Nishat Kurwa, Turnstyle News
In Gun Hill Road, director Rashaad Ernesto Green has written a loving, complex portrait of a Bronx family in struggle. The patriarch, Enrique (Esai Morales), has been in prison for three years. In that time, his wife (played by Judi Reyes of Scrubs fame) has had an affair. But Enrique, feels most betrayed by the changes in his son Michael, who’s in the middle of a transition to becoming a teen girl.
Director Rashaad Ernesto Green said he was inspired by a member of his family who went through something similar as the father in the film. "I watched this family deteriorate…as an artist, I wanted to make a piece of art that didn’t necessarily give them all the answers, but at least pointed them in the way of love and acceptance," he said.
Green said he wanted the script to reflect a Latino family that's driven by their love for one other. It’s a relief, watching the movie, to see a man of color character who doesn’t immediately lurch into physically abuse when confronted with a transgender child, especially as you watch him dealing with his own sexual victimization in prison and the phobias that it produces.
Ultimately, there is violence in Enrique’s reaction to his son’s transformation. But Green was careful to present a man who’s acknowledging the impact of his absence. "He struggles within himself because his love is what sort of holds him to a higher standard of behavior. He doesn’t react like a monster per se.
Everything he does, even though skewed, is somehow out of love. He believes he needs to right his child, even though the child doesn’t need to be righted, because the child isn't doing anything wrong," he said.
Green acknowledged this is a progressive perspective that doesn't look even reflect what happened in his own family as it dealt with this issue. He said, "for Enrique, whose mentality has been shaped by the environment that he's come up in, by the Bronx, that's defined his sense of manhood, and what it is to be a man, I wanted to draw a family that has a realistic response."
The movie follows Enrique’s son Michael as she becomes Vanessa. The actress, Harmony Santana, made her movie debut with this film. Often, straight actors are cast as the opposite sex to play transgender people. Green wanted to find someone transgender to play the roles of Michel and Vanessa.
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Foster care youth are three times more likely to end up in jail than to graduate from a four-year college, according to the LA Times. In a time when the education system is failing many American youth, foster care youth don’t have it easy. But for a certain group of foster care youth, it's hard enough just to find a family.
According to Family Builders, LGBTQ youth are over-represented in the foster care system and face a large amount of discrimination when they disclose their sexual orientation or gender identity. 33 percent, in fact, are rejected from their families when this happens, according to Family Builders, which is an organization in Oakland, CA working to connect foster youth with families.
Mother Jones reported last year that many foster parents refuse to accept a gay young person. But when you take in a young person at age two, there’s no way of knowing whether they are gay, straight, bisexual, or transgender. Jill Jacobs, executive director of Family Builders, said that there is no screening process for whether a family is homophobic.
What do Bayard Rustin, Eleanor Roosevelt, and James Baldwin have in common? Thanks to SB 48, a bill signed into law today by California Governor Jerry Brown, their contributions and those of other gay and lesbian historical figures will be recognized in California history textbooks, reports The Huffington Post. Though the textbooks will not be updated for another two to three years because of the budget crisis, the signing of the bill marks a milestone for the gay community which has often been excluded from or ignored in classrooms. Senator Mark Leno, who introduced the bill, hopes that acknowledging the struggles and accomplishments LGBTQ community will reduce the bullying that led to the tragic suicides of many gay youth this year.
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This story was broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered on 6/3/2011, and was originally published on Turnstyle News..
A lot has changed since the 80’s. Or so I’m told. I wasn’t born until 1991 – the same year Magic Johnson announced that he had HIV. I’m 19 now, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people joke that Magic Johnson discovered the cure to AIDS…money.
Katherine Hood knows the same joke. She’s a senior at UC Berkeley and has grown up knowing about the disease her whole life. Regardless of the jokes, we both know HIV is still deadly serious. “I think it’s interesting because while I don’t think it’s the same sort of death sentence mentality,” says Hood, “To me if I actually stop and think about it, it still seems like a horrifying thought.”
Hood and lots of kids we talked to say their school Sex Ed classes were pretty good. Thanks to my school’s health classes, I had seen a condom by the 7th grade and knew what it was for. My mom even bought me a book called Deal With It. I remember my friends coming over after school to giggle about stick figure illustrations of sexual positions.
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The following originally aired on KQED-FM.
