Land, Love, and Queer Resistance in Red America

What does it mean as a queer person to love a place deeply when that place has so often tried to make queer people disappear? Today In the Den, Sara visits with author, activist, and former Idaho legislator Cole LeFavour to talk about their powerful new memoir In the Arms of Mountains: A Story of Land, Love, and Queer Resistance in Red America. In 2004, Cole made history as the first openly LGBTQ+ member of the Idaho Legislature, serving four terms as an Idaho State Senator and leading multiple acts of civil disobedience in the State Capitol. In addition to their being a legislator and activist, Cole has also been a long-time writer and an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in publications including The North American Review, Idaho Wilderness Considered, and Sawtooth-White Cloud. They write from deep in Idaho about conscience, wildness, belonging, and what it means to build a life rooted in both place and resistance. Part memoir, part love letter to Idaho’s wild places, and part testimony of queer resistance, Cole LeFavour’s story explores what it means to be shaped by a place that doesn’t always know how to love you back. 

Special Guest: Cole LeFavour

Cole Nicole LeFavour writes about conscience and the wild from deep in Idaho. An activist, award-winning journalist and writer Cole’s stories and essays have appeared in The North American Review, Idaho Wilderness Considered, Sawtooth-White Cloud, among others. In 2004, LeFavour became the first openly LGBTQ+ member of the Idaho Legislature, elected four times, serving as an Idaho State Senator and leading multiple acts of civil disobedience in the State Capitol. Cole's book, IN THE ARMS OF MOUNTAINS: A STORY OF LAND, LOVE, AND QUEER RESISTANCE IN RED AMERICA was published by Beacon Press in May. 

Links from the Show: 

• Find Cole’s Book In the Arms of Mountains here
• Cole on FB
• Cole on IG
• Join Mama Dragons today

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org. 

Transcript

SARA: Hi everyone. Welcome to In the Den with Mama Dragons, a podcast and community to support, educate, and empower parents on the journey of raising happy and healthy LGBTQ+ humans. I’m your host, Sara LaWall. I’m a Mama Dragon myself and an advocate for our queer community. And I’m so glad to be part of this wild and wonderful parenting journey with all of you. Thanks for joining us. We’re so glad you’re here.

Hello Mama Dragon. Today we're talking about what it means to love a place deeply when that place has so often tried to make queer people disappear. And we're joined by author, activist, and former Idaho legislator, Cole LeFavour, to talk about their beautiful, powerful new memoir In the Arms of Mountains, A Story of Land, Love, and Clear Resistance in Red America. In 2004, Cole made history as the first openly LGBTQ+ member of the Idaho legislature serving four terms as an Idaho state senator and legislator and leading multiple acts of civil disobedience in the state capital. In addition to their being a legislator and activist, Cole has also been a long-time writer and an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in publications including the North American Review, Idaho Wilderness Considered, and Sawtooth White Cloud. They write from deep in Idaho about conscience and wildness and belonging and what it means to build a life rooted in both place and resistance. The book is part memoir, part love letter to Idaho's wild places and part testimony of queer resistance. And their story is incredible as they explore what it means to be shaped by a place that doesn't always know how to love you back. A story that I know so many of us face in our lives today with our kids. So, Cole, welcome to the podcast. Welcome to In the Den. It's so good to have you with us.

COLE: Thank you so much, Sara. Thank you, Mama Dragons for all the love and resistance that you're putting in the world. It means so much.

S: Thank you for that. You know, as an Idahoan your story is legendary among local activists in the queer community. It's a truly an inspiration, I think, that has seated the groundwork from advocacy and activism today. I'm sure folks have been asking you to write a book about your story and your work for a long time. So tell us, how did this memoir come to be what it is today?

COLE: You know, I long, kind of, had written a blog about my experiences in the legislature and had written pieces that weren't as focused on myself as much as on the process. And so when I was kind of encouraged to do this, I would say that it took me a long time to just get the shape of the story and to really figure out how to make it that love letter that you talk about to the incredible community that my life is interwoven with. Idaho really does have an intense and powerful community of activists, who have worked for decades many times, to try and make this place more loving, respectful and just. And so much of it was just trying to figure out how to do something that would capture how hard and how beautiful the journey has been.

