We stand strong for LGBTQ+ equality

Administrations change, but our values and support of the LGBTQ+ community are unwavering.

June 12, 2025

Clair Lofthouse

Content Manager

Two years ago, we wrote about our concerns with the growing prevalence of hateful laws targeting LGBTQ+ people across the United States. We placed this in the context of our public-facing values and unwavering support for the LGBTQ+ community. This year, we‘ve watched, aghast, as the current US administration has amped up homophobic, transphobic and anti-drag attacks to unconscionable levels.

Over the past six months, the efforts at intimidation and erasure have piled up at an astonishing rate. Despite only reflecting Trump’s individual actions and not the administration’s as a whole, GLAAD’s Trump Accountability Tracker catalogues the President’s LGBTQ+ obsession, now amounting to hundreds of attacks. They range from the petty, like ordering the name of the HSNS Harvey Milk to be changed, intentionally timing the announcement to coincide with the beginning of Pride Month; to the inane, like the creation of a new Title IX Special Investigations Team focused on keeping transgender women and girls from sports teams, despite fewer than 10 known active trans athletes in the US, “endangering all girls as they risk invasive genital exams and other expensive ‘verification’”; to the insidious, like removing trans people from crime data surveys, despite trans people being more than four times as likely to be victims of violent crime, leaving policymakers, researchers and advocates unable to track the victimization of LGBTQ+ people.

“Give Lively remains fiercely and resolutely supportive of the LGBTQ+ community, as a partner to nonprofits who help queer people and as a proud employer of queer people,” states David DeParolesa, CEO of Give Lively. “As a member of the LGBTQ+ community myself, I believe it's critical that we stand up, speak out and not back down in the face of hateful rhetoric and questionable legal attacks. Give Lively has always been a values-based organization and that does not change as the administration changes. We are here for the queer community, now and in the future.”

It should not be considered admirable to maintain outspoken support for the LGBTQ+ community. It should be the norm; there should be no need for boardroom discussions about it or the risk of sanctions. The political party that once touted small government and personal freedom should not be watching over our shoulders at the urinal, muzzling our teachers or monitoring which flags decorate classroom walls. It should not be banning books that document or critique the darkest moments of our country’s history.

But we know ‘should’ has nothing to do with it, and neither do morals, religion, values, safety or freedom. These recent attacks stem from the belief in a zero-sum world where the only way some people can feel big is to diminish others.

And yet, Pride has momentum. More Americans than ever are identifying as LGBTQ+, reaching 9.3% of the population in 2023, and representation in local, state and federal government is growing too, with a net gain of 107 LGBTQ+ elected officials nationwide in 2025, including Air Force veteran Gina Ortiz Jones, the first out LGBTQ+ person elected as mayor of San Antonio, Texas. Studies continue to show same-sex couples raise happy and healthy kids. Oregon’s House of Representatives approved a bill this week that would prevent anti-LGBTQ+ book bans in schools. In Montana, the Missoula City Council approved a resolution recognizing the Pride flag as the only official city flag, getting around the ban on flying the flag on government property, inspired by similar actions in Boise, Idaho, and Salt Lake City, Utah.

So here we are, in 2025, still needing to advocate for the hard-won legal rights of oppressed people. Diversity, equity and inclusion, which should be the default, feel like no more than toeholds in a crumbling status quo already far short of where we should be as a country.

As ever, though, when the government falters, the people rally. They organize and rise to lead the charge. Yesterday, today and for all tomorrows, Give Lively and its member nonprofits are there. Together, we link arms and, with the strength of many identities, gender expressions, colors, cultures and religions, we step forward, heads held high, proud and full of Pride.