Profiles in LGBTQ+ Courage: Real Stories of Identity & Acceptance

Rikki Bates is a rock and roll drummer who has struggled much of her life with gender dysphoria. For years, like many Transgender people, she lived with deep depression, and a lack of adequate employment.  Then, she managed to get gender reassignment surgery which changed her life.  In the process, she also brought about precedent-setting changes in how Transgender health care is provided to peopl...

Transgender activist and first-time state legislator Zooey Zephyr made national headlines in April 2023 when she spoke out in support of Transgender rights in the Montana state legislature and was banished from legislative debate on the topic as a result. Courageous leadership is often defined by four compelling traits: Confidence in oneself, commitment to one's values and beliefs, the ability to...

At the age of 23, Felice Cohen was, like many other college graduates, hesitant about entering the real world, and at the same time, uncertain about her sexuality. Focused on landing her first job as a writer, falling in love was the last thing on Felice's mind. But fall in love she did -- with her boss, Sarah, a woman 34 years older than she. It was a relationship that lasted 9 years. And for Fel...

Jere Mahaffey is a 35-year-old former Evangelical Christian. He's also an out, married gay/bisexual man who has retained many of the tenets of his early Christian faith, while leaving other elements of evangelical doctrine behind him. As an adolescent, Jere was drawn initially to girls, and even had girlfriends while he was in junior high school. But eventually he discovered he found boys attracti...

Connor Ryan is an 18-year-old transgender male and 2022 graduate of Bourne High School in Bourne, MA. He's also one of three recipients of the 2022 Anne Toran scholarship, an award given annually by PFLAG Cape Cod to high school seniors from the Cape in recognition of their courage and work on behalf of LGBTQ+ rights. In this insightful interview with PFLAG Cape Cod's Rick Koonce, Connor talks abo...

Lilith Rose is a twenty-something individual who identifies as transgender and non-binary. At the time of this interview, they had also just been named executive director of PFLAG San Francisco. Lilith grew up in what she describes as a toxic home environment. Born anatomically male, they first came out as gay before eventually discovering they are transgender. Today, Lilith is committed to educat...

In October 1998, Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming, was brutally attacked and tied to a fence outside of Laramie, Wyoming. Five days later he died of deep wounds inflicted in one of the most vicious anti-gay attacks in American history. In this wide-ranging interview with PFLAG Cape Cod's Rick Koonce, Jeff Mack, a personal friend of Matt's and today the Executive...

Alex Hagler is a Latin and history teacher at a prestigious private school outside Boston. They're also the recent co-founder of their school's first Gay Straight Alliance. GSA's (also known as Genders & Sexualities Alliances) operate in many school systems across the country today. As clubs, they're intended to serve as safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth in middle schools and high schools. Increasingly...

Imagine being in a traditional heterosexual marriage for many years and then discovering that your husband or wife is gay or lesbian. What would you think? How would you react? What would you do? And where would you go to get help and find understanding in dealing with your situation? In the late 1980s, Kimberly Brooks Mazella found herself in this very situation, after being married to her husban...

"Vernon Diannah Porter" is probably not a name you readily recognize. But that's because he's much better known by his stage name and alter ego, "Lady Di", host of the popular Friday evening radio show, Leggs Up and Dancing, on WOMR-FM in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Lady Di has been a popular fixture at WOMR for the last 22 years. Each week, she hosts her show from her home in Sandwich, MA, playi...

Some life partners first spot each other from across a crowded room. But not Helen Malone. With a piece of birthday cake in hand, she literally bumped into her future wife, Jane Martin from behind, at a birthday party for a mutual friend back in 2002. From the moment they met, the lives of both women changed rapidly. And while their lives today on Cape Cod -- with three dogs – seems like the pictu...

Dr. Joan Beilstein is a Lesbian Episcopal Priest, and Rector of the Church of the Ascension in Silver Spring MD. Today, though a senior, well-respected pastor in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC, there was a time when Joan was rejected by her own priest for being gay. And even after being ordained a priest herself in 1994, Joan struggled to find employment, because no one wanted to hire an...

