GLAAD launched “Drive the Vote,” a 4-part video series featuring interviews with LGBTQ voters across four battleground states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The series, created in partnership with leading global digital media company BuzzFeed, will launch on GLAAD’s YouTube and social media accounts, as well as on BuzzFeed’s Facebook, IGTV, and Twitter.
The series follows Mathew Lasky, GLAAD’s Director of Communications, as he drives across the country to talk with LGBTQ voters about the upcoming election, why they’re voting, and what issues matter most to them. The interviews were conducted according to COVID-19 safety guidelines, socially distanced, and with appropriate mask use. The series features interviews with Connie Ticho in Allentown, Pennsylvania; Letha Pugh in Columbus, Ohio; Jon Hoadley in Kalamazoo, Michigan; and Camden Hargrove in Menomonie, Wisconsin.
The first video in the series, released today, features GLAAD’s Mathew Lasky speaking with a young, non-binary voter, Connie Ticho, in their hometown of Allentown, Pennsylvania. The first episode was produced in partnership with Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center in Allentown. Check it on BuzzFeed’s Facebook below:
“Drive the Vote” is part of GLAAD’s get out the vote campaign. Viewers are invited to visit glaad.org/action to register to vote, request an absentee ballot, check their voter registration status, and more.
Each day, GLAAD will release state-specific voting information on each state profiled in the series. The series was created in partnership with Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania; Stonewall Columbus, and Black, Out & Proud in Columbus, Ohio; Equality Michigan and OutFront Kalamazoo in Michigan; and the OutReach LGBT Community Center in Madison, Wisconsin.
“With LGBTQ issues largely left out of the political discourse around the upcoming elections, and completely absent from any of the presidential or vice presidential debates, it was important to GLAAD to speak with LGBTQ voters personally to hear what issues are most important to them this election season,” said Mathew Lasky, GLAAD’s Director of Communications and the host of Drive the Vote. “Together with BuzzFeed, we will amplify these stories from real LGBTQ people across America to remind the nation that LGBTQ issues simply can’t be ignored in 2020.”
“At BuzzFeed, we’re committed to representing our massive and diverse audience, celebrating their identities, and covering the issues that matter to them,” said Wyatt Harms, BuzzFeed LGBTQ’s Lead. “Through this partnership, we can help bring an LGBTQ lens to the upcoming election and deliver on our mission to make inclusive Queer media. We’re proud to use our platform to distribute GLAAD’s important work and amplify the voices of LGBTQ voters across the country.”
LGBTQ issues have been largely absent from the 2020 election cycle, with no mention in any nationally televised election events since the presidential candidates were nominated in August. The Trump administration has targeted LGBTQ Americans at least 180 times in policy and rhetoric since taking office in 2017. GLAAD continues to add pressure on news media to include LGBTQ issues as a part of their election coverage.
GLAAD is currently engaged in a 100 Days of Action campaign to educate LGBTQ people about what’s at stake during the 2020 election and to increase LGBTQ turnout at the polls in November. GLAAD’s recently released ‘State of LGBTQ Voters’ poll found that LGBTQ voters are highly motivated and prepared to vote. The poll also found overwhelming support from LGBTQ voters for Vice President Joe Biden (76%) in a head-to-head matchup against President Trump (17%).
GLAAD has also been activating supporters and followers, including the GLAAD Campus Ambassadors and alumni of the GLAAD Media Institute. As part of the campaign, GLAAD last month launched its Digital Doorknocking initiative, which is a grassroots effort to get GLAAD’s followers the tools to reach out to family and friends. By signing up, GLAAD’s followers gain access to exclusive graphics, videos, research and resources to share with friends, family, and fellow advocates between now and the election. Continue to invite your contacts to participate by signing up at glaad.org/knock.
For over three decades, Stephanie Byers taught music and band at the largest public high school in Kansas. After seeing how decisions made by state lawmakers affected her students, she decided to trade retirement for politics.
“They saw a bottom line, a number that needs to be worked with, and didn’t think about what that means when a student is staring at a textbook that is being held together by duct tape because it outlived its usefulness and the district didn’t have the money to replace textbooks,” said Byers, who is running to be the next representative of Kansas House District 86, which includes much of Wichita.
A Democrat who ran unopposed in the primaries, Byers will face off against Republican Cyndi Howerton, a businesswoman, in the November election. While Kansas is largely a conservative state, Byers is a strong contender in Wichita, a progressive enclave that has historically swung left.
