A federal judge temporarily blocked portions of a new Florida law that bans transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers, ruling Tuesday that the state has no rational basis for denying patients treatment.
“The elephant in the room should be noted at the outset. Gender identity is real. The record makes this clear,” Hinkle said, adding that even a witness for the state agreed.
Transgender medical treatment for minors is increasingly under attack in many states and has been subject to restrictions or outright bans. But it has been available in the United States for more than a decade and is endorsed by major medical associations.
Hinkle’s ruling was narrowly focused on the three children whose parents brought the suit.
Hinkle said people who mistakenly believe gender identity is a choice also “tend to disapprove all things transgender and so oppose medical care that supports a person’s transgender existence.”
Research suggests that transgender youth and adults are prone to stress, depression and suicidal thoughts, and the evidence is mixed on whether treatment with hormones or surgery resolves those issues.
Even ahead of contemplating medical treatment, experts agree, allowing children to express their gender in a way that matches their identity is beneficial, such as letting children assigned male at birth wear clothing or hairstyles usually associated with girls, if that is their wish.
“There are risks attendant to not using these treatments, including the risk — in some instances, the near certainty — of anxiety and depression and even suicidal ideation. The challenged statute ignores the benefits that many patients realize from these treatments and the substantial risk posed by foregoing the treatments,” Hinkle said.
He also noted that hormone treatments and puberty blockers are often used to treat non-transgender children for other conditions, so the law makes their use legal for some, but not for others.
The three children in the lawsuit will “suffer irreparable harm” if they cannot begin puberty blockers, Hinkle said.
“The treatment will affect the patients themselves, nobody else, and will cause the defendants no harm,” Hinkle said.
The governor’s office didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking comment.
A library in Montana has canceled a transgender Cheyenne woman guest speaker, saying that her appearance at the library could violate the state’s new drag ban.
Adria Jawort – who made headlines last year when she won a lawsuit against a conservative, straight, white male pastor who called her mentally ill – was set to speak at the Butte Public Library last Friday as part of the library’s Pride Month programming. She was going to speak about “Montana History of Two-Spirit and LGBTQ+ Peoples.”
But the library canceled her appearance on Thursday afternoon. A librarian emailed her and said that the county “decided that it is too much of a legal risk to have a transgendered person in the library. I really regret this.”
Butte-Silver Bow city-county Chief Executive J.P. Gallagher cited the state’s new law, H.B. 359, which is intended to ban drag story hours. The law bans both drag queens and kings from reading in front of children. It also defines both as “a male or female performer who adopts a flamboyant or parodic” male or feminine persona “with glamorous or exaggerated costumes and makeup.”
Gallagher still proclaimed June Pride Month at the Butte-Silver Bow Courthouse that same day.
Gallagher said that he would have let the performance happen if not for the state law. “But we would be in violation of state law if we allowed this person to give her presentation,” he said. According to Jawort’s Substack, Gallagher was reportedly getting legal advice from County Attorney Eileen Joyce.
Jawort said that she testified in the state legislature against the drag ban.
“I did so by explicitly doing a little dance (it was the beginning of the dance by that robot girl in the M3GAN) and saying that this bill’s broad definition targets trans people, what I had just done would be illegal under it,” she wrote. “Then I explained First Amendment Law to them – which seemed to be beyond their comprehension.”
Jawort said that there was already going to be a police presence at her lecture on Friday because the library “had been receiving harassing calls” about it.
“Now, what we have here is like a version of 21st Century ‘masquerade laws’ used to target trans people with back in the 1950s and 60s with [SIC] to arrest them for wearing articles of clothing of the opposite ‘biological’ gender,” she wrote.
In 2021, pastor J.D. Hall, a former darling of the far-right wing in Montana, called Jawort a “Gothic Transvestite,” called her “mannish,” and said she was mentally ill because she is trans. He also said that she threatened state officials.
She sued him for libel and they reached a settlement involving Hall paying Jawort $250,000, retracting the libelous article from his website, and publicly apologizing to Jawort.
“I apologize to Adrian Jawort,” Hall’s public apology in 2022 said. “The information I published about Adrian was false. Adrian did not threaten or harass Senator Butch Gillespie. I regret the error and sincerely apologize to Adrian for publishing it.”
The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund has sued the state of Tennessee over the exclusion of transition-related care from the state’s health insurance plan.
