This is an interview with Susie Wilburn, President of the Woodstock, Virginia chapter of PFLAG. It was recorded on July 29, 2025.

Linda
Hello and welcome to episode 25 of The Spectrum. Today we have somebody who actually helped inspire me doing this, which is Susie Wilburn. She’s the president of the PFLAG Woodstock chapter. And Susie was kind enough to sit down with us today to talk about kind of her involvement with the PFLAG chapter and the history of the chapter and about PFLAG in general. So welcome, Susie.

Susie
Thanks.

Linda
It’s kind of funny because, you know, a year ago this time I had no idea who Susie was. I had never seen her before. And now Susie seems to run my life. But I’m blaming Lauri for that because she’s the one that got us involved with PFLAG. So speaking of PFLAG, what exactly is PFLAG?

Susie
is an organization that’s been around for 50 years now. They were 50 years old in 2023. It was started by a woman in New York whose son was beat up pretty bad at the Stonewall riots. And so she decided to start a group of parents who were supportive of their kids who were in the LGBTQ community. At the time it was just gay and lesbian community. And that’s when PFLAG was born. And it was originally considered – The name was Parents and Families for Lesbians and Gays. Now fast forward 50 years and they only use the acronym PFLAG and it is for the LGBTQ+ community. We’ve added more letters to the alphabet soup and the organization is really good at helping the chapters learn how to advocate, support and educate the community. And that’s what our chapter has been focused on is trying to educate local community.

Linda
So PFLAG isn’t just a national organization. There’s chapters all around the country.

Susie
That’s correct. They’ve added 400 new chapters just this year. So I can’t give a total number of how many chapters there are all over the United States. But I do know that I do zoom calls with them there are states represented from all over the United States.

There’s people in Pacific Northwest and Alaska that zoom in with us as well as Maryland and Hampton Roads. So it runs the gamut all over the all over the United States.

Linda
So what is it that a local chapter does? I’m sure that varies all over the country. So if you want to talk about it in terms of the local chapter.

Susie
Well our local chapter took us a little while before we got the courage up to do support meetings. And the support meetings are held once a month. The first Sunday of every month in a local location which we keep kind of private for safety reasons.

But we bring together those who need to understand LGBTQ community and the issues and policies that are affecting them. Or just so that they can vent about what’s going on in their personal lives. Whether it be a grandmother who has a grandchild that just came out to their parents and her church is telling her to shun the child. Her daughter is accepting of the child and she want she comes, excuse me, she came to a PFLAG support meeting to find out more about what this child is experiencing so that she can also love the child and accept and support the child.

That’s been a big part of our support meetings – grandparents whose – it’s – it’s a generation out. In other words, In other words, the uncles and aunts are the ones who are pushing back and the grandmothers are the ones who are becoming accepting and loving. And then to watch her own children butt heads over the fact that a niece or a nephew is identifying in the community.

Linda
We have these monthly support meetings. That’s a big part of what the chapter does and that’s obviously not just for the LGBT+ community but for the people that support that community based on what you’ve said.

What other sorts of things that we do? Is there a social aspect of the chapter?

Susie
Sure. There are – we have already done three game days that we’ve hosted where we provide snacks and drinks and board games and Dungeons & Dragons and it goes for like six hours and it’s been very well attended. The folks that come seem to totally enjoy the fact that they can socialize with people that think like them or or want to play like them and play with them with the games and it’s a whole day where they don’t have to feel the stress of the politics that’s going on around us.

Linda
And speaking of that politics, is there a political aspect to the local chapter?

Susie
There’s there’s definitely not a political aspect to the chapter. However, we are a 501(c)3 we cannot endorse candidates. We can however discuss their policies. We can put information out in the community as to what the policies of each candidate is. We just cannot endorse either of those candidates.

Linda
So it’s really more of an educationalaspect than an overtly political one.

Susie
Correct.

Linda
When did the Woodstock chapter form? Obviously before Lauri and I showed up on the scene.

Susie
Sure, you guys came to us in September of last year. We had have been a chapter since 2022. It took us a little while to get our chapter through PFLAG National. The young man that was working with us at the national organization wasn’t really helping us along. So our process took about six weeks when it should have only taken about two.

That was in May of 2022 and we held our first PFLAG potluck, Pride potluck that June. So at the end of May of 2022 we got our chapter paperwork and then two weeks later we were having a Pride potluck. So that was that was pretty fun.

Linda
So you kind of hit the ground running. So,obviously, you weren’t alone in this because you’re talking about “we” so there were other people involved. But, in terms of your own aspect, and we can come back to the other people in a minute. but what is it that motivated you to help start this chapter?

