LGBTQ+

September 9, 2025

The Berwick Area Board of Education adopted two controversial policies Monday, monitoring the names transgender and nonbinary students use in class and regulating how they use the bathroom.

As some celebrated the policies as a triumph of parental rights and traditional values, others condemned them as grave, authoritarian threats to the wellbeing of LGBTQ students.

With the policies having been introduced on first reading last month, the meeting drew copious attention from the community and the press. As they did in August, transgender-rights advocates came in force, assembling en masse to oppose the board. One group hoisted a large Pride flag in the back of the meeting room.   Read More

September 9, 2025

The Supreme Court has declined South Carolina’s request for an emergency order allowing the state to enforce a law aimed at barring transgender students in state-funded schools from using bathrooms of their choice.

The justices rejected the state’s emergency appeal by an apparent 6-3 vote Wednesday. The high court’s one-page order provided little insight into the reasons behind the ruling.

“The denial of the application is not a ruling on the merits of the legal issues presented in the litigation,” the unsigned order said. “Rather, it is based on the standards applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court.”

Three of the court’s conservatives noted their dissent: Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch. None detailed his views on the issue.   Read More

September 8, 2025

“I’m so disappointed, this is abhorrent, and I hope you know that, I hope you can’t sleep tonight,” said Lydia Price, a member of the Sunrise Movement.

Many of the people at Monday’s Berwick Area School Board meeting in Columbia County echoed the same feeling, as the board voted to enact two policies centering around transgender students.

“The energy should go toward bullying prevention, not policing identities and bathroom usage of a handful of kids,” said Jill Freeman of Berwick.

The first policy, which the board approved unanimously, prohibits students from using a bathroom or locker room that is different than the sex listed on their birth certificate.

If they don’t want to use the sex-specific bathroom or locker room with other students, they’ll have to wait until the bathroom or locker room is empty.   Read More

September 4, 2025

The No Hate in Our State Town Hall meeting held on September 4, 2025, in York City, Pennsylvania, focused on fostering advocacy and community engagement against hate and discrimination. The meeting featured discussions emphasizing the importance of outreach and collaboration among various organizations and faith communities.

One key speaker highlighted the necessity for advocacy in all spaces, urging attendees to engage with their congregations and communities. The speaker invited organizations to visit local churches to discuss inclusivity and support for marginalized groups, particularly the LGBTQ+ community. They stressed the importance of identifying supportive congregations and being aware of those that may perpetuate discrimination, particularly against transgender individuals.

The speaker shared a personal story about their own child, who is transgender and has successfully graduated from high school and is now attending Bryn Mawr College.  Read More

September 2, 2025

It’s hard to miss the increasing debates around the word “gender.” The last few decades have seen historic gains in the struggle for equality of access to rights and opportunities for women and girls around the world. Though there is still a long way to go, some progress has been made towards recognizing the rights of LGBTQI+ people.

Yet, a dangerous “anti-gender” backlash is spreading, threatening the human rights of millions of people globally. Misinformation and disinformation are being weaponized to use “gender” to attack everything from comprehensive sexuality education and sports to LGBTQI+ rights and sexual and reproductive rights.

Recent political and legal pronouncements, including the UK Supreme Court’s disappointing judgment on the reading of UK’s Equality Actopens in a new tab and U.S. President Donald Trump’s Executive Orders seeking to “protect women from gender ideology,” among others, reveal an alarming backslide to repression, intolerance and discrimination.   Read More

September 2, 2025

The fight over student gender identity, school restrooms and locker rooms is barreling again toward the Supreme Court — and this time tens of millions of government dollars are at stake.

— The Trump administration is squeezing half a dozen school districts in Virginia and Colorado to scrap gender-neutral bathrooms, plus an array of local policies to accommodate student gender identities, or risk losing federal money that includes aid for children who have special needs or live in low-income households.

— Two Virginia districts responded Friday with lawsuits that accuse President Donald Trump’s Education Department of an illegal power play that they say also contradicts state law and a federal appellate court ruling that covers a chunk of the mid-Atlantic.  Read More

August 28, 2025

A bill that would restrict which restrooms transgender people can use in government buildings and schools is now headed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk after the Texas Senate on Wednesday agreed to increased penalties the House added to the proposal last week.

House representatives approved Senate Bill 8 on a 86-45 vote Thursday after several hours of tense discussion that was at times interrupted by people in the gallery shouting insults at lawmakers who supported the bill. The House gallery, where visitors can watch proceedings, was emptied out by staff and Department of Public Safety officers after the disruptions continued.

SB 8 would restrict bathroom use in government-owned buildings, public schools and universities based of sex assigned at birth and would not allow exceptions for transgender inmates’ housing in prisons and jails. It would also bar those assigned male at birth from accessing women’s domestic violence shelters, unless they are under 17 and the child of a woman also receiving services.   Read More

August 28, 2025

South Western public school officials are set to consider changes to policies that would remove any mention of gender identity as a protected class.

The posible change comes after the Hanover-area school district adopted anti-LGBTQ+ policies that restrict what teams students can play on and what pronouns and bathrooms they can use.

Last year, the district cut windows into gender-neutral student bathrooms that allowed passersby to look in, a decision it subsequently reversed after outcry from parents.

