The Butcher’s Bill: Weekly Report on National Attacks Against the LGBTQIA2S Community
The Human Rights Alliance of Santa Fe is launching a new weekly statement series to track and respond to the escalating wave of legislative, regulatory, and judicial attacks targeting the LGBTQIA2S community across the United States. We are calling this series “The Butcher’s Bill.”
The title is not accidental. In the early years of the AIDS crisis, when government indifference allowed thousands of queer people to die, public health officials quietly tracked the mounting death toll on a chalkboard labeled the “Butcher’s Bill.” It was a grim accounting of lives lost while those in power looked away.
Today, we find ourselves once again forced to keep a ledger—not of bodies, but of rights, dignity, and safety being stripped away piece by piece. Each week, the Human Rights Alliance will document these attacks, name them clearly, and call our community and our allies to vigilance and action.
This week’s entries in The Butcher’s Bill illustrate the growing national campaign to erase LGBTQIA2S people from public life and legal recognition.
Federal Immigration Rule Targets Transgender, Nonbinary, and Intersex Applicants
A new rule issued by the U.S. Department of State titled “Enhancing Vetting and Combatting Fraud in the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program,” scheduled to take effect on April 10, 2026, introduces troubling changes to the Diversity Visa application process.
Among the most concerning provisions is the requirement that applicants report their “sex” rather than gender, based strictly on sex assigned at birth.
This policy erases the identities of transgender, nonbinary, and intersex applicants and forces them to submit documentation that may conflict with their lived identity or current legal documents. For many applicants, particularly those fleeing persecution abroad, such discrepancies can expose them to scrutiny, discrimination, and even danger.
The rule also requires passport information and biometric documentation in ways that critics warn may disproportionately impact marginalized applicants and those with limited access to documentation.
At its core, this policy reflects a broader federal effort to enforce a rigid and scientifically inaccurate definition of sex that excludes millions of people.
Courts Allow States to Deny Gender-Affirming Care to Adults
In a deeply troubling ruling, a federal court has allowed the state of West Virginia to ban Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming surgery for transgender adults.
This decision opens the door for states to selectively deny medically necessary care to transgender people under public health programs, even when those treatments are widely recognized as medically appropriate by major professional organizations.
The ruling effectively tells transgender Americans that their healthcare is negotiable—that their dignity and bodily autonomy can be carved out of public health protections simply because of who they are.
The national implications are profound. If allowed to stand unchallenged, similar policies could spread across the country, creating a patchwork system in which transgender people’s access to care depends entirely on their zip code.
Healthcare discrimination should never be public policy.
State-Level Legislation Attempts to Police Children’s Identities
In Ohio, lawmakers are advancing legislation framed around so-called “parental rights” that seeks to enforce a child’s “biological reality” in schools.
In practice, the bill attempts to force educators and administrators to reject the identities of transgender and nonbinary students, placing schools in the role of identity police rather than protectors of student wellbeing.
Measures like this place young people directly in harm’s way. They create hostile school environments, strip students of privacy, and undermine the trust that young people must have in the adults responsible for their safety.
For many LGBTQIA2S youth, school is the one place where they can exist openly and safely. Laws designed to invalidate them do not protect children—they endanger them.
A Pattern, Not Isolated Incidents
Taken individually, these policies might appear disconnected. In reality, they form part of a coordinated national movement aimed at erasing LGBTQIA2S people from public recognition, healthcare systems, educational environments, and immigration protections.
The strategy is clear: redefine legal language, strip away protections, and normalize discrimination until exclusion becomes policy.
The Human Rights Alliance refuses to allow these actions to pass quietly.
A Call to Action
Here in New Mexico, we are fortunate to live in a state that continues to affirm the dignity and rights of LGBTQIA2S people. Our state leaders have chosen inclusion over fear and evidence over ideology.
But the rights of our community cannot stop at state borders.
The Human Rights Alliance calls on policymakers, community leaders, and everyday citizens to reject the growing campaign of misinformation and hostility targeting LGBTQIA2S people. We must speak out, support those under attack, and defend the basic truth that every human being deserves dignity, safety, and recognition under the law.
The Butcher’s Bill exists to remind us of what is at stake.
And as long as these attacks continue, we will keep counting.