I met my future husband Andy fighting for trans equality, and we fell in love. A couple of months after we started dating, Andy was diagnosed with cancer, and despite getting a clean bill of health several months later, eventually his cancer came back, and it was terminal.Collection: Equality
Living authentically isn't an act of courage as much as an act of survival.Collection: Courage
Gorsuch showed his true colors to the LGBTQ community when, in one of his first dissenting opinions on the high court, he advocated limiting the reach of the landmark 2015 marriage equality ruling by denying certain parenting rights to same-sex couples.Collection: Equality
We can celebrate the speed at which LGBT equality has progressed, but we also have to acknowledge that it wasn't fast enough, because too many people didn't get to experience it. We can never be too impatient.Collection: Equality
Efforts to bar transgender people from restrooms are nothing more than an attempt to codify discrimination before our country advances any further on transgender equality.Collection: Equality
Trans issues are also environmental issues. They're also healthcare issues. They're also national security issues.Collection: Environmental
Time and time again, we have seen a growing alliance of allies who are willing to stand with trans people, who are educating themselves on trans identity and trans equality, and who understand that our lives are worth celebrating and that our cause matters.Collection: Equality
Like all women, my path to womanhood is unique. No two paths are the same. Each of us travel with different privileges, challenges, and perspectives - some limiting, others illuminating.Collection: Travel
The reality is that Hillary Clinton has been a steadfast supporter of LGBT equality. She has evolved on the issue of LGBT equality, and I think we are a better movement when we give people space to grow and learn. We can't reduce it to a single issue like marriage equality.Collection: Equality
If I only care about equality for transgender people, then I am leaving so many people behind - if I'm not at the same time seeking to end discrimination against people of color, seeking to end discrimination against women, seeking to ensure that people of every religious background have an equal opportunity.Collection: Equality
Change always seems impossible until it's inevitable.
In my view, the best of humanity is in our exercise of empathy and compassion. It's when we challenge ourselves to walk in the shoes of someone whose pain or plight might seem so different than yours that it's almost incomprehensible.
There is no one-size-fits-all narrative; everyone's path winds in different ways.
I didn't come out for 21 years because I thought that everything I wanted to do with my life - have a family, get a great job, make a change in this world - that the moment I came out, that I would not be able to do any of those things.
When I came out, I wondered whether I had a future not just professionally but romantically. Would I be able to find someone who loved me?
The first thing we need allies to do is listen. Come to us with a willingness to grow and evolve. You're going to make mistakes, and that's fine, but be willing to listen and grow from those mistakes. I think that's the most important trait an ally can have.
Too often, when transgender people die, family members or funeral homes will end up dressing a body of a transgender person in the garments of the gender that they were assigned at birth instead of their gender identity. They're often dead-named and misgendered.
Homophobia, transphobia, and sexism, they're all rooted in the same prejudice: the belief that one perception at birth - the sex we are assigned - should dictate who we are, who we love, how we act, and what we do.
A life in pursuit of position or power is not a life well-lived or in service to others.
The harassment and the bullying that students face is a learned behavior.
I think that someday we will live in a world where transgender people will be viewed as the multidimensional people that we are.
Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Jeff Sessions are using their powers and offices to make life as difficult as possible for everyone from the transgender worker to the gay widower to the queer undocumented immigrant. These efforts are not about bathrooms or religious freedom; they're about driving LGBTQ people out of public life.
No one should be forced to not dream anymore.
For me, having a gender identity that was different from my sex assigned at birth and that wasn't seen by society felt like a constant feeling of homesickness - that unwavering ache in the pit of my stomach.
My name is Sarah McBride, and I am a proud transgender American.
Will we be a nation where there's only one way to love, one way to look, one way to live? Or will we be a nation where everyone has the freedom to live openly and equally?
There's no question that the best way to get people to care about an issue is to humanize it.
It was easier to forget, or be dismissive about, transgender issues when there weren't transgender staffers or interns walking the halls of the White House.
When gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals come out, their friends and families, for the most part, understand what it feels like to love and to lust. Cisgender people have more of a challenge when it comes to transgender identities. I discovered that analogy of homesickness in conversations with my parents, in trying to bridge that empathy divide.
I've always been Sarah. My gender identity has always existed. I've always been a woman. Gay people aren't straight before they come out as gay, and transgender people are who they are before they come out and transition.
The Trump-Pence administration has truly become one of the most explicitly anti-LGBTQ administrations in history.
When you know someone's story, it becomes much harder to hate them.
Put simply, barring transgender people from restrooms consistent with their gender identity doesn't help anyone, and continuing to allow transgender people to access those restrooms doesn't hurt anyone.
Instead of moving backward, we should expand opportunity and protections by repealing hateful laws and passing comprehensive LGBT nondiscrimination laws at the local, state, and federal level.
When the boys and girls would line up separately in kindergarten, I'd find myself longing to be in the other line.
We certainly hope that Secretary DeVos will work on behalf of every student and ensure equal access to a safe and quality education for LGBTQ young people.
I would take issue with the assertion that President Trump has reached out to a diverse group for his cabinet secretaries. In fact, his cabinet is one of the least diverse in modern history.
Despite saying the letters 'LGBTQ' at the RNC, Donald Trump consistently endorsed anti-equality positions.
While I don't think President Trump is going to round LGBTQ people up, I do think the concerns from the community about his vision are not only understandable but warranted.
Days after being sworn in as the nation's top law enforcement officer, Trump's attorney general, the virulently anti-LGBTQ Jeff Sessions, revoked lifesaving guidance promoting the protection and dignity of transgender students.
Trump's appointed extremist judges to the federal bench, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, whose decisions demonstrate a judicial philosophy far more concerned with the rights of corporations than marginalized Americans.
Trump's campaign is not a collection of ignorant statements. It is a candidacy of hate and fear that poses serious risks to people of color, women, people with disabilities, immigrants, and LGBTQ people.
While Donald Trump claimed during the campaign that he would be a 'friend' to the LGBTQ community, we knew it was likely one more 'alternative fact' spouted by the President and his team.
For my entire life, I've wrestled with my gender identity.
I grew up in an upper-income household, in an accepting environment, and with incredible educational opportunities.
My gratitude is great to my family and friends for accepting me as the person who they now know me to be and for letting me show them the possibilities of a life well lived.
Access to public facilities like bathrooms is important for transgender people. But the fight for transgender rights does not begin and end at the bathroom door.
Transgender people, especially transgender women of color, face pervasive discrimination throughout life, including by those sworn to protect us.
Transgender people frequently face bias in court and are assigned unsupportive public defenders, factors which lead to more extreme sentences and longer incarcerations.
I remember, as a child, lying in my bed at night praying that I would wake up the next day and be a girl, to be my authentic self, and to just have my family be proud of me. I remember looking into the mirror struggling to say just two words, 'I'm transgender.'