NY LGBT Center Hosts "Women's Event 13" Gala Honoring Cynthia Nixon, Dr. Yvette Burton & Joan Garry

w/ award honoree Cynthia Nixon (Sex And The City actress/LGBT advocate)

w/ honoree Dr. Yvette Burton of IBM (middle) and GO Magazine's Lauren Golfer (right)

w/ honoree activist Joan Garry

Saturday night New York City’s LGBT Center held their annual “Women’s Event” Awards Gala at Chelsea Piers. It was quite an experience to be in a room with so many dynamic and strong women all committed to one purpose: Equality for everyone in this country, regardless of their gender reality, birth challenges, medical conditions, chromosomes or sexual orientation.

Noted actress and advocate Cynthia Nixon (Sex and the City), IMB Exec & LGBT advisor Dr. Yvette Burton and activist Joan Garry were all honored for their dedication and advocacy to the LGBT community.

Cynthia Nixon has been doing a great job advocating for marriage equality. I met her at the National Equality March in Washington DC last year, and she is really nice in person. Her fiance, Christine Marinoni, introduced Cynthia, and so is so charismatic and funny, she should be a standup comedian!

I met award honoree Dr. Yvette Burton in LA during the GLAAD Media Awards a few years ago. She was the president of GLAAD’s Board of Directors. She actually used to work at The NY LGBT Center too. She totally deserved her award for educating multiple corporations on issues pertaining to the LGBT community.

My heart sank when during Joan’s acceptance speech she kept on saying “gay and lesbian” during her speech, never once did she say “bisexual or transgender”. I wonder if she knew there were many trans people in that room who felt excluded. Hopefully, the next time she speaks she remembers that this is an LGBT community, not a LG one. However, there is no love lost from me for Joan, she is an amazing activist, and perhaps she just needs some more education about the responsibility of inclusive language.

The moment that touched me the most during the night was when Glennda Testone (Director of the Center) spoke about how this was her mothers first time coming to a LGBT event. Glennda shared how it had taken her mother a while to come to terms with her daughters's orientation, but eventually she came through. I met Glennda's mother afterwards and she really is a sweet heart. It makes me feel warm to see other LGBT people's parents so accepting and supporting of their children. I wish all parents were that awesome and unconditional with their love.

It was such a good time being around so many activists and feminists. Can’t wait until next year!

I love that the NY Community Center includes "transgender & bisexual" in their title. The LA Center does not :(
w/ The Center's Exec. Director Glennda Testone (right) and her adorable mother
w/ GLAAD's Cindi Creager (middle) and her wife Rainie Cole
w/ Edge Publication's William Kapher (right) and NPR's Debra Delman (2nd from left)

w/ LGBT advocate Nicole Mason (2nd from right)
w/ The Centers YLC's Billy Wheelan (2nd from left)
w/ Stephanie Battaglino (board member for The Center)
w/ LAMBDA Legals Anna Wipfler (middle) and her girlfriend

Does Dan Savage Get Off On Demonizing President Obama? Why Is Mr "Anti-Bully" A Big Bully Himself?

Seattle based gay advocate (I didnt say LGBT on purpose because I have yet to hear Savage care about true trans inclusion) Dan Savage is …well…a savage. Yesterday Savage wrote a letter to the president saying “F*** you” called “Confidential To The White House”: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/10/11/confidential-to-the-white-house Very classy Danny! The same month Savage starts the “It Gets Better” campaign (where he does a video speaking out against bullying), days later he writes a nasty vitriol filled letter attacking the president, becoming a bully himself!

Another Seattle based activist named Andrew Caldwell replies, “Indeed. Sad, so sad. Dan has a great project with "It Gets Better," and the White House reached out and he screamed expletives back at them. (And we wonder why the DC establishment doesn't give us any political crediblity...) He Gets Bitter.”

These endangered youth should be our top priority, not the right to fight some war over seas and steal resources from other countries. I just don’t understand why he feels demonizing and scapegoating ONE MAN is productive. President Obama is not a messiah with magic powers. He is an elected official. He has to work with the courts, Congress and the people to ensure social justice. I wish Savage would write his irrational letters to the Republican Congress, since they are the ones truly delaying LGBT liberation, not the president. History shows that all social change movements have occurred through incremental change, not over night. If anyone knows Savage, can they tell him that it really does get better? And it has! Read this article that’s highlights FORTY things the Obama Administration has done for LGBT equality called “Accomplishments by the Administration and Congress on LGBT Equality” http://www.equalitygiving.org/Accomplishments-by-the-Administration-and-Congress-on-LGBT-Equality

I don’t know him well enough to say he suffers from internalized racism, but wouldn’t be surprised due to the fact that he started the unfounded propaganda that it was the African American community who was responsible for passing Prop 8. Data showed that to be false.

