Category Archives: LGBT

Jun 22 1 comments
Anti-LGBT, Health, LGBT, Sexuality

Domestic violence: ‘keep it quiet’

The mayor of Mulberry, Fla., was attacked by his partner in the early morning hours of Friday, June 19.

According to news station WTSP Channel 10, 29-year-old Eugene Ornelas came home at 5 a.m. in the morning with someone he met at a local bar. Ornelas is Mayor Julian Mullis’ partner. The couple has two children.

From the story:

The attack allegedly happened on a peaceful street in Mulberry early Friday morning inside the home of Mayor Julian Mullis. It’s a home he shares with his two kids and 29-year-old Eugene Ornelas.

Mullis told police that he and Ornelas are in a relationship and live together as a family unit.

Things got heated, though, when Ornelas brought a stranger home from a club at five in the morning. Steve Peacock is the Interim Chief of Police in Mulberry and says, “It was Mr. Ornelas, who I guess lost his cool somehow, and began throwing articles inside the residence and attempted to strike Mr. Mullis at one point but missed.”

Mullis told police that Ornelas swung at him and has Jeckel and Hyde type episodes.

Ornelas was arrested and charged with domestic violence. It’s not the first time he’s been in trouble with the law. He’s faced a DUI, possession of a controlled substance and battery charge in the past.

Some nitwit, probably slightly anti-gay, told the news station that Mullis should have “kept it quiet.”

Reaction from people who live in Mulberry is mixed. Nancy Ladner says, “I don’t have a problem with homosexuality. I don’t. Everybody has their thing they have to do. But, he is a public image in our town and he needs to keep it quiet.”

Yeah… domestic violence should be kept quiet. My god, where do these people come from?

At least some level of sanity was collected by reporters:

Heidi Strickland says, “They need to concentrate on the problems of Mulberry, not the problem of Mr. Mullis and his family, okay? They’re going to have to deal with that. Just like you have to deal with your family and I have to deal with my family. But, as long as he’s performing his job to the means that he’s supposed to be doing which, so far I haven’t seen any disagreements, then that should be the issue.”

It is quite saddening that their mayor becomes the victim of a domestic violence situation and all folks care to look at or talk about is their mayor’s sexual orientation. Sad, sad, indeed.

Double-whammy: WTSP Channel 10 wasted no time playing on the public’s anti-gay, anti-transgender emotions. Their headline for the story: “Mulberry mayor attacked by live-in cross-dresser.” Shouldn’t the headline have been, “Mulberry mayor victim of domestic violence,” or something?

Jun 09 15 comments
LGBT, United States

Five Alternatives to the March on Washington

It has become one of my biggest pet peeves (and, I do have many) since beginning work at a “real world” day job. When people offer complaint, they should also offer a suggestion for improvement or a solution. Criticism is fine by me, but it should be constructive.

1979_marchVeteran activist Cleve Jones has called for a march on Washington. He says it’ll be different from what most people think of as a “march on Washington.” None of the big flashy staging. None of the celebrity and fanfare. None of the circuit parties.

“This is a march - a demonstration - not Lollapalooza,” Jones told the Washington Blade. “It’s not a national political convention. We are trying to unite around a single, all uniting, all encompassing goal of equality.”

For the record: I think a march on Washington, in this day and time, is a bad idea. Jones is planning his march for October. Veteran gay activist David Mixner has called for one in November. Marriage advocate Robin Tyler says hold off to 2010. Whatever the date, whatever the time, there are several reasons why a march remains a bad idea: the money isn’t there, the time to plan and organize isn’t there and, even if the time and money suddenly appeared, national marches don’t accomplish squat.

In the days since Jone’s call for a march has become public discussion, we’ve seen plenty of similar reasons not to plan the event. An L.A.-based LGBT journalist put together a list of five reasons not to march. An Indiana-based blogger put together a similar but more comprehensive list of 10. In a thread of 80 comments (and likely more by the time you read this), citizens of the LGBT blogosphere weighed in on the topic at Pam’s House Blend.

And while there have been ideas for better uses of time and energy, what we haven’t seen as much are constructive alternatives to the march: ideas to turn whatever passion there is for a national march into real, change-inspiring, on-the-ground, long-lasting action. My five suggestions aren’t anywhere near exhaustive, complete or perfect, but, at the least, it is a start.

