School is sometimes the only safe place for trans youth to find each other, organize, and disseminate information. Including trans kids isn’t just semantics or an internal squabble, it’s something with real stakes. The mainstream movement’s heavy investment in marriage equality over other priorities through the 2015 Obergefell decision was also upsetting for activists concerned about issues like health care equity and the ability to pee in public restrooms. For trans activists, the frustration was very real: during a battle over a version of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act that excluded trans people in the early 2000s, for example, the high-profile Human Rights Campaign declined to take a decisive stance. Mainstream LGBTQ rights organizations have similarly pushed concerns of the trans community aside to focus on achieving their goals, leading the New York Times to hold a debate on whether it was time to break the T from the LGBTQ movement in 2013 (it wasn’t and isn’t). While Pride is often remembered as a watershed moment for gay people, for example, the actual events at the Stonewall were led by trans women.
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“Don’t Say Gay” may be easy to put on protest signs, but it carries uneasy overtones of a long history of erasing trans people from the spaces they helped build. Read More: ‘I Hope This Law Is Obliterated.’ Plaintiffs in the First Lawsuit Challenging ‘Don’t Say Gay’ in Florida Speak Out In other words, trans youth in Florida should receive no transition care.
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And just this week Florida’s Surgeon General announced that treatment for gender dysphoria in youth should not include medical (hormones or puberty blockers) or social (changing names, using different pronouns, dressing differently) transition. This is all in addition to policies like Texas’ recent directive that supportive parents of trans kids should be subject to investigation by child services. These bills include restrictions on transition care, bathroom bills, bans on sports participation, bills allowing for religiously motivated discrimination against LGBTQ youth and parents in the foster and adoption systems, and “conscience exemptions” for health care providers who don’t want to treat LGBTQ patients. More than 200 anti-LGBTQ bills, many anti-trans specifically, have been introduced by legislatures across the U.S. It is awaiting the governor’s signature.Īn unprecedented era of visibility and organizing among trans youth has been met with equal vitriol from conservative legislators, television personalities, and voters. The same logic backs bills such as Florida’s “ Stop Woke Act,” which targets critical race theory and restricts what schools and workplaces can teach in diversity trainings. Just a reminder.” This legislative landscape is also far larger than these particular “parental rights” bills, though their snowballing nature should be cause for concern, not just for LGBTQ people but for others.
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“And Texas, Idaho and Alabama have Don’t Be Trans orders and bills in effect or pending. “The Don’t Say Gay Bill is also a Don’t Say Trans bill,” tweeted civil rights attorney Chase Strangio. It’s reminiscent of the U.K.’s infamous Section 28, enacted in 1988 to prohibit educators from “ promoting homosexuality.” Section 28 devastated LGBTQ Britons, who were left isolated and without supports during the most vulnerable times in their lives there were no LGBTQ texts at school, teachers weren’t allowed to make references, and LGBTQ teachers who taught under the law, which wasn’t fully repealed until 2003, reported being more vigilant and anxious at work. It’s not that the authors of such bills want people to stop saying “gay” at school: It’s that they don’t want LGBTQ people to exist at all, and this is one way of slowly erasing them. Read More: I Know What It’s Like to Be a Florida Teen Who Can’t Say Gay.
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Given that “trans” isn’t represented anywhere in “Don’t Say Gay,” the same thing that makes the turn of phrase so memorable serves to undercut the seriousness of bills that have annihilation at their heart. By using “gay” as a catchall, advocates leave out some key constituencies and obscure the true nature and intent of this legislation. “Don’t Say Gay” may be simple shorthand that can spread rapidly among allies, such as celebrities on the red carpet, but it’s a mistake.