00:00:00INTERVIEW WITH ADRIAN SHANKER
FEBRUARY 4, 2022
MARY FOLTZ: My name is Mary Foltz and I'm here with Adrian Shanker to talk about
his life and experiences in LGBT organizations in the Lehigh Valley, as a part
of the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Oral History Project. Our project has
funding from ACLS this year and we are meeting today at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT
Community Center on February 4th, 2022. So first, Adrian, thank you for talking
with me today.
ADRIAN SHANKER: My pleasure.
MF: And I just want to start with a few business topics. Could you please state
your full name and spell it for me?
AS: Adrian Shanker. He, him pronouns. A-D-R-I-A-N S-H-A-N-K-E-R.
MF: Thank you, and will you please share your birth date?
AS: April 4th, 1987.
MF: And then a few questions about consent. I know you just signed a consent
form with me before the interview began. But just to orally have that consent,
00:01:00do you consent to this interview today?
AS: I do.
MF: Do you consent to having this interview transcribed?
AS: I do.
MF: Digitized and made publicly available online?
AS: Yes.
MF: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational
purposes in other formats?
AS: Yes.
MF: Okay. And do you understand you'll have 30 days to review the transcript of
the interview?
AS: Yes.
MF: Fabulous. And you can identify parts that you want to delete or you could
even withdraw the full interview if you wanted.
AS: Yeah.
MF: Okay, all right, business is out of the way. So I just want to start with a
question. Would you be willing to tell me a little bit about the early years of
your life?
AS: I was born in Manhattan and was raised in Westchester, New York in an
activist family. My grandfather was the president of the American Federation of
Teachers. My other grandfather was a gender theorist, is a gender theorist and
psychologist who studies masculinity. And so I grew up in a very interesting
home where -- very socially aware as a kid. I remember we had a family meeting
00:02:00about Magic Johnson's AIDS diagnosis. We talked about Keith Haring's Crack Is
Wack mural in New York City that we passed all the time.
I just remember growing up in a family that was just very socially aware. I
remember my dad telling me stories about getting arrested protesting nuclear
power or things along those lines. At one point my mom took me to a museum in
New York City that had a worm exhibit. I was scared of worms at the time I
guess. And I got the pleasure of holding them. I wasn't scared of worms after
that. But it was very much about like -- we celebrated Earth Day as a holiday in
my family. Grew up going to the Clearwater Music Festival, an environmental
justice festival and music festival in Westchester, New York.
And so my childhood was very much grounded around social awareness. I wouldn't
00:03:00say activism as much as social awareness in making individual decisions that
keep the earth and the community around us in mind. I was definitely taught as a
kid about kindness to other people and creating a kind world. And I grew up in a
secular Jewish home. Would say culturally Jewish but atheist or nonreligious.
And the values that I was taught were very much just about being a community
citizen, being somebody -- I remember in 1992 the presidential election. My mom
took me to vote with her. And so just some lessons I was taught really early.
My parents got divorced when I was seven. Which was in 1994. And my mom came out
to me and my brother, who was five years younger. So he was two and I was seven.
00:04:00And my brother and I moved in with my mom and her then partner. And so from a
young age I was really aware of social differences in terms of LGBTQ people,
although we didn't have that exact acronym yet. My dad was able to get
remarried, within a year, legally remarried. And my mom couldn't. And I was very
aware of the distinction and the difference.
I also grew up with a lot of cultural context around what it meant to be an
LGBTQ person because of my mom and some of her friends. Grew up going to Cape
Cod in the summers for example. And we'd be camping in Wellfleet and going to
Provincetown and so my childhood was definitely in a place where I was aware of
-- at the time the word I would have used was gay and lesbian people. And that
00:05:00was just as a kid.
MF: So you talk a lot about the kind of values of your family. And then how your
mom's relationship and your dad's experience post-divorce introduced you to
discrimination and structural homophobia frankly. How did you and your mom or
you and your dad talk about LGBTQ people in a more personal way? Or was it
really more about context?
AS: It was more about context. I remember for example -- I don't remember how
old I was. But I was young. I went to the Katonah Museum of Art with my dad. I
come from a family that has always really appreciated and loved art. And the
exhibit was by Pavel Tchelitchew and there was this painting that was like of
00:06:00the rear end of some animal. And I remember my dad saying something about like
how Tchelitchew was a gay artist. A gay Russian artist. And he used some
symbolism to let people know of his identity but he couldn't be as public and
out when he was painting. So just contextual comments like that. Or comments
like when we discussed Magic Johnson for example. And that was fairly early in
my life. And relatively early in the AIDS epidemic. So it was more contextual
conversations, more than personal ones.
MF: How did you discuss Magic Johnson? What was that conversation like in your family?
AS: I don't remember the details of it as much as I remember that it happened.
But I remember that the conversation included a sense of like respect for people
00:07:00with AIDS at a time when that was not always discussed. And I'm pretty sure that
this was before 1994. Because I think it was before my parents' divorce. But I
don't remember 100 percent. And so as someone who was younger than seven years
old, just the conversation about what it meant to respect people with whatever
was happening in their life at a time when a lot was unknown. Certainly looking
back a lot was unknown right at that time. But it wasn't like a family where we
can't talk about things that are maybe hard in the world. My family has always
been a family that talked about what was happening in the world.
MF: So you have a supportive family life. Imparting a variety of different
00:08:00values. Kindness, respecting people, navigating the early years of an epidemic
with kindness for others and a sense of urgency that we're talking about in
family spaces. What's happening to you in your educational experience?
AS: I'll also just add for the earth as well. And other sentient beings. Today
I've been -- I call myself an herbivore, but a vegetarian, for a long time. And
I remember when I was a kid -- my mom tells me I was born to be a vegetarian,
and that I remember going to a Chinese restaurant and they had a fish tank and
there was also fish on the menu and I looked through the menu and I pointed to
the tank and I said, "Fish." Like people would eat those beautiful creatures, I
can't believe that.
And so as a kid I ate like very little meat. Only the kind of stuff that you
don't always have control over your diet as a young kid. But in high school I
00:09:00became vegetarian. It's also the same time I became an activist. And
environmental justice has always been pretty important to me but at some point I
made a decision to prioritize LGBTQ activism for my own career. But I definitely
grew up in a community and a family where we talked about these as kind of in
some ways intersecting issues, although we didn't use that language.
MF: You're moving in a way that -- this is where my question was going. What was
your educational life like?
AS: Oh, sorry.
MF: No, no need to apologize. And I think that's an interesting segue because
you're thinking about activism maybe in high school. So could you reflect a
little bit upon your educational experiences?
AS: I was an okay student in high school. I struggled a lot as a student
actually in high school and earlier. I got bullied a lot in middle school
including for having gay moms and so for me as someone who struggled a lot in
00:10:00those ways I also -- when I became an activist in high school, it was very much
about claiming my own identity but also claiming my place in the school as an
activist. And I found ways to be involved.
