National
Lessons from N.C. defeat
Did lack of money or wrong message lead to sweeping anti-gay marriage amendment?
Incoming HRC President Chad Griffin is one of two principal partners in Armour Griffin Media Group, which was paid to produce TV ads in North Carolina’s amendment fight. (Photo courtesy of AFER)
In the week leading up to the May 8 vote in North Carolina on a proposed state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and civil unions, officials with the campaign opposing the amendment said they believed they had a shot at defeating it.
“We were on conference calls where they were saying we are in striking distance,” said lesbian journalist and commentator Pam Spaulding of North Carolina, who publishes the LGBT political blog Pam’s House Blend.
“The campaign was saying 11 points and closing — that we were knocking in half the gap every week that they started the final [campaign] assault,” Spaulding told the Blade.
According to Spaulding, at an election night gathering in Raleigh, campaign leaders and volunteers who worked to defeat the amendment were stunned when the State Board of Elections announced the amendment passed by a 61-39 percent margin.
“Were their numbers that far off or did they know the numbers and were not disclosing them,” Spaulding asked in discussing the information released by the opposition campaign to bloggers. “How could they be 21 points off?”
Officials with the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families, which operated the campaign opposing Amendment One, said the numbers they cited were from the polling firm Public Policy Polling, which showed support for the amendment down to 55 percent in the week before the election.
“There were a lot of polls, and they were all across the map,” said Stuart Campbell, executive director of the statewide LGBT advocacy group Equality North Carolina and a member of the opposition campaign’s seven-member Steering Committee.
“We actually had internal polling back in January that showed close to 70 percent — around 67 to 68 percent — in favor,” he said. “So we actually do believe we moved it anywhere between seven and 10 points.”
In addition to Equality North Carolina, the organizations represented on the Steering Committee, whom officials said made all key decisions for the campaign, included the Human Rights Campaign; the ACLU of North Carolina; Faith In America; Replacements, Ltd., a gay-owned company that sells upscale dinnerware; Self-Help, an LGBT supportive credit union based in North Carolina; and Southerners on New Ground (SONG), a North Carolina group that promotes progressive causes.
In late December or early January the Steering Committee retained the Los Angeles-based Armour Griffin Media Group to produce the campaign TV ads. Officials said the campaign retained the company months before they learned that Chad Griffin, one of the two principal partners in the firm, was to be selected as the new HRC president. Campaign finance records show the campaign paid the company $66,000 for its media work as of May 11, the close of the most recent campaign finance reporting period.
Campbell and campaign co-chair Alex Miller said the campaign built important alliances with progressive groups, LGBT supportive churches and religious leaders, and leaders of the African-American community that would benefit the LGBT community for years to come.
One of the most important developments, Campbell and Miller said, was the decision by the NAACP of North Carolina to come out against the amendment. Under the leadership of Rev. William Barber II, the state’s NAACP president, the historic black civil rights organization activated its chapters in counties across the state to speak out against the amendment.
Barber told the Blade that he believes a majority of black North Carolinians voted against the amendment despite claims by some media outlets that polls showed a majority of blacks favored the ballot measure.
Ray Warren, a former North Carolina circuit court judge who’s familiar with the state’s voting trends and demographics, said a review of the vote in most parts of the state showed that all of the state’s large cities and urban areas voted against the amendment. In what he called a dramatic contrast, all of the rural counties and nearly all of the suburbs outside city boundaries voted for the amendment.
Ninety-two of the state’s 100 counties voted for the amendment. Each of the eight counties voting against it included cities or urban-oriented towns with universities within their boundaries.
According to Warren, in a development rarely seen in the state, black and white voters appeared to vote alike, with majority white and majority black precincts voting for the amendment in rural and suburban areas. In cities and urban centers, majority black and majority white precincts voted against the amendment, Warren said.
Debate over campaign message
Brent Childers, executive director of Faith in America, said the campaign could have been more effective in challenging and refuting religious arguments used to support Amendment One. (Photo courtesy of Childers)
Some LGBT supportive observers wanted to know whether the message projected by the campaign opposing the amendment in TV ads and other media amounted to the best means possible to persuade voters to reject the amendment.
Marriage equality supporter Brent Childers, executive director of the North Carolina-based group Faith in America, which challenges what Childers calls the “misuse” of religion to deny rights to LGBT people, said the campaign could have been more effective in challenging and refuting religious arguments used to support Amendment One.
Still others, including North Carolina lesbian activist Mandy Carter, joined Spaulding in expressing concern that the opposition campaign mostly “de-gayed” its messages in TV ads by stressing the harms the amendment would have on straight unmarried couples.
Campaign officials dispute these claims, saying the campaign aggressively embraced its support for marriage equality for gays and projected that message through many campaign venues, including online videos as well as TV ads.
