Keeping up the fight

Stonewall Community Foundation knows that the work we do is vital to our communities and critical to the people we serve. Whether through our scholarships to immigrants, microgrants to women and trans folks, or via our broader work building the capacity of nonprofits to meet today’s challenges, we are here and fighting for our people.

Queer Liberation March 2021 - Photo by Leandro Justen

Recently, two major institutions that have supported LGBTQ+ organizations with more than $100M in funding each have changed their funding policies, leaving thousands of nonprofits – primarily those serving trans populations and queer communities of color – scrambling to find the critical resources they need to stay afloat.

The Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr Fund, which has made more than $105M in grants through its LGBT Equality Fund is winding that Fund down over the next year to focus solely on their home state of California. Describing themselves to be “policy and outcomes oriented,” the Haas Fund is moving away from funding for LGBTQ rights because they claim that “California already has by far the strongest pro-LGBT Laws in the nation.” This view is shortsighted and leaves tens of thousands of marginalized queer people out of their vision.

Gilead Sciences, the pharmaceutical giant behind Truvada and Descovy, two powerful HIV medications prescribed for PrEP, has changed its policies and will cut their reimbursable rate for medications from retail price to less than $100 per refill. This alone will result in more than $100M in cuts to HIV service organizations. Compounding the damage, this decision will have an adverse effect on programs in states that have not expanded their Medicaid funding, which also happen to be places with disproportionate numbers of LGBTQ people of color living with HIV.

After the successful campaigns to ensure marriage equality through the 2000’s and ending (so far) with US v Windsor in 2013, more than a few funders claimed victory, shut their doors, or otherwise redirected their priorities away from LGBTQ issues. This was particularly hard on communities where the priority of marriage equality paved over work at the intersections of gender identity and racial justice. Transgender, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary individuals are under growing attacks, both personally and politically. Though marriage as an institution should be an economic equalizer, queer people of color have not, by and large, benefitted from the same economic and societal wins that were celebrated with Obergefell and Windsor. The HIV epidemic is far from over, despite advances in managing it as a chronic condition.   

This is not the time to cut funding. This is the time to step up and do more. America has seen more anti-trans legislation in the last year than at any time in our history, and 2019 and 2020 both saw a 20% increase in hate crimes against TGNC people. Our schools are under attack for daring to teach the humanities with the barest of nods toward racial justice. 

At Stonewall, we’re still walking the walk and talking the talk, and we will not give up until the rights of self-determination are protected for everyone.

We pledge to keep up that fight.