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Bill Advancing Rights of Same-Sex Couples Moves Forward
Despite claims by foes that it undermines marriage, it heads for a full Assembly vote.
By Nancy Vogel (Times Staff Writer)
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
SACRAMENTO -- A bill to greatly expand the rights of same-sex couples cleared its first hurdle in the Assembly on Tuesday despite having been labeled by opponents as an attack on the institution of marriage.
AB 205, by Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles), would grant gay and lesbian couples -- as well as heterosexual domestic partners -- many of the same rights and responsibilities that California gives to married couples.
That includes the ability to file joint tax returns, have joint ownership of property and joint obligation for debt and to authorize medical treatment for a partner's children.
"This is about simple justice," Goldberg said in introducing the bill to the Assembly Judiciary Committee. "It is a giant step along the road. It is not the last step."
Goldberg, a lesbian with a longtime partner, said she would carry a bill to allow gay couples to marry "in a hot second" if she thought it would pass the Legislature. AB 205, she said, would at least put same-sex couples closer to equality with married couples.
The bill passed the committee 9 to 4 after representatives of the Traditional Values Coalition, the Committee on Moral Concerns and other conservative groups argued that it would undermine marriage.
They said AB 205 would undo Proposition 22, which stated that only marriage between a man and woman is valid in California. Voters passed it three years ago by 22%.
"This bill pushes for gay marriage and reverses the will of the people," said Randy Thomasson, executive director of the Campaign for California Families.
After the vote, a few opponents hoisted protest signs on the sidewalk outside the Capitol.
"It completely unravels the fabric of society," said Dick Otterstad of Albany, Calif., holding a sign that read, "Stop the Gay/Davis War on Marriage."
Those speaking in favor of the bill included Lydia Ramos, 47, of Pomona, who lost her partner of 14 years, Linda, in a car accident last July.
"I couldn't even make her funeral arrangements," Ramos said. "Everything was decided by her relatives. I wasn't able to do any of this because I was not considered next of kin even though we had 14 years together and three kids. In my heart, this was my family and it was my obligation to take care of my wife."
Other supporters at the hearing included Keith Bradkowski, who lost his partner on an airliner flown by hijackers into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and Sharon Smith, whose lesbian partner was attacked and killed in January 2001 by a neighbor's dogs in their San Francisco apartment building.
Those victims helped win the passage of laws that give domestic partners certain inheritance rights and the ability to sue for wrongful death. Other privileges won piecemeal in previous years include hospital visitation rights, the right to make health care decisions for an incapacitated partner, and health benefits if one partner is a state employee.
To qualify for those rights, a couple must be registered with the secretary of state as domestic partners. That simple process requires that they attest that they live together and are jointly responsible for each other's basic living expenses. There are 19,117 registered domestic partnerships in California, according to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley.
AB 205 would amend many sections of state law to extend rights to domestic partners in such legal realms as child custody, financial duties to children, public assistance, transfer of property, tax exemptions, organ donations and burial.
But the bill does not bestow more than 1,000 federal benefits given to married couples, such as those related to Social Security, military service, Medicare and family leave.
"It's not always easy to come forward and ask for less than you deserve," Geoffrey Kors, executive director of the California Alliance for Pride and Equality, told the Assembly committee. "And this bill is less than full equality. It's not even separate but equal. But we come asking for this because we have to be able to take care of our families."
Ben Lopez, speaking for the Traditional Values Coalition, said gays and lesbians will not rest until they get all the privileges of marriage.
"What we have here is a cultural war with the norms of nature and of common law being threatened, twisted ... and altered to fit an out-of-step, out-of-mainstream lifestyle," Lopez said.
The committee also passed a bill to ban state contracts with companies that don't offer the same benefits to domestic partners as they do employee spouses. The bill, AB 17 by Assemblywoman Christine Kehoe, (D-San Diego), passed 10 to 2.
The governor has not yet taken a position on either bill. They now face votes in the full Assembly.
Festival Is Called Syphilis Threat
Officials fear outbreak from annual party in Palm Springs. Expected are 30,000 gay revelers.
By By Charles Ornstein and Louis Sahagun (Times Staff Writers)
Friday, April 18, 2003
With 30,000 gay revelers expected for this weekend's "White Party" in Palm Springs -- a festival famous for sex and substance abuse -- public health officials and some gay leaders worry openly that it will fan an epidemic of syphilis.
"We're nervous that they're going to take it there, and we're nervous that they're going to bring it home," said Dr. Peter Kerndt, director of sexually transmitted disease control in Los Angeles County.
They have reason to be nervous. For the last two years, cases of the sexually transmitted disease have risen dramatically in the Palm Springs area and throughout the state, driven almost exclusively by gay and bisexual men. Outbreaks have sometimes been fueled by large gatherings, beginning with millennium celebrations in Los Angeles in 2000.
Statewide, the number of new infectious syphilis cases nearly doubled last year, to 1,035. Los Angeles County reported 362 cases, up from 199 a year earlier. San Francisco logged 316 cases, more than two times the 2001 tally, according to preliminary estimates. But Palm Springs, which is far smaller than either metropolitan area, has in one year developed one of the highest per capita rates of syphilis in the nation.
Riverside County in 2002 reported 54 new infectious syphilis cases -- 48 of them in the eastern part of the county that includes Palm Springs. The entire county reported only 17 cases of infectious syphilis a year earlier, said Barbara Cole, director of disease control for Riverside County.
The California Department of Health Services issued an alert in late January warning health authorities nationwide of the Palm Springs problem and asking them to report syphilis cases among people who recently traveled to the area. In part, the upsurge can be traced to the area's growing popularity among gay men for retirement and recreation.
"The disease is spreading dramatically here," said Robert Farrell, director of medical services at the Desert AIDS Project.
Syphilis, though easily treatable with antibiotics, can lead to blindness, neurological problems and even death if left untreated. But the disease is most worrisome, in the near term, for what it signifies: a breakdown in safe-sex practices that can lead to other sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.
Many men with syphilis already are co-infected with HIV. In San Francisco and Los Angeles counties, at least half of those testing positive for syphilis are HIV-positive. Moreover, the sores caused by syphilis facilitate transmission of the AIDS virus.
Public health officials hope that by promoting syphilis prevention and testing at the 14th annual White Party, they will reach men at risk for HIV or those who have the virus but don't know it.
Volunteers are distributing laminated wallet-sized cards warning, "Check him out! Syphilis is spreading rapidly among gay men in the Coachella Valley. The increase in cases is dramatic and is impacting the health of individuals who are infected."
The reverse side of the cards includes information about symptoms, prevention strategies and treatment.
In addition, hotels and bars are being asked to distribute condoms and lubricant, which helps prevent condoms from breaking, Cole said.
White Party founder Jeffrey Sanker -- whose Web site touting the event contains many photos of muscular, shirtless men -- said he is working with local health officials and volunteers to promote safer sex.
"The safety and comfort of my patrons is my No. 1 priority," Sanker said. "The continued risk of HIV infection as well as the recent outbreak of syphilis cases in the Palm Springs area are both issues we certainly cannot ignore."
The event takes its name from the color white, which organizers said symbolizes the renewal of the spring season. Partygoers are charged $250 for access to all weekend parties or $400 for a "Titanium" pass that admits them to VIP lounges.
The main event is held Saturday night at the Palm Springs Convention Center. Last year, pop and movie star Jennifer Lopez and her dance troupe made a surprise appearance. The party continues Sunday morning at the Wyndham hotel with an event called "Climax After Hours."
Desert AIDS Project officials said Sanker has donated 10,000 condoms and tubes of lubricant -- matching the agency's contribution.
Two weeks ago, a Desert AIDS Project official said Sanker could do more to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. But John Brown, the group's executive director, said this week, "I haven't perceived him [Sanker] as being an obstacle."
He added that gay-oriented events should not be expected to meet a higher standard than other spring break gatherings.
Some White Party veterans said they are aware of the risks, and they take precautions.
"I've been to the White Party many times," said Riverside businessman Darren Conkerite, 36. "You need to be safe ... but that shouldn't take away from the fun."
Officials in Los Angeles County and San Francisco are sending health workers to the party to help with education and testing -- although they acknowledged feeling somewhat helpless to control the spread of syphilis even in their own communities.
Both Kerndt and Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, his counterpart in San Francisco, have launched many awareness campaigns in the last two years, but they said the obstacles have been enormous.
"We're talking about sex addiction, drug addiction, loneliness, isolation, low self-esteem and disease, lots of it," Kerndt said.
Although some people can be encouraged to practice safer sex, he said, "We know information is not enough to change behavior.... There is this hard-core group: They want sex and they want it without a condom."
In its first, or primary, stage, syphilis causes a painless sore on the penis or in the mouth or anus. If it progresses to Stage 2, it can cause a rash. After that, more severe problems can develop if it is untreated.
Klausner said he isn't sure that his department will be able to stop the syphilis epidemic from reaching 2,100 cases, the same as 1983, the highest recorded level since tracking began nearly five decades ago.
"We're working very hard every day to look for innovative responses," he said, "but if it increased back to the levels in the early '80s, would I be completely surprised? No."
OutQ devotes itself to gay issues, 24-7
Sirius radio taps into a market it says is underserved by other programmers
By Steve Carney (Special to The Times)
Friday, April 18, 2003
Radio programmers are always on the lookout for unserved audiences, and this week Sirius satellite radio says it latched onto one that's 15 million strong, and which had been served only by the occasional local program relegated to weekends.
OutQ, which on Tuesday joined Sirius' nationwide lineup of 100 channels, features 24 hours of news, talk and entertainment aimed at gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender listeners, as well as their friends and families. Jay Clark, vice president of entertainment and information programming for Sirius, said he wants the service to touch on social issues, pop culture, love, sex and relationship advice. "When you have 100 streams of programming, you can step out a little bit," he said, and noted that Sirius already features conservative talk and Christian music among its offerings.
"Maybe I'm naive about this," Clark said, but "I think the time has come."
John McMullen, the channel's program director and host of his own show, said OutQ's hosts are generally left of center, but added that the full spectrum of views, from liberal to conservative, will find airtime.
"Even if we don't have hosts who represent every point of view," the guests and callers certainly will, McMullen said. "The audience will not be censored in this. Everybody has a place at the table."
