Advocates Fight Back Against a Flood of Anti-LGBTQ State Bills: ‘We are Scrambling’

A record number of anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced during the past year in state legislatures, the major battleground where LGBTQ civil rights are being fought.

The constant attacks from extremists on not only LGBTQ civil rights but also access to abortion, voting rights, and immigration have spurred advocates to work together. “We are in deep conversation with a broad coalition of groups, with reproductive justice advocates, with voting rights groups because it’s always been important that these policies are not seen in a vacuum, that it’s not just about critical race theory, [or] LGBTQ civil rights, or reproductive justice,” said Brandon Wolf, press secretary for Equality Florida, a statewide advocacy organization. “These laws are designed to consolidate power to politicians and are about the state censoring and surveilling people, so it’s important that we work in coalition. Our political endorsements are dependent on candidates showing that they support reproductive justice as well as LGBTQ civil rights.”

Advocates are adopting new strategies while strengthening ones that have been reliable in the past. “Historically, there has been a two-pronged strategy for advancing civil rights — one is coming out and changing hearts and minds one conversation at a time, and the other is the policymaking side,” said John Becker, press secretary for Catholics for Choice. “Now that the extreme right has captured the courts and skewed the federal judiciary to the far right, the first mistake [that progressives could make] is taking anything for granted. Data shows people agree with the Roe decision, and there is a landslide majority who support LGBTQ civil rights, but that doesn’t matter to extremists, who are determined to force their unpopular agenda on the American people against our will. And now they’ve got the Supreme Court, which has the power to turn so much of our progress back.”

During the past two years, 15 states have enacted legislation to restrict access to gender-affirming care for youth or are considering such laws, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law; these bans would put more than 58,000 transgender youth at risk of losing this vital medical care. Before 2020, not one state had considered such a bill. And 16 states ban transgender youth from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity. Right-wing politicians are targeting transgender youth to garner national attention for election year wins. “Unfortunately, they are using a lack of familiarity [by the general public] with trans youth to rile up their base and generate political gain,” said Corinne Green, policy and legislative strategist for the Equality Federation, a national advocacy organization. “These are the same people who have been coming after us about marriage and bathroom bills for years.”

Polls consistently show that a majority of people support LGBTQ civil rights, including in conservative states like Texas, where more than two-thirds do so. This widespread support has meant “in order for the right to push through their extreme views, they have used fear-mongering and targeted trans people, because there is a knowledge gap about their lives for many people,” said Ricardo Martinez, CEO of Equality Texas.

The Trevor Project reported an increase in calls from Texas since February, when Governor Greg Abbott issued a directive to the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth as child abuse. “These anti-LGBTQI bills cause harm even beyond the policies themselves,” said Caroline A. Medina, senior policy analyst of the LGBTQI+ Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress. “Data show that just considering legislation such as denying best practice medical care negatively impacts the mental health of LGBTQI youth. The narratives around these bills are often fueled by misinformation and hateful rhetoric. State legislators and officials pushing these policies are putting the lives and well-being of LGBTQI youth at risk.”

The damage from this legislative activity is felt even in progressive states like New York. “When there is targeted legislation like in Florida or Texas, for example, it doesn’t mean that young people elsewhere aren’t impacted,” said Soraya Elcock, chief strategy officer at the Hetrick-Martin Institute, which provides services to LGBTQ youth in New York City. “Just last week, we had one of our youth members say, ‘They are coming for us.’ Even before COVID, mental health issues were a huge problem for LGBTQ youth. Sadly, the statistics about the high rates of suicide ideation among LGBTQ youth doesn’t shock us.”

To counter misinformation about transgender people and to ensure that legislators understand the damage that anti-LGBTQ bills inflict, advocacy groups have organized meetings with state legislators around the country. “We are currently fighting 200 anti-LGBTQ state bills in 2022; 141 introduced since January, and most targeting transgender youth,” said Alexis Rangel, policy counsel at the National Center for Transgender Equality. Three bills were vetoed and 89 other bills in 18 states were defeated because their sessions ended without the legislature passing them. “We have found success when policymakers hear stories from trans youth and how these bills impact them. There has been coordinated efforts with national and local partnerships and lifting up the voices of young advocates. The biggest lesson is that we can’t shy away from any of these issues, we can’t get complacent, even in areas where we’ve made progress.”

