Tag: Stories of GLBT organizations

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Stories of GLBT Organizations, by Lewis

My thirty-year career at Ford Motor Company reached its culmination at the end of the last century, coincident with the last of my 26 years of being in a straight marriage and the birth of the GLBT organization that has played the largest part in my personal journey toward wholeness. That organization is Ford GLOBE.

GLOBE is an acronym for Gay, Lesbian, Or Bisexual Employees. It was hatched in the minds of two Ford employees, a woman and a man, in Dearborn, MI, in July of 1994. By September, they had composed a letter to the Vice President of Employee Relations–with a copy to Ford CEO, Alex Trotman–expressing a desire to begin a dialogue with top management on workplace issues of concern to Ford’s gay, lesbian and bisexual employees. They were invited to meet with the VP of Employee Relations in November.

In 1995, the group, now flying in full view of corporate radar and growing, elected a five-member board, adopted its formal name of Ford GLOBE; designed their logo; adopted mission, vision, and objective statements; and adopted bylaws. The fresh-faced Board was invited to meet with the staff of the newly-created corporate Diversity Office. Soon after, “sexual orientation” was incorporated into Ford’s Global Diversity Initiative. Members of Ford GLOBE participated in the filming of two company videos on workplace diversity. Also that year, Ford was a sponsor of the world-premier on NBC of Serving in Silence, starring Glenn Close as Army Reserve Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer. By September of 1996, Ford GLOBE chapters were forming in Great Britain and Germany.

In March of 1996, Ford GLOBE submitted to upper management the coming-out stories of 23 members in hope of putting a human face on what had been an invisible minority. Along with the stories came a formal request for Ford’s non-discrimination policy to be rewritten to include sexual orientation. At the time, only Ford of Britain had such a policy.

Ford GLOBE was beginning to network with similar interest groups at General Motors and Chrysler, including sharing a table at the 1996 Pridefest and walking together in the Michigan Pride Parade in Lansing. After two years of discussion between Ford GLOBE and top management, on November 14, 1996, Ford CEO, Alex Trotman, issued Revised Corporate Policy Letter # 2, adding “sexual orientation” to the company’s official non-discrimination policy. To this day, some of our largest and most profitable corporations, including Exxon Mobile, have refused to do the same.

My involvement with Ford GLOBE began sometime in 1997. For that reason and the fact that I have scrapped many of my records of this period, I have relied heavily on Ford GLOBE’s website for the dates and particulars of these events.

In February of 1998, I attended a “Gay Issues in the Workplace” Workshop, led by Brian McNaught, at Ford World Headquarters, jointed sponsored by GLOBE and the Ford Diversity Office. I remember a Ford Vice President taking the podium at that event. He was a white man of considerable social cachet and I assumed that the privilege that normally goes with that status would have shielded him from any brushes with discrimination. In fact, he told a story of riding a public transit bus with his mother at the height of World War II. His family was German. His mother had warned him sternly not to speak German while riding the bus. Thus, he, too, had known the fear of being outed because of who he was. The experience had made him into an unlikely ally of GLOBE members over 50 years later.

In 1999, Ford GLOBE amended its by-laws to make it their mission to include transgendered employees in Ford’s non-discrimination policy and gender identity in Ford’s diversity training. Ford Motor Company was the first and only U.S. automotive company listed on the 1999 Gay and Lesbian Values Index of top 100 companies working on gay issues, an achievement noted by Ford CEO Jac Nasser. It was about this time that retired Ford Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer Alan Gilmore came out as gay. The Advocate named Ford Motor Company to its list of 25 companies that provide good environments for gay employees in its Oct. 26 edition.

Having earlier written the contract bargaining teams for Ford Motor Company, United Auto Workers, and Canadian Auto Workers requesting specific changes in the upcoming union contracts, Ford GLOBE was pleased to see that the resulting Ford/CAW union contract included provision for same-sex domestic partners to be treated as common law spouses in Canada, for sexual orientation to be added to the nondiscrimination statement of the Ford/UAW contract, and that Ford and the UAW agreed to investigate implementation of same-sex domestic partner benefits during the current four-year union contract.

The year 2000 was not only the year that I became Board Chair of Ford GLOBE but also the year that marked a momentous event in automotive history as Ford, General Motors, and the Chrysler Division of DaimlerChrysler issued a joint press release with the United Auto Workers announcing same-sex health care benefits for the Big Three auto companies’ salaried and hourly employees in the U.S. As the first-ever industry-wide joint announcement of domestic partner benefits and largest ever workforce of 465,000 U.S. employees eligible in one stroke, the historic announcement made headlines across the nation. It was truly a proud moment for all of us in the Ford GLOBE organization.

On January 1 of 2001, my last year with the company, Ford expanded its benefits program for the spouses of gay employees to include financial planning, legal services, the personal protection plan, vehicle programs, and the vision plan.

Since my departure from the company, Ford and GLOBE have continued to advance the cause of GLBT equality and fairness both within the corporation and without. I am fortunate to have been supported in my own coming out process by my associates within the company, both gay and straight, and to Ford GLOBE in particular for the bonds of friendship honed in the common struggle toward a better and freer world.

[Editor’s note: Previously published in 2015 in this blog.]

© 2015 

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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A Salute to PFLAG by Betsy

“I knew my son was gay. He didn’t want to tell me. I told him I loved him and nothing else mattered. He didn’t believe I was accepting, but I was.” These are the words of Jeanne Manford, cofounder of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, the internationally known organization of allies of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered.

The concept for the organization was born in 1972 when Jeanne Manford marched with her gay son Morty in New York’s Christopher Street Liberation Day March, the precursor to today’s Pride parade. She carried a sign which read “Parents of Gays Unite in Support for Our Children.” This brought on cheers yelling, crying and clapping and to Jeanne’s surprise many people came up to her during the march, shook hands, hugged her, begged her to talk to their parents. The requests continued after the parade with hundreds of telephone calls from gay and lesbian people wanting Jeanne to speak to their parents. It became clear to her that a support group was needed. Thus the first meeting was held in March 1973 in Greenwich Village. Twenty people attended.

Jeanne continued answering the calls and began traveling the country making appearances on radio and tv promoting the cause.

By 1979 many similar groups had sprung up around the country. By 1980 the first PFLAG National office was established in Los Angeles followed by the incorporation and granting of tax exempt status to the organization which now included some 20 groups. The headquarters was relocated to Denver in 1987 under President Elinor Lewallen, whom many of us knew well. PFLAG took off in the 1990’s and the national office employed an executive director and some staff and moved to Washington DC.

The administration of George H.W. Bush became the first to be directly supportive of gay rights when the then PFLAG president Paulette Goodman sent Barbara Bush a letter asking for her support. Her reply was “I firmly believe that we cannot tolerate discrimination against any individuals or groups in our country. Such treatment always brings with it pain and perpetuates intolerance.” Unbeknownst to some powers that be, the first lady’s comments were given to the press and caused a political maelstrom.

Today 40 years after it’s inception PFLAG has grown to a network of 350 chapters worldwide with more than 200,000 members. Perhaps one of the greatest services provided by PFLAG over the years has been the dissemination of information to educational institutions and communities of faith and the general public nationwide. This along with personal and group support for parents who sometimes are in tears and in shock and are trying to understand.

I became involved in PFLAG around 2003 when I learned that the Denver Chapter was meeting in my neighborhood. I decided to attend a meeting.

At the meeting I found many acquaintances, gays, lesbians, and straight.

The chair of the board was an old acquaintance from my married days–she had worked with my husband at CU medical school. I think she was surprised to see me there. Before I knew it I found myself on the board of directors of the Denver Chapter. There I remained for 7 years having held the office of president for 2 years until my tenure ended due to term limits.

I was glad to be active and committed to this organization. I believe that PFLAG, being an organization of allies, has been in the right place at the right time to help open people’s minds and bring about attitude and policy changes.

The credibility of parents who love their children just as they are and want to support them can be very powerful. I thought at first that I knew a good bit of what being both the parent of a lesbian and being a lesbian myself was about. But I quickly discovered at PFLAG that being a straight parent of a lesbian is very much a different thing. My eyes were opened when in a “coming out” support group meeting parents were talking about how difficult it is to come out to their friends and family. Some were having difficulty with this, fearing rejection by those closest to them, and had been closeted themselves for a long time. It had never occurred to me that these straight people had the same fear issues that their gay children did, and that they, like their gay and lesbian children had to summon up some courage to “come out” and reveal the secret of their son or daughter.

Our chapter’s major activities during my active years included

1. Speaking with school groups, students, staff, and parents to promote better understanding and acceptance of GLBT. Working with schools who have bullying issues to address. Providing support and education to parents and school personnel around transgender issues.

2. Speaking similarly with other community groups including churches.

3. Providing educational materials put out by the national office.

4. Providing an emergency “helpline” for parents or others in distress.

5. Providing a monthly support meeting with a trained facilitator for parents whose sons or daughters have just come out to them. The support meeting is followed by a program featuring a speaker or panel of speakers always bringing enlightenment to their audiences.

