Wonder what we’re up to at GLAAD?
Be sure to check out GLAAD's Blog each week for updates about our latest work to build support for LGBT equality through news, entertainment, and online media.
GLAAD talked to Bobby Steggert about the Broadway play, Mothers and Sons. The play depicts four generational perspectives on the reality of gay men, family tensions, marriage equality, AIDS, and parenting. Steggert was nominated for a Drama Desk award just after our interview came out (which probably didn't have anything to do with the nomination, but the timing is nice). Read more here.
GLAAD worked with Dr. Monica Cosaro, the pastor of Ranier Beach United Methodist Church, to place an op-ed at Time.com that described why her congregation started a Boy Scout Troop, why openly gay Scoutmaster, Geoff McGrath, was the right person to lead the troop, and why the Boy Scouts' decision to remove McGrath has violated the congregation's religious beliefs. Read more here.
GLAAD worked with Anthony Sullivan, a 72-year-old gay immigrant, as he asked the Los Angeles Field 
Office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to reopen his marriage-based green card petition which this same office denied four decades ago. Sullivan was married to his partner in Colorado in 1975, but was denied a green card in a letter that stated, “You have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two fa**ots.” Sullivan is asking the US Government to reverse that 1975 decision after the death of his husband. Read more here.
Journalist Oscar Lopez wrote an in-depth and interesting piece in Newsweek about the acceptance of LGBT people within Latino communities. He included GLAAD's Director of Spanish-language media, Monica Trasandes, in the piece, "A Latino Coming Out Story." Trasandes discusses the importance of increased visibility in news, reality and telenovelas for LGBT characters but notes that writers still need to be challenged to create characters, especially in comedies, that go beyond the broad stereotype. She notes that increasingly coverage of the LGBT community in Spanish-language media has moved "from being this controversial issue to being something more personal in a way that didn’t treat the LGBT community as ‘the other’ but as part of the culture—these are LGBT Latinos.” Newsweek has a national and worldwide audience. Read the full story here.
GLAAD's Spanish-language media teamed worked with producers of a segment on TRUVADA, the HIV medication that has been approved for a prevention regimen, on Fusion's Alicia Melendez show. The team taught potential guests best practices for speaking with the media and shared information about what different sectors of the community think about the medication's use. Fusion was launched by ABC News and Univision to target millenials and has consistently offered LGBT related content, many on Melendez show. Fusion, launched in 2013, is now available in 35 million homes and hopes to reach 60 million homes in 5 years.
GLAAD attended a rally organized by grassroots organization "Everything Transgender in NYC" in support of a 16 year-old transgender girl, who is being held in a maximum security prison in Connecticut without having been charged with a crime. The rally was in front of the of the Administration for Children Services as a show of solidarity with two other rallies in Connecticut demanding the release of the young woman from prison.
Last week, GLAAD brought CeCe McDonald to New York City, where she participated in several panel discussions about issues affecting transgender people. The first panel, "I Use My Love to Guide Me": Surviving and Thriving in the Face of Impossible Situations, took place at the New School with prison abolition advocates Reina Gossett and Dean Spade as part of the series, No One is Disposable. It is part of a larger Cece also joined Janet Mock at a Barnard College salon focusing on Janet's new memoir, Redefining Realness, and featuring a discussion with scholars, activists, and writers, including Brittney Cooper, Che Gossett, Reina Gossett, CeCe McDonald, and Mey Valdavia Rude.
GLAAD spoke to BuzzFeed about Smith College's policy regarding transgender students and applicants. The article focused on an April 24th protest expected to take place on the school's campus and call for a supplement to the usual application documents for prospective trans women students. “With the multiple forms and documentation required to apply for college, transgender students may not yet have access to documentation that confirms their gender identity and are therefore unfairly rejected by Smith College,” said GLAAD Senior Media Strategist Tiq Milan in a statement to BuzzFeed. “Smith administrators should end the dangerous message they are sending trans youth and prospective students, and instead have a policy in place that prioritizes applicants’ self-determination of gender identity.”
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