A Look Inside the Lonely World of Republican Lesbians
While the vast majority of queer women identify as Democrats, these NYC lesbians are proud Republicans. Here’s why.
This story was originally published in Uncloseted Media, an LGBTQ focused investigative news outlet, and Gay Times Magazine.
On a Sunday evening in Midtown, Manhattan, a group of around 20 lesbians met at The Grisly Pear to mix, mingle and maybe spark a romantic connection.
In addition to being gay, these women shared another key similarity.
Attendees of this meet-up—which was organized by the Log Cabin Republicans (LCR), America’s oldest LGBT organization for conservatives—represent the small minority of gay Republican women.
While many people may find a conservative lesbian to be counterintuitive, roughly 13% of LGBTQ voters cast their ballot for Trump in the 2024 Presidential election.
As the evening kicked off, Rachel Herman, a 40-year-old LCR New York board member, welcomed attendees. With an LCR pin fastened to her grey blazer, she sat on a barstool near the pub’s entrance, introducing herself as people trickled in. For Herman, the need to get involved in LGBTQ Republican circles came after she was kicked out of her gay billiards league when her team found out she was conservative.
“[LGBTQ Democrats] that portray themselves as tolerant and accepting [have not been] for all the parts of the LGBT community,” she told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “If I dare to present myself as a Republican, it means all the wrong things to them.”
These negative feelings from queer Democrats likely stem from ongoing attacks by the GOP to limit LGBTQ rights. The American Civil Liberties Union is tracking more than 600 anti-LGBTQ bills in the U.S., almost all of which were introduced by Republicans. For example, Oklahoma’s Republican Senator Dusty Deevers introduced a bill this year banning drag performance for children, calling them “sexual.” The goal of the legislation was to “restore moral sanity to Oklahoma.”
Herman says it was Donald Trump’s run in the 2016 Republican primaries that first sparked her interest in conservative politics. “The first thing he said was that he was ready to eliminate ISIS, to secure the border, and support the state of Israel. These three major issues really impact my life,” says Herman, who is Israeli.
Like Herman, many women at the event have faced retaliation for voting conservative. They shared stories of being doxxed and expressed concern about having their names or photos published.
This retaliation may be in part because most queer Americans—and especially women—can’t reconcile how a lesbian could be a Republican.
How Can a Lesbian Be a Conservative?
Queer rights are under attack by right-wing groups; Republican support for marriage equality is at its lowest in 10 years, and President Trump has passed a litany of anti-LGBTQ policies, including the cancellation of the LGBTQ youth crisis hotline option. And a 2024 GLAAD poll found that 94% of LGBTQ voters think that “Republicans should stop focusing on restricting women’s rights and banning medical care for transgender youth and instead focus on addressing inflation, job creation, and healthcare costs.”
Despite this, the women attending the event felt that the notion that these factors would automatically make them leftists is reductive.
“Our sexual identity is not all we are. … Instead of demonizing us immediately, just be open-minded and listen,” Geri Brodsky, a born-and-raised New Yorker, told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES.
Brodsky says she doesn’t want her political views to be boiled down to her sexual orientation or her gender. For her, the tragedy of 9/11, not wanting to get the COVID-19 vaccine, concerns of national security, and her fiscally conservative views pushed her more to the right. “I started listening to [Fox News’s] Sean Hannity, and I agreed with everything he said. I don’t think I was brainwashed; I was validated,” she says. “A long time ago, I would say that I was socially liberal and fiscally conservative. And these days, I don’t really fit into ‘socially liberal’ anymore.”
Coming Out as a Republican Lesbian
Brodsky has lost friends due to her political affiliations. “I gotta be in the closet,” she says, referring not to her sexual orientation but to her political identity when in LGBTQ spaces.
She says that her dating life has taken a hit since she became more of a conservative lesbian.
“I won’t get past the first date at this point, because if somebody asked me about if I’m gonna go get a COVID-19 booster, that becomes a conversation,” she says. Brodsky recalls a date in 2021 that went south after the topic of vaccines came up. “My medical decisions have not and never will be based upon politics. This woman didn’t want to hear that. Her reply was ‘So, you’re MAGA.’”
According to a Pew Research Center poll from 2020, 45% of Democrats say they definitely would not date a Trump voter, compared to 19% of Republicans who would not date someone who voted for Hillary Clinton.
For some left-leaning lesbians, these deal-breaking dating preferences are fueled by what they see as an insurmountable gap in values. On a lesbian Reddit thread discussing whether liberals would consider dating conservative women, one user said her “political beliefs are heavily based on morals” and that she “can’t date someone who doesn’t share the same fundamental values.”
Conservative Women and Trans Issues
A key factor driving Herman and other conservative lesbian women to vote red is their feelings towards transgender issues. A 2023 study found that 96% of young lesbian adults describe themselves as “supportive” or “very supportive” of trans people. However, 2025 data from the Pew Research Center found that 79% of Republicans “support making it illegal for health care professionals to provide medical care for a gender transition for minors.”
While Brodsky says she has “no problem with trans people,” she believes medical transition should be delayed until adulthood and that trans women should not be able to participate in women’s sports leagues.
