“Donald Trump and his cronies are willing to commit gender genocide against the LGBTIQ+ community, like the Nazis did to the Jewish people in the 1940s,” says Bamby Salcedo, president of The TransLatin@ Coalition, the largest organization Trans in the United States.
Nearly four out of every 100 Alaskans (3.7%) belong to the LGBTIQ+ community, according to the Gallup Daily Tracking survey conducted by the Williams Institute and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). This is one of the lowest percentages in the country, with only 13 states in the Union having a lower proportion of their respective populations.
Of the 3.7% in Alaska, more than one-third (34%) have dependent children, and of those taking care of children, 14% have incomes of less than $24,000 per year. A very similar proportion (13%) suffers from food insecurity.
The main urgencies for the LGBTIQ+ collective are related to covering their most basic needs: health, child support, social and labor integration and security for their physical integrity.
The latter is because the collective is one of those who suffer most from hate crimes. But also “legislative violence”, according to Amnesty International, which denounces that, since the beginning of the year 2023, in the United States there has been an “unparalleled setback in the human rights of LGTBI people.” A trend that has multiplied and strengthened to its maximum extremes since Donald Trump took office on January 20.
Let us not forget that one of the first “executive orders” signed by Trump, after being sworn in as president, was to “Restore biological truth.” That is, to establish that only male and female genders are recognized, erasing all other identities.
Trump’s homophobic and transphobic discourse does not go into a vacuum. In the United States, it has been documented that the LGBTIQ+ population is nine times more likely than the non-LGBTIQ+ population to be victims of violent hate crimes. In addition, the passage of state legislation against the LGBTIQ+ community continues to rise.
“Trump’s move fosters a climate of intolerance and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex sexual diversity, and even encourages violence against these individuals,” says Amnesty International.
“We will resist and move forward, as we have always done throughout history,” says Bamby Salcedo proudly.
For Samarys Seguinot Medina, director of Environmental Health at Alaska Community Action on Toxics and a lesbian, “the growing trend to attack the achievements and rights of LGBTIQ+ people in the Americas will be met with fierce resistance and solidarity, from North to South of the continent.” Samarys tells Sol de Medianoche that “this political persecution will exacerbate many mental health problems in our community, because it means that the federal government is ignoring an important part of the American nation, as if it wants to force us back into the closet.”
