Gay Couple .  
Named Innkeepers

of the Year:
Moose Meadow Lodge
Owners Break Ground

aterbury, VT - In June, Greg
Trulson and Willie Docto were rec-
ognized by the .

Vermont Lodging & Restaurant Association as
the 2005 B&B Innkeepers of the Year. They
are the first openly gay innkeepers in Vermont
to be so recognized.

The award has been presented since
1997, and was given at the VLRA annual
meeting in Burlington. Docto thanked the
organization for the award recognizing owner-
operated B&Bs, “which are usually Mom and
Pop shops, but in this case, Pop & Pop.”

Moose Meadow Lodge opened in
1998, two years after Docto and Trulson
moved to Vermont.

In addition to innkeeping, Willie

Docto owns the only association management
company in Vermont and produces the very
popular Vermont Brewers Festival. He is also
a free-lance classical violinist, performing in
symphony orchestras and community theater
productions in Vermont and Washington, DC.
Greg Trulson is a former computer
systems architect and trainer. He is an accom-
plished woodworker who created many of the
furnishings and rustic decorations in the
Lodge. His twig furniture and other works are
made with wood from the property. His cre-
ationshave been commissioned by people
from as far as Maryland and Puerto Rico.
Both are involved with their com-
munity. Willie is the former president of the

Waterbury Tourism Council and has served on '

Moose“ Meadow Lodge owners Wi ie Docto and Greg ‘II-ulson

various nonprofit boards. Trulson is a former
Justice of the Peace and serves on the
Duxbury Cemetery Commission. He is also a
non-denominational minister and officiates at
weddings and civil unions at the Lodge and
throughout the state. The co-owners and part-

ners are founding members of the Vermont
Gay Tourism Association — a group of gay-
welcoming businesses and individuals devoted
to marketing Vermont to the Gay & Lesbian
traveler. Y.

Anti-Gay Church Evicted From Library

urlington — The anti-gay"‘City
Bslreets Church” has been evict-

ed from its former meeting
place in Burlington’s Fletcher Free

Library. Library Co-director Amber
Collins said she emailed its pastor,

Q John Hamel, and requested that he

meet with her to review the library’s
community meeting room policies.
Hamel refused to sign the policies, and
his church is no longer allowed to use
the meeting room in the library until
Hamel or another representative com-
plies with library policy.

Among the policies is one

limiting use by any single organization
to once a month. The church had been
using the space every Sunday.

Collins, on behalf of the
library, accepted some responsibility
for the confusion. “Our policies were
ratified by the board in June 2004, and
they’ve been implemented in a piece-
meal fashion. A staff member had
allowed [Hamel] to sign up for a block
of three months.”

In response to emailed ques-
tions, Hamel wrote, “The Library poli-
cy was to allow 90 days to any group
that meets there. Check the Library

records. We had our 90 days which is
all we asked for. We have not been
excluded from anything for any
reason.”

Collins said she met with
Hamel in her office at the end of May
and offered to let the church meet at
the library for an additional week if he
would change the group’s advertising
and sign the policies. Hamel’s advertis-
ing implied that the library was spon-
soring the church meetings. “We are
certainly not sponsoring him or his
church,” Collins declared. In the end,
the group was evicted because the self-

styled pastor refused to sign the poli-
cies, Collins said.

Hamel’s email continued,
“As to refusing to sign a contract at the
Library, my explanation to you is the
same as it was to them. ‘What for? Our
time has "ended. I’ll no longer be using
the facility. What would be the pur-
pose?’”

Hamel also alleged in his
email that during his meeting with
Collins, she was “obviously receptive”
to, “even intrigued" by his remarks
“about what the Bible says about the
sin and deception of lesbianism.” He
wrote to OIT M , “Thank you for creat-

‘ing a situation where I was able to

spend 45 minutes with her in her

office. What you and Satan meant for
harm, God used for good.”

