(music playing) - Welcome to The Aaron Harber Show, my guest today, Jaymes Black, the CEO and president of Family Equality.

Jaymes, thank you so much for joining me.

- Thanks for having me here.

- Oh, it's an honor to have you.

You have an incredible story, and I wanta get into that.

But first, tell me about Family Equality.

- Yeah, so Family Equality is an organization that was born at the first gay lesbian march on Washington in 1879.

And it was born out of necessity.

There are a group of gay dads who were coming out of their heterosexual marriages.

As you can imagine, coming out in the '70s was very difficult.

But they had children within these marriages, and they wanted to continue to parent their children.

But it was the '70s, and so they were being prevented custody of their children, parenting rights, parenting privileges.

And this group of brave, courageous dads found each other at the gay, lesbian March on Washington and committed to building a network of resources and community and, more importantly, fighting for their right to be parents.

So they created the Gay Fathers Coalition now 44 years later, now known as Family Equality.

- So what does Family Equality mean?

- Equality for all families.

It means equality for LGBTQ + families.

It means that you cannot prevent or deny someone the privilege and the beauty of being a parent simply because of who they love.

- And what are some of the factors that determine family equality?

- We are focused on removing barriers, legal barriers and social barriers for LGBTQ + people who want to create families, but also people who already have families, existing families, and they are struggling to exist in their neighborhoods, in their communities.

They're struggling to define or talk about their families in schools.

Oftentimes our children, children like mine are bullied because they have lgbtq + parents.

But really our focus is ensuring that if you want to create a family and you're an lgbtq + person that we are removing those barriers, that we are advocating for you, that we are putting forth policies that help you, that we are fighting bad bills.

- Tell the audience tell me a little bit about your journey which is quite extraordinary.

- I was born to teenage parents in a city called Robstown Texas and I often say in the Corpus Christi area because it's a very small city and not many people know about it.

But I was a child who knew I was different and I didn't know what that difference meant.

I had a hard time sort of making friends and really following the crowd, if you will, I was seen as the weird black kid is really what folks would call me.

But I know it's different and that sort of was my existence and just like I just accept that I'm weird and I'm different and I'm just going to roll with it and this is my life.

And I sort of unraveled in the fact that I could, you know, have a conversation with my black peers and then have a great conversation about music with my white peers.

And oftentimes people thought that was a little weird that I didn't fit in a specific box.

But as I continue to mature and made my way to high school, I knew that I liked girls.

And I never knew what that difference was.

But one of those differences was that I liked girls.

And in high school I was finally able to come to terms with that as much as you can as a 17 year old child.

And I had my first girlfriend and I wrote a love note to her because that's what teenagers do, we write love notes and I wrote a love note to her and I thought that I put that love note in my pocket so I could deliver to her but I dropped it.

And a fellow student found that note and when we arrived at school the next morning I didn't even as I dropped the note, he had shared that note.

This is 1991, South Texas.

He had shared that note, the contents of that note with most people at the school.

And so imagine walking in and having that feeling again in 1990, 1991, or '92, South Texas, and feeling the bullying and the pressure and the isolation immediately walking into school and everything changed.

And that effectively ended my high school career.

I could not deal with the bullying.

I could not deal with the isolation.

The girl that I liked, her parents took her out of that school.

They removed her from that school and she was the only connection that I had.

So I just felt that I had just lost a part of heart.

And my parents didn't understand, of course, being black parents who grew up in the Baptist church had no idea how to handle this.

And it was almost a shame that I could feel from them.

And I remember the day that I walked out of that school for the last time, I was in government class and a fellow student decided to yell across the room a word that I will not repeat, but let's just say it was derogatory as it relates to being a gay person.

The teacher said nothing.

I thought the teacher would protect me or at least say something, the teacher said nothing.

I picked up my books and I walked out of Richard King High School for the last time and I dropped out of high school.

I had a few years or more of struggle of living in a trailer without running water of living on couches working 3 jobs to make ends meet and I remember at 21 years old I said I had enough.