Susie
Well I have a college friend whose daughter is gay. And in 2014 I went to visit her for the weekend. She lives in Blacksburg Virginia. And, they were – she was tabling for her local PFLAG chapter at this big event that was in downtown Blacksburg. So that was where I got introduced to PFLAG. I didn’t know anything about it until then. And, at that time I didn’t really, Well I still didn’t know.

I knew what their purpose was. I knew what their goals were and their mission was. But it didn’t – it wasn’t really on my radar.

Fast forward to 2019, 2020, maybe 2021. And we — my ex-husband was the librarian at a local elementary school. And over the years he had been noticing the children identifying earlier each year. So he started buying books that would help those kids and he would put them on a special shelf in the library. When the school year started he would observe and notice which classrooms they were in. And then he would approach their teacher and say, “Hey you know I’ve got these books in my library. They’re on this special shelving unit. And if you happen to have a conversation with such and such child that you need to discuss these topics we have books that you can you can check out and use for that purpose.”

And so along about that time, a woman named Brandy Rutz was looking to be a candidate for our local school board. She had become become involved with Moms for Liberty and by doing so she was fed a lot of information – wrong information about the LGBTQ community and the children and the books. And so she scouted people to find and seek out books in my husband’s card catalog at the elementary school level because it was online.

So these people found books that they did not feel like should be in the library. The first one – they had three challenges. Rirst book that was challenged was called The Drag Queen Hips Go Swish Swish Swish and it was based on “The Wheels on the Bus”.

And it was in it — It is an adorable little book and that is illustrated with drag queens and they are basically singing the song and it would be like I stomp my shoes. I jingle my jewelry. Those kinds of things and in doing that – it was part of the drag queen story hour series. So someone found that in the in the library and decided to challenge it.

Prior to that though, a little kindergartner girl checked it out. And the parent sent an email to my ex-husband and said, “This book is inappropriate. I’m sending it back because I don’t think my daughter needs to read this book.” And he basically wrote back and said that’s fine that you have that right and we’ll just check her out another book.

Two weeks later another little kindergartner girl checked out the same book That parent, instead of addressing it with the school, took it to Facebook. So the What’s Happening Strasburg page then became the We hate the librarian and we’re going to drag him behind a truck and we’re going to do all these things, so we had to lawyer up.

It forced him to make an early retirement decision because he ended up with three book challenges.

The third one.

Susie
The night before that challenge, there was a school board meeting on a Thursday night. The book challenge was going to be on Friday at one. At that school board meeting on Thursday night, a local trans woman went to that school board meeting and she testified to that school board that had that book been in her school when she was in the elementary school ages, that she wouldn’t have tried to commit suicide. She wouldn’t have had massive depressive incidents. She wouldn’t have been bullied probably as much. She would have been able to have more self confidence. The whole gamut.

And they listened to her. They commended her for coming forward, the school board at the time.

So I had to get up at midnight to walk our little pup and I got online and looked at the video that was had been posted from the school board and I saw Amy testify before the school board. I immediately emailed the link to the school boards video to my ex-husband. He got up at five o’clock in the morning and emailed to his entire faculty at the elementary school and said, “I’m probably going to lose my job over this but this is why we have these books in the library. Watch this woman’s testimony and watch how this woman understands the need for these books.”

That book ended up getting to stay in the library.

Linda
That’s a pretty powerful story that, you know, someone who said if these things had been available to me, my life could have been much less difficult than it turned out to be.

That was the catalyst for you trying to form a PFLAG chapter?

Susie
It was. It made me remember my college friend and that same week – there’s a Facebook page that I follow called Pantsuit Nation and I think it was named after Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits orsomething.

Linda
Yeah, it came out uring the 2016 campaign.

Susie
Sure, and a local trans man put his testimony or his coming out story on that page and I read it. And he’s from Shenandoah County so I reached out to him and said “Are you aware
that we have book challenges now happening right this very moment in Shenandoah County at the local level that could make a difference in people’s lives whether or not those books get get to stay on the shelf or whether or not they get pulled?”

So he and I met privately and then we we put together a meeting at my house and about 10 people showed up who were interested in launching a PFLAG chapter. It was hard because there were people that were super afraid of what that entailed and what they were setting themselves up for.

But I didn’t care.

I knew that we needed to stand up for those in the community who are vulnerable and who are being bullied or not being able to be who they rightfully are.

Over the course of time that individual hung out with me and we became part of the whole process of becoming a chapter and we kept bringing people along with us along the way.