In the suit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, TLDEF is representing a current participant in the plan and a former one. Gerda Zinner (pictured, left), an academic adviser at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, is a trans woman who was denied surgery because the state’s public employee health plan, the State of Tennessee Comprehensive Medical and Hospitalization Program, categorically excludes coverage for transgender-related health care. Story VanNess is a trans woman who was a special education teacher for Knox County Schools for five years, was enrolled in the state’s plan but was also denied coverage for gender-affirming surgery.
The state covers the same procedures for cisgender people to treat injuries, illnesses, or other conditions but excludes them for the purpose of gender transition.
“The only reason the State of Tennessee refuses to provide these women with coverage for medically necessary health care is because they are transgender,” Ezra Cukor, TLDEF staff attorney, said in a press release. “This is clearly unlawful discrimination that jeopardizes the health of hardworking state employees and their families.”
“It took years of careful consideration before I was finally in a position to move forward with surgical care, an important part of my transition,” Zinner said in the release. “Knowing that the only reason I can’t get the care that my doctors and I have decided that I need is because I’m transgender is hurtful and makes me feel second-class.”
“Working with students who have special needs was one of the greatest joys of my life, but it was excruciating to be denied coverage for needed health care simply because I’m transgender,” VanNess added.
The suit argues that Tennessee officials are violating the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by unlawfully discriminating based on sex and transgender status.
“Federal laws protect transgender people from workplace discrimination on the basis of sex,” Darren Teshima, partner at Covington & Burling LLP, which is handling the suit with TLDEF and other attorneys, said in the release. “This lawsuit seeks to ensure that the State of Tennessee and its affiliates stop wrongfully excluding medically necessary transition-related care from their employee health care plans. Covington is very proud to partner with our co-counsel and clients in this important work.”
Over the last year, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Utah — four states bordering New Mexico — have all banned gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Meanwhile, New Mexico passed two laws ensuring that such care will remain legal statewide and that no government entities will ever help another state prosecute someone who obtains or provides that care.
As a result, New Mexico is quickly becoming a refugee state for those escaping their state’s anti-trans policies. That creates a unique challenge for the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico (TGRCNM). The Albuquerque-based center is the state’s only brick-and-mortar center run by trans people, for trans people.
“We’re geographically situated in between states that are struggling with treating people like human beings and allowing folks to have the bodily autonomy to take care of themselves in whatever way suits them best,” TGRCNM’s executive director T. Michael Trimm tells LGBTQ Nation. “So folks are fleeing here in droves.”
It’s difficult to quantify how many trans people have migrated to avoid trans healthcare bans. At least 17 states nationwide have passed laws restricting or banning such care for minors. Other states have also recently passed laws denying trans people restroom access, sports teams, and pronouns matching their gender identities.
While Republican legislators claim such laws are necessary to protect children from “indoctrination” and harm, opponents accuse the GOP of inserting itself between families and doctors as part of its larger culture war on queer people, leaving some no choice but to flee their home states.
New Mexico’s laws mimic those of California, Minnesota, and other “sanctuary states” which promise to protect the right to gender-affirming healthcare for youth and their families. As a result, out-of-state immigrants have increasingly sought help at TGRCNM, turning the Center into a sort of “trans Ellis Island,” Trimm says, referring to the New York center in the early 1900s that processed European immigrants and refugees.
The influx is challenging the TGRCNM to meet additional people’s needs in an already under-resourced state, Trimm adds.
Statistics suggest that trans newcomers may suffer from higher rates of poverty, familial rejection, workplace discrimination, and other oppressions that result in increased houselessness, food insecurity, and poor healthcare. As such, some newcomers may need a lot of assistance to establish new lives.
While many larger cities in surrounding states have LGBTQ+ centers with programs to help trans folks, the nearest centers focusing solely on trans people are located in Missouri and California, both over 800 miles away, leaving TGRCNM as the only nearby option for untold numbers of trans people seeking support.
“We do not feel equipped to handle the needs of these folks,” Adrien Lawyer, TGRCNM’s co-founder tells LGBTQ Nation. Trimm adds, “This is incredibly overwhelming and has continued to stretch the limits of our capacity.”
The TGRCNM already offers “direct services” for trans people in need, including a drop-in center three days a week that provides showers, washers and dryers, prepared meals, an open donation clothes closet, a computer lab, a lending library, and workers who can help people access food benefits, healthcare (including STI testing, needle-exchange, and mental health counselors), legal services, as well as housing and employment assistance.
The center also offers statewide services, including assisting with name changes on government ID documents, providing trans body shaping items (like binders and gaffes), an online directory and referral for trans-friendly healthcare providers, a support program for incarcerated trans people, and also nine weekly in-person and online support groups for trans people of color, children, parents, partners, and others who live inside and outside of the state.
