Love letter to the Salt Lake City LGBTQ fam
"In a country of lost souls rebellion comes hard. But in a religiously oppressive city, where half it's population isn't even of that religion, it comes like fire." ~SLC Punk!
Salt Lake Temple in downtown. Photo by Adria L. Jawort
‘Just gotta make it to SLC…’
In late December of 2023, I was on my way back to Montana from Las Vegas and had to pee really bad while driving a troubled vehicle through Utah with a planned overnight stop in Salt Lake City.
The saying is, “When you gotta go, you gotta go,” and there should be no shame in this, but when you’re a trans woman, sometimes it can be a bit more complex than that.
Confirmed: ‘Holding it’ all the time also sucks.
When I was in early transition and a lot less “passable,” a more ‘experienced’ trans woman told me when traveling in unfriendly LGBTQ territory, always use the bathroom at a Starbucks because their bathrooms are all gender neutral. Good advice. This was mentioned after I told them I was followed by a group of young men for like a block who were upset I used a woman's bathroom despite it being a single room with a locking door. The audacity to…pee.
With all due respect to the non-judgmental people in this Utah town I was in, I always noted to others that while Salt Lake City was super queer friendly, as you left that safe haven it was definitely MAGA country with much of the populace having ingested years of conservative media telling them trans people were essentially demons who wanted to have sex with your children. And now, there I was, the devil in the flesh as no doubt many of them thought I was.
Trans woman, below, also praying to Christian praying for her.
While taller than most cisgender women, in the past couple of years I seem to slide under the radar enough to use restrooms without people knowing or caring I am trans. It'd be ridiculous for me to go into a truckstop men's room especially decked out as I usually am and feel “safe.”
The gas station was hella crowded, and I followed the signs to the commode. In the back of your mind, there’s always that fear of someone “clocking” you (noticing that you're trans) and then making a big fucking deal out of it.
She seems nice.
We trans activist have seen plenty of vids of trans gals emerging from stalls with the crazy Q Anon conservative lady screaming at them and even androgynous cisgender women; we’ve read of of trans men beaten after following local laws and going into the bathroom of their assigned birth at gender; …
wE cAn aLwaYs tELL iF trAnZ.
…we’ve seen men constantly fantasize about beating or violently attacking “any trans they see in the bathroom with my wife of daughter!”—and holy shit there was a lot of sister wives and daughters in that crowded restroom.
HE'LL YUH HAWG BLESZ BRUTHER GET THE TRANSGENDURDS!!!
I stood there a few seconds as I waited for a stall to open as a woman dried her hands and stared up at me, and a girl of about 10-years-old came out. I rushed to the stall, sat down, and immediately began to do my business. I heard the woman who’d been drying her hands loudly speak, “That person who went in there is a man!”
“She is?” the girl said.
“Yes! He is. Look in there. He is probably standing up peeing!”
I was not standing up, I was sitting down and my hand went up to my brow in disbelief as my heart raced. “Holy shit,” I whispered to myself. “Fuck.”
It was a bit of a panicked situation. If there’s a flight or fight situation, I will always flight but when you’re stuck in a bathroom stall with a hostile transphobe outside it, where ya gonna go? After I finished peeing, I glanced through the crack of the door, and the girl had an amused half-smile looking right back at me. What the fuck? What do you do? I decided I was just going to wait until they left, and they did after another long minute or so. Then I waited another couple minutes so I wouldn’t be ambushed coming out. If she was still outside there, then I guess she was dedicated.
I bolted out the stall. No time to wash my hands in this town. The lady was thankfully not there. I got back to my vehicle as fast as I could, gassed up, and got the fuck out. My vehicle had also started going out to the point it would be inoperable soon, and I drove much slower than I wanted. All I could think was, I just got to get to Salt Lake City. Just gotta make it to SLC…
A Queer Mecca
In world where you are constantly defending your existence—especially as an activist; constantly on edge trying to prove you are not a threat; constantly just wanting to have what they call a ‘normal conversation’ with people; constantly don't know if someone might freak out like they lady might’ve done had I not waited for her to leave, cities like Salt Lake City are an unexpected oasis of love.
I fell in love with the city when I stayed their for two weeks once four years ago as I shuttled back and forth to the Sundance Film Festival. While Sundance is a separate story in itself, on an Uber ride back to my hostel I told the driver that Salt Lake City was super friendly. “Is it like…uh… Mormon niceness rubbing off on everyone?” I joked. As someone who’d lived in various cities throughout the U.S., he had to agree SLC did legit some of the friendliest people of any city he'd been in.
He also explained SLC was one of the most progressive LGBTQ cities in the U.S. I asked how was that so if it was so hardcore Mormon. He said for the most part Mormons just want to be free to do their thing, so they just keep to their own and vice versa.
I later checked, and what he said checked out, surprisingly. SLC not only passed a LGBTQ non-discrimation ordinance in 2009, but set the stage for Utah to become the first “red state” to pass a statewide ordinance. One of it’s longest streets going through the heart of the city is Harvey Milk Boulevard—named after the famous gay politician who was slain—and the majority of its city council currently identifies as LGBTQ.
