As we celebrate the immeasurable contributions of LGBTQI+ people during Pride month and commemorate the 53rd anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, we must also renew our commitment to advancing a more equitable America for our LGBTQI+ communities.
Seven years ago, the Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land, but despite this progress, over half of U.S. states can still deny LGBTQI+ people in the United States basic freedoms. LGBTQI+ individuals can still be denied a rental home or a wedding cake, simply because of who they love or how they identify.
Even worse, conservative lawmakers in state legislatures across the country are passing extreme bills targeting LGBTQI+ communities. These Republican-sponsored measures directly attack LGBTQI+ youth—their identity, dignity, and even access to basic health care.
The historic inequities faced by the LGBTQI+ communities and the uptick of radical, anti-LGBTQI+ attacks demand a coordinated federal response. But for far too long, policymakers have lacked the data necessary to craft and implement public policy that serves LGBTQI+ people in the United States.
While the federal government currently collects some data on LGBTQI+ people, it falls dramatically short.
The American Community Survey only accounts for cohabitating same-sex couples—meaning that it does not capture more than 5 in 6 LGBTQI+ adults.
That is why the U.S. House of Representatives passed the LGBTQI+ Data Inclusion Act last week in a historic bipartisan vote of 220-201.
The bill would require federal surveys to include questions pertaining to sexual orientation, gender identity, and variations on sex characteristics on a voluntary, confidential basis. By doing this, the LGBTQI+ Data Inclusion Act would ensure that lawmakers and federal agencies have the comprehensive data they need to advance polices that better serve LGBTQI+ people.
Solid data on sexual orientation and gender identity in federal surveys will help lawmakers craft policies to remedy the disparities faced by LGBTQI+ individuals—particularly LGBTQI+ people of color, who are disproportionately impacted by these disparities. More comprehensive and inclusive federal data could help remedy systemic inequities in unemployment, health care, housing instability and more.
Earlier this month, President Biden issued a groundbreaking executive order to advance equality for LGBTQI+ people across the United States — including by expanding the collection of data pertaining to LGBTQI+ people in the United States. This legislation would expand the ability of our federal agencies to follow the President’s directive so that we can craft policies tailored to the specific needs of our LGBTQI+ communities.
As parents, we also championed this legislation because it will help parents across the country better understand LGTBQI+ youth and their experiences. LGBTQI+ youth deserve the best available data-driven information and resources to validate their experiences, protect them from harm, and help them thrive. Together, we’ll be able to provide these resources for LGBTQI+ youth who are higher risk of depression and attempted suicide.
The LGBTQI+ Data Inclusion Act is a long overdue step in the right direction, and it could not have been possible without the tireless work of LGBTQI+ organizations and activists. More than 150 LGBTQI+ groups and allies have helped shape this bill to ensure that Congress enacts the most comprehensive and effective legislation possible.
Policymakers have a duty to lift LGBTQI+ voices and ensure our LGBTQI+ constituents are all seen, heard, and counted. The House made history this Pride month and passed the LGBTQI+ Data Inclusion Act, we urge our colleagues in the Senate to do the same.
Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D) is a member of the U.S. House from Arizona; Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney(D) is a member of the U.S. House from New York.
There used to be a time when passing a law like same-sex marriage rights meant safety and security for those involved. However, if the controversy surrounding the draft to overturn Roe vs. Wade shows us anything, it’s that nothing is set in stone—even if it once seemed that way.
It’s never been more critical for minority groups, such as the LGBTQ community, to keep up to date with what’s happening in the political sphere. So far in 2022, GOP lawmakers have historically pushed forward hundreds of state bills seeking to erode rights for queer teens, children, and their families. This includes diminishing protections for transgender and gay youth and restricting discussions about LGBTQ topics in public schools.
It’s time to make sense of the massive disaster that is our political process and level the playing field. Using governmental resources, such as the US Senate or US Representatives website, and trusted independent sources for drafts and votes like WeWillDecide, to help gain an unbiased and complete picture of the situation.
There’s a way to level the political playing field and it’s called keeping score. Our politicians need to feel about the American public like the American public feels about the IRS during an audit. Knowledge is power, and, in this case, means knowing exactly how your congressman and representatives are voting and how this aligns with your own political ideals.
