Pat Patterson (pronouns: He/Him/His) speaks of family life, childhood, growing up, coming out, his political activism through drag performance, interactions with the Methodist Church, and his perceptions of the LGBTQ community. Born and reared in a loving and accepting family environment in Spartanburg, SC, he attended Wofford College, the 37th family member to do so. “I’m a Palmetto tree with fairly deep roots,” he notes. He came out in graduate school at the University of SC, and speaks about the founding of its Bisexual Gay and Lesbian Association (BGLA) and how he assumed his drag persona Patti O’Furniture, “a bully pulpit to raise awareness,” on a dare. At various points in the interview, Patterson speaks of the stratification of the LGBTQ community (“part of our charm and part of our problem”), with most of the focus on Charleston, identifying the conservative “blazer gays” who practice “an odd social decorum” at private parties, the “SIN” or service industry gays who are more out, and other socially and geographically distanced groups. He speaks of racism, and racial and trans insensitivity, the difference between the Charleston Pride and the Columbia, SC-based South Carolina Pride organizations, the gay rugby team, the Charleston Blockade, and K. J. Ivery, once a student of his and now an out trans officer of the Charleston Police Department. Having first done AIDS work in Columbia, SC with his friend Bill Edens, he became involved with the SC Equality Coalition, and he mentions a variety of other LGBTQ organizations and leaders. He began commuting to Charleston to perform drag at the bar Patrick’s, eventually moving there, arranging performances at Dudley’s, and he now also performs at brunches, breweries and bingo, usually emceeing, giving his tips from the audience to charity and passing the hat at performances for different causes and organizations. Straight audiences, he notes, are often more appreciative, and in describing his own indoctrination into drag, he shares some of the vocabulary, mentions those icons who influenced him and praises Jay White for his Brooke Collins performances. He names and describes many bars throughout the state, speaks of his evolution as a performer and activist, as well as the need to be aware of how unintended insults or slurs can occur. Making distinctions between religion and faith, the latter very important to him, Patterson also describes his family’s attachment to their local Methodist congregation in Spartanburg and their dedication to liberalizing the Methodist Church in general.
K. J. Ivery (pronouns: He/Him/His), the first openly trans officer with the Charleston Police Department, discusses growing up, coming into his sexuality and gender identity, schooling, family relations and a variety of other topics. A Charleston native, Ivery grew up in a religious family where sexual non-conformity was not encouraged, and in a city where one faced further discrimination for being both Black and queer. He experienced difficulties with his parents after identifying as bisexual in middle school. Later identifying as gay, Ivery had a girlfriend in high school. He speaks of using the internet to find information and peers while in school, having attended Charles Towne Academy and later the Academic Magnet High School. He found the latter place very accepting, despite not being permitted to start a Gay-Straight Alliance, which he nevertheless did, using a different name to mask it. Identifying as trans-masculine, he discusses how he didn't come out to his family until he was identified in the Post & Courier as an openly transgender police officer. He began to investigate this part of his identity while attending the University of South Carolina, in Columbia, where he again was very active in its Gay-Straight Alliance. Ivery was impressed with Columbia's Harriet Hancock Center, and he discusses the arbitrariness and social constructs of gender, speaks of the "awesome things about... identifying as queer" and expresses delight in not being trapped in the limitations of being a cis-gender male, while also discussing the stud/femme roles prevalent in some lesbian communities. Having majored in criminology, he returned to Charleston in 2012 and immediately began working with the Charleston Police Department, which he lauds for its openness and high standards, and which adapted easily to his transitioning. On the force, he first worked in West Ashley neighborhoods before moving to the tourist districts downtown, while serving as an LGBT liaison to the community, which he describes as cliquish, and stratified along economic, racial and even geographic lines. He has worked with We Are Family, the Alliance for Full Acceptance (helping to administer the Trans Love Fund), Charleston Area Trans Support (CATS), and the Charleston YOUth Count, as well as founding a trans-masculine support and social group. He describes his relationship with his wife, Sam Diamond, the marriage ceremony they created and which their families attended, and how society looks at and presumes it understands the dynamics of their interracial marriage. He contrasts his spirituality compared to his family's rigid religious beliefs, voicing his respect for them and their views and noting the growing acceptance by his parents and siblings. Before concluding he also addresses gentrification in Charleston, specifically in regard to his grandparents' home on Line Street, his attendance at an early Charleston Pride Parade, his social life, and the advancements and progress of the LGBTQ community.
