Features
Seeding a gay community in LA, the gay liberation revolution
1970 was an incredible year of achievement for GLF in LA. Marches, protests, & a broad range of other militant, highly visible actions
By Don Kilhefner | LOS ANGELES – There is a big difference in magnitude between a liberation movement and a civil rights movement. Often, the terms “Gay Liberation” and “Gay Civil Rights” are used synonymously. Those terms, however, are very different in meaning.
A liberation movement involves an oppressed group seizing power by its own militant efforts and includes a change in consciousness by an oppressed people about its alleged inferiority, restructures economic and educational systems, and claims or reclaims the group’s history and culture. The central organizing principle of a civil rights movement is lobbying the dominant power structure over time to grant new laws—like voting rights—which gives more equal rights to a minority or majority historically discriminated against without any fundamental changes or threats to the power, economic, or educational systems in place.
Power structures try to destroy liberation movements, as in South Africa in 1961 when Nelson Mandela and others created the paramilitary Spear of the Nation, turning the African National Congress from a civil rights movement into a liberation movement. On the other hand, civil rights movements are easily pacified by political posturing and pretending and assimilated by elite capture without posing much of a threat to the basic power structures of society. Liberation movements are also susceptible to elite capture.
Author’s Note You are advised to remember as you read the following article that all of the Gay Liberation organizing being described was done within a context of 1,000 years or more of hetero supremacy in the West in which all religions declared lesbians and particularly gay men to be subhuman and an abomination in the eyes of God; all national and local laws declared them to be illegal and a crime against nature, with police and vigilante groups hunting them down and killing such deviants, often burning them alive at the stake; and in the 20th century the new science of psychology declared them a severe psychopathology and a threat to society. Gay men and lesbians internalized that hetero supremacist, genocidal ideology, turning it into self-hate, and turning that debasement into fear of being found out, some in fear for their very lives. And so, in 1969, still being officially labeled sick, sinful, and against the law and against the laws of nature, a new, revolutionary narrative unfolded in Los Angeles.
Central to the development of a radical, militant Gay Liberation revolution in Los Angeles was the L.A. Gay Liberation Front, which was called into being in August 1969 by Morris Kight, an anti-Vietnam War activist. GLFs were also organized in other major U.S. cities in the aftermath of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion, a single spark that caused a prairie fire. A gay revolution ensued—a revolution defined as “sudden, radical, complete change.”
For months, GLF meetings were held every Sunday afternoon in random, obscure locations, until, on January 1, 1970, I secured a GLF office at 577 ½ North Vermont Ave. in East Hollywood, formerly occupied by the Hollywood contingent of the Peace and Freedom Party. Using basic organizing skills learned as a volunteer at the Peace and Freedom Party office in Venice while a UCLA doctoral student in history, I became GLF’s around-the-clock, sleep-in office manager, creating a GLF infrastructure for the first time, including a telephone number, mailing address, bank account, and a stable meeting and organizing space.
The office was located on the second floor of a graceful dowager of a fourplex next to the Hollywood Freeway. Soon after GLF left the space, the building was demolished and replaced by a series of gas stations (southwest corner of Vermont and Clinton). [If anyone out there has a photo of the building, please contact me.]
The GLF office became a beehive of gay political organizing that propelled the Gay Liberation movement in Southern California forward rapidly (more about all that activity in the future). In a recent event at USC-ONE Archives, Dr. Craig Loftin, Lecturer in gay history at California State University (Fullerton), described that year as follows, “…1970 was an incredible year of achievement for GLF in Los Angeles. They staged marches, protests, ‘zaps,’ interventions, and a broad range of other militant, highly visible actions. They fought back. They led the march out of the shadows, out of the closets.”
(Photo credit: Author’s collection)
On 9/18/1970, GLF staged a “Touch-In” in a popular WeHo bar, The Farm; at 10 p.m. gay men reached out and hugged each other; L.A. Sheriffs arrived and were warned by GLF: if you arrest one of us, you’ll have to arrest all of us; men continued to show affection for each other; chanting began: “Ho-Ho, Ho Chi Minh, GLF is going to win;” Sheriffs retreated; the beginning of the end of police raids of gay bars in L.A. was upon us.
While Kight and I played a leadership role in those developments, let me make this clear: a handful, then scores, then hundreds of gay and lesbian people—all voluntarily engaged activists—collectively and constructively made it happen, a record of accomplishment probably unmatched by any other GLF in the country.
In this essay, I will focus on one of those 1970 activities, the GLF Gay Survival Committee and the subsequent Hoover Street Commune because there is a clear path, through thick and thin, from that Committee to the Commune to the October 1971 opening of the Gay Community Services Center in Los Angeles (now called the L.A. LGBT Center), the first and, then as now, the largest in the world. GCSC also seeded what grew into a world class gay community in Los Angeles.
The Gay Survival Committee, the name tells you where gay people were at that time, was created in the Spring of 1970 when I proposed the idea to GLF which approved it unanimously. The Committee’s primary purpose was to begin exploring the possibility of offering—out of the GLF office and by referral—services specifically designed for gay and lesbian people suffering from oppression sickness (peer counseling, consciousness raising groups, Vietnam War draft and military resistance counseling, and medical and legal referrals). A Los Angeles Free Press article in August 1970 caught the zeitgeist of that GLF effort.
By the end of 1970, L.A. GLF was beset by a mostly friendly, fundamental debate as to which direction to go in 1971, either in an evolving liberation direction or a more social direction by opening a Gay Coffee House with entertainment. After much internal discussion and to resolve the tension, I made a proposal in December 1970 that the GLF office be closed and that GLF financial resources, totaling about $900, be turned over to the Gay Coffee House project. GLF members agreed.
Early in 1971, a Gay Coffee House was opened by GLF stalwarts John Platania, Jim Kepner, and others in a storefront on Melrose Ave., a site where the Continental Baths subsequently stood (western corner of Melrose and Kenmore). After several months it devolved into a crash pad, could not pay its rent, and closed.
During 1970, my thinking had also evolved considerably from the Gay Survival Committee’s idea of providing limited services out of the GLF office to contemplating a more substantial, comprehensive, freestanding operation providing direct services and infused with the radical spirit and methodology of Gay Liberation. Also, during that year, I grew by leaps and bounds, transforming from a somewhat quiet, introverted academic type into an articulate, assertive community organizer because of GLF’s one-after-the-other successes.
The more I read, dialogued with others, and self-reflected, it was gradually becoming clearer to me that if we were going to succeed as a liberation movement, it was critical that we enlarge our GLF agenda from merely a reactive strategy of fighting back against hetero supremacy into an enlarged, transforming proactive strategy of building a visible, organized, self-accepting, and defiant gay community where none had ever existed.
This new way of thinking began a first level of envisioning that a gay center might be the vehicle around which such a gay community could coalesce. I did not know exactly how GLF could make that happen. As it turned out, I became the vision carrier for such a project, although at that time I did not know that term nor understand what it meant. I just did what I did from a deep well of caring and intense gay liberation motivation. I did know, however, from my many learning experiences as I matured during my 20s, that the path forward reveals itself as we walk the path not as we think about it or discuss it. And it worked.
[I want to acknowledge the important work done by Rev. Troy Perry, whom I admire, in founding in 1968 in Los Angeles the Metropolitan Community Church
which became an important part of the gay community in L.A. and elsewhere. The roots of MCC were in evangelical Christianity and the Society for Individual Rights, a conservative homophile organization started in 1964 in San Francisco. The roots of the Gay Liberation movement, however, were in the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion.]
On January 1, 1971, a year after opening the GLF office on North Vermont Ave., a contingent from GLF consisting of Randy Schrader, Steve Beckwith, Stan Williams, Rod Gibson and me, members of GLF’s Gay Survival Committee, moved into the newly created Hoover Street Commune which became the relocated activist center for Gay Liberation militancy in L.A. Morris Kight and others became an essential part of the organizing activities taking place there.
Thus, began the second phase of the pioneering work of the L.A. Gay Liberation Front.
Hoover Street Commune (1971-1973): GLF Implements a Strategic Plan for a Gay Community Center
One of the important gay historical sites in Los Angeles is located at 1500 North Hoover Street (at Sunset Dr.), right behind the then KCET public television studios (now the Scientology Media Production Studios) on Sunset Blvd. in Silverlake. It was the home of the Hoover Street Commune, which existed from 1971 until 1973—the place from which the building of the gay community center and, by extension, a gay community in Los Angeles emerged.
[Community organizers today have many exquisite organizing tools that we did not have in the 1960s and 1970s; however, missing today is the communal living that focused and magnified our effectiveness. When I dialogue with young activists today, the absence of such an essential tool in their organizing efforts is glaring.]
The house, built as a duplex, had been turned into one large house with five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a small kitchen, a dining room, and a living room. The original communards included very creative Stan Williams, a former Sonja Henie and Ice Capades skater; Steve Beckwith, a suit-and-tie businessman; Randy Schrader, a recent UCLA Law School graduate studying for the California Bar exam; Rod Gibson, a young GLFer; and me. Occupancy was a bit fluid at first, but then stabilized. Gibson soon moved out and was replaced by Ray Powers, a Hollywood actors’ agent, and Beckwith and his lover, Van Brown, a student at UC Santa Barbara, needed more privacy and moved elsewhere, replaced by John Platania.
GLF members Llee Heflin, Dexter Price, and Bruce Cristoff lived right next door at 1502 N. Hoover St. In and out on a regular basis were Morris Kight, Tony DeRosa, June Herrle, Howard Fox, David Backstrom, John Coffland, Justin Dangerfield, John Murphy, my beloved Luke Johnson, and many more. The door was always open.
For me, living there was like being in an always-in-session Graduate School for Advanced Gay Studies, intellectually and spiritually stimulating like nothing I had known before. I was being introduced to gay-centered films, books, art and artists, poetry, ideas, music, personages, spiritual lineages, inventive gay Kama Sutra positions, and much more that were all new to me.
Williams had created a large, low dining table and we sat on the floor to eat; once a week each member prepared supper. Virtually every evening there would be eight to ten people sitting around our large communal table for supper—visiting gay liberationists, soon-to-be-famous filmmakers, writers, and poets, grifters, lovers du jour, the Marlboro Man, mystics, future judges—a gay Noah’s Ark—engaged in animated and liberating discussions.
Sometimes Lucy would come down from the sky with her diamonds to visit. Williams and Platania would put their long hippie hair up into elegant beehive hairdos to go shopping at the local Safeway grocery store, an aspect of Gay Liberation’s political fight against rigid hetero gender norms. GLF called it “Gender Fuck,” a militant precursor of “Gender Fluid.” Williams created a High Tea which was poured many afternoons at 4 p.m. with rolled joints on a silver platter. Spirited political discussions would go into the night. And so it went.
In this exhilarating and creative gay-centered vortex at the Commune, sight was never lost as to why I was there—transforming the work of GLFs Gay Survival Committee into a gay community center. At both the GLF office and the Commune, the Committee’s composition was fluid with people coming and going. However, a more or less stable core group formed over time consisting of Beckwith, Kight, Platania, Williams, Schrader, Herrle, and Howard Fox among others. My role as the Committee’s founding chairman was to provide the leadership and glue to hold things together and guarantee there was forward movement by calling and chairing meetings every two weeks, preparing agendas, facilitating discussion, and ensuring continuity and follow through between meetings.
A revolutionary opening of historic proportions was being created by GLF in L.A. and we collectively leapt through that opening with the most serious intentions and joyful exuberance. Among the critically important developments that grew out of the Hoover Street Commune during those years were the following:
- Development of Content Architecture of a Gay Community Center: Every two weeks, I called a working meeting of the Committee at the Commune where contours and content of the groundbreaking gay center were collectively discussed and agreed to.
After each meeting, Platania and I would meet for an extra hour writing down what we had heard and agreed to in the meeting. Platania had worked as a grant writer for the City of Los Angeles’ Community Development Department and TELACU (The East Los Angeles Community Union). I typed up our writings, and by May 1971, an impressive looking, forty-page, bound proposal emerged from the Committee’s collective work that delineated the reasons for such a gay center, described the comprehensive human services to be provided in a community-based context, and laid out a timetable for implementing each component.
That document became an invaluable organizing tool because it clearly described what we planned to do and how we planned to do it. The proposal clearly sent a powerful message that these gay liberationists were very serious about their intentions, with a blueprint and hammer and nails in their hands, and ready to go to work. The name: “Gay Community Services Center.” Words never seen before anywhere.
“Gay” because we were totally in your face about who we were, not hiding behind camouflage words as was done prior to Gay Liberation. “Community” because of the core values implied in that word: (1) a community is a unified body whose members assumes responsibility for each other, meaning everyone, and (2) a community was what we were trying to call into being. “Services” because we were planning to deliver services specifically designed to meet the needs of gay, lesbian, and trans people, mending the deep woundings caused by hetero supremacy and invoking the new possibilities of gay empowerment. “Center” because of our intention that it be a center around which a gay community would coalesce.