Think Small For Big Change
Data from LGBTQ rights advocacy group, Freedom for All Americans, suggests that the number of bills filed with measures to restrict LGBTQ rights has nearly quadrupled over the last three years. With over hundreds of measures pending in state legislatures across the country, the impact of informed and engaged voters could make the difference between these bills passing or not.
Using online tools to track drafts, votes, and proposals can reveal how larger change is built incrementally. Just think about who will become the next Supreme Court justice. Who votes makes a significant difference. For example, the LGBTQ community is severely underrepresented in Congress, with just 2.1% representation compared to 5.6% of the American population. How many restrictive bills would pass if the LGBTQ community was better represented?
A Right to Feel Safe
While we might not be able to create representation in Congress instantly, we can ask politicians to be allies and hold them accountable for their actions. Votes and drafts are a marker of who that politician is, so unbiased, factual records are favorable to sensationalist media. That way, we can make our own opinions on whether Roe vs. Wade is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to revoking rights.
We can all see that the war on abortion has nothing to do with babies – it is all about the control of populations. Women’s rights and LGBTQ rights have historically been aligned as both have faced violence and restrictions. Like women, those in the LGBTQ community also have a right to feel safe within our systems, with individual freedoms protected. The possibility of Roe vs. Wade being overturned has made us question the safety of everyone.
Stronger Together
All minorities combined creates a majority, and this is when change can start to happen – but we have to do the work. The bottom line is if all minorities are protected, everyone is protected. If some of us are safe and others aren’t, none of us are safe: it’s going to show up on everyone’s doorstep eventually.
We live in an age of fear-driven politics, and keeping the mechanisms of politics shrouded in secrecy and jargon is a tactic for disempowering the voting public. Knowing your representatives through online research is the best start to being your own political advocate. How else can you avoid aligning yourself with the GOP congressman trying to ban teachers from talking about LGBTQ issues with students without parental consent? Bill proposals rarely show up in the news, but they make it clear to see what a congressman is actually about.
Understanding and awareness come through critical thinking and help us build resilience to the noise. Keeping the process secret is dangerous and ingrains the belief that there’s nothing we can do to affect our situation. Humanizing our politicians and making information free and easily accessible is one way we can take the fear out of politics and communicate better with each other to make change happen.
Combating Apathy
Politicians bank on making people afraid and apathetic. If they can keep the American public in flight, flight, or freeze mode, they win when people are too distracted, exhausted, or broken down to make informed decisions. However, when enough informed people care and make an effort, tangible change will occur.
The legalization of same-sex marriage in Ireland is a fantastic example of people-power. In 2015, Irish citizens living abroad returned home in droves to make their vote as they were unable to vote from overseas or by proxy. The #hometovote took off on social media as people came together to support the LGBTQ community by sharing their experiences and encouraging each other to vote.
Politicians have been singing the same song and dance for so long, and it’s going to be up to young people, women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community to work together to shake things up. Rather than doom-scroll, why not use five minutes to search out unbiased political information or check your voter registration status instead? It’s time to learn we’re our own best advocates.
Kelly Riordan, the founder of Wewilldecide.com and a healthcare worker, is a typical frustrated voter that knew she could create a better way for the average person to obtain their political information without bias. She has no experience in politics, which she feels is an advantage in several ways, and gives her a unique point of view over those who specialize in it.
More than 50 years after the famous Stonewall riots, the only Pride Month tradition more predictable than big city parades in June are the perennial complaints about the “commodification” of the gay rights movement.
These days, the month often features corporations and consumer brands participating in the celebrations, with bright rainbow packaging and gay-themed items for sale. Instead of this salutary sign of inclusion and tolerance being welcomed, however, it routinely gets attacked.
Claiming that a gay person needs to vote for a certain party or situate themselves on a certain point of the ideological spectrum is — to use some of today’s pop psychology terms — gatekeeping and gaslighting.
Critics often insist that corporations’ commitment to gay pride is shallow and self-serving, or that rainbow-themed merchandise and advertising during June end up tokenizing rather than celebrating the community. In the run-up to Pride Month, a typical tweet sarcastically enthused “2 days until companies pretend to care about us!,” while journalist Sherina Poyyail wrote an article titled “Why Rainbow Capitalism Is Making Me Start To Dread Pride Month As A Queer Person.”
