Long Beach, California- The Center Long Beach is proud to announce the addition of several new staff and Board members. Porter Gilberg has been promoted to Administrative Director, Kyle Bullock joins as Youth Program Manager, Shawna Cozens as HIV Testing Counselor, and Natalie Tjandra as Operations Assistant. In addition, Jamie Hunt and JaySun Howell have been elected to The Center’s Board of Directors.

“We are thrilled to have doubled our staff and elected two new Board members” states Ron Sylvester, Chairman of the Board of Directors at The Center. “With the support of our community we have grown over the last year and we look forward to continuing our current renaissance in Long Beach.”

Gilberg most recently served as The Center’s Operations Manager and has spearheaded efforts to recruit hundreds of new volunteers, increase funding, and provide additional outreach services to Long Beach. Gilberg brings over five years of experience in non-profit management, community organizing, and fundraising and has been involved with The Center for over five years. Gilberg holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Women’s Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Master’s Degree in Applied Women’s Studies from Claremont Graduate University.

With the addition of Gilberg, our current Interim Executive Director Phyllis Schmidt officially steps down from that role and rejoins our Board of Directors in a voting capacity.

“We are very grateful to Phyllis for her two year stint as our volunteer IED.  We couldn’t have survived without her incredible contribution” added Sylvester.

Bullock has over seven years experience working with youth and has previously worked as a teacher in the Long Beach Unified School District and with Long Beach Parks and Recreation. As Youth Program Manager, Bullock will oversee The Center’s Mentoring Youth Through Empowerment (MYTE) Program which provides support, guidance, and educational opportunities to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (LGBTQ) youth ages 13 to 17.

Howell is a Managing Application Consultant with International Business Machines (IBM). A Southern California resident for over twenty-five years, Howell has volunteered with a number of local organizations and has served as Co-Chair of the Southern California Chapter of Black and White Men Together and just completed a three year term as the Community Relations Chair for The AIDS Food Store Board of Directors. In 2010, Howell received the President’s Volunteer Service Award from President Barack Obama.

Hunt is completing a double major in Psychology and Women and Gender Studies at California StateUniversity, Fullerton and has extensive experience in sales and marketing.  Hunt is also a research assistant for the Tanzania Project which works to protect human rights, the environment, and personal and mental health for Tanzanians.

“This is an incredibly exciting time for The Center and the Greater Long Beach LGBT community” states Gilberg. “With these new staff and Board additions, The Center will be able to provide increased outreach and direct services to better serve our community.”

Performance Event Collective Mama Pancha’s Queer Life Rituals presents the Third Annual LA Queer Posada, featuring Payasos L.A. and the Los Angeles chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. A new take on the Mexican Posada celebration, LA Queer Posada will include performances in theatre, poetry, dance and music with intercultural queer artists.

The procession will take place on Friday, December 23, 2011 and will commence promptly at 7:59 pm at The Eagle in Silver Lake (4219 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90029). There is no admission fee however donations will be collected to benefit the Transgender Youth Clinic of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Mama Panchas Queer Life Rituals is a performance, party, right-of-passage collective that serves the LGBT community through the creation of accessible, inclusive, and intercultural participatory spiritual happenings. The Posada is traditionally a community performance that reenacts the pilgrimage taken by Mary and Joseph as they searched for shelter leading to the birth of Christ.

LA Queer Posada is celebrated in Silver Lake to commemorate the area as a historically gay and Latino neighborhood, at a time when many markers of that history are vanishing. “This year in particular we call attention to the closing of Le Barcito, formerly The Black Cat, a landmark gay bar that launched The Advocate out of pre-Stonewall protests against LAPD raids,” says Mama Pancha.  “Not only had Le Barcito become a sort of sanctuary for the gay Latino community, but they also hosted the previous two Queer Posadas and tons of other queer life rituals.”

This year LA Queer Posada will end its mile-long procession at Los Globos where performances symbolizing the gift of the Magi will take place.  PERFORMERS INCLUDE:  La Cholita, Selah Gospel Choir.  21 and over.

For more information please contact Miguel Barragan LAQueerPosada2011@gmail.com

Many of you  may remember Majd from The Brit Bar here in Long Beach who has gone to a bigger adventure, he has written and is performing in a one-person show, Blood Fruit. The show has great reviews and was brought back by popular demand, it’s a show not to be missed!

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In association with Spoken World Festival, Blood Fruit, the one man play written and performed by Iraqi-born, American-raised Majd Murad, opens Saturday, November 5th at Lounge 2 Theatre along Hollywood’s Theatre Row.

This autobiographical tale, spanning Majd’s high school and college years, focuses on his coming out – first to his friends, but his ultimate decision to reveal to his family that he is a homosexual, especially his Catholic-Iraqi traditional parents, is the heart and soul of Blood Fruit.  Murad fears that by revealing to them that he is gay, he risks being a victim of an honor killing.  Instead, he becomes the victim of a man who infects him with HIV and now faces a new fear:  would his parents do the unspeakable knowing he is HIV positive? He uses humor and pathos to tell his story, while playing the various characters that are central to his life. Majd says: ”I believe from our deepest vulnerabilities we can find our deepest strengths.”  Blood Fruit is a part of that for him.  LA Theatre Review says:  “Majd Murad is a truly likable and empathetic soul, struggling to have life and love on his own terms…..he is here to educate and inspire by “airing out his dirty laundry,” good and bad.”

Blood Fruit

Blood Fruit has been work shopped throughout venues in LA, culminating in this past summer’s 2^nd Annual Hollywood Fringe Festival.  Majd was a Fringe favorite, receiving ovations for his performances and taking the Best Of The Fest in the solo category.

