Empty Closet, April 2017

Wine tasting… page 17

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A PUBLICATION OF THE GAY ALLIANCE what freedom is. We’ve seen an increase in racism, homophobia, transphobia – we have an administration falsely accusing us of being predators. Public schools are being encouraged to ignore the law protecting trans students. The Constitution provides equal protection under the law. Trump and his administration are on the wrong side of history.”

Emma Forbes-Jones, a Brighton psychologist who has worked with hundreds of trans youth and families, said, “The executive order signed by Trump is absolutely unacceptable. Shame on you, President Trump!” She suggested that we all need a “nest” where we are safe to be ourselves.

Bill Moehle, Brighton Town Supervisor, said, “In 2014 the Town of Brighton got tired waiting for the state legislature to pass GENDA. The State Senate didn’t have the guts to bring it to the floor.” So Brighton went ahead to declare its status as a Safe Place for LGBTQ people, including trans students in Brighton schools. He added, “Trans kids are just kids and equality shouldn’t be difficult.

It’s what we all deserve… We cannot be silent because when equal rights are denied to one, they are denied to all.”

School administrators have begun speaking out. On Feb. 24, Kevin McGowan, Ed. D., Superintendent of Schools, Brighton CSD, sent a message to students, staff and the school community on Feb. 24. He said in part: “Simply put, the actions taken by the federal government on Wednesday will have no practical impact here in Brighton. Although we certainly recognize and empathize with the emotional impact that can be felt, we wanted you to know that our practice here will remain unchanged. As we have said here for quite some time, you are who you say you are. We will love, support, and embrace you for being you, in every way, without exception.”

On March 2, the New York City Department of Education issued new guidelines regarding transgender and gender nonconforming students. This updated policy contains some of the strongest, clearest guidance (Trans rally continues page 3)

The Feb. 24 rally took place at School of the Arts. Photo: Jill Frier

“Rochester will not stand for this!”

Over 240 rally for trans student rights is nothing new to us… Discrimination has no place or part in the American dream… This is not who we are. Rochester will not stand for this!”

Gay Alliance Board President Colleen Raimond said, “Another day, another attack on a community, another attack on our youth. Today it’s trans youth, who are so often bullied… and who deserve to be protected and loved as their beautiful selves…

We are just getting started! We the people will not back down, we will fight for our vision of America and we will be successful!”

Trans woman Julia Acosta, president of TAGR, talked about her struggle as a youth with bullying, the loneliness and shame, and her decision to commit suicide. A supportive teacher was able to save her life. “Government at all levels must be committed to the dignity of all people,” she said.

Brae Adams, pastor of Open Arms MCC, and mother of a trans youth, spoke about her son’s experiences with harassment. “We can all do better,” she said. “Make your voices heard!”

Olivia Page, a 20-year-old trans woman, said, “I was the first in Hilton to advocate for myself. This garnered me as a teenager a lot of opposition. I became a target…” If it hadn’t been for the Obama protections, Olivia said, she could never have made her voice heard.

Trans activist Shauna O’Toole said, “We have the right to live as we choose, not as someone dictates to us. That’s

Bashing victim Jim Eskildsen with his partner Lynn Commisso on Feb. 22 at the Resource Center. Photo: Susan Jordan

“This has to end”: Ontario Co. grand jury says Victor assault is not a hate crime

By Susan Jordan “This has to end,” Jim Eskildsen said. “This hatred towards anybody has to end.”

Jim, a 42-year-old heterosexual, was attacked by two men screaming homophobic slurs as he and a male friend sat in the Victor Village Inn on Feb. 4.

After leaving the bar Jim and his friend were attacked by the two

Wheeler and Robert Bergman, were arrested. On Feb. 23 they were charged with assault second degree, with a mandatory threeyear jail sentence, in Ontario Co. Court. However, the Ontario Co. Grand Jury has ruled that the violent attack was not a hate crime.

Ontario Co. Assistant D.A. Jim Ritts told The Empty Closet that he cannot comment on the grand jury ruling. He did say that the case has been returned to the Victor Town Court; no trial had been scheduled by EC press time.

Ritts said that the injuries to Eskildsen do not meet the legal definition for serious damage, protracted impairment of health, etc. He said that one witness heard Bergman and Eskildsen call each other “fags” during the first attack, in which, he said, no one was hurt. During the second attack, which was outside the bar and caused the injuries to Jim Eskildsen, Ritts said, there were no witnesses to hearing the word “fag” used.

Two out of the three alleged attackers were released on bond in early March and they immediately posted a cell phone photo of a Confederate flag and the slogan “Get ‘Er Done”.

Jim Eskildsen responded to the grand jury ruling, “I can tell you for myself, having the hate (Assault continues page 3)

Jim Eskildsen after the Feb. 4 attack.

men and a third attacker, and Jim suffered a broken nose, broken eye socket, concussion and severely bruised ribs.

“If it can happen to me, a white heterosexual male,” he told The Empty Closet, “it can happen to anybody. It can happen anywhere.”

The three alleged attackers, William Cole, Dominick

Inside PHOTO: SUSAN JORDAN

By Susan Jordan Over 240 people attended a rally in support of trans students on Feb. 24 at the School of the Arts. The rally was organized by the Gay Alliance, Transgender Association of Greater Rochester (TAGR), Open Arms MCC, Trillium Health, The MOCHA Center and Action Together Rochester.

Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had erased President Obama’s protections for transgender and gender expansive students. Rallies and protests also took place in Buffalo, New York City, Washington DC and elsewhere.

A SOTA student told The Empty Closet, “I think it’s wrong that Trump decided against trans rights. He’s not really accomplishing anything.”

Rowan Collins, Gay Alliance Education Coordinator, welcomed the crowd. He said, “I was a trans kid. I am a proud transgender man.” He spoke about the silence around gender when he was a student and how he felt he had to remain silent and invisible.

A young trans student also spoke about his experiences of harassment, saying, “It is time to be afraid but also to be unified and brave… Do not let bigotry go unchallenged!”

James Smith, director of communications for the city, represented Mayor Warren. He read a letter from her, saying in part, “This week the city of Rochester passed a resolution affirming our status as a sanctuary city… The fight for equality

APRIL 2017

Poetry scene… page 27

PHOTO: SUSAN JORDAN

NUMBER 510

PHOTO: SUSAN JORDAN

The Empty Closet

Editorials....................................... 2 Interview: Matt Juda.................... 6 Making the Scene......................10 Opinion: Still We Rise................15 Health: Undetectable.................16 LGBTQ Living: Wine tasting ......17 Shoulders To Stand On ...........21 Columnists ................................22 Community ................................25 Entertainment: Poetry.................. 27 Gay Alliance: Al Anon................30 Calendar.....................................34 Classifieds..................................34 Comics........................................35 The Gay Alliance is publisher of The Empty Closet, New York State’s oldest LGBTQ newspaper.

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THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017

Perspectives The Empty Closet Editor SUSAN JORDAN

Resisting the politics of hate

CENTERED

A transgender pastor recently spoke out against those who cite God as their reason for supporting the Texas bill that aims to prevent trans people from using public bathrooms that correspond best with their gender identity.

The Rev. S. David Wynn, a senior pastor from Agape Metropolitan Community Church in Fort Worth, Texas, spoke on March 7 to hundreds of LGBTQ advocates protesting the bill outside the state Capitol in Austin.

“In the beginning, God created humankind in God’s image. ... So God is transgender,” Wynn said. “We’re all created in the image of what is holy and divine and sacred, and we should all be treated that way.”

The violence and abuse that have become daily events in our country began on Nov. 9, when the haters crawled out from under their slimy rocks, rejoicing that they now have “religious freedom” to express their “Christian” hatred of people of color, LGBTQs, women, Jews, Muslims, workers, unions, immigrants, the disabled, etc.

Rochester has seen vandalizing of rainbow and Black Lives Matter flags. The brutal gaybashing of a straight man in Victor on Feb. 4 is only one of a series of hate-assaults on LGBTQ peo-

ple – or those perceived as such – across the country. LGBTQ centers are vandalized or shot at; we are meant to live in fear.

Trans students too are victims of the Right. Far from fighting bullying in our schools, conservatives incite it. But then they have been telling LGBTQ youth for centuries that they must either be “normal” or commit suicide.

In early March, Rochester’s JCC was one of many to receive a bomb threat. Then a week later the JCC got another threat.

Jewish cemeteries have also been vandalized here and around the country. A Jewish youth has now been charged with making bomb threats, but the nationwide cemetery vandalizing is still unexplained.

Muslim Americans -- or people perceived as Muslim -- are being attacked, killed, or refused entry to the land of the free.

So are immigrants and foreign nationals visiting the US, where they may have jobs and families. While Trump rants about immigrants as criminals and terrorists, “illegal” sick women are being pulled off respirators and children are being separated from their “illegal” mothers; a similar incident caused a protest here on March 24.

Planned Parenthood will be de-funded, although no taxpayer money is used for abortions.

What will be affected is poor women’s ability to get cancer treatment, etc. The GOP is also cutting health benefits for veterans. But their replacement for the Affordable Care Act didn’t work out so well…

All this hate isn’t really about bathrooms, or morality, or religious freedom, or anything but politics. The men who exploit and incite hatred in the name of any religion do so to gain more power and profit for themselves.

Millions of Americans (including working-class white folks) are beginning to get past our differences, and starting to see where our oppressions intersect. Together we can resist. ■

100 College Avenue • Rochester , New York

Gay Alliance Board of Trustees Colleen Raimond, President Jennifer Matthews, Secretary Jason Barnecut-Kearns, Treasurer Paul Birkby, Sady Fischer, Jeff Lambert, Martin Murphy, Milo Primeaux, Louis Rosario-McCabe, David Zona

LGBTQ Resource Center Director JEFF MYERS

1978 and today…

As Mark Twain is often reputed to have said, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.”

In searching through the Archives of the Alliance, our Executive Director Scott Fearing discovered a letter from the White House dated September 5, 1978. The letter was written to Ms. Patti Evans of the Gay Alliance in regard to a Rally for Human Rights sponsored by the Gay Alliance. The letter is from the Assistant to the President, Margaret (Midge) Costanza, a Rochestarian.

In the letter, Costanza wrote, “The pledge one makes to support and guarantee human rights and dignity is not selective or qualified.

Human rights are not just for certain groups of people who happen to share certain goals, lifestyles or philosophies.

Human rights are birthrights.

Human rights belong to everyone. And just as human rights belong to everyone, the denial of human rights to anyone -or even the threat or denial of human rights to anyone -- is a direct threat to us all. When even one person’s rights are challenged, nobody’s rights are secure.”

She closes the letter by saying, “We must continue to make it loud and clear that we

Name

will not tolerate oppression.

The reason is simple. Human rights are not negotiable.”

It amazes me how relevant these words are to the challenges facing our LGBTQ community today. For me, it is critical to maintain a sense of self in the era of a Trump White House. We cannot lose our sense of individuality, we cannot lose our love for ourselves. We must concentrate on how much we have grown, and how far we have come. We must remember the struggles that we faced to get where we are today. We must remain vigilant to ensure that we do not fall back. We are here and we will not go away.

For the past 43 years, The Alliance has continued to be “Champions for LGBTQ Life and Culture.” We strive to work behind the scenes to make change, but we are out, loud and proud when the situation demands action.

The National Pride March in Washington D.C. is fast approaching and the Alliance will ensure that there will be a representation of Rochester’s LGBTQ community in attendance at this historic event.

The Alliance will have transportation available for a contingent from our community to attend the March, which is scheduled for June 11..It will be a special moment to march for equality with people from all over the country.

The Alliance is also planning a local rally where we can stand in solidarity on the same day as the march in Washington. We will once again bring the community of Rochester together to send a direct message to our government and neighbors that we are here and we will not tolerate the denial of human rights. ■

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APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET

PAGE ONE (Assault from page 1) crime off the table is incredibly disappointing. It’s disheartening that anyone can be treated so viciously, all driven by the hatred of one’s personal choices. It saddens me that the judicial system seems to stand on the absolute wrong side. It’s absurd to think that this will be treated so lightly. I will not let the court’s decision stop me from doing anything and everything in my power to help fight this atrocity from continuing to happen to anyone else again.”

Background Jim Eskildsen told The Empty Closet on Feb. 22, “I would like this to get out so straight people can understand that this can happen to them.

What you’re perceived as is where the hate comes from. It’s not who you are – it’s who the haters see you as.”

He continued, “I had never seen these men before. They were standing up against the wall talking and as soon as the bartender walked away and closed the door, one guy said, ‘I’ve been watching you all night long.’

Then they called us ‘f****** fags’ and jumped into action.”

Jim said he was able to jump in front of his smaller friend to protect him. “One guy was 6’2” and the other 5’8” and 200 lbs.

You have that wall of force coming at you. They threw a couple of punches – it was more a wrestling match than anything else.

One guy grabbed Paul (Jim’s friend) and threw him over a railing. A couple more punches were thrown, then it ended and I honestly don’t know why. They ran out of that part of the bar…

I checked to see if Paul was OK.” After this Jim and Paul left the bar and as soon as they went around the corner, they were again attacked, this time by three men, again yelling homophobic slurs. Jim said, “The third guy was 6’2” and 220 lbs.

They all jumped us.”

Jim and Paul were knocked to the ground and the three perpetrators concentrated on punching and kicking Jim. He suffered a broken nose, broken eye socket, concussion and severely bruised ribs. Jim’s partner Lynn Commisso said, “His eye was swollen shut. This is a guy who played hockey. I couldn’t stop crying for days.”

Jim said, “The three men were driven by such anger at gay men. It’s not just hitting one person – everybody who cares about that person is affected. I was in the fetal position being beaten – and again it just ended. I wasn’t unconscious but I was shocked.

Audio/visual just sort of went away.”

A witness in the bar knew who the men were and police made arrests the following Thursday (Feb. 9). Jim said, “I’m still dealing with the medical aspect of it. My eye socket was borderline for surgery. I’m hoping that it heals. I have headaches – the whole thing…. I still have trouble breathing. The physical aspects aren’t as hard to deal with as realizing what actually happened. I’m 42 and have led a very full life, but never did I expect anything like this to happen, with such force and blind hate. I’ve had gay friends my whole life; they have experienced verbal harassment but nothing like this.” ■

PAGE ONE (Trans rally from page 1) in the country on how schools must support and protect the rights of students in compliance with local, state, and federal antidiscrimination laws.

The guidance, backed by city and state law, is clear on the rights of all students to access school facilities and participate in school activities consistent with their gender identities.

Such facilities include restrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms, and relevant school activities include overnight field trips, physical education, and sports. The new guidelines also include important instruction on maintaining student privacy and ways to support transitioning students. (See article, page 3) The Gay Alliance responds to anti-trans attacks Four transgender women were murdered in the United States within days of each other in February. (The total of known victims so far this year is eight.) March 6 saw the news that the Supreme Court had remanded Gavin Grimm’s case regarding equal access for transgender students back to the lower courts. (See article page 4) Jaquarrius Holland, Keke Collier, Chyna Gibson, and Ciara McElveen were all murdered between February 19 and February 25 – with Gibson and McElveen being found dead less than 48 hours apart from each other in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Three others – Mesha Caldwell, Jamie Lee Wounded Arrow, and Jojo Striker – have been murdered since the start of the year.

Alphonza Watson was killed March 22. This disturbing trend marks the start of another deadly year for the transgender community, specifically transgender women of color.

“2016 was the deadliest year on record for the transgender community. If we continue to lose community members at this rate, we will surpass that record

by July,” noted Rowan Collins, Gay Alliance Education Coordinator.

Scott Fearing, Executive Director of the Gay Alliance, added that the record number of deaths comes at a time when “our current Administration is turning their back on the transgender community, especially transgender youth. The climate of fear and hatred that has been amplified is simply unacceptable. We need to recognize the humanity and life of transgender people and continue to commit to providing support and opportunity to the most vulnerable and oppressed.”

On March 6, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled to vacate the contentious Gloucester County School Board v. G.G. decision made by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court remanded the case because the basis for the 4th Circuit’s decision was based heavily on the guidance regarding Title IX protections for transgender and gender expansive students from the Departments of Justice and Education that was rescinded by the current Administration late February.

Had the Supreme Court not remanded the case, it would have had the highest court in the country ruling on an issue directly impacting the trans-

gender community for the first time. SCOTUS ruled to send the case back to lower courts following the rescission of guidance regarding Title IX protections for transgender and gender expansive students from the Departments of Justice and Education late in February.

“The rescission of guidance sent a message to our youth that they are less valuable in the eyes of our Federal government. The Supreme Court has asked the lower courts to start all over again and decide what to do with it now that the guidance is no longer on the books. This could have been a historic case and yet we will

3 see Gavin Grimm fighting for the recognition of transgender students across our country all over again,” said Collins. “This maneuver creates more confusion and we are concerned that this turn-around will only foster the increasing danger and intolerance we continue to see afflict the transgender community.”

Colleen Raimond, Chair of the Gay Alliance Board of Directors, stated, “We need to be sure we are standing with our transgender siblings and making clear that we value them as their authentic selves at every stage of their lives. When we do not make clear that our children and teens are valued and loved

for who they truly are and we do not protect them from bullying, discrimination, hatred, and rejection – we have failed them.

And our failure will affect them for the rest of their lives.”

“We will continue to commit to our communities – to fighting homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, Islamaphobia, xenophobia, poverty, and so many systems that impact our communities and nation,” said Fearing. “We need to show up for each other more than ever. And not just once, but over and over again. This will be a long road but we are not deterred and we will persevere together.” ■

NewsFronts LOCAL AND STATE

Mark Milano of ACT-UP (Gay City News)

Groups push for resistance at NYC Pride in June Duncan Osborne writes on Gay City News: The organization that produces New York City’s annual pride parade, rally, and related events is under pressure to put groups that are taking a lead in pushing back against Republican Party control of the White House and Congress at the front of this year’s march.

“One way or another, these resistance groups are going to take over this parade,” Cathy Marino-Thomas, the former head of Marriage Equality who is currently active in Gays Against Guns, told the leadership of Heritage of Pride at HOP’s March 13 general meeting. “I predict that if there is no give here, this will be the first time there will be arrests.”

Members of Gays Against Guns, ACT UP, Rise + Resist, and United Thru Action packed the meeting, which was held at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center.

The meeting is typically attended by just HOP leaders and volunteers, but was standing room only, with 50 to 60 people in one of the Center’s smaller rooms.

All four groups have held recent protests in New York City.

They also participated in the protests in Washington, DC, on January 20 when Donald Trump was inaugurated and the Women’s March on Washington on January 21. They are seeking a spot at the start of this year’s pride march, which comes on

June 25. They want the parade, which began in 1970 on the one-year anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots, to highlight the resistance to Congress and the Trump administration. They also want the parade to send a message to LGBTQ people across the country that the community is united in rejecting the current leaders in the nation’s capital.

“This parade has to not be a parade,” said Mark Milano, a member of ACT UP, the AIDS activist group. “It has to be a march saying ‘We refuse to give one inch.’”….

-Read more at Gay City News

Hundreds of trans New Yorkers legally changed identity after 2015 rule change Joseph Patrick McCormick posts on pinknews.co.uk: Hundreds of transgender New Yorkers have legally changed their gender following a rule change.

A total of 731 transgender residents of New York City have changed their legal gender following the rule change from 2014, enacted in 2015.

The City Council and the Health Department, made it easier for trans people to change their gender identity on their birth certificate.

Previously, on average, around 20 people legally changed their gender in the years before it became easier.

The Department says 55 percent of those changing their

gender did so from male to female, and 45 percent legally changed from female to male.

Those taking advantage of the new rules range from five years of age to 76. Those under 18, of which there were 41, were approved with parental consent.

The city’s Health Department in 2016 issued the first intersex birth certificate.

“As jurisdictions around the country continue to adopt policies of discrimination against transgender people, it is crucial for this city to reaffirm its commitment to equality and health equity,” said Health Commissioner Dr Mary Bassett.

A transgender man in New York in December celebrated victory after being allowed to legally change his name.

Ben Stanford had previously been denied the name change petition after a lower court said he declined to provide “medical evidence” of his transition.

Earlier in 2016 a trans man sued Indiana over a law that has blocked him from changing his name.

The man was granted asylum in the US last year as “a protective step” in case he was deported to Mexico, where he could face persecution for being transgender, and is now suing Indiana because of a law that blocks him from changing his name.

NYC issues new guidelines to protect trans students On March 2, the New York City Department of Education issued new guidelines regarding transgender and gender nonconforming students. This updated policy contains some of the strongest, clearest guidance in the country on how schools must support and protect the rights of students in compliance with local, state, and federal antidiscrimination laws.

The guidance, backed by city and state law, is clear on the rights of all students to access school facilities and participate in school activities consistent with their gender identities. Such facil(NYC continues page 6)

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THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017

NewsFronts NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL

Gavin Grimm

SCOTUS won’t hear Gavin Grimm case due to Trump removal of trans student protections Nick Duffy posts on pinknews.co.uk: The Supreme Court will not go ahead with a planned hearing on transgender rights, in light of the Trump administration’s removal of key protections.

The highest court in the US had been set to hear the case of Virginian trans teen Gavin Grimm, whose school ordered him to use a toilet that corresponds with his “biological gender”.

Grimm is suing the Gloucester County School Board with help from the American Civil Liberties Union, arguing that the policy violated his right to freedom from discrimination.

However, the case was thrown into disarray after the Trump administration acted to withdraw the transgender protections the case partly relied on.

The case had hinged on the Obama administration’s guidance extending Title IX civil rights protections to outlaw discrimination based on gender identity.

However, after the Trump administration withdrew the protections, the Supreme Court opted to send the case back to the lower court.

In a notice, the justices sent the case back to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of

Appeals for reconsideration following the federal government’s policy change.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer previously hinted the administration had sought to send a message to the Supreme Court by yanking the protections.

He said: “The guidance [the administration] puts forward obviously sends a signal to the Court on where the administration stands on this issue.”

The ACLU previously explained of his case: “We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will agree that excluding transgender students from using the common restrooms used by everyone else is sex discrimination and that it’s wrong.

“Gavin’s case, and the so-called restroom debates more broadly, are about much more than just restrooms.

“This is a chance for the country to get to know our transgender family, friends, colleagues, and community members. This case will put Gavin’s story before the public and the justices who will be deciding what equality for transgender people means.

“What should become clear is that restroom restrictions bar transgender people from full participation in public life by making it challenging or even impossible to go to work, to school, to the movies, or a restaurant. And that letting transgender people use the restroom doesn’t intrude on anyone else’s privacy or safety. Gavin — and so many other transgender people all across the country — are living proof of that reality.

“Now that the court has accepted this case, the restroom issue, which has been percolating in national discussions for years, has a face: Gavin Grimm.

“We are so grateful to Gavin for the strength he has shown in standing up for himself and others as well as for the bravery of transgender people all across the country who are fighting to ensure that the type of dehumanizing treatment that Gavin endured doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

GLSEN responds “The Supreme Court has missed an opportunity to end the painful discrimination currently faced by tens of thousands of transgender students nationwide,” said Dr. Eliza Byard, GLSEN Executive Director in response to SCOTUS’ decision to decline to hear the case of transgender student Gavin Grimm, instead referring it back to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The position previously taken by the Departments of Education and Justice lifted up best practices for K-12 schools to improve the lives of students and provide a clear path to opportunity. We remain confident the courts will ultimately stand with Gavin and other transgender students in seeking access to school facilities that correspond with their gender identity and determining their gender-affirming name and pronouns, but in the meantime trans students are left without clear protections from our Federal government while the case is reheard. Additionally, the federal government continues to backtrack on their commitment to supporting transgender students, making it more important than ever that educators, schools, school districts, and state governments make explicitly clear their support through inclusive school values statements and comprehensive policies.”

The National LGBTQ Task Force responds “It is extremely disappointing that the Supreme Court declined to use this opportunity to provide clarity on gender identity protections under Title IX sex protections. That said, nothing about today’s action changes the meaning of the law: Title IX and the Constitution protect Gavin and other transgender students from discrimination. Every single young person in our nation should have access to a quality education, free from discrimination, persecution and violence.

The outpouring of support for Gavin — and through his case, every trans student in our education system — further illustrates America’s abhorrence for discrimination in all its forms, and particularly against the most vulnerable, our children and young people,” said Stacey Long Simmons, Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs, National LGBTQ Task Force.

The High Court decision comes shortly after the historic guidance to Title IX, providing support and protections to transgender students issued by the Obama Administration, was removed by the Trump Administration. The Obama

guidance provided clarity on matters such as: the right of students to not be discriminated against, or bullied because of their gender identity, to be addressed by the names and pronouns that correspond to their identity, using the bathroom matching their gender identity, among others.

The guidance was challenged in court by the opponents of LGBTQ equality.

National Educational Association responds The following statement can be attributed to NEA President Lily Eskelsen García: “We, as educators, have a moral, legal, and professional duty to support all students, including our transgender students, and nothing about the Supreme Court’s decision today to remand Gavin’s case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit changes that.

“While we are disappointed that the Supreme Court deferred deciding whether Gavin’s rights were violated when he was discriminated against at school for being transgender, we are confident that the Fourth Circuit, and eventually the Supreme Court, will ultimately vindicate his rights.

“Most courts have already concluded that federal law protects transgender students, and we fully expect that the Fourth Circuit will agree.”

Poll shows broad opposition to state anti-trans, “license to discriminate” laws Trudy Ring posts on The Advocate: Contrary to the assertions of some rightwingers, a majority of Americans don’t think business owners should be able to turn away gay and lesbian customers and are just fine with transgender people using the public restroom of their choice.

Those are among the findings in a survey released March 10 by the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan, independent research organization based in Washington, D.C. It noted broad support for LGBT rights in a variety of arenas, among Americans of many different religious faiths and political affiliations, although there is still a partisan divide on some issues more than others.

Sixty-four percent of respondents said they don’t believe small-business owners in their state should be able to refuse service to gay and lesbian customers on religious grounds, according to the survey (which specifically said “gay and lesbian,” not LGBT, in the question). Thirty-two percent thought businesses should have that right.

White evangelical Protestants represented the only major religious group in which a majority supported religious refusal rights, with 56 percent. Less than a third of white mainline Protestants, Catholics, black Protestants, the religiously unaffiliated, and members of non-Christian faiths voiced support.

