The Legacy of Queer Elders Who Paved Our Way
A capsule of Queer and trans elder voices
Story & photos by Tristyn MacDonald
It’s nearing midnight, your lukewarm coffee is at its end as you sip it between conversations. A policeman enters the cafe and a wave of anger and fear washes over the room because you can assume what will follow. If not today, tomorrow, this cafe-turned hang-out spot will eventually get raided and some of your friends will get arrested or beaten. Back to square one.
Today people don’t face the same fears entering gay clubs or designated Queer spaces as the ones who laid the foundation of the community as it is today. They faced a great deal of oppression and loneliness, having no sense of an older community to turn to.
People often look up to their families or teachers to help guide them through life. These people are supposed to help you figure out how to be yourself. If you didn’t have role models to look up to, would you know where to look or whom to turn to?
It’s not always blood that makes people your family. The most valuable relationships in life can be found in unexpected places. Whether in a 24-hour cafeteria or the nearest gay bar, Queer people have been forced to find guidance in less stereotypical methods.
“It was the girls on the streets that I looked up to and looked to for guidance,” said Karin Fresnel, who spent much of her youth with her grandmother in San Francisco, California.
The sun shines on Karin Fresnel on the top floor of Makeworth Coffee in Bellingham, Wash. She opens up about her life and experience as a trans woman coming from California in an interview. After growing up in a time when trans representation was scarce, she hopes that people don’t feel so alone anymore in today’s time.
During Fresnel’s time in California, she frequently visited Compton’s Cafeteria, where she met the girls who would become her role models. These girls, some of whom were transgender women or drag queens, were a part of the LGBTQ+ community and found a fondness for Fresnel.
“Female, woman, trans woman, lesbian, trans lesbian, transbian whatever you like,” she said.
“I knew I was different, I always liked girl things,” Fresnel said. “I was 8 years old when I finally had a word for it, I learned about Christine Jorgensen.”
Christine Jorgensen was a trans woman who had one of the first well-known successful gender-affirming surgeries in the ‘50s and was a passionate trans activist. Her coming out was a step toward unearthing trans communities because people had no idea that many others were having the same internal battles about their identity.
Societally, we are naturally drawn to people who we can find community in. In a community where you are comfortable, you can live your life authentically. Queer and trans people didn’t want to fight for the right to live, they were forced to.
Fresnel said that when she was in high school, “being gay was still in the [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders]. I saw that taken out. I saw trans be taken out of the DSM-5.” She also witnessed the fall of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Act. These various victories, big or small, carry a great impact
“I just wanted to be left alone to live my life, but I couldn't,” Fresnel said. “I have seven suicide attempts to my name — all as a result of being trans. Having seemingly nowhere to go, no one to look up to, no one to ask questions.”
She remembers reading a pamphlet stating that the average age for a trans woman was 57.
To know you aren’t the only one going through something can drastically impact your outlook on life, and for Fresnel, she had finally found a trans community with the girls at the cafeteria.
Compton’s Cafeteria is known for being one of the first places riots occurred in response to police harassment of transgender people, particularly trans women and drag queens. This was three years before the Stonewall Inn riot in New York City that would become the catalyst for LGBTQ+ rights movement in the U.S. As well known transgender advocates like Marsha P. Johnson and Slyvia Rivera fought back against police harassment but that would not be the end of the struggle against violence towards Queer people.
In an article by The Pride, Christiana Lilly wrote, “The Los Angeles Police Department often targeted LGBT people through entrapment, intimidation, and violence. Police specifically targeted trans people, arresting those whose perceived gender did not match their driver’s license.”
These events in LGBTQ+ history play a role in the foundation of the community today. Leaving these elements of history undocumented perpetuates the ultimate erasure of Queer people when these communities have always existed.
“They probably are the reason most of all that I am still here today…They were there at a time when I needed someone to talk to and I think that’s what most people want and need,” Fresnel said, referring to the girls from Compton’s who took her in. She was in the cafeteria the day the riot occurred but was hurried out the back with her grandmother hours before the chaos broke out.
Fresnel only had a brother whom she would only grow further apart from as she came out as trans. The girls from the cafeteria became like sisters to her and while some found who they would look up to as siblings, others found love.
People get so busy trying to talk themselves out of being Queer that sometimes they’re the last person to know. Jane Lowrey is a 77-year-old lesbian. “In 1975, I had a boyfriend that I’d been with for about four years, and people kept telling me that I was gay, including him,” she said as she let out a laugh.
Jane Lowrey sits down for an interview, welcoming us into a look inside her home and her life. She enjoys recalling some events that she hasn’t thought about recently and thinks it’s important to bring together older and younger generations of Queer people. She regularly attends the Generations of Pride dinners at the Bellingham Senior Activity Center.
Unfortunately for her, the main spaces available for Queer mingling were bars, and she was not a drinker. She met her wife under cliché romantic movie circumstances.
“We had a mutual friend who worked in a flower shop, and we both showed up on Valentine’s Day expecting her to get off work early because we wanted to go see this movie,” said Lowrey, taking a moment to smile and remember the scene. “We were both there to invite her to the movies. Just totally coincidental. And so she said, ‘It’s Valentine’s Day, this is a flower shop, you two go to the movie!’ So we did, and we were pretty much together ever since.” The pair spent a wonderful 45 years together.
Over time, the path to acceptance has become more attainable for the LGBTQ+ community, with many of its new members finally finding security within their identities and sexualities.
Lowrey reflected on how much more open the community is today. “It was really different 50 years ago, you didn’t refer to your partner as your partner,” she said.
Our generation of elders is, in a way, the first wave of “out” elders in our society. When they were younger, they didn’t have a visible community of Queer people around to share solidarity with.
