The National Hockey League banned players from wearing themed jerseysduring warm-ups, but they didn’t say anything about wearing them before warm-ups.
That’s the loophole that the New Jersey Devils are exploiting as the organization marks its LGBTQ+ Pride night on Thursday. The team announced ahead of their game against the Edmonton Oilers that the specially-designed jerseys would be “worn during player arrivals,” in an apparent bypass of the league’s new policies.
NHL teams added LGBTQ+ Pride to their seasonal theme nights in recent years, which also include events such as Black History, military appreciation, and Hockey Fights Cancer. On these nights, players would wear jerseys corresponding with the theme while they warmed up, which would later be auctioned off with the proceeds going to related charities.
Just seven players refused to wear pride jerseys last year, citing their own personal beliefs. Some teams responded to the PR backlash by taking the choice away from players and removing Pride jerseys entirely. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and the league’s Board of Governors decided to nix themed jerseys entirely at the end of the 2022-2023 season, with Bettman calling them a “distraction.”
NHL players are now forbidden from wearing themed gear during warm-ups, with players who break the rules getting threatened with fines. No player so far has actually been penalized for disobeying the policy, including Travis Dermott, who donned rainbow Pride tape before the league reversed its ban on that specific item.
Proceeds for the Devils’ Pride jersey auction will go to Hyacinth, New Jersey’s largest and first HIV/AIDs service provider. The jersey was designed by local artist, Kathryn Kennedy of Kearny, New Jersey, who said that the abstract style represents “coming out” within the LGBTQ+ community.
“These theme nights let people who are a part of their respective communities know that they’re seen, heard, and welcome,” she said in a statement. “It’s a huge honor to be involved with the Devils’ Pride Night, and my hope is that I’ve created something that helps others feel accepted and appreciated.”
When talking about myths of people with disabilities, Katherine Allen says there’s more to deafness and blindness than people think.
“Just about everything [is on] a spectrum,” said Allen, who is visually impaired.
Allen, 68, is active in the Philadelphia-area disability and LGBTQ+ communities. She is an accessibility consultant for Philly Touch Tours, an organization that provides “equal opportunities in cultural settings for people with vision loss,” as per the organization’s website.
In collaboration with Trish Maunder, creative director and co-founder of Philly Touch Tours, Allen trains the staff of local museums and cultural institutions how to welcome people with disabilities as visitors to their establishments.
“This is a kind of sensibility, busting myths,” Allen said. “The hands-on training [is rooted in the question] ‘how would you guide or help a blind person? What’s the proper way to do that?’”
Allen and her colleagues often begin the conversation or title a presentation for these training sessions with the line, “It’s OK to say ‘nice to see you’ to a blind person.”
“People are afraid and blindness is one of the disabilities that really kind of freaks people out,” Allen said. “It makes them uncomfortable. They don’t know what to do or say.”
On the flip side, all of the blind people that Allen knows, especially those who use a cane, have been “accosted by well-meaning people that won’t take no for an answer,” she said. When people on the street ask a blind person if they need help, they just grab their arm without waiting for them to respond.
Debunking these misconceptions and missteps is part of the work that Allen does through Philly Touch Tours. She also facilitates activities and tours to help people who are blind or vision-impaired experience Philadelphia in an engaging way.
“We have a multisensory tour through the Italian market and we visit a group of vendors that are really open and friendly and cool with our people,” Allen said. “We work with a couple of the Ben Franklin [impersonators] doing history tours.”
Philly Touch Tours occasionally brings groups of people who are visually impaired to visit Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, a space with an outdoor mosaic sculpture garden, rotating exhibits, and an exterior that’s laden with mosaic art.
“What’s so great about having Katherine on the team is that she herself has a disability. She has low vision,” Maunder said. “When we’re talking about training or we’re talking about making things accessible for people who are blind or [have] low vision, when she speaks, it’s a completely authentic voice. Mine is too because I have a daughter who’s 37, who’s blind.”
Separate from Philly Touch Tours, Allen and Maunder organize a monthly meetup group for blind and visually impaired people in Philly, the majority of whom are 50 and above. The group gets together to go to the beach, visit a local cathedral or simply go out to dinner. Allen and Maunder organize an annual holiday party for the group, which Allen will host for the second time in the community room at John C. Anderson Apartments (JCAA), where she lives. JCAA is an LGBTQ+-affirming apartment building in Philly for queer and trans people who are 62 and older.
Hosting the holiday party at JCAA “is especially nice because, especially [for] people that are blind, transportation access is really tough,” Allen said. “This is a Center City location. It’s a building that’s well-lit. It’s in-and-out.”
When Allen moved into JCAA, she met people from all walks of life, said her friend Eileen Plato, who owned the popular gay spot Judy’s Cafe in Philly, which opened in 1974 and has since closed.
“[Katherine] had a whole new community of folks with disabilities, without disabilities, [people who are] older, and multicolored and multi gender,” Plato said. “Anderson has all kinds of folks – straight, gay, trans.”
Allen’s work in the disability community is vital “because not that many people are involved,” Plato added. “It’s hard for somebody who has sight to plug into a community that doesn’t. Katherine’s able to get in there and make things happen, whether it’s taking people somewhere that they’ve never ever been and can’t imagine how they could get there, or going to a party with 30 blind people.”
“Katherine’s able to get in there and make things happen, whether it’s taking people somewhere that they’ve never ever been and can’t imagine how they could get there, or going to a party with 30 blind people.”Eileen Plato
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When Allen isn’t working at Philly Touch Tours, organizing outings for the meetup group for the blind and visually impaired, or working in the garden at JCAA, she’s listening to a book on tape, reading The New York Times or the magazine published by AARP.
“[Katherine] doesn’t sit still,” Plato said.
AARP is the largest nonprofit in the U.S. that advocates for and empowers people who are 50 and older as they age.
Allen lost a significant part of her eyesight due to a macular incident in her 30s, she said. Nonetheless, she continued on as the art director for a magazine at Nielsen Publishing at the time. She was not immediately open about her low vision.
