Pride Month 2024: How did we get here?

By Eva True (They/Them) (Representative)

It’s that time of year again.  Pride Month is when we all come together to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and its shameless existence in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity.  We at LGBTQ+ of FIRST strive to “do justice” to this occasion in a variety of ways.  Namely, these ways include blog posts, social media content, and Discord events. 

I usually volunteer to write a blog post or two for the org during every pride month.  This year’s theme was… difficult to come up with, to say the least.  I’ve been sitting at my desk staring at a blank Word document and past blog posts on the website for the better part of an hour.  A lot of the actionable advice, agendas, and personal testimonials have been written and rewritten over the years.  That’s when it hit me.  We look to the present and future a lot in our content, but have we ever really dug into the past? 

FIRST, at its very core, is a microcosm of what you see in the STEM world.  For decades, that meant straight men being the dominant demographic.  It also meant that breaking that “mold” was frowned upon and discouraged in a variety of ways.  Andy Baker has occasionally appeared at LGBTQ+ of FIRST roundtables to discuss what it meant to be queer in the STEM landscape before some relatively recent changes.  

After a few conversations with Jon Kentfield, who’s been involved with FIRST since the early 2000s, FIRST was one of the more accepting spaces to hang around in the 90s and 2000s.  However, in the age of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” being both a legislative and societal norm until the 2010s, only so much could really be done.  My understanding was that being ‘out’ to a limited number of people was safer within FIRST than it was within the broader world.  On top of that, a central teaching of FIRST has always been to accept others, regardless of their differences.  I don’t doubt that the program was at least a limited haven for queer people in the STEM community.

Now, let’s get to the details most of us were alive to witness.  It’s 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges is found in favor of the plaintiff and gay marriage becomes federally legal.  Conversations are being had that weren’t necessarily even thought about in the 90s and 2000s.  Society is changing, rapidly.  At this time, queer communities verifiably existed within FIRST in a number I wasn’t able to confirm.  Within the year, what would eventually become LGBTQ+ of FIRST began as a Tumblr page.  The details on this are shaky and I don’t have a primary source at hand to ask, but some digging shows that the Discord server came to be in the spring of 2016.

Things were slowly changing, of course.  However, I’d like to cite a 2022 interview I conducted with Jon Kentfield.  He said that he didn’t notice a major shift until after LGBTQ+ of FIRST gained momentum across the United States, and eventually, the world.  In the following years, changes began to sweep through the program rapidly.  2018 marked the first LGBTQ+ of FIRST conference in Detroit.  It was also the first year Woodie Flowers was publicly seen wearing an LGBTQ+ of FIRST enamel pin.  This started an interesting trend where you’d see all the most visible people within the program, such as Blair Hundertmark and Frank Merrick, sporting the pins.

This visibility was vital for growing the org.  One annual conference quickly turned into a handful of roundtables, and then an entire calendar of events becoming a regular part of FIRST events.  In Indiana, 6956 Sham-Rock-Botics played a leading role in making the district more inclusive.  In 2024, the events are adorned with pride flags supplied by their team, and LGBTQ+ of FIRST roundtables are held at 2 FRC district events and at DCMP. 

The physical presence is nearly universal, at least within the United States and Canada.  This presence can manifest as partner teams or staff members, but it never seems to take longer than 5 minutes to find somebody willing to hand you a pin, a pamphlet, and tell you about the organization.  The Rainbow STEM Alliance was formed to manage this growth and serve as a financial “shell” for the organization.  This was explosive for LGBTQ+ of FIRST, enabling the two organizations to work together on partnerships, finances, material distribution, and even an entire offseason event held annually.

In the online world, the server now has over 1,300 members.  The staff maintains an active blog and social media presence.  We even collaborate with FIRST and entities such as FUN regularly on content relating to the work we do.  Other communities, such as Neurodivergent of FIRST and Disabled People of FIRST owe their existence to the path that LGBTQ+ of FIRST paved in the late 2010s. 

​I can tell you that I heard about the organization in passing in 2018.  The only way to receive a pin was directly from one of a handful of staff members.  In the 6 years since, I cannot express how glad I am to see the entire FIRST community embracing equality and inclusion for everyone.  This leaves one clear message to queer people in the program: “You are welcome here”.