About
Equality Arizona is a nonprofit organization that works to ensure that LGBTQ+ Arizonans are treated equally under the law, our full human and civil rights are upheld by every level of government, and we have the same rights and obligations as every other citizen of our state and nation.
Equality Arizona is a multi-entity organization made up of a 501(c)(3), the Equality Arizona Foundation; a 501(c)(4), Equality Arizona; and the Equality Arizona Political Action Committee. We operate under the collective name, Equality Arizona, as the advocacy and political representatives of LGBTQ+ Arizona.
Our Mission
Equality Arizona’s mission is to build broad and inclusive communities that advocate for the civil rights, safety, and social equality of LGBTQ Arizonans through civic engagement, community building, and education.
Our Vision
We envision an Arizona and United States where everyone, including LGBTQ and other marginalized people, lives knowing they are equally protected under the law and have equal opportunity to live, thrive, and be treated with the dignity that all human beings deserve.
Our Values
Equality Arizona’s values help to guide our work – both what we do and how we do it. Our goal in stating these values is to cultivate integrity and accountability for our work and how we do that work.
Justice
Human beings are capable of and responsible for creating a fair society for all people.
Authenticity
Every person is free to live and fully be themselves. In return, they respect how others live, even if they do not like or agree with their choices.
Generosity of Spirit
Assume good intent and treat others and ourselves with respect and dignity. If we are to create real and enduring community we must cultivate a culture of radical hospitality, not a culture of judgement, of in groups and out groups, of right vs. wrong.
Service to Others
Our community is bound together by a commitment to one another through service. We lift each other up and work to help those in need.
Knowledge and Understanding
Change begins with knowledge. We work to educate Arizonans about the LGBTQ+ community and our needs - in order to help them come to know and better understand their LGBTQ+ neighbors.
Courage
We live as LGBTQ+ people, even when we are rejected, discriminated against, and even criminalized because of who we are. We believe that all people have a right to live as full human beings. This is courage in action every day.
Core Beliefs about the Purpose of Government
We believe that our local, state, and federal governments have an obligation to recognize the full civil and human rights of all Arizonans and Americans, including LGBTQ+ people.
Board of Directors
Michael S.C. Soto
President | he/him
Michael S.C. Soto serves as the President of Equality Arizona, the state's oldest and leading statewide LGBTQ+ civil rights organization. Michael has decades of history with Equality Arizona in many roles, from intern and volunteer to the chief executive officer. Michael, once again, leads Equality Arizona so that this 30-year-old organization can provide a sustainable and inclusive political home for LGBTQ+ Arizonans and our allies.
Michael is a long-time leader in the LGBTQ+ movement in Arizona and the nation. He has focused his work in red and purple states where he has seen pluralism and liberty for all exist in real life – where neighbors don’t have to live like one another to value one another’s contributions to the community and treat one another with respect and dignity. Michael truly believes the old adage - all politics are local – and what adrienne maree brown teaches - that patterns arise in systems. With this in mind Michael believes to his core that the best solutions for our biggest challenges and problems facing humanity today are found first in local communities and can be scaled with the wisdom of people from every walk of life to meet any challenge.
He is a graduate of ASU with a Bachelor of Arts in Women and Gender Studies and a Master of Science in Justice Studies. Michael is currently a PhD student in Justice Studies at ASU, where his studies focus on pluralism as the antidote to political polarization and extremism. He believes to his core that justice is a lifelong process and hopes to make some meaningful contribution to creating a more just society during his lifetime.
Dr. H.L.T. Quan
Board Member | she/her
H. L. T. Quan is a political theorist and award winning filmmaker. She teaches Justice & Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. She is the author of Become Ungovernable (Pluto Press, 2024) and Growth Against Democracy (Lexington Books, 2012), and is the editor of Cedric J. Robinson — On Racial Capitalism, Black Internationalism and the Cultures of Resistance (Pluto Press, 2019). In collaboration with C. A. Griffith, Quan’s film credits include Queer, Broke & Amazing! (2024), América’s Home (2014), and Mountains that Take Wing — Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama: A Conversation on Life, Struggles & Liberation (2010). She served as a correspondent on Third World News Review (Santa Barbara, Access TV) and with Elizabeth Robinson, co-founded No Alibis, a public affairs radio show on KCSB FM Santa Barbara that ran for more than three decades.