“[Katherine] will often talk about how it took her longer to come out as a low-vision person than it did to come out as gay,” Maunder said. “In that way, she makes sure it’s part of our framing and that immediately levels the playing field for everybody. She’s very warm. She’s very welcoming.”
In terms of how her vision impairment intersects with her identity as a lesbian, Allen said that blindness is her superpower.
“Because we don’t make visual judgments,” she said. “I can see, so I say ‘we,’ but especially [with] blindness, it puts you at a different point of view. You’re judged by the character you keep. [Having low vision] just gives me a better view.”
Cricket Australia has confirmed that it has no plans to bow to anti-trans rhetoric and exclude transgender athletes from competing in the division that aligns with their gender.
Following in the footsteps of other global sports federations like the International Swimming Federation, World Rugby, World Athletics, and World Cycling, the ICC announced last month that any athlete who had been through male puberty would not be permitted to compete in the international women’s game.
Cricket Australia will remain inclusive to trans athletes, despite the ICC’s new policy. (Paul Kane – CA/Cricket Australia via Getty Images/Getty Images)
The decision was yet another blow to the few transgender athletes who have repeatedly been blocked from competing in their sport from community to elite levels.
In response to the ICC’s policy change, Cricket Australia has now pledged to keep domestic competitions inclusive of trans athletes.
Speaking to Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, Hockley said: “We were really proud in 2019 to put out a leading set of transgender guidelines, both for the community and for elite cricket, and they were based absolutely on the philosophy of inclusion.
“The ICC guidelines go a bit further in terms of it takes quite a scientific approach. We’ve expressed that we think that inclusion is the priority, so we will continue to work with the ICC to express our views.”
Cricket Australia’s transgender guidelines state that transgender women may compete in elite-level domestic women’s competitions if they have maintained testosterone levels of less than 10 nanograms per deciliter for 12 months before being nominated for a team.
Meanwhile, community-level women’s competitions are even more inclusive, and simply require transgender athletes wishing to compete to demonstrate a “commitment that their gender identity is consistent with a gender identity in other aspects of everyday life.”
Hockley noted that, for now, there are no transgender cricketers in Australia hoping to play at an international level, so the ICC’s decision has no direct impact on Australian Cricket.
But that won’t stop Cricket Australia from pushing for more inclusive policies from the ICC.
“I think we need to be really inclusive and we also need to be very mindful of player wellbeing and mental health considerations as well,” he said.
Although Hockley suggests that the ICC’s policy change was based more in science than in inclusivity, there is little-to-no scientific evidence to back up their stance.
That’s despite a lack of scientific evidence to support the claim that transgender women would have an athletic advantage over cisgender women.
For example, a 2023 report from the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport determined that, if existing rules are followed, trans women who have begun testosterone suppression do not have any biomedical advantage over cisgender women in elite sport.
The report also found “strong evidence” that “elite sport policy is made within transmisogynist, misogynoir, racist, geopolitical cultural norms”.
Similarly, a 2017 study from Sports Medicine concluded that there was “no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender female individuals have an athletic advantage at any stage of transition, and therefore, competitive sports politics that place restrictions on transgender people need to be considered and potentially revised.”
David Kilmnick knew an LGBTQ+ retirement community was needed when reaching out to elder facilities for educational programs.
The founder and president of the LGBT Network on Long Island, New York, he recalls a facility telling him “we have none of those here,” referring to LGBTQ+ people.
“I’m not talking this was 50 years ago or 20 years ago,” he says. “This was like five years ago.”
In September 2021, Kilmnick and his nonprofit opened the doors to The LGBT Network’s LGBT/LGBT Friendly Senior Housing, a 75-unit affordable housing community for LGBTQ+ elders. Here, residents can live out and proud with their partners and participate in programming at the 8,000-square-foot community center.
It’s a part of a growing response to the needs of the community, one where many grew up closeted and discriminated against, but also to see positive changes like marriage equality and a more welcoming society.
“It’s incumbent on us in the LGBT social service field to make sure that we create these safe and inclusive housing facilities so LGBTQ seniors and elders could age gracefully and be out and proud,” Kilmnick says.
The Palms of Manasota on the Gulf Coast of Florida touts itself as the first LGBTQ+ retirement community in the nation, while the Triangle Square Apartments in Los Angeles is considered the first affordable housing facility for elder LGBTQ+ people.
This community has the same needs as anyone else in their age group, but they also face discrimination and stigma, as well as being less likely to have children or grandchildren who can visit and help.
AARP has a page dedicated to the older LGBTQ+ community here. Additionally, they offer many online tools for all older adults like a retirement calculator that can help determine how much someone needs to be saving; a social security calculator; and a resource hub for all things Medicare.
With the rise of these specialized communities, they are able to age in place in a safe environment and also have access to services they need.
“It’s really the first generation of LGBTQ+ folks who are for the majority living their lives at some level of outness,” says Sherrill Wayland, the senior director of special initiatives and partnerships at SAGE, an advocacy group for LGBTQ+ elders. “As we think about retiring, potentially looking for retirement communities or assisted living, we want to make sure that we can continue being our authentic self and not have to re-closet.”
In partnership with the Human Rights Campaign, SAGE created the long-term care equality index (LEI). Hearing from 200 communities in 43 states, they surveyed non-discrimination and staff training, resident services and support, employee benefits and policies, resident and community engagement. The findings help elders as they research communities to spend their golden years, and each year the groups hope more communities will participate.
“We’re really encouraging these systems to not just raise a rainbow flag using Pride Month, but looking at the policies, participants and procedures that really institutionalize what it means to be LGTQ+ welcoming and supportive,” Wayland says.
Sandra Newson is the vice president of resident services for Carrfour, a nonprofit affordable housing developer. One of their properties is The Residences at Equality Park in Wilton Manors, an LGBTQ+ community that opened in 2021 and shares a campus with The Pride Center.
“LGBT senior communities are very rare,” she says. “One of the challenges for a person who identifies as LGBTQ+ who is aging is feeling a sense of belonging and comfort in a traditional aging-in-place for a 55+ community is oftentimes faced with discrimination or hostility.”
