Bay Windows - September 22, 2005
Ethan Jacobs, ejacobs@baywindows.com.

There have been few reports thus far of discrimination against LGBT people. In one case, Sharli'e Vicks, a preoperative transsexual, was arrested for using the women's bathroom at a shelter at Texas A&M University in College Station. Vicks, a New Orleans resident, escaped from the city to Texas A&M. After using a women's shelter Sept. 4, she and a cousin of hers, also a pre-op transsexual and a minor, were arrested by Texas A&M police. Vicks was thrown in jail, and LGBT groups only found out about her case four days later after a student newspaper in the area wrote about her. The reporter in question stumbled across Vicks's case while paging through arrest reports for information on another case. In an interview with the Washington Blade, Vicks said she was told by officials that she would be in prison for at least six months to a year because the courts were backed up. After HRC and NCTE learned of the case, however, they lobbied the university to drop the charges.

"I called the detention center down there and just experienced ridiculously homophobic sheriff's deputies running the desk there," said HRC's vice president of policy, David Smith. He didn't make any headway on the case until he reached higher-ups at the university.

Mara Keisling, executive director of NCTE, said her group has partnered with the Task Force and Lambda to distribute information to shelters and relief organizations on the needs of transgender survivors of the storm. And while she has heard of no other cases as horrific as Vicks's, she does not take that as a sign that transgender people are receiving fair treatment.

"None of us found out about Sharli'e being in jail [until] after four or five days, and I'm horrified that there might be someone in jail out there and we might not know about it," said Keisling, referring to the inadvertent way in which advocates learned of Vicks's arrest.

The few reports of problems for LGBT survivors of Katrina aren't necessarily a sign that all is going well for them. Michael Adams, Lambda Legal's director of education and public affairs, said problems may arise in the next few weeks once the states and the federal government set up relief programs to provide funding to the victims of the hurricane. In anticipation of such problems, Lambda has set up a hotline for survivors facing discrimination. He said Lambda is particularly concerned with official recognition of partners and families by relief programs, as well as general treatment of transgender people by agencies and shelters.

"It's very early for these kinds of problems to emerge," said Adams. "Based on our experience at 9/11 we didn't see the problems immediately because when you see them is when relief is actually being distributed."

But there's something else at work, too. The culture from which LGBT survivors are emerging. David Harvey, a 35-year-old openly gay Slidell, La. resident, evacuated to Shreveport before the storm hit and stayed with friends. He said based on the intolerant culture in the state, especially outside the city, he did not even consider going into a shelter for fear of facing discrimination from officials and other residents.

"I personally didn't even try to enter a shelter. I just didn't want to deal with that whole scene. I turned to friends for help and looked for other avenues of assistance," said Harvey, a volunteer substance abuse counselor.

Since the hurricane, Harvey has connected with Provincetown Miracles, a new non-profit aimed at helping the LGBT community in recovery in the New Orleans area. The group flew Harvey to P'town Sept. 20, where he will stay for 45 days, getting back on his feet with clothing and basic needs and helping the organization raise money. After the 45 days he will return to New Orleans to open a residential facility to provide temporary housing and services to LGBT people in recovery, as well as other LGBT people lacking housing and basic services because of Katrina. The facility will be funded by donors in the Bay State but managed by Harvey and other locals in Louisiana.

Ann Robison, executive director of the Montrose Counseling Center in Dallas, Texas, which has been aiding displaced survivors of the storm, said she worries about mistreatment of LGBT-people by some of the faith-based groups helping in the relief efforts. "We have a fairly large faith-based presence in some of these shelters, and whether they have been trained or not [in LGBT issues], there's a question of whether or not they would honor that," said Robison.

But the LGBT communities in both Mississippi and Louisiana were already under attack from anti-gay forces before the storm, most notably over 2004 ballot questions on constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage. Unlike Massachusetts, where the community has been able to beat back amendment efforts, in Louisiana and Mississippi the voters turned out in droves to vote against their LGBT neighbors: Last September voters passed an amendment in Louisiana by a 78 percent majority, and two months later the voters of Mississippi approved theirs with an 86 percent majority. Mississippi in particular is also home to such anti-gay stalwarts as the anti-gay American Family Association and Sen. Trent Lott, who has managed to win re-election despite making highly publicized comments comparing gay people to alcoholics and kleptomaniacs and waxing nostalgic about Strom Thurmond's segregationist campaign for president.

Yet the states also have vibrant LGBT communities. The 2004 Gay and Lesbian Atlas, published by the economic and social policy research organization the Urban Institute based on the 2000 Census, shows that Mississippi has the highest concentration of same-sex couples raising children among its total population of same-sex couples, and Louisiana has the fifth highest concentration. Within the states' total populations Mississippi has the highest concentration of African American same-sex couples, and Louisiana has the second highest. In addition, New Orleans is home to one of the country's most diverse and active LGBT communities, and every year thousands of people pour into the city for the annual Southern Decadence festival, the city's gay Mardi Gras.

"Many, many [LGBT] people from villages and smaller towns and cities across the state migrate to New Orleans to have a sense of community and safety, security," said Christopher Daigle, director of governmental affairs with the advocacy group Equality Louisiana. "I can't tell you in terms of numbers, but a really significant number of people in our community have migrated to the city from small towns around the state. New Orleans is an oasis of tolerance."

Daigle, who has moved from New Orleans to Baton Rouge since Katrina hit, has been hired by HRC to be its eyes and ears on the ground and to help deal with relief-related issues facing the LGBT community. The most immediate crisis is securing medications for people living with HIV to make sure they continue their treatment without interruption. Next week he plans to meet with the governor's office and the state Department of Public Health and Hospitals to ask them to request additional funds for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) from FEMA and to ask that the usual poverty requirements for ADAP be waived. He also plans to visit shelters in Louisiana, Mississippi, and affected parts of Alabama to find out whether LGBT people are being given adequate and appropriate treatment.

Outside the state the Montrose Counseling Center has been performing the same function for survivors. Outreach workers have been traveling to the Astrodome and other shelters to find LGBT survivors, making sure they are safe, and plugging them into the services at Montrose. Thus far the counseling center and its sister organization, the Montrose Clinic, have helped get people access to HIV medications, clothes, food and other basic services. The counseling center is also helping people find housing, and as the weeks roll on Robison expects to begin providing counseling services to people suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health and stress issues related to the disaster.

"We're finding needs are changing every week, and we're kind of playing it by ear," said Robison. She said the counseling center is receiving some federal funds to do its work to provide services for people with HIV. For other survivors it is funding its work through private donations, including funds from the more than $62,000 raised by NYAC's coalition and $35,000 raised by a relief fund established by Pride Houston and New Orleans gay liaison Larry Bagneris.

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