Laura, 54, feels like the LGBTQ movement has become too inclusive. “All of a sudden the Pride flag started adding all these things, everything except for white straight people, I found that deeply offensive,” says Laura, who asked to use her first name only out of fear of being doxxed for her political views, which she says has happened before.
“Lowering the age of consent for puberty blockers and medicalization towards becoming the opposite sex is dangerous,” she says, adding that the solution to gender dysphoria is “therapy and healthy exploration.”
Despite Laura’s concerns, a 2022 study found that those who began hormone therapy in adolescence reported improved mental health. And another study that same year concluded that trans and non-binary youth receiving gender-affirming care experienced a decreased risk for depression and suicide over the course of 12 months.
Despite this, Laura says she is also “very concerned with the fact that the trans community is pushing deeply internalized homophobic beliefs and inaccuracies on children.” She believes many children are misdiagnosed with gender dysphoria when they are just confused and that they later “realize they are gay, lesbian, or bisexual.” However, rates of regret amongst those who received gender-affirming care are extremely low.
Though Laura is now a firm Republican, she was a Democrat until 2016. It was while campaigning for Hillary Clinton in Queens, New York, that she had a change of heart. “I was often encountered by very aggressive, verbally violent Bernie [Sanders] fans. But I also ended up having incredible conversations with all the Trump supporters,” she says. It was these conversations that prompted Laura to move rightward and become a conservative lesbian.
At the LCR meet-up, the women’s views varied along the conservative spectrum. Herman’s partner, Nicole, doesn’t think trans people should be cut off from the queer community. “For me, growing up gay and knowing my whole life, I feel like I understand that as a transgender person, you know something and nobody can tell you otherwise that you’re supposed to be one way or the other.”
Nicole, 35, says she is a conservative with moderate views and doesn’t agree with Herman on everything. Still, she believes there should be more room for queer women to be conservative without facing judgment.
“[Other lesbians] assume that because of who I vote for, I’m voting against myself and that I’m a self-hating lesbian. You have to be open-minded and open to conversation,” she told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES.
Though Nicole says she supports trans people, politicians affiliated with her party do not. In May, the Department of Justice removed all mentions of gender identity from at least four federal surveys, and President Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military went into effect. And in September, the Heritage Foundation—a conservative think tank that penned Project 2025—suggested that trans people should be considered domestic terrorists by designating trans activism as “Trans Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism.”
Unafraid of Losing LGBTQ Rights
A common thread shared by those attending the event was clear: In a time when LGBTQ rights are under attack, these lesbians are not afraid of losing their rights.
“I’m not concerned. If [Obergefell] is overturned, nothing is forever. If we have to challenge this case again, we will do it. We will continue fighting,” says Herman.
Though Herman’s political views have caused her to lose friends and be ostracized by many in the queer community, she says she is dedicated to rightwing politics. She feels that Republican lesbians are unfairly maligned by the left and urges Democrats to hear her out.
But at a time when GOP politicians have referred to LGBTQ people as “filth” and “maggots” and have said that gay people are equivalent to “what the cows leave behind,” it may be understandable why some Democrats see dating a GOP woman as a nonstarter.
Still, Herman remains frustrated and confused.
“It is so hard to be a Republican lesbian because the liberals are intolerant. And for the most part, I would say, also brainwashed,” she says. “If you are a free thinker, you’ll be open to listen. They just will not listen. They will just not talk to me.”
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:
 | A guest post by
|
There IS a fragment of truth in that the queer community can sometimes be exclusionary (we're neither perfect, nor a monolith) and that rejecting someone with different political views based only on a denomination may not be the most productive. Those are real issues that, on the margins, can indeed hurt people or drive them away when they need the community, or when we could use them as allies.
However, there's a bit of a scale there. It's one thing to not support the same economic policies or to disagree on fine points on immigration. But if you're straight up racist (9/11 ? really ?) or transphobic (trans kids' rights matter too), like these women? Miss us with that shit. We will not show tolerance for YOUR intolerance. It is more than a little disturbing to hear them echo hateful talking points, and frankly disgusting that one of them actually points to conversion therapy for trans kids. Yeah, because that worked SO well for LGB people, didn't it "Laura"?
I also wish they realized that "we can just fight to get gay marriage again", while true in a vacuum, is INCREDIBLY self-centered and coming from a place of privilege. In the decade or two that it could take to restore that right, how many people will be hurt and denied? And that's assuming their president doesn't outright install himself as a dictator and makes it impossible to fight for these rights to begin with, at least on a legal standing.
Tl;dr: while one's sexual orientation or gender identity does not, on its own, define one's political views, the right's stances on those has made it pretty unambiguous that supporting them as anyone but a white straight cis man means being complicit in destroying civil rights for you and your whole community.
If you're on the right, you don't actually care about your rights. Or you're privileged enough to think that surely the leopards won't eat your face. Here's a bit of a spoiler: they will.
First off, you can be a lesbian or gay or republican or democrat but when you start calling Democrats terrorists because they believe in equal rights for everybody that’s just bullshit. Also a conservative lesbian who disagrees with getting a Covid shot is just plain stupid. You can disagree about whether you like coffee or not but when it comes to science, if you don’t agree with it, you’re just stupid.
So I still can’t see how anybody can be a lesbian and support the only party in this country who would like to see all of them exterminated — their words, not mine.