In South Carolina, LGBTQ people are vulnerable to discrimination in many areas of life – including housing, public spaces, and health care – due to a lack of explicit nondiscrimination protections at the federal, state, and local level. Recent polling shows that 67% of South Carolinians are supportive.

This swath of bills attempt to infringe on the safety and privacy of LGBTQ+ young people, deprive all students of a diverse, inclusive education, and take away parents’ rights to protect their own children’s freedom to learn.

These bills attempt to block transgender young people’s access to transgender-related healthcare. They focus on stripping affirming medical care away from young people in South Carolina and interfering with the medical decisions made between patients, their family members, and their medical providers.

H3611 grants a broad “license to discriminate” to state agencies and contractors, including child welfare agencies, who hold anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs, including those against same-sex couples and transgender people.

These bills are attacks on the dignity and humanity of transgender South Carolinians, inserting the legislature into administrative processes that are already working effectively for LGBTQ+ people in the state.

Banning conversations about race, gender, and sexuality risk maintaining or creating education environments that are unwelcoming to students of color and LGBTQ+ students.

These bills are brazen efforts to relitigate the freedom to marry for same-sex couples. Thousands of same-sex couples have legally married in South Carolina, and they are entitled to the full dignity and respect that marriage affords to any married couple in SC.

These bills seek to push LGBTQ+ people out of public life, intimidate allies of LGBTQ+ equality, and harm LGBTQ-supportive small businesses.

These bills are attempts to limit, restrict, or outright ban abortion access in South Carolina. They differ in their language but all aim to control the bodies and personal health care decisions of pregnant people, violating control of South Carolinians’ health, dignity, and freedom.