LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Support Local G/L Community Centers |
by Paula Martinac |
Delivery of social services to the queer community has become even more important since "faith-based initiatives" rose to the top of George W. Bush's agenda. Too many churches and religious ministries are either inimical to homosexuality or believe it's something people can choose to walk away from. At gay community centers, however, those who need AIDS treatment or alcohol counseling can receive it without worrying about passing a morality test. There's been an explosion of new gay community centers in the last decade, even though we don't hear as much about them as we do about national groups like the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), with their large staffs and multimillion-dollar budgets. That's because the work community centers do is often not very flashy. Providing space for lesbian and gay AA groups to meet or housing a queer lending library is hardly as headline-grabbing as hosting black-tie dinners filled with Washington luminaries. Among the 100-plus centers, there are some glitzy exceptions. The Los Angeles center, the largest and oldest of our community centers, is famous for its pricey, celebrity-filled soirees. San Francisco's first lesbian and gay community center recently opened, sporting a $16-million price tag, and Chicago's Horizon, Inc. has cut a $2.74-million deal with the city to purchase a site for a new center there. New York's center just completed a $6 million renovation. The budgets of several of our community centers easily compete with those of our major national organizations, like HRC, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. Although the large centers are funded primarily by middle- and upper-class donors, their services tend to benefit the members of our community who are most likely to need them and least likely to afford them. In that way, they're similar to the settlement houses that sprouted up in this country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and looked out for those with little access to money or power. Today, that often means urban queer youth, who are greatly at risk for alcohol and drug abuse, homelessness, suicide, prostitution and HIV. When I was raising money for New York's gay community center in the mid-1990s, a comment I frequently heard as donors drew out their checkbooks was, "I wish there had been a place like this when I was young." It's not just the big centers that are making strides in this area. In cities from Phoenix to Fort Lauderdale, lesbian and gay centers with budgets of $200,000 or $300,000 offer youth support, alcohol intervention, gender identity programs and AIDS services. Across the country, many queers have community centers to thank for literally saving their lives. But in addition to offering social services, many lesbian and gay centers also help foster cultural community. With more and more feminist and gay bookstores closing their doors, community centers have become important sites for maintaining our cultural and intellectual life. Many centers now house lending and research libraries, host readings and film series, and provide space for book discussion groups. Others turn their walls over to local queer artists for exhibits that would never see the light of day if not housed in a gay space. In addition, community centers help build our movement by providing affordable meeting space for queer groups and organizations. That may sound insignificant, but only 40 years ago lesbian and gay groups had to convene secretly in private homes. The advent of community centers has made it possible an enormous amount of political organizing to take place and for many people to become involved in the movement quickly. Imagine, for example, how much more slowly AIDS activism would have grown if ACT UP had gotten its start in Larry Kramer's living room and not in the auditorium of New York's lesbian and gay community center. But what I like most about our community centers is that they strive to create a physical "home" for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. That's no small thing, since we often experience everything from lack of understanding to open hostility from our own families. Sometimes we're even evicted from our homes or can't find a place to live simply because we're queer. As the community center movement expands and the need for social services increases, it's exciting to see our "homes" cropping up in places that would never have tolerated their presence even 10 years ago, like East Los Angeles and the outer boroughs of New York City. You can find the community center nearest you through the National Directory of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Centers, available online at www.gaycenter.org. Visit one soon or make a donationit's an investment in the future of the queer community. Paula Martinac is a Lambda Literary Award-winning author of seven books. She can be reached care of Letters from CAMP Rehoboth or at POcolumn@aol.com. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 12, No. 04, May 3, 2002. |