In this op-ed, President pro Tempore of the California State Senate, Toni Atkins discusses legislation aimed at helping LGBTQ+ youth and communities feel less isolated.
I grew up in a rural nook of southwestern Virginia, one of four children, and into a family so poor that we didn’t have running water in our house. Growing up, I wasn’t popular. I was the girl who went to summer camp on a church scholarship with a bathing suit that my mother had sewn me. I played pick-up basketball games and was elected head of the Latin Club. I didn’t think the world was about me. And never did I think that I would be accepted as my true self. A lesbian in the Blue Ridge mountains of Appalachia? Not a chance. Not in the 1970s.
While I loved my home and my heritage, back then, I felt isolated. I felt like there was no one who could understand what I was grappling with internally. I didn’t know if my family, or even my twin sister, would understand or accept the real me.
It’s been a little more than 40 years since then, and although times have changed in many ways, there still are LGBTQ+ teens and young adults living in corners of our country who feel isolated and alone. Who feel afraid to share with their family, their peers, or their community who they truly are. Who are fearful to celebrate this Pride Month, and may feel more shame than pride themselves.
Research has shown us that one of the most helpful things in terms of fostering acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community is individual relationships. Seven out of 10 LGBT adults who participated in a 2013 Pew Research Center survey said people knowing someone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender helps a lot in making society more accepting.
When I think about my own life, that certainly held true. My parents were evangelical Christians living in the South – I was anticipating the worst when I came out to them at age 18. But what I learned was the depth of their love for me, and that their connection to me helped foster an understanding of not only me as their daughter, but of others like me.
Those of us who have the acceptance of our parents, family, and community are so blessed, and for those who don’t yet, please know this: there are people ready to fill that void, and who are working to make that void smaller. We – the members of the LGBTQ+ community, our allies, and those willing to open their hearts and minds – want to make this country a better, safer, and more understanding place.
So how do we do that?
This spring, I introduced legislation in the California State Senate to encourage acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community nationwide. Called the BRIDGE Project – Building and Reinforcing Inclusive, Diverse, Gender-supportive Equality – my bill would lift our state’s travel ban and create in its place a marketing campaign to infuse inclusivity and compassion throughout America.
Back in 2016, California enacted a ban on state-funded travel to states that passed anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. It was meant to take a stand; to wield our considerable influence. While the right thing to do at the time, since then, that ban has grown to include 23 states, and has had unintended consequences – limiting state travel for professors to conduct critical research, forcing public universities to find private funding to send student athletes to post-season games, and hampering our ability to help women and people needing to travel here from other states to receive reproductive and abortion care.
The BRIDGE Project carries a dual goal – open up California’s ability to get support and research to those states, and open those hearts and minds I mentioned through this non-partisan, non-political project. To infuse hope where it feels like there is none.
I could have used that as a teenager in Appalachia. And for so many LGBTQ+ people of all ages, that hope is needed now more than ever.
This year alone, nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the country, according to the ACLU, spreading divisiveness and targeting everything from civil rights to healthcare.
The damage they are causing isn’t relegated just to statehouses and the courts. The vitriol is taking a real toll on real people – many of whom are the most vulnerable among us. Ninety-four percent of LGBTQ+ youth reported that the recent state of politics negatively impacted their mental health, according to a 2021 national survey conducted by the Trevor Project. Forty-two percent of LGBTQ+ youth seriously considered attempting suicide within the previous year, and 75 percent reported “that they had experienced discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity at least once in their lifetime,” according to the survey.
Recently, Republicans in our California State Senate asked to have a member of a philanthropic queer group known as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence disinvited from the Senate’s Pride celebration. I said no. As I told my colleagues that day, I hoped the experience would help build understanding. Understanding builds bridges, and those bridges are needed right now from coast to coast.
This effort is about everyday people who just want to live their lives – they’re not elected officials, or represent a stakeholder group, they’re not members of the Republicans for this, or Democrats for that. They are just trying to live productively and peacefully with their families, do their jobs, and be who they are. That’s why the BRIDGE Project is so important – because it seeks to meet people where they are and to encourage empathy and compassion.
That’s a bridge that we can all build – and cross – together.
Senator Toni G. Atkins is President pro Tempore of the California State Senate. She is the first woman, and first openly LGBTQ+ person, to lead the Legislature’s upper house – a position she has held for more than five years. She has championed legislation on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community, women, reproductive rights, climate, affordable housing, and more. She lives in San Diego with her spouse and their dogs.
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