The service offers live shows weekdays from 3 a.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific time, with repeats and best-of programming filling the evenings and weekends. It premiered at noon Tuesday with McMullen's show, which featured his guests, playwright and actor Harvey Fierstein and Joan Garry, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
"We're such a diverse community, it's very hard for us to even figure out who we are," Fierstein said. "You need a sort of town square, and we have no town square. There is no place for us to focus, there is no place for us to turn when something happens in our community, to know what's going on. This opportunity is immense, if this could become that. We're hoping it will."
With the channel featuring hourly news breaks between talk programs, Fierstein said he expects, for example, to tune in and hear reports about the latest bill affecting gays that's been passed in Congress or some state capital -- bulletins that he said would have received scant or no coverage in mainstream media.
He and Garry also look forward to hearing topics being hashed out on the talk shows, such as gay marriage, adoption, military service and the stances of candidates in the upcoming presidential election.
"I fully expect that the conversation will be provocative," Garry said. "People are calling in. I think they're going to stir up the pot quite a bit. I think that's a good thing."
OutQ starts its broadcast day at 3 a.m. with the three-hour "Wayne Besen Show," whose host is a gay-rights leader and author of "Anything but Straight: Unmasking Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth." He's followed at 6 a.m. by Cary Harrison, whose L.A.-based "Harrison on the Edge" features humor, news and commentary. Journalist and author Michelangelo Signorile has a namesake show at 9 a.m., with interviews and commentary covering everything from pop culture to politics. McMullen's program is next, with guests and callers discussing current events at noon. Wrapping up the day's live programming, from 3 to 6 p.m., is "Derek & Romaine," which Sirius advertises as three hours of "passionate, provocative conversations about love, sex, relationships and gay culture," with hosts Derek Hartley and Romaine Patterson. The show repeats from midnight to 3 a.m. Harrison and McMulllen also repeat, starting at 6 and 9 p.m., respectively.
OutQ is available to all Sirius subscribers but can also be blocked upon request. McMullen said, however, that even the relationship discussions won't be any more raw than what's already heard on many talk stations. He suggested the tone would be comparable to that found on KROQ-FM's long-running love- and sex-advice show, "Loveline."
"It will be frank," he said, but "this is not pornography. This is not a service where you'd find any sort of gratuitous profanity or anything over the edge."
Garry said she's excited that OutQ is "about us and for us," and will offer gays' stories and issues of concern.
"While we've seen some progress, the gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender community have been painfully absent from key forms of media, and radio is one of the best examples," she said. "This is the first time that an entertainment company has said we're going to dedicate 24/7 to a channel that is about and for the LBGT community."
Online sources and local radio stations have offered scattered shows covering topics of interest to the gay community, McMullen said. And Fierstein cited "In the Life," a weekly public television program that has focused on such issues since 1992. But Fierstein asked those with him in the studio if anyone knew when "In the Life" aired, and their silence made his point: OutQ will always be on, offering easy access to news, talk and entertainment.
He also suggested that the channel, because of radio's anonymous, personal nature, could be especially helpful to gays who have not come out.
"They will not go buy a magazine, they will not go buy a newspaper. They will not do something that would put their anonymity at risk," Fierstein said. But with OutQ they could, "in the privacy of their own home or their own car, be able to turn us on and hear our community, and help them build their self-confidence to the point where they can come out and be themselves. What a great thing to do."
Sirius and its rival, XM, have pioneered satellite radio service within the last 18 months, offering static-free sound beamed from space and niche programming not heard on most earthbound radio stations. They pitch themselves as the premium alternative to regular radio, like cable is to broadcast television, but also require a monthly subscription fee and specialized receivers. Sirius is available for $12.95 a month, though OutQ also streams on its Web site, www.sirius.com.
But Sirius, which entered the market 10 months after XM, lags far behind its rival in numbers of subscribers, a fact that has some industry analysts doubting its long-term viability.
Clark is confident the potential market is big enough for both players, and Larry Rebich, Sirius' vice president of programming and market development, said OutQ alone could bring the company tens of thousands of new subscribers.
For Gays, Secrecy in Love, War
Partners of American military personnel are the invisible players back home, bearing their burdens without support or rights.
By By Patricia Ward Biederman (Times Staff Writer)
Thursday, April 17, 2003
When he went off to fight in Iraq, the 39-year-old Los Angeles resident did what any airman might do. He took with him a photo of his beloved, a reminder of who waits for him at home.
But the airman is gay. So the photo he carries with him appears to be of his dog. The pet is in the foreground, and the man's partner of five years, a 41-year-old talent agent named Brian, is in the background, as if Brian were a friend who just wandered into the frame.
The United States armed forces deem open homosexuality a risk to morale, good order, discipline and unit readiness. Gay servicemen and women who reveal their sexual orientation or are found to be homosexual are subject to discharge.
As a result, Brian and other partners of American military personnel are the invisible players on the home front. The media are filled with photos of the worried families of straight soldiers, including their tearful, poignant goodbyes or their joyous reunions. But gay and lesbian partners can't share such scenes. They can't access the support services the military offers spouses. They can't be sure they would be the first to find out if their loved ones were wounded, captured or killed.
"We do our goodbyes at home behind closed doors and then drive to the base or the airport ... and, there, we'll just shake hands like we're brothers or friends," Brian said.
Brian's partner has been mobilized several times since they met, said Brian, who asked to be interviewed in a booth at a Beverly Hills restaurant, where other diners would not overhear. He declined to let his surname be printed, lest it reveal his partner's identity to other airmen. The men keep in touch by e-mail, but they never know who might be reading their exchanges. "We have to keep our e-mails very sterile and cryptic," Brian said.
Brian said he hates pretending that they are just pals, but subterfuge has become second nature for his partner after almost 20 years in the Air Force.
Their caution extends to the greeting heard by anyone who calls their Westside home, a house that Brian lived in for years before he met his partner: "Our answering machine at home has to be in his voice only, no mention of me," Brian said.
Brian tolerates these evasions, which he blames on the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. "Americans shouldn't have to do this," he said.
A Department of Defense official pointed out that "don't ask, don't tell" is the law and said: "The department continues to work tirelessly to administer that law in a manner that is both fair and consistent. The Department of Defense remains committed to treating all service members with dignity and respect while fairly enforcing the provisions of the law."
In 1982 the Defense Department formalized World War II-era policies against allowing homosexuals to serve.
As a presidential candidate, Bill Clinton supported repealing the ban, but early in his first term he softened his stance in the face of opposition from the military, Congress and a substantial portion of the U.S. public. The opposition argued that the presence of homosexual soldiers could offend or make other troops uncomfortable, undermining esprit de corps and possibly compromising security.
In 1994 the "don't ask, don't tell" compromise took effect. Recruits could not be asked their sexual orientation, but evidence of homosexual conduct could be turned over to unit commanders for fact-finding investigations.
In recent years, most European countries have begun allowing out-of-the-closet gays to serve in their militaries. In the Middle East, closeted American gays serve alongside openly gay troops from Britain and Australia.
Among the 19 NATO countries, six do not let openly gay men and women serve: Greece, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Turkey and the United States. Ireland and Israel are among the 24 nations that allow openly gay soldiers.
Aaron Belkin, director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at UC Santa Barbara, said his group is keeping watch to see whether other nations open their militaries to gays as a result of a 1999 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that led to Britain's lifting of its ban in 2000.
The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network in Washington has counseled and provided legal services to about 3,000 gay, lesbian and bisexual Americans in the military over the last decade.
The defense network advises gay soldiers filling out military life insurance forms to describe the beneficiary partner only as a "friend."
Similarly, the defense network advises gay soldiers to use "friend" on the form that tells the military whom to notify in case the soldier is wounded, taken prisoner, missing in action or killed. Next of kin must be listed on notification forms as well, and blood relatives are more likely to be called than "friends," say the defense network and other advocates for gay soldiers.
Unlike blood relatives and straight spouses, gay and lesbian partners don't have access to base support groups and services, and they often can't visit hospitalized service personnel, let alone have a voice in their treatment.
Brian is listed as a friend on his partner's notification form, and Brian doubts that he would be treated like a mourning spouse if his airman partner were to fall in battle.
"If something were to happen to him, they're not going to knock on my door. They're going to go to the person who is first on that list, and the person who's first on that list is not going to tell me," Brian said.
In wartime, when manpower needs are high, soldiers who are identified as gay are less likely to be ousted than in peacetime, according to a 2001 report by the UC Santa Barbara center. Discharges often all but stop during the actual conflict, only to pick up again as soon as the fighting is over. Discharges for homosexuality tripled after World War II ended in 1945, the report notes. They also surged after the Korean War.
After the Vietnam War, discharges for homosexuality didn't increase significantly until 1977. Sociologist Rhonda Evans, author of the UCSB report, speculates that the end of the draft heightened the need for willing soldiers, whatever their sexual orientation. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, discharges of gay military members were put on hold, only to be started again when the fighting was over.
But gay service people in the U.S. military are always at risk of exposure, war or no war, advocates say.
Kathi Wescott, a staff attorney with the defense network, said the organization warns gay military members that their secret may not be safe even with their military physician, mental health professional or chaplain. Defense attorneys in a court martial or other legal proceeding in which a gay soldier is the defendant "are really the only safe place in the military where people can talk openly about their sexual orientation," she said.
According to the UCSB report, lesbians in the military are much more likely to be expelled than gay men. In 1999, almost a third of the 1,046 American military members discharged because of their sexual orientation were women, although they made up only 14% of the active armed forces.
A contractor in Southern California, 27-year-old Jen has been the partner for more than a year of a woman now serving on a Navy ship in the gulf.
Jen, who also asked that her surname not be used, knows firsthand what happens to sailors who are identified as gays or lesbians. She graduated from the Naval Academy and served as a naval lieutenant until last year, when she was discharged after deciding, she said for reasons of integrity, to reveal that she is a lesbian.
Now she worries what will happen to her 34-year-old partner, who is coming to the end of a long career as an enlisted woman.
The women talk every day via e-mail. Jen fills her partner in on what's happening at home, including the state of her finances. The active sailor signed two boxes of checks before she shipped out and trusts Jen to pay her bills on time.
Unlike Brian and his airman partner, the women are "pretty open" in their exchanges, though not so explicit as to raise alarm: "There's not a lot we censor," Jen said.
They know that their e-mails are read by the Navy for security reasons, but they feel it is important to nurture their relationship, now more than ever, given the pressures of war and distance: "We work really hard at staying close," Jen said.
