Inside the Queer Org Giving Arizona’s Youth a Fighting Chance

While President Donald Trump’s administration has escalated its attacks on the transgender and nonbinary community, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and discrimination have long been part of Arizona’s political landscape.

The state has a long and fraught history of laws aimed at the queer community. It was among the first to adopt a version of a "Don’t Say Gay" bill—then called "No Promo Homo"— and lawmakers have for years refused to pass a nondiscrimination law that would prohibit private businesses from denying services, including housing, to LGBTQ+ people.

In other words, what’s happening right now isn’t necessarily new, but part of something we’ve seen in Arizona for decades.

And right alongside those bad bills has always been a prevailing force to counter them: the Arizona nonprofit one·n·ten, which has served as a steadfast and inclusive space for queer youth since 1993. Through group support meetings and community building, the Phoenix-based organization—with satellite locations across the state—has remained a crucial resource for LGBTQ+ young people, as well as their parents and allies.

What began with groups huddled in garages and community recreational rooms has since grown into a wide-reaching organization. One·n·ten now offers summer camps, weekly meetups, a youth center in Phoenix, and even a charter school—a program that drew far-right criticism and national media attention last year.

Nate Rhoton, who joined the organization in 2015 and has served as CEO since 2018, said their work is more vital than ever—and that’s not an exaggeration.

Seventy-nine percent of the youth served by one·n·ten identify as transgender, nonbinary or gender-expansive. Many travel from across Arizona and beyond to find a safe space where they can grow and be their authentic selves.

And yet, the very people he serves are under attack. Medical institutions across the country are retreating from offering life-saving, gender-affirming care for trans and gender-diverse youth. Queer erasure is happening at both the federal and local levels—from the removal of trans references at the National Stonewall Monument to local school districts scrubbing LGBTQ+ student organizations and resources from their websites.

The moment right now, he said, calls for an organization that is bullish in their mission.

LOOKOUT writer Royal Young spoke with Nate Rhoton by phone about growing up queer in the 1990s, the origins of one·n·ten, and Rhoton’s personal journey from a devout Mormon boy in Flagstaff to proudly leading an LGBTQ+ youth organization. Their conversation also explores the evolving understanding of gender diversity both within and outside the queer community, and the meaningful gift cisgender, straight family members and allies receive when they embrace the world’s queerness.

Royal Young (LOOKOUT): Let’s start with some history of one·n·ten. I love that it was founded in the 1990s. As a ’90s kid myself, I don’t view that era as the most tolerant time for queer people, so it’s amazing this organization was started then.

Nate Rhoton: I couldn’t agree more. I was in high school from 1992 to 1996, so I’m definitely also a ’90s kid. I grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona, and at that time, I was a devout Mormon boy. It was a very different time.

To think that a group of all lesbian volunteers got together and said, “We need a space for young queer kids to just be themselves.” They didn’t really know how they were going to make it happen, but they just did it. They started operating out of garages and back rooms at a community church. They came together on a weekly basis, and eventually, it became more frequent.

The real magic of one·n·ten is in creating safe spaces where young queer people can come together and support one another. The work we’re doing today has certainly grown and become more comprehensive. But at the end of the day, it’s those young people finding community—especially in the times we’re in now—that is vital. I used to say, “I want to work at one·n·ten until one·n·ten is no longer needed.” But what I’ve seen in the 10 years I’ve been here is that we’re needed more than ever.

If you don’t feel safe, how are you going to succeed in all the other parts of your life? For queer young people, if they can have that safe space, it makes everything else in their lives possible. One year at our summer camp, a young camper wrote in the feedback form, “My four days at Camp OUTdoors make the other 361 days possible.” To know that—even though they felt lonely in their hometown—there were all these other people out there who shared their identity, that’s incredibly powerful.

RY: It sounds like you felt a little lonely growing up in a smaller town, where your identity may have felt impossible. What was your trajectory to being a powerful person living their full life? Were there any people along the way who inspired you and gave you a light?

NR: For me, a very early one is my grandmother. My gran—my mom’s mom—was always so accepting. She wasn’t a religious person; she believed in healing yourself. She had a personalized license plate on her car that said “FREE TO BE,” but spelled “FRETOB.”

Years later, when I came out around age 22, she actually took the plates off her car and told me, “I want you to put one up at Hamburger Mary’s, and I want you to keep one, so you always remember you are free to be who you are.” I still have that plate. I love that I had someone in my life who I knew—no matter what—was still going to love me and accept me. She’s still with me today. Though she has dementia, she still knows who I am.

Looking at the LGBTQ+ community, I didn’t come out until my early to mid-20s. So I went through high school and most of college still trying to date women, thinking someone would come along that would work. But it doesn’t work that way.

There was a fellow student in my high school—I'll call them Mandy—who was always very masculine-presenting. With a name like Mandy, they could potentially be a guy or a girl. They went through so much bullying and teasing. There was such a preoccupation among the other kids with what their gender was. I’m sure it was difficult for Mandy, but they’re now living their best life in a same-gender relationship. I’ve been able to reach out on social media and let them know how much they meant to me.

To see a person persisting in living authentically—regardless of anything—was so inspiring to me. Mandy was tougher than I was. I was a small kid physically, and because of my religious upbringing, I didn’t have the internal strength at the time. But I will always remember Mandy and how they carried themselves so proudly.

