PFLAG group forms in DeKalb
DeKALB – An organization for friends and family members of gays and lesbians is being revived in DeKalb County, 20 years after a former organization folded.
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, or PFLAG DeKalb County, held its first meeting Tuesday night at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of DeKalb. A former PFLAG chapter was established in DeKalb in the 1980s and dissolved about a decade later, and Patricia Liberty Baczek, an ally, decided it was time to start the chapter anew.
Sixteen people – about half identifying as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, and the other half as straight friends or parents of gay children – attended Tuesday's meeting. John Cepek, the president of the PFLAG national organization, and his wife were also at the meeting.
Baczek began organizing a local PFLAG chapter about 1 1/2 years ago, but it took a while "to get the ball rolling," she said. PFLAG is an organization of support, education and advocacy.
"I can't believe we're here tonight," she said. "I've been waiting."
The reason PFLAG is needed in DeKalb County is simple: Allies need a voice in the gay movement, too, Baczek said.
"The time is now," she said. "If we don't push hard and push for what we know is the right thing, no one's gonna talk for us."
John Cepek and his wife, Char, live in the Chicago area and became involved in PFLAG when their son, now in his 30s, came out as gay to them over Christmas break while he was in college.
"Then, it was not easy for someone to come to terms of being gay," Char Cepek said. And it wasn't easy for parents to know how to respond.
"What PFLAG offered to me and Char was not an opportunity to go into a basement and weep about having a gay son," John Cepek recalled.
One of the changes the Cepeks and other parents of gay children have noticed in the past few decades is that while parents are more comfortable with the idea of having a gay child, the laws don't always agree.
"Times are changing," John Cepek said. "I don't see the same discomfort in people. People are not uncomfortable with having a gay son, but are uncomfortable about living in Illinois, where their son can't get married."
More than a support group, PFLAG has matured in its role in education and advocacy of gay rights, he said. It has more than 500 chapters nationwide, he said.
"We don't need more experts in this movement," Cepek said. "What we don't have is workers in this movement, particularly straight allies who are getting involved."
The organization's president encouraged the DeKalb chapter to get involved by pushing for gay-rights legislation – particularly for civil unions to be legalized in Illinois – by calling, writing or visiting local legislators and by door-to-door canvassing.
Baczek said that the focus for the new group will be on recruiting membership, which will be discussed at the next meeting on May 12. Another focus will be on outreach, and PFLAG DeKalb County organizers say they plan to march in several parades throughout the county this summer.