Trey Jenkins
Board Member | he/him
Trey Jenkins, MSW is a fourth-year Doctoral Candidate at Arizona State University’s School of Social Work. His research focuses on structural factors that impact the mental health and wellbeing of Black transgender and queer adults. He holds a Masters Degree in Social Work from Arizona State University and Bachelor of University Studies from the University of New Mexico. In his current role as a Program Coordinator, Sr. with the Watts College Office of Inclusive Design for Equity and Access, Trey works to advance inclusive higher education policies and practices. Previously, Trey was a Research Analyst conducting community based participatory research and evaluation. Trey is a Point Foundation BIPOC Scholar and Arizona Leading for Change Fellow. Over the last 10 years, Trey has been an active member in the Arizona community, holding numerous community service leadership and board positions. In addition to his new role on the Equality Arizona Board, Trey currently serves as Co-chair for the 2025 Let’s Get Better Together Conference; Arizona’s 2SLGBTQIA+ statewide integrated health and advocacy conference. Formerly, Trey served as Board Vice President for Recovery Empowerment Network. He also previously served as a member of the Arizona PAIMI Council and board member for GLSEN Phoenix, now GLSEN Arizona.
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C.A. Griffith
Board Member | she/her
C. A. “Crystal” Griffith is an award-winning filmmaker with more than three decades of film production experience, and an Associate Professor of Film/Media Production in the Sidney Poitier New American Film School at Arizona State University. She’s passionate about and deeply committed to Social, Environmental, Economic and LGBTQIA+ Justice—in life, and through film. Her film credits include director of photography (DP), co-producer, co-director and co-editor with H.L.T. Quan on the documentaries Mountains That Take Wing—Angela Davis and Yuri Kochiyama (2010, Women Make Movies), América’s Home (2014) and their recently completed film, Queer, Broke & Amazing! (2024). Griffith's early career film credits her dramatic feature debut, Del Otro Lado/The Other Side. Shot on location in Mexico City, Griffith directed, co-produced and co-edited this Spanish language, independent feature on love, AIDS and immigration. Del Otro Lado’s sold out, 1999 world premiere was at Frameline, it screened extensively at U.S. and international film festivals. Griffith began her film career in the camera department as a First Assistant Cameraperson/Focus Puller (1st AC), Camera Operator, and DP in New York’s independent film community with Juice starring Tupac Shakur (1st AC), award-winning PBS and BBC documentaries such as A Litany For Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde (she began as 1st AC and ended as DP), and 1st AC on Depeche Mode 101, Eyes on the Prize, Making ‘Do the Right Thing’ and music and music videos from Tracy Chapman's "Born to Fight" and Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" to The Rolling Stones' "Rock and a Hard Place". As a writer, Griffith’s screenplays made the finals of the Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Labs and won a top award from the Latino Screenplay Competition. Her publications include writings in Transnational Solidarities and Feminist Futures (upcoming from Duke University Press), Filming Difference, Black Feminist Cultural Criticism, The Wild Good, as well as the journals Meridians, Signs and Calyx.
Monica Phillips
Board Member | she/her
Monica Phillips received her bachelor’s degree in business administration with a minor in speech communication from Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo, CA. It is while finishing her education that she met James. They were married a few years later and began their family. Monica has spent the last 29 years raising and learning from their 5 remarkable children and serving in church and community capacities. Having two LGBTQ children placed her on a growth journey like no other. Learning to support her children as they navigate their sexuality and gender identity has been an amazing and transformative experience. Since then, she has dedicated her time and energy to advocating for LGBTQ individuals in both her faith and civic communities. Monica served for three years on the board of directors for North Star International, which is a faith-based organization serving LGBTQ individuals and their families who are striving to navigate their sexuality and gender identity within the context of their faith. Monica continues to be involved in local LGBTQ and parent support networks here in AZ. Her passion is working with parents of transgender individuals. Her hope is that no parent will feel alone, and that no child will go unloved or unsupported. Monica has enjoyed the opportunity to occasionally work with One Community to train organizations and companies in D.E.I. education. Monica got her first experience in civic engagement when she advocated in favor of the Mesa Non-Discrimination Ordinance. Following this experience of advocacy, she became aware of the amazing work being done here in AZ to forward LGBTQ rights on the state and federal levels. She and her husband had the opportunity to join the Equality and Fairness for All Coalition and travel to Washington DC to represent AZ families as they advocated for fair and respectful treatment for all Americans.
Dr. Sarah Suhail
Board Member | she/her
Sarah Suhail is a scholar, human rights lawyer, activist, and community organizer, focusing mainly on land, labor, women, and queer rights.
Sarah started her work as a movement lawyer in Lahore, Pakistan, in 2008, working with land and water rights movements in Southern Punjab, with indigenous fisher folk of the southern Indus, farmers within the peasant movement in Punjab, and those working to preserve the use of lands held in common; Hari women who escaped bonded labor in Sindh and Khawaja Sira and trans and queer communities struggling to survive the gender regime in Lahore. Along with her activist and research work, she has taught at the undergraduate level since 2008. Beginning at the Institute for Legal Studies (TILS) in Lahore, then to the larger universities in the city, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore University of Management Sciences, and finally, Information Technology University (ITU). She has taught in the fields of law, gender studies, Cultural studies, Justice Studies, Asian Asian American Studies, Sociology, and South Asian history, bringing together the intersections of land and labor rights, queer politics, feminist methodologies, and a deep grounding in the histories of multiple regions as they are impacted by colonialism, settler and neo-colonialism and multiple forms of imperialisms. She is also an advocate of the Lahore High Court and works as a free-lance advocate for refugees in the global north. She currently lives between Phoenix and Lahore.
