Interview with Anne S. Wynne of Atticus Circle

Straight allies are an invaluable component of the struggle for LGBT equality. Anne S. Wynne is the founder of Atticus Circle, an organization that educates and mobilizes straight allies in support of equal rights for LGBT Americans and our families.

Anne agreed to answer some questions about her organization for Mombian’s interview series. Below, she talks about her journey towards creating Atticus Circle, the group’s ongoing work with other LGBT organizations, getting straight people involved who have never before spoken out on LGBT issues, and why you should ask your straight friends and relatives to join.

Anne has a background in both family law and politics. She met her husband, Fred Ellis, while they were working on Ann Richards campaign for Governor of Texas. Governor Richards appointed her as the first woman to serve on the General Services Commission and later the Texas Transportation Commission. Anne is a family law attorney and partner in the law firm Ikard Wynne & Ratliff LLP. She is also the mother of three children, Alex, Hallie and Lila.

Atticus Circle is a fairly new organization. What is its purpose?

Atticus Circle educates fair-minded straight people about how discrimination hurts families, and particularly the children in LGBT-headed families. We mobilize straight people to get involved in this civil rights struggle of our time, and work to achieve equal rights for LGBT partners, parents and their children.

There are already numerous national, state, and local LGBT-advocacy groups. What motivated you to create Atticus Circle and what does Atticus Circle bring to the table that is unique? Why should we ask our straight friends and relatives to support you?

There are several good questions in there! Let me tell you how Atticus Circle got started, and I think you will see what draws people to us.

I had been very involved in the political scene in Texas and decided to take time out to have a family. In November 2004, I was a married mother of three, and as I was watching the national election returns, I was shocked when eleven states voted to add discrimination to their state constitutions by prohibiting same-gender couples from marrying.

I wondered, “How could these measures have passed so overwhelmingly?” and “Where were the people who think like my husband and me?” We believe the right to love is an equal right and that it is wrong to discriminate against someone because of who they love.

I wanted to get involved in this issue, but I could not find the right organization back then: a place where a person could stand up and say, “I am straight and I believe in equal rights.”

I had been around nonprofits enough that I thought, “OK, I will start a group.” Next question was what to call it. I wanted it to be a name that instantly said, “We stand up for others.” Then I thought of Atticus Finch from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” someone who absolutely stood up for the rights of others. So, our group started out as the Atticus Project.

I started doing my homework to educate myself on what rights my husband and I have that gay and lesbian couples do not have. I went all the way back to where one concept for “rights” came from, the Declaration of Independence.

As I read the words about us all being created equal and having the right to “…Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” I looked at those last words in a new way. “The right to pursue happiness” struck me, because happiness, like love, is an emotion.

In the beginning, the only people who could “pursue happiness” were white men in wigs. Because the vision behind those words was strong, as time went by, we let women and people of color into that circle and let them pursue happiness. It seemed to me that the only people outside that circle were LGBT Americans.

The Atticus Project then became the “Atticus Circle,” and I have a new answer to the question, “Where are the people who think like me?” They are standing with me in the Atticus Circle, working to bring LGBT people into the circle and make the “pursuit of happiness” something they can get as well.

What seems to draw people to Atticus Circle is that simple yet compelling mission: to provide a place for straight people to stand out and stand up for equal rights for LGBT partners, parents and their children.

Many of our members are people like me who did not have “gay rights” on their radar, but believe in equality. Atticus Circle gives fair-minded people a way to get involved at any level they choose. They can just show their support and say, “I’m straight and I believe in equal rights,” or they can get more involved as an activist and advocate, which is the journey I made.

I am thrilled when LGBT people tell their family and friends about us and that’s how we get many of our members. I wrote something for my alumnae news magazine recently, and heard from a student in my class who told me she could not risk losing her financial aid, so she never lived openly in college. She said that she was going to tell her sister about us, and I was pleased that she saw Atticus as a place for her sister.