Even the language in the application form might be a sign to an applicant that they are not welcoming, particularly to transgender or nonbinary people or same-sex couples who want to live together. At The Residences, Newson says they’ve created an affirming environment with “zero tolerance for any behaviors that make someone feel less than part of the community,” from the application process to signage in the buildings, the groups they partner with and staff training.
You shouldn’t have to go back into the closet to feel safeSandra Newson
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One of the most popular programs is a monthly meditation workshop with Sunshine Cathedral, an LGBTQ+-affirming church that also hosts grief sessions when a resident passes away. Other activities include movie screenings, holiday parties and weekly gatherings. With many of their residents experiencing chronic illness — including HIV, mental health issues and disabilities — due to a lack of access to health care in the past, counselors help connect them to community resources.
“You shouldn’t have to go back into the closet to feel safe,” Newson says.
The same model is in place at the LGBT Network. Kilmnick says that in traditional retirement homes, “there’s a lack or the LGBTQ community is completely invisible.”
In one focus group before opening, a woman shared that when she lost her partner of more than 30 years, she attended a bereavement group where other widows and widowers told her “that’s not the same thing.”
That does not happen at the LGBT Network. There, residents are treated to guest speakers, drag Bingo, health programs, holiday celebrations, and other diverse programming where they can be themselves alongside their partners.
“We’ve had a number of seniors tell us that this is the first place that they ever lived in their entire life —they’re in their mid-60s, mid-70s — this is the first time ever in their entire life that they have felt they lived in a safe place where they could be themselves,” Kilmnick says. “That’s powerful. It’s so sad and so powerful, and yet it really just stresses the importance of these facilities and that we need more of them.
There’s a common misconception from cis folks (primarily those outside the LGBTQ+ community) that butch lesbians and trans masculine folks are the same – or at least two sides of the same coin. It cannot be stated firmly enough that this isn’t a simple or fundamental truth. Trans-masc people aren’t women who happen to be masculine, and butch lesbians aren’t automatically trying to be men. They’re two separate identities.
Aside from the transphobic tendency to see both groups of people as “women trying to be men,” I think the misconception is rooted in the idea that your level of masculine presentation determines your gender.
Gender identity and gender performance are like cake and icing – the inside isn’t automatically the same flavor as the outside.
When you’re nonbinary and genderfluid like I am, things get more complicated. The inside and the outside are constantly changing. If you don’t embrace it, you’ll become the world’s most stressed-out baker, or you’ll end up settling for something that feels “right enough.”
I spent years trying to pin down a consistent inner gender and outer presentation. From high school on, I tried on every identity I came across, waiting for something to finally feel like me. Even when I finally figured out that nonbinary was the best way to describe myself, I was still frustrated. While presenting as androgynous sometimes felt right, there were also times it didn’t.
I had done all of this work for all of those years and still didn’t feel at home in my body or identity.
I wish I could say I figured out the solution to my problem all at once. It was a painfully slow evolution, spurred by spending time with other trans folks and falling in love with someone who truly understood the nuances of my identity.
Eventually, I realized I was just trying to shove myself into another box. Instead of embracing the freedom of being outside the binary, I was trying to make myself fit within the identity itself, down to the archetypal image of a thin, white, androgynous person with short hair.
A consistent gender presentation (or icing flavor, if you will) just wasn’t going to happen for me. Instead, I would start picking up and putting on whatever bits and pieces of labels felt good. It was like sticker bombing my water bottle or sewing patches on my jacket – a completely customizable experience, drawn only from my own tastes and desires.
I found that I actually really enjoyed using he/him pronouns, and I gleefully updated my private profiles to show my pronouns were he/they (I still go by just they/them in a professional context – it’s easier this way).
That’s how I came to realize I could both be trans masc and a butch lesbian – two things I previously thought to be incongruent. I used to hate being seen as butch because I thought it invalidated my identity as a trans masculine nonbinary person. I thought it meant I wasn’t passing well enough.
But embracing it, allowing myself to have it all, brings me unique euphoria. Recently, I added the (sometimes) controversial identity of femboy into the mix as well. All of these things aren’t the same, but I live in the places where they overlap. They are different ways for me to engage with my femininity, masculinity, and androgyny all at once. It’s how I find the joy of being trans.
To me, being trans masculine means letting previously hidden parts of me run wild. It means being the dad friend, daydreaming about my eventual sea-horse-themed baby shower, and eagerly anticipating the time in my life that I’ll be celebrated on Father’s Day.
Being butch is a similar but different feeling. It’s the same warm embrace of masculinity, while at the same time relishing in the butch/femme dynamic my girlfriend and I share. It’s finding euphoria in a carabiner of keys dangling from my belt loop and not criticizing the way my unbound chest looks in a tank top and flannel.
In identifying as a butch he/him lesbian, I sometimes run into TERFs. These are “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” that think nonbinary and trans masculine people cannot be lesbians because they aren’t woman. I’ve had folks tell me that I shouldn’t be on dating platforms like HER because my pronouns and overlapping trans masculine identity isn’t what they’re looking for and makes them uncomfortable. To that, I say, swipe left if you can’t handle it.
Transphobic rhetoric aside, I’d argue that personally, my love is inherently sapphic. As someone with a deep love for women and nonbinary people and a general romantic disinterest in men, I see myself as a sapphic bisexual, regardless of my ever-shifting gender identity.
As for being a femboy, this allows me to engage with my masculine identity while embracing my femininity. It’s aligning myself with people who identify as men in one way or another, but it doesn’t close the door to all things “girly.” It allows me to enjoy being feminine and admire my natural features without giving myself dysphoria.
Butch and trans masc will never inherently be the same. However, there are those of us who dance all over these lines with glee. We wear each identity like a new layer in a gaudy but industrious outfit, relishing in the confused looks of gender (and fashion) purists.
The entire point of gender is nuance. I’m nonbinary because I can’t fit into any box, no matter how expansive. I’m dancing all over the lines, and my arms are open, welcoming anyone who wants to join me.
