Earlier this month, we celebrated national coming out day. During our rally at the free speech zone, I shared my own coming out story, or the lack thereof. You see, the choice of coming out on my own was taken away from me. It wasn't in my own terms and I still feel violated whenever I think about it. I will not go on with the details of my coming out process, I mean... it is after all a never ending process. But it got me thinking about others out there who were forced to come out, or were outed by someone else.

I was just wondering, in the matter of coming out of the closet, are we helping the cause when we push someone out of the closet? Or are we hindering it? Under what circumstances is this ethically permissible? If you are dating someone who's still in the closet, should you demand them to come out? Or say, you're a public figure, does everyone need to know what your sexuality is?



I'd like to know your opinions on these. Type your response by clicking on the comments section bellow this post.

Auditions for ISU Got Talent! has indefinitely been postponed.

We will keep you updated on any developments regarding our fall benefit show.

Because, as you know, preventing kids from learning about tolerance is the
surefire way to ensure everyone turns or stays heterosexual.

A plan to have an acclaimed gay author speak to students in Charlotte County high schools has been scrapped after a few parents objected.

Alex Sanchez writes books about gay youth and their struggle to find acceptance, but local school principals were not comfortable allowing him to address their students.

Jay Remer, spokesman for the Charlotte County Rainbow Support Group, said Sanchez is a terrific public speaker whose message is about tolerance.

He said Sanchez’s mission is “to help the gay youth in the community to feel less isolated and more part of the community as a whole.”

Remer’s group is one of the sponsors bringing Sanchez, who lives in Florida, to New Brunswick.

"The idea was to try and have an audience of maybe as many as 1,500 students," Remer said.

But Sanchez won’t be able to spread his message in School District 10 because some parents have pressured principals, he said.

Keith Pierce, District 10 superintendent, said he changed his mind about allowing the author to speak in area schools after meeting with school principals.

"A few of them were getting pressure from a few parents, and they just weren’t comfortable going in that direction," Pierce said.

Some principals felt their schools were just “not ready” for the kind of presentation that Sanchez will give, he said.

In 2002, the American Library Association named Sanchez’s book Rainbow Boys to the list of Best Books for Young Adults.

Sanchez is still coming to New Brunswick. He will give a presentation at Wesley United Church in St. Andrews

We will be holding an audition for our fall benefit talent show on Tuesday, Oct 21st. Eaton Hall 1132 from 6-9pm.

The fall benefit show will be on Nov. 14, 2008 at the M-Shop. 7 pm.

Please consider the limitations of our venue before you audition.

Email us at alliance@iastate.edu for more info.

video clip from our fall 2007 & spring 2008 benefit shows.


Don't forget our Fall 2008 benefit show. We will be holding an audition on Tuesday Oct. 21st. Martin Hall 2121. 6-9pm.

October 10, 2008

Connecticut Supreme Court Sides with Equality, Grants Equal Marriage!

Dear Families and Friends,

At 11:30am this morning, the Connecticut Supreme Court issued its ruling in Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health, the equal marriage case. In short, we won. I would personally like to thank Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) and Love Makes a Family for their leadership in this case and on marriage equality in Connecticut.

On this historic day, we should take time to celebrate as a national community of LGBT families. Call your friends and family. Tell them what marriage equality means to you. If you live in Connecticut, join with other families at the state house this evening at 5:30pm for a victory rally! Understand that marriage equality in Connecticut puts us that much closer to marriage equality everywhere. This is truly a great day for our families.

This is also a day to remember the important battles we're fighting in other states. On Election Day voters in California, Arizona and Florida will decide whether to change their constitutions to prohibit you and your loved ones from getting married. In Arkansas, voters will decide whether to ban all unmarried couples, including gay and lesbian couples, from fostering or adopting children.

We're working day in and day out to defeat these terrible amendments, and we need your help.

Now is the time for LGBT families in all states to draw the line in the sand on the attacks against our community. Say NO to further restrictions on our families' ability to care for each other by contributing to one or all of these important ballot campaigns right now. If you can afford to give to each campaign, please do. If one state is most important to you, give to that campaign. Whatever and however you decide to give, just know that that our families have so much at stake in this election.

Your contribution today could decide whether we're advancing positive legislation for our families in the future or continuing to spend precious time and resources fighting off these horrendous attacks.

To contribute to defeating the marriage ban in California, click here.
To contribute to defeating the marriage ban in Florida, click here.
To contribute to defeating the marriage ban in Arizona, click here.
To contribute to defeating the foster/adoption ban in Arkansas, click here.

