DeFrank Center’s boss knows a challenge when he sees one in San Jose
Paul Wysocki was about to show me the drop-in center for youth at the Billy DeFrank Center when the silent burglar alarm went off. Wysocki fiddled with the box to accept his code and wound up calling the alarm company, telling them all was fine. “There’s usually a little lag time before they call the police,” he explained. The situation bore more than a little irony. As interim executive director, Wysocki is sounding the public alarm for the center, San Jose’s gathering place for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. But he has no lag time. Last week, he dispatched an e-mail that bluntly said the center would have to close its doors by Sept. 1 unless it raises $50,000. Wysocki hopes to coax backers to sign up for continuing contributions that would total $20,000 a month. “We had been talking about what we needed to do to get people’s attention,” said the red-haired 60-year-old, an exuberant and funny man who has become an expert in turning around nonprofits. “We decided we had to hit them right between the eyes.”
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/defrank-cente…
San Jose gay center warns it may have to close
The interim executive director of a gay community center that serves Silicon Valley says the 28-year-old gathering place will have to close its doors unless he can raise $50,000 by September.
Paul Wysocki sent a newsletter to supporters of the Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center on Tuesday warning that dried up government funding and declining corporate support had created a hole in the center’s $310,000 budget. The center provides HIV testing, support services for youth and seniors, and career and recreational programs.
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/san-jose-gay-…
San Jose’s Billy DeFrank Center embarks on ambitious fundraising campaign
For 28 years, the Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center has been the go-to place for Silicon Valley’s diverse gay community. But on Tuesday, interim executive director Paul Wysocki sent out a desperate plea: the DeFrank Center will close its doors unless it raises $50,000 by Sept. 1. “Our government funding has ended, and in today’s economy, we can’t count on corporate support,” read a weekly newsletter that is e-mailed to supporters. “Our current income from memberships and events no longer meets even the most basic level of Center operations.” The DeFrank Center has three main programs: support services for youth, another for seniors, and an HIV/AIDS testing program. But funding for the HIV testing from Santa Clara County and for the senior program from the city of San Jose have dried up as both the county and the city struggle with their own budget deficits. The Center has cut expenses and now has an annual budget of $310,000, down from $800,000 a few years ago. Wysocki became interim executive director four months ago after former executive director Aejaie Sellers and former board President PJ Matarese were ousted amid internal power struggles over the center’s long-term vision and escalating financial problems. “I have a lot of empathy for Barack Obama,” said Wysocki. “You inherit a situation where a lot of things were done poorly.”
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/san-joses-bil…
Gay parents along with kids celebrate in annual parade
SAN FRANCISCO — Hundreds of thousands of people turned out for the city’s annual Gay Pride Parade, some in provocative costumes and outfits, but an increasing number of them pushing strollers. “I feel like I’ve seen twice as many children as I saw last year,” said Joseph Bowik, who is a father to two children with his husband, David Bowik. The Pride Family Garden, a small park cordoned off near City Hall to give parents a respite and an area for their children to play, saw more than 600 families last year, a record that appeared set to be broken during this year’s parade, organizer Meredith Fenton said. “Probably the biggest thing we’re hearing about this year from kids is the word ‘backlash,’”‰” said Fenton, who is the program director for Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere (COLAGE), which joined the park effort. “With Prop. 8 passing and the Defense of Marriage Act, there’s so much talk about gay rights, but what people keep asking is, ‘How will the kids of gay parents turn out?’ Those people are all asking about us.” San Francisco and Alameda counties are home to the second- and third-most same-sex couples who are parents in California, after Los Angeles, Fenton said. Diana Castillo, 18, moved to Oakland this summer for an internship at Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere. Raised by her birth mother and her mother’s partner, she said growing up with two moms made her grateful.
See:
- Gay parents along with kids celebrate in annual parade San Jose Mercury News - -
- Video: Gay pride on the streets
- Remembering Stonewall: 40 Years Later Gay Wired Gay Pride Parade Marks 40 Years After NYC Uprising WDIV
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Census study of gay married couples finds similarities to husband-and-wife couples
Marriage — whether you are gay or straight — may be the great common denominator among American households, according to a new government study that offers a first-ever look at the nation’s same-sex couples who say they are spouses. Married men and women average about 50 years old, and about four in 10 have kids living at home. The average couple pulls down a little over $90,000 a year and four in five own their home. That demographic portrait doesn’t just fit the nation’s 56 million husband-and-wife couples. It also closely fits the roughly 340,000 households where two men call themselves husbands, or two women consider themselves wives. In the midst of the nation’s widening debate over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, the U.S. Census Bureau has quietly completed a statistical portrait of U.S. lesbian and gay couples who describe themselves as married. With same-sex marriage likely to be legal in as many as six states by Jan. 1, the study could add another layer to the debate. Many of those gay and lesbian couples live in states where they cannot legally marry, and may be checking the spouse box on their census form to reflect a domestic partnership, a civil union or partnership where two lives have been merged into one household.
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/06/census-study-…
Schwarzenegger, AG Brown oppose bid to immediately block Prop 8
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown on Thursday urged a federal judge to keep Proposition 8 in force for now, arguing that it would create too much uncertainty across the state to put the voter-approved ban on gay marriage on hold while the latest legal challenge unfolds in the federal courts.