So I really had a lot of negative feelings about going to gym class for example.
Which felt very traumatic. And so sometime in high school I found a way I could
volunteer on a high school committee that happened to meet at the same time as
gym. And I never had to go. But it let me also become an activist. And I had a
lot of support.
So in high school I co-started a gay-straight alliance. And I graduated from Fox
Lane High School in Bedford, New York in 2004. I think 2004. And I started with
00:11:00some other people a gay-straight alliance that was the first time that high
school had one. And I remember actually when I was in middle school we had a
meeting with a guidance counselor in high school to transition each family. And
I remember my mom asking the guidance counselor, "Is there a gay-straight
alliance here?" And I remember being like, "Mom." And the answer was no, there
isn't one. And I had heard about this other student who was gay and kind of
picked on and ended up going to an alternative school. And I was a little
concerned about "am I going to a place that's not welcoming".
But in high school coming out and becoming an activist were very intertwined.
And it was also 2003 so it was the time when -- so I might have graduated in
00:12:002005. We'll verify. But 2003 was the start of the Iraq War or the invasion of
Iraq. And March 19th, 2003 I led a student walkout of class to a sit-in in the
front of the school, 150 students. And a couple teachers joined us. I don't
think the school was thrilled about that. And nobody got disciplined. But for me
becoming an activist was very much am I an activist for animal rights, am I an
activist for ending the death penalty, am I an activist for stopping -- we knew
we were going to stop that war, Bush's war. And then I was very passionate about
LGBTQ rights.
At the time President Bush used an hour of his State of the Union in 2004 to
00:13:00condemn families like mine and prioritizing a Federal Marriage Amendment, a full
hour. And it was right after the Massachusetts decision on marriage, Goodridge
decision, where John Kerry and every other major national Democrat except for
Barney Frank condemned the decision. And so I was coming into my activism at the
same exact time. And feeling very angry. Feeling very -- it's like teen angst
mixed with like animosity towards Bush. And really found my activist voice. But
like most people that age I really didn't know what to do with that. Me and a
couple other students, we were invited to a staff meeting for the teachers where
we got to talk about some issues for gay students. We had our meetings. We did
ask the school to change one of their policies. I don't remember if they did.
00:14:00Their nondiscrimination policy to include sexual orientation.
And I actually started going to -- my mom had always gone to this conference in
White Plains, New York. It used to be called the Healing the Hurt conference.
But it was run by GLSEN the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network's Hudson
Valley chapter. My mom is a teacher. So she always went as professional
development because teachers could get continuing ed credits. But they also
allowed students to come as well, and when I was in high school I actually went
with my mom one year.
And I brought some teachers from my high school, I convinced them to go. And
that was really transformative for me because I ended up meeting the leader of
GLSEN Hudson Valley, her name is Mary Jane Karger. Actually she's from the
Lehigh Valley originally, which is cool, she's from Hellertown. And went to
Muhlenberg College as well. One of the first generations of women there I
believe. And so she became a really important activist for me. She was a
00:15:00straight woman, a parent of a gay kid, and she was really the first major LGBTQ
activist I knew. And I was very inspired by her and by the other activists that
I met at this conference.
And remember going back to my school feeling like we can do this, we can become
activists here. I also remember being surprised that I didn't really lose any
friends in high school when I came out. And I thought that I would because it
was a time before mass acceptance for a lot of LGBTQ people, we're still like
early 2000s, so in terms of representation in mass media it still wasn't there.
I think Will & Grace was on. But that was probably it.
MF: Do you remember what it felt like before you came out? Were you anxious
about it or --
00:16:00
AS: Not really, because it was really a self-realization more than a coming out.
It was really a this is who I am and now I'm just going to tell people. It
wasn't an internal struggle. I had a very supportive family. And I was kind of
in the group of students that would be self-defined as like punk rockers. So at
the time many of them identified as bisexual which was fairly common among like
punk rock-identified high school students in the early 2000s. Some of them still
identify as queer or bi. But some don't.
But my friend group was kind of alternative. Which was perhaps helpful for also
my own self-realization. And I will say that like while I'm too young to have
been there during punk, right? Punk rock was my first understanding of queerness
00:17:00and I was really into some of the music and photographs. And I actually don't
enjoy that music at all now. But then I did because it was kind of public
queerness. And it felt very affirming as a high school student. Pictures of
Billy Idol. Or listening to words of Iggy Pop. Or like folks like that. Lou
Reed, who were just so queer and so public about it. Felt very affirming.
MF: With the GSA you described working on a nondiscrimination ordinance or
promoting that at school, did you have any other specific things that the GSA
was doing? Was it more social? Was it --
00:18:00
AS: It was a mix. It was a mix of social and also a little bit political. And it
was about political but with a small p. It was like political for the school, it
was like trying to make our school inclusive. So it was thinking about well, how
come health class doesn't include us, or how come gym classes feel very unsafe,
or things along those lines. So we would try to bring guest speakers into the
school. Or we would do things to try to make those kinds of changes. It wasn't
thinking broader.
I do remember though I was invited as an out student to speak. My first public
speaking thing was actually with Planned Parenthood in Westchester County where
they invited me to speak as a student voice about comprehensive sex education.
They were doing a panel at the public library. And so that was very empowering
00:19:00for me because I was asked to share my own experience about why the lack of
comprehensive sex education was so challenging and so problematic. High school
by the way is also where I claimed my Jewish identity.
So I grew up culturally Jewish. I would say like Jewish heritage but religiously
atheist, a secular family. But after my parents got divorced when I was in
second grade, shortly after that I asked my mom if I could go to Hebrew school.
And my mom was a very supportive mom, but I don't think it's what she was going
for. But she did find one. We joined a Reform synagogue in Bedford, New York
called Shaaray Tefila. And my mom was actually back in school studying to become
a teacher, so she ended up teaching in the religious school there while she was
in her graduate program. And I really loved going to Hebrew school. And I'm not
00:20:00sure why. But I really did. I loved learning about something I actually wanted
to learn about.
And in high school I got very involved in youth group kind of programs that
really helped me solidify my identity as both Jewish and as a queer Jew.
Although I wouldn't have used the word queer in high school. I went to Jewish
summer camp and met other LGBTQ Jewish students and got very engaged in activism
from a Jewish lens. Progressive activism. And actually I remember in high school
I went on a weekend trip or a small trip with my synagogue's youth group to
Washington, DC where we were meeting with members of Congress on a variety of
00:21:00issues. And it was through the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
And the issue that I was able to talk about was the hate crimes bill that hadn't
been passed yet. And actually it was in a meeting with Congresswoman Nita Lowey,
she's now retired. But I came out during that, while I was speaking to the
congresswoman, it was the first time that my rabbi learned that I was gay. The
rabbi I grew up with. And I just had never told him because he didn't have -- he
had never said anything from what Jews would call the bimah but Christians would
call a pulpit that made me feel like he was super embracing.
