Surge in anti-LGBTQ legislation across US has locals concerned

Members of Sonoma County’s LGBTQ+ community and their allies say a surge in legislation being considered in other parts of the country that aims to limit the rights of people from gender and sexual minorities has them concerned.

Though none of the recent wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation has come out of Sacramento, both groups say they worry hateful rhetoric born out of such laws may encourage similar speech, either online or in person, in the West Coast.

There also is a concern that these efforts might embolden those prone to acts of violence against members of this community, which includes people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or members of other gender and sexual minorities.

“Even if we live in a county and a state where a majority of voters may vote to protect or preserve (LGBTQ+) rights here when possible, there’s still a concern that a vocal minority will enact violence, or will engage in hate speech,” said Chelsea Kurnick, the chair of Positive Images, a Santa Rosa-based organization that advocates for LGBTQ+ individuals in Sonoma County.

As of late March, lawmakers across the country had proposed 238 anti-LGBTQ+ bills, with nearly half targeting the rights of transgender people specifically, an NBC News analysis of data from the American Civil Liberties Union and the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Freedom for All Americans found.

That’s a significant increase since 2018 when 41 bills of this kind were proposed, according to the news site.

They include Alabama’s SB 184, which makes it a felony for medical professionals to provide gender-affirming care to transgender children under the age of 19.

And, Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill, which its opponents call the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which was signed late into law March 28.

The measure bars public school teachers from talking about sexual orientation and gender identity in class “in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards." It also prohibits transgender students from using facilities that match their gender identity.

Lawsuits have been filed in an attempt to block both laws.

Many opponents of such laws point to a 2021 national survey from The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ youth, which found 42% of teen and young adults ages 13-24 seriously contemplated suicide in the past year, with slightly higher numbers for the transgender and nonbinary population.

That figure was 20% when looking at high school students generally in the first half of 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

In another poll released by the group in January, 66% of LGBTQ+ youth said recent debates about state laws that would restrict the rights of transgender people had either a very negative or somewhat negative impact on their mental health. Among transgender and gender nonbinary youth 85% responded similarly, the poll found.

Localized data on the LGBTQ+ community is difficult to find as the American Community Survey does not collect data on sexual orientation or gender identities beyond male and female.

Jennifer Rihl, the co-chair of TransLife Sonoma County, an organization that puts on community events for the region’s transgender community, said the influx of laws that target the transgender community have increasingly made her question her safety when traveling to other states and certain parts of California where support for anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is strong.

A Santa Rosa property manager, Rihl came out as a transgender woman to her family and friends in 2015. A year later, North Carolina passed a law that barred transgender people from using bathrooms that aligned with their gender identity at schools and in government buildings.

“I feel like it’s been an onslaught ever since,” Rihl said. “I think the (Republican Party) tries to rally its base by going old school, which is traditional family values.”

As the number of laws that aim to peel back the rights of the transgender community grows, Rihl said she has seen impacts in other parts of her life as well.

She broke ties with a friend who recently posted an image on Facebook that misgendered Rachel Levine, the Department of Health and Human Services’ assistant secretary of health, and NCAA swimming championship winner Lia Thomas, two transgender women.

A regular bowler for nine years, Rihl said she also found herself pulling back during a bowling competition at the Double Decker Lanes in Rohnert Park earlier this month.

With an uptick in debates about transgender athletes’ participation in sports, she worried a win would come with unwanted negative attention, Rihl said.

“It came on the forefront of my mind, that maybe me winning first is not going to be met with applause from these ladies,” Rihl said. “I’m welcomed with open arms by all the members in the league, but it’s now something that is in the back of my head.”

She bowled her best game, scoring 220, and placed second among the women who competed that day, Rihl said.

Kurnick, from Positive Images, said conversations about anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the country are a regular occurrence at the virtual weekly support groups the organization runs, particularly in groups for youth.

Sometimes participants want to use the space to discuss what they’re seeing in the news about their community and process their feelings together, she said.

“I don’t just want to paint a picture of fear, because there’s totally strength and fearlessness in facing this opposition,” Kurnick said. “It nonetheless has an impact on everybody’s mental health that people are feeling safe to express intimidating or hateful views.”

While California is largely seen as having better legal safeguards for people in the LGBTQ+ community than in other parts of the country, Kurnick said there’s a concern that the influx of laws targeting their rights could chip away at existing federal protections for the community.

Another concern is that these type of laws could skew national attitudes about sexual and gender minorities to be less supportive over time, she said.

Kurnick pointed to social media pages that target local LGBTQ+ community members and groups as an example of efforts to aggrieve sexual and gender minorities in Sonoma County.

There was also the theft of a progress pride flag, which represents both the LGBTQ+ community and people of color, from a Petaluma elementary school earlier this year and the group of Windsor High School students who wore red, white and blue to protest a National Coming Out Day celebration on that school’s campus, she said.

“Trans people exist, queer people exist and efforts to hide or silence their existing queerness and trans-ness really are efforts to stamp out people,” Kurnick said.

Matti Cottrell, an intern researcher with the Santa Rosa Junior College’s Queer Resource Center, said the wave of anti-gay and anti-transgender legislation in other states is not only a topic of discussion among queer students on campus, but it’s compounding the stress of other challenges in their life, such as that of being a student and navigating the coronavirus pandemic.

Cottrell said the LGBTQ+ community in the U.S., as a whole, is more likely to be in tune with what’s happening at the state level because of historic examples of how legislation can cause damaging ripple effects for the group.

“Even though it’s something that is happening in other spaces, it’s not distant for us,” Cottrell said . “Queer folks are used to threats from afar and the far-reaching and localized consequences of that.”

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nashellytweets.