Dramaturg, Eric Trules, is an integral part of  Blood Fruit, as developer and editor. Trules is an Assoc. Professor of Practice at USC School of Theatre and a Fulbright Senior Specialist in American Studies (Theatre, 2008-13). Bethany Kraemer, director, earned her MFA in TV, Film and Theatre at CSU-LA and her BA in Theatre from UC-Riverside.  Numerous plays she directed include world premieres of The Milkman and A Conversation with Alana: One Boy’s Multicultural Rite of Passage.

Majd grew up in Redlands, then graduated Cum Laude from UC-Riverside.  It was on campus and off that he found his voice for acting, writing and directing.  He was the recipient of several prestigious college awards and fellowships.  In addition to acting and writing, he is also a mask maker and educator.  When not perfecting his craft, Majd is a substitute teacher.

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Lounge 2 Theatre, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, CA. Dates and Times: In Dec., Sats., Dec. 3, 10 and 17 at 3PM Running Time: 75 mins. Tickets: $30 BUY HERE

Visit his website at http://majdmurad.com/bloodfruit/

In March of 1970, a bloodied and disoriented 13-year-old runaway, Joseph Alwyn Fancher, stumbled shoeless into a Huntington Beach bar. After an ambulance had been called and his stomach was pumped — filled with pills and alcohol — Fancher took police back to the apartment where he said his shoes were at. Discovering not only Fancher’s shoes but an assortment of drugs and pornography, the police knew they had compulsively made a mistake: they lacked a warrant before they barged in.

This was the first seed of violent behavior that no one knew would span for another thirteen years, with a string of murders haunting Long Beach and Seal Beach following the tragedies of the killings of Patrick Kearney. A nickname that Kearney also shared, this decade-long monster would be dubbed The Freeway Killer.

Kraft's 1963 yearbook photo

Randy Steven Kraft was not your typical boy. Born in Long Beach in 1945 from parents who had moved from Wyoming, he seemed to truly find his niche when he was moved to Westminster three years later. The ultraconservative nature of Orange County was befitting for Kraft where high school classmates described him as somewhere ‘right of Attila the Hun.’ After attending Claremont College after graduating high school, where he studied economics, he voraciously supported the campaign of Barry Goldwater as well as support of the Vietnam War.

Then things shifted: growing a beard and becoming swooned by the ’68 protests, Kraft just as voraciously supported the efforts of Robert Kennedy. It was then that he began to frequent gay bars along the then-famous Garden Grove Boulevard, where a string of gay-friendly joints were. In 1969, he came out, much to the shock of family and military co-workers alike, where he was dismissed from the Air Force on accounts of ‘medical problems.’

Kraft then dove straight into the excessives of living freely, where roommates said his diet of speed and beer led him to strange behaviors like disappearing for days or locking himself in his room for equally lengthy times. It was around this time that Kraft was perusing the HB boardwalk and ran into a runaway, Facher. After luring him with marijuana and wine, he raped the semiconscious boy before leaving for work, when the boy had a chance to escape.

With no active connections for over a year, the day after Christmas of 1972 turned out to be the start of a string of horrors that would plague 1973. After the body of 20-year-old Marine Edward Daniel Moore was discovered, there would be three John Does — one of which was entirely dismembered, with the head being discovered in Long Beach, the torso, right leg, and arms in San Pedro, and the left leg in Sunset Beach — and the murders of 20-year-old Ron Weibe and 23-year-old Vincent Cruz Mestas. Similar characteristics of the murders intertwined them: socks stuffed into the anuses of the victims, with bite marks and bruisings on or complete castration of the genitals. Mestas went through a particularly gruesome ordeal, where his body was discovered with both hands missing and covered with plastic bags and a pencil-sized object shoved into his penis.

Terrifying killings as such began to haunt the Long Beach area. Oil field workers in LB found a body while laboring. The body of a 17-year-old was found floating in the surf off Sunset Beach, a wooden pick hammered into his anus. 19-year-old gay student James Dale Reeves was discovered shortly after he disappeared cruising on Thanksgiving in 1974. The discovery was enormously disturbing: his body was left with legs spread, a four-foot-long and three-inch-diameter tree limb shoved into his rectum.

Despite an enormous task force being created — with members from Long Beach, Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Santa Ana, Irvine, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino — the murders continued unrelentingly.

This incident exacerbated Kraft’s physical ailments and behavior, causing him to lose his job after lewd conduct charges at Cherry Park. However, he only needed eight months to get over this near-miss: another murder occurred on Halloween of that year along with one of the most horrifying ones yet two months later. In January of 1976, the body of 22-year-old Mark Hall was discovered in Cleveland National Forest. His body was an entire map of torture: his legs were slashed repeatedly with a knife; his eyes, face, chest, and genitals burned with a cigarette lighter; his genitals were castrated and stuffed into his anus; prior to the castration, an object was shoved with such brutality into his penis that his bladder was punctured.

Nine slayings were confirmed that year, with victims ranging from 13- to 22-years-old. In 1977, the arrest of Patrick Kearney — who admitted to killing some 28 young men — baffled police even further: the tortured bodies of men continued showing up, proving that their search for one man was indeed a search for at least two. 1978 brought about five more slayings; 1979 over a dozen corpses were discovered.

After years of mounting evidence and a trial that was the lengthiest and most expensive in Orange County at the time, Kraft attempted to present himself as a respectable, tax-paying citizen. However, the prosecutors’ evidence was too overwhelming, as a jury convicted him and recommended the death penalty on August 11th, 1989; on November 29th, Judge Donald McCartin made it official. Kraft was convicted for sixteen murders though investigators think he accountable for sixty-seven.

