FARGO — New state laws aimed at transgender people are the catalyst in a culture war that’s driving some gay and trans people to either leave North Dakota or not settle here in the first place.

The Forum talked to nearly a dozen trans and gay people who all said they left North Dakota or were preparing to leave because of the political climate. They are heading to Minnesota or other states seen as more welcoming to LGBTQ people. Some of these culture war refugees are even seeking

asylum in other countries

.

At the same time across the cultural divide, some conservatives are also searching for like-minded landscapes.

So far this year, about 490 LGBTQ-related bills have been introduced in state legislatures, according to

American Civil Liberties Union data

. Seventeen of those bills were filed in North Dakota.

Among the laws passed in North Dakota this year are a ban on transgender treatments for minors, restrictions on transgender females in school sports, and limitations on transgender K-12 students’ pronouns and bathroom access.

Backers of the legislation

said the new laws would uphold biological truths and protect female students in bathrooms, arguments that LGBTQ advocates said are unnecessary and harmful to already vulnerable transgender youth.

Micah Louwagie, who recently became the first openly transgender pastor for St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Fargo, chose to live in neighboring Moorhead, Minnesota, because of the transgender bills the North Dakota Legislature was considering in January.

“My wife and I live in Moorhead and that was a very conscious decision on my part. As soon as we knew I had gotten this job, and the folks there were OK with us living in Moorhead, we decided on Moorhead because we didn’t know where the North Dakota laws were going to go,” Louwagie said.

Rebel Marie, a transgender woman and president of Detroit Lakes Pride, said that before she moved from Fargo to Minnesota in 2022, she made a list of the pros and cons of why she should move.

“With everything going on, I felt I had no better option. It’s bittersweet. I am grateful to Minnesota, but I am also very sad because North Dakota is my home,” Marie said. “It feels like North Dakota wants young people to move. They only want certain people in their communities.”

Katrina Jo Koesterman, a transgender woman, “saw the writing on the wall” and left North Dakota for Minnesota in 2016. Tristate Transgender, the organization that Koesterman leads, is following her move and decided this year to register its nonprofit status in Minnesota because of growing hostility.

“I ended up feeling like I had to move from a conservative area to a liberal area. Some of the best and brightest people in North Dakota are either members of the LGBTQIA community or allies of the community, and I think they are going to leave North Dakota en masse, so North Dakota is going to shoot itself in the foot,” Koesterman said. “There is quite a bit of exodus going on.”

That includes the

Fargo-Moorhead Pride Collective

, which announced that the Pride parade and Pride in the Park festival, two of the area’s largest Pride events historically held in Fargo, will take place in Moorhead this year.

Jess English Teitelman and her wife moved to Fargo in 2020 because of the public school system and for a better job. But now, she said she’s afraid she has no civil rights in North Dakota and she’s looking to move out of state.

“It’s the first home my wife and I owned together and we had to work really hard to get it. But we’re getting older and the idea that I could be in a nursing home with these people taking care of me, and a governor who doesn’t care for my human rights, is terrifying,” Teitelman said.

In 2020,

Glenn Geist and his wife moved out of the Twin Cities because they were fed up with Minneosota’s COVID-19 restrictions.

They self-deported to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in search of more personal freedom.

“When we moved, we were part of the next wave of self-segregation because people are just tired of living where they’re not wanted, quite frankly,” Geist said.

Geist has friends and relatives who are gay, and his wife attended Pride festivals in the Twin Cities before they moved to South Dakota, but he said that recently Pride events have been “hijacked” by transgender people.

Geist disagrees with allowing minors to receive transgender treatments, opening restrooms up to transgender people or allowing them to participate in sports according to the gender of their choosing.

“You can change the way you dress, but you can’t change genes. It’s a mental illness to me,” Geist said.

Transgender advocates say that not offering transgender children and adults help and acceptance can lead to increased risk of suicide.

A

2021 national survey on LGBTQ youth mental health

found that 52% of transgender and nonbinary youth considered suicide and 20% attempted suicide. The survey was done by The Trevor Project, an organization with the goal of ending suicide among LGBTQ youth.

Elias James Edmund was born as a biological female in small-town North Dakota. He moved to Fargo in 2015 for opportunity. After years of surgeries and hormone treatment, Edmund can now grow a beard. He likes Harley Davidson T-shirts, and also performs as a woman named Jessika from the Volleyball Team at drag shows.

As a transgender man, Edmund doesn’t experience fear walking down the street, but he said the state’s message to him that he isn’t wanted initially had him looking east across the Red River.

But he couldn’t afford the move, Edmund said.

“In Minnesota, they declared they are a safe haven for trans people. Before, I was desperately trying to get to Minnesota, but at the poverty level, disabled, and as a chronically ill person, the government is set up to force you to stay. Getting out is so hard,” Edmund said.

Then he met

Rynn Willgohs, a transgender woman and founder of TRANSport, a nonprofit group founded in Fargo that helps trans people in the U.S. emigrate to more hospitable countries.

Willgohs established TRANSport to help transgender people find countries that offer them civil rights protections. “And I don’t believe that will ever happen in the United States,” Willgohs said.

Since TRANSport’s creation, Willgohs said she’s given advice to at least six families with transgender children who moved to Minnesota for political reasons. She’s also received more than 100 applications from people wanting to leave the country due to anti-transgender sentiment and laws.

“These bills are forcing these kids to be outed and bullied,” Willgohs said.

Geist said the differences between political parties and social norms are too great, and predicted the country may not survive the culture war.

“As far back as 15 years ago, I was telling people that we need a national divorce. We had a great 200 plus year run, but this country is too big and too divided,” Geist said.

For transgender people like Willgohs, she challenged people to get to know the transgender community.

“Ask us questions in a sincere manner. Transitioning is hard, it takes years, and it’s not an overnight thing, much like going through puberty. Give people the grace to transition,” Willgohs said.

Koesterman said to stop making the transgender community scapegoats for political reasons.

“We have very little political will on our own,” she said. “We are an easy minority to attack, because we don’t make up a large percentage of the voter base. Until very recently, we haven’t had a lot of public support.”