Last Updated on February 1, 2026 by Chicago Policy Review Staff
Across continents and institutions, the premise of queer equality is being tested anew. From legislative chambers to military ranks to public squares across the globe, LGBTQ+ people are confronting an unsettling pattern: rights once thought secure are again under siege. What connects these struggles is not only the backlash itself, but the systems — legal, cultural, and institutional — that allow regression to masquerade as debate.
This series, Rights in Retreat, explores that global tension through three distinct but resonant lenses. One lens examines how colonial legal inheritances continue to shape the criminalization and regulation of queer identity in parts of South Asia. Another considers the ways military institutions negotiate inclusion, often framing questions of equality as threats to discipline or readiness. A third interrogates the shifting political landscape in the United States, where the conversation about good policy has increasingly become a battleground for defining gender, identity, and belonging.
Together, these stories trace the shifting boundaries of belonging, how law, power, and national identity determine who is recognized as fully human. As global democracy wavers and rights recede, these conversations ask a single urgent question: What does the retreat of queer rights reveal about the health of democracy itself?
Alex Wagner, a former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force and longtime policy strategist, has spent over two decades at the intersection of national security, civil rights, and the law. In this installment of the Rights in Retreat series, he speaks with Elliot Certain, Policy Chair of OUTPolitik, about how debates over “readiness” have been used to justify exclusion, why inclusion within military institutions is essential to its survival, and what the current backlash reveals about the limits (and possibilities) of institutional reform.
Elliot: Hello Alex! Welcome to the Rights in Retreat interview series! To start off, can you introduce yourself?
Alex Wagner: I’m Alex Wagner. I’m a lawyer who’s been at the intersection of policy, technology, law, national security, and civil rights for the better part of the last 25 years; having worked on political campaigns, at think tanks, in classrooms, and inside government, including at the Pentagon. Because of that, I’ve seen how individuals can actually create new international law, how insiders and outside advocates can change the world, and how activists can impact the lives of everyday people. I know how to build coalitions and campaigns that drive long-term social change. I hope that’s one of the reasons you decided to interview me.
Elliot: When you hear the phrase “rights in retreat,” what comes to mind?
Wagner: When I was in law school, I interned for a reporter who covered the Supreme Court. Around that time, various Defense of Marriage Acts (DOMAs) were being passed—both at the federal level but also in state capitals. As part of my internship, I was asked to write a story on the proliferation of DOMAs and to interview Evan Wolfson, who was then the leading advocate for what we now call marriage equality. This was around 2004. It was a pretty dark period: DOMA at the federal level, state DOMAs popping up everywhere, and conservatives winning elections running on that issue. I asked Evan a version of the question you’re asking me now. I said: “You run an organization devoted to ensuring that gay and lesbian people have the same right to marry as straight people. And you’re losing. You’ve lost at the federal level and at the state level, and it’s become a successful wedge issue. How does that feel? Do you get demoralized?” He told me, “Alex, civil rights advance in a patchwork. Sometimes to take two steps forward, you have to take a step back.” That has really stuck with me.
So when I look at this moment, not even a full year into the second Trump administration, and at rollbacks on certain rights, I see an aberration, an exception to a broader pattern. Rights often advance in a patchwork and through a patchwork, but over time they tend to expand, not contract. The periods of contraction are painful, especially for the people most affected, but they are often relatively short-lived in the long arc of history.
Elliot: The U.S. military often presents itself as a reflection of American values. How do you interpret that responsibility when those values, especially around equality, are being contested?
Wagner: Less than 15 years ago, gay and lesbian Americans couldn’t serve openly in the military. Today, despite all the shifts in political winds, open service for gay, lesbian, and bisexual people is not really in question—even among some of the most conservative political leaders at the Department of Defense.
I think, when the country watched the military make open service work for LGB service members, that sent a powerful message: if the military can do it, America can, too. The same was true for racial integration. When the services showed that people of different races could serve together effectively, it challenged prejudices that had never been tested by demonstrating that integration could succeed. When women were allowed into all combat specialties in 2015, the women who successfully met the same standards as men became the people everyone wanted in their units! So if rights are in retreat, it’s not a fast retreat. It is painful, especially for transgender people. The thousands of transgender people who were told by two Democratic administrations that if they met the standards, they could serve openly, and then had that promise revoked. But I don’t see that as a permanent condition. Historically, it took time for racial integration to stick, for women in combat to stick, for open service for gay and lesbian people to stick. I think the same will be true for trans people, especially as visibility grows and stories are shared.
Elliot: In recent years we’ve seen attempts to restrict trans service and roll back DEI programs under the banner of “unit cohesion.” How do you respond to those arguments?
Wagner: Those arguments are old and tired. For decades, “unit cohesion” was the number one boogeyman used against racial minorities, women, gay and lesbian service members, and then against trans people. I actually hear it less now, even as trans service is restricted. What you see now is something more blunt: a belief that trans people lack integrity — that they’re somehow living a lie, and therefore unfit to wear the uniform. I think the opposite is true. Being true to who you are is a profound act of integrity. Unit cohesion absolutely matters, but it doesn’t happen automatically. It takes time and work. People are uncomfortable at first with those from different regions, classes, religions, and identities. But when you’re mission-focused, you see your teammates by their talent and performance. The other stuff fades into the background when you’re doing real work together. The facts have never supported the claim that inclusion ruins cohesion. Over and over, history has shown that inclusive teams are effective teams. The policy arguments against trans service ignore that reality.
