A new billboard campaign hopes to send messages of affirmation to trans youth across the United States amid one of the worst years for anti-trans legislation in history.

At least 29 digital billboards with messages like “You Are Loved” are scheduled to be displayed in 15 U.S. states over the coming weeks. Twenty-three are already up and running, according to Michael Knote, founder and executive director of the Ohio-based LGBTQ2S+ resource centre Have a Gay Day. In addition to Knote’s home state, billboards will appear in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas.

The vast majority of states were chosen, Knote says, because they have been the site of some of 2022’s most vicious political attacks on the trans community. In February, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a controversial directive ordering the state’s child welfare services to investigate affirming families of trans youth for abuse. Alabama, where a billboard is currently waiting to launch, is on the verge of passing legislation banning life-saving medical care for trans minors under the age of 19.

Knote says his goal is to be “louder than the hate.” “It’s about answering the hate with love and kindness,” he tells Xtra. “It’s about throwing a pebble into the water and seeing the ripple effects. It’s these little things that make a bigger impact, and hopefully they’ll inspire other people to send messages of love out, too.”

“Hopefully they’ll inspire other people to send messages of love out, too.”

The campaign is already starting to see those ripple effects, according to Knote. In Mississippi, where state legislators passed an anti-trans sports ban last year, the billboard sits outside of a Bass Pro Shop retail store, and people have started sending in selfies with the display in the background. “Be careful who you hate, it could be someone you love,” reads the 20 x 60 foot sign outside of Jackson.

The messages resonate with James Knapp, chair of the board for advocacy group Trans Ohio, which partnered on the campaign. Knapp says that seeing one of these billboards “would have literally changed my life” when he was coming into his identity as a trans person, often without support from those around him.

But even as society has made incremental progress since the days of his adolescence, Knapp remains keenly aware that trans kids still need that affirmation in their daily life. He says TransOhio has received a spike in crisis calls since the state legislature took up a pair of bills seeking to deny affirming health care and restrict trans youth access to school athletics, which has emboldened conservative parents to lobby local school boards to strip protections for trans students.

“It’s very hard for trans folks right now, youth in particular,” Knapp tells Xtra. “A lot of these kids, they’re afraid, they’re depressed and the worst part is they don’t see the other side of this. They don’t see hope for the future.”

More than 130 bills targeting trans youth have been introduced across the U.S. this year, according to the national LGBTQ2S+ non-profit Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Although Knapp says that it sometimes feels as if trans advocates are “screaming into the void,” he says that he is staying optimistic that these pieces of legislation represent nothing more than an “atrocious blip in history.”

“That’s really the point of the billboard campaign: to say that this is not forever,” he says. “We’re going to come out on the other side.”

Have a Gay Day plans to continue raising funds to ensure that more billboards are erected around the country after bringing in nearly $4,000 on Facebook. In addition to offering hope to those who need it, the signs direct viewers to the non-profit’s webpage, which offers links to resources like PFLAG and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for individuals who need emotional or legal support.

For those who may live in areas where they don’t have many of their own networks to rely on, Knote hopes to remind them someone out there cares. “I don’t know what it means to everyone,” he says, “but if I was ever driving around and there was this message, it would just be like, ‘Wow, maybe I’m not completely alone here.’”