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1. Curiosity Question:
Why are there only few laws to protect trans rights?

2. Question the article answers:
What protections do trans individuals receive in school?

3. Research Path: After reading the article I would like to look deeper into why transgender individuals are denied certain materials that all people need and how it is dealt with.

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1. Curiosity Question: How is activism helping to protect trans individuals?

2. Question the article answers:
Which organizations have aided in helping trans individuals and how?

3. Research Path: After the information in this article, I'd like to look up different ways society can be more active in helping trans people and ways we can help.

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1. Curiosity Question: How can just one law cause so much trouble for a transgender individual?

2. Article Question(s): Why does this law make life difficult and dangerous for trans people?

3. Research Path: I would like to look up more about this HB2 law and when it was passed and if there is anything that is going to be done to remove it.

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HB2 Makes Life Difficult and Dangerous For Transgender People

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HB2 Makes Life Difficult and Dangerous For Transgender People

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Charlie Comero, a 35-year-old transgender man in Charlotte, North Carolina, was nervous about having to use women's bathrooms after his state enacted HB2, a sweeping anti-LGBT law that says you can only use public facilities that match the sex on your birth certificate. So he decided to prepare: He printed cards (see photo below) to hand out to the women he met inside. We asked him to share his story below, in his own words, edited for length and clarity.
I grew up in Michigan, on a farm in a small town, and I moved to Charlotte almost four years ago to teach for a local high school. I was very nervous about moving to North Carolina-it's technically the "Bible Belt"-but the truth is that Charlotte is amazing, liberal. I fell in love with the city and have stayed ever since.

Now, one person's story is obviously not an example for the entire community. But I identify as a transgender man and as a non-binary individual, which means I've never identified only as a girl or only as a boy-I've always identified as both. I wear men's clothing, though I do have a closet full of five-inch high heels that I absolutely love and will never get rid of.

Growing up I always felt different from other girls and I couldn't put my finger on why. Maybe it was a lack of representation of trans people in the media. And I didn't see it growing up in a small town, so being transgender wasn't an option, as far as I knew.

Not all transgender people decide to transition physically, but I decided to when I was 34 years old. It took me that long, and you know what got me there? The book The Alchemist: This talk of personal legend and embodying that, that's what woke me up. I got a ton of support from the yoga community-I do yoga every day-and from the LGB and trans communities. Unfortunately my best friend stopped talking to me, and another dear friend changed how she acted toward me.

I probably started going into the men's room when I was about six months into my physical transition, which is taking testosterone. I made my decision based on how I was being perceived in society. As soon as my voice got low and I was starting to be seen as male, that's when I started going to the men's bathroom. I was scared shitless. It was gross in there. It was liberating and scary. I had this fear that they were going to know I have a vagina. It took me a couple of weeks to realize no one in the men's bathroom cares; there's no way to know I wasn't born with a biological penis.

The day HB2 became law, I was there to testify in front of the Senate, and I had my speech prepared. I was sitting there listening to the senators talk about how important this bill is and how it would protect women and children. If they really cared about women and children, Republicans would actually do things to help women and children, rather than making up some story about an imagined bogeyman walking into a women's bathroom dressed in women's clothes to rape women and children. It was absurd. I felt like I didn't exist, like I wasn't an equal human.

Afterward I was sitting down with my girlfriend at brunch and I asked her: Where do I go to the bathroom now? It's literally against the law for me to use the men's room, and it's also risky. Even though I'm more than a year on testosterone-I'm getting facial hair, my hair has receded a little-I still don't always pass as male. Or do I use the women's room, follow the law, and clearly make people uncomfortable? We started going through the different examples of what would happen, what could happen, and she started crying because it became clear to her that I was at risk for getting hurt.

The first time I went back into a women's bathroom, I was so nervous. I'm still nervous. I've created these cards-I keep them in my wallet. One time I was in a bathroom at a government center in Charlotte, and a woman asked what I was doing there. I tried handing her the card but she didn't want to take it, she walked away. I saw her later in the hallway, and I said, "I didn't mean to startle you." She looked at me and said, "I hope I never make that mistake again." I have no idea what she meant-I don't think she knew what it meant to be a transgender man. And then the other day someone gave me a hug after I gave her my card. I don't know if she recognized it because it's been viral.

But here's what I'm most afraid of: When they don't say anything and just ignore me and leave, I'm afraid to leave the bathroom and to be met by that woman's boyfriend or husband or an authority figure. Because I could easily be socked.

The senators who wrote this bill made it a lot more difficult for transgender people, because a lot of them have the gender on their driver's license changed, but not their birth certificate. If I wanted to do that, I'd have to fly back to Michigan. Some of my friends would have to fly out of the country. Some people, depending on the state, have to go in front of judge, and some judges are not going to be cool with allowing a transgender person to make the change.

