 Hi, welcome to the All Things LGBTQ interview show where we interview LGBTQ guests who are making important contributions to our communities. All Things LGBTQ is taped at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which we recognize as being unceded Indigenous land. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show. So, this is June and Pride is literally bursting out all over. And this year, there is Pride in Bloom that's happening in Bethel, Vermont. So we've invited two of the people involved in the organizing to come and talk to us about Pride in Bloom. So please welcome Owen and Lenny. All right. So I want to start with a little conversation with Owen, because a lot of the events for Pride in Bloom focus around babes in Bethel. And actually babes is something we've wanted to talk about for quite a while. So, Owen, what's babes and why might I wander down to Bethel to come and see you? Well, babes is, I think what it says on our website is babes is a casual local community bar. But we're in a train station built in 1850. My partner Jesse and I own it together. And we try to create an inclusive space where people of all genders and sexualities, body types, races, people who are quote unquote from Vermont and the rest of us feel welcome and seen and celebrated. We do a bunch of different types of events. We have karaoke nights and curvature tournaments. And we have a queer dance party, which we call QDP, which is very popular. So yeah, it's a bar where we really try to meet all the different needs of the community. We'll do a more crafted cocktail. And we also have only Miller High Life undraft for $2.50. So we try to, you know, do all the things. But yeah, that's babes. You're community accessible and community affordable. So how long has babes been in operation? And how might you and your partner have come to Vermont or picked Bethel to start it? Yes. So we've been open since June of 2018. So I went to UVM for undergrad. I graduated in 2004, which feels like a long time ago. And after I left UVM, I went to New York City. I became a lawyer. I lived in Chicago after law school and practiced law and did nonprofit management for 11 years. Jesse and I met out there. He was a musician and worked in Trader Joe's in the downtown wine section. He was a wine buyer for them. And we kind of always had this dream in our minds of someday owning a bar, which was really just more of like a fun thing we would dream and scheme about with our friends whenever a cool, queer bar was closing in Chicago is really what it was when, you know, an awesome gay bar became like a Walgreens or something. And you're just like, no, you know, we're like, we should all buy it and run a bar. So it's kind of this idea of percolating in our minds, but more as a like pipe dream and not a reality. Anyway, we wound up moving to Bethel because Jesse's brother and our sister-in-law started a family and had our nephew. We were looking to get out of the city and move to a smaller city, not as small as Bethel, but a smaller city. And when they had their baby and I was coming back to Burlington once or twice a year to see friends, it just was like, huh, maybe we should consider really living closer to them. And this building happened to go on the market when we were visiting and a little idea of owning a bar was in our minds. And we press play on that idea. And it was really just, you know, a leap of faith. We don't know if this will work. We don't know if this community will embrace us, but we really wanted to create a space that feels a lot like how babes feels actually. And so, yeah, that's the story. That's how we did it. And the community, in fact, has been responsive to your being there. And from what we at All Things LGBTQ have heard, you're providing some really essential safe space, meeting spaces for people within our communities. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It feels like, in some ways, it feels like we were like one of the keys that opened a door of what was already in Bethel, you know, like Leonard, an amazing human being and, you know, an alvin aria dancer, lives in Bethel, you know, like Jim Bennett, who are not Jim Bennett. He's from Lambda Legal, but Bennett Law, who's one of the, you know, founders out in the mountains and, you know, has all this legacy in our state lives in Bethel, you know, there's like a lot of people actually here, but there wasn't a place for us to all know one another or socialize together. And so, it really just feels like we just helped provide a space where Bethel could see itself. That makes sense. So, so, Lenny, now that you've been, you know, sort of outed by Owen, is that how babes feels to someone who is actually living in the community? Yeah, that and more. You know, babes feel the void that we knew we had and didn't know we needed. It's what I love about babes, and I've said this to Owen and Jesse, that it is that space where all of the, where this entire community comes to meet, greet, and just to be with each other. You know, so it doesn't matter what you want to call, what gender you are, whatever we're all in that space together. Some, it's new for some people, even though they're right here in this town, but guess what? They learn, we talk, and we grow from it. And babes has served that need, you know, and hey, it's easy to