Tag: LGBTQ

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Q&A: Renee Parker Sekander, City Of Memphis’ Newest LGBTQ Liaison

Renee Parker Sekander Photo Credit: City of Memphis

Renee Parker Sekander is the city of Memphis’ new LGBTQ liaison.

Those duties are additional to her role as executive assistant to Memphis Mayor Paul Young. Former Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland created the LGTBQ liaison position, a role filled in the past by Dabney Ring and Maria Fuhrmann.

Sekander is a native Memphian, a University of Tennessee graduate and has worked as an advocate in Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, and more. But they weren’t home, she said. Also, she said she’s motivated to create a Memphis that she wants to live and raise a family in.

“I’m a person who is gay and wants to have a family,” Sekander said. “I also have family that’s gay. I have family that’s trans, I have friends who are trans. I have folks who have left Memphis because they say the state is too harsh, that it’s too hard to be trans, it’s too hard to be gay in this community. So they go to Chicago, or Los Angeles, or Boston.”

Sekander went on to say when people leave the city, it’s hard for Memphis to continue to grow and reach its full potential as it’s losing important talent and voices.

Not only is Sekander dedicated to making sure the city is welcoming and inclusive for the LGBTQ community, she also plans on doing outreach work to “bring people back.” She sees this as an opportunity to “rebrand” and “re-educate” the city.

The Flyer spoke with Sekander about her intentions in her role, how her identity impacts her work and more. — Kailynn Johnson

Memphis Flyer: Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Renee Parker Sekander: My name is Renee Parker Sekander, born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. I have lived in several different cities over the last six years, but my wife and I made the decision to move back home to Memphis and make this our permanent home again.

I live in the Midtown area with my fabulous but reactive dog, Fox Cleopatra Parker, and we just have an incredible life here in Memphis. A large part of the reason that I am who I am is because this city built me, and I’m excited to just pour back into it with every bit of me.

 That’s the “too long; didn’t read” summary of who I am.

Could you talk more about how your identity and background play a role in the work that you’re currently doing?

I’ll say I’ve been doing this work unofficially for a little while, just as a person who’s very passionate about inclusivity, equality, [and] making sure Memphis is really seen and branded as an inclusive and welcoming city so that we don’t lose out on talent, culture, and spirit to other cities because some people perceive us to not be an equal city, an inclusive city.

My goal is to make sure that people feel comfortable living here authentically being who they are and making sure we are all free and able to contribute to building the city the way it should be built.

I think for me it’s been very important that I continue the work that has been done over the past few years. I’m not the first LGBTQ liaison, there were two prior to me, Dabney Ring and Maria Fuhrmann… I’m excited to continue the work but also expand the work, too.

When I started my work in government, I told Mayor Young I was ready to push his vision forward. For him, his vision really prioritizes making sure that every member of our community feels valued, feels seen. So, the charge that he’s given me is to continue making strides and taking steps to making sure our city is represented as an inclusive and welcoming city.

I’m really excited to think through some creative ways but also build on the work that’s already been done and is being done by different community members across the city of Memphis and also working with them to be innovative, figuring out new ways we can keep our culture here, keep our people here, so that our city can be as safe and inclusive as possible.

How would you describe your role and responsibilities?

In quite a few different ways. I think one of the biggest roles is going to be making sure that people outside of city government understand and have closer relationships with those in it, making sure that we’re constantly present whether that be at events, at meetings, brainstorming sessions, making sure that I’m expanding the table, making sure that more people can sit at it, and more voices can be heard as decisions are being made on how to make our city more inclusive.

It’s also about making innovative ways to grow our MEI (Municipal Equality Index) score which is currently 54 out of 100, according to the Human Rights Campaign. [This is] our equality index, like how inclusive, how safe is our city? I’m thinking of ways to grow that score. So, it’s going to be a lot of ensuring our city resources are accessible to the people who use them and need them, and making sure we really rebrand the city as a space that is safe and welcoming for all.

What are some of the things in Memphis that may hinder people from having an authentic experience and how does having someone like yourself in the mayor’s office help make that experience a reality?

I think being able to come from the perspective of a woman wanting to raise a family here. What do I want my Memphis to look like for my family, for my children? Making sure that we continue to protect our community.

We see a lot of times in national news and statewide news a lot of attacks against the LGBTQ community, things that are putting obstacles in the way of folks from being able to access housing, job equity, protections against discrimination. These are things that a lot of people look at our state, and look at our country and we have to be able to say [that] Memphis is not a part of tearing people down based on who they identify as. We are actually welcoming and we embrace it and overall we want to make sure people understand they can come home to Memphis if they are trans, if they are queer. They can make an impact here.

