We know you’re still recovering from all that holiday champagne, but you’re probably also feeling anxious after reading headlines about what’s at stake for our community, our state, and our country in 2025. For progressive movements, including the fight for queer and trans liberation here in New Mexico, it’s a time for regrouping and agenda-setting. EQNM is working closely with our partner organizations to identify all the ways we can protect New Mexicans from the incoming Trump administration while maintaining the priorities we’ve always championed at home. Let’s be clear: This is our job, and we are well prepared for it. Much has not changed. We’ve always known what LGBTQ New Mexicans need, and we aren’t giving up all our priorities just because of one election result.
Our first opportunity to make an impact will come mid-January, when our state representatives will come together in Santa Fe for a 60-day legislative session. While we don’t yet know which specific bills are on the docket, we can expect the session to focus on a mix of policies that will safeguard against and absorb any hits we might take at the federal level, as well as revisiting some of New Mexico’s ongoing high-priority issues, like public safety. EQNM will be posted up at the roundhouse for the duration of the session, advocating for LGBTQ New Mexicans and reporting critical developments back to you. We may need to call on you to contact your representatives and let them know where you stand, so if you want to use your voice sign up here.
Since the election, we’ve heard from a lot of you that you’re concerned about protecting your access to healthcare and other essential services. We anticipate that healthcare, including abortion and gender-affirming care, will be a high priority this session. Specifically we will be working to ensure that budgets are not slashed so much that accessing services, even if they are still legal, is effectively impossible. We will also advocate against allowing the federal government to identify and prosecute New Mexicans for securing these services. Our data belongs to us, and our privacy is a human right. That applies outside the healthcare system, too, around issues like immigration, incarceration, and asserting dissenting opinions in public. While we cannot protect New Mexicans against every federal attack, we feel confident that short of an act of Congress (those move slowly, if at all), we will be able to safeguard most New Mexicans’ right to access the life-saving reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare we deserve.
Fortunately, this year we voted to maintain a progressive majority in the legislature, and Governor Michelle Lujan-Grisham has demonstrated a commitment to these core values. In fact all of our statewide elected officals are ready to throw down for LGBTQ New Mexicans—from the Land Comissioner and Secretary of State to the Attorney General and Governor! Holding those progressive majorities in our state legislature is a crucial win for our communities.
This past summer, many of you contacted your representatives about public safety during the governor’s special legislative session. EQNM, along with 40 other community groups, sent a letter to the governor asking for the session to be canceled. We argued that the approaches to public safety being proposed were not designed to address the root issues of the problems, and would have negative consequences for the LGBTQ community and all New Mexicans. In the upcoming legislative session, our coalition is ready to share a broad, proactive public safety agenda that offers solutions for problems like access to affordable housing, drug addiction treatment, improved support for mental and behavioral health, and criminal legal reforms that include building pathways back to community and reducing the odds that folks will return to prison. In addition to public safety, you’ll also see us advocating for policies we have long supported, such as changing the voting age to 16, paid family and medical leave, and generally ensuring that state agencies and public systems fully engage with and respond to the intersectional needs of LGBTQ constituents.
EQNM has had a number of community conversations and collaborations with fellow queer and trans organizations in advance of the legislative session; if you have something to say that we need to hear, please reach out to us. E-mail Marshall or Narthan at info@eqnm.org to share your insights.
For the first time in more than 20 years, hundreds of LGBTQ people came together from across New Mexico from a dozen+ counties to learn about policy, movement values and share dialogue about what's next. We helped build new relationships across our state,so that we can continue to grow our movement for years to come!
Because of our larger staff and influx of volunteers, we were able to attend more Prides across New Mexico than ever before. This meant more community conversations, more new members and more volunteers!
We worked over the last two years alongside some phenomenal partners to research rural and community-of-color attitudes about trans New Mexicans. This year we released the research, which includes key messaging on how to win over New Mexicans on issues facing trans and nonbinary folks!
We convened our LGBTQ Roundtable to map out the access, barriers, and issues facing queer and trans people seeking behavioral healthcare! This report will be released soon, and provides a policy roadmap for legislators and government officials for improving access.
In a year where the entire New Mexico State Legislature was up for election, we had a thorough, values-driven, community-centered endorsement process. Plus, we worked to turn out voters for the candidates we endorsed: texting, calling, and mailing across the state in both the primary election and the general. Over 80% of our endorsed candidates won!