When asked to comment on
that characterization of the meeting,
Collins objected strenuously. “I was
not receptive or intrigued. When some-
one starts spouting Bible verses at me,
it’s just gibberish,” she said. “We met
with him in order to explain and
enforce the rules, and deal with his
advertising, that’s it.”

R.U.1.2? Queer Community
Center Executive Director Christopher

"Kaufman had lodged a protest with the

library over its hosting of a group tar-
geting the center (see “R.U.l .2?
Targeted by Flier,” OITM June 2005).
V

UVM Leads Vermont Gender Identity

urlington — At the end of May,
Bjust before commencement,

Ethan Fechter-Leggett got the
graduation present he’d been working for
during his entire college career. The
University of Vermont's Board of
Trustees voted unanimously to add “gen-
der identity or expression” to the univer-

sity’s nondiscrimination policies.
Typically, the trustees vote on
a “consent agenda” at the end of their
two-day meeting, a collection of the
items the board will approve. In this
case, however, the chairman of the
trustees’ diversity committee, Tom Little,
requested a separate vote, apparently to

ensure the record would be absolutely
clear.

Observing the vote, said Dot
Brauer, director of the University’s
LGBTQA Services office, “was a mov-
ing experience.I’ve seen so many things
not change that needed to change.
Sometimes when you persevere, things

do change.”

The change in policy will
make her job a bit easier, but busier: “I
expect some folks will need and be
requesting training on trans issues.”

In a celebratory email,
Fechter-Leggett called the vote “monu-
mental.” Further, he wrote, “This addi-
tion comes as a conclusion to years of
hard work on many levels, including

activism by Free To Be students, faculty, ‘

and staff involved in the President's
Commission on DGBT Equity,
LGBTQA Services, and the Office of
Affirmative Action and Equal
Opportunity.”

Later that afternoon, Fechter-
Leggett, a transman active in Free to Be
and in organizing the Translating Identity
Conference, received his degree and the
Keith Miser Award recognizing student
success in campus leadership. V

Outright Reaches Out for

urlington — Outright Vermont,
Bthe agency that serves lgbtqq
youth in Vermont, has secured
grants from a number of funders recently,
including at least one nontraditional
source: The New England Patriots foot-
ball team.
The Patriots awarded Outright
$l50O to help fund volunteer Dan
Bems’s “Sex with Dan” discussions.

according to Co—director Lluvia
Mulvaney—Stanal<. "That was completely
off the wall,” Mulvaney-Stanak declared.
The award came through the team’s char-
itable foundation as partof its
“Community Quarterback" award. “It
certainly breaks stereotypes to have a
Superbowl champion team funding
Outright,” she added.

Outright was one of 19 final-

v

New Grants

_ists and runners-up for nonprofit awards,
including three other Vermonters.
Grantees received amounts of either
$3500 or $1500.

Other recent funding success-
es have come from more traditional foun-
dations. The -agency got a grant of $4000
for the first time from the Astrea Lesbian
Foundation for Justice. According to a
recent Gay City News article about the

foundation, its 13 staff members raise
$2.5 million per year and the foundation
has “a small endowment” of $3 million.
The Champlain Initiative
awarded $2,000 to support Julia Smith’s
project: producing Outn'ght’s “Queer

, Idol” drag show in City Hall on Pride

Night, July 9. Kimberly Legg, a
Champlain Initiative staff member. said
the grants are awarded by a nine-member
youth board representing five area
schools. “Julia’s project was one of the
few that involved a drug-free and alco-

hol-free event,” she explained, also not-
ing that the youth grant team’s mission
statement includes support for diversity.

Finally, Outright is awaiting a
potentially large grant from the Liberty
Hill Foundation, based in Los Angeles.
The Vermont agency has qualilied as one
of ten finalists with a proposal to further
develop its statewide outreach and servic-
es with additional staff to support and
coordinate gay-straight student organiza-
tions and organize a youth advisory
board. V

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