Having been in phone and email contact with Dawn Wilson and Anne Casebeer, both of whom were encouraging me to take the board seat vacated by Michael Grey, I had already planned a weekend visit to Louisville when the Lipcomb story broke. Two days after the turnover of Aurora I was at Dawn and Anne's 'ole Kentucky home. At that time Dawn, acting as chair, appointed me to the board seat and made me the "official" NTAC contact on the case along with Sarah Fox and Sue Davis, my appointment to the board to be confirmed at the upcoming board meeting at Southern Comfort. I came back from Louisville and gathered as much information and made as many contacts about the case as I could. I also contacted Sherry Lipscomb and arranged to meet with her personally.
The trip to Kentucky was interesting to say the least. Dawn had arranged to host a fund raiser for a local candidate three days after my arrival in the name of NTAC. When I got to their house I found it, to put it mildly, a mess. Trash all over the yard, a livingroom with no furniture or decor, only a table and china sideboard in the dining area and a kitchen filled with dirty dishes, leftovers and dead beer bottles. I rested the night then started a cleaning blitz. I had Dawn take me to the local thrift store and bought a few items to get some decor in the livingroom area, cleaned the yard, washed dishes, hauled up and cleaned serving dishes from Anne's collection in the basement (where she lived) and went with Dawn to by an assortment of wines, cheeses, breads and wine glasses. I spent a bloody fortune which was supposed to be applied towards a life membership in NTAC since the glasses and unused wine, cheese, etc., were to be used at Southern Comfort for the reception planned there as well. I was determined that if NTAC was to be involved in this campaign, we'd put forth the best image possible. The place looked as good as possible by the time of the reception for Ms. Jordan.
Sarah Fox offered assistance from the beginning of the Aurora case in getting the whole thing into emergency mediation with a trans-sympathic mediator. No small feat, but one of her attorneys from her divorce was now in charge of setting mediation for Franklin County, including children's services and she and Sarah were on very good terms. Randi Barnabee and the other attorneys in the case were informed, it offered a quick resolution to a bad situation but would have ended the media circus that had already started so Sarah's offer was ignored. Sarah refused to have further involvement after that. Susan Davis announced that I was closer to the case and therefore should be the main NTAC contact. A month later, when the case got even worse, I learned from Sherry she had never even been informed this was offered or possible! Aurora wasn't returned to her mother until the summer of 2002, just short of two years later. During those two years she was subjected to a level of brainwashing and conditioning that would have done the North Koreans proud during the Korean War. The case still hasn't ended. Sherry and I are still close.
Suddenly I was back in politics with a vengeance. I met several times with Sherry and quickly discovered the case was much more convoluted and complicated than anyone else knew. Attempts to set Randi Barnabee in contact with the best trans-legal minds and resources were mostly ignored. Paul Lipscomb was a total nutcase and abusive, my introduction to him was his trying to bash down the door when Sherry, her mother, her best friend and I were talking. Sherry and I quickly became friends and stay so to this day. My quiet life underwent an instant transformation. I had been planning a wienee roast for Sarah's upcoming surgery, now had to arrange and pay for a trip to Atlanta for the Southern Comfort Conference, the interview about the case filmed the night of the legal kidnapping of Aurora aired a week later and I lost several job assignments as a result. As the "official" contact on the case, everyone and their sister was calling or writing me for information I now dared not release. As a result of our rapidly growing friendship and in order to let her meet Sarah and others, I invited Sherry to Sarah's wienee roast. That had an interesting result, to say the least. The local television personality who had been most supportive of trans-issues in general and this case in particular, needed to interview Sherry and the only available time was during the roast. She was allowed to attend with a single cameraman with the promise that nothing from the roast would be broadcast. The interview was done in my livingroom, the cameraman, who did not know the nature of the occasion somewhat freaked when he was told after asking why he was the only male there. Several guests had to be reassured, after arriving and seeing the television van, that they would not be filmed.
I kept Anne and Dawn apprised of the need for NTAC to keep a low profile on the case by phone, wrote the board list simply that the case was much more involved than anyone outside realized and most understood. Most except Yosenio Lewis who kept badgering me for more information. Mr. Lewis was the vice-chair of NTAC and I thought Dawn was keeping him up to speed on the events and in any case, had promised Sherry not to discuss details other than to Dawn and Anne specifically. Randi Barnabee had forced Sherry to reconcile with Paul (they were separated prior to the events), who had been abusing both her and Aurora and that was blowing apart, vastly complicating the whole mess. Randi was also the one behind the media circus and had arranged that the taking of Aurora be at a television station. Had any of this been made public at the time, the odds of Sherry ever seeing her child again would have dropped to zero.
