What Could Project 2025 Mean for the LGBTQI+ Community?

Project 2025 is a broad vision regarding the future of the United States led by the Heritage Foundation. The project is hundreds of pages, centered on continuing a conservative United States through consolidating power in presidency, getting rid of civil servants, and further marginalizing already vulnerable communities. Sarah Warbelow, Vice President, Legal, at the Human Rights Campaign, sits down to talk with us about Project 2025’s specific restrictions targeted at the LGBTQI+ community.

Project 2025 seeks to gut protections against discrimination based on sex across education, healthcare, employment, and more. Project 2025 also seeks to rid the federal government’s website of LGBTQI+ inclusive language, prevent access to gender-affirming healthcare, and prevent LGBTQI+ families from adopting children. Anti-LGBTQI+ policy in Project 2025 extends not only in the U.S., but around the world.

Links from this episode

Sarah Warbelow on X
Human Rights Campaign on X
Human Rights Campaign on Facebook
Project 2025 is a Road Map to a Conservative United States. Here’s What You Need to Know.
More information on Bostock v. Clayton County
More information on the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2021

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Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to rePROs Fight Back, a podcast on all things related to sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. [music intro]

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Jennie: Hi rePROs. How's everybody doing? I'm your host Jennie Wetter and my pronouns are she/her. So y'all, it has been miserable here in DC recently. It has just been so hot and humid, like, there are not words for how gross it is and, like, my mom was calling sometime last week and was, like, complaining about it being hot and humid in Wisconsin and I was just like, you are picking the wrong person to complain to because I can't even step outside without like immediately sweating because it is so swampy and gross here right now. I'm hopeful that it looks like it's gonna be cooling down a little bit. So, that will be nice. It's nice to be able to go outside and spend more than a couple minutes in the outdoors without just, like, utterly melting. Yeah, gross, gross. Let's see here, I am getting, I can't believe it is, like, almost August, which is wild. But I'm getting really excited 'cause I'm gonna go see my mom sometime in August and it'll be nice to get away just to get away from everything. The good thing about, like, when I go to my mom's is that her internet isn't amazing and so it really stops me from, like, spending time on social and, like, all of that. So, I'm just really excited to, like, step away from everything and just take it easy. I'm going to do a ton of reading. I took advantage of the big Barnes and Noble sale. They had a big sale on pre-orders and double points and so I bought a bunch of books for my e-reader. So, I am all set and ready to go even if I am not leaving for a couple weeks yet. But still I am very much looking forward to having some time away from all of the things. It's something that I am like keeping an eye on the calendar hardcore for to get through the next couple weeks. Yeah, I think those are like all of the things right now and I'm just, I'm really excited for today's episode. It's the first in what will be a series of a couple episodes. You know, we did an episode earlier this year talking about Project 2025 and kind of big picture, what it is and why it's troublesome and I'll make sure we include that in our show notes. We had the wonderful Beirne Roose-Snyder on to talk about it and why we need to worry about it because it's so anti-democratic. So, definitely worth a listen. But I wanted to do a couple more episodes digging into specific issue areas. So, today we are looking at LGBTQ issues in Project 2025 and I'm very excited to have with me Sarah Warbelow with the human rights campaign to talk about all of the LGBTQ stuff in Project 2025. So let's go to my interview with Sarah.

Jennie: Hi Sarah, thank you so much for being here today.

Sarah: It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Jennie: So, before we dig into everything, would you like to take a second and introduce yourself and include your pronouns?

Sarah: Absolutely. My name is Sarah Warbelow. I use she/her pronouns and I'm the vice president for legal at the human rights campaign. So, I work on things like legal policy at all levels of government and impact litigation.

Jennie: Oh, wonderful. I am really excited to have you on today. We had an episode earlier this year talking about, like, big picture, what is Project 2025, but just because maybe people hadn't already haven't listened to that episode or aren't as familiar, would you maybe like to take a quick, like, couple minutes and explain what is Project 2025?

