HOME > COMMUNITY > PRIDE
By: DYANA BAGBY
COMMENTS |
| 
When the Atlanta Pride Committee announced its theme for this year’s Pride would be “Your Rights, Your Vote, Your Future,” Jeff Gray designed a logo combining patriotism for America and pride in the gay community.
“The melding of the American flag and the Rainbow flag illustrates the GLBT community is a vital part of the fabric of the American landscape and that we should support candidates that will help ensure that we receive all the rights and benefits that the American flag represents,” Gray said in a statement.
Gray is a member of the Human Rights Campaign’s Federal Club and lives in Morningside with his partner, Rodney Rogers, and their two Corgis, Bahji and Sam.
This year’s theme is an extension of the 2007 theme, “Our Rights, Your Rights, Human Rights,” and is intended to stress the importance of an historical election year and to focus on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights in the U.S.
“The idea is to motivate folks to really think about their future, and how they can work toward securing a future that ensures they attain all rights provided to U.S. citizens,” said APC Executive Director Donna Narducci in a statement.
One of Atlanta’s gay history projects, Touching Up Our Roots, along with Congregation Bet Haverim and the Rainbow Center, will record stories of Pride participants as part of an ongoing “Living Stories Project” inspired by National Public Radio’s Story Corps, said Rebecca Stapel-Wax, executive director of the Rainbow Center.
Stories will be collected at the booth of Congregation Bet Haverim/Rainbow Center #Y-31 on July 5 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Interviews will last 10 to 15 minutes.
The groups plan to have the interviews saved at the planned Center for Civil & Human Rights and in the LGBT Special Collections & Archives of the Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library.
“Both the LGBT and the larger Jewish community have already contributed greatly to this effort,” said Stapel-Wax. “Thanks to the generosity of Abby Drue and the Ben Marion Institute for Social Justice, Touching Up Our Roots was able to interview Goldy Criscuolo on Oct. 14, 2006, before she passed away from leukemia on Nov. 18, 2006. As a straight Jewish woman, Goldy was a phenomenal ally for all LGBT people and for all social justice activists.”
Touching Up Our Roots has also interviewed Judy Colbs, who headed up Atlanta’s chapter of PFLAG for 20 years. Colbs, a straight Jewish woman, has a lesbian daughter.
|
