KEYRIS MANZANARES: Gender has an enormous impact on who we are as people and how others view us.

And while society has increasingly been looking at gender on a spectrum, many are still wondering what this means.

This week, we explore gender and identity.

We look at the right to love and lead the life you choose.

And from schools to the stage, are people free to express themselves?

You're watching VPM News Focal Point.

ANNOUNCER: Production funding for VPM News Focal Point is provided by The estate of Mrs. Ann Lee Saunders Brown.

And by... ♪ ♪ This is VPM News Focal Point.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: I'm Keyris Manzanares in for Angie Miles.

Today, we are focusing on gender and identity.

How do we navigate questions around this topic as the LGBTQ+ community continues to grow?

We'll hear from parents raising transgender youth and visit a theater that celebrates diversity.

First, we begin with same-sex marriage.

In 2006, Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment that banned same-sex marriage, but the U.S. Supreme Court legalized it in 2015 making the Virginia ban unenforceable because federal law supersedes state law.

While same sex marriage remains legal in Virginia, many still fear that this right could be taken away.

Now LGBTQ+ advocates are pushing to remove Virginia's constitutional ban.

VPM News producer Adrienne McGibbon has more.

ADRIENNE MCGIBBON: Breanna Diaz was in front of the U.S. Supreme Court the day it guaranteed same sex couples the right to marry in 2015.

(crowd cheering) BREANNA DIAZ: And I remember just sobbing, because of that historical moment, knowing that I had new options on the table.

NANCY PELOSI: The motion is adopted.

(crowd cheering) ADRIENNE MCGIBBON: In 2022, Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, codifying the right to same sex marriage for millions of Americans.

But in Virginia, efforts during this general assembly failed to remove language banning same sex marriage in the state's constitution.

TIM ANDERSON: But what we're really just doing is trying to get rid of the dead language out of the Constitution, which is obviously very offensive to people that are same sex marriages that, you know, feel that that's discriminatory language.

ADRIENNE MCGIBBON: Delegate Tim Anderson says his proposal was one of two dozen constitutional amendments the legislature didn't get to.

TIM ANDERSON: Because it was a short session and they just didn't have the time, that was what they said, didn't have the time to vet all of these things.

ADRIENNE MCGIBBON: Diaz, who's with the ACLU of Virginia, points to the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs, related to abortion rights as reason for concern.

BREANNA DIAZ: The one action we can take for same-sex marriage is to repeal that outdated amendment and to replace it with language that affirms a fundamental right to marriage for same sex couples.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: To remove the ban, a constitutional amendment must pass the General Assembly two years in a row and then be put on the ballot for approval by voters.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: In this week's "People of Virginia," hear from those who are in the LGBTQ+ community as they share their thoughts on gender, identity, and legal protections.

MEREDITH HERTZLER: I do not think that LGBTQ rights are being adequately protected in Virginia right now.

I think that we were on the right path up until about two years ago when we had some administration changes.

KOLIA SADEJHI: I get a sense that people who live in areas that are less urban have to keep it under wraps and pretend that they're not LGBTQ because not doing that would close all kinds of doors to them.

STEPHANIE FLORIE: Even though I'm cis-hetero, I have literally no skin in the game, I feel that everybody deserves the right to be loved for who they are, the way they are, without having to mask or change who they are to get that love.

CHLOE: One thing about gender identity that I think a lot of people don't understand is it's not really a choice for some people on how they identify.

It's just how they are, how they're born.

LISA HARRAH: I wish that more people understood that gender identity and biological sex are not the same thing.

And I did not know a lot about that until I became the parent of a transgender adult child.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: People who consider themselves part of the LGBTQ+ community say they've had to fight for rights and that the focus of the fight has changed through the years.

For generations past, it was the AIDS epidemic and the right to marry that prompted protest and pain.

Today, there's more emphasis on pronouns and inclusion.

