Getting Allyship Right

There is currently a lot of public discourse around what an LGBTQ+ ally is and isn’t.  We know that our listening audience wants to be allying well and often, and as the political climate in the country continues to put our LGBTQ+ loved ones in the crosshairs, it has become increasingly important that we get our allyship right. This week In the Den, Jen sits down with Sara Burlingame, Executive Director of Wyoming Equality, to talk about ways that we can improve our efforts at being good allies to the LGBTQ+ community. 

Special Guest: Sara Burlingame

Sara is the Executive Director of Wyoming Equality, a statewide advocacy group who works to build broad and inclusive communities, shift the hearts and minds of our neighbors, and achieve policy victories. Sara was the only non-Mormon blogger at Feminist Mormon Housewives, before working as a faith organizer with the Human Rights Campaign. A longtime Cheyenne, Wyoming, resident, she loves to spend time with her family reading, watching her sons play baseball, and camping in the most beautiful place on Earth.

Links from the Show:

• Equality Wyoming: https://www.wyomingequality.org/ 
• Join Mama Dragons today: www.mamadragons.org 
• Mama Dragons on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mamadragons 
• Mama Dragons on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themamadragons/ 

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Transcript

JEN: Hello and welcome to In The Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created to walk and talk with you through the journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. Thanks for listening. We’re glad you’re here.

There are a lot of conversations about what an ally is and what an ally isn’t.  I’m personally never super comfortable with using that word as a noun.  It feels more like an action verb that we might be doing in one moment and then not doing so well in the next moment.  But I am hopeful that most of our listening audience wants to be allying well and often.  And as the political climate in the country continues to put our LGBTQ+ loved ones in the crosshairs, it seems increasingly important to me that we get it “right”. So, we have Sara Burlingame here with us today to help us increase our skills a little bit. 

Sara Burlingame is the Executive Director of Wyoming Equality, a statewide advocacy group who works to build broad and inclusive communities, shift the hearts and minds of our neighbors, and achieve policy victories. Sara was the only non-Mormon blogger at Feminist Mormon Housewives, before working as a faith organizer with the Human Rights Campaign. A longtime Cheyenne, Wyoming resident,  she loves to spend time with her family reading, watching her sons play baseball and camping in the most beautiful place on Earth. Welcome Sara!  We are so glad to have you here.

SARA: Thanks so much, Jen. Thanks to Mama Dragons and to you for having me on. I said Wyoming was the most beautiful place on earth just to be provocative because people will come out and want to fight me on it. But I do think it is.

JEN: Starting off with a contention, OK. I actually want to start by talking about how you approach advocacy in general and how that intersects and connects with the Mama Dragons?

SARA: Sure. Yeah. That’s a great question because I do think Wyoming equality and myself as an individual, I would say that we were kind of outliers in our movement. But I think that we’re outliers in a way that dove-tails very nicely with the work of Mama Dragons and what y’all are trying to do which is to really create an entry point for everybody who wants to come onboard to support LGBTQ youth and others. I think that one of the things that our movement has gotten really wrong – I’ll just start out swinging – and say I think we’ve driven a lot of people who want to show up and be allies away. I think that we’ve kind of focused on a sort of purity and policing when the things that we do really well are having potlucks and inviting people in and making them feel welcome and sharing queer joy. Like all those things, I think are real strengths of our movement. And for whatever reason, we kind of fell away from that and we kind of walked away from grace and sort of approached this sort of sterner correctness. So I think that that is unfortunate because I think we need allies now more than we ever had. And we need people to know that they’re invited, they’re welcomed in, that we’re going to give them the tools and the resources that they need, and that it's not a space where you need to be perfect. It’s not a space where you can’t make errors. There’s lots of grace for everybody because, good gravy, do we need everybody to be helping out right now.

JEN: And we make a lot of mistakes when we’re new at anything. We want to fight  for our kids. We want to learn. And we do it wrong. But little by little we get better as people offer us that grace and educate, and are willing to walk with us. On that note, I want us to talk about the small seemingly mundane interactions that we engage in every day. Talk about the impact of these interactions and give us some examples of what that might look like in the realm of being an ally.

