A blog for LGBTQIA+ migrating to more welcoming states or counties
Author: Bob McCranie
I am so proud to run Texas Pride Realty Group. We set out on a mission in 2009 to serve the diverse communities of Texas and to hire kick-ass agents who practice the highest ethics and professionalism. I believe that the agent's role is to help the consumer make well-educated decisions, even if those decisions lead away from a purchase or sale.
I believe that education is vital in this industry. I currently have over 1300 hours of real estate courses on my transcript with the State of Texas. Additionally, I am a Real Estate Business Coach at Tom Ferry International, the largest-real-estate specific coaching company in the world. I coach agents in the US and Canada, and have coached clients in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and Switzerland. I also have knowledge of the UK and Irish markets.
Opening Texas Pride Realty was always a goal of mine and I am working night and day to be sure it is successful. The best way to do that is to be sure clients are satisfied and agents are busy. What better legacy could someone leave in this industry than a group of well-trained, high-quality brokers who do your job better than you?
Renton Sinclair’s mother is a former Miss Illinois who wants to force trans people out of public life. That’s exactly what makes her a rising star in MAGA World.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When Renton Sinclair texted his mom to say that he was transgender, she summoned a curse on the testosterone he was taking.
“I actually went after the medicine, and I cursed it in the name of Jesus, and I said, ‘No, you’re not going to work. I don’t know if you’re going to make her sick or whatever, but she’s going to have to go off that medicine,’” Tania Joy Gibson recounted recently during an episode of her podcast, repeatedly misgendering her child.
Renton doesn’t talk to Tania anymore. But Tania is always talking about Renton these days, on podcasts and livestreams and stages across the country, from California to South Dakota to Pennsylvania. She often tells the story of how God appeared to her in a dream before her first child was born, telling her what to name her child, a name with Biblical origins.
Renton is not that name. Tania refuses to call her son that name. In fact, she refuses to call her son her son. “It’s demonic,” Tania said about the existence of transgender people. “My daughter is in there, my daughter who was born and prophesied over and given the name from God is in there, but the Devil has taken and twisted her mind…”
In Tania’s telling, she is a victim, a mother who lost her child to the woke cult of “gender ideology.” She once told a crowd of 4,000 people that the gender-affirming care Renton and other trans people receive is the work of the literal devil, a scheme of mass sterilization to steal the “seed” of humanity.
She then broke into a rendition of “America The Beautiful,” a sea of middle-aged white people rising to their feet and placing red MAGA hats over their hearts.
Renton knows his mom has always loved the spotlight. She was, after all, a Miss America contestant, having been crowned Miss Illinois in 1996. Renton is horrified that, in a way, Tania has a new, albeit crueler, pageant. It’s a pageant similarly obsessed with gender. For Tania, it has higher stakes than a sash and crown: She believes it’s her divine destiny and duty to take part in the current conservative crusade to force trans people out of public life, a necessary step in paving the path for Christ’s return. As outlandish and self-aggrandizing as that may seem, Tania has allies in high places to help her on this holy mission.
Renton has watched as his mom has started to speak from the same stages as famous right-wing figures — Eric Trump, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn and others — calling for laws that would force him to be everything he’s not.
He has watched his mom get on these stages and call him a “prodigal daughter” — a reference to the biblical story of the Prodigal Son, a wayward child destined to one day repent and return to God, return home, return to her.
But Renton is neither a prodigal nor a daughter. He’d like you to know he’s never going home to Tania because that home was hell — the type of hell he’s horrified that Republican legislators are trying to recreate for every trans kid in America.
He has forged a new home for himself. A new family, too. And if Tania Joy Gibson is going to keep giving speeches about him, then maybe it’s time for Renton Sinclair to speak up about her.
Renton Sinclair’s old diary in Kansas City. Renton kept the diary in a hole in his bed to keep it out of his parent’s detection.
Renton Sinclair reads through his old diary on his porch.
Renton was around 6 years old when his mom put him in a beauty pageant. He didn’t take to it. “I just stole a crown off the table,” he recalls, laughing. “We left, and I was in the back seat, and they were like, ‘Where did you get that?’ And I just said, ‘I took it.’”
