For one weekend, a community of almost exclusively LGBT people congregated to Dallas for the Creating Change Conference, hosted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Over 2,000 people attended the 22nd annual conference, which brings together queer people from every corner of the nation to build leadership and fight for equality.It was, for me, an overloading, overstimulating, exciting experience packed into a long weekend. My school, Columbia College, took myself, four other students and a faculty advisor.
We enjoyed the many workshops ranging from "Butch vs. Femme in the lesbian community" to "Intergenerational storytelling in the LGBT community." The conference was a lot like a queer boot camp, starting with a variety of daylong institutes to choose from that offered in-depth training on a specific topic. The institute I chose was focused on new media, and it felt like a threecredit class crammed into one day. I loved it.
After this cultural immersion of sorts, the rest of the days at the conference were filled with dozens of different workshops, leadership development sessions and several film screenings.
There were so many cute boys and so little time. Dallasalso known as the "big D"had certainly delivered on that front. My roommates and I shared a table at the food court each day for lunch and talked about who had checked us out, chatted us up or asked for phone digits.
As you walked through the hotel lobby, the pink lanyard everyone wore for the conference acted as an instant gaydar, and you could literally feel the massive amount of "checking out" being done through the area.
The best session I attended was an excellent workshop called "Would Jesus Discriminate?" Led by a local Metropolitan Community Church in Dallas, it gave so much insight into how to approach the conservative wing of Christianity. It focused on having loving, meaningful discussions with everyone, no matter how different your beliefs may be.
This was a breath of fresh air, as the LGBT community sometimes chooses to hold an angry protest instead of sitting down individually with the opposition to change hearts and mind one at a time. I'm a fan of the latter, as I feel personalizing an issue helps create cultural change.
A personal highlight outside of the conference itself was exploring the Dallas gayborhood.
While Chicago has Boystown, Dallas has more of a "Boysblock." As a local friend drove me to it, the 'hood was over before I saw it. The bars, however, were totally decent. One, Roundup, offered a deliciously Texan gay experience, complete with country music and cowboys.
The others were in a more traditional gay style, but still had a bit of a Texas charm. I watched an excellent drag show at S4, and was delighted to find out that Lady Gaga performed at the venue before she hit mega-stardom.
This year was the first time Twitter was heavily used, and many conferencegoers tweeted about how good or bad their workshops were, as well as which bars were popular on any particular night.
I took away so much from the experience, but the biggest thing I took away was the strength of the LGBT community. There were so many ethnicities, ages, styles and gender expressions present. While there wasn't unison on every issue, all of these people were present to fight for equality as one.
Blair Mishleau is a sophomore journalism student at Columbia College, focusing on merging the gap between print and online journalism. He is also an occasional contributor to Windy City Times.