We were the only gay family I knew in my synagogue. It was a very large
synagogue. He had never talked about gay rights or marriage equality or anything
00:22:00along those lines. I couldn't remember a single instance of that happening. And
so I didn't really know. And he was somebody who was seen as very powerful, very
tone-setting, for what people would think or believe in.
And I used that opportunity to speak directly to my congresswoman about an issue
that was important to me as a gay high school kid and I didn't care that my
rabbi was there hearing it. And afterwards he said something to me. He said,
like, "I didn't know you were gay." And I said, "Well, you didn't ask." But it
just came out naturally. It wasn't an internal struggle as much as it was
self-realization and becoming an activist.
MF: What happened after that with your rabbi? Did he start speaking about
inclusivity? Did that change your relationship?
00:23:00
AS: It changed our relationship a little bit. But mostly -- in a positive way. I
also worked at the synagogue as a Hebrew tutor when I was in high school. And I
was very very involved there. It's also around the time I started wearing a
yarmulke all the time in the middle of high school as well. It was after Daniel
Pearl was murdered. There was a book of essays that was published called I Am
Jewish. People were writing about the importance of being visible as who you
are. And so for me it was connected also to being visible as a gay person.
As a high school person I had like rainbow belts and there was like pins and
stickers and buttons everywhere. And also before that I had liberty spikes and
then a very poorly kept Mohawk that turned into a mullethawk and then that was
00:24:00kind of replaced with a yarmulke at some point. And it was about being visible.
And it's probably when I started to identify more spiritually or religiously as
Jewish as well.
MF: So let's move a little bit further. What happens after high school to you?
Where are you going next? How does the activity journey, your spiritual journey
continue into the next years of your life?
AS: Yeah. So after high school I went to Muhlenberg College in Allentown, which
is how I ended up in the Lehigh Valley as well. And I came into Muhlenberg
basically expecting to eventually become a rabbi. And I was very excited about
that actually. And there was a lot of reasons why I chose Muhlenberg for that
00:25:00reason. But I came in ready to go as an activist. And I had all the angst and
all the passion and really no know-how for how to operationalize queer activism.
And I remember early in college, probably my first month, there was a series
that Muhlenberg has called Center for Ethics where they have a theme for the
year and they bring guest speakers throughout the year, and they're often tied
to extra credit in classes if you attend and then do a write-up or things
colleges do. And Kate Bornstein was one of the first speakers. And I didn't know
who she was, but I went, and it was recommended by one of my classes. And I also
had the attitude that I really wanted to learn everything queer, so I was going
to go. And she did kind of part talk and part performance. And I felt very
00:26:00inspired. And I still remember some of the things that she said in that talk my
first year of college.
And I went to hear other people speak as well. And some of them also queer in
different ways. And I joined the college's gay-straight alliance, which I didn't
create, It existed before me, right away. And I remember the first meeting they
were like making stickers and doing like erotic writing group and things like
that. But it didn't feel activist-y to me and I kind of spoke up and I said,
like, "Can we do some activism?" And people were like, "Yeah, sure, go do it."
So I ended up doing that, and a lot of other folks' interest was about like
let's get a group together to go dance at the Stonewall on Thursday nights.
00:27:00Stonewall in Allentown. Or things that were more social. And my interest was
more political.
Six weeks into starting as a student I was in the president of the college's
office demanding that the nondiscrimination policy be updated to include gender
identity and I e-mailed him and I was like, "I noticed in the code of conduct
that it does not currently include this and I would like this to be changed."
And I got this e-mail back saying, like, "Why don't we sit down and talk about
it?" And we did. And about six weeks later I got an e-mail from his assistant or
from him saying that it was going to be changed and that the board had approved
it. And I think they thought like okay, he's good now. And I turned around and
within like a couple weeks or maybe a couple months with the gay-straight
alliance we were petitioning the college to create gender-neutral housing. It
00:28:00would have been the first college in the Lehigh Valley to do so.
And that summer I took an internship at the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition,
GenderPAC, founded and led by Riki Wilchins, no longer in existence. And my work
there was focused on gender-neutral housing actually as a national -- this was
before it was very common. This was in summer of 2006. And so therefore I
started college in fall 2005 and graduated high school in fall 2004 by the way
-- spring 2005. So yeah. Interning at GenderPAC. Coming back to Muhlenberg. And
really fighting for gender-neutral housing. And it became a fight that outlasted
my time at Muhlenberg. We won small victories. This dorm building can be
gender-neutral. Or as long as it's not for first year students. Or case-by-case basis.
00:29:00
So yeah, the fight for gender-neutral housing in Muhlenberg College was a really
critical part of my activist journey. It's kind of how I learned how to be an
activist in a more effective way. I learned how to pick my battles better. I
learned how to pick targets better when it comes to activism, who can actually
make the changes we want. It also taught me how to build strong coalitions and
bring in the right voices. There was other parts of that activism on campus as a
student whether it was about policy changes like housing policy or about other
types of things to ensure that LGBTQ students had the kind of college that we
all really deserved. And again it was a time that's a little different than now
where that's common.
At the time I actually remember the president of the college who was someone who
I now consider a friend, but at the time one of the first things he said was,
00:30:00"Well, do we have any transgender students?" And my response to him was, "Where
do you think people would want to sleep? You haven't created a space that people
would feel comfortable being out as trans." And I don't actually remember any
out trans students then at the time in 2006. There were obviously trans
students. Today there's many. It's a college with a trans student activist club.
But that I think happens in part with a college that came to embrace the
policies that needed to happen to make people feel included.
Another thing happened when I was in college, which is that I got connected with
-- so the Hillel director at Muhlenberg, she's no longer alive, but her name was
Patti Mittleman. And she was a very important influence in my life. And one of
00:31:00the things that she did was she actually told me -- well, before that I had
asked the community service office on campus if they could help me find an LGBT
organization I could volunteer at. I had grown up going to the LGBT center in
White Plains, New York for the youth program, and before that for a program they
had for parents with gay kids. And when I moved here to go to college in
Allentown I was looking around, there was no LGBT center.
And I asked, "So is there an organization I can volunteer with?" And they took
two weeks and came back and said, "We can't find one." And I remember
complaining about this to Patti Mittleman, the Hillel director. And she
basically said, "You have to meet these two people, Liz Bradbury and Patricia
Sullivan." And she connected me to them. We actually had one of the first events
that I organized as a college student was for Liz to actually come speak on
campus. And we did an exhibit of a photography series that she had created at
the time about marriage equality, believe it was called Faces of Inequality. And
00:32:00as a student I actually in 2007 joined the board of directors for an
organization that Liz and Trish had founded called Pennsylvania Diversity Network.
