After the 2024 presidential election, a person shoved him on the street and began yelling anti-trans slurs. “I’m laying in the street bleeding. Not one person stopped to help me or see if I was okay. And I got up, and I’m bleeding. My hands are bleeding, my knees are bleeding, my face is bleeding.” It was then that he decided he had to leave the country.
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Hefty is part of the record number of LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. fleeing the president’s anti-transgender policies by seeking asylum in other countries, according to a report released last Saturday by the LGBTQ+ asylum relocation assistance group Rainbow Railroad.
Simultaneously, fewer LGBTQ+ refugees from other anti-LGBTQ+ countries are seeking asylum in the U.S., a result of the president’s anti-immigration policies, according to the group’s report, Understanding the State of Global LGBTQI+ Persecution, which was released on World Refugee Day.
Last year, Rainbow Railroad received 20,215 direct requests for relocation assistance from queer and trans people, a 51% increase over 2024 and the highest number of requests the group has received since its founding in 2006.
Approximately 31% of last year’s requests came from people living in the U.S. The previous year, that percentage was about 13%. While past requests to leave the U.S. had in the past predominantly come from queer immigrants who had been resettled in the states, about 88% of the requests in 2025 came from American citizens who said they were fleeing the current administration’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
I live in a city. Not a small town. A small city… Though frankly uptown/gaytown/andersonville in chicago is the best of most worlds.
large town/small city sizes get fucky out here in california. your small city is probably the same size as my large town. it’s really down to the character of the place and that’s a very blurry line.
i like places where it’s still small enough you get a lot of rural and urban overlap. more people more walks of life meet. The only way i know to force through prejudice is with proximity.
Uptoot for Pittsburgh. Best of both worlds. Really small city with a big city vibe. Lots of restaurants and different neighborhoods with a lot of differential vibes. Also very bike-able, I can bike from Southside to Lawrenceville in 30 mins.
Uh, which one? I’ve been to CA and PA and they are both great for different (and a few of the same) reasons.
Folk define big and small city as it suits them. Like the folk I would visit out at the farm in Oregon, that town is like 1500 people. They all look like me, we’re all related. When I went to church with great gran, they asked where I was from. A town of about [low hundred thousands]. They goggled and exclaimed i was from a big city.
The largest building in town was the hospital back then, which was the only three floor building in my town. Yeah, we have a lot of people but we’re packed in tight. Our “downtown”, which is currently one block long on one street, did not exist back then. It’s less to do with size and more to do with general ambiance.