On June 6, at the ZU Gallery, under the flash of multicolored lights and casual conversation, owner Jodi Jahrling hosted a Pride Month dance party, inviting both members of the LGBTQ community and allies to celebrate beside intimate portraits of gay cowboy couples painted by New Mexico artist Anthony Hurd.
People scrawled supportive messages dedicated to the queer community on rainbow hearts, later plastered on the windows, and danced. She said the turnout of a few dozen patrons was more than previous years, adding that the community has become more visible in her decade living here.
“I feel like that's been everybody’s responsibility to make sure that people understood that they didn’t have to hide, that there are accepting people in the community,” Jahrling said.
During this year’s Pride Month, LGBTQ and two-spirit advocates say Montezuma County’s queer community has grown stronger, but still faces challenges in the rural region.
The queer community can feel more disconnected across the vast high desert of Southwest Colorado. LGBTQ-focused events are concentrated in Durango. In areas like Cortez, Mancos and Dolores, turnout can sometimes be low.
LP McKay, who DJ’d for the ZU’s pride gathering, moved from Austin, where they recalled partaking in various group activities dedicated to the LGBTQ community. When they arrived here, they tried to strike up similar events, with varying degrees of success.
“You’re never going to have a million people show up. Sometimes it’s one person, and you’re like, ‘OK, it’s just us. We’re going on a gay hike,’” McKay said, adding with a laugh, “Whatever that means.”
McKay is open about their identity as a nonbinary gay person, to show others in the community that it’s OK to exist outside straight and cisgender norms.
“I can't really hide who I am very well and I try to be as visible as possible because I know there’s not a lot of that,” McKay said. “You can come here to Cortez and I think it gets, sometimes, a bad rap.”
As such, several prominent queer performers and community members feel responsible to set the stage for others to feel comfortable coming out and finding spaces for connection.
Aria PettyOne, a drag queen based in Durango who asked to be identified by her stage name to speak in a professional capacity, travels to small towns throughout Colorado to perform.
“That’s my bread and butter: the places that don’t get a lot of drag or a lot of opportunities,” PettyOne said. “I’ve gotten about 20 or 30 performers in the area now that I try to cycle through each month and give at least some sort of booking or opportunity to perform.”
She performed for the first time in 2019 after moving to Durango from Baltimore and has won numerous Drag, Initiatives, and Variety Awards for her work. Her passion for small-town gigs hinges on her insistence that queer people should feel both acknowledged and accepted in their own communities.
“I don’t think you should have to go to a big city to live authentically or to be who you are,” PettyOne said. “And I think if you’ve grown up in a place, or if you found a place that you love this much, you should be able to call it home and home should feel safe.”
PettyOne’s mission can sometimes be an uphill battle, facing online and in-person harassment and threats. She’s been called slurs on social media and in public for performing drag.
“Once this article comes out, look at the comments. That will tell you everything that you need to see and hear,” PettyOne said. “People are really bold with the keyboard.”
Despite all the internet noise, PettyOne’s past three shows at the Sunflower Theatre in downtown Cortez sold out.
“Selling out multiple years in a row in a town like Cortez tells me everything I need to know, tells me I’m doing something right, at least,” PettyOne said. “You can tell people are just thankful that we’re there, that they need us. They want us to be there.”
PettyOne is not alone in her mission to promote LGBTQ visibility in Southwest Colorado. Local Indigenous advocates say there is less acknowledgment of individuals facing additional layers of marginalization.
Zorion Wilbanks, a two-spirit advocate and drag performer of both Oneida and Ho-Chunk ancestry, said their identity harks to both their Indigenous heritage and their queerness, placing them in a lesser-known category than others under the LGBTQ umbrella.
“We are a minority of a minority of a minority,” Wilbanks said.
“As it stands, I don’t feel like two-spirit people are visible enough within the overall 2SLGBTQ+ community,” Wilbanks added, using the LGBTQ acronym that places two-spirit at the front to promote awareness of the ethnic and spiritual identity.
Wilbanks explained that “two-spirit” emerged from native cultures that historically honored more than two genders. Being two-spirit means balancing the masculine and feminine roles of one’s tribe, Wilbanks said.
