FORWARD>Schmooze>Play on Words: An Alternative Forward

Play on Words: An Alternative Forward

By Beth Schwartzapfel
January 23, 2007

When members of San Francisco’s Congregation Sha’ar Zahav receive their synagogue’s newsletter, they get a copy of the Forward. The Jewish Gaily Forward, that is. Founded in 1977 as a synagogue for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and heterosexual Jews, together with partners, family and friends,” Sha’ar Zahav has the unique position of being a gay synagogue in what is arguably the nation’s gayest city. So it’s only fitting that its newsletter should evoke its Jewish-ness… with a twist.

“We always want to take creative energy into all of the elements of how we present ourselves,” said Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, editor of the JGF, as the newsletter is affectionately known. The newsletter is “changing the name of a Jewish institution in a way that’s sort of fun and positive and reminds people why change is needed in the Jewish world. We have to make sure that people of various sexual identities are included in mainstream Judaism.”

Like most synagogue newsletters, the JGF runs profiles of its members and reports on community events and initiatives. The publication features a rabbi’s column and a page for naches. Unlike most synagogue newsletters, the JGF also runs such pieces as “Transgender Celebration Shabbat a Wild Success!” and “CSZ Queer Torah Study Project.”

Kaiser, whose day job is senior editor of Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture, says the newsletter’s title is actually a double double-entendre. In addition to being a play on the title of this paper, it’s also a nod to an old gay joke. While out for a drive, some friends come to an intersection. “Should we go straight?” asks the driver. “Heavens, no!” answer the passengers. “Go gaily forward!”

Unfortunately, Kaiser says, the original Forward has less reach in the Golden State than it used to, and as a result, not everyone among her readership gets the other joke of the newsletter’s title. “Today on the West Coast, people don’t really get it so much,” she told The Shmooze. “But when you explain it to people, they think it’s hilarious.”

Advocate>25 Rabbis Walk Into a Room

25 Rabbis Walk Into a Room

The Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards queers the synagogue by giving nod to gay rabbis and commitment ceremonies.

By Beth Schwartzapfel

Last winter 25 rabbis shut themselves in a room at the Park Avenue Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and emerged 48 hours later with a remarkable pronouncement: Gay and lesbian Jews may be ordained as rabbis, and they may formally celebrate their “committed and loving relationships.”

Today, the impact of this decision is still playing itself out.

The rabbis were members of the Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards. Appointed by various top brass in the movement, the committee's members interpret and distill Jewish history and sacred texts into rules, laws, and guidelines on how to live a Jewish life. Homosexuality was something they had grappled with before: In 1992 they voted to forbid ordination of gays and same-sex marriage. And the committee's December 6 ruling was still a mixed one. The rabbis voted simultaneously to uphold the long-standing ban and to reverse it. “We as a movement see the advantages of pluralism, and we know that people come to different conclusions, drawing from the same basic resources of our tradition,” says Rabbi Kassel Abelson, who heads the committee. Three members who supported the status quo resigned in protest.

“They missed an opportunity to take moral leadership,” says Rabbi Ayelet Cohen of New York City’s Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, one of the oldest and largest LGBT synagogues in the world. “The law committee presented treating gay people as equals as an option, and not treating gay people as equals as an equally valid option.”

It’s now up to individual institutions to decide which decision to abide by.

Immediately following the decision, officials at Los Angeles’s University of Judaism, one of two Conservative rabbinic seminaries in the United States, announced that they would begin accepting applications from gay and lesbian students. Last spring, two applicants--one man and one woman--were accepted into this fall’s incoming class, though UJ officials declined to name them, citing federal privacy laws. The admission of these students demonstrates that “the policy change didn’t just happen in a dark committee room. It actually had an impact within weeks at the UJ,” said Rachel Kobrin, a fourth-year rabbinic student who heads the campus pro-equality group, Dror Yikra (Hebrew for “proclaim freedom”).

Eventually, New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary followed suit, but there were a few months where the outcome at the movement’s flagship seminary was anyone’s guess. Before the decision came down at the end of March, many suspected the seminary was stalling. At the time, J.B. Sacks, a now-openly gay conservative rabbi who was ordained at JTS in 1986 and remained mostly closeted throughout his education and early career, predicted, “At a certain point they’ll make the announcement. And at that point the deadline will be past for submission for an application for the fall.” As it happened, immediately following the CJLS decision, JTS commissioned a survey of rabbis, cantors, Jewish professionals, and lay leaders to “take the pulse of the movement,” as incoming chancellor Arnold Eisen described it in a statement, before making a decision. The survey, released in January, found that a large majority of respondents (65% of rabbis, 58% of rabbinic students, and 76% of professionals) favored admitting gay students. The seminary extended its January deadline to June to allow for gay and lesbian students to apply.

Conservative Judaism is one of three mainstream Jewish movements; historically, it has sought a middle ground on the spectrum of religious observance, between the more secular Reform movement on one side and the more strictly observant Orthodox on the other side. Orthodoxy still condemns homosexuality; Reform Judaism allowed for ordination of gays and lesbians in 1990 and same-sex marriage in 2000.

Even at the UJ, none of the campus’s closeted gay or lesbian students have come out, nor were any willing to speak to the press--even when offered the use of a pseudonym--despite the official policy change.

Rabbi Sacks recalls that when he was in seminary, one beloved teacher, upon finding out that Sacks was gay, told him, “you’re very lucky that I probably need to keep teacher-student privilege, because [otherwise] I’d have you thrown out of here in a minute.” Sacks speculates that gay and lesbian students, wary because of this kind of treatment in the past, may still be concerned that, upon coming out, “their private behavior may come under more scrutiny.” Also, because individual congregations are free to decide which of the committee’s decisions to abide by, Sacks says gay and lesbian students may have a realistic fear that coming out will hamper their job prospects once they are ordained.

At a December teach-in at JTS, led by the student group Keshet (Hebrew for "rainbow"), fluorescent stickers reading “Ordination Regardless of Orientation” and, a quote from Deuteronomy, “Justice Justice You Shall Pursue,” were stuck to hats and shirts all over the room. A rabbinic student pulled a reporter quietly into a hallway. He was very sorry he couldn’t speak on the record, he said, but after hiding for so long, he wasn’t ready to say out loud what most of his close friends already knew: that he was gay, that he’d had to be silent for the years he’d been at JTS in order to follow his heart into the rabbinate.

