01.08.09 Outlook Weekly - Our Best Gay Agenda

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02 • OUTLOOK WEEKLY OWNERS AND PUBLISHERS Michael Daniels & Chris Hayes EDITOR-IN-CHIEF / ART DIRECTOR Chris Hayes hayes@outlookmedia.com

SNAPSHOT

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2 PRETTY GIRLS

BETTY GRABLE GAMS

2009 VOLUME 13 NUMBER 27

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

SNAPSHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 ABOUT TOWN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3, 26 LETTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 COMMUNITY CORNER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 EXAMINED LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 OUT BUSINESS NEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 HEALTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 FEATURE: OUR BEST GAY AGENDA . . . . .14-18 DEEP INSIDE HOLLYWOOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 ARTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 INTERVIEW: LILY KOPPEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 CLASSIFIEDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 SAVAGE LOVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 THE LAST WORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 SCOPES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 NEXT WEEK: MLK DAY

SMELL MY FINGER!

JAN 08 - JAN 14

CELINE WOULD BE PROUD!

JUST BACK FROM PROM

OUTLOOK WEEKLY • 03

ABOUT TOWN

by Adam Leddy

THURSDAY, JANUARY 8 REMEMBERING A GREAT MAN Mark Moffett Memorial Concert @ Weigel Auditorium, 1866 N College Road, 614.247.7036: Over 50 faculty, students, staff and alumni perform classical and contemporary music to raise endowment funds for the only GLBT music scholarship in the world. Suggested donation $10; 8p.

See pg 6 for more info.

I HEARD YOU’RE A THESPIAN Auditions @ Emerald City Theater, 6799 Dublin Center Dr, 614.470.1525, www.emeraldcityplayers.com: Emerald City Players is casting for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? If you can fill half a couple in its 20s/30s or 40s/50s, try out. Sun & Mon, 7p; free. See pg 6 for more info.

SEXY NEVER LEFT ME, BABY Bringin’ Sexy Back @ Shadowbox Cabaret, Easton Towne Center, 614.416.7625, shadowboxcabaret.com: Shadowbox redefines sex appeal with outrageous original comedy sketches and raucous rock ‘n’ roll dedicated to America’s favorite pastime. Thru March 21. Thu 7:30p, Fri-Sat 7:30p & 10:30p; $20-$30.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 13 YOU MIGHT AS WELL LOSE THAT PAUNCH THIS YEAR New Year, New You @ The Athletic Club of Columbus, 136 E Broad St, 614.464.3220, www.columbusmetroclub.org: The Columbus Metropolitan Club and the Young Professionals of Columbus present a program that will help you get the new year started right with discussion and tips for a live balance of mind, body and spirit. $5-$10; 5p-7p.

GIVE THE LOCALS SOME LOVE Shenanigal Debauchery and Civic Pride @ MadLab Theatre, 105 N Grant Ave, 614.221.5418, publicity@madlab.net: Shenanigans Playhouse Productions presents three one-act plays from local playwrights. Thru Jan 17. Thu-Sat 8p, Sun 2p; $12.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14 A CHANCE TO PRETEND YOU READ BOOKS Thurber House Evenings with Authors @ The Columbus School for Girls, 56 S Columbia Ave, 614.464.1032, www.thurberhouse.org: New York Times bestselling author Sue Miller will take questions, sign books, and read from her latest novel, The Senator’s Wife. Literary types and Oprah devotees will remember Miller for Inventing the Abbotts and While I’m Gone. 7:30p; $18-$20.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9 COLUMBUS HOMOS ARE TALKING CHAT Social @ Club Diversity, 863 S High St, 614.244.4050, www.clubdiversity.com: Meet the man of your dreams - or at least, your fantasies - THAT’S SO METRO at the monthly social for single gay guys. All wel- Columbus Metropolitan Club Lunch Forum @ come. 5p-9p; free.

The Athletic Club of Columbus, 136 E Broad St, 614.464.3220, www.columbusmetroclub.org: NO, NOT HELLIN BEDD “ODOT 21st-Century Plan.” $17-$35; 12p-1:15p.

The Miracle Worker @ Studio One, Riffe Center, 77 S High St, 614.469.0939, THURSDAY, JANUARY 15 www.ticketmaster.com: The Phoenix Theatre pres- STRAIGHT OUT OF THE HEADLINES ents the classic play about Anne Sullivan, Helen Frozen @ Van Fleet Theatre, Columbus PerformKeller, and “waaater.” Thru Jan 18. Fri 7:30p, Sat- ing Arts Center, 549 Franklin Ave, 614.256.1223, Sun 2:30p; $10-$20. evolutiontheatre.org: Audiences will experience the aftermath of a vicious crime - the murder of a SATURDAY, JANUARY 10 child - in this Evolution Theatre production. ThuTHIS IS BECOMING A HABIT Sat thru Jan 24. 8p; $10-$12.

Rally for Equality @ The Statehouse, Broad & High, www.jointheimpact.com: We’re still here UNITED WE STAND and we must hold the incoming administration Pride Leadership Reception @ BoMA, 583 E accountable. Make a sign to that effect and get Broad St, 614.233.3000, your keister downtown. 1:30p-3:30p; free. www.barofmodernart.com: United Way of Central Ohio is recruiting for Pride Leadership, a program HOW BOUT THOSE BJS? that gives GLBT professionals the skills they need Columbus Blue Jackets Inaugural Rink Run @ to serve on volunteer boards and committees.

Nationwide Arena, 200 W Nationwide Blvd, 5:30p-7p; free. See page 26 for more info.

614.246.4238, bluejackets.nhl.com: A 1-mile walk, run, race or jog with great prizes. Registra- FRIDAY, JANUARY 16 tion includes ticket to the Blue Jackets vs Wild AN ESCAPE YOU CAN AFFORD game. 9a; $30-$65.

AAA Great Vacation Expo @ Veterans Memorial, 300 W Broad St, 614.221.4341, www.AAAgreatPROMUSICA: CAPRICORNS? vacations.com: Favorite travel destinations will Dogs @ The Southern Theatre, 21 E Main St, come alive with interactive events and experi614.464.0066, www.promusicacolumbus.org: ences that will be as entertaining as they are ProMusica celebrates its 30th and presents helpful and educational. Fri 2p-8p, Sat 10a-8p, Thurber’s Dogs in an evening of multimedia col- Sun 11a-4p; $4-$8 (children under 12 free). laboration. Sat 5:30p, Sun 7p; $5-$43.

SATURDAY, JANUAR 17 SUNDAY, JANUARY 11 THE KEY TO MY HEART PERFECT FOR GRAY DAYS Key West Happy Hour @ Wall Street Nightclub, Colorful Artwork @ Studios on High Gallery, 686 144 N Wall St, 614.464.2800, www.wallstreetN High St, 614.461.6487, nightclub.com: Silent auction, prizes, Key Lime www.studiosonhigh.com: Marty Husted and cosmos, and a chance to win a weekend getaway Jeanie Auseon engage viewers through the use of to Key West. Door proceeds benefit Stonewall color in their diverse, playful, and bold creations. Columbus. 9p-10:30p; $5. See pg 26 for more info.

Mon-Sat 12p-6p, Sun 1p-5p; free.

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

04 • OUTLOOK WEEKLY

LETTERS

To the Editor: (This letter is in response to a letter to the editor published in The Columbus Dispatch.)

First and foremost, I find it incredibly insulting that the Columbus Dispatch printed such an overtly transphobic letter to the editor. I know there are far more intelligent people in central Ohio - why not give them space instead?

Secondly, perhaps our friend “R.B. Williams” in Blacklick hasn’t had to apply for a job in a while or has simply been blinded by his or her non-trans social privilege, but as a word to the (not so) wise, most places of employment will ask potential hires for these things called background checks, Social Security cards, and drivers licenses at some point during the interview process. Transgender job candidates who have already transitioned and changed their name may have worked, gone to school, or established credit in their old name. They may also not have had the time, money, or other capacity to change their name and gender on state-issued ID cards, which typically require individuals to acquire a court ordered name change. So far from being your “obvious answer,” it is instead very possible that a background check, or a call to a reference, may be met with the candidate’s information listed under their old name and gender and thus “outing” them as transgender. Discrimination happens every day and privileged individuals who simply sit around crying wolf to mask their own phobias & bigotry are largely to blame.

Charlie Fredrick Columbus RESPONDING TO: Transgender Issue Shouldn’t Come Up - Tuesday, December 23, 2008 The Dec 15 article “Gender Identity on City’s Agenda” raises a question. It quoted Shane Mor-

gan, a North Side resident who began the advocacy group TransOhio in 2006, as saying of transgender people, “They’ll have years and years of experience, and people won’t hire them.”

How would that subject come up in a job interview unless the person being interviewed brought it up, and why would anyone?

The obvious answer is that the person being interviewed brings it up and then says, “Now that you know that, if I’m not hired, I’ll sue for discrimination.”

R.B. WILLIAMS Blacklick

Where’s the Caring Gay Community?

To the Editor: There needs to be a better and more caring gay “community” in Columbus. I sense division and separation mainly by age, race, social and economic status.

I am upset that older gay men and younger gay men don’t seem to connect; that black, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, and Middle Eastern gays don’t connect; that the division between the wealthy white gay males and poor white and non-white gays is so great; that many gay men stick to religions that continually seek to deny our existence and right to love; that one must be in-shape, young, well-endowed, tan, wealthy, white, “masculine” or “straight-acting.” Reality folks, not everyone is perfect and we all have faults and make mistakes.

We need to connect as human beings. Division and hate will never bring us together and solve our common goals, which I think should include marriage rights, the abolition of age of consent, and the end of discrimination in employment, housing, and the military.

Support the Govenor’s Request To the Editor: Currently we are experiencing an economic downturn that continues to hit organizations serving at-risk communities. As the need for services increases, resources simultaneously decrease. In many cases, these safety net providers are forced to drastically cut services, leading those with the greatest need to either go without or try the nearly impossible task of finding services elsewhere.

