47. How Elections are Affecting the LBGTQ + Community

This election season has weighed heavy on the lgbtq+ community and of course so many others. This episode delves into what that has looked like for us over the past few months and the importance of all of us voting. Thank you to Kayla and Taylor for sharing how they decided to get legally married a little earlier than planned.

ACLU on project 2025
I'm not backlinking Project 2025 but you can look them up if you want
Secretary of State MN (polling place and ballot info)
Vote 411 - all the election info you need
Made it out (to the polls) podcast series

 'm so glad you joined!
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HP Envy USB Microphone (HP ENVY USB Webcam)-4 0:34

Weerly beloved, welcome back. I have missed you all so, so much. It feels like it's been a lifetime since I have recorded an episode. Hopefully I remember how to still do this all. But thank you all for tuning in. Your patient says I took a pause on releasing episodes. As I'm sure a lot of you have been able to tell via social media or just based on the season. I have been off shooting weddings and allotments and engagements and. Just kind of putting all of my time and energy into focusing on all of my amazing couples and clients. And also trying to sneak in a few personal moments and breaks in there every once in a while. I am also planning my own elopement and doing my own engagement photos and all of that amazing stuff too. So it's been such an incredible year and I'm also just wildly confused on how it is already basically 2025. Of course I know we still have a couple more months, but I swear it was just pride like a few weeks ago. Like I feel as though I just blinked and now it's already closing up on 2024, which is just crazy. However. That does mean that clearly beloved is back in full swing now, and I've got lots of amazing episodes, topics and guests lined up. So I hope that you will put a mental note in to start tuning in on a regular basis and looking out for new episodes. Like I said, I have lots in store, but if you ever have requests or ideas, please drop me a DM. As per usual, I am at wildlyconnectedphoto on Instagram and would love for any and all of you to say hello. It's one of my favorite things in the world to connect with folks, so. On that note for those of you who are local listeners, I am hosting a party on November 8th. It is very cheesy, but I am calling it a wild connection party. It is in hopes to just really be able to connect with the community. And, also, I just I don't know. I want, I want all of the amazing couples to be able to connect with other couples and be friends and share wedding advice and hang out and maybe walk away with some new buddies that can help us get through the long, dark and cold winter months. So please message me for details. Otherwise I have details up on my Instagram as well. Also, just wanted to say, if you hear a little bit of congestion, so sorry, I am over a cold. Like, I don't feel sick, but I don't know, it's always the last part I feel like is the congestion. So, got just a little bit of that going on, but now I am, if you are ready to hear a little bit of congestion, I am ready to hop into this week's episode. And, as excited and stoked as I am to be back, unfortunately I am kicking off the restarting of the pod with a not so cheery episode. I shouldn't necessarily say it's dark and gloomy, but the topic is important, we'll just say that. So, I am sure you all are aware. That it is election season. I know so many of us are being bombarded with ads and commercials and voting information, and I know that it's a lot. So I'm hoping that this doesn't get too lost in the noise and also wanted to make it super clear that this isn't meant to like inspire fear or to tell you how to feel or just sway anything, but rather just to. Kind of shed some light on the situation on how our community is going to be affected by this upcoming election and my hope is that the allies who are listening who are maybe unaware of just how much is at stake for our community and other communities that this will kind of just help you see truly what's at stake and for those within our own LGBTQ plus community who maybe feel on the fence about voting and whether or not your vote is important and I hope that this can kind of just help you be aware that your voice and your vote is super important and that we need to band together and vote so that we can protect our rights and keep fighting for further rights and for change. Obviously, we always know that when there is a presidential election, it's really important, but this year, it's. It's incredibly important, and I'm going to talk about why, but there are so many things beyond what physical things will be on the ballot that are at stake, and I could talk all day about the wide array of issues, like there's environmental things on the ballot and things to be thinking about, and there's also very important things that will be affected like women's rights and reproductive issues. But that would be a whole thing. It would be much longer than my normal podcast episode. So for now, I am just going to be focusing on what's kind of been going on in the minds of the LGBTQ plus community. Unfortunately, the queer community is no stranger to the idea of losing our rights. It's been kind of a common theme throughout history. Whether it was It's either just not having rights or having very minimal rights or kind of in the past few years, it's sort of been this ongoing feeling that Our rights could just be taken away at any second or they could be changed. And what's coming to mind for me is back in 2022 with the overturning of Roe v. Wade there was so many LGBTQ couples who ultimately ended up deciding to get married sooner than anticipated for the fear that marriage would be, you know, Like, at a federal level, would change, and I remember talking to so many of my couples who were just so full of fear, and many of them, yes, did go to the courthouse or, you know, find an officiant and legalize their marriage because of that very real fear. Of course, we've seen how the overturning of Roe v. Wade has affected so many