Youth's Lives Every Day
LGBTQ+ history is American history. Our community deserves a bright future in this country, too.
By: Jaymes Black (they/she/he), CEO of The Trevor Project
Today, we honor the 57th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, an infamous moment in American LGBTQ+ history. On June 28, 1969, police raided The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City, and our community – led by LGBTQ+ people of color and transgender women – fought back.
While this wasn’t the first time that LGBTQ+ people fought back against injustice (and it would be far from the last), this incident served as a catalyst for a new spirit of LGBTQ+ protest, activism, and organizing that rippled throughout the United States, and the world.
Six days from now, America turns 250 years old. Pride doesn’t share the summer with Independence Day, Pride leads America to its birthday. That is not a coincidence. That is a sequence.
America has always needed LGBTQ+ people to survive, sometimes literally. At our founding, a gay man helped win the Revolution at Valley Forge. Shortly after our 200th anniversary, the rainbow Pride flag was born from looking at the stars and stripes and saying, “we belong here too”. And at 250, we are still here. Still building. Still refusing to be written out of the story of this country. The founding documents weren’t a destination. They were an invitation.
For 250 years, queer and transgender people have been knocking on the door — and kicking it down when knocking wasn’t enough. And we will never stop kicking. Not until every LGBTQ+ young person knows they are not just welcome in this country’s future, but they are essential to it.
A few weeks ago during an interview I was asked: “What is the American dream?” I’ve been thinking about that ever since. So I want to share that vision with you. Imagine, it’s 28 years from now. The year 2054. We are all a little bit older — and we still look fabulous. It’s two years after the 2052 election, and we are still celebrating yet another queer president.
We are a country where every LGBTQ+ young person — no matter where they live, no matter how rural their zip code — knows they are safe, and knows they are never alone. We are a society where the talents of our youth are no longer wasted fighting for basic rights, but instead propelling humanity forward — in science, in art, in leadership, in every field that shapes what it means to be human. We are an America where LGBTQ+ young people know their dreams have no limits — where they transform the world instead of merely fighting to survive in it.
I know it’s hard to see that future from where we’re standing today. This moment is difficult. We are witnessing an attempt from anti-LGBTQ+ advocates to systematically turn back the progress that the LGBTQ+ community has made in this country. In particular, in the last few decades, anti-LGBTQ+ extremists have moved significantly further into the mainstream. They have targeted our movement’s infrastructure – from our funding streams, to our legal protections, to our research, to our organizations, to our stories.
Our current environment of anti-LGBTQ+ hostility is taking a real and measurable toll on the health and safety of LGBTQ+ young people. 90% of LGBTQ+ young people said recent LGBTQ+ politics caused them stress or anxiety. More than 8 in 10 LGBTQ+ young people have reported noticing harmful rhetoric around LGBTQ+ people. The hostility is directly contributing to a public health crisis of suicide among LGBTQ+ youth living in the U.S.
And while the threats against our community are alarming, they are not new. We’ve seen this same playbook in action for more than 50 years. Today, we are seeing retooled iterations of decades old attacks that rely on fear, stereotypes, unfamiliarity, and othering us. This is a challenging moment. But it is also a clarifying moment for our community. A moment of reckoning and one of awakening. A moment where a cut-the-bullshit mentality is required. At this moment, our evolution is non-negotiable.
So, right now, I want to offer a call to my fellow LGBTQ+ community members, organizations, allies, and supporters to join me in saying, “No more. This is our country, too. This country belongs to the LGBTQ+ youth we serve – not to the small group of folks who wish they didn’t exist.” LGBTQ+ young people are not political pawns. They are not collateral damage in someone else’s culture war. They are ours, and we are theirs. This is their world too.
As I reflect on the more than half a century since the Stonewall Riots, there are two truths I’m grappling with: We have made significant progress as a community since 1969. And we are facing a renewed, heightened hostility that most acutely targets our transgender and nonbinary community members. This hostility requires an urgent response – and it takes all of us, working together, as a community to respond adequately.
Yet, despite the challenges we face, I am reminded that every attempt to erase us has only made us more visible. Every attempt to silence us has only made us louder. Every attempt to push us to the margins has only revealed where the heart of this country truly beats. It beats in the hearts of LGBTQ+ young people living in every corner of this country. When I think about the last 57 years since Stonewall, I can’t help but focus on the next 57 years, too.
What will the future look like for the youngest members of our LGBTQ+ community? What will their world look like five decades from now? What will give them hope? What will be their obstacles to overcome?
So, let’s take this moment to reflect and re-center ourselves on all the work that lies ahead. Let’s take a collective breath. Take a collective beat. And then get to work, together, to create the community and the country that our LGBTQ+ young people deserve.
