Winter, 2002  Newsletter (Jan - Feb)

Harwich Community Forum

An open forum, “Making Our Communities Safe for All Our Youth,” will be held at the Harwich Community Center on Oak St., Harwich, April 29, 7 - 9 pm. Our PFLAG chapter is assisting Harwich organizations with the planning.

The Massachusetts State Department of Health awarded a grant to Boston’s Safe School Project to provide annual help to three towns to promote the well-being of GLBT youth. Harwich was chosen this year, with the focus on the many different kinds of discrimination facing our kids today. Please call Pem if you can help or attend. 508-432-8119.

About the Education Bill and the Boy Scouts
[www.glsen.org]

Why was the Boy Scouts Equal Access Act introduced and incorporated, as amended, into the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)?

In 2000, the US Supreme Court held that the Boy Scouts of America, as a private organization, had the right to discriminate against both gay youth who wanted to be members of BSA and gay adults who wanted to volunteer their time as leaders. Following the Supreme Court decision, some individual schools began to reevaluate or terminate their relationship with the Boy Scouts. Senator Jesse Helms introduced an amendment to ESEA that prohibited the use of federal funds to discriminate against the BSA and affiliated organizations.

According to language in the Boy Scouts Equal Access Act, elementary and secondary schools--to the extent that they create open or limited public forums--are prohibited from denying equal access or a fair opportunity to meet to any group officially affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America that wishes to conduct meetings in school facilities before or after school. In other words, if a school allows an organization to use its facilities, it must give other organizations, including the Boy Scouts, an opportunity to use their facilities. Practically speaking, the Boy Scouts provision in ESEA is an unnecessary solution for a problem that does not exist.

Although many have confused access with sponsorship, this provision does not require schools to sponsor Boy Scout troops, just to afford them equal access.

Cape Cod ‘Gayla Ball’

The Welcoming Congregation Committee of First Parish Brewster invites you to their second annual 'Gayla Ball,’ a glamorous celebration bringing together Cape Cod's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual community, friends, and allies.

This year’s ball will benefit First Parish Brewster, in honor of the church’s historic commitment to the GLBT community.

Dance music will be by The Moonlighters and feature Linda Delorey.
Saturday, February 9, 2002 8 pm to midnight
Sheraton Hyannis Resort, West End Circle, Hyannis
Light refreshments, Cash bar $45 per person (more if you can, less if you can't)
For information or tickets call Skip (508) 430-7700 or Joanne (508) 896-3406

Boston Dinner Dance

Please join us for an elegant evening of dinner and dancing at the famous Boston Park Plaza Hotel on Sunday, February 10th from 5:00 to 11:00. This wonderful Gala and Silent Auction are a benefit for the Freedom to Marry Coalition of Massachusetts. Admission is $75 per person.

You can purchase your Gala admissions online (with a credit card) at equalmarriage.org/love.htm or call 617-249-0234.
Dinner choices are Grilled Salmon with a Pernod Cream Sauce, Filet Mignon with a Truffle Demi-Glaze, or Vegetarian Napoleon in a Puff Pastry. Cash Bar and Silent Auction will open at 5:00. Dining Room seating will be at 6:30.

GSL Wins in Utah
[Lisa Neff, Chicago Free Press 11/21/01]

A five-year court battle to keep gay-straight alliances from meeting in Salt Lake City schools ended last week with the State of Utah paying for legal expenses in two lawsuits.

The state spent about $250,000 to defend the Salt Lake City School Board's ban against gay-straight clubs in public schools.
"I hope the government's wasted effort and money will deter other school districts from undertaking these harmful and ultimately futile attempts to ban these clubs," said Stephen Clark, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah.

The Year in Queer: What Went Down in the Cabaret of Contradictions
[Richard Goldstein, Village Voice 1/2/02 ]

Lesbian and gay groups were elated in December when the federal government announced that same-sex partners of victims in the 9/11 attack might qualify for benefits. It was an historic opening -- yet the door was left swinging. Decisions on eligibility will be made on a case-by-case basis, taking state rules into account. In New York, there shouldn't be a problem, but the partner of a woman killed in the Pentagon bombing received a letter of condolence from the state of Virginia, along with the news that she was not eligible for survivor benefits.