6. Advocating for marriage equality.

Will the support and advocacy of PFLAG be a continuing need in the future? I believe there will always be a need. The specific activities of the organization may change with the times. With more awareness, more children are coming out and often at a younger age than in past decades.

Although there has been increased acceptance and policy changes, there is still much misinformation and misunderstanding and hatred of homosexual people. The more recent emergence of awareness of transgender issues by itself presents huge challenges to families involved and to advocacy groups. In my opinion PFLAG will be in business for a long time.

Denver, 2014

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

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Stories of GLBT Organizations by Lewis

My thirty-year career at Ford Motor Company reached its culmination at the end of the last century, coincident with the last of my 26 years of being in a straight marriage and the birth of the GLBT organization that has played the largest part in my personal journey toward wholeness. That organization is Ford GLOBE.

GLOBE is an acronym for Gay, Lesbian, Or Bisexual Employees. It was hatched in the minds of two Ford employees, a woman and a man, in Dearborn, MI, in July of 1994. By September, they had composed a letter to the Vice President of Employee Relations–with a copy to Ford CEO, Alex Trotman–expressing a desire to begin a dialogue with top management on workplace issues of concern to Ford’s gay, lesbian and bisexual employees. They were invited to meet with the VP of Employee Relations in November.

In 1995, the group, now flying in full view of corporate radar and growing, elected a five-member board, adopted its formal name of Ford GLOBE; designed their logo; adopted mission, vision, and objective statements; and adopted bylaws. The fresh-faced Board was invited to meet with the staff of the newly-created corporate Diversity Office. Soon after, “sexual orientation” was incorporated into Ford’s Global Diversity Initiative. Members of Ford GLOBE participated in the filming of two company videos on workplace diversity. Also that year, Ford was a sponsor of the world-premier on NBC of Serving in Silence, starring Glenn Close as Army Reserve Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer. By September of 1996, Ford GLOBE chapters were forming in Great Britain and Germany.

In March of 1996, Ford GLOBE submitted to upper management the coming-out stories of 23 members in hope of putting a human face on what had been an invisible minority. Along with the stories came a formal request for Ford’s non-discrimination policy to be rewritten to include sexual orientation. At the time, only Ford of Britain had such a policy.

Ford GLOBE was beginning to network with similar interest groups at General Motors and Chrysler, including sharing a table at the 1996 Pridefest and walking together in the Michigan Pride Parade in Lansing. After two years of discussion between Ford GLOBE and top management, on November 14, 1996, Ford CEO, Alex Trotman, issued Revised Corporate Policy Letter # 2, adding “sexual orientation” to the company’s official non-discrimination policy. To this day, some of our largest and most profitable corporations, including Exxon Mobile, have refused to do the same.

My involvement with Ford GLOBE began sometime in 1997. For that reason and the fact that I have scrapped many of my records of this period, I have relied heavily on Ford GLOBE’s website for the dates and particulars of these events.

In February of 1998, I attended a “Gay Issues in the Workplace” Workshop, led by Brian McNaught, at Ford World Headquarters, jointed sponsored by GLOBE and the Ford Diversity Office. I remember a Ford Vice President taking the podium at that event. He was a white man of considerable social cachet and I assumed that the privilege that normally goes with that status would have shielded him from any brushes with discrimination. In fact, he told a story of riding a public transit bus with his mother at the height of World War II. His family was German. His mother had warned him sternly not to speak German while riding the bus. Thus, he, too, had known the fear of being outed because of who he was. The experience had made him into an unlikely ally of GLOBE members over 50 years later.

In 1999, Ford GLOBE amended its by-laws to make it their mission to include transgendered employees in Ford’s non-discrimination policy and gender identity in Ford’s diversity training. Ford Motor Company was the first and only U.S. automotive company listed on the 1999 Gay and Lesbian Values Index of top 100 companies working on gay issues, an achievement noted by Ford CEO Jac Nasser. It was about this time that retired Ford Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer Alan Gilmore came out as gay. The Advocate named Ford Motor Company to its list of 25 companies that provide good environments for gay employees in its Oct. 26 edition.

Having earlier written the contract bargaining teams for Ford Motor Company, United Auto Workers, and Canadian Auto Workers requesting specific changes in the upcoming union contracts, Ford GLOBE was pleased to see that the resulting Ford/CAW union contract included provision for same-sex domestic partners to be treated as common law spouses in Canada, for sexual orientation to be added to the nondiscrimination statement of the Ford/UAW contract, and that Ford and the UAW agreed to investigate implementation of same-sex domestic partner benefits during the current four-year union contract.

