“Language is changing a lot, but language does change. As long as everybody can relax and keep learning the words, we’ll be alright.” – Richard Heyl de Ortiz the executive Director of the LGBTQ+ community center
Rokosz Most: What are the words that we should be using to refer to the community and the individuals within the community?
Richard Heyl de Ortiz: This varies from area to area. What’s most common here in this area is LGBTQ+, or LGBTQIA. (Lesbian, Gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersexed, asexual)
RM: And for an article where it has to be repeated…
RHO: I think when I’m speaking sometimes, it’s hard to say those letters over and over again, and you can get tripped up, so I often ask, ‘are you okay if I just use queer in place of these words’? because queer has become a more encompassing word. I know there’s a history to that word, but it kind of falls, at least in my mind, into kind of the same category as some other words that we have taken back in a way.
RM: So in the context when I’m talking about the movement across the decades, I would say LGBTQ+ rights and then somehow acknowledge that from then on I’m going to use a shorter signifier?
RHO: That’s what I would do. I haven’t heard people say queer rights so much. It’s more the queer community, queer individuals, but if I were writing, that’s what I would do. Just know that no matter what you use, there’s going to be someone who feels that it should be somewhat different.
RM: I feel like it’s generational. The people who want to choose the words to identify themselves are casting off the old definitions that the generation before them used and so forth, so it’s inevitable. What do you think it is that about fluidity in terms of gender expression that just seems to drive some conservatives and just reactionary types crazy in general?
RHO: The umbrella of the queer community has become much broader. And with that comes, you know, more options that are harder for some people, I think, to understand.
This kind of reliance on gender as one or the other has existed well before the gay rights movement for queer equality, it’s just, you know, what our big umbrella is asking for is a broader definition and less rigidity.
RM: I have heard talk about people that aren’t embracing the right lexicon quickly enough, you know, and are castigated for their lack of knowledge. Do you counsel those in the queer community to go easy on the squares that don’t get it, so you can try to bring them over?
RHO: I think we do have to give latitude to someone who is not there yet. We have to tell them, this is how I identify. And then, you know, if someone continues to not respect that, that’s a problem. But if someone, as a human being, is saying, I don’t understand, you know, I am trying to do the best I can here, we have to kind of take them at their word and hope that that’s true, and that they really are trying to grapple with a world that is not as definitive, or an environment that is not as definitive. Especially if they’re older.
RM: Many of the oldsters do seem baffled, but really it might be that they’re just attached to their own patois.
RHO: You know, it was interesting. I was talking with someone who participates in programs regularly here, who is older, and was expressing kind of, there was not judgment, but just kind of being perplexed by this. And I said, well, think about it. There are just more options today. When you came out, there were one or two options, maybe three. Now there are more ways that people can find the place that most aligns with their internal compass. With my husband, I don’t know if he came out today, would he identify as gay or not? I’ve never asked him, but I thought, maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t.
RM: Do you think this is all part of a larger pattern throughout history, we’re no longer 55 years ago back at Stonewall, you have a wonderful building, openly, prominently, rainbow flags, rainbow-painted crosswalk, center of uptown. Are you worried that the pendulum is going to swing back?
RHO: It is human nature to make progress forward in terms of equality and for there to be a snapback. Every time. It is like this pendulum that occurs, and I don’t want to take away from the fact that when we’re in that swingback, like I think we are now, it is painful, and it causes hurt, it causes anguish, it’s negative in so many ways, on a very personal level, on a community level. That’s where we are now, and I think we’re seeing it being targeted to the most vulnerable in our community, and that’s really troubling. That’s very cynical to do that.
RM: Do you think the front lines then, right now, are for trans people?
RHO: In general, yes, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that all over this country, and right here, there are still young men who are gay, there are still young women who are lesbian, who still struggle with coming out and still struggle with that. They still feel that. So, I don’t want to take away from that, but yes, in general, I think the decision that was made to target the most vulnerable in our community has a disproportionate impact on trans individuals in our community. By targeting the part of our big umbrella community that the general public is kind of earliest in the journey of understanding and accepting and integrating, that to me is deliberate and it’s really reprehensible.
RM: I want to ask you about, I think the way that I wrote it in my head is like, you know, you have a culture that you had to keep hidden for so long and there’s always antagonistic pressure around it that is just forcing it into this beautiful diamond and it’s your culture and then when it goes mainstream, everyone’s running off with your diamond. So there’s, I think, a tension, I don’t know if you want to address this, that I guess it doesn’t matter if something goes mainstream, if that means your trip to the grocery store gets less filled with hostility and hate and you can go on vacation and not be bothered…
RHO: I think you’re speaking to is there’s a commodification of the culture. If it achieves the goal of creating greater acknowledgment and acceptance, that can be a good thing. Like you said, if it makes it easier for someone to be able to go to the grocery store and shop without being harassed or looked at in a particular way or whatever, there’s a good aspect to that. Certainly I would hope that anyone who chooses to kind of buy into the LGBTQ plus rights movement and into Pride Month is on board with the underlying values about equality and the right to self-identify as one chooses and to be able to live their life without harassment or discrimination.
RM: Comparatively, New York State is doing all right.
RHO: I guess we’re lucky to be in New York State, comparatively. I think about that all the time. I have always been proud to be a New Yorker. Not that everything that happens in our state is really wonderful, but I am aware of the fact that there are people all over this country, very much like me, who do not have the ability to live with the same freedom and cannot take for granted things that we can here.
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