A new law in Maryland requires Medicaid to cover “medically necessary” gender-affirming care for residents — including care well beyond hormones or surgery.
The law went into effect on January 1. It requires coverage for “gender-affirming treatment in a nondiscriminatory manner.”
Voice therapy and lessons, scar and hair removal, hormone therapy, puberty blockers, fertility preservation, and “alterations” to the abdomen, genitals, chest, buttocks, neck, and face are all included. Patients cannot be denied unless a healthcare professional decides the treatment would be detrimental to their health.
“This order is focused on ensuring Maryland is a safe place for gender-affirming care, especially as other states take misguided and hateful steps to make gender-affirming care cause for legal retribution,” Moore added. “In Maryland, we are going to lead on this issue.”
Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller (D) said the order shows that “This administration is saying to all LGBTQIA+ Marylanders: You deserve to be your authentic selves, during Pride month and every month. You deserve to live safely, openly, and freely; and receive the gender-affirming care you need.”
Lee Blinder, Executive Director of Trans Maryland, said, “This legislation emerged from the trans community experiences shared with our organization at Pride festivals and support groups around Maryland about barriers of access to care,. We are grateful to every individual who worked toward passing this groundbreaking bill. Thanks to the Moore-Miller Administration, Maryland is a sanctuary state for transgender people, and we will continue to work closely with the Administration to ensure expansion of access continues.”
Renee Lau, a state resident who started transitioning about five years ago, told CBS News, “I plan on having some surgeries and having consultations within the next two months. I would not believe the relief it is for me, because I never could have paid for [these services] out of pocket.”
Gender-affirming care is considered safe and essential to the well-being of trans people by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and other major U.S. and world health organizations.
Alabama can begin immediately enforcing a ban outlawing the use of puberty blockers and hormones to treat transgender people under 19, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday, granting the state’s request to stay a preliminary injunction that had blocked enforcement of the 2022 law.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had previously ruled that the injunction should be vacated, but the decision had been effectively on hold while families with transgender children asked the full appellate court to reconsider the decision. The Thursday order will allow the ban to take effect while the full court decides whether it will revisit the decision.
The state Attorney General Steve Marshall called the order a “significant victory for our country, for children and for common sense.”
“The physical and psychological safety of our children can now be better protected from these untested and life-altering chemical and surgical procedures through the implementation of the Alabama Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act,” Marshall said.
Lawyers representing parents of transgender adolescents who challenged the ban said the decision will “hurt parents and children in the state.”
“Alabama’s transgender healthcare ban will harm thousands of transgender adolescents across the state and will put parents in the excruciating position of not being able to get the medical care their children need to thrive,” read a joint statement from GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Human Rights Campaign.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act into law in 2022, making it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison for doctors to treat people under 19 with puberty blockers or hormones to help affirm their gender identity.
At least 22 states have now enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, and many of them face lawsuits or blocked enforcement. Courts have issued mixed rulings, with the nation’s first law, in Arkansas, struck down by a federal judge who said the ban violated the due process rights of young transgender people and their families.
Attorneys representing Tennessee transgender teens and their families have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors that a lower court allowed to go into effect. The court is expected to decide later this year if it will hear the case.
Four families with transgender children ranging in ages 12 to 17 challenged the Alabama law as an unconstitutional violation of equal protection and free speech rights, as well as an intrusion into family medical decisions. The U.S. Department of Justice joined their lawsuit, seeking to overturn the law.
U.S. District Judge Liles Burke, nominated to the court by then-President Donald Trump in 2017, ruled when issuing the preliminary injunction that Alabama had produced no credible evidence to show that transitioning medications are “experimental.” Alabama appealed the decision to the 11th Circuit. The challenge to the Alabama ban is scheduled to go to trial early this year.
A coalition of 17 Republican state attorneys general have filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to take up a case about a school’s policy allowing teachers to not out trans and gender-nonconforming students to their parents.
The brief, filed last week, opposes a lower court decision upholding the Montgomery County, Maryland, Board of Education’s guidelines on student gender identity. First adopted by the district during the 2020–2021 school year, the guidelines do not require school staff to inform parents if a student requests to socially transition at school. Instead, school staff must first “ascertain the level of support the student either receives or anticipates receiving from home” before determining whether to speak to their parents.
“This egregious policy completely sidesteps parents’ rights and severs them from having involvement in their child’s physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) said in a January 4 statement.
Morrisey led the coalition, which also included attorneys general from Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.
