Dear NAGAAA,

My name is Brittney Miller, and I manage the Puget Sound Pronouns, a C division team in the Emerald City Softball Association in Seattle. We, the undersigned, are writing you to demand that you immediately move the Gay Softball World Series out of Dallas following Governor Abbott’s abhorrent declaration that supporting transgender youth constitutes child abuse. Abbott’s letter imposing requirements on doctors, nurses, and teachers to report transgender children to the state so that child services may remove them from their loving homes and prosecute their parents for child abuse shows that Texas does not deserve to hold the GSWS.

To continue forth with doing so would betray the stated values of NAGAAA. Any argument as to why you must honor your commitment is nothing more than an excuse. It would demonstrate that NAGAAA cares more about making money than they do about standing up for our community values.

I understand that you may argue that showing up anyway is an act of defiance and a way to show that we are stronger for showing up. This is, once again, an excuse. Playing in the World Series is not free. We would be stimulating their economy with hotel reservations, eating & drinking at local establishments, or any other local amenities we may use. Spending our queer dollars in Texas shows we are complicit with Governor Abbott’s hateful and dangerous policy.

There is no shortage of deserving cities that would love to host the GSWS. Baseball understood that they needed to show courage last year, moving the MLB All-Star game out of Atlanta because of Georgia’s law restricting voting access for people of color. What you have is an opportunity to be leaders for the community. Don’t cower to pressure and moneyed interests asking you to wave this issue away. If you decide this issue isn’t big enough to fight for, the far-right will only feel emboldened to take even more drastic & evil steps in the future.

Gay softball has meant a great deal to me personally. I was welcomed eleven years ago, when I thought I was a cisgender man. ECSA allowed me to challenge myself & push back against over two decades of repression of my true self. Without ECSA, I wouldn’t have felt safe to explore my identity, or discover that I am a trans woman. Texas has shown loudly & clearly that they are not a safe place for the trans community. I would not feel safe even at a NAGAAA event in a state that will prosecute trans parents for affirming their children’s identities.

Trans youths are more than three times as likely to commit suicide as their cisgender peers. This law will only widen that gap, and NAGAAA should not support the state enacting this cruel policy. It would be disappointing for LGBTQIA+ businesses in Dallas, but some things are bigger than helping one city’s queer community. We need to stick together more broadly in support of all members of our community—lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and more—nationally and across the world.

Show the world that you stand with all members of our community. The only way you can do so is to move the GSWS out of Texas until this order is struck down and defeated. Should you choose to proceed with hosting it in Dallas, you are showing all your trans brothers and sisters just how little our safety and lives truly matter to you.

Sincerely,

Brittney Miller & the undersigned