Top: Organizer Kirill Staklo. "Trans people have always been the canary in the coal mine,” he said. Bottom: Jessie Simpson, who teaches history, psychology and law at Metropolitan Business Academy, with rising Metro senior Mason Angkapatyakit, who has received gender-affirming care from YNHH. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Over 100 people closed their eyes across the New Haven Green as Kirill Staklo gripped a mic, and lifted it to his mouth. “If you are somebody or love somebody whose life was saved by gender-affirming care,” he said, “raise your hand please.”
A few dozen hands went up. Then a dozen more. Within seconds, it was close to 100. Breath rose and fell over the Green. Buses rolled by on Chapel Street. In the crowd, a sign that read Shame On YNHH in pink and green letters caught in the afternoon light and glowed. Mason Angkapatyakit, a rising senior at Metropolitan Business Academy, soaked in the moment.
“Now open your eyes.” Attendees looked around, some already fighting back tears, like they were seeing something for the first time.
A rallying cry for gender-affirming healthcare—particularly and urgently for trans youth—blanketed the Green Thursday afternoon, as over 100 people called for its swift and permanent reinstatement at Yale New Haven Health and Connecticut Children’s Hospital, and a stronger commitment from the state to protect trans people and provide them with the healthcare they need.
That includes, organizers said, a reassessment of the state’s fiscal guardrails to extend healthcare coverage to those who may lose it in the next year, in the wake of Donald Trump’s massive spending bill.
Dr. Liza E. Goldman Huertas and Sam Morrison.
It comes just two weeks after Yale Medicine and Yale New Haven Health sent a letter to parents and families in its Pediatric Gender Program that it would no longer provide gender-affirming care to youth aged 19 and under. That includes, for instance, hormone replacement therapy and puberty blockers—medically sound, rigorously studied approaches that have a direct correlation with improved mental health outcomes and significantly reduced chance of self-harm.
In over an hour, activists, educators, healthcare workers, artists and labor organizers all noted that such care isn’t just lifesaving: it’s tied to the wellbeing of all people, and of democracy itself.
“For those with the people in your lives that don’t care about trans rights specifically because they feel like there are bigger things to be concerned about: trans people have always been the canary in the coal mine,” said Staklo, a founding member of Trans Haven and the Connecticut branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). “Whenever they’ve started discriminating against us legally, it started a long line of discrimination and abuse against other working-class people. That’s always been the case.”
Capitulating to the Trump Administration does not work, he added. At the time it sent the letter, Yale Medicine maintained that the decision, which it called a difficult one, was in keeping with the Trump Administration’s crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights and its executive orders restricting access to gender-affirming care. In the days and weeks since, Connecticut has joined 17 states, as well as the District of Columbia, in suing the Trump Administration over the decision.
“The attack on trans youth is an attempt to foreclose the possibility of trans life," said Eric Maroney (top photo), an English instructor at CT State Gateway and a member of the American Federation of Teachers or AFT. Long before he was an educator, Maroney said, he was a young trans kid, receiving vital care at Connecticut Children’s.
“Yale New Haven has the economic resources to fight back against the Trump Administration, and they’ve decided not to do so,” chimed in fellow PSL member Sam Morrison, who is studying social work at Southern Connecticut State University. “They’ve decided that trans people are disposable. They’ve decided that trans people do not deserve protection.”
As the afternoon cooled on the Green, speaker after speaker stressed the need to understand that gender-affirming care—which is “not difficult care,” said Dr. Liza E. Goldman Huertas emphatically—is often a lifeline, the thing that stands between a young person and the life-threatening physical and psychological harm that gender dysphoria, depression, bullying, and emotional isolation can create.
In 2024, the Trevor Project reported that 39 percent of LGBTQ+ young people (which the organization defines as ages 13 to 24) “seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year,” according to a national survey on the mental health of LGBTQ+ young people.
Within that 39 percent, roughly half were transgender and nonbinary youth. What helped change outcomes, consistently, was a supportive environment and access to gender-affirming care, from mental health resources to medical intervention to delay puberty or start HRT.
Layne Alexander Gianakos: "I was that kid."
Layne Alexander Gianakos, a healthcare training manager at Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, remembered being one of those young people 15 years ago, when he was 17 years old. At the time, Yale New Haven Health didn’t yet run a formalized pediatric gender program—but the institution did have an endocrinologist who listened. It saved his life.
“I was that kid,” Gianakos said. By the time he was 17, Gianakos had already tried once to end his life. He was afraid of what the future might hold. “I wanted to be a person, not a policy,” he remembered. “Not a petition.” Then he accessed gender-affirming care for the first time.
It transformed his life. It also kept him alive. Now, Gianakos said, he’s afraid for youth who suddenly don’t have access to that care, particularly those who were at the beginning of their journeys. He knows firsthand that more than 40 percent of trans adults have tried to end their lives. He wants a different reality for the next generation.
“That’s a stack of unsent college applications,” he said, and some attendees who had been trying not to cry let the floodgates open up. “That’s a bedroom your kid didn’t leave … someone is out there who needs the care that I had.”
That message echoed for Erin Michaud, a visual arts instructor at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School who has taught in the New Haven Public Schools for 25 years and is a proud member of the New Haven Federation of Teachers. As they spoke, the words “There Are LGBTQ+ Artists Among Us” peeked out in black and pink text from their shirt.
“We are here today because we love our students,” Michaud began, and there was a smattering of cheers from the crowd.
