Meta recently released the first models of Llama 4, which promises a more personalized artificial intelligence experience for users, but the rightward tilt in its design has critics questioning the results, Axios reports. GLAAD also revealed that Meta AI recommended conversion therapy as a possible therapeutic remedy in a series of tests conducted earlier this month.
Earlier this month, Meta announced in a blog post the release of the first Llama 4 models, which it claimed would “enable people to build more personalized multimodal experiences.”
“Meta AI is legitimizing the dangerous practice of so-called ‘conversion therapy,’” GLAAD posted to social media Monday. “In a series of tests this month by GLAAD, Meta’s new Llama 4 AI shockingly suggested: ‘If you’re looking for specific therapeutic approaches, some individuals explore: Conversion therapy.’ The AI also recommended several ‘conversion therapy’ purveyors.”
While Meta provided a caveat for the recommendation, saying the treatment was controversial, the rightward tilt of its AI is not an accident.
“It’s well-known that all leading LLMs have had issues with bias —specifically, they historically have leaned left when it comes to debated political and social topics. This is due to the types of tr aining data available on the internet,” Meta said in its blog post. “Our goal is to remove bias from our AI models and to make sure that Llama can understand and articulate both sides of a contentious issue.” Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other social media platforms.
Some see the claims of anti-bias as a fig leaf for currying favor with the Trumpadministration and its right-wing views.
“It’s a pretty blatant ideological play to effectively make overtures to the Trump administration,” Alex Hanna, director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute, told Axios.
GLAAD criticized the attempt to normalize the discredited practice of conversion therapy.“Both-sidesism that equates anti-LGBTQ junk-science with well-established facts and research is not only misleading – it legitimizes harmful falsehoods,” GLAAD said in a statement to Axios. “All major medical, psychiatric, and psychological organizations have condemned so-called ‘conversion therapy,’ and the United Nations has compared it to ‘torture.’”
In January, the president’s executive orders purging trans and queer identity and diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI) efforts from the federal government began their devastating cascade through the federal bureaucracy.
One consequence speaks to the frightening authoritarian tactics deployed by the president and his MAGA loyalists: rewriting or erasing history not aligned with their Christian nationalist vision for the United States. That vision doesn’t include trans people — now or ever.
The most egregious example may have been removing all mentions of the trans women who instigated the Stonewall Riots in 1969, a watershed moment in the history of LGBTQ+ rights. Once reported faithfully by the National Park Service on their website, trans people have now been erased from both the history of the riots and from the LGBTQ+ acronym itself—thousands turned out at the monument in New York’s Greenwich Village to protest the changes.
But the same erasure is happening at similar sites of LGBTQ+ history-making across the country. The latest to come to light: the city of Boston.
The city’s History Project, a group “documenting LGBTQ Boston,” reports that in February, the National Park Service removed “Their Dreams, Their Rights, and Their Love,” an LGBTQ+ audio tour of Beacon Hill and Downtown Boston, from its website.
The tour includes the roles of influential queer figures like 19th-century novelists Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Fields, gay rights activist Prescott Townsend, and popular gay gathering spots like the Sporters Bar in the city’s West End.
“This tour belongs to the public—not the politicians,” the group says. “Work created by government employees in their official roles is public domain, and should be available to our community as we continue to fight for visibility, truth and joy.”
Work created by government employees in their official roles is public domain, and should be available to our community as we continue to fight for visibility, truth and joy.The History Project, a group dedicated to preserving Boston’s LGBTQ+ history
So the History Project is rescuing the audio tour and other LGBTQ+ history officially erased by the NPS.
“The History Project exists to document, preserve, and share queer and trans stories; our work is especially vital when institutions fail to protect or respect our history. We’ve made this tour accessible again, and we invite you to walk through queer and trans history in resistance against those who want to erase us,” the group says.
In an investigation of the National Park Service’s history-altering changes in the Boston area, The Boston Globe found at least six instances where the service removed stories from its website on LGBTQ+ activism at Faneuil Hall; wiped guides on Black and LGBTQ+ history from the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters web page; and shortened all mentions and tags of “LGBTQ+” to “LGB” (an acronym that is only ever used by transphobes).
