As swingers, our personal sexual choices are often misunderstood or even detested by those in the mainstream. Many of us may feel unaffected, and therefore indifferent, to the ignorance and intolerance of those who oppose our lifestyle because we can so easily blend in to their ranks. We can go about living our vanilla lives, working vanilla jobs and living in our vanilla neighborhoods, happily secure that nobody suspects the unconventional consentual sexual experiences we enjoy in private… But sometimes we are not so lucky and our private and public lives collide under the worst of circumstances, tearing apart families, losing jobs, and causing a great deal of pain. Protecting us from these circumstances is NCSF, an organization that every swinger should know and care about.

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Kasidie: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us. Can you tell our readers who you are?

Susan: My name is Susan Wright and I’m the spokesperson for the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom.

Kasidie: For those who have never heard of the NCSF, would you like to explain what the coalition does?

Susan: Well, the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom is an advocacy organization for people involved in the BDSM, swinger and polyamory lifestyles. As an advocacy organization we defend the rights of people to practice the forms of sexual expression they want. That includes legal rights, defending legal rights, defending legislative rights, working with people to properly deal with the media, dispelling stereotypes and helping individuals who are actually in trouble.

Kasidie: How did NCSF come about?

Susan: I started NCSF eleven years ago. But I can hardly take all the credit because the NCSF is a coalition of groups, businesses and individuals. We have a lot of people involved at NCSF. But I was the one who went to the first five groups back in the mid 90s and said, “We need to set up an advocacy organization that can speak out to the vanilla mainstream on our behalf, because most of the clubs don’t want to do that themselves.”

Kasidie: Was there a particular incident that happened around that time that sparked that idea? Why did you suddenly see a need for that?

Susan: Yes, there was a raid on a club up in Addleborough, Massachusetts. It wasn’t even a club, it was more of a private party and police officers were in the building for an unrelated reason. It was a big warehouse type building, and they were looking for stolen equipment from another floor and the came down and stumbled across this BDSM party and saw a women sitting at the front with money, wearing a bustier. So they came in and raided the place and charged the owner with running a body house, being crude, and assaulting an officer, because he tried to block them from coming in with his arm. They charged one of the women with BDSM because they saw her doing a scene. News of this incident spread throughout the BDSM community and we realized that if we can’t gather or meet together, our community was going to disintegrate. The BDSM community was getting big enough that we really needed to defend our right to get together as adults. When I saw that happen and I saw the huge outpouring of community support, I realized that we should organize. And it’s a good thing we did, because we’ve had some major incidents happen since then that could have had serious repercussions, certainly on the BDSM community. Then we expanded to include swing and polyamory in 2002, five years after we got started. That’s because the swing community has basically the same issues as the BDSM community in terms of our gathering places, discrimination and persecution that happens. In both communities most people who do it are closeted. Most people aren’t out about what they do to any people who are not also doing it.

…it’s a catch-22, because until we all come out like the gay community did, people around us won’t know what we’re involved in, so the stereotypes will continue. And yet it’s hard to urge people to come out, because when they come out they often get hurt.

Kasidie: Because people are very often closeted about their personal sexual lifestyles, I would imagine it would be difficult to find and reach out to people. How do you find people who are willing to speak out and organize when people are so reluctant to disclose their personal lives?

Susan: Yeah, it definitely can be. Most of our volunteers and most of the people involved with NCSF are not out about what they are doing with NCSF. We have some board members that are totally out, and they are very fortunate to be able to do that. But it’s still largely closeted and I’m one of the few people who is out and can speak to the public about these swing issues. I do media training for the community, helping teach people how to speak to the media. I do half a dozen training sessions every year, and I do training for board members as well. But it’s a catch-22, because until we all come out like the gay community did, people around us won’t know what we’re involved in, so the stereotypes will continue. And yet it’s hard to urge people to come out, because when they come out they often get hurt. They lose custody of their kids, they lose their jobs, or their parties are harassed. So it’s a catch-22… but we’re in the process of a change. It’s just going to take a while for that transition, where we get rid of the discrimination enough that people feel safe enough to come out.

Kasidie: So you feel like we’ve been making progress in the past 11 years? I mean, when you were telling that story earlier about the incident in Massachusetts, you said that one of the women was “charged with BDSM.” I’m not totally familiar with laws, but is BDSM illegal in some places? Or was it illegal at the time?

