Kelli Dunham

When my contact in Huntsville Alabama (author Jane McNeefe) started promoting my Huntsville show, she told me there was one guy I really needed to meet: James Robinson, the executive director and one person staff (cough-but mostly unpaid-cough) of GLBT Advocacy and Youth Services.

We began emailing and James asked if I’d add a health workshop to my agenda in Huntsville. In order to make it happen, he recruited the local PFLAG super-mom Bani Logreira to put me up for a second night and then got one of the organizations’ board members Elizabeth Crankshaw (interview from her coming shortly) to drive me on her day off all the way from Huntsville Alabama to Nashville Tennessee.

Yup, obviously the dude to know.

(To be fair, this was part two of Heroic Alabama Driving Stories, Don Mills, the director of Birmingham Pride drove me from Birmingham to Mobile in the middle of the night so I could grab the next Megabus after my Birmingham gig. He did this even though he had to be at wok at 5 am.)

Anyway, I spent the extra day I had in town with James and it was, okay, I’m going to use the “h” word here: humbling. If you need a metaphor to say “I’m busier than a” try “a gay man trying to find services for LGBT people in Northern Alabama” I am pretty sure at one point I saw him simultaneously on the phone with a youth, trying to find connections for housing, then emailing with a social worker about resources for an LGBT elder that was having problems in his assisted living and exchanging facebook messages with a volunteer who was going to help run the adult support group that night. It was like that all day.

When we got ready to head over to the workshop, we took turns spraying each other with generic Fabreeze (we had eaten at a bbq place for lunch and the cooking fumes still stuck to our clothes) and I asked James if he wasn’t, you know, a little tired. He smiled a little and said “um yeah of course” and we headed out to the car. Later, I asked him if he would answer some questions for PrettyQueer.

Kelli Dunham:  [I had to ask this question first]  Okay dude, seriously, what keeps you going?

James Robinson: My faith in a higher power and in the people who enrich my life inspire me and give me the motivation to push forward when I become tired and discouraged.  For 12 years I was an active addict abusing a variety of drugs.  I eventually became an IV methamphetamine using.  I am very fortunate to be alive.  After surviving years of living this self-destructive lifestyle while also functioning successfully as a special education teacher my life feel apart.  Fortunately, I was arrested.  I had been arrested previously but it took the  second time for me to realize I no longer wanted to live the life of an addict.  I am fortunate to have no criminal record because I was given other alternatives both times.  I am thankful for this and use my voice to advocate for people who are less fortunate.  I am motivated because I remember how dark, lonely, and filled with pain my life was just three and a half short years ago.  I am motivated when I hear of someone ending their life because they felt unloved, unwanted, or lost.  I do not want other people, in ur community to continue suffering needlessly.

KD: Tell me what it’s like to be gay in Alabama, we probably all have our own stereotypes but what’s the reality.

JR: I believe being LGBT in Alabama is very similar  to being LGBT in any more rural  part of our nation.  While it is true that we have advantages and challenges because of cultural differences we generally face the same prejudice, discrimination and hatred based up ignorance and bigotry that our LGBT community faces across our country and our world.

In November 2009 I embarked upon a truly amazing journey when I founded GLBT Advocacy & Youth Services, Inc. as the only social service agency directly serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community in  this region of the country.  When I say ‘region’ I am referring to an area covering all of Alabama, much of Georgia, Tennessee, and Mississippi.  While there are organization such as PFLAG, and ‘Equality’ groups we are the only federally recognized social service non-profit in a vast region of our country.  While I have received amazing rewards on a personal level because of the impact we have had on a community that is suffering due to years of neglect and bigotry I have also faced unexpected challenges.  My original vision was that the agency and our mission of advocacy for the entire community and support for our youth would be received with rejoicing and open arms by the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in this region.

The reality is that I have been confronted with a very invisible and wounded community that has yet to embrace our vision of a safe and healthy community for everyone.  I have faced a severe lack of public support and financial support from the local LGBT community.

KD: Okay so, for people who haven’t spent a Wednesday with you, how does the rubber hit the road? What does a typical day for you look like?

JR: A typical day for me begins when I awake early from a night of broken sleep…I usually wake up several times during the night thinking about what I need to do the following day or thinking about something that happened the day before.  When I eventually give up on resting and get up I usually check for messages on facebook and my e-mail.  Some mornings I spend a couple of hours networking, responding to messages, and promoting our work before I actually go into the office.

At the office I look at the stack of lists I’ve made of things to get back to, ideas to follow-up on, materials to read, etc..  I usually do this while creating a new list that eventually gets added to the top of the stack lol.  I juggle several things on a regular basis and I simply cannot do it all by myself.  My schedule is never the same.  People randomly make appointments to see, call me with questions, or needing support.