In court papers, state lawyers argued against an injunction that would freeze the current gay marriage ban, opposing a request filed in federal court in San Francisco last month by two gay couples seeking the right to marry. Backed by former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and renowned lawyer David Boies, the couples moved to counterract the California Supreme Court’s recent ruling upholding Proposition 8, arguing that it violates equal protection rights under the federal constitution.
Brown and Schwarzenegger argued separately that it would create too much havoc to put the law on hold until the constitutional issues are resolved, perhaps eventually by the U.S. Supreme Court. The governor and attorney general did not take a position on the federal constitutional questions, focusing only on whether Prop 8 should be blocked while the case is litigated, a move that would allow same-sex couples to resume marrying in California.
Brown had previously urged the California Supreme Court to overturn Prop 8, and Schwarzenegger has said publicly he believes the courts eventually will permit gay marriage.
See Schwarzenegger, AG Brown oppose bid to immediately block Prop 8 San Jose Mercury News
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/06/schwarzenegge…
Gay Filipino professor wins political asylum after revealing a 30-year secret of sexual abuse
After his visitor’s visa expired in 2006, Philip Belarmino, an English professor from the Philippines, consulted a San Francisco attorney. He wanted to see if he could stay longer to be with his parents and sister who are permanent residents in the Bay Area. That bureaucratic immigration path led instead to revelation of a stunning personal secret, recounted during an emotional testimony in an immigration courtroom in San Francisco last month: When he was 9, 11 and 16, Belarmino said he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by other boys. Recounting the abuse, said the 43-year Bay Area resident, was “like forever. It was like re-entering a harrowing, hellish experience.” He feared a forced return to the Philippines, “of being hurled back in the world of cruelty.” That wrenching testimony convinced Judge Loreto Geisse to grant Belarmino political asylum in the United States, ending for now the government’s effort to deport him. The Department of Justice, which has until June 22 to appeal, could not be reached for comment Monday. Political asylum in the United States for gays and lesbians who fear persecution if returned to their home countries is not new and no one knows how many such cases are granted each year. Immigration Equality, a New York City group that advocates for gay and lesbian immigrant rights, won 55 similar cases last year.
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/06/gay-filipino-…
Many domestic partners face deadline to reduce property tax hikes
Many gays, lesbians and seniors who registered their domestic partnerships in the early part of this decade were later hit with huge property-tax reassessments after their partners died or they broke off their relationships.
But they have until the end of this month to get those increases reversed.
The reversals are available to individuals who registered as domestic partners before Jan. 1, 2006, but were slapped with property tax hikes when their relationships ended or their partners died. The increases occurred because under laws enacted before 2006, couples in domestic partnerships were not treated like married couples when it came to property reassessment.
“I’ve known a number of people who had to give up their property because a partner died,” said longtime lesbian activist Wiggsy Sivertsen, a counselor and sociology professor at San Jose State University.
Under a 2007 law sponsored by Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, the reassessments can be reversed. But time is running out: Forms must be filed at county assessors’ offices by June 30.
Three years ago, domestic partners in California obtained the same property-tax rights as married people. But the new law was not retroactive, so gay and straight domestic partners who registered from Jan. 1, 2000, to Dec. 31, 2005, were treated differently from those who registered afterward. See Many domestic partners face deadline to reduce property tax hikes
San Jose Mercury News
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/06/many-domestic…
Self-proclaimed ‘Christian’ group asks to fight suit on gay marriage
A self-anointed ‘Christian’ group that raised - and spent - pent more than $37 million in leading the campaign to pass Proposition 8 is now seeking to formally fight a federal lawsuit aimed at overturning California’s gay marriage ban.
The Alliance Defense Fund filed court papers Thursday asking U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker to allow it to defend the constitutionality of Proposition 8. Did you ever wonder how mnuch money they raised for ‘fighting gay marriage’ went to pay their own saleries?
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/self-proclaim…
Alameda school board adopts plan to halt anti-gay bullying
School district leaders have approved lesson plans for kindergartners through fifth graders that aim to curb anti-gay bullying. Trustees voted 3-2 on Tuesday to adopt the Safe Schools curriculum, which supporters say will help children of gay parents feel welcome at school and help end anti-gay teasing and bullying on the playground. The lessons also aim to provide a safe environment for children to learn, as well as to offer a framework for teachers to break down stereotypes and teach kids about different types of families. “The need for this is real,” said Beth Kromer, a fourth-grade teacher at Ruby Bridges Elementary School. Brian Harris, a 16-year-old student at the Alameda Community Learning Center, told trustees that he has been called anti-gay epithets on campus. “I have been harassed by other students in the classroom and I have even begun to consider just stopping and giving up on life,” Harris said. Opponents of the curriculum said it would undercut parents’ rights to teach their children about relationships and sexual orientation, and that it pushed a political agenda without addressing ways to help other groups who may be singled out at school. Trustee Trish Spencer, who voted no, said she was concerned that lessons about other vulnerable students were not on the table.
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/alameda-schoo…
