Dear Future President,

Over the past 8 years, a tremendous amount has been done to give the LGBTQ+ population their rights and representation. Between the legalizing of gay marriage in the Supreme Court, the banning of conversion therapy, and laws passed that try to eradicate gender discrimination, Obama’s terms as President have been some of the best times to identify as LGBTQ+ in American history. However, the battle for equal treatment is nowhere near over; the Orlando shooting, the largest mass shooting in American history, was a hate crime against my own community, and state governments constantly work to strip away our rights.

I ask that in the time of your presidency, you work to ensure all current rights of the people in my community are being upheld, not being revoked by individual state’s legislature. In addition, there is still a lot of work to be done for the rights of trans and genderqueer individuals, such as guaranteeing the rights to use their preferred bathroom or allowing them to change their names and pronouns legally, as well as providing adequate health services for sex reassignment surgery and hormone treatments under all health insurances.

Sincerely,

Olivia Hockley-Rodes, 16