Eighty-one percent of Democrats and 66 percent of independents opposed reli-

APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET gious refusals, while a slight majority of Republicans — 52 percent — expressed support.

Still, the Trump administration seems to be following the lead of the religious right, as it’s reportedly considering an executive order that would let businesses, nonprofit organizations, and even government employees refuse to serve customers who offend their religious beliefs about marriage, sexuality, and gender — specifically, beliefs that marriage is an opposite-sex union only, that sexual activity should occur only within such marriage, and that gender is fixed at birth. There is also a bill to this effect, the First Amendment Defense Act, pending in Congress.

States that have tried enacting such “license to discriminate” laws have aroused much opposition. Indiana, where Mike Pence, now vice president, signed one of these measures into law in 2015, but he and legislators had to amend it after backlash threatened business and tourism in the state. Arkansas adopted and then had to amend a similar law that year. And one passed last year in Mississippi has been blocked by a federal court.

It also turns out that a majority of Americans don’t support measures that restrict transgender people’s restroom access. A majority of respondents, 53 percent, “oppose laws that would require transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond to their sex at birth rather than their current gender identity,” notes PRRI’s summary of the survey findings.

When broken down along political lines, opposition is greatest among Democrats, 65 percent, and independents, 57 percent. But 59 percent of Republicans favor such laws. Among religious groups, opposition was strongest on the part of the unaffiliated (64 percent) and Catholics (56 percent), while several other faith groups were almost evenly divided.

But the federal government and some states apparently aren’t worried about the opposition to such restrictions. In February, the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice rescinded Obama-era guidelines recommending that schools let trans students use facilities matching their gender identity, in addition to recognizing their identity with the proper names, pronouns, and so forth. North Carolina’s infamous House Bill 2, enacted last year, among other things bars trans people from using facilities corresponding with their gender identity, when in public schools and other government buildings; it has drawn much backlash but remains on the books, although being challenged in court. Texas lawmakers are considering anti-trans “bathroom bills” this year.

The PRRI survey also asked respondents about several other issues, including marriage equality; racial, religious, and anti-LGBT discrimination; bullying of LGBT young people; and contraceptive coverage in employee health insurance plans.

-Read more on The Advocate

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Marriage equality finally comes to Finland Joe Morgan posts on gaystarnews. com: Same-sex couples in Finland can officially get married in Finland, starting on March 1.

The last Scandinavian country to open marriage to same-sex couples, it was a long and arduous journey to reach this day.

Kerttu Tarjamo, the Secretary General of national LGBTI rights group Seta, said it was a “joyous” moment that was “decades in the making”….

After allowing gay couples to register their relationship from 2002, a citizen’s initiative signed by 160,000 people reached parliament calling for marriage equality in 2014.

Parliament voted for in November that year, a close vote of 105 to 92, but a homophobic petition signed by 100,000 people forced parliament to debate and vote on the matter once more.

With a shift in parliament in April 2015, the party opposed to same-sex marriage in power, MPs voted again. This time, homophobes lost even more.

That time, 120 voted in favor and only 49 voted against.

While there was a last-ditch attempt to stop same-sex marriage two weeks ago, the legislation could not be stopped.

And now same-sex couples can be legally married with all the same rights as opposite-sex married couples.

“There are going to be a lot of different celebrations around the country,” Tarjamo told Gay Star News.

“A lot of people are going to be getting married today. A lot of people will be changing their registered partnerships into marriages. If you look at social media, it’s a lot of rainbows and happiness.”

Tarjamo said marriage will give samesex couples joint adoption, the ability to have their names changed automatically, and the right to not be outed when signing legal documents.

-Read more on gaystarnews.com

Governor signs Kentucky bill to permit anti-LGBTQ discrimination in high schools, colleges On March 8 the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) called on Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin to veto SB 17, a bill that would, among other things, allow student groups at colleges, universities, and high schools to discriminate against LGBTQ students.

The bill passed the Kentucky House in an 81 to 8 vote after passing through the Senate last month and was signed by the governor on March 20.

“This discriminatory legislation goes beyond protecting students’ already secured First Amendment rights and would allow, in part, student groups, at colleges, universities and high schools to discriminate against LGBTQ students

Boston St. Patrick’s Parade organizers withdraw ban on gay vets; do rainbows = sexuality?

The Associated Press reports: The organizers of Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day parade scheduled an emergency meeting to reconsider their vote to bar a gay veterans group from participating. (EC: They then withdrew the ban.)

The vote March 6 to bar OutVets drew immediate condemnation from highprofile politicians.

Ed Flynn, a member of the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council, which organizes the parade scheduled for March 19, said the emergency meeting would take place March 9. Flynn voted to allow OutVets in. Members of the council and OutVets met March 8 but could not resolve the impasse.

(EC: Many Massachusetts politicians including the governor said they would boycott the parade.)

More from the Washington Post: After its initial vote, the council did not provide a clear reason for excluding OutVets, according to a statement from the LGBTQ group. “Given the tenor of the council’s deliberations,” the statement read, “one can assume it’s because we are LGBTQ.” But organizer Bryan Bishop later told the Globe and other news outlets that it was consternation over OutVets’ logo, which features a small rainbow patch, that inspired the council’s rejection. Council members reportedly told Bishop that the rainbow imagery — a symbol of solidarity among LGBTQ advocates — violates the code of conduct because the council saw it as representative of gay sexuality.

-Read more on JoeMyGod.com and still receive public funding,” said HRC Legal Director Sarah Warbelow.

“We call on Governor Bevin to veto this legislation. All students should have the opportunity to fully participate in school programs, and no public school should have a license to discriminate against LGBTQ students.”

SB 17 undermines inclusive “all comers” policies at public colleges, universities, and now high schools, by allowing student organizations to discriminate against students under the guise of religious freedom. Many public colleges and universities have long had “all-comers” policies that require that student organizations that receive financial and other support from the institute of higher education do not discriminate against students based on race, sex, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity. These policies are important because they allow all members of the student body to participate in students groups and prevent such groups from discriminating against students with state funding. The Supreme Court upheld these all-comers policies as constitutional in the Christian Legal Society v. Martinez decision in 2010.

The attack on fairness and equality in Kentucky is part of an onslaught of bills being pushed in 2017 by anti-equality activists around the country. HRC is currently tracking more than 100 antiLGBTQ legislative proposals in 29 states.

For more information, visit http://hrc. im/2017legislature.

Trans woman Chyna Gibson killed in New Orleans on Feb. 25 The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) mourns the death of Chyna Gibson, also known by her performing name, Chyna Doll Dupree, a Black transgender woman, killed in New Orleans, Louisiana on Feb. 25.

According to media reports, Chyna, a New Orleans native, was visiting for Mardi Gras and to see her family when she was shot and killed outside of a shopping center. Chyna was a well-known and loved performer who toured the country.

Following her homicide, there was an outpouring of support and memories of (Trans continues page 6)

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LOCAL AND STATE (NYC from page 3) ities include restrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms, and relevant school activities include overnight field trips, physical education, and sports. The new guidelines also include important instruction on maintaining student privacy and ways to support transitioning students.

However, the new guidelines include needlessly restrictive criteria for updating a student’s gender on permanent records, requiring an amended birth certificate or passport for no legal reason. In particular, this poses an obstacle for immigrant students.

The following statement is attributable to Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union: “These new guidelines are a leap forward for transgender students’ right to be themselves in New York City schools.

This is all the more important in the wake of the Trump regime’s cruel moves last week to rescind similar guidelines at the federal level. However, the city still needs to make it easier for students to update their school records to reflect their gender identity. That is an oversight in an otherwise strong move to respect and protect students in New York City.

“We hope other localities across the state will follow the lead of the New York City Department of Education to support our students. While the State Education Department guidance also provides important protections for transgender New Yorkers, the state legislature can do more. It should pass the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, which would explicitly add gender identity and expression to the state’s antidiscrimination laws, and it should fix the loophole in the state Human Rights Law that makes it harder for students to challenge illegal discrimination.”

THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017 For more information, visit: https:// www.nyclu.org/en/press-releases/newyork-city-issues-new-guidelines-protecttransgender-students ■

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL (Trans from page 5)

Chyna Gibson

Chyna online. One friend said of Chyna: “My heart breaks as this community must find a way to honor you in death and begin to move forward. The stage will never be the same!”

BreakOUT!, an NCAVP member organization in New Orleans, issued the following statement on Chyna’s homicide: “BreakOUT! is deeply saddened to hear the news of yet another trans woman of color murdered at the same time Penny Proud was killed last year. We are holding healing space for trans and gender nonconforming members while also strategizing ways to keep all trans people safe from both state and street level violence.

We continue to assert that we need trans spaces, education, housing, and jobs to keep us safe.”

“We send our thoughts and condolences to Chyna Gibson’s friends and loved ones,” said Shelby Chestnut, Director of Community Organizing and Public Advocacy at the New York City AntiViolence Project. “Chyna’s is the 5th

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homicide of a transgender person AVP has responded to in 2017 - all five have been transgender women of color: Black and Native. These homicides are occurring within a national context where the Trump administration is signaling that they will not protect transgender lives or the lives of people of color. We must not be silent, in fact we must be louder and more active than ever in our support for our transgender communities, friends and family members.”

Jacquarrius Holland is seventh known trans woman killed this year Jaquarrius Holland, a Black transgender woman, was killed in Monroe, Louisiana on Feb. 19. Her homicide only came to light at the end of February, due to local press misgendering the victim.

According to media reports, Jaquarrius was shot during a verbal altercation with someone who then fled the scene. Jaquarrius was taken to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead. News of Jaquarrius’ death came after homicides of two transgender women, Chyna Gibson and Ciara McElveen, were reported in New Orleans, Louisiana. Friends shared memories and stories about Jaquarrius online, many using the hashtag #PrettyBrown, which she used to refer to herself.

“We send our love and thoughts to everyone affected by the death of Jaquarrius Holland,” said Beverly Tillery, Executive Director at the New York City Anti-Violence Project. “As of today, NCAVP has already responded to seven homicides of

transgender women of color within the first two months of the year. As a society we can stop this epidemic by hiring trans women of color, making sure they have safe places to live and standing up when we see or hear them being demeaned and attacked and simply by valuing their lives.

The moment to act is now.”

Arkansas Senate wants Constitution revised to ban marriage equality, abortion rights The Associated Press reports: The Arkansas Senate on Feb. 28 endorsed a long-shot effort to push for amending the U.S. Constitution to effectively ban gay marriage and abortion, a move one Republican lawmaker said is needed to overturn rulings from the nation’s highest court.

The majority-Republican chamber approved by a 19-9 vote a resolution calling for a federal constitutional convention to take up an amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman. A separate resolution calling for an amendment effectively declaring that life begins at conception passed on an 18-9 vote.

“This is a day where the Arkansas Senate stood up for life and stood up for natural marriage between a man and a woman and also it will encourage people around the nation,” said Republican Sen. Jason Rapert, who sponsored the resolutions.

The Arkansas proposals would need at least 33 other states to agree for a convention to be held, and 38 states to ratify the amendments.

The Human Rights Campaign reacts: “Marriage equality is settled law, and any bill or legislator seeking to undermine it is in conflict with the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Constitution,” said Kendra R. Johnson, HRC Arkansas state director. “HRC Arkansas calls on our law(Arkansas continued on page 11)

APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET

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Interview

Matt Juda

By Susan Jordan Last fall’s election was the deciding factor in Matt Juda’s plan to run for an atlarge seat on City Council. As a teacher, he was horrified by the threat to his students, many of whom are immigrants or refugees.

“It was a confluence of things,” he said. “Obviously the election was very concerning for me. I have a lot of students who are immigrants or refugees, and I have LGBTQ students as well. In going into school the day after the election -- you want to tell your students that everything is OK and they’ll be all right. I didn’t feel I could say that. And they were concerned too.

“My refugee and immigrant students are afraid of being deported. I want to be a role model so they know someone leading us respects them and will fight for them.”

Matt, 33, has taught in the City School District for 13 years. Originally from Irondequoit, he now lives in Charlotte. He graduated from Geneseo and has a master’s in school counseling from Brockport, and a doctorate in leadership from the University of Rochester.

Matt has always been interested in politics, and has been on the Democratic Committee for two years. “I always thought I’d run for something,” he said, “so it was a combination of everything happening – the election and Matt Haag deciding not to run again – that made me feel the time was right.”

As someone who worked with Tim Mains, the first openly gay person on City Council, when he was a principal, Matt feels it is important to have an LGBTQ person on the Council. He notes, “Over 150 pieces of national anti-gay legislation

are being put forward now with Trump in office. We need LGBT advocates to be visible, to show people it’s OK to be gay and we should be treated like everyone else.”

Rochester is very good on protections and full rights for the LGBTQ community. What can City Council do now to advance LGBTQ rights – or is there no urgent need? Matt said, “My website (www.mattjuda.com) has a lot on it about issues I’m looking into. I’ve focused on four things: “First, passing legislation or policy saying anyone who contracts with the city must offer trans healthcare.

“Second, ban conversion therapy within Rochester city limits.

“Third, work with developers to market welcoming and affirming LGBTQ housing, especially for seniors who may not have biological families.

“Fourth, work with Monroe County to ensure that when trans individuals are arrested, they are treated fairly. The county is controlled by Republicans, so it will be a heavy lift. LGB people also need to be treated well, of course, but trans people in the U.S. are often placed in cells with the opposite sex, not their own true gender – this is not equal treatment.”

As far as the most pressing issues for the Rochester community as a whole, Matt said, “I think the number one priority is addressing our structural deficit in the budget, while maintaining the high quality services we provide – recreation, environmental services, water and lighting, etc. It’s a large scale approach to answering the question. We need to look at how we partner with the city school district to cut costs. The City and school district are facing structural deficits.

“We don’t have sufficient property tax revenue, so that’s the next thing to address. In order to raise property taxes we need to give people reasons to stay in the city. We need to provide good programs for youth, adults and seniors. We need to look at schools and how we can improve them.

“We need to look neighborhood by neighborhood and develop plans for each one in terms of future development. One thing City Council needs to do is be careful when giving tax rebates. Are we getting jobs out of it, and downtown residents? Are we creating downtown development that includes housing and businesses reflective of our whole city, balanced racially and economically and in family composition, in comparison to the rest of the city?

“Are we creating high level housing, or mixed level where all residents have access? Mixed residential and commercial development, with businesses on the

first floor and housing on the same level, so people working in the businesses can afford to live in those buildings? City Council needs to be more critical when allowing development in the city center.

“One thing about working in schools – day by day I see the challenges, and we need to provide high quality schools that meet the needs of students and families.

I’d like to see elementary schools going back to being neighborhood schools.

Along with that, taking this to the next level, is making schools the centers of their neighborhoods. We’d put recreation programs at schools, including programs for seniors, and putting other services in as well, like Foodlink and healthcare providers. Schools could be community centers, so we could target the basic needs of that neighborhood.

“So that’s why we need ongoing conversations with residents to learn their needs. This creates opportunities for neighborhoods to build themselves up, and in doing that we can start to focus on each neighborhood’s needs. We’d look in a concentrated way at neighborhoods and meet their needs. The underlying thing is, the number one predicator of student success is parental involvement, so parents would be involved in their own neighborhoods.

“Ultimately, in several years this would result in higher graduation rates. It has taken years to get into this situation, and it will take years to really improve what’s happening in this city. My ‘Rochester Strong’ motto means families, neighbors and businesses should get the resources and services they need. The idea is to listen to everyone and work with everyone.” ■

“I THINK THE NUMBER ONE PRIORITY IS ADDRESSING OUR STRUCTURAL DEFICIT IN THE BUDGET, WHILE MAINTAINING THE HIGH QUALITY SERVICES WE PROVIDE – RECREATION, ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES, WATER AND LIGHTING, ETC. IT’S A LARGESCALE APPROACH TO ANSWERING THE QUESTION. WE NEED TO LOOK AT HOW WE PARTNER WITH THE CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT TO CUT COSTS. THE CITY AND SCHOOL DISTRICT ARE FACING STRUCTURAL DEFICITS.”

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THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017

APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET

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THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017

Making the Scene

ART OPENING: Tom Somerville’s art went on display at Hedonist Chocolates on South Ave. on March 16. His next opening is April 1 at Record Archive, 5-9pm. Photos: Doug Meszler

TRANS STUDENT SUPPORT: On left: Matt Juda and Rich Ognibene with a friend at the rally supporting trans youth on Feb. 24 at the School of the Arts. (See page 1.) Both photos: Susan Jordan

APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL (Arkansas from page 5) makers put an end to these cynical, divisive theatrics, and start focusing on the issues that matter to Arkansans instead introducing a bill that would only seek to harm LGBTQ people.”

The Arkansas legislature has no authority to force Congress to begin the process of amending the U.S. Constitution, and would not be able to influence the outcome of such an undertaking. If the Constitution were to be amended in this way — which is unlikely — it would give states the ability to roll back marriage equality if they oppose it.

RELATED: A petition to rename an Arkansas sewage treatment plant for Rapert was launched after he threatened to shoot a constituent who “harassed” him in grocery store parking lot. In 2015, Rapert called for the United States to use a “strategically-placed nuclear weapon” against ISIS. -JoeMyGod.com UPDATE: The Arkansas legislature has rejected a bill to allow same-sex parents to be listed on their children’s birth certificates.

US Court of Appeals to look at N.C. “religious freedom” hate law Michael Fitzgerald posts on Towleroad. com: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has agreed to hear oral arguments in a lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s anti-LGBT “religious freedom” law on May 10.

HB2 has come under fire for banning many transgender people from restrooms and other public facilities matching their gender. It also prohibits local municipalities from extending nondiscrimination protections to LGBT people.

In response to the law, a number of sporting organizations have withdrawn events from the state with entertainment and business concerns following suit.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal released the following joint statement on March 8: “We look forward to being back in court to fight to ensure that all transgender people in North Carolina are treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve and that is required by law.

“House Bill 2 represents an egregious attack on transgender people and their ability to participate in public life.

“While we continue to urge North Carolina legislators to repeal the law entirely, without still sanctioning discrimination, particularly against transgender people, we cannot wait for lawmakers to do the right thing.

“We will continue to fight for the rights of LGBT North Carolinians in court and beyond.”

In the lawsuit, the ACLU and Lambda Legal argue that through HB2, North Carolina “sends a purposeful message that LGBT people are second-class citizens who are undeserving of the privacy, respect, and protections afforded others in the state.”

Additionally, it argues that the law is unconstitutional because it violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment by discriminating on the basis of sex and sexual orientation.

ACLU and Lambda Legal also note

that the law violates the privacy and medical decision making rights of transgender people and expels transgender people from public life by forcing them “out of restrooms and changing facilities that accord with who they are.”

It is thought that House Bill 186, a bipartisan proposal to repeal HB2, is unlikely to pass.

According to Pope McCorkle, associate professor of the practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy, the bill has been sent to the Rules Committee, commonly known as a “traditional burial ground” for legislation.

McCorkle added that only a bill undoing HB2 would pass, but that Republican leadership has thus far refused to allow such a bill to receive a vote.

Scottish teen found dead after posting about bullies in school Joe Morgan posts on gaystarnews. com: A Scottish gay teen was found dead in his bedroom just two weeks after posting a YouTube video where he blasted bullies at his school.

Liam McAlpine was from Glenrothes in Fife.

He was just 14.

Liam posted a video to YouTube, titled Coming Out, talking about being gay and how he feared bullies at his school.

He said: “Every day in primary school I always got bullied. At my school, Glenrothes High School, I see people getting bullied all the time.

“I’m not getting bullied. You don’t go to school to get bullied everyday. You go to learn. School is meant to be a safe place but getting bullied everyday and picked on, is that really safe?”

He added: “For three years I have been gay. Go ahead and judge me, I don’t care.

“I know folk at school will just say ‘oh haha, you’re gay’.

“Go ahead, I don’t care if you judge me,

11

Liam McAlpine

it’s who I am and I’m proud to be gay.”

Dozens of tributes were paid to Liam, with sister Chelsea saying she was “heartbroken”.

The family said in a statement to the Daily Record they were “devastated by the loss of our beloved son, grandson, nephew and brother.”

-See more on gaystarnews.com

Ciara McElveen is second trans woman killed in New Orleans The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) mourns the death of Ciara McElveen, a Black transgender woman, killed in New Orleans, Louisiana on Feb. 27. According to media reports, Ciara was found stabbed to death in the 7th Ward.

Local media reports originally misgendered Ciara, but local advocates and those who knew Ciara worked to correct press accounts. Ciara’s homicide comes only two days after another Black transgender woman, Chyna Gibson, was shot and killed in New Orleans on Feb. 25.

Local transgender activist Syria Sinclaire spoke out about these recent homicides, saying, “We should have the right to live our lives open and free and not be taunted and traumatized by the general public if they don’t approve.”

BreakOUT!, an NCAVP member (Ciara continues on page 12)

12

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL (Ciara from page 11)

Ciara McElveen

organization in New Orleans, issued a statement, addressing both homicides, saying: “BreakOUT! is deeply saddened to hear of the loss of Ciara McElveen and Chyna Dupree, two Black transgender women murdered in New Orleans in less than 36 hours... we have so much other work to do in our communities -- we need jobs, housing, education, and access to safe spaces - and yet we continue to have to simply fight for our lives.”

“We are heartbroken for the city of New Orleans, and we send our love and thoughts to the communities who have endured the loss of two members within the space of two days.” said Emily Waters, Senior Manager of National Research and Policy at the New York City Anti-Violence Project. “NCAVP has already responded to more homicides of transgender people in 2017 than we did at this time last year, and the current political context is far more challenging. As we face an administration which devalues the safety and rights of transgender people and people of color, we must work tirelessly to support transgender friends, family, and community members.”

THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017

Keke Collier/Tiara Richmond, Black trans woman, is killed in Chicago on Feb. 22 The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) has learned of the homicide of Keke Collier, also known to friends as Tiara Richmond, a Black transgender woman, killed in Chicago, Illinois on Feb. 22.

She was shot to death while walking near her home. Keke’s homicide is the fourth reported killing of a transgender/gender nonconforming person NCAVP has responded to in 2017. All four homicide victims have been transgender women of color. Local media reports continue to misgender Tiara, but LGBTQ media sources correctly identified Tiara thanks to advocacy from her friends and local community activists.

Trudy Ring posts on The Advocate: Tiara Lashaytheboss Richmond, 24, died Feb. 21, Windy City Times reports. She was shot in the chest, arm, and hand.

Richmond was shot shortly after 6 a.m. by a person she was riding with in a vehicle, according to the Chicago SunTimes, which misgendered her in its report. The suspect fled in the vehicle, and police found Richmond lying on the ground when they arrived. She was pronounced dead about 7 a.m. at a nearby hospital.

“We are heartbroken by yet another violent attack leading to the death of a young Transgender woman of color in our beloved community,” said Lisa Gilmore of Illinois Accountability Initiative.

“The humanity and personhood of Transgender women needs to be recognized.

As Trans women of color are among the most vulnerable in our communities and our nation, we all must be accountable for their safety and access to opportunities.”

“We are deeply saddened by the death of Keke Collier, and we send our thoughts and condolences to her friends and loved

Keke Collier

ones,” said Shelby Chestnut, Director of Community Organizing and Public Advocacy at the New York City AntiViolence Project. “At a time when we are seeing the highest number of reports of homicides of transgender and gender nonconforming people, the Trump administration is rolling back protections for transgender youth. This is totally unacceptable. We need to protect transgender lives at all stages, but especially in youth where they experience bullying, family rejection and violence that affects them throughout their lives.”

NCAVP’s most recent hate violence report, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and HIV-Affected Hate Violence in 2015, recorded 24 reported hate violence homicides of LGBTQ people, a 20% increase from the 20 reported anti-LGBTQ homicides in 2014.

Of the 24 reported homicides, 62% of the victims were people of color. Sixteen (67%) of the 24 reported homicide victims were transgender and gender non-conforming. Of the total number of homicides, thirteen (54%) of the victims were transgender women of color.

South Dakota passes discriminatory anti-gay adoption, fostering law On March 10, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) joined the ACLU of South Dakota in calling out South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard for signing into law Senate Bill (SB) 149 -- discriminatory legislation targeting LGBTQ people and other minorities.

SB 149 enshrines taxpayer-funded discrimination into state law by allowing state-funded adoption and foster care agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ youth in their care and to reject qualified prospective LGBTQ adoptive or foster parents based on the agency’s purported religious beliefs.

“This is the first anti-LGBTQ bill that any state has signed into law this session.

Governor Daugaard’s action not only puts the best interests of the more than a thousand vulnerable children served by South Dakota’s foster care system at risk, it signals the potential of a dark new reality for the fight for LGBTQ rights,” said HRC Legal Director Sarah Warbelow.

“These children could now wait longer to be placed in a safe, loving home at the whim of a state-funded adoption or foster care agency with a vendetta against LGBTQ couples, mixed-faith couples or interracial couples -- all while being taxpayer-funded. LGBTQ children in South Dakota’s foster care system face the risk of staying in a facility that does not affirm their identity and actively works against the child’s well-being by refusing to give them appropriate medical and mental health care.”

“Today’s signing of S.B. 149 is deeply troubling not only because it opens the door to widespread discrimination against LGBT people and children in South Dakota, but because it’s only one of many bills moving through state legislatures across the country that authorizes taxpayer-funded discrimination against LGBT Americans,” said James Esseks, director of ACLU’s LGBT Project. “These laws run contrary to one of our core American values: the rule of law, which means we are all held to and protected by the same laws.

These exemptions encourage people to pick and choose which laws they are going to follow based on their religious beliefs.”

“Governor Daugaard’s decision to sign this discriminatory legislation into law is deeply disappointing,” said ACLU of South Dakota Policy Director Elizabeth A. Skarin. “Loving, qualified families should not be turned away from adopting a needy child simply because they are LGBT, of a different faith than the agency, or divorced. Even worse, this law directly affects the hundreds of children in South Dakota awaiting their forever families -- and those children deserve better from our state leaders.”