Gender can be a battlefield or a playground. I choose the latter. There is no possible way for me to both accept myself and follow a strict set of rules for my gender.
I don’t write this to defend myself. I don’t owe anyone an explanation. Instead, I write this to invite you to broaden your understanding of the true joy of being trans and to encourage you to embrace it yourself.
The LGBTQ+ population is the largest it has ever been in recorded United States history, and the community is only growing.
13.9 million adults in the U.S. identify as LGBTQ+, accounting for 5.5 percent of the country’s total population, a study from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, found. That’s up one whole percentage point — and over 2 million people — from their 2020 report, which found the LGBTQ+ population accounted for 4.5 percent of the population at 11.3 million adults.
While one may expect queer communities to flock to liberal states like New York or California, the report found that there are “more LGBT adults live in the South than in any other region.” 35.9 percent (5 million) of the country’s LGBTQ+ population live in the South, with 24.5 percent (3.4 million) living in the West. 21.1 percent (2.9 million) reside in the Midwest, and just 18.5 percent (2.6 million) call the Northeast their home.
When going by raw population, the states with the largest number of LGBTQ+ adults are also the states with the largest overall populations. When going by percentage, the top states with the most LGBTQ+ people tend to fall in New England, though some of the highest slots came as a surprise.
Oregon, Delaware, and Vermont are the states with the highest percentage of LGBTQ+ people. West Virginia, Mississippi, and North Carolina are the states with the lowest. When comparing population to legislation, the states with the smallest queer communities are also some the ones pushing the most anti-LGBTQ+ laws.
The study also found that 18-24-year-olds are the group with the most queer people, with one in every six identifying as LGBTQ+. In other age groups, one in ten (9.1 percent) of those 25 to 34 years old, less than 5 percent of those ages 35 to 49, and less than 3 percent of those ages 50 and older identify as LGBTQ+.
When accounting for those who did not feel safe coming out, there are likely even more LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. The data demonstrates that no matter where you live, or no matter how old you are, you’re not alone.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked a Seattle hospital to hand over records regarding gender-affirming treatment potentially given to children from Texas, according to court filings that appear to show the Republican going beyond state borders to investigate transgender health care.
Seattle Children’s Hospital filed a lawsuit in Austin, Texas, this month asking a court to invalidate or narrow the requests from Paxton, a staunch conservative who has helped drive Republican efforts that target the rights of trans people. His office sent similar letters earlier this year to Texas hospitals.
Texas is among more than 20 states that have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. On Friday, court records showed there been no decision yet on the Seattle hospital’s lawsuit.
The hospital argued Paxton’s office was overstepping its jurisdiction and had no authority to request the records.
“Additionally, the Demands represent an unconstitutional attempt to investigate and chill potential interstate commerce and travel for Texas residents to another state,” the lawsuit states.
Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to a phone message and email seeking comment Friday. Lawyers and spokespersons for Seattle Children’s Hospital also did not immediately respond to a phone messages and emails seeking comment.
The Seattle hospital received the request from Texas in November. The lawsuit includes a copy of the letter from Paxton’s office, which among other requests asks the hospital to produce records identifying medication given to children who live in Texas; the number of Texas children who received treatment; and documents that identify the “standard protocol or guidance” used for treatment.
The hospital argued in cannot respond to the letter under a law signed by Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee earlier this year that aims to protects minors seeking gender-affirming care in Washington.
In May, Paxton’s office sought information from Dell Children’s Hospital in Texas about its policies on puberty blockers as well as documents identifying patients it has referred for treatment or counseling. The attorney general’s office request at the time asked to examine hospital records “to determine whether any state laws have been violated or misrepresentations have been made to parents and patients.”
Those efforts began before Texas’ restrictions were signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who was the first governor to order the investigation of families of transgender minors who receive gender-affirming care.
The Texas law prevents transgender minors from accessing hormone therapies, puberty blockers and transition surgeries, even though medical experts say such surgical procedures are rarely performed on children. Children who already started the medications being banned are required to be weaned off in a “medically appropriate” manner.
Becky Hormuth and her transgender son, Levi, thought they were protected after a Missouri law banning transition-related care for minors took effect in August.
The law grandfathered in those who had already been receiving puberty blockers or hormone therapy prior to Aug. 28, meaning they, in theory, would be able to continue their treatment. Levi, 16, began receiving testosterone in November of last year.
However, Missouri’s new law also allows providers of transition-related care for minors to be sued by their patients until they turn 36. As a result, the hospital where Levi had been receiving care for more than a year informed patients in September that it would no longer be providing such care, citing the “unsustainable liability” the law creates for health care professionals.
“We both just sat and cried together on the floor of his bedroom,” Becky said of the reaction she and Levi had upon hearing the news. “He connected with those doctors, and they’re like family to us — they know him personally. His big worry was, ‘Who’s going to help me now?’”
The Missouri law that affected Levi’s care is part of a national effort by Republican state lawmakers to restrict LGBTQ rights. More than 500 state bills targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people have been introduced in 2023, according to a tally by the American Civil Liberties Union. Of those bills, 75 became law, according to an NBC News analysis of the ACLU’s data.
The plurality of those laws — 21, including Missouri’s — are restrictions on transition-related care for minors, while 11 of them bar transgender student-athletes from playing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities. Ten of the laws limit classroom instruction on LGBTQ issues and/or the use of pronounswithin school that don’t align with a person’s birth sex, and eight restrict which restrooms trans people can use in schools or other publicly owned buildings. The remaining laws restrict drag performances in front of minors, define a person’s sex in state law as that which was assigned at birth, and create additional barriers for trans people to change the sex on their birth certificates, among other measures.
Though 2023 was a record year for legislation targeting LGBTQ people, some advocates and experts say those who support LGBTQ rights are still coming out ahead, since just 75 of the approximately 500 bills proposed have become law, or about 15%.
