The ups and downs of a tumultuous year
The last 12 months have a been a roller coaster for the LGBT community. Still suffering a grief hangover from Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in the November 2016 presidential election, when faced with the reality of his inauguration in January, progressives of all stripes stood up to fight back against what many see as a regressive and oppressive regime.
From the women’s marches that saw millions of people take to the streets of cities across the country on Jan. 21, to the Pride parades and marches in June and September; from the crushing results of 2016 election to the renewal of November 2018 when progressive candidates rebounded and at least openly-transgender candidates won office — we look back at six of the stories that shaped our world in 2017.
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Transgender Americans started 2017 knowing they would have a target on their backs, and the Trump administration wasted no time in showing just how big that target was.
And yet, as the year draws to a close, the trans community is fighting back, with big wins at the ballot box offering the promise of better things to come.
Administration orders removing any mention LGBT people and issues from all federal policies, programs and polls affected the LGBT community as a whole. But there were many directed specifically at trans people.
The first volley in the war on transgender people came from the Trump administration on Feb. 22 when the federal departments of Justice and Education withdrew the landmark 2016 guidance issued by the Obama administration explaining how schools should protect their transgender students under Title IX. It was just the first of many such moves repealing or dismantling federal protections for transgender people and others in the LGBT community.
The DOJ in March refused to appeal a nationwide preliminary court order halting enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s anti-discrimination protections for trans people, and abandoned its request, issued under the Obama administration, for a preliminary injunction halting enforcement of North Carolina’s HB 2. A month later, the DOJ dropped its suit against HB 2 completely.
Also in March, the Department of Housing and Urban Development removed from its website links to key resources telling emergency shelters how best to serve homeless trans people.
Then on July 26, Trump dropped a big bomb in the form of a tweet declaring that trans men and women would not be allowed to serve in the military in any capacity, completely rescinding policy enacted the year before completely lifting the ban on military service by transgender people. A month later, on Aug. 25, he issued a memo directing the Department of Defense to go ahead with developing a plan to discharge trans people currently serving in the military and to continue its ban on recruiting trans people. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has since ruled against the administration in a lawsuit brought by trans servicemembers and advocacy organizations, but the battle isn’t over yet.
On Oct. 5, the Justice Department released a memo instructing the DOJ to take the legal position that federal law does not protect transgender workers from discrimination, and a day later issued a sweeping edict allowing federal agencies and contractors to discriminate based on their personal religious beliefs.
And in December, “transgender” was included in a list of seven words that the Trump administration allegedly ordered the Centers for Disease Control not to use in official documents pertaining to next year’s budget.
And all that was just at the federal level. Here in Texas, right-wing forces in the Texas Legislature, led by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick focused intensely on passing some version of North Carolina’s anti-transgender bathroom bill, ignoring dire warnings from the state’s business leaders that doing so would hurt the Texas economy. Such was their zeal to punish transgender Texans, that other vital legislation — such as bills that would keep state agencies like the Texas Medical Board operating — were left to languish as Patrick and his minions retaliated against those blocking passage of the bathroom bills.
Thanks primarily to the conscience of Republican Speaker of the House Joe Strauss, bills that passed in the Senate never even made it to a hearing in the House, and the regular session ended without final passage of a bathroom bill.
But true to his word, Patrick had managed to block other important legislation out of revenge, forcing Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special session. And Abbott, playing to his own transphobic base, put passage of a bathroom bill on the special session agenda, too. Again Strauss and fair-minded Republicans in the House blocked the bill that passed in the Senate, refusing to back down before Patrick’s bully tactics. And against all odds, the 85th Texas Legislature adjourned without enacting a bathroom bill.
In another victory for the trans community, the city of Dallas in March added gender transition, including gender reassignment surgery, to its health insurance coverage for its employees. But that progress paled in the face of the unprecedented wave of violence against transgender people in the United States this year.
As of Dec. 21, 28 transgender people — mostly trans women of color — have died violent deaths. Four of them died in Texas:
Kenne McFadden, 27, was murdered in San Antonio, her body found April 9 in the San Antonio River; Gwynevere River Song, 26, was shot to death at a relative’s house in Waxahachie on Aug. 12; Stephanie Montez, 47, was found shot to death in a Corpus Christi suburb on Oct. 21, and Brandi Seals, 26, was shot to death in Houston on Dec. 13.
More than 300 transgender men and women were murdered worldwide in 2017.
And yet, despite the violence — physical, spiritual, emotional and political — transgender women and men made great strides forward in the November 2017 elections, when at least eight transgender candidates across the country won their races.
The highest-profile trans candidate to win was Danica Roem, the first openly-trans woman to win a seat in a state legislature. Roem, a married step-mother of two, defeated long-term incumbent Republican Bob Marshall, the state’s self-proclaimed Chief Homophobe, for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates.
But there were other trans candidates who victories were just as important. In Minneapolis, trans woman Andrea Jenkins and trans man Phillipe Cunningham were both elected to the city council. In Palm Springs, Lisa Middleton won a seat on the city council, making her the first openly-transgender candidate elected to a non-judicial office in the state of California.
Stephe Koontz won a seat on the city council in Doraville, Ga., population 10,000, by a six-vote margin. In Stamford, Conn., Raven Matherne became the city’s first openly-trans lawmaker by winning a seat on the city’s Board of Representatives. She is believed to be the first openly-trans lawmaker in the state.
Tyler Titus became Pennsylvania’s first openly-trans elected official by winning a seat on the Erie School Board. And in Somersworth, N.H., Gerri Cannon became the first openly-trans person elected to the school board.

— Tammye Nash