Putting myself into debt, I made it to Southern Comfort. Up to now I had avoided these types of "conventions", attending one did nothing to change my mind. The board meeting was several hours long, I did finally get to put a face to a lot of names and my reception by the other board members was welcoming.........all except for Yosenio, who was very cool, even somewhat hostile, towards me. My confirmation to the board took place in the first few minutes. I did get a lot of praise for my representation of NTAC in the Aurora case and felt my acceptance as one of the board was genuine. I was wrong. At this board meeting, Yosenio also announced that he was sending "board" packets to all the board members about their duties, fund raising etc. As an aside, he added that if you didn't get one, that meant he didn't feel you were worthy of being on the board. I never did get one. I later learned from another board member that Yosenio held a grudge against me for my "attack transie" questions of Donna Redwing more than a year ago as one of the Tranflakes. That he, himself was a transflake and knew the script was written ahead of time by others and had given his own thumbs up, makes this hypocritical in the extreme. I also later learned that he considered most of the board as "amateurs and liabilities" and wanted to "clean house" and replace most of the board with his handpicked choices. Among those choices, Michelle Stiener (who had trolled the list all that summer), Alex Goodrum, Monica Helms, Courtney Sharp, Diane Tanner, Roz Manley, Sylvia Rivera and Pauline Park. Among those he wanted gone, myself, Chelsea Goodwin, Dr. Rusty Moore, Katrina Rose and Angela Brightfeather. He wanted Dawn out as chair. Another name soon added to his list of "wants" was Lynne Jefferies (later Jeniffer Jefferies) who was about to make an appearance.
Sarah Fox had attempted for years to make inroads with Columbus Stonewall, led by Jeff Redfield. Remember that "anonymous" gay man who objected to my castration joke? That was Jeff. It took enormous pressure to get Stonewall Columbus just to add "T". It took $3000 dollars ($2000 from Horton and a matching $1000 from the Gill Foundation) to get trans added to the mission statement. Sarah was the only transsexual on the Stonewall Board, she finally resigned in June in disgust at the total disregard and open sabotage of any other political group with a trans connection in the state as well as their insistence on doing "hag drag" sporting events as fund raisers. The June Columbus Pride Parade had looked like a HRC event more than anything else with their equal sign logo literally everywhere you turned. For the first time in years, almost none of the local transsexuals took part in it. The last straw was an announcement that they had opened a new board seat for transgendered, specifying we were neither female or male! Three years of educational outreach and they still wouldn't even recognize that trans people have a gender! Sarah and I discussed this new development and I agreed to write an open letter to Stonewall protesting their treatment of transpeople with her input. As had always been my habit, I posted it to the NTAC list as well. I considered it a "no-brainer", since Vanessa, Dawn, Anne and others were well aware of the ongoing battles we'd had with Jeff Redfield and Stonewall Columbus.
The next day Lynne Jefferies joined the list and immediately announced that she had personally saved the bridge to Stonewall I had just burned. She followed up with a laundry list of how wonderful she was and that she was a major activist in Ohio with close ties to Jeff! That her skills as a professional spin-doctor were just what NTAC needed (she surely did demonstrate her skills at this as will become clear!) None of us from Ohio had ever heard of her before this, and remember Sarah was on the Stonewall Board for well over than a year! Lynne's follow up posts told us she was on good terms with HRC Columbus and each one contained more and more snide snipes at Sarah and myself for being unable to get along with Jeff along with accusations that Sarah was supposed to contact her when she first got involved with Stonewall at Jeff's request. That last proved to be a major distortion of the facts after Sarah and I later dug up all the information we could. For a couple of weeks, discussion on this continued on the list with my silence. During this time, a new list for NTAC dues paying members only, was added and a disclaimer added to the bottom of the NTAC list emails. While I was silent on the list, I was attempting to contact Lynne by phone and finally we did talk. She claimed intimate knowledge of the Aurora case, close friendship with Jeff and continued baiting both myself and Sarah on the list afterwards. Sarah posted several times about the accuracy of my letter and responded to Lynne's comments. I did not. During this twenty day period, I posted twice to the NTAC list and once to NTAC-members. The NTAC list posts were one saying Happy Birthday to Dawn and Chelsea and the other a comment on a thread about Barney Frank and transwomen in showers at work. The single NTAC-members list post was my immediate, respectful reply to Lynne warning her about Jeff Redfields' past history with trans issues. During this time, Yo Lewis, Vanessa and Chris Stinson were all in private email with Lynne and apparently wanted her to join the board!
