were still better and safer than they are now in Trump’s alternate universe. It is Trump who is diminished, and is diminishing them, while screwing them. They will recognize in Trump’s alternate universe the poor in the United States are expendable and don’t matter except as pawns in his desire to rule the world. He thinks it’s OK to screw the heroic people of Ukraine, and all of our allies in NATO, as he bows down and kisses Putin’s ass. That he can actually talk about displacing millions of Palestinians, so he can steal their homeland, and build a resort. That he can go to the Middle East, bow to their sheiks, and cut deals for his private company to build hotels and resorts. 

So again, it is my hope and prayer, that before 2026 they will realize Trump never had a mandate from them, the people, to enter his alternate universe. Contrary to his rants, while he won the last election, the vote was split nearly evenly. So, it won’t take many voters to throw his MAGA sycophants out of Congress in 2026. It won’t take many to rise up and say, “We have had it with your alternate universe.” They will refuse to continue to live in Trump’s alternate universe, where we get hurt, and you and your friends get richer on our backs. They will say, “We are ready to reclaim our country, to bring back common decency. You will not continue to lie to us and we will not continue to be fooled. We finally see through you, and see who you really are. We will keep you from doing any more harm to us, and our country, in your last two years in office.” Then the people will cast Trump and his MAGA sycophants in Congress out. They will see to it that he ends up on the dust heap of history and ensure that one day his tombstone will read “Here lies the lying felon who tried to destroy our county, but we stopped him, and took it back.” 

We the people, will eventually win against Trump’s alternate universe, because good does finally triumph over evil, and Donald Trump, you are proving to be pure evil. 

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