6 LGBTQIA Texans Who Stood up to the Trump Administration in 2018

By Emily Starbuck Gerson

“Resist” has been the name of the game this year for LGBTQ Texans living under the Trump administration and statewide Republican leadership. But resisting isn’t just about protests and voting. Sure, those two forms of expression are crucial, but I’ve learned that there are countless other ways to resist and fight back.

I’m a queer Texas-based journalist and, in November 2017, I launched Profiles in Pride (ProfilesinPride.com), a blog where I publish a written, Q&A-style interview with a different person in the LGBTQIA+ community each week. Through this work, as I’ve watched state legislators and the Trump administration continue to launch assaults on LGBTQ rights, I’ve also witnessed the diverse ways our community is standing up for itself.

So far I’ve interviewed over 50 members of the LGBTQ community, many of whom are based in Texas. Some are political activists, but others have cultivated a sense of empowerment and resistance through unexpected things, such as ministry or teaching self-care practices to the queer community.

As 2018 winds to a close, I wanted to share highlights from six of the LGBTQ Texans I’ve profiled over the last year or so, all of whom stood up to the Trump administration and/or state government in their own ways. You’ll learn a little about each person and read a powerful quote from their full interview on Profiles in Pride, which is also linked in each post.

Alexander Darke: Using drag and charity work to fight back

Alexander Darke, also known as Sister Dottie Bair, is a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in San Antonio. While the organization known for dressing as nuns in drag works on HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention, they also help with any other needs in their local communities.

After Trump was elected, Darke felt compelled to join the Sisters. Each Sister gets to focus on a cause they’re passionate about. Darke, who was homeless as a teenager, eventually found his way out and got an education, then a great career in the tech industry. His cause of choice is youth homelessness, especially in the LGBTQ community. Earlier this year, he launched an inaugural overnight fundraiser to raise awareness and funds for youth homelessness, and he’s planning to teach computer classes at the Thrive Youth Center, a shelter for homeless LGBTQ youth. Darke also serves on the San Antonio Mayor’s LGBTQ Advisory Committee.

“I’d been a huge fan [of the Sisters] forever, but I never really thought about joining, because drag really isn’t my thing…I probably would have just stayed a fan, but then Trump got elected.

I had this moment where two things hit me: one, the trans community right now is facing a whole lot of attention that, to me, feels very similar to what I faced in the ‘80s. The political football, the demonization that’s going on—the bathroom bills, all of that crap. There are so many echoes there for me of what I lived through in the ‘80s.

I also realized that I have a lot of privilege, and that I don’t necessary pique people’s radars. I’m a big, fat, blonde dude who does IT work…I’m very secure, and I wanted to really put more on the line. It’s really hard to do activism in drag in Texas. There’s no point that I step out of my car in a dress, white face, heels, and walk the three blocks to the bar where I’m not painfully aware that I’m in Texas.

It helps to remind me that I’ve been very comfortable, but there’s still a fight to be had until everyone is comfortable and everyone is safe. For me, with Trump being elected, there are a lot of people who came out under Obama that I don’t think understand why we tend to think of bars as a safe haven and why we refer to ourselves as family, who I think are getting rude lessons in that now, because a whole lot of ugliness is being awoken.

I really just want to double down on doing a whole lot more. I can’t fix Trump, but I can fix my local community and can work in my local community and try to do more and be more and try to help people.”

Alicia Roth Weigel: Publicly coming out to change minds

Alicia Roth Weigel learned she was intersex at a young age; she found out that she had been subjected to surgery as a baby without her consent, and her doctor told her not to tell others for fear of being bullied or ostracized. Then, when the Texas legislature proposed the “bathroom bill” in 2017, Weigel, who lives in Austin, felt compelled to stand up for her trans friends and bust the notion of a gender binary. Weigel testified and publicly came out in front of the Texas legislature, explaining that her very existence proved that binary gender is bunk.

Weigel had already been extremely involved in political activism, primarily with women’s rights, but her coming out led her to get involved in the fight for intersex and LGBTQ rights. After our interview, she also went on to be the campaign manager for Danielle Skidmore, a transgender woman who ran for Austin City Council this year. Weigel is dead-set on not putting people into boxes and addressing our community’s fights as collaborative and intersectional.

