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Main Page  »  GLBT
View Article  Holidays Bring Extra Challenges for Gay and Lesbian Couples
Holidays Bring Extra Challenges for Gay and Lesbian Couples

AlterNet

Christmas is supposed to be a time where families and loved ones gather to share the season's greetings. But this year, like the other three years since this lesbian couple has been together, Beth and Liz will be miles apart on Christmas day.

They agreed to tell their story on condition that their names be changed to protect their privacy.

But their story is like so many other stories of lesbian and gay couples who struggle with the love for their partners vs. the duty to their families, and what to do when those two things clash, as they so often do at the holidays.

This is a Christmas story that seems as familiar and as old as the tale of Mary and Joseph unable to find a room at the inn. Even today, for so many gay and lesbian couples, there's no room at the inn when it comes to their love.

Beth hails from a plain Midwestern family where things like homosexuality are very awkward to talk about.

(click here to read entire story)



  Happy holidays to everyone from Rapid Response-Iowa.


View Article  Iowa School Board Overturns Committee Recommendation, Bans Book; Anti-bullying Workshop in Ames in January (GLBT)
Iowa School Board Overturns Committee Recommendation, Bans Book (GLBT)

The North Scott Press

by Bill Tubbs
  
The United Methodist Church defrocked the Rev. Irene Elizabeth Stroud on a 7-6 vote for being honest about her sexual orientation....The church's decision appears to be, at best, an effort to achieve unity by sacrificing reality and truth.

[That] very week, the networks, who flooded the airwaves all fall with half-truths disguised as political ads, rejected as "too controversial" a 30-second commercial of the United Church of Christ which showed a bouncer standing guard outside a church and choosing whom to allow into services. Among those rejected are people of color and a same-sex couple.

Just when you think all the issues are national, the school board of the Pleasant Valley [Iowa] School District sent shudders through academia with a 4-3 vote to overturn a committee's recommendation that it is OK to continue using the book, "The Misfits" by James Howe, in an elementary classroom. Parents protested when they learned that Linda Goetz, a sixth-grade teacher at Bridgeview Elementary in LeClaire, was reading the book aloud in an effort to curb name-calling. Their objection? One of the characters is gay.

(click here to read the entire story)



Iowa Department of Education Hosts Conference on Bullying and Harassment


"Bullying in Our  Schools: Power and Empowerment"


The GLBT Youth in Iowa Schools Task Force is one of several sponsors of this conference which will take  place on Thursday, January 27, 2005, at the Scheman Conference Center  in Ames.

This conference is designed to help school teams (including youth and community) create plans to prevent bullying and harassment  against all students, including those that are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT).  

Sessions will help team members learn what works, how to effectively intervene when bullying happens, and how to recognize the many forms that bullying can take.  A special strand is being offered for middle school and high school youth team members, in addition to a strand to address bullying/harassment against diverse  populations (GLBT students, students of color, students with  disabilities, religious minorities).

Click here for more information and to register your team

Brad Clark
Project Director,
GLBT Youth in Iowa Schools Task Force
PO Box 1797
Des Moines, IA  50306-1797

Contact Brad here:
Send an e-mail

Click here for more contact info:
www.iowasafeschools.org


Join your fellow Iowans in the fight to take back the media for ordinary citizens.  Click here to join RapidResponse - Iowa.


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