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Lesbian Lives On ABC.com
An Aug. 9 report on ABCNEWS.com, the online news branch of ABC News, includes an advice column by financial advisor Adriane G. Berg. Her subjects: Carol and Laura, a Lesbian couple living in Dallas. The headline reads, "Financial Makeover: Partners for Life." Berg wrote, "Carol is 50 years old. She considers her relationship with Laura a marriage partnership, and she wants them to have the same financial rights as legally married couples." Carol listed these as among her financial goals: "`To be able to retire at 65 to 70 and not have to depend on my children. To find a way to make as much as possible from what we can invest. As a Lesbian couple, we need to protect ourselves in areas heterosexual couples are protected by law.'" Berg began her advice to the pair by stating, "That the couple in that bedroom is Lesbian makes no difference." She recapped several financial planning mainstays for Gay couples, such as executing mutual powers of attorney. Then she added, "They can adopt! Yes, it is perfectly legal for Carol to adopt Laura, making her an inheritress, family member and beneficiary by law, as well as final arbiter of her health care decisions. Although the law deprives Gay couples of standing to marry, it allows them to make a legal commitment to family through adult adoption." Berg's column acknowledged that the two women are partners and plan to remain so. The financial advisor's recommendations proceeded from the assumption that the women wished, were it possible, to obtain the legal privileges of marriage. While not intended to be encyclopedic, Berg's advice provided same-gender couples a rich introduction to the many financial planning options now available to them.
This is almost a textbook example of the most sophisticated type of news coverage. It includes LGBT persons in a story not specifically about an LGBT issue. Please thank ABCNEWS.com for this matter-of-fact recognition that same-gender couples have relationships as valid and as potentially long-lasting as do their heterosexual counterparts--and that they share similar concerns, including the achievement of financial security. Contact: ABC News, 47 W. 66th St., NY, NY 10023, feedback form:www.abcnews.com/service/abc_contactus.html. [GLAAD]
Deconstructing Homophobia
In an Aug. 18 column on the Scripps Howard/Nando Net online news paper, Bruce Hilton refutes, point by point, major arguments for discriminating against Lesbians, Gay men, Bisexuals and Transgender persons. Hilton, who identifies himself as father of a Gay son, writes, "As a member of the United Methodists' four-year national study committee on homosexuality, I learned that there have been Gay people in every time and place - but that not all cultures made them the objects of hate... If prejudice against Gays isn't universal, why do we have it? Here are a few of the reasons." Among his responses: "What people say--Kids pick up parents' off-hand comments or silences. In company that would frown on racial jokes, homosexual stories are still OK. Abuse of the Bible--Jesus said nothing worth quoting about same-sex love, judging from the gospel writers. However, He often spoke harshly to self- righteous and judgmental people. The need for scapegoats--For more than 70 years, the Russian communists served us as a unifying, common enemy.... It's no coincidence that a new wave of homophobia began after the Berlin wall fell. We needed somebody to blame for the confusions of our day. Fear-mongering is profitable--Sophisticated fund-raisers have learned that fear of Gays pays." Hilton, who also is the National Center for Bioethics director, concludes, "The day will come when we look back on this homophobic era...and ask, 'How could we have been so dumb?'"
This writer - father of a Gay son, four-year member of his church's committee to study homosexuality, director of a center dealing with professional ethics issues - speaks with solid authority. His writing is the more persuasive for its unemotional but powerful reasoning. His column serves as a clip-and-save guide to answering many of the extremists' arguments against Gay civil rights, while providing on-point perspective to the current overarching debate.
Please express to Bruce Hilton your appreciation for his well-crafted column debunking the "reasons" for opposing Gay civil rights, and to Scripps Howard/Nando Net for posting the piece on its Internet site.
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One In Ten Students
Admit To Anti-Gay AttacksAlmost one in five male community college students studied said they've physically assaulted or threatened someone they thought was a Lesbian or Gay man, forensic psychologist Karen Franklin told the American Psychological Association (APA) recently. Among both male and female students, one in 10 admitted to assaulting or threatening someone they thought was a Lesbian or Gay man. Franklin interviewed almost 500 San Francisco-area students. Her study, endorsed in a new APA paper on hate crimes, calls for "a national policy of pro-active intervention against school-based harassment and violence." The national Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) reported in September 1997 that among 130 school districts it had studied, 36%-more than one in three-denied students any protection against discrimination or harassment on the basis of their sexual orientation and/or identity. Updated GLSEN statistics on school protections are to be released Sept. 10 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. For more information, contact Kate Frankfurt, GLSEN's director of advocacy and public policy, at 212.727.0135 x108 or via E-mail at kfrankfurt@glsen.org.
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