It’s going to take all of us to fix a lot of the problems that we see in our city and we have to make sure that  there are no barriers or limits to being able to welcome the folks who want to make an impact here in Memphis to be able to do that. It’s going to take a lot of innovative ideas, a lot of ideas people have been fighting for and working on for years and years, but overall it’s going to take a collective group of voices.

What I’m excited to do in my role is creating that table, making sure that we’re constantly hearing those voices, and that everyone has an active part in the progress we’re trying to make here. It’s going to be some ‘teamwork makes the dreamwork’ for the next few years.

How do you continue the work that’s been done but also expanding so more people can have a seat at the table?

I think the first and most important thing is listening. It means meeting with the folks that have been doing the work and consistently meeting, too, and becoming intertwined in that work.

One of the things I hate the most is the duplication of efforts. I want to make sure that we know what work is already being done, what’s working, what’s helpful, and what gaps are there. Are there ways that the city can be doing more to make sure that people feel seen and heard in hard moments and in strong moments within our community?

Having a presence, too. I’m very excited because our mayor has taken the charge of being a present mayor, an active mayor of being in the community. That’s something that he’s going to continue to do and so making sure that there’s always a presence with our city officials and our city government in those spaces where it’s going to be impactful, where people’s presence might not have been there in the past. We want to make sure we’re filling in those spaces, and that we’re there and that we’re listening. 

My first couple of months as the liaison will be learning more about what organizations have been doing this work, meeting with folks and activists who have been doing this work, and making sure they’re at my table as we continue to make these charges and make these changes.

You’ve been in advocacy work for a minute. What keeps you motivated?

I think it’s a combination of “little me” and “big me.” “Little me” was a little girl growing up closeted and gay here in Memphis — scared to come out, scared to be who I am. In that, I was also scared to ever use my voice. I felt like kind of [a] shell of myself sometimes. As I became more comfortable with who I am, who I love, I became more confident in using my voice against the things that are wrong, that are unjust.

For me, I stay motivated by knowing there’s still more work to do. I want to make sure a little Black girl growing up here in Memphis who’s closeted and queer feels more comfortable, more safe, coming out sooner because we need their voice, we need their energy, we need who they are. I think it’s really important we send that message to little girls and little boys.

It’s also about “big me.” I’m not a mother yet, but I want to be a mother, and I always want to be able to look back and say [that] I did good work that’s going to benefit my children’s lives. It’s always about making “big me” proud, too. It’s about doing the work that’s going to be the most impactful, and doing it in my hometown, that really drives me.

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New State Law Allows Discrimination for Anti-LGBTQ Foster Parents

Jace Wilder, education manager of the Tennessee Equality Project, says the new law “puts kids at risk of being abused, neglected and harmed again.” (Photo: John Partipilo)

With Gov. Bill Lee’s signature, Tennessee last week became the first state in the nation to establish the right of adults who claim moral or religious objections to LGBTQ identity to foster and adopt LGBTQ kids.

In the days since the law became effective, the Department of Children’s Services (DCS) has shelved a 10-year-old policy that said children in state custody must receive care that “promotes dignity and respect for all children/youth and families inclusive of their gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.”

That policy is now “under review and will be updated on the website once the review is complete,” DCS spokesperson Ashley Zarach said. New guidelines for how the state will navigate foster kids’ sexual orientation and gender identity in deciding where to place them are expected to be hashed out in the coming months.

Senate approves bill establishing a right to foster, adopt by anti-LGBTQ parents in Tennessee

The law’s passage has raised alarms among advocates for LGBTQ youth in Tennessee and elsewhere, who say it upends a central principle of child welfare systems: prioritizing the best interest of a child.

Instead, they say, the law gives greater weight to a prospective parent’s religious and moral beliefs over the need of a child for a loving, safe, and supportive home.

“What’s really sad about this is there’s a really high volume of LGBTQ+ kids in the foster system whose needs aren’t being met now,” said Molly Quinn, executive director of OUTMemphis. Among the LGBTQ nonprofit’s programs is one that aids 18- to 24-year-old LGBTQ youth facing homelessness, many of whom are former foster kids who faced a tough time in the child welfare system.

“The fact that the state would accept a family that is willing to discriminate into this broken system with such vulnerable kids is difficult to understand,” she said.

Best interests of the child?

The law, formally called the Tennessee Foster and Adoptive Parent Protection Act, was backed overwhelmingly by Tennessee Republican lawmakers, who two years ago also approved a first-of-its-kind law allowing private adoption and foster care agencies that accept tax dollars to reject prospective parents for a variety of religious or moral reasons, including their faith or whether they are LGBTQ.