- Creation of a Non-Profit, Tax-Exempt Organization: This idea was particularly advocated for by me and resulted in several people leaving the Committee, feeling that GLF was changing into an establishment organization, which was a foolish thought given how outcast and vilified gay people were at the time. No establishment would touch us, even most so-called homosexuals at that time avoided us and were afraid that GLF’s radical ideology and fighting back through direct action would get us all in more trouble.
My position was that we were attempting to create a gay community center and a gay community, both ideas revolutionary developments for our people at that time. GLF was building something that would hopefully outlive all of us and a community called for solid community institutions serving the people.
Moreover, one of the successful tactics of the Gay Liberation movement was keeping the hetero supremacists off balance. They never could conceive of gay and lesbian people developing self-respect after the centuries of violent intimidation and instilling of fear. They never expected the audacity of gay liberationists in L.A. creating a community center and envisioning an actual gay community that was real, substantial, and angry, that fought back and thumbed its nose at their supremacist proclivities and actions.
Beginning in April 1971, attorney Allen Gross and I began the grunt work of incorporating the proposed community center in California. Gross, an important hetero ally and lifelong friend, had founded the Legal Aid program in Oregon and served as legal counsel for L.A. GLF. He would serve for 25 years as legal counsel to the Center. We prepared Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws to submit to the State of California and could not read how the documents would be dealt with by the newly elected California Secretary of State, a young fellow named Jerry Brown. The documents were returned approved in two weeks and Brown became a dependable ally of gay people in California.
The same could not be said for the federal IRS tax exemption process, which routinely should have taken a few months, but in our case took five years. Gross prepared the IRS application with great care and attention to all possible traps that could be used to deny us. Decades later, I was informed privately that the Nixon White House had instructed the Secretary of the Treasury to put our application in his desk drawer and not act on it.
In 1972, I was summoned to Washington, D.C., for a special interrogation by Frank Cerny, head of the exempt branch of IRS, in a bizarre scene that unfolded in a majestic hall that was truly a surreal experience. With Gross on one side of me and attorney Ed Dilkes of L.A. Legal Aid on the other side, and me resembling a hippie Hasidic rabbi, I recited calmly over and over again what Gross had skillfully written in our application—we would serve anyone who asked for our philanthropic services and we would turn no one away, which were the exclusivity grounds on which IRS planned to trap and deny us tax-exemption. In 1976, our relentless perseverance and political pressure finally forced the White House and IRS to approve our tax-exemption application. GCSC was the first openly gay organization to secure IRS non-profit, tax-exempt approval—a singular achievement then.
- Opening First Liberation House. By mid-1971, the search began in earnest to find a location to open the Center, but initially nothing suitable could be found. That did not stop us. In August, Platania found a house on North Edgemont Ave. in East Hollywood, just south of Sunset Blvd., where the newly formed Center opened a Liberation House, the first of many in its Liberation House program over the years. Ralph Schaefer, a core GLF member, became its resident manager.
(Photo credit: Author’s collection)
The Edgemont Liberation House provided free housing primarily to young gay men, often runaways who were homeless. From 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. residents were out of the house looking for employment, getting back into school, or whatever. When the residents returned to the house at 4 p.m., under Schaefer’s supervision, they collectively made supper for the house.
The key words for living in a Liberation House, as in organizing the Center
itself, were “mutuality” and “cooperation.” Evening activities at the Edgemont house included a group discussion led by Schaefer or another GLF member that amounted to a gay consciousness-raising group, something the residents had never experienced before—gay and lesbian people viewed in a positive, constructive light. The residents blossomed. After breakfast in the morning, residents headed out to lean into their goals for the day.
Opening of the L.A. Gay Community Services Center
In September 1971, Platania found a possible site for the Center in an old Queen Anne style home at 1614 Wilshire Blvd. at Union Ave., just east of MacArthur Park. Committee members looked at the house and all agreed—yes, let’s do it. I was the full-time+ founding executive director and Kight, Herrle, and Platania became members of the first Board of Directors.
After a bit of cosmetic fix-up, the installation of telephones, and a big sign in front emblazoned with the words “Gay Community Services Center,” the year and a half of relentless organizing work by GLF members led to fruition. The story of that Center and the gay community it facilitated in Los Angeles, including the role of the Highland Park Collective, will be told later, but this was how GLF got that far.
To give you an idea how revolutionary this community organizing was in the lives of gay people, after the sign was hung on Wilshire Blvd., a call was received at the Center from an important gay figure telling us, “You must take that sign down immediately! You people are going to get all of us arrested!” Then, most gay people rightfully lived in fear.
- The Gaywill Funky Shoppe: The story of the Hoover Street Commune would not be complete without mentioning the Gaywill Funky Shoppe, a thrift store the Center opened in 1972 in Silverlake.
Amazingly, all the organizing and sustaining of the Center was accomplished with little money or no money at all. The organizers were fueled by something much larger than money. What little funds the early Center did operate on came from three primary sources: (1) Friday night Gay Funky Dances in Hollywood, open to all ages, which were started in 1970 by GLF, went on hiatus when the GLF office closed, and were started up again in August 1971 sponsored by the Center. After expenses, the dances generated about $150 a week; (2) donations at the Center raised about $150 weekly; and (3) after expenses, the Gaywill Funky Shoppe brought in about $200 weekly.
(Photo credit: Author’s collection)
Central to the Shoppe was Commune member Stan Williams assisted by young GLF members Dexter Price and Bruce Cristoff. Using a gift possessed by many gay men of being able to transform ordinary junk into objets d’art, the thrift shoppe thrived. It was located at 1531 Griffith Park Blvd., where that street meets Sunset Blvd. in Silverlake, occupied today by the Pine and Crane Restaurant. When Williams left for San Francisco, Ralph Schaefer took over as manager.
One day early in 1973, after not hearing from Schaefer for several days and hearing that the Shoppe seemed closed, Kight and I went to check it out. We found Schaefer dead in the bathroom with a bullet hole in the back of his head. He had been executed. Robbery was not a motive since a visible cash box was untouched. The murder of gay men occurred often then with assailants rarely looked for or apprehended by the LAPD. One less fag was a blessing for hetero supremacists.
The LAPD Rampart Division called Kight and me in for questioning and tried to pin the murder on us, demanding that we take polygraph tests.
We gave the LAPD the middle finger, telling the investigators to arrest us if they wanted to, but we refused to play their disrespectful game regarding someone we valued so dearly, and walked out. The LAPD was not heard from again regarding Schaefer’s murder, even after numerous requests for information.
The Gaywill Funky Shoppe was permanently closed immediately as a show of respect for Schaefer.
At the beginning of this article, you were advised to remember that all this GLF organizing was being done under the most difficult community organizing conditions imaginable. Even under those horrendous conditions, however, you can clearly see that something historically significant had occurred in Los Angeles that took place nowhere else in the same way in the lives of gay and lesbian people, facilitated by a vanguard of young gay liberationists.
By October 1971, with the opening of the Gay Community Services Center, with much more revolutionary struggle ahead, a whole new realm of possibilities and ways forward began opening up for gay and lesbian people in Los Angeles. The GLF Gay Survival Committee and Hoover Street Commune had done their early community organizing work impeccably.
A unique revolution in consciousness and liberation unfolded in Los Angeles, radically changing the quality of gay people’s lives and welfare, instilling a new, life enhancing identity and birthing an exciting, emerging community where we learned to value and take care of each other. The ripples of that Gay Liberation revolution wash over us still today.
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Photo by Todd Danforth
Don Kilhefner, Ph.D., played a pioneering role in the creation of the Gay Liberation movement and is co-founder of the L.A. LGBT Center, Van Ness Recovery House, Radical Faeries, and has been a gay community organizer for 55 years in Los Angeles and nationally. [email protected]
Events
Botitas World: the business brand aimed at building community
Cafécito and Comunidad, the event to gather in QTBIPOC community
Zizi Bandera and Ty Curiel, came together to form what is now Botitas–a small business brand and organizing space for Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous and People of Color to celebrate and embrace identity, ethnicity and community.
The co-founders of Saturday’s Botitas event Cafécito and Comunidad, say they had to close the RSVP’s because they reached capacity and were afraid of having issues with the Parks and Recreation Department that issues parking permits and sets a limit for the number of people allowed to gather at Elysian Park in Los Angeles.
“It’s our first event here and it’s an amazing turnout,” said Bandera. “TikTok blew us up.”
Bandera referenced the TikTok video they posted announcing the event and says that they woke up the next morning to see that they had well over a hundred RSVP’s for the event that they expected would only have a couple dozen people.
“We had someone who is part of our community call up the councilmember for this district and was able to talk to whoever is in charge of Parks and Rec to OK more capacity,” said Bandera. “[Eunisses Hernandez, Councilmember CD-1] also got us the tables and permits.”
Bandera stresses that the amount of people who reserved a spot for the event comes to show the need for space like Botitas.
“I thought it was going to be maybe fifteen, twenty people,” said Bandera.
The space is held intentionally for the BIPOC community within the broader LGBTQ+ community, with the intention of centering BIPOC voices that can otherwise be erased, marginalized, sidelined or silenced in broader community conversations.
“Our focus is to have these community spaces and to serve our trans Latine community in Los Angeles and beyond,” continued Bandera. “We thought about making this project a nonprofit, but we wanted to really have full agency and control over, in terms of the needs of our community.”
Bandera says that going the nonprofit route has its own challenges and obstacles because of different stakeholders. They stress the importance of their community being the stakeholders in this business journey.
Though the day was a bit gloomy with some light rain, many people gathered to mingle, chat and yap, along with some coffee at Elysian Park in Los Angeles this past Saturday (Photo Credit Gisselle Palomera).
“I’ve been working in community organizing, mobilizing around LGBTQ and immigrant issues for almost fifteen years now and I’ve always wanted to create something that was for us, led by us–queer, trans, Latine and intergenerational.”
Bandera says that they were inspired to create this space for QTBIPOC because of a report released earlier this year pointing to a loneliness epidemic that disproportionately affects LGBTQ+ people over their heterosexual peers.
The report states that ”…LGBTQ+ youth exhibit higher rates of loneliness, social isolation, and depressive symptoms than their heterosexual peers. Moreover, LGBTQ+ youth grappling with loneliness are less likely to reach out for help regarding their mental health concerns.’
The other co-founder of Botitas has different reasons to have started this business journey.
“Botitas is one day today and another thing tomorrow,” Curiel said. “Our idea came from wanting to create a brand–something that you can wear when you’re out and about in the city. A brand that is backed by people who resonate with you as Latine folks, queer, trans and that’s what we are.”
Curiel also states that the current state of politics also plays a major role in his idea to create Botitas. “We want to [create these spaces], especially in this time and age where there’s a rhetoric of people spreading hate.”
This event is in a public space, encouraging people who show up, to gather in a space that supports sobriety. The offerings included cafécito, pastries and games.
Earlier this year during pride month, Curiel says he and Bandera were looking at historic news articles and photographs of LGBTQ+ life in Los Angeles during the 1950s and 60s, from an exhibit at the Central Library in DTLA, and that’s when it hit them both that none of the people in the photos looked like them. They did not feel represented.
This moment urged them to reconsider what it means to them to feel represented, heard and seen–thus bringing about the idea for Botitas.
Follow @Botitas.World on Instagram and TikTok to get more information on upcoming events.
Arts & Entertainment
Meet the whimsical, fairy-core Uber driver who drives a car named Mollie
Nonbinary Uber driver, Caspian Larkins is rolling on Mollie– no, not that one
Forest green faux fur, rhinestones, a fabric-lined ceiling, planted faux flowers and green plastic grass adorn the inside of an anthropomorphized car named Mollie who spends her days riding off into the sunset on Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood and beyond.
The driver of this 2008 Ford Escape, Caspian Larkins, 24 and a Cancer sign, moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting and through a series of humbling restaurant jobs and other side hustles, ended up driving for Uber. Though working for Uber was not on Larkins’ bingo card for 2021, they wanted to find a way to make the experience not only fun for themself, but also for the people who roll on Mollie.
Larkins, who identifies as nonbinary and queer, grew up being one with nature in the wilderness of Oregon and when you step inside Mollie, it feels like a little magical, mystical slice of Oregonian forest–of course if it were reimagined on four wheels and zooming through traffic in Los Angeles.
Forest green faux fur and a pink ruffle with a layer of tiny fabric roses, line the doors. Stickers on the sunroof and windows reflect rainbow hues across the white leather seats and passengers. (Photo credit Gisselle Palomera)
Going viral overnight doesn’t happen to just anyone, but this iconic duo now have thousands of followers on social media and have big plans for the future.
ShaVonne Boggs, a content creator who hailed an Uber ride from Larkins, posted an Instagram reel of the ride and featured Larkins in all their fairy-core glory, driving through L.A traffic, with the viral Gwen Stefani ‘Just a Girl,’ audio clip playing over.
“I went to bed that night with a couple hundred followers on my account and I woke up the next day and I had gained like 3,000 followers,” said Larkins.