I was waiting for Home Depot and Little Caesars both to call me for a job and they would not-- They didn't call me, they wouldn't hire me.

And I decided I'm going to scrape up everything that I have every cent that I have and I'm going to move to the big city Dallas, Texas 6 hours away.

I'm going there hell or high water.

I have an aunt who lives here.

I hope she allows me to stay with her, but I'm getting that the money together it was $70 and drove to Dallas with my then girlfriend and knocked at my aunt's door at 10 p.m. one night and she was not happy to see me but she said all right you can stay.

And that began my journey of this or transformation rather of changing my life of going back to school of learning information technology of teaching myself a skill.

And I ended up in corporate America some years later, my first corporate American job at 29 years old, I believe.

But that's where my journey changed and where my life began.

And obviously I went back to school, received my bachelor's degree, and then later my master's degree.

- Right, MBA.

I mean, that's an impressive progression, especially given what you experienced.

One of the lines in reading about you is that you were pulled out of the closet.

And certainly that story is very poignant and just amazing resilience on your part to come back from that.

But it wasn't something that happened overnight.

- No, it did not happen overnight.

It was a number of years.

But I was determined to make something out of myself.

That was really the driving force is to make something out of myself and now that I have I feel a I am not in the spot by accident and what that means is that now I get to use my voice, my platform, my story for other people who may be going through the same experience may experience what I did, bullying, family rejection.

I can use that story like also use a story of my family because my dad and I, we fractured during that time when I was pulled out of the closet.

Fractured that what he was my hero and I didn't have him anymore and you fast forward to now and he's speaking at family quality galas about his daughter and loving his daughter and his beautiful grandchildren, that's the story like to me that's like that's the American dream.

- Yeah, and that's what family is about.

- And that's what families about.

- Yeah, that's a great story, one of-- you know you talk about I mean, really what you can impart to others, how you are a model for others, how you can help others understand that they're not alone.

And one of the things I watched was your video about your decision to change your name.

And what I thought was great about it, and I want you to talk about that process, but what I thought was great about it is how you're using that decision to just show others that, "Hey, you're not alone," and there are a lot of people thinking about, "What do I do?

What are the ramifications?

What's on the plus side?

What's on the minus side?

But most of all, what is going to make me feel comfortable?"

So, yeah, tell me a little bit about that.

- It definitely was a journey because the name Jaymes has been a name that I've had in my, as I say, my heart and my soul for about four or 5 years or so only telling the closest people to me, you know, my wife included in that in a couple of friends that I like to be referred to as Jaymes.

I had a bracelet that said Jaymes Black on that I bought 5 or so years ago that I would wear every now and then and that was sort of a way to make me feel that I was living my authentic self but I would not dare change my name or tell, you know the broader community or family.

And I also worried about my parents have overcome my coming out process we're doing great everything is beautiful and they're part of the family.

What would this mean if I were to approach my parents, Im in my 40's.

But what would this mean if I were to approach my parents my dad in particular very close to who's very proud of that he name does my name mean on our last name.

What would that mean?

Is that another coming out process?

Could I bear another coming out process?

Should I worry about another coming out process?

I mean I'm in my late 40's.

But the universe has a really strange way of rattling us awake to our truth and my little brother died suddenly last year in October of 2023.

That was a wake up call for me.

What am I doing?

Am I living authentically?

I'm out here being an advocate and a voice for other people, but am I truly living my truth?

Am I doing that?

And the last piece of that, I think, was this name change to Jaymes, and so I decided to change my name.

And part of that was calling my father and saying, "Look, you may not agree with this, and you may or may not, and it really doesn't matter in terms of my decision, but we've built this relationship, and I want you to understand and I honor who you are and what you named us, but what would you think if I changed my name to Jaymes Black?

How would you respond to that?

And he thought a minute, he asked a couple of questions, and then he said, why would it matter to me?

And that was such a relief given where we came from.

- That's, yeah, that's pretty amazing.

I mean, especially, it's one thing to change your first name but to change your last name.

