Project 2025’s Sweeping Anti-LGBTQ+ Policies Would Roll
Back The Clock On LGBTQ+ Equity
SUMMARY: Project 2025’s 180-day playbook, an effort from the Heritage Foundation, outlines the far-right’s
intentions to drastically roll back rights for LGBTQ+ Americans to promote “life and strengthening the family.”
From the DOJ to the State Department, the Project 2025 playbook threads plans throughout the federal
government to accomplish conservatives’ bigoted agenda rolling back LGBTQ+ progress. The most extreme
anti-LGBTQ+ recommendations include:
● Project 2025 calls on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to defend the First Amendment right of
those who would discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. It also objects to the DOJ notifying states that
their bans on abortion and medical services to transgender persons may violate federal law.
● Project 2025 recommends the next Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary
reverse the focus on “‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and
penalizing marriage,’ replacing such policies with those encouraging marriage, work, motherhood,
fatherhood, and nuclear families.” The Project 2025 playbook laments the fact that family policies and
programs under President Biden’s HHS are “fraught with agenda items focusing on ‘LGBTQ+
equity,’” making it clear that they intend to roll those agenda items back.
● Project 2025 intends to abolish the Gender Policy Council within the Executive Office of the
President, which it views as promoting abortion and the “new woke gender ideology.” Project 2025
said that eliminating the GPC would “eliminate central promotion of abortion […] comprehensive
sexuality education […] and the new woke gender ideology.” In place of the Gender Policy Council,
Project 2025 proposes “new structures and positions” that would promote “life and strengthening the
family.”
● Project 2025 calls on the next conservative Administration to limit the application of the Supreme
Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that Title VII’s sex discrimination protections
applied to LGBTQ+ people. It also calls on the next conservative Administration to not allow
Bostock’s holding to be extended to the broader categories of “sexual orientation” or “gender
identity.”
● Project 2025 attacks the existence of transgender individuals, saying society today includes the “toxic
normalization of transgenderism.” It calls on the Department of Defense (DOD) to “reverse policies
that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military.”
● Project 2025 recommends the next conservative Administration dismantle the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID)’s DEI apparatus, which includes issuing “a directive to cease
promotion of the DEI agenda, including the bullying LGBTQ+ agenda.”
Further demonstrating Project 2025’s commitment to its anti-LGBTQ+ agenda, the handbook chapter on the
State Department was written by Kiron Skinner. Skinner served in the Trump Administration as director of
the Office of Policy and Planning until she was fired for “abusive,” unprofessional behavior, including
retaliation and homophobic remarks to staff.
Project 2025’s anti-LGBTQ+ policy recommendations are sweeping — affecting agencies throughout the
federal government and even past Supreme Court rulings. In no uncertain terms, Project 2025 and its allies
intend to slash advancements toward LGBTQ+ equity in favor of what they claim is “life and strengthening
the family.”