The campaign recruited a lesbian mother to appear in one of the three TV ads aired shortly before the election. Campaign officials told the media in a press release that the woman and her same-sex partner rely on the partner’s employee health insurance to provide coverage for their daughter.
But in the TV ad the woman isn’t identified as a lesbian. While driving a car with her child sitting next to her she says Amendment One would likely result in the loss of her daughter’s health insurance.
“[It’s] because we’re not married,” she says in the ad, referring to her partner. The partner’s gender isn’t mentioned.
“If you’re watching it on television there’s no way to know,” Spaulding said, referring to the woman’s sexual orientation.
Campaign officials said they believe the ad was effective in showing how the amendment would have serious consequences for unmarried couples, gay or straight, and it likely persuaded some voters to oppose the amendment.
In a series of interviews, pollsters, campaign officials, political analysts affiliated with North Carolina universities, representatives of LGBT advocacy groups, and LGBT supportive straight allies provided the Blade with a wide range of opinions addressing these questions.
Most agreed, however, that private polls commissioned for the campaign as well as polls conducted by other pollsters showed that a solid majority of North Carolinians oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds. They noted that the same polls showed that a campaign and vote framed only around the question of whether gays should be allowed to marry would result in a certain defeat for the pro-marriage equality side.
Leaders of the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families said they chose an “evidence-based” approach of using the best possible research from privately commissioned polls to develop the message they ultimately used.
That message focused on how Amendment One goes far beyond banning same-sex marriage and, among other things, would ban civil unions for gay and straight couples. It could also lead to a wide range of harmful effects on all unmarried couples, gay and straight, and their children, the group stressed in its “messaging” campaign.
Advocates of this approach noted that an existing law in North Carolina already prohibited same-sex marriage and that an amendment to the state constitution doing the same thing was unnecessary.
Supporters of the amendment disputed that assertion, saying a constitutional amendment was needed to prevent a court from overturning the state’s existing law banning same-sex marriage. They noted that gay rights advocates had already filed at least one lawsuit challenging the existing gay marriage statute.
Political observers noted that after blocking a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage for years under Democratic Party leadership, the state legislature approved a proposal to place the issue before the voters in 2011 after Republicans gained control of the legislature for the first time in decades in the 2010 election.
Over the strong objections of many Democrats and some Republicans, supporters of the amendment worded it in a way that expanded its scope beyond just marriage.
Amendment One states, “Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.”
The amendment adds, “This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.”
Legal experts in the state have said the amendment’s definition of marriage as the “only domestic legal union” would place in jeopardy rights and benefits currently being offered to gay or straight unmarried couples, such as domestic partner benefits offered by private companies or local governmental entities like cities and towns, including health insurance benefits and hospital visitation rights.
The Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families cited legal experts who said safeguards against domestic violence might also be jeopardized by the amendment, with the possibility that a court could no longer issue a legal “stay away” order for a partner accused of physically abusing the other partner if the couple were not married.
“We saw that all these terrible things could happen,” said Stuart Campbell, executive director of the state LGBT advocacy group Equality North Carolina and a member of the Steering Committee of the campaign opposing the amendment.
Supporters of the amendment, led by the state group Vote for North Carolina Marriage and the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage, said claims that the amendment would impact health insurance benefits, domestic violence protections or child custody rights were unfounded.
Campbell said the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families’ Steering Committee initially hired the LGBT supportive polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research headed by pollster Anna Greenberg. In an effort to get a second opinion, the Steering committee a short time later retained Lake Research Partners, another LGBT supportive campaign research firm headed by pollster Celinda Lake. Both firms have long-established records of helping to win elections for mostly Democratic candidates and progressive causes.
Lake was the pollster in the 2006 campaign opposing a proposed same-sex marriage ban in Arizona that was defeated by voters, the only such ballot measure to lose in more than 30 states across the country that voted on such a measure. Observers said the measure lost in Arizona because most voters disagreed with the additional restrictions it would place on unmarried couples, similar to the “harms” cited by opponents of Amendment One in North Carolina.
Two years later, Arizona voters approved a same-sex marriage ban that didn’t include the additional restrictions on unmarried couples.
Lake told the Blade that the North Carolina campaign stressed the harms Amendment One would cause to gay and straight unmarried couples, including the children of such couples, but it was not modeled directly after the Arizona campaign since the two states have different voter demographics and political traditions.
Lake said her early polling in North Carolina conducted to test different messages clearly found that a message of the potential harm Amendment One would cause for unmarried couples, gay and straight, children of these couples, and women threatened by domestic violence resonated with many voters. Among other things, a significant number of voters who planned to vote for Amendment One changed their position and stated in her poll that they would vote against it after learning about the amendment’s impact beyond banning same-sex marriage, Lake said.
Lake described as historic the North Carolina campaign’s use of a TV ad asserting that Amendment One would harm children, saying it represented the first time a campaign opposing a ballot measure seeking to ban same-sex marriage has argued that such a proposal would harm children.