Despite an over decade-long appeals process, Kraft’s death sentence was held up by the California Supreme Court in 2000. He is currently at San Quentin Prison.

To read some of Kraft’s personal writings about his past and so-called innocence, please visit the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty’s page dedicated to his work, where they have published some of his writings.

Tim Maurer is a tall guy and given this, you might first think brute with his beard and towering frame. However, after he opens his mouth and gestures his body, intimidation is the last thing on your mind. He is — clearly — a loving guy of barely 30-years-old.

And it is perhaps here where the Occupy Movement has found much of its strength. In stark contrast to the polemic, often violent uprisings of the Arab Spring and 1968, Occupy seems to hark towards a Gandhi-style form of protest over a I-need-to-be-heard-so-let’s-throw-Molotov-cocktails style — which makes the recent use of tear gas by police at Occupy Oakland such sensational news. Of course, my readers know that I have said a revolution is not a possibility, but an essential aspect to us continuing as a contributing society. My readers also know that I do not believe all forms of violence are inherently evil. In fact, with regards to the success of the Arab Spring, it is case-in-point that sometimes, violence and extreme tactics are needed and even beneficial to democratic causes. As French philosopher Alain Badiou says, terror is required to ultimately defend ideals such as freedom and democracy — particularly when we are surrounded in what he calls an ‘atonal world,’ where views are seemingly placed more and more on a field in which no stance can rightfully be taken (think of the problem with the phrase, ‘war on terror’ and you’ll catch his drift).

However, this fight against corporate greed has, within the walls of the country that is home to the largest military, refrained from being militaristic on practically any level. And Maurer exacerbates the image that this movement is not about strict politics but significantly about ethics. He said a phrase often: ‘The system is broken.’ His idea of ‘broken’ is not like the oft-used political mantra that involves a power play more than remedial attention. It is, quite differently, a personal narrative.

Photo courtesy of Tim Maurer

‘I’ve been upset over the last five years with what’s been going on in the world. [At 27-years-old] I quit my job selling dental supplies — it was a family business but I hated the fact that I was selling things to people that they didn’t need. I saw our accounts going down before the crisis so I got out and went to school, not knowing how deep this thing really ran.

Like many, he thought going to school was the right thing to do. But also like that many, including this writer, he was left baffled at the exorbitant cost of educating one’s self and the lack of resources it actually provided. ‘We don’t have any jobs after college! We’re spending all this money to — what? Work at a coffeeshop or Barnes & Noble?’

He felt impotent and powerless — and the most he could do was avoid ‘rampant consumerism’ by supporting small local businesses in favor of corporate mainstays like Wal-Mart and Starbucks.

‘When I saw the Arab spring, I asked myself, “Why can’t I do that? Why can’t we do that?” When Occupy WS, I was immediately glued. I was excited that we were actually doing something.’

Slowly but surely, Maurer was led to a Facebook page — social networking undoubtedly being the new key to citizen uprisings — that geared him towards Occupy LB. Attending more and more meetings, his involvement increased significantly as he became entangled with the general assemblies and committees. ‘They helped me find a voice and I decided to run with it.’

Photo courtesy of Tim Maurer

This is a common sentiment amongst Occupiers: a voice. Whether it is stating they are the ’99%,’ a reference to the fact that the world’s 1% wealthiest own 99% of it’s wealth, or simply speaking out on YouTube videos, they make clear that they want to be heard. Of course, there’s a caveat and a criticism that is rightfully put forth. Many are calling the Occupy movement undoubtedly important but lacking a cohesive grip on alternatives. I even found myself saying — and still somewhat do — that witty signs and park camping can only do so much.

‘That is the biggest thing thrown back at us right now: “What plan do you have? You are just a buncha hippie dropouts hanging out at the park playing hackey sack and doing yoga.” I am not a political scientists or an economist — so I can’t give you some structured outline. But I can say that for the past 30 years, we have fostered as a nation unfettered capitalism with no checks. Corporations have become these massive non-human entities with an enormous amount of power so great that their dark roots are now embedded within the system itself; from lobbyists to interest groups to campaign finance to tax inequality to failed political promises. We need a separation of business and state.’

Maurer’s intensity is not to be understated. He speaks with conviction, not a lackadaisical spat. And if you think Maurer supports socialism as an alternative, think again. He is staunchly against it, calling the taking of half of one’s incomes for taxes ‘ridiculous’ and ‘invalid.’ He stands entirely behind the capitalist mantra that one should be able to accumulate wealth and spur innovation but strongly believes that these endeavors must remain in check, citing the problem of corporate greed and their influence within government as the epicenter of the problem at hand.

It is clear by this point that Occupy is a movement. But the movement’s imagination — the same imagination that helped jump start the event itself — needs to gather up the attention that is being bestowed upon it. There are political scientists and economists and social workers and urban planners and corporate lawyers and accountants who do side with Occupy; they not only understand the vastly dark cloud we have covered ourselves with, but they also want to help get us out. It is here where Occupy should migrate to: professors who have been dismissed because of lack of funding, the many workers of corporate America who were immediately outcast without the blink of an eye in favor of the CEO keeping his or her paycheck, the educated who cannot still find a job.

Photo courtesy of Tim Maurer

Your voice has been heard. Now it is time to activate that voice into an actual revolution.

