Wednesday, February 11, 2015 // The Statement 4B Wednesday, February 11, 2015 // The Statement 5B Editor’s note: Upon request, some names have been altered to protect the personal safety of sources involved in this article. D ETROIT — No one talks about marriage equality at the Ruth Ellis Center. The idea of bringing it up seems ethereal, unnecessary in the way a marginal inconve- nience slinks out of grasp. The reason, as Jessie Fullenkamp, the Center’s director of mental health services explains, is straightforward: why concentrate your efforts on making sure the law recognizes your marital status when, in reality, it doesn’t even protect your right to work, to live in and rent property without the constant, overhanging threat of discrimi- nation? In Michigan, citizens can be fired or removed from hous- ing if they identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. The state is one of 29 in the country that does not offer civil rights protections based on sexual orientation. The latest effort to alter Michigan’s Elliott Larsen Act, which includes other protections such as gender and race, stalled in committee last December. “You can’t arrange your priorities around marriage,” Ful- lenkamp says. “If you think about it, a lot of the current pro- LGBTQ rhetoric has been set forward by white, middle class Americans who, often, don’t consider that there are people out there completely cut off from their families, living on nothing because they aren’t straight.” The Ruth Ellis Center is isolated. It’s big and red and drenched in a pall that can be only partially attributed to the abandoned minivan gathering rust across the street. It’s the biggest, reddest building in the vicinity of the much bigger, redder fire station just a block away, and, like a worn fortress, its walls are an expanse of molded brick. On a stretch of iced Detroit roads, occasionally blemished by the grayish weeds clambering through scars in the asphalt, the Center looks still. Dignified. Somehow out of place. Next to the forgotten SUV and the looming fire house, there’s a family-owned bakery that seems perpetually drowsy. From its perch a hundred yards in the opposite direction, a Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen bathes it all in an empty, neon glare. The Center looks guarded tonight. The barbed wire crown- ing its fence stands out. Its doors are clamped shut behind a hunk of electrical locks, and the string of cars parked around the block, lengthening with every passing minute, doesn’t make sense. Neither does the clump of teenagers waiting to be buzzed in. As one of them — her back now pressed against the PA system she was talking into moments before — turns to face the man standing next to her, others swivel around to watch. Her fingers flutter around like butterflies while she snaps them, sprinkling down some unknown gauntlet at the man’s feet. The onlookers await a response. There’s a tense lull. Before the silence curdles, a smile breaks across the pair’s face and they grab each other’s forearms, their feet toeing the ground in synchrony to make a broken circle in the snow. The PA system’s robotic buzz cuts the celebration short. And beneath Popeyes’ stare, the small party of teens seems genu- inely excited about the big, red building getting ready to swal- low them whole. “The Ruth Ellis Center’s mission is to work with youth who are experiencing homelessness and identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning,” Fullenkamp said. “We have a residential facility where youth who are in foster care live with us. We also have a street outreach program. We have mental health services, where we do both individual or family work to reaffirm and support LGBTQ identities.” The name Ruth Ellis comes from an activist who lived in Detroit for much of her eighty-five years as an out lesbian, becoming the first woman in Detroit to own a printing busi- ness and tenaciously advocating for LGBTQ and Black rights. Her house became a hub of activist fervor in the city, and today the residence is structured as an Intensive Treatment Unit set apart from the Center, which is open to any youth seeking short-term care. The Center’s residential program, simply labeled “Ruth’s House,” is for runaway children between the ages of twelve and seventeen looking for permanent housing immediately after leaving their families. These children are in the custody of Michigan’s foster care system or the juvenile justice system and are referred by the state’s Department of Human Services, sometimes even out-of- state care programs Fullenkamp relays this information with the air of someone who has repeated it hundreds of times. Having worked at the Center for four years, she says it with practiced enunciation, her voice rising and falling as she gauges her audience’s under- standing of each program. Part of her job — which often sees her working from early in the morning to 9:00 p.m., when