News from the Pine Tree State
Youth advisory board
Thanks to generous support from Rocking Moon Foundation, OUT Maine has formed a youth advisory board to guide the organization’s future programming for LGBTQ+ and allied youth. The youth board provides a youth voice to OUT Maine’s board of directors, giving valuable feedback to the leadership of the organization.
Board members were recruited through gay-straight-trans-alliances statewide and is comprised of youth ages 14–20 from across the state. The board is facilitated by OUT Maine’s Youth Engagement Coordinator Maggie Hirshland.
“Working with the youth advisory board is one of my favorite things I get to do with my job,” says Hirshland, “and I feel so lucky to be able to meet and work with such inspiring youth from across the state. I learn so much from them every day, and their ideas, passions and perspectives give me hope that the world we live in can and will be better.”
OUT Maine provides programming for LGBTQ+ youth, their families and adults who work with youth. The youth members provide invaluable perspectives, ideas, and visions for the future of the youth programs, policies, and recommendations for schools and community-based youth-serving organizations.
More: OUTMaine.org
A freshly painted rainbow
For the third year in a row, Brunswick has a freshly painted rainbow crosswalk on Maine Street for Pride month.
The Brunswick Town Council unanimously approved the refurbishments after a couple of motorcycles vandalized it with tire marks the previous year, according to a report in the Sun Journal.
“Symbolically, it’s important that we repaint it to show that this isn’t something that’s going to go away just because two people decided that they wanted to do that,” Nathan MacDonald, Queerly ME board president, told the Sun Journal. “There’s a lot of us here. Being able to do something this simple to show that folks are welcome in this space is something that could be easily achieved.”
“As a lesbian and having grown up in this town, I can’t tell you how proud I am of how accepting this town is,” Councilor Kathy Wilson told the Sun Journal. “Having something like that out there so we know we are accepted by the majority of the people is heartening.”
Gender-affirming access
Maine’s Joint Standing Committee on Judiciary voted on May 22 to advance legislation (L.D. 535) that would allow minors who are at least 16 to access gender-affirming hormone therapy without the consent of their parents, according to the Portland Press Herald. The state’s full House and Senate will now vote on the bill.
The committee vote came in with one Republican, Senator Eric Brakey of Auburn, and all but one Democrat supporting the bill.
The bill would also require that teens seeking care must have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, be facing harm without the treatment and must receive information and counseling from a health care professional who must provide written consent.
“The issues we are considering here are highly sensitive, even in the best of times,” said Rep. Erin Sheehan, who sponsored the bill, in a public hearing. “But today, transgender health care is being politicized and stigmatized in the press and on social media. Transgender people, including youth, are being explicitly vilified and branded a threat to their peers by grownups—even by leaders in their communities.”
A federal lawsuit
Despite a state privacy statute and federal law protecting students’ privacy, the mother of a middle school student in New Castle has filed a federal lawsuit against her 13-year-old child’s school because, her case alleges, the school counselor “encouraged her teen’s social gender transition, providing a chest binder and using a new name and pronouns, without consulting parents.”
Reports the Boston Globe, “Amber Lavigne, of Newcastle, Maine, filed the lawsuit after being unsatisfied with the school’s response after she became concerned by the discovery of the chest binder in her child’s belongings in December” and that “Lavigne’s child told her that a school counselor provided the chest binder at the school and provided instruction on how to use it, according to the lawsuit. The mother also says the school was also calling her child by a different name and pronouns.”
The Globe report also pointed out that federal law protects student privacy around gender identity and sexuality and that “counselors need to be able to keep conversations with students confidential if they want to maintain trust.”
The school told the Globe that confidentiality requirements prevented them from commenting on the case.
