A Letter From The President

 Bob Dorr, PFLAG Omaha

 Posted on January 21, 2004

As the battle heats up over marriage of same-sex couples, gay rights
groups are becoming more visible and are fighting back.

A recent full-page ad in The Omaha World-Herald said: “If it’s not on America’s to-do list, then Congress shouldn’t put amending the Constitution to ban marriage rights for gay couples on theirs.” The Human Rights Campaign placed the ad in The World-Herald and a dozen other newspapers. It offered good reasons why even conservatives should oppose the idea of writing discrimination into the U.S. Constitution.

Just a few years ago, fear kept people in the closet. That is changing. Anti-gay letters and columns in newspapers are getting answered. Supporters of fairness and equality are expressing their views.

The battle has many fronts. One is the college classroom. With the start of the second semester, we are again lining up audiences for our Safe Schools presentations.

Despite advances, many teenagers in Omaha and elsewhere wake up every day afraid to go to school because they fear taunting and harassment. According to a recent report by the California Safe Schools Coalition, 7.5 percent of 237,000 students (both straight and gay) who responded to a state-sponsored, confidential survey in the 2001-2002 school year said they were targeted by bullies because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation.

These students were three times more likely to miss school because they felt unsafe and more than twice as likely to be depressed or to consider suicide.

Many of the classes where we make our appearances consist of future teachers or teachers who have returned to college for advanced training, those who will be in positions to make our schools safe for
all.

The two-hour programs by PFLAG and our ally, Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN, include a Safe Schools talk and a panel of PFLAG and GLSEN members who tell about their lives and experiences. If you would like to schedule a presentation before your class or community group, call my wife, Betty Dorr (333-7064), who coordinates Speakers Bureau appearances with considerable help from GLSEN member Joe Price, who schedules presenters, and from PFLAG member Susie Silverman, who schedules panel members.

After a Safe Schools presentation last year at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, one of the students handed me this note: “Thank you! My cousin was gay and committed suicide, because he knew the family would not accept him.”

We still have a ways to go.

*At the Feb. 12 PFLAG support-program meeting, we will hear from Joe Gerstandt, director of education/prevention at the Nebraska AIDS Project. He will talk about the organization’s history and the programs and assistance it offers. Carrie Spencer, Omaha PFLAG’s vice-president, lines up our meeting programs.

*Many of you who receive this monthly newsletter also are on our PFLAG email list. If you are on that list, you receive the National PFLAG Weekly Alerts containing a message from our national executive director, news stories of interest and other items. If you are not on the list, and would like to be, please send your email address to: info@pflag-omaha.org

*If you would like to buy a ticket to attend the Pride Players benefit performance at the Rose Theater at 7 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 30, call 333-7064 to see if any seats remain.

*If you receive a dues envelope with this newsletter, please use it to send us a check to keep your membership current or to become a member. We depend on our dues-paying members to keep our telephone Helpline and pay our other expenses for our 100 percent volunteer-run organization.

*PFLAG collected $86 at our December meeting to donate to the Toyz 4 Totz drive for Christmas gifts. The sponsor, Imperial Court of Nebraska, sent us this thank-you note: PFLAG Friends, Thank you for your $86 donation. We bought gifts for 158 children. Thank you for helping us do that.

*We also received a thank-you note for helping sponsor an ice-cream social benefit for the River City Mixed Chorus. It contained messages of thanks from individual members of the chorus.

It’s nice to receive these warm fuzzies.

Bob Dorr, president