Politics
ACLU counts more than 120 new anti-LGBTQ bills in the first few weeks of 2023
‘Trans people and our families are gearing up to fight back’
Lawmakers across the country have introduced more than 120 anti-LGBTQ bills so far this year, according to a press release issued Thursday by the ACLU.
In a press release announcing the findings, the ACLU introduced a digital dashboard, which summarizes the proposed anti-LGBTQ policies, organizes the bills by category, and tracks their progress through state legislatures.
“These bills represented a coordinated effort to deny transgender people our freedom, our safety, and our dignity,” said Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project.
“Across the country, trans people and our families are gearing up to fight back and prevent every one of these bills from becoming law,” he said in the press release.
Last year, the ACLU reports there were a record-breaking 278 bills targeting LGBTQ people, of which 20 have become law. The group’s litigation team has fought against “bills across the country restricting access to gender-affirming health care, barring trans people from updating identity documents, and denying transgender students equal access to school facilities and activities, as well as defending inclusive policies from political and legal attacks.”
Additionally, the ACLU has brought lawsuits challenging book bans that target materials with LGBTQ characters or themes and represented parties in litigation over a Texas law that criminalizes parents who facilitate their trans children’s access to guideline directed, medically necessary healthcare treatments and procedures.
The number of new anti-LGBTQ legislative proposals seen in the first few weeks of 2023 is especially remarkable considering that some state legislatures have not yet begun filing new bills.
In a Washington Blade article published Wednesday, activist and legislative researcher Erin Reed said that in addition to the fact that lawmakers are now on track to eclipse last year’s record number of anti-LGBTQ bills, the proposals introduced so far this year have tended to be more extreme and cruel than in years past.
The ACLU has categorized them in seven primary focus areas: healthcare access, schools and education, free speech and expression, access to accurate IDs, Weakening Civil Rights Laws, Public Accommodations, and Other Anti-LGBTQ Bills.
The ACLU’s press release describes each of these types of legislative proposals:
- Health Care Access
- Lawmakers are targeting access to medically-necessary health care for transgender people. Many of these bills ban affirming care for trans youth, and can even create criminal penalties for providing this care. 35 bills target health care access for transgender people.
- Schools & Education
- State lawmakers are trying to prevent trans students from participating in school activities like sports, force teachers to out students, and censor in-school discussions of LGBTQ people and issues. 58 bills target LGBTQ rights in schools and educational settings.
- Free Speech & Expression
- Despite the safeguards of the First Amendment’s right to free expression, politicians are fighting to restrict how and when LGBTQ people can be themselves, limiting access to books about them and trying to ban or censor performances like drag shows. 19 bills target freedom of speech and expression for LGBTQ people.
- Access to Accurate IDs
- These bills attempt to limit the ability to update gender information on IDs and records, such as birth certificates and driver’s licenses. Four bills target the right to accurate identity documents for transgender people.
- Weakening Civil Rights Laws
- These bills attempt to undermine and weaken nondiscrimination laws by allowing employers, businesses, and even hospitals to turn away LGBTQ people or refuse them equal treatment. Seven bills seek to weaken existing civil rights laws.
- Public Accommodations
- These bills prohibit transgender people from using facilities like public restrooms and locker rooms.
- Other Anti-LGBTQ Bills
- These bills don’t quite fit in any of the other categories, but nonetheless target the rights of LGBTQ people. Examples include restrictions on marriage and bills preempting local nondiscrimination protections. Five bills target LGBTQ people and rights, including proposed amendments to define transgender people out of existence.
Congress
HRC president campaigns for Chris Pappas in NH
Gay congressman running to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen
Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson on Sunday campaigned for U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) in New Hampshire.
Robinson traveled to Manchester, the state’s largest city, nine days before the Sept. 8 primary that will determine who will vie for retiring U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.)’s seat.
We’re hitting the pavement across New Hampshire to fight for a freer, fairer future for everyone.
Glad to have Human Rights Campaign President @KelleyJRobinson join us for a canvass launch in Manchester today. pic.twitter.com/XWCEaQxy4o
— Chris Pappas (@ChrisPappasNH) August 30, 2026
Former U.S. Sen. John E. Sununu, who represented New Hampshire in the U.S. Senate from 2003-2009, will face off against former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, who represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate from 2010-2013, in the Republican primary.
Karishma Manzur is among the Democrats challenging Pappas.
