Withers: Fighting back against Monserrate

As many of you know, New York State Senator Hiram Monserrate is a worm. There is that misdemeanor assault conviction against his girlfriend, getting booted out of the state Senate, and his ability to compare himself to murdered civil rights workers.

And who can forget his efforts to make Albany more …

Friday Watercooler: Big Bank Brother and Power to the People

• Don’t take it lying down! It looks like the crushing defeat of the Marriage Equality bill in New York State has spurred some righteous advocacy. Gay activist, Tim Gill has formed a new political action committee, Fight Back NY, whose sole purpose is to aggressively target New York state …

Withers: Diaz talks silly….again

Once again Ruben Diaz, Sr. spouts something senseless. The New York State senator has a history of typing out rambling releases, epsecailly when the topic is gay, and then trying extricate himself from some of his own daft mess.

Yesterday Diaz issued a release, wondering why gays and lesbians are not supporting Gov. David …

New York gov extends protections to transgender New Yorkers

From HRC:

(Albany, NY) New York Governor David A. Paterson issued an executive order extending anti-discrimination policies to gender identity for state employees Wednesday.

“Governor Paterson has taken significant action to advance equality for all New York state employees,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “The ability to provide for our …

Vanasco: Marriage Equality Act passes NY senate rules committee

The Marriage Equality Act moved toward a final showdown this morning when the New York state senate rules committee passed it, sending it up to the full Senate.

A full senate vote is expected later today.

Sponsor Sen. Tom Duane told the New York Daily News that he has enough votes for …

Update: NY court upholds gay marriage recognition

New York State’s highest court unanimously fought off a challenge to the NYS policy signed by Gov. David Paterson that recognizes gay marriages performed in other states.

However, the judges ruled narrowly, and asked that the legislature resolved the question of marriage equality.

From the New York Times:
…the decision gave gay advocates …

Report Shows LGBT Health Disparities

A new report on the non-HIV health and human service needs of LGBT people in New York state shows significant disparities compared to non-LGBT people, reflecting national trends exacerbated by lack of adequate data and homophobia.

The state-sponsored report, the first of its kind for New York, was prepared by researcher Somjen Frazer and published by the Empire State Pride Agenda. It is based on government data, interviews with 60 LGBT health and human services experts, and surveys of 3,500 LGBT New Yorkers.

Key findings of the report, according to Somjen, include the pervasiveness of homelessness, which poses a substantial barrier to service access. Fourteen percent of LGBT people, including one-third of transgender respondents, reported being homeless currently or at one point in their lives.

Lack of culturally competent care also creates hurdles, with 40% of LGBT respondents saying that too few health professionals were adequately trained to deliver services to LGBT patients. Moreover, 27% said they feared they would be treated differently if their health care provider learned they were LGBT.

See Report Shows LGBT Health Disparities

Advocate.com

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New Study Finds Gap in LGBT Health Services

With all the media coverage lately around Gay Pride events, as well as around marriage equality, it is ironic that so little is really known about the lives and health needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. This lack of specific information on the LGBT community is not just an academic problem; policymakers, especially those in government, demand real numbers to document the existence of problems. This is particularly true in these tough economic times, as funders, government officials and state agencies rightly demand efficient programs that are targeted like laser beams on specific, documented problems. In this context as with so many things, knowledge equals power: the power to allocate resources and work to fix these problems.

At the national level, researchers have estimated that LGBT people lag behind on seven of the ten targets set by the U.S. government to improve health nationally, called Healthy People 2010. In New York City, we know that LGBT lag behind on at least six of NYC’s health goals, called Take Care New York. However, most states do not measure sexual orientation on their health surveys, and none have consistently measured gender identity.

As researchers and advocates, we are working to change that. In our recent work funded by the New York State Department of Health interviewing 60 experts in health and human services and surveying 3,500 LGBT New Yorkers about their health and human service needs, we have found some striking disparities between their experiences and those of non-LGBT people. Empire State Pride Agenda has just this week published these findings in a report entitled “LGBT Health and Human Service Needs in New York State.”

See New Study Finds Gap in LGBT Health Services

Huffington Post

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The Gay Movement, After Marriage New York Observer -

On the night of June 26, two days before the gay pride parade would overtake Manhattan in honor of the 40th birthday of the Stonewall riots that are popularly imagined as the birth of the gay rights movement, a group numbering a couple of dozen mostly gay men and women found themselves crammed into the parlor floor of the West Village townhouse of John Connor, a former banker who lives with his companion, the designer Steven Gambrel.

It raged and stormed outside, while inside, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the first openly gay person to win that office, thanked the group for coming.

They’d been summoned either because they had money or because they had influence in the “gay movement,” such as it is today, and the organizers of this affair needed their money and influence to stage a large national march for gay rights in Washington, D.C., this October.

The mood was intense, and hardly celebratory, despite the tremendous progress toward legalizing gay marriage in New York State that many of the attendees had been involved in.

“We want results,” Ms. Quinn said. “We want them now. We don’t want to be told any longer that we have to wait. ‘Cause look, in Albany? They said they couldn’t do marriage at the beginning of the session—that they had to get other business done first. And now it’s exploded in Albany. If they kept their promise from Day 1, we wouldn’t be where we are.”

See The Gay Movement, After Marriage
New York Observer -

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Se3nate Power struggle impedes New York gay marriage vote

New York’s annual Gay Pride parade was a colorful celebration of 40 years of progress toward civil rights for gays, but once the dust settled, gay couples who wish to marry in New York state remain thwarted.

A bill to legalize gay marriage in the state that saw the dawn of the gay rights movement is mired in political stalemate in the state capital Albany, where Democrats and Republicans are battling over control of the state Senate.

“I had hoped today’s march would have been a bit of a wedding march. It’s not,” Christine Quinn, the gay speaker of the New York City Council, said at Sunday’s Gay Pride parade. Held annually, this year’s event marked the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York’s Greenwich Village, which triggered the modern U.S. gay rights movement.

“We are disappointed. … But I know there have been other times our community has been disappointed and you need to keep fighting,” Quinn said at the start of the parade, which organizers said drew more than a million people.

Gay couples can marry in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa and will be allowed marry in Vermont starting in September and in New Hampshire from January. Other states offer same-sex unions that grant many of the same rights as marriage.

See Power struggle impedes New York gay marriage vote

Reuters

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