The Trevor Project
The Trevor Project is a national organization that provides crisis intervention, supportive counseling, and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ+ people from that ages of 13 to 24. The organization was founded in 1999, and offers a 24-hour crisis line. The organization also offers text and online messaging options for crisis intervention, and multiple suicide prevention training workshops.
Additionally, the Trevor Project conducts data-based research an analysis that helps them better serve at-risk LGBTQ+ youth, and advocate for policy and and legislation that protects and empowers LGBTQ+ youth. If you are thinking about suicide, you deserve to get the help you need. You can learn more, and access the a 24-hour crisis hotline, by visiting the Trevor Project's website.
Trans Lifeline
Trans Lifeline runs a hotline for trans identified people, staffed entirely by trans identified people. This national non-profit is ready to respond with any support needs 18 hours a day, every day of the week. Trans Lifeline specializes primarily in crisis intervention, but they encourage calls for any reason. “If you are not sure if you should call or not, then please call us.”
It’s also important to note that Trans Lifeline may be able to connect you or a loved one with access to other resources. Trans Lifeline will not contact emergency services until the caller has expressed consent. You can learn more about Trans Lifeline by visiting their website. If you would like to help make Trans Lifeline a 24/7 resource, please donate!
DeQH
DeQH is an online, confidential, resource designed specifically for LGBTQIA+ folks who are South Asian. This resource is comprised of trained LGBTQ+ South Asian volunteers, and they encourage users to write or call about both struggles and successes. If you need to find a lawyer, therapist, or doctor, DeQH may be able to help. They also specialize in navigating South Asian familial culture throughout the coming out process, and may be able to provide support to friends and family members of LGBTQIA+ South Asian folks as well.
DeQH is specifically designed to serve, “people of South Asian heritage, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Tibet, as well as from South Asian communities in diaspora, such as Fiji and the Caribbean.” DeQH's website also explicitly notes that they are prepared to serve kothi and hijra folks in addition to those who self-identify as LGBTQIA+.
GLSEN
GLSEN, or the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network provides students, teachers, and parents with dozens of outstanding resources. GLSEN advocates specifically for LGBTQ+ people in grades K-12, and has crafted programs to help educators establish and maintain safe spaces for LGBTQ+ young people in schools, launched several anti-bullying initiatives, and provided guidelines and classroom resources for creating an LGBTQ+ inclusive curriculum.
Despite an intilialism that doesn't quite indicate inclusion, GLSEN is a vital and versatile resources for students and educators alike. If you are an LGBTQ+ student who is struggling, or an educator interested in providing safe and inclusive spaces where all students can learn, you can learn more about how GLSEN can help by visiting their website.
The Silvia Rivera Law Project
Founded by transgender rights advocate Dean Spade in memory and honor of transgender rights advocate and LGBTQ+ icon Silvia Rivera, the Silvia Rivera Law Project offers prison advocacy services, as well several different types of legal assistance.
Silvia Rivera was a radical activist and gay liberation advocate. In the 1970’s, she and fellow gay history icon Marsha P. Johnson co-founded STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), a group dedicated to providing access to housing and other resources for young trans women, gender non-conforming people, and drag queens living in New York City. While Johnson and Rivera were also founding members of the Gay Liberation Front, which formed in direct response to the Stonewall Riots in the summer of 1969, Rivera discussed in later interviews the ways in which trans and gender non-conforming people of color were still ostracized by the burgeoning gay rights movement.
Rivera was orphaned before she turned eleven, and lived in the streets until she was taken in by a group of drag queens. Born to Venezuelan and Puerto Rican parents, Rivera engaged in activism throughout the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-war movement. She also periodically faced homelessness, struggled with addiction, and performed sex work. Much of Rivera’s experience of the world was informed not only by her identity as a trans person of color, but by her experiences of violence, poverty, and addiction.
Throughout the last five years of her life, Rivera fought vehemently against the assimalist goals of the modern LGBTQ+ movement (i.e. military service, marriage, etc.) and attacked the Human Rights Campaign openly for ignoring the systemic violence produced upon trans and gender non-conforming people, who often face homelessness, lifelong poverty, brutal physical violence, and other forms of systemic discrimination and erasure. Sylvia Rivera died in 2002.
If you are in need of the legal or advocacy services that the Silvia Rivera Law Project offers, would like to donate, or would like to learn more about the project, please visit the Silvia Rivera Law Project’s website.