First the good news: Maryland became the 12th state to add sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination laws; gays came out ahead in four out of five ballot initiatives; the President was shamed out of making a secret anti-gay deal with the Salvation Army; Congress finally allowed Washington, D.C., to offer domestic-partner benefits to some city workers; the Netherlands became the first nation to grant full same-sex marriage rights; Paris and Berlin boast openly gay mayors.

Now the bad news: an anti-gay pogrom rages in Egypt; three men were beheaded Jan 1 in Saudi Arabia for “sodomy”; the Boy Scouts' war against gays goes on, as does the battle in mainstream Protestant denominations over fully accepting us into the fold; our very nature has been called into question by a prominent psychiatrist who declared that some "highly motivated" homosexuals can change; the faith-based initiative that passed the House gives religious groups free rein to discriminate against us, while the law that would add sexual orientation to federal anti-bias statutes still languishes in Congress.

Meanwhile in the media, the same studios that make gays prime-time icons excised homosexuality from the character played by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. The same public that believes we aren't treated fairly harbors fantasies of us as emblems of evil. Consider this year's spate of demonic outings, involving everyone from Hitler to Mohammed Atta. Why would John Walker join the Taliban? It must be because, when he was 16, his father reportedly moved in with another man.

In the gay-life cabaret, one person's freedom is another's oppression. The movement's success has produced a class of homosexual gentlemen who work and play in relative safety, but the queer poor remain at risk, especially as they navigate a social welfare system that refuses to recognize their existence. The censoring of AIDS prevention ads in the Bronx, simply because they acknowledged the reality of homosex among men who don't consider themselves homosexual, was a glaring reminder of how wide the status gap between queers of different classes and cultures remains.

But even in major American institutions, bastions of sanctioned homophobia still stand. The military is the most notorious offender, but there is also the average American schoolhouse, where more than 2 million young people are subject to homophobic harassment, according to a recent Human Rights Watch report. Anti-gay violence remains the third largest category of hate crimes.

What lies ahead in a year of hard times? A series of challenges made more formidable because they stem from the Bush administration's policy of stealth homophobia. This strategy means stroking the elite by making a couple of gay appointments while promoting legislation with a hidden impact on many gay lives. Charitable choice is only the most dramatic of these threats: As currently constituted, it would make hundreds of thousands of queer workers and clients subject to discrimination. But consider the proposed welfare reform package, which would penalize single parents. As a recent report by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's policy institute makes clear, in the eyes of the law, all lesbian and gay parents are single. We can't form families in the legal sense, so we can't avoid penalties aimed at convincing parents to marry. It's like being offered a place at the table without a plate.

Lesbian ‘Sweethearts’
[AP 12/4/01]

Two New Hampshire girls will be listed as "class sweethearts" in their high school yearbook after a dispute over whether same-sex couples were eligible for the honor.

The 17-year-old girls overwhelmingly led other couples when the yearbook staff conducted its annual "senior superlatives" survey.

But when the principal heard the results, he declared the vote invalid because the ballot asked students to choose one male and one female. "I considered it unfair to change the rules and intent of the balloting after the event."

The yearbook staff then decided to eliminate the category rather than award the title to the second-place finishers. But as students began collecting signatures for a petition protesting the decision, the superintendent stepped in and said the original results will stand. He noted that the girls received more than 77 percent of the vote.

But then what happened? See next article.

Kansas Group Pickets Again
[AP 1/3/02]

Dover, N.H.—For the second time in 14 months, a church group from Kansas has come to New Hampshire to conduct an anti-gay picket, this time over recognition of a lesbian couple at Dover High School. The school had allowed two female students to be recognized in the yearbook as the senior class’ best couple.

At the same time, a group of local residents gathered at the high school to show their opposition to the protest.

The same anti-gay group from Kansas turned up in November 2000 to oppose Phillips Exeter Academy's policy allowing homosexuals to be dorm parents. Many students and faculty members wore rainbow-colored pins at that time.

And on a local note, this is the group that came to the Cape a few years ago to picket Provincetown High School for including diversity training in its curriculum. Fortunately, in all these cases, local people have rallied against the picketers, resulting in a more unified support of GLBT issues than if the folks from Kansas had not come.

