By Ramy Eletreby

Torie Osborn to be Villaraigosa's Special Assistant

Perhaps Los Angeles City Councilmember Eric Garcetti described Liberty Hill Executive Director Torie Osborn best in his blog last May after a luncheon where she was honored for her "dedicated, uninterrupted decades of creating community in the struggle for justice here in Los Angeles and in the United States."

Perhaps that's why L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa asked her to join his administration as a special assistant, making Osborn the city's highest-ranking gay person.

Osborn takes her grassroots activism for social change very seriously, starting with her childhood where, as the daughter of a State Department employee, she witnessed food riots in fascist Spain. Name the 1960's movement and she was involved: civil rights, anti-war, women's liberation, anti-poverty.

She graduated from Middlebury College and earned her MBA in finance and marketing from UCLA's Anderson School of Management before joining the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center where she eventually became the executive director. Known for her fiery red hair and her firebrand speeches as well as her thoughtful dissections of the times (she was the one who first talked about the "de-gaying" of AIDS), Osborn was a powerbroker who lectured on leadership while wearing an ACT UP! T-shirt.

Osborn left the Center in 1992 for a short stint at the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force after which she wrote Coming Home To America, a book based on her highly regarded speech at the 1994 March On Washington.

Osborn joined the progressive Liberty Hill Foundation as executive director in 1997 and soon merged her progressive passion with her commitment to LGBT liberation. She also became an expert on philanthropy in the nonprofit world. She married Dr. Lydia Vaias in San Francisco in a then-legal ceremony officiated by her best friend, state Sen. Sheila Kuehl.

Villaraigosa appointed Osborn to his transition team where she was one of four openly gay people. He later asked her to join his team in a newly created position. She starts in January.

"Basically I got seduced. I haven't felt that way about a candidate since Bobby Kennedy. He inspires people. The city has enormous systemic issues but he makes people believe they can do thingsÑ5,000 people applied for 150 staff jobs and 300 commission appointments in three weeks," Osborn told IN.

"I'm going to be a liaison to the philanthropic community and it'll be about programs in the nonprofit sector that have been catalyzed by philanthropy that can be innovative models on the intractable issues. But they're models under the radar screen. I will be helping to create public-private partnerships between the philanthropic community and local government. There has been a lot of disconnect and lack of coordination between local government and the nonprofit sector and philanthropy. Antonio will bring vision and I can be of service and just be some of the glue," Osborn said. "With a lot of political will and some synergies and coordination, really great stuff can happen." -- Karen Ocamb

ACLU Reaches Settlement with Foster Care/Adoption Agency

The Olive Crest Family Care and Adoption Agency has agreed to change its discriminatory policy toward accepting applications from LGBT people in a settlement agreement reached with the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU had filed suit on behalf of a San Diego couple. Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Socials Services, which had watched the suit with interest after an Olive Crest employee disclosed the practice to GLASS, was pleased with the outcome.

"This settlement recognizes what many of us have known for a long time," said Teresa DeCrescenzo, executive director of GLASS. "LGBT people make excellent foster and adoptive parents on a par with straight people. Agencies cannot illegally discriminate against LGBT people and expect to go unchallenged. I hope that the settlement in this case will encourage more LGBT people to apply to become foster or adoptive parents. It sends a strong message to the LGBT community that you are welcome and encouraged to foster a child or to create a family through adoption."

"Though it took five years, Olive Crest must finally recognize that the best interest of a child is served by that child being placed with a loving, responsible, and caring parent," said DeCrescenzo. "One's sexual orientation or gender identity has nothing to do with providing a loving home and a caring family. Thanks to the ACLU and one courageous social worker, the LGBT community has won this battle." -- Karen Ocamb

Bienestar Concerned About Ryan White Reauthorization

Without protest or much public attention, the Ryan White CARE Act expired on Sept. 30. Concerned about the impact on the HIV/AIDS Latino community of expected cuts in federal and state funding, Bienestar Human Services and the Washington, D.C.-based Ryan White ACTION Campaign hosted a town hall meeting in East Los Angeles on Oct. 14, Latino AIDS Awareness Day.

"The focus of the meeting is to bring attention to the reauthorization of the Ryan White CARE Act-the reauthorization has not occurred yet," Mario Guerrero, Bienestar public affairs manager told IN. "There are a number of proposals that could affect our funding the services we currently provide. Any further reduction would impact the Latino community, as well as the community as a whole, negatively."

Latinos, African Americans, and other people of color "have felt the impact of HIV deeper," Guerrrero said, and experienced significantly more barriers to receiving services, such as lack of health insurance. Some of the critical services Bienestar provides are case management, translation and transportation for immigrant and poorer Latinos.

The town hall meeting with a number of elected officials, including Congressmembers Hilda Solis and Grace Napolitano, chair of the Latino Caucus, which has already endorsed reauthorization, as well as many other HIV/AIDS leaders, is intended to raise awareness and ask people to call or write their Congressmember to reauthorize a fully-funded bill as soon as possible.

