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“UNCLOSETED with Spencer Macnaughton” is a new podcast by Uncloseted Media, an investigative LGBTQ-focused nonprofit news publication. Follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. YouTube // Spotify // Apple

On July 4, 2025, over a dozen people held a protest outside of the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, around 40 miles away from Dallas. It was a noise demonstration, a type of protest that uses loud noisemakers—which in this case included fireworks—as a form of civil disruption. As the night went on, tensions escalated as some protestors broke off and committed several acts of vandalism, eventually leading police officers to arrive on the scene. Soon after that, unknown assailants fired several shots at the officers, with the Justice Department reporting that one of them was struck non-fatally in the neck area. Authorities later argued that the shot that hit the officer was fired by a protester named Champagne Song.

Autumn Hill attended the protest but says she left hours before shots were fired. But that didn’t stop the police from raiding her home and arresting her for alleged involvement with the protest, identifying her as a suspect on the charges of terrorism.

Then, in October, the Trump administration got involved, accusing Hill and eight other defendants—three of whom, including Hill, are trans—of being “Antifa terrorists” and “Antifa Cell operatives.”

Hill and her co-defendants were charged with providing material support for terrorists. In a press release, the DOJ wrote that “This is the first sentencing of defendants affiliated with Antifa.” This comes after Trump signed an executive order in September 2025 declaring antifa as a terrorist organization.

Despite the administration’s claims, there is no unified organization called antifa, a name which refers to a decentralized movement based on militant opposition to fascism. And despite no evidence suggesting trans people are disproportionately likely to commit acts of terrorism, the Trump administration in May unveiled a new counterterrorism strategy to highlight “radically pro-transgender” people as a threat.

Hill was convicted for riot, providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to use and carry an explosive—namely the fireworks used at the protest. She has been sentenced to 50 years in prison. That’s more than double the sentences of former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes, who were key leaders in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. While Hill and her co-defendants are appealing the case, legal experts are sounding the alarm that these unusually harsh sentences could set a precedent for strict crackdowns on freedom of speech and assembly.

Since her arrest, Hill has been incarcerated in men’s facilities. Now, staring down half a century in prison, she gives her first on-camera interview from the Johnson County Jail in Texas, where she maintains that the federal government’s narrative about her is false and that she believes she is a “political prisoner.”

Read the interview transcript here:

Spencer Macnaughton: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to UNCLOSTED with me, Spencer Macnaughton. Today, I’m here with Autumn Hill, one of the defendants in the Prairieland case, where the Trump administration has accused several anti-ICE protesters of being part of a so-called “antifa cell.” Hill was sentenced to 50 years in prison for her alleged involvement in a protest where a police officer was shot while she was not in attendance. Today, she’s speaking with me from Johnson County Jail in Texas. Autumn, thanks so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.

Autumn Hill: Well, it’s great to be here, Spencer. I’ve never been interviewed before in a video visit like this. So, this’ll be a first time.

SM: People have seen headlines, you know, the outside world has commented a lot on this. But I want to hear from you and your account of what happened and why are you where you are right now, facing a possible sentence of up to 50 years?

AH: So the night of July 4, some friends and I protested at the Prairieland detention center in Alvarado, Texas, and we did what’s called a noise demonstration, which is a pretty typical form of protest. You know, you show up outside of a building where something is going on that you and your friends might disagree with, and you make a lot of noise to signal your presence and dissent. So, you know, fireworks and megaphones and bells and whistles and all that are extremely common. But my goal was to let the people inside, the detainees, know, “Hey, we’re here, we know that you are there, you haven’t been forgotten, and we understand that what is happening to you is unjust.” That all went well. And I actually left before any of the violence occurred. A correctional officer came outside and asked us to disperse and we did. And so I ended up going home in a separate vehicle, and I didn’t know anything about the violence that had occurred until later that evening. We had been waiting for my housemate and co-defendant Meagan Morris to return home from the protest. And when she didn’t for several hours, we started to look at the reporting from Alvarado and the first that I learned that any violence had occurred was from a report that there had been an officer-involved shooting outside of the Prairieland Detention Center.

SM: But you had left at this point? You had fully cleared the premises before that happened, before the shooting took place, you had gone home?

AH: Yes, it was hours before I learned about any violence. It was in the early hours of the next morning I learned about it from the reporting, and I was arrested the next day.

Note: Per the trial transcript, all parties agree that Hill left the premises at some point that night and was not present by the time arrests occurred. The defense claims that Hill was not in attendance when the shots were fired. Witnesses from both the FBI and the Alvarado police department were unable to produce any evidence to the contrary and as such did not directly dispute whether Hill was there when the shots were fired.

SM: Wow, and I assume you read the reporting at night, and you’re thinking, “I’m not gonna get in trouble for this, there’s nothing that I’ve done.” So you slept well, eventually? Is that fair?

AH: I did not actually sleep super well, you know. I knew that there was evidence of my presence because of the fact that I go work in that van all the time, I realized like, “Oh my god, I left my purse in the van.” And you know, I went to sleep, but I was like, “Oh my god. They are going to come arrest me because of this, because of my ID in the car.” And so I kind of spent the next day in anticipation of this raid that actually ended up happening. It was a huge surprise to me, though, when I was, you know, charged with terrorism. We figured that if there were going to be, you know, if anybody was gonna be charged with anything from that night, it would probably be just trespassing maybe. But then when everybody was charged with terrorism, that was a huge surprise.

The FBI Raid

SM: There have been details in various publications about what was involved in that raid. We want to hear from you. Can you give me, in granular detail, if you’re comfortable, describe the raid as it occurred from your perspective?

AH: Sure. We heard a loud bang from the opposite end of the house from where I was sitting. And I was like, “What’s going on?” And I remember, you know, my girlfriend, Shelby—I’m polyamorous, my wife, Lydia, and I live at the Big Gay House—and Shelby was like, “We’re being raided by the FBI.” And so, you know, the next few minutes were just kind of chaos, you know, we heard them knock down the front door; they brought along a big vehicle with like a battering ram mounted on the front, and they didn’t, they by no means had to knock down the front door. It wasn’t even locked. You know, this was a no-knock raid on our house. They flew a drone in the front door after they knocked it down, and they ordered us to come out. So I came to the front door in nothing but a red dress, you know, my house clothes, and walked out to, like, 11 rifles pointed at me, and I just remember thinking, “Oh my god, if I am not extremely careful, I’m gonna die right here, right now. They are gonna shoot me if they think that I’m gonna do anything other than follow their orders.”

SM: What are they ordering you to do? There’s 12 rifles pointed at your face, at your front doorstep. What are they saying to you?

AH: So they’re ordering me to stay where I am, and then they’re ordering the person in the red dress to come forward, and then I’m walking toward these, you know, tactically armed and armored police officers. They order me to turn around and walk backward toward them, and then they put me in handcuffs, and then they sit me on the pavement, you know, outside of my house and they leave me there for like 30 minutes under guard.

SM: Explain what the Big Gay House is, why are you calling it that? And who else was with you and then subsequently arrested in that moment?

AH: So the Big Gay House is our home in South Dallas. It’s the house of primarily Meagan Morris and her friend Taylor who went in to buy the house together a handful of years ago. And they did so always with the intention of providing shelter to housing insecure queer people and especially the trans people. I met Meagan and Co. through just the activist community. We became close friends and ultimately I started dating first Shelby and then Meagan who are also partners.

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The Charges

SM: The charges against you are for rioting, for material support to terrorists and for conspiracy to use and carry an explosive. What are your responses to that when you hear that? Because the way you describe to me, that doesn’t really match up to your story. Are those false accusations?

AH: Those are false accusations, yes. So as you may know, the Trump administration for most of 2020 and then starting up again immediately during Trump two has tried to create a narrative that there is this shadowy terrorist conspiracy from the left called “antifa.” You know, in NSPM-7, they describe it as like a anti-Christian, anti-American, you know, radical, transgenderist organization. And this became their characterization of, like, the George Floyd uprising, for example. The Trump administration characterized the George Floyd rebellions as being kind of primarily provoked by antifa. And antifa to me is just anti-fascist. And it’s a disorganized collection of different kinds of leftists, and even like some people in the center, who kind of do what I would describe as an organic, immune response to the presence of fascist violence in American communities.

SM: And just to be clear, if you’re a member of antifa, you’re not violent.

AH: There’s no membership in antifa. They want to create a narrative of leftist political violence as being as much or more of a problem in the United States than, you know, right-wing stochastic terrorism. You know, they want to create a false equivalency which the data shows just doesn’t exist.

SM: And what about conspiracy to carry and use an explosive? Where did they even get that from?

AH: So that is on the basis of online conversations in an app called Signal, where, you know, defendants discussed bringing fireworks to the noise demonstration. And they say that the intent the whole time, the prosecutions say, was to riot, was to destroy government property, and was to use these fireworks as explosives.

SM: And just to be clear, it was Champagne Song, I believe, who did shoot an officer, is that correct?

AH: That’s still unclear. Champagne Song has certainly been characterized by the government as the shooter, but I think the evidence for that is still pretty weak from my perspective, and the counternarrative that I have heard talked about by lawyers throughout the trial, has been the idea that Champagne may have actually fired into the ground during the altercation, and that there was never actually any intent to harm the police officer. I wasn’t there. I can’t speak to it. I saw some blurry footage where it was very unclear to me what actually happened, but I am friends with Champagne and I’ll tell you what I have told people the entire time that we have been locked up, which is that Champagne is one of the most calm, level-headed and principled people I know. And I never believed for a minute leading up to the trial that they had attempted to murder someone in cold blood.

SM: And if you found out that Champagne had attempted to do that, you would of course denounce it, I would assume.

AH: Yeah, I mean like attempting to murder somebody in cold blood is, you know, it’s not my style. I see violent struggle as primarily being something that happens in self-defense for people of conscience.

Note: All parties in the trial agreed that Song was one of the people who fired shots. The fact that is in dispute is whether Song fired the shots in an attempt to murder the officer who was shot. The defense claims that Song was only attempting to intimidate the officers rather than to kill them. The prosecution disagrees.

A 50-Year Sentence

SM: How do they communicate the sentence? And what do they tell you the grounds for this sentence is based off of?

AH: Well, so, the sentencing, skipping to the sentencing leaves out a whole year of sitting in jail and sitting through the trial. I learned actually through the, I believe through the law library in Johnson County Jail, that if I’m convicted of all of the crimes that the federal government, you know, puts up on me, I’m looking at actually 30 to 90 as the range. That’s the information that I have when I decide that I’m gonna go, I’m going to take this to trial, is knowing that, you know, if I’m found guilty of everything, I’m looking at 30 to 90.

SM: Tell me about the last year. So, you know, from that raid until now, take me inside what your life has been like in prison.

AH: So for the first roughly 80 days of my imprisonment, I was here in Johnson County Jail, and I was in what’s called administrative segregation or SEG for short. SEG is used both for disciplinary purposes and also to separate members of the jail population who are considered to be particularly vulnerable or high risk. I was never given any reason for my separate housing other than my charges. And so I spent 80 days in what is effectively solitary confinement. These cells are very small, like the size of a bathroom, right? So you’ve got like a bunk, you’ve got a little table, and you’ve got a shower and a toilet, and you basically live in a bathroom. And so, I was physically alone. You can shout to other people in SEG through the vents or through the bean chute, that’s the shoot where they feed you, where they pass you your trays and your mail and such through. But you’re alone. So for the first week, I didn’t have any contact with the outside world. And so it was finally Friday when Lydia came to visit me. And that was the first time I actually knew that Lydia hadn’t been arrested. Like I figured that if they were gonna come raid the Big Gay House, you know, they were just going to arrest everybody. So like, I didn’t know if Shelby had her freedom. I didn’t know if Lydia had her freedom, and I was like thinking to myself, because the fluorescent lights are always on and my wife has like really bad sensitivity issues because of, cause she’s disabled, you know, I was like, “Oh my god, if Lydia is in a cell like this, she’s gonna go crazy. Like she’s not gonna be able to handle it.” And as soon as I saw Lydia, you know, I just, I burst into tears because I just knew, thank God she’s safe. She’s all right. You know, and I knew if Lydia is going to be okay, I can do this.

SM: Were you aware that a few weeks ago, Trump released a new counterterrorism strategy where he labeled certain trans folks as a terrorist threat and didn’t include white supremacists or far-right extremists in that report?

AH: I hadn’t heard of that, but that doesn’t surprise me, that’s consistent with his character.

Targeted Because She’s Trans?

SM: You believe you were targeted specifically because of your gender identity, specifically because you’re trans?

AH: Right, yeah, I think that that’s a part of it, for sure. But obviously not everybody who is a part of the Prairieland, you know, defendants is trans, right? There are autistic people, there are, you know, there are people of Mexican descent, there are women, and, you know, it’s a diverse group of people, but all of whom are part of, I would say, some marginalized underclass.

SM: And tell me about the judge.

AH: The trial judge is actually a man named Mark Pittman. Pittman is a Trump appointee, and throughout our trial, I would say he made rulings which [were] very nakedly preferential to the prosecution. You know, the the easiest example that I can see that is just very, very glaring, is on the first day of our trial, Pittman declared a mistrial on the basis of the fact that one of the defense attorneys was wearing a shirt to celebrate the lives of civil rights advocates like Shirley Chisholm and Martin Luther King Jr., and he said that he, on the basis of her wearing this T-shirt, Pittman said that this was a trial about political protest, and on the basis of that, he could find no other remedy for the bias that it could potentially have on the jury, than to declare a mistrial. You know, then he moved the trial to a different courtroom, and we came back a week later, and there was a great big mural of the Texas Rangers on the back wall of the courtroom in the area where the jury panel sits, and, you know we pointed out like, “Hey, you know, Texas Rangers are going to be prosecutorial witnesses in this case, and you have this great big propaganda mural for the Texas Rangers on the back wall, isn’t that gonna bias the jury in favor of the state?” And he said, “Well no, we can easily remedy that by asking the jury if they can put aside their biases and not be influenced by that.” He’s confirmed to have had an ex-parte meeting with William Barr, Bill Barr, who you may remember as Trump one’s attorney general and the principal architect of Trump one’s attempt to, you know, terrorify antifa. He said that he gave William Barr a tour of the courthouse during the trial, and ultimately, in spite of the fact that he sat through the whole trial, saw all of the evidence and, you know, made kind of grumbling noises about what he saw, he never explicitly said he believed that the case had been overcharged, but he definitely made grumbling noises about the way that the state had charged the case. He ultimately decided to give everyone a maximum sentence.

SM: Take me inside your mind when you’re learning about this sentence being 50 years in prison.

AH: My basic assumption was, you know, the judge had obviously made his mind up about our guilt before the trial even began, and so it didn’t take me by surprise at all when I actually was sentenced to 50 years in the Bureau of Prisons. I knew, like, this is about making an example, this is about creating a narrative that, you know, anyone who resists the Trump administration’s agenda of mass deportation, is going to be made an example of, is gonna be treated this way, that if you stand up, if you speak out, we will bury you. I knew that that was what this was about the entire time that we were going to trial, and it was why I said from the very beginning, “I’m not gonna plea to anything.” You know, like they offered us plea deals, you know, we could have signed to 15 years for material support for terrorism. And I took the risk that I took of, you know, going to trial because I was like, I’m not going to create evidence of this non-existent terrorist conspiracy. That goes against everything I believe in.

The Jury’s Decision

SM: How do you think, how did they manage to convince a jury to believe this? Like, what were the things that you heard that kind of got them to this?

AH: We are not entirely clear on that. Some observers said that, you know, several of the jury members were in tears when they delivered the verdict. There are reports of, like, violent arguing or even screams coming from the jury room during the, you know, during the jury deliberations. There has been a lot of talk amongst the defense team that you know there may have been what’s referred to as “forced trading” in the jury deliberations. It was immediately before spring break and, you know, maybe some people thought we were all innocent of everything, maybe some people all thought we were all guilty of everything, and they could all agree that the most important thing was that they get to go home and have their entire spring break uninterrupted.

The prosecution’s entire strategy revolved around introducing stickers and zines that are created by, you know, various members of different leftist communities, especially propaganda related to the term ACAB. A-C-A-B is short for “All cops are bastards,” which is a slogan that’s very common among anti-authoritarians in the United States of America. This idea that, you know, the American justice system, the American incarceration system is a relic of slavery in the United States.

SM: And just to be clear, they’re introducing kind of swag stickers of “ACAB,” but that is essentially, in America, freedom of speech. I mean—

AH: That’s protected speech.

SM: That’s protected—

AH: They introduced this, and they said, “You know, we find these zines that are very anti-authoritarian and this is evidence,” they say, “of a shared ideology between the co-defendants that proves that they want to commit violence against the police and that was their motivation in going to the Prairieland Detention Center.”

Convicted in a Deep Red State

SM: Wow. And when you think about the jury, you’re in Texas, correct? In Texas, a deep red state. And if you think about the intensity of transphobia in America right now, I imagine you’re wondering if this jury was gonna be completely fair to you?

AH: I definitely feared the idea that, you know, we could get a jury that was just going to, you know, see trans people and say, you know, “Your honor, tranny 50 years,” right? I was surprised by the quality of the jury panels that we got. I don’t feel like anybody there found me guilty, particularly because I am trans.

SM: How long do you imagine you’ll be there? And are you working with a lawyer or anyone to try and reduce the sentence?

AH: So we’re going to take our case before the Fifth Circuit, and if necessary, all the way to the Supreme Court. It’s probably going to be about two years before our case is appealed before the Fifth Circuit. Now, I will say I personally don’t have a lot of hope that the Fifth Circuit is going to set everybody free and, you know, say that this is obviously unjust. So many of those Fifth Circuit justices are Trump appointees. And I think that it is absolutely within the realm of possibility that they just shut down our appeal as a favor to the president. So—

SM: Why would they do that as a favor to the president, do you think? Why do you think Trump would see that as an assist for him?

AH: Because the president, you know, tweeted directly about us. Our case is the first case in United States history where any defendant has been successfully tried and convicted as part of a, like, an antifa-related thing, right? The Justice Department said, “This is the first time we have put antifa behind bars,” basically. But not in those exact words, right? But this is a part of the president’s agenda, you know, to create this narrative of left-wing terrorism, you know, basically in order to be able to prosecute political dissent against him. So I think that, like, if the Fifth Circuit were to overturn this case, which is the first of hundreds, right? The Justice Department has tried to go after, you know, people from Stop Cop City, you know, people from Minnesota and the George Floyd rebellions, and say like, “These people are antifa,” and hundreds of such cases have been shut down. Ours is the first such case to have made it all the way to conviction and sentencing, and that’s because of the fact that they were able to get such a conservative judge, such a conservative prosecutor, and have it tried in such a conservative district, right? In other jurisdictions, this would have been thrown out as a matter of law, but it’s thanks to the fixing of Mark Pittman and the pressure that the prosecutor Sean Smith’s superiors put on him to take this case all the way to trial, that that is what happened and I am here today.

SM: Wow.

AH: I find myself often thinking, like, “Wow, I really hit the jackpot on this one. This is not how I thought my life was going to go.”

‘A Political Prisoner’

SM: And from your perspective, you’ve done nothing wrong. And if what you’re saying is true, you do not deserve to be there. Do you consider yourself a political prisoner?

AH: I absolutely consider myself a political prisoner. I think that it’s clear that I’ve been incarcerated for political reasons. I think that it’s clear that we were tried for political reasons and that, you know, the judge who sentenced me, Reed O’Connor, who was a different man than the trial judge Mark Pittman, also sentenced people for political reasons. You know, that Mark Pittman and Reed O’Connor made it clear that they believe that, you know this sentence, it sends a message to other people who they say “share an ideology that justifies political violence.”

Note: In court notes, there are reports that Judge Reed O’Connor stated that he “wants to send a message to anyone else with similar ideology.”

SM: And when you see, when you absorb this, you know, ruling, 50 years in prison for you, how does that make you feel when you see Trump’s sweeping pardons of the January 6 rioters, for example?

AH: The president of the United States has consistently demonstrated himself to be a man who rewards sycophants and who uses the systems of government to retaliate against his perceived enemies.

SM: Tell me just so the folks know, where are you being housed right now? And is it a men’s prison, a woman’s prison or a coed prison?

AH: So I’m being housed in a men’s facility. I actually haven’t started serving my sentence in the Bureau of Prisons. I am being held in Johnson County Jail, awaiting state charge, you know, awaiting the resolution of my state charges. I’m actually being held under my birth name. I had my name legally changed by a court order in 2023, but the government prosecuted me under my birth name in spite of that. So even now, you know guards refer to me by my birth name instead of my legal name.

The Only Woman in a Men’s Jail

SM: Tell me what it’s been like as maybe the only woman in that jail surrounded by men.

AH: In FMC Fort Worth, which was where we waited, you know, pretrial, in pretrial detention for about the first week. It was pretty scary. The prison system has a reputation that everybody knows for being a rape-friendly environment. And we didn’t have to be scared of that at all as it turned out. There was one hairy encounter with a guy who went by Detroit, who put a lot of pressure on Meagan to have sex with him. But other than that, you know, everyone was very respectful to us. Here in Johnson County Jail, I would say also the people here are respectful to me, they’re friendly to me. They still don’t really necessarily understand me as a woman. You know, I had a conversation with probably my most conservative cellmate here, a guy named Zach, where I was like, you know, “I want you to think about me as a woman, and I want you to treat me as a woman.” And he was very taken aback by that.

SM: Our fantastic reporter, Hope Pisoni did a really impressive investigation where she spoke to folks, and discovered that the Bureau of Prisons is ignoring an injunction and denying trans incarcerated folks gender-affirming healthcare. What’s that been like for you?

AH: I was able to get HRT the entire time, but it was in FMC Fort Worth, and actually I’ve been able to keep my HRT the entire time that I’ve been in jail.

SM: What has this been like for you from a mental perspective? How has it affected your state of mind? Like I can’t imagine this has been easy, and through this interview to me, you’ve come across as kind of chill.

AH: You know, I’m a pretty spiritual person, pretty philosophical person. When I am in a situation where no action is likely to lead to an acceptable outcome, I take no action. And to a certain extent, I do not believe in 50 years. I don’t. Maybe I’m in denial but I still kind of don’t believe that I’m actually going to serve out this whole sentence and I think there’s a little reason for optimism in that regard. There is a big movement of support for a political pardon for us from the next Democratic president of the United States. My mother told me that my father said that the next time a Democratic president is in office, he’s going to write him a letter to ask for a pardon for me. And that was the first positive interaction that I’ve had with my dad in five years. And when I heard that, I just burst into tears and, like, just became hysterical for five minutes because it was just the perfection of the absurdity of the time to me. My arch-conservative father, who I can’t really stand to be in the same room as right now because of his transphobia, that he would do this thing, right, like appeal to a Democratic president on my behalf. And it really shows this bipartisan sentiment that this is obviously unjust, this is obviously political. You know, if this arch-conservative and I can find common ground over the belief that this is a political persecution, I think that there’s a very strong chance for some future good thing to come our way out of that.

Hill’s Message to Trump

SM: The Trump administration has labeled you as a terrorist. If you could say something to the Trump administration, to Trump himself, what would you want to say?

AH: I would say, “What you’re trying to do is foolish. History shows us that when you try to oppress a popular movement by imprisoning their heroes and valorizing the people who oppress them, all you do is build momentum for the people who want to undo your political administration.”

SM: Is there anything else I didn’t ask you that you want to get out, that you wanna say in this context? Obviously, people will see this and I know you have limited connection to the outside world.

AH: I would say the same thing that I’ve said before, which is: Be brave. We’ve been accused of being terrorists, but terror is the power that this administration wants to ply in order to keep people quiet, in order to keep people content. Fear of incarceration, fear of homelessness, you know, it’s this fear, this fear that we’re going to lose our privileges, that we are going to use our comfort, that keeps people docile, keeps people from speaking the truth. Don’t be afraid.

SM: Well, that’s a really interesting place to end on. Autumn Hill, calling me and Uncloseted Media from Johnson County Jail in Texas. Thank you so much for speaking with us today, we really, really appreciate it.

AH: Yeah, no problem. I’m really happy to be here, Spencer. It was nice to meet you and really great to have this conversation.

SM: And if you liked that episode and wanted to get all of our investigative journalism, subscribe to unclosetedmedia.com, our YouTube page, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Additional reporting by Soph Holland and Bella Sayegh

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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In October 2025, Amanda Hunt remembers watching as countless books at Oak Run Middle School in New Braunfels, Texas, were removed from her library. Students walked in and saw more empty shelves and fewer stories they had once been able to check out.

“Every day, they’re like, ‘More boxes? More books to get rid of? More books to pull?’” Hunt, who was the lead librarian at the time, told Uncloseted Media.

That month, Hunt says the New Braunfels Independent School District (ISD) had temporarily closed all four of its secondary-school libraries to audit its collections and assess whether they were in accordance with Senate Bill 13 (SB13), a Texas censorship law that took effect in September 2025. Thousands of books were moved, restricted or removed.

For Hunt, who had spent more than 14 years helping students find books, the assignment felt like a betrayal of everything a librarian was supposed to do. “What kind of librarian takes books out of kids’ hands?” says Hunt, who attended Oak Run Middle School as a student and whose dad worked there as a sixth-grade reading teacher.

SB13 prohibits “indecent content” and content that portrays “sexual or excretory organs or activities in a way that is patently offensive.” But the vagueness of the bill’s language, according to advocates, has led to the banning of many LGBTQ books, including “Boy Erased,” which is about a gay man’s challenges in conversion therapy, “Juneteenth” and “The Art of Drag,” a picture book about the history of drag. As of February 2026, New Braunfels ISD has removed over 600 books from its high schools and aged up over 800 books from middle schools, according to public information requests obtained from the Texas Freedom to Read Project.

Jennifer Cousins, co-founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, a parent-led nonprofit dedicated to defending students’ access to information and fighting education censorship, says removing inclusive books tells already marginalized children that their experiences do not belong in school.

“Being able to read these books in school is a way for them to feel seen, to feel community, even if it’s just through pages,” Cousins told Uncloseted Media. “When you take that away from them, that further isolates them. … You’re making an already marginalized community more unsafe.”

How Texas Libraries Became Political Battlegrounds

The fight in New Braunfels did not begin with SB13.

In 2021, Republican lawmaker Matt Krause made a list of roughly 850 books and asked schools to tell him whether they carry them. Many of the books addressed racial and LGBTQ themes. Krause said he was examining materials that could make students feel “discomfort, guilt, [or] anguish” because of their race or sex. Some of the books on his list included “LGBT Families,” “The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to their Younger Selves” and “The Underground Guide to Teenage Sexuality: An Essential Handbook for Today’s Teens and Parents.”

PEN America, a nonprofit that protects free expression and celebrates literature in the U.S., described the inquiry as “menacing and wrongheaded” and warned that it risked trampling students’ right to access information.

That same year, Texas passed HB3979, a bill that restricts discussions of race and racism in public school classrooms. Together, the measures helped turn classrooms and libraries into political battlegrounds, with conservative officials and so-called parents’ rights groups increasingly scrutinizing books about marginalized communities.

For Hunt, the escalation in New Braunfels made clear that the dispute “wasn’t really about the books. … It was about silencing voices. It was about taking books out that they didn’t understand, regardless of the impact that it had on students.”

As rumors circulated about why the libraries had temporarily closed, misinformation swirled among students. Hunt heard students claim that the district was banning “Harry Potter,” “The Diary of Anne Frank” and even “Charlotte’s Web.” Other students repeated allegations that the library offered pornography.

