pgn Philadelphia Gay News LGBT NEWS SINCE 1976
Vol. 42 No. 29 July 20-26, 2018
Family Portrait: Arthur Zeng: making a splash with the Fins PAGE 31
Norristown expands LGBT protections
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HONESTY • INTEGRITY • PROFESSIONALISM “Oh, Myyy!” — does George Takei have an app for you! PAGE 27
Family Forward: Reality hits home in final trimester
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Catholic agency Advocates pressure mayor to end PARS seeks ongoing foster referrals during appeal By Adriana Fraser adriana@epgn.com
By Timothy Cwiek timothy@epgn.com Catholic Social Services this week asked the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to issue an emergency order for the city to resume referring foster-care children to CSS, even though CSS refuses to license same-sex couples as foster parents. In a 42-page document filed July 16, CSS claimed its foster-care program is in danger of closing if the appeals court doesn’t issue the order. The agency also alleged that the city is violating its free-speech and religious-freedom rights. On July 13, U.S. District Judge Petrese B. Tucker declined CSS’ previous request to issue an injunction that would have required the city to resume foster-child referrals to the agency. The city stopped referring foster children to CSS in March after learning it won’t license same-sex couples as foster parents. In her 64-page opinion, Tucker noted that the city has a right to enforce its Fair Practices Ordinance, which forbids antiLGBT bias in the provision of city services. The judge also held that the city isn’t violating CSS’ constitutional rights. CSS initially asked Tucker to issue an emergency order for the resumption of foster-child referrals while the appeal is pending. But when Tucker didn’t immediately do so, CSS filed the 42-page request for the emergency order. As of presstime, the Third Circuit hadn’t ruled on CSS’ request and city attorneys hadn’t replied to it. In prior court papers, city attorneys emphasized the need for the city’s foster-care system to operate in a bias-free manner. In a statement July 17, a city spokesperson said, “We are committed to ensuring that government services are provided in an accessible way to all Philadelphians and we must ensure that the foster-care services CSS provides are done so in a non-discriminatory way according to the Fair Practices Ordinance and our contract.” PAGE 2
THE QUEER DANCE PARTY PROTESTS ICE Photo: Adriana Fraser
Philly Pride Presents director to retire after 2019 event By Adriana Fraser adriana@epgn.com Philly Pride Presents executive director Franny Price has announced that Pride 2019 will be her last. Price planned on retiring after this year’s OutFest, the largest National Coming Out Day event in the world, on Oct. 7, but then she changed her mind. “I put my retirement on hold because a lot of the big leaders in the city’s LGBT community met with me and discussed how important it would be for me to take on the Pride celebration in honor of Stonewall’s 50th anniversary,” Price told PGN. “Every city will be going all out next year for that, and it wouldn’t be fair for a Pride beginner to tackle such a monumental celebration,” she added. Price began coordinating Philadelphia’s Pride celebrations in 1978, when the Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Taskforce, now known as Philly Pride Presents, organized the city’s first Pride to honor the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. PFP, a group of volunteer coordinators, organizes the city’s annual Pride festival and parade as well as the annual OutFest block party. Price anticipates next year’s festival to be the city’s biggest-ever Pride event and said she plans to provide an appropriate send-off to her 30-year career. PAGE 6 “It’s been great to watch the festival
LGBTQ and immigrant communities are partnering to put pressure on Mayor Jim Kenney to cancel the renewal of the city’s Preliminary Arraignment Reporting System, or PARS. PARS is a local, real-time database of police arrests that collects personal information such as Social Security numbers, dates of birth and countries of origin, which can then be used to target undocumented individuals for deportation. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has had access to the city’s PARS database since 2010. ICE can access information about recent arrests and ask police to detain certain suspects whom the agency can subsequently take them into custody and potentially deport. By Aug. 31, three key stakeholders in PARS — the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, the City of Philadelphia and the First Judicial District — will be required to either reauthorize or decline ICE access. In a statement earlier this month, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said he would “absolutely be a ‘no’ vote to provide additional access to PARS for ICE. The current arrangement shares information with ICE in a way that should not continue.” Mayor Kenney and representatives from the First Judicial District have not responded to requests for comment on whether they will vote against PARS. Juntos, an immigrant-advocacy organization based in South Philadelphia, has been fighting to end ICE’s use of PARS for nearly as long as the authority has been doing it. Erika Almiron, executive director of Juntos, met with Kenney twice last week in an effort to end the information-sharing agreement.
“We’ve been in communication with the city for over a year about PARS and getting them all of the stories about what we’ve been seeing in the streets so that they can hear how ICE has been behaving,” she said. “It was an opportunity for Kenney to hear directly from the community about what’s been going on. It’s important for him to hear from the people who have been fighting this issue for years.” Almiron said while Kenney hasn’t yet issued his answer, she believes the major is “taking it seriously,” adding that 84 local and national organizations have joined Juntos’ efforts to end PARS, including Galaei, Unite Here, the Philadelphia Teachers Union, the national Latinx and Chicanx advocacy organization Mijente and Black Lives Matter Philly. Francisco Cortes, executive director of Galaei, said that immigrant and LGBTQ intersectionality makes it “critical” for LBTQ organizations to rally behind immigration issues. “LGBTQ organizations should align with immigration-rights organizations because immigration is an LGBTQ issue,” Cortes said. “I know that there are LGBTQ immigrants in our city being negatively affected by PARS. LGBTQ people are trying to flee from homophobic countries because their lives are on the line. Even if you’re not an LGBTQ immigrant, LGBTQidentified people know what it’s like for part of our identity to be used against us and to be criminalized for that identity.” A report from the Williams Institute at UCLA in 2013 estimated that more than 267,000 undocumented people in America identify as LGBTQ. In January, Jose “Ivan” Nuñez, an undocumented gay man living in Philadelphia, was detained by ICE agents when he and his husband, Paul PAGE 2