In advocating for this year’s bill, Dickson Republican Rep. Mary Littleton characterized it as a necessary safeguard for families who want to offer loving homes to foster and adoptive kids but worry that they would have to compromise their faith or moral beliefs. Littleton also cited an urgent need for more willing families to step forward. Tennessee currently has 4,948 fully approved foster homes, but needs 400 more.

At the end of the day the state should be acting in the best interest of the kids and this doesn’t do this. This puts emphasis on beliefs of foster and adoptive parents.

– Laura Brennan, Family Equity

Littleton stressed that the new law says DCS is not precluded from taking a child’s preferences into account before placing them in a home.

“This bill does not disregard the values and beliefs of the child,” Littleton said, noting state child welfare officials can still take into account “a comprehensive list of factors” before placing any child in any home.

Advocates have pushed back to say that plain language of the law does not require the state to take into account the child’s own wishes.

They also criticized what they call a mischaracterization by the law’s supporters that prospective foster and adoptive parents in Tennessee have been rejected for holding anti-LGBTQ beliefs.

Parents in Tennessee have not been required to be gender- or sexual-orientation-affirming as a condition of becoming approved as a foster or adoptive parent. They have, however, been required to promote dignity and respect of a child’s identity if they take an LGBTQ kid in their home — until now.

DCS: parents preferences already taken into account

According to the Department of Children’s Services, prospective parents’ “preferences” have routinely been taken into account before a child is placed in a home, a spokesperson for the Department of Children’s Services said in a statement.

“Prior to this legislation, the DCS home study process included asking prospective foster and adoptive parents a series of questions to identify their placement preferences,” a statement from DCS said.

“Among those are questions regarding willingness to parent a child who identifies as LGBTQ+. Our goal always is to find the most appropriate placement to meet the unique needs of each child in our care,” the statement said.

Anti-LGBTQ foster, adoptive parents can’t be denied child placements under proposed law

Tennessee currently has 8,854 kids in state custody — 6,686 of them residing in foster homes. Up to a third of all foster youth nationwide identify as LBGTQ — often kicked out of home or winding up in state custody as result of mistreatment or rejection based on their gender identity, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Jace Wilder, education manager Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBTQ advocacy organization that has vocally opposed the law, pointed to his own tough childhood as an example of the importance of supportive adults in a child’s life.

Wilder, who is transgender, was raised, in part, by a friend’s parents after suffering abuse at the hands of his father, he said. His mother was disabled and frequently hospitalized.

Wilder said the abuse wasn’t solely because of his gender identity, but “it kind of gave him more ammo to use against me, so that did not help.” He was also able to connect with LGBTQ people for support in his teens and college years, he said.

“Without finding people that accepted me and really helped me grow, I think I would have been stuck in the position of being too afraid to transition, too afraid of being out,” he said. “I think this puts kids at risk of being abused, neglected, and harmed again.”

The nature of discourse over LGBTQ youth in Tennessee already exemplifies the need for safe and affirming homes, said Eli Givens, a college freshman from Tennessee who also serves as an advocate for the Tennessee Equality Project.

“It’s been just really unbelievable watching this session,” Givens said. “I’ve had adults telling me I need to go gas myself, that I was clearly molested when I was younger, just a wide array of threats.

“It’s bewildering that the same adults who told me to gas myself can adopt an LGBTQ child. That’s an extremely scary reality.”

Tennessee AG pushes back on proposed federal LGBTQ foster protections

The law was enacted on the heels of proposed new rules currently being considered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services related to the placement of LGBTQI+ youth in foster care. Among the proposed rules for all foster homes is they “establish an environment free of hostility, mistreatment, or abuse based on the child’s LGBTQI+ status.”

Tennessee AG leads multi-state fight against federal protections for LGBTQ foster youth

In November, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti led a 17-state coalition opposing the rules, saying in a letter to the federal government that they would shrink the pool of available foster families and “further divert resources away from protecting foster children from physical abuse and toward enforcing compliance with controversial gender ideology.”

Laura Brennan, associate director for child welfare policy for Family Equality, which advocates for LGBTQ families, said national advocates are keeping a close eye on what’s happening in Tennessee. The state’s 2022 law allowing publicly-funded private adoption and foster care agencies to exclude LGBTQ parents has seen been adopted by 13 other states, she said.

“At the end of the day the state should be acting in the best interest of the kids and this doesn’t do this,” she said. “This puts emphasis on beliefs of foster and adoptive parents.”

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.