Susan: Well, the problem with BDSM is that you come up assault laws. Because some assault laws mention consent and some don’t mention consent. And it’s based all on an old English notion that consent is not a defense to assault. You cannot consent to your own assault. So if somebody assaults you, they’re criminally liable whether you consented or not. It all goes way back to old English law, when peasants were property of the king. So if you hit or beat a peasant, you were harming something that belonged to the king. Property can’t consent to anything. So, I mean, it’s a twisted, bizarre legal tradition that came into American law and stayed there, mostly unused, until it was revived in the 70s to help with battered women cases, domestic violence cases. Eventually the laws caught up and they crafted specific domestic violence laws. But there are still some people that think that if you consent to assault you’re obviously crazy, you can’t possibly consent to assault.

Kasidie: Isn’t that what boxing is?

Susan: I’m sorry, what?

Kasidie: Isn’t that what boxing is? As a boxer, you are consenting to being assaulted. Boxing matches are legal celebrations of consensual assault.

Susan: Exactly! We can liken this to boxing or hockey. You willingly enter into an activity knowing that you will probably get bumps and bruises and you can even have accidents, but it’s not criminal. But the problem is that we’re combining vigorous activity like that with sex, which has an innate societal taboo. Governments and legislatures do not want to be lenient when it comes to sexual activity because there is such a traditional, moral overtone to it. We believe that BDSM is completely legal. Certainly, at this point in time I believe that most jurisdictions would no longer conduct the same sort of raid that happened in Addleborough, Massachusetts in the mid-90s. So we are making progress, but we still need to keep doing more. And by the way, the woman who was charged with assault… the charges were later dropped.

Kasidie: You can’t box without accepting that you are going to get hurt. It’s an essential part of the game that everyone in our society seems totally accepting of. Punch someone to knock them unconscious and it’s acceptable… but punch someone to sexually arouse them and suddenly people think it’s horrific. Why do people get so riled up as soon as sexual context is added to anything?

Susan: Well, that’s in our roots. It’s our puritanical American roots. If you go to France or Germany, they don’t have the same bias against sex. I think part of it is that we still allow some religious or social conservatives to tell everybody else how they should live their lives. Politicians pander to that, so we’ve kept that climate going. It’s only been in the past few decades that that’s begun to loosen under the vigorous attacks made on that sort of thinking by the gay activists. We are riding the coat tails of the gay and lesbian movement. Any swinger who doesn’t know that should definitely give great thanks to the gays and lesbians. It’s because of them that we can enjoy having the small amount of freedom that we have now. It’s the freedom of the gays and lesbians, and as long as they continue to gain more freedom, we will also continue to gain more freedom.

Kasidie: I always hear people in alternative sexual lifestyles complaining about how we will never be accepted because we are a “moral minority” in this country, outnumbered by all the religious and social conservatives… But I often think that if every person in the country who was involved in the swinger, BDSM and poly lifestyles came forward… and maybe even organized with the gay & lesbian communities… we’d probably outnumber the extreme social conservatives. We’d be a political force to be reckoned with! But, unfortunately people are not willing to make that leap. It’s too scary. We Swingers usually hide our lifestyle because we can do it so easily. We can pretend to live a normal vanilla life, get married, have a family and have everything we need to be happy… whereas gays and lesbians can’t. In order to pursue their happiness they are forced to come out bravely display their sexual colors. Swingers don’t have that kind of inherent motivation.

Susan: Right, that is a problem. In the BDSM community we tend to be more naturally out, because of tattoos, piercings and leather. BDSM, like polyamory, also often tends to have multiple partners in a relationship… it’s hard to hide that sort of thing. It’s definitely true that people in the swing lifestyle can easily compartmentalize their alternative sex lives and their vanilla lives without fear of repercussions… Unfortunately, that is not good for our movement. We really want to let the swing community know that there is discrimination and persecution happening. It’s all because we’re not understood. For example, NCSF compiles incident response statistics of people come to us for help. In 2007 nearly 20% the people who contacted us for help were people from the swinger community. Whether it was personal thing, they’d lost child custody, they’d lost their job, or if their club was harassed by the media - which is happening increasingly. That’s up from 15% in 2006. I’m hoping maybe the swing community will become increasingly more motivated to stand up for themselves as these cities try to shut down more of our clubs and our events. Maybe we’ll hit a stone wall for the swing lifestyle, where one our big events is threatened, and people will be motivated to act. But, look at what just happened out in Florida. 4000 people or something like that for a giant event. It was covered by the media and everything went fine. So that allows swingers to still stay in the closet.

