If Erasure Became the End Goal: & It is The Goal. What Would a World Without LGBTQIA+ People Actually Require?
My Plea...
We are living in dangerous times, when erasure and eradication are top priorities in the United States, and many countries have active campaigns to eliminate LGBTQIA+ people and others. It is a national and global crisis.
The current administration, and most, if not all, of MAGA and the GOP, along with much of the Evangelical community, see transgender and LGBTQIA+ people as either sinful, immoral, or mentally ill—and as people to be eradicated, eliminated, converted, or somehow removed to alleviate society of a perceived burden.
It is modern genocide, no different from Hitler, Pol Pot, the Rwandan genocide, and the list goes on. To invalidate millions of human lives as mentally ill, sinners, or moral failures is to issue a death sentence and open the door to violence intended to kill and eradicate the perceived threat.
That is where we are, and it is truly sad.
There is an agenda affecting an estimated 560 million to 730 million LGBTQIA+ people worldwide. Think about that. That is more than the entire population of North America and more than the entire population of the United States. We would lose the equivalent of an entire continent of human beings.
And can you believe that is what they are advocating? Change, or we will get rid of you—or make life so difficult that you wish you were dead.
That is the reality as I see it. What else could they mean?
What does it all really mean?
Go back into the closet?
Hide who you are?
Become small and unseen?
Don't be yourself. Don't love openly. Don't look that way. Don't dress that way. Don't speak that way. Don't have surgery. Don't take medications.
Is life only for “pure” men and women who are married, having children, and God-fearing Christians—because they believe Christ mandated it and that government should mandate it too? And any other religion or faith/belief that condemns LGBTQIA+ people
What does that really mean?
And, friends, that is the truth—the sad truth of the times we're living in. I do not believe it is exaggeration or hyperbole. I believe it is real.
We see people laugh, ridicule, and mock, seemingly taking great pleasure in the suffering of the LGBTQIA+ community. It is truly sad. To me, history gives us terrifying parallels: Hitler's Germany, the Spanish Inquisition, brutal lynchings, and other periods of persecution and violence that humanity has witnessed.
What shall we do?
Fight—and know that God is on our side. We will not shrink. We will not disappear. We will not give up.
Dear God, protect us from this heinous evil disguised in Your name. Protect us from those who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, Muhammad, or any other sacred teacher or understanding of God, yet use that sacred name to justify killing, suffering, death, and destruction.
Save us from ourselves.
A Universal Rainbow Faith Thought Experiment on Project 2025, Criminalization, Conversion, Eradication—and the World We Choose to Build Instead
By Rev. Paula Josephine Sadler Founder & Founding Minister, Universal Rainbow Faith
I began today with a question:
What if Project 2025 and the current political movement against LGBTQIA+ and transgender people were carried to their furthest possible conclusion? What would happen to LGBTQIA+ people in the United States?
That question led me somewhere much larger.
I began thinking not simply about one administration, one political party, one executive order, or even the next four years. I began thinking about what happens when a society decides that certain human beings should no longer be recognized as who they are.
What happens when “traditional values” or “family values” become not simply personal beliefs, but government policy?
What happens when government recognizes sex exclusively as male or female, refuses to recognize gender identity, restricts healthcare, removes LGBTQIA+ information, and attempts to restore a society in which heterosexuality and traditional gender roles are treated as the only acceptable possibilities?
And then I asked the most disturbing question of all:
Where does that road end if absolutely nothing stops it?
This article is a thought experiment about that endpoint.
It is not a claim that every event imagined below is currently happening in America, nor that every political leader advocating restrictions on LGBTQIA+ rights secretly supports extermination.
It asks something different:
If erasure were taken to its absolute conclusion, what would erasure actually require?
The Question That Started It
The current federal government has already adopted a policy recognizing two sexes, male and female, defining them as immutable and directing executive agencies not to treat gender identity as a replacement for sex. Federal agencies were directed to change documents, policies, grants and programs accordingly.
Project 2025 goes further rhetorically. Its Mandate for Leadership calls for removing terms including “gender equality,” “gender equity,” “gender awareness” and related terminology from federal rules, regulations, contracts, grants and legislation. Its foreword also explicitly connects what it calls “transgender ideology” with pornography.
Federal policies have also targeted what the administration calls “gender ideology” in K–12 education, and the administration has directed agencies to eliminate federal support for programs it considers contrary to its definitions of sex.
