In This Issue:

Irish Wake Lesbian Literature Group Dorothy Awards Festivus Connecticut's Gay Men's Choir GLBT Expo Womyn's Social Group My Pride, My Soul Stephanie's Living Room March Dance The Loft - Mohegan Sun Love Makes a Family - Dinner Party Seal Watch Cruise Gay Bingo New Jersey Lawmakers Pass Two Gay Rights Bills Committee and Volunteer Opportunities Calendar of Events Transgender Guide SLAPHAPS - Senior Lesbians at Play Happily JusKissMe.com - Meet Women in CT PFLAG News Resources: Counseling Spiritual & Health Legal Real Estate Miscellaneous

February/March 2006
Vol.18, No. 2

PFLAG Mission - Promote the health & well-being of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons, their families & friends; - Provide support to cope with an adverse society; - Provide education to enlighten an ill-informed public; - Provide advocacy to end discrimination and to secure equal civil rights; - Provide an opportunity for dialogue about sexual orientation, and work to create a society that is healthy and respectful of all human beings.

PFLAG promotes the health and well-being of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons, their families and friends, through support, to cope with an adverse society; education, to enlighten an ill-informed public; and advocacy, to end discrimination and to secure equal civil rights. PFLAG provides the opportunity for confidential dialogue about sexual orientation and gender identity, and acts to create a society that is respectful of human diversity.

It seems that many families have to face the fact that one of their number is a homosexual. Now, that is often not truly a surprise, but a confirmation of a long-held fear that, as long as it was not
mentioned, did not exist. So now it’s been mentioned, and now it does indeed exist. Like the famous elephant in the living room, it won’t go away if you ignore it. What’s next?

Your newly outed kin would love for you to just accept it, welcome their significant other, and move on. The chances of that are slim to none, unless you and your family are truly a nonjudgmental and tolerant group.

More likely, there were tears, recriminations, dramatic “Where did I go wrong?” statements and, in extreme cases, “I hope you don’t intend to tell MY family!” One outed friend told me, “When she said that, I said, ‘It’s true: I’m adopted!’ Otherwise, they would have been my family, too...” Funny, yes, but there was pain there, too.

Upcoming Meetings We invite you to come to our monthly support meetings. We share our stories in a safe welcoming environment and promise strict confidentiality. We meet the first Wednesday of every month at 7:30 P.M. at the Triangle Community Center in Norwalk. For directions, log on to www.ctgay.org. Any questions? Call Sandy at 203-226-0257 or email her at pflagswct@yahoo.com. Mark your calendar for the next three meetings: Wednesdays - February 1st,, March 1st, April 5th

Visit PFLAG. We won’t tell you how to change your loved one; we will tell you how to accept this new member of the family and to see that they haven’t really changed — only your perception. PFLAG has parents who can tell you their stories and describe their journey from aversion to acceptance; gays and lesbians who can answer the questions you can’t ask your own loved ones, and an extensive library with books on many subjects on homosexuality, including some on religion. The leader usually has been through what you’re going through, and other parents and friends who are traveling their own road to acceptance. No subject is taboo, no question is too simple to ask. There are no silly questions, only questions that deserve answers. And you’ll get answers aplenty at PFLAG. How to be supportive of your GLBT [gay, les- bian, bisexual, transgendered — and some people add Q for questioning] loved one, how to answer questions your other family members might have, how to combat religious bigotry and how to be at peace with yourself and your loved one will all be discussed and backed up with facts, not theories. Something else you’ll get is anonymity. We at PFLAG will not discuss you and your GLBT loved one outside the meeting room. We’re here to bring you acceptance and peace of mind.

Right now, you probably think you’ll never be happy again. PFLAG promises that you will be and that you can reconnect with your GLBT loved one. After all, we’ve all done it: why not you?

PFLAG’s Rich Past Provides a Solid Foundation for the Future

It started simply, almost accidentally. In April 1972, the New York Post published a letter from Jeanne Manford, whose gay son had been badly beaten at a protest while police stood by. “I didn’t think anything of it, but I guess it was the first time a mother ever sat down publicly and said, ‘Yes, I have a homosexual child,’” recalls Manford.

Two months later, Manford and her son, Morty, marched in New York’s gay pride parade together. Manford carried a sign which read, “Parents of Gays: Unite in Support for Our Children.” The crowd screamed, yelled and cried as Manford approached. Initially, she thought they were cheering for Dr. Benjamin Spock, who walked behind the Manfords, but as people began to crowd around her, she realized they were reacting to her.

“As we marched the parade route, Morty and I began talking about starting a group for parents,” said Manford, then a fourth-grade school teacher in New York. “I never had any idea it would start all of this. I remember, as we marched, telling Morty that I hoped it would someday become a national organization, but that was just a dream. I never envisioned we would reach so many people.” When Manford got home from the parade, her telephone rang constantly. Gay and lesbian people wanted her to speak with their parents. Other parents wanted to share their stories with her. For several months, Manford continued to field telephone calls, participate in panel discussions and travel the country for radio and television interviews.

