Gay Men and Trump 2.0: Coping with Anxiety
In December, 2004, at the time of the re-election of President George W. Bush (the son of President George Bush, President from 1988-1992), I wrote an article for A&U, “America’s AIDS Magazine,” that was part of my monthly column for that publication for several years, advocating for HIV/AIDS mental health, which largely focused on gay men.
I’d like to reprint sections of that article, below, while encouraging you to consider how these words from back then might apply to the current situation, twenty years later, of the re-election of President Donald Trump on November 5, 2024, just last week:
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A Second Bush Presidency in the Third Decade of HIV: Now What?
What does the re-election of President George W. Bush mean for the mental health of people living with HIV/AIDS? That’s a complicated question. While certainly not all people living with HIV in the United States were supporters of Bush’s challenger, Senator John Kerry, many (some would say most) were, because Democrats have traditionally been the party more of a friend to PWA’s than Republicans. This is probably because many people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH/A’s) are gay men, people who live in urban centers, women, young people, people of color, and people with strained resources and inadequate access to full health care – all Democratic strongholds. So the reelection of Bush, probably, represents an enormous sense of disappointment for these constituents and their interests. In addition to disappointment, there may be shock: How could Kerry lose after “winning” three televised debates, Bush’s approval rating being below 50% before the election, the US experience of a net loss of jobs 2000-2004, and a major, controversial war in Iraq? There also may be helplessness and even rage. And, certainly, a fear that new Bush policies in a second term will practically guarantee that PLWH/A’s needs will not be adequately met over the next four years.
For many living with HIV, the disappointment and shock of the election’s results can easily give way to depression. One genesis of depression is when a person desperately wants to escape or change a situation, and yet is helpless to change it. These frustrated efforts then give way to despair. This must be how many Kerry campaign volunteers from the HIV, LGBT, and other minority communities have felt in their fight, seeing their hopes go up in smoke like prescription drug access reform, increased access to a full range of health care services, threatened reauthorization and funding of local Ryan White CARE Act services (which the new Republican-majority House and Senate will vote on in 2005), HMO reform, immigration policies, and certainly the threat or real loss of civil union and domestic partner rights in states that approved ballot measures to not only prevent gay marriage but to strip legal status of civil unions and domestic partnerships as well. Unfortunately, there are many potential new policies of Bush, and lost potential policies of Kerry, to mourn that affect many lives in very real, personal ways. What isn’t loss, which contributes to depression, can be the threat of loss, which contributes to anxiety.
In both depression and anxiety, we must mobilize our internal cognitive resources to cope. This means we must change the way we think, in order to change the way we feel. One of the best antidotes for anxiety is to take an action – any action – that proves to our inner selves that we are not helpless. People can focus on the positive things that are still left in their lives – seeing friends, spending time with family, and trying do rewarding and productive work. They can become active in local politics such as serving on consumer advisory boards, boards of directors, and volunteer campaigns for Congressional elections in two years. If they are gay or bisexual, they can come out to family, friends, and colleagues – which has proven to be effective in influencing socially conservative people away from voting for Draconian antigay measures if they know someone personally close to them who is LGBT whose life would be negatively affected. They can do letter-writing campaigns, public speaking engagements, public demonstrations, legal actions, or write magazine columns!
We can also do what we’ve been doing for many years, especially during Republican administrations of the 80’s, early in the epidemic, that hurt so many PLWH/A’s for so long: We can take actions despite the dominant paradigm in power, and prove that the power of the people speaking out must be reckoned with. That sense of self-empowerment, which began with those brave, early PWA volunteers of ACT-UP, is critical for survival (silence = death). And we can wait for someone to emerge in 2008 who champions our issues once again, and throw our full support behind them. Even if the current leadership enacts many policies that hurt us, there is a way for all of us, in our personal, meaningful, and specific ways, to demonstrate a resistance that preserves our personal empowerment and prevents despair. And unlike medication viral resistance, this kind of resistance can be a good thing. The ability to act effectively in the face of duress builds our personal capacity for coping, and helps us to develop an increased sense of compassion we can model for others – including our President.
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OK, so that was back then. Back to the present day:
I find it part amusing, and part horrifying, that so much of the sentiment from my previous article is so applicable today, in 2024, with Trump’s re-election. Notice how I mentioned gay men, people who live in urban centers, women, young people, people of color, and people with strained resources and inadequate access to full health care. Notice how I questioned how John Kerry could lose after seemingly “winning” televised debates, the previous incumbent’s approval rating being below 50% before the election, the US experience of a net loss of jobs (2016-2020), and the new Republican-majority House and Senate. Gay Australian singer Peter Allen had a hit song with his cover of, “Everything Old is New Again.” Here we are.