In these unstable times, your family's contribution is profoundly appreciate

Sincerely,

Jennifer Chrisler,
Executive Director, Family Equality Council

P.S. Tomorrow night is Family Equality Council's National Awards Dinner at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. As we celebrate the growth and impact of LGBT families and Family Equality Council nationally, I would love to share with our honorees, HBO and the Pop Luck Club, and our featured guest, Cynthia Nixon not only the news about Connecticut, but the fact that our families responded to this call and contributed to secure equality in these four critical states. Give what you can to move our families forward!

As Mike mentioned in the previous post, the Ad Council launched a new campaign seeking to end the use of homophobic language.

Here's one featuring Hilary Duff.

By STUART ELLIOTT

FOR the first time since the Advertising Council was founded in 1942, the organization — which directs and coordinates public service campaigns on behalf of Madison Avenue and the media industry — is introducing ads meant to tackle a social issue of concern to gays and lesbians.

The campaign, which is scheduled to be announced by the council in Washington on Wednesday, will seek to discourage bullying and harassment of teenagers who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

The campaign, created pro bono by the New York office of Arnold Worldwide, urges an end to using derogatory language, particularly labeling anything deemed negative or unpleasant as “so gay.” That is underlined by the theme of the campaign: “When you say, ‘That’s so gay,’ do you realize what you say? Knock it off.”

There will be television and radio commercials, print and outdoor ads and a special Web site devoted to the campaign (thinkb4youspeak.com). Some spots feature celebrities, the young actress Hilary Duff and the comedian Wanda Sykes, delivering the message.

The campaign is on behalf of a nonprofit organization in New York called the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, or Glsen (pronounced glisten), which promotes tolerance among students. Glsen is spending about $2 million to develop and produce the campaign.

•

The introduction of the campaign will be accompanied by Glsen’s release of the 2007 edition of an annual report, the National School Climate Survey. The survey will report that 9 in 10 teenagers who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender said they were verbally harassed during the last school year. Almost half said they were also physically harassed because of their sexual orientation.

The campaign is “something I dreamed about for 10 years,” said Kevin Jennings, the founder and executive director at Glsen, and has been in active development for two years.

“If you follow hateful language, you eventually get hurtful behavior,” he added. “The chain of events begins with kids learning it’s O.K. to disrespect people.”

The campaign is “a very bold step” on the part of the council, Mr. Jennings said, in that “this will be, by a million miles, the largest public education campaign on L.G.B.T. issues.”

“I think they know they’re going to take some flak,” he added, referring to the leadership of the council.

Peggy Conlon, the president and chief executive of the council, said she did not believe, however, that there would be negative reaction.

“Before Glsen made the investment, we agreed we would poll the media community,” Ms. Conlon said, to determine how receptive outlets like newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations and Web sites would be to run such ads.

In conversations with public service directors — the staff members at media outlets who help determine which pro bono campaigns run — “a very small percentage said they would not run the work,” she said, “not because it was ‘radioactive,’ but because they thought it was not appropriate for their target audience,” which may be older than those to whom the campaign is addressed.

As for this being the first campaign under the aegis of the council to tackle discrimination against gays and lesbians, Ms. Conlon said, “we always had dialogue with that community,” which had been “focused on a different issue,” AIDS prevention.

“We’re always looking for important messages on discrimination,” she said. “We thought this would be a fabulous campaign to take on because it’s surprising how pervasive this language is.”

The council has presented antidiscrimination campaigns like “A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” for the United Negro College Fund, and ads promoting gender equality (“Expect the best from a girl and that’s what you’ll get”).

In the commercial featuring Ms. Sykes, three teenage boys at a pizzeria are making fun of a silly statue of a pizza chef. One says, “That’s so gay, really gay,” to which Ms. Sykes replies, “Please don’t say that,” and then asks how he would like it if she were to say something she disliked was “so ‘16-year-old boy with a cheesy mustache.’ ”

Some print ads are taking a similar tack. “That’s so ‘Jock who can complete a pass but not a sentence,’ ” one headline reads. Another says, “That’s so ‘Gamer guy who has more video games than friends.’ ” The ads end this way: “Think that’s mean? How do you think ‘That’s so gay’ sounds? Hurtful. So, knock it off.”

It is a tricky task to create a campaign that speaks to young people in a tone they do not deem patronizing or condescending. To accomplish that, the campaign was researched and tested with the intended audience.

“Kids that age are tough and media savvy; they see through things quickly,” said John Staffen, chief creative officer at Arnold N.Y.C., part of the Arnold Worldwide unit of Havas.

As a result, “you can’t be too preachy,” he added, “and you can’t sell too hard.”

