The children of LGBTQ+ people are ostensibly at the center of a conservative agenda. In actuality, “we are often erased in these conversations.”
Since January, state legislatures have proposed more than 500 pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. These bills primarily seek to criminalize transgender children, parents, and their families.
Fascist groups and conservative lawmakers have simultaneously ramped up propaganda falsely alleging that LGBTQ+ people are more likely to harm children—a pernicious myth that has caused decades of harm to trans and queer communities. In reality, people raised by queer and trans caretakers have similar well-being to those who haven’t.
The children of LGBTQ+ people, alongside queer and trans kids, are ostensibly at the center of this legislative agenda. In actuality, “we are often erased in these conversations,” said Jordan Budd, executive director of COLAGE, the largest U.S. organization for the children of LGBTQ+ people and the first Black, queer person in the role. He has a bisexual birth father.
“Gay parents exist, and their kids are old enough to speak for themselves,” Budd said.
I talked to a handful of adult children and grandchildren of queer and trans people—many of whom are LGBTQ+ themselves—to hear their experiences of family, discrimination, and care. They come from a range of family and cultural backgrounds, and most grew up in the Midwest and South. And they all have connections to COLAGE, meaning they represent a politically active group with the resources to access a national nonprofit.
I first spoke to them in May 2022; I checked back early this year. I also talked to scholars and legal experts, who helped contextualize how state violence, family law, and institutional racism shape LGBTQ+ families’ lives.
I’m a queer, cisgender white woman in my early 30s, raised by straight parents, dreaming—with equal parts trepidation and hope—about what family could look like for me and for queer communities across the United States.
Many of the people I talked to expressed a sense of whiplash. On one hand, increasing social acceptance in the United States has led to more queer and trans people coming out: As of 2022, 7 percent of Americans identified as LGBTQ+. This contrasts with a surge in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, propaganda, and violence—which many call a conservative backlash to advances in queer and trans rights as well as racial justice.
The LGBTQ-parented people I spoke to shared a vision of the queer movement that centers trans people and people of color.
“A lot of the faces of marriage equality and family acceptance have been white, cis queer folks,” said Adrian Ogle, a queer child of a queer mom and a COLAGE board chair emeritus who works in philanthropy. “We want to continue to break that paradigm. We are made of a multiplicity of families and backgrounds and experiences.”
Current anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is part of a long history of the U.S. government policing marginalized, particularly Black and Indigenous, families. In contrast, the multilayered experiences of the children of LGBTQ+ people—and their refusal to flatten their humanity to fit heteronormative constructs—challenge society at large to imagine more expansive and inclusive forms of family, community, and care.
Part one of this two-part series looks at who LGBTQ+ families are, and how histories of institutional racism shape today’s anti-trans and queer legislation. Part two will examine how discrimination shapes queer and trans families’ daily lives, and how the children of LGBTQ+ people support one another as they advocate for a more liberated world.
Read more at Rewire News Group. Featured image: Jakayla Toney, Unsplash.
Reina Gattuso 