Mandy Giles, the founder of Parents of Trans Youth, sounds weary and irritated on the phone despite her Texas soccer mom charm. Part of it is the evening traffic as she heads to Austin from Houston. Most of it, though, stems from the task ahead. She’s on her way to talk to the Texas legislature, again, about yet another round of anti-LGBTQ+ laws.

“There were so many anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-trans bills I have almost lost track,” she says.

By any measure, the 89th Texas Legislature that closed in early June was a record breaker for anti-LGBTQ+ state laws. Over 200 bills were filed in 2025 alone, more than in any other state at any point in American history. A dozen ultimately passed, including Senate Bill 12, prohibiting schools from using a child’s preferred name or pronouns in school documents, and House Bill 229, which seeks to erase trans identities from all government documents. This comes after Senate Bill 14 in the previous session, which banned many forms of gender-affirming medical care for Texas minors.

By now, Giles is used to the legislative antagonism. The mother of two nonbinary children, she founded Parents of Trans Youth in February 2022 as a private counseling service and resource for parents who need support while raising trans kids. Most of the people who contact her believe in supporting their children, but sometimes struggle with what to do in a state so hostile to the concept. Common topics during sessions are how to positively affirm a child’s gender, what to do when others express transphobic and bullying attitudes, and support for the overall experience of raising a trans kid that most parents do not prepare for.

“The most common advice is to just breathe and to give yourself some grace. Most parents who I talk to are wondering how to support their kids. That’s half the battle if they’re on that road,” Giles says. “If a parent is fearful of what transition means or how their kid will move safely in the world, that fear comes from love. It comes from wanting safety.”

Many of those parents want to fight back at the laws targeting their kids. Giles herself has been a regular at committee meetings at the capitol. She talks about how affirming a child’s gender through adopting preferred names and pronouns is an evidence-based practice that reduces mental harm, as well as the importance of allowing children to make their own informed decisions with the guidance of medical professionals. While she’s found allies in the Texas House and Senate, it’s a very uphill battle. The danger is real.

“You have to be careful about not outing your kid unless you have permission to share their story,” she says. “There has been such a huge increase of doxxing and attacks by the far right against activists, advocates, and those who stand up. My recommendation is to not be public about that fact. It breaks my heart to say that.”

No one knows just how scary it can get better than the staff at Tony’s Place, which was founded in 2016. While some of its clients have loving home lives, most don’t have a home at all. Often, their parents have kicked them out over their gender or sexuality, leaving them without any means of support. At Tony’s Place, LGBTQ+ people between the ages of 14 and 25 can eat a hot meal, do their laundry, buy clothes, find health care providers, look for work, and attend a variety of support groups. It’s essentially a surrogate parent for queer children who’ve been cast aside, in nonprofit form.

Executive director Carrie Rai is proud of how she’s grown Tony’s Place since she took over in August 2023. Under her leadership, the organization is now open five days a week and keeps a full-time staff of seven. This past March alone, they served 429 hot meals to LGBTQ+ youth, and their daily client list has tripled. Some of the most vulnerable people in Texas know they can find a home in the 5,200-square-foot location in Montrose.

Forty percent of homeless people are from the LGBTQ+ community, according to Rai, and the number one reason is family rejection. Sixty-five percent of Tony’s Place clients are Black, and the majority live in poverty.

“They have grown up in the homeless systems, and those systems have failed them,” Rai says. “Now they are in a place where there are no safe adults to support them. They’re on their own. They don’t have a parent who’s going to drive them to a support group. More than 50 percent have no health insurance, and 58 percent have some form of diagnosed disability. There are a lot of barriers they have to navigate.”

Rai’s progress at Tony’s Place is currently secure despite federal and state reversals on LGBTQ+ rights, but she does worry. While they have lost no government grants, several corporate partners have pulled their funding, fearful of drawing government ire for supporting LGBTQ+ causes involving children.

Hatch at the Montrose Center is by far the city’s longest-running LGBTQ+ youth organization, closing in on 38 years of offering community to queer and trans kids.

Current copresident of Hatch Youth, 18-year-old Rose Yard, started attending the biweekly youth group meetings in December 2023, three years after coming out as trans. Her road there was hard. She was expelled from her Christian high school when she came out; her mother, who also worked at the school, lost her job. By Yard’s own admission, she spent most of her teen years spiraling until she became involved with Hatch.

“It’s nothing short of vital for us to depend on each other in these times,” she says during an interview at the Montrose Center, the room filled with items used in the previous week’s prom. “It’s not easy at all being a trans kid in Texas, and I think it would be impossible if we didn’t have each other. There are all these people I can lean on, and who lean on me.”

Part of parenting is teaching kids to stand on their own in the world. Yard has used the support network at Hatch to grow into an adult herself.

As copresident, Yard serves as the intermediary between the Montrose Center and the children who attend support groups, as well as being a den mother and welcoming committee to new arrivals. An energetic young woman with boundless enthusiasm for people, she’s become one of the prime spokespeople for LGBTQ+ youth in Houston. She has spoken at Houston Pride events, protests, and galas, where she’s helped raise over $300,000 for various organizations.

The community and experience have inspired Yard to pursue activism full time. She leaves Houston for college in North Carolina this fall, and wants to make advocacy a major part of her life.

“The current administration, the current legislature tried to paint trans and queer youth as dangerous and predatory,” Yard says. “To have that image thrown at my community, at myself, when it’s the exact opposite is just insulting. Clearly, none of the people making decisions have actually talked to a queer or trans teen, yet somehow they feel qualified to speak on our issues. Hatch has given me a place to speak to people who don’t know what it’s like to be a queer youth, to change their minds. Through our unity is survival.”