Welcome to the debut episode of Kentucky Queeries, a podcast created with you in mind. Join Louisville Drag Queen Sydni Hampton and Louisville Pride Foundation Executive Director Ebony Cross as they share their journeys and insights, addressing crucial topics relevant to the LGBTQ+ community in Kentucky. In this episode, we get to know our hosts Sydni, Ebony and Social Worker, Anthony Munger as they discuss their advice for their younger selves, the passion behind their work at the Louisville Pride Foundation, and the challenges they faced growing up.
Welcome to the debut episode of Kentucky Queeries, a podcast created with you in mind. Join Louisville Drag Queen Sydni Hampton and Louisville Pride Foundation Executive Director Ebony Cross as they share their journeys and insights, addressing crucial topics relevant to the LGBTQ+ community in Kentucky.
In this episode, we get to know our hosts Sydni, Ebony and Social Worker, Anthony Munger as they discuss their advice for their younger selves, the passion behind their work at the Louisville Pride Foundation, and the challenges they faced growing up.
If you’re like us, you've encountered challenges in finding accurate information on LGBTQ+ health issues. "Kentucky Queeries" aims to bridge that gap, providing valuable insights and empowering guidance tailored to your experiences.
Join us on this journey of self-discovery, empowerment, and advocacy as we navigate the complexities of LGBTQ+ health in Kentucky.
Tune in to "Kentucky Queeries" and let's build a more informed, inclusive community together.
Ep 1 Intro
[00:00:00]
Sydni Hampton: Hello, everyone. I'm Sydney Hampton,
Ebony Cross: am Ebony Cross.
Sydni Hampton: welcome to Kentucky Queries. Today we'll be talking with Anthony Munger. Munger is a social worker who works with LGBTQ youth. Before we bring our guests on, Ebony, I have a question for you.
Ebony Cross: Go for it.
Sydni Hampton: What advice would you give little Ebenezer Cross?
Ebony Cross: That's funny you said that like that because that's what my brother used to call me when I was little and still does to this
Sydni Hampton: Ebenezer?
Ebony Cross: Yes. As long as you don't put screws, we good. I would tell little Ebenezer Cross to just always be authentic and do not question yourself. What would you tell yourself?
What would you tell little Sidney? Instead
Sydni Hampton: Well, I think I spent the majority of my formative years just kind of being a ratty little terror. I think I would tell Sydney, just slow the fuck down, vibe, and start estrogen earlier so you can get those big ol honkin mommy milkers sooner.[00:01:00]
Ebony Cross: get into it.
Episode 1 Content
Sydni Hampton (2): [00:00:00] Okay, so mommy milkers aside I guess the other thing that I would tell myself is to try to find resources that are available to me that maybe I didn't, I guess I didn't know about them, but I wish I had sought them out more. Maybe being less fearful of reaching out to people for help instead of trying to do everything myself, because that led to me for a long time not knowing how to get started.
on getting on HRT or finding dental care that was available to me through my network of providers, not knowing who to talk to about financial, like, benefits that I might be
Ebony Cross: Missing out on.
Sydni Hampton (2): missing out on, things like that, and just finding community sooner by, by feeling confident enough to seek it
Ebony Cross: I think that is wonderful advice for little
But you can also give that same advice to, Maybe the youth or kids that are, that were your age. So if you missed out on that advice, you are able to [00:01:00] apply that to someone
Sydni Hampton (2): Yeah, that's what I love about my job now. Like just last night, we were at, we were at a play dance bar and I got to talk to a friend of mine I've known for a while. We're not super close or anything, but she just, you know, she asked me some questions about well, first she said some, alarming things that led to me saying, you know, hey When do you get a minute?
Do you want to talk? And then got her pulled to the side and we talked about , if she, you know, if she ever needs to talk to somebody, I'm available. And I know I don't know her like that, but if she needs help finding resources for mental health care, I'd love to help her out. Like all kikis and shits and giggles aside, I'm a resource if you want it.
message me, and I'll happily help you. And she seemed really responsive, and I thought, , damn, if I was 23 years old, and I had someone like that come up to me and offer me those things, I would have been probably in a much better situation than I was at 23, and I probably would have gotten all the help that I needed much sooner.
yeah, luckily and the work that we do, we get [00:02:00] to meet a lot of really cool people. And one of them actually works at the center with us, Anthony Munger. Yeah. Really? You hired them.
Ebony Cross: heard he was a pretty cool guy.
Sydni Hampton (2): I mean, he's all right. He's, he's all right. Yeah. Yeah. He's all right. I, I, I'm fond. Yeah.
Ebony Cross: Well, why don't we hear from Mr. Anthony Munger himself?
Sydni Hampton (2): Yeah.
