DJ Koessler: The election is over – but the fight for LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms is as important as ever
By DJ Koessler
I came out to my parents days after the 2016 election, in a quiet bar in Brooklyn, just blocks away from Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters.
I hadn’t planned on coming out. But, like so many Americans, I also hadn’t planned on losing.
My parents had just arrived from Michigan, and like me, they were stunned by defeat. They have always been fiercely supportive, so looking back, I shouldn’t have been surprised that my dad’s first reaction was to grab my hand and tell me he loved me, or that my mom’s first words were, “Well, that’s not an excuse for me not to become a grandparent.” But like so many gay men who came of age in the early aughts, I was raised in a world that wasn’t built for me.
I remember the casual homophobia and brutal violence of an intolerant world. I remember “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” George W. Bush campaigning on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, and Matthew Shepard. Like so many, for too many reasons, I hid. Despite all of that, I’ve always found hope in our nation’s capacity for change. I clung to that hope in 2016 and I’m clinging to it now. I hope you are, too.
Our country has made tremendous progress on gay rights and cultural acceptance in a relatively short amount of time. The threat of losing that progress is what compelled me to come out in 2016. Now, as we accept the results of the 2024 election, it’s incumbent on all of us to be visible and vigilant. We face hostile politicians hellbent on silencing us and rolling back our fundamental rights, as well as allies willing to walk away out of political convenience. For gay and bisexual men and women, the risks are high. For nonbinary and transgender people, the risks are incalculable. While many of us in the gay community have the added benefit of fighting in a world with growing cultural acceptance, the trans community does not.
This is a crucible moment for the Democratic Party, the only major U.S. political party with a record of using its power to advance LGBTQ+ rights. Rebuilding the Democratic Party — and winning — begins with a new approach to leadership and how we tell our stories.
Over the last year, we’ve watched Republican lawmakers across the country weaponize their power against the trans community. According to the ACLU, Republicans advanced more than 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in state capitals in 2024 alone. The majority of that legislation targeted trans youth, and all of it was designed to incite a culture war in an already deeply divided country.
Trans people represent less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, and according to the Human Rights Campaign, just 12 to 14 percent of transgender students play sports. There are probably more Republicans legislating against trans youth than there are trans youth wanting to play sports. Republicans understood the calculation. Threatening the safety and well-being of trans kids will not put more food on the table for working families, but it will distract from the Republican Party’s deeply unpopular policy positions.
Republicans were never asking for a common-sense debate. From the outset, their objective was to paint Democrats as out-of-touch extremists, and they were correct in assuming Democrats would not have a clear and forceful response to their scapegoating.
Republicans understand the theater of policy-making and modern media. Unlike Democrats, Republicans have spent years building a media ecosystem that serves to proliferate their messaging, all while Americans lose trust in flagship media institutions and social media algorithms favor outrage.
Anti-trans messaging was at the core of Donald Trump’s closing argument. According to Ad Impact, the Trump campaign and supporting groups spent nearly $215 million vilifying transgender people on TV alone (that’s not accounting for digital advertising). In the final stretch of the election, more than 41% of pro-Trump ads focused on anti-trans messaging, attacking Vice President Harris for comments she made in 2019. The Harris campaign failed to respond appropriately. Harris did not campaign on trans issues; Trump ran against Harris on trans issues. And his strategy worked. The top reason for not choosing Harris among swing voters was that she was “focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class,” according to post-mortem polling conducted by the public research firm Blueprint.
Now Democrats are left to pick up the pieces.
This is not a moment for the Democratic Party to shy away from its core values or its commitment to the LGBTQ+ community, especially trans and nonbinary Americans. This is a moment for the party to maximize its impact in the places where it has power and build a media ecosystem strong enough to compete with President Trump’s cultural influence.
On Inauguration Day, Democrats will control far more governor’s mansions, Attorneys General offices, and state legislatures than we did when Trump first took office. In fact, Democrats will hold a governing trifecta in 15 states, which includes two of the largest economies in the world by GDP. That provides Democratic state lawmakers with the power to legislate aggressively and wield cultural influence in ways they previously have not. And with a Trump trifecta looming over Washington, states with Democratic trifectas will need to meet the moment. As lawmakers in the “laboratories of democracy,” Democrats in blue trifectas should not only blunt the worst impacts of Trump’s anti-LGBTQ+ agenda and protect LGBTQ+ rights, but offer the nation a clear alternative.
Imagine if Democrats in blue trifectas leveraged their majorities like the Republicans who used theirs to legislate against trans youth. Let’s take a page from our political opponents and use that model for good. Democrats should seize the opportunity to not only counter Project 2025 and Trump’s dangerous policies but respond with bold, common-sense solutions that push the cultural conversation and offer bright, blue beacons of hope for the nation.
While Democratic state lawmakers get to work, funders and strategists should strive for a proliferation of Democratically-aligned media channels. That means continuing to invest in progressive content creators and media projects, as well as creating new programs that provide culturally-relevant entry points for political conversations.
As a Democratic strategist who worked for Pete Buttigieg in 2020, I firmly believe Democrats can stand with LGBTQ+ Americans, especially the trans community, without alienating the wider electorate. We can reject identity politics without asking LGBTQ+ Americans to keep their identities secret. We should tell our version of the American story and deliver on a patriotic vision for the country grounded in freedom, security, and prosperity. After all, we’re not just up against a right-wing media ecosystem and traditional news outlets susceptible to Trump’s intimidation, we’re up against an aspiring autocrat with a grip on the bully pulpit and a desire to control the flow of information in our country. If Democrats allow Trump to pour concrete over today’s media landscape, our stories stand little chance of breaking through.
In the days following Donald Trump’s victory, the Trevor Project’s phones were overwhelmed by LGBTQ+ kids desperate for a lifeline. It’s crushing to consider what led those kids to pick up the phone: years of wrestling with their identities and the expectations of an intolerant world, months of political ads designed to stoke hatred, fear, and division; despair about the future.
Those kids need hope, and they need a political party that will fight for them.
I remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach when my boss, Hillary Clinton, lost in 2016. I’m sure you felt it, too. That election pulled me out of the closet and pushed millions of us into the streets. It sparked a resistance that mobilized the Democratic Party and led to victories in 2018.
This time will be different.
During her concession speech, Vice President Harris echoed an old adage: Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. The tough and uncertain road ahead demands a new approach. And it demands LGBTQ+ visibility.
DJ Koessler is the founder of Koessler Strategies, an alum of the Clinton 2016 and Buttigieg 2020 campaigns, and an advisor to political candidates, causes, companies, and cultural figures.
