Within the first two days after the general election earlier this month, LGBTQ crisis lines in the U.S. experienced a 700 percent increase in calls, Marshall Martinez, executive director of Equality New Mexico, said.

With a Republican trifecta taking power in January at the federal level, many in the LGBTQ community are experiencing fear. The Republican Party particularly targeted the transgender community as a part of President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign to win back the presidency.

“I think we cannot overstate what the emotional impact of this election will have, especially on trans people but queer and trans people as a whole,” Martinez said.

What it will mean for policy changes might be harder to predict at this stage, but Martinez said he anticipates a challenge to Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court case that recognized same-sex marriage nationally, perhaps as early as next year. 

Although a legal case will require time, possibly years, to reach the Supreme Court, Martinez expects the Supreme Court will hear the challenge and will overturn Obergefell. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion when the court overturned Roe v. Wade in its Dobbs decision in 2022, that he believed the court needed to revisit Obergefell since it rests on the same legal reasoning Roe v. Wade did. 

If that happens, Martinez said that people who married in New Mexico will still have their marriages recognized by the state. 

“It will be devastating for the country but not impact New Mexico,” Martinez said. “It will only impact married couples in New Mexico if Congress repeals the Respect for Marriage Act at the same time.”

The Respect for Marriage Act, passed in 2022 with bipartisan support and signed by President Joe Biden, protects same-sex marriage if Obergefell is overturned but in a limited way. States that ban same-sex marriage would be required to recognize a same-sex marriage as valid if it was performed in a state where it would continue to be legal. But if Obergefell is overturned, states like Texas that have dormant bans on same-sex marriage would still be able to reenforce them or pass new laws to ban it in their own states.

That would create a scenario similar to what has happened to abortion rights since the Dobbs decision, where the right to same-sex marriage could become a patchwork of state laws that many same-sex couples may need to navigate to feel safe.

But Martinez said that, in terms of a patchwork quilt of protected rights for the LGBTQ community, “we’re already there.”

He said EQNM already advises the LGBTQ community in New Mexico to “do their own risk assessment” when traveling, for instance, with a minor who is taking puberty blockers.

“Those risk analyses will change [if Obergefell is overturned] but we’re already living in that world,” Martinez said.

He said that, despite marriage equality, there are little to no federal protections for LGBTQ individuals. In New Mexico, LGBTQ individuals are protected from discrimination in housing and employment but in states like Texas, neither of those protections exist. And then, in recent years, some states have begun a process of criminalizing the LGBTQ through bans on gender-affirming care for minors; some states have gender-affirming care bans for both adults and minors and some states have set strict standards in terms of what a provider can do when providing gender-affirming care, Martinez said. Some states, such as Tennessee, have placed bans on cross-dressing.

“What’s changing now, immediately, is the discourse and the individual security and safety of folks given the new frame and the newly emboldened hatefulness,” Martinez said. 

HIV Prevention and Treatment 

Trump has named billionaire Elon Musk as his appointee for a proposed organization to ensure government efficiency, along with former Republican Party presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. The organization, though called a department, would be outside of federal government. Musk has been outspoken in his attacks against transgender individuals.

Adrien Lawyer, co-founder of Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico, said that announcement from Trump is worrisome. If Musk is put in charge of such a newly created department, Lawyer worries it could mean a slashing of federal funding for HIV prevention and treatment. Lawyer said it could have the potential of shutting down a lot of nonprofits dedicated to that work and be devastating to the individuals who rely on them for prevention as well as treatment.

“There’s a real human price on all that stuff,” he said.

Gender Affirming Care

Martinez said that since gender-affirming care is protected in New Mexico through state law, the federal government would have to take significant action to impact that care in this state.

That could happen in one of two ways: If Congress passes a national ban on gender-affirming care for everyone or for minors. But Martinez said it’s important to remember there’s a process involved before something like that might happen.

“Don’t jump the gun and make assumptions about the worst possible thing coming,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it’s not possible but it does mean it’s not possible on January 20. If they want to override the access to care in New Mexico outright, Congress moves notoriously slow. We have time before it hits the president’s desk.”

Some ways Trump might try to limit gender-affirming care more quickly, without Congress, would be to try to limit it through executive action for members of the military, Martinez said. If Trump takes that action, he could stop Veteran Administration hospitals from providing gender-affirming care for members of the military and military veterans. With three military bases in the state and a large population of veterans, that has the potential to impact some individuals who live in New Mexico, despite the state’s protections.

