The ACCESSline, The Heartland's LGBT+ Newspaper, January 2014, Volume 28, No. 1

Heartland News Kata Klysmic: Hospitals to Offer Change and Success Nebraska Same-Sex Couples Insurance

by Sarah Headrick Hoskins

January 1, 2013 was a day of resolutions, just like every other New Year’s Day. For some those resolutions never go anywhere and for others they are a struggle to keep. For the newly born Kata Klysmic her resolutions were the path to the top.

Kata Klysmic is Kata Klysmic the result of a New Photo courtesy of Robert Whicker.

Year’s resolution, her title reign as Miss Gay Iowa USofA was a total surprise,

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Nebraska hospitals are starting to offer insurance benefits to same-sex couples. Hospitals in the combined Alegent Creighton Health/Catholic Health Initiatives Nebraska network, in the Methodist Health System and at the Omaha VA Medical Center will offer such benefits starting in 2014. The Alegent Creighton/CHI group has 16 hospitals and two inpatient behavioral health centers in Nebraska and Iowa. The Methodist system has three hospitals, two in Omaha and one in Council Bluffs.

The hospitals have thousands of employees in Nebraska and western Iowa — the Alegent Creighton/ CHI group has 15,300, the Methodist system has nearly 3,800 and the VA med center has almost 1,400.

Utah Marriage Ban Struck Down

A federal judge struck down Utah’s same-sex marriage ban. The decision set off an immediate frenzy as the clerk in the state’s most populous county began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples while state

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A Purchase that ACA & the LGBT Community interview makes a Difference

by Angela Geno-Stumme

interview by Angela Geno-Stumme

Kurt Berke, Lead Navigator for Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, answers a few questions about the Affordable Care Act, which went into effect January 1st. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is set out to reform health care with changes to make care more affordable. The ACA also sets out to make care more equal by prohibiting discrimination due to preexisting conditions or gender. Berke talks about the impact on same-sex couples, those with HIV/AIDS, and preventative care including birth control.

How will the Affordable Care Act impact the LGBT community?

Financial help is available based on income to make health plans more affordable. Under the ACA, financial help in the form of tax credits (known as Advance Premium Tax Credits) is available to make health plans more affordable for people with incomes between 138% and 400% of the federal poverty level (FPL). This means an individual making up to $45,960 and a family of four making up to $94,200 will be eligible for tax credits to purchase health insurance on the Exchange. In states that do not expand Medicaid, tax credits

Udi Behr is the creator of LoveandPride.com a website committed to equality, diversity and tolerance. Udi Behr is an award-winning jewelry designer whose designs have been worn by celebrities including Elton John, Ringo Starr, Jay Leno, Gwen Stefani, Cyndi Lauper, Sharon Stone, Paula Abdul, Udi Behr Ludacris and Paris Hilton. LoveandPride.com offers jewelry, fashion and accessories with proceeds donated to non-profit groups, such as The Matthew Shepard Foundation.

What inspired you to create LoveandPride.com?

There was a moment in 2004 when the fight for LGBT

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Define “Normal”

Interview by Arthur Breur

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What’s Inside:

Section 1: News & Politics

Advertising rates 3 Letter from the Editor 3 Erin Foley: Lady with Pockets by Angela Geno-Stumme 4 Imperial Court of Iowa Gala by Sarah Headrick Hoskins 4 Remarkables by Jonathan Wilson 5 Shrink Rap by Loren A Olson MD 5 Warren’s Words by Warren J. Blumenfeld 6 PITCH Calendar 2013 6 Transformations Iowa Meeting 6 Minor Details by Robert Minor 7 PFLAG - Des Moines Chapter Meeting 7 In the Name of Religion by Rev. Irene Monroe 8 Ask Lambda Legal by Paul Castillo 8 Warren’s Words by Warren J. Blumenfeld 9 Iowan Advocacy by Tami Haught 9 Living as Transgender speech by Ellen Krug 10

Section 2: Fun Guide

Entertainment Picks for the Month 11 Define “Normal” interview by Arthur Breur 11 Inside Out by Ellen Krug 12 The Project of the Quad Cities 12 Wired This Way by Rachel Eliason 13 Honor Your Body, Honor You by Davey Wavey 13 Iowa’s Gay Weddings by Scott Stevens 14 Artist Alana Hyatt Feels Blessed by Angela Geno-Stumme 15 I.C. Kings Present: Hollyweird! Iowa City, IA 16 GSA Day Advocacy Ad 19 A Gay “Cheers” by Sarah Headrick Hoskins 21 The Bookworm Sez by Terri Schlichenmeyer 22 Comics and Crossword Puzzle 22-23 Bisschopswijn Winter Recipes 23

Section 3: Community

Informative & Entertaining by Bruce Carr 25 From the Pastor’s Pen by Rev. Jonathan Page 25 LGBTQ Patient & Family Education and Support Groups 25 A Church Where Everyone Is Equal by Rev. Trabaris 26 SSSS=Second Saturday Social at Six 26 Planning Your Coming Out by Luke Gordon, Life Coach 27 Cervical Health with PPH 27 Business Directory 28-29 McFarland Clinic donates to MICA of Story County 30 The Project of the Quad Cities 31 ACCESSline Winners 32 Prime Timers of Central Iowa 34 University of Iowa LGBT S&F Association 34 Community Billboard: Classifieds 34 ALPHAs 34

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JANUARY 2014

PUBLICATION INFORMATION

Section 1: News & Politics

Letter from the Editor

Copyright © 2013, All rights reserved.

ACCESSline

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Des Moines, IA 50302-0396 (712) 560-1807

www.ACCESSlineAMERICA.com

editor@ACCESSlineAMERICA.com

ACCESSline is a monthly publication by

FIRESPIKE LLC. The paper was founded in 1986 by the non-profit organization ACCESS (A Concerned

Community for Education,

Safer-sex and Support) in Northeast Iowa.

Angela Geno-Stumme, Editor in Chief

Sarah Headrick, Advertising Sales/ Online Media Arthur Breur, Publisher Publication of the name, photograph or

likeness of any person, business or organization in ACCESSline is not to be construed as

any indication of sexual orientation. Opinions expressed by columnists do not necessarily reflect the opinions of ACCESSline or the LGBT+ community. Letters to the editor may

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reserve the right to edit letters and other material for reasons of profanity, space, or

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ACCESSline Page 3

Iowa Representative Dean Fisher.

Dean Fisher, Representative of Iowa District 72, submitted multiple requests to be removed from ACCESSline’s mailing list this past Wednesday, December 18th.

ACCESSline is an LGBT+ advocacy newspaper and one way we are commited to advocacy is by sending Iowa Representa-

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HEARTLAND NEWS officials took steps to appeal the ruling and halt the process.

The lawsuit was brought by three gay and lesbian couples. One of the couples was legally married in Iowa and wanted that license recognized in Utah.

‘Duck Dynasty’ furor sparks Iowa clash

Leaders of the Christian conservative group Iowa Family Leader posted a Web video in support of a reality TV star whose comments on homosexuality have sparked a national debate.

tives and Senators a free monthly issue of ACCESSline. Some subscriptions are bought by constituents who feel strongly that ACCESSline should be received, however Representative Fisher was receiving a free issue courtesy of ACCESSline.

Representative Fisher campaigned this past November with the Republican Party for District 72, which includes all of Tama county, the southern and western halves of Marshall county, and the La Porte city and Eagle Center area in Black Hawk county. Of the multiple endorsements Representative Fisher received, of particular interest is his endorsement by Iowa Family PAC; which is affiliated with The Family Leader. The Family Leader is notorious for anti-LGBT activities and promotions, coaching their anti-equality beliefs in language supporting family and Christianity.

The Gazette also reported that Representative Fisher was one of 16 Republicans who signed a statement this past March In the YouTube video, Family Leader CEO Bob Vander Plaats and Vice President Chuck Hurley defend “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson, who called homosexuality sinful in an interview with GQ Magazine and compared it to bestiality and infidelity.

After the comments were published, the A&E network suspended Robertson from the show, sparking an uproar among conservatives.

In their video clip, Vander Plaats and Hurley criticize the network and laud Robertson and his family for voicing their religious convictions. They also call on viewers and members of their organization to sign a petition of support for Robertson.

Editor-in-Chief Angela Geno-Stumme threatening to withhold state funding from Des Moines Area Community College if DMACC continued to sponsor the Iowa Governor’s Conference on LGBTQ Youth.

The conference seeks to end bullying of gay, lesbian and transgender students.

Representative Fisher has been removed from ACCESSline’s subscription list. However, you can contact Representative Fisher by phone at (641) 750.3594 or by email at dean.fisher@legis.iowa.gov.

Illinois Expedites Marriage for Same-sex Couples

A federal court ordered the Illinois, Cook County Clerk’s office to immediately issue marriage licenses to all Illinois same-sex couples who, because of a lifethreatening illness, cannot wait until next summer to get married. The order comes after three Illinois couples were granted emergency marriage license applications because one of the partners has a terminal illness. Starting today, couples may marry before June 1, 2014, if they provide a doctor’s declaration stating that one or both of them has a life-threatening illness.

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ACCESSline Wants To Hear From You!

Send in photos and stories about your events... especially benefits, pageants. and conferences!

Please send us information on any of the following: Corrections to articles • Stories of LGBT or HIV+ interest • Letters to the editor Editorials or opinion pieces • Engagement and wedding ceremony announcements or photos Questions on any topic we print • Photos and writeups about shows, events, pageants, and fundraisers Please email us at Editor@ACCESSlineIOWA.com. You may also contact us at our regular address, ACCESSline, P.O. Box 396, Des Moines, IA 50302-0396 ACCESSline reserves the right to print letters to the editor and other feedback at the editor’s discretion.

Subscribe to ACCESSline

Thank you for reading ACCESSline, the Heartland’s LGBT+ monthly newspaper. Our goal continues to be to keep the community informed about gay organizations, events, HIV/AIDS news, politics, national and international news, and other critical issues. Don’t miss it! $42 for 12 issues. Subscribe at: ACCESSlineAMERICA.com Send this completed form with check or money order for $42 for a one year subscription (12 issues) or RENEW for $36. Send to:

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Section 1: News & Politics

ACCESSline Page 4

JANUARY 2014

Erin Foley: Lady with Pockets interview by Angela Geno-Stumme in the spring time. Of course I’m looking forward to visiting Iowa! I’ve actually never been to Des Moines and I’ve heard nothing but good things, so let’s do this. I want to experience all things Iowa. I want to meet Herky the Hawk—I’m serious.

You are starting the New Year with your tour “Lady with Pockets”, are there other things on your New Year’s list?

As the years go by (I’m 72) I’ve become much more realistic about my goals for 2014. Here’s the list: 1. Get shot out of a cannon 2. Shag Jennifer Lopez 3. World Peace 4. Create a new salty snack sensation 5. Repeat number two What can fans expect with your performance in Des Moines, Iowa at the Garden Night Club?

Fireworks. Puns. Riddles. Soft drinks.

Hard Drinks. Dancing. Jazz Hands. Aerobics.

Jokes about night clubs in gardens. Throw out your expectations, lower the bar, grab an alcohol soaked beverage and plan on laughing so hard that we all forget our names and social security numbers.

I hear you quote from the Harry Potter series; do you feel the novels have some insights into life?

I love all things Harry Potter. I was making out with this woman and she told me she went on Pottermore.com, answered a number of questions and the sorting hat placed her in the Slytherin House—I immediately broke up with her.

You mention your girlfriend in some of your sets, how does she feel

about that?

I’m very respectful about what I say about my girlfriend on stage. I would never make her feel uncomfortable and always clear anything I’m going to joke about with her first. Also, we broke up months ago, so now I’m crafting some very poignant/hilarious “being single” jokes. Who likes gin?

Ladies?

What are your feelings on gay marriage?

I’m in love with gay marriage and have an infinite respect and admiration for all the gays that are hitched. One of the reasons why I’m looking forward to visiting Iowa is to sit down with some locals (gay and straight) and find out how gay marriage was passed. It’s amazing to me that it happened in a sea of Midwestern red. I have so many questions!

If you had one piece of advice for people for the New Year, what would it be?

Soak up the moment. I think we all have a tendency to focus on what’s next - personally and professionally. Just taking more time to appreciate all the little moments of the day...the taste of your coffee, the way your friend made you laugh, some random person’s smile, a great line from the book/ newspaper you’re reading. I feel like life is moving so fast and if we can take some deep breaths and really focus and appreciate the small things, everyone would be happier.

And/or drink more wine.

For more information go to ErinKFoley.com.

bartends and donates their tips to the charity as well.

All those who help in the gala and perform do so as volunteers. “We are very fortunate to have a very talented group of friends who help us every year, some Court members and some not, some gay and some not, all of which we are very grateful for. We are always looking for new talent and new ways to raise money, we are very open to suggestions,” says Lucy.

Though Sean has since moved away, Lucy intends to keep this event going for many years to come, with the help of many friends. In particular she thanks Blazing Saddle and staff, Buddy’s Corral management staff, Matthew Millard, Jim Wilson, and Royce Renze her partner for 17 years. “Without their help I’m not sure I could do this on my own.”

For more information go to ImperialCourtofIowa.org.

The sorting hat placed her in the Slytherin House—I immediately broke up with her.

Erin Foley No one would have guessed that Erin Foley was a Hawk fan, but she reveals her true colors and razor sharp wit prior to her upcoming tour “Lady with Pockets”. Erin Foley is a comedic actress, comedian, and writer. Just this year, she made her standup debut on Conan, did a guest star on the NBC series ‘Go On’, and also performed stand-up on TV Guide’s inaugural series Stand-up ‘In Stilettos’. Erin has branded a

unique position for herself in the industry as not only a gifted stand-up but a talented actress. Her versatility makes her one of the most sought-after women working the comedy scene today. Foley will be performing January 25th at The Garden Nightclub in Des Moines, Iowa.

Are you looking forward to visiting Iowa in January?

I’ve heard Iowa in January is like Paris

Imperial Court of Iowa Annual Christmas Gala by Sarah Headrick Hoskins

Empress X Lucy Jackson Lucy Jackson and Sean Broyles held the

titles of Empress and Emperor of the Imperial Court of Iowa, the 10th reign, September 2002-September 2003. The tradition is that at the end of their reign, the stepping down Monarchs can have one proclamation to continue each year until they decide to stop.

Lucy and Sean decided to have their proclamation be a Christmas Gala with proceeds to go to the charity of their choice.

The Gala is in its eleventh year, Lucy and Sean’s proclamation is the only one still carried on each year. During their reign they raised $40,000 for charities and since $25,000 through their Christmas Gala. Some of the past charities that have benefitted from the Christmas Gala have been Hospice which is important to Lucy because they helped her family when her father passed away, Cancer research, Pediatric AIDS charities, The Food Pantry of Iowa, and The Project of Primary Health Care to name a few. The last two years the selected charity has been the Eychaner Foundation’s “Matthew Shepard Scholarship Fund.” In these two years over $7000 have been raised, with the help of Jim Wilson (Jessica Tyler), to benefit an openly LGBT Iowa high school student for help with college.

Every year is different and there have been many different methods used to raise money. Drag shows, raffles, auctions, bake sales, and bingo have all been used to raise funds. The Blazing Saddle Christmas party also participates, as Imperial Court of Iowa

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ACA will only be available for people between 100% and 400% FPL. The ACA extends health insurance benefits to same sex married couples in states where same sex marriage is legal and is permitted by law. Same-sex married couples must include both incomes when determining eligibility for tax credits. Additionally, a domestic partner may be same sex or opposite sex.

Will there be changes for those with HIV/AIDS? In Iowa, HIV Primary Health Care in Des Moines will be working with Ryan White Part B to assign individuals with HIV help with marketplace coverage.

Will STD/HIV testing coverage be different?

STD/HIV testing are considered preven-

tive care and thus are covered services under the ACA. How will it impact transgender health care?

Prescriptions should be covered for transgender health care.

Are there changes for birth control?

All insurance plans must cover preventive care, including annual exams and a range of birth control options, at no cost. Women now have full access to birth control prescriptions with no co-pay. Whether a specific IUD or other form of birth control is covered depends on the plan that is chosen.

Is sexual reassignment surgery covered?

Sexual reassignment surgery may be covered if it is deemed necessary; however, most insurance companies consider it an elective surgery.

For more information go to PlannedParenthood.org/heartland/ or HealthCare.gov.

Section 1: News & Politics

JANUARY 2014

ACCESSline Page 5

Remarkables by Jonathan Wilson The Exit of The Reverend Harold Wells

In gratitude, the most recent issue of the First Friday Breakfast Club newsletter was dedicated to Harold Wells (1936 - 2013).

Harold Wells was a friend of mine. He and I were friends before that could be accomplished by the click of a button. Make me a real friend of yours, survive me, and you might just get a newsletter issue dedicated in your honor.

He was an enlightened, empathetic, and courageous human being. There are lots of additional, laudatory adjectives I could use to describe him—and they’d all be true—but those three I consider to be the most important attributes of any worthy person. Most good people among us simply aspire to them; Harold Wells achieved them and kept on, and on, and on, achieving them throughout his adult life—maybe longer, but I didn’t know him before he was an adult.

Harold Wells was a pioneer spokesperson for the GLBT community, of which he was an unapologetic, well-adjusted member. He was a spokesperson long before it was safe to be outspoken on the subject and LONG before it has become more popular. Because of his reputation and stature within the gay

community, he was sought out by many in search of a viable path out of their own closets. I was one of those many. He was anxious to share from his wealth of experience and gentle, reassuring insights and his good humor.

A debt of gratitude is owed to those, like Harold Wells, who led the way, who took the risks and abuse when there was no assurance that today would ever come. People who put their professional careers and personal relationships on the line to advance the cause of GLBT citizens being treated with acceptance and equality. We cannot now thank directly those who, like Harold Wells, have died while paving the path out of the closet for us, those like Harold Wells who were instrumental in creating a culture where GLBT children of God need never live in the closet in the first place.

It has to have been gratifying for Harold Wells to witness the progress that has been made. He was already 36 years of age before the American psychiatric community finally determined that homosexuality is not a mental illness (and homophobia is). At that time same-gender intimacy was a crime in every state in the Union, and gay marriage wasn’t legal anywhere on the face of the earth.

There used to be an expression that something considered impossible would

happen sarcastically, when mankind walked on the moon. That had to have been the expression that would have been used to describe the idea of gay marriage around the time that Harold Wells was 36 years of age. And, sure enough, about that time Neil Armstrong made his historic first step on the moon and anything—everything—enlightened became possible.

There is work yet to be done. More ignorant people are being born every day; they are learning from their elders to take pride in their ignorance and make the all-too-vocal choice to be homophobic bigots. The United Methodist Church, in which Harold Wells was ordained, continues to embarrass itself in an on-going struggle over this very issue. It continues to cling to the indefensible moral notion that homosexuality itself is incompatible with Christianity—the notion that whether a gay person is in a monogamous, committed, same-gender relationship for a lifetime or is utterly promiscuous with as many people of the same gender as possible until death comes from exhaustion or worse—it’s a moral equivalent—it’s the same thing. Holding such a notion is itself immoral.

Here’s the fact. The only way to thank people like Harold Wells for their courage and sacrifice is by reaching out with a helping hand to those who are coming along behind us. That is the only tribute that he and others like him would ask of us. Would expect from us.

ing and rigorous, while at the same time being lucid and accessible.

The idea that sexuality might be person specific rather than gender specific is a rather new concept, and it appears to be one that is more acceptable to the younger generation. However, this concept will surely be difficult for some gay activists who think exclusively in terms of gay/straight, and it may provide more ammunition to antigay groups who insist that all sexuality is a matter of choice.

For me personally, my sexuality moved from believing I was heterosexual, to suspecting that I might be bisexual, to knowing that I am gay. My attraction to men in no way feels “fluid.” Most of the men I have interviewed–admittedly also a small and biased sample–have expressed a transition parallel to mine.

As some of the commenters in my Psychology Today article pointed out, generalizing to an entire population from a small population is the basis of all discrimination and prejudice. But for me personally, my sexuality seems pretty damn fixed; no matter how attractive I might find a woman’s body, I don’t find it sexually exciting. My internal responses are much different when I look at an attractive man. It seems to me to be almost entirely disconnected to how attractive I find that person to be on a personal level.

Freud described fluid sexuality as “polymorphous perversity.” While most of us would not see alternative sexuality as “perverse,” it may be far more polymor-

phous than many of us have believed in the past. Certainly the interconnections between love, sex and sexual identity are much more complicated than once believed.

Although I once saw sexuality as bipolar, gay and straight, I later modified that to include a “way station” in bisexuality.

I then began to align myself with Kinsey’s description of sexuality as a spectrum with varying degrees between exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual.

Now I have come to believe that sexuality is more like a matrix.

A recent viewing of the transgender photo exhibit sponsored by One Iowa and a preview of the movie “Mr. Angel,” documenting the life of Buck Angel (a female to male transgender who says, “I love my vagina”) has expanded my thinking about what it means to be transgender.

I also recently viewed a foreign movie called “Angels of Sex,” that deals with both bisexuality and polyamorous relationships. Both have once again challenged the limitations of my thinking about sexuality.

A couple of things are increasingly clear: 1. Traditional labels for sexuality are inadequate. 2. Those who label themselves (or are labeled by others) as “bisexual” and “transgender” are extremely diverse populations.

We can argue that all labels are damaging, but for purposes of research, categories and labels are essential so that uniform populations can be studied.

Labels in and of themselves are damaging;

We cannot now thank directly those who, like Harold Wells, have died while paving the path out of the closet for us.

Shrink Rap by Loren A Olson MD Women are Bi-sexual?

Dr. Olson, Where can I find some tangible evidence indicating that all women are naturally, biologically and physically bi-sexual and that only men are gay and queer?

Inquisitive Dear Inquisitive, I think you’ll be hard pressed to find that evidence.

Previous research on sexual desire and behavior–when it is done at all–has focused primarily on men, with a preoccupation on the polarities of homosexuality and heterosexuality and the process of coming out. It had been assumed that women followed the same transition.

Nothing I have ever written has generated as much discussion and controversy as an article on bisexuality I wrote for Psychology Today. I’d be the last to consider myself an expert on women’s sexuality or even to understand it. I believe it is important to listen to what women have to say about it.

Lisa M. Diamond has written Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire, a study of 100 women over ten years. A study of this size is considered small by scientific standards, and correlations do not prove causality, but even with these limitations, Diamonds observations are important.

Diamond’s basic hypothesis is that for women, their sexuality is more protean than men’s; and women are blinder to gender than men are. Because of this, she believes that traditional labels are inadequate. Diamond’s work is fascinat-

Jonathan Wilson is an attorney at the Davis Brown Law Firm in Des Moines, and chairs the First Friday Breakfast Club (ffbciowa.org), an educational, non-profit corporation for gay men in Iowa who gather on the first Friday of every month to provide mutual support, to be educated on community affairs, and to further educate community opinion leaders with more positive images of gay men.

It is the largest breakfast club in the state of Iowa. He can be contacted at JonathanWilson@DavisBrownLaw.com.

Now I have come to believe that sexuality is more like a matrix.

Loren A. Olson MD is a board certified psychiatrist in the clinical practice of psychiatry for over 35 years. Dr. Olson has conducted research on mature gay and bisexual men for his book, Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight, a Psychiatrist’s Own Story. He has presented on this subject at conferences across the United States and Internationally. His blog, MagneticFire. com, has a strong following among mature gay and bisexual men. He established Prime Timers of Central Iowa, a social organization for mature gay/bisexual men. For more information go to FinallyOutBook.com or contact him on Facebook.com. it is how labels are applied that damages.

It seems to me it’s increasingly difficult to find “uniform populations” when it comes to sexuality.

I also received this letter recently: “I find myself increasingly attracted to men, but I have only had sexual experience with women. What does that make me?” The only safe response is, “I guess it makes you normal.”

ACCESSline Page 6

Section 1: News & Politics

JANUARY 2014

Warren’s Words by Warren J. Blumenfeld What the Duck: Justice or Lost Opportunity?

Officials of the A&E cable TV network have suspended the patriarch, Phil Robertson, of their surprisingly popular “reality” show, Duck Dynasty, for his comments in the January 2014 issue of GQ Magazine.

On the topic of homosexuality, from his perspective Robertson quipped that “It seems like, to me, a vagina–as a man–would be more desirable than a man’s anus,” and he proclaimed that same-sex sexuality leads to promiscuity with multiple male and female partners, while likening it to bestiality. He concluded by paraphrasing 1 Corinthians 6-9 from the Christian testaments: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself.

It’s not right.”

Three years prior to his GQ interview, Phil Robertson thrust his accusations even further as a guest speaker at the Berean Bible Church in Pottstown, Pennsylvania: “Women with women, men with men, they committed indecent acts with one another and they received in themselves the due penancey for their perversions. They’re full of murder, envy, strife, hatred. They are insolent, arrogant, God haters, they are heartless, they are faithless, they are senseless, they are ruthless, they invent ways of doing evil.” (http://www.regrit. com/phil-robertson-new-shocking-antigay-video-rant-revealed-watch/) On race relations and socioeconomic class: During his youth growing up in the Jim Crow South, Robertson talked about the “singing and happy” black people whom he worked alongside hoeing and picking cotton since, as Roberson phrased it, he himself was “white trash.” “I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once.” Then taking aim at current safety-net programs, he asserted: “Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they

were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

On the environment: Robertson paraphrased Genesis 9 in rationalizing his chosen occupation of providing products for and in his own actions in hunting and killing ducks. “After the flood, that’s when [God] made animals wild. Up until that time, everybody was vegetarian. After the flood, he said, ‘I’m giving you everything now. Animals are wild.’” (Genesis 9:2 actually states: “The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands.”)

Great Potential, But Missed Opportunity Phil Robertson, in his own misguided and offensive fashion, has given us as a society much to unpack by his linking multiple issues and multiple form of oppression (heterosexism, racism, classism, environmental control and degradation), and all in the context of religious justification.

Many critical questions arise, including, for me, “How much longer are we as a society willing to condone so-called “religious” or theological justifications, especially in a society that purportedly separates religion from government, in the denial of rights, denial of respect, denial of first-class citizenship, and continuance of demeaning and dehumanizing representations and stereotypes of people who express their love, their sexuality, their relationships, and their very lives different from supposed heterosexual and “traditionally” gendered norms?”

“How much longer are we as a society willing to condone and engage in historical revisionism and stereotyping, as does Phil Robertson, in his categorization of the “singing and happy” and subservient blacks, and denial of his own white privi-

lege by tuning out the realities that people of color face on a daily basis, today as well as during the Jim Crow South. Robertson needs also to read an introductory book on the history of music because if he had, he would have understood how absurd sounds his statement that the black people he knew in the South were not “singing the blues” since Africanheritage people in U.S.-America created the musical form called “The Blues.”

“How much longer are we as a society willing to marginalize and scapegoat working-class and poor white people in our categorization of them as “white trash,” and how much longer will white people of lower socioeconomic backgrounds refer to themselves in such demeaning terms internalized from the dominant culture?

“How much longer are we as a society willing to blame people from lower socioeconomic classes for their limited resources, and when are we as a society going to come together as a nation to secure the safety nets that provide people greater opportunity to achieve their fullest potential?

“How much longer are we as a society willing to justify our ruthless control and maltreatment of other life forms sharing our world, and how much longer are we going to engage in an insensitive and consuming degradation of the planet in our quest for its resources and our financial gain, all which some people continue to justify as “God’s plan”?

Unfortunately, rather have seeing these and other critical questions springing from Phil Robertson’s statements, most attention in the media and by conservative political pundits have been misdirected to the firing of Robertson from the “Duck

Dynasty” series by A&E, with the attendant questions related to issues of freedom of speech and the role of media.

While I find these questions extremely important, I see a great opportunity slipping away in the raising of issues to the highest level of public discourse regarding where we go as a multicultural society.

Throughout the checkered history of the United States, dominant groups have marginalized and attempted to silence opposing ideas and ideologies. During the current controversy, I am reminded of a poignant and cautionary quote from the great poet, essayist, and social activist, Audre Lorde, who asserted that we must not employ the tactics or use the language of those who oppose us, for she reminded us: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” In other words, we must not replicate the language and the tactics of those who attempt to deny us our rights and our dignity.

Therefore, I call on A&E to reinstate Phil Robertson to his place on “Duck Dynasty,” and then, we can finally commence the public discourse on his statements rather than on his firing.

Transformations meets every Wednesday at 7 PM, the second Saturday of each month at 1 PM, One Iowa, 419 SW 8th St, Des Moines, IA 50309. Transformations Iowa is a Transgender support group. It is open to all ranges of the gender

spectrum, male to female, female to male, cross dressers, drag queens, gender queer, questioning, as well as friends, significant others and allies. For more information email sophia.transformations@gmail. com or call 515-288-4019 x200.

His linking multiple issues and multiple form of oppression (heterosexism, racism, classism, environmental control and degradation), and all in the context of religious justification.

PITCH Calendar 2013

Positive Iowans Taking Charge (PITCH) is a volunteer-run non-profit organization, founded in 2007, their goal is to provide social networking and support to Iowans living with, or affected by, HIV/AIDS. Their mission is to create an atmosphere where HIV+ people can unite, advocate, and assist other HIV+ people for better health and wellness.

More information can be found at pitchiowa.org or call Tami Haught at 641-715-4182.

All of our meetings are open to the public at large. To hear what’s going on, please check out our calendar to see when the next PITCH meeting will be held. For more information go to www.PitchIowa.org.

Groups

Des Moines Open Support Group 5pm-6pm (Wednesdays) Thursday Group 2pm-3pm (Thursdays) Waterloo PITCH Support Group 6pm-8pm (Every other week) Wednesday Evening Group 5:30pm-6:30pm (Every other week)

Hopefully, one day soon, Africa will realize that the anti-gay sentiment is no different from racial or religious discrimination. ~Rapper Eldee about the rights of gays in Africa.

Warren J. Blumenfeld is author of Warren’s Words: Smart Commentary on Social Justice (Purple Press); editor of Homophobia: How We All Pay the Price (Beacon Press), and co-editor of Readings for Diversity and Social Justice (Routledge) and Investigating Christian Privilege and Religious Oppression in the United States (Sense). www.warrenblumenfeld.com

Transformations Iowa Meeting

Section 1: News & Politics

JANUARY 2014

ACCESSline Page 7

Minor Details by Robert Minor No Matter How Ugly It’s Going to Be, There’s Hope in 2014

The New Year can safely be forecasted to bring more of the same. Actually, it’s likely to be an exaggeration of the political craziness of 2013.

There are those who dream of sanity and bipartisan cooperation. I hope they had the pristine white Christmas they fantasized, too.

2014 actually is an election year, though it seems as if we’re always in one anymore. There are 33 US Senate seats being contested in addition to all 435 House seats. So, the pressure to do whatever it takes to raise money and buy votes is now in full swing.

The media circus will continue to predict whatever about the outcome, finding polls to keep cable channels’ viewers on edge. Political advertising money will flow more freely as corporatists target local and national races.

2013 ended with outsiders loving the schisms among Republicans. “Falling in line” was collapsing, but it’s easy to make too much of this as wishful thinking.

Certainly, the ideologues representing remnants of Tea Partyism will continue to

stick to their guns. Incumbents’ realistic fears of being primaried by someone to their right, no matter how conservative they vote, will increase the crazy talk.

There’ll be continuing, if slower, progress in the states on marriage equality. The religious right-wing won’t give up waging various fights against LGBT equality while baby boomers set their agendas.

We’ll be lucky if the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act goes anywhere this election year. But Republicans would give the Democrats social issues if it guaranteed that their rich friends get to hoard even more money.

Except for the religious extreme, the Republican Party will continue to prioritize the protection of the upper 1% and the redistribution of wealth upward. That trumps everything.

The Supreme Court will make it easier this year by loosening election laws further except for those that disenfranchise anyone who could threaten corporate rule. Don’t expect much from this corporate court.

Democrats and liberals will continue to be aghast at what FOX News and Republicans say in 2014, as if anything should surprise them. The lies will continue, and even when it’s pointed out that they

The religious right-wing won’t give up waging various fights against LGBT equality while baby boomers set their agendas.

aren’t true, they’ll be repeated – Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi; Handshake-gate; Socialist infiltration; Kenyan president; Threats to guns.

Democrats and liberal allies, including the President, will allow the Republican right-wing to continue to set the agenda.

Democrats will move to the center claiming it’s good for the country, mom, and apple pie, while Republicans stand pat.

The President will give a lot of really good speeches. But he’ll cave to the Republicans while claiming it’s a necessity.

Establishment Democrats, under the guise of bipartisanship or effective governing, or another nice idea, will affirm the right-wing’s values by giving them credence and even joining them in “reforming” the big three—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If the Republicans are successful, the Democrats will get away with what Republicans could never accomplish in crippling these programs.

Republican de-funding of social programs will mean more liberal money will move to charities to make up the difference, so that liberal money won’t go toward any political change that threatens business. Meanwhile even more corporate conservative money will flow into politics.

The fight against working people’s rights to bargain collectively will continue.

But they’ll have to turn their attention to the organizing of fast-food and other low wage workers who are threatening to change the landscape for every working person.

The people will continue to rise up and support populists like Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, and Bernie Sanders. That will anger the Democratic establishment that will work to marginalize the Democratic populists, while the mainstream media support them with the ever-repeated claim that the people want politicians to move to “the center,” as if there is one.

The media will continue to lose credibility as it continues striving to prove to the right-wing that it’s not liberal. People will rely more and more on the little and less-vetted information they get from Tweets and Blogs.

We’ll lament more mass shootings while they’re calls to loosen restrictions on weapons. As a result many innocents won’t be with us at 2014’s end to protect what the lobbying group for weapons manufacturers and distributors claims is a Second Amendment right.

America will continue to rise on the corruption index compared to other countries while it continues to defame European countries that don’t join it in corporatization. And the world will look

on wondering what happened to that once-great experiment in democracy.

2014 won’t be a pretty year. But falling into hopelessness, hiding, turning inward, and refusing to fight all of this would be self-destructive, disempowering and a vote for the ugliness.

All over the country in almost every place, there are people who don’t want this, and many who’re doing something about it. Connecting to those who believe you can fight will be the most important choice we make in 2014.

Poet, activist Audre Lord was right when she said: “That you can’t change City Hall is a rumor being spread by City Hall.” We don’t have to be optimists when we choose hope.

We can face the ugliness even when we’d prefer that our anthem be Louie Armstrong’s “It’s a Wonderful World.”

Wherever we are, however we can, we can do what says to the world that we’re not giving in or giving up.

It requires that we be there. And that is what actually does change things.

Change is not just silly talk about some crazy dream.

No romantic, American historian Howard Zinn put it this way: “History is instructive. And what it suggests to people is that even if they do little things, if they walk on the picket line, if they join a vigil, if they write a letter to their local newspaper. Anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much, much larger sort of flow of energy. And when enough people do enough things, however small they are, then change takes place.”

The Des Moines Chapter of Parents & Friends of Lesbians & Gays (PFLAG) will meet at 6:30 pm at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 1800 Bell Avenue Des Moines, IA 50315 on the third Tuesday of every month.

The meeting begins with a short business meeting followed by an educa-

tional presentation, and a social and support session. All are welcome!

Made up of parents, families, friends, and straight allies uniting with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, PFLAG is committed to advancing equality through its mission of support, education and advocacy.

Robert N. Minor, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas, is author of When Religion Is an Addiction; Scared Straight: Why It’s So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It’s So Hard to Be Human and Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society. Contact him at www.FairnessProject.org.

PFLAG - Des Moines Chapter Meeting

ACCESSline Page 8

Section 1: News & Politics

JANUARY 2014

In the Name of Religion by Rev. Irene Monroe Mandela’s LGBTQ advocacy fallen on deaf ears in Africa and African diasporic communities

As the world mourns the passing of Nelson Mandela—who was oftentimes affectionately referred to by his Xhosa clan name “Madiba,” or as “Tata” (Father)—I, too, like so many LGBTQ activists across the globe, give thanks for his unwavering support on behalf of our civil rights.

During his tenure as president, Mandela modeled for the world what an LGBTQinclusive democracy entailed.

For example, under Mandela, South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution was the first in the world to ban anti-LGBTQ discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The country was the fifth in the world, and the first on the Motherland to legalize marriage equality. While in office Mandela appointed an HIV-positive gay man, Edwin Cameron, to the nation’s highest court.

And long before his son, Makgatho Mandela, 54, died of AIDS, Mandela was the country’s most vocal and visible HIV/AIDS prevention advocate campaigning against both its stigma and silence.

But, sadly, Nelson Mandela’s LGBTQ advocacy and his impact on the Motherland as well as African diasporic countries and communities across the globe have shown little or no light.

Much of the opposition to LGBTQ civil rights deriving from these countries and communities around the globe—Africa, Caribbean, European and the Americas—when not fueled and funded by Western right-wing homophobic Christian groups—was that no credible heterosexual Alpha male role model could possibly exist and also be African of a royal patriarchal warrior/chief lineage.

But as a former boxer and son of the chief of the Xhosa-speaking Tembu tribe in South Africa, Mandela was the quintessen-

tial paragon of African royalty, black power and black masculinity. However, Mandela’s forward thinking and actions neither tamped down nor stemmed anti-gay rhetoric, murderous acts or homophobic witch-hunting.

For example, to hear of human rights abuses in Uganda’s is sadly, not new. The country’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill dubbed “Kill the Gays bill” criminalizes same-sex relations. And depending on which category your homosexual behavior is classified as—”aggravated homosexual” or “the offense of homosexuality”—you’ll either received the death penalty or if you’re lucky life imprisonment.

David Kato, father of the Uganda’s LGBTQ rights movement, however, didn’t live to receive either punishment. On a list of 100 LGBTQ Ugandans whose names and photos were published in an October 2010 tabloid newspaper calling for their execution, Kato was murdered in January of 2011.

Throughout the African continent there are numerous stories of homophobic bullying, bashing and abuses of its LGBTQ population.

None of us will forget Zimbabwe’s despot Robert Mugabe, who treated his LGBTQ citizens with torturous action, has yet to be brought to justice. Mugabe’s condemnation of his LGBTQ population is that they are the cause of Zimbabwe’s problems and he views homosexuality as “un-African” and an immoral culture brought by colonists and practiced by only ‘a few whites’ in his country.”

But if truth be told, Mandela’s advocacy has shown very little light even in his country, the one country you don’t expect to hear antiLGBTQ rhetoric and human rights abuses. But South Africa has a serious problem with its LGBTQ population, and especially with lesbians. And its method to remedy its problem with lesbians is “corrective rape.”

Corrective rape is a hate crime that for the most part goes unreported and unprosecuted in South Africa. And, these rapes are the major contributor to HIV/AIDs epidemic among South African lesbians.

In the Caribbean, Jamaica is not the most homophobic island country; it’s just simply the most infamous for its anti-LGBTQ crimes.

Homophobia in Jamaica goes unchallenged in that a person can simply speculate about a persons’ sexual orientation or gender identity and then plot to kill him. The intent to murder LGBTQs is unabashedly announced without fear because the police won’t protect them from mob-led murders and violence. As a matter-of-fact, the police incite the country’s homophobic frenzy—by either being present and inactive during these assaults or by following and watching the members of the LGBTQ community.

And in Jamaica, like other anti-LGBTQ friendly countries, homophobic violence drives the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Here in the U.S. Mandela’s LGBTQ advocacy was for the most part ignored by most black churches and their cadre of homophobic African American ministers who professed to have marched with MLK during the black civil rights era.

In 2013 our first black president, Barak Obama, who like Mandela, modeled and legislated on behalf of LGBTQ civil rights-like DADT, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and the repeal of DOMA, to name a few. But, there is still a huge vocal and visible anti-LGBTQ contingent of black Christian ministers and churches.

For these ministers, some of whom support LGBTQ civil rights but draw the line on same-sex marriage. They say their opposition to same-sex marriage is a prophylactic

and family benefits, including identification cards, to same-sex military spouses in the same manner as any other military spouse.

Spousal and family benefits are important for many military families across the country. In order to receive these benefits, you must be enrolled in the federal Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS). Enrollment in DEERS provides access to many benefits, including TRICARE medical insurance coverage, education benefits, access to military commissaries and exchanges, and Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) programs.

The DoD directive is great news for legally married same sex couples, and should apply to you as well. However, we know from experience that some members of the National Guard have encountered resistance. In September, Lambda Legal represented Alicia Butler and 1st Lt. Judith Chedville, a member of the Army National Guard who served in Iraq and Kuwait. After the DoD issued the new guidelines, Butler

and Chedville, who are Texas residents, went to Camp Mabry in Austin to attempt to enroll in DEERS. Even after presenting a valid marriage license, Alicia and Judith were denied access to the registration process at Camp Mabry, and were told they would instead have to travel to a federal facility, the closest one requiring a threehour trip.

Lambda Legal submitted a letter urging Texas Military Forces to abide by the DoD directive and allow not just Alicia and Judith, but all married samesex military couples to register for federal benefits at any military base in the state.

Finally, the Texas Military Forces changed course and the day before Thanksgiving Alicia successfully obtained her military spousal ID card, and they can now feel the dignity and fairness of being treated like any other married military family. Other states, including Oklahoma, South Carolina, Florida, and West Virginia, have relented after Secretary Hagel reaffirmed DoD’s

However, Mandela’s forward thinking and actions neither tamped down nor stemmed antigay rhetoric, murderous acts or homophobic witchhunting.

Ask Lambda Legal by Paul Castillo

Marriage and Military Spousal Benefits

Dear Ask Lambda Legal, My husband is a Military service member and we recently tied the knot! I’ve read that we now have access to military spousal benefits but I am not sure if that’s true. Can you clarify what is available to us?

Congratulations! Lambda Legal has been working on winning the freedom to marry for same-sex couples across the country, and hearing about happy, committed couples getting married is always great news. There are thousands of protections and responsibilities that come with marriage, and that is especially true for military service members and their families.

This past June, the Supreme Court of the United States issued an historic decision that struck down part of DOMA, granting federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples who get married in states where gay and lesbian couples can be legally wed. After that important ruling, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) issued a directive that requires the military to provide spousal

Rev. Irene Monroe is a graduate from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and she has served as a pastor at an AfricanAmerican church before coming to Harvard Divinity School for her doctorate as Ford Fellow. She is a syndicated queer religion columnist who tries to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Her website is irenemonroe.com. measure to combat the epidemic of fatherlessness in black families. In scapegoating the LGBTQ community, these clerics intentionally are ignoring the social ills behind black fatherlessness, such as the systematic disenfranchisement of both African-American men and women, high unemployment, high incarceration, and poor education.

Mandela’s LGBTQ advocacy and his impact on the Motherland as well as African diasporic countries and communities across the globe has for the most part fallen on deaf ears.

We all need another Mandela to help us evolve.

But as Obama stated in his eulogy to Madiba “We will never see the likes of Nelson Mandela again.”

The military to provide spousal and family benefits.

Paul Castillo, Staff Attorney for Lambda Legal. directive in late October. However, National Guard units in Mississippi continue to defy the DoD directive.

If you feel you have been discriminated against because of your sexual orientation or gender identity/expression, please contact our help desk at 1-866-542-8336 or visit lambdalegal.org/help

Section 1: News & Politics

JANUARY 2014

ACCESSline Page 9

Warren’s Words by Warren J. Blumenfeld Economic Disparity: When Is Enough, Enough?

“[A]s long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems.”

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 2013 While economic disparities plague all of the nations across the planet, nowhere are these disparities more extreme than in the United States (Weeks, 2007), and so I ask, when is enough, enough?

When the income inequality between the upper one percent of earners in the U.S. and the lower 99% has been the widest since the great depression of the late 1920s (Wiseman, 2013), when is enough, enough?

When the compensation of corporate CEOs has risen an astounding 725% between 1978 and 2011 while the average workers’ salaries have increased a mere 5.7% over the same period, and when today’s official minimum wage of $7.25 per hour equals $3.00 less accounting for inflation compared to the minimum wage in 1968, when is enough, enough? (http://thinkprogress.

org/economy/2012/05/03/475952/ceopay-faster-worker-pay/) When the top financial rewards went to only 400 people increasing their income between 1992 and 2007 by 392% while their average tax rate fell by 37% (Gibson & Perot, 2011), when these same 400 people accumulated more wealth than the lower 50% of the U.S. population combined (Kertscher & Borowski, 2011), and when corporate profits have reached unprecedented heights, though the wages and benefits of the vast majority of workers either stagnated or diminished when accounting for inflation (Mishel & Shierholz, 2013), then when is enough, enough?

When a few individual families own 20, or 30, or 40, or more fast food franchises while paying their workers less than a living wage, as 26% of fast food employees are parents raising children, and 68% are the major wage earners for their families, and many of our people go hungry as Congress fights to eliminate the food stamp safety net, when is enough, enough? (http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/ publiccosts/fast_food_poverty_wages.pdf) When a McDonald’s employee must work the equivalent of 930 years to match the salary that the CEO makes in a single year, when is enough, enough? (http://blogs. reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/28/

trying-to-raise-a-family-on-a-fast-foodsalary/) When a family purchases two, or three, or four, or five, or even six homes that they occasionally visit depending on their current mood like the rest of us choose which pair of underwear to don for the day, and many of our people, including youth, go homeless, when is enough, enough?