The district’s policy “disrupts ‘perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by the Court,’ the right of parents to direct the care and custody of their children,” the coalition wrote in the brief, quoting the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Troxel v. Granville.
In October 2021, three parents, identified in court filings as “John and Jane Parents,” sued the Montgomery County Board of Education over the guidelines, which they characterized as a “Parental Preclusion Policy,” claiming that they violated state law and the U.S. Constitution by encouraging school staff to keep a child’s gender identity hidden from their parents. In August 2022, a federal judge ruled against the parents, writing that the guidelines are, in fact, meant to be flexible and don’t necessarily instruct school staff to hide information from parents.
The parents appealed, and last August the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the earlier decision, ruling in a 2–1 decision that the plaintiffs did not have standing to challenge the district’s guidelines.
“Simply put, the parents may think the Parental Preclusion Policy is a horrible idea,” Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. wrote. “They may think it represents an overreach into areas that parents should handle. They may think that the board’s views on gender identity conflict with the values they wish to instill in their children. And in all those areas, they may be right. But even so, they have alleged neither a current injury, nor an impending injury or a substantial risk of future injury. As such, these parents have failed to establish an injury that permits this court to act.”
In their brief, the state AGs claimed that the Fourth Circuit’s decision presents a catch-22: “Parents can show standing only if they overcome Montgomery County’s secrecy efforts and discover their child is transitioning. That may be an impossibility, as schools have even been known to alter documentation to hide that information… But even if the parents do find out about enough information to show standing under the Fourth Circuit’s test, then their secrecy injury dissipates in the same moment, and they don’t need a claim at all anymore.”
LGBTQ+ youth are at a higher risk of homelessness than straight, cisgender youth, and outing them to their parents without their consent can increase their risk of harm.
“These high rates of familial rejection and abuse dramatically increase the risks of suicidality, substance abuse, and depression,” the ACLU argues. “Not every child can be their true selves at home without risking their physical or emotional well-being.”
The attorneys general of Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Virginia signed the brief.
Five trans youth and their families have joined a group of LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations in suing the state of Louisiana over its gender-affirming care ban.
The ban took effect on January 1st after the state legislature overrode a veto by former Gov. John Bel Edwards (D).
H.B. 648 bans doctors and nurses from providing safe and medically necessary gender-affirming care like puberty blockers and hormone therapy to transgender youth. It prevents trans youth from receiving both gender-affirming medications and surgery (though surgery is almost never performed on trans youth). It would also punish doctors for providing this care by taking away their licenses for at least two years.
The lawsuit alleges the bill violates parents’ rights to make health care decisions for their children, according to a press release from Lambda Legal. It also claims the law violates the state constitution by denying trans kids equal protection by discriminating based on gender identity and sex. It also says the law violates the kids’ constitutional right to accept or reject medical care based on the support of their parents and doctors.
The plaintiffs in the case range from ages 9 to 16 and have all used pseudonyms. In a statement, one called the law “so upsetting.”
“Growing up, I was intensely self-conscious of my body, which led to a near-constant state of discomfort,” he continued. “Oftentimes I was incredibly uncomfortable and anxious and even found it hard to talk. However, being able to access gender-affirming hormones and be my true self has been a lifesaver. I am now far more comfortable and confident and feel less distress. This health care has allowed me to be happy, healthy, and my true authentic self – the boy I know I am. I am terrified of what the Health Care Ban will do and worry about how my mental health might deteriorate.”
The Center for Health Law & Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School, as well as a state law firm, have joined Lambda Legal to represent the plaintiffs.
“The Health Care Ban prohibits the only safe and effective treatment available for trans youth, putting their health and well-being at great risk,” Suzanne Davies, Senior Clinical Fellow at the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, said in a statement. “By selectively banning such treatments for trans youth, this law deprives Louisiana adolescents of equal access to medically necessary, and often life-saving care that is effective in treating gender dysphoria and addressing other serious health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and even suicidal ideation that can occur when gender dysphoria is left untreated.”
Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, Counsel and Health Care Strategist for Lambda Legal, added, “Denying medical care to youth just because they are transgender is both unlawful and inhumane – especially when the same treatments remain available to all other minors. The Health Care Ban represents broad government overreach into the relationship between parents, their children, and their health care providers.”
In June, former Gov. Edwards vowed to veto any anti-LGBTQ+ legislation sent to his desk, comparing the Republican attempts to target the LGBTQ+ community with opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. But in July, The House voted 75 to 23 to override the gender-affirming care veto, and the Senate voted 28 to 11 to do the same.
