It’s a bittersweet moment at the Campaign for Southern Equality as we prepare for Lindsey Wilson’s transition from our staff team. We are thrilled for Lindsey about her new job at Rural Support Partners and will also miss her tremendously here.
Lindsey has been an incredible leader at CSE from our earliest days. In her role as the WE DO Campaign Manager, she helped lead our work on the frontlines of winning marriage equality across the South and worked with thousands of amazing folks who believed change was possible in the South. Often that work started with kitchen table conversations and evolved into supporting folks as they took brave actions to call for full equality. It involved traveling thousands of miles, staying on couches and in cheap motels, and taking many leaps of faith. Every day on the job, Lindsey has been a champion of folks in small towns and rural areas, places that are too often overlooked when it comes to organizing and resources.
When marriage equality was legalized in 2015, CSE began the second chapter of our work and Lindsey began serving as our Director of Engagement and Operations. She has played an instrumental role as our work has evolved to addressing the changing needs and political landscape of the LGBTQ South, from launching the Southern Equality Fund to growing our Community Health Program.
We are incredibly grateful to Lindsey for all she has given to CSE and the amazing communities we serve. She’s influenced the work we have done and the work we will do in profound ways. And, above all, we’re proud of her as she embarks on this next chapter of her work and leadership. – Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, Executive Director
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Dear Friends,
I have had the privilege to work with the Campaign for Southern Equality for seven years. It has been an incredible chapter of my life and it is bittersweet to say goodbye. That said, I am excited to begin my next professional work as Project Manager for the Appalachia Funders Network, working for Rural Support Partners.
When then Campaign for Southern Equality started in 2011, only a small handful of states allowed same-sex couples to marry. Spoiler alert, none were in the South. Conventional wisdom said it would be decades until the South had marriage equality.
That year I decided to leave a promising career to take a leap of faith and join CSE as the second “employee” (there wasn’t money for salary then) because I believed that the conventional wisdom was wrong. I believed that in the South we had a key role to play in drawing attention to the moral urgency of the decades long fight to win equality for LGBTQ families. I believed in the idea of the WE DO Campaign, where same-sex couples would go to the marriage license counter in their hometown to apply for, and be denied, a marriage license. I believed the campaign could help make put a human face on this discrimination. Further, I believed we could provide a missing piece of national movement for equality that was beginning to show the signs of progress and promise.
If you have never seen what the WE DO Campaign looked like, or if it’s been a while, check out the below video to get a taste of what it felt like in the office.
Over the years, I witnessed more than 200 couples be denied a marriage license. I watched thousands march through the streets of small Southern towns in support of their LGBTQ family and friends. I held the hands of parents who fought back tears as they talked about wanting to simply be able to be a legal parent to a child they loved. I made friends, met heros, and I even met my future wife (more on that in a minute).
State by state, the bans against same-sex marriage began to fall and hundreds of thousands of couples were married. The movement was gaining tremendous momentum, and I was going to lots of courthouse step weddings!
On June 26, 2015 marriage equality won at the U.S. Supreme Court, making marriage equality the law of the land nationwide. After the decision was announced a group of us hopped in the bed of Ivy Gibson-Hill’s big white Dodge Ram pickup truck to hold an impromptu victory parade through the streets of downtown Asheville, NC. We waved huge rainbow flags, blasted queer anthems from a bullhorn, and high-fived onlookers. The sun beat down on us as we sweat, hooted and hollered, cried, and reveled in the fact that our country would never be the same.
(CSE staff and friends celebrating SCOTUS victory, Asheville, NC.)
The work of marriage equality was work that inspired me, filled my spirit, and allowed me to witness first-hand one of the greatest victories for civil rights in a generation. To this day, getting to do that work is one of the great honors of my life. To each of you who were a part of that as a couple, as a supporter, as a donor, as a cheerleader, thank you.
For me, marriage and parenting rights have had a life changing effect. By the time Melissa and I went to apply for a marriage license, marriage equality had been the law for more than a year. When we walked into the Register of Deeds office, filled out our paperwork, paid our money, and received a marriage license I was amazed at how mundane, but joyful, the process was.
(Lindsey, Melissa, and Peyton receiving a marriage license at Buncombe County Register of Deeds.)
Below are a few wedding photos, because who can resist sharing wedding photos! And I know it sounds cliche, but our wedding was truly the best day of my life.
As I enter my final weeks at CSE my heart is full of gratitude and memories that I will cherish forever. Chances are, if you read to the bottom of this long-winded blog post that you were a big part of that! And if you know me, which you probably do, you know it is only fitting for me to sign off with a little Dolly.
XO,
Lindsey Wilson