Whereas ordination of gays and lesbians is playing out on two large stages--the UJ and JTS--hundreds of individual rabbis and congregations are grappling with the other issue addressed by the committee’s decision: commitment ceremonies between same-sex partners.

The issue is at the forefront of many congregational discussions. “I have a friend who just came back from [job] interviews” at several congregations, said Kobrin of Dror Yikra. “He went on 10 interviews, and every one of them asked if he would do commitment ceremonies.”

There were a handful of Conservative rabbis--Sacks and Rabbi Cohen of Beth Simchat Torah among them--who, without the movement’s approval, performed same-sex commitment ceremonies before the committee’s decision. Indeed, most gay and lesbian Jews who wanted a Conservative wedding ceremony weren’t waiting for the law committee’s approval—they simply sought out rabbis who weren’t waiting either. However, many rabbis committed to equality were nevertheless holding out for the nod. “I may be progressive in my thinking, but I’m also a company man,” says Rabbi Jack Moline of Congregation Agudis Achim in Alexandria, Va. “I feel bound by Jewish law. As long as halacha [Jewish law] says something is impermissible, I have to set aside my own preferences in favor of the greater wisdom of the tradition.”

The Conservative movement in North America has over 1.5 million members, according to the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. Of these, only 1%--1,500--are rabbis; it’s likely that a similarly small percentage are gays and lesbians who seek commitment ceremonies. However, the decision’s symbolic import will affect Jews--and gays and lesbians--far outside this slim minority.

“In the Jewish world, everybody knows that if you’re really religious, you’re Orthodox, if you’re not religious, you’re Reform, and if you’re somewhere in the middle, you’re Conservative. All the movements hate that, of course, but that’s the conventional wisdom,” says Jay Michaelson, a gay observant Jew whose most recent book, God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice, explores the intersection of sexuality and religion. “The idea that the ‘somewhat religious’ people now say it’s OK to be gay, and that God doesn’t hate fags after all,” he says, sends a powerful message to all faith communities.

What’s more, “it puts [the issue] on the map,” says Kobrin. “It’s been all over the news. If something is all over the news, you have to talk about it.”

Ultimately, many think the ban on gay and lesbian ordination and commitment ceremonies will fall out of favor, and time will bring only greater inclusion. Eventually, says Sacks, “the Conservative movement will slowly be dragged into following through on its commitment to pluralism, accepting the fruits of scientific research, social justice, and human dignity. A change will come, because such principles are too great not to overtake all people who are open to creating a holy community and a better world.”

Brown Alumni Magazine>God's Creation

God's Creation

By Beth Schwartzapfel
January/February 2007

On December 6 rabbi Ayelet Cohen’s phone was ringing off the hook. The rabbis who interpret Jewish law for the Conservative movement had just voted on whether to lift the movement’s ban on gay rabbis and same-sex commitment ceremonies. As a rabbi at Beth Simchat Torah, the New York City congregation that is the world’s largest synagogue built by and for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered community, Cohen had been a vocal part of the debate for years.

The panel voted to pass three separate and contradictory position papers on the inclusion of gays and lesbians in Conservative Jewish life. One allows the ordination of gay rabbis and the performance of same-sex commitment ceremonies, while two do not. It’s now up to individual rabbis and congregations to decide which paper to follow.

“There’s been some significant change,” says Cohen. “But the committee missed an opportunity to demonstrate real moral leadership. They don’t see that sexual diversity is part of God’s creation.”

Cohen’s disappointment was not surprising, considering her longstanding activism on feminist and gay issues. While a student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, which she entered in 1997, she agitated for including more women teachers at the seminary and more women writers and thinkers in the curriculum. Although she is heterosexual, she assembled Keshet (“rainbow” in Hebrew), a committee of classmates who called for full acceptance of gays and lesbians in Judaism.

In 2005, three years after she was ordained, Cohen came under fire from the Conservative rabbinical association. Although Conservative officials said that Cohen had failed to file important papers on time, Cohen believes she was being punished for officiating at same-sex wedding ceremonies.

The year Cohen arrived at Brown, 1992, was also the year Conservative rabbis first voted to ban gay Jews from participating in many aspects of religious life, including attendance at Seminary. At Brown, Cohen helped form BGLAL, a gay Jewish group, and establish Jewish Women’s Week. She also became active at Brown/RISD Hillel, where, she says, “a real and profound commitment to social justice was inseparable from living a Jewish life.”

Cohen began as a rabbinic intern at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah during the fourth of her five years at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She was inspired, she says, by the congregation and its charismatic senior rabbi, Sharon Kleinbaum. Cohen joined the temple as its junior rabbi in 2002, wanting to reform the Conservative movement from within. “To be a part of a real and authentic progressive religious voice in this world right now is incredibly important,” she says.

FORWARD>Fast Forward>Home for the Holidays

Home for the Holidays

Beth Schwartzapfel
December 22, 2006

With the endless violence in the Middle East, it would be easy to say that my girlfriend, Shereen, and I — she is Muslim; I am Jewish — represent the potential for world peace. But of course, like the world, our story is a little more complicated than that.

Shereen’s father, Ahmed, is from the historically Muslim city of Hyderabad, in the south of India. Any inter-religious struggle in his family’s past would have been with Hindus, not Jews. Shereen’s mother, Pat, is blond and blue-eyed, born and raised in Connecticut by an Irish Catholic father and a Hungarian American mother. Pat and her sister grew up getting their knuckles smacked by nuns. Although Pat converted to Islam when she married Ahmed, Shereen and her sisters were raised with both cultures, studying the Quran at Sunday school and getting stuffed bunnies from their grandmother on Easter.

I grew up attending a Reform synagogue in suburban New Jersey. Which is to say, I derived most of my Jewish identity from cultural, not religious, observance. The highlight of Passover was banging the table while singing “Had Gadya” enthusiastically and with breakneck speed, to the exclusion of the less entertaining portions of the Seder. When I came out at 15, the Torah’s dictates on homosexuality were not part of the family conversation. We had a mezuza on our doorjamb, but only my Grandpa Sam kissed it on his way into the house. One of the defining characteristics of this particular brand of Judaism was that it was emphatically Not Christian. My Hebrew school teachers would upbraid those of my classmates who said, “I’m half-Jewish.” “You can’t be half-Jewish,” the teachers would reply. “You’re either Jewish, or you’re not.” When my family put an electric menorah in our window during Hanukkah, it was as much a defiant counterpoint to the neighborhood’s ubiquitous Christmas lights as it was a religious symbol.