“We have grown so much since we started in 2007, but one of our challenges remains finding and sustaining the funding to do the statewide work that we set out to do here,” Lawyer says.
Trimm agrees.
“New Mexico isn’t the most resourced state, yet we are offering the most protections for folks,” he says. “Funding would allow us to further serve the people already in our state, who may be unintentionally harmed by the influx of [transgender and non-conforming] refugees who come to the state, occupying housing, which raises market rent for everyone.”
Lawyer says TGRCNM’s immediate mission is “to not let people die here in our local community,” but he adds that the Center doesn’t just “want to just be trying to patch up people’s bullet holes with band-aids all the time” either. The Center wants to keep shifting the state’s culture towards valuing trans lives.
Doing this requires progressive legislation to ensure that trans people will be able to thrive in peace throughout the state. Recently passed legislation has made New Mexico “the safest state in the country for LGBTQ people,” according to Marshall Martinez, executive director of Equality New Mexico.
This year alone, New Mexico passed House Bill 207, which added gender identity to anti-discrimination and hate crime laws; House Bill 31, which made it easier for trans people to legally change their names; House Bill 7, which forbids anyone from restricting access to reproductive and gender-affirming health care; and Senate Bill 13 is a “shield law” that forbids the government from assisting with any out-of-state investigations into people who provide or receive such care.
The latter two laws are especially important since Texas and other states have threatened to prosecute doctors and parents for “child abuse” if they help kids access such care. Similar laws also threaten anyone who assists in obtaining an abortion.
Martinez says New Mexico’s trans-inclusive laws passed thanks to a strong, cooperative coalition consisting of Equality New Mexico, the TRCNM, local Planned Parenthood affiliates, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the reproductive justice organization Bold Futures New Mexico, the healthcare access advocacy group Strong Families New Mexico, and a “ton of other groups.”
The coalition’s organizations regularly communicate with each other every day, he says. Throughout the year, they make sure one another’s issues are represented at meetings with community and political leaders across the vast state. Each organization also uses its pre-existing relationships with legislators to educate lawmakers about one another’s key issues, gradually introducing leaders to lawmakers over time.
These groups all share a common enemy, Martinez notes: conservatives who hate LGBTQ+ people — they’re the same ones who want to dictate people’s medical decisions, he says. As such, it made sense for the coalition members to support healthcare legislation that bundled abortion access with access for gender-affirming care.
“These are the only two health care procedures being criminalized,” Martinez says. “At the end of the day in New Mexico, either you believe that a patient can make decisions about their health care and their body or you don’t. And if you believe that, then you must believe it about everything.”
“Liberation is bodily autonomy, and bodily autonomy is the same regardless of whose body it is and what decisions you’re trying to make,” he continues. “The ability to decide whether or not I take hormones to transition my gender is equally as important as the decision I or my partner or sibling may make about having or not having children…. [It’s] the same level of bodily autonomy as being able to sue the cops when they harm you [or] violate your civil rights… which is the same as being able to make an adult decision about using cannabis.”
Under this reasoning, the coalition has helped pass other progressive laws, including ones that will enable residents to purchase a state health insurance option, enable cannabis entrepreneurs of color to benefit first from legalized sales, remove “qualified immunity” protections from abusive cops, and repeal older anti-abortion and anti-sodomy laws. Martinez doesn’t see these all as individual policy changes so much as the victories of a movement that has been successful on multiple fronts.
Granted, New Mexico’s Democratic-leaning electorate differentiates it from other states in ways that could make this strategy difficult to replicate elsewhere. New Mexico has a pro-LGBTQ+ governor, Michelle Lynn Lujan Grisham (D), and its legislature has been controlled by Democrats for almost all of the last 30 years. Its population of just over two million — 30% of which is non-white, including 21 indigenous sovereign nations — has helped Democratic presidential candidates win seven of the last eight elections.
I am deeply honored and humbled to continue serving our beautiful state as governor of New Mexico.
As I begin my second term, I will continue doing the work to ensure that the next fifty years are the greatest and most prosperous in New Mexico history – progress is our destiny. pic.twitter.com/0PPKDpHLAS— Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (@GovMLG) January 3, 2023
But Martinez says the state’s progressive victories at least disprove the idea that religious people of color are among the most conservative. “It has proven to be incredibly untrue amongst Hispanic, Latino, and indigenous Catholics across the country,” he says.
“People in New Mexico have been learning how to live with people of different cultural and religious values and backgrounds for 200 years,” he adds. “And at the end of the day, our values have always been that we love accept and affirm our neighbors, even when we don’t understand or agree with.”