SB 149 would allow state-licensed and taxpayer-funded child-placement agencies to disregard the best interest of children, and turn away qualified South Dakotans seeking to care for a child in need -- including LGBTQ couples, interfaith couples, single parents, married couples in which one prospective parent has previously been divorced, or other parents to whom the agency has a purported religious objection. There are an estimated 1,174 children in South Dakota’s foster care system. The measure would even allow agencies to refuse to place foster children with members of their own extended families -- a practice often considered to be in the best interest of the child. A qualified, loving LGBTQ grandparent, for example, could be deemed unsuitable under the proposed law. It would also allow agencies to refuse to provide appropriate medical and mental health care to LGBTQ children if the agency has a purported moral or religious objection to providing those services. Shockingly, under SB 149, an agency couldn’t lose its license or contract as a result of subjecting a child to abusive practices like so-called conversion therapy if it claimed such “therapy” is compelled by religious belief.

Leading local pediatricians and legal experts, as well as the Adoption Exchange, the Child Welfare League of America, the

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APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET National Association of Social Workers and Voices for Adoption sent letters to South Dakota legislators expressing their concern about SB 149.

Research consistently shows that LGBTQ youth are overrepresented in the foster care system, as many have been rejected by their families of origin because they are LGBTQ. These young people are already vulnerable to discrimination and mistreatment while in foster care, and SB 149 would only exacerbate the challenges they face.

The attack on fairness and equality in South Dakota is part of an onslaught of bills being pushed in 2017 by anti-equality activists around the country. HRC is currently tracking more than 70 antiLGBTQ legislative proposals in 24 states.

For more information, visit http://hrc. im/2017legislature.

Utah repeals law banning discussion of homosexuality in schools On March 8, the Utah Legislature passed a bill repealing a state law prohibiting supportive discussions of “homosexuality” in public and charter school curricula and classrooms.

The legislation passed with bipartisan support by a 27-1 vote in the Senate and a 68-1 vote in the House. The bill now goes to Governor Gary Herbert for signature.

The repeal bill was sponsored by Senator J. Stuart Adams.

“This is a historic day for LGBTQ students in Utah,” declared Equality Utah Executive Director Troy Williams. “We commend Senator Adams and the Utah Legislature for recognizing that LGBTQ students should be treated with the same respect and dignity as other students. The removal of this discriminatory language from the school curriculum laws will send a positive message that all students are valued in Utah.”

Last October, Equality Utah and three students, represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and the law firm of Ropes & Gray LLP, filed a federal lawsuit challenging state laws that ban supportive speech about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Utah public schools.

The lawsuit challenges several Utah laws and regulations that prevent supportive discussions of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people in curricula, classroom discussions, and student clubs. The lawsuit argues that these discriminatory restrictions create a negative environment for LGBTQ students, perpetuate discrimination and bullying, and contribute to the high rates of anti-LGBTQ harassment in Utah schools. The lawsuit alleges that the laws violate the U.S. Constitution and federal education law by discriminating against LGBT people and restricting the First Amendment rights of students and teachers.

Earlier this year, the parties agreed to put the case on hold while the Utah leg-

islature considered a legislative solution.

The bill passed March 8 repeals the key language challenged in the lawsuit.

Said Kate Kendell, Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights and a Utah native: “We applaud Senator Adams and the Utah Legislature for acting in the interest of Utah students and repealing this outdated law. These public officials performed a great public service by recognizing that this statute serves no good purpose and actively harms LGBT students. This is a very gratifying development and a significant step forward in resolving our litigation challenging this stigmatizing and unconstitutional law.”

Professor Cliff Rosky, a member of Equality Utah’s Advisory Council, stated: “The intent of SB 196 is crystal clear: all students are equal. We are confident that in the coming weeks, we can work with the Attorney General’s Office, the Utah State Board of Education, and local school districts to resolve our lawsuit, by ensuring that the intent of SB 196 is carried out in all of our state’s public schools and charter schools.”

GOP “Family Values” crusader named in divorce case; ex-wife got order of protection Joe Jervis posts on JoeMyGod.com Tennessee state Sen. Joey Hensley, the notorious “Christian family values” crusader, has been named in the divorce filings for a local couple, both of whom claim he’s been fucking the wife for three years. Oh, but there’s much more. The Nashville Scene reports: Hensley, 61, was subpoenaed to appear (last month) in Williamson County Circuit Court to testify in the divorce proceedings of Hohenwald Vice Mayor Don Barber and his wife Lori. He refused to show up, citing legislative and medical privilege.

“I didn’t have time to do it,” Hensley said when contacted…. “I had nothing to do with the court case, and any testimony I would have given wouldn’t have made any difference.” But according to the sworn testimony of both Barbers, Hensley has been having an affair with Lori since 2014. Lori, 48, is a part-time nurse in Hensley’s medical practice in Lewis County; she is also his second cousin.

Hensley gained national notoriety in 2012 as a sponsor of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which would have banned public school teachers from even mentioning that homosexuality exists. During one hearing that year, Hensley commented, “I don’t think Modern Family is appropriate for children to watch” — because it features a married gay couple raising children. This session, Hensley is sponsoring a bill from the Tennessee Family Action Council that would make children created using donor sperm illegitimate — an attempt to make it harder for gay and lesbian parents to establish paternity. He is also a sponsor of the so-called “Milo

Bill,” aimed at liberal practices on college campuses.

But Lori Barber is not just a friend or a cousin or a lover — she is also Hensley’s patient. Barber testified in court that Hensley is her only doctor other than a cardiologist, and that she relies on him for recurrent Botox injections. She also said he has regularly prescribed her the hydrocodone pill Lortab — a Schedule II controlled substance — for “chronic back pain,” which she said Hensley first diagnosed after she hurt her neck.

Hensley has been divorced four times.

In 2015 his most recent ex-wife took out an order of protection against him after she claimed he deliberately hit her twice with his car.

There’s also this charming tidbit via Wikipedia: “For several years, Hensley attempted to pass a bill allowing college counselors to refuse to serve LGBT students who are considering suicide. This bill was eventually signed into law in 2016.”

-Read more on JoeMyGod.com

Missing Pa. student’s body found in river Andy Towle posts on Towleroad.com: Some sad news out of the Pittsburgh area.

WPXI reports: The body of Dakota James, a graduate student at Duquesne University, has been found in the Ohio River.

Dakota James, 23, had last been seen Jan. 25 in downtown Pittsburgh. Surveillance video showed him walking in Katz Plaza that night. Authorities were called more than a month later, to the Ohio River in the area of Royal Avenue. Crews recovered James’ body from the water.

The circumstances surrounding James’ disappearance and death remain unclear.

James had been in Pittsburgh since August 2015, when he moved to the area to earn his MBA at Duquesne University.

In March WTAE reported that James was using the Grindr app prior to his disappearance and his mother was seeking more information from the company, but was not getting it: “Grindr (sic) did not provide all the information that we need. They only gave you the minimal (information) that they are required by the so called law. We will continue to fight to get more information,” wrote Pamela James in a Facebook post directed toward Pittsburgh police.

Pamela James believes her son was using the Grindr app prior to his Jan. 25 disappearance and wants police to solicit, or the company to offer, more data and information.

It’s unclear exactly what type of information the family wants from Grindr, but such apps typically have location data as well as logs of messages between users.

“I think Grindr should help in this case any way that they can,” said Alistair McQueen, a bartender at The Blue Moon in Lawrenceville where he said the James case is often discussed.

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Dakota James

Duquesne University President Ken Gormley released the following statement: “Dakota and his family have been in our prayers throughout this difficult ordeal. I am deeply saddened to learn of the tragic outcome, and I extend my deepest sympathy to Dakota’s family and friends on behalf of the entire Duquesne University community.”

SAGE opposes Trump erasure of LGBT elders from national survey Services & Advocacy for LGBT Elders (SAGE) announced March 20 that it is launching a nationwide effort to oppose the Trump Administration’s proposed erasure of LGBT elders from the National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants (NSOAAP).

Specifically, SAGE opposes changes that would eliminate questions that allow the federal government to assess the extent to which LGBT older adults are receiving federally funded elder services.

According to a March 13 notice in the Federal Register, those questions (which have been included in the Survey since 2014) are proposed for elimination in the 2017 Survey. This is the only change the Trump Administration proposes to the Survey.

This annual survey is conducted by the federal government to evaluate the effectiveness of programs funded under Title III of the Older Americans Act, including who is being served by such programs. Results from the survey are used to determine how to direct billions of dollars toward older people’s needs through publicly funded senior centers, home-delivered meals, family caregiver support, transportation, and other key supports.

Community advocates have made inclusion of LGBT people in government surveys a top priority as a way of ensuring that they are counted and that those in need receive their fair share of taxpayerfunded services. This is especially true for the more than 3 million LGBT older Americans, who often confront severe challenges, including intense social isolation. LGBT elders are twice as likely to live alone, twice as likely to be single, and 3-4 times less likely to have children to (SAGE continues page 14)

14 (SAGE continued from page 13) help care for them in their later years; many are estranged from their families of origin as a result of historical bias. LGBT elders, who suffer from the accumulated results of a lifetime of discrimination, are more likely to live in poverty than older Americans in general, and more likely to struggle with serious health conditions.

“Caring about our LGBT elders means making sure they have access to publiclyfunded senior services, which can be literally life-saving,” said Michael Adams, Chief Executive Officer of SAGE. “Now, it appears that the Trump Administration wants to make believe LGBT older people don’t exist, by erasing them from this critically important survey. We insist that this decision be reversed and that the federal government commit to serving all elders in need, including those who are LGBT.” The publishing of the Survey in the Federal Register opens up the exclusion of LGBT elders to public scrutiny and public comment. Per the Federal Register, the 60-day deadline to make comments on the proposed Survey and LGBT exclusion is May 12, 2017. SAGE and its many partners and allies encourage a robust response to the call for public comments.

“I fear that this action could have a chilling effect on our community,” said Lujira Cooper, 70, a SAGE constituent. “It will force people to hide. To be ashamed. To be fearful. You will have people going back into the closet. If we’re not being counted, we become invisible and can’t get the services we need. I work hard to survive and I deserve to live with some dignity and respect.

Center for American Progress responds Despite assurances that no changes had been made to two critical federal government surveys, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS— whose secretary, Tom Price, is notoriously anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or LGBT—has, in fact, proposed to eliminate questions about LGBT Americans from at least two surveys. The Center for American Progress, along with partner Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders, or SAGE, has released a column showing how these changes to the surveys will affect how LGBT Americans receive federal services.

Laura E. Durso, Vice President for CAP’s LGBT Research and Communications Project, issued the following statement: Governments have a responsibility to ensure that social service programs meet the needs of communities they aim to protect, especially vulnerable communities such as LGBT older adults. Policymakers cannot fulfill that responsibility without robust, quality data, which makes this action by the Trump administration an appalling step backward. Data collection is about more than numbers on a page. Without data, we can’t know whether HHS is equitably serving LGBT people in need.

Without the information provided in these surveys, we can’t ensure that LGBT seniors have equal access to important government services or that LGBT people with disabilities have equal access to independent living services that empower them to live full and self-determined lives. We can’t ensure that the administration is fulfilling its duty to eliminate the barriers that shut vulnerable LGBT people out of the safety net. By walking back data collection on LGBT populations, this administration is saying that they would rather erase disparities than end them.

The National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants is one of the coun-

THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017 try’s most important tools for assessing the needs of older Americans who receive social support and nutritional programs. As the column points out, questions about older LGBT Americans have been removed from the most recently proposed survey, meaning that data assessing the needs of older LGBT Americans will not be taken into account by the federal government. Older LGBT Americans face acute levels of economic insecurity, social isolation and discrimination and rely on the services provided by the federal government. Without data assessing their needs, they could be effectively ignored by their own government.

The column looks at a second survey, the data from which had previously been used to provide quality services to LGBT Americans with disabilities. LGBT Americans with disabilities face significant barriers to accessibility services. Discontinuing data collection for this vulnerable group could have an outsized effect on their quality of life.

Collecting data is a critical role for the federal government. In order to provide quality services to the American people in an efficient and effective manner, the government must study the needs of its constituents. By eliminating questions about LGBT Americans from these surveys and then lying about it, the Trump administration and the Department of Health and Human Services in particular are seeking to intentionally under serve LGBT Americans by ignoring their needs.

Related resources: Filling in the Map: The Need for LGBT Data Collection by Kellan Baker and Laura E. Durso Expanding Support Systems for Socially Isolated LGBT and American Indian Seniors by Laura Durso, Katherine Gallagher Robbins, Ashe McGovern, Shabab Mizra, and Jackie Odum Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Data Collection in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System by Kellan Baker and Margaret Hughes

Trump SCOTUS nominee opposed marriage equality in 2004 Tracy E. Gilchrist posts on The Advocate: Donald Trump’s pick for the United States Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, could prove detrimental to the future of marriage equality, considering the views he expressed in a 2004 Oxford University dissertation.

Gorsuch, whose confirmation hearings began March 13, was obtaining a Ph.D. at the time of his dissertation, which suggested that he did not believe the Constitution protected the right to same-sex marriage, according to Corey Brettschneider, a political science professor at Brown University who wrote about Gorsuch for Time.

In the piece, Brettschneider asserts that Gorsuch is critical of the doctrine set forth in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which is the doctrine (sometimes referred to as the right to privacy or autonomy) that recognizes couples have the right to make choices in intimate matters relating to contraception, procreation, child-rearing, and marriage.

It appears from the dissertation that Gorsuch leaned heavily on the ideas of his then-adviser John Finnis, a law professor at Oxford and Notre Dame who is a known critic of the court’s decision to allow couples to make choices in intimate matters.

Instead, Finnis, an adherent of what he calls “natural law,” believes that same-sex marriage and abortion should be prohibited, according to Time.

Brettschneider’s piece extrapolates from Gorsuch’s writing on physician-assisted sui-

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cide to determine how Gorsuch would likely lean in the case of marriage equality.

“Gorsuch’s criticism of choice in the context of assisted suicide includes a broader attack on the idea of a constitutional right to autonomy in intimate personal matters,” Brettscheider wrote. “Gorsuch argues that recognizing this right to autonomy would mean that the state would have to allow every type of voluntary adult intimacy, even those he thinks should clearly be illegal.”

Referring to Planned Parenthood v.

Casey (1992), in which the court reasserted that the Constitution’s guarantee of autonomy in intimate matters includes abortion, as the court considered the choice a personal decision, Gorsuch wrote in his dissertation, “If the Constitution protects as a fundamental liberty interest ‘intimate’ or ‘personal’ decisions, the Court arguably would have to support future autonomy-based constitutional challenges to laws banning any private consensual act of any significance to the participants in defining their ‘own concept of existence.’”

Most damning of all is Gorsuch’s invocation of Justice Antonin Scalia’s assertion in the famed Lawrence v. Texas case in 2003 that struck down laws that banned “homosexual conduct.” Scalia dissented from the majority decision. “‘State laws against bigamy, gay marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity’ are all at risk if we take seriously what Justice Scalia derided as Casey’s ‘famed sweet-mystery-of-life passage,’” Gorsuch wrote in his dissertation, quoting Scalia.

Alphonza Watson

Black trans woman shot in Baltimore on March 22 Alphonza Watson, 38, a transgender woman, was fatally shot in the 2400 block of Guilford Avenue in Baltimore on March 22. At approximately 4:15 a.m., officers responded to that location for a shooting.

According to Baltimore Police, upon arrival, officers located a 38-year-old transgender female who was suffering from a gunshot wound to the stomach. The victim was transported to Johns Hopkins Hospital where she was pronounced dead a short time later. Homicide detectives... are investigating....

Witnesses reported hearing someone yelling for help and then hearing gunshots.

Immediately after hearing the shots, witnesses reported seeing two unknown black males running and getting into a dark colored vehicle that drove away at a high rate of speed.

-The Washington Blade Alphonza is the eighth known trans woman killed this year.

YouTube “Family Friendly” filter bans LGBT content Joe Morgan posts on gaystarnews.com: YouTube has issued an apology for a “ family-friendly” filter that bans LGBTI content.

Restricted Mode, aiming to filter out “more mature content,” is switched off by default.

However if you turn it on, videos that use community flagging, age-restrictions and “other signals” to identify what is potentially inappropriate content.

Gay YouTube personality Calum McSwiggan turned on the family filter and discovered all of his videos except for one disappeared.

Similarly, self-identifying queer Rowan Ellis found 40 of her videos disappeared.

Ellis said, “We don’t really know how long it’s been there. But it’s something that people are just starting to realize the extent of, particularly with regard to LGBT content,” she said.

McSwiggan says this filter is “offensive” and “panders” to people in the wrong way.

“It’s completely backwards,” he said.

McSwiggan also claims any LGBTI sex education videos disappear but heterosexual sex education videos stay.

A YouTube spokesperson tweeted: “We regret any confusion this has caused and are looking into your concerns.”

They added: “LGBTQ+ videos are available in Restricted Mode, but videos that discuss more sensitive subjects may not be.

“We are so proud to represent LGBTQ+ voices on our platform – they’re a key part of YouTube what is all about.

“The intention of Restricted Mode is to filter out mature content for the tiny subset of users who want a more limited experience.”

One (person) said on social media: “Thanks for telling hundreds of thousands of gay kids and teens that their existence is inappropriate and offensive, YouTube.”

Alabama approves law allowing state agencies to refuse gay adoptions The Birmingham News reports: The Alabama House passed a bill March 16 that would protect faith-based adoption and foster care agencies from placing children into homes that go against their religious beliefs. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Rich Wingo, was among a package of “prolife” legislation considered in the House. It passed 60-14 with one abstention.

Wingo said he was inspired to author the bill because other states – Massachusetts, Illinois, California, and the District of Columbia – force foster and adoption agencies to place children into homes that violate the agency’s faith.

“A number of those faith-based agencies have closed their doors,” he said. Wingo said Alabama doesn’t have such issues. “I’d like to think that we’re being proactive instead of being reactive,” he said.

Wingo is a first term state rep and played five seasons for the Green Bay Packers back in the ‘80s.

The Human Rights Campaign reacts: The bill, deceptively titled the “Child Placing Agency Inclusion Act,” would enshrine taxpayer-funded discrimination into Alabama law by allowing state-funded and licensed adoption and foster care agencies to reject prospective LGBTQ adoptive or foster parents based on the agency’s religious beliefs.

“This bill unconscionably harms the nearly 5,000 children in Alabama’s child welfare system who are waiting to be placed with a loving and supportive family,” said Eva Kendrick, HRC Alabama state manager. “It’s disappointing that legislators in the House seem focused on creating new ways to discriminate against LGBTQ people instead of securing loving homes for these children. And it is deeply disturbing that on ‘pro-life day’ the House has embraced a measure limiting the number of qualified, prospective foster and adoptive families who could offer these children the homes they deserve.”

H.B. 24 would allow state-licensed and funded child-placing agencies to disregard the best interest of children, and turn away qualified Alabamians seeking to care for a child in need — including LGBTQ couples, interfaith couples, single parents, married couples in which one prospective parent has previously been divorced, or other parents to whom the agency has a religious objection. The measure would even allow agencies to refuse to place foster children with members of their own extended families — a practice often considered to be in the best interest of the child. A qualified, loving LGBTQ grandparent, for example, could be deemed unsuitable under the proposed law. ■ -Read more on JoeMyGod.com

APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET

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Opinion

“Most of us hear the voice of Maya Angelou, someone who is revered and wondering what she has to say or ask who she is endorsing. I’m just charmed at the end that I can get to finish out the poem,” Gail Marquis said.

As March was Women’s History Month, we still salute Gail Marquis: Former Queens College basketball player; World Champion; Wall Street Executive; LBGT Advocate; MBA Graduate, Class of 2006.

And we salute Maya Angelou!

From GRID to Glee: 35 Years of the LGBTQ Experience in American Politics and Pop Culture

Maya Angelou (seated). Standing left to right: Gail Marquis and spouse Audrey Smalz.

Women’s History Month: saluting Gail Marquis

surprised, confused and even questioning her being there. “You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust I’ll rise.”

She seeks out information about attaining her MBA. “Just like suns and like moons with their certainty of tides”.

Defense of Marriage Act is being fought and won as she and her partner stand victoriously. “Just like hope springing high, still I rise”.

The final scene shows a woman at her graduation ceremony. She is black and seemingly touched by the poem being read by a woman standing behind a podium in front of the graduating class reciting, “You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes. You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, we rise.”

The woman’s name is Gail Marquis; the commercial, University of Phoenix.

By Merle Exit A one-minute commercial serves to span the successes of one woman as you hear the voice of Maya Angelou reciting one of her poems.

It is the year 1968 in New York. There is a teenage girl with her family excitedly watching an Olympic track meet surprised and excited to see that they are both women and black. Her father is cheering in the background.

Cut to a college student playing in an Olympic basketball game with her team winning as you hear, “You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies”. The commercial then views the woman on a bus going to work and taking a seat at a Wall Street firm with people

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By Stephanie R. C. Harageones Part Two, The ‘90s: “Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That…”

The LGBT community in the ‘90s was changing. Pop culture was giving them more positive exposure. But politics were another story.

There were three main issues for the gay community in the ‘90s: marriage, anti-discrimination ordinances and military service. Democrats were at a crossroads. There was a back-and-forth about nondiscrimination throughout the decade with various states passing laws that either stopped or ignored discrimination in housing or health care.

President Bill Clinton was a centrist, a moderate Democrat. Though he was the first president to court the LGBT community, he signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which stated federally marriage was one man and one woman. But in 1997 Hawaii started doing civil unions.

When he was president-elect, he promised to let gays openly serve in the military.

Unfortunately, he had to compromise and signed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Gay citizens were allowed to serve in the military but as the title indicates, they could not tell anyone about their orientation. On the upside, no one was allowed to ask about it, either. So they could serve, just not openly.

Speaking of military service, the title of this article comes from a famous 1993 episode of Seinfeld. In the episode, Jerry gets interviewed by a student with the N.Y.U. school newspaper and through amusing coincidences, the reporter thinks he and George are a couple The famous quote comes up several times during the episode, firstly when they’re discussing it and Jerry, while defending the fact that he’s straight, points out the there’s “nothing wrong with” being gay. Near the end of the episode, a young man who’s in the army comes up to Jerry and George at a restaurant and thanks them for being honest in the article and reveals that it inspired him to come out and even if it means he’ll get kicked out of the military he doesn’t care.

The ‘90s had only a few LGBTQ TV characters: Roseanne’s middle-age gay boss on her eponymous show, Rickie from My So-Called Life, Jack from Dawson’s Creek, Carol from Friends and Ellen came out in 1997 with one tiny word: “Yep.“ This led to the next year with the ground-

breaking premiere of Will & Grace. It was the first show with a central cast of gay characters and with orientation being the drive behind many plots and jokes.

In 1995 there was a song titled “I Kissed a Girl” by Jill Sobule. It had nothing in common with the Katy Perry hit except the title. While it was a more genuine account of women flirting with each other, it wasn’t popular. To be objective: on the Billboard Hot 100 Jill’s song peaked at #67. Perry’s hit was at No. 1— for seven weeks. (More on that in the next article!)

The most tragic event for the LGBT community was the violent death of Matthew Shepard (among so many other less-publicized deaths) in 1998. The silver lining was this: it humanized the gay community and people were starting to change their minds, their hearts and yes, finally -- their laws.

Until next time!

Matt Baume on what’s really behind “bathroom bills” – politics Luis Damian Veron posts on Towleroad.com: Matt Baume takes a closer look at the trend of state legislators rushing to pass anti-transgender “bathroom bans” and finds political motivations at work.

North Carolina’s HB2 is the most infamous example, while Texas seems to be the next high-stakes battle, among various other instances. What’s leading to all this? Baume puts forth his theory: Lawmakers claim that their bills will stop predators, and protect children.

They’re devoting a lot of thought to seats, but not toilet seats, legislative seats.

These discriminatory bills don’t protect citizens; they protect politicians. Here’s how: In 2016, there were around fifty bills introduced in various states that discriminated against trans people, not just in bathrooms, but in housing, education, employment, and more. And when you look at who introduced those bills, a funny pattern starts to appear.

Baume finds that roughly 3 out of 4 sponsors for these bills are running for reelection when they do so, and nearly all— 96%—successfully won after doing so.

Furthermore, he draws a line between this tactic and the 2004 fixation on banning same-sex marriage, which, just like 2016, happened to be a presidential election year as well. That year, 11 different states went so far as to put an anti-marriage equality measure on the ballot. Creating a moral panic and convincing constituents that a problem exists lets legislators play the role of concerned defenders of the public and their children when instead textbook demagoguery is at play.

Baume points out the inherent contradiction in these misplaced priorities: In fact, if anyone’s in danger, it’s trans people themselves. A Williams Institute study showed that 70% have been been harassed or attacked when trying to use a bathroom. So if politicians really cared about safety, they’d make bathrooms more inclusive, not less.

-See article, video on Huffington Post, Towleroad.com ■

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THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017

Health

“Undetectable” news: no transmission and a new drug discovery Desiree Guerrero posts on The Advocate: NAM AIDSMap, one of the foremost sources of HIV information in the world, has joined the growing list of health experts and organizations around the world to endorse the Undetectable Equals Untransmittable Consensus Statement. The U=U Consensus states that a person living with HIV who has an undetectable viral load cannot transmit the virus to a sexual partner. Being undetectable means one has no risk of transmitting HIV to another person through sexual contact.

The U=U Consensus Statement, issued by the Prevention Access Campaign, is based upon the findings of two major scientific studies including HPTN 052, PARTNER, Opposites Attract and Empirical evidence to date, which showed that there were no transmissions of HIV in serodiscordant couples when the person with HIV was undetectable. In NAM’s official statement, the organization’s executive director, Matthew Hodson, says, “The scientific evidence is clear. Someone who has undetectable levels of virus in their blood does not pose an infection risk to their sexual partners.” Many experts are now using the terminology “a zero chance” in regards to the risk of transmission when a person’s viral load is undetectable.

An “interesting” discovery David Artavia posts on The Advocate: A combination of two HIV vaccines and another drug originally developed to treat cancer, Romidepsin, proved successful as an HIV treatment in recent trials, leaving five patients undetectable for up to seven months, reports Medical Daily.

Researchers presented their data at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, which gave 24 newly diagnosed patients two HIV vaccines (though they were still asked to be on antiretroviral therapy) for three years.

Once those three years were over, 15 of them received an additional dose of one of the vaccines plus Romidepsin, then were subsequently taken off ART. After serious monitoring, it was discovered that the virus soon began to spread again in 10 of these patients, who were then quickly put back on ART. But what surprised them all is that the remaining five remained undetectable with no need to take long-term daily drugs — it is still unclear as to why.