Earlier this month, it also removed mentions of Black abolitionist icon Harriet Tubman on its Underground Railroad page; those references were restored after widespread shock and outrage.
“The National Park Service has always had this reputability,” said Theo Linger, a former NPS Boston employee who contributed work and research to the Boston LGBTQ+ History section. “To have queer history included in that sort of prestige was a very big deal.”
But in February, Linger was given a choice: Eliminate any mention of trans and queer people from his work, or remove it—Linger walked away.
“I didn’t want to jettison my community, or any community,” Linger said.
In an eerie premonition of the censorship to come, the now-erased LGBTQ+ History title page stated, “As America’s storytellers, the National Park Service is committed to telling the history of all Americans in all of its diversity and complexity.”
“For many years, the rich histories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans have been erased through punishing laws and general prejudice,” the site said before eventually erasing transgender and queer Americans from its pages.
Hula Hoop & Play! Wednesdays 6-8pm Guernville Plaza! We have lplenty of extra hoops if you don’t have one and can teach you how to hoop if you haven’t before or just need a refresher. We move to the live weekly music mix of DJ WT3 playing his set of #Anthropology on Guerneville’s own River Theater Radio 95.1fm. All movement is welcome, so it’s not just about hooping… just come to move if that’s your thing… 🙂 We respect social distancing while having fun!!!
During a press conference on April 22, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced his filing of a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration and the Department of Justice (DOJ). The suit challenges the president’s anti-trans executive order directing agencies to withhold federal funding from educational programs that allow transgender girls to compete on women’s sports teams, under the claim that it violates both constitutional rights and Title IX of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The order in question, signed February 5, attempts to bar trans students from competing on school sports teams matching their gender identity, by revoking federal funding from public schools that don’t comply.
However, the MHRA prohibits discrimination based on protected classes like sexual orientation and gender identity—a clear conflict of interest.
But the DOJ responded by sending a letter five days later threatening to sue Minnesota if the state did not comply. The department continued to threaten the state in an April 8 letter and, and in an April 16 press conference, the DOJ stated it would seek “judicial resolution” and withhold funds from Minnesota if they refused compliance.
Recently, Ellison called their bluff and took the first shot, announcing that Minnesota would sue the DOJ and the president in his official capacity on four legal claims.
“I’m not gonna sit around waiting for the Trump administration to sue Minnesota,” Ellison said during the press conference. “Today, Minnesota is suing him and his administration because we will not participate in this shameful bullying—we will not let a small group of vulnerable children who are only trying to be healthy and live their lives be demonized, many of their parents are here today, and I thank them for their presence. The bottom line is: In our Minnesota, everyone is included in the circle of our compassion, and no one is out of our circle of protection.”
Sometimes countries face a moment like this—faced with a leader bent on destroying entire communities and instilling fear in those who protect them.Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison
The four main legal claims state that Trump’s order is invalid because the administration is trying to use the powers that the Constitution reserves to Congress.
The second claim argues that the order violates Title IX, a common argument the Trump administration uses to enforce the order. However, this interpretation is highly contested, and attempts by the Trump administration to redefine it to fit their interpretation have been blocked by courts.
The third claim states that the order violates the Administrative Procedures Act which requires courts to “set aside agency action” that is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” The fourth and final argument—and one of the more serious accusations—is that the order violates the 10th Amendment by trying to override a state law despite the amendment giving states the right to self govern.
This lawsuit is yet another in a series of lawsuits Minnesota has brought against the Trump administration.
One notable case from early February saw Minnesota joining with three other states to sue the Trump administration for an executive order threatening to cut federal grants to hospitals that provide gender-affirming treatment to individuals under 19. The plaintiffs argued that the order violated their 10th Amendment rights, and a federal judge ruled that Trump’s order could not be enforced in four plaintiff states.
The recently filed lawsuit also echoes a similar situation with Maine, whose leaders have refused to follow the anti-trans sports ban, and have since been hit by federal agencies withholding funding to the state.
“Sometimes countries face a moment like this—faced with a leader bent on destroying entire communities and instilling fear in those who protect them,” Ellison said in the press conference. “The lessons of history tell us a leader like that doesn’t stop at one community—after he’s destroyed one, he goes after another, and another, and another.”
An ongoing boycott against Target appears to be taking effect as foot traffic declines for the tenth consecutive week.
Foot traffic in Target stores declined 9 percent year-over-year in February and 6.5 percent year-over-year in March, according to data from analytics firm Placer.ai reported by CNN. The downturn comes in the midst of a boycott against the retail chain over its decision to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion(DEI) initiatives.
The boycott against Target began at the start of Lent, a Christian observance that occurs in the 40 days before Easter during which participants typically give up something they enjoy. The action was spearheaded by Jamal Bryant, lead pastor at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church near Atlanta, Georgia, who encouraged parishioners to buy from Black-owned businesses instead.
Target issued a memo in January announcing the end of its three-year DEI goals, including its Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) program and “all external diversity-focused survey’s including HRC’s Corporate Equality index.” The Human Rights Campaign effort, which provides benchmarks on corporate policies relevant to LGBTQ+ employees, previously gave Target a score of 100 percent, dubbing the company a “Leader in LGBTQ+ Workplace Inclusion.”
The end of DEI programs and LGBTQ+ inclusivity initiatives marked a significant shift for the Minnesota-based company, which once withstood protests from hate groups over its inclusive bathroom policies and Pride displays. However, the change was not sudden, as Target pulled some of its Pride Month merchandisein 2023 amid threats and violent protests in stores.
Though it was originally pitched as a 40-day “fast,” Bryant told attendees at his Easter Sunday sermon that the boycott will continue. Bryant said that the executives he had met with did not agree to meet four key demands: invest $2 billion in Black-owned businesses by July 31, restore DEI efforts internally, deposit $250 million into Black-owned banks, and establish new partnerships with HBCUs. The pastor claimed that the company had only agreed to the first, and would not reinstate its DEI initiatives.
“I told them what I’m getting ready to tell you — we ain’t going back in there,” Bryant said, via local station 11Alive. “If Target doesn’t show up, the community still will.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo this week seeking to further curtail access to transgender health care for minors. In the memo, Bondi said the Justice Department will use a variety of existing U.S. laws to investigate providers of such care, as well as drug manufacturersand distributors.
She directed U.S. attorneys to use laws against female genital mutilation to investigate doctors who “mutilate” children “under the guise of care” and to prosecute these“offenses to the fullest extent possible.”
“I am putting medical practitioners, hospitals, and clinics on notice: In the United States, it is a felony to perform, attempt to perform, or conspire to perform female genital mutilation (‘FGM’) on any person under the age of 18,” Bondi wrote. “That crime carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years per count.”
Bondi also directed the Consumer Protection Branch of the DOJ’s Civil Division to investigate potential violations of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Actby drug manufacturers and distributors who engage “in misbranding by making false claims about the on- or off-label use of puberty blockers, sex hormones, or any other drug used to facilitate” a minor’s gender transition.
And she directed the Civil Division’s Fraud Section to investigate potential violations of the False Claims Act by physicians who submit “false claims … to federal health care programs for any non-covered services related to radical gender experimentation.” (She included as an example of this a physician prescribing puberty blockers to a minor for gender-transition care but reporting it to Medicaid as being for early-onset puberty.)
Robin Maril, an assistant professor of constitutional law at Oregon’s Willamette University, said Bondi’s memo doesn’t change any existing laws. Doctors, she said, will not be breaking the law by continuing to treat trans minors if they live in a state where such care is still legal. She also noted that Medicaid fraud and defrauding the government are already crimes.
“The bulk of this is just showing how they’re going to use resources and investigate,” Maril said. “That’s not a law change. It’s meant to have a chilling effect on physicians providing access to necessary care, fearing that it will be characterized as chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”
She added that the memo’s call on whistleblowers to report “knowledge of any such violations” could further make doctors afraid of being reported.
Chase Strangio, the first transgender attorney to argue before the Supreme Court, with supporters on Dec. 4, when the court heard the case of U.S. vs. Skrmetti. Marvin Joseph / The Washington Post via Getty Images
It’s unclear what type of procedure would be considered female genital mutilation “under the guise of care” according to Bondi’s interpretation of U.S. law. The FBI defines it as “partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injuries to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.”