“When I see something where people have found the joy of companionship through life and they've done it in spite of…There's something heroic in that,” Ernissee said.
“The Youth Pride March is a total mind-blowing reality,” Ernissee said, referring to Bellingham’s Whatcom Youth Pride March. “Sexuality in various parts of the world, or in America at least, is being talked about openly, so the isolation has decreased dramatically.”
Sebastian Ernissee starts his morning at one of his favorite breakfast places, Avenue Bread in Fairhaven Bellingham, Wash. Coming from the South, he finds comfort in the fabulous Queer community that he’s found in this city.
“Back then you really thought you were alone,” said 77-year-old Sebastian Ernissee. Ernissee grew up in South Carolina where gay bars were sparse. In Bellingham, Washington, we have Rumors Cabaret right downtown. That isolating feeling experienced by the people who came before us still exists, but not to the extent to which they felt it.
Ernissee recounts the early LGBTQ+ rights advocacy. “The movement was getting underway just a few years after Stonewall, and so apart from the bars and the campuses where a few [LGBTQ+ people] were starting to build groups, there was not a normal social contact,” he said. “It wasn’t normal to have Queer and trans folks roaming around loudly and proudly. It was something that had to be kept under much tighter wraps.”
Ernissee’s first time in a gay bar was similarly nerve-wracking. He drove across state lines to the nearest gay bar in Rochester, New York, where he ran into an old high school classmate, both surprised to see one another. Back then, the feeling that there couldn’t possibly be anyone else you knew who was Queer or trans was the reality. It led people to hide parts of themselves from society that were viewed as “abnormal.” To be that afraid of being yourself takes an unimaginable toll on a person.
The LGBTQ+ community has made tremendous progress that would not exist without its elders and the community they built for Queer voices to be heard. However, they faced a lot of turmoil that would block the continuation of this advocacy and cause much harm to the community.
“People know 69 as the summer of love, that period from 1968-1975 was another window of opportunity for people who were Queer to not face as much radical opposition up until the AIDS crisis began,” Endrizzi said. “It was another open window where people could come out and be authentically themselves and not get as much blowback. Then, of course, when the AIDS epidemic happened and it was wrongfully characterized as a gay disease, that, of course, shut everything down.”
“I don’t want to de-evolve,” said Endrizzi. "Another reason I wish more of us had survived…is because what we can do as older queer adults is calm the younger ones.”
Matt Endrizzi opens up his home to share his journey to becoming who he’s more famously known as, drag persona Betty Desire. The awareness of his sexuality drove his desire to join the Pentecostal Christian Church when he was younger. Today you can find Betty Desire performing every Thursday in her daytime drag shows in Bellingham, Wash., at Rumors Cabaret.
Some recall having to sneak in the back door of the gay bars to avoid getting fired from their jobs. The first time 70-year-old Matt Endrizzi, more well-known as drag persona Betty Desire, went to Rumors Cabaret was when he was still a devoted member of the Pentecostal Christian church.
Endrizzi’s first time at Rumors was on Christmas break coming home from Bible college. He had ordered only a cup of coffee from the bartender, as he didn’t want to lower his inhibitions, he recalled.
In the sixth grade, Endrizzi realized there was something “different” about him, leading him to pursue religion further.
“What’s hard for people if you’re gay is the double life you lead,” Endrizzi said. “You have your straight self and your not-so-straight self and normally never the twain shall meet.”
“I chose the path of charismatic Pentecostal Christianity because that’s where I heard you could pray the gay away,” Endrizzi said. “I was sitting in the last seat of the first row of Immaculate Conception Catholic School in Mount Vernon, Washington, and a friend of mine flexed his bicep, and I got a reaction that I wouldn’t have gotten if I was into women. I thought about that when it happened and I thought, ‘Great.’”
At the time, Endrizzi was dealing with many difficulties that seemed to add up in his mind. Not only was he struggling with his sexuality, but also with being adopted and being confined to leg braces due to damage in his central nervous system.
He recalled thinking, “I know challenges build character, but I’m going to have the best character on the planet.” He paused for a moment before letting out a chuckle.
Although Bellingham is fortunate enough to have as supportive of a community as it does, the fight is not over. Across the country and in Washington, there are still copious amounts of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation circulating. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Trans Legislation Tracker constantly update their websites to keep people informed on proposed bills.
The rights of our Queer and trans community members are in danger, especially young people. If a child doesn’t feel comfortable expressing themselves at home, they might be free to do so at school. But even children’s rights within schools are at risk, along with other things we take for granted.
Before Lowrey moved to Bellingham, she worked against two initiatives, one of which would have prevented any LGBTQ+ individuals or allies from being school teachers.
“We were like, uh…no,” she said with a shake of a finger. “A bunch of us went out and doorbelled and campaigned against that and it did not pass.”
When she moved to Bellingham, she got involved with her union. She became the Central Labor Council representative where she campaigned for years.
Ernissee’s face lit up as he remembered a moment from the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. A sea of people were marching and chanting, “We’re here, we’re Queer, get used to it,” he said.
The Queer community has always been strong and will only continue to grow for generations to come. The future can sometimes feel bleak, but it’s important to remember that the communities of today are setting up the world for the Queer youth of the future.
The Bellingham Queer Collective offers a multitude of resources and support for the local Queer community. With the help of LGBTQ+ Western, Generations of Pride dinners occur at the Bellingham Senior Activity Center on the last Wednesday of every month. This serves as a way for younger Queer people and allies to connect with the older generations of their community.
Other LGBTQ+ resources and hotlines can be found on the Human Rights Campaign website at https://www.hrc.org/resources/direct-online-and-phone-support-services-for-lgbtq-youth