When our elected officials in Washington, DC respond merely to the demands of the upper income groups and discount lower socioeconomic income brackets (Gentilviso, 2013), then when is enough, enough?

When the mammoth economic inequities rooted in a pervasive corporate culture place profits over people and revenues over the environment, then when is enough, enough?

As the corporate sector increasingly dictates economic policy through the purchasing and ownership of politicians at the expense of the people of our country, a corporate culture that eliminates workers’ health care and collective bargaining rights, one that promotes and maintains workplace inequalities based on race, nationality, age, sex, sexual identity, gender identity and expression, and disability, one that forecloses our homes through scurrilous business practices, and one that holds students hostage to loan structures that jeopardizes their futures, then when is enough, enough?

When the military industrial complex marches to the beat of industry, when an educational system based on standardiza-

Laurel Sprague, research director for The SERO Project, states in the documentary, More Harm than Good, “We shouldn’t have legal reasons for people not to get tested. We shouldn’t have a legal reason for people not to access care. And half of our respondents (from the SERO Project survey) said that it was reasonable to avoid HIV testing because of HIV criminalization and 42% of our respondents said it was reasonable, somewhat, or very reasonable to avoid getting HIV care once you’ve tested positive.”

Community HIV/ Hepatitis Advocates of Iowa Network (CHAIN) is leading the efforts to modernize Iowa’s HIV specific legislation. CHAIN wants to modernize the law to create a tiered system which addresses the intentional transmission of any contagious or infectious disease.

Reform is needed to promote responsible disclosure. The current law undermines public health goals by discouraging testing and treatment of HIV, as well as making disclosure of HIV status more risky.

HIV criminalization laws unfairly punish and stigmatize people for having HIV, regardless of their actions, their intent, their risk to others, or even if transmission actually occurs. In 90% of prosecutions,

transmission has not occurred.

This year CHAIN is also partnering with OneIowa, the states leading LGBT organization, for its 2014 “Day on the Hill,” which gives community members a chance to discuss legislation reform with their Iowa Senate and House members. On February 11, 2014 we will be advocating for the reform of Iowa’s discriminatory law, which targets and denigrates people living with HIV and AIDS in Iowa.

OneIowa executive director, Donna Red Wing states: “One Iowa will continue to work with our legislators as we urge them to update and reform Iowa’s current law. We need a statewide campaign, one that educates people around AIDS/HIV that educates people around the law, here in Iowa. We then need to design a campaign that brings as many of the grassroots to the table and equips them with the information, the skills, the messaging and the strategies to move their representatives.

We also need to have both public conversations and more quiet private conversations. We need to get past the insider talk and speak to folks in a way that they can understand. We need to as LGBTQ individuals and organizations, we need to recommit to the work around HIV.” To find out more information on how you can join us, follow CHAIN on Facebook.

Information can also be found on OneIowa’s

I advocate equal pay for equal work between the sexes, and the raising of the minimum wage so workers can raise their standard of living significantly above the poverty line.

Iowan Advocacy by Tami Haught Getting to Zero

One theme for the 2013 World AIDS Day was “Getting to Zero”: Zero New Infections, Zero Deaths, and Zero discrimination.

We have the tools now to make this happen.

We have known, for years, if you use protection, risk of transmission decreases. We now know that if someone living with HIV has access to care and treatment and has a suppressed viral load; chances of transmission are near zero.

We can get to Zero new infections, it is possible. However, it is the stigma and discrimination that prevents us from getting to zero. We will never achieve our goals until these obstacles to testing, treatment and care are eliminated.

For Iowans living with HIV one obstacle that we have to eliminate is our HIV specific criminalization law. The current Iowa law, 709C, is based on outdated beliefs, how people acquire HIV, who acquires HIV, and the medical risks associated with it.

We shouldn’t have legal reasons for people not to get tested.

Warren J. Blumenfeld is author of Warren’s Words: Smart Commentary on Social Justice (Purple Press); editor of Homophobia: How We All Pay the Price (Beacon Press), and co-editor of Readings for Diversity and Social Justice (Routledge) and Investigating Christian Privilege and Religious Oppression in the United States (Sense). www.warrenblumenfeld.com tion and allegiance to corporate needs, and a prison industrial complex that perpetuates the racial and socioeconomic class inequities pervasive throughout the society, then when is enough, enough?

When corporations grab government bailouts with impunity while doling out exorbitant bonuses for executives, and when these same executives pay lower tax rates than their secretaries, then when is enough, enough?

When in 2011, U.S. “Representative” Paul Ryan spoke at The American Spectator’s Robert L. Bartley Gala Dinner in which he referenced to the “30 percent” who desire the welfare state to take care of them and

TTBLUMENFELD cont’d page 32

Tami Haught has been living with HIV for almost 20 years. She is the CHAIN Community Organizer, President for PITCH, and new member of the SERO Project Board of Directors. Tami started speaking out about her HIV status when her son started school hoping that providing education and facts would make life easier for her son, by fighting the stigma, discrimination, isolation, and criminalization people living with HIV/AIDS face daily. Contact info: tami. haught2012@gmail.com website: www.pitchiowa.com website: oneiowa.org.

On February 11, Iowa advocates will go to Des Moines and talk with their state legislators hoping to convince them to vote for the new bill introduced to modernize Iowa’s HIV specific law. Please join our efforts. If you cannot make it in person we ask that you call or email your legislator.

Together we can remove a barrier to testing, treatment, and care steering Iowa closer to “Getting to Zero”.

ACCESSline Page 10

Section 1: News & Politics

JANUARY 2014

Living as Transgender speech by Ellen Krug Compassion for One’s Self and for Others

Given at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, November 20, 2013. Continued from ACCESSline Issue December 2013, Volume 27, No. 12.

Many of you know that the statistics for transgender people relative to suicide are staggering. The incidence of completed suicides for the general population is 12.1 persons per 100,000. Now, I’m going to mix up the numbers, so be warned. For trans people, that number of attempted suicides per 100 people is an astounding 41%.

This is attempts and not actual suicides, but the two figures give you some sense of how prevalent suicide is for the trans community.

Indeed, I know this firsthand. For those of you who have read my book, you know that I idealized about the thin nylon rope that was part of my eight (8) person camping tent. I got to 4.75 on my 5.00 suicide scale, but stopped when I realized that killing myself would leave my two daughters feeling exactly how I felt about my father.

I broke a cycle. I’m so very lucky to be able to say that.

I realize that many times, Transgender Day of Remembrance focuses on those who have been killed or beaten or gone missing because of their status as transgender. We have the names imbedded in our collective memories: Brandon Teena, Larry King, Gwen Araujo. Or, for me and others in the Twin Cities, there is Krissy Bates, who was the first person murdered in Minneapolis in 2011. The police listed only her male name. That’s the case from which I learned the phrase “overkill:” where someone continues to slash away at a body long after death has resulted—all because of anger and rage.

We know this date—as I said it’s “sacred”—stems from the 1998 beating to death of Rita Hester in Boston. We’ve documented the murders of trans people ever since. Last night I looked at the primary website that tallies the deaths of trans persons. For the twelve months since a year ago, the website listed seventy (70) deaths, many of them in the overkill category, and many of them South America.

However, that continent has no monopoly—trans people were murdered across the world, including in the United States.

By no means do I want to diminish or marginalize or forget the ultimate sacrifice so many have made all because they simply wanted to live their lives as themselves.

They should and must be remembered and honored on this day.

Yet, we don’t talk enough about trans people—and for that matter the other alphabet letters, the L’s, G’s, B’s, and Q’s, or further about the other humans who don’t have an alphabet letter—who time and again leave this world through their own hands, their own devices. It is its own separate tragedy of epidemic proportions.

Indeed, the national suicide rate now surpasses the number of people killed in car accidents.

Just last week, a 16 year old Brainerd, Minnesota high school student killed himself when he was suspected of being

attracted to an openly gay fellow student.

So, let us ask why in general, but more particularly, why do trans people attempt and then succeed at suicide in such high numbers?

Why do we hate ourselves so very much that death—the utter nothingness of death—seems the only viable option?

Why do we feel we have no choice about whether to live or die? How is it that we have a society that nurtures pets—cats, dogs and exotic fish—to the tune of billions of dollars a year but yet can’t find it within its collective self to nurture humans who are simply seeking to live their lives authentically and genuinely?

Fo r starters, there’s fear.

We’re human, which means that fear is part of our everyday existence. We need to understand that. We also need to realize that fear is the root cause of so many negative things, and the genesis for much of the hatred in this world.

For most trans people, fear is endemic to our lives. Growing up, I was the poster child relative to fear. I lived in an alcoholic household with a father who often went missing. I vividly recall laying in my bed until midnight, or one or two in the morning, scared to death, waiting to hear the moan of the garage door and rumble of the Oldsmobile, meaning that my dead drunk father had made it home yet again.

On a few nights, he didn’t make it home. By the time I was a college freshman, I learned what the phrases “arraignment” and “presentence investigation” meant.

Rippling from that was yet more fear—that I’d never be able to survive in the world alone. This fueled a tremendous insecurity and lack of self-confidence.

When I pictured myself as an adult, it was hard to imagine me as successful—I saw only a loser, someone who’d never be able to achieve much.

Most of all, fear worked to keep me from understanding my true self. Because I was so afraid, I spent all of my energy on simply trying to survive as a boy, and then a man. Never mind that from age eight or so, I had gut tugs pulling at me, telling me that I was different. Never mind that I started wearing girl’s underwear at age eleven (11) or that as a teenager, I began fantasizing about same sex attractions and being adored as a woman by men.

All of that was too, too big. I was scared to death that if I opened the bottle, turned on the tap, my gender genie would gush forth, and I’d lose any chance for a successful life.

I know that these thoughts—this stuffing, compartmentalizing, suffering—are all too common for trans people. These are our fears. They are what hold us back.

And for many, it’s also what kills us.

I know, though, there’s even more fear out there, plenty of fear to go around. For many trans people in our country—and that includes my dear home state, Iowa— there’s a pronounced fear of being hurt or killed if we ever let that genie out of the bottle, if we ever lived as our true selves,

genetic males who really are female, like Krissy Bates I’ve spoken of, or genetic females who are really male, like Brandon Teena.

That oppression wears on you. And god forbid, if the secret comes out—god forbid, if a closeted transwoman does something so normal as wear painted nails in public—there’s the fear.

Will someone hurt me for this? Who will yell at me because of this? Will I lose my apartment or job over wearing pink nails?

On the other side of the fear equation, there are the hate mongers, the ignorant people who fail to even recognize their common humanity.

Consider the November 7 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine, and Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s story about Coy Mathis, a six year old who made Colorado history because her parents successfully fought for elementary school bathroom access (Coy, genetically male, has identified as female since the earliest age). Erdely writes about those who hate us: “Is that not the craziest thing you’ve ever heard,” Mike Huckabee asked at October’s right-wing Values Voter Summit, speaking of California’s anti-discrimination law [requiring bathroom and locker room access for gender variant students]; California Republicans have already targeted

For many trans people in our country—and that includes my dear home state, Iowa—there’s a pronounced fear of being hurt or killed…

its repeal as a top priority. Earlier this year, House Republicans tried to strip the Violence Against Women Act of its protections for transgender women, and Arizona state Rep. John Kavanaugh introduced a bill that would have made it a crime for trans people to use their preferred bathrooms.

Fox News commentators vehemently oppose any accommodation of trans kids in schools, something Bill O’Reilly calls ‘anarchy and madness.’”

Throw in for good measure one more historical fact: trans people aren’t protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act because North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms believed trans people were an abomination, like pedophiles.

Thankfully, Jesse Helms is gone. I wish that his bigotry was too. It’s that bigotry that accounts for why transgender people have legal protections in only eighteen (18) states, including Washington, D.C. Within the last three weeks, I’ve spoken in both Ohio and Missouri, states where trans people have absolutely no legal rights.

Kansas, next door to Missouri (for those of you who failed United States geography) actually passed an LGBT protection law, only to then have it repealed by popular vote.

Can you imagine feeling safe and legal one day, and then waking up the next to find that you’ve become an outlaw? Think about it; that society suddenly says, “you’re not good enough to protect. You’re not one of us.”

TTKRUG cont’d page 30

ACCESSline’s fun guide

Our Picks for January 1/4 & 10 & 11, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Orpheum Theater Center, Freedom : Unveiling the Cries of a Sex Slave, Orpheum.SFArena.com 1/17, Des Moines, Iowa, Des Moines Playhouse, The Hundred Dresses, DMPlayhouse.com 1/17 & 19, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre, Carmen, CR-Opera.org 1/17, Des Moines, Iowa, Civic Center, Alonzo King Lines Ballet, DesMoinesPerformingArts.org 1/17-2/9, Omaha, Nebraska, Hawks Mainstage Theatre,

Define “Normal”

interview by Arthur Breur

Having Our Say : The Delaney Sisters’ First 100 Years, OmahaPlayhouse.com 1/18, Rock Island, Illinois, The Stern Center,

A Night to Remember-The 21st Annual Red Ribbon Dinner, TPQC.org

1/18, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Orpheum Theater Center, Balleraena Presents: Snow White and the Seven Dancing Dwarfs, Orpheum.SFArena.com 1/18-19, Dubuque, Iowa, Grand Opera House,

Shaun Rice as Fester in the musical “The Addams Family”.

Photo courtesy of “The Addams Family”.

George & Gracie - Yesterday and Today, TheGrandOperaHouse.com 1/24-25, Cedar Falls, Iowa, Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Arts Center, Hello Dolly!, GBPAC.com 1/26, Ames, Iowa, Stephens Auditorium, Cinderella-Moscow Festival Ballet, Center.IAState.edu 1/26, Sioux City, Iowa, Orpheum Theatre, Hello Dolly! Starring Sally Struthers, BroadwayAtTheOrpheum.com 1/31-2/8, Waterloo, Iowa, Waterloo Community Playhouse, Community Theatre:

Black Comedy - The Night the Lights Went Out, WCPBHCT.com

1/31-2/16, Des Moines, Iowa, Des Moines Community Playhouse, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, DMPlayhouse.com

...and February

2/6-16, Mason City, Iowa, Mason City Community Theatre, Little Women, MCCommunityTheatre.com 2/7, Des Moines, Iowa, Hoyt Sherman Place, FFBC Red Party, FFBCIowa.com 2/11, Davenport, Iowa, Adler Theatre, Addams Family, Page 17

Shaun Rice discusses the musical production of “The Addams Family” Addams Family is playing in locations across Iowa and nearby states over the next few months. Arthur Breur had the opportunity to chat with Shaun Rice, who plays Uncle Fester, about the experience of touring on a musical, the musical’s take on the Addams Family, and about the musical’s very downto-earth message.

Tell us about the show.

It’s a really fun show. It goes back to its roots, the actual cartoons that Charles Addams used to draw, but it really borrows a lot of the humor from the old TV shows as well—little bits of the movies are in there too, so no matter how you know the Addams Family, what form, you’re going to recognize them—but it really goes back to those “sitcom comedy” kind of roots.

The storyline is really fun. Wednesday Addams is a little older than we’ve seen her before—she’s college-age now—and she’s found the boy she wants to marry, who comes from this very normal family in Ohio. So she has invited his family to come meet our family, and chaos ensues over dinner.

You mention it draws (no pun intended) on the original New Yorker comics. Can

you share some examples of how it draws from those?

If you’re a real aficionado of the Addams Family artwork, you’re going to recognize many of the scenes. We recreate, visually, several of the iconic Addams comics. One in particular being one of the Thanksgiving comics showing the Addams Family at this huge extended table with Lurch serving a double-headed pig. The end of Act I is that scene all set out, with the long table and everyone sitting like they are in the comic. That kind of humor. It’s a little darker than the TV show—the movies were pretty dark, darker than the TV show—but you will see things like that drawn directly from the comics.

So people planning to see the musical would benefit from taking a look at those original New Yorker cartoons?

They will definitely find some Easter Eggs if they do!

Tell us about your experience with the musical. How did you get into it, and how are you finding the performances?

I’m having a fantastic time with The Addams Family. I grew up watching the movies with Christopher Lloyd, Angelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christina Ricci—I actually saw the first one back when there were drivein theaters! And then there was the HannaBarbera cartoon on Saturday mornings. So I sort of grew up with the family, knowing them, and having a particular interest in Uncle Fester. The movies were very Uncle Fester based, and he was always one of my favorite fictional cartoon heroes. [Laughs.] When the show came out on Broadway, a couple of friends of mine got to see it and they said, “Oh, my gosh, you have to go and auditions for the show when it goes on tour!” So when it did, I just kind of blindly went out—I hadn’t seen the Broadway show yet—and auditioned for it. And once they gave me the sides and I

TT“NORMAL” continued page 31

The Fun Guide

ACCESSline Page 12

JANUARY 2014

Inside Out by Ellen Krug

Junior Anthropologist

People often ask what it’s like to flip genders. The most common question: “Is it really all that different living female as compared to living male?”

My answer: “Yup. It sure is.”

For one, there’s the loss of white male privilege. For another, I now have to deal with men viewing me as a lesser citizen, no longer their equal.

I’ve sometimes written about how things changed gender-wise, but in the last two months there have been two instances—what I call actual bullying— where I’ve been painfully reminded about how the gender deck has been shuffled.

One instance involved a morning retreat for a community board on which I was a member. (With “was” being the operative phrase.) Midway through the meeting, we discussed a zoning issue— something which I sort of understood but didn’t fully grasp. Of course, me being me, I still expressed a fairly passionate opinion on the issue.

Another board member, a man who is an architect/designer (and thus who actually knows something about zoning), responded to my comments by asserting that either (a) I was intentionally misstating the facts or (b) “just plain ignorant” of how zoning laws work.

The accusation that I’d intentionally misstate something was a cheap shot—I pride myself on being ethical and on addressing things directly.

The second part of his response— that I was ignorant—hung in the air for a few seconds. I was quite shocked to hear that word actually enunciated in a large meeting and even more to have it directed toward, of all people, moi.

When I finally answered—an eternity later—all that I could say was, “It’s been a long time since anyone called me ‘ignorant’.”

I went silent for the rest of the meeting. During a break, the architect/ designer approached and apologized, something that I sincerely appreciated.

Yet, the sting of ignorant echoed through my brain. Enough so that by the end of the day, I resigned from the community board.

I’m not usually a quitter, but I’m also not used to being publicly humiliated. I couldn’t help but immediately think that had I been a man, the architect/designer would have chosen different, more defer-

ential words to express his disagreement.

I don’t think “ignorant” would have been one of those words.

What’s more, back when I presented as male, I would’ve had a far different response. Instead of being sheepish, I would have attacked back. I’d never have wanted a group of peers to think that I would take such disrespect. As an attack dog lawyer (which I was as a man), I had a reputation to uphold.

The second bullying incident occurred when a far more experienced and credentialed writer—a man a few years older than me—demanded that I concede something on what’s become a pseudo joint project. When I advised that I wanted time to think about the concession, he answered that “strategically and bluntly,” I needed to agree with his point right then and there.

“Strategically,” I understood.

“Bluntly” hurt. Like hell.

I gave in and agreed to the concession, something which I likely would have done anyway.

I just would’ve liked to have done it without being bullied.

Again, as a man, I would have unloaded on this dude. Other than court judges garbed in black robes, I never, ever, let anyone tell me what to do.

What is it about having become female that’s created this seismic shift where some men deal with me poorly?

More importantly—relative to selfrespect—what is it about the female me that’s allowed it to happen?

This isn’t simply about Ellie Krug, either. I’ve learned to be a good junior anthropologist, and I regularly step back and watch how men and women interact.

I see the same dynamic over and over: men who assume they’ll run the show and woman who appear to let them do it.

Yes, for sure, I’m painting with a broad brush here, making generalizations in a world where there are many exceptions.

Still, we hear time and again how men grossly outnumber women in CEO positions; how there’s an epidemic of sexual abuse of women in the male-dominated U.S. military (why do men simply believe they have a right to use a woman’s body?); and how women—rather than men— continue to feel they must sacrifice career

What is it about having become female that’s created this seismic shift where some men deal with me poorly?

The Project of the Quad Cities

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Symptom Management Group—Every Wednesday from 1-2:30 pm Life Skills Group—Every other Wednesday from 10-11:30 am Coffee Hour—10-11:30 am on Wednesdays when the Life Skills Group does

not meet; A relaxed and casual atmosphere

for family.

And while I’m at it, let me throw out one more idea: the concept of how women vie for male attention.

Now that I’m living and presenting as female, I’m far more aware of cosmetic and clothing ads. Almost always, the underlying theme of those ads is this: our product will help you look prettier or sexier for the man in your life (or the man you’d like to have in your life). In other words, the man is top dog. We women need to entice him.

Successful enticing will bring women rewards, like comfort, money, and security.

Straight women reading this, I suspect, will understand what I’m getting at.

Straight men, on the other hand, might not.

As a transwoman, why have I bought into this system of deference and submission? Why don’t I speak up when bullied by men? Why do I buy cosmetic after cosmetic searching for just the right mascara or blush color?

For sure, it has to do with wanting to fit in. It’s that conformity thing we learned as grade school kids.

But even at age fifty-seven, I’m a newbie to this world of womanhood.

Estrogen has displaced testosterone,

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For more information call Susie or Mollie at 309-762-5433

Ellie Krug is a columnist and the author of Getting to Ellen: A Memoir about Love, Honesty and Gender Change. She resides in Minneapolis and welcomes your comments at ellenkrugwriter@gmail.com. Visit her blog at GettingToEllen.com. making me far more passive. I’d rather have peace than confrontation. Even more, I don’t want to stand out as the disagreeable woman, the one who can’t get along.

Society has a word for those women; it starts with a big fat “B.” Disagreeable men also have their own descriptors, yet they often get away with being bullying asses while women can’t.

I don’t like these unwritten rules.

I suspect I’ll be challenging them quite a bit.

The Fun Guide

JANUARY 2014

ACCESSline Page 13

Wired This Way by Rachel Eliason Pinkwashing Pinkwashing is a term I first heard about three or four years ago and within a single context. I have watched the idea spread slowly and be applied to more and more issues and organizations. When I recently came across the term being applied to HRC, one of the oldest gay rights organizations in the country, I decided it was time to take a closer look at this issue.