That brought me to this conclusion:
To promote so-called “family values” and “traditional values” through a governmental system that recognizes only male and female while refusing to recognize transgender identity can have consequences far beyond terminology.
For transgender people especially, recognition touches virtually everything: identification, healthcare, employment, education, bathrooms, athletics, prisons, shelters and the ability to participate in society as oneself.
If every institution eventually refused to recognize a transgender person as who they are, what would meaningful participation in society look like?
And what happens if that philosophy continues escalating?
Conversion Is Not the Same as Acceptance
My next question concerned conversion.
What if LGBTQIA+ children, teenagers and eventually adults were expected to conform—to become heterosexual, to abandon transgender identities, or to medically detransition?
Conversion practices aren't merely theoretical history.
In the Trevor Project's 2024 U.S. survey, 13% of LGBTQ+ young respondents reported having either been threatened with or subjected to conversion therapy. Among transgender and nonbinary respondents, that figure was approximately one in six. Young people reporting either experience also reported substantially higher rates of attempted suicide.
That raises another fundamental question:
What happens when people cannot—or will not—be converted?
And that is where my thought experiment became darker.
Scenario One: What If Every LGBTQIA+ Person Were Eradicated?
I asked:
What if the entire world's LGBTQIA+ population were somehow eradicated? What would the world look like over the next century?
At first the answer seems obvious.
Millions upon millions of human beings would disappear.
Families would lose children, parents, siblings and grandparents. Businesses would lose employees and founders. Hospitals would lose doctors and nurses. Universities would lose scientists and professors. Churches would lose ministers. Nations would lose public servants. Communities would lose neighbors.
Humanity would lose musicians, writers, filmmakers, architects, engineers, inventors, athletes, caregivers, teachers and artists.
But then I realized something even more important.
Eliminating today's LGBTQIA+ population would not necessarily eliminate LGBTQIA+ people from tomorrow's population.
LGBTQIA+ children are born into heterosexual families.
Gay people do not exclusively come from gay parents.
Transgender people do not exclusively come from transgender parents.
Generation after generation, human diversity appears again.
So even after the unimaginable destruction of an entire LGBTQIA+ generation, eventually another child somewhere would realize:
I am different.
Another teenager would fall in love with someone of the same sex.
Another person would recognize a gender identity that did not correspond with what society assigned them.
Another generation would emerge.
And suddenly the supposed “solution” would have failed.
Scenario Two: What If LGBTQIA+ Identity Were Criminalized Everywhere?
So I asked a second question.
What if LGBTQIA+ people weren't initially eradicated, but instead homosexuality and transgender identity were criminalized throughout the entire world? What if everyone were required to convert, conform or medically detransition?
The LGBTQIA+ population wouldn't disappear.
It would disappear from public view.
People would hide.
Gay men and lesbians might enter heterosexual marriages for survival.
Transgender people might publicly live as their assigned sex while privately knowing exactly who they were.
People would develop secret communities.
Doctors might quietly help patients.
Families might hide their children.
Allies might provide safe homes.
Writers would communicate through metaphor.
Artists would use symbols.
People would develop coded language.
History would move underground.
Government statistics could eventually report almost no LGBTQIA+ people at all.
But those numbers wouldn't demonstrate that LGBTQIA+ people had disappeared.
They would demonstrate that telling the truth had become dangerous.
Then I Combined the Two Scenarios
And this is where my thought experiment ultimately led me.
What if people were first ordered to convert or conform? What if transgender people were forced to detransition? What if those who refused were eradicated?
Then imagine that afterward LGBTQIA+ existence was criminalized throughout the world.
And imagine the ultimate penalty:
If you were discovered to be LGBTQIA+, you could be put to death.
What happens then?
At first, a government might claim victory.
The visible LGBTQIA+ population would collapse.
Pride celebrations would disappear.
LGBTQIA+ centers would close.
Books could disappear.
Museums could remove exhibits.
Websites could be erased.
Affirming churches could disappear.
People might destroy photographs and letters because possessing them had become dangerous.
Governments could announce:
There are no more LGBTQIA+ people.
Except that wouldn't be true.
Because eventually another generation would arrive.
The Killing Would Have to Continue Forever
This was the realization that disturbed me most.
If LGBTQIA+ people continue emerging naturally among future generations, then a government determined to maintain an entirely heterosexual and cisgender society could never simply persecute one generation and declare the project finished.
It would have to do it again.
And again.
And again.
Generation after generation.
