Written by Marcy Waring for the Autistic Self Advocacy Network
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Notes on language usage:
Scope of this article: This article focuses on the intersection of the LGBTQI+ and disability community. I decided to focus on the disability community in a broad sense, rather than solely on the autistic community, to be in line with the intersectional nature of this article. In my opinion, an intersectional lens also calls for a cross-disability lens.
Identity versus person-first language: The disability community expresses diverse views on the use of identity-first versus person-first language. This article employs identity-first language to reflect disability as a core part of someone’s intersectional identity.
Introduction: LGBTQI+ and Disability
Autistic individuals identify as LGBTQI+ 2x to 3.5x more often than non-autistic people. When broadened, nearly half of LGBTQI+ people in the United States also identify as disabled. Our communities intersect and cannot be separated – not in a historical, political, or cultural sense.
The word “Queer” has multiple forms. One sense refers to gender or sexuality queerness. Another sense describes someone as “sick or unwell,” as in the disability community. Though reclaimed, Queer has been used to ostracize marginalized groups. This has linked the LGBTQI+ and disability community throughout history.
Achieving justice means learning the interconnectedness of all social issues, fighting for all Queer groups, and encouraging cross-movement mobilizations. This article highlights how cross-movement leadership has historically brought both groups closer to mutual justice.
A shared need for government assistance
Disabled LGBTQI+ individuals disproportionately rely on government assistance to survive. One of our recent battles has been the Big Bad Bill’s Medicaid cuts. Organizations fought these cuts by asserting that government assistance saves lives – LGBTQI+ lives and disabled lives alike. We fought together throughout 2025, just as we did back in 2017, and even back in 1998.
A shared fight for increased coverage
Community members often find that government assistance programs fail to cover all needed services. The LGBTQI+ and disability communities continue to push for broader services to be included in these programs, particularly gender affirming care services.
In 1978, Bobbie Lea Bennett, a transgender and disability rights activist, was the first person to receive gender affirming care through Medicare. She received this through the disability benefits program, setting a crucial precedent that gender affirming care is valid healthcare.
Despite this precedent, restrictions on gender affirming care have increased and disproportionately impact disabled transgender individuals.
A shared challenge in medical guardianship
Even if community members receive their medical care, the concerns of medical guardianship remain. The case of Karen Thompson and Sharon Kowalski, a lesbian couple who were separated by a guardianship ruling, highlights this issue.
In 1985, Kowalski acquired a brain injury from a drunk driver crash. The courts named her father the “guardian” to make medical decisions on her behalf, though Thompson also petitioned for this title. Kowalski’s father then weaponized his position by sending Kowalski to a nursing home and revoking Thompson’s visitation rights.
Thompson was supported by both the LGBTQI+ and Disability community. After seven years, Kowalski and Thompson reunited. Although this case drew national attention, guardianship remains a concern in the disability community.
A shared fight against “cures”
The LGBTQI+ and disability communities walk a shared line between fighting for needed healthcare, while simultaneously trying to evade the “cure” mindset from medical institutions. Doctors aim to make their patients healthy, but this is sometimes equated to an elimination of disability – without considering what this means for those with chronic or permanent disabilities.
The cure narrative also harms the LGBTQI+ community. American medicine popularized conversion “therapies” in the 1960s which promised to cure homosexuality through harmful practices such as electric shocks. Communities continue to push back, but healthcare systems have yet to fully realize the needs of disabled patients and fringe pseudoscientists continue to push dangerous, unscientific conversion “therapies” at LGBTQ+ people.
The future is shared
The peeling back of government benefits, restricting healthcare coverage, challenging guardianship choice, and attempted erasure underpins the nature of our struggle. It’s a struggle for existence and community survival.
Whether it’s the “ugly laws” that made it illegal for those with apparent disabilities to be in public, or the “public morals squad” that raided gay bars – history has always shown us that our Queer existence in public is resistance.
And resist we have!
In fact, disability pride has modeled LGBTQI+ pride and resistance ever since the first disability pride parade took place.
In October of 1990, more than 400 people, majority disabled, came to march and roll through the Boston streets together in a show of pride. One of the attendees, a disabled lesbian named Carrie Dearborn, said the parade was “like gay pride” where she could “almost imagine [she] was in the majority.” Similarly, the organizers were involved in HIV/AIDS activism and cross-movement actions.
And resist we will!
Public displays of joy, rage, activism, and community from historically “othered” groups are powerful because they bring us together. We need to be together in understanding that our futures are connected wherein a win for one of us is a win for all of us.
We have been connected through history and will continue to have an intertwined resistance against the current attempts at undoing our rights. Through shared Queer struggles, coalition building, and resilience – the LGBTQI+ and disability communities must achieve more than fleeting rights. We will have mutual and stable pride.