Ohioans struggle as the beast of poverty makes way for futile attempts to provide for their families. Health care, nutrition, housing, safety, and education are essential for vulnerable populations in our state. The recession has caused an increase in the need for health care services from our smallest children to our frail elderly. We all feel the pinch, but the most vulnerable of us feel it in the most intense way.

I encourage our community to support Governor Strickland in his request for the federal government to provide $100 billion in block grants to the states and $3.2 billion in additional TANF funds to the states. We must support a federal recovery package that will stimulate the economy and help provide basic safety net services during this recession. The human cost of not protecting these services is too high!

Please urge those who represent you to take action and protect these basic services for basic human needs.

The Reader Poll

Last week we asked:

What should be the next item we fight for on our “gay agenda”?

Statewide ENDA

33.33%

Marriage

22.22%

Repeal of DADT

11.11%

Protections in schools 11.11% Ruby Slipper Fridays

11.11%

Immigration reform

5.56%

Other answer...

5.56%

including answer: Not biting off more than we can chew.

Erin R. Upchurch Columbus

NEXT WEEK’S QUESTION: Can the Gay Rights movement be compared to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s?

Robert John

Log on to: www.outlookweekly.net to take this week’s poll.

Got something to say? We want to hear from you!

Email us at editor@outlookmedia.com or logon to www.outlookweekly.net.

S

OU

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: L OS ANGELES

TIM

CATEGORY

NOV 2 ’04

JAN 02 ’09

DIFFERENCE

AMERICAN DEAD

1,122

4,221

3,099

AMERICAN WOUNDED

8,124

30,920

22,796

IRAQI CIVILIAN DEAD

16,342

98,502

82,160

NATIONAL DEBT

$7,429,629,954,236

$10,553,014,664,691 $3,123,384,710,455

DAYS ‘TIL OBAMA INAUGURATION 1,540

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

28% ES

The Dispatch Insulted Trans Community

18

(1,522)

OUTLOOK WEEKLY • 05

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

06 • OUTLOOK WEEKLY

COMMUNITY CORNER

BUCKEYE REGION OF AMERICAN VETERANS FOR EQUAL RIGHTS OSU SCHOOL OF MUSIC PRESENTS (BRAVER) TO CEASE OPERATIONS 3RD ANNUAL MARK MOFFETT JR.

by Robert L. Stout, president, BRAVER GLBT SCHOLARSHIP CONCERT The Ohio State University School of Music presents the third annual Mark Moffett GLBT Scholarship concert on Thu, Jan 8 at 8p in Weigel Auditorium, 1866 N College Rd. The concert honors New York pianist Mark Moffett Jr., who passed away in 2005 from brain cancer caused by HIV. This year, over 50 performers have volunteered to share their talents in this collagestyle concert. The Mark Moffett concert is the only concert at OSU where faculty, staff, alumni and students perform together. Paul Lockwood, producer of the concert, welcomes all musicians who volunteer to perform. The evening will include the world premiere of “... like a ceaseless rain,” composed by student K.L. Hoffman and based on the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. It will be performed by a volunteer chorus from the Men’s Glee Club and featuring conductor Tim Sarsany and accompanist Matt Ebright.

In its third year, the concert has raised $12,000 and needs $13,000 more to be endowed. The $1500 annual scholarship is awarded annually to a GLBT student majoring in music. The scholarship’s intent is to reinforce pride in sexual minorities as both individuals and musicians. Based on both artistic ability as well as social service, the scholarship is awarded with first preference to piano majors, second to violin majors, and third to all other music majors. Winners have included: Jon-Patrick Thompson, clarinet (2008-09); Kelly Neal, violin (2007-08); and Jared Bollenbacher, voice (2006-07).

A donation of $10 is suggested for admittance. For more information, contact Paul Lockwood at 614.247.7036 or lockwood.38@osu.edu.

Those interested in supporting the scholarship should make checks payable to “Ohio State University” and note the fund number “480417” and “Mark Moffett Jr. Scholarship Fund” on their check. Gifts can be sent directly to the University’s development office at: The Ohio State University, Office of University Development, 1480 West Lane Avenue, Columbus, OH 43221, or donate online at https://www.giveto.osu.edu/igive/index.asp.

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

After careful review and many hours of consideration, I am forced to inform you that Buckeye Region of American veterans for Equal Rights, BRAVER, will cease operations and formally dissolve as of January 31.

Since April 2008, BRAVER has worked to build itself up as an organization as well as provide support to the LGBT members of the armed forces and the veterans community in Central Ohio. Sadly, since that time we have been given a cold shoulder by the veterans community based on our sexual orientation or identity and a cold shoulder from the LGBT community based on our veteran status. With the current political climate in Ohio and the introduction of religious homophobia into the more liberal facets of the populace, we are condemned to this fate.

Combined with the economic situation and the damning effects of the bigotry we face in both communities, we are unable to grow as an organization or fulfill our mission. I had sincerely hoped when we began this endeavor that as an organization we could give a voice to those who could not speak out on their own. But that voice is stifled because we either dare to love another person or we dare to love our country. We set out never to judge anyone nor become polarized in our beliefs to the point of trespass on the liberties of others. Those ideals have given us a death sentence when the two communities we are a part of are so unyielding.

It is with a heavy heart that I leave BRAVER’s mission unfulfilled. I would like to thank from the depths of my those few people who were able to look beyond religion, politics, and even personal feelings to provide help for our servicemen and women and to show dignity to those veterans who surrendered their personal lives to protect all others. There are men and women who need our help, but without any support we cannot assist them. Our servicemembers face wars overseas only to return home and face a greater one. This war is with no foreign enemy, no terrorist, and not even with a definitive combatant. M-16s are not used, but political ideology. Regrettably, no war can be won while fighting on two fronts and with both communities failing to help.

Since I came out to the Associated Press on April 7, 2005, I have fought for two groups to see the similarities and not the differences. I

see now that fight has been in vain. Someday I hope to see the banner of equality and honor raised and see all communities rally behind it.

That day will come, but not until we can set aside our personal differences and beliefs and work towards the greater good of humanity and not just our own personal causes. The military has always been the bulwark of freedom that drew its strength from the public. When those two sections of society work together we ensure the continuation of the liberties and rights granted to all mankind. Cooperation can never be achieved if one section is claiming us to be sexual deviants and using the law to start a new form of religious persecution. Nor can it be achieved if the other side condemning us for not conforming to a personal political belief or using us for a fetish (and therefore providing the justification for the deviant theory). Only then will we ensure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all mankind.

Our mission will be handled by our national organization, AVER, who can be contacted via www.aver.us. Long live the state of Ohio and the American republic.

OHIO SUPREME COURT ALLOWS LESBIAN MOTHER CUSTODY DECISION TO STAND The Supreme Court of Ohio last week let stand an appeals court ruling affirming the enforceability of a court-approved child custody agreement in a case involving lesbian mothers.

“The Court has expressly shut down arguments that Ohio’s antigay amendment impacts parenting and child custody relationships, rights, and responsibilities,” said Camilla Taylor, senior staff attorney in Lambda Legal’s Midwest Regional Office in Chicago. “The court correctly declined an invitation to treat gay and lesbian Ohio parents differently from other families, and to deprive the children of these families of the protections and support other children receive.”

Lambda Legal represents Therese Leach in her fight to uphold a court-approved joint custody agreement signed by both her and her former partner, Denise Fairchild, in 2001. After their son was born in 1996, both women parented him. In order to ensure that Therese had a protected legal relationship with the child, the two women signed a joint custody agreement.

Such agreements were approved by the Ohio Supreme Court in the 2001 Bonfield case in

which Lambda Legal participated.

The Supreme Court decision comes after Fairchild argued, at a trial court and the Ohio Court of Appeals for the Tenth District, that Ohio’s antigay constitutional amendment limiting marriage to a man and a woman invalidated the court approved custody agreement she originally sought with Leach. All three courts brushed aside Fairchild’s arguments, ruling that court-approved custody agreements cannot be ignored or unilaterally undone by one of the parents. In July 2008, Fairchild asked the Ohio Supreme Court to hear her case, and Lambda Legal urged the court to refuse. Today’s order from the high court is the final word on the matter.

Lambda Legal is a national organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work.

EMERALD CITY PLAYERS HOLDS VIRGINIA WOOLF AUDITIONS George, a professor at a small college, and his wife, Martha, have just returned home, drunk from a Saturday night party. Martha announces, amidst general profanity, that she has invited a young couple - an opportunistic new professor at the college and his shatteringly naïve new bride - to stop by for a nightcap. When they arrive the charade begins. The drinks flow and suddenly inhibitions melt. It becomes clear that Martha is determined to seduce the young professor, and George couldn’t care less. But underneath the edgy banter, which is crossfired between both couples, lurks an undercurrent of tragedy and despair. George and Martha’s inhuman bitterness toward one another is provoked by the enormous personal sadness that they have pledged to keep to themselves: a secret that has seemingly been the foundation for their relationship.

In the end, the mystery in which the distressed George and Martha have taken refuge is exposed, once and for all revealing the degrading mess they have made of their lives.

Seeking: One couple in 40s/50s; one couple 20s/30s. Auditions will be cold reading from the script.

Auditions will take place Jan 11 & 12, 7p, at the Emerald City Theater, 6799 Dublin Center Dr, in the Dublin Village Shopping Center. Performances March 6-21.

OUTLOOK WEEKLY • 07

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

08 • OUTLOOK WEEKLY

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

OUTLOOK WEEKLY • 09

THE EXAMINED LIFE

by Tom Moon, MFT

STAYING TOGETHER

Greg and Mark are a couple in their early forties who just celebrated their twelfth anniversary. When I talked with them about what has made their partnership work, it was easy to see that their relationship is strong and that they’re very happy together. “We’re even still having sex,” Greg said. “With each other!”

