Prime Time 25: LGBT Seniors Making a Difference
These 25 LGBT achievers over 65 are proving that a person can change the world at any age.
Advocate.com Editors
www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/people/2014/11/26/prime-time-25-lgbt-seniors-making-difference
Dari Nowkhah's Story From The Let Love Define Family Series
November is National Adoption Month and RaiseAChild.US is celebrating with twice weekly “Let Love Define Family™” series installments in Huffington Post Gay Voices. Today’s story features an ally of RaiseAChild.US whose involvement in National Adoption Month media campaign comes from a personal connection with adoption.
When I happened to meet Dari Nowkhah at an event in Charlotte, NC, I recognized him from his work at ESPN and noticed his striking, multiracial family. In a casual conversation with him, his warmth and welcoming attitude toward all people fascinated me and I wanted to learn more about him. He generously agreed to record a public service announcement (PSA) for RaiseAChild.US and share his thoughts with our readers. — Rich Valenza, RaiseAChild.Us
When it comes to adoption, ESPN anchor Dari Nowkhah wears his heart on his sleeve.
“Blood does not define family. Just because a child would look different or have different biological parents doesn’t mean that they’re not family to us,” said Dari.
After he and his wife, Jenn, expanded their family with the adoption of their daughter Nahla, Dari found himself speaking out as often as possible about the benefits of family building through adoption.
“Our adoptive daughter is just like our other kids,” Dari said. “There’s no difference between her and our other two kids in any way, shape or form.”
This month, Dari filmed a public service announcement for RaiseAChild.US to ask all prospective parents to “let love define family.” As an ally of RaiseAChild.US, Dari’s contribution to its National Adoption Month media campaign will help raise awareness of the 400,000 children in the U.S. foster care system who are in need of safe, loving and permanent homes.
At the time of our interview, Nahla was about to celebrate her fifth birthday with a huge party.
“We hear a lot of, ‘It’s amazing what you did for your daughter,’ but our answer is always, ‘What’s amazing is what she has brought to us,’” said her father. “From day one, Nahla has been as important a part of our family as any of us. She makes us proud that we did this every day, proud of ourselves and proud of Nick, the older brother, for being such a good big brother to her.”
Neither parent knew of any particularly close friend who was adopted who might have inspired them to adopt. They just genuinely loved children and could not deny their urge to be loving parents to a child in need, especially a child of color, for whom there is greater adoptive need.
Dari and Jenn have had three biological children together. In 2011 they lost an infant son, Hayden, while he awaited a heart transplant. They have turned their grief into hope for other children through creating Hayden’s Hope, a foundation that raises awareness about pediatric organ donation.
Dari admits that sometimes his mixed race family gets looks. “There are times, very rarely for me, but my wife gets it more — when somebody gives her an interesting look or even a bit of a disapproving look when she is out with the children. Maybe it is because of a stereotypes or racism. All it does is make us give Nahla a bigger hug. What’s most important to us is that all of our children are happy and treated equally.”
And what does Nahla think about her brother and sister? Like all siblings they sometimes argue, but in a home that preaches respect and love she “does that better than we could have ever hoped.”
At the end of the interview I asked Dari if there was something more that he wanted to cover. He was quick to respond.
“There are a lot of people out there that have a false notion that family is defined by blood. Family is not defined by blood. I firmly believe that. As you know, Rich, you and your partner can’t physically have kids, and that does not mean you wouldn’t make incredible parents. Thank God you can adopt. So the whole family is defined by blood thing just needs to go away. It needs to go away forever.”
For National Adoption Month, RaiseAChild.US is hosting two free events for prospective foster and adoptive parents. We hope you will join us and learn about the advantages of building a family through fostering and adoption: Tuesday, Dec. 2 at The Garner House in Claremont, CA and Wednesday, Dec. 3 at The Montalbàn Theatre in Hollywood, CA. RSVP and information are available at www.RaiseAChild.US.
RaiseAChild.US is a national organization headquartered in Hollywood, California that encourages the LGBT community to build families through fostering and adopting to serve the needs of the 400,000 children in the U.S. foster care system. Since 2011, RaiseAChild.US has run media campaigns and events to educate prospective parents and the public, and has engaged more than 2,400 prospective parents. For information about how you can become a foster or fost/adopt parent, visit www.RaiseAChild.US.