What is pinkwashing? Pinkwashing is the use of LGBT friendly initiatives to cover up a less attractive track record for something else. To understand what pinkwashing is, it might be helpful to look at some of the issues where it’s been applied in the past.

The first time I heard the term pinkwashing was in relation to the Middle East.

Israel has a really good track record with LGBT rights. They have a less than stellar track record on treatment of the Palestinian people. The accusation made by some queer activist was that proIsrael political factions in the U.S. were using Israel’s pro LGBT track record to direct attention away from human rights violations in the Gaza territory.

Throughout Western Europe there is a disturbing trend of far right groups picking up the LGBT human rights cause, as a justification for racism and xenophobia. Anders Breivik, Norway’s infamous mass murdered, cited Bruce Bawer, an American gay writer as one of his influences. The German Lesbian and Gay Federation has echoed Breivik’s notion that Islam is “inherently homophobic” and “enemies of gay people.”

Bawer himself does not advocate violence against immigrants but does voice deep reservations about what he describes as “undemocratic” elements within the Muslim communities throughout Europe.

The rise of fundamentalist Islam in Europe may well pit wealthy white gays against poor and poorly assimilated immigrants.

Here in the U.S. pinkwashing has yet to be tied to such explosive issues, mostly because the tight bond between nationalism and social conservatism makes it unlikely that the far right here would ever appeal to the LGBT cause. However the term pinkwashing has crossed the Atlantic and hit home.

The issue that will likely dominate the near future of American politics is the growing debate about livable wages and worker’s right.

The Occupy Movement of 2011 and 2012 has fizzled, but the political climate that spawned it remains.

Americans are growing leery of what they see as excessive corporate greed and power.

The 2013 holiday season has been marked by protests from workers at Wal-Mart and McDonalds.

Target Corporation has recently landed itself into some hot water over its mixed message about LGBT rights. Target has long informed its customer of its support for the LGBT community. They have sold T shirts celebrating LGBT causes and have a line of wedding invitations aimed at same sex couples. They would seem to be clearly in the ally camp.

Then why is Target funding several right wing candidates in several upcom-

ing elections? That question has activist hopping mad and Target rapidly backpedalling. From the lens of social activism Target’s actions make little sense.

This is the American face of pinkwashing. Here there is a strong connection between social and fiscal conservatives. The strongly anti-gay candidates that Target is supporting are also opposed to regulation and unionization. Corporate America needs it pro-business allies but it also needs to present a friendly, liberal face to the world.

So they publically push social causes like LGBT acceptance while quietly funding conservative politics.

Even the notoriously conservative Wal-Mart Corporation has shown signs of softening their stance on the LGBT community, adding domestic partner benefits. This comes alongside continuing crackdowns on workers right, including the firing of protesting workers over Thanksgiving, despite long standing non-retaliation laws.

The real danger of pinkwashing is its potential to affect the movement as a whole, dividing loyalties of individuals and groups.

Pinkwashing is meant to distract the public, but it may end up distracting the activists as well, diverting energy that could be better used elsewhere.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has been at the center of more than its share of scandals. The most recent scandals has activist crying pinkwashing. HRC recently received a large donation (to the tune of 3 million dollars) to spread the fight for marriage equality and LGBT rights international. The problem is that money comes primarily from Elliot Management, a notorious “vulture fund.”

A vulture fund is a hedge fund that invests millions, or even trillions of dollars, into buying the debt from countries with distressed economies (often for a frac-

Rather than a “look at her” mindset, I bet most people would think “good for her”–if they’re going to think anything at all. In reality, most people are too engrossed in their own workout and their own iPod playlist to really give any of it much thought.

I’m sharing this because I get countless emails from unfit, overweight or obese individuals who are too scared or too intimidated to go to the gym.

My point is: Don’t be. Don’t be paralyzed by your fear–which, ultimately, is just another excuse preventing you from creating what you really want.

I think you’ll quickly discover that it’s much scarier in your mind than it is in reality.

or fumbling with equipment. And then the heart rate results need to be interrupted.

There’s an easier way. It’s quick and it’s simple–and it’s fairly accurate. It’s called perceived exertion.

Perceived exertion is a scale that measures feelings of effort, strain, discomfort and/or fatigue experienced during exercise. The most common is the Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion, which ranges from 6 (no exertion at all) to 20 (maximum exertion). Because it’s so easy and effective, it’s commonly used by personal trainers when communicating with their clients.

Why isn’t the scale rated from 1–10?

That’s a great question! It’s because, as a very general rule, you can multiply your level of exertion by 10 to determine your heart rate. In other words, if you’re exercising at a 14, then your heart rate is probably somewhere around 140 beats per minute.

Again, this is very general.

Here’s the scale: 6: No exertion (i.e., sitting in a chair) 7: Extremely light (i.e., arm circles) 8 9: Very light

Social acceptance, diversity, marriage equality, funding these issues might be a feather in the cap of any corporation, a great P.R. piece.

Honor Your Body, Honor You by Davey Wavey What Skinny People REALLY Think About Fat People At The Gym

This morning, I noticed a woman signing up for a gym membership at the front desk.

While she was very overweight, the first thing I noticed was her body language.

She seemed nervous and uncomfortable–as though she felt out of place.

After putting my clothes away in the locker, I saw her again in the cardio room.

I introduced myself and gave her a friendly, reassuring smile. After a minute or two of chatting, she told me that this was her first time in a gym–and that she was literally terrified. She said, “Women like me don’t belong in places like this. I feel like everyone is looking at me and judging me.”

The truth is, she does belong in a gym.

We all do. Taking steps toward a healthier lifestyle is important for each and every one of us.

As for people judging her, I suspect it’s the contrary. Most gym goers would be quick to recognize her bravery. And they’re probably impressed by her willingness to make a positive change in her life.

Rachel Eliason is a forty two year old Transsexual woman. She was given her first computer, a Commodore Vic-20 when she was twelve and she has been fascinated by technology ever since. In the thirty years since that first computer she has watched in awe as the Internet has transformed the LGBT community. In addition to her column, Rachel has published a collection of short stories, Tales the Wind Told Me and is currently working on her debut novel, Run, Clarissa, Run. Rachel can be found all over the web, including on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Goodreads. tion of the total cost of the debt) and then forcing the nation into “restructuring,” often sending their economy into a deeper tailspin.

It is possible that the hedge fund managers are sincere in their desire to further LGBT causes. It is likely that HRC sees a golden opportunity to do a tremendous amount of good. But it is also possible that this new project will put a friendlier, more progressive face on the fleecing of the third world but ultra rich hedge funds. Is that a price the LGBT movement is willing to pay?

For years most LGBT organizations

TTWIRED continued page 14

The truth is, she does belong in a gym. We all do.

What Is Perceived Exertion?

When you’re performing an exercise, it may be necessary to exercise within a recommended range of intensity. And one way to measure intensity is by determining heart rate. However, this process isn’t always easy–and it often requires stopping

Davey Wavey is an AFPA certified personal trainer shares his passion for and knowledge of fitness, exercise, health and nutrition with the world. For more information go to DaveyWaveyFitness.com.

10 11: Light 12 13: Somewhat hard 14 15: Hard (heavy) 16 17 18

TTHONOR continued page 14

The Fun Guide

ACCESSline Page 14

Iowa’s Gay Weddings by Scott Stevens Non-Traditional Engagements

Today we are seeing gay couples repurpose traditional engagements, we have made old and drab, new and fresh!

Straight couples are even starting to toss out the old traditional engagements and start new trends. Now we have over the top, flash mob engagements.

The best part about gay engagements is that couples are not bound by traditional expectations. I would recommend working with a wedding planner to help with you engagements. Yes, they do engagements too! Iowa’s Gay Wedding Planner can help you keep the focus on popping the question and not getting overwhelmed with the details.

The heteronormativity of most diamond advertising requires a massive rock to show your lasting love. Traditionally, a man pays two to three months’ salary to purchase an engagement ring. He asks her family for their blessing to marry her.

Then he plans a public or very private engagement event to pop the question.

Then he buys another ring to give her at the wedding ceremony.

Gay engagements are not as cut and dry as a straight couple.

There are no traditions for getting engaged when you’re gay. The biggest question is who pops the question? My answer, every couple is different, do what feels right. It is ok to talk to your boyfriend/girlfriend about how you would like to get engaged. Once that is finalized I would recommend talking to your fiancés family and asking for permission to be married. Assuming you are both in good standing. Their family will now be your family. This is a great way to start a solid relationship with them.

Then there is the ring, most gay couples have rewritten the rules and only use one ring to get engaged and married.

To the chagrin of many jewelers straight couples are taking notes and starting to do the same with their rings. Your ring style can be as elaborate or as simple as you want

Know your engagement etiquette and make your special day memorable for everyone.

SScontinued from page 13

WIRED have survived on skeletons crews and bare bones budgets drawn from member donors.

Our movement has finally reached a tipping point where it is popular and lucrative to support our fight. Corporations are now willing to give and give generously.

This change has not come without growing pains. Frontline political activist have accused many of the larger, more mainstream, LGBT groups of being more concerned about their corporate sponsors then the cause of justice. Evidence of how prevalent corporate sponsorship has become is clear every June. Gay Pride is celebrated in almost every major U.S. city.

Over the last few years banner ads, corporate sponsors and corporate P.R. departments have all but drown out the message of social acceptance.

The deeper I dig into the term pinkwashing, the more examples I find. There are many pitfalls, many reasons why we need to discuss this issue. There are real dangers to our movement when we let companies pinkwash themselves in our name.

In Europe we see the clearest danger, we may become little more than pawns in someone else’s fight. Letting the LGBT narrative be tied to xenophobia and racism may well have disastrous consequences for our LGBT brothers and sister in those countries.

Throughout much of the Arab world, they view the west as greedy, power hungry and morally decadent. LGBT rights are often viewed as signs of that moral decadence. If we wish to change that narrative, we cannot ally ourselves with rich hedge fund managers or morally bankrupt corporations.

Corporate sponsorship may come at a price and it doesn’t have to be anything as crude as quid pro quid, back door dealings.

Corporations are selective about where they spend their money. Already fundraisers are learning to brand themselves and pitch their message in a corporate friendly way.

But where is the line for activists? At what point does the message itself start to change? It’s not too hard to see a future, or even a present, where organizations fighting for certain issues are showered in corporate money and others organizations are virtually starved. Social acceptance, diversity, marriage equality, funding these issues might be a feather in the cap of any corporation, a great P.R. piece. The rights of HIV positive workers or health care for Trans people might be more challenging to a corporation’s bottom line.

The biggest problem with pinkwashing is the possibility we will lose sight of true equality. LGBT rights have the potential to be the broadest, most inclusive, social justice movement. LGBT people come from all walks of life. We can be found among all races, ethnic and cultural groups. We come from all walks of life, rich and poor. There are disabled LGBT people, mentally ill LGBT people, LGBT people are young, old and everything in between.

If we remember this and we insist that we don’t have true LGBT equality until everyone has equality, we become the broadest movement of all. Yes, it makes it a much harder fight. We must address racism on behalf of LGBT people of color.

We must address the challenges faced by disabled member of the LGBT community.

We must address worker’s right and social justice on behalf of the poorer member of our community. It will be a hard fight but the prize will be worth it, true equality for everyone.

This will not happen if we allow ourselves to become pinkwashed. We must remain vigilant. Allowing others to tie our cause to anti-immigration or anti-Muslim sentiments blinds us to the very real problems faced by LGBT people in the Arab world. Corporations playing lip service to LGBT diversity is meaningless if we let worker’s rights slide. Nonprofits taking corporate dollars need to be careful that those dollars aren’t buying our silence on other important issues facing our community.

Scott Stevens owner/operator of Iowa’s Gay Wedding Planner.com it, there are not requirements to spend 2 months’ salary. It just needs to represent you as a couple.

So when you think it is time to take that next step with the one you love. Don’t be afraid to talk to your boyfriend or girlfriend about it. Don’t worry that they will still be surprised when it happens. Know your engagement etiquette and make your special day memorable for everyone.

JANUARY 2014 SScontinued from page 13

HONOR 19: Extremely hard 20: Maximal exertion A great example of perceived exertion in practice would performing high intensity interval training on a treadmill. For high intensity interval training, you may, for instance, alternate between perceived exertion levels of 13 and 18 or 19. It may be one minute at 13, followed by one minute at 18 or 19 and so on. It’s much easier to describe the exercise in terms of perceived exertion than a set pace in miles per hour, because what is hard for me may be easy for you or vice versa.

For me, alternating between a 13 and 18 or 19 means alternating the treadmill from 7.7 miles per hour to 11 mph at a 3 percent incline. For another person, it might mean alternating between 3 mph and 6 mph. Either way, you’ll be getting the benefits because both bodies will be working hard. And if a certain pace gets easier over time, you may need to increase the speed to stay at that perceived level of exertion.

As you can see, the Borg scale is really easy to understand and extremely helpful.

Try putting it to work for you!

JANUARY 2014

The Fun Guide

ACCESSline Page 15

Artist Alana Hyatt Feels Blessed interview by Angela Geno-Stumme

Artist Alana Hyatt uses her vision to help bring other people’s ideas to life.

Alana graduated from Iowa State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts. She majored in Integrated Studio Arts and has been a Freelance Artist for the past 7 years.

She is a Photographer, Illustrator and selftaught Graphic Designer. She took the time to discuss her artistic inspiration, how the LGBT community is important to her, and her work with the New Kings on the Block and CRPrideFest.

Where do you take your inspiration from for your art?

Design and life are the same thing to me; hence the subject matter in my work typically revolves around portraiture and daily human emotions. I have a lot of resources on the internet that I use for references and ideas as I compose what a photograph or drawing will look like. It is important for any type of artist to look at those who are far more experienced than they are; you have to become your own teacher in order to improve. The process of creating art is just as rewarding as the finished product to me.

Which artists have inspired you the most?

I take inspiration from artists all over the world, thankfully with the internet it is much easier to connect with artists and designers all over the world. There are websites such as www.behance.net that feature portfolios from people working in industries from Fashion to Animation. Then there are websites like deviantart.com where people post their work, but these are people who do it as a hobby, despite how amazing some of them are. After graduating school, I realized I have to continue learning and improving, so having others to look up to helps me challenge myself to try new things.

You worked with the New Kings on the Block (renamed the 319 Kings) how did they inspire your work?

Being a part of NKOTB was a great experience for me. I learned a lot about what it takes to help run a performance group and promote the shows through a variety of outlets. By

Male Anatomy Sketch- digital drawing.

“My favorite thing to draw is the human body; I have a lot of fun experimenting with backgrounds and styles to make my work stand out.” Alana Hyatt.

Alana Hyatt self portrait. promoting the New Kings on the Block I was also gaining exposure in the community, which has led to other opportunities in Cedar Rapids. I have learned that being a part of something bigger than yourself is far more rewarding than doing things on your own.

Although I have since moved on from the group, they have inspired me to continue to be involved in promoting local events in the community.

You are the 2013 CRPrideFest logo and slogan winner. What did you hope your design would convey to the community?

When I was first brainstorming the logo idea, I was envisioning how it would look on a t-shirt or on a poster. The winning idea would be used all over the place, so I wanted to create something that would bring people out to Pride by advertising through art. I wanted to create a design that people would love to wear on a t-shirt or tank top, and the money made would go back into the funds for next year’s event.

How is the LGBT community important to your work?

I have gained a lot of business from the LGBT community and am fortunate to have met a lot of amazing people who are making a difference in Cedar Rapids. I want to continue to assist LGBT and Diversity Focus sponsored events in bringing people together and discussing, or learning about important topics. My passion is my job, I am able to take other people’s ideas and visions and make it a reality.

What has been your most memorable piece and why?

This is a very hard question to answer!

I don’t have any particular piece of art that stands out more than others; however I have many that were milestones for me, such as tackling a challenging piece or finally completing a 3 month long project. I have photographed many weddings, as well as; expecting mothers and families who will cherish the photographs the rest of their life. Those types of projects are the most meaningful to me because I was chosen, out of all the other photographers, to document special moments and life events. There are customers I’ve become lifelong friends with

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I.C. Kings Present: Hollyweird! Iowa City, IA

The I.C. Kings are a drag king troupe in Iowa City, bending gender and performing monthly for your voyeuristic delight since 2009. They have a monthly show at Studio 13 in Iowa City, Iowa. For more information got to Facebook.com/I.C.Kings or ICKings.com.

Photos courtesy of Sara Tate.

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A Gay “Cheers”: Bad Dog Bar and Grill by Sarah Headrick Hoskins

Bad Dog Barn and Grill.

When relocating or visiting a new city, it is good to know where the hotspots, hotels, restaurants, and landmark sights are located. It is also good to know who is friendly and accepting, where you can fit in while having a good time.

In St . Louis, Missouri, on Chouteau Avenue, in the Grove area, you will find a bar called Bad Dog Bar and Grill. Owned

by Robert Suggs and James Mausteller, managed by Chris “PapaWoof ” Roth and Chuck Van Horn, the bar’s atmosphere is meant to be a gay version of “Cheers”. The Riverfront Times named it the Best Gay Bar in St. Louis in 2010.

As dog owners, Robert and James named the bar after errant canines,

calling it Bad Dog Saloon, in 2004. Within 5 years, a kitchen was added and it became the Bad Dog Bar and Grill. The bar offers friendly bartenders, private parking, a full kitchen, cowboy dancing, music and live bands, and rooms for private parties.

Chef Tyger and his crew provide the usual bar fare with a touch of gourmet. “We have the best burgers in thee Grove area,” says Robert Suggs.

The atmosphere is comfortable, “that of a neighborhood bar that offers an edge.”

The bar promotes diversity in many ways, including the fetish communities.

A c c o rd i n g to Robert Suggs, “If you want to find a bar that is inviting and fun to hang out in, this is the place. There is always something unique and different happening on weekends, whether it be country dancing or a fetish festival. We encourage everyone to come out, play hard, and drink responsibly.”

The bar hosts many events, International Puppy Convention, Midwest

Leather Weekend, Mr. Midwest Leather, and Midwest Puppy to name a few. Charlotte Sumtimes, the new show director, is working on the New Year’s Eve Fetish Ball. She is also bringing in more female clientele with the addition of burlesque and cabaret.

If you are looking for a friendly place to stay while checking out this spectacular bar, you might try Hotel Ignacio or Westin St. Louis.

For more information you can find Bad Dog Bar and Grill on Facebook.com or go to BadDogSTL.com.

Tortillas served in a dog dish at Bad Dog Bar and Grill.

The bar promotes diversity in many ways, including the fetish communities.

Midwest Leather Weekend at Bad Dog Bar and Grill.

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BEHR marriage equality became a centerpiece for the news. As I was watching the Mayor of San Francisco defend the decision to legalize marriage in San Francisco on Larry King, I realized I must join this fight for Equality and Human Rights. No one should have to defend the right to marry or love…like Lincoln said, “We are not free till we are all free.” The weapon of my choice in this fight is jewelry, and sometimes roses. As a jewelry designer it was clear I should design wedding and commitment rings to celebrate and elevate LGBT weddings and celebrations, and other jewelry with every piece having a philanthropic angle to help in the fight for LGBT equality.

How have your designs changed since your arrival in New York City in 1983?

I didn’t really start designing until the 90s. My designs developed over time but took a drastic change after 9/11. As a New

Yorker living in the shadow of that day, the jewelry I was designing then began to express my political and social ideology.

One well-respected jewelry magazine named me designer and “activist” of the year, because all my pieces were from then on made to reflect love, peace, pride, freedom and equality.

What designs will our readers be excited to see on LoveandPride.com?

I hope the wide range of designs we offer that reflect many values, or even just express beauty, will engage and excite our audience. For several of our lines, all net proceeds go to benefit LGBT organizations, and with every purchase you can make a donation.

LoveandPride.com is a worldwide venture, what designers and brands would our readers recognize?

All of the brands and designers we work with are tremendous allies with tremendous talent. They are well recognized, or should be, as important contri-

Midwest Puppy at Bad Dog Bar and Grill. butions to the world our portal can offer.

What standards do you have for designers and brand to include merchandise on LoveandPride.com?

I try to be as open minded as possible in whom we work with. We seek partners and brands that will fit the style and mission of our site and the taste of our discerning customers. All must be in alignment with the values and mission we pursue in the ongoing fight for equality, recognizing a portion of their proceeds will help LGBT causes.

What are some of the non-profit organizations LoveandPride.com has donated to?

We began with Marriage Equality NY and since then have developed fundraising campaigns for Service members Legal Defense Network, Marriage Equality USA, Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, The Matthew Shepard Foundation, The Freddie Mercury Foundation, and are now beginning a new campaign for Immigration

Equality.

With gay marriage becoming legalized nationally and world-wide, how do you think this will affect LoveandPride.com?

While the strides we have made lately in Illinois, Hawaii and NJ are exciting and encouraging, there are still many issues to address and causes to fundraise for. The battles are going strong but we have to win the war. I want to do more for homeless LGBT youth. The new hateful laws in Russia have driven LoveandPride.com and I to wage a campaign to raise awareness about the persecution LGBT people in Russia are now facing. Since the Olympic rings stand for inclusion, we are calling it The Missing Link campaign. Not only are we spreading posters and stickers nationwide, we are fundraising for Immigration Equality’s Russia Emergency Fund to help get asylum seekers to safety. I am not planning on slowing down or stopping any time soon.

For more information go to LoveandPride.com.

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The Bookworm Sez by Terri Schlichenmeyer “My Brother My Sister” by Molly Haskell c.2013, Viking, $26.95 / $28.50 Canada, 213 pages Mom always said you were two of a kind.

You and your favorite sibling: yin and yang, two halves of a whole. A lot of film was spent documenting your lives. A lot of memories are shared when you get together.

Once upon a time, you knew exactly what your sib was thinking–or did you? Read the new book “My Brother My Sister” by Molly Haskell, and you might wonder…

Growing up in Richmond, Virginia, in the post-WWII years, Molly Haskell, her brother Chevey, and their friends enjoyed the same clubs, schools, cotillions, and churches. She remembers a childhood of “privilege” and happiness.

Her brother remembers sneaking up to Haskell’s closet to try on her clothes.

Of course, that was unknown to Haskell until years later, when Chevey came to her in New York and told her that he’d decided to act on something that had vexed him for decades: nervously, he explained that he had gender dysphoria. He’d been on hormones for months. Years ago, he’d thought of himself as “Ellen,” the woman he knew he was inside.

It was something that Haskell never saw coming.

Chevey had been married twice. His first wife knew of his feelings, as did his second wife, but the latter was struggling with acceptance. So, in fact, was Haskell, though she was also curious to know the particulars.