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Film Features Film/TV

Bottoms

The best thing about Emma Seligman’s 2020 film Shiva Baby is the intimate connection between director and lead actor. Rachel Sennott’s Danielle is a college senior facing adult life by making a bunch of questionable choices, like the secret sugar daddy whom she uses for financial support instead of getting a job. Shiva Baby is one of those rare films that earns the “dramedy” moniker. Yes, it’s an extraordinarily well-done cringe comedy, but you actually end up caring about what happens to these (admittedly obnoxious) people. 

Seligman and Sennott re-teamed for Bottoms, a completely different kind of comedy that hints at a deep well of potential for this duo. This time, Sennott stars as PJ, a would-be Ferris Bueller at Rockbridge Falls High School. The problem, as she and her best friend Josie (Ayo Edebiri) express it, is that they’re not the talented, charming kind of gay kids, but rather the sarcastic and abrasive kind. Sure, the Gen Z high schoolers are not nearly as uptight about sexual orientation as they were when John Hughes was making his teenage dramedies, but that doesn’t help PJ or Josie get laid. Nor does it help that they set their sights impossibly high. No matter what gender they are, losers of PJ and Josie’s caliber have no shot with the pair of cheerleaders as radiantly perfect as Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber). Josie’s plan is to patiently wait until their 20th high school reunion and hope Isabel has been ground down enough by life to settle for her. 

PJ convinces her that the long game is not viable, so they go to the school’s opening weekend carnival determined to shoot their shot. It’s an unmitigated, but incredibly funny, disaster. Josie’s opening lines include “I like all the holes in your pants” and “Oh look, you’re skinny, too!” 

As they’re leaving in humiliated defeat, they witness a parking lot fight between Isabel and her quarterback boyfriend Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine). When they offer Isabel a safe ride home, Jeff tries to stop them from driving away, and flops at the slightest contact between the bumper and his precious QB knee. His teammates (who always dress in full football pads and uniform) rush to his aid. The approaching homecoming game against arch rival school Huntington High means this delicate flower must be protected at all cost. As rumors spread that PJ and Josie spent the summer in juvie, they are called into the principal’s office (Wayne Péré, deliciously slimy). Frantically BS-ing to keep from getting expelled, Josie claims their altercation with Jeff was part of a women’s self-defense club. As their infamy spreads, PJ sees an opportunity. They’ll start a fight club, get the cheerleaders involved, then, hopefully, nature will take its course. 

Bottoms stars Shiva Baby’s Rachel Sennott and The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri as teenage fight club leaders looking to get laid. What could go wrong?

It is, of course, a terrible plan, but that doesn’t stop their burly coach-turned-social studies teacher Mr. G (NFL legend Marshawn Lynch) from signing on as faculty sponsor. PJ’s attempt to become high school Tyler Durden are hilariously pathetic — and made even more hilarious by the fact that they actually work in attracting not only their fellow losers like Hazel (Ruby Cruz), but also Isabel and Brittany. 

Sennott and Edebiri are on fire in Bottoms. Josie is the mistress of the rapid, spiraling meltdown. Sennott slowly reveals the desperation lurking below the surface of PJ’s cynical bravado. Fight Club, David Fincher’s classic of male fin de siècle ennui, has long been ripe for a good skewering. Seligman and Sennott gleefully subvert Brad Pitt’s famous speech to the new recruits; the first rule of this fight club is “be punctual.” But the camaraderie of violence works just the same for awkward high school girls as it does for disaffected office workers. As PJ and Josie get lost in “body contact exercises” with the cheerleaders, the group drifts into low-level terrorism. In true Heathers fashion, the adults are so clueless and self-involved that they paper over every new, absurd event. 

Seligman’s direction is razor-sharp. Even as she’s hanging Fincher’s pretensions out to dry, she learns from his strengths. There’s no lazy, flat comedy lighting here, and her image composition belie a Kubrickian precision. She honed her lead duo to perfection but didn’t neglect her supporting characters — who knew Marshawn Lynch had such great comic timing? Bottoms is the best high school comedy since Booksmart, and, for my money, an instant classic. 

Bottoms
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Film Features Film/TV

Passages

Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos) catches the eye of Tomas (Franz Rogowski) in Passages.

If you’ve heard one thing about Ira Sachs’ new film Passages, it’s probably that it earned an NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association. Many have pointed out that the film, while frank about matters of love and intimacy, is neither prurient in intent nor really, in the big picture, all that racy. What the ratings board seems to have found so objectionable is that about half of the film’s sex scenes involve a gay couple.

“It’s a warning to other artists and filmmakers that if you create certain images, they will be punished,” says Sachs. “It’s a legacy of the Hays Code, directly created in the late 1920s by and for the Catholic Church to limit what is available to the public and what art is created.”

