Local activists rally for transgender protections

Ten years ago at Mepham High School, Bellmorite Aiden Kaplan, now 24, started his transition from a female at birth to the man he is today.

Kaplan said that he was fortunate to attend a school that helped him with his transition, where former superintendent Dr. Henry Kiernan allowed him to decide which bathroom he would use and exempted him from having to take gym classes so that he wouldn’t have to use the girls’ locker room.

On Feb. 22, President Donald Trump announced that the Education and Justice departments would no longer mandate that public schools allow transgender students to use the bathrooms corresponding to their gender identities. This reversed the Obama administration’s announcement last May, in which the former president argued that Title IX, the education amendment that prohibits discrimination in public schools based on sex, must include gender identity.

Kaplan now works as the LGBT youth services coordinator at Pride For Youth, in Bellmore, and runs a program for transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals called Trans Action, and is concerned about the Trump administration’s action.

“My clients are so afraid, and that’s terrifying to me,” he said. “We should have made progress. We should have moved forward and we didn’t.”

Kaplan stood with members of Pride For Youth in a crowd of more than 100 people outside the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan on Feb 23. The agency was one of the many organizations to sponsor a late-night rally at the National Historic Landmark.

Protesters chanted “Stand up, fight back!” in response to the administration’s move.

“It’s irresponsible for President Trump to be tossing this to the states,” said Scott Petersen, a social worker at Pride For Youth. Petersen said that Obama recognized that it is up to the federal government to protect the rights of transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals because they are an oppressed, minority community.

In a news release sent out by Pride For Youth, spokeswoman Fran Karliner wrote that Trump’s order “will affect transgender and gender-nonconforming students’ performance in school and their standing in the community, and place these young people in the position of having to defend their own rights.”

After starting at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, the protesters walked up Eighth Avenue into Times Square., while bystanders shot video on their cell-phones, cheered for the marchers or joined them.

Petersen said that he was grateful to live in New York, where people like himself have the support of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who recently affirmed that the change in federal policy “does not alter the protections we afford to transgender students,” as well as the ability to protest in public.

Gabriella Norwood, 16, of Roosevelt, agreed with Petersen and said that she has lived in several states throughout her life, including Texas and Mississippi. “Protests in Mississippi would not go the same way they did” tonight, she said. “It would be a lot more violent and there would be a lot more resistance to our cause.”

When asked what the TGNC community and their allies could do to resist Trump’s decision, Kaplan said, “Our first obligation is to do what we’re doing tonight.”

Kaplan intends to use the master’s degree that he is currently working toward at Stony Brook University to fight back. He and his peers plan to write to their legislators and attend advocacy events in Albany where they can support legislation in favor of TGNC rights.

“[We must] work and organize to make sure that when [Trump] does something like this, it is not seen as the norm,” said Ryan Cleary, a Rockville Centre native who attended the rally with Kaplan.

Kaplan added that his experience at Mepham gave him hope that TGNC individuals would have support at schools in New York. “Our schools are going protect our rights,” he said. “But we have to look out for schools across the country.”