Our Story
PFLAG is an organization of LGBTQ+ people, parents, families, and allies who work together to create an equitable and inclusive world. We are hundreds of thousands of people and hundreds of chapters from coast to coast who are leading with love to support families, educate allies, and advocate for just, equitable, and inclusive legislation and policies. Since our founding in 1973, PFLAG works every day to ensure LGBTQ+ people everywhere are safe, celebrated, empowered and loved.
PFLAG New Hampshire began in 1986, when a small group of people including parents of gay children, met at a workshop in Manchester and decided to form a PFLAG chapter in the state capital of Concord. The chapter flourished and grew. After a few years, members from the seacoast of New Hampshire, led by Nora and John Tuthill, recognized an important need to provide support for coastal communities where there was a sizable gay population. In 1992 they opened a second chapter at the seacoast. The remaining members from the areas around Concord, Manchester, and Nashua feared that the division would shrink the numbers of the Concord chapter to the point of collapse. Fortunately, this did not happen. The Concord chapter has endured to this day and continues to be the most attended of all the chapters.
Over the years, PFLAG chapters have come and gone throughout New Hampshire as people in the LGBTQ+ community and their allies volunteer to facilitate a local group. We give thanks to the early movers and shakers for PFLAG New Hampshire like the Tuthill’s, Cy and Gordon Sherman, Lee and Carol Cole, Nancy Grant, Olivia Howe, Ann Kent, Harold and Betsy Janeway, Bobbie Barry, Christine and Lee Marcroft, and Paul Belyea.
PFLAG New Hampshire has changed a lot over the years. Much of the focus for PFLAG New Hampshire has shifted to meeting the growing needs of the transgender, non-binary, gender fluid, intersex, and others in the diverse queer community.
Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
From its founding in 1972 to its work today, PFLAG’s membership of LGBTQ people, families, and allies have united in love, embracing each other and people whose communities are often marginalized, erased or ignored.
PFLAG reaffirms that unity and inclusion and a shared commitment to human dignity of all people are critical to fight discrimination and bigotry in any form so that all families can live free of fear. We commit to fight for fairness inclusive of people’s sex, race, ethnicity, national origin, socioeconomic position, religion, level of mental or physical ability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or any other perceived or actual characteristic.
PFLAG also reaffirms its commitment to this goal which requires us to learn to be the allies that communities need. We commit to better educate ourselves, listen to others, and engage in critical conversations, ensuring that we model the inclusive behavior we wish to see in the world.
We will be more inclusive allies to create space for voices that might not otherwise be heard and amplify personal stories so that the storytellers are visible. We will listen attentively and actively, and speak out with due diligence and clear conviction, across all barriers and borders, to ensure that all people are included, respected, and treated equally.