by Jeff Graham
For the past 10 years it has been an honor and a privilege to serve as the Executive Director of Georgia Equality. As I look back on this past decade, it’s rather amazing to think of where we were in 2008.
Back then, amidst the beginning of one of the worst financial upheavals that our country had ever seen, it was my job to take the vision of developing a bi-partisan fair majority in Georgia that my predecessor Cathy Woolard had so artfully crafted and turn it into a reality. I quickly realized that my first challenge – aside from keeping the doors of this small agency open – was to overcome the sense that proactive work to advance fairness, safety and opportunity for Georgia’s LGBTQ communities was something unachievable and best left to national organizations working on policies in DC that we hoped would trickle down to us here in the south. The sentiment that progressive change cannot happen here in Georgia, was sadly a self-fulfilling prophecy that has plagued our region for decades.
But as someone with a bit of a reputation for grit and tenacity, I knew it was work I had to do. This has never been a job for me. This is a fight for my state, my community and most importantly, my family.
Luckily the gray hairs that remind me I’m no longer the student organizer I was when I started this journey allow me to look back see how much we have accomplished. Nearly 30 years ago, when I first moved to Georgia to live with, Peter, the man I’m about to celebrate 30 years of partnership and marriage with, our love was considered a felony offense. I had to buy a dark suit, not for job interviews, but to attend the funerals of friends that filled my calendar. Being very outspoken and driving a car with pithy bumper-stickers such as “homophobia is a social disease” invited harassment and threats. One time on the outskirts of Ft. Benning in Columbus when we were chased down a lonely road by a car full of young men threatening to kill us. Another time driving down Clairmont Rd near Emory University, with a different group of men in a car making similar threats.
But even in those often-scary early years of the 1990s, I was challenged to stay and do this work. Atlanta was the cradle of the civil rights movement and the leader of the new south. There was a sense that change was not only possible, but imminent. As the decade progressed, we saw new treatments for HIV literally bring people back from the brink of death. We began to see open LGBT people take on visible leadership roles in all levels of government and society, including becoming elected officials themselves. And by the time the decade ended, we even saw an end to Georgia’s insidious sodomy law.
I lived through those amazing years and I realized that we can create the change we not only want to see in this world, we can create the change that we must see to make this world a better place.
That belief in the possibility that change can and will happen, is probably the single biggest asset I brought with me to this job in 2008.
And 2008 didn’t disappoint. Nationally, the fight for marriage equality became tangible that year when voters unexpectedly passed the notorious Prop 8 in California. Our movement learned from the AIDS activist movement so many of us were a part of and turned our anger into action. From coast to coast, we started doing the hard work of changing hearts and minds one at a time by sharing our stories of love and refusing to allow others to define our families as somehow less than theirs.
2008 was also the year when history was made with the election of Barack Obama as president, something that no one had thought possible just a few months before. Looking around the room tonight with the candidates and elected officials who have joined us, I feel that same sense of hope for what we can accomplish in Georgia in 2018.
I look at the board and staff of Georgia Equality and I see an amazing group of people bringing their talents, passion and commitment to this fight.
And I also celebrate you – our donors and our sponsors – for being with us every step of the way. This work wouldn’t happen without your steadfast belief that not only is change needed and possible, but that Georgia Equality plays a central role in that work.
At Evening for Equality this year we gathered to honor four remarkable individuals who embody the dedication it takes to make significant change, the tenacity it takes to work within systems that are not always safe or welcoming of us, the courage to share our personal stories and the hope that the next generation will accomplish things we couldn’t even dream of when we were their age.
Eric, Melanie, Gracie and Bennett, thank you all for showing us what hope looks like.
Our nation decided more than 50 years ago that when a business decides to open its doors to the public, that business should be open to all—a core principle that is at the heart of how we treat one another. That principle is more important than ever in light of the Masterpiece Cake decision. While the Court’s decision does not create a new license to discriminate, it also does not address the discrimination that millions of Americans still face. In more than half the country, our state laws do not explicitly protect LGBT Americans from discrimination in stores and restaurants, in the workplace, or in housing.
This truth is incredibly important for us to understand here in Georgia. For the last five years, our legislature has spent time debating and ultimately rejecting licenses to discriminate. We will have one of the largest turnovers in our state legislature when they convene in January. While there are some incredible candidates running for office, many of them here tonight. We must balance our hope for change with the pragmatism that gerrymandering and voter apathy are very strong forces to overcome.
We must continue the hard work of sharing our stories, being honest about our lives and be willing to engage in respectful conversation with those who do not yet agree with us. We must continue to have those hard conversations and be willing to work for understanding across the entire political spectrum. Trust me, I’m down at the capitol a lot. I sit in those hearings in which our families, our history and our very humanity is diminished, questioned and mischaracterized as a threat to others. But we must remain engaged.
We must urge the legislature to look carefully at the lessons to be learned from the Supreme Court decision and remind our legislators that they can find a way to protect people of faith, while also protecting members of the LGBT community. The Masterpiece Cake decision supports the contention that all people are worthy of protection against overt discrimination. And we have a unique opportunity in Georgia to lead the country in finding that middle ground where all people can be protected. The LGBT community, immigrants, women, those with disabilities and people of all faiths.
Frankly, that is the position that we have argued for the last several years, that someone’s sexual orientation, someone’s gender identity, is not and should not be considered an affront to someone’s faith. We must overcome that false dichotomy that somehow people of faith are on one side and the LGBT community is on the other.
And I hope that that spirit of finding a way forward of protecting all people against discrimination is the conversation we can finally start to have.