She noted that in all previous campaigns, supporters of anti-gay ballot measures argued that same-sex marriage would be harmful to children. In North Carolina, the campaign against the amendment turned the tables on the anti-marriage equality forces, opening the way for this “game-changing” strategy in future battles against ballot measures seeking to ban same-sex marriage, Lake said.
When asked why Amendment One passed by a 61 percent to 39 percent margin despite the use of the “unintended consequences” and harm to children strategy, Lake and others working with her on the campaign cited the campaign’s lack of sufficient funds to pay for more TV ads and their inability to begin airing the ads sooner.
Jeremy Kennedy, the campaign manager hired by the coalition Steering Committee to carry out the committee’s game plan, said more than 60 percent of the $2.8 million raised by the campaign came in during the last few weeks leading up to the May 8 election.
The three TV ads the campaign used didn’t begin airing until the state’s early voting had already started about 15 days prior to Election Day.
“I was surprised that the opposition campaign didn’t get on the air sooner,” said Wake Forest University political science professor John Dinan, who said he followed the campaigns for and against the amendment.
“To move voters you need to put on TV ads much sooner,” he said.
Kennedy said that in the last few weeks of the campaign, donors began to respond when some outside polls, including those conducted by the firm Public Policy Polling, showed the projected vote for the amendment dropping to about 55 percent.
“If we all had our way and we had early money we would have done several months of TV,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy, 34, is a native of Texas who moved to D.C. in 2007 to work on the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. After Clinton dropped out of the presidential race following the primary season in 2008, Kennedy took a job with the Human Rights Campaign’s field department in Washington.
In 2010 he moved to Maine to work on the gubernatorial primary campaign of Democrat Elizabeth “Libby” Mitchell, who won the primary but lost the general election to Republican Gov. Paul Lepage. Following that campaign, Kennedy went to work as a state field director for the Maine Democratic Party.
He next went to Rhode Island to work on the legislative effort in the state to pass a same-sex marriage law. The legislature changed course and approved a civil unions bill rather than a marriage law. Shortly after returning to Maine, which he considers his home state, Kennedy was recruited to North Carolina last December, where the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families hired him as campaign manager to work for the defeat of Amendment One.
One source familiar with the campaign said the Steering Committee awarded Kennedy a $5,000 bonus near the end of the campaign. Another source expressed concern that money for the bonus would have been better used to pay for additional media ads.
Campbell declined to confirm the amount of the bonus, saying it was a personnel matter that would not be appropriate to discuss publicly. However, he added, “It was not such a large amount that it would make a difference in the media campaign.
“I have nothing but good things to say about Jeremy,” Campbell said. “I think he did an excellent job. He ran the campaign that we hired him to run.”
HRC spokesperson Fred Sainz agreed with Campbell’s assessment of Kennedy.
“In everyone’s estimation – including ours – Jeremy Kennedy is a superstar!” Sainz said in an email to the Blade. “This campaign brought together a diverse coalition that left behind an infrastructure in North Carolina upon which we can build upon for progressive politics and gay rights.”
Sainz said that while the loss was a big disappointment, ballot measures banning same-sex marriage passed in the other Southern states by an average of 75 percent in past years. He said the 61 percent to 39 percent margin of approval of a gay marriage ban in North Carolina shows “amazing progress among Southerners and Americans in general on the issue of marriage equality.”
Approval by voters in Virginia of a state constitutional ban on gay marriage in 2006 by a margin of 57 percent marked the only Southern state with support for such an amendment at a lower percentage than North Carolina. Florida passed such an amendment with a margin of 62 percent in 2008. South Carolina approved a marriage ban amendment by a 78 percent margin of approval in 2006.
Campbell and campaign co-chair Miller said reports by some critics that the campaign ended with a significant surplus and that the campaign chose not to distribute yard signs to urge voters to defeat the amendment were not true.
The campaign distributed as many as 15,000 yard signs opposing Amendment One in mostly urban areas throughout the state, campaign officials said.
Miller said that the campaign’s finance report filed on May 21 showing a $92,317 surplus was based on incomplete data. Bills for media-related expenses and other expenditures had yet to be paid at the time of the report’s filing deadline. He said final expenses would be shown in a final, end-of-the-year report to be filed with the election board.
“We were pretty much down to the last penny,” he said of the campaign’s spending.
‘Mood is grim’
A 17-page memo that Greenberg sent to the campaign Steering Committee on Dec. 6, 2011, a copy of which the Blade obtained, says her polling found that a significant number of voters were inclined to change their vote from “yes” to “no” on the amendment after they learned of the potential harmful impact it would have, including its prohibition against civil unions and overall harmful effects on children.
Greenberg noted in her memo that many voters who opposed same-sex marriage did not object to civil unions for gay or straight couples.
But unlike Lake, Greenberg stated the overall prospects for defeating Amendment One were not encouraging even when the “unintended effects” were spelled out to prospective voters.
