RU12? Community Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Vermont

Ghouls Gone Wild 2 - get your tickets now!

Hello gays and ghouls, its almost time for the second annual Ghouls Gone Wild Halloween Party! The party is going to be the Halloween event  and the proceeds will benefit RU12?!

There will be big CASH PRIZES for the best individual and group costumes.

The party is on Friday, October 31st (of course) at Higher Ground. Buy your tickets now, online or at the Higher Ground box office. Its cheaper than getting them at the door.

The House of LeMay has some hot pics from last year up on their blog! We have a few up on the photostream at the top of this page too.

See you there!

Don't Miss "My Dear Boy" at the Fletcher Wed. Oct. 22, 6pm

RU12 Community Center proudly presents "My Dear Boy" a production of WordStage Vermont in conjunction with the month long celebration of LGBTQ History Month at the Fletcher Library in Burlington.

WORDSTAGE VERMONT is a Chamber Music Readers Theater dedicated to the presentation of works with special literary, historical and musical merit. Our aim is to employ professional Vermont - based artists whose talents will illuminate the texts and music of some of the most fascinating and remarkable figures in the realms of history and the performing arts. Using letters, diaries, recorded conversations and contemporary chronicles underscored with musical compositions of the era, a WordStage Vermont performance will entertain, inform and educate audiences who have a love of literature, the humanities and the performing arts in their purest form. For information on our 2008-09 performances, please visit our web site at www.wordstagevt.com.

“My Dear Boy” is a program culled from the letters collected, edited and annotated by Rictor Norton and published under the same title in 1998 by Leyland Publications in San Francisco. The anthology is a collection of gay love letters documenting the heartbreak and joy of love between men for almost two thousand years.

The compilation offers a tremendous amount of riches from such diverse epistolarians as the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the 8^th Century Chinese Poet Bo Juyi, Italian Painter/Sculptor Michelangelo, Poets and Writers Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Jean Cocteau, W. H. Auden, and Allen Ginsberg and many more.

WordStage Vermont has chosen a dozen of these letters to present on this program as a prelude to the construction of an entire evening for our 2009-10 Season. The narrative and reading of the letters will be performed by G. Richard Ames, William Pelton and Tim Tavcar and will be underscored by the sensuous solo viola of Raymond Malone who will perform a series of romantic Italian Love Songs from the 17^th and 18^th centuries. 

A discussion of the performance will follow immediately afterward.

Ten years ago today

Ten years ago today, America was rocked by the tragic story of a 21-year-old college student that had been beaten severely by two men, tied to a fence, and left alone for 18 hours before he was found. The victim was Matthew Shepard, and as he clung to life for the next six days, the image of his bittersweet smile spread through newspapers and television reports. During that painful week, we learned the truth: the boy’s attackers killed Matthew because he was gay.

Hate violence and bias incidents happen all over the country, and Vermont is not immune. Not all hate crimes result in murder and most are never reported. Hate takes many forms such as hate speech, vandalism of property, discrimination and harassment.

The SafeSpace Anti-Violence program which serves lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) survivors of violence and discrimination in Vermont worked with 16 victims of hate in the last year. One of the more public incidents occurred in northern Vermont on October 1, 2007. Two perpetrators spray painted the cars of two gay men with the words “faggot” and other anti-gay epithets. Law enforcement conducted a thorough investigation, the perpetrators were charged with a hate crime, yet the charges were ultimately dropped in February 2008.

We are fortunate that Vermont is one of a handful of states that protects its residents with hate crime legislation that includes sexual orientation and gender identity, among other protected groups. In contrast, Wyoming—the home state of Matthew Shepard—still does not have any hate crime legislation, nor can we find these protections at the federal level. 

Ten years have passed since Matthew’s murder, and we cannot let the country remain stagnant. LGBTQ people have a right to feel safe not just in Vermont, but in all the cities, towns, and communities across the country. We must take a stand against hatred, so that no more families have to endure the pain of the Shepards. The time is now to see the Matthew Shepard Act, federal hate crimes legislation, passed in Congress.

In honoring Matthew’s legacy, we must also ask ourselves: what can we do in Vermont to improve the enforcement of our existing Hate Crime Law? Is legislation enough to protect our friends and neighbors from violence? What else can we do to ensure safety in our homes, our schools, and our communities?

Part of the answer is that we must continue the dialogue about hate: what causes it, where we encounter it, and what each of us can do to make every person in our community feel safe. We can get involved, support Vermont’s LGBTQ community center and anti-violence program, attend one of the October LGBTQ History Month activities, talk to your friends about this article, challenge all forms of hate and bias, and do not stay silent.

If you or anyone you know has experienced anti-LGBTQ hate or discrimination in Vermont please contact SafeSpace at our toll free support line 1-866-869-7341.

For more information about the SafeSpace Anti-Violence program, the RU12? Community Center or LGBTQ History Month activities please call 802-860-7812.

James Dobson - Radio Hall of Famer?

James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, will be inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame by the Museum of Broadcast Communications on November 8th. Dr. Dobson and his organization have been criticized by the American Psychological Association and numerous LGBT activist groups for promoting conversion therapy to change gay peoples' sexual orientation. A "ministry" of Focus on the Family, Love Won Out, explicitly works to "heal" gay people of their attractions and help them attain forgiveness of their "sins".

If you're interested in responding to or protesting this this induction, visit DumpDobson.com for a list of resources.

Thank you to former RU12? staffer, Shawn, for bringing this to our attention!

LGBTQ History Month 31 days, 31 Icons