Librarians had to repeatedly explain what was and was not being removed.

Hunt says SB13’s broad language gave New Braunfels officials significant latitude to go further than neighboring districts. While the law does not explicitly prohibit books with LGBTQ characters or themes, she says some officials treated all queer content as inherently sexual.

“For some people, they believe that LGBTQ content is the same as sexually explicit content,” Hunt says. “And they’re not.”

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An Algorithm Decided Which Books Stayed

New Braunfels officials did not rely solely on librarians to determine which books complied with SB13.

Hunt says the district uploaded its library collections into spreadsheets and sent them to its technology director, who ran the titles through AI tools designed to identify objectionable material.

“They decided to create their own AI robot that was going to go through every book in our collection,” Hunt says. She says the district took language from SB13, entered it into a model similar to ChatGPT and instructed it to search for books that might violate the law.

Hunt says the system repeatedly made mistakes, flagging books based on Goodreads reviews rather than content. “Anybody can go on and write like, ‘I hate this book because X, Y and Z.’ It is going to flag it.”

Despite those errors, the district continued to use AI. The results were sent back to librarians, who reviewed the flagged books and alerted administrators to errors, though Hunt says their judgment did not ultimately determine what remained on the shelves.

“[The software] ended up having the final say,” she says. “It ended up being the end-all, be-all, deciding what books were pulled or removed, moved up or taken off an order list.”

New Braunfels ISD did not respond to Uncloseted Media’s request for comment.

Demoted and Doxed

All of this frustration led Hunt to start posting her grievances on social media. “[The school board] did not like how much I hated book banning and censorship,” she says.

Around this time, Hunt learned she had been demoted to a regular librarian after years of serving as the lead.

“It got to the point where my district was like, ‘We don’t want you associated with us at all. Don’t mention us. … If you go to post, know you are representing our district.’ I was put in this box of what I could and [couldn’t] say. They’re my employer and I understand that.”

In addition to being demoted, Hunt says she was “doxed online three separate times.”

She says she was harassed by a mom who targeted her support of LGBTQ content at the library. Another parent protested against her promotion of LGBTQ-themed books at a school board meeting for having “Last Night at the Telegraph Club,” a book about two Chinese female immigrants who fall in love, in the library.

“It ended up turning into [the mom] filing a grievance against me to get me fired,” Hunt says. “In addition to me trying to fight to keep the books in the library, I was also dealing with [personal attacks] against my livelihood, against my job and against my character.”

She says the school supported her “0%” through this whole process. “They did not stand up for librarians. They did not support us. They did not take a stand against the school board and what they were trying to do. We were left out in the cold.”

Hunt says that even an LGBTQ-friendly club she ran, known as Alphabet Soup, was shut down by the school due to complaints and non-compliance with Senate Bill 12, another Texas bill that prohibits LGBTQ clubs in schools. “They made me get rid of that because a parent had found an old flier that had rainbow colors,” she says. “I have a particular student that really took that hard because she had been a member of that club since she was in sixth grade.”

Why It Matters

Hunt says the most frustrating part of SB13 is the impact it’s having on kids who are looking for belonging. She recalls a student who was questioning his sexuality and being bullied. She says she handed the student “You Brought Me The Ocean,” a graphic novel about two male characters who fall in love and one of them has magical aquatic powers.

The student later emailed her and wrote, “You saw me when no one else did and because of you I feel like I can actually be myself.”

“He is thriving now and living his true authentic life,” says Hunt.

Stories like his are why Hunt refuses to stay silent. But the stress has taken a toll: After being demoted and subjected to months of investigations and public attacks, she left New Braunfels ISD for a librarian position at a nearby school.

“They have been nothing but supportive and welcoming,” Hunt says. In her new school, she says challenges based solely on the presence of LGBTQ characters are immediately rejected.

Still, leaving the school she was essentially born and raised in was painful. “Leaving them was the hardest thing ever,” she says. “I never thought I would leave my district. I never thought anything like this would ever happen to me.”

Hunt plans to continue speaking publicly about banned books in her state. Earlier this month, she launched “The Library Stage,” a podcast about censorship, education and the pressures librarians face across Texas.

“My heart is always with the students,” she says. “I have had students tell me a book that I recommended saved their life. That is the kind of impact that librarians are making all over the nation and all over the world.”

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Earlier this month, hundreds of people filled a conference room in San Diego. These included Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Assistant Secretary of health Admiral Brian Christine, OpenAI executive Dean Ball and the attorneys general of West Virginia and Idaho.

They all came together for Alliance Defending Freedom’s (ADF) 2026 Summit. The Christian legal group, also a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group, described the event as a “gathering of leaders from many different spheres, including law, public policy, media, business, education, and Christian leadership.”

Johnson—who has said that “homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural and … society cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle”—was a featured speaker.

In his speech, he seemed unconcerned with the separation of church and state: “It is so encouraging to Kelly and I to be among friends and fellow warriors for this cause and people who understand that God is not done with America yet. … ADF’s on the very tip of the spear, front line, defending those very truths and keeping the door open for the spread of the Gospel. This is our moment. I’m telling you, I believe the next season … is going to be the greatest season of this Ministry since its inception.”

That ministry is one that has espoused aggressively anti-LGBTQ views since its inception in the early 1990s. It was co-founded by a group of evangelical men, including Alan Sears, who co-authored a book called “The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today.” Since then, ADF has opposed gay marriage and supported bans on gay sex and on gender-affirming care for minors.

After helping overturn Roe v. Wade, ADF lawyers have led key victories at the Supreme Court (SCOTUS). In 303 Creative v. Elenis, SCOTUS ruled that a website designer could refuse service to gay weddings. And this year they convinced the Court to overturn Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy and to uphold state laws in West Virginia and Idaho that ban trans girls from playing on girls’ sports teams.

At the summit, ADF President Kristen Waggoner, who has promoted conversion therapists and consistently misgenders trans people, interviewed these states’ attorneys general. “The lawyers who were defending women’s sports were among the best I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey told Waggoner.

Similar to Johnson, Trump’s Assistant Secretary of Health Admiral Christine showed his commitment to governing based on conservative Christianity. He gave a Bible-thumping speech against gender transition and trans healthcare, saying that it “contradicts … the deeper moral order that is woven into creation itself. For Genesis 1:27 informs us that God created man in his own image. … Male and female” He also said the “complementary relationship between man and woman is divine” and advocated for youth with gender dysphoria to receive care from a pastor.

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All of these remarks from politicians made me think of the interview I published earlier this week with Pete Hegseth’s pastor, Doug Wilson (you can watch it below). He wants a Christian theocracy in America and told me that: both the perpetrator and the victim should be disciplined in some cases of marital rape; that transgender people are “sad;” that execution is justifiable for certain homosexual acts; and that gay sex should be illegal.

The ADF Summit is glossy and polished. And while its messaging may be less explicit than Pastor Wilson’s, the track record of the organizations shows they have the exact same desires. They’re just deeply strategic in what they say and when and how they say it.

I believe the political power players who attended this year’s summit know this. They know they are endorsing an organization whose members have essentially called for the illegalization of most—if not all—forms of queer behavior and presentation.

In the last few years, these perspectives have become increasingly embedded in the highest rooms of the federal government and they have been effective in stripping away LGBTQ rights. Pastor Wilson, who just installed a full-time pastor in Washington, D.C. to lead services, says there are 10 to 20 government officials who align with his church’s ideology.

It is vital for Americans to keep their eyes wide open to the ultimate goal of groups like ADF: to create a United States that leaves LGBTQ people without rights and that pushes us back in the closet.

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• Idaho pushed anti-trans laws for years. Then a teen died. (NBC)

  • The life and death of May Pollard, 16, provides a window into the tragic effect that legislation and political rhetoric have had on trans people in America.

• 2nd trans woman says “hungry fiend” Lindsey Graham paid her for sex (LGBTQ Nation)

  • “This transphobic, homophobic man can rot in hell,” she said.

• Florida Republican lawmaker found liable for sexually harassing male staffers, faces resignation calls (The Advocate)

  • Florida Democrats are demanding that Rep. Fabian Basabe resign after a jury awarded $450,000 to two former staffers.

• He shot & paralyzed his queer neighbor after weeks of harassment. Now he’s paying the price. (LGBTQ Nation)

  • “You will, indeed, have a long time to think about what you did,” the victim wrote.

• Hunter Biden Says A Closeted Gay Mafia Runs Washington And He Calls It The Closetocracy (DNA Magazine)

  • Speaking on the I’ve Had It podcast on 18 July 2026, the former president’s son said the country’s biggest problem is not the oligarchy but what he calls the “closetocracy”, a closeted gay mafia that he claims is largely Republican and operates in Washington DC.

Over the next week, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting:

• 🆕 COMING SOON: In her first video interview from the Johnson County Jail in Texas, I speak with Autumn Hill, one of the defendants in the Prairieland case. Hill was accused of being part of an “Antifa cell” and sentenced to 50 years in prison for her involvement in an anti-ICE protest last year, where a police officer was shot while she was not in attendance. We talk about her arrest, the mistreatment she’s faced as a trans woman held in men’s facilities and her thoughts on a trial many have decried as unfair and extreme.

• 🆕 COMING SOON: Canada has all the tools to end the HIV epidemic. But in recent years, infections have risen by 15% in Canada, with men under 30 driving new transmissions. Kevin Hurren investigates why.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to email me with questions, complaints and story ideas!

Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chief — spencer@unclosetedmedia.com

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

Donate to Uncloseted Media

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This story includes references to sexual abuse. Viewer/reader discretion is advised.

In February, Doug Wilson made headlines after giving a sermon at the Pentagon as part of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s monthly Christian worship service. Wilson, the lead pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, holds a number of controversial views: He believes the U.S. should become a Christian theocracy, married women shouldn’t have the right to vote and gay sex should be illegal.

In his first interview with an LGBTQ publication, Wilson talks about his connections to Hegseth and others in the Trump administration. He estimates that 10 to 20 people in the government are aligned with his radical ideology. He explains that he thinks trans people are “sad,” certain elements of his idea of “homosexual behavior” should be punishable by execution and in certain cases of marital rape, both parties should be disciplined.

“UNCLOSETED with Spencer Macnaughton” is a new podcast by Uncloseted Media, an investigative LGBTQ-focused nonprofit news publication. Follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. YouTube // Spotify // Apple

Watch the full interview above or read the transcript here:

Spencer Macnaughton: Hi everyone. Welcome back to UNCLOSETED with me, Spencer Macnaughton. Today, I’m speaking with Doug Wilson, the lead pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and an increasingly prominent figure in conservative Christianity. Wilson has recently attracted national attention for his connection to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as his controversial beliefs, which many say align with Christian nationalism, and include denying married women the right to vote and banning gay sex nationwide. Here, he sits down with Uncloseted for his first ever interview with an LGBTQ news outlet. Pastor Wilson, thanks so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.

Doug Wilson: You’re most welcome. Thanks for inviting me.

Embedded with Hegseth and the Trump Administration

SM: Great. So first, you’ve made a lot of headlines this year in particular because in February, you were a guest pastor for the Pentagon’s newly instituted monthly Christian worship service, where you prayed alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Hegseth closed the prayer by putting his hand on your shoulder. That’s pretty, kind of, major to get that high up in the federal government. How did you develop your relationship with Hegseth and subsequently get invited to this very high-level prayer?

DW: I’ll give you a telescope version of that. Before Pete Hegseth was the secretary of war, he was with Fox News. He was involved in making a documentary on the state of education in America and met a friend of mine, David Goodwin, who is the CEO of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, which is an organization I founded. He was so impressed by that kind of education that he moved to Tennessee to enroll his kids in a school like this, but he was still working for Fox. So he’d fly into Tennessee on Sundays, and the only church that was open in the afternoon was a CREC church, which is the denomination that I’m in. And after he was appointed as secretary of war, He moved to D.C., and I was in the Nashville area and filled the pulpit at that church, Pilgrim Hill Church. And as it happened, the Hegseths were back in Nashville. I met him there at church and we visited for a few minutes. And then we planted a church service in Washington, D.C., a little over a year ago, so he’s been coming to that church service. I’ve met him a couple of times there in D.C., and of course, I met with him when he invited me to the Pentagon. But that’s the extent of our meetings, like three times, maybe four.

SM: There’s reports that he considers you his spiritual adviser. What does that mean exactly?

DW: I’m not a policy adviser. But it would be the sort of thing where, if he were in some sort of newspaper conflagration over something or other, I’m functioning currently in a pastoral role. As it happens, this coming Sunday, the Washington, D.C., church service is going to be installing a pastor there. So for the first year or so, our church here in Moscow was supplying, sending and recruiting people to come and preach there, but they will have a full-time pastor starting this next Sunday.

SM: Wow. And you’ve spoken about how, you know, although President Donald Trump is not an evangelical by any stretch, you said, quote, “his administration is full of them.” So how many folks in his administration do you reckon are aligned with your church and might attend the church service that you guys are putting on in D.C.?

DW: I do know that if Kamala had been elected, the White House would have been pretty evangelical-free. She would not have been hiring people like me. But the Trump administration just has quite a few conservative Christians working there. And in our D.C. church service, there are a number of people that are either working for the government, you know, they’re assigned to the Pentagon, or they have roles in the administration.

SM: More than 10, more than 20? Roughly, how many would you say?

DW: Boy, I would say between 10 and 20.

SM: Wow, in the actual administration?

DW: I would say between 10 and 20 in the government.

SM: In the government, got it. And who else in addition to Hegseth would be part of that?

DW: Sure, no major players at the cabinet level or anything like that. And as for the people who are the next tier or two tiers down from that, I’d rather not say because I don’t want to ruin their day.

SM: You think it would ruin their day if you said who they are?

DW: Yeah, basically. For example, I did an interview with NPR. When the NPR video segment dropped, our church secretaries [had] to not answer the phone for three days.

SM: Wow. Why?

DW: Because they don’t want to be vilified.

Back in the Closet, Boys

SM: Understood. So yes, obviously, we’re an LGBTQ publication. Is this the first LGBTQ publication you’ve done an interview with?

DW: I believe that is… I think that’s fair, yes.

SM: Cool. So obviously we’re going to focus on some of the things you’ve said in that realm, right?

DW: Right.

SM: And one of the things you’ve said is that there should be anti-sodomy laws and other prohibition on sexual behavior in all 50 states. So sodomy obviously gets thrown around as a buzzword. What do you mean exactly by that when you said it should be illegalized? Are we talking about anal intercourse between two men or what exactly do we mean by sodomy?

DW: Right. Let me make a distinction and then back up and then answer your question. The distinction is there’s a difference between politics, which is the art of the possible: What proposals am I proposing right now? And secondly, what is my sketch of an ideal Christian republic 250 years from now? Those are two separate things.

SM: Even if it’s 250 years from now, what specifically do you mean by that? Like what becomes illegal when it comes to sodomy laws?

DW: OK. I would regard sodomy as male-to-male intercourse, anal intercourse or oral intercourse.

SM: Would hand jobs count or just anal and oral?

DW: No, between two men, between two men.

SM: Hand jobs as well.

DW: Hand jobs, oral sex and anal intercourse—

SM: Got it.

DW: —would be sodomy. In the old order, the legal definitions of sodomy would have included oral foreplay between a married heterosexual couple, right? So, I think that there were definitions of sodomy that went beyond scripture.

SM: So you’re OK with heterosexual people in oral foreplay or those sorts of things if they’re married?

DW: Yeah.

SM: And then what about women-on-women lovers? Like is oral sex OK for them under these laws or no?

DW: Well, “OK” is too loosey.

SM: Yeah, but in your ideal world 250 years from now, would that be illegal across all 50 states?

DW: No, and this is going to be interesting, because I’m a Bible guy. If you go through the Law of Moses, you won’t find any legal prescription of lesbianism. This brings us up against the difference between a sin and a crime, right? There are things that are manifestly sinful for every Bible-believing Christian, which I believe ought not to be criminal. You don’t have any penalty in the Old Testament attached to lesbian behavior. It would have been considered a sin, a form of sexual immorality, but not criminal.

SM: Got it. So then in your ideal world, gay men engaging in sexual behavior would be illegal under sodomy laws across all 50 states. You’ve mentioned, though, that you wouldn’t want it to be too heavily enforced because you don’t want to create a, quote, “sexual Gestapo.” So how exactly would this be enforced?

DW: Well, I would say that the main enforcement mechanism would be social expectations and a withholding of societal approval. It would be sort of “back in the closet, boys,” not because of fear of legal retribution, but because this is simply not done.

SM: But that’s different than what you’ve said in the past. You said sodomy laws, right? So would it be illegal, or are you kind of walking back?

DW: No, I’m not walking it back. I think it ought to be that society needs to express its disapproval of this behavior in law.

SM: So then if it’s a law, what’s the punishment if somebody makes that act, which would be illegal? What would the punishment be?

DW: So the punishment would vary. I’m reluctant to give the government excess powers of invading private homes.

SM: OK, so just theoretically, I get caught having sex with my boyfriend, what happens to me? What is the punishment?

DW: In the 1980s, there was a movement called Christian Reconstruction. And the Christian Reconstructionists wanted to take the Old Testament law, sort of with a grappling hook, and bring it over and drop it down on modern society. And that would mean the maximum penalty there for homosexual behavior would be execution. And so there were debates among the Reconstructionists of: “Do we have to stone the homosexuals?” And there were some people saying, “Well, firing squads are OK because they’re throwing very tiny stones at a high rate of speed,” but they were talking about execution. In that debate back then, I pointed out that King Asa and King Jehoshaphat in the Old Testament closed the bathhouses, and they exiled the sodomites from the land. And their behavior is praised in the text. That told me that execution, although a lawful penalty for homosexual behavior, was not the minimum penalty; it was the maximum penalty.

SM: And do you believe that still, that in your eyes the maximum penalty for homosexual behavior in an ideal world, in Pastor Wilson’s ideal world, would be execution?

DW: Yeah.

SM: You do?

DW: Yeah, if you ask me: “Could you ever envision a homosexual crime of any nature being visited with the death penalty?” Yes, I could.

SM: You, in other words, want to create a law where—a real law, in this country eventually—where the maximum penalty for me having sex with my boyfriend would be my execution? I just want to make sure that’s clear.

DW: No, no, no. That’s why I wanted to finish this scenario. I do want to create a society where the maximum penalty for a Roman Catholic priest molesting or raping an altar boy is solved and addressed with a tall tree and a short rope.

SM: Right, that’s pedophilia though, which is of course different than homosexuality.

DW: Well, it’s a species of homosexual behavior. So let’s say it’s a Roman Catholic priest and a 15-year-old boy. Or there’s all kinds of variations of human behavior. But there are homosexual crimes that are egregious enough that I would want to execute the person for.

SM: So you see pedophilia as an element of homosexuality, is that right?

DW: Yeah, if we’re talking about the alphabet people. Right?

SM: You’re referencing LGBTQ community?

DW: LGBTQ+. What’s under the plus?

SM: Not pedophilia. Would you consider adding a “P”? Do you think a P is meant into that umbrella of LGBTQ?

DW: Absolutely.

SM: You do? Because you conflate lesbians and gay people with, like, kind of akin to pedophiles. People who rape children?

DW: I don’t think that I’m making that association. I think the LGBTQ+ acronym, that whole chain, is sort of a sexual alliance of people who are defying traditional biblical norms. And pedophilia is one of those things that defies those norms.

SM: Do you see two men having sex as equally sinful as a man raping a girl?

DW: Yeah, they’re both violations of God’s law.

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Conversion Therapy

SM: Obviously, if you’re seeing both of these as sinful, pedophilia and homosexuality, this is a very big concern for you, I would imagine, in society, right? So I wanted to ask, you know, in March, I’m sure you’ve been following this, the Supreme Court overturned Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy. And you’ve called Canada’s conversion therapy ban a, quote, “wretched and misbegotten law.”

DW: I did.

SM: In your church, right, as the lead pastor, if somebody comes to you saying, “I’m attracted to the same sex,” should they be allowed to go through conversion therapy? And if so, what is the most effective form of conversion therapy in your eyes?

DW: I’m a pastor of hundreds of people, and I’m a pastor to people whose sexual temptations are homosexual. I’ve counseled people in that position and have seen them arrive at victory over those temptations.

SM: I see it based on the science and, you know, methodologically sound evidence-based research, it is a discredited practice, but I want to know from your perspective, what works?

DW: So what works is Jesus Christ. So Jesus Christ forgives sin, and Jesus Christ empowers us to overcome sin.

SM: In layman’s terms, if you can, right? Are you just saying pray? Or is there more to it? Like what else—do you give them assignments? Do you give them homework? Are there things they need to do? Or is it simply just pray, pray, pray, pray, pray?

DW: Yeah, it would be easy to sort of dismiss what I’m saying as sort of “pray the gay away.” So when I’m counseling someone who is struggling with this and wants out, one of the places I start is with that person’s relationship with his father, that person’s relationship with his mother, that person’s upbringing. “Do you have a healthy relationship with your father? Do you hate your mother?” You know, it’s not like, “What do you do when you’re horny?” If you just start there, you’re healing the wound lightly, basically.

SM: Have you ever experienced same-sex attraction?

DW: Uh, no.

SM: Never?

DW: No.

SM: No. Got it. And so when they come, right, if say somebody comes to you and says, “Pastor Wilson, Pastor Wilson, I am experiencing this and I love your church, but I’m happy, I have a boyfriend.” Do they stay in the church, or what happens?

DW: Such a person would not be allowed to become a member. But such a person would be welcome to attend as often as they wanted. You’re welcome to attend, but if you were a member, there’s a commitment to becoming a member and that commitment means living as a Christian is obligated by the Bible to live.

The Path to Ending Obergefell

SM: Got it. And OK, so Obergefell, yes, I know you wanted to talk about that, because you said in the here and now, that’s something that you would want overturned.

DW: One of the reasons I would go to Obergefell as one of the action points is I think that that is actually a possibility. Just like Roe was overturned, I think Obergefell could be overturned and it might be a matter of as few as two Supreme Court justices.

SM: When you’re in D.C. or when you’re helping with prayer with Hegseth or other folks in the administration, are there rumblings that there’s a possibility that that’s within reach?

DW: Yeah, I’ve not had any conversations like that with administration officials, but I have certainly written a lot about it and I know that I’m read by people in powerful places.

SM: Of course, because if they align with you ideologically, then they must want that too, I would imagine, if they share the same belief systems as you, no?

DW: I’m not plotting with administration officials to make a move on Obergefell, but I am very vocal about it. So I think repealing Obergefell is an attainable goal in our current climate.

SM: When it comes to the legal issue behind it. What would be the kind of roadmap to overturn it?

DW: I think there’d have to be an increased number of conservative Christians in the Senate. You would have to have trained, capable judges who were evangelical Christians, who had been operating at lower courts, who were in a position to be nominated to that position and survive the character assassination battle, you know? Before, Senate confirmations, hearings were all about abortion. I think the next ones will be about Obergefell.

SM: You do?

DW: Yeah, I do. I think that that is going to be the issue. And so if you have more Christians in the Senate, if you have Christian men nominated, and the Senate has the kind of people who don’t fold under pressure, then it is a doable thing.

Trans People Are ‘Sad’

SM: Mm-hmm. All an interesting perspective. You’ve spoken less about transgender people.

DW: Yeah.

SM: I wanna know your thoughts. In your ideal world, what would happen to people who are trans? Do they have a place in society? What’s your view?

DW: Yeah, this is… no way to talk about it without talking about it. I think transgenderism is simply sad. I don’t think that it should be elevated to a category given equal carved-out rights. I think this should be treated with love and compassion and help, counseling.

SM: About 1% of the population identifies as trans and the vast majority of those people, once they get past stigma, live their lives healthily and happily, so I’m unclear what your issue is with it.

DW: The man is the image and glory of God, and the woman is the glory of the man. I believe God created us in such a way as to reflect his glory. And the transsexual movement, I think, is a movement away from that glory. And so when I see people who are… just… well…

SM: You can be candid. Be candid.

DW: I don’t want to give offense.

SM: You won’t offend, go ahead.

DW: So when I see people who are tatted up and pierced, dog collar, it’s hard for me to not see self-loathing.

SM: But what connection do those folks have to trans folks? I mean, that’s a different kind of, you know, I have a lot of trans friends, none of them are wearing those things.

DW: Well, I’m glad you’re more fortunate.

SM: Do you have a lot of trans friends who do wear those things?

DW: No, I have, I encounter people out in the community, and I have a pastor’s eye, right? And one of the things I can identify and see and greatly sympathize with is people who are miserable and they’re trying to… “Maybe this’ll work. Maybe this will give me a sense of who I really am.”

SM: Do you think trans people are dangerous? I mean, Trump recently included radical transgender folks in his counter-terrorism strategy. Do you have concern there?

DW: We’ve seen many instances of transsexual violence over the last few years. That doesn’t mean that all transsexuals are violent, but a disproportionate number of the violent episodes are coming from transsexual individuals.

SM: And I think a lot of the data that actually shows when you look at things like school shootings, the disproportionate number of cisgender people are perpetrating those, actually white cisgender men are the most common and disproportionately more likely even when you break it down per percentage of the population.

Disempowering Women

SM: Obviously we’re an LGBTQ publication, but we do stories on women too, right? And you’ve been in the news for your belief systems around women. I wanna know just more generally, what role do women have in society for you? In your world, should they be allowed to be anything they want? Doctors? Lawyers? Should they be allowed to serve in the military? How do they place in society in your view?

DW: Yeah, I don’t think there should be any legal barrier to women getting a medical degree, getting a law degree. But I don’t think there should be a legal barrier to women being in the military.

SM: Can they be in combat?

DW: No, that’s the one place I would limit them. I’d say women should be kept away from combat roles. I don’t think women ought to be put in front lines.

SM: Why not?

DW: Because I served on a submarine, a couple of submarines, and I just can’t get inside the head of the person who thought that was a good idea.

SM: Why? Just you don’t think women are as capable in that area?

DW: No, I think that if you have women on board a submarine, and we went to sea a couple of times, submerged for two and a half months, you’ve got 130 people locked up in this steel tube under the water for two and a half months. You put three women on board. That’s like, “Why shouldn’t I throw catnip into the pack of cats?”

SM: Well, there’s going to be gay people in the submarine too.

DW: Yeah. That’s another problem.

SM: And tell me, I have read a few things like, “Women should submit to men, obey their husband, obey their father.” What exact role do women have as it relates to their relationship with men? Men should be the head of the household? Clear up what you mean by women’s role in that dynamic.

DW: The Bible requires women, “A woman should submit,” Paul says, “to her own husband.” And what that means, my wife is submissive to me, but what that means is she doesn’t have to submit to all the other men.

SM: Say a wife and a husband are together and the wife says, “I want to go to med school and become a doctor.” And the husband says, “Nope, I want you to stay home and be with the kids.” Should she stay home?

DW: Yeah.

SM: She should. OK. Because she submits to the husband?

DW: Because she submits to the husband. Let’s say this is a counseling case for us, and the wife wants to do something and the husband has said, “No, I really don’t want you to do that.” We would say, “You married him and you vowed before God and witnesses that you would follow and obey him. And this is one of those cases where he’s made a decision and it’s a lawful decision and you should submit to it.”

Sexual Abuse

SM: When it comes to sex, right? Like, say the man says, “I want to make another baby with you tonight.” And the woman says, “No, I don’t want to. I don’t want to do this right now.” Should he still do it if he wants to? Should she still submit if she doesn’t want to have sex that night?