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Jun 09 0 comments
Anti-LGBT, LGBT, Politics

A step in the right direction for Winston-Salem students

Good news from my childhood hometown and school system: The North Carolina Senate passed a “local bill” on Monday, changing current Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education elections from partisan to non-partisan. Already passed by the House and not in need of the governor’s approval, the bill is now law. The Winston-Salem Journal has the full report.

This welcome change from partisan to non-partisan elections is a longtime coming. Starting in 2010, non-partisan elections will benefit Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school children and open the door to electing more fair-minded and LGBT-friendly candidates like Sandra Mikush, who ran unsuccessfully on a non-partisan ballot in 2006.

The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education has long been dominated by conservative, anti-gay Republicans. Among the most outspoken have been Buddy Collins, Donny Lambeth and Jeannie Metcalf.

In a Feb. 4, 2003 Journal article, Metcalf was quoted saying, “I think homosexuality is a sin. If they want to make fun of them, I don’t have a problem with it.”

By their very essence, non-partisan elections create an atmosphere in which more people untainted by the gotcha games of party politics have a better chance of being elected and serving their communities. If left to partisan politics, the Winston-Salem board would have surely remained as anti-gay and conservative as it has always been.

It remains to be seen whether the change to non-partisanship will bring about the much more needed change for the area’s LGBT students, who remain without fully-inclusive anti-bullying and non-discrimination protections. My guess is that non-partisan elections will bring those students closer to safety than ever before — if the General Assembly, by passing the School Violence Prevention Act, doesn’t do it for them first.

Jun 02 0 comments
LGBT, Politics

No thanks for table crumbs

On June 1, President Barack Obama issued an official proclamation on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and National Pride Month.

The resolution is reprinted in its entirety below, but, first, my thoughts.

Should we thank Obama for the proclamation? Criticize or chastise him for not yet doing more to help us achieve our equality? Should we do both?

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Jun 01 2 comments
LGBT

‘Family is really all that counts’

2009familyday125x125June 1 was the Fourth Annual Blogging for LGBT Families day. As usual, I got busy and yet busier still. The day just came and went without a moment’s notice. Thanks to organizer Dana Rudolph for the late-day reminder of the blogging day. I like to contribute every year.

Most of my regular readers and blogger buddies know I work for Q-Notes, the Carolinas’ LGBT newspaper. I’m the editor and the paper’s only full-time news writer (yes, our staff really is that small).

One of the great things about having the bulk of the writing responsibility is that most of the really great stories get assigned to none other but me! Yes, it’s tiring, but I also do not have to compete for time and attention with other writers, or give away great stories that I’d like to take on to writers who might be answering to me. I know it can’t last; I’ll eventually move on to another paper or another job where I’ll actually have to share and dole out responsibilities. Until then, I kind of like being the “only child.”

I got one of those great stories two weeks ago, just two days before our deadline for the May 30 print issue. We were going forward with our first ever Sex Issue. I’ve got to push that envelope, you know — I just wouldn’t be me if I weren’t, right?

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Jun 01 1 comments
LGBT, Religion

Christian Century on ‘Crisis’

The Christian Century magazine published an outstanding review of “Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing up Gay in America.” Edited by Mitchell Gold, the book was released in September 2008, has received rave reviews from all corners of the country.

David P. Gushee, professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University, a Baptist college in Macon, Ga. Gushee quickly recounts the stories of several of the books contributors, including Jared Horsford, Mitchell Gold, Jarrod Parker, Mary Lou Wallner, Elke Kennedy and me.

He boldly says:

As an evangelical Christian whose career has been spent in the South, I must say I find it scandalous that the most physically and psychologically dangerous place to be (or even appear to be) gay or lesbian in America is in the most religiously conservative families, congregations and regions of this country. Most often these are Christian contexts. Many of the most disturbing stories in this volume come from the Bible Belt. This marks an appalling Christian moral failure.

In contrast to the love and mercy that Jesus exemplified, Christian communities offer young lesbians and gays hate and rejection. Sometimes that rejection is declared directly from the pulpit. But even when church leaders attempt to be more careful, to “hate the sin but love the sinner” (as that hackneyed formulation has it), the love gets lost. Perhaps we need to focus on refining our ability to love; maybe we are not actually capable of compartmentalizing hate.