We’ve now kind of rotated in people in and out so that we have some of the original people and me being the probably the primary one but at the time we had a minister who was willing to deal with the religious aspects of it. We had a nurse practitioner who was willing who had done work with folks in Asheville North Carolina who were in the process of transitioning so she worked at a clinic there. She was helping us.

Those people are not involved now but we’ve managed to bring along other people and build the chapter in such a way that we now have people in place who are strong advocates for the community.

Linda
We’re here in Shenandoah County which is a relatively rural, low population county. How much community is there here? I mean some people think that gay people or trans people don’t exist in rural communities but that’s obviously not true because we see people showing up at events so in terms of what you see and obviously you can’t compare it to places where you haven’t lived but just in terms of what you see here, how much of a community do you see in Shenandoah County? Is it just a small pocket of people or is it much larger than you expected?

Susie
I think it’s I think it’s hard to know exactly how many people that there are in Shenandoah County I do know that. When we do events we find that we certainly have more allies than than non-allies. And that’s refreshing because it makes you recognize that the work is important and we need to figure out ways to bring more people within our circle to advocate for the safety of this community.

Linda
Myself, having moved here from Northern Virginia I wasn’t expecting much in the way of community and so I’ve been really surprised at how much there is which is great to see.

I mean there was – when in Lauri and I moved here we were asked if we were afraid for moving out to a rural location and we both said no and haven’t had any issues. But, It’s been a surprise, you know, seeing how many people do show up to events and things like that.

And at Front Royal Pride over the weekend how many people stopped by and just came through.

Susie
Absolutely yes.

Linda
I mean compared to Capitol Pride it’s a much smaller event but you know given the size of the area it was great.

Susie
It was great and they have doubled what they put on last year and that county has been battling a library book banning issue around the same amount of time that we have. They have a library system over there that many of the people in the religious community have tried to shut down the library and then the board of supervisors over there has taken the whole thing even further.

Given the fact that that community has been pushing back against the book banners over there I think has brought people out in support of this community and the issues and the things the policies that are affecting their lives.

Linda
So let’s fast forward a little bit to the current situation.

Susie
Sure.

Linda
In your role as president of PFLAG and your discussions with allies and people in the community what do you see as the biggest challenges for the LGBT+ community here in 2025?

Susie
We do a Safe Aone training. We did it last year about three or four maybe as many as five times. The person and I give the Safe Zone training noticed, and from people standing up speaking at the school board, was that people don’t understand the science. They don’t understand the difference between sex and gender.

And so we felt like and still feel like that we need to beef up that program so that we can take it to different organizations in the community and help them have that aha moment of “Oh this makes sense now. These two things are totally separate and one is cultural and the other is biological.””

So we think that education is the key.

Linda
And so based on that, I mean it’s obvious that at the national level and at the state level transgender people have been targeted disproportionately compared to other communities. Have you encountered a lot of fear among the community?

Susie
I wouldn’t – I wouldn’t say fear as much as anger and I know that anger is based with fear so those two things do go hand in hand. Most of the folks in the LGBTQ community that I’ve encountered have been very brave souls and they have always said I’m not going away. I’ve been here forever and I’m not going anywhere and I think that that’s again part of our Safe Zone training we’re trying to show that this has been around forever. This is not a new thing, even though people think it is I know I hear a lot of people that say “Why is all of a sudden there are so many transgender individuals?”

Well they’ve been here all along. They just have been afraid to show themselves and I truly believe that because parents are becoming more and more supportive of their own children we have more supportive aspects of it than we do the opposite.

And so I think the caring that parents have, that’s not to say that there aren’t parents who have not been accepting and have not made their kids life total hell until they could get out from under the roof, but I do think that overall that parents have become more and more accepting of their children and so therefore we’re seeing it come out in the medical communities are backing the research and the and the science behind it all.

And so it’s not something new and I think again back to the education part if we can get people to understand this isn’t something new, this is something that we need to support and not treat it as a mental illness, which is how a lot of people see it.

Linda
So let’s – you mentioned the Safe Zone training. Let’s take a moment to talk about that. If there was an organization here in in Shenandoah County that was interested in doing that, what would they do? Would they contact you, contact the chapter?

Susie
They would contact the chapter and we talk to them a little bit first about what Safe Zone is and why people need safe places. We all need places that where we feel comfortable where we don’t feel like we’re threatened, so we need them to learn about that so that they can provide that for either their employees or for co workers that kind of thing. So it it’s a local business that has an HR department that they want their company to understand if they have an LGBT person in their have LGBT person in their employee ranks and they need to understand how to have communication with that person. Then they need to probably do a Safe Zone training.

