How
can I become a member of GAAMC? What are the costs and benefits of
membership?
What
is the Challenge newsletter?
How can I contact the editors?
When
and where are other Pride Celebrations in the United States (outside New
Jersey)?
How
can I find out about social groups, and groups based on my interests, that
meet in my area?
How
does the State of New Jersey protect sexual minorities (GLBT people)?
How
can I find a gay (or gay-friendly) doctor or health-care provider?
What
is the status of relationship equality ("gay marriage") in New
Jersey?
Is
there a group for parents, families or friends of people who have “come
out”?
I
am a gay (GLBTI) parent or prospective parent. Is there a support group for
me in New Jersey?
Where
can I find a list of “gay media” and news about gay issues?
Please read
An Overview of
GAAMC (2005)
Please visit
GAAMC’s
contact page.
For immediate general information, please call the Pride Center of New
Jersey in North Brunswick at 732-846-2232. Hours: Sunday through Friday evenings
7-10. Also: Tuesdays, noon to 4 p.m., and Thursdays, 2 to 5 p.m.
Membership
information and an application are
online.
The PDF document requires
Adobe Acrobat Reader. Also, membership brochures are available at all Monday night
meetings. Or request
a membership brochure be mailed to you.
A listserv on
Yahoo!
Groups provides a forum for GAAMC members and non-members
to exchange ideas and make announcements pertinent to our community. Visit the
site
to join. Members must follow the
listserv
rules and agree to the site’s
terms
of service. On the
GAAMC
Calendar
GAAMC was
founded in 1972 by four people: Jenny Glaab, Jeff Samuels, Mickey Suiter and
John Sheehy III, all of whom were between the ages of 18 and 21. The first
meeting of the Gay Activist Alliance of Morris County was held Sept. 11, 1972,
in the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship, the group’s present and continuous
home. In 1973, the name was changed to Gay Activist Alliance in Morris
County to reflect the breadth of membership. Co-founder John Sheehy III died
April 11, 2002, at age 51.
The GAAMC board meets the third Thursday of each month in the dining room at
Morristown
Unitarian Fellowship. Meetings, open to all GAAMC members, start at 7 p.m.
and typically last about two hours.
For
questions about specific meeting times and agendas, please email the GAAMC
president. Please read an
explanatory
article by John Nakovich. Everyone is
welcome at GAAMC events. Members, attendees, friends, family and allies are
warmly welcomed. GAAMC’s facilities are partially wheelchair-accessible. Sign
language interpreters for the hearing-impaired are available upon request. GAAMC is a
501(c)3 non-profit corporation. A portion of membership fees, and additional
monetary gifts, are tax-deductible as a donation. Please note: In accordance
with Internal Revenue Service regulations, door donations are not
tax-deductible. Please visit the
GAAMC
Program information page. Please visit the
GAAMC Web site
for more information. Please contact us.
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to Top
Why the name Gay Activist Alliance
in Morris County?
Back
to Top
Who is welcome at GAAMC? What do
the initials GLBTI mean?
GAAMC’s constituency is the community of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual,
Transgendered and Intersexed people. Sometimes the initials Q
(Queer or Questioning) or TS / 2S (Two-Spirited)
are also used. (In the Native American tradition, gay and lesbian people are
referred to as haing two spirits, both masculine and feminine, and they were
treated with great respect.)
A
summary of these and other terms was published Sept. 28, 2002, in The Topeka
(Kansas) Capital-Journal.
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to Top
Are contributions to GAAMC
tax-deductible?
Back
to Top
What programs are coming up at GAAMC?
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to Top
How can I volunteer with GAAMC?
Back
to Top
How can I get an ad in
Pride Guide?
How much will it cost?
Pride Guide
Online
is fully compatible with
Internet Explorer (IE) versions 5.00 and newer. If you are using an older version
of IE, Netscape, or another browser, you may experience problems with certain
pages, such as the graphical home page. As an alternative, you may use the
text-only
version of the home page.