I meet with new  volunteers, plan our support schedules, and try to maintain contact with the currently active volunteers.  On any given day I meet with people from the community such as other non-profit leaders, religious leaders, and individuals who are interested in knowing more about what we do.

Is it hard to find places to refer people? How do you make contact with other organizations?

JR: Finding places to refer members of our community and youth who need support has and continues to be a challenge.  Alabama was recently ranked the worst state in the name for homeless youth due to the lack of services currently being provided.  If a young person under 18 comes  to us needing support we are only able to provide advice and refer them to state run social services.  Needless to say, this is not usually the best option for these youth.  We are extremely limited in our ability to provide support due to our lack of funding.

Many people suggest we apply for grants. While we are in the process of doing this it important to have someone experienced in this process.   I have a skill set that was adequate to establish the agency and raise public awareness  but I do not currently have the skills of a professional grant writer.

KD: Tell me about the Host Program. How on earth did that happen? When we look at the places in the US that have programs like this it’s larger cities that are considered progressive: Seattle, New York, Minneapolis and then, Huntsville. One of these is not like the other.

JR: The Huntsville Host Home program [to support homeless LGBT youth] was one of five winning proposals for the Launch Pad Social Media Contest from over 1,000 submitted nationwide.  I modeled the program after a very success program in Minneapolis, Minnesota called the GLBT Host Home Program.  Within a  year of developing the project idea for the social media contest we had our first host home in place and a 19 year old lesbian living successfully in a safe stable home.

KD: Working in the “Bible belt” how has it been collaborating with faith communities? What has been your biggest obstacle/greatest success there?

JR: I have been surprised and pleased with the relationship we have developed with members of our faith communities.  I have been welcomed and support by our local Jewish community, many pastors and leaders of various Christian churches, pagans, and atheists.  While we live  in a very conservative and fundamentalist religious community I have yet to have any direct personal confrontations or problems.  The culture in the South is somewhat different in this respect.  People are much less likely to confront me directly.  I am certain that many hate filled sermons have been spewed from local pulpits  in response the positive message of love and acceptance that I share in our community.

KD Tell me about your support for transfolks; how has your organization been able to be inclusive of the “T” in LGBT when organizations in supposedly more progressive areas still only seem to include transpeople as an afterthought?

JR: We have been fortunate to have a transgender support group meeting off and on locally for a number of years.  This group is called the North Alabama Gender Center.  It had operated as a support group with no connection to an organization.     I stopped by (the group) one evening to meet the group leader, Elizabeth Crankshaw.

Soon after meeting Beth I asked her to serve on our board of directors and she accepted the position.  For the past year and a half she has served as chairman of our board and has proven to be a great asset to the agency and to me personally.  From the beginning our agency’s mission included services for all parts of the LGBT community as well as support for young people regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

After Beth became connected to our agency I discussed with her and our board my desire to incorporate the North Alabama Gender Center into our agency services because there was no need to try and create a different group for this segment of our community.  Since the group was not affiliated with an organization we decided, with Beth’s support to incorporate this group into our services in order to begin our outreach to the transgender community.  We are extremely fortunate to have Beth work with us and be part of our local community because she has proven herself to be a leader and to have a true passion for supporting other people who identify as transgender.  To my knowledge, this is the only group currently meeting specifically to meet the needs of the transgender community in our region of the country.

KD So you moved back to Northern Alabama after living in a much larger city for many years. You started an organization that’s really struggling. Are you wishing you had done something a little different?

JR: I will never regret this decision.  As I said, the personal rewards have been beyond my wildest dreams.  Young people and  old have shared with me that we have saved lives, that we have done things that have never been done before in this area.  How could I ever regret giving up a selfish self-destructive life in exchange for a life that is appreciated by so many people?

KD Finally, why do you think there isn’t an LGBT center or any other organization doing what you’re doing in Alabama? It’s not a small state.

JR I can only guess but I think this is due to the fact that most of our community is closeted.  After years of oppression many people, the people with resources, have found what they consider to be comfortable lifestyles and they are out of touch with the struggles that other LGBT people continue to face.  The saying, ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ come to me at this point…when the community is invisible or nonexistent then it is easy for people to assume the problems do not exist.  I have news for these people…the  problems do exist here and whether or not they believe the affect them they do affect all of us.  Drug abuse, suicide, sexual exploitation, sexually transmitted diseases are rampant in our community and I believe this is because we do not feel free to live openly as the beautiful gifted people that we are.

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Around about Birmingham, I decided this tour needed a little pit stop, so I decided to take one with Sarah Palin.