DW: No, I would say, basically, marital rape is wrong. So if he forces himself on her and rapes her, then I believe that that’s a sin.

SM: If he raped her, how would he be disciplined? Would you call authorities or would you deal with it internally?

DW: It would depend on the nature of it. It would, you know, it would depend on, a violent rape? Yes.

SM: You would call the police?

DW: What’s that?

SM: You would call the police?

DW: Yeah.

SM: What does a nonviolent rape look like?

DW: Oh, let’s say she just says, “I really don’t want to. I’m not into this. I don’t want to, please don’t treat me this way.” But he says “Too bad.” You know, he’s just being a boar. He’s being awful. And someone like that should be disciplined by the church, but there was no crime.

SM: And what line is there, like, she should just “give in,” right? Is she allowed to say no to the husband? Or should she just submit?

DW: Here’s why it’s a gray area.

SM: And it’s a gray area in terms of, you might not consider it a violent rape. For many people, it is not a gray area, no means no. And I think that’s the kind of understanding we have societally at this point in America, but perhaps, is it a gray area for you, I guess, is what I’m trying to ask.

DW: No, let’s say she’s had an absolute horrendous day, is fried, just is exhausted and she says, “Honey, I really, please, please no.” Does she have the right to do that? Absolutely, yes, she has the right to do that. Does she have the right to cut him off for six months? No.

SM: She doesn’t?

DW: No. So if she says, if that situation came to us, and the husband said, “Here’s the thing, we’ve been married for five years and we’ve not had sex for the last six months, and she just won’t.” Right? In this situation, she’s got the problem. And we’d address it like, “Look, we have to talk, you’re married, you need to act like you’re married.”

SM: So in month six, if she is in a space where she doesn’t want to have sex, and he rapes her, is that justified because she, in your view, has held out for too long?

DW: It’s not justified, but neither is her behavior justified. So that would, basically what you’d have there is a marital mess. And both of them sinning against each other.

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SM: And when something like that happens, what’s the discipline you give to both the man and the woman in that case?

DW: We would say we want you to start coming in for weekly counseling, and we want you to agree that the end goal of this counseling is for you to be back together as husband and wife, living together, having sexual relations, the way a normal couple would.

SM: OK, got it. And there have been numerous accusations of sexual abuse at your church. And I’ll read them, I wanna let you respond, but when 14-year-old Natalie Greenfield reported sexual abuse by Jamin Wight to the police, there are allegations that you pushed for him to get lenient treatment. And you’ve officiated the marriage of Steven Sitler, who was arrested for sexual contact with a minor and later admitted to being sexually stimulated by his baby. When a man commits a rape in your church, like this, what happens? Walk me through exactly what happens, because obviously this is a pervasive issue in conservative Christian churches across the United States, and there have been these reports at your church. So what happens when you find out a man has committed a rape?

DW: Oh, what you do is call the cops.

SM: How many times have you called the cops, would you say, for issues of sexual abuse or rape?

DW: Oh. Maybe five?

SM: And how many times would you say a woman has said no, whether it’s that six month thing or some other thing, where you deal with it internally?

DW: No, the one accusation that’s out there about marital rape is an accusation that is coming from a stone-cold liar.

SM: So, you deny those allegations that have been...

DW: Yeah, I deny that we’ve ever sanctioned marital rape. That’s just flatly false.

SM: How many instances have there been when a woman has alleged or a child has alleged that they’re experiencing some form of sexual assault or S.A. where you deal with it internally?

DW: I can’t think of any.

SM: None?

DW: No, if you’re talking about a self-report of, if a child told me that “I’m being molested,” I wouldn’t ever sit on that.

SM: OK, and have you heard reports from other people where they say a child’s been molested and you didn’t sit on that?

DW: Yeah, so I’m going to make up an example, OK?

SM: Oh, no, no. No, I’m just curious. Like, have there been other bystanders or people in the church who have told you this child may be being molested, where you haven’t reported it?

DW: Oh no, what you want to do is follow up on it. You want to check and you know, is there something to this? Is the person reporting to you a rumor or something that they, “I saw them in the grocery store and the girl looked unhappy.” Is there anything to it? If there’s anything to it, you pursue it. You should be all over it.

SM: But are there instances where people have suggested this could be happening?

DW: And then we did nothing? No.

SM: Yeah. No?

DW: No.

SM: No. OK.

DW: Basically, we have an aggressive stance toward this thing. Reports to the contrary, notwithstanding. This is an area where we are lied about routinely.

SM: You have you mentioned the reputation that your church has of, you know, sexual assault or child molestation? Why do you think that exists?

DW: Well, because we’re the size of a small town. And these accusations have come up over the course of like 30 years. I would put a…

SM: But a lot of small towns don’t have accusations associated with them like that.

DW: Let’s put it this way. I saw a bumper sticker once in my grandma’s hometown in Nebraska. “You don’t see much in a small town, but what you hear makes up for it.” The human race is messed up and sexual misbehavior is a big part of that mess.

SM: Why do you think it disproportionately happens in conservative Christian communities?

DW: I think that’s false. I don’t think it disproportionately happens.

SM: You don’t?

DW: I don’t.

SM: So the statistics are just kind of false?

DW: Yeah. Yeah.

SM: One of my last questions, and thank you so much for your time—

DW: You’re welcome.

SM: —is, you know, I’m obviously an openly gay man. I have a boyfriend, we have sex, right? I don’t believe I’m gonna change at all as time goes on. In your view, where am I going? What happens to me?

DW: So, as an evangelical Christian, I believe that the only way to salvation is through Jesus Christ, through looking to him in his death, burial and resurrection. And the sin that you’re committing is homosexual sin. And so I believe that you are spiritually lost, excluded from heaven, and I believe they’re only ultimately two destinations: heaven and hell. So to be fair and perfectly honest and not trying to be rude, but I think you’re lost.

SM: And I’m going to hell.

DW: Apart from repentance, right.

SM: Got it. In a society that gives men so much power, do you ever get concerned that giving men power over women, does it not put them at greater risk of being abused? What happens when there’s no stop gaps and you have powerful men at the top who aren’t helping women who are struggling? Because that does happen a lot.

DW: If you have a patriarchal society, then you are creating the possibility that certain powerful men will abuse their position. Right, that’s true.

SM: Of course, yeah.

DW: OK, so I’m not disputing that. What I would argue is the way you deal with that, the most effective way to deal with that, how do you guard against evil men, predatory men? Well, you need good men to be protectors. So, I believe that fathers and brothers and pastors and elders should be a line of protection around their women.

SM: Obviously that doesn’t happen in a lot of instances. So if women don’t have their own voice and don’t have an outlet, what’s their recourse if the man who’s in charge of protecting them has failed? Like what should they do?

DW: Right.

SM: If they’re in one of these insular communities where the men in charge thinks it’s OK to abuse them.

DW: That’s a terrible dilemma. And I’ve seen it, right? I’ve seen women who need protection from their protector. I have seen that. But you don’t fix the problem by making women dependent upon a federal agency. Now what happens when they need-

SM: What if you just gave women more power and didn’t have it where they have to submit to the men?

DW: Who gives them the power?

SM: I mean a lot of spaces in society see men and women as equal and don’t ask them to submit to their husbands in this way.

DW: Yeah, but they do ask them to submit to them, right? In other words, you have structures in society. And these structures in society, if they say we’re going to stipulate that men and women are equal here, that’s just a statement, that’s just a proposition, that’s just words unless you police it. And somebody’s got to be the police.

SM: But the police should never be women.

DW: Yeah, because they won’t be able to do the job. Problem is, those women are going to be defeated. Men are aggressive, stronger than women. If it came to it, they wouldn’t, they’d be able to… It won’t be an effective defense so if you had… Let’s say we elected a woman president and she said, “As my first act I want the entire Secret Service detail that accompanies me all time, I’m the first woman president, I want all the Secret Service detail to be women also.” The assassins are going to say, you know, “Good job. Ha! Just made my day.”

SM: Yeah, we’ve been on for an hour and 15. So grateful for your time.

DW: You’re welcome.

SM: And we’re an objective news publication. And I think I can objectively say that I believe you’re homophobic, transphobic and sexist. Why should I think anything differently after this phone call?

DW: If your worldview is correct, then absolutely, that’s what I am. I don’t regard myself as homophobic by the standards of scripture at all. According to the standards of the sexual revolution, yeah, I’m homophobic and transphobic. You’ve never met anybody worse.

SM: I think that’s a perfect place to leave it. Pastor Doug Wilson, I really do appreciate you coming on and speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.

DW: Right, thanks for having me.

SM: And if you liked that episode and want more of our journalism, go to unclosetedmedia.com or find us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Additional reporting by Sophie Holland and Bella Sayegh.

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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On a June night in rural North Carolina, dozens of campers sat around the fire as a counselor asked them to close their eyes.

“Picture a place where you feel completely safe,” they were told. “Think about what it looks like and how it feels, what you can hear, smell and taste.”

When they were invited to share what they had imagined, one camper described sitting in a circle with other trans people. It was dark. Trees surrounded them. Mosquitoes buzzed.

“‘That place is here, and this is the place where I feel safe,’” Jacob Hofheimer, one of the camp’s founders, recalled the camper saying. “It got all of us.”

For many of the 8- to 17-year-olds who attend Transcending Adolescence, the weeklong summer camp offers a reprieve from the calculations they have to make in their day-to-day lives: Who knows they are trans? Who can be trusted? Which bathroom can they legally use?

At a time when 40% of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, and 90% of LGBTQ youth reported that recent anti-LGBTQ laws, policies and debates cause them stress or anxiety, those questions never disappear. But at this camp, young people are given space to ask them openly and to a community that understands why they need to.

“It really made me smile knowing that there’s a lot of people out there like me,” Ruby, a 12-year-old camper, told Uncloseted Media. “I’m putting myself out there, I’m being myself and no one judges me.”

Origins

Transcending Adolescence was founded in 2019 by Jacob and his wife Chrissy Hofheimer. The trans married couple wanted to create a camp for queer kids in America’s South, where affirming resources can be difficult to find.

Surrounded by thick woods and the backdrop of the Appalachian Mountains, campers swim, tie-dye shirts, complete ropes courses, roast marshmallows and perform in shows. They also gather for conversations about healthy relationships, medical care, legal rights, bathroom anxiety, coming out, misgendering, depression, substance use and self-esteem.

“A huge part of it is that every single person there is trans or gender diverse, including the staff,” says Rory Sowers, a 19-year-old junior counselor from Florida. “That’s just something that you don’t get to experience a lot, especially as a young trans person.”

Sowers first attended Transcending Adolescence as a camper during its inaugural year in 2021. He returned three times before becoming a junior counselor.

“There’s so much that trans folks have to worry about just going about their day-to-day lives, especially living in the South,” Sowers says. “I was able to come into myself a lot more when I didn’t have all of those anxieties on my back.”

A Place to Be ‘Just Ruby’

For 12-year-old Ruby, pre-camp anxiety was intense.

When she attended camp in June of last year, it was the first time traveling to another state without her parents.

“I was nervous about having someone there not really understanding me … and not really accepting me,” says Ruby, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy.

Outside camp, Ruby worries about how other people perceive her, according to her mom, Kate, whose name has also been changed. She says her daughter has to consider a litany of questions cis kids don’t have to worry about: “‘What if someone finds out? Are they looking at me? Do I look the part?’ … All these thoughts go through her head every single day.”

Before camp, Ruby had been struggling so intensely that her family had questioned whether it might feel easier for her “not to be who she was,” Kate says. Ruby had faced bullying in school, prompting her family to withdraw her and homeschool her for the remainder of fifth grade.

“I couldn’t really go anywhere without picking [at] myself because I was anxious,” Ruby says.

But when she arrived at camp, a lot of Ruby’s anxiety subsided. She didn’t have to introduce herself through the lens of being trans. She could just be herself: a funny, theatrical, outgoing 12-year-old who likes Beyoncé, improvises rap battles and wants to be in the center of dance shows.

“She can just go there and just be [Ruby],” Kate says. “[Being trans] is only a little piece of her. There’s so much more to her, and she’s able to do that for the whole week. … It was completely life-changing for her.”

Research suggests that spaces like Transcending Adolescence can have powerful mental health effects.

Young people tend to fare better when they feel they belong and have access to peers and adults who understand them. In one small study from 2021, participants of a six-day LGBTQ summer camp reported increased resilience, self-esteem and quality of life. Focus groups indicated that transgender and nonbinary campers found an affirming environment that offered social opportunities they had been unable to find elsewhere.

Though this environment can be transformative, it’s intimidating at first for some. Jacob remembers asking one camper from Texas his pronouns during medical check-in, and the boy responding that he used “guy pronouns” because he “was a guy.”

Jacob recalled him being closed off and leery of the “hippie-dippy nonsense.”

But on the second-to-last night, Jacob overheard him speaking with a fellow camper.

“‘When I first came here, I thought that I was a disgusting, mutilated pig and an alien, and nobody would ever love me because I’m trans,’” Jacob recalls the camper saying. “‘And now I know that being trans doesn’t make me disgusting. It’s actually a beautiful thing.’”

He later texted Jacob to say the camp had given him confidence during the school year.

“‘Half the time, I forget that I’m trans,’” Jacob remembers him writing. “‘I’m just a guy. I’m just me.’”

“Finding places where you literally see yourself and can be seen by others for who you are is important during adolescence. It’s a human need,” Stephen Russell, professor of social and family dynamics at Arizona State University, told Uncloseted Media. “For trans youth, especially those who may not feel fully accepted at school, at home or in their faith communities, a camp where their identity isn’t something they have to navigate or defend, but is simply centered as part of who they are, can be transformative.”

Filling the Gaps

The Hofheimer’s know that these spaces can transform the mental health of trans youth because they experienced it firsthand when they met while working as lifeguards at a summer camp for young queer people in New Hampshire.

The camp was doing important work, Jacob says, but many of its attendees came from privileged families in New England and other parts of the country where affirming programs were more accessible. Far fewer came from places such as Florida, Georgia and Texas.

That’s why, for the location of the camp, they intentionally chose North Carolina, a state that has laws on the books that exclude trans girls from participating in sports, restrict the instruction of LGBTQ topics in schools and ban gender-affirming care for trans youth.

“Access is really, really important,” Chrissy says, adding that while the camp costs $1,975 for the week, they offer robust financial aid, including a $1,500 “no questions asked” subsidized rate for families who can’t afford it.

At the camp, the staff educates campers about anti-trans laws, coming out and how to have conversations with their doctors about gender-affirming care.

“The kids want to talk about this stuff,” Jacob says. “That was the gap that we identified.”

For Chrissy, baking education into the camp’s programming is personal: When she was transitioning as a young adult, accessing informed medical care was difficult. During consultations, doctors either quoted prices she could not afford or refused to treat her. One told her that they did not “put boobs on men.”

Desperate to change her chest, Chrissy turned to a friend who had undergone illegal silicone injections without an apparent complication. She received what she believed were similar injections in Florida.

But the substance wasn’t silicone, she says, and it hardened and became intertwined with her breast tissue. Seventeen years later, Chrissy underwent a double mastectomy to fix the damage.

This experience became one of the driving forces behind the camp’s educational work.

“Accurate information might have changed the course of my life,” Chrissy says.

To provide information that breaks out of the TikTok and Reddit misinformation bubble many campers exist in at home, Chrissy and Jacob bring in experts and host nightly fireside chats.

Each night, campers gather around for structured conversations about the nuances of being trans. They talk about coping with misgendering, managing bathroom anxiety, identifying red and green flags in relationships, asking for help and caring for their mental health.

Jacob, who is a certified nurse practitioner, helps answer questions about gender-affirming care. A trans attorney explains policies affecting campers in different states and separates the practical effects of those laws from incomplete information and political fearmongering.

“It made me think about the people who I tell I am trans to and what I have to do to make sure I feel comfortable telling them,” Ruby says. “It let me think about all these questions I had but didn’t really know how to ask.”

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Building What Comes Next

Chrissy hopes the results from the camp’s program will eventually be replicated across the country.

For now, roughly 30 campers come together for one week each summer. Some arrive unhappy about being sent to camp. But by the final day, Sowers says, those same campers are often crying because they do not want to leave.

They return home to the same schools, states and political climates where they have to decide when it is safe to disclose their identities and how to respond when someone does not understand them.

But at camp, Ruby, among the other campers, found a weeklong respite and saw trans adults who were not merely surviving but building careers, relationships and communities.

“After the camp, I really haven’t been talking about how I feel insecure that I’m trans,” Ruby says. “I can’t wait to go back and see the people I met and [meet] new friends.”

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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On Sunday, the office of Lindsey Graham reported that the Republican senator and Trump ally from South Carolina died “from a brief and sudden illness.” The office said that the preliminary cause of death was a rupture of his aorta due to a hardening of his arteries.

Since then, many folks in the LGBTQ community, including a large number of Uncloseted followers, have—for better or worse—celebrated the senator’s death. When we posted the news on our Instagram page on Sunday, our followers commented:

• “Maybe he rest in hell”—this one got 194 likes.

• “She made sure to wait until Pride was over.”

• “And just like that the world is a better place.”

These responses are fueled by allegations that the senator lived as a closeted gay man while supporting policies that would roll back LGBTQ rights. In 2006, he voted in support of a constitutional amendment that would have restricted marriage to only being between one man and one woman. After gay marriage became legal across the U.S. in 2015, he said “I am a proud defender of traditional marriage.” And in 2022, he told CNN he would oppose the Respect for Marriage Act and later reiterated that states should decide the issue of marriage.

Outside the Washington, D.C. rumor mill, there wasn’t much evidence that Graham could be gay until 2020, when adult video performer Sean Harding wrote on Twitter that “There is a homophobic republican senator who is no better than Trump who keeps passing legislation that is damaging to the lgbt and minority communities. Every sex worker I know has been hired by this man. Wondering if enough of us spoke out if that could get him out of office?”

Harding followed up with another post, writing “If you’d be willing to stand with me against LG please let me know,” and, “So far I have two individuals who would be willing to go public and support my claims. Anyone else?”

A few days later, another anonymous sex worker came forward and made similar allegations.

But after that, there was silence, with some believing these sex workers were slapped with non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). And while at least one lawyer took to Twitter saying that he’d “be more than happy to read the NDAs and look for loopholes. For free!” nobody else came forward.

That is until earlier this week, when author Jesse James Rose posted to her Instagram that Graham had paid her for sex work prior to her gender transition. Rose wrote that “Most of you know him as the homophobic senator from South Carolina but to me he will always be the man who paid a twinky pre-transition college student a fat stack of cash to do unspeakable things to him in a hotel room while he wore red lingerie.”

This dynamic has created a complicated question for LGBTQ people: Is it appropriate to posthumously celebrate the death of a man who railed against our community and used his position of power to make our lives less equitable and less safe? Is it even more fair to criticize him if he was living a secret queer life?

Or should we go high and give his track record on LGBTQ issues a positive spin now that he’s no longer with us?

In a time where social media feels like a breeding ground for angertainment, I’ll admit that the immediacy of the response to his death at first felt intense.

At the same time, I knew I didn’t want to send thoughts or prayers to a man who tried to rip my rights away.

If the alleged NDAs that Graham handed his sex workers were legitimate, they likely evaporated after his death. So now really may be the first time people can speak their truth and offer an accurate window into the absurd hypocrisy between Graham’s public and private life.

For that, I think it’s fair game to speak candidly about the story he may have worked hard to muzzle while he was here.

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• I had a great time at the NYC Substack Bestsellers party on Tuesday evening. It was great to meet so many amazing and interesting Substackers!

• After 30,000 public comments were submitted, the Department of Health and Human Services this week abandoned a proposed rule that would have denied Medicare and Medicaid funding to hospitals which provide gender-affirming care for minors following. One of the comments, from Advocates for Trans Equality, cited our article on Alex Byrne, an anti-trans philosopher who was one of the authors of the Department’s report on pediatric gender dysphoria.

• Trump administration caves to public pressure after avalanche of opposition to anti-trans hospital rule (The Advocate)

  • More than 30,000 public comments helped derail an HHS proposal that threatened funding for hospitals providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth.

• In Viral Post, Author Jesse James Rose Opens Up About Anti-LGBTQ+ Senator Lindsey Graham Allegedly Hiring Her for Sex Work (Them)

  • Rose alleged, with a hand-raising emoji, that Graham paid a “twinky pre-transition college student a fat stack of cash” for a meetup.

• West Hollywood’s Lowering of Flags for Lindsey Graham Sparks Backlash from LGBTQ+ Community (WeHo Times)

• Mexico’s first out gay mayor shot & killed while getting ice cream in Guadalajara (LGBTQ Nation)

  • The former mayor was also reportedly under investigation for alleged fraud, though his family members believe the accusations were a political hit job.

Over the next week, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting:

• 🆕 SATURDAY: On the next episode of “UNCLOSETED, with Spencer Macnaughton,” I interview Doug Wilson, the lead pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho and an increasingly prominent figure in conservative Christianity. Wilson, who believes gay sex should be illegal and married women shouldn’t vote, says he has 10-20 followers working in the Trump administration, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

• 🆕 TUESDAY: For one week, trans kids can stop explaining themselves and simply be kids. Inside Transcending Adolescence, campers find community, confidence and something many have struggled to imagine: a future where they can thrive. This piece by Sam Donndelinger takes a deep dive into the camp and how it helps support trans youth across the U.S.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to email me with questions, complaints and story ideas!

Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chief — spencer@unclosetedmedia.com

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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Jordan Korgood has come a long way. In 2023, she says she ran into financial difficulties while studying at Northeastern University in Boston and ended up unhoused. Ordinary shelters are hotbeds of discrimination and mistreatment for trans women like her, and the only trans shelter was full. So for five months, she slept in her car, in public libraries and anywhere she could find in order to continue her studies and campus activism.

Korgood, now 24, started a bid in March for a seat on Massachusetts Governor’s Council, a state board tasked with approving judicial candidates. Despite running against an incumbent who has been in office for 41 years, she secured key endorsements from local Democrats and racked up more than 7,000 Instagram followers, the equivalent of nearly one-tenth of primary voters during the last election cycle.

But last month, her momentum was ripped away. It started when Ronald Iacobucci, one of her opponents, noticed that she was still registered to vote in the 2024 election with an old New York address. He proceeded to file an objection with the state, alleging that Korgood didn’t meet the five-year residency requirement. While Korgood has lived in Massachusetts since 2019, she didn’t have a valid address to register in the state while she was unhoused. So she used her mother’s address, where she had lived before moving.

In an email to Uncloseted Media, Iacobucci wrote: “Because serious questions have arisen concerning compliance with those requirements, an objection was appropriate so the matter can be reviewed through the lawful process established by the Commonwealth. This objection was nothing personal, it was always about the integrity of the process.”

While most residency challenges like this fail in Massachusetts, the State Ballot Law Commission disqualified Korgood on June 18. While she initially attempted to appeal the decision, the financial and logistical burden became too much—she estimates it drained about 40% of her campaign funds. So on July 10, Korgood suspended her campaign.

“I am incredibly frustrated that this is what I have to do at this point,” Korgood told Uncloseted Media. “I’ve spent thousands of hours, I’ve sacrificed my own mental health, my social life, friendships, my professional aspirations and advancement to work on this campaign, and this is how they’re ruling.”

“These are cherry-picking remote issues to target specific individuals,” Eliot Tracz, assistant professor of law at New England Law Boston, told Uncloseted Media. “They’re legitimate laws, but what they’re looking for is a selective application.”

Korgood isn’t the only trans candidate facing barriers. While a 2025 report by the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute found that transgender representation among elected officials has increased by over 700% since 2017, candidates still face major hurdles.

Uncloseted Media found examples of transgender candidates running for public office in Ohio and Michigan who have been threatened with disqualification over challenges to their eligibility. Often, the challenges come from their primary opponents: fellow Democrats.

“It should be voters, not political opponents, who decide who represents them,” Daniel Hernandez, vice president of political programs at the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, a nonprofit supporting queer candidates for public office, told Uncloseted Media. “This is not a legitimate way to fight—if you have a disagreement on policy, that’s one thing, but to try and target trans people just because of who they are is completely unacceptable, especially in a Democratic primary.”

A Growing Strategy

The first widely publicized eligibility challenge against a trans candidate Uncloseted Media identified took place in Stark County, Ohio, in 2024. The Stark County Board of Elections, which has the same chairman as the county’s Democratic Party, disqualified Vanessa Joy, a trans woman who was running for a seat in the state legislature. The board cited an obscure state law requiring candidates who changed their name in the last five years to list their former name on candidacy petitions—in Joy’s case, her deadname.

“The original spirit of the law I kind of agree with,” Joy told Uncloseted Media. “But there’s hardly any information about this law ever being enforced.”

Days later, Arienne Childrey and Bobbie Arnold, two other trans candidates, had their eligibility challenged based on this law. While both candidates were cleared to run, that wasn’t the case for Joy, who never made it on the ballot.

Tom Sutton, a political science professor at Baldwin Wallace University, told Spectrum News 1 he had never seen this law enforced in his 30 years of study. At the time, the relevant forms didn’t include a space to list former names, an omission that has since been corrected.

“The only way to find out about it was to dig deep into all of the additional documents on their website,” says Joy. “They used this law against me.”

Similar challenges cropped up in Michigan this year. Joanna Whaley, a trans woman running for a seat in the state legislature, faced a legal complaint from her Democratic primary opponent Frank Liberati, who claimed in April that she should have filed campaign paperwork under her deadname.

“Because both the original and amended affidavits of identity filed by ‘Joanna Michelle Whaley’ contain FALSE statements, she/he cannot be certified to appear on the August 4, 2026 primary election ballot,” the complaint argues.

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The county clerk denied the challenge, which deadnames Whaley, because she had legally changed her name. Liberati’s complaint was widely condemned, with the Michigan Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus calling it “meritless” and “transphobic.”

“It completely backfired on him,” Whaley told Uncloseted Media. “We tripled our cash on hand within a week because of the support that we’ve gotten from our community, and actually are in a stronger position now to win this race.”

While Whaley benefited from the challenge, that’s not the norm. Toni Mua, a trans woman running for a seat in the Michigan legislature, received a complaint from political activist Robert Davis in April who alleged that she also should have run under her deadname.

One of Mua’s opponents, Democrat Arthur Harrington, had discussed the challenge with Davis before it was filed, according to DeNiro Jones, Harrington’s former campaign manager. Jones told Uncloseted Media he sat in on a meeting between the two where they discussed the plan.

Jones also sent Uncloseted Media a screenshot of what he says is a text thread that Harrington sent him. In the screenshot, Davis tells Harrington, “The transgender candidate will be eliminated,” and Harrington responds that “Toni also won’t have the money to fight it.” Those texts were from April 22, two days before Davis filed the challenge.

In an email to Uncloseted Media, Davis called this story “baseless and meritless” and referred to Mua as “an illegitimate candidate seeking attention.”

“A candidate who happens to identify as transgender clearly violated Michigan Election Law and should not have been allowed to appear on the ballot,” Davis wrote. “A person’s sexual orientation nor identity played no part in the litigation seeking to have the person who filed a false affidavit of identity properly removed from the ballot.”

Arthur Harrington did not reply to multiple requests for comment. But in a June statement to Michigan Advance, he denied allegations that he was involved in Davis’ challenge.

These legal fights cost a lot. Korgood paid her lawyer $5,000. And while Mua defeated her challenge, she also had to use an estimated 40% of her campaign funds, or $10,000, to fight it.

