SEATTLE — On Seattle’s Capitol Hill, visible from Interstate 5, illuminated messages project onto a church’s western façade.
“Protect trans kids,” reads the latest message, visible nightly through the end of June. “Protect trans lives,” flashed on the building the week before.
The projected light display is the latest joint advocacy effort from Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral and the ACLU of Washington.
“Saint Mark’s Cathedral serves as a beacon on the hill above Seattle, visible to thousands each day” said the Rev. Steven L. Thomason, the church’s dean. “We just recognize that at this time in our nation, there is such a hyper-polarized rhetoric and that leans toward violence.”
In 2021, a year after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police, the church and ACLU displayed “George Floyd Should Still Be Alive Today” during a community memorial, followed nightly by different names of people killed by police in Western Washington.
The next year, the display read, “Families Belong Together,” celebrating developments in Jaime Rubio Sulficio’s immigration case. Sulficio, a Mexican immigrant, had taken sanctuary at the church so he could stay with his family while under threat of deportation.
The third installment of the Projecting Justice project aims to show support for the LGBTQ+ community, raise awareness of existing protections and draw focus on anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the country.
This year, lawmakers in several states introduced almost 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills, most of which target transgender and nonbinary people, the ACLU said.
Missouri passed a bill restricting gender-affirming health care for minors and some adults, for example, while Nebraska lawmakers passed a similar law blocking minors, which in the state include those under 19, from accessing gender-affirming care.
This year, state House lawmakers across the country have introduced more anti-LGBTQ+ bills than in each of the previous five years, according to the Human Rights Campaign. By May, 70 had passed across the country.
Washington recently passed a series of bills protecting abortion access, reproductive health care and gender-affirming care, including a “shield law” legislators passed in April that protects those receiving or providing gender-affirming care, as well as abortion, from out-of-state legal action.
Leah Rutman, health care and liberty counsel for the ACLU of Washington, said the legislation offers critical protections that Washington leaders must work to uphold as LGBTQ+ people’s rights are under threat elsewhere.
“Everyone has the right to be themselves fully and freely,” Rutman said in the statement.
