George Kwast spent 15 years mostly alone in his apartment in Manhattan after he retired in 2009, reading, watching television and thinking about friends who had moved away or died.
Then he visited the Edie Windsor SAGE Center, which relies on a mix of private and public funding to provide services for older L.G.B.T.Q. adults, who face far higher rates of isolation and poverty than their heterosexual peers.
Since that day last year, Mr. Kwast’s life has changed. He has new friends who invite him to dinner parties or join him at the center for book clubs, bingo and karaoke nights. He performs midcentury hits by Irving Berlin and Perry Como.
“I need to dance around too, because I am really more an entertainer than a singer,” said Mr. Kwast, 76, who worked for 30 years as a hotel waiter. “Last week I sang Doris Day, her version of ‘Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think).’”
But the Edie Windsor center and other L.G.B.T.Q. social service organizations now face a threat to their existence from the Trump administration, which has paired a zeal for aggressive budget cuts with an undisguised hostility toward diversity programs and the transgender community.
The most immediate danger stems from executive orders that President Trump issued soon after taking office in January, which barred federal contractors like the center from using diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
The orders also stated that the federal government would recognize only two unchangeable sexes, male and female, and banned the use of federal funds for the promotion of “gender ideology,” a term whose legal definition is unclear.
Those orders have wreaked havoc at organizations across the United States, including SAGE, which runs programs for L.G.B.T.Q. elders in New York and Florida. Many other organizations declined to speak on the record for this article out of fear that the Trump administration would retaliate against them or their clients.
For SAGE, the most immediate effect of Mr. Trump’s executive orders has been the revocation of grants that made up roughly 10 percent of its budget, said Michael Adams, its chief executive. He said that the organization had been forced to lay off staff members and cancel programs.
“We have every reason to believe that by the end of the summer all of the remainder of our direct federal funding will be eliminated,” he said. “These can just sound like numbers on budget spreadsheets, but this is about people and their lives.”
Roughly 35 percent of SAGE’s budget of $21 million comes from public funding, including $1.5 million in direct federal support, Mr. Adams said. SAGE also projects that it will lose about $1 million in corporate donations this year, part of a wider trend that has seen companies retreat from L.G.B.T.Q. causes and other activities that could be construed as an endorsement of D.E.I.
In January, the organization joined a lawsuit that sought to block the government from freezing so-called pass-through funds, which are federal dollars given to state or city authorities to disburse. SAGE uses that money to pay for its senior centers.
In February, a judge granted a preliminary injunction, allowing SAGE to keep the lights on for now. But the administration is “still cutting all different kinds of funding in all different kinds of ways,” Mr. Adams said.
Older L.B.G.T.Q. adults are far more likely than their straight peers to wind up in nursing homes, where fear of discrimination forces many to go back into the closet, he said. So SAGE provides sensitivity training to nursing homes and elder care workers, which may end if federal funding is cut.
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in Greenwich Village, a storied institution in the history of gay America, has also taken the lead in pushing back on the administration.
The center is a bustling hub that has roughly 3,000 people enrolled in its programs, which include peer support groups, long-term therapy, a summer camp and an after school program that serves 1,000 students.
Roughly one-third of its $17 million budget comes from federal, state and city funding, said Renee Colombo, the organization’s chief development officer. That includes federal pass-through funds, and funding from the Justice Department and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime challenge here for our community,” said Ms. Colombo. “It feels like the dominoes could fall. If we lose public and private support it could be a really insurmountable loss.”
Natasha Jones, the center’s senior director of community programs, said almost every service it provided was supported in some way by federal funding, including substance abuse counseling and case management to help people navigate housing, public benefits, and the health care and legal systems. There has also been increased demand for mental health services, leading the center to hire a medical director for the first time earlier this year.
The organization’s youth programs had seen a decline in attendance, in part because people were newly concerned about the safety of traveling to a building flying a rainbow flag.
“Visually, we are a staple in this community,” Ms. Jones said. “For a lot of families and young people, we are hearing, ‘Yes, the center is a safe place for me, but walking through the streets to come to the center may not be the best thing for my safety.’”
In February, the center joined a lawsuit in California that challenged three executive orders issued by Mr. Trump opposing funding for “gender ideology,” diversity-related grants and D.E.I.
This month, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted a preliminary injunction that blocked implementation of those orders. But the ruling did not restore the funding that had already been revoked, including a $200,000 Justice Department grant for social services work that the center lost in May.
At SAGE, federal funds are a lifeline for the roughly 5,000 older adults who use its services.
L.G.B.T.Q. seniors are twice as likely as their heterosexual peers to grow old without a significant other, and four times more likely to have no children. Roughly one-quarter of SAGE clients have no one to contact in case of an emergency, said Mr. Adams, the chief executive.
To address that isolation, the organization provides online support groups for those who are homebound and a daylong slate of activities, including events in the evening. For the seniors who spend their days there, learning Spanish or doing Zumba to Abba’s greatest hits, SAGE has opened up a new chapter in their lives.
Richard Helfer, 79, a retired theater professor and poet, started to come to the center in 2022 after his partner of 50 years died. “I didn’t want to be alone,” he said.
He soon began dating a man he had met there and also befriended Mr. Kwast and others. They frequently gather at Mr. Helfer’s apartment for dinner parties or games of bridge.
The idea that executive orders or funding cuts could take any of that away cast a shadow over dinner on a recent night, when roughly 100 people gathered in the center’s brightly lit cafeteria on Seventh Avenue to dig into eggplant Parmesan and baked salmon.
“It’s in the back of everybody’s mind,” said Shep Wahnon, 73, who has lived with H.I.V. since 1984 and lost his arm to a near fatal bout of sepsis in the early 1990s.
Over the years, he has received health care at Callen-Lorde, a nonprofit L.G.B.T.Q. clinic, and GMHC, formerly Gay Men’s Health Crisis, another nonprofit group. He now spends his days at the Edie Windsor center.
All receive public funds that are now at risk.
“Through it all, I always knew I could rely on gay people,” Mr. Wahnon said. “I don’t know what straight people do, especially when they get old.”
Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region.
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