Hawai‘i’s Got Pride, and Plenty of Fight Too
Six essays from U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, Randy Soriano, Peter Tui Silva, Walter Kinoshita, Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson, and Camaron Miyamoto on countering attacks on LGBTQ+ rights.
In Just a Few Months, Decades of Progress Have Been Wiped Out
Introduction by Cynthia Wessendorf - Hawai’i Business Magazine - June 5, 2025:
June is Pride Month, a time to celebrate Hawai‘i’s rich LGBTQ history and the diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, ethnicities and cultures of the Islands – all the intertwined lives that are sometimes fractious, often harmonious and generally tolerant.
But with an openly hostile administration in the White House, this year is markedly different from recent years. For Pride 2025, Hawaii Business Magazine reached out to people active in the local LGBTQ community, or those in positions to advocate effectively, to express what Pride means to them today, in their own words.
The essays capture their joy, sorrow, worry and determination to maintain a vibrant community where everyone is valued. Because the reality is that basic rights are being steadily chipped away by executive orders, many targeting transgender people.
The first 100 days
On Jan. 20, on his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order stating that only two genders, immutable “at conception,” would be recognized by the U.S. government. Passports marked with a gender that’s different from a person’s sex at birth, or the nonbinary X designation, would no longer be issued.
The order also required all programming, grants and other initiatives that “inculcate gender ideology” be reviewed, and employees associated with the programs be placed on administrative leave.
The following day, an executive order revoked protections for transgender employees of the federal government and LGBTQ employees of federal contractors and subcontractors. According to a UCLA School of Law Williams Institute brief, the order affects nearly 14,000 transgender federal employees and over 100,000 LGBTQ employees of federal contractors.
On Feb. 7, the Department of Defense, expanding on another executive memo, banned transgender people from enlisting in the military. Later that month, the department began the process of identifying transgender troops for removal from their positions. At press time, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the ban could be enforced while legal challenges proceed.
Also in February, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission dropped seven pending lawsuits involving discrimination against transgender and nonbinary people – all considered by its staff to be clear-cut and winnable – leaving harassed and unfairly fired employees to pursue lawsuits on their own.
Grants for medical research have been severely cut since January. The science journal Nature reported that, as of April 7, the U.S. National Institutes of Health had canceled about 770 grants. Of those, 29% were related to HIV/AIDS and 24% were related to transgender health.
This is the short version of what’s happened so far. Each week brings another restriction, another round of firings, another funding freeze, most of which are being challenged in courts. All the measures spring from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, seen by many as a blueprint for the Trump administration’s second term.
David A. Graham, author of the book The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America, writes in The Atlantic that “Trump has already moved to limit transgender rights, but the Project 2025 agenda is much wider, aiming to return the United States to a country of married families with male breadwinners and female caregivers.”
So what’s next? Will Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision that same-sex couples have the fundamental right to marry, be challenged? Could adoptions by LGBTQ people be banned, as they were in autocratic Russia in 2014? Will the U.S. emulate Hungary, which has passed a raft of anti-LGBTQ laws, including one in March that outlaws Pride events? After all, the former Soviet satellite state is viewed by many on the right as a “natural” ally of the U.S., according to a Wall Street Journal article.
In the U.S., Bloomberg reported that organizers of Pride festivals and parades across the country were scrambling for funding. Corporate donors were pulling back, with 2 in 5 planning to reduce their Pride month engagement this year. Even powerful companies fear blowback.
A long, hard fight for rights
This sea change happened quickly. Yet it wasn’t long ago that members of the LGBTQ community were routinely denied housing, jobs and services. And police abuse was common, with law enforcement often specifically targeting LGBTQ people and businesses.
It was a violent raid by New York City police on a Greenwich Village gay bar that sparked the Stonewall uprising of 1969 – six days of angry clashes and protests – that ultimately galvanized the gay rights movement.
Marsha P. Johnson, an early activist for transgender rights, participated in the uprising. Called “Saint Marsha” for her generosity, the transgender icon was arrested more than 100 times, sometimes based on discriminatory laws that criminalized cross-dressing. In 1992, her body was found in the Hudson River. Police ruled her death a suicide, but the case was reopened in 2012 and remains unsolved.
The AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s – and the indifferent national response, including from the medical establishment – triggered a highly visible grassroots movement called ACT UP. Activists helped bring needed attention, resources and research to battle an epidemic that claimed 362,004 lives in the U.S. between 1981 and 1999, according to data from the nonprofit research foundation amfAR.
More recently, and locally, the popular nightclub and drag venue Scarlet Honolulu filed a lawsuit in 2021 alleging assault and harassment of transgender customers by the Honolulu Liquor Commission. The suit was joined by Gay Island Guide. On Oct. 8, 2024, they were awarded a $670,000 settlement.
Scarlet Honolulu co-owner Robbie Baldwin told Hawaii News Now at the time of settlement: “[What] I want people to know is to not stop fighting for what’s right. It’s hard, it’s stressful, but if you keep at it, you can really make change.”
One of the most important legal decisions regarding LGBTQ rights happened as late as 2020. In Bostock v. Clayton County, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Yet the impact of this landmark decision is now tenuous, as the Trump administration has instructed the U.S. attorney general to reevaluate how the ruling is applied. According to the Human Rights Campaign website, “If implemented, this directive could allow federal agencies to refuse to acknowledge discrimination against the full LGBTQ+ community in the workplace, education, housing, health care, and more.”
