Connecticut lawmakers tout the state as one of the safest in the country for LGBTQ+ residents. Why do some members of the LGBTQ+ community not feel protected?
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Ally LeMaster to discuss her article, “CT: ‘Safe haven’ for transgender youth? For some, not safe enough,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. You can read her story here.
WSHU: Hello, Ally. You say that Connecticut has some of the most comprehensive protections for transgender individuals. But that’s faced some pushback in the past couple of years from conservative lawmakers and advocates. Is that why you decided to take a deep dive into this?
AL: That’s one of the reasons. I originally got into this story when my coworker Luke Feeney and I were at the Nex Benedict vigil held by Representative Sarah Keitt. And we kind of got a little bit of a juxtaposition from a lot of policymakers and lawmakers. A good chunk of them were essentially saying that everyone should feel safe. And then you hear advocates and people who have these lived experiences saying, ‘We don’t feel safe, and that we might have these protections, but we don’t necessarily feel them.’
WSHU: And what did you find when you started looking into this?
AL: So yeah, we do have Public Act 1155, which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity. There have been a lot of steps to ensure that the LGBTQ+ community has these needed protections. But then also, having policies in place doesn’t necessarily mean that people are going to feel that in their day-to-day life or their lived experience. Going back to 2015, we had an activist say that, you know, they grew up non-binary in Connecticut, and they were receiving death threats. They were getting bullied. And what is that disconnect between how people are treating you versus how are you protected by the law? So I thought that was really interesting to look at.
WSHU: You actually talk about Ace Ricker, an advocate and an educator now, who says it was very difficult navigating life growing up in Connecticut. Now, we have a situation here where nationally, there’s been a lot of pushback to LGBTQ+ rights, especially amongst conservative Republicans. What’s the situation in Connecticut?
AL: So, we have that here as well. We have the Let Kids be Kids Coalition, which has a couple of Republican lawmakers who are pushing bills that LGBTQ+ advocates are saying go against their rights. For one, there were two bills that were talked about in a press conference that were never voted on in concept or voted on in general by the Education Committee. But one would have teachers essentially tell students’ parents if they started using different pronouns at school, and then the other would ban trans athletes from participating in sports with their gender identity. So, while they were not even voted on the concept, we still have a push here in Connecticut for that to happen.
But on the flip side, you have a lot of lawmakers who don’t want that to happen. Specifically, Representative Sarah Keitt has been pushing these policies that would ensure protections for transgender students, and that’s what we’re seeing in Connecticut a lot. We’re seeing a lot of, you know, proposed protections. A lot of them haven’t been voted on, and it’s a very short session that ends Wednesday. So there is that concern of well, you know, while we propose all these, and while they’ve passed out of committee, are they going to be actual legislation?
WSHU: There was also some concern about the banning of books. Where does that stand?
AL: So right now, I know that towns across Connecticut, including Southfield, Newtown and Brookfield, have all had proposed book bans. As far as I know, none of those book bans have ever gone through. But the fact that they’re coming up in Connecticut, which is supposed to be a “safe haven” due to all these legal protections, has been a concern for many. But right now, there is a piece of legislation prohibiting books from being banned based on political ideology, which would thwart these attempts.
WSHU: There’s also some concern that even the laws that are on the books aren’t being properly enforced, and there was consideration of some new legislation to try and enforce the laws that currently exist in Connecticut.
AL: Yeah, so that was something I heard a lot from advocates. They’re saying, on paper, we have all these protections. But you know, you live your experience as a trans person or a nonbinary person, and you don’t feel protected. Someone who I had talked to, Mel from Q+, was saying to me that they go into schools, and they look at policies and they talk to educators about how they interact with their LGBTQ+ students. And essentially, a lot of teachers are misinformed about what protections trans kids have, or nonbinary kids have. And even a lot of people within the LGBTQ+ community aren’t necessarily sure these policies are in place. I’ve heard that no matter how many laws you enact, it’s how you follow through with them and make sure people feel protected and they’re educated on their rights is what I’ve heard.
WSHU: Ally, basically, because of this being a short session, not much legislation has made it through, but it seems as if there’s a lot of groundwork that’s been laid for further action to be taken next year.
AL: Yeah, I think that the task force, which was voted on, would look at hate speech and how it affects students. That one was passed by the Senate. It’s still waiting for House approval. There was a constitutional amendment that was proposed to ensure that people would not be discriminated against based on their gender identity. But even Representative Keitt was saying that’s probably not going to happen. So I think this session, it’s about groundwork. It’s not necessarily about fully, you know, enacting these policies because the session ends Wednesday, and you know, a lot of these policies that were proposed just are not going through and don’t have time to be voted through, especially if it does require money from the state budget.