Generation Z wants agency over their bodies and lives as much as they want Chick-Fil-A to be open on Sundays.

While their love for well-seasoned chicken and stellar customer service from Chick-fil-A might be controversial on account of the CEO’s anti-queer statements, members of Gen Z do stand 10 toes down on abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights, making them one of the most progressive generations.

With hate crimes and other attacks against the LGBTQ+ community happening all the time and more states passing laws to restrict reproductive freedom across the country, members of Gen Z face increasing levels of anxiety.

As Arthur C. Evans, CEO of the American Psychological Association told Prism, “young people are really feeling the impact of issues in the news, particularly those issues that may feel beyond their control.”

The fate of abortion and LGBTQ+ rights are among the abundance of life-altering challenges looming over the generation born between 1997 and 2013, and it’s causing a feeling of deep worry about the state of the world.

This kind of Gen Z Cliff, which includes financial uncertainty, and coping with challenges of physical and mental health, are among the most threatening issues making Gen Z feel pushed closer to the cliff.

However, groups like Planned Parenthood Gen Action and young queer political leaders are working to expand LGTBQ+ rights, abortion access and bodily autonomy.

The queerest generation

At no surprise, this generation so far is one of the queerest, with one in five Gen Z adults identifying as a part of the LGBTQ+ community, according to a Gallup poll.

Queerness has and will always exist despite the onslaught of proposals and rhetoric to suppress and deny LGBTQ+ communities of rights.

Now more than 474 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been filed across the country and while not all of these bills will become laws they do threaten and harm queer communities, according to the ACLU, which tracks these measures.

With bills that censor drag shows, ban gender-affirming care and prevent trans students from participating in school activities popping up all across the country, a new generation of Gen Z queer leaders has started to emerge. For example, Jade Harris, who is running for a state senate seat in Virginia, believes it is essential that LGBTQ+ communities are represented in politics.

“Gen Z is increasingly identifying as LGBTQ+ and by restricting our access to things such as safe places to live and gender-affirming hormone therapy it’s going to end up with a lot of Gen Z people not getting to grow up as who they are,” Harris told Reckon.

As a 25-year-old political leader, Harris has made showing up for her community a priority, including by serving as the vice mayor of Glasgow, Virginia, or organizing with Gen Z lead groups like March for Our Lives, an organization working to create safe communities where gun violence is obsolete.

“I’m a queer Black woman running in incredibly rural and red Virginia and I’m unapologetically supportive of abortion and trans rights. I mean, these are some of the most contentious issues of our day, but I’m right here standing behind them,” Harris said.

With nearly two-thirds of young adults saying they are “extremely concerned” with the future of LGBTQ+ rights, according to the research firm Toluna their worries amplify with the rise of anti-gay legislation.

Right-wing extremism is showing up in efforts like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, banning public school teachers from addressing sexual orientation or gender identity in the classroom amongst a host of other states limiting the rights of the queer community.

Harris is campaigning to make Virginia a safe harbor state for trans individuals and wants a constitutional amendment to codify same-sex marriage.

Harris notes the correlation between homophobic rhetoric and hate crimes. In fact, one in 10 “violent victimizations” against the LGBTQ+ community are hate crimes, according to a study published in December 2022 from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.

“The rise of extreme anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and behaviors may embolden individuals to carry out hate crimes against LGBT people,” said lead author Andrew R. Flores, an affiliated scholar at the Williams Institute.

Last fall, a gunman carried out a mass shooting at Club Q, a queer nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing five people and injuring more than a dozen others. Prosecutors, in that case, have sought hate crimes against the suspect.

“It is vital that law enforcement and anti-violence programs are trained and prepared to effectively serve the unique needs of LGBT victims,” Flores said.

Despite anti-gay rhetoric, the queer community and allies continue to push for protections like Michigan expanding its Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, adding a provision to prohibit termination from employment and eviction based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.

You make the rules, not these fools

Having the agency to make decisions over their lives, bodies and futures are top priorities for Gen Z, whose support of abortion rights exceeds older Americans, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case last June, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion, restrictions on abortion have been popping up across the country. Subsequently, abortion became a mobilizing issue in the 2022 midterm elections, led by Gen Z and other young voters.

Finding ways to protect abortion rights, according to a Cosmopolitan and YouGov survey, is now more of a priority for 1 in 5 Gen Zers after the SCOTUS decision in Dobbs and would motivate them to volunteer at an organization related to reproductive rights. With groups like Planned Parenthood Gen Action, college activists fighting for reproductive freedom and fundamental justice for all, the youngest generation of adults has even more access to advocating for abortion rights.

While Gen Action groups exist at more than 350 colleges, their presence on the campuses of southern states, where abortion is most heavily restricted, has come into sharper focus in the fight to protect abortion.

Student activists like Trenece Robertson, vice president of the Florida A&M University chapter, are now leading the charge.

“It’s already bad enough that we have to deal with all of the other stressors that we have, but to additionally struggle to get access to abortion makes it 10 times worse and stresses us (Gen Z) out more,” Robertson told Reckon in a Twitter Space last Thursday.

Abortion rights impact everyone, but Gen Z holds firm on their position of defending bodily autonomy, so much so they tie their vote to candidates who stand with abortion access, especially 44% of Gen Z women according to the Public Religion Research Institute.

Abortion rights are also changing how Gen Z views and considers birth control, as well as their future of having children. According to the Cosmopolitan and YouGov survey, 16% of Gen Zers are considering changing their birth control method or asking their partner to think about changing their method.

To take it a step further, 1 in 10 of this generation say they will even consider abstaining from penetrative sex altogether.

“We believe that the overturning of Roe v. Wade was heinous,” Logan Terry, a student at the University of Southern California and co-director of the Student Assembly for Gender Empowerment told the Daily Trojan.

“People who, historically, are well off financially or able to move from state to state are going to be able to secure abortions [or] birth control, whereas people who are queer, people who are Black, people who are not necessarily identifying as women are going to have a harder time navigating these systems.”

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The Gen Z Cliff: Imagine a world where you knew everything about the past, saw no change in the present and had no hope for the future — that’s what it’s like for Generation Z. The reality of a pilling list of problems bound to their futures has them standing too close to the cliff or society has pushed them there with an abundance of life-altering challenges that are looming and it’s causing a feeling of deep worry about the state of the world, better known as the ‘Gen Z Cliff.’ Reckons culture and justice reporter Alexis Wray is introducing you to a few of those cliffs through a Gen Z Cliff story series. Read those stories here.