Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is pushing a pediatric heart doctor & his family out of Louisiana

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Pediatrician Jake Kleinmahon says, “The message is very clear.”

“This is one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to do,” says Kleinmahon, a father of two young children and medical director of Ochsner Hospital for Children’s Pediatric Heart Transplant in New Orleans. “It is absolutely heartbreaking thinking about leaving my patients who many of them really rely on me.”

But Kleinmahon and his husband Tom, a chemical engineer for Shell, say Louisiana left them no choice. Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the state has forced them to abandon their friends, colleagues, and the life they’ve built in New Orleans.

Kleinmahon and his family are moving to New York.

“Over the last year, Tom and I have watched state legislatures across the south pass anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Louisiana’s last legislative session was no different,” Kleinmahon posted to Instagram this week. “The message is very clear. Tom and I have discussed at length the benefits of continuing to live in the South, as well as the toll it takes on our family. Because of this, we are leaving Louisiana. Our children come first. We cannot continue to raise them in this environment.”

The Louisiana legislatures anti LGBTQ legislation is driving a highly specialized pediatric doctor, in New Orleans, to leave the state with his family. pic.twitter.com/zQEVTuZf5G

— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) July 30, 2023

The couple and their two kids, 4 and 6, will leave behind a state whose legislature is dominated by a Republican super-majority in thrall to far-right Christian nationalists and determined to erase LGBTQ+ identity from public life in the Bayou State.

In June alone, the red state legislature passed…