But the best line comes at the end: “Moreover, after reading these stories, I feel that Christians have something they need to request from God and from gays and lesbians, and that is forgiveness.”

Thank you Professor Gushee.

May 27 1 comments
LGBT, Politics, United States

Charlotte’s first openly gay candidate?

owensutkowskiOwen Sutkowski will officially kick off his campaign for Charlotte City Council on May 28. He might just be Charlotte’s first openly gay man on a ballot for city election.

But a couple Q-Notes readers say a man named Robert Sheets ran as an openly gay man on the ballot in 1989. In the 1990s, an open lesbian ran as a write-in candidate.

FOX Charlotte reports that the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections doesn’t keep records as far back as 1989, so they weren’t able to confirm. My job today: a search through the newspaper’s archives. It is a painstaking task; something I’m not looking forward to. But duty calls.

What is truly amazing, though, is that Sutkowski is also the youngest candidate for city election ever. At only 26, he’s embarking on a run to defeat a Democratic incumbent and win a seat on council for the largest city in the Carolinas.

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May 21 1 comments
Health, LGBT

Fessing Up: Gay men and ideals of beauty

This is the fifth and final installment of the five-week commentary series, “Fessing Up: exploring the dirty little secrets of the gay community.” The purpose of the series, will be to open community discussion with frank and honest thoughts and debate. Ignoring problems that exist inside our community and among some of our LGBT siblings is dangerous. In order to make our community better, stronger and more equal, we have to begin taking responsibility and speaking out when our own community, personal and social health is threatened.

Although the series will deal specifically with gay and bisexual men, as well as men who have sex with men (MSM), it will contain possible truths and discussion for the whole LGBT community.

We know that issues like substance abuse, promiscuity, unsafe sex, HIV/AIDS and STD infection rates and unattainable ideals of male beauty have an impact on the sexual, social, legal, physical and psychological health of the LGBT community, but we have utterly failed at having open and frank conversation about how we can address these issues, support our LGBT brothers and sisters and make our entire community more healthy and more equal.

This week’s installment, “Gay men and ideals of beauty,” is written by Devon Hunter, a North Carolina-based artist, thinker and exotic dancer. Read more from Devon at his personal blog, www.DevonHunter.info.

adonis

The Greek ideal goes deeper than appearances alone: Although our ideals in Western civilization about male beauty are heavily influenced by Greek imagery, it should be remembered that the Classical Athenians prized excellence, and viewed external attractiveness as only one aspect of it.

As Socrates said, it is best to get specialized information from a specialist. He meant that you should get opinions about armor from armorers, war from soldiers, philosophy from philosophers, and beauty from lovers. And who would know and love male beauty better than gay men? Straight chicks are getting better about demanding something more polished from their fellas, but ultimately it is men who truly appreciate maleness and all its labyrinthine complexities. I would venture to guess that almost every man (and especially every gay man) is struggling with his own Minotaur, and that is precisely what makes us such fascinating caricatures of ourselves.

I have seen surveys that compare the priorities for male beauty as defined by men and women. Men often focus on strength, physical feats, and ripped up abs. Women tend to prefer dominant attitudes, confidence, and a more normalized body composition (as opposed to a lean, visible musculature). Very different perspectives on what makes a man attractive. Even amongst men at the superficial level, most straight men prefer bulk, and most gay men prefer definition. Given what I’ve experienced of men (straight, bi, and gay), it seems many would like their muscles to be honed to resemble the very armor that Socrates might have sent them to Pistias to have melded to their torsos. Armor in Classical times often looked like metal skin covering carved-from-marble perfection. And how not? Men, as much as women, use beauty for various purposes. But the idealized “Greek God” torso is as much a defensive tactic as it is a lure or bait.

Beauty, and the pursuit of it, can be inspirational, but it is also the fuel for many destructive fires. Beauty can be dangerous. In fact, very often danger itself is exactly what defines beauty (or at least that which is desirable in some way). We gay men very often burn with desire to possess beauty, both our own and that of others. We seek to become a physical ideal so that we can reasonably expect to obtain more of it. The desire-rejection cycle is powerful: We all desire, we all reject, we all complain about not being able to get the ones we want (while being pestered by the ones we don’t). Everyone is a 10 looking for a 12, and we’ve forgotten that 5 is average (and that most of us are therefore a 5 or 6, and that expecting an 8, much less a 10, is generally a recipe for disappointment).

