Quebec promises funds to help homosexual seniors facing discrimination

The Quebec government is spending half a million dollars on an education campaign meant to improve the lives of gay, lesbian and transgendered seniors.
It’s a subject so taboo that the cabinet minister responsible for seniors and representatives of the gay and lesbian communities couldn’t find a seniors residence willing to host a news conference.
It was eventually held in a community centre on the fringes of Montreal’s gay village.
Still, Minister Marguerite Blais says it’s more about ignorance than malice.
“We would have found a residence eventually,” she said. “I don’t want to accuse anyone of anything. I just want to show how important it is to educate people on this issue.”
Laurent McCutcheon of the gay helpline Gai Ecoute says homosexuality isn’t discussed in most institutions that serve the elderly, leading many Quebec seniors to hide their sexual orientation.
As they age and lose their autonomy, gay, lesbian or transgendered seniors face stigma, loneliness, social isolation, rejection and in extreme cases, harassment from the very institutions they depend on to meet their needs. See Quebec promises funds to help homosexual seniors facing discrimination
The Canadian Press * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual

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Quebec funds gay seniors program

(Montreal, Quebec) The Quebec government is spending half a million dollars on an education campaign meant to improve the lives of gay, lesbian and transgendered seniors.

It’s a subject so taboo that the cabinet minister responsible for seniors and representatives of the gay and lesbian communities couldn’t find a seniors residence …

A first gay justice?

Gerstein:

President Barack Obama is looking to advance diversity with his pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter — and early speculation has focused on whether he’ll pick a woman, or perhaps the first Hispanic justice.

But gay rights groups — disappointed that Obama didn’t pick an openly gay man or woman for his Cabinet — are pushing him to put the first openly gay justice on the Supreme Court.

Within hours of word of Souter’s departure, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund was hailing the candidacy of a First Amendment scholar and former dean of Stanford Law School, Kathleen Sullivan. “Out lesbian a contender for Supreme Court,” one of the group’s web sites declared.

Another Stanford law professor on the “frequently mentioned” lists, Pam Karlan, has been open about being a lesbian, colleagues and former students say. In response to an e-mail from POLITICO, Karlan expressed no reticence about discussing her sexual orientation, though she downplayed talk about being a possible nominee.

“It’s no secret at all that I’m counted among the LGBT crowd,” she wrote, using a common acronym for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community. As for the possibility she’d be nominated, Karlan said, “Given the landscape, I’m flattered, but not fooled, by having my name tossed around.”

Unrelatedly, a rave for Karlan as “(1) brilliant, (2) broadly knowledgeable — Cass Sunstein aside, I can’t think of anyone who knows so much about so many different legal fields — and (3) a spectacularly gifted writer” from a right-leaning Harvard Law professor, William Stuntz.

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Transsexual wins $500,000 lawsuit

A federal judge has awarded a former Army Special Forces commander nearly $500,000 because she was rejected from a job at the Library of Congress while undergoing a gender change from man to woman.

Diane Schroer of Alexandria, Va., applied for the terrorism analyst job while still a man named David Schroer. He was offered the job, but the offer was pulled after he told a library official that he was having surgery to change his gender.

U.S. District Judge James Robinson ruled Tuesday that Schroer was entitled to $491,190 in back pay and damages because of sex discrimination.

Schroer said she was happy with the judgment but more importantly that the judge recognized her treatment as job discrimination. She said it’s a problem many transgendered people face.

“They are hugely underemployed, at best,” Schroer said. “If they are fortunate enough to get something, it’s well below their capabilities. It’s not just about money, it’s about knowing you are a valuable person.”

Schroer said she feels more fortunate than many transsexuals who face job discrimination because her friends have helped her get work as a national security and counterterrorism consultant.

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Landmark transwoman’s murder trial set to begin

(Greeley, Colorado) Jury selection will begin Tuesday in the trial of a 31-year-old man accused of killing Angie Zapata, a 20-year-old transwoman.

