CLEVELAND — Hundreds of people attended the State of the LGBTQ+ Community of Greater Cleveland Thursday night for a call to action.
During the two-hour long event, a handful of Ohio legislative proposals were addressed, including:
- House Bill 68
- House Bill 8
- Senate Bill 104
- Senate Bill 1
HB 68 went into effect in April 2024. The law bans gender affirming care for minors.
HB 8 goes into effect on April 9, 2025. It requires schools to notify parents if their child identifies as LGBTQ+.
SB 104 went into effect on February 25. It bans gender inclusive restrooms in schools, including higher education.
SB 1 bans Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives at the collegiate level. It passed the Senate on February 12, now advancing to a House Committee where it currently sits.
“The current bans that are happening are definitely about making us feel afraid, but we know we have civil rights as human beings. We're going to lean into that knowledge. We're going to lean into our power. We're going to lean into our resistance, and we're going to fight for our lives,” the LGBTQ Community Center of Greater Cleveland Executive Director Phyllis Harris stated.
The LGBTQ Community Center of Greater Cleveland hosted the State of the LGBTQ+ Community address Thursday night.
“I think tonight was a fabulous show of our readiness and our ability to organize, and this is just the first step. This is getting us ready,” Harris noted.
Harris, along with many other speakers, discussed how they felt like laws such as these look to attack the LGBTQ+ community, women, and people of color.
“We're ready to stand up to that ban. We're ready to get to our policymakers. We're ready to withhold our vote and we're just ready to tell them no, we're not going,” Harris said.
However, for others like Keith Migra, he sees the legislation in a different light. He’s a local podcaster and member of the Lorain County Young Republicans.
“The issues of the LGBT community, I support 100%. But we feel like it's kind of been hijacked by the other alphabetical letters that are attached to it. We feel like it's more hindering women's rights and it's more hindering the LGBT community than it is anything else,” Migra said in response to the three LGBTQ+ legislative pieces brought up at Thursday’s meeting.
Migra believes those topics should fall under a “mental health issue.”
“I feel as a community, we need to reach out and say, ‘What's the real issue here?’ Is it that trans people feel like they have no rights or is it that we feel that there's a mental health issue that's there and we want to help that? But it doesn't come off like that from the right. It comes off like we're damning people and I don't think that's how we should feel anymore,” Migra said.
He also said biology needs to be factored in and believes it is in the bills he sees passing through the State House.
“If the two sides could just sit down and have an eye to God political conversation about it and a moral conversation about it, I think you would see that we're not as far off as everybody thinks,” Migra added.
When it comes to SB 1, he said he supports it.
“I want somebody who's best qualified. If it's an African American, let's go. If it's a white person, understandable. But why not put more training in that? Let's not base it on race. Let's base it on qualifications,” he explained. “I align with President Trump. The Constitution says life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It doesn't say life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness if you're white. It doesn't say life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness if you're black.”
On the flip side, Harris said she is a DEI hire and claims DEI is a necessity in the U.S. as it provides more opportunity.
“Diversity, equity and inclusion, they know is not just a business proposition. It is the way that we are going to live and in order to live and to survive, to thrive. It's needed,” Harris said. “My message to people who are in support of these anti-LGBTQ initiatives and legislation is this: These are your children. They're talking about your neighbors. They're talking about people that you care about, people who are afraid to come out, people who will eventually come out and so what are you going to do? What side of history do you really want to be on?”
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