I think there's been a tremendous amount of progress,
certainly under the Obama administration so many doors at the federal level opened.
A lot of administrative progress,
social security, State Department,
things of that sort. The Affordable Care Act.
Huge, you know, absolutely huge impact
on transgender individuals' ability to access health care.
And currently of course, you know,
there's tremendous questions about where that goes in the future.
But my sense is for many reasons,
whether they're legal cases,
whether there are stories of families who are coming out,
stories of prominent people in the news who are coming out.
I think my perception is that in general people are
becoming more aware that there are transgender individuals,
both adults and kids,
in Minnesota, in their communities,
and that they're not scary and terrifying people,
and they're just, you know,
they're in this unusual situation and they have
particular kinds of needs around documentation or access to space or what have you.
And that although we're seeing efforts by opponents to demonize transgender people,
to promote fear of transgender people.
More and more people are responding with openness
to those experiences and try to figure out how we can do best to serve trans people.
So there's not a tremendous amount of progress,
there will continue to be a lot of progress and
there will continue to be steps forward and steps back, would be my guess.
But I think overall,
I think the future looks good.
I'm confident that movement overall will continue in the right direction.