But the couple took precautions as well. The women created an e-mail account in the name of the mobilized partner. Both of them use that same sign-on when they correspond, which makes it almost impossible for anyone to identify the recipient of the sailor's e-mails.
The woman at war has an informal support group close at hand. Three of her four roommates are lesbians--a statistical anomaly, according to the defense network's Wescott. (No one knows how many of the U.S.' 1.4 million service members are homosexual, but the UC Santa Barbara report repeats standard estimates of the size of the gay, lesbian and bisexual population in the United States -- 1% to 6% of women and 2% to 8% of men report having had at least one sexual experience with someone of the same gender.)
But back home Jen is cut off from the support system established by the military for spouses: "There are resources here on land I'm not allowed to tap into."
The base ombudsman is off limits to her, for one: "If I were a spouse, I could call that person and find out what was happening on the ship," Jen said. Jen has a good relationship with her sailor partner's parents and trusts that they would call her if anything happened to her partner.
Being able to acknowledge their love, Jen said, "would take a weight off our shoulders."
Although Jen said she is not bitter about the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that ended her naval career, she thinks reform is overdue. "The policy needs to change because there are so many gays serving and serving well," she said, sounding like any proud spouse of an American service member. "They're out there, and they're fighting for us."
As the troops return from the war, gay and lesbian military members will have to exercise restraint no one expects of the straight soldiers they fought beside.
"The goodbyes are not the hardest part," Brian said. "It's the hellos. The first time you see your partner in five or six months, it's very emotional. And you have to shake hands."
A prince, a queen or in between?
By Samantha Bonar (Times Staff Writer)
Thursday, April 17, 2003
Was he or wasn't he? Usually my gaydar is spot-on. But with this guy, I was flummoxed.
I met him at a "Mamma Mia!" premiere party. Say no more, you say?
He's a Shakespearean actor who trained at London's Royal Academy. Well, natch, of course he's ...
Not so fast, my gay friend Bryan said. "Sweetie, think of all the Shakespearean actors from across the Pond that many Americans thought were gay but were wholly red-blooded Casanovas. To wit, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, Albert Finney, Ralph Fiennes."
Then I got an e-mail from my new acquaintance, "Hamlet." He was in San Francisco visiting his mother. He mentioned crystal, the Screen Actors Guild and Armistead Maupin. But then he threw me with a typically vague straight-man line: "Would you like to have coffee sometime?"
He called once he got back to L.A. We decided to go for sushi instead. He had chiseled features and was perfectly, nonchalantly disheveled. Too perfectly. Just a hint of stubble and a button-down shirt casually thrown open over a T-shirt. He looked good. Too good.
At dinner he told me how much he loves opera, especially Wagner, and that he is a sometime model. Assuming he had no romantic interest in me, I was completely at my ease, though I did not slurp my miso soup.
I told him about a stalker and he told me about a woman who kept asking him out, even though she knew he was seeing someone. A girl or a guy? I stabbed a piece of sashimi with my chopstick in frustration.
When the check came, he paid, a straight-man-on-a-date move. Hmmm. He walked me back to the office, gave me a hug and said, "I'll talk to you soon, Lovey."
He called three days later and asked if I wanted to meet for drinks that night. I already had plans. He called two days later and asked if I'd like to meet for dinner again that weekend.
This was beginning to look like a straight pursuit -- or was it?
I should add at this point that I love gay men, and they love me. There is something so relaxing about going out with a handsome man without worrying that he is going to grope you. They like me because I am peevish and look good in an evening gown. And we share so many of the same interests -- like fashion, art, theater, shopping, dancing, men, men and men.
But generally, when I have struck up an acquaintance with a gay man, he has let me know about his orientation right away. Which made Hamlet a puzzle. Was he, like his namesake, undecided? Or was I, as my friend Eve suggested, in complete, asinine denial?
Time, and the next date, surely would tell.
But Date No. 2 mirrored the first, ending in a hug.
"I'm still confused," I told Eve.
"Did he make a move?" she asked.
"No ... " I admitted.
"He's gay," she said. "Why are we having this conversation?"
My friend Carolyn disagreed. "You know, more and more men are doubling back and playing it bisexual," she said. "It's the latest thing."
Bi? Gay? Straight? Confused? It's enough to turn a rational woman into a crazed Ophelia. Perhaps I shall forget about date No. 3 and just get me to a nunnery.
Or maybe I should try to hatch a scheme to catch the conscience of the queen(?).
Court Rules Schools Must Fight Gay-Bashing
By Henry Weinstein
Wednesday, April 9, 2003
Public school administrators who fail to take effective steps to counter anti-gay harassment may violate the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the law, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
Merely having an anti-discrimination policy is insufficient if the policy is not enforced, according to the 3-0 ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling covers school districts in California and eight other Western states.
The case arose in the Northern California town of Morgan Hill, where six students -- a male and five females -- alleged that they were severely harassed from 1991 to 1998, and that school officials failed to take corrective measures.
One student, Alana Flores, found pornography and notes to the effect of "Die, dyke bitch" inside her locker, Judge Mary M. Schroeder wrote in her opinion for the court. When the student complained to an assistant principal, he told her, "You need to go back to class. Don't bring me this trash any more."
Another student alleged that he had been beaten by six other students who yelled disparaging epithets. The boy was hospitalized and treated for severely bruised ribs.
School officials punished only one of the six culprits and the victim transferred to another school.
The other students were derided for their sexual orientation, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the students in San Jose federal court in 1998.
The students contended that the Morgan Hill Unified School District and several officials of schools there violated both state and federal laws in failing to adequately respond to the complaints.
The California School Boards Assn. currently advises its 1,000 districts to immediately intervene in situations in which a student is being harassed or discriminated against, said James Morante, a representative of the organization.
But not all districts follow such guidelines, Morante said. Tuesday's ruling is important, Morante said, because "one of the primary responsibilities of a school district is to ensure the safety of its students, as well as provide a good learning environment" free from discrimination.
Attorneys representing the defendants in the case had argued that having an anti-discrimination policy in effect should protect the defendants against a lawsuit.
The defendants also argued that the students had failed to show that administrators had acted out of an "improper motive" and that the law at the time of the alleged incidents had not clearly required the district to protect students against harassment by their peers.
Schroeder, joined by judges Richard A. Paez and Richard C. Tallman, rejected those arguments.
Although the district had anti-discrimination policies, evidence indicated they were not enforced effectively, the judges noted.
The evidence suggested the school "failed to adequately train teachers, students, and campus monitors about the district's policies prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation," they wrote.
There was no immediate comment from the school district.
Unless the decision is overturned, the students will go to trial in federal court in San Jose seeking damages and other relief that could lead to changes in school district policies.
Times staff writer Erika Hayasaki contributed to this report.
Bill Advancing Rights of Same-Sex Couples Moves Forward
By Despite claims by foes that it undermines marriage, it heads for a full Assembly vote.
By Nancy Vogel (Times Staff Writer)
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
SACRAMENTO -- A bill to greatly expand the rights of same-sex couples cleared its first hurdle in the Assembly on Tuesday despite having been labeled by opponents as an attack on the institution of marriage.
AB 205, by Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles), would grant gay and lesbian couples -- as well as heterosexual domestic partners -- many of the same rights and responsibilities that California gives to married couples.
That includes the ability to file joint tax returns, have joint ownership of property and joint obligation for debt and to authorize medical treatment for a partner's children.
"This is about simple justice," Goldberg said in introducing the bill to the Assembly Judiciary Committee. "It is a giant step along the road. It is not the last step."
Goldberg, a lesbian with a longtime partner, said she would carry a bill to allow gay couples to marry "in a hot second" if she thought it would pass the Legislature. AB 205, she said, would at least put same-sex couples closer to equality with married couples.
The bill passed the committee 9 to 4 after representatives of the Traditional Values Coalition, the Committee on Moral Concerns and other conservative groups argued that it would undermine marriage.
They said AB 205 would undo Proposition 22, which stated that only marriage between a man and woman is valid in California. Voters passed it three years ago by 22%.
"This bill pushes for gay marriage and reverses the will of the people," said Randy Thomasson, executive director of the Campaign for California Families.
After the vote, a few opponents hoisted protest signs on the sidewalk outside the Capitol.
"It completely unravels the fabric of society," said Dick Otterstad of Albany, Calif., holding a sign that read, "Stop the Gay/Davis War on Marriage."
Those speaking in favor of the bill included Lydia Ramos, 47, of Pomona, who lost her partner of 14 years, Linda, in a car accident last July.
"I couldn't even make her funeral arrangements," Ramos said. "Everything was decided by her relatives. I wasn't able to do any of this because I was not considered next of kin even though we had 14 years together and three kids. In my heart, this was my family and it was my obligation to take care of my wife."
Other supporters at the hearing included Keith Bradkowski, who lost his partner on an airliner flown by hijackers into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and Sharon Smith, whose lesbian partner was attacked and killed in January 2001 by a neighbor's dogs in their San Francisco apartment building.
Those victims helped win the passage of laws that give domestic partners certain inheritance rights and the ability to sue for wrongful death. Other privileges won piecemeal in previous years include hospital visitation rights, the right to make health care decisions for an incapacitated partner, and health benefits if one partner is a state employee.
To qualify for those rights, a couple must be registered with the secretary of state as domestic partners. That simple process requires that they attest that they live together and are jointly responsible for each other's basic living expenses. There are 19,117 registered domestic partnerships in California, according to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley.
AB 205 would amend many sections of state law to extend rights to domestic partners in such legal realms as child custody, financial duties to children, public assistance, transfer of property, tax exemptions, organ donations and burial.
But the bill does not bestow more than 1,000 federal benefits given to married couples, such as those related to Social Security, military service, Medicare and family leave.
"It's not always easy to come forward and ask for less than you deserve," Geoffrey Kors, executive director of the California Alliance for Pride and Equality, told the Assembly committee. "And this bill is less than full equality. It's not even separate but equal. But we come asking for this because we have to be able to take care of our families."
Ben Lopez, speaking for the Traditional Values Coalition, said gays and lesbians will not rest until they get all the privileges of marriage.
"What we have here is a cultural war with the norms of nature and of common law being threatened, twisted ... and altered to fit an out-of-step, out-of-mainstream lifestyle," Lopez said.
