California’s LGBTQ+ population brace for a wave of federal attacks on their rights.
This story is published in partnership with the Queer News Network, a collaboration among 11 LGBTQ+ newsrooms to cover down ballot elections across 10 states. Read more about us here.
Across California, Donald Trump’s decisive victory was seen as a cause for concern among organizers within the LGBTQ+ community.
Trump’s campaign and the conservatives who aligned with him ran a vehemently anti-LGBTQ+ election, often depicting trans people as dangers to society and uplifted local candidates who elevated LGBTQ+ scapegoating as a reason for poor educational outcomes or moral depravity.
In the outskirts of southern California, for example, far-right evangelicals have taken over school boards and passed anti-trans “parental rights” policies. Despite grassroots efforts to flip these boards, many of these districts failed to oust the Trump-aligned conservatives this election. .
“This election result hits home because it reaffirms the uphill battle our community has been facing—where simply living authentically and with dignity is under constant threat,” said Queen Chela Demuir, the president and CEO of Unique Woman’s Coalition, an organization centered on uplifting the Black trans communities. “Our community is painfully aware of the danger this administration poses.”
Demuir continued in saying that the Trump campaign “has shown a willingness to erode protections, make health care even less accessible, and strip away our rights.”
When Trump won, “my heart dropped to the floor,” said Bamby Salcedo, the CEO of the TransLatin@ Coalition in Los Angeles, an organization that provides services to transgender, gender nonconforming and intersex people. “I just wanted to get out of my place and run and scream.”
Salcedo said she’s worried about how Trump’s administration is going to further target trans communities, which have been used as “political pawns” by conservatives. “That has been the rhetoric of the conservative movement — diminish, devalue and potentially erase our existence.”
This election made some people see the “reality of our state,” Salcedo said.
“This is not new to us as a community and as a people,” Salcedo said. “Conservatives have been trying to erase our existence since the invasion of the colonizers.”
The organizers QNN spoke to said the election results have only renewed their focus on pushing back harder against LGBTQ+ scapegoating, which is almost guaranteed to increase under a Trump administration.
Yuan Wang, the executive director of Lavender Phoenix, a queer Asian and Pacific Islander grassroots organization based in San Francisco said there shouldn’t be a focus on anxiety.
Wang said she takes comfort in knowing that eventually even Trump’s supporters will see that his rhetoric isn’t the solution to their problems. “Dehumanizing trans people isn't going to make people safer,” she said. “Demonizing migrants isn't going to make our economy stronger.”
Though, she said: “I feel afraid for the most vulnerable members of our community.”
For people who sit at intersecting identities — queer people who are also immigrants, incarcerated, undocumented, or who have been impacted by the war in Gaza — Wang said this election is particularly heartbreaking since many of them have felt both targeted by Republicans and abandoned by the Democratic party.
Several progressive propositions also failed to pass. Though voters said yes to affirming same sex marriage in the constitution, they also shot down more progressive propositions that aimed to fix soaring housing prices, outlawing prison-based slavery and a higher minimum wage—an issue that impact queer people, who experience higher rates of poverty and homelessness compared to their straight counterparts.
These leaders also said that California is not immune to enacting conservative agendas, despite often being dubbed a “safe state.”
“That perspective is dangerous because it breeds complacency,” Demuir said. “No one is completely safe as long as discriminatory policies are on the books.”