Creating Change is the nation’s largest LGBT activist conference. It’s held every year, each one in a different place in the US. This time: Kansas City, MO, one of those muscular old Midwestern cities built on the railway: there are freight trains running through the middle of town, just a couple of blocks out my window at the Westin. (People on the other side of the hotel, or up on the steakhouse on the 22nd floor, can see the county’s only World War I memorial, which looks like a giant penis on fire, or, if that thought makes you wince and cross your legs, kind of like SF’s own Coit Tower with a flame on top.)

But I’m sure that wasn’t KC’s primary attraction. There’s the barbecue — Arthur Bryant’s, for you foodies (www.arthurbryantsbbq.com/). Nice and vinegary, if that’s the kind you like. I was damned if I was going to one of the ‘cue capitals of the US without sampling it; when will I be back in Kansas City? It turns out the thing called “burned ends” is what to get. Could it be that Kansas City is *always* on fire?

Or maybe it’s the fact that Missouri (like all midwestern) LGBT activists are glad to have everybody over to visit — to get the wonderful solidarity in numbers that they may not always feel, and to get some support and appreciation for the hard work they do to fight off the anti-gay Right. Not that KC is a wasteland; the city has an anti-discrimination ordinance (I learned in Friday morning’s plenary address by Matt Foreman, the modest yet charismatic director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, that 48.5% of the American populace is covered by such laws now, up from 0% in 1970). Not only that, its mayor, Kay Barnes, issued a welcoming proclamation, and so did two city councilors and the city manager; one of KC Metro’s Kansas congressmen did too. If you’re at all surprised that Missouri and Kansas public servants are welcoming the queers, you need to get out more… to the midwest! There’s a lot more diversity out here than meets the eye, and Friday night I went to a big ol’ BDSM par-tay thrown by a group of locals and some of the national visitors. It was held in a bar that came complete with a leather shop and stripper poles, which were taken over at some point in the evening by Ms. International Leather and Mr. San Francisco Leather. Jessie and Travis, though both queer as three-dollar bills, put on such a sexy show that I’m sure they must have turned all of KC pomosexual for a few minutes… and the eternal flame on top of the big dick probably flared, to boot. Woof! Who knew a man wearing leathers could hang upside down from a stripper pole? And as I mused to my companions, if gay bars had come equipped with stripper poles back when I was coming out in the 1970s, I’d have become an exhibitionist, I’m sure, that much sooner.

And last night, downstairs at the same bar (upstairs is called Bootlegger’s, downstairs is Missie B’s), we saw a fabulous drag show hosted by the incomparable Flo — a big ol’ drag queen wearing old-lady glasses, a huge red beehive wig, a tremendously tacky dress that Dame Edna would probably have gotten in a bitch-fight over, and almost-sensible shoes. She hosts this show all the time and has it all *down*, and a tighter, more fun drag show I have rarely seen on either coast. Though it may surprise you to hear that some of the nation’s best drag is certainly not in urban areas, but out here in the middle: I’ve seen spectacular drag in Little Canada, Minnesota, Columbus, Ohio, and now here, attended by as many straight as queer folks; as Flo said in one of her many pricelessly bitchy asides, “What is there to do in a straight bar, anyway? You just stand around drinking beer, being bored.” Here’s to all the flamboyant queers who entertain us coast to coast, and the queers happy to see them (one old dyke from Oklahoma kept feeling up the queens; I *think* she knew they weren’t real girls) as well as the straight-but-not-narrow people who know where to find a good show. (”Where are you from, honey?” Flo asked one woman. “Liberal? Where’s that? Is it on a map? What’s the population? 18,000? You just made that up, bitch, because you thought it sounded like a really big number. *I* live here in Kansas City, at the intersection of Crack and Ho — *this* is a big town. Well, let’s see, do you have a WalMart?”)

Really, people came from at least four states around to have Flo challenge their sexual orientation (or affirm it); every time she stuck someone’s head under her skirt, her sound guy played either the “Meow Mix” theme song or a lion roaring. People lined up to have their photo taken with her. Do NOT visit KC without checking out Flo and her girls… and boys (she also featured a sexy, sexy drag king and a cowboy who sang his own tunes and was “here to give you straight ladies something to look at; but he gives better head than all of you put together). I don’t care where you get your ‘cue, but get your drag at Missie B’s (www.missiebs.com).

Now then. I came here to Creating Change specifically because I’m on the board of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, dedicated to affirming sexual freedom as a fundamental human right. This fits in nicely with the Task Force’s mission, and for three years the Woodhullians, as I call us, have been attending Creating Change to present workshops in a Sexual Freedom Track. Now, if you’re not gay or lesbian, you might actually be surprised at how little attention can sometimes be paid in the LGBT movement to sex, especially if you’ve been getting your news from, say, Ted Haggard, but see, that’s what they *want* you to think. In fact, LGBT organizing for anti-discrimination laws, marriage equality, hate crimes legislation, and all the rest leaves perhaps less time for sex than even the most avid activist might wish. So many people at CC have thanked Woodhull for putting more sex into the conference than had been there for many years.

On Thursday we spent the whole day on a Sexual Freedom Institute, and by the end of the day, each of five small groups had come up with action plans for individual projects, at least two of which are going to be developed into real initiatives. We’d looked at related issues all morning and had a terrific informational presentation about messaging: when talking to the public about sex there are so many pitfalls, based largely on listeners’ exposure to prejudicial points of view (which that side shorthands as “family values” or “morality”); before we even get started, our faculty said, it’s important to re-cast the message so it’s not simply a reaction to the right wing. I’ll write more in the next day or two about some very interesting ideas that were floated in that session, and my riff on them.

Creating Change isn’t a coming-out conference, although many people attend who are relatively new to the LGBT community or who are just being exposed to queer community politics. So the experience of being there can be enormously intense: this is a diverse bunch, everyone intent on presenting their own brand of LGBT issues to one another. There is a huge pro-gay-marriage contingent here, of course, but that is not everyone’s principle focus by any means; at today’s closing plenary a group presented a letter cautioning us that emphasizing Arizona’s Election Day victory for gay marriage rights allowed us to ignore the four anti-immigrant laws that state passed at the same time. The discussions about the intersections of race, class, sexuality, and other issues is sophisticated (and sometimes heated).

Well, I’m off to the airport, people, so tune back in soon to find out what Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point has to do with sexual politics.

You can read about Creating Change and see Matt Foreman’s speech here:
http://www.thetaskforce.org/UPDATE/CC_06_1110/index.htm

This is where to find out more about the Woodhull Freedom Foundation (sign up for their great email list that will reward you with sexual freedom-related articles almost every day): http://www.woodhullfoundation.org

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