the facility’s drop-in hours usually end — requires that she visit local colleges for speaking engagements. There, she gives long, intensive lectures some- times about Ruth Ellis, though almost always related to sexual orientation and gender identity. This one, at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, is called “LGBTQ 101,” and is accompanied by a thin sheaf of doc- uments featuring titles like “Terminology Related to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People,” “Frequently Asked Questions about Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity” and “The Heterosexual Questionnaire.” On the back of the packet, there’s a full-page diagram of “The Genderbread Person,” a ginger-baked representation of sexual fluidity who shepherds you through varying tiers of Identity, Attraction, Sex and Expression. This informality and a lack of urgency feels visible through- out the presentation. It’s there, towards the end, when Fullen- kamp makes a joke about having to discuss different forms of intimacy with different people. “Anal intercourse, vaginal intercourse, oral intercourse, out- ercourse — which is an umbrella term for holding hands, kiss- ing … whenever we do this presentation with high schoolers,” she riffs, “we end up spending about ten minutes talking about dry humping. It’s their favorite.” She gets laughs, and a few minutes later, closes with another swift pitch about donating to Ruth Ellis. She glides through the two-hour talk like a seasoned pro, and though always calm, her demeanor feels vastly different than when she’s counseling at the Center. After being buzzed in, the teens ascend the flight of stairs that welcome them into the main hull of the two-story prem- ises: a portly reception desk that sits across a row of old looking couches. Behind the desk, Q. Watkins, a youth outreach coor- dinator, maintains a running log of the people flowing through the Center as the night’s drop-in hours officially begin. Often, the banter between her and some of the other out- reach coordinators bleeds into more informal conversations with the youth. This particular night — with forty kids already filing into the rec room — is especially chaotic. Within the next hour, the Center will kick off its annual ball — a dance fash- ioned after an underground LGBTQ practice in which com- petitors amble down makeshift catwalks or dance floors while vying for trophies. Hashing out the night’s food arrangements with another employee, Watkins rarely stops commenting on the deluge of activity unfolding around her. Teenagers sift through a large rack of clothes occupying an entire hallway. As a tall, lanky guest pulls on a short skirt and loses his T-shirt for a blouse, Watkins chimes in: “You’re showing a little nipple there, Adrian.” When Adrian brandishes two upturned middle fingers and responds with a wide, arcing pirouette, she claps. Before she was a member of the staff, Watkins got involved with Ruth Ellis when her girlfriend at the time was kicked out of her home after coming out as a lesbian. Initially, her girlfriend moved in with Watkins and her parents, but facing financial problems and an inability to support an additional family member, they decided it would be best to seek help at the Center. “The rest is history. I went from being a summer intern to an outreach coordinator,” she says. “And one of most bittersweet experiences working here has been the ability to see that in other people. To see these youth when they first come in and are still there a year later.” “It can be a humbling experience, knowing that a lot of them still can’t talk about something as basic as this with their loved ones.” she adds. “It made me realize how privileged I was to have affirming parents who actively created an affirming envi- ronment.” Excitement bubbles up again when conversation drifts back to the ball. “Fifty people already here and it isn’t even five o’clock,” she says. “I remember in the Halloween ball how most of the youth became extremely involved with their costumes and it got out of hand — in a good way. We’ll see what happens tonight.” The ball has a more functional purpose to go along with its casually festive premise. Tonight, while hordes of teenagers shimmy across the Center’s expansive dance floor to thumping house music, Fullenkamp quietly picks them off one at a time to conduct abbreviated meetings in her office. The topic of discussion is a small survey distributed every two years by the U.S. Depart- ment of Housing and Urban Development. The survey starts with questions like “What are the last four digits of your social security number?” and gradually probes for information regarding long-term, problematic relation- ships and whether or not the subject has experienced domestic violence. Ultimately, though, the focus turns to housing status. The goal, Fullenkamp explains, is to determine how much funding or public housing can be made