other things in terms of abortion rights and access and all of that, but again, I need to stay focused here and kind of keep it on the community and so thinking about that, I think, you know, really affects how many of us in the community are feeling about the election this year, and why I wanted to do this episode. Also wanted to say I am no expert here, I'm no political expert, I don't know the ins and outs of everything, but I do feel that I can speak to how our community has been feeling how it's been impacting us, and what we kind of need to do. moving forward as a community. So I first just wanted to share a little bit about what the community has been feeling, what's been going on. Then we're going to hear from a real couple who has made their own decision based on the current political climate and end with just some information. So to put things that might seem very obvious into words, This election season has been very much of a roller coaster. I know it's felt by so many, but it's Really been weighing heavy on LGBTQ community, women, minority communities. Like there's so many people who are feeling this in a very different way than the general population because our everyday lives and the rights. That we have in those everyday lives feel like they're on trial between the announcement of Trump running for reelection and also project 2025 starting to gain traction. This year feels particularly scary. I'm sure so many of you are familiar with project 2025. I just wanted to quickly sum it up in case some of you aren't familiar. Again, just Kind of put in context to our fears. So the has said that project 2025 is a federal policy agenda and blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch authored and published by former Trump administration officials in partnership with the heritage foundation, a long standing conservative think tank that opposes abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, Immigrant rights and racial racial equity. So they have this document that kind of wants to reorganize the federal government to serve a conservative agenda and There's so many things. It's like this huge document that would strip away abortion rights, mass deport folks, there would be censorship in classrooms, particularly with discussing things like learning about LGBTQ history and what that means, and also taking away most, if not all, trans rights. So Learning this in combination with the overturning of Roe v. Wade is what has had so many of us just feel incredibly fearful for this election year. It's also what has caused mass migration of trans folks and families with trans children or trans family members to move states from more red or conservative states. So as you can see there is A lot of things that are adding up to make it feel particularly scary for the LGBTQ plus community. Again, I am not an expert, but I did just want to present a few things of information because, as I said, This isn't meant to be like fear mongering. I think just the general climate has already done a great job of doing that. I just wanted to note that if you go to the actual project 2025 official website, which you, I cannot believe I spent time on there, but. It does say that in quotes, the legal recognition of same sex marriage is not discussed in project 2025 mandate for leadership. The mandate calls for the protection of faith based grant recipients who maintain support for the traditional definition of marriage mandate also supports conscientious protections for those who don't, who do not wish to participate in same sex marriages. So it does seem like a little bit of a gray area, although. There is no, I guess, straightforward and clear call for them to strip it away at a federal level. So I just want to present that piece of information. However, it doesn't ultimately rule out the possibility of what could happen, because as I mentioned, there are so many things on the ballot this year outside of the presidential election. For example, there will be 33 states that will hold state supreme court elections, and one quarter of the 344 state supreme court seats are up for election. For election, so that is incredibly important at a state level. Additionally, whomever is elected as president is the 1 who gets to. Decide who the federal Supreme Court justices are. As we have witnessed, Trump had the ability to elect three Supreme Court justices in his time, which is insane and has put the Supreme Court. Pretty much a conservative majority and that means that whoever is elected next will likely get to pick a Supreme Court justice. There are currently 2 Supreme Court justices who we are kind of waiting to see when, or if they're going to retire and that's huge because they are the people who had the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Again, I'm not, I'm not going to go into details, but my biggest point here is that the election fears are felt by so many. And I just want to validate that. Like we've seen what's played out over the last few years and we don't want to find out what will happen if we don't vote or if Trump gets reelected. So again, I'm not sharing information to make us feel, feel fearful, but to validate that there are real fears because it's been things that we've seen played out in our past. I know that my own partner and I have had ongoing discussions about what it means for our own marriage plans. Like, do those have to shift? What does this mean for us? Is our day to day life going to change in the coming months? It's been, it's been an ongoing conversation and I, I know that so many of you out there are in that same boat. And so I really just want to say like, I see you, and really, it just sucks. Like I think we all just need to also leave space to say like, this sucks that we have to be thinking so much about how our rights could be changed next week. After the election, I really wanted to bring in an outside voice and just kind of hear from you from people in the community, how this has affected you. And so please keep listening to hear from Kayla and Taylor as they discuss how this current political climate and the upcoming election influenced their decision to get married early.

