If you were to tell a queer or trans person from 30 years ago that by 2021, gay marriage would be legal and that transgender people had graced the cover of Time magazine, they would have scoffed. 

The world that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and their allies live in today seems light-years ahead of the realities of just 20 years ago. With massive shifts in consciousness, however, come major pushbacks—and an all-new set of issues and circumstances for advocates to navigate. 

Luckily, the youth at the forefront of LGBTQ activism today are more than equipped to handle their rapidly changing world with grace, dignity and power. 

Sarah Rose Huckman (she/her pronouns)

Though trans people are far more accepted in today’s world than ever before, it’s still common for them to experience bigotry and pushback in the traditionally gendered world of sports. From the Olympics’ repeated censuring of Caster Semenya to an anti-trans congressional bill aimed at school athletics that Tulsi Gabbard has signed, athletics are still extremely fraught and difficult to navigate for trans people. 

Trans acceptance in sports is increasing, however, due to the work of advocates like Sarah Rose Huckman, a New Hampshire teen who came out as transgender in middle school and has been blessed with the support of her family and community, which many transgender people lack. 

She’s translated that support into activism for trans student athletics. She co-starred in “Changing the Game,” a documentary about other athletes like her, and is now a GLAAD campus ambassador in her first year at the University of New Hampshire. 

“The support from other athletes and coaches—those on my team, and those athletes and coaches I competed against—have molded me into who I am today,” Huckman wrote in a February 2020 op-ed in her local paper opposing an anti-trans bill in New Hampshire’s state legislature that was later defeated in a floor vote. “I hope other transgender girls are able to find the joy in sports like I did.”

Ose Arheghan (they/them)

College campuses have become intellectual battlegrounds in the past decade as conservative faculty and students push back against the inclusion of trans and nonbinary students, sometimes going to great lengths to avoid using the singular “they” and hosting inciting, transphobic speakers, all in the name of “diversity of thought.”

These fights unfolded amid a much more dangerous reality: the Trump administration’s attacks on Title IX, which protects students from sex discrimination. 

As a nonbinary trans person, Ose Arheghan, a University of Ohio student and trans advocate has made great strides to educate their classmates and lobby for Title IX protections, even as the outgoing administration worked tirelessly to gut the federal law. 

They’ve also criticized the initial celebration surrounding the summer 2020 Supreme Court ruling that found that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act “includes protections for workers based on their sexual orientation and gender identity” due to its proximity to another, much more dire—and much less publicized—law. 

Just before the SCOTUS ruling, the Department of Health and Human Services published a new rule on the four-year anniversary of the Pulse massacre in Orlando that “revoked provisions present in the 2016 rule that prohibited discrimination based on gender identity, now states sex discrimination will be limited to one’s sex—male or female and as determined by ‘biology,’” Arheghan wrote in The Advocate. “This decision does not take into account the complexities of sex and gender and leaves room for a legal interpretation that does not protect transgender patients against discrimination in the medical field.”

Sameer Jha (they/they)

LGBTQ acceptance is much higher than it used to be, but that doesn’t mean bullying has gone away.

When they were just 14 years old, Sameer Jha founded the Empathy Alliance, an anti-LGBTQ bullying group. They did research on the climate in Bay Area schools for LGBTQ students and found that a majority experienced bullying and harassment from other students about their identities. 

The group—which now operates widely in the Bay Area and serves tens of thousands of students—was founded on Gay-Straight Alliance principles, but expands upon them by providing teachers with “safe space” stickers for their classrooms, training to better understand trans identities, and more LGBTQ literature in their school libraries to better serve their queer and trans students. 

Jha is 19 now and has, since graduating high school, focused on advocating for LGBTQ literature and education. They wrote a book titled “Read This, Save Lives,” and recently became a recipient of Seventeen magazine’s Voices of the Year awards.