2023 Charlotteans of the Year: PFLAG Charlotte

The parent-driven nonprofit aims to build a safer future for LGBTQ kids in a state with laws aligned against them

In North Carolina, parents of LGBTQ children are often frightened, unsure how to protect them in a state where laws are increasingly hostile to them. Last year, a pair of national advocacy organizations ranked the state among the most restrictive to LGBTQ rights. Over the summer, the North Carolina legislature passed three bills that curtailed them even more—including a ban on any discussion of LGBTQ-related topics in elementary schools.

PFLAG gives those parents a place to turn. The Charlotte chapter of the 50-year-old national nonprofit has hosted peer support groups for parents and families since Nila and Stokley Bailey, parents of a queer daughter, founded it in 1987. (The acronym stood for “Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays” until 2014, when the organization changed the name to simply PFLAG.) 

Today, PFLAG Charlotte hosts three support groups that meet regularly in Mecklenburg and Union counties, plus a virtual group, and connects parents with other resources and organizations. PFLAG Charlotte’s three staff, one intern, and 130 volunteers, including 15 volunteer board members, reach out to the broader community, too, through support groups and workshops.

In September, board member Annabelle Pardo led yet another layer of outreach in a diversifying city: PFLAG Charlotte’s first support group for Spanish speakers. Pardo’s teenager came out as gay in 2016 and then as transgender in 2017, and Pardo says she felt especially isolated because the Latino community typically doesn’t talk about LGBTQ kids, much less have resources for them.

She hopes to help change that through PFLAG. After just one support group, she can already see the effect: She says that, towards the end of the gathering, a father spoke up. In Spanish, he told the group, “I have never talked about this, because as a Hispanic male with machismo, it’s been hard for me to verbalize. But now is the first time that I have as much hope as I have fear for the safety of my child.”

The Spanish-language program joins other PFLAG Charlotte efforts to build support this year. PFLAG Charlotte has launched “allyship workshops” to educate the public on how to respect and support the LGBTQ community. As of September, it had hosted 24 at Charlotte-area schools, faith spaces, and workplaces, including Lowe’s, Salesforce, and Credit Karma corporate offices. 

The organization hosted eight workshops on gender-affirming health care for medical professionals. It’s held those since 2017 when PFLAG saw an influx of parents of gender-diverse and transgender kids, says former executive director Karen Graci, who was one of them. (Graci stepped down on Sept. 22; PFLAG Charlotte is searching for a replacement.)

Their goal is to dispel misinformation about gender-affirming health care and teach professionals how to support LGBTQ patients. Since summer, the conversation around gender-affirming care has grown only noisier, and Graci says they’ve received more requests for the workshops.

At the same time, the organization has to combat the widespread assumption, fueled by right-wing politicians and media, that “gender-affirming care” means only irreversible hormone therapy. But PFLAG subscribes to a far broader definition, expressed by child psychiatrist Dr. Jason Rafferty before the American Academy of Pediatrics: The goal of care is “to listen to the child and build understanding—to create an environment of safety in which emotions, questions, and concerns can be explored.” 

When PFLAG launched the workshops, handfuls of participants met in office break rooms. In 2023, each workshop filled an auditorium.

In early September, Pardo, Graci, board member SJ Willis, and board chair Doug Cooper speak with me via Zoom. It’s obvious that the three parents could talk about what they do, and why, for hours. “Finding PFLAG …” Graci says, then pauses for a moment. “Well, it’s really changed all our lives for the better.”

TESS ALLEN is the associate editor.