SOGLBT Welcomes New Members, Celebrates Old

The Student Organization for Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and the Transgendered, (SOGLBT) is kicking off the semester with its bi-annual barbeque at 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 18, at Fort Collins’ City Park.

Kay Lambert, SOGLBT co-chair and senior studio art major, said he sees the barbeque as a welcome back for the fall semester as well as a membership drive.

The barbeque provides an opportunity for Lambert and other long-time members to see who will be involved in the group this year to determine the  events students prefer, Lambert said.

He expects about 50-60 people and hopes to see some members stick around after to see in what direction the group would like to go . Membership has waxed and waned in past years, and this past year has seen fewer students in participation.

Lambert said he’s hoping for the organization to provide as many resources and opportunities as it can, while hoping to hang on to members.

“Things will kind of ebb [with participation] and I don’t think it’ll be a permanent downturn,” Lambert said.

Passionately driven to make SOGLBT a thriving resource for the CSU community, Lambert said he knows that it’s going to be hard bringing back a solid membership. But he’ll continue to keep pushing, focusing on getting the word out through social-networking sites like Facebook and putting more publicity out on campus about the group’s presence.

With student organizations, “it sounds like everything’s going to hell,” said Lambert. “It’s not as awful as it sounds.”

In fact, SOGLBT events draw huge crowds, and it is one of the oldest continuously active organizations for GLBT individuals in Northern Colorado.

In 1973, it was established as the Fort Collins Gay Alliance, and has since changed its name many times “to be more inclusive of the rapidly progressing sexually aware population,” said Gabe Case, CSU graduate and former SOGLBT co-chair and media coordinator.

One of the more well-attended events thrown by the organization is its biannual drag show, usually held to celebrate both National Coming Out Day on Oct 11 and Transgender, Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Awareness Days, a week-long event, in the spring. TBGLAD also includes educational seminars, guest speakers and hosts open-mic sessions.

SOGLBT coordinates with the community during TBGLAD in holding a Queer Prom as well as taking part in the National Day of Silence in the spring, which is recognized in bringing attention to anti-GLBT name-calling and harassment in schools, said Case.

As the current co-chair, Lambert said his goals include rebuilding the infrastructure of the group. He took initiative to become co-chair when most of the old leadership graduated or left the group, leaving no guidelines for folks to keep the structure going, Lambert said.

Although the GLBT Resource Center for students exists on campus, SOGLBT is important to the larger GLBT student community because it functions as a student-run voice in the CSU community at large, Lambert said. The GLBT Resource Center provides something different for students, where as a student organization provides the opportunity for activism and student-oriented goals,  he said.

With a student focus, the group can promote awareness in fresh, thought-provoking ways that are relevant to the GLBT student community. The students get to make their voice heard and that’s what they want, said Lambert.

“It’s been proven through history that not talking about [the issue] doesn’t help intolerance,” said Lambert. “Hiding has never made any group feel better about themselves.”

The beginning of the Queer Reporter’s Notebook..

I caught my roommate off-guard in the library. She was working, speaking with folks she hadn’t seen in a while. I stopped, laptop in hand as I was rushing to take down notes from an interview I just had (or performed? I was the interviewer…)

“You talk to Moira yet?” she basically asks. She has a good rapport with this person, but I, diligently, do not yet. This, I feel, is because I am a part of press, and that makes me the enemy.. no matter how queer I am.

My roommate is gay. This makes a difference to both of us, because it effects the way that we perceive and move through the world of campus every day. Not that campus is our exclusive reality, but that it is the most immediately experienced.. to an unexposed audience, we are simply a removed “other.”

However, to Moira, the director of LGBT student services, I am reporter first, and maybe not really queer. I don’t think she even knows.

My beat this semester for my reporting class is GLBT issues. I chose it enthusiastically, but I knew this would be difficult. Can we say conflict of interest?