By: Sayre Quevedo
Sitting in class, a friend tapped me on the shoulder and I ignored her, hoping she'd take the time to read the plaque hanging around my neck: Please understand my reason for not speaking today. I am participating in Day of Silence, a national “student protest” against the silence faced by the LGBTQ community and their allies.
About a hundred kids at my school managed to stay silent the whole time while others simply wore the cards in support. I have been a part of Day of Silence for 6 years and while I've stayed true to the nature of the event, a part of me wasn't totally invested.
I barely uttered a word all day, but after school I left to attend a rally in the Mission district where I yelled and chanted for transgender rights. The event was held outside the 16th Street BART station, where weeks earlier, a transgender woman named Mia Tu Mutch, was punched and kicked to the ground.
The climate at the rally was electric. People held signs and chanted, but when I looked around I didn't see any of the kids who had been wearing the plaques at my school.
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This commentary originally aired on WAMU, American University Radio in Washington, D.C.
By Ciara Smith
Most moms dream of one day seeing their baby girl in a beautiful white dress walking down the aisle at her wedding. And most moms dream of the grandchildren who may come later.
Girls are princesses to their moms. So, how do you tell a mother that her princess likes other princesses?
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The following originally aired on KCBS.
By Sayre Quevedo
I came out to my 5th grade class when I was nine years old and even had a coming out party. But my father’s side of the family doesn’t know I’m gay. Sometimes, they ask me about “girlfriends” I’ve brought along on family camping trips. I just laugh and say “Those girls weren’t my girlfriends.”
It wasn’t that I trusted a group of fifth graders more than half my family, I just cared less how they reacted. Recently, I wrote an editorial about the “It Gets Better Videos” and my experience growing up gay in the Bay Area. I hadn’t seen my father’s family since the article was published and I was dreading Thanksgiving with them.
But when I walked in everyone greeted me normally, barely turning their heads from the football game on TV. I sat down by my uncle, whose reaction I feared most. “I read your article in the paper”, he said. “I only had one problem with it…Why wasn’t I invited to the coming out party?”
I spent so much of my life worrying about this moment and it had ended up being the most anti-climactic coming out ever.
Previously:
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By Sayre Quevedo
I came out to my 5th grade class when I was nine years old and even had a coming out party. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been out forever.
But my father’s side of the family doesn’t know I’m gay. Sometimes, they ask me about “girlfriends” I’ve brought along on family camping trips. I just laugh and say “Those girls weren’t my girlfriends,” conveniently leaving out the fact that I’m not attracted to girls.
It wasn’t that I trusted a group of fifth graders more than half my family, I just cared less how they reacted. If my classmates decided they didn’t like me because I was gay, I could always switch schools. But if my father’s family didn’t accept me, I wasn’t sure what I would do. I told my dad I was gay, but never felt comfortable telling his family. They aren’t homophobic but they’re old-fashioned. Being gay just isn’t something you talk about.
Recently, I wrote an editorial about the “It Gets Better Videos” and my experience growing up gay in the Bay Area. I never planned on coming out to my father’s family but the editorial, which ran in the San Francisco Chronicle, ended up doing it for me. I hadn’t seen my father’s family since the article was published and I was dreading Thanksgiving with them.
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The Pentagon recently released a study showing new support for getting rid of the policy, "Don't Ask Don't Tell," that currently requires gay and lesbian military service members to keep quiet about their sexuality. The study interviewed 115,000 service members.
The Pentagon summed up their findings in the answers to three questions:
- When asked whether knowing that a fellow unit member was gay or lesbian would affect their unit's ability to get their job done, 70 percent of service members said that it would have no effect or a positive effect.
- When asked if during their career, they had ever worked with someone they believed to be homosexual, 69 percent of service members said yes.
- While serving in a unit with someone they believed to be homosexual, 92 percent of service members said their ability to work together was "very good," "good," or had no positive or negative effect.
The Pentagon also stated that most of the concern about "open" service is driven by misperceptions and stereotypes about what it would mean if gay and lesbian service members were allowed to be open. In addition, they spoke to many gay service members who said they are not trying to push a social agenda or get special treatment, but would like to stop serving in silence.
Youth Radio has been following this issue for over a year. In August 2009, Youth Radio profiled Joseph Rocha, a member of the military who survived extreme harassment from his peers and superiors because of his sexuality. Watch his video below, and visit Youth Radio's hub page for its investigative series Sailors' Abuse Kept Silent in Navy Canine Unit that has won some of journalism's top honors, including an Edward R. Murrow Award.
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