Another, more subtle way the federal government could limit access to gender-affirming care without going through Congress, would be similar to the ways right-wing groups have attempted to limit access to abortion care, by trying to impact the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services. If the Senate approves Kennedy next year, Kennedy would have oversight over the FDA. Martinez said that, while Kennedy’s main theme of interest in attacking the FDA has been on vaccines, which he says, without evidence, are harmful, he could affect, through executive action, FDA approval for certain medicines or restrict medications for certain ages.

“One thing we need folks to be aware of, that medications for gender-affirming care tends to be hormones, puberty blockers, and this can have an impact on people who are not trans. Women fighting breast cancer take hormones to reduce the levels of estrogen. Many men who have prostate issues take hormonal suppressants to reduce testosterone,” Martinez said. 

Michael Trimm, executive director of Transgender Resource Center, said he is more worried about the lack of providers in New Mexico than he is about the potential for a national ban. He said the wait-list to see a gender-affirming care provider in New Mexico can be more than 18 months long and that some places are not taking new patients.

He said there are providers interested in providing gender-affirming care in New Mexico but who lack the confidence to provide that care. There are also patients who are afraid to talk to their provider about needing that care.

Trimm said there are efforts to grow a network of providers who are comfortable in providing gender-affirming care, but the provider shortage is “severely lacking” and “that puts the squeeze on gender-affirming care.”

Jack Teter, director of governmental affairs for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said PPRM provides gender-affirming care. He said he thinks it would “be a grave and naive mistake to not take Donald Trump at his word that he is going to ban gender-affirming care [at the national level].”

But, Teter said banning gender-affirming care is different than conservative attempts at banning abortion care. To ban gender-affirming care, that requires banning procedures and medication based on sexual orientation and gender identity. He said gender-affirming care bans have been thrown out even by conservative courts. But, with that said, he said there’s “no doubt” that people will come up with different mechanisms to ban gender-affirming care.

Erasure and Violence

Project 2025, the authoritarian blueprint written by the Heritage Foundation, calls for the erasure of the LGBTQ community from websites and federal agency recognition or focus. Lawyer said that, especially for young trans or gender nonbinary individuals, that can be really destabilizing emotionally.

He said that, in terms of the potential for physical violence, if it happens in New Mexico, it would be more likely to occur in parts of the state that were already not welcoming whereas in Albuquerque, such acts would be less likely.

But, that doesn’t mean trying to erase an entire group of people from existence won’t have impacts. Lawyer said that life as a transgender person was already hard, regardless of who has been president and what the prevailing political rhetoric has been. He said that since he co-founded Transgender Resource Center in 2007, “there hasn’t been a year when we didn’t lose a bunch of trans people,” and that he has seen people in the transgender community die from structural violence every year.

“We can’t expect everybody to survive [under a future Republican trifecta],” Lawyer said. “We’ve already learned that’s not going to happen.”

When adding in another layer of vulnerability, such as being a person of color or being an immigrant, in addition to being transgender, “it gets really hard,” Lawyer said. 

Trimm said the center has heard from one person who asked for information on how to socially detransition since the election. Instead, since the election, the center has heard more frequently from people who want to reaffirm legally who they are.

Trimm said there is hysteria in the LGBTQ community but that most of that is taking place outside of New Mexico. He said the Transgender Resource Center is engaged in an effort to combat hate against transgender people by providing spokesperson training to empower transgender individuals to be “the best spokespeople for themselves and their local communities and for the state and the region to help keep the needle where it is.” Trimm said that training has already begun in Albuquerque and that there are more planned for Farmington and Las Cruces in the upcoming months.

Martinez said that EQNM has already begun talking to state legislators and policy makers to look for any gap in state law that there might currently be in order to try to write bills in time for the 2025 legislative session to protect New Mexico further. 

He said additional ways the federal government, under the new Republican trifecta, would likely target the LGBTQ community would be through parenting rights for LGBTQ couples by redirecting federal funding to religious organizations that refuse to recognize LGBTQ couples as potential foster parents. There could also be efforts to cut federal funding to public libraries that contain LGBTQ-inclusive materials accessible to minors. But because of legislative support, Martinez thinks New Mexico will be in a better place than some states to fight back. 

Martinez said it’s important to avoid what he called “sinking into anticipatory obedience.” He said just the fear of what’s to come has led people across the U.S. “to find ways to go into hiding or consider social detransitioning.”

“We cannot overstate what the emotional impacts of this election will have, especially on trans people but queer and trans people as a whole,” Martinez said.