I have always been a fan of the actor Michael Keaton, and this past week my love for him grew as I watched him accept his Screen Actors Guild award, and not just because at the age of 70 he ran and barrel rolled onto the stage, although that was very impressive.
In his acceptance speech, Keaton spoke about how proud he is to be an actor. “I’m so blessed to do what I do, and so fortunate,” he said. “I have a job … that actually can spawn thought, conversation, actual change. Who gets to have that job?”
As I heard him say those words it made me think, I have a job like that. The work we get to do here at Watermark, sharing the stories of our local LGBTQ community that spark thought, conversation and change, makes me feel so fortunate and so inspired by the people in our community.
The day before the SAG Awards, I was inspired by some of those very community leaders when I attended the Rally for Our Collective Rights outside of Orlando’s City Hall and watched them fight against the homophobic, transphobic, racist and sexist bills making their way through the Florida legislature. Among those is the “Don’t Say Gay” bill that would forbid discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in school classrooms for certain grade levels.
The bill reminded me of a job I had before joining the team here at Watermark. I won’t name the company but it was a pharmacy benefit manager that operates throughout the country, including in Georgia where I first started working for them. The call center that I worked in was broken into teams that became your work family. Before and after work, during breaks and between calls you would socialize with each other, asking how the family was and what you were planning to do that weekend.
I remember one particular conversation back in 2008 where one of our team members was planning to take a cruise. Between calls we talked about where she was going and who on the team had and hadn’t been on a cruise before. When I mentioned that I had never been on one but had always wanted to take a gay cruise, our team lead came storming down the row and informed us that “having conversations like that” could make others feel uncomfortable. When we asked what conversation, she said talking about a gay cruise.
The team lead had no issue with the other members of the team talking about going on trips with their opposite sex partners, but the mention of the word gay was too much. When I protested, she had me come to her cubicle to tell me that if I continued she would write me up. In my younger days, I was what my mother would call a “pot stirrer,” so I told my lead to start the paperwork and then marched to my desk and — going full Norma Rae — pulled out a small markerboard we all kept at our desks and wrote the word UNION on it and stood on my chair. Sally Field would have been so proud.
The next several weeks turned into what my mother would refer to as a “shit show” for the company as I went full Karen on them and said I would get a lawyer and sue. There were meetings with management, HR and corporate of how to “handle me.” My brother, who worked for the company as well, and several of my friends were brought into the mix and offered bonuses from management for their hard work and, as hard-working team players, hoped they could “talk to me” in order to “calm me down.”
The ordeal ended with an apology from the site director and a meeting with HR asking me to lead an LGBTQ appreciation day at the call center. I did not take them up on that offer and instead told them I would like a transfer to another one of their call centers. And to my delight, they enthusiastically said yes and I headed down to Orlando, where I was free to say the word gay all I wanted.
I have been thinking about this incident a lot over the last couple weeks, imagining what it would have felt like if that situation happened to me when I was a kid in school, talking about my guncle. I thought about how terrified I would have been if instead of being my team lead, that lady was my second-grade teacher and told me that all the other kids could talk about their uncles but I had to be quiet because mine happened to be gay.
The ones supporting this bill say they are doing it because it should be the parent’s decision whether kids hear the word gay or lesbian or transgender but in many cases leaving those talks solely up to parents is dangerous for that LGBTQ kid. This bill has passed the House and moves to the Senate, so now is the time to awaken your inner Norma Rae and call your state senator and tell them “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!” I know that is from “Network” and not “Norma Rae,” but you get the point.