More Than 50,000 Attend Chilean LGBT Rights March….

An LGBT rights march in the Chilean capital drew more than 50,000 people.

Chilean folk singer Camila Moreno; presidential candidates Andrés Velasco, Tomás Jocelyn-Holt, Marco Enríquez-Ominami and Marcel Claude and Rafael Dochao, the European Union’s ambassador to Chile, took part in the Santiago event that also commemorated the International Day Against Homophobia. Former President Michelle Bachelet, who is also a candidate to succeed President Sebastián Piñera in this November’s presidential elections, endorsed the march in a letter.

The march also took place against the backdrop of the debate over Piñera’s proposed bill that would extend civil unions to same-sex couples in the South American country.

He has yet to formally introduce it.

“The government and the National Congress should take note of these massive mobilizations that demonstrate time and time again that the majority of this country supports full equality of rights for sexual minorities,” Rolando Jiménez, president of the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation (Movilh,) an LGBT advocacy group that organized the march, said. “The political class always says that it has to listen to the people, but enough of this. It is time to act.”

Neighboring Argentina is among the 11 countries in which gays and lesbians can currently marry.

Uruguay’s same-sex marriage law will take effect on Aug. 1. Nuptials for gays and lesbians are legal in the Brazilian capital of Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and 11 of the country’s other states.

Piñera last July signed an LGBT-inclusive hate crimes and anti-discrimination bill into law in response to outrage over the murder of Daniel Zamudio, a gay man whom a group of self-described neo-Nazis allegedly beat to death in a Santiago park in March 2012. The trial of the four men who prosecutors maintain attacked Zamudio is expected to take begin in the coming months.

Movilh spokesperson Jaime Parada Hoyl last October became the first openly gay political candidate elected in the country when he won a seat on the municipal council in the wealthy Santiago enclave of Providencia. The Chilean Health Ministry last month also lifted a ban on gay and lesbian blood donors.

Those who took part in the Santiago march also demanded the government pass a law that would allow transgender Chileans to legally change their names and sex without a court order.

Michael K. Lavers – Washington Blade

Kazaky – Crazy Law….

Push Accelerates To Build More LGBT Senior Housing….

As the rebels of the Stonewall era enter their 60s and prepare for the sunshine years, the movement they forged is helping shape new ways of aging for the LGBT community.

More than 20 LGBT-focused retirement communities – homes, apartment buildings or resorts – are in various stages of development in the United States, some as private enterprises, some as public-private partnerships. Several communities already exist, catering to a people who busted open closet doors and don’t want to retreat to those closets in retirement.

But new housing cannot nearly meet the needs of LGBT seniors. For instance, a new affordable housing project underway in San Francisco will provide only 110 apartments and there are an estimated 25,000 LGBT seniors in the city already.

A National Gay and Lesbian Task Force study in 2010 estimated there were 3 million LGBT Americans over the age of 65 and that number will double by 2030.

The Cream City Foundation, which serves as a catalyst for social change on behalf of LGBT communities in Southeastern Wisconsin, published the groundbreaking “Wisconsin’s Elder Readiness: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Lens” in 2011.

The report estimated that about 53,000 to 106,000 older adults in Wisconsin are LGBT. The report also said Wisconsin’s population is aging rapidly – by 2020 there will be more people 60 years and older than children enrolled in K-12 schools in the state.

“And we’re talking about an increasingly diverse older adult population,” said Serena Worthington, director of community advocacy and capacity-building for SAGE. Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders is a national organization with 23 affiliates in 16 states, including a popular group in Milwaukee that Worthington said is becoming part of the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center.

Worthington was working in art therapy at a nursing home in Chicago when she began taking a specific interest in LGBT aging issues. Eventually she went to work for the Center on Halsted, Chicago’s LGBT community center on Halsted Street in the heavily gay Lakeview neighborhood, and then for SAGE.

“If you get a group of seniors together, they’ll talk about the same thing, the same concerns,” Worthington said. Regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, older Americans will talk about health care, transportation, housing and being alone.

LGBT people, Worthington added, will also talk “about acceptance and being able to be who they are where they live.”

