Fifty miles south of Atlanta, Anne Blair gripped the steering wheel heading down her winding driveway to drop her son off at the bus stop. What was a daily occurrence felt different this day for the 37-year-old mother of two. She was completely silent. Tears were streaming down her face while her son sat in the passenger seat.
Across the country, many people felt this way on Nov. 9, 2016, the day after Donald Trump won the presidential election. For people like Blair it meant something more, it meant the safety and future of her child was at stake. Her son is transgender.
Blair said she looked at her son and told him, “Everything’s about to change. You might not see it yet, but we’re going to be okay.”
Parents of trans kids around the country have spent time and money trying to protect their children from the harsh realities of their local communities and guide them along their journey. As resources are slowly being taken away by local and state legislation, the journey is getting more difficult for some parents.
Eight years have passed since Blair’s emotional drive to the bus stop across her 17 acres in Pike County, Georgia. She was right, things have changed since then. In 2024 alone, the ACLU tracked 513 anti-LGBTQ bills in the U.S., 14 of those in Georgia.
Almost 3,000 miles away, Tiffany Tilson works as an engineer just outside of Seattle. Tilson and her family moved there from Dallas last year, just two years after her 13-year-old daughter came out as trans.
“It was the only reason why we moved. I would still be in Texas 100% if my daughter was not transgender. … It makes me really angry, because now we’re in a state where she’s protected, but why did I have to move 3,000 miles away just for her to be herself?” Tilson said.
In the two years they were in Texas after their daughter had come out, Tilson and her husband strongly advocated for trans rights. She said they went to every school board meeting, tried to meet with local elected officials, drove to Austin to talk to state legislators, and joined several trans rights organizations.
Tilson noted that her daughter’s experience encouraged her to study the legislative process and research all the laws proposed in Texas those two years. It also showed her the importance of local elections.
“Federally, I can’t do a whole lot. But I can go drum up support for school board candidates that will help protect my daughter. That’s what would affect our daily lives,” Tilson said.
She believes change begins locally.
“I would love to see [President Joe] Biden or the federal government do something like an umbrella protection while we work from the ground up. But, I don’t think that’s coming so at this point, we have to start somewhere,” Tilson added.
In late 2023, Texas passed SB 14, the law that banned gender transitions for minors. Finding out that her daughter was going to lose access to any trans health care was Tilson’s final straw. They had hoped laws like SB 14 would not pass so they stayed in Texas a little longer. Tilson said that had she known the propositions would have been signed into law, she would’ve left the state immediately.
Tilson’s daughter was the last new patient to be seen at a transgender healthcare clinic in Dallas. A friend in a Facebook group told Tilson about it and that the clinic might not be able to take anyone else soon. She rushed to get her daughter in and after one appointment they were protected as the final existing patient. That clinic and all of those like it in Texas have since shut down.
Tilson said she has taken a step back from being so politically active now that they are in a state where her daughter is protected. She had gone from being an outspoken activist and single-issue voter to being burnt out, but at least able to breathe.
Tilson highlighted that she is concerned that people in states such as Washington are too comfortable with their protections and politicians. She worries that these “liberal states” might not realize how quickly things can go south, and talked about the politicians from just a few decades ago.
“Texas had a Democratic governor, Ann Richards. Oklahoma had a Democratic governor, I grew up with Brad Henry. Things can change very quickly and so I’m very stressed,” Tilson said.
On the other side of the country, Heather Liafsha works as an R.N. in Lexington, South Carolina. While she said her son Sebastian was not the first trans kid in the area, he was the first to have parental support. She took it upon herself to fight the school board on every trans issue that came up.
“I obsessively researched, I literally had a three-inch thick binder all sectioned out that I would take into meetings with them. I wanted to keep them on track and their ignorance was just impressive,” Liafsha said.
One recurring theme in these meetings was her son’s ability to be on the high school swim team. Sebastian, who is now 22, had been swimming on the girls team, but finally was allowed to join the boys’ team senior year after he got top surgery and his testosterone levels reached a certain threshold.
All year, Sebastian had been looking forward to his “senior night,” a swim meet where the school honored all of the soon-to-be graduates. The night before, Liafsha got a call that her son wouldn’t be able to swim. She said she went to the school the next morning the second the doors opened with her binder in hand.
Not only did Sebastian have his mom defending him, but other parents of the swim team were calling the school district and athletic director. They were refusing to swim if Sebastian wasn’t allowed in the water.
That night, other students and parents came to the swim meet in pride shirts and with signs that said, “Sebastian is the pride of our team.”
