southern perspectives on the queer movement committed to home

Dimples, Butch, Buttercup, Sissy… Sissy?

Whenever someone asks me what I’m writing, I feel a fleeting twinge of guilty laziness for saying I continue to blog – no new book of essays, no great American novel, no legacy book for my granddaughters. This is me self publishing using the same platform I’ve had for thirteen years. Never reaching 2,000 followers but loving my local and international friends who faithfully hang with me. Averaging 150 hits per post in 2022, sometimes more in other years, sometimes fewer. Somewhere along the way I found a voice, but the Boomer passion for individual achievement in the realm of literature that produced six books is mixed now with the seasoned settling of comforting routines that continue to produce my cyberspace conversations. If I ever changed my mind about publishing a new collection of my flash nonfiction, I promise the following post from the archives would be included.

Pretty, the great Treasure Hunter, occasionally brings home items that fascinate. One such find was two versions of a board game I played as a child growing up in rural Grimes County, Texas in the mid twentieth century. Before the television set took over as our main form of entertainment, my family played all kinds of games from dominoes to gin rummy to board games Santa Claus left for me under the tree at Christmas. One of our family favorite board games was Go to the Head of the Class which was supposedly “educational” as well as fun. With school teacher parents, I played tons of “educational” games.

fifth series copyrighted in 1949 by Milton Bradley, publisher

The game was originally played with tokens that were cardboard images of children attached to wooden bases. Each game had 8 tokens, and their pictures were on the book that contained the questions.

(top row, l. to r.) Sissy, Dimples, Liz and Butch

(bottom row, l. to r.) Sonny, Buttercup, Susie and Red

Sissy

I can’t find the edition when publisher Milton Bradley eliminated the unsmiling player named Sissy, but I can assure you it would have been the last token picked in my family. Buttercup would have run a close second to the last.

Take a good look at Sissy, the little boy whose two obvious distinguishing features were that he wore glasses and parted his hair down the middle like the little girl tokens.

I remembered Jim Blanton’s essay in Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home where he talked about growing up in Gaffney, South Carolina and being called “sissy” as a child and teenager by bullies in school. Words, labels that cause pain.

I’m sure my parents were oblivious to the subtle cultural messages being sent to me in our educational games, but for me this game was one more nail in the coffin of internalized homophobia and intentional segregation in my childhood. Never any people of color as the tokens. No one wanted to be known as a “sissy,” and how could I explain to anyone why I always picked “Butch” first?

not sure where this picture of me was taken or why –

did I already feel different?

Be aware of bias and labels that hurt. Be kind to each other. Be safe this weekend.

Stay tuned.

PRESIDENT IMPEACHED: A LESSON IN CIVICS AND THE REST OF THE STORY

And it came to pass in these days that President Donald J. Trump has undergone a three months long impeachment process which resulted in the preparation of two articles of impeachment approved by the House of Representatives in a majority vote along party lines last night (December 18, 2019) . The articles will be forwarded to the Senate for his trial and possible removal from office.

For those unfamiliar with the American government, here’s a brief overview of what I learned about impeachment in my eighth grade civics class in the small southeastern Texas town of Brazoria in 1959.

Our system of federal government has three co-equal branches as defined by the Constiution of the Unites States: legislative that makes the laws, judiciary that interprets the laws and executive that enforces the laws. All three branches operate within a constitutional framework of checks and balances to prevent any one of the three from making mistakes that endanger our national security and/or our democratic republic.

Impeachment is one of the constitutional checks available for mistakes, really big mistakes known as high crimes and misdemeanors, made by presidents and others. Only the legislative House of Representatives can impeach a president. Impeachment does not mean the president will be removed from office for his high crimes – that can only be done by the Senate which holds a trial on the articles of impeachment approved by the House and votes to either allow the president to stay or evicts him from the Oval Office, West Wing, White House and in this case exiles him to Trump Tower or Mar-a-lago.

President Trump is only the third out of a total of 45 presidents to have been impeached since the Consitution was adopted in 1788. Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868, William Jefferson Clinton was impeached in 1998, Richard M. Nixon resigned before his impeachment process could have begun in 1974.

End of civics lesson…and now for the rest of the story.

A few weeks ago I was invited to be a guest speaker for a senior level American history methods class at the University of South Carolina here in Columbia. The instructor, Dr. Dave Snyder, asked me to talk with his class of 20 students about a book he assigned them to read, Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home. The USC Press published this collection of essays by 21 grass roots organizers of the LGBTQ movement in South Carolina from the 1980s through the state’s recognition of marriage equality in 2014. I edited the book and also contributed an essay. I was thrilled to go but also a bit apprehensive – wondering (along with Ellen Degeneres) whether I would be “relevant” to these young college students.

