In the early 2000s, Avery Belyeu was living as a gay man in New York City, starting a career in the nonprofit sector and seeking opportunities to help those who were struggling to find their identities. About 10 years ago, Belyeu became a woman.
Now the CEO of the Montrose Center, Belyeu remains steadfast in her advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community, and in Texas, that’s becoming more challenging by the day. She knows the struggles of feeling like she doesn’t belong. Raised in a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Florida, she hasn’t seen her parents in 17 years and has found that her religious beliefs align with Judaism.
“You don’t have to be alone,” she said. “A place like this was built so you don’t have to be alone. This is hard and we’re here to be a source of support.”
This week, Belyeu and the Center’s staff and clients are grappling with the fallout from the recently passed Texas House Bill 229, which strictly defines men and women based on the reproductive organs they are born with and requires state records to reflect it.
That means a person born with male organs who now identifies as female and has updated gender markers on their ID cards will likely face inconsistencies with their documentation, potentially leading to harassment as they navigate traffic stops and airport security, and try to access services. Additionally, transgender people may be barred from using certain bathrooms, shelters or locker rooms.
Belyeu’s transition included medical interventions and most of her legal identification reflects her sex as female. The new Texas laws won’t go into effect until September 1, but there’s already fear among the trans community that their identities are being erased, Belyeu said.
“Trans people should have the freedom and the autonomy to make whatever decisions feel right for them about their bodies and about their legal status as a human and a citizen of this country,” she said. “What we are unfortunately seeing in this moment is a persistent attack on trans people’s rights, not just youth but now also adults, to have the freedom to choose what happens to our bodies and the freedom to belong in spaces.
“When you pass laws saying that some people can’t have accurate documentation and that their sex assigned at birth has to be displayed in their medical records, the message being sent is that trans people do not belong, that there is not a space or a place for trans people to exist.”
HB 229’s author, Ellen Troxclair, R-Austin, says it “lays out the biological truth for anyone who is confused.”
Senate Bill 1257, which de-incentivizes insurers from covering trans care for youth and adults, also passed in the Texas legislative session that ended in June.
“How this will play out across the next many months, legal organizations and advocates will be analyzing and talking about what it means,” Belyeu said. “I assume they will be considering every possible avenue to combat these.”
Opponents of HB 229, including ACLU of Texas and the Texas Freedom Network, say the new law is “incredibly disrespectful,” discriminates against the trans community and disregards their identities. But no one really knows yet how it will be enforced and what the implications could be.
“They’re not easily enforceable and they’re creating a problem where there is not a problem,” Belyeu said. “Where we’ve seen an elevated concern about trans people existing, for example, in bathrooms, what we’ve seen over and over again is that when people have taken it upon themselves to try to elevate a concern about a person in a restroom, most frequently the person is not even a trans person.”
It puts private citizens in the position of trying to determine whether a person is trans, Belyeu said.
“What does this create in our society where we’re inviting citizens to become gatekeepers of how people are supposed to look?” she said. “That’s an attack on all women’s bodies because then any woman who falls outside of a particular deemed norm is perhaps trans and there are lots of people who do not follow the gender norms because of height or how they choose to groom themselves.”
Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston opposed HB 229, saying in May: “The reality is this bill, however you couch it, is about eliminating the existence of trans individuals in Texas. Stop pretending that you’re for freedom. Stop pretending that this is about the kids.”
A federal judge this week blocked President Trump’s executive order that limits passport sex markers for transgender and nonbinary Americans. Under the federal injunction signed Tuesday, people who are currently without a valid passport, those whose passport is expiring within a year, and those who need to apply for a passport because theirs was lost or stolen or because they need to change their name or sex designation can use the “X” identification marker instead of choosing “male” or “female.”
That sounds like good news for the trans community but it just adds to the confusion, some say. People don’t have clarity around conflicting state and federal laws and Trump has repeatedly issued orders that have later been walked back or overturned by a court.
Houston’s LGBTQ+ advocates joined the No Kings protest on Saturday and will be at the upcoming Houston Pride Festival and Parade, set for June 28 at Houston City Hall. A festival will be held from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., with the parade beginning at sunset.
While they’re fed up with the harassment, the LGBTQ+ community is also empowered by the bravery they’ve seen in those who are standing up to Trump and the Republican-majority Texas Legislature, Belyeu said.
Joe Mendoza, a volunteer with the Houston Human Rights Campaign, spoke at a June 14 protest about how legislation intended to stifle the LGBTQ+ community harms everyone.
“Over the time [Trump] has been in power, the Klansmen pulling the strings have continuously assaulted the foundations of our republic with their blitzkrieg against the Constitution and Bill of Rights to try to create cracks in that foundation,” Mendoza said. “Through history, we know that any cracks in the foundation are only the first step in their attempt to crumble the institutions of our democracy and establish authoritarianism.
“We know that attacks against the LGBTQ community will not stay isolated to just us queer folk,” he added. “We know that when they come for one of us, they will come for all of us.”
The passage of HB 229 may not seem like a big deal to people outside of the trans community, but it will force more than 120,000 Texans to be defined by the sex they were assigned at birth, even if they’ve legally changed their birth certificates and driver’s licenses, Belyeu said.
To make matters worse for the trans community, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that Tennessee’s gender-affirming care ban, similar to a Texas statute, is constitutional.
Texas law currently “prohibits doctors from prescribing medical treatments, like hormone therapy and puberty blockers, to help a minor transition,” the Texas Tribune reported. “These treatments are recommended by all major medical associations to treat gender dysphoria, a medical condition related to the distress someone can feel when the sex they were assigned at birth doesn’t align with their gender identity.”
The Texas ban, adopted in 2022, has forced some parents to take their children out of state for gender-affirming care and prompted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to sue doctors he alleges are still providing such treatments. A lot of people are leaving Texas permanently because of the anti-trans legislation, Belyeu said.
“It’s a misuse of public resources to target trans people in this way,” she said. “Secondarily, there seems to be a message of, you don’t belong here. As a result, many trans people have felt that they don’t want to continue to stay where they don’t belong, where that sensitivity is not being given.”
Belyeu said she expects more legal challenges to both state and federal laws targeting the trans community and “how states will act on this and interpret this still remains to be seen.”
Belyeu says continued disrespect for the LGBTQ+ community motivates her to speak out but it can also be overwhelming.
“It is ironic that yesterday we got the news that the dedicated [U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] LGBTQ+ suicide prevention line is going to be discontinued and then the following day we get notice of a negative Supreme Court ruling on transgender care,” she said. “The goal is to overwhelm. However, the struggle is not new, the fight is not new, and, in fact, where we are today is so much farther along than where we were even a decade ago.
“For folks who may be feeling despair and overwhelmed, I would name that this is also a moment to remember that we enjoy a lot of freedom that our ancestors could not have even dreamed of. This is Pride Month, and we’ve just gotten a really blunt reminder that the work still continues.
“The way the queer community chooses to respond is by coming together and making a public display of the fact that we are not afraid. We are not backing down. We are not going away. And we do belong. We belong in Houston, we belong in Texas, and we belong in these United States.”
