Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation Is on the Rise in Kentucky
Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation Is on the Rise in Kentucky
"Stopping anti-trans legislation is a key part of Appalachian sustainability and survival."
Earlier this month, results from a national survey conducted by The Trevor Project reported some troubling, if not surprising, statistics. For starters, two-thirds of LGBTQ+ youth reported that their mental health was negatively impacted by recent debates over state laws restricting the rights of transgender people. This impact, according to the survey, is even more dramatic among transgender and nonbinary youth, with “more than four in five of them (85 percent) reporting it has impacted their mental health negatively.”
But despite the direct harm caused by anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and bills attempting to limit the rights of transgender and nonbinary people, Kentucky lawmakers are part of a handful of states still pushing ahead with this deeply damaging legislation during the 2022 session.
“We've been incredibly fortunate here in Kentucky to have gone almost a decade without any [legislation] targeting the LGBTQ community from passing,” says Chris Hartman, Executive Director of the Fairness Campaign. “This session, though, feels more treacherous. It has not helped that so many other states have passed these bills targeting and attacking some of our most vulnerable youth: trans kids.”
The seismic lurching of the Overton window to the right in recent years has made Republican lawmakers far more emboldened to introduce anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in what is seemingly an attempt to rile up their voter base—even if the issues aren’t rooted in reality in their rural Kentucky districts.
“It feels like we've swung in the opposite direction pretty fast, pretty hard. But I’ve long said that most of these people, most of your rural voters, really don't care. This is not an issue that's near and dear to them,” says Addison Newton of TransKentucky. “It's been made to appear that it’s near and dear to them because they're having their fear stoked, but most of these people have a misconception of what trans and gender nonconforming people really are without having any real-life experience. They’ve never met a trans person so to speak, or if they have, they don’t even know that they did.”
Following a blueprint being copy-and-pasted across the United States, the bills in question this year target the denial of gender-affirming care for trans youth (House Bill 253 and Senate Bill 84) and prohibit access to sports for trans and nonbinary students (House Bill 247 and Senate Bill 83). The legislators behind House Bill 247 took a alarmingly misleading approach by labeling the bill the “Save Women’s Sports Act” while “prohibit designated agencies from entertaining complaints or investigations” against the anti-trans policies contained therein.
“The sports bills are incredibly problematic, because these are fabricated out of what arch-conservatives find polls best. First, it was bathroom bills. We went through the series of attacks on trans students from using bathroom and locker room facilities that matched their gender identity. And those failed after a while, so they moved on from bathroom bills to sports bills, which are really just bathroom bills 2.0,” says Hartman. “How can we use trans kids as political pawns on this issue that many people don't have a lot of familiarity with, but that is easy to villainize a group of folks and use that for political gain? This is an election year, and those are our most dangerous because people want something they can put on a postcard and run for reelection on.”
For the Republican lawmakers who introduced this legislation—none of whom responded to my request for comment as to why they were sponsoring these bills—political maneuvering now seems to outweighs any scientific, rational or compassionate understanding of these issues, particularly when it comes to gender-affirming care by medical professionals.
“As a healthcare provider myself, there's a wealth of literature out there that says gender affirming healthcare is beneficial to the mental health of adolescents,” says Newton, pointing to a recent Stanford University School of Medicine study that found starting gender-affirming hormone treatment in adolescence is linked to better mental health outcomes than waiting until adulthood. “But it really goes back to selling a story. I think that for the right patient; for the right child; for the right adolescent, that hormone suppression is absolutely appropriate and gives them time to explore their identity. And I think that if these people read the literature versus the headlines, that they would understand that, but they’re being sold a bill of goods.”
Carmen Wampler-Collins, Executive Director of Pride Community Services Organization agrees. “I think there's a lot of misunderstanding and fear about it in the general public. I mean first of all, young, prepubescent kids are not having transition surgery. These kinds of bills play on a fear that people have that this thing is happening that is not actually happening. I mean, transgender kids are some of the most vulnerable people in the world. And with higher rates of suicide [among trans youth], playing on that, it’s just really, very damaging.”
(Trans Pride Shirt from Pikeville Pride, available here)
Below, we’re diving into the world of audio (!) to chat with Abby Lee Hood, journalist and mastermind behind the limited-run podcast, Hellbender: Giving TN Anti-Trans Legislation All Hell. Tennessee is often used as a “test balloon” state for anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, and last year the state legislature passed a bill preventing transgender students from participating in sports that is eerily similar to one being floated around in Kentucky this year.
After listening, go give the Southern & Appalachian Co-Op Press a follow to stay up-to-date on Hellbender’s debut!
In addition to the resources above, if you’re a transgender Kentuckian searching for healthcare that will reaffirm your autonomy and community, check out the Trans Health Advocacy Program, a part of the Kentucky Health Justice Network.