CLEVELAND — Nationwide, state legislators have introduced more anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in 2023 alone than any other single year. Here in Ohio, a number of bills are currently in play, including two passed by the House on Wednesday.
The Buckeye Flame, Ohio's only LGBTQ+ publication, has been covering the ongoing frustrations surrounding such legislation here in the state since it began.
"A few weeks ago, one of the Republican representatives said, 'It's not affecting people living here at all. It's not affecting people's decisions to move here,'" Ken Schneck, editor of the Buckeye Flame, said. "That is categorically not true."
When the Buckeye Flame was founded three years ago, Schneck made the move from Vermont to Ohio to become editor. However, as a member of the queer community, the decision came with a lot more consequences.
"In those seven and a half hours, I left behind in my rear view mirror all of my legal rights as an LGBTQ person," he lamented.
It was a change that he says he had a hard time accepting.
"At the start, I had a really hard time separating myself from the work, and so I would sit and watch a hearing with folks saying some horrible things about the LGBTQ+ community," he recounted. "And then you couldn't talk to me for the rest of the day because I couldn't reconcile the fact that I live here in a state where there are people who are only a few miles away saying these horrible things about my community, and then I would have to write about them."
And while June should be marked with celebrations of Pride, Schneck and his team have been working harder than ever as they document what he calls an attack on LGBTQ rights as a whole, but specifically targeting the youth.
"There's all these scare tactics that I thought we left behind decades ago of associating LGBTQ people with predators," Schneck explained. "That's some early '80s, late '70s stuff right there, but it's being brought back because they know that it plays."
The proposed bills cover a range of topics, including banning transgender females from women's sports, banning transgender medical care for children, and requiring the reporting of students who question their sexual identity in school. The Ohio House approved two such bills — HB 8 and HB 68 — on Wednesday, with the Senate set to consider both next.
As for the Buckeye Flame's role in LGBTQ+ history, Schneck says they're doing their absolute best to get things right.
"We feel a lot of pressure," he said. "We are not anti-Ohio at the Buckeye Flame, and that's where we have to remind ourselves. It wasn't the article, it wasn't the reporting; it's the actual facts of what's happening here."
But in order to see change, Schneck say it's going to take both action and collaboration.
"I think it's going to require that people be less complacent, and this is in some ways a call to action," he explained. "You have to be informed. ... It's not just a pitch to read the Buckeye Flame; you actually have to be informed, because you can't do anything if you don't know that this is happening here."
For an in depth look at LGBTQ legislation coverage from the Buckeye Flame, click here.