The rainbow flag was designed to represent diversity—sex, sexuality, and gender all woven into one banner. If you remove the pink (sex) or the teal (magic/art), the flag falls apart. But if you remove the transgender stripes (the light blue and pink) from the modern Progress Flag, you are left with a flag of the past, not the future.

When the Nazis came for the communists, the socialists stayed silent. Then they came for the trade unionists. Then they came for the gay men. The legal framework used to ban transgender healthcare—using religious freedom and parental rights—is the same framework used to deny gay adoption in the 1990s.

To the outside observer, the marriage seems natural. After all, transgender activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera are credited with throwing the first bricks at the Stonewall Riots. Yet, the lived reality is more nuanced. The transgender community exists both as a cherished pillar of LGBTQ history and as a distinct group whose needs are frequently sidelined or misunderstood by the cisgender majority within the queer community itself.

When we fight together, we win. When the gay community abandons the trans community, we ensure that the closet we escaped will be rebuilt with a separate door for "gender non-conformists." To be transgender in 2025 is to live on the front lines of a cultural war. To be a member of the LGBTQ community who stands with trans people is to understand that liberation is indivisible.

The transgender community does not need the LGBTQ culture to fully understand the nuances of gender dysphoria. They need the gay uncle to show up at the hospital when a trans nephew is denied care. They need the lesbian aunt to testify at a custody hearing. They need the bisexual brother to share that viral video of a trans athlete winning a race.

The transgender community is the "canary in the coal mine" for LGBTQ rights. If trans people lose the right to exist publicly, gay marriage and lesbian bars will follow. True LGBTQ culture does not ask, "Is the trans experience the same as the gay experience?" It asks, "Do we share a common enemy?" The answer remains yes. The enemy is the belief that there is only one way to be human—cisgender, heterosexual, and binary.