CHAMPIONS OF PRIDE
Alabama
Quentin Bell, a 31-year-old trans man, devotes his life to making sure queer and trans folks in Selma have the community, resources, and safety that he never had growing up.
“Selma needed a change,” he says. “You have to create the things you need and want to see in your community.” This led him to create the Knights and Orchids Society (TKOSociety.com), which is devoted to increasing visibility and improving the lives of LGBTQ people, specifically those living in the rural South. The society opened the Black Sheep Relief Center in 2017, where Bell serves as the executive director.
Doing this work in Alabama—where a majority of residents are opposed to same-sex marriage—isn’t easy, Bell says. “They don’t like it when we speak up. I can tell you that the work is hard, but I can also tell you that the reaping my children and their children will have makes it worth it.” (@TKO_Alabama)—JEFFREY MASTERS
Hurley Haywood. In the world of 1970s motor racing, Hurley Haywood was a true golden boy, winning numerous titles while also attracting the eyes of boy-crazy young ladies across America. But behind the spotlight, Haywood was closeted from the public until he came out as gay in his 2018 autobiography, Hurley: From The Beginning, which has been made into a documentary called Hurley, now available on streaming services and on-demand.
Since coming out, Haywood has used his fame to ingnite conversation about what it means to be LGBTQ in sports: “The more you talk about it, the more educated people get and the more accepting that they get,” he says now.—DAVID ARTAVIA
ALASKA
Kathy Ottersten. The 53-year-old intersex, gender-nonconforming, pansexual leader from Fairbanks, Alaska, made history last year as only the second out intersex person to win public office in the U.S. and first person to do so in Alaska, when she was elected to the Fairbanks City Council.
Ottersten says residents of Fairbanks were concerned with substantive issues rather than questions about sex and gender. Ottersten sees their new position as a continuation of a long history of activism. As an old ACT UP NYC member with a number of arrests under their belt, they see an opportunity to bring about real change in their state.
“Parts are parts,” they quip. “We’ve all got them and none are all that interesting. Just find somebody to love and be loved by.” (OtterstenForFairbanks.com) —DONALD PADGETT
Lillian Lennon. The 20-year-old trans woman says she first caught the activism bug “when I started my hometown’s first LGBTQ+ Pride organization. From then on, queer rights and advocacy became a central point in my life, as I went on to help lead the Fair Anchorage Campaign in taking down the discriminatory Proposition 1 here in Anchorage, Alaska.”
That measure would have forced transgender people to use public facilities that match the sex on their birth certificates. For the nine months preceding its defeat, Lennon and her No on Prop 1 team went door-to-door to talk with residents. “I was able to explain that I’m a transgender woman myself…. I think it’s hard to say to someone’s face, ‘No, I don’t agree that you should have equal rights.’”
Lennon currently works for Planned Parenthood Votes, the org’s super PAC, and also works with Fair Anchorage, Transgender Leadership Alaska, and Talkeetna Pride. (@MsLillianLennon)—DESIREE GUERRERO
ARIZONA
José Ramón Garcia-Madrid. On a mission to protect and support LGBTQ immigrants, the 26-year-old, gender-nonconforming femme is “inspired by trans and LGBTQ migrants who flee severe violence in their home countries,” saying, “the act of migrating is an act of hope.”
Garcia-Madrid is currently a part of the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, where they support unaccompanied children in their immigration cases, and will be starting law school this fall “with the goal of defending the rights of queer and trans migrants.” They’ve also worked with the National Minority AIDS Council; Act Against AIDS initiative; the Association for Jotería Arts, Activism, and Scholarship; and Union=Fuerza: The Latinx Institute at Creating Change. Garcia-Madrid urges support for orgs like Trans Queer Pueblo (TQPueblo.org).
“I was born in Mexico, but I am a queer, formerly undocumented—now DACAmented—immigrant from Phoenix,” says Garcia-Madrid. “I grew up hearing congressional representatives, community leaders, and the media calling my community ‘illegal aliens,’ ‘criminal aliens,’ and ‘illegals.’ I learned to think of myself as an alien, not a student; a foreigner, not a community member; a criminal rather than a human being. In order to be mentally and spiritually healthy, I continue to work very hard to unlearn those stereotypes.” (@MaricaIlegal)—DG
Natalie G. Diaz is a queer Mojave American poet, enrolled in the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona and the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University, where she currently teaches. A former pro basketball player, Diaz is an MFA holder and archivist of Indigenous languages.
“I think most of us do what we have to do to make sure our beloveds have a chance to live the full and complex lives that everyone deserves,” she says. “I wish to live a life where I never forget I am deserving of love, that I am capable of offering and returning love, in which I’m willing to learn love over and over again, in whatever ways my beloveds and I need it.”