LGBT Nebraskans You Should Know: Deven and Jocelyn Muhammad
The LGBT Nebraskans You Should Know series features inspiring individuals from across the Cornhusker State.
HRC.org
Fox News Homophobe Is Pissed That A Local Library Won’t Carry His Hate Manifesto
Fox News commentator and columnist Todd Starnes is pissed.
In a new rant published by Charisma News, Starnes complains that a little local library in Cordova, AK (population 2,285) is refusing to carry his latest hate manifesto book God Less America: Real Stories From the Front Lines of the Attack of Traditional Values.
Starnes, of course, has a rich history of saying really awful things about gay people. In 2012, Fox News sent him to cover the Brooklyn Gay Pride celebrations, during which he complained about “a gaggle of angry lesbians” and “militant gays” as he fired off a string of homophobic tweets. In 2013, he referred to a transgender woman as a “burly man wearing a dress,” and claimed Christian soldiers were being unfairly “punished” when the Air Force announced plans to crack down on homophobic. And earlier this year, he responded to Michael Sam‘s historic coming out by saying: “We are no longer allowed to have fun and enjoy sports or entertainment programs. How sad.”
In his latest rant, Starnes says one of his readers, a man by the name of Kanji Christian, tried donating God Less America to the Cordova Public Library earlier this year.
“The folks at the library said it would take a while for them to approve the book,” he writes. “A few months later, Kanji dropped by, hoping to find his donated copy of God Less America on the bookshelf. But the book was nowhere to be found.”
When he asked about it, the librarian allegedly told Kanji it wasn’t “something the community would be interested in.”
Shocked and offended, Starnes decided to take matters into his own hands.
“I called the public library,” he said.
Bullying employees of a small town public library over the phone. Classy.
Starnes demanded to speak to the librarian who rejected his book. She got on the phone and told him: “We have a really small library. Real estate on our shelves is very valuable.”
“That’s understandable,” he whines. “I’m just glad the Cordova Public Library has ample room on their shelves for the works of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and President Obama. No wonder they don’t have room for the bad boy of the literary world.”
Bad boy of the literary world? Really?
“I can’t say I’m all that surprised that the public library refused to accept my book,” Starnes says. “[T]hat’s how the tolerance and diversity crowd operates. They don’t burn books–they just ban them.”
When they’re written by horrible homophobes like yourself, Mr. Starnes, then yes. Yes, we do.
Related stories:
Mega-Bookstore Stocks Ex-Gay Torture Manuals
Anne Rice Is Fed Up With Homophobic Facebook Commenters
New Book Claims Matthew Shepard Was A Meth Head, Murdered By His Bisexual Lover
Graham Gremore is a columnist and contributor for Queerty and Life of the Law. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
Graham Gremore
Anti-Gay British Pundit: Gay People Live 'Deathstyle', Have 20,000 Partners In 'Short, Miserable Lives'
Anti-gay bigot Lord Christopher Monckton has taken to birther wingnut rag WorldNetDaily to defend an Australian politician who last week attempted to place a ban on the “promotion” of homosexuality, reports Right Wing Watch.
Right-wing Rise Up Australia counsellor Rosalie Crestani had called for the City of Casey near Melbourne to stop all diversity training and to put a ban on media releases related to sexual orientation. She also called for the removal of pro-gay signs on council premises and for pro-LGBT messages to be banned for discriminating against straight people.
Monckton, a member of British racist and anti-gay, anti-immigration, anti-EU party UKIP, argued that Crestani discovered during a consultation with “an expert in non-heterosexual lifestyles” that gay people have “an average of 500-1,000 partners in their sexually active lifetime, and that some had as many as 20,000.”
Continuing the tone of absolute hatred, he added that gay people lead “short, miserable lives” as part of their “deathstyle.”
Praising Crestani for her “Christian” beliefs and for being “so nice” to gay people, while promulgating the notion that being gay is a choice, he added:
“Councillor Crestani was so shocked by the official mortality figures for homosexuals that she proposes to circulate a memorandum to all councillors and staff giving them detailed statistics for promiscuity, prevalence of HIV and many other sexually transmitted diseases, and for the consequently short, miserable lives and high death rate of homosexuals.
