Leigh didn’t want this life.
As a teen, there were times Leigh thought about giving in to the depression and anxiety. Fighting them all the time was miserable. Leigh wondered at times if sadness would win.
So did Leigh’s mother, Natalie. She knew her child was depressed, but she was helpless to do anything about it except show love. She felt so much despair that at times she didn’t want to visit the basement, where Leigh stayed, because she was worried that she would find Leigh dead.
At an age when so many are trying to discover who they are, Leigh always knew she was a girl, despite how others might see her. She just didn’t want to accept it. Yes, she was worried about what others would think: She was already teased for being feminine. She couldn’t imagine what people would say when she transitioned.
“No one wants to be trans,” Leigh said. “I tried for so long to convince myself I was not a trans person. But I also felt fundamentally broken in some way. It’s just undeniable.”
When Leigh, now 20, came out to her mother as transgender in November 2024, they both felt immense relief.
“It’s just made everything so much easier, because she’s so much happier,” said Natalie, who along with her daughter, asked that their last names not be used in order to guard against harassment.
The political climate has intensified the risks. The American Civil Liberties Union currently tracks nearly 600 pieces of state legislation that it says are anti-LGBTQ+. Most of them are anti-trans.
President Donald Trump has issued executive orders that target trans people, including orders that recognize only males and females and moved transgender women into men’s prisons. His administration sued states that allow trans athletes to play on high school sports teams. He eliminated references to trans people on federal websites, removed them from the military and halted data collection on health issues that affect them.
But his latest action worries Natalie and Leigh most of all. In December, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced new proposed rules that would prohibit hospitals from participating in Medicare and Medicaid if they provide gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers and surgeries to people under the age of 18. Kennedy called many types of care “malpractice.” Colorado is part of a coalition of states suing over the declaration.
On Jan. 2, both Children’s Hospital Colorado and Denver Health said they would suspend gender-affirming care other than “supportive services” for patients under age 18. Children’s has never provided gender-affirming surgery to young patients.
Supporters of trans people say their opponents like to focus on the low-hanging fruit, wrongly accusing hospitals of surgically transforming children at their first request. But gender-affirming care is designed to ease the transition from one gender to another, and this includes counseling, said Vincent W., who like many employees at The Center on Colfax, uses only the first initial of their last name. The Center opened in 1976 and calls itself the largest LGBTQ+ community center in the Rocky Mountain region.
Leigh has used gender-affirming care to help her with her transition, leaning on counseling the most. It probably saved her life, she said.
Many major mainstream medical associations, including those for general care, psychiatric care and pediatric care, support gender-affirming care. The care, in fact, does not recommend surgery for children, and research shows that surgery is rare among transgender or nonbinary teens.
Most care focuses on less invasive measures, including counseling as well as hormone treatments and binding clothing designed to help those struggling with their gender overcome body dysmorphia and feel more comfortable in their own skin, which makes Kennedy’s declaration feel cruel, Vincent W. said.
Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, denounced Kennedy’s announcement in a statement, stating that only families, children and their physicians should determine what care is best for them.
“The government’s actions today make that task harder, if not impossible, for families of gender-diverse and transgender youth,” she said.
Fort Collins dad had “front-row seat” to suicide risk
Nate Lamkin of Fort Collins supported his 16-year-old son, Arthur, when he came out last year as trans. This was partly because of what he saw as a social worker in health care.
During his time in emergency rooms, he saw teens struggling with suicidal thoughts nearly every time he was there. Not all the teens he saw were LBTGQ+, but a shocking number of them were. National numbers back him up: LGBTQ+ youth are four times as likely to attempt suicide, and roughly half of all transgender young people seriously consider it, according to the Trevor Project, an organization that supports LGBTQ+ youth.
“Trans teens are at a much higher risk,” Lamkin says. “I had a front-row seat to that. I knew that to not accept Arthur for who he is put his life at risk.”
Lamkin described Arthur coming out to him as a relief more than a burden, a feeling echoed by Natalie and other parents of trans kids. Arthur spoke at a Poudre School District meeting when the board voted to recognize the International Transgender Day of Visibility.
More recently, however, in March, Arthur spoke at a Thompson School District board meeting after a board member, Nancy Rumfelt, wore a T-shirt that advocated against transgender athletes in women’s sports. Lamkin went to support Arthur but also to protect him: The meeting had metal detectors in place and more than 60 signed up to speak, some who supported trans children and others who expressed concerns about trans people in sports and what bathrooms they should use.