While these critics claim that corporations are missing the true meaning of the season, they’re the ones missing the point of Pride Month. Buying a T-shirt with the phrase “Love Is Not a Crime” from Target won’t, on its own, change the world or end anti-gay discrimination. A person who wears it may hope to have some marginal positive effect on the people around, but it’s primarily an individual choice about self-expression.
Though there are historical connections between the gay rights movement and opposing capitalism, it’s a mistake for the LGBTQ community today to embrace an anti-corporate attitude. The desire to associate gay identity with a particular part of the political spectrum doesn’t reflect the community’s diversity and can actively alienate people who are not part of that political group — at the expense of the interests of the community as a whole.
What was originally known as the “gay liberation” movement was born out of a wide-ranging cultural ferment on the left in the 1960s and early 1970s that also gave rise to the women’s liberation, anti-war and Black power movements, a cross-pollination among activists groups described in Cornell University’s archive on the history of gay activism.
Given this background, and aided by the fact that their conservative antagonists were generally in favor of free-market economic policies, gay rights activists during the 1970s were associated with a hostility toward capitalism, markets and corporations.
This was not entirely by default — some gay activists were committed socialists who thought the two struggles were closely linked. The socialist theorizers in favor of liberation via class struggle and the abolition of private property, however, were a small minority of the movement. Gay historian Martin Duberman, an activist himself, readily admits that “The gay left — like every other kind of left in this country — has rarely represented more than a small minority.”
But that link between gay rights and hostility toward free markets continues to exist for some people today. Union organizer Meghan Brophy, for instance, epitomized this viewpoint when she wrote for the socialist magazine Jacobin in 2019 that “the greatest gains for the LGBTQ movement came through fighting corporations.”
The actual history of gay pride and corporate America, however, is much more positive and collaborative. Rutgers law professor Carlos A. Ball deftly tells this history in his book, “The Queering of Corporate America” (also out in 2019). Ball, a progressive who has plenty of criticism for corporations, documents how U.S. companies— often persuaded by internal affinity groups formed by their own gay employees — implemented nondiscriminatory hiring rules and extended benefits to same-sex domestic partners when virtually no national politicians were willing to support such policies publicly. For most of the late 20th century, the private sector well outpaced the political establishment on gay rights.
So while many early gay radicals were understandably suspicious of corporate America, we can now safely say that those worries were overstated — and, at times, based on pre-existing ideological commitments that had little to do with sexual freedom or civil rights. Someone who happens to be an advocate for both gay rights and socialist politics is free to try to link those two goals, but I as a gay man living in the 21st century don’t have to accept that they are connected. And it’s weirdly old-fashioned to be repeating hippie-era denunciations of big business when one of the world’s most valuable corporations is led by an openly gay CEO.
Even if it was the case that most gay people were clustered at one end of the political spectrum in previous generations (impossible to say because of the lack of polling), that’s not true today. While non-straight Americans are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans, a 2020 study by UCLA’s William Institute found that “LGBT people, like other minority groups, hold diverse beliefs and political affiliations.”
Claiming that a gay person needs to vote for a certain party or situate themselves on a certain point of the ideological spectrum is — to use some of today’s pop psychology terms — gatekeeping and gaslighting. Fox News contributor Guy Benson, for example, has described how after he came out, critics of his politics insisted he must be a “self-hating gay person.” To suggest that you can’t be out and proud without being a progressive who thinks corporations are evil is an offensive attempt to program someone else’s identity.
Moreover, it’s exactly the kind of high-handed effort that activists have rightly denounced in other contexts. Progressives would never accept conservatives insisting that they can’t be both gay and Christian. Why would I accept that I can’t (or shouldn’t) be gay and libertarian? And does it really make sense to turn down offers of support for gay causes and events from big business just to strike a stylishly militant pose?
That is not to say that the two major parties in America are equally aligned on policy issues affecting gay people. It has been a long time since the 1980s, during which, as historian Clayton Howard told FiveThirtyEight in 2021, “a lot of Democrats were indistinguishable from Republicans on gay issues.”
GOP majorities in many states have recently backed laws that critics characterize as anti-gay and that most Democrats strongly oppose. But if gay rights supporters want broader, rather than narrower national support, tying their agenda to unrelated economic stances will only further diminish the pool of potential allies.
