Why your gay friends are afraid - maybe you should be too

Some more background behind the meme

Memes, memes, memes

Social Media - especially micro-blogging sites (Facebook, X (formerly twitter), Instagram, etc) is filled with memes. They touch the surface of an issue and if we’re lucky they drive conversation. Many times they come across as clubs that figuratively wack the reader across the head and result in the opposite. People turn away from the conversation scrolling past and become more numb to much of what lies beneath the meme. Today I’m going to cover a bit of the background behind this one:

Not very long ago

Gay people didn’t have the right to marry in the United States and have that marriage recognized throughout the nation until the Obergefell v Hodges decision in June 2015. Prior to that decision there were some states that allowed same-sex marriages but those marriages were not recognized in other states.

The question of marriage isn’t simply one of equality in a civil matter. Marriage conveys a number of rights related to inheritance and the ability to make decisions about the health care of your spouse when they are not able to do so as well as funerary decisions.

When states were beginning to offer same-sex marriages I was in a long term relationship. When he died we had been together for almost eleven years. He had made a number of legal arrangements that provided me health care power of attorney and he had worked with an attorney to create a will however there were some important details that were not in the will. Even being names health care power of attorney and executor of his estate there was a period between his passing and the establishment of his estate where I had no legal standing and even when the probate case was opened I was able to ensure that wishes stated in the will were executed - but nothing else. Questions related to the service and the location of his burial were all decided by his family. Since he had never told his parents plainly that he was gay nor the full nature of our relationship that was not an optimal situation for anyone. This is the way things worked as recently as 2005.

When the Obergefell decision was handed down in 2015 I had been married for almost two years. We were married in the District of Columbia but our marriage was not recognized by the State of North Carolina at the time. Even things like filing taxes was a nightmare. We did our federal taxes three time. Once as a married couple and each of us had to do an individual return that was then used as the basis for our state tax return. We celebrated the Obergefell decision in the hospital where at last I could make decisions about my husband’s health care because he was my husband - not because I had a notarized piece of paper that said I could.

So given that same-sex marriage is the law of the land why would one be worried about the results of the election? It isn’t all about Project 2025 but let’s start with that. For those who don’t know, Project 2025 is a very far-ranging effort led by the Heritage Foundation. You can view a quick YouTube explainer here. If you wish to read the 900+ page policy document called “Mandate for Leadership - The Conservative Promise” you can enter your contact information and access the document here. Once Project 2025 began to be widely discussed both Trump and Vance publicly attempted to distance themselves from the effort however much of the content of Agenda 47 (Trumps Platform) overlaps with Project 2025 and many in Trump’s circle have been involved in the project. We’ve also all heard how transgender individuals have been used and abused during the 2024 campaign. So why does Project 2025 engender fear among the LGBTQ+ community?

Project 2025 and “the family”

Page 3 of the document states:

The Heritage Foundation is once again facilitating this work. But as our dozens of partners and hundreds of authors will attest, this book is the work of the entire conservative movement.

This is an important background statement - the views expressed in the document are not only the views of the Heritage Foundation. They are broadly supported and as such could come to pass even if the “Mandate for Leadership” isn’t the official policy playbook.

The first promise in the book isn’t even a fiscal one. It is a social policy promise that serves as the backdrop for a vast amount of the fiscal policies in the document. That first promise is stated on page 4:

PROMISE #1: RESTORE THE FAMILY AS THE CENTERPIECE OF AMERICAN LIFE AND PROTECT OUR CHILDREN.

I don’t think anyone would argue with this broad promise given a broad understanding of the world “family” but we need to understand what the authors of the document mean when they say “family.” We get this definition in the section of the document that addresses Health and Human Services. On page 451 discussing Goal #3 for DHHS we find:

Goal #3: Promoting Stable and Flourishing Married Families. Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society. Unfortunately, family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are fraught with agenda items focusing on “LGBTQ+ equity,” subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage. These policies should be repealed and replaced by policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families.

When coupling this definition of "family" with what the document says on page 4 it is clear that the statement about restoring the family as the centerpiece of American life we see that the document is permeated with social policies that could set LGBTQ+ people back decades in their quest for simple equality in the eyes of the law. According to conservative views families are not "married couples" they are married mother, father and their children. Same-sex couples need not apply.

The larger removal of protections

Now let’s turn back to page four of the document. This quote begins at the bottom of page four and runs onto page five:

The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.

Think about this quote for a moment. These words are in regulations and legislation for the very purpose of ensuring rights. This document, however, sees this assurance of rights in the law of the land as something that deprives “Americans of their First Amendment rights.” I suppose Americans who should have First Amendment rights according to their definition are only those to whom those terms have no meaning. Namely if you are a straight, white, male you have agency. If any of those other terms have benefitted you in the past the authors of the document want to see those benefits removed.

I have on-going conversations with friends on Facebook who support Trump and the conservative cause. They go to efforts to assure me that they don’t think any of this will come to pass and that they have friends and family who are members of the LGBTQ+ community and that they are accepting of those people.

Let us hope to God that they are right and that these things do not come to pass.

All of this seems to make a mockery of the fourth broad front named on page three of the document:

4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty.”

If that were truly a goal of the document why would the document spend so much time talking about removing protections?

It would be laughable if it weren’t all right there for the world to see - If only people would.