The day after Shapiro’s speech, I watched the transgender women engage in a lengthy discussion with several young men, including Ben Holden and another conservative gay college student. In what occasionally felt like a debate, Williams tried to get them to understand that transgender people face many of the same smears — that they’re mentally unstable and a threat to children in restrooms — that were aimed at gay men not long ago. Their conversation was momentarily interrupted when a young white nationalist walked between them, handing out his business card and suggesting that his organization “is going to be the future, because we have stuff like this” — meaning transgender people — “we have to deal with.” Though jarring, the disruption offered Williams and the students something they could agree on: White nationalism is bad.

I could think of few lonelier identities than that of transgender conservative activist, and I wondered whether Williams considered leaving the party after she transitioned in 2015. She had, she said, but she decided against it partly because “I was a Republican long before I was transgender,” adding that her politics — including limited government, a strong military and free-market policies — still align her more closely with Republicans.

Like many L.G.B.T. conservatives, she also held out hope that her party might change. Jimmy LaSalvia, the longtime gay conservative who left the party in 2014, told me that he had watched several waves of gay conservatives have similar hopes dashed over the decades: “I’ve seen so many fight the good fight, then become disillusioned that the party isn’t changing and become independents or Democrats,” he said. “Then a new group of young gay conservatives appears, and they know almost nothing of this history, and they again insist that the party will change.”

Williams’s initial optimism in 2016 was shared by many L.G.B.T. conservatives, who watched as candidate Trump “made rather unprecedented public moves for a Republican to declare himself on the side of L.G.B.T. voters,” recalls Patrick J. Egan, a political scientist at N.Y.U. who researches L.G.B.T. voting behavior. Trump hawked “LGBTQ for Trump” T-shirts on his campaign website, held up a pride flag during a campaign event and presided over what Angelo, the former Log Cabin president, called “the most gay-friendly convention in G.O.P. history.” That’s a low bar, to be sure, but for some Log Cabin members who witnessed Pat Buchanan’s virulently anti-gay speech at the 1992 Republican convention, Trump’s willingness to say the term “L.G.B.T.Q.” from the stage and to offer the PayPal co-founder and openly gay conservative Peter Thiel a prime speaking slot was “deeply meaningful,” Angelo said.

But it wasn’t meaningful enough to earn Williams’s support — or that of many L.G.B.T. people. Trump received just 14 percent of the community’s vote, according to exit polling, significantly less than the 22 percent who backed Mitt Romney in 2012. One reason, Williams said, was Trump’s selection of Mike Pence, who has a long history of opposing L.G.B.T. rights, including suggesting that same-sex marriage might cause “societal collapse,” as his running mate.

Still, Trump’s announcement as president that he would block transgender people from serving in the military came as a surprise to Williams. “It felt like somebody sucker-punched me,” she said. But many gay conservatives I spent time with played down the importance of Trump’s record on transgender rights. “I think the trans issue gets more attention than it warrants,” says Jamie Kirchick, a center-right gay writer and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution who opposed Trump’s military ban but who believes “the gay movement has been overtaken by transgender issues affecting a minuscule percentage of the population.” Rob Smith, the Iraq veteran, channeled the feelings of many gay conservatives I spoke to about transgender rights when he tweeted: “A ‘good’ gay in 2018 must: Diffuse his masculinity at all costs. Never question a trans person. Ever.”

The unwillingness of many gay conservatives to prioritize the struggle of transgender people comes as little surprise to Richard Goldstein, a gay former executive editor for The Village Voice who published “Homocons,” a scathing book about gay conservatives, 17 years ago. Though Goldstein doesn’t view them with the same scorn he once did (he sees their ability to live openly gay lives as proof of “the gay left’s success making it possible for every gay person to be themselves”), he remains disappointed by what he sees as their inability to empathize with marginalized communities. “These are mostly white gay men who are pretty comfortable and who can’t seem to understand that many in the L.G.B.T. community are still not safe and need protection,” Goldstein said.