Pioneering gay student athlete says schools must protect all students
Ten years after drawing national attention for coming out while serving as co-captain of his high school football team, Middleton native Corey Johnson told attendees at the annual conference of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network of Boston (GLSEN Boston), that his own visit to the conference a decade ago was instrumental in his decision to come out publicly. Speaking to a crowd of youth, teachers and administrators gathered at Jamaica Plain’s English High School on May 1 Johnson recalled traveling to that year’s conference on the Tufts University campus on a bus with his school’s gay/straight alliance (GSA), but the Masconomet Regional High School student sat as far away from the GSA kids as possible for fear that people would think he was gay. Yet arriving at the conference completely changed his perspective. See Pioneering gay student athlete says schools must protect all students
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Healthy Gay Relationships: Ken Howard Gives Tips for Relationship Success at Annual Gay Men’s Forum
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West Hollywood, CA — The Gay Men’s Forum is a free, day-long event will focus on the theme: “Where We’ve Been. Where We Are. Where We’re Heading” and will include contemporary experiences of gay men, panel discussions featuring a range of perspectives from the gay community, special performances and interactive workshops.
Ken Howard, LCSW will be participating in the discussion: “Love & Its Opposite: A Discussion on the Differences Between Healthy & Unhealthy Relations” with fellow colleagues including, Tyrone Carter, Ian Stulberg, LCSW and Andrew Susskind, LCSW; the Q&A will be moderated by Christian Antonio Calle of the LA Gay & Lesbian Center.
Howard has extensive experience in counseling the gay male community (and lesbian and straight couples) on how to achieve healthy and satisfying relationships. Throughout the years he has worked with a variety of couples who have sought his guidance on topics including “how to have an open relationship without hurt feelings”, “being serodiscordant (one HIV-positive, one HIV-negative), managing stress, and older-younger relationships. He teaches communication skills using the Imago Couples Dialogue, pioneered by Harville Hendrix. His long-list of testimonials from happy couples provides countless examples of those who have turned his philosophy and guidance into real-life skills and solutions, often preventing breakups.
The forum is being held in collaboration with the City of West Hollywood’s Lesbian and Gay Advisory Board, community organizations and the City’s Social Services Division.
The GAY MEN’S FORUM: Dialogue and Workshops will be held at Fiesta Hall at Plummer Park on Saturday, May 2, 2009 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. located at 7377 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood. The event is free.
To RSVP, please call (323) 848-6381. For more information, please contact Corey Roskin, Hernan Molina or Larissa Fooks at (323) 848-6460. For the deaf and hard of hearing, please call (323) 848-6496.
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Remembering Bea Arthur, feminist TV pioneer
There are lots of reasons to take a moment this weekend to mark the passing of Bea Arthur, who died on Saturday at age 86 in her home in Los Angeles. The most obvious was that she was talented and hilarious, and that if you are over the age of 30 in this country, there’s a good chance that she made you laugh on a semi-regular basis at some point in your life.
But it’s also important to remember that before “Dollhouse,” before “Sex and the City,” there was “Maude.” The “All in the Family” spin-off, which ran from 1972 to 1978, starred Arthur as Maude Findlay, the Democratic-voting, women’s liberation-supporting, four times married cousin of Edith Bunker. The program, created by television visionary Norman Lear, made the news early in its run for featuring prime time’s first abortion, in a two-part episode that aired two months before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal across the country.
Seven years after “Maude,” Arthur starred in “The Golden Girls” as Dorothy Zbornak, the divorced retiree who shared a home in Florida with three other women, including her aged mother. It’s remarkable to think, given how young, glossy and pneumatic network television has become, that less than 20 years ago, the airwaves were given over to four older women who talked about sex and ex-husbands and ate cheesecake.
Many others have observed that “The Golden Girls” was “Sex and the City” before “Sex and the City,” or alternately that the “Sex and the City” ladies were only a few decades away from drinks on the lanai themselves. The show was one of the most female-friendly and respectful looks at the experience of aging while female ever broadcast on national airwaves, simply by showing women — living, talking, having sex, making friends, cracking wise, living full lives together with energy and engagement. And if you happen to catch one of the reruns that still air, chances are good you’ll laugh your ass off.
So here’s to Bea Arthur, one of television’s finest and funniest feminists.
Remembering Bea Arthur, feminist TV pioneer
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National Equality Rally at Independence Hall March for Equality on Independence Mall Sunday, May 3, 2009
PHILADELPHIA, PA — The National Park Service (NPS) has issued a First Amendment permit for a National Equality Rally at Independence Hall on Sunday afternoon, May 3, 2009 at Independence National Historical Park.
The goals of the National Equality Rally are:
– Passage of trans-inclusive hate crimes legislation and the Employment
Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)
– Repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA)
– Support for GLBT health issues
– Equal benefits for same-sex families
– Same-sex marriage Equality
Regional, state and national organizations, people of color, progressive religious institutions, high school and college GSAs, and straight ally organizations will be represented as Co-Organizers. Over 100 organizations from across the nation will March for Equality on Independence Mall.
Leaders will carry their organization’s name on pole-mounted placards. Activists, participants and straight allies will be offered American and rainbow flags. After completion of the March for Equality, activists, organizations, and allies will fill in Independence Mall for a one-hour high-impact Rally.
Gay Pioneers Frank Kameny and Lilli Vincenz will lead grassroots activists, organizations, and straight allies in the March for Equality on Independence Mall from the National Constitution Center to Independence Hall.