VPM News anchor Angie Miles spoke with a longtime same-sex couple and with a researcher who's devoted her career to studying gender diverse issues.

(glasses clink) JERRY WILLIAMS: Thank you so much, Mark, for getting the glasses.

ANGIE MILES: Jerry Williams and Mark Reed still love sharing the story of how they met.

(glasses clink) JERRY WILLIAMS: We met in January of 1990 at the YMCA.

But before you get the wrong impression, he was a lifeguard and I was swimming.

I wasn't drowning, but I went in and we started a conversation.

And our first date was at the Little Yogurt Shop in Carytown.

In 2013, when it became legal, we went to Baltimore and got legally married.

So we've been married almost ten years legally.

ANGIE MILES: The Richmond couple has been together for 33 years and feel fortunate to be surrounded by an accepting community.

JERRY WILLIAMS: I mean, I've been out since the seventies and technically, as far as I know, it's never been a problem.

I'm not aware of ever having actually been discriminated against because I was gay, so I don't know if it's just because I was lucky or what.

ANGIE MILES: But it wasn't always that way.

Especially for Mark, who grew up in a small Virginia town.

MARK REED: People, including me, were bullied.

Gym class.

Everywhere.

JERRY WILLIAMS: Oh, we all hated gym class.

MARK REED: Glasses.

I wore glasses.

I'm tiny.

If I were anything like I am now (laughs) or spoke out or did anything, I could have been in, you know, a ditch or beaten up.

ANGIE MILES: And the couple has had a considerable share of struggle because of long standing laws against same sex unions.

JERRY WILLIAMS: I was self-employed, paying $1,000 a month for health insurance.

Once I did get on his plan, it went down to $350 a month.

Twenty something years when we couldn't legally be married.

I was paying $1,000 a month.

MARK REED: I resent that we were not able to get married in my state where I was born and I grew up.

I resent that my husband did not get benefits for all those years.

CHARLOTTE PATTERSON: It's really an interesting new finding that Gallup polling has reported.

ANGIE MILES: University of Virginia researcher Charlotte Patterson says she, too, has seen remarkable change in how the general public views gender diverse individuals.

In fact, more Americans than ever view themselves as part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Gallup shows a record 7.1% of people identify with one or more of these letters.

For those who don't, it can be confusing to know what the variations mean.

CHARLOTTE PATTERSON: Usually, when you think about gay and lesbian, you're thinking about sexual orientation.

Who are you attracted to?

Who would you like to have a date with?

Gender identity, of course, is something quite different.

It's, What gender are we?

Are we male or female?

For most people, that's a pretty clear question.

For some people, it isn't, and perhaps the answer is both.

So nonbinary is a term that can cover male some of the time female some of the time or in the middle all the time.

ANGIE MILES: There's also I.

For Intersex.

People who are born with genitalia that doesnt match the customary biology of girls or boys.

And A.

For Asexual individuals.

people who don't feel sexual attraction for others.

There are basically two different ways to consider gender diversity.

One set of labels is for those who feel their identity is not a match to what they were assigned based on appearance at birth.

Others consider themselves sexual minorities based on attraction.

CHARLOTTE PATTERSON: LGBTQ.

Q. Queer.

You might think of it as an umbrella term for all the things that we've already mentioned that you can be queer and fit within that spectrum of gender and sexual identities.

Why are so many people identifying as gender diverse now?

The research is not conclusive.

CHARLOTTE PATTERSON: Why are some people CIS gender and other people not?

We don't really know, but I'm a lot more interested in questions like, “How can we help people be the best versions of themselves?

” I think that's a probably more important question in the short term for researchers to look at.

JERRY WILLIAMS: You know, it's an interesting situation because in some ways we've come so far and so many people you say, ‘I'm gay.

So what?

Who cares?

MARK REED: The whole world has changed dramatically from where I grew up.

It's been a road to get there, (laughs) to feel good and whole within myself, you know?

