As a pediatrician who provides essential health care for transgender and gender diverse youth, I have watched over the last two years as more and more trans kids and their families have lost their homes. But not from a fire or other natural disaster, from something else.
Since 2023, 26 states have banned or restricted essential health care for trans and gender diverse youth, making it impossible for young people to grow up as themselves in their communities and forcing parents to choose between the health and well-being of their kids, and leaving the place they call home. These health care bans have almost always been paired with other restrictive and discriminatory laws that restrict trans youth from playing sports with peers who share their identities, banning them from bathrooms that match their identities, and removing much needed supports in schools that ensure their sense of belonging and safety.
Lives uprooted
In our Gender Health program, we have welcomed families from North and South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Kansas and more. I see and hear the pain and loss these families feel in uprooting their lives and leaving the communities they have called home, in some cases for generations. They have moved to Minnesota to find safety and sanctuary, to find a sense of belonging and to protect the health and well-being of their beloved trans and gender diverse kids.
I have also seen the unspoken burden on the transgender and gender diverse kids themselves, not only from the impact of leaving friends, teammates, extended family members and the familiarity of community, but in knowing that the choice their family was forced to make was on their behalf. No child should have to bear this burden.
Over the last two years, I have felt proud to live in Minnesota, a state that has been a leader in civil rights and inclusion for transgender people, passing the first state civil rights law in 1993 that explicitly outlawed discrimination based not only on sexual orientation but also gender identity. We continued this tradition in 2023 by passing a trans refuge law, declaring that all kids and all families belong in Minnesota. That all parents should have the freedom to access the health care their transgender children need to thrive. That all trans and gender diverse kids belong as integrated members of our schools, sports teams and public life.
I’m not a Minnesotan
But the truth is, I’m not a Minnesotan. I have lived here for 25 years now, and in fact, was born right across the street from where I work at Children’s Minnesota. Soon after, my parents moved to Iowa. I grew up in Iowa City, a proud City High Little Hawk, playing four sports, excelling in academics and putting down roots in a place that very much felt like home. And even though I swore I was going to leave Iowa for college (I was convinced I needed to be somewhere in a big city or farther away from my parents), I ended up getting my undergraduate degree from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. In Decorah, I played Division III college basketball, fell in love with the hills and valleys that were new to me, and came to appreciate the community of “small town” Iowa as opposed to the “big” college town of Iowa City where I grew up. And while many of my friends in Minneapolis were shocked when Iowa legalized same sex marriage in 2009, the third state to do so, I was not. This was reflective of the state where I grew up, the state where friendliness was genuine, kindness mattered, and people let people live their lives unencumbered. Folks in Iowa cared for each other, and individual differences didn’t matter as long as the commitment to community and shared well-being was upheld.
Fast forward to last week when, at the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines, legislators rushed through and approved a bill that became the first in the country to explicitly remove civil rights protections for transgender Iowans. The first state to take away civil rights from a protected group that had been granted them as a part of state law in 2007. This is not the Iowa I grew up in. This is not the state or the culture that I had come to love and had always defended when I heard “Iowa” jokes over the last two decades of living in Minnesota. This is not the state where I got legally married back in 2011 or where I was proudly inducted into my high school hall of fame in 2021.
No longer welcome
Iowa is a state that has already removed access to essential health care for trans youth, causing many families to travel to Minnesota and Illinois to access the health care their kids need, and motivating many families to leave. It’s a state that has also banned access to youth sports for transgender athletes who want to play on teams aligned with their gender identity and expression. In a state where I lettered in four varsity sports and played college basketball, I would now not feel welcome to play.
It’s been happening slowly over the last decade, but now I too have lost my home. I love living in Minnesota and am so happy to raise my kids here, but I have always been a Hawkeye. I have so much pride in what Minnesota has become and how we embrace all kids and families, but crossing the border on I-35 into the rolling plains of Iowa when I go back to visit my parents has always felt like going home. And now, it doesn’t. It can’t. As a non-binary queer person trying to raise my three kids to understand respect, kindness, inclusion and justice, I don’t want them to spend time in a place that has come to reject these principles. I don’t want to be there when someone takes their misplaced hatred out on me in front of them because of a shirt I am wearing or a bathroom I am using.
It’s time that we as a country, and as a community of compassionate people and loving parents, start changing the tide. No one should have to leave their home because of who they are. No one should have to fear for their dignity or safety when they are in school, at work or in public. My home state has become a place to which I cannot return, because I could be fired from my job based on my identity, denied public services, discriminated against in housing, business and personal life.
This feeling of “losing home,” losing a place of belonging and safety, has increasingly happened to so many young people for whom I provide lifesaving health care. It has to stop. There is no place like home. And we all deserve a sense of home, safety and belonging wherever we live and whoever we are.
Dr. Kade Goepferd, (they/them)
Chief education officer and pediatrician in the Gender Health program
Dr. Kade Goepferd, (they/them), is a pediatrician, chief education officer and founder of the Gender Health program at Children’s Minnesota. Dr. Goepferd is an advocate for advancing equitable health care for all children – including trans and gender-diverse youth. They have been named a Top Doctor by both Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine and Minnesota Monthly for the last several years and gave their first TED talk, “The Revolutionary Truth about Kids and Gender Identity” at TEDx Minneapolis in 2020.