The crown is somewhere in his place now, a two-story house with a front porch in a working-class part of Kansas City, Missouri, that Renton, 23, shares with his partner Greg Hyatt, their three dogs, and a large orange cat.
He has other artifacts from his childhood stuffed into a Home Depot moving box — old family photos, Christmas cards, and a beat-up blue journal, the first page inscribed with an urgent, all-caps message: “MOM, GO AWAY.” (Tania did not respond to a list of detailed questions for this story. “It would be inappropriate for me to discuss my daughter’s health issues or her experiences as an adolescent,” she wrote in an email where she deadnamed and repeatedly misgendered her child. “My only request is that you respect my daughter’s fragile condition and consider the harm the Huffington Post can bring her by making her problems known worldwide.”)
Court turns away case on law implemented over a century ago with explicit goal of preventing Black people from voting
The supreme court did not say why it was rejecting the case (it takes four votes on the court to grant review). Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA.
The US Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging Mississippi’s voting rights rules for individuals with felony convictions, upholding a policy that was established over a century ago with the explicit purpose of disenfranchising Black people. Those convicted of 23 specific felonies in Mississippi permanently lose their right to vote, a list determined during the state’s 1890 constitutional convention with the intention of targeting crimes believed to be more likely committed by Black individuals. The convention’s president made it clear that the goal was to exclude Black people from voting. The list of disenfranchising crimes has remained largely unchanged since then, with some amendments made over the years.
It continued to have a staggering effect in Mississippi. Sixteen per cent of the Black voting-age population remains blocked from casting a ballot, as well as 10% of the overall voting age population, according to an estimate by The Sentencing Project, a criminal justice non-profit. The state is about 38% Black, but Black people make up more than half of Mississippi’s disenfranchised population.
Challengers to the law argued that the policy was unconstitutional because it bore the “discriminatory taint” from the 1890 constitution. One of the plaintiffs was Roy Harness, a social worker in his late 60s who is permanently barred from voting because he was convicted of forgery decades ago. Forgery was one of the original crimes included in the list of disenfranchising offenses.
“It makes me feel bad. I’ve served my country, nation … got a degree and [I] still can’t vote, no matter what you do to prove yourself,” Harness told the Guardian in 2022.
Once a person loses their right to vote in Mississippi it is essentially impossible to get it back. To do so, a disenfranchised person must get the legislature to approve an individualized bill on their behalf by a supermajority in both chambers and then have the governor approve the bill. There are no online instructions or applications, and lawmakers can reject or deny an application for any reason.
Hardly anyone successfully makes it through the process. Between 1997 and 2022, an average of seven people successfully made it through the process each year, according to Blake Feldman, a criminal justice researcher in Mississippi.
Both a federal district judge and the US court of appeals for the fifth circuit upheld Mississippi’s policy. The modifications to the policy in 1950 and 1968, the fifth circuit noted, got rid of any discrimination in the original policy.
The supreme court did not say on Friday why it was rejecting the case (it takes four votes on the court to grant review) and Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor were the only two justices who noted their dissent from the denial. Jackson wrote an opinion saying the fifth circuit had committed “two egregious analytical errors that ought to be corrected”.
First, she wrote, even though Mississippi voters removed a crime in 1950 and added two more in 1968, the substance of many of the original crimes from 1890 remained intact. That means that the list is still discriminatory, she wrote in a dissent that was joined by Sotomayor.
“The “remaining crimes” from [the list of crimes] pernicious origin still work the very harm the 1890 Convention intended – denying Black Mississippians the vote,” she wrote.
She also took issue with a conclusion from the fifth circuit that the list of crimes would have been enacted absent discriminatory intent. A taskforce and Mississippi lawmakers studied whether to amend the list of crimes in the 1980s, nearly a century after the convention and chose not to. “Subsequent legislative attention to Mississippi’s election laws indicates that Section 241 was carefully evaluated before the legislature opted to leave it unchanged.
The suspect was killed in a confrontation with sheriff deputies.
Club Q shooting survivor remembers partner
GMA Digital shares the story of drag performer Wyatt Kent who lost his boyfriend during the devastating shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs.
