Daily Archives: June 18, 2017

Thousands of supporters showed their support for the LGBT community at Knoxville's Pride Parade and Festival on Saturday.

Grant Robinson, WBIR 10:28 PM. EDT June 17, 2017

KNOXVILLE - Thousands of supporters showed their support for the LGBT community at Knoxville's Pride Parade and Festival on Saturday.

The event comes just before the two year anniversary of the Supreme Court's monumental decision on marriage equality ,and barely one year after the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando that killed 49 people.

Festival-goers said celebrating and remembering both events made this year's Pride Fest even more meaningful.

"I've never felt so much love and acceptance," Krista Bunch said.

2017 marked Bunch's third Pride Fest and first time participating in the parade.

"I have seen an increase of support among people that, honestly, I would have never thought would show support," Bunch said. "People are becoming more open, more accepting and it honestly makes my heart happy to be able to see so much support, especially in Tennessee."

Yet despite the progress made for LGBT rights in recent years, some say there's still more work to do.

"A lot of people were under the impression that when marriage equality passed that civil rights issues for gays were done, but because we do have the housing discrimination, because there's so much employment discrimination it's important that we have these gatherings and kind of encourage each other," Perry Stevens said.

About half a dozen protestors stood at the end of the parade with signs, speaking through megaphones. Stevens says they just help the LGBT community become even more tightly knit.

"It's not easy to listen to some of the things they say," Stevens said. "They certainly have the right to say them, but we also have a right to drown them out with our cheers, so we've been doing that too."

Mayor Madeline Rogero reaffirmed her support to the LGBT community.

"It just lets everybody relax and have some fun," Mayor Rogero said. "And you know when you're in the midst of a struggle, which we are on this issue, you have to take some time to celebrate."

Several festival-goers wore shirts supporting the victims of last year's Pulse nightclub shooting.

RELATED:Pulse shooting: Remembering the victims one year later

"It made quite an impression," Stevens said. "Last year at this time, it was a very somber mood because of that. This year we're still remembering them and we don't want anybody too forget what happened to them. That's one of the reasons we're out here."

Stevens says events like Saturday's Pride Fest are important because they help move the community forward, even through hard times.

Though Saturday's Pride Parade and Festival is the summer's largest event, Knox Pride will host other events throughout the summer. You can find a list of those HERE.

2017 WBIR.COM

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Pride Fest celebrates progress, remembers Pulse - WBIR-TV

With tens of thousands of children lingering in foster care across the United States, waiting for adoption, Illinois schoolteachers Kevin Neubert and Jim Gorey did their bit. What began with their offer to briefly care for a newborn foster child evolved within a few years into the adoption of that little boy and all four of his older siblings who also were in foster care.

The story of their two-dad, five-kid family exemplifies the potential for same-sex couples to help ease the perennial shortfall of adoptive homes for foster children. Yet, even as more gays and lesbians are adopting, there are efforts by state and federal politicians to protect faith-based adoption agencies that object to placing children in such families.

Sweeping new measures in Texas and South Dakota allow state-funded agencies to refuse to place children with unmarried or gay prospective parents because of religious objections. A bill passed last month in Alabama applies to agencies using private funds. A newly introduced bill in Congress would extend such provisions nationwide.

For those who support gay adoption, the entire phenomenon is very much a good news/bad news story. Gays and lesbians have ever-expanding opportunities to adopt, and a strong likelihood of finding community support if they do so. Yet bias against prospective gay adoptive parents remains pervasive, whether its overt or subtle, and experts in the field believe that many thousands of gays and lesbians are dissuaded from adopting for fear of encountering such bias.

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Some of these agencies are quite clear that they dont work with certain sorts of people, said Currey Cook, who handles adoption and foster care issues for the LGBT-rights group Lambda Legal.

Some would-be gay adopters seek out other agencies, Cook said. But some people think, Im not going to risk being stigmatized and turned away, so Im not going to step up at all.

Theres no official, up-to-date count of gay and lesbian adoptive parents, but the number is on the rise.