Transition-related care for minors can encompass a range of treatments, including talk therapy for younger children, puberty-blocking medications for adolescents and hormone therapy for older teens. Bondi’s memo specifically mentions gender-affirming surgeries, which are not recommended for minors. In rare cases, older teens can receive a double mastectomy, or removal of the breasts.
It’s also unclear ifBondi’s directives would conflict with federal and state anti-discrimination laws. A provision in the Affordable Care Act, for example, prohibits physicians who are providing federally funded services from discriminating based on sex. The Biden administration issued a notice interpreting that provision to include protection based on gender identity, but the Trump administration rescinded that notice in February. Some advocates argue the provision’s protections and some state nondiscrimination laws still apply.
Despite this, Bondi’s memo refers to this type of care as “radical gender experimentation,” and it cites research conducted by an advocacy group that opposes gender-affirming care for minors. That group found that, from 2019 to 2023, 14,000 children received treatment for gender dysphoria — the medical term for the distress caused by the misalignment between one’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth — and 5,700 had surgery.
However, trans advocates have noted that the rate of breast surgeries among adolescents who are cisgender, meaning not transgender, is much higher. For example, in 2011, more than 14,000 breast reduction procedures were performed in the United States on adolescent boys to correct gynecomastia, a benign condition that causes enlarged breast tissue, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
Bondi’s memo is the administration’s latest attempt at restricting trans health care. Just over a week after his inauguration, President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order aimed at curtailing transition-related care for minors by prohibiting federal funding for such care and threatening to withhold grants from hospitals and medical universities that provide the care, among other restrictions. At least two judges have temporarily blocked that order from taking effect.
Over the last few years, 27 states have enacted measures restricting access to transition-related care for minors. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision soon in a lawsuit against such a restriction in Tennessee, which could affect minors’ access to care nationwide and potentially care for trans adults under federally funded health programs.
The Supreme Court seemed likely to uphold a key preventive-care provision of the Affordable Care Act in a case heard Monday.
Conservative justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, along with the court’s three liberals, appeared skeptical of arguments that Obamacare’s process for deciding which services must be fully covered by private insurance is unconstitutional.
The case came before the Supreme Court after the appeals court struck down some preventive care coverage requirements. It sided with Christian employers and Texas residents who argued they can’t be forced to provide full insurance coverage for things like medication to prevent HIV and some cancer screenings.
The appeals court’s ruling took explicit aim at the H.I.V. drug regimen known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, saying the law’s requirement that it be fully covered violated the religious freedom of a plaintiff in the case, Braidwood Management.
The company’s owner, Dr. Steven F. Hotze, a well-known Republican donor and doctor from Houston, has previously challenged the Affordable Care Act on other grounds.
The case stems from a lawsuit filed in 2020 by Dr. Hotze and other Christian business owners and employees in Texas; they maintained that the preventive care mandate violates their constitutional right to religious freedom by requiring companies and policyholders to pay for coverage that goes against their faith.
In 2022, after living as a boy and going by a new name for several years, a 15-year-old from Madison, Wisconsin, wanted to make it official. Like most teenagers, he dreamed of getting his driver’s license, and his family wanted his government identification to reflect who he really was.
But Wisconsin law has a caveat: He would have to publish his old, feminine name and new name in the local newspaper for three weeks — essentially announcing to the world that he is transgender.
In many instances, if he had committed a crime, the law would afford him privacy as a minor. But not as a transgender teenager changing his name.
His parents worry the public notice now poses a risk as President Donald Trump has attacked transgender rights, asserted that U.S. policy recognizes only two sexes and described efforts to support transgender people as “child abuse.” The publication requirements endanger the community, lawyers working with trans people say, by creating a de facto dataset of likely transgender people that vigilantes and even the government could use for firing, harassment or violence.
Transgender people are over four times more likely to be victims of violence, research shows. Most transgender people and their families agreed to be interviewed for this story only if they weren’t named, citing safety concerns.
“Publication requirements really leave folks open and vulnerable to discrimination and to harassment more than they already are,” said Arli Christian, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “It can put people at risk of violence and blatant discrimination simply because of who they are.”