The backlash against transgender, nonbinary and intersex people is fully underway, and the lives of everyone in the LGBTQ community have been rendered less secure, less free from discrimination.
These measures affect millions of people, including my own daughter, 23 and living in Berlin, who can’t safely travel to Hawai‘i, where she was born and raised. With a U.S. passport that lists a name and gender different from the one she had as a child, the document could be destroyed by a petulant border control agent, or she could be accused of traveling under a false identity.
Her German passport also puts her at additional risk of detention, as many international travelers have discovered, including two teenage travelers from Germany who were detained and then expelled when they arrived at the Honolulu airport in April without hotel reservations.
As the age of progress swings into a time of setbacks, the activism of the past seems relevant and vital again. In an interview about her 2021 book Let the Record Show, which documents the raucous ACT UP movement and its impact, writer Sarah Schulman said:
“I think the biggest thing was that we changed how people with AIDS and queer people were seen all over the world and how we felt about ourselves. And that’s been lasting.”
The Quest for a Permanent AIDS Memorial and Site of Memory
By Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson, Lei Pua ‘Ala Queer Histories of Hawai‘i
When we launched a new nonprofit project called Lei Pua ‘Ala Queer Histories of Hawai‘i in 2023, we were excited about creating new ways to bring Hawai‘i’s long history of gender and sexual diversity to a wide public audience.
From the early kānaka embrace of same-sex love and gender fluidity to the influences and experiences of missionaries, plantation workers and so many others who have come or were brought to these shores over the centuries, we knew that illuminating the little-known struggles and accomplishments of LGBTQ+ Māhū people in the unique context of these islands could inspire those seeking better lives for themselves, and those still working for justice and equality in communities near and far.
We never could have imagined that just two years into such work, a new president and administration intent not just on marginalizing and scapegoating our diverse communities, but on erasing our very existence, would give the project an alarming new sense of urgency and importance.
Now at our weekly performances of “The Return of Kapaemahu” in Waikīkī, we feel obliged to explain that despite President Trump’s executive order claiming that there are only two genders, individuals of dual male and female spirit do, in fact, exist and have long been an important part of Hawaiian culture.
The attempt to erase the accomplishments of the 442nd Japanese American soldiers in World War II, along with the defunding of the National Endowment of the Humanities, including our valued collaborators at the Hawai‘i Council for Humanities, was further evidence that we can no longer trust our own federal government to acknowledge that diversity is an essential element of our nation and people.
Equally concerning has been the campaign of the new administration to destroy the public health programs and agencies responsible for infectious disease control and preventative medicine. The recent display of the Hawai‘i AIDS quilt panels at the Capitol Modern was a poignant reminder of the devastation that HIV/AIDS brought to Hawai‘i, but also of the resourcefulness of our local LGBTQ+ Māhū community and state Department of Health, which responded with one of the most effective awareness and prevention campaigns in the country.
Now, our national health and human services agency is headed by a person who denies even the most basic facts about AIDS – that it is caused by HIV, and that anti-HIV drugs can both prevent and treat the devastating effects of the virus.
As the intent of the new regime to erase every trace of queer history and existence has become clearer, the fragility of our work and progress at the Lei Pua ‘Ala Queer Histories of Hawai‘i project has emerged. Websites can be erased, exhibitions taken down, performances canceled, historical markers removed, funding threatened, and other acts of censorship and intimidation unleashed.
How can we respond? While there are many possible answers to that question, one theme that has emerged from our conversations with a range of LGBTQ+ Māhū community members, students, kūpuna, people living with HIV/AIDS and others is the desire to create a permanent, visible and public reminder of our existence, and the challenges encountered and accomplishments made.
Thus was born the idea of a new AIDS Memorial and Community Memory Site for Hawai‘i – a place where people can gather to mourn those who have been lost or suffered from HIV/AIDS and other forms of oppression and erasure, honor Hawaiian traditions of diversity and inclusion, and celebrate those who have struggled and are continuing to pave the way toward a more just and equitable future for all.
We are fortunate to have two strong collaborators for this community-centered effort. One is the Hawai‘i Health & Harm Reduction Center, the first and largest AIDS service organization in the Pacific and a leader in public health and fighting stigma and discrimination. The other is the City and County of Honolulu, which has worked closely with us on a variety of projects to illuminate the people, places and events that make our city a shining example of why diversity, equity and inclusion is good for all. The city’s Rainbow Employee Resource Group, UH’s John A. Burns School of Medicine Student Pride Alliance, the Hawai‘i LGBT Legacy Foundation and other community groups are also involved.
The proposed site for the monument is the overlook at Kaka‘ako Waterfront Park, a magical place with encompassing views, ready public access, a history of association with the infectious disease epidemics that have devastated Hawai‘i over time, and a deep sense of spirituality.
While there are many steps ahead, our goal is to create a place where all our diverse communities can meet, reflect and rejuvenate; a place where our stories are literally written in stone – too large, visible and important to be ignored or erased.
Without Trump, such a memorial might or might not have come to fruition. With him in power, it must. We hope all those who value equality and justice will join us.
Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson are co-founders and co-directors of the nonprofit Lei Pua ‘Ala Queer Histories of Hawai‘i; co-directors with Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu of the Oscar short-listed animated film “Kapaemahu”; and Emmy-winning documentary filmmakers. For more information, see queerhistoriesofhawaii.org.
Read the essays from U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, Randy Soriano, Peter Tui Silva, Walter Kinoshita, and Camaron Miyamoto here.