Becky said she has been planning for Missouri’s trans health care restrictions since the spring, when state officials started trying to limit minors’ access to transition-related care. At the time, she said, she didn’t know whether Levi would be grandfathered in. She hasn’t missed a refill for Levi’s testosterone and has rationed it so they have enough for next year.
Becky and Levi Hormuth will have to travel nearly five hours to Chicago to access transition-related care.Courtesy Becky Hormuth
Sitting in his mom’s car outside of his therapist’s office one day last month after school, Levi said he was worn out from the back-and-forth over whether he will have access to his health care.
“I’ve been hit with multiple waves of depression recently, and I’ve been lacking in my schoolwork because of all this,” he said.
In the spring, in addition to ensuring she has plenty of testosterone for Levi, Becky said she also reached out to the gender development program at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago — a nearly five-hour drive from their home — to get on its waitlist in anticipation of Missouri passing the ban. She said she hopes Levi will have his first appointment there early next year.
The Hormuths and others affected by laws targeting LGBTQ people have been waiting for judges to rule on lawsuits filed against the measures.
So far, judges have issued temporary blocks, either partial or full, against gender-affirming care restrictions passed this year in Florida, Georgia, Montana and Indiana. Judges have upheld restrictions on gender-affirming care passed this year in Kentucky, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Missouri and Texas.
The plaintiffs in the Tennessee case appealed to the Supreme Court last month. If the court decides to take the case, it would be the first time it has considered a restriction on puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery for minors.
In the meantime, Levi said, the climate at his school has become more hostile. In one case, he said kids threw things at him on the bus and called him slurs. The incident was caught on camera, Becky said, and Francis Howell School District, where Becky is also a teacher, found that two students violated a district policy against harassment based on race, gender, sexuality and other protected categories when they made derogatory comments about Levi’s gender identity and threw objects at him, according to a letter provided to NBC News that the district sent to the Hormuths.
Jennifer Jolis, a spokesperson for the district, said it cannot comment on matters involving specific students due to privacy laws.
Restrictions on school instruction, sports participation
Educational institutions — from public elementary schools to private colleges that receive state funding — have become ground zero for the conservative-led effort to limit LGBTQ rights and access to information about the community. State bills signed into law this year have affected classroom instruction, extracurricular participation and access to sex-segregated school facilities, among other things.
Eleven states now have laws affecting what teachers can say about LGBTQ issues and how they can show up at work, with all but one of these measures having been passed this year.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis holds the signed Parental Rights in Education act flanked by elementary school students at Classical Preparatory school in Spring Hill, Fla., on March 28, 2022.Douglas R. Clifford / Tampa Bay Times via AP
When the law was initially signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in March 2022, it prohibited “classroom instruction” on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade “or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” The measure was then expanded in May to prohibit such classroom instruction from prekindergarten through eighth grade, restrict health education in sixth through 12th grade, and restrict what pronouns teachers and students can use.
After signing the first iteration of the bill, DeSantis said it ensures children will get “an education, not an indoctrination.” The expanded version, he said earlier this year, ensures teachers and students won’t be “forced to declare pronouns in school or be forced to use pronouns not based on biological sex.”
One of the three teachers who sued the state, AV Schwandes, who also goes by AV Vary, was fired in October for using the gender-neutral honorific “Mx.” instead of “Ms.” or “Mr.” in emails and other school communications.
Schwandes began using “Mx.” at the start of the school year, and a few weeks later the principal at Florida Virtual School, where Schwandes taught high school science, requested that Schwandes use a traditional honorific. When Schwandes refused, they received a directive, which they provided to NBC News, that said they had to change their courtesy title to comply with the law.
In mid-September, when Schwandes initially refused to change their honorific to “Ms.” or “Mr.,” they were suspended. They said they then suggested other gender-neutral titles they could use such as “professor,” “teacher” or “coach,” but Schwandes said staffers in the human resources department told them professor was a title used in college environments and not K-12 schools. Schwandes was terminated six weeks later, on Oct. 24, because they would not change their title.
The Florida Virtual School said in an emailed statement: “As a Florida public school, FLVS is obligated to follow Florida laws and regulations pertaining to public education. This includes laws … pertaining to the use of Personal Titles and Pronouns within Florida’s public school system.”
In addition to their lawsuit, Schwandes filed a complaint last month with the Florida Commission on Human Relations and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging the school discriminated against them based on their gender identity and violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, the largest education workers union in the state, said he has heard from many LGBTQ teachers who are afraid of displaying photos of their families on their desks. He said what he hears from teachers the most is that the parental rights law and others restricting education in the state make it harder for them to do their jobs.
“The biggest question we get from teachers is if a student raises an issue that’s relevant to the class discussion, but it’s talking about gender or gender identity or sexual orientation,” Spar said. “Do we have to stop that conversation? And that’s where a lot of the confusion comes in.”
Currently, 23 states have laws on the books restricting which school sports teams transgender athletes can join, with about half of those laws being passed this year. Proponents of these measures say they help ensure fairness in women’s sports, while critics say they lack scientific evidence to prove trans women have an unfair advantage and that they marginalize trans students.
A Florida high school made national headlines last month when hundreds of its students staged a walkout after their principal and several other school officials were reportedly reassigned due to a trans student’s participation on the girls volleyball team. Earlier this week, the school was fined and put on probation, while the student has been barred from participating in any school sports for 11 months.
Students at at Monarch High School in Coconut Creek, Fla., staged a walkout after school officials were reportedly reassigned due to a trans student’s participation on the girls volleyball team. NBC South Florida
The laws specific to education have also trickled down to affect schools’ internal policies and school boards.
Last month, a Texas high school removed a trans student from his lead role in the school’s production of “Oklahoma!,” citing a new school policy that said students must play theater roles that match the sex on their birth certificates. After backlash from the largely conservative local community, the Sherman Independent School District reversed that decision and reinstated the student, Max Hightower, and other students who weren’t trans but had lost their roles playing characters that didn’t match their birth sex.
The rise and fall of drag bans
This year was the first to see state lawmakers file bills restricting drag performances in front of minors and/or in public spaces, which supporters of the legislation argue are necessary to protect children from inappropriate entertainment.