Elliot: From inside the Pentagon, how did you see cultural and political currents outside the military shaping personnel policy inside it?
Wagner: The military has to recruit hundreds of thousands of young Americans every year. To do that, it has to meet them where they are — literally and figuratively. That means showing up where they go to school, where they hang out, and where they get information. It also means understanding their values.
Increasingly, young Americans are put off by discrimination that feels rooted in nothing but animus, especially when it targets their friends. Banning trans people from serving directly affects a relatively small number of potential recruits by identity. But it sends a message to a significantly much larger group: the classmates of trans youth, the teammates of trans youth, and the relatives of trans youth.. The message the current ban and witch hunt sends is that the military discriminates against people they know and love. Many of those young people understandably don’t want to join a place that does that. So if we want high standards and a broad, diverse recruiting pool, we can’t close the door to people who meet every standard simply because of who they are.
Elliot: There’s a growing narrative that the military is becoming “too woke.” How do you address that criticism, especially as it pertains to dignity for service members?
Wagner: The idea that the military is “too woke” doesn’t reflect the reality of daily life in the force. It reflects a well-funded, well-resourced political campaign that uses the military—one of the most trusted institutions in an era of declining trust—to drive a particular narrative. That campaign cherry-picks real incidents to tell a story that doesn’t match the whole. And yes, politics drives that. But if you only look at those examples, you miss what’s vital for a high-functioning team: a diverse set of problem solvers who feel free to use all their talents.
On dignity: no one has an inherent right to serve in the military. But everyone who does serve deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. That includes appropriate accommodations for religious practice or medical conditions — like long-standing shaving waivers for Black men with pseudo-folliculitis barbae — so long as those accommodations don’t undermine readiness. Uniform and grooming standards aren’t merely arbitrary; they’re part of what it means to be a “uniformed” service. But they shouldn’t be enforced in ways that gratuitously humiliates or excludes people who are meeting every other requirement and standard.
Elliot: How do policies translate into real experiences for people in uniform — especially younger service members and guardians who are navigating identity and service at the same time?
Wagner: A lot of it actually comes down to family policy. The military actively encourages and incentivizes marriage and having children, in part because it means you have someone back home you’re connected to when you deploy. As more LGBTQ people have been able to serve openly, it’s become important that same-sex couples have access to the same benefits as straight couples: travel benefits, parental leave, fertility treatments, time to care for kids. If heterosexual couples can access IVF or other reproductive technologies with support from the system, then lesbian couples should, too. Husbands and wives, wives and wives, husbands and husbands. All of them should have access to the same policies and leave. One of the things we did in the Biden administration was expand parental leave broadly to both parents of children, regardless of marital status or gender. Those benefits weren’t reserved for just one narrow idea of “family.”
Elliot: In a time when democracy itself feels incredibly fragile, how do you see inclusive service as part of the national defense of freedom?
Wagner: For the military to be successful, it has to stay close to the society it serves. Young Americans need to be able to see themselves in the force and imagine joining that high-performing team. What worries me is the tendency to treat the military as the last line of defense for democracy—almost as if people are saying, “No matter what happens in politics, the military won’t let democratic backsliding go too far.” That’s not fair, and it’s not realistic. The military is just as vulnerable to political pressures as other institutions; it’s just a bit harder to co-opt. We’ve watched universities, media companies, and other institutions shift their tune on rights when their bottom line is at stake. It can’t just be on the military to hold the line. More Americans have to do more than cross their fingers and hope the uniformed services “figure it out.”
Elliot: What gives you hope that the arc of inclusion can still bend forward?
Wagner: Talking to young people! Eighty percent of the force is enlisted. Every time I visited an installation, I’d kick the officers out of the room and sit down with 18- to 22-year-olds and ask: Why did you join? Why the Air Force? Why the Space Force? What are you getting out of this? What can we do better? I never once heard the word “woke.” I never heard anyone bring up culture-war talking points. They talked about wanting to provide for their families, get an education, travel, do something bigger than themselves, improve their own lives and their parents’ and siblings’ lives. The people joining today are incredibly impressive. Always, young people give me hope.
Elliot: Is there anything you want to emphasize that we haven’t touched on — or that I cut off too early? Wagner: It’s the same thing you’ve probably heard me say a thousand times, but maybe not in this exact context. To succeed, the military has to be in sync with where young Americans are and offer something that they want. Historically, it’s taken some big social steps before the rest of the country—not always because it was morally ahead, but because effectiveness demanded it.
The armed forces desegregated in 1948, almost two decades before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They paid women the same as men for the same work before the Equal Pay Act. And the efficient, effective implementation of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal, and how smoothly open service for gay and lesbian played out in the military, helped show the country that marriage equality wouldn’t be a huge disruption to society either. It helped courts and the public see it as a reaffirmation of rights Americans thought they already had. So I push back hard on the stereotype that the military is inherently regressive. I think it’s often a surprisingly progressive institution because it needs to be, to be effective. If the military can make something work, the country can usually make it work, too.
Elliot: Thank you so much for your perspective, Alex.
Wagner: Happy to contribute!
Interview edited for brevity. Final edit approved by Alex Wagner and the Chicago Policy Review.