Larkins has a unique sense of style that incorporates nature, fashion and sustainability, often foraging for materials from the side of the road to add to the car and accepting donated fabrics from people who reach out to them through social media.
“I’m a forager. What can I say?,” said Larkins and then jokingly added that Jeff Bezos also personally delivers some of the items they use to decorate Mollie.
“I come across stuff on the street sometimes that I’ll pick up, put in my car and repurpose.”
Larkins says that Mollie is a little bit dinged up and bruised up from the outside, but that it’s the inside that truly matters.
There is a third character in this story that resides on the inside of the car at all times.
Jack Aranda is the name of the guardian angel of this fairytale ride. It is a miniature rubber ducky that was given to Larkins by a spiritual witch that opted for an Uber drive, over a broom one night.
“It was midnight, by Venice Beach and you know it was good vibes, but yea she gets in and we’re talking and she’s like ‘I’m going to give you this duck,’ and gives me this little tiny purple good luck duck,” said Larkins. “So I kept the good luck duck and I put him on my dashboard.”
Larkins says that ever since this encounter, the luck in their car changed.
“Red lights will always turn green for me, and sometimes someone will run a red light and miss [hitting] me and I just think it’s divine intervention because of Jack.”
Larkins poses in front of their car Mollie on a road in West Hollywood, CA. (Photo Credit Gisselle Palomera)
Larkins says that the decorated interior and its elements serves not only as a conversation starter, but also as a filter from unwanted conversations and painfully boring small talk.
“I think that since I’ve decorated my car, it’s like my filter,” said Larkins. “The people who get in and are like, ‘Oh my god,’ those are my people and those are the ones that I’m there for. And the ones that get in and are silent, I just let them sit there and soak in the rainbows.”
They say that there have been more good interactions, than bad ones and more people who ‘get it,’ than those who don’t.
Anthropomorphizing cars is nothing new to pop culture. In fact, cars have almost always had names and it is almost a part of engrained American culture to assign personalities to them based on their cosmetic characteristics.
The earliest examples on TV go as far back as the 1940s and some of the most memorable examples are Christine, the possessed, killer Camaro from Stephen King’s imaginative mind.
Or Herbie, the 1963 Volkswagen Racing Beetle from the early cartoon TV show Herbie, the Love Bug.
In everyday routine, people spend so much time and energy on and around inanimate objects, that they sort of become meaningful elements who accompany us on our journeys from here to there–and back.
“What I’m doing now with her is switching out different designs with the seasons,” said Larkins.
Larkins drives around Los Angeles and West Hollywood, picking up and dropping off people from all walks of life. (Photo Credit Gisselle Palomera)
“So right now we have our spring/summer look and a lot of the things in there are removable, velcroed and stapled.”
They say that right now they are exploring a very niche area of automotive interior design that they feel has not been explored within vehicles recently.
“It’s just hard for other people to conceptualize it and what I often describe to people, comes off as very tacky and just kind of nasty– not demure, not cute.”
Larkins feel they are really just now setting the stage for what’s possible, as far as interior customizations.
“I want to start creating this world in which design plays a bigger role in what a car could be and the experience of just being transported,” said Larkins candidly. “I want to invite people into my little delusional fantasies.”
Larkins believes that even in the present and near future of self-driving vehicles, they would like to collaborate with these major self-driving car companies and take part in designing and customizing the vehicles so that it can be a pleasurable and fun experience for riders who might feel anxiety about self-driving technology.
The inside of Mollie is adorned from top to bottom and from left to right. (Photo Credit Gisselle Palomera)
Modifying and customizing cars has been a part of the North American experience since the early 1930s. Now, attention is shifting toward the addition of technologies like Augmented Reality, to enhance the experience of driving and getting from point A to point B, and also using that technology to navigate the vehicle without a driver.
There are now endless possibilities when it comes to custom car culture and Larkins feels this is their place to explore and forage for the looks that people want and can’t even imagine.
“I want to step away from driving for the platforms and I would love to design with them,” said Larkins. “There is a group of people that are in support of this future technology and there is this other group of people that are kind of scared of it because it feels very cold and very uninviting and very new, so I would like to be the one to sort of bridge that gap for those people and make it less scary.”
The vision that Larkins has, is that they would like to reimagine the possibilities of custom interiors with interchangeable parts and additions that one could only think of as synonymous to Barbie and her endlessly fun assortment of interchangeable outfit components.
Larkins sees a long future ahead, where they have the opportunity to collaborate with airlines, rideshare companies and any other sponsors who are willing to make their visions come to reality. Until then, they will continue to weave up and down the asphalt arteries of WeHo and beyond, rolling on Mollie and working on their fairytale ending.
Features
The little idea that could: These queer, Latinx, DJs are shifting the scene in LA
‘All you jotas, grab your botas!’
The rallying call urges all the Spanish-speaking and corrido-loving sapphics, butchonas, jotas and vaqueeras, to grab their boots and meet up at Little Joy Cocktails for a carne asada-style, family party every fourth Sunday of the month, featuring spins by DJ Lady Soul, DJ French and DJ Killed By Synth.
In Los Angeles, these three disc jockeys have embraced the word buchona, adding the ‘t’ as a play on the word butch.
The free event, now locally known as Butchona, is a safe space for all the Mexican and Spanish music-loving lesbians to gather on the last Sunday of every month.
Buchona is usually a term used in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries to describe a woman who is a boss– someone who exudes dominant energy or marries into a powerful position.
“I didn’t know how well [the idea for Butchona] was going to be received and my favorite part of all that, has been the looks everyone has been bringing,” said Rocio Flores, who goes by DJ Lady Soul.
DJ Lady Soul poses outside of Little Joy Cocktails in her butchona outfit.
The event that started only a few months ago, brings in dozens of dressed-up jotas. The ‘looks’ that the crowds bring are reminiscent of how dad’s, tíos, and their friends dressed at Mexican family parties: a tejana, cowboy boots, giant belt buckle and a beer in hand.
Dressing up in these looks is a way to show wealth and status to earn the respect of other males in a male-dominated and -centered culture– that is until now.
This traditionally male, Mexican, cultural identity, is something that has never been embraced or accessible to women or gender non-conforming people. The giant belt buckles that are traditionally custom-made and specific to male identities like head of household, ‘only rooster in the chicken coop’ and lone wolf, are only part of the strictly cis-gendered male clothes that dominate the culture.
The embroidered button-ups, belt buckles and unique cowboy hats –all come together to create the masculine looks that are now being reclaimed by women and gender nonconforming people at the event curated by three queer, Mexican DJs, who once had a little idea that could.
Flores, 37, (she/her), Gemini, says that to her the term butchona describes a woman who is a little ‘chunti,’ a little cheap in the way she dresses– but in a queer way.
“That title also means that you’re a badass,” she said. “I want to look like that señor, I want to look like that dude and now I feel like I could, so why not?”
Flores says that now she feels like she can embrace and reclaim that cultural identity, but it wasn’t always that easy.
At first, her family upheld the traditional cisgender roles that forced her to dress more feminine, but she always wanted to dress like her cousins and her tíos.
“Now, I’m like: ‘Fuck that!’ I’m going to wear the chalecos and the Chalino suits,” she said in Span-glish.
The Chalino suits are traditional, Mexican, suits that were worn and popularized by Chalino Sanchez, known as the King of corridos—a genre of music that is said to have originated on the border region of Texas, Tamaulipas and Nuevo León, Mexico.
“It felt good to break into the DJ scene, but what I always noticed was that the lesbian culture was always lacking,” said DJ Lady Soul. “I would mainly see gay males at parties and a lot of male DJs.”
According to Zippia–a career site that sources their information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics and the U.S. Census–23.5 percent of disc jockeys are women, 16 percent are LGBTQ+ and only 12.7 percent are Hispanic or Latin American.
What has always been a traditionally machista music genre and scene, is now being embraced by a growing number of queer women and non-male DJs in Los Angeles.
For Fran Fregoso, who goes by DJ French, 33, (they/she), Taurus– embracing their cultural identity came a lot easier because of their late uncle who sort of paved the way for them to come out as queer and be more accepted than he was as the first openly out queer person in their family.
Their music journey began listening to the 90s grunge, alternative, hip-hop and metal music played by their older siblings at home.
“Then I met Vanessa [DJ Killed By Synth], and she introduced me to the industry,” said DJ French.
DJ French felt the acceptance and support to enter this music space and decided to embrace their cultural roots by playing music that they grew up listening to at family parties. They booked their first gig with Cumbiatón LA, a collective of DJs and organizers who host Latin American parties across Los Angeles, often centering queer DJs and other performers.
“When [Lady Soul and Killed By Synth], brought this idea up to create Butchona, I was like: ‘Oh, I’m in 100 percent’,” they said. “Because I love playing corridos and banda music because that’s a core memory from my childhood and family parties.”
Banda, corridos, cumbias and other traditional music is a big part of Mexican culture, even as gendered and male-centered as it has been, it is embraced by all.
“I know a lot of people in our queer, Latino, community love that music too, but they also want to be in a safe space,” they said. “That’s where we decided to make an environment for our community to dance and be themselves.”
Vanessa Bueno, 40, (she/her), Libra, who goes by DJ Killed By Synth, says her journey started about 20 years ago when she started DJing for backyard parties in East L.A. and across L.A. County.
Her family is from Guadalajara, so she says that growing up she also had a lot of family parties with corridos and banda blaring in the background of memories with the many cousins she says she lost count of.
“A lot of the music we heard was bachata, banda, cumbia and even some 80s freestyle,” said Bueno.
Even while she had a ‘little punk rocker phase,’ she says she couldn’t escape that Spanish music her family played ritualistically at family get-togethers.
When they began their music journey–back in the AOL, Instant Messenger days, they played a lot more electronic music, hence the name Killed by Synth. At first, it was just a username, but then it became her DJ name.
“Later down the line, comes [the idea for] Butchona came about, and me, Rocio and French collaborated,” she said. “It’s kind of always been my goal to create these safe spaces for women and queer people, and I had been in the scene long enough to where people were willing to answer my calls to work with them to make it happen.”
For Bueno, it was natural for her to build community and embrace this part of their culture later on in her career when she saw a need for queer, Latin American-centered club spaces with family party vibes.
She started hosting Latin American-style parties, blending music, culture, and food and attracting the exact audience she envisioned. With these events, Bueno aimed to reclaim her Mexican identity and foster a sense of family and community at these events.
“We’re here to build a safe space to embrace the music and kind of not think about the machismo that is tied to it and celebrate who we are,” said Bueno.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor and Statistics, California, Texas, New York, Arizona and Washington rank the highest in employment rates for disc jockeys in 2023. There is also a recent trend in more women DJs–the study does not include gender nonconforming DJs–booking twice as many gigs as men in event spaces and concerts that host DJ sets.
“It feels like we’re barely cracking into these safe spaces and expanding our horizons a little bit,” said DJ French. “I hope this inspires other people to also create safe spaces like Butchona.”
The next Butchona event will be on Sunday, Oct. 27 and will feature all three DJs playing corridos, banda, cumbia and all the classics, for a chunti Halloween party.
Features
1st time West Texas has a permanent LGBTQ+ community center
A local volunteer died by suicide ahead of the center’s grand opening, reminding the West Texas community why such spaces are important
By Carlos Nogueras Ramos | ODESSA, Texas — Patty Reeves stood centerstage overlooking a park dotted with dozens of people from West Texas’ LGBTQ+ community. There were clusters of families and friend groups. A local church brought congregants who sat in lawn chairs in the front row.
The cheerful atmosphere at the fifth annual pride festival in West Texas had shifted. A suicide had rocked the community. Luna Harris, a 19-year-old gender-nonconforming person, died two days earlier.
As a warm gust carried dust through the park, Reeves delivered her speech.
“What I see in West Texas is a community that says, ‘I am here. I am thriving. You will not erase us,’” she said.
Like many present that day, Reeves, the president of PFLAG’s Midland and Odessa chapter, wanted to believe in her message. But at that moment, she couldn’t.
“I said those words because that’s what I hope for,” Reeves said offstage. “But then I thought: Are we really?”
The sudden loss hovered over the festivities meant to close a busy week of events, which included the grand opening of a brick-and-mortar community center for the region’s LGBTQ+ community.
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(Photo Credit: Callie Cummings for The Texas Tribune)
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(Photo Credit: Callie Cummings for The Texas Tribune)
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It was also, Reeves and others said, a sobering reminder that underscored how necessary spaces like the festival and the community center are — especially in a state such as Texas where Republican lawmakers and other policymakers are working to limit how LGBTQ+ people live their lives.
During the last decade, several organizations that support the Permian Basin’s LGBTQ+ community have sprung up. None have had a permanent — and visible — home of their own. That changed in April when Pride Center West Texas opened its doors to the public.
The center’s grand opening was four years in the making. It all started when Bryan and Clint Wilson moved to Midland, from Florida in 2020. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the couple shuttered their consulting services to move back and be closer to family.