SARA: Yeah.  That’s a great question. Wyoming Equality does a training where we talk about one of the barriers to people getting involved is that every single conversation where you’re being an ally or you’re advocating for your kid or family member is a stand and deliver moment. That, like every single one, is what I call a “Three”. A Three is where you’re throwing down. It’s thanksgiving dinner and your racist uncle has just said something terrible and you’re going to let a lifetime's worth of googling what to say to my racist uncle at thanksgiving unleash and put it all out there. And that’s a Three. You’re all in. But the majority of your confrontations or the majority of just having the conversations are probably “Ones”. And we think that people don’t sort of step into this advocacy space when someone is dehumanizing. Say someone is just saying like, “I think it’s a shame that boys don’t dress more like boys.” Right. Or, “I think it’s a shame that little girl doesn’t wear pretty dresses.” Like something really simple, really basic like that. And people, if our amygdala lights up and we think, “Oh, no. I have to go into battle and I have to remember what I read about The Genderbread Person. And I need to remember to use correct pronouns myself and I need to get this perfect and right.” But the moment passes and nothing happens. But really, a little bit of curiosity, a little bit of kindness and just a little verbal inflection that says, “I don’t know. I think she looks nice.” Or, “I haven’t found that to be true.” “I haven’t found that to be true” Is kind of my gold standard for, “Look. That’s it. You just did your first advocacy. You said I haven't found that to be true.” And you saying, “I haven’t found that to be true” has disrupted a whole narrative that says everyone here in this church or everyone here in this small town or everyone here in this office all believes the same things about gender. We all believe that this should be policed and enforced. But you just said, “I don’t know. I haven’t found that to be true.” And you’ve disrupted that. And I think, if people knew and understood that we could do that, you can have a Number One – I haven’t found that to be true” or “I think she looks nice” or “I don’t think that’s accurate.” Something small but states the thing, I think it helps us feel like we have our own dignity back, right? Like we’re not complicit in things that hurt other people. But it also doesn’t mean that you have to throw  down. That can be the whole conversation. And then the middle of that, what I would call a Number Two conversation, is having a little bit of curiosity. Like, someone says something, and they’re not trying to do harm. They’re not trying to say anything that they haven’t been taught their whole lives in their churches, at their dining room tables, in their schools. This is something that is intuitive and correct to them. And if you can show them a little bit of curiosity and if you can ask some questions but state clearly what your belief or your boundary is, I think that’s a conversation that opens up a pathway for someone to say, “Oh, OK. I’m not canceled.” But then sometimes, honestly it’s very rare, but there will be like a Number Three where I’ll just say, “Oh no. Absolutely not. You should know better. That’s racist or really unkind, cruel, and transphobic and smug.” And then I’ll go all in and say, “Yeah. That’s unacceptable. You can’t say that around me. And I’m happy to tell you why.” Is that helpful?

JEN: That was awesome. I think one barrier that people sometimes run into when they’re attempting to be an ally is they’re afraid of the potential costs? And there are costs to being an ally. Can you talk about those costs and maybe thoughts for people who are running into that?

SARA: I will say this is why I think Mama Dragons is such a necessary organization to have and to grow right now is because I don’t know how you bear those costs alone. I think standing up and being an ally, it shouldn’t be true but it is, you might be ostracized from your community. You might be ostracized from your faith, from your workplace, from your friends, from your family. Those are really profound losses. There’s a lot of grief there. And I don’t know how you would do it if you didn’t have a group of people who were doing the same brave thing and could commiserate and mourn with those who mourn but also just say, “Oh, that asshole. That shouldn’t have happened.” I mean, I think someone shaking their head and saying that shouldn’t have happened to you is one of the kindest things we can do for each other. To just know that other people have your back in that way. And then, Jen, I also want to say that sometimes though, our fear of what will happen is so much larger than the reality, right? I’ve been in those places myself where I thought, “Well, everyone’s going to be real mad, but it feel like I just need to say this.” And then everyone sort of yawns about it, like “Yeah. That’s probably true. Good catch there.” And everyone moves on. Okay, be cool. So we can awful-ize, right?  You know that word, awfulize where I think it’s a psychology term where we build it up in our heads to be so monstrous and we’re kind of paranoid about what people will do. But sometimes people surprise us with their kindness and their willingness to hear other perspectives.

JEN: An idea that I want to kind of tackle and deconstruct a little bit is the idea of privilege because usually in the world of social media, it’s almost like an insult, right? “That’s because you have privilege.”

SARA: Yeah.

JEN: Said dripping with disdain. It’s this pejorative. And I don’t think of it that way. I’m hoping that you’ll define it better and help us understand what privilege means and how it could be a good thing, things we might be overlooking.

SARA: It’s funny that you’d ask me that question. You know how Facebook does those memories?

JEN: Mm-hmm.