The year 2000 was not only the year that I became Board Chair of Ford GLOBE but also the year that marked a momentous event in automotive history as Ford, General Motors, and the Chrysler Division of DaimlerChrysler issued a joint press release with the United Auto Workers announcing same-sex health care benefits for the Big Three auto companies’ salaried and hourly employees in the U.S. As the first-ever industry-wide joint announcement of domestic partner benefits and largest ever workforce of 465,000 U.S. employees eligible in one stroke, the historic announcement made headlines across the nation. It was truly a proud moment for all of us in the Ford GLOBE organization.

On January 1 of 2001, my last year with the company, Ford expanded its benefits program for the spouses of gay employees to include financial planning, legal services, the personal protection plan, vehicle programs, and the vision plan.

Since my departure from the company, Ford and GLOBE have continued to advance the cause of GLBT equality and fairness both within the corporation and without. I am fortunate to have been supported in my own coming out process by my associates within the company, both gay and straight, and to Ford GLOBE in particular for the bonds of friendship honed in the common struggle toward a better and freer world.

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Stories of GLBT Organizations

My thirty-year career at Ford Motor Company reached its culmination at the end of the last century, coincident with the last of my 26 years of being in a straight marriage and the birth of the GLBT organization that has played the largest part in my personal journey toward wholeness. That organization is Ford GLOBE.

GLOBE is an acronym for Gay, Lesbian, Or Bisexual Employees. It was hatched in the minds of two Ford employees, a woman and a man, in Dearborn, MI, in July of 1994. By September, they had composed a letter to the Vice President of Employee Relations–with a copy to Ford CEO, Alex Trotman–expressing a desire to begin a dialogue with top management on workplace issues of concern to Ford’s gay, lesbian and bisexual employees. They were invited to meet with the VP of Employee Relations in November.

In 1995, the group, now flying in full view of corporate radar and growing, elected a five-member board, adopted its formal name of Ford GLOBE; designed their logo; adopted mission, vision, and objective statements; and adopted bylaws. The fresh-faced Board was invited to meet with the staff of the newly-created corporate Diversity Office. Soon after, “sexual orientation” was incorporated into Ford’s Global Diversity Initiative. Members of Ford GLOBE participated in the filming of two company videos on workplace diversity. Also that year, Ford was a sponsor of the world-premier on NBC of Serving in Silence, starring Glenn Close as Army Reserve Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer. By September of 1996, Ford GLOBE chapters were forming in Great Britain and Germany.

In March of 1996, Ford GLOBE submitted to upper management the coming-out stories of 23 members in hope of putting a human face on what had been an invisible minority. Along with the stories came a formal request for Ford’s non-discrimination policy to be rewritten to include sexual orientation. At the time, only Ford of Britain had such a policy.

Ford GLOBE was beginning to network with similar interest groups at General Motors and Chrysler, including sharing a table at the 1996 Pridefest and walking together in the Michigan Pride Parade in Lansing. After two years of discussion between Ford GLOBE and top management, on November 14, 1996, Ford CEO, Alex Trotman, issued Revised Corporate Policy Letter # 2, adding “sexual orientation” to the company’s official non-discrimination policy. To this day, some of our largest and most profitable corporations, including Exxon Mobile, have refused to do the same.

My involvement with Ford GLOBE began sometime in 1997. For that reason and the fact that I have scrapped many of my records of this period, I have relied heavily on Ford GLOBE’s website for the dates and particulars of these events.

In February of 1998, I attended a “Gay Issues in the Workplace” Workshop, led by Brian McNaught, at Ford World Headquarters, jointed sponsored by GLOBE and the Ford Diversity Office. I remember a Ford Vice President taking the podium at that event. He was a white man of considerable social cachet and I assumed that the privilege that normally goes with that status would have shielded him from any brushes with discrimination. In fact, he told a story of riding a public transit bus with his mother at the height of World War II. His family was German. His mother had warned him sternly not to speak German while riding the bus. Thus, he, too, had known the fear of being outed because of who he was. The experience had made him into an unlikely ally of GLOBE members over 50 years later.

In 1999, Ford GLOBE amended its by-laws to make it their mission to include transgendered employees in Ford’s non-discrimination policy and gender identity in Ford’s diversity training. Ford Motor Company was the first and only U.S. automotive company listed on the 1999 Gay and Lesbian Values Index of top 100 companies working on gay issues, an achievement noted by Ford CEO Jac Nasser. It was about this time that retired Ford Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer Alan Gilmore came out as gay. The Advocate named Ford Motor Company to its list of 25 companies that provide good environments for gay employees in its Oct. 26 edition.