Notice also how I mentioned that disappointment and shock of the election’s results can easily give way to depression, when the genesis of depression is said to be when a person desperately wants to escape or change a situation, and yet is helpless to change it. I’m not thrilled about animal experiments, but they did this with rats in a box; after trying to escape for a while, they gave up – and didn’t try again, even after the latch had been unlocked and they could have just left. These frustrated efforts then give way to despair. But as perhaps the greatest Democratic President ever said, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself,” (Franklin D. Roosevelt, President, 1932-1945, who was elected to four terms before Congress instituted term limits for Presidents).
Clinical Social Workers (like me) often encourage our clients to identify “adaptive coping strategies” for any life stressor they encounter. We can ask ourselves, now, what are the adaptive coping strategies for the re-election of Trump, one of the most virulently anti-gay Presidents in the history of the country? (see also: https://www.hrc.org/resources/trumps-timeline-of-hate, https://www.hrc.org/news/the-list-of-trumps-unprecedented-steps-for-the-lgbtq-community, https://fenwayhealth.org/during-first-term-in-office-trump-administration-enacted-more-anti-lgbtqia-policies-than-any-previous-administration-with-devastating-consequences/, https://theconversation.com/lgbtq-rights-where-trump-and-vance-stand-237298, and https://www.them.us/story/donald-trump-worst-lgbtq-attacks).
With the re-election of Trump, the commitment to reverse marriage equality rights (which two-thirds of Americans support now), the emphasis has shifted to being more anti-Trans than anti-Gay (gay men and lesbians). However, usually the policies that hurt Trans people also harm the entire LGBTQ+ community, and others as well (such as women and immigrants, all people living with HIV/AIDS, those without health insurance, low-income people, people of color, veterans, the elderly, disabled people, homeless people, children, etc. – it’s a wide ripple effect when LGBTQ+ people are harmed by laws and policies because those policies hurt our most vulnerable populations).
Much of the anxiety regarding Trump’s re-election is partly what is (such as the appointment on November 12, 2024, of Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel, one of the most virulent anti-gay political figures in recent history), but also what “could be” as Trump makes more position appointments even ahead of his re-Inauguration in January, 2025, now just two months away as of this writing in mid-November, 2024. Clinically, anticipatory anxiety can be more subjectively painful than what actually is, because a sense of threat activates our psychological defenses and autonomic nervous system such as cortisol and adrenaline, the “flight/fight/freeze” response, and causes hypervigilance, that keeps us chronically on high alert to threats to our well-being, even without knowing what those harms are, yet.
Anxiety is sometimes defined as “the fear of loss.” As gay men, we (legitimately) fear losing rights and protections that we currently have, as well as being denied further rights which we have been advocating for (such as more comprehensive workplace and consumer protections, against “religious freedom” businesses that want the legal permission to discriminate against us as a group.)
It’s also said that the opposite of anxiety is safety – when a threat has been eliminated, as much as any threat ever can be.
We want to feel safe again, and feel that we, as a gay male community, are making progress to expand our rights to full equality with others under the Law. With the re-election of Trump and the historically virulently anti-gay Republican Congressional majorities, now in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, where House Speaker Mike Johnson as the most overtly Christian Nationalist and anti-gay Speaker in the history of Congress, we are not likely to make that progress, and will be lucky if we don’t lose considerable ground, making us less safe, more vulnerable, and even more designated as second-class citizens in America, compared to heterosexuals. Part of Trump’s “Project 2025” by the Heritage Foundation, long known as a virulently radical anti-gay group, is the goal of eliminating all protections against discrimination for LGBT people, in employment, housing, education, the military, and public services, which is in part anti-gay, and in part pro-business so they can’t be sued for damages for discrimination, preserving their profits.
Part of anxiety management is realizing that anxiety is a more clinical term for just “worry.” And as the saying goes, you can’t “worry” your way to safety. Worrying or not will not affect the outcome of something outside of your control. The wisdom of bumper stickers is often salient, which includes the adage, “Hope for the Best. Prepare for the worst. And take what comes with a smile.”
Another saying is “Action Is Antidotal to Anxiety.” If the government’s new legal systems want to take rights away, the way we fight it is through public education and public sentiment, and through the (rather boring) legal aspects of the courts. Remember, the Supreme Court case that gave us national marriage equality was actually a lawsuit from a rich lesbian who didn’t want to pay additional inheritance tax that she would not have had to pay had she been married to her same-sex partner. It was a “sentimental” idea about “Love Is Love,” it was a tax savings idea for someone rather privileged person.
