Interview With Melissa Moore

Melissa Moore is that person who stacks up her plate so high at Thanksgiving she can barely carry it to the table, and to the delight and horror of everyone else, manages to put the whole thing to rest in a matter of minutes. This one is not afraid of commitment. That's why she's got a feeler or two in just about every organization in Charleston. She has the kind of lasting visionary passion that most people envy or don't understand. Too legit to quit, she's been on the Charleston front lines for years now. Read on to see what she is working on these days...

JL: Tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do.

MM: I’m Melissa Moore and I’m the program director for We are Family, which is an organization that provides support and leadership development for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and straight ally youth in Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester counties. I also work on a reproductive justice project called the South Carolina Access Initiative, which aims to increase access to comprehensive reproductive health services for women in the state. That includes helping the Women’s Choice fund raise. We also do workshops for frontline workers like for Lowcountry Healthy Start to try to teach values clarifications. Like you might not agree with certain things, but you need to offer your clients full-options counseling. If they come to you with an unintended pregnancy, for example, you need to tell them, in addition to adoption, what services are available to them, and how to access those services, whether or not you agree with them.

JL: And what motivates you to do what you do?

MM: Well, I have to say a sense of justice, you know, that it needs to be done. Especially with the work with We Are Family. When I was in high school I would've loved to have had a resource like this available to me. And you know just the tiniest bit of support, the tiniest little effort, with a kid who just needs somebody to listen to them, the tiniest bit of interest in whatever a kid is interested in, can sometimes make all the difference in the world. The tiniest little thing, to you, that you may not remember years later, is something that has made a huge difference in someone’s life, something they will never forget. By working to try to develop leaders, it’s making the world a better place exponentially. By the smallest amount of work, you’re developing these leaders and then they’re going and developing leaders, and it’s exponential and viral, in a good way.

JL: How do you define community?

MM: I guess there are a bunch of different ways to define community. Community is coming together for a common goal, the common good. Community is your safety net. Imagine a bunch of hands entwined, if you fall they’re gonna catch you. It is a sense of responsibility for other folks around you. Community is sort of a family outside of your family, it’s your chosen family.

JL: If you could pick three things that you would like to see happen in Charleston in the next year, what would they be?

MM: I would like to see more art that really turns me on. I wanna go to an art show or music show that reaches me in such a place where I’m like “Dang, I never heard it said that way before. That’s what I’ve been thinking always but I’ve never heard it expressed that way.” And poetry, I love spoken word poetry that reaches you like that. I want to see more passion in the people who are in office. I want to see them be passionate, I don’t want them to just be carrying the party line or status quo. I want to see more passion in the folks around here who are electing people. I want to see people in this community--all facets of this community--understand what is happening to them, be educated about the lies that they have actually absorbed and believe, and do something about it.

For example I want us to rise up against all the over-development that’s coming in here. Nobody can afford to buy houses, yet we’re allowing them tear down all these portions of forest and start building and developing these cookie-cutter communities with all these cul de sacs. And then they’re abandoning the developments because they’ve run out of time on their loan, or no one can afford to buy the houses, or the developers can’t afford to finish the houses and there, you’ve ruined an entire section of forest that you can’t get back, old-growth forest, especially in places like John’s Island. I want to see us rise up against that, we should take to the streets! I don’t understand why no one--I mean there are small segments of the community doing work against that, but theres not enough happening to combat the terrible atrocities that are being committed against our environment in the name of greed, especially in this coastal area. I want to see something to ward that off. We need to do more. I’d like to see a bi-partisan effort by the people who are already elected to come together on this issue. I’ve already seen some of them coming together, some people who you would never think would be working together are working together on this issue.

JL: Describe a day in the Melissa Moore utopia.

MM: Nobody has to agree, and I think healthy debate, and respectful debate is encouraged. It would be a true think-tank type of society, where everyone’s ideas are valued. Nobody has this homogenous way of thinking, everyone comes at it form a different perspective, and no one has drunk the kool-aid...

JL: What do you mean drunk the kool-aid?

MM: Jim Jones at Jonestown, the mass suicide. There was a cult, and he told them to drink the kool-aid, and they drank it, and died.

JL: Oh, that’s horrible.

MM: Well I kind of feel like everybody is drinking the kool-aid right now.

JL: Yeah, yeah...