15:51

Will you two both introduce yourselves and your pronouns, please? I am Taylor Quay now. Used to be Taylor Booth. My pronouns are they, them. I'm Kayla Quay, used to be Thielman, and my pronouns are she, her. Wow, oh my gosh, we're gonna have to talk all about this name change in a second. But before we get there for the folks listening, I just wanted to kind of give you two an opportunity to share anything about like, your relationship, kind of like how you guys met, anything you want to really, just to kind of give some context. We met in September of 2022, I think, and we started dating in December typical lesbian, fell in love, and we got engaged. In October, 2023 in Thailand. And here we are. Well, now we're married. Now we're married. Yeah. We were not even engaged for a year. Yeah. A little bit earlier than we had originally planned, but yeah, we're going on a little over a month of being married now. Yeah. So. That is, that is amazing. And everybody has a unique timeline. So I'm glad that you guys shared yours. First, can you share kind of what you did this year? Yeah. So we went to the courthouse where we live. Well, we had to travel like an hour and a half away. They didn't, they don't do courthouse weddings in our town. Yes, it has to be a specific court. So we went to the cities. But we found a judge who was available and we did a small, it was just me and Taylor obviously getting married and then we had two witnesses and Anna was there as well to take our pictures. Yeah, we originally, our plan was to get married in Colorado next year, 2025, and with the upcoming election on November 5th coming up very quickly, we decided that we wanted to be married officially, legally beforehand, just in case the election goes. don't want it to. And that right is taken away from us. So we're still planning to have like our wedding celebration and everything next year, like we had originally planned. But we're just, we got the legal part of it done. And I mean, it was, it was still fun and sweet, but Definitely wasn't our original plan. So, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, it was gorgeous. You both looked so amazing and it wasn't the OG plan. Yeah, I'm kind of curious, like, what sort of sparked the initial conversation between you 2 as far as like, oh, like, maybe we should actually. Figure out if we wanna do this. Now, I think I had insomnia one night, and I was just laying in bed and I was thinking about it. It was probably two months before the courthouse wedding. And I was just like, you know, they're talking about making it illegal for gay people to get married again. Maybe we should figure out if we can do this before. And then we had talked about it the next day and we were like, yep, let's do it. Okay. So it was pretty easy. Like you guys are on the same page. We're very in touch with each other. Yeah, very similar opinions, thoughts, things like that. Kayla did all the logistical stuff of it because I am not good at that stuff. So she kind of like researched like what to do and found out like we couldn't do it here in Mankato and we had to travel somewhere else. We also discovered that they don't do weddings during Open hours. So that's just not like you can't just go to a courthouse and then find where it says weddings this way and follow the arrow because there's no signs for it or anything. There's just a list of judges online about people who said that they, you know, Are willing to do it. So Kayla contacted one judge. She didn't get back to us. So then she ended up contacting another judge. And she got back to us and we scheduled a time and a day. We were kind of wanting to do it september 20th, which is They were, we had planned to get married in 2025 but it just didn't work out with schedules and stuff. So we did it on September 12th, which is still wonderful and great. But it was less of like. You get to choose exactly what time where it was more just kind of what the judge had available and then what worked out for us. And then we obviously had to travel a little bit. So we had to make sure we weren't working and stuff like that. So, yeah, it's a big thing to, like, try to take on at the last second for, yeah, an unfortunate reason, but. Obviously, the outcome is still beautiful. Okay. What, like, obviously, yes, you guys are very in touch and that's beautiful. I think that's gonna obviously help you to have a very long and happy marriage. But like, what were the factors that you kind of discussed when you were like, yeah, I think, I think this is our best bet and like our safest option. I think the biggest thing. Was we want to be recognized as legal spouses after the election? And we even said, well, if things get really bad here and we want to move out of the country, it will be harder if we are not married. To get not even citizenship or whatever, but however it would work just everything would be easier if we were legally married and if all of our name changes and all of that was already done. And we're moving out of state next year. So we just wanted everything to kind of be solid in case what our fears are happens. Right. Yeah, and I know you touched on this in your post just as far as like being legal spouses offers you the capability to actually kind of do things in each other's lives if need be. Was that part of the discussion as well? Yeah, think a part of it we haven't like fully talked about this, but something I've been thinking about if we want to adopt kids or Things like that, if we're not married, I feel like that will also be another hurdle that you would have to jump through. So it kind of just makes everything easier for the things that we want in the future. Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, thank you so much for sharing. Obviously, I know it's It's, it's been a weird couple months and it is a weird time now, especially knowing that election day is coming up so quickly. So thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, I really only have one other question, which is just for other queer folks listening, other queer couples, do you have anything that you want to share with them? Any advice or any encouragement or anything like that? I think the biggest thing for me is, for me to share, is even if your family doesn't validate you or see you or if they're saying that they love you, but they aren't accepting your queerness, then. They aren't loving you in the way that they should. And I don't talk to any of my family anymore because of it. And it's the best decision I made, even though it was the hardest one I've made. So put yourself first. And So your love is amazing. That was gay enough, right? Agree completely. I mean, I'm always a huge advocate for like being yourself and like living authentically. And it really makes a big difference about who you surround yourself with. I've just now been able to really truly be myself the last couple of years with Kayla. Before that I was surrounding myself with people who weren't prideful in their queerness and very judgmental. So I just Wasn't able to discover who I am because I wasn't in a space to do so. So like, yes, be yourself, but also it really depends on who you're surrounding yourself with. It helps to surround yourself with good people in order to be yourself truly and fully. Yeah. all of this. Yeah, community is so important. And I think I don't want to speak for you too, but kind of just to segue it community is important right now because we all need to go vote. Yeah,

