Profiles in LGBTQ+ Courage: Real Stories of Identity & Acceptance

Profiles in LGBTQ+ Courage: Real Stories of Identity & Acceptance

Author: Rick Koonce Language: English Episodes: 56
Hosted by Rick Koonce, Profiles in LGBTQ+ Courage: Real Stories of Identity & Acceptance is built around intimate, unscripted conversations that go beyond headlines. This podcast lives in the personal moments-the difficult family dinner, the quiet realization, the supportive friend’s first question. You’ll hear directly from LGBTQ+ individuals, their parents, siblings, and allies, sharing narratives that are less about grand declarations and more about the daily, nuanced journey toward living authentically. The stories encompass coming out, gender transition, and the complex, ongoing search for belonging, offering a raw and moving look at what courage actually sounds like in real time. Produced by Huntington Northstar Productions in partnership with PFLAG Cape Cod, each episode functions as a personal audio journal, focusing on a single portrait where vulnerability and strength are inseparable. Listening feels like being invited into a deeply meaningful, private conversation that highlights our shared humanity. The collective result is a powerful and necessary tapestry of voices that celebrates resilience while honestly examining the challenges within families and communities. Tune in for a series that connects through specificity, where every story adds a vital thread to the broader fabric of human experience.
Episodes
Interview with Jeff Mack | Ep #26 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:07
In October 1998, Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming, was brutally attacked and tied to a fence outside of Laramie, Wyoming. Five days later he died of deep wounds inflicted in one of the…
Interview with Alex Hagler | Ep #25 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:33
Alex Hagler is a Latin and history teacher at a prestigious private school outside Boston. They're also the recent co-founder of their school's first Gay Straight Alliance. GSA's (also known as Genders & Sexualities Alli…
Interview with Kimberly Brooks Mazella | Ep #24 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:21
Imagine being in a traditional heterosexual marriage for many years and then discovering that your husband or wife is gay or lesbian. What would you think? How would you react? What would you do? And where would you go t…
Interview with Lady Di | Ep #23 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:52
"Vernon Diannah Porter" is probably not a name you readily recognize. But that's because he's much better known by his stage name and alter ego, "Lady Di", host of the popular Friday evening radio show, Leggs Up and Danc…
Interview with Jane Martin & Helen Malone | Ep #22 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:56
Some life partners first spot each other from across a crowded room. But not Helen Malone. With a piece of birthday cake in hand, she literally bumped into her future wife, Jane Martin from behind, at a birthday party fo…
Interview with Rev. Dr. Joan Beilstein | Ep #21 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 35:14
Dr. Joan Beilstein is a Lesbian Episcopal Priest, and Rector of the Church of the Ascension in Silver Spring MD. Today, though a senior, well-respected pastor in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC, there was a time…
Hollis L. | Ep #20 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 32:49
Hollis L. is a 25-year-old individual who identifies as both non-binary and transmasculine. That means that, though assigned a designation of female at birth, they don't fully identify with being a person of either gende…
Interview with David Bermudez & Bob Isadore | Ep #19 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:10
David Bermudez and Bob Isadore are a same-sex couple who have been together for 47 years. David, a veteran of the Stonewall uprising of 1969, met Bob, in 1974, when the two were both living and working in New York City.…
David Bermudez: Letter from President Barack Obama | Ep #18 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:23
David Bermudez's work on behalf of gay rights has continued since the days of the Stonewall uprising. Listen, as he tells PFLAG Cape Cod's Rick Koonce, about the letter he received in the mail one day, acknowledging his…
Interview with David Bermudez | Ep #17 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:58
In the history of the gay rights movement, there are few moments as pivotal as the Stonewall uprising – a night in June 1969, when, confronted by a police raid at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, members of the gay an…