It’s weirdly old-fashioned to be repeating hippie-era denunciations of big business when one of the world’s most valuable corporations is led by an openly gay CEO.
While it is perhaps inevitable that institutions that are inherently political (because they are controlled by the government) will be flashpoints in the culture wars, the private part of society based on markets, competition and voluntary association has a much greater opportunity to defuse conflict — if we allow it to stay private and voluntary.
This is not because the institutions of civil society necessarily bring us all together, but because they allow us to live and work in our own chosen worlds and build our own chosen families. No corporation can dictate your living conditions the way the government can — but they can supply you with many of the desirable accouterments of out and proud living.
The United States is a country with a long history of market-driven innovation, growth and success, and gay people have been a big part of that. While some skeptics will always be cynical about the motives of pride-themed products and marketing campaigns, the rainbow packaging on store shelves is a stunning advance from a time when many companies were worried that having a single openly gay employee would lose them customers and cost them money. Even a socialist revolutionary should be able to celebrate that.
It happens every June. Well meaning folks supporting queer rights completely ignore the intersex community, people like myself who are born with sex characteristics (chromosomes, genitals, hormone levels and/or internal organs) that don’t align with typical notions of either “male” or “female” bodies. Although we make up nearly 2 percent of the population and have been speaking out about the human rights abuses based on our non-binary bodies for over three decades, we continue to be erased even by those in the rainbow community who share these experiences of oppression rooted in the same sexist, homophobic and transphobic stereotypes. Some intersex people identify as gay or trans, while many, like myself, do not. Nevertheless, we all experience similar harms largely based on other’s irrational fear of difference.
Traditional gender norms and non-scientific beliefs about binary sex are driving the most detrimental type of discrimination against the intersex community: Physical erasure through irreversible, nonconsensual and medically unnecessary procedures. These medical interventions often cause long term physical and emotional harms and have been deemed human rights abuses by the U.N. and other human rights bodies and organizations, yet continue to occur largely unregulated, around the world.
Much like the trans community, intersex people are also fighting for bodily autonomy. LGBT+ communities and their allies in the United States are well aware of the influx of hateful legislation denying trans youth the right to gender affirming healthcare. But nobody’s talking about the fact many of these bills include specific exclusions for intersex children expressly permitting doctors to irreverisbly surgically “fix” their healthy bodies without their consent. The same oppressive movement denying trans youth healthcare they want and need is promoting harmful unwanted intervention on intersex kids. And it seems to go unnoticed and without a peep from the queer community.
Kudos to President Biden for recongizing the intersex community and including us in the recent White House statement in support of Pride month. It is time for the LGBTQ+ movement to finally join the fight for intersex rights and the celebration of intersex lives.
As someone who has spent over three decades fighting for the rights of our LGBTQ+ communities, particularly safe spaces for our youth, I have seen and been part of many forward changes. I lead the LGBT Network, which held the first LGBTQ+ youth prom in America’s suburbs, started the first recognized Parent-Teacher Association in the nation to focus on LGBTQ+ youth, and opened America’s first LGBTQ+ senior affordable housing in suburbia. We have helped to start hundreds of gay-straight alliance clubs in our schools and have been a part of the many struggles, rallies, and fight for full equality and equity. After watching the most recent episode of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher, it feels like 1993 all over again, although this time it’s different and even more frightening.
On last Friday’s Real Time With Bill Maher, Maher said the number of youth identifying as LGBTQ+ is rising because it’s “trendy,” while he spewed other harmful, homophobic and transphobic rhetoric. Maher continued his vitriolic commentary by taking several more potshots at LGBTQ+ youth, including claims that society was “experimenting” on children through the use of puberty blockers and genital surgery as a means to perpetuate culture wars. Maher correlated his comments on “trendiness” with statistics on LGBTQ+ youth in California versus other states, like Ohio, claiming that “either Ohio is shaming them or California is creating them.”
Back in 1993, I would chalk this up to ignorance and truly believed education would help folks to critically think and change, and it did. But today is different, and the alarm bell is ringing — loud! The onslaught of attacks legislatively and in the media against our community goes well beyond ignorance; it is hateful, purposeful, and intentional. We need to wake up and be smart in our fight, as all our LGBTQ+ youth need us now more than ever. We need to speak up and hold everyone accountable, even those who purport to be “liberal and progressive.” That’s why I am calling for the LGBTQ+ community and supporters of LGBTQ+ youth to boycott HBO until Real Time With Bill Maher is removed from its platform. Maher has gone too far.