The married couple had been active in LGBTQ+ nonprofits in Florida, and registered Pride Center West Texas as a nonprofit with plans to open a center once they settled. That summer, the first center opened on the third floor of a building in downtown Odessa with a conference room and group spaces, Clint said.
The center outgrew that space. And in 2021, they moved the center to another building downtown, next to a bank. There, the Wilsons, volunteers and the center’s board held events and group sessions for two years before outgrowing the space again. In 2023, the couple moved the center to a church. But after the Wilsons held a drag show for adults, members of the church’s board voted to evict them. Until this year, the couple operated the center out of Sanctuary Wyrd, a shop that sells gems, crystals and art — and has doubled as a refuge, opening its doors to other organizations that hosted monthly meetings and movie nights.
Now the center is tucked away in a nondescript strip mall behind a busy Italian restaurant.
A rainbow placard hangs on the glass facing the street. At the entrance, the Wilsons have placed desks for people to work at. They do not charge patrons for using the space. A clerk sits by the window, welcoming every straggler. Farther down the hall, visitors may chat on a sofa and chairs while others study the collection of books on a shelf. Pamphlets containing information about sexually transmitted diseases line the countertop of a bar area in the back.
Among its programming, it offers youth groups for adults aged 18-25 to discuss different subjects. Some weeks, it hosts group discussions on religion. On Fridays, visitors can drop in for Queer Connection, a support group for adults. The center also offers its space as an office to other local organizations serving the LGBTQ+ community.
Reeves, the PFLAG president, also moved to Midland from Arlington in 2020 with her husband and trans teenager, Milo. Before looking for a house, Reeves said, she and her husband searched for available resources for her teen, who is now 17. Bryan and Clint helped the family by connecting them to the local network of organizations focused on supporting LGBTQ+ youth. Reeves volunteered for a year before becoming president of PFLAG in 2021.
“Finding the Pride Center was the best thing that happened to us,” Reeves said. “I came as a parent, I didn’t know what to do.”
Funding such community centers is a priority for Texas Pride Impact Fund, a nonprofit charity organization that grants money to support programs and community centers across Texas. Since 2018, it has awarded $2 million to organizations in Abilene, Corpus Christi, El Paso, Lubbock, Eagle Pass, the Rio Grande Valley and others. The fund traveled to Odessa in June to document the center and show the results of its work to donors in Fort Worth.
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(Photo Credit: Callie Cummings for The Texas Tribune)
Ron Guillard, the fund’s executive director, said it’s unclear how many similar organizations exist across Texas — especially outside the major metropolitan areas. A national database suggested there are 20, but not all operate out of a physical space. For many, Guillard said, a brick-and-mortar is aspirational.
Míchél Macklin, the fund’s communications and administrative coordinator, said rural community centers do more with a fraction of the budget of bigger cities. A challenge for the community hubs like the West Texas center, they said, is working with scarce resources. The fund found that the support the organizations provide to each other has enabled their success.
“I think the folks who are in the Permian Basin are creating connective tissue among each other and pooling the resources, however small they may be … to create a larger compound or silo of resources that can be shared among one another,” Macklin said.
Guillard agreed: “What I find most striking is that [rural centers] appear to be more cohesive than the major cities because they’re led by a younger set of activists,” Guillard said. “Especially in towns like Eagle Pass and Odessa, there are communities, those on the frontlines working across the spectrum. And they understand that that is the fight.”
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Guillard said he had seen promising examples of other LGBTQ+ organizations aiming to open brick-and-mortar centers in El Paso, Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande Valley.
Harris, the 19-year-old who died by suicide, was a regular volunteer at the center since 2022. They helped organize meetings and events. And they helped produce the local Pride celebration, often performing original songs. Full of ideas, they proposed a chocolate bar stand and a firecracker sale to help raise money.
They were talkative and outgoing, their friends said. They wrote songs and performed them with an operatic tone, people close to them said. In high school, Harris sang in a choir. For the 2024 Pride festival, Harris had volunteered to face-paint and perform a song.
The Wilsons and other advocates were stunned. How could this happen to someone so deeply involved with the tight-knit community?
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“What is enough?” Clint said. “How many resources are enough resources? What is enough for a community to feel accepted? It’s a very hard question.”
Nationwide, 42% of transgender adults will attempt suicide, according to a 2023 report by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, which used data from the U.S. Transgender Population Health Survey. Nearly as many, 44%, said they considered it.
Contributing to this harsh reality in Texas is a Legislature that has introduced scores of bills seeking to regulate how LGBTQ+ people live. Republican lawmakers filed more than 100 bills between the last legislative session and the following special sessions. Some passed, including a ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for trans kids, limiting the college sports teams trans athletes can join and an attempt to limit where drag performances can take place.
“All LGBTQ people have to be really resilient because we know our rights are always on the line,” said Brad Pritchett, deputy director of Equality Texas, a statewide political advocacy organization. “In places like Texas, where you’re under a constant barrage from lawmakers trying to find new and creative ways to harm your community, it really does take an extra ounce of resilience to continue saying, ‘This is my home, I’m not leaving it, I’m gonna stay and defend it.’”
While LGBTQ+ organizations have been staples in major American cities since the 1970s, it has only been in the last decade that similar groups have started in Midland and Odessa. Among them are the West Texas chapter of PFLAG, the first organization in the country dedicated to advocating for LGBTQ+ people and their families, which arrived in Midland and Odessa in 2014. There is also Out West Texas, which serves transgender West Texans and started in 2017, and Basin Pride, founded in 2019, has arranged the logistics for putting together Pride festivals.
“This is hard work, to keep the community going,” said Adriana Aguilar, who joined Basin Pride in 2021 and now serves as its chair. Aguilar, 28, volunteered for the center in 2020.
The effort to establish and grow more inclusive spaces can draw unwanted attention.
Last January, Aguilar, Basin Pride chair, said she and a group of volunteers attempted to host a family-friendly, Barbie-themed event that included a drag show and local artists. The group secured a venue, performers and volunteers. But days before the event, organized protesters flocked the surrounding area, and the county sheriff was called. Agitators threatened Aguilar with protests. Aguilar postponed the event indefinitely. And because of the event, several sponsors who had offered to support the Pride festival backed out. Aguilar said she had two months to regroup and find other financial supporters.
“Basin Pride is growing, which is great,” she said. “But that means we have more eyes on us, that we’re under certain radars that we weren’t before.”
And on Tuesday, an Odessa City Council member suggested the city should limit the use of public restrooms based on a person’s sex assigned at birth, the Odessa American reported. Such policies are routinely used to discriminate against transgender people.
Other Odessans have responded positively to their growth — or are at least indifferent.
Earlier this year, the center began hosting a bingo night at the Odessa Veterans of Foreign Wars hall. The Wilsons and other volunteers wear grey shirts with long, pink sleeves, floating through the hall selling bingo cards and dobbers. Lorraine Wilson, Bryan’s mom, calls the evening’s numbers.
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It was Lorraine’s idea. She proposed it to Rick Mitchell, the VFW hall’s commander in February, who then brought it to his members for a vote. It was unanimous.
“They’re a human being just like I’m a human being is the way I see it,” said Mitchell, a lifelong conservative from Kermit who lives in Odessa. “It doesn’t affect me one bit.”
Samantha Washington has been playing bingo at the hall for 15 years. The 49-year-old introduced her daughters, Elisha and Mesha, to the tradition. Bingo nights are a family getaway, she said. That the proceeds from Monday night help fund the Pride Center doesn’t bother her one bit, she said, so long as there is bingo.
“I don’t mind supporting them,” Washington said. “It’s people’s rights.”
The proceeds from bingo night don’t cover the expenses of running the center, but it helps, the Wilsons said. The couple hopes they will someday earn enough from that and other grants to expand their services and reach.
After Harris’ death, they said, their services are crucial to the community.
“We have to be able to give what we have now,” Clint said. “We have to rally and still continue what we have now. The main question that Bryan and I had was, how could this happen on our watch? It forces us to see how we can improve our reach.”
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Carlos Nogueras Ramos is a regional reporter based in Odessa. Carlos joined The Texas Tribune in 2023 in partnership with Report for America. Carlos tells the stories of Texas from the vast energy-rich Permian Basin region. Before the Tribune, Carlos spent time in Philadelphia writing about local politics, including the city’s 100th mayoral election. A Spanish speaker, Carlos was one of the few Latino reporters on the campaign trail, covering the most expensive primary election to date in Philly. He is a proud Puerto Rico native, born and raised in Cayey. He studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston and the University of Puerto Rico.
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The preceding article was previously published by The Texas Tribune and is republished with permission.
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Features
Second Thought: New film short explores now, then & a future
In light of the overwhelmingly positive reception their short film has garnered, the young queer filmmakers look to the future
BOSTON, Mass. – In an unexpected yet delightful turn, YouTube personality Chris Stanley and friend and TikTok sensation Art Bezrukavenko have ventured into filmmaking with their debut indie film, Second Thought.
The two new gay filmmakers were recently in Boston for Pride festivities and took a moment to share their insights with the Los Angeles Blade about their debut film short, which has been met with enthusiastic praise and critical acclaim. Their successful transition from social media influencers to filmmakers marks an exciting new chapter in their careers, promising more creative ventures ahead.
Second Thought (With Spoilers)
Despite their lack of filmmaking experience, ‘Second Thought’ shines with impressive acting and the pair’s shared eye for cinematography, set against the picturesque backdrop of Cape Cod’s Provincetown, also known as P-town—a historic and vibrant LGBTQ+ resort haven in Massachusetts.
Located at the tip of Cape Cod, it’s celebrated for a rich LGBTQ+ culture, beautiful beaches, charming B&Bs, and lively queer bars. The town’s transformation into an art and gay mecca began after the 1898 Atlantic hurricane season, attracting artists, bohemians, and the nascent queer community. By the 1920s, Provincetown had firmly established itself as a queer-friendly destination, a legacy that continues today. It’s no wonder John Waters, Baltimore’s famed out gay director and writer, calls P-town his second home.
Second Thought, written and co-produced by Bezrukavenko and Stanley, explores the complexities of modern gay dating and the diverse experiences within the LGBTQ+ community. The film stars the duo, with Stanley and Jimmy Martin co-directing the project.
The narrative follows two young men, portrayed by Stanley and Bezrukavenko, who meet on Grindr shortly after arriving in P-town. They exchange messages and quickly arrange to meet at a local bar. What follows is a candid depiction of a hookup, tastefully shot to convey intimacy without explicit content.
However, the morning brings a twist: Bezrukavenko’s character sneaks out and blocks Stanley’s character on the app, leaving him feeling rejected and disheartened – a scenario based loosely on both filmmakers’ personal experiences.
“I’ve definitely had experiences like that,” Bezrukavenko told the Blade. “There have been nights when I thought, oh my God, that was such a great night. And then, you know, we wake up in the morning and the guy tells me okay, go away.”
“I didn’t really have a lot of experience with hookup culture,” Stanley admits, “Although I can relate to the ghosting part. When I was trying to talk to guys before I met Bret [Stanley’s boyfriend of three years] for sure.”
The film then cleverly rewinds to their initial bar encounter, offering an alternative storyline. This time, the characters spend the evening talking, flirting, and enjoying a series of sweet activities around the quaint town. The poignant climax shows the two men as an older couple, having spent their lives together, enriched by the deep connection they fostered by avoiding the pitfalls of meaningless and empty immediate sex.
Gay Hookup Culture
In an article by Vox Media, gay psychiatrist Jack Turban, explores the effects of Grindr on gay men’s mental health. Grindr (which is featured in ‘Second Thought’ as the catalyst for the two protagonists meeting) and similar apps like Scruff and Jack’d, with millions of users, are designed for easy, anonymous, LGBTQ+ sexual encounters. While these apps promote sexual liberation, Turban concludes that they may also harm mental health.
Turban conducted an informal survey on Grindr, posing as a medical writer. He received many responses revealing that many users find the app addictive due to the brain’s pleasure responses, triggered by the unpredictable rewards, akin to gambling’s infamous slot machines, which make it hard to stop using the hookup app.
Grindr provides temporary relief from anxiety and depression, but many users feel worse after using it. They log on to escape negative emotions, only to feel more isolated and anxious after shallow interactions and hookups. Despite this, the cycle of temporary relief and subsequent distress continues.
As is the case at the beginning of ‘Second Thought’, Turban finds that some men struggle to form lasting relationships due to Grindr’s hypersexualized nature. The app’s convenience leads to sex-first interactions, which don’t typically result in meaningful connections. This behavior can also damage self-esteem and hinder relationship-building skills.
Although the film does not explicitly oppose hookup culture, Stanley and Bezrukavenko, both in committed three-year long relationships, believe that developing a long-term connection requires more depth than what Grindr typically offers.
“Excitement comes and goes,” says Bezrukavenko. “It’s not always easy, and it is not always like those early days. I think the issue is that in a lot of couples, people start off very, very excited, right? But then that excitement kind of fades away and then people stop fighting for each other. You know what I mean? People give up too fast and they want some fresh new thing. But relationships take work. Relationships are friendship and partnership first, and then passion. You need to date your best friend.”