The National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance
NQAPIA is, in their own words, “a federation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Asian American, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander (AAPI) organizations.” NQAPIA has launched several culturally specific campaigns in an effort to promote acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities in Asian American, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander families. They host an annual national conference, provide comprehensive resources to better understand the complexities of immigration, and explore the effects that DACA and the Trump Administration’s Muslim bans might have on Asian American, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander in the United States.)
NQAPIA has also compiled an extensive list of legal resources for DACA recipients and DACA-eligable youth, organized meticulously by state. If you would like to learn more about the services NQAPIA offers, or you would like to donate, please visit their website.
Prison Activist Resource Center
This prison abolitionist group based on Oakland, California, provides a comprehensive list of resources for incarcerated LGBTQ+ folks. For trans women in particular, the systemic violence, discrimination, and targeted harassment by prisoners and staff alike can be a death sentence. PARC is committed to “exposing and challenging the institutionalized racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, and classism of the Prison Industrial Complex,” and act as a point of contact between prisoners and support systems.
The resources that PARC lists here are vital in providing incarcerated LGBTQ+ people with legal assistance, healthcare and pre-release resources, as well as connecting them with pen pals and support networks on the outside. If you or an LGBTQ+ loved one are currently incarcerated, or faced with the possibility of incarceration, the Prison Activist Resource Center is a good place to gather resources and get help.
Queerability
Founded by Kristen Guin, who is also a chapter leaded for the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, Queerability is an LGBTQ+ disability rights organization founded and operated by LGBTQ+ people with disabilities. Their online presence includes a long-running blog that allows users to submit their own stories and aims to increase the visibility and amplify the voices of LGBTQ+ people with disabilities. Queerability is accessible, comprehensive, and constantly examines the intersections of ableism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny. You can also access articles, features, statements, resources, and community networks facilitated by Queerability through their Twitter account and Facebook page.
I am not Haraam
Queer Muslims
These blogs, founded by LGBTQIA+ Muslim people for LGBTQIA+ Muslim people, function as complex support networks and provide an infinite amount of resources and affirmation.
While blogs are informal, their value shouldn’t be underestimated. These two blogs in particular explore the intersections race, ethnicity, religion, class, and queerness through poetry, art, performance, and the telling of personal narratives. If you are a Muslim person who also identifies as LGBTQIA+, these blogs are a wonderful places to find your footing and find communinity.
PFLAG
PFLAG, or Parents, Friends, and Families of Lesbians and Gays, is an international organization founded in 1972 by Jeanne Manford after she walked in the New York City Pride parade in support of her son, Morty. PFLAG is a national organization that offers a whole host of resources to help parents, families, and LGBTQ+ people themselves navigate the personal politics of moving through the world as an LGBTQ+ person.
If you are the parent or family member of an LGBTQ+ person, or an LGBTQ+ person whose family might be struggling with the idea of your identity, PLFAG may be able to provide you with resources to help. You can learn more by visiting PFLAG's website, or searching for a local chapter.
Guidelines for the Primary and Gender-Affirming Care of Transgender and Gender Non-Binary People
The Center for Excellence in Transgender Health at the University of California offers a comprehensive guide to transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary specific medical treatment. Trans, gender non-conforming, and non-binary people often have difficulty accessing primary care due to discrimination, and often postpone seeking care, or are denied care entirely based on their gender identities.
This comprehensive guide includes information on hormone replacement therapy, and aims to "address these disparities by equipping primary care providers and health systems with the tools and knowledge to meet the health care needs of their transgender and gender nonconforming patients." While this resource is billed as a set of guidelines for care providers, it also functions as a comprehensive healthcare resource for trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people and their loved ones.
Keshet
Keshet, which translates to “Rainbow” in Hebrew, is a national organization that advocates for full affirmation and inclusion of LGBTQIA+ individuals in Jewish life. Keshet’s equality guided allows users to search for LGBTQ+ friendly Jewish organizations, including community centers, high schools, synagogues anywhere in the world.
Keshet also offers leadership training, safe spaces for Jewish LGBTQ+ identified teens, support networks for parents and allies of LGBTQ+ people in Jewish communities, and opportunities for actvism. Keshet also hosts an extensive archive of LGBTQ+ resources that include queer readings of traditional Jewish texts.