Honestly, I see no conflict. Who better to report than someone who fundamentally has raised his or her critical consciousness, at least slightly enough to be inclusive and understanding of the community? We are not “others.” And try as we might to disseminate this fact, anecdotal evidence is not enough to get through to the minds of our audiences, or for that matter, our newspaper editors.

That is why queer journalism is important.

I have emailed Moira three times thus far. Today, I stopped in, left a message. pick one: L Groves

Emailed

Called

Came in to see you

Wants to see you

Wants to make an appointment

Emailed again

Called for the third fucking time, where are you?!

Calmed down and

Wants to engage in open, communicative dialogue about reporting and the GLBT community.

Another thank you written out and I was almost on my merry way. I actually spoke with some of the students in the office, like, “omg she hates me, sadface” and they responded sympathetically. They may even help open doorways for me to SOGLBT, the student org (not the resource center).

I know folks in this community but, you know, I am attempting to branch out. And no one wants to talk to the press anyway, I’m thinking, not even my friends.

“Can I remain anonymous?” is a question oft asked. I answer this with sensitivity. I wish all my sources could remain anonymous, and then anyone would talk to me!

But really, I get it. People don’t want to be out. It is important, let me tell you, not to out people in the press unless they are expressly out and tell you so. Outing politicians? No-no. Outing frat boys on campus? That could even be dangerous. Ever been in a room full of bros with your bleached blonde girlhawk, trying to fend off the guys like savage beasts? Yeah. Talk about awkward.

Well, today was “talk to CSUPD!” day at the information center on campus, and on my merry way out of the office, I stopped, flitted my eyelashes, and cornered the man.

“Normally we have only one person who talks to press. Are you a part of any media organization in town?”

If you mean the organization of my own free will, then I’m shit out of luck. But otherwise, I’m in!

We discuss hate crimes. He is white and handsome. And in uniform. I scribble down his panderings of “diversity trainings!!! We have them.” He has never personally dealt with a hate crime. I should probably pursue things elsewhere. Suddenly, another handsome white man walks by in a crisp, collared shirt and a name-tag.

“Eric!” the policeman directs me towards this person, apparently an assistant director, and again, I move in for the kill. He helps me out with a little more knowledge about how hate crimes might be dealt with on campus.

Honestly, neither of them have any idea. What if the student is afraid of further retaliation from their attacker? What if it escalates? What happens then? Where can they go?

My quest to figure this out continues…

Featurette: F/Stop cafe breeds soulful poetry scene in Fort Collins

I recently had a chance to sit in on a local open mic poetry night, and decided that to best take you there was to have you listen to it.

A web version of the story is below.

It’s Wednesday night at a slow down-town coffee shop, and the place is filled with people. There is a line forming at the register for coffee. It’s the intermission for an open mic poetry night called Musings held weekly at the F-Stop cafe. Local poets have built a culture around here on sharing and writing their own and other’s poetry. Sage Morris-Greene, co-owner and manager of the cafe, co-created the weekly event with North Carolina poet Neal Ray, who used to host. They wanted to create a different sort of poetry night than those around town.

Morris-Greene says she started the night to be a place of expression for people, where they could share pieces they were working and get constructive critique on the process.

“I don’t think there’s any other open mic in town that allows you to work on stuff that you’re unsure about, or that’s unfinished,” said Morris-Greene. “I really wanted to see something more like that.

The name of the night, Musings, was meant to reflect the open, meditative and thoughtful rumination of poetry, of expressing poetry, and most importantly, of performing poetry. It’s set up as an open-mic, with a style of laid-back lounging and discussion.

“[Neal] and I wanted it to be a mode of expression and recreation of one’s work,” said Morris-Greene. “That really starts touching poetry on a deep level.”

She believes, she said, that poetry becomes the vehicle of the way that we see the world, the way that we paint our perspectives to others through words.

Unfortunately, back in April, Ray, the original host, had to go back to North Carolina. Morris-Greene then took over as host. For many of the poets, Ray gave the night a soulful feel, allowing them to open up and really share their artistry, straight from the gut.