Did Martin Luther King ever swear at the president? No! Why? Because he was smart enough to know it would alienate allies. Im begining to suspect some people in our community want the classist Republicans to win, but they wont admit it.

Concerning the “It Gets Better Campaign”, many transsexual, transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people are disappointed in the campaign’s non-inclusive language and gay appropriation of those in LGBTQI community who are not gay or lesbian. To have the PSA refer to the LGBTQI community as “gay and questioning youth” is inaccurate because sexual orientation, medical conditions, birth challenges, chromosomes and gender identity are not all the same thing (though many transphobic people would argue they are). The good news is that many trans organizations are currently creating an anti-bullying campaign which will be trans and gender specific, because words and messaging matter, and trans youth deserve understanding, accurate education/terms and respect.

I think Dan has an influential voice, it’s just unfortunate that he behaves like a dodgy Tea Bagger one day, and a savior of teens the next. Savage should do all the teens he is reaching out to a favor and not taint all his good work he is doing with the “It Gets Better Campaign” by turning around and slandering the president WHO HAS DONE MORE FOR THE LGBT COMMUNITY THAN ANY OTHER PRESIDENT IN HISTORY. I respect that we need to keep up the pressure on the government and Congress, but can we please reconsider the method of “over the top bullying?”

A good intentioned activist who calls himself “Just Say No” (and lives in the same town as Savage) left a comment under Savage’s hostile letter yesterday saying, “No, Dan Savage, Fuck You. As a volunteer with a Seattle-based gay rights group I am out in the field every weekend canvassing door-to door in places like Bellevue and Federal Way for Democratic candidates who have taken tough votes in support of our issues because it was the right thing to do. Fuck you, because every time you tear down the president you demoralize the Democratic base and literally drive down the progressive vote and ensure the election of every retrograde, savagely anti-gay, tea-bagging wingnut out there. Fuck you, for having the nerve to think you speak for me. Fuck you for making a difficult job more difficult than it already is. I don't know when you self-appointed yourself the leader of all that is gay in America but until you're ready to stand for election or actively work with somebody who is, you're just another media fame-whore and the only thing that distinguishes you from someone like Ann Coulter is that she throws her hate-bombs from the right and you throw yours from somewhere inside your capacious and worn-out ass. Fuck you.”

Do Savage and his kind realize that they are doing precisely what the classist, racist, anti-LGBT liberation Tea Baggers want them to do? I’m scared for our community’s future. So many activists are alienating our biggest allies, and if they keep up their smear campaigns against the Democrats and President Obama, the vote may get split, and it will be another 8 years of the GOP, and they were the ones who voted for DADT and against ENDA, not the Democrats. Wake up Danny boy, wake up!

Frontiers Magazine includes me in their "Our Heroes in a New Age of Activism" edition

Im happy that Frontiers Magazine, Los Angeles' oldest and biggest LGBT magazine, included me in on in their "Fighting 15 List" (California LGBT activist edition) along with some of my friends like Dustin Lance Black (screen writer of Milk) and Adam Bouska (NOH8 Photo Campaign founder), and more advocates for equality.

Here's part of the article below, to see the rest go to: http://www.frontiersweb.com/Features/Exclusive-Interviews/Story.aspx?ID=1278278


Fronteirs Magazine: Features / Exclusive Interviews

Our Heroes in a New Age of Activism Leaders in the LGBT community on what it means to be an activist
by Lesley Goldberg 9/13/2010

What does it mean to be an activist? Answers from 15 of the most involved leaders in the LGBT community might surprise you.

Cleve Jones, a longtime human rights advocate and founder of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and longtime friend of the late gay-rights crusader Harvey Milk, says anyone can be an activist but he prefers to be an organizer and solve problems working with large groups of people.