In a statement, Edwards pointed out that he has issued 319 vetoes in his eight years acting as a Democratic governor with a Republican legislature, and that more than 99% of the vetoes have held.
“Just two of my vetoes have been overridden,” he wrote. “Today, I was overridden for the second time, on my veto of a bill that needlessly harms a very small population of vulnerable children, their families, and their healthcare professionals. I expect the courts to throw out this unconstitutional bill.”
Edwards’ original veto letter was six single-spaced pages, and blasted the GOP leaders for trying to “generate concern and outrage where none was warranted.”
Edwards, who was term-limited, completed his tenure as governor on Monday. He has been replaced by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who reportedly supportsthe anti-trans health care ban.
Out Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) has proposed legislation to grant LGBTQ+ military veterans coverage for in-vitro fertilization (IVF), something the federal Veterans Administration (VA) only allows for heterosexual couples.
Healey first introduced the legislation – dubbed the HERO Act – in November, and according toThe Boston Business Journal a hearing on the proposal is set to be held this month before the Joint Committee on Veteran and Federal Affairs.
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“Our veterans have sacrificed so much for our country, and this transformative legislation marks an important step toward ensuring that Massachusetts supports them in return,” Healey said in a press release after introducing the legislation.
Calling the bill “historic,” she added, “From day one, our administration has been committed to revitalizing veterans’ services in Massachusetts and ensuring that every one of these heroes receives the benefits, resources, and support that they deserve.”
The bill would no doubt have a massive impact, as veterans in same-sex marriages have made it clear the current policies affect them deeply. In August, Massachusetts veteran Ashley Sheffield filed a class action lawsuit against the VA arguing that the denial of fertility coverage to LGBTQ+ couples is unconstitutional.
“We are entitled to equal treatment and we should no longer be treated as second-class citizens,” Sheffield reportedly said when she filed the suit.
In addition to granting IVF coverage to same-sex couples, the HERO Act proposes a myriad of other benefits, including expanded access to mental health care treatment, an increase in the tax credits small businesses receive for hiring low-income and chronically unemployed veterans, an increase in flexibility for veteran property tax exemptions, and an expanded definition of a veteran dependent.
In November 2022, Healey became the first out lesbian governor in the country, as well as the first woman elected governor in her state. Before that, she was the country’s first out lesbian state attorney general.
As AG, she championed non-discrimination protections for trans people in Massachusetts and pushed for gender-neutral markers both federally and for the state. And as civil rights chief in the AG’s office, Healey brought the first successful challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, helping to lay the groundwork for marriage equality nationwide.
After she won the Democratic primary, she stood before a raucous crowd of supporters and told them, “I am so proud to be able to stand before you tonight as your Democratic nominee for governor of Massachusetts.” She nodded to the sound of her latest title and added, “That sounds good.”
The former professional basketball player and captain of her team at Harvard describes herself as a “baller” and was clear-eyed about the work ahead in her remarks that night: “I ask you, as a former point guard, to leave it all with me on the court.”
Sitting on his living room couch, a 16-year-old high school student described all the reasons he’s fighting to change his gender identity on official documents.
He doesn’t want his classmates to know he’s trans. He worries about the disrespectful comments he hears from people who don’t realize he transitioned years ago, the ugly rhetoric on social media that prompts him to put down his phone, and the alarming data and stories about harassment and violence.
But mostly, J. Doe — as the teen is referred to in a lawsuit his family filed last month against the Oklahoma State Board of Education — just wants to be seen as a boy, not a transgender boy.
“Because there is a big difference,” he said in an interview at his Oklahoma City home. “There shouldn’t be, but there is.”
Last fall, a few weeks after the state’s education department learned that J. Doe had obtained a court order to update his gender to male on all of his official records, the Board of Education created an emergency rule requiring school districts to get state approval before changing gender markers on students’ private files. Then the board decided unanimously — without notifying his family to give them a chance to weigh in — that J. Doe’s student records should continue to list him as female.
The new rule effectively gives the Oklahoma Department of Education notice every time a student has transitioned to a point where they want their records updated to reflect their gender identity. And it gives the board the opportunity to reject that request, as it did to J. Doe and another student in October.
“It’s hard enough to get supportive parents; once you achieve that, you are lucky enough,” said J. Doe, whose parents have backed his transition since he was a young child. “It shouldn’t be a challenge with the government, too.”
Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s superintendent, voted to restrict schools from changing gender identifications on private student records.Christopher Creese for NBC News
Oklahoma has become one of the least accepting states for transgender children under a Republican-led state government that includes Ryan Walters, the combative state superintendent who has attacked what he and far-right activists label “transgender ideology.”
“We’re going to stand against this,” Walters said in October after the state board voted to prevent J. Doe’s records from being updated. “We’re not going to do the transgender game of back and forth, back and forth.”
The Oklahoma Department of Education offered a different explanation, saying it created the policy because officials learned school districts had received requests like J. Doe’s, and the state wanted to protect “the accuracy of historic records for future use.” The board is set to vote on whether to make the emergency rule permanent later this month.
J. Doe and his mother are now suing Walters and the rest of the board, arguing that the new rule is discriminatory and violated the family’s due process rights as well as a parents’ rights law. They are asking a state court to invalidate the rule and for $75,000 in damages.
Joshua Payton, an attorney for J. Doe’s family, said he believes the new rule is an abuse of the state government’s power, intended to “attack the most vulnerable students.”
The Oklahoma Department of Education declined to make Walters or anyone else available for an interview, and did not directly respond to written questions. The department previously called the lawsuit “frivolous” and sent a statement to NBC News in which Walters said he is fighting against “woke indoctrination” in the classrooms. “It is time to end gender wars and get back to the basics in education,” the statement concluded.
The five other state Board of Education members did not respond to requests for comment.
In Oklahoma, the American Civil Liberties Union is suing, asking courts to invalidate laws that limit what teachers can say about gender in schools, restrict which restrooms LGBTQ students can use and ban gender-affirming health carefor adolescents. Student athletes in the state are supposed to submit affidavitssigned by their parents that attest to their sex assigned at birth.
During his first year in office, Walters has added to those laws with policies forbidding the use of textbooks that include so-called gender ideology, and criticizing school districts that offer support services for LGBTQ students. He wants to make it easier to fire school staff members who engage in what he called “sexually provocative behaviors” outside of work, after he objected to a principal moonlighting as a drag queen. He has said his positions are meant to protect parental rights.
“Parents absolutely know what’s best for kids, and anyone who doesn’t understand has no business being involved in education whatsoever,” Walters recently said on Real America’s Voice, a far-right streaming network whose hosts are known for pushing conspiracy theories. Walters added that parents should be involved in all decision-making in schools.
But J. Doe’s parents said Walters’ policies have interfered with their rights, rather than protecting them.
“You’re telling me what I can and can’t do with my child,” Jane Doe, as J. Doe’s mother is referred to in the lawsuit, said in an interview. “And you know what, you didn’t raise this child; I raised this child.”
Oklahoma’s top culture warrior
Ryan Walters has called the teachers union a “terrorist organization” and pushed for prayer in public schools, calling the separation of church and state a “myth.”
A Tulsa-area school district faced weeks of bomb threats after Walters shared a Libs of TikTok post about a school librarian on social media.
He has also become an outspoken proponent of PragerU, a right-wing nonprofit that’s seeking to get its videos played in public school classrooms.
LGBTQ advocates in the state said the new laws and regulations have spurred some families they know to flee for Colorado and New Mexico, which have more accepting policies for transgender children.
“Honestly, there is a lot of fear,” said state Rep. Jacob Rosecrants, an Oklahoma City Democrat who has a transgender child. “It’s heavy — you can cut it with a knife.”
Rosecrants said when he worked as a teacher, making accommodations for transgender students took little effort beyond brief conversations with parents to ask if their child wanted to be called something different or needed extra time for restroom breaks.
Oklahoma’s regulation requiring state permission for schools to change students’ gender on records is unusual, said Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ advocacy group, but it follows a pattern of restrictions nationally.
“I think there’s this misconception on behalf of some politicians that if you take away the support system, then young people will simply stop being transgender,” Warbelow said. “When we know the reality is they continue to be transgender. They simply will live a more isolated and sometimes miserable young adulthood or adolescence.”
Surveys and research show that LGBTQ youth whose community affirms their identity and uses their chosen pronouns are less likely to be suicidal.
J. Doe was upset about being identified as a girl long before he realized he was transgender.
As a 5-year-old, he argued with other children that he was a boy. His mother remembers him coming to her in tears, asking why God didn’t make him a boy. He cried when he received the girls toy from McDonald’s Happy Meals. When he discovered what pronouns were at around age 9, he began insisting on being called “he” and “him.”
