In 2025, LGBT Americans still struggle for equality (Happy Pride month)

Police officers escorting two protesters at a Gay Liberation Front demonstration in New York City, June 1971

Content warning: mentions of sexual assault

June is pride month, meaning across the country, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans are celebrating their community, history and culture. Recent trends and events, though, have been a sobering reminder that although the LGBT community has made great social and legal progress throughout the years, there is still a long way to go before the fight for equality is finished. 

Legal discrimination against LGBT people is still widespread in 2025. In 27 states, it is still legal to refuse people basic needs like housing and employment based on gender identity and sexual orientation. In 25 states, health insurance providers are not required to cover life saving gender affirming care, and 10 states have banned Medicaid from covering it. And things are getting worse.  

According to the ACLU, 588 anti-LGBT bills have been introduced throughout the country since the beginning of this year, already more than the entirety of last year, indicating the movement to exclude gender and sexual minorities from society is growing. While many of these proposed laws target lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, transgender people seem to be the primary targets of most. These proposed laws range from bans on all forms of gender-affirming care, to banning transgender people from public bathrooms, to even banning “gender non-conforming” haircuts. 

The increasing frequency of these attacks have been a wake up call to a fact that had been somewhat glossed over by the preceding decade or so of greater social acceptance: the systematic dehumanization of queer people is alive and well. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our prisons. 

Transgender individuals in prison are frequently denied the gender affirming healthcare necessary for both psychological and physical wellbeing. Although this has always been a problem, it has gotten even worse since President Trump signed executive order 14168 in January, which ordered the Bureau of Prisons to stop funding any and all gender affirming care for prisoners, even in cases where such treatment had been previously prescribed. Although this order has been temporarily blocked, this is not permanent, and it may eventually be upheld. 

Another long running problem made worse by the executive order is the placement of transgender people in prisons for the incorrect gender. This is especially an issue for transgender women sent to men’s prisons, who are put at extreme risk of sexual abuse.  A devastating 69% transgender women housed in men’s prisons were reported to have been sexually assaulted while there, which is thirteen times higher than the general population, and 88% said they had to enter sexual relationships for protection, according to a 2021 study. 

The sexual abuse transgender women are subjected to is not just the result of indifference from prison staff, as many prisons intentionally, systematically encourage and partake in such acts. V-coding, a practice in which transgender women are intentionally placed in cells with violent male prisoners who are free to do with them what they like, continues to happen in prisons across the country. Although the main point of this practice is to satiate the most aggressive male prisoners so that their violent tendencies have a regular outlet, many corrections officers also participate. In 2017, 75% of transgender women in New York state prisons were reported to have been sexually assaulted by a corrections officer. 

It is hard to overstate how grim the reality of being a transgender prisoner is. These conditions are nothing short of barbaric. How can we say we live in a just country, how can we say that all are equal under the law, when an entire demographic of people serve as sacrificial lambs in our prisons? 

Ending the systematic discrimination and abuse LGBT people still face is essential if we are ever to live in a truly fair and compassionate society. It is as important as ever to listen to those who society forgets, and to fight for their dignity.