Now, I am not one for getting caught up in the extreme left and right’s battle on “cancel culture,” and I know many of us, including myself, will suffer from not being able to watch Jean Smart in Hacks. But the LGBTQ+ youth are the ones who are really suffering from being told that it is a trend to say you are LGBTQ+, while at the same time being shoved and kicked in school hallways, and HBO must take immediate action and remove Bill Maher and simultaneously take action to let every LGBTQ+ youth know they are loved.
The consequences of not doing anything can be deadly. Nearly half of LGBTQ+ youth seriously considered suicide in the past year, and it’s comments ones Maher’s thar give license to others to dehumanize and torment LGBTQ+ youth. Maher’s words are also nothing more than a dog whistle for those who seek to roll back the rights of the LGBTQ+ community which we are seeing happen throughout our nation. The trend is not willy-nilly identification as being LGBTQ+; it is the alarming measures being passed to deny LGBTQ+ people’s existence and rights. Whether it’s Florida’s “don’t say gay” law or the dozens of states that are banning trans athletes and rights, this is unfortunately the real trend we should be talking about and organizing around to change.
Our LGBTQ+ youth are perfect just the way they are — they need no fixing. They need supportive spaces and policies to be completely free and authentic and to achieve their full potential. What they don’t need are the rants on a platform like Bill Maher’s show, which pose the greatest risk to LGBTQ+ youth’s safety and well-being. Call on HBO now to take immediate action and remove Real Time from its lineup. Maher has simply gone too far. Our actions and voices will send a loud message that these types of careless and negligent behavior and speech will not be tolerated, and in doing so we can instead focus on the work of making sure that not one more kid contemplates taking their life simply for being who they are. It’s the least we could do as we get ready to celebrate Pride.
David Kilmnick is the founder and president of the LGBT Network, one of the largest LGBTQ+ advocacy groups in the U.S., which is based in New York City and Long Island, N.Y. The LGBT Network operates four LGBT community centers throughout the expansive Long Island and Queens region to reach and serve as many LGBTQ+ people and their families as possible.
Cubans might have a chance this year to do something they’ve done very rarely: cast a meaningful vote. The government, which rarely consults its people, says it will allow Cubans to “have their say” in a referendum, with respect to whether same-sex couples, a minority, can marry.
Cuba’s government has a well-documented history of violating citizens’ right to vote in free and fair elections and to take part in public affairs. The Communist Party, the only one allowed in the country, has governed since the 1959 revolution without giving citizens the option to vote its leaders out of office—or even to protest their actions.
But now, authorities are subjecting basic rights to a political football between advocates for equality and non-discrimination and their opponents, some of whom mischaracterize their work as “gender ideology.”
To be sure, the inclusion of marriage equality in the draft Family Code, which has been undergoing a “public consultation” since February, is a positive development. It includes a gender-neutral definition of marriage, thereby opening the door to marriage between same-sex couples.
The draft Family Code also strengthens women’s rights in domestic law by reinforcing their sexual and reproductive rights and upholding the equitable distribution of domestic and care work. It also expands children’s rights by, for example, enshrining their rights to be heard and to physical integrity, as well as the principle of progressive autonomy, to allow children to participate in decisions affecting them based on their age and maturity. The right of same-sex couples to be free from discrimination, however, is proving the be amongthe most contentious of the draft Code’s provisions.
The “public consultation” process ended on April 30 and the draft will be put to a referendum vote later this year. But there’s serious reason to doubt that the plebiscite will fully respect voters’ rights. Given that the administration of Miguel Díaz-Canel controls all branches of power and severely restricts freedom of expression, respecting people’s will in the polls will ultimately be up to the administration.
What’s also troubling is the political pageantry of putting individual rights, including the right of gay and lesbian couples to be free from discrimination, to a popularity vote. In Cuba, this comes after public protests in 2019 against redefining marriage to include same-sex couples in the draft of a new constitution. In response to this outcry, the government withdrew that provision from the draft, approved that same year, and punted the marriage equality question to this Family Code referendum.
