The leadership of two statewide LGBT groups have been in talks in the past few weeks over the future co-existence of both organizations’ youth programming.
The Pennsylvania Student Equality Coalition is pressing Equality Pennsylvania to shutter its Student Network Across Pennsylvania program, from which PSEC developed.
Six months ago, students involved with SNAP broke from Equality PA to launch the independent, student-run PSEC.
Jason Landau Goodman, PSEC executive director, asserted that the similarity of the missions of the two entities has become problematic.
“We literally came from this program but this program is now being used to duplicate our work,” Landau Goodman said.
According to its mission statement, SNAP, launched in 2007 and revived last year, provides “resources and opportunities” to enable members to become “involved” and “educated” about the LGBT-rights movement and to “enact change” on campuses and in communities through leadership development.
PSEC’s mission statement describes that it provides “resources and support” to LGBT youth and schools, works for “social support and coordinated campus-community organizing” for LGBT rights and strives for Pennsylvania to respect diversity issues, with the “primary focus” being on local, state and federal safe-schools legislation.
Ted Martin, Equality PA executive director, said that while the goals of the two entities are similar, he believes they should be able to function separately and cooperatively.
“There is enough work to go around,” Martin said. “What’s the problem with having more than one youth organization or program in Pennsylvania? There are certainly enough things going on for more than just one organization to be working on these issues.”
Luis Medina, the North-Central chair of PSEC’s State Committee, said that when SNAP voted last year to become independent, there were initial discussions of continued collaboration with Equality PA.
“We saw ourselves as empowered and saw that this program could be more than a program and could be an entire organization,” Medina said. “And at the time we voted to create our own organization, we wanted to work with Equality PA and those doors were still open but there was some resistance.”
Martin said Equality PA was surprised to learn that the SNAP leaders decided to separate but were still open to working in partnership with the organization.
PSEC leadership, however, has contended that Equality PA leaders have made negative remarks about PSEC to other LGBT agencies in the state — charges Martin said were “completely baseless and groundless.”
Brian Sims, former EQPA board president, also denied ever making negative comments about PSEC.
“My last words to [PSEC executive director] Jason [Landau Goodman] after they decided to leave was that no matter how I felt about this happening, it was in our best interests to work together and that he would not hear us saying anything bad about them,” Sims said. “That’s not how I operate, and that’s not how this organization operates. So it’s been very frustrating to hear what’s been happening with these allegations. And sometimes it’s easy when someone says harsh words to fire back, but I think Equality Pennsylvania has handled this with a smart, congenial approach.”
The situation came to a head when PSEC sent Equality PA a letter Oct. 23 requesting that it “discontinue all operations of SNAP.”
“They’re doing what we did when we were SNAP,” Medina said. “People are confused and it’s undermining our work. It’s great if they want to have youth programming but having it as SNAP disenfranchises PSEC and competes with us.”
After last month’s letter, the two groups entered a mediated discussion overseen by a third party.
The dissolution of SNAP became a sticking point, however, Medina said.
“We went into it trying to figure out what are each of our strengths, weaknesses and where do we overlap. But we needed to ask them to end SNAP and not talk about SNAP during [last weekend’s Mid-Atlantic LGBTA Conference at Bloomsburg University] because it’s undermining our work. But they did.”
Martin said Equality PA approached the mediation session with the goal of discussing the future of the organizations, not the disbanding of SNAP.
“I think we were very upfront with what we wanted — we wanted to move forward and find a solution,” Martin said. “We attempted to work closely in making sure we could find a solution but I think unfortunately that desire to find a workable solution is something that only we were holding quite frankly.”
PSEC Pittsburgh-West co-chair Ellie Gordon said she believes the current structure and focus of both entities makes it difficult for them to operate at top efficiency.
“Equality [PA] is not letting go of their hold on what they think is theirs, this idea of an LGBT youth coalition,” Gordon said. “If they could change it to something else, that may be fine — but right now they’re saying that SNAP is basically what PSEC is. And I don’t think we can coalesce because of that.”
In the past few months, SNAP members have participated in youth-focused workshops and events and been involved in awareness-raising efforts around antibullying and nondiscrimination efforts.
PSEC, which offers online LGBT resource guides, has hosted and participated in a number of community-building youth events and conferences in its first six months to engage LGBT young people on issues such as safe-schools efforts and met with lawmakers to discuss LGBT-equality issues.
The peaceable collaboration of SNAP and PSEC is still a goal for Equality PA, Martin said.
“I think the best possible resolution is to find a way to work together,” he said. “I don’t see the problem with having more than one group that deals with similar issues. There are numerous organizations nationally that deal with LGBT issues, not just one. There’s enough work for both of us.”
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].