The Church and Gay Marriage: Are Mormons Misunderstood?

Last November, Jay Pimentel began hearing that people in his neighborhood were receiving letters about him. Pimentel lives in Alameda, Calif., a small, liberal-leaning community hanging off Oakland into the San Francisco Bay. Pimentel, who is a Mormon, had supported Proposition 8, the ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage. And that made him a target. “Dear Neighbor,” the letter began, “Our neighbors, Colleen and Jay Pimentel” — and it gave their address — “contributed $1,500.00 to the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign. NEIGHBORS SHOULD BE AWARE OF THEIR NEIGHBORS’ CHOICES.” The note accused the Pimentels of “obsessing about same-sex marriage.” It listed a variety of local causes that recipients should support — “unlike the Pimentels.”

Pimentel, a lawyer and a lay leader in the small Mormon congregation in Alameda, is markedly even-keeled. Yet the poison-pen note still steams him, even though in May the California Supreme Court validated Prop 8 as constitutional. He is bothered less by the revelation of his monetary contribution, which he stands by, than the fact that the letter’s author didn’t bother to find out that every other Saturday for 15 years, he or someone else from Alameda’s 184-member Mormon ward has delivered a truckload of hot meals to the Midway Shelter for Abused and Homeless Women and Children — one of the organizations the Pimentels allegedly wouldn’t support. “The church does a lot of things in the community we don’t issue press releases about,” he says. “And when people criticize us, we often just take it on the chin. I guess you could say I’m not satisfied with the way we’re seen.”

Across the country, that’s the dilemma facing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With 13 million members worldwide (by its own count), the LDS is the fourth largest church in the country, the richest per capita and one of the fastest-growing abroad. The body has become a mainstream force, counting among its flock political heavyweights like former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid, businesspeople like the Marriotts and entertainers like Glenn Beck and Twilight novelist Stephenie Meyer. The passage of Prop 8 was the church’s latest display of its power: individual Mormons contributed half of the proposition’s $40 million war chest despite constituting only 2% of California’s population. LDS spokesman Michael Otterson says, “This is a moment of emergence.”

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Revisiting 1969 and the Start of Gay Liberation

On Friday afternoon, officials from the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising and also to honor Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.
The embrace of the gay rights movement by Wall Street — the title of the stock exchange event was “From Stonewall to Federal Hall” — was a striking example of how much things have changed for lesbians and gay men in four decades. The change is brought into relief in a monthlong exhibition, “1969: The Year of Gay Liberation,” that opened June 1 at the New York Public Library.
Using the Stonewall uprising, which began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, as a starting point, the exhibition focuses on the pivotal months that followed, charting the emergence of a new strain of militant activism — exemplified by groups like the Gay Liberation Front, Radicalesbians and the Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries — that expressed a new vision of gay freedom.
The activist vision of that era, the exhibition suggests, was more far-reaching than the so-called homophile movement, which had used a more cautious approach, and also more critical of societal institutions like the family than the contemporary gay rights movement, which has been dominated in recent years by the debate over same-sex marriage.
Jason Baumann, who curated the exhibition and also coordinates the extensive collection of gay materials in the library’s Manuscripts and Archives Division, contrasted the new exhibition with “Becoming Visible: The Legacy of Stonewall,” the library’s landmark show in 1994 on the history of gay and lesbian life in New York.

Photo: Photo: Diana Davies. Gay Liberation Front marches on Times Square, 1969.

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KY’s Fairness Campaign Hires First Director

(Louisville, KY) Following a period of strategic planning and organizational renewal, along with the establishment of an endowment, the Fairness Campaign has hired its first Director, Chris Hartman, (left) who will oversee fundraising, communications, leadership development, and legislative strategy for the almost two-decade old civil-rights organization.
A Louisville native and graduate of Bellarmine University and St. Xavier High School, Hartman most recently worked as Congressman John Yarmuth’s 2008 campaign Press Secretary. He served in 2005 as an AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteer In Service To America) in St. Louis, Director of Philadelphia’s Grassroots Fundraising for the Democratic National Committee in 2004′s Presidential Election, and as Producer and Founder of performance companies Project Improv * St. Louis and Louisville. Hartman holds a Master’s degree in Drama from Washington University in St. Louis, where his thesis, Stage Families of Choice: Emergence, Evolution, and Future of the American Gay Male Family on Stage, focused on American gay male family history and analysis.

