All roads lead to where?

Symbols are everywhere and have countless purposes. Road and crosswalk signs try to catch your attention so that you may be safely guided toward your destination. You might use the fun and colorful emojis on your phone to communicate various thoughts to friends and family, from the quick to the complicated. But what does it mean when heads of large entities, like governments, use them? And what are the ramifications for what they decide to use?

On March 9, President Trump reshared on Truth Social an opinion piece from The Washington Times, a right-wing news outlet. The piece praised Donald Trump and his newly appointed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for banning trans soldiers and recruits from the military through a recent executive order. This is different from the ban he enacted in his first term, which allowed trans personnel to continue serving if they had come out before his order.

The article also echoed the rhetoric of the current administration: “Diversity is bad – it weakens (enter any process, project, field).” What I want to focus on is the image used for this opinion piece, which also appears in Trump’s post: an inverted pink triangle crossed out by a red “no” sign.

This pink triangle is a symbol that was first used by the Nazi regime to identify gay men within their concentration camps. At the beginning of the Holocaust, the Nazis revised Section 175 of the German Penal Code in 1935 and turned same sex relationships from a minor offense into a felony. Anyone accused or found to be homosexual was moved from jails into the camps. There were additional colored triangles in this badge-coding system used to identify groups that were deemed “harmful” to the Nazi regime, including yellow for Jewish people, black for “asocials,” red for political prisoners and blue for immigrants. Once the camps were liberated at the end of the war, the prisoners who wore pink triangles were not guaranteed freedom. Under the still-intact Nazi-coded Section 175, many were indicted for homosexuality. If they were convicted, they were placed back into prison. Section 175 would stay in effect until 1969.

This symbol came back into popularity during the AIDS and HIV crisis of the ’80s and ’90s. During this time, organizations like ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) inverted the pink triangle and reclaimed it. What once was used to identify gay and trans “undesirables” was being used to show unity and pride during one of the darkest times in queer history.

Thirty years later, under a Trump presidency, this triangle has been reused with its original intent – as a scarlet letter for trans and queer people, attempting to shame and alienate them from culture at large. There has been resistance to this order, with several enlisted individuals suing the Trump Administration and taking their cases to court. In addition to this ban, federal programs and initiatives that help veterans are being gutted under his leadership with the promise of efficiency. This includes reducing the number of federal jobs available (which are legally required to have a preference toward hiring veterans), shrinking the funding available for veteran research, and reducing veteran access to healthcare and mental health services.

If we were to read the signs of this presidency, much like the ones on a map, where do we think they will lead us? How will we know which way is forward and which way is back? If we were to simply follow them, I believe they would have us take a series of backroads and shortcuts, hoping that we get lost so that we’re unable to connect with others or ourselves. Why would they want this? Because to be queer and to feel love and support, despite the social and religious stigma surrounding it, is a danger to this administration. This freedom to love balks at the fear and hate that they try to instill in us. My hope is that we are able to heed the warning signs along the way.