do that over a good drink. You know, it's, it's, go ahead. I was going to say a good drink or Chicago dog, which that's right. I warned you all that as a long-term Vermonter, Chicago dog? How is that different than what I'm used to getting at, you know, one of the Lake Monsters games? Take it away, Owen. So a Chicago style hot dog is a very specific ingredients list. It is a poppy seed bun made by the Vienna beef company in Chicago, which we do have mail ordered into Vermont. It is a hot dog. We use McKenzie's Frank, so we try to keep that part more local. Yellow mustard green, bright green relish that looks like nuclear energy. Onions, tomatoes, pickle, and these hot peppers, and then it's topped with celery salt. And it's delightful. There's like nothing not to love about this hot dog. We've been able to recruit many people into the Chicago dog experience. But actually the real truth of how that happened is that we didn't know when we bought the bar that you had to serve food in a bar in Vermont to have a liquor license. Because that's not a thing in Chicago. You can just be a bar without a kitchen. And so it was a little bit of a last minute scramble for us. And we just thought, I'm from Wisconsin. We moved here from Chicago. Let's do Wisconsin brought some Chicago dogs. And that's it. So that's kind of our kitschy thing now. I was going to say you had me at hot peppers. So we'll be coordinating a road trip. So a lot of the events for Pride in Bloom have some connection or they center around babes, which people can see over my shoulder. So is this the first year you've done Pride festivities in Bethel or have the rest of us just missed it in years past? Bethel in Bloom Pride Fest 2022 is the first ever Pride event in Bethel. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so tell us what you put together because you have events starting on Thursday the 23rd and running through the weekend. Yeah. Yeah, let me do. Gay trivia happens at Babe. So that's that starts Thursday night, June 23. I'm going to let Owen tell you about that. Yeah, so gay trivia, it's going to be very fun. It's hosted by Jesse and I. We do have regularly we have trivia once a month, but we decided to take the home of this one. And so there's going to be different sections of trivia. I cannot tell you all the sections because you know some real deep trivia fans will start like thinking about what that could be. But I will tell you that there will be some music. There will be some things about history, activism. There might even be a little bit about flagging. Who knows? It could be all sorts of things, but all the content is going to be honoring and celebrating LGBTQ people. Oh, that is that that will be a history lesson in and of itself. Challenging us to what do we know about our own heritage? And it's sponsored. The event will be sponsored by citizen cider as well. So they've been a big supporter and they want to be clear in their company that they support LGBTQ, right? Yeah. Oh, that's great. Okay, so you're also doing a prom. Yes, we are. Okay, so tell me about the prom. Well, we're doing a pride problem. One of the things about doing, you know, a four day thing is you have to have events and you have to have things people want to do. Part of doing the Pride Fest was not for was for the young people in this area to let them know that they are seen, heard, appreciated and loved and supported. So I work at the credit union in Randolph, so I run into a lot of different people. So I asked some young people, one in particular, about, you know, go to your friends, would you mind going to your friends and finding out what you would, what you, your age group would like to see at a Pride festival. And they came back to us with Pride and the reason for that was that a lot, you know, he said to me a lot of us didn't get to go to our prom. We were told we couldn't go as, as who we were. So we didn't go. Either our parents didn't let us go or the school or both. So they're older. They want to do this. So this is a Pride prom for all. It's all generational ages. It's cross generational. And it will be held at the White Church in Bethel, which is about four stones, throw four stones throws from babes. And we're looking forward to it is we have volunteers. It's Bethel in bloom. So it's all about flowers and blooming and growing. And it's about Bethel growing as well. This whole thing is about Bethel blooming and growing into a bigger place of inclusivity. And just love, love for everybody here. We have such a wide variety of people here who identify as so many different things. They're all included. You know, this is a safe space. They're all included. We want them there. So and this is, you know, the almost all of these events are by donations only. So they're free. So if you don't, if you can't donate, come to the door and come in anyway. If you can donate, drop something in the donation box. We're all free. That's going to say as, as you're describing it and reaching out to our youth and looking at what's happening across the country. Exactly. You were giving such an important message to the youth in Bethel about you belong here. This is your home. Yeah. We're going to create a safe space. They need to know that. They need to know, they need to feel that and not just from, from this, from the entire body of