On Friday, the school board’s policy committee — comprised of a small subset of board members — will take up changes related to Title IX sexual harassment. It will also consider a ban on the presence of any flag that isn’t the U.S. flag or the Pennsylvania flag on school property.  Read More

August 26, 2025

The Trump administration is threatening to pull federal funding from 40 states for a sex education program aimed at vulnerable teens unless those states remove references in their curriculum to gender identity and transgender people.

In a Tuesday press release, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the action reflected the Trump administration’s “ongoing commitment to protecting children from attempts to indoctrinate them with delusional ideology.”

The threat comes after California refused to change its curriculum last week and HHS terminated the state’s nearly $6 million-a-year grant.

The states that received notices to change their curriculum are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.  Read More

August 20, 2025

More than 2.8 million people now identify as transgender in the US, including an estimated 724,000 youth, according to a new data analysis that is the largest of its kind to date.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Williams Institute used federal surveys and data from state health agencies to identify the size and demographics of the trans population in each state.

The analysis, shared with the Guardian and released on Wednesday, documented thousands of trans youth living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The findings counter Donald Trump’s aggressive efforts to deny the existence of trans minors, as his administration removes references to trans people across federal agencies and widely erodes protections and programs for LGBTQ+ communities.  Read More

August 20, 2025

Approximately 2.8 million people aged 13 and older—1.0% of the U.S. population in that age group—identify as transgender, according to new estimates from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. This includes about 724,000 youth aged 13 to 17 (3.3% of youth) and around 2.1 million adults aged 18 and older (0.8% of adults).

Transgender individuals tend to be younger than the overall U.S. population, a trend consistently seen in previous research. Three-quarters (76%) of people aged 13 and older who identify as transgender are under 35, compared to 34% of the entire U.S. population in the same age group. One-quarter of individuals who identify as transgender (25%) are between 13 and 17, versus only 8% of the overall population.

“Younger generations are more likely to identify as transgender, and we expect that trend to continue,” said lead author Jody Herman, Senior Scholar of Public Policy at the Williams Institute.   Read More

August 19, 2025

The Berwick Area Board of Education introduced a pair of policies Monday night monitoring transgender students’ names and regulating how they use the bathroom.

Community members fearful of dire impacts on transgender students mobilized against the policies, as others defended them on the grounds of upholding parental rights and traditional values.

The group advocating for LGBTQ rights came wearing rainbow shirts and waving Pride signs.

“This is a hot-button, politically motivated thing and it is going to harm our kids,” Kristina Birdsall Culver, the co-chair of Defense of Democracy of Columbia County and a parent in the district, said before the meeting. “So, we’re here to stand up and fight back for our kids.”

Rick Matash, a licensed clinical social worker from the borough, argued the district should focus on protecting students from prevailing prejudice.  Read More

August 19, 2025

West Shore School District officials are expected to consider new restrictions on which bathrooms LGBTQ+ students can use and what all students can read.

Both of those policies are expected to be discussed at Thursday’s policy committee meeting. In recent years, the board’s new far-right majority has pursued a series of anti-LGBTQ+ proposals.

A month ago, Ryan Argot, the board’s secretary and the district’s director of federal programs, said the policy committee chair, Heidi Thomas, proposed the policy draft, which appeared to be copied from the Independence Law Center’s website, to be shared with the committee to discuss during an August meeting.

The ILC is a Harrisburg-based, far-right Christian nonprofit law firm that has pushed book bans and anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Some of the policies the law firm authored have been adopted by local school districts, such as restricting which teams LGBTQ+ students can join, which bathrooms they can use and how they can refer to themselves in the classroom.  Read More

August 19, 2025

On a summer day, Lee sat waiting in a doctor’s office, playing GamePigeon on his phone, telling family stories with his mom and deciding where to get dinner. 

It seemed like an ordinary afternoon, yet the reason for Lee’s appointment was far from ordinary.

Lee, 17, was there because the UPMC health system, headquartered in Pittsburgh, had cut off the gender-affirming care he’d been receiving for two years — a change driven by a federal executive order. A pharmacy mix-up meant his final puberty blocker shot never came, and the “weaning off” period his doctor had promised vanished. Within a month, he was experiencing hot flashes he hadn’t felt since starting treatment.

Lee was devastated when he learned he could no longer receive treatment. “You feel like you’re starting from rock bottom,” said Lee, who plans to start classes at Carlow University this month.  Read More

August 15, 2025

Gov. Josh Shapiro has directed state resources to provide crisis care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer residents after the federal government cut back some services.

The national 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which is accessible by phone call or text, previously offered a “press 3” option to connect LGBTQ+ people under 25 with trained counselors. President Donald Trump’s administration ended that service in July after it used the $33 million Congress had allocated for the fiscal year, according to a statement from the federal Department of Health and Human Services. 

The three-digit hotline was launched in 2022. When the “press 3” option ran over budget previously, then-President Joe Biden’s administration allocated more money. From September 2022 through July 17, 2025, nearly 1.6 million callers used the press 3 option, according to the agency that oversees the hotline. That is 11% of total callers.  Read More

August 11, 2025

The City of Minneapolis hosted its annual Trans Equity Summit on Monday at the McNamara Alumni Center, bringing together transgender, nonbinary and gender expansive residents for a day of workshops, performances and a resource fair.

