Within the past year, a disturbing rise in anti-LGBTQ legislation has passed in states around the country. This comes on a wave of rising anti-trans sentiment, amplified by malicious legislation and remarks by politicians looking to revitalize their voter base.
417 bills have been introduced that attack LGBTQ rights, most significantly, Transgender rights. This is a new record, with most of the bills centering around issues in education and healthcare. There has also been a rise in bills restricting or banning gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth. Florida’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay Bill,” a bill restricting in-school discussions about gender and sexuality for elementary school students, has recently expanded to all high school grades.
In Tennessee, a bill was passed to ban drag performances. Mass panic about transgender people’s participation in sports and debates on access to gender-affirming care has also swept the country. Many states have also banned “radical literature,” with schools having to remove books from libraries that contain “inappropriate” content about race and sexuality.
As a queer person myself, this consistent barrage of hateful legislation is exhausting and terrifying. Growing up, LGBTQ people were slowly becoming more accepted. I was ten when gay marriage was legalized, and as a young person, I was hopeful that things would only continue to improve.
Looking back now, I grieve for my younger self. I am now more fearful of my rights in the future than I am hopeful, as this wave shows no signs of slowing. I do not understand how people in power are seeing some sort of target in LGBTQ people, especially LGBTQ youth such as me. Children are only trying to live authentically and be themselves. There is no harm in that.
This storm of vitriol, this torrent of hate, stems out of a need to have an “issue” or a group of people to target. Politicians and personalities needed a problem to “solve,” a problem that wouldn’t lose them money with their NRA, and fossil fuel donors. They needed something to create campaigns out of. They needed a polarizing issue to get their voters and supporters riled up. In doing so, they have gone back on decades of progress and have created the anti-trans and anti-gay rhetoric and paranoia we are seeing play out today.
Politicians are harming children and innocent people with their legislation while ignoring the damning statistics against their cause. History will not paint them as heroes, but rather, as cowards who incited violence. They are causing people to take their own lives or be murdered by people full of the hate they preach. These legislators have blood on their hands and spread it through ink in every bill they write.
LGBTQ people just wish for the freedom to be themselves. America is “the land of the free,” but only to those it deems fit for freedom.