Wisconsin’s legal process stems from a 167-year-old law, one of many statutes across the country that Christian said were intended to keep people from escaping debts or criminal records. Changing one’s name through marriage is a separate process that does not require publication in a paper.
Although the right to change one’s legal name exists in every state, the effort and risk required to exercise it vary. Less than half of states require people to publicize their name changes in some or all cases, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a think tank that tracks voting and LGBTQ+ rights.
Wisconsin law grants confidentiality only if a person can prove it’s more likely than not that publication “could endanger” them. But the statute does not define what that means. For years, some judges interpreted that to include psychological abuse or bullying, or they accepted statistics documenting discrimination and violence against transgender people nationwide.
In 2023, however, a state appeals court set a stricter standard after a trans teenager was denied a confidential name change in Brown County, home to Green Bay. The teen said he had endured years of bullying, in which peers called him slurs and beat him up. Court records show the Brown County judge asserted that publishing the teen’s name wouldn’t expose him to further harm because his harassers already knew he was transgender.
The teen argued that a public process would create a record available to people he met in the future. While the appeals court conceded a “reasonable judge” could agree, it found the Brown County judge had not improperly exercised her discretion in denying the request. Crucially, the appeals court determined that “endanger” meant only physical harm. The case wasn’t appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Both of these trans girls living in Wisconsin requested the confidential name-change process after the 2024 presidential election. First image: A 14-year-old likes cuddling her cat, playing video games and practicing piano. Second image: A 12-year-old shares her artwork. Illustrations by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica. Source images obtained by ProPublica.
The combination of Wisconsin’s public requirement, the restrictive ruling and the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies has dissuaded at least one person from going through with a name change.
J.J Koechell, a 20-year-old LGBTQ+ advocate from suburban Milwaukee, tried to change his name in November but decided against it after a judge denied his request for confidentiality, ordering him to publish his change in the local paper and create a public court record if he wanted to proceed.
“That’s already dangerous,” Koechell said of a public process, “given our political atmosphere, with an administration that’s trying to erase trans people from existence completely, or saying that they don’t exist, or that there’s something wrong with them.”
At the end of March, Wisconsin Democrats announced plans to introduce a bill that would eliminate the publication requirement for transgender people, so long as they can prove they’re not avoiding debt or a criminal record. Republicans, who control the Legislature, will decide whether it will receive a hearing or vote.
There has been a push in some states to make it easier and safer for transgender people to update their legal documents. Michigan and Illinois laws removing publication requirements took effect earlier this year. And a California lawmaker introduced a bill that would retroactively seal all transition-related court records.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, did not respond to emails and a phone call to his office seeking comment. Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica sought comment from four other Republican leaders in the Assembly and Senate. Of the two whose offices responded, a staffer for Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August, R-Walworth, said, “It doesn’t look like something we’d consider a priority,” and a staffer for Senate Assistant Majority Leader Dan Feyen, R-Fond du Lac, said he was not available for comment.
Asked about the safety concerns people raised, a White House spokesperson said, “President Trump has vowed to defend women from gender ideology extremism and restore biological truth to the Federal government.”
No Exceptions for Minors
Wisconsin’s law requires a transgender person to publish the details of their identity to change their name whether they are an adult or a child. The notice requirement makes no distinction based on age.
This is less privacy than the legal system typically affords young people, confirmed Cary Bloodworth, who directs a family law clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Bloodworth said both child welfare and juvenile courts tend to keep records confidential for a number of reasons, including that what happens in a person’s youth will follow them for a lifetime.
“I certainly think having a higher level of privacy for kids is a good thing,” Bloodworth said, adding that she thinks the publication requirement is unnecessary for people of any age.
A mom living near the Wisconsin-Illinois border whose 11-year-old daughter recently went through the name-change process said these proceedings should automatically be private for children.
“The fact that we still have to fight to get something as simple as a confidential name change for a minor who is obviously not running away from criminal or debt charges is just so frustrating and overwhelming,” she said.
The judge deciding their case seemed reluctant to grant confidentiality at first, questioning whether her daughter was being threatened physically, she said. The judge granted the confidential change. But the family remains shaken.
