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Melissa Carter, former co-host of the Bert Show on Q100 and columnist for the GA Voice — and soon-to-be columnist for Huffington Post — got the votes needed to become the newest member of the Atlanta Police LGBT Advisory Board.
At Monday's meeting of the board, three applicants were voted on and each received two votes. In addition to Carter, DeKalb County high school teacher Charlie Stadtlander and Matthew Robison, assistant dean of students at Georgia State University hoped to become the newest member of the board. A seat became open after Molly Simmons resigned in August.
Former mayoral candidate and gay-favorite Mary Norwood showed interest on being on the Atlanta Police LGBT Advisory Board, but withdrew her request after being informed members must self-identify as lesbian, bisexual, gay or transgender.
At Monday's meeting of the board, Norwood's name came up as someone interested as being on the board — and putting her in a pretty good spot to oppose the man who beat her to become mayor, Kasim Reed — but Norwood is straight and ineligible.
"It's nothing against Mary at all, but this board is for LGBT people," board chair Glen Paul Freedman said Tuesday.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit will hear arguments in the federal discrimination lawsuit filed by a Georgia transgender woman who was fired from her state job after informing her employer she was transitioning from male to female.
Vandy Beth Glenn, represented by nonprofit LGBT legal organization Lambda Legal, sued the state of Georgia after she was fired in 2007 as a legislative editor for the Georgia General Assembly.
In July 2010 a federal judge ruled the state illegally discriminated against Glenn and in August the judge ordered she be reinstated back to her job. During the appeals process, however, Glenn has been receiving her 2007 salary but has not been able to return to her job.
CHRIS Kids, an Atlanta nonprofit that provides housing and support to LGBT and other young people, has been awarded $25,000 by the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta.
The announcement, made today at the Community Foundation's Annual Meeting and to celebrate its 60th anniversary, named CHRIS Kids a 2011 Managing for Excellence Award winner. The other winner of a $25,000 award was Moving in the Spirit.
On Aug. 30 CHRIS Kids celebrated the grand opening of the CHRIS Counseling Center, Education Center and Summit Trail Apartment Community.
It was business as usual at Outwrite Bookstore & Coffehouse this morning as employees hung flyers indicating sales on merchandise and Dolly Parton's new CD played in the background.
The news that the store would be closing in the next few months at its iconic location at 10th and Piedmont, however, was on the mind of the store's owner Philip Rafshoon, wearing a red Outwrite t-shirt that stated on the back "Your community landmark since 1993."
"I'm ready to find a new space," Rafshoon said, while seated in his office at the back of the store, framed by a wall with the signatures of hundreds of authors who have read and signed books at Outwrite that serves as not only a book store but a major gathering space for LGBT people.
Rich gays richer than other rich folks It comes as no surprise to us, of course, but it was satisfying...
Editor's Note: Caitlin Ryan, PhD, is in Atlanta this weekend for the Council on Social Work Education's annual conference and speaks at the very first LGBT plenary of the CSWE on Sunday, Oct. 30, from 9:45 a.m.-11 a.m. The conference is at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis and is open to the public. The hotel is located at 265 Peachtree Center Ave., Atlanta, GA 30303.
While sitting bedside of numerous gay men dying of AIDS in the 1980s while living in Atlanta, Caitlin Ryan said she was overwhelmed not only by the disease's impact on the men infected by this new virus but also the devastation to their families.
"I was sent to Atlanta in 1980 when I was a graduate student at Smith College for social work. At that period, AIDS was just starting. I worked clinical internships here and they asked me to help at AID Atlanta," Ryan said in an interview with GA Voice.
A former Atlanta Police Department officer fired for lying during investigations into the unconstitutional raid on the Atlanta Eagle made a plea to the city's Civil Service Board to get his job back.
Cayenne Mayes, 34, a former member of the now disbanded APD's Red Dog Unit who was fired in July, testified to the city's Civil Service Review Board on Wednesday and said he did not intend to lie when he told the Atlanta Citizen Review Board in March 2010 he did not pat down or frisk any patrons in the gay Midtown bar when it was raided Sept. 10, 2009.
In May, however, during an APD Office of Professional Standards and the Greenberg Traurig investigation, Mayes admitted he did pat down at least three men during the raid. He was fired by APD Chief George Turner in July after the Greenberg Traurig and OPS reports were finished and made public, showing many officers violated the rights of the patrons in the Eagle as well as did not follow policies. As a result of the reports, six officers, including Mayes, were fired.
Georgia's Department of Public Health has received $3 million for the state's AIDS Drug Assistance Program.
“We’re working right now to move about 277 people off the waiting list,” said Georgia Department of Public Health Commissioner Brenda Fitzgerald in a statement.
There are more than 1,700 people on the ADAP wait list.
Out on Film is over but LGBT films abound in theaters this month. This week “Love Crime” opens at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinemas and “We Were Here” at the Plaza. Next week sees the openings of “Gun Hill Road,” “Dirty Girl” and “3,” and Oct. 28 brings “Toast.”
“Love Crime” opens with Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas) being flirtatious with her assistant, Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier, awesome!), giving her wine and gifts. Neither woman is exclusively lesbian because both sleep with men — the same man (Patrick Mille as Philippe) in one instance, though not at the same time. Isabelle even asks Philippe what Christine’s like in bed.
Things turn deadly, but you’re better off not knowing what to expect. Just let the story unfold deliciously, because you’re in the capable hands of the late Alain Corneau, channeling Alfred Hitchcock.