Green Mountain State Update
Protecting trans health care
In mid-May, Vermont Governor Phil Scott signed into law two bills — HB 89 and SB 37 — protecting access to essential health care for transgender people.
The new laws come as at least 18 states have moved to ban established healthcare for transgender adolescents or adults. Together HB 89 and SB 37 create the most comprehensive protections to date for both providers and seekers of transgender healthcare, as well as reproductive care.
HB 89, “An Act Relating to Civil and Criminal Procedures Concerning Legally Protected Health Care Activity” — introduced by Representatives Katherine Donnally, Martin LaLonde, and Taylor Small — declares access to transgender health care and reproductive health care a right in the state.
SB 37, “An Act Relating to Access to Legally Protected Health Care Activity and Regulation of Health Care Providers” — introduced by Senators Virginia Lyons, Ruth Hardy, Alison Clarkson, and Kesha Ram Hinsdale — requires that health insurers provide coverage for transgender and reproductive health care and protects providers from being subject to disciplinary action or increased malpractice insurance premiums or risk classification for providing such care.
More: glad.org
Pride read-a-thon
“It’s so important for people to celebrate all different kinds of voices in literature and we think it’s very important for readers to be able to see themselves in the books and the stories that they read,” Jess Turner of Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, Vermont, told NBC-5 TV, of the store’s first-ever Pride Readathon.
Reports NBC-5, the bookstore planned to host the event throughout the month of June, and hoped to raise some $40,000 for scholarships to Outright Vermont’s Camp Outright. What’s more, one family has pledged to match funds up to $20,000.
Bear Pond created a list of suggested titles, and participants set their own reading and fundraising goals on a shared, online link. “There’s no rule. You pick whatever number of books you want to read, and you read whatever you want, as long as it celebrates an LGBTQ+ author’s voice,” Turner said. “So, graphic novels, memoirs, novels, fiction, nonfiction, fantasy, all the genres within that, anything goes.”
More: outrightvt.org
Public funding for anti-LGBTQ schools
State legislators have been grappling with the 2022 US Supreme Court decision that requires public school funding to go to private religious schools if the state has a school choice system, according to a report on Vermont Public, and have yet to find a solution.
The SCOTUS ruling in Carson v. Makin came out of a lawsuit in Maine, “a rural state that has a very similar school choice program to what we have here in Vermont,” said Vermont Public’s Howard Weiss-Tisman. “Two families there sued the state, saying that they wanted to send their kids to religious schools using the public money. And the District Court and the Court of Appeals both ruled against the families, but then it went to the Supreme Court. And the court ruled 6-3 in support of the families.”
Some of the schools that receive state funding refuse to admit gay or trans students. “So, you know, our public money is now paying for religious schools that discriminate against these kids,” said Weiss-Tisman.
The story also quoted State Senator Ruth Hardy, who said, “I think a lot of Vermonters don’t understand what’s going on right now. Also, they don’t understand that there’s the possibility of taxpayer money going to support religious education. And they don’t understand that there’s the possibility of taxpayer money going to schools that discriminate against LGBTQ students and teachers and staff also.”
Queer youth speak out
On March 31, Transgender Day of Visibility, approximately 100 LGBTQ+ youth and allies from across Vermont gathered on the steps of the statehouse to participate in a national youth march for Queer and Trans Youth Autonomy, which was organized by Queer Youth Assemble, according to another report from Vermont Public.
“Thank you so, so much to everyone who was here,” emcee Charlie Draughn, a high school senior, told the crowd. “Thank you to the amazing youth who shared their voices. . . . Thank you to the adults who listened and heard and hopefully, will one day act.”
Said Vermont Public, Draughn credited gender-affirming care and his mother’s support for saving his life, and how he feels listening to legislators and other adults debate his right to receive such care.
“My life is not your debate. It is not a political issue,” Draughn said. “I am not hurting anyone.”