I needn’t have worried. Many of the students had actually read the book and had thoughtful questions about several individual contributors, their motivations for becoming activists, the challenging coming out experiences during the HIV-AIDS epidemic in the 1980s for individuals in a conservative rural state like South Carolina. The discussion was lively and took up the entire 90-minute class period. I hadn’t had that much fun since the tour when the book first came out in 2018.

“When you and the others were doing the organizing back then, did you realize you were making history?” asked one young man in the class. Hm. I really had to think about that before I answered.

“No, I finally said, “I don’t believe we understood that at the time. We just saw injustices and wanted to make them right.”

Unlike the original whistleblower who ignited a firestorm of events that created the impeachment process I watched on television over the past three months which culminated in the articles of impeachment against President Trump last night, I felt I was a bystander in an historical moment. I knew this was history in the making right now as I watched from my favorite recliner in the den. No doubt about it, but this time around I could only observe and hope injustices could be made right.

The People’s House took their place in history by agreeing (1) that our president had abused the power of his office to achieve personal political gain which would disrupt our election process that is a foundation of our republic and (2) that he had showed contempt of Congress by refusing to turn over subpoenaed documents to the impeachment committees while also refusing to allow members of his administration to testify before the House.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi began the House proceedings yesterday with a reminder of our pledge of allegiance we learned and memorized as children. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Have we ever realized our hope for liberty and justice for all? Definitely not. Are we feeling indivisible as a nation today? The answer depends on daily polls that change as often as the wind changes its course. Do we still have a republic supported by the will of we, the people? I think we must be collectively woke to make sure we keep our freedom secure.

Neither President Andrew Johnson nor President Bill Clinton was removed from office by the Senate after their impeachment and there is little likelihood that President Trump will be either. So why bother with impeachment? Why devote we, the people’s taxpayer dollars to an expensive legal process? My answer goes back to our civics lesson today.

No one, not even the President, is above the laws of our land. Every person, even the President, is accountable for his actions. Our holy book, the Constitution of the United States, demands nothing less. The laws we obey keep our democracy safe and help define who we should be. Corruption at the highest level of government has a trickle down effect on lower levels of all government officials in addition to promoting self dealing in our corporate board rooms and executive suites which ignore our commitment to liberty and justice for all. The art of the deal is sometimes based on disrespect and dishonor for those who are “lesser than.”

My dad frequently quoted a Bible verse to me about what was most important to him. A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, he said. I can’t swear he was right because I never had great monetary riches, but I hope my legacy includes “she kept her word, spoke the truth, respected others, fought for what she believed.”I’m hoping for a President who cherishes his or her good name.

Stay tuned.

text message yesterday from contributor Pat Patterson made me happy!

“Look what I just found at Strand Bookstore in NYC…”

One of the contributors to Southern Perspectives, Pat Patterson a/k/a Patti O’Furniture, texted this to me yesterday afternoon…followed by “proudly asked the clerk at Strand for your book and then showed her my contribution”

Hello – first, thanks so much to Pat for the text and second, I encourage everyone to look for our book in bookstores around the country and shoot me a text when you find.

I love to think that people in New York City(and other areas) are reading about our part in the movement.

What a lovely gift idea for celebrating Women’s History Month, too!

Stay tuned.

wonder women – southern style (part II)

A politician/philanthropist from Faith, North Carolina who settled in Charleston; an attorney who moved to Columbia from Key West, Florida; a midlands YWCA executive director from Detroit, Michigan — three women whose different, yet similar, stories were chronicled in Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home. I celebrate these women today during Women’s History Month because they all overcame a youthful sense of isolation and fear of discovery to become leaders of the LGBTQ movement in South Carolina. Regardless of their diverse backgrounds that brought them to our state or the different motivations that inspired them, these women stood on the battleground of equality and refused to surrender.

Linda Ketner was the first openly gay candidate for federal office in South Carolina. As the 2008 Democratic nominee for the US Congress, District 1, she won more than 48% of the vote, narrowly losing to a four-term incumbent in a district held by Republicans since 1980. Linda’s fearless leadership in forming organizations such as the Alliance for Full Acceptance and South Carolina Equality plus her generous financial support of individuals and other organizations within the LGBTQ community have cemented her place in our history.