I think when you're talking to a parent is an even bigger deal.

- It's even bigger deal to be fair though my legal last name will be Stephenson Black but Black is what I use professionally but for him still not having that last name out there, was a big deal for him, but he said that's my ego and my ego doesn't really matter what matters is the love of my a child, the love of my daughter.

And that was just the greatest gift that he could have ever given me.

- I'm fascinated when we look at the numbers when it comes to LGBTQ + people, that it's something that there doesn't seem to be a lot of discussion about.

Some of the survey research says that approximately almost 8, 7.6% of the population is LGBTQ + but I've been fascinated by the distribution of those numbers, and how those numbers are growing significantly and changing.

So I'm going to read a couple of the statistics, because you know, less than a decade to go the numbers went about up a half of that.

So I guess my first question is what is your take on-- I mean because statistically in less than a decade to go roughly to 3.5% to 7.6% statistically that's a huge increase.

What is that about?

What's your take on that?

- I think more people are coming out and more people are coming out at an earlier age and if you go back ten years ago less people were willing to come out we were coming out later in life and you fast for to today where we have Gen Z who is the most LGBTQ + generation yet.

So I think what you're seeing is the growth really is about people who are coming out more often, people who are coming out earlier in their lives.

And I think one of the reasons for that is the representation that we see on television and the media.

We have the highest office in the land, you know, talking about our rights and what it means to protect LGBTQ + people.

That's brave like that's the type of that helps us in terms of being brave that helps us in terms of coming out and so that's the numbers that you see that three or so percent now to seven point one whatever it is now.

- 7.6 - 7.6 - And growing.

- And growing right?

Really is about you're going to continue to see people come out for various reasons, but representation, and also we're coming out more often now.

- Right, and certainly a higher comfort level about doing that.

So, yeah, the distribution fascinates me that if you look at the silent generation, which I mean, 1925, 1945, it's less than 1%.

Baby boomers are a little over 3%, Generation X, 4, a little over 4%, millennials, 10.5%, generation Z, 21%.

So I mean, the stunning difference, I mean, it's like you have this wave that is rippling through, because obviously, all these people are going to get older and then replaced by, I don't know, generation alpha.

- I'm raising generation alpha.

- Yeah, So, I mean, obviously, I doubt there's a lot of research yet.

- There's not a lot of research just yet.

But if you think about societal ideas or societal understanding of our community drives that too.

And if you think about back in the 1800s, you had these marriages called Boston marriages where women who were gay would actually live together without the support of a man.

And it allowed lesbian women, and sometimes they're a platonic relationship, but it's these lesbian women to live together under the guise of friendship.

But those were hidden.

And then you think about these lavender marriages where one or both partners were LGBTQ plus, but it was a sort of a front that we were a straight couple.

And you could also trace it to where we were really hidden and in the closet.

And as homosexuality was decriminalized and subtle ideas, et cetera, changed.

You can also track that in terms of how the numbers have continued to grow and how we're coming out.

- Yeah, I was surprised when it comes to LGBTQ + people, that the region of the country that has the highest percentage is the South.

And of course, you're from the South.

So that to me by, I mean, I think if you ask going to say, "Oh, it's got to be the East Coast or the West Coast."

Any take on that?

What do you attribute that to?

- What's interesting is that I was surprised that the majority, when I started doing this work, that the majority of LGBTQ + people, even families, are in the South.

And, you know, I can't pinpoint exactly why that is, but what I will say is that we know that the South tends to be sometimes a bit more regressive in terms of LGBTQ + rights, so now that we have this information, what are we going to do with it?

And we are looking at families who live in those spaces of family quality to ensure that they have equal protections, equal access, and that we're paying attention especially to those families who live in those states that probably have more regressive laws than say their East Coast peers.

- So I really be interested in your opinion on what's happening in America.

During your lifetime, when it comes to LGBTQ + people and the perspective that Americans, that the entire country, the population, and obviously there are different perspectives, but the change in those perspectives, you know, since when you were growing up through your lifetime, but also looking into the future, how do you see those perspectives on LGBTQ + people changing?

