Jacob “Jake” Kelley no longer attends public events without a safety plan.
That point was driven home to Kelley, a nonbinary queer-inclusive sex educator, in March as they prepared to do a training at a local school. It was surprising and certainly unsettling, they said.
“They got word that there may be protesters and were afraid I could be harmed,” Kelley said. “I had to make sure I had a police escort, a private parking space and had to make sure I was paid in advance in case funding freezes happened.”
Kelley is no stranger to threats or concerns about safety and has even had their life threatened. But, before President Donald Trump took office in January, Kelley felt the country was moving toward acceptance and inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community.
Now the community is on edge following a rollback of protections.
Misunderstanding the transgender community
In Northeast Pennsylvania, advocates say Trump’s policies, apparent in multiple executive orders, have promoted a misunderstanding of the transgender community in areas ranging from gender-affirming care to military service to supportive resources.
Kelley said the current administration has done much to perpetuate misconception about the transgender community.
Kelley, founder of Mx. Kelley Queer Education LLC, cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision which upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors. The law prohibits health care providers from prescribing puberty blockers or hormones, or performing surgeries for the purpose of facilitating a minor’s gender transition.
Kelley points out that many of those supporting the ban misunderstand the nature of “gender-affirming care,” assuming it routinely includes surgery on young teens. Much more often, gender-affirming care is simply hormone blockers and sometimes hormone therapy, they said.
Although the decision doesn’t directly affect Pennsylvania, it does seem to open the doors for states to ban gender-affirming supports for those under 18, they said.
Kelley points out Pennsylvania does not have a state law explicitly protecting transgender people from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.
Helen Davis, a professor of women’s studies at Wilkes University and the university’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance faculty adviser, said although the Supreme Court decision enabling Tennessee to continue its ban on gender-affirming care for minors doesn’t apply to Pennsylvania, it has an impact.
“Some of our medical institutions have voluntarily, preemptively decided to withdraw gender-affirming care for minors,” Davis said. “UPMC, Penn State Health and Penn Medicine have decided to pre-comply with the executive order.”
The language defining gender-affirming care in many of Trump’s executive orders has not been accurate or based in science, she said.
Legislators often define the term as routinely including surgery for adolescents, even younger adolescents. But, like Kelley, Davis emphasizes that isn’t the case.
“For children in early adolescence, its often puberty blockers, which just slow things down, stop the body from continuing to advance, and that is reversible when you go off the blockers,” she said. “The next step would be hormone replacement therapy, which changes the way the body develops.”
The decision to have gender-affirming surgery is almost universally a decision made for adults, by adults, she said.
Davis also points out gender-affirming care is not limited to the transgender or LGBTQ+ community.
“Breast augmentation and reduction, for example, is very common, and that’s gender-affirming care,” she said. “Anyone suffering from erectile dysfunction and being treated for that, that’s gender-affirming care. Anyone getting hormone therapy post-menopause, that’s gender-affirming care.”
Uncertain times
The LGBTQ+ community is in a state of uneasiness because they feel their rights are at stake, Kelley said.
“Our autonomy is being taken away, someone is controlling our autonomy, telling us how we are supposed to live, act and where we could be,” they said.
The transgender community was making progress on many fronts on such issues as the military, athletics, health care, inclusion and opportunity. “Now, we’re hands-down going backwards,” Kelley said.
They point out Trump issued an executive order in January banning transgender troops from serving in the military. Trump issued such an order during his first term that took effect in 2019, but it was overturned by President Joe Biden in 2021.
“We were going in a direction that created progress, equality, equity for many trans and nonbinary people,” they said. “But since Jan. 20, there has been so much that has been rolled back.”
Another concern, Kelley said, is the defunding of the Trevor Project, a hotline service supporting LGBTQ+ youth.
The National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline will stop providing tailored support options to LGBTQ+ youth and young adults on July 17, consistent with Trump’s commitment to cut funding for those services.
“When resources are being taken away, when things are being defunded, when programs which were in place to help individuals to help are no longer in existence, that’s going backwards,” Kelley said.
Davis is also concerned about defunding of the Trevor Project.
“There were over 231,000 crisis contacts through that lifeline in 2024,” she said. “Transgender people have a higher rate of suicide ideations and suicide attempts because of all the horrible pressure they already face in our culture. In our current moment, it has gotten worse.”