You can imagine my relief, then, that the person with whom I wanted to spend my life was Not Christian. I was adamant that no home of mine ever would have a Christmas tree in it, and now I didn’t have to worry. Until I was invited to her parents’ house for Christmas. “What?” I said. “I thought you were Muslim!”

“We are, but my mom was raised Catholic,” Shereen said. “Christmas is something we always shared with my grandmother. What’s the big deal?”

It was a good question. Did it make me any less Jewish to share a holiday with my girlfriend and her family? During starry-eyed conversations about our imagined future, she and I had discussed both Arabic lessons and Hebrew school for our children. Why did it seem somehow more palatable for my hypothetical kids to participate in Muslim rituals than in Christian ones?

Shereen hypothesized that part of my disdain for All Things Christmas had to do with my identity as an outsider, a nonconformist. I derived pleasure from being the minority in a dominant culture, besieged by people who earnestly wished me a Merry Christmas; it was enough to make me want to appropriate one of the gay movement’s touchstone rallying cries — “Don’t Assume I’m Straight” — only with a slightly different wording: “Don’t Assume I’m Christian!” I had to admit that my righteous indignation did feel good at times. “Don’t worry,” Shereen said. “With two moms, our kids will have enough to make them feel different.”

I went to Shereen’s family’s house for Christmas that year, and I’ve gone for the seven years since. Pat makes dough for sugar cookies using her mother’s recipe, and then Shereen, her sisters and I use the cookie cutters to shape it into Christmas trees and holly sprigs, like they have always done. That first year, Pat also got out a handful of brand-new cookie cutters, shaped like dreidels, menorahs and Stars of David. She had picked them out for me, special. This has to be a first, I thought. The Jew and the Muslims making Christmas cookies in the shape of Hanukkah symbols. And although this was exactly the type of Jewish-people-coopting-Christmas-traditions-so-they-don’t-feel-left-out thing that might have driven me crazy in the past — like those families that string blue-and-white Christmas lights on their houses and call them “Hanukkah lights” — I decided to roll with it.

Last year, for Hanukkah, Shereen gave me a beautiful handmade cast-iron menorah. Each of the nine little candle holders is an individual puzzle piece that comes apart and fits back together. I had admired it years ago, when she and I first moved in together. We couldn’t afford it at the time, and opted instead for a cheap aluminum one. I brought my new menorah to her family’s house, and, after we made Christmas cookies, I scrawled out an English transliteration of the Hanukkah prayers so that we all could light candles together. Her whole family stumbled earnestly through them — her dad, with his Urdu accent, making out the Hebrew words written in English letters.

This past summer, Shereen and I had a small commitment ceremony at her family’s home, where we shared stories and exchanged rings. We still can’t agree about Christmas, though. With this year’s holiday season approaching, she recently tacked the following P.S. onto an e-mail: “I love Christmas trees. Now that I’ve gotten you to marry me, I can come clean and tell you that I intend to have one.”

We’ll see about that. But if we do, at least we’ll string it with Hanukkah lights.

ADVOCATE>Music>Hurricane Doria

Hurricane Doria
Singer-songwriter Doria Roberts—lesbian force of nature—rocks this summer with performance, a new CD, and her own pride festival, Queerstock

By Beth Schwartzapfel
July 18, 2006

As the name of her record label indicates, folk rocker Doria Roberts brings thunder and lightning wherever she goes. In April, Hurricane Doria Records released the 34-year-old singer songwriter’s sixth album, Woman Dangerous. And June marked the 11th anniversary of Queerstock, the loose-knit festival that historically has piggybacked on pride events nationwide. Put together each year like a potluck with various musicians in different cities, Queerstock offers an edgier alternative to what some call the overly commercial lineups at many pride festivals.

Queerstock originated in 1995 at a gay hangout area on Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River known as “Judy Garland Park,” where Roberts and a bunch of guitarists plugged in and made some noise. Moving to Atlanta in 1996, Roberts has single-handedly organized Queerstock since.

Her new record marks a return for Roberts: Starting in 2003 she cut her touring by at least half and took a break from making records. Her many years of activism were starting to wear her down, and the constant identity-shuffling she was subject to as a gay female African-American musician was causing her to lose perspective.

“I’d play at the women’s festival [where] it was more important for me to be a woman. I’d play a jazz festival where the audience was predominantly black…Or I would play gay pride, and then I’d be gay,” says Roberts. “I just couldn’t be Doria.” The lead track on Woman Dangerous, “Simple Life,” is an anthem for Roberts’s return, a paean to being yourself and not making apologies. “I’ve played the victim too long / and I have paid some dues,” sings Roberts in her clear-throated and fierce tenor, “But I have packed all my bags / And I am looking for something new.” For a musician who’s appeared in as many protest rallies as concert halls, Roberts’s new record is decidedly personal. The songs offer intimate details and domestic scenes, such as Roberts drinking coffee at 5 a.m. with her girlfriend. Roberts says that the album is, finally, “where I get to be me.”

Meanwhile, Queerstock, which has a tour tentatively scheduled for this fall, is “the longest relationship I’ve had,” Roberts jokes, attributing the festival’s longevity, in part, to its mission. As its motto goes, “start enjoying what you’ve been fighting for.”

As for Roberts, look for her on stage at this summer’s Gay Games. Listen to her lovely guitar playing, and get a sense, most of all, of the new resolve with which she returns to the scene. “Let’s see what Doria Roberts looking the world in the eye as a whole person looks like,” she says. “Pretty much, I’m not to be messed with, in any way.”

ADVOCATE>Music>Girls' Rock Rules!

Girls' Rock Rules!
Young or old, expert or beginner, any woman with music in her heart is welcome to make big noise at Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls

By Beth Schwartzapfel
May 9, 2006

“Are you ready to rock?” asks a small voice. A girl no older than 10 and no bigger than a bass guitar steps up to the microphone, looks nervously down at her notes, and proceeds to screech her lungs out. Welcome to Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls, a Portland, Ore.-based nonprofit organization founded in 2000 to “eradicate all the limiting myths about music and gender that make girls afraid to speak up, sing out, and make noise,” according to its founders. Three years ago, the organization launched a new program that’s both a fundraiser for the camp and an opportunity for women to rock out, too. Ladies Rock Camp gives women of all ages and all experience levels the opportunity to take lessons in guitar, bass, keyboards, vocals, or drums, participate in workshops such as “Rock ‘n’ Roll in Everyday Life,” form bands, and perform together. This year’s camp will be held May 5-7 at camp headquarters in northeast Portland. Participants in past years have ranged in age from a 19-year-old who graduated from the Girls’ camp to a 61-year-old whose kids signed her up “because they think she rocks,” according to organizing committee member Alexa Weinstein. “Even if you play music, and even if you play music with women, this is special,” says Weinstein, who plays with the Portland-based band Wind Up Birds and was herself a camper last year. Even someone who has never picked up an instrument before should expect to perform at the Sunday afternoon showcase. “The good thing about rock and roll,” says Weinstein, “is if something is raw and sloppy, that’s cool.”

