by Peter DelVecchio

One in four gays without health insurance

Almost one-quarter of gay adults have no health insurance according to a nationwide survey released May 19, 365Gay.com reports. The online survey of 2,710 adults was conducted by Harris Interactive and Witeck-Combs Communications in April. Of the 343 respondents self-identifying as gay or lesbian, 22 percent had no coverage, compared to 12 percent of straight respondents, states a Witeck-Combs release.

“We know the problem of the uninsured has reached crisis proportions in this country and, unfortunately, this survey shows that the [LGBT] community is today at greater risk,” said Peter Francel, Head of Sales-Product Group for Aetna, an insurer that has received a 100 percent score on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index since 2002.

Seventy-nine percent of gay respondents identified advertising featuring gays as an important factor in choosing an insurer; 78 percent said they would be more likely to choose one marketing to the LGBT community; 67 percent said they would be likely to consider an insurer if the agent selling the plan were openly gay. “GLBT consumers place a high value on brands … that earn and grow respect within the community,” said Colleen Dermody, a Witeck-Combs vice president.

Legendary gay artist Rauschenberg dies

Celebrated openly gay artist Robert Rauschenberg died at 82 May 12, the Advocate reports. Rauschenberg’s “combines”—so-called because they combined unusual or everyday three-dimensional objects and later, photographs with paint—brought him to the fore as a pop artist in the 1950s and ’60s. But he was also a sculptor and choreographer and won a Grammy Award in 1984 for best album jacket for the Talking Heads’ Speaking in Tongues. Rauschenberg founded Change, Inc., which helps artists pay medical bills. “I don’t ever want to go,” he told Harper’s Bazaar in 1997, when asked about dying.

First openly gay Illinois lawmaker dies

Former state Rep. Larry McKeon, Illinois’ first openly gay lawmaker, died of a stroke at 63 May 13, CBS 2 Chicago reports. McKeon entered the Illinois House of Representatives in 1996 and retired in 2007. He worked to extend the state’s antidiscrimination law to protect gays and lesbians. A statute barring sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination took effect in January 2006. “He may have gone in there as the first openly gay state legislator,” said Rep. John Fritchey (D-Chicago) in July 2006, “but he is leaving as a very good legislator who happened to be gay.”

Lesbian rights pioneer Ruth Simpson dies

Pioneering lesbian rights activist, lecturer and author Ruth Simpson died May 8 in Woodstock, N.Y., at 82, the Los Angeles Times reports. In 1970, Simpson became president of the New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis, where she helped open one of the earliest lesbian community centers in the United States. She published the lesbian classic From the Closet to the Courts in 1976 and, from 1982 until the week before her death, she taped a weekly cable political talk show, Minority Report. Simpson is survived by her partner of 37 years, Ellen Povill.

LGBT hate crimes up in Michigan

Violent crimes against LGBT persons in Michigan because of their sexual orientation increased by 133 percent last year, the biggest jump in the nation, according to a May 20 report from the Triangle Foundation, the Detroit Free Press reports. The foundation is “Michigan’s leading organization serving the [LGBT] and allied communities,” according to its website, www.tri.org. Of 226 reported 2007 cases, 46 were assaults, and 101 involved intimidation or harassment, the report states. “We can rise above choosing violence,” said Triangle Foundation Interim Executive Director Kate Runyon. “We need to stand up for one another.”

HIV-positive man spits on cop, gets 35 years

On May 14, an HIV-positive homeless man was sentenced to 35 years for harassing a public servant with a deadly weapon—having spit on a police officer in Dallas, the Advocate reports.

Willie Campbell allegedly spit in the officer’s eye and mouth while being arrested for public intoxication in 2006. Campbell will not be eligible for parole for 17 years, the New York Times reports. HIV/AIDS advocacy groups are criticizing the ruling, calling the designation of saliva as a “deadly weapon” excessive and arguing it will cause misunderstanding about HIV transmission.