In its opinion rejecting Davis’ challenge of Mua’s candidacy, the state court of appeals wrote, “Plaintiff misreads the statute … The Court of Claims did not err by concluding that Mua complied with the law or that the Wayne County Clerk did not err in rejecting plaintiff’s challenge.”

“I had to leave my job to run for this open seat,” Mua told Uncloseted Media. “It truly pisses me off, because [Democrats] have always said that they were better than this, and it’s showing truly where their support lies.”

Quinn Allred, executive director at Let Us Lead, a youth-focused voting rights nonprofit, finds these eligibility challenges from Democrats “despicable.”

“Instead of saying ‘trans people shouldn’t be running,’ [they’re entering] into this respectability politics and saying ‘oh, it’s actually because the names don’t match up, or it’s because of this residency law,’” Allred told Uncloseted Media. “[It’s a] special brand of cowardice that it takes for a Democrat to target a queer person who is also running for office.”

Uneven Enforcement

While challenges to candidates’ residency aren’t uncommon in Massachusetts, they usually fail, according to Western Mass Politics & Insight, a long-running blog by local political and legal analysts.

The blog says most officials with authority over elections have a “great reluctance … to remove an individual from the ballot.” This makes Korgood’s removal unusual.

And while the State Ballot Law Commission says it considers many factors when determining a candidate’s residency and “no factor standing alone can be dispositive,” it largely cited Korgood’s voter registration in its decision despite other evidence that supports her eligibility, including apartment leases and membership in city programs.

“While there’s an undertone of legitimacy to some of those claims, it’s very selective,” Tracz says. “Most of us, when we move to a new state, don’t bother to go through the process of getting rid of our registration to vote in the prior state.”

Throughout history, Massachusetts candidates who faced similar challenges have been left on the ballot. These include former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who received a tax credit in Utah reserved for primary residences, and Brockton, Mass., mayoral candidate Hamilton Rodrigues, who had gotten his voter registration in Brockton removed and hadn’t voted in the city for over 10 years.

Months after Joy’s disqualification in Ohio, the Mahoning County Board of Elections struck down a similar challenge against Republican Tex Fischer, a cisgender man who changed his legal name. They allowed him to stay on the ballot.

Tracz says a judge would likely find selective enforcement like this questionable.

“[That rule is] applicable to any candidate, and the question then becomes ‘Is this only being enforced against a select group of candidates?’” he says. “Why are we only investigating a specific type of candidate? I think that will give some courts pause.”

Making Existing Challenges Worse

Trans candidates face hurdles beyond eligibility challenges. A June report from the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute found that nearly two-thirds of LGBTQ candidates face in-person harassment and nearly 80% of them face online harassment.

“Whether it’s threats of violence, coordinated harassment campaigns, attempts to remove people from the ballot, the cumulative effect is the same: public service becoming more difficult and less accessible to the LGBTQ community,” says Hernandez of the Victory Fund.

Whaley says the increased attention from Liberati’s challenge brought even more harassment her way. She says she reports death threats to the police weekly and has a security detail at every public appearance. Security has become her second-largest campaign expense, and for good reason; in October, her team intervened when a man wearing a Make America Great Again hat followed her around with a gun at a No Kings rally.

“At the end of the day, I want to get home to tuck my kids in bed,” Whaley says. “We could be using that money for other things, but we’re having to use it to just keep me alive.”

Eligibility challenges distract from the candidates’ policies. Childrey remembers one woman telling her she couldn’t vote for her because she’s “only about the rainbow people.”

“Most of what [I’m] talking about is affordability, funding for our public schools ... bread and butter issues,” Childrey told Uncloseted Media. “There is an assumption, because we’re trans, that that’s all it is.”

Barriers also pile up intersectionally. Nearly one-one-third of trans people experience homelessness at some point in their lives, a rate eight times higher than the general population. This means barriers for unhoused people disproportionately affect trans candidates.

“Trans youth, trans people of color, students, those who are unhoused like [Korgood] was, or who are disabled or low-income—those barriers only compound,” Allred says.

What Could Change?

Zein Murib, a political science professor at Fordham University, says these incidents demonstrate the need for more leniency with official documentation, arguing that a candidate’s deadname or legal sex aren’t relevant information. Today, 45 states accept common-law names, or the name a person uses in everyday life regardless of their ID, for other legal procedures, and Whaley says this should apply to campaigns as well.

Besides these policy changes, Allred says LGBTQ advocacy groups should allocate more funds to defend trans candidates from eligibility challenges. And Hernandez says that more people should condemn these tactics and show support for those targeted.

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“We need to make sure that we set the expectation that everyone … is rejecting these tactics that are disproportionately burdening our trans candidates,” he says. “We have to call it out when we see it, and we have to make sure that we are not just letting candidates fight these fights themselves.”

Mua says that she doesn’t see a future for herself or other trans people with the Democrats unless the party stands up for them. “I refuse to put myself into a party where I don’t see my safety and protection being vital.”

While Korgood says she is saddened by this outcome, she doesn’t intend for her political career to end.

“I’m incredibly proud of what we were able to accomplish, and while I am beyond disappointed and frustrated that this is how this is ending, I am so grateful that I earned the support and the attention of thousands of people in this race.”

Uncloseted Media also reached out to the Stark and Mahoning County Boards of Elections as well as the office of the Secretary of State in Ohio. None replied. Uncloseted Media also attempted to reach out to the Massachusetts State Ballot Law Commission, but was unable to obtain their contact information prior to publication.

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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This story was written in partnership with Gay Times Magazine.

After spending the first 82 years of her life keeping her trans identity a secret, Sandra Kaye finally came out last year. But it wasn’t long before Kaye—a lifelong Republican who lives in Texas—found herself dealing with tension between her gender and her political views. A conversation with a left-leaning friend led Kaye to feel confused and unsure about her longstanding affiliation with the GOP.

“[My friend] has always been a little bit left, and I’ve always been a little bit right. So she asked me a question one day: How can I be trans and a Republican?” Kaye told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “I was not prepared for that question.”

Since this conversation, Kaye has moved further towards the center and now considers herself an independent. However, she is still proudly conservative, and voted in Texas’ Republican primary on March 3.

Kaye is in the small minority of trans people who hold conservative views.

According to a 2022 survey conducted by KFF and The Washington Post, 10% of trans U.S. adults identify as Republican. These numbers are likely continuing to dwindle as the Republican party pushes transphobic rhetoric and policies. During the 2024 presidential election, Trump and the GOP spent more than $215 million on anti-trans ads. And as president, he has eliminated the federal recognition of transgender identities and introduced a counterterrorism strategy that vows to crack down on “radically pro-transgender” extremists.

Still, some trans Americans stand by their conservative beliefs.

“When you get right down to it, I don’t think the Republican Party itself is anti-trans. I think the anti-trans comes from Donny Boy,” says Kaye, referring to Trump.

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For These Trans Women, Voting Conservative Makes Sense

Kamryn Wilson, a 25-year-old trans woman in Iowa, also holds right-wing beliefs. She is a member of Young America’s Foundation (YAF), an organization dedicated to helping young conservatives spread right-wing values on university campuses. Sen. Ted Cruz has spoken at YAF events, and the organization’s president, Scott Walker, has a track record of supporting anti-LGBTQ policy.

Though Wilson believes there are transphobic voices within the Republican Party, she does not see them as fundamental to the ideology of the GOP. “The conservative party is not a party that is designed to hate trans people,” Wilson told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “There are people in higher-up positions in the [GOP] that are not fond of trans people, and they voice those opinions very loudly. But it is not a consistent [ideology].”

Wilson thinks concerns that Trump is curtailing trans rights are overblown. She believes the president is exclusively concerned with trans people on the far left, who she sees as having a tendency to exaggerate. “He’s coming for a subset of the trans community. The same people that have constantly said that misgendering someone is violence are the same people saying Trump is coming after [them],” she says. “Trump is coming after far-leftism.”

Though Wilson believes Trump’s threats are overblown, the president has passed a litany of anti-trans policies. These include banning trans and nonbinary people from military service, removing the T from LGBT on government websites and banning trans people from receiving passports with the correct gender marker.

Despite this, Wilson says she hasn’t faced significant hardship under the Trump administration. “Nothing of note has really happened to my rights.”

While Wilson may feel protected under Trump, a 2024 survey of trans Americans found that 42% had taken steps to legally protect themselves following the 2024 presidential election. Meanwhile, 83% had increased concerns about their mental health.

As a right-leaning trans woman, Wilson believes she is able to influence those around her who may be skeptical about trans people.

“I find that they tend to listen to someone like me a lot better, not because I’m bowing down to them, but because I can share ideas with them,” she says, adding that people who have doubts about trans rights are misguided. “It’s not really transphobia that is going around, it’s trans stereotypes that are being inflated by these hyper-vocal groups, and that’s where conservatives get these ideas of what the LGBT community in general is about.”

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Wilson feels that some trans women are spreading misleading and harmful perceptions of the community. “A lot of people on the left love to over-embellish things and make it seem like anyone that has any sort of opposition to trans people is immediately this bigoted transphobe,” she says.

They Don’t Always Agree with Trump

Though Kaye voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, she says she did so “under duress” and was never fully a Trump supporter.

Her vote was instead a response to her wariness of the left. “I am of the anti-communist age. That was drilled in my head for years and years and years,” she says. “It’s still there, and I still believe it. I could not vote for Joe Biden.”

When the 2024 election came around, Kaye saw the same “communist” messaging from Kamala Harris. “When we got around to the young lady that ran this last time, all I could hear coming out of her mouth was communist leanings,” she says. While Biden and Harris are not communists, Kaye’s views reflect a popular right-wing political tactic involving painting those on the left as such.

Despite having voted for Trump twice, Kaye does not support the administration’s crackdown on immigration. “We should not have the SS out there grouping people,” she says, comparing ICE to Schutzstaffel, a major Nazi paramilitary group abbreviated as SS. “The leadership of the United States is so close to the fascism of Germany and World War II. It is downright scary.”

A key issue fueling Kaye’s and Wilson’s conservatism lies in access to guns, which both women believe are critical to their freedom and self-defense. “You’ve got people on the far left who do not want you to be able to defend yourself,” says Kaye, who is a former firearms instructor. “I believe in the Second Amendment.”

Wilson believes guns are necessary in order for Americans to keep their governments in check. “I’m an American. Our nation was founded on the idea that we have the ability to stand up to our own governments, and we cannot [do that] if we are not equipped,” she says.

In April, the Trump administration proposed a rule which would make it harder for trans people to access guns by requiring them to list their assigned sex at birth on purchase paperwork. The National Rifle Association publicly opposed an earlier version of the rule, which would have classified trans people as mentally ill and thus banned them from owning guns outright.

While most of the trans people Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES spoke with for this article weren’t outright Trumpers, they were all conservative. Barbara Minney, a 73-year-old trans woman in Ohio who has doubts about Trump, describes herself as a “conservative/moderate/common-sense transsexual woman.”

“I was 63 when I transitioned, and when you transition that late in life, most of your core beliefs and values have been ingrained over that period of time. It’s hard to change those beliefs and values … after suddenly becoming part of a new community,” says Minney. After voting for Trump in 2016 and 2020, Minney chose not to vote in 2024 because of pressure she felt from Democrats in her life.

Without that influence, she says she likely would have voted for Trump in part because of his immigration policy. “I believe that people who came into this country illegally committed a criminal act and should be dealt with,” she says.

Still, Minney doesn’t like the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric from the administration.

“But he does have LGBTQ people as part of his cabinet, so I respect that,” she says. “Trump sends a lot of mixed messages, and it’s hard to read and understand what his true thoughts are.”

How Do They View Trans Rights?

Minney’s views on trans rights differ from the majority of trans women. “I always describe myself as a transgender woman. I’m not just a woman, because I understand that I’m not a woman,” explains Minney. “I present as one. I am perceived as one, but deep down, I know that I will always be different.”

Alaina Kupec, a former Republican and the current leader of Gender Research Advisory Council + Education, a trans advocacy nonprofit, says that while she understands people like Minney’s desire to “give space” to cisgender women, other trans people shouldn’t be expected to view themselves the same way.

“If she wants to identify that way for herself, she’s entitled to that perspective,” Kupec, a Navy veteran, told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “I don’t think that she can use that same rationale for anybody else outside of herself, because the community is so broad. … I don’t think that it’s correct to say that any woman who is transgender is any less of a woman.”

Minney also differs from most trans people when it comes to policies surrounding bathrooms. While she does use women’s restrooms and locker rooms, she understands if some cisgender women don’t feel comfortable in her presence. “I believe that we have to be mindful of the spaces that women want to preserve for themselves,” Minney told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “I would respect their desire to have a biological women-only space.”

Similarly to Minney, Wilson believes transgender people should be able to use bathrooms that correspond to their gender, but she thinks this access should only be granted to trans people who “pass,” meaning their appearance is perceived as aligning with their gender.

“People that have been transitioning for one to three years, then we can talk about using the women’s restroom. Those people start to have more estrogen in their system than testosterone, and they tend to live life very femininely,” she says.

Because Wilson herself is early in her transition, she chooses to use the men’s restroom. “I think that there should be a passability line,” she says. “I started HRT about a month and a half ago. I’m nowhere near that line yet.”

Kupec says that, while she respects Wilson’s decision, the notion of passing is too complex and subjective to impose on other people. She also says that inviting legal regulation on such an issue is actually antithetical to the traditional conservative value of small government.

“If she doesn’t feel safe going into a women’s restroom, then she should not go into a women’s restroom, and any trans person should have that same autonomy to make that decision for themselves based on their situation and their personal feeling of safety,” Kupec says. “I don’t think there’s a litmus test that you can put out there that’s a line in the sand because everyone’s going to be different. … By arbitrarily putting lines in the sand, you’re inviting more regulation into something that common sense could take care of anyway.”

Another area in which Wilson is likely to disagree with other trans women lies in access to gender-affirming care. “That’s something that I think [Trump] has done really well is up the age for puberty blockers to 19. Personally, I still think it should be older than that.”

Despite Trump having barred federal funding for youth gender-affirming care, a study published in 2022 found that such care has been associated with lower odds of depression and suicidality in American children.

Backlash From Others in the LGBTQ Community

Wilson says she faces backlash “all the time, literally every single day” from others in the LGBTQ community for her political views. She says being conservative has made it hard to get past a first date; a recent phone call with a crush didn’t pan out after Wilson mentioned her political affiliation.

“We had a call and we talked for an hour, and at the end, I had mentioned something about being Republican. It went from ‘She seems very interested in me,’ to ‘Now she’s becoming very standoffish,’” Wilson remembers.

Wilson has also been banned from various online LGBTQ communities after revealing her politics. “I’ve had people literally kick me out of Reddit communities, Discord communities, Twitter communities, Facebook, you name it, all of the above because I have political views that differ from others.”

Minney says she has learned to stay quiet about her politics in queer spaces. “I very rarely talk about my political beliefs. But when I did, I was called a monster, an enemy of humanity, and other names that I can’t even repeat,” she says.

Minney believes many trans conservatives stay quiet about their beliefs and questions the extent to which she is a political minority. “I think that you would be surprised at the number of transgender women and men who identify themselves as conservative,” she says. “There are probably more of us than you would think.”

Kupec has a different outlook. She says that while it may be true that some trans people hold conservative beliefs but keep it to themselves for fear of backlash, many, including herself, have been pushed away from American conservatism because of the Republican Party’s mounting transphobia.

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“I am an independent who used to be a Republican until Republicans went away from their true conservative values and started getting involved with issues that personally affect me and my ability to live my life freely,” Kupec says. “Government doesn’t have a place in the bedroom and doesn’t have a need to regulate everything, which is not what we’re seeing in today’s Republican Party and what some people call conservatism.”

Additional Reporting by Hope Pisoni

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For my newsletter this week, I wanted to take a deeper look into Patriot Front, the white nationalist group that made headlines last weekend with huge rallies across Washington, D.C. One photo, taken by a Reuters journalist, displayed a Black woman on the subway surrounded by dozens of anonymous Patriot Front members.

As I read into what happened, it made me think of my years of reporting on far-right extremism. What are they thinking right now? And how has the landscape of far-right extremism and white supremacy changed in the last 10 years?

I opened my phone, searched through my contacts and found “Brien KKK.”

James says he joined the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in his teens after attending a high school that was “80% Black.” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, he then co-founded the Vinlanders Social Club, a coalition of regional skinhead groups known for racist violence. He also participated in numerous white nationalist rallies over his multiple decades in the far-right movement. And in the summer of 2011, the Vinlanders held a white power concert, entitled “Plunder and Pillage,” which reportedly drew more than 50 skinheads to Ohio from around the country.

While James no longer considers himself a white nationalist or a skinhead and has since left the KKK, he is still a member of the Proud Boys, a far-right militia group most infamous for being one of the biggest players in the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol.

James makes it clear that the Proud Boys and Patriot Front have different ideologies: The former denies that it is a white supremacist group, for example. Still, both groups have been known to organize and attend protests, often violent ones, against pride and drag events. In this interview with Uncloseted Media’s Editor in Chief Spencer Macnaughton, James offers insight into where far-right extremism in America is today and how those following the ideology view the LGBTQ community.

Press play to listen to Spencer’s interview with Proud Boy Brien James.

Listen to the full interview above or read the transcript here:

Spencer Macnaughton: When we met, you were, I believe, with the KKK, is that correct?

Brien James: No, I had been in my past, which is, I guess. I was in the KKK as a teenager, I’m 50 years old.

SM: Wow, 50 years old now. And how did you get in the KKK originally, and how do you see the Ku Klux Klan having morphed and where are they now? I feel like I haven’t heard of them that much these days.

BJ: I don’t think they’ve existed for quite some time, not that I know of.

SM: Because I remember 10 years ago, I attended like a 200 person cross and swastika burning with the KKK to document, but today, do you hear much about them?

BJ: No. The last guy I knew that was active was a guy named Jeff Berry here in Indiana. He was the one that would go to the courthouse and be on the talk shows and get a lot of publicity. I’m sure there’s like a few guys somewhere in some town, saying, “Yeah we’re the Ku Klux Klan,” but I haven’t heard or seen any of them any more than you do. When you interviewed me, I think I had just started American Guard, but I’m in Proud Boys now.

SM: Oh, you’re in Proud Boys. OK, cool. And how’s that going?

BJ: Oh, fine. I’ve been… let’s see, I’ve been in Proud Boys for like eight years.

SM: Eight years. OK, yeah, tell me a little about that.

BJ: Proud Boys is just kind of right wing. It’s multi-ethnic, so it’s not a racial group. And there’s been plenty in the news about Proud Boys and what’s going on the last several years. It was kind of a pro-Trump thing. It kind of started when Trump was running for president the first time. There were a lot of rallies and events and stuff that were being attacked by antifa on the left, and before I joined, those guys kind of decided to go out and start defending or showing up and being kind of a counterbalance at those events, and it just kind of grew out from there.

SM: Got it. And obviously there’s a lot of headlines of political violence and all that kind of stuff. Do you guys engage in that?

BJ: Yeah. I mean, we engage in it from a defensive position. But that’s the way it gets written up, sure.

SM: Did you see everything that went down with Patriot Front this weekend in Washington, D.C., for Independence Day?

BJ: Just in the news, I just saw that they had a march and gave a speech.

SM: Got it. Yeah. What are your thoughts on them?

BJ: I don’t know them real well, or know a lot about them. I think I’m involved in some chats with them on Telegram that are centered around, like, working out or jiu jitsu or whatever. They’re not necessarily political, but that’s the only real interaction I’ve had with most of their members. It seems like a typical kind of white nationalist thing to me. I don’t know anything that particularly stands out about them. They do their marches, and they do their… I think they put up flyers and stickers and stuff, it all seems kind of innocuous, to be honest.

SM: And when I was with you 10 years ago, I remember, like, the KKK and the various other kind of white nationalist, white supremacist organizations, they had kind of fragmented where there was almost like beef between the groups. How would you describe it now?

BJ: From what I understand, it’s a completely different movement now. The younger people have decided to kind of go in a different direction, so you’ve got Patriot Front and the active clubs that mainly go out and kind of just do their own thing. Like, Proud Boys went out to events and met the left in the streets and tried to be like a counterbalance or counterprotest or so and so forth. Or we did a lot of stuff where we went to drag queen story hour, so Patriot Front just goes out and on their own and says, “OK, we had this march, we showed up, we showed people who we are, we got in the news, and then we went home.” And then you’ve got these active clubs, which they did, they’re big into working out, boxing, jiu jitsu, all this stuff. So compared to what it was when I was doing it, 20, 30 years ago, it seems to be a completely different strategy. They’re more private, and they’re just delivering their message, and then kind of leaving it at that. They seem less confrontational than what we were. As far as fragmenting and infighting. I guess I don’t see as much of that. But I’m not as close to it as I would have been back then. But as far as what you can see as an outsider, it seems like they’ve got a better handle on that than people did 20, 30 years ago.

SM: And the thing that confuses me, I don’t understand the mix. Because you see these active clubs, or even Patriot Front, and they post these videos of them doing jiu jitsu or getting really involved in martial arts. How do you explain that? It feels kind of random, the connection between white nationalism and jiu jitsu.

BJ: You know, I have sons that are in that age group. I think there’s an overall feeling that if you’re making physical improvements on yourself, that you’re making improvements all around. At the same time [they’re] training, preparing, conditioning for whatever may come. I mean, I think wherever someone stands on the political spectrum, I think everybody has the sense that maybe things in the world aren’t going in the right direction, so their response to that is to get themselves as physically prepared as possible.

SM: Got it. What do you think is the fear that they have, like that so many folks are training for? Do you think there’s an overarching concern that “event X” could happen?

BJ: Like I said, I think everybody has a feeling that things are headed in a direction where there could be more hostility or more conflict of some type. I think that the general feeling in the world is that there’s more and more conflict, more and more division, more and more room for something to come about that would cause men to have to be more prepared and formidable.

SM: I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but are you implying these groups as white nationalist groups, are you thinking like a race war or not?

BJ: I have no idea how it would play out, to be honest. I think the biggest direct concern for everyone I know that would span, what we call the right or the far right that’s not racial, is called civic nationalists. So, from civic nationalists all the way to white nationalists, I think people are concerned with the direction our government’s going more than anything. And then, on a street level, I don’t know that there’s an increase in racial incidents, but there’s definitely an increase in the reporting of them. We have so much more access to information now that it does make people feel like it’s just more dangerous to be alive.

SM: And what do you guys think about Trump? Because Trump released a new counterterrorism strategy and Biden said that white supremacism was the number one terrorism threat, right? And then Trump released a new terrorism strategy but didn’t even mention white supremacism or far-right extremism, so he doesn’t seem to think it’s as big of a deal. What are your thoughts on all that? How do you feel about what Trump’s doing?

BJ: From my perspective, obviously, I don’t see how the numbers would bear out that white supremacy is anywhere near the threat that the left makes it out to be. I think it’s pretty easy to dig into statistics and see that that’s not the case. So I think that was just something that Biden and the left does to get their voters fired up.

Note: According to a study in Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society: “since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives.”

SM: Got it. I think I mentioned to you before, obviously we’ll have differences here, but we do an LGBTQ publication, right? So you mentioned that you, as a Proud Boy, you guys would show up at drag queen story hours and that kind of thing. What’s the point of that from your perspective? Like, what are you trying to get out of that when you guys head to a drag queen story hour?

BJ: Well, we only have a problem with the ones where they invite kids. We don’t really care—matter of fact, Proud Boys has members that are gay. But we don’t really care that they’re having the events, as long as there’s not children there. It just became a thing where it was really tied in with, and it still is. We just had one that we got canceled in Florida. Florida made a law that you can’t have a drag show—not a Pride event, but an actual drag show—with children there. So they’re so determined to bring children to these events that they were trying to get around it and hold one on private land at a ranch down there called the 2K Ranch. So when we find out these things are going on, we basically call them up and let them know, “Hey, make it all adults, we got no problem with it. Otherwise, we’re going to be there. You’re going to be in the news, we’re going to make it out in person, protest, you’re going to have problems.” We got a yearly event shut down from a group called NARSOL—National Association Reforming for Reforming Sex Offender Laws. And this is all kind of under the LGBTQ umbrella. They try to remove the laws, they try to remove the sex offender registry. They try to remove the laws that keep sex offenders from living by schools and parks. They try to go after the law that makes you have to show ID if an adult wants to take a kid on an airplane and take him out of the country, so for us it’s all one big thing that’s kind of tied together, but hidden under this LGBTQ umbrella.

Note: The group James is referencing is National Assoc. for Rational Sexual Offense Laws (NARSOL).

SM: But that’s where I get confused, to me there’s zero link between sex offenders and LGBTQ people. Do you agree with that, or do you feel like there’s a link between LGBTQ people and sex offenders?

BJ: No, I don’t agree with that. To me, it’s the entire LGBTQ movement is always creeping towards trying to normalize pedophilia, in my opinion.

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SM: Wow, OK. I mean, I would strongly disagree with that. I find there’s a lack of evidence for that, but definitely curious why you think that. Why do you think it’s creeping towards pedophilia, the LGBTQ movement?

BJ: A good example is the fact with these grooming shows, we call them, the drag queen shows, they refuse to leave children out of it. They’re not going to old folks’ homes or anywhere else to try to cheer people up.

SM: No, no. They do. There are examples.

BJ: They’re obsessed with doing this for children.

SM: But I guess I’m missing, not trying to be confrontational, but I don’t understand.

BJ: It’s obviously very personal by the tone of your voice, but that’s OK.

SM: Well…

BJ: I don’t mind telling someone what I think.

SM: I appreciate you talking to me, but I don’t understand. I guess I’m genuinely, taking the emotion out of it, confused. If a drag queen is coming to read a storybook to a set of kids and it’s innocuous and they’re reading a children’s book, I mean, I just don’t really see the problem, right? And Proud Boys, for example, in California, showed up and a lot of the parents there were concerned. They said that you guys totally freaked out the kids and were extremely aggressive. So I’m wondering, like, is there an argument that maybe you guys are scaring the kids more than the drag queen reading the storybook.

BJ: Well, let me ask you this: If I showed you video clips that we’ve accumulated of drag queens where there are children dancing suggestively, partially or fully nude, if I showed you gay Pride parades where there are adults nude in front of children, would you just accept the point at that, would that be enough, or would you just continue to fucking twist it and argue?

SM: Well, I guess I’m wondering—

BJ: Because I can produce those videos.

SM: I guess I’m wondering, when you’re totally freaking out the kids from the parents?

BJ: What if I produce those videos? Would that be the end of the argument that this is innocuous, or?

SM: Send me them, definitely. I think they’re anomalous, but I don’t want to get in a tit for tat. I guess my question is: Is showing up with more intimidation tactics the right move? Is that genuinely, do you think that’s the… this is obviously something you believe is a problem. Do you think that tactic is the right tactic?

BJ: Well, for every time that you’ve heard that we’ve shown up, that’s not our preferred outcome or preferred tactic. For every time that it’s made the news that we’ve showed up, there’s been 10, 20, 50 times that we’ve simply made a phone call and said, “Hey, keep this adults only, and you won’t see us or hear from us.” And then they do, so that’s our preferred outcome.

SM: Got it. And then, which groups would you say in 2026 are the most prolific? Which are the most popular and have the most status in this movement? Would it be Patriot Front? Would it be Proud Boys? Who are the leaders these days?

