Lgbt

Courageous. Historic. Inspiring. Misguided. Immoral. Out of touch. Reactions ranged widely in the Philadelphia region to President Obama's unequivocal statement Wednesday in support of gay marriage rights, an issue that has elicited strong feelings across the country about morality, religion, and constitutional rights. "At first, I was dumbfounded," said Oberon Wackwitz, a gay 17-year-old from North Philadelphia. Wackwitz, a junior at a Philadelphia charter school, had been with a group of friends at the Attic Youth Center, a Center City program that supports gay teens, when the television interview on ABC was broadcast.

MARRIAGE IS A sacrament. A function of the church, not the state. Given all that we are up against today, the state should not perform "marriages" for anyone. Only religious institutions should do that. The state should offer civil unions for anyone. I'll explain the italics later. With President Obama's "evolution" returning gay marriage to Page One, I remain conflicted: emotionally in favor of it, but intellectually opposed. I strongly endorse civil unions, with the stipulation that persons in such a union have precisely the same rights as a married couple.

For the 20 years of the Equality Forum in Philadelphia, lawyer Malcolm Lazin has been its guiding light. It's a legacy of tense times and sometimes slow ones, but he sees this year's as a turning point. "Let me give you an example," Lazin said. "We have a military panel. In past years, we would be lamenting 'Don't ask, don't tell.' Now, people are out and serving in the armed forces. Things are really different. " In addition, Lazin said, Equality Forum will be welcoming a big star in the LGBT political community, Houston Mayor Annise Parker, only the second female mayor of Texas' largest city - and the largest city in the country with a gay mayor.

Mark Segal had been biting his nails, waiting for the call. Thursday morning, he was drinking a mug of sweet vanilla coffee in his den above the offices of the Philadelphia Gay News when the phone finally rang. His dream project, an affordable housing complex welcoming to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender seniors, had won a competitive bid for an $11 million state tax credit. "I've been trying not to cry," Segal said Sunday, barely succeeding in holding back the kvell . For more than three years, the 61-year-old founder and publisher of PGN has been planning, lobbying, negotiating, collaborating, and cajoling every social-service agency, activist group, and political leader he knows to make Philadelphia one of the first cities in the nation to meet the needs of the aging LGBT community.

IN HER opinion piece on the Boy Scouts, Christine Flowers writes, "Isn't it nice to know that in the town where the Constitution was written, there are some people - including some lawyers - who think it's OK to blackmail citizens into forgoing those rights, I mean, behavior?" The question was never about whether the Boy Scouts have the right to exclude openly gay members. The issue is whether an organization that excludes openly gay members has a right to remain headquartered in a city-owned building without paying any taxes.

THERE WERE a lot of newsworthy things that happened in the city and the country over the past few weeks, including protests in memory of (and anger about) Trayvon Martin, the start of the trial against Monsignor Lynn (who, let's be honest, is standing in as proxy for the Catholic Church), the health-care debates before the U.S. Supreme Court, the pope's visit to Communist (but increasingly religious) Cuba and Rick Santorum's win (in Louisiana, not at the bowling alley in Wisconsin).

AREN, A TRANSGENDER refugee from Iran, was in a library in Northeast Philly last year when something surprising caught his eye: The Philadelphia Gay News . "I've never seen a newspaper that's gay," he recalled the other day. "I think, 'Wow! They are so free [in the U.S.].' " Aren, 24, who did not want his last name published, is one of the first four refugees classified as lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) who have been resettled in Philadelphia by the Nationalities Service Center, the city's largest refugee-resettlement agency.

TO PARAPHRASE author Erich Segal in Love Story, being an ass means never having to say you're sorry. Or, at least, it shouldn't. That's because if you truly are an offensive creep who gets your jollies humiliating others (and who believes you are doing it for a higher cause), any apology you might later extend under threat of losing your advertisers or job is insincere and irrelevant. So, Rush Limbaugh's less-than-heartfelt mea culpa to birth-control crusader Sandra Fluke is less notable for its substance than for what it reveals about society.

Bryn Mawr College will host a workshop by a gay performance artist whose program was canceled by Villanova University this week, officials said Thursday. The announcement came as concern about Villanova's abrupt reversal on hosting Tim Miller's weeklong workshop continued to build, with students planning a forum next week, and several groups and communication and theater professionals issuing letters or statements against the university's decision. "Bryn Mawr College is a community of scholars with a long history of honoring freedom of expression," the women's college said in a statement.