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On Wednesday, Gallup released a striking new poll showing support for LGBTQ+ people declining for a second consecutive year. The drop is not limited to transgender people—similar declines have hit support for same-sex marriage and the moral acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships, which is now at its lowest point since 2016. When examined closely, the decline is driven almost entirely by Republicans, whose support for same-sex marriage has collapsed 18 points in five years and whose moral acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships has fallen back to where it was in 2010. The numbers come as the political crackdown that began with transgender people has broadened to target the wider LGBTQ+ community—with state legislatures now hearing bills to overturn same-sex marriage and a sitting Republican congressman declaring this week that "homosexuality has no place in America." The data makes one thing clear: there is no LGB without the T. As it has been for our entire history, our rights are deeply interconnected, and those who target one part of this community will not stop until they have come for all of it.

Support for LGB people is dropping as well as trans people, and it seems entirely driven by Republican respondents.

It is tempting to view this decline as emblematic of a broader societal backlash toward LGBTQ+ people, but a closer look at the data reveals something more specific. The numbers are driven almost entirely by a collapse in attitudes among Republicans, whose party has actively stoked hostility toward LGBTQ+ people among its base for the past five years. Democratic support for same-sex marriage remains at 87%, unchanged since 2022. Independent support has dipped only modestly. But among Republicans, the reversal is severe. A majority of Republicans—55%—said they favored same-sex marriage in 2021 and 2022. Today, that number sits at 37%, an 18-point collapse. In that same period, the share of Republicans who said gay and lesbian relationships were morally acceptable fell from 56% to 35%, a 21-point drop—meaning nearly two-thirds of the Republican Party now believes it is immoral to be gay. Only 5% of Republicans believe it is morally acceptable to change one's gender. These changes did not happen organically. They are the product of a deliberate, well-funded, decades-long campaign by the religious far right to roll back LGBTQ+ acceptance in America. The Alliance Defending Freedom, a massive far-right and Christian Nationalist organization with $100+ million fundraising, has pursued what it calls a "generational wins" strategy that explicitly includes the elimination of marriage equality. The organization was was the legal force behind Chiles v. Salazar, the case that legalized conversion therapy nationwide. ADF has openly identified the elimination of marriage equality as part of its "generational wins" strategy. Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump term included sweeping rollbacks of LGBTQ+ protections across the federal government, many of which are actively being implemented. As a result, Republican leaders are more willing than ever to embrace not only anti-transgender stances, but openly anti-LGB ones as well.

#united states #sexuality and gender identity #homophobia #transphobia #sourced from substack

What I soon discovered was that some people are mad about this event. And not just mad at the Trump administration, which I could easily understand. They’re also mad at the UFC. They’re mad at me for writing about it, even critically. They’re mad at the fighters for participating in it. They’re mad at anyone who watches this sport. It’s all trashy bullshit, according to them, and it’s our fault there’s a gaudy arena going up on the White Houe lawn right now. I was surprised by this reaction, and maybe that’s on me. I’ve been inside the fight sports bubble for so long that I’ve gotten desensitized to a lot of different aspects of it. Not just the violence, either (but definitely also the violence). I’ve also become numb to some of the more absurd and sensationalized aspects of the fight business, mostly because it’s always more or less like that. At some point you lose the capacity to be shocked. Oh, they’re gonna put a UFC cage on the White House lawn? Yeah that sounds like some shit they would do. In the years I’ve worked within this weird world we’ve had fights at the Playboy mansion, a Brazilian police special forces base, a U.S. military base, a Spanish bull ring, and a medieval castle, just to name a few. Couple weekends ago there was a boxing match at the pyramids. The real ones! The ones in Egypt! So yeah, when I heard that the UFC would team up with its pals in the Trump administration for a fight at the White House, it did not seem all that surprising. Tacky? Sure. A possible sign of a republic in decline? O absolutely, it’s some dwindling days of the Roman empire type of shit for sure. (My podcast co-host Chad Dundas has suggested we call this event “UFC: Bread And Circuses,” which just feels right.) But I have to admit that I didn’t seriously consider the possibility of any meaningful backlash against the UFC itself, maybe in part because I assumed that all the people who usually ignore this sport would ignore this event. Then we saw that giant “claw” structure going up in front of the White House. Suddenly it got a lot harder to ignore. Especially when paired with the super important ballroom construction site right next to it, there’s an inescapable quality to this visual reminder of what our nation has become.