But they almost didn’t make it. About two and a half years into their relationship, they found themselves in trouble. “We were sniping at each other all the time, fighting about everything, and we were both starting to stray,” Mark told me. “We were irritated and restless around each other. I didn’t think we were going to make it.”

By the time many couples seek couple counseling, it’s already too late, because the relationship has deteriorated so completely that it’s beyond repair. Fortunately for Mark and Greg, they got into counseling before that point. “What became clear right off the bat was that we didn’t know how to talk with each other,” Greg said.

My experience of counseling gay male couples has, unhappily, convinced me that gay men are usually men first and gay second.

What I mean is that when boyfriends and partners disagree, all too often they fall back on conventional male patterns of handling conflict, no matter how free of traditional male conditioning they believe they are.

Typically, both parties want to win more than they want to settle the disagreement.

Both see yielding as losing face or being one-down. Each man wants to convince the other that if you’d just be “reasonable” you’d see that the evidence clearly shows that my position is correct and logical –- and that you don’t know what you’re talking about. We could get past this if you’d just admit that it’s only your stubborn pride that is preventing you from admitting that I’m right and you’re wrong.

When two men approach conflict in this way, the argument begins to look like an athletic competition in which the two opponents make points and struggle to gain the verbal upper hand. The disagreement can only be settled if one party accepts the humiliation of defeat. The loser then feels resentful and looks for opportunities for a “rematch” so that he can turn the tables and regain the upper hand. When they’re approached in this way, conflicts become protracted wars.

Over the years I’ve done work with both predominantly male and predominantly female groups, and, like many others, I’ve been struck with by how differently men and women react to discussions of problems.

When participants in the women’s groups heard a problem, they were inclined to empathize, listen, ask questions to elicit more

information, and talk about the ways in whichhow they identifiedes and empathized with what was being said. But the men (and this was as true of gay men and as it was of straight men) were more inclined to be “solution oriented.” Often they wouldn’t even give the speaker time to finish describing his problem before they jumped in with advice and started telling him what to do.

Whenever I was able to interrupt this process long enough to explore how they were feeling, I usually found that the speaker wasn’t feeling heard or listened to. I also usually found that the other men in the group were feeling anxious, because the unresolved problem was reminding them of their own unwanted feelings of confusion, uncertainty, or helplessness. In attempting to “fix” the speaker’s problem they were really trying to make themselves feel safer.

“It really didn’t take that much to get us back on course,” Mark said of their couple counseling experience. “The therapist told us that instead of focusing on who was right when we fought, we should make the goal to understand the other guy’s point of view completely. He had us schedule a meeting every week in which one person spoke at a time, and said whatever he was upset about, while the other one just listened without interrupting. Then, when it was the other guy’s turn, he wasn’t allowed to disagree or argue,

but just to summarize as completely and fairly as possible what had just been said to him. Then we’d switch and do the same thing with the other person.”

What they learned in the process was that what they both most deeply wanted was not to win, but to be heard and understood, and that when they got detoured into correcting, changing, lecturing, advising, instructing, and judging each other, both of them lost.

“Those meetings kept us together,” Greg told me. “Sometimes, even now, when things get tense, one of us will say ‘Time for a meeting,’ and we’ll sit down and do the exercise all over again.”

One of the most important keys to a successful relationship is to relinquish the need to be right. Another is to understand that we don’t always have to understand why the other person feels and acts the way he or she does. Even the closest partners will never completely understand one each another, but one of the delights (if also one of the frustrations) of a relationship is living in the mystery.

Tom Moon is a psychotherapist in San Francisco. His website is www.tommoon.net.

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

10 • OUTLOOK WEEKLY

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

OUTLOOK WEEKLY • 11

OUT BUSINESS NEWS

Planning For Partners

by Clint Helmbrecht

As with any personal relationship, communication is key between domestic partners on matters of financial importance. You and your partner probably have different ideas about spending, saving and investing money. There is no better way to address these differences than to simply discuss the issues at hand. If these are difficult conversations then you may need to consider hiring a financial professional to get both people on the same page.

Clearly the laws here in Ohio do not support the GLBT community in the same way they support a married heterosexual couple.

While many within the community work to change these legal statutes, it is important to be aware of how best to protect yourself, your family, and your loved ones under current law. Changes to current legislation may take two years or ten years, and working within the system is necessary for the time being.

You don’t look at your partner and see a stranger, but legally that is what they are to you. Planning effectively deals with how you

can both address the issues of growth and protection of your assets in the right way. As with any couple, decisions still need to be made about the growth of assets in order to attain your goals, be they college funding, retirement at a certain age, or achievement of a certain lifestyle. In order to be clear, your plan for growth should include knowledge of how much to save, what your risk tolerance is, and where the money should go, such as a 401(k), Roth IRA, savings account, etc.

Talk plainly about what your short and long-term goals are as a couple. Remember that money is just the tool we all use to reach those goals. If you ask most people what they truly value, rarely will anyone bring up money. Spend some time writing out what your values are, and how your goals are linked to them. This step should always be done before you can truly move forward with the nuts and bolts of financial planning, and ensures that the two steps are serving the same purpose.

Protecting your assets is as important as

growing them. You can have all the money in the world, but dying unexpectedly without proper planning can leave a disaster for your loved ones to deal with. Unfortunately we all seem so sure death is a long way off, but in reality no one knows what the future holds for us. Spending a small amount of time planning today can have a dramatic impact in the event of an emergency, and can do wonders for your peace of mind.

It is under the auspice of protection that financial planning and estate planning overlap, and attorneys and financial planners frequently work together for the best interests of their clients. For example, you may visit a financial planner to determine how much life insurance you need, and an estate planning attorney to draft a will, but the beneficiary you chose on your life insurance policy 10 years ago will still receive the proceeds in the event of your death, even if your will lists your current partner as your sole beneficiary.

Power of Attorney and Living Will documents should also be critical to you and your

partner. In the event of an emergency, it needs to be made clear what rights both your family and your partner have. The time to accomplish this is not when you are lying unconscious in a hospital bed. Your family and your partner may not see eye-to-eye, and having legal documents in your possession can answer the question of what your wishes are. And remember, these documents are useless if someone else doesn’t know where you keep them.

All these issues come back to communication. Take the time now to have a conversation about your goals and values as a couple. Once established, these values will be what guide you through the rest of the process. Just remember, have the conversation, then take action on those decisions.

The first step doesn’t do you any good without the second.

Clint Helmbrecht, CFP® is an owner of Prospera Financial Group and a financial adviser with Multi-Financial Securities Corporation, member FINRA, SIPC. Prospera Financial Group is not affiliated with Multi-Financial.

Outlook Media & Out In America/Ethan Interactive Announce Sales Partnership

Savoodle Sees Glad Tidings For Local Business Owners

Ethan Interactive, parent company of the Out In America group of GLBT web portals, and Outlook Media, Ohio’s premier GLBT and allied media company, announced a strategic partnership that makes Outlook Media an authorized sales channel for all Out In America product offerings.

“We are excited about this new partnership with Outlook,” said Michael Reese, vice president of sales for Ethan Interactive, Inc. “Working together will provide easy access to our shared knowledge of the online and offline GLBT market.”

“This is a natural fit for both of our organizations,” said Michael Daniels, business and advertising director of Outlook Media. “Outlook is in the business of building relationships between our clients and our readers, and part of that relationship is often web marketing. Being able to sell the Out In America products alongside our own is one more arrow in our quiver that we can offer our clients and partners as they build their brand in the GLBT and allied marketplace.”

The partnership agreement is effective immediately.

by Remko Bloemhard, founder, Savoodle.com

Since 1997, Ethan Interactive has experienced unparalleled growth as a world leader for GLBT users. The only portal targeting local communities, Out In America has become the top destination for GLBT consumers with more than 800,000 registered members in 178 cities and counting. Ethan Interactive uses this unprecedented reach and expertise to develop marketing programs for small to Fortune 500 companies.

Since 1996, Outlook Media has been Ohio’s premier GLBT and allied media company.

Growing from a monthly newsletter to a monthly newspaper to a bi-weekly newspaper to our present weekly status, our flagship product, Outlook Weekly, is now a lifestyle and advocacy publication for the Ohio queer community and urban progressives. Our networking organization, Network Columbus, is a 21st-century chamber of commerce servicing the GLBT & allied business community. For more information, contact Michael Daniels, copublisher of Outlook Media, at 614.268.8525 or mdaniels@outlookmedia.com.

As most Americans are trying to survive the economic apocalypse, many local business owners throughout central Ohio are embracing the glad tidings of a new local marketing concept.

Business owners understand that marketing is the lifeblood of any retail operation. The key to a successful marketing campaign is simple: getting the right message to the right people.

Without their business, there is no business.

That might seem like a basic concept, but it is amazing how many retailers still employ the old “Spray-and-Pray” method. They spray the market with a message and they pray for its success.

Most traditional channels of advertising rely on flashy demographic charts and exposure ratios to close the deal, create the “Spray-andPray” campaign, and gladly take your money.

When you need to know how successful that campaign was, they become eerily silent. The fact is, they don’t know.

Savoodle preaches to vendors that marketing without measurement isn’t marketing. It’s rolling the dice. Vendors with Savoodle get the

option of a variety of services, but the most appealing is the access to their own personalized databank. Savoodle believes success lies in the sophistication of its ability to monitor each vendor’s marketing campaign. Unlike any other marketing channel, the message or promotion can be changed immediately if it doesn’t appear to be working.

As a permission-based online marketing portal, Savoodle is basically an outsourced marketing department. Vendors take care of their businesses, Savoodle takes care of their marketing and promotion. Consumers are enticed to frequent the online marketing portal by a steady offering of giveaways and substantial promotions that all work to enrich their lifestyle “one click at a time.” Membership is free and once a quick online application is completed, consumers get a loyalty card that looks much like a typical credit card. As they logon to the website, they will be periodically asked to answer generic questions, and the answers help generate promotions they will actually appreciate and use.

