News
Veteran strategist takes helm of coalition to pass ENDA
McTighe says executive order would make issue a partisan one
Matt McTighe is campaign manager for Americans for Workplace Opportunity. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key).
For Matt McTighe, the strategy for passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is similar to the one he oversaw guiding the legalization of same-sex marriage in Maine: Having LGBT people tell their stories about the harms they face under current law.
“The big things are just the need for personal interactions, really trying to educate people using our own personal stories,” McTighe said.
The gay 34-year-old veteran political strategist, who in addition to leading the 2012 ballot campaign that brought marriage equality to Maine had a hand in efforts as a Gill Action Fund operative in defeating anti-gay marriage efforts in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, has been contracted through the fall to head the $2 million LGBT campaign known as “Americans for Workplace Opportunity.” The campaign has a singular goal: pass ENDA.
During an interview with the Washington Blade on Tuesday, McTighe said he wanted to bring the recent success the LGBT community has seen on marriage equality to ENDA in the wake of legalization of same-sex marriage at the ballot in three states and in legislatures in two states.
“We can take those same proven tactics and apply them to other issues that haven’t had as much resources behind them or as much as a concerted push behind them in recent years and see if we can get it done,” McTighe said.
Ian Grady, the Equality Maine communications director who worked with McTighe under the Maine marriage campaign, said his former boss’ ability to work with people of different political affiliations makes him “a great choice” to lead the new coalition.
“In Maine, while he led the efforts to secure marriage, he brought together people and groups from across the political spectrum to build the support we needed to win,” Grady said. “He’s a natural choice to lead this new, bi-partisan effort.”
Foremost on McTighe’s mind is ensuring successful, bipartisan passage of ENDA in the Senate, where a vote is expected in the fall. The campaign has identified several key states with undecided senators where it’ll concentrate on building grassroots support: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and West Virginia.
With U.S. senators at home in their districts during August recess, McTighe said the immediate focus of the campaign includes efforts “to generate a high number of quantity contacts and quality contacts” of individuals and business leaders who have a personal connection to lawmakers and are able to talk with them about ENDA.
“And so far, that outreach has been going really well, we have a growing list of supportive companies, a growing list of faith leaders who are coming on board and some really high-profile prominent advocates on both sides of the aisle,” McTighe said.
Also on the agenda while Congress is on hiatus is updating the research and polling on ENDA, which McTighe says has remained stagnant for some time.
“The last real massive comprehensive poll on this was done in early 2011,” McTighe said. “So, we need updated research, we need updated numbers. Our guess is that support has only increased in recent years because we’ve seen support increase on marriage and growing acceptance of LGBT Americans across the country.”
Amid anticipated plans for town halls for lawmakers and their constituents, McTighe said he encourages ENDA supporters to question their representatives in Congress about ENDA “as long as they do it in a respectful way that gives them space.”
“It’s never helpful for them to do it in an accusatory way that’s going to put it on the defensive and frame it as, ‘Why aren’t you supporting this thing already?'” McTighe said. “Because the case is for some of these legislators, yeah, we wish all of them were supportive, but some of them just really haven’t had the exposure to the education.”
Three of the undecided senators on ENDA are Democrats: Sens. Bill Nelson (Fla.), Mark Pryor (Ark.) and Joe Manchin (W.Va.). Nelson has been quoted in the Tampa Bay Times about having concerns over the transgender protections in ENDA, including whether private business insurance policies would have to pay for gender reassignment surgery.
While expressing faith that Nelson would cast a vote in favor of ENDA based on the lawmaker’s record, McTighe said the way to bring the Florida senator on board is through additional education and lobbying from transgender constituents.
“I think the things that Sen. Nelson has said and certainly his past voting record shows that he’s open-minded, fair-minded who, I think, gets that these are his constituents, too, and anybody needs to be protected,” McTighe said.
McTighe said he’s “optimistic” that ENDA would find 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate, but added “it’s not going to be easy” getting there and he wouldn’t predict the number of votes that would be ultimately won on the Senate floor.
The Senate vote has such prominence in McTighe’s strategy that he said he wouldn’t openly speculate about the strategy for passing ENDA in the House, saying it’s “premature” to talk about ideas like a discharge petition or the Senate inserting ENDA into a larger bill that the House would later pass.
