William Saltonstall, a former Massachusetts state senator who died last month at the age of 81, was an outspoken ally of LGBT equality, in part because of his daughter and grandson who live in Palmer.
Saltonstall was a staunch Republican who served in the legislature from 1966 to 1978. He became an
advocate for LGBT rights in the last decade of his life.
In 2000, he began speaking out against opponents of gay adoption and same-sex marriage. He wrote letters, donated money and lobbied for marriage equality. In 2006, Saltonstall changed his party affiliation to democrat. “I’ve been active in the gay rights movement, because my daughter is gay – she lives in Alaska – and the party has not been favorable to people like her,” he told the Boston Globe.
Abigail, her partner Chris and their three children live in Palmer and own
Half Moon Creek art gallery in Anchorage.
Tuesday, 10 February 2009 – 5:36 PM
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Art, politics, entertainment, sports, religion – share your knowledge of LGBT Alaska on the blog. Interview your friends, review our shows, give good advice or spread outrageous rumors! It’s time to expand the blog and bring in more writers who represent different voices within our community. Send your ideas to
Bent Alaska and see your byline on line. Thanks!
Sunday, 8 February 2009 – 6:53 PM
| Comments Off on Pick. Click. Give. for Gay Alaska
Alaskans can go online to apply for the PFD and support our favorite Alaska non-profits with just a click. It’s a chance for all of us to come together and give a little extra.
To donate all or part of your PFD,
apply online then choose the groups you would like to support. The filing period continues through March 31, 2009.
National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day 2009 on aims to get Black Americans educated about the basics of HIV/AIDS, get tested to know their HIV status, get involved in their community around the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and get treated if they are living with HIV/AIDS.
Because “Black Life Is Worth Saving!”
For AIDS testing and information in Alaska, contact Four A’s in Anchorage and Juneau, and Interior AIDS Assoc. in Fairbanks.
Friday, 6 February 2009 – 12:11 PM
| Comments Off on This Week in LGBT Alaska 2/6/09
Check out this week’s events from Alaska GLBT News.
For full listings, classifieds and up-coming events,
subscribe to AGN, the weekly email newsletter.
Bent Alaska on Facebook
Juneau
SEAGLA Social Fridays (6-8 p.m.) for GLBT people and our friends over 21, at The Imperial Bar, downtown.
SEAGLA Night at the Theatre: Shakespeare’s R&J, 2/6, 7:30 p.m. by Thunder Mountain Theatre Project, at the The Old Elk’s Hall. Tickets at Hearthside Books.
Fairbanks
PFLAG Fairbanks meeting to discuss the proposed School Board policy change 2/8, 4 p.m.
Mat-Su Valley
Mat-Su LGBT Community Center social support group meetings to discuss LBGT issues in the valley. Mondays at 2 p.m. and Wednesdays at 5 p.m. Vagabond Blues in Palmer.
Anchorage
Sweet at Out North Theater begins 2/6, 7 p.m. for the Off the Rocks Theater Project.
Equality Works Steering Committee meeting at the GLCCA, 2/7, 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
Alaska Rainbows monthly dinner 2/7, 5-7 p.m.
LGBT Town Hall to End Discrimination in Anchorage 2/11, 7 p.m. at Immanuel Presbyterian Church. Equality Works
Dan Savage: Savage Love Live! 2/12, 7:30 p.m. at UAA’s Wendy Williamson Auditorium. General Public $10, free for students with UAA ID. UAATix.
An Electro Affair with Kilogram and Grym 2/12, 9 p.m.-2 a.m. $5 at the door. Mad Myrna’s.
If you read Alaska GLBT News, you already know that Dan Savage, an openly-gay author of a popular sex-advice column, is coming to Anchorage on Feb. 12 to present Savage Love Live, a talk followed by audience questions on anything and everything sexual.
Feb. 12, the day of the Anchorage show, is also national Freedom to Marry Day. Savage and his partner were married in Canada in 2005, and Dan is a strong advocate of LGBT equality.
Today’s Anchorage Press, the alternative weekly that carries the Savage Love column, ran an interview with Dan:
“‘[H]homophobia, like racism, is a pastime of the ignorant and elderly. And the elderly are leaving us. They want to take a snapshot of this moment in time and lock in these prejudices, and make them hard to undo. But they’re losing ground. We’re moving the ball down the field and we’re winning. It’s just… Canada got the French; Australia got the convicts; we got the fuckin’ Puritans.'”
See Savage Love Live at UAA’s Wendy Williamson Auditorium, 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 12. Students with a UAA ID get in free. General Public tickets are $10 and are available at UAATix.
Wednesday, 4 February 2009 – 5:46 PM
| Comments Off on Knocked Down, Get Up: Inspiration from Creating Change
Tiffany McClain attended the
Creating Change conference last week in Denver. In this guest post, she describes the diversity of activists, the inspiring setting, and the lessons she brought home for Alaska’s LGBT civil rights movement.
——-
A Broad Definition of What It Means To Be an Activist
Sponsored by the
National Lesbian & Gay Task Force, the annual Creating Change conference is 5 days of inspiration, nuts-and-bolts training, and a little entertainment for campaigners, grassroots organizers, service-providers, faith leaders, community center workers, teachers, and artists who are dedicated to advancing the rights and quality of life for LGBT people in our country.
I attended a workshop with someone who serves LGBT youth with wilderness-based therapy, people who directed the LGBT center at their local universities, a young woman who is training the children of lesbian and gay parents to be advocates for LGBT families, another who honed her organizing skills by moving from state-to-state working on campaigns to fight anti-gay marriage initiatives, and queer youth of color who are fighting gentrification in New York City. During our closing brunch, we were entertained by The Kinsey Sicks, a drag a capella group that blends comedy and political commentary in their performances.
