Opinions
State Department’s new human rights reports are silent. We refuse to be
LGBTQ people ‘erased’ from 2024 report
In Dhaka, Bangladesh, a young gay man who had traveled five hours to meet us at the U.S. ambassador’s residence spoke softly about the violence he endured. For years, activists like him would meet with U.S. officials to tell their stories, trusting our government to publish their truth for the world to hear. Last week, the Trump administration betrayed that trust and cast aside decades of bipartisan work. Instead of fair and accurate reporting, it systematically deleted almost all references to abuse and persecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) people in the 2024 U.S. Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, known as the Human Rights Reports (HRRs).
Mandated by Congress since the 1970s, the HRRs cover every country in the world. They are an essential resource for courts, governments, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in evaluating human rights abuses, allocating resources, and crafting policy. Though the reports originally did not cover anti-LGBTQI+ violence, persistent education and advocacy from our community led Republican and Democratic administrations, including the last Trump administration, to document abuses based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics annually for the past two decades.
When we served as the Office of the U.S. Special Envoy for LGBTQI+ Rights, these reports were a priority. During our service, we reviewed and incorporated reporting from our embassies, the UN, NGOs, universities, media, and — most importantly — from survivors themselves. By the time we left government in January, every country’s report contained a dedicated, robust section documenting abuses against LGBTQI+ people.
These sections filled a void. They mapped where U.S. investments in human rights could do the most good, reinforcing work by human rights defenders, foreign governments, and allies to make the world safer for LGBTQI+ people. They helped asylum judges evaluate claims from LGBTQI people fleeing persecution. They told activists that their struggle was seen.
This year, the Trump administration did the opposite. After a long delay, they released them last week during the congressional summer recess in order to bury the truth. They erased whole categories of abuse and watered-down others, including against women and girls, workers, indigenous peoples, people of African descent, Roma, and LGBTQI+ people. The LGBTQI+ section was deleted outright. A keyword search across all the 2024 reports we’ve read yields almost nothing: no “LGBTQI+,” virtually no “sexual orientation,” no “gender identity,” no “intersex.” What few references remain are shortened, sanitized, and buried deep.
Read the 2024 chapters for Uganda and Russia, and you might believe there are no LGBTQI+ people or abuses in either country. But read the report from 2023 and you’ll see 45 reports of anti-LGBTQI+ abuses in Uganda and 36 in Russia. Clearly, it is not possible to resolve such systematic abuse in one year. Instead, our State Department just removed any reference to most of the most egregious abuses of LGBTQI+ people worldwide.
In Iraq, for example, parliamentarians passed an anti-LGBTQI+ law that equates homosexuality with “prostitution,” and punishes same-sex relations with up to 15 years in prison. But that law, reported on in 2023, gets no mention. Same in the Kyrgyz Republic, where a nationwide “LGBTQI+ propaganda” law forced a shutdown of perhaps the country’s oldest LGBTQI+ service provider. No mention. And, in Afghanistan, unspeakable acts of anti-LGBTQI+ violence and abuse at the hands of the Taliban, all reported last year, are gone too.
This erasure is deliberate. It tells authoritarian governments they can abuse minorities with impunity. It also signals to Americans that LGBTQI+ equality is negotiable here at home, too, landing just as the Supreme Court received a petition to overturn marriage equality.
But here is the truth: erasure has never defeated us. Visibility has always been our movement’s most powerful tool — and history shows it cannot be permanently denied. From Stonewall to marriage equality in the United States to countries around the world that have struck down sodomy laws and codified transgender rights, LGBTQI+ people have always overcome silence with courage and persistence. Across continents, when they try to erase us, we turn exclusion into progress.
The administration’s refusal to report on human rights abuses of LGBTQI+ people and other marginalized groups is a political act, not an accident. We urge you: call your U.S. senators and representatives today via the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and ask them to confront the administration for failing to do its job on the HRRs and pass Senate bill S. 2611 mandating that future reports cover LGBTQI+ rights and other key categories. We urge other governments to expand their own reporting to rigorously document and condemn abuses. All of us can fill the gap by elevating high-quality data from NGOs, universities, and think tanks that are already setting the global standard for reporting on the status of LGBTQI+ people around the world.