SARA: Yes, I appreciate that. And what's also really interesting about the book is that your journey unfolds alongside it, your own personal journey. So we get a little inside the you in, sort of, how you got to be the Cole, the public facing Cole, that a lot of people know and how your own life story sort of influenced all of these choices and this unfolding. And that has been really beautiful and really interesting. And so I want to go back to the beginning because you start with your early life being raised by these hippie, free-spirit parents in Colorado who then moved to Idaho because Colorado at that time was feeling too restrictive, which I think many Idahoans now laugh at. Talk a little bit about what that young life was like for you.

COLE: It really was a childhood spent around people who defied conventions and really disdained conformity. In fact, on the bathroom of my childhood wall, like the bathroom had this poster on it said, “Protest the rising tide of conformity.” It has these white men all walking in a line. And those kinds of things I might not know what conformity was at the time but you could tell from the picture of all these men walking identically in the same direction.  And so I think I was left free by my parents to find my own path in a lot of ways. My parents mixed around the idea of gender roles a little bit because my dad was a chef. So he would cook and he was so loving. And you know my mom was very brazen and wild. And she really – you know the nurturing mothering thing wasn't her. So I was lucky I got plenty of good parenting from the two of them. It's just that they didn't take on the roles that we expect parents to take on.

SARA: It's funny to hear you talk about an unconventional early childhood, and your parents, and really defying convention and the largest chunk of your adult life was spent, although you may have been unconventional, in a very conventional place in the Idaho Legislature. And I want to get there. That just struck me that sort of sort of dichotomy of those two things. But you also talk about how your mom came out as a lesbian, and left your dad, and had a partner, and that this was just part of life. And I'm curious because you share your journey which seemed like quite a journey in the book. You take us through the journey of your own coming out story. How did your mom's coming out intersect or impact your own understanding of your queerness and how did your parents react?

COLE: You know I think that's one of the surprising things. I think a lot of people would expect somebody who was the child of a queer person would have an easier time coming out or coming to terms with their own being gay or non-binary. And I actually watched the reactions that my mom got. And a lot of them were negative. And the society at the time said that being gay was shameful and to be hidden. And my mom, in her own voice when she told the story of, “Hey, I'm in love with a woman.” It had a certain degree of shame in it. And I feel like that made me afraid of being gay. It made me feel like it wasn't going to be safe or okay to do that. And so I waited 20 years.

SARA: Wow. I think that’s really difficult and complicated. But I also appreciate the sharing of that for all the parents in our podcast whose experiences of their own and children coming out are all over the map. And so just to, I think, here the affirmation that even being raised and what others might interpret as an affirming family and environment, the stigma is still so intense and still plays that role.

COLE: Exactly. Yeah.

SARA: And one of the things that I also really noticed in the telling of your story, including as you decide to run for legislature and all your terms there, is your own, both struggle and maybe not struggle like awareness of your own gender identity, and all of the different ways that society has something to say about that in all of these conventional places. And I was just really struck about hearing your own inner personal struggle and process in discovering your own gender identity while being an elected official in a place where gender roles are so binary and there's so many expectations and so much stereotype where you talk about having to try to dress a particular way that was authentic to you but it also still sat within some of those norms. Tell us more about what that was like to navigate all of those different tensions and spaces in that part of your life.

COLE: I think that the course of my expression of gender would have been very different had I not started working with the legislature just as a regular everyday activists trying to go into the building, looking like someone they would listen to, to working as a lobbyist and then to being a state representative, State Senator, myself because I really didn't want my appearance or their perception of me to ever make them not listen. And my sense was that there were certain things that were expected and one of them was professional dress. And that definitely had a degree of strong “This is how a man dresses and this is how a woman.” And I came in just as pants were an okay thing for women to wear.

SARA: In 2004.

COLE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't a lot of pants really. And I guess I really almost wanted to excel at that part because there was so much else about my life that, if I let them spend too much time thinking about me being gay, that wouldn't be the thing. So I wanted to have those conversations without them obsessing about something to do with gender. And so I did conform to a pretty great extent. But to know about me is something, I mean, I am not a very binary thinker, like I never was as a child. There really isn't a whole lot that's binary about my sense of politics or political parties or science and nature or myself. So I have always kind of embraced those grays. And it really didn't fit with me, even then, to see people as so one thing or the other. And my coming to a nonbinary identity is really just very, very fitting of my nature, very fitting of my nature because I just see the both in myself and in so many people.