If elected, Byers has vowed to fight for increased funding for education and Medicaid expansion in Kansas, one of at least 12 states that have not expanded the program under the Affordable Care Act. She has also made civil rights protections a pillar of her campaign in a state where, according to advocacy group Freedom for All Americans, “there are currently no explicit, comprehensive statewide non-discrimination protections” for LGBTQ people.
When Byers came out as transgender six years ago, she was largely embraced by her students and colleagues, an experience that pushed her to become a trailblazer for trans educators in her school district.
“I realized that when I came out as a teacher that I was blazing the pathway,” she said. “A lot of public educators that are trans may not necessarily come forward and come out during their careers, because the fact that there’s the fear of prejudice is going to be there.”
As Republican-backed anti-transgender legislation — including much designed to keep trans students out of public restrooms and off sports teams — proliferated in statehouses across the country, including in Kansas, Byers met with school officials and spoke at community events to educate the public about gender identity.
Last October, she spoke out on behalf of trans educators and students at an American Civil Liberties Union rally outside of the Supreme Court, which at the time was hearing arguments in cases that would determine whether employers had a right to terminate workers because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. In 2018, a year before she retired, Byers was named both state Educator of the Year by GLSEN Kansas and national Educator of the Year by GLSEN, the national LGBTQ youth advocacy organization with chapters across the country.
If Byers wins her election on Nov. 3, she will be the first out transgender lawmaker from Kansas. She is one in a “rainbow wave” of at least 574 LGBTQ candidates who will be on the ballot next month, according to a new report by Victory Fund, a group that trains, supports and advocates for LGBTQ candidates. Byers said politicians who are transgender are seen as novelties, and that’s something she hopes to change.
“It’s a part of who we are. It’s part of our identity, but it’s not the only thing. There’s so many other things we are passionate about as well,” she said. “It’s just a matter of normalizing that enough that it’s no longer a thing, and … it’s just a matter of what can we do to serve the communities that elected us?”
The candidate, who grew up in neighboring Oklahoma, is a wife, parent of two adult sons and a grandparent of nine children. She’s a member of the Native American Chickasaw Nation and has deep roots in the working class. She said her father, a longtime U.S. Postal Service worker, and her mother, who served as national vice president to the American Postal Workers Union Auxiliary, showed her the struggles that working-class families face.
“I’m a parent, I’m the grandparent, and I know the challenges that families face at this time,” Byers said, “and that’s who I want to be a voice for — for those families that need somebody who stands up for them.”
Kendall Stephens, a trans woman who survived a horrific transphobic attack in her own home, has described the shocking reaction by police who “cracked jokes while she bled onto the floor”.
Warning: contains graphic descriptions of violence against a trans person.×
The 34-year-old was studying and enjoying a quiet night in with her two goddaughters, aged 12 and 16, when she heard a fight breaking out outside her house in South Philadelphia.
When the group refused to disperse, she called emergency services, but one of the women turned on her and punched her in the face. The attacked and her friends then forced their way into Stephens’s house to continue the assault.
Recalling the attack in an interview with Human Rights Campaign, Stephens said: “I ended up in my dining room getting attacked by four women at all sides of me, and then suddenly one of the women picked up a wooden decorative planter and began hitting me about my head and face with it, causing me to become concussed and black out momentarily.
“Throughout the attack the woman referred to me as a ‘man’ and ‘tranny’.
“The assault did not end there. Several men stormed into the home as well and pulled the women away, but did not pull them away before getting a few hits in as well and calling me the N word and a ‘f**king tranny’.”
Police refused to arrest trans woman’s attacker.
Stephens was left with her nose broken in two places, bruised ribs, swelling on her face, a head contusion, “a busted lip” and damaged gum vessels that caused two of her teeth to become necrotic.
When the police arrived, however, they had little sympathy for the trans woman who had been brutally beaten.
“The responding police officers were very unhelpful,” said Stephens.
“They were belligerent and unsympathetic and refused to arrest one of my attackers, who I had ID’d to them (she was a few doors down continuing to hurl transphobic slurs while they were there).
“Furthermore, they said that by looking at my injuries, they regarded the incident as a simple assault, and as such, I had to make a private criminal complaint.”
While this was happening, her husband arrived home, and they both begged with police to take action. They left without confirming the attackers’ identities or making any arrests.
