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Over the past four years, a wave of damning legislation has threatened the lives of many LGBTQ+ Alabamians, especially our state's trans community. Throughout this time, two grassroots organizations Montgomery Pride United and The Knights & Orchids Society have created systems of care that look beyond Election Day as the sole inflection point for change.
We know that voting our way out of our systemic oppression won't work for the people we serve. We must therefore carve out our own futures—ones that involve models of community health, job opportunities, and community mentorship—beyond the limits of the predatory state's systems.
In this article, we have chosen to center the ongoing battles we are struggling to win at the Alabama state legislature. Regardless of a Trump or Harris administration, we are the canaries in the coal mine issuing a loud warning: What happens in Alabama locally is coming for your state. We hope our experiences and observations can be a guide for queer people looking beyond Election Day.
We Are the Breadcrumbs: Taking Care of Our Own
As queer folks from the South, we have shared stories from being brought up—and traumatized—by the Baptist church that are upheld in the way we organize. In the Book of John, after feeding thousands of people from a few loaves of bread, Jesus asks his disciples to clean up the leftovers, "gather up the broken pieces…that nothing be lost." We believe trans folks in this state to be breadcrumbs. We are the ones that the media, leaders, legislators, and even presidential hopefuls throw to the wayside. The ones who neither the churches nor the "traditional" organizations ever account for. Therefore, we are also the ones who must gather and create new systems of community care that center Black, trans folks. A breadcrumb trail of actions that have taught us how we get free.
Speaking of crumbs, less than $1 out of every $500 donated in the United States goes to LGBTQ+ organizations; one can only imagine how much less sprinkles down to us here in Montgomery, Alabama. Facing such gaps in resources and support, we've had to rely on each other for the care and security we deserve.
The Knights and Orchids Society (TKO) is the first and only AIDS service organization and STD/STI clinic in the state founded and led by Black, trans, and gender non-conforming people. The care that TKO provides isn't just resources for testing or hormone therapy, as it offers a holistic approach to health that in turn, positively impacts one's outlook on life. TKO's culture of care is asking, "Have you eaten? How are your people? Are you working? Want to come with us to a party?" Wellness for our communities can't be prescriptive, it has to be holistic, loving, and always at the ready to fix you a plate.
Access to care and sustainable resources are not the only barriers queer and trans folks face down here in central Alabama. We also lack spaces to call our own. In Montgomery in particular, we don't have a gay bar for gathering and refuge amid the very few welcoming churches and shelters that tend to push out LGBTQ+ folks.
Montgomery Pride United is a GNC, trans-led organization born in 2015 to create a safe space for LGBTQ+ people in central Alabama and nurture organizing among progressive folks. Thanks to them, we have the Bayard Rustin Community Center and Thrift Store that stands less than three blocks away from the Alabama State House. The community center is a constant reminder to Alabama legislators that we will care for our own, employ our own, and march to the Capitol at any given time to remind them that we cannot be erased.
Weathering Tornadoes: Four Years of Nonstop Legislative Attacks
W.E.B DuBois said it best: "as the South goes, so goes the Nation." Time and time again, we witness people ignore our experience amid legislative sessions, despite our plight being a warning sign of things to come. 3.6 million LGBTQ+ adults live in the South, including 500,000+ trans adults—that's more than any other region in the United States. And while we've lived under the Biden Administration since 2020, you wouldn't notice any progress based on the type of verbal attacks and legislation that LGBTQ+ Alabamians have faced over the past four years.
In 2020, Alabama lawmakers brought forth House Bill 303 that would essentially ban gender-affirming care for people under 19. The same bill respawned as House Bill 1 and Senate Bill 10 in 2021 before failing to pass through the session. The relentless anti-trans bloc in this state successfully passed a version of this bill (Senate Bill 184) during the 2022 legislation cycle, and by April of that year, Alabama became the first state in the country to impose felony prosecution, as the consequence for medical professionals who try to provide gender-affirming care for anyone under 19. In the very same year, House Bill 322 was signed into law banning K-12 students from using bathrooms consistent with their gender identity.