Anthony Munger: I mean really, I'm dubious at best, but Hi! I'm happy to be here, happy to see you too.
Ebony Cross: Thanks for coming on our show today.
Anthony Munger: Of course, anytime. I love the advice that you are giving to your younger selves. That is really valuable. I think that's an experience that many queer people have. And it's even a theme in our media when you watch Drag Race. That is the thing that every contestant has to say, What
advice would you give
Sydni Hampton (2): to say what advice would you give.
Then she's just like, [00:03:00] oh, you're right. And she left me at a bus stop.
Speaker 16: Laughter
bust up! I
Anthony Munger: Alright
Sydni Hampton (2): Yeah.
Speaker 16: I,
Anthony Munger: Roxy. bus stops in Chicago every single time. Like, Oh honey, you never got out of it. Did you?
Sydni Hampton (2): she lives there now.
Anthony Munger: Yeah, I, I love
Sydni Hampton (2): up in these stockyards,
Anthony Munger: Yeah, she's a really great person and I think her experience is not as people think it is. There are a lot of kids that don't get to stay in their parents home for very long. I know Roxy was very young, but as people discover their sexuality, it is easier now. There's more acceptance now, but there's a lot of parts of the world, especially in in the South and in Kentucky where That doesn't happen and the kids have to leave very very early before they have the resources that they need from their
Sydni Hampton (2): they need from their [00:04:00] parents.
You know, access to mental health care or just plain old health care, getting a primary care doctor getting food, et cetera. So tell us a little bit about what your day to day looks like.
Anthony Munger: is high level stuff where we get calls like this person is homeless. They need housing, which is such a rough thing to deal with, especially in Kentucky. There doesn't seem to be housing for as many people as are here. Let alone the LGBTQ individuals. Most of the questions I actually get are more where can I find binders?
Where can I get a doctor that will just call me by my correct pronouns? Who can I talk to about getting on HRT? And what ends up happening is we connect them with Other because, because of the laws in Kentucky, we ended up connecting them with a fund out of Lexington which provides 500 of emergency funding to get [00:05:00] someone out of the state to seek care.
And until a few weeks ago we were able to send them to a couple of clinics in Indiana because Indiana had a stay on their anti LGBTQ legislation, but that went through. So we ended up sending them to one of three clinics, Probably two or three clinics in Illinois out of Carbondale. One of them being a Planned Parenthood so that they can get affirming care that way.
Sydni Hampton (2): Oh yeah, support Planned Parenthood, by the way.
Ebony Cross: Absolutely. You know, we still, I live in Indiana and I believe we still have one location that is open right around the corner from our house on State Street.
Anthony Munger: Street. Oh really?
Ebony Cross: It's in the plaza next to where they built a new Marshalls and the Kroger Plaza. It is off in the corner right next to the new Mint dentistry that opened up.
Sydni Hampton (2): That's further down from Pride Bar and Lounge,
Ebony Cross: Yes. Are you familiar with them?
Sydni Hampton: I used
Sydni Hampton (2): to work there at Pride Bar. Yeah.
Ebony Cross: I always wanted to go in there, but it just seems like it's so [00:06:00] dead that I just never decided to stop and go in
Sydni Hampton (2): Yeah. Well, you know, I have my own reasons to not want to go into that bar, but I do have friends who work there. And whenever I worked there, it was never really the most welcoming place for a lot of people, especially people of color and trans people
Ebony Cross: then there was a reason why I wasn't going in there
Sydni Hampton (2): Yeah, exactly.
I have some, I have some stories that we can talk about off the podcast, maybe whenever we take an ad break or something,
Ebony Cross: so Anthony, I have a question for you.
Anthony Munger: Yes, I have an answer.
Ebony Cross: As you heard in the opening, I'm not sure if you heard it or not, but Sydney asked me a question of what would I tell my little self?
And,
of course, Sydney also answered the same question. So what would you tell your younger self?
Anthony Munger: I think about that a lot. That I wouldn't just want to say a couple of things and vanish. First of all I'd say, I'm from the future and it's going to be okay. Just to freak myself out a little bit. I, I was one of those kids that had to leave their [00:07:00] home early.
And it was a really scary time. I didn't have a lot of family that ever checked up on me or a lot of friends, but I just remember thinking that I turned out to be right about so many
And
and all the things that
And this is not literal, but the things that were trying to be beaten out of me those were all right.
I was ahead of my time. All the things that I was interested in, I, I loved Wizards and Witches ten years before Harry Potter came out. And I've never seen those movies because that was beaten out of me too early. So I would just remind myself that Keep doing what I'm doing. And it's going to be all right.
And whenever you can try to reach out for help and let more people know that you're not as together as you are. So
Ebony Cross: [00:08:00] It has gotten better. I went
Anthony Munger: It has gotten better ever
Ebony Cross: I realized that that was
Anthony Munger: I went into social work before I realized that that was the reason for it.