And before that in 2006 my first time lobbying in Pennsylvania was against the
Pennsylvania Marriage Amendment in March 2006. And I got on a bus with some
people who had become close friends and fellow activists. Reverend Goudy from
Metropolitan Community Church [inaudible] Donna Cruciani from PPL Corporation,
the head of their LGBT resource group before she retired, Steve Black, who had
led PA-GALA, he's unfortunately no longer alive. There was a few other people on
that trip as well. And we met with legislators and as a college student it felt
00:33:00very empowering.
It was also NRA lobby day in Harrisburg that day and I remember coming back and
talking to one of my professors, Gary Jones, who taught a class I was taking
called "Radicalism in American History." And I was so upset that there was all
these NRA people in the capitol. He said to me, he said, "Adrian, if you want to
be effective working on gay rights in Pennsylvania you have to let them have
their guns." And he said, "What I'm telling you is pick your issue and stick
with it." So that was really when I started really thinking I have to pick my
issue and stick with it and that issue is going to be LGBTQ issues. And it was a
time before I was thinking about cross-movement solidarity and thinking a little
bit about intersectionality. But in terms of movements like gun control and gay
rights for example, seeing them as separate.
00:34:00
MF: You used this interesting phrase earlier, which is related to what you just
shared. You said something like, "I learned how to pick my targets and think
about effective ways or effective strategies." I'm just curious if you could
maybe expand on that. During your college activism years what did that mean for
you? Learning effective targets, effective strategies. What did that look like
during that time period? What were some of the most important lessons that you
were taking from that time period?
AS: Looking back I can remember getting responses from people around our
gender-neutral housing campaign that might not have been positive, and reacting
to them, without really thinking through how important is it to win over that
specific person. They're not the decision maker. So learning how to figure out
who actually needs the time and energy devoted to winning them over, who has to
be won over to be part of a strong coalition, who has to be brought in as a
00:35:00clear advocate.
So for example the college didn't have any kind of LGBTQ resource center,
director, or anything like that. And we had petitioned the college to appoint
someone as an LGBT liaison. And they did and her name was Anita Kelly. And we
ended up going to Anita and saying, "You have the administrators' ears. We need
you as a staff person to really be our advocate here."
And we went to the housing folks, Jan Schumacher and Aaron Bova, and asked them,
"You're the people they're going to ask about how this will be operationalized.
How can we help you understand this? Here's the other colleges that have it. Can
you call your counterparts there and see how it works for them?" So learning how
to win over the right people instead of what in the political world we would
call a blank canvas. Trying to go and just get anyone we can, but those may not
00:36:00be the most influential people or most necessary people to win on the issue we
need to win on.
MF: You talked about the GenderPAC. You talked about working with PDN,
Pennsylvania Diversity Network. Could you talk a little bit about GenderPAC? Was
that a transformational moment for you? Did that prepare you to work with PDN?
Were there specific things you learned at the GenderPAC?
AS: A little bit. Yeah. My internship with GenderPAC was actually through the
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. They had a summer program for college
students where you could take two classes and be part of a cohort and also do an
internship. And so I did that. And being at GenderPAC I was very excited to go,
before I got there I read Riki Wilchins's two books at the time, Read My Lips
and Queer Theory, Gender Theory. And I went in so excited. And then I was given
00:37:00the responsibility of working on this gender-neutral housing campaign.
One of my supervisors there was Tyrone Hanley who is now at National Center for
Lesbian Rights. And he was somebody who was very engaged in queer and trans
activism and probably a little bit more radical than I was at the time as a
college student. And the other staff there was also very very engaged and interested.
One thing I learned from being at GenderPAC though was that there was kind of a
dismissiveness of the so-called like mainstream LGBTQ activism. And I wasn't
really sure that I agreed with that. But I also wasn't sure I disagreed. And I
felt like I didn't know enough. When I was at GenderPAC though they let me go to
-- one of the requirements of the program at the Religious Action Center was to
go do a day on the Hill, a legislative day. And so GenderPAC let me go and meet
00:38:00with Pennsylvania legislators. And Rick Santorum was one of them.
And so I got a meeting with Rick Santorum's staff person, and what GenderPAC
sent me in to do with each of the meetings was to ask if they would sign a
pledge saying that they wouldn't discriminate against LGBT people in their
offices. So just their office staff. And Santorum signed it. And he signed it
right in front of me. And then I got a picture with him. And so I came back to
the office next morning and they were like floored. And this was the guy who --
I don't need to explain who Rick Santorum was.
MF: But you can still explain for other people.
AS: There's enough people can google. But he was a very conservative, very very
conservative senator, later became a presidential candidate. He was awful, he
00:39:00really hated LGBTQ people. And he signed this thing. His chief of staff was gay
by the way. A gay Black man actually. But Rick Santorum was very homophobic. And
he signed this pledge. And so the next day GenderPAC puts out this press
release. And a couple days later I get a call from a reporter at Agape Press, a
genuinely Christian press, and the reporter says, "Are you the homosexual from
Pennsylvania who got Rick Santorum to cave on the family?" And I was like, "Who
are you?"
But it made national news, Rick Santorum signing this pledge. He then rescinded
his signature. And actually tried to say he didn't sign it. But we produced the
photograph of him with me and it kind of was hard for him to say he didn't sign
it. He then said he didn't understand it. So it was a formative time in terms of
00:40:00becoming an activist. I also think that I still didn't really know what I didn't
know. But being in DC, I spent that summer and the next summer in DC. The next
summer I was at Faith in Public Life, which was a program at the time of Center
for American Progress, a Clinton alumni think tank. So a slightly left of center
think tank.
And as this was 2007 I was working with faith leaders to help them take action
on progressive social justice issues. And basically to get them to stop talking
about abortion and gay marriage and talk about instead hunger and homelessness
and ending torture. And one of the issues at the time was the farm bill, which
includes SNAP funding, nutrition funding. And so Jim Wallis, Pastor Wallis,
famously said that here at a protest at the Capitol when I was doing that work,
said, "The budget is a moral document." And that's something I've always thought
00:41:00about for my activism going forward. The budget is a moral document.
And so that summer was equally formative because I started to really think about
the intersection between faith and queer rights. Even though my work there did
not include LGBTQ issues, it was about how do we utilize people of faith to help
tell a story that's compelling for the broader public. And that's something that
I really have continued to use in my activism. When I was at college though,
towards the end of my time at Muhlenberg, I started working through PDN,
Pennsylvania Diversity Network, on municipal policy change. I had been involved
in local politics here as a college student. I led the College Democrats at
Muhlenberg as a student. During the Obama campaign I led the College Democrats
through that with registrations, 80 percent of students showing up to vote in Allentown.