In Bezrukavenko’s experience, putting the work into a relationship is well worth it. “Passion is a great word because a lot of people have a misconception of what love and what passion is. They think that they should be passionate all the time, but passion comes and goes and then it returns and then it can be doubled. And in my case, I had the most passionate after, two and a half years in my current relationship. I would have not ever thought that it’s possible.”
Stanley agrees wholeheartedly with his friend and co-creator, believing that communication is the glue that holds a long-term relationship together. “I would say communication is really important. Once you stop telling your partner things or if you’re keeping things from them, the relationship just shuts down. So, yeah I would say it’s important to always keep an open dialogue conversation, telling each other what you like, what you don’t like, and working together on things while feeling comfortable to share whatever is on your minds.”
Coming Out (Chris Stanley)
(Photo Credit: Stanley/Instagram)
Growing up in a close-knit community in New Hampshire, Stanley navigated the complexities of coming out during his high school years, facing both rejection and support along the way.
“I came out when I was a sophomore in high school, and it didn’t really go well for me,” he reflected. While his family embraced his identity, the response at school was markedly different. “My main friend group, about five guys, ghosted me the very next day after I came out,” he recalled.
The sudden ostracization was a significant blow for Stanley, who had assumed his friends had always known about his sexual orientation.
“I used to act stereotypically gay when I was trying to be funny, and my friends would always joke about it being real. So, I was shocked when they reacted that way,” he explains. The loss of his friends and the ensuing awkwardness at school led Chris to quit the soccer team, despite being one of its best players.
“Senior year was a bit better,” Stanley noted, mentioning that the team even tried to recruit him back. However, the trust issues and the hurt from his earlier experiences made it impossible for him to return. “They sent the team captain to ask me to play again, but I said no,” he stated firmly.
Despite the challenges, his love for the sport never waned. Last year, he discovered and joined a gay soccer team in Boston. “It was really fun to play again with a bunch of gay guys and queer people. It felt good to be competitive again, although I did hurt my knee trying to go too hard,” he says, laughing.
(Photo Credit: Stanley/Instagram)
Now at 24, Stanley has built a strong relationship with his family, including his boyfriend of three years, Bret. “My parents just want me to be happy,” he says, highlighting the support he receives from his mom and dad. His father’s acceptance was particularly meaningful, especially after learning that his uncle was also gay. “I didn’t realize my uncle was gay until after I came out to my dad,” he revealed. “That was a surprise.”
Stanley’s journey from isolation to acceptance has also fueled his creative passions. During his high school years, when he often found himself sitting alone at lunch, he turned to writing. “I would eat my food as fast as I could and then go to the library to write short gay stories and poems,” he recalled.
Today, Stanley continues to create, sharing his work on YouTube with a supportive community and enjoying life with Bret by his side.
Coming Out (Art Bezrukavenko)
Art Bezrukavenko grew up in Eastern Ukraine, in a city where being gay was not openly acknowledged. “I was 17 years old, and there were no gay people in my school or my city,” he recalls. The lack of representation left Art feeling isolated, unable to find role models or a community to relate to.
At 17, Bezrukavenko moved to Poland to study and escape the war near his hometown. His time in Poland was marked by academic achievements, earning a degree in International Relations and Business. Despite his accomplishments, Art was still not fully comfortable exposing his sexual orientation.
“I worked and studied in Poland for three years but didn’t come out,” he shares. “I did try to come out to my mom once, but she told me, It’s okay. We can see a therapist and fix this.” Bezrukavenko had also tried to come out to a close girlfriend, but in return, he received a lecture on the moral obligations of a man and woman to procreate together. Both experiences left him with a bitter taste when it came to publicly embracing his sexual orientation.
Bezrukavenko’s quest for a new life brought him to the United States where he spent time in Maryland and then Chicago, living in Northalsted (also known as Boystown) one of the most country’s inclusive LGBTQ+ communities and the oldest officially recognized gay neighborhood in the United States. It’s known for its welcoming vibe, nonstop nightlife, LGBTQ-owned businesses, and excellent dining options. It’s also the center of some of Chicago’s most popular events and festivals. His time was spent working as a waiter.
Art moved on to Los Angeles with dreams of becoming an actor. He had previously won competitions in journalism and playwriting, including a poignant play about living with HIV, inspired by a friend. However, his stint in LA was short-lived and tumultuous. “It was messy,” he reflected, eventually returning to Chicago and then back to Maryland as the COVID-19 pandemic began. “I was a stripper for a short time…But LA was not for me.”
(Photo Credit: Bezrukavenko/Instagram)
It was in Austin, Texas, where Art began to embrace his identity more openly. He started to explore the dating scene and came out to his mother for the second time. This time, however, the conversation had a more supportive outcome. His mother accepted him, a significant step in his journey toward self-acceptance. The two now maintain a close relationship.
Bezrukavenko’s confidence grew as he shared his experiences on TikTok, connecting with a broader audience. “I decided to embrace who I am and realized I can benefit from being gay,” he said. His online presence became a platform for sharing his story and supporting others in similar situations.
Today, Bezrukavenkot is 27 years old and living in New York City with his supportive boyfriend of three years. “I was almost 24 when I came out officially, and now I have a boyfriend,” he shared. His relationship has provided stability and happiness, something he had long sought for himself.
A future
In light of the overwhelmingly positive reception their short film ‘Second Thought’ has garnered in just the YouTube community alone, Stanley and Bezrukavenko are excited about the possibility of creating a Christmas movie and further refining their filmmaking skills. Romantically, in the long term Bezrukavenko envisions himself getting married and having children, while Stanley prefers to take life day by day, embracing whatever comes his way.
Finally, the new filmmakers shared these closing thoughts:
“Choices shape our lives,” says Bezrukavenko. “It’s important to stay true to yourself. You can do anything, whether it’s being in a relationship or just hooking up, as long as you are being true to yourself.”
“It gets better,” says Stanley. “Use your experiences and adversities to your advantage. Never give up on what you want to do. After I came out in high school, those were the worst years of my life, but they led me to create my favorite project ever.”
Watch the film here:
Features
Queer TikToker Nicky Champa: Social media & balancing life
Champa shared his thoughts on the profound impact of TikTok highlighting both the positive and negative aspects of the platform
LOS ANGELES – As I joined the line of customers snaking out the door of a popular Studio City café that resembles a small cottage, I spotted a young man with cheekbones so sharp they could chisel granite already waiting for me.
He smiled warmly and waved. I left my place on the sidewalk to join him inside the cozy café. We hugged, and he told me, “Oh my God. You are stunning!” to which I replied, “Thank you. So are you!” I like to think we could tell we both meant it.
After placing our orders at the counter, flanked by a glass cases brimming with massive sweet treats, we navigated the deceptively deep and winding interior of the cottage. We eventually emerged onto the wraparound outdoor patio, investigating every free parcel of seating real estate until we decided on an indoor spot in a tucked-away corner. I placed my phone on the wooden table between us as we awaited our coffees and began recording, capturing the hum of relaxed conversations all around us as Nick Champa started sharing his story with me.
Nick “Nicky” Champa (28) is a household name in the digital world. With nearly 13 million followers on TikTok, he has captured the hearts of many through his videos, candidly sharing his every day life as a young gay man living in LA. A former NYU acting student, Champa is also known for his roles in “Deadlocked” (2020), “Charmers” (2021), and “Astrid Clover” (2014),
Early days
Champa, born in Dallas, Texas and raised in Syracuse, New York, said that his seemingly perfect family life was disrupted by his parents’ divorce when he was just 11 years old. “The divorce was messy. It was a 10-year court battle. Until that point, I thought it was just as perfect as it looked.”
Champa described his upbringing before the divorce as privileged, with a successful father and a stay-at-home mother. However, the separation shattered this idyllic life, forcing him to adopt a new and more sombre reality. “My mom had to work; it was a dramatic change in reality that really changed my whole childhood,” Champa said. “I had to do things that my dad used to do. I was in charge of the yard and all the chores, and I was an emotional support for my mom and brother. I had to grow up very, very fast.”
Champa explained that experiencing his home breaking so suddenly had a traumatic effect on the young actor. “My dad very much neglected us and he made it a very torturous experience for us. I had to testify in court a bunch of times. It was very traumatic.”
While Champa did not speak to his father for years after the divorce, they eventually rekindled their relationship after Champa graduated from high school, although, he explained, the relationship is still strained by memories of past hurt.
On the other hand, Champa’s bond with his mother remains exceptionally strong. “My mother and I are very, very close,” Champa said. “We became best friends. We have a great relationship; not everyone understands it. I tell her everything—literally everything. There is not one thing I wouldn’t be able to tell my mom, from boyfriends to sex life. I tell her everything.”
Coming Out
“I’ve never really identified with being gay. I prefer to call myself queer,” Champa said. Despite participating in sports and exhibiting traditionally “masculine” traits, “whatever that means,” Chapa added, he also enjoyed painting his nails and engaging in artistic pursuits. “I was confused growing up. My mom was not shocked when I came out, but it’s not like she necessarily knew I was gay.”
“The way I came out is actually really funny,” Champa said, laughing as he recounted a memorable coming-out experience that occurred after a night partying in West Hollywood. While exploring his newfound sexual identity, a one-night stand landed Champa in a precarious situation when, while doing the deed at this beau’s house, he accidentally crashed through the glass shower door, leaving shattered glass and blood all over the bathroom floor.
The incident left him needing over 100 stitches, and he had to call his mother from the hospital to get his insurance information. “I told her I had been having sex with a girl, and she asked what girl was strong enough to push me through a glass door?” Realizing the need for honesty, he sent her a photo of the bathroom, inadvertently including the other man’s jock strap in the frame. “So I had to admit to her that I had been with a man.”
Luckily, Champa’s mother was unsurprised by the revelation, and was more concerned with her son’s wounds than this sexual orientation. Champa also shared that he felt grateful that his entire family, his father included, were accepting of his coming out. “I’m really lucky in that way,” he said.
TikTok
After deciding to leave NYU in his sophomore year of college, Champa’s career took a significant turn when he was signed by Paradigm Talent Agency in Los Angeles. “Then I was auditioning for larger roles, so I didn’t feel the need to go back to school,” Champa explained.
Champa, noticing the growing trend of social media, decided to try his hand at Instagram. His rise on the platform was rapid, which he largely attributes to his openly queer posts, detailing honest accounts of his real life, travels, and journey with love.
The transition to TikTok, where Champa is best known, came with support from the platform itself. “TikTok contacted me with support and got me on the platform,” Champa said.
“In a way, I felt like a gay mascot on TikTok,” said Champa.
“The person I spoke to there was gay, and many of my contacts at TikTok have been gay,” Champa noted, stating that, in spite of recent accusations, he did not believe the platform to be inherently homophobic. Despite this, he acknowledged that the algorithm could sometimes be perceived as leaning towards homophobic or racist tendencies, as it aims to avoid political content.
While Champa is grateful for his success on the platform, the constant demand of social media began to take its toll. Champa shared his desire to shift focus back to acting, reducing his social media engagement. “I do find myself moving away from posting so much and moving slightly away from social media because I want to focus more on acting roles. It was an everyday thing that consumed me, and I don’t think I want to go back to that. I’m trying to find a way to navigate social media part of my life without making my bread and butter day to day part of my life.”
“For the longest time, my motivation on social media was just to grow, but I feel like I have plateaued now at 13 million followers. Now it’s time for me to figure out what to do and where to grow next.”
The TikTok Ban
On May 7, 2024, TikTok filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government. The Chinese-owned company argued that the Senate’s recent ultimatum, which demanded that TikTok’s parent company divest from the social media platform under the threat of a ban, was unconstitutional.
The law, known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, specifically names TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance Ltd. It also extends to other apps and websites with over a million monthly users that have significant ownership from China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea. The president has the authority to determine if these applications pose a national security threat, in which case they must be sold or face a ban in the U.S.
TikTok’s lawsuit claims that the law violates the First Amendment by not providing evidence of the national security threat it allegedly poses and for failing to seek a less restrictive remedy. Legal experts argue that this law implicates First Amendment interests in significant ways beyond this specific case.
Supporters of the law claim it is not a ban but a divestiture, describing it as a purely economic regulation. They argue that after the sale, users can continue using TikTok without concern for its ownership. However, critics view the law as an attempt to control speech by mandating a change in ownership, particularly to prevent potential Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
The government has not disclosed the national security concerns cited in the TikTok law. While such concerns might justify intervention, public skepticism remains.
Unless the courts invalidate the law or Congress repeals it, TikTok may not be able to operate effectively in the U.S. by January 19, 2025. App stores might be unable to update the software, and Oracle Corp. might not continue hosting TikTok’s U.S. user data. This potential scenario underscores the profound implications of the ongoing legal battle between TikTok and the U.S. government.
