Performers opened up about catcalling, dealing with sexuality and “breaking free” from the restraints of scripture at Queer Confessions Poetry Night on Thursday. This year, Spectrum hosted the event for the second time with the help of student organizations Equality for HER, the Student Equality
Project and Qroma. 
Performers words bounced off Highland Coffees’ walls, hitting audience members who responded with silence, snaps and claps of support. Speakers read stories of heartache, unrequited love and more from phones, notebooks and printed sheets of paper. They performed their own poems and writings and also works from other popular writers and performers. 
While sharing intimate writings with a crowd of strangers, several performers looked down, up and away. For poet Chris Polite, being around a crowd of people from the LGBT community with shared experiences made performing easier. 
“It definitely makes you feel safe and comfortable, kind of like you’re with family even though you don’t know 90 percent of the people there,” Polite said.
Equality for HER president Blair Brown helped organize last year’s event and felt it was important to assist again and offer often ostracized groups a place to share their experiences.
“The people who attended appreciated having a space where we don’t have to hide in the shadows, can express ourselves and be vulnerable,” Brown
said. 
Spectrum, Equality for HER, the Student Equality Project and Qroma are all organizations aimed at improving LGBT rights and providing support for LGBT students. Equality for HER brings awareness to women’s rights, Student Equality Project’s advocates for equality in Baton Rouge and Qroma is an organization that supports queer students of color at the University.
Brown said some people think these organizations can’t all exist at the same time because of their similarities, but this event shows these organizations can all collaborate together.  
Spectrum events coordinator JaRon Augustus said that by inviting other groups to host, they will get a larger variety in performers and subjects. 
“By joining up with those other groups, there’s so many other people that they bring and different aspects, so it won’t just be queers talking,” Augustus said.
Performer Valerie Collins, who rapped one of her original songs, said the event brought poets and writers from different backgrounds together and offered variety for Baton Rouge community members. 
“Around here, you get a lot of partying and EDM-oriented events and not many intimate social things,” Collins said. “It’s nice to have a young community that’s not centered around partying.” 
Polite said this event provided something different for people specifically in the LGBT community and rejected the stigma surrounding LGBT events.
“When you think of the LGBTQA community, you think of gay bars and clubs. To think that there will be other events put on in the future where we can get together is really promising for the Baton Rouge community,” Polite said.
Having more places in Baton Rouge for the LGBT community to share their thoughts and experiences is important to the organizers and performers. Collins said she’s hoping to attend similar events that allow those within Baton Rouge’s LGBT community a safe space to represent themselves. 
“In Baton Rouge or Tigertown you don’t see a lot of representation for our community and what makes us unique,” Collins said. “It’s a reminder that I’m here, I’m a human being, I have these feelings and I’m worthsomething, and I can do it my way.”