Okay, true it wasn’t a spontaneous pit stop. I didn’t see her at the Megabus stop in Montgomery, Alabama and say “Sarah, I’m going on this big queer tour, wanna hang out?” Although I am pretty sure I saw an adult movie with that plot once.

Nope, I signed up a few months ago to be a volunteer with the Extraordinary Women Conference, a fundamentalist Christian women’s gathering sponsored by the Million Moms. Our people usually know the Million Moms as the Million Moms against Ellen, but they’ve had their knickers in a knot over a lot of stuff: girl on girl kissing in the Urban Outfitter catalog, the Sports Illustrated Swimming Suit Issue and Mattel considering a Kardashian Barbie Doll line. I adore their campaign against a recent Liquid-Plumr ad which complains that Clorox is trying to sell “products with sex:” they are worried because “[the commercial shows] a man in produce is standing beside cucumbers with a price sign behind him reading 69 cents.” I agree someone is obsessed with sex here, but I’m not sure it’s Clorox.

But I’ve been captivated by the idea of the Million Moms since I heard about them. A Million Moms, at the standard statistical shorthand, would have 100,000 queer kids. If their emailing habits are any indication, they are not being nice to those kids. So I decided that someone needs to talk to these moms, on their turf. And I decided that someone should be me.

My friends and my therapist were all confused by this plan. Was I going to do some direct action? By myself, of course not, no. A demonstration of one is a lonely thing indeed. Was I trying to gather fundamentalist Christian trade secrets? What trade secrets? They point to the Bible and say “we believe that.” Was I going to create some kind of comical mass disruption? Nope.

I was just going to go, help out by volunteering, and if anyone engaged me in conversation, I’d answer honesty about why I was there.

What could go wrong?

Well, my wardrobe for one thing. What does a big ol’ queerbait wear to a fundamentalist Christian conference anyway? After a number of mishaps, I’ve finally learned the difficult lesson that the harder I try to look un-gay, the gayer I appear. This was brought home to me several years ago when I showed up for the trip to meet my girlfriend’s mom wearing an outfit I had picked out just for the occasion.

“Well, that’s an interesting choice” my tactful girlfriend said, as she looked down at my clothing: a light pink sweater, black jeans, and matching pink Vans. I explained “I was trying to look you know, less gay.”

This sent my normally reserved girlfriend into such guffaws that she stood in the middle of Port Authority with tears from laughter cascading down her face.

Trying to avoid just such a scene with hundreds of strangers, I went for an understated choice, an Old Navy American Flag Tee Shirt. I felt like the character in the Birdcage, defending his decision to place Playboy Magazines in the restrooms for the straight people: “What? It’s what they like.”

The second thing that could go wrong was my volunteer assignment. Heather, Extraordinary Women’s volunteer coordinator and also the perkiest woman alive, told me that she’d put me on the greeting committee, “those folks are the very first friendly faces people see when they walk in the door of the conference.”

I don’t blame Heather one bit when I arrived at the volunteer meeting and she looked at me and then nonchalantly reassigned me to the “floater” position. I wouldn’t want my face to be the first face people see at Christian women’s conference either. Unless it were a queer Christian’s women conference, which would probably not fill up the Birmingham Convention Center.

Unfortunately, my floater position was to staff the speaker sales table, which means I could have easily spent 16 hours taking people’s money and handing them one of Palin’s hardcover classics. That seemed to be over some philosophical line that even I could not cross. So I did what any mature, intelligent human would do on such an occasion. I ran behind a large artificial plant and hid until the volunteer meeting was over.

Although I hadn’t anticipated The Great Tree Hiding Incident of 2012 (I will say there is something about spending forty five minutes stooping down behind an artificial tree at the volunteer meeting for a Christian fundamentalist’s conference that gets you really thinking about where your life is going) I had anticipated potential problems with my volunteer position. Just to ensure entry, I had purchased a basic level ticket for the conference. Just the ticket that cost fifty bucks, mind you, not the 250 buck pass that allowed all access to the events, special seating, a meet and greet with Sarah Palin and the opportunity to wear a pink ID that said “Palin” on it at all times.

It was on entering the Birmingham Convention Center arena for the first time that I realized another problem with my plan: the math. First of all, there was 7,000 of them and one of me. I listened to that Dar Williams “I’m Not Afraid of Women” song on my iphone huddled in the bathroom (seeing a theme here?) for fifteen minutes and then mustered the courage to come out.

I found a seat and watched the women as they listened to this first speaker and so began my very long weekend.