As we begin 2025, we are so excited that in 2024 we developed, sourced funding, and kicked off our new leadership development program, called the Legislative Fellowship! We will be teaching, mentoring and developing the next policy leaders for LGBTQ liberation.
Our annual Resilience event was a huge success! Thanks so much to our performers, donors, staff and volunteers who made this the event of the Pride season. Don't forget to mark your calendar for the first Saturday of June in 2025.
We are so proud to have defeated all the bad bills throughout the 2024 legislative session, including the special session on public safety, that would have harmed LGBTQ people. We worked with partners to make sure there were no successful attempts to attack trans New Mexicans, and to beat back the harmful "tough-on-crime" proposals that only would have attempted to incarcerate our way out of an addiction, behavioral health, and homelessness crisis. (That won't work, as we know!)
In January of 2024, we were a team of 3 employees. Now, as we wrap up 2024, we have 6 staff and 2 ongoing contractors working to ensure we are leading the movement for LGBTQ liberation in New Mexico!
We were honored by the New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs! We are so grateful that they selected us as a Community Partner at their annual conference and can't wait to work alongside them this upcoming legislative session.
by Marshall Martinez
My activism journey began in the summer of 1997, when I learned about preventing the spread of HIV. I happened to walk past a booth at the county fair where a man, who ultimately became a lifelong mentor and friend to me, asked if I'd like to attend a training about how to have safer sex. Back then, misinformation about sex and sexuality was rampant at my high school. There were juniors and seniors who had no idea how people become pregnant—or, more specifically, how they might not get pregnant! Since authority figures were neglecting the straight kids, it goes without saying that the existence of queer kids like me was never even acknowledged.
There wasn’t much to do in Alamogordo, so I agreed to participate in the training. I learned how to assess risk for myself, and even how to make all kinds of decisions about sex, drugs, and alcohol. I was taught both how to say no and how to be safe if I decided to try something. What began as a way to kill time that small town summer grew into a passion project for me. I began sharing what I learned with others. I worked to ensure that young people had equitable access to high-quality sex education, condoms, and treatment for sexually-transmitted diseases. I was even punished for providing my peers with accurate information and daring to give condoms to people who were sexually active.
Even though I was the only queer kid out there providing all of this sex education to straight kids, I was undeterred. I saw how important it was for everyone. At the end of the day, both straight and queer kids grow up and learn together whether any adults want to acknowledge the spectrum of sexual health or not. My experience doing this outreach definitely helped solidify what I already suspected—that I’m gay. Once I realized so clearly that I was queer, I felt an even deeper connection to sexual health because I learned about the AIDS epidemic and its history in my community. I had no idea prior, which speaks to the erasure of gay and bisexual men in addition to being an epic sex ed failure.
This World AIDS Day, I feel forever grateful for my high school experience and how it helped me grow into the young activist I was destined to be.
Sadly, our country is still lacking in quality sex education for young people, and it hurts everyone—not just queer and trans kids. For us, it is especially dangerous to cede our sex education to pornography and pop culture references. There are countless complexities and nuances we must understand in order to lead sexually healthy lives.
Over the past 20 years, I have been blessed to observe and experience the incredible progress that sexual health advocates have made, especially in treating and mitigating the spread of HIV.
Back in 2003, I got my first job at Equality New Mexico, where leaders in my community were doing this work. My youth activism taught me that systems and policies save communities. I dreamed that one day our community wouldn’t be solely responsible for saving ourselves.
Now, in 2024, as a result of tireless advocacy efforts and battling to secure dedicated public funding, we have made great strides toward managing the epidemic that once ravaged a generation of queer and trans elders, poor people, and people struggling with drug addiction—disproportionately impacting people of color. PrEP, the medication that reduces transmission rates, is widely available. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2022 more than one-third of people in the U.S. who could benefit from PrEP were prescribed it, and expanding access is considered a major public health initiative. Unfortunately, access is still racially biased, with CDC estimates indicating that 94% of white people who could benefit from PrEP have prescriptions, compared to only 13% of Black and 24% of Latinos who could benefit.