His parents — a churchgoing mother who leans liberal and a father who voted for Donald Trump — supported him at every step. His mother had a feeling he’d one day identify as gay or transgender.
“I sat back and had to wait for him to figure it out, because that’s not my job to tell him or put that in his head,” Jane Doe said. “He needed to figure that out on his own, and that’s what he did.”
He went on puberty blockers in seventh grade, and started taking testosterone two years later. Recently, facial hair came in, causing him to become preoccupied with how often he should shave, and whether it’s true that shaving causes the hair to grow back quicker and fuller.
Trans-rights activists protest at the state Capitol in Oklahoma City, in Feb. 2023, as lawmakers advanced a ban on gender-affirming health care for minors. Sue Ogrocki / AP
J. Doe’s parents found Payton, their lawyer, when they searched online a year ago for help updating J. Doe’s gender on official records, trying to head off problems at school. He had already legally changed his name in middle school to ensure that a substitute teacher never misgendered him by accident.
Payton started the Oklahoma Equality Law Center in late 2020 to provide legal services to LGBTQ people.
A governor’s order in Oklahoma bars changing the gender on birth certificates, but Payton has worked around this by asking judges to approve orders to update gender markers on other records. He has seen how significant it is for people to have their official identification affirm who they are, as well as help them pass at school or work, access proper health care and feel safer.
“It’s transformative — I’ve seen it turn lives over instantaneously,” he said.
In the past three years, Payton has gotten these orders approved for 172 people, including 25 minors, in the state, he said.
Last February, a judge approved Payton’s petition to update J. Doe’s gender to male on official records maintained by “all political subdivisions,” such as his school district, Moore Public Schools, just south of Oklahoma City. J. Doe’s driver’s permit now lists him as male, and his parents assumed everything would be taken care of at school once they gave administrators a copy of the court order.
But on the first day of school in August, J. Doe saw an “F” next to gender on his class schedule. He worried people would see it. His parents called the school administrators, who said they wanted to ask the Oklahoma Department of Education for advice, according to the family and the suit.
Moore Public Schools did not respond to a request for comment.
The following month, the state Board of Education passed its emergency rule, and then the month after that, the board voted to deny the request to change J. Doe’s records. Payton and J. Doe’s family said they learned of the Oct. 26 vote as it was happening.
“It really shows where the state board’s priorities are, especially when Oklahoma is one of the worst states for education,” said J. Doe, referring to multipleanalyses that rank the state at or near the bottom for education quality. “And they’re focusing on transgender kids. I just really don’t get it.”
J. Doe became depressed after the state board’s vote, he said. He feared that people who have only known him as a boy would find out he’s transgender and ostracize him, or worse. He stayed home from school for nearly two weeks.
“If the world was safer towards trans people, it would probably be a different story of who I was comfortable with knowing that I was trans,” J. Doe said, “but really I just don’t know what could happen with people knowing that.”
He did not want his identity revealed, in this article or in the lawsuit, because he does not want to become a poster child for the transgender community. He said he wants to play video games and figure out what he wants to do after high school.
“He’s never wanted to be ‘the transgender kid,’” Jane Doe said. “He just wants to be him.”
The family decided to file the suit, with help from Payton and the nonprofit advocacy group Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, because they realized that J. Doe was not going to be the last one in this situation.
“Someone needs to stand up for kids coming up behind him,” his mother said. “It’s gotten to a point where you can’t be quiet anymore. You’ve got to do something.”
Arienne Childrey is running to be the first transgender member of the Ohiolegislature — and she’s running against a state representative who sponsored a drag ban and supported bills restricting gender-affirming care and trans participation in school sports.
“If you’re going to attack our communities, then you’re gonna have to compete against someone from our community,” Childrey told the Ohio Capital Journal.
Childrey has declared her candidacy in the Democratic primary in Ohio House District 84, located in the northwestern part of the state. No other Democrat has entered the race so far. The incumbent is Republican Angela King.
King and Rep. Josh Williams are the lead sponsors of House Bill 245, which would ban drag performances outside of adult entertainment venues. Penalties for violation would include criminal charges. It’s awaiting action in a House committee. In testifying for the bill in November, King voiced objections to a drag show held during a Pride event in her district last summer. Childrey organized a protest against the bill.
King also supported a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors and one that would bar trans girls and women from participating in female sports in public schools. The legislature has passed these bills, but Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed them last week. An override is possible.