“The biggest thing is that we know for sure that we’re not going to get anywhere until we actually have a successful bipartisan vote that actually comes to the floor and can overcome a filibuster in the Senate,” McTighe said. “To me, it’s pointless to speculate about what’s going to happen in the House, or what’s going to happen on the executive order in the administration until we really give it our all to get a full Senate vote.”
Still, McTighe said his work during the short-term on the Senate vote is meant to build support for success in the lower chamber of Congress.
“Even though I’m only contracted to oversee this effort through the Senate vote this fall, everything I’m doing and all the plans, field and research groundwork I’m putting into place is predicated on the notion that the coalition will need to keep the fight going in the House,” McTighe said.
McTighe said he sees a path forward in the House following a bipartisan vote on the Senate floor if other GOP lawmakers joins Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in supporting the bill.
“We think we’ve got a really good shot of getting anywhere between two to five more,” McTighe said. “If we can do that, and show that this isn’t a partisan issue, I think a lot of Republicans in the House are going to look at this and probably put some pressure on leadership that this is an issue that so many Americans support, this is an issue in every state you’ll see, in every poll you’ll see support growing, and the polls are only going in one direction.”
McTighe says executive order would ‘inject level of partisanship’ into debate
The campaign is focused on the Senate without looking for additional help beyond what the administration is currently offering. McTighe said he’s happy with the level of support from the administration and Obama’s position on the legislation is clear.
“I think the president has been great in expressing his support for this legislation and expressing his support for the pathway of trying to actually get a bill passed because the administration recognizes and has a long track record of supporting workplace protections,” McTighe said.
Notably, McTighe expressed a lack of interest in Obama issuing an executive order that would prohibit LGBT workplace discrimination among federal contractors, saying that kind of unilateral administrative action “injects a level of partisanship into whatever that debate is.”
“We want to embrace the legislative process here instead and actually work with the Senate, and work eventually with the House to get this passed because an executive order would only cover approximately 20 percent of the American workforce or less through federal contractors, whereas passing a full ENDA, which we’re only going to get to with a bipartisan majority, is going to cover everybody,” McTighe said. “The minute an executive order is invoked, now you’re going to make it a lot harder for people from whatever party the current administration is not in, so in this case Republicans coming on board, it makes it harder for them because now this is much more of a partisan issue.”
The Americans for Workplace Opportunity coalition includes more than 90 groups seeking to pass ENDA headed by a steering committee of eight prominent groups — LGBT-affiliated and otherwise — seeking to pass the legislation. The steering committee consists of American Civil Liberties Union, American Federation of Teachers, American Unity Fund, Human Rights Campaign, Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights, National Center for Transgender Equality, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force and the Service Employees International Union.
McTighe said these groups working under a single umbrella to pass ENDA is more effective than each of them working individually because a bigger pool of resources will be combined toward a larger goal.
“We know there’s a focus and we know that we’ve got significant resources that are going to be better spent and more effectively utilized because they’re going to all flow through one entity, and in this case it’s going to be overseen by me as campaign manager, and I can treat it as I would any other campaign, focusing on a deadline and a specific goal,” McTighe said.
Getting access to the steering committee, McTighe said, required organizational strength as well as shared belief that the tactics employed to win marriage equality are the right ones to pass ENDA.
“This is a very specific campaign where funding is being allocated for very specific purposes, so we’re working with the organizations that do that, that actually do that level of research-driven targeted field [work] with a tailored message and message-testing like what we’ve seen done with all the marriage states,” McTighe said.
Still, the steering committee lacks some groups known for their work on ENDA, including GetEQUAL, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal, Log Cabin Republicans and Freedom to Work. Freedom to Work’s absence is particularly striking because that group is focused specifically on winning LGBT workplace protections.
McTighe emphasized that each of these organizations is part of the larger 90-group coalition to pass ENDA and emphasized that inclusion on the steering committee “really depends on the tactics” that these organizations pursue.
“I look at it as a pie; this is one slice of the pie,” McTighe said. “There’s a much bigger movement, and this is true of every movement and every campaign. There are going to be groups that are supportive, some of them are going to be part of the coalition some might be on a board, some might be on a separate advisory board.”