Shelli Quenga (pronouns: She/Hers), describes living all over the world, moving to Charleston in her 20s and coming out as a lesbian in her 40s. Her father was in the Air Force, and she discusses her experiences being the daughter of a mixed-race couple with a Guamanian father and a white mother. Educated at Vassar, she married twice. Although she had a gay uncle, “it just never occurred to me that being gay was an option,” she states. Married with one child, she met another woman with four children (two withs special needs) and their relationship began; the coming out process was “tortuous.” During it, she lost a relationship with her daughter, her parents, and her job due to its homophobic work environment. Quenga discusses how her experience differs from that of lesbians who never married men, noting her realization that heterosexuality did give her more power and status. She speaks of her obliviousness to LGBTQ people and issues before coming out and her limited awareness of the Charleston LGBTQ community. That changed once she met Lynn Dugan and began to attend functions organized by the Charleston Social Club, a local lesbian group that Dugan founded. She describes the pressure she feels to keep her personal and business lives separate, including on social media, while also observing how such mundane things as health care forms can be off-putting to LGBTQ people and express subtle discrimination. With the passage of time, she has become more vocal in order to demonstrate to others how misleading or stereotypical their assumptions about her can be, and she has found a shift in those around her, too. She and her wife have been accepted by their extended families, their children now have LGBTQ friends, and Quenga discusses how they keep her up to date with terminology and issues in the community. She mentions the rupture in the congregation of Old St. Andrews Episcopal Church over the ordination of a gay bishop, and ends the interview discussing racism and sexism in South Carolina, and how an inability to be fully free and out causes her to question staying in the state. Her advice for younger people, however, is to leave the state, achieve success not possible here, and then perhaps come back.
Andrew Becknell, sometimes known as Andrezia (pronouns: they/them, but also she/her) describes growing up in the Charleston area as a bigender or two-spirit person. They grew up in a conservative Catholic family, moving from West of the Ashley to Mount Pleasant. Becknell's parents divorced when they were young, and they became close to their mother, and has only recently begun to renew ties with their father. Becknell has Tourette's syndrome, misdiagnosed early on as Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), leading to bad reactions to drugs and an unhappy year at Blessed Sacrament School. Later attending Wando High School, Becknell, who always sensed they were different, began experimenting with high heels and other forms of feminine attire, eliciting a range of both negative and positive reaction, the former from his family and the latter from a church youth group leader. Attending Trident Technical College, Becknell served as Vice President of Gay/Straight Alliance, which they helped found and later had both positive and negative experiences in a different work environments. Now working as a car-detailer, a job much enjoyed, Becknell discusses being out, "blending in," and also moving into "survival mode." Becknell mentions attending some Charleston Area Transgender Support (CATS) meetings, notes being more attracted to women, describes the impact of certain albums and musicians on them, declares that "The binary must die," and speaks of their attraction to Norse Polytheism. They also muse on the rigidity of the older generation, both straight and gay, in viewing of sex and gender roles, mentioning a lesbian "takeover" of the Alliance for Full Acceptance (AFFA), making the organization more accepting. Becknell also discusses work with a number of therapists, and how a gender therapist has been most helpful.
Robert Arrington (pronouns: He/Him/His), Black reverend of the Unity Fellowship Church, the only affirming church for LGBTQ people of color in the Charleston, SC area, discusses his personal life, his spiritual growth, and troubles and issues with his church and the larger Charleston, SC community. A native of Harlem, NY, Arrington grew up in an abusive household and due to a misdiagnosis, was sent to schools for the mentally handicapped. "My childhood was just about survival," he notes. Being different, he was the subject of contempt by others and sought solace in religion and the church, where he was told he was gifted. After being sent to a rigorous all male Catholic School, and his father's murder in 1974, Arrington and his family moved to a rural area near Durham, NC, where he graduated high school. In college, he married a woman "to make everybody happy," but that did not work out, and, moving to Fayetteville, NC, he became involved in a party scene, contracted HIV and nearly died. Back in Durham, facing family issues, Arrington rejoined the church, started an AIDS ministry, and could not be ordained as a minister in the Missionary Baptist Church as a gay man but only as "a non-practicing homosexual." To preserve his integrity, he joined the Unity Fellowship Church movement, and had a congregation in Charlotte, NC. Arrington then gives a brief history of the denomination, noting how he moved to Rochester, NY before coming to Charleston in 2010 and setting up a Pentecostal type church service here. Arrington describes the growth and decline of his congregation, mentions an ex-husband, and speaks of the prejudice he has felt in Charleston directed against him as an African American, and specifically against him as a reverend in and out LGBTQ church. While loving the area, he comments on the resistance of "gatekeepers" to change, feeling that racism is "in the air." He comments favorably on many working to improve the LGBTQ and African American communities, but concludes that many with power and privilege are halting progress.