During the days of the Hays Code, Memphis was notorious for the strictness and arbitrary nature of its censorship board. But what’s so frustrating to the filmmaker about the whole affair is that he never intended for Passages to be a film remembered for its sex scenes. “It’s not about sex,” says Sachs. “I mean, sex is part of the story. But I wanted to make an actor’s film — a film that, for me, recalled certain kinds of cinema. I think particularly of [John] Cassavetes, and also of the French New Wave, which were actor-driven and really about what happens between people in the moment. I think about [Cassavetes’] A Woman Under the Influence, but I also think about [Jean-Luc Godard’s] Contempt. It’s just this kind of thing that is monumental, which gets lost in the kind of neutered space of contemporary American cinema, where there are no humans. I mean, the number-one movie in America is about a doll!”

When we first meet Tomas (Franz Rogowski), he is working with a difficult actor on the set of a new film he is directing. He is demanding of the people around him, but also seemingly unsure of exactly what he’s looking for. These are recurring themes for Tomas as he navigates his relationship with his husband Martin (Ben Whishaw). When a young woman Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos) catches his eye during the wrap party, Tomas sends Martin home and hooks up with her. The next morning, he returns home to Martin, exclaiming, “I had sex with a woman last night!”

This will not be the last tone-deaf moment from Tomas, who spends the rest of the film ping-ponging between his two lovers, wrecking lives in the process. “I recommend to your readers to go on YouTube and type in ‘Franz Rogowski Chandelier,’” says Sachs. “You’ll see a karaoke performance that you’ll never forget. That was, to me, the inspiration to write a film for Franz. He’s a purely cinematic form who takes great risk and great danger and isn’t scared to make himself look bad. We talked a lot about James Cagney making the film because I think, similarly, he’s someone who creates a performance of a man behaving very badly, but done so beautifully.

“I wrote the film for Franz, and then I needed to find actors who were similarly brilliant and also alive and comfortable with risk and failure. That’s what I found in Adèle and Ben. Failure is really important in the creation of an interesting piece of work — the possibility that you’ll get a pie in your face. I think what this film is for me is, you’re given the opportunity to see people who are comfortable sharing some part of themselves that is the most personal and the most vulnerable. Interestingly, Adèle said the most difficult scene for her was not either of the sex scenes she’s in, but the moment when she sings a song to Tomas, which was a moment where she felt very, very exposed.”

Tomas is the latest in a long line of Sachs’ characters who could be described as toxic narcissists, such as Rip Torn’s indelible performance as a Memphis music producer in 40 Shades of Blue. “I resist those terms, which have become too generalized,” says Sachs. “It’s a character who’s not uncomfortable with taking up space, and also who believes that the rules of society are not necessarily made for him. … I think that there’s been a continual interest since I started making work in trying to understand what men with power do with it and what are the consequences.”

Passages opens Friday at Malco Ridgeway.

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News The Fly-By

MEMernet: Defaced, Tiny Bombed, and Ja 2K24

Posted to FAcebook by Jerred Price

Memphis on the internet.

Erasing the Hate

A Saturday-morning power-washing erased the hate at Cooper-Young’s Rainbow Crosswalk last weekend. A hateful someone scrawled a hateful word on the street in white spray paint. The act was all over the MEMernet and local television broadcasts. Jerred Price, the principal mover to get the crosswalks installed, and others washed the word away.

“But this small act of hate was trumped with the outpour of love today from all those who helped clean it up,” Price wrote on Facebook. “Thank you [Memphis Police Department] for your help and investigation into this as well as to all those who helped clean this mess up.”

Tiny Bombed

Posted to TikTok by Sarah Galyean

Sarah Galyean put beer — Wiseacre’s Tiny Bomb, to be specific — in her hair. The TikToker was testing a conditioning method used by Catherine Zeta-Jones, mixing beer with honey. The two-part post had Galyean joking as she mixed the ingredients in a NutriBullet before pouring the mix in her hair in the shower. Verdict?

“Does my hair smell like the floor of a Dave & Buster’s? Yes,” she said. But, “this is the first celebrity beauty secret I might actually do a second time because it really does work. I’m shook.”

Ja 2K24

Posted to Instagram by @jujueditzzz on NBA Showcase 

Not official or anything. But who are we to argue?

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Mobile Law Firm to Offer Free Legal Services for Memphis LGBTQ+ Community

(Credit Bianca Phillips)

The Caravan of Hope, a mobile service that provides pro bono legal services to LGBTQ+ people in rural and underserved areas, will be heading to Dru’s Place, located at 1474 Madison Avenue, on June 14th. The service will be available from 9 a.m.-3 p.m.