00:42:00
We hosted events with Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, all during that
election. And I was the organizer of all of those. So I was very visible and
engaged in the Democratic Party efforts as a college student. I volunteered on
Sam Bennett's congressional campaign in 2008. A very involved volunteer. I
became really active with the Lehigh County Democratic Party as a college
student as well. So I was engaged politically, and had helped to elect a number
of city council people, and had good relationships with a number of people on
city council in Allentown. And after getting them elected I really wanted to do
something about LGBTQ rights in Allentown.
And so I talked with Liz and Trish and Liz encouraged that the thing that was
needed was domestic partner benefits. And at the time it didn't feel like the
00:43:00most compelling issue to me. But she made a good case. And I definitely felt
passionate about it. And we ended up working with -- he's now a judge but then
he was a city council person and council president, Dr. Michael D'Amore. And we
asked if he would introduce legislation which we were going to provide.
Liz was able to work with Suzanne Goldberg at the Columbia University gender and
sexuality program, who was able to get us a draft of legislation. And then I
brought in some local Democratic Party-affiliated lawyers, especially Tim
Brennan, who really understood the municipal law process in Allentown. And we
were able to get this passed through with unanimous support in Allentown. And I
think it passed after I graduated. It passed I think in January, either 2010 or
00:44:002011. And from then I was really set on working on municipal policy for a while.
I started to actually work on the same issue with the city of Easton. So we were
able to get domestic partner benefits for city workers in Allentown and Easton.
What's important to remember as a lookback is that before marriage equality if
you worked for an employer that provided spousal health care, if you were a gay
couple you could not put your spouse on health care unless they had domestic
partner benefits policies. Even if you could get that you had to pay federal tax
on the value of the benefits. But the ability to actually access health care was
such a big challenge.
It was before the Affordable Care Act as well. So the Affordable Care Act passed
00:45:00in 2010. But it wasn't fully implemented for a little bit after that. So it was
a very propulsive movement. We were in the movement for marriage equality and it
felt also that winning partner benefits was kind of a vote in support of
marriage equality. And that actually came up during these council meetings
saying, like, "We wish we didn't have to do this, Pennsylvania should have
marriage equality." So after winning in Allentown we started, or around that
same time we also introduced identical legislation in Easton.
And with each of these we did something that wasn't common in the Lehigh Valley,
where we did public signing ceremonies. We had public events for the mayors to
sign these laws, and to generate a lot of press on this issue. Press was really
important because we were trying to win hearts and minds on marriage. So I
worked on the Allentown ordinance very closely with Liz. I kind of led the
effort on the Easton ordinance. And also on passing nondiscrimination in
Bethlehem, which passed in 2011. Bethlehem at the time was the largest city in
00:46:00Pennsylvania that did not have a nondiscrimination law. And it was an entirely
Democratic city council with a Democratic mayor. And the mayor, John Callahan,
supported the legislation but wasn't moving on it.
He said he supported it and he had this big press conference and then nothing
was happening with it. And so of the entire city council only two were
supportive. Karen Dolan and Willie Reynolds. And the two of them became our only
two very strong champions. The rest of council was lukewarm at best or at the
beginning even a little bit negative. And we were able to bring them all around
but it was a very challenging time that actually included really really really
having to work against -- the Catholic diocese sent a lobbyist to try to change
the legislation.
They knew we would pass the legislation, so they put all these poison pill
00:47:00amendments in, a sunset clause that would end the ordinance automatically after
three years. An amendment that would gut all the powers of the human relations
commission. So the ordinance would exist but nobody could be held accountable by
it. Amendment after amendment after amendment.
The city solicitor in Bethlehem also made major procedural errors and we had to
redo an entire city council meeting. Each meeting was over four hours long.
Hundreds of people testified. And it was mixed between pro and con. The people
who testified against us were using some horrible anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and
language. Suggesting that all gay people are child molesters or things like
that. It was really really beyond the pale, especially for 2011. And to be
honest we did not expect it to pass unanimously.
The council president at the time, Bob Donchez, who then became mayor, ended up
00:48:00voting for it. But he was the last person in Bethlehem to decide how he felt
about this issue and many other issues. And Dave DiGiacinto, who was on council,
he's no longer alive, he was not sure if he was supportive. And then we had two
council members who were, one of them had Parkinson's, Gordon Mowrer, the former
mayor, and the other one had other health issues that really made it difficult
to determine how aware she was of the issues that she was voting on, Jean
Belinski. There was really no way we could communicate with her directly and it
was a really big challenge actually.
So what we ended up with was a unanimous nondiscrimination law that really set
the table for starting to pass these again. At the time Pennsylvania had I
believe 17 municipalities that had nondiscrimination laws. Today in 2022 it's
00:49:00more than 60, might even be 70. But at the time we were talking about less than
20. And that kind of helped to transition into some future activism as well.
MF: As you're sharing the story, that whole project starts in college, starts
with work with PDN, but then continues into 2011.
AS: I graduated college in 2009 and I stayed in Allentown. I stayed in Allentown
actually because -- two reasons. One, I didn't get the job that I wanted
elsewhere. And two was I thought I could actually make a difference here. So I
ended up working professionally in Civic Theatre of Allentown where I was on
their fundraising team. I was the only person doing fundraising there. And I
ended up leaving that at some point to go work for SEIU Local 32BJ, where I
organized in support of food service workers for a company called Sodexo that
00:50:00paid the workers very very poorly. And so I was working on a campaign to
unionize these employees and I was their faith organizer, so I worked with
Lutheran and Jewish clergy to help them take action in support of food service workers.
Around that time I also joined the board of Equality Pennsylvania, which had
just been restructured by one of their funders. Basically they had a complete
restructuring. The entire board and staff except for one board member and one
staff member that stayed. And it was a rebuild. And so I was brought on to the
board and was very excited. And the person who recruited me for the board was
Brian Sims, who is now a state representative, but then he was a policy attorney
for Gay and Lesbian Lawyers of Philadelphia, called GALLOP. And so a whole new
board was being built. And there was early conversations at Equality
00:51:00Pennsylvania about where do we go from here.
There was a lot against us. It was a conservative legislature, Republican
governor, Governor Corbett. And a real propulsive need to ensure that we could
demonstrate impact to funders. So I said, "Let's win municipal policies. We're
not going to win at the state level." And so we did. So that was the push for
Bethlehem, it was actually through my role with Equality PA. And then Equality
Pennsylvania ended up getting some grants to work on municipal policy change
around the state, passing nondiscrimination protections around Pennsylvania, and
building public support for nondiscrimination through that process.