The committee also passed a bill to ban state contracts with companies that don't offer the same benefits to domestic partners as they do employee spouses. The bill, AB 17 by Assemblywoman Christine Kehoe, (D-San Diego), passed 10 to 2.
The governor has not yet taken a position on either bill. They now face votes in the full Assembly.
Equal Rights for Gays Faces Supreme Court Test
Justices will be asked to throw out sodomy convictions of two Texas men as well as extend constitutional privacy accorded heterosexuals.
By David G. Savage
Sunday, March 23, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The gay equal rights movement, which has been steadily growing in strength, faces a crucial test in the Supreme Court this week.
The court has never said gays and lesbians are entitled to equal rights, and has upheld laws branding them as criminals for having sex.
Adding insult to injury, in a 1986 opinion the court described abhorrence of homosexuality as time-honored and traditional. It would "cast aside millennia of moral teaching" to say sex between gay men "is somehow protected as a fundamental right," then-Chief Justice Warren E. Burger said in the case of Bowers vs. Hardwick.
Now, 17 years later, the court is being asked to cast aside Burger's view as bigoted and archaic.
Gay civil rights leaders say public opinion regarding homosexuality has changed dramatically since 1986. These days, the "real social and legal deviants" are not gay people but "homosexual sodomy laws" that remain on the books in 13 states, says the Human Rights Campaign, which calls itself America's largest gay and lesbian group.
On Wednesday, the court will hear a Texas case that asks the justices not just to throw out the prosecution of two men who were arrested for having sex in the Houston home of one of the men, but to declare that the Constitution gives same-sex couples the same rights to privacy and equality as heterosexuals.
Such a statement would be a milestone on the road to full equality, rights lawyers say.
"This is the most important gay rights case in a generation," says Ruth E. Harlow, a lawyer for the Lambda Legal Defense Fund. "We believe America has moved beyond these [antisodomy] laws. And we're hoping the court will say all adults have the same right to privacy, and you can't have a different rule for gay people."
On Sept. 17, 1998, police received a report -- false, it turned out -- of a man with a gun at an apartment complex, and they broke into the residence of John Lawrence. They found him with Tyron Garner, and arrested both for violating the Texas law against "deviate sexual intercourse."
Most states, including California, repealed sodomy laws during the 1970s and 1980s. But not Texas, which prosecuted Lawrence and Garner and secured fines of $200 each.
"We think the court is behind the times and Texas is behind the times" on this issue, says Harlow, who appealed Lawrence's case to the high court.
The symbolic significance of these antisodomy laws goes well beyond their role as regulator of sexual conduct, legal experts say.
"These laws don't send people to jail, but they are a brand of disapproval for gay people. They are used across the board as arguments against them," said William B. Rubenstein, a UCLA law professor and an expert on sexual orientation law.
Often, in cases involving child custody, adoptions and public employment, antisodomy laws are invoked against gays or lesbians, he said.
For example, Linda Kaufman, an Episcopal priest and a lesbian who lives in Arlington, Va., said she and her partner were trying to adopt a second foster child from the District of Columbia. Adoption workers agreed they had a good home and family, but Virginia officials cited "crimes against nature" in saying Kaufman and her partner were unfit to adopt. Kaufman is suing the state.
If the high court were to say these laws are irrational and discriminatory, it would affect a wide variety of such cases, Rubenstein said.
About 2.8% of adult men and 1.4% of women identify themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual, according to the government's National Health and Social Life Survey. If accurate -- and the Human Rights Campaign cites this survey as the most reliable of its kind -- it means the nation has about 4 million openly gay men and 2 million lesbians.
The case, Lawrence vs. Texas, has split conservatives.
Traditionalists have sided with Texas, saying marriage and family are threatened by an equal-rights ruling for gays. However, libertarian conservatives say the government has no business in the bedroom.
Texas state lawyers say the court should consider dismissing the case. Failing that, they say, the justices should rule there is no "constitutional right to engage in extramarital sexual conduct." If the court were to recognize such a right, it could undercut or even invalidate laws against adultery, polygamy, prostitution and incest, they say.
Such a ruling would "strike at the institution of marriage itself" and "further push this nation toward sexual libertinism," says the American Center for Law and Justice, which is based in Virginia Beach, Va.
Lawyers seeking equal rights for gays respond that they are arguing only for a constitutional right of privacy among consenting adults. Public or commercial transactions with prostitutes are not included, they say.
Two prominent libertarian groups -- the Cato Institute and the Institute for Justice -- say the government should not be allowed to meddle in purely private matters.
"This case is about the proper scope of and limits on government power more than it is about homosexuality and homosexual conduct," says the Institute for Justice, a Washington group that has championed causes such as "school choice" through vouchers.
During the 1990s, the Supreme Court stayed away from most disputes over civil rights for gay people. The justices repeatedly ignored appeals that challenged the military's ban on those who are openly gay.
Two rulings lean in opposite directions. In 1996, the court struck down a Colorado voter initiative that voided all local ordinances related to the rights of gays. In a 6-3 decision, the justices described the ballot measure as irrational and discriminatory.
But three years ago the court reversed the New Jersey courts and ruled in a 5-4 vote that the Boy Scouts were entitled to kick out a well-regarded scoutmaster who said he was gay.
Only three justices remain from the 1986 ruling. They are Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who were in the majority, and Justice John Paul Stevens.
But O'Connor and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, both Reagan appointees, voted to strike down the Colorado initiative, and rights lawyers are hoping they will join with the four liberal justices to rule against Texas in the new case.
A ruling is not likely until June.
Next on AIDS' frontier:After a promising vaccine fails in trials, researchers channel efforts and optimism toward other possibilities.
By Jane E. Allen (Times Staff Writer)
Monday, March 3, 2003
The first AIDS vaccine to undergo advanced human trials has proved a failure, its makers acknowledged last week. But researchers and advocates are not giving up.
Vaccines using other strategies remain in the pipeline, keeping alive the hope that at least one will someday tame the global spread of the human immunodeficiency virus. About 19 are currently in human trials, researchers say.
They caution, however, that large-scale progress isn't expected any time soon. Most are in early studies designed to show that they're safe and can mobilize the body's disease-fighting systems. Others haven't gotten even that far.
"We have a field of them that are doing pretty well in animal studies," said Martin Delaney, founder of Project Inform, an AIDS treatment, information and advocacy group in San Francisco. "But the nature of vaccine research is that if you had the perfect vaccine tomorrow, it would take you almost 10 years to prove it and get it to the regulatory stage."
AIDS has killed about 22 million people since it was first identified more than 20 years ago. Currently, an estimated 42 million people are infected with HIV, with 15,000 new infections each day, most in Asia and Africa.
Antiviral medications can prolong the lives of those with HIV and AIDS, but they're expensive and unavailable in many of the nations hardest hit by the disease. Therefore, the ultimate goal is to prevent new infections using vaccines.
Vaccines against polio or influenza give people a weakened or inactivated virus, which then teaches the body to recognize and defeat the real thing. But because HIV is so infectious, researchers are using only parts of the virus to avoid producing AIDS. They're testing various genes and proteins that might rev up the immune system, as well as the most effective means to inhabit human cells.
The Aidsvax vaccine, from VaxGen in Brisbane, Calif., was the only vaccine ever to get through Phase III trials, which test for effectiveness in large numbers of people. In the five-year trial, doctors injected 5,108 gay men and 309 women, all HIV-negative, with a genetically engineered protein from the surface of the AIDS virus, called gp120, hoping to stimulate the formation of antibodies that would neutralize HIV.
As last week's long-awaited announcement revealed, Aidsvax failed to produce the hoped-for disease protection, although there were suggestions it may have some effect in African Americans and Asians. VaxGen has a modified version of the same vaccine in Phase III trials of intravenous drug users in Thailand. Results are due by year's end.
Another hopeful
Another vaccine scheduled to enter Phase III trials in Thailand uses a two-step process. Participants will get an initial shot of a vaccine from a weakened canary pox virus (a bird virus in the same family as smallpox) that has been engineered to carry HIV genes into the body. It will be followed by a booster shot with Aidsvax. The trial of the vaccine, made by the French pharmaceutical company Aventis Pasteur, is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and Thailand's public health ministry. The timing is uncertain because officials are expected to review the latest Aidsvax data before proceeding.
Such a two-part vaccine tries to fire up two types of immunity: antibody and cellular. Vaccines that produce antibodies aim to lock out the enemy, preventing HIV from entering disease-fighting T-cells and turning them into HIV factories.
Vaccines that promote cellular immunity are intended to bomb the HIV factories, telling the body to dispatch immune cells to destroy virus-infected cells. The attack would keep infected cells from turning out millions of copies of HIV that could infect other healthy cells.
Today, several research groups are trying to make a better antibody-inducing vaccine -- to either use alone or more likely in combination with a cellular immunity vaccine, said Dr. John P. Moore, who runs an AIDS research laboratory at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.
The antibodies produced by Aidsvax didn't prevent infection. But the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, a nonprofit vaccine research program in New York, in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health, has established a multimillion-dollar international consortium of scientists from leading laboratories to accelerate the development of the right vaccine components to generate effective antibodies.
Of the many vaccines in early human trials, two that try to generate cellular immunity are garnering particular interest, said viral immunologist Wayne C. Koff, senior vice president of research and development at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.
One, made by pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., shuttles HIV genes into the body using adenovirus, a cold virus that has been modified so it can't reproduce. Early results show adenovirus seems to stimulate a bigger and more prolonged immune response than other viruses used to ferry genes into target cells, said Koff. However, he noted, that as many as 80% of people worldwide have antibodies to adenovirus.
The other closely watched vaccine, being tested in Britain, Kenya and Uganda, has two parts: an initial shot of HIV genes and a booster shot of modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA), which resembles the virus in smallpox vaccines, containing other HIV genes.
One-two punch method
AIDS activists and researchers also have hopes for another combination vaccine (using an initial shot of HIV genes and a booster using adenovirus) and a GlaxoSmithKline vaccine made from three different HIV proteins. Both are being studied by the NIH.
The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative is working with France's AIDS research agency on a vaccine that gets into cells using a lipopeptide -- a small protein fragment with a lipid tail. And IAVI has been conducting pre-clinical trials on a vaccine from Targeted Genetics Inc. in Seattle that's made from adeno-associated virus, which appears to give persistent immunity with one shot, said Koff.
