The Trump Administration is threatening life saving healthcare for vulnerable trans children by publishing a rule on August 11, 2026, that prohibits federal Medicaid funds from being used to provide medically necessary care to transgender youth under age 18 (and Children’s Health Insurance Program [CHIP] funds under age 19). We stand with the parents and families facing attacks on their health care by the Trump administration.

We urge health care providers and hospitals to continue to fulfill their duties and obligations to protect the health of all patients. This is a wake up call for states to take aggressive actions to protect essential medical care and push back on this unprecedented federal overreach.

What The Rule Does

• Prohibits the use of federal Medicaid funds to cover puberty blockers, hormones, or surgeries.
• Does not prohibit this care from being covered with state-only Medicaid funds or private insurance.
• Does not prohibit the use of federal funding for supportive mental health care.
• Provides a 6-month “tapering” period for transgender youth currently receiving hormone therapy. This tapering period does not apply to puberty blockers.
• Will go into effect on October 13, 2026.

The Facts About Healthcare For Trans Kids

• Medicaid is a lifeline for millions of children and their families around the country.
• Decades of research show that care for transgender youth is safe, effective, and beneficial, and every major U.S. medical and mental health association in the U.S. supports access to essential medical care for transgender youth.
• Health care should be based on science, medical expertise, and the needs of children and families.
• Medical decisions belong to parents, families, and doctors, not to politicians.
• All children should be happy and healthy. Like all other parents, the parents of transgender youth should have the freedom to get their child the care they need to stay healthy.
• The Trump administration has repeatedly put politics above families and thrown science under the bus to advance its baseless theories.

What The Rule Changes, What It Doesn’t

• It does not change the legality of providing care for transgender youth.
• The administration has not finalized the proposed rule that would amend the Conditions of Participation (COPs) to prohibit hospitals that receive Medicare and Medicaid funds from providing care to transgender youth under age 19.
• State Medicaid funds can be used for this care.
• The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2025 Skrmetti decision leaves decisions about health care for transgender youth to states and places no new legal limitations on care in states that do not have them.
• The administration’s threats to terminate funding for health care organizations that provide this care are currently blocked by the courts.

For more information on this issue

• National Center for LGBTQ Rights: nclrights.org/
• GLAD LAW: gladlaw.org/
• Movement Advancement Project: mapresearch.org

For support for South Asian families

• Speak to a Desi Rainbow Saathi: Support groups & Saathi
• Join the monthly Desi Rainbow Parents and Family Support Groups: Support groups & Saathi

Take Action

• Join an advocacy training for Desi families of trans children on August 20th: Open the form. You will learn how to contact your elected officials and advocate for trans chidlren and adults.
• Receive our advocacy alerts: Desi Rainbow Trans Ally Pledge: Open the form
• Submit your story about the impact on your family: Open the form
• Become a member of Desi Rainbow: Volunteer & membership
• Support Desi Rainbow’s work with a donation: Donate

The Supreme Court issued two decisions on June 30th, one that we celebrate wholeheartedly, and one that disappoints and saddens us.

As an organization that serves South Asian LGBTQIA+ immigrants and their families, Desi Rainbow celebrates the Supreme Court’s rejection of the attack on birthright citizenship. This decision upholds a constitutional promise that has protected generations of Americans, and ensures that South Asian American children are guaranteed citizenship regardless of their parents’ immigration status.

At the same time, we are saddened by the Supreme Court’s decision to allow state-level bans on transgender girls’ participation in sports to stand, including those previously passed in 27 states. This ruling is deeply disappointing and hurts trans youth and their families.

The bans single out trans girls for exclusion without context, treating a kindergarten soccer game the same way as an elite athletic event. Looking forward, we must work to replace bans with rules for participation that are tailored to achieve fairness in different sports at different ages and levels of competition. All students playing sports deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

The 2025-2026 Supreme Court term has been a disappointing one for LGBTQIA+ rights and protections, with rulings that refuse to allow a state ban on conversion therapy (a dangerous and discredited practice) in Colorado and allow forced outing of trans students in California.

We believe that these rulings do not define the future of trans children or our LGBTQIA+ community and their families. No court ruling can diminish our power, our joy, or our resilience. We will continue our grassroots work to ensure that our community receives support, education and advocacy to weather these storms and continues to resist and thrive.

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About Desi Rainbow: Desi Rainbow is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to the vision of a South Asian diaspora where diversity of sexuality and gender is valued, affirmed and celebrated. About us.