Printed copies
of the Guide are available at GAAMC’s offices during regular Monday night
meetings, and at the Pride Center of New Jersey (North Brunswick) and other
businesses and organizations that have requested them. Also, the Guides are
distributed at Pride celebrations and other events throughout the year. To have a
copy mailed to you, please contact us.
Challenge,
published since 1975, is a bimonthly newsletter mailed to GAAMC members. Challenge
presents information on current events and issues at GAAMC and elsewhere.
Contact the editors.
Please send your
updated information as soon as possible to
changeaddress@gaamc.org.
Please include your old and new addresses, and if applicable, your other contact
information such as phone number and email address.
Jersey
City Lesbian and Gay Outreach, Inc. produces a celebration on the Jersey City
Waterfront in August. The group
Trenton's Capital Rainbowfest. The fifth annual event happened Sunday, Sept. 17, 2006, in Trenton’s Mill Hill Park.
Jersey
Pride Inc. produces the annual LGBTI Pride Celebration the first weekend in June
in Asbury Park. The 16th annual celebration was held Sunday, June 3, 2007.
Please visit
PlanetOut’s
Pride Celebration Calendar.
Please visit the
Pride Guide Online
Organizations
page.
The Personal
Liberty Fund of the New Jersey Lesbian and Gay Coalition distributes a
Religious/Spiritual Directory, distributed since early 2002.
The
directory is online.
The New
Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD)
makes it unlawful to subject people to differential treatment based on
race, creed, color, national origin, nationality, ancestry, age, sex (including
pregnancy), familial status, marital status, affectional or sexual
orientation, atypical hereditary cellular or blood trait, genetic
information, liability for military service, and mental or physical disability,
including perceived disability and AIDS and HIV status.
Download a
fact
sheet in PDF format on “Sexual Orientation & Discrimination” issued
by the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights.
For an overview of New Jersey law on sexual orientation, please visit
Lambda
Legal.
GAAMC does not handle legal issues.
If you believe you have been discriminated against in housing, employment, financial matters (mortgages, banking, etc.) or public accommodation, you should get in touch with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights. You may not need a private attorney. Call your local office and make an appointment to file a complaint.
Also, lists of gay and gay-friendly lawyers are included in these resources:
GAAMC does not make referrals to mental health professionals. Such professionals are listed in these resources:
“Rap groups”
are discussions among peers, and are held at GAAMC, the Pride Center of New
Jersey and other locations. Sometimes the discussions are structured, sometimes
not. In “therapy,” a patient/client usually works with a mental health
professional, sometimes individually, sometimes in a group.
GAAMC does not make referrals to such professionals, but does provide lists of available providers.
Health-care professionals are listed in several
categories in the
Pride
Guide Online Directory, including Mental Health/Therapists
and Physical Health and Fitness.
Other sources include:
It is impossible
to pinpoint the gay population of any particular area. However, the U.S. Census
Bureau has surveyed the number of households with “same-sex unmarried
partners” in both 2000 and 1990. The Census Bureau on Aug. 6, 2002, released
“Summary File 3,” listing 18,228 New Jersey
households
containing same-sex unmarried partners.
Of those households, 8,858 were
couples of two men, and 9,370 were couples of two women. More detailed reports
on New Jersey same-sex households are available by
County
or Place (municipality or locality).
Also, see the Census’
Technical
Note on Same-Sex Unmarried Partner Data From the 1990 and 2000 Censuses.
For information
on the NJ-AVP, please visit
GAAMC’s
Services Page.
Visit the
New
Jersey Division of Elections site.
The Personal Liberty Fund of the New Jersey Lesbian and Gay Coalition in November 2002 published the New Jersey Educators’ Resource Guide for Serving Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Youth. In April 2003, the guide was updated and placed online. The guide has been widely distributed to New Jersey schools.
Gay Helpline of
New Jersey is a volunteer-operated service that provides the GLBTI community
with a comprehensive information source as well as peer counseling and support.
