It’s a good day for LGBTQ people in the Empire State.
State lawmakers in Albany have officially passed two pieces of inclusive legislation: one protecting transgender residents from discrimination, and another banning gay conversion therapy for minors.
For more than a decade, Democrats in the state legislature have tried to pass the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), a trans-inclusive add-on to 2002’s Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act protecting gay, lesbian, and bisexual New Yorkers. With Republicans in control of the Senate until very recently, the bill failed to make it to the governor’s desk, meaning trans and gender non-conforming New Yorkers weren’t technically protected from gender-based discrimination under state legislation.