For years the main joke about the American Family Association’s bombastically overstated One Million Moms (OMM) has involved its name itself. For obvious reasons. When an organization gives itself a grandiose name like that, the comedy is built-in.
But after a weekend where we watched a popular American brand, The Hallmark Channel, temporarily duped into believing that the organization’s constant bark was really an effective bite, it is time to move past the jokes and state the obvious about this organization: it is basically One Meddling Mom with an agenda, and no company should be giving her the credence she so desperately craves.
Her name is Monica Cole. In the decade that I have been aware of One Million Moms, she is quite literally the only staff member I have ever heard anyone name. She is the one and only person who appears on their petitions, as well as the one and only person who speaks for them to the media. She is the mom. Her. Solo. One person, supposedly representing one million.
One Meddling Mom has issued so many calls and condemnations over the years, it’s become easy to tune them out. As GLAAD has arduously detailed, OMM has gone after everything from recent blockbuster Toy Story 4 for including a seconds-long clip of a supposed lesbian couple that quite literally no one but them noticed, to Chips Ahoy for a Twitter ad featuring a Rupaul’s Drag Race star. Basically if a company hires, recognizes, features, or in any way supports an LGBTQ person, One Meddling Mom will issue a petition, claim to have millions of supporters behind her, and then start cranking the AFA machine in hopes of getting some sort of press for her campaign-of-the-week. OMM even uses a conservative PR firm, Hamilton Strategies, to help spread this message to a wider public.
Sadly, because nonsense will forever grab headlines, OMM is pretty capable when it comes to getting ink. It’s typically dismissive, if not outright derisive, press. Most often the anti-LGBTQ campaign to which it is attached goes absolutely nowhere and the company under attack continues right along serving its entire customer base rather than cutting out the share that AFA/OMM believes to be anti-godly mistakes. Still, Monica Cole and her minuscule operation that masquerades as “millions” does get people talking.
It’s easy to be fooled into thinking the organization is larger than it is. But let’s look at some evidence:
The Internet ranking site Alexa (not to be confused with your in-home listening device) gives OneMillionMoms.com a ranking of #1,133,944 in global internet engagement. That is extremely low. For comparison’s sake, GLAAD’s own page has a ranking that is ten times higher ranking than theirs.
One Million Moms has only 4,200 Twitter followers. Sure, not everyone uses social media, and it might even be fair to say that OMM’s target audience uses it at a lower rate. But 4,200 followers? For a squad of supposedly one million? That follow rate doesn’t add up.
Searching social media, it is really hard to find prominent voices speaking out in favor of OMM’s campaigns. You can find all kinds of pro-LGBTQ people pushing back against OMM, in ways ranging from funny to snarky to serious to whatever unclassifiable thing Cole Escola does. But even though Social Conservative Twitter is a reliably outspoken bunch, it’s pretty tough to find any sort of goodwill support for OMM. That would not be the case if they had anywhere near the support base they claim to have.
American Family Association petitions have been skewed for years. Regardless of how you fill out an AFA petition, they will count you as a supporter. So if you weigh in with pushback, thinking you are going to open their eyes and change their minds, you will simply get a “Thank you for supporting us!” and your reply will be counted as support. I still get emails addressed to “Mr. Stop Hating,” the name I used for an AFA petition that I “supported” (read: trolled) a full fifteen years ago. So whenever they say they have X number of signatures, you can be sure that a sizable percentage are people who wanted to deliver a message on a forum where the petition is the only open communication channel.
Every once in a while, a company allows itself to be deafened by the bark, believing it to instead be bite. That’s what happened with The Hallmark Channel before they reversed course. Because of these minor “victories,” Monica Cole and her PR arm are able to push the illusion even further.
But an illusion it is, and we need to call it out. Here on the side of equality, our ranks are much larger, our voices are much louder, and our cause is infinitely more righteous. And many of us are moms and dads ourselves, and we know that Monica Cole’s crude bigotry is not a family value. It is time we tell One Meddling Mom to not only stop attacking our families, but to also stop bearing false witness about her operation.