A California clothing store owner and designer was killed allegedly by a gunman who confronted her about a rainbow Pride flag outside her business and shot her after making disparaging remarks about the display, according to police.
Laura Ann Carleton, a married mother of nine children, was killed Friday outside her clothing store in Cedar Glen, an unincorporated San Bernardino County community on the shores of Lake Arrowhead, according to a statement from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office.
The suspected killer, who has not been publicly identified, fled the crime scene on foot, but was found by sheriff’s deputies near Carleton’s store, where he was fatally shot in a confrontation, authorities said. The sheriff’s office said the assailant was armed with a handgun and refused orders to drop the weapon.
“When deputies attempted to contact the suspect, a lethal force encounter occurred and the suspect was pronounced deceased,” according to a statement from the sheriff’s office.
In 2023, anti-trans bills continue to be introduced across the country. We track legislation that seeks to block trans people from receiving basic healthcare, education, legal recognition, and the right to publicly exist.
We’re tracking 28 national anti-trans bills in the United States in 2023. This sweeping introduction of legislation at the federal level is unprecedented, seeking to impact access to healthcare, student athletics, the military, incarceration, and education.
“We’ve shown that small states can do big things,” she said.
Sarah McBride is making history as she could become the first openly transgender person to be elected to Congress. However, she remains focused on delivering results and making positive changes for her constituents in Delaware. Advocating for healthcare, education, and workers’ rights, McBride’s campaign centers on addressing the needs of the community she aims to serve. While her groundbreaking candidacy is significant, she is determined to prioritize the well-being and progress of her state, highlighting the importance of her legislative agenda over her personal identity.
Sarah McBride vies to be the nation’s first openly transgender congressperson
McBride, 32, has been serving as a Democrat in the first district of the Delaware state Senate since 2020.
Sarah McBride is used to being first. She was the first openly transgender person to work in the White House, the first to speak at the Democratic National Convention and the first to become a state senator, in Delaware.
If the campaign she announced on Monday is successful, she will be the first transgender person to serve in Congress — representing Delaware’s sole congressional district — and the first openly transgender person to be elected at the federal level.
Because Delaware’s at-large district is solidly Democratic, competition in the race will likely play out during the primary next fall. The seat is currently held by Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who announced last week that she is running for the U.S. Senate to fill the seat held by retiring Tom Carper.
McBride, 32, enters the race with endorsements from high-ranking Delaware lawmakers, support from LGBTQ advocacy groups and relationships with the Biden family. President Joe Biden wrote the foreword to her 2018 memoir, and she has called his late son, Beau, one of her mentors.
“I’m incredibly confident and optimistic going into this campaign that we will win in September of 2024 [during the primary] and then win in November of 2024,” McBride said. “I believe that Delaware is ready. We’ve shown that small states can do big things, and it’s time for us to do that again.”
A person reads about Delaware Legislature Sarah McBride becoming the first transgender person to speak at a political convention, displayed in the Rise Up exhibition at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, on June 8, 2023, in Dallas, Texas.
Adam Davis/EPA via Shutterstock.
On the day she launched her campaign, she told ABC News that she has been happy to answer questions about her trans identity. But, she said with a smile, gender is not at the core of her job description as an elected official and she didn’t seek office to be “the trans senator.”
“My day-to-day focus is not explaining gender identity to people,” she said. “My day-to-day focus is delivering tangible results for the constituents that I serve.”
McBride is aware that trans candidates face increased scrutiny of their electability at the same time that the number of trans officeholders is growing, she said. She’s also running at a time of rising anti-LGBTQ extremism across the U.S., according to recent assessments from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the Anti-Defamation League and GLAAD.
While celebrations were held around the world for Pride month, there were no major LGBT events in China.
The country’s largest Pride event has been suspended since 2021.
The organiser, a group named ShanghaiPride, did not give a reason for the move, saying at the time it was “cancelling all upcoming activities and taking a break from scheduling any future events.”
People taking part in political protests in China often face punishment, so instead of holding parades, ShanghaiPride had organised dance parties, community runs and film screenings in the city.
