Lambda Literary Awards – Finalist Reading

I’ll be reading this Thursday, May 19th, as part of the Lambda Literary reading for Awards’ Finalists, starting at 7 PM, at the Center.
Here’s the complete bill:
Mickey Small – Up All Night
Perry Brass – Serendipity
Gary Zebrun – Someone You Know
Kristie Helms – Dish It Up, Baby!
Damian McNicholl – A Son Called Gabriel
Laurinda D. Brown – Fire & Brimstone
Aaron Krach – Half-Life
Helen Boyd – My Husband Betty
Han Ong – The Disinherited
Alison Smith – Name All The Animals
I’ll be reading at around 8 PM, but the event starts at 7 PM.
Location: New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Center, 208 West 13th St.

Please Donate

If you can, please donate this month to help keep the boards running.
I’m also still collecting money to help buy Lambda Lit Gala tickets for us and James Green and his partner Heidi.
Helen

Happy Birthday to Us!

Betty and I are both turning 36 today – yes, same day, same year. Us, and Little Stevie Wonder. So go on, put on a copy of Sir Duke, really loud, and sing along:
Music is a world within itself
With a language we all understand
With an equal opportunity
For all to sing, dance and clap their hands
But just because a record has a groove
Don’t make it in the groove
But you can tell right away at letter A
When the people start to move

Music knows it is and always will
Be one of the things that life just won’t quit
But here are some of music’s pioneers
That time will not allow us to forget
For there’s Basie, Miller, Satchmo
And the king of all Sir Duke
And with a voice like Ella’s ringing out
There’s no way the band can lose

Can’t you feel it all over?
& for those of you who notice, here are the boys, looking bored that it’s not their birthday:
kitties

Rape Crisis Center fights judge's order to talk about woman it counseled

Rape Crisis Center fights judge’s order to talk about woman it counseled
Last Update: 05/08/2005 2:46:35 PM
By: Associated Press
SANTA FE (AP) – A New Mexico judge has ordered two rape crisis center workers to reveal information about a woman they counseled. But rape crisis center operators say the order is alarming.
Operators say if they can’t guarantee confidentiality, victims won’t turn to them for help.
The Albuquerque Rape Crisis Center is asking the state’s Supreme Court to overturn the order issued by state District Judge James Blackmer.
The woman says she was raped in January 2003 by a former boyfriend.
The man’s public defender, Sophie Cooper, says she wants conversations between the center workers and the woman disclosed.
She says the center workers played an important role in convincing the woman she had been raped.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case Tuesday.
Reported by KOB-TV, and thanks to Lynne for bringing it to my attention.

Apologies Again

Apologies once again for not being where I was supposed to be; I’d been looking forward to being on a plenary panel this morning with Eli Clare, Yosenio Lewis, and Betsy Driver to talk about “Alliances, Umbrellas, Coalitions?” in the trans community. I had a lot to say, too – since there were no other workshops that discussed either crossdressers or partners in the rest of this weekend’s conference.
I’ll eventually put my thoughts together and post them here, since once I thought about the subject I realized I had quite a lot to say.
In thehelen with cats meantime, I fear I’ve managed to get Betty sick as well, and we’re not sure either of us is going to make it to the scheduled party for the NCTE tonight; nor will I make (I doubt) the screening of Susan Stryker’s documentary Screaming Queens, which I was very much looking forward to seeing (as we’d seen a teaser cut of it at Fantasia Fair last year).
On top of everything else, I’ve gotten worse, not better, as my stomach is now in revolt (from all the painkillers, aspirin, and anti-biotics.) The cats, however, encourage me to nap, which is about the only time I don’t feel like hell.
(^ Me with the cats, on a day where I felt much better than I do today.)

CLAGS Conference

Tomorrow and Friday are the CLAGS (CUNY’s Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies) Conference on Trans Politics, Social Change and Justice:
May 6-7, 2005
Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS)
Graduate Center, CUNY
New York, NY
Join us to for two days of plenary sessions, workshops, roundtables, caucuses, films, and performances that will strengthen activist networks, incite dialogues, share resources, and create social change.
I’ll be speaking at the 9:30 am Plenary on Umbrellas, Alliances, and Coalitions?.

Apologies

Apologies to Lambda Lit, my fellow readers in DC, and anyone who intended to go/went to the reading tonight to see me: I’ve spent the day in our local emergency room trying to find out what’s wrong.
I’m about to crash on vicodin, but thanks to all for your good wishes, and apologies again for not going to tonight’s reading. I’m terrifically disappointed that I couldn’t be there.

Off to DC

May 5, 2005 — Lammy Reading — Washington
Location: Goethe Institut 812 Seventh Street, NW
Hosted by One In Ten
Time: 6 – 9 p.m.
Confirmed readers include:
Helen Boyd, My Husband Betty
Laurinda D. Brown, Fire & Brimstone
Alexis De Veaux, Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde
Barbara Johnson, Once Upon a Dyke
Amy King, Antidotes for an Alibi
Jeff Mann, I Do/I Don’t
Damian McNicholl, A Son Called Gabriel
Therese Szymanski, Shadows of Night
Colm Toibin, The Master
Gary Zebrun, Someone You Know

Um, DUH!

The 13 year old girl whose abortion Jeb Bush and his cronies tried to keep from happening apparently faced her judge with these words:

Why can’t I make my own decision? What is it that you can’t understand? I don’t think I should have the baby becuase I’m 13, I’m in a shelter and I can’t get a job.

They were trying to prove, of course, that she’s too immature to understand what having an abortion means. But it seems to me they might want to listen to her, instead.

Not Just Microsoft

In September 2004, Magellan Health Services invited Dr. Warren “ex-Gay” Throckmorten to join their National Professional Advisory Council. In February they rescinded his invitation.
Sometime between September and February, they’d seen his video called I Do Exist, which is a nifty little film about men who “gave up” being gay through reparative therapy.
Sometimes after his invitation was rescinded, Throckmorten teamed up with Concerned Women for America* (whose press releases are regularly issued by men) and the Illinois Family* Institute, and now Throckmorten has been re-instated. Just like that.
Reported by gayhealth.com, and the gay news blog, and Wayne Besen, the author of Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth.
* I’m starting to become convinced that any organization with either “America(n)” or “Family” in its name must be right wing. As an American who loves her family, the right’s use of these words in titles of organizations that are all about intolerance makes me ill.