The organizing committee and the campers are a mix of queer and straight women, according to program coordinator STS, a self-described “big flaming dyke” who played drums as part of the homocore duo The Haggard. “The queer women of Portland, they are a part of a politically activist community,” says STS, “and the expression of a lot of our political beliefs is making music the medium for self-esteem and learning about who you are and your identity and valuing yourself.”

“If there’s a woman out there who’s like, ‘that sounds like fun, but I couldn’t do that, that’s for cooler people,’” Weinstein has a message for you. “It is for you. Anyone who dreams of it, who thinks it sounds wonderful. She belongs at camp.”

ADVOCATE>Q&A>Billie Jean King

Billie Jean King

Tennis legend Billie Jean King is serving up two new projects: On April 20 in Beverly Hills the Women’s Sports Foundation (founded by King in 1974) holds the first annual Billie awards program. And King has an endorsement with RainbowVision resort retirement communities for LGBT folks and friends. The Santa Fe, N.M., site opened last November; the Palm Springs, Calif., site, set to open in 2008, includes the Billie Jean King Fitness Center and Spa.

By Beth Schwartzapfel
April 25, 2006

Why don’t you start by telling me a little about the Billies?
We wanted to honor people—media—who have done great things for girls’ and women’s sports. Women’s sports is not covered very much—about 8% of coverage—and sometimes we’re not portrayed in the most solid way. When I played Bobby Riggs or Anika Sorenstam played in the PGA, the only reason everybody got so excited is because we crossed into the male arena. Of course, 90% of the media’s controlled by men, so all of a sudden they’re interested.

Do you think we’ve made progress since the time you first entered women’s sports?
We have made progress, but we have so far to go. We need more professional opportunities at the top for women’s sports. When little girls grow up, just like little boys, there’s this top element that inspires and motivates them. We have to keep Title IX strong. The other thing we’re trying to do is stop the drop: We know that girls drop out of sports and fitness twice as fast as boys from ages 8 to 18. Around girls, it’s about looks instead of feeling good. [But] if you feel good, you’ll look better, OK?

Tell me how you got involved with RainbowVision.
They called me. [President-CEO Joy Silver] wanted me to be involved because I’ve done a lot of things first. She likes that.

What makes RainbowVision different from other retirement communities?
What I like is that help is there when you need it. When you’re ready for assisted living, it’s there. You can live there with or without it. I know because I’m taking care of my parents. They’re in their 80s now, and it’s a worry. One thing I think is really good—I said [to Silver], “What if you want to visit a friend, but you don’t want to stay with them?” So we’re going to have rentals. We’re going to have buy, lease, and [short-term] rent.

How involved will you be?
Santa Fe was already built when I got involved. I helped put the last touches on the fitness center. We had conference calls about equipment, the things I thought were important if you want to work out. And I’ll be more actively involved in Palm Springs, with the tennis court, the health and fitness, the spa, and all that.

Will you do tennis clinics?
I don’t know what we’re going to do, but we’ll have activities for sure. We’re not going to have a tennis court without activities, I’ll tell you that much. I can’t stand an empty tennis court.

RainbowVision is targeting people in their “second 50 years.” You’re 62 now. Would you consider moving into a RainbowVision community?
Absolutely. You don’t have to be part of the [LGBT] community either. It’s open. Like some of us have straight friends, and we’re thinking, I want to be with my friends, period. Can’t you just see Chris Evert, Martina, Billie, all of us sitting on the porch together?

Curve>Out In Front>The Good Doctor

The Good Doctor

By Beth Schwartzapfel
April 2006

“I did not want to work with teenagers,” recalls physician Husna Baksh with a laugh. It was the early 1990s and Baksh was in the middle of her medical residency at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC. She had “kicked and screamed” about the requirement to spend a few weeks studying adolescent medicine, but all that changed when the physician who had been assigned as Baksh’s teacher and mentor got a phone call. The distraught mother of a teenage boy who had just come out had called the one person she could think of who cared as much about her son’s health and well-being as she did – his doctor. “She spoke to that boy’s mom so skillfully and lovingly,” Baksh recalls. Baksh had only recently come out as a lesbian to her own parents, so this phone call struck a chord.

Baksh, 44, is now takes care of her own patients, gay and straight, from “teenagers to very elderly folks,” at her Silver Springs, Md., practice. As such, in September she was awarded GayHealth.com and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association’s Provider of the Year Award for 2005. Though her practice is not aimed specifically at the gay community, Baksh estimates that 40 percent of her patients are LGBT. “By focusing on gay health, I’ve learned to be a better provider to all people,” she says. Her work with gay patients has helped her learn how “to get a sense of the whole person. I don’t think there’s a lot of providers out there taking the time to say, ‘how’s your personal life? What’s your stress level right now?’” Baksh herself is a firm believer in the power of movement to maintain “a healthy emotional/physical balance,” and named her practice Healthy Steps in honor of her love for dance and athletics. In fact, she and her partner danced in the International/Latin competition at the 1998 Gay Games in Amsterdam. One day Baksh hopes to integrate her two passions: both practicing medicine and teaching and studying dance. In the meantime, she is growing Healthy Steps, taking care of patients, and demonstrating, by her actions, why this award – and her work – is so important. She has heard enough of her patients’ horror stories to know that “homophobia is a health hazard.”

ADVOCATE>Update>Chad Allen's Not Sorry

Chad Allen's Not Sorry

By Beth Schwartzapfel
March 14, 2006

The evangelical Christian blogosphere ricocheted with outrage in mid January. The casting of out actor Chad Allen as real-life Christian missionary Nate Saint in the film End of the Spear was “like Madonna playing the virgin Mary,” fumed the Reverend Jason Janz on his blog, SharperIron.com. Condemning the devout Christian producers of the film, another blogger provocatively dismissed the idea of “firebomb[ing] these men’s houses.” Throughout the backlash Allen himself remained at peace with his participation in the film, which hit theaters January 20. “It’s a pretty amazing story of love and forgiveness,” he says. “I definitely knew I wanted to be a part of it as soon as I read the script.”

