RA-news Newsletter of the Rainbow Alliance at the University of Florida October 2006, Vol. 5, No. 1
The Rainbow Alliance is the organization for University of Florida faculty, staff, and alumni concerned with matters related to sexual orientation and gender identity. RA welcomes all members of the University community who share its goals.

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Please contribute to the Rainbow Alliance Fund. Payroll Deduction makes it easy! Next Rainbow Alliance Dinner: Wednesday October 11 at "The Third Place" at the Haile Plantation Village Center. 6 PM for a drink, and 6:30 for dinner. Please RSVP. October Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Upcoming Local Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10/7 University of Florida Homecoming: LSU at Florida, 3:30 pm (LGBT Homecoming Event has been cancelled.) 10/6-15 Pride Days (Pride Celebration of Gainesville) 10/6 - Awards Banquet 10/8 - Pride Banquet 10/7-9 - Pride Film Festival 10/14 - Parade and Festival 10/11 National Coming Out Day 10/23 IBC Book Club Event -- Selection: Black Girl in Paris by Shay Youngblood (story below) 11/20  Transgender Day of Remembrance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Other Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pride Events -- Worldwide Calendar Black Gay Pride Events 11/7 General Election Apr 2007 Equality Ride 2007

Contents Features Local . . . . . . . . . Gainesville Pride Week, October 6-14 National Coming Out Day Institute of Black Culture Hosts LGBT Book Club Event National . . . . . . . . . Florida Rep. Mark Foley (R-Palm Beach) Resigns Over Suggestive E-mails to Congressional Page Former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey Out of the Closet and On the Road with New Book Tour Domestic Partner Benefits for Federal Employees? Book: The "G" Quotient BTW... California Assembly Limits Use of "Gay Panic" Defense "In the Life" LGBT News Magazine -- shown locally on WUFT, next showing, Sunday October 8, midnight Massachusetts Judge Approves Marriage There for Rhode Island Gays Departments Help us Build the Rainbow Alliance Contributing to the Rainbow Alliance Fund Resources How to Join the Rainbow Alliance Contributors to This Issue of RA-News

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Features

Gainesville Pride Week, October 6-14 It's nearly here! Gainesville's annual Pride Celebration begins Friday, October 6 with the Pride Awards Banquet at the Hilton Hotel on 34th Street. All Rainbow Alliance members and friends are invited! During October 7-9, a Pride Film Festival will be held at the Hippodrome State Theatre in downtown Gainesville featuring the following films (click on the title for more information about the movie): April’s Shower Mysterious Skin Transamerica For complete information about times, visit the Pride Celebration Web site. On Sunday, October 8, a Pride Picnic will be held at Westwood Park at NW 8th Avenue and NW 34th Street. For complete details, watch the Pride Celebration Web site. On Saturday, October 14, the Pride Parade and Festival will be held in downtown Gainesville. The Parade begins at 1 pm and proceeds down University Avenue from the Ayers Medical Plaza (around 8th Street) to the Downtown Plaza. The Festival will then continue into the night. This year's Festival will be mc'd by Doug Mattis, a world-class figure skater who is also a writer and activist. It will be a great week! Pride Celebration works hard to create a wonderful week. Join in and celebrate your Pride! [top]

Institute of Black Culture Hosts LGBT Book Club Event On October 23, the Institute for Black Culture will host a book club to discuss homosexuality in the black community. The book that will be the basis of the discussion is Black Girl in Paris by Shay Youngblood. In this book, Eden, a young woman from Georgia, goes to Paris to become a writer. Paris had always been a place where black were more accepted than in the U.S. andit becomes a site of personal struggle and liberation for Eden. The book has been described as 'jazzy' and 'improvisational' as it takes Eden on a journey of self-discovery through parts of Paris tourists never see. The book club will begin at 6 pm at the Institute for Black Culture, 1510 West University Avenue (next to Chipotle). [top]

Florida Rep. Mark Foley (R-Palm Beach) Resigns Over Suggestive E-mails to Congressional Page Florida representative Mark Foley resigned from the House suddenly on Friday, September 29, after it was made public that he had exchanged a series of e-mail messages and instant messages with a House page. The e-mails were first made public by ABC news. In the messages, Foley, 52, makes provocative remarks and suggestions to the page, who was 16 at the time of the communications. Foley was considered a clear winner in his re-election bid this November, and he has been influential in the House, notably in the area of child welfare. Foley was chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus. He had introduced legislation in July to protect children from exploitation by adults over the Internet. He also sponsored other legislation designed to protect minors from abuse and neglect. Foley's resignation statement gave no reason for his decision, but the e-mails released last week by ABC news were followed by additional revelations, including more explicit messages and more pages with whom Foley echanged inappropriate messages. The page at the focus of the current story worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA), who said that he contacted the page's parents as soon as he became aware of the problem late in 2005. The page had reported the e-mails to staffers in Alexander's office. The story developed further when it was learned that the House ledership had become aware of the incident last year. Initially, House speaker Dennis Hastert (R-MN) had said that he did not about Foley, but later was forced to admit that he had known. The matter was brought to Republican members of the House ethics committee but was never shared with the full committee. In Florida, work has begun to choose a successor for Foley. The successor will also stand for election in November. Foley had at one time announced a candidacy for the state senate seat held by Bob Graham, and at that time, he refused to address rumors about his sexual orientation. Nevertheless, he withdrew from the race stating that he needed time to care for his parents. Lawmakers have said that the whole matter will be reviewed for criminal wrongdoing. [top]