Handbook for transgender kids published

The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals will be published in June, according to a release. The book is “[a] comprehensive, first-of-its-kind guidebook for the unique challenges that thousands of families face raising children who step outside of the pink or blue box,” the release says. Its authors are Stephanie Brill, founder of Gender Spectrum Education and Training which, according to the release, “provides education, resources and training to create a more gender-sensitive and supportive environment for all children,” and Rachel Pepper, coordinator of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies at Yale University.

Sen. Kennedy diagnosed with malignant brain tumor

Longtime LGBT rights champion Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), 76, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor May 20, The Associated Press reports.

Physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston discovered the tumor, a malignant glioma in the left parietal lobe, after Kennedy suffered a seizure at his Hyannisport home.

Kennedy “has had no further seizures, remains in good overall condition and is up and walking around the hospital,” his doctors said in a May 20 statement.

The prognosis, however, is bleak. “As a general rule, at 76, without the ability to do a surgical resection, as a kind of ballpark figure, you’re probably looking at a survival of less than a year,” said Dr. Keith Black, chairman of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Other experts give Kennedy up to three years.

The news stunned Capitol Hill, where Kennedy has served since 1962. “Keep Ted here for us and for America,” said a weeping Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV). President George W. Bush hailed Kennedy as “a man of tremendous courage, remarkable strength and powerful spirit.”

LGBT groups offered their prayers and best wishes. “For generations, Sen. Kennedy has been a pillar for justice for all people in all areas of life,” said H. Alexander Robinson, CEO of the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), in a statement. “NBJC’s thoughts and heartfelt prayers are with him and his family.”

“Sen. Kennedy has been a champion for our community for a long time—long before many of us even got involved in the fight, Ted Kennedy was fighting for us,” said Human Rights Campaign Vice President of Programs David Smith (who once served as Kennedy’s communications director), in a statement on HRC’s website. “We’re all keeping him in our thoughts.”

Kennedy is currently working on three bills affecting the LGBT community. In April, he filed a Senate version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Like the bill that passed last year in the House of Representatives, it does not include protections for transgender people, an exclusion that has outraged some LGBT groups and individuals. Kennedy, however, has said the law could be extended to cover transgenders next year, when he hopes there will be a gay-friendly Democrat in the White House and more Democrats in Congress.

Kennedy is also a sponsor of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crime Act, which passed in the House last May. To get around a threatened presidential veto, Kennedy attached the bill to the 2008 defense authorization bill. That bill passed, but the Matthew Shepard law was detached in committee. Kennedy said in April he wants to reintroduce the bill this session.

Finally, Kennedy also wishes to sponsor legislation to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which bans openly gay people from the military. Hearings are expected this year on the House’s Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which would repeal the decade-old policy and has bipartisan support, but no Senate version of the bill has been filed.

Numbers as of 10 a.m., May 21

American Deaths in Iraq: 4,079 • www.icasualties.org

American Wounded in Iraq: 30,329 • www.antiwar.com/casualties

Iraqi Dead since 2003: 84,040-91,703 • www.iraqbodycount.org

Cost of War: $521,495,000,000+ • www.costofwar.com

National Debt: $9,359,535,444,718.90 • www.brillig.com/debt_clock

U.S. Trade Deficit: $274,672,000,000. 00+
www.americaneconomicalert.org/ticker_home.asp

Quote/Unquote

“They’re best friends. It’s pathetic what people say.”

—Ali Lohan, on the entertainment show Extra, denying rumors that her sister, actress Lindsay Lohan, and openly gay DJ Samantha Ronson are lovers.

“People say homosexuality is unnatural, that nonhumans don’t engage in homosexual behavior, but that’s not true.”

—Georgetown University biologist Janet Mann to LiveScience regarding homosexual behavior among animals.

“We thought, ‘How do we continue to remind our audience that they should get tested?’”

—Stephen Friedman, general manager of MTV’s MTVU network, about the network’s new online HIV/AIDS game, “Pos or Not.”

“It is amazing that the armed forces haven’t leveled their own protest against As the World Turns for prejudice against the military.”

—Ginia Bellafante, in the New York Times, about an episode of the soap where an Iraq vet tries to have his son killed for being gay.