When did Chevey know? (At age seven). How did he decide to do this? (The urge was so strong that he could do nothing else). Why did he wait 50-some years to transition? (Many reasons, including family). He likened his gender to a “birth defect.” It was time to make things right.

As Chevey became Ellen, Haskell mourned the loss of her brother.

When Ellen informed the rest of the family of her news, Haskell kept “waiting for the sky to fall” but nothing happened. Yes, there were slips, gaffes, hurts, and a few surprising revelations, but the world didn’t end.

“Lucky for me,” says Haskell,” my newly minted sister is still the magnificent human being my brother was.”

There’s an awful lot of Poor-Me-ing in the beginning of “My Brother My Sister;” a lot of hand-wringing from author Molly Haskell, and too much fretting about how her brother’s transformation would affect her. While some readers might imagine how they’d feel in the same situation, it’s pretty tedious reading here.

And angsty, almost.

Her brother remembers sneaking up to Haskell’s closet to try on her clothes.

Across

1 Top 5 Path through leaves of grass 10 In need of a massage 14 Just one of those things 15 Eagle on a par five 16 TV’s Trebek 17 South Park composer Shaiman 18 Lubricated 19 One who says, “Let us prey” 20 With 34-Across, where sister Liz is 22 ___ Hari of espionage 23 Part of an IRS return 24 Type of fluid 26 Love Songs poet Sara 30 Bounce on the knee 31 Stroke the ball gently 33 Rods’ partners 34 See 20-Across 39 Error or erection 40 Short term employee 41 Susie Bright, to erotica 43 Game in which you bend over 49 Provides a seat for 51 What Garbo “vanted” to be 52 Bahrain biggie 53 Source of the quote 57 One with flaming pants?

58 Hurricanes of sports 59 Targets of men who make passes 60 Suffix with sermon 61 Banish from a flat 62 Buster Brown’s dog 63 A Scout may do a good one

Thankfully, the book gets better.

Once Haskell’s story gets around to acceptance, readers are treated to a more relaxing read, one of discovery (both on Haskell’s part, and that of her sister), devotion, and of delight. That’s the raison d’etre of this book. What you’ll find from there to the end is why you’d want to read this book in the first place.

Aside from a bumpy beginning and some surgery descriptions that are TMIoverload, I thought this was a good enough book. If you, too, are curious, or if your family is dealing with these same issues, “My Brother My Sister” may be one of a kind.

Q-PUZZLE: Gee Whiz, Liz

64 Piddle around 65 Sucker’s start?

Down 1 Tops 2 Monopoly square

3 Style expert Stewart 4 Emulates Paul Cadmus 5 Unload loads 6 Spin like a top 7 Alice’s Restaurant patron 8 Andrew Van de Camp, and others 9 Avoided commitment 10 Giant actor 11 Poisonous bush 12 How an a**hole behaves?

13 Blows out 21 Leno’s announcer Hall 25 Shopping area 27 Letters on love letters to GIs 28 Judy’s daughter Lorna 29 Merman of Broadway fame 32 What cons do 34 Anal type?

35 New member 36 Put off 37 Boy who shoots off arrows 38 Sweaty place 39 Cut at a slope 42 Just missed, on the green 44 “Poppycock!”

45 Commands of admirals 46 Bush predecessor’s nickname 47 Liable to blow 48 Yellowstone sight 50 Easily screwed 54 Train track 55 Village People hit 56 Place for Maupin’s tales

• SOLUTION ON PAGE 34

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Bisschopswijn Winter Recipes A form of hot spiced wine has been made and imbibed for centuries, mostly across northern and western Europe.

When you purchase bisschopswijn products, you’re getting a perfectly formulated mixture of spices and fruits that can be added to wines, apple cider, or cranberry juice and enjoyed from the earliest cool fall days to the bitterest of winter nights.

To purchase Bisschopswijn go to Bisschopwijn.com.

Mulled Wine & Cider Spices Recipe

• 32oz. cranberry juice • 12oz. apple cider • 12oz. dry red wine • ¼ cup light brown sugar • ¼ cup apricot flavored brandy • 1 oz. (generous 1/4 cup) Bisschopswijn - Mulled Wine and Cider Spices Stove Top or Crock Pot Method 1. Combine the cranberry juice, apple cider and red wine in a large crock pot or large sauce pan.

2. Add the brown sugar and stir until it is dissolved.

3. Place Bisschopswijn spices in the muslin bag* provided.

Close the bag by pulling the strings. Place the bag of spices into the juice and wine mixture.

4. Cover the crock pot or sauce pan and heat the mixture until hot over a medium setting on your crock pot or medium heat on your stove top. Do not boil.

5. Reduce the temperature to low and simmer for 30-60 minutes. Stir occasionally to make sure the brown sugar has dissolved completely. Taste the Bisschopswijn occasionally.

6. Remove the spice bag when the desired amount of “spice” is reached. Just before serving add the apricot flavored brandy and stir until combined.

7. Ladle the hot Bisschopswijn into mugs and serve with a Cinnamon Stir Stick.

Makes seven 8 ounce cups.

This is our original recipe you will find in a package of Bisschopswijn - Mulled Wine and Cider Spices. Feel free to adjust the ingredients to suit your personal taste.

Apple Granite With Apples Granite • 2 pounds Granny Smith apples • 2 cups apple cider • 2 cups water • 2 tablespoons sugar • 1 teaspoon ground Bisschopswijn - Mulled Wine & Cider Spices 1. Peel the apples. Set aside the peel from 2 of them for the granite and reserve the peeled apples for the puree.

2. Chop the reserved apple peel in a food processor and put it in a saucepan with the cider and water.

3. Bring to a boil, cover loosely and boil gently for 25 minutes. You should have about 2 cups of, adjust with water if necessary.

4. Add the sugar and spices. Mix well to dissolve the sugar.

5. Pour the mixture into a bowl and place in the freezer for a few hours, stirring the mixture occasionally with a wire whisk.

When it turns into slush or frozen crystals it is ready to serve.

Apples • ½ cup maple syrup • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract • ¼ cup water • ¼ cup sour cream • 1 pinch ground Bisschopswijn - Mulled Wine & Cider Spices 1. Halve and core the peeled apples and cut into slices.

2. Put them in a sauce pan with the maple syrup, vanilla, spices and water.

3. Bring to a boil partially covered, and boil gently until soft.

Let cool to lukewarm.

4. Add the sour cream and mix to cover the apples. Refrigerate until cool.

5. When ready to serve, spoon ¼ of the apples into a glass dessert dish.

6. Top with the granite and serve.

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KATA KLYSMIC

Kata Klysmic crowned as Miss Gay Iowa USofA 2014.

Photo courtesy of Napier Photography & Fine Art. though a great one. At the age of 26, after less than a year of doing drag, she has earned her crown.

It all started with a resolution to become more active in the community. Starting to do drag and become involved in the shows and fundraising for charity at the bars, was a good place to start. This was not a decision made lightly, this would be the first time doing drag and everything had to be thought out. Kata Klysmic, “cataclysmic” meaning to bring about a fundamental change, had a purpose and though that purpose has evolved since the

The Fun Guide beginning, there is no lack of nobility in her road to success.

She started out doing her make-up at home, she learned in the trial and error fashion. As she got better she started spending more time getting ready with the other performers. She had some major concerns; she was insecure and worried about perceptions, from other performers as well as the community. She decided, “I’m just gonna do it and own it.” Apparently she did ‘own it’, because in March she won Miss Blazing Saddle 2013.

Everything in her campaign has had a theme and a purpose. She selects her music and routine with a specific message or even a destination in mind. In October, she won the title of Miss Gay Iowa USofA 2014. All that is left for this year is a bid to nationals. Though she is going through a grueling bout of prelims to help the next set of contestants, she strives to be a leader and set a standard that others can respect and try to live up to. She feels it is her duty, not just in her reign but in her life, “to be the most accepting of everybody in the community.” She says as a title holder you have to “step away from yourself and do something to help the next generation of contestants.”

Her title reign has made her more ambitious, both on a personal level and for the community as a whole. She hopes to bring in more competitors and to bring the community together, to show how working together and getting along can make it, the community, so much stronger. Her current concerns are the progression of her reign and maintaining a good public image. She has nationals in May and her chance to win another title.

She has definitely made an impact in the community. Patrick Boltinghouse at Vanity &

JANUARY 2014

Kata Klysmic Photo courtesy of Billy Porter.

Glamour Cosmetics in Des Moines, VGCosmetics.com, has created a lip color named Kata and a gloss named Klysmic and is also considering an eye color to be named after her.

When asked if she set out with the goal of winning Miss Gay Iowa USofA, she said “I never intended to be Miss Gay Iowa, it was a fate I never dreamed possible, but I am happy the planets aligned and made it so.” As for what comes next, “preparing for nationals in May, as far as when my reign ends in October 2014, I will continue supporting and helping

others make their dreams possible. Kinda like a Drag Yoda.”

In summing up her experience, the impact on her life, and a message to those walking the same path as she, “[t]his experience has been the most satisfying endeavor in my life. The people I have grown with and built bonds with will be something to take with me for life. I hope to set a standard for this title, one that shows that a title doesn’t make you.

You make the title, so be the best human and citizen you can be.”

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Informative & Entertaining: It Gets No Better Than That by Bruce Carr

Rabbi Steven Edelman-Blank The First Friday Breakfast Club’s guest speaker on December 6th was Rabbi Steven Edelman-Blank of Tifereth Israel Synagogue. This conservative Jewish congregation, now numbering some 300 families, was founded in Des Moines in 1901 and has worshiped and communed in its synagogue on Polk Boulevard since the early 1930s.

Rabbi Edelman-Blank began by noting with gratitude, and characteristic humor, that his invitation to speak to us came

during the Christmas season; his talk then continued to a practical introduction to the three traditions or “denominations” (orthodox, conservative, and reform) of Judaism, with a handy outline of what Jews “are” (an ethnic group) and “are not” (a race). Like any other ethnic group, he assured us, Jews come in all sorts: rich, poor, smart, stupid, liberal, conservative, homosexual, and heterosexual. Further, he commented, every one of these flavors is represented in his congregation.

Regarding attitudes and practices relating to same-sex orientation, Rabbi Edelman-Blank said that in late 2006 the highest legal body in Conservative Judaism had voted — following years of debate — to allow the ordination of gay rabbis and the celebration of same-sex commitment ceremonies. And he mentioned with some pleasure that his move to Des Moines had

Jews come in all sorts: rich, poor, smart, stupid, liberal, conservative, homosexual, and heterosexual.

From the Pastor’s Pen

by Rev. Jonathan Page

God’s Presence Makes the Lowly Holy

“I loved my Jesuit education,” Andy said to me. It was an odd place to be talking about religious education. We were walking down the street in Campustown in Ames on our way to grab a drink at a bar.

“What did you love about it?” I asked in return.

“I loved the Jesuit focus on the sacredness of human experience.”

“Oh?” “Yes. The Jesuits regularly emphasized the holiness of life, that God was present even in the mundane aspects of life. Spirituality can and should be explored in the midst of the world.”

“You mean, God could even be present in a bar?” I prodded him.

“Without a doubt,” Andy replied. “We believe in the Incarnation: that God’s very self came into this world to make it holy. Of course God is present at a bar, and everywhere else for that matter!” I stopped and looked around me. People, mostly ISU students, were mingling on the street, caught up in their conversations and the enjoyment of the evening. I tried to picture God present there. God in the midst of a conversation between a guy and his girlfriend. God in the playful embrace of one frat brother to another. God in the laughing I heard echoing down the street.

“That’s a powerful concept,” I added.

“It is, Jon. And it’s also what we believe.

It can be so easy to forget when we are outside of church or a soup kitchen. God’s holiness is everywhere.”

Of all the seasons and times of the year, the most important for gay Christians is Christmas. Yes, it means lots of fun holiday parties with unusual drinks, kitschy deco-

come in April 2009—right on the heels of the Varnum decision by the Iowa Supreme Court.

Steven Edelman-Blank was most entertaining and informative, as well as both devout and practical. As he has written on Tifereth’s Web site: “I believe that the Jewish tradition is rich with wisdom that can make our lives more meaningful on a daily basis. This belief is at the center of my deep love of Judaism and my tremendous pride in being a member of the Jewish people. Jewish texts and religious practices can continually provide lessons on how to answer some of life’s most difficult questions. I do not mean only intellectual questions though. Sometimes, the most important question we need answered is how to get through the day. I particularly see Judaism as a source of comfort and hope from which we can draw in times

of need.”

Steven Edelman-Blank received his Ordination from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard with a Bachelor of Arts in Social Studies, his eclectic experience includes interning at Temple Emanu El in Burbank, California; directing youth programs at Congregation Beth El in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; assisting with research in the field of psychology at Boston University; serving in AmeriCorps; and an array of community service. His professional passions lie in community development and making Torah meaningful in daily life. Rabbi Edelman-Blank’s wife, Deborah Edelman-Blank, is a clinical psychologist in Des Moines whose clinical interests (it is of some interest to note) include multicultural competence, therapeutic humor, LGBTIQ affirmative counseling, and religion/spirituality. Steven Edelman-Blank can be reached on Facebook and at office@tifereth.org.

LGBTQ Patient & Family

Education and Support Groups Come join the UI LGBTQ Clinic providers and other health professionals to learn about various health and wellness topics and have the opportunity to meet new people!

Hours: Every Thursday evening 5:30-7:00pm Location: University Capitol Center (UCC), Located in Old Capitol Mall 201 S. Clinton St., Iowa City IA RM 2520B Contact: meagan-schorr@uiowa.edu or www.uihealthcare.org/lgbt/

FFBC member Jonathan Page is senior pastor of the Ames United Church of Christ, 217 6th Street, Ames, Iowa. Sunday service is at 10:45. He can be reached at jon@Amesucc.org. rations, and outrageous sweaters. “That’s the ugliest sweater I have EVER seen!”

“Why, thank you!” It is a time when you can forget about the diet (praise God!) and dream up that perfect gift for your niece or nephew. Being a good gay aunt or uncle is essential. But from a religious perspective, Christmas is important because it celebrates the Incarnation.

Queer and Feminist theologians have, for years, grappled with the problem of the body in Christianity. The writings of Augustine of Hippo and others through the years have emphasized the denial of the body and its desires. Self-denial, and especially bodily self-denial, took on the form of a masochistic cult in some parts of Christianity. Prolonged fasting, strict celibacy, self-flagellation, exposure to the elements, these and other forms of self-

By coming into this world, Jesus’ life redeemed what it means to be human.

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A Church Where Everyone Is Equal by Rev. Peter Trabaris The New Day Has Dawned

As you read this month’s article, the new year has dawned. It is now 2014.

And it’s time to look ahead to the future.

The beginning of a new year is always a time of anticipation. We aren’t quite sure what will happen. We know our lives are going to continue pretty much as they have been, and yet, we also know that there is a blank slate, of a sort, lying ahead. And so, there is a sense of possibility that is ours to inhabit.

As I begin this year, I celebrate my second January here in Des Moines. I have just shared my second Christmas, and New Year here. And I find myself serving as the pastor here at MCC. And this church is facing its first January as MCC of Central Iowa. For me, and for MCC, there is a palpable feeling of newness, and possibility. With prayer, and God’s blessing, this will be our first full year as MCC of Central Iowa, and our first real opportunity to give birth to ministries of possibility, with you, and in your midst.

As a reminder, MCC of Central Iowa is a church ‘Seeking, Teaching and Living for Justice and Equality’. And I’m wondering, where this will lead us over the next twelve months?

Currently, we are still small, and growing. Our church community is now in the mid-thirties, though our worship attendance is still in the mid-twenties.

We are speaking with another church in town that is struggling, and they may be joining forces with us, and we are praying for this. If we do join forces, our congregation will grow to the mid-forties. Just a year ago we were struggling to get eight people to church each week. As you see, God is blessing us.

We have just seen the completion of our first Children’s Sunday School session, and are about to begin our Spring term.

The children love the Sunday School, and are upset when they can’t be there for the Sunday classes. We now have six children for Sunday School, and they are our joy and pride. If you have children, and are looking for a Sunday School where they will be raised with the good values of our community, we hope that you will consider having them become part of our program, and that you will choose to become a part of our church.

We are also beginning to develop small ministry groups for the church. We want to make sure that everyone in the church is part of a meaningful ministry group, that will provide individualized pastoral care, community care, study, prayer, a place to share their story, and their struggles and joys, and where together they can be a part of a ministry where they can make a difference for others. We are working toward becoming a church where discipleship is the norm, or to say that in a less churchy way, where we all find realistic ways to put our beliefs into action. Sound interesting, there is plenty of room for you, your families and your friends.

What I am sure of, is that we are working to create a church community in which community, and people matter;

and where we are always ready to deviate from the expected path in order to follow human need.

I John 4:8 teaches us: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (Frank Charles Thompson, 1990) Sometimes the whole topic of church gets complicated.

What is it about, we wonder? There are a lot of ways of talking about the church.

And somehow, no matter how we try to talk about the church, and what it is, even the language seems to somehow get in the way. I think, the reason for this is simple though. What drew people to Jesus two-thousand some years ago, was the way he interacted with the people he encountered. Regardless of who they were, or where they had come from, Jesus accepted them just as they were. And then, together, they considered what becoming better, or more present for one another meant.

In 2014, so much of our world seems to be far away from that simple kind of human reality. The teachings of Jesus, and his presentation in the Gospels, bring us into a sense of his reality, and we long for that. But too often, the history of the church, the dogma of the church, sometimes the traditions of the church, or even worse, the bigotry of some Christians, get in the way of that simple spiritual experience. That simple human/divine interaction is what we are seeking to re-discover in Metropolitan Community Church.

If you have been reading this column, you will have noticed by now that when I describe the ministry of MCC, either here in Des Moines, or around the world, current, or in the previous work of MCC throughout the LGBTQ Communities that we have been a part of, it is all about how we work with the people we encounter.

It is about finding ways to bring Love to life. It is because, simply put, we agree that God is Love. And our task is to engage in that shared Love. By sharing together in this Divine Love, we do find ourselves becoming different people. And so, the MCC Phrase: Transforming Ourselves as we Transform the World.

So, where is God leading MCC of Central Iowa? I believe toward you. The people of Iowa. And what is God calling us to do? I believe to discover new ways of bringing the teachings of Jesus, through God’s Love into a meaningful current reality that makes our individual and collective lives better.

There are many areas where change is needed. Our children still face a world in which bullying occurs. Our elders are quickly finding themselves fading into the closet again, as they move into assisted living, and nursing facilities; or as their LGBTQ friends pass on, and they become isolated from the younger members of the community they helped to build.

Our Transgender sisters and brothers are all too often not accepted for who they are, even at times, within our own

LGBTQ Community. Too many people in our community are still afraid they will lose their employment, or housing, if they become who they are too publicly.

Too many young people are becoming HIV Positive, because they don’t really understand why Safe Sex is still necessary, even if Bare Backing feels better. Substance Abuse affects way too many people in our community.

And what is causing the loneliness, and emotional pain, that is driving our LGBTQ siblings toward too much alcohol, drug abuse, and sex abuse?

Hunger, and Homelessness are on the rise. And let’s not forget our siblings who are, or have been in prison.

We can’t change the world alone.

But working together, we can make a difference.

It’s all about love. We all feel the hot love of attraction when that new guy or gal walks by; and yes, I feel it too! The question is, are we willing to love one another, and care about one another enough, to go beyond attraction, into knowing, and understanding, and a willingness to help be the change that is necessary for the suffering, the pain, the loneliness, the sickness, the injustice to come to an end?

The New Day Has Dawned. And I am inviting you to join with me to discover how we can bring Love to Life.

Frank Charles Thompson, D. P. (1990).

The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible,

Second Improved Edition, New International Version. USA: The B.B. Kirkbride Bible Company, Inc.

The Rainbow Outreach Center is asking for your support in sharing the news of a new outreach program. SSSS is aimed at providing a social event in the Omaha community on the second Saturday of each month at six o’clock p.m.

This event includes a potluck meal (a main dish, tea, lemonade, water, utensils, plates, napkins will be provided),

a movie, games and plenty of space to spend time with friends and catch up.

There is no cost to those who want to join us, and there is no membership required, donations to the Rainbow Outreach Center (a 501c3) are always welcomed. Program located at the Rainbow Outreach Center, 3620 Leavenworth, Omaha, NE.

We are working toward becoming a church where discipleship is the norm, or to say that in a less churchy way, where we all find realistic ways to put our beliefs into action.

Rev. Peter Trabaris, Interim Pastor, MCC of Central Iowa. Peter has served as the pastor of four MCC congregations in Illinois, and Iowa, and has functioned in denominational leadership, most recently serving the MCC North Central US Network.

Peter has represented to the National Council of the Churches of Christ USA, and has served on the Executive Boards of the Church Federation of Greater Chicago, the Hyde-Park and Kenwood Interfaith Council, the Lakeview Overnight Shelter Board, and was the Co-Founder of the Northeast Lake County Clergy Network. Peter was an activist in the LGBTQ Community working for the Illinois Gay and Lesbian Student Caucus, the Illinois Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the Helping Hands Outreach AIDS Ministry. Peter can be reached at: revpetert.mccciowa@aim.com and 515-393-7565.

SSSS=Second Saturday Social at Six

Section 3: Community

JANUARY 2014

ACCESSline Page 27

Planning Your Coming Out by Luke Gordon, Life Coach “I’ve been confused for awhile . . . so what, it’s no big deal.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I regretted what I had done. I felt embarrassed and more vulnerable than I ever had in my adult life.

I retreated to my room and didn’t come out for the rest of the night. I kept berating myself with thoughts such as “I can’t believe you did that,” and “everything would be comfortable right now if you wouldn’t have said anything.” I just wanted to pretend that it never happened, but when I awoke in the morning, the reality hit me again. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye at breakfast and literally hid behind a newspaper. I returned to my room and wrote a letter to my family explaining my bisexuality (I would realize 10 years later that I was gay). I handed it to them and stated that I didn’t want to talk about it again. Fortunately, I did discuss it with them again and many other people.

I would not recommend my initial experience in 2000 as the way to come out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual as I hadn’t thought the situation over and there was no planning involved. The coming out process would have gone smoother if I had readied myself by asking questions that took the big picture, i.e., why, how, and what, into consideration.

If you feel certain about your orientation and are considering coming out, it

would be helpful to reflect on the aspect of “why.” Why do you want to come out and why at this time? What is your purpose for doing it? Once you come out, you may hit some rough moments and having a clear purpose for engaging the process can be a source of strength and courage to draw from.

Another aspect to consider is the “how.”

