Trump's Recent War on Transgender People and What It Means to the LGBTQ+ Community as a Whole

The Trump administration recently had a document leaked that implicated they wanted to make a change to Title IX (9). Title IX protects against discrimination in educational environments so long as that institute receives federal money. In the original document of Title IX it states:

"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

The change that the Trump administration is planning on making would define sex as, "either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with."

This change immediately would mean that persons identifying as anything other than their birth gender could be barred from all extracurricular activities such as sports or clubs. However, the much larger implications of this would mean that this opens up a gap in all civil rights protections of LGBTQ+ by the federal government. This means that each state could then enact their own laws either protecting or discriminating against the LGBTQ+ community. As of now, only 22 states offer protections for sexual orientation, and 21 for gender identity. This means that in 28 states it’s not explicitly illegal for someone to be fired from a job, evicted from a home, or kicked out of a business just because an employer, landlord, or business owner doesn’t approve of the person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. This is an issue that the whole LGBTQ+ community should be looking at, analyzing it as access to basic human rights are at risk.

The government has already stood in the way of our rights when the supreme court ruled in favor of a business refusing to make a cake for a LGBTQ+ couple, and now Trump wants to make it where anyone, anywhere, whether it's a public or private institution/business could deny us. There are at least 8 million adults in the United States identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, according to a new study released Thursday by the Williams Institute. In total, with approximately 700,000 transgender Americans, nearly 4 percent of the nation's population is openly LGBTQ+. These numbers don’t even include the estimates of the amount of people that could still be closeted that would be affected if they came out. This attack on our rights is a blatant attempt by the Trump administration to silence not only the transgender community, but also an attempt to crush the LGBTQ+ movements everywhere in the United States. In these times it is important for the community to rise up together. No longer can there be infighting between us. It doesn’t matter if you’re a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, a person of color, religious, or just an ally at the end of the day, we are all a part of the same community.

We are living in a time where no matter what our differences might be we have to stand together or else we could be forced back into hiding. People forget that the Stonewall riots happened less than 50 years ago and we could easily be forced back into submission if we don’t continue to fight for our rights. So with the elections in two weeks, I urge everyone to get out and vote. Vote for the representatives that will protect you and your beliefs do not let your rights be taken away just because you didn’t want to leave your house. If you have to work tell your employer you want to exercise your rights and they cannot keep you away from the polls. Never say you give up and always push through the hate.