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Queer Australians are axing travel plans to Washington DC’s World Pride festival, as Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting LGBTQ+ rights leads to fears of discrimination at the US border and potential attacks.
People skipping the international event join other Australians and travellers from around the world who are avoiding the US after Trump’s inauguration and a string of controversial policies enacted in the early months of his second term as president.
Washington DC will host the 2025 edition of World Pride from 23 May to 8 June, with tens of thousands of domestic and international tourists originally expected to travel to the capital for events including a parade, concerts, street festivals, lectures and a human rights conference.
When Sydney hosted World Pride in 2023, more than 1 million people attended the festival, with about 100,000 tourists visiting the city, including 21,000 international travellers who injected more than $228m into the New South Wales economy, an analysis from Deloitte found.
The Guardian was contacted by LGBTQ+ Australians, including trans and same-sex couples, who had scheduled trips to the US to incorporate World Pride but in recent weeks ditched their plans.
Mik Bartels is among them. The University of Canberra student, who is examining LGBTIQ+ discrimination in healthcare for their PhD, was offered a scholarship that covered travel expenses to attend World Pride’s human rights conference.
Bartels had attended the conference at the 2023 World Pride in Sydney and found it valuable for their research.
“It brings together people from all disciplines – community leaders, scholars, academics from around the world,” they said.
“I got so much out of the 2023 conference, so when I got the offer, I thought this would be amazing to travel to Washington DC. So I accepted it. I hadn’t really read many reports of people being detained or denied entry at the time.”
However, after an Equality Australia travel warning and recent reports of discrimination in the US, they decided to withdraw their acceptance of the funded trip.
“Given my appearance as identifiably queer, my academic profile being centred on LGBTIQ+ discrimination, and my online presence where I am openly queer, I was not confident that I would be able to get into the US without being detained,” they said.
“I’m conscious of the US government’s list of banned words in academic research – my own research includes about 20 of those words.
“I’m also hyper aware of how I present myself online. I’m quite visibly queer in how I look and dress. I realised there was a very real possibility of being detained. I didn’t withdraw the acceptance lightly, but felt [that] for my own safety, I needed to.”
Beyond the risk of discrimination from customs and border officials, Bartels said their partner had raised safety concerns about World Pride itself.
“Even though Washington DC is quite progressive, you can be worried about gun violence at any queer event in the US.”
Missing out on the conference and World Pride was a “double whammy”, Bartels said.
“When you spend a lot of your life building the confidence to carve out a space for yourself, that becomes a lifelong journey. Opportunities to celebrate that journey and to demonstrate my relationship proudly are rare, so for this to be taken away, it can feel like a bit of a kick in the guts,” Bartels said.
“The irony of not being able to attend a human rights conference due to a possible lack of human rights is not lost on me.”
Reports of valid passport and visa holders being denied entry, and of mistreatment at the hands of customs and border officials, prompted Equality Australia in April to issue a specific warning to gender-diverse Australians and those with a record of LGBTQ+ or political activism.
Equality Australia said travelling to the US carried “serious risks” of being denied entry, being mistreated or even being detained.
World Pride organisers announced this week they were relocating events set to be hosted at the Kennedy Center – which Donald Trump took over this year – to an alternative venue because of “inhospitable” conditions, including the banning of drag performances.
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A Canberra trans woman, who asked not to be named, is another Australian who has cancelled their trip to the US.
She and her wife had planned a holiday in California, where her wife grew up, before going to Washington DC for World Pride.
“Even though the specific locations we were planning to visit are known for being progressive, the risks that I face as a trans woman in being arbitrarily turned back or detained at the border are too high,” she said.
“Considering the hostile actions the Trump administration is taking against queer and gender-diverse Americans, unfortunately we don’t envisage being able to visit any time soon.”
Other Australian families have cancelled holidays to the US because of fears of how border officials would process their gay or trans children, they told Guardian Australia in response to a reader callout in April.
The cancellations follow reports of gender-diverse and politically active travellers facing discrimination at the hands of US border officials.
Separately, an Australian man with a working visa who was detained and deported on returning to the US, alleged border officials called him “retarded” and boasted “Trump is back in town”.
An award-winning Australian comedian cancelled a planned trip to the US after receiving legal advice that she could be stopped at the border due to her previous jokes about the Trump administration.
Australian academics are refusing to attend US conferences for fear of being detained.
Equality Australia legal adviser Heather Corkhill said Australians, particularly trans and gender-diverse travellers, “need to think carefully” before booking tickets to World Pride.
“While Washington DC is generally more progressive, travellers to World Pride should be mindful that visiting other states comes with risks like being arrested or fined for using the ‘wrong’ bathroom,” Corkhill said
“Even in the capitol and its office buildings, trans people are unable to use single sex bathrooms and changing rooms that align with who they are.”
The president and CEO of Washington DC’s official tourism arm Destination DC, Elliott Ferguson, said millions of people were expected to attend World Pride 2025.
He acknowledged the reports of some people abandoning trips but insisted they were in the minority.
“We have not heard of any widespread cancellations and remain optimistic that turnout will be strong,” Ferguson said, speaking on behalf of World Pride 2025.
“Our message is you are safe and welcome here. The concerns of the community are exactly why World Pride is so important. Washington DC is a place to advocate and make your voice heard.”