Sarah: Yeah, so Project 2025 is a plan that was put together by the Heritage Foundation that lays out disproportionately all the administrative steps that a conservative president could take to really reshape American culture. And it looks broadly at a lot of issues, including things that are considered cultural hot topics, but also things like getting rid of civil servants and consolidating power in the presidency. And there were lots of folks who advised on this more than a hundred conservative organizations and some really powerful individuals from the last Trump administration, including folks like Ben Carson who was the secretary of HUD and Ken Cuccinelli, who was a very senior person in the Department...uh I'm sorry, of the Department of Security. Thank you. I'm so sorry. [laughs]

Jennie: Homeland Security.

Sarah: My brain was "Department Defense," and it wasn't pulling it out there.

Jennie: Well, I'm like all the acronyms get in your head and yeah. And I was really glad to see, like, there's so many like wonky bits that aren't as easy to explain. So, like, I was so grateful for like the John Oliver show for like that Last Week Tonight to do that deep dive into the silver servant portion because that's like so complex and, like, to get to why it's so important, take so many steps that it was so nice to see a show take the opportunity to do the deep dive on like why it was so problematic.

Sarah: It's so true. And I will say even just at a very high level, I mean the proposal is to get rid of all the folks with experience and expertise, folks who aren't political, who are just there to be good civil servants and keep our government running and functioning so that people across the country get their paychecks on time and their disability benefits and their social security. I mean, just really basic stuff that we need.

Jennie: Okay. So, now we get into the like extra terribles of, like, I'm gonna try to do like a couple different episodes y'all talking about specific areas. So today we're gonna talk about impacts to the LGBTQ community. So what are we seeing, what are you keeping an eye on in project 2025 around LGBTQ rights?

Sarah: Well, Project 2025 is just an absolute laundry list of horrific policy proposals that would negatively impact LGBTQ people in virtually every area of life. I mean, laying aside an intent to eliminate Department of Education altogether, you know, the proposal is to roll back all protections for LGBTQ people. In 2020, the Supreme Court decided a case called Bostock v. Clayton County and they looked at: what does it mean to engage in discrimination on the basis of sex and employment? And they thought really hard and took into account a lot of expertise and experience from everything from major corporations to prior court decisions and made the decision that you really can't think about somebody's sexual orientation or gender identity without taking into account sex. Whether it's the individual's sex, whether assigned at birth or the sex that they currently live as, whether it's who you are dating and who you want to date or who you're married to--these are all sex-based considerations. And that's a long way of saying that the Supreme Court found that LGBTQ people are protected under our federal sex non-discrimination laws and Project 2025 wants to gut all of that. So, they wanna remove protections in education, they wanna remove protections in healthcare, they wanna even remove protections in employment by saying the employment protections only apply to hiring and firing and not all of those other things like harassment, benefits, pay differentials, where you use the restroom, all the critical components of being able to function in a workplace.

Jennie: It is just so horrifying to think that this could happen and like it's not that far outside the realm of possibility if they got a friendly administration.

Sarah: And we've already seen some of this come to fruition or at least attempts to make it happen. You know, the last Trump administration just days after the Bostock decision came down, finalized a rule designed to strip away healthcare protections from LGBTQ people. The Supreme Court literally said you had to consider sex and discrimination protections to apply to LGBTQ folks and the Trump administration said, no thank you. We're just gonna pretend that never happened and go about our merry way. So, those processes were already put in place and we know that there's a desire just to expand upon it.

Jennie: Yeah, and I, you know, even with Bostock before we get to, like, all of the things they were talking about, like, I was already worried about some doors you could see that were open in that decision. So, like, this would be so much worse than even that.

Sarah: Absolutely. You know, the Bostock decision didn't decide everything with respect to employment and certainly was a little squishy on the full scope laying aside for another day. But this is just taking a Mack truck and running through that opening.