Jayson Gulick (pronouns: He/They) speaks of the challenges and satisfactions of his growing up, discovering his gender and sexual truths, and embracing both trans masculine and androgynous identities. Born in Wheaton, IL, into a Catholic family that faced prejudice from the Protestant majority, he moved with his family to Charleston when he was in the fifth grade. Having discovered and defined himself as trans by searching out information on the internet, he delayed coming out, feeling that the move to the Lowcountry would provide an appropriate opportunity. Experiences in public school and Catholic school convinced him to delay the announcement, however; he told his family just as a friend in Catholic school was denouncing Gulick for posing as a male on social media. Accepted by his parents and one sister, and rejected by another who had become fundamentalist, Gulick was out and visible at Wando High School, getting support from some staff but not others. He describes an attempt by the school to censor a student interview on the topic, noting how he and others posted it on YouTube instead. Gulick then describes his experiences at the College of Charleston, speaking of his good fortune of having previously legally changed his name, thus not having to experience being called by his dead name, as happened to some of his peers. He describes clandestine meetings of other trans students on campus (called T-Time) and some of their unwillingness and fear to have their identities known. Noting how therapy, top surgery, and association with We Are Family have been extremely beneficial, Gulick describes his connection with androgyny, his dislike of sexual assumptions about him by others, and how affirming participation in Charleston Pride events has been. Torn between being a teacher and a guidance counselor, he has decided on the latter, to help spare others from having to undergo experiences similar to his. Since South Carolina does not offer specific gender and sexual protections, he regrets that he may have to go elsewhere to fulfill that profession. The interview ends on a positive note with Gulick commenting that people just a few years younger than he are accepting on a broad array of gender and sexuality issues.
Cator Sparks (pronouns: he/him), white board president of LGBTQ youth organization We Are Family, discusses his life as a gay man and his volunteer and professional work. He describes growing up in a liberal family in Atlanta, Georgia, and his difficulties and successes in high school. Sparks attended the College of Charleston in the early 1990s and speaks of coming out in Charleston into an exciting and accepting environment, then detailing his experiences in the rave scene. Along with rave venues, he describes gay bars including Treehouse, A.C.'s, and The Arcade. He discusses his volunteer work with neighborhood associations in the Cannonborough-Elliotborough neighborhood in Charleston and Harlem in New York City. Sparks performed in drag in Atlanta as Spectra Gramm, one of his performances during the Olympics being televised in France, where he soon went to study abroad. Back in Atlanta, he enrolled in American College, finishing his degree in fashion marketing in London. It was there he discovered dandyism, and he speaks of his conversion to it from rave fashion, defining what dandyism means to him, the effect it had on his life, and how it can educate others. He emphasizes how he values working with LGBTQ youth and his experiences volunteering with the Harvey Milk High School in New York City and with We Are Family in Charleston. Sparks describes the impact the 2016 Presidential election had on him, prompting his social action and recaps his professional life, including a description of working in Jeffrey, a high-end New York shoe store started by Jeffrey Kalinksy of Charleston, his freelance writing and his future plans of becoming a life coach. Photograph credited to Carolina Knopf.
Steven Willard (pronouns: He/Him), a white yoga and meditation teacher in Charleston, SC, speaks about his life and changes seen in society and in the LGBTQ community over the years. With a father in Vietnam when he was born, Willard and his family moved to North Charleston, SC when he was six. It was "small town, USA," and Willard attended church and public schools, where, knowing he was different, he found a friend who was also gay. As a teen, he worked in a record store in a mall and found comfort in seeing people he could identify as LGBTQ even as he sought further "validation" in movies, books and on television. He describes how he and his friend, with false IDs, attended bars such as the Garden and Gun Club and the Arcade, and the impact it had on them. While distanced from his father, he had a fairly good relationship with his mother; yet being discovered as gay as he finished high school at eighteen in 1986, led to his removal from his home. He moved to New York City where he felt safe for the first time. Mentored by an older gay man, he worked in a variety of jobs. Growing up in SC, he had had no access to positive information about gay life or AIDS prevention, and throughout the interview, Willard marvels at his luck at surviving the death and devastation around him. He returned to Charleston in 1993, left periodically, but came back. He found it necessary to be closeted working for the Department of Motor Vehicles, and coming out, experienced prejudice and harassment. He stood up to this, however, noting, "I might have been a fag, but I wasn't a punk." An interest in yoga lead him to teaching, and in the 1990s and afterwards, he witnessed a change in the city triggered by the empowerment from surviving AIDS. He noticed more gender fluidity in younger people and in himself in such places as the Treehouse bar. He gives a vivid description of the celebrations that occurred in Charleston when marriage equality was achieved, unfortunately, very close to the time that the massacre at Emanuel AME Church occurred. Throughout, he speaks of the loss of honesty, and face-to-face communication that social dating apps have brought about and then mentions the loss of LGBTQ spaces in the city, specifically describing Dudley's as a gathering spot for bridal parties. He regrets the lack of political involvement on social issues, such as abortion, among younger people, yet also believes that being LGBTQ "just living our lives is a form of activism." In reply to how being LGBTQ has influenced his life, Willard responds that, if not challenged as a minority and faced with prejudice, he could have become complacent. "Like women, people of color, LGBT, we all have to realize that we ?re in those cross hairs of these straight white Christian dudes, and we all have to fight together."
