Stonewall Columbus had no lesbians or women in their 2021 Pride entertainment. Representation matters. Stonewall, why do you ignore us?
We, the undersigned, are businesses, organizations, influencers, artists, Lesbians, and allies that are stakeholders in the Central Ohio Lesbian community. We are calling on Stonewall Columbus to meet with a representative group of Central Ohio Lesbians to make a plan to increase Lesbian inclusion and address Lesbian erasure.
Lesbians have been a central part of the LGBTQ+ community from the very early days of Gay and Lesbian liberation. We have fought on the front lines on all the major issues with our brothers and sisters. Imagine our surprise to have been excluded from performing at Pride.
Stonewall has a mission to "increase visibility, inclusion, and connection for the LGBTQ+ community," but you are failing Lesbians in this mission. We are not naïve and do not expect perfection, however, excluding Lesbians from this part of Pride feeds into the already existing perception of Columbus Stonewall as an organization that is really only for gay men, whites, and the moneyed. The exclusion speaks to a much larger issue of lesbian visibility and inclusion.
Representation from all parts of our large community has become a primary focus of our communities and our politics, both locally and nationally. In a city with a large lesbian community and many lesbian performers, what message are Lesbians to draw from this omission? Rather than increasing our visibility, you have further fed into the growing problem of Lesbian erasure.
When Stonewall was contacted by numerous Lesbians, we received a say-nothing response. While we do not want to speculate about the reasons for your surprising exclusion of us, it is apparent that you need help in ensuring that this never happens again. With that in mind, we are calling for a meeting with Executive Director Densil Porteous, the Executive Committee (Gerry Rodriguez, Ronald Murray, Jeffrey Carter, Jonah Minot, and Dominiece Hoelyfield), and Lesbians on the Board and Staff to discuss an ongoing plan to ensure that Lesbians and the Lesbian Community are not an afterthought to Stonewall.
We look forward to working with you to make Stonewall an organization that truly serves all of us.