Susie
When we moved here in 1995, I was moved here through a headhunter to work at the printing plant in Strasburg. And, there was a transgender person that worked in the bindery. And, the mean, the meanness and the bullying and all the things that took place there — our company could have used to safe zone training.

I know that OSHA does trainings where they go in and have – you have to understand things, company wide safety policies, safety policies. This could have been looked at as an OSHA training where they could they could have learned about, you know, the differences between sex and gender and, try to teach them how important it is to have empathy.

Linda
That sounds like a good thing.

In terms of participation within the chapter, has the current political situation brought people out of the woodwork, so to speak, to to be more visible?

Susie
It has. It has. And Sunday afternoon I went to an event for a local school board candidate. District three or four I’m not sure which. Her name is Yvonne Litton. And, I gave her an entire package that that involved the PFLAG booklets that we have as resource booklets that we purchased to give away. And she was very excited to get them and she was going to read it and get back with me if she had any questions but there was another woman there and I just. I’m very suspicious of everyone. And, I –

Linda
There’s a lot of that going around these days.

Susie
Exactly and so you meet someone and you just don’t know what they’re going to say and how you’re going to have to respond or should you respond. Those kinds of things. And this woman was talking about using nicknames or names for kids in the classroom. She was a retired teacher and at first I thought, oh man, am I going to have to get into it with this woman? You know?

And turns out she was an ally. And, she has a child that that uses they/them pronouns. But, when I first started talking to her I was like, this is going to be so hard you know I don’t know what I’m going to say but then she wouldn’t shut up about it.

I mean she was such a good advocate that she said, “I’m going to write go home and write a check for you guys because I’m really grateful that you’re here and are in the community.”

So I think people are spread too thin right now. Just like she was trying to give money wherever she could so she ran down a list of like Doctors Without Borders and, you know, the folks in Gaza and all of the things that we’re watching happening that there’s just so much and she said, “I’ve been wanting to send a check and to contact you guys and maybe come to a support meeting but I just haven’t had time.”

Linda
Well that’s terrific to hear that the situation with the attacks on especially the trans community has actually brought people out to support it.

Susie
Right.

Linda
That covers pretty much all the questions that I had for you but is there something that you think that’s important that we haven’t talked about?

Susie
I would like to encourage people to to reach out to us for the Safe Zone trainings and to possibly attend a support meeting. If we haven’t done anything in the three years that we’ve been a chapter I’m most proud of the fact that we have those monthly support meetings. We did notice that the chairs filled up after the election that there’s 12 chairs in the room and just about every month every one of those 12 chairs has somebody sitting in it.

What you see and hear in that room, it’s like Vegas, you’re not supposed to talk about it but I will tell you that I have learned an enormous amount from sitting amongst those folks. I’ve learned things that they’ve had to go through I’ve learned the fear that they have felt simply because when we would then do an event and I would have to go to the local sheriff department or to organizations and let them know about the event I felt the fear for the people that were sitting in the room with me. So I know it’s just a small percentage of the fear that these folks have to live with but if you can attend a support meeting to where you can sit and hear their stories. Hear their backgrounds. Understand where they’re coming from. It makes a huge difference in how to go about understanding, maybe even looking at it as how you could help.

Linda
if somebody was interested in getting involved with the chapter. Coming to a support group meeting or something like that where should they look?

Susie
We have a website it’s pflagwoodstockva.org but we also have a Facebook page PFLAG Woodstock Virginia and they can email me or the chapter itself. Our email is pflagwoodstockva@gmail.com.

Linda
And if somebody is not from the local area, how do they find the national organization and maybe find what’s in their area?

Susie
The national organization is pflag.org and there is a plethora of information on there that even the folks in my chapter could benefit to just spend in my chapter could benefit to just spend a day reading their website because it’s full of really good information.

Also there’s there are resource booklets that we order from PFLAG National and we purchase them for like a dollar fifty a piece with the sole purpose of giving them away. As a matter of fact at the Front Royal Pride on Saturday there was a mother that came in late in the afternoon and she was trying to understand her child. And she took several of the books. I made sure that she had plenty of information that she could go home and read. Her child was identifying and she wasn’t truly believing her child but at the same time she was trying to be supportive so I handed her everything I could I could give her and I think it’s going to help her to to come to some terms with how to help that child go through the process of understanding what they what they’re dealing with.

Linda
Well thank you so much, Susie, for taking the time to sit down with us today. And we’ll see you at the next event.

Susie
Okay.

Linda
Take care everyone and we’ll see you next time.