The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by a woman in Monroe County. I think it’s amazing, we’re all very excited about it,” Hineseley.

At a youth conference today- hosted by the Gay Alliance of Genesee valley, a sense of victory over the court ruling that New York must recognize gay marriages performed out of state.

Christopher Hineseley, the executive of the Gay Alliance, says it means stability for his wife and daughter. Something he is says is long overdue.

“It’s a great thing for families, it’s a great thing for couples,” who are trying to protect themselves financiallyand legally,” Hineseley.

The ruling comes after a lawsuit filed by an employee of Monroe Community College.

Patricia Martinez sued because she wanted health care benefits for her partner. The two married in Canada, but the college refused.

“We do not believe that gay marriage should be allowed or permitted in New York State,” Martinez.

Pastor Grant Aldridge of Glad Tidings Church in Rochester says the county must appeal the ruling.

“God has strictly spoken that for two men or two women to have sex together is an abomination.” “We do not hate gay people, but we do not approve of what they are doing,” Aldridge.

Hineseley says gay couples deserve the benefits given to married couples.

I think it’s getting harder to understand why someone would want to allow one couple to get married but not another”

It’s very hard to justify discrimination”

The judge that made this ruling says the state legislature can block these marriages from being acknowledged. But until that happens, they must be recognized in New York.

The New York Civil Liberties Union called the ruling a victory for families, justice and human rights.

Source: msnbc.msn.com

Film events already lined up include a screening of Victim at the Stockport Plaza on February 7th. This film, starring Dirk Bogarde as a doomed gay men blackmailed by tormentors, proved to be an instrumental part in the movement to legalize homosexuality during the sixties. Meanwhile, the Lesbian and Gay Foundation are launching The Gaiety Club housed in their offices on Princess Street in Manchester on February 10th. This will be a monthly film club and, for LGBT History Month, they have chosen to screen The Celluloid Closet; a showcase of the contributions LGBT people have made to the film industry during the last hundred years. Narrated by Lily Tomlin, the film features countless clips and contributions from such luminaries as Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Harvey Fierstein and Gore Vidal.

The LGF are also bringing a little light relief to their fundraising activities this month. They have launched Retro Homo with all their male members of staff pledging to stop shaving for the entire month in homage to those clone icons of the seventies. In a statement, Chair of the LGF’s Board of Trustees David McGovern said “Secretly, I have been looking for an excuse to grow facial hair and a moustache like my hero Burt Reynolds.

Alba Martinez, chief executive officer of the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, didn’t know her father was gay until he contracted AIDS and died when she was 21. To the world, Antonio Martinez, an administrator at the University of Puerto Rico, was a heterosexual family man. Only when his disease was diagnosed, in 1986, did he reveal his secret life. Six months later, he was dead at 55.

The traumatic event “reaffirmed my belief in being true to yourself,” says Alba Martinez, 45. “I felt really sad that my father had to lead a double life. Nobody should have to go through life hiding who they are.”

In the buttoned-down business corridors of Philadelphia and other large cities, an increasing number of gay CEOs are not hiding anymore. Some, like Martinez and Sean Buffington, new president of the University of the Arts, have been open about their sexual orientation for their entire professional lives.

They are in the minority. Coming out is serious business in business. Especially for a CEO.

It can stall, or even derail, careers. It can spark backlash from clients or shareholders or boards of directors. It can trigger consumer boycotts or alumni mutinies.

For gay CEOs who keep their sexual orientation under wraps, much of that fear is self-generated, says Kirk Snyder, author of The G Quotient: Why Gay Executives Are Excelling as Leaders.

“That closet has become very familiar,” says Snyder, 47, who came out 15 years ago. “You’re not fooling anybody. Employees take their cues from you. Everybody knows, but nobody talks about it. We can’t live that way anymore.”

Still, not a single CEO of a Fortune 500 company is openly gay, according to Snyder’s research. He says he knows of five who are closeted, however, and he predicts that at least one of them will come out within five years.

Five openly gay CEOs in Philadelphia were interviewed for this article. An equal number declined. Despite being out to their companies and to the gay community at large, several said they weren’t comfortable, or weren’t ready, to be totally public.

One said she wanted the spotlight to be on her company, not on her, regardless of her sexuality. Another was advised by his company not to participate. All agreed it was more difficult to be out in the business world.

Difficulty aside, “I would never even consider working in an environment where I couldn’t be open about who I am,” says Martinez, former commissioner of Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services, the city’s largest operating department, and a former columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News.

Martinez came out while attending Georgetown Law School. (An academic whiz, she began at 19.) Her partner, Roberta Trombetta, 40, an executive with the Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania, is also a lawyer.

Gay CEOs “are more reticent to stand out in a crowd,” says Bob Witeck, openly gay CEO of Witeck-Combs Communications in Washington and author of Business Inside Out.

“It’s more important to represent the company than yourself. You don’t want to go off script. You don’t want to be perceived by a conservative board of directors as pushing an agenda.”

Martinez says she does not judge other gay leaders on how public – or private – they choose to be. For her and numerous others, however, personal authenticity is essential for good leadership.