I initially described this as requiring the elimination of “at least 10% of the population.”
But no responsible analysis can establish one permanent worldwide percentage. Estimates differ depending upon age, country, whether researchers measure identity, attraction or behavior, and whether people feel safe enough to disclose who they are.
The precise percentage isn't actually necessary to understand the horrifying implication.
Some portion of every succeeding generation could become the next target.
The machinery of persecution could therefore never be dismantled.
A society attempting to eliminate LGBTQIA+ people would have to become a society permanently organized around finding LGBTQIA+ people.
Imagine the Machinery Required
Think about what that would actually require.
Government would need to know whom people loved.
It would need to know how people dressed.
It would need access to medical histories.
It would monitor communications.
Schools might watch children for signs of nonconformity.
Neighbors might report neighbors.
Teachers might report students.
Doctors might be required to report patients.
Parents might be expected to report children.
Children might report parents.
Dating relationships could become evidence.
Private messages could become evidence.
Medical treatment could become evidence.
Books could become evidence.
Photographs could become evidence.
The government would no longer merely regulate LGBTQIA+ people.
It would have to regulate everybody in order to discover which people were LGBTQIA+.
Heterosexual and cisgender people would therefore lose freedoms as well.
Once government possesses the authority to investigate love, sexuality, gender expression, medical decisions, private correspondence and family relationships, privacy has disappeared for everyone.
The project would no longer merely be about eliminating LGBTQIA+ people.
It would become a civilization organized around policing human difference.
This Is Not Entirely Science Fiction
My hypothetical goes far beyond current American law.
But criminalization itself is tragically real.
Human Dignity Trust currently identifies 66 jurisdictions that criminalize private consensual same-sex sexual activity. Forty-two criminalize consensual sexual activity between women. Thirteen countries criminalize transgender identity or expression through laws such as those targeting so-called cross-dressing, impersonation or disguise.
And most disturbing of all, there are jurisdictions in 12 countries where the death penalty is imposed or legally possible for consensual same-sex activity. Human Dignity Trust reports that it is implemented in at least six and remains legally possible in others.
Iran criminalizes consensual same-sex activity and provides for a maximum punishment of death.
Saudi Arabia criminalizes same-sex activity, criminalizes aspects of transgender gender expression, and maintains the death penalty as a possible punishment.
Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act created an offense of “aggravated homosexuality” for which the death penalty can apply under specified circumstances.
And this isn't exclusively an old collection of laws gradually disappearing. Niger criminalized same-sex intimacy in 2026, bringing the worldwide number of criminalizing jurisdictions reported by Human Dignity Trust to 66.
So when LGBTQIA+ people fear criminalization, imprisonment or death, those concepts are not inventions.
There are human beings living under such laws today.
What I Believe—and What I Can Prove
I want to be completely transparent with my readers.
I truly believe that elements within the GOP, MAGA movement and religious political movements are pursuing an ideology that, if continually expanded without resistance, could produce increasingly severe exclusion of LGBTQIA+ people—particularly transgender people.
That is my conclusion and my fear.
It should not be confused with a documented statement that the Republican Party, Donald Trump, MAGA or Project 2025 currently proposes executing LGBTQIA+ Americans. I have not found evidence establishing such a policy.
What we can document should concern us enough without exaggeration.
The federal government has adopted an official definition of sex excluding gender identity from that definition and has directed executive agencies to implement that framework across numerous federal activities.
Federal policy has targeted what the administration calls “gender ideology” in education and government programs.
Project 2025 contains extraordinarily aggressive language about transgender ideology and proposes eliminating numerous gender-related concepts from federal policy.
And elsewhere in today's world, LGBTQIA+ people already live under criminal laws carrying penalties ranging from imprisonment to, in some jurisdictions, death.
These facts are enough for me to ask:
How much further are we willing to allow any society to travel down the road of erasure?
What Would Humanity Lose?
Suppose this nightmare persisted for one hundred years.
We would never know what humanity had lost.
Some child who would have become a scientist would be gone.
Some teenager who would have become a composer would never write their symphony.
Some transgender child who might have developed a medical breakthrough would never enter medical school.
A future architect wouldn't design their buildings.
A future minister wouldn't establish their congregation.
A future inventor wouldn't build their invention.
A future writer wouldn't write the book that changed someone's life.
A future parent wouldn't raise their children.
A future teacher wouldn't inspire their classroom.
We would never even know their names.