DeLesslin George-Warren (pronouns: He/Him/They/Theirs) speaks of his life as a queer member of the Catawba Indian Nation and his work for social justice, through both direct action and performance art. The son of a white father, who worked in health care and later became a private consultant, and a Catawba mother, an attorney working with the tribe for federal recognition, he was called "Roo" from childhood on. Growing up in Rock Hill, SC, he felt a "dual consciousness" attending a conservative Christian school while being part of a very liberal family in which he was expected to find his own truths. He started volunteering at the cultural center on the Reservation in high school, but did not reclaim his Catawba heritage or come out as a gay man until he attended college, eventually realizing that? "liberation as a queer person is tied to the liberation of my community." At Vanderbilt University, he pursued musical studies and also worked to establish gender-neutral bathrooms on campus. From 2014 to 2017, in AmeriCorps, he lived in Washington, DC. In museums there, as a guide and cultural interpreter, he often took patrons by surprise, sometimes making them angry, when he gave more nuanced and truthful version of American history as it involved indigenous people; being pale and blue-eyed, he defies cultural stereotypes. With a grant from Running Strong for American Indian Youth, he returned to the Catawba Reservation in 2017 and became involved in projects reviving the Catawba language and focusing on food sustainability. In the interview, George-Warren speaks of being accepted in the Catawba community as a gay man, despite its affiliation with the? Church of the Latter Day Saints; describes the "briar patch" nature of Catawba family relationships; notes the historical matriarchy of the tribe; sums up the impact of the loss of federal tribal recognition and then regaining it; mentions a "strain of queerness" in Catawba history; and discusses his identity. He recalls a PRIDE march in Washington, DC, wherein he and others protested the sponsorship of corporations, some involved in actions on Indian lands; and expresses gratitude for being born queer, beyond the norm, to free himself from society's expectations. It's "liberating to be Catawba and also be queer," he believes. He perceives a need for solidarity in the LGBTQ community and notes, "I've seen more anti-Native sentiment in LGBT spaces than I have seen explicit anti-LGBT sentiment in my Catawba community."??
Chase Glenn (pronouns: He/Him/His), white executive director of the Alliance for Full Acceptance (AFFA), speaks about himself and his family, his life impacted by a growing awareness of the LGBTQ community and its issues, his transition, and his professional development that took him from church work to his current position. Growing up in Mt. Vernon, IL, an insular, small and rural community into a loving and giving Southern Baptist family, Glenn was "pretty naive to the world growing up." While he "felt like the other," he "didn't have the words or the real understanding" of his identity. In a world where "heterosexual sex was bad, then gay sex was not just not on the table at all," he did not have a frame of reference or knowledge about gay or trans people. Not until attending Belmont University in Nashville, TN did Glenn know gay people and there it was a shock to be told that women could never be ministers in the Southern Baptist denomination, despite Glenn's life-long "call" to the ministry. Never "feeling fully a girl," Glenn began a relationship with another woman, that being the "path of least resistance" and worked in churches. When outed as a lesbian at work in a church in Florida, Glenn was given the option to stop living that way or be fired. That prompted a 2006 move to Charleston, SC, where Glenn maintained a relationship with a lesbian, was married, came out successfully to his family, and worked for the Mt. Pleasant Presbyterian Church. After seven years he began to work for Blackbaud, and his awareness grew as to his true identity. His relationship ended; he discusses some of the lesbian and other bars in Charleston he attended, as he openly pursued his transition, sharing it online and on his dating profiles. He met a woman whom he married and now the couple has a son through invitro fertilization. Glenn discusses his fears of being an appropriate father and recalls his growing involvement in the LGBTQ community, doing the design and layout for the first Pride programs, serving on its board, that of AFFA, and working for SC Equality and the Trans Action Committee. Having gotten a master's degree in counseling and experiencing again the call to advocate for, and work with, people, Glenn, after discussions with his wife, left the safety of his corporate job to become the director of the non-profit AFFA. He describes the directions in which he took the organization, details the complexities of the community needs assessment survey AFFA and its partners undertook, discusses some of the results, talks about how race and racism affect the community and how society affords him "white male straight privilege" because of his appearance.
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