2017 Issue 5 Sep/Oct - Focus Mid-South Magazine

lgbt advocate
Michael Hanson
Alabama’s first openly gay candidate
is challenging the status quo
by Chellie Bowman | photo courtesy of Michael Hanson
“Openly gay environmentalist
running for Jeff Session’s old seat.”
Bold categories, high emotions,
incendiary blurbs. That Michael
Hansen, born and raised in
Memphis, is now the first openly
gay person running for statewide
office in Alabama, is garnering
lots of attention and support is no
surprise. But Hansen was just a
concerned citizen like us, who took
a leap of faith, taking things into
his own hands.
Hansen has a long history of
challenging the status quo – he
works as executive director of
the health and environmental
advocacy organization GASP, has
a been working for LGBT rights
locally in Birmingham for many
years, and moreover, came forward
with a powerful story last year. In
November of 2016, Michael and
his brother went public about abuse
they endured by a youth minister
when they were kids, and the
subsequent attempts by the church
to cover it up. It empowered him to
run for office, he said, and that in
itself has generated in him a sense
of peace and inner strength.
Hansen has cultivated
this strength in running a
campaign that he describes as an
unapologetic defiance of what
Alabama politics is supposed to be.
Over the phone he firmly asserts
“I am unapologetically who I
am.” And Hansen means this in
more ways than one. Apart from
running as an openly gay man in a
historically conservative Southern
state, he also believes that people
are longing for authenticity, “for
someone authentic, who speaks
without obscurity and ambiguity.”
Something that is in complete
opposition to Trump and his
administration’s “alternative facts”,
political obviations, and double
speak.
It is just that kind of duplicity
that Hansen offers voters an
alternative to. He actually decided
to run for office when he heard
that former Chief Justice of the
Alabama Supreme Court Roy
Moore, a “prolific homophobe”,
had decided to run for the seat.
Many of us Tennesseans know of
Moore because of his history of
anti-LGBT actions. In 2003 he was
removed from his position as Chief
Justice for refusing to remove a Ten
Commandments monument (that
he commissioned) from the court,
and in 2015 once re-elected he
attempted to block probate judges
from issuing marriage licenses
despite the Supreme Court ruling
that overturned the state’s ban on
same-sex marriage and was then
suspended—and ultimately forced
to resign—from the court.
Hansen described Moore as
issuing “some of the most vile and
bigoted opinions from the court
about LGBT people.” By launching
his campaign in response to
Moore’s, he wanted to show the
gay community in Alabama that
“we need the courage to stand up
to bullies – whether they’re at your
school, work, or the Senate. That
representation matters. We need
elected leaders who are like us, who
know what it’s like to grow up as a
gay kid in the South.”
Indeed we do. Hansen’s
experiences growing up in
Memphis and in the South – and
the complicated relationships
we have with our families and
religion – are something to which
many of us can relate. Although
Hansen left Memphis around a
decade ago to pursue graduate
school in Tuscaloosa, he still has
emotional connections to the city.
His parents and his sister and
her wife still live here. He comes
back often and concedes that he
is impressed every time by how
much Memphis has grown. In
portraying his upbringing, Hansen
discloses that his family “grew
up relatively poor and in a pretty
diverse neighborhood. And my
parents are conservative, Southern
Baptist Republicans. And when I
look at someone like Jeff Sessions
or Roy Moore who use the Bible as
a weapon I think it makes people
like my parents look bad – and
other Republicans and Christians
look bad, this weaponization of
faith. My parents are two of the
best people I know, they’re always
helping others and doing their
part. Just because we don’t see
eye-to-eye politically doesn’t mean
we love each other any less. And
I think that’s the story of most
Southerners.”
In the current political climate
in which Trump and the recent
election has divided families
and friends, Hansen represents a
progressive, pro-LGBTQ candidate
who also, however, understands
the nuances and complications
of living gay in the Bible Belt.
He represents the change we
need, but as a political newcomer
and “gay kid from the South”
he also has the context and the
insight to represent us. When
asked what he had learned since
starting the campaign, Hansen
mentioned how exhaustive and
hindering campaign finance laws
and regulations were, stating “the
system is set up for wealthy people
to run.” His campaign and those
of other grassroots candidates
rely on donations from private
citizens like us to support them.
Since our interview Hansen
himself has taken a pledge not
to accept “contributions from
the oil, gas, and coal industry,
instead prioritizing our families,
climate, and democracy over fossil
fuel profits.” This is the kind of
authenticity he was talking about,
that he represents, and that we
need.
In response to specific LGBT
legislative concerns, Hansen
relayed that he is focused on
getting the Equality Act – which
adds sexual orientation and gender
identity/expression to the Civil
Rights Act – passed to prevent
discrimination towards LGBTQ
citizens in employment, housing,
education, etc. Additionally,
Hansen is deeply concerned about
the systemic lack of hate crimes
being acknowledged and reported
in Alabama, citing the murder and
assault of several trans people in
Birmingham alone last year.
To learn more about
Michael and/or donate to his
campaign check out his website
hansenforalabama.com/
Page 36 / focusmidsouth.com / SEP+OCT 2017 / Imagine