-- A Harris survey finds that 61 percent of U.S. adults think that companies should be free to offer partnership benefits to gay and lesbian employees.
The fifth annual Out and Equal Survey also found that 72 percent of those questioned favor company non-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation, up from 63 percent in 2002.
Gays and lesbians included in the survey had a growing comfort level with being open about their orientation. Half said they would be comfortable displaying a same-sex partner's photograph in the office, and 62 percent said they would be comfortable introducing same-sex partners to supervisors and other management.
In 2002, only 34 percent were comfortable with photographs and 41 percent with introductions.


READ THE SURVEY

©2006 www.RonMills.us

The DNC's new gay voice Longtime Democratic activist Brian Bond is the party's new gay outreach adviser. And he's not worried by that fact that his predecessor was fired shortly after that man's boyfriend criticized the DNC.


By Christopher Lisotta

The DNC's new gay voice

Brian Bond, former executive director for the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and Democratic Party liaison, was expecting to take a job leading the gay political group National Stonewall Democrats. That was until Donald Hitchcock was fired from his post as executive director of the Democratic National Committee's Gay and Lesbian Leadership Council in April, and Bond stepped in.Hitchcock was fired by DNC chair Howard Dean one week after Hitchcock's partner, Democratic Party operative Paul Yandura, wrote an open letter criticizing Dean and the Democrats for not doing enough to defend the rights of gay and lesbian couples. The DNC has stated repeatedly that Hitchcock was not let go in retaliation for the letter.Bond sat down with The Advocate during his first full day at work on May 9 to talk about the party's prospects in 2006, how gays and lesbians fit in, and whether he thinks he could get fired for something his partner says.Does the DNC have a strategy to combat what promises to be another big round of constitutional marriage bans on state ballots this year?I would say yes, but I think you have to look at this in both a short-term and long-term context. In the short term, clearly strategy is being put in place. Obviously I'm new here, so I have some ideas myself. But at the same time there is a long-term piece to this too. One of the things Governor Dean has done very well with the staff here is to start and put an infrastructure in place that starts bringing people up through the process. They are doing an incredible amount of training that I don't think they are getting credit for, quite frankly. Having been the former gay desk person [before Dean eliminated it in favor of a more integrated approach to outreach], I can tell you I actually think the new approach, the way the governor has integrated things-where everybody has to talk and work together here and everybody knows what's going on-is going to be more beneficial in the long run. That is part of the reason I wanted to take this job.Some people were very critical of the DNC getting rid of its desk system. How did you feel about it, having been someone on that desk?This integrated approach will work better. It doesn't minimize the impact of the community. I mean, my work is going to be [with] GLBT [people], but I think it allows you to bring more people in. I mean, I had to fight for pencils. Having to call a major donor to get pencils for your desk was a little tough when you should be focusing on the issues. They changed the paradigm here, and I think in the end it will pay off.Are you afraid that if your partner or boyfriend says something critical [of the DNC], you're going to get fired?No. First of all, I trust my partner beyond a shadow of a doubt.Some people are saying the reason your predecessor is gone is because of what his partner was saying publicly. Do you agree?I think timing in this whole situation is what it was. It's apples and oranges. I don't think they had anything to do with each other. It was a timing issue.What position were you up for at the National Stonewall Democrats when you decided to take this job instead?I was in the final round for the National Stonewall Democrats [executive director position]. In the end, I love that organization. And I know they will be an integral part of whatever is happening here in the DNC. They have to be. If I can be their advocate and bring them more into the process-it's a great organization, and it is grassroots. It is what we should be doing.How would you respond to gay people who say, "I'm not going to write a check to the DNC because they have not been as supportive of gay couples as they could be"?
