You can find more about the LGBTQ Center of the Cape Fear Coast here.
Benjamin Schactman: All right, Elena Rosemond. Thank you very much for being here.
Elena Rosemond: Thank you so much for having us.
BS: So, I want to start here. For folks who don't know what you do at the LGBTQ center, tell me a little bit about, like, the work that you're doing right now.
ER: Yeah, absolutely. So, the LGBTQ center of the Cape Fear Coast, formerly the Frank Harr Foundation, is our region's LGBTQ community center. So we are serving sort of the greater Cape Fear area, and our primary goal is to be a hub for our community to help connect people with resources, to help small groups connect with each other, to help facilitate communication and community building, and then also to help celebrate queer joy. We had our annual adult pride prom last weekend, and it was just like the most fun thing ever. So all of these very serious tasks, and then a lot of just celebration.
BS: So I do want to ask, when it comes to pride, there's always this tension between pride the parade and pride the protest.
ER: Yeah.
BS: The activism part and the celebration part, right. How do you feel about that?
ER: I mean, I think what I want from everyone, not just the queer community, but the community at large, maybe especially the community at large, is year-round activism and celebration, and I think that Pride started as a riot, right, it started as a protest, it is a celebration of all of the years, all of the generations of efforts from our queer ancestors who fought so that we could put on Daisy Dukes and dance in the streets. Like, we're having this joy because of that fight, and we all know the fight continues, so we're not able to just put down the fight and pick up the rainbow flag. We have to be doing both of those things, certainly in June, but preferably all year long.
BS: Certainly, when you had Black trans women fighting corrupt, bigoted New York City police officers, a very literal fight.
ER: Yeah.
BS: And over time, that's become more metaphorical, and I feel like there have been times, there've been pockets of times, when the fight aspect has sort of taken a back seat, because it felt like the progress had been made.
ER: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's, you know, I'm a white cis woman, so like acknowledging that there have been times where it has felt like we've made enough progress that it didn't have to be, being a lesbian didn't have to be my entire personality. And then there are other times where you know, I'm the head of school for a local school, and on tour days I'm making sure I'm putting out books about different types of families, I'm making sure that I'm mentioning my partner, my female partner, I'm making sure, like, those sorts of things. Because I do have to, for the safety of myself, my school, my community, put forward this is a safe place, this is a safe place for queer families, for queer teachers, etc. So, like, depending on our social moment, I have to put that more forward in my personality. I'm lucky, as a white cis woman, that I could theoretically just never mention it, and coast through life.
BS: You could just pass,
ER: Right. Exactly. There are lots of people in our community who don't have that privilege, and historically those people, the Black trans women, most notably, are the ones who have to fight always, because they don't have the privilege or the ability to otherwise assimilate, and so making sure that we are recognizing that they have a very different journey than some of us do is a really important piece of it, when we're talking about pride,
BS: I'm curious, we were looking at some opinion polls in the newsroom, and we have seen, you know, six, seven percentage-point decreases in support for gay marriage, or more broadly, support for the LGBTQ or queer community. Do you feel that in your work?
ER: Yeah, absolutely. I actually, recently, was leading a tour for a prospective student, and at the end of it, I mentioned my wife. And the woman, she pulled a face, and then I never heard from them again, and I was like, honestly, that's a bullet dodged for me. I now don't have to enroll a family that's homophobic, that's then going to be mad at our other gay or queer teachers, families, trans kids, yada yada. I've received enough angry emails from parents over the years for being on the right side of that, but it was one of those moments where I was like, wow, that's really, we're doing that right now today, in June? Happy Pride. June 2026, that's where we are.
BS: Yeah, another thing we've seen in some of the opinion polling, and I see this in my conversations with people, and I see it in the comment sections – which is not a great sampling of humanity, but it is, you know, it is a data set – and that has to do with sort of a divide in opinions on on gay and lesbian rights versus trans rights or non-binary rights. I've heard this described by some of my friends as ‘establishment queer’ versus ‘frontier queer.’
BS: Yeah.
BS: But that there seems to be some sense that the reactions are different. What do you, what do you make of that?
ER: I mean, I think it's, the first big indication of that I saw in this most recent political wave was when the Trump administration changed the travel advisories, and they changed the title of the page, ‘LGB Travelers.’ They took the ‘T’, the ‘QIA’ is gone, but they took the ‘T’ away. They're saying, for now, “lesbians and gays, you're okay, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, you're okay. We've othered this.” And obviously that administration's war on trans people has been perpetual, but I think that for a lot of folks, you do see a comfort with lesbians, certain types of lesbians, and certain types of gay men, ones that fit into the roles and the stereotypes that we've accepted socially more so than trans people and non-binary folks. So, there is a level of social discomfort with those groups that differs from, I think, that the types of gay people that you've been seeing in media for decades, right? Like everyone loves a Will and Grace caricature, everyone loves, you know, a certain type of lesbian, a certain type of gay man, and then the minute they step out of that trope, they're in trouble. But as long as they say on those lines, they're okay.
