Equality Rider Takes the Cake to State Government Officials
Teen Voices: Where are you from? Are you in school?
Desiree Tienturier: I'm originally from the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Right now I live in Berkeley, California because I attend the University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley is very open-minded. It's just a very liberal, supportive place. Whoever you are, whatever you do, there's a place for you.
TV: When did you discover your passion for LGBT issues?
Desiree: Well, I guess I'd have to say that I was always really passionate about the fight for equality. When I hit adolescence and started becoming attracted to women the issue took so much more of a personal turn for me. I actually identify as pansexual*, which is an identity that not a lot of people know about.
TV: Is your family supportive of your activism?
Desiree: Yeah, absolutely. My mother and I have never really had "the conversation," but I'm sure that she knows. She's very impressed and very excited with my activism and going to New York. She's always been very, very supportive.
TV: How did you get involved with Soulforce? What did you find attractive about the organization?
Desiree: There is an entire apartment building at Berkeley set aside for LGBT students. I moved there from where I was living before, and it was just the most amazing experience. One of my roommates introduced me to Soulforce. He was in charge of interviewing people, picking applicants for the "Right to Marry" Campaign that Soulforce was going to work on that summer.
TV: What are your responsibilities with Soulforce?
Desiree: We go on Equality Rides. An Equality Ride is a yearly thing for Soulforce; it's two months long. They had just finished the "Right to Serve" Campaign about the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the military. Right before it came time for our ride, New York Governor Elliott Spitzer hand-drafted a marriage equality bill that passed through the state Senate. So, they pulled us all out of California and bussed us to New York. They just wanted to have more bodies behind the fight. We split up into four vans, about eight or nine people per van. Then we would get conversations going with congresspeople and senators, to talk one-on-one, face-to-face with them.
TV: What would you do once you were in the government offices?
Desiree: We brought in a lot of visuals. We brought in cupcakes that had two female figures from wedding cake decorations on them. And we had a wedding cake with the man and woman figures on it, and we talked about the inequality of rights between the civil union cupcake and how much smaller and inadequate it is compared to a wedding cake. We talked about everything from marriage rights to the kind of benefits given by national corporations.
TV: Wow, were you part of making the decision about those kinds of visuals?
Desiree: Yeah, absolutely. You have no idea how many places we looked for cake figures that we didn't have to pull apart. They are all produced as one piece. They don't sell them individually anywhere, so we finally just bought the one pieces. Here we were in a parking lot, trying to wrench these things apart and trying to glue them together and it was so apropos* to the issue. It was like, "We can't even get the plastic figures apart!"
TV: What kind of reception did you get?
Desiree: We met people who were just like, "Yes, I totally agree. I'd never thought of it that way before, thank you so much for changing me." There were other people who refused to meet with us for weeks and weeks and weeks; we couldn't even get a meeting with one of the staff people. The secretary hung up on me a number of times when I was trying to talk to her about setting up a meeting. And we said we're just going to show up, whether we have a meeting or not, sit down in their office and wait until someone talks to us.
TV: How did that work out?
Desiree: Well, one of the staff people that was there, he barely gave us his name, all we know was that his name was Ralph-no last name, no position-he wouldn't make any comments on the senator's position on this issue, he just kind of sat there with no look on his face while we gave him our spiel*. He was like, "OK, thank you, goodbye." That was about it. He didn't want to hear anything that we had to say. We felt that way when we were talking to a lot of people."
The Republican majority leader of the New York State Senate, Joseph Bruno, is astonishingly anti-gay. He said repeatedly that when the marriage bill came to the Senate, he would not let it get on the floor; to date, he has not. So all the senators that we went to talk to who changed their minds or who analyzed their opinions more seriously, still haven't even had a chance to vote on this bill, because Senator Bruno is just going to keep it off the floor. So we started this campaign called "Walk a Mile in My Shoes." We asked people to send Senator Bruno a pair of their shoes and attach the note, "This is why I support marriage equality; walk a mile in my shoes." It will change his life very, very little to allow this bill to be voted on, even to vote for this bill.
Desiree Tienturier with other Equality Riders collecting shoes for their "Walk a Mile in My Shoes" campaign.
TV: What do you do when you are faced with intolerance and homophobia?
Desiree: You grin and bear it. We do a lot of venting in the van ride back home and get it all out. Soulforce is all about nonviolence. You just have to call them out on their issues and say, "Why do you feel that way?" We found that a lot of times when you ask people "Why?" they don't have an answer. It was kind of like, "How do I know? Well, the Bible tells me so." They often times don't have any examples. You can show a lot of these people just by example: Here I am; I am a normal person, I have medical bills and I get mail and I am just like you are.
I think that a very big strategy in the anti-gay movement is trying to dehumanize gays because it's a lot easier when you don't consider someone a human being to say, "This is why I'm not giving them these rights, because they're not the same as me. Why should they get the same rights as me?" And I feel like a lot of times just being there at people's doors, in public parks, in senators' offices, just being there as articulate, intelligent, passionate young people-which I also feel like is a group that isn't nearly as politically active as they ought to be-just to stand there and say, "This is something that is important to me. How can you look at me in the face and tell me that I'm that much different than you are?"
TV: What do you hope to achieve by being a part of this organization?
Desiree: This issue is massively important to everyone, and I think it feels like someone else's issue to a lot of people-it's not. It's everyone's issue because children are being affected by this. Men are being affected about this. Women are being affected by this. A massive chunk of the American society is being affected, and even more when you think about families, children, grandparents. It's a massive issue and if the government says there is no difference between a union between a man and a woman and two men then that's a precedent for everyone else in the country.
TV: Are you currently working on any big projects with Soulforce? What are they?
Desiree: Soulforce has just these big rides, like the Equality Ride and I can't do that right now because I'm a full-time student. So the kids who do Equality Ride take off of school for the semester and I'm not able to do that. But there has been a lot of talk about doing the "Right to Marry" Campaign in California this year. So if that happens this summer in California I would absolutely be included in that for sure.
TV: Do you have any advice for teens in the LGBT community?
Desiree: Friends get you through everything. I think it's really important to find a community; they're hard to find, but they're out there. You need to be honest with yourself to be able to be honest with everyone else. A lot of people in the LGBT community internalize the hate that you get on a daily basis, and I think you need to heal yourself of that and keep telling yourself that those kinds of things are other people's shortcomings, not yours.
TV: What about advice for teens who want to be supportive straight allies?
Desiree: The LGBT community loves their straight allies. Just be as active as you can in LGBT issues because they're really important, and straight allies are a really big asset. Do not stand by little kinds of discrimination like, "Oh, you're gay" or "Don't be a fag." Just little things like that seem unimportant, but are important in the way that our society thinks about LGBT issues. The biggest thing a straight ally can do is not perpetuate those things themselves and also take a stand when other people say things.
TV: What else do you like to do besides being an activist?
Desiree: I am a total animal lover. Before I went into Psychology I wanted to be a veterinarian. It turned out that I was actually allergic to pretty much everything under the sun, so that's not really the career for me. I did some volunteer work this summer for the Cat Rescue Organization over in Oakland and that was amazing. It is activism, but a very different form of activism. It is much more hands-on. Sometimes I feel like I get "peopled out." I just want to sit in a pile of cats.
*Pansexual: a person who has the potential to be attracted to people, regardless of their gender identity or biological sex.
*Apropos: fitting, at the right time.
*Spiel: A lengthy talk or speech, often used to lure people to a cause; a pitch
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