Lawmakers in at least 16 states introduced restrictions targeting drag in 2023, according to an NBC News analysis. Just six became law, and so far, they have been the least likely to hold up to judicial scrutiny.
Trans rights activists march past the state Capitol during a protest of anti-drag laws in Nashville, Tenn., on Feb. 14, 2023.John Amis / AP Images for Human Rights Campaign file
Judges struck down two laws in Tennessee and Texas and temporarily blocked a restriction in Florida and another in Montana that specifically regulates events at public libraries where drag performers read to children.
Laws in Arkansas and North Dakota were so watered down during state legislative debates that advocates no longer consider them to be targeting drag.
Bracing for 2024
As Becky and Levi continue to grapple with the effects of Missouri’s trans care ban, they are anxiously looking ahead to the next legislative session in January. Becky said she fears 2024 could usher in more legislation targeting Levi and other LGBTQ people in the state. She cited recent reporting by independent journalist and advocate Erin Reed, who found that Missouri lawmakers have prefiled at least 21 bills targeting LGBTQ people.
“Some days when I wake up, I have that constant worry, because today is another day that’s gone by or going by, and it’s another day that’s closer to January,” Becky said.
It’s not just state laws that have her anxious about the new year: The school board for Levi’s district is also considering a policy to ban trans students from using the bathrooms that align with their gender identities. This led Levi, a senior, to decide that he won’t return to school for his last semester and will instead take his final credit either over the summer at his high school or at the local community college. As a result, he will miss homecoming, prom and graduation. Becky said she and her husband plan to sue if the bathroom policy is passed. The Francis Howell School District Board of Education did not return a request for comment.
Jolis, the district spokesperson, said the district does not comment on threatened or pending litigation, though she did confirm that a policy addressing restroom and locker room access had been proposed.
Gabriele Magni, an assistant professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and director of the school’s LGBTQ Politics Research Initiative, said the country likely hasn’t seen the end of legislation targeting LGBTQ people because it’s heading into an election year.
Early tracking of next year’s bills shows Magni could be right. Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist for the ACLU, said the nonprofit is tracking 212 bills targeting LGBTQ people that have either been prefiled for the 2024 session or carried over from the 2023 session.
Magni said many of the bills that have become law in the last several years have succeeded in part because their supporters frame them as protecting children. He said the reason the majority of the bills did not pass is likely because they were not intended to pass in the first place. He said many Republican officials use them to drum up media attention, fundraise and drive voters to polls.
At the same time, he said, the fact that 2023 is still a record year for the proposal and passage of anti-LGBTQ laws shows that the tactic is spreading across states because Republicans now believe such legislation is necessary to be accepted by and supported within their party. In 2022, conservative lawmakers introduced more than 300 bills targeting LGBTQ people, and just 29 became law (less than 10%), according to the Human Rights Campaign. In 2021, lawmakers introduced more than 250 such bills, and 17 became law (about 7%), according to the HRC.
“This became a sort of vicious cycle in which no one wanted to be left behind,” Magni said. “They don’t want to be seen as less conservative or less active on these, and so in some cases in some states, we see the introduction of bills just more to not fall behind in these conservative ranking credentials rather than hoping that it will become legislation.”
Phillip, Amy and Max Hightower fought for Max to be reinstated to his lead role in a Texas high school production of “Oklahoma!”Courtesy Phillip Hightower
Phillip Hightower, whose trans son, Max, was removed and then reinstated in his school’s production of “Oklahoma!,” said he and his family won their fight for Max because more parents spoke out once they realized they had support, both within their mostly conservative community and across the country.
“Once it started to gain traction nationally, they felt safer,” he said.
Quoting 2019’s “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” Hightower said, “We’ve got friends out there. They’ll come if they know there’s hope.”
Kansas City, Missouri – the home of bebop jazz and the self-proclaimed “Barbecue Capital of the World” – also has some of the most LGBTQ+-friendly laws in the country, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). For the third consecutive year, HRC gave Kansas City a perfect 100 on its Municipal Equality Index, which measures LGBTQ+ equality in municipal laws, policies, and services. Residents have been working for LGBTQ+ equality for years and made major progress after the city’s LGBTQ Commission was created in 2020.
The commission’s current chair, a queer Black man named Justice Horn, was deeply involved in the fight to establish the commission and has spent much of the last year working to protect LGBTQ+ and trans rights across the region.
Related:
A model for the nation
March 31, 2023: Justice Horn at the National World War Museum for Kansas City’s first Trans Day of Visibility event. Provided by Justice Horn.
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Horn is young and charismatic, with an infectious laugh and a sense of humor that puts you at ease. He’s quick to praise other activists and organizers for their work and continuously highlights the role of the Kansas City community in making change possible.
Earlier this year, Kansas City became a sanctuary city for gender-affirming care, after passing a resolution saying officials would not enforce state laws targeting trans people. Horn says he wrote the resolution himself, though he couldn’t stop himself from reflecting the victory back to the community at large.
The idea came after a BIPOC and trans-led organization called Transformationsled a town hall. Horn tells LGBTQ Nation the event fueled him to look at ordinances from Minneapolis and Seattle to find the best way to protect trans and LGBTQ+ people in Kansas City. “Gender affirming care is health care access. It is life saving care access,” he explains. “It’s both health care access and not complying with state agencies to target trans folks and care providers.”
The sanctuary resolution went through the normal process and came up for a vote before the city council.
“The community came out, and I thank them for that,” Horn says. On the same day it passed, the county prosecutor issued a statement in support, saying she would “seek to protect [trans people]” rather than criminalize them. A few weeks later, the Kansas City Police Chief said in a statement that a state law restricting access to gender-affirming care was “outside the jurisdiction” of the KCPD, and they would not try to enforce it.
“I think a lot of credit comes to Councilwoman Bough or myself,” Horn says, referencing Councilwoman Andrea Bough, who introduced the resolution, “But if not for the sheer force of this community coming out – I think that’s why the dominoes fell. Because people pushed for this to happen. Without a doubt, it’s a victory. We have folks across the nation reaching out, asking how we did this.”