Chad Griffin, meanwhile, doesn’t consider himself an activist at all but instead the strategist behind the American Foundation for Equal Rights’ fight against Prop. 8. For Milk producer Bruce Cohen, it means supporting a cause he believes in and doing the little things that go beyond writing a check. And for Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, the term “activist” is too political.
For Rogers Hartmann, the founder of Beat Dystonia who taught herself to walk again, it’s about time and energy. And for scores of others—including such newsmakers as Dan Choi and Charlene Strong—it’s about making a difference in people’s lives.

And for you, it hopefully means finding inspiration from the Fighting 15 and getting involved to make a difference in our community.

Ashley Love

“It can be any action that expresses your message, from writing a song or poem, to protesting with picket signs at a rally; there are many ways one can take a stand for how they feel ... It was actually many people in the Southern California transsexual, transgender, intersex, lesbian, gay and bisexual communities who inspired me to change my life a few years ago. I now believe that understanding, acceptance and protections of our community is possible.” —Ashley Love, LGBTTIQQSA advocate at MAGNET (Media Advocates Giving National Equality to Transsexual and Transgender People)

Dustin Lance Black

“I would refer back to some of the early gay rights ‘activists’ who said, ‘This is our lives we’re fighting for.’ I think that’s still true today, which is why I work not only with stuff that pushes us forward like the American Foundation for Equal Rights, but I also want to work with things like the Trevor Project, which is making sure that we have a safety net in place until a time comes that we have equality, and until the time comes when a child isn’t subjected to the sort of abuse they’re subjected to in their schools, homes and churches ... I try as much as I can to not look at this as a political issue; I try to look at it as a more human issue.” —Dustin Lance Black, Oscar-winning screenwriter of Milk; narrator, 8: The Mormon Proposition

Lt Dan Choi

“Rejecting any false sense of inferiority, helping future generations stand up tall, proclaiming, ‘I am somebody,’ and teaching them the hard-earned lessons to confront our oppressors, ridding them of delusions of abused privilege constitutes the work of the activist. An activist is the epitome of love.” —Dan Choi, former American infantry officer in the United States Army

Chelsea Montgomery-Duban

“Being an activist means fighting through the no’s, the criticism and the ignorance and standing up for your cause ... I have two gay dads that have been together for almost 29 years. They are the people that gave me life, unconditional love and help me follow my passions every day. I fight to defy a society that believes they are unfit parents and that they have somehow managed to raise me incorrectly. My dad and daddy inspire me to be a better person and I fight for them and for all gay families and couples.” — Chelsea Montgomery-Duban, daughter

Cleave Jones

“I’m trying in my life to be an organizer. I think there’s a difference between an activist and an organizer. An organizer works with large groups of people and that is what I find most satisfying about my work. Anyone can become an activist but I suspect one is born an organizer. There’s sort of a compulsion to do the work. I do this work because I love it. I like working with people and solving problems ... and every now and then there’s a really wonderful victory to celebrate.” —Cleve Jones, author-lecturer

Adam Bouska

“Activism is about using your own personal strengths to bring about awareness and change, and whether that applies to a lobbyist gathering signatures, a volunteer canvassing neighborhoods or even a photographer taking protest photos, everybody can be an activist in their own right.” —Adam Bouska, NOH8 Campaign creator-photographer

To see the rest of Frontier Magazine's "Fighting 15" list: http://www.frontiersweb.com/Features/Exclusive-Interviews/Story.aspx?ID=1278278

Black LGBTI Americans & Allies Honoring President Obama's Advocacy Event!

President Barack Obama has done more for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender and intersex Americans in the first year alone of his presidency than any other president. Many LGBTI African Americans and allies are disappointed by LGBT Inc’s personal attacks on a fierce advocate such as our president. Change has to be inspired, not forced. To show our solidarity and support of our first African American President, we need to come forward and be vocal about the real changes that have taken place.

This weekend has been a historic event with the first convergence of over 100 African-American LGBTI leaders from around the country at the Congressional Black Caucus with the National Black Justice Coalition's OUT on the Hill event! In that spirit, I am asking that we come and celebrate together at Busboy's & Poets, a venue located in a historical neighborhood where Black intellectuals, artists and activists have come together for over a century to take a stand for social justice and to combat racism.

Time: Sunday, September 19 · 5:30pm - 7:30pm
Location: Washington DC. "Busboys & Poets" Address: 14th & V. 2021 14th St, DC.


For more info contact Ashley Love: ashleylapr@yahoo.com