Having earlier written the contract bargaining teams for Ford Motor Company, United Auto Workers, and Canadian Auto Workers requesting specific changes in the upcoming union contracts, Ford GLOBE was pleased to see that the resulting Ford/CAW union contract included provision for same-sex domestic partners to be treated as common law spouses in Canada, for sexual orientation to be added to the nondiscrimination statement of the Ford/UAW contract, and that Ford and the UAW agreed to investigate implementation of same-sex domestic partner benefits during the current four-year union contract.

The year 2000 was not only the year that I became Board Chair of Ford GLOBE but also the year that marked a momentous event in automotive history as Ford, General Motors, and the Chrysler Division of DaimlerChrysler issued a joint press release with the United Auto Workers announcing same-sex health care benefits for the Big Three auto companies’ salaried and hourly employees in the U.S. As the first-ever industry-wide joint announcement of domestic partner benefits and largest ever workforce of 465,000 U.S. employees eligible in one stroke, the historic announcement made headlines across the nation. It was truly a proud moment for all of us in the Ford GLOBE organization.

On January 1 of 2001, my last year with the company, Ford expanded its benefits program for the spouses of gay employees to include financial planning, legal services, the personal protection plan, vehicle programs, and the vision plan.

Since my departure from the company, Ford and GLOBE have continued to advance the cause of GLBT equality and fairness both within the corporation and without. I am fortunate to have been supported in my own coming out process by my associates within the company, both gay and straight, and to Ford GLOBE in particular for the bonds of friendship honed in the common struggle toward a better and freer world.

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way. 

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Lavender University by Pat Gourley

My involvement in the Gay Community Center began back in 1976. My first volunteer duties started very shortly after it opened at its first location in the 1400 block of Lafayette. This was an old brick two story duplex that I think was owned at the time by the Unitarian Church on the corner and the Center was renting the space from them. My main duties initially involved phone volunteering and coordinating other phone volunteers along with building our database of referrals, which we kept on a single Rolodex! A majority of our calls were for social referrals to local bars and bathes and the emerging number of local LGBT organizations, and also not a few requests for gay-sensitive therapists and health care providers. We referred men frequently to the Men’s Coming Out Group still in existence today, which met early on in the Unitarian Church itself, their library I think.

1976 was the year I started nursing school and eventually did my Community Health rotation at the Center. One of my nursing student activities was participating, as a tester, in a weekly STD clinic at the Center on Friday evenings. I am not sure why it wasn’t on a Monday rather than a Friday since the business would have probably been more brisk after a busy weekend in the late seventies, the age of thriving bathhouses. These clinics involved a fair amount of counseling on STD’s and how you got them and how to possibly avoid getting them. Unfortunately, though, we gay men rather cavalierly thought of STD’s as just the cost of doing business and not something to particularly strive to avoid. We drew blood for syphilis and did throat, penis and rectal cultures for gonorrhea. HIV was still several years away.

My Center volunteer activities drifted from phone work and coordination to milking penises and swabbing buttholes to the much more highbrow efforts involved with a program of the Center called Lavender University. Where or from whom the name came has been lost in the mist but it was a queer take off at the time on the very successful Denver Free University. I was a member of the Center’s University Staff from its inception until probably early 1984 when The Center kind of imploded around a variety of issues including extreme tension between some community-based organizations, the tumultuous resignation of Carol Lease and the demands and urgency of the emerging AIDS epidemic. I do believe much of this tumult was fueled in no small part at the time by often-blatant sexism and an at times over the top focus on the perceived supremacy of the penis within the gay male community but that is a topic for another time.

Our quasi mission statement read as follows: “Lavender University of the Rockies is a free school by and for the lesbian and gay communities of Colorado. It is dedicated to the free exchange of ideas, to the examination of diverse points of view and to free speech without censorship.” In addition to being on the University staff I was an occasional instructor offering often erudite classes including one called: Evolving Queer Spirituality or The Potential Significance of Paganism For Gay Men further subtitled “might Christianity just be paganism with the gayness taken out.” In only three of the course catalogs I managed to keep I also see I offered a class on the Tarot and one year a November 1st celebration of the Harvest Sabbat. Yeah, what can I say this was certainly my “witch-phase?”

The most fulfilling repeated offering I made though was one for gay men and involved a series of writings we would read and dissect by gay visionaries including Edward Carpenter, Gerald Heard, Harry Hay, Mitch Walker, and Don Kilhefner among others. These offerings were usually weekly and involved spirited group discussion around that week’s selected piece and food. Most of the sessions were held at the Center or my house up in Five Points. Many of the attendees were budding radical fairies and some friendships were made that last until this day.

These were probably the peak years of what I will rather presumptuously and ostentatiously call my Queer-Radical-Phase. These years of my life involved hours and hours of community work and play with many other often very receptive comrades in arms. It was a very exciting and challenging time for me personally and I think for the larger LGBT community, the world was truly becoming our oyster. It was constantly being reinforced for me on a daily basis that Harry Hay was right-on that we were a distinct people and a real cultural minority.