“You can’t be in leadership and not be who you are,” she says. “You lead by example. Leaders have to be truthful and open. I couldn’t live any other way.”

Neither could the University of the Arts’ Buffington. One of a handful of openly gay college presidents in the United States, he is also, at 38, one of the youngest.

Born and raised in rural Maryland, Buffington was an altar boy for 10 years. He came out during his junior year at Harvard.

He and his partner of 14 years, Boston Globe arts editor Scott Heller, 46, were married in July in Lenox, Mass. They’ve been commuting since Buffington began his five-year, $200,000-plus contract in mid-August.

Buffington, an arts administrator at Harvard for 13 years, says he was totally up-front with UArt’s search committee about his “marital status.”

It was such a nonissue, he says, that Heller joined him for dinner with the chairman and vice chairman of the board.

Around the 2,400-student campus, “I have gotten absolutely no negative response,” says Buffington, who hosts pizza parties to get to know students. “That doesn’t mean people don’t think it.”

For a university president, being out presents special challenges. Boards of trustees, which tend to be older and conservative, fear it will hurt fund-raising, a huge part of any president’s job.

Some fret over the image of a president attending university functions with his same-sex partner. Or playing golf with donors and not talking about the wife and kids. (News flash: Buffington, who stands 6-foot-2 and wears size 13 shoes, doesn’t like sports.)

For public universities – UArts is private – there’s the additional fear that conservative lawmakers will lobby state legislatures to reduce funding.

As part of a generation that grew up enjoying benefits hard won by older activists, Buffington says he doesn’t sweat the gay stuff. Given the changing sexual landscape, he doesn’t have to.

“It’s easier now. There isn’t the sense of a day-to-day insecurity or fear or anger. Being gay is in my consciousness every day, but it’s not the defining sense of who I am.”

Geography matters, too. Martin Sellers, 59, CEO of Sellers Feinberg, a health-care strategy firm in Center City, says it’s easier for a CEO to be out in gay-friendly Philadelphia than in many other cities.

“You see a lot more [openly gay CEOs] than you used to,” says Sellers, whose 15-year partner, Brian Dorsey, 41, is an actor and playwright. “If you turned the clock back 25 years, there might not have been a single one.”

United Way’s Martinez agrees. “The business community here, as I’ve experienced it, is very enlightened. Leaders understand they have a diverse workforce and a diverse customer base. You can’t be exclusive anymore.”

David Jefferys, CEO and founder of the marketing firm Altus Group, learned that lesson about 10 years ago. That’s when he began adding gay-related businesses to the company’s all-heterosexual accounts.

At the same time, he came out professionally, too. Today, 50 percent of Altus Group’s business is targeted to gays, and Jefferys feels 100 percent whole.

“It doesn’t feel like I’m living two separate lives,” says Jefferys, 50, who grew up in tony Darien, Conn.

“Before, I had to have my private life hidden when I was at work. I had to play a lot of games. You can’t have integrity without honesty.”

Authenticity is what drives leadership ability, in Sellers’ view. “It’s what attracts people, what makes them interested in what you have to say. It’s what forms trust.”

Jefferys came out during his senior year at Villanova. He and his partner, dentist Ron Hayes, 40, have been together 12 years.

Mark Stiffler doesn’t understand what all the noise is about.

Stiffler, 45, CEO of Synygy, an incentive-compensation company based in Chester, has been out since he was 16. He has two degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and owns homes in Gladwyne, Florida and Arizona.

“I’m clueless why anybody isn’t out,” says the Harrisburg native, who is single. “I’ve never experienced any problems. I think it helps to be educated and rich.”

Stiffler says he’s been hearing the same arguments for 25 years against letting one’s rainbow flag fly. He’s over it. Even if he didn’t own the company.

“If you lose a job, it wasn’t the right job. If you lose friends, they weren’t really your friends. If your family doesn’t talk to you for 10 years, oh, well.

“Things happen. How you react to them is within your power and control.”

Spoken like a CEO. Gay, straight or otherwise.

Source:philly.com

Some parents in California are pissed after finding out that photos of their teenaged sons have shown up on some gay porn websites.

The photos of teen water polo players, some boys as young as 14, were displayed next to photos of nude young men and graphic sexual content, an Orange County Register investigation found.

Parents say some of the boys were traumatized and had to seek counseling.

“These kids don’t look at what they do as shameful,” said Joan Gould, an international water polo official and a spokeswoman for a group of Orange County water polo parents. “For someone to come in and take what these kids are doing and take it out of context and exploit these images, these kids and their schools, because you can see the school name on the caps, is just horrible.”

Cops at the University of California, Irvine are investigating whether a campus police dispatcher was the one who photographed the high school athletes for gay-oriented sites.

The Register said it found photos of players from 11 Orange County high schools in addition to schools in Los Angeles and San Diego counties on several pages of one gay porn site registered to a London address.

PLEASE NOTE: The photos here are NOT the photos of the teenaged boys. These men in this photo are a part of British college waterpolo team.