One of the wonderful things about the Democratic Party is open discussion, open dialogue, and hopefully, constructive criticism. In the end, part of my job will be to use this as an opportunity to digest suggestions people have, with a respect of knowing we both want the same thing in the end. [We need to] identify the coalition partners, obviously the [National Gay and Lesbian] Task Force, Victory Fund, Stonewall, and see what roles people need to play, and then just get to work. Because we're losing what we need to be doing right now, and that's focusing on winning elections. Honestly, I respect everyone who has criticisms right now. I hope people know me as somebody who will listen, and bring it back to the table, and try to come up with plans that work.Do you think the Democratic Party should have an official position on marriage equality, or is it better to let that be an issue each candidate has to deal with?Even in the infamous Yandura letter, Paul says he doesn't expect [the DNC] to be right there on marriage right now but to be focusing on winning elections, which is what I think we should be doing. And listening to not just donors but the grassroots activists for what works in their area and moving forward with that. We've got to get someone like a [minority leader] Nancy Pelosi in charge of the House versus what we've got now, or this is all for naught.What do you think will happen in the Senate with the Federal Marriage Amendment, which is now scheduled for a vote on June 6?All I can tell you is at this point it's about the incredible work [Human Rights Campaign president] Joe Solmonese and HRC have been doing right now. It is about scapegoating. Having just started, I'm still getting my feet wet, but I do know the HRC is putting together a strategy that will involve a lot of our coalition partners.Do you think in the 2004 elections the state marriage amendments drove turnout and influenced votes?I need to focus on the future instead of second-guessing some of this. I do believe one of things I can be helpful with is helping with message. Getting some of our gay elected officials out there, they are definitely part of our process for moving things forward. I know Stonewall for a fact did an excellent job in the 2004 elections. [But] the scapegoating, the wedge issues, it's going to work where it's going to work. Some of it was dictated by the presidential campaign too, not by just specific issues.Do you see the recent wave of proposed bans on adoption by gays as similar to the political wedge issue marriage has been?That's a good question. I have to take that from a personal note too. My partner has a 12-year-old daughter. When you talk to anybody about how they raise their children, it's a passionate issue. I think it is dealt with differently. People feel more deeply about the adoption battle and fighting it, while some of the community is still split on where the we should be on civil unions versus marriage versus domestic partnership.Are you optimistic about political change in 2006?I can only say I'm very excited to be working here right now, or I should say, again. The governor has a great vision for what we need to be doing, and it is focused on the states and the grassroots level. It is going to be exciting to be a part of that. [Because] of the people that I have met in my one hour here, it's going to be an incredible election cycle. But we've got to get focused back on the elections.Are there any other issues you hope to focus on in your new position?
The DNC has been spending a lot of time training volunteers. Part of their training process is to learn how to do outreach to the GLBT community. I think that is a significant shift. It's helping basically to build the party from the ground up, but also with the inclusion of the GLBT piece. It also ties in as well to the whole delegation selection process of making us part of that process. One of the things I know they have done, and I have a definite interest in, is electing more GLBT candidates and having them be part of the process.
--
Posted At Advocate.com

