The Fabric of our Society

The Fabric of Our Society editorial is a platform for industry thought leaders to provide experience-based opinions and reflections on various topics. Diverse perspectives are respected and most welcome. Want to contribute? Email [email protected]

May 2024

First They Came for the Socialists… 

Alana Shepherd
Founding Principal, Intangible Light
Founder, North American Coalition of Lighting Industry Queers
Lecturer of Design, Theatre Arts Department, University of Idaho

From 2021 to the middle 2023, I was everywhere, fighting hard for queer rights and pushing the lighting industry to be more inclusive and equitable. Trade shows, conferences, magazines, podcasts, you name it… I was loud and proud. But I haven’t spoken at an architectural lighting event since a Pride event last year. My writing, once prolific in frequency and volume, has almost stopped entirely. My presence on committees and at board meetings is sporadic at best.

I started a full-time faculty position in the department of Theatre Arts at the University of Idaho last fall. Plus, I am on track to design more than a dozen shows this year. My theatrical lighting side hustle has apparently squeezed out my main hustle. At the moment, I have zero active architectural projects. And that’s okay.

I could chalk up my activism-absenteeism to this substantial career shift. But that would not be the whole story. Activism is hard! And to survive, an activist has to step back now and again to rest and recharge.

However, the biggest factor—and the whole of the truth—is that I’m scared. Scared of the future that we as queer people are facing. Scared of the silence and indifference I fear I will meet when I do come to the architectural lighting community for support.

LGBTQ+ persons losing ground
When I started the North American Coalition of Lighting Industry Queers (NACLIQ) in the summer of 2020, nothing like it existed. Fresh out of the closet as a transgender woman, I was desperate for advice and guidance in navigating an industry that was suddenly as foreign as it was familiar. Since no queer affinity group existed in architectural lighting, I decided to be the change I wanted to see in the world.

It became clear, very early on, that the mission of NACLIQ needed to grow beyond peer support and representation. Attacks on LGBTQIA+ rights in state legislatures, town halls, and in school board meetings grew in ferocity and in frequency. In 2020, state legislatures introduced 118 anti-LGBTQ+ bills. As of February 14, 2024, state lawmakers have proposed 423 bills seeking to limit queer rights in some way.

These measures cover everything from student participation in sports to custodial rights to bodily autonomy with respect to gender-affirming care. In Idaho, the state where I teach, HB421 seeks to redefine all references of gender, in any state law, as the sex assigned to a person at birth. The implications of this are so far-reaching that its impact has yet to be fully understood. Nevertheless, it is on track toward easy passage. Florida has been flagged as a do-not-travel state by human rights groups, partly because of their laws erasing LGBTQ+ folks.

Why is all this happening? Why are queer people, and specifically transgender people, such a menace to society? We’ve done nothing, of course, except exist.

Game plan
Here’s the choice that we, the queer people of the United States, face: Do we stay and fight? Or do we cut and run?

I’m not itching for a fight. I stay because it’s just easier to live day-to-day. I focus on immediate deadlines and mundane tasks, pretending that life can just keep going like this. But it can’t.

Regardless of the outcome of the 2024 election, a reckoning is coming. The forces set in motion by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and other anti-LGBTQ organizations will reverberate through a decidedly conservative judiciary for decades to come. In short, it is a well-connected, well-oiled, incredibly effective hate machine. The Dobbs decision, and its assault on bodily autonomy for all, is the most glaring example.

State and federal bans on changing gender markers on official documents, accreditation and funding for hospitals providing gender-affirming care, and all forms of gender-affirming care for minors are very real threats. Should all of that come to pass, folks like me may no longer be able to travel abroad or even work. Hormone therapy would become nearly impossible to obtain. And trans and non-binary kids would be completely blocked from getting the medical and psychological care they need. Intersex folks would be legally undefinable. It is erasure, plain and simple.

The situation is indeed desperate, but it is not too late. Legislative efforts only work because they stir up a vocal minority with an outsized influence on primary elections. In the absence of relentless propaganda, people are mostly in favor of letting people express their true gender and love who they want. Only in the past 2 years has public opinion shifted backwards, thanks to relentless bombardment from right-wing media.

Yes, it’s hard
Even now, most people are quietly supportive or quietly indifferent. The key word there is quiet.

With so much injustice in the world, you feel like it will never end. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Let’s turn that around: fighting for justice anywhere is a threat to injustice everywhere, whether it’s in Minneapolis or Ferguson or Rafah – or in your own office. I am not arguing for justice only for queer folks. Far from it. Rather, I have found that recognizing injustice and acting on it leads to greater empathy for all.

So here I am, emerging from my little corner and facing a world increasingly defined by insularity, indifference, fear, and cruelty. I appeal again to the architectural lighting community. I’m asking for real, tangible support for your queer peers.

I once viewed the industry as tight knit, especially in New York. Though I went West years ago, I will always consider myself part of the NYC lighting community.

What does support look like?
It’s organizations declaring – full-throated and without obfuscation, dithering, and false equivalency – that the rights of all LGBTQIA+ people are human rights. Queer folks deserve as much protection under the law as anyone else.

It’s manufacturers and conglomerates willing to leverage their nine- and ten-figure market capitalizations to encourage legislators in their business-friendly states to drop anti-LGBTQIA+ bills.

It’s all of the industry advocacy organizations speaking in unignorable, undeniable unison.

It’s individuals really seeing their colleagues and recognizing that far more people than they’ll ever realize are struggling with this onslaught. Parents fret over their kids’ healthcare and whether they will even be able to maintain custody. Closeted people are too terrified to honor their own truth, not just professionally but to their parents, siblings, children, and friends.

It’s giving money. It’s giving time. Sometimes it’s just giving a cup of coffee or a hug. (Asking first, of course!) Goodness knows we need it.

Note: For those who are wondering, the title of this essay quotes prominent German pastor Martin Niemöller, an outspoken critic of Adolf Hitler.