Feelings on the TikTok Ban
Champa shared his thoughts on the profound impact of TikTok on modern society, highlighting both the positive and negative aspects of the platform that has propelled him to fame.
“TikTok democratized the world,” Champa said. “It gave power back to artists and creators. You don’t need to rely on people with more power anymore to have a voice and to build a brand and to have a career.” According to Champa, TikTok has leveled the playing field, offering opportunities to individuals who might otherwise never have had the chance to shine.
“I watch this one baker in Australia, who has built a huge empire just through TikTok, which I think is incredible,” Champa said, highlighting how the platform can connect individuals from all corners of the globe. “Now I know about her bakery in Australia, which I would have never known.”
Champa expressed concern over the potential banning of TikTok, stating that it “would make our world smaller,” by stripping away a platform that fosters global connections and success stories across various industries.
“There is a real world out here. You don’t need to feel like you are missing out on anything if you don’t scroll all day. You really are not missing anything.”
(Photo: Simha Haddad/Los Angeles Blade)
However, Champa also acknowledged the downsides of such pervasive connectivity. “This is still a double-edged sword. I do think sometimes it’s too much information all at once.”
Champa described how the platform can inundate users with content, particularly when significant events occur, which he believes yields both positive and negative outcomes. “If something horrible or amazing happens in the world—anywhere from an eclipse to a war to tornadoes in the Midwest—I go to TikTok to get perspective and get multiple perspectives on a situation. That’s amazing, and that’s a privilege to be so connected in that way.” Yet, he warned of the dangers of information overload. “Sometimes too much information can be detrimental. For example, I watched one video on how Joe Biden is really an alien, TikTok immediately thinks all I want to see is how Joe Biden is an alien, and now I’m flooded with nothing but this information. That’s not healthy.”
Champa emphasized the need for the younger generation to balance their time on TikTok with real-world experiences. “There is a real world out here. You don’t need to feel like you are missing out on anything if you don’t scroll all day. You really are not missing anything.”
He also touched on the issue of free speech and expression. “Then there’s, of course, the issue of the First Amendment and freedom of speech because we all do have the right to express our opinions,” Champa said. “It’s a difficult topic and I’m not sure what the solution is.”
Champa’s reflections underscore the complex relationship between social media and society. While platforms like TikTok offer unprecedented opportunities for connection and success, they also present challenges that users must navigate carefully. As Champa continues his journey, his insights offer a valuable perspective on the evolving digital landscape.
Features
Bringing Pride every day to everyone everywhere
What sets Gay Pride Apparel apart is not just the quality of the designs but also the unwavering commitment to giving back
NEW YORK – A relatively new clothing line is making major headway on the LGBTQ+ apparel scene. Gay Pride Apparel, a vibrant clothing line specializing in LGBTQ+ T-shirts and crew necks, was founded by Jesus Gutierrez and Sergio Aragon, best friends since the sixth grade and now partners living in New York City.
Gay Pride Apparel, which has seen astronomical growth since its inception in 2019, recently celebrated a major milestone: its apparel products are available at Walmart for the second consecutive year, both in-store and online.
“This is very exciting,” Aragon told The Blade in an exclusive interview. “We are so grateful that they were able to help us amplify our vision of bringing pride every day to everyone everywhere.”
In addition to its Walmart placement, this year, Gay Pride Apparel has embarked on a myriad of other high-profile collaborations. In May, Gutierrez and Aragon partnered with HBO’s popular show, We’re Here, a show that follows renowned drag queens Sasha Velour, Priyanka, Jaida Essence Hall, and Latrice Royale as they continue the series’ mission of spreading love and connection through the art of drag across small-town America. The collaboration includes a line of exclusive merchandise that will be available for Pride month, and possibly beyond.
Continuing their upward trajectory, Gutierrez and Aragon are launching a collaboration with the Broadway award-winning musical Wicked, which the New York Theatre Guide describes as being centered around the themes of female friendship, discrimination, and governmental corruption. This partnership includes a pride-focused merchandise collection featuring four unique designs, one of which will be showcased and sold at the theater. This collaboration signifies a significant achievement for the brand, as their products will be sold at the show’s venue. “It’s crazy to see our clothing being displayed and sold at a venue like that,” Aragon said.
Additionally, Gay Pride Apparel is teaming up with NYC Ferry, an LGBTQ+ ally known for its inclusivity. This collaboration aims to create a special merchandise line that emphasizes The Ferry’s message that all passengers of all sexual orientations and gender identities are welcome aboard.
Gutierrez and Aragon took time out of their busy schedules to share their inspiring journey from best friends in Phoenix to influential entrepreneurs in the queer fashion scene in New York City and beyond.
Growing up queer in Mexican American households
Jesus Gutierrez and Sergio Aragon’s personal backgrounds played a significant role in shaping their vision for Gay Pride Apparel. Both grew up in Hispanic, Mexican American households, but their journeys to self-acceptance were markedly different.
Aragon, a first-generation American, faced a childhood filled with religious and social events that made him feel different and compelled him to hide his identity. “Our family was very diverse in our culture growing up Hispanic Mexican American,” Aragon said. “We always had a bunch of fiestas and religious social events that came with being in the church. I knew I was different from when I was little. I remember going to these parties and these family events and there always being a religious cloak over everything. It always felt like I didn’t belong and I had to hide my identity. the belief system was that it was not good to be gay. This was just something we did not talk about.”
Aragon shared that this feeling of religious culture within his household delayed his coming out until his sophomore year in high school.
In contrast, Gutierrez came out at the age of 12, driven by a desire to rebel against the toxic masculinity, oppressive gender roles, and domestic violence he witnessed in his household. His coming out story is particularly harrowing.
“I came out when I was 12. I don’t really know where that came from but if I had to guess I would say it was seeing all the machismo around me. I grew up in a household of domestic violence. My mom stayed with my dad. He was the breadwinner. The view of the hyper masculinity of the man being in charge of the house and the woman cooking and staying home and having to take the abuse, I think I wanted to rebel against all of that,” he told the Blade.
Gutierrez first came out to his mother, who embraced her son’s sexual orientation. However, worried about his father’s potentially explosive reaction, he elected to come out to his father in the presence of his mother and a school counselor, hoping these supportive adults would help soften the blow. He was fifteen.
“The domestic violence had always been directed to my mom, but coming out I feared that that would be turned on me,” Gutierrez said, recalling the event. “I came out to my father in front of a school counselor because that was supposed to be a safer environment. I thought maybe if this tall, educated Mexican man told my father I was gay he would take it differently than if I told him. The counselor said, “Your son doesn’t like girls.” My father got up and left my mother and I stranded at the school.”
Later, a football player friend offered to walk Gutierrez home. He explained that his father mistook his straight friend for a gay partner of his and immediately exploded in rage.
“My father went after him verbally. My father was telling me I was going to die from AIDS. I didn’t even know what that meant. He broke my door down. Domestic violence is a vicious cycle,” Gutierrez said.
Despite these challenges, Gutierrez found solace and support in his friends, who played a crucial role in his development. His experience of constantly coming out in stages shaped his resilience. “You never really stop coming out,” he said, quoting an old adage in the LGBTQ+ community.
Fostering a Sense of Belonging
Both Gutierrez and Aragon attribute much of their sense of community to their childhood friends who supported them through difficult times. This sense of community is something they strive to foster through their Gay Pride Apparel brand. They aim to create a space where everyone feels included and celebrated, reflecting the diverse and multifaceted nature of the LGBTQ+ community.
Gutierrez’s perception of the LGBTQ+ community changed significantly after taking an LGBTQ+ studies course in college, which broadened his understanding and appreciation of the community’s history and struggles. This newfound perspective reinforced the commitment to creating a brand that celebrates and supports the LGBTQ+ community.
The Start: From Phoenix to a Big City Pride
In the summer of 2018, Gutierrez and Aragon moved from the sunbaked streets of Phoenix to the bustling energy of New York City, where they experienced their first massive large-scale pride event. The vibrant celebrations and the sense of community pulsing through the city left a lasting impression on the couple.
However, one observation stood out starkly: pride merchandise seemed to vanish as quickly as the rainbow confetti settled. This fleeting presence of LGBTQ+ apparel led the couple to recognize a significant gap in the market—a need for pride gear that could be celebrated year round.
The seed for the idea of Gay Pride Apparel was planted.
Gutierrez, with a keen eye for graphic design from his prior roles in corporate America, and Aragon, armed with extensive merchandising experience, decided to turn their idea into reality. By January 2019, they had secured the domain for Gay Pride Apparel, laying the foundation for a brand that aimed to celebrate pride beyond the confines of a single month.
Their mission was clear: to create a brand that offered year-round support and love for the LGBTQ+ community through their apparel. The first year was a whirlwind of hard work and dedication. Gutierrez and Aragon poured their hearts into spreading the word about their new venture. They formed partnerships with nonprofits, leveraging these collaborations to build a community around their brand. In those early days, the support from friends and family was crucial, as they relied on these initial sales to gain momentum.
“The contributions we were able to raise we’re not that large,” Gutierrez said. “But the goal has always been to be able to give back to nonprofits and people and organizations that are doing great work.”
What sets Gay Pride Apparel apart was not just the quality of the design elements but also the unwavering commitment to giving back. Contributions to various charities, particularly in their home state of Arizona, became a cornerstone for Gutierrez and Aragon’s business. This dedication to community support resonated deeply with their customers, who were not just buying apparel but also supporting a cause.
“During the pandemic, which was about one year after the launch, we started going with the flow of everything happening in the world,” Gutierrez explained. “It was a very scary time for everyone, and we started pushing our message out on social media that we are in this together. We asked the community how we could help them and how we could be there for them as a business. We made it cleat that we wanted to support each other during these weird times. We created some really fun products which was what our bread and butter was at the time and blew up overnight.”
Gay Pride Apparel quickly became more than just a brand; it became a symbol of inclusivity and year-round pride. Gutierrez and Aragon’s journey from Phoenix to founding their own business is a testament to the power of recognizing a need and having the courage to fill it. Today, their apparel continues to make people feel supported and loved, every day of the year.
Discreet Packaging
Gutierrez shared the story behind their decision to offer discreet packaging for their products. “We started out as a loud and proud brand, coming from a big city queer brand perspective,” he explained. “But the first year that we started blowing up, in 2020, we heard a lot of feedback about our shipping. People would receive their packaging from the USPS person and get cruel comments or looks. Sometimes the packages would disappear. Sometimes parents would not let children get their packages.”
This feedback was a wake-up call for Gutierrez and Aragon, reminding them of their own experiences growing up in households where expressing their identity was not always safe. “I remembered if we were younger and we had received something for pride, we also would want discreet packaging in our households,” Gutierrez said. “So now we also offer that. We also offer discretion when we charge the credit cards. It’s important that we be discreet.”
The decision to offer discreet packaging was not just about customer satisfaction but also about ensuring the safety and comfort of their customers. “This was a very big learning moment for us. We had forgotten that we had been in that position too,” Gutierrez admitted.
Building an Authentic Community
Since its inception, Gay Pride Apparel has thrived on the principle of creating an authentic and inclusive online community. Their success isn’t just built on vibrant and meaningful products but on the strong sense of connection they cultivate among their customers and followers, they both emphasized.
One of the foundational elements of their community-driven approach is actively seeking feedback from their followers. Gutierrez and Aragon ensure that every product they release resonates deeply with their Instagram audience. This dedication to listening and adapting has fostered trust and loyalty among their customers, they stated.
The sense of community extends beyond product development. Gutierrez and Aragon are passionate about reviving their podcast, “Through the Queer Lens,” which aims to amplify the voices and stories of queer individuals across various industries. This platform reflects their desire to create spaces where the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community can be celebrated and shared.
Both attribute their deep sense of community to the support they received from friends during challenging times in their lives. Gutierrez recalls a particular friend who supported him while he lived in a domestic violence shelter, often taking him into her home and even paying his phone bill when his father neglected to. Aragon also cherishes the friends and family who supported him, noting their invaluable role in his development. “It is the sense of community that we try to foster through our social media presence and our clothing line, Gay Pride Apparel,” Aragon said.
Gutierrez shared how his understanding of the LGBTQ+ community evolved over time to a deeper understanding of the all-encompassing message embedded in the rainbow flag.
“In the beginning, I associated gayness as my father and the news portrayed it to me with AIDS and random hookups being all there is to it. I also associated being gay with sinfulness because the Catholic Church did not accept it. But as I grew, everything started to change. My perception of our community changed when I took an LGBTQ+ study course in college that really realigned my thinking. I learned about the Stonewall riots and Marsha P Johnson. I learned about all these different subcultures within the queer space. Then, when we started working on Gay Pride Apparel, we really saw how there is an entire world of us out there. For a long time, we felt isolated and alone, but then we realized we are not alone and we want to foster that feeling in others. We are all very different, but we have this thing that brings us together,” he told the Blade.
Features
Meet Howard Uni’s first trans student body president, Jay Jones
Jay Jones was born to a conservative Christian family where she said being gay was not socially acceptable
By Omari Foote | WASHINGTON – Jay Jones was born to a conservative Christian family where she said being gay was not socially acceptable. This year, she was named Howard University Student Association’s first transgender president.