For more information, visit the Ryan White ACTION Campaign Web site at www.ryanwhiteaction.org, Bienestar Human Services, Inc. at www.bienestar.org, contact Guerrero at (323) 727-7896, or email mguerrero@bienstar.org. --Karen Ocamb

Lesbian Fertility Case May Go to Supreme Court

For the past four years, the high-profile case of a San Diego-area lesbian who was denied artificial insemination at a local clinic has bounced back and forth through the court system in a dispute over doctors' rights to refuse treatment based on religious beliefs and state laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. On Oct. 11 during the most recent hearing, Associate Justice Gilbert Nares of the 4th District Court of Appeals in San Diego predicted that the case will eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2001, Guadelupe "Lupita" Benitez of Oceanside filed a lawsuit against the North Coast Women's Care Medical Group in Vista claiming Drs. Christine Brody and Douglas Fenton refused to artificially inseminate her because she was a lesbian. Benitez's attorney, Lambda Legal's Jenny Pizer, said that violated California's anti-discrimination laws and, she told the appeals court, "The state has a compelling interest in eradicating invidious discrimination."

Brody and Fenton's attorney, Carlo Coppo, told the appeals court that the doctors' refusal of treatment was based not on sexual orientation but Benitez's unmarried status, which is not a federal or state protected class. Coppo was appealing a lower court ruling that disallowed the doctors from using religious beliefs as a defense in denying treatment.

Last September, the California Medical Association withdrew its amicus brief in support of the doctors, and filed another supporting Lambda Legal.

Benitez eventually went to other doctors and paid for the procedure out of her own pocket. She has now a 4-year-old son and infant twin girls.

The three-judge appeals court has 90 days to issue their opinion.

Fresno Man Claims "Gay Panic" as Defense for Transgender Killing

The Fresno, Calif., LGBT community expressed outrage after Estanislao Martinez was sentenced to four years in prison for repeatedly stabbing and killing transgendered Joel Robles.

Martinez and Robles met on a blind date in a bar. While having sex later, Martinez discovered that Robles was biologically a man and stabbed Robles 20 times with a pair of scissors. Martinez's lawyer, Roberto Dulce, encouraged his client to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter, based on the "gay panic" defense that the crime was committed in the "heat of passion" and was not cold-blooded murder.

"The decedent (Robles) represented himself to be female. She/he said he was female to him," said Dulce. "[It] doesn't justify the conduct, but excuses it to a certain degree and therefore it's not murder."

"It wasn't manslaughter," said LGBT activist Charlotte Jenks. "So, what is their excuse? A plea-bargain so they don't have to deal with it? I think they've made it abundantly clear that transgender people are not valued and it's okay to kill them,"

Martinez could have received up to 11 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter. With good behavior, he could be free in three years.

L.A. Valley Pride Doubles Attendance

L.A. Valley Pride attracted over 2,000 participants, twice as many as last year, and 100 vendors to the Oct. 9 event in Studio City. "This goal for this year's event was two fold. First, to continue to improve the relationship with CBS in order to assure continuation of the invitation to hold LAVP on the lot. And second, to deliver at least one "breakout success," in order to demonstrate the viability of the event and show promise for the future. Both goals were achieved in spades. Pictured [l to r]: LAPD Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell, L.A. Valley Pride Executive Director Paul Waters, and Congressman Brad Sherman's representative Oscar Garcia. For more pictures of Valley Pride, see page 46.

UCLA Honors Paul Monette

To honor and celebrate the 10th anniversary of the late author Paul Monette's death and what would have been his 60th birthday, on Oct. 14 the UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library and the Paul Monette-Roger Horwitz Trust held a daylong retrospective One Person's Truth: The Life and Work of Paul Monette (1945-95)."

At a "Paul-a-palooza" dinner, hosted by Monette's "widow," psychotherapist Winston Wilde, the Monette-Horwitz Trust awarded Monette's authorized biographer Chris Freeman with a $5,000 check and presented the first Monette-Horwitz Ally Award to Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). The Trust gives out awards annually to individuals or organizations "for significant contributions in research or activism to eradicate homophobia."

In the spirit of Monette's righteous anger, Wilde decried the talk about "the sanctity of marriage" by cheating politicians. "Are we really going to let these adulterous hypocrites dictate to America what marriage should look like?" Wilde asked. "This is a battle between the people who hate and the people who love ... We will prevail."

For more on the Monette exhibit at UCLA, go to www.library.ucla.edu/ libraries/special/scweb/monette.htm.

Popular Catch One DJ Passes

Bill Long, Jr., known as the "Legendary Billy Long," the beloved DJ and assistant manager at Jewel's Catch One Disco, died Sept. 29, just 33 days shy of his 55th birthday. "He selected me as his spiritual mom 28 years ago," Jewel Thais Williams told IN. "There are really no words to explain the depth of his loss to me."