Jennie: I think another area that I, like, got worried is seeing the list of language they want to get rid of. And it was taking me back to like protests at HHS where they had like these words they were, like, eliminating from HHS early in the previous administration.

Sarah: The absolute intent is to erase any reference to LGBTQ people sexual orientation or gender identity from the entirety of the federal government website. So, whether it's, you know, teachers trying to learn more about protecting their students from bullying because they're LGBTQ kids, whether it's a healthcare provider wanting to understand what their obligations are to patients who are LGBTQ, whether it's LGBTQ folks who wanna be counted on government records-keeping, you know, the precursor to the census. They wanna just eliminate every evidence of the existence of LGBTQ people.

Jennie: And I feel like that's something we've really been seeing growing like the last several years. Like I just feel like when we start to see, like, things related to gender, a lot of, I do some work around like gender-based violence globally. And so, like, we're starting to really see that language being attacked and not wanting to use that language, really wanting to push it back to like violence against women and or tying it to abortion. So, like, this is just like this growing concern of really attacking anything that comes close to touching on gender identity.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. I mean there's an absolute desire to ignore the fact that Congress passed and a president signed into law the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization that expressly protects sexual orientation and gender identity, right? So, we don't even have to go through the exercise of applying sex to LGBTQ folks. That law says you have to protect LGBTQ people who experience a whole range of violence, you know, whether it is intimate partner violence, sexual assault. Organizations that are promoting Project 2025, just pretend that law doesn't even exist.

Jennie: Okay. So, I feel like another area we really saw them going after LGBTQ people was for things that fall under HHS and wanting to rename HHS.

Sarah: Yeah, I mean there is just sort of a desire to end any support for LGBTQ people, particularly transgender people, accessing healthcare. And you know, much has been written about and said in terms of eliminating the ability of transgender young people to access best practice medically necessary healthcare, cutting off access to puberty blockers and hormones. But there's also an intent here to ban gender-affirming care for adults, to take away coverage under Medicaid and Medicare for healthcare that trans adults need. And that these are folks who don't necessarily have other options, right? They don't necessarily have an employer who's giving them access to that care. They are elderly they are poor. And these are real vehicles that are necessary to, to get the care folks need. And beyond that, they want for healthcare providers to be able to turn someone away who has a broken ankle just because they're transgender.

Jennie: I just, again, I feel like so many conversations I had, like, in the previous administration when they were trying to enact a lot of these policies then, like, just the stories you would hear were just so heartbreaking with like, even just like getting to like conscience refusals of like refusing to tell somebody that they had cancer. Like, they just didn't call this patient back to let them know how their test results came in. And like, there were just so many devastating stories and to again, think that we could be going back to that world, it's heartbreaking.

Sarah: It's incredibly troubling. Particularly because, you know, we know that the vast majority of doctors and other healthcare providers don't wanna discriminate against LGBTQ people. There are folks who are the exception, right? I mean, like you said, we hear about these denials of care and even things like rough handling. You know, one of our clients when her healthcare provider was a nurse, found out that she was transgender, actually like moving her body in ways that were physically painful for her. We heard this happening to older LGB people when a healthcare provider finds out that they have a same sex partner or spouse. But you know, it is sort of this absolute denial that LGBTQ people exist, particularly trans people, right? A sort of a refusal to acknowledge that it is real to be trans, that this is in fact recognized as a condition of being human. It doesn't happen to everybody, but we've known for an incredibly long time that there are many people who are transgender. It's not a new concept.

Jennie: Right? You're not going to eliminate, like, trans people are not going away. They exist, they're real. You can't discriminate them out of existing, is really I feel like what it comes down to. They wanna try.

Sarah: That's right. You can erase...they definitely wanna try. And you can erase all sorts of resources and protections for people. But you can't eliminate people.

Jennie: Okay. Is there anything else you're keeping an eye on in this? Like I said, it affects so many aspects of LGBTQ life.