So, let people do that.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: For years, people have debated whether sexual attraction and gender identity are genetic or shaped by environment.

Studies show the answer seems to be a complex combination of biology, environment, and cultural influences, and attraction and identity can change over time.

ANGIE MILES: VPM News Focal Point is interested in the points of view of Virginians.

To hear more from your Virginia neighbors, and to share your own thoughts and story ideas, find us online at vpm.org/focalpoint.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Transgender policies in Virginia schools have become a political flashpoint impacting families across the commonwealth.

At the same time, many parents are learning about the trans community and what it means to be transgender and how they can help their own children.

Research indicates that parental support is critical to the health and safety of trans youth.

VPM News Senior Producer Roberta Oster introduces us to one family who opened up about their journey.

We are not using their last name in this report to respect their privacy concerns.

STEPHANIE: So we're actually both accountants, that's how we met.

We met when I interviewed him for his job.

CHAD: Long, long time ago.

COLTON: Oh!

STEPHANIE: We have two beautiful, healthy children who are completely unique in their own ways.

Ellie loves art.

She loves hanging out with her hermit crab.

She loves- CHAD: Watching "SpongeBob".

STEPHANIE: Watching "SpongeBob".

CHAD: And Colton, typical boy stuff.

"Let's talk sports.

Let's go in the backyard and kick the ball."

STEPHANIE: For me, we're living what I kind of always imagined to be the dream.

(indistinct chatter) Ellie, early on, age two, started with things like accoutrement.

There was always something extra, like a necklace.

CHAD: She always had flair.

STEPHANIE: And then it just amplified and increased in intensity and frequency as time went on.

There was a long period of time where she insisted on wearing a cape.

I can't tell you how many times she would actually put a pair of pants on her head or a towel and fashion it so that to her it felt like long hair.

CHAD: We didn't realize it then.

STEPHANIE: And we also did not realize at the time, because we just didn't know, that this is very common behavior for transgender children who were assigned male at birth.

ELLIE: I was very into fashion and dresses and makeup and hair and stuff like that.

I kind of knew since I was five or six years old that I was a girl from that age.

Just, I was very scared to tell everybody 'cause I thought no one would accept me like that.

STEPHANIE: I mean, this was a little uncomfortable at the time.

We didn't know...

I had been for probably three years, every now and then I would Google ‘signs of transgender kids early on.

She never came out and said, ‘I'm a girl, but she showed us in a thousand different ways.

There was a day when she was doing flips on the bed in a dress and she had said that when she went to school, she wanted to wear girl clothes for the upcoming school year.

I said, ‘Do you feel like a girl inside?

And she just looked at me and kind of meekly said, ‘Yes.

I hope I did a good job of masking my reaction, but inside it's like I felt like I was on fire, like, ‘Oh, God, just wave of panic.

There's nothing wrong with Ellie, there's never been anything wrong with Ellie, but knowing what we would be up against from other people was the real problem.

CHAD: All I could focus on was, ‘I don't know what this means.

I know how society treats it, but I don't know anything about it, but I love my child, so it doesn't matter.

All I ever wanted was for her to just be herself, right like, for her to feel comfortable, and I didn't care what that was.

COLTON: Press the A button.

Are you going to score a goal for him?

ELLIE: He's pretty nice.

Oh, look at that!

COLTON: At first I never knew about it, but then I started seeing the dresses and I was like, ‘What's going on?

And then I figured out, ‘Okay, so you want to be a girl, you can be a girl, I don't care.

You just do you.

STEPHANIE: Initially transitioning for a child is just social and for two years, that's all it was.

So we came out and for two years it was just name, pronouns, and really her appearance, how she dresses.

That was it.

ELLIE: It's very nice to have parents that are very supportive of me because I know some kids don't have supportive parents and what happens is sometimes they'll run away and end up homeless.

And I just feel like, ‘Why did you have kids if you're not going to accept them as who they are?