Last night I reached out to two really close transgender women friends who are people of color, because I'm worried about them, and they are both scared-they feel unsafe. I'm scared, yeah, I'm at risk, yeah, but not as much as them. They were already at risk before this bill, they were already a target [as transgender women], and now it's multiplied. And that's the thing that really upsets me-that this bill gives people permission to be bigots.

HB2 isn't just about bathrooms. It's stripping away all city ordinances that are in place to protect marginalized folks. Women, including those who aren't transgender, are starting to realize this affects them, too. It puts all of us at risk unless you're a white man. And who wrote the bill? White men. Isn't that interesting?

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HB2 Makes Life Difficult and Dangerous for Transgender People - Document - Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints

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1. Curious Question: Why are protection laws for transgender people still in consideration being a simple human right?

2. Question the article answers: What does transgender mean?
Why transgender rights?

3. Research Path: After this article, I want to search up how the movement for transgender rights has helped over time and how much it has grown.

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The Transgender Rights Movement Is Necessary

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The Transgender Rights Movement Is Necessary

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In the past thirty years, the transgender movement in the United States has gained surprising visibility and strength. In the legislative arena, transgender advocates have successfully fought for inclusion in nondiscrimination and hate crime laws in several states and dozens of municipalities. More than two hundred employers, including some Fortune 500 companies, and more than sixty colleges and universities now include gender identity in their nondiscrimination policies. In 2004, overturning decades of prior case law, a federal court of appeals ruled for the first time that transgender people who are discriminated against in the workplace are protected under Title VII of the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on sex. Trans [transgender] activists have formed hundreds of social service and advocacy organizations, such as the Transgender Law Center in California, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York, and the International Foundation for Gender Education. In several cities, trans activists have created community gender identity centers and clinics to counterbalance the power of doctors, therapists, and psychiatrists. Every major LGB [lesbian, gay, bisexual] national organization has changed its mission statement to include transgender people. In higher education, trans people are no longer simply an "object" of study in abnormal psychology textbooks. Rather, transgender issues have become a topic of serious and respectful inquiry in virtually every scholarly field, from medicine to political theory, and scholarly works by trans authors are now widely available.

At the same time, violence and discrimination against transgender people persists in daily life. In 2003 Gwen Araujo, a transgender teenager from a small town in Northern California, was murdered by a group of young men who beat her to death with a shovel after discovering that she had male genitalia. The attorneys representing the young men argued that their clients' actions were justified by Gwen's "deception" in not disclosing her transgender identity to them. Far from an isolated event, Gwen's brutal murder was one of thousands of similarly lethal hate crimes against transgender people that have been documented by the community Web site, Remembering Our Dead. While this epidemic of actual violence goes largely unnoticed by the mass media, it is an ever-present reality for transgender people-and especially for transgender women, who are most often the victims of such crimes. This vulnerability is amplified in prisons and jails, where transgender prisoners typically are housed by their birth sex and where transgender women are particularly vulnerable to rape by both fellow prisoners and guards.

Most transgender people still are deprived of any secure legal status.

The legal status of trans people in other arenas is equally precarious. In the past few years, appellate courts in Texas, Kansas, Ohio, and Florida have ruled that transsexual people are prohibited from marrying; in three of these cases, the courts held that marriages of many years' duration were null and void, simply because one of the spouses in each case was transsexual. In 2002 a federal court in Louisiana ruled that it was not discriminatory for Winn-Dixie to fire Peter Oiler for occasionally cross-dressing outside work. In prior decisions, federal courts routinely have excluded transsexual people from any protection under federal nondiscrimination laws, thereby leaving employers free to fire transsexual workers at will. In many states, obtaining a driver's license or birth certificate that reflects one's new gender is extremely difficult; in some, it is impossible.

In short, while the gains won by the U.S. transgender movement are impressive, most transgender people still are deprived of any secure legal status. In the eyes of the law in most states, they are nonpersons, with no right to marry, work, use a public bathroom, or even walk down the street in safety.

What does transgender mean? Since about 1995, the meaning of transgender has begun to settle, and the term is now generally used to refer to individuals whose gender identity or expression does not conform to the social expectations for their assigned sex at birth. At the same time, related terms used to describe particular identities within that broader category have continued to evolve and multiply. As new generations of body modifiers and new social formations of gender resisters emerge, multiple usages coexist, sometimes easily, sometimes with much generational or philosophical tension: transvestite, cross-dresser, trannie, trans, gender-, genderqueer, FTM, MtM, trans men, boyz, bois. Transgender is an expansive and complicated social category.

