The new Lavender Scare

The “anti-DEI” purges being ordered by Elon and Trump are, needless to say, encompassing every letter of the LGBTQ alphabet:

Hundreds of organizations like Michael’s exist throughout the federal government—not just for LGBTQ workers, but also for veterans, Black and Hispanic workers, people with disabilities, and others who share a connection around a fundamental part of their identity. Known as “employee resource groups,” they’ve long been officially recognized and approved by federal agencies; the first federal Pride employee resource group, at the Smithsonian, was founded in 1988, at the height of the AIDS epidemic. During Trump’s first term, leadership urged employees to join them. “Employee Organizations can serve as sounding boards around strategic diversity and inclusion matters,” reads an April 2017 Interior Department bulletin, “and provide a support system that offers employees a sense of community, camaraderie, and connection to the organization.” 

But since returning to power, Trump and his allies have cast these same groups as subversive and even illegal, an example of “radical” and “discriminatory” programs promoting diversity, equality, and inclusiveness. On February 5, the Office of Personnel Management—essentially the executive branch’s HR department—issued a memorandum telling agencies to “prohibit” employee resource groups that promote “unlawful DEIA initiatives” or “employee retention agendas based on protected characteristics.” 

The OPM memo is just one of many Trump actions generating fear of a new “Lavender Scare”—a purge that could roll back decades of LGBTQ gains and send those who remain in the government back into the closet. While Trump has appointed a couple of token gay officials—Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and special missions envoy Ric Grenell—he’s simultaneously declared war on transgender people, issuing edicts against so-called “gender ideology” and an onslaught of executive orders attempting to impose widespread discrimination against trans people in schools, hospitals, sports, homeless shelters, and prisons.

The new administration’s anti-LGBTQ hostility doesn’t stop at the transgender community. On his second day in office, Trump rescinded a nearly 60-year-old order prohibiting discrimination by federal contractors. His appointees at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have halted that agency’s investigations of anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Last week, the Department of Homeland Security said it will now allow its agents to conduct surveillance based solely on a target’s gender identity or sexual orientation. And OPM opened a tipline for federal workers to report colleagues who have worked on DEI—a callback to an earlier era when employees were encouraged to report and out their gay coworkers.

A lot more depressing detail at the link. We are being governed by comprehensively reprehensible people.