About a year into my time on the board at Equality Pennsylvania I was on my way
to a board meeting in Erie, and I got a call from Brian, who said, "I'm going to
00:52:00be stepping down from the board because I'm running for the state house against
Babette Josephs," who was one of our champions on the issues, champions in the
state house. And he was going to run against her because she was becoming less
and less effective at winning the change. She was very vocal and very effective
at getting media and public support, but not always as good at actually working
with the other side to get results that we needed. So Brian said he was going to
run against her. And I let him know that I would be running for the president of
Equality Pennsylvania's board.
I was unanimously elected and I was 24 years old. And the organization, we were
also creating a PAC. And a 501(c)(4) entity. So (c)(3) entity is charitable,
tax-deductible. Equality Pennsylvania Educational Fund, that's technically what
I was president of. And then the (c)(4) is a political organization, can endorse
00:53:00in elections, etc. And then the PAC can actually give money to candidates. So
three separate legal entities. And I was the president of the educational fund
side but also on the board of the others. And so we were kind of building our
political arm up.
We were starting to make a real impact and build power for LGBTQ Pennsylvanians.
We talked with candidates. I remember Det Ansinn was running for Bucks County
commissioner. And at one point he said, "What are you looking for in
candidates?" And we said that we wanted candidates who would talk to -- we
wanted front porch Democrats, not back porch Democrats. We wanted Democrats that
would talk to us, talk about our issues, when they're sitting on their front
porch, not only in a private party in the back of their house where their
neighbors can't see them.
We wanted them to talk about LGBTQ issues everywhere they talked, not just when
they were talking to us. We wanted them to be public about their stances, not
private about it. It wasn't going to be like a little pinkie swear, I promise I
00:54:00won't vote against your rights. It was going to be on your website as part of
your platform. And we started working with a lot of candidates across the state.
One of them, for example, Erin Molchany, was running for the state house in
Pittsburgh, and we were her first endorsement, or one of her first endorsements.
And she became one of our strong champions.
Eugene DePasquale was running for auditor-general in 2012 and we were very
heavily involved in his race. I ended up on his transition team, where I drafted
rewrites to the personnel manual around LGBTQ inclusion for auditor-general
staff. And that was the role that Equality Pennsylvania was playing, was
victories where we could find them. Some of them were behind the scenes. Not an
issue I worked on, but the former executive director of Equality Pennsylvania,
Ted Martin, worked with Governor Corbett's team to actually get a change in the
00:55:00driver's license policy to change a person's gender on the driver's license in a
more simplified way. And part of the agreement was that there wouldn't be a
press release, it would just happen. So it was changes where we could make the
changes happen. Sometimes behind the scenes, sometimes very public. That was
really the goal.
My time at Equality Pennsylvania overlapped with the fight for marriage in
Pennsylvania. Because I was on the board from 2010 to 2013. I served as
president 2011 to 2013. And it was a very propulsive time for LGBTQ rights.
Literally every day we were seeing different things happen in the national news
around LGBTQ rights. On marriage and on other issues. Around "Don't Ask, Don't
Tell." Whole bunch of issues were changing. We were watching history as we were
making it. It felt so energizing.
But I was doing that work as a volunteer. And I was driving across the state as
a volunteer. Not receiving reimbursements for mileage or covering my costs of
00:56:00this travel. And I was also just a couple years out of college, I didn't have a
lot of money. But this was what was so important to me. And it definitely felt
like a second full-time job. And I wanted to do this work full-time at some
point. A couple other things happened during my time with Equality Pennsylvania
that were pretty formative.
In 2013 it was the fiftieth anniversary of the national March on Washington,
which was called the National Action to Realize the Dream. And I was actually
invited to speak at it as one of six out queer speakers. It was actually very
important for me because my grandfather was very close friends with Bayard
00:57:00Rustin, who organized the original 1963 "I Have a Dream" March on Washington.
And Bayard was not allowed to speak at the march because he was gay.
And there were six LGBTQ people invited to speak at this one at the fiftieth
anniversary. I was so thrilled to be one of them and really the only state-based
leader. All the others were national leaders. Randi Weingarten, the current
president of American Federation of Teachers. Mary Kay Henry, president of SEIU.
There was leaders from Human Rights Campaign. And there were other LGBTQ people.
But I was the only one from a state equality organization.
And that was just a very powerful opportunity in my activist career. Yeah. The
decision to leave Equality Pennsylvania was in large part because I really
wanted to do this work full-time. And yeah, I really wanted to do this work
00:58:00full-time. Before I go into starting the center, I want to talk about what it
was like to get married during that time. So my ex-husband and I, his name is
Brandon, we decided to get married right in between Windsor and Obergefell. So
this was a time when Pennsylvania Diversity Network used to have annual freedom
to marry rallies at usually the Lehigh Courthouse. One time we did it at the
Northampton County Courthouse. But annual rallies. And people would go in and
they would actually request a marriage license.
I think it's important just to remember what it was like in that moment first.
So it was a moment where there was a lot of excitement and energy for marriage
equality and still an enormous amount of lack of public support, including from
Democratic politicians. Barack Obama when he ran for president originally didn't
support marriage equality. So it was this time period where there was a lot of
00:59:00energy and still lack in public support. After the Windsor decision which
granted basically full faith and credit to marriages for the benefit of federal
benefits, so if you were a resident of Pennsylvania but lived in Connecticut and
you got married in Connecticut you could get federal benefits, even if you
didn't get state benefits in Pennsylvania. So not full faith and credit, but
actually just federal recognition.
And it was also a time when the federal government was interpreting every single
marriage benefit that they could as either state of celebration or state of
residence. So for every guideline you could imagine, Social Security
Administration says they'll recognize marriages based on state of celebration,
where you got married. Federal Election Commission says state of celebration for
if you can count as a spouse for higher ability to donate to campaigns. Every
01:00:00single agency, every single rule was making an interpretation after Windsor. And
it was a time when there was just a lot of energy.
My ex-husband Brandon and I decided to get married during that time. Then we had
two weddings. The first one was a legal wedding where we started at the Lehigh
County Courthouse and we were joined by our parents. Actually our parents
didn't. I think Brandon's parents were here. My parents lived in New York, but I
think they met us up there. But we were also joined by a reporter from Morning
Call, Colby Itkowitz, who's now at Washington Post. And Jen Colletta, who was
then the editor of Philadelphia Gay News.
So they started with us, recorded us not being able to get a marriage license.
It was not a shocker. We knew what the law was. But we paid the fee. We got a
marriage rejection certificate which I still have, stamped. It says rejected or
01:01:00denied and it says the reason why we were denied, because two people of same
gender. We got in the car, drove to Darien, Connecticut. Went into the town
hall. Darien was the closest place to Lehigh Valley where you could get married
in one day without a waiting period. And many people from Lehigh Valley got
married in Darien for that reason. Got our marriage license there.
