Center Blog

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center has devoted the entire month of April to the issue of immigration and how it affects LGBTQ People. Our Cultural Programs department has hosted nearly a dozen events, ranging from “Strategies for Winning Asylum by Overcoming Stereotypes in Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity,” to “Immigration’s Impact on the Political Agenda.” And during Immigrant Heritage Week we hosted our “Third Annual LGBTQ Immigration Fair,” an event to connect LGBTQ immigrants to service providers that can address their unique needs. The Center’s Services for LGBT Immigrants’ Social Action Group worked tirelessly to organize the fair and their efforts paid off, as over 400 people attended the gathering.

Photo Credit Rob Zukowski

These events give a glimpse into the vital work our Center does each and every day throughout the year to help LGBTQ immigrant populations find support in all aspects of their lives and we were honored to be presented with an official Proclamation from the New York City Council,  praising our Services for LGBT Immigrants Program.  The proclamation, signed by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, read in part:

“WHERAS: LGBT immigrants sometime flee their native country when merely being gay may be illegal, punishable by prison, and, in some cases, punishable by death. On this occasion, it is a great privilege to pay tribute to Immigration Services Program at the Center in New York City for its extraordinary support of LGBT immigrants facing these injustices and many other important concerns; and

“WHERAS: LGBT immigrants endure legal discrimination in many ways and need support for residency, mental health, HIV, family and other concerns. They also face numerous unique challenges, including their status as nearly invisible, highly stigmatized and marginalized individuals who often reside in generally underserved communities. Often, their undocumented immigration status interferes with access to their basic needs for shelter, health, employment, legal matters. These challenges are frequently compounded by social isolation from other LGBT immigrants, country of origin, asylum or residency, language issues, and more; and

“WHERAS: LGBT immigrants who visit the Center often seek help with dealing with the increased barriers to employment along with increased stigmatization and violence. They share how increasingly difficult it is to access and information that can assist them towards obtaining legal documentation. At the same time, they reveal the negative impact immigration barriers have on bi-national couples and their families. Due to the current inability for an American Citizen to sponsor their foreign born partners, LGBT individuals endure a devastating impact on finances, health and mobility of their families. Many nationals are forces to relocate abroad in order to keep their families together; and

“WHERAS: The Center has always been a tremendous resource for LGBT immigrants.  Services for asylum cases include: information and referrals, assessments and short-term counseling, letters of support in asylum cases when warranted, support groups and a social action group; and

“WHEREAS: The Center worked in coalition with other organizations as part of a movement wide effort to end the HIV immigration and travel ban. After two decades of discrimination and stigma, this went into effect on January 4^th, 2010. The Center also worked in coalition on the Uniting American Families Act, as well as on state identification issues which impact immigrant, transgender, young and homeless people; now therefore

“BE IT KNOWN: “That the Council of the City of New York gratefully honors the LGBT Center’s Immigration Services Program.”

As immigrant populations in this city reach and begin to exceed 40% of the population, the Center will continue supporting LGBTQ immigrants so they can bring all of themselves to this city and achieve all of their dreams. Congratulations to our Services for LGBT Immigrants Program and its extremely devoted Social Action Group!

If you are interested in the Center’s Services for LGBT Immigrants, you can learn more about the program by visiting this page on our website.

Glennda Testone

Cheryl Boyce Taylor

The evening started with a series of reading and intermittent singing from poet Rajiv Mohabir. He conveyed a powerful and thematic poem about coming out to his grandmother in a poem titled, “You can’t stop a river from running”. He then carried his “river” theme through space and time, as he took his audience from rivers in India, the United Kingdom, Florida, and finally the Hudson River, each river marking a rite of passage in his life.

Then poet Thereece Irradiance Thomas took the audience through a powerful journey of confidence, defiance, and unity. Her poem “Assumption” charged the audience to be empowered, while her poem “Kept Illusion” called for strength and unity. By integrating a streak of sexuality, a hint of oppression, and hue of race, Thereece Irradiance Thomas uses her poems as a tool to awaken and strengthen those who are oppressed and victimized.

Poet and fiction writer Anton Nimblett colored the evening with a theme we are all very familiar with: desire. He read an excerpt from his fiction novel “Sections of an orange,” where the narrator is posing half-naked for a barber who is also a photographer. Anton Nimblett gives such vivid and detailed descriptions, one can actually feel every touch, every move, and every impulse of the narrator.

