Story and photo by Marc Glass (Fall 2008 issue)

For their efforts to foster equality for Maine’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, Ray ’69 and Connie (Ouellette) ’71 Winship were recently feted by EqualityMaine, the state’s oldest and largest LGBT advocacy organization, with the F.E. Pentlarge Award. Named for F.E. Pentlarge, the founder of the first PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) chapter in Maine, the award recognizes “outstanding demonstration of family values,” said Betsy Smith, executive director of EqualityMaine.

In presenting the honor at EqualityMaine’s 24th-annual awards dinner in March 2008, Smith lauded Ray and Connie’s work on behalf of Maine Won’t Discriminate and their founding of Civil Rights Team Project programs at Lawrence High School (where Ray taught mathematics for 35 years) and Winslow Junior High School (where Connie taught home economics for 27 years).

“If you ask them, Ray and Connie will tell you that they feel blessed and grateful to have been able to do this work,” Smith told a crowd of approximately 550 at the March 2008 award ceremony in Portland. “But it is really our community who is blessed to have Ray and Connie as allies, and it is our community who is grateful for their years of services, advocating for our equality.”

In accepting the award, Ray said their commitment to gay rights began in 1993, when one of their three sons came out during his sophomore year at MIT—shortly before Maine was “embroiled in the No on 1 campaign.” Their “last-straw moment,” he said, came when they read—and decided to challenge—Op-Ed columns “rife with hurtful stereotypes and blatant untruths.”

“We did not realize it at the time, but that simple act of activism changed the course of our lives,” he said.

“We were in the right place, at a time of our lives when we were secure about who we were, knowing lots of people in communities where we had credibility. All of which made us formidable opponents,” Connie explained.

Now semi-retired, Ray and Connie are active in the Waterville Universalist Unitarian Church, where they co-chair the Welcoming Congregation Program (the church’s official LGBT outreach program) and are trainers for the Northeast District UU Churches interested in becoming welcoming congregations.