This is a moment when we should be doubling down on outreach efforts to communities where PrEP could be lifesaving, but HIV-prevention is one of many public health initiatives that will be threatened under the second Trump administration. If we don’t continue to aggressively pursue the goal of comprehensive, medically-accurate, and culturally-appropriate sex education for all students, then the gains we’ve made will undoubtedly regress and racial disparities will exacerbate. We simply cannot eradicate the HIV virus (or HPV and any other life-changing conditions) if we don't teach people about them.
While we don’t know with certainty yet what will specifically be targeted, we do know that with the federal government signaling plans to make massive cuts over the next four years, states will have to carry the burden. It will be up to us here in New Mexico to be prepared for cuts to programs that supply PrEP and other sexual health treatments, for pandemic-era measures to be dismantled, and that our state government will be strained as it works to ensure the best outcomes for all New Mexicans—including queer and trans kids who are learning how to be out in the world.
To allow vulnerable communities to slip back into high-risk HIV environments would be a major public health failing, as well as moral malpractice. On World Aids Day, it is important to celebrate how far we have come, but we cannot pretend that our progress is secure and in position to continue. We can't stop. Regardless of the political circumstance we face, now still has to be the time to double down on community health and safety.
AIDS claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the 1980s and 1990s, but it devastated queer and trans communities in particular. Nearly an entire generation of gay and bisexual men was lost, robbing those of us who were coming-of-age access to mentors. We grew up without seeing examples of what life could be like, to love oneself, to care for oneself, and to be in community. The emotional impact of that cannot be overstated.
The country’s poor response to the AIDS epidemic was effectively a way to disappear and eradicate us. Those of us who survived are testaments to the strength of our communities. We have always been here and we always will be; we will persevere in the face of threats to our public health programs.
We cannot pretend, however, that none of us will be lost along the way. It’s literally life and death for our most marginalized. That is why it is so crucial for groups like Equality Mexico, our partners, members of the New Mexico LGBTQ community and our allies continue to fight.
This World AIDS Day, I ask us to pause and remember—then recommit to that fight.
As we head into a long December, queer and trans New Mexicans and our allies are processing how we came together in 2024 and gearing up for a fight in 2025. Ideally, a time like this would be filled with hope, but we sadly know that the year ahead promises to threaten our community—as well as many others. Next week many deserving advocacy groups, including EQNM, will begin conducting year-end fundraising outreach on Giving Tuesday. For those who are able to contribute to the LGBTQ movement financially, this is an opportunity to help fuel our work in this next chapter.
Last week, we shared our 2024 impact report with the EQNM community. We were able to accomplish so much with your support: re-establishing the NM LGBTQ Roundtable, hosting a statewide summit and 12 pride events, launching the T.R.A.N.S. NM Project to establish research on statewide attitudes (people are mostly supportive!), gaining 700 members, expanding our staff, and focusing on outreach to rural areas and youth. We plan to come at 2025 with the same level of rigor as we seek to protect and expand our existing rights.
Every donation we receive (including the small ones!) helps to build coalitions, reach elected officials, and mobilize communities on the issues we care about.
To be part of the momentum, we recommend choosing one of these three ways to contribute:
ONE-TIME DONATIONS: These gifts jump-start our activism and help us prepare for the upcoming legislative session in January.
MONTHLY DONATIONS: These recurring gifts provide guaranteed income that help us prepare for challenges throughout the year.
PLANNED GIFTS: It’s also possible to donate through a will or bequest, which can guarantee the movement for years to come. You can make a planned gift to EQNM on FreeWill.org.
We are grateful for your consideration. Please visit goeqnm.org/2024EOY to make your donations.
by Marshall Martinez, Executive Director
Elections will never be the only path to our liberation, but queer and trans New Mexicans sure know how to work the system. We are so proud to share a by-the-numbers look at the impact you made on state politics through EQNM’s collaborative actions. Our advocacy contributed to maintaining an LGBTQ-friendly majority in the legislature, and setting us up to maintain and grow our protections!
Look at what all those hateful 2024 vibes inspired you to do:
We sent 26,444 text messages.
We made 17,143 calls and talked to 12,077 voters.
We sent 12,142 mailers.
We endorsed 49 candidates for the state legislature and identified 4,692 voters who supported our priority candidates.
We created 89 social media graphics that educated voters about what’s at stake and stood up against lies about trans New Mexicans.
Together we elected 85% of our endorsed candidates!