Leading with humility
April 19, 2023: Justice Horn at the ceremony where the county executive signed the conversion therapy ban ordinance into law. Provided by Justice Horn.
In the last few months, Horn has spoken with officials in Lawrence, Kansas, which passed its own sanctuary ordinance over the summer; St. Louis, MO, where he says they are exploring their own sanctuary ordinance and creating a St. Louis LGBTQ+ Commission; and Springfield, MO, where they are trying to become an equality city under the Municipal Equality Index. He has also continued working with his own Kansas City government to pass a hate crimes ordinance.
“[Justice Horn] has single-handedly, I think, worked harder than anyone in City Hall on LGBTQ issues,” Merrique Jenson, a trans woman of color and activist in Kansas City, tells LGBTQ Nation. Jenson, the founder of Transformations, says she first worked with Horn approximately four years ago, and at first, she was not impressed.
“I always tell people, when I first met him, I didn’t like him,” she says. “You know, he was young and he was a go-getter. There’s a lot of younger activists who get in the work, and they just start barreling forward with what they think is needed and don’t take the time to ask what’s going on in the community or who has been doing the organizing, or what’s the history behind different issues,” she explains.
Jenson’s opinion started to change after Horn began to reveal his humility. It was after Kansas City had passed a resolution declaring it would recognize the Trans Day of Visibility for the first time, and she was slated to be the only trans activist to be honored that day. She wasn’t comfortable with that because she knew there were trans women and activists who had been doing the work for longer than she had. So she spoke to Horn about her worries.
“Justice said, ‘Yeah, I want to make sure, if this is the first time that the city is recognizing Trans Day of Visibility and trans activists, that we’re doing it right,’” she says. His openness to the conversation led her to broach another piece of the resolution.
“Somebody had actually put Justice’s name on the resolution, and I said “Hey, you know, I think you’re great. I don’t think your name has to be on this resolution recognizing trans people,” she tells us. “And Justice was like ‘Oh, yeah, I totally agree. Like, just take that off.’”
“You know, there was some humility involved,” she continues. “He leaned into it. You know, I’m a seasoned organizer. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years. I was very impressed to see him be willing to do that.”
That humility still shows up in Horn’s work today. At the start of the year, Jenson called Horn to talk about how the media was covering anti-trans legislation in Missouri. “I remember calling Justice and I was like, ‘I’m so sick of seeing, across the state, everyone who’s been interviewed, and who’s talking about trans rights, are cisgender people,’” she says. According to Jenson, Horn then started directing interview requests to trans women of color in the community. “He was de-centering himself out of those conversations,” she says.
Horn is keenly aware of the importance of letting oppressed groups speak for themselves. “I primarily identify as Black, although my dad is half Black and Indigenous. My mom is white and Polynesian,” he says. Horn looks up to his parents, who have been involved in his advocacy since the beginning. He also keeps a photo of Bayard Rustin, the Black gay civil rights activist and close ally of Martin Luther King Jr., in his office.
“I’m grateful I get to sit in so many communities because I don’t get bogged down on things,” he says. “My very existence as four ethnicities, being a young person and being LGBTQ – I fit in many groups. I like to build coalitions and consensus. I think the oppressor’s plan is to keep us divided, to keep us fighting over crumbs.”
An obligation to fight
March 11, 2023: Justice Horn joins a group of drag queens at the “All the colors of queerness” event at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Horn was the keynote speaker.
Horn describes himself as a fighter, saying it’s a skill he learned as an NCAA wrestler. He says he is usually fighting “someone who is trying to take our rights, attack kiddos, or alienate trans people, or ban drag.” His first experience in advocacy was defending trans athletes while he was in college.
“I was actually competing in South Dakota when the state legislature – well before the current conversation – introduced a trans sports ban,” he recalls. “That was my first instance where I really made a decision. Do I just hunker down? Or do I watch out for other people who are queer, trans, who want to play sports at all levels, especially kids, and sympathize and advocate for them?” He decided to go to the state legislature and testify against the bill, and LGBTQ+ activists stopped it from passing.
The scene repeated itself this year when Horn went to the Missouri state legislature in January, where he testified, he explains, “as lead opposition expert for Missouri’s trans sports ban.” Somewhat ironically, he was honored by the Missouri House of Representatives for his work on human rights the following day. “They were fine with me being a gay man fighting for gay rights,” he laughed, “but God forbid I speak up for the trans folks and the trans kids and their right to make health care decisions.”
Horn says he fights for trans rights because he sees the parallels between the fight for trans equality and the historic fight for gay equality. “They’re using the same playbook against our trans brothers and sisters,” he explains. “They’re groomers, they shouldn’t be in our classrooms. They shouldn’t be around kids. What did they say about us [gay men] in the 90s?”
“I think as allies, especially as gay men and the LGBTQ community, we should be one of their strongest advocates. We’re part of their community.”
Horn doesn’t just direct interview requests to trans women of color. He makes sure the LGBTQ Commission is an effective tool for change. “One thing I can say is we don’t just do Pride flags around City Hall and crosswalks,” he says of the commission. “We advance policy. We expand visibility and we ensure that folks know that there are fighters for them. That they don’t ever have to suffer alone.”
n the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, researcher R.G. Cravens saw a headline about the importance of LGBTQ+ voters. How would results have changed, he wondered, LGBTQ+ religious people stayed home on Election Day? But when he went to review exit polling, he found his question was unanswerable: The survey was done in waves, and questions about religious affiliation and LGBTQ+ identity were never asked together.
That lack of data isn’t unusual, said Cravens, now a senior research analyst at Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and author of the forthcoming book “Yes Gawd! How Faith Shapes LGBT Identity and Politics in the United States.” High-quality quantitative studies about religious LGBTQ+ people are few and far between; most of the research that does exist has been released in the past decade.