“The mood is grim — and conservative — in North Carolina,” she said in the memo. “North Carolina shocked the country by delivering its electoral votes to Barack Obama in 2008. The world has since turned,” she wrote in the memo. “Half of this (special) electorate describes their feelings toward Obama in negative terms,” she added in discussing her poll findings.
A source familiar with the campaign, who spoke on condition of not being identified, said Greenberg made it clear she didn’t think a victory was possible for the opposition side. Instead, she recommended the campaign adopt a strategy that would educate voters and help their opinions in favor of marriage equality for a future campaign, the source said.
“We would not complicate this issue with a discussion of the impact this would have on straight, unmarried couples, despite the Arizona experience,” she wrote in her memo. “Voters’ moral judgment is not expended entirely on the LGBTQ community as voters here have problems with unmarried straight couples living together as well. An additional focus on straight couples does not make enough difference to justify muddying up your message,” she said in the memo.
She said her memo was based on a survey of 600 likely special election voters in North Carolina taken Nov. 16-21, 2011. She said her poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent, found that 66 percent of the voters surveyed supported Amendment One, with 30 percent opposing it.
“More information and messaging reduced down the margin so by the end of the survey the support side leads by 24 points (59 percent favor, 36 percent oppose),” she said of the poll.
Greenberg’s adjusted poll numbers, reflecting the “messaging” that opponents used in the campaign, came close to the 61 percent to 39 percent outcome of the election nearly six months later.
Similar to Lake, Greenberg noted in her memo that opponents of Amendment One would need to invest in an extensive media campaign to educate voters of the harms the amendment would likely cause LGBT people and others.
Kennedy told the Blade that despite the fact that the campaign came close to meeting its $3 million fundraising goal, far more money was needed to educate voters that polls showed would switch from support to opposition of the amendment if they knew it went beyond just banning same-sex marriage.
Rev. Barber of the NAACP said the media were partially responsible for the lack of voter education.
“The folks who brought this forward framed it on whether you support gay marriage on religious grounds,” he said. “And the media fell for this. They should have made it clear that this was a constitutional amendment that would take away rights.”
He added, “The NAACP saw a dangerous pattern. We saw the rights of a minority being put up for a popular vote. The media never asked the right questions.”
Childers of Faith In America said he attempted but did not succeed in persuading the campaign to directly respond to attacks against same-sex marriage by religious groups and leaders. He said Faith In America, which was co-founded by gay businessman Mitchell Gold, believes the opposition vote would have been considerably higher if the campaign addressed the religion issue “head on” in TV and other media ads.
Childers noted that the campaign opposing the amendment, among other things, should have responded to religious leaders’ claims that same-sex marriage is against God’s will. The Rev. Billy Graham was among the religious leaders in the state to come out for the amendment.
When told that sources familiar with the campaign said campaign officials were reluctant to question or challenge voters’ religious beliefs, Childers said, “That’s one of the fallacies that frankly our own community have fallen prey to. Any person that has spent much time at all in a religious environment knows that religious teachings are questioned all the time,” he said.
“If you look at the voice of history it is crystal clear when it comes to misuse of religious teachings to justify prejudice and discrimination against minorities,” Childers said. “We have concluded as a society on a number of occasions that that is simply a moral failing as a society.”
Puerto Rico
LGBTQ ‘human rights crisis is unfolding in Puerto Rico’
Activist spoke at Congressional Hispanic Caucus briefing in D.C. on July 15
An activist from Puerto Rico who spoke at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus briefing last week in D.C. said anti-LGBTQ laws and policies have left the LGBTQ community in the U.S. commonwealth even more vulnerable.
“A human rights crisis is unfolding in Puerto Rico — one that disproportionately affects LGBT+ people, particularly transgender and nonbinary Puerto Ricans,” said True Self Foundation Executive Director Miguel Vázquez-Rivera.
The True Self Foundation and LatinoJustice PRLDEF participated in the briefing that took place on July 15.
Vázquez-Rivera during the briefing highlighted several anti-LGBTQ laws and policies that have been implemented since Gov. Jenniffer González took office in January 2025. These include Law 63-2025, which prohibits gender-affirming healthcare for anyone under 21, and Law 26-2026, which prohibits the University of Puerto Rico and other “government facilities” from installing “mixed or gender-neutral multi-occupancy restrooms.”
“The legislation aims to strengthen public safety standards while ensuring that no individual is subjected to unlawful discrimination,” noted the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration on Feb. 25 in a press release after González signed it.
González, a Republican who is a member of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, was Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner in the U.S. House of Representatives before she became governor. González supports President Donald Trump.
Vázquez-Rivera during the briefing highlighted anti-LGBTQ measures that have been introduced in the Puerto Rico Legislative Assembly. These include House Bill 164, which would prohibit transgender athletes from school sports teams that correspond with their gender identity, and House Bill 131, which would allow faith-based adoption agencies to deny services to same-sex couples.