According to Caravan of Hope, they will offer advice and legal services on estate planning, name changes, uncontested divorces, adoptions, and general legal questions.

Angela D. Giampolo, of Giampolo Law Group and founder of Caravan of Hope, said the idea is to provide a safe place and to “fill a hole,” where LGBTQ+ folks could reach out for counsel on all of their legal issues, and not just the ones that deal with being LGBTQ+. 

Giampolo said participants will be able to confidentially come on the caravan (an RV) and receive help on their legal issues with the aid of a local lawyer as well. 

“They can just come with their questions ready to go … confidentially speak [to us], and whatever their need is we go from there,” said Giampolo.

Giampolo is a lawyer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a place that she considers “extremely LGBTQ friendly.” However, after the 2016 election, she said she still got direct messages from LGBTQ+ people who expressed fear about their rights and protection. With that, she wondered what LGBTQ+ people in Alabama, Arkansas, and Tennessee — which she described as a “a hell” — must feel.

“The Caravan of Hope seeks to alleviate the burdens and stress experienced by the most vulnerable of us in the LGBTQ+ community and ensure that people living in rural communities have access to the resources they need to thrive,” said the organization.

“The sad reality however is that LGBTQ+ individuals in the 29 states without state laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation consistently see greater disparities than in the 21 states with such laws, including less social acceptance and greater economic vulnerability, especially among African-American LGBT and individuals transgender people,” they said.

According to Caravan of Hope, “55 percent of the LGBTQ+ population in the United States live in the Midwest or the South, where they lack legal employment protections, earn less than $24,000 a year on average, and are less capable of affording food or healthcare.”  

Six years later, the Caravan of Hope set forward on its “maiden voyage.” Giampolo said with the presidential election coming up, this is a foundational year of “setting the groundwork for following years.”

A report entitled “LGBTQ Tennesseans: A Report of the 2021 Southern LGBTQ Experiences Survey,” released by the Campaign for Southern Equality in January 2023, stated that “LGBTQ Tennesseans face an unsupportive legal system and a hostile political climate that results in disproportionate disadvantage across some of our most central social institutions, including work, family, education, and healthcare.”

The report also stated that there is an absence of laws that protect the LGBTQ+ community, “such as state and local non-discrimination policies.”

Giampolo said that not only do LGBTQ+ people face legal issues in things such as name changing services, but also in other legal areas such as estate planning.

“So many queer folks are disowned or mistreated by their family,” Giampolo said. “Is that who you want [to have] power of attorney over you if you’re in a car accident?”

She said that while “straight, cis-gendered folks,” get service for things such as adoption services, divorces, and other things as well, the way that LGBTQ+ people use these services is much more fundamental to their basic needs.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Drag Queens on Trial

(l to r) Smith McWaters, Hal Harmon, and Den-Nickolas Schaeffer-Smith, ETC founder (Photo: Courtesy ETC)

As of June 2nd, the anti-drag bill that passed in the state legislature this spring has been declared unconsitutional, violating drag performers’ First Amendment right to free speech by barring them from performing in spaces where minors can view them. But even when this decision hung in the balance just a few days ago, the Emerald Theatre Company (ETC) was determined to embrace drag and the LGBTQ community, no matter what happened, as it closes its 26th season with Drag Queens on Trial.

The semi-dark comedy centers around three drag queens who go from the dressing room to the courtroom to stand trial for the “crime” of being a drag queen. “It’s truly written and played for laughs,” says Hal Harmon, the show’s co-director with Michael Holliday, “but there are some very serious topics and serious dialogue that allows the audience to think about the prejudices that these people face. It showcases their insecurities, how they defy society’s norms, and how they deal with the horrors of the persecution of being who they truly are. Sadly, though the story was written in the 1980s and it takes place in the 1980s, the themes and ideas of persecution, of course, are just as relevant, if not more, today.

“[But] they’re not gonna stop us,” continues Harmon, who also plays one of the drag queens. “We’re still gonna produce a great show.”

This will be the second time ETC performs Drag Queens on Trial, the first time being in 2006. After the “Don’t Say Gay” bill was passed in Florida last year and then other states began to “pick on drag queens,” Harmon says, “I decided it’s time to redo this show. … It is my hope that those who see the show will leave it with hope, and if they have a strong enough voice and they have not used it yet, quite possibly, seeing the show will give them the extra push to let them get loud and be supportive.”

To accompany the production and to celebrate the history of drag in Memphis, photographs from local drag performers from the ’80s to the present will be on display in the TheatreWorks lobby. Looking back on those earlier days, Harmon says that progress has been made since ETC’s founding when fully fleshed-out LGBTQ stories were rarely found on stage. “We knew there were so many stories to tell,” he says. “We worked so hard at that, and we’re ever so happy that now we’re no longer the ‘taboo’ theater company. We’re just another theater company.”