BJ: Well, Proud Boys and Patriot Front are two different movements. They don’t really accept each other or approve of each other, associate with each other very much. But I would say in the white nationalist movement, it’s definitely Patriot Front, and then the individual, probably Nick Fuentes would be the closest thing to the white nationalist movement that it has to a leader.

SM: And it’s so interesting that, you don’t think through history that presidents have really kind of aligned themselves at all with, or at least they haven’t tried to publicly align themselves with white nationalists. But Trump, obviously, I believe invited him to Mar-a-Lago and this kind of thing. What’s your take on that? Is Trump signaling, “I’m down for this, I’m OK with this sort of thing,” or “I stand with this,” even? What are your thoughts there?

BJ: There have been all sorts of presidents that were aligned with white nationalism in one degree or another. I think some of them were members of the Ku Klux Klan, so I’m not sure what your preface there was.—

SM: Yeah, no, fair, fair. But I guess in 2026 to align that closely, you know, if you look at recent history, people at least explicitly publicly wouldn’t align themselves that closely. So I don’t know, maybe you have nothing to say, but I’m just curious, if there’s any takeaways you have from that public showing of support? He’s obviously said, and I believe closer to 2020, “Proud Boys, [stand back and] stand by,” like all of that messaging, is there any kind of thoughts you have on all of that?

BJ: Yeah, I think given the relationship that we had with politicians on the right in 2016, I think the Proud Boys… a lot of those were Republican politicians genuinely had a good opinion of us and they wouldn’t have any reason not to. I mean, we’re basically just coming to events and keeping their attendees from being attacked. Now, as more and more pressure came down on them, the more mainstream people, the Fox News crowd, and even Trump, to some extent, denounced Proud Boys. He did come through and pardon all of the J6 people when he got reelected, which was something that he had promised people behind the scenes. And I’ll be honest, I don’t think people thought it was really going to come through, but it did, you know? I’m not real happy with his policies and his relationship with Israel or this new war with Iran, and I think that’s the general feeling, probably of like Proud Boys and civic nationalists as well as white nationalists. I think you know it’s just— I don’t know, I don’t know what it’s like to be him or be in his shoes, but he’s probably in a really rough place, support-wise, at this stage.

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SM: And obviously, you know, your leader, the Proud Boys’ leader, Enrique Tarrio, was pardoned by President Trump after he received the 22-year prison sentence in 2023 for seditious conspiracy related to the January 6 Capitol attacks. People were really upset about that. They thought he was leading the charge. What are your thoughts on that? That Trump pardoned the leader, Enrique Tarrio?

BJ: Personally, I don’t have a good relationship with Enrique, because prior to January 6, it was discovered that he had been a federal informant himself on a criminal case before Proud Boys was created. So on a personal level, I don’t deal with anyone who has that type of history, or basically he had got himself in criminal trouble a long time ago and told on every random person he could find to try to get a lesser—or to successfully get a sentence reduction. So we had parted ways then, and he hasn’t officially been the leader of the Proud Boys since all that happened, but I do feel like for the most part, most of those people that were there, I feel like they were overcharged or overzealously prosecuted, and I am glad they are pardoned.

SM: Mhm, then just back to the LGBTQ thing a little bit. Obviously, you know I run an LGBTQ publication here, right? I’m gay myself, right? What are your thoughts on us? And I won’t take it personally. Do you see us as committing a sin? Do you see us as bleeding toward pedophilia? What are your thoughts on gay people and LGBTQ people?

BJ: So, we have a handful of gay guys in Proud Boys. I look at it as a personal decision, as long as it’s kept between consenting adults. I think the vast majority of straight males, if they were honest, don’t really understand it, or on some level, find it gross or unnatural. But the bottom line is people can do whatever they want. Someone might have some other sexual fetish or preference or something that I don’t agree with, that you know, that can’t become their entire identity. The problem is, in my opinion, and in the opinion of most people on the right, and that would include, like, gay Proud Boys, [is] the LGBTQ movement in general is very heavily connected to the left, and it does become their identity, their politics, their religion. Where it crosses from annoying into a place where we feel like it’s a threat, again, is when it starts coming on to children. You know, the trans thing. We have a huge problem with the trans thing. I think if someone’s going through issues in their teenage years and they’re not sure about their identity. Now we’re in this place where we’re putting people on hormones and recommending them for surgery, basically doing permanent life-altering things to fix what might be a temporary teenage problem that every human being goes through. When I look at that, it makes so little sense and seems so irresponsible that I can’t help but see sinister motives behind it. Because all you hear from the left or from the LGBTQ community, is that “Oh, we’re saving their lives. If we don’t do this. They’re going to kill themselves.” You wouldn’t deal with any other manifestation of teenage angst in that way. So everything to me involved in the left wing larger part of the movement, I definitely see evidence that it’s geared towards pedophilia, and I find it disgusting,

Note: While research is developing and exact statistics vary, the vast majority of trans people do not cease their transition, with detransition rates in more recent studies usually being 10% or less.

SM: But I guess when you look at the actual data and the number of LGBTQ people that are engaged in pedophilia, there’s zero connection to the fact that they’re disproportionately likely to do that. Actually, if you look at conservative Christian denominations in the evangelical church, they’re far, far more likely—pastors, priests, church leaders—to commit acts of child rape and of pedophilia. So I guess I’m confused why you would focus on LGBTQ communities when the belly of the beast seems to be in these church communities in the United States.

BJ: Yeah, I don’t have that information in front of me. If I saw churches saying, “Hey, you know, we’re all straight and we, we want to make sure that—”

SM: But you’re not seeing countless headlines coming out about pedophilia and the church among Church leaders?

BJ: I’ve seen the Catholic stuff, you know. I haven’t looked into it recently.

SM: Evangelical, Southern Baptist, non-denominational, I mean, it’s omnipresent, no?

BJ: No. I’m not a church guy, and that’s nothing that’s come up in front of me. But, like I said, if there were events at church talking about, “Hey, we’re going to sexualize children,” or “We need to explain to them, man, we should explain to young girls how to give a good BJ.” You know, if I saw anything like that, I would be just [as] against it as I am this. But this is what comes up in the news. This is what, you know, Indianapolis has a huge gay population, and it’s, you know, when it was going hot and heavy before we kind of got things worked out to where they know where we stand—

SM: What news sources are you looking at? Because I mean, you’d honestly have to be blind not to see the headlines about the Church.

BJ: Like, molestation?

SM: Yeah, molestation, child rape, like, you know, priests, pastors.

BJ: What’s the last big story of… I’ve seen the Catholic things, they’re almost like a meme, but I haven’t seen anything lately from anyone. What’s the last major story of the Baptist Church raping some kids?

SM: There’s a lot. There’s the one from the Houston Chronicle. They did about a 20-year investigation into it, and then there’s a lot of kind of one-offs. I can send you some articles after this, but it’s definitely a big, big problem. Yeah, I’m just surprised you haven’t seen it.

BJ: Like I am aware that exists, but I’m not aware of anything currently ongoing where they’re still doing it, they’re still proud of it in a way where I could go out and take action against it. Anybody ask me, I’ll be like, “Hey, don’t send your kids to Catholic Church.”

SM: Yeah, yeah, got it. OK, OK. And then this is all interesting. And then—

BJ: I could pull up the NUVO, like I could pull up the alternative paper in my town on a weekly basis and see a drag brunch at a bar where they’re saying, “Bring your kids out.”

SM: Yeah, but a drag brunch at a bar is different than a headline about a pastor raping a child.

BJ: Sure.

SM: That’s completely different. I mean, it’s a drag queen reading a story to kids versus a pastor raping a child.

BJ: And for the record, I work against NARSOL, which is a group that is specifically trying to change the laws to hide sex offenders, but I also work with a local group here, which is ran by a young Black dude that sets these predators up and catches them. I work with other local groups that basically find predators who have failed to register and puts that information on Facebook so people know where they’re at. So, I mean, of everything I could be involved in politically, that’s the one that I think does the most good.

SM: Got it. And you mentioned earlier that you think a lot of the politicians might not mind it, because you all come out, the Proud Boys come out and try and keep everyone safe, especially from the other side. Who are you guys looking for? Who are the, I guess I don’t know if you call them enemies, but the other people when you go to these rallies and you want to keep people safe?

BJ: This kind of died out, like once Biden became president. I think these things are tied to funding. Well, I know they are, because I’ve seen the massive buses that bring people in like 2020, but it was antifa, mostly. The guys that wore all black and go up and [unintelligible], but that’s kind of… you don’t see them anymore. If you go to the No King’s Protest now, it’s like white boomers, you know? I think the antifa comes out when it’s being paid to come out, and that seems so dried up.

SM: What’s next for Proud Boys? What do you guys have cooking? What’s the next thing and are there any kind of current mission-focused goals you guys have for the rest of 2026? As we’re getting close to the midterms, obviously, that’ll be big.

BJ: Well, we’re disenfranchised with politics, like almost everybody is right now on the right and left, to be honest. But we’re engaged fully with working against this NARSOL organization. They’ve got some lawsuits against us and going forward, we’re trying to monitor and possibly shut down their events.

SM: OK, interesting. And you mentioned you’re not related to Patriot Front, is there beef between Patriot Front? Like, do you disagree with some of the things they do?

BJ: Yeah, obviously we have members that aren’t white, so they’re not real happy with that.

SM: Mhm. How do you guys view race? How do you see race?

BJ: I mean, that would be up to each individual person, but obviously in my mind, America has been a multi-racial country, well, from the beginning, since its founding. And you know, there are things that point to, OK it was founded with this European culture or this or that. But the bottom line, the problem I run into when I left the racial movement, the problem I run into with racial is currently, because I’ve had a discussion with the leader of Patriot Front from before, many, many years ago.

SM: Thomas Rousseau, yeah.

BJ: Yeah, they have a platform that says, basically, you know, no non-white person is a quote-unquote “real American.” Well, I mean, the first guy killed in the Revolutionary War was Black, so at every point our white ancestors had the opportunity to probably make this a whiter or an all-white country, and they failed to do so. When they took land from the Indians, they didn’t expel them all the way out. They carved out a place for them. When we took five or six states from Mexico, we didn’t expel them. They carved out a place for them. When they wanted the railroads built, they brought in Chinese. When they wanted cotton, they brought in Africans, so on and so forth. And that continues to this day. So, there are a lot of racial issues in this country, I think some of them are legitimate, especially between the fact that the culturally Blacks and whites just can’t seem to align, no matter how much time goes by and how much money gets spent on it, but at the same time, whatever’s going to come about, whatever solution’s going to come about, I mean, we have to have to play the hand we’re dealt, and the more people that want to help, the better. I think the racial movements are isolating themselves entirely too much, not only by pitting all the other races against them, but the amount of white people who will also never support them when they have that platform is pretty staggering.

SM: You were obviously once a member of the Ku Klux Klan, you mentioned you joined in the, in your late teens, now you’re 50 years old. Do you still believe we’re in a white supremacist nation?

BJ: No, quite the opposite.

SM: What changed you? What made you change?

BJ: Well, when I was in the Ku Klux Klan, I wouldn’t believe that we’re in a white supremacist nation. I believed that the nation was the opposite, and that we had to defend ourselves. Like, if it was a white supremacist nation, no one’s gonna join a white supremacist group, they wouldn’t have to.

SM: Right. But, like, I guess if you’re a member of the KKK, I presume you don’t love Black people.

BJ: Yeah, at that time I did not. I was taken from a small rural all-white community and put into a high school that was 80% Black, and it was… I did not like what I saw, so I was very desperate to try to find a way to stand against what I saw, but as I got older, I learned that the answers weren’t nearly as simple as you think they are as a teenager.

SM: How did you get recruited to the KKK in the first place?

BJ: I don’t remember. I think someone must have handed me a business card, or I saw a flyer or something.

SM: How long were you a member there for?

BJ: Oh, probably about five years.

SM: And what would you guys do when you were a member there?

BJ: They mostly got together and just had their little meetings in private. Like I said then there was a guy named Jeff Berry that came along that was holding public rallies everywhere to get, you know, media attention and more membership, and so on and so forth. And I tried that for a while, and when he was holding those rallies, you can look him up. There was a lot of riots and fighting and violence and stuff, and at that age of my life, I found that kind of exciting.

SM: You said as you got older, you realized it was more complicated. Was there a turning point or was there someone you met that made you think differently?

BJ: No, nothing specific. There were just… After that, I had founded and ran a couple skinhead groups, and I had risen to kind of an overall leadership position in the white nationalist movement. You can kind of look all that up online, but when going through the process of trying to figure out what exactly our platform would be and our foundation would be, I started asking a lot of questions about race that the other people there just didn’t really want to come up for answers with. It was a long time ago, but we were on the verge of DNA testing becoming accessible to everybody, and I said, “Hey, if you’re gonna base this all on race, like, we need to figure out what white is, how much white is acceptable,” and they’d say, “Oh, it gotta be 100%.” So, I got bad news for you. I was born with blonde hair and blue eyes, and I’ve got some Native American in my family, you know, 100 years ago, that I know about through a weird inheritance escrow. There’s a lot of you in this room that are much darker than me, that are not 100% white, so just things over the years that made me realize, as far as like making the country better or make things better for my family, like that was not going to be the road to go down, and there were a lot of people in it for the wrong reasons and there were a lot of people in it who were just looking for a place to be accepted. And you know, I continued to be disturbed by the direction I saw things going in the world, and I realized that that was not the group of people that was going to bring about any change.

SM: Got it? OK, I know you got to go, so let me just get a few questions, so I have clarifying. So, you’re 50 years old, five zero, now?

BJ: Mhm.

SM: And you’re based in Indianapolis, did you say?

BJ: Mhm.

SM: And what is… if I want to look up your other stuff through the years, it’s Brien. What’s your last name?

BJ: James. I got my own dedicated page on the SPLC, the ADL, all that stuff. It’s all on there.

SM: Oh, you do, OK. So, what would I look… let me actually look it up while I have you here. So, Brien James, SPLC, KKK. Oh, Brien James got it. Racist skinhead, OK.

BJ: You love that KKK thing, don’t you?

SM: No, I just… it’s how we met, I remember. I think we were together when you were part of that, I thought, but I guess if you weren’t 10 years ago, then OK. So, this is you, and Brien if we did want to do a longer video interview, would you be open to that?

BJ: Probably not.

SM: OK. Well, let’s stay in touch. This is my number, and I appreciate your time.

Additional reporting by Hope Pisoni.

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“UNCLOSETED with Spencer Macnaughton” is a new podcast by Uncloseted Media, an investigative LGBTQ-focused nonprofit news publication. Follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. YouTube // Spotify // Apple

After appearing on the 11th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, the first season of Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World, the sixth season of RuPaul’s All Stars and now the 11th season of All Stars, Silky Nutmeg Ganache, known by many as the Reverend, is undoubtedly a legend.

Born and raised in Moss Point, Mississippi, Ganache bears all in this episode of “UNCLOSETED with Spencer Macnaughton.” She speaks about her relationship with gender, her 100-pound weight loss, what it’s like living as a queer person of color in a red state and why she’s calling on allies to stand up for the trans community.

Watch the full interview above or read the transcript here:

Spencer Macnaughton: Hi everyone, welcome back to UNCLOSETED with me, Spencer Macnaughton. Today, I have the great privilege and pleasure of sitting down with a Drag Race legend, the Reverend Dr. Silky Nutmeg Ganache, who has competed on the 11th season of Drag Race, the first season of Canada’s Drag Race vs. the World, the sixth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars and now the 11th season of All Stars. Silky, it is honestly a privilege and a pleasure to sit down with you today. Thanks so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media.

Silky Nutmeg Ganache: Well thank you for having me.

SM: You’re on the 11th season of Drag Race now and you have really been just described online as a legend, as a real one, as a lip sync assassin. What’s the journey been like for you since you went on that first season of Drag Race, now many years ago?

SNG: Honestly, it’s been more of a journey that the world has gone through with me. I feel like when I first got on Drag Race, like eight or nine years ago, I was a little girl. I just started doing drag. And I didn’t always do the best to show myself in the best light, but I was there and I was present. And I think me being there and present is what has led me to be on television and invited back multiple times. So, I think now I’m in a place where you get to see the fully realized me of who I am and what I represent. Y’all have literally watched me go as a little girl to this grown woman now. And I can’t be more excited than anything.

SM: And I think you talk about, like, you couldn’t be fully realized, you know, on the first season. What’s changed and how do you think you’re able to be more authentic Silky now?

SNG: Well, I was literally trying to find my place when I first got on, with a combination of trying to have a career. I wasn’t trying to win Drag Race.

SM: I think that’s interesting because I think so many people are out there trying to be an influencer or be a celebrity. What have you learned? What makes good TV? What do audiences respond to?

SNG: You being your authentic self. People are trying to be an influencer. And I think the cameras don’t lie. At all. I never tried to make good TV; I was just good TV. I was myself, you know? And even when I wasn’t myself, the cameras didn’t lie about it. All Stars [season] six, I was eliminated early. I wasn’t in the mental space to compete. So yeah. Influencers, if it’s meant for you, it’s meant for you. You know? You can’t force yourself on anyone.

SM: Some would argue it’s hard to be your authentic self when you’ve grown up with the background that you’ve grown up. I mean, you grew up in the middle of the Bible belt as a queer person of color in Moss Point, Mississippi. What was your upbringing like in kind of realizing who you were and developing into the kind of amazing star you’ve become?

SNG: You know, right after I was on season 11, our original season of Drag Race, we were at the family reunion. I was at my family reunion, and it’s on a dirt road in Mississippi—Lexington, Mississippi—at my grandmother’s ranch. And they’re on the microphone, and we’re having a good time, the drinks are flowing, they’re dancing. And the family reunion for me is not just family. It’s more like a family friend. It’s like a community event. And you know, the people on there was just like that crazy individual you saw on television. That’s what we’ve been dealing with our whole lives.

SM: I love it.

SNG: So for me, I just always, who I was, even at church growing up, that was me. If you ever seen the movie “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and Tina Turner’s at the beginning of the movie singing “This Little Light of Mine.” And she’s adding her own flavor and style. And they kick her out of church. That was literally me, like, as a kid. Like, I add my own flavor and style to everything. And if you didn’t like it, that was your problem to deal with. It wasn’t mine.

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SM: I feel like that’s an amazing perspective to take. Did you grow up in a church where you were hearing messages about being gay or identifying with a different gender expression?

SNG: Well, first of all, what’s understood needs no explanation. I never announced it growing up or… Everybody knew. And it had gotten to a point because when I was in high school, I was very popular. So with the personality that I had, nobody ever bullied or messed with me; I was just who I was. And people seem to gravitate towards it. I’ve had more adversity as a Black person than as a queer person in my life. Because of course, when you first see me, you notice the color of my skin. You don’t notice that I’m queer. And... No shade, I’ve always looked like this. So I have been passable as a woman my whole life. So most people thought when I was in high school, they thought I was a little… They always called me a butch lesbian. Because I wore a little mohawk with a taper fade. It wasn’t until I went off to college that I—actually wasn’t until my 30s—that I started to just accept the femininity of who I am. So when I turned 30, I can remember it was just that I accepted the femininity, because I always kind of shied away from it.

When people ask me what’s my gender identity, I always say Roger the alien. I’mma wake up and be what I want to be that day. If it’s for you, it’s for you. If it’s not, it’s not. I’ve never claimed to be trans or anything. I’m Silky. I ain’t got time to be explaining. If you like it, like it. Come on over here. If you don’t? Stay over there. It’s always been that with me. My pronouns are she and her though.

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SM: For cis people, right? Like me who knows gender from, you know, that I feel like I’m born with the sex that matches my gender identity. How do you view gender in between your own ears and how you express it out to the world?

SNG: Honestly? I don’t. I feel, and this is just me, and it may get me canceled or whatever, I feel that we put too much into it when it comes to gender identity. I don’t feel like everybody deserves to know my true gender. And maybe this is a old outdated Mississippi theory for me, and I think about it in a way of what’s between my legs is my personal business.

SM: And I love what you say about gender is personal, folks shouldn’t [be] getting involved and that kind of thing. Somebody who has definitely gotten involved is President Donald Trump, who has introduced a spate of executive orders, policies, laws to roll back trans rights, to roll back the rights of people who identify as anything other than cisgender. And he also just released a new counterterrorism strategy last week that actually highlighted trans people, linking them completely falsely, there’s no evidence to back this up, to terrorism, right? And another thing he didn’t even mention was the threat of white supremacy, even though we know that’s one of the biggest threats in America right now. As a Black woman who presents perhaps differently than a cisgender person, where are you at right now seeing this come out?

SNG: Honestly, where I’m at in life, I don’t care. I’m not scared. I’m no longer raising my blood pressure over the things Donald Trump say. Just as he’s done it for queer people, he’s already done it for Black people and he’s not gonna stop. And I realize that even in the queer community, we always say, “It’s a safe space.” I no longer consider clubs, bars, safe spaces.

SM: Why not?

SNG: Because half of them are owned by Trump supporters. Half the people who work for them are Trump supporters. And so I have realized that where I’m at in life right now, I’m gonna do everything I can to make a safe space around me and with the people in my close corner. I know that it may sound insane because I have a platform and I have a voice and I should use it to fight and come back all the time. However, for me, I feel like as a Black person in America, the time is not for me, as a Black queer person in America, to continue to be on my soapbox. It’s been my lifetime journey to speak out and to speak against all of this. I’ve done it my entire life. And now? I tell people cause—I always get criticized for this—and I’ll be like “you need to have that same energy to white men in this community.” It’s time for them to speak up.

SM: You need allies to come in with a catcher’s mitt and stand up and take the microphone for a hot second.

SNG: Oh yeah, that’s where we at. Where is the white cis men in the community speaking up? And so until it becomes important to them, I’m just gonna sit back. And I’m not gonna say too much because the scariest part about it for me is, I bought my home here in Houston. And when it came for Donald Trump’s election, I was the only person—I live in Harris County. And I had a Kamala Harris sign on my yard. Everybody else? Donald Trump, Donald Trump, women for Trump. Women’s for Trump? Girl be about a [pedophile] in this neighborhood? And I kept my sign up until it magically disappeared when I was gone, maybe like five months until his presidency. I live by myself. I don’t want to put myself in a safety risk of my home or my life being threatened. So it is time for me to sit back. And this is the only way I have learned to grasp the idea of peace. And I encourage every Black person, queer person, Black queer person in America, to find that peace because I’m no longer raising my blood pressure. Because the more I speak out it seems like we don’t always have the allies or the advocates to speak out with us.

SM: I think a lot of people share that sentiment right now of allies needing to step up. And you’re, you know, in Houston, which is still a very red state in Texas. And I hear what you’re saying about a lot of the owners of the queer bars are Trump supporters, right? So when you go in as a drag performer in some of these spaces that you know are owned by people who might have a MAGA flag on their front porch, what goes through your mind thinking this is not a safe space for me?

SNG: So now that I have gained the notoriety that I have, I automatically assume every place is not a safe space. I assume that every space is owned by a Trump supporter. And people are like, “How could you walk into these bars knowing that first off, they had a Trump sign or Make America Great Again on the bar?” You know my Black [ass] ain’t walking in.

SM: Right.

SNG: That’s first. That has not happened. However, I feel like in the time that we’re in now, it’s my duty to go and give people an hour and a half show that will make them forget about the status of this world. It is my duty to go in to make them feel good to just forget what is going on in their real life problems. It is my duty to go in and let my trans sisters know that sis I see you, and this too shall pass. I feel like it’s my duty to go in and let these bars know I’m collecting money from you. And that’s what I’m doing. You are a check, you may support Donald Trump, and you may profit a little bit off me. But guess what? You publicly paid me. I feel like a lot of Trump supporters are cowards cause you’re making money off this community. But you’re not really telling that you’re voting against this community. So I let it be known everywhere I go that, you know, this is who I am, this is what I represent, this what I support. And if you don’t like it, that’s on you. But I came in, I uplifted my community and I hit the door.

SM: I love it. I love your perspective on this. I mentioned I recently interviewed your friend Peppermint, who was also a finalist on Drag Race, and she and I had a really interesting conversation. We talked about how MTV is owned by Paramount, and Paramount is now owned by billionaires, the Ellisons, who are Trump loyalists. And I asked her, should RuPaul’s Drag Race stay on Paramount when it’s owned by the Ellisons, right? And I want to read you what she said and then see what you think. Peppermint said,

“It would be a wonderful surprise to see anyone on that show speak out against sort of what is happening in our country with regards to the control of politics and policies and the intersection again, of money with politics, especially as it’s related to the Ellisons and the purchase of Paramount, we’ll know when the takeover is complete, when RuPaul is like, ‘I love Larry Ellison,’ because that’s probably what’s happening. They’re gonna get a script. That’s what I envision happening, is they will try to either cut Drag Race or use it as a tool to parrot what they want to say.”

Pretty bold statement from Miss Peppermint over there. What do you think?

SNG: Right now, as long as RuPaul’s Drag Race using the platform to unite people, as long as they’re using the platform to pay queer artists, I’m good with it. And I’m in a place right now where I don’t want to misspeak on that issue. I think as things unravel, we’ll speak up a little bit more. But for me, as long as we collecting those dollars, queer artists are being seen, our stories are being told, I’m OK with it.

SM: I appreciate it. I respect it, and I get it. I want to pivot. You recently posted late last year that “being born and raised in Mississippi under Southern values, I used to be ashamed of saying, ‘I want love after coming out.’” And you got really vulnerable about, you know, having a kind of shitty situation with an ex and then that inspiring a weight loss journey where you said you were officially 100 pounds down. You’re no longer ashamed or embarrassed to be who you are. You’re proud to be, quote, “Black, femme, fat and fabulous.” I think you inspire a lot of people. What made you want to post that? And what does that kind of moment in time represent for you in your journey and Silky’s journey?

SNG: I was ashamed for a very long time, like being Black, being queer and being raised in the Church. There are so many people that say that “the gays are going to hell.” And I used to believe that, and I lost my grandmother a few weeks ago. And one of the things that she had instilled in me is that you live heaven and hell on this earth. And being plus size people had, you know, they don’t think that fat people deserve love or to even exist at times. And when I wrote that, I wrote that in a place of taking back my power. That status was a way of me reclaiming myself and what I want for life. I wanna be loved and I wanna have kids one day. But now I’m no longer in a rush to do it. I’m gonna take a page out of my grandmother’s book and I’m going to live heaven on this earth, and I am gonna live and I’m going to enjoy. Why should I have one boyfriend when now I got a roster?

SM: I love it.

SNG: You know, you can’t do the job, I know somebody that got it, you know? And I feel like that’s where we heading in life. I think that’s the more progressive way of dating. You know, you can date multiple people. The southern me want to say, you know, you date one person and you committed to that one, and now I’m like, no until somebody proves that they’re committed to me, I’m dating multiple.

SM: What’s your dating game right now? If you’ve got a roster, I think people might want to know, like, do you do the Grindr, the Hinge? Are you on none of that? How do you meet people?

SNG: Um, I travel. Despite what the world thinks, you know, being plus size, there’s a lot of people that like plus size down low, you know?

SM: Oh! OK!

SNG: You know, they don’t like to tell they friends that they really into the big girls. But I have never had a issue pulling guys, ever. As it pertains to dating apps, I feel like everybody’s moving more towards “let’s hook up.” So I don’t get on there often. The last three guys I dated, I met in bars. But I would like to also say, I have a book coming out about dating and relationships in the next couple of weeks.

SM: I did not know that.

SNG: And it’s called my—yeah! It’s called “My Man, My Man, My Man. 10 Red Flags to Let You Know That Your Man Is Really a Fuck Boy.“

SM: I want to know two things: What is the biggest red flag that you look out for? And then I want to know what is Silky’s perfect first date.

