The GLO Center advocates for LGBTQ community members by connecting them with resources and support through programs, events and support groups. The center is celebrating its 30th anniversary and growth – from losing all of its part-time volunteers during the COVID-19 pandemic to now having a paid, full-time staff and even an onsite social worker.
For Executive Director Aaron Kitchens, the center’s growth reminds him of the positive progress he’s seen from the community – something that Springfield lacked in the 90s that led to the founding of GLO. He mentioned the “Normal Heart” incident of 1989.
“Missouri State was putting on this play, The Normal Heart, and due to the themes and the content of that, there was anti-gay protests against it that actually led to one of the students involved in that production’s house being burnt down and pets being killed in that fire,” said Kitchens.
He said it was incidents like those that opened up conversations around how Springfield could be more tolerable. That pushed allies of the LGBTQ community to respond, which led to the founding of The GLO Center.
“Those things (responses) were not done because Springfield was more friendly to LGBTQ community,” he said. “I think that often — that was a response to there being a lot more of that backlash and there being such a stark need for an organization like GLO at that time.”
Kitchens said there has been significant progress in the community since then to support LGBTQ rights and advocate for them, but he added that there’s still backlash at the federal level. It’s not just threatened rights and policy changes that are harmful, he said, but the rhetoric being spread about the LGBTQ community. An example, Kitchens said, is the transgender community being portrayed as dangerous.
“The research also is there that trans people are not committing violent crimes at a higher rate than other populations,” he said. “So, there is no data to back it up. We know that it is just rhetoric that is meant to cause harm.”
Kitchens said he thinks it's often how conversations are being conveyed that largely influences public support. He said just having these conversations, whether positive or negative, has an impact.
“What we’re trying to explain and get people to understand is the conversation is the weapon,” said Kitchens. “We shouldn’t have to constantly be having conversations about whether or not we deserve equality, whether or not transgender people deserve to be acknowledged as human beings in our country, in our community, in our society.”
He added that a lack of representation has an especially harmful impact on young members of the LGBTQ community.
“People have to listen to elected officials, the leaders of their community, argue that they shouldn’t exist,” he said. “Not that they shouldn’t be treated the same, that they shouldn’t even exist — that trans people don’t exist or that these issues aren’t real, that we need to ban them from being discussed in schools, (that) we need to take books that reference trans people out of libraries.”
But, Kitchens said, he believes that all of the discrimination is in response to how much positive progress is also being made.
Locally, he said, GLO now has a full-time staff rather than volunteers, adding that they’ve been able to make progress in expanding their support and services.
“We’ve been able to become a lot more present in the community, and the result of that has been fairly amazing,” Kitchens said. “As we have stepped out into the community, the support has been there for us to continue growing to really meet the need.”
GLO recently added an onsite social worker to their team which, Kitchens said, has given them the opportunity to implement new resources, like a crisis cold weather shelter and the GLO Food Pantry. He said they’re also working on a housing program that would make GLO a safety net resource for those struggling to find a place to live.
Among the various groups, programs and social events GLO offers, Kitchens said they’ve also introduced two new programs.
The Resource Navigation Program is a tool that gives clients hands-on assistance from a GLO staff member in navigating resources they need help accessing, like housing programs, name change and gender marker procedures, gender affirming clothing and health and medical care. Kitchens said it's difficult to even know how to start navigating these life decisions without having mentors and a support system.
“So we just have all these folks who graduated from high school, didn’t graduate from high school, one way or the other they’re adults now, and they're in this community and they have no support. Nobody passed on that knowledge, nobody passed on that information,” he said.
The program, according to Kitchens, identifies the goals individuals are working towards and helps them access the resources needed to make those goals happen.
GLO also received a $10,000 grant from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation to bring a national program to Springfield – Next Level. Kitchens said Next Level is an economic empowerment program that focuses on teaching young individuals about navigating career pathways and building personal wellness and financial health.
“The goal is to kind of work towards that next step, which is why its called Next Level,” he said. “So it’s about getting people from a place of stability to a place where they are working toward thriving.”
Kitchens said GLO’s next step is determining if they can expand their community outreach outside of Springfield. GLO’s mission, he said, is not to create a more inclusive Springfield, but to create a more inclusive Ozarks.
“We’ve kind of started taking the steps that we need to take to look at, ‘what can we do to support rural southwest Missouri? What can we do to support our friends in Joplin and in Branson?’ ” Kitchens explained.
He said there’s a lot of progress happening in rural southwest Missouri, from West Plains holding their third annual Pride event, to LGBTQ groups reaching out to GLO from small towns like Mansfield and Ava. He said GLO is in the process of identifying what it would look like to be able to support those communities.
“This will be GLO reaching out to those individuals who have been reaching out to us to let us know the really cool things that they’re doing in their towns to try to keep their community there,” Kitchens said.
He added that with so much progress comes challenges. The biggest struggle, he said, has been losing organization partners.
“There’s been partners that have been with us up to a certain extent that, you know, took a step back with pressure from this administration, pressure from the State of Missouri in this political atmosphere,” he explained.
He said seeing partners step back from an organization that serves marginalized communities has been disheartening, adding that it's also been difficult for GLO to fill in those gaps.
Kitchens mentioned an incident in September of 2025 when two bullets engraved with the word “die” and a homophobic slur were found outside the front doors of GLO. He added that the center also receives hateful emails and phone calls.
But, Kitchens said, he doesn’t consider those offenses to be challenges but rather nonsense and white noise that GLO can get past.