As ETC looks to its 27th season, Harmon hopes to bring in new directors, new voices, new ideas, and new actors. “We’ve already got it planned,” he says. “We’re gonna stay gay.”

Drag Queens on Trial, TheatreWorks, Performances run Friday, June 9-June 18, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m., $20, etcmemphistheater.com.

Categories
News News Blog

Federal Judge Rules Tennessee Drag Ban as Unconstitutional

Photo credit: Kevin Reed

U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker has ruled that the Tennessee law that bans “adult cabaret performances” is unconstitutional.

In March, Friends of George’s, an LGBTQ theater company at the Evergreen Theatre, filed a suit against the state of Tennessee regarding what they called the “reckless anti-drag law.” The law was temporarily blocked shortly after, as it was set to go into effect on April 1st.

Parker granted a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against District Attorney Steve Mulroy, the state of Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee, and Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti.

The Friends of George’s suit stated the law violated the group’s First Amendment rights and argued the statute is unconstitutional.

“After considering the briefs and evidence presented at trial, the Court finds that — despite Tennessee’s compelling interest in protecting the psychological and physical wellbeing of children — the Adult Entertainment Act (“AEA”) is an unconstitutional restriction on the freedom of speech and permanently enjoins Defendant Steven Mulroy from enforcing the unconstitutional statute,” said court documents.

The court stated that not only is the AEA “unconstitutionally vague” but is “substantially overbroad,” specifically in its language regarding what is “harmful to minors.”

The law defined adult cabaret performances as those that feature “topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, and male or female impersonators.” It also stated that these performances were “harmful to minors.” The law made “adult cabaret performances” on public property or “in a location where the adult cabaret performance could be viewed by a person who is not an adult” a criminal offense.

The Tennessee General Assembly defined “harmful to minors” as “that quality of any description or representation, in whatever form, of nudity, sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse when the matter or performance would be found by the average person applying contemporary community standards to appeal predominantly to the prurient, shameful or morbid interests of minors.”

“The AEA’s ‘harmful to minors’ standard applies to minors of all ages so it fails to provide fair notice of what is prohibited, and it encourages discriminatory enforcement. The AEA is substantially overbroad because it applies to public property or ‘anywhere’ a minor could be present,” said the ruling.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Targeted

Pride Flag Photo: Cecilie Johnsen | Unsplash

To stimulate sales for Pride Month (June), Target stores around the country put up displays of LGBTQ-centric clothing. Customers in some stores were offended and showed their displeasure by knocking down the Pride merchandise, angrily confronting sales clerks, and posting threatening videos on social media. Target’s response to the vandalism and intimidation was to remove entirely some of its Pride merchandise, and move other items from displays at the front of the store to less-prominent areas.

“Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work,” Target said in a statement last week. “Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior.” In other words, Target gave in to the wishes of a loud minority of bigots and bullies who created those “volatile circumstances.”

And we let them.

There were no major counter-protests of Target’s actions from LGBTQ activists. There were no cries of outrage from those of us with LGBTQ friends, co-workers, and family members (which is all of us). We just let it happen. Oh well, who needs a rainbow T-shirt, anyway, right?

This is how fascists take over a country: one small victory at a time. They are the would-be thought police, the Christian Nationalist Taliban, afraid of anything that challenges their tiny-minded view of the world. They are easily manipulated by leaders who stoke their fears and bigotry.

Sadly, there are now plenty of would-be autocrats in this country eager to lead the charge — one small victory at a time: They ban books about Black history, even about heroes like Rosa Parks. They prohibit the viewing of Michelangelo’s sculpture of David. They try to fire a teacher who shows a fifth-grade class a Disney movie suitable for 8-year-olds. They want to force every pregnant woman to give birth. They shoot cases of beer. They make white-supremacist noises on social media and cable news. Their game plan is to intimidate a pliant majority and fire up their own ignorant base in the process.

It’s time to say enough, time to stop conceding ground that was hard-won over decades to racists, bigots, misogynists, and other assorted morons seeking to force their prejudices upon us and our children. It’s time to emulate a group in Florida that fought back when the Escambia School Board banned a book called And Tango Makes Three, a true story of two male penguins, Roy and Silo, who lived in New York’s Central Park Zoo and raised an adopted chick. The book was banned at the insistence of one parent who said she was concerned “a second-grader would read this book, and that idea would pop into the second grader’s mind … that these are two people of the same sex that love each other.”