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Timothy Maurer is currently a student at CSULB, majoring in Communication Studies with an emphasis in Cultural and Public Affairs. If you are interested in more information or volunteering for Occupy LB, you can contact Tim at www.facebook.com/occupycsulb or email at sharptimothy80@gmail.com

I once had a friend who was brought up in a very conservative Jewish family. The minute he left high school, he became a Buddhist. His family imploded. I remember his mother coming over to our house and weeping so uncontrollably I thought she was having a small stroke. At one point she laid herself down on my mother’s linoleum kitchen floor and shook so badly, she scraped off a small lane of Mop and Glow. When I began my transition and had to tell my mother what was happening to me, and that I had always felt like this, and that in order for me not to go completely bonkers I had to start living my life the way I was meant to… Well, she wept uncontrollably as well. After a few stiff drinks and about 15 minutes of utter silence she said slowly:

‘You’re not going to start dressing like Lana Turner, are you?’

When I was 18-years-old, that was the last time I ever set foot into a men’s bathroom. Between you and me and the fence post, if you’ve never been in one, you’re missing nothing. Seeing as I’m now almost half a century old, and having seen the coming of home computers, glowing sneakers, boys wearing pants to their ankles, cell phones, CDs, and now this iPod thing (which is still a complete mystery to me), I’ve lived more of my life going to the women’s room than I have the men’s room. Which by and large, only means that I’m much more used to a towel lady.

This has nothing to do with me being braver than anyone, freer than anyone, or smarter than anyone. I didn’t begin to live my life this way because I wanted to prove a point. I did it because I didn’t want to die.

I knew that if I went to college like the rest of my family and began my journey as a young adult with everyone calling me ‘Scott,’ I’d finish the last suicide attempt and this time, I wouldn’t screw it up. Those pills would be flushed down by something much stronger than tap water. I had to do what I had to do. It wasn’t a decision. I need to make that clear. This seems to be a serious debate now what with some Evangelicals nipping at our rear ends with nasty signs and humungous Bibles preaching to us how much they love us but hate what we do. They seemed to have talked themselves into this nonsense that we chose to love who we love and that what we do in bed and with whom, defines us. I could go into why, but psychoanalyzing these people is not only draining, it’s redundant.

And now, the Transgender community is suffering. I don’t mean we’re suffering in the spiritual sense (although that’s true as well) but according to recent books and official articles by leading psychiatrists we’re ‘suffering from a disorder.’ There’s something terribly, terribly wrong with us. We seemed to have moved past the Gays and we’re now into the Trans community. Gays used to be thought of as clinically sick. Something to not only be frightened of, but to be cured. Now we know that’s nonsense, and we’re just furious at their sexual habits. So, the next natural step is to heap all of our fear and paranoia on the last of the Mohicans.

Us.

I’ve never cared for this ‘coming out’ phrase. It’s never made much sense to me. I never felt as though I was in something. I never felt trapped in anything. I never felt as if I was confined by walls of any kind. I’m in sympathy for those who do, and I respect their personal journey and it’s beautiful that we’ve found a piece of text that can join our causes in a common way, but it simply never applied to me.

For me, transition was just that: a journey. I walked, ran, jumped, skipped, slid, fell, tumbled, and dragged my feet through something that seemed not only impossible, but hurtful to me and everyone else around me. It wasn’t just about opening a door and letting the sunshine in. Coming out was never anything I really did.

Freedom isn’t a casual word. It’s not something I throw around. Our country has been obsessed lately with plastering this word on billboards and car bumpers and even assorted small children. It’s all about Freedom. But freedom isn’t a slogan. Whether it’s by bloodshed or by ease, the action is fierce. It isn’t easily gotten and it isn’t easily received. One person’s freedom is another person’s caution. And the longer one waits to find their voice, to step out of the darkness, to travel down the road less traveled, the harder it is to reconcile. Waiting solves nothing. Waiting begets waiting. The clock still ticks and time moves forward and if you’re waiting for someone to tell you it’s okay, you’ll be waiting until the Universe stops.

My community goes into retreat. We find our voice, and then change it because we don’t sound like we should — according to the rules. So we hide. We keep hiding until the right time. Until our parents pass away, until the government makes up its mind, until the gardener stops staring. So how are we supposed to stand up and be counted if most of us are sitting down waiting to be called?

I’m saying whether you call it Coming Out or Moving Forward, you’ve got to do something. If you ask most people, gay or straight: ‘When did you know what gender you were?’ They’ll most likely answer, since they were born. That’s true of most of us. Not all, but most.

Since we know that to be true of most of us, there’s no reason to wait to announce it to the world. There’s no reason not to do what you need to do in order to live the way you need to live. And as we all do that, the other people waiting to get the Big Okay Sign, will finally and ultimately take that huge, long breath they’ve held in for most of their lives. Everyone’s life starts before their first breath, so we might as well attach our truth to it as soon the air hits us. Otherwise, we’re trapped in a silence that year by year, bit by bit, and person by person becomes harder to break free of.

Power isn’t about brute strength, it’s about clear dreams. It’s about shouting our name from a roof top. It’s about knowing who we’ve always been and finding out what’s next. It’s about proclaiming. And that can’t be done in a minute. It can’t be done simply by coming out of something. We have go through something. We have to experience. We have to run, jump, and fly. And once we’re airborne, once we find our wings, and glide and tumble, and hurl toward the planet at an awesome speed, we can land. Some of us land softly, some us not. Because our job, after we find our voice, after we go like lightening, after we scream it loud to anyone within earshot, is to rev up so we can do it all over again. Life is about a series of Cliffs, and they need to be tackled at once. No more waiting. Do it now. And keep going, no one’s keeping score.

Oh, and my friend? The one that transitioned to Buddhism? He’s now a full-fledged atheist.

Amanda Fruta is the Public Relations Director for the University Art Museum (UAM) at California State University, Long Beach. In addition to being a look back into the early years of gay liberation, both Get Out LB and its author proffer this piece as an enthusiastic endorsement of the exhibition in discussion, PEACE PRESS GRAPHICS 1967-1987: Art in the Pursuit of Social Change, on view through December 11, 2011 at the University Art Museum at CSULB.

