For a Montgomery County resident named Paul, the election of Donald Trump to a second presidential term feels personal. Paul, who agreed to speak to MoCo360 if only his first name was used, and his husband are expecting a baby girl through in-vitro fertilization and the use of a surrogate in two weeks — and he is worried about the status of his parental rights.
“If mine and my husband’s relationship is no longer federally recognized, and I have to go to a hospital with my daughter in Texas, for example … are you going to try and take her away from me?” he said. “I don’t know how to raise a kid in this [political] environment.”
It’s concerns like Paul’s that have motivated MoCo Pride Center Executive Director Phillip Alexander Downie as he grapples with how to best support the local LGBTQ+ community since the Nov. 5 election.
“One of the things that I tell people is I know that we are so tired of having to be resilient all the time, but unfortunately right now, we have to be as we anticipate these new challenges that we are going to face from an incoming administration who unfortunately has been unfriendly towards queer, trans and gender expansive people,” Downie told MoCo360.
Advocates including Downie and other LGBTQ+ county residents are bracing for potential legal challenges on the federal level regarding civil liberties guaranteed to the LGBTQ+ community under existing laws. One of those longstanding advocates, the MoCo Pride Center is an nonprofit organization that promotes health, well-being and offers services and social events for the local LGBTQ+ community.
Trump has expressed his support for ending certain rights for transgender Americans, according to The Washington Post, and previously expressed disappointment at the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in 2015.
Project 2025, an initiative from conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation that outlines proposed changes for the incoming Trump administration, takes a more explicit approach to these issues, according to Axios. The initiative’s agenda proposes stripping anti-discrimination laws for LGBTQ+ Americans, including workplace protections. It also calls for ending federal funding for LGBTQ+ health initiatives and is particularly hostile about trans health care access.
Local advocates and residents who spoke to MoCo360 said they believe LGBTQ+ people are more vulnerable after the Dobbs v. Jackson decision that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, as the decision referenced the possibility of overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
Because of the uncertainty of legal changes, local LGBTQ+ organization leaders told MoCo360 that it’s difficult to know what to tell the members of their community.
“I really wish we were in a place where we could say everything would totally be fine, but we don’t have specific answers on what will happen,” Lee Blinder, director of Trans Maryland, told MoCo360 in an interview.
Blinder leads the state’s largest name change program for transgender residents as part of Trans Maryland’s work. Blinder, who now lives in the Baltimore area, started the organization that advocates for the trans community and helps connect trans Marylanders with resources, after finding a lack of support while living in Montgomery County. Since Trump won the election, Blinder has been working to connect as many LGBTQ+ Maryland residents, particularly trans people, with legal resources as possible.
“People are really struggling right now, they’re wondering what will happen,” Blinder said of the trans people they’ve worked with since the election. “They’re worried about legal rights, their legal status and access to gender-affirming care.”
State laws provide protection
Blinder said they’re grateful to live in Maryland, where LGBTQ+ rights and particularly trans rights have been codified through General Assembly legislation signed into law by Gov. Wes Moore (D), who pledged in 2023 to make Maryland a trans sanctuary state. Many of the laws passed recently were sponsored by Montgomery County lawmakers, who have been leaders in the LGBTQ+ political arena.
The Trans Shield Act, which went into effect in October, was sponsored by House Majority Leader Del. David Moon (D-Dist. 20), who represents Silver Spring. The new law added gender-affirming care to the state’s definition of legally protected health care. It protects Maryland residents and patients who live outside of the state who receive gender-affirming care within the state, as well as their physicians, from legal action and prosecution for receiving or providing that care.
In 2023, the General Assembly passed the Trans Health Equity Act sponsored by Del. Anne Kaiser (D-Dist.14) with co-sponsoring support from the majority of the Montgomery County delegation. It was signed into law by Moore and went into effect later in 2023. The law requires Maryland Medicaid to cover gender-affirming care for trans residents, enabling Marylanders without private insurance to obtain comparable gender-affirming care.
Kaiser represents parts of Olney, Laytonsville and Damascus, and was one of the most prominent proponents of legalizing marriage equality in Maryland, coming out as a lesbian during 2004 testimony to the General Assembly on a bill that would allow same-sex partners to make medical decisions for each other.
Despite these protections, LGBTQ+ Marylanders still see some cause for concern under a Trump administration and a Republican-led Congress due to potential changes in federal law, Blinder said.
“We are hopeful that the current laws will stand, but we don’t know what will happen, and that really is hard to not be able to reassure people,” Blinder said. “There is nothing more heartbreaking than facing your community that you’re a part of, and saying ‘we are not sure what will happen.’ ”
What the laws say
Marriage equality became state law in 2013, after it was passed by Maryland voters during the 2012 election. This means that if the Supreme Court were to overturn the Obergefell v. Hodges decision on marriage equality and leave it to states to enact legislation, Marylanders in same-sex marriages would likely be protected. But advocates are concerned that the lack of codification in the state constitution could invite problems in the event of a federal ban.
“While Maryland provides strong protections for same-sex couples under state law, those protections are based on statutory law rather than constitutional amendments. This means recognizing same-sex marriage isn’t guaranteed in the state constitution,” Downie said. “The absence of codification in Maryland’s constitution is a concern as we see a pattern of harmful legislation and federal protections being stripped away for our most vulnerable communities.”