Kasidie: Not to long ago, I ran across a blog post on a polyamory website, where someone had written, “It’s no secret that there has been bad blood between the polyamory and he swinging community for years.” To which I thought, really?! I had no idea! As a swinger I always thought that polys were wonderful… Any swinger I know has had only had positive responses about polys. So I spoke directly to a polyamorist and was told that polys don’t really like swingers because they feel it’s cheapening their lifestyle. Polys are about having multiple emotional relationships. They don’t want to be mistaken as swingers, who they believe are all about meaningless sex, not love. But I don’t really see that the two groups are all that different. At least not in what they want - Tolerance, acceptance and sexual freedom.

Susan: I agree. I think swinging is basically polyamory. It’s many loves. It’s a subset of polyamory. Swinging tends to be more couple oriented, while polyamory tends to be more individual oriented. That seems to be the way the two communities have fallen apart. I have sometimes heard sentiments like that from poly individuals talking about swinging as if it was just casual sex. But I know plenty of people in the swing lifestyle that have long standing relationships with other people. They get together regularly outside of just sex and have formed very close bonds of friendship. You can’t call that “casual” when you’ve been spending time with someone for 15 years. I think there’s misconceptions the polyamory community has about swingers as much as the mainstream does.

Kasidie: Right. I just wish everyone would get together instead of stepping on each other. I’ve even heard the gay community use the “At least we’re not polyamorous!” argument when vying for marital rights.

Susan: People compartmentalize things. It’s always US and THEM. We compartmentalize down into smaller and smaller little labels.

All these groups try to avoid talking about the actual sex… that’s why there are a lot of these sexual issues left hanging.

Kasidie: I was just really astonished to learn that when it comes to blame, the swinging community is at the very bottom of the “consensual sex food chain.”

Susan: [laughing] Believe me, it’s not! It’s actually the BDSM community. There are some swing clubs that don’t allow any sort of spanking or BDSM to take place. The BDSM community is always at the bottom.

Kasidie: I guess you have a point. I know a lot of swingers who say, “We may have sex outside our relationships, but at least we’re not chaining people up and beating them!”

Susan: [laughing] Yep.

Kasidie: So even within these different, yet similar, supposedly “open-minded” sexual subcultures, there is a lot of misunderstanding, fear and intolerance of other people’s sex lives. How can that be?

Susan: When you look at the gay and lesbian communities, you’ll notice that they do not talk about sex. They talk about everything but sex when talking to the mainstream. They say “We’re not racist, we’re not pushy, we’re not going to try and convert you. We’re ordinary decent human beings.”- but they never address the actual sexual issues. All these groups try to avoid talking about the actual sex … that’s why there are a lot of these sexual issues left hanging.

Kasidie: It’s ironic, because that’s really all that the religious and social conservatives are concerned about… the sex. It all boils down to the sex. You take the sex out of any of these lifestyles and I don’t think anyone would have a problem with them.

Susan: And I think that’s exactly where the polyamorists get the urge to say “We’re not just out there having lots of sex, were forming relationships.” - as if sex is something terrible. It’s a societal construct that they’ve picked up. I mean, it’s not easy to keep these totally different groups coordinated, but I think that it’s important that these different communities do see that we all have similar objectives. So even if we’re not going to party with each other, we are all working towards the same goal. I think that that’s one of the big things that NCSF has managed to do. It’s a coalition of individuals and businesses from different sexual subcultures. We have almost 60 coalition partners and over 150 supporting members, as well as groups and businesses who are actively supporting NCSF. So when you really come down to it, it’s sexual subcultures that are working together.

Kasidie: During my years in the lifestyle I’ve often heard of people who were exposed as swingers at work, causing them to jeopardize or lose their jobs. Often these people will just throw up their arms give up, saying, “There’s nothing I can do. They’ve caught me, I’m a swinger.” But just because you live an alternative sexual lifestyle, does that mean you’ve given up your rights?

Susan: Absolutely not. NCSF helps out with job discrimination quite a bit. We can refer people to lawyers who can help them with their legal rights. Hopefully these people come to us before they get fired, because we can work with human resource departments. Often all that really needs to be done is some education. You never have to just sit there and take it. We educate them that these are consenting adults, and there are millions of people who do it - what may actually be happening is some sort of sexual harassment that’s going around among the employees towards the swinger. So by leveraging that, we’ve got something against them that they focus their attention on, because sexual harassment is a huge thing. Then they have to deal with it. So as soon as somebody starts having trouble at work, if they come to us, we can start helping to guide them on how to deal with it.

