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Weekly Full Policy Report - 10/11

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National Coming Out Day


National Coming Out Day (October 11) arrives amid renewed attacks on LGBTQ+ people, with escalating efforts to surveil, criminalize, and brand our lives as threats. Still, coming out remains a vital, political act.


Coming out this year means risking that the government targets you for institutionalization or jail. Elected MAGA followers are ensuring that access to healthcare, education, and public life are burdensome for LGBTQ people, much of their vitriolic “policymaking” geared toward transgender youth. 


Visibility humanizes policy debates: a teacher, parent, or neighbor who is out makes it harder for lawmakers to treat us as faceless targets or pundits to create caricatures of our lives. It fuels organizing, builds care and trusted information networks, and shifts public narratives away from justifying our exclusion. History shows visibility opens doors and provokes backlash; today’s threats are the latest iteration of that cycle.


Coming out is personal and political. Not everyone can safely be visible, especially trans and queer people of color, immigrants, and those in precarious situations. We value and respect safety and autonomy. And, we know that when people who can come out do so, they change hearts and policy.


On this National Coming Out Day, we honor the courage of those who made queer life visible and recommit to protecting and expanding the conditions that make coming out possible. We can elevate this courage by:


  • Amplifying stories of those who can safely speak publicly

  • Train and mobilize allies with relative safety and influence

  • Center intersectional leadership and coordinate advocacy, community education, and mutual aid alongside visibility – 


Whether private or public, your truth matters — it builds the power we need to survive and thrive. 


SCHOOL BOARD ACTION

Take meaningful action in your school community to monitor Arizona’s school boards by applying to be a Hall Monitor!


We’re currently taking applications for Hall Monitors to help monitor local public school governing boards. We can train you or your organization on how meaningful this work is to stemming the attacks on some of our most vulnerable youth: trans and nonbinary students. 


CIVIC ENGAGEMENT - Local Elections


Check your mailbox Maricopa County voters! Ballots for the all-mail election go out on Oct. 8, and should be mailed back by Oct. 28.


This election deals with bonds to fund local hospitals, schools, etc. Government bonds are loans paid back with tax money. Investors lend the money up front, and taxpayers pay them back over time, with interest. The idea is that taxpayers get some public benefit in return, like a hospital, school or road.


REMEMBER, if you're a Maricopa County voter, look out for your ballot on or after Oct. 8 and return it by Oct. 28. Vote from your couch or kitchen table. Your vote matters!


CIVIC LITERACY - DISCRIMINATION & HARASSMENT COMPLAINT FORM

Humanity doesn’t always send our best. We know that queer students experience discriminatory comments, harassing behavior and a spectrum of slurs at school from their peers, faculty, and administrators. Discrimination and harassing behavior are not part of growing up and have no place in our classrooms or on our playing fields.


By documenting your ongoing lived experience, government officials can no longer claim their ignorance of the problem. Bullying, harassment, and discrimination disrupt a student’s education and threaten their academic attainment and physical and mental health. Don’t be silent.


If you have been discriminated against or have experienced harassment at school, consider filing a complaint with the Civil Rights division with the Arizona Attorney General here: (https://www.azag.gov/complaints/civil-rights) 


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