The groundbreaking APICHA Transgender Clinic provides comprehensive medical services including the initiation and maintenance of hormone therapy along with mental and social support services designed to accommodate the dis-tinct needs of transgender individuals with particular focus on communities of color.
ABOUT APICHA
This year, APICHA has served over 2,600 patients, mostly people of color, LGBTQ and low income individuals in New York City. APICHA is staffed with a multi-lingual, multi-cultural staff fluent in 21 languages including various Asian languages, Spanish, Ro-manian, Italian and American Sign Language. Founded in 1989, APICHA provides comprehensive primary care and other medical services including mental health, STD and Hepatitis and supportive ser-vices targeted to Asian & Pacific Islanders, the LGBT community and other individuals living with and affected by HIV/AIDS. …
January 2012
The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) has launched a new ad attacking Ron Paul in Iowa and lauding Paul’s rival candidates for their views on ‘traditional marriage’, the NYT reports:
…the National Organization for Marriage ad injects a new and volatile issue into the race, one that has so far largely remained on the sidelines. Same-sex marriage has been a contentious issue in Iowa — voters have removed some of the state judges who paved the way for its legalization — but it has not been a major factor in the presidential campaign…
Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, said it was important for conservative Iowans to know where Mr. Paul stood on the issue before it was too late. “There’s five days left,” he said. “This is the critical period. This is a very unique election. People are still making up their minds in Iowa, and that’s why it’s important we do this now.”
Click the link above to watch the video and read the rest of the article.
This has been a game-changing year for transgender rights, says Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.
December 2011
By Scott McPherson
After hours of research, The Advocate Art Department has compiled this year’s list of the most searched gay and lesbian people on Google. Who came out on top? The results may surprise you! View last year’s list here, and see the 2011 list after the jump.
Sex sells: the business of pleasure (Sydney Morning Herald)
Smells like sexual revolution.
(via workingsex)
Each year, QUEER WOMEN OF COLOR MEDIA ARTS PROJECT offers 4 free Filmmaking Workshops through our award-winning Training Program. Our workshops serve teenagers to elders.
To better serve our community, QWOCMAP has conducted Training Program workshops specifically for youth (ages 18 to 25), queer folks of color who are butch/genderqueer/transgender, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black/African descent, Chicanas/Latinas, and Native American/Indigenous/First Nations queer women. We also offered a workshop focused on queer immigration. We do this to deepen the dialogue and address issues specific to each community’s needs.
Intermediate workshops (and soon, advanced workshops) are available to participants who have completed a film through our QWOCMAP introductory workshop. Information regarding intermediate workshops will be announced through our filmmaker listserve and on this page when available. Please contact TRAINING@qwocmap.org with questions or inquiries.Jump to QWOCMAP FREE Video WORKSHOP FOR YOUTH 2012 Jump to QWOCMAP FREE VIDEO WORKSHOP 2012
CNNMoney reports that the federal government’s lack of recognition of same-sex marriages, which forces legally married couples to file separately on their federal returns, results in as much as $6,000 per year in additional taxes.
Not only are these couples losing out because they can’t take advantage of the lower tax rates that come from combining incomes and deductions, says to the article, it’s “also harder for them to qualify for certain tax breaks because the credits phase out sooner for single filers.”
“It’s costing these families thousands of dollars a year, as well as the emotional pain and suffering,” said Ken Weissenberg, a partner at accounting firm EisnerAmper and one-half of a same-sex married couple.
CNNMoney based their information on a series of same-sex versus opposite-sex tax scenarios it presented to H&R Block. A seemingly equal household with one working parent earning $100,000 per year and one stay-at-home parent earning nothing produced radically different results when toggled between opposite-sex and same-sex situations.
While a heterosexual couple can file jointly and divide their assets, the homosexual couple must file separately, the breadwinning spouse as “head of household” and the non-earning spouse as “qualifying relative.”
In this particular scenario, says the article, the same-sex household would owe $4,543 more tax than the opposite-sex household. This is because the “head of household” designation pushes more income into a higher tax bracket and the individual filings provide lower standard deductions than “married and filing jointly.” The gay head of household is also subjected to a tax on the stay-at-home spouse’s health insurance premiums that the heterosexual breadwinner isn’t responsible for.
In addition to lowered benefits, same-sex couples who live in a marriage equality state often end up having to fill out twice as many forms when filing their state and federal returns. The additional — and generally more complicated — filings result in higher fees from their tax preparers.
Not that it’s not worth it, says Weissenberg, who says, “If I had to pay twice as much in taxes to be married to my husband, I would.”
Read the full article here.
At a church in southern California, a nativity scene depicting same-sex couples was vandalized in what’s being considered a hate crime.
Claremont United Methodist Church has a history of putting up nativity scenes with social or political messages. This year’s display included lightboxes showing three couples holding hands - a man and a woman, two men and two women.
Sometime before Christmas morning, someone pushed over the gay couples and left the straight couple standing. Police are investigating the incident as a hate crime and have not identified any suspects. From the LA Times:
One year, the nativity depicted a homeless family. The scene prompted an impromptu outpouring of giving, with congregation members leaving donations of food, clothing and money.
“Christ’s birth in a stable had a lot to do with poverty and being marginalized,” said Pastor Sharon Rhodes-Wickett. “What this church has tried to do through these scenes is say, ‘What would that look like today?’”
In 1993, the church made a decision to be a “reconciling congregation” which welcomes gay, lesbian and trasngender members. This year’s nativity display was intended to convey that message, Rhodes-Wickett said.
Well, this is sad. Still, props to the church for putting the display up and standing by it.
Looks like a great cause to support or a great resource for those out there who have been kicked out of their homes.
by Evan Hurst
Oh, Mittens! You’ve gone and rustled up the ire of the wackiest fringe rabbis in the land! Why, they have given you a new title, that of “dangerous homosexualist!” Oh, dear:
The statement today comes from the Rabbinical Alliance of America, which describes itself as an organization of 850 Orthodox Jewish rabbis in the U.S. and Canada, who serve some 500,000 religious Jews.
[…]
The statement attributed to Rabbi Yehuda Levin said that Hannukah marks the defeat of the Syrian Greek efforts “to impose their pagan culture on the Jewish people.” That included, he said, the increased emphasis on homosexual behavior.
“While our organization does not make any endorsements of political candidates, in view of the disastrous national decline in morality, we are compelled to condemn Mitt Romney’s support and promotion of the immoral homosexual lifestyle and agenda,” his statement said. “While we sympathize with those challenged by homosexual urges, or a desire for minors or adultery, they all remain prohibited activities that debase the practitioners and demoralize society. Gov. Romney over a long political career has earned the title: ‘Dangerous Homosexualist’ – one who constantly advances the militant anti-religious, anti-society, immoral homosexual agenda to the detriment of family people.”
Oh, Yehuda, for him to “constantly” be advancing anything, he’d have to be capable of having a single opinion on an issue for more than five minutes.
I am happy, though, to have a new thing to call him: Mittens The Dangerous Homosexualist. It’s like a whole new Mormon superhero!
