Oh, Really?

online polls

There is a new study out that looked at the worst business states for the LGBTQ+ community.

5 most LGBTQ-hostile states — and they're getting worse

A new business climate index found lower-ranked states falling further behind while top-performing states continue strengthening LGBTQ+ protections.

The Advocate

Jack Walker

Jun 05, 2026

An index that measures state-level LGBTQ+ inclusion for business leaders has measured a national decline in support for the LGBTQ+ community for the fourth consecutive year.

Released this month, the eighth annual State LGBTQ+ Business Climate Index examines states across five main categories: legal protections, family support, political and religious attitudes, health care and employment. The index is published by OutLeadership, an LGBTQ+ business network.

This year’s report found that states that rank low in the index are performing worse year over year, and that fewer states are placing toward the middle of the 100-point index scale. The states with the lowest rankings were Arkansas, Tennessee, Idaho, South Carolina and Florida in that order.

What?

No Kentucky?

No Texas?

No Montana?

All of those states have passed a massive amount of anti-trans legislation, yet they don’t make the list.

Methinks there is bias in the selection of the states. It seems that all those laws are considered okay because they don’t affect the LGB community.

Just saying.

Some Take Aways

First results of the 2022 US Trans Survey has just been released and some of their findings are,

Data were collected over a 48-day period, from October 19 through December 5, 2022. The sample included 92,329 respondents, including 84,170 adults (18 and older), from all fifty states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and U.S. military bases overseas.

This makes it the largest needs trans assessment survey ever.

The USTS was approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB), which is an entity intended to protect the rights and welfare and ensure confidentiality of individuals participating in a research study. The study underwent an extensive full-board review by the University of California, Los Angeles, North General IRB, which included review and approval of the study design, questionnaire, and all recruitment materials leading up to the launch of the survey and throughout the fielding period in English and Spanish. As required by the IRB, the survey began with a study information sheet describing aspects of the study and participants’ rights in the study. Participants were required to consent to taking the survey at the end of the information sheet and before beginning the questionnaire.

[…]

The USTS was approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB), which is an entity intended to protect the rights and welfare and ensure confidentiality of individuals participating in a research study. The study underwent an extensive full-board review by the University of California, Los Angeles, North General IRB, which included review and approval of the study design, questionnaire, and all recruitment materials leading up to the launch of the survey and throughout the fielding period in English and Spanish. As required by the IRB, the survey began with a study information sheet describing aspects of the study and participants’ rights in the study. Participants were required to consent to taking the survey at the end of the information sheet and before beginning the questionnaire.

The survey was anonymous, and maintaining privacy and confidentiality in the collection and maintenance of survey data was an important component of preserving participants’ anonymity. The IRB required the research teamto ensure that confidentiality protections were in place for the study and demonstrate sufficiency of data security protocols. The research team also obtained a Certificate of Confidentiality from the National Institutes of Health, which could be used to legally refuse to disclose information that may identify respondents in any federal, state, or local civil, criminal, administrative, legislative, or other proceedings, such as if there is a court subpoena.

I include this about the IRB because it is important to show that the survey respondents are protected from state inquiries. And their anonymity of the respondents is guaranteed.

I have certificate of completion of the NIH training on working with human subjects have worked on another survey that researced HIV/AIDS in the trans community and had to go before the IRB.

Here are some more of the demographic finds,

Gender:
Thirty-eight percent (38%) of respondents identified as nonbinary, 35% identified as a transgender woman, 25% identified as a transgender man, and 2% identified as a crossdresser.

Intersex status:
Five percent (5%) of respondents reported they were born with a variation in physical sex characteristics or had an intersex variation or Difference of Sex Development, 72% reported they were not, and 23% reported that they did not know.

Health Insurance:
Eighty-seven (87%) percent of respondents had health insurance coverage.„ Approximately 1 in 4 respondents (26%) had at least one issue with their insurance company in the last 12 months, such as being denied coverage for hormone therapy, surgery, or another type of health care related to their gender identity/transition; gender-specific health care because they were transgender; or routine health care because they were transgender.

You know how the conservatives are always harping in regrets?

Nearly all respondents (94%) who lived at least some of the time in a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth (“gender transition”) reported that they were either “a lot more satisfied” (79%) or “a little more satisfied” (15%) with their life. Three percent (3%) reported that transitioning gender made them “neither more nor less satisfied” with their life, 1% were “a little less satisfied,” and 2% were “a lot less satisfied” with their life.

Nearly all respondents (98%) who were currently receiving hormone treatment reported that receiving hormones for their gender identity/transition made them either “a lot more satisfied” (84%) or “a little more satisfied” (14%) with their life. One percent (1%) reported that hormones made them “neither more nor less satisfied” with their life, and less than 1% said that they were “a little less satisfied” or “a lot less satisfied” with their lives after receiving hormones.

Nearly all respondents (97%) who had at least one form of surgery for their gender identity/ transition reported that they were either “a lot more satisfied” (88%) or “a little more satisfied” (9%) with their life. One percent (1%) reported that surgery made them “neither more nor less satisfied” with their life, less than 1% were “a little less satisfied,” and 1% were “a lot less satisfied” with their life.

That sure doesn’t sound like there were many regrets! The next section is a little depressing…

Income, Employment, Workplace Experiences,
and Housing Stability

• More than one-third (34%) of respondents were experiencing poverty.
• The unemployment rate among USTS respondents was 18%. „ More than one in ten (11%) respondents who had ever held a job said they had been fired, forced to resign, lost the job, or been laid off because of their gender identity or expression.
• Nearly one-third (30%) of respondents had experienced homelessness in their lifetime.

