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Graying Lavender:
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Outing Age talks about the issues
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Published Every Two Weeks On Recycled Paper • Volume 15, Number 15 • December 9, 2000 • FREE
UNC students
seek GLBT center
by Rachel Clarke and Stephanie Horvath
Special to Q-Notes
A group of University of North Carolina
students working to organize a new resource
center for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and
transgenders on the Chapel Hill campus met
November 14 to discuss the needs of the GLBT
community and to begin planning efforts.
“We wanted to get an understanding for why
people were here, whether there was a need,
whether the University supported it and how
to go about it,” said sophomore Fred Hashagen,
a philosophy and Journalism major who helped
lead the meeting. Attendees discussed the need
fot an GLBT center and outlined the needs they
wanted the center to meet.
“UNC has a history of preferring the gay
and lesbian students remain invisible,” said
Dean Blackburn, the coordinator of substance
abuse programs for the University’s Center for
Healthy Student Behaviors. “A resource center
will provide the visibility and education nece.s-
sary to make UNC a welcoming community
for all students.”
At the meeting, graduate students Chantelle
Borne and Christopher Strauss and under
graduates Kevin Brown and Jamie Sohn vol
unteered to help lead the movement for a re
source center. “We identified people who are
willing to commit their time, and that’s a real
step forward,”'said junior Rudy Kleysteuber.
The possibility of the center was presented
to Chancellor James Moeser last week by the
Student Advisory to the Chancellor Commit
tee. “The committee mentioned the resource
center to the chancellor, and he was very sup
portive of the idea,” .said Lerissa Rentas, stu
dent body vice president. A group of students
from the School ol Public Health visited the
Center for LGBT Lite at Duke University .sev
eral weeks ago for ideas of what such a center
could contribute. Duke’s center provides sup
port through activities such as sensitivity train
ing, speeches and administrative work to co
sponsor events with orher campus groups.
Such centers also are common at UNC’s peer
institutions, such as the University of Califor
nia at Los Angeles, UC-Berkeley, the Univer
sity of Michigan and the University ofVirginia,
said Sarah Stokes, a graduate student in the
School ot Public Health.
The Old Well
UNC^Chapel Hill
Stokes .said there are several compelling rea
sons to form a center. “The needs of the GLBT
community on camptis are not well understood
and certainly not well met,” she said. “There
certainly needs to be a support system for stu
dents who come to campus and are thinking
about coming out.” Stokes said the center also
could be used to create a .sense of unity among
GLBT men and women in the area. “People
conuf to campus knowing that there are other
people like them here, but sometimes they’re
hard to find,” she said.
•Glenn Gros.sman, a member ol the Caro
lina Alternative Meetings of Professional and
Graduate Students, (a queer profe.ssional orga
nization,] said a new center does not necessar
ily involve the construction of a new building
becau.se it could easily serve its (unction while
occupying existing office space on campus. “For
us, it’s just trying to include otir.sclves as much
in the campus as po.ssiblc,” he .said.
Several students made reference to the struggle
that ensued over the construction of the Sonja
H. Slone Black Cultural Center, .stretching from
the early 1990s until funding for the project fi
nally was secured in September 1999.
“Anytime you’re dealing with bettering the
lives of minority students, you’re going to have a
struggle,” Hashagen .said. “Wliile we arc hopeful
and think [the center] will be a reality, we won’t
kid ourselves into thinking it will be ea.sy.” ▼
[Reprinted with permission from the Novem
ber 77 Daily Tar Heel, Chapel Hill, NC.[
Britain equalizes age of consent
by Clay Ollis
Q-Notes Staff
On the centenary of Oscar Wilde’s death,
Britain finally has an equal age of consent for
everyone, gay or straight. The British queer
activist organization OutRage! reports that the
age of consent for gay .sex was lowered to 16 on
November 30.
A spokesperson for the Speaker of Britain’s
House of Commons reported to OutRage! that
the Parliament Act was invoked, and the bill to
equalize the age of consent for gay and straight
teens received royal assent on December 1. Pre
viously, the age of consent in England was 16
for persons of opposite sex, but gay teens needed
to be 18 to legally have sex.
The House of Commons has approved the
equalizing legislation before, but it has never
pa.ssed the more conservative upper chamber,
the House of Lords. The Parliament Act con-
Columbia area HlV-infection rate
ranks fourth in US, says study
by Clay Ollis
Q-Notes Staff
COLUMBIA, SC — Only three cities in
the United States have a higher rate of AIDS
infections than metropolitan Columbia, The
State reported in an atticle on November 12 .
The SC capital tanks behind only three other
cities in the US — Fort Lauderdale, Miami
and New York City —
in the number of
AIDS ca.ses per capita.
And vastly dispropor
tionate numbers of
tho.se cases are African-
American. In the state
of South Carolina]
about 30 percent of the
population is black, yet
that group accounts for 71 percent of AIDS ca.ses
in the state.
The State interviewed several men of color
— gay, straight and bi.sexual; single and mar
ried —for the article. The five gay men all re
fused to allow their real names to be published,
fearing rejection by friends and family to whom
they are not out. They said they have no choice
but to hide their sexuality. All the straight men
quoted in the article also noted they would
probably stop a.s.sociating with a friend or col
league who came out for fear of being stigma
tized them.selves.
Many African-American men who are gay
or bi.sexual, the article reports, work hard to
present a straight.
macho image, which
they feel is needed to
maintain both per-
.sonal and profe.ssional
relationships. Many
continue to date
women and some are
married. State AIDS
activists say the closet
makes it a much harder task to educate both
men of color and the women who love them on
how to protect themselves. T
[A black gay man and Palmetto State native
offers his analysis of the situation exclusively to
Q-Notes. See related story, A community di
vided, o!t page 4 of this isstte.]
Lambda Legal Fund issues 2000
World AIDS Day Report Card
SC Attorney General
earns an F
tains provisions for passing legislation without
the approval of the upper house.
Welcoming the news, OutRage! spokesper
son Chris Morris said, “The long battle has fi
nally been won. ... queer teenagers will be able
to love and be loved without fear of prosecu
tion and impri.sonment.
“It is a symbolic step forward that I think
will pave the way for bolder moves to increase
our rights as equally valid members of society.
There remains a lot to achieve, hut we are mak
ing good progress,” he added.
Morris was one of the teenagers who took their
cases to the European Court of Human Rights
in 1997 to demand an equal age of consent, con
tending that the inequality constituted di.scrimi-
nation against homo.sexual Brits, and therefore
violated equal tights provisions of the European
Union. He now edits the controversial British
queer current affairs magazine Outcast. T
by Peg Byron
Special to Q-Notes
NEW YORK— Lambda Legal Defense and
Education Fund, with its fifth annual World
AIDS Day report card, awarded a grade of F to
Charlie Condon, Attorney General of South
Carolina. The report de.scribed Condon as a
“moralizing maniac on a misguided mi.ssion”
against the Centers for Di.scase Control and
Prevention’s AIDS prevention materials (which
he declared illegal for tolerating premarital sex).
Condon is now questioning each school dis
trict in South Carolina to ensure that they do
not use the CDC’s materials. Lambda also
handed out dunce caps toTexa.s’ top health of
ficial and the New York Catholic Diocese’s new
bishop for their failures in responding to the
AIDS epidemic.
Top grades this year went to a Pulitzer prize
winning reporter, several lawmakers in Califor
nia, New Jersey and New York, and activists
including a cru.sading nun who operates the
largest online databa.se of AIDS re.sotirces.
For the first time since Lambda first i.ssucd
its World AIDS Day Report Card in 1996, the
annual report was dedicated to the memory of
three activists — Kyoshi Kurosawa, Stephen
Gendin, and Gary Bailey —- who all died this
year. Kirosawa was the mastermind behind the
Critical Path AIDS Project (www.critpath.org),
an on-line activist resource that provides free
access to the Internet to thousands of people
with HIV in the Philadelphia area. Gendin, a
fearle.ss writer for POZmagazine, was a driving
force in many direct action groups, including
ACT UP/New York and ACT UP/Rliode Is
land. Bailey was a long time HIV educator in
Philadelphia.
“World AIDS Day reminds us of progre.ss
and terrible los.ses in our battle against this in
ternational plague,” said L.ambda Executive
Director Kevin M. Cathcart on the eve of the
worldwide observance on December 1. “The
fighters we have lost to AIDS are especially
mi.ssed, and our determination burns with their
memory,” he said.
Some 20 individuals and institutions arc
graded this year, including;
• F for William Archer, Texas Cov. George
W. Bush’s health commissioner. Under his di
rection, Texas built an abysmal record by fail
ing to provide adequate treatments for people
with AIDS. Archer also blamed the state’s high
teen pregnancy rate on Latina women and di.s-
ini.ssed concerns about the high number of
people without insurance in his state.
• F for Edward Egan, the new Archbishop
of New York. Bad news for a region with the
country’s most people with AIDS: the new spiri
tual leader of more than two-million New York
Catholics in the past oppo.sed sound preven
tion programs in city schools, .saying one op
tion was to “wait for AIDS to put an end to us
all.”
• A for Pulitzer prize-winning journalist
Mark Schools. His series for The Village Voice,
“AIDS: The Agony of Africa,” heralded in
creased attention to the global AIDS epidemic,
particularly in Africa, where the devastation is
widespread.
• A for Rudy Galindo, the United States
men’s figure skating champion in 1996. The
first Mexican-American and openly gay pro
fe.ssional figure skater, he di.sclosed his HIV sta
tus in April and has since worked tirelessly to
promote AIDS awareness.
• A for Internet crusader Sister Mary Eliza
beth Clark. A former marine, this transgendered
nun founded her own religious order. Now she
singlehandcdly runs the world’s largest datab.asc
See LAMBDA on page 9
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