'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Stays
[hrc.org]

The U.S. military has not suspended its policy of discharging openly gay service members, contrary to media reports after the Sept. 11 attacks. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue, Don't Harass" is still in effect.

As the U.S. military geared up to respond to the 9/11 attacks, President Bush authorized Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to issue a "stop-loss order," a measure that suspends certain administrative discharges during times of war or conflict to help armed services keep sufficient personnel for combat readiness. Rumsfeld, in turn, authorized the head of each military branch to issue its own stop-loss order.
The Air Force and the Navy have issued stop-loss orders that do not suspend the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policies.

“Trembling Before G-d”

“Trembling Before G-d” is a groundbreaking new documentary by Sandi Simcha DuBowski that has broken Film Forum's opening-day box office record previously held by “Paris is Burning.”

The film is built around intimately told personal stories of gay Hasidic and Orthodox Jews, both young and old, who face a profound dilemma: how to reconcile their passionate love of Judaism with the drastic Biblical prohibitions that forbid homosexuality.

Florida Murder Prompts Call as Hate Crime

Terrianne Summers, 51-year-old transsexual activist, was shot to death December 12 in the driveway of her Jacksonville home. She apparently was shot in the back of the head but was not robbed. Local investigators have not identified any suspects. Summers is survived by her spouse and two children.

Equality Florida, a statewide education and advocacy organization dedicated to eliminating discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, gender and class, has called on law enforcement agencies to investigate fully the possibility that Summers' murder was a bias-motivated attack.

"Terrianne was a human rights activist who worked closely with local and state human rights organizations and who helped to organize and empower the transgender community in the Jacksonville area," said Jessica Archer of Equality Florida. "A Navy veteran with 22 years of service, her sudden and violent death is a great loss for her family and friends as well as for the transgender community long ravaged by hate-based violence."

Milwaukee Hate Crime
[Exerpted: Daisy Hernandez, Tallahassee Democrat 12/17/01]

On Nov. 11, Pablo Parrilla allegedly killed his sister's lover, Juana Vega, 36, outside his home in Milwaukee, WI. Vega, a Mexican-American lesbian, was shot from point-blank range in her chest and face five times, before Parrilla allegedly beat her dead body.

He reportedly told police he was tired of Vega and his sister reconciling after their arguments. It was his sister's first relationship with a woman, and according to Vega's friends, Parrilla accused Vega of turning his sister gay. Vega was a community activist with Las Americas Without Borders, a social organization for the city's gay Latino community.

Parrilla has been charged with first-degree intentional homicide, but not with a hate crime. The district attorney's office has only tentatively begun an investigation after outcries from Vega's friends and LLEGO, a national gay Latino organization.

The district attorney's failure to move quickly was no surprise. He was allegedly opposed to expanding hate-crime laws to include sexual orientation, according to LLEGO. Initially, he told Vega's family and friends that it was enough to call it a murder and charge her killer with homicide, an open-and-shut case. It's not.

The Southern Poverty Law Center recently released a study that found the FBI severely undercounts hate crimes. The authors of the study wrote that they suspect the number of hate crimes to be close to 50,000 a year -- almost six times what the FBI reports.

Reporting to the FBI remains voluntary, and police officers are under-trained in identifying crimes based on sexual orientation and race. Many states that don't report hate crimes often claim that they don't have them.

It's hard to tackle a problem if you don't know it's there. The consequences of not calling Vega's murder what it is -- a hate crime -- reach much further than the Latino and gay community. Hate crimes affect legislation and the financial resources that all communities can demand from local politicians and representatives in Washington. To ask that police officers be properly trained and that in-school programs against racism be funded, we need first to know the extent of the problem.

It's harmful to have things go unnamed. As a queer-identified Latina, I know that things are rarely called by what they are. In Spanish, lesbians are known as mujeres del otro lado (women from the other side), and our lovers are frequently referred to as buenas amigas (good friends). For a woman to live as an out-lesbian and call it like that, in any language, can be a dangerous act. It frequently results in exile from your familia of origin, and sometimes, as with Vega, it ends in murder.

Hate knows no borders. To be stopped, it needs to be named.

Do You Know? (From 2K Census)
[PFLAG/LA 1/02]
Almost 600,000 same-sex couples were identified in the last census. That’s more than 1 out of every 178 households in the United States.

