Supporters of LGBTQ in Pennsylvania want to hear more from the governor Josh Shapiro, when President Donald Trump is increasingly intended for their community.
Since several healthcare systems in Pennsylvania announced restrictions on health care confirming sex in the result of federal orders focused on juvenile procedures, some supporters of the LGBTQ community are increasingly frustrated with what they say that this is a relative silence about a democratic governor.
Their dilemma: How to navigate The president who attacks them, and the governor, who was an ally, but quieter than he wants.
“If Shapiro has any presidential ambitions, it’s better to start talking,” said Kyle McIntyre, the organizer of Delco Pride, calling him to “fight” for the community.
The frustration of Shapiro’s relative silence in transgender matters has been bubbling for months, and with it a debate among activists about engaging. There is a fear of disclosing the internal division and drawing the attention of Trump’s administration and its megaphone. But several supporters said that there is also an urgent need for support, because transgender access to healthcare is actively threatened.
Trump conducted a campaign, and then quickly signed that executive orders prohibit people from transgender participation in women’s sport and limiting sex care, which some healthcare institutions ceased to ensure.
As a pride, there is a monthly celebration of the history, culture and resistance of LGBTQ, the Coalition of LGBTQ groups asks Shapiro for more pronounced protection of transgender health care. Last weekend, organizations last weekend Widespread QR codes, driving people to log out on the list about the Shapiro officedemanding defense of transgender healthcare.
20 -year -old Edward Mono wore an empty testosterone vial on a silver chain on his neck on the march of the Pride March in Philadelphia last Sunday. He wanted to comment on how hormone therapy saved his life – something that the White House and the Governor’s residence thought more and more, may not understand.
“It helps me live, it’s an absolute minimum,” he said. Mono said he appreciates Shapiro, saying that he was supporting transgender people: “But I haven’t heard of him act All.”
“Lack of direction”
Shapiro, a popular governor of the first state of the state and the potential presidential candidate in 2028, publicly supported the LGBTQ community, marching in pride parades and condemning the discrimination of LGBTQ people, But he largely avoided the burden of Trump’s executive orders related to transgender people.
Known as a tactical politician, Shapiro largely expressed the sentiment that Pennsylvania should meet its founding principle: be “warm and hospitable to everyone, including people in the LGBTQ+community,” he said at a press conference in York in March.
As for the questioning of Trump’s administration, he chose other public battles: targeted lawsuits regarding the deduction of federal funds or commenting against specific political proposals that in his opinion will harm Pennsylvania, such as tariffs or medicaid cuts.
In the presidential election campaign in 2024, democrats were driven into transgender issues, often with the misleading claims of Republicans, which is a tactic that continues.
This led some in the party to blame their sweeping November losses, partly, to focus on the GOP and distance from it. California Gavin Gavin News, another President’s Future Possible, He entered Maelstrom after he questioned the honesty of transgender athletes competing in women’s sports. Then Trump quoted comments to the news when the president transported a state meeting with the participation of a transgender competitor.
“We seriously hope that he is not considering the Governor’s government to the news when we urgently need him to make him more similar to the governor,” said one of the LGBTQ leaders, referring to Janet Mills, a democratic Governor Maine, vocal defender of WHO transgender children She quickly became a training bag For Trump over it.
“He just makes Shapiro governor,” said the lawyer. “No direction”.
In recent months, Shapiro carefully stated that he had asked about transgender problems.
On Wednesday, at a press conference in Philadelphia, Shapiro answered a question about hospitals ending sex confirming surgery for people under 19 years of age.
“We see threats from the federal government,” he said, noting that he talked to “many, if not all”, main health directors.
“I know that they are trying to move in a humanitarian way, in a way that respects the rights and needs of all people they serve, all Pennsylwanians. And we will continue dialogue on this subject and work on it,” he said.
People familiar with these conversations stated that the administration focused on supporting healthcare providers and patients during legal uncertainty and concern for federal retaliation.
Penn Medicine announced last week that he would no longer provide sex confirming patients under 19 years of age, following in the footsteps Upmc and Penn State Healthwhich supported sex care services for newborn people under the threat of loss of federal financial support.