Same-sex couples are nearly three times as likely to adopt as heterosexual couples, says Gary Gates, a specialist in LGBT demography. His latest analysis of Census Bureau data indicates that in 2015, the year that same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide, there were 44,000 adopted children being raised by 28,000 same-sex couples. That number of children was double his estimate from 2013.

For some gays and lesbians, particularly those able to afford the $20,000 to $40,000 cost of a typical private adoption, the odds of success are good.

If you have financial means, you can find providers who are welcoming and inclusive and help you through that process, said Ellen Kahn, who oversees youth and family programs for the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT-rights group.

She says problems often arise when gays and lesbians seek the far less costly option of adopting out of foster care, given that many of the placements are handled by faith-based agencies under contract with child-welfare departments.

We wouldnt have kids waiting if we had enough families seeking to adopt, Kahn said. Yet the LGBT community is being pushed aside.

Kim Paglino, program director for the Donaldson Adoption Institute, says gays and lesbians can benefit from networking and careful research as they seek an agency to work with.

It can take a while to find the right place, she said. You have very clear messages from the agencies that are not interested in same-sex couples. Sometimes knowing where you shouldnt go is helpful.

Among the supportive agencies is Vermont-based Friends in Adoption. Its founder and director, Dawn Smith-Pliner, says shes heartened by the overall trends of LGBT adoption in the past decade, but now worries about a resurgence of frantic phone calls if, given recent political developments, more agencies feel emboldened to refuse placements with gays and lesbians.

Do we have to go backward again before we go forward? she asked.

Of the couples currently posting profiles on her agencys web site, expressing their yearning to adopt, about half are same-sex couples. Smith-Pliner says birth mothers are increasingly open to placing babies with such couples, once the agency raises it as an option.

Don Dupont and Brian Hiller, music teachers in New Yorks Westchester County who married in 2011, decided they would try to adopt, and turned to Friends in Adoption at the recommendation of friends. They posted their profile online, stressing their love of music and love for each other, and it struck a chord with a pregnant woman in Californias Napa County who chose them to provide an adoptive home for her child.

Hiller and Dupont were on hand, and welcomed warmly, at a Catholic hospital in Napa County when their son, Brandon, was born in 2015. They have arranged an open adoption thats intended to include annual visits with Brandons mother and her family in California.

As for their home turf in New York, Weve been fully embraced by every person weve met, Dupont said.

In Illinois, Kevin Neubert and Jim Gorey opted to pursue adoption out of foster care after calculating that a private adoption might be too costly.

Following night classes to qualify as foster parents, they agreed in December 2011 to provide a temporary home for a newborn baby. A stay intended to last only for a few days was extended into several months, and Neubert and Gorey learned that the baby had four older siblings who were also in foster care.

Initially, the two men thought about trying to adopt three of the children, and eventually decided to adopt all five, a process finalized in June 2014.

Some people thought we were crazy, but everyone was supportive of keeping the kids together, Neubert said.

The youngest, Derek, is 5; the eldest, Luke, is 12. There are two other brothers, 10 and 7, and a middle sister aged 9.

Neubert and Gorey, who married in 2010 and live in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, said the family has enjoyed strong community support, though shopping trips could be a spectacle. We didnt know if people were looking at us because were two guys with kids, or because we had so many kids in tow, said Gorey.

The dads have coached their children on how to handle potentially awkward situations.

If someone asks, Wheres the mom? Derek knows to say there are all different types of families, and in our family there are two dads, and no mom, Neubert said.

The path to adoption was bumpier for Dr. Christopher Harris, though by some measures he was an ideal candidate when he first pursued that goal 17 years ago in Nashville, Tennessee. He was a pediatrician and faculty member at Vanderbilt University, but he also was single and openly gay.

For more than a year, he worked with a church-affiliated adoption agency, taking parenting classes, submitting to home visits. Yet his application never progressed, and he finally deduced that it was because he was gay. He reached a similar dead end with a second agency, which took fees from him, and only later when he pressed for an update said it would not place children with single men.

It was frustrating for me to get passed over, Harris said. As a pediatrician, I look at the science and see there are no data that children raised by gay and lesbian parents dont do well.