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Former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey Out of the Closet and On the Road with New Book Tour In 2004, then New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey was forceed to resign from office when it was revealed that he had placed a male lover onthe New Jersey payroll as a homeland security advisor. A crisis was precipitated when the man demanded millions of dollars from McGreevey to keep the secret of McGreevey's sexuality. At the time, McGreevey was married to his second wife. Since that time, McGreevey has dissolved his marriage, undergone therapy, and acquired a partner, Australian-born financier Mark O'Donnell. He has now written a tell-all book about his life, "The Confession," and is engaged in a highly public book tour -- beginning with Oprah Winfrey -- to promote it. McGreevey has been very candid in interviews. He is clearly a man coming to terms with himself and yet very comfortable with what has happened. He says that he is grateful to the man that betrayed him and put in this situation, for otherwise, he might never have come out of the closet. The Confession by James McGreevey -- "More than a coming-out memoir, The Confession is the story of one man's quest to repair the rift between his public and private selves, at a time in our culture when the personal and political have become tangled like frayed electric cables. Teeming with larger-than-life characters, written with honesty, grace, and rare insight into what it means to negotiate the minefields of American public life, it may be among the most honest political memoirs ever written." [top]

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Domestic Partner Benefits for Federal Employees? Senators Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) have introduced the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act. This is a Senate version of the bill introducedin the House last year by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) (House BIll 3267). Specifically, the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act would provide benefits to federal employees’ same-sex partners on the same basis as spousal benefits. These benefits would include participation in retirement programs, compensation for work injuries and life and health insurance. In addition, the bill would subject federal employees with domestic partners to the same obligations as federally recognized married couples. The Domestic Partnership and Obligations Act defines a domestic partner as an adult person living with, but not married to, another adult person in a committed, intimate relationship. The bill requires that partners file an "affidavit of eligibility for benefits" certifying that the employee and the domestic partner of the employee: are each other's sole domestic partner and intend to remain so indefinitely; have a common residence and intend to continue the arrangement; are at least 18 years of age and mentally competent to consent to a contract; share responsibility for a significant measure of each other's common welfare and financial obligations; are not married to or domestic partners with anyone else; understand that willful falsification of information within the affidavit may lead to disciplinary action and the recovery of the cost of benefits received related to such falsification; and are same-sex domestic partners, and not related in a way that, if the two were of opposite sex, would prohibit legal marriage in the state in which they reside; or are opposite-sex domestic partners, and are not related in a way that would prohibit legal marriage in the state in which they reside. More than half of all Fortune 500 companies now offer domestic partner benefits, according to the Human Rights Campaign. More and more companies and institutions are doing so to make themselves more competitive with LGBT prospects. [top]

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Book: The "G" Quotient The G Quotient: Why Gay Executives are Excelling as Leaders... And What Every Manager Needs to Know by Kirk Snyder According to Snyder, whose book compiles the results of a five-year research project covering over 2,000 organizations and 3,500 professionals, openly gay male managers and executives offer a specific and effective model of leadership that he calls the G quotient, which accounts for a 25 to 30 percent higher level of job satisfaction and workplace morale among employees of gay managers. Snyder believes the gay experience teaches these managers to "place a greater emphasis on the individual value of their employees," and identifies seven qualities that gay executives bring to the workplace: inclusion, creativity, adaptability, connectivity, communication, intuition and collaboration. Snyder is perceptive and detailed in analyzing his research and discussing it with a slew of today's top gay business leaders, including a state senator, a college president, and top executives at Disney, PepsiCo and Morgan Stanley. Novel managing strategies, including "focusing on the process of work rather than the final product," "placing value on experiential learning" and "seeing inspiration as a manageable commodity," make this a practical business primer as well as a landmark study; managers looking for a fresh approach should pick this title up, as should those interested in the rising profile of gays in America. (Publishers Weekly Annex (starred review), June 2006) -- Amazon.com Recommended by the Harvard Business Review. [top]

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Departments

Help Us Build the Rainbow Alliance 1) UF Faculty and Staff: We want every LGBT staff or faculty member and ally to be a Rainbow Alliance member. Tell interested friends and colleagues about Rainbow Alliance. They can check out the Web site at <www.ra-online.org>, or bring them along to a monthly dinner. They can join by sending an e-mail to <info@ra-online.org>. 2) Alumni: Our mailing list of UF alumni is growing. Alumni are a vital part of the University community. Anyone with an interest in improving the LGBT envrionment at the University of Florida should look into Rainbow Alliance. Working together with Pride Student Union and the Director of LGBT Affairs, we are working to keep alumni informed, to help them connect, and to draw on their expertise. 3) Contribute: The Rainbow Alliance Fund at the University of Florida Foundation (established March 2003) is the only one of its kind at the UF Foundation specifically dedicated to the support of the LGBT community at UF. The Fund needs continuing support if we are to realize our goals. As always, details about contributing to the Rainbow Alliance Fund can be found at the end of the newsletter. Details about payroll deduction will be e-mailed to RA members soon. A word to out contributions: Your donation is fully tax-deductible, and the RA Fund is not used to support operations of the Rainbow Alliance. Learn more below. 2) Statewide: Help us connect with staff and faculty on other Florida/Deep South campuses working on LGBT issues. We have some unique challenges in the South. Maybe we can support each other and collaborate on progress. [top]