Meanwhile, the AIDS community is waiting.
"I'm hopeful. The problem is timing," said Delaney. "In the best case, you're going to see something seven or eight years from now."
Gay, Lesbian Wedding Expo Honors "We Do"
West Hollywood event features tips, booths and belief in commitment. About 1,000 attend.
By Steve Hymon
Monday, February 24, 2003
Mark Aguilar and Miguel Rodriguez drove four hours from the San Joaquin Valley to West Hollywood on Sunday to plan their wedding.
The gay couple found pretty much everything they needed at the first annual Gay and Lesbian Wedding Expo in the ballroom of the Wyndham Bel Age hotel. There were booths manned by vendors offering all the usual wedding provisions -- tuxedos, catering, flowers, DJs, photographers, travel agents and even financial planners.
If the name of the event was unusual, many of the more than 1,000 who attended said the unofficial theme of the day was universal -- a wedding is a wedding even when there are two brides or two grooms and it won't be legally recognized.
"I think most people think of gay people as promiscuous and that's not true of us and I don't think it's true of most of the population," said Aguilar, 36. "Everyone's looking for their other half whether they want to admit it or not."
Aguilar and Rodriguez plan to tie the knot in Vermont in the spring of 2004 with about 10 family members present. They've chosen Vermont because they want the ceremony to be in the only state in the nation that recognizes gay marriages, although they know that their marriage will carry no legal weight outside Vermont.
Although efforts to make gay marriages in California legal have failed, the number of gay weddings and commitment ceremonies seems to be on the rise, said many people at the event.
Whereas in the past such ceremonies tended to be small, private affairs that often took place in the home of a friend, an increasing number of gays and lesbians now want a ceremony in a public venue with friends and family to celebrate a commitment to a life partner.
"Little kids that become gay are raised with the same image of what a wedding is supposed to be as straight people," said Amy Dickens, a nondenominational minister who works for a company named Minister Deb that specializes in providing officiators for gay weddings.
"I think so many people who are gay feel like they've been on the outside of society for so long because they're made to feel that God doesn't sanction your love for someone else," Dickens said. "I think these weddings do a lot to heal some of that spiritual wounding."
At one booth, Kristin Andry, 27, tried on a traditional veil as her partner Lynnae Brady, 33, watched. The couple, who live in the San Fernando Valley, will be married in May at the Redondo Beach Library and are inviting 120 family members and friends.
In a sign they hope indicates that times are changing, they had few problems in planning their big day. Unlike some gay couples, they were not turned away by any bridal shops or other businesses.
"We want to be able to stand up and say this is who we are," Brady said. "We love each other. We want people to see how serious we are."
Feminist professor shares her secrets
The road from poverty to academia took the lesbian scholar through strippers' clubs and nude photo sessions.
By Susan Salter Reynolds
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
On a warmish, gray day at Cal State Fresno, graduate students collapse in little metal seats with desk trays for their class on Form and Theory: Creative Non-Fiction with Lillian Faderman, leading feminist scholar, lesbian writer, author of "To Believe in Women," "Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers" and "Surpassing the Love of Men."
Faderman is one of a handful of founding feminists (Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, Sheila Rowbotham, to name just a few) who, in the last 30 years, have helped build departments and syllabuses and careers in academia that focus on feminism and gender studies. These are not the Gloria Steinems and the Betty Friedans and the Nancy Fridays.
These are women working from within the tower, in the attic, fiercely changing the way scholars look at history and politics and economics and creating new generations of problem-solving feminists.
Dressed in tweed pants, a brown blazer, a scarf, Faderman communicates a life of quiet modesty and intellectual focus.
She reads the class a story from the book on her lap, "Naked in the Promised Land." It is the story of a girl named Lilly, born in 1940, whose father denied paternity and whose mother worked in sweatshops to support them. Lilly wanted desperately to be a movie star so that she could save her mother from poverty and from depression. Instead, she became a pin-up girl, a stripper.
"Naked in the Promised Land" is Faderman's memoir, out this month from Houghton Mifflin.
Lil, also known as Gigi Frost, sometimes Mink Frost, put herself through college and graduate school at UC Berkeley by working in clubs and doing photo shoots for magazines like King, a precursor to Hustler. The photos in the book reveal a girl-woman -- 38-26-36, short dark curly hair and a sad, if defiant, face. The photos are accompanied with captions like, "I'm in the Mood to Please."
Lilly, Lil, Lillian and Dr. Faderman were not completely reconciled until the writing of this memoir. "Distance is critical," Faderman, 62, tells her class. "What Wordsworth called 'emotion recollected in tranquillity.' It was only in the process of writing this book that I discovered the connections between the girl, the stripper, the lesbian and the professor."
Early reviews have praised the book, calling it a "uniquely American story." Faderman agrees. Her mother lost most of her family in the Holocaust. She was a single working mother, very poor. Movies were an escape. When mother and daughter and Lilly's beloved aunt moved to East L.A., they were that much closer to Hollywood.
Lilly was repeatedly molested from the age of 12 by her mother's suitors, later by fellow students and employers. She found a kind of refuge in the tough lesbian underground in San Francisco. She followed her dream and got her doctorate in English literature and became a professor of English at Fresno 35 years ago.
Lilly had to make her own success story. Her mother fed her the Hollywood dream, but for Lilly that dream was always a means to an end. It wasn't the glamour and attention that fulfilled her, it was the academic life. The parts of Lillian Faderman, more widely scattered than for most, were finally reunited. She found her niche.
Faderman lives with her partner of 35 years, Phyllis, in Fresno. They have a son (Lillian was inseminated), Avrom, who is 28 and lives in Palo Alto with his girlfriend.
In her office after class, Faderman says she is most worried about the effect the photos in her book will have on her students. "I don't want to hide anything. It's not that I'm ashamed of the pictures, it's just that the students might feel awkward about seeing their professor bare-breasted. I had hoped to be off this semester."
This is not to say, Faderman assures, that the college administration has been anything but supportive. And they should be. Faderman has won the Outstanding Professor Award at Cal State Fresno as well as awards for teaching excellence. She and Phyllis founded the women's studies department.
"I tried to write this book 10 years ago but got stuck after 80 pages. It was so angry. No one wanted to read about my terrible childhood. I've often kept a journal during difficult times, and four years ago I found one with a red velvet cover that I had kept while my mother was dying, in 1979. I had always thought that I was withholding at that time, inadequate to meet my mother's needs, but the journal showed me that this was not the case. We did connect and I wasn't inadequate. This freed me to write the memoir from a less angry, defensive place. I realized how much I loved my mother and how much she loved me.
"I was a stripper because there were things I needed to do," Faderman says. "I wasn't going to make $25 an hour working in the library if I could make $500 an hour posing nude or working in the Presidential Follies. I did what was logical."
Lil quit stripping in graduate school but, when her aunt stopped sending a small stipend, she went back to the follies. "I came on stage to thunderous applause and I thought, 'I really like this.' " Faderman kept her past secret for a long time, although she did tell Phyllis when they got together.
"I had the unconditional love of two women, my mother and my aunt," Faderman says, explaining the kind of mother she tried to be for Avrom. "He says he had a privileged childhood. I felt with Phyllis that we were quite grounded, unlike my mother's life, but the unconditional love was there."
Though she and Phyllis have engaged in some political activism, Faderman believes that her best contribution as an activist is through the pen. "I can't stand violence or shouting," she says, and it's no wonder. Her childhood was full of scenes and yelling and women tearing their hair out. Her mother and aunt fought constantly.
"It galls me when women students sit in class and say, 'I am not a feminist,' as if that were a bad thing. I think, you wouldn't be sitting here if it wasn't for feminism. And Phyllis Schlafly saying come back to the home. Well, then why did she get a law degree? What's she doing on TV? Shouldn't she be back at home?"
Faderman writes that all her life she felt she was playing a role. Is that still true? "Whoever this Dr. Faderman is," she says, "I've forgotten what it feels like to be different. There are many selves. There was something Lil and Lilly and Lillian had in common. You build on whatever that is. I'm still different talking to colleagues than I am to students or to friends, for example. But now there's a core that is strong."
Faderman is working on a partly fictional social history based on her mother's life. What was it like to work in the garment industry in New York in the early decades of the century? How would women get abortions? She has been trying to get more information about her mother's paternity case and the following appeal.
In the meantime, she and Phyllis travel. They have a salon with friends that meets every couple of weeks and she continues to teach three classes a year. "I encourage my students to write about their experiences honestly. So many have been molested, even since the feminist movement. They still tend to think it's their fault."
It was fun being in the limelight, but Faderman believes her books and her teaching have really helped people. "They see another side of feminism and of the lesbian life, a side that is not secretive or tawdry." For a woman who kept so many secrets in her life, this is her gift to the next generation.
Lesbian Sues Over Physician's Refusal to Do Insemination
Appeals court reviews case that pits civil rights claim against a doctor who declined for religious reasons to perform procedure.
By Peter Y. Hong
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Eager to start a family, Lupita Benitez asked her doctor to help her conceive a child through artificial insemination. Benitez thought her request was routine -- just another of many from women who face infertility and seek medical help to get pregnant.
But Benitez's doctor, Christine Z. Brody, refused to perform the procedure. Her reason: Benitez is a lesbian, and Brody said it was against her Christian beliefs to help a homosexual become pregnant.
After that 1999 appointment in her doctor's office in the San Diego suburb of Vista, Benitez filed a civil rights lawsuit against Brody and the doctor's medical group. The trial court initially dismissed the lawsuit. Now the matter is before the 4th District California Court of Appeal in San Diego.
The case has thrown into confrontation a young woman's claim that she is entitled to be treated equally regardless of her sexual orientation against a doctor's insistence that she should not be forced to provide medical services that conflict with her religious beliefs.
Brody and her medical colleagues won an initial round in court on a technical issue.
Civil Rights Issue
Lawyers for Benitez say she is entitled to equal treatment under the law, just like any citizen; in other words, her lesbianism should not block her from receiving artificial insemination. The lawsuit filed by Benitez against Brody and her medical group contends that doctors, just like other professionals and businesses, are subject to California law that bars discrimination against gays.
A state appellate court is expected to rule within weeks whether to uphold the lower court ruling or, instead, to allow the suit to move ahead and send it back to a lower court for trial.