“As the experts she has consulted have pointed out, the QWERTYs [Monckton’s term for LGBT activists] – who represent about 0.5 percent of the population – have brilliantly promoted themselves by carefully shifting the debate away from what homosexuals actually do to each other (just ask any proctologist: all of them are heartily sick of trying to repair the gross damage caused by deviant sexual practices) and on to “celebrating” what is misleadingly presented as a “valid alternative lifestyle.” Deathstyle, more like.
“And why have homosexuals – most of whose partners last as little as a few hours – been so keen to promote the lifetime promises of so-called “gay” so-called “marriage”? The reason, of course, is that they cannot produce children, so they want to adopt them. Is this fair to the children? The answer is no.
“What makes Councillor Crestani so deadly to the QWERTYs’ cause is that she is so relentlessly nice to them. She is a Christian, so she is well used to the ancient theology that draws a clear distinction between hating the sin and loving the sinner. The key point she makes over and over again is that educating potential homosexuals in the medical dangers of their deathstyle will benefit the homosexual community first and foremost. For it is they that are most at risk, and we do them no favors by being over-delicate in refusing to educate them in the dire risks they run.”
Jim Redmond
PHOTOS: Civil War LGBT — and Feminist — Heroes
A photo exhibit celebrates those who crossed gender lines to serve in the Civil War.
Trudy Ring
Is This The Best Trans Character In The History Of Video Games?
We’ve already written plenty about how Bioware’s new game, Dragon Age: Inquisition, is super-queer-friendly. It has the first exclusively gay party member, multiple gay and bi romance options, and lots of graphic (but tasteful) gay sex to enjoy.
But did you also know it has a trans character, and that’s he’s voiced by Jennifer Hale, who played the lesbian-if-you-want-her-to-be Shepard character in Mass Effect? (Spoilers below!)
Take a look at how Dragon Age handles a character who presents as male, but then later opens up about having been born female:
“Let me know if you need help binding,” Krem teases one character with big pecs.
What follows is a brief conversation about trans issues and gender identity, without ever using those words. It’s sort of an opportunity for straight games to ask a transman what it’s like to be trans, without the risk of offending a real person.
About transmen, Bull says, “they are real men, just like you or me.”
And if you slip up and call him a woman, Bull corrects you: “he’s now a woman. … Krem’s a good man.”
The game was already pretty friendly to gender fluidity, since it lets you create female characters with an Adam’s apple and beard, or male characters with makeup. As IO9 pointed out, it would be nice if your character had an opportunity to explicitly declare their trans status as well, but oh well. Maybe that’ll come in Dragon Age 4.
Krem’s voice actor, Jennifer Hale, is already a heroine where queer games are concerned. Here she is voicing Shepard in a lesbian sex scene in Bioware’s Mass Effect:
matt baume
Davey Wavey Wants To Make The World Sexier
For someone who is pretty much always naked, we were sort of surprised Davey Wavey’s newest venture was in the underwear world. Then again, it’s Davey Wavey, who loves being around guys, and it just makes sense he wanted to create a line of underwear so he could be as close as possible to boys around the globe and their junk. We want to introduce you to his underwear line, DirtyFit, which is going to be the world’s sexiest underwear yet.
What makes this underwear amazing? Davey Wavey has combined the best aspects of the greats before him into one solid pair of underwear. Made with high performance fabrics, flatlock seams, PenisPouch technology, and best of all, it’s made 100 percent in the USA. To get his project off the ground, Davey is asking for our support through the launch of his KickStarter.
Help him out here by backing his underwear project, and get some awesome rewards in return. Just donating, you’ll already be one degree of separation from Davey, and that’s incentive enough for us! Watch the video below to learn more about DirtyFit, and Davey’s mission to make the world sexier than ever.
For more information, go to The Underwear Expert.
Photo credit: DirtyFit
Underwear Expert
feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/HRCE3xqayQ0/davey-wavey-wants-to-make-the-world-sexier-20141126
LGBT Employment Equity: Teaching
Early Childhood Educator Alex Avola discusses coming out in the workplace and what employers can do to make LGBT employees feel comfortable. For more information on LGBT Employment Equity,.
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