In Southern Perspectives Linda wrote about her own spiritual journey: “It was at this time [having found a religious community in an all-black church] that it became essential to both my mental health and my soul to ‘take all of me with me everywhere I went’ – to come all the way out to everyone I knew. The decision to do that for me was like jumping off a cliff where you didn’t know if the ground was eight inches below or eight thousand feet. It was an act of faith. What I hadn’t expected was that rather than falling, I soared. My heart soared with a freedom, integrity, and peace I had never known. I was living my life with integrity and congruence. I was living authentically. Secrets kill. Secrets produce a life of shame and a shameful life. And I have never known an LGBTQ person who regretted coming out, no matter what the consequences.”

Linda Ketner at a Pride Parade in 2013

Nekki Shutt was born in Honolulu, Hawaii into a military family that traveled in eight states before she graduated from Key West High School in Florida. She moved to South Carolina in 1986 to finish her undergraduate degree at the University of South Carolina where she also finished law school in 1995. Nekki served on the national board of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and co-chaired the board from 1998 – 2000. She helped to found South Carolina Equality, served as its first board chair and was involved in leadership roles in a number of other community organizations. She was, and continues to be, a warrior woman.

Nekki was one of the lead attorneys in the Condon v. Haley case that resulted in South Carolina’s becoming the thirty-fifth state to recognize marriage equality in November of 2014. She wrote in Southern Perspectives: “That case was the highlight of my legal career, because it brought my passions for both practicing law and civil rights together in one place at one time…This was not an accident, and it is not a result of Will and Grace or Ellen. It is the result of people coming out to their friends and families and neighbors and coworkers because they felt it was a safe environment. The people and organizations of the LGBTQ community have created that environment by their actions during the past thirty years. I am proud of our state and proud to have been a part of this movement. To whom great things are given, great responsibility comes. I had incredible role models in my family as a child and in the larger world as an adult. What I do as an activist is my way to give back and follow in very big footsteps. We have more battles ahead in the war for equal rights, but I predict we will win…”

Nekki Shutt (l.) at 2015 Pride Parade with her law partner Malissa Burnette

Carole Stoneking (1937 – 2016) was born and raised in Michigan with an undergraduate degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. She worked for twenty-seven years for the YWCA and came to Columbia as its executive director. Following her career in the YWCA, Carole took a new path as the owner of the Stress Management Institute of Therapeutic Massage in Columbia for the next twenty-three years before her retirement. Carole was a social justice activist throughout her life; she was president of the Columbia chapter of the National Organization for Women, board member of the South Carolina Gay and Lesbian Business Guild, a past delegate for South Carolina Equality, a board member for the South Carolina Council on Aging, a board member for Old Lesbians Organizing for Change, and a member of that organization’s national steering committee.

In Southern Perspectives Carole says: “I came out of the closet in 1956. That was thirteen years before Stonewall. I came out in a tumultuous time when it was taboo…there were no organizations helping gays or lesbians. No agencies were trying to help people from feeling shame. Only the bartenders were there to help people keep from starving or to provide space for people to sleep for the night. There were no colleges or universities offering places for lesbians to study about the effects of shame or suicide. I faced a great deal of hardship and criticism from everyone, including my own mother who told me ‘I would rather have seen you be a prostitute.’ At that moment I felt all the shame of a lifetime…However, I am glad that I did not hold it in; being out and fighting for an equal right is a virtuous thing.”

Carole Stoneking and OLOC banner in Pride Parade in Columbia

I met Carole shortly after she moved to South Carolina and watched her grow older but continue to show up for meetings and parades for the next thirty years. I always admired her for that. She never quit believing that the fight for an equal right was a virtuous thing. In July, 2008 (at age 71) she gave a speech at a regional Older Lesbians Organizing for Change meeting. That speech has much more meaning for me now – luckily the talking points are preserved in Southern Perspectives. This is talking point #8:

“Is this ageism I am feeling? Is this the time in my life when I need to be focusing on the reason I am here on earth? Or maybe a new reason I am here? B.B. Copper says’Unless old lesbians are remembered as sexual, attractive, useful, integral parts of the women-loving world, then current lesbian identity is a temporary mirage, not a new social statement of female empowerment.'”

Pride – 2015 – our history belongs to you now

Candace Chellew-Hodge, Harriet Hancock, Deborah Hawkins, Linda Ketner, Nekki Shutt, Carole Stoneking — these are a few of my wonder women, southern style who began a fight for themselves and for those who will come after them and sought to honor those who came before them. The fight took place in a conservative, sometimes hostile, environment but these women persevered in their own battlefields to win some of the fights, lose others, but know that the fight was a virtuous thing. We do, indeed, have more battles ahead, but I also predict we will win. Onward.

Happy Women’s History Month!

