www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com

·

March 26, 2010 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

3

Kent State honors activist legend at center opening

by Eric Resnick

Kent "LGBT students, you're brave and you're powerful and this is your center!" declared professor Molly Merryman during the March 11 dedication of Kent State University's new Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Student Center.

Merryman, a lesbian who has been pushing Kent State for progress on LGBT issues since the 1990s, anchored the speakers dedicating the office.

The center is the new home of the university's LGBT Studies minor, a sevencourse program taught at the ma campus and at the Stark and Trumbull branch campuses.

Kent State was the first in Ohio to offer LGBT studies, beginning in 2001. Two more schools, Ohio State University and Hiram College, have added programs since. There are fewer than 50 such programs in the nation.

According to Merryman, there are currently 18 students who have declared the minor and an additional 30 taking the classes.

The center is an office located in the Center for Student Involvement on the second floor of the student center. Its walls are covered by a mural painted by gay artist Jeff Leadbetter titled Individual Community. The piece purposely uses multiple application techniques and layers of paint to, ac-

cording to Leadbetter, illustrate the integration of diverse patterns and parts into a cohesive whole.

The mural avoids use of familiar LGBT symbols like rainbows and triangles.

"We wanted something fresh," said Merryman. "This art represents a new chapter, a new historical point on issues around sexual orientation and gender."

"I believe we have reached a tipping point globally, not just nationally," Merryman said in a later interview. "Young people say LGBTQ people are people and a legitimate minority. This is different from the world I came out of."

"There are more heterosexual allies who just want to live in a complete world and want us to be in that world," Merryman concluded.

Other speakers at the dedication ceremony echoed Merryman's sentiments of a changed world and hopes for the role the center and the programs housed there would play in it.

KSU president Lester Lefton said, "This is a milestone event. It marks a change in the way the Kent State community works as a community."

"This is one of those important wins," Lefton continued, "and one that was a long time coming."

College of Arts and Sciences dean Timothy Moerland called the center “a guiding element to our vision for the future."

newsbriefs

Max Blachman, who works as a regional representative for Senator Sherrod Brown and is gay, told the audience of about 200, "There's nothing more important than an inclusive community."

"No one wants to be tolerated," Blachman said. "Everyone wants to be included."

"The center is also a reminder that we have a lot of work to do," said Equality Ohio director Sue Doerfer, reminding those assembled that Ohio is still ranked dead last among states in legal protections for LGBT people.

Doerfer also talked about her college experience years earlier.

"I took a psychology of women class, which was like a secret lesbian society and the only time anyone heard anything about us," Doerfer continued.

Doerfer, the former director of the Cleveland LGBT Center, also made the case for having dedicated space.

"Centers are the entry point," Doerfer said. "They are the places people go when they aren't quite sure why they're walking in them."

Local lesbian hero recognized

Hanging in the center is a plaque honoring Kent professor emeritus of English Dolores Noll, who received the university's first Diversity Trailblazers Award at the dedication.

Noll facilitated the founding of the Kent Gay Liberation Front in 1971 and served as its faculty adviser with colleague Art Kaltenborn, who was also at the center's dedication.

The group was the forerunner of the present Pride! Kent, making it one of the oldest continuously viable gay rights student organizations in the country.

Noll is nationally recognized as a civil rights leader and LGBT pioneer, but according to Merryman, "escaped recognition at home" until now.

The Kent Gay Liberation Front grew out of a period after of the May 4, 1970 slaying of four students protesting the Vietnam War, when the university community was trying to heal and look for a more positive identity.

Student Bill Hoover came out and started giving talks on gayness in 1971.

Noll, who had come out earlier in Washington, D.C., came out in Kent and also began speaking on campus.

Hoover and Noll got acquainted, then got acquainted with another student, Gail Pertz, who had already begun a small "Gay Lib" group.

When the three got together, the prospects for the new organization were set. Seventy people attended the organizational meeting.

Kent Gay Liberation Front hosted Continued on page 7

Poll: Most recent vets are okay with gays in the ranks

Washington, D.C.-Lending more weight to the push to repeal the military's ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly, a new poll indicated that about three-quarters of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans find the removal of "don't ask, don't tell" to be "acceptable."

That number rises from 73 percent to 77 percent when the veterans are under 35 years old.

The poll was commissioned by the Vet Voice Foundation, a non-partisan organization and used two research groups, one Republican, one Democratic.

Additionally, 73 percent of the veterans polled said that they are comfortable in the presence of gay men and lesbians, while only seven percent said that they were very uncomfortable.

The majority also agreed with the statement that sexual orientation had no bearing on whether someone could perform their duties properly.

