Our Friends in America

Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) is the American equivalent of FFLAG. With almost 20 employed members of staff a similar number of Board members, over 200,000 members/supporters and local groups in more than 500 areas it is a much bigger organisation than FFLAG.

I was recently contacted by John Cepek who is the newly elected National President of PFLAG (a similar role to our Chair of Trustees). Together with his wife Char he was due to visit the UK for a few weeks and hoped that they could meet up with people from FFLAG to discuss our organisations.

Sue Allen, Bob Allen and myself met with John and Char. The similarities between the two couple were numerous. Of similar ages both couples have been married for over 30 years. Both have two children one of whom is gay/lesbian. Sue and Char both work in schools. John and Char have been involved in PFLAG since 1991, seven months after their son came out. Char is currently the President of the PFLAG Council of Northern Illinois (their home state). This involves supporting the eight chapters (groups) in the area. John has previously been a Chapter President and Secretary of the Board before becoming Vice President and now President.

As we talked about our own organisations I was struck by how much they had in common. PFLAG have recently formed a “Religious Leaders Working Group” which will introduce the PFLAG voice into the ongoing discussions about sexual orientation in communities of faith across the US. This is along the same lines as the work that FFLAG is proposing to do with parents from religious backgrounds.

PFLAG also have a “Families of Color Network” aimed at supporting families from ethnic minorities. The group is particularly keen to work with Latino families and has translated some of its publications into Spanish and formed a support group specifically for Latinos in New York. In addition PFLAG have specific support for Asian families including a video “Coming Out, Coming Home.” We were able to provide John and Char with copies of our Hindi and Urdu materials and explain about our work with Jewish and Asian families.

As both Sue and Char have experience of the education system they were able to discuss their own experiences of working within schools. Both FFLAG and PFLAG have worked to challenge homophobia in schools and PFLAG have several publications aimed at helping schools become more inclusive of LGBT students and teachers. We talked about the Education for All campaign in the UK, which coincidentally is sponsored by IBM who is a major support of PFLAG.

One major difference between the two organisations is that PFLAG include gender identity within its remit and support transgendered people, their families and friends whereas FFLAG do not. We talked about how it was a fairly recent decision for PFLAG to include the “T” of LGBT and the reasons for their decision to do this. We discussed how FFLAG had taken the decision not to include “T” as it is often an issue of gender identity rather than sexual orientation and raises a different set of questions. PFLAG are fortunate that they have parents of trans people within their organisations to provide support to other families something that FFLAG does not have.

PFLAG are currently running a campaign called “Straight for Equality” this is aimed at increasing the number of straight individuals working for LGBT rights. Based on the premise that every LGBT person has four straight friends or family members who support equal rights for that person then the pool of potential supporters is huge. In the UK that is over 14 million people!! Definitely something worth considering.

PFLAG has successfully engaged with a number of celebrities who have LGBT relatives to run an advertising campaign called “Stay Close”. Cyndi Lauper and her lesbian sister, Ben Affleck and his gay cousin and Congressman Dick Gephardt and his lesbian daughter have all been involved. The aim is to help LGBT, their families and friends stay close by understanding and supporting one another.

John and Char explained how they felt that the UK was much more advanced in terms of equality for LGB people that the US. Only a few states in the USA have civil partnership legislation and goods, facilities and services protection is not yet in place. The reason that John and Char continue to work in PFLAG is because they want their two sons to have the same rights as one another “nothing more and certainly nothing less. We also want to create a society in which LGBT individuals are accorded the same value as us garden-variety straights”

We chatted about the merits, or lack of them, of our political leaders and the progress that has been made towards equality. John and Char seemed keen to swap their president for our prime minister an offer we politely declined!!

Although much progress has been made we all agreed that it would be a long time before there was no need for organisations such as ours. There are still organisations promoting racial equality forty years after race relations legislation was introduced so it will be a long time before both FFLAG and PFLAG are redundant.

Inevitably the conversation turned to money and how the two organisations both struggle for funding. The situation in the US is different in that corporate sponsorship is much more the norm whereas in the UK government or trust funding supports most voluntary organisations. PFLAG have an impressive list of corporate sponsors and private donors. We discussed ways in which FFLAG could attract similar funding by approaching large organisations and high profile LGB people in the UK.

The meeting was not solely devoted to ‘business’ we talked about how potato chips (crisps) are so much better in the UK (lots more exciting flavours apparently) and how horrible American chocolate is. We chatted about how much more expensive food is in the UK, about twice the price, but our guests felt the British food was much better than its reputation. John also seemed to be enjoying the local beer!!

We put the world to rights in terms of healthcare, private versus the NHS, and the pros and cons of Oprah Winfery. Of course we talked about our families, careers and holidays (or vacations). We managed to get through four hours of lively chat with no major language difficulties and I think we all learnt a lot.

As the meeting drew to a close John expressed the wish to form an international parents’ movement involving FFLAG, PFLAG and similar organisations in Europe. All those present felt that this had been a valuable (and enjoyable) meeting and hoped it would be the start of a long and productive friendship.

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