When Jones was younger, she enjoyed activities that are traditionally “feminine.” She said she has always had a higher-pitched voice, talked with her hands and preferred playing inside with Barbie dolls.
Jones came out as gay in eighth grade to her sister who said, “Girl, I been knew.”
“I think that was very much a turning point year for me because it was a year where I kind of knew how I was feeling,” Jones explained. “There were emotions I felt ever since I was younger, but I never could put verbiage or language to it,” she said.
That same year, Jones was elected as the first student body president of her middle school. She said that is where her leadership journey began and that year was pivotal in her life.
When Jones won her first campaign as HUSA vice president, she was feeling unsure about her gender identity after she was asked which pronouns she wanted to use.
“I said ‘I don’t really know because I don’t feel comfortable using he/him pronouns because I don’t think that expresses who I am as a person,’ but at that time, I don’t think I was to the point where ‘she/her’ was necessary,” she said.
Outside of student government, she was part of a traditionally all-male organization at Howard, Men of George Washington Carver Incorporated. There, she said she always felt like the sister to all of her brothers.
“I remember I would cringe sometimes when they would call me brother,” she said.
Even though she felt like she aligned with she/her pronouns she said she was “scared” of what it could mean for her moving forward.
She knew that her given pronouns were not a reflection of who she was but wasn’t sure what to do about it. She was talking with Eshe Ukweli, a trans journalism student who asked Jones a simple question that clarified everything.
“‘If you were to have kids or if your brother or your sister or someone around you was to have kids, what do you imagine them calling you?’ and I realized, it was always ‘mom,’ it was always ‘sister,’ and it was always ‘aunt,’” she said.
Jones still looks to Ukweli as a mentor who provides her with wisdom and guidance regularly.
“She knows what it’s like to do hormones, she understands what it’s like to be in a place of leadership and to be in a place of transition,” she said. “There is no amount of research, no amount of information, no amount of anything that you can take in, that could ever equate to that.”
In 2023, Jones’s junior year, Howard University was named the No. 1 most inclusive Historically Black College or University for LGBTQ-identifying students by BestColleges.
Howard has a storied past with the queer community. In the 1970s, Howard hosted the first National Third World Lesbian and Gay Conference, according to a 1979 Hilltop archive. However, multiple articles in the ‘90s highlighted homophobia on Howard’s campus.
“’There is the feeling … that by coming out there will be a stigma on you,” said bisexual Howard student, Zeal Harris in a 1997 Hilltop interview.
As a result, multiple LGBTQ advocacy organizations were created on Howard’s campus to combat those stigmas.
Clubs like The Bisexual, Lesbian, and Gay Organization of Students At Howard (BLAGOSAH) and the Coalition of Activist Students Celebrating The Acceptance of Diversity and Equality (CASCADE) were formed by Howard University students looking to create a safer campus for queer students.
However, Jones didn’t know much about this community when she was entering Howard. She recognized Howard as the HBCU that produced leaders in the Black community, like Thurgood Marshall, Toni Morrison, and Andrew Young.
“This university has something about turning people into trailblazers, turning people into award-winning attorneys, turning people into change makers,” she said. “I think that was one of my main reasons why I wanted to come here, I wanted to be a part of a group of people who were going to change the world.”
So, as she entered her junior year at Howard, she set out to begin her journey to changing the world by changing her school.
This school year she ran for HUSA president, the highest governing position on Howard’s campus. She said that this was the hardest campaign she has ever run at Howard and that she warned her team the night before election result announcements that she would start weeping if their names were called.
“During the midst of that campaign season, I was in an internal kind of battle with members of my family not accepting me, not embracing me, calling me things like ‘embarrassment’ and not understanding the full height of what I was trying to do and who I was becoming,” she said.
Jones said the experience was mentally draining and a grueling process but that she leaned on her religion to help her see the light at the end of the tunnel.
“I’m a very devout Christian and for me, I was like, ‘It was nothing but God that got me through, it was nothing but God that got me through this,’” she said. “If people knew what I went through you would be falling on your knees and weeping too.”
Jones said that in high school she had to really work through her relationship with God because she was raised in a church that said gay people were going to hell. So, when she came out as a trans woman she had to re-evaluate the relationship she worked so hard to create with God, again.
She reflected and realized that God didn’t use the perfect people in the Bible but that he works through everyone.
“So if God can use all of those people, what is there to say that God can’t use the queer? What is it to say that God can’t use trans people,” she said.
After she graduates next year, Jones hopes to work in campaign strategy. She said the ‘lesser of two evils’ conversation isn’t working anymore for Gen-Zers and wants to pioneer new ways for young voters to engage with politics.
“Really working on engaging and mobilizing young voters on how to understand and utilize their power, especially as it relates to Black and Brown people,” she said.
When she became vice president of HUSA last year she said she did it for for all the little Black queer children down South who haven’t gotten their chance to dance in the sun yet.
“If there was anyone ever coming in who’s trans, the No. 1 piece of advice that I can give you is, be the role model that the inner child in you needed most, be the advocate that the child in you needed most,” she said “And most importantly, be the woman that the child saw in you but was too scared to be.
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Omari Foote is a journalist and currently a Web + Social Fellow at Washingtonian Magazine. She is also a contributor to the Washington Blade and a graduate of Howard University in Washington D.C.
Features
Is Connecticut a ‘safe haven’ for trans youth?
For some, not safe enough- Connecticut lawmakers and advocates are pushing for legislation offering protections for trans and LGBTQ+ students
By Ally LeMaster & Luke Feeney | HARTFORD, Conn. – When LGBTQ+ activists, lawmakers and students gathered at the Capitol on Feb. 28 to honor the life of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary teenager from Oklahoma, their loss felt a lot closer to home than the nearly 1,500-mile distance.
“We gathered together today as a community to grieve the loss of Nex Benedict, a beautiful 16-year-old child, and to try and make sense of what is absolutely senseless,” said Rev. Aaron Miller of Metropolitan Community Church in Hartford.
Benedict, who used both he/him and they/them pronouns, died by suicide a day after getting into an altercation with three girls in an Owasso High School bathroom, according to the Oklahoma Chief Medical Examiner. Their death has sent shockwaves across the country, causing LGBTQ+ activists to renew scrutiny of Oklahoma’s anti-transgender school policies.
Gov. Ned Lamont, one of more than 100 attendees at the Hartford vigil, vowed: “We’re not going to let that happen in Connecticut. That’s not who we are.”
But many advocates say state leaders could be doing much more to support Connecticut’s LGBTQ+ students.
Among state lawmakers, the debate is far from settled. Connecticut has some of the most comprehensive legal protections in the country for transgender individuals, yet for the past two years, Republican lawmakers have supported legislation the LGBTQ+ community takes issue with — for example, banning trans athletes from competing in school sports and mandating schools to notify parents when a child starts using different pronouns.
For a state often labeled as a “safe haven” for trans children, many LGBTQ+ students say they still face hatred in school based on their identity.
Surviving school
Ace Ricker, an LGBTQ+ advocate and educator, says “navigating” life as a queer person in Connecticut was far from easy.
Ricker grew up in Shelton. He came out as queer at 14 years old to his family but only told a few friends about his identity as a transgender man.
Everyday in high school, he would show up with his hair in a slicked back ponytail, wearing baggy T-shirts and jeans.
No bathroom felt safe to Ricker in high school. At the time, he only used the women’s bathroom, where he says he experienced verbal, physical and sexual abuse.
“The few friends I had, I was telling them, ‘Hey, if I go to the bathroom and I don’t come back in 10 minutes, come and check on me,’” said Ricker.
One year in high school, he opened up to his civics class, sharing that he was a part of the LGBTQ+ community. He said he thinks that led school administrators to assign him to what he called “problem student” classes.
“I was seen in school as a rebel or a problem,” said Ricker. “I barely got through graduating because through school, it was about surviving— it wasn’t necessarily learning.”
Ricker graduated in 2008, but stories like his are common among LGBTQ+ students in Connecticut.
Leah Juliett, a nonbinary activist who uses they/them pronouns, graduated from Wolcott High School in 2015. Like many trans and nonbinary students, Juliett originally identified as queer and later came out as nonbinary at 19 — the year they found out what “nonbinary” meant.
“I came out in high school. I was relentlessly bullied,” said Juliett, “My school binders were thrown in the trash and had milk poured over them. My school locker was vandalized on my birthday. I would get harassing messages and things like that on social media.”
Juliett says they were one of the few openly gay kids in school who not only had to deal with bullying but watched as local lawmakers proposed legislation to limit their rights.
“It becomes deeply hard to exist,” Juliett said. “I was engaging in self harm, suicidal ideation. All of this is a result of not being supported by my town, by my community, by my peers, by my family— all of it.”
In recent years, parents of LGBTQ+ students in Connecticut have brought their concerns to the federal Department of Education.
In 2022, Melissa Combs and other concerned parents reported Irving A. Robbins Middle School in Farmington to the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights after school administrators declined to investigate an incident where students ripped a Pride flag from the wall and stomped on it.
Combs is the parent of a transgender son. During her son’s time at the middle school, she said he faced relentless bullying, where he dealt with students telling him to kill himself, getting called slurs and was assaulted by a student.
Two years later, the OCR investigation is still ongoing.
“We entered into this knowing that it was going to take a lot of time,” said Combs. “We entered into it with the hope that we could make some positive changes to the school climate in Farmington.”
Since opening the investigation, Combs tried to reenroll her son in Farmington public schools, only to pull him back out again. She says not much has changed in the school culture.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done,” said Combs. “It was, again, a horrible experience.”
Events like this pushed Combs to take the issue up with the state legislature. Combs founded the Out Accountability Project that has the goal of “understanding” local issues affecting LGBTQ+ youth. She says she’s been having these conversations with lawmakers.
“I’ve spent a great deal of time in the LOB [Legislative Office Building] so far this session,” Combs said. “What I’m sensing is not only support, but a sense of urgency in terms of supporting families — families like mine across the state.”
The legislation
Republican lawmakers in state houses across the country have introduced a variety of legislation targeted at LGBTQ+ students. In 2023, more than 500 of these bills were introduced around the country, with 48 passing. Since the beginning of this legislative session, Benedict’s home state of Oklahoma has considered over 50 different pieces of legislation regarding LGBTQ+ children.
In Connecticut, the “Let Kids be Kids” coalition, a group of elected officials — including legislators Mark Anderson, R-Granby, and Anne Dauphinais, R-Killingly — and religious leaders and parents advocated for two bills for the Education Committee to consider.
(Photo Credit: Connecticut Senate Democrats)
The first piece of legislation would have forced teachers to disclose to parents if their child started using different pronouns at school. The other would have required student athletes to participate in sports with members of the gender they were assigned at birth.
“Kids are best protected when parents are involved,” said Peter Wolfgang, the president of the Family Institute of Connecticut, during a February Let Kids be Kids press conference at the Capitol. “The state should not come between parents and their children.”
The Education Committee declined to raise the bills, and neither concept got public hearings. This hasn’t thwarted future plans by the coalition.
We’ve seen undeniable research that trans students face an inordinate amount of bullying and stressors in their lives. – Rep. Sarah Keitt, a Fairfield Democrat
“I am actually very encouraged, because we grew awareness at the General Assembly this year,” Leslie Wolfgang, director of public policy at the Family Institute, wrote in a statement to the Connecticut Mirror. “This session was just the first step in a multi-year process to grow awareness and look for ways to balance the needs of all children and their families in Connecticut.”
Debates during the current legislative session have revealed nuanced views among lawmakers on transgender rights. General Assembly Democrats sparred over gender neutral language in House Bill 5454, which seeks to direct more state and federal funding toward mental health services for children, caregivers and parents. Members of the Appropriations Committee debated whether to use the term “pregnant persons” or “expectant mothers,” with two Democrats calling for an amendment to include both terms, saying they felt the bill was more inclusive that way.
Still, the legislature has advanced several bills this session that propose to expand rights and protections for LGBTQ+ individuals in Connecticut, and they heard testimony from the public on an effort to extend Shield Laws — laws meant to protect individuals who seek abortions from other states — to include gender-affirming care.
On April 10, the Senate passed Senate Bill 327, a bill aimed at creating a task force that would study the effects on hate speech against children.
The legislation calls for the group of educators, social workers, religious leaders and civil rights experts to file a report by the beginning of next year with their research and recommendations. The group would also study the environments students where face the most hateful rhetoric and examine if hate speech is primarily conducted by children or adults.
“We’ve seen undeniable research that trans students face an inordinate amount of bullying and stressors in their lives,” Rep. Sarah Keitt, D-Fairfield, said in an interview with the CT Mirror. “A lot of that comes at schools and we need to do much more to protect them.”
The bill is currently on its way to the House.
