Quotes from Sarah McBride

I would take issue with the assertion that President Trump has reached out to a diverse group for his cabinet secretaries. In fact, his cabinet is one of the least diverse in modern history.

I didn't come out for 21 years because I thought that everything I wanted to do with my life - have a family, get a great job, make a change in this world - that the moment I came out, that I would not be able to do any of those things.

Discomfort isn't grounds for discrimination. We have a big country with a lot of different kinds of people in it.

When I came out, I wondered whether I had a future not just professionally but romantically. Would I be able to find someone who loved me?

Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Jeff Sessions are using their powers and offices to make life as difficult as possible for everyone from the transgender worker to the gay widower to the queer undocumented immigrant. These efforts are not about bathrooms or religious freedom; they're about driving LGBTQ people out of public life.

Time and time again, we have seen a growing alliance of allies who are willing to stand with trans people, who are educating themselves on trans identity and trans equality, and who understand that our lives are worth celebrating and that our cause matters.

Will we be a nation where there's only one way to love, one way to look, one way to live? Or will we be a nation where everyone has the freedom to live openly and equally?

I grew up in an upper-income household, in an accepting environment, and with incredible educational opportunities.

We can celebrate the speed at which LGBT equality has progressed, but we also have to acknowledge that it wasn't fast enough, because too many people didn't get to experience it. We can never be too impatient.

I think it's really difficult for folks that aren't transgender to really wrap their mind around the feeling of having a gender identity that differs from their sex assigned at birth. But for me, it felt like a constant feeling of homesickness.

When gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals come out, their friends and families, for the most part, understand what it feels like to love and to lust. Cisgender people have more of a challenge when it comes to transgender identities. I discovered that analogy of homesickness in conversations with my parents, in trying to bridge that empathy divide.

Efforts to bar transgender people from restrooms are nothing more than an attempt to codify discrimination before our country advances any further on transgender equality.

Transgender people, especially transgender women of color, face pervasive discrimination throughout life, including by those sworn to protect us.

Transgender people frequently face bias in court and are assigned unsupportive public defenders, factors which lead to more extreme sentences and longer incarcerations.

During my sophomore year at American University, I was elected president of the student body. At the same time, I was struggling with my identity and whether or not to come out as transgender.

The first time I heard the word 'transgender' had been in a sitcom episode that mocked the potential for cisgender people to find people like me attractive. Every time someone expressed any interest in the gorgeous trans guest character - her identity still a secret to most of the main characters in the show - the laugh track would cue.

My name is Sarah McBride, and I am a proud transgender American.

Put simply, barring transgender people from restrooms consistent with their gender identity doesn't help anyone, and continuing to allow transgender people to access those restrooms doesn't hurt anyone.

Days after being sworn in as the nation's top law enforcement officer, Trump's attorney general, the virulently anti-LGBTQ Jeff Sessions, revoked lifesaving guidance promoting the protection and dignity of transgender students.

Access to public facilities like bathrooms is important for transgender people. But the fight for transgender rights does not begin and end at the bathroom door.

I remember, as a child, lying in my bed at night praying that I would wake up the next day and be a girl, to be my authentic self, and to just have my family be proud of me. I remember looking into the mirror struggling to say just two words, 'I'm transgender.'

Too often, when transgender people die, family members or funeral homes will end up dressing a body of a transgender person in the garments of the gender that they were assigned at birth instead of their gender identity. They're often dead-named and misgendered.

Whenever you tell a group of people that they can't use bathrooms, or they can't access spaces that other people use, that is dehumanizing. It is discriminatory, and it reinforces the stigma and the prejudices that the transgender community already faces.

If I only care about equality for transgender people, then I am leaving so many people behind - if I'm not at the same time seeking to end discrimination against people of color, seeking to end discrimination against women, seeking to ensure that people of every religious background have an equal opportunity.