Organizers said the summit is built with the communities it serves, with sessions on legal rights, health care access and ways to build supportive networks in Minnesota.

“I feel like the Trans Equity Summit is important because it is things that are important to the trans community, done by the trans community,” said Florence Addams, who goes by Flo.

The program also honored Minneapolis City Council Member Andrea Jenkins for her leadership. Performers took the stage during a midday celebration that organizers described as an expression of trans joy. Read More

August 4, 2025

Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York co-led a multistate lawsuit today challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict access to medically necessary health care for transgender and nonbinary youth.

Raoul and the coalition of 14 other attorneys general and the governor of Pennsylvania, filed the lawsuit targeting recent federal actions aimed at deterring providers from offering medically appropriate care to transgender individuals under age 19, even in states like Illinois where such care is legal and protected. The lawsuit argues the administration has overstepped its authority by using threats of criminal prosecution and federal investigations to pressure health care providers. The coalition is asking the court to block these actions and protect access to care for patients who need it. Read More

August 2, 2025

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is joining with other state leaders to sue the Trump Administration over gender-affirming care after the U.S. Department of Justice subpoenaed several healthcare clinics and providers.

More than 20 doctors and clinics that have been involved in transgender medical care were subpoenaed, and now Governor Shapiro is joining with 16 other Democratic officials suing the Trump Administration over restrictions for gender-affirming care for people under the age of 19.

The federal lawsuit filed in Boston alleges that attempts to deny medically necessary healthcare to transgender people through an executive order are unlawful.

According to the Department of Justice, however, these investigations include healthcare fraud, false statements, and more, saying those involved in performing these types of procedures on children will be held accountable.  Read More

July 23, 2025

Gov. Josh Shapiro, making his first public statement about a bill in the Legislature that would prevent transgender girls and women from playing on publicly funded sports teams, said the legislation is the work of extremist politicians.

“What we do not need in Pennsylvania are politicians — extremist politicians like Donald Trump, Doug Mastriano, and these others — trying to legislate a student’s participation and legislate the restriction on freedom,” Shapiro said Tuesday, “the way they’ve tried to do on many other things, like on abortion rights or marriage equality.”

President Trump signed an executive order in February to keep all trans people out of athletics called “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” while state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who lost to Shapiro in the 2022 gubernatorial race, co-sponsored the athletic ban and is the prime sponsor of a bill that would bar Pennsylvania’s government from recognizing trans individuals in official records. Read More

July 22, 2025

Just about all transgender Americans believe they’ll lose their access to gender-affirming health care during President Donald Trump’s current term in office.

As a result, despair is driving many to consider suicide or risky black-market hormones, researchers report in JAMA Network Open.

Every single participant in a 489-person poll of gender-diverse Americans aged 18 and older expects to lose their access to gender-affirming care during the next four years, researchers found.

“It was startling,” researcher Teresa Graziano, a professor of nursing at the University of Vermont in Burlington, said in a news release.

“This is a population that already feels that their access to care is constantly under threat, and so when you have somebody going into power that is campaigning on removing their access to care they believe it,” she said. Read More

July 19, 2025

The nation’s Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, 988, shuttered the specialized services for LGBTQ+ youth this week. The move came a day after the Lifeline marked three years since its launch. During this period, it has fielded more than 16 million calls, texts and chats. Nearly 10% of those contacts have been from gay and transgender young people, according to government data.

“This is a tragic moment,” says Mark Henson, vice president of government affairs and advocacy at The Trevor Project, one of several organizations that had contracts with the federal government to provide counseling services for this vulnerable population. The Trevor Project fields about half the LGBTQ+ contacts.

Data from the Youth Behavior Risk Survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, show that LGBTQ+ youth are more likely to experience persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness compared to their peers, and more likely to attempt suicide..  Read More

July 16, 2025

The Transgender Health Care Access Act seeks to expand access to evidence-based, lifesaving health care for transgender people through workforce development, medical education reform, and expanded community care capacity.

119th Congress: H.R. 2487

The Problem 

As of now, 27 states have enacted bans on gender-affirming care, putting more than 120,000 transgender young people—over 40% of all trans youth in the U.S.—at risk of losing access to the care they need to live healthy, authentic lives.

In some states, like Idaho and Tennessee, lawmakers have gone even further by prohibiting the use of state funds to provide gender-affirming care to minors and adults. Others, including Oklahoma, Texas, and South Carolina, have considered extending their bans to include care for transgender people up to age 26. These are clear, alarming attempts to erase trans adulthood.  Read More

July 11, 2025

It was in the late 1970s when a teenage James Lantz lost a close friend to suicide — something he believes to this day happened “because he was gay and was not accepted.”

The filmmaker describes his upbringing in a small Virginia town as conservative and Christian, recalling the kind of place where “nobody was out.” Now 64, Lantz feels as if he’s been transported back to his youth as he grapples with the losses of five transgender and nonbinary young people, all of whom died by suicide in the same Pennsylvania county within 18 months. It was their stories that would reignite Lantz’s life mission, and ultimately land him in jail with a fine of over $16,000.

“Having grown up a closeted gay teen in Virginia … I knew how that felt,” Lantz tells The Advocate. “I know that I got extremely depressed sometimes. I know that I have been suicidal at times. I know what these kids are experiencing. All they need is just a little bit of support. They need an adult in their life, or just an adult anywhere, to listen and say I see you, I support you, and you are loved.”  Read More

July 8, 2025

Members of the Republican minority in the state House tried to force a vote on a bill that would ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports in public schools and publicly funded colleges.

But Tuesday, Democrats on the House Education Committee blocked them.

The bill had already passed the GOP-controlled Senate, with five Democrats joining every Republican in supporting it. After crossing over to the Democratic-controlled House, the bill stalled in the Education Committee.

The maneuver House Republicans used to try to force a vote is called a discharge resolution, which allows 25 lawmakers to petition to have a bill forced out of committee after it’s sat for 15 session days.  

But Democrats on the panel re-referred the measure to the House Health Committee, effectively resetting the clock and avoiding a vote on the proposal itself.  Read More

July 4, 2025

The University of Pennsylvania’s decision to ban transgender female athletes from competing in women’s sports to resolve a civil rights complaint by the Department of Education is being slammed by LGBTQ activists and legal experts as unconstitutional.

The Trump administration announced this week that the Ivy League school has agreed to follow the Department of Education’s interpretation of Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance.

The administration had previously suspended $175 million in federal contracts awarded to Penn, citing the participation of openly transgender athlete Lia Thomas on the women’s swimming team during the 2021-2022 season.  Read More

June 28, 2025

Gov. Josh Shapiro will be joining Pennsylvania’s LGBTQ community and their supporters at Lancaster Pride Festival on Saturday.

His announcement came the same day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that parents must be allowed a provision to opt out their children from class when course material conflicts with their religious beliefs. The suit over LGBTQ book characters was the latest in a series of legal actions, state and federal legislation, presidential executive orders and funding threats targeting the rights of LGBTQ people.
In Pennsylvania the major hospitals that provide gender affirming care to trans people of all ages, abruptly dropped all treatment to those under 19, after President Trump threatened to withhold federal funding, leaving distressed families and patients with no where to turn for healthcare.  Read More

June 27, 2025

The Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision along ideological lines Friday ruled in favor of parents in Montgomery County, Md., who sought to opt out their children from instruction that uses books with LGBTQ themes.

It hands another win to religious rights advocates, who have regularly earned the backing of the high court’s conservative majority in a series of high-profile cases.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the six Republican-appointed justices, found the lack of an opt-out option likely substantially burdens parents’ constitutional right to freely exercise their religion.

The decision sends the case back to a lower court for a final decision on whether that requires the county to provide an opt-out. In the meantime, Alito said the school district must notify parents in advance and enable them to have their children removed from the instruction.   Read More

June 26, 2025

It’s been more than three years since Naasire Johnson’s murder and his family still visits his grave regularly.

On Feb. 17, 2022, Johnson, 20, left his home in West Philadelphia and went to a residence on the 2900 block of W. Oxford Street where he met with Kylen Pratt, a man whom he had been in a romantic relationship with. Pratt then pulled out a gun and shot Johnson in the neck, killing him.

Pratt then took Johnson’s body and traveled to a remote area in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, according to prosecutors. Prosecutors said he then wrapped Johnson’s body in cloth, plastic and duct tape and set it on fire.

After Johnson’s remains were discovered, an investigation was launched, leading to Pratt being identified as the murder suspect.

Pratt was then arrested in June of 2022. In September of 2024, he was convicted of first-degree murder, possessing an instrument of crime, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. He was then sentenced to life in prison without parole.  Read More

June 25, 2025

The number of state laws preempting local policies governing transgender rights in the United States has been steadily increasing since 2019, according to newly updated research by the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University School of Law.

There were 27 states at the end of 2024 with laws explicitly limiting local authority related to rights for transgender Americans compared to just three states in 2019.

The data, available on LawAtlas.org, now capture laws in all 50 states from August 1, 2019, to December 31, 2024. In the latest update, the data show increases in state-level preemption limiting local protections for transgender individuals in three areas over the past five years:

• There were no states in 2019 that used preemption to restrict participation in sports for transgender athletes; there were 26 states five years later at the end of 2024.   Read More

June 25, 2025

As part of June’s Pride Month, the Child Mind Institute has released a list of resources on how to support LBGTQ+ children’s mental health.

Learn More

One of the most important ways to support LGBTQ+ children is being aware of their mental health and emotional well-being, the Child Mind Institute wrote. Much like other teenagers, LGBTQ+ youths are vulnerable to anxiety and depression, especially if they are under pressure or do not feel accepted.

The Child Mind Institute’s resources include information on how to protect the mental health of LGBTQ+ children as well as signs of teen-onset mood disorders of which parents should be aware.

Also included among the resources are steps that caregivers should take if they are concerned about an LGBTQ+ youth and advice on how parents can support their children who are coming out or struggling with confusion about their sexual orientation or gender identity.   Read More

June 24, 2025

A new package of legislation set to be introduced to Pittsburgh City Council Tuesday could create new protections for the LGBTQ community. Sponsored by Councilor Barb Warwick, the bills are designed to de-emphasize enforcement of any future law restricting the LGBTQ community from participating in otherwise legal activities.

