Articles from the Constitution State
A visit from Harvey
Tony Award-winning playwright and LGBTQ rights advocate Harvey Fierstein will pay a visit to Connecticut’s Ridgefield Playhouse on March 15. Fierstein, a resident of Ridgefield, is an arts advisory board member of the Playhouse.
His visit coincides with the release of his new book, “I Was Better Last Night: A Memoir.”
At the March 15 visit, he’ll join New Yorker cartoonist and fellow Ridgefield resident Roz Chast. Notes the Playhouse website, Fierstein will “impart wisdom gained, mistakes made, and stories that will all come together to describe his astonishingly colorful and meaningful life.” Chast will discuss things with him such as “never-before-told stories of his personal struggles and conflict, of sex and romance, and of his fabled career.”
This will be followed by a Q&A, and all audience members will receive a copy of the book.
More: ridgefieldplayhouse.org
Nondiscrimination statute upheld
In late January, the state Supreme Court ruled that Edge Fitness violated the state’s nondiscrimination laws by maintaining a separate workout area for women.
Making an exception to nondiscrimination laws would put women and transgender people in a position where they could be “excluded based on ‘the privacy interest of men or the ‘moral comfort’ of customers,’ which ‘defeats the purpose of our state’s antidiscrimination legislation,” quoted the Boston-based GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders in a press release.
GLAD argued against the gym’s policy in a friend-of-the-court brief.
Said GLAD’s Transgender Rights Project Director Jennifer Levi, “Connecticut has long been a leader on full and fair inclusion of LGBTQ people in all areas of life. [This] ruling reaffirms that commitment, and ensures the state’s nondiscrimination law continues to work as intended for all those it was enacted to protect.”
Social justice mini-grants
Student projects at the University of Connecticut received two of the 10 social justice mini-grants that Campus Pride distributed to schools across the United States in a second round of 2021 awards, announced in late December. (A first set of 10 awards was announced this past June as part of Campus Pride’s 20th anniversary celebrations, when UConn also won a pair of them.)
Says Campus Pride, “Grantees represent schools from across the country working on projects ranging from providing binders to transgender students, cultivating a photojournalism series, developing educational & safe space trainings on campuses & supporting LGBTQ students on one of the most discriminatory campuses in the country.”
The first of the two latest grants going to UConn will help fund research into topics including the effects of disability on transgender people’s sexuality, the intersection of race and disability and explorations into disparities marginalized people face.
UConn’s second December grant goes to research housing insecurity within the LGBTQ community in partnership with UConn’s Women’s, Gender and Sexuality studies department, and the publication of a zine centered on these issues.
UConn’s June grants went to a production of an original play with trans artists and the development of legislation to be presented to school administration to protect LGBTQ+ students on campus.
HRC Municipal Equality Index
New England earned leading scores once again on the Human Rights Campaign’s 10th annual Municipal Equality Index.
In the Constitution State, Norwalk and Stamford both received perfect 100s. New Britain scored 85, New Haven 73, Hartford 72, Waterbury 67, Storrs 61, Fairfield 46 and Bridgeport 42.
The index measures LGBTQ inclusivity in municipal laws, policies and services for LGBTQ people in cities and some other communities with a strong LGBTQ presence across the US. Scores are based on 49 different criteria from employment, housing, credit, education, public services, transgender health care and anti-conversion therapy laws.
More: hrc.org
CGLC Virtual breakfast
The Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Chamber (CGLC) regularly hosts monthly breakfast meetings online. On March 3, their virtual Zoom breakfast meeting will be a presentation by Mental Health CT (MHC). At it, they’ll cover coping with COVID in daily life and at work.
CGLC is the official affiliate chamber of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.
More: ctglc.org
