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'At a time when there are a lot of people in our community desperately needing help and desperately needing community, the center needs to be up and running and operating,' he said.
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If 2,500 people from the gay community around the country donated $20 each, the center's crisis could be averted for a full year, Beach said. The all-volunteer facility, located in the unflooded Faubourg Marigny neighborhood, operates on $30,000 to $50,000 a year. The center has 100 to 150 core donors but has been able to contact 'no more than half a dozen of them,' Beach said. 'Also, it's hard to ask people for money when they don't even have a house,' he said. The base of our support has always been in the community itself, we've never had a lot of corporate support, many of our heavy donors are scattered around the country.
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'We have met several times trying to figure out how to keep the doors open. It may, in fact, have to close if help doesn't arrive soon. The fact that most evacuees still haven't been able to come home also has thrown the Lesbian and Gay Community Center into dire financial straits. GAY COMMUNITY CENTER THREATENED WITH COLLAPSE Much of Mid-City was under water as well.' 'A lot of the lesbian population relocated-and we don't even know where they are,' she said. The city's lesbian population is likely to remain depleted for some time, said Belinda Hernandez, an openly gay executive producer at WDSU-TV. Most schools have not reopened, which prevents people with school-aged children from coming home, even if they have a home to come home to, which most evacuees do not. 'A lot of the Lesbians took a harder hit, Bagneris said, because 'more lesbians lived in Mid-City and Lakeview, and many have kids that have to go to school.' 'The flooding hit a lot of the community that is less visible than the bar crowd,' said Randal Beach, co-chair of the Lesbian and Gay Community Center of New Orleans. 'All those preachers who blamed the gay community for Katrina-our neighborhoods were the ones that had the rainbow over us and were blessed,' Bagneris said.īut many gay people didn't live in those gayest neighborhoods-especially lesbians, Blacks and men who don't frequent gay bars. We've come back not only to dry land, but to our jobs. 'The benefits of living in that environment-the French Quarter, the Marigny, the Bywater, Uptown-where most gay people live, they were spared the water. 'The 20 percent of the city that was spared, 80 percent of those parts of the city are gay ,' said Larry Bagneris, executive director of the New Orleans Human Relations Commission.
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And the New Orleans gay scene appears to be bouncing back faster than the city in general.
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NEW ORLEANS - A few Christian political activists blamed Hurricane Katrina on gays, noting that it hit immediately prior to gay-friendly New Orleans' famed 'Southern Decadence' gay festival.īut, in fact, about the only parts of the city that weren't severely damaged by the massive flooding from burst levees were the gayest areas. Gay Community Center May Collapse, Lesbians and Blacks Hit Harder Gayest Neighborhoods Spared, Bars Are Fairly Busy #7 Typical damage in 'The Dead Zone' - the 70 percent of New Orleans that was wiped out by the massive flooding resulting from burst levees. #6 Openly gay WDSU-TV Executive Producer Belinda Hernandez. #4 Former city Health Department director and well-known French Quarter figure Dr. #3 Good Friends Bar assistant manager Jerry Frederick. # 2New Orleans Human Relations Commission Executive Director Larry Bagneris. This article shared 3398 times since Wed Dec 21, 2005