Equality California and LGBTQ Victory Fund condemned San Diego mayoral candidate Barbara Bry for repeatedly refusing to denounce homophobic and false attacks on her openly gay opponent California Assemblymember Todd Gloria. The Assemblymember is now receiving threats of physical violence — including death threats — on social media. The threats are being investigated by the San Diego Police Department.
The threats come after a campaign by right-wing media and activists to spread lies about Senate Bill 145, which changes California law to give judges the same level of discretion when determining legal penalties for LGBTQ+ people as it does for straight people in certain crimes (USA Today fact checks the bill here). SB 145 was strongly supported by the California District Attorneys’ Association, the California Police Chiefs’ Association and the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault. The misinformation campaign has provoked a barrage of homophobic attacks against Gloria – including the death threats (seen here: 1, 2, 3). Bry repeatedlyrefuses to condemn the homophobic nature of the misinformation campaign or the threats of violence against Gloria.
Among the most prominent right-wing media outlets promoting the falsehoods is KUSI. On Wednesday, the president of KUSI Michael Dean McKinnon, Sr., along with Martha McKinnon, each maxed out to Bry’s campaign.
“Just like Donald Trump refuses to condemn white supremacy, Barbara Bry is refusing to condemn homophobia,” said Equality California Executive Director Rick Chavez Zbur. “Barbara Bry’s willingness to lie about civil rights legislation supported by law enforcement and survivors’ advocates and to pander to far-right, anti-LGBTQ+ extremists says a lot about her character. San Diegans deserve a mayor who will unite the city and stand up to violent extremists. Barbara Bry has shown us repeatedly that she’s unwilling to be that mayor and unfit to lead America’s Finest City.”
“Barbara Bry is putting politics and self-interest before morality and leadership, emboldening the ugliest segments of our society by refusing to condemn homophobia and falsehoods,” said Mayor Annise Parker, President & CEO of LGBTQ Victory Fund. “Barbara is thriving on the mischaracterizations of Senate Bill 145 – which does nothing but equalize the legal implications between LGBTQ people and straight people – because she believes it will benefit her campaign. Her early condemnation of these lies from right-wing extremists would have defused the internet trolls now threatening Todd’s life.”
After Bry attempted to shift blame for her refusal to condemn anti-LGBTQ+ hate onto Assemblymembers Lorena Gonzalez and Tasha Boerner Horvath, the San Diego legislators pushed back:
“Please don’t try to justify your inability to distance yourself and denounce the support of hate-filled extremists like DeMaio & Gastelum & Trump’s SD Republican Party by in any way aligning yourself with my vote,” tweeted Gonzalez.“I fully support @ToddGloria & am disgusted by these alliances.”
“Homophobia doesn’t have a place in our politics, Barbara Bry,”tweeted Boerner Horvath.“These attacks on @ToddGloria are despicable. You should denounce them unequivocally, not make excuses for them.”
Todd Gloria will be the first openly LGBTQ+ person and first person of color elected mayor of San Diego if he wins in November.
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Equality California is the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization. We bring the voices of LGBTQ people and allies to institutions of power in California and across the United States, striving to create a world that is healthy, just, and fully equal for all LGBTQ people. We advance civil rights and social justice by inspiring, advocating and mobilizing through an inclusive movement that works tirelessly on behalf of those we serve. www.eqca.org
LGBTQ Victory Fund works to change the face and voice of America’s politics and achieve equality for LGBTQ Americans by increasing the number of openly LGBTQ elected officials at all levels of government. victoryfund.org
We’re still in October, and that means as we cast our eye on our screens this month, it’s inevitable for us to also be casting our eyes on the past.
The most relevant offering this week is surely the debut of a new HBO Max docuseries, “Equal,” designed to fill in a few gaps in our education about what queer life was like in the days before Stonewall – just in time for LGBTQ History Month. Premiering on Oct. 22, it’s four episodes of slick, smart, and star-powered television that profiles various “leaders and unsung heroes” of the community who stood up, each in their way, to become pioneers in a movement for equality that might never have happened were it not for their refusal to stay invisible.
Narrated by Billy Porter, this look back at the giants upon whose shoulders we stand is not what you might call a “deep dive” into pre-Stonewall queer history; instead, it provides a sweeping overview of LGBTQ life in the middle of the 20th century, through a focus on some of the individuals who cast a long shadow in the ongoing fight for equality. That doesn’t mean it’s short on information though; a lot of detail is packed into each hour-long episode, and viewers are sure to walk away feeling much more informed about this long-obscured era of queer history.