“One thing I’ve noticed within the LGBTQ community and some of the organizations that work on those issues—not wanting to minimize anyone’s issue in that movement or prioritize one over another…hopefully one day we won’t need to fit in these letters of the acronym, because those barriers don’t exist. I hope people will think about that too as they advocate for their issues. And that other queer and non-queer people will hop onto the intersex rights movement as I did, for example, for the trans community in coming out against bathroom bill. Or as I had for my friends during the fight for marriage equality.

I think it’s really important to understand that our movement is intersectional and for people not to trivialize that by only advocating for the issues they personally face. Some people, once their issue is fixed, they wipe their hands. But we need each other’s support!”

Emmett Schelling: Fighting back through full-time activism

After many years of working in activism in his spare time, Emmett Schelling took the leap to full-time activism in the summer of 2017. He’d moved to San Antonio, Texas, a few years prior, and he took notice of how badly transgender people were treated in Texas. He got involved with the San Antonio Gender Association and was elected as their president for a year. But he felt compelled to do more—especially when the Texas legislature put forth the “bathroom bill.” Schelling testified at the first hearing and was heavily involved in efforts to fight the bills.

Soon after, Schelling was appointed to be the executive director of the Transgender Education Network of Texas, a nonprofit that works to protect transgender Texans. Schelling now lives in Houston, though he travels all over the state for his work with TENT. He also closely monitors the Trump administration’s efforts to whittle away protections for transgender Americans, and he’s dedicated to fighting back however he can, starting at the Texas level.

“I was recently appointed to be the executive director of TENT, a statewide trans org. We’re going to focus on policy and education, and engaging trans Texans throughout the state to galvanize the separate regional populations and unite to fight against any anti-trans legislation.

We really need to further educate people about the trans community and who we really are. It’s a sad day when we’re at the point where we need to humanize any group of people for them not to be targeted by discrimination and harmful legislation. That it’s such an aggressive push to erase people out of society just because we don’t know anybody or don’t understand a journey—that we have the arrogance to say that because we don’t agree with somebody, that they shouldn’t exist.

There are a lot of obstacles that trans people in Texas already face without horrible legislation aimed at them. Trying to slowly improve the quality of life overall is really critical. With TENT, I really value the ability to lend support and resources.”

Julian Tovar: Lifting up his community

By day, Julian Tovar works as a leader for Wells Fargo in San Antonio. In his free time, he’s a devoted LGBTQ activist. He’s a member of HRC’s national Board of Governors, and he serves as their area representative for South Texas.

When Tovar came out as gay in high school, his family had difficulty accepting it at first, so he poured himself into activism. He was saddened as he began to observe how LGBTQ people were treated. Tovar continued to devote himself to fighting for equality in whatever ways he can and being an agent of change. Through his work with HRC, he helps pro-equality candidates get elected—people who will stand up to the Trump administration’s anti-LGBTQ politics—and fights against anti-LGBTQ legislation across the state and country. After losing friends in the community to suicide, Tovar is also committed to personally befriending and supporting those who need it most.

“From a national perspective, the Trump-Pence Administration is by far the most anti-LGBTQ administration that we have ever seen and our biggest challenge. As part of the Human Rights Campaign, we are actively fighting and demonstrating the power of resistance. We are pushing back on absurd attempts to target the LGBTQ community while building a force to elect pro-equality candidates through our largest grassroots deployment in HRC’s history. Endorsing and electing pro-equality candidates across the country will be a key part to helping us halt the dangerous Trump-Pence agenda.

From a statewide perspective, the same holds true—except it is not an administration that is dangerous, it is legislators that continue to push discriminatory legislation at the state capitol. In Texas, we have a high priority to achieve basic equality in areas of parenting laws, non-discriminating laws, relationship recognition and religious refusal laws, hate crime laws, youth laws, and health and safety laws—all areas that impact LGBTQ individuals.

The other challenge is getting people to understand that this is more than just politics. We are not fighting for a political party, we are fighting for lives. To help lives. To keep lives. To protect lives. To ensure that someone’s life is treated with dignity and respect, equally and fairly.”

