Good .WritIng- »
. Kudos to Kevin McAteer on his beautifully
written, "perceptive preview of Nora Mitchell's
I powerful new work, the performance piece
Minus Music. I thought it a particularly nice
match, editorially, of writer and subject.

Suzi Wizowaty
Burlington

; The West Coast Likes Us

I As a friend of Lee Lynch, I benefit (among
other ways) from receiving your publication.
Thanks for all the work you do; it's one of the
best I’ve read. Keep up the good work!

 Nel Ward
Newport, OR

1: Transgender clarification

 lam responding to Judith Beckett’s letter in last
it month’s issue of OITM concerning legal pro-

‘; tections for transgender Vermonters. At the time
[ she wrote the letter, she was unaware that trans-
 gender Vemionters are in fact protected under
 Vem1ont’s hate crime law. In 1999, through the
 hard work of a member of the.transgender com-
E munity, gender identity was added as a protect-
l ed class.

i In 2000, a bill was introduced which

; would have added gender identity to the

' Vermont anti-discrimination law. That was the
same year that civil unions was debated and

. legislators felt it would have been too much to
address both issues. The following year,

because so many new legislators were elected

4 who were not supportive of glbt issues, that

. same bill was not introduced.

This year, Equality VT (formerly the

Vermont Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights)
will discuss the possibility of introducing the

bill again with supportive legislators. In order
for the bill to pass, it is imperative to build a
coalition of organizations and individuals who

support changing the anti.-discrimination laws
to make it illegal to discriminate against trans-
genders.

If you are interested in being part of
this coalition, or have a question on legal pro-
tections and rights, please contact Equality VT
at 802-496-4333 or email renfrew@sover.net.
You can also obtain information about bills
which we have supported or opposed over the
past several years at www.equalityvt.org.

Virginia Renfrew
Equality VT

I saw a letter to the editor, and an apology from
the editor, for a mistake in a story suggesting
that Vermont does not include transgender peo-
ple in its hate crime laws. In fact, Vermont does
have statutory language that explicitly includes
transgender people. In 2000, the legislature
passed, and the governor signed, a bill adding
“gender identity” as a protected category.

This is the language from the state
code: “‘Protected category’ includes race, color,
religion, national origin, sex, ancestry, age,
service in the armed forces of the United States,
handicap  sexual orientation and gender iden-
tity, and perceived membership in any such
group." VT. STAT. ANN. tit. 13, §l458 (Supp.
2000).

Best,

Paisley Currah_

Transgender Law and Policy Institute &
Associate Professor, Dept. of Political Science
Brooklyn College of The City University of NY

Actually, author Judith Beckett originally wrote
(December 2002) "In California and Vermont,
gender identity and expression are protected
under hate crimes provisions. " During the
Transgender Day of Remembrance, a transman
she was talking to told her that was not true, so
she endeavored to correct the "error ” with her
letter. Thanks to several readers who either
emailed Judith or emailed or buttonholed me in

the last month, we now know that her original
statement was accurate: if you areassaulted or
your property is vandalized or damaged I
because of your gender expression, the perpe-
trator — if caught, tried, and convicted — may
face increased penalties for participating in a
hate crime. And we regret our error in not
checking the statute for ourselves. — EB

concern for Youth

I am following up on our phone call of today
[January 7] re: the dropping of the resources for
students that you have carried for many
months. These resources listed the towns /
schools that had in-school organizations that
could be of help to gblt/allies that needed help
or support.

I called a few weeks ago with the
complaint that the paper had dropped the refer-
ence to Woodstock area sources (since they did
not have an in-school org. I appealed that it be
re-inserted as it was a reminder to all that they
still needed a resource to contact whereas many
of the surrounding towns did have their own
school-based resource. Much to my surprise,
the entire list of resources was dropped. This
does not show as big a commitment to youth
that I thought the paper had. Besides, I was
going to use your listings to show the
Woodstock area supt. that these in-school
resources were lacking and that other schools
had a resource close to their students. Please
rethink your decision to drop this resource in
print as it is a very visual reminder to students
and adults who has and doesn't have resources.

Besides not all kids will go to a com-
puter to get their info; Have you ever been in a
library/school and seen people looking over
others’ shoulders to take a look at what you
have on your screen?

Please bring the hard copy back. I
have been trying to make a change in
Woodstock for a couple of years and have not
been successful as yet. I was very active in a
Cambridge, MA, high school in the establish-

 

ment of the sensitivity to gblt issue many years
ago when I was teaching there.

