Pride Month: Q&A with Dickinson's LGBTQ residents

Jun. 23—June is recognized as LGBTQ Month in the United States. Pride Month is the promotion of the self-affirmation, dignity, equality and increased visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people as a social group. Pride, as opposed to shame and social stigma, is the predominant outlook that bolsters most LGBT rights movements.

In 1999 and 2000, former President Bill Clinton was the first to declare June as "Gay and Lesbian Pride Month." When former President Barack Obama was in office from 2009 to 2016, he declared June as "LGBT Pride Month." Former President Donald Trump was the first Republican president to acknowledge June as Pride Month, and did so via a 2019 Tweet.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Leslie Ross, 58 of Dickinson, shared her thoughts on the LGBTQ community in southwest North Dakota. Ross, originally from Crystal, Minn., has lived in Dickinson for 25 years and is retired from the U.S. Air Force and currently is self-employed as a Veterans Affairs Accredited Claims Agent. She works for veterans worldwide on disability appeals before the Board of Veterans Appeals. She also ran against Neal Messer for the vacant District 5 seat for Stark County Commission in 2020, and has served on the Dickinson Public School Board for 12 years — even sitting as chair of the budget committee.

Q: How are you involved with the Dickinson and LGBTQ community?

A: I am currently a founding member of the Don't Wine Just Run charitable organization which holds two events per year. One for our local animal rescues and one in the fall for a local family benefit. I am the newly elected President of the Dickinson Public Schools Foundation, I am also a board member on the Dickinson Public Library Foundation, a member of the ND Suicide Prevention Coalition, Disabled American Veterans (DAV) ND State 2nd Junior Vice Commander, AMVETS and American Legion Post 180 member. I was a DPS school board member for 12 years. Not to mention I played softball and volleyball for many years.

Q: Have you ever experienced, as an LGBT person, discrimination in North Dakota for your sexual orientation or gender identity? If so, explain.

A: If you are a member of "Our" community you have faced discrimination in some form overtly or covertly. How would you feel if every decision you made was to specifically avoid discrimination? Decisions are made based upon self preservation. We consciously do an internal risk/benefits analysis of these decisions because we have to protect ourselves. All our journeys are different, but I personally have made or altered my reactions or responses to the following:

* Hid my relationship or not referred to my spouse of 25 years as my wife, who I am legally married to. Introduced her as just Amy instead of a proper introduction.

* Made decisions on where to work or who to work for.

* Who to send to parent teacher conferences. Having to have a special power of attorney in order for my wife to care for our kids at school, at home, for healthcare and everything in between. This all before Marriage Equality.

* Housing decisions, Insurance, benefits, names on car titles, signing forms, checking into hotels, always what's your relationship to xyz. It really is exhausting.

Q: What does the word "discrimination" mean to you?

A: It means the unequal, unjust, prejudicial treatment of persons based on a identifying characteristic. This is a universal definition. I abhor discrimination in all forms.

Q: What kinds of things might a person who is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender go through when coming out? And what was your own experiences when you decided to be open with your sexuality?

A: First there is no right or wrong way and no timeline. Some come out only to their families and close friends, some never do and some use a combination such as out to some and not at work. Everyone's journey is there own and it will be different depending on their own experiences and situations.

Coming out is a process of understanding accepting and valuing your identity.

You may be experiencing identify confusion when you start to identify which may lead to denial, you may then start to compare yourself to this new identity and the social isolation you may find, you then may start to find tolerance for your new identity, but feel stress. Then you start talking with other LGBT individuals, then you may start to have Pride in your new community and finally you incorporate your identity into all aspects of your life.

As much as it can be liberating being "Out," it also has negative effects. There may be a sense of being different, not fitting in to the roles expected of you by family, friends, workplace or the greater society. It involves facing societal responses and attitudes towards LGBTQIA people. You may feel ashamed, isolated and afraid. Unfortunately many are ostracized by family, leaders in their faith communities, social clubs, schools, sports and their own legislation passing hurtful legislation and not not passing any form of protections. For many youth they become homeless because they are kicked out of their homes, judged, ridiculed, bullied and suffer bias based on stereotypes of gender and social norms.