SNG: Oh my goodness, one of the biggest red flags to where I’m at now, if a guy meet me and he start talking about Drag Race. It confuses intention. Because are you a fan or are you trying to become a friend? So when you say RuPaul’s Drag Race, it’s a deal breaker. My perfect first date? Honestly, it’s just a nice dinner, just a ni—I’m simple. I require car service. I require you to put in effort to introduce me into your world. And trust me, the life that I live, you would enjoy it and I don’t have to do too much explaining. You would enjoy it cause I eat The Capital Grille, Ruth Chris Steakhouse on a Tuesday night if I want.

SM: Yeah, OK. OK, yes.

SNG: You know, because I’m in a place of enjoying life the way I want to enjoy it so, yeah.

SM: I love it. I want, like, the headline of any dating profile to now be “I require car service.”

SNG: Yeah! Send me an Uber, send me a Lyft, like if you’re serious.

SM: So funny and I’m excited to read that book and we can definitely plug it in the show notes. But I wanted to circle back because you did mention something about DL guys, right? You probably know that folks who are not out, especially in the Bible Belt, especially queer people of color who are not fully out, are part of what’s fueling an epidemic of HIV resurgence in the country, right? Curious about your experience there? What can we do better? Anything to say on that?

SNG: Yes, I would first like to start off by the use of trade on Rupaul’s Drag Race is not accurate at all. You know, they love to say “the trade of the season.”

SM: What do they mean by that? They mean like the hottest person in not drag kind of thing?

SNG: Yes, the hottest person not in drag. And that is not the term. The trade historically is a word used by Black trans women to say that this guy likes trans women, and they would sometimes trade him off. Because if a guy likes trans women, the girls will always let you know, you know? But what people don’t realize is trade is a touch of danger. So trade will literally kill you.

SM: Wait, that’s a bold statement. What do you mean by that?

SNG: You asked about DL. DL trade will kill you. If you told anybody, if they were outed, look how many trans girls dated like a straight guy, trade, and then all of a sudden they have died because the guys could no longer, like, accept or live with themselves or their families found out. So when we use the word trade on Drag Race, I always try to advocate them to be like, “Girl, you wear a broach and we call you girl, you’re not trade.” I try to do it as a way of educating people like trade will literally kill you. So let’s not use that term unless we’re gonna use it appropriately.

SM: And what about like, when you’ve kind of, you know, if you’ve interacted with DL guys or anything like that, what do you think folks need to be mindful of, or aware of, as it relates to safe sex in a moment when, you know, there is PrEP access, but, you know, HIV is still alive and well?

SNG: I used to date DL guys. I don’t do it anymore because I’m in a place in life I’m not gonna be anybody’s secret. DL guys have that touch of danger. Half the time, you don’t know who they’re sleeping with, and they lie. DL men lie. And if they can lie to you, and 9 times out of 10 be living with their baby mama, don’t have a job, come do the nasty to you, put you through the mattress? You have to protect yourself by having safe sex. And a lot of DL men don’t like that. And it does spread disease. HIV, gonorrhea, herpes, it does. But I’ve gotten to a place where I can’t do that anymore to myself because I can no longer be someone’s secret. At all. I’m not anyone’s secret.

SM: I also wanted to ask you, you know, you’ve been candid, like I mentioned in that vulnerable post about your weight loss journey, and we’re in a space right now with all the GLP-1s. You know, there’s a huge new kind of conversation about weight loss. Um, and I’m just curious what you think about that. I feel like every other person I know is on one now. I don’t know. It’s a big moment in time for the conversation around weight loss and I’m curious your thoughts.

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SNG: Considering that I am a person that has tried every diet on this planet, if people need help, let them get the help that they need. There’s so many people that downplay or are so nasty and rude to people that uses this. And it shouldn’t be like that at all, and I’m a person that needed help all my life. And it’s so crazy because first, people are criticizing you for being fat, and now they wanna criticize you for the way you lose the weight. And I’ve never gotten that. I lost my weight by going to the gym. And then I got some cosmetic surgery after I lost a lot of weight. And so, I’m down like 100 pounds now. And I wanna lose a little bit more, but there is nothing wrong with help if you need it.

SM: I did want to say this when you mentioned, and I’m so sorry for your loss of your grandmother because I know she was absolutely integral to you. She taught you about the importance of education. What did she mean to you and what has she taught you about this life?

SNG: Thank you. My grandmother honestly taught me how to be glamorous. She was a preschool teacher. And I watched my grandmother get up every morning, do her makeup, wear perfume, do her hair. Even to her older age when, you know, her health declined. And if she needed to go to the hospital, put my makeup on first and make me look good. But that was the woman she was and she taught me to never give up on myself. And I think that’s really important, especially in today’s world. But I honestly will take “you live heaven and hell on this earth.” That will forever be engraved in me. Absolutely.

SM: That’s beautiful. Last question cause some people who might be in your shoes in one way may think, you know, I’m an underdog because I’m queer, because I’m Black, because I’m plus size, because I’m these things, and they might not have the confidence that, Silky, you have, right? Easier said than done to get to where you’re at, you know? What’s your message to people who might be in similar shoes thinking, “I can’t do this”?

SNG: Well, if you say you can’t do it, you’d have already lost the battle. You have to take a chance on yourself because in reality, nobody in this world owe you a damn thing. And I’ve learned over the years, you have to give yourself grace. You have encourage yourself, and you have fight for all your dreams. And so if you’re not gonna take a chance during investing yourself, you have lost the battle. You have to start investing in yourselves right now. You never know what may happen. Do it.

SM: Dr. Silky Reverend Nutmeg Ganache, you’re amazing.

SNG: No, thank you so much and thank you for having me.

SM: You’re fantastic, and yeah, thank you so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today. And for those who never want to miss an episode of our podcast, you can subscribe to Uncloseted Media’s YouTube channel or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Read all of Ganache’s books here.

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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After I worked at 60 Minutes and before I launched Uncloseted Media, I worked as a producer for Nickelodeon News. I traveled across the country and had the privilege of working with kid correspondents and coaching them on how to conduct interviews and be great on-camera hosts.

One of the most memorable segments we produced was a profile of then-Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. My 11-year-old correspondent Rory Hu and I filmed with Buttigieg in Wisconsin and Washington, D.C. He was professional, kind and fun to work with. He played ball when we asked him to do an impromptu segment called “Digging for Dirt with the Secretary of Transportation,” where Hu asked personal questions in front of a bulldozer as a ticking clock counted down. If he didn’t answer all the questions, he’d get slimed. Spoiler: He passed!

So when I read Buttigieg’s essay from last Friday explaining how Child Protective Services (CPS) came to his door because an anonymous caller accused him of committing “unspeakable violent crimes” and believed his 4-year-old twins were at risk, I was devastated.

While CPS has since verified that the calls were false and “politically motivated,” that was only after Buttigieg was separated from his children. It was after his kids were forced to complete a forensic interview where their parents and other family members were not allowed to sit in.

Buttigieg wrote that the event was “the ugliest thing that has happened to [him] since [his] career in service began.”

He went on to write: “It’s not lost on me that this happened soon after we shared photos of our family on social media for Father’s Day. Or that this occurred during a month meant to make families like ours feel welcome and safe. We’re used to nasty, hateful, and sometimes violent things being said about us and even about our family. But this is the first time someone managed to invade our lives like this - and drag our children into it.”

While what happened to Buttigieg is horrific, it shouldn’t surprise us. False suggestions that LGBTQ people—gay men and trans women in particular—are pedophiles or a danger to children, are embedded in the political fabric of America’s right wing.

Some of the most successful conservative podcasters peddle this narrative: Candace Owens, who has cracked the top 10 American podcasts, has called homosexuality a “social contagion” and blamed gay men for pedophilia in the church. And Joe Rogan, who is number one in the U.S. on Spotify and has over 14 million listeners, has falsely said trans people are “perverts” who commit the majority of school shootings.

These sentiments are also held by some of the most powerful people in American government: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson wrote an op-ed suggesting that gay marriage could lead to giving pedophiles the right to marry children.

And in 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis passed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, banning K-12 teachers from instructing kids about anything related to sexual orientation or gender identity. Around the passage of the bill, DeSantis’ press secretary tweeted that anyone who opposes it “is probably a groomer.” Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked her millions of viewers “When did our public schools … become what are essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals?” And conservative podcaster Jack Posobiec encouraged his 1.7 million followers to buy t-shirts that read “Boycott Groomers, bring ammo.”

This conspiracy theory didn’t come out of thin air. Americans have been baselessly accusing LGBTQ people of preying on youth since the Lavender Scare, a 1950s push to remove gay people from the government. A 1950 Senate report stated that “these perverts will frequently attempt to entice normal individuals to engage in perverted practices,” and that that is “particularly true in the case of young and impressionable people.”

What happened to Buttigieg made headlines. But what we don’t read about is the countless everyday LGBTQ Americans who are subjected to the same scrutiny or false accusations from homo/transphobes. In 2022, the same year that DeSantis brought grooming rhetoric back to the spotlight, there was a 400% increase in the narrative’s spread online.

It’s critical that I don’t mince words here. You cannot get lower than accusing gay and trans people of being more likely to rape and abuse children.

But I know the accusers don’t care what I have to say. They see me and other LGBTQ people as subhuman. So it’s on allies of the community—the listeners of these podcasts who say they still love gay people, the Republicans who say they care about economics but don’t back Trump’s anti-LGBTQ attacks and the straight bros who may have friends who claim their anti-LGBTQ statements are just jokes.

It’s long overdue that you start standing the fuck up. Show your allyship.

Push back. Call it out. Walk the walk.

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• I had an amazing time joining and the Association of LGBTQ+ Corporate Directors to close the New York Stock Exchange on Monday! Thanks to Jon Tilli and Deutsche Bank for sponsoring such a fantastic event! It was great to represent Uncloseted Media and to cap off what’s been a whirlwind of a Pride Month!

• There’ll be no story publishing on Saturday. We wish all of you a happy July 4th weekend!

• Supreme Court upholds state laws banning transgender girls and women from school athletic teams (Associated Press)

  • The court’s conservative majority, which has repeatedly ruled against transgender Americans in the past year, ruled that state bans in Idaho and West Virginia don’t violate the Constitution or the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.

• Trump administration moves to restart LGBTQ+ suicide hotline it initially ended (The Guardian)

  • The Trevor Project non-profit that helped pioneer LGBTQ+ ‘press 3’ option for 988 hotline is being shut out as it restarts.

• Alarm over ‘extreme’ sentences for anti-ICE protesters convicted of terrorism (The Guardian)

  • First amendment groups call 50-to-100-year prison terms chilling as legal experts say sentences unusually long.

• Oregon Pride march canceled after organizers say police wouldn’t protect eventgoers (The Advocate)

  • Eugene Pride organizers said last year’s hate group presence and recent police actions against trans activists made the march untenable.

• Pete Buttigieg and his kids subject to CPS, police investigation after false report (NPR)

  • Buttigieg, who lives with his husband and their twin four-year-old children in Traverse City, Michigan detailed the experience in a Substack post on Friday, saying that a police officer and CPS worker had come to his home and notified him of an anonymous report that alleged his children were at risk.

Over the next week, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting:

• 🆕 TUESDAY: An exclusive conversation with Silky Nutmeg Ganache. The RuPaul’s Drag Race star, educator and self-described “Reverend Doctor” opens up about her journey, activism and life beyond the runway.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to email me with questions, complaints and story ideas!

Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chief — spencer@unclosetedmedia.com

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

Donate now

_{This story was produced in partnership with hankycode, an LGBTQ+ history publication.}

_{Related read: 1776-2026: The Moments That Defined Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Rights in America.}

Records of trans people date as far back as 218 C.E. with the Roman Empress Elagabalus. And all through U.S. history, transgender figures can be found: sometimes in the shadows, sometimes at the forefront of social change and always bravely living their lives, often through fear and danger.

It’s impossible to highlight every notable transgender person, organization or moment since the U.S. signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. But as we mark America’s 250th birthday, here are key events that have shaped the trans and gender nonconforming experience over the last two and a half centuries.

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1776

Following a fever, Jemima Wilkinson, a Quaker, takes on a new identity as the “Public Universal Friend.” “The Friend,” as they become known, presents as gender nonconforming and rejects she/her pronouns. According to the Friend, Wilkinson’s soul was in heaven, and God had rejuvenated their body with this new spirit, whose mission was to preach the Quaker gospel.

1829

Lucy Ann Lobdell is born. After teaching herself to shoot at the age of 10, she becomes known as the “female hunter.” In 1854, Lobdell moves to Bethany, Pennsylvania, begins using he/him pronouns and going by the name Joseph Israel Lobdell. Four years later, Joseph is arrested and put on trial for impersonating a man. However, because he could do men’s work, the judge finds him not guilty.

In 1880, Joseph is taken to Willard Asylum for the Insane following an arrest and being declared a lunatic. There, he continues to wear men’s clothes and insists that he is a man.

1836

Sex worker Mary Jones is arrested in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood after being accused of stealing a client’s wallet.

While searching for missing money, officers decide to conduct a physical exam, which reveals a leather prosthesis tied around Jones’ waist with a belt. The prosthesis is “bored open in imitation of a woman’s womb.”

Following the discovery, Jones is disparagingly referred to as a man masquerading in women’s clothing. While Jones does face grand larceny charges, the majority of the transcripts from her interviews in the criminal justice system focus on her gender identity. H.R. Robinson, a lithographer and publisher, salaciously refers to her as the “man-monster.”

1843

St. Louis, Missouri, becomes the first U.S. city to institute a cross-dressing law when it revises its ordinance:

“Every person who shall appear in any street, alley, avenue, market place or public square … in a dress not belonging to their sex … shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor.”

1849

We’Wha, a lhamana, or Zuni Two-Spirit, individual is born. As early as 3 years old, We’Wha is recognized by their community as showing traits of being two-spirit, which in some indigenous cultures describes someone who is a third gender or holds mixed-gender roles. We’Wha takes on both male and female tasks, and they become a Zuni cultural ambassador in Washington, D.C., where they attend various high society events, meet with President Grover Cleveland and help identify and document Zuni artifacts.

1861-1865

At least 400 women disguise themselves as men to fight in the American Civil War. Many of these folks were likely not trans and simply wanted to serve. However, one soldier, Albert Cashier, maintains his identity as a man until his death in 1915.

1866

Frances Thompson becomes the first trans woman to testify before Congress when she shares her experience being assaulted at the Memphis massacre of 1866, where 40 people were killed over three days from violence that was ignited by political and social racism following the American Civil War. While Congress isn’t aware of her gender identity, her groundbreaking testimony is believed to be the first time a transgender woman testifies before the House. In her testimony, Thompson details the assault she experienced during the riot: “They drew their pistols and said they would shoot us and fire the house if we did not let them have their way with us.”

A decade later, Thompson is outed following rumors that she was “cross-dressing.” She is eventually arrested and fined $50 (roughly $1,000 today). Since she can’t pay, she is imprisoned and forced to work in an all-male chain gang as a way to pay off her fine. She is also publicly humiliated in the newspapers.

1886

Lucy Hicks Anderson is assigned male at birth. But as a young child in Kentucky, Anderson insists on wearing dresses to school. When her concerned mother takes her to the doctor, she is encouraged to allow Anderson to live as a girl.

Years later, in 1945, Anderson’s identity is outed, and her marriage to her husband is voided. Anderson is arrested for perjury, and the federal government tries her and her husband. She is placed on probation for 10 years as an alternative to prison. During the trial, she tells reporters, “I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman.”

1895

The Cercle Hermaphroditos, led by Roland Reeves, is the first known informal transgender advocacy group. The group is made up of New York City androgynes and meets at Paresis Hall, a brothel and gay bar. They are formed “to unite for defense against the world’s bitter persecution.”

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1901

New York City politician Murray Hall dies. After his death, the coroner’s inquest reveals that he was a transgender man. Public backlash ensues from people who claim they’d been tricked, and The New York Times claims that he “masqueraded in male attire.” One of Hall’s colleagues tells The Times: “He’d line up to the bar and take his whisky like any veteran, and didn’t make faces over it, either. If he was a woman he ought to have been born a man, for he lived and looked like one.”

1917

Dr. Alan Hart, a trans man, undergoes a hysterectomy performed by Dr. Joshua Allen Gilbert. Dr. Gilbert writes in “Homosexuality and Its Treatment,” that “hysterectomy was performed, her hair was cut, a complete male outfit was secured and ... [Dr. Hart] started as a male with a new hold on life and ambitions worthy of her high degree of intellectuality.”

Dr. Gilbert is initially hesitant to perform the surgery, but eventually he finds that Dr. Hart is “extremely intelligent and not mentally ill, but afflicted with a mysterious disorder for which [Dr. Gilbert had] no explanation.” Dr. Gilbert later would write that “from a sociological and psychological standpoint [Hart] is a man.”

1952

Christine Jorgensen is the first American transgender woman to become famous for having sex reassignment surgery. An article titled “Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty” publishes in the New York Daily News and celebrates Jorgensen’s bravery in the war while also embracing her feminine qualities. “Bronx Youth Is a Happy Woman After 2 Years, 6 Operations,” the article states.

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1960

Virginia Prince launches “Transvestia,” the first widely distributed magazine focused on the cross-dressing community and later the transgender community at large. The magazine publishes six issues a year and is a lifeline for transgender readers who finally have a place to share their experiences. Article titles include “Psychological Test Results” and “The Soldier with Two Sexes.”

1964

Reed Erickson, a wealthy transgender man, launches the Erickson Educational Foundation.

The foundation becomes an incredible resource for transgender people. It offers counseling services, organizes conferences—including the first three International Symposiums on Gender Identity—and publishes newsletters.

1965

Psychiatrist John F. Oliven coins the term “transgender” in the second edition of “Sexual Hygiene and Pathology.”

1966

Johns Hopkins University creates the first Gender Identity Clinic in the U.S. A team of 10 physicians and psychologists provide gender-affirming care, including sex reassignment surgeries, to trans Americans.

1967

Conversion Our Goal (COG), later named Transsexual Counseling Unit, launches. The group is funded by Reed Erickson and is created in response to transgender prostitutes in San Francisco rioting against police harassment at a local cafeteria. COG provides a critical point of contact for transgender folks in need of medical care. Through collaboration with “Queens Magazine,” COG resources reach transgender people across the U.S.

1969

Police raid the Stonewall Inn, sparking a rebellion that lasts for six days as New York City’s LGBTQ community pushes back against police violence. Leaders of the uprising include trans activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.

1970

Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a collective that helps transgender folks find shelter and support, is founded by Rivera and Johnson. Founding member Bubbles Rose Lee opens STAR House, a home that provides shelter for unhoused transgender people. Approximately eight months later, the organization is evicted and STAR House is forced to shut down because they’re unable to pay rent.

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1980

Transgender individuals are classified by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as having one of three types of gender identity disorder: transsexualism, nontranssexualism and not otherwise specified.

1986

FTM International is founded by Lou Sullivan, making it the first organization for transgender men in the U.S. The organization provides peer support and networking. They also launch a newsletter, which includes medical and health articles, advice columns and classified ads seeking social connection. The first newsletter includes information about a “female-to-male” get together, another edition talks about support groups and another provides practical information on buying shoes.

1991

The Southern Comfort Conference, a major transgender conference, has its first annual gathering in Atlanta. Mariette Pathy Allen, who photographed the conference, explains, “It was the largest TG conference, attended by a great variety of people, including many locals for whom it was affordable. You could meet so many different people, go to or lead a variety of seminars, [and] dance at night.”

1995

GenderPAC is formed by Riki Wilchins. The association brings together national transgender organizations to form the first national political advocacy organization focused on the right to one’s gender identity. As reported by The New York Times, GenderPAC “is lobbying to have crimes against ‘transgendered people’ included in the Hate Crimes Statistics Act.”

Nov. 20, 1999

The first official Transgender Day of Remembrance takes place. The event, founded by Gwendolyn Ann Smith, begins as a vigil to remember Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed the previous year. The event spawns a yearly tradition of remembering all the transgender lives lost to violence.

1999

The National Transgender Advocacy Coalition is founded. The organization lobbies lawmakers on behalf of transgender Americans.

Monica Helms, an American transgender woman and veteran, creates the Transgender Pride Flag. She chooses pink and blue to symbolize the colors typically associated with girls and boys, while white symbolizes those who defy gender, are transitioning or are intersex.

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2002

Gwen Araujo, a 17-year-old transgender girl, is murdered by multiple men in a hate crime. During the trial, the defense blames Araujo for her death by saying she deceived the men by not revealing that she is trans. This is compared to the “gay panic” defense. The trial ends in a hung jury, and a second trial finds the two men guilty of second-degree murder.

In 2006, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs the Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act, which requires juries to be informed that they are forbidden from making decisions based on a victim’s gender or sexual orientation.

2009

Dylan Orr becomes the special assistant to Assistant Secretary Kathy Martinez in the Office of Disability Employment Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor. In this role, Orr becomes the first transgender person to serve in an appointed position in a presidential administration.

March 31, 2010

The first International Transgender Day of Visibility takes place. The day was founded by Rachel Crandall, the head of Transgender Michigan.

2010

Judge Victoria Kolakowski is elected in Alameda County, California, becoming the first openly transgender trial court judge of general jurisdiction.

2013

“Gender Identity Disorder” is removed from the DSM and replaced with “gender dysphoria.” As the APA notes, “This change further focused the diagnosis on the gender identity-related distress that some transgender people experience (and for which they may seek psychiatric, medical, and surgical treatments) rather than on transgender individuals or identities themselves.”

2014

Laverne Cox is on the cover of TIME Magazine and is featured in the article “The Transgender Tipping Point.”

As Cox tells TIME, “We are in a place now where more and more trans people want to come forward and say, ‘This is who I am.’ And more trans people are willing to tell their stories. More of us are living visibly and pursuing our dreams visibly, so people can say, ‘Oh yeah, I know someone who is trans.’ When people have points of reference that are humanizing, that demystifies difference.”

2016

The first U.S. transgender bathroom ban passes in North Carolina. The law states that people must use the bathroom that matches the sex on their birth certificate. Boycotts erupt across the state and are projected to cost North Carolina $3.76 billion in lost business.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announces that “otherwise qualified service members can no longer be involuntarily separated, discharged or denied reenlistment or continuation of service just for being transgender.”

However, the following year, President Donald Trump announces in a series of tweets that transgender individuals are no longer permitted to serve in the military: “After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow … transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.”

2020

The Brooklyn Liberation March becomes the largest trans rights demonstration in the U.S. with an estimated 15,000 participants. The demonstration is sparked from the national outrage following George Floyd’s murder and focuses on the disproportionate amount of police violence against Black transgender people.

2024

During the 2024 presidential election, Republicans go all in on anti-trans attack ads, spending an astounding $215 million on them. Trump’s campaign spends more than twice as much on anti-trans ads than on ads about immigration and more than five times as much than on ads focused on the economy.

Sarah McBride becomes the first openly transgender person elected to Congress when she wins Delaware’s House seat.

2025

As Trump takes office for a second term, he begins an unrelenting attack on the trans community. He signs an executive order that changes the definition of sex, implements discriminatory passport policies and restricts healthcare for transgender youth.

2026

As of today, there are 804 anti-trans bills under consideration in 43 states. Since 2015, anti-trans legislation has been steadily increasing.

On May 6, Trump’s administration falsely links trans people to terrorism in its new Counterterrorism Strategy, writing: “In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national CT activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist. … If you hurt Americans, or are planning to hurt Americans, ‘We Will Find You and We Will Kill You.’”

New Jersey passes a bill protecting transgender healthcare seekers as well as their medical providers. Additionally, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order to exclude transgender troops from service likely violates their constitutional rights.

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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This story was produced in partnership with Religion News Service, an independent, nonprofit source of global news on religion, spirituality, culture and ethics.

Jacob May remembers sitting across from his pastor at 22 years old in 2014 at a Chipotle in rural Virginia and defending his gay identity over a carnitas burrito.

They went over the usual talking points, with his pastor pointing to the clobber passages—the Bible verses used to condemn homosexuality—and May pointing out mistranslations and historical context in response.

“We should continue meeting weekly,” his pastor said. He wanted to continue teaching May the Southern Baptist way: that homosexuality is a sin that would be punished by eternity in hell.

After that day, May stopped replying to his texts.

As May continued to tell people he was gay, he wound up losing his childhood church community.

“I just felt really alone,” May, now 34, says. “I felt like I had to start over essentially in my life since so many of my connections and friends and just subculture essentially were in the church. … I remember times just sitting on my bed, sobbing.”

It wasn’t until three years later, when he walked into the LGBTQ-affirming St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, that he began to open up his heart to faith again and his loneliness started to lift.

A national study published in 2016 found that 86% of LGBTQ folks are raised in faith communities. Nearly two-thirds of LGBTQ people raised Christian no longer identify as Christian, and as religious affiliation has declined in the general population, nearly half of Americans who left religion cite the mistreatment or rejection of LGBTQ people as an important reason.

Tyler Lefevor, a psychologist who specializes in LGBTQ individuals’ relationships with faith, says queer people suppressing their identities can experience physical and mental consequences, including PTSD, anxiety, high cortisol levels and high blood pressure.

Lefevor adds that leaving religious spaces can be challenging because queer people are “cut off from community and a source of meaning and a way of understanding the world.” Because of this, many queer folks still want to find a space where their religion and LGBTQ identity can coexist; according to a multi-year study from researcher Andrew Marin, 76% of LGBTQ people who have left the Church are open to returning to faith.

But it takes work for LGBTQ-affirming churches to address the lingering effects of religious harm, a form of trauma more therapists are recognizing. One study estimates a third of U.S. adults have suffered from religious trauma at some point in their lives, with LGBTQ people disproportionately impacted.

Progressive churches have to learn to handle the spiritual wounds of exiles from conservative religions, including queer Christians, says Zach Lambert, pastor of Restore church in Austin, Texas, an LGBTQ-affirming church that describes itself as “post-evangelical.”

“They think a rainbow flag on the front or a nod at Pride is enough to help somebody overcome whatever they’ve been put through, and it’s just not,” Lambert says.

Instead, he says, it requires creating a church culture where queer inclusion is intrinsic, not performative, and where LGBTQ people are “in every area of leadership.”

For May, finding a welcoming church was key to his healing. When he felt unable to be fully himself with his family and feared getting fired from his conservative workplace for being gay, his new church was the only place he felt comfortable wearing his engagement ring and being openly gay.

“My affirming churches filled that hole, filled that need, filled that spiritual desire in a way that, of course, a church that rejects you couldn’t ever fill,” May says. “They [also] give me space to process [my past]. Just holding space and listening was so important.”

What Do Trauma-Informed Churches Look Like?

Visible inclusion

LGBTQ churchgoers say that seeing visibly queer people is one of the strongest signals of safety.

That was the case for 30-year-old Mariah Montgomery-Lindsay. Raised in East Tennessee in a charismatic, nondenominational church, she left in college because of how members spoke about and shamed queer people.

A decade later, on her first day at Restore, a formerly evangelical church that’s since joined the mainline United Methodist Church, she was so nervous she was shaking.

“It was so scary to walk into a church with my partner as an obviously lesbian couple,” she says. “But then we get out of the car, and there’s another gay couple that gets out of the car right next to us.”

Inside the middle school where Restore meets, Montgomery-Lindsay says it felt like there were gay couples everywhere—greeting them at the door and playing instruments from the platform. “No one took a second glance,” she says.