Allen Ray Andrade is charged with murder as a hate crime – the first time the state’s hate crime law has been applied in a case involving a transgendered …

Transgender model steals fashion show

(Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) Rio closed its main fashion event of the year with less attention to the clothes than the model – a transgendered actress.

Patricia Araujo received a standing ovation after parading along the runway for the Complexo B brand to end the event in a city that delights …

Rudnick’s ‘New Century’ is a funny time

The one-liners fly furiously in “The New Century,” Paul Rudnick’s collection of four short plays that SpeakEasy Stage Company is presenting at the Boston Center for the Arts. Once they’ve all landed, you may be left wondering whether they actually add up to much, but while they’re in the air it’s hard to do anything but laugh.

“Make remarks, not war,” declares one of Rudnick’s characters, the flauntingly flamboyant Mr. Charles. The slogan could easily decorate a banner above any of Rudnick’s outlandish but decidedly unmilitant vignettes, from Mr. Charles’s own cable-access show in Palm Beach, where he’s been banished from New York for being “too gay,” to the opening monologue by one Helene Nadler of Massapequa, Long Island, mother of three gay children.

In Helene’s case, there is an actual banner over the stage, and it reads “P.L.G.B.T.Q.C.C.C. & O.” As Helene soon informs us, this stands for “Parents of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, the Transgendered, the Questioning, the Curious, the Creatively Concerned, and Others,” and Helene is here to show us that she is the most accepting, most loving, most liberal-minded mother of all time.

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Boston Globe, United States -

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Activist’s ‘railroad’ helps gay Iranians

Not quite three years ago, Arsham Parsi was an Iranian refugee in Turkey. Today, he is executive director of the Iranian Queer Railroad, trying to help 200 people down the same road he took to Toronto.

“Every day, people escape, people come here,” he said yesterday in his downtown apartment. “It’s constant, like a railroad, always moving.”

On a recent trip to Turkey, he secured refugee status from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees for 45 Iranian gays, but they are awaiting interviews at the Canadian and U.S. embassies. Parsi, 28, is lobbying on to get them out of Turkey where temporary residents must pay a $200 fee every six months.

“People in Turkey say they’re not homophobic and I say, `You’ve living in Istanbul. When you leave Istanbul, it’s different.’ Gays have been beaten on the streets in Turkey and the police do nothing.”

Canada, the U.S. and Australia are the likely destinations for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people on his “railroad,” because those countries recognize the kind of persecution they face in Iran, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said there are no gays.

Iran is one of 86 countries around the world that still declare homosexuality a crime and punish it with prison or death.

Parsi was still in Iran when he became an activist in 2001, first starting a clandestine online chat group for fellow gays, then an organization. He left when he heard government officials were hunting him.

Since arriving in Toronto in 2006, Parsi has been a guest speaker at the UN Human Rights Council and his activism earned him awards last year from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and Pride Toronto.

See Activist’s ‘railroad’ helps gay Iranians
Toronto Star, Canada

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Gay Life to sparkle and shimmy at the Hilton

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — The community is some 50,000 to 60,000 strong on Staten Island, according to some estimates, and its members have money to burn.

The borough’s first-ever Gay Life Expo will include vendors, giveaways and a chance to get to know gay-owned and gay-friendly businesses, but it isn’t only about marketing to Staten Island’s largely affluent gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered residents.

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Staten Island Advance – SILive.com, NY -

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Transgender model ‘star’ of show

Rio closed its main fashion event of the year with less attention to the clothes than the model — a transgendered actress.

Patricia Araujo received a standing ovation after parading along the runway for the Complexo B brand late Friday to end the weeklong event in a city that delights in shocking the prudish with each year’s Carnival celebration.

Complexo B designer Beto Neves said he invited Araujo to amaze the public.

“In fashion, the cool thing is to surprise,” he told the O Dia newspaper.

See Transgender model ‘star’ of show (pic)