Trump has declared war on LGBTQ people. Since entering office, he has swept away access to gender-affirming care for tens of thousands of trans people or made it effectively inaccessible by stripping Medicaid funding. Numerous bills and executive orders have attacked trans kids’ ability to participate in sports to ostracize them back into the closet or away from social spaces. Trump 2.0 has meant a significant escalation in the right-wing rampage against trans people.

Anti-trans legislation across the US shot up by over 200% in 2023 compared to 2022—615 bills targeting trans people were put forward, 87 of which passed. But even with a Democratic majority in the Senate and the presidency, Biden and the Democrats sat by idly when these attacks started to ramp up, just like they did when Roe v. Wade was overturned right under their noses. These attacks under Biden’s watch were decisive in laying the groundwork for the onslaught of Trump’s first few months.

Now, in assessing their 2024 loss in the presidential election, some Democrats have been blaming the loss on being too “woke.” In an interview on a podcast recently, Democratic Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, said that it was “deeply unfair” for trans kids to play sports corresponding to their gender. Democratic congresswoman Sarah McBride, the first openly trans person elected to Congress, has said that Democrats need to be more open to those who oppose trans rights in the party, shamefully ceding ground to the right wing.

Some Democrats have pushed back on this rhetoric, such as Congressman Cory Booker in his marathon 25-hour-long speech. But ultimately, his statements are largely symbolic in a party that has never meaningfully fought for working-class LGBTQ people. This Pride, we need to build the fight to defend and extend LGBTQ rights, independent of both the Democrats and Republicans—for a new party that actually represents LGBTQ people and the entire working class.

How Were LGBTQ Rights Really Won?

Democrats today try to pose as a party for LGBTQ people, but they’ve never been on the frontlines of fighting for the oppressed. In the 1950s, as part of the “Red Scare” against communists, there was an all-out assault on purging gay people from working in federal jobs in what became known as the “Lavender Scare.” Through a bipartisan subcommittee led up by Democratic Senator Clyde Hoey, almost 10,000 federal workers were fired or intimidated into quitting. At this time, many gay rights organizations like the Mattachine Society, which was founded in 1950 and made up of primarily middle-class and wealthy gay people, had focused on education, small study circles, and trying to lobby individual politicians. However, in response to this and other discriminatory practices, a new wave of the gay rights movement began to take shape that saw the necessity of taking a militant approach.

Young working-class queer people who were disproportionately affected by practices criminalizing homosexuality, from police brutality to job and housing security being threatened, saw the need to build a movement that could go on the offensive. Organizations like the Gay Liberation Front, Radicalesbians, and the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) started to emerge, organizing protests and direct action throughout the 1960s and ’70s to fight for the rights of all LGBTQ people. Many were socialists and revolutionaries, and fought against the whole capitalist system that perpetuates regressive gender norms and makes basic needs for all working people unaffordable.

A critical step for the gay rights movement was broadening the fight to include wider layers of society, including the labor movement. In 1977, Allan Baird, a gay Teamster truck driver, initiated a campaign to boycott Coors Beer distributors. In the hiring process, Coors was terminating applications of those who answered yes to being “pro-union” or “homosexual.” Harvey Milk, a gay city councilor in San Francisco, joined the coalition for the boycott which saw Teamsters truck drivers and gay bars all boycotting Coors, eventually getting the question removed.

But where is this type of organizing today? The once militant LGBTQ rights organizations of the previous decades were either crushed or funneled into fangless lobbying machines for the Democratic Party. LGBTQ people, though, have little to show for hitching our wagon to the Democrats. Bill Clinton signed the discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law in 1993 that pushed queer people in the military into secrecy. One of the biggest victories of the gay rights movement, the federal legalization of same-sex marriage, was not won until 2015 and was staunchly opposed by many Democrats, including Obama saying he did not support gay marriage until 2012.

Through decades of the gay liberation movement, public opinion started to shift in favor of LGBTQ rights. It was only when the Democrats saw an opportunity to gain a section of voters that they changed their tune. But while Democratic politicians of today might attend many Pride events and try to rewrite history, we need to be crystal clear: It was the decades of militant working-class organizing against police brutality and discriminatory laws that won the rights that queer people have today, not the Democratic Party. Defeating Trump’s right-wing attacks today will take the same.

The Democrats Won’t Save Us—We Need a New Party

Some people today might recognize the failures of the Democratic Party of the past, but argue that they’ve turned over a new leaf. But Democrats’ backpedaling on even the meager lip service they paid to trans people since Trump’s election shows how fragile this “new leaf” really is. They try to ride the wave of what they think is popular at the time, but the spineless Democrats have no intention of fighting for what would actually make working-class LGBTQ people’s lives better. The reality is the Democrats are backed by many of the same billionaires and corporations that the Republicans are backed by.

Nearly one in four trans youth experience homelessness, but the Democrats’ ties to wealthy real estate developers mean that they’ll never fight for affordable housing. Their billions of dollars in corporate donations from pharmaceutical companies mean that they’ll never fight for trans-inclusive universal healthcare with full reproductive healthcare. They have failed, over multiple decades, to even attempt to raise the federal minimum wage, while LGBTQ people disproportionately work in low-paid sectors like food service and retail. 

Same-sex marriage, anti-discrimination laws, and other legal rights for LGBTQ people are important victories that were won through struggle, not handed down to us by any corporate party. Now, as Trump threatens to dismantle these and other protections, we need to know who our allies are and who they are not. The LGBTQ rights movement needs to break from the do-nothing Democrats and help to build a new party that fights on the side of the working class, not the billionaires. A pro-LGBTQ, working-class party could take the slogan “An Injury to One, Is An Injury to All” and put it into practice, building a mass fightback against Trump and all attacks on queer rights and the oppressed.

This Pride Month, Socialist Alternative says:

• No to Trump’s divide-and-rule! For a mass, working-class movement against all attacks on trans people, immigrants, and student protesters.
• LGBTQ rights organizations and the labor movement should organize a national day of action against Trump’s attacks, including protests, walkouts, and strikes!
• Fight for universal healthcare, with free gender-affirming care and reproductive rights!
• The Democrats won’t save us! Build a new, pro-LGBTQ working-class party.
• Trump is a symptom, capitalism is the disease—fight for queer liberation and socialism!