Sarah: So many aspects. You know, one of the other things is even though they don't technically call for the elimination of marriage equality, they hint at it. They want the government to privilege the marriages of opposite sex couples. They wanna hold out man-woman couples as the ideal families and that can have ramifications and consequences when we're looking at things like benefits. Or one of the things they've been incredibly clear about is wanting government funded adoption and foster care agencies to be able to turn away same-sex couples and LGBTQ individuals, which really reduces the pool of eligible families. You know, we're at a point in time where there are not enough families to provide for kids who aren't out of home care--and, you know, leave for another day a discussion of how those kids ended up in that situation--but they are currently in that situation and the proposal is to eliminate from the pool loving adults who can help these kids simply because those adults are LGBTQ people.

Jennie: And we already know that marriage equality is in the cross hairs, right? Like, it was explicit in the Dobbs decision of like, hey, there were other rights that were guaranteed based on this equality idea and, like, here they are enumerated, here are the next cases you should be going after. And it was right there.

Sarah: That's right. I mean they are saying out loud the quiet part all of a sudden and in fact inviting challenges to marriage equality. Now, whether or not a majority of the Supreme Court, at least as it's currently made up, would in fact gut marriage equality is a different question than inviting that political vitriol and creating that doorway where somebody thinks they can in fact privilege the marriages of opposite sex couples over same sex couples.

Jennie: Or chipping away the grounds, like you said, like all these other areas that are around it, but related.

Sarah: Yeah, creating all sorts of broad religious exemptions. You know, as we saw with 303 Creative, allowing business owners to turn away couples that they disagree with, and not just same sex couples, but interracial couples, couples of different faiths, really this false vision of what life used to be in the 1950s. I mean, we all know that that's not what it actually looked like, but that is their fantasy of at least what life looked like for wealthy white privileged Americans who were not LGBTQ. That's their fantasy.

Jennie: I think another area that I was like, I mean I guess I shouldn't have been surprised was seeing around LGBTQ, particularly trans people in the military. That was another area that was really highlighted in Project 2025.

Sarah: No matter how any individual feels about the military, we don't want the military to have policies of exclusion. Anybody who has the capacity to serve should have the right to serve if they wanna do so. And this is absolutely a call for eliminating the ability of transgender people to serve in the military. And historically, the military has been a really important place of employment for transgender people. And veteran services cover for folks a lot of the healthcare that they need when they're no longer serving in the military. And so, if you start that ball rolling that you're not eligible to serve because you are transgender, it also suggests that you shouldn't be eligible to get all of your healthcare needs met once you are no longer in the military. And this really ties to some of the other employment pieces as well. You know, they have proposed allowing religious employers to completely violate civil rights law, not follow it at all, and then to allow religious employees to refuse to work with LGBTQ folks, you know, whether that's in our nation's military, whether that's in private employer, or even the government as a whole. The idea that you could just say, mm, "I should have a religious exemption so that I don't have to serve an LGBTQ person." If one of my colleagues files paperwork to update their benefits plan to include their same sex spouse to change the name of their child who has updated their gender marker and their legal name to be able to say, "nope, I just don't even have to do that. I can shove it in a drawer because I disagree with people being LGBTQ." That's all on the table here.

Jennie: I remember the first time that I learned that this was like even something that people could do. I was in college and I had a friend who wanted to become a pharmacist and another one, a friend, other friend who was gonna be a physician's assistant, like, well, I'm not gonna treat anyone who's gay or has HIV, and I'm just like that, you can't do that. That's not a thing. And they're like, no, yeah, I can. And I'm like, how is this a thing? Like, it's just so wild to me that that is something that could even exist.

Sarah: And a lot of the rules that are part of our federal law that allow for religious exemptions around abortion, which are incredibly problematic, have been utilized to sort of bootstrap on gender affirming care. You know, sort of claiming falsely that providing gender affirming care is a form of sterilization. First of all, most gender affirming care does not result in sterilization. And those surgeries that mostly adults undergo that could result in sterilization, it's incidental to the care. Just like somebody might have a cancer treatment that results in sterilization, that's not why somebody's seeking out the care. It's incidental. And if we're gonna open up the idea that any procedure that could result in sterilization, you can have a religious objection to all of a sudden there is a ton of care that folks need that is off the table or at least with certain providers.