The diversity of individuals at the conference was a reminder that the future of the LGBT movement will be the collective success of people with different skills, talents, and passions. Not just the lobbyists and vote-counters but the teachers, not just the grassroots organizers but the artists, not just the people who see marriage as the ultimate goal of the LGBT movement, but those fighting the displacement of poor and working-class families from their neighborhoods. Creating Change is an opportunity for us to learn with and from each other, and to take these lessons back to our communities and places of work.
Living the Change We’re Working For
What was inspiring about attending Creating Change was not only the opportunity to train and brainstorm with other activists, but also the world that the Taskforce created for almost a week: a world where gender neutral bathrooms were located on every public floor of the hotel, where every downtown restaurant and even the Denver airport greeted LGBT people with welcome signs, where queer people of different races, ages, classes, abilities, gender identities and religions found common purpose and were comfortable enough to challenge each others’ prejudices. The organizers of Creating Change inspired conference-goers to continue advocating for change in our communities by showing us what change feels like.
“Get Knocked Down 7 Times, Get Up 8”*
If I were to sum up the theme of this year’s Creating Change conference in one word, I would say “resilience.” There were a lot of activists from California still grappling with what could have gone wrong with the Prop 8 initiative and trying to heal from the weeks of unfair back-biting and blaming that followed the election. But the disappointments of these last few months have not discouraged them from continuing the fight and working on the next strategy to advance the rights of LGBT people in California and across the country.
I sometimes hear LGBT Alaskans cite past defeats and the power of conservatism as a reason not to push for civil rights in our state. At Creating Change, I was reminded that very few LGBT communities and activists tasted victory before they tasted defeat. (And some defeats can be victories: 52% to 48% in CA is not a landslide. That’s a lot of people who believe that gays and lesbians should be able to get legally married!) My point is, if we want to live in a community as welcoming as Denver or Seattle, we have to be willing to build it ourselves—even if it means risking defeat along the way.
* Quote from Rea Carey, Executive Director of the National Lesbian & Gay Task Force
“I’m still trying to find new members, so beware!” writes Brianne “Your Highness is optional” on the new
Mat-Su LGBT Community Center blog. “If you see a Big Transwoman with a Lasso headed your way, run! and run fast lest you find yourself sipping steamy beverages and talking about the LBGTA community in the Valley.”
On Wednesdays at 5 p.m., Her Highness Brianne waits at a table in Palmer’s Vagabond Blues with a sign taped to a coffee can. Brianne and Jaime Rodriguez are resurrecting the Mat-Su LGBT Community Center, and the coffee group for socializing, support and discussion is the first activity.
Their vision for the Center goes far beyond coffee. “A functioning Valley Community Center can help create a real community where none exists, and provide a central clearinghouse for information, contacts and services, not to mention a fun and safe place for meetings and activities of all sorts,” Jaime wrote in the blog’s first post.
Safety is a big issue in the bible belt of Alaska. When journalists searched for LGBT Wasillans to interview during Gov. Sarah Palin’s vice presidential run, few were willing to talk on camera or give their real name in print. Jaime and Brianne were the only queer locals named in
this HRC video with ally Rev. Bess and a supportive therapist, although an anonymous lesbian spoke with her back to the camera.
About six or seven times a year, word comes from the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Anchorage that people are asking about LGBT groups in the Valley, wanting to get involved or attend events. The Mat-Su population has swelled to 83,000, which means at least several thousand LGBT residents. There seems to be an unusually large transgender population in the Valley, and more bisexuals and closeted people than in urban areas of the same size.
“If we could organize, we could help break the conservative hold on the Valley,” said Jaime. “Six thousand queers is a powerful economic and political force, if we can harness it.”
The new Center rents office space in The Church of the Covenant in Palmer, where Rev. Howard Bess was pastor until he retired last year. They have a reception area, coffee nook, conference room, bathroom, and library space for the many boxes of books collected when the Center was active.
In 2001, a small group of LGBT men and women in the Valley met in a cafe in Wasilla to organize a community center. They moved to Palmer when Pastor Howard Bess offered the Church Meeting House. A weekly social support group drew about 20 people, and they added a potluck and movie night one Friday a month.
“By 2002, the LGBT Center had about 60 members on the email list,” said Jaime, the only remaining board member. “The support group grew, but was overwhelmed by people who needed a therapy group. A conflict arose between two members and attendance dropped. Only those who needed the group for therapy stayed, plus three or four of us committed to building the Center.”
Jaime and Brianne are ready to try again. They have the office, non-profit status, and start-up funds from the Imperial Court. What they need most is new members.
“I am not discouraged,” Brianne wrote last week when only two straight allies joined her for coffee. “There are lonely Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Allied people out there who could really use an avenue to meet and enjoy the company of other friendly people.”
“I invite you to participate in something that benefits you directly, your friends and loved ones, your acquaintances, and potentially even the straight segment of the Valley we all live in. Please help us, in whatever way you can: a donation, a chair, couch, bookshelf, your time, your service. What can you spare that will make our world that little bit better?”
Monday, 2 February 2009 – 11:09 PM
| Comments Off on Brother Outsider and Black History Month
February is national Black History Month, and the Anchorage Urban League is co-sponsoring a showing and discussion of Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin at the Anchorage Museum, along with Identity, the ACLU of Alaska and other sponsors.
Sunday, 1 February 2009 – 9:09 AM
| Comments Off on Joani’s Annual Sweetheart’s Dinner