Isaac Freitas, a Colorado State Alumnus, is a regular at Musings. He only began performing his poetry in front of people last November, and says that before that, he had never read his work to anyone. Since then, he said his style has changed a bit, because reading and speaking poetry can have two different effects on the way it is perceived.

“Sharing has definitely given me ideas about what else to write, where to get inspiration, who to mock,” he said jokingly.

He likes the comfortable atmosphere of the poetry night, compared with the monthly poetry slams that go on at the Bean Cycle Cafe.

“You can say what you want to say,” he said. “You can do your worst poem, and people may cringe, or roll their eyes or something, but more in a playful way.”

Joe Dominica is another regular, and has been coming to the poetry night since February of this year. The first poem of the night was one he recited by Adrian Mitchell, called To Whom it May Concern.

“The first time I heard that, it just blew me away,” said Dominica. “I don’t know what it was, but it just sent me somewhere.”

Dominica said his poems are more political, even the ones he recites that are not his own, but loves coming to the weekly poetry night to see what’s out there and draw inspiration from other poets.

The place is such a welcoming and open place that after intermission, a couple participants bring their own instruments. Howard Landman, local poet and self-published author, pulls out a guitar and begins to strum away. Dominica and some new-comers discuss meditation and Buddhist philosophy. A regular coffee-house jam session unfolds.

“I just got a drum recently because I was inspired by Neal Ray, the former host, to express myself musically,” Dominica said.

Ray often brought his own percussion instruments and played them when he was up at the mic. Dominica has frequented other poetry nights– particularly the Monday Night Poetry at the Alley Cat Cafe, but says he prefers the way Musings integrates the music into the night, keeping in-tune with it’s soulful flavor.

Landman has been in the Fort Collins poetry scene for about a decade, and despite writing only about ten or 15 new poems, he has translated about 120 of Rainer Maria Rilke’s works. Like Rilke, he believes that a writer must go into his or her own heart, ask themselves why they are writing, and then “be true to that.”

He enjoys performing in front of an audience, as well.

“When it works,” he said, “there’s just really something about performing in front of people and getting the feedback, and knowing that what you’re doing is affecting them.”

Morris-Greene, who has now become the new host, hopes that Musings will contribute to the poetry scene by providing an open place where people can relax.

“[They can] really let their soul-selves, true-selves, their heart-selves… feel heard,” she said.

NCAP: Humble office, Ambitious Strides in Help for Persons Living With HIV/AIDS

Maybe it was his destiny. I couldn’t tell. But sitting there, across from him, I felt the warmth emanating from his heart and mind. Or maybe it wasn’t so much that, but the graceful way in which he spoke about the people he fights hard to help every day.

I found him through a little red door underneath a quaint office building on the corner of 400 Remington St, a humble office for its ambitious dedication of over 20 years of service to eight counties in the Northern Colorado area.

His name is Jeff Basinger, the executive director of the Northern Colorado AIDS Project, and this story is not so much about him but about his work. More specifically, about NCAP, which was started in 1986.

“NCAP started like all other AIDS service organizations in the world,” said Basinger, “with families and friends helping people die of this incredibly mysterious and frighteningly terrifying disease.”

Helping them die because no one knew. He’s speaking about HIV/AIDS, and for a short run-down for those of you too young to remember, here is a short history (not included: perspective of social injustices).

NCAP was just a small volunteer run organization until 1989, when it was granted 501(c)3 status. In 1990, they acquired funds from the Federal government through the Ryan White CARE Act, which was the first Federal funding given out for the care and treatment of people with HIV/AIDS. Since then, it’s just been growing. Basinger said that currently NCAP is serving about 190 active clients each month, but that there are more out there who are either not getting the help they need or receiving substandard care.

People do have hesitations about getting help. In smaller communities, people are just living in “holy fear of their neighbors knowing, or their families finding out” due to the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS, as well as various other reasons, Basinger said.

