News
Progressive Jean Szilva Makes a Bid for the Statehouse
Samara Dinner Celebrates Scholarships, Grant Recipients
Michelle Barber: MPM's Newest Board Member
off our backs wins Michigan Media Award
The Rest of Our World
The
Rest of Our World
Washington,
DC
Military School Elects Gay Student Prez
The Uniformed Services University (USU), a Department of Defense military
medical, nursing and graduate school, has elected Patrick M. High as its
first openly gay student council president, the Servicemembers Legal Defense
Network (SLDN) reported.
High, who will represent graduate
students at the university, previously served nine years in the Illinois
Army National Guard and is currently a PhD candidate at USU. High was
elected by a student body that includes uniformed personnel in the armed
forces.
"Patrick High's election as student
council president is just the latest in a series of signs that those serving
in our armed forces are ready to welcome openly gay colleagues,"
said SLDN Executive Director C. Dixon Osburn.
Orlando, FL
Doctor Denied Gay Man Fertility Services
Lambda Legal filed a complaint in September with the Orlando Human Rights
Board on behalf of a gay man denied fertility services because of his
sexual orientation, Lambda Legal reported.
"Dr. Barros was denied services not
because of any real medical risk, but solely because of his sexual orientation,"
said Gregory Nevins, Senior Staff Attorney in Lambda Legal's Southern
Regional Office in Atlanta.
Dr. Dennis Barros, a veterinarian in Orlando,
and his partner decided to have a child with a surrogate mother who agreed
to carry an implanted egg. To do so, they sought fertility services with
Dr. Frank Riggall, a practicing fertility doctor. After previously agreeing
to provide services for the couple, Dr. Riggall's offices sent Barros
a letter saying they were denying him fertility services because performing
the procedure would breach FDA guidelines.
Delaware, OH
Pride at the County Fair
For the second year in a row, visitors to the Delaware County Fair were
met with a message of tolerance and inclusion, the Gay People's Chronicle
reported.
The Delaware Gay Straight Christian Alliance
set up a booth in the Coliseum at the fair, which ran from September 16
to 23.
"We didn't really know what to expect
beforehand," said Howard Blanchard, an Alliance member who worked
at the booth last year, "but the experience was an extremely positive
one."
Tony Marconi, another member of the Alliance,
also put in many hours at the booth last year, the Chronicle said.
"We were overwhelmed at the amount
of positive support we received from people who visited our booth,"
Marconi said.
"I also enjoyed some sincerely
heartfelt discussions with people who view Scripture passages differently
than we do," he continued, "but almost without exception, our
exchanges were polite and respectful."
Gilsum, NH
First Home for Residents Living with HIV and HCV
The first housing program for people living with HIV, AIDS and HCV (Hepatitis
C) in New Hampshire - and nationwide - opened its doors on August 1st
in Gilsum, near Keene, NH, said Susan MacNeil, Executive Director of AIDS
Services for the Monadnock Region (ASMR).
Named after the founder of the AIDS Memorial
Quilt, The Cleve Jones Wellness House will offer service-enriched congregate
housing to a total of seven male residents age 21 or over, MacNeil said.
The unique program is run by ASMR, whose offices are located on the second
floor of the building.
Prospective residents must be living
with either HIV and/or HCV and have low to moderate income. Wellness House
is not a hospice, but a safe environment where residents are self-sufficient
and empowered by participating in the cooperative mission of the Wellness
House program.
New
York
Airfare Taxes to Help Children with AIDS, TB and Malaria
A new Geneva-based organization, Unitaid, will work with officials in
France, Brazil, Britain, Norway and Chile to raise $300 million in the
next year to help children suffering from three deadly and prevalent diseases,
the New York Times reported last month.
The money will come primarily from
airfare taxes in the countries involved in the program, the Times said.
Unitaid, led by France, plans to work with former President Bill Clinton,
who will negotiate for lower prices from drug companies.
The program is intended to pay for health
care treatment of 100,000 children living with AIDS, 100,000 people who
have become resistant to antiretroviral AIDS drugs, 150,000 children with
tuberculosis and 28 million with malaria, the report said. Public health
experts welcomed the plan as a way to provide needed long-term financial
support for treatment of people living with AIDS.
Washington, DC
Religious Leaders Praise Statement of Inclusion
The National Religious Leadership Roundtable last month strongly praised
the joint statement put forth by the Council of Bishops, Elders and Christian
Leaders on Sept. 11, 2006, denouncing the hostile use of Christianity
against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, the National Gay
and Lesbian Task Force reported.
"They deplored the 'portrayal
by Christian extremists of the tragedy of Sept. 11 as God's judgment on
America for the presence of gays and lesbians and all political manipulation
in the name of Jesus,'" the report said.
The resolution also called for several
steps to end discrimination against sexual minorities, including the right
to civil marriage and rites of Christian marriage, the right to full equality
under the law, to refute the "ex-gay notion that sexual orientation
and gender identity can and should be changed," and to refuse to
cooperate with political or religious leaders who condemn the lives of
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Washington, DC
Capital Leads Way With LGBT Police Unit
Washington's Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit, an award-winning unit that
covers a variety of crimes against the LGBT community, has six full-time
officers, including one who teaches "Gay 101" to his peers,
the Associated Press reported last month.
The officers investigate hate crimes as
well as drug abuse and gay-on-gay violence, Internet crimes against the
LGBT community, and transgender prostitution, the AP said.
Police Chief Charles Ramsey created the
unit in 2000 after learning that hate crimes were not being reported due
to mistrust of the police. Ironically, Parson is pleased that the number
of reported hate crimes has risen since formation of the unit.
"That doesn't mean we're more homophobic
- it means you have a community that finally feels comfortable turning
to the police," the AP quoted Ramsey.
New York
Ten Percent of M2M Identify as Straight
A survey of 4,193 men living in New York City conducted by the NYC Department
of Health and Mental Hygiene found that nearly 10 percent of male participants
who identified themselves as straight reported having sex with at least
one man during the previous year, according to a press release from publishers
of the survey.
The study, "Discordance between Sexual
Behavior and Self-Reported Sexual Identity" published in the Annals
of Internal Medicine, is reported to be one of the largest U.S. population-based
surveys to report on the contrast between a man's self-identified sexual
identity and his actual sexual behaviors.
Preeti Pathela, DrPH, lead author of the
study, said "Public health prevention messages should target risky
sexual activities, such as unprotected receptive anal sex, and should
not be framed to appeal solely to gay-identified men."
Seattle
Gay Zombie Movie Audience Favorite
Feature-length horror spoof Creatures from the Pink Lagoon has been awarded
the Audience Choice Award at the Q2 Baton Rouge Gay & Lesbian Film
Festival, a press release from Q2 reported last month.
"Creatures from the Pink Lagoon is
an irreverent mash-up of gay male melodrama and B movie madness, in which
a plucky young sissy's idyllic birthday weekend is crashed by a group
of libidinous gay men - turned into ravenous flesh-eating zombies by toxic
mosquitoes at a cruisy highway rest stop," the release said.
"The film played to a capacity
audience ... [and] received a whopping 94 percent of the votes for Q2's
Audience Choice Award," festival Program Director Patrick Abadie
was quoted.
The film was shot on digital video in 2004
and 2005 and began its festival run earlier this year.
Compiled this month by Editor Lynn McNicol