Finally Lynne posted an "announcement" by Jeff Redfield about Meral Crane speaking at the upcoming Ohio NOW conference. A gay man announcing a women's organizational event. A lively discussion about Meral Cranes credentials began by various people familiar with her "program". After several of the posters ask me to comment, I finally did. I had also been writing on the board list (closed, private, board members only list) about my growing concerns about Lynne's apparent ties to HRC. Lynne almost immediately responded with a masterfully condescending put-down of my ability to get along with these folks and closed with I should not go to the NOW conference, that she could do a better job of representing NTAC. Apparently my response was what she'd been waiting for. Susan Bader, president of Columbus NOW, was on very good terms with both Sarah and myself and was one of the folks almost always at the It's Time Ohio meetings. I was livid. Lynne had been baiting Sarah and myself on the list for nearly a month, smoozing up to the board, shamelessly promoting herself, had admitted she was aware of Sarah's and Sue Davis and my own activist work but never contacted any of us, and now was telling me I wasn't good enough to represent NTAC at a NOW convention when I'd been a NOW member for several years. I wrote a blistering reply, but mindful of the board concerns about flames, didn't send it. I rewrote it later that day when I was calmer, but still not trusting my judgement on that, called Anne Casebeer to get her take on Lynne's post and see if she saw the same level of insult in it I did and whether or not my reply was too harsh. My concerns were both that as a list moderator, I needed to address this before it went further and as a board member, I had just been insulted. Anne agreed with me that the level of insult in Lynne's post was not just my perception and that my response was extremely measured and even given the provocation.
Having thus bent over backwards not to over-react and crosschecking with another board member to make sure, I sent my response. What followed was nothing short of astonishing! I had "officially" been on the board just under a month after having to be convinced to join it at all and initially refusing. Lynne issued a very very nasty flame at me to which I did not respond, Yo Lewis posted another true flame the next day aimed directly at Sarah and myself after Lynne posted an "apology" to the list for her flame and a "tearful" goodbye aimed at making Sarah and I look like a couple of bullies who just ran her off. Off list she wrote to Dawn, Anne and myself bragging she could have done even more damage. Joann Roberts wrote the membership list with a threat to withdraw the TG fund support. (not the first time she'd done this, it was how she was controlling the board) Dawn announced that I must apologize to Lynne on the list, which I did although it galled me no end. I got an email from Chris Stinson thanking me for doing so and saying that under the same circumstances he didn't think he would have been able to do so. I got a phone call from Dawn the following night telling me I had just been suspended from the board for three months after an "executive board" meeting. The Executive Board being Yo, Chris Stinson, Dawn and Anne. Mind you, there never was such a group set up in the charter, no one had ever heard of it before and the board of NTAC was large to prevent take-overs by a small group of individuals! Dawn tried to convince me that it was the best she could do since Chris and Yo both demanded my being thrown out of NTAC altogether. In short, it was a major set up by Yo and Joann Roberts aided by Chris Stinson to get rid of me.
Having done nothing wrong and being illegally suspended anyway, I wrote my resignation to the board. Apparently after I resigned, Chris put forth a motion to have me removed on the board list. I cannot confirm that because Yo had me off the board list within minutes of my resignation. He also set all the lists except NTAC, which was still owned by Sarah, to moderation and personally killed my resignation post to the membership list. I was then removed from the membership list even though I was one of the few board members who had actually paid the dues and then some up to that point. A month later, in response to Yo Lewis' constant demands that she be at every possible GLBT event without any means of paying for it and having just lost her job for being absent too many times, Dawn resigned as chair and announced she was leaving all involvement with NTAC. Yo now had his wish and was in total control of NTAC.
As a postscript to all this, about a month after my resignation Sarah
and I discovered that Lynne had indeed been working closely with Jeff Redfield,
was put in charge of sponsorship of the Pride event and was personally
responsible for the fact that it looked more like an HRC event than a Pride
one. Sarah had never been informed of this or Lynne's presence even
though she was on the Stonewall board this entire period. Lynne rejoined
the list two months later, now as Jennifer Jefferies, crying about having
been denied her name change by a Franklin county magistrate. The
supreme irony is that when Sarah had run into difficulty with her own name
change, she had arranged for pro-bono (free) expert legal representation
for the next time this happened in Franklin county, since it was in clear
violation of Ohio law. Jefferies' case would have been exactly what they
were waiting for.