So a weird thing happened last week and it exposed a blind spot in my thinking that I am going to attribute to having my brain gradually mel

It’s not hard to see how even some longtime fans might not relish their role in this exchange. In this way being a fan of MMA and the UFC starts to seem pretty fucking uncool. It’s kind of like how, back when I was on dating apps and having the same what-do-you-do-for-work conversations over and over, women would often go straight from the ‘MMA writer’ reveal to probingly skeptical questions about my thoughts on Joe Rogan. I knew what they were really trying to find out: Is this guy one of those manosphere red pill dickheads? I’m not, but I could definitely see how they made the mental leap from UFC to internet misogyny. (It’s the same leap the YouTube algorithm has made with me many, many times. Just because I’m watching old Wanderlei Silva highlights that does not make me a prime candidate for Jordan Peterson lectures.) And see, that was back when the Joe Rogan association was about the worst thing the UFC had going for it. The Trump stuff is, for around 50-60% of Americans, way worse. What becomes of your sports brand if a significant chunk of its target demographic regard it as some cringey bullshit they do not want to be lumped in with? These are people who love the sport itself. Many of them have already been straining hard to ignore the political allegiances of the UFC owners and just focus on the fights. But when you plant your cage on the White House lawn and fawn all over the president on his birthday, you make it pretty much impossible to ignore the politics of the moment.

#united states #politics #sports #sourced from substack

We now know that going back at least 15 years, immigration officers have been putting themselves in front of cars to create the conditions that justify deadly force. The tactic is prohibited by most police agencies around the country, and a clear violation of federal policy. But a policy is only effective if it’s enforced. And this administration takes pride in not enforcing restraints on immigration officers. We also know that when DHS has charged people for hitting federal officers with their vehicles, those charges aren’t holding up in court. And we know that such charges have been repeatedly contradicted by video and witness statements. Despite all of that, mere allegations against a motorist are apparently enough to reduce the life insurance payout to the surviving family.

It took nearly a year for the public to learn that a DHS officer killed a Latino man and U.S. citizen -- and that federal officers lied abou

This pattern in which federal officers put themselves in front of cars; give conflicting commands; kill, shoot, or assault confused motorists; claim the motorists intentionally tried to run them over; and are then clearly contradicted by video and witnesses, has played out over and over in the 15 months since. So far, none of those agents have been held accountable, for either the abuse or the lying. The Texas Rangers investigated Martinez’s death, and in February a grand jury declined to indict Stevens killing him. I’m not sure that tells us much, given how often we’ve seen police misconduct excused by prosecutors. And of course we don’t know what evidence prosecutors actually presented to the grand jury.

#united states #immigration #police #racism #violence #sourced from substack

A STAT News analysis found that more than 40 hospitals across the country have paused or stopped offering some form of gender-affirming care to trans youth since Trump issued his first executive order. In these cases, hospitals are capitulating preemptively, out of fear of losing the Medicare and Medicaid funding the Trump administration has threatened to withhold, even before any rule allowing him to do so has taken effect. In New York, that capitulation is almost certainly illegal: Attorney General Letitia James warned hospitals early last year that denying care to transgender patients while providing it to others violates the state's anti-discrimination laws. But those laws have gone largely unenforced, and hospitals like NYU Langone have shuttered their programs anyway, with no apparent consequence. A dedicated state fund—or direct provision of care through public hospitals—would at least offer transgender New Yorkers a second avenue to treatment, one that does not depend on the state successfully compelling private hospitals to follow a law it has so far declined to enforce. The state budget is not the only place where New York's elected leaders have failed to act. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on a $65 million pledge to fund gender-affirming care through public hospitals and community clinics, but Prism reported that the money did not appear in his February preliminary budget, with the city's Independent Budget Office unable to locate the funds and the mayor's office declining to say where they were. He also has not demanded the city's public hospital system, NYC Health + Hospitals to expand access, and has not coordinated with state officials to hold noncompliant hospitals accountable. Writing in The Nation, Sophie Hurwitz noted that despite his promises—and despite his having personally protested NYU Langone's capitulation as a candidate—"many of his promises to the trans community have yet to become reality."

Advocates wanted the state budget to support access to care as hospitals capitulate to the Trump administration.

#united states #new york #healthcare #transphobia #sourced from substack

The onlookers I was trying to reach see a famous scientist and assume the science has spoken. It hasn’t. He’s done exactly what the pub did. He’s just done it in a lab coat.

