OUTwatch – Wine Country’s LGBTQI Film Festival and Sonoma County Pride will again team up to present collection of short films,“Don’t Blink! It’s Love: Short Films for All” Sunday, June 9 at 2 p.m. at Third Street Cinema in Santa Rosa. OUTwatch is determined to bring the best of International LGBTQI Cinema to the North Bay. “Don’t Blink! It’s Love: Short Films for All” will be an integral part of this year’s Pride celebration, that will happen in Santa Rosa. OUTwatch will showcase seven entertaining and engaging short films, including three thought-provoking documentaries.
The seven short films that will be screened are: Happy Birthday Marsha A fictional film that imagines transgender rights pioneer Marsha P. Johnson in the hours leading up the the Stonewall protest. Marguerite An aging woman and her nurse develop a friendship that inspires her to unearth unacknowledged longing that helps her make peace with her past. Femme Rejected for not being ‘masculine’ enough, a young gay man journeys toward self-acceptance with the help of a fabulous drag performer. My Own Wings An exploration of intersex identity and intersex people who are born with a variation from the standard concept of ‘male’ and ‘female.’ Pink Boy Six-year-old Jeffrey loves wearing dresses and performing dance routines, but how will his butch lesbian mom keep him safe in rural Florida. Grace and Betty When 23 year-old-old Grace decides to come out to her grandmother Betty, she discovers something she wasn’t expecting. I Have Something to Tell You A photographer creates an acclaimed portrait series when he shoots his friends’ reactions to his telling them a longheld secrete.
Now in it’s seventh year, OUTwatch is one of the fastest growing film festivals in the North Bay. This year’s festival will happen in October at Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol. Films will be announced and tickets and festival passes will become available in September. For more information go to: www.outwatchfilmfest.org.
If you would like more information about this topic or to schedule an interview with Co-producers Gary Carnivele, Jody Laine and Shad Reinstein, please call Shad at 707.360.5919 or email shad@outwatchfilmfest.org.
Calendar Listing
Sunday, June 9 , “Don’t Blink! It’s Love: Short Films for All” presented by OUTwatch – Wine Country’s LGBTQI Film Festival and Sonoma County Pride will happen Sunday June 9, 2019. 2 p.m. The program is comprised of seven important films. Admission: $10. Address: Third Street Cinema 620 3rd Street, Santa Rosa, CA 95404. Web site: www.outwatchfilmfest.org.
When the first Los Angeles Pride parade hit the streets of Hollywood in 1970, the world was experiencing a crisis of contradictions. When it came to gay identity, things were changing. The Stonewall Riots of the year before gave way to protests all across the country, led by people who were sick of being treated like second-class citizens. The Black Cat demonstration in L.A. in 1967, along with the Cooper Donut riot of 1959, laid the groundwork for a new generation of activist gays who weren’t content to be shoved around, targeted and violently harassed by the police. – Advertisement –
Christopher Street West was formed, in part, as a response to the need for action and visibility. At a time when gay sex was still illegal in most parts of the country and the AIDS epidemic was still a decade away, America was trying to figure out how gayness, and openly gay identities, fit into its identity as a free speech-loving, yet vocally conservative, country. So the parade happened in Los Angeles, and then in New York. But these celebrations, as the surviving images show, were full of queens, leather daddies, go-go boys and folks generally unconcerned with respectability politics. Perhaps it was for this reason that the Pride parade was never televised. It couldn’t have been treated with the same level of interest, the same pomp and glamour and bizarre gaudiness as a Macy’s day parade.
Today is another era, of course, and while the people currently running our country may wish to harken back to a simpler, straighter, whiter time that never, in fact, existed in America, the people who live here are ready for this yearly celebration of gayness to be broadcast out to the world. Or at least, to greater Los Angeles.
In a historic deal with Southern California news station KABC, Christopher Street West has signed onto a three-year contract to televise the L.A. Pride festival, as well as the famous West Hollywood parade.