Community Advisory Board
Iese Purcell Wilson
Advisor | he/him
Iese Purcell Wilson’s life mission is to hold space and build bridges at the complex intersections of the society. Due to his backgrounds of being Samoan, Hawaiian, Filipino, and English raised in the US while also claiming space in both the LGBTQ Community & the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the choral craft has become the perfect medium for empathy-based advocacy at these intersections. Iese has recently graduated with a Masters of Music in Choral Conducting from ASU but was previously known for his work of building bridges at his alma mater, BYU-Hawai’i, where he came out as being openly gay and would go on to privately comfort about 200 students from dozens of countries, meet with the BYUH Presidents Council to discuss the wellbeing of these LGBTQ+ students for the first time in school history, co-found Hawai’i’s first (Latter-day Saint) LGBTQ+ support group off campus for students and staff, helped create and host the first LGBTQ+ fireside on the BYUH campus, and offered the first LGBTQ+ awareness training for the Guest Services Department at the Polynesian Cultural Center. He was also the opening speaker for the Gather Conference which was the largest LGBTQ+ gathering of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and those who love them where he shared about dissonance being vital to moving societies forward towards harmony.
Peter Burgoyne
Advisor | he/him
Peter Burgoyne is a senior development engineer with eight years of experience in the solar energy and battery storage space. He spent two years building community among minority and refugee communities in northern and eastern Wisconsin before earning a degree from Arizona State University in biophysics with a particular focus on renewable energy systems. He also holds a certificate in culinary arts from the Arizona Culinary Institute. Despite brief stints in Europe and the Midwestern United States, Peter has lived most of his life in Arizona, considers himself particularly “state-riotic”, and longs for Arizona to be as beloved a home to others as it has been for him.
Peter is an aspiring writer, musician, theologian, chef, botanist, farmer, and outdoorsman. In fact, so far he’s accomplished little more than aspire to a great many things, but Peter comes to Equality Arizona having been inspired by a handful of exemplary LGBTQ+ individuals to take a leap toward building unity in an increasingly divided world. He is thrilled to contribute in ways that both excite and push him in new directions.
A self-described “recovering idealist”, Peter firmly believes in embracing complexity: that faith is available to anyone and often produces the greatest benefit–and greatest beauty–across the margins of society. As life allows him to continue engaging with people of ever more diverse backgrounds, he becomes increasingly convinced that an open mindset of religious and spiritual pluralism is among the greatest ways to distill compassion, cultivate community, and unite what seems irreconcilable.
History
From Founding to Today
Equality Arizona was founded at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic to fight for the rights of people living with AIDS and for the decriminalization of LGBTQ+ lives. Our founders were loving called the “Bill’s”, because all six of these men were named Bill. Our state and the LGBTQ+ Arizonans that came after the Bill’s all owe a debt of gratitude to these brave men who stood up as out gay men and openly advocated for legal protections for LGBTQ+ Arizonans, during a time when being out was not what it is today.
In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, we fought for the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the archaic laws that criminalized LGBTQ+ relationships, challenged laws that would have defined marriage as "one man and one woman", and campaigned to win marriage equality for the entire community.
Throughout the early 2000’s and 2010’s we worked for marriage equality in Arizona and federally, to secure adoption and foster care rights for LGBTQ+ families, and to win non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ Arizonans in employment, housing, and public accommodations, winning ordinances in city after city and beginning to lay the groundwork for statewide protections a coalition of other statewide LGBTQ+ organizations.
Most recently, in the late 2010’s and so far in the 2020’s we have continued to work with an incredible coalition of statewide LGBTQ+ organizations to win non-discrimination ordinances in 11 cities in Arizona, covering more than 50% of the population and introduced and had a first ever hearing in the legislature for a statewide non-discrimination bill. We co-founded a national coalition with One Community that works to support LGBTQ+ civil rights work in red states and in co-leading this coalition we played a crucial role supporting Arizona’s senior U.S. Senator, Kyrsten Sinema, in an effort that resulted in codifying the first federal LGBTQ+ civil rights law, the Respect for Marriage Act. Additionally, we have played a significant role in Arizona electoral politics, helping to galvanize voters of every party to vote for pro-equality and pro-pluralism candidates, resulting in more representative government for a diverse Arizona.