How you decide to come out will be impacted by your fears and challenges. Possible fears may include: rejection/discrimination by family, friends, coworkers/ work place, and place of worship; verbal and physical harassment; a disruption in the family structure; having to find a new place to live; financial support; losing your heterosexual identity, and social isolation. A few potential challenges may be: limited resources and support in your area (particularly if it’s a small or rural area); reconciling sexuality with spirituality; and living in a country where homosexuality is socially unacceptable or is illegal and punishable. It’s important to look at these fears and challenges to determine if you can resolve them or have a plan in place should they arise. If the fears and challenges can’t be worked around, is this the right time and place to come out?

In addition to considering fears and challenges, having supportive people by your side is important to facilitating the

“how” aspect of the process. Is there a close friend or relative that you believe will be supportive of your orientation? Perhaps this person can be the first one you tell and see how it goes. If that goes well, can you tell another person? And another? Are there LGBT resource centers, social groups, support groups (e.g. PFLAG, gay-straight student alliances) in your area that could help you connect with others who have been through the process and can offer advice and support? There are books, articles, and blogs that can offer suggestions on how to come out. Also, as a life coach who has been through the process, I can explore the fears and challenges with you, help you to develop a systematic approach to the process, and support you in your steps.

Finally, it’s important to consider the “what” aspect of the process. What are the outcomes and opportunities you are seeking? Coming out can help develop a greater level of freedom and acceptance to be who one is and increase your courage, confidence, network of people who share this experience, and opportunities for dating. When people feel free, they are more willing to explore new avenues, take on new risks and challenges, be their true selves, and live a fuller life. Additionally, your example may inspire others to take courageous steps in their lives. In these ways, the coming out process is very empowering.

In summary, if there’s one takeaway that can be gleaned from my life experience it would be that the process will go smoother when you feel ready; know what

you want to say, why you want to say it, how you want to say it, and whom you want to say it to; take your fears, challenges, and potential outcomes into consideration; and have support in place. And please bear in mind, this empowering process is ongoing as there will always be new people entering your life.

January is Cervical Health Awareness Month, and the New Year is a perfect time for women–whether that’s you or the ladies in your life that you care about–to take charge of their health with important preventive screenings such as Pap and HPV tests, which detect irregularities that can lead to cervical cancer. Here is some information that all women should know: What is cervical cancer?

Cervical cancer is caused by certain strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV), a very common sexually transmitted infection. If left untreated, high-risk HPV may lead to cervical cancer in some women.

How common is HPV? Genital HPV infections are very common. In fact, HPV is so common that most sexually active people should expect to be exposed to it and, if not vaccinated, infected by HPV at some point in their lives. Most people who have or have had HPV don’t know it. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 79 million Americans

are currently infected.

How exactly does HPV turn into cervical cancer?

In most cases, the body’s immune system clears HPV naturally. But if it doesn’t, when left untreated, abnormal cells caused by HPV can develop into cervical cancer. It can be prevented if changes in the cervix are found early and treated.

What can I do to protect myself from HPV? Get the HPV vaccine. Talk to your doctor or health care professional to learn more about getting vaccinated. Planned Parenthood health centers offer the HPV vaccine.

Use protection if you have sex.

Condoms or dental dams can lower the risk of passing HPV if used correctly every time you have sex. But HPV can infect areas that are not covered by a condom or dental dam—so they may not fully protect

against HPV. Talk with your sexual partners. You can be exposed to HPV by having skin-toskin contact just once with someone who has the virus, so it’s important to talk with your partner about the importance of being protected and safe.

Get regular Pap tests.

A Pap test can find abnormal cells (that are caused by HPV) in the cervix before the cells become cancer.

Women aged 21-29 should have routine Pap tests every three years and women aged 30-64 should have a Pap test every three years or a Pap and HPV test every five years.

Is the HPV vaccine unsafe?

No. The HPV vaccine is one of the best ways to prevent the spread of HPV, is safe, and is supported by leading medical organizations. The FDA has approved this vaccine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended it for girls and boys aged 11-12. The American Cancer Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, as well as Planned Parenthood, support ensuring all young people get the vaccine.

Who should get the HPV vaccine?

Medical guidance recommends that both girls and boys get the vaccination when they are 11 to 12 years old because the vaccine works best when people receive it years before they start having

sex. But even those who have had sex can benefit from the vaccine; it is available to anyone aged 9-26.

What about older women?

For women over the age of 26, the best way to prevent cervical cancer is to get routine cervical cancer screenings, as recommended. Still, some people may be candidates to receive the vaccine and should talk to their health care provider for more information.

Is there a cure for HPV? Most HPV infections are harmless, do not require treatment, and go away by themselves. However, there is treatment for the abnormal cell changes in the cervix that are caused by HPV that is available at some Planned Parenthood health centers.

Treatment is also available for cervical cancer, which, when caught early, has a nearly 100 percent five-year survival rate.

Planned Parenthood health centers can help those who do need additional care connect with trusted, quality resources.

What about the Affordable Care Act? Under the new health care law, people who already have insurance will gain access to Pap tests, HPV vaccines and other no-cost preventive services, will no longer be discriminated against for having a “preexisting condition,” and young people can remain on their parent’s insurance until age 26. Those who are uninsured can enroll in new, more affordable health care plans right now.

The coming out process wouldhavegonesmoother if I had readied myself by asking questions that took the big picture, i.e., why, how, and what, into consideration.

Cervical Health with PPH

Most people who have or have had HPV don’t know it.

Deeply disappointed by shameful, anti-gay bill passed in Ugandan parliament that will further create intolerance & persecution in Africa. ~Nancy Pelosi

Luke Gordon is an Iowa native that resides in Hiawatha. He is a life coach and sole proprietor of Luke Gordon Coaching. He coaches individuals to come out as gay or lesbian through exploring resources, identifying support, and developing a systematic approach to the process. For life coaching services, Luke can be reached at: 62 Northwood DR #4, Hiawatha, IA 52233, 319-2944289, luke@lukegordoncoaching.com, www.lukegordoncoaching.com, www.facebook.com/lukegordoncoaching.

ACCESSline Page 28 DIRECTORY NOTICE

The ACCESSline community directory is updated each issue. LISTINGS ARE FREE but are limited by space.

Free online listings are available at www.ACCESSlineAMERICA.com.

Information about new listings must contain a phone number for publication and a contact (e-mail address, land address, or website) for our records. For more information or to provide corrections, please contact Editor@ACCESSlineAMERICA.com or call (712) 560-1807.

The ACCESSline is expanding our resource directory to include heartland resources outside of Iowa. Please bear with us as we continue improving our resource directory.

NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

Breur Media Corporation : Website Consultation, Design, Programming, and Hosting.

HIV and STD Testing Sites near You, including places where you can get tested for free: hivtest.org/ Crisis or Suicide National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: suicidepreventionlifeline.org Information on Mental Health National Alliance on Mental Illness: nami.org Counseling, Information and Resources about Sexual Orientation GLBT National Help Center: glnh.org or 1-888-843-4564 Information on Mental Health for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender nami.org Information on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Health, cdc.gov Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund 1133 15th Street NW, Suite 350, Washington, DC 20005, victoryfund.org 202-VICTORY [842-8679] Human Rights Campaign, National political organization, lobbies congress for lesbian & gay issues, political training state and local, hrc.org, 1-800-777HRCF[4723] Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund I I E. Adams, Suite 1008, Chicago, IL 60603 lambdalegal.org, 312-663-4413 Rivendell Media National Advertising 212-242-6863, sales@rivendellmedia.com National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) - ngltf.org - taskforce.org 1325 Massachusetts Ave NW, Ste 600, Washington, DC, 20005 National Organization for Women (NOW) 733 15th ST NW, 2nd Floor Washington, DC 20005, now.org 202-628-8669 PFLAG National Offices 1133 15th Street NW, Suite 350, Washington, DC 20005, info@pflag.org - pflag.org, 202467-8180 The Trevor Lifeline |Crisis and suicide prevention lifeline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth. (866) 4-U-TREVOR - (866) 488-7386 Open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. All calls are toll-free and confidential - thetrevorproject.org/

IOWA ORGANIZATIONS

Diviners of God Support line for ex-Amish & ex-Mennonite.

402-328-3229, evenings & afternoons.

Equality Iowa P.O. Box 18, Indianola, IA 50125, equalityiowa.org - 515-537-3126 Faithful Voices Interfaith Alliance of Iowa’s marriage equality project. faithfulvoices.org Imperial Court of Iowa Non-profit fundraising & social, statewide organization with members from across the State of Iowa.

PO Box 1491, Des Moines, IA 50306-1491 imperialcourtofiowa.org Iowa Chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) Janis Bowden, President, IA NOW janleebow@aol.com PO Box 41114, Des Moines, IA 503111

Section 3: Community Iowa Gay Rodeo Association (IAGRA) 921 Diagonal Rd, Malcom, IA 50157 polebender60@yahoo.com 641-990-1411 Iowa PFLAG (Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gay) State Council, PO Box 18, Indianola, IA 50125 http://community.pflag.org/Page. aspx?pid=194&srcid=-2 515-537-3126 or 641-583-2024 Iowa Pride Network 777 Third Street, Suite 312, Des Moines, Iowa 50309 - Iowapridenetwork.org, Executive Director: 515-471-8062, Outreach Coordinator: 515-471-8063 LGBT Youth in Iowa Schools Task Force PO Box 1997, Des Moines, 50306 515-243-1221 One Iowa 500 East Locust St, Ste 300, Des Moines, IA 50309 - 515-288-4019 - OneIowa.org The Quire Eastern Iowa’s GLBT chorus, thequire.org

NEBRASKA ORGANIZATIONS (LIST IN PROGRESS)

Citizens For Equal Protection-402-398-3027 1105 Howard St, Suite #2, Omaha, NE 68102. cfep-ne.org - info@cfep-ne.org The Imperial Court of Nebraska Meets the third Monday of Every month at the Rainbow Outreach Resource Center at 17th and Leavenworth in Omaha, NE. Meetings start at 6pm and are open to the public.

PO Box 3772, Omaha, NE 68103 Nebraska AIDS Project Omaha Office (Home Office) 250 South 77th Street Suite A Omaha, NE 68114 (402) 552-9260 - Email us: info@nap.org (also serving Southwest Iowa)

AMES, IOWA

First United Methodist Church 516 Kellogg Ave, Ames, IA 50010, Contemporary worship Sat 5:30; Sun 8:30 & 11am acswebnetworks.com/firstunitedmcames/ 515-232-2750 ISU LGBTA Alliance GLBT Support, Activism, Social Events, Newsletter - 515-344-4478 L East Student Office Space,2229 Lincoln Way, Ames, IA 50014-7163, alliance@iastate. edu - alliance.stuorg.iastate.edu Living with HIV Program, MICA 230 SE 16th Street, Ames, IA 50010, Ask for Helen (Director), 515-956-3333 ext. 106 or 800-890-8230 Lord of Life Lutheran - 515-233-2350 2126 Gable Lane, Ames 50014, Services Sundays at 9:00a.m.; Wed. 7:00pm.

PFLAG Ames Youth and Shelter Services Offices, 2328 Bristol Drive, Ames, IA 5001, 2nd Tuesday, 7pm - pflagames.org 515-291-3607 Romantics Pleasure Palace 117 Kellogg Street, Ames, IA 50010-3315 romantixonline.com 515-232-7717 United Church of Christ-Congregational 217 6th Street, Ames, Iowa, 50010, Sunday Continental Breakfast, 9:00am; Sunday School, 9:30am; Worship 10:45am. office@ amesucc.org 515-232-9323 Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames 1015 Hyland Ave. Summer services: 10:00 am, Sunday. Services 10 a.m. for the rest of the summer. Contact uufa@uufames.org and www.uufames.org or call 515-231-8150.

Also, the email and website are uufa@ uufames.org and www.uufames.org Unity Church of Ames - unityofames.com 226 9th St, Ames, IA 50010-6210, Sunday service and Sunday school 10:30am.

Wednesday mediation 6:30pm Daily dial-a-blessing 515-233-1613

ARNOLDS PARK, OKOBOJI, SPENCER, SPIRIT LAKE, IOWA

The Royal Wedding Chapel 504 Church Street, Royal, IA 51357 712-933-2223 TheRoyalWeddingChapel.com Wilson Resource Center An Iowa Great Lakes area gay-owned, nonprofit community based organization. PO Box 486, 597 W. Okoboji Rd., Arnolds Park IA 51331-0486 - 712-332-5043 F.JosephWilson@aol.com. wilsonresource. org

BURLINGTON, IOWA

Arrowhead Motel - arrowheadia.com 2520 Mount Pleasant St, Burlington, IA 52601-2118 - 319-752-6353 Faith Lutheran Church E L C A 3109 Sunnyside Ave, Burlington, IA 52601 HIV/AIDS Screening @ Des Moines County Health Department in Burlington, 522 N 3rd By appointment between 8:00am to 4:30 319-753-8217 Confidential

RISQUES IV (adult store) 421 Dry Creek Ave, West Burlington, IA 52601 (319) 753-5455, Sun - Wed 8am-Midnight Thurs - Sat Open 24 Hours, LoversPlayground.com Steve’s Place 852 Washington St, Burlington, 319-7545868 Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Services start at 10:30 am, 625 N 6th St, Burlington, IA 52601-5032, (319) 753-1895 uuburlington.org

CEDAR FALLS - WATERLOO, IOWA

Adult Cinema 315 E 4th St, Waterloo, IA 50703-4703, (319) 234-7459 Black Hawk Co. Health Department Free HIV testing (donations accepted); MW, 1:00pm to 3:00pm; Thurs, 1:00pm to 4:45pm 1407 Independence Ave. (5th fl), Waterloo 50703 319-291 -2413 Cedar AIDS Support System (CASS) Service, support groups & trained volunteers for persons with HIV/AIDS in Waterloo/CF call Elizabeth or Karla, 319-272-AIDS(2437). cvhospice@forbin.net Cedar Valley Counseling Services Promoting personal growth and development in a strengths-based environment, Joan E. Farstad, MA, Director. 319-240-4615, cvcounseling.com farstd@cvcounseling.com.

Cedar Valley Episcopal Campus Ministry.

In Lutheran Center, 2616 College St, Cedar Falls, IA - 319-415-5747, mcdinoiwa@aol. com, episcopalcampus.org Community AIDS Assistance Project (CAAP) - PO Box 36, Waterloo, IA 50704 LGBTA Support Group at Hawkeye Community College, Call Carol at 319-296-4014 or carol.hedberg@hawkeyecollege.edu Iowa Legal Aid Free civil legal service available to low income persons who qualify under income/asset guidelines.

607 Sycamore, #206, Waterloo, IA 50703 1-800-772-0039 or 319-235-7008 Kings & Queens 304 W. 4th St, Waterloo, IA, 319-232-3001 Romantix Waterloo (Adult Emporium) 1507 La Porte Rd, Waterloo, IA 50702 319-234-9340, romantixonline.com Stellas Guesthouse 324 Summit Ave, Waterloo, IA Private B&B, Overnight accommodations for adults only. 319-232-2122 St. Lukes Episcopal Church - 319-277-8520 2410 Melrose Dr, Cedar Falls, IA 50613 Services: Sunday 8:00 & 10:15, Thurs 11:30 st-lukes-episcopal.org St. Timothys United Methodist Church 3220 Terrace Drive, Cedar Falls, 50613 sttims-umc.org, 319-266-0464, info@sttimsumc-org, “Welcome of all persons, including those of all sexual orientations and gender identities.”

Together For Youth 233 Vold Dr, Waterloo, IA 50703, TogetherForYouth.net 319-274-6768 UNI-LGBTA Alliance-Student Organization, 244A Bartlet Hall, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls 50613 - lgbta@uni.edu 319-222-0003 United Church of Christ Cedar Falls 9204 University Avenue, Cedar Falls 319-366-9686 Unitarian Universalist Society of Black Hawk County - 319-266-5640 3912 Cedar Heights Dr, Cedar Falls, IA

CEDAR RAPIDS/MARION, IOWA

Adult Shop 630 66th Ave SW, 319-362-4939 Adult Shop North 5539 Crane Lane, 319-294-5360 CRPrideFest (formerly Cedar Rapids Unity) Social activities, non-profit Pride festival organization. PO Box 1643 Cedar Rapids 52406-1643 - CRPrideFest.com Christ Episcopal Church “We have a place for you.” 220 40th Street NE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52404, 319-363-2029 ChristEpiscopal.org Belle’s Basix - 319-363-3194 Open 5pm to 2am M-F, Sat & Sun 3pm-2am 3916 1st Ave NE, Cedar Rapids Club CO2, A GLBTQA Nightclub, 616 2nd Ave SE, 319-365-0225, Open 7 days a week 4PM-2AM, Happy hour from 4-8 pm, clubco2.com

Coe Alliance GLBTQ and straight students, staff and people from the community. Coe College, 1220 First Ave NE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52402. coealliance@coe.edu or Erica Geers, faculty advisor at 319-8616025 Community Health Free Clinic 947 14th Avenue SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52401 - 319-363-0416 - communityhfc.org Free Medical Services provided for the uninsured and underserved patients of Cedar Rapids, Marion and the surrounding areas in Eastern Iowa.

CSPS Legion Arts Contemporary Arts Center - 319-364-1580 1103 3rd St. SE, info@legionarts.org Diversity Focus, 222 2nd Street SE, Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401, 319-363-3707, DiversityFocus.org, Lead in the promotion of diversity, cultural awareness, and inclusion in the Corridor community.

Eden United Church of Christ 351 8th Ave SW, Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52404 (319) 362-7805 Sunday School 9am - Worship 10:15am Foundation 2 Crisis Counseling 24-hour telephone crisis counseling. f2crisis@aol.com or www.f2online.org 1540 2nd Ave. SE Cedar Rapids, IA 319-362-2174 or 800-332-4224 Linn County Public Health 501 13th NW, Free confidential HIV testing, 319-892-6000 Linn County Stonewall Democrats For more info, contact linnstonewall@ gmail. com People’s Church Unitarian Universalist A welcoming congregation. 4980 Gordon Ave NW, Cedar Rapids, IA. Worship starts at 10 AM and Adult and Children Religious Education is at 11:15 AM on Sundays.

319-362-9827 - peoplesuu.org PFLAG CR, Linn Co and Beyond Support Group meets on the 4th Thursday at 7pm except for Nov Dec - call for details.

319-431-0673, pflaglcb@gmail.com The Linn County Stonewall Democrats Meet 2nd Wednesdays, Blue Strawberry, 118 2nd St SE in Cedar Rapids, IA. Contact Harvey S. Ross, HRoss007@aol.com.

Tri-ess, Iota Kappa Phi Chapter P.O. Box 8605, Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52408 We are a transgendered organization supporting crossdressers, their families, and friends.

- ri-ess.org, 319-390-6376, georgia523@ yahoo.com - marlenemarschel@yahoo.com Unity Center of Cedar Rapids “A center of positive, practical Christianity.”

4980 Gordon NE, Cedar Rapids unitycr.org - (319) 393-5422

CLINTON, IOWA

18 and Beyond (aka ABC Books), 135 5th Ave South, 563-242-7687 Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Clinton 309 30th Avenue North, Clinton, IA 52732 (563) 242-4972 - uuclinton.org, Sunday services at 10:30 (year-round), Where YOUR spiritual and ethical journey is welcome! Rev. Ruby Nancy, minister

COUNCIL BLUFFS, IOWA

Council Bluffs Community Alliance “…will promote the city of Council Bluffs as a developing gay, lesbian, bisexual & transgender family community, & to assure the equality of all Council Bluffs’ residents.”

CouncilBluffsCommunityAlliance.org Council Bluffs NOW PO Box 3325, Omaha, NE 68103-0325 Romantix Council Bluffs (North) (Adult Emporium) 3216 1st Ave, Council Bluffs, IA 51501-3353-romantixonline.com515-955-9756 Romantix Council Bluffs (South) (Romantix After Dark) 50662 189th St, Council Bluffs, IA 51503 romantixonline.com, 712-366-1764

DECORAH, IOWA

Decorah Human Rights Commission Contact: City Clerk, 400 Clairborne Dr, Decorah, 563-382-3651, Meetings: First Tuesdays, 5:30pm Luther College Student Congregation Contact Office for College Ministry 700 College Dr, Decorah, IA 52101, 563-3871040.

Luther College PRIDE-Diversity Center, 700 College Dr, Decorah, IA 52101 Contact Charles 563-210-6570 PFLAG Northeast IA (Waukon/Decorah) Meets 4th Monday of the month at 7 PM in Northeast Iowa Peace and Justice Center, 119 Winnebago St., Decorah. Contact Ellen C. at 563-380-4626.

JANUARY 2014 Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Meets alternating Sundays at 10:30am, Decorah Senior Center, 806 River St, Call Bill at 563-382-3458.

DES MOINES, IOWA

AIDS Project of Central Iowa Free HIV testing, prevention supplies, care services, food pantry, information. 711 E. 2nd, Des Moines, IA 50309, 515-284-0245 Blazing Saddle 416 E 5th St, Des Moines, IA theblazingsaddle.com - 515-246-1299 Buddies Corral 418 E 5th St, Des Moines, IA - 515-244-7140 Des Moines Diversity Chorus [A gay-friendly mixed chorus] Rehearsals on Mondays at 7 p.m. at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Beaver Ave. at Franklin St., Des Moines.

All are welcome, no auditions.