RY: It’s okay not to be strong all the time. Seeing other people be strong is sometimes what we need in that moment. And, as you said, being stronger with community is so important. The more community we have, the stronger we’re able to be.

NR: Exactly. I was in college when Matthew Shepard was killed on Oct. 12, 1998. It still makes me emotional to talk about. I remember thinking: He didn’t have a choice in being his full, authentic self, and that ultimately resulted in his murder. So who was I—someone who had friends and family who would support me—to remain in the closet? That’s what led to me starting to come out. Fortunately, my whole family has been accepting— to varying degrees, of course—but the most important folks, like my siblings, my mom and my grandmothers, have always supported me.

RY: On having a supportive family, I want to talk about the incredible ripple effect of love that happens when cisgender, heterosexual parents choose to embrace their kid, regardless of gender identity or sexual or romantic identity. How does that change the lives of the cis het people in the family for the better?

NR: I’m really seeing a lot of amazing parents step up—especially right now—and especially parents of trans and gender-diverse young people. They are having to make very difficult and unfortunate decisions. In some cases, they’re leaving this state or even this country because of the fear they have for their children. Love doesn’t get more pure than that—you’re willing to leave the country where you’re a citizen and move abroad just to make sure your child is safe.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we heard from a lot of families. For the first time, some families were stuck in the house together and had to face the fact that their child has an identity they weren’t fully aware of or didn’t understand.

So we started a parents’ group. Because of Zoom, we saw an opportunity to provide a space for families to support one another. The group still meets twice a month on Zoom and is facilitated by Gina, who also happens to be one of the original volunteers who founded the organization in 1993. She’s a rock star.

That group provides a space where, wherever a parent is along the continuum of acceptance, they can talk to other parents and really see: This isn’t a phase. It’s not something you can just write off or change. Parents share what happened in their family once they fully accepted their child’s identity—and the beauty that happens after that. The joy of getting to see their child transform, both literally and figuratively, into the person they’re meant to be.

I think as a family member, when you see that, it changes you to your core. Your eyes are opened to the beautiful perspective that gender and sexuality are so much more fluid than how many of us were raised to believe. I see so much positive from that.

At one of our brunches this year, a father came up to me. He was from a very rural community. His eyes were welling up, and he said, “Thank you for allowing me to see how beautiful my daughter is in so many new ways.” Because while he accepted her before, he had never fully understood. That’s what brings me hope at a time when there is very little hope in many ways.

RY: What we are talking about is expanding your capacity to love. That is never a bad thing.

NR: One of the sayings I absolutely disdain and despise is, “why do you have to let everyone know what you do in the bedroom.” But that is simplifying queer identity into sexuality, where queer identity, and gender identity in particular is so different from that and so much more.

When young people feel like they have to make a part of themselves smaller. Or hide a part of themselves around family and friends, that doesn't allow them to live their lives in any way shape or form. I think all the impacts of that show themselves in things like addiction, depression, suicidal ideation. Allowing someone to be their whole self lets them heal that.

RY: What are some human moments that stand out to you over your time working at one·n·ten where you saw a kid’s world open up?

NR: My first year at Camp Outdoors, I go as a camp counselor. I am really there to just be a support, and I was assigned to be one of the counselors at the twelve-year-old’s cabin. We had a young person come in, they had traveled all the way from Arkansas. This young person had blue hair, and they arrived and were very withdrawn. Blue identified as non-binary and was still figuring that out, which is obviously totally okay. They had a big backpack, and selected the bunk in the furthest corner of the cabin. They slowly started taking out all these stuffed animals and built a wall, then climbed up behind that wall.

I just thought, wow this is going to be such a difficult experience for this young kid. It’s probably one they need so much, but their fear may be so bad I don’t know if they will let themselves enjoy it. Fast forward two days later, I’m standing in the cabin door and Blue comes running in with the other campers, and I was just like “Wow you seem like a totally different person, what’s changed?” And they said, “It’s my first time being around people like me.”

They ran on, but I just stood there blinking back tears.

RY: I love that you mentioned your grandmother’s license plate earlier, because literally the theme of LOOKOUT’s Summer Issue is “fierce and free.” For me, as a non-binary person going to Trans Spectrum of Arizona meetings for the first time, and seeing the spectrum of gender identity, that was so important. To see there are all these different ways to authentically be yourself, to live and be happy. That really made me feel fierce and free.

NR: I love that and your eloquent description of your non-binary identity. One thing I’d really like to see more of in the community, and I am just going to call it out, are mostly cis white, older gay men. I have had to constantly learn more, and expand and push myself when it comes to learning about different gender identities, and I wish more folks would do that, especially in our own communities. The question I get from these older gays is, why do we need more pronouns? Why do we need more identities?

My point is that these identities have always existed, none of this is new. It’s just that now we have the language and communities that allows people, especially young people to not just have to choose this box of LGB or straight, there are so many more ways to be. It allows people to be seen, affirmed, free and celebrated for exactly who they are.

Who wants to live in some bubble of limited options, when in reality, we know for time and all eternity, the fluidity around gender and sexuality has always existed. So why not celebrate that in the ways we refer to one another, in the ways we remain curious, and the ways we seek to understand one another?

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