Support for the LGBT community is growing in NWA

Mitchell Evans sits with his elbows on the table, nervously fidgeting with the lid of his thermal coffee cup. His cheekbones and rosebud mouth, slightly pursed, are highlighted by his flawlessly applied make-up.

Evans, who has known he was gay since he was six, is in between: in between male and female, in between child and adult, and in between his past and his future.

He is 17 years old and is self-educated on the topic of sexuality, especially for gays and lesbians, he says. His sex education class in Greenland Middle School did not even touch upon the subject of homosexuality, an upsetting situation for Evans, who was openly gay at that time. Instead, he used a book called "The Joy of Gay Sex" to teach himself all there was to know, he says.

"That was kind of a hard place to come out in," Evans says.

Evans is only one of many gays and lesbians in the Northwest Arkansas area who find coming out a difficult situation.

“Coming out is the one thing that ties us all together as a LGBT community…it’s the one big hurdle we all overcome,” says Anthony Clark, president of the NWA Center for Equality. “But even though it’s the one thing that ties us together, every story is so unique.”

Clark grew up in a fundamental evangelical home in a small rural town outside of Little Rock, and then moved to Fayetteville when he was 18 to attend the U of A.

“I didn’t know any openly gay people until I was 19 years old,” Clark says. “It felt like I was the only one in the whole wide world.”

Clark didn’t go through the coming out process until he was 19, when he was attending the university and belonged to the support group P.R.I.D.E., People Respecting Individual Differences and Equality.

“Because we are in a fundamentally religious part of the country, there are people that just simply don’t believe that I was born gay,” Clark says, citing this as one of the reasons why gays and lesbians are still without civil rights in Arkansas.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which are said to have been the beginning of the gay and lesbian civil rights movement. The Riots happened June 27, 1969, when gay and lesbians fought back after police raided a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village.

They have been fighting for civil rights since then, but Clark points out that the struggle has been significantly longer than the black civil rights movement, which is considered to have lasted 20 years. Clark believes this is because being gay isn’t as obvious as skin color, making it easier for people to dismiss gay rights and hide discrimination.

The NWA Center for Equality, a support and advocacy group working to achieve legal rights and social equality for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in Northwest Arkansas, was founded by Kay Massey in 2006, about a year after Arkansans voted to suspend all marriage or relationship rights for same-sex couples.

“There was no presence in Northwest Arkansas whatsoever [at that time] as far as an advocacy group specifically for gay rights,” Clark says.

The NWA Center for Equality is one of only two non-profit organizations in the state which actually works specifically for LGBT rights. The other is the Center for Artistic Revolution, or CAR, based out of Little Rock.

But things have been improving for gays and lesbians in the Northwest Arkansas area.

“Northwest Arkansas is overall a little more progressive than the rest of the state,” Clark says. He believes that is because of the influence of the university and of Walmart, Tyson and other large corporations that bring people from more progressive areas.

Evans believes Fayetteville, a growing city, has become more accepting of gays and lesbians, citing more gay bars (two, to be exact) than other areas of Arkansas as evidence.

"I know I can walk down the street in full drag garb [in Fayetteville] and nobody would really say a lot," Evans says. He believes the more accepting atmosphere has to do with Fayetteville being an arts and college town.

Other towns in Northwest Arkansas are becoming more accepting of gays and lesbians, as well. Eureka Springs, in Carroll County, now provides domestic partner registry, though it is the only town in the state to do so. The ordinance, which went into effect on June 13, allows non-married couples from anywhere in the country to register with the city for $35 and receive a certificate bearing the signature of the mayor and the city clerk validating their relationship. The certificate is not a legal document and does not signify that the partnership is equal to a legal marriage.

“Things are certainly better than they were five, 10, any amount of years ago, but there is certainly a lot of work to be done,” Clark says.

Clark feels that LGBTs are close to reaching social equality in Northwest Arkansas; he says the problem is the lack of legal rights or protection from discrimination. This prevents professional gays and lesbians from moving into the area, at the same time encouraging those from Arkansas to move away.

“The Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce, the University of Arkansas, the City of Fayetteville…if they had fully inclusive nondiscrimination policies they would attract talent from all over the country,” Clark says.

As it stands right now, many gays and lesbians are not going to move to the area if they are looking for a job in higher education or public policy, Clark says. They are not going to consider Northwest Arkansas if they can’t have full coverage benefits, if their partner or spouse can’t fall under their insurance, and other such things that many have become used to in larger metropolitan areas.

Only a little over 64,000 gay, lesbian and bisexual adults were living in Arkansas in 2005, according to figures from the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. The same figures show that more than 269,000 gays and lesbians were living in Massachusetts, a state less than one-fourth Arkansas' size.

The institute estimates there were 16,864 gay, lesbian and bisexual adults living in 12 of the Northwest Arkansas counties: Benton, Boone, Carroll, Crawford, Franklin, Johnson, Madison, Marion, Newton, Pope, Sebastian and Washington.

Evans, who anticipates pursuing a fashion degree at the U of A by next fall, and is actively involved in groups such as P.R.I.D.E, is one of those who do not plan to stay here. He wants to transition, via surgery and hormone treatments, into a straight female, and he feels it will be difficult and dangerous to try to find someone here to date. He plans to move to either the upper East Coast or the West Coast, he says.

“Really what it comes down to is familiarity,” Clark says. “As the general population, as our friends, as our family members become more familiar with us [and] see that we’re no different than they are, then they become more accepting, more inclusive. You really have to understand the differences in order to change your perception.”