He persisted, finally finding an agency that was able to connect him with a woman open to having her soon-to-be-born child adopted by a gay man. The baby, Maria, was born in November 2002, and adopted soon afterward by Harris.

Father and daughter now live in Los Angeles, where Maria has completed her first year of high school. During several summers, the two of them have attended a weeklong gathering of LGBT families on Cape Cod. Its very good for me and my daughter to be around families like ours, Harris said.

Those annual events on Cape Cod are organized by the Family Equality Council, a national group that supports LGBT families.

The councils chief policy officer, Denise Brogan-Kator, went to Texas to testify against the adoption-related bill there and was distressed by its passage. The bill is designed to allow agencies to turn qualified families away, she said.

There are more than 100,000 children in foster care in the U.S. waiting to be adopted, and child welfare officials constantly struggle to find enough qualified adoptive families. Some jurisdictions such as New York City and Los Angeles have stepped up efforts to recruit gays and lesbians to adopt, but agencies that shun gay clients operate in most states.

Buckner International, a large agency based in Texas, specifies on its web site that applicants seeking to adopt should be heterosexual married couples or single adults who are not cohabiting with a partner.

Catholic Charities, which does child-welfare work across the country, says it seeks to ensure that the children it places in adoptive homes enjoy the advantage of having a mother and a father who are married.

In some jurisdictions, authorities have said Catholic Charities must serve same-sex couples. Rather than comply, Catholic Charities shut down adoption services in Massachusetts, Illinois, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

While many faith-based agencies contend that children fare best in the home of a married father and mother, theres a growing body of research contending that children fare just as well in the homes of same-sex couples.

Initially, such research focused on lesbian couples. However, Charlotte Patterson, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, said recent research suggests children adopted by gay male couples also are faring well. Indeed a 2014 study in Britain , led by University of Cambridge researchers, asserted that gay dads did better at parenting than lesbian and straight couples, likely because they faced more challenges en route to parenthood.

It seems that those who successfully complete the adoption process become particularly committed parents, the researchers concluded.

Bethany Christian Services, which provides adoption and foster-care services in more than 30 states, says its religious principles preclude serving same-sex couples directly, but it has established procedures for referring them to LGBT-supportive agencies.

When we meet with them, were very respectful, said Bethanys president, Bill Blacquiere. We want them to have all the rights any citizen has, including the right to be adoptive or foster parents.

Follow David Crary on Twitter.

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Advocates of gay adoption see both progress, obstacles - New Haven Register

Cuba's government slammed President Donald Trump for his "hostile rhetoric" during a speech Friday that it said took "a backward step in the relationship between the two countries."

Trump's address in Miami announced changes in the United States' policy toward Cuba after the Obama administration decided to normalize relations with the island nation following a decades-long freeze of diplomatic ties.

But the Raul Castro-led government didn't care for Trump touting his desire to partially reverse course from the "last administration's completely one-sided deal."

The Castro government said in a statement that Trump's speech "reminded the times of open confrontation with our country, announced the policy of his government towards Cuba which reverts the progress achieved in the past two years."

The Trump administration says it is changing the policy of the U.S. toward Cuba by limiting the amount of money that might go toward the Cuban military, restricting American tourism there and reaffirming the 56-year-old trade embargo. The policy memorandum directs the Treasury and Commerce departments to create new regulations within 30 days, although they wouldn't be in place for several months.

Related: Freely Wandering in Cuba Gets Harder to Do Under Trump

Trump has stopped short of completely resetting relations with Cuba again: He isn't ending diplomatic ties, or closing the U.S. Embassy in Havana or placing restrictions on cigars, rum and other items that Americans can schlep home.

But the changes would ultimately meet four objectives, according to the White House: Ensure compliance with U.S. law, hold the Cuban government accountable for alleged human rights abuses, further the interests of the U.S. and the Cuban people, and "empower the Cuban people to develop greater economic and political liberty."

The Cuban government argued that it would only be a retread of the past, and that the Trump administration is not in a position to lecture.

Its statement takes a swipe at the United States under Trump by noting issues that negatively affect Americans, including racial discrimination and gun violence, and controversial policies on immigration, a border wall and abandoning the Paris Agreement on climate change.