Now, only a few low-profile events are available for the LGBT community such as “voguing balls”, where dancers execute moves inspired by model poses.
And ShanghaiPride is not the only major LGBT group to cease operations.
In recent years, several others have had to shut down, raising fears of a crackdown on activism in the world’s second largest economy.
The same year, a group which filed lawsuits on behalf of members of the LGBT community closed down. There were reports that its founder was detained by authorities, with the closure of the group being a condition for his release.
And last month, the Beijing LGBT Center became the latest group to stop operations “due to forces beyond our control”.
“With the closure of the Beijing LGBT Center, the last large LGBT organisation in China has decided to take a break,” Raymond Phang, the co-founder of ShanghaiPride, told the BBC.
Mr Phang left China after his group cancelled an annual celebration in Shanghai.
An Illinois city has emerged as a haven for the LGBTQ community seeking affordable housing options. With its welcoming atmosphere and relatively low cost of living, the city has become an attractive destination for LGBTQ individuals and families. By providing a safe and inclusive environment, the city is fostering a sense of belonging and promoting equality for all residents.
The dream of owning a home seems out of reach for millions of Americans, especially those in the LGBTQ+ community. But in Peoria, Illinois, Alex Martin owns a home at age 30 — something she never thought would be possible.
“I’m black. I’m trans, and I’m visibly so, and so having a space that, like, I made that I can just come in and recharge, I’m ready to face the world again,” she said.
And she’s not alone. In recent years, many LGBTQ+ people and people of color, who are statistically less likely to own homes because of discrimination and wealth gaps, are moving to the same city.
At first, they came from places like New York and Seattle, where home prices are sky-high. Now, many are coming from some of the 21 states that have passed anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
Last year, realtor Mike Van Cleve sold almost 80 homes, and nearly one-third were sold to people moving from out of state.
Angie Ostaszewski says she has almost single-handedly grown Peoria’s population by about 360 in three years thanks to TikTok.
“When I first started making TikToks about Peoria, it was about ‘improve your quality of life,'” she said. “But in the last six months especially, people are relocating here more for survival, and that’s such a different conversation.”
Ostaszewski also said she would like for her posts to help spread the word even further.
“I love the idea of shaking up that big cities are the only places that LGBTQ+ people can thrive,” she said.
Amidst civil rights threats, the fight to openly discuss and embrace LGBTQ+ identities remains an uphill battle. The struggle to “say gay” and affirm diverse sexual orientations requires continued advocacy and resilience. By challenging discriminatory policies and promoting inclusive dialogue, we can work towards a more accepting society.
Pride month may be coming to an end, but the fight for queer rights is ongoing. Two days ago, Vice President Kamala Harris visited the site of Stonewall, the historic birthplace of the gay rights movement. On this day in 1969, there was a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City. This raid marked a pattern of repeated harassment against the LGBT+ communities who patronized the bar. As a result, a multi-day riot ensued.
Although trans activist Marsha P. Johnson is credited as throwing the first brick, she said in an interview that “the riots had already started” prior to her arrival. According to them.us, there are competing accounts of who threw the first brick or Molotov cocktail at Stonewall. Nonetheless, Johnson’s impact is felt in the queer community and even beyond.
She and other activists like Sylvia Rivera, and Stormé DeLarverie were active during the riots. Fifty-four years later, their legacies are worth revisiting. Despite major strides like gay marriage and the end of sodomy laws, there has been a heavy backlash against the LGBT+ community in recent years.
Bob McCranie, leader of Texas Pride Realty Group, said that of the 140 anti-gay and anti-trans bills presented to the Texas legislature, nine of them got through. While that number may seem small, he added, “It impacts our ability to live, to get healthcare, to run our businesses.”
When he came out in 1992, it would be eleven years before McCranie could live as a “legal person,” in his words. In 2003, the reversal of Lawrence v. Texas marked a new day for gay rights.
It would be another eleven years before gay marriage would become legal, through the Obergefell v Hodges case in 2014. Alas, these protections are now in danger. When the historic reversal of Roe v. Wade happened, the 14th Amendment came under judicial threat. McCranie stated, “We just saw the 14th Amendment get knocked away with the Roe v. Wade ruling.”