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by Amanda Fruta

Tolerance of being openly gay has improved by leaps and bounds in recent decades, but conservative political rhetoric still points public opinion in terrible, often ignorant directions. An increasingly volatile societal climate raises the question: we may have tolerance, but do we have acceptance? I don’t think acceptance is measurable, to be fair, but after the debacle that was Prop 8 (which is still in the news, people), I have serious doubts about the general public’s ability to think critically; however, that is a different story entirely.

There’s a bright side to this rant: let us simply thank our lucky stars that, even when things take dire turns for the worst, the LBGTQ community is in much better social standing now than it has ever have been. All we have to do in order to prove that is to open this free space for discourse to those who started the fight for equality in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Let’s go back to the time when the gay liberation battles became full-fledged movements.

Back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Venice-based Peace Press was a progressive printing collective, cultural hub and political safe haven for the activists. PEACE PRESS GRAPHICS 1967-1987: Art in the Pursuit of Social Change at the University Art Museum, CSULB, showcases a wide array of political posters, but Peace Press printers produced protest pamphlets, books, and anything else that activist groups needed printed. Because of their ethical practices they were often commissioned for rock concert posters back stage passes (something had to pay the bills). Yes, the Santana and Bob Marley posters are totally rad, but I’m focusing on Christopher St. West for it’s special place in the history of gay rights efforts.

If you come into the UAM’s galleries (located in the Horn Center on CSULB’s campus), Christopher St. West looks like the image below. The wall text reads:

Christopher St. West, 1971

The first-ever Gay Pride Parade was held in Los Angeles on June 28, 1970 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in New York City. The CSW parade was started by a number of Los Angeles gay activists, prominent among them Morris Kight, Don Kilhefner, Reverend Troy Perry, and Bob Humphries. Although one of several gay pride parades that took place that day around the United States, this was the only ‘street closing’ gay pride parade held in 1970—something emulated by the other parades the following year. After several troubled years (no parade was held in 1973), the CSW parade returned in 1974, and originated yet another feature of the modern gay pride movement by adding a festival to its annual event.

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), whose members attempted to stop the parade by enforcing unreasonable and unsubstantiated fines and sanctions, which would eventually be overturned in court, opposed this pioneer event. Not only did the organizers face obstacles from law enforcement, but also owners of commercial businesses refused to be associated, due to their political and moral stance, in the production of any CSW parade material.

This poster was for the second Christopher Street West Parade held in Los Angeles. No print shop was willing to print this poster until organizers contacted Peace Press, whose members not only printed this poster, but were enthusiastic about printing pamphlets about gay rights in general and gay opposition to the war in particular.

Researched by Daniel Pham

Being the only leftist printing house around at that time, Peace Press was a beacon of hope for countless schools of alternative thought, including the Gay Liberation Front. The research process of Peace Press Graphics has brought many shining examples of gay rights heroism to light, and while regaling Get Out LB readers with my own personal anecdotes is tempting, more can be learned from the veterans of the movement. Enjoy the following excerpts from a conversation between UAM Associate Director, Ilee Kaplan, and Gay Liberation, Los Angeles Co-founder Don Kilherner:

[April 24^th, 2010: Peace Press interview with Don Kilhefner]

IK: Why don’t you start by talking a little bit about who you are, and Christopher Street West…

DK: Okay, got it. I’m Don Kilhefner a Jungian psychologist here in Los Angeles, but for the last forty-two years I have been working as a community organizer in the gay and lesbian community here in Los Angeles. My first encounter with Peace Press was when I was living in Venice in the late 1960s, which was a hotbed of political and social activity, and everyone had their posters and leaflets done at Peace Press. It was kind of like Mecca of printing on the Westside. When I got involved with gay community organizing through the Gay Liberation Front here in Los Angeles, which was in the fall of 1969, the Stonewall rebellion happened in June of 1969, in New York City, Greenwich Village, and that is generally considered the big bang of the gay movement in this country. The Gay Liberation Front sprung up in New York and Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta—major cities. The one here in Los Angeles was particularly militant in its orientation. One of the problems we had early on was nobody would print anything for us because we were gay. For example, one of the first things that we came up with was a little card that you could stick in your pocket on what to do if you were arrested, because gay people were routinely arrested just for walking a little funny on the streets, or maybe men touching each other, or being at dances together. We felt that one of the things we needed to do was consciousness around what to do when arrested. I devised this little brochure, this little thing you folded in two, and took it to two printers thinking that this would be a quick deal and both of them refused to print it. They said, “we want nothing to do with homosexuals—Gay Liberation, you sound like a radical organization.” People had very strong views at that time around the anti-war movement, around feminism, around black people being treated as equals, and so many people, business people, their business would follow their political views and they just would not deal with us in any way whatsoever. We even had situations here in Los Angeles of funeral parlors not allowing gay people to be buried from them because they were gay and we actually, on two occasions, had the viewing in a gay bar with the casket up on the bar and then from there we actually took it to the cemetery. So that’s what we were up against in 1969, the first thing was this brochure What To Do When You Are Arrested. In the back of my mind I thought Peace Press, oh yes, we’ll take it to Peace Press.