There weren’t many surprises: I grew up evangelical Christian and know this culture. I have an underlined Bible and my real name is Kelli Sue. In fact, the attention paid to me by genuine loving Christians, first at church, then in a Christian high school and Bible College, gave me a stability to my childhood and teen years that was probably (no joke) lifesaving. So it’s hard to think of these people as the enemy.

Exactly.

I talked with lots of people, and did some listening as well. I’m not sure I changed anyone’s mind about anything but at least people could say they’d met a real live queer once if anyone asked them, for example, at a church potluck. No one was anything but nice, although this particular conversation illustrates the whole experience:

I was sitting with Church Lady X at a table in the lobby of the hotel attached to the convention center. We were both eating Subway because it was the only thing in the area that was not overcooked hot dogs. We chatted about the relative merits of different Subway sandwiches combinations and then the subject turned to (surprise surprise) God. She gave me her testimony (the story of how she found God) and then asked about me. I launched into a ten minute explanation of why I was there, my history, my plan and a little bit about the comedy tour I was on.

Her eyes glazed over and when I stopped talking she responded “so, you’re looking for Jesus then?”

I smiled and said “I guess we’re all looking for our own Jesus” and got up to throw our trash away.

The event ended with Sarah Palin’s much anticipated keynote speech. I couldn’t believe the welcome those women gave her. Picture a 90s Ani DeFranco concert times 10 and you’d be almost getting close to that female excitement level.

But what is it about Sarah Palin? Why does she have to be so…hot?

I had a seat just off the left side of the stage and the whole time she was spouting off her own special brand of paranoid political insanity I kept looking at her legs and thinking “that woman needs to have sex with me.”

Somehow I think that’s not what the other Million Moms were thinking.

On the way out, I ran into Church Lady X again. We greeted each other with a hug. As we walked out, she tapped the back of my Audre Lorde Project 25th anniversary sweatshirt. On the back it reads “We are strong because we have survived — Audre Lorde”.

“We are strong because of Jesus” Church Lady said, almost in a whisper, in my ear.

I stopped for a moment. Those were not quite fighting words, but they were close.

“Don’t mess with our Audre and I won’t mess with your Jesus” I said.

Her eyes glazed over again but she nodded yes.

And I put my arm around her shoulders and walked her to her car.

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So I got a nice piece of fan mail yesterday.

And by “fan mail” I mean “vaguely threatening online missive.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised when the clerk at a convenience store somewhere in rural Virginia handed me the number for a runaway hotline.

It seems that one Paul J Mitchell (cough- gay name-cough) took issue with my Radical Queer Agenda posting on the Nashville craigslist event forum. In response to “LGBT and need to laugh?” Mr. Crankypants wrote:

I felt ambivalent about how to response to this email. As the Reigning Quing of Bad Ideas (this is not an exaggeration: I got sick from dollar store sardines, not one time, but twice) this struck me as a teachable moment. I mulled over the possible options:

Perhaps Mr. Mitchell just needs to see some queer stand up comedy and he will find that he loves queers.

In which I case should offer to comp him into the show.

Perhaps Mr. Mitchell is trying to express his ambivalence at the perils of the rigid gender binary but lacks the vocabulary to do so.

In which case I should suggest he come to the next event at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, loan him my copy of Stone Butch Blues (hey, you gotta start somewhere) or perhaps invite him to brunch with my friends.

Or, more likely, Mr Mitchell is a predominantly heterosexually identified cis dude who finds himself attracted to chubby boi dykes.

In which case, I could respond, as I do to indications of sexual interest from men on the street. That is, by saying “Um, hey if you’re sexually attracted to me, you know that means you’re totally gay, right?”

See what I mean about being the Quing of Bad Ideas?

Instead I responded thus:

It’s hard to overestimate the usefulness of a good solid brussel sprouts analogy.

In other tour news, apparently everyone on this little trip is a comic, including the Megabus drivers.

While loading onto bus #2 (the DC to Knoxville leg) I accidentally handed the driver my folded up set set list instead of my itinerary.

He looked over the piece of paper for a full thirty seconds while I slowly realized my mistake.

“I don’t know where you’re trying to go with this, “ he said drily, handing it back to me, “but I’m almost positive Megabus can’t take you there. “

In still other tour news, I’d forgotten that for each mile away from a big city, my gender becomes closer to male and my age drops precipitously.

This is why I shouldn’t have been surprised when the clerk at a convenience store somewhere in rural Virginia handed me the number for a runaway hotline along with my diet mountain dew.

It would help, I suppose, if I wore my ballcap frontwards, or drank a soda more frequently consumed by grown folks, but what’s the fun in that?

Tonight: Atlanta, tomorrow Sarah Palin.

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