No More Compliance: Historic LGBT Clinic Whitman-Walker's Erasing Of Trans People A Step Too Far

On Friday night, it became widely known that several links to gender affirming care and transgender resources disappeared from Whitman-Walker's website. Their stated reason is harmful to us all.

Story Update: Whitman-Walker Health has updated its page to include a transgender healthcare page under primary care. It can be found at this link: https://www.whitman-walker.org/health-services/transgender-healthcare/.

I asked about the front page code block for gender affirming care and other pages and could not confirm a timeline for their return. There are also still some pages where “gender identity” has been removed, such as the legal services page, where the old page lists “sexual orientation and gender identity” but the new page only lists “sexual orientation”. (Update 2: this is now also fixed). That said, I am pleased that Whitman-Walker made the decision to return the transgender care resource to their public facing website.

On Friday evening, it became apparent that several transgender-related resources had been hidden, removed, or password-protected on the Whitman-Walker website. The clinic, a pillar of D.C.’s LGBTQ+ community, was named after poet Walt Whitman and Dr. Mary Edwards Walker—figures historically tied to queer and gender-nonconforming advocacy. Yet now, in a stark departure from its namesake’s legacy, Whitman-Walker has quietly removed “gender-affirming care” from its list of services on the homepage and obscured key resources for transgender people. Reports indicate that this move stems from fears of losing federal funding under the Trump administration’s aggressive anti-trans policies. But this kind of preemptive capitulation isn’t just shortsighted—it emboldens authoritarians, sets a dangerous precedent, and paves the way for even more crackdowns on transgender rights.

The erasure of transgender people from the clinic’s website is extensive. On January 23, “gender-affirming care” was listed prominently among its service offerings on the front page. By February 21, that listing had disappeared. Several pages are now either password-protected or removed entirely. Their dedicated Gender Affirming Care page, once a comprehensive resource with guides and information about transgender healthcare, now redirects users back to the website’s homepage—its contents wiped from public view.

Whitman-Walker’s removal of “Gender Affirming Care”

The decision likely stems from Trump’s executive orders threatening funding for organizations that support transgender people. These guidelines have already convinced a handful of hospitals to halt transgender care and have prompted nonprofits like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network as uncovered by Journalist Mady Castigan to erase transgender resources from their websites in a misguided attempt to comply. The chilling effect of these orders has even spurred ongoing lawsuits aiming to block what amounts to a totalitarian gag rule—one issued unilaterally by Trump without statutory backing.

And indeed, in a recent interview with WAMU, Whitman-Walker’s Britt Walsh, specialty director of care, confirms that this is what was behind the erasure: “We could not take chances that we would not be able to continue services,” Walsh says. “That our FQHC designation would be taken away, that we wouldn’t make payroll. So we pulled things down from our website,” making it clear that they are still offering transgender healthcare but erasing transgender people from public-facing material.

This is a stunning betrayal of transgender people. While Whitman-Walker may believe that scrubbing its website protects its broader services—such as HIV/AIDS care, reproductive health, dental care, and even its continued provision of transgender healthcare—their compliance with erasure inflicts real harm. It blocks new patients from discovering and accessing critical resources, but worse, it legitimizes the White House’s pressure campaign against LGBTQ+ institutions. By yielding to these demands, the clinic sends a chilling message: that transgender people and our healthcare must be hidden, treated as something shameful, unmentionable. That even acknowledging our existence is a risk they are unwilling to take.

Timmothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, a book which has been often quoted in recent times as a guidebook for how to deal with the kind of tyrannical government we are seeing under Trump’s second term, has a lesson for Whitman-Walker, other organizations, and all of us. “Do Not Obey In Advance: Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do… Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy.”

Timmothy Snyder’s “On Tyrrany”

And indeed, Whitman-Walker is teaching a tyrannical Trump government exactly what it can do. If the administration were to issue an executive order barring federally funded clinics from providing gender-affirming care to new patients—or even banning care for transgender adults entirely—it’s easy to imagine Whitman-Walker making the same argument: that they must comply to preserve their FQHC designation and continue serving the broader LGBTQ+ community. This is the same logic now being used by shelters and children’s hospitals, justifying their silence on trans rights to protect their operations, and it echoes the Human Rights Campaign’s 2007 decision to sideline transgender people in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to prioritize protections for cisgender LGB people—a failed compromise that history does not look kindly upon and that the organization has had to work hard to recover from.

It’s unlikely that Whitman-Walker’s attempt to shield itself will even protect its funding. In D.C., it’s no secret that the clinic is a major provider of transgender care. They even acknowledged it in a radio show broadcast to the entire region. An administration willing to strip its funding over a few website pages is not going to suddenly change course just because those pages were hidden. Instead, Whitman-Walker now faces the worst of both worlds—complicit in its own erasure while still vulnerable to the very attacks it sought to avoid.

Erasure is the line that cannot be crossed. It is the foundation upon which far worse policies are built, normalizing the idea that transgender people should not be acknowledged, let alone protected. The moment we accept even a little compliance, we set the stage for further marginalization. I have spoken with those making these decisions at medical organizations, shelters, and advocacy groups—many believe they are doing the right thing, that erasure is a necessary trade-off to keep providing care or to serve other populations that are also in need. But as my wife, Representative Zooey Zephyr, tells every new legislator she meets, “One day someone will ask you to do the wrong thing for the right reason. Don’t. It just makes it easier to do the wrong thing.”

Whitman-Walker—and every organization facing this choice—must take that lesson to heart.

Editors note: Erin Reed is a former patient of Whitman-Walker and received her name change through their legal clinic.