Advocacy 101: Finding Your Voice for LGBTQ+ Families

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Welcome back, everyone. I’m Emily Carter, here with Jason Miller, and today we’re recapping a webinar on advocacy for LGBTQIA+ families. This podcast’s content originally aired in full in June of 2025 as part of the Brazelton Touchpoints Center’s Family to Family Real Talk Program. The conversation was hosted by Kim Simes of Family Equality, the nation’s leading LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. Kim was joined by Bethany Snyder, the founder of Central Iowa Rainbow Families, a network of more than 1500 LGBTQ+ identified parents and families with LGBTQ+ children, and Bridget Stevens, a minister, fierce advocate, and proud parent. What really stands out in this conversation is how advocacy was discussed as something personal, daily, and somewhat unavoidable when you’re raising a family in a world that doesn’t always make room for you.

Jason Miller

Agreed. Bethany came at it from a policy and organizing background, but she made it really clear that advocacy isn’t just some professional skill set. For her, it’s tied to her actual life: she’s a lesbian, married to a trans man, raising a child, and living in Iowa. She described advocacy as a way to create systemic change and have a small and measurable impact. That makes sense because sometimes we hear “advocacy” and think it means doing something huge and public. But both guests made it sound more accessible and family and community-centered.

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Bethany also named privilege very directly. She said she and her partner have a level of stability, like secure housing and employment, that allows them to speak up with less risk. That point matters. She framed advocacy not just as defending her own family, but also in terms of using her privilege to advocate on behalf of those who can’t be as visible.

Jason Miller

Bridget echoed that in a slightly different way. She’s a straight, cisgender Christian minister, and she talked about leveraging her privilege wherever she can. Her advocacy started in justice work, but it deepened when laws in Iowa began targeting trans and non-binary youth, including her own child. So for her, advocacy became both solidarity and parenting.

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And she mentioned that she could use her voice without the same level of risk as others around her. That’s such an important summary of her perspective. She wasn’t centering herself; she was naming her responsibility. Bethany and Bridget both treat advocacy as an ethical response to their privilege.

Jason Miller

They also made it feel practical. Bethany talked about contacting lawmakers, schools, churches, doctors—and the importance and value in establishing that you are the expert on your own family. She reaffirmed that when it comes to your lived experience, you’re the subject-matter expert. She said that’s a helpful compass when people feel intimidated by institutions and systems.

Unknown Speaker

That is very true. One more thing from this first part: neither of them suggested advocacy is only reactive. Yes, it protects your own family, but it also says to other families, “You are not alone. We see you.” That broader sense of standing up for others was woven through everything. And both guests really delivered the message that advocacy matters because families need protection, community needs witnesses, and privilege creates an opportunity—maybe even an obligation—to show up.

Jason Miller

The discussion turned to community, and Bethany was especially vivid here. She talked about founding Central Iowa Rainbow Families because there just wasn’t a place for queer families to find each other. She joked about spotting each other “out in the wild,” which other queer parents listening can recognize and relate to.

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What she described was bigger than networking. She framed queer community as a survival tradition and a source of joy. She talked about chosen family, and how often it is that LGBTQ people can’t rely fully on families of origin, so queer communities have long created their own systems of belonging. That history shaped how she understood advocacy—not just speaking out, but building spaces where people can breathe.

Jason Miller

One of the strongest examples she gave was about straight parents of queer or trans kids joining that community. At first, she wasn’t even sure what she had to offer them. But then she described the power of a parent showing up to a playgroup and being overwhelmed because it was the first time their family wasn’t judged or questioned.

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The guests also discussed representation. Bethany shared that for one trans child she met, simply meeting an out trans adult changed what seemed imaginable. Not in some dramatic movie-scene way—more like, oh, I can have a life. I can grow up. I can be ordinary and safe and loved. Too often we underestimate how powerful that kind of everyday representation is.

Jason Miller

Bridget picked up that thread from a different angle. She talked about how advocacy changed her day-to-day life by making her more intentional about affirmation in public spaces. She mentioned complimenting kids or adults who visibly read as outside the norm—bright hair, expressive style, whatever it is—as a way of saying, “I see you, and you’re safe with me.”