"Health-care professionals, including doctors, need to understand civil rights laws apply to them," said Jennifer C. Pizer, a lawyer with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund who is assisting Benitez. Pizer said a doctor's care is a "public accommodation" under the law, which must be accessible to all just like the lunch counters of the South that were finally opened to African Americans.
Claim Called Baseless
Carlo Coppo, an attorney representing Brody, her medical partner Dr. Douglas K. Fenton, their medical group and Benitez's health plan, called Benitez's claim baseless.
Citing rules of patient confidentiality, Coppo said the physicians could not comment on the specifics of Benitez's case. But he agreed that the doctors declined to perform the artificial insemination and instead referred Benitez to another doctor.
Benitez, 31, saw another doctor. She later became pregnant and is now the mother of a 1-year-old boy. She said she filed the lawsuit because "I don't want anyone else to go through what I went through. Everybody should be treated equally."
When Benitez first saw her doctor in August 1999, Brody's North Coast Women's Care Medical Group was the only provider of obstetrics and gynecology services for Benitez's health plan. Joining Benitez at the appointment was Joanne Clark, then her partner of eight years.
During the visit, Benitez said she mentioned to the doctor that she was a lesbian. Brody informed Benitez that she would help her with fertility treatments and could treat her after she became pregnant, but the obstetrician said her religious beliefs would keep her from performing artificial insemination on a homosexual. Brody said another doctor in the group would be able to handle the procedure.
Clark, who sat next to Benitez that day in the doctor's office, said that although the exchange was civil, she sensed that Benitez was angry, and thinks the doctor also sensed she had upset her patient. Brody "told us she had many gay friends and said gays made some of the best parents," Clark recalled. "I truly believe she saw the anger in Lupita and was trying to calm the situation down."
Benitez said the doctor's remarks upset her, "but I appreciated her honesty." As long as she could get the care she required, Benitez said, she would tolerate the obstetrician's approach. Besides, Benitez said, she did not feel she had much choice, since Brody's medical group was the only one authorized by her health plan.
Court documents say Benitez saw the obstetrician for 11 months, receiving drug and hormone therapies as she tried to inseminate herself at home with sperm from a sperm bank. In April 2000, Dr. Brody performed diagnostic surgery on Benitez to determine her suitability for artificial insemination.
Ultimate Refusal
Benitez and the obstetrician arranged on July 5 for an intrauterine artificial insemination, which must be performed by a doctor, at the North Coast medical group, the lawsuit alleges. The suit states that on July 7, Brody's colleague, Douglas K. Fenton, telephoned Benitez and told her that because of the feelings of Brody and other staff at the medical office about Benitez's lesbianism, she could not be treated at the office.
Though she had tolerated Brody's earlier objections to her artificial insemination, Benitez said the doctor's ultimate refusal stunned her. "I was just shocked," said Benitez, who works as a medical assistant in a building next door to Brody's office. "I never thought there would be that kind of discrimination in the medical field."
Benitez reported the incident to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. She filed her civil rights lawsuit in July 2001. Coppo, the attorney for the doctors, said Benitez was referred to another doctor at no charge.
Benitez's lawyers contend that she saw another doctor only after seeking assistance from her health plan's primary-care doctor, who referred her to a physician out of the health plan's network. Albert Gross, one of Benitez's attorneys, said his client had to pay thousands of dollars in extra fees for an out-of-network doctor, and she was reimbursed only after suing the health plan.
Pizer, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund lawyer assisting Benitez, said that, even if her doctor arranged for her to see another physician, such behavior is still illegal. She compared it to "a lunch counter in the segregated South saying, 'We don't serve you here, but they'll serve your kind across the street.' It's humiliating, destructive to our society and unlawful."
Benitez's doctors argued in court filings that their actions fell under the Constitution's religious freedom protections.
Pizer contends that California law makes it clear that business establishments, including medical practices, cannot turn people away because of their sexual orientation. "When the doctors were practicing medicine, they were not engaged in religious worship," she said.
Society must balance equal protection for minorities while securing the liberty of religious groups, Pizer said. "Those needs have to be balanced," she said, since "everyone needs access to good health care while at the same time civil rights laws have no place in people's churches."
Lessons for Son
Meanwhile, as Benitez awaits the outcome, she hopes her struggle will someday yield lessons for her son, whose name she and Clark would not reveal for safety reasons. "We're going to teach him everybody's equal," Benitez said. "He can follow his own judgment, whether he wants to become a Christian, a Catholic, whatever."
A South Korean Star Came Out of the Closet and Fell Into Disrepute: After acknowledging he is gay, Hong Suk Chun faced not only anger but joblessness
By Henry Chu (Times Staff Writer)
Saturday, February 8 2003
SEOUL -- He never really worked in this town again. Not as an actor, anyway, the crowd-pleasing performer he felt destined to be since childhood.
Hong Suk Chun's promising career in South Korean show biz came crashing down because of a single fact he kept concealed for years: He is gay.
When Hong finally revealed his sexual orientation in a magazine interview 2 1/2 years ago, he was fired from his job as the goofy host of "Po Po Po," South Korea's answer to "Sesame Street." Fellow actors shunned him, teenage boys hurled abuse at him in the street, his parents suggested that the family commit group suicide for shame, and the job offers vanished, leaving Hong to ponder the wreckage of a once-successful life.
"I lost my whole career -- TV, musicals, commercials, everything -- just like that, overnight," Hong said. "I thought, 'OK, I'm 30, it's the new century, it's a good time to come out as gay.' " He paused, tapping the ash off his cigarette before adding: "That was my mistake."
It's a mistake few homosexual South Koreans are willing to risk in a deeply conservative society governed by old cultural and new religious norms.
More Confucian in some ways than China and more rigidly Christian than many Western nations, South Korea remains a difficult place for gays and lesbians to be open about their sexual identity without fear of rejection and ostracism.
So few, in fact, have publicly declared their homosexuality that the phrase "coming out" wasn't even a part of the lexicon until Hong's pioneering revelation in September 2000.
History may mark him down as the first South Korean celebrity to acknowledge being gay -- the man who, perhaps, helped pry open the closet door for future generations.
But the aftermath of his decision hasn't been so kind to Hong, who has spent the months since painfully trying to reinvent himself.
Sitting down for an interview in his newest venture, a trendy eatery called Our Place in Seoul's busy Itaewon district, Hong described the funk he plunged into at a time in his life when he thought he would be reaching new heights as an actor.
"Let me put it this way: I didn't smoke much in the past, maybe two cigarettes a day, but then I smoked two packs a day. Before, I wouldn't touch alcohol; then I started drinking," he said. "Acting was the only thing I did well."
For a few weeks after his very public coming out, Hong shut himself in, afraid to leave his apartment to face the media maelstrom.
That the announcement of his homosexuality -- half on impulse, half planned -- caused such a stir was rife with irony, since Hong had risen to fame playing a flamboyant, sexually ambiguous character on the popular sitcom "Three Men, Three Women," South Korea's version of "Friends." His trademark shaved head and tiny round spectacles made his an instantly recognizable face.
But viewers, albeit ready to accept a possibly gay figure in prime time, were not so ready to accept a certainly gay celebrity in real life. The extreme nature of some of the reaction shocked him.
"Supporters said, 'You did the right thing, you're brave, we admire you, we'll support you to the end,' " he said. "The other group hated me. They said: 'I'll kill you. You have no right to live on the Earth.' "
Hopes that his employer's response would be more tempered and compassionate were shattered when MBC, the network that produced his children's show, called him in, asked if he really was gay, then booted him from the program when he said yes.
South Korea's nascent gay-rights groups were furious and protested. But the network heeded viewer sentiment that poured in -- more of it for the decision to can Hong than against -- including support from some Christian groups demanding that he never be seen on television again.
Next, Hong was axed from a radio show. Then the phone calls offering work stopped. More than once, a sympathetic TV producer would grant him a role, only to call back later retracting the offer, apologetically explaining that a higher-up executive had nixed the idea.
His only forays back into mainstream TV were a small, short-lived role on a sitcom and an occasional stint on a morning talk show, where he introduced South Korean homemakers to recreational activities such as cliff-climbing.
To all intents and purposes, Hong's acting career was over.
Compounding the professional misery has been the personal fallout. Hong's parents, residents of a countryside village, were so devastated by the news and humiliated by the whispers of neighbors that they closed their small clothing and textile shop.
"They asked me to drink poison together with them. They even thought to send me overseas," Hong said. Even now, he added, his mother goes to church every morning to pray that he'll change, marry a woman and have kids, as all Korean men are expected to do.
Whether Hong's coming out has chipped away at such societal assumptions and expectations is yet to be seen. Inevitably, the furor died down, and gay activists lost a rallying point. Hong was invited, then uninvited, to speak to a legislative committee on health and social affairs.
Gay activist Im Tai Hoon credits Hong with propelling homosexuality into the public arena, but progress has been slow. Social awareness of gays and lesbians remains low, and legal protection for them, such as the anti-discrimination ordinances in many American cities and states, is barely on the horizon.
"It'll take 10 years before Korea reaches the status of the U.S.," Im said.
Some activists are heartened by the rise in popularity of model and singer Harisu, South Korea's most famous transsexual. But others note that a man becoming a woman and then pursuing a heterosexual lifestyle is less threatening than two men pursuing a homosexual one. And Harisu draws a distinction between her life and Hong's.
"I announced to the world from the beginning that I'm a transgendered person. I was true to myself and to my career," she said recently, fresh from taping a Lunar New Year TV variety show. "Mr. Hong tried to hide the fact he was gay."
Not anymore. At 32, Hong says he is now happily honest with himself and those around him. He has found love, and together with his partner, Ron Hartsell, a Tennessean he met shortly after his public announcement, opened the restaurant last October.
Hong no longer cries in front of the TV, lamenting lost opportunities.
Late last year, however, he was offered another chance to go before the cameras, though not as an actor. This time, he got to be himself, as the subject of a documentary.
On the evening of Jan. 9, in one of the many ironies that have marked Hong's life of late, MBC, the same network that fired him, broadcast the program.
It was the No. 1 show in its time slot.

Skin infection spreads among gay men in L.A.
By Jane E. Allen
Times Staff Writer
Monday, January 27, 2003
With infections that outsmart powerful antibiotics on the rise, doctors and public health officials have long worried that they might face an outbreak of resistant bacteria that threaten large numbers of people. Now they've found it -- in Los Angeles County.