“The idea of a therapeutic vaccine that could provide ongoing control of the virus without having to take a pill every day would be a huge advance,” executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition Mitchell Warren said to The Independent.

The five HIV-positive patients continue to be virally suppressed, even as long

as seven months. While it’s too soon to ponder whether this strategy might be an effective one when searching for one-time HIV treatment, it’s still an interesting discovery that could possibly open the door to more breakthroughs.

AIDS United: Undetectable viral load means no transmission possible In a statement released March 7, the AIDS United Public Policy Committee— the largest and longest-running national coalition of community-based HIV/ AIDS organizations—strongly affirmed the conclusive evidence proving that people living with HIV who have achieved a sustained, undetectable viral load cannot transmit HIV to sexual partners.

This evidence-based declaration reinforces AIDS United’s programmatic, policy and advocacy work to expand access to antiretroviral medications to all people living with HIV. “This is a landmark development in the response to HIV and too many people are not hearing this message and receiving its full benefit,” said AIDS United President & CEO Jesse Milan, Jr. “A person living with HIV with a sustained suppressed viral load poses no risk of transmitting HIV. This is a game changer because it makes achieving viral suppression bigger than people living with HIV taking care of their own health, it is also about taking care of others too. This development puts each one of us living with HIV at the forefront of stopping new infections, and gives everyone strong, clear and direct language to stop the stigma and move all communities faster towards ending the epidemic.”

In addition to signing the consensus statement issued by the Prevention Access Campaign, the AIDS United Public Policy Committee calls for: Providers and educators to consistently share that evidence demonstrates that a person living with HIV who has a sustained, undetectable viral load cannot sexually transmit HIV to another person.

The Department of Health and Human Services Antiretroviral Guidelines Committee examine this issue further and consider updating guidelines language.

States to modernize HIV criminal laws and policies to reflect the science related to viral suppression and HIV transmission risk.

Advancing these recommendations will be incorporated into the Public Policy Committee’s policy agenda.

In the United States, more than 1.2 million people live with HIV and according to the most recent CDC data available, 37,600 people contracted HIV in 2014. Yet, less than one-third of people living with HIV in this country consis-

tently receive the medical care needed to sustain an undetectable viral load. Bringing people living with HIV into and retaining them in care is critical to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic in this country.

Helping people understand that maintaining viral suppression not only maintains health but also prevents transmission can encourage people living with HIV to initiate and adhere to treatment regimens and may help reduce HIV-related stigma.

“We won’t end this epidemic until all people understand this advancement and support access to antiretroviral care and other supportive services for people living with HIV. The science is clear and now we must put science to work,” said Milan.

About the Public Policy Committee: The AIDS United Public Policy Committee (PPC) is the oldest continuing federal policy coalition working to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States since 1984. With 44 current members, it is the largest body of communitybased HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, research, education and service organizations and coalitions in the United States.

The PPC has been instrumental in creating and developing important programs, including the Ryan White Program and the National HIV/AIDS Strategy. Its national membership covers jurisdictions that include more than two-thirds of people living with HIV/AIDS and advocates for the millions of people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS in the United States and the organizations that serve them. policy.aidsunited.org About AIDS United: AIDS United’s mission is to end the AIDS epidemic in the U.S., through strategic grant-making, capacity building, formative research and policy. AIDS United works to ensure access to life-saving HIV/ AIDS care and prevention services and to advance sound HIV/AIDS-related policy for U.S. populations and communities most impacted by the epidemic. To date, our strategic grant-making initiatives have directly funded more than $104 million to local communities, and have leveraged more than $117 million in additional investments for programs that include, but are not limited to HIV prevention, access to care, capacity building, harm reduction and advocacy. aidsunited.org.

Lesbians, bi women often told they don’t need cervical cancer test. Not true!

Josh Jackman posts on pinknews. co.uk: Women who have sex with women are often told they don’t need a test which screens for almost all cervical cancers, LGBT groups have reported.

As a result, half of all eligible lesbians and bisexual women have never had a smear test for the human papilloma virus (HPV).

All women can contract HPV – which, like other sexually transmitted infections, is passed on through body fluids – and should therefore be offered cervical screenings regardless of sexuality.

The only women who don’t need the smear test are those who have never had sex.

Nearly 1,000 women die from cervical cancer every year.

The news comes at the beginning of Britain’s first ever National Lesbian & Bisexual Women’s Health week, created

by The National LGB&T Partnership.

According to the charity Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, around 3,000 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer this year.

The organisation said that “as HPV can be transmitted through skin-to-skin contact in the genital area, gay women are equally at risk of contracting HPV and experiencing abnormal cervical changes and, thus, should always attend when invited for cervical screening.”

In a study by Sheffield Hallam University, most women surveyed had been assumed to be straight by the health worker they consulted.

This led to less than half of lesbian and bisexual women receiving appropriate information and advice.

Another study by the University of Salford found that more than one in three lesbian and bisexual women questioned said they had been told they didn’t need a cervical screening test because of their sexuality.

One woman told the LGBT Foundation: “I have had GPs stare at me in silence when I said my partner was a woman.

“One GP told me she didn’t know what STIs I could get as a woman who was having sex with women.”

And yet another said that her GP “does not acknowledge my sexuality and assumes as I have children I identify as heterosexual.’

One woman said: “I was told I was greedy by a GP for being bi even though I’ve been with my partner for five-and-ahalf years and we are due to get married.”

The Advocate: Three experts on maintaining bisexual health Desiree Guerrero and Jacob Anderson-Minshall post on The Advocate: In some ways, maintaining sexual health as a bisexual is just like maintaining sexual health as someone with any other sexual orientation.

For example, Denarii Monroe of the Bisexual Resource Center says, “Staying sexually healthy for me personally means making sure that I’m getting regular STI and HIV checkups, preferably before starting a new sexual relationship with someone.”

“In terms of tips for the happy, healthy bisexual, my number 1 tip for sexual health is to maintain [it] by getting those exams,” says Amy Andre, who works with the Bisexual Research Collaboration on Health at The Fenway Institute in Boston. She argues that routine screenings and preventative medicine are essential for long-term health.

“Unfortunately,” Andre acknowledges, “studies show that compared to women of other orientations, women who identify as bisexual are less likely to get cancer screenings like Pap smears and mammograms.”

It’s one of the many health disparities between bisexual women and men versus their non-bi counterparts.

“Bi+ sexual health means recognizing the specific systemic obstacles that bi+ people have to [overcome] obtaining adequate health care, including sexual health care,” says Monroe, who prefers the more inclusive “bi+” — a moniker meant to include pansexual, polysexual, and other orientations beyond gay, lesbian, or straight.

One of the main impediments for bisexual health is the “biphobia, bi invisibility, and the discrimination that people face who are out as bisexual,” says Andre. That stigma “impacts our physical and mental health, and even our ability to make choices around sexual health screenings.”

Preventative sexual health screenings are just the tip of the iceberg, when looking at the health needs of bisexuals, Monroe argues, because “we have higher rates of poverty than both straight people and gays and lesbians, [and] lower rates of health insurance coverage.”

Andre agrees. “There’s very little research on this, but what research there is shows that we tend to have less money, have higher rates of unemployment and underemployment. As we all know, healthcare in the United States can be expensive, and for many people, prohibitively expensive.”

“The majority of bi+ people are people of color and the majority of transgender people are bi+,” adds Monroe, who notes that the unique socioeconomic issues that bisexuals face impact “how much we’re able to access to adequately address our needs in a very oppressive set of systems, especially when we’re multiply marginalized. For me, addressing bi+ sexual health means addressing these specific needs, which means specifically acknowledging and then tackling bi+ erasure, bi+ antagonism, and monosexism.” ■ -Read the full article on The Advocate

APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET

17

PHOTOS: SUSAN JORDAN

LGBTQ Living

Sommelier Brian Aladesuyi

By Susan Jordan Brian Aladesyui is a sommelier – a wine expert – and server at Branca Midtown, an Italian restaurant, as well as being a classically-trained cellist. His Monday afternoon wine tasting group at Apogee, a wine bar at 151 Park Ave., will end now as he is moving to NYC. Brian hails from Marietta, Ga. and moved to Rochester in 2012. He says, “I started working in a restaurant and was very curious about wine. I didn’t drink wine at all. I tried to teach myself about it because I like to learn. I bought ‘Rosetta Stone’ which is a language instruction

program, for both Italian and French. I also learned German (at Indiana University).

“I taught myself; I initiated everything.

Took notes, went online. I bought tons of books and created my own library.”

He learned so well that he was approved by the Court of Master Sommeliers after taking their three-part exam. The first part is a written exam, and the second involves wine tasting and identifying where wines are from, what year the vintage is, etc. The third part of the exam is the service exam, where candidates wait on a “table” and the sommeliers grill them.

“Being a sommelier isn’t just about wine,” Brian says. “You have to know about all spirits, beer, coffee, pairing wine

with food. ‘What is Campari? Where does Southern Comfort come from?’ Since I’m from Georgia, I knew that answer to that – peaches.”

The wine tasting group members sometimes brought bottles of wine in paper bags, so the labels can’t be read, and everyone tried to guess what wines they are, using the “Deductive Tasting Format” from the Court of Master Sommeliers. The Format includes sight, flavor, nose and palate (structure) elements.

Brian said, “The more I learn about wine, the more I realize I don’t really understand wine. The more you taste, the more you realize that wine doesn’t always follow the rules. For instance, rosee is not always sweet.”

Steve, who works at Apogee, commented, “The dynamic in the consumer market is changing. It’s our job as restaurant staff to educate staff and the community.”

Brian said, “Having diversity in choice is good. There’s no reason you can’t find a wine you like. There are many kinds.

We’d like to get rid of the snob appeal.”

He advises wine buyers, “Always ask at the store or restaurant. Sometimes I think people are afraid to ask. Don’t be afraid to ask for the sommelier or for help at the wine store. I’m kind of like a d.j. or orchestra conductor – it’s all about the music. I just want to help you enjoy the wine. The most expensive wines are not always the best.”

Brian turns to the music analogy again when asked which wines are his favorites. “It’s like being a musician,” he said. “You love all music. So you have an appreciation of all wines, although you may not love them all. Personally I love Reisling – which isn’t always sweet. It’s

incredibly versatile and food-friendly. The most important thing isn’t the sweetness or dryness, but the quality of the wine.”

He recommends Pinnacle Wine & Liquor on Monroe Ave. for those who are serious about buying. “You can find really interesting wine that isn’t particularly expensive,” he said. “There are lots of nice, eye-opening wines as well as all the classics.”

If you’d like to start your own wine cellar and put down some vintages for the future, Brian says, “Around 95 percent of all wine is meant to be drunk within five years. You need to know what can be laid down for years and what needs to be drunk within five years. Structure is important – the content and acid structure will determine how long it will age.

Cabernet Sauvignon for example ages well, because it has tannin and acid. Italian wines – from Barolo in northern Italy where Nebbiolo grapes grow – is another example of wine that ages well.” ■

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APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET

Shoulders to Stand On

The Long Road To Wellness – Jesse Helms Roadblock

By Evelyn Bailey In 1988, research was underway to find an AIDS vaccine. It soon became clear that even though money was beginning to flow through the pipeline for research, there would be no quick fix for this problem Government agencies, LGBT organizations and the medical profession became acutely aware of the complexity of HIV, the time consuming research process, and the slowness of FDA approval of new drugs. They realized that in order to keep AIDS from spreading, huge changes in behavior and in society’s attitude toward this disease had to take place.

In January 1988, New York City health officials were given permission by state authorities to distribute free hypodermic syringes to drug addicts in an effort to combat the spread of AIDS. According to the New York State AIDS Advisory Council report in 1996 on Needle Exchange Programs And Deregulation Of Needles And Syringes.

The interdependence of the HIV and drug use epidemics has been recognized since the early years of AIDS case reporting, and New York has long been recognized as an epicenter of both. By 1988, injecting drug use had surpassed all other risk factors as a cause of new cases of AIDS in New York State, and it continues to be the single most important cause of HIV infection. It would be years later that AIDS Rochester would put a needle exchange program in place.

In February, 1988 James Watkins, Chair of President Reagan’s AIDS commission, recommended a 10 year $15 billion expansion of rehabilitative treatment for IV drug abuse, including the establishment of 3300 new drug abuse clinics, and hiring 32,000 specialists to staff them in an effort to control the spread of AIDS. At that time there was a growing scientific consensus that IV drug users were the main source of new AIDS infections. According to an article published in the journal Science, Feb. 12, 1988, drug addicts accounted for 53 percent of all deaths due to AIDS in New York City from 1978 to 1986.

In Washington DC health officials began giving drug addicts vials of bleach to clean hypodermic needles. During April and May the District of Columbia distributed over 2,000 vials of bleach. In June, a community health clinic in Portland, Oregon began distributing clean hypodermic needles. In October, 1988, New York City Health Comminioner Stephen Joseph announced that testing a program to distribute free needles to 200 intravebous drug users would begin. The program met with significant resistance from opponents who contended that this give away program would promote the abuse of drugs. In September 1988 New York State governor Mario Cuomo signed a bill that allowed physicians to warn needle-sharing or sex partners of people infected with HIV that they may be in danger of contracting the disease. It is very difficult for this writer to consider that physicians in New York State would not be able to do this prior to this legislation.

Educating the general population including drug users, those who live in poverty, and those whose access to medical services is limited to prevent them from contracting AIDS was very challenging for many communities. This was made more difficult by the passage of the “Helms Amendment” in October 1987 which prevented federal funding of any AIDS education effort under the premise that this education would “encourage or promote homosexual activity”. In November, 1987, Mayor Koch of New York City wrote: :Mr. Helms introduced it (amendment to the fiscal 1988 appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education) because he’s upset with New York’s Gay Men’s Health Crisis.” Koch further wrote: “The organization has established a brilliant reputation in caring for and counseling those with AIDS and in educating others on how to prevent the spread of AIDS.” This small piece of legislative verbiage had an enormous impact on the American

Learn the history of the LGBT community in Rochester from the people who made that history.

AIDS scene. The Department of Health and Human Services not only published a great deal of AIDS prevention literature itself, but also funded much of what came from state and local health departments.

The Helms amendment effectively censored the large majority of publicly funded AIDS prevention literature throughout the United States, and its language was so broad that it was not just homoerotic pieces like “After the Gym” that were banned: even a mention of anal intercourse, for example, could be seen as violating the federal mandate, despite the fact that anal intercourse was one of the primary routes of transmission for HIV. The action was opposed by the U.S. Public Health Service. Congress restored the executive authority to remove HIV from the list of excludable conditions in the 1990 Immigration Reform Act, and in January 1991, Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan announced he would delete HIV from the list of excludable conditions. A letterwriting campaign headed by Helms ultimately convinced President Bush not to lift the ban, and left the United States the only industrialized nation in the world to prohibit travel based on HIV status. The travel ban was also responsible for the cancellation of the 1992 International AIDS Conference in Boston. On January 5, 2010, the 22-year-old ban was lifted after repeal was signed by President Barack Obama on October 30, 2009.

In response to this federal legislation, the Monroe County Legislature began approval of $100,000 to fund community-based programs. In July, 1988 Monroe County funded three community based organizations and an AIDS Research Library to provide prevention education.

Action for a Better Community (ABC), Baden Street Settlement and Puerto Rican Youth Development and Resource Center began to develop comprehensive services which are still in operation today.

ABC’s Action Front Center’s mission is to empower people living with or affected

by HIV/AIDS in the greater Rochester area. They provide prevention and education, mobilize the community to use its resources and celebrate human value.

Baden Street Settlement is the host agency for the Metro Council for Teen Potential (MCTP); a coalition of youthserving organizations that promote youth development and youth health in the City’s most stressed neighborhoods.

MCTP includes HIV education and prevention. Ibero American Action League’s Youth Services program THRIVE 2 provides evidence based workshops on the topic of HIV/STD and teen pregnancy to youth. The primary objective

The Gay Alliance invites you to celebrate 40 years of LGBT history in Rochester with your very own DVD/BluRay of this powerful film.

Shoulders To Stand On Evelyn Bailey, Executive Producer Kevin Indovino, Producer/Director/Writer

Standard DVD $25 / BluRay DVD $30 Order at: www.GayAlliance.org

21 is to increase awareness, decrease HIV/ STD and teen pregnancy prevalence and increase access to reproductive health care centers. IBERO’s Family Service Program Beacon of Life provides education and outreach services to assist in the prevention of HIV/AIDS. What the Monroe County legislature began in 1988 continues to the present day.

In October, 1988 the fight against the AIDS epidemic was dealt another blow when Sen. Jesse Helms amended a drug and alcohol bill to prevent the use of federal funds for needle exchange programs or the distribution of bleach for addicts.

One could ask what was behind Jesse Helms’ war on AIDS funding. The New York Times stated that Helms was “bitterly opposed” to federal financing for research and treatment of AIDS, which he believed was God’s punishment for homosexuals.

Opposing the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill in 1988, Helms stated, “There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy”. When Ryan White died in 1990, his mother went to Congress to speak to politicians on behalf of people with AIDS. She spoke to 23 representatives; Helms refused to speak to Jeanne White, even when she was alone with him in an elevator. Despite opposition by Helms, the Ryan White Care Act passed in 1990.

The Road to Wellness was rocky and full of setbacks. Shoulders To Stand On would like to thank the Monroe County legislature and then – Governor of New York Mario Cuomo for their clear headedness and willingness to stand for People with AIDS (PWAs). Today more than ever before we need to find common ground for the health and well being of all American citizens. Grateful to live in New York we must continue to raise our voices for those who do not have the benefits of legal protection and health care.

Shoulders To Stand On challenges the LGBT Rochester community to continue to “fiercely and passionately” fight for equality and justice for all Rochestarians, New Yorkers and Americans!

History Corner Empty Closet: A Monthly Newspaper of The Gay Brotherhood of Rochester, 713 Monroe Avenue, Room 4, Rochester, NY 14607 (716) 244-8640 April 1975 Number 49 FOCUS: In this issue, the EMPTY CLOSET focuses on the most intensive lobbying effort ever attempted by gays in New York State. The article LOBBYIST COMMENTS reports on the financial plight of the project, which may soon bring the effort to a close. LIAISON REPORT (p8) gives details of the legislative condition of our bills. WHO’S THAT SQUATTING ON THE SEAT OF POWER (pi) describes the efforts of eight intrepid Rochester Gays as they join 120 others in the halls of Albany Legislative chambers interviewing our representatives.

CONTACTING THE PEOPLE IN POWER tells what you can do to aid in getting pro-gay legislation passed, and how you can get a drink on the house for doing it. A “do-it-yourself” poster appears on p 13, clip and post in a public place.

Also in this issue are GAY TIMES IN THE UNEMPLOYMENT LINE, a primer for the newly (and gayly) unemployed. OPINION (p4) comments on drag, and regular features include the SOCIAL SCENE, CLOSETARY COMIX, and NEWSFRONTS, plus numerous LETTERS. EXCLUSIVE! HIT MEN TERRORIZE BAR; SEVERAL ASSAULTED IN RAID FOR STORY/ PHOTOS/ see page 10 Do you want to read this issue of the Empty Closet?

Here is Link: http://www.library.rochester.edu/rbscp/EmptyCloset On that page click on: Browse the Empty Closet issues Go to 1975 – April ■

22

THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017

Columnists The opinions of columnists, editorial writers and other contributing writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the collective attitude of the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley or The Empty Closet.

Eric with Alex Breaux

Growing Up ART

By Eric Bellmann Fairly low on my list of enjoyable activities is going to the movies with someone else.

Plainly said, I don’t want to listen to your opinion. Until recently that was worse than discussing politics.

Because I go to a lot of, and love movies, people will now and then ask me for suggestions. Always dangerous.

My habit is to go to the earliest show when the theater is more likely to be sparsely occupied. I like to sit in the back of the auditorium where I can appreciate the full design of the film. Those are the minor issues.

I know I’m being boorish and self indulgent writing this crap but it’s two days after the 81 mile per hour wind storm and now it’s miserably cold and only days until the EC deadline and I have not a thought of anything else to write. Also I have an unexamined compulsion to keep producing columns. So, sorry and I’ll just rattle on.

Thrilled almost beyond words by “Moonlight,” I told a married couple they should see it.

He said, “kind of slow”. She said, “... oh, the editing” and I knew I would have to shut up, exercise tolerance to continue loving my friends. To this day I cannot see a still photograph of the actors who were Chiron and Little without my eyes filling with tears. The movie was transformative.

It is why I love movies, why I relish Art that has the capability of enlarging my spirit, expanding my mind, enlarging my heart, making me want to live and be a better person.

I have an artist friend who never goes to the movies. “No one to go with,” she explains. Once, in my prime, I went on a date to see a French film, “LeBal,” which covered four decades and was the music and dance, no dialogue, of those years. It was original, brilliant, deeply moving and exiting the theater, my date said, “God, I could use a John Wayne movie”. Never spoke to him again.

I grew up at the movies. Hiding out from a reality that had no comfort for me.

I learned about survival and power from the women’s movies, romance and joy from the MGM musicals, had a crush on

Gene Kelly, lusted for Tarzan. And when I discovered foreign movies I knew I was sophisticated.

I am not, in the last analysis, a snob.

“Sausage Party,” which I’ll bet a thousand bucks no one reading this saw, was terrific, one of the year’s best. I like a well-made movie and many of the popular mainstream ones are skillfully made.

The problem, I think, is that most people go to the movies for the story line, the narrative and that’s only a small element in the undertaking. Why is the camera placed where it is? Why does that scene end ? Editing, sound, color palette, camera movement, all those things, along with script and performance, are part of the experience. “I didn’t think it was believable” or similar comments just don’t cut it for me.

Truth to tell I have one friend, half my age, with whom I occasionally go to movies and he only reacts to story line, to content and he is terribly sensitive. I guilted him into seeing “ Son of Saul”. “How can you not pay witness to this tragedy?

He went, bless him. Thirty minutes into it he fled.

Just too hard to bear. I understand. I need to understand better. I should not hold others to my standards. At least he goes to the movies. That’s a start.

Reading is a bit more problematic. I resist reading because I will regularly drift off into reverie. A phrase, an off side comment can unplug memories and I drift off and stare at the ceiling. Literature is often the best way for me to understand human behavior. Real life is too controlled, necessarily too focused on moving from spot A to spot B. A good short story [Alice Munro] reminds me how complex, how nefarious, how sad life is. What’s really going on.

I hate New York City now. Real estate has destroyed neighborhoods. The city is dirty, congested, expensive. But there is theater and I can find plays with tickets as cheap as $18. And I have come to love acting and actors. Acting is like painting with water on a hot stone. It disappears, evaporates before your eyes as it happens.

How do they memorize all those lines?

How do they survive being in a mediocre [or lousy] play. Endless auditions, the pain of rejection [too tall, too old, too not what we want], too much competition, and, my God, now you have to be willing to be naked in front of audience if that’s in the script! I love actors! And to my credit I made friends with one. Actually I

accosted him.

About a year ago I saw a nifty play: “Red Speedo” about a Michael Phelps type swimmer, not too bright, who cheerfully takes drugs because they help him excel. Good play, reviewers admired Alex Breaux who had the lead. I googled him. Harvard, then Juilliard, teaches Soul Cycle between acting jobs, writes and directs.

Then last October I went to see a play at The Ohio Theater. Went early to see if I could snag a front row seat and avoid the general admission rush. I know how to pull that off. Just tell the young woman behind the counter that she is a powerful woman [she will agree] and that she can do anything she wants [agrees again] and add that I don’t hear so well anymore and love theater and can she reserve a seat for me ahead of time. Worked so far.

I check the cast photographs – the play is about four women working for a beauty magazine -- and see, whoa, also in the cast is Alex Breaux.

Now I have been to this theater before.

It is in the basement of an office building.

There is no other entrance. The actors will have to come through the front door. Do I have the courage to lie in wait for Mr. B.?

You bet I do.

Initial contact is not entirely smooth.

He is wearing ear buds and only registers my mouth flapping in his direction. “Hey man, what’s up?” I gurgle rapidly my admiration for his acting. It doesn’t matter what else I sputter. We take selfies. My day is complete.

Email: EricLBellmann@gmail.com

Cleaning My Closet PIX

By Meredith Elizabeth Reiniger I have taken pictures of my kittens.

Actually, picturessssssssssss.

Shug Avery and Alice Walker every which way… sitting IN a basket, suitcase, empty cardboard any-shape-any-size box, drawer, sink, slipper, flower gardens; UNDER the tablecloth; ON a window sill, table, chair, bed, a sleeping friend’s lap. Even sitting ON TOP of a just baked, warm apple pie.

Back-story: I had failed to notice that I had overwatered a plant that sat (never more) on top of the black, carved chest where I housed my photo albums. When, sadly too late, I opened the chest, the damage was done. Pages and pages of my past were sogged beyond retrieval.

Trashed.

Sister-kittens... staring into space; playing with balls, endless curls of ribbons, sagging helium balloons, stuffedanimals, teeny-tiny catnip mice, socks, shoes, and a pair of underpants dragged downstairs to share with my guests.

Post-flood, I had yanked-out the stayed-dry photos. Jammed those surviving pictures into mildew-free albums.

Alas, the rescue-frenzy disturbed my cherished chronological order. Even now my nerves twang as I fight my compulsive desire to put 73 years of pictures back in proper order.

Calico comedians: peeking out of any brown paper bag; dipping a paw toward an orange fascination streaking around the fish bowl; midnight leaping toward a swooping bat.

Recently, I returned to my albums to look for camera-caught memories of sister-Leslie. Those pictures I would use to make her birthday present: a book of collages for her to hold in her hands.

My adorable fur-people… breathing sculptures: svelte Walker silhouetted behind a white lace curtain; puffy, gray Shug Avery watching red maple leaves dance, back-lit by an autumn sun; on my dining room table, stretched felines in the middle of pooled sunshine.

But when I was done searching through all the black and white, Kodachrome, and Polaroid glossy prints, I dis-

covered only a few snippets of her life.

First thought: Hey! Somebody should have taken as many pictures of my sibling as I had taken of my pets. And then I realized that many years of pictures had been recorded on daddy’s slides, pictures that remain captive in their carousel.

Click. Click. Rolls and rolls of film.

My feline family sleeping… ON a quilt; UNDER a quilt made by my Aunt Ruth; BETWEEN the couch cushions; IN a cut-glass bowl; ON TOP of Disneyworldsouvenir, purple-and-pink, Alice-in-Wonderland, Cheshire cat.