“When a person walks through our front door for the first time, usually they’ve been thinking about it for six months, a year, three years,” Basinger said.

Depending on what a person’s needs are, Basinger said their clients are professionally trained to meet them there, and to express to them that the office is a safe space. The staff, he said, listen and empathize with clients, support them in risk reduction, and help them in gaining access to other services within the community.

And they do so much. As far as prevention programs goes, NCAP offers rapid HIV testing, hepatitis C testing and peer-networking to assist the population of injection drug users, as well as programs for keeping partners safe for those who are living with HIV/AIDS. They offer medical case management which look at the resources and ways that help stabilize people who are especially under-served, in high need, living in poverty, or homeless.

“If we can stabilize them and get them into care, retain them in care,” said Basinger, “their health outcomes shift hugely from dying of AIDS to living with HIV.”

NCAP is also unique, said Basinger, in that they offer an in-house mental house counselor. They also provide a food-bank for those in need, proffering a pantry of ingredients that create over 800 meals a month. They offer financial services which include eviction prevention, housing assistance, and insurance co-pay programs. Basinger says, with these services, “their health outcomes are just so much better.”

With all that they do, funding is a hard score.

“We cost about $700,000 a year,” Basinger said.

Seventy percent of that is through Federal funding programs such as the Ryan White CARE Act, contracts from the CDC through the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, and other government contracts. The other 30 percent is from private donations. Basinger said the organization feels fortunate for being funded at almost 100 percent of their 2008 contracts from the government for 2009, but that they have seen about a 40 to 60 percent drop in private donations. That money is what pays the rent. It’s overhead.

“Funding is an issue everyday,” Basinger said. “That’s definitely a big part of my job.”

So is advocacy. A part of NCAP’s mission is to reduce the spread of stigma about HIV/AIDS, as well.

“It’s not new,” said Basinger. “It’s always been here, but just has surfaced finally because it found the way to go global. All species have immunodeficiency viruses. Ours is human.”

NCAP works well with the Fort Collins interfaith community, especially around Christmas time, when families are in greatest need. He said that although there has been obvious friction between people living with HIV/AIDS and religious communities, NCAP has been working to improve those relationships and making in-roads.

Basinger wants to stress that the organization is a safe place for anyone who is looking for more information, education, resources or support.

“Everything we do is medically accurate and evidence based, non-judgmental,” he said. “We take individuals as people.”

Northern Colorado Community Reaction to Proposition 8: The Next Steps

It’s the early morning on Tuesday, May 26, and 1,000 people are holding hands. They stand, confident, in front of the California state court house in San Francisco. They are waiting to hear a ruling from the judges inside, who will decide whether or not Proposition 8, the state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, is unconstitutional.

The amendment was approved by a 52 percent popular vote in the November 2008 election, and according to a summary prepared by the State Attorney General of California, the amendment officially provided that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized” by the state.

Through whispers and text messages, news of the ruling metastasized through the crowd. Upheld.

California officially became the first state in the nation to rescind same-sex marriage rights. Opponents of the amendment cried out, “shame on you!” to those who were in favor. Though the judges ruled in favor of the popular vote, the marriages that had already been given between July and November of 2008 were to be recognized and not annulled. At least, for some couples, including those in Colorado, there was certainty that their vows still had validity.

GLBT Support Centers in Colo. Face Reality of Decision
“This is a real battle,” said Andy Stoll, director of the Lambda Community Center of Fort Collins, Colorado.

Back in November, the Northern Colorado GLBTQ community, among others, felt the ripple coming out of California.

“I had a lot of folks who had gone to California to get married, and were really frustrated and mobilized around the issue,” Stoll said. This time around, however, the ruling didn’t affect Coloradans as much, being that it was state and not national legislation. He describes the Day of Decision call to action which served to show mobilization around the inequality that is out there, a consequence of the ruling as a necessary reminder for movement and involvement on a national scale.

“I think honestly that it acted as a catalyst for a lot of other folks to get involved,” Stoll said. “In November, people were just so taken aback about the fact that California did this.”

