Overview: The article warns against the dangers of Donald Trump’s authoritarian approach, which includes attacking and vilifying various groups, including the LGBTQ+ community. The author draws parallels between Trump’s actions and the Nazi regime’s persecution of homosexuals, highlighting the elimination of federal recognition of transgender people, banning them from the military, and advocating for the right to fire members of the LGBTQ+ community based on their sexual orientation. The article concludes by urging people to pull the alarm and speak out against Trump’s actions, as they are hurting real people and are contrary to the beliefs of the majority of Americans.
S.E. Williams
Today we sit like frogs in a pot of water that is slow to boil. We all know the allegory about the dangers of complacency–if a frog is dropped into a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out. But, if you put a frog in water that is room temperature or tepid and then it is slowly brought to a boil, the poor frog–unaware of the danger–is boiled to death.
Donald Trump has offered many examples of how he is using this approach to cower a nation into submitting to his authoritarian whims through insults, threats of actions and actual attacks against one group of people or another whether its immigrants, women in relation to reproductive autonomy, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility initiatives, healthcare and food security for the vulnerable, and voting rights, to name a few.
All of these actions are sinister. They are hurting real people. And in the final analysis, are contrary to the beliefs of the majority of Americans. The administration has targeted a number of groups and initiatives, among them he has specifically targeted with the intent to vilify and invalidate members of the LGBTQ+ community.
One of the reasons Trump is constantly being compared to a Nazi is because of his penchant for nationalism, authoritarianism, and love of dictators. In addition, he is racist, misogynistic, xenophobic and homophobic. Among his continuing attacks against so many segments of the nation, and his almost rabid attacks on the LGBTQ+ community, continues to raise an alarming red flag.
History tells us that the Nazis worked to eliminate all aspects of homosexuality in Germany. This was one of its many goals. History also tells us that by 1935, nearly 80 percent of all prisoners held by the Nazi’s in so-called “protective custody” in concentration camps were being held for alleged homosexual crimes. Yet, this wasn’t enough for the German government and it soon revised its law, making “all homosexual acts” illegal–including how one man might look at another. The revised law accomplished its goal, and made it easier to both arrest and convict homosexuals. This, of course, led to a significant increase in convictions and confinements.
Turning back to the slow boiling frogs here in modern day America, we need only to consider the exhaustive list of actions/attempted actions by Trump against the LGBTQ+ community to warrant increased concern for the LGBTQ+ community.
Trump facilitated the elimination of federal recognition of transgender people when he declared that there are only two sexes. As a result, all government documents must now only list the sex a person was assigned at birth.
Trump has eliminated transgender people from the military.
Trump advocated before the U.S. Supreme Court to make it legal for members of the LGBTQ+ community to be fired from their jobs because of their sexual orientation.
The Trump administration has also argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, that religious liberty gives business owners the ability to refuse service to LGBTQ+ customers.
During his first term in office, Trump retracted a proposal to collect demographic information on LGBT people in the 2020 Census.
Trump rescinded federal guidelines that required prison officials to house inmates according to their sexual identification. Officials now house individuals based on their birth sex, increasing the potential rape of transgender women.
Donald Trump has withdrawn the guidance and protections of Title IX Education Amendments of 1972, that banned anti-transgender discrimination in federally funded schools leaving LGBTQ+ vulnerable to bullying. He is also against investigating anti-transgender discrimination complaints in public schools.
“I just have one question: What comes next“ . . . After we’ve against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities—once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends—after that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face—what comes next?”
J.B. Pritzker, Governor, Illinois
Just recently, the Trump administration removed all anti-discrimination protections related to sexual orientation and gender identity in federally funded child nutrition programs denying them access to federally funded breakfast and lunch at school as well as access to SNAP benefits.
Like the strategy and tactics pressed upon the gay community in Nazi Germany that worked aggressively to eliminate all aspects of homosexuality in the country in alignment with its national goals at the time, Trump just can’t seem to do enough to demonize and destroy America’s gay community. As noted in some of the actions by his administration detailed above, many of these efforts date back to his first term in office when Trump attempted to repeal a number of protections for LGBTQ+ Americans.
One of the first things Hitler is purported to have done when he took office in Germany was to ban all gay and lesbian organizations and soon after, burned nearly 12,000 books housed at the Sexual Science Institute in Berlin. Some of the lessons of Nazi Germany are playing out across America today–we’ve already witnessed the attack on books and authors across this country (along with other Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility focused publications) . America parallels Nazi Germany’s strategic maneuvering against gay people in this regard.
In Nazi Germany, gays were not the first to be rounded up. Hiltler went after his political enemies first just like Trump targeted immigrants first. All the while, however, the Nazis in Germany did all they could to batter, disparage and stoke sentiments of homophobia in the general population. Just like Trump is doing in America today.
It wasn’t too long after Hitler made the LGBTQ+ community a target, that the government rounded them up and confined members of the LGBTQ+ community to concentration camps as they were considered so-called “threats to the government.”
Nazi Germany is not the only place members of the LGBTQ+ community were threatened in the last century. We’ve seen the targeting of this community before, here in this country, during the McCarthy era. Gays and lesbians were considered national security risks. Thousands were “purged” from federal jobs.
America’s abysmal history with the LGBTQ+ community further extends to AIDS. Many of us bore witness to how, for the most part, many in this nation sat silent, while the federal government allowed thousands upon thousands of young men to enter early graves due to this disease. A great number of political leaders, church leaders, and others in this country in the throes of homophobia, somehow believed these young people deserved it.
The number of gay and lesbian individuals who died in Nazi death camps is unknown. One scholar, however, believes the death rate may have been as high as 60 percent, higher than any other group. Not only were these individuals subjected to the cruelties of the Nazi regime, they also suffered the intolerance of other concentration camp inmates who, seeped in homophobia probably believed although they themselves did not deserve to be in these camps, the gays and lesbians did.
The continuing threats against members of the LGBTQ+ community is not the only major issue coming to a boil in America, but it is a significant one, highlighting yet another major reason why it is time to pull the alarm.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker recently pushed back against Trump’s threatened deployment of federal troops to Chicago under the guise of fighting crime. Pritzker declared, “I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in this city, and as a state, and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.”
I, too, am sounding the alarm.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I’m keeping it real.
This op ed was updated for added clarity September 2, 2025.