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Those small acts matter. Visibility in schools, neighborhoods, coffee shops, pride events—throughout the webinar, both guests indicated how those places are emotionally important. When families see others like them, or allies who are unmistakably affirming, it reduces isolation. It tells children and parents alike that they belong somewhere right now, not someday.

Jason Miller

And both guests were careful about kids’ needs, too. They talked about helping children connect at their own pace. If a child is nervous about a queer or trans peer event, the answer isn’t to force participation. But rather to model, to stay close, to debrief, to try again if needed. Bridget’s whole approach was to validate the fear, protect safety, and create gentle on-ramps into community.

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Bethany emphasized that community is more than shared identity labels. It’s also about showing up for one another. That’s what makes it feel like belonging rather than just attendance. I also appreciated their discussion of different family configurations—queer parents with kids, straight parents with queer kids, children at different stages of identity and disclosure. Both guests were very clear that those needs overlap sometimes and diverge at other times, and healthy community makes room for that complexity.

Jason Miller

That was one of my favorite takeaways. Belonging doesn’t mean everybody needs the exact same thing. It means there are enough doors into the room. And in the webinar, visibility wasn’t just symbolic. Bethany and Bridget both described belonging as reassurance, power, and sometimes the first real glimpse of a future.

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Bridget then moved the conversation to courage, shame, and joy. She talked very candidly about showing up at school board meetings, city meetings, the state capitol—even when she felt awkward, unsure, or out of place. Her advice was not, “Wait until you feel ready.” It was more like, readiness is overrated; sometimes you just have to be present because there is no crowd unless people show up.

Jason Miller

Bethany made a parallel point about lawmakers: don’t let them say they never heard from queer families. Don’t let them off the hook. Even if they disagree with you, your job is to make sure they know you exist and that their decisions affect real people. I think that’s useful for folks who assume advocacy only matters if it changes a vote immediately. Sometimes it’s also about refusing erasure.

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And they widened that idea beyond government. Bridget discussed a painful family decision not to attend a wedding because her whole family would not have been safe or welcomed equally. That example made advocacy feel very real. It can mean school boards and legislatures, yes, but it can also mean family gatherings, traditions, and the quiet grief of choosing dignity over convenience.

Jason Miller

Bridget was very honest that those choices can hurt, create conflict, and change relationships. But she also said advocacy helped her get clearer about her family’s values: they go as a unit, and they won’t sacrifice one person’s mental health for another’s social comfort. That’s hard stuff.

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Then there was the conversation about shame, and Bethany was very direct. She said shame is not some personal failure unique to one family; it’s produced by living in a homophobic and transphobic culture. Her response was to return to community and joy—to remind people that shame thrives in isolation. When families find chosen family, affirmation, and shared experience, they can start to understand that the problem is not who they are.

Jason Miller

Bridget added something powerful there too: she sees advocacy itself as a tool to counter shame. She described helping her child prepare testimony and hearing them publicly say that they deserved protection, dignity, and respect. Her point wasn’t that one brave moment solves everything. It was that speaking truth out loud can help a child—and a parent—practice believing it.

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That connects to affirming a child’s identity. Neither guest treated affirmation as passive acceptance. They described it as active, repeated, sometimes protective work: listening, making room, honoring a child’s timing, and refusing narratives that tell them they are wrong or broken.

Jason Miller

And then they ended on a very hopeful point: joy. Bethany talked about visible pride—pins, flags, just living openly in a very red community. Not because visibility solves everything, but because living well and openly is one answer to hostility, and there is so much love in the fullness of queer community.

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The guests shared how their joy sustains their advocacy. Pride, connection, laughter, ordinary family life—those aren’t distractions from the work. They are the reason for it.

Jason Miller

Bethany Snyder and Bridget Stevens gave a recap-worthy reminder that courage doesn’t erase discomfort, shame can be resisted, and joy is not optional fluff—it’s fuel.

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Thanks to everyone for listening. We hope you are motivated to further your advocacy journey.

Jason Miller

And thanks to the Brazelton Touchpoints Center and everyone involved in making the Family to Family Real Talk program possible.

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Take care, everyone—and look for more episode recaps in this podcast series.