Kelly Marshall: Resisting by teaching self-care

Kelly Marshall, a nonbinary person in Austin, uses their gifts of healing as their way to fight back. Marshall started their career as a massage therapist, primarily for the queer community, but they found that it often just served as a bandaid for stressed people. Additionally, yoga training helped them have a personal breakthrough in terms of understanding their own gender identity.

Marshall trained in other modalities, and through their business, Spectrum Yoga Therapy, they offer a blend of one-on-one massage, yoga therapy, mindfulness, meditation, and reiki as holistic care for LGBTQ people. Marshall sees this work as much more than stress relief, but as a way for queer people to nurture and heal themselves amidst a toxic political environment. Marshall believes that being oppressed and marginalized can cause a litany of issues, so their practice empowers the LGBTQ community to stand up for their health and wellbeing.

“I think the LGBTQ+ community, especially in this current administration, is still dealing with being an oppressed minority. When you have a culture of oppression, there’s this commonality of trauma that we share of always being unsure about the safety of spaces we’re in, even queer spaces!

There’s meta layers to that too, as we’re becoming more aware and having these conversations amongst ourselves about privilege and access and whiteness and all those things. So I think what can happen is instead of getting still, and instead of looking within and doing the hard work of self-reflection, a lot of people will react. A lot of people will also numb out and will try to find ways to avoid the hard business of being in this community and being in the space that we are in now, culturally and politically.

I think these practices offer so much breathing room. An experience of relief, release, allowing, and an invitation to really take a stand for our own self-care and self-love, which I think is just revolutionary and so important. I really believe that queers are going to save the world, just by being our beautiful, authentic selves. Radical self-love, self-compassion, and the practices of self-care are so essential to our wellbeing as a community.

And what better way to change the world than by first protecting and loving the precious and beautiful weird, sensitive rebels that we are? The dominant culture often takes its cues from us queers. What if we lead by example and show them how much love we deserve by showering it on ourselves?”

Rev. Dr. William H. Knight: Preaching love amidst hate

Rev. Knight is the senior pastor at Metropolitan Community Church in San Antonio, an extraordinarily LGBTQ-friendly church that was founded by a gay man who had been kicked out of his church. Many of Rev. Knight’s congregants have experienced pain at the hands of the church, and he spreads a message of radical love and acceptance everywhere he goes. Rev. Knight gave a moving invocation at San Antonio Pride this year, and he’s also always a speaker at San Antonio’s Transgender Day of Remembrance service.

A gay man and a fierce advocate for equality, Rev. Knight is also politically active; he’s not afraid to preach about current events, and he serves on the San Antonio Mayor’s LGBTQ Advisory Committee.

“We’ll be talking about this [immigration crisis] on Sunday, July 22, because it’s been weighing so heavily on my heart. We pride ourselves on being a community of love and being an extended family, and when any members are hurting, we all are hurting. And this situation at the border is just unbelievably unacceptable.

We’re looking for how can we support these people who are coming to our shores looking for safety and looking for help and looking for someone to protect them, and instead what we’re doing is ripping babies from their mothers. It’s unbelievable. Yes, I accept that it happened, because that’s the reality. But where does your heart have to be to make that OK? What do you have to believe to be true where you can make that OK? I can’t think of one thing that is Christian or loving or even human that makes that OK.

So Sunday is Parents Day, and we want to celebrate the fact that we honor parents. But we don’t get to selectively honor the parents we think are doing well, we don’t get to honor the parents we think are great; we have to honor all parents. Because all of us have done the best we could with the parents we have. I firmly believe that even when we’ve had damaging childhoods, they were doing the best they could. They were trying; they were working out of the things they understood.

To carry anything other than love in our hearts for them damages us. I say, ‘My forgiving you is not about you; my forgiving you is so I can have a heart space so I have more room for love. I can’t afford to have anything in my heart for you but love, because I don’t intend to carry anything in my heart but love.’

See more powerful profiles on ProfilesinPride.com.

Emily Starbuck Gerson is a native Houstonian and full-time freelance writer currently based in San Antonio, Texas. She’s also the founder of the LGBTQ blog Profiles in Pride. In her free time, she loves volunteering for local LGBTQ nonprofits with her partner, doing yoga, cooking up a storm, and snuggling with her rescue dogs.