Queer as he wants to be - Out & About Newspaper

42 • NEWS • OUT & ABOUT NEWSPAPER • APRIL, 2006
East Tennessee briefs — continued from page 40
Response from members and visitors showed
great interest concerning the individual legislators
and the legislative process. Cramer also
shared both how he would be impacted personally
and how Tennessee citizens would be
impacted.
Todd Cramer is Co-Chair/Co-President of
the Greater Knoxville LGBTQ Leadership
Council and heads up the Knoxville Human
Rights Meet-Up Group. He is currently a
board member of the Tennessee Equality
Project.
PFLAG meets on the fourth Thursday of
each month (Third Thursday in November
and December) at the Tennessee Valley
Unitarian Universalist Church. Meeting time
is 7:00 p.m. Everyone is welcome.
KTown Softball to host additional
women’s team
Knoxville’s GLBT softball league’s Keith
McDaniel reports that there are enough signups
to add another
women’s team for
the Spring 2006
schedule.
“It looks like we
might have enough girls for another all
female team, which will take us to nine
teams,” says McDaniel, who is searching for
sponsors for the additional team. Funds are
needed for start-up fees and jerseys.
Contact KTown Softball by visiting its
Web site at: www.ktownsoftball.com.
Click on “email” in the left margin navigation
bar.
Equality Radio now
Equality Radio is now streaming for your
listening pleasure. Run by Donna Hankins of
the Lesbian Social Group and Greater
Knoxville LGBTQ Leadership Council, the
well-known local networker is looking for
events announcements and other news to
broadcast via the Internet-based radio station.
“It’s my hope that our GLBTQ family will
be informed, alert, and ready to act for equality.
If not now, when family? Let’s work
together for change before the self-righteous
moralists reverse any more of our progress. If
we don’t pay attention, they will win. Send
me your thoughts to broadcast on
www.equalityradio.com. Wake your neighbors,”
urges Hankins.
On January 20, 1941, in his third inaugural
address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt shared
these words: “A nation, like a person, has a
mind – a mind that must be kept informed
and alert, that must know itself, that understands
the hopes and needs of its neighbors –
all the other nations that live within the narrowing
circle of the world. “
You can reach Donna by email at
donna@equalityradio.com.
Leadership Council speaker’s bureau
to address marriage ballot initiative
The Greater Knoxville LGBTQ Leadership
Council has a speaker’s bureau poised to
address the upcoming marriage ballot initiative
that will go before Tennessee voters in
November.
In conjunction with local members of the
Tennessee Equality Project, the GKLLC
speaker’s bureau hopes to speak to the concerns
regarding the upcoming vote.
Marriage equality is already outlawed in
Tennessee. A law defining marriage as solely
between one man and one woman has been
on the books since 1996. The ballot initiative’s
supporters hope to ban marriage equality
forever by altering our Tennessee State
Constitution in the upcoming election. The
measure would also invalidate same-sex marriages
solemnized outside the state of
Tennessee.
Freedom to Marry, a national coalition of
GLBT and supportive organizations, shines a
spotlight on efforts to reach out to our supportive
allies in the community. Their Web
site features resources that underlie their mis-