As Pride Month winds down, LGBTQ+ support groups in South Dakota said they are strengthening a resource tool detailing which businesses are willing to serve and stand with the state's queer population.

The Transformation Project, which assists transgender individuals and their families around the state, is taking over leadership duties for Dorothy's List. Adam Jorgensen created the list as a way to highlight South Dakota businesses promoting and practicing inclusivity.

He said part of it is knowing which shops, restaurants and companies are allies in policy debates. Jorgensen added it can be about the best way to recruit workers who are part of the LGBTQ+ community.

"If they, for example, don't have a strong policy with hiring, or maybe they need to update their forms or their website," Jorgensen explained.

He pointed out businesses seeking this guidance can get connected with other list members who are in a position to help. Jorgenson stressed this is a need for smaller businesses without a big human resources department. Officials said the new partnership can devote more staff to find allies in smaller towns and not just the state's larger cities.

South Dakota is among the conservative-led states to pass restrictive laws advocates say unfairly target LGBTQ+ people but Jorgensen emphasized it doesn't mean there's no one to turn to.

"There's been a lot of political noise and theater over the years, where people are led to believe that South Dakota isn't the place for people like us," Jorgensen acknowledged. "It really is. There's communities across the state where they're welcomed wholeheartedly."

He added the list also informs people about welcoming businesses when they need to do things such as hiring a contractor to work at their home.

According to a recent survey from the group, only 18% of respondents said they see businesses engage with the LGBTQ+ community outside of Pride Month. Another 59% said they struggle to find openly inclusive businesses to support or work for.


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June is Pride Month, and people who fight for LGBTQ+ health care are speaking out against huge proposed cuts to Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in the Golden State.

The U.S. Senate is about to vote on the reconciliation bill, known as the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act." Republican backers say they want to add more work requirements and make people reapply every six months.

Juan Carlos Guerrero, western regional organizing manager for the nonprofit Caring Across Generations, said that will kick eligible people off the program.

"This is part of a misinformation that we're trying to really address and make clear that these are cuts to Medicaid services that are going to be felt in the community around us," he said, "through people who use it for in-hospital services, people who use it for in-home supportive services."

The bill's supporters have said they want to use the Medicaid savings to fund an extension of President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts.

LGBTQ+ people are three to four times less likely to have children and twice as likely to be single and living alone as adults, so they often depend on Medicaid. Caring Across Generations is organizing a 60-hour vigil for Medicaid on the U.S. Capitol grounds July 24-26. By that time, Guerrero said, the Senate and House will have each passed their own version of the bill and will need to hash out a compromise.

"There will have to be a larger discussion between them to reach a strong consensus on what the cuts should include," he said, "but with both their packages being different enough where it will lead to larger-scale conversations."

The mobilization protests in July will also highlight some important anniversaries coming up. July 28 is the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, July 30 marks Medicaid's 60th birthday, and in mid-August, the Social Security Act will turn 80 years old.

This week, the law guaranteeing same-sex marriage equality turned 10. But advocates are concerned about the growing number of threats it now faces.

A decade after the Supreme Court's historic Obergefell v. Hodges decision, most Americans are onboard with gay marriage. While President Donald Trump has never stated outright opposition, members of his conservative base do. And with a conservative Supreme Court majority, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have also signaled they'd like to revisit the issue.

Despite pressure from the far right, said Jenny Pizer, chief legal officer at Lambda Legal, ending same-sex marriage isn't something that has public support.

"I think what is key for people to have in mind is, there's no case in front of the Supreme Court pending for a court review at this moment," she said, "and the Supreme Court can't review a case and consider a case without there being a case -- and there is none at this point."

She reminded folks that Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022, which codified marriage protections for same-sex and interracial couples. It also repealed the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that exclusively recognized marriage between one man and one woman.

In 2020, Nevada became the first state to enshrine gay couples' right to marry in its state Constitution.

Even if the law were overturned and certain states were what she called "hostile" to same-sex couples who want to marry, Pizer said, states would have to continue to respect and honor same-sex marriages. She added that folks should not be panicking, but should be paying attention.

"The bottom line is that we have to keep our eye on this," she said. "We know that there are those on the far right who want to raise money on this issue, want to gin up fears on this issue, use it for organizing."

Since the Supreme Court's decision in June 2015, almost 600,000 same-sex couples have married legally. In the United States alone, there are about 823,000 married gay couples, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

As Pride month winds downs, a Montana group said the latest edition of its zine celebrating queer and transgender folks is still hot off the presses.

The fifth edition of Forward Montana's zine titled "The Sun Will Rise Again" contains poems, stories, photos and more made by and for LGBTQ+ and Two-Spirit Montanans. Zines are low-cost publications, often printed at home and are accessible to various creators.

Lyla Brown, central region senior organizing manager for Forward Montana, said the new edition was well-timed for Pride month and more.

"It also comes at the end of our Montana legislative session, where we saw a lot of attacks on queer and trans Montanans," Brown pointed out. "We wanted to center resilience and joy and strength of the queer and trans community that Montana does have."

Montana state lawmakers brought at least two dozen bills targeting trans people this session. In a lawsuit against the state over House Bill 121, which mandates specific bathroom use, a Missoula County District Court judge in May granted plaintiffs a preliminary injunction during the lifetime of the case, writing Montanans "will not be subject to the prying eyes of others or to governmental snooping or regulation."

Brown noted despite the legislation, many Montana communities celebrated Pride.

"We have seen a lot more smaller Prides popping up," Brown observed. "There's Pride in Libby and Anaconda and in Red Lodge, Montana, which are really small towns. I think people are so thrilled and so excited to be in community."

She added people interested in new or older editions of the zine can request copies from Forward Montana.