News from the Rainbow History Project

The following press release is worth noting:


Washington, DC – The Historical Society of Washington, DC (HSW) and the Rainbow History Project (RHP) are pleased to announce their archival partnership in bringing Rainbow History’s collections of documents, images, and ephemera to a wider audience of researchers, students, and members of the community.

Mark Meinke, chair of Rainbow History, believes “Rainbow History’s mission of collecting, preserving, and promoting the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) history of metropolitan Washington, DC fully complements the Historical Society’s mission to make ‘the history of the Washington metropolitan area and its people accessible and understandable to public audiences in order to achieve a sense of identity, place and pride in Washington for those who live and work here.’”

The Historical Society of Washington will house and preserve the collections transferred to it by the Rainbow History Project. The collections will be processed and made accessible under the leadership of Yvonne Carignan, Director of Kiplinger Research Library at the Historical Society.

The agreement between RHP and HSW preserves RHP’s rights to materials in its copyright and to access and display items from the collections in keeping with its mission. Both organizations look forward to working together to bring the history of the city’s LGBT community to a wider audience. RHP will work with HSW to bring other collections to the Historical Society in the years ahead.
Ms. Carignan remarked, “Those of us at Historical Society’s Kiplinger Research Library welcome this partnership. Since 1894 the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., has been dedicated to collecting, preserving, exhibiting and celebrating the many stories of Washington. We are very excited to have the RHP collection because it adds important depth and dimension to our rich collections on Washington history.”

Among the first items to be transferred to HSW will be Rainbow History’s collection of The Furies newspapers. A local lesbian feminist separatist collective which practiced and taught self-reliance to women, the Furies’ newspaper initiated nationwide discussion of the rights, challenges, and opportunities for women in the 1970s. Also transferred will be Rainbow History’s collection of seminal African-American LGBT publications including issues of Blacklight, BlackOut, BGM, BLK, and publications of Black and White Men together from the 1980s. The David Aiken collection of draft articles for The Advocate and his topical clippings and document files from 1970 to 1981 also joins the publications at the Historical Society of Washington

The Upcoming Tax Rebate

I’m not sure of this issue. It seems you have to have had an income of over $3,000 to get the “refund.” I get more than that in Social Security but file no income tax return usually. So I’m told I have to file anyway just to be eligible for the $300 “refund.”

The irony about thinking about this for me was that on the same day I am thinking about the issue of bigots voting (meaning against Obama just because he is black, or Hillary just because she is a woman, I find a perfect example of how such people “think.” (And Obama came close to saying the same thing.)

I took my neighbor, Carolyn, to visit with her mother and brother in Glenmora, where Carolyn grew up (half-way between Alexandria and Lake Charles in the part of the state that “divides” the Protestant north from the Catholic/Cajun south).
Her mother in most ways is a good woman, in terrible health, as is the brother, both on welfare, but the son, as a start, refuses to apply for Medicaid. He gets help despite himself thanks to his advisors, mental health etc. We sit down to eat a good southern dinner (lunch) and just off handed she says well, this country will be in terrible shape if they elect that black man president. Prejudice, ignorance?

Then, as Carolyn and I had discussed on the trip down, we want them to apply for the tax refund, as they all all people need it. But, she said, I don’t think she will, even though our relatives down there have told her about it so she could fill out the form and send it in. Well, we asked her and she said she was NOT going to apply for the “REFUND.” She and the son/brother are refusing, for unknown reasons to file for the money.

A final point about saying the nation will suffer under Obama. My dear, now dead, aunt said the same thing as we were eating dinner a long time ago, long, long ago when she said Bill Clinton would destroy our nation and then after he was elected, she said well, he will probably declare some emergency and put us under a dictatorship. Now this from a woman who was not ignorant in a “forgivable” sense. She was just stupid as she only heard from a few right-wingers and hardly ever left the house. But she was good to my niece, who eventually killed herself over a man—the 4th one, she was a stereotypical woman who didn’t feel she could be happy without a man to hold on to.

Well, so I am not surprised at the “thinking” of ignorant people. The question is if young people will take an interest and understand that even with such people our nation has grown better and needs them to continue to work for progress.

Obama’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago

I only worry that it is the Clinton’s who are bringing up this. I think in a sense he had to be “vetted,” but I would not like to think of them as bigots. I do wonder who put out the videos.

But I also, as in the case of the New York governor, want to know the rest of the story—in his case who are the OTHER clients, if he is #9? It is devious and wrong to only attack him, even though, like Senator Craig, it couldn’t have happened to a more “deserving” person.

In Obama’s church issue, I am not that surprised—even though it is out of character for a United Church of Christ church to be so bigoted, even for people who have suffered. My point and I think it is a major one for intelligent people is what is the opposite. A little bit of the “opposite” comes with McCain’s “friends” such as Hagee, or if Focus on the Family supports him, or Pat Robertson. Pat said the same thing this black preacher said—and he was “covered” for it by the media a little bit, most taking him as a joke, which can not be done for Obama’s preacher.