From a collaboration of producers that includes the likes of Greg Berlanti and Jim Parsons, “Equal” looks to shine a light on figures whose stories took place within the shadows of past American culture: founding fathers of the LGBTQ equality movement like Harry Hay, Dale Jennings, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin; pioneering trans women like Christine Jorgensen and Sylvia Rivera; and men and women of color, like Lorraine Hansberry and Bayard Rustin, who brought their queerness with them into the larger fight for civil rights in the arts and politics of the mainstream world. To that end, real-life archival footage is blended with newly filmed “re-enactments” – and a healthy dose of artistic license – to bring their histories to life.
Among the cast of queer and allied actors taking part are quite a few familiar names and faces. Cheyenne Jackson stands in for One Magazine founder Jennings, with Anthony Rapp as Mattachine Society founder Hay; Heather Matarazzo (“Welcome to the Dollhouse”) and Shannon Purser (“Stranger Things,” “Riverdale”) play Lyon and Martins, respectively; Jamie Clayton (“Sense8”) is Jorgensen, and Hailie Sahar (“Pose”) is Rivera, while Samira Wiley (“Orange is the New Black,” “The Handmaid’s Tale”) and Keiynan Lonsdale (“Love, Simon”) portray Hansberry and Rustin. The cast also includes Sara Gilbert, Anne Ramsay, Alexandra Grey, Jack Starr, Isis King, and Jai Rodriguez, as well as many additional performers, playing a mix of other real-life and fictional composite roles.
If you can’t wait for Oct. 22 to watch, you might be in luck, thanks to NewFest. The series is included as part of the line-up during the long-running LGBTQ Film Festival scheduled run between Oct. 16-27.
Celebrating its 32nd edition in the year of COVID-19 might not have been what this venerable film fest would have preferred to do, but like other prominent festivals that have had to adapt to life in 2020, it’s taken its show online – at least for the most part. That means that film fans who want to participate in NewFest without actually making the trip to NYC have gained an historic opportunity.
Organizers have put together what they describe as “an incredible virtual lineup” of screenings, special events, and panels, available nationwide for the first time in the festival’s history; and if you feel you must go in person to really feel a part of it all, there are even a few special drive-in screenings scheduled during NewFest’s 11-day run.
If you’re not a documentary person, NewFest has you covered, too. Don’t get us wrong – it features plenty of them. But it also offers a lengthy list of narrative options, both short and long form, from which film fans will be sure to find something to fit their personal tastes.
Among the highlights: “Ammonite,” the new semi-biographical 19th-century period romance from “In God’s Country” director Francis Lee, starring Kate Winslet and Saorise Ronan; “No Hard Feelings,” a debut feature from German filmmaker Faraz Shariat that explores a romance between two Iranian immigrants who meet in a refugee camp and has already won a German Teddy Award for Best LGBTQ-themed Feature; “Ahead of the Curve,” Jen Rainin and Rivkah Beth Medow’s documentary tracing the legacy of the groundbreaking lesbian publication Curve Magazine; filmmaker Mike Mosallam’s feature debut “Breaking Fast,” a cross-cultural gay romcom about a Muslim-American (Haaz Sleiman) whose blossoming romance with an All-American white boy (Michael Cassidy) is set against the backdrop of his family’s celebration of Ramadan; Laurie Lynd’s “Killing Patient Zero,” a riveting documentary about the scapegoating of Gaëtan Dugas, the gay French-Canadian flight attendant who was blamed for spreading AIDS to North America; and Stanley Kalu’s “The Obituary of Tunde Johnson,” a timely drama about a black teenager struggling with coming out to his parents while dealing with the trauma he experiences from both being closeted and being black.
There’s a long list of other features and shorts, most of which are available for the entire run of the festival after their official “screening” times and dates; there are also numerous special events – such as an all-trans cast doing a table read of “Brokeback Mountain. The full line-up can be found, along with all-festival passes, tickets and ticket packages, on the festival’s website at newfest.org.
With so much exciting queer content at our fingertips, even in the middle of a pandemic, even the gloomiest among us would have to call it an embarrassment of riches – more than enough to see us through until long past Thanksgiving. If not, don’t worry. LGBTQ History Month is barely halfway through, and there’s sure to be plenty more, still in store.
The groundbreaking queer Broadway show Slave Play has achieved a Tony Awards first, racking up the most nominations for any non-musical play in its 73-year history.
