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by Cindy Abel
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April 29, 2011 00:00 |
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Once upon a time, it was hard to get companies to support LGBT organizations. They worried they would lose their non-gay customers if they were open about wanting gay ones.
So we got smart: We showed how much discretionary income same-gender couples without kids had. Never mind that it was less than opposite-gender couple without kids, it was still a good argument.
Not only did it give the marketing teams cover, it had the added benefit of being true: We were a valuable target market. “The color of diversity,” we would say, “is green.”
As some of the big companies came out as supporters, their employees came out as LGBT. Then their friends and family members started coming out as LGBT-supportive. Visibility was shifting every landscape. Next thing you know, 20 years later, we not only have friends in high places, we have our own people there —running companies, winning election to Congress and hosting major TV news shows.
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by Melanie Thompson, MD
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March 18, 2011 00:00 |
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The paid advertisement in this issue of GA Voice correctly reminds us that “there is no magic pill” to prevent HIV infection. Unfortunately, the ad is part of a campaign to convince the FDA not to review, and Gilead Sciences not to submit, data to support approval of Truvada for HIV prevention. (Truvada is now available by prescription to treat HIV.)
It is based on fear and speculation at a time when we need reason and research to guide us through scientific and policy issues raised by this new HIV prevention tool.
In spite of 30 years of fighting HIV, there will be an estimated 2.7 million new HIV infections globally in 2011, with 56,000 of these in the US, a number that has remained stable across a decade. Gay and bisexual men, especially men of color, will bear a disproportionate burden of these infections, as will women of color.
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by Rabbi Joshua Lesser
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February 17, 2011 08:59 |
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I once asked a reluctant professor for a make-up Calculus test which had been scheduled on Yom Kippur. Surprised by his resistance, I uttered in exasperation, “You wouldn’t have scheduled a test on Christmas.” Defensively he replied, “Of course not, school is not in session.”
It is a privilege to have one’s heritage, gender, race, class, faith or sexual orientation represented as normative in the mainstream culture. While there is richness in distinction from the norm, it often alienates and creates conflict between a person and her community and conflict within himself.
As American Queer Jews, we live with at least three distinct identities that each have a cultural aspect to them which frequently collide and rarely coalesce. Our Pride celebration is one of the places where one hopes to celebrate the richness of all of one’s identities. For many Jews, the scheduling of Pride on Yom Kippur creates a conflict of identities and painfully highlights our difference. It raises the question that many people feel: Am I a valued and a legitimate member of the LGBTQ community?
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by Cindy Abel
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January 21, 2011 00:00 |
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Only someone who’s never had to fight for their civil rights could wonder if there’s a connection between words and deeds.
As I watched the news of the violent attack on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), I was shocked. Not only at the horrific events, but at the commentators who questioned whether, as Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said, “toxic rhetoric can lead unstable people to believe [violence] is an acceptable response.”
Ask the kid who looks a little different than his peers, and he’ll tell you how it works: first the jokes, then the taunting and then the physical bullying. “Boys will be boys” he’s told, as those who should be paying attention dismiss the ramp-up to violence.
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by Mark S. King
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December 10, 2010 00:00 |
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There is so much distance in my mother’s eyes that I fear she may never come close to me again. Circling her stare are wrinkles of pain, betrayal even, and in her hand she holds the watch.
It was December of my senior year of high school, and things had calmed down considerably after my having burst forth from the closet that Fall, wearing go-go boots to school dances and openly flaunting my twenty-something boyfriend. But these were all healthy choices, I told myself.
If there was nothing wrong with being gay, then there should be nothing defiant about letting my family know about it. And my friends. And my teachers. And people at church. Never mind that we lived in Bossier City, Louisiana. Or that it was 1977.
But there was something about that look in my mother’s eyes, in that moment. It took all my arrogance to protect myself from it, to seek refuge from the shocked stare, the battle in her face between heartbreak and fury. She was squeezing tightly to the silver watchband, and her hand shook imperceptibly.
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