According to VoteVets.org co-founder Jon Soltz, who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, "As the pollsters write in their memo on the poll findings, 'Any notion that ending "don't ask, don't tell" would disrupt the military or that service members would be unwilling to meet the change is debunked." "

Writing for the Huffington Post, he concluded, "While politicians go nuts and toss around heated words... those in our military are essentially saying of a repeal, 'Fine. Who cares?" "

Eight men cleared in bar raid

Atlanta-Three men were found not guilty on March 11 of charges stemming from a raid on the Atlanta Eagle bar, and prosecutors dropped charges against five other people arrested September 10.

The trio were accused of dancing nude without proper permits.

Police, including an elite anti-drug unit often used in gang raids, descended on the bar on September 10, allegedly because of reports of drug use and men openly engaging in sexual activity.

However, no drugs were found, and none of the men at the bar that night were accused of public indecency.

The only charges brought against the dancers, bar employees and one co-owner were violations of licensing rules for adult businesses. However, when a group of defense witnesses countered the claims of two

police officers that they saw dancers pull down their briefs to expose their genitalia, the prosecution's case fell apart.

Police officers are also accused of using anti-gay slurs and making patrons lie facedown on the floor amid broken glass with their hands cuffed behind them.

The Atlanta City Council subpoenaed 18 officers involved in the raid when none voluntarily spoke to the Citizen Review Board.

Some of the defendants and patrons who were there on the night of the raid have filed a federal lawsuit against the officers.

Episcopal Church gets 2nd gay bishop

Los Angeles-Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool was confirmed as the first lesbian bishop in the Episcopal Church.

She will be ordained as a suffragan, or assistant, bishop on May 15.

Glasspool comes from the Diocese of Maryland, and is now the second out bishop in the Episcopal Church, after the 2003 confirmation of Rev. V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Robinson's appointment created tension between the Episcopal Church and branches of the Anglican Communion in developing nations, as well as conservatives in America.

The "Global South," comprised of Southeast Asia, South America and Africa, contains Anglican denominations that are extremely homophobic. Most do not approve of ordaining women, either.

Pennsylvania panel kills marriage ban

Harrisburg, Pa.-The Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee on March 16 shot down a proposed constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage.

It was tabled on an 8-6 vote that crossed party lines. While it could be considered again, given its committee defeat, it is not likely to be brought back before the end of the legislative session.

Three of the votes against the measure came from Republicans on the committee.

Private prom shuns lesbian student

Fulton, Miss.-A lesbian high school student whose school district canceled the prom rather than let her bring a female date was not invited to the private prom that local parents are putting on to replace it.

While Constance McMillen will not be dancing with her classmates, she will be

dancing with joy at the $30,000 scholarship Ellen DeGeneres raised for her.

McMillen had asked to wear a tuxedo to her prom and bring a female date. When the school district rejected her request, the ACLU sent them a letter asking them to reconsider.

The Itawamba County School District then canceled the prom, leading to a federal suit filed by the ACLU on McMillen's behalf, asking the court to rule that the school board violated her right of expression and to reinstate the prom.

The district's attorneys claim that since the schoolis no longer putting on a prom, McMillen cannot claim that they are violating her equal rights.

"Constance has not been invited, so it is clear to me that what is happening is that the school has encouraged a private prom that is not open to all the students," ACLU attorney Christine Sun said, according to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. "That's what Constance is fighting for-a prom where everyone can go."

Marriage foe goes down to defeat

Albany, N.Y.-State Sen. Hiram Monserrate, one of eight senators targeted by gay advocates for voting against samesex marriage, was defeated by a pro-marriage challenger in a special election on March 16.

Last year's 38-24 defeat of the marriage bill in the senate came after progressive donors spent large sums of money to put the chamber under Democratic control, only to have their hopes of marriage equality dashed by Democrats who sided with conservatives in the vote.

Fight Back New York was founded to seat pro-marriage candidates in place of the senators who LGBT advocates feel betrayed them, and Monserrate was the first target.

They did, however, have a relatively easy time unseating him. Monserrate was convicting of domestic violence for an attack that left his girlfriend with 20 stitches in her face, and as a city councilor he moved a quarter-million dollars to a nonprofit that cannot explain how they spent the money. Trio videotape BB shots at gay men

San Francisco-The moral of the story is, if you're going to drive around shooting BBs at people you think are gay, don't videotape yourself doing so.

Mohammad Habibzada, Shafiq Hashemi

and Sayed Bassam learned that lesson the hard way after being arrested for shooting a man in the face from their car on February 26.

The trio of cousins, all 24, were pulled over near where they attacked the man, who called police once they had pulled away. The man refused medical treatment.

Police believe they attacked him because they thought he looked gay, and police found a video camera in the car that they used to film the attack.

Investigators are looking into whether the assault was connected to similar attacks around the San Francisco area.

Compiled from wire reports by Brian DeWitt, Anthony Glassman and Patti Harris.

Auto

Life

Health

Home

Business

For all your insurance needs!

Betsy Warner Agent

2479 Lee Boulevard Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118 Office (216) 932-6900