On June 4, your Brooklyn state senator stood on the New York State Senate floor, looked dead at everyone working to legislate queer people out of existence, and gave them two words. “Actually though. Give up,” Jabari Brisport said, according to Brooklyn Paper. “If it were possible to create a world without queer people you would have managed it by now.”
Brisport, who has represented parts of Fort Greene, Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy since 2021, delivered the speech alongside a resolution he sponsors every Pride month recognizing June as LGBTQIA+ Pride Month in New York. The resolution walks the queer timeline from the Stonewall uprising through marriage equality and lands on the wave of anti-LGBTQIA+ laws passed in recent years by federal and state governments. “The month of June reminds us of all the achievements of the past and highlights the work that remains to be done,” it reads.
Then he read the history out loud. “Throughout history you have demonized us, ostracized us, harassed us, assaulted us, criminalized us, sterilized us, killed us, censored us, fired us, evicted us, and denied us medical care,” Brisport said. “Yet still, here we are, looking fabulous.” Brisport, elected in November 2020 as the first openly gay person of color in the New York State Legislature, told the chamber he is one of only two openly queer senators currently in office.
The speech could read as a victory lap. It is not. It is a list of names of people who fought when fighting could cost them everything, starting with one most New Yorkers have never heard. Brisport opened with William Dorsey Swann, who was born into slavery in Hancock, Maryland, in 1860. In the 1880s and 1890s, Swann threw drag balls in Washington, D.C., mostly for formerly enslaved men who danced in silk and satin, and he called himself “the queen of drag.” At his thirtieth birthday celebration on April 12, 1888, police arrested Swann and twelve other Black men in what is recorded as the first documented arrest for female impersonation in the United States. Swann fought the officers off, one of the earliest known instances of someone physically resisting arrest in the name of gay rights.
In 1896, Swann was convicted of “keeping a disorderly house,” a euphemism for running a brothel, and sentenced to ten months in jail for the crime of throwing a ball. After he got out, he demanded a pardon from President Grover Cleveland, something no American on record had done before. Cleveland said no. That made Swann the first American to take legal and political action to defend the right of queer people to gather. “When he and his guests were arrested during police raids of his events, he did not suffer in silence,” Brisport said. “He fostered an equally proud tradition of advocacy for queer liberation.”
That tradition runs straight up the East River. Brisport traced the line to 1969, when Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson helped lead the Stonewall uprising. The seven-acre waterfront park in Williamsburg, formerly East River State Park, was renamed Marsha P. Johnson State Park on February 1, 2020, after the transgender woman of color and Stonewall figure. “For queer people, resilience is an art form that’s been handed down through generations of found-family and perfected over centuries,” Brisport said.
Brisport’s “in recent years” is not abstract. As of February 9, 2026, the ACLU was tracking nearly 400 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills moving through state legislatures nationwide, while the Trans Legislation Tracker counted 645 anti-trans bills. They hit bathrooms, gender-affirming care, schools and sports, and lawmakers are increasingly advancing broad “sex definition” laws that strip transgender and nonbinary people of legal recognition outright. That was the backdrop when he delivered the kicker.
“Your hate can harm us. Your hate can even end lives,” Brisport said. “But your hate cannot bring you peace. Your hate cannot win you a higher wage, affordable medical care, clean air, or lower energy bills. Above all, your hate cannot end our movement.” It is a clean line. It is also complicated, because New York did not come through on the affordable-medical-care half this spring.
When Albany finalized its 2026 state budget in late May, an $8 million fund for gender-affirming care got cut entirely, according to Prism Reports. The Assembly had written in the full $8 million and the Senate had proposed $4 million, with broad Democratic support during the March negotiations, and then it vanished in the closed-door executive meetings in late May. On the city side, Mayor Zohran Mamdani trimmed a promised $65 million for trans services down to $15 million over two years. “A budget is a moral document,” Kei Williams of New Pride Agenda told Prism. “It’s a document that shows your values.” Amanda Babine of Equality New York put it flatter: “They left transgender people hanging. We’re absolutely furious.”
The gap is between the floor speech and the spreadsheet. Brisport told the haters their hate cannot win them affordable medical care, which is true, and in the same season his own state quietly pulled the money for it. The resilience he described is not a metaphor about looking fabulous. It is what gets handed down because, over and over, the institutions do not come through.
The resolution and the funding fight are both on the record. Brisport’s district and Albany offices take constituent comment, and you can read his Senate bills and contact his office directly through his official New York State Senate page. Marsha P. Johnson State Park is open on the Williamsburg waterfront, and you can find hours and access through the New York State Parks site. The history is free to walk through. The medical care, this year, came with a price tag.
Featured image: New York Senate Photo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