SARA: I had one pop up. It was from like almost a decade ago or something. And it was saying – There was someone stacking magazines at Safeway and he just said some crazy sexist, homophobic things. And I really thought about it, about whether I should say, “Buddy. That’s crazy. That’s not true at all.” or just let it go.  And what I was thinking about and writing about was that I was asking myself, “Do I want to do this because I want to feel better about myself if I do it? Or do I do it because I think it’ll make some difference to somebody who will be impacted.” And I kind of decided that I would just do it for myself. I don’t think it would really change anything and I could just let this one go. And then a woman who was taking some kind of higher ed, like I think she was studying to be a school administrator and so she was taking a higher level gender studies came in and was like, “Well, actually Sara, you should have used your privilege. You should have leveraged that privilege for people who have less.” And I think that’s a legitimate sort of argument that, “Hey, white ladies, please stop taking so much spa days and get in the struggle. Roll your sleeves up and help your brothers and sisters and others here.” I think that’s a legitimate thing to say. But also, the space I was trying to create in this conversation was I’m accountable to my community and if I’m taking spa days all the time because I’m not in there using that privilege, leveraging it for people who have less, then that’s a problem. But we also all have our own discernment. And I think when we sort of police it in that way, that every fight is your fight, if you haven’t leveraged your privilege in every situation, then you’ve just really let the team down. I think that’s a kind of fundamentalism. And I think that fundamentalism is always devoid of grace, devoid of compassion, devoid of curiosity, right? Fundamentalism thrives on certainty and obedience. And I think the left can be just as high bound to fundamentalism as the right. So I don’t know if that was your question about privilege but I guess that’s my – I see us using it in a punitive way. Check your privilege rather than in a communal way which is like we should all be checking our privilege. Not like in a police check, like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But check like checking in with each other, like “Hey, am I walking in here assuming that we’re all the same? I’m going to check this.” Am I not showing enough grace or humility in this? Let me check it. Am I assuming that we all have the same socio-economic or the same racial experiences? That’s something I want to check. I think if our movement could move to a place where we thought of it more in those terms, we’d be in a healthier place.

JEN: Awesome. Thank you for that. I want to talk about the word “Ally” a little bit. I mentioned in the intro that I sort of struggle with the word like when people say, “I’m an ally” or “is he an ally” or whatever. The word itself I think for me is really fraught. And I want to talk about the difference between being an ally and being an advocate, and what those words kind of mean, and if there’s a difference between general life like, “I’m an everyday ally” and “I’m a political ally”, or if they’re just the same thing if you’re doing it right.  

SARA: I guess – I mean, feel free to say no – but like I’d be kind of curious, Jen, about who hurt you? What was your first experience where someone used ally pejoratively? And my question is, did you agree? Did you think, Oh yeah, actually that person is really self-absorbed? Or did you disagree? Was it like, “I don’t know. I think they’re just trying to help.”

JEN: You’re asking me for real? Okay, we’re going to turn the tables. I think for me it’s more me judging other people than feeling – that’s horrible to say – than me feeling like I had early on when I was trying so hard to figure out how to fight for my son. And people would say, “I’m an ally.” And I was feeling like, “Then where are you?” They would whisper things in my ear in my little small town like, “I think what you’re doing is awesome. I’m also an ally.” And I’d be like, “Then show up.” So I think for me – that sounds horrible to say – but if I’m being honest, I think it’s more about me being judgmental than me feeling judged.

SARA: That doesn’t feel horrible at all. I’m so glad I asked you because I’m right there with you. I’m like, where were they and how dare they be like, “Hey don’t tell anybody. I’m not front and center.” That’s not what that means. It can be so lonely. And there is no loneliness on this planet like the loneliness you feel with other people. I would rather be alone than with someone who says, “I’ve got you” but they don’t.

JEN: Yeah. I do think that has a little bit to do with it. So I always avoid the word ally, because I don’t need allies. If you’re just at home not hating queer people. That’s not enough. I need an advocate.

SARA: Yeah. That’s right. You know, I served in the Wyoming Legislature for a term. And so some of my republican colleagues have been sidling up next to me this last year and saying – in a whisper, not out loud, not in public – but “Sara, I just want you to know, if it comes to it, I will not vote to criminalize women crossing the border to get health care. Just so you know.” I was like, “Do you want me to buy you a drink? What? Are you bragging that you won’t let them hunt us like dogs? Do you want a thank you for that? My brother in Christ, what are you saying to me? How are you not ashamed to say that?” That kills me. That just kills me. I think people can call themselves whatever they like. But I would reserve the right to say, “That’s not what I mean when I say ally.” I tend to talk about it a lot, casseroles play a very heavy role in my concept of community. I think this is why I fit in so well with the Mormons even though I wasn’t raised LDS was that, Yes, finally, people who are invested in casseroles and this very embodied sense of I’m not going to tweet about it, I’m going to show up on your front door with something that my hands have made to feed your body because you’re hurting right now because our school is not a safe place for your kid to be and that kills me. I want people to show up. And I think that looks different for different people. We’re not all casserole makers. But it definitely has to cost something. I think in the early days why I was getting cranky at our community for sort of saying, “Hey you’re not doing it good enough.” Was that it did seem like we were real busy policing people on their intent, you know, and if they hadn’t gotten it right enough. I thought then, and I think now, that that was a huge mistake. But you’re right, on the other side of that equation is people who give nothing, who sacrifice nothing, who stand in positions of power and authority and hoard all the credit that they’ve earned from that to themselves and won’t spend it on our children, on our community. I think it’s a sin. I think it’s a sin to do that if anything is.

