Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, 2001, the world changed. For the LGBTQ+ community, the tragedy was not only about the lives lost that day, but also about the families, partners, friends and communities left behind — and the inequalities that suddenly became impossible to ignore.

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There are moments in history that divide our lives into a before and an after. For millions of people around the world, September 11, 2001, is one of those moments.

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The attacks on New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania claimed almost 3,000 lives and changed the course of American history. Twenty-five years later, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum is marking the anniversary by remembering the victims, survivors and responders while encouraging a new generation — many of whom were born after 9/11 — to understand its significance.

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But behind the statistics were individual lives. And among those lives were LGBTQ+ people.

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A community was grieving too

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On the morning of September 11, LGBTQ+ New Yorkers were experiencing the same shock, fear and devastation as everyone else. Gay men, lesbians, bisexual people and others within the LGBTQ+ community worked in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and surrounding areas. Others were firefighters, police officers, emergency workers, medical professionals, office workers and passengers.

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They were sons and daughters. Brothers and sisters. Parents and friends. And they were partners.

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For the LGBTQ+ community, however, grief could sometimes be complicated by the fact that, in 2001, same-sex relationships did not have the same legal recognition as heterosexual marriages. That became particularly significant when families began trying to deal with the aftermath 

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When your partner wasn't legally recognised as family

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In the weeks and months following the attacks, LGBTQ+ rights organisations raised concerns about the treatment of same-sex partners of people who had died.

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The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund had been established to provide financial assistance to people affected by the attacks. But questions quickly emerged over whether same-sex partners would receive the same recognition as legally married spouses. Documents submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice in 2001 show LGBTQ+ organisations arguing that surviving same-sex partners should be eligible for compensation and should be able to represent their deceased partners' claims.

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The issue was painfully simple.

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If two people had spent years building a life together, shared a home, finances and responsibilities, and one died in the attacks, did the absence of a marriage certificate make their loss any less real?  For many LGBTQ+ people, the answer was obvious. But the law was not always so clear.

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In one significant case, Sheila Hein, an Army analyst who died at the Pentagon, was survived by her partner Peggy Neff, with whom she had lived for 18 years. Because their relationship was not legally recognised in Virginia, Neff initially faced barriers that a legally married spouse would not have faced. Ultimately, the Victim Compensation Fund awarded Neff more than $500,000. LGBTQ+ legal advocates described the decision as an important step forward. It was a reminder that the victims of 9/11 did not all leave behind families that fitted neatly into the legal definitions of the time.

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Remembering Mark Bingham

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Perhaps the most widely recognised LGBTQ+ victim of 9/11 is Mark Bingham.  Bingham was a 31-year-old public relations executive from San Francisco and a passenger aboard United Airlines Flight 93. He was also openly gay and a member of the San Francisco Fog, a gay rugby club. The National Park Service records that Bingham was travelling for business and to attend a friend's wedding. When Flight 93 was hijacked, Bingham was among the passengers who made telephone calls to loved ones. 

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The National Park Service's account of the flight records his call to his mother, Alice Hoagland, during the hijacking. The passengers of Flight 93 ultimately fought back against the hijackers, with the aircraft crashing into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, preventing the plane from reaching its intended target. Bingham's story has consequently become part of the wider story of courage and resistance on 9/11.

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But it is important to remember him not simply as a hero of Flight 93.  He was a gay man. He had friends, relationships, ambitions, a career and a community. He was part of the LGBTQ+ story of September 11.

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LGBTQ+ grief didn't stop at Ground Zero

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For LGBTQ+ people who lost partners, friends and loved ones, the aftermath of 9/11 extended far beyond the collapse of the buildings. There was grief. There were practical questions about homes, finances and possessions. There were legal questions about who could speak for a deceased partner. And there was the deeply personal question of whether the relationship they had built would be recognised by the institutions dealing with their loss.

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​In the immediate aftermath, LGBTQ+ organisations including Lambda Legal, the Human Rights Campaign, the Empire State Pride Agenda and others pressed for greater equality within the compensation process. In the immediate aftermath, LGBTQ+ organisations including Lambda Legal, the Human Rights Campaign, the Empire State Pride Agenda and others pressed for greater equality within the compensation process.

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A community already familiar with loss

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It is also impossible to consider the LGBTQ+ experience of 9/11 without remembering the period in which it happened. The attacks took place only two decades after the Stonewall uprising had helped ignite the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.  In 2001, same-sex marriage was still years away from becoming legal anywhere in the United States at the federal level. LGBTQ+ people were fighting for employment protection, relationship recognition and basic equality. The community was also carrying the enormous legacy of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. For a generation of LGBTQ+ people, loss was already something they knew all too well.  9/11 created another enormous collective trauma — one that was shared with the wider population but experienced through the particular realities of LGBTQ+ lives.

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The world after September 11

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The consequences of 9/11 went far beyond New York. The attacks reshaped international politics, national security, travel, immigration, surveillance and public attitudes towards Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim or Middle Eastern. For LGBTQ+ people, the post-9/11 world also produced complicated conversations around identity, religion, sexuality and freedom.

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Some LGBTQ+ people found themselves confronting a difficult tension: how to defend LGBTQ+ rights while resisting the idea that those rights should be used to stereotype or demonise entire religious or ethnic communities. That remains an important conversation 25 years later. The legacy of 9/11 cannot be separated from the Islamophobia and discrimination experienced by Muslim communities in the years that followed. Nor should the experiences of LGBTQ+ people be reduced to a single narrative.

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9/11 affected communities differently. And many people belonged to more than one of them.

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Twenty-five years later

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Today, a growing number of adults have no personal memory of September 11. The 9/11 Memorial & Museum notes that around 100 million Americans are now too young to remember the attacks themselves. That makes remembering increasingly important. But remembrance should be more than photographs of smoke rising above Manhattan or footage of the towers collapsing.

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It should be about people. The office worker who never came home. The firefighter who ran towards the danger. The passenger who called their family. The partner waiting for someone who would never return. The friend who suddenly became a member of a grieving family. And the communities that came together to help one another survive. For LGBTQ+ people, remembering 9/11 also means remembering those whose relationships were not always recognised by the law — even though their love, commitment and loss were every bit as real.

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Never forget — and remember everyone

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Twenty-five years after 9/11, the names of the victims remain engraved at the Memorial in Lower Manhattan.  Each name represents an individual life. And each life contained a story. Some of those stories were LGBTQ+ stories. Remembering them is not about separating LGBTQ+ victims from everyone else. It is about making sure they are not lost within the history of one of the defining events of the modern era.  The LGBTQ+ community has always understood the importance of remembering those who came before us.  We remember through Pride. We remember through memorials. We remember through stories. And, ultimately, we remember through the lives we continue to build.

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Twenty-five years on, we remember September 11. We remember the nearly 3,000 people who died. We remember the survivors and first responders. We remember the families. And we remember the LGBTQ+ people whose lives were forever changed by that September morning. We remember because every life mattered. We remember because every love mattered. And we remember because history belongs to all of us.

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This article is published by g10 group to mark the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.​​