SARA: Yeah, was it difficult to spend so much time making that mental calculus in the legislature about how you're showing up so people would listen to you? I mean, I think it's really helpful to hear that you were focused on wanting them to listen and understand the issue and not be over-focused on you in your life and their assumptions.

COLE: Yeah.  

SARA: That had to have been a constant inner battle.

COLE: Yeah. And I think, had I realized I had the option of showing up in a nice tie, I mean, I think it would have helped me. If I thought about the fact that I could do as Lenore Barrett from Challis did, and show up in a tie, maybe I would have tested that on them and had a different path. But honestly, as I took it, that role of trying to conform and trying to figure out –  because I mean, figuring out gendered dress, I don't know if it's really easy for other people, but it wasn't easy for me – I had the sense that the collars matter, that other certain things that my mind attached itself to. And it stressed me out. I had meltdowns when I would walk out of the house and realize that I had something on that just made me look somehow undecided about my gender. And of all the things in the state house that caused me stress – and there were tons –  unfortunately that whole dressing thing was one of them.

SARA: Yeah, I can imagine. In your book, you also share this journey which I read as a journey toward activism. Advocacy and activism, it seemed like, have always been a pull for you in your own life, particularly starting with college. And you share that beautiful journey. And I'm wondering if you can just reflect a little bit about that. What was that pull for you?

COLE: I think, I mean, I thought a fair about it. And I think it's fair about what the origins of conscience and empathy and things are. And I think some people are built a little bit that way. But also I know that my dad modeled that for me. I wouldn't say that I was the most perceptive about what things that I might do would cause others harm. But I was particularly concerned about that. Like, I wanted to be good, and I came up with this idea that if life didn't have a meaning, I could give it one. And that is like, if happiness is a good thing to humans, let's make more people happy.  Maybe my mission should be to increase the happiness in the world. I literally said that as a lower high school student. I just was like, that's going to be my meaning of life because I wasn't particularly raised with a lot of religion. But I really had strong drive to believe in something. And so when I thought about world problems and I looked at people in the world around me, I thought about what can make lives better? What could make lives happier? And what were the injustices? What were the things that pained people that I could help be part of?  So I threaded my way from Berkeley, just showing up and being a body at the protest and being arrested for the first time, just showing up and wanting to help, sitting down untrained. And I think I started just to try and find work and try and find roles and meaning that fit with that.

SARA: Do you think those early experiences added to both your knowledge and your confidence? Then when it came into doing some of those civil disobedience actions –  which I want to get to that story too in a little bit – in Idaho?

COLE: Did my experiences in Berkeley? Yeah.

SARA: Yeah, in all of the old early protests, and just showing up and watching and participating in the larger community in those space.

COLE: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, as I described in the book, my first protests scared me. It really did. I put my hands over my ears because I had always lived in tiny little towns. There were more people at the first protest than had ever lived for 100 miles in every direction around me my entire life. So to hear a thousand people clapping in unison on a city street between those tall buildings, just stunned me. It also made me see how powerful human bodies are, how powerful collective action with our bodies just moving along the street is, how powerful a thing clapping or singing in the universe. I never forgot that. I will never forget that sense that really we could do anything if we were moving together in that way.

SARA: That's beautiful. And that really resonates with a lot of what unfolded for you in your activism in later years and also still what we're watching happen today and happen in Minneapolis and the big cities and even right back here in Idaho. That's a really beautiful description. So let's jump in, let's fast forward just a little bit, since we're already there, into you've been elected as a legislator and you reflect a little bit about how you knew that as the first –  you traveled with the label of first openly gay legislator elected in Idaho. And that was always with you and got you a lot of interest and notoriety in the press and whatnot and that you're awareness of the challenges that queer folks faced in Idaho at the time with no constitutional protections for employment or housing. But you knew you had to move slowly, that you couldn't just immediately become the voice for all queer folks that make that you're only agenda.

COLE: Yeah.

SARA: So talk about a little bit about that, how you understood that trajectory as you were starting in the legislature? And then where did that point come, when you knew or you had received so many stories that you knew now is the time?

