Trans rights are under attack. Now is the time to show where you stand.
Dear Basic Rights Oregon supporters,
I never thought I’d have to write a letter like this.
When I came out as a transgender woman in 2010 and began transitioning, I knew I’d face discrimination. I knew trans people are targets for violence, experience unique hardships in accessing medical care, and bear the brunt of society’s rigid expectations about gender.
Still, I couldn’t predict what the landscape for transgender rights would look like in the United States in 2023.
It’s a grim picture: In the first three months of this year alone, several state governments have passed laws banning or restricting gender-affirming care for minors, and many more are clamoring to do so. The underlying goal of this strategy—to eventually outlaw gender-affirming care for all trans people—is becoming clear.
It’s not just our medical care. They’re also coming for our ability to use public restrooms, be ourselves at school, play sports, participate in the art of drag—essentially, they want to erase us from public life.
As a supporter of Basic Rights Oregon’s work, you must be feeling the scariness of this moment. I feel it too.
My life is so much fuller and happier now that I am living as the woman I’ve always been. I’ll always be a woman, and no law can change that. But I know my ability to access medical care and safely exist in public are under attack.
Right now, these laws are mostly passing in states with more predominantly anti-LGBTQ2SIA+ sentiments than Oregon. But this anti-trans movement is gaining momentum, and our federal government certainly isn’t immune to it.
“We need your support to keep this hateful movement out of Oregon.”
I take solace in the fact that I work at Basic Rights Oregon. Since 1996, BRO has fought head-on against anti-LGBTQ2SIA+ interests across the state. We were born out of the campaign against Measure 9, which would have categorized homosexuality as “abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse” in the Oregon Constitution.
Our community defeated Measure 9, but history is repeating itself now, as the old anti-gay rhetoric of the 1990s is being recycled to use against the trans community. We need your support to keep that hateful movement out of Oregon.
Can I count on you to join us in this fight? As trans rights are stripped away across the country, now is the time to show where you stand. A monthly donation of any amount will help BRO fight against this wave of fear-mongering and intolerance.
It’s an honor to be in this fight with you.
Mikki Gillette, Major Gifts Officer, Basic Rights Oregon