The live coverage of the parade will be co-hosted by the beloved (yet controversial) Raven-Symone, along with KABC regulars Ellen Leyva and Brandi Hitt for a special two-hour broadcast on June 9.
A protestor fights against the controversial Briggs Initiative, a measure that would have made it illegal for LGBTQ+ teachers to work in schools, in 1978.
“I am honored to be a part of this year’s Pride celebration,” Community Grand Marshall Phill Wilson said to CSW. “The LGBTQI community has come a long way in the last 50 years. It has not been without heartache, pain, sacrifice, and growth. I am humbled to be among such a powerful and diverse group of grand marshals. Together we represent how much stronger we are when we celebrate all of what we are.”
The Los Angeles LGBT Center, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year with the opening of a new Senior Campus, will take the role of Organizational Grand Marshal.
“We are humbled and honored to have Phill Wilson and the Los Angeles LGBT Center serve as the Grand Marshals for LA Pride 2019.” said Estevan Montemayor, CSW Board President, in a press release. “Together, these people and the organizations they represent have made an indelible and important mark on the LGBTQ+ community that has improved and enriched the lives of many individuals who have faced so much adversity. Our grand marshals inspire us, empower us and are examples of how to unite our community. We are so excited that KABC is here to increase the awareness of our grand marshals and LA Pride.”
There’s no denying that the queer community has come a long way since the early days of the parade, when you could still get booked for a blow job. With queer and trans rights currently under attack by the Trump administration, the show of support, optimism and pride might be just what the community needs to see on small screens everywhere.
“We’re proud to bring the L.A. Pride Parade celebration to viewers across Southern California,” Cheryl Fair, president and general manager of KABC, told Deadline. “Our collaboration with LA Pride is a commitment to reflecting and serving the diverse communities that represent our audience.”
Last weekend’s Pride kickoff events–Sonoma County Pride parade, festival, park celebration, our youth leaders awareness raising performance, & our Napa sock-hop themed youth dance–were huge successes & so much fun. And the fun continues this week (& all month long)!
Los eventos del finde pasado que iniciaron nuestras celebraciones del Orgullo LGBTQ–el desfile del Condado de Sonoma, el festival y celebración en el parque, el espectáculo que presentaron nuestrxs líderes jóvenes para aumentar conciencia, y nuestro baile juvenil en Napa con el tema de la decada de los 50–fueron grandes éxitos y muy divertidos. ¡Y siguen las oportunidades para divertirnos esta semana (y por el resto del mes)!
Tuesday, June 4:10:15a – 12:00p, “LGBT Seniors Pride Breakfast” at Queen of the Valley Community Outreach, 3448 Villa Lane, Suite 102, Napa (completely free, LGBT seniors)Wednesday, June 5:7:00p, “The Look of Love: Kellie Fuller Sings the 60s” at Blue Note Napa, 1030 Main St, Napa (benefit, all ages)Thursday, June 6:5:00p – 9:00p, “Napa Pride Kickoff at the Q” at The Q Restaurant and Bar, 3900 Bel Aire Plaza, Suite D, Napa (no entrance fee, benefit, all ages)Saturday, June 8:doors, 7:00p, show, 8:00p, “Drag Queens of the Valley Benefit Show” at JaM Cellars Ballroom at Margrit Mondavi Theater, 1030 Main St, Napa (benefit, 18+)Sunday, June 9:doors, 11:00a, show, 12:00p, “Drag Queens of the Valley Drag Brunch Pajama Party” at JaM Cellars Ballroom at Margrit Mondavi Theater, 1030 Main St, Napa (benefit, 18+)Reply to this email or call LGBTQ Connection for questions / Para preguntas responda a este email o llame a LGBTQ Connection: Sonoma County events 707-579-4327 or Napa County events 707-251-9432.