Kasidie: Another situation that I’ve heard all to often is someone who has a child from a previous marriage, and their ex finds out that they’re a swinger, and then use it against them in a custody battle as leverage. I’m always sad when I hear that.

Susan: We definitely get requests from parents, or from attorneys who are representing the parents. Again it’s about educating a judge. Family courts are usually closed hearings, and the judges usually have a lot of autonomy. We can get studies and statistical data to these judges and get them information. We can educate the attorney or even help the person get an attorney who already understands the issues involved in this. We’ve helped resolve many cases because of the information that we provided the courts. We’ve helped the courts decide that alternative sexual expression alone was not enough to make a parent unfit.

Kasidie: What is the argument that’s actually being used to claim a swinger parent is unfit? I mean, when mom and dad go out, the kid doesn’t know where they go or what they do. How can another person think they can use this as leverage in court?

Susan: It’s just the stigma and the stereotypes. They can try to claim that you will be doing these sexual things in front of the child because you are sexually loose and therefore irresponsible. So we have to show evidence that swingers are in fact much more educated about safe sex than most people. They are educated and diligent about making sure the kids don’t hear about their personal lives. There are some people out there that believe that someone who has any sex outside of a monogamous marriage for procreative purposes as supposedly dictated by the bible, is a bad or immoral person. It really does come back to that religious and moral argument. But judges are very open to listening to scientific evidence, and we can show these studies that prove that kids raised by people in the lifestyle have no more problems than the normal population - In fact, there have been studies done that indicate that since people in the lifestyle are usually much happier, they are much better in dealing with their responsibilities as parents, because they’re being fully satisfied in the other aspects of their lives. That’s the sort of information that we give, we help people stand up for themselves. A lot of people just want to crumple and slink off. Perhaps they feel like, maybe deep down, what they’re doing is wrong. But it’s not! NCSF stands up for their rights. We’ve helped other people win, and you can do it too. Sometimes that alone is enough to get them started. But we also have the resources, we have the Kink Aware Professional List, which is a giant database on our website that you can go to, click your state and city and find kink aware lawyers and psychiatrists. Because in a child custody battle you have to be evaluated by a psychiatrist. It’s much better if you go and pick out a kink aware psychiatrist so you’re not sitting there the entire time trying to defend what it is that you do and why you do it.

We’ve all been trained since kindergarten to answer questions, but when we deal with media you have to stick to sound bites. You don’t ever talk about your personal, private sexual life. Instead you talk about how people shouldn’t be discriminated against for their lifestyle.

Kasidie: Absolutely.

Susan: And we have medical doctors listed. We continue to build this database, so if somebody reading this has a lawyer or a therapist who is kink aware we urge you to tell them about NCSF so they can sign up. We offer resources like this to help people. Once you see that you have a lot of people who are on your side, it’s easier to stand up for your rights. That’s what is making a change.

Kasidie: What would you say is the greatest threat to people who live alternative sexual lifestyles like ours?

Susan: The media. The media can destroy a group quicker than anything else.

Kasidie: So true. You said earlier that you give workshops on how to talk to the media?

Susan: I give media training at the coalition partner meeting in Atlanta. If there is anybody in Atlanta who wants to come to that, it’s open to anybody. You don’t have to be a coalition partner to attend. Basically, I teach people how to deal with the media. We’ve all been trained since kindergarten to answer questions, but when we deal with media you have to stick to sound bites. You don’t ever talk about your personal, private sexual life. Instead you talk about how people shouldn’t be discriminated against for their lifestyle. We are consenting adults, we have the right to gather. It’s very easy to teach people how to do it, they just need the tools and the sound bites that we give them. I am also available. People have asked if they could put my name and number on their website so when the media wants to contact them they can get ahold of NCSF instead. And that’s really great because we can speak about lifestyle issues. I don’t have to talk details about a specific club or people, you know what I mean? I’m not speaking for that club or person, I’m speaking for the lifestyle.