With 12 nominations, Slave Play has overtaken Angels in America, which previously held the record for the most Tony Awards nominations for a non-musical.×
The three-act play was written by Jeremy O Harris, and follows three interracial couples, including a same-sex couple, on a disturbing retreat undergoing “Antebellum Sexual Performance Therapy”, as the Black characters are not getting sexual satisfaction from their white partners.
The set of the play featured a giant mirrored wall and the house lights are kept dimly on so the audience is forced to put themselves into the narrative, and confront their own reactions.
The New York Times critic Jesse Green described it as “one of the best and most provocative new works to show up on Broadway in years”.
Slave Play is in some ways a “thought experiment”, Green said, asking the questions: “If Black people in intimate partnerships with white people felt safe to say how they needed to be seen, would their white partners be able and willing to comply?
“Or are Black people forever condemned by the legacy of slavery to live ‘squarely in the blind spot’ of their non-Black partners’ ‘myopia?’”
It is with a heavy heart that after 20 years in business supporting our work here at Face to Face that we have made the difficult decision that our 3 Monkeys Thrift store will be closing its doors byDecember 15th. These challenging times have made us look closer at our operations and know that this is the best decision for us in being fiscally responsible to the organization.
A huge debt of gratitude is owed to our Store Manager Richard Chole along with Roger Lloyd, Monica Hostnick and a team of amazing volunteers who have been truly dedicated to the store and the mission of ending HIV in our county. To our patrons who passed through our doors all these years we thank you for your support. We will miss seeing you.
Please note that we will no longer be accepting donations at this time but will be offering some amazing deals on a daily basis until we close our doors!
In the meantime, please do stop on by and give us a “simizal” from behind your masks!
For the past two years, residents in the small Rocky Mountain town of Heber City, Utah, have seen their main street bedecked with rainbow banners in celebration of Pride Month in June.
However, after the City Council voted for a controversial ordinance regulating banners, LGBTQ advocates said they fear the colorful displays will be a thing of the past.
“It feels like a slap in the face,” said Allison Phillips Belnap, 47, a local real estate attorney who raised $3,553 through a GoFundMe campaign to purchase and install the banners on city lampposts.
The new ordinance, passed in August, requires banner applications be reviewed by the city manager, with appeals submitted to the council for review. Any event or message promoted on the signage must be sponsored by Heber City, Wasatch County or the Heber Valley Chamber of Commerce, and events must be both nonpolitical and nonprofit. Due to the ongoing debate within the community over whether Pride banners are “political” speech, and since the new ordinance bans political banners, it’s unclear whether city officials will approve them next June.
Heber City Mayor Kelleen Potter, the mother of two LGBTQ teens, opposed the ordinance.
“It has pretty much eliminated the option of private citizens funding banners and requesting them to be hung on Main Street, unless they are able to get sponsorship from the city, the county or the chamber, and that sponsorship means some financial sponsorship,” she said.
Prior to the ordinance, residents could apply to display banners on city lampposts for a fee of a few hundred dollars, so long as banners were noncommercial, according to Potter. Banners were approved by the public works department, and if public works had concerns about an application, they sent it to Potter for approval. Typically, banners advertise holidays and local events, such as Veterans Days and Heber Valley’s sheepdog competition, Potter said. No one questioned the process until June 2019, when residents saw their downtown adorned in rainbow banners for the first time.
A day after they appeared along Main Street, residents filled a city council meeting to voice divided opinions over them. While many were thrilled, others saw the rainbow banners as government-sanctioned “political speech,” according to Potter. She said city officials began receiving phone calls and emails from people who wanted to know if they could hypothetically apply to install flags with anti-abortion or anti-pornography messages, or with Ku Klux Klan or Nazi symbols, though no one actually applied to install such banners. Still, the inquiries sparked debate among city officials over whether an ordinance was needed to regulate them.
“No one ever gave me a specific example besides those that we could dismiss easily as hate speech,” said Potter, who had approved the Pride banners the past two years.
‘Are we the silent majority?’
Home to about 16,000 people, Heber City is a microcosm of how small towns across America are adjusting to evolving attitudes around gender and sexuality.
Last year, Mayor Wally Scott of Reading, Pennsylvania, canceled a Pride flag ceremony, calling the flag a political symbol. After criticism, he reversed his decision, and the rainbow flag flew over the city last June.
