Breaking Down Project 2025: A Massive Loss for Queer Rights

In 2023, a conservative think tank called the Heritage Foundation published Project 2025, a document that outlines the right-wing game plan for the next conservative president. In this document, the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender” are collectively mentioned over 120 times. Wading through Project 2025’s whopping 900 pages can be overwhelming, so let’s break down a few quotes. What, exactly, would Project 2025 mean for LGBTQ rights?

One of Project 2025’s many goals already begins to paint an alarming picture for queer communities: Project 2025 aims to “Rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics” (584). In other words, the Heritage Foundation wants to legalize discrimination against queer people. Businesses would have the legal right to turn away queer clients. Laws protecting you from losing your job because you’re gay or transgender would fly out the window. And queer people wouldn’t be the only ones affected—straight and cisgender women would also lose protection against sex-based discrimination. The Heritage Foundation also tells us on page 478 that it wants to pass the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act, which would offer adoption agencies legal protection if they decided, on the basis of religious beliefs about marriage, that gay couples or prospective single parents should not be allowed to have kids.

That said, even a quick skim of Project 2025 shows you that it plans to hit transgender communities hardest. The Heritage Foundation not only plans to legalize discrimination against queer people, it wants to “Direct agencies to refocus enforcement of sex discrimination laws [...] on the biological binary meaning of ‘sex’” (585). In other words, it wants to enforce legal discrimination against trans people specifically. Under Project 2025, trans people would, once again, be barred from military service. The government would implement laws banning trans people from participating in sports or using the right bathroom in public spaces. 

And discrimination isn’t the worst outcome trans communities could face if Project 2025 becomes a reality. As early as page 5, for example, Project 2025 claims that pornography is “manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology.” They equate being trans and “trans ideology”—i.e., telling trans stories and speaking positively about trans people—with porn. Moreover, in the same paragraph: “Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned” (5). If you’re transgender and making content talking about your life experiences, or if you’re a writer writing a story about a trans character, your work could be considered pornographic simply for being trans. Under Project 2025, this would be a crime that could send you to prison.

Project 2025 also outlines plans to cut funding for gender-affirming care, stating that the Health Resources and Services Administration “should withdraw all guidance encouraging Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program service providers to provide controversial ‘gender transition’ procedures or ‘gender-affirming care’” (485). Without this funding, a lot of trans people would lose access to the hormone supplements and medications they need, and trans people aren’t the only ones who use gender-affirming care. Cisgender women going through menopause or women who have had a hysterectomy often take estrogen supplements. Cisgender men often take medications to help with erectile dysfunction. This also counts as gender-affirming care, and providers that offer these services could lose funding under Project 2025.

Instead, the Heritage Foundation believes the National Institutes of Health “should fund studies into the [...] negative effects of cross-sex interventions, including ‘affirmation,’ puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries” (462). In short, they’re trying to prove that transitioning is dangerous, that even “affirmation”—simply calling someone by the right name and pronouns—is harmful. They’re intentionally looking for a negative outcome to gender-affirming care. There’s a reason studies like this don’t exist already: first, if a scientist is going in only looking for negative outcomes, then the study is skewed from the start, and the results will be biased. Second, the research that has already been done on gender-affirming care tells us that trans people on hormones are happier, with fewer symptoms of depression and a better self-image. 

This attack on trans rights would also have a huge impact on trans children. In a section discussing parental rights in education—in a similar vein to Florida’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill—Project 2025 states that “No public education employee or contractor shall use a name to address a student other than the name listed on a student’s birth certificate [or] use a pronoun in addressing a student that is different from that student’s biological sex without the written permission of a student’s parents or guardians. No public institution may require an education employee or contractor to use a pronoun that does not match a person’s biological sex” (346). Not only would legislation like this be annoying to enforce—teachers wouldn’t legally be allowed to use nicknames for their students—but Project 2025 would essentially legalize, and even require, transphobia in public schools. Public school teachers would be forced to deadname and misgender trans students or out them to their parents. Transphobic teachers who refuse to use a trans student’s pronouns would be protected by law. A law like this would be incredibly dangerous for transgender kids. The Trevor Project emphasizes just how important a supportive school environment is for suicide prevention in LGBTQ children. Queer kids are already at a higher risk of suicide, especially when they lack social support, and Project 2025 would legally strip that support away.

Project 2025 makes it clear from page 1 that it doesn’t support what it calls the “LGBTQ+ agenda.” It calls the rainbow flag, a symbol of queer pride and community, “divisive” and argues that the flag should be banned from classrooms. According to Project 2025, the government “should proudly state that men and women are biological realities [...] and that married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure” (489). There’s a clear and alarming bias against the LGBTQ community here. The people who wrote Project 2025 believe that transgender people don’t exist. They believe any family that doesn’t consist of a married man, woman, and their children is unnatural.

And, as always, this bias against queer people (and anyone whose family isn’t nuclear, including single or divorced parents and extended relatives who have taken a child in) is framed as concern for the safety and well-being of children. Drag queens, Project 2025 complains, are invading school libraries! Don’t you know liberals want to do “sex-change surgeries on minors”—something which no doctor or legislator has ever actually suggested doing? This idea that queerness is dangerous to little kids, or that seeing queerness could infect children with “toxic” LGBTQ ideas, is queerphobic. Project 2025 wants to use it as an excuse to legalize discrimination, to ban gay couples from adopting, to imprison trans people for talking about their lives or to ban people from getting the gender-affirming care that they need and deserve. Project 2025 would be a huge loss for queer rights if it became a reality, which is a terrifying prospect for LGBTQ people across the country. 

So, what can we do about it? If you’re a citizen of the United States and legally able, you can vote. Vote every chance you get, in every election, every year. 

Project 2025 isn’t Donald Trump’s plan, but it was written and endorsed by over 100 of his staff members, and Trump’s Agenda47 uses very similar anti-trans talking points. Election Day this year is Tuesday, November 5. Project 2025 and the impact it could have will be an important factor to keep in mind.