In February, Senate Bill 380, An Act Concerning School Discipline, passed out of the Education Committee. The bill includes proposals that would require services for the youngest children who receive out-of-school suspensions and continues work initiated last year to collect survey data from schools on the “climate” facing their more vulnerable student populations. This year’s bill would also require school administrators to clarify the motivations for any bullying incidents — if they’re due to a student’s race, gender or sexual orientation, for example.
Another proposal comes as an amendment to the state constitution that would prohibit the discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity under the Equal Protection Clause. While Keitt expressed support for the amendment, she was doubtful on the likelihood of it passing.
“It is such a short session, we have very little time, and if we were to take up the constitutional amendment, it would mean that we wouldn’t be able to get other more pressing needs — not to say that those protections aren’t important.” Keitt also pointed to the statutory protections already in place statewide.
Another piece of legislation, House Bill 5417, would require local and regional boards of education to state a reason for removing or restricting access to public school library materials and prohibits such boards from removing or restricting access to such materials for reasons based on race, political disagreements or personal discomfort.
Book bans, primarily targeting novels about people of color and LGBTQ+ community, have increased over the past few years in towns like Suffiled, Newtown and Brookfield.
“I think that it really protects gay and transgender authors of color,” Keitt said. “It allows our children to have a broader educational experience and protects our libraries from political attacks.”
Policy already in place
While state lawmakers have been considering new legislation, many LGBTQ+ advocates say they’d like to see more enforcement of existing legal protections for queer people.
Public Act 11-55 was enacted in 2011, prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity or expression. This, among other protections, is why Connecticut is often heralded as a “safe haven” for transgender and nonbinary individuals.
But many advocates say the LGBTQ+ community, and those designated to protect them, are often uninformed of those legal protections.
“You can pass all the laws you want, but if you don’t provide communities with resources to implement those laws, they aren’t as useful as they should be,” Matt Blinstrubas, the executive director of Equality CT, said. “We haven’t invested enough into educating people.”
According to Mel Cordner of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Q Plus, one of the most concerning trends they see in schools is when educators are unaware of the protections students have.
“I’ve had teachers [say] you can’t do any kind of hormone therapy or puberty blockers or anything until you’re 18. Or require kids to get parental permission to change their name in the school system, which you don’t need to do,” said Cordner. “Staff are either fooled by their administrators, or they just assume that kids don’t have certain rights.”
When the Nex Benedict news hit, that rocked our whole network of career kids really, really hard because every single one of them went, ‘Oh God, that could have been me.’ – Mel Cordner Q Plus
While the Department of Education must keep a list of instances of bullying, advocates say many queer students do not report their harassment because they are not comfortable coming out to their families.
“I’ve grown up with many trans kids who only felt safe being openly themselves at school,” said Juliett. “And even then they were subjected to bullying and harassment, but they couldn’t be themselves at home.”
“When the Nex Benedict news hit, that rocked our whole network of career kids really, really hard because every single one of them went, ‘Oh God, that could have been me,’” said Cordner. “There were a couple kids I was worried about enough to reach out to personally, because that was them — that exact situation of being cornered and assaulted in a bathroom physically has happened in Connecticut schools more than once.”
Filling the gaps
Bullying, isolation and lack of support from family members are few of many reasons why gay, bisexual and transgender youth have a disproportionately high suicide rate.
According to The Trevor Project, a nonprofit suicide prevention organization for the LGBTQ+ community, queer young people are “more than four times as likely” to attempt suicide compared to their straight, cisgender peers. In a 2023 study, the nonprofit found that 41% of LGBTQ+ youth have “seriously considered attempting suicide” within the past year. Youth of color who identify as trans, nonbinary and queer experience even higher rates.
Concerning statistics like these are why many LGBTQ+ advocates have taken it upon themselves to create a community-based support system for queer youth.
Miller, a Christian pastor from Metropolitan Community Church in Hartford, works with community members across the state to provide services like “Trans Voice & Visibility 365,” a ministry dedicated to helping transgender individuals get their basic needs, and at the Yale Pediatric Gender Program, a support center for people children exploring their gender identity.
Miller creates a place at his church where he can “celebrate” transgender and nonbinary people and coordinates with other LGBTQ+ groups like Q Plus to throw events where kids can explore their identity by exchanging clothes and trying on different outfits.
“Kids want to be themselves. We’re encouraging them to be themselves,” said Miller.
It’ll never stop surprising me how many people work with teens and think they don’t work with queer teens. – Mel Cordner Q Plus
While Miller helps build community for many transgender individuals, he finds himself on the front lines of many near-crisis moments. Miller said he once stayed up through the night talking a child out of killing themself after their family abandoned them.
Miller’s church is part of a support network for families he calls “medical refugees” — transplants from places like Oklahoma and Texas, where they faced death threats and allegations of child abuse. The church community helps these families find housing, medical services and other support.
“The two greatest commands that we were given in a Christian understanding is to love God and to love each other as we love ourselves,” said Miller. “And yet, we’ve been telling people that they can’t love themselves or they’re not lovable, and that other people aren’t going to love us either.”
Cordner founded Q Plus in 2019 “with the goal of filling gaps” for LGBTQ+ youth programs. Q Plus operates in nine towns and cities across the state while providing a variety of resources for students from support groups to game night.
The organization also provides services aimed at adults that include programs that help parents better engage with their LGBTQ+ children as well as professional development trainings for school staff on the best ways to interact with queer students.
“It’ll never stop surprising me how many people work with teens and think they don’t work with queer teens,” said Cordner.
Q Plus also has a program where the organization is contracted by schools to “review and revise policies” to support LGBTQ+ students.
“[The] bottom line is always listen to your kids,” said Cordner. “They will tell you what they need.”
Connecticut Mirror is a content partner of States Newsroom. Read the original version here.
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Ally is a CT Mirror 2024 legislative intern. She is a senior at University of Connecticut studying English and journalism. In addition to The Connecticut Mirror, she acts as the editor-in-chief of Long River Review, UConn’s undergraduate-run literary magazine and works as a research assistant on The Mansfield Training School Memorial and Museum project, recording and writing about disability history. She has also written for The Daily Campus, her university’s newspaper.
Joining Connecticut Mirror as a legislative reporting intern for the 2024 session, Luke Feeney is a senior at the University of Connecticut. He is currently studying political science and journalism and expects to graduate in June. At UConn he is currently a columnist for their student-run newspaper, The Daily Campus. In his weekly column he explores politics, international relations and current events. In addition, he is a member of the Daily Campus Editorial Board.
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The preceding article was previously published by The Rhode Island Current and is republished with permission.
The Rhode Island Current is an independent, nonprofit news outlet focused on state government and the impact of public policy decisions in the Ocean State. Readers can expect relentless reporting with the context needed to understand key issues affecting the lives of Rhode Islanders.
We’re part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
Features
“Our Queer Life” chronicles the diversity of the LGBTQ+ experience
The series is quickly reaching people across the globe and fostering understanding and empathy among its viewers
WEST HOLLYWOOD – In the bustling lanes of digital storytelling, where narratives burst and fade with rapid clicks, Matt Cullen’s documentary series “Our Queer Life” emerges as a poignant chronicle of the LGBTQ+ community’s diverse experiences.
With over 200,000 subscribers on YouTube, Cullen’s series stands out not just for its breadth of voices—from celebrities to street hustlers—but for the depth with which it explores the moving lived realities of queer individuals.
Cullen took time out of his busy schedule to give The Blade an exclusive interview about his fledgling hit series.
A Passionate Beginning
Born and raised in Northern California, Cullen’s early life in a supportive, albeit traditional, family environment shaped his sensitive approach towards storytelling. A curious and open child who loved musical theatre, Cullen always had a passion for interesting stories and how they are told.
Cullen worried about coming out to his family, but said that he is eternally grateful that the nerve-wracking experience involving a letter left on the kitchen table for his parents to find, fortunately ended in acceptance and love, with his parents ultimately embracing his truth warmly.
“It was a scary big step,” Cullen reflected. “Coming out to my family or my really close friends was scary because I was worried if they didn’t accept me, I would not know how to handle that… It was more about accepting myself and embracing who I was and saying, this is my life now. “
Cullen said that he knows that the familial support he received as a newly out high school senior contrasted sharply with the narratives of many he would later spotlight in his series, providing him with a profound appreciation for his own comparatively smoother journey.
“The stories that I tell are very heavy,” Cullen said. “But I still feel so inspired and motivated by the determination of these people to keep living and to keep going in spite of everything. Their drive and their willingness to live for themselves and nobody else leaves me invigorated and inspired.”
The Birth of “Our Queer Life”
Cullen, who initially pursued acting after college in New York, found himself dissatisfied with the roles and scripts that came his way. “I felt like I was just regurgitating somebody else’s words,” he shared, highlighting his discomfort with being constantly typecast as over-the-top gay characters.
The turning point for Cullen came during the COVID-19 pandemic.. Trapped in his apartment, feeling isolated and longing for interaction, he envisioned a new creative outlet. “I felt like I needed to talk to new people,” Cullen said. “I was craving a deep connection with strangers, and I wanted to hear new stories. That deep desire was what the impetus for the series.”
The combination of Cullen’s artistic empathy mixed with his own feelings of entrapment led him to think about how difficult life must be for other queer individuals stuck in societal ecosystems that inherently reject their queerness.
“I thought about a lot of fundamentalist religious groups and how difficult it is for people to be gay there,” Cullen remarked, pinpointing the acute need for representation from these underrepresented groups.
Cullen’s first interview was with Rob, a man Cullen had found through a Facebook group and who had left the Jehovah’s Witness community to live authentically.
“I am still so grateful that Rob felt comfortable to be the first to share his story with me,” Cullen said.
Rob’s story provided a raw, unfiltered look at the challenges of adapting to the outside world after leaving a controlled religious environment. He discussed not only the doctrinal and social shackles he escaped but also the practical challenges of integrating into society, like finding employment without real-world skills.
This encounter didn’t just enrich Cullen’s series; it set a precedent for the type of stories he wanted to feature—stories of struggle, resilience, and the search for identity. Each episode aims to foster understanding and empathy among viewers, broadening their perspectives on the complexities of queer life in various contexts.
Empathy Through Intimacy
“Our Queer Life” thrives on its intimate portrayal of its subjects. Each episode delves into the hurdles and triumphs of individuals within the LGBTQ+ community, aiming to destigmatize topics like sex work and address the misrepresentation of trans people. Through his conversations, Cullen not only exposes the challenges faced by his subjects but also celebrates their resilience and humanity.
Mousie, who had lived through unimaginable challenges, from serving multiple prison terms to surviving on the streets of North Hollywood, became one of the earliest and most influential subjects of Cullen’s series. Her willingness to open up about her life provided “Our Queer Life” with a narrative that encapsulated the struggles and resilience of a marginalized individual fighting for survival and dignity.
During their first meeting, Mousie shared her journey with Cullen, detailing her life in a $67/month apartment and her experiences as an intravenous drug user and sex worker. This episode alone drew over 300,000 viewers, resonating deeply with audiences and humanizing a community often relegated to the shadows of society. Cullen revisited Mousie a year later, further exploring her day-to-day experiences and struggles, adding layers to her story that emphasized her humanity over her hardships.
Mousie’s influence extended beyond the screen; her relationship with Cullen grew into a deep, familial bond. In her final days, confined to a hospital bed, she expressed her heartfelt connection to Cullen, telling him, “I was her brother and that we had great things to do together.” Her passing was a profound loss for Cullen, who felt her spirit continued to guide his work, inspiring him to pursue stories with even greater dedication.
Reflecting on Mousie’s role in shaping “Our Queer Life,” Cullen credits her with helping him gain the credibility and trust necessary to navigate the complex landscapes of street life and sex work. “Mousie was the one who broke this for me,” Cullen remarked, acknowledging how a TikTok video of her story garnered 30,000 views and messages from viewers expressing how deeply they related to her experiences. This response marked a turning point for the series, illustrating the power of storytelling in building connections and fostering understanding.
“I feel like she is still with me in everything that I do,” Cullen said. “She told me before she died that I was her brother…I can literally feel her.”
Looking Forward
As “Our Queer Life” continues to grow, so does its creator. Cullen remains hands-on, involved in every aspect of production from filming to editing, driven by a personal touch that resonates deeply with his audience. While he contemplates the future of the series, possibly on larger platforms like Max, his priority remains the authentic representation of his subjects’ lives.
“I will always refuse to do anything exploitative where we don’t ask about (the subject’s) lives and their desires,” Cullen said, underscoring his commitment to creating real and nonexploitative narratives. “I want every person who clicks on a video to leave that episode feeling a connection and relating to them.”
The series is quickly becoming a vital part of the cultural conversation, reaching people across the globe and fostering understanding and empathy among its viewers. For many, it provides the first intimate look at lives they might otherwise never encounter, bridging gaps and building connections.
In a world where divisions run deep, Matt Cullen’s “Our Queer Life” offers a beacon of unity, celebrating the shared human experiences of love, struggle, and resilience. Through his lens, viewers are reminded that despite our vast differences, the desires for acceptance, health, and happiness are universal.
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