Intersectionality

Karlyn Meyer, a 42-year-old legal education professional, initially joined a local Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation after moving to Chicago. The openly progressive church lined up with what she was looking for on paper: They supported queer rights, had a rainbow sign out front and funded social justice causes. But as a Black, then-closeted queer woman, she still felt like an outsider.

“It was predominantly white, we were kind of the younger people there,” she tells Uncloseted Media and RNS. “When you hear of affirming churches, it’s a lot of straight people who are affirming.”

Looking for a better fit, she turned to Google and discovered Lighthouse, a church founded by Black gay men that, at one point, met in a space also used as a Burlesque club. Now a United Church of Christ congregation, the church has always been explicitly “Black-centered and LGBTQ+ affirming” according to its pastors.

“Lighthouse was the first time I’ve been in a majority-queer congregation,” Meyer says. “I just didn’t think that could be possible. … That was really stunning.”

Inclusive language

These queer-inclusive cultures are often complemented by thoughtful language. At Lighthouse, speakers deliberately introduce themselves with their pronouns, and each week, the church sings a welcome song that includes multiple pronoun options for God, like she, they and he.

At the River in Midtown Manhattan—which, like Restore, belongs to the Post-Evangelical Collective—leaders opt for songs that have LGBTQ-affirming language, and they are mindful that certain lyrics can trigger painful memories for people who grew up hearing they were sinful or broken.

Language that organically acknowledges LGBTQ people’s lived experiences is one practical way to say, “I get you, I see your world,” says Lefevor.

For Lucius Seo, a 31-year-old teacher from a Korean Presbyterian background, the language at the River is a crucial part of their affirming environment.

“In the churches that I grew up in, God has been contained very neatly into a box of a father figure. In the Bible, God is very mysterious and infinite,” Seo, who identifies as gay, told Uncloseted Media and RNS. “At River, our songs use all pronouns and all expressions.”

Some examples include songs by LGBTQ artists and adapted lyrics that specifically acknowledge the queer community, like Spencer LaJoye’s lyrics: “Amen for the Queers and their closeted peers, Amen for the bullied who hold in their tears” and updated lyrics for the song “For Everyone Born, a Place at the Table”: “For everyone born, a place at the table ... for Queer and for straight a place at the table.”

Autonomy

At the River, it’s common for people to come from high-control religious contexts where belonging is contingent on conformity.

For Seo, even after leaving his family’s church, he spent nearly a decade in a non-affirming nondenominational congregation in Long Island. While he served as a Sunday school teacher, he says he felt pressure to align his teachings with anti-queer norms. He eventually left after a parent asked him to teach students that being gay was wrong.

After coming to the River, he had moments of anger, tears and “frightening rage.”

He remembers having a panic attack on the subway commuting to the River, because arriving late at the churches he grew up in resulted in shame and beratement.

Other members of the River were able to comfort him and affirm that what he was feeling was a normal part of the grieving process.

“I had a lot of church trauma from the past,” says Seo. “It took me a couple of months to be like, ‘I can breathe here, I can be myself, I can be authentic, and our voices matter here,’ and that’s why I decided to stay.”

During services at the River, Rev. Alison Noll says she adopts a trauma-informed approach by giving cues for what will happen (celebrating communion, for instance, or singing hymns) so people can opt in or out if they feel it’s too much for them.

Leaders give congregants agency by inviting them to adopt whatever worship posture suits them, like standing, sitting or kneeling, and unlike high-control religious spaces, participation in services and at church events is invitation-based rather than compulsory.

“We’re not going to pressure you to do anything here, and so that means you have to claim your own agency and decide for yourself how involved you want to be,” says Noll.

Every few months, they also host conversation church, where instead of sitting in rows and listening to a sermon, congregants sit in small groups while leaders guide discussion.

“The church is the entire community,” explains Noll, “and we all co-create the church experience together.”

Theology

In the hopes of not offending others, some LGBTQ-affirming churches avoid concrete teachings on Jesus and the Bible, focusing instead on positive spiritual messages, like “God is love,” that everyone can agree on.

While that can be comforting to some who are healing from religious trauma, the approach isn’t satisfying for everyone. Lefevor finds that affirming religious traditions can often feel too theologically “loosey goosey,” especially for those coming out of traditions where the Bible was central.

At Lighthouse, the pastors aim to offer in-depth teaching and analysis of the Bible while also inviting curiosity. According to Meyer, when they run into passages that have been weaponized against queer people and folks of color, they don’t “shy away.”

“If there’s something there that’s horrible, let’s find out the context for it,” she says. “Let’s figure out what it was and why.”

If folks do get triggered, they have experts from within the church community, including therapists, doctors and advocates, to provide support.

“I firmly believe that every person is an expert of their own experience,” says Rev. Luther Young, Jr., one of the pastors at Lighthouse. “I am not an expert on your life, ergo, I cannot give you all the answers about your life, but what I can give you are tools to aid you as you question, to aid you as you wrestle.”

For May, being able to ask questions and examine things deeply changed everything for him.

“Once I found an affirming church, it wasn’t about arguing over whether being gay and Christian was possible,” May says. Instead, he was able to focus on faith, service and “the beloved community” he believes God calls Christians to build.

Today, May attends St. Paul & St. Andrew Church in Manhattan, where he worships alongside his fiancé, and in April he graduated from seminary with an M.A. in Religious Studies.

“That church was the first space where I didn’t feel like I had to hide,” May says. “The best thing that affirming churches did for me was give me space to process. They didn’t try to convert me or get me to believe what they believed. They accepted me as I was.”

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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Editor’s note: This article includes mention of suicidal ideation. If you are having thoughts of suicide or are concerned that someone you know may be, resources are available here.

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Earlier this month, my older sister Madison picked me up from the airport. I’d flown in to Pittsburgh from Seattle for my cousin Meredith’s wedding. While the drive to her home was only five minutes, it’s one I won’t forget.

“I have something to tell you and you need to let me finish before you freak,” Madison said.

“Mimi and Pappy know. Well, they don’t ‘know,’ but they know. So you should tell them,” she said.

“Fuck. They figured out my secret,” I thought.

Mimi and Pappy are my 79-year-old grandparents and the anchors of my family. From day one, they helped raise me in the 7,000-person town of Connellsville, Pa.—formerly a coal town, currently in the heart of a strong MAGA county.

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Mimi was always doting, sing-talking to make me laugh and ensuring I kept the house “redd up,” a regional expression for tidy. I remember watching Barney and Mister Rogers with her as a kid and, as a teen, helping set up her Facebook page so she could play fake online slots.

Pappy drove me to and from school, to hockey practice and to doctors’ appointments. I have fond memories of calling Pappy every time the Pittsburgh Penguins scored a goal.

I love them so much. But as early as eight years old, after realizing I was gay, I knew I had a secret that could transform our relationship. As Mimi and Pappy got older, they’d become more religious. And through the years, I had memories of Pappy making comments about other minority groups that made me nervous about whether he would accept me.

Before I could even grapple with telling them, I had more pressing demons to address.

At school, I was bullied for being gay from 7th to 12th grade. Two guys would walk behind me and call me a “queer” and a “faggot” on my way to soccer practice. At study hall, they’d throw erasers at my head. In the parking lot, they’d throw chewing gum in my hair. I intentionally grew a bowl cut to hide the gum.

Nobody ever stood up for me and I never stood up for myself.

Being on the receiving end of this led to a deep depression that was compounded by a myriad of concussions from ice hockey. I don’t remember much about these years except for a perpetual sadness and guilt over my sexual orientation. What I do remember are the suicidal thoughts that were exacerbated by my classmates as they referred to me as the kid with “resting suicide face.”

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It was brutal. And I was so afraid of telling my loved ones. What if they didn’t accept me because we’re Catholic? What if I became one of those gay kids with no family after they come out? What if they made me quit sports? What if they only saw me as a vicious stereotype of all the worst things people say about gay people?

But there was a silver lining: As I slowly came out to people in high school, I found my voice.

Will. Myles. Cole. Danny. They may never know it, but their affirming responses transformed my mental health and gave me the courage to tell my family.

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I told my aunts first, then my cousins, then my big sister. Their reactions were positive.

Then, when I was 17, it was time to tell my dad: a barrel-chested, muscular guy who worked three jobs, including at the prison, to keep our family afloat.

We had just finished a set of pull-ups while working out in the garage. The knots in my stomach were overwhelming.

“Dad, I’m bisexual,” I spat out, thinking that if I didn’t reveal my gay identity, it could soften any negative reactions.

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I waited with bated breath. I’ll never forget his response. “I was wondering when you were going to tell me. Are you sure you aren’t just gay? Do you want me to tell your mother?” And then he gave me a hug. I didn’t cry, he didn’t tell my mom and we had chicken and potatoes for dinner that night. I’d come out to her later, in my own time.

As I entered my 20s, Mimi and Pappy were the only ones who didn’t know. I was so afraid of losing them, but keeping this secret caused great strain on our relationship. I felt like I couldn’t share my life with them. I couldn’t tell them about Drew, my partner of six years. Others would hear me lie to them and they’d uncomfortably play along. I stopped calling them as frequently because… what was there to say? I couldn’t talk about my writing for Uncloseted or the adventures Drew and I got up to that week. Every story I told was twisted to make me sound straight.

But after Madison picked me up from the airport and told me they knew, I realized I needed to reveal my secret to them myself. And what better place to do that than at a wedding in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania with a bunch of blue-collar country folks?

So as the reception wrapped up and I finished the last of the champagne right from the bottle, I sat down beside Mimi. “I know you know I’m gay, I know you’ve known for a while. You should tell Pappy,” I said, pointing at my grandfather across the room.

Mimi started tearing up. “So you talked to your sister?” she said. She told me that they’d known for a long time but never knew how to bring it up. I told her I’d been dating Drew, the “roommate” they’d met several times on vacation, for six years.

“We’ll always love you. We’re proud of you,” she said.

As Mimi said what I needed to hear, my soul felt lighter. I had no burdens, no secrets, no weight on my chest. I hugged her and then I scampered outside to collect myself. I was so elated that I wanted to take a victory lap and celebrate my final coming out. But today wasn’t about me; it wasn’t my wedding. So I settled with hitting my vape—I’d earned it!

The next morning, I woke up with no hangover and no regrets.

I’m done coming out. I am officially Uncloseted. And I did it at the beginning of Pride Month.

It feels damn great.

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“UNCLOSETED, with Spencer Macnaughton” is a new podcast by Uncloseted Media, an investigative LGBTQ-focused nonprofit news publication. Follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. YouTube // Spotify // Apple

Editor’s Note: If you are questioning your gender identity and don’t feel safe reaching out to anyone you know, The Trevor Project has a handbook on how to navigate this as well as 24/7 crisis support via calls and messaging with counselors.

In April, dominatrix and sex worker Shy Sotomayor revealed that she had had a nine-year professional relationship with Bryon Noem, the husband of former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Following reports in March that Bryon Noem had allegedly engaged in feminization and “bimbofication” fetishes with other sex workers, Sotomayor is sharing more details about his interest in trans identities.

These interests represent a stark contrast to his wife’s anti-trans record. As Governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem signed bills into law that allow businesses to use religious refusal to deny service to LGBTQ people; ban gender-affirming care for trans youth; and ban trans women and girls from competing on women’s and girls’ sports teams. Through all of this, Bryon Noem never denounced his wife’s policies.

In addition, experts have raised concerns about Bryon Noem’s relationship with sex workers from a national security standpoint. “If a media organization can find this out, you can assume with a high degree of confidence that a hostile intelligence service knows this as well,” Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer, told the Daily Mail. “Damaging information like this can be a tantalizing lead for a hostile intelligence service.”

In this episode of “UNCLOSETED, with Spencer Macnaughton,” Sotomayor speaks about her nine-year online relationship with Bryon Noem and describes the terrifying moment where she was almost caught by Kristi, who at the time was one of the country’s most powerful intelligence officers.

Watch the video or read the full transcript below.

Spencer Macnaughton: Hi everyone! Welcome back to UNCLOSETED with me, Spencer Macnaughton. Today, I’m here with Shy Sotomayor, a dominatrix and sex worker best known as Raelynn Riley. She gained public attention earlier this year when her nine-year online relationship with Bryon Noem became public. Bryon is the husband of former Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, who has railed against the trans community. But according to Sotomayor, Bryon asked her to call him Crystal and expressed a desire to transition in their sessions. Shy, thanks so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.

Shy Sotomayor: Thank you for having me.

SM: Of course, yeah. And I know you’ve shared some of these details before, but for our audience, do you wanna just tell us how you came across Bryon? How did you meet him, and how did the relationship develop?

SS: So, the relationship developed nine years ago. I was freshly 21, almost 22. I got my third breast augment and I was pretty much at the—I wouldn’t say the height of my career, but I was climbing up that mountain, you know? And I was getting a lot of submissives and I got this clientele and he told me he’s a Chicago CEO and I was like, “OK, that’s cool.” And he was just really obsessed with like the big fake implants and kind of the bimbo look and that’s really where it started, and I would say around COVID, he dropped off. It picked up last October. And he came back and he was like, “Hey, I don’t know if you remember me.” I’m like, “I actually do. You spent quite a bit of money on me.” I remember those kind of paychecks. And he was, like, “Oh, I wanna buy your number.” And I’m like, “OK, cool.” So he bought my number and we had our first phone call, and it was almost recognizable when I heard his voice. My jaw just hit the floor when it connected.

SM: You really think you knew this could be a public figure, this could be Bryon Noem when you heard that voice? Because he’s not that famous.

SS: So when I heard the voice, I was just like this sounds really familiar. And I started kind of doing the hot girl thing of searching the internet, what I can find from his information. I’m like, you know what, let me go to PayPal because I know I had to put in my real information to get paid and all that kind of stuff. So I was like, maybe he has something in there. And it was one invoice where he did not change his alias from Jason Jackson, and it said Bryon Noem. So I went to my husband, I was like, “Hey, does Noem sound familiar to you?” And he’s like, “Kristi Noem?” I’m like, “Does she have a husband?” And he’s like “Yeah, they’re married.” So we looked up a interview with him, which was with Moms of America.

SS: And once I heard his bit talking about his wife, I was like that’s him. That is 100% him.

SM: Got it. So he’s literally sending you PayPal payments through the name Bryon Noem, through his actual name, which sounds so sloppy in terms of trying to protect himself. How much money do you think he gave you through the years?

SS: So from the earlier years, he would do Amazon gift cards just because I wasn’t doing like third party apps. So I wasn’t taking full payments like that, but he’s bought luxury bags, heels, phones. So he had his own photos with that phone. He would go to my adult streaming services, and I would purposely up my prices for him because he liked the fact that I cost more. But I would say a total between the nine years, it was probably close to 35, maybe 45,000.

SM: Up to $45,000 he paid you for sex work and for phone calls and all that kind of stuff. And just to be clear, you guys have never met in person and hooked up in real life, is that correct?

SS: That’s right.

SM: A lot of folks listening could think this is a salacious story. Why would Uncloseted Media interview you about this? And our justification for why this is newsworthy is when you look at his wife, Kristi Noem’s track record, as you probably know, she has been a long time enemy to the trans community. She has banned trans athletes and gender affirming healthcare for minors and has also allowed businesses to deny services to trans people. And through all that, while Bryon himself was never explicitly transphobic, he never condemned it. So is that part of why you decided to speak out? Because I know you’re very confidential with your other clients.

SS: So in the very beginning, I had my concerns ethically because of him using his business number to pay me and talk to me. But outside of that, I really tried to come forward with it because he stands with Kristi. And I knew that he was in my DMs saying, “Oh, I wanna be trans, bimbo, I want to get hair implants, I wanna get breast implants, I wanna do all of this kind of transitioning.”

SS: It got a little awkward for me because I am also pansexual. Some of my closest friends are trans. I have siblings who are gender fluid, you know, and I’m just like, this directly affects me and my friends and my family and people I hold very close to me. And I didn’t feel right being able to promote and being like, “Oh yeah, you can do that.” And then he goes on interviews and be like, “Oh, my wife is God’s gift to me and she’s right in everything that she does.” And personally, I don’t like keeping those kind of people in my circle because they’re dangerous.

SM: From the nine years you spoke to him, how would you describe his overall interests, his overall fantasies? What would be like the thesis statement of what Bryon Noem is into?

SS: I think I would classify it as borderline obsessive because he got very obsessive with a certain type of look and I think kind of the Mar-a-Lago transformation that Kristi went through kind of helped push that forward for himself.

SM: What do you mean by the Mar-a-Lago transformation? How would you describe it? What do you mean by that?

SS: The Botox, the going super blonde, the ICE Barbie look, and generally anybody that I see who’s really trying to get close to either the MAGA side or the red side, they really go through this big beauty transformation to appeal to the men on that side. And I really felt like with Kristi doing that on her part, because she did quite the transformation. And I think it really pushed him to become obsessive over pretty girls and maybe even fantasizing about being a pretty girl.

SM: And we’ve reviewed texts that you say are from Bryon himself. And he repeatedly asked to go by Crystal. He said, quote, “I will be your trans girl.” You asked him, “Do you wanna be a woman?” He says, “I think I do.” And it was reported in the Daily Mail that he had a desire to transition his gender through surgery and hormone therapy. Is that accurate? Is that all accurate? These are things he told you?

SS: Yeah, it’s very accurate. He not only went into depth on text, but when we would talk for hours on end, he would eventually kind of slip into that and talk about all these procedures that he wanted, and it really shocked me when he started talking about the hormones. Because generally in fantasy, it’s just kind of like the blanket, oh I want to look like a woman, I want to be in women’s clothing. It was when I was like, is this fantasy still? Like I started questioning it and even when I was coming out I had a really long talk with my close trans friend because I was like, “Am I outing him if I talk to the Daily Mail and talking about this?” Because you know as somebody who is an ally and in the LGBTQ, I’m not somebody who’s, you know, trying to out somebody. But they’re like, even if he does come out in the news and like, “Hey, I am trans, this is what it is,” he has a lot of backpedaling and a lot of apologies to start dishing out.

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SM: Tell me more about the details of what he talked to you about the hormones, about the transition surgeries that kind of put a flag in your mind being like, OK, there might be something more here. This person may be trans and closeted.

SS: He didn’t go into depth on what type of hormones, but he talked about wanting to do fem face surgeries. He wanted to get hair implants and a lot of permanent surgeries, like breast implants. And he would talk about how he wanted makeup lessons and how to do his hair and styling for clothes and stuff. And that’s when it was like... OK, this feels a little bit more like you want to be a woman in broad daylight and not just behind a closed door. That’s when it was starting to feel a little more outside of the fantasy realm for me.

SM: Do you believe he’s trans?

SS: You know, I don’t believe I can make that definition for anybody. You know? I don’t think that’s fair of an assumption for me. But I can’t say that if he comes out in, like, whatever time and says, “Hey, you know, I am trans,” I can’t say that I’d be too shocked, you know? But I don’t think I have the right to say, “oh, yeah, Bryon Noem is trans,” but that’s on him to decide and whether or not he wants to fulfill more of that fantasy [rather] than it just being a real life thing for him.

SM: Mhm. And I think there’s the element of gender identity. That’s one thing, but they’ve also been ardent supporters of Project 2025. I believe Kristi was a contributor to that report which rails against sex work. They implied that they want to illegalize porn in certain capacities, right?

SS: Yep.

SM: How do you make [sense] of that when Bryon’s coming to you and engaging with dominatrixes, sex workers, and it just feels so hypocritical. I’m curious what you make of all of that.

SS: That’s another reason why I kind of put boundaries with Bryon, because I knew what his wife was trying to do for not just the LGBTQ, but for my livelihood. She was trying to damage that. She was trying to make what I do illegal, even though it’s one of the oldest professions out there. And it just became very disheartening knowing that he was spending not just this much money on me, but several other girls. And when people are like, “Oh, he hasn’t spent that much money,” I’m like, “Me alone, he’s over 30K.” So if there’s other women like me? He spent a lot of money. And that’s where I worry where that money came from too.

SM: Mhm, where do you think it came from?

SS: I can’t say for sure because I don’t have any hardcore proof, but I know when you’re paying somebody through a business phone and business accounts, it’s kind of hard for me to believe, oh, I’m transferring this from my personal account in the moment and then putting it into my business and then that’s what I’m paying her with. You know what I mean? So I began to try to come out in the beginning, especially around when the Good family happened and Alex Pretti. I really started hitting the news hard, trying to get people to talk to me, and I just had no luck until one of the other women broke the story and I was like, “You know what? I might as well tell the Daily Mail my side because I’ve been here the longest.”

SM: That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for you, when Alex Pretti and Renee Good were murdered by ICE agents. And of course, Kristi Noem was leading ICE at that time. That was what took it to the next level for you and said, I need to say something.

SS: Yeah, that’s really what it did for me because I just didn’t feel like on good conscience that I could continue talking to him especially with the things that he wanted, with the career path that I had, I felt like she was ramping up what she was trying to do very quickly, and having a Hispanic last name even though I’m very white presenting I still had a fear, you know? And I didn’t know how much she knew because we were almost caught on the phone with Kristi.

SM: Paint the picture of almost getting caught by Kristi. Where were you and how did she almost bust you?

SS: So I was upstairs just on the phone with Bryon and it was a normal conversation and all I hear is, “Who are you talking to?” And I was just like, “That’s a woman.”

SM: Did he give you any reason to believe that Kristi knew? And if not, do you think she knew?

SS: I asked him, “Do you think she knows about us? And that’s why, you know, she has her little boyfriend?” And he’s like, “No, she doesn’t know.” And I’m like, “OK, so one, she’s just cheating on you to cheat. And you’ve been cheating on her for the last nine years.” So.

SM: And I’m putting myself in your shoes right now, and you have the head of the Department of Homeland Security coming into the room being like, “Who’s on that call,” right? If I were in your shoes, I’d be terrified. Can you describe more of the fear you had of Kristi herself if she were to find out that you were connecting with her husband in this way?

SS: Like I said, with having a Hispanic last name, being a sex worker, and even around the time he caught me—or that she caught him talking to somebody—was kind of in the mix, I believe, in January. So it was in between the Good family and Alex Pretti happening.

SM: When tensions were at an all-time high.

SS: Tensions were at an all-time high. I honestly kind of stayed really low-key in my neighborhood because we had ICE in our neighborhood.

SM: In Colorado, that is.

SS: Yeah, and in Colorado and 30 minutes north of me is a detention center. And that is something that I was just like, if she has any inkling of who I am, what I look like, let alone my name or number, she can find me. She’s the head of ICE. And that’s another reason why I was like, I don’t know if I want to come forward because that’s really putting me in the limelight. And I was just like, you know what? I feel like this needs to come forward for the hypocrisy.

SM: When you look at Project 2025 and you look at the deep desire to ban porn, to ban kink, to ban prostitution, to ban sex work, obviously we think of the big boobs. He had a really big fetish for big boobs, but give us specifics. What were the most shocking things you heard from him?

SS: I think him really just kind of wanting to imitate my size. I thought that was just really wild, especially for knowing who he was and how he looked. I’m like, that’s gonna look crazy. And something that I told people is that I was really jealous when I saw those photos of his like wonky nipples and the implants and the balloons and stuff, because I never got those photos. I was—

SM: You were jealous.

SS: Yeah, I was his longest-standing dom and I never got those photos. I never got to see his face. I had to discover who he was by myself and being a little internet sleuth essentially. And I was just shocked, and I was like, “Damn, I wish I could have seen those photos so I could correct those nipples.” It drove me nuts.

SM: That’s so interesting because that’s what I was going to ask you too, you know, because obviously I’ve reviewed some of the text messages that you guys have had, and I can’t tell what’s acting and what isn’t. Of course you’re getting paid for this, right? But tell me, is this just a job where you’re clocking in and clocking out, or were there real feelings there? Like how would you describe the actual connection you had with Bryon from your point of view? And what do you think he felt towards you? Did he have feelings or did he see you as like, you know, almost like an inspirational sister that could help him grapple with his gender identity?

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SS: So, I definitely, on my end, it’s kind of a clock in, clock out. It’s easier for, I will say, on the guy’s part to develop feelings. And that’s something that Bryon definitely did multiple times in those text messages. He told me he loved me. During New Year’s, he actually said, “Can I ask you out?” I’m like, oh, you want a girlfriend, you know, during the New Year. He’s like, “Yeah.” I always asked him, you know, what are your expectations of meeting me? Because I wanted to know, I’m like, do you want to have sex with me? Because that’s not happening. Cause one, we are in a dom/sub relationship and outside of that, I don’t do prostitution. But it’s easy for guys to be getting those feelings and really falling for sex workers. It’s pretty easy for them.

SM: So what did he want to do? He’s painting this picture of, let me take you to a hotel room. Let me have you spend the night in New York City. What did he say he wanted to do when you asked him that?

SS: It was very much, “I wanna take you shopping, I wanna take you to all these nice restaurants.” He would also kind of slip into like, “Oh, I wanna walk Central Park in the snow, and I wanna go ice skating.” And I’m like, OK, that seems a little relationship-y Hallmark situation. And I was just like, OK, maybe he’s just being kind of sweet, endearing, and then he would push it a little bit further and being like, “Oh I want to be seen together, I want us to kiss and touch,” and all this and that, and towards the end he was just like, “Yeah, you know, I do want to have sex with you,” and I’m just like, I’m good on that.

SM: And for the viewers who don’t understand what this means, you say you’re a dom/sub relationship, where you’re the dom and Bryon is the sub. What does that mean?

SS: So that kind of just means that I call the shots, you know, he would address me as either god or goddess because that’s how he saw me as a very divine person, and if I said something and I wanted him to do it, he’d be like, “Yes, goddess.” He’d do it. If I say, “Hey, you need to send me a PayPal invoice because we’ve been on the phone for three hours.” He’s like, “Yes, goddess, I do.” He’s like, “Actually, let me send you two.” And he would try to make up for, you know, the lack of me saying, hey, you need to do this. Because a lot of times in a dom/sub relationship, it’s kind of anticipating wants and needs from the other person.

SM: What’s the weirdest thing he ever did where he said, “Yes, goddess” to you?

SS: He was trying to come up with a religion for me. Like a Raelynn-Riley religion. He talked about having a shrine. He wanted a little statue-esque to worship. He wanted to do offerings type of thing. And that’s really interesting for somebody who has a very strong Christian background because you don’t talk about leaving offerings for Jesus Christ. You know, you pay the church and stuff like that, but generally it is prayers and stuff. You know, along those lines.

SM: Fascinating, and he went by the name Crystal Balls 666. Is that correct?

SS: So that was one of his emails that he used that I would attach to, like, PayPal note invoices and stuff like that. But he chose the name Crystal. And I think that was another thing that kind of raised a little red flag in my mind is that generally subs don’t give themselves a feminized name like that or have she/her pronouns when we text. They still very much are like a man dressing up in a dress and stockings, but he is still he. Adam is still Adam. Bryon wanted to be Crystal.

SM: And would you guys like, I know you did a lot of the conversations on audio and that’s all we’ve seen. We’ve seen texts and audio recordings. Would you guys go on cam? Would he masturbate for you? Would you masturbate for him? Would you do sexual things virtually?