JEN: That’s a super interesting perspective. I appreciate that. So, if we talk about being an ally, doing allying or advocacy, talk to me about local politics like city, state-level politics.  What should people be looking at and what should they be doing to stand up and support their queer loved ones?

SARA: Yeah. That is a great question. And honestly, right now, you’re local politics is where it’s at. That’s where you focus, your animus, your passion should be. Everything right now is super local. I don’t care where in the United States of America or any place you are hearing this, something is happening either in your school board or your state legislative race or you federal. Your dog catcher might be an incredibly political race right now. There’s a place for you to get involved that is critical. And I feel like maybe we’ve been like the boy who cried wolf or something, like every election is the most critical, every time is. But, oh golly, it really is right now. And a thing that I have said since I’ve been in this position in Wyoming Equality is if you gave me ten Mama Dragons we could take this place over. If I had ten trained, organized Mama Dragons, everything in Wyoming would change. I’ll tell you the first time we had one of the Mama Dragons come to the state legislature when they were attempting to – there was one good go on nondiscrimination and there were a couple of really bad bills that sought to do some really harmful things – and there was a mom who lived up in Gillette, which is about five hours north of us. And since she’s the mother of a large family, she couldn’t come up the day before. So she got up at her house at like, 3:30 in the morning and drove from Campbell County down to Laramie County and we met with a Bishop who was helping me. Helping might be a strong statement, he would say, “I was amenable to the idea.”  And we met and she was so nervous that her hands couldn’t stop shaking. She’d never testified in front of a committee before. She’d been raising her large family and supporting them and hadn’t seen herself as any kind of public advocate or someone who would be involved in politics, very conservative republican family. And then one of her sons had come out as gay. And as was – an maybe sometimes still is – you know, there is that double step with wondering if this planet was a place they could live. Wondering if there was a place for him in the church, wondering if there was a place for him on earth. It’s so heavy. And she’s such a good mom and she just wants to give love and support to her kiddo. And so she got involved. And she, thank goodness, found the Mama Dragons and they all sort of supported her. So she drove down to Cheyenne and I asked the Bishop, before, we were going over talking points. How she’s going to talk about her family, if there’s any questions from the committee, how she’s going to answer them, which made her want to throw up, I think, that the committee would have questions for her. Like I’d love it if I could just read my little thing and we all go home. And I just said, “Bishop, do you think you could give her a blessing?” “Would you like a blessing?” and he said yes and she was like, “Oh, yeah. This would be very helpful to me right now.” And so this very conservative bishop who I think always kind of wondered what I was dragging him into put his hands on her head and gave her a blessing. And it really shifted everything for her. And once she had the blessing, she became very calm. She became very centered. We went over to the Capitol and she waited for her opportunity to address the committee. The committee, the chair was a woman who was a very devote LDS, who happened to be the chair of Labor and Health at the time. So it was a very friendly face. And they voted to pass nondiscrimination out of that committee. And I think she was a really pivotal part of it. I think her voice, getting to hear the thing that you can’t fake it. There’s nothing that’s a stand in for how we love our children, you know and what we’re willing to do, how unequivocal we’re willing to be to promote that. and legislators, most of them, they’re parents too or even if they aren’t, they know it when they hear it. And it brings something into that room. And sometimes the city council, right. Sometimes the city council wants to pass bad bills like they want to say we don’t want these kinds of books or drag queens or something. Sometimes it’s the school board saying anything that acknowledges LGBTQ lives and reality and sexuality should be censored or banned. Sometimes it’s the state legislature. But wherever it is, there is an opportunity for you. You can reach out to us, Wyoming Equality. I don’t care what state you live in, we’ll point you to the right place. But there’s an organization in your state that is going to help you get connected and get involved. And I’m telling you, they’re going to welcome you in. And if they don’t, tell me. I’ll unhinge my jaw because yours are the voices that we’re really waiting to hear right now. And you don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be able to pass a high-level civics exam to get involved. You just have to know that the American dream insists that we all get involved and that it’s got to stand for all of us, or it stands for none of us. And you’ve got a voice in that conversation.

JEN: When it comes to federal politics, how is it different?