I’ve been back to this city several times since, staying for days as mini-vacations, collecting my thoughts in peace at chill af local coffee shop open late, wandering the immaculately clean downtown area and staring at the temples, or going to (my own church of sorts) the gothy, Area 51 queer friendly alternative club where I dance the night away with said friendly people. Also, go to the other gay bars on karaoke night, and those former choir boys and girls can sing.
I also note it seems every coffee shop and business seemed to have an LGBTQ sticker or flag in their front entrance. For someone ‘like me,’ when I see an LGBTQ flag, it’s such a relief.
Me writing late night at my fav Salt Lake Break coffee shop in 2022.
You know you can banter with the barista or clerk and they’re not going to give you an evil eye; they’re not gonna let anyone fuck with you just for being you; bigots are offended by said flag anyway so oft they won’t come in; and also, you sure as shit now they ain’t gonna call the fucking fuzz if you dare have to use the bathroom or tell little kids to look at you while sitting on the toilet while accusing you of being in the wrong. This is perfectly normal. -_-
But alas! For all the beauty of this queer mecca, much of their rights fought for and hard earned are being regressed on a state level as anti-LGBTQ hysteria grips red states across the nation.
I mean, I know I am not the most popular, but why they wanna lynch me ‘back home’ in Montana?
As Trish in the film SLC Punk! noted,“What do you expect in a town of God? Mormons run the state, and that is the state of things, I'm afraid.”
Fact check: True.✅️
‘The state of things’
People have also asked me my theories on why this city had so many LGBTQ people, and I noted it’s because it’s a regional mecca of queerness that people flocked to from across the not only the state but region, apparently.
One personal instance I know is a trans man named Xander. (Trans men always have the coolest names, you know?) Xander, who currently resides in Missoula, Montana who grew up in the Apostolic United Brethren cult known for being practicing fundamentalist polygamists. The APU has been disavowed by the main Latter Day Saints sect, but still count over 10,000 people as adherents and a popular show on TLC called Sister Wives aims to humanize them as stars of the show even went on Oprah.
Even as a kid knew he knew he was queer. “I was a trans boy who had dreams of falling in love with a woman and being her man, and loving her for the rest of my life,” he says. As they started to hit puberty, it created not only body dysphoria, but a resentment against the AUB.
While reality shows like Sister Wives aim to humanize the AUB and polygamy, the actual reality is much more bleak for those forced into a life they do not want. He said he felt a “strong resistance to a cult that expected me to be feminine and always wear modest dresses, marry a man, push an untold number of babies through my vagooberhole” while only being able to have borning, conventional sex whenever their chosen husband decided to give them attention amongst the other wives.
“Fuck that,” he said. As they rebelled, the more they were forced into being more fundamentalist—including taking a “Girl’s Class” that “indoctrinates girls and women to be obedient wives and dutiful homemakers.”
He did, however, enjoy the hymn signing. “There is something about being surrounded by women of all ages singing in a big room full of them,” he noted. “Beautiful.”
The Mormon Youth Symphony and Chorus Tabernacle. Photo by Adria L. Jawort
Eventually, they’d escape the AUB, and ended up in the artsy Sugar House area of Salt Lake City. They said they were an “innocent high school lesbian right out of the Apolostic United Brethren, who loved to love love and be loved, and smoke weed,” and as a result his new peers in SLC enveloped him with love right back. “I was a shaved head, wallet chained, bright-eyed little freak, but folks thought it was great.”
Nowadays, Xander is %100 “passable” as a man. You’d never presume he once went to a “Girl’s Class.”
Yet, for people like Xander, and me for that matter, risk going to jail not only in Utah, but the Salt Lake City we love so much when and if we go back there thanks to laws that deem using the bathroom of our genders not only a criminal “trespass” charge, but “voyeurism.”
When I had a couple of daylong layovers on my way to and from Orlando to protest laws back in October, I was actually excited because it was in Salt Lake and I could take the train from the airport and be in the city center in 10 minutes for just two dollars and wander about the town that’d always made me feel welcome and warm in a world and political atmosphere that was oft anything but.
🎶 Sometimes I think sittin’ on the SLC trains…Every stop I get to I'm clocking that game. Everyone's a winner! we're making our fame. 🎶
When I had a couple of daylong layovers on my way to and from Orlando to protest laws back in October, I was actually excited because it was in Salt Lake and I could take the train from the airport and be in the city center in 10 minutes for just two dollars and wander about the town that’d always made me feel welcome and warm in a world and political atmosphere that was oft anything but.
As the governor debates whether to sign this bill—and perhaps maybe he vetoes it, and maybe the legislature overrides it like they did for laws that banned gender affirming care for youth—I think of my trans siblings and queer fam who live there, who fought for so long and so hard to create a safe space for all of us, and now old-fashioned bigotry takes much of that work and seeks to erase it like a dry erase marker on a white board.
Anyway, just thinking about you over there, and hope to visit again soon as I look for the welcoming 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈 at your entrances, knowing you got my back, and vice versa.
Solidarity. ↙↙↙
This lifts my heart — thank you for writing it. Sending you back all the love and prayers for your health and safety.