He encourages advocacy organizations in larger states not to operate from a territorial and scarcity model, one that sees other progressive causes as a potential drain on an organization’s resources or influence. In New Mexico, he says, progressive groups inquire about one another’s legislation, asking how each can help apply equal pressure on legislators over a wide range of issues. Over the years, such coalition building has made it so that New Mexican lawmakers don’t pursue bad laws, he says.
It’s likely that the state’s trans protections will eventually be legally challenged by conservatives either inside or outside of its borders. But Martinez remains confident that the laws will withstand legal challenges, especially with a broad coalition supporting them.
“We’re not doing something radically new by protecting trans people,” he says. “We’re doing what we’ve always done, which is protect people from hatred and discrimination because that’s a New Mexican value.”
Shortly after announcing his 2024 presidential campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) went on Fox News and showed everyone how obsessed he is with transgender people.
“How would you address the ongoing war in Eastern Europe between Russia and Ukraine on day 1 of a Ron DeSantis presidency?” host Trey Gowdy asked.
He also said LGBTQ stands for “Let God burn them quickly.”
“First, I think what we need to do as a veteran is recognize that our military has become politicized. You talk about gender ideology, you talk about things like global warming that they’re somehow concerned, and that’s not the military that I served in,” DeSantis responded, saying absolutely nothing about Ukraine, where almost no American troops are serving. Even if the issue were primarily about U.S. military involvement, “gender ideology” would have nothing to do with anything.
But responding to the question is never the point in these campaign interviews; getting out one’s campaign soundbites is. And the military being too pro-trans (and also pro-gay and anti-racism, according to Florida Republicans) is the talking point he wanted to get out there to show that he, too, would be willing to ban trans people from serving openly in the military, just like his top rival Donald Trump did in 2017.
DeSantis isn’t the only one who is trying to work transphobia into places where it makes no sense. Yesterday, former Trump administration official and 2024 candidate Nikki Haleymade nasty comments about transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, blaming her for teen girls considering suicide. There is nothing to tie Mulvaney to teen suicide rates, but no one cares about facts when they’re trying to stoke a moral panic.
“Everybody knows about Dylan Mulvaney? Bud Light, right?” Haley told an audience of New Hampshire business leaders who were probably there to hear what she had to say about business and not Instagram videos. She was met with silence. “Make no mistake. That is a guy, dressed up like a girl, making fun of women. Women don’t act like that. Yet everybody’s wondering why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year?”
Both Haley and DeSantis are facing an uphill battle against Trump, who is currently the top choice of over half of Republican primary voters. They have to stand out somehow instead of being one of a dozen not-Trumps – how most GOP primary candidates failed in 2016 – and they’re betting that outrage against the very existence of transgender people is how to do it.
After two years of hundreds of anti-trans bills being considered in state legislatures across the country – including bans on trans people participating in school sports, trans people being called by the correct names and pronouns, and trans youth getting gender-affirming health care – and two years where anyone flying a rainbow or a trans Pride flag risked getting labeled a “groomer” or a “pedophile,” people can be forgiven for forgetting that, as recently as 2020, anti-trans activists were trying to get the attention of the Republican Party to make transphobia a campaign issue.
That was where the country was in the middle of the pandemic. In August 2020, Terry Schilling’s small and relatively unknown anti-LGBTQ+ organization American Principles Project was forced to run its own anti-trans ads in several campaigns in an attempt to get the Trump-Pence campaign and the national Republican Party to even think this was an issue worth mentioning.
That’s not to say that Trump was pro-trans equality; his administration repeatedly attacked transgender rights as well as LGBTQ+ rights more broadly every chance they got. But they didn’t think that it was the top vote-getting issue last time around, the one issue to bring up at every campaign stop to rile up the base and get swing voters into the GOP camp.
Trump himself has been talking more about trans people at his campaign stops this past year, calling out “the perverted sexualization of minor children,” a Republican expression that covers any form of support for LGBTQ+ people.
Mike Pence, another likely 2024 candidate, has also been making transphobia a bigger part of his not-yet-a-campaign, telling people at events in Iowa that he’ll stop the “radical gender ideology” that has “invaded our schools, our colleges, and our workplaces.” Just two days ago, in an interview with Scripps News, Pence brought up his opposition to trans rights and promised to implement a ban on trans people in the military and a national ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth, saying that he would campaign on the military ban if he runs in 2024.
