PLAC’s Drag Queen Story Time over spring break went off without any problems. (Courtesy of Tina Biffle)
Prompted by her daughter’s coming out and suicide attempt, Tina Biffle is helping create community for LGBTQ people in Parker County
TAMMYE NASH | Managing editor
nash@dallasvoice.com
It’s been almost two years now since Tina Biffle’s daughter came out — almost two years since her daughter attempted suicide because she was convinced that being LGBTQ made her a sinner who her family could not love. And in that nearly two-year span of time, Biffle has created a network and, now, a nonprofit organization to make sure that not just her daughter but every LGBTQ youth in Parker County knows they are loved and valued.
Biffle founded Parker County LGBTQ Awareness Community — PLAC, for short — for her daughter and others like her daughter. It started out as a Facebook group for LGBTQ people in Parker County, west of Fort Worth, and their families and allies. Then earlier this year, in March, PLAC completed the paperwork necessary to become an official nonprofit, with nearly 600 members on its Facebook page.
But it all started with her daughter.
“My daughter came out in the eighth grade, and she is going into the 10th grade,” Biffle said this week.
“When she came out, she tried to commit suicide. Even though we are a loving and accepting family, she thought for some reason that we would disown her.”
Biffle was, she said, floored to realize her daughter was afraid of being rejected. Biffle said she spent “about a decade or so” as a children’s pastor,” and that her daughter had grown up “in a Christian household.”
Still, she added, “We didn’t teach our children homosexuality is a sin or anything like that. We brought up our kids to know if they ever had such feelings, we wouldn’t turn against them. They are our children, and we will always love them, no matter what.
“Our church had members [who are LGBTQ]. We even had queer people on staff and a few members who are transgender people who are out,” Biffle continued. “But still, she thought we would reject her. I don’t know where she got that idea. Maybe she got it just through osmosis from living in Parker County, seeing people being mean and seeing how other [LGBTQ] people were treated.”
Today, Biffle said, her daughter is doing well. “She has never attempted anything like that again. She is an excellent student and an excellent leader in the community.”
But Biffle has worked diligently to make sure they got to this place.
At first, she said, “I didn’t really know how to parent through these issues or feelings, and I didn’t know anybody else who had queer kids that I could ask.” So she turned to social media, creating a Facebook page as a way to “find people just to do life with, and ask questions, Find her a community here in Parker County.”
That community came together quickly, and soon, “people wanted us to start doing events and community service projects,” Biffle said. And about a year in, she continued, they started the process of becoming a nonprofit “because people weren’t taking us seriously. We wanted people to take us seriously, to be legitimate, so we could accomplish things in the community.”
In 2021, PLAC held its first Pride picnic, but this year in June, we had our first official Pride events. “We went to play minigolf and ride the go-karts, things all kids like to do, we did have some protesters show up, but nothing really happened,” she said. “We get the occasional hate message on our Facebook page — “You’re going to hell’ and things like that — but those are few and far between. We even had a Drag Queen Story Time over spring break at a church, and we didn’t even have anyone get mad about that!”
Biffle said that this fall PLAC will be launching smaller affinity groups to help people build support networks for themselves, micro-communities they can lean on and trust, so they don’t feel alone. That will do more for more people than we can as an organization until we can grow and develop a larger volunteer base,” she explained.
Biffle said when she first started the Facebook page, “I honestly didn’t think we had as many people in the community in Parker County as we do. We are still trying to find people and let them know we are here.”
To accomplish that goal, she said, “We just try to create safe spaces and places for people to meet and gather, to build bridges in the community. A lot of people just don’t know someone in the LGBTQ community, so they just make up whatever thing in their head about who LGBTQ people are. We want to change that, so we try to be part of the community as much as we can. We have booths at other events and things like that.
“We just want to show everyone that we are just regular people out here doing life together with our neighbors and helping make a better world.”
To support PLAC, like and follow the organization’s Facebook page and its Instagram, and share their content to help spread the word. You can donate through a link on those pages, and you can also contact the organization to donate to its trans closet to help transgender youth have proper clothing for school.