Let’s hope so. Everyone knows that American business owners deserve some glad tidings this Holiday Season!

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

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HEALTH

by Mickey Weems and Kevin Mason

THE DREADFUL PRICE AND HIDDEN PROMISE OF PROMISCUITY After years of limited success in the search for a cure for AIDS, we are finally getting good news.

The best we’ve been able to do so far has been a stalemate. People with AIDS can lead somewhat normal lives, sometimes for years. Sometimes not, as complications with the meds can disrupt their bodies, play havoc with their minds, and throw roadblocks in the way of even the simplest daily routines.

The latest news on bone marrow transplants, however, has brought us strong evidence that a cure is possible (advisory to the clueless: there is no cure yet, so please practice safer sex!).

We in the LGBTQ community have seen many of our people afflicted with this disease. We have done our best not to stigmatize those who are positive, nor to condemn those who engage in irresponsible behavior, while at the same time encouraging everyone, regardless of orientation, to practice safer sex.

There is no doubt that the unrestrained mento-men sex drive coupled with our inherent need to connect with others, and then doing so, has increased the numbers of PWAs. But we should acknowledge that this same promiscuity has led to the new discovery.

The Facts So Far Here is what we know about the latest research: • Some people appear to be immune to HIV, the virus deemed responsible for AIDS. We’ve known this for a while, but the question of such immunity being 100% verified by medical research and the biochemical mechanics that make it work are still being outlined.

• The number of people with such immunity is a mere fraction of the entire population. It appears that these fortunate few had parents that both had the genetic predisposition for immunity.

• A patient with AIDS and leukemia was given a bone marrow transplant from a person with said immunity.

• Since the transplant some 20 months ago, JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

all signs of HIV in the patient have disappeared.

Not all scientists believe the patient in question is completely cured of HIV. The virus hides in places that are well nigh impossible to check. 20 months in remission is notable but not conclusive.

In addition, the conditions for bone-marrow therapy are themselves draconian and lifethreatening. Treatment requires drastic measures, including the destruction of the patient’s bone marrow (by itself, this phase of treatment kills between a fifth and a third of patients) and discontinuation of HIV meds.

Since this treatment is still very much in its infancy, it may be years before it can be available to the general public.

Numbers Game Nevertheless, it is a start.

After so many decades of monitoring the spread of AIDS, one of the cardinal laws of biology has finally been observed: genetic diversity as a survival mechanism.

Sexual replication won out in every advanced multicellur organism as the preferred means for the production of offspring because of the novel genetic mixes occurring when egg meets sperm.

The rich variety of options that happen every time the genetic dice are rolled makes it difficult for any disease to wipe out a whole species because, at the most elementary level, individual members of a species are rarely identical copies.

All human populations have faced severe dieback from infectious bacteria, viruses, protozoa and even fungi. We carry the markers of survival in our immune systems as our ancestors’ bodies learned to fend off cholera, bubonic plague, smallpox, malaria, any number of terrible plagues that even today cull our numbers. Despite the percentage that dies, there are always those who survive and pass the genetic trait that saved them to their offspring, recombining within the gene pool to produce new protections against fu-

ture diseases.

But HIV seemed to be an exception. How does the body protect itself against a virus that so closely mimics those biochemical combinations we need to survive, rapidly morphs into a different form within the nooks and crannies of our cellular structure as to make detection even more difficult, and shuts down our security systems that would detect and destroy it?

The only sure protection is that which has kept our species alive over the millennia: genetic diversity. But the only way of knowing whether the proper genetic combination had been achieved was if scientists could identify those who were immune. And the only way we could determine immunity in a free society was by those who we knew disregarded precautions on a regular basis, yet did not get infected.

It’s a numbers game. People who do not have sex are much less inclined to get infected. Being a virgin, however, cannot protect one from rape or needle transmission, so celibacy is still no absolute guarantee. Those who do not engage in practices that lead to significant blood transference are also statistically safer, but once again are not completely protected, since any number of micro-abrasions could possibly result in seroconversion, as well as the presence of HIV in other bodily fluids. The same can be said for protection offered by condoms. So far for the vast majority of humanity, it’s been a matter of chance, be it greater or lesser. Safer sex reduces the chances to the equivalent of the odds for getting struck by lightning, but it does not eliminate all risk.

No doubt there are millions of people who are immune who don’t know it. But the focus has never been as intense on Straight populations, in part because of stigma attached to AIDS. It has been the MSM populations in cities such as New York, San Francisco, London and Paris who have acted as the guinea pigs for this grand experiment in the massive multi-urban laboratory. Bedrooms, dungeons, bathhouses, rest stops, pretty much every conceivable place where guys can do

it becomes one more potential tragedy of infectious transmission or triumph of genetic resistance.

The few instances of triumph, statistically speaking, that have been recorded have finally given us evidence that immunity exists, thanks to the same rampant promiscuity that led to the rapid spread of the epidemic in the first place.

Our Gift to Humankind This will be one of the greatest gifts to humankind ever from the LGBTQ community. And it comes from the L, G, B, T, Q and our Straight allies.

Had we as a community not stood together for our brethren and sistren who had fallen ill in the face of those who said God was punishing us, the research necessary to solve this Gordian knot of a biological puzzle would have been hampered by the politics of fear. Had not we as Lesbians stood with our fellows, by their bedsides when they were dying and at our ACT UP rallies, we would have been even more vulnerable. Had we not shown by our own example that safer-sex practices reduce seroconversion, Straight kids would have been taught it was a Gay disease. And humanity would have suffered all the more.

Diseases don’t read the Bible. AIDS didn’t stop with homosexual men; the population currently with the most seroconversions in the USA is African American women. The blessings that will come from the hard work, compassion and genius of our researchers in what could be the very near future will extend well past the shores of the so-called First World and encircle the globe.

And no doubt the spin-offs from the search for the cure will continue to help those with other diseases.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope this latest development is not another dead-end. In the mean time, hedge your bets and play safely.

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JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

14 • OUTLOOK WEEKLY

FEATURE STORY

AS THIS PAPER IS PRINTING, WE HAVE ALREADY USHERED IN MARY JO KILROY AND OTHER NEW LIFE INTO THE US CONGRESS AND STATEHOUSES ACROSS THE LAND. WITH THE CHANGE IN POLITICAL POWER, OUR HOPE IS THAT THINGS WILL BE BETTER FOR GLBT PEOPLE IN AMERICA. AS WE PREPARE FOR OBAMA TO TAKE OFFICE, WE HAVE TO ASK OURSELVES WILL THE CHANGES IN PARTY AND PRESIDENCY ACTUALLY BE GOOD FOR US? JUST HAVING DEMOCRATS IN OFFICE DOESN’T GUARANTEE ANYTHING. SO WHAT SHOULD OUR ‘GAY AGENDA’ BE THIS YEAR? HOW CAN WE ADVANCE OUR FIGHT FOR EQUALITY? WE ASKED GLBT EQUALITY ADVOCATES TO GIVE US WHAT THEY THINK THE GAY AGENDA SHOULD BE. LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK.

THE GRASSROOTS PERSPECTIVE

by Derek Stephens When I first heard about the vote for Proposition 8 in California being so close, I waited anxiously in the hopes that NO vote would prevail. I was devastated when I heard that Prop 8 passed. I thought to myself, How could we live in a world where a majority votes and approves a law that discriminates against a minority? I was angry and wanted to do something with my anger.

I wanted to stand up for my and everyone else’s rights. My first thought was to protest. I had seen the protests in California, so I searched and found out about the National Protest being started by Join The Impact. I was very excited to have a place to voice my concern but I couldn’t find anyone organizing anything here. Even though I was very busy with school and work, I had to do something. I didn’t want November 15th to pass and not have a place for the LGBT community to voice their anger. So even though I had never organized anything like this, I began to organize and get the word out. Even with the rain, we had a great turn out. We aren‘t going to let those who are against the LGBT community silence us, nor will the rain!

This is what this this movement is about, getting people involved who have not had the chance to do so in the past. It also shows how much of a difference one person can make. How many people out there do not vote because of feeling like their vote wouldn‘t count? Look at the Join The Impact movement, within a week a few individuals created a national movement getting hundreds of thousands of people involved.

I believe the rallies are important to show those against us that we are not going to hide or back down. We are going to stand together spreading a message of love, equality and acceptance. A rally is a place where people can voice their anger in a positive manner. How often are we silenced and not given the opportunity to speak? It is liberating to finally have a voice! It is also important to get everyone involved, gay and straight alike. Not everyone who is straight is homophobic. I had so many straight people come up to me and ask to help. We need all the support and allies we can get.

The next national rally is Saturday, January 10 at 1:30p. It was suggested we have a Statewide Rally for Ohio. I thought it would be a great way to unify our voices in the Ohio’s state capital at the Statehouse. I really hope to have as much of Ohio as possible represented at the rally. Individually they may be able to get to us, but together we are a strong force that will not give up.

The rallies were started by grassroots efforts: individuals coming together to create change from the ground up and unifying with the national effort to promote equality. The grassroots movement is very important to the cause because it will unite the individual with organizations that have been working hard for equality. In the end, we are all soldiers fighting the same battle for equality. United we stand, divided we fall.

Going forward into 2009, the LGBT community has a great opportunity to create change. With change comes education. So many people do not realize that gay people can get fired from their jobs, lose their housing or not have any rights if something happens to the person we love. Also important is to put a face to the cause. It is much more than marriage, it is about equal rights. If those who are against us can put a face with the name, they can see we aren’t much different from them. If they get to know us they will find out that we are just regular people who want to be able to share our lives with the people we love in a world where we are protected and embraced with love, not hate.

Finally, the United States will have a LGBT-friendly President. It is going to be very important to remind Barack Obama of his promise to our community to expand hate crime legislation, fight workplace discrimination, promote LGBT rights, support full civil unions and federal rights for LGBT couples, repeal DOMA and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, expand adoption rights and continue the fight against HIV/AIDS. JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

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NETWORK COLUMBUS NEXT MEETING JAN 14, 6P-8P @ BUCA DI BEPPO [In the Arena District - 343 N Front St]

WWW.NETWORKCOLUMBUS.COM

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

16 • OUTLOOK WEEKLY

EQUALITY OHIO READY FOR 2009

by Lynne Bowman, executive director, Equality Ohio Equality Ohio enters 2009 with a renewed commitment to making Ohio a place where everyone can feel at home. We are presented with numerous opportunities for the advancement of equality this year, but we must also address a number of challenges. In the latter category, EO will work with local leaders and activists in Cleveland to protect that city’s domestic partnership registry from an attempted repeal. The creation of the registry in late 2008 was a significant achievement for Cleveland, and its preservation is a priority as we enter the new year.

While we must react when our progress as a community is challenged, we must also be proactive in advancing equality. Equality Ohio has a robust plan for moving forward in 2009. We will continue and intensify our focus on outreach to faith communities and people of color, as well as to straight Ohioans generally. As our outreach programs expand, we will also increase the involvement of proequality people in local volunteer activities for the public good (such as Habitat for Humanity) so that more Ohioans interact with GLBT people and our straight allies on a regular basis. We know, empirically and anecdotally, that when people know us, they are more likely to support our progress toward equality.

We will spend considerable time in 2009 developing the future leaders of the movement. The CAUSE (Colleges and University Students 4 Equality) project unites this goal with the need for LGBT people to be out, visible, and working to make their communities better places to live. CAUSE will engage LGBT and straight students in their community and in this movement. CAUSE 2.0 will expand the project for adult participation. For more information, visit www.equalityohio.org.

Our work in education and outreach - changing hearts and

minds - is crucial, and it does not take place in a vacuum. That work is critically important in achieving concrete legislative and legal protections for LGBT people and families. We expect to make significant progress this year on the Equal Housing and Employment Act, with reintroduction of the bill in a more pro-equality house. Ohioans are broadly supportive of nondiscrimination protections for gender identity and sexual orientation, and we expect bipartisan support of the legislation. In the meantime, we will continue to partner with local organizations to achieve protection and recognition of our relationships and families at the local level.

When necessary, we will defend our achievements from efforts to make us feel less welcome in our communities and our state.

Equality Ohio launched in 2005, and we have been a strong and sustainable organization ever since. 2009 will be a difficult year for nonprofit organizations. We are committed to sustaining a financially stable organization through tough economic times. Now more than ever, Ohio needs the contributions of LGBT people. We love our state and will do everything we can to help it weather these tough times. In return, we will expect that our contributions will be valued and honored.

Equality is sometimes won in dramatic, large-scale victories.

These are the victories that we read about in the news and hear about on television. Yet equality is usually won a little bit at a time, through what we give of ourselves on a daily basis. To move forward, we all need to work together. To get involved with Equality Ohio and add your contribution to the movement, please visit www.equalityohio.org. Equality Ohio belongs to you, and with your help, we can make 2009 a year of achievement and progress.

VOLUNTEER FOR EQUALITY OHIO Dear Volunteers: Happy New Year! 2009 is going to be an exciting year and we have lots of opportunities for you to be involved in the work towards equality!

Volunteers to Collect Fired Cards • Saturday January 10 from 1:30p-3:30p at the Ohio Statehouse (High St and Broad in downtown Columbus) • Help collect Fired cards from rally attendees that we can send to our legislators to let them know we support the Equal Housing and Employment Act in Ohio. If you can make it I ask that you show up at 1:15p to get set-up!

Data Entry Volunteers Needed • First Two Weeks of January 8a-5p (anytime during the day) at our offices in Columbus • Come in during the day and help us finish up our Fired card data entry and look-up as we will be sending this to our legislators by the end of this month!

Canvassing and Phonebanking • Protect Cleveland Domestic Partner Registry at various locations in Cleveland • Join us to help protect the Cleveland Domestic Partner Registry.

Canvasses and Phonebanks have started and all help is needed to ensure that we protect the positive legislation in Cleveland. Please email doug@clevelandfamiliescount.org to get involved or for more information!

For the first two volunteer options please contact me directly by via email or phone.

Thank you all and welcome to 2009 a year that promises to be very exciting for equality!

Best, Dan Coleman Community Organizer, Equality Ohio 614.224.0400 x26 (o) www.equalityohio.org www.dowhatsrightohio.com JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

Rothan, Farrell and Dingus are three of six candidates for City Council from the GLBT community.

GLBT HOPEFULS AWAIT CITY COUNCIL DECISION

by Adam Leddy Among the dozens of applicants to fill two vacant Columbus City Council seats are at least a half-dozen GLBT candidates. With Councilmembers Kevin Boyce and Maryellen O’Shaughnessy leaving to serve in other public office, the GLBT community has a rare opportunity to restore what some have referred to - reverently or derisively - as a “gay seat” on the council. Mary Jo Hudson was the only openly gay person to serve on Columbus City Council, leaving upon her appointment to head the state Department of Insurance in 2006.

The GLBT pool is diverse and impressive. Stonewall Columbus ED Karla Rothan joins past applicant and BRAVO board member Steve Farrell in seeking a seat. TJ Brown has consulted for Democrats, and attorney Shawn Dingus ran a strong race for the Court of Common Pleas in 2008. Marc Conte and Jeff Knoll are highly regarded for their involvement in community (and city) affairs.

Of course, most of the applicants from outside the GLBT community can also boast strong resumes and stellar reputations. We’ll find out on January 12 who will take their seats on Columbus City Council.

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JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

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FEATURE STORY

THE PROMISE OF A NEW YEAR THE NEXT STEP

by Rea Carey, executive director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

by Joe Solmonese, president, Human Rights Campaign

What an extraordinary and emotional election year 2008 was - from the exhilaration of participating in a historic presidential election (no matter who you supported), to the election of the first person of color - an African American - to the presidential office.

And to the pain of the losses in Florida, Arizona, Arkansas and California, as well as Nebraska’s anti-affirmative action measure and Missouri’s English-only initiative.

With the disappointing ballot losses of the recent election, it is hard to remember that we are making progress toward full equality - but remember we must!

Practically unnoticed were significant signs of progress and cause for celebration in states like Connecticut, where voters headed off a threat to the recently-won right to marry. Or in King County, WA, where voters made it illegal for the county to discriminate in hiring based on disability, sexual orientation or gender identity and expression. And, we now have what promises to be the most LGBTsupportive administration and Congress in this nation’s history.

Since the election, we have seen a swell of activity as people turned anger into action with rallies and protests across the country. With our focus on grassroots activism, the Task Force knows the power of people coming together to stay engaged in the fight for change.

Yet, it is clear that we must continue moving more voters of all backgrounds toward justice and equality. The fact of the matter is, the only segment of the population we actually won or came closest to winning across the board on the LGBT-related ballot measures were voters under the age of thirty.

We also must not forget the progress that has already been made. For example, despite Prop. 8’s passage, there clearly was a positive shift in public attitudes toward the freedom to marry in California - from 38 percent in our favor during the 2000 vote to 48 percent this election. This gain was due to the hard work of the Task Force and dozens of other organizations that have worked tirelessly to build coalitions and educate the public over the past eight years. We will win back marriage in California, and we will win it across the country.

As we move into 2009, here are just a few things the Task Force is already doing: • Through our “Anger into Action” campaign, launched shortly after the election, we have given people concrete steps to turn their anger into action - and to turn their action into long-lasting change. Already, nearly 4,000 people have signed our Anger into Action declaration. Our annual National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, beginning on Jan. 28 in Denver, CO, will also be a place where people learn how to create long-term change.

• We are working with top researchers to analyze the election data to gain insight into strategies for winning in the future.

• We are taking part in the rallies organized by JointheImpact.com. In fact, we’ve been talking with the women who organized the site about how we can support them to continue the momentum. Turns out, these amazing activists attended Creating Change a few years ago, were inspired and are now inspiring so many others!

• We are heading up a project with nineteen colleague organizations to identify and develop concrete policy and regulatory changes that the next administration can make that have a direct impact on the well-being of LGBT people.

• We have spent the past year, in partnership with SAGE, mapping the federal government with regard to aging programs, services and support so that we can advocate for increased attention to LGBT seniors right off the bat in the upcoming year.

At the Task Force, we will work every day, as we have for 35 years, to eliminate the possibility that LGBT lives will be subject to someone else’s judgment, someone’s condemnation of our humanity, our love and our inalienable freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness. Please learn more about our work at www.theTaskForce.org.

America is preparing for the change of our lifetime. Divisive, anti-gay politics are leaving our executive branch. Congress will have more allies than ever, and our next Supreme Court justices will respect our fundamental rights. Through our work and our unyielding commitment to a better future for ourselves and our families, LGBT people helped to make this happen.

2009 has just begun, and the opportunities before us are vast. We can finally pass hate crimes legislation covering our entire community and a fully-inclusive ENDA; we can roll back eight years of bad Bush administration policy on HIV, workplace protections for federal employees, and benefits for families. We can build support for repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and we can help create safe schools. The Human Rights Campaign will be working tirelessly to advance these policies.

In winning the elections, we did not pass these bills or secure these policies. The election opened a door that had long been locked, but what lies beyond the door is a steep spiral staircase. In this election, we won the chance to climb it. And my experience tells me that a “fighting chance” is a good way to describe it, because we’re going to have to fight for it.

This lesson learned from Prop 8 and of all of the discriminatory campaigns against us and eight years of roadblocks to our legislation is that when our community is getting ready to win, the other side fights hard - and they fight with lies. When we passed hate crimes in the last Congress, the haters rolled out every lie that they would later use to take away our rights in California. We harm religion. We harm children. We take over the schools. We put preachers in jail.

