PFLAG-NEMO
Welcome to PFLAG-NEMO
PFLAG is a group of people with one common thread: we all know and love someone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning their sexual orientation (GLBTQ). Our members are young, old, straight, GLBTQ, teachers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, children, mothers, and fathers. We come from all walks of life, all religious and spiritual beliefs - are non-sectarian, non denominational, and are not affiliated with any religious institution. Some of us have reached full acceptance of our GLBTQ selves and/or loved ones, and some of us are still struggling. We are all somewhere along this path and all are welcome in the PFLAG family.
We no longer have an official organization, we are now an informal group of people available to anyone needing to talk about the above issues or answer any questions.
I am Sherri Palmer and a "member representative" of the PFLAG national organization. You can call or email me and if I can't help you, I will do my best to find someone else in the community who can.
For more information about PFLAG national, please go to: PFLAG.org.
You can email me at pflag-nemo.org, dogsrule@cableon.net, or spalmer@truman.edu.
My phone number is 660-341-1871. If I don't answer, please leave a message and I'll get back to you.
Index article about the changes in PFLAG-NEMO 2/21/08
Kirksville PFLAG branch disbands
By: Schute, Kelly
Posted: 2/21/08
After almost a year and a half of existence, the local chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays has stopped meeting.Professor of psychology Sherri Palmer, former president of the Kirksville group and member of the nationwide PFLAG organization, said she officially had to let the group dissolve because of members' inability to keep it going.
"In order to have an organization, you have to have a president, a secretary, a treasurer, generally a board of directors that has a chair and some board members," she said. "… That's a lot of people that need to be willing to put in a lot of time, and I didn't have that. I had people who were interested enough and willing to take those roles, but everybody works, everybody's busy, and it was just very difficult to find times for the people to meet and to do jobs, so as the president, I ended up having to do everything."
Palmer said that although members were not able to devote enough time to the workings of the group, this did not signify that members were not dedicated to the purpose.
"All the people who were involved and helping and interested, everybody was very interested in keeping the group alive, so it wasn't that they were lacking the interest or desire," she said. "It was mostly a lack of time."
In addition, Palmer said that the makeup of those who came to meetings was not consistent with the intent of the group, so it ultimately was not serving its primary function. The purpose of PFLAG is to support family members and friends of GLBT individuals, but Palmer said the group was not reaching that audience.
"In the two years I've been involved in PFLAG here in Kirksville, I've had a lot of GLBT kids, mostly gay and lesbian, bisexual and allies, come to the meetings," she said. "I have not yet encountered any parent wanting assistance, wanting help, wanting any of [the brochures]. … I haven't had anyone call the hotline asking for help. … So that, coupled with the hard time I had with people doing the tasks of the elected officials, and me having to by default do everything, it sort of caved in."
Despite the fact that meetings no longer will take place, Palmer still will make herself available to the community. She also said she would use the donations the group has accumulated to purchase books for the local library and for the high school library to provide literature for those struggling with the acceptance of gay friends or family members.
"I've disbanded the official organization, but I'm staying on as the member representative of the national organization," Palmer said. "So I'm going to still have my Web site, which is pflag-nemo.org. … I'll still have that with information and links to other things. I'll still have my phone number out there as a hotline for people in need, and people can still contact me. … I'm going to keep it going on my own."
Professor of English Linda Seidel, a former PFLAG board member, said one of the publicly visible influences the organization had at the University was bringing speaker Mark Adams to the University last semester. Adams is an author and the gay son of a conservative preacher, and PFLAG joined with the National Organization for Women and Trinity Episcopalian Church to bring him to the campus.
"That was really a collaborative effort to bring him," Seidel said.
She said she attributes the collapse of PFLAG to the dynamics of the Kirksville community but not to any absence of need for the group.
"It's difficult to sustain a progressive activist organization around here," Seidel said. "As a member of the local NOW chapter, we are also struggling to keep going. … I think for a group like that to flourish, you just need a larger population to draw upon. I don't think it's that people aren't interested or that there isn't a need."
Seidel said that by nature, PFLAG is an organization that exists mainly as a source of help that can respond when there is a need, but this makes it difficult to sustain.
"I think Sherri's concern was that there should be a resource for people because you never know when trouble's going to come up," she said. "… It's a shame not to be able to keep an organization going because you might need that organization at some point. But I'm not so sure that PFLAG was viable."
Junior Deidra Kendall, historian for the University's gay-straight alliance group Prism, said Prism members were supportive of PFLAG from the beginning, attending meetings and donating money to get the organization off the ground. However, despite Prism's involvement, PFLAG wasn't meeting its objectives. With the group's disbandment, Kendall said the community would be the one to suffer.
"I was pretty sad … just to know that yet another organization failed in the community, especially one that's for Kirksville and not just Truman, that parents didn't really take the resource," she said. "Because you know they're out there, and they didn't take the opportunity given to them. … People knew that it was there. They just didn't want to go, and that's their loss."
© Copyright 2008 Index
LOCAL NEWS:
We are very excited to announce that Kirksville High School has its very first Gay-Straight Alliance, the KHS GSA.
Please see "FAVORITE LINKS" for their web site and Facebook addresses.
Email link to Sherri
About PFLAG
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) is a national non-profit organization with over 200,000 members and supporters and over 500 affiliates in all 50 United States and abroad.