SS: So when we were doing live sessions, it wasn’t ever—he didn’t ever want me to get nude, which I thought was kind of different in my line of work. Most men wanna see me naked. He wanted to see me in really tight, shiny tops. So like faux leather or faux latex, stuff that really kind of shined. And he just loved seeing the attributes of how they laid and how tight they were and stuff like that. We never really did a lot of, like, sexual acts of me playing with myself or anything like that. I would just do a lot of touching of my breasts, but in October, he would always describe himself in the height of, I would say our sex talk, dirty talking, he would always describe himself as “getting wet.” He never said, “Oh, I’m getting hard.” And I think that also kind of played into the transition fantasy. He imagined that he got wet like a woman instead of saying, “Oh, I’m stiff, I’m hard, I’m this, I’m that.” He always used more fem descriptions.

SM: Yeah, and he never sent you pictures of him hard or wet, I guess, or anything like that?

SS: No, I got butt pictures of him in like leggings or like hot pants.

SM: Oh, he’d send you butt pictures, interesting. And he’d be in women’s clothes, and it would be like an ass picture from him kind of thing.

SS: Mhm.

SM: Huh, I wonder what propelled him to send you those. What do you think was his, you know—I could see a lot of people working with dominatrixes or sex workers and being like, “Hey, I’m paying you, you send me the pics.” But what do you think inspired him to send you those pics himself?

SS: I think my intrigue, I got really curious because he would talk about how he loves to wear women’s thongs into his work office or like any time we talked. I’d ask what colors do you have, and I would always tease him that he needs better colors, and he’s like, “Oh I’m wearing leggings tonight,” and I’m like, “Oh? You’re actively wearing women’s leggings?” He’s like, “Yeah, do you want to see?” And he would send me a photo. And I think it was just him trying to show up, like, “Oh, look what I’m doing,” you know, kind of like peacocking.

SM: OK, I listened to the interview that you did with the Lincoln Project and there was one quote that you gave them that really stuck out to me. You said, “Bryon showed me that he wanted to be this outrageous crazy bimbo. But I think underneath it all he wanted to be heard.”

SS: Yeah.

SM: What did you mean by that?

SS: If you listen to a lot of our conversations in the audios, it feels like therapy almost. I feel like I’m kind of just listening to him and being like, “OK, he wants to connect with somebody on a more personal level.”

SM: We do a lot of reporting on religion, right? And conservative Christian communities and obviously, you know, the repression of LGBTQ identities and the repression of sex at large is a huge thing in those communities. He comes from a very conservative Christian background. How do you think that plays into his, you know, relationship with you and his relationship with gender?

SS: So I will say that somewhere where I can kind of relate to Bryon is that I was also raised pretty religious. It’s coming up and not having the sex talk when I was younger. Not knowing what really happens when you get pregnant. Porn was not in the realm of any type of knowledge that I had. Outside of that, I will say, I think that kind of drives that sex drive forward because it is unknown. It’s tempting, it’s salacious. You want to explore it because you don’t have much knowledge in it, and I also feel like that’s where you can deep dive and kind of stay in deep waters because you don’t know how to moderate yourself with it.

SM: Did he ever speak about his religion with you?

SS: No, he never really touched religion. We touched on politics once. He said, “You seem like you really don’t like my wife.” And I was just like, “You want a list or do you want a fantasy, ‘I don’t like your wife,’” you know, because anybody who comes into my life as a submissive, it’s always, “Oh, my wife is the worst, she doesn’t do this, she doesn’t do that.” I’m like “Oh, yeah, fuck your wife. I’m the better one.” And it’s all fantasy. But for him, I think it teetered on that real life to not real life. And then he would sometimes have guilt about it.

SM: Why do you say he would sometimes have guilt about it? What made you think that?

SS: So I’m referencing a particular conversation I’m remembering. He’s like, “Yeah, give me the list on why you don’t actually like my wife.” And so I gave him everything I had to say about Kristi and such, and he went quiet. And I was just like, OK, maybe we’re just not gonna talk about it. And he’s like, “Well, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet.” I was like, oh, OK. But she wrote a book! And I’m like, she’s talking about shooting a dog and innocent animals and stuff like that. And he’s like, “Ugh. It’s stupid that people are still talking about it.” And I was just like, oh, OK.

SM: You’re referencing that she shot her dog Cricket to death, which made headline news. Did you ever speak about how she has railed against the trans community? Did that ever come up?

SS: So I never brought that up. I was getting close to that, but he was also dipping in and out because of the Good and Pretti shooting.

SM: You shared with us audio recordings that you took of your phone calls with Bryon Noem. There’s a phone number listed here, and we did check, and it is actually the phone number associated with his insurance company. So we do have reason to believe that it was indeed him in addition to your account. And I wanna play one of those clips and then ask you a question about it.

Shy: What’s the color of the thong you have on?

Bryon: It’s nude.

Shy: Nude? We got to get you more exciting panties. I bet you would wear my thongs wouldn’t you?

Bryon: I would.

Shy: Maybe one day I’ll send you some. You already like wearing thongs don’t you?

Bryon: I do.

Shy: Might as well just dress you up.

Bryon: Mhm.

SM: I mean, it’s frankly shocking to hear the husband of the former Department of Homeland Security [secretary] saying that. When you think about Bryon in that moment, what are you thinking about when you hear that again?

SS: Now knowing everything that has come out and it really solidifying that it was who I was talking to. When I started doing deep dives into that phone number and finding out who he was and it tying to his business, I was just like, this is crazy. It’s insane. And I would have never expected somebody like him to be into what he’s into.

SM: A former CIA officer, to pivot, told the Daily Mail that, quote, “If a media organization can find this out,” essentially what Bryon was doing, “you can assume with a high degree of confidence that a hostile intelligence service knows this as well.” What do you think about all of this from a national security perspective? Bryon using his business phone, communicating with you like this, paying you through PayPal with his actual name. What are your thoughts on the implications of all of this from a national security perspective?

SS: I think it shows that even though he’s not in the direct position of power, he is also a loose cannon. Anytime I talk to him and [I] was like, “Hey, people could find us out” because he was talking about meeting in person, he’s like, “I don’t care.” And even while things were being reported on with the Daily Mail, I lined it up. He was still actively trying to talk to me and pay me and have phone calls. And then a few days later, the Daily Mail comes out with their first report on him, and he was still trying to talk to me. I’m like, you either don’t know when to quit and this is a real issue for you, which I wholeheartedly believe that he has a sex addiction. And he just did not care [about] the consequences.

SM: And when you think about not caring of the consequences in that domain, there’s perhaps valid concerns that, you know, he might know a lot that Kristi Noem knows from a DHS perspective. And there could be implications for that. There could be compromising national security implications to that.

SS: Yeah, absolutely. I felt like, especially with how close he was wanting to get with me and meeting in person, I never tried to really get a lot of secret information out of him. Mainly because I wanted plausible deniability. You know what I mean? I don’t know nothing. We just talked, it was all sex work, that kind of thing. That’s what I wanted it to be, and I felt like if we did meet up and stuff like that, and I started prying and asking little questions here and there, I think he would have told me. I think he wholeheartedly would have trusted me with that information.

SM: Megyn Kelly reported that Bryon Noem entered a program called Pure Desire Ministries and that is supposedly designed to, quote, “Stop unwanted behaviors and restore broken relationships.” Do you have any information on that? Do you know where he is right now? Is he at the rehab right now?

SS: So, I personally don’t know, but I know for a fact since November he’s been using rehab as an excuse to not wanting to talk to me, and he never really fell through with it. I think now he probably is in a stay-in rehab, because we have not seen him in the public eye, at all, anywhere. So I think wholeheartedly he’s probably there. But I’m not shocked that he’s in a religious rehab. That seems pretty on par for something that Kristi would be like, “This is something you have to do.”

SM: You posted to X on June [16th] that you, quote, “Can’t keep Bryon out of [your] DMs.” How recently has he DM’d you and what is he saying to you?

SS: May 17th, he texted me on iMessage. He’s like, “I’ve been a really bad boy.” I’m like, “Oh, I know. I know you’ve been a bad boy,” and then he started talking to me directly on WhatsApp, and I had a long talk with my husband. And I was just like, “You know what? I feel like this is truly a sick man. I feel he has a sex addiction and that’s not something I would want to take advantage of.” So I was just like, you know what, I’m going to send Bryon a message. I sent him a very long message saying, “Bryon, I thought really hard on this. You obviously are very sick. You need help. If it’s not clear by now or after being America’s joke, I truly don’t know what is. But I’ve came forward with my story about you. This is just kind of me saying goodbye. If you find another girl who does want to talk to you during this, I’m like shame on both of you. You need to get better.”

SM: Did he respond to you?

SS: No, he read it, did not respond, and then I followed it up with a PayPal invoice of essentially what he owes me. Has not paid me.

SM: How much money does Bryon Noem owe you right now for your work with him as a dominatrix?

SS: Forty-five hundred.

SM: $4,500.

SS: Yep.

SM: Wow.

SS: Yeah, I think so too. I’m not a person to be like, oh, well, I’m gonna take him to small claims court because one, that’s a lot of money on my end to do. I was shocked that he was still trying to talk to sex workers. And I still wholeheartedly believe he’s talking to sex workers because I see him on Telegram, on and off. Deactivating his account, reactivating his account.

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SM: I want to take this all back because there’s a human, a very human element to this. Whether or not he is struggling with his own gender identity, his silence being the husband of Kristi Noem has really dangerous implications for trans and nonbinary Americans who are under unrelenting attack right now. I mean, the Trump administration recently classified them as a possible terrorist threat, right? If you could say something to Bryon right now, knowing everything you know about his interest in exploring his gender identity, what would you want to say to him?

SS: I think I would just call him a hypocrite. It’s sad that he feels like he can have all of these sexual fantasies and get off on this sexual fantasy of having a trans body and becoming a woman and all of this and that. And that’s not a fantasy for other people. It can be a fantasy in sex work; it’s not for a lot of people who are struggling to get HRT and getting testosterone and people who are now getting arrested by ICE because they are simply trans and they don’t match their birth certificates anymore. And it’s ridiculous.

SM: What do you think is the best thing he could do?

SS: I think the best way to do that is to cut all ties from Kristi. Is to backpedal on things that he stood proudly with and just make a lot of apologies, maybe work with the community, working with the trans community, helping people get resources that they need and really trying to, you know, better what he used to stand on. Will he do that? I’m not too sure, but that would be, I think, at least the right direction to start.

SM: Well, and he certainly has political connections and a level of power where he could genuinely be influential if he did decide to make a change.

SS: Yeah, absolutely, if he wanted to. But he’s done a lot of wrong and he’s hurt a lot of people.

SM: One other thing that you mentioned on the Lincoln Project podcast, which I found very interesting, you talked a lot about how you don’t think Bryon Noem is an isolated incident of MAGA and deep Republican men who are into kind of fetish sex or into playing with gender identity. Things that you wouldn’t associate with them if you just read their policies and their positions on paper. Can you tell me more about that?

SS: Obviously being into that kind of stuff isn’t just for, you know, MAGA or the Republican side. But I find it the more red you are and more actively homophobic, transphobic, you generally have that sexual arousal towards those people.

SM: So essentially it sounds like internalized homophobia, internalized transphobia are real things as they relate to the work you do and the clients that you seem to have.

SS: Yeah, absolutely, and they still love trans porn. They love gay porn. They can say, “Oh, I hate gays and they shouldn’t have rights and they shouldn’t exist,” but you’re still watching them.

SM: Well, Shy Sotomayor, I could talk to you for a very long time, but this has been a fascinating and very important conversation. Thank you so much for speaking with me and Uncloseted Media today.

SS: Thank you so much for having me, this was a lot of fun.

SM: And for this episode and all our episodes, subscribe to Uncloseted Media on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. And it should be noted that we reached out to both Bryon Noem and Kristi Noem for comment. They did not get back to us in time for publication.

Additional reporting by Hope Pisoni.

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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_{This story was produced in partnership with hankycode, an LGBTQ+ history publication.}

^{Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part series on the history of LGBTQ rights in the U.S. On June 30, we will publish another timeline focused on the underreported history of transgender and gender-nonconforming Americans.}

Since the U.S. was founded in 1776, visibility of the lesbian, bisexual and gay communities has increased. Though progress has not been linear, this timeline of key events explores how rights related to politics, healthcare, military service and marriage have developed over time and brought us to where we are today.

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1776

Before the United States is founded, people who live in the colonies are often subjected to laws that make sodomy, or gay sex, a capital offense.

1786

Pennsylvania is the first state to pass “An Act Amending the Penal Laws,” which states that those convicted of “robbery, burglary, sodomy, or buggary” would no longer be killed and instead would forfeit their lands, goods and servitude for a term “not exceeding ten years.”

1804

When the U.S. is first created, many early states and colonies, including Ohio, inherit common law sodomy statutes from England.

Shortly after Ohio’s statehood in 1803, the laws are repealed, effectively legalizing sodomy for just six weeks before they are enacted again. For years, the policy goes back and forth, causing confusion.

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1924

Henry Gerber launches the Society for Human Rights, the first known gay rights organization in the U.S. The group’s goal is to combat prejudices against the gay community and support those who are being discriminated against.

While the organization only lasts a year before Gerber and several other members are arrested for deviancy, it marks the official beginning of gay rights organizations in America.

1950

Harry Hay launches the Mattachine Society, which goes on to be a prominent group in the Homophile Movement, a pre-Stonewall era term used to refer to homosexual or LGBTQ rights groups.

In 1955, the society begins publishing the Mattachine Review, a periodical which includes articles that pose questions like “as a distinct personality type, are homophiles so different?”

1950

A Senate report titled “Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government” is distributed to members of Congress. The report states, “It is the opinion of this subcommittee that those who engage in acts of homosexuality and other perverted sex activities are unsuitable for employment in the Federal Government. This conclusion is based upon the fact that persons who indulge in such degraded activity are committing not only illegal and immoral acts, but they also constitute security risks in positions of public trust.”

This report is an early move in the “Lavender Scare,” which leads to thousands of gay employees being fired or forced to resign.

1952

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) publishes its first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). In it, they claim that homosexuality is a sociopathic personality disturbance.

1953

President Dwight Eisenhower signs executive order 10450, which bans homosexuals from all federal government work. The order states that any “criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, habitual use of intoxicants to excess, drug addiction, [or] sexual perversion” is a threat to national security. At the time, sexual perversion is understood as homosexuality. The order continues to fuel the Lavender Scare.

1953

Civil rights activist and organizer Bayard Rustin is arrested for getting caught having sex with a man in a parked car. Police arrest him under “morals” laws that target homosexual people. Following the event, Rustin chooses not to hide his sexuality. This leads to discrimination and results in him having to play a more behind-the-scenes role in the civil rights movement.

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1955

Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian rights organization in the U.S., is created. Rosalie “Rose” Bamberger first had the idea for the group and founded it with her partner, Rosemary Sliepen, and three other lesbian couples.

Since lesbian bars are regularly subjected to police raids, the club decides to host safer social functions, such as dances in people’s homes, and eventually the first National Lesbian Conference at San Francisco’s Hotel Whitcomb. While the organization begins as a social club, it eventually grows into a lesbian rights group with chapters throughout the country.

1958

The Supreme Court case, One, Inc. v. Olesen, is groundbreaking for LGBTQ First Amendment Rights. The case involves the Los Angeles postmaster Otto K. Olesen, who required federal postal authorities to seize copies of One: The Homosexual Magazine.

According to Olesen, the magazine was “obscene” which would make it unmailable under the Comstock Act of 1873. The Supreme Court ultimately decides that it is legal to mail LGBTQ magazines in the U.S., citing its previous ruling in Roth v. United States.

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1962

Illinois becomes the first state to decriminalize homosexuality when it enacts the repeal of its sodomy laws. This is part of a larger overhaul of the state’s criminal code, so many folks didn’t realize that sodomy laws were repealed.

1968

The APA publishes the second edition of the DSM. This version reclassifies homosexuality as “sexual deviation.”

1969

Following a routine police raid of Stonewall Inn, the patrons fight back. From June 28 to July 3, as New York City’s LGBTQ community resist police violence, the Stonewall uprising becomes the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement.

Stormé DeLarverie has been identified as the “Stonewall lesbian,” a butch lesbian who was clubbed by police the night of the raid, which many believe activated the patrons. DeLarverie says in an interview, “[The officer] then yelled, ‘I said, move along, faggot.’ I think he thought I was a boy. When I refused, he raised his nightstick and clubbed me in the face.”

1972

Don Fass begins the National Bisexual Liberation Group, making it one of the earliest bi groups in the U.S. They began “The Bisexual Expression,” the first known bisexual newsletter in the United States.

1973

Following pressure from homosexual activists, the APA votes to remove homosexuality from the DSM’s list of mental illnesses.

1974

Kathy Kozachenko is elected to a seat on the Ann Arbor, Michigan, City Council, making her the first openly LGBTQ elected official in the U.S.

Kozachenko later writes, “The fact that I was running as openly gay was a statement in and of itself. We also discussed the need for stereotypical gender roles to be eliminated and for women’s rights and gay rights to be more widely established as policy–in city and state government and in corporate America.”

1978

Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to hold public office in California, is assassinated outside city hall by a disgruntled former city supervisor. In his work, Milk helped pass a new city ordinance that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing and public accommodations. He is remembered as one of the great LGBTQ advocates in American history.

1979

Over 75,000 people join the first-ever National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Attendees demand equal rights for lesbian and gay people and push for protective civil rights legislation.

1980

The Democrats become the first major U.S. political party to endorse gay rights when the Democratic Rules Committee announces that they won’t discriminate against homosexuals. However, they also reject a proposal that would allow the party to recruit homosexuals.

1980

The cover of the “Gay Insurgent” journal features a photo from the first March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights that includes people holding a banner reading, “We’re Asians, Gay & Proud.”

Gisele Pohan, one of the women in the photo, later explains, “We put this banner together rather quickly, having discovered a group of Asian queers in the 3rd World Gay Conference.”

1981

The Department of Defense prohibits all gay and lesbian people from serving in the military, stating that “homosexuality is incompatible with military service.” This leads to the discharge of 17,000 homosexual service members.

1982

Wisconsin passes Bill 70 and becomes the first state to outlaw discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations based on sexual orientation.

1990

President George Bush signs the Ryan White CARE Act, a federal program created to support people living with AIDS. The goal is “to provide emergency assistance to localities disproportionately affected by the HIV epidemic.”

The act is named after Ryan White, an Indiana teenager who contracted AIDS following a tainted blood transfusion.

1993

The Department of Defense officially launches “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a policy that allows homosexual service members to be part of the military so long as they keep their sexual orientation a secret. The policy bars commanders from asking service members about their sexuality, and military personnel aren’t allowed to discriminate or harass closeted service members.

1996

President Bill Clinton signs the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The new law recognizes marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman. Additionally, DOMA ensures that states aren’t required to recognize same-sex marriages from out of state.

1997

New Jersey becomes the first state to allow same-sex couples to adopt jointly. Previously, only single gay people were allowed to do this.

1998

Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old University of Wyoming student, is brutally attacked and tied to a fence in an anti-gay hate crime. He later dies in hospital, and his case brings national attention to the dangers of homophobia.

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2000

Vermont becomes the first state to legalize civil unions and registered partnerships for same-sex couples. This gives them the same benefits and protections as married couples.

2003

In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court finds that sodomy laws are unconstitutional. Previously, Texas had a law that criminalized consensual gay sex. This ruling immediately invalidates sodomy laws that exist in other states.

2004

Massachusetts becomes the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. Tanya McCloskey and Marcia Kadish are the first same-sex couple to be legally married in the U.S. “We just wanted to make sure that the world saw the most positive side of being a gay couple,” Kadish says.

2008

Proposition 8 passes in California, making same-sex marriage illegal in the state. It was heavily backed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who spent nearly $190,000 on getting the initiative passed.

This sparks the NOH8 Campaign, a photo project featuring celebrities and other influential figures pushing for marriage equality.

2009

President Barack Obama signs the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act. This law expands the 1969 federal hate crime law to include cases when the “crime was committed because of the actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.”

2010

The U.S. Senate repeals “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” enabling gay and lesbian members of the military to be open about their sexual orientation while serving.

2011

Attorney General Eric Holder announces that the Obama administration won’t defend Section 3 of DOMA, which refers to the definition of marriage as a “union between one man and one woman.”

Two years later, the Supreme Court rules in a 5-4 decision that Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional.

2012

California becomes the first state to ban state-licensed healthcare providers from practicing conversion therapy on minors. Today, 22 other states have passed similar bans.

2015

In a 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court rules that same-sex marriage is legal nationwide.

In a speech, President Obama says, “It will end the uncertainty hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples face from not knowing whether their marriage, legitimate in the eyes of one state, will remain if they decide to move [to] or even visit another. This ruling will strengthen all of our communities by offering to all loving same-sex couples the dignity of marriage across this great land.”

2016

A federal judge strikes down a Mississippi law that bans adoption by same-sex couples. This is viewed as the final legal hurdle to adoption rights for same-sex couples.

2018

In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the Supreme Court sides with Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and rules in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple’s wedding. This decision overturns a prior ruling from the Colorado Court of Appeals, where they found that the bakery violated state law by discriminating against the couple because of their sexual orientation.

2020

In Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court rules that if an employee is fired solely for being gay or transgender, it violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

2026

In an 8-1 ruling in Chiles v. Salazar, the Supreme Court sides again with ADF when it rules that Colorado’s anti-conversion therapy law discriminates against a Christian therapist because of her religious views. The ruling is a blow to LGBTQ rights and has the potential to set a precedent in 23 other states.

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I am beyond thrilled to announce that Uncloseted Media has won *four* prestigious awards from the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists.

The NLGJA Excellence in Journalism Awards, established in 1993, recognize outstanding journalism on issues related to the LGBTQ community.

For me, these honors are particularly meaningful because of my history with the organization.

When I moved to New York City 12 years ago to study journalism at Columbia’s Grad School, one of my fondest memories was serving as the NLGJA Chapter co-president alongside Uncloseted advisory board member and good friend Liz Lucking! We brought in Andy Cohen to talk about the intersection of pop culture and hard journalism and we held a panel to discuss covering the queer beat in 2015 (a quite different conversation way back then!).

After graduating, I was selected as a young journalist to attend the NLGJA conference in San Francisco, where I was mentored by CBS Sunday Morning producer—and now good friend—Dustin Stephens. I then joined the NLGJA New York chapter as their event coordinator alongside Patrick Henderson and Zach Wichter.

A decade later, I have the privilege of editing the next generation of queer journalists. But here’s the best part: The talent among these journalists is so impressive that they don’t need huge oversight. I am floored by their ability to dig into stories that are versatile and complex. They report with a professionalism and a mix of compassion and skepticism that you expect from the most seasoned veteran journalists.

There are a few noteworthy elements to these awards that I want to highlight:

1. We won for reporting in a wide diversity of areas: excellence in long-form journalism, excellence in business coverage, excellence in HIV/AIDS coverage and excellence in education coverage.

2. Each of our award-winning stories were reported or co-reported by four young queer women.

3. We tied with The New York Times for the most total awards given to a single outlet. But what I’m more proud of is that we are a newsroom of four full-time staffers, compared to the NYT’s staff of roughly 6,000 global employees.

4. Lastly and most importantly: These stories would have been left untold if it weren’t for our reporting. And every single one of these investigations are critical. All of our award-winning stories are linked below, along with an outline of their key findings.

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Long-form journalism:

• Sam Donndelinger took months investigating this tough but critical topic. While research is limited, reports suggest that almost half of sex trafficking survivors are boys. But as of 2025, there are zero safe houses for boys under 18.

• This story affected me the most because of Sam’s interviews with survivors:

  • At 16 years old, Jose Alfaro remembers being trapped in a dimly lit room and told to give a naked stranger a massage and “let him do what he wants.”

    • “I was terrified and I had a bodily reaction of tremor, just shaking uncontrollably,” Alfaro, now 34, told Uncloseted Media. “I felt cold, even though I wasn’t cold. I didn’t know what to do when I’m in a room with two adult men and the door is locked.”

Business reporting:

• Imogen Sayers and I uncovered that Inspire Investing, founded by Robert Netzly in 2015, is one of several financial firms specializing in what’s known as biblically responsible investing—a rapidly growing, socially conservative form of Christian faith-based investing that steers Christians away from companies that support or promote LGBTQ rights or inclusive policies.

• Netzly says his company is “growing like a weed,” with over $3.2 billion of assets under management, up from the $35 million they had eight years ago.

HIV/ AIDS reporting:

• Hope Pisoni uncovered how the devil is in the details with the Trump administration’s dismantling of HIV/ AIDS funding. Hope found that the National Institutes of Health alone cut $1.353 billion from HIV funding in the first five months of Trump 2.0, a number that has likely increased.

• “I am immensely proud for this momentous achievement for such a young publication,” says Pisoni. “On a personal level, it’s vindicating to see that, while the largest and best-resourced news publications in the U.S. continue to leave the trans community out in the cold in their coverage, independent journalism done by an early-career trans woman like myself can pick up that slack and do important and meaningful work.”

Education reporting:

• Emma Paidra and I spoke with people who had their lives shaped by corporal punishment—a form of child abuse that is still legal nationwide in homes in and in 17 states in schools. We found that the practice is disproportionately used to punish queer kids.

• “I am grateful to work on pieces of such profound importance,” says Paidra. “Both to those who shared their stories with me, and to queer people who see their experiences reflected in my work. Winning the NLGJA award is a powerful reminder of the impact that LGBTQ journalism can have.”

Congratulations to our whole team. And if you want to celebrate and support our award-winning investigative journalism, feel free to upgrade to become a paid or founding subscriber or donate below.

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• 🏳️‍🌈📺🇨🇦🏒I had a great time appearing on Global News' "The Morning Show" on Wednesday to discuss all things Pride and Heated Rivalry. At a time when the Federal Communications Commission in the U.S. is considering putting a warning label on trans content, queer visibility on TV can transform culture and literally save lives. Watch here:

• US judge limits enforcement of Idaho’s transgender bathroom access law (Reuters)

  • A federal judge on Tuesday barred Idaho from fully enforcing a new state law making it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, for transgender people ​to use public restrooms whose designations differ from their sex assigned at birth.

• Queer panic erupts as AI face scanners installed across San Francisco gay bars (PinkNews)

  • Facial recognition scanners are appearing at gay venues in The Castro

• Tens of thousands join Pride marches in Romania, Bulgaria to call for equality (AP News)

  • Marchers walked through Bucharest in Romania and Sofia in Bulgaria, waving colorful flags and blowing whistles and calling for equality.

• Fox hosts force JD Vance to eat “pickle cake” as part of bizarre anti-gay joke (LGBTQ Nation)

  • Chocolate cake is apparently “too gay” now.

• MLB Warns Giants Pitchers Who Wore Bible Verses on Caps During ‘Pride Night’ (Sports Illustrated)

  • Giants pitcher Landen Roupp wrote a Bible verse on his cap for the team’s game on Pride Night.

Over the next week, be on the lookout for new Uncloseted reporting:

• 🆕 SATURDAY: In the lead up to America’s 250th birthday, we’ll be collaborating with Rebecca from hankycode on timelines about key events in LGBTQ history since 1776. We’ll be kicking it off with a timeline focused on sexual orientation, and following up soon with another on gender diversity and the trans community.

• 🆕 On the next episode of “UNCLOSETED, with Spencer Macnaughton,” I’ll be speaking with Shy Sotomayor, a dominatrix who revealed in April that she had a nine-year relationship with Bryon Noem, the husband of former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to email me with questions, complaints and story ideas!

Spencer Macnaughton, Editor-In-Chief — spencer@unclosetedmedia.com

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation in the U.S. through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

Donate now