‘I was just Jack,’ a transgender statehouse staffer reflects on LGBTQ+ policy in Colorado

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Jack Teter is too young to remember the passage of Amendment 2 or to have directly felt its impact. Ten years ago, when he started his gender transition while working as a legislative aide, gender identity didn’t seem like something that would ever be on the news.

“Even though I was transitioning in sort of the center of politics in the state of Colorado at the state capitol, it did not yet feel like the mere fact of being trans was a political thing. And so it wasn’t a thing,” said Teter.

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Jack was the first transgender staffer at the statehouse, working for a lawmaker from Colorado Springs.

“It is a workplace imbued with lots of traditions and dress codes and things like that,” said Teter. “And so I remember having a conversation with the sergeant-at-arms for the House of Representatives who enforced decorum about how I was going to wear a men's suit on the floor. I had to also wear a tie, which is totally fair.”

Jack told his parents, told his boss, changed his outfit and then went back to work after Christmas, in January of 2015 with new pronouns and a new badge.

“And that was it. And then it was fine. And I just was Jack,” said Teter.

Now, Jack says, people with varying gender identities can face layers of political red tape. A handful of states have passed laws restricting transgender healthcare. In some areas, obtaining updated identification documents can be difficult after transitioning .

In Colorado, legislation has generally moved in the opposite direction, especially after 2018 when Governor Polis was elected and Democrats took over the statehouse.

For years prior, Jack remembers Democrats running legislation over and over again to simplify the process of changing identification documents for transgender Coloradans. The initial version of that bill , drafted in 2015, was the first transgender-specific legislation to be introduced in the state.

“ We would show up and we would tell our stories and bring documents, and families would come with their children and adults would come and everyone would really be incredibly vulnerable and put our lives on display for these legislators,” Teter said. “And then the Republicans would vote no.”

In 2019, the bill, called Jude’s law , passed.

“We were able to pass all sorts of stuff that had stalled out on, you know, just this party line vote over and over and over again,” Teter said.

Last year, Colorado became the first state to require health insurance providers to cover gender-affirming care. Under a new law , schools are now required to use student’s chosen names.

Still, not all LGBTQ+ people feel this progress. Jack says some districts prevent students from forming Genders and Sexualities Alliances (GSA Clubs). Some are trying to ban books.

“To a certain extent, we can't prevent those things from happening. But we have the policy and legal infrastructure in place so that when they do happen, people have the law on their side.”

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‘I was just Jack,’ a transgender statehouse staffer reflects on LGBTQ+ policy in Colorado

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