Gay & Gray - at the crossroads

The Gay & Gray Conference to address issues pertaining to LGBT seniors is being held in Charlotte next week. I will have an opportunity to speak to the helping professionals Wednesday. The Tuesday evening session is free to the public. The needs of this segment of the community are often overlooked. Thanks to The Centralina Area Agency on Aging for offering this conference.


I've been DVR'ing much of the Angie Zapata murder trial or more accurately the Allen Andrade murder trial. Jury instructions are being read as I type this. The issue is not whether he did it but whether it was a hate crime. Supposedly he went over the edge when he found Angie was transgender. Yet the evidence says he knew much earlier. Moreover in a telephone conversation from the jail, he said "gay things need to die".

This is one more example of the dehumanizing homophobia we see to varying degrees in society even today. It happens with people who should know better. A Court TV reporter cited a statistic that a transgender person has a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered. Whether it's that high, I don't know. However the chances of being subjected to harrasment or violence are astronomically high. It is incomprehensible to me that some people in the local transgender community do not yet think in terms of a united LGBT community.

A number of transgender people are in Greely, CO covering the trial. An excellent blog can be read here.