Trump in January issued an executive order that Federal bars Funds for sex protectionIncluding hormone therapy, maturation blockers or operations for patients with transgender under 19 years of age. Such care helps patients have a body that suits their sexual identity and is widely accepted in the medical community.
At the same time, hospitals in a state suspended care, Congress considers the Budget Agreement Act This covers the prohibition of the Act on inexpensive care, healthcare plans including sex care (including hormonal therapies) for all Medicaid patients, including adults.
Asked on Wednesday if he would push the trump or Trump attempts to change what Medicaid covers in the state, Shapiro pointed out that maybe.
“I will not be threatened or intimidated by the federal government,” he said. “I proved that for years … my task is to follow my oath. My task is to protect all Pennsylvanians.”
The Shapiro office pointed to these comments when the LGBTQ supporters were asked.
Shapiro rarely mentions transgender people in public comments, but more generally has many achievements in LGBTQ matters.
He supports Act on HonestyRecently re -introduced by a representative of Malcolm Kenyatta (D., Philadelphia), which would change the Act on interpersonal relations in Pennsylvania in order to prohibit discrimination in apartments, employment and public accommodation based on sexual orientation or sexual identity.
And the Shapiro administration is currently defending the Pennsylvania human relations committee against a lawsuit filed by a conservative legal group addressed to trans students.
The polls show that most Americans do not support sex care for minors or Transgender athletes competing in sportswho made both issues politically full of democrats.
“We lose arguments for some of these problems directly,” said one of the chosen democrats in the state. “He is guided by the fact that people know little about it, openness to disinformation and because most Americans do not know Trans.”
A democrat, who did not want to be quoted in the future Shapiro, said that while the governor is probably walking slightly, taking into account his political ambitions, he will remain too peaceful, may go back.
“This and police reform may seem out of fashion because of Trump and this moment, but I do not think that anyone passes through the presidential main throwing children with a bus.”
Debate about the best way to tell
Before breeding Philadelphia last week, e-mail, obtained by Inquirer, I went to the participants, asking the speakers about “saving direct support of politics for other events” and “avoiding referring to the provisions of anti-LGBTQ+ or politicians.”
“This event is not about fighting,” we read E -Mail. “It’s about shiny.”
It often happens that sponsored flagG To avoid politics, and the city spokesman said that E -Mail was developed for such tips, but the note was a symbol of internal debates that continue among LGBTQ organizers about how and when to push back.
Many thoughts concerned the best public approach to Shapiro because of pride.
Michel Lee Garrett, a member of the management board at the non -profit LGBT+center, described the Pride campaign as “Solidarity”.
“Solidarity with each other, among themselves and our allies and our selected officials who were ready to stand with us,” she said.
Letters to Shapiro ask him for a public statement confirming support for LGBTQ healthcare for all residents of Pennsylvania and taking action to ensure that he is inexpensive and available, including through Medicaid.
Corinne Goodwin, executive director of the Eastern Pennsylvania Trans Equality project, is one of those who circled the letter for signatures. The Goodwin organization conducts a helpline that helps transgender people. Since Trump’s election, the volume of connections has increased from about five a day to 60.
“Our community feels a lot of trauma,” said Goodwin. “So we try to get the governor more confirming than he.”
Delaware McIntyre from the Delaware Cręcie helped in the development of a resolution undertaken by the Delaware Council last week, which declares that this is a unthreatening space for transgender and transgender health care and confirming that the core officials will not provide private healthcare information, unless they are legally authorized.
McIntyre asked Shapiro to make a similar promise in which Pennsylvania is a national sanctuary for Trans Healthcare.
“The only reason why hospitals are involved in compliance with the regulations is that it is a deafening silence,” he said. “They don’t receive any signals from the government that will be supported.”
McIntyre admits that he is personally skeptical about the effectiveness of letter campaigns when he said that the community needs urgent public support. “We always have to be strategic,” he said.
But he called Trans Healthcare “another problem of civil rights from lightning” and compared the moment with Stonewall’s demonstrations against a rapid police raid at the New York gay bar in 1969.
“We started riots in Stonewall because we had no choice,” he said. “This does not mean that this is happening … but it builds.”
Personnel writers Michelle Myers, Katie Bernard and Fallon Roth contributed to this article.