I'd been a bartender for 20 years and my jump into social work was, what can I do easily that is similar to this? And, and, and social work seemed right. And the more I learned about it, the more I realized how universal my experience was for so many people. And I never, I was never interested in working with kids.
I am an only child. I am still the youngest person in my family at 40. But just being able to reassure the kids that things are going to be okay and let them have an example of someone who has lived through it and then did not make good choices and how those affected me and how I was able to come out of it.
Ebony Cross: of
Anthony Munger: it's, it's something that I've fallen into, but it does, [00:09:00] it drives me every day.
Ebony Cross: Thank you for sharing that. That was super, super personal.
and
I'm glad that you were comfortable enough to, to let us in with that.
Anthony Munger: that. I am happy to help. And especially if there is anyone out here listening to it that might identify with that, I want them to know that there are safe places like the Louisville Pride Center and that there are resources that will help them find their way.
Ebony Cross: Awesome. Sydney.
Sydni Hampton (2): Yeah.
Ebony Cross: So Anthony shared a lot with us about his childhood and how that went. And without diving too personal into your personal business, how was your childhood growing up?
Sydni Hampton (2): about me is I have no filter and I don't care to tell y'all every single nasty little detail about my
Ebony Cross: I don't even
Sydni Hampton (2): So, it all started when I was born. No, I was
Ebony Cross: A twinkle in your father's eye. Is that where we starting?
Anthony Munger: You were born and then you didn't speak to your parents for a year.
Sydni Hampton (2): So I was raised in a very Christian home. I was, my parents loved going to revivals. Are y'all familiar with what that is?
Um, so [00:10:00] everybody who's not, which I imagine you are, cause you're from Kentucky, probably if you're listening to this, probably, I don't know, maybe, I don't know.
A revival is basically like a traveling circus for kids. Christians. They can be somber and kind of boring. They can be, like, full of music. The idea is that people go and they feel revitalized in the spirit of Christ or whatever. So we would go to a lot of those. We would never, like, snake people.
Like, the snake churches, you know, the snake handling churches. But we did go to some pretty fundamental Christian churches, and I heard a lot of rhetoric about gay people before I even knew what being gay was, before I even had an inkling about who I was. So I think from an early age, I knew that what I was was not going to be well received.
Loved, cared for, so I instead dove into like video games, especially like Pokemon, Kingdom Hearts, things like that that were these fantastical worlds that I could escape And through those those games, a lot of the time, like most of the [00:11:00] time, stories have a like a message, you know, or a lesson.
And I would learn about friendship and family and love and all of those things that I didn't get at home. So growing up I was, I was also not allowed to listen to a lot of what my mom called worldly
Ebony Cross: Mm hmm.
Sydni Hampton (2): First time I ever got my mom to let me change the radio station from 88. 5 W J I E.
I put it on 99. 7 DJ X and this was a big risk I was taking. You know, I was hoping they'd be playing like Natasha Benningfield or something. Nope. They were playing I'm in love with a stripper. My mom immediately turned it off. I wasn't allowed to touch the radio dial for a very, very long time. We were so fundamental that listening to country music.
Like my dad listened to it, but I wasn't really encouraged. I was actually discouraged from listening to like more modern country music. I was allowed to listen a little bit of Shania Twain. I was allowed to listen to Reba, which was still hot in the nineties. But it was mostly like [00:12:00] old country music.
So I don't know. I grew up very fundamental Christian. I didn't, I wasn't very well socialized. I was very afraid all the time, and then whenever I turned 15, I was in a Christian school. And I came out to my pastor. I had come out before that, that's why I was in a Christian school. But I had come out to my pastor, I was kind of like, this isn't working.
I'm not getting, I'm not getting better. I'm just gay. It is what it is. At the time I was identifying as a boy. Cause I didn't know what trans was. So, I'm in this school, and I've got this preacher who basically told me, you know, you can either leave the school of your own will,
Take your credits and go to public school or we could expel you and you won't get your credits and I was like, well Girl, I'm gone.
So I told my mom like my mom was called out Oh, we you know, they they didn't have a choice. They had to either expel me or let me go So I really it was my choice because I knew what I was doing when I did it So I get out of there and I go to
Public school and I thought everything was gonna be easy breezy beautiful cover girl, and it was not [00:13:00] and I And then I ended up dropping out.
So once I dropped out, so I already did not have a great support system prior to leaving my parents house. I'd run away a few times. I would stay out of town a lot with friends in Shepherdsville where I went to high school. I would ditch class. I was drinking a lot. and not making good decisions at all.