The term transgender offers political possibilities as well as risks. Any claim to describe or define a people or a set of practices poses the danger of misrepresenting them. The danger is not trivial; distorted representations lead readily to misguided advocacy. The term can, at times, mask the differences among gender nonconforming people and risks implying a common identity that outweighs differences along racial and class lines. Nonetheless, there is also considerable value in a term that can draw together people who believe that individuals should have a right to determine and express their gender without fear, stigmatization, marginalization, or punishment.

One particular area of tension is the inclusion of intersex people in the definition of transgender. Intersex activists argue, rightly we think, that being intersex is not the same as being transgender. Being intersex denotes, according to [Northwestern University professor] Alice Dreger, "a variety of congenital conditions in which a person has neither the standard male nor the standard female anatomy." The attempt simply to assimilate intersex identities and political interests within a transgender rubric too often has meant ignoring the urgency of ending the surgical mutilation of intersex children....

Ultimately, the effectiveness with which the transgender movement addresses the diversity of its constituents will depend less on finding a satisfactory vocabulary and more on how actual strategies for social change are implemented. The same is true for creating effective connections with people who do not see themselves as transgender. Put simply, the movement's effectiveness will depend heavily on who benefits from its successes.

Ultimately, transgender refers to a collective political identity. Whether we have psychological features in common or share a particular twist in our genetic codes is less important than the more pressing search for justice and equality.... It is a matter of fact that trans people conceive of themselves in many radically different ways: as transsexual women and men who have always known that they were female or male; as genderqueers living in an existential rebellion against the biopolitics of the dominant society; as butches who move complexly among lesbian and transgender identities and communities; as quietly androgynous femme boyz. Despite their profound differences, these groups all share a common political investment in a right to gender self-determination.

If it is wrong to fire someone for being a woman, it is equally wrong to fire someone for becoming a woman.

In practice, transgender is a useful term in many contexts, yet insufficiently inclusive or too imprecise in others. Many activists organize directly under the transgender rubric: the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Transgender Law and Policy Institute, and the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. Other activists have embraced what appears to be a more universal term, gender: the International Foundation for Gender Education, Gender Education and Advocacy, the Gender Rights Advocacy Association of New Jersey, and Gender-PAC. Still other groups such as FTM International and American Boyz use more gender-specific labels to describe their constituencies. Nonetheless, when these groups seek justice and equality for people whose gender identity or expression contravenes social norms, they become facets of the same movement....

Until recently, nondiscrimination laws did not define sex or gender. Consequently, it was left to the courts to decide whether discrimination against trans people should be recognized as a type of sex discrimination. The judiciary's record on this issue has been poor. The exemplary case in this area is Ulane v. Eastern Airlines, a 1984 case that is still binding precedent. In Ulane, a federal appellate court found that the plaintiff, a transsexual woman, was not discriminated against on the basis of sex. Rather, the court explained, "it is clear from the evidence that if Eastern did discriminate against Ulane, it was not because she is female, but because Ulane is a transsexual-a biological male who takes female hormones, cross-dresses, and has surgically altered parts of her body to make it appear to be female." The court's evasive logic has seemed weak even to people equipped with only a dictionary's definition of transsexuality; after all, it seems hardly an affront to reason to think that, if it is wrong to fire someone for being a woman, it is equally wrong to fire someone for becoming a woman. Nonetheless, this decision, and scores of others exactly like it, is symptomatic of the broader patterns of exclusion and misrepresentation faced by transgender people in the law.

Trans activists have put their energies into changing both laws and cultural perceptions. Perhaps the most visible strategy used to counter judicial hostility has been to ask legislatures to define sex, gender, or even sexual orientation within nondiscrimination laws so as to explicitly include trans people, or to add a new category, usually gender identity. At the same time, trans advocates have drawn on the tools provided by other civil rights movements to change the judiciary's understanding of who counts as a person deserving of protection....

If we return to foundational questions, perhaps the most important one to ask is, simply, "why rights?" For some, the rolling back of the gains of the traditional civil rights movement and the critique of identity-based movements as insufficiently inclusive and incapable of addressing nonidentitarian concerns such as class and poverty lead to a belief that activists and theorists must find a better focus of political practice. Nonetheless, rights discourse remains the commonsense of politics in the United States. The idea of rights provides a familiar, and thus quietly powerful, lexicon through which to challenge injustice. This is particularly the case when violence and exclusion are clearly targeted at particular kinds of persons.

Discrimination on the basis of gender nonconformity is, by its very nature, gender discrimination.