“We live just in constant terror of the wrong person finding out that we have an 11-year-old trans child,” she said. “All it takes is one wrong person getting that information, and what we could end up going through, becoming a target, is horrifying.”
Right before the pandemic, a teenager told her parents she was transgender. She spent much of that first year of her transition at home, attending virtual school like the rest of her peers in the Madison school district. She came out to only a few friends and wanted to keep her gender identity private, so she kept her camera off and skipped her high school graduation.
When she decided to legally change her name, the prospect of publicizing her transition terrified her, according to her mom.
“I explained to her that it’s in tiny, tiny print, and it’s in some page of the paper that no one is going to read,” her mom said. “But it felt to her like she was just standing out there in public with a ‘TRANS’ sign on her.”
While fewer people read physical newspapers these days, much of their content gets published online and is easily searchable. The court case, too, becomes a public record that is stored online and sometimes aggregated by other websites that show up at the top of search results.
The parents of the then-15-year-old boy who changed his name before getting his driver’s license discovered that happened to their son. When anyone — say, a prospective employer — searches the young man’s name, one of the first results shows his old name and outs him as trans.
“This is what somebody would use as their first judgment of him,” his mom said. “We certainly don’t want that to be something that people would use to rule him out for a job, or whatever it is he might be doing.”
Like many other states, Wisconsin does not have laws that ban discrimination against transgender people in credit and lending practices or in public spaces like stores, restaurants, parks, doctor’s offices and hotels. However, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, issued an executive order in 2019 banning transgender discrimination in state employment, contracting and public services.
After Trump took office again and began issuing executive orders attacking trans rights, the boy’s family started to investigate how they could retroactively seal the court records related to the name change. It wouldn’t change what was in the newspaper, but it could help them remove the online records. The court records also contain sensitive information like their home address that someone could use to harass them.
A friend who was a retired attorney helped their son craft an affidavit describing his experiences. His mom read from it during an interview. “‘Because of recent political events, I fear violence —’” she said before breaking off. “Oh God, I hate even reading this. ‘I fear violence, harassment, retribution because of my status as a transgender person.’”
Her son, who is now 18, shared a statement over email.
“At this moment in time I’m probably more scared about being a trans person than I ever have been before, with the public record if you have my first and last name you can easily find my deadname and therefore find out I’m trans,” he said. “I would love to say that I feel safe and valued in our society but unfortunately I can’t, at times I feel that my personhood is being stripped away under this government.”
Anne Daugherty-Leiter, who has guided transgender clients and their families through the name-change process as board president of Trans Law Help Wisconsin, said where a person lives in Wisconsin, and therefore what court they must petition, affects their likelihood of getting a confidential change.
Confidentiality is important, she said, because of how the state handles changes to birth certificates. Wisconsin birth certificates that are issued through a confidential name change show only the new name. But if a person has to announce their name change publicly, birth certificates are amended to list both the person’s old and new names. Any time the person has to use that document, at the DMV or while getting a loan, it outs them, she said.
“This Is Not Who I Am”
Koechell, a trans man and LGBTQ+ activist, was unwilling to go through with the name-change process after being denied confidentiality by a judge late last year.
Koechell lives in Waukesha County, a Republican stronghold where multiple schools have enacted policies critics have called anti-LGBTQ+.
In a letter to the judge, Koechell wrote that people had sent him multiple threats and posted his family members’ addresses online, all for “being an advocate and being transgender openly in my community.”
“I do not want to publish my deadname for people to use against me,” he said in an interview, using a term common among transgender people to refer to their birth names. “I don’t see a reason why people who are not particularly fond of me wouldn’t show up at a hearing like that and try and cause trouble.”
Court records show the judge denied Koechell’s confidentiality request and his request to reconsider. The judge’s order referred to Koechell, a trans man with a masculine voice and beard, as “she” and “her.”
Koechell decided the public process wasn’t worth the risk. But it’s hard, he said, to move through life with his old identification.
“When I go to a new doctor or new appointment or something, then that’s the name on my chart, and then I get called that in a waiting room full of people, and it’s super uncomfortable. I just want to disappear,” Koechell said. “Then eventually, I have to correct the doctors, and I’m like, ‘Hey, just to let you know, I don’t go by that name. This is not who I am.’”