Kasidie: Right

Susan: That’s very helpful in conjunction with someone being trained to speak to the media. I can do training over the phone because the information is all on our website. People can download it, and then I go through the training with them over the phone. I’m also there as back up when a reporter calls and can research the reporter and find what they’ve done before. You have to act very quickly because they’re usually on a deadline. I deal with a lot of people who look at it as adversarial relationship, like how they often will look at the police in a kind of adversarial light. I don’t look at it that way. I try and look at how can we work with these people so that they understand us. Or if not understand us, at least tolerate and respect us. I’ve discovered that if you give information to reporters and actually work with them, they are much more open to putting a new and positive spin on a story instead of the same old tired stereotypes… you know? Like “key swapping parties.”

Kasidie: I’ve been very impressed by the media in the past few years. Every time there’s a rumor about an upcoming story on swinging on 20/20, Dateline or Oprah, its seems like everyone in the swinging community panics. Yet almost every time time I’ve seen swinging discussed on a national show like these, we have been portrayed in a very positive light. I was shocked and delighted by Oprah’s open-mindedness. She probably influenced a lot of viewers to be more tolerant of our choices after seeing her show on swinging. Oprah didn’t judge us, but rather saw us for what we are.

Susan: And I think it’s because it is a very wonderful thing. It’s couples. That’s a great thing right there. It’s couples enjoying something openly and honestly, and being safe about it. If you’re having safe sex and it’s all consensual adults, I think that vast majority of American will support us… Just so long as we stand up and acknowledge that we deserve to be supported. We deserve our rights.

Kasidie: You said it!

Susan: I talk to the media constantly. Every week I’m talking to the media. I may not always be quoted, but I’m giving a lot of background information. That’s where the term “consenting adults,” which you hear a lot, comes from. It a term from NCSF. That’s the buzz-phrase that we’ve permeated the media with. As long as it’s consenting adults, who are we to say anything?

Kasidie: It must be working because I’ve definitely noticed a shift in past decade in how the media chooses to cover the swinging lifestyle. Years ago I’d only hear about swinger clubs on investigative hidden camera reports. They’d sneak a camera in, film a whole bunch of legs or blurred faces, all overlaid with dramatic sleazy music and close up shots of alcohol and cigarettes. They’d make it seem like it was some sort of seedy underworld. Thankfully, I don’t see that kind of media story much anymore.

Susan: I know! Honestly, the main difficulty we are having with the media right now is a result of people who are expanding casual sex parties that they have in their homes and turning them into “clubs” where they’re having regular nights or they’re charging for people to attend or causing parking problems in the neighborhood. There was that article that you did in July that was really good, which really covered the importance of not crossing that line because that turns into big negative media coverage. I get these Google alerts anytime a story about swinging comes through. If the story has a negative tone it’s almost always involving home turned club in a residential neighborhood. So I would just tell people that if you are thinking about doing anything like this, just don’t stay in a residential neighborhood. Go out into a rural area or an industrial area where the zoning is very different. Always hire a lawyer just to have the consultation to see what basic permits you need and then you will be fine.

Kasidie: If someone had any kind of doubts about a party or event they are doing, could they give NCSF a call to say,“Hey, we’re planning on throwing a party. What can and can’t we do?”

Susan: Absolutely! You can call us. We have instant response. That’s exactly what we do. If you need help or are in trouble you can contact us, by email, by phone, we can outline your party based on certain basic things. If you are in a residential neighborhood, if you have occasional parties and you’re not charging at the door… perfectly legal. Nobody can say anything to you. Even if people are parking on the street. If you’re having parties every week but you’re still not charging… you’re starting to get into a sticky situation just because of the nuisance factor, especially if you have loud music, things happening in the back yard, or having people arriving in skimpy clothing. If it’s that’s a weekly occurrence, you’re going to draw more notice from neighbors. If there is an exchange of money happening… then you’re in much riskier territory, even just asking for donations. If you have a website or web presence, that can be construed as you being a business. There’s a lot of different things you can do in terms of staying out of residential neighborhoods. Incorporating as a 501C7, which is a non-profit group… you know? Easy. Then guests can donate or join as members. But still need to always check with your local laws and ordinances because some cities, like Phoenix, won’t even allow a local non-profit group to have sexual activity in a space. Which is why I’m finding that hotels are great places to hold events. You can rent out a ballroom for the meet and greet, yet hold out a block of rooms. If people want to go up to use those rooms, the hotels are absolutely adamant about defending their guests right to do whatever they want in the privacy of those hotel rooms.

Kasidie: Although sometimes a hotel will book two conventions that don’t quite go together… like a swinger party in one ballroom and the National Youth Soccer League in another.

