Oasis Center
Looking for an organization to support on Giving Tuesday? Free to Be Youth, a legal services program for low-income and homeless LGBTQ youth in New York City, is partnering with Nashville’s Oasis Center to send care packages to youth in need. The packages will include LGBTQ books and gender-affirming cosmetics and can be purchased on the group’s website.
This year, Giving Tuesday falls on Dec. 3 — the day before the U.S. Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments in United States v. Skrmetti — a case centering on Tennessee’s ban of gender-affirming care for minors.
“I think Tennessee is a good example of some of the many challenges that queer youth are having,” says Amy Leipziger, project director of the Free to Be Youth program. “It’s going to get worse.”
Leipziger helped pull Free to Be Youth back together after it closed in 2020. The organization now works to provide legal assistance to LGBTQ youth, helping with issues including name changes, immigration services and family law resources.
Says Leipziger: “Especially for young people who are navigating a lot of struggles both in and out of school, both in and out of work, both in and out of family, [they] won’t often know, ‘How do I get the help I need? Where do I go? Who do I trust?’”
She says that’s where the Free to Be Youth project steps in.
“We’ve been having a lot of internal conversations to say, ‘OK, we know we’re here in New York City, and we’re experiencing things in a different way than y’all are out there,’” says Leipziger. “How do we create a safe space in a state that’s not ours, in a community that’s not ours, but with a mindfulness toward what we imagine some of the challenges might be?”
Tennessee has been struggling with book bans, challenges and other forms of censorship for several years. With many books centering on LGBTQ topics under threat in public school libraries, FYP and Oasis hope to bring some of that material directly to young Tennesseans. “FYP is dedicated to supporting queer and questioning youth by providing access to some of these banned books,” reads a release from the group.
But Leipziger says the relationship between FYP and the Oasis Center won’t end after Giving Tuesday. She hopes to continue working with the Oasis Center to provide resources for Tennessee’s LGBTQ youth going forward.
“We want to create spaces across boundaries that are both for rural, urban, city, country,” she says, “because we know young queer people are in for a really, really rough four years.”