Asked whether he was happy with Freedom to Work’s contributions to the effort to pass ENDA, McTighe replied, “I haven’t had a lot of firsthand experience working with Freedom to Work, but everything that I’ve seen, I know they’re really dedicated to this issue, and I look forward to working with them as part of the broader coalition that we’re all going to be working in.”
Tico Almeida, president of Freedom to Work, said he hasn’t met McTighe, but looks forward to collaborating as part of the effort to pass ENDA.
“I’ve never met Mr. McTighe, but I’ve heard really wonderful things about him from our contacts at the Gill Foundation, in Maine, and elsewhere in our movement,” Almeida said. “I’m looking forward to learning more about AWO’s efforts, especially since Freedom to Work has a full docket of lobbying, litigation, field organizing, Republican outreach, Spanish-language Latino outreach, collaboration with faith and business leaders, and social media efforts that we will roll out in September.”
The presence of another group on the steering committee, the ACLU, is also noteworthy because that group is the chief organization that’s seeking to narrow a religious exemption to enable a greater number of meritorious cases for LGBT workplace discrimination. McTighe denied the group’s inclusion means the campaign would share this goal, nor did the issue come up during negotiations in bringing the ACLU on board.
“The opportunities to amend it — whether it was in the committee process, or previous years, or in the early drafting stages — some of these organizations had positions were they were really trying to advocate for narrow exemptions or different wording or additional language, but in the case of coming together in the steering committee, we’re united in trying to get a bill passed that’s already passed the committee and that’s the version that’s out there right now,” McTighe said.
But the main message that McTighe had for supporters of ENDA was that people need to make clear the federal employment non-discrimination protections don’t exist to grow the number of voices calling for its passage.
“You need to get those same people who are shocked and even outraged when they hear protections don’t currently exist … trying to contribute in a productive way whether it’s supporting the organization — supporting Americans for Workplace Opportunity in this case — also just talking to the legislators, telling them them in an open-minded way why they care about it,” McTighe said.
World
Top 10 international LGBTQ news stories of 2025
Marriage progress in Europe; trans travel advisories depress WorldPride attendance
The Trump-Vance administration and its policies had a significant impact on the global LGBTQ rights movement in 2025. War, anti-LGBTQ crackdowns, protests, and legal advances are among the other issues that made headlines around the world over the past year.
Here are the top international stories of 2025.
10. Australia ends ban on LGBTQ blood donors
Australia on July 14 ended its ban on sexually active LGBTQ people from donating blood.
“Lifeblood (the Australian Red Cross Blood Service) has been working to make blood and plasma donation more inclusive and accessible to as many people as possible, whilst maintaining the safety of the blood supply,” said the Australian Red Cross Blood Service in a press release that announced the new policy.
Lifeblood Chief Medical Officer Jo Pink said the new policy will allow 24,000 additional people to donate blood each year.
9. Kenyan judge rules gov’t must legally recognize trans people
A Kenyan judge on Aug. 20 ruled his country’s government must legally recognize transgender people and ensure their constitutional rights are protected.
Justice Reuben Nyakundi of the Eldoret High Court in western Kenya ruled in favor of a trans athlete who was arrested in 2019 and forced to undergo a medical examination to determine her gender. The 34-year-old plaintiff who is a board member of Jinsiangu, a trans rights organization, said authorities arrested her at a health facility after they claimed she impersonated a woman.
“This is the first time a Kenyan court has explicitly ordered the state to create legislation on transgender rights, and a first in the African continent,” noted Jinsiangu in a statement. “If implemented, it could address decades of legal invisibility and discrimination faced by transgender persons by establishing clear legal recognition of gender identity, protection against discrimination in employment, housing, healthcare, and education, and access to public services without bias or harassment.”
8. U.S. withdraws from UN LGBTI Core Group
The U.S. in 2025 withdrew from the U.N. LGBTI Core Group, a group of U.N. member states that have pledged to support LGBTQ and intersex rights.
A source told the Washington Blade the U.S. withdrew from the Core Group on Feb. 14. A State Department spokesperson later confirmed the withdrawal.