My task: turn pages; find pictures. My reality: Skimming was impossible. I could not focus on just sister-stuff. I had to OH MY STARS or OH NO every single photograph on every one of how-many pages.

OH MY STARS. Once-upon-time events resurfaced. Dearly-departed darlings stirred in my heart. Long-ago friends paraded across today. And every picture conjured more than a thousand words.

OH NO. Regrettably, my eyes could not avoid tainted yester-days and yester-folks. Strewn among the sentimental were depressing images that set-loose whirlwinds and tempests I thought I had locked in the cellar of my brain. So I tossed those pain-packed pictures into my waste-basket.

Eventually I finished selecting pictures that my octogenarian sister could re-view without having to confront her cantankerous computer. And when, on her birthday, she held her completed book in her hands, she would feel my offering of laughter and remember-whens.

And later, as I danced a happy jig, I noticed that I had inadvertently tornadoed my dining room, leaving hundreds of unintended consequences. It was certainly time to throw-out and tidy-up.

Out, of course: why did I take pictures of roasted turkeys on their celebratory platters, note-worthy cakes with elaborate frosting-flowers and curlicued words.

Ineffective… out: expansive scenery with colorful tiny little dots purportedly a posed special person.

Out! Taking them was silly enough; out! Keeping them is downright embarrassing: Perfect strangers standing by a festive flower; crowds; inscrutable blurriness. And this: A wedding, the whole damn family gathered; four cousinwomyn walking ahead of me; not only did I take that picture, I saved, for 11 years, that full view of their backs.

Out, out, foolish photos. It took several late nights to interview and eject approximately 1,234 more oops-es.

Consumed, I looked, picture by picture, at each of my 5,678 keep-its. In hindsight, I am keenly aware of my deceptive vocabulary: ‘look’ is barely descriptive. What I did was scrutinize these split-second snaps of my life…

I am caught in geriatric time-travel. I study a picture so that I may return to a space I once inhabited. I stare at its white edges until my mind’s eye sees invisible details.

The black and white picture of me and my mother is an archive. We are in my parents’ they-finally-had-reached-middleclass, suburban backyard; standing on the sidewalk my father poured (he loved making concrete things, like the sundial I now have in my front yard); wearing my tryto-be-a-funky-first-year-teacher dress with giant turquoise polka dots; my mother hates polka dots; we hold glasses of iced tea; (I don’t really like iced tea; my mother does; so I drank it); my mother’s left arm is stretched, her hand rests on her lower back; (she suffers, quietly, with chronic pain); she is intently talking at me; my head and eyes are lowered, but a gentle smile is blooming on my face.

And I am left, this moment, decades later, wondering, what was said, what was heard.

Photo-ops: in my backyard, kittens on their lavender leashes, doing up-close squirrel-observing; performing head-turning bird-staring. Being.

Photo-ops to the max: my gardens’ evolution. Incalculable snapshots of the bare urban space, surrounding my first,

APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET sole-owner house, that I transformed into my garden sanctuary.

Yes, I captured every step. Moving, one shovel-full at a time, the massive truck-load of topsoil dumped, accidently, on my neighbor’s driveway. My habitual relocating of dug-up and donated rocks.

Clean-cut edging, like daddy taught me.

Curb-gleaning 211 bricks (yes, I counted) and then building planters and decorative walls. Watching a color-coordinated, tool-belt-wearing, really cute dyke as she pushed-and-pulled her Sawzall to extricate a row of ancient cedars fossilized sixfeet under.

This I know: I will, with no reservations, keep all my albums, as is. Never onto a DVD. (I just cannot form an intimate relationship with those things.) I know this about myself, a Crazy-Wild, part-time-butchy, lesbian elder: I need to hold my dear photographs in my hands so I can tenderly stroll my gardens and pet my kittens.

Forever more, whenever the spirit moves me, I and my pictures will sit on the couch. Silently exchanging stories.

MeredithReiniger@gmail.com

Faith Matters BOSTON LGBTQ YOUTH THEATER GROUP FIRST TO RECEIVE HIGHEST HONOR FROM (OBAMA) WHITE HOUSE

By Rev. Irene Monroe Receiving the award is a historic moment not only for True Colors, but also for the White House in recognizing and honoring the artistic talents of America’s LGBTQ youth, especially

youth of color.

The next night following “Moonlight’s” win for Best Picture at the Oscars, a first for a black LGBTQ film, True Colors Out Youth Theater - the country’s longest running LGBTQ youth theater company- celebrated a first, too -- a 2016 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award presented in November at the White House by First Lady Michelle Obama.

The National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award is the highest award in the country for youth development programs, and receiving the award is a historic moment not only for True Colors, but also for the White House in recognizing and honoring the artistic talents of America’s LGBTQ youth, especially youth of color.

As one of the 12 awardees - chosen from a pool of more than 251 nominations and 50 finalists- True Colors is the first LGBTQ organization to receive the award.

Evelyn Francis, 40, director of programming at The Theater Offensive, the organization behind True Colors, and troupe member Traeshayona “Trae” Weekes, 18, accepted the award from First Lady Michelle Obama. Weekes shared what it was like to travel to the White House to receive the award.

“I never left Boston until True Colors… Accepting this award from the First Lady of the United States at the White House was an unforgettable experience, and I’m so proud to be part of the first ever LGBTQ organization to receive this honor,” Weekes told The Advocate. “It’s amazing to see that the power of True Colors’ work in helping make communities a safer space for LGBTQ youth while giving us a place to explore our identity and find our own culture in a way that is recognized and valued.”

True Colors celebrated receiving the award at the historic Hibernian Hall in Roxbury, and the evening was an extrava-

PFLAG MEETS 3RD SUNDAY OF EACH MONTH

1-3pm, Open Arms Metropolitan Community Church 707 E. Main Street, Rochester, New York 14605 Phone: 585-993-3297 ~ Email: rochesterpflag@gmail.com

ganza showcasing local LGBTQ artists and performers, like rapper Oompa, poet Black Venus, and the fabulous Fly GirlsNeon Calypso, Yune Neptune and Candace, to name a few. Generations of True Colors participants proudly returned for the evening to celebrate not only the coveted honor, but also the man who made it all happen.

“This moment means the world to me because it’s the coming together of all the generations of True Colors Out Youth Theater. This is crazy! There are people who were in True Colors in the beginning who have children old enough to be in True Colors now,” Abe Rybeck, self-proclaimed “queer hillbilly” from West Virginia, ebulliently shared with me wearing his signature incandescent chandelier-like earrings.

True Colors Out Youth Theater is the creative genius of Abe Rybeck, 56, renowned Executive Artistic Director of The Theater of the Offensive. The youth troupe has been in existence since 1994, and is the oldest out and allied youth theater in the world. The ages range from 14-22, where 75 percent are youth of color and 40 percent are either gender-nonconforming or transgender coming from Greater Boston’s urban enclaves.

True Colors serves as a community sounding board and home base in forming and nurturing Greater Boston’s diverse LGBTQ youth artistic talent pool.

The troupe receives theater training, leadership development, and performance opportunities across greater Boston and beyond. And with the training the troupe challenges heterosexist cultural and familial norms by creating educational and social opportunities for cross-cultural dialogue within their communities by touring schools, churches, youth groups and social agencies.

For 23 years, True Colors teaches troupe members how to create artwork from their authentic unapologetic lives. Learning that their lives are a work in progress as they grow and evolve, troupe members have shared that Rybeck have taught them how to put their stories in their bodies, and keep them there.

“Everybody has something inside, but don’t know it, but it’s in them. Giving True Colors a voice we must support it for this to work, seeing what each person has, not correct it and judge it. It is a pleasure to have that be your work every day” Rybeck shared.

Troupe members learning the art and discipline of putting pen to paper, then orally telling and finally acting out their stories before an audience, is not only aweinspiring to listeners, but it is also aweinspiring to watch these young actors proudly evolve and embody their unique narratives.

The work at True Color builds confidence, and acceptance of self and others. The power derived from sharing their stories and publicly holding them up as models of activism empowers the troupe and informs communities struggling with LGBTQ-acceptance.

However, with this Trump presidency LGBTQ communities across the country are worried if the country will become less accepting. Just last month the Trump administration rolled back protections for transgender students revoking federal guidelines that allowed use of public school restrooms matching their gender identity. The week True Colors learned of their award Trump used the Orlando gay nightclub shooting to broaden his ban on immigrants.

When I asked how will True Colors respond to a Trump presidency rollback on LGBTQ rights, Rybeck laughed, stating, “My young folks will not tolerate it!”

SOURCES: Boston LGBTQ Youth Theater Program Wins National Award | NECN http://www.necn.com/news/new-england/WEB-Making-the-Grade-True-Colors_NECN-403782486.html First Lady Michelle Obama Recognizes True Colors As Top Creative Youth Development Program at White House Ceremony!

23 http://www.thetheateroffensive.org/ updates/first-lady-michelle-obama-recognizes-true-colors-as-top-creative-youthdevelopment-program-at-white-house-cer emony/5840964793009c04000d5088 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Awards http://www.nahyp.org/ First Lady Michelle Obama Recognizes True Colors As Top Creative Youth Development Program at White House Ceremony! http://www.thetheateroffensive.org/ updates/first-lady-michelle-obama-recognizes-true-colors-as-top-creative-youthdevelopment-program-at-white-house-cer emony/5840964793009c04000d5088 ABE http://www.thetheateroffensive.org/about/who-weare?id=5384ba04ef798c0200e08952 fact sheet http://res.cloudinary.com/the-theateroffensive/image/upload/v1478548009/ ytzzqpp5ldyp4f5krhus.pdf True Colors video clips - Google Drive https://drive.google.com/drive/ folders/0ByAm2xzyfQm_Z2ZpV0lZMHJBMU0

What’s Bothering Brandon?

SHORT AND SWEET FOR A SUNNY SPRING

By Brandon W. Brooks Daylight Saving Time – when we “spring ahead” – is a great time of the year. We gain an hour of sunlight in the evenings, and we lose an hour of Trump’s presidency. What more to ask?

This is a time of flux. The weather has swung back on us several times this late winter and early spring period. We had sunny 60 degree days in February, followed by a wind storm and blizzard in March. I should know not to anticipate a smooth climatic transition in Rochester, NY. I sit here listening to vaporwave mixes, contemplating my goals for summer ’17.

Do I want to move in with a roommate, or hold onto the peace of solitude? The slow-paced tempo and low pitch of the vapor makes me feel simultaneously nostalgic and hopeful for the future warm months. I can’t help but think of how much warmer they may be with an equally nostalgic male companion. I imagine lazy Sunday mornings making breakfast for him, the droning beat of the vaporwave turning my Neo-Classical apartment into a Sears department store circa 1989. We’d then vacate the shopping center for the shore of Ontario to spend the afternoon chain-smoking under the cover of an umbrella.

But chain-smoking cigarettes and imagining a fake boyfriend – are these truly my goals for summer ‘17, my last summer in my 20s? Not too lofty, I’d say.

No, instead I should attempt to ditch the cigs, and lose ten pounds. The vaporwave however; that’ll remain.

I can’t wait until I can walk outside and smell the earth, for the sky to be sunny at 9 p.m., and for that strange sense of something calling me out to socialize to return. Snow tends to slow me down, both physically and socially – I just want to stay inside with the 1995 Pride and Prejudice – Colin Firth is life. But summertime? Colin Firth can go hang in the summertime; my interests are for the living and active.

I want to manifest my goals into reality this summer – to stop that smoking, and to cut out sodas and sweets. Who knows, maybe I’ll even find a boyfriend.

I’ll be interviewing candidates in my office.

Questions, comment, or critique?

Feel free to e-mail the author at: brandonbrooks@mail.adelphi.edu

24 (Columnists continued from page 23)

Safer Computing VAULT 7 AND OTHER STORIES

By David Frier There are probably few professions as driven by news as information security. In the weeks since I have written to you about Ransomware (March ‘17) a new story has become the flavor of the month: Vault 7.

On March 7, Wikileaks published a dump of documents allegedly taken by a CIA insider, detailing how the CIA can subvert many popular products, even security products such as McAfee anti-virus and the secure messaging apps WhatsApp and Signal. It may seem to herald the end of privacy. It actually reminds me to be careful inferring too much from headlines and to dig deeper.

One thing I was curious about was, how did the manufacturers of the products react? PR spin or no, you can tell whether the publisher of a software product is “deer-in-the-headlights” or “it’sno-big-thing” in response to a published exploit or vulnerability. And I saw very few white-tails this time around. Apple and Google, the makers of two highly targeted software platforms iOS and Android, have already released fixes for most of the published security gaps. Now the fact is, the CIA may have had knowledge of these gaps for quite some time before they were published. So we don’t know how many of them were fixed prior to publication in the normal course of maintenance as opposed to hurriedly in reaction to the revelation.

In either case, it highlights the importance of keeping your software current.

There are many paths for manufacturers to learn about defects in their software, from cosmetic issues to security holes. In the security realm, independent researchers find vulnerabilities all the time, some immediately exploitable, some more difficult. The responsible thing to do, and what I believe the majority of researchers in fact do, is to let the manufacturer know first, so they can fix their products and make them safer. Many software vendors pay bug bounties to the researchers in order to offset the potential benefits of going over to the dark side and using the found vulnerabilities for criminal profit.

The product of this symbiosis is, monthly updates that fix security flaws in all your most basic software products: the operating systems, Windows, Linux, OS X, Android and iOS. The final link in the chain, of course, is you. You have to make sure all these fixes get applied to your systems.

My own policy is, to keep all updates enabled on my systems for automatic download and install. Leaving aside the recent execrable behavior of Windows 10 (about which, more in a column to come), this has proven fairly non-disruptive. Windows 7’s favorite time to do the update & reboot dance seems to be 3 a.m.

Linux, on the other hand, seldom requires a reboot -- updates are applied silently in the background and life goes on.

Our phones (Android) and tablets (iOS) seem to need the most hand-holding, but it’s easily enough accommodated during morning coffee.

In addition to the operating systems, you should pay close attention to the availability of updates for a few products that have in the past shown a special amount of ability to wreak security havoc when not patched. Browsers, because they are the portal to the Internet and because web developers are not all benign, have a distinctive power to introduce evil code into your systems. Their developers work like mad to shut these channels down, but you need to meet them halfway and keep the browser versions current. Every browser will tell you when it needs updating some, like Chrome, will just do it and let

THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017 you know afterward. Don’t interfere with this. Consider it a part of your digital immune system.

A few other products are also able to introduce lots of code to your systems, not necessarily all well-meaning. Microsoft Office, and Adobe Flash and PDF products all run code that others may have written for you -- or AT you. Entire applications can be written in Flash. Javascript uses PDF as a platform as comfortably as it uses web pages, and Microsoft Visual Basic is the macro language of Office.

My chosen self-defense against these is, I do not use them (it’s possible to browse the web without Flash! Try it!).

But if you choose to, or if you do not have the choice, at least keep up with the patches. If you patch regularly, only the most advanced and sophisticated of cybercriminals will be able to target you. And the CIA, of course. But just based on the small proportion of them that fit those categories, you will have made it all the more probable that you will be safer.

Both Sides Now SING A SIMPLE SONG WHEN IT ALL GOES WRONG

By Cora Treoir Duncan Most of us may be experiencing a full stop this winter. In the last three months I have watched in horror, awe, delight and consternation as very public events have unfolded to where we are today.

With the results of the election still burning like a brush-fire across the country and the world, there are few who have not been affected and spurred into action, whether in expressing direct protest or as domestic terrorists hell-bent on divisive violence. Like legions of disappointed and horrified Liberals and part of a marginalized group (transgender), I have fumed and trembled at the new reality and its inevitable projected implications.

Each of us face moments that halt forward motion: some as temporary as a snowstorm, lost keys or flat tire, some critical as an accident, job loss or sudden illness, plus every possibility in between.

Each of us must muster the inner and outer resources we have to face the realities that confront us in every situation.

When the cold hard reality hits, we need to remain calm and go forward. Obviously, this is an aspiration we all seek and pursue with varying results depending on our wisdom, age and experience. I have learned to stop “trying” as it rarely produces success. One either does or does not; there is no maybe. Eventually I found that my intentions will equal my results.

Personally my life has overflowed with Chaos and Change. Over time I have finally recognized them as Old Friends who come around whether I invite them or not. I have ceased chasing the false promises of Perfection in my life. It now seems toxic; these days I seek Imperfection. I have discovered I have a chance of attaining that! I have learned to trust the process and go with the flow. Ironically, it was one of the earliest clues to living I was handed! Let me explain.

One of the first songs I ever learned to sing was a Round, where the singers are divided into two groups and sing the song with staggered starting points. I’ll bet everyone reading this has sung the same song at some point in their lives: Row, Row, Row Your Boat. I will also wager that few if any have considered the wisdom inherent in this childhood tune.

Please, let me share what I mean as we consider every line.

“Row, row your boat...” You have to initiate the action; no one else is going to propel you forward. You have to do it for yourself. Each of us knows how much we dislike or resent other folks deciding we are not doing it right or that they could do it better than we can. It is YOUR boat!

So start rowing. “...Gently down the stream.” Stop fighting Life. Go with the flow. Trust the process and you ability to know what it means. It definitely can make a difference to finding peace of mind and general well being plus it is energy efficient to boot. Be kind to yourself and others. Release anger, fear, sadness and pain. Why carry the burden? Lighten your load.

“Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily...” Laugh, dance, smile, sing, hug and frolic whenever you find opportunity doing whatever your heart and soul divine and design. Why be miserable?

Happiness is circumstantial and fleeting, disappearing like smoke when the doors and windows open. Joy is a state of mind and being we can all embrace once we know how.

“Life is but a dream.” It is too important to be taken seriously. It is over in record time, done before we are ready.

The story of you and I is a blink of the eye and too soon goodbye. In the passing parade of this great and grand Universe we are all legend and legion...until we begin the next round and start singing again...

“Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a Dream.”

Health and Wellness SPRING CLEANING OF YOUR HEALTH HABITS

By HCR Home Care Spring is a great time to re-energize and get motivated to renew healthy habits. Lifestyle changes that improve your overall health and energy can be accomplished in small steps that won’t overwhelm you. Transforming your overall health will make you feel great and give you the energy to enjoy the nice weather finally coming our way after the long winter.

Try to incorporate some of these healthy eating, exercise and general health tips one day at a time, and celebrate every small success!

Healthy Eating • Swap out ice cream for frozen bananas, or low-calorie/low-sugar popsicles.

• Never skip breakfast, and always include protein to start your day off right.

• Ditch the frozen foods, and start prepping your meals the night before.

• Eat 5 small meals throughout the day to boost your metabolism.

• Drink green tea.

• Lean meats, chicken, fish and eggs are among the best options for protein.

• Decrease your sodium intake.

• Drink more water! Ditch the soda, sugary juices and chocolate milk.

• Cut back on eating out. If you are out, skip the bread and limit your alcohol intake.

• Substitute pastas and white breads with sweet potatoes, rye bread and quinoa.

• Have veggies at every meal and eat more of them.

• Portion control is key to your success; fill half your plate with veggies, and keep your other portions small.

Exercise • Walk, run or dance for 30 minutes every day, if possible.

• Add weight training to your routine to build muscle and improve your metabolism.

• Find something that keeps you motivated. Exercise with a partner or a trainer, work out to exercise DVDs, or join an online community.

• Walk on your lunch break.

• Try new activities to keep your body challenged, such as a HIIT workouts, yoga or swimming.

• Sign yourself up for walks/races in your community, and think of them as goals.

General Health • Have a positive mindset and keep stress levels down. Find an activity that helps you relax.

• Take a multi-vitamin and a Vitamin D supplement.

• Get at least eight hours of sleep.

• Limit yourself to television, the computer, and surfing the web on your cellphone.

• Keep track of your health indicators, such as your cholesterol levels, blood pressure and BMI. Whether you are trying to lose weight, following your doctors’ recommendations or simply working to improve your energy level, everyone can follow these small changes. Remember, changing your health is a lifestyle change. It is taking one step at a time to live a longer and healthier life.

Reference: http://balanceinme.com/ blog/101-healthy-habits-that-anyone-canfollow/ ■

• Legal name change?

• Birth certificate amendment?

You’ll need those forms NOTARIZED! Our notary can help!

Schedule a free appointment today!

Phone: 585 244-8640 or email: info@gayalliance.org

APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET

Community Find the friends, fun, and common interests you’re looking for through the various groups listed here

DIGNITY-INTEGRITY Since March, 1975, Dignity-Integrity Rochester has been welcoming all who come through our doors, worshiping every week at 5 p.m. at St. Luke’s and St. Simon’s Church, 17 S. Fitzhugh St., at the corner of Broad St. We have the following services and activities for the month of April, 2017.

April Services: 1st Sunday: Episcopal Mass/Healing Service, with music 2nd Sunday: Palm Sunday. Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Word, with music 3rd Sunday: Easter. Quiet Episcopal Mass 4th Sunday: Prayers to start the Week followed by Potluck.

5th Sunday: Catholic Eucharist, with music The theme for the April potluck is “April in Paris”. Take a trip to France without leaving Rochester! Spring weath-

er or not, we’ll pretend to be dining in Paris. Bring your favorite French dish to add to the table, and a friend or two to join the conversation There is always plenty to share, so don’t worry if you’ve no time to shop or cook. All are welcome! After each service during the remainder of the month we’ll be gathering for fellowship around a tasty coffee hour and going out to a local restaurant for dinner. Join us anytime!

Remember that you can always call the Hotline at 585-234-5092 or check our website at www.di-rochester.org/ for updates on services and activities.

OPEN ARMS MCC Here’s what’s happening at Open Arms: Our latest ministry, “Giving Arms”, works with several community organizations to provide a variety of small household items to people in need. We are now accepting donations

Lesbians of Rochester & Allies Saturday April 1 11am-12:30pm: LORA 2017 Calendar Planning at the Gay Alliance. All are welcome.

Wednesday April 5 6-8pm: LORA Variety Night Social at the Gay Alliance. Coffee and dessert. Sing Karaoke!

Bring your knitting and listen! $3.

Wednesday April 19 6-8pm: LORA Variety Night Social at the Gay Alliance. Coffee and dessert. Sing Karaoke!

Bring your knitting and listen! $3.

Sunday April 23 10am-12noon: LORA Brunch Group at Pixley’s Restaurant in Gates.

Contact Kerry at DressyFemme@aol.com.

Thursday April 27 5-7pm: LORA Night Out. “Winging It” at Richmonds, 21 Richmond Street, Rochester 14607.

Find LORA OUTdoors on Meetup for biking, hiking, kayaking and more! Have a good idea? Let’s do it! All women are welcome.

LORA: Lesbians of Rochester & Allies Contact: LORA@gayalliance.org (585) 244-8640x23

of new or gently used household items, such as small appliances, linens, kitchen utensils, bathroom supplies, etc. If you know of someone in need or have items to donate, please contact the church at 271-8478.

And on Saturday, April 1, 2017 there will be a fundraising event for this ministry and no, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke, although THERE will be an actual jester showing up! All the funds raised will directly support Open Arms’ Giving Arms Ministry. This event will be at the Open Arms Community Center, starting with a sit down spaghetti dinner from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm, followed by music and raffles from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm. Come join us and enjoy good food, great music and friendly fun!

(And maybe a prank or two?)

Our weekly Bible study is every Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Sunday School for Teens & Tweens is on April 2 during the service and refreshments are served.

Sunday, April 2nd from 12 p.m. 1:30 is the next TRANSformative Ministry meeting. Through this ministry, we support and respect people of all gender identities and gender expressions. We create ties by linking people of diverse gender identities and expressions, and their allies, through stewardship, education, and social justice. Contact us to learn more and check out our Facebook page.

Easter Service is at 10:30 a.m., Sunday, April 16, followed by an Easter Brunch.

Save the date for our GARAGE SALE – June 16 & 17, 8-3, at 474 Marsh Rd. in Pittsford.

Saturday, April 29 we will once again be at Red Wing Stadium for our premiere fund raiser. We will be at Pop ‘N’ Hots concession stand starting at 12 p.m. So why not come and join us in this FUNd raiser and enjoy an afternoon at the ballgame!

Open Arms MCC is a vibrant, boldly inclusive church that seeks to live the message that “God loves you just the way you are.” Our goals are: 1) do justice, show kindness, and live humbly with God; 2) explore life’s questions with open hearts and minds; 3) raise our voices in sacred defiance against religious (and political or systemic) exclusion, and 4) reach out to those with no hope.

So what is the 10:30 a.m. Sunday morning service like? First there are all the people – every gender identity and gender expression, all sexual orientations, every color, and all ages that gather to worship and celebrate the God who made them just as they are meant to be. When the service starts you can tell that this is not going to be just any worship experience. We blend traditional and contemporary music, multimedia presentations, a reading of the living word of God, and a message that shares how the word of God speaks to us today. Every service includes communion – God’s table is open to all no matter who you are or what you believe. When the service is over, join us for coffee, fellowship, and a snack in the Community Center.

Our Sunday’s sermons are now available to listen to on our website – just click on the link below to listen to Sunday’s Sermon at: http://www.openarmsmcc. org/newsletter-sermons We also host a number of community groups in our Community Center: AFTY (Adult Families with Trans

25 Youth) meets the first Tuesday of each month from 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm; PFLAG (Parents, Friends and Family of Lesbians, Gays, Trans, and Questioning) meets on the third Sunday of each month at 1 p.m.; TAGR (Trans Alliance of Greater Rochester) meets on the third Saturday of each month from 3 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.; New Beginnings Christian Fellowship is having their services in the sanctuary on the first and third Sundays of each month from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Our facilities are available for rental by any community groups or individuals needing a safe and flexible meeting space. You can see our ads with pictures and rental fees on Craigslist.

At Open Arms MCC we are committed to Building Bridges and Changing Lives. You are welcome, regardless of your sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, or your religious beliefs. We are located at 707 East Main St., across from the Delta Sonic Car Wash. There is plenty of free parking in front and to the side of our building. For updated information on coming events and to view our facilities, check our website: openarmsmcc.org. Call the church if you would like to receive our monthly electronic newsletter.

Our provisional pastoral leader, Brae Adams, has office hours on Wednesdays, from 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. and by appointment. (Please call first to make sure she’s available.) Open Arms regular office hours are Thursdays and Fridays from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. and our phone number is (585) 271-8478.

