THIS EMAIL CONTAINS HOPE
Wow, there is so so much good stuff happening!!!
Hey folks! Wow, the past couple of weeks have been absolutely PACKED with great queer news!! So so many of these victories are driven by everyday people and I cannot wait to share them with you.
First a quick request: If you are a trans person who has changed your name, one of my community members here is working on a workbook to help people figure out their new names. Would you take a couple of minutes to tell the story of your name here?
Okay… let’s get into the good stuff!! First I’ll share one of my favorites, which was sent to me by someone who is both a friend and a GQN subscriber! (if you have good news stories from your neighborhood or community, please send them to me, too!!)
From Deb: “On Tuesday this week, 35 of us gathered in The Park (it was one of those perfect St. Louis spring days) to hold an interfaith program of prayer, song and the public reading of our Statement of Support for Trans, Intersex, and Nonbinary Missourians. It was a hopeful, beautiful morning as people of diverse faith, sex, and gender could gather and say trans, intersex, and gender-nonconforming siblings are made in God’s image, and as such, they are WHOLE and HOLY.”
Looking at this picture just makes me smile. I love Missouri so deeply, having lived there for five years, and I know that this picture would shatter expectations that a lot of folks have about Missouri. It is a state full of tremendous faith, tremendous activism, and these things do not counteract each other. So often they intersect in ways that bring me so much hope.
Legislative Sessions are ending and we are continuing to see some amazing results from the hard work of advocates on the ground.
Kentucky has defeated all 10 proposed anti-LGBTQ+ bills this session!! Read more about how they did it: https://queerkentucky.com/kentucky-no-anti-lgbtq-laws-2026-legislative-session/
Mississippi has defeated 13 out of 14 anti LGBTQ+ bills proposed this session.
Nebraska has defeated all proposed anti-LGBTQ+ bills proposed this year, including many sneaky proposals from a single senator attempting to sabotage/hijack other bills meant to actually help Nebraskans. Neither democrats nor republicans wanted to waste their time on hate! https://outnebraska.org/reflections-on-the-2026-nebraska-legislative-session/
West Virginia has defeated all proposed anti-LGBTQ+ bills proposed this year!
These wins don’t happen by accident, and they don’t happen for free either!! If you want to help another state join the ranks of 100% success stories, consider a donation to PROMO in Missouri or Oklahomans for Equality (two of the states with the highest volume of anti-LGBTQ+ bills)
All above here is proof that TAKING ACTION WORKS. Calling and writing to your senators means something. It adds up, even if you don’t think it will. When people talk about staying informed, it’s critical to balance that with a focus on the actions we are able to take.
Access to Care
In case you haven’t seen, a federal judge struck down RFK’s “declaration” aka threat about federal funding for hospitals providing care for transgender minors. The ruling is truly artful and does not mince words: “unserious leaders are unsafe.”
Since that ruling, the largest children’s healthcare system in Minnesota has restarted their care, and the attorney generals of both California and New York have ordered hospitals to comply with state nondiscrimination laws and reinstate care! (puberty blockers and hormone therapy are available to cisgender minors in these states, making the voluntary care restrictions illegal in many state constitutions)
We still have a lot further to go on rebuilding access to care, so if your state does not have a ban on gender affirming care, reach out to your state attorney general, champion state legislators, or apply direct pressure via calls and emails to hospital leadership. Not the doctors. You don’t need to pressure them, I promise they are fighting the same fight from the inside.
Remember, gender affirming care is SAFE, WELL-RESEARCHED, AND FEDERALLY LEGAL! If anyone under 19 needs help accessing gender affirming care, please reach out to the trans youth emergency project. (and if you don’t need help accessing care, maybe give them a donation!)
Speaking of the variety of brilliant scholars who’ve worked to develop our understanding of best practices in gender affirming care, the Pediatric Academic Societies came under fire this week for planning a panel at their conference that included none of those voices. Instead they opted to exclusively platform speakers tied to the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine, SEGM, a fringe hate group formed to legitimize anti-trans healthcare bans and push christian nationalism and conversion therapy. Erin Reed did some fantastic investigative, solutions-based reporting on the conference in the lead-up. She’s now written a follow up on the conference this past weekend that truly filled my heart with hope.
Look at all the disparate groups who decided independently that something wasn’t right and they wanted to DO SOMETHING!
Other Wins!
The Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from January Littlejohn—the mom in Florida who has inspired many of the country’s forced outing laws after her trans child was supported by teachers without January’s knowledge. This doesn’t make me a fan of the supreme court, but I am extremely relieved we won’t be seeing a nationwide ruling on requiring forced outing in schools!
A teacher in Michigan was suspended for sharing empathetic words about a trans athlete in an interview. After significant public backlash, and after the broader Title IX investigation that was ongoing was found to be meritless, he was reinstated!
Australia is changing its rules to allow gay and bi men to donate blood!
Botswana has officially removed anti-sodomy laws from its penal code, creating significant safety for its LGBTQ+ residents. A queer couple is currently suing the government for the right to marry as well, and activists are hopeful they will be able to continue building a more accepting country.
The EU high court has ruled that Hungary’s ban on LGBTQ+ content in schools and on television is unconstitutional, and now that the populace has overwhelmingly voted out the far right authoritarian Orban, we’re hopeful they will take fast action on this!
There’s some fascinating new polling from Fox News that shows, among many things, voters trust democrats more than republicans on transgender issues by more than 13%. There’s been a lot of debate and discussion about what that truly means, but this polling provides a few hopeful glimmers for me. I think Erin Reed has some great thoughts on the matter!
Also, after I thought the deal was dead from a few court dust-ups in November, it appears that comedy/satire website The Onion is close to finalizing their purchase of InfoWars, the far right media platform Joe Rogan was forced to sell after his bankruptcy and defamation lawsuit about his repeated claims that the Sandy Hook shooting was faked. They will be using the platform to talk about gun safety and LGBTQ+ rights, and to share funds generated with the families of Sandy Hook victims.
A group of drag queens who sued a city in Utah for violating their first amendment rights won their case…and $350,000 to cover their legal fees!
Students at Baylor University in Texas—a Baptist University with a tangled history of safety for LGBTQ+ students—hosted an LGBTQ+ affirming event with queer christian speakers for the first time. The event was hosted on the same day as a TPUSA event, and drew over 300 people to attend. Props to the students for fighting to make this happen, and to Baylor for being willing to stand up to continued pressure to suppress their queer students!
That’s All I’ve got!
I know it’s tempting to jump right back into “the fight”, to smile about these wins and put them down to go right back to the doomscroll, but I want to encourage you to resist that urge.
If we want to keep taking care of ourselves, we have to sloooooow down. Instead of treating these victories like a shot of espresso, treat them like a cup of tea. The peace we get isn’t just from the act of consuming them as quickly as possible. It comes from sitting with it and letting the knowledge of our power go deep into our spirits.
Which victory meant the most to you? Write about it. Tell a friend about it, send the link to someone you love. Start to build a practice of savoring instead of just sprinting on to the next thing.
Ok that’s everything! Don’t forget to let me know if you see any victories you’re particularly proud of. The wins are all around us if we decide to look for them!
Some good queer news: my friend started estrogen and I'm 3 years on testosterone!
Hi - InfoWars is Alex Jones not Joe Rogan :-). Alex Jones is even worse than Joe Rogan. Thank you for all the good news.