Steven LaChance Blog

Let me be blunt: when you vote for politicians who call us “degenerates” or promise to “protect traditional values,” you are not just casting a ballot—you are signing off on a blueprint for our erasure. The Department of Homeland Security’s recent decision to revoke protections barring the surveillance of LGBTQ+ individuals isn’t a bureaucratic tweak. It’s a revival of a playbook written in blood. Under the guise of “national security,” they’ve reopened a door history has slammed shut too many times before.

This isn’t hypothetical. In the 1950s, during the Lavender Scare, the U.S. government systematically purged gay and lesbian federal employees, branding them “security risks” and “moral perverts.” Senator Joseph McCarthy, infamous for his communist witch hunts, declared, “Homosexuals are a dangerous risk to government. They are susceptible to blackmail. They lack emotional stability.” A statement which was never to be proven with examples or facts. Over 5,000 people lost their jobs, their livelihoods, their dignity. One survivor, Frank Kameny, who was fired as an astronomer for being gay, later said, “They took away my career, my identity, my humanity. All because I loved the wrong person.”

Fast-forward to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. As thousands of gay men died, the government didn’t see a public health emergency—it saw a propaganda opportunity. Law enforcement surveilled ACT UP meetings, tracked HIV-positive individuals, and raided bathhouses under the pretense of “public safety.” ACT UP activist Larry Kramer raged, “We’re not just fighting a virus. We’re fighting a government that wants us dead.” The same rhetoric now fuels policies targeting trans people: “bathroom bills,” bans on healthcare, and laws criminalizing drag as “deceptive.” The script hasn’t changed. Only the cast has.

Now, under the Trump administration’s DHS, led by Kristi Noem—a politician who once called same-sex marriage a “threat to South Dakota families”—we’re told surveillance is about “security.” But we’ve heard this lie before. When you weaponize the state to monitor marginalized communities, you’re not protecting anyone. You’re justifying hate. You’re reviving the ghosts of COINTELPRO, which spied on civil rights leaders, and the FBI’s “Sex Deviates” program, which tracked LGBTQ+ Americans for decades.

To those who dismissed our fears as “hysteria” in 2024: this is what your vote enabled. When you shrugged and said, “Trump won’t really come for your rights,” you ignored the lesson of every authoritarian regime—that power tests the waters slowly. First they strip protections. Then they rewrite laws. Then they send the cops. As Holocaust survivor and gay rights activist Pierre Seel testified, “They came for us in increments. First the lists, then the raids, then the camps. No one believed it would happen—until it did.”

But here’s what they forget: queer joy is a rebellion. Surveillance? We’ve lived in the shadows before—and we lit those shadows on fire. When the NYPD raided Stonewall in 1969, they expected shame. Instead, they got bricks and brilliance. Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans woman who helped lead that uprising, once said, “History isn’t something you look back at and say it was inevitable. You make it.” And we have. When the government labeled us “security risks” during the Lavender Scare, we built underground networks. When they ignored our dead during AIDS, we stormed the NIH with our loved ones’ ashes. When they banned our marriages, we married anyway, in parking lots and courthouses, screaming vows over the hate.

So let me be clear: if you voted for this administration, you’ve aligned yourself with a legacy of fear. But fear has never stopped us. They can add our names to their lists, but we’ll write ours larger—in Pride parades, in mutual aid funds, in the quiet courage of a trans kid surviving another day. We are the descendants of Sylvia Rivera, who threw her heels at cops, and Bayard Rustin, who marched with Dr. King while the FBI called him a “pervert.” Our resilience is not a hashtag. It’s a birthright. As Audre Lorde, a Black lesbian warrior-poet, warned: “Your silence will not protect you.” But neither will theirs.

They want us to believe we’re weak? Let them dig through their data. Let them tally our love as a threat. We’ve already outlived their dragnets, their laws, their lies. And we’ll outlive this too. Because queer survival isn’t just about enduring—it’s about rewriting the ending. Every time they try to erase us, we paint the sky in rainbows they can’t censor. That’s not hope. That’s a promise.

To those who enabled this: you own the fear my husband and I feel when we hold hands in public. You own the reality that our marriage—a right we fought for, buried friends for—is now a line item in a DHS report. But you do not own our future. We’ve danced on the edge of extinction before. We’ll dance there again. And when the music stops, we’ll still be standing—because our love is not a vulnerability. It’s a weapon.

History doesn’t repeat itself word for word—it rhymes. And right now, the rhyme is a rallying cry: We’re still here.