BS:This is a sensitive question, but it is one I get a lot, and that has to do with – no community as a monolith – do you feel sometimes pushback from folks who maybe are, you know, gay or lesbian, and would like to maybe back away from that tension point, that division, and say, ‘okay, good, I'm, you know, I'm part of the establishment, I'm not a target. I don't want this fight.’
ER: Yeah, I mean, certainly that exists. I hear overwhelming support for each facet of our community when I'm at community events, you know? I spent all day Sunday at Pride at Highwire, and it was so affirming and wonderful. And it's one of those, like Pride is a great month for feeling that right, that sense of community, and to, like, okay, this is good, look at these thousands of people who are coming out to celebrate this community and our rights. But absolutely within the community you will hear people who have differing opinions. I would say that's the minority, at least from people that I am talking to, but it certainly exists in the same way that bi-phobia exists, and all of these different things within our community, you know. Humans are, unfortunately, multifaceted most of the time.
BS: And we are very good at making categories and tribes and excluding people, all that fun stuff.
ER: Absolutely, as a former preschool teacher, I can tell you that, really, it's human nature.
BS: Yes, it is. I mean, speaking of kiddos, this cannot be the easiest time in recent history to be young and queer.
ER: Yeah, absolutely.
BS: How has that looked through your lens?
ER: I mean, I think that what we are seeing is, thankfully, a thriving youth group. The center, our youth group, has grown consistently every month for the past few years, and I feel so grateful that we, as a center, are in the position to provide that, to provide safety, to provide community, to provide a place for them to be young and queer and joyful – and talk about the hard things, and talk about the scary things, but also just be like silly teenagers, that's so important. On the other side of that, we, through the center’s email and social media, get a lot of messages from young queers that are saying they're not out to their family, they're feeling worried – ‘thank you for what we're doing. Unfortunately, I can't attend Pride events because x, y, and z.’ I remember being that teenager. I remember being a teenager who wasn't sure how I could talk about my identity, who didn't have queer elders around me that I could look up to. And I felt so much hope for there for a while, and it feels really scary to be in a place where especially the trans and non-binary youth are more vulnerable than they've ever been before – or certainly more vulnerable, I'm almost 40, in my lived memory.
BS: One of the things we see a lot is, man, can it be rough on social media. There's no way I could possibly overstate that, so I won't try, but it is a toxic dumpster fire of hatred and division. And I feel like that has overshadowed some of the benefits of social media that we hoped it would bring us, that it would connect us with like-minded folks and community. Does it serve any purpose anymore? Is there any hope on social media for people who might not have something in their neighborhood that they could go to?
ER: I mean, yes, I think so. I think that what social media does is silo us, so it makes it so easy to surround yourself with just people who think the same as you, which is problematic on a societal level, of course. But it does also mean that, like, unless the algorithm really glitches, I largely am seeing things about, like, queer joy – and people doing their nails and people cutting cakes, it's like, my algorithm is feeding me things that I really want to see. My wife's algorithm is like gay people on horses, and so it can allow you to sort of hone it. I think, for so many people, social media is the first place where they can be openly gay, we hear from a ton of late in life trans people, late in life queers who started exploring that side of their identity through social media, that the first step before they came out to their families, before they came out socially, was expression on social media, either as themselves or anonymously, just absorbing the information. So I think that it can be something that's really wonderful. It can also be an absolute dumpster fire.
BS: I think that's fair. I also think it depends on the platform.
ER: Yeah.
BS: They're not all the same. I found that Instagram, I have trained it to be people playing guitar and cats.
ER: Yeah, yeah.
BS: Facebook, I cannot train it. No matter what I tell it, it wants to show me the worst.
ER: Yeah, Facebook, for sure, wants me to feel sad, and scared.
BS: But not leave.
ER: Exactly. Yeah.
BS: So, I mean, what else would you want people to know about the work that you guys are doing right now?
ER: I think that it's a vulnerable time for nonprofits, you know this –
BS: All too well.
ER: And I think that what I want everyone to understand is that we exist to serve the community. We're currently doing a community needs assessment, so we're currently – find us at any table at every Pride event this month all around town, and allow us to check in with you. We have it online, we have it in person at tabling events. We want to know what the community needs from us. We have the benefit of being really flexible. We are at a big growth place for the center, and we want to guide our future based on our actual community.
I was looking around this past weekend at prom, and then again at Highwire, and I was just like, so overwhelmed by the young queers and the parents of trans teenagers who were coming to talk to me because they wanted resources, and we run a monthly queer family play date, where families who identify in queer, in whatever facet, maybe the parents are queer, maybe one of the kids is queer, can come and sort of get together. I'm having, you know, folks reaching out to us about all these different types of programming, all our different community groups, and support groups, and events. I just feel so excited that we get to exist for them.
And, you know, that does come with us needing perpetually to fundraise, so supporting us through events and then supporting us through donations is a great way to help make sure that we can do the work that we want to do, continue to do it.
BS: All right, well, Elena Rosemond, thank you so much for your time.
ER: Thank you so much for having me.