- If I think about the personal perspective and growing up, I didn't know of an LGBTQ + person or family in my neighborhood and in our lives at all.

What does that mean?

- Well, they were there.

- And we were there, but as I was mentioning earlier, we were hidden.

No idea that that even existed.

And I think many Americans and people didn't think that it existed.

So if it doesn't exist, then it's not real.

And you fast forward to what the data says today, and it believes about 70, 71% of Americans believe that LGBTQ+ people should have the right to marry.

And it's holding steady at 70%.

I believe in 2020, it was 60%.

And now it's 70, 71%.

And so the data tells you that the attitudes towards our families are changing, despite what you may hear in the news these days about what some people feel.

I could also say from another personal experience that living in neighborhoods where you are the only LGBTQ + person or family is quite isolating and people still don't know how to interact with our families or they ask really rude or evasive questions that they don't know that they're being rude, like who had the baby or how those kids come into your life.

Things that we would never ask a heterosexual couple.

So I think while the attitudes are changing, which is great, and the data tells us that, there's this cultural competency that people require, going to require, so they understand that our families are just like theirs, and you should address our families and treat our families like all other families as well, right?

And so there's a lack of that cultural competency sometimes.

- Yeah, so you mentioned kind of the reaction.

There seems to be right now at this point in time kind of a backlash that there is a much higher frequency of criticism, there's a resistance to policies that you know that grant people, all people the same rights, what do you attribute that to and how concerned are you about that?

- So I'm really concerned about the state of affairs now and but we have to realize, I would love people to sort of zoom out to understand that in the fight for American civil rights and the fight for LGBTQ + rights, there's this pattern of progress backlash, progress backlash.

You can actually trace that to go back to Brown versus Board of Education.

You can always trace, there's always this progress backlash.

And as we're progressing, we are seeing more backlash.

And what you see is just this barrage of recycled tactics that they've used over the years to dehumanize LGBTQ + people.

So what I'll say is one, that America has a history of dehumanizing LGBTQ + people.

Why you'd want to focus on only 7.6% of the population is beyond me.

And you have to ask yourself, why would these lawmakers focus on such a small percentage of the population.

- What's causing this?

What's the root cause of people who are concerned about afraid of LGBTQ + people?

- On the surface, people love to say it's religion.

I don't buy the religious argument.

And the reason that I don't buy it is because the behaviors are not those of what Christianity would be, I grew up in the Baptist church.

And so I don't, I think people use religion as a shield to say, well, I'm religious, I'm a Christian, and the Bible says this, and you've sort of taken this, you've interpreted what the Bible says and to your own sort of like, you know, liking, right?

- That's a new concept.

- Right, exactly.

Where I think the core issue is that we are a threat to the status quo.

We are a threat to the nuclear family.

We are a threat to the one man, one woman, child nuclear family, which we've never really been part of the traditional family.

Lawmakers are using fear tactics, again, recycle tactics to make people believe that somehow, some way, that my family, if we have all the rights that we need to survive and thrive in America, is somehow a threat to my neighbor's family who are a heterosexual couple.

It really is a threat to the status quo and it really is a threat to what's different and what's not understandable.

And I don't think that people take the time enough to say, wait a minute, why am I reacting this way to that?

- So how do you engage with people with those kinds of opinions?

- There are people who never be convinced, but I could use in my own life and thinking about my in laws who were really religious, deeply religious and when my wife and I first started dating they had wanted nothing to do with me based on their religious beliefs and in fact we my wife and I married in Canada before marriage equality was the law of the land here and we eloped it was just her and her and me in this church in Canada with no family because of how her family felt.

So I didn't wanna invite my family if she couldn't have the same representation there.

And that was their argument, the religious argument, why they didn't have anything to do with me.

They started to interact with me.

They started to have this human connection.

And I was sort of demonized before.

And as they got to know me, their shields and their guards came down and we started having human connection.

