Lou Maletta, who founded the Gay Cable Network in 1982, when the gay rights movement was not receiving broad media attention, died on November 2 in Kingston, N.Y. He was 74. The cause was liver cancer, said Luke Valenti, his companion of 37 years, reports The New York Times. The network had its roots as a weekly program called Men & Film on Channel 35 on Manhattan Cable Television. Mr. Maletta showed gay pornographic movies that he had edited to make less explicit, and the programming grew to become a forum for the full range of issues facing gay people. There had been gay-oriented television shows before the Gay Cable Network was started. But Maletta’s enterprise was considered the first to produce weekly news, entertainment, political commentary, cultural and health-related programs, and it distributed them to public-access channels in 20 cities (at first on videotapes he mailed). “It was critical to the L.G.B.T. rights movement,” said Kenneth Sherrill, a political science professor at Hunter College who has written extensively on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. “Mainstream television wasn’t rushing to cover the movement, and public access cable provided entree for social and political groups that were traditionally excluded. Lou Maletta’s programming allowed voices of the gay community to speak for themselves.” Among those voices was Andy Humm, who is now the co-host, with Ann Northrop, of Gay U.S.A., a weekly one-hour cable news program produced by Manhattan Neighbourhood Network and distributed nationally. The show originated on the Gay Cable Network, which Maletta closed when he retired in 2001. “Lou had this grand vision of a 24-hour gay cable network,” Humm said. “That didn’t happen for him.” Still, the continuation of “Gay U.S.A.” and the introduction in 2005 of Logo, a primarily gay-oriented 24-hour cable channel that is part of MTV Networks, have in part fulfilled Maletta’s dream. “Lou laid the groundwork,” Humm said. “He developed news programming, entertainment, sports. He had a guy come on every week and talk about the gay bowling league.” Maletta’s network began in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and he enlisted officials from New York City’s health department and Gay Men’s Health Crisis, a non-profit AIDS advocacy group, to provide segments. From 1984 to 2000, he provided coverage of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, interviewing political leaders from the floor and gay rights demonstrators in the streets. Those were among the dozens of local and national protests the network covered. In 1988, Maletta traveled with a team of volunteer correspondents to the Republican convention in New Orleans, by way of Mississippi. “He was this tremendous character, generally wearing spandex, a black leather jacket, the Gay Network T-shirt and a cowboy hat,” Humm recalled. “Not unusual in New York, but try going to a Hardee’s in Mississippi on the way to a convention. I didn’t think we were going to get out alive.” People just stared, Humm said.
A national controversy over whether the Atlanta, Georgia-based Chick-fil-A is anti-gay has come to Salt Lake City, The Tribune reporting that Thursday, a small group of gay-rights advocates picketed the opening of a new store in Sugar House at 1206 E. 2100 South. The protest was planned for the lunch rush, and an estimated eight people gathered at 12:30 pm, holding signs with slogans such as "Chick-fil-A is anti-gay." The fast-food chain was the subject of boycotts earlier this year after a restaurant operator in Pennsylvania provided free food at events held by the Pennsylvania Family Institute, a political advocacy group that opposes gay marriage. More than 10,000 people have signed a student-led petition at Indiana University South Bend, demanding that Chick-fil-A be removed from campus. But the company, which is owned by a Baptist family that takes pride in guiding the business with religious principles, has refuted claims that it is anti-gay. Following the Pennsylvania incident, Dan Cathy, president and chief operating officer, said publicly that while he and his family believe in the "biblical definition of marriage," they love and respect those who disagree and did not consider the free meals to be an endorsement of the Pennsylvania Family Institute or its mission. But Kyle Foote, organizer of the Salt Lake City protest, said such statements are hurtful toward members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. "I can’t, in my mind, understand how someone can say, ‘I love and respect you, but I spend millions of dollars fighting your equality,’ " said Foote, a gay Salt Lake City resident. Q Salt Lake magazine recently reported that WinShape, Chick-fil-A’s non-profit foundation, has donated $3 million since 2003 to "anti-gay groups," such as the Eagle Forum, Focus on the Family and the Marriage & Family Legacy Fund. In an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune in July, Cathy said his company has wrestled with how to address the backlash from the LGBT community, saying the company wants to "give positive encouragement and support" to everyone. "We’re very pro the traditional family of a husband and a wife in marriage, parenting children," Cathy said. "We are not politicians and we don’t want to get into having a political voice here, but we support, financially and otherwise, organizations that are going to be strengthening society and raising young men and women that are of the character that we would want in our restaurants." Foote, 32, said he hopes the protest helps consumers make educated decisions about whether to buy food at Chick-fil-A. "It’s the first time they’ve opened up a location in Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City is a very inclusive community," he said. "They’re coming in and essentially being our neighbour. I wanted to send a message to them and to the community about what we expect of our neighbours and about their history." Foote became the subject of news stories in 2008 after he pledged $3.4 million to Westminster College in exchange for naming rights to the school’s entrepreneur center and was unable to pay. He made the commitment at a time when he was deeply in debt to investors and later used publicity about the pledge to groom targets in an unrelated securities scam for which he was convicted on charges of felony fraud, according to court records.
Two Fort Collins, Colorado High School students say they do not feel welcome on campus because they say they are not allowed to use the restrooms they want. Both identify themselves as transgender. Sixteen-year-old Dionne Malikowski was born male, but she now identifies as transgender. Her friend Kurt Peters, also 16, was born female and says he is transgender as well. "To be one sex that feels like they're the other sex," Malikowski said defining what a transgender person feels. Inside Fort Collins High School, according to 9 News, the two say they are asked to use staff restrooms. "There's not staff bathrooms all over the school, so when you really got to pee, you got to pee," Malikowski said. That's what she says happened about a month ago when she used the women's restroom. She was told she'd be suspended for three days. "I cried," Malikowski said. "I told them that it was really messed up for them to do that to me, and they were like, 'We've warned you before,' and I was just like, 'Obviously you don't understand what it's like.'" The school will not comment because of student confidentiality, but on the school's website "defiance" is listed as one reason a student can get suspended. "I feel like the school doesn't really understand what it's like to be in our situation," Malikowski said. It is a situation that Peters says happened to him when he used the men's restroom, but he only got a warning. "Since it was a first time offense, they let me go. But I think it's really stupid that Dionne got suspended and I didn't. I should have got suspended if Dionne did," Peters said. Without the school's comment, it's impossible to know exactly what happened in the hallways of Fort Collins High School, but the two students say they feel punished for who they are. "It kind of makes us feel like we're not welcome," Malikowski said. The Poudre School District says there is not an across-the-board policy for bathroom use by transgender students. The Colorado Association of School Boards says there really is no case law on this in Colorado and the association hasn't provided any guidance to school districts. They say this issue is an emerging legal one and schools are still working their way through it.
The superintendent of Union-Scioto Local Schools in Ohio says they are considering adopting an anti-bullying policy which includes sexual orientation and gender identity in the wake of an attack on a gay 15-year-old student that was caught on video. "It's something that we're looking at but a change hasn't been made as of right now," says Dwight Garrett. Garrett says he expects a decision on whether a change in policy will be made at the Chillicothe-area school by the end of the year, reports WOUB News. More than 75,000 people have joined a campaign on change.org asking for the change in policy. Bret Thompson, who launched the petition, said, "It is inspiring to see so much support for my petition on Change.org. Now it is time for the school district to respond to the 75,000 people who want all students protected in the Union-Scioto School District - including LGBT students." Garrett says the student who attacked the gay student was initially given a three-day suspension as punishment, but once the video surfaced, the district revisited the punishment. He will not say what punishment was given.
A bespectacled, pillow-toting Zachary Quinto spotted arriving at LAX.
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