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Shannon Gallagher and her family saw the writing on the wall as bills targeting transgender youth were being introduced in the Ohio Statehouse last year.
Their youngest child Alex, now 17, is transgender non-binary and their family no longer felt welcome in Ohio, so they moved to New York City last fall.
“It was not an easy decision,” Gallagher said. “… We decided we needed to create an environment and move somewhere where all of our family members felt wanted and appreciated for who they are.”
The Gallaghers made the decision to move in June 2023 — months after state Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickery, introduced his gender-affirming care ban bill (House Bill 68) and shortly after state Reps. Beth Lear, R-Galena, and Adam Bird, R-New Richmond, introduced a transgender bathroom ban bill (House Bill 183).
“Is this where we’re gonna call home?” Gallagher recalls thinking when she lived in Ohio. “This place obviously does not want our family here and is trying their hardest to get rid of us. That’s very much how we felt. So it’s like, why are we contributing to the economy here?”
The Gallagher family’s four children in 2017. (Photo provided by Shannon Gallagher)
It felt like there was something new every day, said Alex’s dad Eoghan Gallagher.
“Normally, that new thing that came out wasn’t encouraging,” he said.
They tried fighting by testifying against the bills.
“It just started taking a huge toll on all of us,” Shannon Gallagher said. “We just had a heart-to-heart as a family, and realized that the weight of all of that was crippling all of us and that we, unfortunately, had to leave.”
The Gallaghers moved to Ohio in 2011 after previously living in Los Angeles, Utah, and New Jersey. They had already moved from Dublin to Grandview in 2021 for the smaller school size and the gender-inclusive restrooms in the high school.
“To find out that the state could come in and tell them you can’t offer that to your students anymore was devastating,” Gallagher said. “We realized that it didn’t really matter what the school’s rules were if the state was going to change what they were allowed to do.”
In the year since their out-of-state move, Ohio’s gender-affirming care ban bill recently became law. This blocks transgender youth from starting hormone therapy and puberty blockers.
Alex started receiving gender-affirming health care at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in 2021, but the family said they were already seeing the chilling effect the bills were having on Alex’s health care.
The bathroom ban bill — which would require Ohio K-12 schools and colleges to require students to use the bathroom or locker room that aligns with their gender assigned at birth — is only one step away from being sent to Gov. Mike DeWine’s desk for his signature. The Ohio House wove H.B. 183 into Senate Bill 104, which revises the College Credit Plus Program, during the last House session in June. SB 104 passed, sending it over to the Senate for concurrence. The lawmakers are currently on break.
The Ohio Capital Journal reported earlier this year that more than 100 families with transgender members have made plans to leave Ohio.
“We realized we were in a very privileged position to be able to (move), which is one reason why we are still trying to help our friends in Ohio as much as possible,” Gallagher said. “We want to give back.”
The Gallagher family in 2016. (Photo provided by Shannon Gallagher).
Getting out of Ohio and moving to Brooklyn has been a relief for the Gallaghers.
“Everybody’s stress level just dropped,” Gallagher said. “We were holding all of this in and we knew it was bad, but we didn’t know it was as bad as it was until we got out because it was all consuming.”
New York is seen a LGBTQ friendly state. It has school nondiscrimination laws on the books that protect LGBTQ students from discrimination in school on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity and shield laws that protect gender-affirming care, according to the Movement Advancement Project.
The family’s mental health as a whole has improved dramatically since moving.
“It was night and day in a lot of ways,” Gallagher said. “There’s lots of gender neutral bathrooms everywhere we go. We used to always have to plot and plan where we would go.”
In New York City, it is illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of gender identity or expression. This includes denying access to bathrooms.
Time they previously spent protesting Ohio’s anti-transgender bills they now spend listening to K-pop, going to concerts and exploring New York.
“Our conversations don’t revolve around the nasty things (Rep.) Click is saying,” Gallagher said. “We talk about more fun things. We do a lot more as a family.”
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