Kyle Pape, a senior Ethnic Studies major at Colorado State University, was out of the country when the amendment was voted in. Pape is self-identified as non-heterosexual.

“[The amendment] hit me personally as a deterrent to my humanity,” said Pape. “I was like, this dehumanization needs be approached… it is just blatant, institutional oppression.”

The Effects of Proposition 8 on the GLBT Community
“It actually serves to contribute to those acts of violence when you have state-sponsored discrimination of those folks,” said Stoll, “because it acts to dehumanize them and make it easier for people to treat them as less than human.”

Dehumanization begins when one side perceives another as threatening to their well-being or traditional values. According the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, every human being, regardless of any distinguishing characteristic, is “born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

The United States is sovereign in its own right, but the nation has made strides in working towards, what the Constitution delineates, as “equal protection of the laws” for all US citizens. This was demonstrated in the 1960s as the Civil Rights Act was passed to ensure the inability of employers to discriminate on the basis of age, race, sex, religion, or national heritage. Sexual orientation, however, is still an identity characteristic that has not been nationally protected.

“Equal protection of the laws” should amount to the inability to discriminate based on sexual orientation, race, nationality, religion, age, sex, physical ability, age, socio-economic status, education, and gender identification, Pape said. “The way that Proposition 8 is being perceived nationally is very much so tied to an individual sense of dignity within the GLBT community, and that is something very significant because it is a law that’s impacting how we think about ourselves.”

Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back?
“My feelings were that it would set us back 10 years,” said Joe Peterson, CSU student and co-director of Coloradoans For Family Equality. “Never in my wildest dreams would I think of people voting to take away rights.”

Despite this, many in the GLBT community feel that there have been small strides in progress, such as when President Obama officially signed the UN declaration decriminalizing homosexuality.

Before this, the U.S. was the only Western nation that had not signed it, due to Bush era administration fears that it would direct federal government to allow equal protections to people of sexual orientations other than heterosexual under the law. States within the U.S. still have sovereignty in this matter, and the results have been mixed. The Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996, allowed for a loophole in the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the US Constitution, meaning that states were not legally required to recognize same-sex marriages licensed in other states.

How big is this impact? According to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the DOMA excludes gay and lesbian married couples from about 1,138 federal protections, rights and responsibilities bestowed upon licensed married couples.

In 2006, Colorado voted in its own amendment banning same-sex marriages.

Pape said that despite successes in mobilization, he sees a large amount of frustration and fervor within the movement due to the ruling of Proposition 8.

“People have the lack of ability to enact agency and have meaningful action that impacts the way their life is going,” said Pape. “What we have is this energy that isn’t being released by the people.”

Campaigning Strategies, Marginalization Thought as Influential Factor in Ruling
Between January and May of 2009, Pape researched and wrote a thesis on the effects of Proposition 8 on the GLBT community, including how and why it had passed. A large factor for the lack of success within the GLBT movement was possibly the differences in campaigning between the proponents and opponents of Prop 8, as well as with marginalization within the GLBT community.

What is recognized in the community is that the media campaign that the proponents of the amendment put out played a huge role in the results, partly due to the amount of money able to fund the campaign and the numbers of people that came out to vote.

“The money was all there for the opposition,” Pape said, “and they were very intelligent in that they were reaching out to so many different kinds of people, their information was in 14 different languages, and the GLBT movement’s was only in four.”

Funding is debatable, however.

“There is money on both sides,” said Peterson. He states that in 2006 in Colorado, the pro-Referendum I and the anti-Amendment 48 campaigns outspent their opponents four to one.

The other part of the issue, Pape said, is that the GLBT movement needs to reach out to all those who are suffering in oppression, not just this one marginalized identity. In this case, the church was able to reach out to many different people and, as Pape said, utilize their ideologies to mobilize the proponents of the amendment.

