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6 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE June 29, 2012 • www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com

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Muse director Catherine Roma to be honored by GALA

by Maggie Panyko

Cincinnati-For nearly 40 years, Dr. Catherine Roma has been creating vibrant choral communities that reach across barriers of race, religion, class, sexual orientation and age. She works to translate the values of social justice and inclusion into fundamental experiences of community for both audience and singers. She does this through music that spans a wide variety of styles and cultures and through strategic efforts to develop membership and audiences that reflect the rich diversity of our world.

On Saturday, July 7, Dr. Roma will be awarded the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses Lifetime Achievement Award. The Lifetime Achievement Award honors an "individual whose body of work has significantly impacted the global community around LGBT issues." She has, as the award requires, "contributed to exceptional progress in how LGBT people are viewed and represented in society, (being) a notable leader, and (is) widely recognized as

News Briefs

Continued from page 3

The suits were filed against Cook County Clerk David Orr, on the argument that he violated the couples' due process and equal protection rights by not giving them marriage licenses. Orr himself expressed pleasure at the lawsuits' filings.

Illinois enacted a civil union law last year, but the plaintiffs contend that the measure does not equal marriage, and that couples sometimes encounter people and institutions who have no idea what a civil union is.

The Thomas More Society said that it will ask to defend the marriage law. The group is a national right-wing religious nonprofit law firm. Its name honors the Catholic chancellor of England who opposed King Henry VIII's efforts

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From her first women's choir in the early 1970s in Madison, Wisconsin, to the stillthriving Anna Crusis Choir of Philadelphia, to Muse, Cincinnati's Women's Choir, celebrating its 30th year in 2013, Catherine Roma has "brought diverse groups of people together to enhance quality of life and the greater good.”

GALA Choruses got its start in the early '70s, and notes the formation of Roma's Anna Crusis Choir as one of the "milestones" in its pre-incorporated (1983) history. Quadrennially since the early 1980s, GALA has held festivals of singing in varied locations around the country and abroad. Muse began its participation in the third GALA held in Seattle, Washington, in 1989, and has participated in every festival except

one.

When asked what her favorite GALA has been, Muse member, Dorothy Smith (Alto 1) remarks, "That's hard because they are all

to enthrone himself as the head of the Church of England.

Mary Cheney marries Heather Poe

Washington, D.C.-Mary Cheney, daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, married her partner Heather Poe in the capital on June 22.

They have two children together, a 5-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter, and live in Virginia, where samesex marriage is not legal.

While her father was vice president during an administration that occasionally floated the idea of a federal marriage ban amendment (usually in an election year), Dick Cheney said he thought the issue should be left to the

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states. He endorsed same-sex marriage in 2009.

He and his wife Lynn issued a statement expressing their support for their daughter and daughter-in-law.

Mary Cheney worked on her father's political campaigns, drawing criticism from LGBT activists for working to elect an administration that espoused anti-gay policies.

Lesbian teen couple shot in Texas

Portland, Texas-Two lesbian teens were found shot in knee-deep grass in a park on June 23.

Mollie Judith Olgin, 19, died from her injuries; Mary Christine Chapa, 18, was in serious but stable condition in the hospital.

According to friends, the young women had been dating for about five months. Police said that they always look for an anti-gay motive in such attacks, but have as yet not found any motive. Nor have they found any suspects.

Police Chief Randy Wright said that officers had spoken to Chapa, and that the situation did not appear to be a random attack, but they did not have

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Olgin's death is the first homicide in the Corpus Christi suburb in two years. Denmark is 11th with full marriage

Copenhagen, Denmark-Parliament approved a law on June 7 allowing same-sex couples to get married formally in churches instead of the simple blessing ceremonies they now have in the country's Lutheran Church. Legislators voted 85-24 in favor of

so different and so amazing. If I had to pick one as my fave, it would be Seattle in 1989. Muse really brought the house down that night with our performance and we were treated as complete rock stars for the rest of the festival. Very heady experience!"

This summer, Muse will again join the remarkable voices of the GLBTQ music movement in Denver, Colorado. Muses are excited! GALA 2012 takes place the week after the World Choir Games, so the women of Muse will be energized from that experience and ready to bring their own diversity to the other performers at GALA, Denver.

Dr. Roma also announced four years ago, in Muse's 25th anniversary season, that she would shepherd the chorus through its 30th anniversary. With that milestone looming, she will retire following the end of the 30th season in 2013. Muse is accepting applications for the position of artistic director on the website, www.musechoir.org.

Maggie Panyko is the web coordinator for Muse, Cincinnati's Women's Choir.

putting the country on equal footing with Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Portugal, Sweden, Iceland, Norway and Argentina in offering full same-sex marriage.

Holocaust survivor Gad Beck dies

Berlin-Gad Beck, the last known gay Jewish Holocaust survivor, passed away on June 24. He would have been 89 on June 30. He is survived by his partner of 35 years, Julius Laufer.

Beck, gay and Jewish, was constantly at risk during the Holocaust, but engaged in some remarkable stunts against the Nazi regime. Most notably, he put on a Hitler Youth uniform and went into a deportation center to try to rescue his boyfriend Manfred Lewin, who was eventually sent to Auschwitz and killed with his entire family.

Beck immigrated to Israel in 1947, then returned to Germany in 1979, where he was appointed director of the Jewish Adult Education Center in Berlin.

Beck and his father were held in a compound on the Rosenstrasse in 1943; his father was Jewish, but his mother converted, so he was considered a mischling, a half-breed. Non-Jewish wives of men who were being held staged a protest, and Beck and others were freed.

After that, he joined an underground resistance youth group, using his connections in the gay world to help give food and shelter to Jews on the lam.

He was betrayed in 1945 by a Jewish spy working for the Nazis, but the war ended before he was shipped off to a camp. After the war, he helped Jews go to Palestine.

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