“In line with the president’s recent executive orders, we have withdrawn from the U.N. LGBTI Core Group,” said the spokesperson.
7. Wars in Gaza, Ukraine continue to make headlines
Israeli airstrikes against Iran prompted authorities in Tel Aviv to cancel the city’s annual Pride parade that was scheduled to take place on June 13.
The airstrikes prompted Iran to attack Israel with drones and missiles. One of them destroyed Mash Central, a gay bar that was located a few blocks from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. Marty Rouse, a longtime activist who lives in Maryland, was in Israel with the Jewish Federations of North America when the war began. He and his group left the country on June 15.
Bet Mishpachah, an LGBTQ synagogue in D.C., welcomed the tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that took effect on Oct. 10, roughly two years after Hamas militants killed upwards of 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 200 others when they launched a surprise attack on the country.
In Ukraine, meanwhile, the war that Russia launched in 2022 drags on.
6. Int’l Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Taliban leaders
The International Criminal Court on July 8 issued arrest warrants for two top Taliban officials accused of targeting LGBTQ people, women, and others who defy the group’s strict gender norms.
The warrants are for Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s supreme leader, and Afghanistan Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani.
Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, in January announced a request for warrants against Taliban officials over their treatment of women and other groups since they regained control of Afghanistan in 2021. The request marked the first time the court specifically named LGBTQ people as victims in a gender persecution case before it.
5. Hundreds of thousands defy Budapest Pride ban
More than 100,000 people on June 28 defied the Hungarian government’s ban on public LGBTQ events and participated in the 30th annual Budapest Pride parade.
Former Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who is his country’s first openly gay head of government, and openly gay MEP Krzysztof Śmiszek, who was previously Poland’s deputy justice minister, are among those who participated in the march.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz-KDNP coalition government have faced widespread criticism over its anti-LGBTQ crackdown.
Hungarian lawmakers in March passed a bill that bans Pride events and allow authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify those who participate in them. MPs in April amended the Hungarian constitution to ban public LGBTQ events.
4. LGBTQ delegation travels to Vatican to meet Pope Leo after Francis dies
Pope Francis died on April 21.
The Vatican’s tone on LGBTQ and intersex issues softened under the Argentine-born pope’s papacy, even though church teachings on homosexuality and gender identity did not change.
The College of Cardinals on May 8 chose Pope Leo XVI, an American cardinal from Chicago who was bishop of the Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru from 2015-2023, to succeed Francis.
Leo on Sept. 1 met with the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest who founded Outreach, a ministry for LGBTQ Catholics. A gay couple from D.C. — Jim Sweeney and the Rev. Jason Carson Wilson — are among those who took part in an LGBTQ pilgrimage to the Vatican a few days later that coincided with the church’s year-long Jubilee that began last Christmas Eve when Francis opened the Holy Door.
3. EU’s top court rules states must recognize same-sex marriages
The European Union’s top court on Nov. 25 ruled member states must recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other member states.
The EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled in favor of a couple who challenged Poland’s refusal to recognize their German marriage.
The couple who lives in Poland brought their case to Polish courts. The Polish Supreme Administrative Court referred it to the EU Court of Justice.
“Today’s ruling of the Court of Justice of the EU is of key importance not only for the couple involved in the case, but also for the entire LGBT+ community in Poland,” said the Campaign Against Homophobia, a Polish LGBTQ and intersex rights group.
2. U.S. funding cuts devastate global LGBTQ community
The Trump-Vance administration’s decision to cut U.S. foreign aid spending in 2025 has had a devastating impact on the global LGBTQ rights movement.
Council for Global Equality Chair Mark Bromley noted to the Blade the U.S. historically funded roughly a third of the global LGBTQ rights movement.
Groups around the world — including those that worked with people with HIV/AIDS — that received U.S. funding had to curtail programming or close altogether. LGBTQ+ Victory Institute President Elliot Imse earlier this year noted the global LGBTQ rights movement in 2025 was set to lose more than $50 million.
“It is a catastrophe,” he said.
1. Countries boycott WorldPride amid travel advisories
Canada and a number of European countries in 2025 issued travel advisories for trans and nonbinary people who planned to visit the U.S.