[On producing a draft counseling brochure for gays:]

DK: … The second thing we needed during that time was the Gay Liberation Front did a great deal of draft counseling. Young men were going to war, some young women, but basically young men were going to war. Many of them scared shitless over what was going to happen to them, so we did a great deal of draft counseling and military resistance work. And we got a small grant for $250, I think, and we did a draft-counseling brochure—the first gay and lesbian draft counseling brochure in history. Again, we took it to several printers that were in our area, we were located here in Hollywood—wouldn’t touch it. First of all they wouldn’t touch it because it was anti-war, and then secondly it was a bunch of faggots who were involved with it and so they certainly did not want to touch it. Again, we took it to Peace Press and there was no problem whatsoever. Indeed there was cheering and ‘power to the people’ when we brought it in, so that Peace Press really served a very important critical role for gay and lesbian people in this city and I think for other politically active, revolutionary, radical, militantly active political people. It served a role that it would print our stuff. It would print announcements, it would print posters, it would print leaflets that other printers would not touch. The poster that you are talking about, that’s in your collection, was for the Christopher Street West parade, the first one in 1970. What had happened there was the New York Gay Liberation Front sent out a notice about, maybe January of 1970, saying in order to commemorate the Stonewall rebellion a call was going out for cities to hold marches on June 28,^th  the Sunday closest to June 28^th, to commemorate the first anniversary of the beginning of the rebellion. Here in Los Angeles we did planning, the Gay Liberation Front played in that, the Metropolitan Community Church, the gay-oriented church, and other organizations got together and planned a march down Hollywood Boulevard on a Sunday afternoon at 2pm to commemorate this. The thing is, we needed to have a police permit to do this. We went before the police commission and tried to get a police permit and they refused to issue it. Chief of Police, Ed Davis, at the time, said he would not issue a permit to thieves and prostitutes like the homosexuals who planned to march down Hollywood Boulevard. We contacted the ACLU, they represented us, and the Friday before the march was to be happening, two days before, a judge issued a temporary restraining order against the LAPD and said they must issue us a permit to march down the street, this is a free speech issue, which happened. The LA Times picked it up the next day, which did all of our advertising for us, and Sunday afternoon there were about 30,000 people lining Hollywood Boulevard as we marched down the street. The first time there was that kind of visible, militant, take-it-to-the-streets kind of action in Los Angeles. The posters for Christopher Street West, the gay pride celebration, those early posters were printed by Peace Press. Again pointing out the valuable, critical role that they played in helping outsider militant organizations like the Gay Liberation Front do its work, do its community organizing. Peace Press holds a special place in my heart that will never go away because when nobody else would deal with us, Peace Press always had an open door—very gay friendly, very lesbian friendly, very woman friendly, very social change friendly.

IK: … What we want to do is show [how] some of the major events, both the large scale like the war in Vietnam, but also some of the local events, such as this [Gay Pride] parade, that really influenced the posters…

DK: It reverberated around the world. Some of the stuff we did here in Los Angeles, the ripple effects went out throughout the country, throughout the world. It was a generation of gay and lesbian people changing the course of our history. Gay and lesbian people will never be the same again, as a result of the revolution, as a result of the early 70s. A community was created where a community didn’t exist before. There was defiance where before there was fear, there was visibility where before there was invisibility, there was self respect where previously there was self-loathing, there was a community where previously there was aloneness, and Peace Press had a role to play in that in terms of helping us to get the word out—helping us communicate with out own community.

[On the cultural climate around the formation of the Gay and Lesbian Center in Los Angeles]

The Gay and Lesbian Center here in Los Angeles became the template around the country for gay community organizing. You have to remember at the time it was organized, Morris Kite and I (who are the cofounders) at the time it was organized we were officially psycho-pathological by the American Psychiatric Association. In the state of California we were illegal and men could not touch each other in public. Women could not touch each other in public under fear of arrest—and that was enforced. It wasn’t a law that just was on the books it was enforced when it came to gay people. We could not dance; we could not show any affection whatsoever in 1971 when the center was formed. To this day it is the largest gay institution of its kind in the world, running today on a budget of 22 million dollars.

IK: Can you go into a little detail about the Stonewall rebellion?

DK: It was a hot, Spring night in New York City and there was a bar called the Stonewall Inn—a dive, really, a mafia-owned dive: paying off the police to stay out of there, a beer joint inhabited by anything from drag queens to Wall Street attorneys. It was one of the few places we could get together. One night the police came in and did their usual routine of you, you, you, and you, arresting them. They would do that just routinely. That night, for some reason, we said no, we’re not going to do it. They tried to arrest people by force and gay people fought back, entrapped the police in the bar, started pelting it with stones, and bottles, and what-have-you. Other police reinforcements were called, the crowd got bigger and bigger, and more and more volatile, police cars were overturned and set on fire, and gay people said no more, this is it. That rebellion that night, that fighting back, did something to gay people around the country because we saw that the social protest that was going on by black people, by women, by poor people, by Latinos, by you-name-it, was our struggle, too. It became a liberation struggle and we fought back and we haven’t stopped fighting back since.

[The bar was on] Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, and that’s why it was called Christopher Street West.

DK: …June of 1970 the first Gay Pride Parade. They still continue to this day, every June, though now located in West Hollywood. They have become carnivals rather than marches; the militant tone has gone out of it and it has become just another parade. I say. Sadly.

IK: What in your opinion would be the legacy of Peace Press? Or how it could be applied to young activists who want models and want some guidance?

DK: It’s very important that we create organizations that have a political consciousness, that have a sense of service to the community, that have a sense of social change, and that those organizations be supported by the rest of us. We are involved in a mutually collective social change movement and we need to support each other. One of the things that surprises me with all of the high tech ways of communicating, is that there is very little in the way of cross-fertilization that goes on between organizations, very little cross-pollination takes place. We have more and more ways of communicating with each other and less and less to say to each other, and I think that this applies to social change movements as well. One of the things that I’m trying to do is (and I just wrote an article on it for the major gay newspaper here in Southern California, Frontier) is that we have to start reimagining community and we need to start building alliances and coalitions with other communities and organizations that are interested in significant social change, because we have a window of opportunity now, that’s beginning to open up for us, where social change is possible. We didn’t for the last thirty years of the Reagan revolution, but something is opening up. I think the so-called healthcare reform inched it forward. I think Obama taking the lead on regulations for Wall Street and not bargaining it away, I think it’s giving us some momentum, a sense that “Yes We Can,” we can have social change in this country, and that window of opportunity is just beginning to open up.

