TL;DR
- Nearly 48% of LGBTQ+ adults say they’re less out than a year ago.
- Visibility has dropped at work, school, health care settings, and public spaces.
- LGBTQ+ people report rising economic stress, health care barriers, and discrimination.
- The Human Rights Campaign links the shift directly to Trump-era policies.
- Advocates warn this is what Project 2025 looks like in real life.
America’s LGBTQ+ community is retreating — not quietly, but noticeably — as fear, discrimination, and political hostility push people back into the closet during Donald Trump. That’s the blunt takeaway from a new national report that paints a stark picture of life for queer Americans just one year into Trump’s return to power.
According to the Human Rights Campaign’s latest Annual LGBTQ+ Community Survey, nearly half of LGBTQ+ adults (47.5 percent) say they are now less out in at least one part of their lives than they were a year ago. Workplaces, doctors’ offices, schools, and even everyday public spaces are becoming places of quiet self-censorship, where people weigh safety against authenticity before opening their mouths — or holding a partner’s hand.
At work, the numbers are especially grim. More than 57 percent of LGBTQ+ employees whose companies rolled back or eliminated diversity, equity, and inclusion programs say they’ve experienced stigma or bias. Visibility is shrinking across the board, with over half of queer adults reporting they’re less visible overall, and more than 40 percent of LGBTQ+ parents saying they’re less out at their children’s schools. The message many are hearing is simple: blend in, stay quiet, don’t draw attention.
The report doesn’t shy away from pointing fingers. Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, says the results reflect exactly what Trump and his allies promised. “They laid it out for all to see in Project 2025,” Robinson said, pointing to a coordinated effort to erase civil rights protections through executive orders, funding cuts, and regulatory rollbacks. “Now, LGBTQ+ Americans are deeply hurting.”
That harm isn’t just emotional — it’s economic and medical. LGBTQ+ adults were nearly twice as likely as non-LGBTQ+ people to say their financial situation has worsened over the past year. For those relying on Medicare or Medicaid, access to HIV prevention and treatment has become dramatically harder, with reported barriers more than doubling. Transgender and nonbinary people, in particular, are being squeezed by policies that deny their existence, restrict health care, ban military service, and target everything from sports participation to bathroom access.
The report outlines a sweeping list of first-year Trump administration actions that have fueled the retreat: ending federal recognition of trans and nonbinary people, halting LGBTQ+ data collection by the Census Bureau, rescinding nondiscrimination protections across multiple federal agencies, banning trans people from military service, and canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants. For many queer Americans, the cumulative effect is a return to survival mode.
And yet, Robinson insists the story isn’t only one of loss. She argues that resilience remains the community’s greatest weapon — and that visibility, even when scaled back for safety, has not been extinguished. “For all the pain Trump has caused, the LGBTQ+ community’s resilience drives our power,” she said, vowing continued resistance and organizing.
Still, the numbers don’t lie. This is what rollback politics look like on the ground: people hiding wedding photos at work, avoiding doctors, dodging school conversations, and choosing invisibility not out of shame — but out of fear. For LGBTQ+ Americans, the closet isn’t history anymore. Under Trump, it’s becoming policy-adjacent reality.