There’s a thing the psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls attribute substitution. When the mind meets a hard question, it quietly swaps it for an easier one and answers that instead, without noticing the swap. Ask someone “how satisfied are you with your life?”, a genuinely hard question, and what they actually answer, without knowing it, is “what mood am I in right now?” The substitution is invisible from the inside. They’re certain they answered the hard question. Here’s how it runs with people like me. The hard question is this: what is the actual risk of allowing trans women into women’s spaces, weighed against the actual cost of excluding them, in light of the actual evidence? That needs base rates, proportion, some moral seriousness. What harm has actually occurred, how often, compared against the harm exclusion causes. Think about how we drive. Two cars approach each other on an ordinary road at sixty miles an hour, a combined hundred and twenty, with nothing between them but a painted line and a shared agreement not to cross it. Any driver could swerve across and kill everyone. We know this. We accept it. We don’t ban driving, because we weigh the real risk against the real cost and make our peace with the painted line. That’s what grown-up risk reasoning looks like. It’s never “could harm ever occur?” It’s always “how much, how likely, against what cost?” So you make that argument. You bring the base rates, the proportion, the painted line. And the answer comes back: But you’re not a woman. There it is. The switcheroo. You asked about risk; they answered about definitions. And this is the maddening part, the part that took me a thousand arguments to see: they experience it as having answered you. They’ve swapped the hard question for an easy one, knocked the easy one over, felt the satisfying crunch of something falling, and assumed it was your point. You hand them an actuarial table; they think the conversation was about the meaning of a word.

This week: the Nobel-winning psychology of why you've never once won an argument about trans people, and never will. Featuring Daniel Kahnem

The root axiom was never derived; it was asserted, then sealed. No fact is permitted to climb back up and touch it. So when you argue rung three, the risk and the evidence, and they answer with rung one, the slogan, that’s the switcheroo in its native habitat. They retreat to the top of the tree because it’s the only rung that feels safe. The lower rungs wobble the instant you ask them to justify themselves.

#communication #psychology #transphobia #sourced from substack

Key court appearances in the Trump administration’s attack on transgender children’s right to obtain gender-affirming medical care are scheduled this month. The outcome of those appearances — and decisions regarding the underlying requests at issue — could represent the most critical moment in the past year for Justice Department’s effort to target the provision of medical care for transgender minors. As Law Dork has covered in depth, from the opening day of the second Trump administration, President Donald Trump and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi had aggressively sought to challenge the provision of gender-affirming care for trans minors — even in states where such care is allowed or even explicitly protected by law. Among other steps, the Justice Department issued administrative subpoenas last summer to more than 20 providers of such care seeking extremely invasive data about individual patients, in addition to other records. The shifting rationales for the requests have included “health care offense“ claims related to off-label prescribing of medication used in gender-affirming medical care, coordination with pharmaceutical companies regarding the provision of such medication, and billing of such care. Despite that attempt at nuance, last August a DOJ lawyer admitted the broader goal, telling a court that “the executive branch wants to reduce or eliminate gender-related care to minors, especially … medicalized gender-related care to minors.“

Three court appearances next week could represent the most critical moment in the past year for DOJ's effort to target the provision of medi

#united states #legal system #transphobia #sourced from substack

Musk is an abuser, and part of the way abusers inflict psychological abuse is through gaslighting and victim-blaming. When Musk denies his own agency as an abuser, he is not explaining the abuse; he is inflicting it. Wilson is well aware of this. In an interview with Teen Vogue (and in quotes that Them itself reproduced), Wilson said, “It’s such a convenient narrative, that the reason he turned right is because I’m a fucking tr*nny, and that’s just not the case. That’s not what that does to people.”

Elon Musk did not go hard right because of his daughter.

Most people on the left do know that Trump and his sycophants are all lying liars who lie all the time. Yet, when those lies are colorful or seem fun or confirm certain biases, it can be hard not to take the bait. Them, which is committed to supporting LGBT people, published a story which amplified Musk’s lies and helped him target his daughter, even when they printed quotes from that daughter saying explicitly that those lies were in fact lies. The New York Times headlined their piece with brain worms, even though the real story is not the brain worms, but the fact that RFK subjected his ex-wife to intensive psychological abuse. Fascists and antisemites, Sartre wrote, “delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.” He also said, “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies.” The absurdity is in fact, for fascists, part of the fun—per Sartre, “They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors.” Sartre could have added that the ridiculousness of their arguments can be seductive. Fascists spin out conspiracy theories and nonsense, and that nonsense is arresting, exciting, funny. It makes good headlines. It’s more fun, and feels more objective and newsworthy, to say, “Musk turned evil because of his daughter” than to just say, “Musk is still abusing his daughter.” It’s more interesting to say, “RFK has brain worms” than to say, “RFK abused his wife.”

#united states #politics #elon musk #transphobia #sourced from substack

Where Things Stand in 2026 The anti-trans/LGBTQ+ “groomer” slur still persists. A few examples of headlines from just last year include “Marjorie Taylor Greene calls Sarah McBride a ‘groomer’ and ‘child predator’ for reading to kids”; “Parent accuses Satellite High teachers of ‘grooming’ teen to transition”; and “Republicans accuse PBS of ‘grooming’ children with Sesame Street Pride post.” As for anti-trans legislation, well, that has increased roughly ten-fold since early 2022, with many of those bills invoking the false accusation that trans people are “grooming” or “sexualizing” children.