Then poet Ysanne K. Latchman brought a collection of experiences from her childhood through womanhood. Most striking of her reading was a poem titled “No thank you, I will pass,” where she shed light on a common experience for all New Yorkers: cooking smells. Her incandescent account of smelling her neighbor cooking bacalao reminds all of us that as New Yorkers, we experience cultures that are thousands of miles away, everyday.

And finally, poet Cheryl Boyce Taylor took the audience on a ride through her memory lane, from the day she left her home country to her experiences as an ex-patriot. She cleverly intertwines various themes about daily routines, internal struggles, and innocence in a seemingly complicated subject of nostalgia and identity. Her poem title “Piaco” illustrates a conflicted, yet curious child ready to embark on a new experience as she leaves her home country, while her poem “Reaching Trinidad” flash forwards decades later painting the experiences of a woman visiting her “home” country.

These five poets brought together a colorful array of experiences, feelings, and senses, all embodied in beautiful poems and works of art presented as a string of memories. As immigrants to this country and emigrants of their home lands, their writings carried an undertone of longing a time and space forever lost. Not only were they uprooted from their home countries,  they were also uprooted from their childhoods. In their works, one could feel equal parts of challenge and excitement in adjusting to a new environment, language, and customs, all of which influenced and shaped their experiences as queer immigrants.

This year marks the first anniversary of the Center’s LGBTQ Foster Care Project, a Center Families program that works to ensure New York City based foster care agencies have the tools and resources they need to treat LGBTQ children in foster care with dignity and respect, and to create an affirming and inclusive environment for LGBTQ identified birth, foster, and adoptive parents. As part of this effort, the project has formed a partnership with the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, “to provide foster care agencies with the information, training and resources needed to offer safe, high-quality and sensitive services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth.” Under the new policy, “participating foster care agencies will have demonstrated efforts towards LGBTQ inclusiveness and cultural competency as outlined in ACS Best Practice and Quality Assurance Standards.” Those standards are based almost entirely on the guidelines, procedures, and best-practice recommendations from Center Families’ LGBTQ Foster Care Project.

The LGBTQ Cultural Competency Benchmarks include “ensuring that all youth, staff and parents receive notice of the ACS Non-Discrimination Policy, actively recruit potential gay affirming foster care and adoptive parents from the LGBT community and identify a staff person to serve as the LGBTQ contact person within the agency.”

Earlier this year, The Foster Care Project marked its pilot year with an orientation and recognition ceremony at the Administration for Children’s Services, where it honored five agencies for their work towards creating an affirming and inclusive environment for the LGBTQ Community. The agencies included: Harlem Dowling, Leake & Watts, Episcopal Social Services, SCO Family of Services and Abbot House. The Foster Care Project also recently welcomed three new agencies as LGBTQ inclusive, including: Mercy First, Children’s Aid Society and Little Flower.

And this week Center Families learned that Commissioner for the New York City Administration for Children’s Services John B. Mattingly, is honoring LGBTQ Foster Care Project Program Coordinator Tracey Little, with the Commissioner’s Child Advocacy Award. Little will receive the award at an April 28 ceremony at ACS. In a letter announcing the honor, the Commissioner said:

“In recognition of April as National Child Abuse Prevention Month, the New York City Administration for Children’s Services is pleased to take this opportunity to honor you with the Commissioner’s Child Advocacy Award for your outstanding contribution to keeping children safe and strengthening families.

“As part of our mission, ACS investigates reports of child abuse and neglect, provides safe homes for children in foster care and works to rehabilitate youth involved in the juvenile justice system.  We rely on skilled, caring individuals and organizations, like yourself, to achieve these goals.  Your dedication and compassion have made a difference in the lives of countless children and young people—not only this month but on every single day of the year.  We thank you for your contributions to this critical work.”

Congratulations to Center Families’ LGBTQ Foster Care Project for its positive impact on the key agency that looks out for the well-being of New York City’s children! Because of these efforts, a growing number of agencies throughout the city now have the vital resources they need to protect LGBTQ children and families!

On March 8, the Queer Nerds series of programs from the Center Speaker series presented “Queer Nerd Print Culture.” For this historical program, Ray Cha, editor of FAQNP: FAQNP’s A Queer Nerd Publication, dug into the Center Archive to find signs of the queer nerd in the pre- and early-Internet era.

Cha decided to research what the archive had because he’d come across an ad for “The Backroom BBS” while putting together FAQNP’s second issue, which focused on early computer and Internet culture. For those who don’t know, before the Internet existed as it does today, a BBS (a.k.a Bulletin Board Service) was one of the ways of making connections through the computer network. Of course, people still connect via computer today it’s just done through different—and more user friendly—formats.