Press and media inquiries: info@desirainbow.org

Desi Rainbow strongly condemns the passage of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill on March 26, which significantly rolls back rights that were established a decade ago. This bill actively harms transgender people by denying self-identification, narrows the legal definition of a transgender person to erase trans men, non-binary, and gender-fluid individuals from legal recognition and subjects trans people to scrutiny by state-appointed medical boards and district magistrates. Even more chilling is that the bill introduces severe penalties, including life imprisonment, for those who "abduct" or "forcefully alter" the identities of children or adults—provisions that could be used to target affirming parents, NGOs, medical providers, or chosen families that support trans youth,

We are appalled and saddened by the erasure of transgender rights in India in a single act that reverses a decade of progress.

We represent a large Indian American diaspora consisting of LGBTQIA+ South Asians and their parents and allies, who are proud of India’s trans community and its history of resilience. We stand in solidarity with trans people in India in their battle for legal recognition and equal rights.

If you need support to process this painful moment, here are some resources:

In the United States

• Desi Rainbow Support Groups: the monthly LGBTQIA+ group (details) and the Parent & Family group (details)
• Saathi - talk to a Desi Rainbow Saathi volunteer (details)
• Contact Deqh, a Desi LGBTQ+ helpline (website)

In India

• Sweekar Rainbow Parents

Today, like everyone trapped by flashing red hearts that jump out at you from every corner of the media, I’m thinking about love. Over the weekend, I met several couples for the first time and each of them exemplified what love is.

One couple had recently got married in a civil ceremony, with a small group of friends cheering them on. The joy on the faces in the photos they showed me on their phones was incandescent. They were queer Indian American women, and they told me their families hadn’t warmed to the idea at the time, but now, they were treated like any other married couple when they visited.

Another couple invited me for breakfast, and over a meal of tacos and chai, talked about how they had met through work. One partner was transgender and white, and the other cisgender and Indian. One was very tall, and one very short, and they smiled at each other as I told them what a lovely couple they make, and my heart melted. They shared their own story - one of their families having initial worries about the relationship, but eventually fully supportive, and the other facing complete rejection from their family.

What I’ve observed in my journey as an ally is that LGBTQ+ folks take love seriously. They have had to. They have had to battle families and communities that make them feel their same-sex attraction and gender identity is shameful as they are growing up. Many have faced emotional and physical violence as children and learned to protect themselves the hard way. As adults, they have faced a world where their love is considered illegal, wrong and disgusting. So when they find love, they claim it fully, wholeheartedly, and it is a beautiful thing to see.

In the USA, the law of the land has finally affirmed the right of LGBTQ+ people to marry and claim the right that all cisgender, straight people take for granted. In other parts of the world, including South Asia, this right is far from guaranteed. In Sri Lanka, the government just announced that it plans to decriminalize same-sex relationships. In India, while same-sex relationships were decriminalized in 2018, the Supreme Court will hear the petitions of gay couples demanding legalization of same-sex marriage in March. Winning these legal battles will make a huge difference to the fear and violence that LGBTQ+ people face, but the battle to change the attitudes, hearts and minds of all of society remains a much larger one.

This Valentine’s Day, I’m celebrating LGBTQ+ love in all its infinite beauty. Those flashing hearts should reflect all colors of the rainbow.

First appeared in American Kahani on June 1, 2022.

This Pride Month, if you are LGBTQ+ or have someone who is in your family or community, I urge you to educate yourself and speak up publicly about your support for the LGBTQ+ members in your temple, gurudwara, Diwali party and weddings.

I had no idea I was lesbian when I was growing up in India. Sure, I was privately drawn to and ‘in love’ with the beautiful Bollywood heroines, from Sadhna and Madhubala to Madhuri Dixit and later Deepika Padukone. But I still remember the first time I heard the word “queer” was at a dinner party in Chandigarh in the 1980s, in embarrassed whispers referencing someone at the party who’s son had a terrible disease (AIDS) and had died because he was gay.

Sure, I was a tomboy, but I was treated like a star in my family, since I was Delhi State Swimming Champion for many years in the 80s, excelled at academics, and also did well at extracurricular activities like public speaking. I built my vision for life based on a desire for social change and impact which was seeded as we hid in our house in Defence Colony in 1984, hiding from the dangerous mobs who might threaten our family and lives, and in long talks with my inspiring public servant father.

Till the day I came out to my loving and supportive family, I was a star in my Desi community. The best all-rounder from Modern School’s graduating class of 1992, and then a high-performing Ivy Leaguer who graduated from Princeton and achieved impressive sounding things like a job at a place like McKinsey, that the Desi community respected.

I didn’t think I would ever fall in love — that just did not seem like a priority given all my other goals, and the successful tradition of arranged marriage within my family. I was never attracted to any boy I grew up with or met, and I had embraced a life vision and plan which included arranged marriage into a top Sikh family followed by a storied business and political career in Punjab and India.