You’ve said that you wanted this film to bridge the divide between gay people and people of faith. Is that mission still feasible given the backlash from conservative Christians?
It’s not just my mission, it’s my accomplishment. We’ve done it. I’m surrounded by an enormous amount of letters and e-mails and phone calls [from] people publicly supporting me who are Christians, who are saying to me, “Look, we’re getting to witness firsthand the meanness of what’s gone on in the name of Jesus Christ for a long time now. And we’re shocked. And we’re sorry. And we love and respect you.” And that’s all I’m asking for. I’m not asking for us to agree on this at the end of the day. But we can respect each other.

In shooting the film, was it hard to work with people who thought you were a sinner?
I’ll be honest. I thought I was going to work with a bunch of right-wing conservative wackos. I think they, in turn, thought they were going to work with the godless bohemian kid. None of those preconceived notions were true. We had to throw everything out and get to know each other. Which is exactly the message I’m trying to get across.

You’re not a godless bohemian kid? Are you religious?
I’m a deeply spiritual person. Religion still makes me squeamish. I grew up a Catholic boy. I had what I considered to be a pretty profound relationship with God, even when I was little, and my relationship with the Catholic Church and my understanding of its teachings really screwed that up for me—a lot—and so I began a spiritual journey that’s taken me all over the map. I’ve studied Buddhism, Hindu philosophy, Native American spirituality—and it’s all coagulated; I’ve taken pieces of it to build my current spiritual understanding. My greatest hope is that when we die, we get to experience God and let go of all judgments and preconceived notions and ideas of separation. I think anything that comes with fear attached or judgment attached, it can’t be of God.

Has making this movie changed your approach to spirituality?
Working on this movie has provided me the invitation to go deeper than I ever have in my relationship with God. I got in touch with a huge amount of deep-rooted shame and guilt and even questioned my sexuality. And that’s the amazing thing about it. I actually allowed myself to go there. I could see that [director Jim Hanon and producer Bill Ewing] were loving people and this is what they believed is the most loving thing for me.

You actually considered the possibility that God didn’t want you to be gay?
Believe me, that was scary. I really came to that place. The amazing thing is, after a particular evening deep in prayer I woke up the next morning thinking about a church that I had been to one time. A friend of mine got married there years and years ago. I couldn’t even remember where it was. I knew nobody there. I just remembered [what town it was in]. So I drove in that direction. I figured if I was meant to find it, I’d find it. And I walked up to it—it happened to be Sunday—and it turned out mass was getting ready to start. I sat down in this pew next to this elderly man. And he said, “Hello. Today is a very special day. The bishop Gene Robinson is here today. We’re celebrating inclusion and diversity in the church.” And I just started crying. And since then, again and again it’s been affirmed for me, the perfectness, the wholeness, the goodness of who I am. That is, for me, the message of this movie. My only goal here is to just, in as many ways as possible, affirm our perfectness.

Providence Phoenix>The Long Wait for Gay Marriage

The long wait for gay marriage

Although Rhode Island offers a hospitable home to gays and lesbians, equality remains elusive

By Beth Schwartzapfel
February 15, 2006


Justice Brown-Duso is an outspoken nine-year-old with a big smile. He knows what his name means, and he is quick to criticize injustice when he sees it. “He gets really indignant,” says his mom, Michelle Duso. “Like, ‘What do you mean a mom and dad family is better than my mom and mom family?’ ” In 1998, when Duso, the executive director of the Providence nonprofit Youth Pride, and her partner, Julie Brown, went before a judge to adopt Justice, they were essentially asking the same question.

The two women went through the entire process together, insisting, recalls Duso, that they would not start “our family based on lies and shame and loopholes.” Despite this, Brown ultimately wound up stepping aside to allow Duso to file an individual petition for adoption. Told that the adoption was unlikely to be granted if they petitioned together, the couple decided it was more important to have Justice in their home than to start a court fight. A few years later, though, in 2002, Duso and Brown were able to jointly adopt their second son, Dylan, now five, and then his brother, Corey, now four.

The friendlier stance of Rhode Island courts toward gay and lesbian parents is just one sign of how things are steadily improving, locally and nationally, for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer (LGBTQ) people. The changes can be seen in such disparate events as the mainstream success of Brokeback Mountain, a string of legislative victories in Rhode Island, and how David N. Cicilline’s status as an openly gay man proved a non-issue in the 2002 Providence mayoral election. As Rodney P. Davis, president of Rhode Island Pride, which runs the annual Pride Parade in Providence and other events, puts it, “Individuals feel comfortable to be who they are in places where 10, 15, 30 years ago that wouldn’t have been imaginable.”

Stephen Hartley, director of development at AIDS Care Ocean State, agrees. “People are finally coming around,” he says. Hartley, a Johnston native who is well known in the LGBTQ community through his alter ego, drag queen Miss Kitty Litter, says the scene is far less furtive than when he came out in the 1970s. “I have been dressed in drag in every bar, every restaurant in downtown Providence,” he says. “It astounds me how many people in Rhode Island know me. The governor of Rhode Island knows Kitty Litter.”

But despite considerable progress, Rhode Island still lacks a formal community infrastructure, beyond nightspots, for gays and lesbians. There are only two organizations — RI Pride, and Youth Pride, which provides support, advocacy, and education for youth — with their own offices and paid staff. More fundamentally, the ongoing legal inability of gays and lesbians to marry here shows how a central social convention — and all that it conveys — remains out of reach.

While six states have marriage or some form of domestic partnership on the books, gay marriage legislation has been introduced at the General Assembly and then killed in committee for seven of the last eight years. The state’s top three elected officials, Republican Governor Donald L. Carcieri, and Senate President Joseph Montalbano and Speaker William J. Murphy, both Democrats, are united in their opposition to the bill. As evidenced by a well-attended Valentine’s Day rally at the State House on Tuesday, gay and lesbian activists are continuing to press their fight. But despite the enactment of steadily more legal protection for Rhode Island’s LGBTQ community, this year’s gay marriage legislation is expected, once again, to have little chance of becoming law.