SARA: Yeah. That’s a great question. We absolutely need blue states just as involved as red states. I mean, you guys have the opportunity in blue states to carry that message to your Congresspeople, to your Representatives, to your Senators. And really, there’s nothing as powerful, even if you’re a US Senator or US Congressperson, the personal stories of people back home, that’s what they use. Those are the stories that they tell to make sense of their votes. Those are the stories that they tell when they’re talking to donors, when they’re talking to crowds of people and they’re saying, “Hey. I’m supporting this bill because of families and then they talk about families like yours.” But they don’t know that if you’re not with them. And this idea – it makes my head want to rotate – this idea that if you’re in a blue state, you’re safe. And so you can stay home and you don’t need to get out and advocate. We can’t afford that. This is not a time in our national history when we can afford that. And I guess I would just ask you to sit with a little bit and read your Walt Whitman. Read your secular bible that the leaves of grass and say, “Who are we as Americans? Are we in these little Silo’s, these little pockets, of legislative protection or are we united?” Because if we’re united, you have to be fighting for us here in Wyoming and I have to be fighting for you there in Massachusetts. And I have to see us. As Doctor King says it is a mutual web of interdependence and building the beloved community it relies on us knowing that and believing that. If you believe that we’re separate, then we fall and we can’t be separate right now.

JEN: So what can somebody do if they want to get involved in a federal level?

SARA: So the easiest thing to do, every single Congressperson, every single Senator has home offices. So if you live in a rural place in Idaho, per se, you can see where’s your closest Senator or Congressperson's office? And you can go in person to that office and you can ask to speak to someone and say, “Hey, I’m a constituent and I have a message for the Senator. I have a message for the representative.” And then you can say, “When they’re in town next, I would like to sit down and talk with them.” And I’m telling you, it is shocking how many times they’ll say, “Yeah, Okay.” What they really want you to do is set something up with them for more people. And they don’t want a “Gotcha”, right? They don’t want, like, a town hall where people are going to pepper them with things. But say, “Hey, I’ve got a group of ten families and we’re not going to invite the press or anybody, but I noticed that you’ve been talking about this issue and we’d like to sit down and share our stuff with you.” And even if they won’t meet with you when they come home, just keep pressing and say, “Could I have a zoom call with the Senator?” “The Senator is very busy.” “Okay, could I have a zoom call with the senator’s legislative director?” And they’ll probably say yes to that one. And you’ll get half an hour on a zoom call with a US Senators legislative director and you’ll have your talking points written out beforehand and say, “Hey, I saw how you voted on this bill. I heard the conversations that the senator made and I just want to tell him about our family, and I just want to tell him about our experiences because you represent us.”

JEN: I like that.

SARA: We’ve had such success with that. And, I mean, I’m telling you like our US Senator Cynthia Lummis, she is always in the top two percent of the most conservative legislators in Congress. And she voted, and she brought some of the votes with her, on the Respect for Marriage Bill. It helped. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also came out in support of that despite having been one of the architects of the Prop 8 Campaign back in 2007, 2008. And she’s a lifelong misery synoc  Lutheran. So these are very conservative, very devote people. But because we just talked to them about our families, they came to a different understanding. Nobody lobbed any bombs at them. Nobody threatened to go picket outside their house. We just stayed in conversation. And the more people who sign up for that, who say, “I’ve never thought of talking to my US Senator, but maybe I’ll just start reaching out. Maybe I’ll just start seeing where I can connect with that office.” I could’ve never anticipated Senator Lummis voting for the Respect for Marriage. I could’ve never have anticipated the LDS church coming out in support of it. And no one person could have made it happen. But this satellite of people who are really by-and-large it’s parents advocating for their kids. That’s the bulwark.

JEN: What if somebody is very, very introverted and timid, and they want to show up to ally in ways that are authentic to their nature. What can somebody do that’s very introverted and timid?

SARA: That’s a great question and you probably won’t have seen this coming because I don’t talk about it very much. But I’d like to talk about casseroles.

JEN: Okay. Brand new.

SARA: I really do think, if they don’t want to be someone who talks, if they want to be someone who supports, then say, “Hey, we’re all going to get together to talk about this and I’m going to make the cookies or I’m going to do that.” And there’s a thing that you can do, right? Holding a bullhorn and having a rally, that doesn’t have to be everybody. But you can be the person who’s quietly holding a sign at that rally, you know. And you can be a person who isn’t going to ask to sit down with the Senator, but you’re going to write them a handwritten note. They get those. They see those, you know. It’s the same thing we were saying, right, with the like, is it a One, Two, or Three conflict? It’s not all stand-and-deliver. It’s not all the music swells and you encapsulate your life struggle into a couple pithy sentences that that senator will always remember. That’s for the movies. That’s for fiction. But some handwritten postcards, some handwritten letters that show up like clockwork every month or every week, those make an impact. And we all just have to lift where we stand. You don’t have to be somebody else’s idea of an advocate. You just have to advocate from the place where you live.

JEN: WE have a lot of moms who do cards. So I think a lot of people are like, “Wait, I can do that. I can write a letter.”

SARA: Can I tell you what’s so interesting is the number of times that I’ve written cards that people have said, “And you used cursive. I didn’t think anybody used cursive anymore.” It feels like it’s a weird sort of shibboleth, “That’s right, cursive.” Or, I found you unrelatable until I saw your cursive. And I’m like, “Maybe she’s alright.” I was like, that’s a really weird shibboleth, but I will take it. You’re right.

