When the rainbow flags come down and the glitter is cleared from the streets, one question lingers: How does the fight for LGBTQ+ rights and equity continue when the spotlight fades? With more than 850 anti-LGBTQ+ bills filed in 2025 alone, as well as continued challenges in queer communities in the District and nationwide, activists are saying that support for LGBTQ+ rights cannot be seasonal.
“Pride began as a protest, and whilst June offers a moment to celebrate progress, it also reminds us there’s still work to be done,” said Tristan Pineiro, senior vice president of brand marketing and communications for Grindr, the world’s largest LGBTQ+ social networking app.
While many cities have celebrated Pride this June, LGBTQ+ communities across the nation continue to face major challenges, attacks and efforts to prevent them from thriving.
With such action such as the Trump administration’s Jan. 20 anti-trans executive order, recognizing people as only biologically male and female, to people in the LGBTQ+ community facing continued disparities — particularly African Americans — advocates, community leaders and politicians alike are emphasizing that work toward positive change and equity for all is a non-stop commitment.
“Pick up the phone on July 1. If you’re only engaging with the queer community during Pride Month, you’re not building a relationship, you’re running a campaign. And we can tell the difference,” Pineiro said. “Authentic support means showing up when it’s not convenient and investing in us year-round.”
While June 30 might wrap up Pride, advocates emphasize the importance of keeping the momentum of the month year-round, through such actions as: supporting LGBTQ+ owned business, providing safe-spaces and committing to help uplift queer communities.
“People need to want to support those things all year long,” said Alex Fraioli, secretary of Rainbow History Project, a D.C.-based organization preserving and promoting local LGBTQ+ history and culture.
Supporting LGBTQ+-Owned Businesses, Efforts, Spaces
For Fraioli, Pineiro and other advocates, supporting LGBTQ+-owned businesses and grassroots organizations, as well as non-queer-owned corporations showing their allyship, is a key way to carry the spirit of Pride beyond June.
“We are an organization that’s specifically focused on LGBTQ+ history. We’re going to share it all year long, but businesses should be supporting our community all year long [as well],” Fraioli told The Informer. “Businesses can run fundraisers that might even end up being more successful outside of Pride month.”
In the District, Fraioli said there’s been a positive shift for LGBTQ+ representation in business, lauding an increase in queer ownership and organizations that are hosting more events “outside of Pride month than they used to.”
But on a national scale, Corporate Pride — the way businesses publicly support LGBTQ+ communities — has noticeably declined in 2025, according to Forbes. Several major brands, including Walmart, Target and Lowe’s, have scaled back their Pride efforts in response to political pressure and public backlash, raising questions about the depth and consistency of corporate allyship.
However, with national and worldwide threats to LGBTQ+ communities, some corporations, such as Grindr, are working hard to uplift queer people and rights in June and throughout the year.
“Nearly 40% of brands are scaling back Pride engagement this year, we’re choosing to lean in,” said Pineiro, before highlighting one of the app’s efforts toward global LGBTQ+ empowerment: “Grindr Rides Again Tour 2025.”
Now in its second year, “Grindr Rides Again” expanded its reach with stops in cities including Washington, D.C., (June 6-8), New York, London, Berlin and Paris, in an effort to turn online connections into real-life community engagement.
“Our very existence is a political statement,” said Pineiro, “and the ‘Grindr Rides Again Tour’ is our love letter to the people and places that built queer culture.”
The tour hit the nation’s capital on June 6, featuring drag queen Crystal Edge, who emphasized the importance of such efforts for LGBTQ+ empowerment.
“It’s chances like this where we can celebrate being ourselves, celebrate being our most authentic self, talk about sexual health, and be together as a community,” Edge said in a statement.
At a time where LGBTQ+ rights, lives and efforts are under attack, part of the Grindr tour was to promote safe-space “gayborhoods” for self-expression and engaging with others, which Edge describes as “a neighborhood that feels just as safe as the gay community is.”
“It should be a place where you can walk around being 110% yourself and not only walk around without fear but be embraced by the people around you,” Edge said. “It offers a space for open expression, social gatherings, and access to essential resources. It’s that sense of community that is so important right now, especially with the amount of vitriol pointed at the queer community today.”
Creating a Safe Space: LGBTQ+ Housing Opens in Ward 7, Serves as Model for Other Cities
While Dupont Circle in Northwest is commonly noted as the District’s “gayborhood,” a new apartment building has opened in Southeast D.C.’s Fort Dupont with the goal of embracing, uplifting and providing a safe space for senior LGBTQ+ Washingtonians.
It’s only been a month and a half since moving in, but Wallace Corbett told The Informer Mary’s House for Older Adults feels like home because he says it is the epitome of what a safe space should be. Raised on a North Carolina farm, Corbett’s mother taught him about canning food, cooking, farming and keeping a home safe.