Hollis L. is a 25-year-old individual who identifies as both non-binary and transmasculine. That means that, though assigned a designation of female at birth, they don't fully identify with being a person of either gender. But, in Hollis' case, it does mean they tend to embrace more of a "masculine" identity than a feminine one. In this fascinating interview with PFLAG Cape Cod's Rick Koonce, the...

David Bermudez and Bob Isadore are a same-sex couple who have been together for 47 years. David, a veteran of the Stonewall uprising of 1969, met Bob, in 1974, when the two were both living and working in New York City. At the time, David was a Manhattan-based interior designer. Bob, was an assistant buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue who hailed from Queens. As they tell PFLAG Cape Cod's Rick Koonce in t...

David Bermudez's work on behalf of gay rights has continued since the days of the Stonewall uprising. Listen, as he tells PFLAG Cape Cod's Rick Koonce, about the letter he received in the mail one day, acknowledging his decades of work on behalf of all gay and lesbian Americans. Please click the like button above and leave a review if your favorite podcast app has that ability. Thank you! For more...

In the history of the gay rights movement, there are few moments as pivotal as the Stonewall uprising – a night in June 1969, when, confronted by a police raid at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, members of the gay and lesbian communities fought back against police injustice. The rebellion that ensued that night – and on subsequent nights at the Stonewall – eventually helped spark the gay right...

Ryan R. is a 24-year-old non-binary lesbian. In Ryan's case, that means that though they are lesbian and like to date women, they don't identify with being a girl, a woman, or, with the attributes of traditional femininity. It was a discovery that Ryan made after dating boys in high school, faking physical attraction to males at the time, and then discovering their true gender identity in college...

Nell Fields is a born-again Christian, social justice advocate, and a happily married lesbian who's been with her wife Sarah, a lawyer, for over 20 years. She's also the minister of Waquoit Congregational church in East Falmouth, MA. The youngest of five daughters whose father was a career Army officer, Nell initially pursued a career in business and journalism. But, at a pivotal point in her earl...

Bisexuality... Even among members of the LGBTQ+ community it's a concept and reality that often is not fully understood – or appreciated. As a result, bisexuals sometimes feel marginalized and rejected, even among people who identify as members of other sexual minorities. And that means being bisexual can be a lonely and misunderstood place to be. So says Deer Sullivan, a bisexual educator and cou...

Dr. Maureen Osborne is a psychologist and gender therapist who has spent over two decades serving the needs of transgender clients. In this fascinating interview with PFLAG Cape Cod's Rick Koonce, Maureen talks, in depth, about her work with a variety of transgender men and women over the years. She describes the human anguish, confusion, and shame transgender people often experience, when they fe...

Ali Sands is an author and professional speaker who writes and speaks frequently on the topics of love, relationships, intimacy, and gender expression and identity. They're topics she knows a lot about. Married for 23 years to a straight man, and mother of two children, in 2002 Ali began a relationship with a new partner, who, at the time, inhabited a physically female body, but who soon told Ali...

Dirk Correia is a twenty-something transgender male who identifies as nonbinary -- meaning that they don't identify with being either entirely male or female, as society typically understands those terms. As Dirk explains to PFLAG Cape Cod's Rick Koonce in this illuminating interview, their journey to accepting themselves as nonbinary has been a long, and at times, difficult process -- one that ha...

She calls herself "a fierce Mama bear" when it comes to safeguarding the rights and safety of her two boys. So says Lori Duron, author of Raising My Rainbow, a book that chronicles her family's adventures raising a gender creative child named C.J., a boy who, from the age of just two and a half, displayed clues that he wasn't like other kids. While Duron's older son, Chase, grew up as a sports-pla...

Rabbi Elias Lieberman has been Rabbi of the Falmouth Jewish Congregation on Cape Cod since 1990. In that time, he's been a steadfast champion of LGBTQ rights, signing on early to support same-sex marriage when it first became law in Massachusetts, and later, becoming an outspoken advocate of transgender rights as well. His congregation also served as the host location for meetings of PFLAG Cape Co...

You might call Joanne Hush a social pioneer. It's probably not a label she would ascribe to herself. But, Joanne is the mother of a gay son and a lesbian daughter, both of whom came out to her (and her husband Paul) decades ago –- in the 1980s and early 90s -- when having openly gay or lesbian children was far more controversial and uncommon than it is today. Joanne learned her son was gay in the...