Jennie: So, one of the things that I think we hear a lot about in terms of Project 2025 in the repro space is threats to bring back the Comstock Act and what it would mean in terms of abortion. But I've been worrying about it in terms of gender affirming care. Are there other things we should be worried about with Comstock?

Sarah: You're absolutely right to be worried about it. When it comes to gender affirming care, the act itself singles out abortion, but it isn't limited to abortion. It really applies to all sorts of other "offensive materials," "dangerous materials." And I share that concern that they will attempt to interpret it to apply to shipping puberty blockers over state lines or any other ways that they can restrict gender affirming care. Above and beyond that, they are also talking about banning pornography. And to the extent that you're inclined to shrug your shoulders and be like, well, I mean that sucks, but what does that have to do with LGBTQ people? They are adopting an incredibly broad definition of pornography that arguably could include any material, any content that touches on LGBTQ people. I mean, this is what we're seeing in terms of the advancement of that false groomer narrative for LGB people, the false concept of gender ideology. They're really packaging it all up in this concept of pornography and obscene and inappropriate materials. So, this is their hook to banning books not only in libraries but prohibiting major retailers from shipping books across state lines or frankly shipping books at all that contain LGBTQ content.

Jennie: That was like the first thing my brain went to as you were talking about this was like linking it to all of the book bans and like all of the, like, "this book is pornography" and it's like, it has like an a gay relationship in it or something that's so innocuous and so frustrating. And

Sarah: Then to even go after teachers who yeah, have the audacity to read And Tango Makes [Three] about real penguins who'd have both be male and wanted to raise a baby chick together. I mean, that's their review of pornography and it could lead to even wider censorship than what we're already seeing today.

Jennie: Well, as LeVar Burton says, "Read banned books, that's where all the good stuff is."

Sarah: [laughs] And give 'em to a friend.

Jennie: Yes, I also do very much have that concern about-

Sarah: Oh, it's clearly what they intend to do. I mean, like, completely clear.

Jennie: So, unfortunately this all doesn't stay within the US borders. There is also a global aspect and this is extremely problematic, right? Especially right now when you see the anti-rights movement overseas and particularly Iraq attacks on LGBTQ community overseas. What are we seeing on the global side?

Sarah: Well, many of the same individuals who had a hand in writing this proposal, who were consulted on this proposal are going abroad and perpetuating false narratives about LGBTQ people pushing foreign governments into restricting rights, arguably going so far as to criminalize being LGBTQ. And these are the policies that Project 2025 wants for our federal government to adopt, to really walk away from promoting equality for LGBTQ people globally to, in their words, sort of focusing on core issues such as poverty. Even though we know that the two are linked, if you are denied your basic civil and human rights that results in folks experiencing torture, it results in folks experiencing things like forced anal exams, all sorts of discrimination. If you are accused of being gay, you can lose your home in many countries, be rejected from your family, which may not be a government policy in and of itself, but those government policies have harms that go beyond what is directly controlled by the government. And of course, the other thing that they want globally is for embassies to stop celebrating Pride. They want embassies to pretend that nothing is happening, that LGBTQ people, again, don't exist, and not take that moment to be a beacon of hope for LGBTQ people worldwide.

Jennie: This is something we've definitely been following, like I said, a lot of my work is on the global side, so it's like watching it marching overseas and like seeing the same people coming back, seeing who wrote those sections and I'm like, oh yes, recognize so many of those names and seeing the policies they want come back bigger and stronger and worse than before.

Sarah: And a lot of these folks wanna deny people access to PrEP and HIV treatment medications because there is sort of a warped view that providing people sexual and reproductive health protections allows them to be an LGBTQ person or promotes a "homosexual lifestyle." And so, we're condemning people to really negative health outcomes and in the most extreme cases, death, simply because we want to control people's sexual behaviors rather than recognizing that everybody has a right to live a life of dignity and to receive the care that they need.