people in Bethel. They need to feel that you are safe. This is your home. You are loved. You are appreciated. You are respected. So just come as you are, wear flowers, dress up, drag out, don't drag out. Who cares? Just come and enjoy. You know, I call it queer positivity. Anybody who comes queer positive. Absolutely. So, okay. So, so what do you have going on Saturday? So the first thing we have on Saturday is an inaugural meeting for people who are either in recovery or seeking sobriety that we're calling the family meeting because it's a quink-quink family. But this is going to be happening every Saturday at Bethel at the Arnold Block, which is a community space here that is co-owned by two couples, one of which is a queer couple. And it's going to be a space for people who are navigating addiction and various substance use, you know, recovery. So it's not going to be specific to any type of program. So it won't be an NA or an NA specific program, AA. Yeah. And it's also not going to be a theistic program. So sometimes the fact that these programs use a traditional 12-step method that is rooted in, I mean, six of the steps have the word God in them. And so that can be a real deterrent for some people. But especially because many of the events are focused, well, actually, only two of the five events are in the bar. But because the bar plays such a large role in community events like this, we wanted to make sure there was a space that really recognized that that can be a hard space for some people to be in. And it'll be the first in Bethel of an LGBTQ specific recovery program. And it's also going to be the only recovery program in Bethel right now. There's no other meetings here regularly. So it'll be every Saturday starting at noon, with this being the kickoff event. As someone who's been clean and sober since 81, thank you for creating space for our community to move from. But okay. So what else you got going? It's happening at Babe. So I'm gonna go over to Owen. Okay. So then that night, we are doing our first drag and burlesque show at the bar. This is going to be amazing. We're actually setting up the downstairs of the bar and sort of like a speakeasy, parlor, vibe, low lighting, cute little cocktail tables together. We have six different performers, three folks doing drag, three folks doing burlesque. They're coming from all over the state. But I'm really excited to say that I believe three of them, certainly two, are from central Vermont. It is our only ticketed event. And just so everybody knows who's watching this, it is actually sold out already. But there is a wait list. The wait list is about 40 people deep right now. So it's going to be hard to get in. But it's going to be fantastic. And the bar will be closed to anybody who's not a ticket holder. So also be like a very intimate space. You may need to expand it to not only an in-person, but a virtual event. Oh, okay. That, well, I saw the list of some of the people who are performing and I recognize them from people in Performances in Burlington and at Merchants Hall and around the state. And it looks like a phenomenal lineup of people. Yeah. But you also have a sort of closing event movie on Sunday. Yes. We're going to be doing the screening of the movie Pariah. Pariah is a young woman coming into her queerness. And it revolves around the family and how they deal with it. I saw the film. It's a beautiful film. It's a, if I'm not mistaken, and Owen, you can correct me. It's direct, it's a black, it's written by a black guy and directed by a black person, I think. But it's about a black woman. It's about coming into your queerness. But what's interesting too is the family, the movie really delves into how the family works with this and deals with this. And as a family, how they deal with it. I love this film. I think it's great. And afterwards, we're going to have a discussion at Q&A. And the Equity and Inclusion Committee is going to host that. And I'll let Owen tell you a little bit more about the Equity and Inclusion Committee. Yeah. So this event will take place at the Town Hall in Bethel. And the Equity and Inclusion Committee was founded in the fall following our Bethel March and Rally for Black Lives after the death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Maud Arbery, and others. And it's really a committee that seeks to educate and support the town in creating a more equitable and inclusive community and thinking about anything from how access to voting happens to what our government documents look like, our forms, and also just the way that the government in our community engages with the town so that people feel like they have a place in leadership, that they're empowered around how they access the civics of the town, basically. Beth, yeah. That sounds amazing. And it sounds like a model that other communities in Vermont should be putting into place. It's like Cabot at their most recent town meeting wanted to do something more than just look at the Indigenous people and say, you know, we weren't good to you. They are now allowing all of their public lands to be totally accessible to and free of charge to Indigenous communities. So it sounds like Bethel is moving in that same direction. So I just want to add that the Pride event, the family meeting, of course, and the queer movie, those are all alcohol free events. So, you know, the Pride Prom is about everyone. So because we have young people there, there will be no alcohol, sir. It's just about getting together, being at your prom. We're going to crown royalty. We're going to do all of that. Okay. So it's going to be fun. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'll bring my own tiara with me. There you go. So, so pariahs at the town hall two o'clock on Sunday afternoon there. Yes. Okay. So what has been the feedback or response that you're getting from the Bethel community about this upcoming event? Absolutely positive. We have tons of volunteers. We're doing the flower wall. We needed flowers made. We had 35 people come to help us make flowers, you know, for this. It has been very positive. We have Kakadoodle, which is the local pizza place. They're going to cater to Pride Prom. So they're supporting us by giving us an end kind donation. Bethel Village Sandwich Shop donated some finances to us. So they're supporting us. So it's been very supportive. Okay. You mentioned a flower wall. What is that? Yes. That is a wall of flowers, not real flowers. We're making them. Okay. And that's going to be the background for the whole set. And you want to see photos taken in front of it and everything. That's going to be a big lattice wall full of flowers. Full of colorful flowers, Bethel and Bloom. Let's get it all tied in. So yeah. This all sounds so amazing. Yeah. It's going well. It's going very well. So and we're proud of that. All right. And happy. Well, and it also sounds as though some of these events, such as the family meeting, you're looking at it not being just a one-time event, but you're actually setting up a community service that will be ongoing. Yeah. Yeah. That's the hope. And even the film screening of Pariah, one of the things that the Equity and Inclusion Committee is really set out to do is to host community conversations around some of the topics that it felt during that summer of organizing that the town wasn't ready to talk about. And we're really trying to gently push, but push, that we need to be talking about this. And it's good to learn together. Learning is vulnerable. And we're here to support that process. So we're going to have more film screenings. We'll have more community conversations in that light as well. Well, it sounds like from what you've shared that Babes in itself has tried to create a safe, inclusive environment where people can come together just to become comfortable with each other. And then the community at large can start having conversations that otherwise might not have been possible. And I interject really quickly. Babes has created that space. The space you described, they have created that space. As a member of the town, as somebody who frequents the bar, yes, they have created that space. It isn't it nice, Owen, to get to sit there and hear people say good things about you? It is. I mean, it's honestly, it feels like it feels like, you know, and I was a lawyer for a long time, I went to law school because I thought I could change the world by being a lawyer. It feels like one of the most the thing it's the thing I'm the most proud of in my life, like it just feels and it's not just us. I think that's so important to stress that it's the community was already here. You know, it's like the people in this area make the bar what it is. When you walk in, people turn around and say, hey, how are you? And sure, we helped steward some of that, but it's like a it's just a growing organism that is just getting bigger and bigger and more. Yeah, it's like, it's like cheers, but more diverse, much more than cheers. Because it's more diverse. Yeah, exactly. I was going to say you created the environment, and then they brought it to life. So with that, thank you so much. We'll make sure that thank you the link to babes website and the events, you know, is included with with the interview, because during the winter, you know, we may need to wander down for the cribbage tournaments for something to do. And we'll see exactly how good we are at trivia. Thank you, Keith. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Keith. Hi, everybody. I'd like to introduce Ava Laffity. And Ava is embarking on a project. Is this a new project? You've done this this before? Or is this a brand new? This is something of a new project for me without the open. And the way that I found out in the open was as a as an adjunct at the Community College of Vermont. CCV when it went into pandemic mode left a lot of our students, unfortunately, up in the air with no real support. And I had come out with fully as Ava in 2019, teaching at CCV. And when I did that, I experienced every semester, students would come to me and eventually confide in me what their own gender struggles were or sexuality struggles. So there was a real need that I saw for our students that unfortunately was very difficult to meet. So what I started doing with the blessing of the administration was looking for contacts for students that they could link to from the student portal. And I contacted Pride and worked with Gustavo there. And I also contacted out in the open and discovered that they had a weekly trans femme group that was meeting, which for me was perfect. And I joined that and I made some very good friends and have