Even South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R), who hasn’t announced her 2024 campaign yet and is speculated to be trying to get the VP slot on Trump’s ticket, ran a national ad in early 2022 touting her opposition to trans rights. “In South Dakota, only girls play girls’ sports. Why? Because of Governor Kristi Noem’s leadership,” the ad told the nation, even though she was officially just running for reelection as governor then.
The 2004 presidential election was historic in its homophobia. George W. Bush and other Republicans saw marriage equality as the top issue that could drive Evangelicals to the polls. Harold Meyerson of the American Prospect said that the GOP saw”the specter of gay marriage as a political gift from the gods.”
Twenty years later, it looks like they’re making the same bet with the basic humanity of transgender people. The Republican primary – when it’s not just Trump dunking on the other candidates who will be too afraid of his supporters to respond in kind – will be full of outlandish stories about schoolteachers secretly performing gender-affirming surgery on kids in restroom stalls, student-athletes with arms “30 feet long” setting world records in middle school, and hypnotic children’s cartoons making little boys wear dresses.
And when the primary is over, the winner will go on to attack President Joe Biden’s record of supporting trans equality through executive orders, rules, and guidelines as well as lawsuits in his first four years in office.
In Hanover Township in New Jersey, the Board of Education passed a policy Tuesday requiring school staff to notify parents of their children’s sexual orientation, classifying it along with substance and alcohol use, firearms, and “unlawful activity” as a threat to students’ well-being.
New Jersey’s attorney general is suing.
The kindergarten through eighth-grade district serves about 1,300 students in Whippany and Cedar Knolls in Morris County.
“Enacting a policy that has teachers policing their schools to out LGBTQ+ students is a disconcerting return to tactics used to criminalize sexual orientation and gender identity,” Jeanne LoCicero, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, told NJ.com. “It targets students based on their LGBTQ+ status and cannot stand.”
“We will always stand up for the LGBTQ+ community here in New Jersey and look forward to presenting our arguments in court in this matter,” AG Matthew J. Platkin said in a statement. He joined Sundeep Iyer, Director of the Division on Civil Rights, to file an emergency motion in Superior Court to enjoin the new policy.
“We are extremely proud of the contributions LGBTQ+ students make to our classrooms and our communities,” Platkin added, “and we remain committed to protecting them from discrimination in our schools.”
Platkin’s complaint argues the board’s policy violates the state’s Law Against Discrimination because it requires parental notification for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer students but not for their peers.
The attorney general’s office quotes from the new policy requiring all school staff to “immediately, fully and accurately inform a student’s parent(s) whenever such staff member is made aware of, directly or indirectly, any facts or circumstances that may have a material impact on the student’s physical and/or mental health, safety and/or social/emotional well-being,” including a student’s “sexuality,” “sexual orientation,” “transitioning,” and “gender identity or expression.”
In a statement, the Hanover Township board claimed the requirement doesn’t target students based on a protected status. Under the Law Against Discrimination, sexual orientation and gender identity or expression are protected statuses.
The attorney general’s complaint also argues that the policy would put students’ safety and mental health put at risk, and that it goes against guidance from the New Jersey Department of Education, which protects students’ confidentiality and privacy.
“The purpose of this policy is to involve the parents in the lives of their children,” the board’s attorney, Matthew Giacobbe, told the Daily Record. “They’re participating and not having people other than themselves make judgment calls on their child.”
The board’s statement added: “The Hanover Township Board of Education believes that parents need to be fully informed of all material issues that could impact their children so that they – as parents – can provide the proper care and support for their children.”
A 14-year-old transgender youth left his school, walked down Huse Road to the overpass over busy Interstate 293, climbed the 6′ chain-link fence installed by the New Hampshire Department of Transportation to prevent people falling off the older bridge and its low guard rails, and lept into eastbound traffic.
A spokesperson for the Rainbow Youth Project confirmed in a phone call Monday that Nova Dunn, a student at Southside Middle School, died by suicide. The New Hampshire State Police while not commenting, citing an ongoing investigation, confirmed the incident and the resulting “hours-long traffic jam at the location” just east of the Mall of New Hampshire.
A friend of the family, Stacey Greenberg, wrote in the GoFundMe post to raise the funds to defray the cost of the funeral:
“Hello, this is Stacey a friend of Melissa and Mom to one of Nova’s close friends. No one should have to outlive their child, but Melissa has now experienced this twice. On Wednesday afternoon, 14-year-old Nova left this earth and found the peace and acceptance he was searching for.”
The New Hampshire Union Leader reported that Manchester School District Supt. Jenn Gillis sent an email to district families last Wednesday night that said in part: “It is with deep sadness that we inform you that one of our students has died unexpectedly.”