Jamie Grace Alexander is an organizer with Trans Rights Advocacy Coalition of Maryland (TRAC), an organization that advocates for the rights of transgender Marylanders and lobbied for legislation such as the Trans Shield Act and the Trans Health Equity Act in the General Assembly.
Alexander said she wants to reassure residents that the drafters of the state legislation kept in mind the potential for changes under administrations hostile toward LGBTQ+ protections.
“We were grateful to have protections pushed forward by Gov. Wes Moore, but we weren’t satisfied with the level of protection that an executive order had, and that’s why we pursued additional protections legislatively,” Alexander said.
Alexander said the Trans Health Equity Act’s provision regarding insurance coverage in particular offers trans residents a resource as they may consider moving ahead on gender-affirming surgeries.
“We have that a lot of people who in this moment are evaluating … or moving up their timelines for surgery, and a lot more people are able to move up their timeline because of the reduced financial access barrier because of increased insurance coverage,” Alexander said.
The Trans Shield Act would offer an additional legal framework to protect gender-affirming care access, although Alexander said it is more focused on protecting physicians.
“In the language, it says that gender-affirming care is legally protected health care, so that immediately would put Maryland law at odds with whatever federal [ban] could come out of that,” Alexander said.
While advocates are concerned about vulnerabilities in Maryland’s laws, those laws offer a security for LGBTQ+ residents that many red states do not. Downie and Blinder said they anticipate that LGBTQ+ people in other states may come to the Montgomery County as political refugees.
In anticipation of this, the MoCo Pride Center is creating a program called The New Underground, which is aimed at providing support LGBTQ+ individuals and families who may be in crisis or seeking a new home.
“Maryland and Montgomery County are sanctuary places, but at the same time, people shouldn’t have to flee,” Downie said. “We want to create resources to ensure that everyone not only feels safe but is actually safe.”
Preemptive measures
Lee said LGBTQ+ residents, even in blue states and counties, are still taking preemptive measures. Blinder recommended trans residents who desire a legal name change or gender marker change to complete that process prior to Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration and to also apply for a passport with their affirming name and gender marker. Trans Maryland offers a free name change service to help trans Marylanders receive assistance and resources in that process. An intake form is available on the organization’s website.
Blinder also recommended that LGBTQ+ residents of all identities fill out advance directives, documents that allow an individual to grant a trusted person the right to make decisions about the person’s health care if the individual is unable to do so. These documents could include a living will or a legal form granting medical power of attorney. Blinder said it is particularly important for same-sex couples to create these legal documents.
For LGBTQ+ couples who have children, Blinder said families should consider second parent adoption, a process that allows a non-biological parent to adopt their partner’s child and provides both parents with equal legal rights. Even if the couple were married when they had the child, Blinder said that doesn’t mean a non-biological parent is legally considered the child’s parent in all cases. Blinder advised that families see whether they need to take this additional step.
Paul said and his husband are planning to take that step.
“We’re planning to adopt our own child,” Paul said. “Part of it feels like paranoid speculation, and part of it feels like it’s completely based in fact. It’s just scary.”
And if an LGBTQ+ couple is not ready for marriage but wants to ensure each partner has some legal rights, Blinder recommended looking into Maryland’s Domestic Partnership Registry, which became law in October 2023. The law allows domestic partners to file paperwork with the state that confers some legal rights to each other in the event one partner dies, although it does not cover all the rights that marriage would.
Dr. Divya Shenoy, a family physician at Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, D.C., which operates a clinic in Gaithersburg, said the organization is still providing access to gender-affirming care both in person and via telehealth, even though it is experiencing a high volume of patients.
She said the organization is planning for how it can support current county residents as well as people who may move to the county for LGBTQ+ health care.
“We’re really trying to work on building our capacity clinically with hiring and staffing to make sure that we can serve the patients that need to come,” Shenoy said. “I think telehealth is a way that really allows us to expand our reach.”
The path forward
Blinder said they are inspired in such uncertain times by the ways in which they’re seeing the local LGBTQ+ community come together.
“People are doing a lot of really powerful organizing. It is an impossibly stressful time, but it is also a time when people are really stepping up within the community,” Blinder said.
The MoCo Pride Center has lacked the funding to build a brick-and-mortar center, but Downie said there has been movement toward this goal, which he hopes would better support residents. He’s hoping the county government would consider the political environment and invest more funding into the organization. The organization receives funding through donations and the county government, which often refers individuals to the nonprofit for services and support.
“We are providing as many resources to people as possible. We’re always at capacity, essentially, and so like, having community members to really show up and really be allies in this moment is more important than ever,” Downie said. “Our work does not start and end in an election cycle. It is constant. There has been a silent genocide going on around the world of transgender, gender expansive and queer folks.”
Downie said while he anticipates a challenging four years for LGBTQ+ people while Trump is in office, his message to members of his community in Montgomery County is “it is OK to just live.”
“I tell queer young people that it is completely OK to just live an ordinary life. We exist in every facet of society. We exist in every place, in every religion, we don’t all need to be activists,” Downie said. “But now we all need to be advocates for ourselves and for those who are around us and to ensure that we are safe. Right now, just to exist authentically is a form of resistance.”