As a result, other civil liberties have come under the spotlight. Following the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas called for renewed interest in three other rulings: Griswold v. Connecticut (contraception access), Obergefell v. Hodges (gay marriage), and Lawrence v. Texas (same-sex relationships), Politico reported. Two of these rulings affect the LGBT+ community.
“If we become illegal people again…what does that do for us living in these states?” McCranie asked. To fight these regressive laws, McCranie founded Texas Pride Realty Group, which helps get people out of anti-LGBT+ states and relocates them to sanctuary states and countries. According to McCranie, sanctuary states and anti-LGBT+ states are divided along party lines.
So, typically blue states have been welcoming for the most part, and traditionally red states have been enacting harm. These states include Texas, where McCranie is from, and Florida. To McCranie, Governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott are competing to see who can be the most harmful.
Abbott has called on Texas citizens to report parents of trans kids for abuse if they are providing gender-affirming care for their children. Simultaneously, DeSantis wanted to restrict Medicaid coverage for those seeking gender-affirming care.
As DeSantis vyes for a Presidential seat, he appeals to the same far-right base that elected and supported Donald Trump. McCranie mentioned that activists underestimated Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to take away former President Barack Obama’s ability to appoint a Supreme Court justice and then turn around and grant that right to former President Trump.
This was all strategic, Bob mentioned. In my view, the trans bans, book bans, and abortion bans are part of the Republican strategy to revert the country to the right. We must resist that.
Bob said, “When I came out in 1992, I was an illegal person…it’s not my intention to go back to that.”
Facing challenges and barriers to healthcare, education, and acceptance in Texas, these families are making difficult decisions to provide a safer and more supportive environment for their transgender children.
Sara, a mother and LGBTQ+ advocate, recently moved to Colorado from Texas in an effort to keep her transgender son safe.
AURORA, Colo. — Brianna went to bed Aug. 22 with a knot in her stomach.
That night, a Texas school board near her home passed a “Don’t Say Trans” policy barring employees from discussing what the district defined as “gender fluidity.”
The school board’s new policy was the latest entry in growing, right-wing political playbook that targets transgender youth and the adults who support them.
Months before the school board’s decision, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to conduct child abuse investigations into parents whose children received gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy. Abbott’s decision was in line with the heavily conservative state legislature, which had introduced more anti-transgender bills than any other state.
In 2020, Brianna’s son, Rylee, came out as a transgender boy. He was 12 years old at the time.
Brianna and her family moved to Texas — which has one of the largest transgender communities in the country — in 2015 to be closer to their extended family. Brianna knew the small town they called home was far from progressive, but she expected to largely be left alone as she and her family kept their heads down and raised LGBTQ+ children.
But the state’s policies seemed to get crueler over time. Brianna knew her family wasn’t safe.
“I went to bed knowing what was happening and woke up the next day thinking, ‘we have to leave,’” Brianna recalled. “’We have to get out of Texas. This is not going to get better; it is just going to get worse.’”
She spent the following day researching states that were more welcoming to transgender people. The Pacific Northwest was too rainy, California was too expensive, Minnesota was too cold. She booked a 24-hour trip to Colorado — which received high marks from places like the Movement Advancement Project — to vet the state, making sure to ask folks she encountered about its safety for LGBTQ+ kids.
As she drove around Denver and saw rainbow flags plastered in business windows and hanging outside homes, Brianna knew where to move.
“It was so overwhelmingly positive and welcoming,” she said of Colorado. “In Texas, you couldn’t even talk about this stuff.”
The family voted in the Nov. 8 Texas election, feeling they owed their votes to friends in similar situations who couldn’t leave the state. Three days later, they packed their bags and started their journey to Aurora.
Tired of living in fear
Lucas and Sara had deep roots in Texas. Lucas worked at a nonprofit supporting kids in the foster care system; Sara taught music at a private school. The two had family and deep friendships in the state.
But fear overwhelmed them in February 2022 after Abbott declared gender-affirming care for children a form of child abuse. The couple’s son, Alec, came out as transgender years earlier and began transitioning soon after.