Jennie: Okay, I feel like that's enough bleak for now. I like to always end episodes looking at what steps the audience can take. What can the audience do in this moment to push back on these things?

Sarah: Well, there's a couple of things that folks can do. First and foremost, and I'm sure I sound like a broken record, but vote voting really, really matters. And there are a lot of races that are incredibly close and tight races. It's critically important that people vote for a president who will have an administration that is supportive of LGBTQ people. And it's incredibly important that people vote for senators, governors, and members of the House of Representatives who will also take these same positions. State attorneys general have incredible power here to challenge bad regulations or to try to dismantle good regulations that are happening. You know, we've seen state attorneys general from Montana to Virginia to Mississippi trying to challenge the regulations that support LGBTQ students in schools. So, those are really powerful positions. I also like to tell people, call a friend, right? That cousin who lives in a state where their vote is going to have a disproportionate effect. The college roommate you haven't talked to in a couple of years, it's time to reconnect. You know, grab your granny, whatever it is. If we're not having these conversations with one another, if we're not trying to break down the silos and the barriers and help people understand why our lives are important and why they matter, people will vote on other issues because they may have a very narrow view of what this election is all about. And so, helping to expand people's viewpoints, I'm not saying, you know, waste your time with the uncle who's never ever gonna move, but there's a lot of people in your life who will and you can talk to on that front. And then of course, weigh in. Regardless of what happens, folks have an opportunity to weigh in through the regulatory process. And the way that that works is that the agency is required to respond to every single issue that is raised. And if they don't, it makes the rule vulnerable to court challenges. So, take the time to weigh in. That kind of civic engagement still matters and members of Congress care too. They really are influenced when folks pick up the phone and call, write an email to their office, you may not see it, but it is happening behind the scenes. It might not mean that a conservative lawmaker votes the way you want them to, but it might mean that they call up the chair of a committee and say, "don't make me take a vote on this. Let's bury this issue." And so, those are really significant ways that people can influence the process.

Jennie: Yeah, and as a friend pointed out to me, if you went weigh in on a policy you don't like and if you are really someone who likes to get in depth on it, they have to track down every citation that you put in there. So, like, cite everything and cite lots of things.

Sarah: That's right. And if you cite, you know, those important documents, whether it's research or a court case, it can help create that record for the court case as well. We've often seen hostile administrations for LGBTQ folks who literally will cite the dissent instead of the majority opinion in cases [laughs]. And so, it's, you know, helpful to point out, like, "actually here's the whole body of case law" or "they cited one study that is an outlier. Here's what the bulk of the studies say on this particular issue."

Jennie: Studies done by reputable people.

Sarah: Exactly. [laughs]

Jennie: Well Sarah, thank you so much for being here today. I had so much fun talking to you about possibly terrible things.

Sarah: [chuckles] It was wonderful to be here with you too. And fingers crossed, Project 2025 never comes to fruition.

Jennie: Okay, y'all, I hope you enjoyed my conversation. It's really important that we learn more about Project 2025. There is so much stuff related to our issues in it. Like I said, we'll be doing a series on it. I'm hoping to do one, looking at domestic repro things that are in Project 2025 and then a global repro/gender section as well. So, we'll have a couple more episodes talking about everything that is in there. And I hope everything is going good with y'all and have a wonderful rest of your week and I'll see you next week. [music outro] If you have any questions, comments, or topics you would like us to cover, always feel free to shoot me an email. You can reach me at jennie@reprosfightback.com or you can find us on social media. We're at @RePROsFightBack on Facebook and Twitter or @reprosfb on Instagram. If you love our podcast and wanna make sure more people find it, take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Or if you wanna make sure to support the podcast, you can also donate on our website at reprofightback.com. Thanks all!