Howard Dean says he's sorry In an exclusive interview with The Advocate, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee says that his mistake on The 700 Club should not blind LGBT voters to his party’s ongoing, hands-on work for equality. Does he support marriage equality himself? Sort of. By Bruce C. SteeleAn Advocate.com exclusive posted, May 17, 2006









Howard Dean screwed up, and he’s sorry. Appearing May 10 on the Christian Broadcasting Network talk show The 700 Club—antigay preacher Pat Robertson’s home base—the chairman of the Democratic National Committee misstated his party’s platform on marriage equality. “The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says that marriage is between a man and a woman,” he said. In fact the platform calls for “full inclusion of gay and lesbian families” and says the definition of marriage should be left up to the states.
Speaking to The Advocate by telephone six days later, the former Vermont governor—who signed into law the nation’s first marriage-like civil unions law covering same-sex couples—said simply, “I made a mistake, and it was a bad mistake.” But having won unprecedented LGBT support in his home state and in his 2003 campaign for president, Dean added, “I would hope one misstatement is not going to destroy the relationship that I’ve had with the LGBT community over the past four or five years.” [See the full interview below.]
But the 700 Club incident wasn’t the first bad press the DNC got in the gay media in 2006. In February the Washington Blade reported that the party had, months earlier, abolished all constituent outreach desks—including the staff responsible for LGBT voters—replacing minority-specific outreach efforts with a new program called the American Majority Partnership. Democratic Party fund-raiser Jeff Soref resigned from the DNC in protest, telling the Blade gays were being “remarginalized” in the party.
That same month, a six-page Annual Report to the Grassroots issued by the DNC failed to include any mention of LGBT issues or voters. The party quickly issued a clarification underlining its support for LGBT equality and distancing itself from the apparently unofficial and incomplete “report.” As if that wasn’t enough, the DNC was back in the news in May, when Dean fired the party’s gay outreach adviser, Donald Hitchcock, shortly after Hitchcock’s partner, Paul Yandura, had sent out an e-mail critical of the party. Yandura’s April 20 “open letter” accused the Democratic Party of refusing to battle antigay statewide initiatives, such as state constitutional amendments to outlaw marriage equality, and suggested LGBT people withhold donations from the party.
The DNC immediately hired Brian Bond to replace Hitchcock, and a spokeswoman said that Hitchcock’s firing was “not retaliation.”
A week later came Dean’s gaff on The 700 Club.
At a time when your opponents have perfected the art of mobilizing their base to win close elections, what’s the chairman of the DNC doing on The 700 Club? We’re also trying to mobilize our base. We have people in all 50 states knocking on doors, and we’re doing specific [organizing] with the LGBT community for the first time. We’re paying for these organizers in every state—there’s 200 of them around the country—and when we train them, among all the other things they have to [learn], specifically, is how to empower our friends and family in the LGBT community. We talk to them about how to talk about LGBT issues, with the straight community and with the LGBT community. We also have an arrangement with Stonewall Democrats—they were very active in our million-household canvass two weeks ago. We’re really trying to integrate the LGBT community so they don’t just talk to each other, they also speak to the straight community—because ultimately, I think, that’s how we’re going to start converting folks to understand that gay Americans are Americans first, who happen to be gay.
But while it’s good to hear that the DNC is doing grass-roots organizing on gay issues that we haven’t necessarily heard about, what we see on the news is you on The 700 Club. Gay voters supported your presidential campaign [in 2003 and early 2004] because they saw you as cutting through the bullshit and speaking your mind. Now you appear to be pandering to the antigay far right. Why should gay voters trust you with their issues when you’re on The 700 Club? Well, to be honest with you, I was hurt a little bit by the reaction, because I certainly made a mistake in misstating the party’s platform.
How did that happen?Because that was the position that the presidential candidate had in the last election—I just assumed that that was the party platform, and it wasn’t. I just made a mistake, and it was a bad mistake, but if you look at what else I said on [the Christian Broadcasting Network]—and it’s not the last time I’m going to go on CBN—I went on and I said gay people need to be included. We stand up for equal rights for every American and the belief that everybody deserves to live with dignity and respect. That wasn’t sent around in all those e-mails, but that was part of the transcript too. Look, I don’t defend the mistake I made—I made a mistake and I misstated the party’s platform, but I also stood up for gay and lesbian Americans on that show. Look, with my history, there’s no way I’m going to back away from the LGBT community.
But then why eliminate all discussion of gay issues and gay voters from the DNC’s Grassroots Report, which came out earlier this year?To be honest with you, I don’t know what the Grassroots Report is, I’m embarrassed to say. [DNC spokesman Damien LaVera explained after this interview that the so-called Grassroots Report was not an official DNC publication but a fund-raising e-mail on which Governor Dean had no input. The e-mail also failed to mention outreach to African-American voters, LaVera noted.]