Keshet’s mission is rooted in more than just the tolerance or reluctant acceptance of LGBTQ+ people in the Jewish community. Rather, Keshet suggests that the resources and theories of change they offer might actively create “a future where the ethos of justice, caring, and inclusion that encapsulates the best of Jewish tradition is seen and felt by all Jewish youth and adults – gay, lesbian, bisexual, straight, and/or transgender.” To learn more about the services and resources Keshet offers, please visit their website.
The Williams Institute
The Williams Institute, based at the UCLA School of Law, is a public policy research institute that focuses primarily on issues that pertain to gender identity and sexual orientation. Much of the information cited in this project comes from studies, surveys, and reports conducted and published either by the Williams Institute, or in conjunction with the Williams Institute. It’s important to remember that because othering often occurs via public policy, public policy can also act as a powerful tool of change for marginalized populations. To learn more about the Williams Institute’s mission, and browse the dozens of studies and reports they've published, please visit their website.
The Human Rights Campaign
The Human Rights Campaign is the largest political advocacy group for LGBTQIA+ people in the United States.
HRC has largely focused on pushing for non-discrimination policy and the legalization of same-sex marriage, which offers LGBTQ+ families legal protections, allows more LGBTQ+ parents to foster and adopt children, and increases LGBTQ+ families’ access to healthcare. However, more radical critics have suggested that in focusing primarily on marriage legalization, HRC has failed to accommodate the specific needs of other, often more vulnerable segments of the LGBTQ+ population, whose concerns are rooted in violence and survival, not marriage. Additionally, HRC’s support for transgender individuals have been publicly called into question, and the organization's ties to the Democratic party and large corporations make some LGBTQ+ advocates uncomfortable.
It's important remember that HRC has funded and published groundbreaking surveys and reports, and is often at the forefront of policy change. You can learn more about the Human Right's Campaign by visiting their website.
Q Christian Fellowship
Q Christian Fellowship is a national organization that offers faith-based resources specifically designed to “equip churches, educate lay people, build supportive communities, influence key thought leaders, foster self-acceptance, and advocate on behalf of the marginalized and oppressed.”
Q Christian Fellowship offers dozens of resources for LGBTQIA+ people who may have been hurt by their own religious communities as a result of their actual or perceived sexual orientations or gender identities. They offer online resources and an annual conference that features a diverse set of speakers and presentations. Presentation and lecture topics range from the intersections of race, sexuality, and faith, to the importance of protecting LGBTQ+ youth from conversion therapy, to tips for squashing internalized homophobia. These annual conferences do charge an attendance fee, but there are scholarship programs available. If you're interested in attending a conference, or would like to learn more about Q Christian Fellowship's mission, please visit their website.
GLAAD
Formed in the fall of 1985 in response to the New York Post’s coverage of the HIV/AIDS crisis, GLAAD, or, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, is a media monitoring organization that advocates for LGBTQ+ inclusion onscreen and functions as a kind of watchdog for the defamation of LGBTQ+ people in media.
Additionally, GLAAD runs the world’s largest anti-bullying awareness campaign, monitors pundits and commentators who use anti-LGBTQ+ language through their Commentator Accountability Project, and maintains a Studio Responsibility Index, which keeps track of “the quantity, quality and diversity of images of LGBT people in films released by six major motion picture studios.”
The Intersex Society of North America
The Intersex Society of North American is a now defunct group comprised of intersex individuals dedicated to providing support, advocacy and educational material to and about intersex people for intersex people themselves, their families, and healthcare providers. While ISNA is no longer an operating organization, their website still includes valuable and comprehensive information. If you or a loved one are looking for more information on intersex individuals and communities, ISNA's site is a good place to start.
United Church of Christ
Here, the United Church of Christ explains the concept of Open and Affirming churches (sometimes abbreviated as ONA), and describes the requirements that a church must meet in order to be categorized as open and affirming. Here, the UCC provides training resources and toolkits to help facilitate the ONA process and the building of an inclusive church.
These resources may be useful if you or a loved one are struggling to reconcile your Christian faith with acceptance and affirmation of LGBTQ+ individuals and identities, or if you are looking for ways to make your own place of worship not only inclusive, but deeply affirming for LGBTQ+ people. To learn more about the United Church of Christ's mission, please visit their website.