Working in coalition with other issue groups is crucial because “legislation targeting trans people for discrimination doesn’t just harm trans people, it impacts and implicates the rights of us all,” said Darrell Hill, policy director at the ACLU of Arizona, whose legislature has considered more anti-LGBT legislation this year than any other state. Advocates organized health care professionals, parents, trans youth, and advocates at the numerous legislative committee hearings to protest against SB1138, which bans medically necessary health care for transgender youth, but it passed despite their efforts and was signed into law on March 30.

Last year, advocates defeated multiple anti-LGTBQ bills in South Carolina through working in coalition with local groups and local people. “One of the things we have learned is that when lawmakers face opposition from national organizations or from people who are not local, then they aren’t motivated to change their positions,” said Allison Scott, director of impact and innovation at the Campaign for Southern Equality, an advocacy organization focused on the Southeast. “But when a local person testifies about a bill that will harm them or their family or loved one, that has impact. This is especially true in the South, where being from here really matters to lawmakers.”

In Utah, advocates have organized meetings between LGBTQ youth and state lawmakers, including Governor Spencer Cox. This work resulted in Governor Cox in March not only vetoing HB11, which bans transgender youth from participating in sports teams consistent with their gender identity, but also speaking out about the harm that it would cause them; the legislature overrode the veto later that month. “We have worked with Governor Cox for years,” said Troy Williams, executive director of Equality Utah. “He’s been open to working and meeting with LGBTQ youth. We have a model here of collaboration and bringing together all stakeholders to find a compromise. Unfortunately, when fringe right groups heard that there might be a compromise on HB11, they went after moderate legislators and the negotiations fell apart. The only way to inoculate against this is for people to share their stories and engage with Republicans. It’s incumbent on us to do this, and that’s been the secret to our successes.”

In New Hampshire, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) was involved in defeating two anti-LGBTQ youth bills in March. “It was an all-hands-on-deck effort,” said Chris Erchull, staff attorney at GLAD. “We reached out to the Trevor Project, who sent lobbyists, I made cold calls to Republican legislators which resulted in several good conversations, we had press conferences, letter-writing campaigns from therapists, had people testify, and on the day of the voting there was a huge rally. We did everything we could.”

Right-wing extremists have already found success with rolling back access to abortion in state houses across the country and are now poised to overturn Roe altogether. “We have seen what the anti-choice movement has been able to do to abortion rights,” said Scott McCoy, interim deputy legal director for LGBTQ rights and special litigation for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is involved in a legal challenge, along with several other advocacy organizations, to a bill in Alabama that criminalizes health care for transgender youth. “And we are standing on the shoulders of the reproductive justice advocates who plowed that ground, but it’s disheartening, to say the least, to see reproductive rights being lost.”

While it’s clear to many progressives that LGBTQ civil rights and reproductive justice are deeply connected, the far right understands this as well, said Logan Casey, senior policy researcher at Movement Advancement Project, a think tank. “The language they use in anti-abortion bills is increasingly wrapped in anti-transgender language and definitions of sex, and both kinds of bills attempt to limit people’s right to make their own decisions about their life. Why has the far right put so much effort into attacking abortion access and LGBTQ civil rights when the majority doesn’t agree with this? It’s about politics and power. This is a new type of attack but an old battle.”

Faith leaders have been increasingly involved with advocating for LGBTQ civil rights. “We have hundreds of clergy in Florida and we have been taking them to the state capitol” to lobby against the so-called Don’t Say Gay Bill, said Rev. Jennifer Butler, CEO of Faith in Public Life, a national network of 50,000 clergy and faith leaders who advocate for social justice. “What I see is an uptick in religious leaders organizing starting with the election of Trump. And we made sure that more faith leaders were involved in the 2020 election, and the insurrection led to even more joining. But we have to give people hope that when they turn out to vote, it makes a difference.”

The past two years of the pandemic have meant that some advocacy organizations have struggled with getting volunteers. “The challenge during COVID is that people were reluctant to go out to do advocacy work, and now they are dealing with the psychological effects of the isolation and the losses,” said Martinez. “But there is so much you can do from where you are, including having difficult conversations and correcting transphobia and homophobia when you encounter it.”

The large number of anti-LGBTQ bills in state houses this year “forces us to put out small fires everywhere, so we are spread thin and we are scrambling,” said Erchull. “It also makes me think, what does this mean for next year? It requires a lot of resilience in the community. The most effective advocates for trans youth are trans youth, and we ask them to speak out again and again and again, and that takes its toll to be asked year after year. I am so proud of them and also concerned because there aren’t enough resources to support them in this work.”