[This column appears in the May/June 2021 issue of Boston Spirit magazine.]
This legislative session has brought an onslaught of bills taking aim at transgender young people across the country. Transgender youth, their families, friends and other supporters—including doctors, coaches and teachers—are powerfully organizing against these efforts. They need and deserve the support of every one of us in the LGBTQ+ community to be speaking out along with them.
As this issue [went] to press, Arkansas lawmakers [had] just pushed through a dangerous ban on established, best-practice medical care for transgender youth. It’s the first state to pass such a radical and cruel measure, but not the only one to consider it—a similar bill is currently pending in Alabama. The legislature overrode Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson’s veto of the bill, which he accurately called out as extreme. Just a week before, though, Governor Hutchinson signed a bill to exclude transgender girls from participating in school sports with their peers, as did the governors of Mississippi and Tennessee. In South Dakota, Governor Kristi Noem took the unusual measure of signing two executive orders to do the same when that state’s legislature failed to pass a bill to the governor’s satisfaction.
This trend, spurred by anti-LGBTQ forces seeking to create a cultural wedge issue at the expense of vulnerable kids, isn’t confined to one area of the country. Bills to exclude transgender girls from school sports have been introduced here in New England, too. While a New Hampshire bill has been stopped for this session, a bill is pending in Maine, and we are seeing others introduced or moving through statehouses across the country.
These bills are extremely harmful and undoubtedly unconstitutional. A similar sports ban in Idaho was already struck down by a federal court last year, and GLAD and other legal advocates will fight in the courts and legislatures to stop these unlawful and dangerous policies. But we all must show up and support transgender youth in every way we can as this battle continues.
GLAD has had the honor of working with transgender young people and their families for years in our advocacy. Their hope, tenacity and joy in life are an inspiration, and their example shows that we can turn back the tide on the attacks we are seeing now.
In the early 2000s we represented a young transgender girl who wanted to wear barrettes in her hair at school when she felt like it, and to make all those choices kids make to express themselves and figure out and celebrate who they are with their peers. The principal literally told her “Not in my school,” but she decided she wasn’t going to let him get away with that. And he didn’t—we got a great court ruling that has paved the way for other students.
We represented Nicole Maines and her family against the elementary school that said Nicole couldn’t use the facilities other girls used. Nicole and her family powerfully shared their story and we were able to help the court and the public understand how harmful it is to separate transgender girls out from their peers. Nicole has gone on to become such an advocate for herself and others—it’s no surprise that she went on to play a superhero in her first TV role.
We worked with Sarah Huckman and her family when her New Hampshire high school tried to keep her from playing on the sports teams that she has called lifesaving. Sarah continues to be an out-spoken advocate against school sports bans so that other kids don’t have to face what she did.
And just recently in Connecticut, we worked with two wonderful parents as they fought to get their insurance company to cover the medical care that has enabled their son to thrive.
Transgender youth want and deserve the same chance as all kids to live, play and grow into the adults they want to be. They shouldn’t have to fight just to have that chance, but many of them are leading that effort now. Let’s make sure we’re all there to support them.
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