ROMANS Rochester Male Naturists (ROMANS) had an action-filled March with something nude to do every weekend.

The ever so popular nude swim at a nice gym facility in Rochester happened on the first weekend. Then we had our regular meeting at a member’s home with a hot tub and massage table.

On the third weekend, ROMANS members ventured out of town to make some new nude friends at Syracuse Naked Men’s dish-to-pass meeting.

Towards the end of March, we joined some male members of Naturist Rochester at their last Men Only swim of the season. ROMANS members are already planning to spend some quality nude time at local campgrounds this summer and to join 400-500 naked men at the annual Gathering of the Gay Naturists International in August.

ROMANS is a social club for gay and gay-friendly male nudists over 21. More information is available on our website at www.wnyromans.com. Contact us at message line 585-354-8979, by E-mail wnyromans@yahoo.com or via regular mail at PO Box 92293, Rochester, NY 14692.

Batavia Outreach Planning Meetup is April 8 The Gay Alliance’s Rural Outreach program will host a planning meet-up at Bohn’s Restaurant, 5256 Clinton Rd., Batavia, NY 14020, on April 8.

All are invited to help launch new LGBTQ programming west of Rochester. The cost is $8 for a lunch buffet: salads, beef on weck, chicken salad, eggplant parm, beverages and dessert. You must RSVP to annet@gayalliance.org or (585) 244-8640 ext 23. ■

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THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017

Inquiring minds want to know...

Join us at the Gay Alliance LGBTQ Resource Center for new learning opportunities.

There’s something for everyone and we invite participants, experienced and new, to come and enjoy these classes and community workshops.

Queer as Folk Screening Saturday, April 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 3-5:30pm Come kick back with some popcorn and pop, and watch Queer as Folk with us. Brash humor and genuine emotion make up this original series revolving around the lives, loves, ambitions, careers and friendships of a group of gay men and women living on Liberty Avenue in contemporary Pittsburgh, Pa. The show offers an unapologetic look at modern, urban gay and lesbian lives while addressing the most critical health and political issues affecting the community. Sometimes racy, sometimes sensitive and always straight to the heart, Queer as Folk is groundbreaking television at its best.

Yoga with Thomas Somerville Tuesday, April 4, 11, 18, 25, 5:30-6:30pm Yoga - Stress reduction, relaxation, body awareness, increased flexibility, injury prevention taught by Rochester’s favorite Yoga Instructor Thomas Somerville. Cost of Session is $15.00 Thomas Somerville is a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT) with Yoga Alliance, which acknowledges the completion of a yoga teacher training with a Registered Yoga School (RYS).

Just Poets Workshop InQueery Tuesday, April 4, 18, 25, 6:30-8:30pm Focused on LGBTQ writers and led by seasoned poets Colleen Powderly, Dwain Wilder, Jonathan Everitt and Bart White, each workshop will include time for writing, sharing, and critiquing of work among a small, relaxed group. Every participant can look forward to coming away with new work, insightful feedback, and the inspiration to revise and refine their writing. The workshop is free, but registration is required.

Send your name, contact info, and a poem you’ve written to colleenpowderly@gmail.com If you want to attend please send your name, contact info, and a poem to colleenpowderly@gmail.com.

Classic Campy Cinema Tuesday, April 4, 7-9pm Free movies, free popcorn, building community... what more could you want? Chill with the Gay Alliance and get campy with our monthly classic LGBTQ films. The April Movie is the original John Water’s classic Hairspray (1988).

With huge hair, a big grin, and all the right moves, Tracy Turnblad (Rikki Lake) becomes the queen of Baltimore’s number one TV dance party. Also starring the legendary Divine, Sonny Bono, and Debbie Harry. Come join us to watch this fun, feel good campy classic!

Safe Journey Wednesday, April 5, 19, 6:30-7:30pm This will be a space of acceptance, and a non-judgement zone. We recognize that everyone has their own spiritual path that is unique to them, regardless of religious, or nonreligious affiliations. To maintain this environment, we ask that you come to learn and share with one another without the urge to “fix” their situation. However, we will advocate for one another whether they are Christian, Buddhist, Pagan, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Atheist, etc. We can offer wisdom from our own path, and learn together about how to advocate for our spiritual well being. Many of us have faced spiritual opposition to our sexual orientation or gender identity, and the thought of something like this may be scary.

We want you to know that it’s ok to be wary, but we hope you will come and share with us. A shared burden is easier to bear than trying to carry it alone – that is our hope for this community gathering.

So whether you are curious, whether you are affiliated with a religious path, or maybe just interested in being

recognized and validated as a spiritual being without the trappings of religion, we welcome you.

People of all faiths, traditions and spiritual paths are welcome to join in harmony, breathe in silence and connect across lines of faith.

We invite you on a SAFE Journey to share a path to spiritual wellness.

Throw Down Thursday Euchre Thursday, April 6, 13, 20, 27, 6:30-10:30pm Join our host Sean (Moxie) Daniels and lets play some Euchre!

You don’t have to be on time and you don’t have to stay the whole time.

Don’t worry if we have an odd number of people as we can rotate people throughout the games. We’ll be playing Euchre every Thursday night.

Jewish Family Services Adoption InQueery Tuesday, April 25, 6-8pm If you’ve been thinking about adoption, the adoption experts at Jewish Family Services can help you take the first steps on your adoption journey. Come hear about all the aspects of adoption.

You’ll learn about domestic and private adoptions as well as adopting waiting children.

Adoption Star Orientation Session Tuesday, April 11, 6-8pm LGBTQ+ individuals interested in adoption are welcome and encouraged to attend this free orientation session. Adoption STAR staff will introduce the agency’s policies and procedures, as well as the many services and programs it offers. A Rochester area family that has adopted successfully with Adoption STAR’s help will be present to share their adoption story. With programs focused on both infant adoption and older child adoption, along with a proven track record of successful placements with many LGBTQ+ adoptive parents, Adoption STAR is an ideal resource for helping you explore your adoption options. Please RSVP for the session by calling 716639-3900 or emailing the agency at info@adoptionstar.com.

Introduction to PrEP Wednesday, April 26, 6:30-8pm Trillium Health Knows PrEP.... In this InQueery learn what is PrEP, should I use PrEP and PrEP Facts. We will have specialist from Trillium Health in the Center to answer any question you have about PrEP.

Rochester LGBTQ RESOURCE Center

The Gay Alliance, 100 College Avenue, Rochester, New York 14607 Phone: (585) 244-8640 • Website: www.gayalliance.org • E-mail: Info@gayalliance.org

APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET

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Arts & Entertainment

Tony Leuzzi in the poetry phone booth outside Writers & Books.

Photo: Susan Jordan

Rochester poetry scene creates “an enormous sense of community”

By Susan Jordan Tony Leuzzi is a poet who teaches at MCC. He has published several books and his next book of poems, “Meditation Archipelago,” comes out in 2018 from Tiger Bark Press, a national press based here.

Tony knows the Rochester poetry community well and says that he is impressed by the number and quality of area reading series and small presses.

His own work often involves inventive use of meter and form.

“Meditation Archipelago” is based on the image of islands and their underlying connection.

He said, “I don’t usually quote other poets but the book starts with a quote from Muriel Rukeyser’s poem ‘Islands’ – ‘oh for God’s sake they are connected underneath’. I’m using that as a metaphor for my book – the idea

that there are so many different forms in the book but they’re all connected underneath. And that’s also a metaphor for how I see the world today.”

In the past Tony has written variations of formal, traditional meters such as sonnets and sestinas. He said, “I do a lot of precise forms but since 2010 I’ve been doing a lot of syllabic forms to move away from traditional metrics. With syllabic verse you don’t have the five feet in a line (of iambic pentameter). It can be any number of syllables per line, depending on the form.

“For example, in the book there are a bunch of poems patterned on my zip code – 14620.

So the first line of the stanza is one syllable, the second four, etc. The zero is represented by a space between the stanzas. There are other syllabic forms in the

Two poems by Tony Leuzzi Evicted Three condom wrappers and a pair of tattered boxers— this two tenants left behind. With the battered shovel I used yesterday to break blocks of April ice from my porch, I lift the remains of their story and dump them into a tote on which, printed in gold, is: “Do Not Steal—The City of Rochester, NY Thanks You.”

Swath I thought his gift strange— a long wool scarf in the middle of May. I thought it stranger still that one week later— once the soft purple of early vanguards had given way to a brazen swath of crimson tulips— a hoar frost covered the stems and stamens and all bright turned black.

book, too, like the postal for the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya.

These weird syllabic forms are based on patterns that fit the themes of the book.”

Tony is an upstate New Yorker in origin but lived in Louisiana for several years, arriving in Rochester in 1994. “Back then I was terribly isolated as a poet and wasn’t in touch with Rochester poets,” he says. “That came 10 years later when I became more integrated into the scene.

I credit that to Norm Davis and Rick Petrie; they run the Pure Kona reading group, now called the Flying Squirrel. It’s an open mic reading they do every week.

They were so much fun and got me back into it. Now when I look at all the reading series in Rochester I’m really impressed.

“There’s the Genesee Reading Series at Writers and Books; that’s been going on for years.

Each spring and fall there’s a different group of readers.

“There are a lot of open mics, like New Grounds Poetry, run

by Jonathan Everitt and Albert Abonado (who has a weekly radio show about poetry on WHAM). That open mic is at Equal=Grounds on first Tuesdays. What I love about it is that it takes place in a LGBTQ space but everybody, gay and straight, comes. I think it’s a great series and I always recommend it to my students.

“Just Poets is doing a series of workshops at the Gay Alliance LGBTQ Resource Center right now. The organization’s president Bart White is invested in getting poetry out into the community. He, and the rest of the group, want to make poetry a part of our lives and expand the poetry community in the city, which is wonderful.

“Rachel McKibbens and her husband Jacob Rakovan run Poetry and Pie out of their home. They’re both fine poets who have, among other things, created a safe space for writers of all stripes, and especially those who are writing about their trauma and pain. It’s a very supportive space for people to address those things in poetry. I’ve been to a couple of them and have been impressed.

“Roc Bottom Slam Team is a collective of strong performance poets. I’ve had two of the team members, Anderson Allen and Shaq Payne, come to my classes. Students love their work.

They’re in their early 20s and are so civic-minded, and have for years seen themselves as poets.

They already know that poetry itself is a vocation. Their performances are electric.

“Three other great poets, Sarah Freligh, Jennifer Litt, and Charlie Cote, run Poetry Bootcamp, workshops for people to get their poems done.

“What I’ve noticed about the Rochester poetry scene now is, if you want a community you can find one.”

Tony also mentioned four local presses, which are actually national. “People don’t know about them, except for BOA,” he said, “which is one of the best small presses in the coun(Poetry continues page 28)

Patrick Vaill

Patrick Vaill says “Cabaret” is about fun, excitement -- and a country’s descent into darkness

By Susan Jordan Patrick Vaill plays Ernst Ludwig in Cabaret, at RBTL’s Auditorium Theater May 2-7. He comments about the show, “I think audiences can expect to see something that will thrill them. It’s a show that begins with flashy, sexy, and exciting musical numbers and grows into something extraordinarily rich, satisfying, and troubling -- particularly in how timely it is.

“What starts as a simple story — a young man arrives in Berlin and goes to a nightclub -- turns into a portrait of a country teetering on the precipice, about to descend into darkness with the rise of the Nazi party.

“This is not to say it’s a downer. It is funny, daring, shocking at times, and an absolute adrenaline rush. And the songs aren’t bad either. It’s great theater.”

As an actor, the role of Ernst Ludwig presents some challenges for Patrick. He notes, “Ernst is wonderful to play. He’s mysterious, funny, and has a tremendously open heart. His is a particularly interesting storyline -- you don’t fully learn about him until quite late in the first half -- and he ends up in a very different place from where he started, having made some very questionable choices. The tricky part as an actor lies in not judging a character’s actions and seeing through their eyes to the best of your ability. At moments his behavior may be despicable but it’s his behavior. I’d say this is the biggest challenge, but it’s also the most fun part of playing him, so maybe they’re one and the same.”

Patrick loves Shakespeare and has for years. “I started to love Shakespeare in high school,” he said. “It was the first

acting I ever did. I think there’s a pretty good argument to be made that, quite simply, they’re the best plays. You can work on them forever. That kind of language is endlessly fun to work with. I’m a bit of a nerd so I love research and looking up words and playing within the structure that his verse gives you. A director I worked with likened the verse to a surfboard -- that you use it to ride what’s going on with you internally -- as a means of expression. And she was right.

It’s similar to working in a musical in that way. The verse does what the melody does in a song and propels you forward in a way that’s really exhilarating when it works.”

Patrick’s favorite actors are those who provide mystery. He said, “I started acting seriously when I was in college, and then worked professionally for a while before going to get my MFA in acting at NYU’s Graduate Acting Program.

“The actors that inspire me tend to be enigmas. Five that come to mind are Isabelle Huppert, Nicole Kidman, Ian McKellan, Willem Dafoe, and Anthony Perkins. I love it when at the end of something you still feel like you don’t fully know the person. Like the mask hasn’t fully come off. Some people love transparency in acting, I’m addicted to being drawn in by someone unknowable.”

Patrick also loves “Cabaret”.

“This is such a special show. I first saw this production when I was a teenager and remember being completely galvanized by its celebration of sexuality, creativity, and self-discovery. It’s a world where you’re free to forge your own identity and not adhere to one that’s been created for you by social norms.

“There’s a character who says at one point, ‘This is Berlin.

Relax. Loosen up. Be yourself’.

After I saw it I was a little braver, I was a little more comfortable in my skin, and I was a little turned on. It’s great stuff.”

(Patrick continues page 28)

( Patrick from page 27) Patrick’s credits include Broadway: Macbeth, Off-Broadway: Edward The Second (Red Bull Theater), Also The York Theater Company, NY Fringe, Fringe Encores, The Brick, and others. Regional Includes: Oklahoma! (Bard Summerscape; Daniel Fish, dir.) Othello, Henry IV, pts 1&2, Henry V, Richard II, As You Like It (Shakespeare Theatre Company), Bay Street Theater, and others. FILM: Xmas In July. Education: MFA: NYU-Graduate Acting Program. ■

Listen to Your Mother is back; tickets available for May 13 event The national movement LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER (LTYM) is back in Rochester for the third consecutive year for a one-night-only performance at The Lyric Theatre on Saturday, May 13 at 7:30 p.m. In celebration of Mother’s Day weekend, 13 local writers will present a live, staged-reading of their stories of motherhood.

Tickets can be purchased in advance at www.brownpapertickets.com/ event/2886548 for $18.50 or at the door for $25. There is also a link to purchase tickets on the LTYM: Rochester show website. Proceeds from LTYM Rochester will benefit the Society for the Protection and Care of Children, which supports children and their families in the Rochester community LTYM is an acclaimed series created by founder and National Director Ann Imig in 2010. This year it is in 29 cities nationwide that will be hosting similar events on or around Mother’s Day. LTYM: Rochester is organized by a team of local women, including co-producers Sally Bittner Bonn (Rochester) and Corrie Spike Carter (Fairport) and co-directors Sarah Fitzgibbons (Roches-

ter) and Monica Gebell (Rochester). The show is being held this year at The Lyric Theatre, located at 440 East Ave. at Prince Street, in Rochester.

The cast of the 2017 LTYM: Rochester show includes Maria DiTullio (Syracuse); Evvy Fanning (Rochester); Mary Finucane (Rochester); Stacey Freed (Pittsford), https://staceyf.contently.com/; Kristen Gentry (Rochester), featured on www. facebook.com/WeAllWriteRoc; Nadia Ghent (Rochester), www.motherology. wordpress.com; Christine Green (Brockport), www.christinejgreen.com; Lara Liu (Rochester), www.shinyapplepress.com; Xavia Omega (Rochester), www.messifulmama.com; Lauren Spiker (Henrietta), www.13thirty.org; Bridget Strub (Rochester); Raquel K. Walker (Rochester), www. dedicatedaisy.com; Miriam Zinter (Rochester).

This community event would not be possible without support from local sponsors, including: (Ultra-Megaphone) Genesee Regional Bank and Sharon Stiller, Esq., Attorney at Law; (Megaphone) Debra Wallace Photography and Writers & Books; (Microphone) Karen Craft Photography & Designs and Nox; (Podium) Balsam Bagels, Lighthouse Gardens, One Hip Chic Optical, Pittsford Pediatric Dentistry, Rochester Brainery, Sara Silvio Handcrafted Jewelry, The Lyric Theatre, and Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester.

Sponsorships are still available. If interested, please call 585.490.9642. For more information about LTYM: Rochester, visit http://listentoyourmothershow. com/rochester.

ImageArt call for work: We Are Family ImageArt 2017 is putting out a call for work for next fall’s ImageOut Film Festival. The exhibit will run Sept. 1- Oct. 21 at Visual Studies Workshop.

Submission Guidelines: The 2015 US Supreme Court ruling that declared same-sex marriage legal provided same-gender loving individual’s access to one of the two dominant forms of kinship making (the other route being biological reproduction). However, this development does not signal LGBTQ people finally being able to access “family,” as LGBTQ people have had to and continue to create alternative models of family that exist outside of marriage and reproduction.

With this in mind, ImageOut seeks submissions of art that explores: how contemporary LGBTQ people are accessing and navigating marriage, family building and child-rearing; the cultural, social and legal barriers to marriage and child-rearing that remain; and historical and contemporary kinship practices that do not reflect dominant conceptions of family (e.g. the nuclear family).

In addition, ImageOut recognizes that abuse, neglect, estrangement, and expulsion cause many LGBTQ people discomfort around the concept of “family.” And so we invite work that does not just treat “family” as an inherent good, but as a concept that needs to be troubled, interrogated, and dismantled.

Eligibility: All artists working in any media can submit up to three works for jury consideration.

Submission deadline: July 15. Submission must include submission form, entry fee ($15 for up to three artworks), artist’s statement (no longer than 300 words) and images of artwork. Fee payable by credit card or check; check made out to ImageOut; write “Art Submission” in memo line. Checks can be sent to ImageOut, 274 N. Goodman St., Rochester NY 14607.

Selected artists will be notified by email in early August. Artworks must be delivered to Visual Studies Workshop between Aug. 21 and 25. If art works are for sale, 60% of sale price will go to the artist and 40% shared by ImageOut and Visual Studies Workshop. For more information, email ImageArt@imageout.org.

G A L L ERY Q

Gallery Q for April: The Dichotomy of Juxtaposition ImageOut and Gallery Q present The Dichotomy of Juxtaposition, photographs

by Cory Fitzgerald and Dan Larkin. The exhibition opens April 7 at Gallery Q, 100 College Ave., with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m.

This exhibition brings together the landscape work of two photographers that is visually complimentary to one another, yet poses a stark juxtaposition conceptually. In Fitzgerald’s series Swarm Trail, he explores what he calls, “the tidal zone of civilization.” He shows the edges to which industry and housing sprawl, and where they also fail and recede.

Fitzgerald says of his work, “It is a space of constant flux, anticipation and devastation, and often unclear whether something is coming or is already gone. It is in traces and trails that our imagina-

DAN LARKIN

( Poetry from page 27) try. Then there are Open Letter Books, with a focus on translation; Tiger Bark Press, also a national small press and Nate Pritts’s H­­_ngm_n Books. The fact that we have these presses here is pretty incredible.”

Tony also likes the area’s poetry events and venues. “Writers & Books is a wellknown site,” he said, “and there’s Nox in Village Gate, a bar which does a lot of programming around books. Many people have had their book launching parties there and most of the presses I’ve mentioned have had events for their writers when they come to town.

“MCC and Brockport both have reading series – MCC hosts four writers a year and Brockport has several writers each semester. Both open the readings to the community. I also have to give a shout to Greenwood Books on East Ave., run by Franlee Frank. She’s really supportive of local poetry and local poets often read at her store.”

Tony concludes, “There’s an enormous sense of community here and I’m only giving you what I’m aware of. I’m sure there’s much more. I tend not to be identified with a particular group. I do a lot of readings but what’s impressed me is that any time you want to reach out to the community, there’s something there.

I think what’s happened to the poetry scene is true of what’s happening in the city now – Rochester is much more open and accepting of diversity. Within the city there is a combined openness and access that weren’t there 30 years ago. That’s pretty remarkable. I always felt there was someplace to go, and that’s only increasing. Through these communities, young writers are now reading more widely. The Rochester poetry scene is thriving, and with people of all ages. So in that respect I’m feeling encouraged.” ■

THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017

CORY FITZGERALD

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tion, memory, and conjecture formulate and infer existence, and this imaginative impulse is one of humankind’s most beautiful and generative qualities, as well as one of its most terrifying and destructive.

This body of work is a collection of images in visual conversation around creation, belief, primal human desire, and destruction, and its relationship to photography.”

In contrast Larkin’s series, Old Cape Cod, explores the beauty of that location. Larkin says, “I’ve never encountered another locale with a quality of light quite like outer Cape Cod. Stuck out there in the ocean, the peninsula is luminescent.

Sunlight radiates from the sky, reflects off the water, and bounces around off the sand revealing everything with an incredible clarity. My interest lies in showing more than how it looks. That, to me, is the difference between taking a picture and making a photograph. I place trust in an ability to suggest how it might have felt.”

Gallery Q is open Monday and Friday 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., as well as Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9 am – 8 pm. The exhibition closes April 28.

“Beauty & the Beast” box office success is victory for LGBTQ visibility worldwide Daniel Reynolds posts on The Advocate: The country of Malaysia and a theater in Alabama may have boycotted Beauty and the Beast due to its “gay moment” — but they were in the vast minority.

Audience members flocked to Dis-

ney’s live-action remake of the 1991 classic in record numbers. The film raked in $174.8 million domestically and $182.3 internationally on its opening weekend, for a total of $357.1 million, Deadline reports.

-Read more on The Advocate

APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET

Book launch party, onenight show for Marilyn Anderson is April 20 ImageOut partners with HRC to host screening of “Political Animals” ImageOut, in partnership with The Human Rights Campaign, presents a fundraising film screening of Political Animals at The Little Theatre on Wednesday, April 5 at 6:30 p.m.

Political Animals (2016 ImageOut Audience Award Winner for Best Documentary) tells the story of the civil rights struggle of this century – the gay rights movement -- through the eyes of four elected women.

The film follows four ground-breaking lesbians who took the fight for LGBT causes most personal to them and their communities off the streets and into the halls of government. These women had the courage and foresight to start the work on legal rights of the LGBT community,

ultimately paving the way for other states across the nation. Bills they authored included the first domestic partnership registry enacted by a legislature, the first anti-bullying bill protecting gay students, and many more.

This film shows how their legislation brought about change in laws and societal acceptance, the strategies behind this incremental change, and what tough bargains had to be made to get us to where we are today.

The LGBTQ community and the Endowment for the Arts both face serious challenges under this new administration.

One small but significant way you can help is by supporting the work of these non-profit organizations.

General admission (includes annual HRC membership or renewal): $7.50 online advance sale through April 4; $12 at the door. For more information and to purchase tickets visit www.ImageOut.org.

Greenwood Books and Rochester Contemporary Art Center (RoCo) announce a book launch party and one night exhibition of Marilyn Anderson’s prints on April 20, 6-8 p.m. at RoCo. Long time resident of Rochester, Marilyn Anderson’s newest book is Guardianes de las artes/Guardians of the Arts. Produced after years of residence in Guatemala, research and documentation, it graphically celebrates Guatemalan arts

29 and crafts traditions and the artists themselves.

Anderson made her first print in this series of forty-three wood and linoleum prints in 1995. Her latest book contains reproductions of these prints, along with twenty-five drawings. Each illustration is accompanied by an extended bilingual caption in Spanish and English which describes each craft, its history and place in today’s world.

Anderson has exhibited her prints, drawings and photographs in NYC, Washington DC., Mexico City and Guatemala City among others. She received three NEA awards in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

She has produced previous books, two printed in the 1970s, Backstrap Weaving (1975) and Guatemalan Textiles Today (1978) along with a third, Granddaughters of Corn (1988) with co-author Jon Garlock.

“Marilyn Anderson is every bookseller’s dream customer,” said Franlee Frank, proprietor of Greenwood Books, “book loving, open to new art and writing, appreciative of the nearly lost art of browsing, talented and progressive.” ■

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GAY ALLIANCE NEWS – APRIL 2017

THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017

Sady Fischer

Meet the Board: Sady Fischer Sady says: One of my favorite Dr. Seuss quotes is “Why fit in when you were born to stand out?” As an out and proud queer Latina feminist who was born in Honduras, raised in Europe and is bilingual in English and German, it wasn’t always easy to fit in. I often didn’t feel queer enough, or Latina enough, or feminist enough – but when I stopped comparing myself to what I thought others would expect of me, I realized I was more than enough.

In fact, I discovered there’s value in being different and having a unique perspective and voice – and that I wasn’t alone.

There are plenty of us who don’t fit in. I represent my queerness, my Honduran roots, and feminism by simply being me – not someone else’s interpretation of what those identities should look like. I am passionate about being vocal, visible and OUT, in order to help others find their own way of being OUT and proud.

So if you’re reading this: Be you and know you are enough. Don’t be afraid to break out of the box.

And then pay it forward to the next generation of nonconformists. As a proud mami to three beautiful boys, I am intentional about raising loving, feminist, social justice warriors with

a love and appreciation for diversity and inclusion. My girlfriend and I raise all of them with the freedom to explore, think, question and be who they are without limitations or judgements based on any aspect of their identity. I want them to grow up living their truths – whatever that may be for them!

In addition to my love of family and challenging societal norms and expectations, I also love a great cup of coffee, spending time outdoors and any excuse to socialize with great people! My favorite women are Audre Lorde, Frida Kahlo, Wonder Woman, and of course, my partner for life and the other mami to our boys, Leslie.

Professionally, I am the Diversity & Inclusion Programs and Outreach Coordinator for the Office of Inclusion at Excellus BCBS. In my one year with the company, I have updated the company’s Gender Transition Guidelines and supported staff in its implementation; I initiated and led the company’s first-time participation in the Puerto Rican Day parade; and am the new 2017 Chair of our LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group, which we renamed Lifetime PRIDE as of March 2017.

