lgbt youth

On May 27, The National Center for Transgender Equality, in partnership with the TRANSContinental Run, hosted two events for the trans community and allies in Texas. We kicked off the day with the Trot for Trans Lives - a 5k run - and the Championing Change panel, which brought activists from across Texas to build power, fight back against those  and create a space where we can center and uplift the needs of trans Texans. 

Big news: We’re launching the Let Us Play campaign to make sure that trans and intersex youth can play sports with their friends – and we need you!  The right to play is being threatened – and in some states, already taken away – all around the country. But we have an opportunity now to get protection at the federal level! The Biden-Harris administration and the U.S. Department of Education are proposing a new rule that would make it so that students can’t be banned from playing sports just because they're trans, nonbinary, or intersex. The time is NOW for us to tell them what we think. We want full and equal participation for ALL trans and intersex students in sports. Make your voice heard!

For Trans Day of Visibility 2023, we've released a video celebrating trans joy and featuring four voices from our trans community! Hailing from around the country — Nebraska, Maryland, Georgia, and Texas — Marcus, Jamy, Dionne, and Damien speak about how they find their joy even in these challenging and uncertain times.

Our joy is especially important right now at a time when trans people are under attack from politicians around the country seeking to do us harm, scapegoat our community, and erase us from society. Legislators seek to strip away our right to receive health care, participate in sports, express ourselves, learn about our histories, and more.

As extremist lawmakers in state after state try to attack our transgender community’s basic health care, the misinformation is rampant. Serious misconceptions about transgender people are fueling legislation from Florida to Missouri to Mississippi – and they all aim to stop young people and their parents from accessing essential health care. Some even go farther, with some bills attempting to ban transition-related care until the age of 21 or even beyond. These bans attack our most basic values of privacy and control over our own bodies, and they’re based on misleading or even outright false ideas. Here are the real facts everyone should know.

On Wednesday, NCTE Policy Director Olivia Hunt spoke at the House Oversight Committee’s hearing on anti-LGBTQ violence. Olivia described how anti-trans rhetoric and policies coming out of statehouses across the nation fuel the increasing wave of anti-trans violence, and emphasized that trans people, and especially trans youth, deserve to be able to live their lives in safety and security. We were honored to speak alongside survivors of the violent attacks at Club Q, as well as the new President of HRC Kelley Robinson, Williams Institute scholar Ilan Meyer, and Brandon Wolf, Press Secretary of Equality Florida and survivor of the 2016 attack on Orlando’s Pulse nightclub.