Illinois State University hosted the Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference in Normal, Illinois February 13th through the 15th. With the generous help of the Office of Student Life, Ivy Tech Bloomington’s very own Campus Pride was able to send their three officers and one lucky member to attend the conference, accompanied by Beth Warner from the Office of Student Life. Officers Katelyn Spencer (Vice President), Walt Walters (Secretary/Treasurer), and myself (President) had been looking forward to the event since we started seeking funding in November of 2014.
The weekend started with an amazing keynote speech from actress Laverne Cox about her life. Starting early Saturday morning, the weekend was filled with educational workshops, spanning a range of topics from “Fat & Queer: Loving Your Body, Exploring Your Identity” to “You Can’t Change What We Never Chose: Ending the Abuse of Conversion Therapy” to “A Is Not For Allies: Aromanticism and Asexuality 101”. Education was accented by wonderful entertainment opportunities, from Cupid Ain’t @#$%!: An Anti-Valentine’s Day Poetry Movement to a Saturday night drag show hosted by the winner of the sixth season of Rupaul’s Drag Race, Bianca Del Rio.
MBLGTACC has a reputation of being the second largest queer conference in the Midwest. This year, the conference hosted 2300 queer individuals and allies from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. This allowed for an astounding sense of total acceptance and community. We would walk the halls of the auditorium center and be able to smile at total strangers, because no matter what our individual stories were, we were in a place where we would face a considerably smaller chance of being judged – which felt like no judgment at all.
While our dear Bloomington, Indiana is a haven of acceptance in a largely conservative state, it doesn’t quite compare to the spirit of MBLGTACC. While none of us had ever felt necessarily unsafe in Bloomington, there was a strong sense of safety that was at the conference that was hard to leave. When Sunday afternoon came, and it was time for everyone to start heading home, there was a profound sense of leaving a family.
I want to pass on a message that I left MBLGTACC with, and will likely carry with me for a long time. To anyone out there who is feeling confused, scared, judged, insecure – never forget: YOU ARE VALID!!! In the words of Rev. Dr. Jamie Washington spoken to me at MBLGTACC, “We are nothing other than whole… You are enough as you are.”