The Cuban government maintained that the new policies would not work, comparing it to the economic embargo that never ushered the Castro regime out of power as the U.S. had hoped.

"The Government of Cuba denounces the new measures for strengthening the blockade, which are destined to fail as proven repeatedly in the past," the statement said. "They will not achieve their purpose of debilitating the Revolution or submitting the Cuban people, whose resistance to the aggressions of any kind and origin has been proven throughout six decades."

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Cuba Blasts Trump's Policy Speech as 'Hostile Rhetoric' That 'Reverts' Progress - NBCNews.com

MASSENA Construction continues on land-based facilities that will support in-river work as part of Arconics cleanup of the Grasse River.

Weve started construction of the staging area, which is the first step. Theres a minimal amount of work in the river. So far, so good, Young Chang, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency remedial project manager said during an informational open house Wednesday night in Massena.

Construction on land-based facilities began this spring and is expected to continue through early 2018. The work includes construction of a staging area next to the river, near the intersection of County Route 42 and Route 131. The staging area will be used to unload sediments dredged from the near-shore areas and to load clean capping and backfill materials that will be placed in the river during the in-water portion of the project.

A final design for the in-river portion of the remediation project is still ongoing, Ms. Chang said. She said studies continue and the design has gone through several iterations.

Thomas Sullivan, executive director of the Business Development Corporation for a Greater Massena, asked when in-river work is expected to begin. Ms. Chang said there would likely be some in 2018, but most in 2019.

Donald Lucas, who said he lives within a block of the plants main gate, voiced concerned about the area.

Last week, they were cleaning muck off the road with a high pressure wash. Id like to see that road closed down for the project, he said.

Mr. Lucas said that while the road cleanup last week didnt involve contaminated material, he was concerned that some could find its way onto the road. But Ms. Chang said no contaminated materials would end up on public roads.

What you saw was the clay, said Bruce Cook, Arconic project coordinator, noting the clay was a result of heavy rains in the area and Arconic had since taken steps to ensure it wouldnt occur again.

My concern is whats going to migrate out on their wheels, Mr. Lucas said. But Mr. Cook said, there would be no contaminated material on the wheels. He said cleanup workers are required to meet Department of Transportation regulations whenever they transport material across any regulated road.

Those regulations prevent you from having those kind of situations. The rules are very strict, he said.

Mr. Lucas said he would also like to see an additional air monitor placed on an overpass near the intersection of Center Street and Liberty Avenue in case the winds shifted and brought gaseous material toward Massena .

Prevailing winds dont always go west. If theres any gaseous material, its going to blow right into my window, he said.

Heather VanDewalker from Arcadis, a consulting firm working with Arconic, said four air monitors would surround the landfill, including one on the southwest side, to capture any change in wind direction. She said daily monitoring is for particulates, PCBs and other materials.

Ms. Chang said that, as construction work continues on land-based facilities, she plans to hold monthly meetings monthly in Massena. Once in-river work begins, she said the meetings would become more frequent. Ms. Chang said if in-river work starts in 2019 as scheduled, there is an approximate completion date of 2022.

Mr. Lucas wondered if the work would involve shutting the river down to recreational boaters. But Ms. Chang said that wouldnt be the case.

Well schedule our work so theres always access available, she said.

In 2013, the EPA finalized a cleanup plan for river sediment contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) as a result of past industrial activities at Arconic, formerly Alcoa. Arconic is performing the work on the estimated $243 million project. The EPA, the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe are overseeing and coordinating various components of the cleanup project.

Grasse River cleanup will be through dredging and capping of contaminated sediment in a 7.2-mile stretch. The plan calls for dredging about 109,000 cubic yards of sediment from near-shore areas. In the main channel, about 59 acres of sediment will be covered with an armored cap and about 225 acres of contaminated sediment will be capped with clean sand and topsoil to isolate the contamination.

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Meeting held in Massena to update progress on Grasse River cleanup - WatertownDailyTimes.com

BOISE - Hundreds of people from all over the state were in the City of Trees Saturday to stand together in support of equal rights for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer community.

