Deb Law 0:13 Good morning. And I do mean Good morning. This is Deborah Law of Lambda Reports. And welcome to this morning's edition. I'm going to be talking with Janet. This is a pseudonym, a woman who works on the hotline as part of Challenge Metro. Professionally, she is a counselor and maybe, as opposed to my explaining why the pseudonym, I'll let Janet speak for herself to this issue. "Janet" 0:35 It's very important to be an individual who is freely expressing themselves in many different ways, whether or not they feel one way or the other about an issue, or whether or not they want to be open to the community. But I think it's very important to retain anonymity as a volunteer on the Hotline. I also do coordinate the Hotline because, along with a counselor for the gay and lesbian community, I also am my own person, and it's important that the Hotline work I do is left at the Hotline. Deb Law 1:10 Is it not also true that there, in fact, have been some threats made against individuals who are working for the Hotline? "Janet" 1:16 There have been, but I think that's true of any hotline. Deb Law 1:20 Well, maybe, as we if you could give us a broader picture in terms of what is Challenge Metro, when did it get started, and what kind of services does it provide for our community? "Janet" 1:30 Challenge Metro is a organization which is, really, is, is a service offered to the gay and lesbian community in St Louis. It's been going for approximately 20 years. It's gone through many revisions, and most recently, the Challenge name has been adopted approximately a year and a half ago. It used to be the St Louis Gay and Lesbian community, what we jokingly refer to as alphabet soup. And we decided that we needed more focus in our group, and we decided to change the name for that focus. We adopted the name Challenge because we feel that first, when an individual discovers they're a gay or lesbian, that is a real challenge to us. Not only is it kind of an overwhelming thought that one may be different, but also it's a real challenge to incorporate that into one's own identity. The next challenge is then centered around accepting ourselves and explaining to the rest of the world who we are and what we're all about. And finally, the challenge is bringing this individual, this new person, incorporated with this identity as a gay man or a lesbian to other individuals who identify themselves or are starting to identify themselves and sharing the knowledge and also some of the pain and joy. Deb Law 3:00 Are there services, then that challenge Metro provides specifically to help individuals deal with each of these challenges? "Janet" 3:07 Yes, there are a number of services. The Hotline is sponsored by Challenge and the Hotline, the main goal of the Hotline is to give information to the community about businesses or professional organizations that that cater to the gay and lesbian community, also provide counseling for a variety of issues we find on the Hotline that not everything is gay or lesbian related. It's not a sexual focus on the Hotline, rather all kinds of issues, it may be relationship issues. We talk with many individuals about coming out experiences. We also talk with individuals about having a bad day and not getting along with their parents or whatever the issue is. Another branch of challenge is the CLEAR speakers bureau and clear stands for Community Liaison with Education and Resource and Research, pardon me. And clear provides speakers for the community, whether it be the state straight or great, straight or gay community, right, exactly, sometimes, also CLEAR as given birth to the lesbian and gay archives, which will house just about everything, old love letters, books, newspaper clippings, just about everything. Deb Law 4:32 This is actually a place or a concept, with maybe a trunk of stuff at this point? "Janet" 4:43 Right exactly, we have been given space and so it's growing right now, exactly. Finally, the Hotline is runs for three hours, seven days a week, from seven to 10pm. When the Hotline is not functioning, the Action Line is on, and this is a pre recorded message. This is one of the only cities in the country where we have this service. We estimate that we get a call every three minutes on this pre recorded message, and it gives the community information about activities, support groups, all kinds of information. Deb Law 5:13 That's great. Why don't you give us that number now? And we'll make a point of making note of this number several times throughout the show. "Janet" 5:19 It's 367-0084. For anyone who may be listening, the area code is also 314 Deb Law 5:26 Great. What getting back to the Hotline for a second, what kinds of calls do you get on the Hotline? You gave us a general rundown, and I assume one of the things that you're referring to is that as lesbians and gays, we live our lives as everyone else and some the complication of living it in a homophobic society certainly presents us with some unique challenges at best. And I'm actually being awfully polite as I'm describing this, aren't I, but really, what kinds of calls do you get? And "Janet" 5:53 I would say a majority of our calls are lately, individuals who are in high school or in college who are dealing with coming out issues. All of a sudden, they realize they're attracted to their best friend who happens to be of the same sex, and there's a kind of this internal panic that goes on, and it's very helpful to talk to somebody else about who's been there. A couple of years ago, a majority of our calls were people looking for bar information, and so our hotline is taking more of a counseling approach now. Deb Law 6:24 What, do you have a reason? Do you think this change has occurred? I have better information available to us in other ways. "Janet" 6:31 That's part of it. I've been hearing that an awful lot of schools are putting information about the gay and lesbian hotline in pamphlet form available to students, and so they know that we're out there. I also feel that there is a greater, at least a discussion about gay and lesbian issues in high schools. Whether or not it's acceptance, it's hard to tell. Deb Law 6:54 That's great. I wonder if part of it could also be the function of the speaker's bureau going out into schools and things. "Janet" 6:58 I think that's true. Deb Law 6:59 That was another question I was going to ask was, how do people find that number? How do people find out about the hotline? "Janet" 7:05 It's listed in the yellow pages in the phone book, under gay, Deb Law 7:08 Okay, and under then, it's gay and lesbian Hotline? "Janet" 7:11 Right. Exactly. Deb Law 7:13 Very good. We were saying that the organization is 20 years old. I am assuming that you have not been