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But this bill hasn't been the only one that has continued to restrict our ways of life. A bill to ban discussion of LGBTQ+ subject matter or "Don't Say Gay" from Kindergarten to 8th grade came around in 2021 and passed in 2022. And yet again, it came back to us for an expansion to 12th grade in 2023, 2024, and will AGAIN in 2025.
Participation in high school sports? Banned.
Participation in college sports? Banned.
Puberty blockers and hormones in gender-affirming care for youth? Banned.
Bathroom use in alignment with one's identity? Banned.
Despite the widespread harm of these 2022 laws—and their unevenly severe impacts on Black and other marginalized trans folks—press from across the country flocked here down to profile white families with trans children and paint a picture of helplessness and abandonment. A takeaway message that suggested to folks: "Alabama is a lost cause. People need to leave." This flurry of media pushed TKO to create Black Trans Futures, a storytelling project to combat the narrow, false narratives of national outlets and reminds us that Black, trans folks in the state belong here and aren't going anywhere. This counter-narrative project also serves as a historical archive of joy, resistance, and hope.
And even still, we stand. We meet. We dance. We celebrate. We work and contribute to our hospitals, our schools, and our businesses.
There Is No New Savior: There Is Only Us
Strategically, extremists have consistently repeated language that treats transgender people as a scapegoat for issues that don't actually exist. And Alabama legislators love finding solutions for such sensationalized, nonexistent problems.
Meanwhile, in reality, Alabama has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the country. A third Alabama hospital is set to close this year. A billion-dollar prison is being constructed. Yet the debate of trans folks' existence seems to take the spotlight. The disparagement of our people is happening in the 2024 electoral races at both the state level and Presidential race.
The race for Alabama's District 2 congressional seat is using trans folks as a pawn. There is a roaring debate that centers on "sex changes" as a major issue in the state. In a debate between progressive candidate Shomari Figures and her conservative opponent Caroleene Dobson, the two sparred over "sex changes." Rather than set the record straight or defend the validity of gender-affirming care in the state, Figures went along with the argument and reminded Dobson that we "need to prioritize local issues and go over defense contracts that matter and not spend time talking about sex changes." Gender-affirming care being reduced to "sex changes" is an embarrassment. On top of this, conservative groups have sent out transphobic mailers and texts meant to mock and target trans-Alabamians.
These same antics have been mirrored in the federal election and circulated nationally as the presidential candidates continue to campaign. In what could have been a promising opportunity to stand for trans people and their care, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has taken no proactive strategy. Neither on her candidacy site and certainly not in the most recent interview with NBC News, where she stated in response to the question of whether she believes in access to gender-affirming care: "We should follow the law." Once again, conservatives and Trump-aligned voters use trans people as a rallying cry for hate and harassment, while Democrats and progressives remain passive.
The point is that even "progressive" candidates have also proceeded to do what Alabama legislators have continuously strategized in the past four years: to make the rights and healthcare of transgender folks a topic to be questioned when it shouldn't be questioned in the first place. Waiting around for candidates to see trans folks as worth defending or to take an affirmative stand for us won't save us.
We're Preparing Our Own No Matter What Comes Next
Right now, we're not waiting for the outcome of this Presidential election, we're preparing ourselves for this upcoming legislative session. We are focused on several rumored bills that will likely be filed, including one that seeks to ban LGBTQ+-related books in public libraries across the state and an extension of the "Don't Say Gay" law which bans discussions of LGBTQ+ content up to 12th grade. We also witness a new conservative coalition trying to move bills like this forward. Our preparation to combat this legislative onslaught requires equal parts pressuring elected officials, local organizing, and creative trouble.
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Bayard Rustin, a gay civil rights leader, once stated that he believed in "social dislocation and creative trouble." What this means is that we aren't simply going to wait or plead for white, cisgender legislators to see us as valid when we are the answer we've been looking for, and we're going to create the means for our people to get their needs met and then some.
Both The Knights and Orchids Society and Montgomery Pride United are investing in their youth programming—one where young students can meet with one another and find support amidst hostile school environments. We will affirm each other's stories and expand our community mentorship programs that ensure none of us feel alone in this fight. And lastly? You'll see us marching in front of the Alabama State House until the very end. We won't be silenced or ever be legislated out of existence.
We are the breadcrumbs, and we will always be here.