The late Harvey Milk, who was a Supervisor in San Francisco was murdered, used to advocate for gay men to just be “out”. The more the general public knows LGBT people in their life, the more it “de-mystifies” us and helps them to empathize with LGBT people, which makes them overall less inclined to vote against our rights. Marriage Equality was certainly that way, after lots of straight people started knowing same-sex couples, as friends or family, and they attended their weddings. These days, they need to get to know more Trans kids and understand they need medical care, and to dispel the Republican hysteria that little boys are going to school and coming home with their penises chopped off by the school nurse, as Trump specifically touted. Those kinds of myths need not go unchecked; they need to be called out as absurd by our LGBT advocacy organizations, like Human Rights Campaign, who do a horrible job of educating the public, while the Christian Right does a stupendously expert job of “mis-educating” the population, if you’ve ever heard “Christian radio” programs.
So, we reduce anxiety about losing our rights in the cultural battle through a combination of public sentiment and legal proceedings, which, when you think about, is how most civil rights changes happened through history, such as women getting the right to vote in 1920 after a long campaign that dates back to the 1880’s or longer.
We can take heart in the long view with another inspirational quote:
“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life…most of which never happened.” – Mark Twain.
But we can do, is prepare, and do the things that work for us in our value system, whether that’s involve ourselves in activism, or “living well” as best we can, staying out of the fray as much as any of us ever can so that we limit the volume of stressful information we are exposed to, especially media hysteria and noise we can do nothing about; that stuff is largely click-bait and trying to sell “screen time” on apps.
Before we had marriage equality, that brings with it thousands of Federal and state civil rights automatically, gay men provided for themselves by entering private contracts, such as a will leaving their money to their partner, or writing/notarizing a formal Power of Attorney for health care decisions, or arranging for joint ownership of real estate or other property.
If we fear the most extreme possible policy changes, such as the loss of marriage equality rights in many states if the Supreme Court should overturn the Obergefell case, then the action to take would be doing things the way gay men did them before any state had marriage equality.
If there is a fear that gay men would be systematically rounded up for internment camps or mass execution, as happened during the European Holocaust (1934-1945), the coping would be like any other threat to our lives, such as illness, accident, or violent crime (not to mention natural causes). While any socio-political scenario, even the most dystopian, is possible, we mitigate our worry/anxiety but understanding what is most likely. In the case of Trump’s second administration, the hardship is likely to fall on the Trans community, such as being denied health care services (especially as children or youth), being denied military service, and being denied civil rights in employment, housing, and access to medical care. All severe hardships, but all are subject to actual policy changes that may or may not occur, and all subject to reversal by a more progressive President and government (Congress, Supreme Court, state governments) in the future.
There are a number of inspirational quotes about coping with worry on this website, conveniently curated: https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/worry-quotes
My favorite among perusing these is this one, by an inspirational author popular in the 1980s:
“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”
Gay men used to live under far fewer civil rights than we have now, and thrived – such as the story of Hollywood luminaries William Haines and Jimmie Shields, Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, Christopher Isherwood and Don Barchady, or Tab Hunter and Anthony Perkins. No matter what (including the AIDS crisis), we endure.
We’ve done it before, and we will again.
Onward.
If you would like more customized help that is specific to you and your situation, consider booking an appointment for psychotherapy (for guys in California, where I’m licensed for that), or Coaching, anywhere in the world (we just figure out the time zone difference when we schedule appointments). There are some areas of overlap in those services, but also some important legal and ethical differences that are important to differentiate between these types of professional services; see also GayCoachingLA.com for Coaching services. I can also answer any questions you have about this. See also other Blog articles on this website, or check out my Podcast, “Gay Therapy LA with Ken Howard, LCSW, CST” heard in over 148 countries around the world, with over 150 episodes to date. I also offer online courses, including one on gay men starting your own business, available on the Thinkific course platform. Other online course offerings are in the works, including the upcoming “Gay Men and Improving Sexual Self-Confidence.” If you have suggestions for future blog articles, podcast episodes, or online course topics, your suggestions are welcome. If you want individualized help sooner, email Ken@GayTherapyLA.com, or Ken@GayCoachingLA.com, or call/text 310-339-5778, and I’d be happy to help. (Instagram: gaytherapyla_Ken_Howard_LCSW)