Toward a more tolerant state
Gwendolyn Howard, a clinical social worker, sees her clients in a tidy and comfortable office on Wickenden Street in Providence. In her words, Howard is “a woman who has experienced gender reassignment surgery.” (Others might call her transgendered, but Howard says, “Labels can get really charged and confusing.”) During her transition, Howard moved from upstate New York to Providence in 1996, and the process was at times frightening.

Howard and her partner (a woman whom Howard married while she was still a man, and to whom she remains legally married — they just celebrated their 25th anniversary) rented their apartment as two women. Since Howard was hired at a temp agency as a man, however, she would wear men’s clothes to work, and then change in the car on the way home, hoping she wouldn’t run into her landlord, or someone from the job. Had such a chance encounter occurred, and not gone well, she would have had no legal recourse, since Rhode Island lacked civil rights protection for transgendered people at the time. “That awareness that you can lose your job, you can lose everything, just if someone found out,” Howard says, “that can be kind of a crippling fear.”

Five years ago, state Representative Edith Ajello (D-Providence) introduced a bill to bar discrimination against transgendered individuals in a variety of areas. The Rhode Island Alliance for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights, a nonprofit advocacy organization, intended 2001 to be merely a test year for a bill. But when community activist Lauren Nocera was able to arrange a meeting with then-Senate Majority Leader William V. Irons of East Providence, everything changed. Nocera happened to have grown up in the same Rumford neighborhood where Irons had raised his family (Irons’s daughter, in fact, had babysat Nocera when she was a girl). So when Nocera asked the legislative leader to meet with Gwen Howard, she was speaking not just as a constituent, but a family friend.

“You’re a parent,” Nocera recalls telling Irons. “You know my parents. And these are issues that affect families.” In the subsequent meeting, “Gwen was brilliant,” recalls Nocera. “That meeting wholly illustrates the power of personal connection.”

Irons (who left the Senate at the end of 2003) proceeded to take a strong interest in the legislation, even speaking in favor of it during a committee meeting. The bill ultimately became law, making Rhode Island at the time one of only two states offering such protection to transgendered people. These types of stories abound in the history of the LGBTQ community’s struggle for legislative recognition. As longtime community activist Tina Wood, who operates Rhode Island’s LGBTQ news list (listserv.brown.edu/rilgbt-news.html), puts it, “Other states are huge. Here, people are more likely to say, ‘Hey, you’re talking about my cousin.’ ”

The enactment of protection for transgendered people capped a string of legislative victories, including three in 1998 alone. First, the legislature repealed the state’s sodomy statute, which categorized oral and anal sex acts between consenting adults — dubbed “abominable and detestable crimes against nature”— as felonies. Second, Rhode Island became only the second state to allow individuals to choose their “immediate family,” including same-sex partners, for the purposes of hospital visitation. Third, the General Assembly passed a hate-crimes law, implementing harsher penalties for a crime committed specifically because of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (the law already contained such provisions for race and gender, among other things, but still does not include transgendered people). In 1999, Rhode Island became the first state to allow individuals to designate someone who is not an immediate family member to be responsible for their funeral arrangements. And finally, in 2001, same-sex partners of state employees became eligible for spousal benefits.

If activists were surprised by how quickly the transgender civil rights bill, and the array of subsequent legislation, passed, it was partially because of how long and how hard they had fought for their first victory.

In 1995, Rhode Island became the eighth state to pass legislation prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in housing, employment, credit, and public accommodations. In retrospect, it seems so simple — why would anyone oppose protecting people against discrimination? But a bill guaranteeing that gays and lesbians could not lose their jobs or be kicked out of their homes because of their sexual orientation was introduced almost every year for 11 years, starting in 1984. And every time, it was either voted down, killed in committee, or passed in one branch of the legislature, but not the other.

In 1993, after nine years of fighting, supporters erupted in a minor riot at the State House, hollering and shouting in the rotunda, bringing the legislature to a standstill after the House Judiciary Committee killed the bill. “The frustration was palpable,” recalls longtime community activist Marti Rosenberg, the executive director of Ocean State Action. “We were just there, and angry, and loud.” The LGBTQ community felt alone, and it had very little support from other groups. “At the time,” remembers Rodney Davis, “we were singular activists, out in the cold, fighting.”

Rosenberg recalls sitting in the wings of the Senate in 1995, listening to the legislators’ debate in the hours before the anti-discrimination bill finally passed. “When the vote finally happened, people were crying,” she says. “I had chills. Just to see that justice was being done was an amazing thing. It was electric.” Two weeks later, Rosenberg’s then-partner gave birth to their daughter, Abby. Abby was six weeks old when the family marched in that year’s Pride parade; taped to her stroller was a triumphant sign: “Born in a Free State.”

The splintering of a movement

The mounting victories for the LGBTQ community, coupled with the more tolerant general atmosphere toward gays and lesbians, can lend a sense of inevitability to the community’s progress, leading young people to conclude that these changes were only a matter of time. Stephen Hartley, the drag queen known as Miss Kitty Litter, spends a lot of time in gay bars and clubs, mentoring and keeping an eye on the rising generation. “Sometimes I see them being disrespectful to the older people. I need to remind them that if it weren’t for the older people, there wouldn’t be 14 gay bars in downtown Providence,” Hartley says with a measure of hyperbole. “You have American history, and if you’re gay, you have gay history. These changes don’t just happen. People fought for them.”

Following the passage of the civil rights bill in 1995, the “us-against-them” cohesiveness that unified the extended gay and lesbian community for 11 years began to wear thin as different priorities came to the fore. The anti-discrimination bill “was the holy grail for so many years,” says Tina Wood. “There was no clear sense of what was next.” Although the issue of gays in the military, for instance, was a hot topic during Bill Clinton’s first term, “there’s no way I’d ever spend my time working on that,” says Peter Hocking, a former director of Brown University’s Swearer Center for Public Service, reflecting the views of the large number of LGBTQ Rhode Islanders who believe in equality, but are uncomfortable with militarism.

Ultimately, depending on who’s speaking, the Rhode Island Alliance for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights either disbanded or was put on hold. The group’s nonprofit status was revoked in 2001 and its Web site (members.aol.com/rialliance/) was last updated in 2003.

The previous focus on the civil rights bill has shifted to same-sex marriage. There is not the same unqualified support for marriage, however, from all corners of the community, particularly from its more politically radical members. Hocking, for example, respects those who have taken up this cause, but adds, “Marriage is a fundamentally flawed institution in this country. It’s an issue of patriarchy and it’s an issue of ownership of women and transmittal of property.”

