KBIA News

Alphabet Soup

What radical courage does it take to love in the face of hate? Through portraiture and personal narratives highlighting joy, belonging, found family and meaningful romantic and platonic relationships, KBIA’s Alphabet Soup challenges the notion that Missouri’s LGBTQ+ community is a monolith.Tucked away within the amalgamation of letters that makes up the LGBTQ+ community and the complex identities each represents is joy: rebellious, resistant, radiant. If you have a story you would like to share, visit https://tinyurl.com/LGBTQJoy or contact news@kbia.org.Created by Bailey Stover.

Trent Rash: "Your definition of how you're gonna live as a queer person is just as valid as the next person's."

KBIA | By By Bailey Stover, Photo Editor: Nick Sheaffer

Published May 30, 2025 at 2:00 PM CDT

Trent Rash sits at his piano on Monday, April 7, 2025, at his home in Columbia. “[My partner David Hall and I] were at this event for Planned Parenthood, raising money, and it's kind of a desert around here, right? We're so lucky to have it here in Columbia. And I said, ‘Anytime we get together like this in a room, and we are with each other, and we're united and we're laughing, that's what queer joy is.’ And it's so important now because it makes people so upset, which is funny to me, that they — but guess what? Guess who's really unhappy? They are. It's not us. They're just unhappy because they see what we have and they can't. I wish they'd find it for themselves because I think they'd back off,” Rash said. “Queer joy is the fact that people have fully embraced and accepted their authentic self. And that is such a burdenless place that you can't do anything but be joyful, you know? … I see trans people. I see non-binary people. I see bisexual people. I see gays, lesbians. They're just exuding who they are. And so, if you're doing that, that's queer joy. It's the intersection of your authenticity and how you're showing up in the world. And I think when those things align, you're going to be joyful, for anyone.”

Trent Rash is a gay man who didn't come out until mid-life.

He spoke about the fear he felt about coming out in his youth during the height of the AIDS epidemic, but also about how important he believes it is to remember the people who lived and died before us.

Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.

Trent Rash: You know, I very deeply know the fear of AIDS. It wasn't that I was ever afraid of people who had it, but I know, like, the stigma that it caused. And now I know the wrong kind of stigma it caused, too, in many ways.

And I think that also played into my thing of being afraid to be gay – people were either dying from something that was in their body killing them, or were dying because people were, like, literally beating them up, you know?

So, I think that there was a real fear.

I look at some of my friends now, who I – from, from college, I'm like, “I need to tell you how much I am in awe of you for being who you were in the late 90s, early 2000s at a time when it was still very, you know, like, we had a community that where we were safe together, but in general, like, it still wasn't safe, you know, sometimes even maybe to walk down the street.”

Trent Rash’s copy of “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” by Alison Bechde sits on its stand atop a bookshelf on Monday, April 7, 2025, at his home in Columbia. Rash said Bechde is a lesbian author who wrote the book about her coming out at the same time she was learning her father was a closeted gay man. Rash said he saw parallels between his own life and that of Bechde’s father who, by the end of the story, had passed away.

“I read this, and I highly recommend anyone to read it, it’s just so beautiful. But then Stephens College did the show in the fall of 2018, and that really kind of kicked off my coming out journey because I realized if I did not come out I was gonna end up like this gentleman,” said Rash, who performed as the father’s character in the stage play. “I just knew I could see just how sad he was and how the choices he was making were affecting his family. So I knew that I did not want that for myself or my family, so it kind of broke open my journey for myself.” — Trent Rash’s copy of “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” by Alison Bechde sits on its stand atop a bookshelf on Monday, April 7, 2025, at his home in Columbia. Rash said Bechde is a lesbian author who wrote the book about her coming out at the same time she was learning her father was a closeted gay man. Rash said he saw parallels between his own life and that of Bechde’s father who, by the end of the story, had passed away. “I read this, and I highly recommend anyone to read it, it’s just so beautiful. But then Stephens College did the show in the fall of 2018, and that really kind of kicked off my coming out journey because I realized if I did not come out I was gonna end up like this gentleman,” said Rash, who performed as the father’s character in the stage play. “I just knew I could see just how sad he was and how the choices he was making were affecting his family. So I knew that I did not want that for myself or my family, so it kind of broke open my journey for myself.”

So, I feel a little shielded because I was from a small town, so there wasn't, like, a lot of that happening where I was from, but just watching it, hearing it in the news, you know, that gets ingrained. That “I don't want to be hurt.”

It's important for me to kind of know where we come from because I think that generation fought so hard that the people right now who are in college and younger, and like my kids age, have it a lot easier.

Which is great, but I think there's a lot that had to happen for them to be there, and I think that's something that we should be careful we don't forget.

You can't erase history as much as you try, and they're trying really hard, and I think that there always has to be voices who are going to be able to speak, you know, that history.

People need to know, you know, these things really happen. People put their lives on the line for us to be where we are.

And I come from a very white, traditional family, you know, so I've had to really like work to expand my understanding of sexuality – how it can be very – I wouldn't say that, I'm not necessarily traditional, but I'm trying to unpeel layers of all this religiosity and stuff that, you know, I was, like, just so deeply inside of me, you know?

And so, I struggle with, like, what is my value system – even as a gay man, and do I really fit in, you know, in this world because I'm not built like every other gay man.

But then I realized that it's so unique, you know, and I think that's part of the beauty that I'm finding, is that everyone's story is different, and everyone's view is different, and that's actually okay, and there are people that are more like you than you think.

Your definition of how you're gonna live, you know, as a queer person, is just as valid as the next person's even if they're very different from each other.

For me, it's so important, because I have, I have very, very, very deeply felt suicide in my life, you know, and I felt what it's like to be the one left behind, and I don't wish that on anyone. I don't wish that on anyone.

And so, I am such an advocate on let's, like, create a safe and loving place for people so that they don't end up a statistic because not only are you a statistic, but they're the behind that are people that are still there.