Childrey, a Virginia native, has lived in Ohio since 2014. She is the founder of Northwest Ohio Trans Advocacy. This is her first run for elected office.
“It’s well past time that we’ve got somebody who goes to the statehouse who’s actually interested in dealing with those issues — issues that actually impact people that can help our lives — rather than somebody who’s more focused on who they can hurt rather than who they can help,” Childrey told the Capital Journal.
Her priority issues, in addition to LGBTQ+ rights, include support for public education and job creation, expanding broadband access, and strengthening unions. “I’m committed to being accessible to our constituents, so that together we can make a real difference in our district, and state,” her campaign websitesays.
“You should have representation that actually cares about your day-to-day life and people that are actually working to make things better,” she said in the Capital Journal interview. “Together, we can actually make some real change one step at a time.”
Childrey, who is 40, transitioned at age 34. “I know what gender-affirming care is for me,” she told the publication. “I know that it was lifesaving. I know the years that I wasted … before I transitioned. … I’ve never regretted my transition.”
“The only thing that could possibly make me more happy than being the first trans woman elected in the state of Ohio is to not be the only trans person elected in the state of Ohio,” she added.
A transgender man’s murder in August has become a teaching opportunity in progressive Wayne County, Michigan, as mourning friends and family members were forced to defend his gender identity after death.
The senseless killing of 26-year-old Jean Butchart, shot in the head by a stranger on a hot August evening in Belleville, shocked his loved ones. But a cascade of misinformation based on conflicting reports about his gender worsened their heartbreak.
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As police searched for Butchart’s killer, conflicting information on the victim’s driver’s license led police and the media to misgender him as a woman.
“It was an honest mistake,” Julisa Abad, a trans woman who serves as director of transgender outreach for the advocacy group Fair Michigan, told news outlet MLive.
On the day of his murder, Butchart had started a new job doing landscape maintenance at a mobile home park. First responders found him motionless on the ground with no pulse and a gunshot wound to the head. He was declared dead at the scene.
While Butchart’s driver’s license identified him as male, his name had yet to be changed on the document. As such, his license reflected his deadname. Though Michigan has made changing sex on identity documents relatively easy and affordable, a name change is more complicated, time-consuming, and, for some, prohibitively expensive.
Witnesses at the crime scene identified Butchart as Jean, using the French pronunciation common in the Great Lakes region close to Quebec, so police were aware of the victim’s male gender identity.
“They called him Jean,” Van Buren Township Police Chief Jason Wright said. “That’s how we knew.”
Over the next few days, as the crime was reported internally and to the public, conflicting information on his driver’s license became a source of grief.
First, the Van Buren Township Police Department posted a news release about Butchart’s death in association with the capture of Matthew Torrey Tiggs Jr., 22, who was charged with Butchart’s killing as well as an attempted murder and assault in two other incidents over 10 days in August.
That release identified the victim as “26-year-old Jean Butchart” with no gender indication.
Then, when the prosecutor’s office issued a news release, the release identified Butchart by their deadname with “Jean” added in quotes, as is customary with nicknames.
“Because the names were female names with no explanation of the gender identity of the victim, it was wrongly assumed that the entry ‘male’ [for Butchart] was a mistake,” explained Maria Miller, the prosecutor’s office director of communications.
That misinformation was amplified in news reports and on social media, leading to frustration and anger among Butchart’s friends and family, who overwhelmed officials with an email campaign demanding a correction and a formal apology.
“We apologize to his family, friends, and to the transgender community,” Miller said in an email. “We immediately corrected this error after we confirmed Mr. Butchart’s gender identity. There was never any intent to misgender Mr. Butchart.”
While the mistake was traumatic for Butchart’s friends and family, Miller called the case “helpful” in spurring cultural competence training for officials in Wayne County.
Now, 18 area police departments have attended a special training session, with more planned for other Wayne County police departments and the sheriff’s office.
“We have to realize that not everything is coming from a place of malice,” said Fair Michigan’s Julisa Abad. “We’re all still learning all the alphabets of the LGBTQ+ umbrella – I don’t even know all of it.”
ev. Sawyer Vanden Heuvel hails from a small town where his church shunned him for being LGBTQ. However, when the pastor moved to South Dakota he became pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). It didn’t take long for Vanden Heuvel’s faith to beckon him to lead, and thus, he founded “a place for all” called Shepherd’s Table; born at the only LGBTQ community center in the state called the Prism Center.