Gillis wrote that: “This loss may raise many emotions, concerns and questions for our entire school community, especially our students.”
Manchester School District spokesperson Andrew Toland, in a press statement, noted that counselors from other Manchester area schools and the state’s Disaster Behavior Health Response Team spent May 18 at the school “directly impacted” by the death.
“Our focus in the coming days and weeks is to be supportive of our students, families and staff,” said Toland.
Multiple sources alleged that bullying and transphobia factored into the death of the teen, although the Washington Blade has been unable to verify any of those claims.
In the past few months there has been considerable attention focused on trans youth nationally, particularly around school policies regarding trans youth health care and gender identity. Last month, New Hampshire Public Radio reported that the New Hampshire Supreme Court heard arguments in a case brought by a Manchester parent challenging school policies around trans and nonbinary students.
The parent says she was kept in the dark when her child began using a different name and identifying as a different gender at school — something the parent objected to, NHPR reported.
At issue is a district policy that says Manchester school staff generally shouldn’t disclose when a student identifies as trans or gender nonconforming without that student’s permission.
Republican New Hampshire lawmakers are rallying behind legislation that would force schools to disclose a student’s gender identity to parents when asked. The state House of Representatives narrowly rejected one such proposal last month, but another remains on the table after passing the state Senate along party lines.
In an interview on Rated LGBT Radio with Rob Watson this past week, Lance Preston, founder and executive director of the Rainbow Youth Project USA, noted that the toxic legislative atmosphere had tripled calls for assistance to the RYP’s crisis counselors, as nearly 18 states have banned trans youth gender-affirming therapy for minors, and have also passed laws the forbid discussion of LGBTQ issues, history and people in classrooms.
Preston also pointed out that more than a half dozen states enacting measures, like New Hampshire’s proposed disclosure of a youth’s gender to parents, in cases of non-affirming households specifically places those youth at risk for suicide or leaving, oft times ending up living homeless on the streets.
At the beginning of this month, the nation’s leading suicide prevention organization for LGBTQ youth, the Trevor Project, released the results of its latest survey of queer young people ages 13 to 24.
The survey of 28,000 youth nationwide, conducted last fall, underscores the negative mental health impact of anti-LGBTQ legislation and policies. Among the key findings:
41 percent of LGBTQ young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year — and those who are trans, nonbinary and/or people of color reported higher rates than their peers.
56 percent who wanted mental health care in the past year were not able to get it.
LGBTQ young people who had access to affirming homes, schools, community events and online spaces reported lower rates of attempting suicide compared to those who did not.
Trans and nonbinary young people reported lower rates of attempting suicide when all of the people they live with respected their pronouns and/or they had access to a gender-neutral bathroom at school.
LGBTQ young people who experienced victimization because of their orientation or identity — including being physically threatened or harmed, discriminated against or subjected to conversion therapy — reported more than twice the rate of attempting suicide in the past year compared to those who did not have any of these anti-LGBTQ experiences.
Nearly 2 in 3 LGBTQ young people said that hearing about potential state or local laws banning people from discussing LGBTQ people at school — also known as “Don’t Say Trans or Gay” laws — negatively impacted their mental health.
Link to the GoFundMe campaign to assist the family is here: (Nova Dunn)
A Mississippi school district is refusing to let a transgender girl wear a dress and heeled shoes with her graduation cap and gown for high school graduation this weekend, her family says in a federal lawsuit against the district.
The lawsuit filed Thursday demands that the Harrison County School District allow the 17-year-old to wear what she wants as she and her classmates graduate from Harrison Central High School on Saturday.
The teenager is listed in court documents by her initials, L.B. The lawsuit said L.B. had worn dresses to classes and to extracurricular events throughout high school, including to a prom last year.
The Harrison Central principal, Kelly Fuller, told L.B. and her parents May 9 that the school on the Mississippi Gulf Coast would make L.B. follow a dress code requiring male students to wear white shirts, black slacks and black shoes for graduation, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the family. The dress code says girls are to wear white dresses.
Fuller said the request to meet with L.B. about the dress code was prompted by Harrison County School District Superintendent Mitchell King, who had called to ask what transgender students were wearing to graduation, according to the lawsuit.
King told the teenager’s mother in a phone call that L.B. “needs to wear pants, socks, and shoes like a boy,” and King repeatedly misgendered L.B. as a boy, the ACLU said in a news release.
U.S. District Judge Sul Ozerden scheduled a Friday hearing on the family’s request for temporary restraining order against the school district.
Wynn Clark, attorney for the Harrison County School Board, declined to comment on the lawsuit Thursday.