Jenn Steinfeld, co-chair of Marriage Equality RI (www.marriageequalityri.org/), the group that is spearheading the fight, acknowledges, “Marriage is still a really controversial issue within the LGBT community.” Further, civil rights affect everyone, while marriage affects only some. “Maybe if I had a partner, I would be more involved,” Hartley says, “but I don’t have a partner, so marriage is not my fight.”

In some ways, the splintering of goals and priorities is a sign of the LGBTQ’s community’s ongoing successes. The community, after all, is a diverse one, and diversity of interests and demographics is no longer strictly set aside in favor of commonality. The community’s diversity, however, in combination with Rhode Island’s small size, leads to some of the community’s most glaring shortcomings.

In 2004, creating a community/resource center, for example, was one of the top priorities identified by LGBTQ community members in a Rhode Island Foundation study. Consistent concern was expressed that the only opportunity for social interaction for LGBTQ people is in bars and clubs, which are not welcoming for families, non-drinkers, and some older people. However, despite the intense interest, no such center has lasted for more than a few years. Two of the more notable examples were the Triangle Center, which opened in 1994 and closed a few years later, and the India Point Project, which hastily closed in 2004, amid questions involving financial impropriety. Other problems aside, Peter Hocking says these centers didn’t last because they were “trying to do too many things.”

Rather than trying to be “monolithic,” Hocking suggests that the only way community centers will work is if there are lots of them, each of which starts small and grows organically from a specific mission. Money to establish such a center has also been scarce, in part since less than 0.3% of all national charitable dollars go to gay and lesbian issues, according to the Rhode Island Foundation.

Hocking is the chair of Equity Action, the Foundation’s new fund for sexual orientation and gender identity initiatives. Since going public in 2004, Equity Action has distributed more than $100,000, including recently announced grants to expand the GLBT Helpline of Rhode Island and to provide a safe and supportive space for LGBTQ Southeast Asian-American youth. Hocking says Equity Action is particularly invested in projects and programs that build community infrastructure, especially those which are “interesting and inventive, which enliven the cultural life and allow people to know each other.”

The 2004 WhamBamTrans art festival, which received Equity Action funding, is a good example of the latter. Similarly, Options, the longstanding newsmagazine of Rhode Island’s gay and lesbian community, was volunteer-run until an Equity Action grant enabled it to hire a managing director. “We want to see that grow and flourish,” says Hocking, “to make the transition to a more serious professional organization.”

Advocates push for a stand

Michelle Duso and Julie Brown have been together for more than 17 years, though Duso can’t say when in their relationship they might have gotten married had that been legal. “There were conversations early in the relationship, like, ‘What if?’ — but the future looked very different because that wasn’t an option,” she says.

When the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2003 that same-sex couples there should be allowed to marry, marriage was suddenly an option, albeit not a palatable one to Brown and Duso. “We’ve talked about why we wouldn’t go to Massachusetts,” Duso says. “This is where we live. Not to have your marriage recognized in your home state? It made more sense to work towards inclusion here than seeking inclusion elsewhere.”

Despite disagreement within the LGBTQ community about priorities, marriage is widely acknowledged to be the current focus. And though there are five states in which same-sex couples can either be joined in civil unions or be registered as domestic partners, there is only one — Massachusetts — where they can get married. Despite the obstacles, Rhode Island aims to be the second.

The state’s first gay marriage legislation was introduced in 1997, largely as a countermeasure to a “Defense of Marriage” (DOMA) bill that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Gay marriage bills and DOMAs have been introduced almost every year since then, although none have come to a vote, in part due to strategic reasons. (That Rhode Island is one of only 12 states without a DOMA is itself a victory.) Marriage Equality RI’s Jenn Steinfeld says the overall expectation was always one of incremental movement, raising awareness among legislators without forcing a vote. “They don’t want to vote against it,” she says, “but they don’t feel like they can stick their neck out” and vote for it.

Although some gays and lesbians see civil marriage as a step that would build wider social acceptance, Marriage Equality has decided that civil unions are not worth fighting for. Steinfeld says, “There’s a real sense of inequality, having to stand on a separate line and get a piece of paper that says something different.”

Marriage Equality introduced this year’s gay marriage bill amid fanfare in late January, with more sponsors than ever before. Despite the opposition to gay marriage of the state’s top three elected officials, Steinfeld hopes to see this year’s bill finally go to a vote. “In the House, I think we have a good shot,” she says. “In the Senate, not so much.” Referring to gay marriages in Massachusetts, Steinfeld says, “The Rhode Island community, we’ve seen it be a reality. It’s time for people to take a stand.”

Curve>Top Ten>Reasons We Love Dori Midnight

TOP TEN REASONS WE LOVE DORI MIDNIGHT

With a name like Dori Midnight, you’d better be able to deliver the sexy late-night goods—and this schoolteacher-cum-porn star certainly does. Here’s why we love the spunky, lusty lady behind the phenomenal Dirty Tarot Cards.

By Beth Schwartzapfel
February 2006

1. She’s a visual and performance artist. Midnight recently performed with San Francisco’s Circo Zero, doing raps and “dirty gay limericks.” She draws and paints and studied visual art at Metáfora, an international art program in Barcelona.

2. She’s a lesbian porn star. Midnight played Bita Honey in the 2001 lesbian porn flick Sugar High Glitter City. In 2003, she portrayed Brooklyn Bloomberg in the steamy 5-minute Matzo Maidels, which features rare 1920s footage of nice Jewish girls doing naughty things to each other.

3. She’s a schoolteacher. Midnight teaches kindergarten through fifth graders at San Francisco’s Rooftop Elementary School. The kids draw, paint, and sculpt, but Midnight also mixes it up a little. “I do little witch classes with them. I had one kid come up to me yesterday and tell me my aura was pink and red. He’s in second grade. They’re imaginations are just, like, huge.”

4. She’s studying to be an interfaith minister. In her second year at the New York City-based New Seminary, Midnight has a new vision for old tent revivals. “Some sort of queer, two-spirit, traveling spiritual cabaret where people can come and get what they need.”

5. She created Dirty Tarot. This deck of divination incorporates the lust and faith and earthy grit that make Midnight who she is. Reproduced from 40 of Midnight’s original watercolor paintings, these cards celebrate the magic of everyday objects. Traditional tarot decks might contain chalices or pentacles, but a reading from this deck can deliver Revolution, Kitchen Table, or Cheese Puffs. “I just wish these were made of marzipan,” said sex activist and author Susie Bright of Dirty Tarot. “I would eat the card deck.”