Bullying and harassment were common for Alec in his small Texas town, but when laws began to threaten his safety, his parents knew something needed to change.
“There was a moment where I just imagined Alec being taken from our family,” Sara said. “Just having to process that was extremely scary and upsetting.”
Lucas and Sara became more outspoken in their LGBTQ+ allyship by helping plan Pride festivals and volunteering with Equality Texas.
Alec and Lucas sit on their couch discussing their experience moving from Texas to Colorado.
Alec did his best to fit in at school. He wore baggy, unassuming clothes and tried to keep his head down.
“There were so many times where I was like ‘if I just de-transitioned and lived, I could live easier here,’ but the dysphoria makes things so hard,” said Alec, who is now 15 years old. “It wouldn’t have been a happy life for me.”
Other parents began complaining that Sara was using her position as a teacher to “push an agenda.” Sara maintains she never discussed politics in class.
“It was very clear that we were being targeted because this was a relatively small town and we had been outspoken,” Lucas said. “I knew this was really scary and we worried about what could happen to our family.”
Brianna and Rylee also remember living in fear.
“How exhausting it was, not knowing day-to-day what laws were going to be passed that would hurt my child and not understanding why it’s something that people care about,” Brianna said. “I don’t understand the vitriol towards these kids who just want to exist and the parents who just want their kids to survive.”
Brianna tried to educate those around her and give them the benefit of the doubt. But many people didn’t seem interested in learning.
“It’s extremely frustrating and there’s no amount of education I could do,” Brianna said. “You think you can educate people away from bad beliefs, but they’re not interested in the truth. They’re interested in their narrative and that’s it.”
Lucas and Sara remember having conversations with Alec where they reminded him not to stand out too much, which was a painful message to send for two parents who wanted nothing more than to affirm their child.
“We did a lot of apologizing to the kids and saying, ‘I’m sorry you can’t wear what you’d like to wear because we need to be careful right now,’’ Sara recalled. “I remember saying that a lot. ‘We need to be careful right now.’”
The family also helped plan a kid-friendly Pride celebration in their town, hoping to show marginalized children that adults were on their side. However, several other adults, including an anti-LGBTQ+ Instagram “influencer,” showed up and chanted “groomer” at those participating in the festival.
“It was really weird because I grew up there and that place just turned on me,” Alec said.
The family had lived in their town for 14 years and felt it was important to stay and fight for other LGBTQ+ people. But as anti-transgender bills stacked up and hateful rhetoric grew louder, Lucas and Sara saw that their family’s safety was in jeopardy.
“It was a constant state of anxiety and fear,” Lucas said. “All it would take was one person in our town who didn’t like us and report us and we would’ve had a CPS case that we would be dealing with.”
In 2023, the family said goodbye to their longtime church, colleagues and friends and moved to Denver, where they felt safer in their new home.
Alec, Lucas, Sara and other family members pose together next to drag queens.
Relaxing again
The contrast between living in fear and living in a state with codified LGBTQ+ rights has been immense, the families told Rocky Mountain PBS.
“I’ve met some really sweet people here,” Alec said. “It definitely feels like a whole reset.”
Though they know things are safer in Colorado, Alec, Sara and Lucas said it has been a struggle to shake the feeling of fear, as they lived in fight-or-flight mode for so long.
“We’ve only been in Colorado for a few months and I feel like I’m still letting go of some of those anxieties and fear and worries,” Lucas said.
Some of the anxiety and fear dissipated after the family connected with other LGBTQ+ Coloradans.
During their first week in town, they attended a drag brunch in which the performer affirmed the transgender kids in attendance.
“It was really emotional for me, because we had left a bad situation so recently,” Alec said. “It was really heartwarming to hear that.”
An abnormal childhood
As Alec navigates his transition, he said many of his peers treat him “like Google.” They ask him invasive questions, he said, which can sometimes make him feel like a political prop.
“I become their search engine and it’s so strange,” he added.
When he is not advocating for his rights, Alec enjoys watercolor painting. His family has a collection of chickens he painted on their walls.
Alec, 15, stands next to his watercolor paintings of the family’s chickens.