COLE: When I first was elected, my colleagues would literally say to me, “Well, I'd never met a game person before.” I mean, you know, of course we know they had. They served with people I know, but they were closeted. But I took very seriously the need to have them see me as human and to build relationships. So I spent a great deal of time on my one-on-one relationships with my Republican colleagues. I probably spent too little time on my relationships with my democratic colleagues, simply because I was so intent on understanding and making sure that those would be most likely to misunderstand LGBTQ people would have an example of someone. So I spent a lot of time on that and when I had worked enough on other issues, I had worked a great deal on sentencing, substance abuse, mental health, school counselors, I realized maybe I was at a point where I could try proposing something. I realized too that there was a point at which I really had to because there wasn't really anyone in state government that people could go to when they had faced a firing or an eviction or a hate crime or they'd lost their child to suicide. People came to me and I had nowhere to send them. And right now I don't know that we have anywhere to send anybody either because there isn't some part-state function that is designed to address those tragedies and those wrongs. And so I felt very compelled to make sure that we started the work. And many people had long wanted to start the work. So it was a time that we had long been ready for.

SARA: Yeah, that was a really poignant part of the book where you describe being that receptacle for all of the stories. And how open you were that you would publish your cell phone in your materials and on your website. And some people were calling and texting and writing you and sometimes late at night, and just because there was nowhere else to take their stories. And that had to have been a challenge to hold all of those stories and those growing stories in that time.

COLE: Well, at first, they were very much just fuel, just me feel so determined to do it. By the time I left the legislature, they were a really heavy weight because I didn't feel it was okay to leave as long as that was unsolved.

SARA: Yeah.

COLE: So that decision to leave was made very hard and complicated, even though I knew I was leaving to try another method of making change in there.

SARA: Yeah. So I wonder if you can walk us through the story particularly for our listeners who are not familiar with the Add The Words story of Idaho and just kind of set the stage a little bit for us about what the bill was? What were you trying to address and how it went? Give us a little bit of that narrative into how this civil disobedient and activism really started because I think what I want to share with our listeners that I alluded to but I don't know that I've described as that part of the legacy that you created here in Idaho was a massive civil disobedience, multi-action civil disobedience project, in order to get the legislature to do this. And so tell us a little bit of that story.

COLE: Sure, so the legislature's normal process is that they print a bill, which means they put it in the computer and give it a number. And then they hold a public hearing. And then people get to come and testify and tell their stories. And I knew we had thousands of people with incredible stories. So once I submitted the bill – and the first time that was printed, I think it was in maybe ’07, ’09. I’m bad at date, but it's in the book – and we waited and waited for our public hearing. Everybody was ready to come and testify and help my many, my 105 colleagues, or at least that part in the house get a chance to listen to the stories. And it didn't happen. And so it was kind of like, then it's always like that, “Well try next year.” So you bring it again. And this time they didn't even print it. They didn’t even give it a bill number. It saw the chairman's desk doors, which is what we say. So I knew that I needed Republican co-sponsors. And I had built so many relationships. So I had more than 10 Republicans as co-sponsors and presenting the bills and prepared to prevent the president of the bill. The Bill Rodan, former republican leader of the Senate was ready to present the bill in, I believe it was 2010 or 2009. And suddenly something happened where all my sponsors told me they couldn't. Something had happened in the background and I don't –  I mean I speculate in the book a little bit on it – but you know we had taken so long to come to that point and were so ready. I think we had the votes honestly. And all the sudden it was our opportunity just vanished. And we didn't know what the pressures were or why, but we started to decide we had to do something. It had been so many years of them refusing to hear our stories that it was time to do something they couldn't refuse to see. So we started to post sticky notes with little bits of testimony and messages on them. And people would put them up and then security would come and take them down. So we put up more. And more people would come un the building. Thousands of sticky notes were posted on glass inside the capital with stories from people from almost every single town in the state. And yet, still they didn't hold a public hearing. Still they wouldn't take the bill up. And when I left the legislature in 2012, it was after having undeniable amount of public pressure, media pressure, pressure from all corners of the state and still they would not even hold a public hearing. So at that point I was really aware that there main strategies that are going to be walk around us. And the one thing that I could think of that they couldn't walk around was some form of civil disobedience. And so we began training people. We trained over 300 people to do silent, peaceful, respectful protest. And it was going to be, we knew, standing and we decided in doorways. And so on February 3rd of 2014, we came in the dark through the snow. And we wound our way up into the Senate floor side and just went down behind security and blocked all three doors to the Senate Chamber. Forty four people standing hand over mouth, arm in arm. So we were linked together. And they showed up, and we gave them basically what I call little ransom and note which was a pretty gentle thing. But it said, “Go downstairs. We're not leaving until you start work on the bill to Add The Words.” And they chose to arrest us instead of doing that work. So 44 people went to jail that day. And at that point, you have to decide what we do next. And the decision was, we keep coming back. We keep coming back. And we tried all forms. I mean, they wouldn't let us anywhere near the Senate Chamber after that. So we would block other parts of the capital. It was a long series of just creative and sometimes – some of the people in our group came up with beautiful, beautiful protests that weren't necessarily blocking anything. They were just theater or written stories. It was very powerful. And in 2015 after a year of protests, they did hold a public hearing. Unfortunately, there were four LDS Republicans on the committee who a couple of folks said that they really wanted to vote yes, and they were told that the church said they couldn't. And they were promised that the legislature would take it up in another form. They were promised the issue would be solved. And they mostly left after that I think. It was hard on the conscience of a person with a conscience, who knows the impact of that to sit there in a lawmaking body and see that utter refusal to solve what is devastating harm to their own families, to the people of the communities that they love, and to people they serve with, people who are their constituents.