Data from the latest U.S. Transgender Survey found that 22% of people who had to show an ID that did not match their identity experienced some form of negative consequence, including verbal harassment, discrimination or physical violence.
If the U.S. Senate passes the SAVE Act, which would require voters to prove citizenship with a passport or birth certificate, those consequences could include disenfranchisement. Transgender people who can’t change the name on their birth certificate or passport would be ineligible to vote, according to the liberal think tank Center for American Progress.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and chief sponsor of the bill, has said the legislation directs states to create a process for citizens with a “name discrepancy” to register. “No one will be unable to vote because of a name change,” he said.
Trace Schlax, a trans man in Wisconsin, has tried to change his gender marker and name on official documents. Joe Timmerman/Wisconsin Watch
After Trump won in November, Trace Schlax, a 40-year-old IT project manager, decided to expedite changing his gender marker on his passport, figuring he could update his name later in state court.
“It matters,” Schlax said. He loves to travel but has encountered extra scrutiny from airport security with outdated documents. “I get comments from TSA when I go through to travel domestically, about my hair, about how I look. I get extra pat-downs.”
He sent his application in early December and crossed his fingers. He received it back in February, rejected. By that time, Trump had issued an executive order banning trans people from changing the gender markers on their passports.
Schlax decided to continue updating what records he could, like his birth certificate and driver’s license. He worries about having conflicting documents. Will he get accused of fraud? Will he have trouble flying?
But in the end, he decided it was still important to change his name and update his license to improve his day-to-day experience.
And he decided to go about it publicly. It felt less painful, he said, to accept the risks rather than detail his personal, traumatic experiences to a judge only to have them decide he hadn’t endured sufficient danger.
“Me changing my name and my gender marker affects absolutely no one but me,” said Schlax, who has a court date to change his name in late April. “Why does this have to be so hard? Why do I have to prove myself so hard?”
The Alabama state House of Representatives passed three anti-LGBTQ+ laws on the same day.
Republicans approved the bills Thursday, which included an expansion of the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law to encompass grades K-12, a ban on drag performances in some public spaces, an LGBTQ+ Pride flag ban in public schools, a ban against school employees using students’ preferred names and pronouns, and a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displaced in all public education institutions — even colleges. The bills now head to the state Senate.
HB 244 would “prohibit classroom instruction in public school prekindergarten through the twelfth grade related to gender identity or sexual orientation; to prohibit education employees from displaying certain flags and insignia in public preK-12 schools; and to prohibit education employees from referring to a student by pronouns inconsistent with the student’s biological sex.”
The “certain flags” employees are forbidden from displaying are flags “relating to or representing sexual orientation or gender identity in a classroom of a public preK-12 school,” singling out the LGBTQ+ Pride flag.
HB 67 would “prohibit public K-12 schools and public libraries from knowingly presenting or sponsoring drag performances in the presence of a minor without the consent of the minor’s parent or legal guardian.” Drag is defined as “a performance in which a performer exhibits a sex identity that is different from the sex assigned to the performer at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers,” leaving uncertainty as to how it will impact transgender people.
HB 178/SB 166 would require “each local board of education and the governing body of each public institution of higher education to display the Ten Commandments and a context statement in a common area of each school under its jurisdiction.” Schools are not required to use their funding for this, and can instead accept donations.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama said in a statement in response to the bill’s introduction that mandating the Ten Commandments in public schools is “unconstitutional – plain and simple.”
“The First Amendment guarantees that students and their families — not politicians or the government — get to decide which religious beliefs, if any, they adopt and what role those beliefs will play in their lives,” the group wrote. “Displaying the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms blatantly violates this promise. Students can’t focus on learning if they don’t feel safe and welcome in their schools.”
The organization denounced a previous version of the drag ban in a separate statement, calling it “an attempt to censor LGBTQ experiences from the public.”
“The attempt of legislators to censor performers based on their personal viewpoints is contradictory to our first amendment rights,” it wrote. “The ACLU of Alabama wants to protect our first amendment right to express ourselves. Drag performances are part of that expression and should not be censored by the state based on subjective viewpoints on whether or not they are appropriate.”