This general election was harder than previous ones. It wasn’t just because of the losses, but also because of their nature and the attacks we felt as a community. But EQNM ran an incredibly strong program, and we proved again that New Mexico's values are strong. Our neighbors are on our side!
While these systems were not designed for us, our community has learned to utilize available tools that make the systems work for us. That is why EQNM works so hard to elect the right representatives to the state legislature. Through these efforts, we are able—along with our champions—to pass laws that allow queer and trans people to live our full, authentic lives in health, safety, and security.
We’re going to have a lot of work ahead of us! We can get through it and win many of those fights with your help. Now is the time to re-commit to the road ahead with EQNM! Take a moment to click here and ensure we have the most up-to-date information to make activism as convenient as possible for you!
by Marshall Martinez, Executive Director
NM Queer, NM Strong: Our work begins
There are no words of outrage or consolation that can abate the awfulness of facing another Trump era. For members of the queer and trans community, it is especially difficult to know that millions of Americans voted to support a government that is expressly determined to harm and, ultimately, eradicate us from society. It will take some time to process and settle into this shift in power, but we as LGBTQ New Mexicans are still in a strong position to affirm and secure our rights in a state that has demonstrated its commitment to us in policy and spirit. That is why EQNM exists, because no matter what happens with the federal government we have always known we have to protect our own communities here at home!
There are some bright spots. Many Equality Champions will be returning to the Roundhouse in Santa Fe, joined by new allies and advocates for LGBTQ communities. We cannot overstate the joy we hold for Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender person elected to the U.S. Congress, representing Delaware.
We may be moving forward under attack at the federal level, but we have work to do here in New Mexico—and we are not doing this work alone. EQNM and the whole LGBTQ community have our close partners standing strong with us: Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico, ACLU, Bold Futures New Mexico, and Strong Families have always been with us!
Regardless of who is in power, LGBTQ New Mexicans know we have work to do here. There are two years left in Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s term, and we must maximize them to maintain our protections while also building toward a more just and equitable future, across all of our intersections. That looks like envisioning public safety laws to protect everyone through a humane and community-based approach, cementing and expanding abortion and gender-affirming care access, securing paid family and medical leave, and empowering our youth in education and school spaces. Our work is more critical than ever, and we are equipped to do it because we are strong here at home.
In 1993, when a handful of brave and committed New Mexicans founded what is now Equality New Mexico, they did so because they saw that systemic, cultural, and continuous discrimination and hatred fueled policies that harmed us. They knew that federal protections were decades away, and might never come at all. They were proven right when they said that New Mexican values are affirmation, acceptance, and love. They were right when they worked to pass the first non-discrimination law ten years later in 2003. We are still right today when we believe we can continue to create laws that lift up LGBTQ New Mexicans. So, we will keep fighting.
This presidential election outcome changes a few strategies, but it never changes our goal: liberation for queer and trans New Mexicans through policies that ensure LGBTQ New Mexicans have housing, healthcare, economic security, safety in public and private spaces, and—most of all!—connection and community. After decades of movement building in New Mexico, these goals are supported and championed not only by EQNM, but by thousands of New Mexicans whose connection to the movement comes from dozens of organizations across the state, all working in collaboration and mutual love for our communities.
This is our battle as we move forward from the 2024 election. As we prepare to push the federal government to protect what generations of queer and trans people secured for themselves, we must remember to lead by example. For years, New Mexico has been a lighthouse in the dark for people seeking access to abortion care, trans folks living in hostile states, and for people who just want a community that is inclusive, loving, and accepting. We will not give that up because of this presidential election. In fact, we will fight even harder to be that lighthouse, not only for New Mexicans, but as an example for the state governments across the country who want to see how it's done right!
Stand Firm Against Trans Scapegoating in the Election
by EQNM Staff
The LGBTQ community is no stranger to being used as a pawn to mobilize voters, and the 2024 election season will be remembered for continuing this harmful practice.
Conservatives in New Mexico and across the country have depicted false characterizations of trans people alongside skewed perspectives of the issues that impact us in order to scare their constituents to the polls. Whether that looks like willfully distorting the knowledge of medical experts who provide gender-affirming health care or sparking moral panics around who is on which sports team, their attacks are intentionally designed to hurt and systematically erase us.
“These lies are infuriating, but more importantly, they hurt us and they scare our communities,” says Equality New Mexico Executive Director Marshall Martinez. “This is the worst kind of electoral tricks, and we can't let them win with fear and hatred.”