In the archive Cha found many examples of LGBT people using the print medium to stay in touch.

Cha found several examples of queer nerds getting together, including:

• The Tri-State Gaylaixians, which met at the Center in the early 1990s, focused on gay and lesbian images in the comics.
• “Where No Gay Has Gone Before” was a letter writing campaign targeted at the producers of Star Trek: The Next Generation to persuade them to add a gay character to the show to help commemorate the 25th anniversary of Trek.
• There were several examples from the Girth and Mirth Social Club, which had the Fat Apple Review and The Spare Tire. Each of the publications celebrated “wide pride.”
• In 1996 the Lords of Leather Ball XIII had a Star Trek: TNG theme and featured an image of the U.S.S. Enterprise on its flyer.

Before Google and Yahoo, the primary way to find things was through print directories. A 1970 edition of The Gay Persons Guide to England listed organization, services, products, radio shows and more. From 1985 there was the Directory of Homosexual Organizations and Publications, which had among its listings the nerd oriented Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Science Organization and Gays at MIT. More recently there was the 1991 Lesbian and Gay Community Phone Book, which covered New York City. Perhaps the best title of all is 1971’s The Gay Insider: A Hunter’s Guide to New York City and Thesaurus of Phallic Lore.

Even as late as 2001, there was Cybersocket, which promised 2,500 of the best gay sites. Cybersocket still exists today, but rather than a directory of sites it carries mostly adult ads and a few articles.

“Things were much harder to find in the time before Google,” said Cha. “Now we have so much information available that we have to filter what we get. These directories are good historical documents as on what was happening in gay life in a particular time and place.”

One of the primary uses of computer technology revolves around meeting people, which was one of the things the Backroom BBS was for. In the time before sites like Craigslist, ManHunt and Grindr there were personals in print publications.  QQ Magazine had personals that offered “a good look back for how people would look for other people,” said Cha.

Among the ads he pointed out were one from “CB Freak,” who was looking for information on how to find other interested CBers, as well as a white engineer who was looking to get together with a black engineer.

Today it’s easy to find groups of interest through a site like MeetUp. Before that, flyers and zines were the primary way to find out what groups were meeting and when.

There are many examples of pre-Internet publishing too. Today a lot of activism takes places on websites and on Facebook. However, there is a strong history of activist publications. The 1965 publication The Ladder was directed at lesbians and included an article titled “Does Research into Homosexuality Matter.” Another lesbian publication shown was Tribad: A Lesbian Separatist Newsjournal, which carried the warning that it was to be sold and read by lesbians only.

The AIDS crisis led to many publications, including the Diseased Pariah, which is considered the first AIDS publication that didn’t treat those infected as victims. Cha said this was quite radical at the time. There were only 11 issues, however, before it folded because its founder passed away.

The final installment of the Queer Nerds series is coming up on Thursday, May 12 at 7pm with “A Queer Nerd Travel Guide.” Queer travel is the topic of the third issue of FAQNP, which will debut at the event. There will be readings from the issue as well as the opportunity to talk with the creative team behind the magazine.

Written by Jeff Adams

The Center is extremely sad to hear that our friend and tireless supporter Mark “Spanky” Bialous has passed away this week after battling cancer.

Spanky was a beloved member of Team Eagle, an amazing group of cyclists who consistently raise the most money for the Center’s annual Braking the Cycle fundraiser, a three-day bike ride from Boston to New York, which supports the Center’s vital HIV/AIDS Services. Team Eagle raised a hundred thousand dollars for the Center in 2010.

He was truly a special character and a few of his friends shared these wonderful Braking the Cycle memories about him:

“He had all of his outfits custom made for the ride and they had labels inside that said “petite” because ‘when you go custom they’ll do anything you want.’ He was about 6′6″”

“One night at dinner in PA on the old G’burg/NYC route, ride organizer Eric Epstein was making his announcements and a cell phone started ringing. It was Spanky’s who of course was dressed up like a French maid. As you and I both know, pockets are not always available so he had it shoved down his cleavage. He dug it out – seriously – whole arm down the front of his dress and got it turned off. He was 20 shades of red. About 30 seconds later Eric was back doing his announcements talking about route safety or hydration or something and Spanky’s phone said “message received” with perfect timing.”