The advisory the Danish government issued notes President Donald Trump’s executive order that bans the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers. It also notes “two gender designations to choose from: male or female” when applying for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) or visa for the U.S.
Egale Canada, one of Canada’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organizations, in February announced its members would not attend WorldPride, which took place in D.C. from May 17-June 8, or other events in the U.S. because of the Trump-Vance administration’s policies. Other advocacy groups and activists also did not travel to the U.S. for WorldPride.
InterPride, which coordinates WorldPride, also issued its own travel advisory for trans and nonbinary people.
National
Top 10 LGBTQ national news stories of 2025
Trump, Supreme Court mount cruel attacks against trans community
President Trump’s anti-LGBTQ agenda dominated national news in 2025, particularly his cruel attacks on trans Americans. Here are our picks for the top 10 LGBTQ news stories the Blade covered in 2025.
10. Trump grants clemency to George Santos
President Donald Trump granted clemency to disgraced former Long Island Rep. George Santos. Santos was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft and had served just 84 days of his more than seven-year sentence. He lied to both the DOJ and the House Ethics Committee, including about his work and education history, and committed campaign finance fraud.
9. U.S. Olympics bans trans women athletes
The United States Supreme Court decided in 2025 to take up two cases — Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J.— both of which concern the rights of transgender athletes to participate on sports teams. The cases challenge state laws under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which prevents states from offering separate boys’ and girls’ sports teams based on biological sex determined at birth. Both cases are set to be heard in January 2026. The developments follow a decision by the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee to change eligibility rules to prohibit transgender women from competing in women’s sporting events on behalf of the United States, following Trump’s Executive Order 14201, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”
8. FDA approves new twice-yearly HIV prevention drug
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on June 18 approved a newly developed HIV/AIDS prevention drug that needs to be taken only twice a year, with one injection every six months. The new drug, lenacapavir, is being sold under the brand name Yeztugo by pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences. According to trial data, 99.9 percent of participants who received Yeztugo remained HIV negative. This emerging technology comes amid direct cuts to HIV/AIDS research measures by the Trump–Vance administration, particularly targeting international HIV efforts such as PEPFAR.
7. LGBTQ people ‘erased’ from gov’t reports
Politico reported in March that the Trump–Vance administration is slashing the State Department’s annual human rights report, cutting sections related to the rights of women, people with disabilities, the LGBTQ+ community, and more. Members of Congress objected to the removal of the subsection on “Acts of Violence, Criminalization, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity or Expression, or Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC)” from the State Department’s Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
In a Sept. 9 letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), Julie Johnson (D-Texas), and Sarah McBride (D-Del.) urged the department to restore the information or ensure it is integrated throughout each report, noting that the reports serve as key evidence for asylum seekers, attorneys, judges, and advocates assessing human rights conditions and protection claims worldwide.
6. Trump admin redefines ‘sex’ in all HHS programs
The Trump administration canceled more than $800 million in research into the health of sexual and gender minority groups. More than half of the National Institutes of Health grants scrapped through early May involved studies of cancers and viruses that disproportionately affect LGBTQ people.
The administration is also pushing to end gender-affirming care for transgender youth, according to a new proposal from the Department of Health and Human Services, NPR reported. The administration is considering blocking all Medicaid and Medicare funding for services at hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care. “These rules would be a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s attack on access to transgender health care,” said Katie Keith, director of the Center for Health Policy and Law at Georgetown University.
5. FBI plans to label trans people as ‘violent extremists’
The Human Rights Campaign, Transgender Law Center, Equality Federation, GLAAD, PFLAG, and the Southern Poverty Law Center condemned reports that the FBI, in coordination with the Heritage Foundation, may be working to designate transgender people as “violent extremists.” The concerns followed a report earlier this month by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, who cited two anonymous national security officials saying the FBI is considering treating transgender subjects as a subset of a new threat category.
That classification—originally created under the Biden administration as “Anti-Authority and Anti-Government Violent Extremists” (AGAAVE) — was first applied to Jan. 6 rioters and other right-wing extremists. Advocates said the proposal appears to stem from the false claim that the assassination of Charlie Kirk was committed by a transgender person.