A poll the University of New Hampshire Survey Center released on Aug. 26 shows Sununu is ahead of Brown. The same survey shows Pappas ahead of Manzur and his other Democratic challengers.
The UNH Survey Center poll shows Sununu ahead of Pappas by a 45-43 percent margin if they were to face off in the general election. The margin of error is +/-2.1 percent.
Pappas would become the first openly gay man elected to the U.S. Senate if he were to win in November.
Congress
Chris Van Hollen says the Democratic Party needs change. Is he the one to lead it?
Senator is backing anti-establishment Democrats across the country
By LEE O. SANDERLIN | The Democratic Party is having something of an identity crisis — losing to President Donald Trump twice in three elections will do that.
Should the party embrace anti-establishment figures who espouse progressive policy ideas like Medicare for all and rhetoric about unrigging the economy for the 1 percent? Or should Democrats try to appeal to moderates who want to return to semi-normalcy in a time of political upheaval?
Although he’s been in Congress since 2002, with key leadership roles throughout his tenure, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, 67, counts himself firmly in the anti-establishment camp.
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
Politics
Log Cabin Republicans remove transgender rights from mission
Decision made after ‘significant discussion’ with members, board
Log Cabin Republicans, an organization that formerly represented LGBTQ conservatives, has removed advocating for transgender and queer rights from its “renewed” national advocacy focus.
In an opinion piece written by Log Cabin Republicans President Ross Hemminger for the conservative media outlet Town Hall, he announced that trans rights would no longer be part of what the organization advocates for through conservative leadership and candidates.
In his piece, Hemminger wrote that after “significant discussion” with members and Log Cabin Republicans’ board of directors, the organization’s leadership voted to “refine Log Cabin Republicans’ national advocacy focus to concentrate specifically on issues of sexual orientation and conservative values,” a focus that does not include trans people.
“We have fought for the right to legally marry who we love, serve our country and our communities openly and proudly, and to enjoy the same inalienable rights afforded to all law-abiding Americans — and we succeeded,” Hemminger wrote. “However, the new era of gender identity politics is not the movement we supported and fought for. Gay men and women are losing public support across the country, and support for gay marriage and other once-widely accepted rights is eroding. Why? Because many voters today weren’t alive or cognizant of the politics of gay marriage winding its way through the courts and gaining ground in public opinion. Their view of the gay community is based on today’s radical transgender activists with their unnecessary and discomfiting focus on America’s youth.”
Hemminger then went on to argue that trans advocacy has shifted to focusing primarily on minors — a characterization that does not reflect the breadth of issues trans advocates address.
“They push schools to teach radical gender ideology; they want biological men in women’s sports regardless of the consequences; perhaps most offensively, they support gender reassignment treatments for minors, often without the knowledge or consent of the parents, knowing full well these treatments are mostly irreversible,” he wrote.
Hemminger and many right-wing political leaders have continued to assert this false reality as fact.
A Harvard-affiliated study found approximately 2.1 gender-affirming surgeries occur per 100,000 trans and gender-diverse minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria, underscoring how uncommon these procedures are among minors. In addition to the option of surgery for those who think it’s right for them, there is an array of other medically sound options to treat gender dysphoria, which according to KFF, an independent source for health policy research and polling, includes “medical, surgical, mental health, and non-medical services for transgender and nonbinary people.”
Additionally trans advocacy is not as narrow as Hemminger makes it seem in his opinion piece.
There are a slew of issues the trans community faces — and fights for — on a daily basis that have nothing to do with healthcare. Those include obtaining government documents that accurately reflect one’s gender identity, multiple elements of family law that include the right to marry and adopt children as straight couples can, protections from violence, hate crime protections, the right to serve in the military, access to bathrooms corresponding with their gender, and the right to education.
Despite the overwhelming number of issues trans people — regardless of political affiliation — have to struggle with as a result of systemic gaps in protections that are supposed to be afforded to everyone under the law, they remain vulnerable to unequal treatment.
Despite this shift, Log Cabin Republicans has committed to standing with the Republican Party rather than LGBTQ people as a whole. The organization was initially founded as a loosely connected network of local California social clubs made up of LGBTQ conservatives in the late 1970s before eventually emerging as a national political organization in the early 1990s under its founding executive director, Rich Tafel.
As the organization continued to gain momentum, it endorsed a handful of Republicans who voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, the 2022 law that federally recognized marriage equality for same-sex couples.
The Washington Blade reached out to Log Cabin Republicans for comment but did not hear back by the time of publication.
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