How are you working with other LGBT organizations?

One of the biggest steps we took in 2006 was to meet with the leadership of every LGBT organization and have a conversation about how we could work together. We realize that we are babies compared to other LGBT organizations that have been doing this work for a long, long time.

We recognize their expertise and effectiveness, and one way we work with them is to bring our members into those campaigns and programs.

Remember, getting involved in this issue is new for many of our members, so part of our education is making sure they know what’s happening at the national level and where they can have an impact by getting involved, whether it’s in a letter writing campaign, talking to their legislator, or having the talking points to talk to their friends.

For example, we plugged our members into national efforts around the federal marriage amendment, and saw many of our members working against marriage amendments in their states.

I am honored to be on the Board of two organizations, Equality Texas and Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, (SLDN), and we encourage our members to get involved in their communities, and at the state and national level, so more straight voices are speaking out on this issue.

What are some other of Atticus Circle’s accomplishments to date?

In 2005, when Texas had its own Marriage Discrimination Amendment on the ballot, Atticus Circle played an active role in the campaign to defeat the amendment. I debated the measure’s sponsor several times, educating people about the thousands of children in LGBT families that are being hurt by marriage discrimination. Though the amendment passed, Atticus Circle demonstrated that straight people can help change minds by speaking out on this issue. Our work earned us an award as the “Best Straight People” in our community, an accolade we love!

In just two short years, Atticus Circle has brought the equality movement thousands of volunteers, donors and activists that it would not otherwise have, and we are growing daily. We also reached out beyond our Texas roots, attending House Parties that were hosted by people who had joined Atticus Circle and wanted friends in their home states to know about us.

What are your projects and goals for 2007?

Our projects for 2007 reflect one of our biggest accomplishments: each project is a collaboration with one of our LGBT partners and I’m really proud of that.

Like I said, we encourage our members to work in their communities and on a larger scale, and Atticus Circle is doing the same thing with its Advocacy Project.

We are working with our state equality group, Equality Texas, on a project called, the “Equality Circle.” It is designed to get straight people involved in advocating for LGBT issues with the Texas Legislature.

When I testified against the Texas Marriage Amendment in 2005, I noticed that there were very few straight people participating in that process, especially people who were not related to the many LGBT people testifying.

With the Equality Circle, we want to change that dynamic and make sure straight people have a strong presence on Lobby Day. We are forming teams composed of straight families and LGBT-headed families that will meet with their legislators and tell them that equality is something many straight Texans believe in — and expect to see in public policy passed by their elected officials.

What is really exciting is that most of the people participating in the “Equality Circle” are new to the process — some have never been to a Lobby Day and most have never spoken out on an LGBT issue.

We are also plugging our members into SLDN’s Lobby Day in Washington, D.C. I am planning to attend myself and show Congress that straight people want to see “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repealed. When I did my research on the many ways discrimination hurts LGBT families, I was appalled to see how military families are hurt by “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and Atticus Circle is going to be one of the voices working to change that bad public policy.

Our biggest project this year is with Soulforce and it is called, “Seven Straight Nights for Equal Rights.” Seven Straight Nights will take place during the week of October 7 — 13, and is an opportunity for straight people who believe in equal rights to “get active.” We are planning candlelight vigils in the capital cities of all fifty states. Each vigil will be coordinated by a straight family who is standing up for LGBT families in that state.

This project draws on the outreach we have done and the relationships we’ve built. In some states, our members are serving as lead families; in others, Soulforce has found straight families. In some states, progressive, religious or LGBT organizations have chosen to take on the event in their state as a group project. We plan to end the week at the Jefferson Memorial (we’ve come full circle on that!) and celebrate our success in getting so many straight families to stand up for LGBT families.

Seven Straight Nights is also a huge education effort. Our lead families will be talking about how marriage discrimination hurts LGBT families, as well as other issues like employment discrimination, fostering and adoption restrictions, bullying and hate crimes.