Therapy that seeks to change minors’ sexual orientation or gender identity is now illegal in Colorado. Gov. Jared Polis, the first openly gay man ever elected governor in the U.S., signed the ban into law on Friday.
“Colorado has joined a growing list of states that have banned so-called conversion therapy. It’s a horrific practice that has long been widely-discredited by medical and mental health professionals and has scarred many survivors for life,” Polis said in a statement emailed to NBC News. “Today Colorado took an important step forward in recognizing our diversity as a strength. These bills truly underscore the idea that Colorado is a state where everyone can be their true selves and live the life they want.”
Colorado is now the 18th U.S. state — and the fourth this year — to ban the controversial practice. Just this week, Maine’s governor signed a ban.
Research shows so-called conversion therapy, which treats being gay or transgender as a mental illness, increases the risk of suicide, drug abuse and depression among teens. A long list of health associations, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association, have spoken out against the practice, which is also known as “reparative therapy” or “ex-gay therapy.”
In the statement shared with NBC News, Polis said he’s thrilled to launch LGBTQ Pride Month in June by outlawing what he called a “tortuous practice” harming children.
Polis also signed into law on Friday a bill making it much easier for transgender Coloradans to update the gender on their birth certificates, identification documents and driver’s licenses.
Daniel Ramos, executive director of One Colorado, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy group, applauded the “strong bipartisan support” both bills received, which he said “further demonstrates that LGBTQ equality should be a nonpartisan issue.”
“Colorado will continue to make history as our country’s first openly gay Governor, Jared Polis, signs our pro-equality agenda into law to send a strong message that Colorado is a state that is open to all,” Ramos continued.
A transgender woman from El Salvador seeking asylum in the U.S. died on Saturday in a Texas hospital four days after being released from custody, officials and advocates said.
Johana Medina Leon, 25, complained of chest pains and was brought to Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. That same day, ICE said she was processed for release on parole. Medina Leon died on the first day of pride month.
“This is yet another unfortunate example of an individual who illegally enters the United States with an untreated, unscreened medical condition,” said Corey A. Price, field office director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) in El Paso.
Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso, Texas, U.S.Dan Dalstra / Reuters file
Allegra Love, the executive director of the Sante Fe Dreamers Project, a nonprofit that provides free legal service to immigrants, said Medina Leon did nothing “illegal” when she fled to the U.S following Department of Homeland Security protocol
“She didn’t violate a single law coming to the U.S. to ask for political asylum,” Love said.
Medina Leon, who was known to friends as Joa, had been detained in the U.S. since mid-April. On May 18, Medina Leon received a positive credible fear finding, ICE said. Advocates told NBC News Leon was seeking asylum in the U.S. as a transgender woman.
Medina Leon was being held at Otero County Processing Center, a private detention center in New Mexico where the ACLU and the Santa Fe Dreamer Project recently alleged poor treatment of and “unconscionable conditions” for LGBTQ immigrants. In a letter sent to ICE, the groups said “ICE’s practices at Otero have created an unsafe environment” for the LGBTQ detainees in Otero.
Medina Leon fell while in ICE Custody, where she also tested positive for HIV.
In a Facebook post about Medina Leon’s death, Diversidad Sin Fronteras, an advocacy group for LGBTQ refugees, said that Medina Leon had pleaded to ICE for medical attention. She “became extremely ill and unconscious” the group said.
Kris Hayashi, the executive director of the Transgender Law Center, said in a statement the group is “devastated and outraged, but not surprised” by the news of Leon’s death.
Referring to the deaths of both Hernandez and Medina Leon, Hayashi wrote, “these deaths are a direct result of U.S. government policy, and will continue unless we force dramatic change.”
In the wake of Hernandez’s death in ICE custody, activists and advocates have been sounding alarms on the treatment of LGBTQ migrants in ICE Custody.
When a spokesperson for Diversidad Sin Fronteras visited Medina Leon in the hospital, she said we was deeply cornered about the young women’s fate. “I said that what happened a year ago to Roxana in the month of May could happen to JOA right in there. And it did.”