Our job is to beat back those same lies. When hate crimes comes up for a vote this year, will those of us who are standing up against the Prop 8 haters come out against those who would kill this bill? We must. We must never forget that, even as we focus on the right to marry and the economic and spiritual benefits that it brings, we have a duty to protect our entire community’s right to live without fear of being attacked for who we are. We have a duty to stand up in this fight because passing hate crimes legislation ten years after Matthew Shepard’s death is a step toward marriage and every other community goal.

Each step upward is a step in full circle: back to facing our enemies, back to the same set of falsehoods, the same tired old bigoted players. But we are climbing upward, even though we have not yet achieved so many of our goals. More Americans support marriage than ever before. Young people, LGBT or not, overwhelmingly believe in our rights, and are fighting for them. Employers are treating our families equally; faith communities are embracing us. Although we find ourselves facing the same people again and again, I truly believe that with each year that passes, we do so from higher ground.

But we cannot reach the top if we do not keep the heat on the other side. We cannot reach the top if we do not invest the same energy, time, and even anger into federal laws and policies that we have invested in fighting Proposition 8.

After losing California, it is difficult to imagine how working on hate crimes, or an inclusive ENDA, or family benefits, or fair federal workplace policies, is going to move the ball forward for marriage. But it’s clear to me that this is our path - upward and around, steadily and surely. It’s clear to the right wing, which is why they try to block every measure that would help our community at all.

Martin Luther King once said that faith is taking the first step when you don’t see the whole staircase. Many of you took that first step in speaking out against Proposition 8, or volunteering for Barack Obama, or coming out. Our equality - in our families, in our workplaces, and in our communities - is that staircase. It is linked together, and one measure follows from the next.

The LGBT community is linked together with one future, one path, and one monumental task: to fight hate with truth. That is the next step that we will take together.

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

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JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

20 • OUTLOOK WEEKLY

DEEP INSIDE HOLLYWOOD

by Romeo San Vicente

CHO AND PENN UNITE FOR SISTERS

PEE-WEE COMES BACK TO THE PLAYHOUSE

NO, REALLY: LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS

NEXT CHRISTMAS, MAKE THE YULETIDE GAY

Queer-identified entertainer Margaret Cho is quite the Renaissance woman - she’s a standup comic, author, actress, blogger, and activist.

And now she can add “director” to her resume with Two Sisters, her feature debut. If you were expecting something racy from the pottymouthed comedian, forget it; the movie is slated to premiere on ABC Family. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but Cho has assembled an impressive cast, including Kal Penn (from the Harold and Kumar movies, as well as The Namesake) and the gorgeous Tamlyn Tomita (who recently popped up on Heroes), plus Kathy Najimy (King of the Hill) and Elaine Hendrix (Tru Loved, The Parent Trap). As for the lady herself, Cho will also appear in a small role. Look for Two Sisters to make its premiere on ABC Family in 2009.

There are a lot of unanswered questions floating around about Pee-wee’s Playhouse: The Movie, like “Is it really happening?” and “Is Johnny Depp playing Pee-wee?” So far the only certainty is that Paul Reubens, who, thankfully, is still in charge of Pee-wee Inc, is jump-starting this cash cow one more time and is working on the goal of a 2009 release date for the slow-moving production. Plot details are few and up for debate. Casting, too. (Who’ll replace the late Phil Hartman? What happened to the guy who played the unambiguously gay Jambi? Will S. Epatha Merkerson return as Reba the Mail Lady?

Please?) But all will surely be answered eventually, possibly via ticker-tape readout from Conky the Robot’s torso. And if Johnny Depp shows up, even as a Pee-wee doppelganger, that’s just fine, too. Now if the cameras would only hurry up and roll.

Whether it’s Snakes on a Plane or The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?, a movie’s title can sometimes tell you everything you need to know.

And so it is with Lesbian Vampire Killers, a new British horror-comedy about a Welsh village whose women have been cursed by the local Sapphic bloodsuckers. In an attempt to improve matters, the town sends two hapless visitors (played by James Corden and Mathew Horne, the stars of the BBC sitcom Gavin & Stacey) into the woods as a sacrifice to the titular undead. The film also features Paul McGann (Withnail & I, Doctor Who) as one of the few remaining men in the village. Lesbian Vampire Killers will put the bite on audiences in 2009.

Romeo loves a good holiday classic, and some gay filmmakers obviously feel the same way about the genre, with Make the Yuletide Gay now going into production. Queer actor Adamo Ruggiero (who played out-and-eventually-proud Marco on Degrassi: The Next Generation) and Allison Arngrim (best known as frontier mean girl Nellie Oleson on Little House on the Prairie) will don their gay apparel for this comedy about what happens when a guy who’s not out to his family goes home for the holidays and then has to explain the sudden appearance of his boyfriend. Yuletide also features Ian Buchanan (Twin Peaks) and gay indie-film vets Derek Long (Socket) and Steve Callahan (East Side Story).

Look for Make the Yuletide Gay to pop up at around the same time as 2009 Advent calendars.

guitar, will join The Early Interval for this year’s Twelfth Night concerts.

Among the composers represented on the program will be Cristóbal de Morales, Lucas Ruiz de Ribayaz, Claudin de Sermisy, Eustache Du Caurroy, Costanzo Festa, Claudio Monteverdi and Ermeni Murad Çelebi. This season’s program will include music from early improvisatory traditions, including Ron Cook’s improvisation on the harp of a North African taqsim based upon a traditional Middle Eastern maqam, or mode.

The members of The Early Interval are Ron Cook, director, Jim Bates, Janice Cook,

William Dunlap, Aaron Minnick, Monica Rudy and Tamara Seckel.

Romeo San Vicente can be reached care of this publication or at DeepInsideHollywood@qsyndicate.com.

ARTS

by Kathy Wolfe

TWELFTH NIGHT:

A PERFECT CLOSE TO THE HOLIDAY SEASON! Christmas has come and gone. You’ve survived Aunt Edna’s fruitcake. You’ve exchanged that horrible sweater that your mother gave you. Your list of New Year’s resolutions is already gathering dust. Wouldn’t it be nice to enjoy just a little bit more of the season without all of the insanity? We’ve got just the ticket for you!

Every year since 1992, Early Music in Columbus has presented the local early music group The Early Interval in a program of music that celebrates the twelfth night of Christmas. For the uninitiated, Twelfth Night (officially January 6th) is Epiphany - the day when the wise men came to visit the Christ child. In medieval and Renaissance times, this was also the close of the Christmas holidays and great feasts were given on this twelfth day of the Christmas season. A tremendous catalogue of music was also composed to celebrate Twelfth Night and JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

each year, The Early Interval presents a concert of music featuring some of that music.

This year, The Early Interval will present A Mediterranean Twelfth Night Celebration on January 9, 10 & 11 in the glorious acoustics of the St. Turibius Chapel at the Pontifical College Josephinum, 7625 N. High Street in north Columbus. On Friday and Saturday, January 9-10, the concerts will begin at 8p with a pre-concert lecture at 7:30. The Sunday concert will begin at 2:30p with a preconcert lecture at 2p.

A Mediterranean Twelfth Night Celebration will feature early music from Spain, Cyprus, France, northern Africa, Turkey and Italy. The group will perform vocally and on its wide range of instruments, including recorders, medieval and Renaissance harps, violas da gamba, medieval lute, vielles, rebec, violin and pipe and tabor. Sean Ferguson, performing on chitarone and Baroque

The Early Music in Columbus concert series features regional, national and international artists who perform music from the medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods on reproductions of historical instruments. Tickets are $25 general admission, $20 for seniors and $10 for students and may be purchased at the door or charged by phone. To order tickets, call Ticketmaster at 614.431.3600, CAPA ticket offices 614.469.0939 or contact Katherine Wolfe at 614.861.4569. Tickets also may be purchased at The Loft Violin Shop, 4604 N. High Street.

Kathy Wolfe is Program Director for Early Music in Columbus a member organization of the Columbus Arts Marketing Association. For more information, visit www.camaonline.org.

OUTLOOK WEEKLY •

21

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Dear Diary:

22 • OUTLOOK WEEKLY

INTERVIEW

by Gregg Shapiro

an interview with writer Lily Koppel With the frigid winter temperatures plummeting outside, wouldn’t it be nice to curl up with a book to warm your heart (and potentially other regions)? The Red Leather Diary (Harper Perennial)

by Lily Koppel is one such read. Subtitled Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal, Koppel writes about finding a diary in a dumpster in New York and what occurred when she started reading. Between the tattered covers, Koppel introduces readers of The Red Leather Diary to Florence Wolfson, a remarkable young woman who lived an equally remarkable life as a teen, from 1929 to 1934, which included taking lovers of both genders, among other things. One of the best books of 2008, The Red Leather Diary is sure to steam up the lenses of your reading glasses.

Gregg Shapiro: Finding a treasure such as what you found in a dumpster at 98 Riverside Drive sounds like the kind of thing that could only happen in New York. Would you agree?

Lily Koppel: I think that’s exactly why I moved to New York, to fall in love, to have something incredible happen to me, like being hit by a meteor, that kind of thing, and to look for a great story as a writer. So coming out of my building one morning and just having this dumpster full of these old steamer trunks … I never thought that they weren’t treasure chests, and that’s why I had to climb in there and go through them. … … That’s how I tend to look at the universe.

You kind of create your own adventure, and of course there’s a lot of chance involved in it as well, but you kind of have to look for something really interesting to happen and then act upon whatever impulse you have. Whether it’s with a person or these mystical steamer trunks that appeared one morning outside of my building.

GS: The book includes original diary passages interwoven with your exposition of the text. How did you decide which excerpts to include and which ones to expand on for the purpose of advancing the story?

LK: I was just telling the story behind the diary. I would tell the story and allow her entries from that time to kind of speak to exactly to what she was feeling at that moment.

GS: How did you choose?

LK: There were over 2,000 diaries entries and each one was only four lines because it was this five-year diary. Each one was like a little haiku or something. It just gave you the kind of…

GS: … the jumping off point.