And then we had children and love started to flourish with their grandchildren and they started to see that I was no different than the spouse that her brother was married to at the time.

And so I think it's about human connection and stories.

We have to get the stories out there.

- What legislative changes would you like to see?

- I would like to see the John Lewis Every Child Deserves a Family Act passed, which would eliminate discrimination and federally funded foster care, which is essentially shrinking the pool of parents, LGBTQ + parents in particular, who want to foster and adopt children.

- How do we do a better job of getting the general population to see that LGBTQ + people are just like themselves?

- We have conversations like this and we tell stories.

We need more media outlets and more platforms to tell the stories of our families to see us in our family settings that are just like anyone else.

We are changing diapers, we are taking, we're doing the carpool, we are dealing with terrible tools, we are dealing with everything that our straight peers deal with but I do not think that largely like universally that message or those stories are out there.

Who are some of your allies?

And how can people be more effective supporting LGBTQ + people?

- What I've been really encouraged by is our straight allies, especially in this day and age, you mentioned how we are seeing a lot of backlash, and our straight allies have really started to, they've always supported us, but they've really started to stand up and to speak out and to practice what I call authentic allies, where when I'm not in the room, they're speaking on my behalf.

And not only that, they're willing to have very difficult conversations.

And our straight allies are so important to our fight.

They are so important to our history.

And I'm just encouraged by how they've stepped up for us recently.

- How would you define great leadership?

- I think great leadership is knowing how to remove your ego when you need to, and being willing to show a level of vulnerability.

- Do you think leadership can be taught?

- I think it can be taught, yes.

But you have to have the ability to not get caught up on the title, but on the mission of a leader.

- And in your opinion, whether it's historical or current and current times, who would you consider a great leader and why?

- You know what, I would consider MLK a great leader.

And the reason that I say that is because he not only showed a level of vulnerability, he understood that he had to sort of put his personal needs aside and to fight for a bigger mission or mission bigger than himself, larger than himself.

And oftentimes that's what leadership is about, is about sort of putting our personal needs aside for this larger mission.

And I really honor his leadership.

- Yeah, it's certainly amazing when you think of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy and how it's literally grown over time.

And that's, you know, how about you as a leader?

What's a decision that you've made as a leader that you're really proud of?

- A decision that I've made as a leader that I'm really proud of is to allow people to create an employee led group, what we call the Culture Club, to decide how the organization should shift culture.

I was used to driving that myself and in my current role as the CEO of Family Quality, I had to sort of step aside and decided to step aside and say this should be employee led.

They should lead the shift on culture and then come back to me on what those recommendations are and it's gone really well and I'm really proud of it.

It was a growth opportunity for me.

- Yeah, and for them?

- Yes, absolutely.

- Yeah, that's a great mark of a leader.

Okay, what's a decision you made that didn't turn out that well and that you would maybe even like to take back?

- I made a huge organizational structural decision earlier in my career at Family Quality where I only communicated to the people that I believed needed to be communicated to and not the folks that were impacted.

And I was more so, I believe, using my corporate hat versus the hat of a non -profit leader, which is very different.

And that was a decision that I would change now.

I would bring people closer in, the impacted people, to the conversation sooner rather than later.

- Alright, last question.

The future for LGBTQ + people.

What's your sense of where we'll be in, say, 20 years?

- In 20 years, I want to have a America, And I believe that we will have in America that support LGBTQ + people in large part based on that we have started to move the needle to tell our stories, to show our families, to have more representation in media, where it's no longer a question about why you have two mothers, or why you have two dads, or why would you want to have a child.

I think in 20 years we'll see legislation evolve where our families are no longer excluded.

We are included.

I hope in 20 years that it is no longer an issue but we are included in the larger American fabric of what it means to be family and we no longer have to use LGBTQ + family.

We just use family.

- Well let's hope it's even sooner than 20 years.

- Let's hope it is.

- Jaymes thank you so much.

- Thanks for having me.

- That was Jaymes Black the president and CEO of Family Equality.

I'm Aaron Harber.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

(music playing)