SARA: Yeah, it's devastating. There's a beautiful documentary video about that time. We'll put a link to that in our show notes as well. And I remember watching that because I came right after all of this. And I heard all the inspiring stories. And I remember watching that now on the 10th anniversary of that action, feeling very deeply that devastation especially because still no action has been taken, not without the effort of some of our legislators trying and the community trying. But it hasn't resulted in an action from the State House. And that's a really difficult place. And I'm curious to hear from you – I think in your book you talk a little bit about this – when you started those civil disobedience actions, when you realized that's what it was going to take, were you still in office or had you already left at that point?

COLE: Oh, when I was still in office I knew I was leaving, basically, to do that.

SARA: You knew you were going to leave because a new tactic was required.

COLE: Yeah, I wasn't leaving to stop working on it. I was leaving to try it differently.

SARA: And so, how many different series of arrest actions happened in the course of that time?

COLE: I believe there were 10 in 2014, and 4 or 5 in 2015 after the hearing which I mean you can kind of call a shaming hearing because if people are told how they’re going to vote in advance that's not hearing.

SARA: And that hearing was a multi-day hearing?

COLE: Oh yeah. There were so many people came to testify.

SARA: Yeah. It’s so interesting to me to watch and to know that they gave a lot of time for the hearing and allowed a lot of community testimony. And it was overwhelming and people did get to tell their stories. And to contrast that with how things work today when some of those – some of the egregious Anti-LGBTQ+ bills get maybe 45 minutes total.

COLE: Yeah. And honestly, I think my final year of 2012 was the year they put time limits on. They didn't use to have time limits for testimony.

SARA: Interesting.

COLE: And so it just all got so restricted. And they would reorder the sheets, the sign and sheets, to try and make it look, in the early, part like there was just as much opposition as there was support. I feel like at that point the process stopped being just. The idea that it could be manipulated began to take hold. I remember when Bruce Nucombe was the Speaker of the House and he managed that chamber with a great deal of integrity. And there were a lot of Republicans in the Republican Party who had extremely strong feelings about the propriety of the process and the justice of the process and how it had to be fair. I think that the closed primary elections are part of what changed that. It allowed a small group to have more control over one party. And that isn't particularly healthy for any political party. I think that it has led to just the rise of extremism. You look at the people in control of the Republican party now, and they are not traditional conservatives. They are more white nationalist more concerned with restricting freedoms and elevating forms of bigotry because it reflects their own perspectives. Their attitudes towards members of the LDS church is really concerning right now. And that to me, should be of real note to people in the state of Idaho. Our leadership of the House and Senate has long been LDS. And I really am curious what many of those leaders think about the turn in some of the rhetoric from that extreme path of the Republican Party, especially as it relates to the church. It's very hateful. It lumps, surprisingly it lumps being LDS with being gay and trans and that it's a bad decision that's going to send you to hell.