The administration may rewrite its reports to fit its narrow view of the world, but it cannot erase the courage of those who tell their stories or the victories we have already won. Our history as LGBTQI+ Americans proves that visibility, once claimed, cannot be buried for long. The task before us is simple and urgent: to insist on truth, to defend it in every forum, and to carry it forward until equality is beyond erasure.
Jessica Stern is a Senior Fellow at the Carr-Ryan Center at the Harvard Kennedy School and co-founder and principal of the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, an organization co-founded by eight former ambassadors, special representatives, and special envoys advocating for human rights in U.S. foreign policy. She is the former executive director of Outright International and the former U.S. Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons.
Suzanne B. Goldberg is the Herbert and Doris Wechsler Clinical Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and former senior advisor in the Office of the Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons.
Reggie Greer is a Global LGBTQI+ Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a former Biden-Harris Administration appointee, serving as Senior Advisor to the U.S. Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons as well as White House Director of Priority Placement and Senior Advisor on LGBTQI+ Engagement.
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.
I hope you have a great Thanksgiving and can enjoy it with family and friends and that you have things you can be thankful for this past year. That you have your health. Now here is the column I would have liked to share with you this Thanksgiving:
To all my friends and family. This year I am thankful the felon has left the White House. It feels we can all finally breath again. I am so happy his idea of a ballroom at the White House was a joke, and we can once again walk in Jackie Kennedy’s rose garden, and visit the beautiful East Wing. I am thankful the felon’s personal Goebbels, Stephen Miller, lost his job when the reality that he was a fascist was too much to take. It was wonderful to see the Supreme Court wake up and do their job once again. They stopped drinking the MAGA Kool-Aid and voided all the executive orders calling on museums to hide the history of Black Americans, women, and the LGBTQ community. They told the president he didn’t have the right to place tariffs, and that he couldn’t fire legally appointed members of commissions under the rubric of Congress’s control.
Then I am thankful the Congress began to do its job. That so many Republicans grew a set of balls and decided to challenge Speaker Mike ‘sycophant’ Johnson, reminding him they were an independent part of government, and didn’t need to rubber stamp everything the felon wanted. I was thankful to see them extend the SNAP program indefinitely, and the same with the tax credits for the ACA, agreeing to include these important programs in next year’s budget. Then they went further, and paid for the programs, by rescinding all the tax benefits they had given to the wealthy, and corporations, in the felon’s big ugly bill. Finally realizing it is the poor and middle class who they had to help if the country was to move forward. Then I can’t thank them enough for finally passing the Equality Act, and doing it with a veto proof majority, so the felon had to sign it, before he left office. They did the same for the Choice Act, and the Voting Rights Act. It was a glorious year with so much to be thankful for.
Then I am so thankful Congress finally stood up to the felon and said he couldn’t start wars without their approval, and the Supreme Court ruled they were right. That attacking Venezuela was not something he had the right to do. Then the final thing the court did this year I am thankful for, is they actually modified their ruling on presidential immunity, and said the felon’s grifting was not covered, as under their decision that was private, and not done in his role as president. Again, can’t thank them enough for waking up and doing that.
Then there is even more I am thankful for this year. It was so nice to see Tesla collapse, and Musk lose his trillion-dollar salary. The people finally woke up to him and insisted Congress mandate the satellite system he built, basically with money from the government, was actually owned by the government, and he could no longer control who can use it. It was determined he alone would not be able to tell Ukraine whether or not they can use it in their war defending against the Russian invasion. Then I am so thankful Congress went even further, and approved the funds needed by the Ukrainians for long-range missiles, and a missile defense system, accepting Ukraine was actually fighting a proxy war for the West, and Ukraine winning that war would help keep our own men and women off the battlefield.
And speaking of our military, I thank Congress for lifting the ban on transgender persons in the military, and honoring their service, along with the service of women, Black service members, all members of the LGBTQ community, and all minorities. It was fun to see Pete Hegseth being led out of the Pentagon, and being reminded he wasn’t the Secretary of War. There is no Department of War, it is still the Department of Defense, with congressional oversight. Again, so many things to be thankful for this past year. It seemed like my heart runneth over.
Then my alarm went off and I woke up from my big beautiful dream, only to realize I was still living in the Trumpian nightmare.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
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