The 40-year-old professor lives for the water. “I was raised along the Colorado River, so being out in that blue-green water—floating, or diving off some high place, or standing around on a sandbar waist deep in its cold-cold water—is one way I enjoy my desert.”(@Ndinn)—DG
Arkansas
Sharyn Grayson, chief financial officer at the Griffin-Gracy Educational Retreat and Historical Center (House of GG) in Little Rock, knows the power of community. She has received several awards for her work on behalf of trans people since 1985. The trans educator founded a variety of organizations to serve her community, including the Nonprofit & Consumer Services Network, offering a variety of professional services and resources to support the economic growth of the trans community.
Grayson is also a well-noted public speaker, a highly respected mentor among the queer and health care community sectors, and serves as the interim executive director at Urban Sanctuary, a nonprofit focusing on the wellbeing of queer people of color in Arkansas.—DA
Tippi McCullough had always been a private person before she became a public figure in 2013, when Mount St. Mary’s Academy, a Catholic school in Little Rock, fired her from her teaching job because she had married her female partner, attorney Barbara Mariani. McCullough now has another job: Arkansas state representative.
She won the election to the Arkansas House in November 2018, making her one of very few out LGBTQ people to win elective office in the state.
One of her first efforts in office was introducing an equal pay bill, which died in committee (where the leading opponents were Republican women). No doubt, McCullough will continue fighting for the causes she believes in.—TRUDY RING
CALIFORNIA
Tommy Pico. “I think people get the wrong idea about what poetry is or is not supposed to be.” Pico’s describing how surprised people are when they hear his work. “You can put a tweet in a poem. You could talk about a ghost that gives a blow job. You could talk about whatever you want to.” Nothing is off limits to the poet, who has quickly become one of the most successful today, queer or otherwise.
Formal poetry often ignores the work of people on the margins of society, people like Tommy Pico. And yet, having gotten his start making poetry zines he’d leave around New York City in cafés, bars, and laundromats, Pico is set to publish his fourth collection, Feed, with an American Book Award and the 2018 Whiting Award next to his name. Pico also co-curates the reading series “Poets With Attitude” with Morgan Parker and cohosts the podcast Food 4 Thot.
The 35-year-old lives in Los Angeles but is originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation. He says that while he’s not a spiritual person, he strongly believes in ancestor worship. “I know that I came from people who are ancient and special. Especially when I’m back home in the place where they lived for 10,000 years, I do feel insanely connected to them.” —JEFFREY MASTERS
Mahawam recognizes the power of art. The 26-year-old queer Oakland hip-hop/electronic vocalist and producer tackles the complex emotional trauma that comes with an HIV diagnosis. Their new EP, Is an Island (released on Bay Area LGBTQ label, Molly House Records) looks at themes of resignation, loneliness, lust, and hope navigated during their journey of coming to terms with being poz, through a style reminiscent of Blood Orange & André 3000.
“My art is to heal. My art is to explain myself. And in explaining myself, I hope to understand others and… be able to explain others as I understand them. I suppose I am to bridge the gap—the age gap, the race gap, whatever it is.. I want to engender understanding. That’s really my goal. And to clarify complex emotions for things we don’t have words for or don’t have the language to discuss.”
Their note to other artists living with HIV: “I’d say if [your HIV story] has been something you’ve been avoiding featuring in your music, think of it as a feature and not a flaw. A way to deepen the connection to others, and it’s something to be explored. It doesn’t have to be highlighted. It doesn’t have to be the only thing the work is about, but I think it could be introduced as a feature of who you are as a person.” (@Mahawam.exe) —GERALD GARTH
Sonya Passi. “This is the worst thing to happen to women ever,” Passi says of the level of domestic abuse in the U.S. and abroad. One in four women, and one in nine men, will experience severe domestic violence in their lifetime “It’s a national emergency,” Passi says.
In addition to physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, there is also financial abuse. “It’s really, really expensive,” she explains, which led Passi to create FreeFrom.org to financially empower survivors of domestic violence, helping them launch businesses, and creating an online self-help compensation tool which, in 2018, helped over 100,000 survivors in California—now she’s hoping to expand the tool to all 50 states. FreeFrom has also launched a policy lab to springboard other innovative economic justice policies for survivors and is hosting the first Survivor Wealth Summit this July. The summit brings together survivors, antiviolence organizations, national funders, and key stakeholders.
Passi lives in Los Angeles with her wife, the writer and astrologer Chani Nicholas, and says that while there haven’t been enough reliable studies, trends point toward higher rates of domestic violence among LGBTQ people. “We know that trans women experience intimate partner violence in much higher numbers. We know gay men experience intimate partner violence much more than heterosexual men.”
Domestic violence isn’t a queer or straight issue, it’s not a single gender’s issue, and it’s not a private issue. “It’s a public, systemic problem,” Passi says, “and we all are responsible for solving it.” (@PassiSonya)—JM
COLORADO
Kota Babcock is an 18-year-old journalism major at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, who proudly rocks two letters of the LGBTQ (he’s trans and bisexual)—but admits that Pride didn’t necessarily come easy.
“I noticed an entire chapter of American history had been entirely hidden from me as a young, closeted LGBT person, especially when I lived in a conservative town,” says Babcock. “I joined Rainbow Alley [a youth space in Denver]