SARA: Yeah, it's a very strange time right now, across the country, but I think particularly we've seen the roots in conservative states like Idaho have been so deep. So we're further ahead, perhaps, than in a not a good way, than the rest of the country. I'm curious when you write in the book and your whole journey in advocacy and activism and your time in the legislature in a very engaging in a very formal political setting and also in civil disobedience and community advocacy, how do you think about the relationship between working within systems and resisting them from the outside?

COLE: You know when a system is just and it gives equal weight to the words of all perspectives, working from within is an honor and a form of work that I feel privileged to had been part of. When that breaks down and the system no longer gives equal weight to each human life and each voice, then our responsibility in my opinion is to resist unjust laws that are made in that fashion and to even make a mockery of them if we need to, make a point with it, if we need to call attention to them and wherever possible, to resist having them implemented or passed. And I hope that this time passes and that we can return to more constitutional understandings of how we make law and what is worthy of law. But as long as we are in this time when that's not the case, I'm going to be on the outside and I'm going to be helping others to try to turn this around so that it's just so that people are safe so that they're not afraid so that they don't live in fear of arrest, in fear of violence, in fear of loss of people right now.

SARA: Yeah. There's a growing tension, I think, today around the efficacy of direct advocacy in the legislature in really conservative strongholds like Idaho where you know the makeup of the body, you know how it's going to go. They, for now, well over a decade have utterly refused to make any progress on this very simple bill of protections in employment and housing. I mean, we're not asking for anything wild here. How do you think about that because there is tension about it's not worth it? It's not worth doing the committee testimony anymore. And then there are others that are like, it’s still important for them to hear the stories of  impact. Where do you fall in that?

COLE: I have to admit I have a bit of visceral reaction walking in the capital. So I have not been there with you all while you advocate. I do sometimes train people or encourage people or go in with people to help them with meetings in the past. But we can't just leave them to do whatever they want. Now, if committee work is becoming a sham, somehow calling attention to that – and it may not be by testifying – but somehow calling attention to that is absolutely essential because that's the process that's making the laws of our state. And it can't be broken. It can't be unjust. And it can't just elevate some voices and ignore the rest. And as long as that's happening, we really, we have to have a response. And I don't know what it is.

SARA: Yeah, I think the advocacy community is right there, right there with you. And I do want to, that question – I'm just really glad to hear your reflection because I think there is no definitive answer. It is always, we talk a lot about on the podcast and in advocacy circles, about finding your role, your place, and it's different for everybody. And some are gifted and skilled and want to be doing that very front facing advocacy work inside the building and others have other roles that they're doing outside the building. All are important. I just know that every year this kind of tension comes up, do we bother to be there and to be a presence in the official way inside the system, in addition to outside the system. And I'm sure that's a conversation that's happening nationally, right? When it can feel very defeating and very futile to be constantly trying to battle the mistruths that are being told in the name of our government.

COLE: I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to build relationships with lawmakers. That is really the only way things are going to change is when they feel they have enough support behind them within a community to withstand a hard primary election or the incredible pressure that comes from the party to conform to the parties own ideas of what justice is and what freedom is and what rights are and who's rights matter. Those relationships are what give lawmakers backbone. If they feel they're going to go home and just face anger from their constituents for voting in support of, for example, in the Add The Words bill or against an anti-trans bill or another bill, they're going to feel hesitant. But the relationships and the stuff they learn from speaking to parents at LGBTQ kids is so important. And that is best done at home where before the session starts to give those lawmakers a bit of fortitude when they go into the capital. And hopefully to have them talk to each other. I really think it is a tragedy that so many don't talk to others about their LGBTQ family that they themselves may have.

SARA: Yeah.

COLE: We know so many lawmakers have big families. They have queer people in their families. And I don't think they get a chance to realize that other people do to, other Republicans do to, and that it matters.

SARA: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. I think that's really helpful for parents to hear too. I know a lot of our parents, especially in the wake of the election, are getting more involved in their community advocacy spaces and local politics. And so I appreciate that reminder of how valuable it can be to just, especially in smaller towns, to just go try to have that meeting and share your story with your local legislator or school board rep or whoever it is that needs to hear those stories and needs to hear about the impact. I want to talk a little bit about the writing of the book and the memoir. And you were very vulnerable in your writing. You really gave us a window into your own life and your own journey. That is the beauty of a memoir and reading memoirs we get that kind of deeper insight. It's very different than journalism and political work. What was the hardest thing to put on the page?