These are valid concerns for a population that knows about isolation and discrimination.

Today’s LGBT seniors “came of age in an era when it was illegal to be gay. …This is a whole group of people whose formative years are shaped by this stigma, this rejection,” Worthington said.

In Milwaukee, different groups have examined aging issues and assessed needs in the LGBT community. There’s general agreement that providing access to affordable – and welcoming – housing must be a priority.

“There’s certainly a need, as we well know,” said Paul Fairchild, president and CEO of Cream City Foundation.

Fairchild said community leaders have had some discussions with representatives from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. But, he added, “We have a lot of work to do.”

Fairchild played an early, pivotal role in developing an LGBT aging program in Chicago in the 1990s and acknowledged that establishing affordable housing can be a lengthy effort. Although construction is set to begin this year on the senior housing project in Chicago’s Boystown, Fairchild said, “We started talking about that housing issue all those years ago.”

A Vulnerable Population:

Contrary to a public perception, study after study shows that LGBT people are not disproportionately affluent. Discrimination has limited or ended careers, including military service, and denied same-sex couples many benefits others receive to prepare for their sunshine years.

Studies also show that LGBT people are twice as likely to enter old age as singles; less likely to have relatives who will care for them in old age; less likely to access health care, housing or social services – or, when they do access such services, more likely to say the experience is stressful or demeaning.

“We’re talking about a population that is pretty vulnerable,” said Worthington.

Older LGBT Americans in partnerships may find themselves unwelcome in a traditional retirement community or find that, because they are not legally married, they can’t share a room at a nursing home.

Some of these trends are likely to shift as a result of changing attitudes about LGBT people and transformative political reforms, especially the potential overturning of the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act as early as this summer. But what won’t change is the need for adequate services for a booming LGBT senior population.

A study by the National Senior Citizens Law Center and Lambda Legal found that many LGBT seniors in traditional retirement settings feel pressured to return to the closet. But, in some communities, there are nonprofits working with government agencies to create affordable housing so seniors can remain in their neighborhoods, in some cases the vibrant LGBT-centric neighborhoods they helped establish.

Triangle Square Hollywood is a four-story retirement community in Los Angeles that’s operated by the nonprofit Gay and Lesbian Elder Housing and provides housing to seniors who are 62 and older and earning 60 percent or less of the area’s median income. Triangle, built as a result of a public-private-nonprofit partnership, features more than 100 apartments, as well as an activity center, a pool and social service programs.

In Philadelphia, construction is underway on the John C. Anderson Apartments, named for a gay city councilman instrumental in the passage of Philadelphia’s gay rights bill in 1982 and a mentor to Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter. The 56-apartment affordable housing project in the city’s Gayborhood involves the William Way LGBT Community Center, the city, the Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld Fund and Penrose Properties. Construction could be finished this year.

In Denver, SAGE of the Rockies is working with other groups on exploring the creation of a retirement community in the heavily gay Capitol Hill neighborhood.

In Minneapolis, Spirit on the Lake Housing Co-op is a proposed 46-unit project for those earning less than half the area median income. The project involves the Spirit of the Lakes UCC Church and a community housing development group. The building may open as early as September.

In Chicago, the Center on Halsted and the Heartland Alliance, Inc. are working with the city and local housing authority to convert an empty police station at Addison Avenue and Halsted Street into a mixed-use building that contains commercial space and 70 apartments for low- and moderate-income seniors. Construction could be completed by next spring.

In San Francisco, the nonprofit Openhouse has city and county support, as well as the involvement of a private developer, for the development of 110 apartments for low-income seniors at 55 Laguna St., part of a larger multi-family development at the property. Construction is expected to start in late 2014.

“The 55 Laguna development addresses a critical need for LGBT seniors, who face enormous challenges in finding welcoming and affordable housing,” said Openhouse’s Seth Kilbourn. “For decades, thousands of LGBT people have come to San Francisco to find personal freedom and acceptance. As older adults with increasing needs, the pioneers of this migration are being forced back into the closet in order to receive the quality care and housing they need. They are being forced to relocate and leave dear friends behind. 55 Laguna will be a critical community resource to help LGBT seniors age with dignity and grace in the city they call home.”