Like everyone else, my story is somewhere in between all of that and a personal private matter. What is important to note is that LOVE IS LOVE IS LOVE and everyone is deserving and worthy of it.

Q: Some would argue that the United States was founded on religious freedoms, and in southwest North Dakota the majority of the population are religious. Do you believe that people are entitled to their religious views when it comes to the support or condemnation of the LGBTQ community?

A: This question puzzles me, what does religious mean and founded on religious freedom mean? We could have a history lesson here on the intent of the creators of our Constitution, but we do not have time for that. There is no such thing as religious views toward the LGBTQ community. As an ordained minister and a follower of Jesus, and as a defender of the Constitution I have pledged my life to uphold it. With that I respect your right to your religious belief and the private practice of it. I am an Episcopalian and I don't expect my Jewish, Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, Mormon etc. brothers and sisters to believe in which I do.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

For me Jesus is the way of love for every human being, feeding the poor, uplifting the oppressed, ministering to the marginalized.

Gay pride was not born of a need to celebrate being gay, but our right to exist without persecution. So instead of wondering why there isn't a straight pride movement, be thankful you don't need one.

Q: What does "pride month" mean to you?

A: Embracing and recognizing the wonderfully diverse human beings that make up this community and recognizing their struggles. It also means acknowledging all those that came before us who paved this path. It also means I have a personal responsibility to live my life out loud and share my gifts and advocate and support all those members of this special and colorful community that you are loved.

Benjamin Haynes, 30, of Phoenix, Ariz., shared his thoughts on Pride Month, and the community in southwest North Dakota. Haynes, originally from Dickinson, N.D., has lived in Arizona for five years and is a former teacher at Dickinson Public Schools. Today, he works as a fifth grade teacher at Wildfire Elementary in the Paradise Valley Unified School District.

Q: How are you involved with the LGBTQ community?

A: I am gay, and I actually came out while I was attending college at DSU... I'm really not actively involved in any organizations at the moment. I do donate money occasionally to the Human Rights Campaign. But I don't currently have any standing or any official positions on any committees or anything like that as of right now.

Q: Have you ever experienced, as an LGBT person, discrimination in North Dakota for your sexual orientation or gender identity? If so, explain.

A: I did. It's interesting because when I hear stories from other members of the LGBTQ/Black community that I've met over the years, not just while I lived in Dickinson, but also since I've moved to Phoenix, I guess I kind of realized how lucky and fortunate I was compared to some stories that I've heard. I had a really good, simple and pretty privileged go of it. While I experienced some hate and I experienced some harassment and some bullying over the years, I never really had too bad of an experience. In high school, I got called a couple names here and there that I won't say, but a couple gay slurs by a lot of guys in high school who just felt insecure about themselves and thought the best way to go about it was bullying somebody else. But I had that happen a lot in high school — just name calling.

In college, I really don't think I had too much of an experience. I think people just kind of knew. I don't feel like I really came out to a lot of people, per se. I came out to my family and my closest friends, but I don't know I think it was just understood that you know this is who I am and that's not changing.

I remember when I was an RA at Dickinson State, I had a resident who frequently tried to harass me by calling names and writing awful things on the whiteboard outside my room, and we cracked down on it. We got in touch with campus security and local law enforcement, (and) we kind of put that to bed basically.

Once I started my teaching career, I did have a family or two that did pull students from my class... It was never openly said, "Well, the reason is because of your sexuality." But it was always kind of questionable as to why they were trying to pull and so I personally just knowing what I know about people sometimes, I kind of assumed that was it but I can't confirm that was exactly why.

But compared to people that I've talked to and people that I've met and stories that I've heard from other people — older, younger, same age as me — I feel fortunate to have had a welcoming community in Dickinson, with my family and my close friends that kept me safe and made me feel loved.