JEN: That’s hilarious. What about, not the shy person but somebody who’s a brand new, baby ally? I’ll toss this in to start. One thing I notice is that when people are kind of new to the space they have discovered that being queer is actually wholesome and healthy and they’re convinced that they are ready to change the world. I definitely had this. Like, “If only everyone knew what I knew, we would change the world in an instant.” And so they enter these ally spaces, it’s the same patterns over and over again of having a lot of ideas, right?  I know what to do. And all the people who have been doing it for 15 years are like, “Yeah. We tried that every year. We also tried that. Also, that was a great idea and we’ve tried that. Here’s what is working.” Somebody wants to be an ally, they’re taking their very first steps, what is the best way to do that?

SARA: I think it’s joining with the Mama Dragons for sure, for sure. But then also have some Mama Dragons, have some people local to you because we all need accountability, right? Like, there’s no divas. There’s no solo gun-slingers in this movement. If you are, you’re a menace. You’re a danger to the rest of us because that means that you can’t be accountable. And if you can’t be accountable, you’re not safe.  Folks who’ve come from really sort of orthodox faiths, I think that’s a much harder leap to be in a place where you’re just going to make mistakes. You just are. You’re going to have to be cool with it. You’re going to have to struggle with the ways that race is complicit in all this. You’re going to have to struggle with the ways that socio-economics stuff and genders are the same as sexuality. You’re going to get some of this stuff wrong. But if you have people that you’re accountable to who hold that accountability in love – they’re not trying to cancel you. They’re not trying to score points on the White Savior Scoreboard, “I’m doing it better than she is. Look at me. I’m nailing this. Look at this girl.” – all of that makes it harder to do this work. But I don’t think there’s any way through it. It’s still true of me. And I don’t say that in a false-modesty sort of way, like I’m sure I make a mistake or two here or there. Like, I step in it all the time. I mean, here’s a great example of a time that I stepped in it.  We were doing a Reproductive Health Rally after Rowe fell. And one of our friends who’s been really instrumental, she started Feminist Leaders for Reproductive Justice, which is like a black and brown, queer led reproductive justice organization. And it comes out of the south and it’s sort of this recognition that, “Hey sometimes white feminism has conceptualized reproductive health as just do you or do you not support abortion access when really we want a much broader sort of, like, do we have safe schools, do we have access to safe water and the food and the community we need to raise children and have families.” We knew all this. I’ve been a participant in all of it. and I was in charge of the social media for it. And our friend, Ambria had said, “If you guys are going to call this Reproductive Justice, which is very specific, it’s this specific thing, don’t embarrass me. Don’t be like white ladies out there.” And we’re like, “No Ambria, we got it. We’re good. We’re good. We’re good. Trust us.” And then I was doing the social media and a handful of women had done The Handmaid’s Tale, sort of, recreation in front of our capitol. And whoever had taken the pictures was like a really good photographer and it was like at that golden hour. So it was like our Cheyenne capitol and it was these four or five women single file as Handmaid’s Tale. It was very striking. And I was like, ‘That’s the picture we’re using for this social media.” And I put it up and then the next thing I heard was from my friend who was just distraught and beside herself. And she’s also a journalist and it turns out that  -- and I knew this. When I was like I know that Handmaid’s Tale is problematic for some women of color and I know there’s been some pushback. But I think this is okay. And honestly, I’d love to say that I had more ignorance or I had some pure motive. But it really was, I just thought the picture’s so good, so what if I cause this specific kind of damage? It’s a really good picture. And mortifying that this is true of me, but it really was and I shouldn’t try to be better than I am. And my friend was so hurt. She was so hurt. It turns out that one of the articles that had been circulated the most about the kind of specific damage that black women in our movement felt around Handmaid’s Tale, “That was us. We were chattel. We were enslaved. We were forced to bear children against our will. We were sexually assaulted. And anything that sort of reinforces the story that it’s only important when it happens to white women, it only takes on dread and terror when y’all might be next, that’s hurtful. It’s hurtful and it’s offensive.” And I think the thing that broke my heart the most was my friend saying, “if you, Sara, who are so committed to racial justice, who are so committed to being in the struggle, if you get this wrong in such a blythe,  arrogant way, then how do I do this work with y’all. I need you guys to be better than that.” And I think the gift of my friend was still loving me through that and still letting me see the damage that I had caused. She wasn’t trying to cancel me. She wasn’t trying to give me shame. She was just letting me know that it had hurt her. And I think the best kind of advocacy and the best kind of “Hey, where do we begin, how do we get people involved” is if we have these relationships with each other, we’ll want to get it right. We don’t want to be publicly known to have messed something up. We won’t want to hurt each other because we love each other and we’re accountable to this growing larger community. And our community won’t look like just people who look like us, just people who have kids like we have kids, just people who pray the way we pray. We’ll really grow out this community to be larger and better and bolder. It won’t be so small. And I think once people get the experience of that, the terror of being wrong kind of starts to fade and you recognize that you are going to be wrong, or we’re all going to get it wrong. We just are. But it’s so worth it to be doing the work together.

