Profile
Photos
Comments
LGBT Population Estimate at 9 Million
The Williams Institute – a think tank dedicated to sexual orientation and
gender-related law – announced data collected through six surveys that they
estimate the LGBT population to be at 9 million, roughly the population of New
Jersey. This number comprises 3.5 percent of the adult population.
“The Institute of Medicine at the National Academies released an analysis of
LGBT health research calling for federal statistical agencies to quickly move
toward LGBT inclusion in their data collection. The surveys highlighted in this
report demonstrate the usefulness of sexual orientation and gender identity
questions on large-scale national population-based surveys. Better data can
provide the building blocks for critical information to understand the lives of
the 9 million LGBT Americans who have been historically marginalized in both
society and research,” stated study author Dr. Gary J. Gates.
Although in terms of sexual contact the numbers differ greatly, as women are
more likely to identify as bisexual, and reports of same-sex sexual contact and
attraction are significantly higher than those who identify as LGBT. An
estimated 19 million Americans have reported same-sex behavior, and more than 25
million admitted to same-sex attraction.
WPB Adds Benefits for Domestic Partners
The West Palm Beach City Commission voted unanimously to add family and
medical leave benefits to domestic partners this month.
After only one week in office Mayor Jeri Muoio spearheaded the effort brought
forth by the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council.
"As mayor, I am proud that our lesbian and gay municipal employees are
entitled to every family benefit offered by the City of West Palm Beach," Muoio
said in a statement.
Council President Rand Hoch said West Palm Beach is Florida's most
gay-friendly public workplace. According to the PBCHRC more than 2 percent of
the city's 1,700 employees have registered domestic partnerships.
“While most of the County's constitutional officers -- Supervisor of
Elections, Property Appraiser, Tax Collector and State Attorney -- have already
done this, West Palm Beach is the first municipality to do so,” Hoch said.
Hoch said he’s going to bring the same issue to the Palm Beach County Board
of County Commissioners in May.
“Last week I met with the mayors of Wellington, Delray Beach and Lake Worth,
and the City Manager of Palm Beach Gardens, and I am optimistic all of those
municipalities will also update their policies accordingly,” he said.
Tuesday, 19 April 2011 13:43
Two-hundred men gathered in the Arizona desert, on Labor Day Weekend in 1979,
for the first Spiritual Conference for Radical Faeries. Called forth by Harry
Hay (of Mattachine Society fame), Hay’s partner John Burnside, Don Kilhefner and
Mitch Walker, this first of many Gatherings created a development that spread
around the world and combined elements of gay liberation, feminism,
environmentalism, new age spirituality and the counter-culture.
Thousands of gay and bi men (later joined by a few women) met in out of the
way, rural gatherings and sanctuaries, creating a very loose network that defied
the LGBT community’s tendency toward assimilation and institutionalism.
Creative spirits like Will Roscoe, James Broughton, Andrew Ramer, Toby
Johnson, Dan Nicoletta and Charlie Murphy became part of this sub-culture. It
was Hay who coined the term “Radical Faeries,” both Radical (as to the root) and
Faerie having to do with gays’ spiritual and cultural traditions rather than
“radical” politics.
Among the 200 men who attended that first Faerie Gathering was author Mark
Thompson.
As Thompson remembers, the Gathering “was definitely a turning point in the
burgeoning gay men’s spirituality movement. In some ways, I felt that gathering
in the Arizona desert was as historically important as the Stonewall riots had
been a decade before. Both events signaled a significant refocusing of values
and vision, helping to create a new leap forward in gay culture-making. I
attended many Gatherings – mainly in the Western United States – for the next 20
years.”
More than thirty years after attending that first Gathering, Thompson, along
with Associate Editors Richard Neely (Osiris) and Bo Young, have assembled the
first anthology by and about the Faeries. The Fire In Moonlight: Stories
from the Radical Faeries, is published by White Crane Books/Lethe Press as
part of the White Crane Wisdom Series ($25).
“Since their sudden inception on a remote site in the American Southwest in
1979, the Faeries have grown like some exotic species of flora around the
world,” Thompson wrote in the introduction. “This book of many voices continues
that early call – a call for freedom of mind, body and spirit from the petty,
awful tyrannies of those who have tried every means to destroy us. It is about
how being a Radical Faerie has changed a life.” Among the contributors are Will
Roscoe, Franklin Abbott and Trebor Healey.
Bo Young, publisher of White Crane Books, and Associate Editor of The
Fire In Moonlight, began his involvement with the Radical Faeries in 1990,
when he first visited the Short Mountain Sanctuary in Tennessee.
As Young is quick to point out, “the organizing principle of the Faeries is
consensus and the Faerie Circle . . . no leaders. Everyone is ‘equidistant’
from the center. No one person is out in front…While the Radical Faeries are
identified most often as a ‘movement’ it isn’t something you join. It’s a state
of mind. If you say you are a Faerie, you are a Faerie. There are Faeries who
are into drag and organic farming and wild fermentation and there are Faeries
who are theatrical and there are Faeries who are living communally and there are
Faeries that are eremitic. There are rural Faeries and there are urban
Faeries.”