Notes from Pem

Thanks to all who have sent in their dues for the Oct. 2001 through Sept 2002 year. We on the cape are very grateful, and PFLAG National is and will be even more appreciative. $10 of your dues goes to the national office. They have been short of their usual funds these past months, due to a general lack of giving and the disastrous disruption of the DC postal service due to the anthrax contamination.

PFLAG Brewster gratefully thanks Jeanne Chagnon for her years as our Treasurer. We are delighted to announce Martha Berndt will assume the position this Jan-Feb. Thank you from all of us! And Randy Kendell will assume the Librarian position formerly held by Martha.
Our Feb 18 monthly meeting will feature a segment of time devoted to a video on our transgendered community. There will be a chance for some sharing by our members and friends who are a part of this journey of living who they are.

News of CIGYA. Funds are needed to support this wonderful program for our youth. The expenses to maintain the CIGYA House are great and our help is needed. They are located at 56 Barnstable Rd. Hyannis 02601.

And last but not least, please support the Harwich Community Forum on April 29. See the article on page 1.

Support PFLAG / Have Fun

Register Now for Conference 2002

Early-bird registration for "PFLAG: Family Voices of Equality, Charting a Course in the Great Lakes" has been extended until February 22, 2002. An exciting program is planned with a safe schools town meeting, three plenaries, three workshop sessions, an awards lunch, and a Family Reunion celebration.

The conference will be held in Columbus, OH, on September 27-29, 2002. The current plan is to include a Friday night dessert reception, lunch and dinner Saturday, and breakfast Sunday as part of the registration cost. Meals and schedule are subject to change as we continue planning - updates will be posted on our website. Register today at www.pflag.org or call Ron Schlittler at 202-467-8180 x226.

Tires in Your Future?
[hrc.org]

In November, tire manufacturer Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. announced a further expansion of its diversity marketing efforts to include the GLBT community. The company also detailed a history of donations to GLBT and AIDS charities.

Bridgestone's vice president said the company has a long-standing philosophy "not to discriminate against people of any race, gender, military status, ethnic heritage, physical condition, culture, sexual orientation, age, social background, etc. We are committed to communicating with our diverse customer base."

GLBT Group Info

Brewster Gay Men meet the first and third Mondays of each month at the First Parish Church, Brewster. 430-2818
Straight Spouse meets third Thursday of each month. 896-9060
Transgender Support meets fourth Sundays. 432-8119.
Metropolitan Community Church meets 1st and 3rd Sundays, 3pm, Sanctuary of First Parish Church. 385-2873 or 430-2682

Dates to Remember
Jan 21, Feb 18, Mar 18. Apr 15: Brewster PFLAG, 7 pm
Jan 17, Feb 21, Mar 21, Apr 18,: Straight Spouse, 896-9060
Jan 27, Feb 24, Mar 24, Apr 28:Transgender Support 432-8119
Feb. 9 Gayla Ball in Hyannis (see article p, 1) 508-896-3406
Apr 29, Harwich Community Forum, 7 - 9 pm
July 20, 2002 Cape Cod Gay Pride Day in Hyannis

PFLAG/Cape Cod, Brewster
PO Box 1167 Orleans, MA 02653

MISSION: Promote the health and well-being of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons, their families and friends, through Support, to cope with an adverse society; Education, to enlighten an ill-informed public; and Advocacy, to end discrimination and secure equal civil rights.

MEETINGS: 7 pm on the third Monday of each month at First Parish Church, Brewster; everyone is welcome. For information call 240-2737 or 432-8119.

MEMBERSHIP: Dues-paying members support the efforts of PFLAG both locally and nationally. Ten dollars goes to PFLAG National (includes subscription to Pflagpole), and the balance is used for our own Newsletter and the purchase of pamphlets, books, and videos. Our fiscal year begins October 1.

OFFICERS: Co-Leaders, Pem Schultz & Rob Lewis; Treasurer, Martha Berndt; Corresponding Sec’y, Betsy Cochran; Publicity, Martha Berndt; Newsletter, Doris Scherbak and Joann Figueras; Program, Sandy Bayne; Library, Randy Kendell; Membership, Joann Figueras.

NEWSLETTER: Published four times a year. Send articles to above address or e-mail joann@pflagcapecod.org.

WEBPAGE: www.pflagcapecod.org