A group of parents, book publishers, authors, and PEN America stood up and said, “Enough.” They filed suit against the school board, alleging that the ban restricted books “based on their disagreement with the ideas expressed, an orthodoxy of opinion that violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. … State censors are spiriting books off shelves in a deliberate attempt to suppress diverse voices. In a nation built on free speech, this cannot stand.” Hopefully, a judge will agree.

But lawsuits are just one tool in the toolbox. Confrontation at every turn is how this hateful stuff gets stifled. Bullies understand the power of numbers and volume. Progressives need to show out in numbers and stand up to these repressive tactics at every opportunity.

The only reason Governor Bill Lee called for an August special session to deal with gun reform (of the mildest possible sort) is because thousands of outraged citizens filled the streets of Nashville for days at a time after the Covenant School shooting. Now, the Tennessee legislature, which has essentially gerrymandered true democracy out of existence, is trying to cancel the special session, saying it’s a “publicity stunt” that will incite “the national woke mob.”

As a member in good standing of the National Woke Mob™, I say it’s well past time for us to get “incited.” And stay woke. We’re all Targets now.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

When Beer Goes Woke

Bud Light introduced a limited-edition Pride Bottle in 2019, with a portion of proceeds donated to GLAAD. (Photo: GLAAD | Facebook)

Bud Light has gone woke. Can you believe it? The tried-and-true, most America-hell-yeah beer ever apparently has an agenda, and folks are angry, by god.

Earlier this month, in a seemingly innocuous move, Bud Light partnered with trans activist and TikTok sensation Dylan Mulvaney. The 26-year-old is best known for her Days of Girlhood series of videos, where she’s documented her gender transition since early 2022. On April 1st, Mulvaney shared a video announcing some sort of beer-sponsored March Madness contest, and — to everyone’s dismay — that Bud Light sent her a tallboy with her face on it.

This made rock/hip-hop/country artist Kid Rock really mad. So mad he put on his MAGA hat and shot up a bunch of beers. In a video uploaded to his social media channels on April 3rd, the 52-year-old “American Bad Ass” said, “Grandpa’s feeling a little frisky today …” and proceeded to blast cases of Bud Light with a semi-automatic before adding, with a middle finger raised, “Fuck Bud Light. Fuck Anheuser-Busch. Have a terrific day.”

He hates those cans!

The backlash landslide continued from there, with conservatives across the country boycotting the brand — mostly by buying it and pouring it out or violently destroying it in one way or another and documenting the whole ordeal on social media. “Hey, let’s stop supporting Bud Light by buying Bud Light and fuggin’ it up! We’ll show them!”

An interesting thing to note is that Kid Rock’s down-home fan base is rallying behind a man who basically built his career on a false narrative. “I ain’t straight outta Compton, I’m straight out the trailer,” he proclaimed in the late-’90s hit “Cowboy.” The truth is, though, that Mr. Kid, whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, was raised by well-to-do parents in a 5,600-square-foot house that sat on five-plus acres in a suburb of Detroit. His father owned several successful car dealerships, and Kid spent his younger days picking apples on the Ritchie orchard and helping care for the family horses. A real cowboy, that guy, just like the song says — but an affluent one who had a personal tennis court, indoor jacuzzi room, and five-car garage at his boyhood home. Hmm.

Another note of interest: Many boycotters boast they’ll now be drinking Corona (owned by Constellation Brands, which has publicly supported LGBTQ events — a Corona Pride rainbow flag can be found on its website). Or Coors (whose parent company, Molson Coors, has a variety of long-standing equality-focused programs, including Tap Into Change, which has raised more than $600,000 for LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS nonprofits since its inception). Or Miller (also owned by Molson Coors and has contributed $450,000 to the LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Federation as part of the brand’s Open & Proud program). People are blindly boycotting Bud Light by switching to brands that also support diversity and inclusion! Gasp!

The fact that a pretend blue-collar Kid started this whole mess by murdering cans with a rifle when gun violence has become a national epidemic astounds me. And so many right-wing celebrities have gotten in line to bash the brand alongside him. What are they really pissed off about? Freedom of choice?

Could this have been a marketing ploy drummed up by Bud Light to rile and stir the public? We all know Bud is the equivalent of piss water, but allies everywhere are heading out in droves to buy the stuff to, eh, boycott the boycott. “We don’t like your beer, but we like what you’re doing! We’ll show them!”

Maybe we should take a second and figure out who “they” are. Who has the agenda? What are we supporting with our dollars? What is proven with mindless boycotts?

Trans rights and gun laws have been at the forefront of news cycles for months. Somehow, Kid Rock of all people brought beer into the mix of things that divide us. It’s all about as nonsensical as his lyrics. Bawitdaba it is.