Then, inconveniently, and completely outside of my plans, I fell in love — with my soulmate, a woman. It happened in the U.S., at a high school reunion for our Indian high school in Los Angeles in April 1997, and it totally changed my life.

I decided — after a few years of trying to ignore my truth knowing how unsavory it was likely to be for my Desi family and community — to live a life based on truth, a fundamental principle of Sikhism embodied in the oft-repeated word Satnam — Truth is God. This was the only source of wisdom I had access to at the time, that I considered higher than my parents, who I deeply loved and respected.

I’m happy to share, 22 years after the terrible day I decided to ‘come out’ to my family that my story worked out quite well. I decided to stay in the U.S, become an American citizen, and pursue a career in business. I was able to achieve what some would consider extraordinary career success, including multiple high-profile CEO roles in the U.S. financial services and real estate sectors. I lived in a beautiful home in the Hollywood Hills, with my beautiful family including my wife and four children and contributed to many social and community causes I cared deeply about.

But my coming out wasn’t to be followed by feelings of Pride. Instead, it led to years, no decades, of shame, rejection, and pain for me and within my highly educated and progressive nuclear and extended birth family. That feeling of shame and non-acceptance continues today — though significant incremental progress was made on multiple fronts, and I know my family feels they have tried their best — as I struggle to accept the reality that my wife and children, including two sets of twins 9 and 11 years old each, may never see the places I grew up in that are core to my childhood and identity.

No gays of repute, I am told, come to Punjab with their spouses and children; the gay person may visit home but must come alone and for the duration of their visit, get back in the closet where their family typically sits. Coming out — an action considered core to the LGBTQ+ experience in the U.S. — is not a source of pride, but rather a source of shame given the community’s huge focus on, well, community.

And so, we find that LGBTQ+ South Asians are not “out and proud” — they are only as out as the most closeted important member of their family and community. This may explain why we see almost no publicly out LGBTQ desi role models who are famous, even today. Yes, that is slowly changing with the coming out of folks like Kal Penn, but most successful LGBTQ folks in South Asia and in the Desi Diaspora are still closeted.

The Desi diaspora must realize that the only way Desi LGBTQ+ individuals can live open lives of truth and acceptance — key to their mental health — is if our straight allies and family members come out in support of us, to protect us, to model the right behavior for others, especially elders, and to give LGBTQ+ children and youth shelter so they may become strong and prosper.

Having gone through life as a queer Indian American myself, I am particularly sensitive to the challenge that a child must face — in the U.S. and in India (where they may never be able to go to their village or hometown, even if they are the child of a congressperson!) — if they belong to the LGBTQ+ community openly.

Parents can educate themselves by speaking with other Desi (and non-Desi) parents of LGBTQ+ children such as Aruna Rao, the founder of Desi Rainbow Parents and Allies. These conversations can be incredibly helpful and clarifying. No matter what, support your child. This does not mean we should accept everything they tell us at face value, or that we should not ask them to think critically about their identity and feelings over an extended period of time. It just means you understand that LGBTQ+ youth overwhelmingly become depressed and suicidal unless they are supported by family and community on their journeys, and parents need to value their child and their mental health — more than than they value the potential judgment of others.

If you are LGBTQ+ or have someone who is in your family or community — and especially if you are NOT LGBTQ+ and don’t have someone like that in your family and community — I urge you to educate yourself, approach those who look or act differently, and speak up publicly about your support for the LGBTQ+ members in your temple, gurudwara, Diwali party and weddings.

Your simple act of speaking up may actually save a life.

Rayman Mathoda is mother to two sets of twins, Board Chair of Desi Rainbow Parents & Allies, Board Director for Mosaic Sustainable Finance & Sharestates, and Partner at Emerge Life Sciences.

Ah, the aroma of karaah prashad, the lingering sweet and milky flavor of payasam, the shimmering of the Diwali lights, the childlike anticipation of getting your Eidi or kharchi, or the excitement of ripping apart the gift wrapping of your Christmas presents! Desi Festivals take so many of us back to the memories of joyous and pompous celebrations.

However, these beautiful memories are often cut short with some bitter remnants of the past and the present. “I do not want to wear a sharara, Ajji! I feel like a boy inside.” “I do not want to pray for a future husband, Ma! I dream of getting married to a girl like me.” “No, Nanaji, your grandson dreams of a beautiful groom, not a beautiful bride.” These thoughts were kept buried deep inside the hearts, less often said. If uttered, they were often met with confused resentment. “Log kya kahenge? What will people say?” “Someone cast an evil eye on my kiddo.” “Why are you punishing us after all we did for you!” “You have changed.”