When we all know that privately, many Democratic politicians support marriage equality, why can’t the Democratic Party take a firm stand on equality?Well, I think we do take a firm stand on equality; there’s no question about that.
But not for marriage equality.Well, the question is how we get to equality under the law for all Americans, and I think the Democratic Party has provided that [plan]. It’s obviously a difficult debate, but there’s no backing away from equal rights under the law for all Americans, including gay and lesbian Americans. The question is how do you get there, and I think that’s what’s still being debated.
Do you personally support marriage equality for same-sex couples?I’ve never answered that question. What I have said is that I support equal rights under the law for every single American.
That sounds like you want to say you’re in favor of marriage equality without saying you’re in favor of marriage equality.You know, I represent a party that has a very broad constituency. I think there are people who are committed to equal rights under the law but don’t think you have to have [same-sex] marriage in order to do it, and there are people who think you have to have marriage. I’m not a candidate at this point; all I can do is say is that we’re going to continue to work really hard for equal rights under the law, and we’re going to continue to work really hard to kill nasty approaches and divisive approaches like the marriage amendment [which would write antigay marriage discrimination into the U.S. Constitution and has been scheduled for an early-June vote in the U.S. Senate by Majority Leader Bill Frist]. We do not support amendments to the United States Constitution that scapegoat communities.
Why do you think it makes news when someone like Sen. Russ Feingold comes out in favor of marriage equality? Why aren’t more Democratic politicians who privately favor marriage equality putting that into their campaigns and platforms?Because I think it’s extremely controversial, and we need to work through that controversy. There’s a lot of education that has to be done, and that’s why we decided to ask Stonewall [Democrats] to help us with the [50-state] canvass. It’s why we got rid of the so-called gay desk and all the other desks, because we wanted to integrate folks into our approach to mainstream voters. We don’t want to pigeonhole, for example, gay staff or black staff or Hispanic staff or anybody else anymore. We want to have an outreach [effort] that emphasizes the diversity of our party. My guess is, we have more LGBT staffers at the DNC now than we’ve ever had before. Those folks can do a lot more than just do LGBT outreach, but each time they represent themselves as openly gay or lesbian to an American who happens to be straight, that American finds a human being who’s a competent, qualified person who happens to be gay, and that kicks the ball down the court in terms of equal rights under the law.
Coming out is always a political act, I agree. But it’s a very private one. I think gay and lesbian voters are looking for the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates to take a firm public stand on issues of equality: on overturning the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, on support for gay youth, on rights for gay parents, on scrapping abstinence programs in favor of real AIDS prevention education. Why can’t Democratic candidates stand up and say very firmly that these things need to be addressed? I’m happy to do that. When I was running for president, I did that. Don’t forget, I’m still on record as opposing [the federal] DOMA [signed by President Clinton] and thinking that “don’t ask, don’t tell” ought to be eliminated. I still publicly make fun of the Bush administration for kicking out Arab translators because they happened to be gay. I’m with you on all these issues. I think it’s very important—I have to underline this—that the LGBT community and the Democratic Party not get divided over the one issue that we’re still having a big conversation about, which is the conversation about marriage equality. Because all the other things, certainly, the chairman of the DNC is with you on. And many Democrats are with you on. Maybe not all; maybe not as many as we think should [be]. But I am with you on “don’t ask, don’t tell”; I am with you on adoption rights; I am with you on DOMA. I’m not perfect, but I think when you compare us to the other side, we’re pretty close.
But without a unified party standing firmly for equality, how do you motivate gay and lesbian people on a national level to be as supportive of the Democratic Party as many of them were of your campaign? Where are the big gestures to make people excited and want to give money and support it and get out there and vote? I think one of the things that we have to do is be very clear when things like the Frist amendment come up. We have to be very clear about standing up and saying, “No, this is wrong and this is divisive.” And I think that’s how you do it—we have to be out there doing this grassroots, personal-recognition thing that I talked about before. We have to show that we’re willing to stand with the LGBT community, and I think we have. I think my record shows [that]. I would hope one misstatement is not going to destroy the relationship that I’ve had with the LGBT community over the past four or five years.
No, I don’t believe one misstatement will, but there have been a series of what are perceived as missteps, and I’m wondering what bigger gesture can be made to counter that series of unfortunate events. Yes, standing up against the Frist amendment is a good thing. Do you think the Democrats in the Senate have actually done that in a very public way? Have they gone on the Sunday talk shows to say, “This is a bad thing”? Well, in fairness, it’s not up [for a vote] yet, and usually people don’t crank that up. This week, it’ll be immigration, and we’ll get to [the Frist amendment] by June 5, and the talk shows will do that [the weekend before the vote]. And I’ll certainly be up there saying it’s a bad thing, and it didn’t pass the last time, principally because a majority of Democrats stood up and said, “No, we’re not going to do this.”
Among the missteps I referred to, I have to ask you what happened with Donald Hitchcock. Obviously, there’s the appearance that he was fired because of something that his partner, Paul Yandura, said. That’s absolutely false. But I can also tell you that in fairness to Donald, I’m not going to discuss his personnel records in public. We’re not going to do that. But there’s no way that his termination was in any way related to Paul’s views on anything.
Did you know Paul’s views?I actually have not seen the e-mail [Paul had written]. I’ve never seen the e-mail, but I personally did not know about the e-mail until after Donald was asked to leave.
We have time for just a couple more questions. I have to ask: What happened with [Iraqi War vet] Paul Hackett [who says he was forced by top level Democrats to bow out of the primary for the U.S. Senate in Ohio]? Many gay voters in particular thought he was a terrific candidate and a fresh voice for the Democratic Party, and he was pro–equal marriage. Why was he not allowed to run in Ohio? I thought that was a mistake—I publicly said so. I think that folks in the party committees ought not to be heavy-handed about deciding who can and who can’t run. I was one of the people who talked Paul Hackett into running for the Senate, and I disagreed publicly with those leaders who participated in getting him out.
So are we going to hear you really calling the Bush administration on everything at every turn for the next six months until the November election?I haven’t stopped doing that. As I said, I made one mistake misstating the party platform, and I just hope that the LGBT community will remember all the good things that I’ve done. Look, I’m going to go on Christian [broadcasting] again, because we need to reach out to evangelicals and I don’t think it was wrong to go on Christian broadcasting. Misstating the platform was wrong, but judge me by the next time I go on, by what I say to the Christian evangelical audience and see if it’s not consistent with standing up for the rights of every single American and being proud to be supported by the LGBT community.
After time expired with Governor Dean, The Advocate had some follow-up questions for DNC spokesman LaVera:
The governor talked about grassroots organizing efforts on a state-by-state level. But he didn’t specifically mention putting party resources into the effort to defeat antigay initiatives and constitutional amendments on the ballot this fall in many states. Is the DNC helping to organize to defeat these divisive and antigay ballot measures? The DNC and Governor Dean are currently engaged in work related to fighting the Republican effort to scapegoat the LGBT community through a Federal Marriage Amendment.
And statewide ballot initiatives?And statewide ballot initiatives.
So the Democratic Party is, in fact, prepared to work against antigay statewide ballot initiatives?We’re already working to do that. Not that we’re prepared to—we are, in fact, doing it.
Can you be more specific?A couple of things: At the national level, we are consulting with the key groups in the community and, in fact, just had a conference call today in which the Human Rights Campaign briefed our state party chairs on important polling information about the issue [of LGBT equality]. And at the state level, we are providing important resources through our partnership program by training all the organizers that we have hired in these states on how to reach out to and communicate with the LGBT community, and also on how the LGBT community is working with the straight community as part of our effort to make sure that we can fight ballot initiatives in the state and elect Democratic legislature in the states where a lot of these fights originate.
What I got from the governor is that not all Democratic candidates are on board for fighting for gay rights. How do you deal with that?Democrats generally are united around the notion that all Americans should be treated equally under the law. That’s a common commitment among Democrats. And we’re all committed to ending these Republican efforts to scapegoat LGBT families, and that is consistent across the board for Democrats. So we’re all united around that, and that’s why we’re fighting these ballot initiatives in the states and why we’re fighting the Federal Marriage Amendment as well.
But do you think Democratic candidates running for office in the states that are facing antigay ballot initiatives will be vocal about their opposition to these initiatives? Is that something that the DNC would like to see happen?I can’t speak for those candidates—you’d have to talk to them. But we’re providing the resources to the state parties so that they can help organize against state ballot initiatives, and we’re also providing them the resources to take back the state legislature so these things don’t make it to the ballot in the first place.
But there’s no way of telling whether these state Democratic committees and specific state candidates are actually going to utilize this information and these resources.We encourage in all candidates in the states’ parties to stand up for equal protection under the law for all Americans. There’s hundreds of candidates—I can’t speak for all of them.

National Stonewall Democrats

www.stonewalldemocrats.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: John Marble (202) 625-1382
johnmarble@stonewalldemocrats.org
Stonewall Statement on Position of Democratic Party Platform
Statement Follows Remarks by Governor Dean on 700 ClubWednesday, May 10, 2006

Washington, DC - Today, the National Stonewall Democrats released the following statement on remarks offered by DNC Chair Governor Howard Dean on the 700 Club program:"Governor Dean correctly understands that our party needs to convey the values that are championed by Democrats and shared with the majority of Americans, including those in the evangelical community. Many evangelicals reject Republican efforts to politicize faith and share in the work of our party to create an inclusive society that respects all families.""Our founders created a federal system that allows individual states the freedom to develop policy for their own families as they see fit. Democrats do not believe that the federal government should forcefully dictate family policy for individual states, as championed by congressional Republicans and the Bush Administration. Therefore, we strongly point out that Governor Dean incorrectly spoke when stating that the 2004 Democratic Party platform defines marriage as between a man and a woman."- Jo Wyrick, Interim Executive Director, National Stonewall DemocratsDuring his interview, broadcast today by the 700 Club program, Governor Dean stated that "the Democratic Party platform from 2004 says marriage is between a man and a woman." Governor Dean went on to point out that Democrats seek to respect and provide equal legal protections to all families.From the 2004 Democratic Platform:"We support full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of our nation and seek equal responsibilities, benefits, and protections for these families. In our country, marriage has been defined at the state level for 200 years, and we believe it should continue to be defined there. We repudiate President Bush's divisive effort to politicize the Constitution by pursuing a 'Federal Marriage Amendment.' Our goal is to bring Americans together, not drive them apart."------National Stonewall Democrats is the only national organization of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Democrats, with more than 90 local chapters across the nation. NSD is committed to working through the Democratic Party to advance the rights of all people regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.--

By Paul Harris

PHarris@OurIndy.com



While
supporters of the “Religous Right” were meeting a little over two miles to
the north at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church for their “Love Won Out”
conference gay activists and supportive clergy members from a number of
backgrounds held their own conference at First Congregational Church. About 150
people attended the gathering called “Love Welcomes All” which was addressed
by clergymen, a distinguished psychiatrist, and the author of “Anything But
Straight,” Wayne Besen.



Chip Arndt Miami LGBT Caucus

The day started with a press conference and then proceeded to the conference
proper. Frank Faine, on the staff of the Sunshine Cathedral and one of the
organizers of the conference, stated that the goal of the conference was “to
proclaim God’s love is for all” as well as pointing out the harm done by the
ex-gay ministries by explosing the flaws and dangers of the ex-gay
ministries. He described the activities of the Religious Right as “doing
spiritual violence” to gays and lesbians.



Elder Nori Rost pointed out that far from supporting the family the Religious
Right’s policies actually excluded family members and placed conditions on
God’s love with “their insistence that parents treat their GLBT children
differently.” She called on the Focus on the Family organization to “stop
lieing about us.” Later in the day she pointed to the number of estranged
families involving members of the GLBT community. She blamed the Religious Right
for “spreading the language of fear, not love.” The Reverend Rost preferred
to say not that she was “coming out” but that she was “welcoming you in to
the reality of my life.” She pointed to the high levels of divorce in
heterosexual marriages. “When was the last time you saw a Focus on the Family
conference on divorce?” she asked.



Dr. Jack Drescher is an internationally acknowledged psychiatrist and author. He
opened his comments by saying that “homosexuality does not require therapy”
and that “most of the treatments don’t work” and that “people often feel
worse.” If gay men do get married to women the resulting “families often
live under tragic circumstances.” He also pointed out that “no mainstream
qualified school of therapy teaches reparative therapy.”



When he came to make his presentation he showed that not only did the vast
majority of people who entered conversion therapy fail to change their same-sex
attractions but that many of them suffered long-term harm as a result of the
alleged ‘therapy.’ He pointed out that the American Psychiatric Association
(APA) had decided that conversion therapy does not work and is both harmful and
unethical.



Jason Cianciotto, the Research Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task
Force Policy Institute, appealed to Dr James Dobson of Focus on the Family to
“stop lying to parents about their children,” claiming that what he was
doing was harmful and “only served to split families.”



Cianciotto went on to describe the state of Florida as “Ex-Gay Central.”

He stated that between 2000 and the end of 2006 there will have been 53 “Love
Won Out” and similar conferences of which 11 of them will have been held in
Florida, more than in any other state! Cianciotto went on to relate the story of
how a five-year old diagnosed as being “prehomosexual” had been taken
to see Dr Joseph Nicolosi because he liked the color red and liked to dance on
his toes!



The person perhaps most responsible for highlighting the failures of the Ex-Gay
movement in the popular media in recent years has been Wayne Besen, author of
the book “Anything But Straight.” He was the journalist who photographed
(supposedly) ex-gay leader John Paulk at a Washington D.C. gay bar. He has also
collected many other instances of supposedly “cured” homosexuals behaving in
anything but “cured” ways. He described many of the ex-gays as being
“living spoofs rather than living proofs” that reparative therapy works. He
also pointed out that in spite of all the publicity the Religious Right have put
into opposing equal rights for gays and lesbians they are offering the ex-gay
ministries less financial support than they used to. Besen described the
ex-gay ministries as offering “promises that they can’t deliver.” For
Besen the main reason the Religious Right used the gay issue was for their own
political and financial ends.



In the afternoon Sky, a transgender male to female, was introduced by Carole
Benowitz, the Florida statewide coordinator for PFLAG. Sky spoke movingly about
her life in foster homes and the rapes and violence that she suffered in
Pentecostal homes which led to her attempting suicide.



The challenge facing gay activists and progressive clergymen, both gay and
straight, was sketched out by the Reverend Hal McSwain, of the host church,
First Congregational - “Our most daunting task is maintaining the high ground
while maintaining a regard for the integrity of every human being.”



At the conclusion of the “Love Welcomes All” conference a brief peaceful
demonstration was held outside Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church to coincide with
the end of the “Love Won Out” event that was attended by about 50 people.



Editor’s Note: The Independent congratulates all those involved with
mounting the “Love Welcomes All” Conference.

Posted at The independendent

Love Welcomes All conference planned
On Saturday, May 6th, at the First Congregational Church of Fort Lauderdale, United Church of Christ, 2501 NE 30th St., the South Florida GLBT and Friends Interfaith Clergy Association, and Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) will sponsor Love Welcomes All.
The conference, taking place from 1:00 pm to 4:30 pm, is designed to provide an alternative message to Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out” conference, scheduled for the same day at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.
Love Welcomes All will feature nationally recognized researchers and clergy such as the Reverend Elder Nori Rost and Dr. Jack Drescher, who will speak on the harm caused by so-called “reparative therapy”, a method purported to make gay people straight.
Love Welcomes All will encourage responsible men and women from all walks of life not to remain silent while members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community, especially the youth, are called “sinful, disordered, perverted, unnatural, or trapped” by groups like Focus on the Family.
The message of Love Welcomes All is that all people deserve respect and dignity as full members of our community and society. Furthermore, it maintains there is nothing wrong with being gay or homosexual, that a person’s sexual orientation is not in need of change, but is to be affirmed as an essential part of their humanity.
For more information or to register contact Marc Paige at 401-837-6818 or at marcpaige@msn.com

The percentage of working-age Americans with moderate to middle incomes who lacked health insurance for at least part of the year rose to 41 percent in 2005, a dramatic increase from the 28 percent in 2001 without coverage, a study released on Wednesday found.

Full article.

This is getting spooky. Nearly half the country... I guess "working age" doesn't include people on Medicare, the single-payer health plan for over-65-year-olds. Those guys are 100% insured.

Hot Spots Magazine profiles Florida GLBT Caucus President, Michael Albetta

See the full article