Maybe I Do And Maybe I Don't

via The Village Voice, By Steven Thrasher

Kevin Beauchamp, 49, and Howard Orlick, 50, are both legally blind. Kevin is thin and wiry; his vision loss is degenerative, and eventually he'll go completely blind. For now, he sees a little through one eye, making out shapes when there is enough contrast. With the aid of adaptive software, he's able to read modified text when he's not too tired.

Don't Ask, Don't TellBrian BrownKevin BeauchampSame-Sex MarriageLGBT IssuesHoward is broad and muscular. Because of a genetic condition, he sees nothing in daylight. The sun's light acts on him like snow blindness. But at night, he has some vision. During the day, Kevin's dwindling vision is enough for him to get by with a cane. But at night, it's Howard who guides Kevin as they walk together.

For nine years, they've been together, relying on each other to get down the street and up steps and around corners, so that they could do what had been a major part of their forties—protesting for the right of gay couples to marry.

They carried a banner together in the National Equality March in D.C. (Howard admits that he worried about falling in a manhole.) And Kevin was arrested last March while participating in a demonstration that shut down the intersection of Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street at rush hour, even though police didn't seem interested in cuffing a blind man carrying a white cane.

"The cops looked at me and passed me right by," Kevin says, laughing as he adds, "Of course, I didn't know that at the time."

The NYPD officers handcuffed Kevin only after another of the protesters complained, "He's with us! Arrest him, too!"

Both men have been hard at work fighting for gay rights in their forties. They each buried previous partners in their thirties.

Howard says that when his late partner, Peter, died, his family didn't treat him like a widower, even though "we were just like a married couple—the only thing was that we couldn't get married."

Read more.

Queer advocacy group says youth being "scapegoated" for Boystown crime

 via GoPride.com

Young black man claims officer told him to go back to the south side....

A new video by a queer rights advocacy group, asserts that youth, particularly young people of color, are being "scapegoated" for the recent increase of reported crimes in Boystown. 

Video Action League says that homeless gay youth have been unfairly blamed for the "purported increase in crime" and that they wanted to give youth a space to "express themselves without the threat of being silenced."

"All the youth that hang around here are getting blamed for it," 24-year-old Cat, a lesbian who is homeless, said of the increased crime in Boystown.

"Our Youth Belong In Boystown," which was posted to YouTube on July 12, 2011, includes interviews with Cat and two African-American men, who have also been shunned by their family and community after coming out gay. 

"When people constantly call the police on me and harass me, it makes me feel less than a person," said Tyrone Strickland, who has been staying in Boystown since leaving his South Side neighborhood when he was 15 years-old.

."It's so important that we advocate for safe spaces for youth that aren't 21 so they have a community they can go to," Lindsey Dietzler, co-founder of the Video Action League, said at the end of the 7 minute video.

Read more.

Police Targeting Gays? Ya Don't Say..

Police harassment is one of the many topics to be discussed at LifeLube's forum It's Not Just "Faggot!" tomorrow night. Join the discussion and RSVP now!



Teens who had same-sex attractions or relationships, were "30 to 50 percent more likely to be stopped by the police, 40 percent more likely to be convicted of a crime as adults, and more likely to be expelled from school," according to Yale University researchers Kathryn Himmelstein and Dr. Hannah Brückner, who looked at data from more than 15,000 teens in grades 7-12 back during the 1994-95 school year. They found teens who self-identify as gay or lesbian were more likely to end up in juvenile detention centers and convicted of crimes.

Read more at Queerty.

Fort Worth Police Chief: That Faggot Had It Coming

Very important post by Dan Savage at the Stranger:

Most residents of Fort Worth have never even seen the inside of a gay bar. Fort Worth's police chief Jeff Halstead is counting on that fact—counting on the average person's ignorance about gay bars and certain stereotypes about gay men—to get a half a dozen Forth Worth police officers off the hook for conducting a violent raid on a Forth Worth gay bar, the Rainbow Lounge, late last Saturday night. Seven men were arrested during the raid, which took place on the 40th anniversary of the raid on the Stonewall Inn that kick-started the modern gay rights movement, and one of those men—Chad Gibson—remains in intensive care with a brain injury. Gibson may not survive.

Read the rest here at The Stranger.