Log Cabin Republicans, the conservative gay rights group, announced it will be known as an “LGB” advocacy organization going forward, dropping the “T” and distancing itself from the transgender rights movement.
Ahead of the group’s 50th anniversary, the organization’s board of directors voted to ditch the “T” from the umbrella of its mission due to the “new era of gender identity politics,” Log Cabin Republicans president Ross Hemminger wrote in an op-ed published Thursday.
The move aligns with the rollback of transgender rights since President Donald Trump returned to office.
“After significant discussion with its membership, the Board determined that Log Cabin Republicans will focus its national advocacy specifically on lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans and issues including marriage, adoption, military service, equal treatment under the law, and religious liberty,” a statement from the organization said.
In the op-ed, Hemminger said that the transgender movement “has ceased focusing on adults” and is instead focusing on minors, echoing Trump’s rhetoric.
“They push schools to teach radical gender ideology; they want biological men in women’s sports regardless of the consequences; perhaps most offensively, they support gender reassignment treatments for minors, often without the knowledge or consent of the parents, knowing full well these treatments are mostly irreversible,” Hemminger wrote.
Hemminger’s comments were described as “untrue and inflammatory” by the LGBTQ Nation publication, and accused him of “fear-mongering about ‘gender ideology’ in schools.”
Log Cabin Republicans, which describes itself as an “inclusive community” also faced criticism from the Human Rights Campaign. “Splitting up the LGBTQ+ community and pitting us against each other is exactly what anti-equality forces want to see happen,” the group’s spokesperson Delphine Luneau told LGBTQ Nation. “Sacrificing one part of a community in the false hope that it will somehow protect the rest of it has never worked throughout history, and it’s a tactic that should be rejected again today.”
The conservative group said that its membership “remains open to all conservatives, and the organization welcomes allies who share its commitment to conservative values and individual liberty.”
The move comes as the Trump administration has imposed sweeping bans targeting trans Americans over the last year.
During his State of the Union address in February, Trump used a teenager’s story to call for a ban on states and schools allowing transgender and nonbinary students to socially transition without parental consent, in what civil rights groups have called “forced outing” that endangers vulnerable children.
Trump has taken a particularly hard line since returning to office in 2025, casting the gender identity of transgender people as a lie and issuing multiple executive orders limiting their rights.
One Trump directive stated that the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, male and female. Another sought to exclude transgender athletes from female sports.
The Associated Press contributed to this report