N.Y. must take the lead on transgender rights
Three hundred and forty nine. According to the ACLU, this is how many pieces of antitransgender legislation have been introduced in state legislatures around the United States since the beginning of the year. The year is just couple of months old, and lawmakers have found 349 ways to tell transgender, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary individuals that their existence is illegal and dangerous for youth.
New York is fortunate to have a liberal-leaning governor and Legislature that have provided LGBTQ+ individuals better access to equitable resources — better, not perfect, but moving forward. But other states are stripping these individuals of their rights: their right to medical care, their right to performance and creativity, their right to autonomy in youth, and their right to exist in public.
When the Supreme Court reversed the protections of Roe v. Wade in 2022, New York stepped up. Gov. Kathy Hochul boosted resources for New York abortion providers to help them deal with an influx of out-ofstate patients. The state also helped by providing out-ofstate abortion seekers with information on organizations that offer travel assistance. And Attorney General Letitia James, who pledged to “work tirelessly to ensure our most vulnerable and people from hostile states have access to this lifesaving care,” worked with national law firms and reproductive rights groups to launch a hotline providing legal guidance to New York residents and those traveling to New York for reproductive care.
The time has come again for New York to pool our community resources: Agencies and nonprofits should coordinate to provide information about their various services to those seeking asylum from hostile states.
As the communications coordinator at the Pride Center of the Capital Region, I have received numerous emails in the last few months from residents of conservative-leaning states
who identify as transgender and/or gender-nonconforming. These individuals are asking for relocation resources, advice on good neighborhoods to live in if you identify as LGBTQ+, and places to look for employment and assistance as they seek to flee their home states.
Our center is the oldest continuously operated LGBTQ+ community center in the country. Since 1970, we have advocated for the LGBTQ+ community in and around the Capital Region. Now that our advocacy and resource bridging appear to be extending outside the New York borders, we find ourselves asking: How do we provide resources for those entering our community for asylum and safety? Do we have the resources to provide?
New York has often stepped forward to protect human rights, even where the federal government lags behind. And if other states become unwelcoming and unsafe for gender-nonconforming individuals, we may be called upon to be a national leader once again.
Thirty-two. This is the number of transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals who lost their lives to violence in 2022, according to the Human Rights Campaign, which has been tracking these tragic losses since 2013. Many deaths each year are also attributed to suicide, as many transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals too often face stigma and rejection in society. We have the power and the skill to bulk up our community resource infrastructure. What we need is a plan for resource coordination. Let’s do it.