JEN: So that actually goes really nicely into my next question. I don’t know if this is just something I’m seeing on social media a lot that I’m just starting to notice, but pretend this is not really me. But pretend I’m saying to you, “I want to learn how to be an ally for the gay community. But I think gender is sort of a different thing and I’m not really interested in being an ally for the trans community. And I don’t understand all that race stuff going on. I think we’re making everything about race, and that doesn’t make any sense to me. But I would like to be an ally for gay people. Can I do that?”

SARA: Yeah. We had that happen with the Feminist Leaders for Reproductive Justice. We had someone show up and say, “I’m here. I absolutely want to work on Reproductive Justice. I think it’s really important. But not any of that race stuff. I’m not interested. To a group of black and brown, queer leaders. I would say, My people, white women, we are raised with a real boldness around what we will say out loud. And I think that was handled in a pretty good way which was like, “Hey, come get your girl.” Other white ladies, this is the work that y’all have to do to say, “Hey, we’re going to sit together and I’m going to talk to you about it and I’m going to give you some stuff to read.” We’re not going to make this the work of the black and brown women here to tutor you through this. I don’t think there’s any such things as being bifurcated in that way and saying “I’m here for the gays, but the trans can kind of take a hike.” I think that we’re a movement that’s about human rights. We’re a movement that’s about promoting the best possible values. And those values, they cut across all lines, right? I don’t care whether you’re talking about what’s the proper role of policing or what’s the proper role of gardening and zero-scape versus traditional. Your values are going to come into play. They just are. And if you think that you can say, “I’m going to let this political movement come after my friends child because they’ve decided that how they understand their gender is unacceptable to the state, but I’ll just be over here caring for me gay friends.” Bullshit. I mean, you can do it, but don’t call it love. Don’t call it advocacy because that’s not what love looks like.

JEN: WE had that come up in Idaho a few times. We’re still working on our anti-discrimination laws. But the legislators were talking to us and they were coming back with, “How about if we just pass it for gay and lesbians? And then, in a few years, you can try again to include it for trans people.” And I was really proud of the people involved who said, “No. We’re not leaving people behind.”

SARA: Yeah. I can introduce a little bit of a nuance into that, though, because – absolutely right, there is no such thing as gay and lesbian, we’ll come back later for trans. And after the Utah Compromise, right, the nondiscrimination [inaudible] and the ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union, they came out and said, “Hey, anything that doesn’t have accomodations, we won’t support. We’ll actually activiely work against because Utah Compromise addressed housing and hiring but it didn’t address accommodations. Accommodations are like, who bakes the cakes, what bathroom you go into. And at the time it was understood that accommodations would address the majority of the harms that were currently being considered against trans people and they would be like, the most hard hit by it. And so the state of Ohio, the person how has my job in ohio, she and her team had just been working their tail off to get this clean non-discrimination bill out. So it addressed housing and hiring and accommodation. And the, I don’t know if it was the speaker of the house or the president of the senate was like, we can get it. We’ve got the votes. But you’ve got to drop accommodation. And she was like, “We can’t. We can’t drop accommodation because it would seem as turning your back on trans people.” But Ohio is big enough that not only did they have an LGBTQ that was inclusive of trans people advocacy, but it also had their own stand-alone Trans Advocacy Group. And they came to the table and they said, “I don’t know what HRC and ACLU are talking about. We appreciate that backup and the support. But honestly, housing, housing and hiring – not being fired right now. But housing right now is where trans people are being so hurt. And we need this. And we can’t afford that kind of purity. So as tshe statewide trans organization, we’re telling you we’ll take housing and hiring. We’ll come back for accommodation. And that’s the sort of nuance, that’s different. That’s different than saying we’ll take gay and lesbian and we’ll come back for trans. That’s unacceptable, right? I would and I have done the same thing. We’re always offered – I always think it’s funny for religious people to not hear the – I’ve got 30 pieces of silver for you. I just need you to betray one little thing. And you’re like, “You know that doesn’t end well for anybody.” So there’s maybe a little bit of nuance in there.

JEN: Yeah. The difference I hear in your talking is sometimes we have to baby step towards equality, but we don’t leave people behind. We’re including everyone in our march forward towards equality is kind of what I’m hearing.

