Wis. advocate fights for LGBTQ+ people
By the time Kathy Flores was 7, she had saved the most children in her town from total damnation. As part of her Baptist upbringing, she dragged as many of her friends as she could down the aisle of her church to kneel before the altar because, well, that’s what she was told got you into heaven. If she was going to the good place, she wanted all her friends there, too. Flores was, she admits, a bossy child. “Soul-winner,” the title she earned in Riverside, California, where she grew up, turned out to be an apt one for Flores, although she took it in a different direction later in life. Nearly 40 years after saving the most souls in her town, she and a local reverend were marrying as many same-sex couples as they could a year ahead of Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark civil rights ruling that made same-sex marriage a fundamental right in June 2015.
If she was going to marry her samesex partner, Flores wanted her friends to marry theirs, too.
“I told my father, who did not appreciate the work I did at all, ‘Dad, I’m preaching, too. It’s just a different message,’ ” Flores said. “It’s a message of inclusion, and I think it’s closer to Jesus’ words.”
Flores, 57, always has gone against the grain. A California transplant who moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1986 with her first husband, she has become a leading advocate for LGBTQ+ people in northeast Wisconsin, carving space for those experiencing violence of all kinds, whether that looks like intimate partner violence, sexual assault, hate violence, bullying or religious-, policeand state-sanctioned violence.
And she’s done it all while overcoming significant medical challenges along the way, including cancer and an aneurysm. She lives with the daily impacts of multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune issues that cause her immune system to mistakenly attack its own cells and tissues.
Flores is the USA TODAY Woman of the Year honoree for Wisconsin.
Flores has helped make Appleton a better place for LGBTQ+ residents. She helped change Appleton’s fair housing laws, an effort so controversial “nobody wanted to touch it.” She also learned about – and quickly organized to get rid of – an archaic dress code policy still in place in 2012 that gave restaurants, bars and other businesses the right to kick people out for not wearing clothing aligned with their perceived genders.
Flores also helped put Appleton on the map as the first city in northeast Wisconsin – and just the third in the state – to institute employment and accommodation protections for trans and nonbinary individuals.
All these changes cleared the way for her partner, who’s transgender, to live and work in the city with equal rights in place.
That work dovetailed with Flores’ venture into full-time advocacy. She established a first-of-its-kind anti-violence center for LGBTQ+ residents in northeast Wisconsin. The space served as an extension of Diverse & Resilient, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit focused on LGBTQ+ safety and well-being.
Through Diverse & Resilient, she opened A Room to Be Safe, which serves LGBTQ+ survivors of violence in northeast Wisconsin.
“I’ve always been most interested in working with marginalized or oppressed people … some of that is because I couldn’t advocate for myself,” Flores said. “I started doing all this advocacy work for other people. I told myself, then, that I was a 17-year-old girl who got pregnant, who didn’t think she had a future. I’ve grown up so much since then.”
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Question: Who paved the way for you?
Answer: When I was doing (diversity, equity and inclusion) work in the ’90s at Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Dr. Bola Delano-Oriaran and Dr. Sabrina Robins were huge influences who paved the way for me. They helped check me with compassion, because I was new to DEI work and I only knew my own lens. Years later when I was working at Harbor House Domestic Abuse Programs, Beth Schnorr, its director, was one of the first people I came out to – I came out later in life, in my 30s. She told me, “You know what? You don’t have to worry about the label. Enjoy the journey.”
Before I worked at Kimberly-Clark, I was working in a mill-type setting. I was a single mom with three kids under the age of 6. I was very stressed out and in my early 20s. I went to see an attorney because I’d had an accident at work. I don’t even know if she’d remember me, but her name was Jane Kirkiede. I went to talk to her about a possible work lawsuit and she saw me as this young mom working at a mill with all these babies. She looked at me and said, “You were meant to do big things. Go back to school. You’re bigger than what you’re doing right now.” I didn’t believe in myself at all, but … within a matter of weeks, I signed up at Fox Valley Technical College to begin my secondary education.
From Fox Valley Technical College, I got the job at Kimberly-Clark, which got me involved in diversity, equity and inclusion, which made me realize I’m not meant for corporate life, I’m meant for community work.
What is your proudest moment?
The thing that I am most proud of in my career has been the passage of laws to protect transgender people in my community. This is something you’d expect from cities like Madison and Milwaukee. Being able to do that (in Appleton) was my proudest moment. And now, having a transgender partner who works for the city and benefits from those laws, that’s the gift that keeps on giving.
On a personal level, I’m most proud of my daughters and the women they are today. I’m proud that they are strong women, and I’m so honored that they still come to me for advice on life and love.
“I’ve always been most interested in working with marginalized or oppressed people … some of that is because I couldn’t advocate for myself.”
How did you find your courage?
The first time I acted with courage was at Kimberly-Clark. I had a friend in marketing and he was in a room full of white men. Somebody exploded at him and threw a tissue box at his head. He came to me afterwards, obviously very upset about it, and with his permission, I went with him to the vice president and I lodged a complaint. I was a secretary at the time; he, the next person in line to be CEO. I’m Mexican and whitepassing, and I had a lot of people help me learn how to use my privilege. A lot of people thought I had a lot of audacity, but I said, “No, this is wrong. We’re going to address it.” When it came to people being marginalized, I easily pushed through the bureaucracy to get to the person who needed to hear it.
What advice would you give your younger self ?
Trust your gut. Where you are right now is temporary. This is temporary. When I think of myself at 18, I’m a young mother who has already survived sexual and physical abuse. That’s temporary. This isn’t going to be your whole life.