It is my belief that it was the slowing emerging AIDS nightmare that derailed this truly grassroots revolution and really forced a refocusing of our energies into survival. The tensions created by that little retrovirus locally nearly led to the end of The Gay and Lesbian Community Center and certainly to lots of soul searching and critique of the rich expressions of much of the gay male world we had come to know and love in the 1970’s.

I like to fantasize that if AIDS had not come along we would have seen a much more radical queer community and force for seminal social change than we are today. The community might have led a nationwide revolt that would have tossed Ronald Reagan out of office in 1984 and reversed the countries unfortunate slide into oligarchy. Perhaps igniting a re-election of Jimmy Carter and a return of the solar panels to the roof of the White House. We might well have been in the vanguard of the dissolution of traditional marriage, replacing it with a much more polymorphous and rich arrangement of human interaction and loving support.

A severe curtailing and redefinition of the American military into a force truly devoted to peace on earth would have been another goal. Instead of the race to the local recruiters office for those with no other economic choice everyone would do two years or more of service to the community that would have been of great benefit to the entire world and health of the planet. But perhaps I am putting way too much on our plate or …. hmm … maybe I did do too much LSD in the 70’s.

© April 2014

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Tender Loving Care by Gillian

I came out to the world in the early eighties; the early nineteen-eighties, that is, not my early eighties. I was around forty. I came roaring out of the closet in a letter printed in the Boulder Camera newspaper, as I lived in Lyons at the time, and it felt great.

Beyond words great. 
I was free, I was me – the me I was born to be. 
Free at last.
OK.
Now what?
I didn’t have to hide the real me any longer. Great. But what did that do for me? Yeah yeah it did feel wonderful, but it had to lead somewhere. Feeling free is terrific but I needed action. But what action? I hadn’t a clue. I knew what I wanted but I hadn’t a single solid idea of how to go about finding it. A few other lesbians made themselves known to me at work after I came out, but they were in long-term relationships and had little to suggest by way of meeting others. All they had to offer was The Three Sisters bar in Denver, or start playing softball, neither of which appealed to me. I have, as most of you know, no aversion to bars and alcohol, but was quite incapable of conjuring up in my imagination any vision of what a lesbian bar, or its clientele, would really be like. How was I expected to dress and act? Going to this place alone offered rather a scary prospect.
Almost as scary as taking up softball!
At that time, gay and lesbian gatherings and organizations often kept pretty well below the mainstream radar and were not easy to find. I looked in the Boulder paper and found very little. But then, one Sunday, I spotted a small ad. The following weekend was the monthly meeting of a group called TLC – standing not for Tender Loving Care, as I had supposed, but for The Lesbian Connection. This group proclaimed its purpose as offering an alternative lesbian gathering for those outside of the college community. At each meeting there was a speaker and a following discussion. It all sounded rather staid and not in the least bit scary. It was held in a church community room for God’s sake!
The next Saturday I turned up at my first TLC meeting, and in the first ten minutes I knew I had found a home. There were more lesbians there than I knew existed in the entire country, and it seemed to me that every single one of them was warm, and witty, and wonderful. Of course they were not. They were just like any other group of people; some were indeed warm, some witty, some wonderful, but others were boring, aloof, or just plain obnoxious. But I loved that group of women who folded me into their arms and their lives and propelled me into a lesbian social whirl I so craved. They eased my entry into this new world; they welcomed and supported me in my new life. Some became firm friends for life. As far as I was concerned, the initials TLC certainly did stand for Tender Loving Care. That was what I found there, anyway.
The group continued for several years, eventually dying a natural death as such organizations do.
These days Betsy and I again gather with a lesbian group which meets monthly, but this one is OLOC, or Old Lesbians Organizing for Change. We meet at different places throughout northern Colorado, from Denver to Estes Park to Loveland, and all points in between. This group, as the name implies, has somewhat loftier aims perhaps than the old Lesbian Connection, but many of the same women are there, and a similar number of women attend the meetings. 
The social time and energy we once used in dancing and parties and wild weekends, we now tend to expend in support of old friends in care facilities, and hospitals, or struggling to stay independent at home. But the laughter and the camaraderie remain, as does the tender loving care.
These wonderful groups, past and present, played, and still play a huge part in my GLBT existence. But the icing on that particular cake is, now, this very special Storytelling group.
I find, within it, that same humor, the same sharing and caring and support, the same laughter and tears, as in TLC and OLOC. I consider myself incredibly blessed to have been welcomed into such groups throughout my lesbian life; groups which, whatever the name, could all most appropriately have been called Tender Loving Care.