This past June, debate swarmed in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, a town of about 42,000, after the town’s first Pride flag was relocated to what many residents considered a less visible location. That same month, officials in Foster City, California, a town of about 34,000, refused a request to raise a Pride flag outside the city’s municipal building in celebration of Pride Month. Councilman Sam Hindi told the Bay Area Reporter that doing so would open the door for hate groups to fly banners in the city.
Just last month, after some residents in Minot, North Dakota, voiced anger over a rainbow flag that was temporarily hoisted outside city hall, a lesbian council member came out publicly in fierce defense of the flag. Her speech was captured in a now-viral video posted online. Minot has since banned flags other than the American flag until it decides on an official policy.
Throughout Utah, rainbow flags are becoming common and increasingly controversial. Last year, Project Rainbow, a small Salt Lake City-based nonprofit, rented out rainbow flags for $14 that Utahans could stake in their lawns for the duration of their city’s Pride festivities. The group staked about 1,400 flags, and raised about $20,000, which it donated to local LGBTQ centers. The flags were not all well-received: The group received backlash on social media from people accusing it of “forcing their beliefs” on local communities, according to the group’s founder, Lucas Horns. Horns estimated that about 10 percent of last year’s flags were stolen or vandalized.
This month, for National Coming Out Day on Oct. 11, the group staked 3,000 Pride flags.
“It does seem like there was an uptick in stolen flags and particularly vandalized flags,” Horns said in an email to NBC News. “A number of people found their flags torn or written on or even lit on fire, which I think speaks to a more emboldened hatred. But with that said, more people signed up for flags than ever before and were more excited about showing love and support to the LGBTQ community than ever.”
When Pride banners were installed along Main Street in Heber City this past June, there was less controversy than there had been the year prior, according to Mayor Potter. Still, residents took to the town’s local “Ask (Heber, Utah)” Facebook group to debate them. One mother expressed frustration over having to explain the meaning of the rainbows to her young children.
“As a Christian, our family believes that marriage is between a man and a woman. I’d like to think that there are other people in this valley who feel the same way. Are we the silent majority? If you still believe in Christian values, please speak up,” the woman wrote.
In August, after the second wave of backlash, the City Council voted to pass the banner ordinance. City Council Member Ryan Stack took to the “Ask (Heber, Utah)” Facebook group to explain why he voted in favor of the measure.
“By playing favorites and choosing only those banners it wants to see, a governing body engages in illegal viewpoint discrimination,” he wrote. “I supported removing the element of discretion by allowing only government speech on the banners. Yes — this prohibits private banners on Main Street. But it also protects the City in the stronger way to insulate it from potential legal claims when it comes to decisions regarding banner display.”
Heber City Council Member Mike Johnston, who also voted for the ordinance, told NBC News that it does not ban Pride banners, but is rather a way to keep out potentially hateful and divisive messages.
“If we decide — and I hope we will — that Pride is something we want to support, then we will do that as a city council, as elected officials, who are elected to make the decisions and take the heat,” Johnston said. “I think we’re big girls and big boys, and we can make those decisions, but it’s tough when you let anybody in the public submit banners to put up, and basically, they’re making a free speech statement that, ‘You have to let me do that, because that’s what you do, you let everybody do it, so you have to let me do it.’”
Political speech or symbol of inclusion?
Phillips Belnap claimed Heber City council members passed the ordinance to appease a religious minority who opposed the banners. She said the ordinance will likely prevent her from installing them next year, since it will require her to organize an event, such as a Pride festival, with financial sponsorship from the city, county or chamber of commerce.
“We’re not going to be able to get this council to sponsor a Pride festival or to get the county to sponsor a pride festival,” she said, referring to the ongoing debate over whether the banners are “political.”
She rejected criticism that her banners are political symbols. A lesbian who left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly referred to as the Mormon Church) after multiple suicide attempts, Phillips Belnap said the banners were intended to reduce suicide among local LGBTQ youth.
“We have a large number of people who are closeted and at high risk of suicide, because they feel like coming out is the equivalent of ruining their lives and ruining their family’s lives,” she said.
Heber City resident Jamie Belnap, 41 (no relation to Phillips Belnap), whose 14-year-old son, Luke, is openly gay, said the banners “made us feel great” in a town where few LGBTQ people feel visible.
“Kids who don’t feel comfortable coming out yet, at least they know that our community is working towards being a welcoming place for them and that they’re seen and valued, so I know my son felt that way,” Belnap said.
