A crowd of community members gathered Monday at the Allen Street gates in State College to celebrate International Day of Transgender Day of Visibility, an event that this year was set against a rising tide of Trump administration directives and state-level legislation targeted against transgender people.
“I, like I’m sure every non-binary, trans and gender expansive person who’s here today, am feeling a lot of fear right now,” Michel Lee Garrett, a Centre LGBT+ board member, said. “There are federal policies that are being put into place that are fundamentally grounded in the denial of our rights, of our existence and our right to exist.”
Since taking office for his second term in January, President Donald Trump and his administration have rolled out a series of executive orders and policies aimed at transgender people, ranging from gender identity on government documents to gender-affirming care for youth to programs and instruction in schools to federal prison assignments to military service.
State legislators, too, have undertaken efforts targeting trans people, Garrett noted. A bill in Texas, which is unlikely to pass, would make it a felony to identify as trans. Iowa removed gender identity from its civil rights law. And Republicans in the Pennsylvania Senate have introduced legislation aimed recognizing only sex assigned at birth.
Like other transgender individuals and advocates, Garrett said the collective efforts amount to an attempt to erase trans people from public life.
“I do not use this word lightly, but we are in a moment of attempted trans genocide,” Garrett said, citing the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security. “There is no other word for it. That is the word when you prosecute a small group of people and attempt to remove them from public life.”
The negative impacts of anti-transgender rhetoric and policies, Garrett said, are often felt the hardest by trans individuals of color, with disabilities and migrants.
Invisibility, she added, is the goal of transgender opponents, which makes Transgender Day of Visibility important. Visibility doesn’t change policies or protect rights, and for some transgender people it can be endangering, Garrett said.
“But what visibility does is it replaces darkness with light,” Garrett said. “It replaces closet doors with pathways to possibilities. And it signals to others in a shared space or in a community that they are welcome, that they are safe and that they are cherished. And fundamentally, it normalizes transgender people as exactly what we are, a natural and beautiful part of the diverse spectrum of human experience.”
She and other Centre LGBT+ members urged allies to help by calling and writing their legislators, push school boards to adopt protections for transgender students and health systems to maintain gender-affirming care and call on their municipalities to pass trans sanctuary policies, like the one in State College Borough.
State College Mayor Ezra Nanes, who has a transgender daughter, said the borough’s policy is “to support and protect the rights of all people, including transgender and non-binary people.”
Earlier this month, Nanes issued a proclamation recognizing March 31 as Transgender Day of Visibility in State College.
“We all have to stand up, everybody in this community,” Nanes told the crowd. “And I have to say, seeing you all here, I didn’t know how many people we would see today, but I feel so proud, so excited, actually, so moved, and so supported to see all of you here.”
Nanes called the Trump executive orders “unconstitutional,””unethical” and “amoral” threats to individuals and institutions.
“We have to stand up and say we believe what we believe,” Nanes said. “We believe that every person has the right to have their identity accepted. Every person has the right to have their experience acknowledged and to feel safe both physically and psychologically.”
Nanes also read a message from state Rep. Paul Takac, D-College Township, who could not attend the event because he was hosting a community forum on the proposed Rockview prison closure. Takac said Democrats in Harrisburg are working to reintroduce legislation that would add protections for gender identity and expression to the state’s Human Rights Act, as well as a package of bills “to create a more inclusive and equitable environment for trans and non-binary students in K-12 schools across Pennsylvania,” including his own anti-discrimination and anti-bullying bill for every student.
Throughout the rally, attendees held up signs such as “Acceptance saves lives,” “You are valid” and “Protect trans kids,” while cheering when passing drivers honked in support.
Across the street, one resident who held up signs opposing transgender participation in women’s and girls’ sports and citing the Book of Genesis to challenge the idea of being transgender spoke with a few rally participants who came over to talk to him.
Among several faith leaders attending in support of Transgender Day of Visibility was Rev. Scott Hoffman, senior pastor at State College Presbyterian Church, who was there with a contingent from his congregation.
He said he feels it is important for the LGBTQ community to know they have the support of some faith congregations.
“For me specifically as a Christian, as a pastor, a leader of other Christians, a disciple and apostle of Jesus Christ, I take very seriously the call that Christ puts on our lives to care for the marginalized,” Hoffman said.
He explained that it’s important for people to know “that there are a myriad of Christian voices.”
“And especially in this day and age when the nation, and especially American Christians, are so divided on these matters, I think it’s important that people know that not all Christians believe that transgender people shouldn’t exist, that gay people are wrong,” Hoffman said. “I think they need to know that there are plenty of Christians, Christian leaders, everyday lay people Christians who believe quite the opposite, that everyone is a child of God and deserves God’s love, and how they feel about their bodies and their identity and their gender matters far less in God’s eyes than we often want to think it does.”
Hoffman added that his congregation has members who are transgender or otherwise part of the LGBTQ community because they feel accepted there and safe “to express their concerns about the larger picture in our country and in our world and what it is that people that are part of that community are facing in these days.”
“Especially within our tradition, it’s not about top-down ‘we’re telling you what to believe,’” he said. “This is coming to me from the pews and I happen to be one who in my own faith journey, in my own discernment agree strongly with those concerns and the need to support our brothers and sisters who identify in those ways.”
Garrett said that support from allies is important for members of the transgender community who are “bearing the weight of this moment.”
“We will not return to the shadows,” she said. “We will not become invisible. We will be tall, proud and visible.”