COLE: It was really hard to write about my relationship with my spouse Carol because we have had quite the journey. And the legislature was not kind to, and the stress was not kind to our relationship or to my sense of myself or all the things I set aside in dealing with. I kind of spent a long eight years trying to be this one thing and not really being or letting myself figure out all of myself. And so, Carol and I were apart for four years. And I think that writing about my leaving and my living as a bisexual person for a time was really, really hard. It's not something I really wanted to write about. But I think really the writing process itself actually helped Carol and I to some extent, have to really settle with how far we have come in our ability to forgive. I mean, Carol has had to forgive me and a whole part of the book is called forgiveness. And that is forgiveness of so many in the legislative process or not. And forgiveness of myself and of Carol. And to really be that honest about a relationship and about the hard things is a real challenge and something it took me a very long time to figure out what the story was and what would be meaningful in the context of the rest of my journey and meaningful to people who might struggle with similar things or have identities that are complex.

SARA: Absolutely. I remember being stuck at your book launch by hearing the moderator talk about call this a love story.

COLE: Yeah.

SARA: In many ways, that's the through-line is your love story, your journey of self-discovery, and then your relationship. And that kind of undergirds all of the pieces of your life, and particular the part of being a legislator in that public life that you lead. And that's a really beautiful through-line. It’s very honest. And I think that speaks to a lot of people who sometimes when we only are interacting with the public-facing story and version of someone, we don't always get to see the struggle behind the scenes. And it's so meaningful to be able to read that and experience that. Was there anything about yourself that you discovered in the writing process that maybe surprised you?

COLE: I am sure there's a lot. I haven't thought about that one. I guess I learned a lot about writing. I learned a lot about braiding stories together. And I think I gained a bit of confidence that you have to get some distance on the story before you can tell it sometimes. And when you're too close to it, I think the painful parts are almost all you see. And so that distance allowed me to get to that ending where I could see the journey and see the beauty of all the people that I struggled beside and still struggle beside. And also just see the beauty of Carol and I's relationship and the way we compliment each other and also just the place we’ve landed. We're staying. We’re staying in a state that is not an easy place to stay in right now. We stay in a very small town and small town has its beauty in that people know each other and people get to know each other because we know we might be the person who has to pull each other out of the ditch in a winter. So Carol and I really have surprised ourselves just with how much we love living in the Challis area and how much a part of the community we feel and how phenomenal it is to know that even some of the most intensely, I guess you would say, we have friends who are MAGA and Ultra MAGA. And I think it's very important for them to know us and to see us in the community and consider us neighbors because we get to have conversations with them sometimes. And I've had people ask me about trans athletes twice and I was really happy they did. And in both cases, they were people who were certainly not Democrats and those conversations I would never get to have and they would never have that perspective. But I have other conversations too. There's something I can consider the armed middle, which is those Republicans out there who love their firearms and their second amendment, but they're not white nationalists. They have their own sense of what conservative means, and they don't hate. They may love a lot, but they have guns. And I've had more than once honest conversations with neighbors just saying, “You know, these are hard times and at times I have been afraid. And you know, there are people out there who I might not feel safe with. And if I were every in harms way, would you stand with me?” And people said yes.

SARA: That's a lovely story. It's a very brave question to ask.

COLE: It's hard to believe we have to ask that.

SARA: It is hard to believe we have to ask that. I want to ask the hard question. And perhaps you have been asked this already on your book tour. But when you look at the extraordinary activism that finally got that bill a hearing, to no avail, right? It did not pass. And then 10 years later, and now here we are. In a legislature that is far more divisive and conservative than the one you described in your book when you were serving, where I was surprised to read some of those stories and think, oh, right? That was a time when there was a little bit more – there was more of a middle . . .

COLE: Yeah.

SARA: . . . that seems to be gone today. And so here we are today with all of the attacks happening on the trans community, legislative attacks, statewide, and federally. And how do you think about that? How do you reconcile that? That in many ways that feels like we have gone backwards. There was something very emotional about reading your book that felt so hopeful during your early years in the legislature. That it was hard for me to pull myself out and sort of realize that this moment is not that at all. How do you make sense of all of that for yourself?

