News & Stories

In some ways, there has never been more LGBTQ+ Pride in greater Westchester County and Connecticut. From flag raising ceremonies, to family-friendly comedy shows, to street festivals and parades, there’s a little something for everyone. Pride is a celebration of joy and acceptance, a radical expression of love for ourselves and for each other. Nothing, and no one, can take that away from us. But some folks are really trying to, aren’t they? The LGBTQ+ community is under vicious attack throughout the country. It’s tempting to try to fight fire with fire, give the haters a taste of their own venom. But actually one of our greatest weapons in this movement is Pride. Pride is not just about marching in parades. Here in the greater Westchester County and Connecticut, it can mean attending a Pride Flag Raising Ceremony in Norwalk, or Easton, Greenwich, or Waterbury. There are parades and street festivals planned in places like Rye, Yorktown, Putnam, Yonkers, New Rochelle, and Mount Vernon. Movies nights in Middletown, and Drag-Queen Story Hour in Darien. A Pride Color Run in Pound Ridge, and a Drag Gospel Fest in Waterbury. This February, local Pride organizers from across Connecticut and New York convened…

In an age of nonstop information and misinformation, we know that the messaging can be just as important as the message when it comes to telling our stories as LGBTQ+ people. That’s why the Leonard Litz LGBTQ+ Foundation has been honored to support a very important initiative aimed at developing and supporting storyteller voices in our community. The first annual Writers and Artists Grant from The Gay & Lesbian Review is intended to help bring new, diverse perspectives, ideas, and voices to the literary marketplace by encouraging and supporting emerging and unpublished LGBTQ+ writers, thinkers, scholars, and artists. After a rigorous application and evaluation process, three amazing graduate students have been selected for this first cohort. Cait N. Parker (she/her) is a Ph.D. Student in American Studies with a concentration in Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Purdue University, whose project is titled “Don’t Let Them Bury Us: Lesbian Revolutionaries in the Prison Abolition Movement.” Gervais Marsh (they/them), pictured above, is a PhD Student in Performance Studies at Northwestern University, and their project is titled “Intimate Notes: Patric McCoy’s Archive of Black Gay Life in Chicago.” They will focus on artist Patric McCoy’s photographic archive as a meditation on the…

A significant part of our long struggle to achieve equal dignity and rights as LGBTQ+ people has been to enact and advance equal protections under the law. The folks attacking us at Stonewall over 50 years ago were not random thugs. They were police officers. And while we’ve come a long, long way since then, many of us know firsthand that we still have a long way to go. But, even when we have allies in positions to create and advance public policy (which, itself, requires constant vigilance these days), it is increasingly difficult to make any progress without robust data underpinning your arguments. We know inherently that LGBTQ+ people receive disparate treatment under the law, but it is crucial to quantify that disparity in a way that helps both LGBTQ+ policy-makers and our allies make the best decisions for our community. Enter Lambda Legal, and the 2022 Protected and Served report. Funded in part by a Leonard Litz Advocacy Grant, the report builds on Lambda’s groundbreaking work in 2012 exploring government misconduct and harm by police, prisons, school security, and courts against LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV in the U.S. As the report notes, “Our hope is…

It feels frustrating, alarming, and sad, and scary that this still needs to be said in 2023, but here we go, once again, for the record: Trans. Rights. Are. Human. Rights. Some so-called “leaders” throughout the country have decided that the transgender community makes an easy target as political pawns in their hate-filled culture wars. Which is why it is more important than ever for the LGBTQ+ community and our allies to stand up boldly on behalf of our transgender family. Allies like Senators Megan Hunt and Machaela Cavanaugh of Nebraska, whose courageous stand in the legislature led to every single bill being filibustered until an insidious proposal blocking gender-affirming healthcare for youth is dropped. They know as well as we do: There is no LGB without the T. Do not for a second delude yourself into thinking that this attack on the transgender community is “not your fight.” These zealots have no love for cis-identified gays and lesbians, either. Already your favorite drag queens are being targeted in places like Tennessee and Arizona. Legislators in Iowa this year proposed a ban on same-sex marriage. And Florida’s now infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law has spawned copycat legislation in more than a…

Three years in to our work of supporting nonprofit organizations that protect and uplift the LGBTQ+ community, one lesson has become especially clear:  there is more work to be done in this movement than any one organization can do alone. To that end, we at the Leonard Litz LGBTQ+ Foundation have been grateful for the opportunity to convene with other like-minded individuals and organizations in our community to share best practices, discuss capacity-building, and collaborate on ways to enhance our collective impact by working together. In February, Leonard Litz traveled to San Francisco, CA, to take part in our first ever Creating Change Conference, hosted by The National LGBTQ Task Force. In addition to attending seminars about effective community-building and trans-specific outreach, we invited attendees to the inaugural Leonard Litz Leadership Reception, which provided a fun and educational opportunity for LGBTQ+ nonprofit professionals to network, amplify their work, and elevate their own potential. With a focus on  heart-centered leadership, we hope to work toward a future where our community’s leaders are equipped for both organizational success as well as self-compassion. Huge thank you to Jacob Rudolph of The Pride Network for his collaboration on the event production. In April, Executive…