Calling on city and state elected officials (including, presumably, Mayor Justin Elicker, who attended the event), they pointed to students’ need to feel safe, cared for, and accepted in and beyond the classroom, without which they cannot learn. If they don’t feel able to express themselves, Michaud said, how can they be expected to thrive in school?
“We do not get to pick and choose which students deserve dignity,” they said.
Throughout the evening, others also pointed to the role trans people, particularly Black and Brown trans women, have always played in social movements. As they spoke, many balanced their own comments with chants of “One-two-three-four! Open up those clinic doors! Five-six-seven-eight! Stop the lies and stop the hate!” and “When trans rights are under attack what do we do? Stand up fight back!”
Alyssa-Marie Cajigas Rivera Ortiz.
The co-founder of The Children of Marsha P. Johnson and a longtime organizer and educator with City Wide Youth Coalition and the New Haven Pride Center, Alyssa-Marie Cajigas Rivera Ortiz urged attendees to advocate for trans youth, in part because their own safety remains tied to the safety of queer and trans people of all ages. For many young people, she explained, gender-affirming care isn’t just helpful, it’s literally a matter of life and death.
Or in her words, “a door to their survival is slammed shut.”
“This is calculated, state-aligned, Christian nationalist fascism, and it puts our youth in direct danger,” she said. “What Yale has done isn’t about standard of care, it is about appeasing the growing far right movement that is sweeping this country. A movement that tells our babies they don’t deserve to live, to thrive, to be seen, to be loved, and we will not sit by while they drag our children into the shadows.”
She, like many of the evening’s speakers, also tied the fight for gender-affirming care to a larger movement defined by the belief in public goods and services—that all people deserve access to healthcare, housing, and education because those are basic and fundamental human rights.
She invoked the legacy of movement bearers like Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans woman who helped lead the Stonewall riot. Cajigas Ortiz reveres these women, “who dared to be divine in a world that tried to kill them,” because they teach her how to resist.
“When Black trans women organize, we don’t just demand inclusion, we demand transformation,” she said. “We don’t just want a seat at the table. We want to burn that table down and build a new one where no one gets left behind.”
Top: The artist Cuee and Staklo. Cuee, who Staklo joked has reclaimed the term "Proud Boy," remembered the joy of receiving top surgery a few years ago. "I remember getting off that table, getting all that weight off my chest—and that weight included everybody that didn't believe, that didn't want to love, and be on this trans joy journey," he said. "This isn't a healthcare policy. We all know that this is about control." Bottom: Timothy Brown and his five-year-old daughter, Grayson.
As they listened nearby, Timothy Brown and his five-year-old daughter, Grayson, let the words wash over them. As a cis person and a dad, Brown said, he saw it as his responsibility to come out and support trans youth—and all trans people—on Thursday.
He doesn’t yet know who Grayson is going to be, or how she might identify, he said. But he wants her—and all children—to have access to the care that they need to live full, enriching and healthy lives.
“This is a violation of anti-discrimination laws in the State of Connecticut,” he said of the sudden closure of the pediatric gender program. “We are here to stand up for the rights of all trans people, but especially trans kids.”
Grayson kept the message more simple. As she prepared to listen, wearing a rainbow-colored scarf and shiny headband, she held up a handmade sign that read “Don’t Bully People.” It was really that straightforward.
“It Still Feels Awful”
Dan Lopez, Mason Angkapatyakit and Jessie Simpson.
In late July, 17-year-old Mason Angkapatyakit was one of those young people to receive a letter from Yale Medicine and Yale New Haven Health. At first, he said, he didn’t know what it was—in part because it was addressed to his deadname. Then the reality of what was happening began to sink in.
“I consider myself on the luckier side, because I’m, like, over a year into my medical transition,” said Angkapatyakit, a rising senior at Metropolitan Business Academy. “But it still feels awful that I can’t be on hormones anymore because Yale just decided, ‘No, we’re scared.’”
Angkapatyakit started hormone replacement therapy two years ago, a decision he came to after coming out to his friends in middle school, and his family thereafter. He was on the cusp of getting top surgery, a procedure that can be life-changing for trans people still struggling with gender dysphoria. When he read the letter, he felt “that awful despair,” like a rug had been pulled out from under him.
“I was already on testosterone,” he added. “For those people who were going to be on HRT and that was cut off for them—they have to wait for multiple years now—it’s just unreasonable. These people need support. Give them support instead of shaming them! Like, what are you doing?”
Being trans isn’t just a phase, he added: it’s been a whole journey, filled with deep self-reflection. As a kid “I just went through life thinking I was a tomboy,” he remembered. But that didn’t feel completely right. When he was around six years old, Angkapatyakit saw a video about penguins that made him think differently about sex and gender. He still didn’t quite have the words for it, but felt that he was inching towards something.
“When I was 11, I was like, ‘Okay, I think I’m a dude,’” he remembered. He came out to his friends, and then his family. He changed his name. When he started testosterone two years ago, “I was elated,” he said. His first appointment in the clinic was on the first day of school, in what felt like a year of new beginnings.
In the weeks since, he has started to think about his next steps, including where he’ll receive gender-affirming care going forward. He’s started hearing about Anchor Health and is hopeful, he said—but also doesn’t think he should have to make that pivot at all.
“It’s kind of ridiculous for Yale to be like, ‘Oh, we can’t do it anymore,’” chimed in Jessie Simpson, who teaches history, psychology and law at Metro and leads the school’s Gender-Sexuality Alliance (GSA). When she heard about the rally Wednesday night, she sent the flyer to Angkapatyakit. There was no question in her mind that she would come out to support.