My strong training and facilitation skills are part of my tool belt in changing the world one conversation at a time. I try to always assume goodwill, and use my gifts to help shift perspectives and break through stereotypes. In addition to my workshop facilitation at Excellus, I am a trainer with the Gay Alliance’s LGBTQ Academy and member of their Speakers Bureau; a Senior Facilitator with the National Coalition Building Institute’s Rochester Chapter; and a Facilitator with the YWCA’s Racial Equity Program.

Volunteering is something that has always been important to me, which is why I continue

to make time to do so no matter how busy I get! I volunteer for a number of organizations, including Latinas Unidas, FR=EE, and of course the GAGV. I was first introduced to the Gay Alliance by one of my queer activist friends, Erik Libey. He took my young questioning self to rallies and events. It didn’t take long for me to join the Speaker’s Bureau back in 2009 and I’ve been involved with the organization in one way or another since then. After eight years of volunteering, the education team continues to make me feel valued and appreciated. This year, thanks to Jeannie’s enthusiastic persistence, my family and I are participating in Ride for Pride!

I decided to join the Board because I was inspired by the passion and commitment of our current Board President, Colleen Raimond. When she first approached me, I wasn’t looking to add any additional commitments to my plate – but I agreed to meet with her to chat and it was evident that she wants great things for our community. It became clear to me that joining the board would put me in a position to continue to make great things happen for our community. We need more diverse representation in leadership positions to make things better for ALL of our community members. So I have a favor to ask of my LGBTQ+ people of color out there: I’m on the Board now, which means I’m in a position to further address and advocate for the needs of our various intersecting communities, but I need you to help shape what that will look like. In other words: Help me help us to help each other, Fam! I just joined the Board, so my first priority is to listen and learn; to learn about the Board, our role and connection to the Gay Alliance, and about my role. I want to use my position

OUT in the Sticks: The Alliance’s rural outreach program brought people together March 19 in Dansville.

to benefit the needs of diverse communities, such as my Queer Latinx and Black communities! I want to use my role and visibility to build bridges and address issues of racism, classism, sexism, transphobia, other “isms” and forms of power and privilege that we know are present but often shy away from acknowledging and addressing.

To those thinking of volunteering -- just do it! The world is so much bigger than any of us, and through volunteering we all get to be a part of shaping our world. You get to meet new people. You get to know you’re making a difference. You get to grow and learn. Plus, research shows that people who volunteer are happier and healthier and live longer than those who don’t – it’s a win however you look at it!

Josh Stapf

Josh Stapf is the Gay Alliance’s new development director

By Susan Jordan Josh Stapf started as the Gay Alliance’s development director on March 5. He is a native of Niagara Falls and graduated from RIT, majoring in Museum Studies.

He has worked as administrative coordinator for the Susan B. Anthony Museum & House and ran an Art Education program here in Rochester during his senior year and the year after graduation. Josh also worked with RIT’s development department in 2011-2012. As part of his degree work he did research with the membership departments of the Strong Museum, the Seneca Park Zoo and art galleries.

Josh says, “My first priority is building a relationship with many people in all the different communities within the LGBTQ community. I’m starting to meet people and figure out what they like about the Alliance and need from the organization.

“I’ll be reaching out to potential sponsors, such as companies and different organizations like unions, Planned Parenthood, etc. I hope to help the Gay Alliance continue the good work it has done, like SAGE and the LGBTQ Academy, and help the Alliance grow. I look forward to making a great organization even better.”

Dawn Balsis

Volunteer of the Month: Dawn Balsis Dawn Balsis says: I started as an intern with the Gay Alliance in the fall of 2013. I was working on my masters in social work.

After my first meeting with Scott Fearing I knew that the Gay Alliance would be the perfect place for me to complete my field experience. Scott was so welcoming and warm and, as I was to discover, so were the rest of the staff and volunteers.

During my time as an intern I coordinated the youth program. It was an amazing experience that was only made better by getting to work closely with three smart, kind and dedicated volunteers, BJ Scanlon, Adrianne Chesser and Kerry Meagher-Roberts.

I also really enjoyed the kids that would come weekly to our group. As my time was ending as an intern I decided that I wanted to stay on as a volunteer with the youth program. I truly believe I get more out of volunteering with the Gay Alliance than I give. The Gay Alliance is a place where anyone can feel welcome and that they belong.

Al-Anon is a safe place for the LGBTQ community

By Brian, Al-Anon member Alcoholism is a generational disease that affects the entire family unit physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

As a young boy growing up in an alcoholic family, I didn’t know that there was a problem.

It seemed normal that physical fights would break out, there wasn’t enough money to pay bills, and collectors were calling. My father would lose job after job, mom wasn’t emotionally available since she was suffering as well, and we were all just trying to survive.

As a result of growing up in a home with distorted thinking, extremes, lies and half-truths, my early adult life mirrored the childhood crisis that was so

The Gay Alliance is a non-profit agency, dedicated to cultivating a healthy, inclusive environment where Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) people are safe, thriving, and enjoying equal rights. We are a coalition of individuals and groups working to empower LGBTQ people to affirm their identities and create an atmosphere where the diversity can thrive both collectively and separately. We educate and advocate for civil rights for all and for the eradication of homophobia.

Board President: Colleen Raimond • Executive Director: Scott Fearing • Center Director: Jeffrey Myers • Development Director: Josh Stapf Education Director: Jeannie Gainsburg • Education Coordinator: Rowan Collins • Database: Kat Wiggall Bookkeeper: Christopher Hennelly The Empty Closet: Editor: Susan Jordan E-mail: susanj@gayalliance.org Phone: (585) 244-9030 Designer: Jim Anderson Fax: (585) 244-8246 Advertising: (585) 244-9030; Jennie Bowker, jennieb@gayalliance.org.

The Gay Alliance, 100 College Avenue, Rochester, New York 14607 • Hours: Monday-Friday, 9 am-5 pm Phone: (585) 244-8640 • Fax: (585) 244-8246 • Website: www.gayalliance.org • E-mail: Info@gayalliance.org

APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET

GAY ALLIANCE NEWS – APRIL 2017

familiar. As an adult gay man, I chose men who were addicted, mentally unstable, and treated me poorly. At the age of 28 I discovered the Al-Anon Family Groups through a friend who was sober in A.A. When I attended my first Al-Anon meeting, I listened to the other people share about how they practiced the same 12 Steps of A.A. themselves. I heard people talk about the “3 C’s”: I didn’t cause the disease of alcoholism, I can’t control it and I couldn’t cure it. All of these ideas were foreign concepts to me since I lived my life with an overwhelming sense of guilt, shame and responsibility to control and cure my parents’ problems.

When I first began to attend meetings, I felt insecure because I was the only gay person in the room. I wasn’t always honest about my true self because my old thinking was telling me I

wasn’t safe. As I grew in recovery, I realized that other members were loving, kind, sincere and welcoming to me exactly as I was. There have been many Al-Anon members over the years who have touched my life with their strength and loved me until I learned to love myself.

Al-Anon gave me the tools and freedom to grow up. I’ve learned so much about life and I continue to attend meetings even though I do not live with active alcoholism today. There is only one requirement for membership in Al-Anon and that is that your life has been affected by someone’s problem drinking. If you have suffered from the effects of alcoholism, Al-Anon might be for you.

There will be a presentation at the LGBTQ Resource Center on Tuesday April 11 at 6:30 p.m. ■

The Gay Alliance Speaking Engagements for February 2017 • SafeZone Train-The-Trainer Certification Program at San Vicente Family Health Center (Texas) • Creating LGBTQ Inclusive Schools at Victor Central School District • LGBTQ 101 at The Harley School • LGBTQ Panel Presentation at Allendale Columbia • Creating LGBTQ Inclusive Schools for Monroe #1 BOCES Transportation Department • Understanding Non-Binary Identities at the Twelve Corners Middle School GSA • Creating LGBTQ Inclusive Workplaces at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Illinois) • LGBTQ Inclusive Schools Table Talk at New York State National Association for Multicultural Education • SafeZone Train-The-Trainer Certification Program at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Illinois) • SafeZone Training - Part 1 for the West Irondequoit School District • Meeting the Mental Health Needs of LGBTQ Clients at Medaille College • Creating LGBTQ Inclusive Workplaces at MedScribe, Inc. (two trainings offered) • Creating LGBTQ Inclusive Spaces - Part 1 at the YMCA • SafeZone Train-The-Trainer Certification Program at Contra Costa College (California) • Creating LGBTQ Inclusive Schools at Nazareth College • Meeting the Mental Health Needs of LGBTQ Clients at the University of Rochester, Warner School of Education Feedback from participants in February: • “Inspiring, enlightening, felt very supportive. I would be happy to do it all over again! This was really empowering - in a time when a lot of things seem scary and uncertain, to connect in this positive, humanity-affirming way was a gift.”

• “It was amazing, empowering, useful and engaging. The time flew by and I feel much more knowledgeable and confident. The facilitator was fun, engaging, energetic, personable, personal, patient and hilarious. Thank you so much for the many positive reminders of things we know but often forget (like that people come from a place of good will).”

• “It was mind-expanding and inspiring. Most of us feel like we are inclusive and respectful to everyone but we can always learn, listen and practice to really practice inclusion, equality and respect. Not sure how it could be better. I would definitely recommend this to all. Thank you! You have given me the tools to assist humanity.”

SAGE APRIL

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Thursday April 13 10am Breakfast Club at Denny’s, 911 Jefferson Road, Henrietta. RSVP by 4/11 to Audet 585-287- 2958 or email aprice002@aol.com 10:30-11:30am Senior Yoga with Tom 11:30am-2pm BYO lunch, When We Rise, an American docudrama on the LGBT rights movement, part 2 of 4.

Saturday April 15 5-8pm Pot Luck and Bingo Bash. All are welcome. $3 toward token prizes.

Tuesday April 18 10:30-11:30am Senior Yoga with Tom 11am-3pm Mara, Care Manager from Lifespan onsite for consultation 11:30am-2pm catered lunch, presentation

by Home Care of Rochester (HCR): “Spring Cleaning – Brighten up your Attitude”.

7pm Men’s Group hosted by Chuck & Tony

Christopher Hennelly leads Irish karaoke at SAGE’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration.

Tuesday April 4 10:30-11:30am Senior Yoga with Tom 11:30am-2pm catered lunch “Cake Day” celebration of April birthdays, “Hidden LGBTQ History” 5:30-6:30pm Multilevel Mat Yoga for all ages with Tom ($15) 7pm Men’s Topic Discussion Group with Tony & Chuck Thursday April 6 10:30-11:30am Senior Yoga with Tom 11:30am-2pm BYO lunch, When We Rise, an American docudrama on the LGBT rights movement, part 1 of 4 Saturday April 8 11am-1pm Batavia Outreach Planning Meetup. Bohn’s Restaurant, 5256 Clinton St Rd, Batavia, NY 14020. All are invited to help launch new LGBTQ programming west of Rochester. $8. for lunch buffet: salads, beef on weck, chicken salad, eggplant parm, beverages and dessert. You must RSVP to annet@gayalliance.org or (585) 2448640 ext 23.

Sunday April 9 2-6pm Dansville “Out in the Sticks” Intergenerational Potluck and Program, Fearless Hook and Ladder Fire Hall 26 Clara Barton Street 14437. All are welcome. For info contact annet@ gayalliance.org Tuesday April 11 10:30-11:30am Senior Yoga with Tom 11:30am-2pm catered lunch, Spring egg & cookie decorating, Easter & Passover traditions.

5:30-6:30pm Multilevel Mat Yoga for all ages with Tom ($15)

Thursday April 20 10:30-11:30am Senior Yoga with Tom 11:30am-2pm BYO lunch, When We Rise, an American docudrama on the LGBT rights movement, part 3 of 4.

Saturday April 22 6-9pm “Anne’s 65th Birthday Fund-raiser” to launch the SAGE Seniors “Call to Connect” program. Support isolated home bound and rural LGBTQ seniors! $25.suggested donation, appetizers, adult beverages, blackjack with Bess and more...OR you can avoid all the fun & “Pay to Stay Away”! ...either way a check payable to “Gay Alliance” with “SAGE” on the memo line would be greatly appreciated! All donations up to a total of $5000.will be matched by a generous donor. LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Avenue 14607.

Monday April 24 5:30-7pm SAGE Services Team meeting.

Tuesday April 25 10:30-11:30am Senior Yoga with Tom 11:30am-2pm catered lunch, Crafts with Carolyn!

5:30-6:30pm Multilevel Mat Yoga for all ages with Tom ($15) Wednesday April 26 5-7pm SAGE Happy Hour at Lux Lounge (666 South Avenue, Rochester 14620) Thursday April 27 10:30-11:30am Senior Yoga with Tom 11:30am-2pm BYO lunch, When We Rise, an American docudrama on the LGBT rights movement, part 4 of 4.

Friday April 28 5:30pm Fabulous Fish Fry at Merchants Grill (881 Merchant Rd., Rochester) Park across the street. RSVP by 4/26 to Audet 585-287-2958 or aprice002@aol.com

SAGE Rochester is a program of the Gay Alliance designed for LGBTQ people over 50. SAGE operates out of the LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Avenue, Rochester, NY 14607. All programs are open to the public and all are welcome. Senior Yoga is $5 per person and is offered every Tuesday and Thursday unless specified in the calendar. Multilevel Mat Yoga for all ages is $15 per person. A donation of $3 is requested for catered lunches. All programs are subject to change and all members are responsible for their own transportation. Become a SAGE member or get information at sage@ gayallinace.org or call (585) 244-8640. We are also on Facebook as “SAGE Rochester a program of the Gay Alliance”

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THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017

Resources Check our Monthly and Ongoing Calendar and Community section for more groups and events. For further information, call the Gay Alliance, 244-8640 or visit: www. gayalliance.org. More SAGE and Gay Alliance Youth Group info: pages 30-31.

BISEXUALITY RESOURCES AMBI Los Angeles; American Institute of Bisexuality (Journal of Bisexuality); Bay Area Bisexual Network; ; BiNet USA; Bisexual Organizing Project (BOP); Biversity Boston; Boston Bisexual Women’s Network; ComBIne - Columbus, Ohio; Fenway Health’s Bi Health Program; Los Angeles Bi Task Force; New York Area Bisexual Network; Robyn Ochs’s site; The Bi Writers Association; The Bisexual Resource Center (email brc@biresource.net)

CULTURAL Rochester Women’s Community Chorus 234-4441. (See Ongoing calendar).

Rochester Gay Men’s Chorus www.thergmc.org Open Arms Community Center Available for parties, events, meetings. 707 E. Main St. Parking. Accepting and welcoming of all.

271-8478.

DEAF SERVICES Deaf Rainbow Network of Rochester See Facebook.

Spectrum LGBTIQ & Straight Alliance RIT/NTID student group. <SpectrumComment@ groups.facebook.com ASADV Our mission is to provide support to the Deaf community and to Deaf, Deaf-Blind, and Hard of Hearing individuals, families, and children who are or have been victims/survivors of domestic violence and/or sexual abuse. A safe and supportive environment of advocacy, empowerment, community education, and training services. All staff are Deaf. All staff, advocates, and volunteers are fluent in American Sign Language (ASL). It is our vision that the various components of ASADV be Deaf-run and be advocates within institutionalized systems. We work cooperatively with various Deaf and hearing-based agencies. PO Box 20023, Rochester, NY 14602, www.asadv.org. 585/2862713

ELDERS Gay Alliance SAGE Rochester Many monthly get togethers, LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. 244-8640; SAGE@gayalliance.org. See page 31.

FAMILY Adoption Place at JFS Jewish Family Service of Rochester 441 East Ave., Rochester, NY 14607. You can adopt! Adoption Place at Jewish Family Service of Rochester provides adoption consultation, home studies and post-placement supervision to the entire community regardless of race, religion, ethnic background, sexual orientation, gender expression or gender identity. Laura Glasner, LCSW-R, Adoption Director, 585-461-0110; lglasner@jfsrochester. org; www.jfsrochester.org Rochester Gay Dads The meetup.com website is: https://www.meetup.com/RochesterGayDads/ Resource or starting point for gay dads in the area to reach out for support, questions about starting a family, etc.

Open Arms Community Center Open Arms Community Center available for parties, events and meetings; 707 East Main St. Plenty of parking. We are inclusive, actively accepting, welcoming of all people. 271-8478 openarmsmcc.org CNY Fertility Center Integrative Fertility Care. Support meetings, webinars, workshops. Information: cbriel@cnyfertility. com; www.cnyhealingarts.com Rochester Gay Moms’ Group Support group for lesbian mommies and wannabe mommies in Rochester and surrounding areas.

Subscribe: RochesterGayMoms-subscribe@ yahoogroups.com.

Catholic Charities Community Services 1099 Jay Street, Building J (585) 339-9800, www.ccsrochester.org . Offers: Families in Transition services for HIV positive parents with small children, short term/long term housing assistance, employment services, supportive case management, health education and behavioral health education and peer navigation for substance abuse linkages.

Lesbian & Gay Family Building Project Headquartered in Binghamton and with a presence throughout Upstate NY. Claudia Stallman, Project Director, 124 Front St., Binghamton, NY 13905; 607-724-4308; e-mail: LesGayFamBldg@ aol.com. Web: www.PrideAndJoyFamilies.org.

Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) PFLAG’s threefold mission: supporting parents and family members in coming out process; educating the community; advocating on behalf of LGBT family members. rochesterepflag@gmail. com; 585-993-3297.

Adoptive Parent Support Group Monthly potluck lunches. For information, location, call Shari, 350-2529.

HIV/AIDS Free testing for HIV exposure is available from New York State Department of Health: call Rochester Area Regional Hotline at (585) 423-8081, or 1 800 962-5063. Deaf or hearing impaired people should call (585) 4238021 (TDD.) Available from NY Dept. of Health: HIV and STD resource testing site. Rapid testing in only 10 minutes. STD testing provided by Bullshead Clinic, 855 W. Main St., Rochester. Contact: Narissa @ Rochester hotline.

Volunteer Legal Services Project (585) 232-3051; www.vlsprochester.org. 1 West Main St., Suite 500 Rochester, NY 14614. Free legal services for low-income HIV positive clients.

No criminal cases. Appointments: scheduled at medical provider locations or at 295-5708.

Trillium Health Trillium Health is the leading provider of HIV/AIDS services in Rochester and the Finger Lakes. Onsite services include HIV testing and limited STD screenings, Primary and HIV Specialty Medical Care, Pharmacy, and many more. Satellite offices in Geneva and Bath. Contact Information: Website: www.trilliumhealthny.org. Main Office: 259 Monroe Ave., Rochester, NY 14607; Main Phone: 585-545-7200, Health Services After Hours: 585-258-3363; Case Management After Hours (Lifeline): 585-275-5151; Fax: 585-244-6456.

Finger Lakes Office: 605 W. Washington St., Geneva, NY 14456, 315-781-6303. Southern Tier Office: Buell St. Box 624, Bath, NY 14810 607776-9166. The Health Outreach Project: 416 Central Ave., Rochester, NY 14605; 585-454-5556.

Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley Referrals to physicians and service agencies.

(585) 244-8640; www.gayalliance.org.

Victory Alliance University of Rochester Medical Center. One of several research sites worldwide that comprise the HIV Vaccine Trials Network. Rochester site conducts research vaccine studies sponsored

by National Institutes of Health (NIH). 585-7562329; www.vaccineunit.org.

Threshold At The Community Place, 145 Parsells Ave., third floor, 585-454-7530. Provides confidential HIV, STD testing and General Health Care, ages 12-25.

Sliding fee scale, no one denied, most insurances accepted. Mon., Wed., Fri. 9am-5pm; Tues., Thurs., 9am-7pm; Sat. 10am-2pm. www.ThresholdCenter.org Center for Health and Behavioral Training of Monroe County 853 W. Main St., Rochester 14611. Collaboration of Monroe County Health Department and U.R. Provides year-round training in prevention and management of STDs, HIV, TB and related issues, such as domestic violence and case management. (585)753-5382 v/tty.

Planned Parenthood of the Rochester/Syracuse Region 114 University Ave., Rochester, NY 14605; Tollfree Helpline: 1 866 600-6886. Offers confidential HIV testing and information. Ask about our sliding scale fees. No one is turned away for lack of ability to pay.

Rochester Area Task Force on AIDS A collection of agencies providing a multiplicity of resources and services to the upstate New York community. Their offices are located through the Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency, which also provides medical literature and newspaper clippings, as well as demographic and statistical data for use in developing health care services. (585) 461-3520.

The MOCHA Center of Rochester Our mission is to improve health and wellness in communities of color. Youth drop-in center, HIV testing, peer education, support groups, computer lab, referral services and more. 189 N. Water St., lower level. (585) 420-1400.

Monroe County Health Department at 855 W. Main St., offers testing and counseling for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

(585) 753-5481. Hours: M-W 8:30-5:30; R: 8:30-11 am; F 7:30-2:30.

Strong Memorial Hospital provides a complete range of HIV medical care, including access to experimental treatment protocols, and HIV testing. Also provides individual and group psychotherapy. Training of health care professionals also available. Infectious Disease Clinic, (585) 275-0526. Department of Psychiatry, (585) 275-3379. AIDS Training Project, (585) 275-5693.

Planned Parenthood of Rochester and Genesee Valley Offers testing and information (585) 546 2595.

Rural HIV testing Anonymous and confidential, in Allegany, Livingston, Ontario, Schuyler, Seneca, Steuben, Wayne or Yates Counties, call 1 800 962-5063.

Action Front Center (Action for a Better Community.) Provides HIV, STD, viral hepatitis prevention counseling, risk reduction counseling. Tailored programs available to incarcerated, ex-offender individuals.

Services for people living with HIV; case management, peer support groups, United Colors support group for MSM of color, educational groups, peer educator training and leadership development, multicultural, bilingual staff. 33 Chestnut St., 2nd floor, Rochester 14604. Office hours M-F 8:30 am-5 pm. 585-262-4330.

Anthony Jordan Health Center Jordan Health’s Prevention & Primary Care Department provides personalized care designed to address and treat the needs of people living with HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C; and services focusing on the prevention of those diseases.

Bilingual staff serves both English and Spanishspeaking patients. HIV and hepatitis C virus (HVC) rapid testing as well as HIV and HCV education and counseling. Walk-in testing at all Jordan Health Sites. Prevention & Primary Care Department hours are Mon – Fri 830a – 5p.

HIV Clinic hours are Tuesday and Friday 830a – 400p. HCV Clinic hours are Wednesday and Friday 100p – 500p. The Prevention & Primary Care Department has two sites: Anthony L. Jordan Health Center 82 Holland Street, Rochester 14605 585.423.2879, fax 585.423.2876 and Woodward Health Center, 480 Genesee Street, Rochester 14611, fax 585.295.6009 Jordan Health’s Prevention and Primary Care Department is now providing PrEP services. For more information please call 585.436.PREP (7737). We are accepting new PrEP patients at the following sites: Anthony L. Jordan Health Center, Woodward Health Center and Jordan Health at Community Place, 145 Parsells Ave. 585.436.3040 x1764 - 585.454.7530 CDC National STD and AIDS Hotline 1-800-CDC-INFO (800-232-4636) 24 hours a day. TTY service: 1-888-232-6348. E-mail address: cdcinfo@cdc.gov.

Fair Housing Enforcement Project of Monroe County 585-325-2500; 1-800-669-9777. Deals with housing discrimination on basis of race, orientation, HIV status, etc.

Public Interest Law Office of Rochester 1 W. Main St., Suites 200 & 300. Free legal services to HIV positive persons, families. Spanish bilingual advocates available. All civil cases except divorce; no criminal cases. Ask to speak to someone in PILOR. 454-4060.

Westside Health Services Brown Square Health Center, 175 Lyell Ave. (254-6480); Woodward Health Center, 480 Genesee St. (436-3040). HIV/AIDS services, support, more.

McCree McCuller Wellness Center at Unity Health’s Connection Clinic (585) 368-3506, 89 Genesee St., Bishop Kearney Bldg., 3rd floor. Full range of services, regardless of ability to pay. Caring, confidential and convenient.

Geneva Community Health 601 W. Washington St., Geneva. Provides HIV testing, HIV specialty and primary care for residents of Ontario and surrounding counties. M, W, R, F 8am-8pm. 315-781-8448.

LGBT HEALTH Huther Doyle Healthcare, chemical dependency treatment.

585-325-5100; www.hutherdoyle.com Trillium Health See www.trilliumhealthny.org LGBT Healthy Living: Veterans Canandaigua VA, second and fourth Tuesdays, 10-11am, Building One, 2nd floor, room 245.

Matt Cokely 585-393-7115.

HCR Home Care We provide a full multidisciplinary team consisting of nursing, social work, physical, occupational, and speech therapies as well as home health aides who have completed the eight-hour cultural competency program provided by the Gay Alliance. More information: 585-272-1930 or visit us online at HCRhealth.com.

TRANSGENDER Trans Alliance of Greater Rochester (TAGR) Support/educational group for gender variant people and allies. Last Saturday, 3-5:30pm, Open Arms MCC, 707 E. Main St. Adult Families of Trans Youth (AFTY) First Tuesdays, 5:30-6:30pm, Open Arms MCC, 707 E. Main St. Trans Lifeline Hotline for transgender people experiencing crisis.

Staffed by transgender people for transgender people. (877) 565-8860. Additional info is available at www.translifeline.org.

TransParent Support group for parents of trans children. Third Tuesdays, 6:30-8pm LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. Empire Justice Center Milo Primeaux, Esq., Hanna S. Cohn Equal Justice Fellow, Empire Justice Center, LGBT Rights Project, Telesca Center for Justice, 1 West Main Street, Suite 200, Rochester, NY 14614. (585) 295-5721 Fax (585) 454-2518, mprimeaux@ empirejustice.org, www.empirejustice.org.

Volunteer Legal Services Project (585) 232-3051; www.vlsprochester.org.1 West Main St. Suite 500, Rochester, NY 14614. Free legal services for low-income clients seeking a name change. Other services for low-income clients include family law issues, bankruptcy, unemployment insurance hearings, wills and advance directive documents for clients with serious illnesses.

Gay Alliance Youth Gender Identity Support Group First Tuesdays 5:30-6:30 100 College Ave. Ages 13-18. 244-8640 Genesee Valley Gender Variants Thurs. 7-9pm, Equal Grounds, 750 South Ave. GVGenderVariants@yahoogroups.com Guys’ Night Out Trans* group, 1pm second Saturdays at Equal=Grounds, 750 South Ave. Transmen and those identifying with trans-masculine experience (including questioning individuals) welcome. Contact Adrian at abartholomeo@gmail.com.