Sir, Three cheers for the investment banks actively trying to recruit gay and lesbian staff in Asia. However, Raphael Minder’s article “Cool reception for Asia’s gay workers” (January 15) acknowledges but barely touches on the numerous difficulties that these new gay recruits may experience later in their careers once “partnered” if they consider transfers to other Asian countries.

Two years after I was transferred to Tokyo my male partner was refused re-entry to Japan at Narita airport and had to return to England. The agreement made earlier with the immigration authorities was no longer deemed acceptable. Although HSBC’s human resources department had given him all the benefits of an “expat” spouse, Japanese immigration law could not treat him similarly.

Five months of unwelcome separation followed before he could return to Japan. Despite finding a workable solution, the uncertainty surrounding subsequent annual visa renewals curbed my willingness to extend my stay in Japan and we returned to England just two years later.

Visa problems are not the only impediments to successful international relocations for gay staff. Even at senior levels, gay or lesbian partners are more likely to have their own careers than their heterosexual counterparts. An overseas transfer or promotion for one may require the abandonment of a career by the partner. A reluctance to abandon a satisfying career for the uncertain stimuli of the “expat spouses” circuit is sometimes understandable.

James Johnston,

Source: ft.com 

SACRAMENTO – Phone calls Robert Gay made to 911 dispatchers after a fatal fight with his wife in 2005 became the focus Tuesday of oral arguments before the state’s 3rd District Court of Appeal.

The three justices – Coleman Blease, Vance Raye and Arthur Scotland – have three months to decide whether Gay’s 10-year sentence for shooting his wife should be overturned. Gay is out on bail while they decide.

The 911 recording “shows the mental state of mind” Gay had, said Charles Bonneau, Gay’s Sacramento attorney.

Bonneau argued that jurors in the initial trial should have heard the 911 calls, which San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Valli Israels never presented as evidence. Gay should get a new trial, Bonneau has said.

Gay and his wife, Peggy Spencer, were in a deteriorating marriage when they fought in the garage of their Spanos Park home on July 31, 2005, authorities said. Both ended up with gunshot wounds that day.

Gay had told police the gun went off in a struggle, while prosecutors, who sought a murder conviction, claimed Gay planned the killing and inflicted upon himself a nonfatal wound to cover up the crime.

A jury in June 2006 found Gay, 56, guilty of voluntary manslaughter. San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge K. Peter Saiers sentenced him to 10 years in state prison and then set Gay free on bail pending the appeal.

Jurors would have been “impressed by his breathing, his concern for his wife,” Bonneau said, also describing “spontaneous comments” Gay made to dispatchers to prove the sincerity of the calls.

In one emergency call, Gay told dispatchers he and his wife were both shot and that somebody should contact their son. In the second call, Gay asked dispatchers if he should open his garage door so paramedics could better find them, according to arguments.

In the appeal, attorneys submitted written arguments over several months, and Bonneau requested a hearing in which each side could argue for 15 minutes as the judges asked questions.

Deputy Attorney General Kelly Le Bel argued Gay planned the killing and Saiers’ sentence should be upheld. Gay’s spontaneous statements were “self-serving,” she argued.

Gay waited 13 to 20 minutes after the shooting to call for help, Le Bel said, citing the trial record. If jurors heard the recordings, the outcome of the trial would be the same, Le Bel said.

Gay attended the hearing, which was held in an ornate courtroom next to the Capitol in Sacramento, as did Israels. Gay was not available for comment after the hearing.

Bonneau said he could not predict the eventual ruling based on questions the three justices asked.

“They like it that way,” said Bonneau, who expected a written decision in the coming weeks.

Source: recordnet.com

The study found that couples in same-sex relationships were more flexible in terms of gender roles, parenting, and household responsibilities.

It also found that lesbian couples are emotionally closer than gay couples, who, in turn, are emotionally closer than heterosexual married couples.

“It all comes down to greater equality in the relationship,” Green said to UPI. “Research shows that lesbian and gay couples have a head start in escaping the traditional gender role divisions that make for power imbalances and dissatisfaction in many heterosexual relationships.”

According to the article, the researches concluded, “heterosexual couples could learn from gay couples about sharing housework and childcare, using softer communication in conflict, and having more nurturing behaviors toward one another and their children.”

Source: advocate.com

    The Castro district of San Francisco, which has a higher gay population in the United States, has been hardest hit, researchers said.

    But the superbug was said to spread through skin to skin contact, therefore, anyone could get it.

    “It is skin to skin contact, not sexual orientation, that is crucial for it to be passed on,” said a spokesperson for the Health Protection Agency. 

    ”These multi-drug resistant infections often affect gay men at body sites in which skin to skin contact occurs during sexual activities,” said Binh Diep, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who led the study.

    The bacteria can cause life-threatening and deep-tissue infections if they enter the body through a wound in the skin and only be treated with expensive, intravenous antibiotics.

    Most people carry staph in their noses but community-based MRSA also can live in and around the anus and is passed between sexual partners.

    Staph killed about 19,000 Americans in 2005, most of them in hospitals, according to a report published in October’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

Source: news.xinhuanet.com