Birdie Lopez, a two-spirit member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, didn’t come out until after college but said they always knew the two-spirit identity aligned with them.
“When I was younger, I had to be under the radar” Lopez said.
Lopez, who works with youth support programs in Cortez and on the reservation, is often the first openly two-spirit individual the kids encounter. By being candid about their identity, they hope to change that reality for the next generation.
“I told them, ‘I am Birdie. I'm a two-spirited person. I go by them and I am a tribal member.’ And they're like, ‘Where have you been?’ I was like, ‘I’ve been here this whole time,’” Lopez said, recalling their experience as a supervisor for the bushwhacking summer program on the Ute Mountain Ute reservation.
For Lopez the story of Fred Martinez, a two-spirit youth murdered in Cortez 25 years ago, surfaces for them when they think about their role in making the two-spirit community known and accepted in Southwest Colorado.
“I’m just trying to be a positive beacon for the youth as well as the adult community, especially those who are still struggling to come out,” they added.
While it is often individuals and grassroots movements that shed light on the struggles of the LGBTQ community, it’s also an issue Cortez City Council has taken head-on.
As the City Council proclaimed June Pride Month for the sixth year in a row – with Mayor Dennis Spruell and Councilor April Randle opposed – memories of previous harassment and threats directed toward LGBTQ members remained.
Some current and former city officials say identifying within the LGBTQ community places targets on them or their queer colleagues’ backs.
One previous council member resigned due to what colleagues said were threats and extensive harassment for their sexuality.
“I just want to talk about the safety issue because it impacts this council right here,” council member Bill Lewis said during a debate about the proclamation on May 26. “We had a City Council member that had to resign because she was getting threatened and she felt that the threats were becoming larger and she was worried about her family.”
Another former city council member, who identifies as gay and asked not to be named to protect the safety of their family, said they often felt targeted by community members for their sexuality while on council.
“I feel like people really called me out more than the other people on council,” they said, adding that social media posts from the city picturing them would receive negative and homophobic comments.
Support from fellow council members often came in private settings, they said, and was not vocalized to the public.
The proclamation, the council member added, is important to the LGBTQ community in Cortez, which is marginalized and still faces harassment openly. However, the council member believes Cortez can still offer a refuge for members of the LGBTQ community, through events like the Pride Dance Party hosted by the ZU Gallery.
Michael Kaltenberger, who reveled in the casual joy of the ZU Gallery partygoers from the sidelines, lived in Cortez 10 years ago and returned within the last few months to find a changed city.
“I didn’t really connect with this community the first time I lived here,” Kaltenberger said. “I just don’t remember there being these kinds of events 10 years ago.”
His first evening out after moving back, he was shocked at the peaceful coexistence he witnessed between different groups.
“I looked around the room and I saw these people dancing together. There’s the cowboys, there’s the hippies, there’s the gay people and everybody was in union or peace,” Kaltenberger said. “All these issues that we see on social media, I didn’t see it.”
Abbie Herring, who says she moved to Montezuma County as a “very visibly queer person” four years ago, grew up in the Southern Baptist Church, experiencing homophobia from her own family. But Southwest Colorado provided some solace.
“I would go play at open mics just over in Mancos and I’d do queer songs. Like ‘vibe check, how are you guys reacting about me singing about kissing girls?’” Herring said.
To her surprise, some of the elderly in the crowd would approach her to complement her songs. The music community, she said, helped bridge the gap between isolated rural living and the need for comrade, creating a community Herring believes is better than can be found in a city.
“I’ve always liked small towns because you can connect better and there’s a lot more intentional community,” Herring said.
Despite the threats and negativity directed toward the LGBTQ community residing in Southwest Colorado, advocates chose to focus mainly on the positive, seeing Pride Month as a celebration rather than a lament of all the progress yet to be made.
At the ZU Gallery, people laughed, danced and waved hello to each other, kissed their partners openly and casually, held hands and swayed to the music, and basked in the freedom.
“We have to take every opportunity we can to express joy,” McKay said.
avanderveen@the-journal.com