WOMEN Highland Hospital Breast Imaging Center 500 Red Creek Drive, Rochester 14623; 585487-3341. Specializing in breast health, diagnostic breast imaging and treatment and mammography outreach and education.

Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester 1048 University Ave., Rochester NY 14607 585-473-8177; www.bccr.org; info@bccr.org Programs and services for those diagnosed with breast or GYN cancer. Programs include support and networking groups, Healing Arts classes, book club, writing workshop, monthly evening seminars and a group for those living with metastatic breast cancer. Comprehensive lending library. All programs and services FREE. Center for Community Health (585) 224-3050. Comprehensive breast cancer screening services for uninsured and underinsured women.

Elizabeth Wende Breast Clinic 170 Sawgrass Drive. 442-8432. Mammograms.

Self Help for Women with Breast or Ovarian Cancer (SHARE) Breast: 866-891-2392; Ovarian: 866-537-4273.

Willow Domestic Violence Center 232-7353; TTY 232-1741. Shelter (women only), counseling. Lesbians, gay men welcome.

Victim Resource Center of Wayne County Newark N.Y. Hotline 800-456-1172; office (315)331-1171; fax (315)331-1189.

Mary Magdalene House Women’s outreach center for HIV positive women and women at risk. 291 Lyell Ave. Open Mon-Fri. 6:30-9:30pm.

Planned Parenthood of the Rochester/ Syracuse Region 114 University Ave., Rochester, NY 14605; Toll-free Helpline: 1-866-600-6886. Planned Parenthood has led the way in providing high quality, affordable reproductive health care since 1916. All services are confidential. Accept most insurances; including Medicaid. You may qualify for low- to no-cost family planning services. When you make your appointment, ask about our sliding scale fees. No one turned away for lack of ability to pay.

Women’s Shelter YWCA, 175 N. Clinton Ave. 546-5820.

YOUTH Gay Alliance Youth Group Monthly Special Events 100 College Ave. 2448640; Ages 13-20. www.gayalliance.org. Check Facebook.com/GayAllianceYouth Gay Alliance Youth Gender Identity Social/Support Group First Tuesdays 5:30-6:30 LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave., Ages 13-18. 244-8640 Trevor Project The Trevor Project offers 24/7 Lifeline with trained counselors, 1-866-488-7386; Trevor Chat, instant messaging; TrevorSpace online where youth can talk to each other, and Trevor Text with text trained counselors for support and crisis intervention.

CNY Youth Group Bi-Polar Support.

Second Monday of every month. 315-428-9366 Teen Clinic at Planned Parenthood 114 University Avenue Rochester. Birth control, condoms, HIV testing, counseling. Weekly, Tuesdays 3-7pm..

APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET

Ongoing Calendar DAILY

Free confidential walk-in HIV testing M/W 9am-5pm, T/Th 9am-7pm, F 9am-12:30pm Trillium Health 259 Monroe Ave. 585-545-7200 Gay Alliance Library & Archives 9am-5pm. Tues./Wed./Thurs. 6:30-8:30pm 100 College Ave. Walk-in HIV testing At all Anthony Jordan health center sites including 82 Holland St. (See Resources)

MONDAYS Women’s Coffee Social Equal Grounds Coffee House 750 South Ave. Monday evenings. 7 pm. Contact: Regina Altizer: reginaaltizer@gmail.com Crystal Meth Anonymous Meeting Every Monday 12-1pm. Huther Doyle, 360 East Ave., Rochester. Starting Monday Oct. 5.

Rochester Historical Bowling Society 7pm. Empire Lanes Born That Way Formerly 3rd Presbyterian LGBT Support Group.

First, 3rd Mondays, 7:30-9:30pm, 34 Meigs St. Carol, 482-3832 or Kaara, 654-7516.

Frontrunners/Frontwalkers Mondays, 6pm, George Eastman House parking lot. www.rochesterfrontrunners.org.

Steps Beyond Stems Crack Support Group, Mondays, 7-8pm, 289 Monroe Ave.

TUESDAYS Craft Night Every Other Tuesday, 6:30-8pm, LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. 244-8640.

Just Poets workshop Third Tuesdays thru May, 6:30-8:30pm, LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. 244-8640.

The Social Grind 10am-12noon and again 7:30-9pm at Equal Grounds, 750 South Ave. Email: DHutch457@aol. com for information Teen Clinic at Planned Parenthood 114 University Avenue Rochester. Birth control, condoms, HIV testing, counseling. Weekly, Tuesdays 3-7pm.

Adult Families of Trans Youth (AFTY) First Tuesdays, 5:30-6:30, Open Arms MCC Community Center, 707 E. Main St. TransParent Support group for parents of trans youth. Third Tuesdays, 6:30-8pm, LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. LGBT Healthy Living Veterans support. 2nd, 4th Tuesdays, 10-11am Canandaigua VA, bldg. 9, room 8, Library conference room. 585 463-2731, 585 205-3360.

Testing Tuesdays at Trillium Health FREE HIV Testing for everyone, STI/STD testing FREE for women and MSM. Trillium Health, 259 Monroe Ave, 5-8 pm. 585-545-7200 Women’s Community Chorus Rehearsals each Tuesday, 6:30-9pm, Downtown United Pres. Church, 121 N. Fitzhugh Street. 2344441, www.therwcc.org Gay Alliance Youth Gender Identity Support Group 5:30-6:30pm, LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. Ages 13-20. 244-8640.

SAGE Rochester 50+ Tuesdays and Thursdays, usually 10:30am at venues including LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. 244-8640. (See page 31) SAGE Men’s Group 50+ 7pm, LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. 1st, 3rd Tuesdays. rtony13@aol.com

WEDNESDAYS Identity Group LGBT identified individuals who have a developmental disability diagnosis. The group meets Wednesdays 3-4 pm at ARC Health Services (2060 Brighton-Henrietta Townline Rd. 14623).

The goal is to provide a safe space to discuss identity issues, share personal experiences and increase self-esteem. Facilitated by Delaina Fico.

LMSW. Contact Delaina Fico at dfico@arcmonroe.org or 585-271-0661 ext. 1552.

Line Dancing at 140 Alex Weekly on Wednesday, 7– 9pm. 140 Alex Bar & Grill, 140 Alexander St. Line dancing lessons upstairs. All types of music, relaxed group, beginners welcome! $2 a person suggested donation.

LORA Knitting Group 6pm, Equal Grounds Coffee House, 750 South Ave. LORA Knitting group meets the 1st & 3rd Wednesdays of the month from Equal Grounds Coffee House. For more info visit www.loragroup.org or Contact Kerry Cater: dressyfemme@aol.com or email us at info@loragroup.org

Lifetime Care LGBT Bereavement Support Group For loss associated with any type of relationship.

Meets 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of every month from 5:30-7pm at Center for Compassion and Healing (3111 Winton Rd S). No fee. Please call 475-8800 for more details.

Gay Alliance Board of Directors Meets Third Wednesdays, 6pm, 100 College Ave., 244-8640 New Freedom New Happiness AA Gay meeting, 7pm, Unitarian Church, 220 Winton Rd. Men and women. Open.

COAP Come Out and Play Wednesday game nights. 7-10pm.

Equal=Grounds, 750 South Ave. coap.rochester@ gmail.com Rochester Rams General Meeting 2nd Wednesdays, 7:30pm, Bachelor Forum, 670 University Ave. www.rochesterrams.com Positive Warriors Wednesdays, 11:30am-12:30pm. Trillium Health, 259 Monroe Ave. Positive Divas Wednesdays, 11:30am-12:30pm. Trillium Health, 259 Monroe Ave. Frontrunners/Frontwalkers 6pm, Eastman House parking lot. www.rochesterfrontrunners.org.

Gay Alliance Library & Archives 6:30-8:30pm (Also Tues. and Thurs.) 100 College Ave. Empire Bears Every Wednesday. 6pm dinner at various venues.

See Empire Bears Inc. on Facebook.

THURSDAYS Safe Space Discussion Thursdays, 7-9 pm, at LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. 244-8640.

Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns 6:30pm, first Thursday. Ralph, 271-7649 Pride at Work & AFL CIO First Thursdays, 5:30pm. 1354 Buffalo Road, Rochester 14624, 426-0862.

Depression Bipolar Support Alliance Youth and young adults. LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. dbsa.monroecounty@gmail.com GLOB&L (Gays & Lesbians of Bausch & Lomb) Meets every third Thursday in Area 67 conference room at the Optic Center. Voice mail: 338-8977 Rochester Gay Men’s Chorus Downtown United Presbyterian Church, 121 N. Fitzhugh St. 7-9:30pm, 423-0650 NLIST Transgender Support Group 5-6:15pm, Trillium Health. Must pre-register.

Out & Equal Second Thursdays Social/business networking, 5:30-7:30pm.

Changing venues. E-mail: fingerlakes@outandequal.org Genesee Valley Gender Variants 7-9pm, Equal=Grounds, 750 South Ave. GV GenderVariants@yahoogroups.com SAGE Rochester 50+ Tuesdays and Thursdays, usually 10:30am at venues including LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave, 244-8640. (See page 31)

FRIDAYS LGBT AA meeting Fridays, 7:30-8:30pm, Closed meeting. Emmanuel Baptist Church, 815 Park Ave. Gay Alliance Youth Monthly Special Event, LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave., 244-8640; Ages 13-20. youth@gayalliance.org. Check Facebook.com/ GayAllianceYouth GLBTQI Motorcycle Group Second Fridays, 5:30pm, Various locations.

RochesterGLBTIQbikers@yahoo.com; 467-6456; bmdaniels@frontiernet.net.

Boyz Night Out Drag king revue. First Fridays, The Firehouse Saloon, 814 S. Clinton Ave.

SATURDAYS The Repair Shop AA meeting at the LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. 5:30-6:30 pm, Saturdays. 2448640.

Rochester Rams Bar Night Third Saturdays, 8pm-2am, Bachelor Forum, 670 University Ave. 271-6930 Sapphic Singles – Professional Women’s Group http://www.meetup.com/Sapphic-Singles-Rochester/. Contact: Patty: Email: pattyrdn11@gmail. com. Phone: 585.223.6743. 3rd Saturday of each month. Monthly Dinner Socials for single professional women at various locations in and around Rochester NY area! Join us!

Trans Alliance of Greater Rochester Support/educational group for gender-variant people, allies. Last Saturdays, 3-5:30pm, Open Arms MCC, 707 E. Main St. Frontrunners/Frontwalkers 9am, George Eastman House parking lot.www. rochesterfrontrunners.org.

Guys Night Out GNO, social group for transmen, now meets on the second Saturday of the month, @ 1pm @ Equal Grounds, 750 South Ave. Saturday Night Special Gay AA 7pm, Unitarian Church, 220 Winton Rd., S. Men and women. Open meeting.

Sophia’s Supper Club First, third Saturdays, 25 Bernie Lane, 6:30 pm.

Men’s Cooking Group Third, fourth Saturdays. 585-355-7664; mcgofrochester@aol.com.

SUNDAYS Campy Classic Cinema Free movies and popcorn, second Sundays at 2 pm, LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. “Celebrating LGBTQ culture through film”. An Inqueery event. For movie line-up call 244-8640.

PFLAG (Parents Families & Friends of Lesbians And Gays) 585 993-3297; rochesterpflag@gmail. com.

LORA brunch Third Sundays. For location, time contact Kerry at DressyFemme@aol.com Dignity-Integrity 1st Sunday: 5pm Episcopal Eucharist with music; 2nd Sunday: 5pm Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Word with music; 3rd Sunday: 5pm Episcopal Eucharist (quiet); 4th Sunday: 5pm Prayers to start the week, followed by potluck supper.

Open Arms Metropolitan Community Church 707 E. Main St., Services at: 10:30am. 271-8478.

Gay Men’s Alcoholics Anonymous St. Luke’s/St. Simon Cyrene Church, 17 S. Fitzhugh St. 8pm, 232-6720, Weekly.

Closed meeting ■

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ROCHESTER AA/NA MEETINGS

Every week there are three regularly scheduled GLBTI AA and two inclusive NA meetings in Rochester.

TUESDAYS Narcotics Anonymous 6-7:30pm. AIDS and Recovery 1124 Culver Road (Covenant United Methodist Church) This is an NA meeting that is open to all addicts who have a desire to stop using. Although it is not specifically a gay-oriented meeting, it is welcoming to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, as well as to anyone who is affected by HIV and AIDS.

FRIDAYS LGBT 7:30pm. Immanuel Baptist Church, 815 Park Ave. • Open meeting • Handicapped accessible This is a round-robin discussion meeting. If you are shy about meeting people or speaking up in a group, you will find this meeting particularly warm and inviting because everyone gets their turn to speak (or pass). As a result, this meeting often runs long, so plan on more than the usual hour.

SATURDAYS The Repair Shop AA meeting at the LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. 5:30-6:30pm, Saturdays. 244-8640.

Saturday Night Special 7pm. First Unitarian Church, 220 S. Winton Rd. Bus riders: The #18 University Ave. bus does not go by the church on weekend evenings. Take the #1 Park Ave. bus to the corner of East and Winton, then walk five minutes south (uphill) on Winton.

• Open meeting, all are welcome, “straight friendly” • Mixed men and women • Handicapped accessible, take elevator to basement Meeting begins with a speaker, followed by open discussion.

SUNDAYS Step in the Right Direction 7:30-9pm. 1275 Spencerport Road (Trinity Alliance Church) This is an NA meeting that is open to all addicts who have a desire to stop using.

Although it is not specifically a gay-oriented meeting, it is welcoming to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. Each week features a reading from NA literature, followed by discussion.

Rochester Gay Men 8pm. St. Luke/St. Simon’s Episcopal Church, 17 S. Fitzhugh Street. Bus riders use the Fitzhugh Street stop on Main Street at the County Office Building and walk south one block.

• Closed meeting, restricted to alcoholics and addicts • Men’s meeting • NOT handicapped accessible Meeting begins with a speaker, followed by open discussion. ■

GAY ALLIANCE LIBRARY & ARCHIVES

100 College Avenue, 9am-5pm and on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings, 6:30-8:30pm.

Check out our ten thousand-volume library, along with the Bohnett Cyber Center.

Contact us: library@gayalliance.org or at 585-244-8640.

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THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017

April 2017 SATURDAY 1

Open Arms MCC fundraiser to support Giving Arms ministry. 5-7 pm spaghetti dinner, music and raffles 7-9 pm.

707 E. Main St. Tom Somerville art opening. Record Archive. 5-9 pm

SUNDAY 2

Dignity Integrity. Episcopal Mass/ Healing Service, with music. 5 pm at St. Luke’s and St. Simon’s Church, 17 S. Fitzhugh St. Open Arms MCC TRANSformative ministry meeting, noon-1:30 pm. 707 E. Main St. New Beginnings Christian Fellowship, 707 E. Main St., at Open Arms MCC. Service and guest speaker Bishop M. Maurice Garland, 3 pm.

TUESDAY 4

Equal Pay Day. Rochester NOW sponsors lower cost coffee for women at Coffee Connection, 681 South Ave., 1872 Café at 431 W. Main St. NOW asks all to write/call/email members of Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. For more information: info@rochesternow.org Just Poets workshop, 6:30-8:30 pm, LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. Free; also April 18 and 25. Registration is required. Send your name, contact info, and a poem you’ve written to colleenpowderly@gmail.com.

Mid level yoga for all ages by Tom Somerville. Tuesdays, 5:30-6:30 pm at LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. $15 per session.

WEDNESDAY 5

LORA Variety Night social, coffee, dessert, karaoke. $3, 6-8 pm. LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave.

“Political Animals” screening hosted

by ImageOut, Human Rights Campaign.

6:30 pm, Little Theatre. $7.50 online advance sale through April 4; $12 at door. www.ImageOut.org

FRIDAY 7

Gallery Q First Friday opening.

“The Dichotomy of Juxtaposition” by Cory Fitzgerald and Dan Larkin, in partnership with ImageOut. Reception 6-9 pm. 100 College Ave.

SATURDAY 8

Dirty Thirty Crazy Cash. Fundraiser for GREAT, Gay Alliance. 4 pm, Bachelor Forum, 670 University Ave. $20 ticket donation. Drawing 8 pm.crazycash@ bowlgreat.org Healing, Coalition Building and Decolonization. 4th annual Northeast Queer and Trans People of Color Conference. Through April 8, Princeton University. Neqtpoc.com CampusOut summit. 9 am-4 pm, St. John Fisher College, Golisano Gateway Upper Level.

Batavia Outreach Planning Meetup. Bohn’s Restaurant, 5256 Clinton St Rd, Batavia, NY 14020. All are invited to help launch new LGBTQ programming west of Rochester. $8 for lunch buffet: salads, beef on weck, chicken salad, eggplant parm, beverages and dessert. You must RSVP to annet@gayalliance.org or (585) 244-8640 ext 23.

SUNDAY 9

Dignity Integrity. Palm Sunday.

Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Word, with music. 5 pm at St. Luke’s and St. Simon’s Church, 17 S. Fitzhugh St. SAGE Rural Outreach. 2-6 pm Dansville “Out in the Sticks” Intergenerational Potluck and Program, Fearless Hook and Ladder Fire Hall 26 Clara Barton St. 14437. All are welcome. For info contact annet@gayalliance.org

Classifieds Classified ads are $5 for the first 30 words; each additional 10 words is another $1. We do not bill for classifieds, so please send or bring ad and payment to: The Empty Closet, 100 College Ave., Rochester, NY 14607.

Paying by check: checks must be made out to Gay Alliance. The deadline is the 15th of the month, for the following month’s issue. We cannot accept ads over the phone. Pay when you place your ad. We will accept only ads accompanied by name and phone number. Neither will be published, but we must be able to confirm placement.

The Empty Closet is not responsible for financial loss or physical injury that may result from any contact with an advertiser. Advertisers must use their own box number, voice mail, e-mail or phone number. No personal home addresses or names allowed. Classified ads are not published on The Empty Closet page of our website. However, each issue of the paper is reproduced online in its entirety at ww.gayalliance.org

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Children’s Ministry thriving at Open Arms Metropolitan Community Church for toddlers to ‘tweens. Join us for vibrant, inclusive, progressive worship on Sundays at 10:30 am, 707 E. Main St. info@ openarmsmcc.org; (585) 271-8478.

SERVICES

Rochester’s Best Man to Man Rubdown. Unwind with this degreed, employed, fit, friendly, healthy, Italian GWM. Middle aged, 5’8”, 165 lbs., 32” waist, nonsmoker, d & d free, HIV negative. My 10-plus years experience guarantees your relaxation and satisfaction.

Hotel visit, in call in my home or out call in your residence. Reasonable rates. Dis-

cretion appreciated and practiced. Don’t delay, call me today at 585-773-2410 (cell) or 585-235-6688 (home).

Sacred, loving interfaith presence to mark your life’s special days and help you to navigate your way. Weddings, memorials, baby blessings, house blessings, spiritual counseling. Reverend Gaioma Bair (585)494-1795.

Martin Ippolito master electrician.

Electrical work, telephone jacks, cable TV, burglar alarm systems, paddle fans.

585-266-6337.

Wedding Space and clergy services available. Celebrate your special day at Open Arms Metropolitan Community Church, 707 E. Main St. info@ openarmsmcc.org (585) 271-8478.

SATURDAY 22 TUESDAY 11

Al Anon presentation. 6:30 pm, LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. Adoption Information Seminar. Presented by Adoption Place of Jewish Family Service of Rochester. 6-8 pm, Gay Alliance LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. RSVP: lglasner@jfsrochester. org; 585-461-0110.

WEDNESDAY 12

LGBT Community Passover Seder, 6:30-8:30 pm, LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. Includes interactive program, light meal. All welcome.

THURSDAY 13

SAGE Breakfast Club, 10 am, Denny’s, 911 Jefferson Road, Henrietta. RSVP by 4/11 to Audet 585-287- 2958 or email aprice002@aol.com.

SUNDAY 16

Dignity Integrity. Easter. Quiet Episcopal Mass. 5 pm at St. Luke’s and St. Simon’s Church, 17 S. Fitzhugh St. Open Arms MCC Easter service, 10:30 am, followed by Easter brunch. 707 E. Main St.

TUESDAY 18

Just Poets Workshop, 6:30-8:30 pm, LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. 244-8640. Also April 25.

WEDNESDAY 19

Youth Movie Club. “Deep Run” screening. True story of young trans couple in N. Carolina. 6:30 pm, Little Theatre. Movie Club meets at LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave., weekly for 6-8 weeks, with different film, followed by dialogue, activity or guest speaker. April 19 event is end of series.

Open to LGBTQ and ally youth ages 14-20. Jmoll2@u.brockport.edu

Earth Day. Parade starts 10 am at Wadsworth Square.

Anne’s 65th Birthday Fundraiser, 6-9 pm, LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. Fundraiser for SAGE Seniors “Call to Connect” supporting homebound and rural LGBTQ seniors. $25 suggested donation, food, adult beverages, blackjack with Bess and more!

SUNDAY 23

Dignity Integrity. Prayers to start the Week followed by April in Paris potluck. 5 pm at St. Luke’s and St. Simon’s Church, 17 S. Fitzhugh St.

TUESDAY 25

Jewish Family Services Adoption Inqueery. 6-8 pm, LGBTQ Resource Center, 100 College Ave. Ladies Only Skinny Dip Party. Free for first time visitors. 7-10 pm. Indoor pool, hot tub , sauna. For location: Rowena@NaturistRochester.org

THURSDAY 27

LORA Night Out. “Winging It” At Richmond’s, 21 Richmond St. 5-7 pm.

FRIDAY 28

SAGE Fabulous Fish Fry at Merchants Grill (881 Merchant Road, Rochester) Park across the street. RSVP by 4/26 to Audet, 585-287-2958 or aprice002@ aol.com

SATURDAY 29

Open Arms MCC fundraiser, Pop ‘N Hots concession stand at Red Wings stadium, starting noon.

Rochester Gay Men’s Chorus fundraiser More Than Us. Historic German House, 315 Gregory St. Tickets $55/person or $100 for two. www.thergmc.org; 585-423-0650.

SUNDAY 30

Beltain, Walpurgisnacht. Ancient Celtic Cross Quarter fire feast of spring and the life force.

Dignity Integrity. Catholic Eucharist, with music. 5 pm at St. Luke’s and St. Simon’s Church, 17 S. Fitzhugh St.

ON GARD The Gay Alliance on-line Resource Directory The online community tool-providing local, state and national resources... twenty-four, seven! www.gayalliance.org

APRIL 2017 • NUMBER 510 • THE GAY ALLIANCE • THE EMPTY CLOSET

The Empty Closet is published by the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley 100 College Avenue Rochester, New York 14607 © 2017, All rights reserved.

Editor-in-Chief: Susan Jordan Graphic Design: Jim Anderson Ad Sales: Jennie Bowker, jennieb@gayalliance.org Advertising policy: The Empty Closet does not print advertisements that contain nude drawings or photographs, nor does it print advertising that states that the person pictured in the ad is for sale, or that you will “get” that particular person if you patronize the establishment advertised. Advertisements that are explicitly racist, sexist, ageist, ableist or homophobic will be refused; advertisements from organizations that are sexist, racist, ageist, ableist or anti-gay will also be refused.

All political advertisements must contain information about who placed them and a method of contact. Additionally, The Empty Closet does not print negative or “attack” advertisements, whether they relate to a product or politics and no matter in whose interest the ad is being produced. A negative advertisement is defined as one that focuses upon a rival product, or in the political area, a rival election candidate or party, in order to point out supposed flaws and to persuade the public not to buy it (or vote for him or her). The Empty Closet maintains, within legal boundaries, neutrality regarding products, political candidates and parties. However, “attack” ads that fail to provide undisputable evidence that the information in the ad is true do not further in any way the objectives and policies of the Gay Alliance or The Empty Closet, including the primary tenet that The Empty Closet’s purpose is to inform the Rochester gay community and to provide an impartial forum for ideas.

Submissions: For publication, submit news items, ads, photos, letters, stories, poetry, ads, photographs or art by mail or in person to The Empty Closet office by the 15th of the month. Design services for non-camera ready ads are available for a fee.

244-9030, susanj@gayalliance.org Publication Information: The Empty Closet is published 11 times a year (December and January combined) by The Empty Closet Press for the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley, Inc. Approximately 5000 copies of each issue are distributed during the first week of the month, some by mail in a plain sealed envelope. The publication of the name or photograph of any person or organization in articles is not an indication of the sexual or affectional orientation of that person or the members of that organization. For further information, please write to The Empty Closet, 100 College Avenue, Rochester NY. 14605, call (585) 244-9030 or e-mail emptycloset@gagv.us.

The Empty Closet is the official publication of the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley, Inc., as stated in the bylaws of that organization. Its purpose is to inform the Rochester gay community about local and national gay-related news and events; to provide a forum for ideas and creative work from the local gay community; to help promote leadership within the community, and to be a part of a national network of lesbian and gay publications that exchange ideas and seek to educate.

Part of our purpose is to maintain a middle position with respect to the entire community. We must be careful to present all viewpoints in a way that takes into consideration the views of all – women, men, people of color, young and old, and those from various walks of life.

The opinions of columnists, editorial writers and other contributing writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the collective attitude of the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley or The Empty Closet. The Empty Closet shall not be liable for any loss or expense that results from the publication (whether correctly or incorrectly) or omission of an ad.

In the event of non-payment, your account may be assigned to a collection agency or an attorney, and will be liable for the charges paid by us to such collection agency or attorney.

Letters to the editor: The opinions of columnists, editorial writers and other contributing writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the collective attitude of the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley or The Empty Closet. We will print letters at the editor’s discretion and on a space available basis. Only one letter by the same writer in a six-month period is allowed. We will not print personal attacks on individuals, nor will we be a forum for ongoing disputes between individuals. We reserve the right to edit for space and clarity. We will print anonymous letters if the name and phone number are provided to the Editor; confidentiality will be respected. Submissions are due by the 15th of the month at: The Empty Closet, 100 College Avenue, Rochester, NY 14607; e-mail: susanj@gayalliance.org. The online edition of EC is available at www. gayalliance.org.

Bed & Breakfast

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THE EMPTY CLOSET • THE GAY ALLIANCE • NUMBER 510 • APRIL 2017