LK: Exactly. I had to ask Florence to tell me the JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

story behind her life, behind Pearl and George, Manny, Matt, and weave all this together along with her family life and her parents coming to America to really show how she was part of this group of Depression-stamped children who were trying to carve out artistic and independent lives for themselves. So I treated it almost like Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman, but because the diary is such a rare form where you get that portal into someone’s innermost thoughts, I wanted the reader to have the experience of reading her journal for the first time….

GS: How much do you think being a journalist influenced your approach to and interest in the material?

LK: … I felt that when I found this diary that this was someone I could really connect with, even sometimes more than my peers.

She was very internal but external. Constantly out at theater and movies and her life was full of literature and art and this literary salon. She seemed to be this rare combination of beauty and intellect; someone who’s very self reflective but also very adventurous. She was definitely a girl about town.

She was like the star of her own show. Now, so many people look to Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan on how to behave. But Florence seemed to just be so sure of herself, and I felt like as she was writing this diary she was writing who she wanted to be in life, and she was a complete nonconformist, and totally surprised me. At first I thought I was reading the chronicles of this nice Jewish daughter, riding on horseback and playing tennis and playing piano, and then you know I stumbled upon “Slept with Pearl last night” and I thought, “Wow, Florence!”

GS: Given the time that it was written, how surprised were you when you read about Florence’s sexual escapades with women in her diary?

LK: Totally. It’s after the 1920s, so there’s still this streak of freedom in the air, but this was someone who was between 14 and 19, and when I read it, it seemed to me a perfect parallel to my life in my 20s. You hardly got a sense that she had parents. She came and went from her parents’ Upper East Side apartment as she pleased.

She was obsessed with this famous stage actress named Eva LaGallienne, who she wrote to, and she didn’t hear back, so she draws her portrait, goes to a performance of Peter Pan, hands it to an usher and demands to see her and is ushered in backstage.

GS: You could tell that she felt pain when she broke it off with Pearl.

LK: I always love this entry where she just said, “I feel almost vulgar in my desire to write.” That was kind of how she approached life, too.

GS: Do you think that keeping a diary is a way to get out of doing the writing that you are meant to do?

LK: She had really strong literary ambitions. At 15 she writes, “working on a novel … but what adolescent is an adolescent without a novel.” I’m holding her diary, and I think, well, Florence, how true. That’s how I felt when I first read it. Her diary was really her enduring work of art….

GS: Has your experience with Florence’s diary influenced the way that you think about diaries or journals?

LK: It’s definitely changed my approach to writing in general. When I found it I was Photo by Mark Seliger working on a novel. Although it’s written in a journalistic way, in that it’s non-fiction, and that it’s all based on original interviews, and research, it was something that a journalist doesn’t often get the experience to enter into their own story, so it was really a culmination of all the writing I’d been doing at the time. After celebrity reporting I started writing about the hidden treasures and interesting characters of New York, as it fills up with Starbucks and Citibanks, like the sleuth who helped me track Florence down.

GS: The story truly is cinematic. Is there interest in making it into a film?

LK: I think there is a lot of interest. It’s like a Titanic on the Upper West Side of New York. Florence is set on Meryl Streep for her older self. I think Scarlett Johansson for the younger Florence.

GS: The book really feels like it has multiple audiences. There’s the memoir/ nonfiction audience, the Jewish book club audience, the

GLBT audience. Were you aware when you were writing the book that it would have such broad appeal?

LK: I guess I was, though it never started out as a book. It was just this magical object I had found.

I wanted to return it to Florence and I was blown away by the fact that she was still alive, that she wanted to meet me. … She was so open and she even writes in her forward how she felt about all these intimate thoughts being on public display, she was especially concerned with the orgasm scene, and she said, well, the younger Florence would’ve said “go for it.”

GS: Was your meeting with Florence everything that you had hoped for?

LK: It really was. Someone recently asked me was it like two twins reunited after be separated at birth? [Laughs.] We’re kindred sprits. She had her arms open and hugged me. She just started reading it, and it was just like this amazing event. She’s 90, and I think life had not been going so well. Her husband was now 95, he was really deteriorating. You could just see the memories coming back and hearing them, and she spoke about her parents, who she had a very difficult relationship with. One of the entries which really breaks my heart is when she writes at about 15, “I never realized what a tragedy my parents’ lives were.” So precocious. She graduated from high school at 15. In terms of maturity she was like a 20-year-old when I found the diary.

She graduated from college at 18. She was 4 years ahead of everybody.

GS: What is next for you?

LK: I’ve started my next book. When Florence’s daughters finished the book, and she has granddaughters and great grandchildren, they both said that they had learned so much about their mother from reading the book. They had never been able to see her as this young, passionate woman. They already had known about the love affairs of both men and women, but it was just seeing the world through her eyes. So it got me thinking about my mother, so my next book is going to be about my mom. She’s kind of like, “My life is an open book to you.” She has a really fascinating story.

OUTLOOK WEEKLY •

CLASSIFIEDS HELP WANTED UNEMPLOYED? UNDEREMPLOYED? Do you routinely scan the classifieds? Are physical, emotional, or mental health issues or handicaps causing you roadblocks to successful and satisfying employment? Vision & Vocational Services and

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23

ments available, new kitchen, wd flrs, vaulted ceiling, $450/mo. More OTE rentals available. Call Beacon Property Mgmt. at 614.228.6700.

REAL ESTATE CAPE COD Two-bedroom Cape Cod with updates galore. Priced at $89,500. One mile from Westgate Park with friendly neighbors. Call Cindy Dunigan at 614.361.8400.

MLS ID 2843973

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

24 • OUTLOOK WEEKLY

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

OUTLOOK WEEKLY •

25

SAVAGE LOVE

by Dan Savage

I’m a 34-year-old straight woman living with a 32-year-old straight man. His daughter is 2, and I am the only mother she has ever known.

(Her real mother is a crack whore somewhere.)

My boyfriend tells me he loves me, but it doesn’t feel like he wants to spend any time with me. I pay the rent and am the only person in our household with a full-time job. When I get home, I want to relax. He wants to go out because he has been sitting at home all day. If he hasn’t been at home, he has been running around with his friends. This pisses me off, and I am not afraid to tell him so. His response?

“You’re just jealous because you have to work!” Damn right I’m jealous! Also, I do all the cooking and don’t get any help with cleanup or housework.

Other factors include my 13-year-old son, who has had trouble adjusting to a baby in the house; my boyfriend’s outstanding warrants; and the fact that I have desperately wanted another baby for 10 years. What on earth should I do?

Back Against The Wall Here’s one occupational hazard of the advicecolumn bidness: If you’re not careful, if you’re not constantly on your guard, you can fill your column with letters like BATW’s. Your column fills up with letters from people asking, in essence, “DTMFA?” and you’re forced to respond, “Yes, for fuck’s sake, DTMFA.” (For those of you just tuning in: DTMFA stands for “dump the motherfucker already.”) You may be helping people, sure, but your column quickly becomes a tedious slog, people stop reading, and then you have to get a real job at an auto plant or a hedge fund or a daily newspaper.

But there is one good reason to run DTMFA letters: You can dispose of the letter quickly - keep the baby, if at all possible, BATW, and DTMFA the freeloading, inconsiderate piece of shit - and

move on to more interesting topics.

For instance: A new study out from the Bradley Hasbro Children’s Research Center found that “anal sex is on the rise” among straight teenagers and young adults. According to a heavy-breathing report from ABC News, straight kids are having butt sex “to please a partner, to have sex without the risk of pregnancy, or to preserve their virginity.”

I’m old enough to remember when getting fucked in the ass was considered a sex act, something that virgins, almost by definition, shied away from. But that was before kids were subjected to religious indoctrination masquerading as sex-ed. Abstinence “educators” emphasize the importance of virginity - but they only talk about vaginal intercourse because they figure if we don’t tell kids about anal sex they’ll never figure out what brown can do for them. But they do figure it out. And lacking accurate info, kids aren’t just concluding that anal sex isn’t really sex. (“Otherwise it would’ve been covered in our sex-ed classes, right?”) Kids are telling researchers that anal intercourse, unlike the premarital vaginal intercourse they were warned about (STDs! pregnancy! eternal damnation!), carries no risk of disease. (I can’t wait to tell all my dead friends!)

I wanted to scream and yell about this study and a DTMFA letter leaves plenty of room - but then I figured, you know, fuck it. I’ve been ranting and raving about the idiocy of abstinence education for 10 years. Obviously I can’t beat ’em, so I might as well join ’em. All my life I’ve had to listen to fundamentalist Christian bigots like Pat Robertson and Rick Warren - Rick Warren, Obama? - fume about all the terrible, no good, really bad sodomy gay men get up to. But I haven’t been sodomizing the boyfriend all these years!

I’ve been preserving his virginity.

I’ve been preserving the shit out of my boyfriend’s virginity for 14 years now. If my boyfriend ever decides to marry a woman - mira-

cles can happen! - he’ll be able to wear white at his wedding. Hell, he’s so pure he can wear Saran Wrap at his wedding. And his wife will have me to thank for delivering him to her with his virginity intact. (Unfortunately, the boyfriend can’t preserve my virginity. As a teenager, I had actual vaginal intercourse, under duress, with an actual female’s actual vagina.) But until the boyfriend meets the right girl, I’m going to keep preserving the living shit out of his virginity. His virginity isn’t going anywhere - not on my watch.

My girlfriend’s parents are very wealthy and are paying for her education. They also bought her an apartment and give her tons of spending money. My dad is dead(beat) and my mom is a waitress, and I’m paying my way through school. My girlfriend demands gifts and flowers. I pay for everything when we go out. Other than this, she’s sweet and attractive. Once I graduate and start working, I’ll be happy to pay for everything. But how do I convince her that things have to be more egalitarian for the time being without losing her?

Boyfriend Reeling Over Killer Expenses P.S. She’s only ever physically affectionate after I’ve spent money on her.

