This is a guest opinion column

Here we are again: Alabama’s Republican-led Legislature is attacking the LGBTQ community. Alabama has a long history of discrimination against the queer community and intentionally working to instill fear in its queer citizens. In fact, last year the UA’s Queer Student Association Executive Council and I wrote that Alabama is a state where we are clearly unwelcome.

Emboldened by other states’ extreme measures like Florida and Texas’s new laws that have forced LGBTQ families, children and parents to flee their states, the Alabama Legislature is now pursuing a similar path. Last month, members of the Legislature introduced a slew of new bills, including HB 405, HB 401, HB 354, HB 7, HB 312, and HB 261. Taken together, these bills will destroy the ability of LGBTQ people to live free of discrimination by the state. One bill will eliminate drag queens’ ability to perform in public and their fundamental right to freedom of expression. Another will prohibit schools and public institutions from considering transgender and non-binary identities in their decisions. Another will define “divisive concepts” and restrict the ability to discuss these topics in public schools, including whether anyone can even mention LGBTQ identities in public K-12 schools.

As a queer person, I am intensely concerned about the safety of myself and other LGBTQ identifying people, particularly my transgender and Black queer friends, to be free in the state. As president of the Queer Student Association, I am concerned about their impact on our organization’s ability to exist. We have already identified several events that we are planning for the upcoming year that will have to be reworked or eliminated completely because of these bills. We work to bring community to UA students. The Alabama Legislature (and Governor Ivey) should be ashamed of themselves.

I came to this university from rural Washington County, Alabama. I know the soul of this state, and I know that these bills are the result of propaganda and fearmongering enacted by those who want to see our community eradicated, not the vast majority of Alabamians. LGBTQ bars in Mobile, Birmingham and Tuscaloosa are sometimes the first places queer people find a community in this state–this should not be true. For some, they find community and acceptance earlier. Many Alabama teachers have been the first people to make queer kids comfortable in their identities by being accepting where others have not been, and finding this community at school earlier than 19 years old–at the least–is important. LGBTQ kids should be able to see ourselves in libraries and schools. Queer people deserve their version of a Cinderella story; we deserve our happy ever after just like every other kid deserves. The Alabama Legislature is trying to take an already hard reality and make it into an impossible nightmare.

Regardless of these bills, the Queer Student Association intends to remain a bedrock of activism and community at the University of Alabama whether Republicans in Montgomery like it or not. However, we cannot be in this alone. That’s why the QSA encourages all UA students and Alabamians, regardless of their identity, to contact their state representatives and talk about their opposition. We also encourage participation in the Drag Me to the Capital March on May 16th in Montgomery. Allyship matters now more than ever, and we cannot let the Alabama Legislature strip of us our freedom to live as who we are.

Sean Atchison, a native of Alabama, is President of the Queer Student Association and an undergraduate student in Latin American Studies at The University of Alabama