Experiences In Restrooms

• Four percent (4%) of respondents were denied access to a restroom in a public place, at work, or at school in the last 12 months.
• In the last 12 months, 6% of respondents had been verbally harassed, physically attacked, or experienced unwanted sexual contact when accessing or using a restroom.

Harassment and Violence

• Nearly one in ten (9%) respondents reported that they were denied equal treatment or service in the last 12 months because of their gender identity or expression.
• Nearly one-third (30%) of respondents reported that they were verbally harassed in the last 12 months because of their gender identity or expression.
• More than one-third (39%) of respondents reported that they were harassed online in the last 12 months because of their gender identity or expression.
• Three percent (3%) of respondents reported that they were physically attacked in the last 12 months because of their gender identity or expression.

The summary goes on for a total of 22 pages and there is one last topic that I want to mention is,

• Forty percent (40%) of respondents had thought about moving to another area because they experienced discrimination or unequal treatment where they were living, and 10% of respondents had actually moved to another area because of discrimination.
• Nearly half (47%) of respondents had thought about moving to another state because their state government considered or passed laws that target transgender people for unequal treatment (such as banning access to bathrooms, health care, or sports), and 5% of respondents had actually moved out of state because of such state action.
• The top 10 states from which respondents moved because of state laws targeting transgender people for unequal treatment were (in alphabetical order): Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

This greatly saddens me, why in the United States do people have to flee a state in order to have all the rights everyone else is entitled to? Why do people have to flee from their state in order to get proper healthcare?

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And speaking of discrimination and having anger issues...

Missouri Republican candidate torches LGBTQ-inclusive books in viral video

Valentina Gomez, who is running for Missouri secretary of state, lit two books on fire, including an LGBTQ guide for teens and a sex education book.

NBC News

By Jo Yurcaba

Feb. 7, 2024

A Republican candidate for Missouri secretary of state posted a viral campaign video Tuesday lighting LGBTQ-inclusive books on fire with a flamethrower.

“This is what I will do to the grooming books when I become secretary of state,” Valentina Gomez, 24, of St. Louis, said in the video on X, Facebook and Instagram before she lit at least two books on fire. “These books come from a Missouri public library. When I’m in office, they will burn.”

Gomez added “MAGA” and “America First” in the text of her post on X.

[…]

“You want to be gay? Fine be gay. Just don’t do it around children,” the statement said. “Stop putting books in libraries about sexualization, indoctrination and grooming of children. Children need to learn mathematics, science, developing their people skills, getting fit, while protecting their innocence. Not learning the ideologies that the radical left loves to push on children. I am against all drag shows around children, pride flags in classrooms, teachers with pronouns, people wanting to ‘change’ genders, and people that can’t even define what a woman is. If genitals don’t define gender, how does removing them affirm it. I only fear God.”

Ask yourself, who is stirring up the anger and animosity against us?

Who are the real groomers who wants to tell everyone what to think, what to read, what to say, and what religion to believe in?

Have You Taken The Trans Survey Yet?

The new trans survey is out and it is closing on November 21st.

What this transgender survey can tell us that other population studies are missing
NorthJersey.com
By Sammy Gibbons
November 10, 2022


Every 10 years, Americans fill out census surveys identifying our age, race, hometown and other demographic traits to help determine areas in need of financial and social support. But those questionnaires have yet to dig into experiences and needs of LGBTQ people.

The U.S. Transgender Survey asks extensive questions about lived experiences of transgender, nonbinary and other gender-diverse people. It's one of few sources that collects data about these communities, and it's returned for the third round of responses after a seven year gap.

The National Center for Transgender Equality, along with several partners, launched the 2022 survey in October. Responses collected in 2015 created what’s considered the largest, most effective dataset about transgender people and is cited almost daily, according to U.S. Trans Survey and Special Projects Director Josie Caballero.  

“When we leave communities uncounted, it makes it easier for people to spread the myth that trans people don’t exist,” said Caballero. “It is so critical to make sure that those stories are quantitatively collected in a dataset so we can report these lived experiences and social outcomes.”

When we were first working to pass the Connecticut trans non-discrimination law in 2007 we were constantly asked how many trans people are there is the state and we didn’t have the answer. But in 2009 the first trans survey came out and we had answers! 

The survey was by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and we begged and pleaded for a copy of it and we got a copy with in bright red letters… “Preliminary Findings • November 2009”! In 2011 when we once again introduced a non-discrimination bill we could answer the legislators’ questions.

The team behind the survey includes entirely transgender people.

Beyond being the largest dataset focused on transgender people, the community-led survey stands apart because transgender people built it for transgender people.

"This is serving us," Caballero said.

My only comment was there were only basic questions about elder trans people, about long term care facilities, nursing homes, and none about senior centers. I will be bugging them to be inclusive of trans elders in the next survey.

Caballero expects data will publish by the end of 2023. The next U.S. Transgender Survey will accept questions in five years. Respondents should be 16 or older and identify as transgender, nonbinary or an identity other than cisgender. The survey can be taken at ustranssurvey.org by Nov. 21.

Take the survey, it is important especially in today’s political environment. And if you are an elder like me and you find it lacking in coverage of us there is a “Contact Us” at the end of the survey.