The Bilerico Project | Daily experiments in LGBTQ

On Saturday, March 12, I attended the 2nd annual convening of LGBT journalists, editors and bloggers in San Francisco, sponsored by the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund. We heard extraordinary presentations from Ann Haas from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention on LGBT Youth and Suicide Prevention; Carl Siciliano and Ksen Pallegedara on LGBT Youth Homelessness and the Ali Forney Center; Shannon Minter, Legal Director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, on the status of Prop. 8 and DOMA cases; Caitlin Ryan on the Family Acceptance Project – who produced a short video on the acceptance by Elizabeth and Ed Plata of their gay son; and Jason Cianciotto on LGBT Youth in America's schools.

Please excuse the amateur quality of these videos. I just bought a flip camera and had no idea how to use it - other than to point and shoot - and I had no idea if anything was really recording. You may need to boost the audio. These videos were originally posted on Frontiersweb.com.

Ann Haas on how there is very little good research connecting bullying with LGBT suicide:

Ann Haas, part two:

Shannon Minter, NCLR's extraordinary Legal Director, explained what is going on with the DOMA and Prop. 8 cases--but he refused to speculate about whether or not the California LGBT community should mount an effort to repeal Prop. 8 if the California Supreme Court doesn't reply to the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals in the Prop. 8 case before 2012:

Caitlin Ryan of the Family Acceptance Project is one of the LGBT community's under-reported treasures. Her work is both research and compassion-based and is critical to understanding the movement but also how to prevent suicides and the post-traumatic stress disorders that come with growing up LGBT in an unsupportive family environment:

We also watched this short documentary “Always My Son,” produced by the Family Acceptance Project:

And then we met parents Ed and Elizabeth Plata:

crossposted at LGBT POV