would require that state to ensure that every resident of Oregon “has access to cost-effective, clinically appropriate and affordable health care as a fundamental right” — a right that would sweep within it a right to gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary Oregonians. Also in Oregon, the Multnomah County ballot includes an initiative,, which would remove binary gendered language in the county’s charter and replace that language with gender-neutral terms.
And then there is the other side of the U.S.: one of retrenchment, repression and fear. Because of the more recent LGBTQ legal and political victories, prompted by the move in social and cultural norms toward supporting LGBTQ people, the Christian nationalists have shifted their tactics and rhetoric to be less overtly anti-LGBTQ.
In the early decades of the movement, norms permitted and embraced explicitly homophobic and aggressive anti-LGBTQ rhetoric that branded LGBTQ people as pedophiles, “mentally ill” and “deviant.” Today,, it is less socially acceptable to use explicitly homophobic rhetoric when talking about LGBTQ people or lobbying for anti-LGBTQ laws and policies.