A few years ago, Sarah Celotto would have described herself as someone who was raised Catholic, traditionally voted as a Republican, and who “was very unsure about the LGBTQ+ community altogether.”
That changed, however, when one of her children said they wanted to transition. The love of her child came first, Celotto said — so she began her research.
Cameron, Celotto’s transgender son who medically transitioned, inspired the creation of her own nonprofit that provides support to queer youth and their families.
Her son’s transition also led to a pivotal change in her political identification and how she’s approaching the upcoming presidential election.
“I’m registered as an independent. I’m not thrilled with our Democrat candidate, but I also will absolutely not vote for Donald Trump. It’s a very easy decision for me because what Donald Trump says about the transgender community is just horrendous,” Celotto said, citing false claims from the former president about children undergoing transgender surgery in schools.
“My big worry is that when you have somebody like that as the head [of the country], you’re gonna have all these other people who come out and they agree, and now they feel they have a platform to stand on for all this anti-trans rhetoric,” Celotto said. “It took 14 years [for my son] to really, truly feel like he belonged in this world, and the thought that could be taken away is terrifying.”
In recent weeks, GOP campaigns, including those of lawmakers in Ohio, Montana, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin and presidential candidate Donald Trump, have spent millions on anti-trans campaign ads. Trump alone has spent over $19 million on two commercials that have aired over 55,000 times as of Oct. 1, particularly during NFL and college football games, CBS News reported.
“This election means a lot to me and my friends who are part of the [LGBTQ+] community … because this is going to say what our future looks like,” Cameron Celotto, 17, said. “It’s crazy that this election is whether or not we have access to our basic health care needs.”
“I cannot believe that something is being pushed so hard and talked about so much that affects a very tiny percentage of this country,” Sarah Celotto added.
The Celottos aren’t alone in their concerns. Other Connecticut families of transgender or queer youths believe the outcome of the presidential election could define what accessibility to health care, safer school environments and combating misinformation will look like across the United States.
The televised ads build on rhetoric that has caused ongoing concerns for students, their families and school staffs, including a slew of book challenges in schools and local libraries on work featuring the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ individuals, both in Connecticut and across the country, and pushback on newly expanded Title IX protections regarding sex-based discrimination.
“There’s now hundreds of pieces of legislation introduced across the country that aim to take away the rights of transgender people and children,” said Melissa Combs, the founder of the Out Accountability Project and the mother of a transgender youth.
“In terms of the election itself, there’s an enormous amount of concern about the outcome,” Combs added. “Some of the things being said — if they come to fruition — then I have a very real problem on my hands with my son’s well-being and emotional health if we no longer have access to medical care and other things also.”
In a campaign video released in February 2023, Trump called gender-affirming health care for youth “child abuse” and said “left-wing gender insanity” was being “pushed on our children.” In the video, Trump announced his plan to “stop the chemical, physical, and emotional mutilation of our youth,” and as of late August, 26 states have enacted laws or policies limiting youth access to gender-affirming care, according to KFF.
Pamela Einarsen, a Westport parent of a transgender woman who transitioned at the age of 28, said decisions about gender identity should be left up to families and their doctors.
“It really upsets me that people seem to think on certain sides of the situation right now that they can make decisions for families. I’ve seen it where there’s senators and people that are making these decisions that aren’t informed by the medical community, but they’re making decisions just based on who knows what,” Einarsen said. “It’s really frightening, and it concerns me for my daughter, because I don’t want her to be targeted depending on how the election goes.”
Despite direct attacks against her by Trump and other GOP lawmakers, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris wasn’t very vocal on the issue of queer rights since accepting the presidential bid in July — until recently.
In an interview with NBC on Oct. 22, the vice president reaffirmed her commitment to providing gender-affirming care and support for the transgender community.
“I believe that people, as the law states, even on this issue about federal law, that that is a decision that doctors will make in terms of what is medically necessary. I’m not going to put myself in a position of a doctor,” Harris said in the interview. “I believe that all people should be treated with dignity and respect, period, and should not be vilified for who they are and should not be bullied for who they are.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, criticized Trump’s campaign ads in a podcast earlier this month.
“They’re running millions of dollars of ads demonizing folks who are just trying to live their lives,” Walz said.
In Connecticut, state officials have doubled-down on becoming one of the more progressive states in the country, with added protections for transgender youth.
Earlier this year, the state Department of Education released its “Guidance on Civil Rights Protections and Supports for Transgender or Gender-Diverse Students,” which made some changes to previous state-issued guidance and clarified federal and state laws to make clear that schools must treat all students, regardless of their gender identity, equitably in academic and extracurricular settings.
The document now makes it clear that a Connecticut student under the age of 18 is not able to formally change their name or gender on their student records without parental permission. However, a student can ask a school and its staff to acknowledge their gender identity even if it’s different than what’s written in their file.
