Kelly Metzgar, center, shows trans pride at the first annual Tri-Lakes Pride Festival at Riverside Park on June 26, 2022. Metzgar is the executive director of the Adirondack North Country Gender Alliance, which hosted the Pride festival. (Enterprise photo — Lauren Yates)

June is LGBTQI-plus Pride Month, a time when LGBTQI-plus community members, family, friends and advocates acknowledge and celebrate the gift of diversity that is unique to each of us.

Many municipalities host pride parades and events where LGBTQI-plus community members outwardly profess their ability to live freely and openly as their true authentic self. This is a time to acknowledge the many accomplishments of LGBTQI-plus people both past and present as well as the strides in our current social/political arenas.

The LGBTQI-plus community has worked for decades to ensure equal rights protections, access to employment, education, medical and mental health care, public accommodations. We’ve fought for acceptance and equity in our ability to live in a culture that is growing increasingly hostile to our community members, especially those in the transgender community.

Sadly, in recent months, the U.S. has seen a resurgence of restrictive, faith-based minority rule with a small group of highly ultra-Conservative people forcing their beliefs on a much more open and progressive majority population. As a nation, we can never go back to a time when women had no rights over their own bodies, citizens were denied their constitutionally protected voting rights or voting was made so difficult and problematic that marginalized people were denied the ability and opportunity to make their voices heard.

Currently, laws in 19 states restrict access to medically necessary health care for transgender people and youth. Rather than listening to evidence based medical and mental health care professionals from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, politicians in many Conservative states lead by a certain political party somehow suddenly possess advanced medical and mental health skills far beyond those of actual evidence-based practitioners.

Conservative politicians are now making laws based on heavily biased misinformation, their own personally held religious beliefs and those from conservative religious groups. Currently, there are over 390 laws either proposed or already enacted that restrict LGBTQI-plus — and especially transgender people’s — rights and access to living their authentic lives. These very same states and politicians deny a woman’s bodily autonomy and voting rights for all people in their states.

We cannot regress to a time when already marginalized LGBTQI-plus people lose their ability to live authentically, love and marry whom they choose, have access to affordable medical and mental health care to meet their medically necessary needs, regardless of whether it meets someone else’s deeply held beliefs on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Transgender youth should never be denied the opportunity to fully participate in school activities, functions and athletics as any of their other classmates or denied medically necessary medical care to align their minds, bodies, and spirits (their sense of their true and authentic selves). Local, state and federal governments have no business regulating our bodies based on their religious beliefs!

Thankfully, here in New York state, we preserve, protect and defend these basic human rights. Unfortunately, it only takes one election to undo decades of progress.

Still pending before our state legislature is a bill that would designate New York along with a growing number of progressive states, as a transgender “sanctuary state” protecting transgender people and their families. This proposed legislation will prevent state courts or officials from states outside New York from complying with child removal requests, extraditions, arrests, or subpoenas related to gender-affirming health care that a transgender person receives or provides. Sadly, as of this date, this bill has not yet passed our state Legislature!

Participating in LGBTQI-plus pride allows us to come together, to build community with others who share our common beliefs that human sexuality and gender identity exist on a fluid continuum of possibilities rather on only two fixed standard points of self-identification.

Pride celebrations are a way to honor those who came before us, who fought for the right to express their love towards another person on their own terms and not what society dictates as being acceptable or “proper.” It allows us to show our young people that they are perfect just as they are.

Still pending in Congress is the Equality Act, a bill that would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, public accommodations, public education, federal funding, credit and the jury system. Today, 29 states have not passed anti-LGBTQI-plus discrimination protections for their citizens. The Equality Act seeks to remedy this by applying existing state anti-LGBTQI-plus discrimination laws nationwide. Still, one political party has consistently blocked this vital basic human right protection law from being passed. They base their restrictive authoritarian, fascist, minority rule on the religious views they and others cling to. They ignore scientific and medical facts to support their highly biased and repressive beliefs as to how people should live and interact with others in our society.

These should not be progressive, liberal, or conservative issues! This is a basic human rights issue! LGBTQI-plus people are naturally created this way prior to birth. We have existed throughout time, history, cultures, and civilizations. We exist in the past, the present and will continue well into the future. We only wish to live our truth! Live as our authentic selves!

This year, Adirondack North Country Gender Alliance will hold our second annual Adirondack North Country Tri-Lakes Pride celebration on Sunday, June 25, adding a parade beginning at noon from Olive St. This is free and open to everyone in our Tri-Lakes region from all our surrounding villages, towns, and hamlets. The event features exhibits, vendors, and music throughout the afternoon, along with a fashion show presented by youth at the Saranac Lake Youth Center in collaboration with Main St. Exchange consignment store (24 Broadway).

Owen Gilbo, equal opportunity specialist, state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, will speak at the event, along with several Tri-Lakes community leaders.

As I’ve stated so many times in the past, the LGBTQI-plus community is not looking for any “more” or “special” rights than anyone else in New York state. We are only demanding the same “equal” rights and protections as currently enjoyed by every other person in this state!

With that in mind, let’s go forward and celebrate — Happy Tri-Lakes LGBTQI-plus Pride Month!

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Kelly Metzgar is the executive director of the Adirondack North Country Gender Alliance.