And then I got my GED pretty quick, and I got into the workforce, and then I, as soon as I was in the workforce, I found queer people. Not because I was looking for them, but because we're out there. Sometimes you have to kind of sit around and wait for the queer people to expose themselves, but we're hard, we're not, we're not always hard, like, hard to
Ebony Cross: They will find you.
Sydni Hampton (2): Yeah, so once I found them, that's how I got into I met this girl named Christina. And she was my lesbian elder, and she took me to The Connection, and that's, that's where everything started for me. I saw Vanessa De Mornay, and Mocha Montrese, and Terri Vanessa [00:14:00] Coleman, and Hurricane Summers.
Ebony Cross: And it was at that moment,
Sydni Hampton (2): And it was at that moment I was like, I love this, I'm obsessed with this, this is going to be my entire personality until I die.
And guess what? Here I am.
Ebony Cross: and Here
you are. Here
Sydni Hampton (2): am, 14 years later. And, 14? How old am I? 32? 14 years later. And I'm still obsessed, just like the day that I first saw drag.
Ebony Cross: Yay. Congratulations on finding and coming into yourself.
Sydni Hampton (2): Thank you. Yeah, I survived fundamental Christianity. I still have a relationship with my mother. She's actually visiting the center today.
Ebony Cross: Oh, really? Yay!
Sydni Hampton (2): I don't know if I told you all that.
Ebony Cross: desk and
Sydni Hampton (2): come see my desk and what we do and I'm gonna show her the podcast room because I'm very excited that we're starting
Ebony Cross: excited that
Well, I don't think I will be here when that happens. Please tell her I said hello.
I hope I get a chance to tell her what an amazing human being that she made,
Sydni Hampton (2): Yeah,
Ebony Cross: because you are absolutely awesome. Both of you are, actually.
Anthony Munger: I'm just trying
Ebony Cross: make sure that I [00:15:00] tell both of you and all the staff that, because you guys are great people.
Sydni Hampton (2): thank you.
Ebony Cross: thank you for sharing your personal That
Sydni Hampton (2): do you, how do you use your, your own, like for you, Ebony, what, how do you use your personal experience to guide your work?
Because I think, I think Anthony and I very much so let our past inform how we go forward in the world doing social work and stuff.
Ebony Cross: I think for me, and that's part of the reason why I wanted to hear both of your stories, especially in your youth.
I was one of the children who had supportive parents. I just didn't think I knew it at the time. I don't know if you guys understand or know how black families work, but my grandparents were super, super, super, super religious. My uncle and my, my uncle and my aunt, they are, they were raised Catholic over time they [00:16:00] became Baptist, but my grandfather was also a pastor. So. It was almost one of those things where I was afraid to mention it to my family because I didn't know how they were going to respond. It was less of me being afraid of who I was because I knew. I knew at nine, I had a best friend who was an Asian girl and we were as thick as thieves. And I knew at that moment because I knew the feelings that I was feeling weren't normal.
I seen younger kids with boyfriends and stuff like that and that just, I never had it. a thing for that. So I think a part of it was just me being afraid to tell them because I didn't know what their reaction was going to be. And with a black family, they can know this about you, but never bring it up.
Because it's one of those things where you just don't talk about it. You can know it. Don't tell anybody. Don't do it in front of anybody. We may know, but they don't even want you to know that they know. So when I would have female friends, it was, you know, That's my [00:17:00] friend. It wasn't anything past that.
Now I knew secretly what we were doing, but to them, it was, that's just your friend. So I didn't completely come out to, I came out to my mom. And I was terrified. I told my stepfather at the time first, and he made me go tell my mom. And I understood why he made me go tell her because when I did, it was just that look of, Well, thank God you finally said something.
Cause we were trying to figure out when you was going to say something. And I think from that point, that made me comfortable. So then I tried to seek out resources again. I'm I'm from Akron, but living in Cleveland most of my life. So. You asked me the question of what drives my work. I like to provide things that I didn't get or I didn't see growing up because I know that there is a little me out there somewhere.
Just like there's little you, just like there's little you. And I wanted to create resources and programming that I [00:18:00] myself at a young age would have wanted to see. And now in 2024 we are seeing those types of programs but everybody's experience is different. So the way that I look at it is I take myself out of it and say, what would you like to see in the center?
What type of programs would you attend or go to? So that's kind of where the crux of my work comes from.
Sydni Hampton (2): Well, everyone, these are just a few of the amazing voices here at the Louisville Pride Center. If you wanna come in and see our beautiful faces, we are open from two to seven Tuesdays and Thursdays. And soon we'll be open two to seven Tuesday through Saturday. Yeah. And if you have any ideas of things that you would like to see in the center, feel free to email us.
You can email me at sydney.Hampton@louprideky.org, or you can email info@louprideky.org. Until next time, see ya!
Ebony Cross: See ya