My mom and her partner and I believe my dad joined us there as well. And then we
went to a beach, Pear Tree Point Beach, right in Darien. Got married on the
beach, very quick ceremony, officiated by Reverend Debra Haffner, one of the
most vocal faith leaders nationally for sexual freedom and LGBTQ rights. And
01:02:00then as we were driving back, as the reporter Colby Itkowitz described it, when
we crossed from New York to New Jersey, our relationship was given -- it was
demoted to civil union. And when we crossed the free bridge into Easton we were
sitting in a car together as complete strangers.
And so that was the experience of getting married then. We then had a Jewish
wedding ceremony as well, but the experience of getting legally married at that
time was also really formative to my activism because it was such a hurdle. I
remember that we got estate plans drawn up that we had to have 14 documents
between the two of us, 14 documents. Because of being able to protect each
other. HIPAA release forms. Things that are automatic for people who are legally
01:03:00married, but that we knew since our marriage wasn't going to be recognized in
Pennsylvania, we had to have all these additional documents drawn up by lawyers.
And that's just something that's important to remember now. Sometimes it's easy
to criticize movements in the past for not going far enough. And frankly there
were valid criticisms of the marriage movement. But one thing that we shouldn't
forget was that for people who wanted to get married there was real serious
reasons why they needed to. And it wasn't only about stigma, and it wasn't only
about feeling equal in the eyes of the law. It was also about being able to take
care of your partner with legal rights.
And so I had criticism of the marriage equality movement. And also I was part of
it. Because both were possible at the same time. We could simultaneously believe
01:04:00that health care shouldn't be tied to whether you're married or not or
immigration shouldn't be tied to whether you're married or not, and we could
also believe that people should be able to have the legal relationships that
allow them to take care of their families. And so that was a very galvanizing
moment in time.
MF: In your description of that, both in terms of your college activism and then
into your postcollegiate activism, you talked about housing issues on college
campus. Then you talked about nondiscrimination legislation at the civic level.
And then the fight for marriage equality. Were there other issues that were
really important for you either at PDN or moving into the Pennsylvania Equality?
AS: Equality Pennsylvania.
MF: Equality Pennsylvania organization.
AS: Yeah. So I designed the candidate questionnaire for Equality Pennsylvania
and really led the endorsement process for candidates that were seeking our
01:05:00endorsement. And in that questionnaire we asked about do you believe people who
are incarcerated should be housed based on their gender identity or their sex
assigned at birth. We asked questions. We were really trying to make sure that
we were finding people who really understood our community and the way that we
define ourselves. We asked about bullying in schools. We asked about
nondiscrimination. We asked about marriage or other forms of relationship
recognition. We probably asked about hate crimes legislation. And we asked about
stuff that wasn't legislative as well. We asked about people's connection to the
LGBT community in the area where they lived in Pennsylvania. We asked about
their volunteer work with LGBTQ issues.
I remember one person who's now on the state supreme court, David Wecht, judges
have to be careful about how they answer questionnaires. But we asked him to
01:06:00describe his judicial philosophy when it comes to historically excluded
populations. And we asked about his past connection to LGBTQ communities in
Pittsburgh where he lived. And he told us that he volunteered at an AIDS
organization I believe in the '90s. Well, that was very telling for us because
it was a time when not every lawyer wanted to volunteer with an AIDS organization.
So we were looking for hints from people's past involvement, how they might be
once they were elected. I remember there were some really interesting races that
we were involved in. One of them was the attorney general's race between
Kathleen Kane and Patrick Murphy. And Patrick Murphy when he was in Congress led
the effort in the House to pass "Don't Ask, Don't Tell's" repeal. And we ended
up endorsing him. And I remember one of Kathleen Kane's staff members calling me
and saying, "I can't believe you're endorsing Patrick Murphy." And we said, "He
01:07:00kind of repealed 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'" And they were like, "Oh yeah, that
thing." We were like, "That thing? That was like a very significant thing." What
it also is, is it's proof of his commitment for somebody who's never held public
office before where we don't have any proof. There's no proof we could get.
And so sometimes we were endorsing against people that both said they were good
on the issues but one had record and one didn't. And so we were always looking
for that. Also with Equality Pennsylvania we were trying to be very aware that
Pennsylvania was very key nationally. And during the Obama administration, those
eight years, I was invited to numerous briefings at the White House or other
types of ways to engage with national leaders.
01:08:00
And I remember the Obama administration's LGBTQ liaison, Gautam Raghavan, who's
now the director of the Office of Presidential Personnel in the Biden-Harris
White House. We would ask and we would say, "What LGBTQ Pennsylvanians really
want to see is the president come out for marriage." And he would always say,
"I'm not here to make news today. Here's what I can tell you." And they were
always very clear about what the White House was willing to support. And we were
always saying, "There's one thing that's missing. And our voters, our people,
are very aware of that."
MF: After you move from Equality Pennsylvania so you're looking for a full-time
position in this line of work, how do you make it from Equality Pennsylvania
into a full-time position?
AS: So at the time I had been here for a while in the Lehigh Valley. But my
01:09:00LGBTQ activism was really statewide. And later during that time with Equality
Pennsylvania one of the races that I got involved in was the Bethlehem mayor's
race. And Equality Pennsylvania played a pretty significant role in supporting
Willie Reynolds when he ran for mayor of Bethlehem the first time. He had been
our champion for nondiscrimination.
And he was running against Bob Donchez, who was elected mayor, who was really
not our champion. He ended up being supportive, I would say like lukewarm
supportive, but was certainly not a champion when it came to LGBTQ people. And I
worked with Willie on a number of his statements, and one of them was a mail
piece he put out where we had a whole bunch of LGBTQ leaders standing behind
him. And it said, "As mayor I pledge to not marry anyone until I can marry
01:10:00everyone." He would only officiate at weddings for any residents once
Pennsylvania gave him the legal authority to officiate gay weddings. And that
was a really big statement for somebody in the Lehigh Valley. This wasn't
Philadelphia. This wasn't Pittsburgh. It's the Lehigh Valley. And before
Pennsylvania had marriage.
And so that campaign, which he didn't win, but he lost by only a very small
amount of votes, it kind of let me know that I really liked doing work here in
the Lehigh Valley. And I had also been involved with some other campaigns in
this area. Including Matt Cartwright when he ran for Congress around that same
time actually. And Congressman Cartwright, he wasn't a congressman yet, he
called me to ask for LGBTQ community support. And I told him that we were
concerned that he didn't support marriage equality. And he said something like,
01:11:00"Well, I'm just not sure that the area is ready for it." And I told him that he
should go talk to his son and then call me back.
And he called me back a little bit later and he said, "I talked to my son and he
says that his entire generation thinks of this as a nonissue and that I should
get with the times and support marriage. And so I'm going to." And I really
started feeling like this is an area, and at the time his district included
Easton. It now doesn't. He lived in Scranton. He's become a very strong champion
for LGBTQ rights in Washington. But I felt like I liked being involved locally.