By the age of 25, about 40% of transgender people have attempted suicide.
“To cut a lifeline in which people are trained to help support LGBTQ+ youth in moments of crisis is appalling to me,” she said. “Getting that care is literally life or death.”
Spirit of understanding
Kelley recently attended a LGBTQ+ event marking Pride Month hosted by Gov. Josh Shapiro.
They remember having a conversation with another attendee wondering if those standing against the transgender community had gotten to know even one member of that community.
“I want to ask people, ‘Have you ever met trans people and talked to them and got to understand their lives?’ ” they said. “Or are you doing this out of ignorance and spite?”
Others are acting against the transgender community with hostility and malice even though they know they’re hurting others, they said.
“Either ignorance or malice, both are the wrong answer,” Kelley said.
Kelley stresses that transgender people are people and shouldn’t be forced to abandon who they are in order to belong and to have a place in the community.
They cite Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which ranks the importance of needs met in a person’s life in order for survival and success.
Previously “love and belonging” were thought to be a higher need to be met after several other needs. Psychologists now consider “belonging” necessary for both physical and psychological well-being — a necessity, they said.
Concerns about safety
The wave of executive orders reducing the rights of and support for the transgender community has emboldened those who stand against the LGBTQ+ community to openly oppose them, Kelley said.
The LGBTQ+ community has responded with safeguards, protecting its members from physical harm as well as harassment.
For example, at a recent rally in State College, protesters held signs Kelley said were hurtful and offensive.
Attendees stood shoulder to shoulder in a line, preventing those attending from seeing the protesters and offensive slogans.
But Kelley is also concerned about physical safety — a concern that is not new but increasingly necessary.
In March, before doing a training about psychological safety at a local school, Kelley was required to submit a safety plan. Kelley said that, although they routinely take precautions, submitting a safety plan wasn’t required before this year.
Kelley also has seen an increase in protesters at small community Pride events they routinely attend.
At one of those events earlier this month, organizers grew concerned about a vehicle that continuously circled the event, questioning the intent of the driver.
Michelle Rothenbecker (SUBMITTED)
Jacob Kelley, founder of Mx. Kelley Queer Education LLC, shown doing a training at Marywood, (SUBMITTED)
Helen Davis, a professor of Women’s Studies at Wilkes University and the university’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance faculty advisor, speaks at a LGBTQ+ event earlier this month. (SUBMITTED)
Inclusion and community
Michelle Rothenbecker, chief of staff of Action Together NEPA, became a transgender advocate in 2019 when she hired a trans employee and was hoping to provide appropriate resources for them.
At that time, Rothenbecker was able to access resources and information to make that employee’s experience a good one — from using the correct pronouns to providing appropriate human resource documents.
Although Pennsylvania doesn’t have a statewide law explicitly protecting transgender people from discrimination, she felt like the state and the country were moving in the right direction, toward inclusion and acceptance.
She doesn’t feel like that anymore. Instead the government is withdrawing necessary resources from the LGBTQ+ community, she said. Part of the population already at risk for being bullied and discriminated against now faces life without necessary legal protections and without access to opportunities they deserve.
She recently spoke with a father of a trans child who was having a difficult time finding appropriate care for his child.
“He was trying to help his child not only survive, but thrive,” she said. “Like any parent would do.”
Rothenbecker is also concerned about transgender members of the military who will no longer be able to serve and about those who will never have the opportunity of joining.
“There are qualified people being expelled from the military,” she said. “That doesn’t make us safer.”
Rothenbecker also takes issue with Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order that bans trans athletes from competing in sports according to their gender.
The order read, in part, “… it is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy. It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.”
Rothenbecker points out most transgender athletes are simply playing sports as participants in a healthy activity.
“They just want to go out there and be kids. Do what kids do. Play Little League,” she said. “Instead they are met with political discord.”
She encourages people to contact their legislators and ask them to support legislation which supports LGBTQ+ rights.
Rothenbecker said she was wasn’t sad, but angry.
Part of the answer, she said, is bringing members of the LGBTQ+ community and allies together to host events that highlight joy.
“We need to create safe spaces,” she said. “We need to highlight joy.”