“That was my first thing when I did the application and the tour,” said Corbett, a 62-year-old George Washington Hospital radiologist and new renter at the Ward 7 building. “I said ‘How am I going to feel safe?’ They showed me the cameras, the security things on the door … All of that made me feel safe. When I go to sleep, I’m not worried about someone coming in.”
It’s not only the security features that makes Mary’s House for Older Adults feel safe for Corbett and his neighbors.
The 15-unit Fort Dupont apartment complex is the District’s first affordable LGBTQ+SGL (same gender loving) affirming communal living space for adults 60 and older.
According to the Black and woman-owned community development organization, Northern Real Estate Urban Ventures, it is also the nation’s first model of such a living space.
“We’ve tried some things other people haven’t tried,” said Mayor Muriel Bowser during the ribbon-cutting of Mary’s House in May. “We’re on a pathway to drive down homelessness, we opened a shelter that is focused on our LGBTQ+ population, and now we have a model for 60-year-olds and older to live right in the District.”
As an advocate for women, people of color and the LGBTQ+ community–all populations she identifies with– Dr. Imani Woody, founder and president of Mary’s House for Older Adults, sought to turn her Ward 7, four-bedroom, childhood home into an apartment building that would provide solace and socialization for a population that she said is often forgotten.
“It houses 15 people, but the concept is more than 15,” Woody said of the shared housing model with more than 5,000 square feet of communal shared living space. “This is a place for the residents of Washington D.C.’s LGBTQ+, same gender loving [community] to have a safe space.”
Dr. Gina Merritt, the project’s developer and principal of Northern Real Estate Urban Ventures, said now that Mary’s House is complete, it can inspire similar efforts nationwide, starting with Baltimore.
“Our goal is to replicate this and do this all across the country,” Merritt said. “Now that we’ve done all the hard work, it should be easier to replicate as long as you can get the funding.”
Further, Merritt is particularly motivated to keep the momentum going after being exposed to the many challenges experienced by LGBTQ+ senior.
“This project has been an amazing experience, learning about this group of people who have been underserved, and when they get older, isolated. I am a community developer, but I was not exposed to the challenges of the LGBTQ+ community and seniors,” said Merritt. “I have always been an ally, but I did not know enough about this community when we were connected. I hope we can do this project again in all eight wards.”
Importance of Continued Investments in the District, Nationwide
While efforts such as Rainbow History Project, Grindr Rides Again and Mary’s House for Older Adults are ways to promote progress for LGBTQ+ rights, local advocates note a deeper investment in queer communities is needed to address long-standing issues facing queer and trans residents in the nation’s capital and across the country.
“In D.C., I want to see LGBTQ representation deepen beyond visibility and move into real power, especially for Black and brown queer people, who have always been the backbone of queer activism in the city,” said Jeremy Allen, 2025-2026 president for Howard University’s Coalition of Activist Students Celebrating Diversity & Equality (CASCADE), a LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. “That means more LGBTQ people in policymaking roles, more community-owned spaces, and more access to housing, health care, and education that directly serve queer and trans people across all eight wards.”
With proposals such as restrictions on access to gender-affirming care, regulations affecting participation in school sports and bathroom access, and measures that impact updating identity on legal documents, many advocates offer a call-to-action in order to work toward positive change: keeping up the Pride momentum year-round. ‘
“We see [that] court decisions and laws are being made year-round, [so] we have to continue to have visibility no matter what,” said Fraioli.
For organizations like Rainbow History Project, preserving and promoting LGBTQ+ history and narratives is a way of helping others understand the past in order to combat modern-day homophobia and anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
“By collecting [LGBTQ+] history, it gives people an opportunity to have context for what they’re going through today,” Fraioli told The Informer.
For Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Michelle D. Hammond, seeing something such as Mary’s House for Older Adults open up in the neighborhood she was born and raised in is a step in the right direction toward positive progress for queer Washingtonians. However, she said there’s more to do.
“We have to spread the word and get people to be knowledgeable about the community because when we were younger, it wasn’t talked about,” said Hammond, 60, who added that she is new to the LGBTQ+ community. “My plan is to come around here and see how I can help. I’m the person that likes to help serve.”
Chardae Henderson, 22, a bisexual, told The Informer that while the LGBTQ+ community has shown extreme resilience — despite historic hatred, homophobia, and disparities — unity and working to uplift others has been key in modern-day progress and is critical to combating current challenges and achieving equal rights for all.
“Queer people and culture have endured and survived for centuries,” said Henderson, 22. “Making sure that we are taking care of one another is crucial for that.”