SARA: That’s exactly right. And the second you get involved in this kind of advocacy, you will be offered the opportunity to, like, “Hey, let’s make you the good days. Let’s make you the good trans. Let’s make you the good advocate. But it means that you need to throw these other people under the bus.” And you just have to refuse, over and over and over, right? You just have to say, I’m going through the door with all of my family, right? There’s no one from my family that I say, “Oh, thanks. You’ll take me, but they have to stay out there?” Then it’s not equality. It’s not love. It’s not fairness. It’s not a door we’re going to walk through. [dog barking]

JEN: Your dog agrees.

SARA: Even my dog.

JEN: So one last question before I let you go. Right now, most states are out of session. I know some aren’t. But most states are out of session. We have a little breathing room locally, some of us. But we’re hitting some national big elections coming up in November. What should we be watching for, what are the biggest issues that we should be watching and be concerned about because they’re also trying to baby step, right? They’re baby stepping in the opposite direction. So what should we be listening for? What key words or bills or ideas?

SARA: Yeah. That’s a great question  because I think some people assume, as long as they’re a democrat and they believe this or if they’re a republican they must believe this. And that’s not true at all, right? Wyoming is the most conservative state in the country and until 2023, we had defeated every single anti-L:GBTQ bill since 1978. We had 45 years of defeating anti-LGBTQ bills be a republican majority, the most republican conservative state in the county. So this idea that oh it’s only blue states, it’s only progressive democrats who can hold that space, it’s not true. I would say, though, that the thing that you’re listening for, the thing that’s really determinative is what do they believe is the role of government. And whatever party they’re at, really listen to do they believe that government should have the right to come into your home and tell you certain things. And if they do, I think they’re probably a threat to your personal liberty. I’m a little extronic beause I live in Wyoming and we’re a little extra on that. But we take very seriously, Wyominng was the first state to acknowledge women’s right to vote. And some people will say that wrong and they say Wyoming was the first state to grant women the right to vote, but the state can’t grant me rights. They are inalienable to me. The US Constitution says that I’m born with them. And so if there is a political candidate or party that is telling you they want to reach into your home and take your rights away or bestow them on you, they’re a threat to democracy. They’re not just a threat to LGBTQ people, they have a bad sense of what government is there to do and you need to get involved and you need to say that’s unacceptable. I was born into this world with these rights being inherit to me and I’m going to make sure that the government is there to help me secure those rights. That’s the correct way. So anything that’s about banning books or “Don’t Say Gay or anything that dehumanizes, anything that uses language to say that person isn’t like the rest of us and maybe we should drive them out. Maybe we should punish them. All of that is, I don’t want to sound hyperbole, but it is the reality that people who study genocide and people who study what happens before the tanks role in, is first you have to convict people that those people are not people like you are. They’re different. They’re less and they somehow have coming whatever they’re about to do to you. And we’re there now. I went on a bike ride with some friends of  mine the other day. They’re not going to the same beer hall – we don’t say beer hall in Wyoming, I don’t know why I said that, bar – but it’s kind of a sport sort of thing because every time they go, they get called homophobic slurs. So they’re going to a different one. We rode our bicycles past the synagogue. The synagogue here in Cheyenne, pays the Cheyenne PD to patrol around the clock because the synagogue is being targeted. Wyoming Equality, after January 6th, we paid rent for three months, but we didn’t work a single day in the office because some online watch group said our office was being targeted by people who were in DC for January 6th. So if we were sort of wondering where we are in the timeline, we’re here. We’re here. The Supreme Court just said that whoever is the president is not beholden to the law in the way everybody else is. So we’re in a dangerous time. And the only sort of epiphany I’ve had about feeling optimistic and like we can meet this moment is the people. We only get to keep what we’re willing to fight for. and right now, the alt right and people who really want to dehumanize people who aren’t like them, they’ve been very organized and they’ve been willing to fight for it. But I know that everyday Americans and certainly the LGBTQ community, we have a pretty impressive track record of rally and fighting to protect each other. And so I have a lot of faith in us.

JEN: That was actually a beautiful parting note. Thank you so much for coming and helping us on our journey to learn how to become better allies especially in a world that does feel a little bit tumultuous. Thanks for showing up for us.

SARA: Oh, I love you guys, Jen. You guys are the best! Seriously, give me ten Mama Dragons. We will take over.

JEN: Alright, are you hearing that Wyoming? Anyone in Wyoming who’s listening, Wyoming Equality is looking for ten. You guys show up for Sara. You’re awesome. Have a great day.

SARA: Thanks, Jen.

JEN: Thanks for joining us here In the Den. While we have you, we want to let you know about the inaugural LUV Conference coming up this October 18th and 19th in Salt Lake City, Utah. The conference is all about learning and connecting and creating a more supportive environment for LGBTQ+ individuals and their families. Get more information at www.luvwithoutlimits.org . That’s L-U-V- without limits.org. Or find the link in the show notes under the links from the show. We hope to see you there.  

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