Other countries have tried this. Ireland (which was required by law to hold a referendum to change the constitution) and Australia upheld the rights of same-sex couples when citizens voted overwhelmingly in favor of marriage equality. Bermuda and Taiwan’s referendums rejected same-sex marriage (Taiwan’s legislature later passed it).
Referendums can be an important component of democracy and can, in some circumstances, help break the political inertia to uphold rights and promote rights-respecting policies. Yet, ultimately, the recognition of the rights of minorities, including LGBT people, should not hinge on a popularity vote. That is an affront to the human dignity of already marginalized people subject to violence and discrimination, and could expose their lives and identities to unnecessary and harmful public debate, scrutiny, evaluation.
What would we say if the referendum was about whether a religious minority could practice their religion openly? Or, whether an ethnic minority should enjoy freedom from discrimination? This would provoke moral outrage. There should be no differences when the right of same-sex couples to be free from discrimination is at stake.
What’s worse, in Cuba, news and government reports suggest the vote may be close, a prospect that is not helped by the Catholic Church describing the Family Code as attacking “the nature of the family” and constituting “gender ideology.” Evangelical and other churches have also opposed the Code’s provisions on these grounds.
“Gender ideology” is a vacuous catch-all term generally intended to denote an ill-defined gay and feminist conspiracy to wreak havoc on traditional values. Far-right movements and politicians worldwide, including Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Florida’s Ron Desantis, have peddled disinformation to popularize the term, using it to attack LGBT, children’s, and women’s rights. Yet, what in Cuba they are calling “gender ideology” is really about gender equality.
Cuba should urgently rectify its miserable rights record, including by allowing people to participate in periodic free and fair elections. But this would-be referendum is categorically misguided. The people’s will should certainly guide public policy, but not dictate whether well-established international human rights will be upheld. Instead of passing on its duty to the electorate, Cuban authorities should themselves uphold these rights, including if the referendum fails to do so.
Oklahoma’s legislature has passed a bill that would ban transgender students from using bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. Senate Bill 615 would require students in the state’s public schools to use restrooms according to the sex on their birth certificate, barring transgender girls from using female bathrooms, and transgender boys from using male bathrooms. Governor Kevin Stitt is expected to sign the bill into law this week.
Bathroom bans have a pernicious history. In 2016, at least 18 US states considered bills that would restrict transgender students’ access to restrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities. Now, after two years of relative silence from state lawmakers, there are troubling signs of a resurgence of these legislative efforts: Alabama recently enacted a bathroom ban, and now Oklahoma is on the verge.
Oklahoma’s bathroom ban is part of a larger wave of recent attacks against transgender youth in the United States. Lawmakers in at least 30 states have proposed athletic bans this year limiting or completely barring transgender students from participating in sports; 16 states now restrict transgender students from playing alongside peers. In addition to these athletic bans, officials in Texasand Arkansas have taken steps to investigate or prosecute the provision of gender-affirming care for transgender children.
Oklahoma’s bathroom ban would endanger transgender students’ health and undermine their rights to education and privacy. Bathroom bans are documented to exacerbate physical and verbal harassment against transgender children, and adversely affect their physical and mental health, academic achievement, and participation in school. If enacted into law, Senate Bill 615 would further isolate and stigmatize transgender children who are already prone to bullying, rendering schools an unsafe and hostile environment. Many students are effectively “outed” through these bans as they are compelled to implicitly disclose their transgender status through their bathroom usage.
Oklahoma’s lawmakers have chosen to expand a nationwide assault on transgender children’s rights. Officials should instead ensure transgender children have safe and comfortable access to bathrooms, and an education free from discrimination. Lawmakers should defend the rights of all students, not undermine them.
This year, the Republican majority in the Arizona state legislature passed two bills, S.B. 1138 and S.B. 1165, which target trans children. The day before the 2022 Trans Day of Visibility, Gov. Doug Ducey (R) signed them into law, claiming they were about “fairness.”
In reality, S.B. 1138 and S.B. 1165 willfully restrict the opportunities and medical care available to trans children, with no regard to their quality of life or peace of mind.
The passage of these laws will humiliate and harm trans youth in Arizona, and increase the risk of bullying and social ostracization. And when we know that over 52% – over half – of all trans and non-binary minors seriously consider suicide, laws that target and restrict their lives further could quite literally be a death sentence.
S.B. 1165 bans trans girls from playing on girls’ sports teams because “there are inherent biological distinctions that merit separate categories” for players.