available by the govern- ment to those being interviewed. In a phrase, the needier the person appears on paper, the higher on the queue their name is placed for any available residence. “It’s not a catch-all system, but it’s one of the only ways we have right now to try and get a feel for what’s going on or how to best meet people where they are,” she says. “A lot of the youth here might not be literally homeless, sleeping on a park bench or in the streets right now, but there’s a very good chance that within the next year they will.” Based on the data gathered through the survey at the Cen- ter and most other advocacy centers throughout the city, the Homeless Action Network of Detroit decides how best to por- tion lots from public housing projects. The bureaucratic rigma- role becomes doubly frustrating for non-profits like the Ruth Ellis Center, considering the lack of attention these govern- ing agencies devote to the interconnectivity of homeless and homosexuality in lower-income neighborhoods. The Center is one of only four organizations in the country solely dedicated to serving runaway, homeless, at-risk LGBTQ youth — and the only one in the entire Midwest. Small numbers give way to marginalization. “The problem in Detroit is that there are very little resourc- es for victims of domestic abuse, and fewer still for same-sex partners who are often experiencing similar problems,” she continues. “They’re still not recognized, which creates a really unhealthy atmosphere of isolation that only makes the problem worse.” There’s no dedicated source of funding within the $24 mil- lion pot HAND handles annually for individuals who have come out as gay. In their yearly State of Homelessness Report, the organization doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ individuals. This shortfall — despite a growing number of reports that indicate the number of LGBTQ youth on the streets — is increasing by a sizable margin every year. And in poverty- stricken, urban areas like Detroit, the epidemic is especially worrisome. A 2012 study conducted by the Williams Institute found that between 20 and 40 percent of homeless youths iden- tify as LGBTQ — double the percentage of adolescents nation- ally who are openly gay. Further research by the National Coalition for the Homeless found that homeless LGBTQ ado- lescents are more than twice as likely to commit suicide as their heterosexual counterparts. According to Fullenkamp, the trouble often arises from a painstakingly stringent verification process. The verifications are used to weed out applicants, discrediting information given by people seeking federal vouchers. “Anybody who’s ever been in a position where they’ve had to ask for something understands how dehumanizing that pro- cess can be, and the system is set up to reinforce those feel- ings,” she says. “At the end of the day, you want people to feel safe asking for help and you want people who ask for help to get it.” “But, you have to have all these verification letters that demand you to verify that you’re homeless,” she continues. “So an outreach worker would have to go with you to wherever it is you’re sleeping and actually see that it exists. Which is crazy, not only because it’s disrespectful to the individual, but also because it’s not at all an efficient use of the system’s time and money.” The survey distributed this night is a means to find recipients for 200 recently released federal vouchers, and homeless agen- cies across town are scrambling to find potential candidates. Though Fullenkamp insists — with a muted smile — that this isn’t a competition per se, each agency makes fervent efforts to advocate for its own clients. Some of the other organizations conducting surveys tonight include the Neighborhood Service Organization and the Coalition On Temporary Shelter, both of whom cater to a predominantly older, heterosexual demo- graphic. Eric Stanson is a large man wearing a white, patterned zip- up fleece and dark jeans. He closes his eyes as he picks up a mic and keeps them that way when his hands reach down to pull out the pair of ivory-colored sunglasses from a back pocket. Some people watch as he puts them on. Stanson is the master of ceremonies for the night. The mic in his hand, by accident or careful foresight of those who hold their ear drums dear, remains off for the next two hours. Stanson doesn’t need it. Around the sweeping hardwood dance space that looks more like a cafeteria than a disco, he prowls. In front of the black foldable table that holds the store-bought trophies, tonight’s prizes, he pauses. And through the cacophony of chatter that LGBTQ youth find community and support at Detroit’s Ruth Ellis Center Akshay Seth, Daily Film Columnist RUBY WALLAU/Daily LEFT: Ruth Ellis Center workers at the welcome desk. CENTER: A community room at the center. RIGHT: Youth outreach coordinator Jessie Fullenkamp in her office. See RUTHELLIS, Page 8B