•

So the goal was “to show the situation in a new light,” Mr. Staffen said, “to point out this language can be hurtful and let the kids make their own decisions.”

“Ultimately, we believe they will make the right decision,” he added.

Two students who were shown the ads to elicit their reactions praised the approach.

“These ads do a great job of making you stop and think,” said David Aponte, 16, a junior at Battlefield High School in Haymarket, Va., who described himself as a “straight ally” of Glsen and other organizations doing similar work. “I think people could connect to them,” he added.

Lynnette Schweimler, 17, a senior at Thunderridge High School in Highlands Ranch, Colo., said she hoped the campaign would “open people’s eyes a little bit.”

Ms. Schweimler said that when she was attacked last year by assailants who singled her out for being a lesbian, “they used a lot of derogatory language.”

The repeating of such language “builds up intolerance,” she said, because “it’s used so often, people don’t understand the meaning of it.

The second debate between presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain is tonight at 8p on all major news networks. Please tune in and make an informed decision this election!

The following article was posted today on lesbiatopia.com by Renee Gannon.

Ten years ago from today, October 7, 2008, Laramie Police Dept. Officer Reggie Fluty went to the scene reported by a bicycle rider - a young man tied to a fence and obviously beaten very badly. Her words in the Laramie Project - that "the only part of his face not covered in blood were where he had been crying" are one of the most saddening and tragic moments in GLBTQI history. This was the day Matthew Shepard was found.

I wanted to post this for everyone as a 10-year memorial to the discovery of Matt, who was in a coma at the time of discovery, but also to everyone else who has been a vitcim of hate and violence.

Matthew Shepard was a good kid. He was the oldest son of Dennis Shepard and Judy Shepard. He attended Crest Hill Elementary School, Dean Morgan Junior High, and the first two years of high school at Natrona County High School. He was a member of St. Mark's Episcopal Church. Shepard spent his junior and senior years of high school at The American School In Switzerland. After graduating in 1995, he attended Catawba College and Casper College before he relocated to Denver. Shepard then became a first-year political science major at the University of Wyoming and was chosen as the student representative for the Wyoming Environmental Council.


He was described by his parents and good close friend from Orlando, Florida, Frankie J. McGraw, as "...an optimistic and accepting young man ...[who]... had a special gift of relating to almost everyone. He was the type of person that was very approachable and always looked to new challenges. Matthew had a great passion for equality and always stood up for the acceptance of people's differences."

The two men who attacked Matthew Shepard, Henderson and McKinney, were not charged with a hate crime, as no Wyoming criminal statute provided for such a charge. The disturbing and brutal nature of Matthew Shepard's murder prompted calls for new legislation addressing hate crime, urged particularly by those who believed that Shepard was targeted on the basis of his sexual orientation. Under current United States federal law and Wyoming state lawcrimes committed on the basis of sexual orientation are not prosecutable as hate crimes.

In the following session of the Wyoming Legislature, a bill was introduced defining certain attacks motivated by victim identity as hate crimes, but the measure failed on a 30-30 tie in the Wyoming House of Representatives.

At the federal level, then-President Bill Clinton renewed attempts to extend federal hate crime legislation to include gay and lesbian individuals, women, and people with disabilities. These efforts were rejected by the United States House of Representatives in 1999. In 2000, both houses of Congress passed such legislation, but it was stripped out in conference committee.

On March 20, 2007, the Matthew Shepard Act (HR 1592) was introduced as federal bipartisan legislation in the U.S. Congress, sponsored by Democrat John Conyers with 171 co-sponsors. Matthew's parents, Judy and Dennis, were present at the introduction ceremony. The bill passed the House of Representatives on May 3, 2007. Ultimately, the amendment was dropped by the Democratic leadership because of opposition from antiwar Democrats, conservative groups, and President George W. Bush.

Please use this article as a reminder that we are still very far from receiving equal rights and equal protections in this country. The fact that there still is not a national law protecting our community from hate and violence perpetuated by our own sexuality and gender identities is not only disheartening but frustrating too.

How many others out there do you think have been a victim of a hate crime whose perpetrators didn't receive the justice they deserved? How many people do you know personally that have been a victim of some kind of hate crime, attack or slur? When is enough, enough?

This is an extremely big election and I urge each and every one of you to stay educated on the issues involved in this election. Barack Obama supports expanding federal hate crimes to include sexual orientation/gender identity and he might be our only hope to finally get the national protection we deserve. Let's do it for Matthew Shepard. Let's do it for all the innocent victims whose attacks have gone unnoticed or unreported time after time. Let's do it for ourselves.