The role of Director is the second to be filled by Fairness in under a year. Last July, the organization hired Administrative Coordinator Erica Dolinky, who manages the office, constituent communications and works to foster volunteer engagement and membership recruitment. Dolinky recently mentored at-risk college students in southern Colorado and worked for over a decade with Boys and Girls Clubs of Scottsdale, Arizona. She holds a degree in Fine Arts and a minor in Women and Gender Studies from Arizona State University.

The Fairness Campaign celebrates this year the 10th anniversary of the landmark passage of Louisville’s first Fairness Amendment by the Board of Aldermen on January 26, 1999. Currently, Fairness is teaming with Kentucky Fairness Alliance and other ally organizations to promote the passage of a statewide Fairness law, prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodations. A statewide Fairness lobby day in Frankfort is planned for February 25; more information will follow.* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual

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Gay Marriage Ban Inspires New Wave of Activists

SAN FRANCISCO — They’re calling it Stonewall 2.0.

Outraged by California voters’ ban on same-sex marriage, a new wave of advocates, shaken out of a generational apathy, have pushed to the forefront of the gay rights movement, using freshly minted grass-roots groups and embracing not only new technologies but also old-school methods like sit-ins and sickouts.

Matt Palazzolo, 23, a self-described “video artist-actor turned gay activist,” founded one group, Equal Roots Coalition, with a group of friends about 10 days ago. “I’d been focused on other things in my life,” Mr. Palazzolo said. “Then Nov. 4 happened, and it woke me up.”

Often young and politically inexperienced, the new campaigners include an unlikely set of leaders, among them a San Francisco chess teacher, a search-engine marketer from Seattle and a former contestant on “American Gladiators,” who jokingly suggested that he had become involved in the movement as a way of making up for his poor performance on the show.

“We’re a gay couple in West Hollywood, neither of us involved in activism, but we just wanted to help,” said Sean Hetherington, 30, a stand-up comic who was the first openly gay contestant ever to do battle, however briefly, in the Gladiator Arena. “And we were amazed at what happened.”

Mr. Hetherington and his companion were among several people surprised by the strength of positive reaction after starting Web sites geared toward a demonstration planned for Wednesday, “Day Without a Gay.” Its organizers are asking gay rights supporters to avoid going to work by “calling in gay” and volunteering in the movement instead.

Many grass-roots leaders say the emergence of new faces, and acceptance of tactics that are more confrontational, amount to an implicit rejection of the measured approach of established gay rights groups, a course that, some gay men and lesbians maintain, allowed passage of the ban, Proposition 8.

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Activists open gay meeting center

YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning Valley’s gay and lesbian activists have opened a community center here that takes its name from a watershed event in the emergence of the gay and lesbian movement almost 40 years ago.

The center, known as the Stonewall Community Center and located at 1523 Poland Ave., conducted its grand opening and holiday party Saturday.

“It’s really a milestone for us because, for so long, there has been no sense of community,” among local gay and lesbian people, said Brian Wells of Youngstown, co-chairman of the Mahoning Valley Pride Coalition, which operates the center.

“This really provides everyone with a place to go and a place to gather and to be able to develop a sense of community,” Wells said. “We want to be able to provide them with a place to call home,” he added.

The coalition had previously rented small quarters at a North Side church, but the new center, which occupies donated quarters, is the first true gay and lesbian community drop-in center in the Mahoning Valley, Wells said.

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Youngstown Vindicator, OH