“It feels like we are explicitly targeted,” Lamkin says. “It keeps you up at night sometimes.”
Reggie Johnson, a grandmother, is president of the PFLAG chapter of Fort Collins, a national organization touted as the largest nationwide organization that supports LGBTQ+ members. PFLAG helps mostly trans members now: Johnson believes more than 90% of the members are trans. They’re the ones who need the support, she said. The organization has seven chapters in Colorado. The Fort Collins chapter started in 1994. Denver’s chapter was organized in 1980. Johnson has a trans daughter who is now 34.
“People who are gay or bi, they don’t have the same struggles,” Johnson said, at least in Colorado. “They’re mostly accepted now for who they are.”
Angela’s teenager began to struggle in 2019, when Angela, at age 41, divorced her husband and began dating women. Angela’s family was not supportive, and it hurt. When her child, who had used female pronouns since birth, wanted to dress in boys clothing and use the name Lucais, Angela was ready for it. She tried to give her child the same support she wished she had when she came out.
“It greatly affected how I responded to Lucais when he had the bravery to be authentic,” says Angela, who, like Natalie, is a Fort Collins resident who wanted to be identified by only her first name to protect her child. “Not everybody has a supportive family.”
Indeed, one in five trans people experience homelessness at some point because they are kicked out of their households. It’s difficult, Angela says, when both families and the Trump administration seem to be against them: They don’t seem to have anywhere to turn but a few specialized and generally overwhelmed nonprofits.
Stifling and scary
It’s a scary time for everyone in the LBGTQ+ community, even those who have been out for years: GLADD, a nonprofit that advocates for the community and cultural change, tracked 1,109 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents in 2023-24, a 112% increase from the previous year.
Many say the evidence is indisputable that trans people have faced the worst of these attacks.
At times, the atmosphere is stifling, so much so that any simple gesture to support the trans community gets shouted down. Artist Amy Sherald, for instance, is known for painting Michelle Obama, and her boldly colored paintings documenting Black people have made magazine covers. But she recently canceled her career-comprehensive show at the Smithsonian because the National Portrait Gallery wanted to replace a painting of a trans woman holding a torch.
“While no single person is to blame, it’s clear that institutional fear shaped by a broader climate of political hostility toward trans lives played a role,” Sherald said in a statement.
Angela is a proud Ohio State alum, but Lucias won’t apply there because, she says, he has no rights in Ohio. Still, they aren’t afraid to live their life. They traveled overseas recently and had a great time, partly, Angela says, because people didn’t give Lucias the same looks he gets here.
“He felt more affirmed in Egypt,” Angela says, “than he does here.”
The backlash against the trans community scares Johnson enough that she keeps a baseball bat by her front door. In Colorado, a state the community considers safe, a trans woman was found dead in Jefferson County after she was missing for two months. Police ruled that her death was suspicious, but a cause could not be determined. Details in an autopsy report were unsettling enough that many in the trans community have called for more investigation.
The trans community already recalls Colorado’s most famous case, the brutal murder of 18-year-old Angie Zapata in Greeley in 2008. Zapata met her killer online. The 31-year-old man was convicted of beating her to death after they went on a date.
What’s even scarier is this was in Colorado, a state with an openly gay governor and where most trans people agree is safer than most. Many in The Center’s support groups moved here from other states because they didn’t feel safe in the states they were living in.
The way the country seems to have turned on them is frustrating for those who were finally able to breathe a bit after Barack Obama was elected president and, later, when Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020.
“We thought we’d reached a tipping point in the 2000s,” said Joy Iwancio, the support group coordinator for The Center. “We thought we were being accepted. Humanized.”
Just a couple years ago, Iwancio said her support groups were full of trans people coming out after decades of being in the closet. This includes Iwancio, who couldn’t come out as a trans woman for fear of losing her job. Iwancio’s position at The Center, one she’s had for a couple years, is the first one she’s held as Joy. She attended support groups in her 30s. She is now 68.
Laurie Michelle Machin, a support group facilitator for The Center and a Broomfield resident, stayed in the closet for 23 years as a trans woman because she worked in IT for the defense industry. She worked from home, so she would wear dresses when she wanted, usually as a way to unwind. She figured out she was trans in 1998, after she confided to her partner at the time that she liked to wear women’s clothing. At age 65, after living through the pandemic, she decided to stop lying to herself, she said, and began transitioning in public. She is now 69.
