As new North Dakota laws target transgender rights, some residents live in fear
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Longtime residents have left North Dakota. Some transgender residents no longer feel safe. Advocates say they're hearing more anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.
Those are just some of the impacts from recent laws passed by the North Dakota legislature.
Advocates point to 10 new laws they say target LGBTQ+ people, including a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, restrictions on transgender girls participating in sports and limits on bathroom access and pronoun use for K-12 students.
“This is a really scary time in North Dakota,” said Kristin Nelson, who leads a Fargo advocacy group and testified against the bills in the legislature. She describes the rhetoric of recent months as “pretty damaging to kids and and those that parent them.”
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Her group Project RAI, or Rainbows Are Inclusive, is focused on supporting queer kids.
“Because having just one supportive person can reduce the risk of suicide by 40 percent. I mean just that statistic alone is the biggest motivator to keep going,” said Nelson.
As she has raised the profile of her group, the anti-gay rhetoric has increased.
“I’ve been called a groomer,” she said. Her voice filled with irony she continued, “We're child abusers right? Like that's what we're here for? We're here to sexualize and abuse kids.”
Nelson knows some advocates have taken a lower profile because of the backlash, but she uses it for motivation.
“It is super empowering because I want to be able to stand up against the bullies and the haters and people who say those things,” she said.
Making the move
Others feel the recently enacted laws gave them no choice but to leave the state.
Emily and her family are still unpacking boxes after their recent move from Fargo to the Twin Cities.
“My spouse and I sat down and figured out our kids are sixth generation North Dakotans,” she said. “We've got deep roots there. And that's a really hard thing to walk away from.”
Emily, who works as a mental health professional, asked MPR News to not use her last name because she wants to protect her transgender daughter.
Her daughter does not want to be public about her gender transition and Emily felt some of the new North Dakota laws would take away that option.
“With some of these things it would essentially out her to her entire school. I think that would be an absolutely awful experience,” she said. “She's still in elementary school. I think that is not something that anyone at her age should have to navigate.”
Emily said her family lived in their dream house in Fargo, in the school district they wanted for their kids, with grandparents living nearby. But they made the choice to leave after anti-trans restrictions were signed into law by Governor Doug Burgum.
“There were tears about this, because it's not an easy thing to have to sit there and go, you know, do we pick our home, or do we pick our kid and I'm going to pick my kid every time,” she said. ”But it also is heartbreaking being in a community that says your kid is not welcome.”
When they recently visited her daughter’s new school in the Twin Cities, a rainbow flag hung in the cafeteria, and the school was celebrating Pride month. She and her husband walked out feeling validated in their choice to leave North Dakota.
Lives uprooted
Many North Dakota LGBTQ+ residents are wrestling with that choice.
“My trans friends are all in crisis right now because their lives are being uprooted. People who have lived here their entire lives are having to think about leaving their homes, leaving the people that they love,” said Zara Crystal, an activist in Fargo.
Crystal said her family in a small northern Minnesota town tried to suppress her gender expression. She had a mental health crisis and ended up hospitalized in Fargo about three years ago. That led to her coming out as a transgender woman and changing her name from Zachary to Zara.
She found a supportive community in Fargo and said the new laws have shaken that foundation.
“It took a city that was my liberation and turned it into a place where I fear to walk down the street, where I'm scared to go into the women's bathroom because I don't know who's going to have it out for me,” Crystal said.
People who used to stare at her on public transportation now make threatening comments. The increased hostility has begun to permeate her life. Crystal is making plans to move to California by the end of summer, a move that was in the works before the new laws were passed.
She said some of her friends want to stay and fight for a place they call home, others will leave out of fear.
“It should fall on the backs of allies to fight for us in places that we can't,” she said. “In places like North Dakota as it becomes a lot more hostile to trans people, it's going to fall on cis and straight people to fight against this legislation for us.”