Q: What does the word "discrimination" mean to you?

A: To me, discrimination just means that you're treated in a negative manner simply because of something that sets you... and I don't like saying, "sets you apart," because then it almost makes it seem like there's a higher class and there's a lower class. But to me, I would define it as any word, action or negative demeanor towards somebody who is different than you. I think multiple groups of people, not just people in the LGBTQ+ community, could tell you that there are different types of discrimination, depending on who you are and what you identify as.

Q: What kinds of things might a person who is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender go through when coming out? And what was your own experiences when you decided to be open with your sexuality?

A: There's so much that goes on in the process of coming out. I think back to my experience, I knew that something was different about myself from an early age. I never felt like, "God, I'm different than everyone." I just knew there was something about me that was different. I don't really know how to explain it, I just I could tell that there was something about me... Eventually you get to a certain age like while you're in middle school, high school where you kind of start to put it together. I think, for me, I put it together somewhere between sixth grade and eighth grade... Based off of some of the comments that my classmates had made, I was like this is definitely not something that I can talk about. I just kind of kept it to myself, and I never felt ashamed necessarily. I just felt like it was just something that I wasn't supposed to talk about and I wasn't supposed to bring up and or even hint that to anybody and so I kept it to myself.

When I finally got to a place, when I was 18, where I was like "this is who I am." I went through a phase where I had to kind of accept it for myself and start to be able to openly say the words, "Okay, I'm gay," to myself and I had to grapple with what that means and what that didn't mean. Eventually then it morphed into "I'm going to tell my mom about this, I'm going to tell my dad about this and I'll tell my brother about this; then I'm going to slowly tell my friends."

It's such a process — it really is. I would say that anybody who has come out or knows that they need to come out or is thinking that there might be something different about themselves that would trigger them to need to come out, you have to take your time. Every person is different. There's no roadmap for it. There's no right or wrong way to do it. There's just the way that makes the most sense and feels most comfortable to the individual... Luckily I'm very fortunate, very blessed to come from a very loving and very accepting and open family.

Q: Some would argue that the United States was founded on religious freedoms, and in southwest North Dakota the majority of the population are religious. Do you believe that people are entitled to their religious views when it comes to the support or condemnation of the LGBTQ community?

A: I think anybody's entitled to their opinion and entitled to their beliefs. I just think that if you expect that everyone is going to follow your beliefs, you're responsible for your own misery at that point. I say that to everybody and I say that to anybody in any community for any religious belief or any political belief. You are entitled to your belief and your opinion, but it does not, however, mean that everybody else has to agree with you and it does not mean that you can sit there and enforce your opinion on everybody else; it's never gonna work. And unfortunately that seems to be the main thing that any member of the LGBTQ+ community that ever faced backlash or discrimination, that a lot of the discrimination comes from things that were rooted in religious beliefs. I've never quite understood it because, to me, in religion, I was always taught you love everybody. It doesn't mean you have to agree with them, but you love everybody. And I guess I just never understood why I was feeling so much discrimination, so much hatred, so much bigotry from an organization that was founded on the principle of "love everybody." My ultimate answer is, you can think what you think, you can believe what you believe and you're absolutely entitled to whatever beliefs you want, but you may not impose those beliefs on everybody — it just won't work.

Q: What does "pride month" mean to you?

A: Pride Month means a lot. It's funny because I didn't attend my first pride festival or parade or anything like that until June of 2015 and actually I was fortunate I had a friend that had just moved to New York City, and he'd also never been to any pride things like that... I flew up there and that also happened to be the week and the summer that they legalized marriage equality in the Supreme Court. I feel very fortunate that my first pride experience was like pride on steroids, because it was just an explosion of love everywhere. And so I guess to me that's ultimately what it means, it's just love. Because anybody who's ever been to a festival for pride, a parade or any pride event, they will tell you that there is nothing but love in the air and it's just so amazing to watch everyone just feel so comfortable in their skin. Everybody represents themselves in different ways, there's so many different colors of the rainbow literally when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community.