“Now that I have experienced freedom of expression,” she said, “there’s no frickin’ way I’m going back.”
Even so, her support group, and her own fears, are full of “doom and dread,” she said.
“We are out and proud,” she said, “but we are doing our level best to protect ourselves.”
Anti-trans rhetoric, even from friendly communities
The Rev. Ben Konecny, the head of staff at First Congregational Church in Greeley, has an “open and affirming” policy toward the LGBTQ+ community.
The congregation voted nearly unanimously for the label, an official title in the United Church of Christ. A few years ago, they hired the Rev. Tamara McGovern, a member of the LBGTQ+ community herself, as a pastor. McGovern believes hers was the first Christian church in northern Colorado to do so.
“It means that we are going on the record as not just neutral but kind,” says Konecny, who describes himself as a straight ally.
He worries about the trans people in his flock the most.
“What’s more front and center right now is the anti-trans rhetoric,” Konecny says. “There’s an urgency right now for people to be accepted for who they are, and there’s a validity to that.”
He pauses.
“But not everyone sees it that way,” he said.
Indeed, some more traditional members of the LGBTQ+ organizations, the ones who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual, have a hard time relating to trans people. They’re frustrated to be lumped in with them and worry the backlash could affect them, too, after years of fighting to attain basic rights such as marriage, said Leanna Valadez, the owner of R Bar in Fort Collins.
“It’s really hard. Just because we have the same acronym doesn’t mean we have the same values,” said Valadez, who opened the LGBTQ+ bar in 2015, two years after the last gay bar in town closed.
Still, she supports trans people without hesitation because ultimately they come to her bar looking for a safe space, and those are in short supply these days.
“They are at the pinnacle of the attack,” Valadez says. “They’re really needing those spaces where people won’t look sideways at them.”
Nearly all LGBTQ+ organizations remain steadfast in their support, including The Center.
“We don’t always know how to support each other,” Vincent W. said. “You see movements where cisgender queer folks are trying to excuse themselves from trans people, but we wouldn’t be where we are without transgender folks.”
Historically, Vincent W. said, trans women led the fight for gay liberation, even when doing so put them in serious danger.
“They’re the ones now at the highest risk,” they said. “They need our support more than ever.”
Struggling to find support
Johnson sought out PFLAG in Fort Collins not for her trans daughter but for herself. She needed the support just as much. She’s now been president for four years. Even supportive parents struggle with the news their kid is trans.
Johnson is fierce but understands why. The pronouns are clumsy, and gays and lesbians rarely, if ever, undergo the kind of physical transformation that trans people undergo.
“I remember my kid talking to me,” Johnson said, “and all I saw was the dress they were wearing.”
Many parents do come around, however, with the help of other parents in support groups. Even so, this is not universal, and families can split up: Urban Peak, a shelter for homeless kids in Denver, reports that nearly 10% of their clients are members of the LGBTQ+ community.
There also aren’t nearly as many trans people as those who are openly gay, leaving opportunities for understanding few and far between. Just 1.6 million U.S. residents 13 and older identify as trans, or 0.6% of the population, compared with nearly 14 million, or 5.5%, who identify as lesbian, gay, bi or trans.
It’s OK to struggle with it, says Brendon Williams-Ransdell, the community organizer for The Rainbow Circles, a nonprofit therapy practice in Fort Collins staffed by people who are “part of the queer, trans and/or gender expansive communities.”
There are many ways for family and friends to be supportive, even loving, and still have hard questions about a lifestyle, Williams-Ransdell said.
One of Williams-Ransdell’s proudest moments was when his 80-year-old grandmother yelled at one of his cousins who was making fun of him for being gay. Williams-Ransdell grew up in Sterling, a conservative rural city in northeastern Colorado. He took solace in the family members who defended him, like his grandmother.
Williams-Ransdell, in fact, was patient with his family members and has a good relationship with most of them as a result. It took a lot of hard work, he said, but many successful relationships require that.
Natalie and Leigh say they haven’t faced the repercussions that worried them. Natalie now has someone to hand down her old shirts to, and Leigh’s depression and anxiety are gone.
“I feel profoundly privileged,” Leigh said. “I haven’t lost anyone because of my transition.”
Now, she said, she knows her life is worth living.