And I also felt like I didn't have to keep doing elections and campaigns. I
wanted to just find community. And so when I decided to leave Equality
Pennsylvania it was to start Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center.
01:12:00
MF: Well, we're just about at the end of our time. And we're going to do a
follow-up interview where Adrian will tell the origin story of Bradbury-Sullivan
LGBT Community Center. But since we're nearing the end, and we've talked about
your early years of activism, perhaps we could conclude with a question like
looking back on all of that early work what mattered to you the most, is there
anything you wish you would have focused on more during that time period. How do
you reflect on those early years of activism in your life?
AS: Yeah. I'm really grateful for my time at Muhlenberg because it really kind
of let me learn how to be an activist. It let me test out my activism in
different ways and try different things. Learn also what didn't work. It gave me
an opportunity to become a better activist. And in many ways with my time in
Equality Pennsylvania as well I was really young when I became the board
01:13:00president. I was 24. And there was a lot that I thought I knew that I didn't.
There certainly are things I would do differently now that I have had experience
leading organization on the staff side. But I will say that that moment in time
felt so important and so urgent. It felt like such a strong sense of urgency.
And I'm really glad that I had the opportunity to be an activist then.
I also think that in terms of the issues that we prioritized we weren't
necessarily setting the agenda. The agenda was being set by national actors and
national media around okay, :Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Okay, marriage equality.
These things were happening. And state equality organizations don't exist in a
vacuum. Because the state doesn't exist in a vacuum. So Pennsylvania is part of
01:14:00the US. And what's happening in the US affects Pennsylvania. So we weren't
necessarily setting the agenda the way we may have wanted to or not. We were
responding and leading in our state. And we can always look back on time periods
and say, "Well, we should have done more on this." Or we could look back now and
say, "Equality Pennsylvania should have done more on trans inclusion. Or more on
racial justice. Or more on cross-movement issues." And we did some.
For example Equality Pennsylvania got behind UFCW's campaign, United Food and
Commercial Workers' campaign, to prevent the privatization of state liquor
stores. Because as state employees liquor store employees are protected by a
state executive order for nondiscrimination. We don't have state legislation
that would protect private sector workers. We got behind an effort against
01:15:00school vouchers because it would provide tax dollars to schools who don't have
antibullying rules in place. And they don't have nondiscrimination protections
for students or teachers. So there were some cross-movement issues.
But we always had to make that very clear LGBTQ case for it. And I think that
looking back now we can look back to that time period and say we should have
just been better at solidarity in general. But in that moment LGBTQ issues were
considered deeply controversial. And front and center in the media. And most of
us were doing it as a volunteer, with limited capacity. And doing the best and
making the best decisions we could at the time. I do think that we helped to
change Pennsylvania, although winning marriage in Pennsylvania came through the
court. It came through the Whitewood decision.
01:16:00
The ACLU of Pennsylvania represented a bunch of couples. And a Bush-appointed
judge, Judge Jones, who also ruled in the case related to evolution in schools,
the Dover case, he gave his ruling that Governor Corbett didn't appeal that
granted marriage in Pennsylvania in 2014. And to get to the point where a
Republican governor didn't appeal a ruling on marriage was in large part because
of trying to make this issue propulsive in our state and really broadening
public support for it. So I do think that our work at Equality Pennsylvania made
a tangible difference.
MF: Can I ask one follow-up question? I know we're moving to the end. We had
01:17:00started this discussion of activism, especially at the college level, as being
very much connected to your faith. Very much linked to your burgeoning,
developing, or evolving understanding of yourself and Judaism in your life as
being connected to politics and activism. It felt like hand in hand at the
college. How did your faith journey move along with your journey into activism?
AS: So in college I really changed how I identified as Jewish. Again. I changed
in high school and I changed again in college. In college I was working at the
Reform synagogue in Allentown, Congregation Keneseth Israel. And I was teaching
in the religious school. And that experience was really important for me because
I met a couple people there. One, her name is Janet Hogan. And she was a
religious school director. A straight woman, but a mother of an adult gay son
who was married to a rabbi named Victor Appell. And she kind of invited me to
01:18:00her family events, like some family dinners. And I really had a really important
-- she was my boss but became a mentor in many ways.
And Ellen Sussman, who was the cantor at this congregation, who was also very
supportive. And I really loved that job but I realized that it wasn't where I
felt any kind of spiritual connection. And so I joined a Reconstructionist
congregation in the Lehigh Valley called Am Haskalah that had a lesbian rabbi
and many LGBTQ congregants. It was small and very grassroots. But that community
was really important for me as well, especially in college and afterwards. I was
still wearing my yarmulke all the time at that time period. And both in college
01:19:00and then throughout my time with Equality Pennsylvania. And I do think that how
people read other people based on religiosity has always been really interesting
when it comes to the queer movement.
Some people have tried to paint -- some people meaning of a different ideology
than mine -- have tried to paint it as God versus gay. And I think that when the
leader of a state equality organization is wearing visibly religious symbols
that are personally meaningful to them and that are not performative it does
change that conversation a bit. When I would speak at rallies and people would
see a visibly religious guy speaking about marriage equality, it made an
enormous -- or when I would testify in front of local governments from
Philadelphia City Hall to Bethlehem to small towns, Cheltenham Borough,
Springfield Township, I would go to these small towns and testify for
01:20:00nondiscrimination, or for in the case of Philadelphia passing a couple other
bills that weren't related to nondiscrimination.
It did change the conversation a little bit. It undercut the opposition.
Remember in Bethlehem, some people tried to suggest that religious people were
against nondiscrimination. And it was like are you kidding. I do remember at one
of the meetings, Bethlehem city council would always have a religious leader
give an invocation at the beginning of the meeting. Which was an issue we
actually -- we were going to pick our battles on. But that wasn't going to be
our battle.
I did feel very uncomfortable. And we were always concerned about who was going
to give the invocation on the nights our issue was being voted on. Were they
going to invoke council members, to pray for them to make a decision against
equality? And there was a pastor who we didn't know. I looked him up and it was
01:21:00like an evangelical church. It was like uh-oh. And he got up and he spoke and
gave his invocation.
He said, "I didn't know what was going to be on the agenda tonight. But I'm so,"
these aren't his exact words. But he said something along the lines of, "I'm so
pleased to see that the city council is poised to take action to support the
equal rights of all residents. That's what my faith teaches. And it's what most
faiths teach." And we were like sigh of relief. So for me it was a little bit
symbolic and also very much personal religious decision to continue to be
visibly Jewish through that time period.
MF: Well, at the end I just want to thank you and give you the opportunity. Is
there anything that you think we missed in this first oral history that you want
to return to or something you want to say at the end of the interview today?
01:22:00
AS: No.
MF: No? Adrian, this is such a pleasure, I'm so grateful that you took the time
today. Thank you so much.
AS: Thank you.