Stay tuned.

wonder women – southern style (Part I)

Don’t get me wrong. The men whose stories were included in Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home are just as important as these women I celebrate today, but it is Women’s History Month after all. As I wrote in the Prologue of the book: “The narratives in this collection tell the stories of ordinary people who became extraordinary in our struggles for equality in a place and time that made change seemingly impossible.”Ordinary women and men became extraordinary as they organized the LGBTQ grass roots movement in a hostile environment from the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the 1980s to marriage equality in 2014….and beyond. The fight continues.

Candace Chellew-Hodge, the current pastor of Jubilee! Circle and one of the co-hosts of the first LGBTQ radio show in South Carolina which began in 2005, Rainbow Radio, had this to say about that experience in Southern Perspectives: “[On Rainbow Radio] for the first time, a long-silenced group of citizens was granted access to the microphone, and their stories of hiding, living in shame, and feeling condemned by their God and their family were at once heartbreaking and revolutionary. They were stories of hardship, trial, tears, laughter, triumph, and joy, even in the mist of oppression and despair.”

Candace Chellew-Hodge co-hosted Rainbow Radio

In the fall of 1980, according to Harriet Hancock’s essay in Southern Perspectives, her son Greg came out to her with the support of Harriet’s sister Diane who was very close to her nephew. With the words Mom, I’m gay, Harriet’s life changed forever. Greg was the middle child of her three children. He was enrolled at the University of South Carolina – along with Harriet who at 44 had decided to go back to college to become an attorney.

“My heart broke for him, but somehow I managed to keep my composure. I sat down, and with a sigh of relief, I said, “Is that all?’…I don’t think we consider the struggle that many gays and lesbians have in overcoming their own internalized homophobia. Unfortunately some never make it.”

Now known in South Carolina as the Mother of Pride for her activism in organizing the first Pride Marches in Columbia in the early 1990s and countless other outrageous acts and everyday rebellions against social injustice during the next 30 years, the Harriet Hancock LGBT Community Center was named to honor her commitment to the queer community and continues to be a beacon of enlightenment for youth and adults in all segments of the population.

Harriet and her son Greg at an early Pride March on State House steps

“My phone rang at midnight…[An older gay man] told me I was a troublemaker for organizing the march and how it would make more trouble for gay people…The last thing he said to me was ‘There will be blood running down Main Street tomorrow, and it will be on your hands.'” – Harriet Hancock in Southern Perspectives

Thankfully, the caller was wrong, and those empowered standard bearers became the catalysts for change in South Carolina and kept marching every year – all the way to the nation’s capitol a few years later.

“In 1993 I went to Washington, DC, for the national march….I stayed outside the city and took the subway to the Mall. I heard people getting excited on the train on the way to the mall, and it sounded like a symphony orchestra to me. By the time I walked up the stairs from the train and stepped out in the sunlight, it was as if the drums and tympani were exploding.” – Deborah Hawkins in Southern Perspectives

Deborah Hawkins, owner of lesbian bar Traxx

By the time Deborah marched in DC in 1993, she had owned and operated a lesbian bar near the railroad tracks in Columbia since March, 1984. “I was thinking we needed a place where women could gather. We needed a country club, a place where we could get together for more reasons than just beer and such. I felt like it was my home, and I wanted people to come in and be happy. I was the hostess. I wanted the women to have somewhere to go, because a lot of them were lacking someone in their life to let them know they were loved. I could see…they were different and felt the difference, and I wanted them to know that I cared about them and loved them. That was my goal for opening Traxx.” — Southern Perspectives

Candace once thought of South Carolina as a place you went through when you were driving someplace else. Nevertheless, she moved from Atlanta to Sumter in 2003 in search of a new family life that led her to become a reluctant apostle to the LGBTQ people of faith in the midlands for the next 15 years. Harriet was born in 1936 and raised in Columbia in a house built on land deeded to her family in 1784. A disastrous 25-year marriage to a troubled man led her away from the state but her determination to make a better life for herself and her children brought her home in 1978 to her larger family in Columbia that loved and supported her. Deborah’s family lived in the same house in West Columbia from the time she was born until the day she left for college. As a young adult in the 1970s, she hitchhiked around Europe for six weeks with three friends, all planning to never come back home. Riding around in a van through the Transylvania forest at a hundred miles an hour on the Autobahn, the group of four travelers realized they’d gotten in the wrong vehicle. It was time to go home.

These women were ordinary women who became extraordinary – their stories are remarkable. They heard voices crying for help in a wilderness of needs in a state smothered by conservative rural leadership. Here are we, they answered. We won’t leave you, but we will work for change.

Stay tuned for the conclusion.