Another legislative session, another strike for Add the Words with House Bill 440 not passing through the Idaho Legislature for yet another year.
Add the Words is a movement local to Idaho, advocating for the rights of individuals in the LGBTQ+ community. Beginning under former senator Nicole LeFavour 14 years ago, Add the Words has aimed to add the terms sexual orientation and gender identity to the Idaho Human Rights Act, protecting queer individuals from discrimination according to their website.
HB 440 would have done exactly that, but as expected by the organization, the bill did not make much ground. In January it was referred to the Ways and Means committee, with no other actions being taken since.
Chelsea Gaona-Lincoln has been executive director at Add the Words since 2016, and has been following the movement since 2012. Under her leadership, she has flipped the organization into a volunteer-run non-profit.
In the past, Gaona-Lincoln said the group focused heavily on the annual legislative session, seeking to promote certain bills and take action against others. While they are still active in the political realm, their general focus has shifted.
“Over this year mark, it’s definitely still something that we desire to do but we also know that, reality-wise, the political landscape is unlikely to allow it,” Gaona-Lincoln admitted.
She explained that the organization moved to fight for municipal protections, but the legislature continued to push back and city-level powers were limited. This included passing laws that stunted the implementation of things like city employee raises or banning plastic bag usage.
“So that was kind of the legislature’s way of letting us know, we know what you’re trying to do at a municipal level, and they wouldn’t stand for it,” Gaona-Lincoln said. “We just kind of ended up in between a rock and a hard place, which is why we became more community-centric.”
Gaona-Lincoln remembered finding some of the first Add the Words buttons from when the movement first started. A memento from the movement’s roots, it was also a reminder of how long the struggle has been ongoing.
“I actually was joking with my fellow organizer, John Martinez, who does our political strategy. We found a bag of Add the Words buttons and we decided that we’ve been fighting for the same protection from discriminations as everybody else for so long that the buttons are actually now vintage,” Gaona-Lincoln said.
While Add the Words continues to push for the additions of gender identity and sexual orientation to the state’s act, much of their time has been spent working against proposed bills. Rather than simply promoting bills that would benefit their cause, they instead have to play defense against bills that harm the LGBTQ+ community.
House Bill 675 was struck down during the legislative session this year, a copycat of a similar bill from 2020 according to Gaona-Lincoln.
The bill aimed to criminalize gender affirming care, placing consequences on both the individual seeking out therapy and the doctor providing it. The bill equated gender affirmation to genital mutilation.
The drastic wording of the bill ultimately stopped it from being passed, but it still had difficult implications for the trans community.
“One of our medical doctors… who provides gender-affirming care, they had to assist three families with youth suicide attempts, just in the time that that legislation was introduced,” Gaona-Lincoln said. “So even though ultimately it wasn’t passed, it was very scary for trans siblings and their families to have to flee the states or relocate.”
Flick Kemp is the secretary of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance at the University Idaho, who feels that states are behind on providing equal protections to this minority community.
“The LGBTQ movement is very young, I think, particularly with regards to legal activism,” Kemp said. “You’ve only really seen legal protections being provided starting in the early 2000s, and so it’s kind of playing catch up.”
Within GSA and the community in general, Kemp has noticed a fresh drive from people his age.
“I think my generation, we’re just now coming to the understanding that if we want to live our lives, we do have to engage in the public sphere, in politics,” Kemp said. “For the most part, what you see is a lot of, you know, older millennials kind of doing most of the legwork in those public spheres. But I do think that a lot of people who were born 2000 and forward are kind of stepping into that role.”
As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, Kemp has felt the effects of watching the news of the Idaho Legislature firsthand.
“It’s incredibly stressful to hear your rights, your livelihood, your ability to exist freely and publicly, being debated,” Kemp said. “Where you have been made distinct and other from society.”
In February, UI’s student government unanimously passed a resolution urging the state legislature to add the words in the form of HB 440 that was being considered at the time. Instead, for the fourteenth year in a row, the bill did not make ground.
“It’s crazy how it’s absolutely legal to fire someone or deny them a place to live solely because they are gay,” ASUI Senator Kayla Nguyen said.
Nguyen supported the bill when it came up in the legislative session, understanding the widespread positive impacts it could have.
“As of now, there are over 20,000 LGBT+ individuals that are 18 and older in Idaho’s workforce,” Nguyen explained. “By simply adding these four words… It would be preventing suicides, job loss, and all the anger and fear that many LGBT+ Idahoans have to live with every day.”
As an ASUI senator, when talking with representatives about issues pertaining to college students, Nguyen hasn’t felt heard. She described a situation with a representative who was being passive aggressive.
“I honestly just feel like they’re not listening to all the calls they’re getting, to all the emails we’ve been sending,” Nguyen said. “It’s extremely frustrating. Being an individual in Idaho, especially being a woman, to kind of witness us going backwards instead of us moving forwards.”
Despite her frustrations, Nguyen believes people need to continue to push their representatives, and that eventually, representatives will be made to understand.
“At some point, our (representatives) are going to have an eye-opening experience,” she said. “They’re gonna finally see it from our perspective.”
While the Add the Words supporters continue to fight for the movement, there are other ways people can help support LGBTQ+ people in their communities.
Gaona-Lincoln suggests working with like-minded organizations, volunteering time to help them out. She also noted that some organizations focus on accountability work, lobbying for change.
“We’re just so excited to still be here and to have something to offer to the community,” she said.
Haadiya Tariq can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @haadiyatariq