That is perhaps the greatest tragedy of eradicating human potential:
You cannot measure the future that was prevented from existing.
And Yet I Believe Humanity Would Resist
There would still be parents who loved their children.
There would still be doctors who remembered their oath to heal.
There would still be ministers who believed every human being possessed sacred worth.
There would still be teachers preserving forbidden books.
There would still be historians hiding archives.
There would still be heterosexual and cisgender allies saying:
No.
There would be safe houses.
Underground communities.
Secret healthcare networks.
Hidden archives.
Encrypted communications.
Forbidden literature.
Art carrying messages that only some people understood.
Human beings have an extraordinary ability to preserve truth when institutions attempt to destroy it.
And eventually someone would open the box.
Someone would find the photographs.
Someone would discover the journals.
Someone would uncover the archive.
And history would ask:
How did humanity allow this to happen?
That Is Why We Build Now
This thought experiment brought me back to the work of Universal Rainbow Faith and our vision for the Universal Rainbow Path.
Our answer to institutional withdrawal must be institution building.
Our answer to erasure must be preservation.
Our answer to isolation must be community.
Our answer to economic discrimination must include economic empowerment.
Our answer to homelessness must include housing and property ownership.
Our answer to disappearing history must be archives, libraries, museums, publishing, film, music and art.
Our answer to disappearing healthcare must include strong networks of qualified affirming medical and mental-health professionals operating lawfully and ethically.
Our answer to employment discrimination must include LGBTQIA+-affirming businesses, entrepreneurship, professional networks, mentorship and lawful equal-opportunity employment practices.
Our answer to spiritual condemnation must include affirming churches and spiritual communities declaring that LGBTQIA+ people possess inherent dignity and sacred worth.
And our answer to a frightened child asking whether there will still be a place for them tomorrow must be:
Yes. We are building it.
We Are Building for People Who Have Not Been Born Yet
That may ultimately be the most important realization I reached through this entire thought experiment.
Universal Rainbow Path cannot merely be about surviving one administration.
It cannot merely be about surviving four years.
We need to think in terms of four generations.
Buy buildings.
Own land.
Build endowments.
Support LGBTQIA+ centers.
Build businesses.
Create scholarships.
Support healthcare.
Train attorneys.
Preserve archives.
Publish books.
Record oral histories.
Create art.
Make films.
Write music.
Build affirming spiritual communities.
Support parents.
Protect children.
Mentor young people.
Support elders.
Help people own homes.
Help entrepreneurs establish businesses.
Connect philanthropists with organizations doing meaningful work.
And preserve everything redundantly—physically and digitally—so that no single government, corporation, server or institution can erase our history.
We are not merely building infrastructure for ourselves.
We are building it for LGBTQIA+ people who haven't even been born yet.
From Erasure to Empowerment
I refuse to end this thought experiment with extermination.
Because that isn't the future I am working toward.
The question isn't merely:
What happens if they erase us?
The more important question is:
What can we build today that makes our community stronger tomorrow?
If information disappears, preserve it.
If books are removed, publish.
If history is forgotten, archive.
If a community center rents its building, help it own one.
If someone needs employment, connect them with opportunity.
If an entrepreneur has an idea, help them build it.
If a young person feels alone, create community around them.
If parents are frightened, give them accurate information and support.
If someone needs spiritual belonging, open the sanctuary.
If someone has enormous wealth and asks what they can possibly do with it:
Build something that will still be protecting people fifty years after you are gone.
That is generational empowerment.
That is institutional resilience.
That is spiritual resistance through creation.
That is the Universal Rainbow Path.
A Final Question
One hundred years from now, people will inherit the consequences of what our generation chooses to build—or fails to build.
They may never know our names.
But they may enter a community center we helped purchase.
They may receive a scholarship from an endowment we created.
They may read a book we refused to let disappear.
They may find an affirming doctor through a network we established.
They may worship in a congregation we planted.
They may discover an archive containing the story of someone who lived a century before them and realize:
I was never alone.
And perhaps that is our answer to the entire thought experiment.
We cannot control every government that will exist during the next hundred years.
But we can determine what we leave behind.
We were here.We are here.We will preserve our stories.We will build our institutions.We will protect one another.We will create opportunity.We will love across generations.
And to every LGBTQIA+ child who has not yet been born:
We are building a path for you now.
Rev. Paula Josephine SadlerFounder & Founding MinisterUniversal Rainbow Faith
Activating the Rainbow Light of Love
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