“The overwhelming scientific evidence is clear: children raised by same-sex parents do just as well as those raised by different-sex parents,” said Vázquez-Rivera. “What matters is not the gender or the sexual orientation of the parents; but the presence of love, stability, and support.”
Trump upon taking office for a second time on Jan. 20, 2025, signed his “Defending Women from Gender Identity Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” executive order. Among its provisions is the federal government’s recognition of two genders: male and female.
Vázquez-Rivera noted “other proposals” in Puerto Rico “would recognize only ‘biological sex’ in government documents, prohibit inclusive language throughout public institutions, continue challenging recognition of nonbinary identities, and reverse protections for LGBT+ students previously adopted by the University of Puerto Rico.”
“The challenges facing LGBT+ Puerto Ricans cannot be viewed as isolated debates about healthcare, sports, bathrooms, or language,” said Vázquez-Rivera. “They are part of a much larger picture.”
“Puerto Rico is already confronting poverty, disaster recovery, healthcare shortages, and economic instability,” he added. “When discrimination is added to these realities, existing inequities become even deeper. Mental health worsens. Families are displaced. Communities become more vulnerable.”
Vázquez-Rivera further stressed “these issues are interconnected, and our response must be as well.” He also urged the LGBTQ rights movement to do more to support — and fund — advocacy efforts in Puerto Rico.
“Ultimately, this is not about granting special rights,” said Vázquez-Rivera. “It is about ensuring that more than three million American citizens living in Puerto Rico have the same opportunity to live healthy, safe, and dignified lives as every other American.”
The Puerto Rican government has not responded to the Washington Blade’s request for comment.
North Carolina
In the middle of the Bible Belt, a summer camp lets trans kids exhale
Adulthood feels possible at Transcending Adolescence
Uncloseted Media published this article on July 18.
By SAM DONNDELINGER | On a June night in rural North Carolina, dozens of campers sat around the fire as a counselor asked them to close their eyes.
“Picture a place where you feel completely safe,” they were told. “Think about what it looks like and how it feels, what you can hear, smell, and taste.”
When they were invited to share what they had imagined, one camper described sitting in a circle with other trans people. It was dark. Trees surrounded them. Mosquitoes buzzed.
“‘That place is here, and this is the place where I feel safe,’” Jacob Hofheimer, one of the camp’s founders, recalled the camper saying. “It got all of us.”
For many of the 8- to 17-year-olds who attend Transcending Adolescence, the weeklong summer camp offers a reprieve from the calculations they have to make in their day-to-day lives: Who knows they are trans? Who can be trusted? Which bathroom can they legally use?
At a time when 40 percent of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, and 90 percent of LGBTQ youth reported that recent anti-LGBTQ laws, policies, and debates cause them stress or anxiety, those questions never disappear. But at this camp, young people are given space to ask them openly and to a community that understands why they need to.
“It really made me smile knowing that there’s a lot of people out there like me,” Ruby, a 12-year-old camper, told Uncloseted Media. “I’m putting myself out there, I’m being myself and no one judges me.”
Origins
Transcending Adolescence was founded in 2019 by Jacob and his wife Chrissy Hofheimer. The trans married couple wanted to create a camp for queer kids in America’s South, where affirming resources can be difficult to find.
Surrounded by thick woods and the backdrop of the Appalachian Mountains, campers swim, tie-dye shirts, complete ropes courses, roast marshmallows and perform in shows. They also gather for conversations about healthy relationships, medical care, legal rights, bathroom anxiety, coming out, misgendering, depression, substance use, and self-esteem.
“A huge part of it is that every single person there is trans or gender diverse, including the staff,” says Rory Sowers, a 19-year-old junior counselor from Florida. “That’s just something that you don’t get to experience a lot, especially as a young trans person.”
Sowers first attended Transcending Adolescence as a camper during its inaugural year in 2021. He returned three times before becoming a junior counselor.
“There’s so much that trans folks have to worry about just going about their day-to-day lives, especially living in the South,” Sowers says. “I was able to come into myself a lot more when I didn’t have all of those anxieties on my back.”
A place to be ‘just Ruby’
For 12-year-old Ruby, pre-camp anxiety was intense.
When she attended camp in June of last year, it was the first time traveling to another state without her parents.
“I was nervous about having someone there not really understanding me … and not really accepting me,” says Ruby, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy.
Outside camp, Ruby worries about how other people perceive her, according to her mom, Kate, whose name has also been changed. She says her daughter has to consider a litany of questions cis kids don’t have to worry about: “‘What if someone finds out? Are they looking at me? Do I look the part?’ … All these thoughts go through her head every single day.”
Before camp, Ruby had been struggling so intensely that her family had questioned whether it might feel easier for her “not to be who she was,” Kate says. Ruby had faced bullying in school, prompting her family to withdraw her and homeschool her for the remainder of fifth grade.
