If you were told there was a $10,000 bounty on trans people using the restroom, you’d probably think it was the plot of a dystopian film set in the not-so-distant future.

In Odessa, Texas, that near future is a current reality.

And it’s one that Pride Center West Texas founder Bryan Wilson said he hopes young people pay attention to, especially during election cycles.

“The only future that I see is younger folks and queer adults of all ages starting to pay more attention to local elections,” Wilson said. “People are realizing that it is these local officials who impact more of our day-to-day lives, and so that is the only future where we're alive and healthy.”

Wilson has strong ties to South Florida, where he spent years working for nonprofits in the Wilton Manors area. Wilson and his husband, Clint, also started a successful entrepreneurial business, but hopes of expanding it were crushed when the pandemic hit in 2020.

Wilson said Odessa doesn’t have many support centers, so he said that he initially wanted to open a queer nonprofit if no one else had done, so after their kids went off to college. When they closed their business in 2020 and Clint had dreams about the West Texas desert, this plan was fast tracked, and Pride Center was born.

With this recent bounty, Pride Center couldn’t have come at a more crucial time for a rural community of 116,000 people with sparse support centers available.

The bounty would be pressed on any transgender person who “enters or uses a restroom in a public building designated for the exclusive use by persons that do not correspond to his or her biological sex” in a city-run building. It also specifies that “biological sex” is decided by the person’s original birth certificate, meaning trans people with updated certificates are also subject to the law.

Florida and Utah are the only states with explicit penalties for trans adults using the restroom, according to journalist and activist Erin Reed. In Florida, trans people utilizing government-owned public restrooms that align with their gender can face a trespassing offense if they refuse to leave.

However, Florida hasn’t reported any criminal arrests under its bathroom ban. Incentivizing citizens, like in Odessa, may prove different results than the Sunshine State, Reed noted.

Having worked for nonprofits in Florida, Wilson said Floridians shouldn’t panic about this rule spreading to other red states like theirs because rural places similar to Odessa are “like stepping back a decade.”

However, he said it’s still concerning that anti-trans policies like this one are used as a “fearmongering” strategy.

“It’s cyclical –– around election time, what are some hot issues that can be used for fearmongering?” he said. “And men watching your little girl pee, which is how they would characterize a trans woman using a bathroom behind a closed door stall, is unfortunately a successful fearmongering tactic for about a third of the country.”

It’s these tactics like these that drive Wilson to focus on educating the community. For example, he said many don’t realize that the implications of the bounty in Odessa affect parents too.

The law makes exceptions for children entering opposite-sex restrooms with their parents “under the age of 12.” Since Wilson and his husband were both assigned male on their birth certificates and their daughter was assigned female, he’s concerned that he won’t be able to help her when she turns 12.

“If she has an emergency in a city-run or operated bathroom and cries out for her parents, neither of us would legally be able to enter that bathroom to help her without facing some sort of legal issue,” Wilson said. “[The bill] completely discounts single parents, or a grandmother who's raising her grandson … once that child turns [12], which is still a child, he can't cry out for his grandmother without her doing something illegal."

Educating the community also helps people feel safer, Wilson said. He recalled a moment shortly after the bounty was announced when a trans woman entered the community center. She didn’t ask what the Pride Center was doing to fight against it. Wilson said she simply wanted to know more about it and drown out the misinformation.

When she learned it would only go into effect in city-run buildings, and not common areas like grocery stores, Wilson said she was relieved.

He noted there has been an uptick in people seeking services or information from Pride Center after learning about the bathroom bounty.

Whether it’s in Odessa or South Florida, Wilson said it’s important for people to focus on the resources queer people have in their community, such as identifying safe places to use the restroom, where to find information on PrEP and how to connect to mental health services.

“We have TikToks going viral about the Odessa ban, [but the] thousands of viewers will never set foot in Odessa,” he said. “Unfortunately, LGBTQ community members love to talk about places that aren't safe … we'd be a lot better off if we spent more time discussing the places that are taking action to build our community.”