March for Queer and Trans Youth Autonomy San Francisco

Photos: Dan Ryan, ProBonoPhoto
Please credit the photographer

Queer Youth Assemble, a national organization that serves LGBTQ people under age 25, organized a national day of action for March 31. Planned to coincide with the annual Trans Day of Visibility, the event was in response to the wave of anti-trans state legislation introduced by Republican lawmakers over the last three years. Right wingers seek to restrict minors’ access to transition-related healthcare and prohibit the instruction of LGBTQ-related topics in schools. They are banning books and limiting what sports teams transgender students can play on. 

Queer Youth Assemble already already had an action in the works in response to the violence and discrimination transgender people face when a mass shooting at a Christian private school in Nashville, Tennessee became an excuse for right-wing media to seize on the reported identity of the shooter. Demonstrators and speakers bemoaned the fact that extremists continue to villainize the entire transgender community and call transgender people threats to society.