Tag Archives: lgbt community

Damn The Man, Save The Howard Brown Health Center!

SimchaNovember 10, 2010 //

Help! The Howard Brown Health Center, which has been serving the LGBT community since the ‘80s, needs donations, baaaaad. Two top officials were dismissed earlier this year for financial mismanagement of grant funds, and now the new CEO, Jamal Edwards, has regretfully announced that the center needs to raise $500K by Jan. 1, or it will have to close its doors. Noooooo! The clinic has been a cornerstone of AIDS research and gay outreach in Chicago. In fact, Howard Brown is currently conducting a decades-long research program, the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, and it would be a cryin’ shame for humanity if it had to give up on the work now. Keep reading »

Facebook Is The New Closet, When It Comes To Coming Out

Carrie WasterlainJune 4, 2009 //

According to the LGBT community, Facebook is useful for more than just sharing photos and favorite pastimes; it’s also great for coming out. Instead of doing it the old fashioned way—face to face—coming out of the closet now only entails checking a box on your Facebook profile page. Friends can then discover your sexual status at the comfort of their own computer, and you can avoid spending precious time engaging in what could be uncomfortable exchanges.

Gays, lesbians, and bisexuals talked to Time about the new Facebook trend, explaining that it has turned what used to be a tedious process into a convenient and liberating one.

“I just came from a courthouse where they practically want you to undress to be approved for official gender reassignment,” said Herrald, a practicing bisexual. “But on Facebook, I could do it myself and under my own terms. I made that announcement in my own town square.”

Oh Facebook, how we rely on you.
Keep reading »

Harvard Endows LGBT Professorship Role

Annika HarrisJune 4, 2009 //

The Ivy League is making waves toward greater acceptance this week. First, Katie Couric was the first woman to give a commencement speech at Princeton. Now, Harvard University has become the first institute of higher education to create an endowed professorship in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies. Although other colleges and universities offer courses and degree programs in sexuality studies, Harvard is the first to set up an endowed professorship on the subject. Visiting scholars will teach on sexuality and issues affecting sexual minorities for one semester each.

The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus raised $1.5 million to fund the role, which is named after F.O. Matthiessen, an American studies scholar and literary critic who kept his homosexuality a secret while chairing a Harvard undergraduate program. “It’s not so much that we’ve been able to raise this money, it’s that Harvard and the faculty at Harvard have accepted this perpetual endowment for gay and lesbian studies,” said Mitchell Adams of the Harvard Board of Overseers. Now, if we could only get same sex marriage legalized across the board, we’d be one progressive society. [Reuters] Keep reading »