Even years after being in a comfortable space with their identity, a vast number of Desi Queer and Trans Folx are often left with minimal support from their families. If not outright rejection, it comes with a lot of passive rejection, often leading to estrangement and prolonged periods of distance. Queer and Trans Folx feel isolated, especially during the Desi Festivals, which at one point of time had been such an important part of their lives and included a sense of belonging and sharing with the family and the community. The other side of the picture is that the parents and the families of Queer and Trans Folx also feel isolated, exhausted, and rather helpless during these times of apparent joy and fun because of this emotional distance from their Queer and Trans loved ones, irrespective of where they themselves might be in their journey of acceptance.

This is what drives Desi Rainbow’s mission. More than being an organization, Desi Rainbow is a community, a chosen family, a welcoming space to the Queer and Trans Folx, a mentor to the parents and the families who are trying to move forward in their journeys of acceptance for their Queer and Trans family members.

The South Asian traditions are vast and diverse. One single festival is marked with different traditions. Desi Rainbow not only acknowledges this variance of cultural, religious, and social identities in the Desi Diaspora, but also provides a space to celebrate these festivals with your chosen Desi Rainbow Family in a manner that is not only inclusive of Queer and Trans Folx but rather celebrates their identities and their journeys. We provide a space where a Queer or a Trans person can be their complete, unadultered self and be celebrated for it.

In the past, we have hosted Faith and Family discussions about how Faith can be inclusive of Queerness. We recently celebrated a Dussehra/Garba Gupshup. It was heartwarming, even emotional, to see Desi Families come together to celebrate with their Queer and Trans children of different ages. We even met an adorable 9 year old trans kid. We are soon celebrating a Queer Gurupurab and are in the planning phase for Queer Christmas and Queer Eid.

This is what Desi Rainbow is about: celebration of Queerness in the most Desi way, with pomp and show. It is about Desi Families coming together, giving comfort to one another with their sheer existence, providing support to one another through their shared and diverse lived experiences.

Remember, the Rainbow is full of different colors. A Rangoli is made up of many hues and shapes. Henna leaves a whole different spectrum of red-brown hues on each person. This difference or rather the celebration of this difference makes us beautiful and very Desi. Here is hoping for every Desi Family in the world to celebrate every Desi Festival in the most Queer and Trans Affirming, Inclusive, and Celebratory manner.

Today, we call on the Senate to swiftly pass the Equality Act, a landmark nondiscrimination and civil rights bill that would update existing federal laws to protect people from discrimination based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.

70% of Americans support the Equality Act, indicating that it has broad and deep support across political party, demographics, and geography.

We are a national organization representing the voices of South Asian American families – parents, allies and LGBTQIA+ people. We want our children and loved ones to have equal rights so they can live free of discrimination.

These are some of our voices

Anitha Chennat: As a loving and proud parent of an LGBTQ+ child I urge the Senate to vote YES when the Equality Act comes to the floor. As a South Asian immigrant, I fear for the safety of my child and our chosen family of LGBTQ+ people in the State of Michigan. We ask that you stand with us as we fight against discrimination and fear.

Kalpana and Madhu: We look to our legislative representatives to support the Equality Act. We are the parents of a Transgender Daughter and we need equality for her in all aspects of life. Health, Employment and Safety are important to us. We are counting on you.

Mona Patel: I ask that the Senate pass the Equality Act for my son Joshua, who is a gay man. He has had to advocate for himself and for other LGBTQ+ community members. I support the Equality Act because I love him.

Why it is still needed

Opponents of LGBTQIA+ equality continue to file discriminatory bills in states across the country in an attempt to undermine existing protections in adoption, marriage and access to basic public services and businesses. The Equality Act would ensure that all LGBTQIA+ Americans can live, learn, work, play, and access public spaces free from discrimination, no matter what state they call home.

Although 21 states and more than 330 cities have passed LGBTQIA+ nondiscrimination protections, half of LGBTQIA+ people live in states that still lack comprehensive statewide laws.

LGBTQIA+ people have won critical victories in the fight against discrimination in this last year, both at the Supreme Court with the decision banning LGBTQIA+ discrimination in employment in Bostock v. Clayton County and with President Biden’s recent pro-LGBTQIA+ executive orders. The Equality Act is still needed in spite of these victories in order to achieve full protections in employment, housing, and public accommodations.

In 2019, the Equality Act was introduced in the House of Representatives. It passed the House on May 17, 2019 with a bipartisan 236-173 vote. It was not heard in the Senate.