“I couldn’t really go anywhere without picking [at] myself because I was anxious,” Ruby says.
But when she arrived at camp, a lot of Ruby’s anxiety subsided. She didn’t have to introduce herself through the lens of being trans. She could just be herself: a funny, theatrical, outgoing 12-year-old who likes Beyoncé, improvises rap battles, and wants to be in the center of dance shows.
“She can just go there and just be [Ruby],” Kate says. “[Being trans] is only a little piece of her. There’s so much more to her, and she’s able to do that for the whole week. … It was completely life-changing for her.”
Research suggests that spaces like Transcending Adolescence can have powerful mental health effects.
Young people tend to fare better when they feel they belong and have access to peers and adults who understand them. In one small study from 2021, participants of a six-day LGBTQ summer camp reported increased resilience, self-esteem and quality of life. Focus groups indicated that transgender and nonbinary campers found an affirming environment that offered social opportunities they had been unable to find elsewhere.
Though this environment can be transformative, it’s intimidating at first for some. Jacob remembers asking one camper from Texas his pronouns during medical check-in, and the boy responding that he used “guy pronouns” because he “was a guy.”
Jacob recalled him being closed off and leery of the “hippie-dippy nonsense.”
But on the second-to-last night, Jacob overheard him speaking with a fellow camper.
“‘When I first came here, I thought that I was a disgusting, mutilated pig and an alien, and nobody would ever love me because I’m trans,’” Jacob recalls the camper saying. “‘And now I know that being trans doesn’t make me disgusting. It’s actually a beautiful thing.’”
He later texted Jacob to say the camp had given him confidence during the school year.
“‘Half the time, I forget that I’m trans,’” Jacob remembers him writing. “‘I’m just a guy. I’m just me.’”
“Finding places where you literally see yourself and can be seen by others for who you are is important during adolescence. It’s a human need,” Stephen Russell, professor of social and family dynamics at Arizona State University, told Uncloseted Media. “For trans youth, especially those who may not feel fully accepted at school, at home or in their faith communities, a camp where their identity isn’t something they have to navigate or defend, but is simply centered as part of who they are, can be transformative.”
Filling the gaps
The Hofheimers know that these spaces can transform the mental health of trans youth because they experienced it firsthand when they met while working as lifeguards at a summer camp for young queer people in New Hampshire.
The camp was doing important work, Jacob says, but many of its attendees came from privileged families in New England and other parts of the country where affirming programs were more accessible. Far fewer came from places such as Florida, Georgia, and Texas.
That’s why, for the location of the camp, they intentionally chose North Carolina, a state that has laws on the books that exclude trans girls from participating in sports, restrict the instruction of LGBTQ topics in schools and ban gender-affirming care for trans youth.
“Access is really, really important,” Chrissy says, adding that while the camp costs $1,975 for the week, they offer robust financial aid, including a $1,500 “no questions asked” subsidized rate for families who can’t afford it.
At the camp, the staff educates campers about anti-trans laws, coming out, and how to have conversations with their doctors about gender-affirming care.
“The kids want to talk about this stuff,” Jacob says. “That was the gap that we identified.”
For Chrissy, baking education into the camp’s programming is personal: When she was transitioning as a young adult, accessing informed medical care was difficult. During consultations, doctors either quoted prices she could not afford or refused to treat her. One told her that they did not “put boobs on men.”
Desperate to change her chest, Chrissy turned to a friend who had undergone illegal silicone injections without an apparent complication. She received what she believed were similar injections in Florida.
But the substance wasn’t silicone, she says, and it hardened and became intertwined with her breast tissue. Seventeen years later, Chrissy underwent a double mastectomy to fix the damage.
This experience became one of the driving forces behind the camp’s educational work.
“Accurate information might have changed the course of my life,” Chrissy says.
To provide information that breaks out of the TikTok and Reddit misinformation bubble many campers exist in at home, Chrissy and Jacob bring in experts and host nightly fireside chats.
Each night, campers gather around for structured conversations about the nuances of being trans. They talk about coping with misgendering, managing bathroom anxiety, identifying red and green flags in relationships, asking for help, and caring for their mental health.
Jacob, who is a certified nurse practitioner, helps answer questions about gender-affirming care. A trans attorney explains policies affecting campers in different states and separates the practical effects of those laws from incomplete information and political fearmongering.
“It made me think about the people who I tell I am trans to and what I have to do to make sure I feel comfortable telling them,” Ruby says. “It let me think about all these questions I had but didn’t really know how to ask.”
Building what comes next
Chrissy hopes the results from the camp’s program will eventually be replicated across the country.
For now, roughly 30 campers come together for one week each summer. Some arrive unhappy about being sent to camp. But by the final day, Sowers says, those same campers are often crying because they do not want to leave.