Warwick said the bills are an example of the city standing arm in arm with the local queer community.

“We really need lawmakers at every level of government — county, state, etc. — to be figuring out ways that we can proactively protect LGBTQIA folks, especially trans folks and other vulnerable communities,” Warwick told WESA. “These are some of the first steps we can take here in the City of Pittsburgh.”

One bill would prohibit the withholding or denial of “elective medical care which would normally be provided to a person, but for that person’s real or perceived gender identity or expression.” Read More

June 23, 2025

On June 18, 2025, the Supreme Court decided U.S .v. Skrmetti, a case about a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming hormone therapies for transgender youth (SB-1), which was challenged as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution by discriminating based on sex and transgender status. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a 6-3 conservative majority, held that the state only needed to show a “rational basis” for the law, and allowed SB-1 to go into effect, banning hormone therapies for transgender youth in that state. Although the decision is hugely consequential for transgender children, their families, and friends, it leaves unanswered important constitutional questions about protections for transgender people. Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, dissented.

The ruling allows for discrimination against transgender youth in healthcare based on the majority’s finding that SB-1 merely makes age and medical distinctions by barring the use of hormone therapies for youth with gender dysphoria.   Read More

June 21, 2025

Across Pennsylvania, LGBTQ+ advocates are raising the alarm over what they describe as mounting setbacks to queer rights, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors and a series of federal rollbacks under the Trump administration.

“Decisions like this only further underscore how policies targeting the transgender community have an unjust and dangerous impact, jeopardizing the safety of those who rely on this essential, often lifesaving, care,” Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey said in a statement Wednesday after the Supreme Court ruling.

The justices’ 6-3 decision effectively bolstered the authority of both the Trump administration and state governments to regulate transgender rights and roll back LGBTQ+ protections, shielding such efforts from legal challenges. Another 26 states have laws similar to Tennessee’s, the Associated Press reported.   Read More

June 18, 2025

Three years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states to ban abortion, the justices have decided to let states ban another politically controversial form of health care—this time, gender-affirming medical treatments for minors.

In a major ruling on Wednesday, the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law banning transgender kids, but not cisgender kids, from accessing puberty blockers and hormone therapy—regardless of their parents’ support for the treatment. Tennessee’s law is one of 25 state bans on pediatric gender-affirming care passed nationwide since 2021. Nearly all of those laws are currently facing legal challenges by transgender children and their families, and are now expected to be allowed to remain in effect.  Read More

June 11, 2025

Since becoming president, Donald Trump has aggressively sought to fulfill his campaign promise to reverse the Biden administration’s protection of transgender Americans.

His administration decreed that the federal government will recognize only two genders and banned transgender Americans from serving in the military. Trump has also restricted federal funds for hospitals that perform gender-affirming care.

Trump is not alone in attacking the rights of transgender Americans. In 2025, 53 bills have been introduced in the U.S. Congress and over 900 bills have been introduced in 49 states that aim to limit the rights of transgender Americans in education, health care and athletics, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker.  Read More

June 12, 2025

In Central Pennsylvania, LGBTQ+ youth are navigating increasingly complex and often dangerous environments at home, in school, and in their communities. Advocates Amber Roadcap, Executive Director of the LGBT Center of Central PA, and Hope Dehnert, a local LGBTQ+ youth advocate and researcher, joined The Spark to speak candidly about the challenges these young people face—and what all of us can do to support them.

According to Roadcap, two of the region’s largest healthcare providers have recently pulled back their youth gender-affirming care for individuals under 19 years old. “So I now have LGBTQ youth looking for providers,” Roadcap said. “Where are they supposed to find them? The closest hospitals are Nemours, CHOP… But these barriers to healthcare are a huge stressor for LGBTQ youth. We know that gender-affirming care saves lives.”  Read More

June 09, 2025

Julie Lobur and her wife, Marla Cattermole, came of age at a time when the LGBTQ community had to fight for the most basic rights.

Over the years, Lobur, who is 70, and Cattermole, who is in her 60s, took part in countless protests, demanding marriage and federal benefits rights for same-sex spouses.

In 2013, Lobur and Cattermole were among two dozen gay couples in Pennsylvania challenged the state’s ban on gay marriage.

A federal court judge reversed the ban and in 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court granted the fundamental right to marry to same-sex couples, changing the life trajectory for the Harrisburg couple. They were able to legally marry, buy a house and put both their names on the deed.  Read More 

June 9, 2025

Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles is pushing back against anti-trans rhetoric, calling out former swimmer-turned-conservative Riley Gaines for her ongoing attacks on transgender athletes.

Biles is considered one of the greatest Olympic athletes, and with 11 Olympic medals and 30 World Championship medals, she is the most decorated gymnast in history.

The exchange unfolded Friday night on Twitter, after Gaines posted a photo of a Minnesota girls’ high school baseball team that reportedly includes a transgender player. In the post, Gaines appeared to mock the student by referring to her as a boy. Biles responded sharply, labeling Gaines “sick” and a “sore loser.”  Read More

June 8, 2025

The Northern York County School Board has followed other local districts and adopted a policy restricting bathrooms for transgender and gender-diverse students.