Love, of Sante Fe Dreamers Project, told NBC News, “I give an interview a week about the medical conditions for trans women,” which she described as alarming and dangerous.
“If anyone wants to pretend to be shocked, did you miss a year ago when a trans woman died in custody in Albuquerque?”
Maine banned gay conversion therapy for minors on Wednesday, joining more than a dozen other states that have outlawed the controversial practice.
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills signed the bill Wednesday, and it will take effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns next month.
Conversion therapy aims to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Under the new law, professionals, including school psychologists, pharmacy technicians and social workers, who have advertised, offered or administered conversion therapy to a child could face discipline from licensing boards.
Maine joins 16 other states and the District of Columbia that have banned the practice. Supporters decry it as a harmful and note the American Psychological Association opposes the therapy.
“Conversion therapy is a harmful, widely discredited practice that has no place in Maine,” Mills said. “By signing this bill into law today, we send an unequivocal message to young LGBTQ people in Maine and across the country: We stand with you, we support you, and we will always defend your right to be who you are.”
A law against conversion therapy was signed recently in Massachusetts, while states including North Carolina are considering such legislation this year.
“With this law, Maine is taking seriously its responsibility to ensure youth and parents who seek support are not subjected to fraudulent and dangerous practices under the guise of therapy,” said Mary Bonauto, the Civil Rights Project director for GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders.
Maine’s former Republican governor vetoed a similar measure last year, but the bill has gained momentum this year under a Democratic-led Legislature. Republicans argued that the bill was unnecessary, while also contending that it would prevent parents from seeking religious counselors for their children.
“There have not been any recorded cases of this happening in Maine,” said state House Republicans spokesman John Bott.
Republicans failed to pass an amendment to exclude talk therapy and counseling from counting as conversion therapy.
Maine’s law exempts treatment that offers acceptance, support and understanding while being neutral on sexual orientation and gender identity.
According to Michael Williams, much better known as “Sister Roma,” the story of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence began in San Francisco on Easter Day of 1979. Back then, just a year before the city’s gay community was struck by the AIDS epidemic, four friends found themselves fed up with what Roma called the “Castro clone look.”
“Gay men in San Francisco in the 70s all presented very masculine, leather jackets, moustaches, sort of like the Marlboro Man, you know?” Roma told NBC News. “So they were very fed up with that, and they thought, ‘Let’s put on these nun’s habits and sort of go out and screw with people and see what happens.’”
As they strolled from the Castro to the city’s gay beach, Roma said, “everywhere they went the reaction was just insane — people had never seen anything like men, most of them with facial hair, in nun’s habits.” They realized they were onto something, so they came up with a name for their group: The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
Now four decades later, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were clearly ahead of their time, and many of their campy “dragtivism” tactics have inspired others, Roma said. “Little did they know it, but these four queers who went out in these nuns habits actually changed the world,” she said.
“One of the original sisters was Bobbi Campbell, who was Sister Florence Nightmare, who was a registered nurse,” Roma said.
Campbell became well known across America as the self-designated “AIDS poster boy,” a role he took on in an effort to destigmatize the disease.
“The sisters took a very pragmatic, responsible attitude towards the virus, and said, ‘We need to protect the community,’” Roma said. “So the sisters produced a safer sex pamphlet called Play Fair that we still produce today, that was the world’s first-ever safer sex pamphlet.”
In the early 1980s, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence hosted some of the world’s first fundraisers for AIDS victims, many of whom faced financial ruin as the then-unknown pathogen ravaged their bodies. “The sisters were at the forefront of the fight against HIV/AIDS before anyone knew what the disease was,” Roma said.