Susan: You’re talking about the Orlando New Year’s Eve ball that happened in Florida a couple of years ago. It was soccer parents there for a Disney tournament. The soccer parents were claiming that they could look through the windows and see naked people in the ballroom.

Kasidie: I know the people who threw that swinger event. It was a nightmare for them. The media jumped all over them.

Susan: When it happened, NCSF and I jumped in. What I did is I went to the website for the hotel and I downloaded the site plans of the building… and according to the site plan, there were no windows in the ballroom! So there was no way that anyone could possibly see anything in the ballroom! That was a huge chink in what the soccer parents were saying. So we immediately put out a press release that challenged their key point, including a statement from a police officer who was stationed in the corridor and was watching everything, who stated that nothing happened. It killed the negative story within a week. I was scheduled to debate the soccer parents on the radio four days after the press release went out and they all backed out because they knew that we’d proven that they were lying… And we did all that without even talking to the owners of that event.

Kasidie: It sounds like the soccer parents simply got hold of the fact that swingers were in the same hotel as them and made it their goal (no pun intended) to run them out of the hotel on moral grounds. It was really a shame.

Susan: I really enjoyed working on that particular incident because we were able to completely turn it around and completely debunk it. Before NCSF got involved, Intercontinental Hotels, who owns that hotel, put a freeze on contracts on two other events, a swing event and a BDSM event in other states, saying that because of the controversy that was happening in Orlando, these franchises would no longer move forward with any adult oriented events. So we actually had to confront Intercontinental Hotels and tell them that this was a violation of the Fair Accommodation Act: You cannot discriminate against the guests that you serve. If they have signed a contract with these people they’ve already accepted them, they can’t turn around and say that just because there is bad publicity in another state they are not going to accept them anywhere… and Intercontinental Hotels backed right down and those events went on as planned. So we have to stay vigilant all the time, because one incident like that could have caused a cascade effect where hotels around the country would have stopped holding adult events if we’d let them get away with it.

Kasidie: I’m glad to see you didn’t let them get away with that. If someone is interested in staying informed about important things that are going on which be affect them and their lifestyle, what can they do?

Susan: They can sign up for the NCSF announcement list. We send out media updates, and articles about things that are happening around the country that involve swing, polyamory or BDSM. We send out press releases, like when the Orlando New Years Eve Ball was attacked, letting everybody know what was happening. It’s free to sign up.

Kasidie: Is there anything in closing that you wanna say?

Susan: I wanted to say thank you to Kasidie Magazine for becoming an NCSF Coalition Partner. I think that’s fabulous that you’ve actually joined as one of our coalition.

Kasidie: I’m sure that most of our reader are not aware of this, but while we do offer a small fee to all of our writers and photographers who contribute to the magazine, we also give them the option to decline that fee and donate it to the NCSF in their name instead. I’d say about half our contributors decide to donate their fee to to NCSF. They don’t contribute to Kasidie for the money, they do it because they love the lifestyle and are proud to do their part to promote it in a positive fashion, and they’re happy to donate their fee to NCSF.

Susan: Every donation makes a difference. I’m a volunteer, I do this in my spare time. None of the money comes to me. It goes to pay the cell phone bills and the website bills. We need to keep going as an organization and we operate on a tiny budget so, you know, every bit is huge. I think it’s great you and your writers are doing that for us.

Kasidie: I’ll include a donation link on this interview for anyone reading this who would like to contribute to the National Coalition for Sexual Freedoms.

Susan: Oh, that’d be great. We need your help. If the community doesn’t support us we’re going to go away. Then a lot of the gains we made are going to be ratcheted back.

Kasidie: Donating to NCSF is an excellent way for those people who can’t contribute by actually standing up joining the march. If you’re someone who hides their lifestyle, you can still help by contributing money to help those people who are standing up for you publicly and making your voice heard… so maybe, one day you won’t be forced to feel like you have to hide.

Susan: Exactly. And I think we’re heading that way. It’s going to happen soon. You know, another decade or two and hopefully we’ll be over the worst of the hump and we’ll only be fighting over smaller issues.

Kasidie: Decade or two? I’ll have lost my good looks by then!

Susan: [laughing] I’ll be worn out by then too. Believe me!

Kasidie: Well, Susan, thank you so so much for talking with us. And please thank everybody who works and volunteers at the NCSF for everything that you’ve done, and continue to do for all the alternative lifestyle communities out there. Our lives would be much much different without the great strides you’ve made for us.