The board adopted the policy during a May 20 school board, with one person voting against it.

The newly adopted policy cites that it complies with President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order that separates intimate spaces based on sex rather than gender. It also says twice that the district will not separate facilities based on race, religion, sexual orientation, ancestry or gender identity and more, but it will separate them based on sex.

Students who may not want to use the multi-user bathrooms will be permitted access to the single-user bathrooms without asking for permission. The policy calls for single-user facilities to be fully enclosed rather than having “total floor to ceiling walls,” as other similar local policies call for. Read More

June 7, 2025

Dozens of rainbow umbrellas and Pride flags lined South Broad Street in Lititz on an overcast morning as thousands of residents and visitors streamed into Lititz Springs Park on Saturday for Lancaster County Chooses Love’s annual Pride festival.

What started as a small event in the parking lot of a middle school in 2021 with an attendance of around 300 people has grown into a celebration that covers the length of Lititz Springs Park and is attended by thousands each year.

Vendors set up along the walkways selling food and homemade crafts and advertising local resources, while rock music from local performers reverberated from a gazebo, drowning out the handful of sidewalk preachers on the park’s periphery.

Event organizers said they expected around 4,000 attendees Saturday, although morning rain showers may have softened those expectations.  Read More

June 4, 2025

Most members of Pennsylvania’s LGBTQ community believe violence is a bigger problem for their community than access to health care.

This is according to Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center’s 2024 LGBTQ Health Needs Assessment, which was conducted last spring and summer and includes responses from 3,394 LGBTQ Pennsylvanians from 65 of the state’s 67 counties. The survey was released Tuesday, coinciding with the center’s 2025 PA LGBTQIA Health Summit.

Funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the Pennsylvania LGBTQ Health Needs Assessment is conducted every other year to evaluate health needs, health disparities and barriers to care impacting LGBTQ+ Pennsylvanians.

Forty-four percent of respondents said violence was the top community health concern. Many were speaking from experience; just over half of respondents said they had experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. Just under half said they had experienced violence at the hands of a family member, partner or spouse.  Read More

May 28, 2025

It’s Pride Month, which means it’s a good time to brush up on your knowledge of the different Pride flags you may see at parades this year and the identities within the LGBTQ+ umbrella.

The best first step is to learn about the community. Asking your LGBTQ+ friends and family is an option, but be mindful of placing the burden of your education on others when there are so many resources at your disposal.

What does the ‘T’ in LGBTQ+ stand for?

The T in LGBTQ+ stands for transgender. LGBTQ+ is an acronym of identities related to sexual orientation and gender identity.

What each letter in LGBTQ+ means:

• L: Lesbian
• G: Gay
• B: Bisexual
• T: Transgender
• Q: Queer or questioning Read More

May 22, 2025

This morning, while most Americans were sleeping, the anti-equality majority in the U.S. House passed the GOP-led reconciliation bill, which slashes programs that millions of people rely on to bankroll tax cuts for the ultra wealthy. The bill’s cuts pose significant threats to critical programs that disproportionately serve LGBTQ+ individuals and families, particularly those who are low-income, living with HIV, or facing food insecurity. Should the bill be signed into law, it would be the largest transfer of wealth from poor and working class Americans to the extremely wealthy in the nation’s history.

In addition, late last night, House Republicans  changed a previous anti-trans provision so it now cuts off federal Medicaid and Affordable Care Act funding for medically-necessary care for ALL transgender people–no matter their age.  Read More

May 22, 2025

The tax bill the House passed Thursday would bar Medicaid coverage of all transgender care and prohibit plans offered under the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges from covering such care as an essential health benefit, potentially jeopardizing access to care for hundreds of thousands of trans adults and an unknown number of minors.

The bill initially would have prohibited Medicaid from covering “gender transition procedures” for minors, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery. However, House Republican leadership introduced an amendment late Wednesday that struck the word “minors” and the words “under 18 years of age” from that section, The Independent first reported.

The amendment passed the GOP-led House Rules Committee on Wednesday night before the full House passed it Thursday morning.  Read More

May 22, 2025

After days of infighting over Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” the House GOP passed reconciliation legislation in the dead of the night — with one major giveaway to the far-right. Late Wednesday, Congressional Republicans amended the bill to prohibit the use of Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care, potentially ripping healthcare access away from hundreds of thousands of transgender Americans.

An earlier version of the legislation targeted Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care for minors. In a midnight-hour maneuver, Republicans removed the word “minors” from that provision, prohibiting the use of Medicaid funding for “gender-transition procedures” for children as well as adults.

The legislation broadly defines “gender-transition procedures” as everything from surgery to hormone therapy. It needs only a simple majority to pass the Senate.  Read More

May 20, 2025

At its May 14 meeting, Easton City Council passed a resolution titled “RESOLUTION DECLARING THE CITY OF EASTON PA, AN AFFIRMING CITY FOR LGBTQ+COMMUNITY, AFFIRMING THOSE MEMBERS RIGHT TO CARE” which announced the Pennsylvania city’s support of the LGBTQ+ community and noted how that support will be carried out.

Councilmember Frank Pintabone introduced the resolution with support from Easton Mayor Sal Panto. The resolution passed unanimously with a 6-0 vote.

