Youth commission to honor Boston Pride, PFLAG leaders

by Laura Kiritsy
Editor-in-chief
Bay Windows

The Friends of LGBT youth will honor Boston Pride Committee President Linda DeMarco and Greater Boston PFLAG Executive Director Pam Garramone at this year’s Sunset Soiree at the Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge on May 8.

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Gay support groups challenge homophobia at May 15 event

from The Burlington Post

It was 17 years ago, on May 17, that the World Health Organization (WHO) removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.

On Thursday, May 15, the International Day Against Homophobia and the International Day of the Family are being celebrated together by the Halton Organization for Pride and Education (HOPE) and the Halton Chapter of Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays (PFLAG).

The two local groups are celebrating both days as a means to "combat" discrimination of sexual orientation and gender identities for lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transsexual and queer (LGBTQ) members of the Halton community.

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Father Knows Best: Having a Gay Son is Great

PFLAG Blog

“Yeah, so what?,” I asked myself.

I’d just read Would You Really Be OK with a Gay Kid? a March 21 column on the Details Magazine blog. The column contends that even progressive men, perhaps especially progressive men, have a hard time being “comfortable” with the idea of having a gay son. I actually do know a progressive man who is uncomfortable that his son is gay. My wife thinks there are many more.

I’m not so certain. After all, I know only one befuddled dad, and the column presents only three other anonymous progressive men with heebie-jeebies about gay sons. But I also met a progressive dad who accompanied his son, a high school sophomore, to our PFLAG meeting last Sunday. He wants to be more out than his son. He wants to tell everyone. He’s proud to have a gay son.

OK. There’s one progressive dad who’s not breaking out in hives about gay sons. I know another one, me. A child of the sixties, I wanted my children to march to a different drummer, and so when I learned John is gay, I clapped along with the beat.

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Savage Love, In memory of Dan's Mother

By Dan Savage

April 4, 2008

I thought I could bang out a column today—a regular column, a column about my readers’ problems and their freaky fetishes and all those asshole politicians out there. You know, the usual.

I opened my laptop and started reading your letters. I love reading your letters—I do. But I couldn’t get into it. I’m disappointed in myself. I write this column at Ann Landers’s desk, for crying out loud, and the old lady banged out a heartbreaking, truncated column when her marriage collapsed. If Landers could bang one out under that kind of emotional strain, then I could damn well bang one out, too. Just do it, right?

My mother died on Monday.

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PFLAG companion article

October 11: National Coming Out day and Cyndi Lauper

PFLAG Launches 'Straight for Equality' on October 11

Cyndi Lauper will be urging straight America to speak out for Gay friends.

From October 11-14, hundreds of families and allies of GLBT people will be in Washington D.C., for the PFLAG National Convention, presented by IBM.

The national event marks the official launch of Straight for Equality, an entirely new project that aims to motivate the vast audience of fair-minded Americans who wish to more actively support equality in their daily lives.

Straight for Equality empowers people who may not have GLBT family members but who nonetheless want to curb homophobia in their daily lives. From speaking up when hearing an anti-gay joke, openly supporting equality in your work place to taking action to change anti-GLBT policies.

The PFLAG National Convention also will feature special guests such as the world's most widely syndicated columnist, Dear Abby, and the first-ever openly gay Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson.