GLAAD RELEASES SECOND INSTALLMENT IN NATIONAL AD CAMPAIGN AIMED AT EXPOSING THE HARMS OF PROJECT 2025

“The Purge,” out today, spotlights right-wing calls to eliminate federal employees deemed disloyal to the President

New York, NY – Monday, August 12, 2024 – Today, GLAAD, the world’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ)  media advocacy organization, launched the second installment in a national ad campaign focused on right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a transition plan and playbook calling for radical changes to the U.S. government.

• The new ad, titled “The Purge,” is available to watch and embed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK-ipl1JG6k 
• “The Pledge,” released in July, is available to watch and embed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvhLg4GrqQ8 

Depicting the potential effects of Project 2025, “The Purge” is set in a federal government office in February 2025 and features a federal government supervisor conducting an employee review to determine if she has been involved in any diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, calling out LGBTQ initiatives specifically, or if she has belonged to any groups deemed newly unacceptable.  As the scene plays out, the employee clearly fears for her future as a civil service employee. 

“Six years, experience. Outstanding employee. Promoted twice. Ok great. So, new President, new policy. I’m sure you get it. I have just a couple of questions for you. Have you participated in diversity or DEI initiatives? Or any initiative that promotes gender ideology or deviates from the biblically-based definition of a marriage?” questions the supervisor.

GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said: “LGBTQ people don’t have to look too far back in our history to remember when the federal government and the military conducted witch hunts to expose us and purge us from the ranks, but that’s exactly the world that Project 2025 envisions. It is an assault on every American and would strip away the progress we have made for LGBTQ people, people of color, women, and other marginalized communities. The more Americans learn about this dangerous plan, the more they realize it must be stopped. We refuse to go back.”

GLAAD previously released an analysis of Project 2025 and its harmful impact on LGBTQ people, women, and other Americans. Read more here.

What is Project 2025?

Project 2025 is a presidential transition plan and a government in waiting, spearheaded and organized by the far-right the Heritage Foundation, and with 100 coalition partner organizations, many of which are well-known for pushing anti-LGBTQ policy, legal efforts, and harmful rhetoric, accompanied by Christian nationalism.

The project is a 180-day playbook of regulations and executive orders that could be signed and implemented by the next president upon taking office, a database of potential appointees, and an online “education academy” to train appointees in its conservative tenets.

The $22 million effort also includes a 1,000 page handbook which it describes as “the next conservative President’s last opportunity to save our republic.” It claims that its goal is to pave the way for an effective conservative administration. In fact, if implemented Project 2025 would strip away rights and protections, embolden authoritarianism, and weaken institutions that uphold American democracy and the rule of law.

The plan includes firing federal employees that oppose or insufficiently support right-wing policies, ending access to abortion and contraception, and eliminating protections for LGBTQ people. The document calls for erasing LGBTQ-inclusive language throughout federal agencies such as “the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights.”

What’s in the plan?

Among policies areas in Project 2025 are:

• Eliminating LGBTQ rights
• Eradicating federal funding for DEI programs
• Purging the government of apolitical civil servants
• Eliminating the checks and balances built into three branches of government in favor of expanded control by the executive branch
• Ending reproductive freedom and replacing the Department of Health and Human Services with the “Department of Life”
• Replacing the Department of Homeland Security with a 100,000-worker-strong immigration department, militarization of the border and an end to refugee programs
• Fundamentally altering American diplomacy in favor of anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ agendas and abandoning international organizations and traditional diplomatic and security alliances

What does Project 2025 mean for LGBTQ people?

Project 2025 aims to gut protections for the LGBTQ community, which its organizers believe exists in opposition to the “traditional American family” and its Christian nationalist underpinnings. The Project would prioritize families “comprised of a married mother, father, and their children,” and would eliminate any federal policies that promote LGBTQ equality or that assist single mothers. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) reports that the project claims falsely that, “Only heterosexual, two-parent families are safe for children, and that, ‘All other family forms involve higher levels of instability (the average length of same-sex marriages is half that of heterosexual marriages); financial stress or poverty; and poor behavioral, psychological, or educational outcomes.’ (Their data on the length of marriages is false).”

Project 2025’s Lies vs. Facts:

• Project 2025 lie: Transgender people are an “ideology” and their existence is linked to pornography and the “sexualization of children.”
• Fact: Trans people are people, not an ideology. There is no factual evidence that transgender identities are inherently connected to pornography or the sexualization of children. 
• Project 2025 lie: “Children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.”
• Fact: There is no such thing as “transgenderism.” Medical and psychological experts recognize that gender identity is a natural aspect of human diversity, not an ideological choice or belief system. (More on extremists’ use of “transgenderism” here.) Drag Queen Story Hours are events where drag performers read age-appropriate books to children, incorporating themes of acceptance, diversity, and self-expression. They do not involve any pornographic content or explicit sexual material. There is no evidence of “pornography invading school libraries.” Libraries have strict policies and procedures in place to ensure that materials in their children’s sections are age-appropriate and do not contain pornographic content. (More information on reporting on book bans here).
• Project 2025 lie: Transgender health care for youth is child abuse.
• Fact: Characterizing health care for transgender youth as “child abuse” is an egregious lie that contradicts all credible medical evidence and expert consensus. It is a bad-faith attempt to restrict life-saving care for a vulnerable population based on prejudice rather than facts. Health care for trans people is supported by every major medical association. (30+ statements here). 
• Project 2025 lie: Education texts related to race, gender, and LGBTQ identities are “noxious tenets.”
• Fact: Educational materials promoting understanding, acceptance, and inclusion of diverse identities and experiences provide factual information and positive representation, which is beneficial for all students.

Project 2025 will:

• Strip away non-discrimination protections:
  • Removing terms including “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” “diversity,” “equity,” “inclusion,” “gender,” “abortion,” and “reproductive rights” from federal rules, regulations, contracts, grants, and legislation.
  • Restricting the application of the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision, which extended workplace protections against sex discrimination to LGBTQ employees.
  • Rescinding regulations prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics.
  • Defining “sex discrimination” narrowly as referring only to the “biological binary” of male and female as assigned at birth.
• Restrict health care: 
  • Eliminating transgender health care in Medicare and Medicaid
  • Opposing transgender health care or abortion access to service members using public funds
  • End anti-discrimination rules based on gender identity and sexual orientation in the Affordable Care Act
• Restrict participation and expand discrimination in the military:
  • Reversing policies allowing transgender people to serve in the military
  • Expelling transgender troops from the military
  • Expelling people living with HIV from the military
• Repress education policy
  • Closing the Department of Education.
  • Disallowing students using names or pronouns that don’t match the sex on their birth certificate, and stating that no school employee should be “forced” to use a student’s pronoun. (Research from the Trevor Project shows that youth who reported having their correct pronouns used by the people they lived with had half the rate of attempted suicide compared to those who did not have their pronouns respected.)
  • Promoting an extremely restrictive view of gender and racial identities in education, removing LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum and policies while compelling adherence to strict definitions of gender that exclude transgender students and staff. Removing “critical race theory and gender ideology” from public schools because they claim, without basis, that it is “poisoning and indoctrinating children with leftist ideologies” and that there is a “devastating effect” on children, especially girls; in fact there is no such thing as “gender ideology” and there is no evidence that girls are harmed by inclusive school policies for transgender youth.
• Export anti-LGBTQ hatred
  • Ending the Department of State’s LGBTQ equality initiatives in Africa, where punishing laws against the community are being proposed or have been enacted, such as Uganda’s law that criminalizes same-sex conduct, potentially punishable by the death.
• End the separation of church and state
  • Privileging religion over civil laws and rights; and attempting to ensure that Christianity enjoys a privileged, favored status in society.
• Limit or eliminate the free press’s access to the White House.

What does Project 2025 mean for other minority or marginalized groups?

The project outlines an aggressive agenda to severely restrict abortion access and reproductive rights across the United States, even in states where abortion remains legal. Its “Defend Our Borders” pillar outlines an extremely harsh and demonizing agenda towards immigrants, portraying them as a criminal threat. Key elements include:

• Calling for a ban on abortion pills and criminally prosecuting providers. (Read more on abortion as an LGBTQ issue)
• Ending Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood and removing abortion coverage from healthcare plans; defunding abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.
• Transforming the Department of Health and Human Services into the “Department of Life” that rejects abortion as healthcare.
• Pushing to eliminate contraception.
• Claiming immigrants released from detention often “disappear” and commit crimes, perpetuating a false stereotype of immigrants as inherently criminal.
• Dismantling the Department of Homeland Security, alleging it has been “weaponized” against the political right by monitoring far-right domestic terrorist threats.
• Restricting asylum criteria, expanding ICE detention facilities, restricting visas for human trafficking and crime victims
• Ending all efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion and racial equity describing them as hostile attacks amounting to “affirmative discrimination” and “racist policymaking.”

Project 2025 is also vehemently opposed to climate action and environmental protections, which it views as a “radical” and “extremist” agenda pushed by the left.

Who wrote Project 2025?

The Heritage Foundation describes itself as a “conservative think tank” with a mission “to formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.” Heritage’s stated support for freedom and limited government does not extend to LGBTQ Americans, as evidenced by decades of waging losing battles against:

• out LGBTQ military service
• LGBTQ Boy Scouts and leaders
• marriage equality
• protections against discrimination for LGBTQ workers
• LGBTQ parents
• bans on “conversion therapy”
• evidence-based healthcare for transgender youth
• supporting bans on LGBTQ-inclusive books, curriculum and books about racism

Additionally, the Heritage Foundation wrote and coordinated copycat state legislation targeting health care for transgender youth, opposes the Equality Act, criticized the Bostock ruling, and opposes anti-discrimination laws.

Partner organizations in Project 2025’s advisory board include anti-LGBTQ groups Alliance Defending Freedom, Eagle Forum, Family Policy Alliance, Moms for Liberty, Turning Point USA, and dozens of other far-right organizations.