Dear Editor:

Nicole called me on July 5. We had a spirited chat for about a half hour about her recent columns about her mother joining her in the LGBT Pride Parade and the accused tragic murderer in Los Angeles. I greatly appreciate Nicole’s call and concern about the intention of her columns and her concern about my responses.

I got clarification from Nicole that this past week’s columns referencing “homosexual parade” was a quotation from her mom. We discussed different generations and our shared struggle and challenge to educate our elders and contemporaries about Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgenders. I, like Nicole, can understand the response from a mother when invited to an LGBT parade or invited to understand not being heterosexual.

My mom’s response to my coming out 10 years ago as bisexual was … “Gee, I hope you will make the easier choice for yourself.” I responded, “Yes, mom, the easier choice will be for me to identify as bisexual because that is who I really am. It is the most honest way I can describe myself because I am attracted to both genders and even some genders in between.” I have had long-term relationships with both genders.

Sexual proclivity is not a choice. How I choose to identify myself is a choice. I am hopeful that we will have a community where people are allowed to express honestly who they are.

Nicole clarified that in last week’s column she did not intend to suggest that bisexuals are any more confused than any other sexual orientation.

I explained to her that I was acknowledging in my email that Nicole has done a tremendous amount for the community and gets very high marks for using GLBT in most of her writing. I hope that increases. I and the bisexual community were needing clarification which we now have. We are hopeful that everyone will make efforts to be sensitive to the desire on the part of transgenders and bisexuals to be included in both names and mission statements.

It is not enough for social service organizations to only include us in mission statements. PFLAG is a good example. We are working diligently to get PFLAG to add Bisesual and Transgender to the name so that parents of bisexuals and transgenders will feel comfortable seeking the fine support that PFLAG offers. We need more help from our political and business leaders (GSDBA) to get inclusion of bisexuals and transgenders now.

I want to thank Nicole for calling and for here ongoing efforts to educate people about the importance of growing the use of LGBT when referencing our community.

Richard Woulfe

Bisexual Foundation

Dear Editor:

Thank you for this [“Wake up to the Reader”] article! I moved to San Diego two years ago from Atlanta. What a great surprise it was to me that in California there could be such a conservative, uninformed corporate businesses and people. As you know how great Atlanta is on its diversity in Corporate America, not to mention how excepted “Our People” are on a whole, some ignorant fools in every crowd.

I was an Account Manager for Creative Loafing, one of the largest Alternative Weekly Network member in the country. Taking pride in the fact that we celebrated diversity internally/externally and with Corporate America. The editorial was cutting edge, diverse and rocked the boat on all levels – newsworthy reading.

Funny thing is, is that when I first moved here, I picked up The Reader. Can you say boring!!! No diversity, no coverage of a city, no contiversial [sic] Politics … nothing worth reading. I even emailed their publisher to ask why there is no substance to their topics. I also explained I worked in Atlanta for Creative Loafing. I never heard back even after the second attempt to ask for their stance. Go figure. …

To top it all, the first job that I had when I moved here was a company that was so backward ass and good ole’ boy, that I never spoke about my personal life. Then 4 months later, when approached about being gay, was outed. Not only was I shunned, I was demoted to a position that did not even exist in the company. It was “made for me” I was told…. 3 times the work load than before, with harder goals and quotas.

As you can imagine, it was the worst experience of my life. I eventually quit from the stress. I did take on this 400 million dollar company since I did go by their steps to correct this with HR. They lent a deaf ear, so I found this awesome law firm in Del Mar. I did try to use a “family member” first, but I never got the gut feeling they wanted to fight and win. So Kail and Saint helped me for over a year with the process of suing these bastards. Since I did have some co-workers on my side, and documentation, we eventually settled out of court. I cannot talk about specifics, but I am satisfied with the outcome. They one thing the Judge has made them implement is diversity/ sensitivity training in the work place for Southern California.

That was my goal, not money. So one for our community.

The good news is that my current company is awesome. I helped build Get 1 Free Magazine for over the last 1 ? with great success. I have considered moving back recently, for many reasons, but mainly the fact that the being gay here just is not the same. I am no femfam or butch bear, just me and it seems really hard to live in this city, not to mention how expensive it is to by a home.

I hope that with our ambition, one day things will change locally, nationally and globally. … What a great day it will be.

Bill Burrows

Dear Editor:

I just wanted to shout out my disappointment in the festivities of what will be the San Diego Gay Pride Day this year. Maybe I am wrong, and I certainly know of many in the community who feel the same way as I do, that being proud of who we are certainly has been drying up here in Southern California.

For two years now there has been rumors upon rumors of this year being our big thirty year celebration of Pride. Along with those rumors came lots of speculation of a huge celebration to highlight this memorable marker for San Diego. What happened? I see that we still have one of the same entertainment acts performing that anyone under forty may not recognize or find pleasure in making the effort to head to Balboa Park. Where did Long Beach, New York City, LA, and other smaller communities of Pride find their entertainment of greater magnitude and popularity? Maybe this is why so many of my friends and associations have fled to other cities or countries for Pride celebrations or simply find staying at home with a few friends more entertaining. Good entertainment, such as Lauper or even Miss Patti, brought solidarity to being gay in their songs and interactions with the audience. One felt good singing along or simply listening to the words that have special meaning to us in the community and not just music filler to dance to.

I understand these celebrations are difficult to organize and would not want to attempt such a thing, nor would I have the experience to deal with the many issues surrounding a big event, but we must have someone here in the community that could bring our Pride Day up to par. In other cities I have attended I never seemed to notice or be aware of the heckling straight crowd with signs and microphones telling me I was either “an abomination” or “going to hell on the fast-track” for my sexuality choice. Maybe other cities try to keep their celebrations upbeat and place these people strategically out of sight. For several years now, San Diego has allowed these “friends of Christ” to lay in wait right in the middle of the Pride parade route. Why? Freedom of speech is one thing but could also not be given prime realstate to do so … Lastly, could we somehow minimize the political factor of the Parade. This is our day to celebrate the feelings of community, hope, aspirations for equality, and remembering loved ones since Pride began. We do not need reminders of names for voting day.

I will apologize if this has offended any of the organizers of this event. It was not my intention to do so, only to express that somewhere somehow we will have a celebration based on expressing what being gay in the country and in this community means to us: support of gay owned and operating businesses locally, support for the aging and younger persons of our community needing guidance just to survive, hearing local and State representatives talk to us straightforward on their efforts to seek equality for gay rights, and how we can support the programs of The Center for local causes. We should be represented in this local community as more than Drag Queens sitting on classic cars, a solo act standing in as Parade Marshall, and grinding go-go’s on floats.

Joseph Dorsey