“I have not read the entirety of their complaint,” Clark told The Associated Press.
The AP left phone messages Thursday for Fuller and King about the lawsuit, which says L.B. should not face discriminatory and unequal treatment.
“My graduation is supposed to be a moment of pride and celebration and school officials want to turn it into a moment of humiliation and shame,” L.B. said in the news release. “The clothing I’ve chosen is fully appropriate for the ceremony and the superintendent’s objections to it are entirely unfair to myself, my family and all transgender students like me. I have the right to celebrate my graduation as who I am, not who anyone else wants me to be.”
The lawsuit said L.B. “has lived every aspect of her high school career as a girl.”
“L.B. should be focused on celebrating this important milestone alongside her peers; however, this targeted attack by the leaders of the Harrison County School District seeks to strip her of her right to celebrate this occasion as her true self,” said McKenna Raney-Gray, staff attorney for the ACLU of Mississippi.
Aaron and Lacey Jennen’s roots in Arkansas run deep. They’ve spent their entire lives there, attended the flagship state university, and are raising a family. So they’re heartbroken at the prospect of perhaps having to move to one of an ever-dwindling number of states where gender-affirming health care for their transgender teenage daughter, Sabrina, is not threatened.
“We were like, ‘OK, if we can just get Sabrina to 18 … we can put all this horrible stuff behind us,’” Aaron Jennen said, “and unfortunately that’s not been the case, as you’ve seen a proliferation of anti-trans legislation here in Arkansas and across the country.”
At least 17 states have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors, though judges have temporarily blocked their enforcement in some, including Arkansas. An Associated Press analysis found that often those bills sprang not from grassroots or constituent demand, but from the pens of a handful of conservative interest groups.
Many of the proposals, as introduced or passed, are identical or very similar to some model legislation, the AP found. Those ready-made bills have been used in statehouses for decades, often with criticisms of carpetbagging by out-of-state interests. In the case of restrictions on gender-affirming care for youths, they allow a handful of far-right groups to spread a false narrative based on distorted science, critics say.
“These are solutions from outside our state looking to solve nonexistent problems inside our state,” said Aaron Jennen. “For whatever reason, they have the ear of legislatures in states like Arkansas, and the legislators will generally defer to and only listen to those individuals.”
The AP obtained the texts of more than 130 bills in 40 state legislatures from Plural, a public policy software company, and analyzed them for similarities to model bills peddled by the conservative groups Do No Harm, which also criticizes efforts to diversify staffing in medicine, and the Family Research Council, which has long been involved in abortion restrictions.
One of the clearest examples is in Montana, where nearly all the language in at least one bill can be found in Do No Harm’s model. Publicly available emails from December show the Republican sponsor, Sen. John Fuller, tweaked the model before introducing it weeks later. Democrats criticized his efforts.
“This is not a Montana issue; it is an issue pushed by well-funded national groups,” Democratic Sen. Janet Ellis said during debate in February.
Republicans pushed back.
“Someone mentioned this is not a Montana solution. And I can tell you that I won my election on this issue,” said Republican Sen. Barry Usher, who ran unopposed in the general election after winning his contested primary.
The Montana bill passed in March with much of Do No Harm’s model language intact and has been signed into law.
Do No Harm’s model and the 2021 Arkansas bill endorsed as a model by the Family Research Council also have many similarities, including the assertion — rebutted by major medical organizations — that the risks of gender-affirming care outweigh its benefits.
Republicans’ recent focus on legislation to restrict aspects of transgender life is largely a strategy of using social “wedge issues” — in the past, abortion or same-sex marriage — to motivate their voting base, political observers say. And it does appear to resonate; a Pew Research Center survey a year ago found broad support among Republicans, but not Democrats, for restrictions on medical care for gender transitions.
“These organizations are not introducing this model legislation to make legislators’ jobs easier, to support kids in their constituencies. They’re introducing this model legislation to gain wealth, to gain eyes, to gain power, and to gain access,” said Heron Greenesmith, a senior research analyst who monitors anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric for Political Research Associates, a liberal think tank.
Such bills often distort valid science that supports gender-affirming care for youths, said Dr. Jack Drescher, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University who edited the section about gender dysphoria in the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual. Do No Harm cites the manual in its model bill.
“These bills are not at all interested in patient care,” Drescher said. “These bills are designed to inflame.”
It’s problematic “any time policymakers are cherry-picking isolated studies or scientific research that arrives upon a different conclusion than the rest of the community or that relies upon studies without having that expertise,” said Marty P. Jordan, an assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University. “It’s problematic for the individuals that the legislation could impact. It’s problematic for the larger public, and problematic for democracy writ large.”
