The LGBTQ community may feel a bit less celebratory for Pride Month during a year which saw a slate of legislative attacks throughout the country.

The month-long commemoration in June is meant to celebrate and recognize the impact of the LGBTQ community and the ongoing fight for equality.

As a highlight to Pride Month, President Joe Biden signed an executive order June 15 intended to counter state laws and bill proposals which he called discriminatory actions against the LGBTQ community.  

The order tasks the Department of Health and Human Services with drafting new inclusive policies in the area of schools, adoptions, and health care programs.

The also order promotes offering gender affirming surgery and support for LGBTQ foster parents, while discouraging so-called conversion therapy — which seeks to suppress or change someone’s gender identity. 

“Children who are exposed to so-called ‘conversion therapy’ face higher rates of attempted suicide and trauma,” the order states. “Numerous states across the country have already passed bipartisan laws to prevent exposure to so-called ‘conversion therapy,’ with Republican and Democratic governors signing state bans on conversion therapy into law.”

Restrictive state laws

Representatives with the Human Rights Campaign — the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy and lobbying group — said equality for the community took a major step backwards in 2022 as more than 340 bills have been introduced in state legislatures that have “harmful “impacts for the LGBTQ+ community.

The group tracked 24 restrictive LGBTQ+ bills passed into law in 13 states, including two in Alabama, four in Georgia and two in Tennessee this year.

Cathryn Oakley, HRC’s state legislative director and senior counsel, said Alabama “passed the most anti-transgender legislative package that we have ever seen from a state in history.” 

HB 322 requires students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their biological gender — similar to a law passed in Oklahoma this year — and also prohibits teachers from discussing gender identity or sexual orientation with students in grades K-5, known as the “Don’t say gay” bill in other states, most notably Florida.  

SB 184 bans gender-affirming treatment to transgender youth in the state, punishing doctors who perform those services with up to 10 years in prison.

That bill also mandates school officials report to parents or guardians “information related to a minor’s perception that his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with his or her sex.”

“So altogether, it was four provisions packaged into two bills passed at the 11th hour is the final day of legislative session,” Oakley said in a virtual presentation Wednesday.

Though attempts to pass similar health care bans in Texas failed previously, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week directed the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate parents or medical professionals who perform these services, arguing the gender-affirming services constitutes child abuse under Texas law.

Arizona also passed a ban on gender affirming health care for transgender youth, while attempts to do so in Georgia this year did not advance.  

Oakley referenced support of gender-affirming medications by the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Medical Association.

Eleven states — including Georgia and Tennessee— passed laws prohibiting transgender students from playing on a team that matches their gender-identity.

In Georgia, HB 1084 prohibits transgender students from playing on teams matching their gender identity; HB 1178 requires school districts to provide procedures for a parent or guardian to withdraw their child from specific course curriculum, including gender or sexuality topics, while SB 226 allows for the creation of a process to remove so-called “harmful materials” from schools that could include books and materials pertaining to sex, sexuality, gender and race. 

Such bills take away social supports that transgender and LGBTQ youth need to succeed, Oakley said.

Florida was among the states that saw several transgender youth bills, most notably its “Don’t say gay” bill that paved the way for similar laws in other states. 

“All of these bills, what they have in common is, they are going after children and they are trying to separate those children from their support systems,” Oakley said. “They are trying to separate them from their coaches, trying to separate them from their teammates. They are trying to separate them from their teachers. They are trying to separate them from their school guidance counselors and their supportive parents and their doctors and books that they might read that have LGBTQ characters or themes in them or history that includes LGBTQ people.”

Equality Act

Advocates are hopeful the federally proposed Equality Act will pass, after having passed in the House last year; the bill is stalled in the Senate.

The Act specifically would include sex, sexual orientation and gender identity among the prohibited categories of discrimination or segregation. 

“Some of the bills, should the Equality Act pass into law, are going to be in conflict with the Equality Act and there will be an easy venue to challenge,” Oakley said. “Equal Protection under the law is something that applies with or without the Equality Act, and all of these bills are singling out a very vulnerable population of folks for negative impact without a good rationale for why.”