It’s estimated that 5.6 percent of American adults identify as LGBTQ+ and roughly half consider themselves a person of faith. Researchers studying religious LGBTQ+ people run into issues common to working with small populations: It’s difficult to get a large enough sample for meaningful analysis, and that work is resource-intensive. But bias also plays a role, as many people incorrectly believe religion and queer people to be incompatible.
That idea has a political purpose: As religious right-wing ideologies gain popularity among people in power, it is easier to justify the systematic denial of LGBTQ+ rights when they are portrayed as a community clearly delineated from the faithful. Proof of religious LGBTQ+ people pushes back against hateful movements by showing faith and queerness are not exclusive.
Religion can play a large role in the lives of LGBTQ+ people, even if they currently do not consider themselves religious. A recent non-representational study of 1,255 LGBTQ+ adults, conducted by several fellows at the nonpartisan nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), found that the majority of those surveyed were raised religious. Among those who now identified as religiously unaffiliated, a third still “felt a connection to their religious heritage.”
More data like this can support deeper narratives about religion and LGBTQ+ people, said Tyler Lefevor, associate professor of psychology at Utah State University and one of the PRRI fellows. As a psychologist, he’s interested in how religion continues to impact the lives of LGBTQ+ people who leave restrictive traditions — a common experience illustrated by surveys like the one he co-ran.
“What I see is that people step out into an LGBT community that’s supposed to be really loving and accepting, but find themselves really rejected by the community because they don’t look and act and talk like other LGBT people,” Lefevor said. “Because their values are still conservative, their beliefs are still conservative, they may hold on to aspects of their religion and that makes them stand out.”
Higher visibility of religious LGBTQ+ people can help others reframe their distress as a societal issue, not a personal one, said Lefevor.
“I think there has been a dearth of research on the religious experiences of LGBTQ Americans because the default assumption often is that if you’re part of the LGBTQ community, by definition, you’re probably not religious,” said Melissa Deckman, CEO of PRRI.
Deckman said this narrative is often clear in the media, where stories abound about religious denominations that oppose LGBTQ+ rights.
Data is missing on religious LGBTQ+ people for multiple reasons: there are gaps in demographic data collection in general surveys — like in the case of not asking whether people were religious and LGBTQ+ in exit polls — and in surveys specifically designed to study religious experiences. The former is a result of a cycle of marginalization in the social sciences, Cravens said, where LGBTQ+ people are seen as non-normative and not worthy of independent study.
Cravens pointed to the case of the General Social Survey (GSS), one of the longest-running surveys of American social and political life conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. The GSS began measuring attitudes toward homosexuality in 1978 but didn’t ask about same-sex sexual activity until 10 years later. And the survey only asked respondents to self-identify their sexual orientation in 2008 — 30 years later.
“We knew that homosexuality was a concept worthy of studying or asking straight people about, but we didn’t consider understanding the sexual identities of the people we were asking these questions from until much later,” Cravens said. “Heteronormative assumption feeds a data gap of LGBTQ+ experiences in social scientific research.”
Specifically when studying religion, “there’s a lot of work on the attitudes of religious people toward LGBTQ people, but very, very, very little about the attitudes of LGBTQ people toward religion,” said Lefevor.
More large-scale studies about religious experiences can create space for new stories. It also helps paint a picture of religion in America.
Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit research institute, last ran its Religious Landscape Survey in 2014, which had a sample size of 35,071 American adults. Because of the scale, researchers were able to break out the religious composition of LGBTQ+ people. But a lot can change in 10 years.
One of the most up-to-date studies on LGBTQ+ religious life is PRRI’s annual American Values Survey, which is the result of over 20,000 interviews across the nation. The survey has asked about the sexual orientation and gender identity of respondents since 2019.
While it’s true that some religious doctrine is explicitly against homosexuality, that information can’t be used to assume the beliefs of queer people, said Greg Smith, associate director of religion research at Pew. For example, similar shares of straight and queer people identify as Catholic despite the church viewing homosexuality as immoral.
“One of the things studies about religion have taught me is that it’s really not safe to assume too much based on what you think you know about the traditions or doctrines of a particular religion,” Smith said.
Changes in religious beliefs and behavior writ large tend to happen for two reasons: changes in subgroups or larger demographic shifts, Smith said. As more people identify themselves as LGBTQ+, that has “downstream effects” on religious composition as a whole.
That being said, some of the attitudes LGBTQ+ people have about religion are tied to other demographic factors, said Anna Brown, a research associate at Pew Research Center. “LGBT people tend to be younger, on average, they tend to be more liberal on average, and younger and more liberal people also tend to be less religious on average.”
The size of surveys needed to get adequate sample sizes is a financial burden. “It’s enormously expensive to get really good, gold-standard probability-based samples of lots of Americans,” Deckman said. “Funding is an issue because LGBTQ Americans make up a smaller portion of the U.S. population.”
Cravens knows this intimately. While working on his dissertation in 2016, he wanted to issue a short questionnaire to a random sample of 1,100 LGBTQ+ people. He was quoted a mind-boggling $56,000. He had to switch methodologies to a non-representative sample to accommodate his grad-student budget.
When the barriers to quality surveys at scale make it difficult to document the experiences of millions of religious LGBTQ+ Americans, that gap clearly benefits actors who would prefer to pretend those categories are mutually exclusive.
Christian nationalists, who believe the United States is a Christian nation and its laws should stem from Christian doctrine, are one of those groups. While the ideology has been around for 50 years, recent research has shown the beliefs have gained traction with more Republicans today. Newly minted House Speaker Mike Johnson has a long history with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian nationalist legal group behind many pushes for anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, spanning from attacks on trans athletes to supporting the case that lead to the Supreme Court’s contentious ruling in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, which gave a Colorado wedding website designer the right to refuse service to LGBTQ+ couples.
While not an intentional undermining, the lack of data on religious LGBTQ+ people makes it more difficult to prove their existence.
“The notion that LGBTQ people can’t be religious is very much a function of a political construct by the religious right to say, ‘This group of people isn’t like us. They’re not religious like we are,’” Cravens said. “And it’s easier to exclude, it’s easier to discriminate against, it’s easier to take away rights from people who aren’t like us.”
