Though 2015 is only halfway through, it’s already been a game changer of a year for the transgender community, both in Hawaii and far beyond.

Here at home, a long-sought change to Hawaii law allowing transgender individuals to amend their birth certificates without mandatory “sex change” surgery finally passed the Legislature in May. It rightly recognizes the reality that many trans individuals can’t have such surgery and are disadvantaged daily by birth documents that don’t agree with their gender presentation and identity. It now awaits the approval of Gov. David Ige, who has indicated he’ll sign it.

The LGBT community and its allies celebrated that key point of progress Saturday at Honolulu Pride, where state Rep. Chris Lee and attorney Rebecca Copeland — the legislative introducer of the birth certificate bill and its chief community advocate, respectively — served as grand marshals of the annual event’s parade and expo, attended by thousands in Waikiki.

Just a couple of days prior to that, the U.S. Air Force changed its policies to make it harder to expel transgender service members because of their gender identity. This follows the Army’s adoption of a similar policy in March. The Air Force’s new rules say that diagnosis of gender dysphoria or self-identification as transgender will not automatically trigger involuntarily separation and ensure a thorough review of each case by senior officers and review board members.

But the biggest recent transgender news, of course, concerned legendary Olympian Bruce Jenner’s high-profile transition to Caitlyn, a process capped by last Monday’s publication of Vanity Fair, with its already-iconic Annie Leibovitz cover photo of a transformed Jenner. In a measure of just how completely the Jenner media tsunami dominated our popular culture last week, consider this: “Caitlyn Jenner” was far and away Google’s top search term with more than 10 million queries.

Jenner’s big moment came exactly one year after TIME magazine featured trans actress Laverne Cox (“Orange is the New Black”) on its cover along with a story titled “The Transgender Tipping Point,” predicting the rise of a “social movement poised to challenge deeply held cultural beliefs.”

“Transgender people … are emerging from the margins to fight for an equal place in society,” said the TIME story, in part. “This new transparency is improving the lives of a long misunderstood minority and beginning to yield new policies, as trans activists and their supporters push for changes in schools, hospitals, workplaces, prisons and the military.”

Indeed, just as Hawaii’s Legislature passed the new birth certificate bill, both Maryland and Connecticut passed similar measures. Maryland’s became law on June 3, while Connecticut’s bill, like Hawaii’s, awaits a likely gubernatorial signature. The three should raise to nine, plus the District of Columbia, the number of states where trans individuals can access a birth certificate that affirms the gender with which they and their health care providers attest they were born.

Throughout their lives, transgender people experience shocking levels of physical and sexual violence, including murder, and are depressingly much more likely to commit suicide than others in our culture.

While such progress is welcome, much more is obviously needed. Only 19 states ban discrimination in employment based on gender identity. Nationwide, nearly two-thirds of trans people experience “serious acts of discrimination — events that would have a major impact on a person’s quality of life and ability to sustain themselves financially or emotionally,” according to the National Center for Transgender Equality. Nearly a quarter experience “catastrophic” discrimination.

Transgender people are also likely to live in extreme poverty — four times more likely than those in the general population to have a household income of less than $10,000. Almost one in five have been homeless at some point in their lives. And throughout their lives transgender people experience shocking levels of physical and sexual violence, including murder, and are depressingly much more likely to commit suicide than others in our culture.

That’s why moments like passage of Hawaii’s birth certificate bill, new discharge policies for the Air Force and Army and Caitlyn Jenner’s triumphant debut in Vanity Fair are so important: They remind us that circumstances for transgender Americans can be changed and provide collective opportunities for us to consider the changes that must be undertaken.

For as many as 3.2 million transgender people around the country, including thousands here in Hawaii, those changes can’t come quickly enough. Amid the media hoopla of “Call Me Caitlyn” last week, Jenner spoke personally and profoundly to the urgency of the need.

“If I were lying on my deathbed and had kept this secret and never did anything about it, I would be lying there saying, ‘You just blew your entire life. You never dealt with yourself,’ and I don’t want that to happen,” she said.

“I’m not doing this to be interesting. I’m doing this to live.”