Marina S. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Kansas–

The Trump regime’s vindictive assault on the rights and safety of LGBTQIA+ people and the scientific community reached new levels on Jan. 31, 2025, when the National Institute of Health (NIH) ordered researchers to freeze an adolescent HIV research and prevention program. An NIH representative, via a Zoom call, gave a work stoppage order that specifically targeted research being conducted by Kristi Gamarel (PhD, EdM) and Sari Reisner (ScD, MA) to improve outcomes for nationally oppressed transgender and gender-nonconforming youth. This research freeze is the direct result of Trump’s so-called “Defending Women” executive order banning federal agencies from recognizing transgender identity. The chairs of the research project have also said that two transgender staff members may be fired due to the freeze. This order has coincided with the removal of many HIV resources from federal websites, whether they make any mention of gender or not. 

An additional detail was reported by an anonymous state health worker to the Washington Post: health workers using the National Violent Death Reporting System, a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) program that collects data about violent deaths, including suicide, will no longer be allowed to identify victims as transgender. The Trump regime not only wants to erase transgender and gender-nonconforming people from public life, but it is now doing all it can to make sure that it is as difficult as possible to accurately study violent crime perpetrated against the transgender community. The danger of this is underscored by a study published by the UCLA School of Law that shows transgender people are four times more likely than cisgender people to be the victims of violent crime. 

On the same day as the NIH research freeze was ordered, the CDC ordered its scientists to withdraw papers that were set to publish so that they could be reviewed by the Trump administration. The sweeping order, which originated from the agency’s chief science officer, aims to ensure that no “forbidden terms” will appear in any CDC papers in consideration for publication. According to science communicator Dr. Jeremy Faust, these “forbidden terms” include but are by no means limited to “gender,” “transgender,” “pregnant person,” “LGBT,” “transsexual,” and “nonbinary.” The order also stated that if any scientist employed by the CDC has authored or co-authored any papers using those terms originating outside the agency, those agency members will be required to remove their name from the paper. Dr. Faust has called this latest edict an “expansion of an emerging censorship regime” at the CDC that is extending beyond the bounds of what Trump considers “woke ideology” to all aspects of medical research. As a result, an atmosphere of chaos, fear, and uncertainty has gripped researchers caught in this regime. 

The Trump administration’s silencing of scientific research related to the LGBTQIA+ community has many antecedents, from the Nazi raids on the research library of the Institute for Sexual Sciences in Berlin, to the UK’s notorious Section 28 provision banning the depiction of “homosexuality as a pretended family relationship” in schools. Incidentally it is worth noting that the legacy of Section 28 is still alive and well as its wording is largely similar to that used in the wave of new anti-LGBTQIA+ curriculum laws that were introduced in several US states starting in 2022. The queer community as well as open scientific inquiry have always been favorite targets of fascist violence and state suppression. 

Then, there is the Feb. 13, 2025 confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services. In addition to being an outspoken anti-vaccine activist, Kennedy has also actively promoted AIDS denialism – the pseudoscientific claim that HIV does not cause AIDS. In his 2021 book entitled “The Real Anthony Fauci,” Kennedy, while claiming to not take a position on the relationship between HIV and AIDS, heavily quotes Peter Duesberg, a German-American molecular biologist well known for his AIDS denialism. In 1996, Duseberg wrote the book “Inventing The AIDS Virus,” in which he asserted that HIV is a harmless virus, and that AIDS is instead caused by recreational drug use among the homosexual community, particularly alkyl nitrites (commonly known as poppers), as well as by antiretroviral medications like zidovudine (AZT) which are used to treat AIDS. In 2000, Duseberg was a prominent member of an advisory panel on HIV and AIDS to South African president Thabo Mbeki. This panel was convened to add scientific credibility to the support of the Mbeki administration for AIDS denialism and its opposition to providing antiretroviral treatment for pregnant HIV positive people in South Africa. Two separate studies have concluded that the public health policies of the Mbeki administration, which were influenced in part by Duseberg’s writing and advice, were responsible for 330,000 AIDS deaths in the country. 

Despite all this, nearly every one of Duseberg’s false and dangerous claims about AIDS has been repeated by RFK Jr. In a video that resurfaced in 2023, Kennedy blamed the early AIDS epidemic on the behavior of gay men. “There’s a lot of people that said it is not a virus,” said Kennedy. “The virus is a passenger virus, and these people are dying mainly because of poppers. A hundred percent of the people who died in the first thousand [with] AIDS were people who were addicted to poppers, which are known to cause Kaposi sarcoma [A common symptom of HIV] in rats. And they were people who were part of a gay lifestyle where they were burning the candle at both ends.”

It is important to also note that Kennedy’s promotion of medical falsehoods related to the queer community does not end at AIDS denialism. In an interview with right-wing political commentator Jordan Peterson, Kennedy expressed his belief that the existence of transgender children is due to exposure to a “soup of toxic chemicals.” Kennedy went so far as to quote a 2010 study of the herbicide atrazine’s effect on male frogs to justify the false claim that the chemical causes feminization in humans, a claim popularized by fellow conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. This is the man who now oversees the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

The recent homophobic and transphobic policies adopted by the current administration, the confirmation of Kennedy, and the absolute failure of the “opposition” Democratic Party to halt or even delay these developments have left many in the LGBTQIA+ community with feelings of helplessness and despair.

In the face of such overt oppression, how are we to mount our opposition?

“Working-class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected.”

V. I. Lenin, “What Is to Be Done?”

The American Party of Labor condemns in the strongest terms the efforts of Trump and his pack of fascist thugs to erase the existence of LGBTQIA+ people and to paper over the violence they experience. As scientific socialists we recognize that open scientific inquiry is a critical aspect of a functioning society, and we therefore also voice our opposition to any attempt at censorship of the scientific community on political, ideological, or any other grounds. Finally, we reaffirm our commitment to resist, using any means at our disposal, the fascist onslaught being perpetrated by the Trump regime.

Categories: Health Care, LGBTQIA+, U.S. News