HP Envy USB Microphone (HP ENVY USB Webcam)-5 25:58

well, thank you so, so much to Kayla and Taylor for being guests on the show and being willing to be a little bit more vulnerable and share about their experience. I know for a fact, they're not the only ones and I just. Really value hearing from the community, hearing their perspective, hearing your perspectives and hopefully that kind of helped you understand to just. How real this is for all of us these are things that, like I said, I've been talking to my couples and clients about, but they've also been very real conversations and Facebook groups and Reddit threads and people trying to figure out what makes sense and what's actually happening and what the safest move is. So, yeah, it's just been very, very real and very stressful for so many people over the past few months. And so I'm just going to end with what I said before, like the stress has been real, like what we have been feeling is real. And I want you to feel validated in that, but take that energy, whether you are allies here, listening and learning, or whether you are part of the community. Please vote. Please, please, please, please vote. Like this. This is affecting our day to day lives. This is affecting our trans brothers and sisters and siblings. It's affecting so many people and I know there has been a rising attitude in young folks that like, either A, my vote doesn't really matter that much, or B, saying things like, well, Kamala is problematic and so I'm just not gonna vote at all. And it's like, listen, I hear you, but your vote is important because there is potential for it to be a close race and also, not voting is really showing your privilege. Like, these votes are life and death in some situations and it's so, so important. So please, vote. Please vote. And on that, I am going to leave just a few resources. One of my favorite resources is Vote411. You can sign up to get texts and reminders, and they will send you helpful information like helping figuring out your polling place. Also, if you just Google what's on my polling place I know it does it for Minnesota, and I think it does it for other states too, where it'll usually be the Secretary of State or another government official website where you can type in your address, and it'll show you exactly what your ballot's going to look like, pretty much almost an exact copy, just so you know what you're voting for. Like, all of the names, all of the different things that are going to be on your ballot so that you can look at them, do your research ahead of time and feel really prepared to go into the polling place. I am always here to answer questions as I can. Also, Google is here. There's so much information out there to help you with that. And the last thing I'll mention is that there is another queer podcast titled Made It Out. And they are actually doing a series that is all about the election, voting, they're talking to officials they're sharing really good information, they're kind of breaking things down and it's all queer owned and run. So I will be linking All of those things in the show notes in case you find any of those helpful or interesting. And with that, Cruelly Beloved, thank you so much for rejoining after a long hiatus. Thank you for voting. Thank you for encouraging other people to vote. And I will see you here back next week for maybe a slightly cheerier episode. Maybe not. But November 5th, go vote. All right, bye guys.