As we celebrate Pride Month, we decided to take the opportunity to invite a local LGBTQ+ organization to tell us about the important work they do. Ellyn Ruthstrom is the Executive Director of SpeakOUT Boston and has been involved with LGBTQ+ activism for thirty years. As a former president of the Bisexual Resource Center, Ruthstrom co-organized the first White House Roundtable on Bisexual Issues in 2013 during the Obama Administration.
On the oppressive summer night of June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Rebellion started in New York City. Drag queens, trans women and men, gay and bisexual people all stood up together and said “No more!” when the police yet again raided the Stonewall Inn that night. Those first few days of the rebellion didn’t start the LGBTQ+ movement, but it did ignite the sparks that had already been smoldering, and it galvanized activists to organize in a more cohesive way to demand change and to fight the discrimination and stigma that the queer community experienced on a daily basis. The bravery of Stonewall inspires the LGBTQ+ community to march, protest, and celebrate every June for Pride Month.
And just three years after Stonewall, members of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Homophile Union of Boston (some of the earliest gay rights organizations) joined forces to create the Gay Speakers Bureau in Boston. Believing in the power of personal storytelling, the Gay Speakers Bureau trained its members to tell authentic, personal stories that debunked the harmful stereotypes of the “lavender menace.” The organization added other identities to its name as the movement expanded, but eventually we left behind the old name to instead emphasize the importance of what we do: speak out.
SpeakOUT is a community of speakers working to create a world free of homo-bi-transphobia and other prejudice by telling the truths of LGBTQ+ lives. Sharing our stories and fostering a dialogue with a wide range of audiences—schools, colleges, businesses, faith communities, libraries—has always been at the core of SpeakOUT’s mission and work. After 50 years, you can imagine the thousands of stories we have shared! And now we are able to conduct our engagements in both in-person and online formats, reaching beyond the Greater Boston area.
SpeakOUT speakers shared their stories during the AIDS epidemic, the fight for marriage equality, the campaign against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and during the more recent fight for transgender civil rights. We will continue to speak out against the current backlash of laws that are targeting our schools, transgender youth, reproductive rights, and even marriage rights.
Forty or fifty years ago our members encountered a lot more hostility and resistance to what they shared with their audiences than we do now. At that time, audience members felt much more comfortable expressing anti-gay sentiments and our speakers were trained in how to defuse a situation, how to keep the discourse focused on personal experience, and how to use those points of conflict as teachable moments. Our training still includes those skills, even though it is much less likely now for our speakers to encounter extreme viewpoints. Not impossible, but less likely.
The biggest change from what was the Gay Speakers Bureau is the diverse range of identities that we represent. LGBTQ+ may seem like an unwieldy acronym, but it points to the complexity of both sexual orientation and gender identity. I have personally seen a huge change in our client’s willingness to discuss gender identity in just the last eight years when I came on as Executive Director. At that time there were still some clients that explicitly requested us not to send transgender speakers. Now, the majority of clients insist on having a transgender or nonbinary speaker on a panel and are eager to educate their constituencies about trans and nonbinary issues.
As part of our 50th anniversary this year, we have just updated our logo to include the Progressive Pride flag colors, reflecting the organization’s commitment to the BIPOC and transgender communities. An affinity group called SpeakOUT in Color formed within the last two years to provide a social and support space for speakers of color. This group sparked more discussions within the organization to initiate a board-driven DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging) committee that is centering racial diversity within our organization and will be a major focus for the organization going forward.
SpeakOUT’s personal storytelling continues to make a difference. I think of the year or so leading up to the anti-trans referendum in 2018 as being an example of when our format really helped to educate a lot of people out in the community to the importance of trans civil rights. I give props to our trans speakers who tirelessly spoke to faith communities, public forums at libraries, a lot of businesses, so many places. It took a statewide effort by many organizations and individuals and I’m very proud of the work that SpeakOUT did to help ensure the continued protections for our transgender citizens. A lot of our work goes under the radar—we don’t grab the headlines—but I believe the personal connections between our speakers and audience members makes for a meaningful change of attitudes that is an important part of larger social change.