The guidance adds that Connecticut schools must recognize and respect a student’s preferences, and that refusing to use a student’s preferred pronouns or call the student a particular name may “constitute gender-based discrimination” and be “deemed discriminatory under Title IX.”
Regardless of state efforts, families continue to worry about bullying.
In 2023, the state legislature passed a school climate initiative that’s meant to promote a safe and accepting learning environment through the use of national guidelines, the creation of a bullying complaint form and the creation of several new practices for local implementation.
Parents of queer youth, like Combs, say that despite “amazing safe school climate statues and non-discrimination statues, that doesn’t mean that they’re being executed properly on the ground in real life.”
“[Bullying is] prevalent. It’s an epidemic,” Combs said. “The state Department of Education does not keep data on verified acts of bullying aimed at the transgender or even LGBTQ+ community as a whole, so we don’t know the scale. We need that data.”
Some parents believe that bullying has particularly picked up in recent months, coinciding with the election.
“Let’s be honest — these kids are hearing and believing everything that their parents are saying. So if their parents are at home saying that this whole transgender thing is ridiculous, and it’s baloney, and it’s a social contagion, and all this stuff — they’re going to believe what they hear,” Celotto said. “[My son] has been chased down the road [and] called a tranny. His [birth] name has been yelled out to him from cars numerous times. … He wants to get out of this town as soon as he can.”
Students also say they’ve seen an uptick of anti-trans rhetoric on social media.
“I have noticed a lot more on social media starting about a month ago, around the same time the anti-trans ads started,” said Vin, 15, Combs’ son.
“The stuff passing around on social media is just fueling a lot of people in negative ways,” Cameron said. “People think they can say whatever they want behind screens without consequences.”
There’s been other cases of resistance in the state too.
Earlier this year, a tampon dispenser was torn down minutes after its installation in a boys bathroom at Brookfield High School. In 2023, there were ban challenges to books with LGBTQ+ themes and characters in Newtown, and a Connecticut court case made national headlines for challenging the state’s trans-inclusive sports policy.
The “Let Kids be Kids” coalition, a group of elected officials — including legislators Mark Anderson, R-Granby, and Anne Dauphinais, R-Killingly — and religious leaders and parents advocated for the Education Committee to consider two bills in 2024. The first piece of legislation would have mandated teachers disclose to parents if their child started using different pronouns at school and the other would have required student athletes to participate in sports teams that correlate to their birth gender.
The Education Committee declined to raise the bills, and neither concept got public hearings, but it didn’t thwart future plans by the coalition.
“I am actually very encouraged, because we grew awareness at the General Assembly this year,” Leslie Wolfgang, director of public policy at the Family Institute, wrote in a statement to The Connecticut Mirror in May. “This session was just the first step in a multi-year process to grow awareness and look for ways to balance the needs of all children and their families in Connecticut.”
The Family Institute of Connecticut, a nonprofit social welfare organization that’s advocated against abortion, did not make a political endorsement for either presidential candidate, but Wolfgang told the CT Mirror they “encourage everyone to vote and consider these important issues on a state and national level.”
Wolfgang said the organization doesn’t have a “position on adult transition at this time” but heavily criticized gender-affirming care for teenagers.
“Teenagers are minors, and ‘gender-affirming care,’ including social transition, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical interventions, is one of the biggest medical scandals in modern history and these minor children and their families are victims,” Wolfgang said in an emailed statement. “Medical mutilation of children and pausing puberty indefinitely will never be good medical practice and we are concerned when doctors and schools appear to be withholding important medical information from parents.”
Wolfgang added that “politics has become the last realm of common sense since doctors, the media and trusted institutions have been misleading families to believe that unless they support a gender transition their child will commit suicide.”
But the transgender youth undergoing these changes and their families disagree.
“They aren’t handing out gender-affirming care on street corners; it’s a process that involves trained doctors and nurses,” Vin said. “By age 4, most children have a sense of their gender identity. I knew I was trans for a long time before I came out. It affected my mental health, not understanding who I am. People should understand that all medical care is gender-affirming care — and no, schools are not performing surgeries on children.”
Both Combs and Celotto said health care accessibility saved their sons’ lives.
“[My son] was very, very, very unhappy for a long time and was engaging in all sorts of dangerous behaviors that led him into the hospital and psychiatric wards and residential treatment centers, etc., etc.,” Celotto said. “Eventually, when he finally had the strength to come out to us as transgender — and to himself, quite frankly — we were able to start the journey of making him feel whole, and helping him heal. Now he’s 17, and he’s a much happier individual who now sees a future for himself.”
“What I like to just remind people of is that — and I can personally put it to my own 17 year old child — he’s just trying to live his life. He’s a good kid. He’s a good person. He does not have a mean bone running through his body,” Celotto added. “I just wish that people would understand that, and maybe, instead of jumping on things, maybe they would take a second to realize what this must be like for the children and their families.”