AUSTIN, Texas — Monday was "Equality Advocacy Day" at the Texas State Capitol, and Equality Texas marked the day with a rally for LGBTQ rights.
The organization expected more than 500 people to attend the rally, which started at noon on the south steps of Capitol. The rally featured speakers from Equality Texas, the ACLU of Texas, the Texas Freedom Network and more.
The rally also featured an appearance from special guest Jonathan Van Ness, of Netflix's "Queer Eye," and a performance by celebrity drag queen Cynthia Lee Fontaine.
After the rally, participants spoke with lawmakers to push for protections for LGBTQ Texans.
"We've been fighting for years – our entire lives. We are not going to be relegated to the defense. We won't continue letting this state force kids and their families into hiding or out of the state into others as refugees," said Landon Richie with the Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT).
Also on Monday, conservative Texans planned to rally at the Capitol at 1 p.m. in support of legislation that they say protects Texas children. According to a press release from the group MassResistance, the rally was planned in support of bills "that would ban pediatric gender modification, stop drag shows for children, and remove sexually-inappropriate materials from school libraries."
"Children deserve to be protected. Texas has a duty to pass legislation to prevent children from being irreversibly harmed by pediatric gender procedures. No child is born in the wrong body. This pseudoscience is hurting people, it hurt me and I am here to support a ban on these procedures for children," said Kevin Whitt, assistant director for MassResistance.
However, KVUE crews on the Capitol grounds were unable to locate the MassResistance rally. It is unclear if it was canceled or postponed.
Monday's rallies were part of a continued fight between LGBTQ advocates and conservatives over certain bills filed in the 88th Texas Legislature.
Last week, advocates protested a number of bills that would change the lives of transgender Texans. Much of the discussion centered around Senate Bill 14, which would ban puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for transition purposes for minors under the age of 18. It would also revoke the licenses of doctors who give provide children with that care and block public dollars from going to those facilities.
Members of Equality Texas and TENT say when lawmakers decide who can access life-saving care, they are making decisions about who deserves to die.
Meanwhile, the opposing side has said it's time for the government to step in to help decide the age when certain care can be provided.
"Fifteen years ago, this would be rarely heard of. Now it's just exploding. It used to start with young teenage boys. Now it's just a plethora of young teenage girls," State Sen. Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels), the author of SB 14, told the Senate State Affairs Committee last week.
"Important ways I think we should approach this is by telling the government they have no business in getting involved in making these medical decisions," said Dr. Jessica Zwiener, an endocrinologist from Houston who joined last week's rally. "It's a real slippery slope when they start picking and choosing which guidelines they get to follow and ones we don't."
Other bills LGBTQ advocates are against include Senate Bill 162, which would require doctors to put a sex on birth certificates unless a newborn is intersex; Senate Bill 250, which would bar physicians from providing minors with puberty blockers or hormone therapies and would ban insurance companies from covering such treatment; and Senate Bill 1029, which would allow people to sue health insurance companies for covering transgender treatment.
On Monday, while LGBTQ advocates were protesting outside the Capitol, lawmakers inside advanced SB 14 in a Senate committee.