Peace.
Bob Richards
Woodstock

There was no deliberate philosophical ‘decision
not to provide this information, or to delete it
permanently from our Source section. Because
of budget concerns, we have had to cut the
paper _from 36 pages to 32, and one of the
pages to go was one of the three Source pages,
which we have published for several years as a
service to the community. All of the Source
information is always available online.

My first attempt to cut the section
resulted in some headings being followed only
by the online address where readers could go
for the full version. At the last minute before
going to print, we found we still had too much
Source and not enough page, so the last column
(including part of the Womenls listings and the
entire Youth section) had to be cut from the
print version. If we had a sponsor or under-
writeéfor the Source section, it could be print-
ed again in full.

The listings in the Source are free;
some may be out of date because the organiza-
tions or contact people have not provided cor-
rected information. As a result, we have ques-
tioned just how much attention our readers pay
to this section of the paper and how useful it is.
We have also considered maintaining it online
only and discontinuing the print version. Your
letter suggests that we should revisit this issue.
In the meantime, if any person or business

would like to support this service by sponsoring
or una’erwr1't1'ng the costs of printing I/re Source

listings, please let us know. — EB

ments in Baker v. Vermont. I knew

happen. I have really only found a

at witt's end leah wittenberg

istrange Trip

eont’d from previous page

and people, from Jeffersonville Falls
and that great little bookstore in
Lyndonville to Curtis Barbequein

5 Putney and the Clothes Barn in St.
Albans.

“I took it on as a missionto
increase the distribution of the news-
Paper by delivering it personally and
talking to people in all of the small
‘ towns and cities of the state,” he
recalls in an email from Germany. “I
tripled the number of drop-off sites
while meeting an amazing array of
P€0ple through out the state. I was
. always amazed at the pockets of gay,
, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered
; P€0lJle from a multitude of back-

. grounds, who make up the diasporic
community the paper sought to serve.
‘ I was always struck by the desire to

, create and build community of the
People I met.”

Barb Dozetos was on the
Board of Directors and volunteered
as a copyeditor for OITM before she
Wa5.PF€vailed upon to become editor
Pcgmning with the November 1993
. issue. It was, as she remembers, a

Vfiry exciting time.”
the “Because of my position at
the lgflpfir, I got. a front row seat for
thrmgft of civil unions. The most
meralrllg moment for me was sitting —
Y ~ In the front row of the
“meme Court for the oral argu- ‘

Y. .

A

'1
r‘__ T-“_-:..-. 2.-v . A... _ A _

then that I was watching history
being made. Among the many gifts

my tenure as editor brought, what I’ll I

cherish the most is the opportunity to
know personally people I’ll always
look to as my personal heroes: Bill
Lippert, Susan Murray, and Beth
Robinson.”

When Barb Dozetos left in
December of 2000 (she is now a free-
lance journalist and national secretary
for the National Lesbian and Gay
Journalists Association), the ruling
had been issued, civil union legisla-
tion had been_passed, and one of the '
least civil, most vicious state election
campaigns in Vermont’s history
resulted in a House determined to _
repeal or eviscerate the law recogniz-
ing gay and lesbian relationships,
held in check by a Senate with a pre-
cariously slim pro-civil union
majority.

Jason Whipple followed
Barb Dozetos in the editor’s chair,
taking on his first post-graduation
professional job. Whipple, now a
teacher in Brattleboro, saw the paper
through 2001, the first backlash year.

“I agreed to take this job
because I wanted to feel like I was
part of a community,” he wrote in his
farewell editorial in the March issue
of OITM. “I was certain that my
experience as the editor of a commu-
nity paper would grant me automatic
access to a family that I desperately
needed. Unfortunately, this did not

 

handful of individuals with whom I

could connect. This trip has been ‘i~t"- ’_ ‘K ..; f/"‘  item .‘,£,f§a  -
worth that alone)’ ' 1 ' x 3 . L W , _ ., ~. ,. 
My year began with confi-  A ‘V _t “A.   ._ :1 , .9  -,-;s.,.,.,\,.;

dence tinged with panic (“I know I
can do this, but how?”), and has for
the most part been rewarding. The
feedback about 0ITM’s coverage of
our communities has been over-
whelmingly positive, not only in
direct comments and letters, but in
the number of people willing to trust
us with their stories, their opinions,
their hard times and glad times.
Without you — readers, writers,
artists, organizations, advertisers, vol-
unteers, board and committee mem-
bers, drivers, stuffers, web gums,
fundraisers, donors, distribution sites
— we could not exist. As I wrote to
each of the former editors: We stand
on your shoulders!

Em 

Euan Bear
editor@mountainpridemedia.org

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EARLY PALM PILOT