SHANNON McKAY: Well, I'm Shannon McKay, I use she/her pronouns, Executive Director and also the Co-Founder of He She Ze and We.

I have my own trans kid, that's why I do this work.

Family support is the number one protective factor for trans youth.

Sadly, only one in three trans or non-binary youth report that their family is supportive and affirming of their gender identity.

And that wrecks me.

That's why we do this work, because we can do better than that.

The Trevor Project in 2021 reported 42% of LGBTQ youth considered attempting suicide last year, and out of that number 50% were trans or non-binary.

When a young person tells us who they are, we need to believe them.

It's their truth.

It is very hard for kids to come out to their parents or to a trusted adult or to a friend and the best thing that we can do is say, ‘I believe you, I trust that you know yourself, and I'm here for you.

CHAD: What I learned is how important advocacy is.

It's not enough to just let things happen right its It's providing that support.

It's providing that affirmation.

It's providing that ‘I see you, I love you and who you are, and there are others like you and we love them too.

ELLIE: I came to school one day and I was like, ‘Hey guys I have a new name and I'm a girl now.

Everyone at school was like, ‘What?

You can't do that.

That's not what people do.

That's not normal.

It was very difficult, but then at the end of the day, I'm me.

People don't get to tell me who I am.

STEPHANIE: She's just a girl, just let her be a girl, and I'm like, yeah, she's just a girl, but there are 11 bills being proposed through the Virginia legislature this year against kids like her.

We can't just wait and hope that things will change.

Things only change because people work for change.

ELLIE: I really don't want other kids to be scared.

I really want people to feel everyone's going to accept them and they're going to be safe.

Why be mean for no reason, just because I'm not who you want me to be?

COLTON: I would say to the bullies, ‘Back off.

We're stronger than you think.

We have every right that we were born with and you can't take that away from us.

STEPHANIE: I love that picture because it's like, here's Mr. America and then here's Ellie with this get up.

CHAD: We just want to live, we just want to be us, and it just so happens this particular topic is getting more attention.

Transgender people have existed forever.

It's finally getting the light of day that it probably always should have.

We finally have social momentum to allow these conversations to happen.

STEPHANIE: There's no such thing as the normal family, but most people would just assume we're just a regular family- CHAD: In the suburbs.

Just whatever comes along with that, that's what that is.

But back to Ellie, its like, you know, I'm proud of her.

Right, I love the fact that we can provide an environment where she can be herself and she can be her best self.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: This year, Virginia's legislators considered 12 bills regarding transgender youth.

The bills ranged from limiting bathroom and sports access to restricting gender affirming care.

None of the bills passed.

Nationally, trans youth have been the subject of more proposed laws than ever before.

And according to a Washington Post analysis of third-party data, most of the proposals aim to restrict the rights of transgender people.

Chad, Stephanie, Colton, and Ellie say they will continue to fight for the rights of everyone who identifies as LGBTQ+.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: In Virginia, the debate about school policies versus parental rights continues to divide communities.

One of the most controversial bills in this year's general assembly would've required that teachers notify parents if their child identifies as transgender in school.

Joining us today to discuss this is Equality Virginia's director, Narissa Rahaman, and clinical psychologist, Dr. Erica Anderson, who is a transgender parent and the former president of the US Professional Association for Transgender Health, she refers to herself as Dr. Erica.

Dr. Erica, you've spoken out in support of parental notification.

Why do you think it's important for teachers to notify parents if their children are having conversations about their identity?

ERICA ANDERSON: Private conversations is one thing, but if a school has supported adopting a different name and different pronouns than parents know them by, that's what I'm concerned about, de facto, that is supporting a social transition of a child at school from one gender to another.

I've been speaking out saying, "I want a collaboration between educators and parents around the issues with gender-questioning youth."

For now, what I'm concerned about is schools going their own way, and in effect, creating a double life for children.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Narissa, what are your concerns about requiring notification?

