Get Used to Her

Philly's newest LGBTQ activist is quickly making her mark.

by Timothy J. McLaughlin

organizational dynamos

Brandi Fitzgerald (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Brandi Fitzgerald likes using made-up terms. She loves adjectives like "ginormous" and "fantabulous" and creates acronyms for everything. She even has a word for made-up words: "wobo," meaning, "word combo." So, when she talks about "diving into the EAR," she doesn't mean doing a jackknife into someone's aural cavity. She's referring to a term she coined: the "Equality Awareness Revolution." And Fitzgerald isn't exactly diving into it; she's being thrown headfirst.

After Proposition 8 passed in California, banning gay marriage in that state, an LGBTQ rights group called Join the Impact organized protests in major cities across the country. Fitzgerald, a retail store manager, wasn't an activist at the time, but at the urging of a friend in California, she volunteered to be the point person for the Philadelphia rally. The event attracted several thousand people, and now, she says, she is getting e-mails every day asking her what will be the next step in the fight for LGBTQ rights.

Fitzgerald, 32, came out as a lesbian when she was 14 years old. While she's never faced discrimination or hatred on a personal level, she says, Prop 8 hits close to home. Fitzgerald lived in California for four years and was in a domestic partnership, which broke up. Her experience as an organizer has been something of a conversion process.

Fitzgerald says enthusiasm for the protest — which she describes as a "shoot and then aim" scenario — surprised her. "When all the buzz happened and everyone was on this natural high, I was getting 1,500 e-mails in a week from people who wanted to help," she says. "And at the same time I'm going, 'I just stepped up to this and I didn't even know [how big it was going to be].'" One thing she does know is that she wants the new movement for LGBTQ rights to be fueled by love, not anger.

Naturally, Fitzgerald has already thought of an acronym for the movement: LOVE, for "Listen, Observe, Volunteer, Engage." She explains how gay-rights supporters can use the acronym to educate other people: A lot of people, she says, want to engage their family and friends in a conversation about LGBTQ rights, but don't know where to start. "Using LOVE, you can listen to the other person," she says. "When you listen to them you can observe how they react and you can gauge how to deal with the conversation. Then you volunteer your information using facts. Then engaging is doing your part to make this change happen." 

After the rally, Fitzgerald formed a Southeastern Pennsylvania chapter of the national LGBTQ rights group Marriage Equality USA, and has started promoting more events for Join the Impact, such as Call Out Gay Day on Dec. 10, when every LGBTQ person is asked to call out of work, and a candlelight vigil on Dec. 20. She's also gotten involved in the Project Postcard campaign, which encourages LGBTQ people to write a postcard to Barack Obama asking him to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

Fitzgerald has also co-created an organization called Create Equality, whose mission is to combine the arts with the fight for marriage equality. Create Equality is partnering with Join the Impact to hold an arts and music festival Valentine's Day weekend in California. Create Equality has just launched a campaign to get gays to send loving but educational letters to everyone who donated money to the anti-gay Yes on 8 campaign, an initiative they call "Prop 8 Love Mail."   

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Fitzgerald envisions an LGBTQ rights movement that uses technology to its advantage. When organizing the Prop 8 rally, she relied almost entirely on e-mail, Facebook messages and word-of-mouth to get the message out. Going forward, she hopes to have virtual Marriage Equality meetings, in which members can log on and share thoughts online, in addition to the in-person ones. 

Additionally, Fitzgerald has set up several Web sites. One of them, imgaysowhat.com, draws inspiration from the sign she made for the Prop 8 protest. She couldn't think of a political message, so she wrote on her sign, "I'm gay. So what?" The Web site will feature pictures of LGBTQ people and a blurb about their lives. The Web site's motto is "Changing the face of gay, one true story at a time."

"We have to change the hetero idea of gay [being defined just by what happens] in the bedroom," Fitzgerald says. "That's got to go away. We're everyday people with families and kids and jobs and trash to take out and lawns to mow. There's absolutely no difference [between LGBTQ and straight people]."

(editorial@citypaper.net)