In The Fire in Moonlight, Faeries past and present share in their
Faerie experience. According to Jerry Berbiar (Jerry the Faerie), “the Radical
Faeries were founded for gay men. The Gatherings were places where gay men could
individually recreate themselves, create community, explore faggot essence and
create their own culture, free from the dominant all-encompassing hetero
viewpoint.”
Joey Cain wrote: “At the heart of the Radical Faeries is a recognition of and
exploration into gay men’s souls: our unique way of viewing, experiencing and
being in the world.”
While “EuroFaerie” Marco Shokti recalled: “I found myself in environments
where my very sexuality, my embrace of myself as male and female, my
determination that my sexual nature was both natural and magical, were honored
and explored.”
And Pete Sturman, AKA Mockingbird and Pistol Pete declared: “For a freaky
little queer boy like me the Radical Faeries were the family I hardly dared to
dream might exist. The Faeries provided me with a safe environment to try all
sorts of different things. I could split wood in high heels, bake bread in my
underwear or run around covered in mud. I could laugh like a hyena or take a
day of silence. They helped inspire me to become a musician and songwriter, a
loud and proud queen troubadour.”
One of the most interesting parts of The Fire in Moonlight is the
book’s “Faerie Glossary.”
According to Young, “a shared, unique language is one of the defining
elements of ‘culture.’ The Faeries have a very definite and unique use of
language and one of the chief motivations of the various traditions such as
Sanctuaries is a ‘time out of time’ period in which the gay individual removes
him (or her) self from the dominant culture and literally engage in ‘coming to
terms’ with who s/he is.”
Hay challenged the Faeries to self-define, from which emerged a vocabulary
which the editors believe required a Glossary. Many Faeries have taken “Faerie
names;” spiritual or ecologically-inspired names in contrast to their “mundane,
everyday names.”
The Fire in Moonlight presents a mostly-positive view of the Radical
Faeries. But there are dissenting views. “Improbable Faerie” Artwit, who was
active with the San Francisco Faeries during the 1980’s, is critical of a
subculture which, like other gay tribes, favors the young and beautiful: “I have
no desire to be a Faerie Mormon and make breakfast while the pretty ones sleep
in and fuck,” he said.
Young admits that “one of the challenges we had was finding an
African-American contributor. The Faeries are like any other part of this
American society and suffers from the inherent racism of the culture. But that
said, it is one of the few communities of which I am aware that actually
attempts to address that.” In short, “The Fire in Moonlight is not
meant in any way to be a hagiography of the Radical Faerie movement.”
Artwit is in the minority. As Thompson put it, “once a Radical Faerie, always
a Radical Faerie.”
“The Faeries are by no means a perfectly evolved group,” Thompson admits.
“But it definitely represents a quantum step in healing gay male relationships
and community practice. “The Radical Faeries may appear as a rather funky,
insignificant tribe of social outcasts, but I have to state here for the record
that nowhere have I encountered more intelligent, creative and beautifully
self-aware gays in one place than at a Faerie Gathering. A Gathering is the
antithesis of a typical gay ghetto environment. It is an intentional community –
a destination on the inner journey, not some angry place of refuge. There is a
lot of joy that comes from being a Radical Faerie.”
“The strongest thing about the Faeries is their commitment to community and
their general awareness of and respect for history and tradition,” Young notes.
“Another strength is the creation of and maintenance of the Faerie Sanctuaries
in their various manifestations,” many of which are listed in the “Radical
Faerie Resource Directory” found at the back of The Fire in Moonlight.
On the other hand, Young admits that the Faeries’ “generally perceived
flamboyance tends to scare people away.”
The Radical Faeries, Thompson says, “claim no particular leaders (we say we
are ‘leader-full’) so there is not a problem of domineering egos holding others
in thrall. People like that quickly get invited elsewhere. The reverse of this
is that sometimes chaos ensues and the group experience can rapidly devolve into
incoherent confusion. Over the years, the Faeries have learned how to walk
better in balance between these polarities.”
Thompson continues: “The Faeries have a very significant role in the greater
understanding of what I would call our core gay values. Because we are living
so in the moment, the archetypal motifs of gay psyche are more keenly felt and
expressed. This is one crowd that is not going to be assimilated into
mainstream mythology, which is still a narrative of heterosexual dominance.
Faeries are shape-shifters, makers of ritual and beauty, natural teachers,
healers and soul guides. We walk between the worlds, the seen and unseen, and
between the genders. It represents a more authentic vision of who we gay men
really are inside.”
Young adds: “For myself the chief asset of most Faeries I know is that they
understand a history of same-sex people and tend to see themselves as connected
to that history. There are so many other aspects of what I think of more as a
culture than as a ‘movement’ . . . the attraction to the land, the care of the
land, the rejection of consumerist culture, the sense of humor. It is one of
the ancient archetypes of same-sex people to be jesters, culture carriers,
interpreters and teachers. The Radical Faeries are all of these. These have
always been incredibly important to any vital society . . . and they always will
be.”