The Center extends its deepest condolences to Spanky’s family, friends and his comrades on Team Eagle. He will never be far from our hearts and we’ll be remembering him fondly on this year’s Braking the Cycle ride.

Location:
Buckley Funeral Home
509 Second Avenue
Asbusy Park, NJ

HIV and AIDS remains pandemic, killing 1.9 million people in 2009 worldwide, nearly 30-years after AIDS was first recognized. 2.6 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2009 and  40 percent were young people aged 15- 24.  In New York City young gay and bisexual MSM and transgender people of color in particular are at extremely high risk.

The Center is helping to get the word out about a very important event later this week. The United Nations is seeking young leaders to lend their voices to a one day conference on HIV and AIDS this Friday, April 8 at the UN. The 2011 Civil Society Hearing on AIDS is a series of interactive discussion panels convened by the President of the General Assembly, with leaders in the AIDS response from around the world. With people, communities and countries at a critical crossroad, the AIDS epidemic and the people whose lives it touches must help shape the future of the AIDS response. With 40 percent of new infections globally, young people are at the center of the AIDS epidemic and must therefore be at the center of the AIDS response.  In the lead up to the June 2011 UN General Assembly High Level Meeting on AIDS, this historic event will help ensure the voices of those most affected can influence the negotiation process for a new declaration, which will shape the AIDS response in years to come. Join the dialogue to create a new generation of diversity, shared action and community participation.

Events like the 2011 Civil Society Hearing on AIDS, programs like the Center’s Youth Enrichment Services (YES) and Center CARE and fundraising activities like Braking the Cycle and AIDS Walk New York, which benefit the Center’s HIV and AIDS services, help keep the spotlight on a disease that impacts so many members of our communities.

Here’s detailed information for those interested in participating in the United Nations Event:

LOCATION: United Nations HQ, General Assembly Hall (1st Avenue at 45th Street)

TIME: Friday 8 April, 10am – 5pm

RSVP REQUIRED: (By 5pm, Thursday April 7) to bienenstockr@unaids.org, including your full name and e-mail.

REGISTRATION: Use the entrance at 1st avenue opposite 45th street. You will need to pass through security, so do not bring large bags. Tickets can be picked up at the registration desk in the visitor’s foyer, adjacent to the information booth. Please arrive at 8.30AM to ensure there is time to pass through U.N Security and collect your ticket.

Given our 28 year commitment to serving the vast health needs of the LGBT community, the Center was pleased to learn that on Thursday, March 31, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) issued a landmark report on LGBT health issues.  Titled, “The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People:  Building a Foundation for Better Understanding,” the report underscores the need to address the significant health disparities facing LGBT people.

The IOM is an independent, non-profit organization that works to provide unbiased and authoritative advice to decision makers and the public. The report was requested by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and will help that agency as it develops specific health programs geared towards LGBT people.

The report offers several recommendations:

(1) NIH should implement a research agenda designed to advance knowledge and understanding of LGBT health; (2) data on sexual orientation and gender identity should be collected in federally funded surveys administered by the Department of Health and Human Services and in other relevant federally funded surveys; (3) data on sexual orientation and gender identity should be collected in electronic health records; (4) NIH should support the development and standardization of sexual orientation and gender identity measures; (5) NIH should support methodological research that relates to LGBT health; and (6) a comprehensive research training approach should be created to strengthen LGBT health research at NIH; and (7) NIH should encourage grant applicants to address explicitly the inclusion or exclusion of sexual and gender minorities in their samples.

The Center applauds this report as a critical step in addressing the drastic health inequities facing LGBT people.  This reinforces the efforts we have been engaged in for decades to ensure that LGBT people receive the vital health care they need, including preventative care. Our community still regularly encounters structural and systematic barriers to care that have engendered widespread health disparities.  The IOM report verifies what we have known from 28 years of community and evidence-based practice and it will play a key role in bolstering prevention practices for LGBT people nationwide. 

According to a post by Metroweekly this was also welcome news to a key legislative ally:

In a statement about the report, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) — who has sponsored the Ending Health Disparities for LGBT Americans Act and been focused on addressing LGBT health concerns in her time in Congress — said, “For years, in Congressional hearings, briefings, and meetings, I have asked our national health policy officials and medical experts, ‘What do you know about LGBT health?’ Only to hear, ‘I have to get back to you.’ Today, we’ve gotten a well-researched and most welcome response. I am delighted that after years of advocating for more attention to LGBT health disparities, IOM’s report will bring us closer to the goal of promoting good health for all Americans.”

 You can read the full report here: