The key players? Transgender women and street queens.

Evidence suggests the opposite. In an era of rising authoritarianism and anti-gender ideology movements worldwide (from Florida’s "Don’t Say Gay" laws to Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act), the attacks are aimed at everyone under the rainbow umbrella. The conservative backlash does not differentiate between a gay man, a lesbian, or a trans child. They see unnaturalness, confusion, and sin in all of us.

The transgender community is not a separate wing of the LGBTQ museum. It is the load-bearing wall. As we move forward into an uncertain future, the resilience of the transgender community will continue to dictate the resilience of the entire rainbow. To support the "T" is not to abandon the "LGB"; it is to honor the original promise of the revolution—a world where everyone, regardless of the body they are born in or the people they love, can live authentically and without fear.

The transgender community was not a later addition to LGBTQ culture; it was a founding pillar. The "T" in LGBTQ is not a recent appendage but a co-author of the original fight for liberation. The Great Schism: Tensions Within the LGBTQ Umbrella Despite this shared genesis, the relationship between the transgender community and the rest of the LGBTQ culture has not always been harmonious. As the gay and lesbian movement became more mainstream in the 1990s and 2000s—focusing on marriage equality, military service (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell), and workplace non-discrimination—many felt that transgender issues were being left behind.

Gay culture taught the world that love is love. Trans culture teaches the world that identity is identity. One cannot flourish without the other. When a young trans boy comes out at school, he relies on the trail blazed by gay teachers who fought for anti-bullying policies. When a lesbian couple holds hands in public, they walk through a door held open by trans rioters at Stonewall.

Consequently, the transgender community and LGBTQ culture are fusing tighter than ever before. The "LGB without the T" movement remains a tiny, vocal minority. The vast majority of queer people recognize that the fight for the right to love who you love is inextricably linked to the fight for the right to be who you are. To understand the transgender community is to understand the most radical proposition of LGBTQ culture: the self is sovereign.

Similarly, at Stonewall, the voices that shouted "I’m not taking it anymore" were not the clean-cut gay men in suits, but transgender activists and gender-nonconforming drag performers like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. Johnson, a self-identified transvestite and gay liberationist, and Rivera, a transgender activist, threw the proverbial bricks that lit the fuse for the modern movement.