MM: But you know, a society where people can think for themselves, and individuality and uniqueness is cherished rather than beaten out of you. In my utopian society, our education systems would value all different types of learning, rather than standardized learning and standardized tests, you’d include creative learning. We wouldn’t have a system where you sort children like, “Okay, you’re gonna go into the prison industrial complex, you’re gonna go into the military industrial complex, you’re gonna go into the service industry...” They sort children in public education, they do, and in my ideal society, we would respect the fact that there are different ways that different people learn. And in my society we would value teachers over basketball stars. We would pay our teachers more than sports people, because they’re the better role models, and we would make it lucrative for people to be good teachers. And there would be music and art and stuff...

JL: What projects are you currently involved in, besides your job-jobs?

MM: I’m involved in the pink party which is the LGBTQQAI queer fundraising arm of politics, we just started a couple years ago. We throw parties and we collect the checks people are writing to candidates. We bundle them and present them and we’re like, “Okay this is from the gay and queer community, you are accountable to us.” And I hate to say it, because I used to be so anti-capitalism, but you have to do it. It sucks. It really does. But it’s kind of cool when you collect these checks that people are gonna write anyway, and we’re like, “Hey, these are queer people who are writing checks to you, this is from our community and we’re feeding you so you’re accountable.”

I’m also just starting to be involved in the Coastal Conservation League, doing environmental work. I’ve done work with the Lowcountry Food Bank. I’m part of a community advisory board for the Charleston Area Men’s Empowerment Project. They do safe sex outreach for gay and bi guys, and I think I’m pretty much the only girl on that board.

JL: What about your band?

MM: I’m the bass player and I sing in the Big Bang Theory. We’re gonna play at the Windjammer on Oct 15.

JL: What is something happening in mainstream culture that you think is moving the conversation about GLBTQQAI issues forward?

MM: Well, about three years ago there was a conversation within ENDA where there was some debate about where or not trans folks should be included in the bill. I found it interesting that people in the gay community did not want to have a trans-inclusive bill. When I was with SC Equality we signed on in support of having a trans-inclusive bill. We got so much push-back from the gay community, it was insane. People were like, “Why should we support that? Make them fight.” You know, how can you say that? Our mission statement says “gay lesbian bisexual transgender.” We cannot leave out any part of this community, so it was like, I’m sorry, but you are wrong.

In the mainstream news media you have a discussion of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which is soon to be repealed and I hate war and I’m all about peace, but as soon as the ban is lifted, you cannot deny gay people any other rights. They are fighting and dying for this country that does not give them the same rights. How can you deny people the right to marry people, the right to employment non-discrimination, housing, how can you deny these people basic human rights when they are fighting and dying along with everyone else?

JL: How do you define queer?

MM: Not straight.

JL: Pick a myth about queer people in general or some group under the umbrella and debunk it.

MM: That queer people are sexual predators and child molesters. It’s not true. Actually, statistics show that the majority of child molesters are straight. If you look, the percentage of straight people who are child molesters is representative of the population. There is no variance according to sexual orientation, it’s there in any population. A child predator is a child predator, and there is a difference between someone who is interested in someone of the same gender who is a consenting adult versus someone who is preying on a weaker vulnerable class who is not able to speak for itself.

JL: What questions do you think we should be asking ourselves as activists in Charleston?

MM: Why are you in this? What is your motivation? What is your end goal? Who is your target audience? What messages do you think they would receive best? How should you formulate your message? How should you deliver your message? What do you want to get out of it? How do you want your audience to respond? And how are you going to be sustainable?

JL: What is your definition of feminism and do you think that feminism is important to the LGBTQQIA movement and community?

MM: Absolutely. My definition of feminism is equality, across all races and sexes, mostly with regard to gender and sex, but it’s equality and it’s very important to GLBTQQAI organizing because thats our big thing, equality. I think that there is no better representation of feminism than in LGBTQQIA things, because the argument I have always heard against gay marriage is basically “But who’s the man? Who’s got the power? Oh my god, there’s equality? What? Who’s the man?” So now you have two people of the same gender, oh no! Now the whole dichotomy is thrown off, the whole power structure is shifted. The arguments against gay marriage are very sexist.

JL: What person, group or movement do you think is doing a stellar job of combatting an oppression in the charleston community?

MM: There are several groups, barring the gay and lesbian groups. The environmental groups, like the Coastal Conservation League--they combat environmental racism, the pollution in certain communities, water quality. Those issues are very pervasive, and it’s all about being self-actualized, and certain communities can’t be self-actualized if their needs are not being met on the most basic level. You can never move ahead if you don't have access to food, or if you don’t have clean water. That’s kind of the most basic need, and I think that groups who deal with the most basic needs are actually doing the most important work, so that the people they serve can move on, once basic needs are met.