Good lovin
‘We’H be back”
Shelby Lynn debuts new album
page 21
S.C. couples demonstrate for marriage
page 12
m
Gay student murdered
15-year-old shot at school
page 19
Noted. Notable . Noteworthy. LGBT News & Views
Volume 22 . Number 21 www.q-notes.com February 23.2008
Task Force
director: HIV is a
‘gay disease’
Matt Foreman sparks controversy
at national Creating Change
conference
by Todd Heywood . Special to Q-Notes
DETROIT, Mich. — In a speech about the
state of the LGBT movement, National Gay
and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) Executive
Director Matt Foreman took the collected
1,500 activists from around the world to task
on HIV/AIDS issues.
“We cannot deny this is a gay disease,”
Foreman said to a muted response. “We have
to own up to it.”
Foreman’s comments spurred controversy
at the 20th Annual Creating Change
Conterence^held here Feb. 6-10. As the leader of
the sponsoring Task Force, the oldest national
gay rights
organization
still in exis
tence, his pub
lic claim that
HIV is a “gay
disease” flies in
the face of over
25 years of
AIDS activism
and political
battles.
To bolster
his remarks.
Foreman cited
statistics show
ing the disease
in the United
MAP loses gay fundraiser support
Matt Foreman:‘HIV/AIDS
is not a priority for the
vast majority of LGBT
national, state and local
organizations.’
States is still widespread in the gay community.
About 68 percent of HIV/AIDS infections are
among men who have sex with men, he said.
“Forty-five percent of African-American men
in most urban areas have HIV’he continued.
“And what do we do when we hear that statistic?
We, as a community, give a collective shrug. For
that response to happen internally and externally
(of the gay community), ifs appalling.”
However, Foreman did not just call on the
LGBT community to take the disease more seri
ously, he also attacked the Bush administration
for what he said were its failures on HIV/AIDS
prevention, particularly with regard to African-
American men who have sex with men (MSM).
“This disease has been around for 26 years,”
he said. “For only one of 29 grants and programs
see foreman on 13
AIDS agency recovering from
alleged internal crisis
by Matt Comer and David Stout
Q-Notes staff
exclusive
CHARLOTTE — Over the past two and a
half decades the demographics of the
HIV/AIDS epidemic have changed. From a killer
that initially ravaged the gay male community,
AIDS is now a health crisis that affects men and
women, gay and straight, younger and older and
all races — if not with equal disregard.
Responses from the government, support
agencies and activist groups have also
changed over the years. Awareness has
increased but funding has been cut; more
people know someone who is affected by HIV
but fewer seem to be involved. AIDS service
organizations such as Charlotte’s Metrolina
AIDS Project (MAP) have faced great difficul
ties keeping up with the transformation.
At a time when there were no resources
available, MAP was founded in 1985 by six gay
men. They were driven by a desire to counter
the “gay plague” that was destroying their
community, partners and friends. l^P
focused on raising awareness, prevention edu
cation and case management.
By the nature of its founding and the clients
it first served MAP was for many years inti
mately linked with the LGBT community.
But, as the demographics of the epidemic
have broadened, particularly with the
rates soaring among African-
American men (many of whom
don’t identify as gay but have sex
with men) and heterosexual
black women, the
agency’s client base CftPOllllA
has substantially
changed.
This has led to a sense among some within
the gay community that MAP’s focus has shifted
to serving these demographics at the expense of
those who for years were die agency’s duef sup
porters, funders and volunteers.
According to one longtime community
member, this perceived slight has recently led
a group of donors to sever ties with the
agency.
Carolina Celebration is a non-profit organ
ization founded in 1990 by a group of long
time MAP board members, major donors and
volunteers, to raise money for the agency’s
Dennis Fund, named for one of MAP’s earliest
clients, Dennis Thaw.
The tens of thousands of dollars Carolina
Celebration generated each year through its
annual party helped fill the gaps left by federal
and state funding by provid
ing direct financial assis
tance for clients.
Although no official
announcement has been
made, a Carolina Celebration
founder and
^ board mem-
IDS raffed
* Notes that the
board has voted to close the organization and
will likely disband sometime around June 1.
“We decided about two months ago to dis
continue servicing the Dennis Fund and go
with something else,” Ed DePasquale said. “We
were going to go through with changing the
bylaws [and have the money go to a different
organization]. Personally, I said the best thing
to do is shut it down and start something else
later down the road.”
DePasquale remembers how the gay and
lesbian community rallied in those early years
to confront the AIDS epidemic and combat its
spread. He said he hasn’t seen the same level
see fundraiser on 15
N.C. activist honored at national conference
NAACP leader:
‘Gay rights are civil rights’
by Todd Heywood . Special to Q-Notes
DETROIT, Mich. — Mandy Carter has long
been on the front lines fighting for LGBT and
racial equality. As Sue Hyde said in
her introduction of Carter as the win
ner of the Susan J. Hyde Activism
Award from the National Gay and
Lesbian Task Force, Carter represents
“40 years of political troublemaking.”
Carter was honored at the 20th
anniversary Creating Change confer
ence, hosted Feb. 6-10 by the Task
Force, for her work with Southerners
On New Ground (SONG), a North
Carolina-based rights group created
at the 1993 Creating Change confer
ence hosted in Durham.
“I am truly humbled to receive
this award and I do so for everyone
who has been, is and will be in the social jus
tice movement,” Carter said.
She began her battle for social justice when
she heard a speaker from a Quaker group at her
high school. She said that conversation changed
her life, and as a result she often follows the
lead of the Quakers in her own activism. “We
have to go where the people are and we have to
interact with them there,” she said.
“The con
cept of power
is that 1, we,
all of us have
the capacity of
change. Not
everyone acts
on it,” she
said. “It’s
about equality
for all... No
one gets left
out and no
one ever gets
left behind.”
She also
Hyde Award winner Mandy Carter
(left)t National Gay and Lesbian Task
Force’s Matt Foreman and transgen
der activist Pauline Park at the
Creating Change 2008 conference.
reminded onlookers that it takes time to be
included, citing the annual commemorations
of the 1963 March on Washington, where Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “1
Have A Dream” speech.
Even though the march was largely organ
ized by a gay man, as each remembrance of
the event .was planned LGBT activists were
told this was not the year for their issues to be
heard. Forty years later, things changed when
Coretta Scott King herself asked that the LGBT
community be part and parcel of the events.
“It takes time. It takes tenacity,” Carter told
the crowd. “Our movement is at a historical,
pivotal crossroads. The question before us:
Are we about justice, or just us? It’s got to be
about justice!”
Julian Bond hails activism
Julian Bond, chair of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), wowed a packed ballroom of
over 1,500 LGBT activists during his Feb. 7
address at the conference.
“I want to talk about civil rights. 1 believe
gay rights are civil rights,” he said. “That is
why when 1 am asked are gay rights civil
see task' on 16
k.d. lang visits Chapei Hill
page 21
Charlotte tackles bullying
page 17
‘Skin’ author writes again
page 24