IK: Is there anything else you want to add?

The next few years were spent doing shows — and doing shows wherever and whenever I could. Talent shows. Random gatherings. Performances. I was even a castmember on a show for a few years. But life had to slow itself down because a relationship became involved — and the Drag Gods know Sabreena ain’t down for no ball-and-chain. Nonetheless, I began my first long-term relationship which, of course, killed any performance time. Then I found myself in Southern California…

This is a piece expanding on a previous article by Mr. Addison that dealt with hate crimes. To read the first piece, click here.

During what we could now call a rather strange state of affairs Long Beach found itself in back in late July and early August, the feared string of hate crimes never occurred — just one. Of course, I am not idiotic enough (i.e. Bachmann enough) nor egotistical enough (i.e. Libertarian enough) to claim that this is a I-told-you-so moment, that absolutely everything we were reacting to was over-dramatic or that hate crimes legislation should be simmered down. Far from it. And though I feel redundant stating this since I have stated it so often with my pieces, I am here to engage a dialogue, to discuss our reactions to and sanctions of societal events. I am not here to condone violence towards anyone nor endorse the actions taken by any of the offenders in cases forwardly mentioned.

That being said, I do stand by my previous piece that our extension of ‘hate’ to certain behaviors has me highly worried, concerned, and even flat-out distressed. This, of course, is nothing new: the argument of making crimes with hate biases legally worse than other crimes has been fraught with First Amendment issues, the problem of grounding a definition of hate, and a recourse to actions in the past in correlation to actions now (does the punching of Martin Sanchez in Long Beach, for example, equate to the intimidation and fear of a burning cross Justice O’Connor laid out her 2003 opinion of Virginia vs. Black?).

On August 30th, 21-year-old Jorge Jhovanoy Ibarrias was sentenced to five years in prison for punching Martin Sanchez after asking him if he was gay, leaving Sanchez with a missing tooth and cracked teeth. On October 11th, Olivier Rodrich Saintvictor will face a possible sentence of nine years in prison for throwing rocks through the windows of The Center and Ripples, as well as the Dolphin Bar in Redondo Beach.

As I’ve mentioned before, I have an issue with cheapening the word ‘hate’ because I don’t think hate is a widespread problem. It is focused, rare, and deeply seated — and specifically in conjunction with the idea of a hate crime, it is meditated and practiced. They are personal crimes, dedicated to the immutable characteristics of a particular group. Take, for example, the 2008 murder of Marcelo Lucero in New York: the group of Long Islander teens eventually sentenced for the crime quite comfortably vocalized they often went ‘beaner hopping,’ turning their disturbing, repeated behavior into a kind of sport.

That is hate. They are sending a message — and one that is perpetuated within premeditated violence towards direct subjects.

Of course, I understand that both of the local cases brought up are tinged with violence. Ibarrias’s case is physical violence while Saintvictor’s is more symbolic. For this, the offenders should face the law as according to any violent crime committed. My caveat relies on the extent of their sentence/proposed sentence and the lack of any remedial course of action — that is, a lack of any attempt to engage them with what these offenders apparently so vehemently despise: facing homosexuals, speaking with them, hearing their stories.

When placed in contrast with the Lucero case, the two seem quite different, do they not? On the one hand, we have a group of young people who have no problem taking someone’s life on a regular basis and on the other, we have a singular, most likely confused young Latino who took a swing and another who threw rocks at windows. My point is not the extreme differences of their crimes; that’s just a rhetorical trope. I am referring to the probability of rehabilitating someone — just like we do with people who have ‘subjective’ or ‘psychological’ issues such as anger management, domestic violence, and drug abuse.

I believe in different forms of violence and you will not convince me that violence is, simply put, violence. Even the law recognizes this point: a punch is not just a punch and violence can sometimes not even be physical. To play on this point, if there is something that law has managed to somewhat get right, it is the concept that premeditated crimes are far more disturbing than reactionary, compulsive crimes; even further, crimes which deal with personal choices, such as drug and alcohol abuse, are not to be dealt with entirely in regards to imprisonment. In this sense, law has correctly assumed (theoretically, of course, not practically; people are falsely accused continuously) that the type of crime affects the punishment: stealing a car, putting a few pounds of cocaine in the trunk, kidnapping your daughter, and leading police officers on a three-hour chase is not quite the same as simply stealing a car.

With regards to these beliefs, the two cases seem rather disproportionate — and more importantly, lacking the idea that hate can be remediated within the criminal. Have we honestly hit the point that we give up? For the people who so willingly said ‘justice was served’ on their Twitters and Facebook profiles, I have a feeling that they were jumping the gun: for someone who can possibly learn to not only retire and revert his discriminatory thinking (he’s twenty-one) but also possibly influence that change within others, sending him straight to jail without providing him proper reflection is not justice; it is a failure. For those who think that proper reflection is what he’ll be spending his time on in jail, I’ll exercise my point a little more bluntly:

Mr. Ibarrias will be serving his sentence at Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown L.A., the jail that was once called the biggest known prison in the world by its own sheriff department. Upon arrival, he will be surveyed, a clerk asking him which race he identifies as, if he has had an history of mental illness or suicidal thoughts, and if he is a non-heterosexual. The reason for these intakes is that our prison system is archaic because those who administrate it claim it needs to be: in order to avoid uprisings, civil unrest, and racial factions, the general population (GP) is separated from the mentally ill, sexual violators, and homo/bisexuals, and then further divided by race. Pick a side — and you better pick the one you’ll be safest in.