“Easton has a vibrant and active LGBTQ community,” said Corinne Goodwin, the executive director of Eastern PA Trans Equity Project. “There are community events there almost every week. They really came out in force to support the resolution.”  Read More

May 15, 2025

The Eastern York School District has unanimously passed a new policy that restricts male participation in female athletic programs, citing safety and fairness.

The policy aims to align the district’s athletics program with executive orders from President Trump regarding sex and gender. The policy identifies student athletes strictly as “male” or “female.”

Despite the policy’s significant implications for the future of sports in the district, the board meeting where it was passed was notably quiet, a stark contrast to the high tensions seen in previous meetings.

The board’s decision was met with silence, as no public opposition was voiced during the vote.  Read More

May 12, 2025

When Shana Knizhnik was growing up in Philly, she seemed like the kind of girl who wasn’t afraid of anything.

As a student at high-achieving Masterman High School in the early aughts, she was opinionated, even for the debate club. She was on the tennis team, she was a theater kid, getting big roles like Adelaide in Guys and Dolls.

But Knizhnik had a secret.

The childhood memories were a bit hazy; she recalled being told something was wrong with her ovaries, requiring surgery when she was a baby. Her mother said she told her daughter she was born without a uterus.

She understood she could not one day become pregnant and that she would have to take “special medicine” — estrogen — to develop like other girls. When her friends started going through puberty, she made up period-related cramps and pretended to experience “that time of the month.”  Read More

May 7, 2025

Pennsylvania’s state Senate approved a bill to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports at the collegiate and K-12 levels, reflecting larger anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment nationwide and in York County.

An earlier attempt to pass the same legislation, in concert with a Republican-controlled House, met then-Gov. Tom Wolf’s veto pen in 2022. This time, Senate Bill 9 is unlikely to go up for a vote in the House, where Democrats hold a slim 102-101 majority.

York County school districts with far-right board majorities — including Red Lion and the Hanover-based South Western — have passed similar bans in recent years, many of them drafted by the Independence Law Center, the Harrisburg-based Christian law firm.  Read More

May 5, 2025

A civilian employee of the Illinois National Guard has filed a class action complaint to the Army National Guard Bureau Equal Opportunity Office (NGB-EO) challenging a Trump administration policy prohibiting transgender federal employees from using restrooms and other accommodations aligned with their gender.

LeAnne Withrow of Springfield, Illinois, is a lead military and family readiness specialist and civilian employee for the Illinois National Guard. Previously, she served as a staff sergeant for the National Guard and is the recipient of multiple commendations and awards, including the Illinois National Guard Abraham Lincoln Medal of Freedom. Read More

May 5, 2025

For some transgender athletes, the Trump administration’s sports ban feels like just one play in a broader societal erasure of millions of Americans.

The big picture: Transgender and nonbinary people across the U.S. are navigating an upended sports landscape — on top of additional rollbacks of their protections and civil rights — following President Trump‘s February executive order banning trans athletes from women’s sports.

• Other executive orders have targeted access to gender-affirming care, military service and basic federal recognition. Several government websites have also been scrubbed of references to trans people. Read More

April 25, 2025

West Shore School Board officials are still grappling with a policy proposal that would restrict LGBTQ+ student athletes.

The policy, similar to others passed by other far-right York County public school boards, would separate the teams based on the “biological distinction between male and female based on reproductive biology and genetic make-up.” It also suggests that the superintendent may request the original birth certificate or a doctor’s note to confirm the students’ gender.

West Shore Superintendent Todd Stoltz raised a series of questions last month about exactly how that policy would be implemented, which conservative members of the school board haven’t answered.  Read More

April 27, 2025

As a retired San Jose State University faculty member (1988-2018) and a long-time unapologetic LGBTQ+ ally I read with anger, sadness and great admiration of Spartan transgendered volleyball player Blaire Fleming’s treacherous journey.

Rising above the unrelenting intolerance, hate, transphobia and lies promulgated by the right-wing media, countless politicians, including, shamefully, our current sitting president, and most damning her own teammates, opponents and one SJSU coach, Blaire carried herself with courage, dignity and grace.

As the grandfather of an impressive and aspiring 12-year-old female athlete I owe an unrepayable debt of gratitude to Blaire for being such an awesome role model to countless young female athletes, both transgendered and cisgendered. Blaire Fleming, I am one of the millions in your fan club. You are, indeed, an impressive young woman. Thank you. Read More

April 16, 2025

As social and political attacks on the transgender community ramp up in a trans-hostile U.S. presidential administration, these narratives affect individuals who don’t conform to a narrow vision of womanhood.

The federal government is actively working to erase transgender people from official recognition, and various organizations are complying, also affecting cisgender people who don’t follow rigid gender norms or look the way they’re “supposed” to.

Last year, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, faced global harassment due to her masculine appearance after a first round knockout in the 2024 Paris Olympics despite being a cisgender woman.

These attacks on the transgender community stem from rigid gender norms that harm anyone who does not conform. Although transgender women feel the brunt of state legislation and federal executive orders, cisgender women are caught in the crossfire along the way. Read More

April 3, 2025

After President Donald Trump issued an executive order restricting access to gender-affirming medical care for transgender people under 19, many hospitals nationwide abruptly cut off treatment for trans youth. This sent thousands of families scrambling, with some even wondering if they needed to leave the country to protect their family’s future.