This month, Shepherd’s Table became the first LGBTQ place of worship in South Dakota.
“Opening Shepherd’s Table has been a dream since I first connected with people while tabling with other Lutherans at a local Sioux Falls Pride event in 2021,” Vanden Heuvel said in an email to GLAAD. “There, I met so many LGBTQ+ folks in the area who had stories and experiences like that of many queer folk, including myself.”
The stories Vanden Heuvel heard were those of being kicked out of faith communities for coming out, stories of heartache, trauma, and survival; as well as stories of shame and isolation that come from being queer in the Midwest.
“The constant refrain I heard from people was how they longed for a community where both faith and queerness are not at odds with each other – a community where they truly could belong and experience the expansiveness of God’s love for all people,” said Vanden Heuvel.
That dream is now a reality. Two years ago Vanden Heuvel, also a 2020 GLAAD Media Institute Alum, had a “vision” for the ministry he founded.
The new, inclusive, community in Sioux Falls, South Dakota seeks to be a place for all to gather. And also, a place where LGBTQ people can be “seen, heard, loved, welcomed, and fed at Christ’s table,” reads the Shepherd’s Table website. “The Gospel of Jesus Christ does not discriminate, but we know that in some faith communities, people have been shamed or discriminated against for being LGBTQIA+. We welcome all to the table to experience the expansiveness of God’s love for all people,” the site continues.
With this said, the inclusive ministry practices: embracing LGBTQ people and their faith, and ensures the people are fed.
“[T]o witness the Holy Spirit make dreams like this become realized for a public, unapologetic, unashamed ministry of the Church that is focused on supporting LGBTQ+ people and their families, moves me deeply because I know this, without a doubt, will become life-saving and vital work for many who call South Dakota home.” Vanden Heuvel said.
Shepherd’s Table was founded on the call to remember Jesus as the “Good Shepherd.” The Good Shepherd who tends “to his flock and makes sure all are found in his fold.” The organizers also remember those fallen from violence against them. For instance, the community ensures Matthew Shepard’s memory always has a seat at Shepherd’s Table. Two anti-LGBTQ classmates murdered Shepard for being a gay man in 1998. Shepard was a Wyoming college student at the time, and he was 21-years-old.
“We consider Matthew’s life to be remembered as a saint and martyr for all of our queer siblings,” the ministry’s website reads.
St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Sioux Falls recently called Vanden Heuvel to serve, and then he became the mission developer and pastor for the Shepherd’s Table faith community. He earned his Master of Divinity in 2023 from Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In addition to earning his Bachelor of Arts in 2012 from Augustana University in Sioux Falls. Heuvel is passionate about building longer tables and creating spaces of belonging so that all may be fed, seen, heard, and loved at Christ’s table.
GLAAD Media Institute provides activist, spokesperson, and media engagement education, consultation and research for LGBTQ and allied community members, the media industry and advocacy organizations desiring to deepen their media impact
Erik Lundstrom was about 14 when he secretly purchased the coming-of-age novel “Rainbow Boys” and hid it in his room, waiting until he was alone to become absorbed in the story of three teenage boys coming to terms with their sexuality.
“I read that book five or six times that summer, just finally having some sort of outlet of stories about people that I identified with in a new and interesting, exciting and terrifying way,” Lundstrom told CNN.
It would be many more years until Lundstrom, now 32, would join the ranks of a small group of volunteers dedicated to creating a library packed to the brim with books written by or about LGBTQ people – metaphorically that is.
The Queer Liberation Library (QLL, pronounced “quill”) is entirely online. Since launching in October, more than 2,300 members have signed up to browse its free collection of hundreds of ebooks and audiobooks featuring LGBTQ stories, Lundstrom said.
After becoming increasingly alarmed at efforts to censor LGBTQ stories in the nation’s public schools, Kieran Hickey, the library’s founder and executive director, said they set out to create a haven for queer literature that can be accessed from anywhere in the country.
“Queer people have so many barriers to access queer literature – social, economic, and political,” Hickey said. “(For) anybody who’s on a journey of self-discovery in their sexual orientation or gender identity, finding information and going to queer spaces can be incredibly daunting. So, this is a resource that anybody in the United States can have no matter where they live.”
Until recent years, books featuring LGBTQ stories made up a small percentage of titles challenged in schools and public libraries in the US.
Between 2010 and 2019, just about 9% of unique titles challenged in libraries contained LGBTQ themes, according to data from the American Library Association, which tracks and opposes book censorship.