6. She’s spunky, colorful, and wide open. Midnight stands under five feet tall, but you’d never know it. Her kooky demeanor, generous personality, and expansive ideas radiate enough love for five people.

7. There’s no such thing as a bad reading. “The deck has no negative cards,” says Midnight. “I wanted to make the deck foolproof in the sense that you couldn’t get a card which means ‘I’m fucking up.’ I want to help you look upon your quirks with love, turn them upside down, celebrate them – like sluttiness, toughness – and never hate on yourself.”

8. Midnight is a family name. She wasn’t born with it, but it’s a part of her history. Her grandmother “was really wild. She talked to animals. She bought herself a taxicab and drove across the country.” Dori found some old pictures of her grandmother and asked her uncle who the other people were. “Oh, those are the Midnights,” said her uncle. Dori’s grandmother was an orphan, and the Midnights were one family that took care of her in her childhood. “I had never thought about changing my last name before,” says Midnight “but I said, ‘that’s my last name!’”

9. Pluto is in her first house. This is what Midnight was told when she had her astrological chart read. Pluto is the symbol of sex, death, and rock and roll. “And when you have it in your first house,” says Midnight, “that’s your identity, that’s your life.”

10. Somehow it all fits together. “Reading tarot, teaching art, making dirty movies, becoming a minister – I do all these things and they all make sense to me, because they’re me,” she says. Activism, art, healing, and sex are all part of the equation. “I can’t commit to any one of those things unless all of those things are present.”

Advocate>Books>Short Answers>Rachel Harper

Short Answers: Rachel Harper

By Beth Schwartzapfel
April 25, 2005

“Brass Ankle Blues” tells the story of one summer in the life of Nellie Kinkaid, a 15-year-old girl trying to find her way in the world. Her parents have just split up, and Nellie and her father take a road trip to the family’s vacation home in Minnesota. Rachel M. Harper’s first novel is published by Touchstone.

Like Nellie’s, your father is a black poet and your mother is a white woman from Minnesota. How much of Brass Ankle Blues is autobiographical?
In many ways, it is autobiographical, but not because of Nellie. Nellie is one aspect, sure. But so many of the characters, so many of the dynamics, are things that I’ve struggled with. Every character is me.

One of the novel’s themes is the spaces in between: black and white, childhood and adulthood, compassion and anger. Is that one of the dynamics that you’ve struggled with?
I tried to mix a lot of worlds in the book, to come out of the box as multifaceted. Characters that affect me are multifaceted, are the ones who can be so amazing and heroic in some ways, and then just huge failures in others. [I don’t like] this whole separation of breaking down who you represent and what team you play for.

You are also a lesbian, though sexuality plays only a minor role in the novel.
Several love stories unfold throughout the novel, but none are explicitly gay. A central character does explore her sexual identity, but it is not the central “issue” in her life. However, I do think I have, and write with, a “gay sensibility,” which is about letting go of masks and honestly looking at yourself and others. There is a search for balance. There is hope. All of this is what my novel is about.

Providence Phoenix>This Just In>Doctor targets better care for LGBT community

Doctor targets better care for LGBT community

By Beth Schwartzapfel
March 18, 2005

When you get him going, Tim Cavanaugh thinks big. His blue eyes get bright and wide, and he runs his hands over his closely cropped hair. When you get right down to it, Cavanaugh, a family practitioner at Family Health Services, a community health center in Cranston, is an old-fashioned doctor. He takes care of children and their parents, he gives vaccines and does exams, he talks and he listens. As an openly gay physician, however, he also has a vision of "really basic, good community health for lesbian and gay people in Rhode Island." As such, Comprehensive Community Action, the Cranston-based agency that runs Family Health Service, recently received $15,000 from Equity Action, a new sexual orientation- and gender identity-specific philanthropic fund at the Rhode Island Foundation.

On one hand, Cavanaugh wishes that medical providers would focus more on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues. LGBT people commonly face barriers to receiving high-quality medical care — for reasons ranging from ignorance, and a "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy, to outright discrimination. A recent survey of men who have sex with men (MSM, in public health parlance) by AIDS Project Rhode Island found that only 40 percent of respondents had discussed safer sex with a health-care provider, and almost 20 percent had experienced discrimination in the health-care system. On the other hand, Cavanaugh also bemoans the all-too-common response to this problem: focus on LGBT issues and LGBT issues alone. He points out that taking care of people’s health involves understanding "how they socialize, how they take care of themselves, how they express their sexuality. We don’t want to be the person they come to [only] when they want to get an HIV test or when they think they have an STD."

There are LGBT-specific health centers in big cities around the country, usually situated in areas with large gay communities, such as the Fenway Community Health Center in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood, and the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in Manhattan’s Chelsea section. But Cavanaugh does not think this model would work in Rhode Island, because, as LGBT citizens, "we’re not sequestered and segregated. We really are part of a larger community with the way we all live." Therefore, one of the first steps Cavanaugh will take as part of this Equity Action award is to integrate an LGBT health clinic into the Family Health Services practice.

One benefit of this approach, he says, is that the practice will be a comfortable and appropriate place for entire LGBT families, because physicians there can take care of both children and adults. Another benefit is that it allows Family Health Services to be more accessible to people of color. The practice already serves a large Hispanic and Southeast Asian population, and Cavanaugh says people may feel more comfortable attending a community clinic than a clinic specifically identified as a gay health center.

Other plans for the funds include hiring an outreach worker, who will reach out to Rhode Island’s LGBT community in bars and clubs, distributing information and answering questions about health-care, prevention, and the services available at the clinic. The clinic will also sponsor a Men’s Health Day on March 19, with free HIV and STD testing, hepatitis vaccination, massage therapy, and body fat index testing.

These are the small steps, Cavanaugh says. Getting back to thinking big, however, if he really had enough money, he would buy a bus: "Our own, fabulous LGBT mobile clinic, with banners, great fabrics, and good music." The bus would travel the state and all of New England, attending to all the health needs of the LGBT community, offering HIV and STD testing, but also mental health and substance abuse care, and resources on exercise, sleep, diet, and healthy relationships. He gets almost a dreamy look, talking about it. "Priscilla," he would call it, "Queen of the Health-Care System."