Elsewhere, there’s a focus on market-rate LGBT-centric retirement communities, although some have struggled to survive the recession, foreclosure and bankruptcy.

In New Mexico, RainbowVision Santa Fe consists of a restaurant, a lounge with cabaret entertainment, the Billie Jean King Spa and Fitness Center, as well as more than 100 condominiums and 26 assisted-living apartments.

In Santa Rosa, Calif., the luxurious Fountaingrove Lodge LGBT Retirement Community features a pool, pet park, orchard, wine cave, art studio, bistro and cocktail lounge, as well as apartments and bungalows.

Outside Palm Springs, Calif., a massive proposed market-rate project is to be called Boom. The $250-million “urban village” is in the early planning stages.

In addition to creating LGBT-specific senior housing, aging specialists are working on alternatives – homesharing programs, building partnerships with housing authorities and continuing to train people at senior centers, nursing homes and assisted-living facilities to help make LGBT seniors feel more comfortable in more settings.

Perhaps it is not as exciting as seeing the groundbreaking on a new building, but this work will lead to “huge structural change,” Worthington said.

Lisa Neff – Wisconsin Gazette

Another Gay Wedding, Another Cake Denied….

Even the most romantic dreamer couldn’t imagine a more fairy tale setting to get married.

A wedding beneath towering Mount Hood, overlooking the swift blue water of the Columbia River in the Gorge, truly felt like a fairy tale for Erin Hanson and Katie Pugh.

But when the couple went to find a baker for their wedding cake, they were turned away because they are lesbians.

It’s a familiar story. In February, Sweet Cakes, a bakery in Gresham, turned away a gay couple. That became national news.

And while the faces changed, the law has not. It’s still against statute to turn away customers because of sexual orientation. It doesn’t matter if it’s for a legal wedding or just a ceremony or anything else.

“We have had a lovely time working with the vendors in Hood River,” said Pugh. “We love Hood River. Everybody’s been so kind and wonderful.”

That is until what should have been sweet turned sour.

It took a long time for Hanson and Pugh to narrow down just the cake they wanted.

“I found a gal who was making gorgeous cakes,” said Pugh. “I contacted her and we set up a time to do a tasting.”

It was the perfect baker in the perfect spot – Fleur Cakes owned by Pam Regentin – just down the road from the wedding.

The ladies scheduled a tasting.

“I mentioned Erin in passing, and said a ‘she’ in passing too, in the email. A few days later she called back and that was today. And called and verified it was a same-sex wedding,” Pugh said.

And that’s when Fleur Cakes said it wouldn’t bake the cake.

The business is also Regentin’s house. She was out of town but spoke to KATU News on the phone.

When asked if she was aware it’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation for a business that serves the public, Regentin said: “I believe I have the liberty to live by my principles.”

She is not the first business owner to walk away from a gay wedding or similar ceremony. Most of them point out they serve gay customers, just not the weddings.

A lot of these business owners in other states are arguing for a new exemption, a religious exemption, which would let them turn away same-sex weddings.

State statutes say any place or service offering public accommodations must provide “full and equal accommodations without any distinction on account of race, color, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.”

The refusal of the Gresham bakery to make a wedding cake for a gay couple sparked controversy and protests. The bakery’s owner said he saw a spike in business because of the publicity.

We tracked down this story after a viewer tipped us off on what happened. Let us know what’s happening near you, by emailing us at newstips@katu.com.

Dan Cassuto – KATU News

If you would like to contact Pam Regentin owner of Fleur Cakes and tell her what you think about her discriminatory actions call her @ 541-490-4607 or email her @ fleurcakes@gmail.com

Calif. Moves To Comply With 2011 Law That Requires Teaching Of LGBT History….

California education officials took the first step this week toward complying with a law that requires public schools to include prominent gay people and gay rights’ milestones in the curriculum, adopting a set of classroom material guidelines that prohibit “pejorative descriptions” based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The California Board of Education on Wednesday unanimously approved new standards stating that textbooks, workbooks and other teaching materials purchased with state funds must avoid “descriptions, depictions, labels, or rejoinders that tend to demean, stereotype, or patronize individuals” who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

“Materials should not convey the impression that persons of gay, lesbian, or bisexual orientation, or transgender identity, are any different from other people in their emotions or their ability to love and be loved,” the standards read.