4. Pentagon targets LGBTQ service members
Acting in agreement with the growing anti-LGBTQ sentiment from the Trump administration, during a televised speech to U.S. military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico in late September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denounced past military leadership for being too “woke,” citing DEI initiatives and LGBTQ inclusion within the Department of Defense. During the 45-minute address, Hegseth criticized inclusive policies and announced forthcoming directives, saying they would ensure combat requirements “return to the highest male standard only.”
Since 2016, a Navy replenishment oiler had borne the name of gay rights icon Harvey Milk, who served in the Navy during the Korean War and was separated from service under other than honorable conditions due to his sexuality before later becoming one of the first openly LGBTQ candidates elected to public office. In June 2025, the ship was renamed USNS Oscar V. Peterson.
The U.S. Air Force also announced that transgender service members who have served between 15 and 18 years would be denied early retirement and instead separated from the military without benefits. Transgender troops will be given the option of accepting a lump-sum payout offered to junior service members or being removed from service.
In February, the Pentagon said it would draft and submit procedures to identify transgender service members and begin discharging them from the military within 30 days.
3. Trump blames Democrats, trans people for gov’t shutdown
Republicans failed to reach an agreement with Democrats and blamed them for the government shutdown, while Democrats pointed to Republicans for cutting health care tax credits, a move they said would result in millions of people paying significantly higher monthly insurance premiums next year. In the White House press briefing room, a video of Democrats discussing past government shutdowns played on a loop as the president continued to blame the Democratic Party and “woke” issues, including transgender people.
“A lot of good can come from shutdowns. We can get rid of a lot of things. They’d be Democrat things,” Trump said the night before the shutdown. “They want open borders. Men playing in women’s sports. They want transgender for everybody.”
2. Supreme Court joins attacks on LGBTQ Americans
The U.S. Supreme Court issued multiple rulings this year affecting LGBTQ people. In Mahmoud v. Taylor (6–3), it ruled that public schools must give parents advance notice and the option to opt children out of lessons on gender or sexuality that conflict with their religious beliefs. The case arose after Montgomery County, Md., schools added LGBTQ-inclusive storybooks to the elementary curriculum.
In June, the court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors, protecting similar laws in more than 20 states. Lawmakers and advocates criticized the ruling, and a coalition of seven medical associations warned it strips families of the right to direct their own health care.
The Court also allowed the Trump administration to enforce a ban on transgender military personnel and to implement a policy blocking passports with “X” gender markers, with the federal government recognizing only male and female designations.
1. Trump inaugurated for second time
President Donald Trump became the 47th president after winning Wisconsin, securing 277 of the 270 electoral votes needed. His guidebook, Project 2025, outlined the Republican Party’s goals under his new leadership, with a particular focus on opposing transgender rights.
Trump nominated openly gay hedge fund executive Scott Bessent as U.S. Treasury Secretary, a role he eventually assumed. Bessent became the highest-ranking openly gay U.S. government official in American history.
Honorable mention: The war on rainbow crosswalks escalates around the country
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) ordered state transportation officials to remove a rainbow-colored crosswalk in Orlando next to the Pulse gay nightclub, where 49 mostly LGBTQ people were killed in a 2016 mass shooting. The move follows a July 1, 2025, announcement by U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy that, with support from President Trump, the department adopted a “nationwide roadway safety initiative” that political observers say could be used to require cities and states to remove rainbow street crosswalks.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Tuesday signed a bill that will ban so-called LGBTQ propaganda in the country.
Members of Kazakhstan’s lower house of parliament last month unanimously approved the measure that would ban “‘LGBT propaganda’ online or in the media” with “fines for violators and up to 10 days in jail for repeat offenders.” The Kazakh Senate on Dec. 18 approved the bill.
Kazakhstan is a predominantly Muslim former Soviet republic in Central Asia that borders Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and China. Russia, Georgia, and Hungary are among the other countries with anti-LGBTQ propaganda laws.
A dangerous precedent on trans rights in Texas
Top 10 international LGBTQ news stories of 2025
A pledge to keep fighting in 2026
Top 10 LGBTQ national news stories of 2025
Looking back at the 10 biggest A&E stories of 2025
Out actor talks lead role in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’
This gay author sees dead people
How to cope when a partner gives you the silent treatment
The 25 greatest queer movies of the 21st century so far