What needs to change? Protections on paper are, of course, inadequate. The legal recognition of trans people is meaningful only when it is part of a larger cultural transformation. For example, although Minnesota has included trans people in its nondiscrimination law since 1993, that state's highest court ruled in 2001 that Julie Goins had not been discriminated against when her employer told her she could not use the women's bathroom. The judges in that decision understood quite clearly that the law prohibited discrimination on the basis of "having or being perceived as having a self-image or identity not traditionally associated with one's biological maleness or femaleness." Nonetheless, it seemed nonsensical to them that Goins should have access to women-only space. The success of rights-based arguments depends on creating a culture in which trans people are not just a curiosity or a perversion of nature. At the same time, struggles organized around civil rights are also a form of cultural work. For example, including transgender people in hate crime laws does not create change by enhancing penalties but by educating legislators, the media, the police, and the courts about the violence faced by trans people and by asking the public at large to side with the victims rather than the perpetrators of hate.

Why transgender rights? Feminism already has established the ethical and legal basis for gender equality. The idea of gender equality includes transgender people, and so it may seem redundant to argue for the specific inclusion of transgender persons in nondiscrimination legislation. Logically, transgender people already should be covered by existing gender nondiscrimination laws; discrimination on the basis of gender nonconformity is, by its very nature, gender discrimination. In practice, however, courts, civil society, and the mass media typically have failed to apply the principle of gender equality to transgender people. One reason for this broad failure of logic and imagination is that trans people have been seen as examples of sexual "deviants," in the same way that homosexuals have been cast as gender inverts. As a consequence, the transgender movement,... has continued to be affiliated more strongly with the LGB movement than with the feminist movements that began in the 1960s and 1970s, despite significant conflicts. In the legal arena, the transgender rights movement has striven to expand the inclusivity of the term gender beyond its current cultural and legal boundaries; similarly, our political goals also have the potential to close the significant gaps created by the institutional separation between, LGB and women's rights advocacy.

The transgender movement is a highly accelerated and fragile reality. In thirty years, trans people have moved from meeting in secret to lobbying Congress, from being arrested for cross-dressing to mobilizing public protests against transphobic violence.... But in reaching our goals, transgender people will not disappear as a constituency or identity. Instead, transgender political work will take on different forms and become reoriented toward other projects and goals. Achieving equality will not be an end for trans people, but the start of a dramatic widening of the cultural and social imagination. What such a new world will look like, and what the transgender generations who live in it will make of their world, remains as yet unwritten.

Source Citation

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The Transgender Rights Movement Is Necessary

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In the past thirty years, the transgender movement in the United States has gained surprising visibility and strength. In the legislative arena, transgender advocates have successfully fought for inclusion in nondiscrimination and hate crime laws in several states and dozens of municipalities.

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1. Curious Question: Has the perception against the LGBTQ+ community changed over time?

2. Question the article answers: How was the LGBTQ+ community treated and perceived years back?

3. Research Path: This article makes me want to look deeper into how much the views on the community has changed throughout the years.

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The issue of LGBTQ+ community equality encompasses both civil rights and human rights for members of the LGBTQ+ communities. The LGBTQ+ community includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people and others with a broad range of sexual orientations and gender identities. In the United States, LGBTQ+ equality advocates have focused mainly on constitutional protection of civil rights, such as same-sex marriage, parental rights, and workplace discrimination. Around the world, however, members of the LGBTQ+ community face a broader set of challenges including the possibility of having to deal with criminalization and legal sanction, including the death penalty, and extra-judicial killings. LGBTQ+ rights became a major issue in the United States in the early 2010s. At this time, LGBTQ+ equality advocates continued calling for the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage. This became reality in June of 2015, as a Supreme Court decision made same-sex marriage legal across the United States.

Critical Thinking Questions

Why was the 1969 raid on the Stonewall Inn a turning point in the LGBTQ rights movement?

What changes could have been made to President Bill Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" policy to make it better protect soldiers?

How were domestic partnership laws discriminatory?

Background

The term gay generally refers to men or women who are sexually attracted to people of the same gender. The term lesbian is specific to women who are attracted to other women. Bisexual describes a person who is attracted to more than one gender. Transgender refers to individuals whose gender identity is different from the sex they were assigned at birth. Q most generally refers to those who "question" or are in the process of identifying their gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation. However, it can also refer to "queer," though the term has historically been used as a derogatory way to refer to gay people.

LGBTQ+ identities have existed throughout history and enjoyed periods of open acceptance-even celebration-among certain cultures (for example, in ancient Greece and Rome). Yet throughout most of that history, LGBTQ+ identities have been censored, banned, condemned, and criminalized.

Beginning with the Code of Hammurabi, written around 1790 BC, laws have been written establishing the rights and responsibilities of citizens. In 1948 the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted to promote the understanding and protection of human rights worldwide. Provisioning of these rights, however, may vary according to a person's gender, race, political, or economic affiliation. For example, the US Constitution and Bill of Rights did not guarantee, by themselves, a woman's right to vote or the civil liberties of African Americans.