They return home to the same schools, states, and political climates where they have to decide when it is safe to disclose their identities and how to respond when someone does not understand them.
But at camp, Ruby, among the other campers, found a weeklong respite and saw trans adults who were not merely surviving but building careers, relationships, and communities.
“After the camp, I really haven’t been talking about how I feel insecure that I’m trans,” Ruby says. “I can’t wait to go back and see the people I met and [meet] new friends.”
National
Remembering Victoria Cruz, Stonewall veteran and beloved trans activist
A witness to history who would spend decades helping to shape it
Victoria Cruz, a veteran of the 1969 Stonewall uprising and unwavering advocate for survivors of violence, died on June 25 from liver cancer. Fierce, generous, and unyielding, Cruz emerged from Stonewall as a witness to history who would spend more than five decades helping to shape it. She became a fixture of New York LGBTQ+ activism and in time, one of the community’s most beloved elders and mentors.
One of 11 children, Cruz arrived with her family in Red Hook, Brooklyn from Guánica, Puerto Rico as a young child. She occasionally quipped that she was “never in the closet” but “in the armoire,” and knew from an early age that she was a girl at a time when there was little language to describe her experience. She studied cosmetology and hairdressing at Metropolitan Vocational High School, before attending Brooklyn College where she earned a theater degree in 1982. She supported herself through beauty work, as a stripper, sex worker, and entertainer in the New York City nightlife scene, giving her first drag performance at the Grapevine in 1973 to a Billie Holiday song.
A regular at the Stonewall Inn, Cruz often arrived in what she described as “full drag and semi-drag.” In a 2025 interview she recounted details of the gay bar on Christopher Street – the lack of plumbing, except for the bathroom, and how she would only drink beer because the ice for mixed drinks was drawn from unsanitary garbage cans where glasses were rinsed.
“[The cops] used to come in and raid the place, and put the lights on. If you were two men together, you’d look for a lesbian to sit with or talk to.” If you had make-up on, she said, they’d make you wash it off with dirty water from the mop bucket. Officers also did what she called “the Robin Hood.”
“They used to take the bra straps in the back and pull them, you know, they were very heavy elastic, and let it go so it’ll hurt their back.”
Harassment was routine. But the night of Friday, June 27, 1969, was different. Maybe the cops weren’t given “the little brown bag pay off” or “enough money,” she speculated.
Cruz hadn’t planned to go that night. She had work the next day at a beauty parlor but her boyfriend, Frankie, was a bouncer at Stonewall — and “a cheat.”
“I went and stalked him.” When he asked her to go home, she said, “‘No, I’m going to wait up here, because tonight you’re going home with me.'”
It was close to midnight, and the air was hot and humid, she recalled. A full moon in the sky. Judy Garland had just been buried, and the atmosphere in the Village was solemn – “like the calm before the storm.” Standing near the steps next to the Stonewall, Cruz spotted Sylvia Rivera—who would also become a prominent trans rights figure—with her friends across the street by Sheridan Square Park.
The paddy wagons came. The bar got raided, yet again. But this time, a rebellion began to simmer.
“And then the crowd started getting a little bit rowdier outside, they started throwing pennies,” Cruz recalled. “They were calling them names, you know, ‘dirty copper.’ ” As cops started loading people into the paddy wagons, she “saw one queen got punched.” She thought it was Miss Major, who later publicly recounted taking a blow to the head and getting knocked unconscious.
Police brought a paddy wagon around and went back inside the bar. “And here comes a brick out of Sheridan Square Park, and it cracked the window, and they closed all the doors as a barricade. We were hearing noise from inside.”
Frankie came out to see whether she was still there. A Canadian in the country illegally, he wanted to leave. Cruz wanted to stay. “That’s serious when they started burning stuff – and then Frankie says, let’s get out of here.” She recalled the violence escalating. “First it was garbage pails. Then they started setting up fire on cars. And I said, no, no, no. That’s too crazy.”
After the raid, Frankie’s boss called him in “to clean out the basement and try to straighten up whatever the cops smashed up over there.” Frankie found one of three drink-price signs, and downstairs, the dog, Rusty, who guarded the liquor (“even though the liquor was watered down”). One of the owners let Frankie take him home. “I was so afraid of dogs, but I gave him food, and then he became my best friend and my protector.”
As for the sign, she kept it in her possession and shared that she hoped to return it to Stonewall along with photos of Frankie and Rusty. “They are part of our original history and they belong there.”
Those nights of chaos and violence are now widely regarded as the birth of the modern gay rights movement. One year later, Cruz joined thousands in what she called “the big first gay pride liberation march.”
“She was definitely one of our mothers in the movement,” says Shelby Chestnut, now executive director of Transgender Law Center, who worked with “Miss Vicky” at the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP) from 2010 to 2017. Cruz first came to AVP seeking support after being sexually assaulted by members of the nursing staff while working at Cobble Hill Health Center. She later volunteered at AVP and remained with the organization for 18 years, eventually coordinating the domestic violence project and serving as a senior counselor advocate.