In other words, trans girls are not real girls.
Schools will be forced to prove that girls weren’t assigned male at birth by performing invasive bodily searches of their genitals. The same Republicans who insist that LGBTQ education in schools is sexualizing children would force girls to undergo these searches.
Arizona Republicans pretend that this anti-trans sports law is about fairness. Gov. Ducey cites the need to protect cisgender girls from trans girls who would seek to “unfairly” steal their “titles, standing, and scholarships.”
At the core of this law is the belief that trans girls are not real girls – they are boys masquerading as girls, trying to cheat. This is a gross interpretation of a positive trend – that transgender athletes are finally starting to experience the freedom to compete on the teams of their real gender.
Having access to spaces, like sports teams, where their gender identity is embraced dramatically reduces the likelihood that trans youth will attempt suicide.
S.B. 1138 prohibits trans minors from accessing gender reassignment surgery, which is both affirming and often lifesaving for trans youth experiencing gender dysphoria. There is a reason why every major medical association supports gender-affirming healthcare.
Gov. Ducey and other members of the Arizona GOP claim that they are acting in the best interest of trans youth. But for trans children, who bear disproportionately high rates of mental illness, this is the very care that will transform their lives for the better.
It is undeniably wrong for politicians to have more say over a trans child’s body than themselves and their family members. And anti-trans sports bills are just another way of invalidating transgender people and seeking to cast us to the sidelines once more.
But we will not be silenced. Fighting against atrocities like these bills is about saving lives – the lives of children.
Republican leaders in Arizona, and across the country, are obsessed with trans children, and LGBTQ youth more broadly. In 2022, Arizona led the nation with the most anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in its state legislature. These laws are not about fairness or respect, as Ducey says. They are a sinister step toward controlling and coercing trans youth. They are absolutely reprehensible, and everyone in Arizona, and across the nation, should be raising their voices in outrage.
In 2023, the Super Bowl LVII is scheduled to take place in Arizona, outside of my hometown Phoenix, the same city where I am running as a candidate for the state legislature. Phoenix has one of the highest populations of LGBTQ residents of any city in the United States, and my district in particular, Legislative District 5, has a high concentration of LGBTQ constituents.
And we’re not alone. Religious leaders and voting rights activists all over the country have already called for the Super Bowl to be relocated over the countless heinous restrictive voting and election laws passed by the Republicans in Arizona this year.
If the NFL truly stands with us, they know what to do. They talk the talk; now it’s time to walk the walk.
Brianna Westbrook, a transgender working-class parent who grew up in poverty, is running for State Representative for District 5. For nearly a decade, she has worked tirelessly with local and national progressive organizations and organizers to meet the community’s needs.
My decision to transition took place while in the midst of reading the classic George Orwell opus on war: Homage to Catalonia.
Having been on and off feminizing hormones for the previous nine months, it was in Barcelona when I called my best friend and told her that my 35-year wait to embrace myself was finally ending.
Barcelona was also the city where Orwell’s personal narrative of fighting for a foreign nation in combat took place.
When coupled with other works on conflict by literary luminaries from the past including Faulkner and Hemingway, I’d come to appreciate the skill seemingly necessary when trying to write under such conditions and respected the apparent sacrifices that came with their tales.
Almost three years after that May 2019 phone call took place, I too am experiencing the conditions faced by the writers named above. However a different realization has taken place in the midst of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and my time spent here on the front lines.
That reality has imbued me with a new perspective on life as a writer, a transgender female and a minority in general, one that, no doubt, many others realized as part of their own existence well before I did in mine.
Put bluntly, the danger and microaggressions that non-cis, non-hetero, non-white, non-males face in the United States is the same as being in a European ground war.
The comparison is apt for several reasons.
After decamping to the northeast Ukrainian battlefront for the last month and counting, I understood with stark clarity that ever since announcing the decision to live as my most authentic self, I had been faced with the same obstacles I’m encountering here including the need to exhaustively be on guard against danger, to prove myself over and over as an outsider, and to wake up wondering every morning if this is the day I’ll die.
Having lived as a cishet white male for the vast majority of my life, the risks faced by those who blazed the pathways for my own success had always been a concept which eluded me.
No longer.
