Zohran Mamdani’s LGBTQIA+ ‘Educational Liaisons’

Avowed socialist and New York City mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani garnered attention with his pledge to allocate tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to gender-affirming medical care, but far less publicized is his proposal to fund LGBTQIA+ “educational liaisons” in every public school.  

Mamdani’s LGBTQIA+ policy memo states that only two LGBTQIA+ liaisons cover the 1,800 schools and 900,000 students under the purview of the NYC Department of Education. Under Mamdani’s plan, an Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs would be created, costing taxpayers $3 million to expand staffing and place at least one liaison in every NYC school district.

Given Mamdani’s views on gender ideology, these positions would inevitably push affirmation-only “gender-affirming care,” embedding the “student-to-trans pipeline” and placing children at the center of trans activism.

The DOE already has a sprawling web of diversity roles—each school must have a “Respect for All” liaison, a Sexual Harassment Prevention liaison and often a Gender & Sexuality Alliance staff liaison, plus every district has a Title IX liaison. 

With so many overlapping roles, adding more LGBTQ-specific liaisons feels less like filling a gap and more like expanding an already bloated bureaucracy, a hallmark of the socialist-style governance that thrives on creating new administrative roles, often tailor-made for political allies and activists. 

In this case, the system seems less about bolstering support and more about multiplying titles and opportunities to appoint fellow Democratic Socialists of America-aligned staff into taxpayer-funded posts. Additionally, institutionalizing ideological programming will raise concerns about parental rights, oversight and the vague duties of these “educational liaisons.”

Mamdani’s platform is largely a response to President Donald Trump’s January executive order restricting gender transition procedures, such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy or surgeries for individuals under 19, though the mandate is presently in court.

Mamdani has pledged to make NYC a sanctuary for LGBTQIA+ individuals and families, offering legal protections against federal rollbacks. His plan includes a $65 million investment in public providers of gender-affirming care for both youth and adults, as well as the creation of a gender-affirming care “Access Hub” to expand outreach and connect patients with providers.

Under his administration, Mamdani has pledged to hold private hospital systems accountable for denying gender-affirming care to transgender youth, arguing such refusals violate state and city law. Mamdani also plans to coordinate with the New York State attorney general and local district attorneys to investigate noncompliant hospitals, hold public hearings and pursue legal consequences. 

Zohran’s LGBTQIA+ policy memo pledges to codify the NYC Transgender and Gender Expansive Guidelines to ensure that “all DOE schools are held accountable to respecting students’ identities.” 

The NYC Department of Education’s guidance allows schools, depending on circumstances and the student’s wishes, to withhold a student’s gender identity from parents. The policy requires access to restrooms, locker rooms and changing areas consistent with asserted gender identity, and prohibits mandating alternatives like single-use restrooms. 

Schools must provide reasonable alternatives for students seeking privacy, such as single-occupancy restrooms or separate schedules. Students are also generally permitted to participate in physical education and athletics in line with their asserted gender identity.

Mamdani’s political rise in New York is more than a local story, it’s part of a deliberate strategy by socialists to export their controversial gender agenda nationwide. At last month’s Socialism 2025 conference, Democratic Socialists of America member Daniel Goulden openly detailed plans to use New York as a launching pad for national policy expansion. 

Goulden said he helped write Mamdani’s transgender policy platform, boasting of his access to Mamdani’s inner circle: “With Zohran, we’re in basically the best possible position to seize state power … [Democratic Socialists of America] has regular meetings with him, let alone his team. His policy director is my friend. I’ve been working with his campaign manager for well over a year. I have friends who are in his staff.”

“Zohran is literally attempting to do what conservatives say we want to do—provide gender-affirming care to anyone who wants it for free,” Goulden said. “We’re gonna fly people in and pay for their hotel rooms.”

The goal? To use New York City’s political and financial infrastructure to provide free gender-transition services nationwide: “What we explicitly wanted to do was use the power of New York City to provide free gender-affirming care—and I say free in case insurance companies decide to boot us off—free gender-affirming care, not just to people in New York City, but across the country. There’s no reason at all that we can’t use telehealth and mailing prescriptions to people across the whole country to undermine state bans.”

A Mamdani spokesperson denied that Goulden was affiliated with the campaign, according to a statement provided to the New York Post. 

Regardless, the strategy is clear: sidestep state laws across the U.S. by turning New York into a hub for taxpayer-funded gender medical services for out-of-state residents, regardless of whether their own states have passed laws to restrict or regulate such procedures.

A key component of their sidestepping strategy is to use the schools, with a captive audience of other people’s children, to promote their ideology. This includes facilitating relationships with strangers, known as LGBTQIA+ liaisons, who have an explicit agenda and set of marching orders, likely bypassing parental rights and fostering early pathways toward medical intervention.

In their own words, these activists are using New York to push policies most Americans have never voted for, and they’re planning to scale it nationally.

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