Photographer Richard Renaldi’s new body of work, “Manhattan Sunday,” which opened at George Eastman Museum on Friday, straddles the lines between portraiture, street photography, and still life. Featuring photographs made on eerily empty Manhattan streets in the wee hours after the clubs let out, the work also captures the blurred lines between nightlife and daybreak, […]
LGBT
Posted inNews & Opinion
Planning begins for Pride ‘16
The Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley will hold a Pride 2016 community forum at noon on Saturday, January 9. The meeting is the first planning session for the annual Pride weekend events. Organizers want to hear from the community. What should be changed or added? What could be done to improve the events? The […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Attack rallies trans community
Nicole Clark, a 19-year-old transgender woman, was attacked last month on Monroe Avenue near Goodman Street. Clark, who was with her mother at the time, says she was punched several times and knocked to the ground, where the attack continued, according to a police report. Police later charged Dyshieka McFadden with harassment in relation to […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Catholic bishops’ changing views on gays
It’s taken a long time, but in some ways it was inevitable. An assembly of Roman Catholic bishops called to the Vatican by Pope Francis has released a document saying that the Catholic Church should be more welcoming to gays, unmarried couples, and divorced people and their children. Some Catholics are shocked and outraged, especially […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Trans health coverage
The City of Rochester will add transgender health care benefits for employees and their families starting on January 1, 2015. The new coverage means that services related to gender reassignment procedures such as medical and psychological counseling, hormone therapy, and reconstructive surgeries will be covered by insurance. To receive the benefits, employees will have to […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Tim Mains: ‘I was the gay teacher’
Tim Mains was still new to teaching in the early 1970’s when he walked into his class in the Greece school district one day to find the word “faggot” written on the blackboard. That and a series of other events led him to come out of the closet to his students and peers at a […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
This Week: Brockport elections, Mounted Patrol vote, Supremes rulings, chat with Vargas
Brockport residents will hold elections to choose a mayor and two trustees. Mayor Maria Castañeda is seeking a second term, running against Margaret Blackman, a current village trustee and retired professor of anthropology at SUNY Brockport. Blackman is joined by newcomer Valerie Ciciotti, and incumbent trustee Carol Hannan on the Revitalize Brockport party. Castañeda’s running […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Pride Games for Rochester
Could Rochester become a hub for LGBT sporting events? That’s what officials at the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley and Bill Gray’s Iceplex, a multi-sport arena on the MCC campus, envision. In conjunction with Rochester’s Pride Week this year, ROC Pride Games will launch with a hockey tournament. The teams will play from Friday, […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Scouts in a changing America
I can’t help feeling sorry for boy scouts: they’re caught in the middle of something they probably don’t understand. No matter how many badges they earn or how many ways they learn to survive in the wilderness, it’s humankind they will have to learn to live with daily. And Boy Scouts of America’s leadership is […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Deciding DOMA
The US Supreme Court is hearing legal challenges this week to two major pieces of LGBT-related legislation: California’s Prop 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Voters in California narrowly approved a ban on same-sex marriage, known as Proposition 8, in November 2008. The ban was upheld by the California Supreme Court in May […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Week Ahead: Prop 8 and DOMA Supreme Court hearings, RCSD budget, city budget forum, keeping an eye on pawn shops
The US Supreme Court will hear a legal challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act beginning on March 27. In anticipation, a local collaborative group that includes representatives of the LGBT, religious, and labor communities will hold a couple of events this week. Under DOMA, marriage is limited to one man and one woman […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Scouting ways out of the culture war
Joel Helfrich was once a Boy Scout, eventually earning enough merit badges to reach Scouting’s highest rank: Eagle Scout. His experience with the Scouts while growing up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Pittsford was wonderful, he says, yet last year Helfrich renounced his affiliation with the Boy Scouts of America. Helfrich returned all of his scouting […]
