KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The world changes over decades. A generation of people who spent their childhood unable to imagine marrying the people they love woke up one day years later and found out gay marriage had been legalized.
NSYNC and Brittney Spears gave way to celebrities like Ncuti Gatwa or Chappell Roan. Magazine articles and classroom gossip found new ground on social media. The times change, and the attitudes and perspectives of people in the LGBTQ+ community change with them.
But, both older and younger people in the LGBTQ+ community said they seek justice.
"I think that everything is kind of tied together, with where we are in the world. Climate justice is a huge part of it, economic justice — it's all intertwined together. So, I think a lot of queer liberation, and pushing the queer movement forward, you have to incorporate all of that, racial justice too. It's all intertwined, it all connects to one another," said Jakob Davis, who works with Knox Pride.
He is 42 years old, and said he is considered a "geriatric Millennial." He said he did not come out as a gay man to any friends or family members until he was around 19 years old or 20 years old.
"Coming out in high school to some of my friends was actually not that hard. The high school I went to at the time was pretty diverse and open, especially for it being the late 1990s," he said. "Coming out to family, it was much worse. And it was, I kind of got outed by a friend to my mother."
He said there were a few months when his relationship with his family was tenuous, but his family has grown more accepting.
"Not only is she accepting, but she doesn't think that any man is good for me," he said.
Jasper McEwan, 22, works with young people experiencing homelessness through Youth WINS. He said he questioned his gender from a young age, gravitating toward traditionally masculine hobbies while trying to repress his transgender identity. He said he didn't find affirming peers until he was in his first homeless shelter.
"My parents were not thrilled at all. That's actually how I ended up in my homeless shelter. But my grandparents ... I'm still the oldest grandchild and, you know, they wanted to talk to me and make sure that I was okay and check in," McEwan said. "From working with other homeless young adults, it is a very common story I run into. At this point, if you're not aging out of foster care or getting kicked out after your grandparents are done raising you, it's almost always an LGBTQ matter."
For McEwan, coming out as transgender meant losing the place he had in his home.
But Davis said while it made relationships with his family tense, his identity was ultimately accepted. He said younger people, in some ways, have a harder time navigating the world than he did coming out.
"I could not have imagined having grown up and come out during the social media age, where everybody was so connected. That sounds like a nightmare. It was already kind of not my decision to be outed to my family, and I guarantee that with social media, there's a lot more things like that, that happen in this day and age," he said.
McEwan said social media was a primary way he connected with people and learned about the LGBTQ+ community. He said while there are aspects of the internet that can pose a threat to people, such as by impacting mental health or by sharing misinformation, it also shows people it's okay to be themselves.
"You've got this little pocket of space in your life that you can use to just remind yourself that you're not by yourself. And it's a little bit safer, and more anonymous than trying to hide magazines or sneaking out to unknown locations would be," he said.
Specifically, he said he found a community on forums for LGBTQ+ people made by The Trevor Project, a national nonprofit.
"That's where I learned, like, little fashion tidbits," he said. "Even though I couldn't be out and proud about the closet —I'd know because somebody with a username I'll never see in real life told me, 'Hey, we're wearing beads on our shoelaces.' And look at that, I've got beads on my shoelaces. And that kid in a thrift store does, too. And, I'm not by myself."
For McEwan, the advent of social media helped the LGBTQ+ community find new ways to organize in plain sight, while still safe from threats. He said it gave the LGBTQ+ community a way to outmaneuver legislation and political movements that would repress peoples' identities.
"There's a joke going around — I'm terrified to tell the waitress she got my order wrong, but I will just stand an arm's length against the cops with somebody at a protest if I need to. There's an innate desire to force our way into communities, and to force our way into the spotlight, because it's right, even if it's aggravating other people or inconveniencing other people. Because there's just a strive for justice, there's a drive for correctness, and I see that in youth everywhere," he said.
McEwan said younger LGBTQ+ people may seem more glib toward social justice, but Davis said older LGBTQ+ people had their own share of challenges that informed their own activist work. He said some older LGBTQ+ people may feel like they're "trying to make up for lost time," after staying in the closet for decades or longer.
"I came of age in a time when a lot of people had been taken by HIV and AIDS. So, I didn't have a whole lot of elders around to kind of guide me. I was kind of on my own, figuring out what it was to be gay in your teens, and then early 20s. So I feel like I have an obligation, now as an elder and an elder in the community, to try and steward younger people where I can," he said.
Davis saw marriage equality made legal in the U.S., a right that many LGBTQ+ people fought fiercely for in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He said because of that, and because of his experiences, he's learned to be cautiously optimistic about the future — a sentiment he shares with McEwan.
Both said that the future is neither bleak nor bright. They said it's something in the middle, where progress may be made and there is still work to be done.
"You have to push further than what's comfortable because this world will always try to take stuff back from you. And we're seeing that now. They're trying to roll back rights and protections. So, you always have to fight for, I think, more than what you want with the understanding that you are going to get what you can," said Davis.