My home of Missoula sits at the confluence of three rivers. If you zoom out, the state of Montana spans the Canadian borders of Glacier National Park to Yellowstone, with Native American reservations, ski resort towns and university cities in between.
Montana’s confluence of ideas has always struck me the most, though. It’s a state where privacy is held dear right alongside a love of the land, guns, good beer and community.
However, like the rest of the United States, our political climate has shifted. Hard. A once gloriously purple state has turned blood red with hate. For many, it’s unsurprising. Far-right extremists have always found comfort in the tucked-away, small-town spaces of the state.
As a queer woman and Realtor working in Missoula, it means my life feels radically different depending on exactly where I am within 100 square miles of the city.
My advocacy journey starts at home
Missoula is home to nearly 120,000 of Montana’s 1.1 million-plus population. That’s a small number by many standards, but it represents a beating liberal heart in the middle of western Montana, and it’s a place most assume is open and welcoming, no matter what.
My advocacy journey began with my real estate career. I entered the industry with no proper understanding of certain realities and was alarmed by what I found in a place I thought was open and accepting.
My real estate mentors, who are also queer, advised me not to be open about who I am to allow “all sides” of business to come my way. I was followed by real estate professionals who touted fighting the “LGBTQ Mafia” despite our Code of Ethics stating plainly, “Realtors must not use harassing speech, hate speech, epithets, or slurs … ”
Realtors are supposed to value the fundamental human right to housing, a human right all humans deserve, regardless of skin color, family dynamic, age, gender or sexual orientation.
To me, the boundaries are clear, like a lawyer or a doctor: Community members deserve to feel safe when seeking a Realtor’s assistance with their housing journey. I knew I wanted my local industry to be better than how I found it. I immediately became a founding member of the LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance, knowing the road ahead would be long and tedious, but worthy of the journey.
Taking action
In 2022, I began taking action and helped create the Homes for All program with the Missoula Organization of Realtors in support of the first annual Missoula Pride, partnering with incredible allied non-profits and local businesses. The partnership and program creation were hard-won with a focus on housing insecurities and inequalities within the LGBTQ+ community.
I quickly learned the industry’s politics and, more importantly, that the discourse around discrimination is surface-level at best. Our Code of Ethics is concrete on this issue; casual discussion with our peers involves rejecting discriminatory ideals and practices and enthusiastically supporting housing for all.
Embodying the true spirit of anti-discriminatory practices and advocating housing as a human right as a community is clearly another matter entirely, however.
Despite receiving ongoing backlash from more conservative real estate professionals, Homes for All has raised over $40,000 for Missoula Pride and the Western MT LGBTQ+ Community Center in the four summers since its inception.
It’s been made clear to me that the desire for openness, respect for others, and responsibility in this industry remains strong among many individuals and companies. They just need someone to amplify their voices and support them in their advocacy.
Turning up the volume
Now you can walk in Missoula downtown and see Homes for All in the windows of real estate brokerages, people on the river wearing the logo on a hat or with a cold drink and a coozie, spreading the idea of Homes for All year-round. It’s a simple message with a big impact. All are welcome here.
State legislators did all they could do to diminish our light this session, however. Despite the state grappling with uneven tax burdens, a housing crisis, access to medical care and more, our majority Republican legislative session found it more important to pursue more than 24 anti-LGBTQ laws. Only five focused on property tax relief.
For queer people like me, it was a devastating few months to listen to politicians call me a “contagion” or a “diseased individual”, while fighting to limit my right to adopt children, to marry, to access healthcare, or erase my existence from education and public spaces. It’s especially devastating when noting that Montana’s Realtor Political Action Committee endorsed and contributed funds to several of the most hateful of these representatives.
What has continued to spurn from the hate, though, is a wildfire fueled by love that is pure and can’t be stopped. Republicans pushed to dictate every aspect of the LGBTQ+ community and despite many losses, still managed to pass wasteful bills such as one restricting flags (including the Pride flag) from any government property.
Missoula took this as a challenge. Droves of community members showed up for city council and proposed a change: to adopt the progressive Pride flag as an official city flag to skirt the language of the new law. In a nine to two city council vote, it passed and set the stage for our neighbors in Bozeman to do the same, defying our governor and state.
Returning power to the people
Republican politicians, the message is clear: Montanans are sick of the hate and will not let it win.
As I now move to launch the Montana Chapter of the LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance to spread our message and betterment of the real estate industry statewide, I know the war will continue. It will be hard, and it will be worth it.
The power is with the people. It always has been. And I believe in the power of the people of Montana to come together to find a better way forward with respect and acceptance.
Leave us on the river with a joint in one hand, a cold “Say Gay Ale” from local brewery Draughtworks in the other and an osprey drifting lazily in the breeze above the mountains in the distance. “Montana ’til I die” is a saying we have here, and I’ll fight for everyone to have the right to live here until my dying breath.
The author and members of the Missoula Organization of Realtors recognize and acknowledge that the lands of which we focus our business was once the territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksikaitsitapi), Salish (Selis), Kootenai (Ksanka), and Kalispel (Qlispe) where they would hunt, gather, raise their family, hold ceremonies and protect the land which now represents our homes, our agriculture and our way of life. We honor and recognize the connections of Salish (Selis), Kootenai (Ksanka), Kalispel (Qlispe) people, the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksikaitsitapi) and all people who have migrated through. We are committed to care for the land with honor and grace as the people before us did.
Karen Berg-DiGangi is a Realtor in Montana. You can connect with Karen on Instagram and LinkedIn.
