PFLAG Madison Mailing address: 4221 Venetian Lane, Madison, WI 53718 Voice-Mail: 608-848-2333 Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.pflag-madison.org Meeting Place: Friends Meeting House, 1704 Roberts Court, Madison, WI Meeting: 2:00 to 4:00 PM, 3rd Sunday of the month, Sept. to May National PFLAG Web: http://www.pflag.org Support Education Advocacy President: Nancy Jones Past President: Karen Baker Sec/Treasurer: Sharon Whitney Board Members: Joann Elder, Paul Wertsch, Lynn Cupelli, Frank Roub (emeritus), Casey Garhart, Lora Schmid-Dolan Ken Jones, Diane Wensel, Jeanne Williams NEXT MEETING TOPIC – March 17th - Please note meeting location change! Topic will be "Homeless LGBT Youth" with a DVD titled Out of Respect, a story of five. This is the story of 5 homeless LGBT youth who are hustling to find work, food and a safe place to sleep. Members will be meeting at 2pm as usual, but will meet at Elder's, 1112 Grant Street in Madison. Don't park on Grant St. We are meeting there because the Meeting House can't be darkened so visibility is not the best. More News of Jeanne Manford – PFLAG Voice On Friday February 15th at the White House, President Obama awarded the 2012 Citizens Medal to PFLAG founder Jeanne Manford. Her daughter, Suzanne Swan, accepted the award on behalf of her mother, who passed away last month at the age of 92. The President personally selected Mrs. Manford as one of the 18 re- cipients of the medal, which is the second-highest civilian award in our country, and recognizes individuals “whose service has had a sustained impact on others’ lives and provided inspiration for others to serve.” The ceremony marked only the second time an individual has been honored for advancing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights. Summary of February Meeting - Nancy Jones LGBTQ Communities and the College Campus: What’s good, what’s not, what’s changing, and how can PFLAG help. Two students spoke to the group about life on campus. One speaker (X) is a gay male and is currently a graduate student at UW Madison, having done some undergraduate work at UW Baraboo. He was close to his family and well-accepted as a gay man. The other speaker (Y) is a gay transgender male (female to male) who attended UW Stevens Point and recently graduated from UW Madison. He had very supportive parents but still has difficulty with his sister. It took about 1 ½ years to come out. Concerning what was difficult about attending college X stated that he didn’t know where to meet LGBT people. He started at OutReach where he still plays an active role. Coming to Madison became the time to come out to more people, a very long process for him. Y attended college while still in high school and found it stressful living in women’s dorms. This became the time when he truly questioned his gender identity. Both grew up in relatively small towns and found that coming to college was the time to experience freedom and find information. The good things about college are the acceptance by many and also the resources. A not-so-good example was given by Y concerning a gay person’s fear of going to campus police. Both speakers saw positive changes in acceptance by more people and more GSA groups forming. X made the comment that ENDA does not protect our trans friends at all and feels there will always be discrimination. He also stated that “the fun- damental aspect of bullying” is that people will always find something to make people feel bad about them- selves so they can feel good about themselves. Y is very happy to be moving into a “very open” coop house in Madison and he will be “living the hippy dream.” A suggestion was made by X that PFLAG help develop support systems at MATC, Edgewood and Upper Iowa and get resources developed for the families of students. Y suggested hosting holiday dinners for LGBT students. A final thought of the afternoon was that there is still a strict dichotomy in society and we should work to see each other as people. Training: Being an Ally to LGBTQ Identities - Anne Urbanski Friday, March8 1:00-4:00pm Masley Media Room, Red Gym Join International Academic Programs and the LGBT Campus Center for a comprehensive ally training! This workshop is designed to increase your capacity to build and sustain inclusive environments for LGBTQ people. The training builds on our natural ally behaviors towards learning how we can make durable, sustain- able change in our communities by being proactive bystanders, recognizing wide array of homophobia in our own lives, and reflecting on our power and privilege. LGBTQ-identified folks are also welcome to attend! Please RSVP to Gabe Javier at [email protected]. Supreme Court takes up the issue of marriage equality - Kay Heggestad Circle Tuesday, March 26 on your calendars. That is the day that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) takes up the case of Hollingsworth v. Perry. A lower court held that California’s Proposition 8 from 2008, that amended the state constitution to restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples, was unconstitu- tional. Now SCOTUS has to decide. See http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/hollingsworth-v-perry/ for details of what is happening. Sev- eral PFLAG members (including Paul Wertsch and me) were asked to be part of an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief. A law firm, working for free, interviewed us and the others and we got to tell our story of how the lack of marriage equality affects us and our son, his partner and child personally. If you access the web site above, you will be able to see the complete PFLAG brief along with dozens of others. The three main points in our brief are: 1. Our opponents say that not allowing gay couples to marry does not dishonor gays and lesbians. We say that it does indeed dishonor gay people since it causes them to be second class citizens. 2. Our opponents say that the domestic partnerships in California are sufficient to give people their rights. We say, no they don’t. Marriage is so much more than a legal document. Marriage says “family”. 3. Our opponents say that allowing gay people to marry would somehow hurt straight marriages. This is ob- viously balderdash and their side can’t come up with cogent examples to support this nonsense. There are other arguments (see the web site) but our brief just addresses those three. Kay and Paul's testimony in the PFLAG brief may be easier to find at this link. Look in the Contents or page 16. From the Human Rights Campaign email, Feb. 28, 2013 The Obama Administration just filed a brief at the Supreme Court arguing for the first time – in no uncertain terms – that a law denying gay and lesbian couples the ability to marry is unconstitutional. It argues that Proposition 8 violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection. The Obama adminis- tration courageously stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 2011, but this brief marks the first time it has weighed in on a state law barring same-sex couples from marrying. “For insisting that equality knows no bounds of sexual orientation or gender identity, the United States honors Jeanne Manford.” President Barack Obama - awarding the 2012 Citizens Medal to PFLAG founder Jeanne Manford. .