In recognizing the physical, mental, and emotional similarities which exist between the two spaces, I finally accepted that whatever privilege I’d previously enjoyed had long since dissipated. Furthermore, in spending the last few years compartmentalizing the slights, bigotry, and prejudice directed towards me, I was unable to fully grasp the constant struggle too many others are forced to endure.
Being a party to an actual, defined war has forever rendered my unintended ignorance moot.
In addition to making me aware of societal hostility, and the ramifications surrounding it, living among constant shelling, rocket attacks, and machine gun fire has also made me further consider why bloodshed, and the scent of ever looming death, may have creatively driven the authors I previously mentioned.
My current belief is that for those men, whose lives were otherwise bland, pedestrian, and without racial-, ethnic-, or gender-based burdens, seeking out the ultimate confrontation allowed for them to feel alive and stare at death.
For many who are minorities, every day brings a slight twist on that challenge: we avoid death, while hoping to grasp life.
Now is the time for the larger progressive movement to connect the struggles for LGBTQ and reproductive rights more deeply, especially for those who are transgender, gender non-conforming and non-binary.
Trans people get pregnant. Trans people need abortions. Trans people deserve access to culturally competent medical care. Trans people must have the freedom to live, something that is currently under unprecedented direct attack through hundreds of pieces of legislation across the country. Despite all of this, trans people have been marginalized in the mainstream fight over body autonomy. That must end. The reasons why are right in front of us.
Take Idaho as a recent and obvious example. Headlines there within two days of each other make the point: “Idaho House passes Texas-style abortion ban” and “An Idaho bill would criminalize medical treatments for trans youths. It echoes abortion bans.” These links are undeniable.
As is often the case, the forces opposed to body autonomy for cisgender women also oppose it for trans people. It is clear that this is one fight, but for decades, there has been an over-emphasis on cisgender women in the reproductive rights movement and transgender people have been left out and left behind. Restricting a women’s right to choose, curtailing sexual freedom, homophobia and transphobia are all inextricably linked with common roots.
The right wing mainstays of the anti-abortion movement, including The Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and the Liberty Council are at the forefront of the anti-trans movement, especially the ability for trans people–including children–to have equal access to health care.
TransLash’s investigative series last year, the Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality discussed how these very organizations, many of whom have been designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, are targeting the trans community as the next wave in the war over who gets to control our bodies.https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gh3rPqhWLXo?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1
For these organizations, the fight against abortion and the fight against trans rights are increasingly one and the same. And as was detailed in a recent Time Magazine piece, anti-trans forces are borrowing tactics from the anti-abortion movement in targeting doctors who provide gender-affirming healthcare.
By missing these obvious connections and denying a broader civil and human rights frame, the mainstream reproductive rights movement is playing into the hands of the right wing.
At the December 1, 2021 protests outside the Supreme Court hearing on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Task Force witnessed hundreds of protesters but the ones hoping to see Roe v. Wade overturned were not just holding anti-choice signs, but also anti-LGBTQ placards. They clearly get the connection.
Each of us who wishes to decide what we do with our body is in the crosshairs. As individuals, we know that our humanity is larger than the physical forms we are born into. A coalition of people with this understanding, in addition to a deep commitment to racial, disability and economic justice, would create a powerful force for human rights grounded in body autonomy. And that force is needed now to preserve and extend hard fought gains made over the past fifty years.https://www.youtube.com/embed/2oDMaQ0Wwqg?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1
But there is a solution. Visibility. Conversation. Education. Advocacy. The need for us to end this erasure is why Translash created the “Trans Bodies, Trans Choices” short-film series. Putting transgender people and their stories at the center of the discussion is essential if we are going to create the understanding necessary to bring people together both cis and trans. This is about transgender people rather than “transgender issues”.
“Trans Bodies Trans Choices” tells powerful stories of trans people whose lives were changed forever because they had access not only to abortion but also reproductive services and trans-affirming medical care. These are stories that tens of millions of people can relate to, and they bind us all together in a common cause.
Telling our truths and leveraging our collective power is how we will create the change required for us all to live whole and with dignity. Storytelling is the first step in creating a common bond but there are so many other steps that must follow.
The only way we will make progress is if we are in it together.
Imara Jones is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning journalist, intersectional-news producer, and creator of TransLash. Kierra Johnson is the Executive Director of the National LGBGTQ Task Force.