© 19 April 2014

About
the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Stories of GLBT Organizations by Ray S

When I noted the address, 1301 East Colfax Ave., I thought it was the new location for Pleasures. Interesting, but that didn’t make sense with the info I had from a recent edition of “Out Front” a newspaper which I had surreptitiously read when no one was around. My mission was to learn what, where, and when about some sort of conference about “adult” (nice-speak for “old”) gay folks being held this weekend.

Cautiously my closet door creaked open just a bit and barely sticking my head out I bravely made my way to the address which turned out to be some place named anonymously “The CENTER.” Then if you looked close in fine print you read “Advancing LGBT Colorado.”

Long story short a really nice guy, I thought he was straight, clued me in and took my registration fee.

The next day I arrived at the conference site hotel to have a whole new world open up for me.It was wonderful to observe the diverse (overused word but accurate) crowd. Mr. “Center-Ken” had put this really first class show together with lots of dedicated volunteer help. People manning or “woman-ing” booths hawking pertinent products or information of all kinds. It was SAGE high on some really good stuff.

At one presentation the group–we had all signed up for various subjects regarding gays far beyond the millennium age–was hearing all about preparing for some financial or medical eventuality adult GLBT’s will be confronted with. When I asked the young man sitting to my right (he had to be 30 or so and that’s young!) if he knew what these folks were talking about, it didn’t matter what the answer was because suddenly I was smittten with an instantaneous crush. Could he possibly be interested in Daddy? I hardly qualified for lack of the necessary sugar, but I felt my ardor rising. See, you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Turned out after luncheon and the speaker, we broke up into small groups again for various “learning experiences” and low and behold the new object of my affection was leading one on the subject “self esteem,” right up my alley.

Needless to say my love light had flared brightly for at least the duration of the lunch hour, then flickered out with challenges of trying to locate something called self esteem and learning his partner was a famous drag queen, on top of experiencing hovering in and out of my cozy closet.

Once the whole Dog and Pony Show had terminated I was aware I had found a new friend and was resigned happily returning to my pre-baby boomer age group. I could see the bright light under the crack between the floor and the bottom of the closet door. Somehow between Mr. Ken-Center and the SAGE Sheraton Downtown a new life had begun.

Footnote #1, with apologies to Mr. Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray ne’ me that appeared in a recent edition of “Out Front” has come back to haunt me, but delightfully so. Last night after I had finished this testimonial, my cell beckoned around 8 PM. The voice of my “friend” from far away St. Louis called to tell me how happy he was to have received a copy of said publication and the SAGE OF THE ROCKIES STORY TIME stories. This coincidence was doubly welcome when my young friend (he must be 35 by now–just a kid) told me we would get together when he is passing through on a business trip to Wyoming in May. Does hope spring eternal or at least stumble a little?

Footnote #2 Germain pg. 45

“Life is a mirror which riddles the truth;

Age is but an excess of youth.”

April 7, 2014

About the Author

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Queens, Lesbians, and Gay Pride Committee by Louis

Geographical Note: Jackson Heights is located in Queens County in New York City. The big pride parade takes place in Manhattan. Jackson Heights is the second biggest lesbian and gay neighborhood in NYC outside of Greenwich Village. The population is primarily Hispanic and Hindu. 3 major subway lines converge in Jackson Heights so it is easily accessible from anywhere in Queens and Manhattan.

I was the recording secretary of the Queens Lesbian and Gay Pride Committee from 1986 to 1988, for 3 years. It was hard work. At the monthly meetings I had to record pretty much what all the committees had to report. The march in Jackson Heights, Queens, took place and still takes place on the 4th Sunday of June every year. There were the Treasurer’s report, the advertising-promotion committee report, the lawyer’s report, the President’s report, the mass mailing committee report. The promo-advertising-committee had a sub-committee, the fundraising committee that had its own separate report, the website maintenance committee.

The lawyer usually reported on the status of his application to the IRS of the 501.c status of our not-for-profit corporation, QLGPC. For some reason this was an on-going process as opposed to a one-time settled issue.

Of course, the fundraising sub-committee had to report directly to the treasurer, and the treasurer told the General Meeting where the money was being kept, in what bank account. The treasurer had to report to the (rather expensive) CPA of the corporation. The treasurer also reported on the payment of the expensive liability insurance premiums. The officers of the corporation, including myself, had to sign the certificate of incorporation. The fundraising sub-committee was no joke; they received large donations both from gay bar owners and large corporations such as Citibank. Then of course QLGPC sold advertising to businesses that wanted to purchase ads in QLGPC brochures and other promotional material. Naturally, wherever there is a large accumulation of cash, there are going to be embezzlers. But QLGPC was quite successful in finding out and getting rid of its embezzlers. Some of them were jailed.