worked with them continuously. And the opportunity now has opened up to expand the trans femme chill club. We're going to relaunch it in July on July 14th by a zoom. And then you can see the poster, I'm going to have the poster up there so you can everybody can see it. So hopefully, you know, what started as a rather small effort to just connect CCV students to support resources has really blossomed into a broader effort to bring safe support spaces to the Northeast Kingdom where I live. Out in the open is Brattleboro based, but they really do have an interest in rural communities and rural folk in the LGBTQ community. So they've been very helpful and very positive. It's really important. It's a very small state with a lot of rural areas where people really find themselves feeling very, very alone. And it's very difficult. I think there's been a sea change in the rural areas since Donald Trump became president. I've seen a definite change of attitude toward the other here in the Northeast Kingdom. And it's it can be rather frightening at times. So I really feel for young people, especially who are going through their struggles and who don't have a readily ready place to go that's safe for them to to meet others and explore who they are. I think, you know, it's in the Northeast Kingdom, but it's really everywhere. I think there's a lot of underground and not so underground Republican or alt-right people out there who are really organizing in the state as well. Getting ready for whatever attack they think they might be able to do. So Ava, let's learn a little bit about you. You're from Long Island. And I have from your writing here that it was it had a lot of pluses and minuses for you. I, you know, if you believe in reincarnation, I must have done something really horrible in a prior life to wind up as a young male in post-World War II suburban New York out on Long Island. But even though I was raised on Long Island, I'm really more of a Manhattanite and New Yorker. But it was a valuable experience growing up out there. And you were an attorney there in New York, is that correct? I am still an attorney. I'm admitted to practice in the courts of New York and before the federal bar. I was, excuse me, an administrative law judge for the city of New York. I was first commissioned by Edward Koch and then David Dinkins and lastly by Rudy Giuliani in his more sane phase, I guess is what we'll say. I didn't like working for him and there was a buyout offered in 1994 and my then wife had matched it for a surgery residency at Tulane. So it worked out very well and we left. And you have children, correct? I have a daughter who lives in the Boston area in Jamaica Plain and she is a student at Lesley University studying art history. Nice. No law school for her. I hope not. No. Okay. I say that, you know, with my tongue and teeth because even though for me practicing law as a litigator on Wall Street in Manhattan was very uncomfortable in the gender role, the white privilege male gender role that I was living, I was never comfortable with it. I was deeply unhappy with it. But in retrospect now I find that that legal training and experience is very valuable both in teaching academic classes at CCB like criminal justice, the Constitution and also reaching out and helping people. And you've put it to a lot of good as your teaching indicates you do a lot of work with young people as you were saying before. And you're really, you know, wonderfully put yourself into the community to make it a better place. And that should really be applauded. Thank you. Thank you. The goal is simply to try to go to bed every night and feel that you've done something positive and made the community a little bit better. So tell us about, so the group is meeting and let's see it's in person and they can also do Zoom, right? Right. Well, they've been meeting for about eight years before I hooked up with them last summer. And when I hooked up with them they were meeting mostly on Zoom but then they tried every other week going live at the restorative justice center in Brattleboro. But once Omicron hit, that was pretty much over. So it's been Zoom. And I think what we're going to do, it's been attended reasonably well, but we're going to try to do a revamp and do things like have a guest speaker come in, have specific topics, and decide on the topic the week of the meeting so that this topic is contemporary and relevant. And it's called the Trans Femme Chill Club. Yes. That's a cool name. Yeah. I think it's very 60s myself, but that's okay. It's a nice group of people. It ranges in age. People have been there that I've seen from say early 20s up to myself. I'm probably the oldest person there and I'm 72. I hate to thought of that. I know. I'm right there with you. Yeah. And so this will continue all through the summer. The dates are, as I see here, July 21st, August 18th, and September 22nd. So do people... I'm going to have some live outdoor meetings. We'll be meeting outdoors at the open center in Brattleboro. They have a tent or a shelter, if you will. How do people get in contact with you about this? They can contact out in the open on the flyer. There's information. They can also contact me, and you're welcome to put my email address up. What we do to keep it a safe space is we do screen people to make certain that