Identities that are not cisgender and heterosexual are typically excluded from legal doctrines expressing the rights of individuals. Thus, the legal status of those in the LGBTQ+ community varies widely throughout the world. Homosexuality is explicitly banned in many countries where the legal systems stem mainly from religious or traditional laws. Penalties for same-sex activities range from a few years to life in prison or-in countries like Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Iran-death.

LGBTQ+ Rights Movement

Historically, in the United States, as in much of the world, those in the LGBTQ+ community lived privately and kept their identities hidden from public perception. During the 1950s and 1960s, such activities as holding hands, kissing, engaging in sexual activities, gathering in public places, or consuming alcohol were illegal for gay people in most states. The first societies representing the interests of gay men and women were founded in the mid-1950s in the United States. However, the modern LGBTQ+ equality movement did not take flight until well into the 1960s. It was during this decade of civil rights campaigns, the women's movement, and antiwar protests that many LGBTQ rights activists began the push to overturn laws banning gay activities. It would be another decade before states began to repeal laws that banned private sexual activities by consenting gay men and women.

In 1969 the LGBTQ+ rights movement experienced a historic victory toward progress when police targeted the LGBTQ+ community and raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village. Such raids were common and typically targeted the LGBTQ community. However, on this particular evening, the LGBTQ+ community, including gay men and women and transgender women of color resisted the police and rebelled, forcing the police to retreat back into the bar. The rebellion by the patrons of the Stonewall Inn continued for several more nights. Their fight for equal treatment eventually led to what many refer to as one of the most notable moments for LGBTQ+ equality in America. To commemorate this new era of resistance, pride parades are held every year in cities across the country to mark the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

Over the following years, several members of the LGBTQ+ community rose to prominence through their activism, including Marsha P. Johnson. Johnson resisted arrest during the initial raid, then helped lead the protests and rebellion against the police. During these events, she demanded equal rights for LGBTQ+ people. Sylvia Rivera, a friend of Johnson's, also became well-known within the LGBTQ+ community during the Stonewall Riots. Rivera threw a Molotov cocktail during the initial resistance, then fought for transgender rights during the following years. Stormé DeLarverie, another future activist present at the Stonewall raid, was a famous drag performer. She was known for throwing the first punch at the Stonewall Riots, though that claim is sometimes disputed. DeLarverie was commonly referred to as the "Rosa Parks of Stonewall."

During the 1970s, the LGBTQ+ community saw a few of its members elected to public office. In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. (The American Psychological Association and American Medical Association would soon follow suit.) However, beginning in 1977, conservative activists launched several campaigns to overturn many of the new LGBTQ civil rights ordinances. In 1978 San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay man, was assassinated by a conservative council member following passage of a citywide LGBTQ rights ordinance.

For most of the 1990s and beyond, same-sex marriage became the most important and controversial issue for LGBTQ activists. As of 2011 six states and the District of Columbia had legalized same-sex marriage. Other states implemented so-called "domestic partnership" or "civil union" laws. These laws permitted same-sex couples to obtain many of the same rights and privileges enjoyed by heterosexual couples, such as marriage tax benefits, health insurance, and survivor benefits. However, in many states conservative opposition to gay marriage has produced laws and constitutional amendments banning same-sex partnerships. At the federal level, the Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996, defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman. It specifies that a spouse must be a person of the opposite sex. The act also provides that states are not obligated to recognize same-sex unions sanctioned by other states.

In 1992 presidential candidate Bill Clinton offered to lift the ban on gays in the military. However, he later had to rescind his promise, owing to pressure from military and political leaders. His revised plan would later become known as the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, under which recruiters and commanding officers were not allowed to inquire as to a soldier's sexual orientation. The policy did nothing to protect soldiers from being discharged from the military if their sexual orientation became known.

During the 1990s, hate crime legislation was modified in some states to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Such legislation is developed to protect citizens from assault or other crimes committed against them based on their ethnic, racial, or religious affiliation. The move followed a number of high-profile incidents. Among them was the beating death of gay college student Matthew Shepard, in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998.

The Yogyakarta Principles

In many parts of the world, members of the LGBTQ+ community continue to face severe discrimination. They may be denied employment and educational opportunities. They may also face extra-judicial violence, torture, detention, and even the death penalty. Many are frequently denied the same basic human rights enjoyed by heterosexuals and cisgender people, such as freedom of assembly and expression, access to legal and medical resources, and protection from cruel and unusual punishment or human exploitation and trafficking.