Then there were more reports from the liaisons to the elected officials, the liaison to the Mayor’s Office (referring to the Mayor of New York City), the liaison to the department of sanitation, the liaison to the police department. And finally there was the liaison committee to the civic organizations, both gay lib type civic organizations and other groups. Among all of these, the most important was

P-FLAG that became a major sponsor of the Queens March. Another important group was ACQC, or the Aids Center of Queens County. In this case the liaisons were also officers of their own organizations, and they would report back to their organizations what they heard at our monthly general meeting. I should qualify this and state that as June approached, the monthly meetings turned into weekly meetings.

Then there were the reports from the liaisons to the vendors of which there were two categories: regular vendors, food vendors, beer vendors (selling beer required another special permit from the City) and the civic groups, such as HRCF, the NLGTF, the New York Imperial Court and on and on and on. They all had to rent their space. If the civic groups could not afford the fee, if applicable the fee was waived. Then there were the Lesbian and gay ethnic groups, e.g. the gay and Lesbian Bolivians. In other words, these groups set up their tents for the festival and rally following the 15-block march down 35th Avenue.

This whole parade committee had been founded and originally promoted by City Council Member, Danny Dromm. Mr. Dromm was also the founder of the Progressive Caucus in the New York City Council. His biography is quite interesting.

Then there was the Hospitality Committee with a sub-committee liaison to the NYC Dept of Parks. The Hospitality Committee was responsible for setting up what went on at the main tent of the Festival where Danny Dromm presented himself to the public to announce important legal victories or setbacks over the previous years. The Hospitality Committee also had to arrange the catering for the guests of honor at the main stage of the Festival. Yours truly was one of the guests of honor. In general, they did a very good job. The entertainment was really sensational and inclusive. And any VIP, such as a member of Congress or an elected official from New York State General Assembly or the Senate, could depend on getting his or her five minutes or so on the stage, once he or she was approved by the QLGPC steering committee. Special mention should be made of NY State Senator, Tom Duane, a long-time gay lib agitator.

Another issue that required planning was the choosing the Grand Marshall of the Parade, which usually was the Borough President. The BP would usually be expected to hold a Lesbian and gay pride reception in the Boro Hall, to which Danny Dromm was usually invited. The ACQC liaison committee also had an outreach team to local hospitals. The most responsive but certainly not the only local hospital was Elmhurst General Hospital that was interested in promoting its own Health Fairs. One of the officers of Elmhurst General Hospital was a particularly good friend of QLGPC.

After the first 3 or 4 years of holding the Queens Lesbian and Gay Pride parade, certain people wanted to start a Lesbian and gay Pride Committee for the borough of Brooklyn. So it happened, and QLGPC formed another liaison committee. So now Brooklyn has its own Lesbian and gay annual pride march and festival, and, for the sake of variety, holds their festivities at night.

An off-shoot of the Hospitality Committee was a sub-committee charged with the responsibility of setting up the Winterpride Dinner. If you wanted to attend, the ticket cost $60.00, less if you couldn’t afford it. So every year there is an elaborate catered affair at one of the rather lavish catering halls in Queens. The one I remember is Dante’s in Jackson Heights. But there were others, when attendance at the Winterpride Dinner got too large, Dante’s could not handle it. At the dinner, you could expect a Baroque quartet, lots of booze and very gourmet appetizers. Again part of the entertainment of the main stage at Winterpride were the necessarily brief presentations of the local politicians who pointed out what they did and are doing for our community.

After 3 years of being recording secretary, I got burned out. Someone succeeded me, I think it was a Mr. Siciliano. After 3 years of this, I said to myself that what gay liberation means to me is not so much political organizing, as important as this is. Gay liberation means to me the status of Lesbian gay people in the Church community. So I ran around to various churches, etc. I told you that story already. Besides the people I was dealing with all had some real political power, they were middle class. I did not really identify with them. I used to frequent the Lesbian and Gay Center on West 13th Street in NYC. I kept track of the groups that formed there. Two groups that intrigued me were COOL – Committee of Outraged Lesbians and Bronx Lesbians from a Lower Class Background. Whoever the founders of these groups were, I say “bravo.” Middle class gay people are not the only people interested in gay liberation. And there is more than one way of being disenfranchised.

Moral: We should all be thankful to the organizers of our annual Denver Gay and Lesbian Pride March. It involves a crushing amount of legal work to keep everything on track.

April 7, 2014

About the Author

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.