Members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, San Francisco’s beloved sect of cross-dressing nuns, attend The Hunky Jesus Competition event at Dolores Park in San Francisco on April 1, 2013. John S Lander / LightRocket via Getty Images file
At each anniversary every 10 years, the sisters have had a different focus. In 1989, Roma launched the “stop the violence” campaign, which addressed an uptick of homophobic hate crimes in San Francisco at that time.
“In 1989, queer people were still really fighting for equality and just desiring to be recognized as equal people in the world,” Roma said. “So it was a very basic fight, and we were also crippled with HIV and AIDS, which many people saw as a disease that was killing all the right people.” That year, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence also became an official nonprofit organization.
For their 20th anniversary in 1999, the Sisters closed Castro Street for a massive celebration. “That seemed like a no-brainer to us, but apparently it was quite a major issue for a lot of people in San Francisco, who still at the time … thought that we were very sacrilegious,” Roma said. But support from local politicians got them through the day, and they hosted their street fair, where the Sisters emceed a “hunky Jesus” competition that continues to this day.
Members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, San Francisco’s beloved sect of cross-dressing nuns, attend The Hunky Jesus Competition event at Dolores Park in San Francisco on April 1, 2013. John S Lander / LightRocket via Getty Images file
Because of publicity generated by the opposition, “it was one of the largest celebrations that we had, probably ever in our history,” with around 20,000 to 30,000 people filling Castro street, Roma said.
The Trump administration plans to launch a new panel to offer “fresh thinking” on international human rights, a move some activists fear is aimed at narrowing protections for women and members of the LGBT community.
The new body, to be called the Commission on Unalienable Rights, will advise Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to a notice the State Department quietly published Thursday on the Federal Register.
“The Commission will provide fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights,” states the notice, which is dated May 22.
The State Department’s media contact for the new commission is former Fox News contributor Kiron Skinner. As many of you surely know, “natural law” is often cited by hate groups in legal briefs opposing LGBT rights.
Ten years ago, Rafeal “Nephew” Bankston landed in solitary confinement in San Quentin State Prison for refusing a gay cellmate.
“Where I grew up, we called it gay bashing,” he said. “We hated them, robbed them,” Bankston added matter-of-factly.
On a Wednesday afternoon in April, he told that story to a classroom of 15 other inmates. About half of them were LGBTQ. Photos of LGBTQ icons — Janet Mock, Ellen Degeneres, James Baldwin — smiled down from a whiteboard at the front of the room.
Rafeal “Nephew” Bankston is an inmate at San Quentin State Prison. Kate Sosin
No one said a word. Lisa Strawn, 60, a transgender woman, was sitting next to Bankston and didn’t move.
Bankston, 37, was smaller than most of the others in the room. He wore plastic-frame glasses and a blue prison shirt that looked several sizes too big. Like many in the room, he has spent more than half of his life behind bars. He entered prison at 18 and said he learned at a young age to hate gay and trans people.
Half a life later, he wants to talk about Jussie Smollett. He wants to know how his LGBTQ peers feel about Smollett now that the TV star’s reported anti-gay hate crime has been refuted by Chicago Police.
“When we walked out of here, here, everybody was pulling for him because it was wrong, how he got treated,” Bankston said. “Do you all still feel that way?”
He posed the question to members of Acting With Compassion & Truth, or ACT, a restorative justice group that meets weekly at San Quentin. Restorative justice is an alternative to punishment, one in which offenders and victims try to heal together.
‘I didn’t know where I fit in’
Each week for a year, LGBTQ and straight inmates meet for two hours in a small yellow classroom. They talk about everything from what it means that Janelle Monáe came out as pansexual to how to respect intersex people. Their goal is simple: heal together and work toward a better world for LGBTQ people.
Inmates Michael Adams and Juan Meza currently lead the group. The lessons have been designed by LGBTQ prisoners.
The group is as diverse as the world on the outside. Ages range from 25 years to late middle age, and races and ethnicities vary. Almost all of the attendees are what are referred to as “lifers,” those convicted of felonies so serious that their sentences range from many years to life in prison. These include murder and sex crimes.