At a 2007 meeting of human rights experts in the province of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, participants produced a list that addresses "a broad range of international human rights standards and their application to issues of sexual orientation and gender identity." The twenty-nine principles in this list are known as the Yogyakarta Principles. These principles became part of a broader framework on human rights adopted by the United Nations in 2008. The framework is intended to affirm the obligation of states (countries) to promote and protect the human rights of all people. It links human rights statutes to the specific conditions faced by members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Progress Despite Setbacks

Advancements were made in LGBTQ+ equality during the early part of the twenty-first century. However, setbacks also occurred. Gay marriage laws were repealed in several US states, and hate crimes against members of the LGBTQ+ community continued in many parts of the world. In South Africa, a country that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation, hate crimes against gays and lesbians continued. The practice of "corrective rape"-a hate crime in which a lesbian is raped to "correct" her behavior-was becoming more frequent in the country. In March 2011, however, demands for action from around the world spurred the South African government to create a task force to bring awareness to the issue and help prevent these hate crimes.

A few months after this progress in South Africa, a government minister in Ghana, where homosexuality is a crime, called for the arrest of suspected homosexuals. In July 2011 Paul Evans Aidoo, a minister in the Western Region, publically demanded that local police immediately arrest suspected homosexuals after reports that eight thousand gay people in the area had registered with AIDS charities. The Christian Council of Ghana also spoke out against homosexuality.

Despite these setbacks, the fight for LGBTQ+ rights continued and positive changes were made. Almost twenty years after former president Bill Clinton signed "don't ask, don't tell," President Barack Obama repealed the law. Gay and lesbian members of the military no longer had to hide their sexual orientation. They could not be expelled from the military for being gay. This repeal was a positive step forward for LGBTQ+ equality. In July 2017, however, President Donald Trump announced that transgender people would no longer be allowed to serve in the military in any capacity. While that decision was challenged in court, temporarily blocking the ban, a January 2019 decision by the Supreme Court overturned that decision, allowing the ban to go into effect while the case proceeds through the lower court system. Agreeing with Obama's 2016 direction, President Joe Biden (1943-) signed an executive order in January 2021 repealing the ban.

Also in 2011 Prime Minister David Cameron announced that the United Kingdom would withhold aid to African countries that persecute gay people. The United States and Germany had previously instituted similar policies. These actions came after Malawi president Bingu wa Mutharika passed a law making sex between two women a crime. In response to this law, the Global Fund refused to grant Malawi $560 million worth of requested funding.

In June 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled in the Obergefell v. Hodges case that denying gay people the right to marry was unconstitutional under several provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. These provisions guaranteed all American citizens protection under the law. Therefore, with this decision, same-sex marriage became legal in all fifty US states. The case was celebrated as a landmark victory for LGBTQ+ equality. The issue of how LGBTQ+ people are treated around the world also arose in 2015 in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. The Islamic militant group ISIS became known for its strong anti-LGBTQ+ position and violence toward gay people. Syrian refugees fleeing from the group's influence later told stories of ISIS's brutal treatment of those caught engaging in gay activities.

In 2020 the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects LGBTQ+ people from discrimination in employment based on sex. This ruling made discrimination in the workplace illegal regardless of state legislation.

Timeline of America's LGBTQ+ Equality Movement

1924: Country's earliest LGBTQ rights organization is formed, the Society for Human Rights

1950: An early national gay rights organization, the Mattachine Society, is founded in Los Angeles

1956: First lesbian rights organization is founded in San Francisco, the Daughters of Bilitis

1966: Compton's Cafeteria Riot, a riot against police persecution of LBTQ people that took place in San Francisco

1969: Stonewall Inn riots take place in Greenwich Village in New York City

1969: The activist group Gay Liberation Front is founded after the Stonewall Riots, later splitting into the Gay Activists Alliance

1973: American Psychiatric Society removes homosexuality from its list of mental disorders

1984: Berkeley, California, becomes the first city to offer domestic partner benefits to its employees

2004: First same-sex marriage takes place in Massachusetts

2015: Same-sex marriage becomes legal in all fifty US states.

2016: Senate confirms Eric Fanning to be secretary of the army, the first openly gay secretary of a US military branch

Source Citation

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The issue of LGBTQ+ community equality encompasses both civil rights and human rights for members of the LGBTQ+ communities. The LGBTQ+ community includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people and others with a broad range of sexual orientations and gender identities.

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Transgender Americans are entitled to the same rights as all US citizens. However, they face much discrimination-and even violence-over issues related to identification, employment, school, health care, military service, and more. Because of this, many US states and jurisdictions have laws in place to protect the rights of transgender individuals.

Critical Thinking Questions

What is one point of contention regarding federal Title IX, a law that has been intrepreted to protect transgender students in schools?

How does the Affordable Care Act (ACA) help transgender individuals?

What can be done to protect transgender individuals from being discriminated against by healthcare organizations?

