Proudly displayed upon an exposed brick wall, contrasting newspaper clippings about his LGBTQ activism and photographs of his loved ones, is a framed bright orange piece of paper familiar to any Monopoly player: a get out of jail free card.
Jeff Graham smiled and gestured to the card, recalling his lengthy history of advocacy in the LGBTQ community, including 15 or 16 arrests. The framed card is a joke to remind him of all the work he accomplished, and all the more he still needs to do.
Since 2008, Graham has served as the executive director of Georgia Equality, the largest and oldest LGBTQ advocacy group in the state. The group targets the legislative side of LGBTQ issues by endorsing candidates, organizing boycotts and protests, and lobbying for candidates and issues important to the state’s LGBTQ community.
“At Georgia Equality, our mission is to advance fairness, safety, and opportunity for LGBTQ communities and our allies throughout the state of Georgia,” Graham said.
Graham is a gay man who came out in 1984 when he was attending college in San Antonio, Texas. This was a tumultuous time for the gay community, with the AIDS crisis in full swing and misinformation about the illness running rampant.
Graham was part of a group who formed the first queer student organization on his college campus: Gay & Lesbian Support Group, today known as Trinity P.R.I.D.E. The group tasked him with peer outreach, and he would regularly talk to fellow students about his experiences as an openly gay man on campus.
“Inevitably I would get asked some form of the question, ‘Why do you choose to be gay if you know you’re going to die of AIDS?’” Graham said.
He said this response reflected the prevailing attitude of the era, that AIDS was a gay disease that heterosexual students did not have to worry about. Ignorance about the disease, Graham said, inspired him to pursue a life of LGBTQ health advocacy.
As the ‘80s progressed, so did the AIDS crisis. Graham said he and other gay men grew increasingly frustrated with government inaction, as well as the stigma they faced from other communities.
“Even though I was still in my mid-20s at this point in time, I had friends that were starting to die,” he said. “I felt I needed to do more.”
Graham channeled his anger into action and got involved with AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), a grassroots group working to end the AIDS crisis and support people living with the disease.
It was during this period of Graham’s life when he got arrested multiple times. ACT UP regularly staged acts of civil disobedience to draw attention from lawmakers and the community. Members knew they were risking arrest, he said, but they knew the importance of their mission outweighed the risks.
“I was arrested a couple of times during the campaign to change the definition of AIDS,” he said. “We were in the offices of the leadership of the HIV division at the CDC, and a group of us were arrested there. The first time I was arrested was at the state capitol in my pajamas on the opening day of the legislative session in 1990. I protested the sodomy law here in Georgia.”
Georgia’s sodomy law criminalized any private sexual relations between consenting same-sex adults. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated sodomy laws across the country with its ruling in Lawrence v. Texas.
He was also arrested during a disruption of a live broadcast of CNN Headline News on July 26, 1991, where he and other activists with ACT UP drew attention to the lack of research about AIDS that was published in mainstream media.
Graham said one of the accomplishments he is proudest of from his time with ACT UP is when the group successfully pressured the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) into changing the definition of AIDS to include women and non-homosexuals.
“Jeff is an outstanding thought leader, advocate, and encyclopedia of Georgia politics and Atlanta politics, just the LGBTQ history of Georgia,” said Marc Ebelhar, the vice chair and treasurer of Georgia Equality’s board of directors. “He is the almanac when it comes to that and [is] such a treasured resource.”
Graham said Georgia Equality works on behalf of all people living with HIV and AIDS, not just those who identify as LGBTQ. He brings an intersectional framework to the organization that addresses not only LGBTQ issues, but racial injustice, housing inequality and the healthcare coverage gap too.
“We understand and have made a commitment as an organization that people don’t live their lives in boxes, and we’ve got a very strong commitment to supporting and engaging in efforts that also address racial equity, gender equity and geographic equity here throughout the state,” he said.
During the 2024 Georgia legislative session, lawmakers proposed a number of bills that would negatively impact members of the LGBTQ community. None of those bills passed due to the efforts of Georgia Equality.
In the past, the group worked with 18 counties across Georgia to pass non-discrimination protections, not just protecting LGBTQ people, but also immigrants, women, people of color and people of faith, Graham said.
“I have a lot of respect and admiration for [Graham,]” said Noël Heatherland, Georgia Equality’s statewide organizing manager. “And I think it’s part of why our organization is able to be really successful with the work that we’re doing, because we’ve got somebody coming into this with years and years and years of experience. I just think we are so lucky to have him.”
Much of Georgia Equality’s current work focuses on expanding protections for the transgender community due to the rise in anti-trans legislature in recent years, Graham said.
“There is a lot today that is happening in the LGBTQ space that I think we can learn lessons from the ACT UP movement, very specifically around transgender health and the attacks on the transgender community,” he said. “The well-being of especially young people is being impacted by elected officials that are setting policy based on stigma and misinformation, as opposed to science and the public good. That’s what I started my career fighting for. That, unfortunately, is what I’m [still] doing today.”
Graham said there are strong parallels between the situations seen today in dozens of states, where access to transgender health care is restricted or criminalized, and what he saw happen during the AIDS crisis. A lesson he learned with ACT UP, he said, is recognizing the importance of working in a bipartisan manner.
“I think that is one of the reasons why the story of HIV and AIDS ultimately is the story of success,” he said. “It had always been about targeting and working with people regardless of their political background and political identity. We need to do the same thing today.”
For more information on Georgia Equality, go to georgiaequality.org.
The Everyday Heroes project is a partnership between Fresh Take Georgia, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other newsrooms in Georgia.
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