DTMFA, BROKE. And here’s hoping that the girlfriend’s parents invested all their money with Bernard Madoff, and that the spoiled-rotten little whore they raised has to get a job and start pulling her own weight.

And, hey, here’s another interesting study: While straight kids are busily boning each other’s butts - the better to preserve their virginities! gay teenagers are knocking each other up. According to a study out of the University of British Columbia, lesbian and gay teenagers are seven times likelier to get knocked up than their straight peers. How the hell does that happen?

Well, gay teens are having straight sex in order “to prove they are heterosexual to avoid harassment and discrimination” by their parents and peers. In other words, gay kids are still having heterosexual sex under duress.

So this is where abstinence education and homophobia have gotten us: Gay kids are having vaginal intercourse and straight kids having anal intercourse. Good work, sexphobes!

I’ve been reading your column since I was 13. I’m 20 now and dating a 41-year-old crossdresser. We were friends for six months before he told me he wouldn’t be able to spend time with me anymore unless we “got closer.” A couple months later, he told me he is into pegging. Now, pegging is all he wants to do. He also told me that he wants to transition from male to female, but he changed his mind and stopped going to his appointments. All that is background to what has been happening recently.

When we fight lately, he makes threatening gestures like he is going to punch me. He also pulls my hair and chokes me. He refuses to apologize and tells me I deserve it. I don’t know what to do.

Worried And Sad You’ve been reading my column since you were 13, WAS, and you don’t know what to do? DTMFA right fucking now, this fucking minute, without fucking delay. Choking and hair-pulling is physical abuse; telling you that you “deserve it” is emotional abuse. And those raised fists - not very ladylike of him, I must say - are a prologue to more extreme acts of abuse. DTMFA. You deserve better, and he - well, he deserves to be pegged by a predator drone.

Download the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at www.thestranger.com/savage. mail@savagelove.net.

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

26 • OUTLOOK WEEKLY

ABOUT TOWN

WIN A TRIP TO KEY WEST AT WALL STREET How’s this for a triple-shot: On Saturday, Jan 17, you can enter a raffle to win a trip to Key West, support Stonewall Columbus, and have a great time at Wall Street Nightclub. Not too shabby, especially considering that you can do all of it before 10:30p.

Wall Street and the Florida Keys Tourism Board are hosting a benefit for Stonewall Columbus. Doors for the FKTB happy hour open at 9p and the event will run 9:3010:30p. A silent auction will feature some of the best products and packages Key West has to offer. You’ll also be able to get some great travel information and wet your whistle with delectable Key Lime cosmos.

The $5 cover goes to Stonewall and each paying attendee is entered into the raffle for a weekend getaway in Key West.

Even if you don’t win the raffle, we’re all winners when we support the organizations that mean so much to the GLBT community.

Feeling lucky? Then we’ll see you at Wall Street on the 17th.

PRIDE LEADERSHIP SEEKS GLBT PROFESSIONALS Looking to get more involved in the community, develop your leadership skills, and make valuable contacts with other GLBT professionals? United Way of Central Ohio’s Pride Leadership is currently recruiting for its second class of participants in 2009.

Pride Leadership is an eight-month training program designed to give Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgendered (GLBT) professionals the skills they need to serve on volunteer boards and committees. The program increases the number of GLBT professionals who are qualified and well prepared to make decisions in our community. 2008 graduates included Outlook’s very own Chris Hayes, so you know you’ll be in good company.

Applications are available at liveunitedcentralohio.org and must be returned by February 6 to United Way of Central Ohio.

JOIN THE IMPACT HOLDS STATE-WIDE RALLY FOR EQUALITY Obama promised LGBT equality. Don't let him forget about us!

Date: Saturday, January 10 Time: 1:30p Location: Ohio Statehouse (High/Broad) President-elect Obama has said, "I support repealing the federal Defense of Marriage Act, passing an inclusive non-discrimination act, repealing 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' passing hate crimes legislations and fighting HIV/AIDS." Let's remind him of his promise and remind him who we are.

More information, including carpool detail, can be found at http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/page/ohio and questions can be directed to jointheimpactcolumbus@gmail.com

COLUMBUS NEXT MEETING: JAN 14, 6P-8P; LOCATION: BUCA DI BEPPO (343 N FRONT ST); SPEAKER: ANGEL LYONS & JOHN WHYDE • WWW.NETWORKCOLUMBUS.COM JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009

OUTLOOK WEEKLY •

fin

27

THE LAST WORD

by Leslie Robinson

RICK WARREN’S INVOCATION OPTIONS Poor Rick Warren. After President-elect Obama selected the evangelical minister to deliver the invocation at his inauguration, gays and liberals kicked up a ruckus. I bet the California megachurchster hasn’t had a moment to think about what he’ll say to America and the world on that cold January day in Washington, DC. I’ve taken it upon myself to help. What follows are several possible invocations I’ve whipped up on behalf of the Rev. Warren. He can use whichever one he likes best. I’m not fussy.

First invocation option: We ask God’s blessing on this most historic day. For this is the day that America fulfills its promise of opportunity for all.

Lord, we know it has not always been so. Our nation has been guilty of the sins of bigotry and discrimination. Many good men and women have been held back, defeated, prevented from contributing for purely base reasons.

But on this day we all gather to celebrate the historic elevation of one man to a position of rare prominence and importance. He is a man, Lord, who is marked by wisdom and conviction and compassion. We thank you for touching him with greatness.

This man, oh God, is . . . me! I get to give the invocation! I’ve made it to the top! Eat your hearts out, Billy and Franklin Graham! The gig doesn’t belong to your family anymore! Oh, and God, do me a favor and look out for what’s-his-name who’s becoming president.

Second invocation option: As we gather here today, let’s thank God for our country, our leaders, and above all our democracy. In a democracy citizens disagree. We have different opinions, and we’re free to express them.

The man we’re inaugurating today knows that a goodly portion of America’s citizens did not vote for him. But he has pledged from the beginning to be everybody’s president. He has a rare talent for bringing together people of different views to work for common cause. Barack Obama truly is a uniter.

Folks, look at his decision to have me offer the invocation today. Gays are livid because I fought for Prop 8, and a bunch of conservative Christians have bugs up their butts because they think I’m an opportunist. Both sides are pissed. If that’s not uniting people, I don’t know what is.

Third invocation option: God of all people, we

humbly ask you to bless the citizens of this nation. We come together today as Americans, each and every one of us. We put aside our differences to celebrate what makes America great: the orderly, peaceful transition of power from one administration to the next. Lord, that transition makes this day the perfect example of true democracy.

My being here today is another darn good example of democracy in action. If you were listening, Lord, you just heard me mention differences.

Take a gander at these facts: Homosexuals helped get the new guy elected, and I believe gay marriage is right up there with polygamy and incest, but here I am anyway! I helped lead the fight to take away gays’ civil right to marry, but here I am anyway! I believe that even if homosexuality is biological, gays should just squelch it their entire lives, but here I am anyway! You, and democracy, both work in mysterious ways.

The new president wanted me here to let religious conservatives know his administration won’t ignore them. Gays

see me as a slap in the face. I’m a symbol to both sides. Blessed are the symbols, for they shall wine and dine in DC. Lord, is this a great country or what?

Amen.

HOROSCOPES

by Jack Fertig

CAPRICORN (December 21 - January 19): This should be your lucky year for money, but it comes with some deceptive lures. Still, odd chances that shouldn’t work might prove very lucrative. Think ahead, but be ready to take advantage of sudden opportunities.

ARIES (March 20 - April 19): You’ll be amazed to see what your friends would do for you. Take the opportunity to advance yourself politically and socially, and to promote whatever goals and ideals you see improving the world.

CANCER (June 21 - July 22): New sexual adventures beckon - and celibacy and monogamy may count as “adventures,” if they’re new to you. You can get your sex life where it should be or wherever you want it. Are they the same? Be careful what you wish for!

LIBRA (September 23 - October 22): If you wants kids, now’s the time! If you prefer having time for fun, explore new pleasures, hobbies, and creative directions. Try something you’ve only considered at the edges of your wildest dreams. The more “out there” and daring, the better!

AQUARIUS (January 20 - February 18): In a 12-year cycle, this is your lucky year. Buy a few lottery tickets now and then, travel, or take some classes. You can expand yourself educationally, economically, and/or otherwise. But watch your diet!

TAURUS (April 20 - May 20): Don’t be shy! Toot your horn and let everyone know what you’re worth.

This is your chance to rise to any position you’re qualified for. You have a bigger career peak in 12 years, but promotions now can boost your trajectory.

LEO (July 23 - August 22): This is your lucky year for relationships. That could include becoming very happy with being single. Join in political or community groups; do things that fulfill you, get you out among others, and accomplish some good. Love will come when it is ready.

SCORPIO (October 23 - November 21): Whether it involves moving or decorating, embark on the big domestic changes that will make your home what you really want it to be.

Do what you can to heal family problems. You can hardly go wrong.

PISCES (February 19 - March 19): The worst things that happen to you could turn out for the best, although it may take a while to see that. By next year, you’ll be very glad for the experience and insights.

GEMINI (May 21 - June 20): At least give a listen to the wackiest, most far-out ideas coming your way.

Take classes that challenge everything you believe in. Ask yourself and the world all the hard questions, and be ready for whole new worlds of answers.

VIRGO (August 23 - September 22): Health-wise, this is generally a good year, but be careful of your liver.

You can get almost any job you want, if you’re suited for it. Make sure to have the education you need for the post you want.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 - December 20): Could you be any more loquacious? Keep your mouth out of trouble by harnessing the brain behind it. Learn a new skill or language, or sign up for any class that offers you a different direction.

Jack Fertig, a professional astrologer since 1977, is a founding member of the Association for Astrological Networking. He can be reached for consultations at 415.864.8302, www.starjack.com, and by e-mail at QScopes@qsyndicate.com.

JAN 08 - JAN 14 2009