The criteria will be use d by the state over the next few years to guide the adoption of new materials, which also will be evaluated to ensure they include the contributions of prominent gay and transgender people when it would be historically accurate to do so, California Department of Education spokesman Paul Heffner said.

“A local district can make a decision of what materials are appropriate for use in their schools, but if they want to use state instructional materials, funds, they would have to choose them from materials on a state-adopted list developed using these social content standards,” Heffner said.

The standards were last updated in 2000 and did not previously include a section outlining how sexual minorities are to be portrayed in the books and other resources handed out to students.

The changes adopted this week were made in part to implement a first-in-nation bill, passed by the California Legislature and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2011, requiring schools to teach the contributions of gay, lesbian and disabled people in social studies lessons.

The legislation, known as SB48, also prohibited the adoption of any materials that reflect adversely on gays or particular religions. It was supposed to take effect in January 2012, but because of budget cuts that have put state textbook funds on hold until 2015, few districts have moved to implement it.

The Capitol Resource Institute, a religious conservative group, mounted two unsuccessful efforts to qualify a ballot measure overturning the law, but was unable to secure the necessary signatures.

Gay-Straight Alliance Network Executive Director Carolyn Laub, whose San Francisco-based group supported the law and helped lobby for its passage, said Friday that the state school board’s support “sends a really powerful statement” and she hopes and expects school districts will move voluntarily in coming months to make sure that materials purchased with local dollars conform with the new guidelines.

“Our students have said to us, ‘The only time I ever learned or saw any gay person ever reflected in any materials is when we learned about the AIDS epidemic,’” Laub said. “We need to make sure all curricular materials, regardless of subject, need to reflect the diversity of California and cannot perpetuate stereotypes and reflect adversely on any group.”

The state school board also approved a change, under the section dealing with racial and ethnic groups, replacing an anachronistic reference to “American Negroes” with “African Americans.”

Lisa Leff – Associated Press

Minnesota Makes It A Dozen….

Gov. Mark Dayton on Tuesday signed a bill making gay marriage legal in Minnesota, the 12th state to take the step, as thousands of onlookers cheered.

“What a day for Minnesota!” Dayton, a Democrat, declared moments before putting his signature on a bill. “And what a difference a year and an election can make in our state.”

Rainbow and American flags flapped in a sweltering breeze during the ceremony, held on the Capitol’s south steps. The crowd, estimated by the State Patrol at 6,000, spilled down the steps and across the lawn toward downtown St. Paul.

Dayton thanked legislators for “political courage” before signing the bill just a day after it passed the state Senate. It passed the House last week.

The push for gay marriage was a rapid turnabout from just six months ago, when gay marriage supporters had to mobilize to turn back a proposed constitutional amendment that would have banned gay marriage. Minnesota already had such a law, but an amendment would have been harder to undo.

But voters rejected the amendment, and the forces that organized to defeat it soon turned their attention to legalizing gay marriage. Democrats’ takeover of the Legislature in the November election aided their cause.

The two main sponsors of the bill, Rep. Karen Clark and Sen. Scott Dibble, were among the onlookers as Dayton signed, capping their long and often discouraging struggle to advance gay rights.

Clark, 67, was first elected to the Legislature in 1980, a decade after she came out of the closet to her parents. In 1993, her by-then elderly parents marched with her in the Minneapolis gay pride parade a few weeks after she led the effort to extend Minnesota’s civil rights protections to gay people.

But by 1997, the same Legislature passed the “Defense of Marriage Act,” which restricted marriage to only opposite-sex couples. A year later, Clark introduced a bill to repeal it and allow gay marriage.

It took 16 years to get to this week, which comes two years after the 2011 Legislature – then controlled by Republicans – put an amendment on the statewide ballot asking voters to cement the existing gay marriage ban in the state constitution.

“I thought it would happen someday, but I didn’t know I would be able to be here to be part of it,” Clark said hours before the ceremony.