But having grown up in the racially segregated south and heard the sermons of white preachers in the Baptist, Methodist (remember George Wallace? He was a Methodist), who aid terrible, un-Christian things such as God does not approve of blacks and whites living together. It was preachers who supported the KKK and what would you expect from a black preacher who was honest if he didn’t say, or she, that Hillary had not experienced being arrested for “driving while black? or of being discriminated against everyday of her life.

I would think that at 75, having gone through how many presidential campaigns I would have some knowledge, but I don’t. But I do have confidence that perhaps we need to finally go through this issue. It is only complicated with the darn fact that a woman is the other choice. Dam it—we go all this time and here we bring up a woman and a black at the same time? Who is charge here??? But we need to expose bigots, where ever they are, just as I, as a homosexual, need to know my enemies. But the media, as exampled last night on Obama’s interview with someone also “accused” of being gay, and the interviewer pushed things that made him seem antagonistic to Obama.

I have wondered not how Obama got to be what he is—his speeches etc got him there and Geraldine is a racist to say what she said, considering that SHE got where she is by affirmative action because she was a woman, because Obama’s race has not helped him, the question is, a legitimate one, if it will hurt him.

Isn’t it a wonderful irony that here the attempt to attack him as being a secret Muslim, which didn’t work, has now been changed-speaking of change-and he is being attacked because his “Christian” church is racist. Wonder if the people asking this have ever attacked white churches in the south for being racist?

I do think that ONLY people who questioned Romney on HIS Mormon religion have standing to question Obama. While it is wrong to attack either one of them on this aspect, at least such people are being “equal.”

As I think we all worry, we must not say that everyone who wants Hillary is a racist. It is another irony that the couple that has been considered very NON racist, the Clintons, now seem to be defending themselves as being the ones secretly pushing racist attacks on Obama.

We do live in interesting times. I do consider this campaign to be not that bad-and our nation is making progress. I can be sure of that as a homosexual-life for me today is 90% better than it would have been if we had not worked to change the laws and educated the public, etc. And perhaps Obama and his supporters will be recorded in history as doing this for the race issue. I don’t think that Jesse Jackson and his type did-this is not the same work as ML King—this is politics. I am of course in favor of taking away the tax-exemption of every church that pushes a candidate or tries to change laws, such as the anti-gay marriage laws. that will shut them up, and they are the ones who are usually anti-gay, anti-black, anti-everything.

I do wonder if this Pew Report is accurate, it says that churches are losing members—across the board. And even if people are not leaving religion, they are shopping around, changing churches as often as they change cars or houses, jobs, etc. A good American free enterprise system at work.

Gay Las Vegas

I thought of Melvin Cain and his time there working and studying with Father Bernard and Father Thomas, who wrote for ONE Magazine too, and their attempt to get the American Eastern Orthodox Church going there in the ’60s.

I know I hate such “info” but I don’t want to forget, so am sending this tidbit that I saw mentioned in one of the magazines I saw at the bookstore (Books-A-Million here in Bossier City). Probably Instinct, but it has articles covering gay Las Vegas. It says that it is not that gay, but then in a sense that may be because most people are “integrated.”

And most people are working at casinos and one from Louisiana is typical in that he is single and finds little support as he works the night shift, at a table, and has, like most, only been there four years and has seen great changes in that little time. One person who likes it admits that may be because he has a partner.

It talks about several new hotels/casinos being built and that, while they are going to be gay-friendly, they are aimed at tourists of all types. And the local Pride is not that good compared to others. And the local center has a budget, donated by individuals, of about $350,000 compared to a $35 million dollar budget for the gay center in Hollywood—most of which comes from governments, local, state and federal.

But the interesting and personal item that caught my attention is a mention of what I think was called St. Therese Center, run by a priest, that, while dealing mostly with AIDS cases as a support resource, is a lot like the Fathers were when they were in Las Vegas and so what you and they were thinking of in the what? the ’70s, is still an idea that is “going” today. We should let them know of the work they did.

Glenn Beck coverage of the young homosexual Iranian’s problem with Holland and England

I accidentally saw Glenn Beck’s CNN show last night and since I don't like him, and he gave me another reason last night since he was stupid about a tape of a sermon by Obama’s preacher which makes a lot of sense if you have lived as a black man, he made “life” complicated by then doing a segment on the young Iranian man they are trying to deport back to Iran—and his guest was a good Muslim lesbian who has written a book and they made the perfect point (he compared the young man to historic rejection of jews at the time of World War II by nations and the ship had to take them back perhaps to their death) that dear England and Holland claim to be so liberal and gay-loving and here they are being so bureaucratic and stupid over this young man’s life.

I don't have an email address for Glenn Beck but he should be thanked. I also wonder who brought the story to his attention and what other general media places and people have covered this issue that you have worked on.