Forty Years Ago
Martine leaving for San Francisco on June 2, 1982, photo taken by Granny, our maternal grandmother.
Forty years ago today, June 2 of 1982, my oldest sibling boarded a bus in Alabama, embarking on a journey to San Francisco, California. Martine had told Mom that there were “people in San Francisco who could help.”
I now know she was seeking help for her gender transition.
I only know now to call her “she.”
I didn’t know then that we would never see her again.
[Related: “Why am I now finding out my sister was transgender?”]
In six weeks she would turn 29.
She would never turn 30.
Four decades later, gender affirming care is being criminalized.
Transgender individuals, parents of transgender children, teachers and health care providers are being targeted and threatened in a campaign of disinformation and anti-science bias aimed at swaying voters who are ill-informed. Alabama governor Kay Ivey has made it part of her re-election campaign. Last month, Alabama became the first state in the country to make gender-affirming care a felony that could punish anyone who provides care to transgender youth with up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $15,000. Despite the objections of medical professionals, parents, and the young people themselves, the lawmakers claimed it was to protect Alabama’s children, dubbing the law with the misleading misnomer: the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act. By appealing to the strong and primal instinct to protect our children, they are destroying lives in a resurgence of cruelty and criminalization of the LGBTQ community.
The gains we have made in science, biology and psychology are being ignored in a return to the days when being gay or transgender was considered to be a crime and a sin. It is neither.
Families with transgender children are being forced to move from unsafe environments, such as Alabama, to affirming states, such as California, and thus the trek again, forty years later, mirrors and echoes Martine’s journey from Tuscaloosa to San Francisco. A federal judge has temporarily blocked parts of Alabama’s legislation, a reprieve for young people and parents, who were considering leaving the state. One father, Jeff Walker, whose teenaged daughter would have lost her health care was interviewed by the Washington Post: “Of all the things I’ve done in my life, I’ve never thought getting health care for my kid was going to make me an outlaw.”
Martine struggled. Our family dismissed the signs of her gender dysphoria as being indicative of drug use and mental illness. Denial, lack of information, secrets and silence kept us from supporting her or understanding what she was going through.
On July 26, 1972, having turned 19 the previous week, Martine slipped out the door of our childhood home, unnoticed. She left behind a handwritten letter on college ruled note paper, entitled Running Away From Home Note. In it, she writes, “…someone asked me if I was trying to find myself. I replied that I knew myself well enough, that I was looking for a place for myself. Huntsville is not the place, neither is Tuscaloosa nor Birmingham.”
Martine would make the trip back and forth many times over the ten years that followed, searching for her place, sometimes seeming to find it with friends and family in Alabama, only to leave again for San Francisco. In 1982, she left for the last time.
Forty years later, we have the opportunity to stop the criminalization of health care. Call your local legislators to urge them not to support a regression of safety and civility. It is imperative that we offer support services, not condemnation. We can welcome and care for our transgender youth. No young person should have to step on a bus and make a dangerous journey simply because they are searching for a place to belong, and a place where people will help.