While on the House floor last week defending her quest to legalize gay marriage, she won plaudits even from Republicans opposed to the bill.

“I don’t know of a kinder, more gentle woman on this floor that has a bigger heart for the environment, the underprivileged, the downtrodden, the American Indian, especially the women. I admire you,” said Tony Cornish, a longtime Republican representative from rural southern Minnesota.

“It was hard because it was very personal,” Dibble said of the 2011 vote. “People whom I had counted as very, very good friends voted for it.”

Dibble, 47, graduated from high school in the Minneapolis suburb of Apple Valley and came out in college. He cut his teeth politically in the late 1980s as a member of the Minnesota chapter of ACT UP, a gay civil rights group that engaged in civil disobedience out of anger toward government neglect of AIDS and HIV sufferers. He got an early chance to join the establishment from Clark, who tapped him to run one of her re-election campaigns.

“I pulled him from street politics,” she said. Dibble was elected to the House in 2000, and in 2002 to the state Senate. He holds the southwest Minneapolis seat once occupied by the late Allan Spear, who in 1974 became one of the very first U.S. elected officials to come out of the closet.

While Dibble’s district includes many of the city’s trendiest neighborhoods, Clark’s just to the east is marked by public housing towers and large populations of new immigrants.

“She is a huge, huge voice for the poor and the disenfranchised and the dispossessed,” Dibble said. But she continued through her career to make a mark for gay rights: During former Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s 2006 State of the State speech, Clark stood up on the House floor and turned her back to the governor as he endorsed a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Not long after that, the first stirrings of legal same sex marriage started to surface around the country. In 2008, Dibble and his husband, Richard Levya, were married in California, where Levya is still a part-time resident. While a judge later struck down gay marriage in that state, marriages that already occurred were not nullified.

Dibble said they won’t remarry in Minnesota, but will have an affirming ceremony.

But Clark and Jacquelyn Zita, her partner of 24 years, plan to make it official in Minnesota. They haven’t picked a date, but Clark envisioned a wedding on the farm they own north of Minneapolis.

“It will be small, probably just friends and family,” Clark said. “We’re actually very private people.”

Patrick Condon – Associated Press
Jim Mone – Photos

Student Gov’t Candidate Targeted In Anti-Gay Smear Campaign Wins Election….

A student government candidate at University of Houston-Downtown, who was the subject of an anti-gay smear campaign that also revealed his HIV status, has been elected student body vice-president.

Kristopher Sharp, a third year student at UHD said he was surprised by the victory, and that he had not prepared himself for winning.

Last month, Sharp was the target of a campaign to discourage students from voting for him by publicizing his HIV-positive status and other private medical information on a flyer distributed on campus.

The front of the flyer had the words “WANT AIDS?” above a picture of Sharp with a large “x” on it, and “Don’t support the Isaac and Kris homosexual agenda” at the bottom. (Isaac Valdez, also a junior at UHD, was Sharp’s running mate.) On the back of the flyer was Sharps’s medical information from a physician visit, including his HIV status and prescribed medication, along with his home address and telephone number.

Sharp said the campaign against him was very “discouraging,” but that he is proud of the way he and Valdez turned it into a victory.

Sharp told LGBTQ Nation on Tuesday that he plans to move forward and concentrate on executing the responsibilities of his office to best serve his fellow students, rather that dwell on the negative aspects of the campaign.

He did say, however, that he feels the overall of issue of how HIV-positive individuals and the stigma they’re treated with by peers and society, still needs to be addressed in a more positive fashion, as opposed to portraying inaccurate stereotypes — which is what he said was the intent of the campaign against him.

Sharp, who takes office in June, said he hopes to focus on eco-friendly initiatives and updated technology on campus, but that he’ll also use his role to educate students on diversity and acceptance, a topic influenced by the campaign.

“We want to address the culture of hate on campus” through awareness and education, he said.

In the meantime, the person, or persons, behind the campaign against Sharp have not been identified.

UHD Director of Media Relations Claire Caton told LGBTQ Nation that the university is actively pursuing the case trying to determine who was responsible for the flyers.

LGBTQ Nation