Three of the group’s attendees are transgender women. Lisa Strawn is among them.
Lisa Strawn is a transgender inmate at San Quentin State Prison.Kate Sosin
Strawn, who prefers no pronouns, entered prison 25 years ago on three-strikes burglary charges and has served much of that time at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, another men’s prison. Strawn transitioned to female at age 18 but has always been housed with men.
That’s because in most prisons across the nation, transgender inmates are housed according to their birth sex, despite federal requirements in the Prison Rape Elimination Act that inmates be housed on a case-by-case basis.
Strawn has grown accustomed to navigating men’s prisons as a woman.
San Quentin is California’s oldest prison, built in 1851 by prisoners at the edge of the San Francisco Bay in Marin County. The views from the entrance are so heavenly it is often remarked that it’s astonishing the prison has not been flattened and divided up for real estate.
San Quentin State Prison overlooks the San Francisco Bay.Kate Sosin
The 600-man cell block looms at six levels. There is no air-conditioning in the unit, and fans run in the background. Cells are just wide enough to stand in sideways. They house two people each and the sum of their possessions, crammed into cubbies above bunks. At one end of the cell block, men make calls from a line of pay phones. At the other end, they shower out in the open.
With a blond ponytail and carefully-applied eyeliner, Strawn decidedly stands out at San Quentin.
“Honestly, I’ve had problems, but then I guess myself personally, I think a lot of it is how you carry yourself,” Strawn said. “Every time I walk into a room I better own it.”
San Quentin State PrisonKate Sosin
At Vacaville, Strawn helped establish an LGBTQ group. Leaving that a year ago to come to San Quentin was devastating.
“I hated this place when I got here,” Strawn said. “I didn’t know where I fit in, and I knew where I fit in there. But when I came here, I got into ACT.” Aside from the restorative justice group, Strawn also got into journalism by writing for the San Quentin news outlet, The Beat Within.
Transgender women like Strawn report exceedingly high rates of violence behind bars, according to data from the National Center for Transgender Equality. The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found that transgender people were nine times more likely than the general prison population to be sexually assaulted by other inmates.
Trans Inmate Holly Stuckey participates in San Quentin’s restorative justice group.Kate Sosin
It was due to that hostility that trans women approached the Insight Prison Project in 2015, where Billie Mizell was then serving as executive director. Inmates asked Mizell to support the formation of an LGBTQ education program at San Quentin. They didn’t want a support group.
“What I kept hearing from them was, ‘We live our lives here every day surrounded by thousands of people who have been for the last 20 or 30 years who haven’t had exposure to the evolution that we know is happening out there,’” Mizell explained, noting that the transgender inmates wanted to “bring that inside” the prison’s walls.
Working with several inmates, Mizell brought a yearlong curriculum to the prison. She has been leading the Acting With Compassion & Truth group as a volunteer at San Quentin ever since.
Billie Mizell leads San Quentin State Prison’s Acting With Compassion and Truth group, a restorative justice program. Kate Sosin
This year, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation allowed her to replicate the program on San Quentin’s death row, which remains intact despite California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent decision to halt executions. That group, comprised of five people, meets Tuesdays. It is not open to reporters.
ACT is entirely voluntary, although many admittedly come to the Wednesday class because it looks good for the parole board. Mizell, however, won’t let anyone in who is not genuinely committed to the lessons.
Still, the resulting class presents a strange juxtaposition. Prisoners, some convicted of extreme anti-LGBTQ hate crimes, spend a year in close proximity with the prison’s most vulnerable LGBTQ population.
‘I was so ashamed’
Among the group’s founding members is Phil Melendez, who faced 30 years to life in prison for two counts of second-degree murder, partially motivated by animus against a lesbian.
In 1997, Melendez’s father was stabbed while collecting a drug debt. Melendez justified avenging the assault because one of the assailants was a lesbian. On a phone call with NBC News, Melendez, who has since been released from prison, rattles off the slurs he used as he burst into a house and killed two people.
In prison, Melendez said he had a lot of time to think, not just about the crime he committed at 19, but about the homophobia behind it.
“I noticed that there was that element of LGBTQ bias in the slur that I used,” he said. “In that slur, I was actually dehumanizing a human being.”
When the country debated marriage rights for LGBTQ people, he said found himself frustrated.
“I actually took offense at people who were against gay marriage,” he said.
So in 2015, when ACT started forming, Melendez took his own life experiences and used them to help design a curriculum for other straight peers in the class. Two years ago, Melendez was released. He is now a national advocate for restorative justice and LGBTQ rights.
Among those who benefit four years later from his work inside are attendees like Lee Xiong, who was struggling to face his younger brother who he suspected was gay. Trying to grapple with that, Xiong found ACT last year.
“I always thought that transgender or gay were nothing,” he says. “I thought it was a choice.”
Lee Xiong, center, participating in San Quentin’s restorative justice group.Kate Sosin
Xiong has spent more than a year unpacking those feelings. When his brother came to visit him at San Quentin, Xiong asked his brother to come out to him. It took him five minutes to even reach the question.
“I was so ashamed,” he tells the group. “I asked him that question. Is he going to get hurt? Or is he in fear to tell me? But he just came out and said, ‘Yes man, I know what you’re going to ask me.’”
His brother told him that when he came out to their parents, they told him to “get the f–k out” and disowned him.
“I told him that, “You know what, don’t worry man, when I get out, we’ll talk to my mom,’” Xiong said.
This story, of straight prisoners connecting with LGBTQ family because of their time in ACT, is highly common. Bankston’s sister came out to him as transgender.
“I cut off communication,” Bankston said. “I don’t want to talk to you more. I don’t know what to say to you. Nobody likes you.”
But Bankston recently picked up the phone and called his sister. He asked how she was.
“He, excuse me, she ran with the whole rest of the conversation,” Bankston said, correcting himself on his sister’s new pronoun.
“It’s going to take some time and to adjust to my sister’s new lifestyle,” he explained. “I got some struggles with that. I’m not perfect.”
In May, Bankston’s sister agreed to come visit him at San Quentin for the first time since he entered prison 17 years ago.
The planned visit was a moment for the group to reflect on how far Bankston had come, according to Mizell. When he entered ACT, he was looking for a “chrono,” or a positive write-up to help his parole case. “And now I am out here being an ally, raising awareness and answering questions,” he said.
‘I was able to be authentically me’
Straight prisoners aren’t untangling their homophobia and earning parole at the expense of LGBTQ inmates in the group. For those who are LGBTQ, the group can be deeply healing.
“There was a time I would be deathly afraid of someone like Nephew,” 52-year-old Adams, tears pushing at his eyes, said of Bankston.
“This group is the first time I was able to talk about my lived experiences, as related to being a member of the LGBTQ community,” Adams said. “It was the first time I was able to be authentically me and also feel safe. That’s a profound feeling of humanity.”
Adams, who has been incarcerated for 19 years, struggled for years before coming out as bisexual publicly on San Quentin’s podcast, Ear Hustle, last June.
He noted that not a single man in ACT identifies as gay. “In here, it’s life or death,” he said of coming out.
The group aims to ease some of those challenges by adding to the number of allies on the inside.
In order to build this empathy, Meza tries to draws parallels between straight inmates and their LGBTQ peers.
Juan Meza uses “The Genderbread Person” as a learning tool during a session of San Quentin’s Acting With Compassion and Truth group.Kate Sosin
He shows the class “The Genderbread Person,” a visual tool for talking about gender identity that resembles a Gingerbread man. He draws kind of a stick figure on the whiteboard. The group labels the person by distinguishing where different LGBTQ identities live: Anatomy is on your body; gender and sexual orientation are in your heart and brain.
“My culture would say that I’m a ‘two spirit,’ because I have the spirit of the masculine and the feminine at the same time,” Meza explained. “So it just really has to do with how I express myself and how I know myself.”
The group is then asked to rattle off words used to hurt marginalized groups: racist terms, sexist words, anti-LGBTQ slurs and hurtful terms for the incarcerated. Adams and Meza drew lines between the groups of terms, noting that insults hurled against prisoners, like “punk,” are also used to hurt LGBTQ people.
Nythell Collins is an inmate at San Quentin. Kate Sosin
Meza noted that using the wrong pronouns for a transgender person can be just as harmful as a slur.
“We’ve said it many times, when we can’t express ourselves for who we are … a lot of the community ends up killing themselves,” Meza warned.
Class in April goes well over the allotted two-hour time. Egypt Senoj Jones, 25, a transgender, sings a song she composed herself, called “I Know.” She stands in the center of the arranged tables, her arms outstretched, tilts her head up toward the low ceiling vents and closes her eyes.
“I know what I gotta do,” she sang. “Now that I know the truth, there is no excuse.”
She sang about growing up in foster care, transitioning to female, dropping out of college and popping pills. She is snapping her fingers. By the end, the whole group is singing the chorus with her. She finishes and they erupt into applause.
Outside in the yard, Strawn poses for the camera in the sinking sunlight. Strawn beams in a movie-like pose, sunglasses glinting against the glare.
“This is how we do it at San Quentin,” Strawn said playfully.
Gay borrowers are more likely to be denied mortgage loans, and those that do get approved pay higher interest rates and fees, according to a new study from Iowa State University.
Despite being “less risky overall,” same-sex borrowers are 73 percent more likely to be denied when applying for a mortgage loan, according to the report. When they are approved, the study found they have mortgage interest rates that are 0.02 to 0.2 percent higher on average — potentially adding tens of thousands of dollars to their repayments over the lifetime of the loan.
The study, published earlier this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests there may be systemic housing discrimination against gay and lesbian borrowers.
“Our investigation on mortgage performance reveals that same-sex applicants are less likely to prepay mortgages and are no more likely to default than their peers, indicating that they are less risky to lenders,” the report states. “Given the absence of evidence that suggests that same-sex status is a reliable signal for loan underperformance, potential disparate lending practices against sexual orientation might exist in the mortgage market.”
Lei Gao, one of the study’s authors, said he became interested in the experience of same-sex borrowers in the mortgage market after observing the experience of his gay neighbors in Georgia, one of the 26 states across the United States that does not have statewide housing protections for LGBTQ people.
“Their housing purchase experience and my selling experience basically taught me about this,” Gao explained, noting that it seemed “they were treated differently than some other neighbors.”
Since mortgage applications do not ask prospective borrowers about their sexual orientation, the researchers inferred borrowers’ sexuality through the gender disclosure of the applicant and co-applicant. Their data correlated with LGBTQ population estimates conducted by Gallup and the University of California, Los Angeles’ Williams Institute.
While Gao said it may be “premature to conclude that there exists discrimination against same-sex couples” in the mortgage lending market, he said the report’s findings should “raise enough concerns and call for a further full-scale investigation.”
“The potentially existing lending discrimination might just reflect a corner of the iceberg,” he told NBC News.
In the report, Gao and his co-authors state that their findings “have direct implications for the urgency of protecting the LGBT community regarding fair credit accessibility.”
Currently, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, federal legislation passed to end racial and religious segregation in home rentals and purchases, does not ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The Equality Act, a federal bill reintroduced in Congress last month, would modify the existing law to do so.
After the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, racial and religious housing discrimination became illegal, but it didn’t disappear overnight. Since 1991, the Justice Department has employed “testers” to determine whether landlords, sellers and agents are discriminating against protected classes, the Justice Department writes on its website. “This information may indicate whether a housing provider is complying with fair housing laws.”