Deeply conservative Utah has begun to warm on LGBTQ issues. In 2015, the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature passed “the Utah compromise,” a law that made Utah the only solidly conservative state to pass some protections in housing and employment for LGBTQ people. Two years later, Utah became the first of eight conservative states to repeal a “No Promo Homo” law that prohibited discussing LGBTQ issues in schools. And this past January, it became the 19th state to ban conversion therapy for minors, a controversial practice that aims to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. It was the most politically conservative state to do so.
One reason for this shift could be a growing tendency among Mormon parents to embrace their LGBTQ children. In recent years, the Mama Dragons, an online support group for Mormon moms of LGBTQ kids, has grown to thousands of members. The group, which Mayor Potter joined after one of her own children came out, has pushed acceptance for LGBTQ youth among families in Utah.
Despite progress, Potter said many LGBTQ teens still feel isolated in Heber City.
“In a self-reported survey, 12 percent of our students at our high school report that they are somewhere in the LGBTQ community — that’s a lot of kids. And one of the top three issues they’ve identified are mental health issues, and so as we all bang our heads against the wall about how to help these kids, this was something that really was helping, because it created a more inclusive and accepting feeling,” she said of the Pride banners.
Three hundred miles southwest of Heber City, a similar controversy flared in the small desert town of St. George, Utah, where rainbow banners fluttered on lampposts along the town’s main thoroughfare last September.
Pride of Southern Utah, a local LGBTQ advocacy group, raised $6,100 to install the banners in St. George, as well as the towns of Cedar City and Hurricane. The banners promoted the group’s annual Pride Week festival, which is typically held in mid-September. After raising the money, the group obtained a permit to have the banners installed.
After they appeared, city officials received at least two informal inquiries from a white supremacist group and another group that wanted to display banners with President Donald Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again,” according to St. George Mayor John Pike. In an email circulated on social media that year, a St. George councilwoman referred to the rainbow Pride banners as “political statements,” unleashing a debate over whether a current ordinance surrounding public signage should be reevaluated. In response to the backlash, St. George put a moratorium on applications for lamppost banners until officials could revisit the city’s existing ordinance.
Because the Covid-19 pandemic forced the annual Pride festival to be canceled, the group has not applied to resurrect the banners this year, according to Pride of Southern Utah Director Stephen Lambert. But Lambert said he is confident that St. George officials will approve the banners in 2021.
On the topic of Heber City, Lambert said he understands the desire for an ordinance but also expressed concern.
“The real damage, I think will be if Heber [City] says, ‘Well, we’re just not going to do it, because we made a law that prevents you from doing this,’” Lambert said. “They need to figure out a way to keep out the riff raff and the negative and the hate, and keep in the people that need it.”
Despite the backlash against Pride banners, Phillips Belnap said the awareness they’ve created has helped encourage many in Heber City’s small LGBTQ community to come together. A local LGBTQ Facebook group that she started now has about 150 people, she said, and the local middle and high school have formed Gay-Straight Alliances clubs.
Jamie Belnap said her son was “very disappointed” by the ordinance but was also not surprised that it passed.
“I think it’s almost worse when the flags go up, and everybody feels seen and everybody feels like, ‘Oh, this is such a movement in the right direction’ … and then you see the backlash,” she said. And then to see the city give in to that backlash, she added, “That’s a pretty strong message — almost more so than if the flags had not been up.”
Texas social workers are criticizing a state regulatory board’s decision this week to remove protections for LGBTQ clients and clients with disabilities who seek social work services.
The Texas State Board of Social Work Examiners voted unanimously Monday to change a section of its code of conduct that establishes when a social worker may refuse to serve someone. The code will no longer prohibit social workers from turning away clients on the basis of disability, sexual orientation or gender identity.
Gov. Greg Abbott’s office recommended the change, board members said, because the code’s nondiscrimination protections went beyond protections laid out in the state law that governs how and when the state may discipline social workers.
“It’s not surprising that a board would align its rules with statutes passed by the Legislature,” said Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze. A state law passed last year gave the governor’s office more control over rules governing state-licensed professions.
“There’s now a gray area between what’s legally allowed and ethically responsible,” he said. “The law should never allow a social worker to legally do unethical things.”
The Republican-led Texas Legislature has long opposed expanding nondiscrimination protections to LGBTQ Texans in employment, housing and other areas of state law.
Alice Bradford, the board’s executive director, said she received an email from the governor’s staff recommending the change Friday, three days before the board’s Monday vote.
Francis pushed back against that idea. “Rules can always cover more ground as long they don’t contradict the law, which these protections did not,” he said.
U.S. health officials have identified more than 100 Texas counties, particularly in rural areas, with a shortage of social workers and other mental health professionals. Parks, the Houston social worker, said the policy change could impact LGBTQ clients’ access to mental health services in those areas.
“There’s research to show that members of the queer community … are at higher risk for trauma, higher risk for all sorts of mental health conditions,” he said.
Ivon Garcia, 26, grew up two exits from the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego. Garcia was so steeped in Mexican-American culture and Spanish that Garcia “didn’t really conceptualize someone not knowing Spanish.”
At a young age, Garcia identified as nonbinary. But this got consistently swept under the rug by Garcia’s extended family, who was often hostile to anyone different.
“To me, Spanish and Mexican, Chicano, Xicano, Mexican-American culture has consisted of being a matter of ‘one or the other, otherwise not acknowledged,’” Garcia said. “There is so much unsaid, but still judged, because it simply doesn’t fit.”
It didn’t take long into Garcia’s teen years to realize that the pronoun “ella”—which means “her” or “she” in Spanish, did not describe Garcia.
“‘Ella’ communicated something to others that seemed so profoundly wrong,” Garcia said. “‘Ella’ was for my tías (aunts) and mother who I could resonate with but still felt a departure from. ‘Ella’ encompassed so much that I wasn’t, that I rejected it.”
So Garcia began to search for an alternative in Spanish, the way that “they/them” is used in English instead of “he/him” or “she/hers.” Garcia settled on “elle,” a still-emerging pronoun not used by many Spanish speakers.
As an alternative to “él” (he) and “ella” (she), Garcia says “elle,” which is pronounced EH’-jeh, gives them more agency in conversations with other Spanish speakers.
“‘Elle’ is a tool to me, a way to communicate something that I want, a way to test the waters and see if I can be me,” Garcia said.
Not mainstream—at least not yet
In recent years, activists and academics in the U.S. and Latin America have opened a dialogue about inclusivity in Spanish, a gender-defined language in which most nouns are assigned either a masculine -o ending or a feminine -a ending. The -e ending has become common as other gender-inclusive terms like “Latinx” and “Latine” grow in prominence.
As pronoun options for trans and nonbinary individuals become more recognized in the United States, linguists say a similar push can be seen in Spanish-speaking countries.
Mexican-American lexicographer and Amherst University professor Ilan Stavans told NBC Latino that he’s heard the “elle” pronoun used in progressive and academic spaces, but not so much in the mainstream yet.
“They resemble the efforts done in the United States to give that type of linguistic neutrality,” Stavans said. “They seem to me to be scattered.”
Stavans referred to a recent study by the Pew Research Center that concluded only 23 percent of Spanish-speakers in the U.S. have heard of “Latinx” and only 3 percent use the term to describe themselves. Stavans says he supports the move toward gender-inclusive language, but hasn’t seen evidence that it’s catching on on a large scale.
“The Spanish language is so gender specific,” he said. “There are 450 million speakers of Spanish throughout the Americas. It’s a very diverse and heterogeneous population.”
In her 16-student Spanish class, NYU associate professor Laura Torres-Rodriguez makes sure to give everyone the chance to share their pronouns. On the first day of school this semester, she asked everyone to put their pronouns in their screen-names — “él”, “ella”, or “elle”. Students in her advanced-level class told her it’s the first time a Spanish teacher has ever offered that to them.
“Teaching the use of the nonbinary pronoun in Spanish is I think crucial if you want all your students to feel safe and included,” she said. “I’m learning all the time and changing my teaching and speaking practices to better achieve this.”
Torres-Rodriguez says the problem of the “elle” pronoun catching on is more of a political one than a linguistic one, as with the -e ending, “you can easily have concordance between the noun and the adjective.”
“The use of the “elle” pronoun is to me an essential step in recognizing and including the experience of trans and nonbinary persons and to start exiting the gender binarism that generates so much social and political violence,” Torres-Rodriguez said.
Even for Garcia, the “elle” pronoun takes some getting used to for someone who has spoken and heard Spanish their whole life.
“Even to me, elle/elles is new, is a bit off-tune when spoken, and a splash of curiosity when heard,” Garcia said. “It’s a work in progress where I’m learning how Spanish, how my culture, how my identity, how my family will receive me, all of me, all the different aspects that encompass me.”