If enforced, President Trump’s order will deny transgender youth access to medically-necessary care, like puberty blockers and hormone therapy, even as these same treatments remain readily available to their cisgender peers. The order also intends to cut or reduce federal funding for health care providers who refuse to prioritize the Trump administration’s political preferences over their patients’ medical needs.

At the American Civil Liberties Union, we know that politics and partisanship have no place in patient care and we all deserve the freedom to be ourselves.  Read More

March 31, 2025

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump used contentiousness around transgender people’s access to sports and bathrooms to fire up conservative voters and sway undecideds. And in his first months back in office, Trump has pushed the issue further, erasing mention of transgender people on government websites and passports and trying to remove them from the military.

It’s a contradiction of numbers that reveals a deep cultural divide: Transgender people make up less than 1% of the U.S. population, but they have become a major piece on the political chess board — particularly Trump’s.

For transgender people and their allies — along with several judges who have ruled against Trump in response to legal challenges — it’s a matter of civil rights for a small group. But many Americans believe those rights had grown too expansive. Read More

March 29, 2025

Parker Tirrell, 16, enjoys her art classes, scrolling on TikTok and working at her new job at a pet store. But most of all, the transgender teen loves playing soccer.

Until last year, that wasn’t a problem.

“I was just living my life like any normal person,” said Tirrell, who has played since she was 4. “I was accepted. I had a nice, steady team that I played on all the time.”

Then came a cascade of obstacles, starting with a state ban on transgender girls in girls’ sports, and most recently President Donald Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”

Now, life is anything but normal. Tirrell, along with Iris Turmelle, 15, another transgender girl, are the first to challenge Trump’s order, six months after suing their own state over its ban and getting a court order allowing them to play. Read More

March 20, 2025

Stigma, bullying and politics are fueling high anxiety and depression rates among LGBTQ+ youth in Pennsylvania, who face high barriers to accessing mental health care.

The big picture: More than a third of 653 young LGBTQ+ Pennsylvanians ages 13 to 24 surveyed by crisis intervention organization The Trevor Project seriously considered suicide in 2023, according to state-level research released this month.

By the numbers: More than two-thirds of young LGBTQ+ Pennsylvanians reported experiencing anxiety in “the last year,” the Trevor Project survey found. Just over half experienced depression. Read More

March 19, 2025

Dover Area school officials, while adopting new restrictions Tuesday night on which bathrooms and pronouns LGBTQ+ students can use, empowered school staff to investigate the gender of anyone suspected of using the wrong facilities.

By defining gender as “biological sex,” the district’s school board now requires nonbinary, transgender and intersex students to use the facilities that correspond with their birth certificates.

Several other public school districts have adopted similar policies, starting with Red Lion Area in 2023. Many of those policies, including Dover Area’s, were drafted by the Independence Law Center, a far-right, Christian law firm based in Harrisburg. Read More

March 17, 2025

Eastern York School Board officials are set to take up a pair of proposals that would restrict LGBTQ+ athletes and the use of pronouns in public schools.

The policy was recently added to the agenda for Tuesday night’s operations committee meeting — at the request of board members Cindy Rohrbaugh and Carrie Lawson. They’ll be considered again at Thursday night’s regular board meeting for consideration and a possible vote on the pronoun policy.

Other districts have adopted a similar policies, many of them drafted by the Harrisburg-based Independence Law Center, a far-right, Christian law firm that promotes book bans and anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Read More

March 10, 2025

Dover Area School District officials will review two anti-LGBTQ+ policies, including one that was originally tabled several months ago, on Tuesday night.

One of the policies exempts school staff from honoring student pronouns based on their personal beliefs — even if parents grant permission for their child to use those pronouns. Another restricts which bathrooms students can use.

Additionally, the board will review other policies, including an update on one about artificial intelligence in education. The updates include pieces such as the superintendent establishing protocols to confirm the AI tools are good to be used for payroll, budgeting, human resources processes and more. The update also requires a human to make the final decision for hiring, promoting and evaluating employees. Read More

March 6, 2025

Just one week after sharing initial plans that drew outcry, the State College Area School District is walking back parts of its push to require the use of students’ legal names in some software programs and district applications.

In an email sent to student families on Feb. 25, SCASD director of technology Justin Hetrick said the district was moving forward with plans to begin using students’ legal names over preferred names in some applications, including the PowerSchool student information system. A subsequent email from Superintendent Curtis Johnson three days later said the district would, in response to community feedback, accommodate preferred names “wherever possible” before changes are implemented over spring break, which begins March 10. Read More

March 6, 2025

Just one week after sharing initial plans that drew outcry, the State College Area School District is walking back parts of its push to require the use of students’ legal names in some software programs and district applications.

In an email sent to student families on Feb. 25, SCASD director of technology Justin Hetrick said the district was moving forward with plans to begin using students’ legal names over preferred names in some applications, including the PowerSchool student information system. A subsequent email from Superintendent Curtis Johnson three days later said the district would, in response to community feedback, accommodate preferred names “wherever possible” before changes are implemented over spring break, which begins March 10. Read More

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