involved all of those 20 years. But do you have some perspective on the history in terms of how I would assume at 20 years, we certainly look at just post Stonewall, "Janet" 7:28 Right. Deb Law 7:28 of the beginning of activity here in St Louis, also "Janet" 7:32 Exactly Deb Law 7:33 to the transformations of the organization. "Janet" 7:35 I have some history. It's piecemeal, but I understand that the Hotline started with the effort of about five individuals, they were getting about approximately 1500 calls a week, and that it was their primary responsibility to staff that hotline, and that this was the only resource that the gay and lesbian community had t that point, was that Hotline. Now the Hotline, over this 20 year period probably gets about, we probably get about 2500 calls a year, so it's considerably less than when it started. But it's because more information is available. There are books, there are bars, there are all kinds of support groups where none of that existed. Deb Law 8:18 That's great. That's great. Now I understand that also, there's a tie in between the Hotline and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in terms of their efforts to collect information from around the country in terms of the kinds of hate crimes and bias right against lesbians and gays. Could you talk to us a bit about that? "Janet" 8:41 Sure. We are the reporting center for the National Gay Task Force, and we keep statistics of any threat to a gay or lesbian individual that is a hate motivated crime, such as somebody who calls somebody else a derogatory term in terms of their sexual orientation, or if there is a theft which is sexual orientation related. So we're keeping all those statistics. What we're trying to do as a collective organization across the country is show the government that hate crimes against gay and lesbians is a larger issue than they think. We also are working hand in hand with St Louis in collecting information about the hate crimes that go on in this city, because recently, I believe it was February, there was a new law that was passed against against biased crimes involving not only sexual orientation but race and a number of other discriminatory factors. Deb Law 9:43 That's very exciting and actually somewhat surprising, in terms of its passage in St Louis. Were you also involved then in providing information, like to Alderman Roberts and people who were actively involved in putting the bill together? "Janet" 9:56 Yes, Charles was directly involved with that. Deb Law 9:58 That's great. Thank you very much for doing that. Yeah, in terms of, I would assume that there's actually two levels that this needs to be addressed, not only in terms of collecting the information, but in fact, also alerting our community to the fact that not only is there some place we can report it, but to begin to look at those things that are directed at our sexual identity and our sexual identification as, in fact, hate crimes and bias crimes, as we, you know, deal with homophobia on a daily basis, you begin to just accept some of these things, and that it's actually a lot of work and very painful to be ever vigilant in terms of what kinds of things are directed at you. So I assume that you deal with it on both levels, not only collection, but also educating all of us to the fact that, right, that we need to be vigilant in terms of dealing with this stuff. So is that part of the speaker's bureau a task? "Janet" 10:52 Yes, I think the main goal of the speaker's bureau is education at all levels. Absolutely. I think a majority of our work has been educating the straight community. But you're right. It's important to educate important to educate the gay community about what's acceptable and what's not. Deb Law 11:06 I know it was disappointing at best, to have some of the legislature, and thanks to Jesse Helms, in a pretty aggressive and virulent manner, denied shortly after the March on Washington, in terms of the amount of lobbying work that people had done dealing with things. But then it's been very exciting, not only in terms of the Bias Crimes Bill in St Louis, but the recent civil rights ordinance that was passed in the city of Chicago. And so, you know, we certainly have been having some victories in places that we need to continue to work on. I think sometimes in St Louis, we've you lose sight of how long other communities have worked to make these things happen, and we can tend to get very disappointed, and it just takes years and years of work "Janet" 11:47 That's right Deb Law 11:48 to dig away at things. Let me ask also, in terms of, do you find that you get many calls on the Hotline in terms of dealing with people who have been attacked or raped, or "Janet" 12:02 Very few, Deb Law 12:03 very few, which is probably not as much a function of it not happening as people not being aware of calling the hotline in terms of talking to people. "Janet" 12:10 I think last year, we collected two or three incident reports, Deb Law 12:13 Which we all know there's more than that happening in our community. Well, great, is there? I know that you had mentioned to me before we actually went on the air, that there will be a training session happening in September. So maybe you'd like to let our listeners know about that, and I'm certain that your discussion of Challenge Metro has inspired some, and hopefully they'd like to get involved. "Janet" 12:30 It's a lot of fun and it takes very little time commitment to be involved in Challenge. We're looking for information or for individuals to work in every single branch of from making tapes for the Action Line to working on the Speaker's Bureau to actually answering the phones. We do do training for all our volunteers. So when somebody talks to me about becoming a volunteer, it's not like I put them on the phones instantly. We give them counseling skills so that they can elicit information and really address the concerns of the person who's calling. We do training sessions twice a year. We have in training session coming up in September. And so all you would need to do if you were interested in volunteering for the Hotline or Challenge as a whole, call 367-0084, during the hotline working hours, which is 7pm to 10pm Deb Law 13:19 Great. Great. Well. I thank you very much for joining us. It's been very interesting and very informative. I certainly did not know all of the things that Challenge Metro provides for our community, and I hope that the same has been true for our listeners. I'm sure it has been. I thank you again for joining us, and I thank you all out there in radio land for joining us. Also, please turn us on next Sunday morning at six o'clock again. This is Deborah Law for Lambda Reports. Transcribed by https://otter.ai