The year’s nearly out. Sometimes that calls for taking sweet stock of the past months’ wonderful events. Coming to the end of 2025, on the other hand, is more like getting to that denouement in the action movie where the survivors take a breath and pat each other on the back for having made it out alive. At this stage, we are Newt getting tucked-in to her Sulaco hibernation tube.
With some effort and a pinch of luck, may we all fare better in 2026 than poor Newt’s end at the start of Alien 3.
Why such a shitty year? So much of it, obviously, can be laid at the feet of Lame Duck Donald. Not that he hasn’t had loads of assistance in his evil efforts to erase our transgender family and friends, colleagues, and leaders during 2025. The purge, as promised, began right out of the gate on Inauguration Day.
One small passage of the Jan. 20, 2025, executive order, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” reads, “Agency forms that require an individual’s sex shall list male or female, and shall not request gender identity. Agencies shall take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the Federal funding of gender ideology.” In simpler syntax, “Trans people don’t exist, but if they do we will make every effort to ostracize and oppress them.”
Another selection from the Jan. 20 playlist was the “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” executive order. It was an awful — yet productive — day all round.
Setting the tone with such malfeasance, it’s no wonder I ditched the annual holiday letter. It wouldn’t be much more than pics of protests. My photo library tells me I joined protests in January, February, April, July, August, September, and October. It’s a tedious, but necessary, pastime reminding the powers that be that, indeed, this is what democracy looks like.
Death was no stranger in 2025. In our LGBTQ community, we lost Capital Pride Hero Bernie Delia, trans activist and author Miss Major Giffin-Gracy, and Advocates for Trans Equality noted 58 deaths of Trans and nonbinary people in America. Here at the very end of the year, honored allies Rob Reiner and Michelle Singer Reiner were killed.
“So many in our movement remember how Rob and Michele organized their peers, brought strategists and lawyers together, and helped power landmark Supreme Court decisions that made marriage equality the law of the land — and they remained committed to the cause until their final days,” offered Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, in the organization’s statement marking the sad occasion. Chad Griffin, a past HRC president, was also quoted, detailing how years ago he had been hired by the couple to work for their foundation.
Roberta Flack’s death is also notable in that her legendary piano still sits at one of the city’s gay-friendliest venues, Mr. Henry’s. She’s seen playing it on the cover of her debut album, First Take, released a week before the Stonewall uprising. Lyrics from that album’s “Compared to What,” resonate today: “The president, he’s got his war / Folks don’t know just what it’s for / Nobody gives us rhyme or reason / Have one doubt, they call it treason.”
While the year’s economy has sucked for most of us, masked federal goons have made 2025 the year of the “disappeared” neighbor, and the DOGEbags have led a direct assault on the federal workforce and so many treasured national institutions, the year has not been entirely disastrous.
Returning to Delia, I think of what is arguably his legacy: World Pride 2025. From those I’ve interviewed, nobody worked harder to bring this global event to Washington. And it was a glorious, much-needed celebration in the face the fetid Heritage Foundation’s evil efforts broadcast from D.C. Seriously, not only did they essentially give us the blueprint from hell, Project 2025, but had one of their worst, Russell Vought, installed again as the director of the Office of Management and Budget, a far more powerful post than bureaucratic banality suggests.
In the wake of a successful World Pride in the belly of the political beast, Hungary followed suit days later. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government passed legislation banning Pride events with hackneyed “save the children” propaganda. Despite threats of employing facial-recognition technology to identify and fine those who dared to defy “illiberal democracy’s” poster boy — and MAGA hero — Orbán, Budapest Pride was massive. Another bright spot in a bleak year.
In our gaudy “golden age,” celebrating even the smallest 2025 victories is crucial to our sanity. The acquitted D.C. gay sub-thrower, Sean Dunn, is a goddam hero.
Despite the bright bits, in these waning days it’s doubtful anything will redeem 2025’s infamy. So, what about 2026? I’m writing this ahead of Trump’s promised Dec. 17 primetime address. Will we start the year at war with Venezuela? If so, can we all at least agree it has nothing to do with narcotics and everything to do with monied American interests getting hold of Venezuelan oil?
At least 2026 will bring us midterm elections. Will they be as astounding as November’s off-year blue blitz? The administration appears to be doing everything in its power to fend off a fair vote. I’m going to hold on to hope. It’s free, and it’s good for mental health. Thankfully, these upcoming elections should suck up much of the 2026 oxygen, offering something to look at aside from the administration’s daily dive into absurdist theater (with a sadism streak). Candidates are already campaigning, and it will only get louder at the new year.
What might a new Congress do? No shade to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, but I’ll let my optimism run amok and consider a new Democratic majority elects Rep. Sarah McBride as the House’s first transgender speaker. Next, with both the Senate and House in Democratic hands, that stretch of 16th Street fronting the White House will once again be Black Lives Matter Plaza, by law, permanently. They will override the veto. Certainly, we can expect the Epstein mire to get deeper and dirtier.
God knows there will be more protests. And each protest is a bright spot we can manifest regardless of whatever happens next year. We control them. We are them. In the meantime, please enjoy the odometer flip from one year to the next along this needlessly bumpy road.
Will O’Bryan is a Metro Weekly senior contributing editor. He lives with his husband in D.C. Find him online at LifeInFlights.com.
Sian Radaskiewicz-King, of Baltimore, has pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors for spray-painting a transgender symbol near Saints Peter & Paul Elementary School in Easton -- conduct that prompted a hate-crime charge and kept her jailed without bond for more than two months.
Under a plea deal with the Talbot County State's Attorney's Office, the 32-year-old admitted to one count of defacing religious property and one count of malicious destruction of property, with prosecutors dropping 24 additional charges.
Prosecutors say Radaskiewicz-King spray-painted a transgender symbol -- a circle with male and female glyphs and a third combined spoke -- around Saints Peter & Paul Elementary School in Easton on the night of September 4. They allege she tagged the same symbol at several other spots in town, including a liquor store fence, the sidewalk outside an Ulta Beauty, and a brick archway at a nearby shopping center.
History was made in Pennsylvania several weeks ago, when Erica Deuso became not only her town's first transgender elected official, but the first transgender mayor to be elected in Pennsylvania history.
Deuso's identity -- and the historic nature of her candidacy -- were not the focus of her campaign for mayor of Downingtown, Pennsylvania. Instead, the 45-year-old focused on kitchen-table issues and the nuts and bolts of governing a small city in an exurban county outside Philadelphia.
"After I won my primary, The Philadelphia Inquirer did a story about it, noting, 'This person could be the first trans mayor in Pennsylvania.' But that's not what I was running on," says Deuso. "Everybody I met was really focused on what was in it for their families. What was I going to do about flooding? What am I going to do about public safety? And I kid you not, the first person who approached me, after I found out that I won, was talking to me about a speed bump in their neighborhood."
Justine Lindsay, the NFL's first out transgender cheerleader, recently revealed that she was fired this year, a decision she alleges was motivated by transphobia and Donald Trump's election as president.
"I was cut because I'm trans," Lindsay said in an Instagram Live with Gaye Magazine. "I don't wanna hear nobody saying, 'She didn't wanna come back.' Why the hell would I not wanna come back to an organization that I've been a part of for three years? That makes no sense to me. So I was cut. I was devastated. It stung. I was hurt."
Lindsay, who made history as the NFL's first transgender cheerleader when she tried out and made the Carolina Panthers's TopCats squad in 2022, told the magazine that her teammates "know the truth" about the decision to cut her from the squad.
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