Kent Syler, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University, said: “If it’s a good bill, no one should be shy about where they got it because that’s the federal system working correctly.”
Do No Harm launched last year with an initial critical focus on the role of race in medical education and hiring, and the Virginia-based nonprofit has registered lobbyists in at least four states. People associated with it have testified in statehouses around the U.S.
When asked about Do No Harm’s legislative activity, founder and chair Dr. Stanley Goldfarb responded in an email: “Do No Harm works to protect children from extreme gender ideology through original research, coalition-building, testimonials from parents and patients who’ve lived through deeply troubling experiences, and advocacy for the rigorous, apolitical study of gender dysphoria.”
The Family Research Council, an advocacy group that opposes abortion and LGBTQ rights, has been behind what it calls the Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act, or SAFE Act. Among other things, it falsely asserts that “‘gender transition’ is an experiment.”
A leader of the Family Research Council declined to directly answer several questions about its model bill, including where it had been used and which legislators it had worked with, but said, “What should be an issue debated in the scientific community now has to be dealt with through legislation.”
“The SAFE Act gives minors a chance to experience development before imposing lifelong chemical and surgical procedures that increasingly show evidence of psychological and physiological harm and completed suicide after the transition,” Jennifer Bauwens, the organization’s director of family studies, said in an email.
In Arkansas, Sabrina Jennen — who will turn 18 in July — continues to receive gender-affirming health care while her family’s suit winds through the courts.
“For these outside groups to carry more weight than the people these legislators were elected to represent is very upsetting,” Aaron Jennen said. “They didn’t listen to us before, but now they have to listen to us because we filed a lawsuit and went to court.”
Nearly three quarters of trans people in the UK have faced verbal abuse in the last year, shocking new figures from a leading LGBTQ+ charity have revealed.
Just Like Us, the LGBT+ young people’s charity, has shared new data which highlights the raft of vile abuse both LGBTQ+, and non-LGBTQ+, young people face in the wake of rising homophobic and transphobic rhetoric.
The figures are part of a new report by the charity called Positive Futures, set to be published on 1 June, which examines the experiences of LGBTQ+ young adults in the UK.
The report will cover a range of topics including wellbeing, home life, school and work, as well as taking into account intersectional identities such as faith, race and disability.
Carried out by market researcher Cibyl on behalf of Just Like Us, the study surveyed 3,695 adults aged 18 to 25.
‘Devastating’
The research found in the past year 61 per cent of LGBTQ+ young adults have experienced verbal abuse.
Within these figures, a staggering 72 per cent of trans young adults faced verbal abuse in that time frame.
After trans people, non-binary (70 per cent) asexual (68 per cent) young adults were then the most likely to report verbal abuse in the last 12 months.
The research also found nearly half (47 per cent) of non-LGBTQ+ young adults have also faced anti-LGBT+ verbal abuse during the previous 12 months, despite not being queer.
Amy Ashenden, interim CEO of Just Like Us, said it is “devastating” to see a majority of trans young people have faced verbal abuse and it is a “sign of the often terrifyingly transphobic times we are living in here in the UK”.
“The levels of abuse faced by LGBT+ young adults are completely unacceptable,” she said.
“It’s hard to believe that in 2023, LGBT+ young people are still being subjected to verbal abuse and violence, and that anti-LGBT+ attacks are so prevalent that they are even being directed at non-LGBT+ young people.”
‘Vital’ we take LGBTQ+ inclusion ‘seriously’
The Just Like Us research also found that when it comes to physical abuse, both LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ young people face similar levels (25 per cent and 24 per cent respectively).
However, when examined in terms of identity these results shot up for those who are lesbian (30 per cent), asexual (32 per cent) and gay men (31 per cent).
LGBTQ+ young adults were significantly more likely than their non-LGBTQ+ counterparts to say the physical abuse they experienced was sexual abuse (50 per cent opposed to 30 per cent).
Within this, young lesbians were the most likely to have faced sexual abuse (57 per cent) whilst asexual young people were the group with the highest likelihood of experiencing domestic abuse (44 per cent).
“It is absolutely vital that we start taking LGBT+ inclusion seriously, and that schools all over the UK give young people positive messages about LGBT+ identities, otherwise I fear that these figures will only increase,” Ashenden added.
“A great place to start for schools UK-wide is signing up for School Diversity Week, so that teachers can access our free and easy-to-use resources and let all of their pupils know that being LGBT+ is something to be celebrated and proud of.”