At the university level, LGBTQ+ students are fighting against gender-segregated housing. In April 2023, freshmen students living in Stony Brook University’s Gender-Inclusive Housing (GIH) corridor in Wagner Hall sent a long, detailed email to Campus Housing. The email addressed inequalities experienced by transgender and gender non-conforming students in on-campus housing at Stony Brook.
Community among queer folks is incredibly important, especially for young people who may not have grown up seeing positive representations of happy queer people.
The rainbow cast across the machzorim — that’s what this story is about. On Sept. 16, 2022, Yeshiva University banned the only student-run LGBT club on its campus. This is not their first fight. YU’s queer students have been struggling for an officially sanctioned place to belong for over a decade.
Abbott, Paxton and other supporters of anti-LGBTQ policies pose their efforts as pleas to protect children from “abuse.” In reality, preventing children from gaining access to gender-affirming experiences that improve their quality of life would be truly abusive.