The large, painful skin infections started turning up early last fall among local gay men, then appeared with increasing frequency over the ensuing weeks and months. Although doctors found the symptoms alarming, it took a while to confirm a connection between these cases. Now they know they're facing an emerging epidemic of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or, more simply, staph.
Although the outbreak seems confined primarily to gay men, doctors say at least one woman contracted the infection, probably from a male sex partner. Because they still know so little about the extent of the outbreak, they can't predict how many people it may eventually affect.
The infection, which causes nasty-looking boils, deep abscesses and widespread surrounding inflammation, has proved impervious to common antibiotics. Although it appears to be spread primarily by skin-to-skin contact, including sex, its origins and precise mode of transmission remain a mystery. Doctors treating it caution that it could also be contracted at health clubs, steam rooms and other warm, moist environments.
"The concern is this organism could spread to and cause disease in the community at large," said Dr. Peter Ruane, an infectious disease specialist in Los Angeles. "It seems to be able to attack normal skin in healthy people."
County health officials, with assistance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have begun a public health investigation to understand how the infection is spread, determine who else may be affected and develop strategies to contain it.
"Primary-care doctors and ER doctors need to know about this so that when they encounter these infections, they can prescribe a drug that's active against resistant staph," Ruane said. Treatment typically involves draining the abscess, culturing the bacteria to see what they are resistant to, then prescribing appropriate antibiotics.
Cases of drug-resistant staph, long recognized as a problem in nursing homes and hospitals, have increasingly cropped up in clusters outside those settings. But the current outbreak marks the first time resistant staph has been reported in the gay community, which doctors say gives it the potential to spread widely and quickly because many of their gay patients frequent circuit parties and bathhouses, engaging in sex with multiple partners.
Medical treatment has resolved most of the infections, with more aggressive cases requiring prolonged hospitalization and intravenous antibiotics. In some cases, the infections have taken up to a month to clear up. However, because staph isn't spread through the air like the flu, it would be less likely than those infections to cause widespread disease and fill emergency rooms.
Still, although no one has died, doctors are grappling with the daunting prospect that the bug will outsmart additional antibiotics, further narrowing treatment options. They know that in cases where the infection spreads to the blood, it can prove fatal if antibiotics fail or it goes untreated.
Dr. Gary Cohan, managing director of Pacific Oaks Medical Group in Beverly Hills, one of the nation's largest private AIDS practices, says he used to see one antibiotic-resistant staph case a year among hospitalized AIDS patients. Now, two patients a week come to the office with "abscesses filled with a viciously resistant staph."
"It's an evolving story," said Ruane, who in September began noticing an increasing number of the aggressive staph infections in his gay patients. "The aggressiveness of this took us aback."
Because Staphylococcus aureus lives on the skin's surface, usually existing harmlessly in the nose, armpits and groin, infections typically start in a cut or other opening. But the infections seen in local gay men -- the majority with well-controlled HIV or AIDS, but many others in good health -- took hold in unbroken skin. Doctors also noticed that the painful boils, and abscesses were in rather unusual places: the legs, buttocks, penis and scrotum, as well as hands and face.
After comparing notes with several colleagues also seeing unusual skin infections in gay patients, Ruane said, "we felt we were looking at some form of outbreak." Ruane then notified county health officials.
Ruane, an AIDS specialist and director of research at Tower Infectious Disease Medical Associates in Los Angeles, is aware of 40 cases among his and colleagues' patients. Others may go unrecognized because some people drain their own boils and never seek medical care.
He sent specimens to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's microbiology lab, where they were analyzed by a scientist, Margie A. Morgan, and her boss, Dr. Steven Nichols. Using a scientific technique called molecular fingerprinting, the two found, as suspected, the cases involved a genetically identical strain of resistant staph. They also found that the strain contains a powerful toxin called Panton-Valentine leukocidin seen in resistant staph outbreaks in France and in this country. No one knows if that toxin is responsible for the microbe's ability to break through the skin, and Morgan is looking for other toxins. The county is sending samples to the CDC for further tests and to see if the same strain has been seen elsewhere.
Already, microbiologist Barry N. Kreiswirth, a researcher at the nonprofit Public Health Research Institute in Newark, N.J., has found that the strain in Los Angeles is the same one he found among 39 hospitalized AIDS patients in 1997 in New York City.
Meanwhile, local epidemiologists compared the infections among gay men to last summer's limited outbreaks of resistant staph among five newborns and among three young adult athletes. But the staph strain in those cases matched that seen in the gay patients. The epidemiologists also have seen the same strain for many months in an ongoing outbreak associated with what they will only describe as a "large institution." That outbreak remains under investigation. Although it's unusual to have the same strain in multiple locations, it may be that the current strain is gaining a local foothold, they say.
"It's only in the past couple of weeks when we got the molecular fingerprinting results that we were able to go back and connect the dots," said Dr. Elizabeth A. Bancroft, a medical epidemiologist with the Los Angeles County Health Department who is leading the investigation. All the local cases involved skin infections only; those in hospitalized patients typically involve fever and pneumonia as well as an infected surgical site or wound. In addition to alerting local doctors, she has launched a study with Ruane and the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation that will try to understand the risk factors for contracting this strain. The infections, known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus because of their resistance to the antibiotic methicillin, are the bane of modern health care because they don't respond to the cheapest and most frequently used antibiotics, including methicillin, penicillin and penicillin-like cephalosporins such as Keflex and Ceftin.
Federal figures show the percentage of staph specimens resistant to antibiotics increased from 2% in 1974 to 50% in 1997. But not until 1999 did the public-health community begin appreciating the severity of the resistance problem outside hospitals.
That's when the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the deaths of four children in Minnesota and North Dakota whose infections didn't respond to cephalosporins. Similar outbreaks, sometimes with fatalities, have been reported among intravenous drug abusers, athletes, prisoners, Native Americans and Eskimos, whose close living conditions make them likely to share personal items such as towels.
The L.A. investigation has found that the local strain is resistant to erythromycin and the powerful fluoroquinolones, such as Cipro and Levaquin. That limits the arsenal to Bactrim, rifampin, clindamycin, and the drug of last resort, vancomycin, which is administered intravenously. Some doctors use a new antibiotic called Zyvox, although with a single course costing $1,500, they often have trouble persuading insurers to pay for it.
Bancroft stressed that until an investigation reveals how the infections are being spread, anyone with a boil or skin infection should maintain good hygiene, washing towels and anything else that comes into contact with infected areas. Any skin infection that looks particularly aggressive should be examined and cultured by a doctor. And, anyone prescribed antibiotics must complete the full course even if they start feeling better.
"The worst thing in the world is only to take a half-dose," Bancroft said, because that fosters further resistance. If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives. For information about reprinting this article, go to www.lats.com/rights.

Sexual harassment suit roils lesbian industry group
By Robert W. Welkos
Times Staff Writer
Saturday, November 2, 2002
Power Up, a network of gay women in the entertainment industry, burst upon the scene two years ago with a mission to promote the visibility of lesbians in the media and a commitment to change the "old boy's club" way of doing things in Hollywood.
But as the nonprofit group prepares for its second annual fund-raiser -- a gala in Beverly Hills on Sunday night honoring singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge, Showtime Networks' Jerry Offsay and this year's "Top 10 gay women in showbiz" -- the organization finds itself embroiled in a sexual harassment dispute involving two of its co-founders.
In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Power Up co-founder and onetime publicist Karen Pearson Brown has accused executive director and co-founder Stacy Codikow of making unwanted sexual overtures and sexually offensive comments, e-mailing her a lewd photograph, inquiring about the sex life of Brown and her partner, and demanding Brown's resignation after learning Brown was bisexual.
"You cannot be a founder of Power Up if you are with men," Codikow told Brown, according to the suit. "This is a lesbian organization."
Brown left the organization and filed suit last year, and Codikow has since fired back in legal briefs, alleging that it was Brown who made unwanted sexual overtures and that she twice removed her clothes at Codikow's home in a failed attempt at seduction.
Brown's "tawdry allegations are completely false," Codikow said in a statement released Friday by her publicist. "It is truly regrettable that Pearson [Brown] is abusing the legal system and civil rights laws by trying to extract money from a nonprofit organization."
In August, Codikow filed a countersuit saying Brown has defamed her by spreading false claims that she had embezzled $38,000 from Power Up and used the nonprofit's money for personal purposes. Both cases are in the discovery phase, and both women have denied doing anything improper. Each has her defenders in Hollywood's lesbian community.
Jehan Agrama, who co-chaired the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's Media Awards for 11 years and is now a member of Power Up's honorary board of directors, calls Brown's charges "laughable."
"I can't imagine [Codikow] jeopardizing [Power Up] or doing anything like that," she said. "It's just not who she is."
But Marjorie Mann, a freelance production manager for television and live events and a former Power Up member, said Codikow's countercharges are implausible.
"There is no way that Pearson [Brown] would be remotely interested [in having sex with Codikow]," she said, adding that Brown is "extremely professional."
With offices in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, Power Up -- the Professional Organization of Women in Entertainment Reaching Up -- has between 500 and 700 members, gay and straight, nationwide. It has bankrolled short films by its members, has held industry workshops and provides a resume bank for Hollywood filmmakers looking for talent.
Last year, Power Up received wide media coverage when it released a list ranking the Top 10 most powerful gay women in show business that included comedian Ellen DeGeneres, Etheridge, singer k.d. lang and director Kimberly Peirce ("Boys Don't Cry").
Its honorary board of directors includes such entertainment figures as Jan Oxenberg, producer of the TV series "Once and Again," Lee Rose, writer-director of "The Truth About Jane," Marcus Hu, co-president of Strand Releasing, Andrea Sperling, producer of "Pumpkin," and Jamie Babbit, writer-director of "But I'm a Cheerleader."
The first salvo in the legal skirmish was fired last fall, when Brown's Century City attorney, Craig T. Byrnes, filed suit against Power Up, Codikow and her production company, Codikow Films, alleging sexual harassment, defamation and infliction of emotional distress.
Among the allegations contained in Brown's suit:
* On Oct. 12, 2000, Brown attended a dinner with Codikow and others to discuss the promotion of Power Up. Codikow allegedly asked Brown, "So, are we going to have sex? What are my chances on scale of one to 10?" Brown said she replied, "I'm not going to answer that. We are business partners."
