Landon was presupposed to be at her high-school commencement on Saturday. As an alternative, she was making ready to journey to Washington, D.C. By Monday, the 17-year-old from Gulfport, Mississippi, was carrying a protracted, smooth blue costume and dancing in entrance of the U.S. Capitol with about 100 of her transgender friends on the Trans Youth Promenade.
Landon’s plans modified earlier this month after Harrison County Faculty District Superintendent Mitchell King knowledgeable her that she wanted to decorate as a boy through the commencement ceremony, and never in a costume and heels as she’d deliberate. (Landon’s mother and father requested that she be recognized by her first title solely to guard her privateness.) After a federal choose on Friday denied a movement filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on her behalf demanding that she be allowed to put on her costume, she determined to not attend.
Landon had been out as a trans woman at her highschool for 4 years and advised me her classmates have been in her nook. However in the end she determined to not stroll, as a result of she didn’t wish to attend an occasion that “doesn’t help me,” she mentioned. “There was no care; there was no compassion. It felt disrespectful,” she mentioned.
However on the Capitol, there was no scarcity of affection and help. This promenade was created by 4 youngsters—Daniel Trujillo, 15; Libby Gonzales, 13; Grayson McFerrin, 12; and Hobbes Chukumba, 16—with the assistance of some grownup organizers as a means of celebrating being trans.
After exiting a bus in entrance of the Capitol Reflecting Pool, the youngsters and teenagers marched of their formal put on down a grassy runway flanked by cheering organizers, mother and father, and supporters who held up trans and gender-nonbinary flags and indicators that learn Trans youngsters have at all times existed, Trans youth are highly effective, and Have fun trans pleasure. The youth entered the social gathering, dance music already blasting, via a big arch product of color-changing glass topped with the phrases You might be beloved.
Not like a typical high-school promenade, the occasion additionally included teenagers that had already accomplished highschool. Alongside the drag queen Stormie Daie—the occasion’s emcee—they took turns displaying off their strikes inside a dance circle to hits by Lizzo, Lil Nas X, Madonna, and others. Often, they’d duck into the shade of close by timber or chat and take photos with household and mates.
Most of the youths who attended had traveled with their mother and father from hometowns the place their gender id is affirmed and embraced. Some got here from states the place politicians have been debating and legislating the small print of their life—whether or not they can obtain transition-related medical care, for instance, or compete on sports activities groups that match their gender id. In 2023 alone, greater than 500 payments that may prohibit the rights of transgender folks have been launched. (Greater than 70 of them have handed up to now.)
Michelle Callahan-DuMont and her husband, Andy DuMont, flew with their 9-year-old daughter, Violet, from Tucson, Arizona, to D.C. for the promenade. Violet wore a sequined gold-and-blue costume that she advised me she’d purchased at Dillard’s. Her favourite music to bop to is techno, she mentioned. As Michelle advised me, “We’re at all times speaking concerning the unhappy issues; we’re at all times speaking concerning the scary issues, speaking about perhaps having to maneuver out of state. And so for this weekend, we’re simply having enjoyable.” She mentioned that in a dinner for the occasion the night time earlier than, Violet had advised her mother and father: “That is the very best day of my life.”
The selection of promenade, a quintessential coming-of-age milestone for American youngsters, was deliberate: a message that lawmakers can’t take away folks’s childhoods, Chase Strangio, one of many occasion’s grownup organizers and the deputy director for transgender justice on the ACLU, advised me. “That is trans folks defining their pleasure on their very own phrases, coming collectively to say, ‘Sufficient. We don’t want you to debate us any longer. We all know precisely who we’re.’”
After the speeches and dancing, about 200 folks in attendance marched down Structure Avenue, chanting and cheering to music, earlier than stopping on the steps of the Supreme Court docket. Beneath the phrases Equal Justice Underneath Regulation etched on the entrance of the excessive court docket, they chanted: “Trans rights are human rights!”
