History was made as the 119th Congress convened this month with three new LGBTQ+ members, including U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Delaware), the first openly transgender member of Congress.

Polly Crozier, director of family advocacy at GLAD Law, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, said this is a tremendous achievement.

“It really gives me hope and makes me excited,” Crozier told GBH’s Under the Radar. “It reminds me that LGBTQ people are doing the work in their communities and are electable, because they want to focus on the issues that voters care about, like health care and education. So I think it’s really awesome, particularly in this moment that we have, what I think, is pretty robust representation, and particularly those three women come from communities across the country.”

Joining McBride in the House of Representatives are Julie Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, and Emily Randall, a Democrat from Washington. There are now 14 members of Congress who are openly LGBTQ+.

Despite increased representation on Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers have made clear their intentions to restrict transgender rights. Ahead of the term, Rep. Nancy Mace proposed limiting access to bathrooms on federal properties. And the new rules package, which sets guidelines for how Congress will operate, fast-tracked a bill targeting transgender rights under Title IX.

Janson Wu, vice president of advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project, said he’s most concerned about the impact of anti-trans rhetoric and legislation on young people. Wu said after the November presidential election, The Trevor Project’s crisis line increased by 700%.

“Young people are particularly afraid about what this means in terms of their legal rights, particularly now at the federal level,” Wu said. “So to all the young people who are watching the news and worried, what I would want them to know is that the gears of government moves slowly and sometimes that’s to our detriment. But here it is to our advantage. And so it’ll be interesting to see how these political fights over the rights of transgender individuals play out in Congress.”

Meanwhile, a new study out of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that gender-affirming hormone treatment is rarely prescribed to transgender and gender diverse adolescents in the United States.

The study reviewed records of more than 5 million patients under the age of 18, and found that only 0.1% of them were transgender or gender diverse and prescribed puberty blockers or hormone therapy.

Grace Sterling Stowell, executive director of BAGLY, the Boston Alliance of LGBTQ+ Youth, said the data backs up what people working in LGBTQ+ spaces have been saying for years.

“When the general public, who might not be as informed on these issues, hears 'gender-affirming care,' they’re immediately thinking surgeries and hormones — medical interventions,” Stowell said. “And as important as they are for the folks who need and want those interventions, it’s important to acknowledge that, especially when we’re talking about children and youth, that the percentage that are actually accessing those is really tiny, and that gender-affirming care is a much broader spectrum of supporting a young person’s identity and development.”

All this and more on this week’s LGBTQ+ news roundtable!

Guests:

  • Janson Wu, vice president of advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project.
  • Grace Sterling Stowell, executive director of BAGLY, the Boston Alliance of LGBTQ+ Youth.
  • Polly Crozier, director of family advocacy at GLAD Law, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders.