Wake County towns and homophobic bullies are reacting to progress
This year, Pride in North Carolina — and across the country — has felt more like a call to action than a celebration. It’s disappointing to see Holly Springs’s mayor reject a gay Pride month proclamation, or Apex’s mayor having to announce the cancellation of Drag Queen Story Hour (only for it to be reinstated Thursday). It’s hard to know that a preschool teacher in Fuquay-Varina resigned from her position after complaints that she was teaching colors using flashcards that depicted happy LGBTQ families.
Damon Seils is the mayor of Carrboro, Orange County’s progressive hub. While he’s wary of saying things are exceptionally great for gay and trans people in his town, Carrboro is a positive outlier in the state, and the South. What he’s seeing nearby, however, is troubling.
“I think queer people are so used to this crap, sometimes you sort of see it, but don’t see it,” Seils told me. “You just get so desensitized to it sometimes, at least some of us do. It’s obviously harder on the people who are most directly impacted by it.”
Seils is the third openly LGBTQ mayor the town has had; Michael Nelson was North Carolina’s first openly gay mayor back in the 1990s, and Seils’s predecessor, Lydia Lavelle, was the state’s first lesbian mayor. From the looks of it, Carrboro has had more out LGBTQ mayors than any other municipality in the country.
The right to be gay and exist in North Carolina is still pretty new. Gay marriage was legalized in 2014 here, less than a decade ago. Two years before that, the state voted on Amendment One, which codified the prohibition of gay marriage into law — it’s still on the books. Two years after 2014, our legislature passed HB 2, which was written in response to Charlotte passing a non-discrimination ordinance. When the bill was repealed, those ordinances were prohibited from being passed in the state for a few years.
Carrboro was one of the first municipalities to update its nondiscrimination ordinance when the ban on doing so was lifted last year, along with Chapel Hill, Hillsborough, and Orange County altogether. He notes that the local reaction in other municipalities may be a response to the progress made.
Seils says he’s spoken with LGBTQ people who sought to make a home in Carrboro precisely because of the continued commitment his town has shown to creating a safe space for LGBTQ folks.
“I have seen the value of these kinds of statements, of these kinds of local ordinances,” Seils says. “I’ve seen the difference that it makes when people feel welcome and accepted in their own communities, when these kinds of steps are taken. When you see it for yourself, it’s hard to deny.”
But welcoming LGBTQ people into our community shouldn’t solely fall on Seils and other “out” politicians. If you are a state representative, a mayor, a town council member, or any other elected official, it’s your job to protect all of your constituents. Right now, Wake County is throwing vulnerable members of the community under the bus, and leaving them susceptible to threats and violence. It sends a message: in these towns, LGBTQ people aren’t worth protecting.
Holly Springs councilman Aaron Wolff had the right idea Tuesday, when he challenged the mayor’s idea that a Pride month proclamation wasn’t necessary.
“We have heard from residents why they think the proclamation had value,” Wolff said at the meeting. “ I’ve heard from my LGBTQ neighbors and the families of youth — transgender, LGBTQ youth in this town — and they have told me that it has value.”
In spite of the attempts to bash North Carolina’s LGBTQ community, the community has persevered. You can’t legislate gay and trans people out of existence, at any level. Even the fact that it’s being attempted, Seils says, could be a sign that the work LGBTQ people are doing to be seen and heard is working.
“In another region and another time, the topic wouldn’t even have come up,” Seils says.
LGBTQ people are here to stay. Towns need to do the right thing and protect them.