Rights in the Workplace and School

In the United States, laws protect transgender individuals from being discriminated against in the workplace. Discrimination against a person because they are transgender is considered illegal sex discrimination. Employers cannot demand medical or legal documentation of a person's gender. These laws protect transgender individuals from being fired or passed over for jobs or promotions simply because they are transgender. The laws also protect transgender people from being sexually harassed. Forms of sexual harassment toward a transgender individual include asking invasive questions; making jokes or derogatory comments; and intentionally calling someone by the wrong name or pronoun. In addition, employers must provide transgender individuals access to restrooms that conform to their gender identity.

In June 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which disallows discrimination on the basis of sex, also included gay and transgender individuals. The decision was a surprise to many legal analysists, who had expected the court's conservative majority to side against LGBTQ rights. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch stated in the majority opinion: "An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids."

In education, it has been widely regarded that the federal Title IX law protects transgender students in public schools from being sexually harassed and bullied. However, in 2018, a spokesperson from the Department of Education (DOE) clarified that Title IX specifically prohibits discrimination based on sex, not gender identity. While this protects transgender individuals from discrimination resulting from their refusal to conform to the traditional expectations associated with one's sex, it does not protect them from discrimination based on displaying their gender identity. In contrast with this statement, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August 2020 that any policies segregating transgender students from other students are unconstitutional. This ruling states that policies which forbid students from using the bathroom of their choice are discriminatory on the basis of sex and thus must be voided. It also prohibits any attempts to deny transgender students transcripts that reflect their gender identity.

Other protections that transgender individuals receive in schools include the right to equal educational opportunities and school activities; the right to dress according to one's gender, as long as the dress code is followed; the right to privacy regarding transition and school records; the right to join or form groups such as the Gay-Straight Alliance or the Pride Alliance; and access to restrooms that are consistent with a person's gender identity.

Changing Identification Documents

Some transgender people choose to change their gender and/or name on official documents such as driver's licenses, birth certificates, and passports. This process can be difficult, and requirements vary by state. Some states require special court orders, and until recently, proof of gender confirmation surgery to change one's gender on official documents. However, as of 2010, the US State Department has changed this requirement from proof of surgery to proof of "appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition" in the form of a physician's affidavit. This change acknowledges the variety of ways in which trans people may transition incluing changes in gender expression, hormone therapy, psychotherapy, and/or surgeries. Still, it remains difficult for a transgender individual to change their identification information on official documents.

Right to Health Care

In the United States, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) makes it illegal for health care providers that receive federal money to discriminate anyone based on race, national origin, age, or disability. The act protects transgender individuals from being denied physical and mental health care by physicians, hospitals, drug rehabilitation programs, assisted living facilities, school and prison health centers, and more. The ACA states that a transgender person cannot be harassed; refused services, including emergency care, counseling, and referrals; refused access to gender-appropriate restrooms; and isolated from other people. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects the privacy of a person's health information, including a person's transgender status and transition.

In addition, several insurance companies provide plans that include coverage for transgender people who want to medically transition. While the ACA does not require insurers to cover hormone therapy and gender confirmation surgeries, insurers cannot discriminate based on sex or gender. However, some insurers make their plans very vague or broad to get around the law. Several states have banned insurance companies from excluding transition treatments for transgender individuals. However, many transgender people still experience discrimination and harassment from healthcare providers and insurance companies.

Service in the Military

On June 30, 2016, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that the US military would lift its longstanding ban on the service and enlistment of transgender individuals. Prior to this announcement, openly serving transgender individuals could be discharged or denied reenlistment because of their gender identity. The move was widely celebrated by the LBGTQ community.

In 2017, President Donald Trump issued a series of tweets calling for the restoration on the ban on transgender people in the military. On March 23, 2018, the President issued a new order forbidding anyone taking hormone therapy or who has undergone a gender transition from enlisting. The new ban allowed transgender individuals who had previously enlisted to continue to serve; however, it mandated that they serve as the sex they were assigned at birth. Though several lawsuits were filed against the ban, it remained in place for the duration of President Trump's administration.

The election of Joe Biden as president in 2020 lead to a reversal of Trump's policy in 2021. Biden signed an order that prohibits service members from being removed from the military on the basis of gender identity.

Community and Activism

Many groups and organizations have formed to help fight for and protect the rights of transgender individuals. Some organizations also provide information and services regarding health care, legal services, employment, housing, and immigration for transgender individuals. These organizations include GLAAD, Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, National Center for Transgender Equality, Transgender Law Center, and TransYouth Family Allies.

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Transgender Americans are entitled to the same rights as all US citizens. However, they face much discrimination-and even violence-over issues related to identification, employment, school, health care, military service, and more. Because of this, many US states and jurisdictions have laws in place to protect the rights of transgender individuals.