Shay Huffman, a school social worker and former AVP Board Member, credits Cruz with being her lifeline while going through intimate partner violence. “By the time I got to AVP, I was 95 pounds,” says Huffman. “I seriously doubted I would survive. I had lost my appetite, wasn’t eating, and felt like my spirit was being sucked out of me.” Huffman says it was important to her that Cruz was a woman of color. “She heard me. She met me where I was. She validated me. She gave me hope and encouragement. She made me believe, ‘Maybe I can survive this.’ It was the first step from becoming a fighter and survivor to really thriving.”
Cruz’s impact extended beyond those she counseled. For many young trans people, the presence of an elder figure like “Miss Vicky” was not something to be taken lightly, Shelby Chestnut says.
“Especially at the time when she got into advocacy, in an ‘official’ way, there was a real expansion of trans justice organizations in New York City, and she would come to all of the events and be this big voice of reason. Even in the face of so much terribleness in the world right now—even at almost 80 years old—she was so clear and articulate: ‘We can’t back down. We’ve been here before. We can’t give people new ground in this moment to take our power and livelihood away.’ She imparted this to a new generation of organizers and leaders in a way that not many people could.”
“She came up in a post-Stonewall reality but also was clear that so much of our conditions didn’t change just because Stonewall birthed our movement.”
Her commitment to justice came to wider public attention with the release of the 2017 documentary “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson.” The film documents her meticulous investigation into the 1992 death of her contemporary, Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans woman whose death was ruled a suicide despite suspicious circumstances. Cruz’s probing not only helped expose the very real possibility that Johnson was murdered, but also underscored a broader reality: Many trans women of the era were treated as throwaways, their deaths denied the attention and justice they deserved.
Following Cruz’s death, the documentary’s director, David France, paid tribute to Cruz on Facebook:
“Throughout her life she embodied pure joy, something she learned from Marsha P. Johnson (whom she called “The Rosa Parks of the gay movement”), and fierce resistance, which she dedicated herself to in her last conversation with Sylvia Rivera on her death bed. She promised Sylvia she would ‘keep the community together.’ And she did that and more. She died on Pride Week, her highest of holy days. There never will be another like her.”
“Victoria loved the beach,” recalls Cruz’s sister, Heyde Cruz, 73. “She called it her sanctuary and as my children and my other siblings’ children were growing, she would take them to the beach and show them how beautiful it was, picking up seashells and other beach objects on the sand and they loved it.”
Indeed, Cruz was a popular presence at the People’s Beach at Jacob Riis Park in Queens, where she was often spotted beneath a sun tent in colorful attire and her signature headband with feathers and cowrie shells. She was considered royalty at this haven for queers near the former Neponsit Hospital — a building that fell into ruin over decades before ultimately being demolished, despite protests by a community that had laid claim to a landmark no one else seemed to want.
In a 2023 conversation, the “Queen of Riis” recounted tales of noble mischief dating back to the earliest days when she had first set foot on the sands in 1963. The facility had been running as a “Home for the Aged” and the gay folks delighted in helping elderly residents sneak out to frolic on the beach.
“We would tell them when the guys were coming so they could run back to the premises,” she said. She loved hearing the concerts from the facility’s gazebo, where patients would be taken out for lunch. “I loved to go on Sunday mornings because of the church services,” Cruz said. “They played the most wonderful American gospel I ever heard.”
Cruz had hoped that the building might be preserved and turned into a hospice, where “the sounds of the sea, the sun, the gulls [might] make them enjoy life more, especially in their last days.”
Last December, The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative (SIGBI) honored Cruz with a Brick Award for Community Activism. Latina actor, model and trans activist Angelica Christina introduced Cruz, highlighting the elder’s fight for the LGBTQ+ community as “front and center,” noting she had “done so with courage, conviction and compassion.”
“From being a longtime leader at the Anti-Violence Project, to being a part of the documented history at Stonewall, Victoria has supported survivors of anti-LGBTQIA+ violence when few others would,” said Christina, herself a survivor of sexual assault and homelessness. “She fought for safety and accountability and dignity at a time when our stories – especially that of BIPOC trans women – were too often ignored… “
To a standing ovation, Cruz spoke to those who have long admired her spirit, as well as a new generation reaching for the torch amid a renewed political tempest intent on extinguishing the most marginalized:
“We resisted at Stonewall and we can resist now because they’re not going to erase us,” Cruz assured. “Today, it is better to be yourself. Life is much easier when you are you.”
“And I thank you for this prize, because like Sylvia [Rivera] said – and I promised her – that wherever I would go, I will try to keep the community together because we do have the numbers, and with our allies, we can defeat them anytime…
“We’re here from the beginning and we’re going to be here ’til the end.”
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