The Rainbow Chorale of Delaware will open the Rally with a choral tribute, and 100 members of the Philadelphia Gay Men’s Chorus, Anna Crusis Women’s Choir and the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia will sing a special rendition of “America the Beautiful” to end the Rally.
The Philadelphia Freedom Band and members of the national Lesbian and Gay Band Association will join the March for Equality on Independence Mall. The Lesbian and Gay Band Association marched in President Obama’s Inaugural Parade. There will be participants from the New York Big Apple Corps, D.C.’s Different Drummers, North Carolina Pride Band, and Flamingo Freedom Band of South Florida, among others, marching past the Liberty Bell Center and the Gay Pioneers Historic Marker to Independence Hall.
Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell are where the Gay Pioneers held the first organized gay and lesbian civil rights demonstrations called “Annual Reminders” each Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969. The Annual Reminders laid the groundwork for the Stonewall Riots in 1969 and the first New York Pride Parade in 1970.
“Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell are where the movement was launched. With a new Congress and a President who describes himself as a ‘fierce advocate’ of our civil rights, it is the right moment for us to join hands at an iconic location to demand Equality,” stated Malcolm Lazin, Executive Director of Equality Forum.
Equality Forum is a national and international GLBT civil rights organization with an educational focus. The National Equality Rally at Independence Hall will be held on the concluding day of Equality Forum 2009 (April 27 to May 3), the largest and premiere annual national and international GLBT civil rights forum.
For more information about the National Equality Rally at Independence Hall, visit www.nationalequalityrally.org. For more information on gay-friendly Philadelphia or to book a hotel stay, visit the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation’s website at www.gophila.com/gay.
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Vandal Who Allegedly Desecrated Gay Icons’ Trees Arrested, Charged
Sheriff’s detectives found the man they say desecrated a pair of tribute trees honoring pioneers of the gay rights movement in the center of West Hollywood this week, say officials S
The incident occurred Thursday night, March 26, with a second on Saturday night, the result of which left the trees, one a flowering Chinese Magnolia and the other a California Live Oak, suffering from considerable damage.
A transient named Bruce Bartmann, age 47, who is known to make WeHo his tramping grounds, was captured by a Sheriff deputy who spotted him in the Beverly Hills Court hallway on Wednesday; recognizing him from a photo that had been making the rounds, he arrested him on the spot.
ee Vandal Who Allegedly Desecrated Gay Icons’ Trees Arrested, Charged WeHo News
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Will Vt. gay marriage vote encourage lawmakers in other states?
(Montpelier, Vermont) Vermont, which invented civil unions, on Tuesday became a pioneer again as the first state to legalize gay marriage through a legislature’s vote, suggesting growing popular acceptance of the idea.
The House barely achieved the votes necessary to override Gov. Jim Douglas’ veto of a …
Existing gay marriages now on a great divide
With the California Supreme Court likely to uphold Proposition 8 but still recognize those already married, the couples are feeling both elated and isolated.
Jeanne Rizzo, 62, who married her partner of 20 years in September, was “somewhat heartened” Friday that her marriage is poised to survive Proposition 8 — but she was not celebrating.
“We don’t want to be on a marriage island,” said the Marin County resident, who runs a health advocacy group.
The California Supreme Court’s signal Thursday that it would uphold Proposition 8 but still recognize 18,000 existing same-sex marriages raised questions and concerns about the prospect of being a minority within a minority — part of an exclusive club whose doors have been closed to others.
While some gay married couples fretted Friday about being isolated culturally and legally, others expressed relief and joy that their marriages would remain valid. Some said they would feel pressure to be a symbol for same-sex marriage and to always present a positive image.
“If I’m on an island, at least I’m on an island with someone I love,” said Howard Bragman, a Hollywood publicist who married his partner before the November election in which voters passed the gay-marriage ban.
Jon Davidson, legal director for the gay-rights advocacy group Lambda Legal, called the couples “pioneers” put into “an unprecedented situation.”
“It will be challenging for those 18,000 couples,” Davidson said. “They are likely to be frequently asked to prove that they are married. . . . They will be going forward where no couple has gone before.”
At the same time, the gay married couples may help educate Americans about same-sex marriage, Davidson said.
“They will be kind of living examples of the fact that no one else is harmed by the existence of married same-sex couples,” he said.
See Existing gay marriages now on a great divide
Los Angeles Times
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Kameny house a DC landmark
Home of gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny gains new historic status by unanimous vote.
Kameny house a DC landmark
Home of gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny gains new historic status by unanimous vote.
Pioneers in Splitsville
Hillary and Julie Goodridge of Massachusetts, America’s first same-sex husband and wife — wife and wife, husband and husband, whatever — are divorcing, nearly two years after they announced they were separating.
Recall how advocates for years had claimed same-sex marriage would be good for the institution historically reserved for a man and a woman because so many homosexuals are in committed, loving relationships with their lifetime partners.
Of course, about the time the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court was dabbing lemon juice on the back of the state Constitution to reveal the “homosexual marriage OK” message John Adams scribbled there in invisible ink in 1780; and Mr. and Mrs. — Ms. and Ms., Mrs. and Mrs., Mr. and Mr., whatever — Goodridge were tying the knot, the Institute for Marriage And Public Policy was reporting (and the news media were suppressing) research showing the divorce rate among same-sex couples in Sweden was about twice that of heterosexuals. MORE
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