Group provides local LGBT support
When an individual outs themselves as gay or lesbian in Cache Valley, it’s never easy for them or their friends and family, according to members of local support group Cache Gay Families.
In about a month, family and friends of lesbians and gays should have a new local support group, if everything goes according to plan, said Amy Bailey, assistant professor of sociology at USU and vice president of Cache Gay Families.
“We’ve had meetings since October — monthly meetings — and every single meeting we’ve had new people show up we didn’t even know were coming,” Bailey said.
Cache Gay Families has held a series of organizational meetings to discuss plans to create a local chapter of a national organization — Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). Group organizers have submitted the final applications necessary to make the chapter official.
Now, she said, they just have to wait. Bailey said her efforts are those of a concerned member of the community and have nothing to do with her university affiliation.
“There are amazing resources with the PFLAG national that we can rely on,” Bailey said. “In our discussions, we’ve identified safe schools as a real critical issue in Cache Valley. There are LGBT students in our schools who don’t feel safe. There are gay and lesbian parents … who don’t feel like their kids are safe.”
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students attend Cache Valley middle schools and high schools, as well as at USU, and several members of the LGBT community have experienced unsafe conditions at school, Bailey said.
Amid the perennial controversy between gay rights advocates and the dominant conservative Utah culture, USU alumnus Reed Cowan spoke at an on-campus screening of his award-winning documentary “8: The Mormon Proposition” on Oct. 21, 2010, in the Eccles Conference Center Auditorium. The film analyzed the LDS church’s support of a California proposition to ban same-sex marriages in that state.
Bailey, who attended the event, said she witnessed testimony given by distressed LDS parents who, while fighting back tears, said they were torn between love for their gay children and devotion to their religious beliefs.
“That really pushed me to say, ‘OK, I’ve got to do something,'” she said about the event surrounding Cowan’s film. Bailey also recently said she has a nephew who is gay. “I was not authorized to talk about it when we talked last summer, (but) that is (also) part of my motivation for being involved in this.”
For help in founding a Logan PFLAG chapter, Bailey said she met with PFLAG Mountain West Regional Director Kathy Godwin at the annual Pride parade June 2011 in Salt Lake City. Godwin is also the president of the Salt Lake City chapter of PFLAG — the oldest chapter in Utah, which formed in 1989.
“I have a 24-year-old son who came out to my husband and I when he was between his junior and senior year in high school,” Godwin said. “And actually my husband found PFLAG information and said, ‘You know, they have a chapter. We should contact them.'”
Godwin said the first PFLAG meeting she and her husband attended was “marginally helpful,” which she said she thinks is typical for people in similar situations.
“You’re sort of in a phase of trying to figure out what that means for your family to have a gay kid,” Godwin said. “My husband and I were both — although grappling with what to do next — very much interested in continuing our strong relationship with our kid in any way we could. We just needed education.”
To find that education, Godwin said she began scouring the Internet, reading books, attending panel discussions organized by University of Utah’s gay student union and periodically visiting more PFLAG meetings.
Networking with people is what Godwin said was a “huge value,” because at that point she realized the variety of people necessary to make a PFLAG function the way it should — parents, LGBT individuals and allies of those individuals.
“It’s a very confidential and welcoming format where no question is unsafe,” Godwin said. “The cardinal rule is you can never out somebody, you can only out yourself.”
She said mandatory anonymity and promised confidentiality are what make the meetings safe.
“All over the country, for all various faiths, there is a challenge and a reason for support,” Godwin said. “In those communities that have a concentration of any one faith, (they) seem to have even more difficult challenges because there is this fear of discrimination and alienation by a community which they value above most others.
“In many faith communities around this country where the perception, or the reality, when they’re in their faith community and worshipping, the message is not one of acceptance and love. And it’s not just specific to the LDS church.”
In Utah, kids see and hear pervasive news reports that seem to perpetuate an anti-gay stigma, Godwin said. That stigma, underscored by conservative and religious overtones, is what creates an unsafe environment for kids in middle schools and high schools, as well as for university students, she added.
Cache Valley resident and nurse Patsy Marx, who will be the president of Logan PFLAG when it becomes official, was introduced to Bailey by Marx’s daughter, who also works in the sociology, social work and anthropology department at USU.
Marx said she joined Cache Gay Families because she also believes there’s a need for support in the area, and the idea of making schools safer for LGBT individuals is something that resonated with her. Marx, too, has a child who is gay.
“I know (my son) struggled with his feelings and (was) afraid to let anyone know he was gay at the time,” Marx said. “I don’t want someone to feel that way. I don’t want children to feel like they’re less than somebody else or there’s something wrong with them, because they’re beautiful people.
“It breaks my heart, and I don’t want any child to have to go through that. So if we can start in the schools, I think that’s a good place to start the education, so everyone knows they have a right to be where they’re at.”
Bailey said to continue in providing support, Cache Gay Families will host a Valentine’s Day social Thursday, Feb. 2 from 7-9 p.m. in the Lake Bonneville Room at the Logan Library, located at 255 N. Main Street. She said the social will hopefully generate awareness of the soon-to-be PFLAG chapter in Logan.
Bailey said there are four current PFLAG chapters in Utah — Ogden, Salt Lake City, Provo and St. George — and when the paperwork all goes through Logan will be the fifth, she said.
– dan.whitney.smith@aggiemail.usu.edu