3rd place — 2025 grad student essay contest: Ian Webb

FFRF awarded Ian $2,500.

By Ian Webb

I live in Atlanta, which is a vibrant, progressive city surrounded by a state that’s become a testing ground for Christian nationalist policy and fearmongering. As a gay man and activist in my late 20s, I’ve spent the last decade working to elect leaders like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff — people who understand that LGBTQ rights are human rights and that the wall between church and state is not optional, but the bedrock of American society. But, now that foundation is crumbling under the weight of a coordinated, well-funded and rapidly accelerating movement: Christian nationalism.

Let’s drop the euphemisms. What’s happening in America isn’t some abstract culture war. It’s a calculated campaign to dismantle secular governance and replace it with a theocratic state — led by groups like the Heritage Foundation, emboldened by Donald Trump, and organized under blueprints like Project 2025. At the center of their agenda? People like me. Queer people, trans people, anyone who dares to exist outside their narrow, 1950s fantasy of what America should be. My siblings in life who choose to live life out loud and honestly.

Trump didn’t invent Christian nationalism, but he welcomed it with open arms. Under the guise of “religious liberty,” his first administration stacked the courts, gutted civil rights enforcement, and greenlit open discrimination against LGBTQ Americans. Now, in his second term, he’s emboldened himself. In less than 100 days, he introduced the trans military ban, began rolling back health care protections and gender-affirming health care, and gave federal contractors a mandate to discriminate.

But the greatest danger lies ahead. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s dystopian playbook for a second Trump term, outlines, in explicit detail, a future where LGBTQ people are systematically erased from public life in favor of a white, Christian traditionalist nation.

They want to scrap nondiscrimination policies across federal agencies, eliminate references to sexual orientation and gender identity in civil rights law, strip independent school systems and higher education institutions of inclusive curriculum, and revoke protections for queer youth. If this sounds alarming, it’s because it is — this isn’t hypothetical. This is written in a manifesto, and it’s backed by billions of dollars, media echo chambers and religious extremism dressed up as patriotism.

Christian nationalism is not about faith. It is about dominion. It weaponizes Christianity to justify the suppression of civil liberties, the erasure of marginalized communities, and the consolidation of political power in the hands of a select few. It is fundamentally anti-democratic — and it is rising.

I’ve seen this playbook before. I wrote about it in 2021 in an opinion piece for NBC News, when backlash to LGBTQ visibility began gaining momentum again on the state level here in Georgia. I’ve watched it escalate from statehouse attacks on trans kids to national efforts to dismantle the rights of an entire community. I’m not just studying this trend as a first-year MBA student — I’m living it. I’m organizing against it. And I’m preparing to lead in a world that is increasingly hostile to people like me.

But, here’s what Christian nationalists fail to understand: We’re not going quietly. We have history on our side. We’ve painstakingly fought for every inch of progress — through AIDS, through marriage bans, through bathroom bills. We know how to fight. And more importantly, we know how to win.

To combat this threat, we need to treat Christian nationalism like the existential crisis it is. That means challenging its legal infrastructure — filing lawsuits, expanding federal protections, defending the separation of church and state with the same urgency we bring to defending the right to vote. It means investing in public education. It means organizing locally to keep extremists out of office and hold national collaborators accountable.

And, it means being visible — loudly, unapologetically visible. Because what they fear most is not our rights, it’s our existence. It’s queer kids growing up in a world where they are affirmed, not condemned. It’s trans people walking into clinics and getting the gender-affirming care they need without fear. It’s drag queens reading books about farm animals at their local public library. It’s me — an out, proud, successful queer man in Atlanta, living freely, loving openly and refusing to back down.

They want us erased. But we’re still here. And we’re not going anywhere.

Ian, 29, attends Georgia Institute of Technology with plans to get a degree in business administration.

Ian writes: “I am passionate about public education and protecting access to education for society’s most vulnerable populations. My work has been featured in NBC News and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and at the Emmy Awards and Mellon Foundation. I live with my partner, Patrick, and our cat, Oliver, in Atlanta.”