The Leonard Litz LGBTQ+ Foundation is pleased to introduce our newest Trustee, Robyn Schlesinger! Robyn is an attorney who has worked extensively with the LGBTQIA+ community, nonprofit organizations, and institutions of higher education, and currently serves as the Director of LGBTQIA+ Programs, Resources, Innovation, Development & Engagement (PRIDE) for WJCS and Center Lane. She joins the Foundation at a critical time for our community, and is, in her words, “really excited about building on what Leonard Litz has already started.” Robyn’s career in nonprofit/higher education development and law has included senior management roles with the University of California, Berkeley, Westchester Community College, and Western Connecticut State University.  She is a director with The LOFT LGBTQ+ Community Center in White Plains, and serves on Westchester County’s LGBTQ Advisory Board, the Westchester County Police Reform Task Force, and the 9th Judicial District Access to Justice LGBTQ+ Subcommittee. Robyn was graduated from Harvard College with an AB cum laude, received her JD from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and her EdD from Manhattanville College. Please join us in welcoming Robyn to the Leonard Litz family!

A little over two years ago, we had the idea of starting a Foundation with the goal of supporting nonprofit organizations that offer programs and services addressing the needs of the most vulnerable in our diverse LGBTQ+ community. We knew that, no matter the level, every single gesture of support can make a tremendous difference to so many community-based organizations. We believe that even more passionately today. We’ve had the privilege of meeting amazing leaders and advocates from over a dozen states, and learning about the ways in which they all work to protect the safety, equality, and well-being of our community. We are grateful for their activism, and proud to count them as partners in this work. What we didn’t necessarily foresee is just how personal this work would be. We have both led rewarding lives. We’ve had our ups and downs, but always managed to persevere and thrive through a combination of wits and luck. And with a little help from our friends. Friends like the City University of New York, which offered opportunities for future success for a young Jewish kid from Brooklyn. Friends like the fine people at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST), colloquially known as…

As we gather with family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving this year, let us also celebrate and honor our country’s rich indigenous history and experience as part of Native American Heritage Month. While we have made some progress in decolonizing Thanksgiving and at least acknowledging the decimation of native people by early Europeans, LGBTQ+ Native Americans are too often sidelined and invisible in the narrative of queer culture. Just as LGBTQ+ History Month is an opportunity to celebrate all facets of our shared experience, including its intersections with Native culture, Native American Heritage Month lets us do the same from an LGBTQ+ perspective. Our LGBTQ+ experience simply would not be the same without the contributions and impact of so many LGBTQ+ Native Americans. Here are some very diverse examples. While Pete Puttigieg made headlines and history in his trailblazing presidential primary, LGBTQ+ Native Americans have quietly been making historic strides of their own in the political arena. In 2018, for example, Chelsey Branham became the first openly-LGBTQ+ member of the Chickasaw Nation to be elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives, and in 2020, Stephanie Byers’s election to the Kansas House of Representatives made her the first transgender Native American…

They’re still counting to the very last vote in some places, but at this point it has become clear that some of the most dire predictions about this year’s midterm elections have not come to pass. Bucking historical trends, President Biden may end up with a slightly larger Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, with the GOP poised to retake the House only by a razor-thin margin. Considering what the outcome may have been, the Democrats are counting this as a major win. For most of the LGBTQ+ community, it is a narrow escape from certain disaster. This summer, after the conservative-leaning Supreme Court overturned decades of precedent protecting a woman’s right to choose to have a baby or not, Justice Thomas sent a clear signal that precedents protecting the right to privacy in our sex lives and the right to marriage equality were potential next targets. Having leaders in the executive and legislative branches of government dedicated to protecting those rights is crucial. Already this week, we’ve been pleased to see the Senate take initial action on a bill known as the Respect for Marriage Act, which would preemptively codify protections for people in same-sex marriages (and interracial marriages,…

One of our core priorities at the Leonard Litz LGBTQ+ Foundation is Racial Justice. We are proud to support programs and services that specifically address the inequalities faced by LGBTQ+ people of color. So supporting this new fellowship from the Washngton Blade Foundation was a natural fit. The LGBTQ+ community is not a monolith, but rather a cosmic rainbow of intersecting identities. This fellowship helps to explore and spread awareness of this diversity by supporting journalism that focuses on stories at the intersection of LGBTQ+ identities and race. Our struggles are impossible to separate—quite literally for many people. Let’s not forget, people of color were the ones leading the fight at Stonewall. We cannot build a whole future if we only tell half our history. The Blade has already welcomed its inaugural fellow, Brandie Bland, whose first story, copied below, examines the unique challenges faced by communities of color when it comes to coming out of the closet. “The visibility of queer sexuality in Black culture can be traced back to the Harlem Renaissance, where literature and music were full of stories about lived queer experiences,” writes Brandie. “And non-binary identities have always been visible and integrated in some communities…