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Brad Shreve and his husband had often talked about leaving the United States. To start with, it was just an idea.
But when their fellow citizens returned Donald Trump for a second term as president this November, they began to pack their bags in earnest.
“We don’t feel safe here. It’s not just Trump, it’s the fact half our country voted for him,” Brad said.
They had seen the tide of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment rising in America over the last decade. Nevertheless, they were shocked into silence when broadcasters confirmed the former president’s return to the Oval Office.
“We were almost completely silent for two weeks,” Brad told Byline Times. “He and I would barely talk, and if we did it was not about the election.”
He is now one of the many LGBTQ+ Americans who no longer feels safe in their own country due to increasingly hostile rhetoric towards their community from Trump and MAGA Republicans.
The last half decade has seen a growing number of anti-LGBTQ+ laws introduced across America. The American Civil Liberties Union found that at least 510 such bills were introduced in state legislatures in 2023 alone – nearly three time the number introduced in 2022.
Brad, an author and podcaster originally from Michigan, had consulted a relocation specialist when Joe Biden declined to drop out of the race – especially following the outgoing president’s disastrous debate performance against Trump in June.
Kamala Harris’ nomination in Biden’s stead gave him some hope that the Democrats might prevail, but he kept his options open to leave America nonetheless.
“We really did not think Trump was going to win. But as it got closer, we said we would go if it did happen.” Now that Trump is returning to the Oval Office, Brad and his husband have resurrected their plans to move to Uruguay – a country he selected due to its strong record on LGBTQ+ rights and progressive values.
Online database Equaldex ranks Uruguay first in Latin America for LGBTQ+ rights and fourth in the world, only behind Iceland, Norway and Spain. In 2013, Uruguay became the third country in South America to legalise same-sex marriage after Argentina and Brazil.
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Toby from the West Coast had no faith that Kamala Harris would win the election. He and his partner had already made all necessary preparations to leave the country.
“We were doing it regardless of the election result, but we knew it was going to be the result it was,” he told this paper. “We had no optimism whatsoever.”
Toby, who is in his forties, said the United States has changed a lot over the past decade since Trump first ran for president. “There’s a lot more racism and hatred. The behaviour is just out in the open.
“It’s such a negative atmosphere. We don’t want to be a part of it anymore.”
In his first term in office, Donald Trump filled three vacancies on the nine-strong US Supreme Court – a move that further entrenched the court’s conservative majority.
Trump appointed justices were instrumental in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that guaranteed abortion rights across the United States.
Toby believes the court will likely now look to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges –a 2015 ruling that extended equal marriage rights to same-sex couples in every state. “They’re going to overturn gay marriage, 100%,” he said. “They’re probably going to wait until close to the middle of his term.”
Donald Trump did not campaign on a platform of overturning marriage equality. But Dr Louis Bromfield, a tutor in Politics and International Relations at Swansea University, told the Byline Times: “There is a non-zero chance that abortion is not the final frontier for the Supreme Court.”
Dr Bromfield pointed to comments from conservative SCOTUS justice Clarence Thomas, who suggested in 2022 that the court should revisit decisions such as Obergefell.
Despite speculation that the overturning of Roe v. Wade might help Kamala Harris’ case among more socially liberal voters, Donald Trump swept all seven critical swing states in November.
Angelia Wilson, Professor of Politics at the University of Manchester, told Byline Times that acceptance of equal rights for same-sex couples remains high in the US – but “an activist conservative SCOTUS may try to reverse social attitudes.”
Like Brad, Toby is also making the move to Uruguay – a country he described as being “very welcoming” to foreigners.
Toby added: “I’ve heard that people are more upset at the result of a fútbol game than the result of an election. You don’t have to worry about democracy falling there.”
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‘Anger, Paranoia, Bigotry, and Intolerance’
“I didn’t get any sleep on the night of the election this year,” Rhiannon, who originally comes from a state in the south east, said.
Rhiannon is agender, and said that the growing hostility towards transgender Americans was part of their decision to leave the country. “The sense of abandonment that I got for myself and the rest of the trans community was overwhelming,” they said.
Donald Trump’s election campaign leant heavily into anti-transgender rhetoric, pledging to bar trans athletes from women’s sports and cut funding to schools over “radical gender ideology”. Data from AdImpact suggests that Republicans spent as much as $215 million on anti-transgender TV adverts.
Trump’s transition team spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told TIME Magazine: “President Trump will serve ALL Americans, even those who did not vote for him in the election. He will unify the country through success.”
The Independent has also reported that Trump is likely to sign an executive order removing transgender service people from the US military once he returns to the White House – although a transition team spokesperson said “no decisions” had yet been made.
Rhiannon said: “They’re talking about this one election having the potential to swing the country pretty hard right for the next 40 years. Of course, things can turn around, and I truly hope they do, I’m just not willing to hold my breath about it anymore.”
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“I think the some of the worst change will be the cultural shift that he’s caused – all the anger, paranoia, bigotry, and intolerance.
“For whatever reason, he seems to give a lot of people permission to be their worst, and I just don’t see that changing any time soon.”
Dr Bromfield added: “What is quite a horrible reality to acknowledge is that same-sex marriage has not been directly under fire from Trump because he has instead set is political crosshairs on the trans community.
“This by no means is a comfortable reassurance for the wider LGBTQ+ community, it’s akin to telling people not to worry about a forest fire because their house is not currently on fire, even though the smoke is in the air.”
Some names have been changed to protect their anonymity.