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May 14 6 comments
Health, LGBT

Fessing Up: The Magnetic Divide and Viral Apartheid

This is the fourth installment of the five-week commentary series, “Fessing Up: exploring the dirty little secrets of the gay community.” The purpose of the series, will be to open community discussion with frank and honest thoughts and debate. Ignoring problems that exist inside our community and among some of our LGBT siblings is dangerous. In order to make our community better, stronger and more equal, we have to begin taking responsibility and speaking out when our own community, personal and social health is threatened.

Although the series will deal specifically with gay and bisexual men, as well as men who have sex with men (MSM), it will contain possible truths and discussion for the whole LGBT community.

We know that issues like substance abuse, promiscuity, unsafe sex, HIV/AIDS and STD infection rates and unattainable ideals of male beauty have an impact on the sexual, social, legal, physical and psychological health of the LGBT community, but we have utterly failed at having open and frank conversation about how we can address these issues, support our LGBT brothers and sisters and make our entire community more healthy and more equal.

This week’s installment, “The Magnetic Divide and Viral Apartheid,” is written by Todd Heywood, a Michigan-based journalist, blogger and LGBT advocate. Read more from Todd at his personal blog, The Conversation Starts Here.

Not all queer men are equal — even in the confines of our self-imposed ghettos. Being gay and out is one thing; but being gay, HIV+ and out, that is an automatic move to isolation from the queer ghetto. With HIV being a more controllable illness, the question arises, why now? Why the viral apartheid and how do we address it?

In July of 2007, I was diagnosed with HIV. It was, to put it mildly, an earth shattering moment in my life. I had fallen in love with and cared for a man who had HIV when I first came out. I was there for him until he died in July 1996, having “failed” the newly released cocktails. At the time my partner was diagnosed, there was a level of awareness and connection about HIV that seems to have disappeared. At that time, HIV activism was interwoven into the very fabric of LGBT activism. The annual Pride march was preceded by a reading of the names of those lost to the HIV epidemic, and those names, placed on brightly colored ribbons lead the march. It was an honoring of the dead, and a promise to the future that we would not forget.

But then, with the miracle that were the cocktails, this began to change. We saw the fish bowls of condoms and literature about HIV disappear from gay bars. HIV itself, once talked of openly because even the most casually connected member of the LGBT community could count at least one death among associates, stopped being noted. A new reality set in — the reality of silence.

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May 08 2 comments
Health, LGBT

Fessing Up: HIV/AIDS

This is the third installment of the five-week commentary series, “Fessing Up: exploring the dirty little secrets of the gay community.” The purpose of the series, will be to open community discussion with frank and honest thoughts and debate. Ignoring problems that exist inside our community and among some of our LGBT siblings is dangerous. In order to make our community better, stronger and more equal, we have to begin taking responsibility and speaking out when our own community, personal and social health is threatened.

Although the series will deal specifically with gay and bisexual men, as well as men who have sex with men (MSM), it will contain possible truths and discussion for the whole LGBT community.

We know that issues like substance abuse, promiscuity, unsafe sex, HIV/AIDS and STD infection rates and unattainable ideals of male beauty have an impact on the sexual, social, legal, physical and psychological health of the LGBT community, but we have utterly failed at having open and frank conversation about how we can address these issues, support our LGBT brothers and sisters and make our entire community more healthy and more equal.

The statistics are scary. In places like Washington, D.C., the facts and figures take on new meaning, as more and more people contract HIV and are left to live with the disease, the cultural and institutional stigma and health disparities.

Like many epidemics, HIV/AIDS has hit minorities the hardest. In the 1980s, the disease hit gay men and intravenous drug users. There’s no doubt many of the men and women first affected by the AIDS crisis were either minorities or poor; perhaps they were both.

In 2009, the face of HIV/AIDS has changed drastically. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 49 percent of all people living with an HIV/AIDS diagnosis in 2005 were African-American. Among black men with HIV, 48 percent had contracted the disease through male-to-male sexual contact; 22 percent through heterosexual contact. Among black women with HIV, almost three-quarters had contracted the disease through heterosexual contact.

Nationwide, male-to-male sexual contact accounts for half of all HIV/AIDS transmissions. Among men who have sex with men, 50 percent are white and 32 percent are black.

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