Tony Award-winning composer Jerry Herman, who wrote the cheerful, good-natured music and lyrics for such classic shows as “Mame,” “Hello, Dolly!” and “La Cage aux Folles,” died Thursday. He was 88.
His goddaughter Jane Dorian confirmed his death to The Associated Press early Friday. He died of pulmonary complications in Miami, where he had been living with his partner, real estate broker Terry Marler.
The creator of 10 Broadway shows and contributor to several more, Herman won two Tony Awards for best musical: “Hello, Dolly!” in 1964 and “La Cage aux Folles” in 1983. He also won two Grammys — for the “Mame” cast album and “Hello, Dolly!” as song of the year — and was a Kennedy Center honoree.
Herman wrote in the Rodgers and Hammerstein tradition, an optimistic composer at a time when others in his profession were exploring darker feelings and material. Just a few of his song titles revealed his depth of hope: “I’ll Be Here Tomorrow,” “The Best of Times,” “Tap Your Troubles Away,” “It’s Today,” “We Need a Little Christmas” and “Before the Parade Passes By.” Even the title song to “Hello, Dolly!” is an advertisement to enjoy life.
Herman also had a direct, simple sense of melody and his lyrics had a natural, unforced quality. Over the years, he told the AP in 1995, “critics have sort of tossed me off as the popular and not the cerebral writer, and that was fine with me. That was exactly what I aimed at.”
In accepting the Tony in 1984 for “La Cage Aux Folles,” Herman said, “This award forever shatters a myth about the musical theater. There’s been a rumor around for a couple of years that the simple, hummable show tune was no longer welcome on Broadway. Well, it’s alive and well at the Palace” Theatre.
Some saw that phrase — “the simple, hummable show tune” — as a subtle dig at Stephen Sondheim, known for challenging and complex songs and whose “Sunday in the Park with George” Herman had just bested. But Herman rejected any tension between the two musical theater giants.
“Only a small group of ‘showbiz gossips’ have constantly tried to create a feud between Mr. Sondheim and myself. I am as much of a Sondheim fan as you and everybody else in the world, and I believe that my comments upon winning the Tony for ‘La Cage’ clearly came from my delight with the show business community’s endorsement of the simple melodic showtune which had been criticized by a few hard-nosed critics as being old fashioned,” he said in a 2004 Q&A session with readers of Broadway.com.
Herman was born in New York in 1931 and raised in Jersey City. His parents ran a children’s summer camp in the Catskills and he taught himself the piano. He noted that when he was born, his mother had a view of Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre marquee from her hospital bed.
Herman dated his intention to write musicals to the time his parents took him to “Annie Get Your Gun” and he went home and played five of Irving Berlin’s songs on the piano.
“I thought what a gift this man has given a stranger. I wanted to give that gift to other people. That was my great inspiration, that night,” he told The Associated Press in 1996.
After graduating from the University of Miami, Herman headed back to New York, writing and playing piano in a jazz club. He made his Broadway debut in 1960 contributing songs to the review “From A to Z” — alongside material by Fred Ebb and Woody Allen — and the next year tackled the entire score to a musical about the founding of the state of Israel, “Milk and Honey.” It earned him his first Tony nomination.
“Hello, Dolly!” starring Carol Channing opened in 1964 and ran for 2,844 performances, becoming Broadway’s longest-running musical at the time. It won 10 Tonys and has been revived many times, most recently in 2017 with Bette Midler in the title role, a 19th-century widowed matchmaker who learns to live again.
“Mame” followed in 1966, starring Angela Lansbury, and went on to run for over 1,500 performances. She handed him his Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2009, saying he created songs like him: “bouncy, buoyant and optimistic.”
In 1983 he had another hit with “La Cage aux Folles,” a sweetly radical musical of its age, decades before the fight for marriage equality. It was a lavish adaptation of the successful French film about two gay men who own a splashy, drag nightclub on the Riviera. It contained the gay anthem “I Am What I Am” and ran for some 1,760 performances. Three of his shows, “Dear World,” “The Grand Tour” and “Mack and Mabel,” failed on Broadway.
Many of his songs have outlasted their vehicles: British ice skaters Torvill and Dean used the overture from “Mack and Mabel” to accompany a gold medal-winning routine in 1982. Writer-director Andrew Stanton used the Herman tunes “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” and “It Only Takes a Moment” to express the psyche of a love-starved, trash-compacting robot in the film “WALL-E.”
Later in life, Herman composed a song for “Barney’s Great Adventure,” contributed the score for the 1996 made-for-TV movie “Mrs. Santa Claus” — earning Herman an Emmy nomination — and wrote his autobiography, “Showtune,” published by Donald I. Fine.
Since they married in 2015, Jonathan Hobgood, 37, and his husband, Kerry Johnson, 36, have wanted to be dads. At first, the couple saw adoption as the best path to parenthood, but South Carolina, where they live, is one of 10 states with religious exemption laws that make it more difficult for same-sex couples to foster and adopt, and they worried that adopting would set them up for a legal nightmare down the road.
“Our concern was that if we did a private adoption and the birth mother decided a couple of years later that she wanted her child back, we would be in for a rather extensive legal battle to try to keep the child,” Hobgood told NBC News. “Most likely the courts would have sided with the biological mother, so that became a big worry for us. So we just decided, ‘Well, let’s take ourselves down the surrogacy path from there.’”
The couple did their research. The cost of hiring a female surrogate, they learned, would be steep — $120,000 to $150,000, a price that Hobgood, a project specialist for a medical insurance company, and Kerry, a management analyst with the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, could hardly afford. But it did not deter them.
“I knew I wanted to be a child’s father,” Hobgood said. “I really just wanted to go through and enjoy bringing up this wonderful child who is a part of our family.”
Hobgood and his husband are among an increasing number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people in the U.S. planning to have children, according to data released this year by the Family Equality Council, a national nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ families. And despite the additional financial barriers for many prospective parents in this group, this increased desire to have children was found across income levels, according to a report the council released this month, “Building LGBTQ+ Families: The Price of Parenthood.”
The Family Equality Council polled 500 LGBTQ and 1,004 non-LGBTQ adults, and found that the desire to become parents is nearly identical among both lower- and higher-income lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Forty-five to 53 percent of LGBTQ people between the ages of 18 and 35 are planning to become parents for the first time or add another child to their family (compared to 55 percent for their non-LGBTQ counterparts, a gap that has narrowed significantly compared to older generations).And those making less than $25,000 a year plan to have children at a similar rate to those making over $100,000, according to the report.
Amanda Winn, the council’s chief program officer, was surprised by the findings.
“I was expecting that folks who were living at the poverty line would report lower rates of wanting to bring children into the home knowing that finances were tight, but that’s not the case,” Winn told NBC News. “That innate, strong desire to have families exists regardless of income levels.”
LGBTQ prospective parents are more likely to face financial hurdles than their heterosexual peers, according to the report. Reasons include their relatively lower annual household incomes and the additional costs associated with having a child using an option other than sexual intercourse, which is considered by only 37 percent of LGBTQ people planning to start their families or have more children.
Assisted reproductive technology: ‘an impossible barrier’ for some
Thanks to advancements in assisted reproductive technology (ART), such as artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization and surrogacy, more LGBTQ people can have children through nontraditional methods, and interest is growing. Forty percent of LGBTQ people are considering such technology to conceive children, according to a Family Equality Council survey published in February — but many of these prospective parents will pay for it out of their own pockets, and the technology can be expensive.
“Most LGBTQ+ individuals will learn that their health insurance plan does not cover the cost of fertility treatments at all, and, if they do, the individual or family unit must prove that they have been ‘trying’ to conceive for 6-12 months before coverage begins,” the Family Equality Council report states. “This stipulation in the policy results in high monthly expenses for some and creates an impossible barrier for others.”
The report outlines the diverse array of options now available to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people looking to have children, and the costs associated with them, which can range from less than $300 for those using a known sperm donor to over $150,000 for those pursuing gestational surrogacy.
Same-sex female couples typically rely on artificial insemination with donated sperm to conceive children, which usually costs several thousand dollars and is not always covered by insurance. If two women choose to have a child through reciprocal in vitro fertilization, where the fertilized egg of one partner is implanted in another, the cost is higher — typically from $12,000 to $15,000 for a basic cycle, according to Internet Health Resources.
Chandra Chester, with her wife, Lynn Doyle and their two children.Lisa Fleet
Chandra Chester, 40, and her wife, Lynn Doyle, 37, both social workers who live in Maryland’s Baltimore County, conceived two children — a daughter, 4, and a son, 1 — through artificial insemination without IVF.
Chester said their insurance covered some of the cost, but she estimated they spent about $6,500 out of pocket for their pregnancies, including one that ended in miscarriage. Additionally, the sperm, which came from the same anonymous donor for both children, cost $500 yearly to store, she said.
On top of fertility care and doctor visits, the couple pays $30,000 annually on day care for both kids. Along with food, clothing, diapers and other necessities, paying for their children consumes at least 50 percent of their gross annual income, said Chester, who works two jobs to make ends meet and will soon get a third. She said in hindsight, she wishes she had saved up more money for the fertility expenses and day care before having kids.
“I knew it was going to be expensive,” Chester said, “but I had no clue it would be this expensive.”
Impact of ‘religious freedom’ adoption laws
State laws that limit gay couples’ ability to adopt can make the process even more difficult and costly, with some prospective parents opting to relocate to more LGBTQ-friendly states to adopt or pursue fertility treatments.
Kenneth Livingston and his husband, Ashley Redmond, both in their 30s, moved from Mississippi to Boston in 2013 so they could adopt a child. Livingston said it would have been too difficult to adopt in Mississippi, where adoption agencies could legally turn them away and where their marriage wasn’t yet legally recognized.
“We moved away from Mississippi not just to adopt, but to raise our child in a state that embraces diversity and inclusion, and we would never have that in Mississippi,” Livingston said.
At least nine states permit state-licensed child welfare agencies to refuse to place children with LGBTQ families if doing so directly conflicts with their religious beliefs, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. In November, the Trump administration proposed a rule that would allow faith-based foster care and adoption agencies to continue receiving taxpayer funding even if they exclude LGBTQ families and others from their services based on religious beliefs.
Foster care is the least expensive route to parenthood for most LGBTQ people, and typically costs no more than $2,600, according to the Family Equality Council report, but many can be turned away in states with religious exemptions.
Kelly McGlasson in Sparta, N.J. in December 2018.Courtesy of Kelly McGlasson
Kelly McGlasson, 43, a single lesbian in northern New Jersey, always wanted to be a mom, but she didn’t have an insurance policy that covered fertility and couldn’t afford private adoption. So McGlasson, an early childhood coach for a nonprofit that advocates for children, decided to adopt through the foster care system in New Jersey, one of seven states that explicitly prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ people in foster care and adoption.
“It was something I knew I needed, to be a mom, and time was running out,” she said. “So I made that choice.”
Helping to offset the ‘price of parenthood’
A number of programs have emerged in recent years that help LGBTQ people offset the relatively high cost of building their families.
When LGBTQ couples choose to privately adopt a child without going through the foster care system, the cost can be $20,000 to $70,000, depending on whether the adoption is domestic or international, according to the “Building LGBTQ+ Families: the Price of Parenthood” report.
Even in Massachusetts, Livingston and his husband have struggled to adopt a child. Ashley, a freelance event planner, has had difficulty finding steady full-time employment. Livingston, a contract specialist, is the couple’s main source of income. The couple, who have been waiting to adopt since January 2018, saved as much money as they could since their move, obtained a no-interest $10,000 loan through a charity that works with their Massachusetts-based adoption agency, and qualified for a $15,000 grant from Help Us Adopt, a nonprofit that helps people adopt children regardless of “race, religion, gender, ethnicity, marital status or sexual orientation.”
Kenneth Livingston, left, and his husband, Ashley, on Ogunquit, Maine.Courtesy of Kenneth Livingston
Livingston said adopting would be “extremely difficult” for him and his husband without the financial assistance.
“It’s just helping us avoid further debt, and helps us fulfill our wish of becoming parents, and allowing us to focus more on preparing for a child and less time worrying about finances,” he said.
Interest among same-sex male couples who wish to have biological children through surrogacy is growing, but few can afford it, according to Lisa Schuster, a program manager for Men Having Babies, a nonprofit that provides financial assistance to men who want to become parents through surrogacy. Annual applications for financial assistance rose from 157 in 2014, when the grant program began, to over 450 applicants in 2019, Schuster said.
“The demand is huge, and there is also a growing trend of younger and younger men who are wanting to start families and are looking to surrogacy,” she said.
When Hobgood and his husband, who live just outside Columbia, South Carolina, learned they qualified for financial assistance to pursue surrogacy through the Men Having Babies program, they were thrilled.
“At first, I was in that shock mode,” Hobgood recalled.
The program also helped connect the couple with a surrogate, and it is helping them navigate through the complex medical and legal process of surrogacy.
Even with the financial assistance, Hobgood and his husband will pay about $70,000 — roughly half of what they would pay without the assistance, according to Hobgood. But the couple’s journey to fatherhood is far more certain than ever before, and will likely end with a trip to Iowa, where their prospective surrogate lives, to witness the birth of their child.
That’s the “most exciting part,” Hobgood said — “just having our family grow.”
A trans woman and activist who tirelessly worked to battle transphobia was allegedly murdered last weekend in Canada and a suspect has been arrested.
Julie Berman, 51, based in Toronto, had for years exerted energy in raising awareness of the rocketing rates of anti-trans violence across the city.
She lit candles and delivered potent and inspirational speeches at Transgender Day of Remembrance vigils, loved ones and colleagues said.
But according to authorities, she was killed in a downtown boarding home near the corner of Brunswick Avenue and Harbord Street, a residential neighbourhood with fish and chips eateries and university accommodation.
Toronto Police said officers were called to the scene, near Bathurst and Bloor Streets, at around 2:20pm on December 20, theToronto Sun reported.
‘Let the lights shine on the wonderful life and courageous advocacy of Julie Berman’.
While information is scant, detectives alleged that the victim suffered from head injuries and Toronto local Colin Harnack was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.
She was swiftly taken to hospital, but medics pronounced her death later that day.
Local authorities have yet to confirm she is trans, but numerous loved ones and community leaders have identified her and gathered to mourn their loss.
“Let the lights shine on the wonderful life and courageous advocacy of Julie Berman, a trans woman from Toronto who was murdered this weekend,” said Freddie Arps, a legal aid.
“Another trans woman, taken from the world too soon,” explained Karl Jennings, a trans activist.
“She had reported harassment to some of her friends, earlier in the week – though I have not heard yet if this is connected to her murder.
“Sadly the first transgender death since the yearly November 20th memorial – sadly the first Toronto name on the 2020 list.”
Pride Toronto confirmed her passing on December 24, describing Berman as a “staunch supporter […] and a good person.
Moreover, community leaders stated that the suspect in her reported killing is not known to be a member of the LGBT+ community, The Globe and Mailreported.
The Rio de Janeiro H.Q. of Porta dos Fundos, the Brazilian comedy troupe behind the Netflix gay Jesus Christmas Special sparking outrage in Brazil, was hit by a Molotov cocktail attack in the early hours of Dec. 24.
Two petrol bombs were thrown at the building. causing a fire, which was put out by one of the office’s security guards, according to one report,.
No one was hurt in the attack which, however, “endangered several innocent lives in the company and on the street,” Porta dos Fundos said in a press statement. Porta dos Fundos has given security cam footage of the attack to authorities.
The group‘s Christmas special, “The First Temptation of Christ,” a 46-minute comedy that portrays Jesus bringing home his presumed boyfriend Orlando to meet the Holy Family, prompted around two million people to sign a petition calling on the streaming service to remove the show because it offended Christians.
President Jair Bolsonaro, who has described himself as a “proud” homophobe, once told an interviewer he would rather have a dead son than a gay son. His son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, recently called Porta dos Funds’ Christmas special “garbage” on his Twitter account, saying the filmmakers “do not represent Brazilian society.”
A video on social media in Brazil shows three masked people claiming they carried out a gasoline bomb attack to protest a Christmas program on Netflix that some critics have described as blasphemous.
A man in the video, whose voice is digitally altered, says the Christmas Eve attack on a video production house in Rio de Janeiro targeted Brazilian humorist group Porta dos Fundos for its Portuguese-language program.
The man claims to speak for a group he calls the Command of Popular National Insurgence. The video, which was circulating on Thursday, also shows three people throwing gasoline bombs into the building.
Via press release from hate group leader Mat Staver:
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1990 that burning the American flag is First Amendment protected speech. But if you burn an LGBT flag, it’s another story. An Iowa court just sentenced a man to 16 years in prison after he torched an LGBT flag.
That’s a hate crime in Iowa, which means Adolfo Martinez, who stole the pro-homosexual banner off a church and used lighter fluid to set it aflame, will spend the next decade-and-a-half behind bars.
What he did was wrong, but no one was hurt or verbally threatened. Sixteen years is an extreme and disproportionate sentence. It’s also an ominous signal of LGBT power and the growing threat it poses to your freedom and mine.
That’s why—with your help—we fought throughout this year to STOP the radical LGBT assault on freedom misnamed as the “Equality Act.”
Staver goes on to make the usual money beg but never mentions that Martinez got such a hefty sentence due to his prior felony convictions. Iowa has a three strikes-style mandatory sentencing guideline passed by the Republicanstate legislature.
Eleven Christian ministers and the Tennessee Independent Baptists for Religious Liberty (TIBRL) are challenging the legality of marriage certificates issued to same-sex couples.
The group filed a Declaratory Order with the Tennessee Department of Health on Thursday, arguing while the state is following a federal order allowing same-sex couples to wed in the state, there is nothing in the Tennessee Constitution which defines marriage as anything other than that between a woman and a man.
In a statement release by The Family Action Council of Tennessee’s Constitutional Government Defense Fund (FACT), which is representing the case, FACT says the “state’s definition of marriage implicates the civil rights of the ministers in regard to the liberty of conscience guaranteed to them under the Tennessee Constitution.”
Tennessee’s FACT has been battling to have Obergefelldeclared void since the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in 2015.
Alexander and Felipe are gay immigrants from Nicaragua and El Salvador living in D.C. Their home is one bedroom festooned with Barbie dolls, rainbow flags and their national flags. How they made it to this small brick rowhouse off of Georgia Avenue, N.W., is a journey fueled by violence, fear, desperation and ultimately love.
In early 2018, the young men left their respective homelands because of homophobic violence. Alexander, who owned a successful fried food kiosk called a fritanga in his hometown of Ayapal, Nicaragua, was forced to flee because he says neither his parents or siblings accepted his homosexuality. The neighbors in his small community were equally intolerant.
“I was threatened with machetes and knives,” he recalls. Alexander says he abandoned his home, business and country because “I thought they were going to kill me.”
Felipe’s story is similar, with the added twist of gang or mara violence that is the “daily bread” of many Salvadorans, especially those living in his hometown of Sonsonate.
“You live in constant fear,” he says. “More so when you are part of … ”
He pauses and says quietly “… the gay community.” It’s almost as if proclaiming his sexuality out loud could still cause his death.
Each youth left on their own and headed north. Their only companions on the road were hardships.
“I had to sleep on the side of the road and in parks. I endured heat, cold, hunger and thirst,” says Alexander. For Felipe, leaving El Salvador was equally tough.
“I placed myself in God’s hand and in his will,” he says softly.
They say their trip to Mexico was fraught with danger. Cartels and criminal gangs are everywhere and immigrants are easy prey.
“They see Central Americans as merchandise,” says Alexander. “If they catch us they kidnap you and hold you for ransom. If you can’t pay, they kill you.”
The youth met in Tapachula, Mexico, near the country’s border with Guatemala and became friends. Unable to find work or get asylum in Mexico, they soon joined one of the caravans of Central American migrants trekking norte to the U.S. border. They faced the same homophobia in the caravan that had forced them to flee their homes.
“They mocked us, threw rocks at us,” recalls Alexander.
Clothes from migrants in Miguel Hidalgo Central Park in Tapachula, Mexico, hang on walls surrounding the park on Jan. 29, 2019. Alexander Flores Olivas and his husband, Felipe Aguilar, met in this Mexican city near the Guatemala border after they fled homophobic violence in Central America. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
The couple sought safety in numbers and joined a group of several dozen other LGBTQ youth who were part of the caravan. They hoped that banding together would spare them from even worse homophobic violence from within the caravan.
By the time the ragged group arrived at the Mexico-U.S. border they were exhausted, had run out of money and were still at risk of being kidnapped by the cartels or attacked by homophobes. Alexander, Felipe and the others say they were unnerved by the chaos of thousands of migrants waiting their turn on the bridge and living in camp cities on the border.
Felipe says they feared the Trump administration would soon close the border, which it would do a few months later. The group made a fateful choice.
“We decided we would all try to swim across or die trying,” says Felipe.
The youth on Feb. 23 jumped in the Rio Grande as a group but Felipe, who can’t swim, soon began to struggle in the murky waters.
“About halfway through I started to drown,” he says.
Alexander saw this and returned from the American side of the river and rescued Felipe.
“I told him to hold on to my neck and that I would get him across,” says Alexander.
Border Patrol agents arrested the 15 soaking wet youth but were at a loss with what to do with such a large LGBTQ group of detainees. They were shuttled from one detention center to another in a space of three days.
“No one wanted us, we were rejected everywhere, one day here, then somewhere else, another place,” says Felipe.
Homeland Security contacted Ruby Corado, a transgender activist and Salvadoran-American immigrant who runs Casa Ruby in D.C., and asked her to sponsor them. She didn’t hesitate.
“I understand very well the dangers of being in detention centers, many of them die, some of them are very sick,” says Ruby.
Ruby flew to San Antonio where she took custody of Alexander, Felipe and the other 13 youth on Feb. 28. She bought food, loaded the immigrants into a van and began a 1,600-mile trek to D.C.
At least 24 immigrants have died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody since the Trump administration began, including seven children and two trans women. Scores of others have complained of physical and sexual abuse while in ICE custody.
Ruby tapped into her contacts within welcoming congregations across the country and arranged support for her small caravan, explaining what was at stake.
“I knew somewhere down the line we were going to save lives,” says Ruby.
The shell-shocked youth, who hours before were shivering in an immigration cell were now being driven across the country and being warmly welcomed at multiple stops, including Houston and Atlanta, where congregations cared for them physically, emotionally and spiritually. For many of these southern congregations, headed by African-American pastors, it was an opportunity to validate their all-embracing vision of Christ’s teachings.
“God told me to love and I show my love for God by serving God’s people,” said Pastor Marvetta Walker of Progressive Open Door Christian Center in Houston while she laid out steaming platters of eggs and bacon along with smiles and hugs in her home. It was also an opportunity for these congregations to re-enact a seminal moment in the plight of enslaved Africans’ own journey to a promised land.
“We all answered the call, so that we could be here and be a part of this underground railroad, to get these wonderful beautiful souls to Washington, D.C. to really experience the freedom that we have,” said Dr. Elijah Nicholas, pastor of Kingdom International Ministries in Atlanta. “This is what America is about.”
Felipe Aguilar, first from right, puts food on his plate at the home of Pastor Marvetta Walker of the Progressive Open Door Christian Center in Houston after Casa Ruby CEO Ruby Corado took him and other migrants into her custody. (Photo courtesy of Armando Trull)
At one point towards the end of the journey, Ruby started playing Spanish ballads from Mexican torch-singers, the kind of sad songs usually heard at drag shows in Central America. Ruby began bellowing out the words to “A Prueba de Todo” which means “Able to Withstand Anything.” Her bellowing rendition was off-key but with drama to spare, and soon one-by-one the youth started to sing as well. It was a “Priscilla Queen of the Desert” moment as the van made its way through the darkened interstate. It seemed the words of resilience and love were triggering a cathartic group experience.
“At first, I didn’t believe any of this was real, but by the time we were driving in the van towards Washington and singing I started to hope that maybe my life might get better,” said Felipe.
Casa Ruby CEO Ruby Corado drives through the night after she took Alexander Flores Olivas, Felipe Aguilar and more than a dozen other LGBTQ migrants into her custody in San Antonio. (Photo courtesy of Armando Trull)
Three days later, they arrived at Casa Ruby at 3 a.m. where the exhausted youth were lovingly welcomed by staff, volunteers and clients.
In the past year; Alexander, Felipe and the others enrolled in English classes and secured pro-bono attorneys for their asylum cases. They’ve shared their stories with federal, state and local lawmakers and with LGBTQ activists from places as far away as Israel.
“It was so nice so beautiful that people from so far away wanted to share time with us, wanted to know about us,” says Felipe.
“I feel good, I feel at peace, I feel happy in a free country,” adds Alexander.
Alexander and Felipe are living in a free country where they were able to do something they never imagined in their wildest dreams: Get married, and on Dec. 6 they did just that at Casa Ruby with Larry Villegas as their officiant.
From left: Alexander Flores Olivas and Felipe Aguilar kiss at their wedding at Casa Ruby in D.C. on Dec. 6, 2019. (Photo courtesy of Casa Ruby)
A 67-year-old man who the Home Office said wasn’t “gay enough” to stay in the UK has received an early Christmas present – asylum status from the government.
Yew Fook Sam, known as Sam, lives in Kirkby, Liverpool, and has lived in fear of being deported to Malaysia, where homosexuality is illegal, for the past three years.
When he heard about being granted asylum, Sam told the Liverpool Echo: “I am so happy. I was crying and screaming with joy when I got the phone call from my lawyer. This will be my best Christmas ever!”
Home Office officials had previously said that they believed Sam was lying about being gay in order to stay in the UK, using the fact that he doesn’t have a boyfriend as evidence.
Sam said he tried to tell them that at his age, he doesn’t need sex.
He added: “I was so disappointed and depressed after being told that I was not gay. How can I prove it?”
A campaign led by his friends at St Bride’s Church in Percy Street, Liverpool – where Sam is part of the Open Table LGBTQIA+ worship community – and promoted by the Echo saw more than 5,000 people sign an online petition urging the Home Office to reconsider.
Sam said he’d lived a lie in Malaysia, marrying a woman at the age of 30 and fathering two children.
But when his wife learnt that he was gay, in 1988, she left him and took their children to the US. Sam hasn’t seen his kids since.
“It’s been such a joy to work with Sam and I am delighted that he has this lovely Christmas present,” said Helene Santamera, an immigration lawyer at the Immigration Advice Service in Liverpool.
“Through his bravery, he has now created a pathway for others who are facing outdated and oversimplified ideas about sexuality.
“And I think the Echo story clinched asylum for him, because it was picked up by so many other papers – including in Malaysia, which would have confirmed the point about the dangers he could face.”
Sam said: “I have been photographed on gay marches here [the UK] and I would be in danger of being arrested – and attacked by members of the public. I fear I could be killed if I had to go back.”
Sam, who arrived in the UK in 2005 on a tourist visa and remained in the south of England, working, until he was arrested in 2016, is studying tourism at the City of Liverpool College with a view to being a tour guide.
“I am so happy here – Liverpool people are so kind and welcoming,” he said.
Sam has been granted asylum for five years, the standard time. One month before this ends, he will become eligible to apply for indefinite leave to remain.