“I have goosebumps just thinking about it. He got to swim, but we were furious with the athletic directors,” Liafsha said.
Sebastian said that while the community support was empowering, there is almost no support from South Carolina politicians. He and his mother both cited Republican Gov. Henry McMaster as the face of anti-trans legislation in their state.
Two years after Sebastian graduated, McMaster signed the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” which banned transgender students from participating in school sports aligned to their gender identity.
In January, the South Carolina House of Representatives approved the “Help Not Harm Bill,” which will ban all gender-affirming care for minors and force school officials to out students to their parents. The bill was recently approved and is awaiting McMaster’s signature.
“This is a good idea to keep young people safe and healthy. If they wanna make those decisions later when they’re adults then that’s a different story, but we must prevent our young people from making irreversible errors,” McMaster said at a January news conference.
Sebastian said he is extremely worried about the effect this will have on trans children throughout the state as it is disheartening and does more damage than good.
“Quite literally my entire transition as a minor is no longer allowed. I had top surgery at 17, I went on testosterone at 15 or 16. All of the resources I used as a child, the places, the endocrinologist I went to, the therapy groups I saw, they’re all disbanded. It’s all been shut down. No one can do what I did,” Sebastian said.
Liafsha said she puts all the blame on Republicans and what she called the normalization of hatred since Trump was elected in 2016.
“The Republicans want my son dead. That’s the stuff that they’ve said, especially with them calling [transgender people] groomers and pedophiles,” Liafsha said.
Liafhsa and her son both stated that while they know the Republican Party is much more harmful to the trans community, they aren’t enthusiastic about voting for Democrats this coming November.
In February, Liafsha and her husband were at an early voting center in South Carolina. Her husband was wearing a zip-up hoodie with a gray t-shirt under that had a rainbow heart on it, but they were there to vote for Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary. They are registered Democrats, but said that it felt more important to vote against Trump than participate in the Democratic primary.
Liafsha and her husband said if Trump were re-elected they are confident that more laws like the ones passed and proposed in South Carolina would come into effect.
“When it comes to Democrats, I don’t see them doing much either … The Democrats aren’t helping, but they aren’t actively pushing for an insurrection and actively pushing hate,” Liafsha said.
Liafsha and her son are both planning to vote for Biden in November.
One state to the south, Blair, who is a food safety specialist, said she is pushing her husband to find work in a different state. She wants to get out of Georgia. Her husband works in the railroad industry, so she says he will have opportunities in most places throughout the country.
Blair emphasized the lack of community and protection laws for her now-18-year-old trans son as the reason she wants to leave the state.
“I’m looking to move either to a blue state where they have protection laws or to a more urban area where they have a local community. You need one or the other … That community is what is going to band together and help get those laws changed,” Blair said.
Blair embodies the concept of a mother who is willing to give up her home and livelihood to protect her child and provide him with a safe environment. She doesn’t want to move, but she knows what she has to do.
“I love my 16 acres. I love the three horses and the cats. But, I don’t like the lack of resources,” Blair said.
Since her son came out, Blair has fought with the school board and, unapologetically, with her local community in Facebook groups. She is more concerned about her local politics since Georgia has two Democratic senators, but she still hasn’t seen real change.
Last year, Georgia passed SB 140, which banned the treatment of gender dysphoria for minors in hospitals and prohibited most surgical procedures associated with it. Blair hopes to see change on a federal level, but similar to Tilson, doesn’t see that happening.
Blair cited a mistrust in the judicial system as well. She said the Supreme Court used to be a beacon of hope for issues such as civil rights, abortion access and gay marriage, but now is illegitimate largely due to Trump.
“It went shit when Trump got there because he packed it with Republican justices. The legitimacy of the Supreme Court has just gone downhill in the past three years. Just shady, shady opinions with stupid reasoning,” Blair said.
Blair worries that the trans community will be the next target of the Supreme Court. She said that since issues such as affirming gay marriage as legal were secured, it seems as if Republicans need a new marginalized group to come after.
“They’re picking on trans people because they don’t have everything under their thumb. They’re scared of the other, they didn’t learn from history,” Blair said.
Blair believes there is an increasing normalization of radical opinions among Republicans across the country, trans rights being one of their issues. She fears what this will mean for the future of her child.
Tilson, Liafsha and Blair said fear-mongering and over-politicization by members of the Republican Party only make their fears worse — especially when considering the February death by suicide of transgender teen Nex Benedict following a fight in the school bathroom.
“I’m just terrified. Terrified of my son becoming a hashtag,” Blair said.