Boise's Pride Parade keeps getting bigger every year. The LGBTQ community converge, along with their friends and family, and feel a sense of unity. They just wish every day could be like this.

"When you say you're getting gay married, or something. It's just marriage, it's just love like everybody else," say Jasper Schultz, who advocates for equality for all. "We don't want anything different, we just want to be respected."

Some of the festival attendees Six On Your Side talked to says the event represents their history and that it's also a way to create awareness that coming out is not an easy path to take.

"When you hate yourself enough," says Rukia Bliss, a Nampa resident. "You don't need everyone else hating you too."

Idaho's only openly gay legislator currently in office had a booth set up at the Capitol Park festival. He thinks having other lawmakers get to know him is helping the LGBTQ community's cause.

"As they [Idaho legislators] get to know that we are here and that we're just like everybody else.. we love the same, we hurt the same, we bleed the same," says Rep. John McCrostie, representing District 16 Seat A (D). "We all work together to try to make our communities better places."

Rep. McCrostie is already preparing for the next legislative session. He will keep working to get a statute passed to ban gay conversion therapy in the Gem state. He says it increases rates of suicide among teens.

In addition, he also wants to amend Idaho's HIV criminalization law created in the late 1980s when not as much was known about the virus and its transmission. Like others, McCrostie is not giving up hope either that the Idaho Human Rights Act will one day include the words sexual orientation and gender identity.

"As someone who is transgender, it [the Add the Words Movement] speaks to me on a really personal level," says Cade Kendall, who just wants to feel more safe in general. "So, I would really enjoy it if it got passed."

The two-day festival ends Saturday night with a Pride Street Party that starts at 10 p.m. along 8th and Idaho Streets.

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Boise Pride Fest draws crowd and hope for further progress - KIVITV ... - 6 On Your Side

Firefighters are making progress on keeping the East Fork wildfire, burning near Sterling, from moving toward people or the Sterling Highway.

Alaska Division of Forestry Public Information Officer Celeste Prescott said firefighters saturated the west line of the fire to keep it from moving toward residents and were focusing Saturday on the south line to keep it from reaching the Sterling Highway. The fire is burning in a limited suppression area of the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge about 5 to 6 miles north of the highway, around mile 76.

The blaze was discovered just before 6:30 p.m. Thursday and was estimated Friday night to be 850 acres. However, its growing in the right direction, Prescott said.

It was pretty active yesterday afternoon and early evening, but it did lay down in the late evening, she said.

The wildfire sent lots of smoke up toward Anchorage on Friday, Prescott said, so much that many residents called authorities worried.

Two water scooping aircraft and a tanker have been dumping water on the blaze. Prescott said firefighters will soon be up to three helicopters in addition to those aircraft. An additional four crews are either en route or already dispatched to bring the total number of firefighters close to 80, she said. These will be ground forces used to reinforce the work thats been done from the air, she said.

Prescott said the Alaska Division of Forestry and refuge personnel feel good about the progress being made on the blaze and its direction into the refuge. The two entities are coordinating a response to the fire, which was caused by dry lightning.

Its Mother Nature cleaning up some black spruce out there, Prescott said.

Refuge Ranger Leah Eskelin of the refuge said that residents should report any other smoke they may see in the area due to the recent prevalence of lightning. Suspected fire or smoke can be reported to 907-260-4100.

Eskelin said Friday the section being consumed by the fire hasnt burned in a very long time.

We recognize that human safety (comes) first, and after that, fire has a natural place in the landscape, Eskelin said.

There is also a temporary flight restriction in place in the area over the wildfire.

The East Fork fire has cost roughly $50,000 to date, according to the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center.

Firefighters also helped with another small fire off East End Road in Homer this week. The Wilderness fire was only 1 acre, according to the coordination center, and was also discovered on Thursday.

Members of the Division of Forestry and Kachemak Emergency Services brought that fire under control that same day, according to a Facebook post by the Division of Forestry.

Reach Megan Pacer at megan.pacer@peninsulaclarion.com.

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Progress made on East Fork fire | Peninsula Clarion - Kenai Peninsula Online