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The transgender community faces much discrimination as it strives to find acceptance. Transgender individuals are discriminated against in the workplace, at school, and in public places. They struggle to find employment, housing, and health care. They face many obstacles in changing their name and gender on official identification documents. In addition, transgender people face disproportionate risk of abuse and violence with numerous laws being enacted to protect transgender individuals from discrimination. Many advocacy groups and organizations have formed to help fight for and protect the rights of transgender individuals. These organizations also provide information and medical and social services to transgender individuals.

Critical Thinking Questions

What do you think can be done to combat the discrimination faced by transgender individuals?

Why are transgender advocacy organizations important?

What social and legal advances have been made over time for the LGBTQ+ community?

Activism

The growing lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer (or questioning) movement, sometimes called LGBTQ+ to include people with a broad range of sexual orientations and gender identities, has been compared to the civil rights movement of the 1950s in which African Americans campaigned for equal rights. Transgender individuals face many of the same issues experienced by African Americans. They are harassed and discriminated against because they are different, and they are broadly excluded from public spaces. Just like African Americans were barred from using the same restrooms as whites, transgender individuals face backlash and criticism when using restrooms that conform to their gender identity. According to the National LGBTQ Task Force, transgender individuals are two times more likely to be unemployed and four times more likely to live in poverty compared to cisgender individuals, who identify with their sex assigned at birth. This number is even higher for African American and Latino transgender people.

Through the years, numerous organizations have formed to help protect the LGBTQ+ community. These organizations include GLAAD, Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, National Center for Transgender Equality, Transgender Law Center, and TransYouth Family Allies. The American Civil Liberties Union also has worked for a century defending the LGBTQ+ community. Some focus on changing legislation to protect the rights of transgender individuals in schools, public places, and workplaces throughout the United States. Others help the community directly by assisting with issues such as health care, legal services, employment, housing, and immigration. Continued issues being pursued by transgender advocacy organizations include access to trans-competent health care, the treatment of transgender people within the prison system, and the fight against workplace discrimination.

First Trans State Lawmaker

Democrat Danica Roem was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in November 2017. She was the first openly transgender person to win an election and be seated in a state legislature in the United States. During the campaign she talked about LGBTQ inclusion, but her main focus was traffic congestion in her district.

Media Gives Visibility to the Transgender Community

While the LGBTQ+ community has been visible in the media throughout the late twentieth century, much of the attention has been given to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. Transgender people did not receive as much visibility until the twenty-first century. This push for recognition and rights largely occurred when the US Congress was preparing to vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in 2007. Leadership of the Human Rights Campaign and Democratic members of Congress believed a bill that included transgender people would not have enough support to be passed. Instead, they limited ENDA to protecting lesbian, gay, and bisexual workers, although the bill still did not get enough votes. When leaders of transgender-rights groups discovered they were being left out, they galvanized more than four hundred organizations to protest. Many leaders in the trans-rights movement point to 2007 as the start of national recognition of transgender individuals and their fight for equality. More and more people-actors and celebrities included-became the faces and voices of transgender activism. They shared their stories and struggles, helping to educate many people about the transgender community. While ENDA never became law, several federal court cases held that LGBT workers, including transgender individuals, are protected from employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Transgender issues became the subject of many television and film projects. Various films such as Boys Don't Cry (1999), Transamerica (2005), and Dallas Buyers Club (2013) featured transgender characters. Chaz Bono, the son of Sonny and Cher, transitioned from female to male and chronicled his story in the documentary Becoming Chaz and the memoir Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man. In 2014, transgender actress Laverne Cox of Orange Is the New Black was the first transgender individual to be nominated for an Emmy Award. A few months later, she became the first transgender person to be profiled on the cover of Time. She appeared on numerous news outlets to share her experiences and insights as a trans woman.

Former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner made headlines in 2015 when she announced her transition from male to female and starred in the reality show I Am Cait. The reality show I Am Jazz features teenage transgender activist Jazz Jennings and her family as they navigate transgender issues. Several television dramas such as Amazon's award-winning Transparent and ABC Family's Becoming Us feature stories about families who are changed by the transition of a loved one. These projects have advanced the visibility of transgender identities and helped to educate the public about the inequalities that transgender individuals face.

Source Citation

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The transgender community faces much discrimination as it strives to find acceptance. Transgender individuals are discriminated against in the workplace, at school, and in public places. They struggle to find employment, housing, and health care. They face many obstacles in changing their name and gender on official identification documents.

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Transgender activist talks Pride month and issues facing the trans community

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How A Transgender Rights Legal Victory Could Have National Impact

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The Past, Present And Future Of Trans Rights