In March 1973, New York City Parents of Gays held its first meeting. Nearly 20 people gathered in a Methodist church in Greenwich Village to share their stories and support each other. Amy and Dick Ashworth, whose two sons were gay, and Bob and Elaine Benov, who also had two gay sons, began attending meetings in the group’s first year. “It made an immediate difference in our lives,” Benov said. “At that time we came from a very different place and needed the help that we got from the parents’ group and stayed on to continue it.” Throughout the 1970s, the New York group received calls from parents nationwide who wanted support or information to start groups in their communities.

In March 1976, the Adele and Larry Starr launched the Los Angeles group, the first parents group to apply for non-profit, tax-exempt status. More than 35 people went to the Starrs’ home for the first meeting.

Harlen and Lois Adams started a parents group in Chico in 1978 — one of the first ever in a non-urban area. “It was so scary for people to come to meetings then,” said Lois Adams. “One lady came to our house four or five times before she actually came inside. She would just drive over, sit in her car, then turn around and go home.” Parents from across the country gathered in Washington, DC, in 1979 at the first National March for Gay and Lesbian Rights. The parents marched in the parade, and Dick Ashworth and Adele Starr both addressed the historic crowd from the podium in front of the Washington Monument. Later that weekend, 25 parents met and “got down to business” to plan a national organization, Benov said. Two years later, more than 30 people met at the Starrs’ home in Los Angeles to write the bylaws for a national organization, give it a name and draft the articles of incorporation.

The 20 local groups decided to call themselves the Federation of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, or Parents FLAG. They created a five-member Board of Directors, and Adele Starr became president of the Board.

Throughout the early 1980s, Parents FLAG began to distribute information to educational institutions and communities of faith nationwide. The group also began establishing itself as a source of information for the general public. When the “Dear Abby” syndicated newspaper column mentioned Parents FLAG, the group received more than 7,000 letters.

The Federation also continued the advocacy work that local groups had been doing individually. The Starrs, who were active through the Los Angeles group in fighting Anita Bryant’s anti-gay crusade in the 1970s, worked against the U.S. Military’s efforts to discharge lesbians in the 1980s.

Later that year — with an increasing number of local groups, a larger Board of Directors and the establishment of Regional Directors to help start and support chapters — Parents FLAG relocated to Denver, with Ellinore Lewallen as its president.

The Federation had a mailing list of 1,300 and a budget of $16,000. All letters, lists, newsletters and other publications were done on one manual typewriter. “It became a complete national office,” Bossart recalls. “But it was a lot of work in those start-up years.”

The work was paying off. More than 100 communities formed local groups, and “once chapters were going, they were amazingly enthusiastic,” Bossart said. “It was an exciting time.”

The Federation was receiving an enormous volume of requests for information. The Board established task forces on issues related to religion, HIV/AIDS, straight spouses and youth. “We were part of a historical movement,” Lewallen said.

In 1988, with nearly 200 local groups, Parents FLAG permanently relocated to Washington, DC, and Paulette Goodman became
president.

Goodman’s efforts were catapulted into the national spotlight in 1990, when she began corresponding with First Lady Barbara Bush. Goodman wrote to Bush, explaining Parents FLAG’s work and asking the First Lady to “speak kind words to some 24 million gay Americans and their families, to help heal the wounds, and to keep these families in loving relationships.”

After repeated attempts to get the letter directly to Bush, Goodman carried it in her purse to a hate crimes bill signing at the White House and handed it to an aide. She received a reply from Mrs. Bush 10 days later, in May 1990. “I firmly believe that we cannot tolerate discrimination against any individuals or groups in our country. Such treatment always brings with it pain and perpetuates intolerance,” Bush wrote.

The letters were inadvertently given to the Associated Press, and Parents FLAG was in the middle of a political maelstrom. Conservative columnists attacked Bush for being sympathetic to the “gay lobby.” Goodman spoke out, clarifying Parents FLAG’s role “We got a lot of mileage out of that.” Goodman and the First Lady continued to correspond regularly until 1992.

To accommodate its growing public profile and local network the organization restructured in 1993. An affiliation process was established for chapters, board seats became elected and the organization’s name changed to Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, or PFLAG.

PFLAG continued to support parents, while speaking out for their gay children, in 1996, when Nancy McDonald became PFLAG’s president. Following what Henderson calls “an enormous growth spurt,” 65,000 households were PFLAG members.

“The last couple of years have been largely devoted to sustaining PFLAG’s growth, staying focused on our mission and reaching out to even more people — to open hearts and minds all across America,” McDonald said. “We’ve strengthened locally, and we’ve taken our place at the national table. When I first became involved with PFLAG 10 years ago, we were an afterthought. Now, people call us to testify before Congress.”

Reflecting on the organization’s evolution over the past 25 years, Adele Starr said parents’ unconditional love has been constant. “In some ways, nothing has changed. In some ways, there’s obviously been tremendous change,” she explained. “We never agreed on a lot of things but we all got along because we all had one purpose in life, and that was to help our children and change attitudes in the community at large.”