PO Box 65312, West Des Moines, IA 50265, Julie Murphy, Artistic Director jahmurphy@hotmail.com, 515-255-3576, desmoinesdiversitychorus.org Des Moines Gay Men’s Chorus 515-953-1540, 4126 Ingersoll Ave, Des Moines - administrator@dmgmc.org Des Moines Pride Center @ One Iowa (temporary location) 419 SW, 8th St., Des Moines, IA 50309 Family Practice Center - 515-953-7560 Safe, supportive LGBT health care. 200 Army Post Road, Ste 26, ppgi.org First Friday Breakfast Club Educational breakfast club for gay/bisexual men. Meets first Friday of each month. Contact Jonathan Wilson for meeting topic and place. 515-288-2500 info@ffbciowa.org ffbciowa.org First Unitarian Church 1800 Bell Avenue, Services Sundays at 9:30 & 11am - 515-244-8603, ucdsm.org Franklin Family Practice Dr. Joe Freund, MD 4908 Franklin Ave., Des Moines, IA 50310 515-280-4930, ucsinformation@ucsdsm.org, UCSOnline.org/FranklinFamilyPractice The Gallery (adult store) 1000 Cherry St, Des Moines, IA 50309-4227 - (515) 244-2916 Open 24 Hrs, LoversPlayground.com The Garden 112 SE 4th Des Moines, IA, 515-243-3965 Wed-Sun. 8pm-2am grdn.com Gay & Lesbian AA & AI-Anonymous Mon 7pm; Tue-Thu 6pm; Sat. 5:30pm, at Drake Ministries in Ed. Bldg. 28th & University Gay and Lesbian Issues Committee 4211 Grand Avenue, Level-3, Des Moines, IA 50312 - 515-277-1117 Lavender Victory Fund Financial assistance for women in need for medical emergencies. lavendervf@aol.com Le Boi Bar 508 Indianola Rd, Des Moines, IA Liberty Gifts 333 E. Grand Ave, Loft 105, Des Moines, IA Gay owned specialty clothing, jewelry, home decor. 515-508-0825 MINX Show Palace - 515-266-2744 1510 NE Broadway, Des Moines, IA 50313 MCC of Central Iowa 2500 University Ave, 2nd Floor Chapel, Worship, Sunday at 11:00 am, Pastor’s Email: MCCofCentralIowa@gmail.com, 515-393-7565 North Star Gay Rodeo Association of IGRA, Iowa Division of North Star, NSGRA@ NSGRA.org or 612-82-RODEO Primary Health Care Inc., David Yurdin, 2353 SE 14th St., Des Moines, 503020, Works with GLBT ages 16 to geriatric, 25 years of experience. 515-248-1427 Rainbow Union, Drake University ru@drake.edu PFLAG Des Moines - 515-243-0313 1300 Locust , Des Moines, IA 50312 Plymouth Congregational UCC Church and the Plymouth GLBT Community 4126 Ingersoll Ave. 515-255-3149 Services at 9am & I lam Sunday. PlymouthGLBT.com Polk County Health Department Free STD, HIV, and Hepatitis B & C testing.

HIV. Rapid testing also offered. 1907 Carpenter, Des Moines, IA, 515-286-3798.

Pride Alliance, AIB College of Business Gay and straight students celebrating diversity. Contact: Mike Smith, Advisor, PrideAlliance@aib.edu - aib.edu/pride Pride Bowling League for GLBT & Supporters - Every Wednesday, 7 PM, Air Lanes Bowling Center 4200 Fleur Drive, Des Moines, IA 50321-2389. Email pridebowlingleague@gmail.com or 515-447-2977.

TTDIRECTORY cont’d page 29

JANUARY 2014 SScontinued from page 28

DIRECTORY

Raccoon River Resort Accommodations for men, women, or mixed in campgrounds, lodge, Teepees or Treehouses. Reservations: 515-996-2829 or 515-279-7312 Ritual Café - ritualcafe.com On 13th between Grand and Locust.

Gay owned, great music, awesome food & coffee. 515-288-4872 ritualcafe@aol.com Romantix North Des Moines Iowa (Bachelor’s Library) 2020 E Euclid Ave, Des Moines, IA 50317, romantixonline.com 515266-7992 Spouses of Lesbians & Gays Support group for spouses of gays and lesbians. 515-277-7754 St. John’s Lutheran Church 600 6th Ave “A Church for All People.”

Services Sat 5pm, Sun 7:45, 8:45 & 11am.

See web page for other services.

515-243-7691 - StJohnsDSM.org TransformationsIOWA Meets every Wednesday at 7pm, 2nd saturday of each month at 1pm at OneIowa, 419 SW 8th St, Des Moines, IA. For more information email sophia.transformations@gmail.com or call 515-288-4019 x200 Trinity United Methodist Church 1548 Eighth Street - 515-288-4056 Services Sundays 10am, trinityumcdm.org Urbandale UCC - An open & affirming congregation. 3530 70th St., Urbandale, IA 50322, 515-276-0625, urbucc.org Walnut Hills UMC Join us at 9:30 am for Sunday worship.

Sunday classes & group studies at 10:45 am. 515-270-9226, 12321 Hickman Rd, Urbandale, IA 50323, whumc.org Westminster Presbyterian Church 4114 Allison Ave - WestPres.org Sunday services 8:45 and 11am. Of note is their GAY-LESBIAN-STRAIGHT AFFIRMATION GROUP, GLSA 515-274-1534 Women’s Culture Collective (WCC) A lesbian social group. Des Moines, IA iowawcc.org Word of God Ministries, Sunday service: 3:00pm, at 3120 E 24th Street, Des Moines, Iowa 50317, Gay, lesbian & straight affirmation 515-707-5947.

Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventure Open daily. Gay-friendly, 515-244-7694 2723 Ingersoll, Des Moines, IA

DUBUQUE, IOWA

920 Main 920 Main St., Dubuque, Iowa 52001, Tue Sat: 8:00 pm - 2:00 am, (563) 583-2121 or dbq.gaybar@hotmail.com Adult Warehouse - 563-588-9814 975 Jackson St, Dubuque, IA Dubuque Friends Worship Group (Quakers) Join us at an unprogrammed worship service on Sunday at 10am. Welcoming and Affirming, 563-582-9388 St. Mark’s Community Center, 1201 White Street, Dubuque, Iowa 52001 Rainbow Pride support and socialization group.

For members of the LGBT+ community who want to expand their social circle, get support for LGBT specific issues, & help with advocacy. Meets Mondays at 1pm Hillcrest Wellness Center 225 W 6th St., Dubuque, IA 563-690-1239 PFLAG Dubuque/Tri-State Carnegie Stout Library, 3rd Floor Conference Room, 360 W. 11th St. 3rd Tuesday, 7pm 563-581-4606 Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Dubuque - “The uncommon denomination.” general services at 10am. 1699 Iowa St, Dubuque, IA uuf-dbq.org 563-583-9910

ELKADER, IOWA

Bethany Church (ELCA) - 563-245-1856 307 3rd St. NE, Elkader, IA 52043 Inclusive. Welcoming. A ‘ReconcilingWorks’ congregation. www.bethanychurchelkader.org bethanychurch@alpinecom.net Schera’s Restaurant & Bar 107 S Main St, Elkader, IA 52043, Scheras.com, E-mail: info@scheras.com Fine dining featuring Algerian & American Cuisine. 563-245-1992

FORT DODGE, IOWA

Romantix Fort Dodge (Mini Cinema) Sun-Thu 10am-12am, Fri & Sat 10am-2am 15 N. 5th St, Fort Dodge, IA 50501-3801 RomantixOnline.com - 515-955-9756

Section 3: Community GRINNELL, IOWA

Broadviewwildflowerseed.com, Broad View Wildflower Seed, 428 Hamilton Ave., Grinnell, Iowa 50112, Manager/Owner: John C., chicoski7@yahoo.com Saints Ephrem & Macrina Sunday services at 10am. (Affiliated with the Orthodox-Catholic Church of America.)

Divine Liturgy is served Sundays during the College academic year 1:30 p.m., Herrick Chapel, Grinnell College Campus, 1226 Broad Street, Grinnell, IA, 641-236-0936 Stonewall Resource Center Open 4:30pm to 11:30pm, Sun through Thurs and by Appointment., Grinnell College, 1210 Park Street PO Box B-1, Grinnell, IA, 50112, srcenter@ grinnell.edu 641-269-3327 United Church of Christ-Congregational, ‘An open and affirming church.’ 902 Broad St, 641-236-3111

INDIANOLA, IOWA

Crossroads United Church of Christ (UCC) An Open & affirming congregation. Services: Sunday 10:30am, Summer worship: June, July, Aug, @ 9:30 am, worshiping in the Lounge at Smith Chapel, Simpson College, corner of Buxton and Clinton. Mailing address: P.O. Box 811, Indianola, IA 50125 515-961-9370. crossroadsucc.org

IOWA CITY, IOWA

AA (GLBT) 319-338-9111 Meetings Sundays 5 - 6pm at First Baptist Church, 500 North Clinton Street. For more info, call IC Intergroup Answering Service, Congregational Church UCC An Open and Affirming Congregation, Sunday Worship 10:15 a.m.

30 N Clinton St (across from Ul Pentacrest) 319-337-4301 - uiccic.org Counseling Clinic 319-354-6238 Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender sensitive and supportive counseling for individuals, couples, families and groups. Sliding Fee. 505 E Washington St., Iowa City, IA 52240 Counseling and Health Center Client-centered therapy. Les-Bi-Gay-Trans always welcome. 616 Bloomington St, Iowa City, IA - 319-337-1679 Crisis Center 319-351-0140 1121 Gilbert Ct, Iowa City, 52240 Emma Goldman Clinic 227 N. Dubuque St, Iowa City, IA 52245 319-337-2111or 1-800-848-7684.

Faith United Church of Christ An open and affirming congregation.

1609 Deforest Street, Iowa City, 52240 Sunday Worship 9:30 AM 319-338-5238 bob.faithucc@g.com, faithucciowacity.org GLBTAU-U of lA Student support system and resource center, info, activism, events, and other community involvements.

203 IMU, University of IA, Iowa City, IA 52242-1317 - 319-335-3251 (voice mail) glbtau@uiowa.edu Hope United Methodist Church Worship Service at 9:30am. 2929 E. Court St., Iowa City, IA - Contact Rev. Sherry Lohman.

319-338-9865 Human Rights Commission (City of Iowa City Human Rights Commission) 319-356-5022; 391-356-5015; 319-356-5014 Fax 319-887-6213 humanrights@iowa-city.org ICARE (Iowa Center for AIDS Resources & Education) Practical & emotional support, youth programs, information, referrals and support groups. 319-338-2135 3211 E 1st Iowa City, IA 52240-4703 Iowa City Free Medical Clinic - 319-337-4459 Free & strictly confidential HIV Testing. 2440 Towncrest Dr Iowa City, Call for appointment Iowa City NOW PO Box 2944, Iowa City, IA 52244 Iowa Women’s Music Festival P.O. Box 3411, Iowa City, IA 52244 319-335-1486 Men Supporting Men 319-356-6038, Ext 2 HIV prevention program. Discussion Groups, Educational Series, Safer Sex Workshops, Book Club. Andy Weigel, email: aweigel@ co.johnson.ia.us New Song Episcopal Church 912 20th Ave, Coralville, IA. Sunday services at 10am.

Jennifer Masada, Jane Stewart, and John Greve. 319-351-3577 Pride Committee WRAC, 130 N Madison, Iowa City, IA 52242 Bridget Malone - 319-338-0512 Charles Howes - 319-335-1486 Romantix Iowa City - 319-351-9444 (Pleasure Palace I) 315 Kirkwood Ave, Iowa City, IA 52240-4722 - romantixonline.com

Studio 13 13 S. Linn St. (in the Alley) Iowa City, IA Open 7pm ‘til 2am, daily 319-338-7145 U of I Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual Staff & Faculty Association, c/o WRAC, 130 N Madison, Iowa City, IA 52242, 319-335-1486 Unitarian Universalist Society of Iowa City Inclusive & free religious community nurturing intellectual & spiritual growth & fostering ethical & social responsibility. uusic.org 10 S. Gilbert, Iowa City, IA Sunday services: 9:30am & 11:15am. 319-337-3443 United Action for Youth (UAY) A GLBTQA youth group providing support and counseling for teenagers and young adults processing sexual identity issues. Meets Mondays 7-9pm at UAY 410 Iowa Ave. Iowa City, IA. 319-338-7518 or Teen Line, 319-338-0559.

The Ursine Group Bear Events in the Midwest. PO Box 1143, Iowa City, IA 52244-1143 - 319-338-5810 Women’s Resource Action Center (WRAC) Leads & collaborates on projects that serve U of l and the greater community, offers social & support services, including LGBT Coming Out Group.

University of Iowa, 130 N Madison, Iowa City, IA 52242 - 319-335-1486

MARSHALLTOWN, IOWA

Adult Odyssey (Adult Video Store) 907 Iowa Ave E - 641-752-6550 Domestic Violence Alternatives/ Sexual Assault Center, Inc., 132 W Main St. 24 hour Crisis Line: 641-753-3513 or (instate only) 800-779-3512

MASON CITY, IOWA

Cerro Gordo County Dept. of Public Health 22 N. Georgia Ave, Ste 300 Mason City, IA 50401. Free confidential AIDS testing. 641421-9321 PFLAG North Iowa Chapter 641-583-2848, pflagmcni@yahoo.com, Carlos O’Kelly’s Mexican Cafe @ 7 p.m. Wed.

MOUNT VERNON, IOWA

Alliance Cornell College 810 Commons Cir # 2035 - alliance@cornellcollege.edu - orgs.cornellcollege.edu/alliance/

PELLA, IOWA

Common Ground (Central College) Support group for GLBT students and allies.

Contact: Brandyn Woodard, Director of Intercultural Life woodardb@central.edu 641-628-5134

QUAD CITIES, IOWA

AIDS Project Quad Cities Info, education & support. Davenport, IA 52804, www.apqc4life.org 319-762-LIFE Black Hawk College Unity Alliance Serving GLBT community at Black Hawk College. 6600 34th Ave, Rock Island, IL 309-716-0542.

Connections Nightclub 563-322-1121 822 W 2nd St, Davenport, IA 52802 DeLaCerda House 309-786-7386 Provides housing & supportive services, advocacy and referrals for people living with HIV/ AIDS. P.O. Box 4551, Rock Island, Il. 61201 Good Samaritan Free Clinic 309-797-4688 Provides free primary medical care to patients age 16-64 who are working but have no medical insurance. gsfc@mchsi.com 602 35th Ave, Moline, IL GoodSamaritanFreeClinic.org The Hole-In-The-Wall 309-289-2375 A Private Membership Men’s Club, Located 3 miles east of Galesburg, IL. just north of I-74 at Exit 51. HoleInTheWallMensClub.org Holy Spirit Catholic Faith Community Meets one weekend a month for mass.

Please visit our web site: www.transformationalcatholicchurch.com for more information or call: 309-278-7909.

Lucky Shamrock 313 20th St, Rock Island, IL - 309-788-7426 An Irish Pub open to all types.

Mary’s On 2nd 563-884-8014 832 W. 2nd St. Davenport, IA MCC Quad Cities - Svcs Sun 11am, Bible study Wed 7pm 563-324-8281, 3019 N Harrison, Davenport, IA 52803 Men’s Coming Out/Being Out Group Meets 2nd & 4th Thursdays, 7pm. QCAD. outforgood@gmail.com 309-786-2580 PFLAG Quad Cities 563-285-4173 Eldridge United Methodist Church 604 S.2nd St., Eldridge 1st Monday, 6:30 pm Prism (Augustana College) 309-794-7406 Augustana Gay-Straight Alliance, Augustana Library - 639 38th St, Rock Island, IL, Contact Tom Bengston

Quad Citians Affirming Diversity (QCAD) Social & support groups for lesbian, bi, and gay teens, adults, friends & families; newsletter.

309-786-2580 - Community Center located at 1608 2nd Ave, Rock Island.

Quad Cities Pride Chorus (Call Don at 563324-0215) At the MCC Church in D’port, 7pm Wed. qcswede64@aol.com Rainbow Gifts www.rainbowgifts.net - 309-764-0559 T.R. Video Adult books & video, 3727 Hickory Grove Rd, Davenport, IA. 563-386-7914 Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Quad Cities, Rev Jay Wolin, Sunday Service 11am - 563-359-0816 3707 Eastern Avenue, Davenport, IA 52807 Venus News (Adult) 902 W 3rd St, Davenport, IA. 563-322-7576

RED OAK, IOWA

First Congregational United Church of Christ (open and affirming) - 712-623-2794 608 E Reed St, Red Oak, IA 51566 Rev. Donald Morgan, Pastor www.redoakucc.org, office@redoakucc.org

SHENANDOAH, IOWA

PFLAG Shenandoah 1002 South Elm Street - 712-246-2824

SIOUX CITY, IOWA

Am. Business & Professional Guild.

Gay Businessmen. Meets last Sat. of the month; ABPG, P. O. BOX 72, Sioux City, 51102 - abpguild@yahoo.com Grace United Methodist Church 1735 Morningside Avenue - 712-276-3452.

Jones Street Station (Bar) 712-258-6922 412 Jones St., Nightly 6:00pm to 2:00am.

Mayflower Congregational Church 1407 West 18th St - 712-258-8278.

Morningside College Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual Alliance Contact Professor Gail Dooley, Advisor Morningside College GSA. 1501 Morningside Ave, Sioux City, IA 51106-1717 dooley@morningside.edu - 712-274-5208 PFLAG Siouxland PO Box 1311, Sioux City, IA 51102 siouxlandPFLAG@aol.com Romantix Sioux City 712-277-8566 511 Pearl St, Sioux City, IA 51101-1217 St. Thomas Episcopal Church Service Sun 10:30am 406 12th St, Waverly, IA Rev Mary Christopher - 712-258-0141 Western Iowa Tech. GSA widemal@juno.com for info.

SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA

Toppers, 1213 N Cliff Ave, Sioux Falls, SD 57103, (605) 339-7686, Su-Tu 7:00pm - Close : We-Sa 3:00pm - 2:00am, sdtoppers.com Center for Equality, PO box 2009 Sioux Falls, SD 57101-2009, 605-331-1153, centersforequalitysd.org

WAVERLY, IOWA

Cedar Valley Episcopal Campus Ministry.

717 W. Bremer, (St. Andrew’s Episcopal) episcoplcampus.org - 319-415-5747 Gay, Lesbian Bisexual Student Alliance Wartburg College, Waverly, IA 50677. Contact Susan Vallem - 319-352-8250 St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church 717 W. Bremer. We welcome all to worship with us on Sunday at 10:30am. Bible discussion Wed. 6:45pm 319-352-1489 Rev. Maureen Doherty, Pastor

NEBRASKA (CONTENT IN PROGRESS) HASTINGS, NEBRASKA

PFLAG Hastings - pat@datacc.net

LINCOLN, NEBRASKA

Indigo Bridge Books The Creamery Building, 701 P St, Ste 102, Lincoln, NE 68508 - 402-477 7770 “Indigo Bridge Books strives to provide a solid, relevant Gender Studies section with a focus on LGBT titles. indigobridgebooks.com Nebraska AIDS Project (Lincoln Office) 1921 South 17th Street, Lincoln, NE 68502 (402) 476-7000 - nap.org OUTLinc - outlinc.org Bringing Lincoln’s LGBT Community Together Panic - 402-435-8764 200 S 18th St, Lincoln, NE 68508 PFLAG Cornhusker Chapter PO Box 82034, Lincoln, NE 68501 Meetings 4th Tuesday, Unitarian Church of Lincoln, 6300 A St, 7-9pm pflagcornhusker.org PFLAG Helpline: 402-434-9880 - Confidential Support & Information - We’re Here For You !

ACCESSline Page 29 Planned Parenthood of the Heartland Sexual and Reproductive Health Care, Transgender Care - (402) 441-3302 2246 O St, Lincoln, NE 68510 The Rainbow Clinic in the UNL Psychological Consultation Center “…a specialty outreach service to the GLBTQ community. Psychological services, including individual, couples & family therapy, are provided within the UNL Psychological Consultation Center by regular PCC staff…open year round; day & evening appointments available. $10 for intake & $25 for therapy sessions. Application can be made for reduced fees based on federal poverty guidelines.

325 Burnett Hall, Lincoln, NE 68588 402-472-2351 unl.edu/psypage/pcc/ Star City Pride starcitypride.org - info@starcitypride.org The Unitarian Church of Lincoln 6300 A Street, Lincoln, NE 68510-5097 (402) 483-2213 - unitarianlincoln.org Sunday from 10am to 11am

OMAHA, NEBRASKA

AIDS Interfaith Network 100 N. 62nd, Omaha, NE Call Br. Wm. Woeger, 402-558-3100 Citizens For Equal Protection-402-398-3027 1105 Howard St, Suite #2, Omaha, NE 68102. cfep-ne.org - info@cfep-ne.org Flixx Bar 1019 S. 10th Street www.flixxomaha.com Front Runners/Front Walkers Walking/jogging club. P.O. Box 4583, Omaha, NE 68104, 402-804-8720, frontrunners.org Greater Omaha GLBT Network - goglbt.org “…to advance growth & equality for its members, businesses & allies by providing educational, networking & community-building opportunities. Meetings 1st Thursday every month locations at a traveling location to see the community and be seen. For more info or to be included on the e-newsletter list, please email us at info@goglbt.org.

Heartland Gay Rodeo Association (HGRA) (Midwest Division of the International Gay Rodeo Association) PO Box 3354, Omaha, NE 68103, hgra.net - 402-203-4680, Serves Iowa and Nebraska Heartland Pride ”…to develop a high impact and relevant cultural festival & events annually that promotes equality & unity for the LGBTQ & Allies Communities of Western Iowa and Greater Nebraska. heartlandpride.org Imperial Court of Nebraska 402-556-9907 P.O. Box 3772, Omaha, NE 68103 Inclusive Life Pastoral Services Holistic Health-Weddings-FuneralsCoaching-Essential Oils-Holistic Health www.inclusivelife.org 402-575-7006 The Max 1417 Jackson at 15th, Omaha, NE 68102 6 bars in 1 - 402-346-4110 McLovin 1010 South 10 Street, Omaha, NE, 68108 info@mclovinstore.com, MclovingStore.com 402-915-4002, A store for men.

MCC Omaha 819 South 22nd, Omaha, NE 68103, Sun 9:30AM & 11:15 AM. Wednesday “ReCharge” Worship, Wed 7pm - 402-345-2563 PFLAG Omaha Mead Hall, First United Methodist Church, 7020 Cass St. (Omaha), 2nd Thursday, 7, 6:30 Social, 402-291-6781 Queer Nebraska Youth Network https://sites.google.com/site/theqnyn The QNYN is the only youth-focused, peer-led group providing social activities, connections to resources, and confidential online discussion to lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer youth in Nebraska River City Gender Alliance Peer support, friendship, and understanding for crossdressers, transgenderists, and transsexuals. PO Box 4083 Omaha, NE 68104, 402-291-6781, info@rcga.us - rcga.us River City Mixed Chorus Gay/lesbian chorus, PO Box 3267, Omaha, NE 68103, Call Stan Brown, 402-341-7464 Tri-ess Chapter, Kappa Phi Lambda Chapter, Omaha, NE 68107, Transgendered organization supporting crossdressers, their families, and friends. tri-ess.org, 402-960-9696, Judy marlenemarschel@yahoo.com Youth Support Group for GLBT Youth 13-21, meets twice monthly. Omaha, NE - 402-291- 6781

ACCESSline Page 30 SScontinued from page 10

KRUG As a trans person, my response to all of this public demeaning is “What have I done to you?” “Why can you not simply leave me alone?” “Why do you have to diminish me or target me?” Or the extreme, “Why do you want to kill me?”