COLE: There are great forces out there, gathered to try and control and try to get their way and take power and use whatever means to divide us into tiny little portions that will never work together and rise up and hold them accountable. But the thing that I hold hope out for is that so many people are starting to feel the pain of this time. They see the harm. And I know that across-party, if we just say, “Oh, you voted for Trump, I'm not speaking to you.” we will never turn this around. We need each other too much right now. And that letting ourselves be parsed into tiny factions, they choose what they've always known are wedges, issues that people are unfamiliar with enough or undecided or that get mixed with religion easily, that they can try and slice and dice us into tiny factions with. And unfortunately, trans people are one of those little knife-edges that they have that they can use for a little while. It never lasts long because people then do what they're getting to do now which is getting to know trans people. That issue is not as salient as it was when they started doing this because trans people have come out. People know they know trans people and that only works for so long. When we come to that point where each of us has to make a decision about what is acceptable to us in the world, each of us is radicalized by the harm of others. And this is a time when people are seeing that harm to others at levels they can't just sit by and tolerate. All those bodies, all those millions of us out here, there's going to be a point where we’ve had enough. There is a way to overcome this that is loving and peaceful. But it's not going to be easy. But when each of us leans over our back fence and talks to our Republican neighbors, and looks each other in the eye, and knows we are together in suffering under this, and that it is not okay with us, that resolve will get us through.

SARA: Thank you. That is beautiful. What do you hope queer readers, especially those living in red states, feel or hear when they read your book?

COLE: That relationships can change minds, that together we are incredibly powerful, and that our solidarity, our reaching out, our community is so important. Also, that we are so different. And it's not easy to just paint any part of the LGBTQIA into just a tiny little box. We’re not boxes. We're all just these incredible spectrums of humans that are like three dimensional, not just the spectrum, but just so many levels of complexity. And that itself is beautiful. This time is such a classic thing in history where we hold on to simple explanations for things because they have served us for so long, we think. And then we realize how much harm is done by them and we move on. I mean, pronouns, you hear so many people resisting pronouns. We've used Mr. and Mrs. Those were pronouns, Ms., Mrs., they defined your marriage or your role in a marriage. We stopped using those as much because the boxes didn't fit. They were too inaccurate. And humans are so beautifully more complex than just two genders. And I know it's uncomfortable for people who have never thought about that before. But for queer readers, I hope that our confidence that the complexity of it is important and that it's beautiful. And when we embody it and help others just see its complexity, we make really important change.

SARA: Yes, thank you. That's beautiful. And I also hope that readers get affirmed in their own complex identities and lives and expressions because you've so beautifully shared your own journey and your own self-discovery and changes and struggles and the public facing Cole and now the Cole that you get to be post that world. And I think that's very inspiring. I think that show is a lot of hope and possibility for all of us.

COLE: Thank you.

SARA: Thank you for this beautiful book and thank you for your beautiful legacy and your continued activism.

COLE: Sara, thanks for all the work you do every day. I am stunned by the breadth of it. I learn new things all the time. And you make a place for people in so many different ways. And right now we need that so much. Thank you.

SARA: Thank you. Thank you for saying that. That's very kind. And I want to let our listeners know that the Mama Dragon's Bookshop will have Cole’s book available and you can buy it there and we'll put a link in the show notes. And I highly recommend an audiobook is equally fantastic and beautifully read. And I'm enjoying that as well. So, pick up a copy of this beautiful book to help get an insight into a beautiful story and all the complexity of this landscape and this state and identity. I am so grateful you put this story into words. Thank you so much.

COLE: Thanks, Sara.

SARA: Thanks so much for joining us in the den. Did you know you can connect with our Mama Dragons community on our own free private, secure platform. In addition to our main support group we host regional groups for more localized connection and support and affinity groups to connect moms with shared identities and experiences: including groups for gender diverse parents, political advocacy, mamas of transgender children, mamas of children with special needs, Madres Dragones –  our Spanish-speaking moms – and moms of color. We also offer religious-based groups from those grounded in faith to those navigating transitions out of it. Wherever you are, there's a group for you. You can learn more and join by visiting our website at mamadragons.org/join.