NARISSA RAHAMAN: You know, if a young person does not feel safe telling their family that they're LGBTQ, their school or teacher could be putting them at serious risk by disclosing that information.

We absolutely want students, especially LGBTQ youth, to feel safe and affirmed in their school environment.

It's where they spend a majority of their day, and we know that when we affirm identities and, you know, create supportive environments for students, it can, you know, lead to academic success, and also, has just long-term mental health benefits for these kids.

You can watch the full interview on our website.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Richmond Triangle Players recently celebrated its 30th anniversary.

This nonprofit theater company, founded in 1993, is the leading performing arts organization in the mid-Atlantic, staging works rooted in the LGBTQ+ experiences.

We take you behind the curtain to see the impact of this work on the actors and the community.

PHILIP CROSBY: Back in the 1990s, when we first started operating, Richmond Triangle Players was one of the only places that a gay or lesbian couple could go on a date.

So coming to a safe space and being able to be who you were as an audience member was hugely, hugely important.

>>By Ravel >>I don't really know Ravel, what's he done?

>>What do you mean done, babe?

PHILIP CROSBY: Richmond Triangle Players is the longest operating professional theater in the entire mid-Atlantic region, with a focus on LGBTQ+ works, and developing queer artistry.

Every show we do, every show we produce is rooted in that mission.

>>Henry was the first, the only man I ever loved.

No, that's a blatant lie, and shame on me for telling it.

RAJA BENZ: Being a leading queer institution in the city of Richmond means that we have the opportunity to come across people who may not have seen themselves on stages before, welcoming in people who get to see their stories for the first time.

And that goes well beyond just a sense of entertainment, but a sense of belonging in community.

And so it's particularly thrilling to me as a trans woman of color that I get to watch my own story play out live.

PHILIP CROSBY: We believe that since this theater is staffed with folks rooted in the LGBTQ experience there's an authenticity of voice, and an authenticity of attitude.

We can tell the stories 'cause we lived 'em.

KASEY BRITT: RTP is giving the kinds of roles that people deserve to the people who deserve them.

It's taken a really long time for roles like that to exist and immediately Richmond Triangle players will find them, pull them, and be like, quick, here.

TeDARRYL PERRY: I think every piece that we do at RTP, as well as the people who are cast, and the people who work here in front of house, and people who design, there's so much love, and there's so much compassion for people, and empathy.

We're one team with one goal to represent our community.

>>Thank you.

>>Be the best you can be.

PHILIP CROSBY: I like to think that RTP and organizations like us nationwide have had a very transformational effect on society because of the stories we tell.

RAJA BENZ: Sometimes in the privacy of theater, and the privacy of our emotions and our stories, we can really step out and see what it means to be courageous, what inclusion looks like, what abolition looks like, what anti-racism looks like.

So we're sort of rehearsing that in the play and then we have to take that into our real world.

KASEY BRITT: Especially the content of the shows, making stuff that young people feel they have a voice in.

I want to draw them back in and be like, this is an important part of how the queer community has always functioned, come back to the theater.

TeDARRYL PERRY: We are representing a part of ourselves that one for a lot of us had to hide for so long.

So to be at a professional theater doing what we love, and being able to celebrate us and our community, it really feels like a safe haven.

>>Who wants a Manhattan?

PHILIP CROSBY: The LGBTQ community is changing.

This theater can support our society in brand new ways.

We're just waiting for the material to be written, and for the actors to come through our door, so that we can tell the stories.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Learn more about our stories at vpm.org/focal point There, you'll also find links to our full interview with Equality Virginia's Narissa Rahaman and Dr. Erica Anderson as well as our digital exclusive with Shannon McKay, executive director of "He She Ze and We."

Thanks for watching VPM News Focal Point.

We'll see you next time.

ANNOUNCER: Production funding for VPM News Focal Point is provided by The estate of Mrs. Ann Lee Saunders Brown.

And by... ♪ ♪