“Churches are really, really fantastic at organizing people,” said Stoll. “They can get a lot of people out there on whatever issue they are on, and we need to be better at countering that and utilizing some of their model… that’s something that we recognize as a strength in their group.”

This goes along the same vein as the Civil Rights Movement, said Pape. “[The church] is a mobilizing force.”

Media Influence and the Public Sphere
Despite the proponents’ heavy campaigning, the public also wasn’t seeing enough of how Proposition 8 was affecting the GLBT community, Peter Durth said. Durth is a Colorado State Alumnus and was the coordinator of TBGLAD, a week of awareness for under-represented and marginalized non-heterosexual populations, for two years at the university.

“Media outlets are so directed to specific audiences,” said Durth. “Anything about Prop 8 is preaching to the choir.”

The public was not getting enough of the images that we needed to see, said Durth. He compared the shortcomings of the GLBT movement’s campaigning to the successes of the Civil Rights Movement. Hear more about what Durth had to say on the issue… (as a warning, the file is large, I’m working on converting it to mp3).

Stoll said that the representation of the issue in mainstream media lies mostly in accord with whose ideology is being perpetrated through which conglomeration, with some main examples being Cable News Network (CNN), and Fox News.

Pape said, though, that it goes deeper than this. He said that the mainstream media’s representation of the GLBT community is not equal on the whole.

“It is in the interest of the media to appeal to the interest and perceptions of the public, which amount to the perpetuation of [fears and stereotypes] being incited to manipulate the public’s attention, and cause them to be afraid,” said Pape.

The Judges’ Decision
On whether or not the media had a significant affect on the California Supreme Court judges’ ruling on Tuesday, Pape can’t conclusively say. He wonders whether, in the context of their jobs, if they made the wrong decision or not in deciding to uphold the wishes of popular vote.

“The way they justify it, it looks like it may now go to a higher court,” said Pape. “If we get a federal ruling on our side, then we would get national change and that would be amazing.”

Peterson disagrees. He said that he is unsure of whether or not the lawyers who are taking the Prop 8 case to federal court has the support of GLBT legal advocates such as Lambda Legal.

“I hope it doesn’t go through the federal court because I do not think we have the precedent,” said Peterson. He said that the Supreme Court tends to be very conservative in how it makes change, and very slow in enacting these sorts of changes.

“What I hope it does is galvanize the community to become more active than we have been,” said Peterson.

The Next Steps for GLBT Equal Rights
Pape believes that the next steps for the GLBT movement are to begin connecting with all oppressed people, and that this will begin to connect the various movements of liberation into a singular fight.

“The GLBT identification is very unique in that it’s the only identity that is marginalized that also transcends all other identities of marginalization,” he said. “Really, we could mobilize very rationally with GLBT issues as one of the forefront leading catalysts connecting all the other fronts.”

Stoll said that the community centers around Colorado have been focusing more on what they can do to provide protections that are similar to those given in licensed marriages, without necessarily calling them marriages or civil union. This includes protections such as visitation and property rights, second parent adoptions, state employees having domestic partner benefits, and non-discrimination protections in the workplace.

“We are focusing… on all the things that happened since 2006 that are really positive, and getting people to understand that and getting them mobilized around it,” said Stoll.

Peterson, however, has been influential in drafting and proposing a new initiative in Colorado that will propose civil unions. After Proposition 8 had passed, he thought it would be the next best step that could be taken after the loss.

“This would be the first time we’d win partnership recognition through the initiative process, rather than going through the courts or legislature,” said Peterson.

“All of the places that have gone through legislature, like Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire, they had civil unions first,” he said, “so we believe this is a very good, achievable step forward.”

Only Iowa and Mass., which went through the courts, had no recognition beforehand, he said. Peterson said that a win in Focus on the Family’s home state would speak to the amount of strength the community is still building up.

“That’s what I hope we come away with as a community (from Proposition 8),” said Peterson. “Nothing can be taken for granted, and we must fight for everything we can.”

Where has marriage for lesbians and gays already been legalized?