And yet again, the answer is fear. Trans people who transition make other people uncomfortable. Non-trans folks don’t know how to react. Confused and unwilling to consider alternative perspectives, they believe we’re sexual deviants. Many people consider us crazy—“what do you mean that have to wear a dress? You’ve been wearing men’s shirts for 40 years; why after all that time, do you have to wear that Donna Karan sleeveless dress? In January with two feet of snow on the ground?

For many, fear translates to attacks, verbal and physical.

And of course, when you have national figures egging people on, it’s so much easier for others to view trans people as less than 100 percent human.

That makes it a whole lot easier to harm or kill us.

It also makes it a lot easier for trans people to kill themselves.

I haven’t even started on the idea that many transphobic people actually harbor their own gender variant secrets. Can you imagine Bill O’Reilly in a cute sky blue Ann Klein jumper with matching pill box hat and shoes?

Hmmm. Let’s hold that image for a moment. Now that would be a reason to tune into Fox. Let me offer another reason why trans people kill themselves in so many greater percentages than the rest of society. It has to do with God—however you want to define him or her.

Again, much of the fear mongering I quoted above is rooted in the idea that a person’s “Quote-Unquote Gender” is God-given. Indeed, one of my best friends from Coe College, upon learning that I was transgender, asked if I was contemplating surgery. When I told him indeed I was, he immediately responded that surgery was just plain wrong—that the “science” around gender identity was very shaky and that I didn’t have the right to tinker with what God had given me for a body.

Section 3: Community It was a pretty remarkable statement considering that my fellow Coe graduate was a well-respected psychiatrist.

What trans person would want to be treated for gender dysphoria by him?

So, we trans people have fear and religious-fueled intolerance to contend with. There are other factors that lend to our own self-hatred—the society-instilled idea that we can “choose” our gender; a complete and total lack of therapeutic and medical resources in many parts of the country; and for many, a lack of medical insurance that would make it easier to treat depression.

Yet, there is one more key factor for our self-hatred, for what fuels our overwhelming depression.

Loss. The people and things we lose by coming out as trans.

In my case, I swore that I wouldn’t hurt Lydia, my soul mate, the love of my life.

We started out as high school sweethearts, and before it was over, we’d been together for thirty-two (32) years. For a long time as I secretly struggled with my gender issues, the idea of taking my own life—of checking out without anyone ever knowing about my struggle—seemed like a far better option compared to breaking Lydia’s heart (and the hearts of my children) and the divorce and hurt that would follow.

But then I thought about my father, about his suicide, and how being a suicide survivor can be an overwhelming burden in itself. I know what it means to clean up after someone has killed himself. I know firsthand the questions—why did he do it?

Didn’t he love us enough to get help? And most of all, the big super-duper suicide survivor questions: Was there something that I did to cause it, or could I have done something differently to have prevented it?

Am I the only person in the room touched by suicide? Who else in this room has had family members or loved ones or friends suffer self-harm?

Look around. Those are the people we need to honor on this Transgender Remembrance Day. It doesn’t matter if only one or none of those suicide victims was transgender.

The reason it doesn’t matter: All of those victims—along with all trans people who take their own lives—have one thing in common.

In my case, I swore that I wouldn’t hurt Lydia, my soul mate, the love of my life.

JANUARY 2014

McFarland Clinic donates to MICA of Story County

Photo: (l-r) Robin Schwartz, Dr. Chris Johnson and David Seals with donations at MICA. The 9th annual McFarland Clinic Turkey Food Drive kicked off on Friday, December 6th.

McFarland Clinic and the 2013 Turkey rallied together to benefit MICA of Story County. The clinic as a whole donated 6,488 items and an additional cash donation of $1,849.31.

In addition to this, McFarland Clinic had the opportunity to purchase a t-shirt or button as part of our annual Dollars for Denim campaign. Staff that purchased a shirt or button were able to wear denim on Fridays during October, November and December. $5,821 was raised from dollars for denim and given to MICA of Story County.

The Turkey Food Drive is a McFarland Clinic Story County tradition. Each year a provider or staff member is voted or self elected to be the Turkey. This year’s turkey was Chris Johnson, MD, a Pathologist.

Clinical and non-clinical departments

were challenged this year to see who would have the highest percentage increase from their 2012 totals of food items donated. Dr. Johnson and his volunteers stopped at every department and collected items to take to MICA. “You could really tell the departments were excited about the food drive. It was a fun day for everyone involved and resulted in an enormous donation to MICA. The clinic really rallied together to support those in need,” said Marcia Kent, PR Coordinator at McFarland Clinic.

“This fall has been tough; we have been really low on items while seeing a steady increase in the number of families that need our services,” says Family Development Worker Michelle Boster. “We really appreciate McFarland Clinic helping us stock up for the holidays.”

JANUARY 2014

Section 3: Community

SScontinued from page 11

“NORMAL” saw what he gets to do in the show I was just so entranced I felt, “Gosh, I really have to be in this show!” I made it my mission to make sure I gave the best audition I could, and it worked out!

Tell us about the experience of touring so many cities. I’ve always wondered how much the cities all blur together.

We rehearsed all January of 2013 and started touring in February, so we’re on month 11. I’ve personally been on tour for about five years with different shows, so a lot of the cities do tend to blend into each other. When you go to different sections of the country, different things stand out. I’m a big foodie, so I like to find out what the big food things are for the area, that you can only get in that specific area, and make sure I check those out. Like we were in Louisville where you’ve got to have a “Hot Brown” which came out of one of their hotels, the Brown Hotel. It’s an amazing open face sandwich with gravy and bacon and stuff like that—it was so good! It’s fun to find that kind of stuff, and I keep a kind of “foodie diary” across the country and other places—we spent the summer in Asia, which was amazing. We’ve been flopping around the country and all over the world with the show.

The second family in the musical is described as “straight arrow Midwesterners”…?

They’re supposed to be the all-American family. They’re kind of what you think of when you think of the old “perfect” families from the sitcoms of the fifties, like the “Leave It To Beaver” family or the “Donna Reed” family.

They kind of have that persona when they first show up, and then once they get a little dose of Addams they deteriorate to who they really are and drop the façade of being the perfect family.

Tell us about the music.

Andrew Lippa’s really put together a fantastic score. It’s very diverse. It mirrors the characters of the show, so when Gomez is singing, you’re going to hear a lot of Latin flair in the music. When Wednesday and Lucas—who is her fiancé—are doing their numbers, it’s a lot more pop sounding, young and fresh—something you might hear almost on the radio today. That appeals to the new generation of musical theatre goers. Uncle Fester’s more of an old Vaudevillian song and dance fan, so my songs are more like classical musical theatre. So there’s a whole big array of everything in the show. There’s bound to be something that you walk away humming.

The musical “The Addams Family”. Photo courtesy of “The Addams Family”.

Speaking of Uncle Fester’s songs, you perform a song called “The Moon and Me”—tell us about that.

“The Moon and Me” is visually really, really stunning. It’s one of the numbers that really hearkens back to the whimsical fun of the comics. It takes a break from the story that’s going on—it’s kind of a dream sequence, it takes a little break in Act II from the plot of all the lovers who are in distress and focuses on Fester and his love affair with the moon. He has this almost “dream ballet” where he flies up to dance with the moon, and sings with the moon. The stars come out and he’s floating in the sky. It’s gorgeous when you see it. It’s probably the most technical piece in the show. I think we spent about fifteen hours just doing lighting for that number, just to make sure that it comes out perfect every time.

Are there any particular over-arching messages or morals from this musical?

Absolutely. One of the recurring themes and phrases in the show is “Define Normal.” It really looks at “What is normal?” This family comes in and they appear to be the perfect American “normal” family, but what does that really mean? Normal is just who you are, it’s not what society thinks you should be. And we find out that once they stop trying to fit that mold and just be who they are—like the Addams Family does—they end up being a lot happier. So the message of the whole

show is just be who you are and let the world adjust to you instead of you having to adjust to the world.

Being on tour—not just around the country, but around the world—how does this affect your personal relationships?

It’s tough. It’s always tough when you’re away from your family and your friends. It’s definitely not a lifestyle that’s for everybody.

Some people find it not for them and just go back to “real life” right away. It’s one that I seem to love. I’ve been doing it for a long time now, and I just love the travel, I love meeting the people. Today’s technology makes it a lot easier. I Skyped with my family and my goddaughter from Singapore once a week, so we got to stay in visual contact as well. But it’s still tough.

We’ve got several married couples on the show and their spouses fly out to see them when we’re close or whenever it’s just been too long. So there are ways around it, though it can be expensive that way because you’re paying for airfare back and forth. But if this is something you really want to do, you find ways of making it work.

You’re doing performances every single day, sometimes, with very few breaks. Tell us what’s involved in doing that.

The most important part is keeping a good eye on your health. It can be very straining to a body or a voice just to be constantly not in a state of rest. Because sometimes we’re doing twelve or fourteen shows in a row, or fourteen one-nighters in a row, where you’re traveling to a different city. You get out of the bus, you do the show, go to the hotel to sleep at night, and get up at six in the morning to drive to the next city and do it all over again. So you

There’s bound to be something that you walk away humming.

ACCESSline Page 31 just have to make sure you’re really taking care of yourself, which is a challenge, to eat right, to cover up as much as you should be going climate to climate. We came from California yesterday, now we’re in Boise, Idaho where it’s like five degrees. So you have to keep healthy, which is the most important part.

Traveling like that and working like that, where you’re constantly on the move with the same group of people, you really bond with the cast and the crew. They really become like a travel family for you. So you at least have some kind of emotional support. You know wherever you’re going, you at least know forty other people in town, which is kinda nice.

What are your favorite things in the production?

They’ve done such a fantastic job casting the show. Normally, when I go to see a show, you pick out “stand out” people, you can usually pick them out of the crowd. I think out of the twenty of us, there are twenty stand-out people in this cast. I don’t think there’s one single weak link, which is amazing and very, very rare. From the “ancestors”—who are our dancing-singing chorus—to the people in the families themselves, everyone really, really so talented and brings so much to every single show that it’s a phenomenal experience to be able to be on the stage with them all the time and just feed off of that talent. But it’s also a phenomenal experience for the audience just to see a show where it’s just non-stop brilliance from the acting standpoint. It really is very solid from beginning to end.

The Addams Family has never been something meant just for kids—except maybe the Saturday morning cartoons.

This show wouldn’t be G rated, but is it still a “family” show, good for different generations to see together?

Yeah, it’s probably not G, but it’s very PG. It’s like going to see Home Alone back in the day, where you don’t want your kid playing with a blow torch, but it’s still very kid friendly. [Laughs.]

“Do not attempt this in your own home!”

Right! And we run a disclaimer, like there are no guillotines allowed during the show, things like that. But I think the way it’s written, because it does hearken back to that comedic style of a 1950s sitcom, it really hooks the younger audience in. Even if this is the first musical that they’ve ever seen, or they (quote-unquote) “don’t like musical theatre” or something like that, I think this show will hook them. I think it’s very funny. People don’t expect it to be so funny.

And the comedy comes from such a family-oriented place— the musical is so family based just as the Addams Family itself is, being such a strong family unit—that the comedy comes from that kind of place and it really hooks the audience in, no matter what age they are. It becomes a really enjoyable family experience for everybody.

The Project of the Quad Cities

Founded in 1986, The Project of the Quad Cities is a non-profit HIV/STI/AIDS Service Organization that provides support to persons living with HIV/STI/AIDS as well as their families and friends in Iowa and Illinois. www.apqc4life.org Symptom Management Group—Every Wednesday from 1-2:30 pm Life Skills Group—Every other Wednesday from 10-11:30 am Coffee Hour—10-11:30 am on Wednesdays when the Life Skills Group does not meet; A relaxed and casual atmosphere Groups meet at our Moline office. We also offer free HIV testing Monday through Thursday from 9 am to 4 pm.

For more information call Susie or Mollie at 309-762-5433

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Section 3: Community

ACCESSline Winners

Ticcket winners Carolyn Brugioni and Brad Snyder.

The Imperial Court of Iowa held its monthly Bingo at Blazing Saddle on

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PAGE inflicted pain or denial have had many religious supporters through the years. At a less extreme level, Christians have advocated complete abstinence from alcohol and have fetishized sex and sexual desire, drawing careful boundaries around when sex is acceptable (in heterosexual marriage, preferably for procreation) and when it is not (all other times).

This denigration of the body and of this world flies in the face of the great news of Christmas. At Christmas we proclaim that, by coming into this world, God seeks to redeem it. And not just to redeem the soul, but the flesh and everything that makes up creation. In the Gospel of Luke, the evangelist describes Jesus’ birth in ugly terms. Jesus is born in a feeding trough to a couple forced to travel an arduous journey. The heralds of this great news are shepherds, the paradigmatic low-lives of first century Palestine. Shepherding was dirty, lonely work with no status and with all the aromas of country life. Yet it was there, and not in a pristine palace, that Jesus was supposedly born. God chose the most humble of circumstances to show forth the greatest example of grace in the world. The

December 14, as part of its annual Christmas Gala, hosted by Lucy Jackson with proceeds to benefit Eychaner Foundation’s “Matthew Shepard Scholarship Fund.”

There was a drag show featuring Empress X Lucy Jackson, Reigning Empress Shelbi Anne Baker, Stinketta Beaverhausen, Amiliana Shades Jackson, and a surprise performance by Ineeda Payattention. Ineeda was unfortunate enough to call a false bingo and as part of her punishment she was called a not so nice name and had to perform a number as part of the drag show. ACCESSline donated tickets from Des Moines Playhouse and subscriptions to ACCESSline newspaper for bingo prizes and an auction. Our winners were Ineeda, Carolyn Brugioni, and Brad Snyder. The entire event raised over $1,600 and the auction raised over $500.

The next bingo will be held January 4, 2014 at the Blazing Saddle. The theme is “The Great Iowa Porn Swap.” message is clear: that it is in the mundane, the lowly, and the everyday that God can be most present.

The profundity of the Incarnation was not lost on the early Church. The great church father Irenaeus of Lyon wrote about how it was the Incarnation itself which saved us. By coming into this world, Jesus’ life redeemed what it means to be human.

The pain and suffering of childbirth. The struggles of growing up. The reality of human desire. The difficulty of relationships. The effort to find meaning and purpose in life. The nature of death. Indeed, as biblical scholars like N.T. Wright have emphasized recently, the early Christian vision for the end times was the redemption of this world and not some promised otherworldly heaven. John 3:16 reminds us, “For God so loved the world that he sent his only-begotten son...” (emphasis added) Looking back on the bustling Christmas season, I implore you to remember what it is actually about, in a Christian sense. You, your body, whether gay or straight, male or female or trans, have been transformed by the presence of God in the world. Our bodies are sacred and are the subject of redemption. What a great message to hear in the deep, darkness of winter! “God is with you.”

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BLUMENFELD continued that, “Before too long we could become a society where the net majority of Americans are takers, not makers,” we must all ask, when is enough of this demonization of the working poor enough?

So, what I advocate to narrow the gaps is a governmental single-payer quality universal health care system, which includes safe and reasonablypriced prescription and over-the-counter drug therapies.

I advocate for our country to protect and enhance our Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid safety nets.

I advocate for a system of parental leave, paid sick leave, tax credits and governmental supplements for quality child day care services, as well as universal Pre-K education for all young people.

I advocate equal pay for equal work between the sexes, and the raising of the minimum wage so workers can raise their standard of living significantly above the poverty line.

I advocate for the further nationalization of our parks, forests, mountains, rivers, streams, shores, and off-shore waters, rather than allocating increased corporate mining, drilling, and timber rights.

I advocate for free and quality education, not only through grade 12, but throughout higher education and after for everyone who desires and works to achieve their fullest potential.

I advocate for a government-sponsored program that guarantees our seniors a retirement system that ensures a high quality of life free from economic burdens.

I advocate for the rights of workers to organize and to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions.

I advocate for the elimination of workplace and larger societal inequalities based on race, nationality, citizenship status, age, sex, sexual identity, gender identity and expression, disability, socioeconomic standing, religion, and other social identities.

I advocate for everyone a guaranteed comfortable and secure place to live, and governmental policies that actually prevent a banking system that forecloses people’s homes through scurrilous business practices.

I advocate for severe restrictions on the political process to prevent mammoth contributions by individuals and corporations to buy and own politicians and to influence public policy, while locking out individuals and groups unable to amass large political funds.

I challenge a military industrial complex that marches to the beat of industry, and a prison industrial complex that perpetuates the racial and socioeconomic class inequities pervasive throughout the

JANUARY 2014 society.

I advocate for a true progressive tax structure where everyone pays their fair share, one that inhibits massive inequities in the overwhelming accumulation of wealth by the top income brackets.

Most basically, I advocate for effective restrictions on the so-called “free market” economic system that enables the creation and enhancement of mega monopolies, outsourcing of jobs, manufacture of defective products, and inhibition in the development of clean renewable energy technologies.

Even before the Cold War and the so-called “McCarthy Period” (named after Wisconsin Senator, Joseph McCarthy), individuals and groups on the political and theocratic Right have flung the term “Socialist” from their metaphoric sling shots into the faces of their political opponents to discredit their characters and dismiss their political ideas and policies, and to sway the electorate toward a Conservative agenda. This continues to this very day as evidenced by the Tea Party’s representations of President Obama, various other Democratic politicians, Pope Francis, and even against the great Nelson Mandela.

As destructive and as freedom-killing as the Right would have us believe, according to the World English Dictionary, Socialism involves “a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole,” where each of us has a stake and advances in the success of our collective economy.

Maybe if more of us challenged the widening and inhumane inequities, where each of us understood that we all have a stake and advance in the success of our collective economy, then enough would definitely and finally be enough!

References: Gentilviso, C. (2013). Senate represents the wealthy first: Study. The Huffington Post, August 21.

Gilson, D., & Perot, C. (2011). It’s the inequality, stupid. In Mother Jones, March/ April.

Kertscher, T, & Borowski, G. (2011). The truth-o-meter says: True – Michael Moore says 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined. PolitiFact, March 10.

Mishel, L, & Shierholz, H. (2013). A decade of flat wages. Economic Policy Institute. August 21.

Weeks, J. (2007). Inequality trends in some developed OECD countries. In J. K. S. & J. Baudot (Eds.), Flat world, big gaps. New York: ZED Books, pp. 159-174).

Wiseman, P. (2013). Richest 1 percent earn biggest share since ‘20s. Associated Press, September 10.

I advocate for everyone a guaranteed comfortable and secure place to live…

The most influential person of 2013 doesn’t come from our ongoing legal conflict but instead from our spiritual one — successes from which are harder to define. ~The Advocate explaining it’s choice of Pope Francis as Person of the Year.

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HYATT because they have chosen me to take care of

ACCESSline Page 33 all their design or photography needs, I feel blessed to be an artist!

For more information go to Facebook. com/AlanasArtwork.

“Falling”- Photography. “This piece is a portrait of Brook Hoover. I wanted to create a piece that made him look like he was “one” with the guitar and free falling. When we listen to music, we tend to “let loose” so I wanted to play off of that.” Alana Hyatt.

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Section 3: Community

Prime Timers of Central Iowa Prime Timers of Central Iowa, the Iowa chapter of Prime Timers World Wide, continues to grow and has expanded across Iowa and even across our borders. It has now launched its website: www.primetimersww.com/centraliowa/ Prime Timers of Central Iowa held their second annual Christmas party on December 14th in the home of two of our members. We had a large turnout, with mature men attending from as far away as Iowa City.

The newly started Prime Timers chapter in Omaha held their first event, a holiday brunch on December 15th. They

reported that 65 men responded to their invitation. Our Iowa Chapter and the Omaha chapter have begun discussions about a joint event this summer.

Several members from Iowa and Omaha are planning to attend the regional gathering of Prime Timers in Chicago in July, 2014. Many of us will be taking Amtrak to Chicago to attend.

More information about the Iowa and Omaha Prime Timers chapters is available on Facebook or you can email PrimeTimersIowa@gmail.com or to find a local chapter or become an independent member, go to PrimeTimersWW.com.

University of Iowa LGBT S&F Association - Iowa City, Iowa

The University of Iowa Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Staff & Faculty Association (the “Association”) was organized in 1990 to support the interests of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender campus community. The Association is open to any University employee—merit staff, professional/scientific staff, graduate assistant, faculty, administrator or community member. Meetings are held monthly and feature guest presentations as well as discussions of current topics recommended by members. In addition, the Association sponsors other public activities throughout the year ranging from lectures to cultural performances and social events.

The Association’s services and activities are open to everyone.

2012-2013 Executive Board Meeting Schedule, IMU River Room #1 2nd Thursday of the month, 12:30-1:30 p.m.

Wednesday, Jan 22, 2014, Wednesday, Feb 26, 2014, Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014, Wednesday, Apr 23, 2014. For general comments or questions, please contact the Association by e-mail at lgbtsfa@uiowa.edu. For more information go to their website at http://www.uiowa.edu/~lgbsfa/

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NEWS The order provides a streamlined process for couples in similarly urgent medical circumstances, allowing a physician to evaluate a person’s illness to determine if an emergency marriage license is needed and appropriate. The order allows couples to get the protections and responsibilities of marriage without having to go through a legal and possibly public process during a time when privacy and calm is of utmost importance.

Federal Resolution Opposing ‘Ex-Gay Therapy’ for Youth

U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier introduced the Stop Harming Our Kids Resolution (SHOK), a federal resolution supporting efforts to stop mental health providers from using dangerous efforts to change sexual orientation or gender identity sometimes referred to as “ex-gay therapy,” “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy” - with minors.

JANUARY 2014

Community Billboard: Classifieds Small advertisements for the LGBT Community related to housing, for sale, wanted and personals. No profanity, no solicitation for illegal activities, no physical addresses.

Black & White ad sizes available: 1/32 page and 1/16 page, priced at $30 and $45.

TEXT ONLY. No photos and no graphics. Payment required prior to print, multiple cc/debit card charges possible, no refunds, no stopped payments after charge set up.

For more details contact Sarah at ads@ACCESSlineAmerica.com.

ACCOUNTS, BOOKKEEPERS, Payment Reps, Payable Clerk & Receivable

P/T positions open. Are you looking for job? Want to be part of a great team?

If you are interested in this Part Time JOB opportunity for advancement for the right person please e-mail resumes to: smithdonald042@gmail.com.

ALPHAs

ALPHAs have a meet and greet every third (3rd) Friday of the month, held at Icon’s Martini Bar located at 124 18th Street in Rock Island. It’s a gathering for members of the LGBT community, supporters and friends to socialize, celebrate and get to know one another over martinis. Events are posted on Facebook at alphaselitecrew@ facebook.com or for more information contact alphaselite@yahoo.com.

JANUARY 2014

Section 3: Community

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