What is particularly interesting with regards to Ibbarrias (or Saintvictor if he is convicted) is this separation of GP and the ‘unstable’ (mentally ill, sexual violators, and homosexuals). The three outcast groups are clearly identifiable due to the yellow tags they sport — and with the grouping of gay and bisexual men within Twin Towers, the GP can easily perceive them as pedophiliac or mentally ‘sick.’ And this isn’t just a possibility — it happens continuously and this justifies the authority’s insistence that the separation continue. The separation I agree with, but the collective grouping of LGBT members with sexual predators and the mentally ill antagonizes and heightens hatred.

Even further, it has been shown that sentence time increases homophobic behaviors, i.e. the longer the sentence, the more likely that inmate will be less tolerant of homosexuality. If we add the fact that many men who still identify as heterosexual in prison are coerced into sexual acts unwillingly and that such acts often cause the victims to engage in homophobic behavior makes the Ibbarrias case even more worrisome. To say that he’ll step out of prison two or so years from now (assuming he serves some 40% of his sentence) without once having stepped into a social space which educates him on the issues that caused him to throw the punch… To say he won’t throw another punch (and possibly worse) is a very dangerous assumption.

My ultimate stance is not that either violator in these cases should be slapped on the wrist and asked to engage in some LGBTQ community gatherings. Violating someone’s physical space or body is something that should be taken with utmost gravity with regards to punitive measures. However, it is odd to me — and seemingly antithetical to our belief about educating ignorance — that hate crimes involving non-life threatening situations have no community action, that they are purely imprisonment-oriented. We must encourage some form of educational value to the punishment, for I believe that most of our society would agree that hate can be overcome cognitively.

On a more meta-level, I think we have a very ill-grounded view of imprisonment particularly in this country, where the idealization of justice is cemented in a jail: Yes, justice has been served but I could care less about making a better citizen. In just as cheap words, our belief revolves around the idea that it’s ‘time to get tough.’ There are overwhelming amounts of literature that discuss how the U.S., despite having only 5% of the world’s population, has managed to account for 25% of our world’s prisoners. When we decide to — rightfully so, I must emphasize — include hate bias into our criminal measures, we must do so with a caution and precision that exceeds current practice.

Once visits are permitted, Brian plans on talking to Mr. Ibbarrias to discuss his actions and sentence. There are currently no comments nor quotes within the media from Mr. Ibbarrias.

New York town clerk Laura Fotusky is shocked that since she’s employed by the state she resides in, she must actually follow state laws. This is shocking to Laura because she doesn’t want people to fall in love with other people of the same gender. She doesn’t want two consenting adults to create a life together, worship when they chose, have a family if they want — not to mention own a house, drive a car, and do their dishes. Laura’s very concerned that something awful might happen to her and her family if she signs a paper that solidifies two people of the same sex wanting to make a legal commitment to one another.

Laura’s also annoyed that she doesn’t have ultimate power in New York State. Laura’s big beef comes down to the fact that although she ‘loves everybody,’ she’s certainly not going to attach her name to an unholy union. Her religious freedoms are under attack and Laura’s going to do what any other red-blooded American would do under the same circumstances: she’s going to exert her religious right to break the law of her state.

Laura also believes that religion and government are the same thing. Laura believes that it’s actually her these same sex couples came to see. That out of all the state representatives in that office that day, that they wanted Laura Fortusky’s personal signature on their certificate of marriage. That before anyone got dressed or stepped into a cab, the couple turned to the Universe and asked God, ‘Dear Lord, please send us Laura Fortusky today. If not Laura, we’ll be done with each other. Amen.’

Laura doesn’t really have a full grasp on this whole pesky government job thing quite yet. Laura doesn’t really understand that it’s not her these couples want nor care about. Laura seems to be dipping into the Ego Parfait a few too many times. Like many who have problems with the changing of the world and the way people are opening up to what love is and the fact that it has not a color preference or religious preference or gender preference, Laura’s struggling. She’s reaching for anything she can because the fear and the rage against ‘newness’ is almost too much. It’s bigger than she ever thought possible and larger than she ever dreamed. And although Laura and her like are just a wee bit confused about the fact that they work for the state, and their religion, or lack thereof, has nothing whatever to do with the title of their job, Laura’s sticking to her guns. She’s ready to quit. She’s ready to walk. She’s a soldier of God and her immediate need is to put an end to this ever changing tide. She likes the old ways. She believes in one man and one woman as a union to be blessed by her — emphasize her — God. She’s mistaken when she thinks that’s true for most of the people needing a signature from anyone sitting behind that glass pane in her office. No one’s asking about her specific God, nor does anyone need to be blessed by it. All they need is a signature.

Not Laura’s signature.

A signature.

Laura almost lost her job. Laura’s thinking about quitting. Laura feels discriminated against. And Laura’s getting a lot of angry hate mail and being called ridiculous things like ‘bigoted’ and ‘hateful,’ when all she’s trying to do is simply express herself and live in what she and her God believe to be true. It really is unfair. It really is a shame and a crime. But I think I may have a solution for Laura Fotusky. A way to get her out of this awful jam she’s in and off to a place where she’s free to live her life according to the book she feels most connected to. There is an answer. There is an answer and a way everyone wins. Everyone’s happier and more at peace and no one complains. There’s a very, very simple solution for Laura Fortusky:

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