But books featuring the voices and experiences of LGBTQ people now make up an overwhelming proportion of books targeted for censorship – part of a broader, conservative-led movement that is limiting the rights and representation of LGBTQ Americans.
In 2021 and 2022, the ALA reported record-breaking attempts to ban books and more than 30% of the titles challenged included LGBTQ themes. And in the first eight months of 2023, more than 47% of challenges targeted LGBTQ titles, preliminary data shows.
Pulling these stories from shelves, book ban opponents argue, deprives readers of all ages of essential, affirming representation of the LGBTQ community’s lives and history.
“Fundamentally, at its core, it is discriminatory against who we are as a people and a community, and it ‘others’ our families and our stories,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of GLAAD, a nonprofit LGBTQ advocacy group.
A resource like QLL, she said, could be “a wonderful gift” for those searching for LGBTQ stories, including parents looking for children’s books, a person questioning their sexuality or a heterosexual person looking to understand their peers more deeply.
Naturally, QLL carries some of the most commonly challenged books, including Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer” and George M. Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue.”But its volunteer librarians have also curated lists of spine-tingling queer horror, indigenous folktales and time-bending fantasy among others.
Its virtual shelves are also adorned with fixtures of the queer literary canon such as Rita Mae Brown’s “Ruby Fruit Jungle” and groundbreaking new releases like transgender actor Elliot Page’s memoir “Pageboy.”
Lundstrom, who directs the library’s steering committee, said the range of genres and identities represented in the collection reflects the vast diversity of the LGBTQ community.
“Whoever finds use from this platform for whatever reason – whether that is for vital information they need, or if it is to read a fun little romp about two men kissing – whatever that is, we want to be able to serve that,” Lundstrom said.
A library without walls
Though the QLL may not be able to provide the small joys of browsing cozy corridors of shelves and perusing time-worn book spines, its online platform offers something that can be invaluable to some readers: privacy.
Readers who are queer or hoping to explore their gender or sexuality may not be ready to explore a shelf of LGBTQ books in a public space or crack open such a book in front of family and friends, Hickey said. Being able to check out books from the privacy of one’s home or read on an unassuming tablet or laptop in public can relieve some of those feelings of anxiety and risk.
“This was a way to combat the book bans, but also to give people that sense of home and safety in their own space without having to potentially out themselves in any way,” Hickey said. “Privacy and hiding don’t have to be the same thing.”
The library can be accessed through a website called Overdrive and an app called Libby, which many public libraries use to house their digital collections. QLL’s informational website also features a “quick exit” bar at the screen, which redirects away from the site if a user needs to suddenly hide the website orleave the page.
Funded by donations and registered as a nonprofit, QLL is also not beholden to government funding or the school or library boards that typically enforce book bans. Selena Van Horn, an education professor at California State University in Fresno whose research focuses on elementary school literacy and LGBTQ literature in K-12 schools, noted that some libraries may not have robust LGBTQ collections merely because they have tight budgets or live in remote areas with limited resources.
“Not everyone has access (to LGBTQ books) purely based on their location,” Van Horn said. “So being able to access things online is a wonderful thing.”
Advocates warn bans reinforce stigma
Efforts to remove books because they contain LGBTQ characters or themes perpetuates the “othering” and exclusion that many LGBTQ people already struggle to overcome, said Ellis, the president of GLAAD.
“Children and adults are hearing that there is something wrong with them”when people propose banning their stories, Ellis said. “So that immediately … builds this culture that LGBTQ people, queer people don’t belong and should be on the margins of society.”
For children and young adults seeing stories that represent their identity can be an essential part of developing positive self-worth, said Van Horn.
“When children don’t have access to stories that represent their identities in a positive light – that show that people like them go on to do wonderful things – they can internalize those feelings and wonder, ‘Am I what they are saying I am in some negative way?’” Van Horn said.
This is especially important for LGBTQ children or youth whose families or school environments are hostile to their identities, she said.
“It’s vitally important that they have access to literature and potentially communities – even in an online space – that can support them and know that they’re beautiful, wonderful people and their identities will be valued, even if not in the space they are right now,” Van Horn said.
Already, the library has received messages from readers thrilled to see themselves reflected in the book collection, including one that was particularly meaningful to Hickey.
“There was one person who let us know that we’re their main access to library materials at this point because of where they live in a rural area,” Hickey said.
“That was a lot for me because I was just like, ‘This is the exact person I’m trying to reach. This is the exact person I want to help.’”