Sara tries to encourage Alec to simply be a kid.
“Having to speak to other adults about what it’s like to be trans, that’s a lot of responsibility,” Sara said. “I know it’s important but it’s very heavy and it’s not a normal childhood.”
“We try to just make sure we’re doing the things that help them in life and society,” said Sandra Zapata, director of youth services at the Center on Colfax, an LGBTQ+ community center in Denver. “A lot of it is just making sure they know they have a space to come, and once they find us, it’s a good place to make connections so folks will create those personal relationships with each other.”
Zapata leads the Rainbow Alley, a youth program at the Center on Colfax. Both Rylee and Alec attend Rainbow Alley and said they’ve made many friends and connections there.
“It’s about giving them that space where there’s no rules, there’s no expectations of how you’re supposed to dress and what colors you’re supposed to like, and what kind of careers you’re supposed to have,” Zapata said. “So, then you’re left with this blank canvas.”
Zapata leads the Rainbow Alley program at The Center on Colfax.
Zapata said many of the children they meet come from states with anti-LGBTQ+ laws. Though moving can bring newfound safety, the process is often isolating, Zapata said.
“There’s a lot of sadness, maybe you lived in one place your whole life and now you’re having to move, not because you want to but because ultimately you know it’s going to be safer,” Zapata said. “It’s still hard to leave your friends and family and whoever you’re leaving behind.”
Zapata said housing is often the biggest barrier for those looking to move to safer states. Colorado’s housing prices skyrocketed in recent years, making a move to the state out of reach for many families.
Though many people see Colorado as a sanctuary for LGBTQ+ people, especially compared to its neighboring states, the state is far from perfect. The United States Supreme Court, to use a recent example, recently sided with a Denver website designer who argued that designing websites for same-sex couples violated her First Amendment rights. Moreover, several school districts have attempted to pass their own “don’t say gay,” bills as well.
Nevertheless, more families with LGBTQ+ children are deciding to move to places like Colorado.
“There’s a migration happening,” said Bob McCranie, owner of Texas Pride Realty Group, a realty group in Texas that focuses on selling homes to LGBTQ+ Texans. “This is a national state of emergency for LGBTQ people.”
McCranie also connects LGBTQ+ Texans looking to leave the state with affirming realtors in other states, something he said is necessary as dozens of states cut rights for queer people.
Eventually, McCranie said, LGBTQ+ people across the country could lose rights regardless of the state they live in. McCranie said he asks clients if they’ve considered moving abroad, should conservative politicians and Supreme Court justices continue to roll back long-held rights.
“If some of these cases get overturned and the court says you can’t have gay marriage in any state, the blue states won’t be safe either,” McCranie said. “Do you have a plan for when and if that happens?”
Differentiating medical facts from misinformation is vital. Rely on trusted sources, fact-check information, and consult medical professionals. Promote critical thinking and health literacy to combat misinformation.
Almost three weeks after Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed a bill making it a felony for doctors to provide gender-affirming care to transgender minors, a judge issued a preliminary injunction preventing enforcement of the law for three children whose parents are part of an ongoing lawsuit.
Florida is one of at least 20 states that have limited gender-affirming treatment for minors. The legislators sponsoring some of these bills say their intent is to protect children and families from pressure “to receive harmful, experimental puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and to undergo irreversible, life-altering surgical procedures,” as a new Montana law puts it.
“Gender transitions involving major surgeries not only result in sterility, but other irreversible negative biological effects,” said Montana state Sen. John Fuller, the Republican who introduced the bill.
Such laws and policies, and statements — such as Fuller’s — used to justify them, reflect misconceptions and misinformation that conflate treatments and strip trans youth of essential care.
What is gender-affirming care?
Gender-affirming care is a broad term for many distinct treatments provided to children, teens, and adults. Puberty blockers, for example, are medications that inhibit puberty by suppressing the body’s production of sex hormones, while hormone therapy is the administration of testosterone or estrogen to alter secondary sex characteristics.
One common misbelief heard when legislation is discussed is that gender-affirming medical interventions are provided immediately to any trans or nonbinary kid who walks into a gender clinic.
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