We’ve recently learned of new scare tactics conservative activists are deploying during the last few weeks leading up to Election Day. You may have heard about some of them, too. When you see this happening, the best way to respond is to avoid engaging with their lies by pivoting back to what we know is true.
Instead of giving any more attention or potentially lending credibility to their claims by acknowledging them or responding, simply do not mention their efforts by name or link to any of their misinformation content. If you want to take a counter-action, make an informed statement of your own by standing up for trans people and our rights.
At Equality New Mexico, we conduct research and equip our community members and allies to handle these types of intense situations. We know it is hard to speak when someone else is spitting vitriol, but we have found the following types of language to be most persuasive.
New Mexicans appreciate our differences, and as a state we have consistently trusted families to decide what healthcare is best for them—not the government.
All parents want their children to be happy and healthy and to have opportunities for success. Instead of being afraid and fearful when our children come out to us as transgender, what is really needed is more resources, education, and acceptance.
In our lifetime, we’ve seen big increases in accepting gay men, lesbian women, and support for marriage equality. This same cultural shift can and will happen for transgender people. For their health and safety, it is important for each of us to work our best to support the transgender people in our lives.
We found in a recent study we commissioned that the majority (65%) of New Mexicans in both urban and rural areas believe we should be working to create more acceptance and affirmation for our trans community members.
We are fortunate to have many powerful champions for queer and trans folks in our state, including our New Mexico House Speaker Javier Martinez. As he has pointed out, we can and will compromise on policy ideas; we can and will compromise on the details of our programs; but we can never compromise on the dignity and humanity of our people. Never.
Elections have become more polarized and hateful in recent years. Now, apparently, conservative activists feel empowered to say anything about us, often without having to prove it. When this kind of lying to voters becomes the norm, it's dangerous.
“These attacks on LGBTQ people, specifically trans people, have just gotten worse and worse,” Martinez says. “They aren’t only lying to win your vote. They’re lying to inspire violence and hatred, too. We won’t stand for it.”
by EQNM staff
Like many Americans, you’ve probably been imagining Nov. 5, 2024 in your head since you saw live footage of insurrectionists descending on the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. After years of wondering what could possibly come next for the nation and here at home in New Mexico—we’ll know soon enough. If you want to ensure that your voice is heard before the madness of Election Day, here’s another important date for you: Today!
Early voting begins in New Mexico on Oct. 8. You can learn more about your regional options through your County Clerk’s office. For example, here in Bernalillo County where Equality New Mexico is based in Albuquerque, we have the option to vote early at the Clerk’s Annex from Oct. 8-18, and at 20 Early Vote Convenience Centers from Oct. 19 thru Election Day.
While the importance of the presidential race is front-and-center, there are high stakes for us here.
“Our votes for president matter, but the votes we cast for state legislators can be so much more powerful sometimes when local legislative races are often decided by less than 100 votes,” says Marshall Martinez, EQNM’s Executive Director.
Early voting opportunities have increased in recent elections, as more states embrace the importance of making the process more accessible. According to the Brennan Center, a well-known authority on voting rights, early voting reduces stress on the whole system on Election Day, increases participation among groups that are often overlooked or disenfranchised, means shorter lines, improves poll worker performance, allows for the early detection of glitches, and increases voter satisfaction. Early voting results can also impact media coverage, helping to shape the story going into Election Day.
“Early voting is the easiest way to ensure that nothing takes your power away,” Marshall says. “Voting early on a Saturday after hitting the farmer's market is more fun than waiting in long lines on a Tuesday. It also means that a flat tire, being caught late at work, or evening traffic don't prevent you from getting to the polls on Election Day. It’s the best way to be certain you get your vote cast.”
There are 112 seats up for election in the New Mexico legislature, and a pro-LGBTQ majority in both the Senate and House of Representatives is at stake.
As LGBTQ voters, we’ll be impacted by who is in power. The incoming legislators will determine important issues like paid family and medical leave (which protects our chosen families), access to abortion and gender-affirming health care, access to behavioral health care, creating affordable housing (which serves a large population of homeless LGBTQ youth), and making real progress on public safety at the root level.
With so much hanging in the balance, we understand why many of us want to race to the polls as soon as possible. Visit NMvote.org to find information about how you can vote early—and vote for LGBTQ rights!