they're not somebody who's trying to invade our space and injure people. So a little bit about how you found yourself in this position of advocate and activist. You said earlier on, your mother tried to keep the birchers out of... Yeah, age of seven. I remember working on a political campaign to keep a John Bircher off the school board. And then my next real memory was of the Civil Rights Movement and watching CBS News and seeing people hosed and having dogs set on them down in the south and asking my parents why this was happening and being told that it's wrong. It's illegal. And then there was, of course, the Vietnam conflict, which I opposed while in college. I know we were all... And you went to school in New York? You got your... I went to college at Franklin and Marshall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which was rather conservative. We were not very popular when we protested the war. But at the same time, it was a good experience because it forced us to deal with confrontation and conflict and learn how to deal with it. And we actually made some inroads and we had a fellow who was the head of the local rotary invited us to a luncheon during moratorium week, Vietnam moratorium week, to talk to them about why we opposed the war. So that was really a very positive outcome from that. Yeah, so your transition has taken a long time to kind of get to where you wanted to be ultimately even if you knew at five years old. Yeah, I knew at five or six that I was not a boy. And of course, that would have been 1954. And there was just no literature available. I mean, I vaguely remember sometime later in the fifties or early sixties hearing about Christine Jorgensen, but that was just something you could not get real information about. And anything on sexuality or gender was in the public library was in the special reserve section only for adults. So if you were going through the throes of puberty, there was no way that you could possibly access it. And I'm not even sure it would have been really accurate at that point either. And so you really had to stuff your feelings for many, many, many, many, many years. Absolutely. And my mother caught me dressing as female when I guess it was about maybe 12 and Catholic guilt rained down on me and had me back in the closet for many, many years. But good people here and there, especially later in life in New York City started to rekindle the true gender issue for me. By 2012, it was becoming clear to me that who I was was not male and was not really prepared anymore to function in that role in society. So, you know, maybe, you know, there are so many states now that are passing anti-trans legislation that it seems, well, it's a buzzword for the right, don't you think, and also, you know, a way to kind of like, oh, the big fear, you know, watch out, this is, destroy the country. Well, I was shocked the other day with the Texas shooting when Representative Gossar in Arizona labeled the shooter. He covered a lot of bases. I mean, transgender, trans femme, immigrant, and God only knows what else he might have thrown in there. But that to me was just shocking that a member of Congress could do that, with absolutely no factual basis whatsoever. And that's frightening. That's pure fear politics is what that is. And they're using it forever for all it's worth. The Republican Party plays a zero-sum game. And unfortunately, Democrats have not learned very well how to play that. But the zero-sum game is based on fear, exclusion, and the creation of other people who they can victimize. And of course, they try to victimize some of the weakest people in our society. Right. The people with least support. Yeah. Yeah, it is very scary times. So we will put this up, the flyer, and I hope it's a huge success. We'll do whatever we can to promote this project. I mean, it's so valuable, especially like I said, in a time where there are so many attacks coming from so many different places. We would like to expand it into the Northeast Kingdom. In East Burke, Cafe Lottie has been wonderful to our community. We've had two inclusion, fusion party nights, which were cut short by the pandemic. But they are totally behind our community. So I'd like to see us be able to start, if you will, a chill club north and meet maybe once a month at Cafe Lottie or some other safe space here. I think we do it all over the state. I mean, Montpelier area, you know, that has some very rural areas, not very far from Montpelier. So, you know, that's another area in which I think it would be very valuable to the community. Well, I want to thank you. Thank you. Ava for all the work you do in the community. It's really important. And I know from your posts, because we're friends on Facebook. And, you know, I've met you a few times that you're a very political person as am I. And, you know. I have trouble keeping my mouth shut. Me too. I get so much trouble. But anyway, we'll continue to resist. And I will talk to you soon. Maybe we'll have a follow up at the end of the summer to see how your project went. And if you're going to expand. And what else you're doing? So thank you so much for coming on. Stay tuned. There's some interesting things in the works, which I'll keep you posted on. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. And until next time, remember, resist.