* That same month, Codikow invited Brown and her girlfriend to her house for dinner, which was also attended by Codikow's bookkeeper, Kevin Vermillion."After dinner, Codikow began asking Brown and Brown's girlfriend personal questions about their sex life," including "Do you like to watch?" the suit states.
The next day, according to the suit, Codikow e-mailed Brown a picture of a man masturbating.
* In July 2001, Codikow invited Brown and Vermillion to get ice cream during work one day. The suit states that Codikow and Vermillion then started talking about "hooker parties" they had thrown and described sexual acts they had performed on prostitutes. Brown said she told them, "This conversation is making me sick," but they continued talking about sexual acts with prostitutes.
Vermillion has filed a sworn declaration denying that he ever discussed "hooker parties" with Codikow and Brown. He also denied ever going out for ice cream with the two women.
* In July or August of 2001, Brown was having lunch in the Power Up board room with Codikow and a talent manager named Alan who had a nearby office, when Codikow allegedly said: "Hey, Pearson wants a baby. Why don't you and Alan [engage in intercourse]?" Brown said she became upset and embarrassed and replied, "That's sexual harassment, Stacy. You are creating a hostile environment."
According to Brown's suit, the situation exploded in August 2001, when Codikow asked her out but was rebuffed; Brown said she had a date with a man.
Until then, "I never discussed with her that I had been married," said Brown, 39, in an interview. "I was with the same man for about 12 years."
Two days later, Brown said she arrived at the office and found Codikow and the organization's other co-founder, Amy Shomer, waiting for her and demanding that she sign resignation papers.
"I said, 'I want to leave this office now,' " Brown recalled in the interview. "[Codikow] said, 'You're not going until you sign that.' "
In legal briefs, Codikow's attorney, Jeffrey F. Webb, branded Brown's lawsuit "utterly frivolous."
Webb also filed an appeal trying to get the suit tossed out using the novel argument that Brown's suit infringed on Codikow's right to free speech under California's anti-SLAPP law (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation). The 2nd District Court of Appeal recently rejected the argument and trial remains months off.
A key legal question is whether Brown was an employee of Power Up. Codikow, 39, has maintained that Power Up has no employees, only volunteers, and that Brown merely worked as a volunteer during her tenure with the group.
In response, Codikow claims in a sworn declaration that she never sexually harassed Brown, never made overtures of a sexual nature to Brown and never created a sexually hostile environment.
"It was Ms. Brown who engaged in conduct of a sexual nature," Codikow said.
In fact, Codikow said, Brown once sent her a picture in which Brown was on a bed wearing a negligee. And "on two separate occasions while Ms. Brown was visiting at my house, Ms. Brown took off all her clothes and stood naked in front of me" in a failed attempt at seduction.
In a sworn declaration, Shomer said she received a call from Codikow, who "told me that Ms. Brown had just taken off all of her clothes and was running around naked in front of her. Ms. Codikow was very upset and said, 'Help me. What do I do?' I told Ms. Codikow to lock the door of her bedroom."
Shomer also states that in August 2001, after Codikow told Brown her services at Power Up were no longer needed, Brown became angry and said to her, "There will be no Power Up if I can't be part of it. I will destroy it." She then turned to Codikow and said, "I will take you down."
Brown has denied the allegations.

Parents Angered by Lesbian's Talk at School
From Staff and Wire Reports
Saturday, October 26, 2002
In Brief
Parents are furious that a lesbian was brought in to discuss homophobia during a Goleta Valley Junior High School Diversity Day assembly.
Parents and conservative Christians told school trustees that schools should stick to academics and leave "moral education" to parents at home. Some suggested that by discussing issues related to homosexuality, schools are promoting it.
The Diversity Day assembly last week featured speakers ranging from a Holocaust survivor to a disabled man.
School Principal Kristine Robertson, who oversaw and helped create the assembly, will send a letter of apology to parents for failing to notify them.

3 Charged in Beating Death of Boy, 17, Who Lived as a Girl:The suspects allegedly attacked him after they learned he was male. His body was found in a shallow grave near a campground.
By Tim Reiterman, Christine Hanley and Louis Sahagun Times Staff Writers
Source:http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hate19oct19.story
Saturday, October 19, 2002
NEWARK, Calif. -- Three Bay Area men were charged Friday with murdering a 17-year-old boy who dressed and lived as a girl after one of the accused led authorities to the victim's body, buried in a remote area of the Sierra foothills.The Alameda County coroner's office identified the dead teenager as Newark resident Eddie Araujo and said an examination showed he had been severely beaten. Araujo's body, dressed in women's clothing, was unearthed Wednesday near an El Dorado National Forest campground 30 miles east of Placerville. Araujo, a former student at Crossroads High School in Newark, was last seen at a party on Oct. 3, police said, where he was attacked after the suspects discovered he was male. Police reports detail interviews with several people who said they had heard the defendants had sex with Araujo and then discovered he was not a girl. Araujo's mother reported him missing on Oct. 3, telling police she was worried he might have been harmed because he was dressed in women's clothes, police reports said. She told police that Araujo left for the party dressed in a jeans miniskirt and black shirt. Newark police said Araujo, who used the first names "Gwen" and "Lida," had been dressing as a woman for some time.
In an interview Friday night, Araujo's mother, Sylvia Guerrero said, "If I can bury him, I'll bury him in a dress with makeup and his nails done, and the tombstone will say, 'Gwen.' He deserves it." Prosecutors filed murder charges Friday against Michael Magidson, 22, of Fremont and Jaron Chase Nabors, 19, and Jose Merel, 24, both of Newark. Police said Nabors led them to the grave near the Silver Fork campground in El Dorado County. The suspects entered no pleas and were held without bail. Merel's brother, Paul Merel Jr., 25, was released. A police affidavit said Paul Merel's girlfriend, Nicole Brown, discovered Araujo was male when she took him to a bathroom to determine his gender. After she told the others, the defendants allegedly beat him into semiconsciousness and dragged him into a garage, where they tightened a rope around his neck until he appeared dead, the affidavit said.
The defendants drove Araujo to the campsite in the rugged back country of the High Sierra, where they buried him, according to the affidavit. Araujo's aunt, Imelda Guerrero, 30, called police on Oct. 9 after hearing a rumor of the slaying of a male dressed as a woman at a local party, police reports said. Police then began interviewing people who had heard about the confrontation at the party, which was held at the Merels' house. One person who attended the party took police to the house. Nabors' attorney, Robert J. Beles, said his client was "in the wrong place at the wrong time," but did not "participate in any homicide activity at all." "There are no indications of any bias or attitudes of any homophobic nature at all in Jaron," he said. "When all the evidence is in, it will show he is not guilty of this. He told me he did not participate in any aggressive activity toward the victim, or in beating the victim." Beles denied police allegations that Nabors had confessed Wednesday to the crime. He would not comment, however, on whether Nabors led authorities to the body. Nichole Giacoletto, 19, an acquaintance of Nabors in junior high school, said: "I just can't believe what's happened. It's very sad. Very sick." "Jaron was popular -- all the girls liked him," she said. "He hung around with the cool kids. I never saw him in a fight. So I'm shocked."
Bay Area community groups Friday compared the killing to the 1998 slaying of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard. A local high school production of a play based on Shepard's killing, "The Laramie Project," is set for production next month. "This case shows that there is still so much work to do about people's fear and hatred," said Tina D'Elia, hate-crimes specialist with the San Francisco-based Community United Against Violence. "It shows that for anyone who chooses to go outside the mainstream binary culture, the fear of death is so real."
Araujo had apparently dropped out of school over the summer. He had been in Newark's public school system since kindergarten and had shifted to alternative study programs when he was in middle school, first attending the Bridgepoint School and switching to Crossroads for his first three years of high school, said Newark Unified School District Supt. Ken Sherer. Araujo's classes required students to meet with a teacher once a week. But he attended only about half his weekly meetings over the years, Sherer said, and hadn't shown up since the school year began in late August. Truancy officers do not usually try to find students who are 17 or 18 because they are old enough to quit school. His last teacher retired this summer and has moved out of state. Friends of Araujo at Newark Memorial High School collected $207 Friday to assist with burial expenses. "We are going to keep collecting and get more people involved," said Jessica Bernal, 16. "We are going to make one big check and give it to his mother. As friends of Eddie, we just want to help." "We spend a lot of time teaching students they should respect another person's lifestyle," Sherer said. "It's ironic that this happened to occur at the same time we're putting on this ["Laramie Project"] play. It does kind of speak to the point that no matter how hard we try within society to eliminate prejudices, we still have a lot of it." Newark Memorial drama teacher Barbara Williams said the school still plans to stage "The Laramie Project" next month. Williams, who has taught in the district for 38 years and is directing the school's production, said she picked the production because she thought the community needed a lesson in tolerance. "I've watched over the years so many of our students, especially those who are gay, being ridiculed and abused, and being afraid," Williams said. Williams said the small East Bay community, consisting of working-class and immigrant neighborhoods between San Jose and Oakland, embraced the idea for the show, which is sold out for its Nov. 8 opening night. Now, because of the Araujo killing, Williams said, "we're living the horrible reality of our play."
The play, she said, will be dedicated to Araujo and all other victims of hate crimes. Araujo's friend Daisy Bernal said Araujo would get upset if she called him Eddie. "She would be like, 'Shut up. Don't call me that,' " Bernal said. "After I called her that, she just said, 'I'm a girl, I'm just a girl trapped in a guy's body. God made me like that.' "

Dispute Over Gays May Lead to Special Assembly
From Times Wire Services
Saturday, October 19 2002
IN BRIEF
Despite a heated dispute over ordination of gays and lesbians, the Presbyterian Church (USA) is not in a "full-blown constitutional crisis" and needs no special assembly to settle internal conflicts, church leaders said. Church officials hope to quell a petition drive for an unprecedented special assembly to deal with pastors and churches who have openly defied a church law that bans the ordination of non-celibate gays and lesbians. Alex Metherell, a church elder from Laguna Beach, said the assembly is needed because denominational leaders have turned a blind eye to open defiance of the church constitution. Such defiance represents "a clear and present danger to our constitution. A constitution that is not enforced is no constitution at all," Metherell wrote in his petition. A special assembly can be called by 25 ministers and 25 elders from at least 15 regional presbyteries.

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