As a married straight person, what do you say to those who claim that same-sex marriage is weakening the institution of marriage?

We have an expression in Texas that my old boss Gov Richards liked to use: “That dog won’t hunt.”

What I like to do is tell people we have it backwards. We should be supporting people who want to make a commitment to each other, who want to pay that marriage tax!

I tell people there is nothing any of us can do or should do to stop two people who love each other from making a commitment to each other and starting a family. We should be asking what we can do to help, and we certainly should be giving your family the same rights my husband and I have, and your children the same rights my children have.

Do you find that other straight people are more willing to listen to you rather than an LGBT person on the topic of LGBT rights?

Who the messenger is might make some people listen in a different way, and if what I say and how I say it moves people who weren’t moved before, then that’s a good thing. I think as a movement, we should use as many messengers as we can!

Let me share something with you. I mentioned earlier that when the Texas Legislature was considering the Texas Marriage Discrimination Amendment, I went to the Capitol to testify. I knew many of the legislators from my work with Gov. Richards. When I told them I was there to testify against the amendment, their first reaction was, “Is there something you want to tell us about you and Fred?”

That exchange really opened my eyes and, hopefully, opened his heart. You see, he did not know what I was going to say. He could not understand at first why I, as a straight, still-married-to-Fred person, would care about this issue. Maybe he “listened” to the arguments against the amendment a little more closely, because he was hearing them from someone he considered a peer, someone he could connect with who could tell him why he should care.

I think “caring” is what connects people to this issue, whoever the messenger is.

That dynamic of caring is at work in all we do at Atticus Circle. People join Atticus Circle because they care about other people, and they hate to see other people hurt by discrimination. Our members want to share what they have learned with people they care about, and that brings in the “circle” analogy again.

A new member has a House Party to tell his circle of friends about Atticus Circle, and then one of the people at his party decides to host a House Party and tell her circle of friends about Atticus, so the circle of people “standing up straight for equal rights” keeps growing.

We have been invited to House Parties hosted by gay couples, who invite their straight friends and ask them to support us.

For some of those LGBT people, it is the first time they asked a straight friend to do anything for them. It is also the first time a straight person might turn to his longtime friend and say, “What can I do to help?”

Are you familiar with the book The Millionth Circle, by the feminist writer Jean Shinoda Bolen? Dr. Bolen writes about the many social changes that have happened through the years and credits circles of active women with getting those changes made. She argues that any new behavior must be done 999,999 times, and when it is done that millionth time, change happens, and then everyone does it that way.

Maybe we’re somewhere in the middle of the 999,999 times of people speaking out about equal rights, and Atticus Circle is just one of the many organizations trying to bring about this social change. If by bringing more people into the movement, we get closer to that millionth circle, then we are happy to have been able to play a small part.

Whatever it is that brings people to us is good, because it results in one more volunteer, one more donor, one more advocate. If what draws people to us is the wonderful image of Atticus Finch or the simple statement, “Stand Up Straight for Equal Rights,” it’s all good and Atticus Circle can help generate the power in numbers needed to bring about the vision we all share: true equality for LGBT people.

You’re a partner in a law firm, a mother of three, and now the head of a national civil-rights organization. Do you have any time-management secrets you’d like to share?

I have thought about that question a lot because I could use the secret for cloning right now!

I think my best time-management tool is remembering what is most important, my family. Almost everything I do, I do for them, whether it is earning a living (and fortunately, my work is something I love), or growing Atticus Circle, so my children can live in a country where their friends with two mommies or two daddies have the same rights they do. It all connects back to wanting to be with and do right by my family.

With a job, a two-year old organization, three children and a husband, that means lots of juggling. Like all moms, I worry about the balance of wearing all my hats at the same time. Some days I balance better than others. Our kids are pretty good at letting me know when I have blown it. Then it is time to reconnect with the ones to whom I am really necessary.

But I’d still take the secret to cloning if you’ve found it!