Callers to the Helpline, at 973-285-1595, may leave a message at any time to be
returned on Sunday or Monday evening. Callers should make sure to leave a
complete message, including name, area code and phone number, and reason for
calling. The Helpline is a service of GAAMC, and callers do not need to
register.
Yes. The Telecommunications Relay Service, also known as TRS, is a convenient link to telephone system users who are deaf, hard of hearing or speech-disabled. Persons using a standard voice telephone can be linked with the TRS user, through the use of a text telephone (TTY), computer, personal digital assistant, Web-capable telephone or a pager device. A Communications Assistant relays the conversation between the TRS user and the standard voice telephone user. The TRS can be reached throughout the United States by phone at 711 or online. Additional information is available on the Web sites for Verizon, AT&T and other telephone service providers.
On July 10, 2004, the New Jersey Domestic Partnership Law took effect, granting same-sex couples some of the same financial and legal benefits as married couples. Those couples who joined in a domestic partnership before the civil unions law took effect, will remain domestic partners unless they join into a civil union or the partnership is dissolved.
Pride Guide Online does not maintain current information on civil unions. For current information, we recommend the sites maintained by Stephen Hyland and Garden State Equality.
For historical information please see the PGO page, New Jersey Domestic Partnership: Facts and Figures.The
Partners Task
Force for Gay & Lesbian Couples is a Web resource for same-sex couples,
supporting the diverse community of committed gay and lesbian partners through a
variety of media. The site’s
Vows page
lists sample ceremonies that may be used to solemnize the relationships between life
partners.
In the United States, Massachusetts is the only state that allows same-sex couples to marry.
Four other jurisdictions briefly, during February through April 2004, allowed gay and lesbian couples to marry. They ceased their actions because of legal challenges at the state level:
The City of Asbury Park, New Jersey. Louis Navarrete, 42, and Ric Best, 44,
of Asbury Park, were the first same-sex couple to be married in the city. Deputy
Mayor Jim Bruno married the couple March 8, 2004.
The City Council agreed March 10 to discontinue issuing marriage licenses to
same-sex couples, after being challenged by New Jersey Attorney General Peter C.
Harvey.
Multnomah County, Oregon, including the City of Portland, issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples from March 3 through April 20, 2004. Mary Li, 40, and Becky Kennedy, 42, of Portland, were the first same-sex couple married March 3 by retired Oregon Supreme Court Justice Betty Roberts. For more information on the Oregon issue, visit Basic Rights Oregon and The Oregonian.
The Village of New
Paltz, New York. Billiam van Roestenberg, 38, and Jeffrey McGowan, 39, of
Plattekill, N.Y., were the first gay couple married Feb. 27, 2004, by Mayor
Jason West. Mayor West married 25 same-sex couples that day.
On March 2,
Ulster County District Attorney Donald Williams said he charged Mayor West
with 19 counts of solemnizing marriages without a license, a domestic
relations law misdemeanor, Reuters News reported.
The City and County of San Francisco, California. Lesbian activists Phyllis
Lyon, 79, and Del Martin, 83, on Feb. 12, 2004, were married by Mayor Gavin
Newsom, the first same-sex couple
married in San Francisco. As of Feb. 24, 2004, more than 3,200 same-sex couples had
been married in the city.
As of March 11,
the
California Supreme Court ordered the city to discontinue issuance of
same-sex marriage licenses.
Also check out Pride Guide Online’s Resources (Links) and News on Same-Sex Marriage and Domestic Partnership. (Note: The News section is currently not being updated.)
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) produces the Corporate Equality Index, rating U.S. companies on their equitable treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees and consumers.
Yes.
Parents,
Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (P-FLAG) works on support,
education and advocacy issues. Information on New Jersey chapters can be found
online.
Yes.
Lambda
Families of New Jersey offers information and support for GLBT parents
and those wishing to become parents in New Jersey.
Also, the online community
Families
Like Ours provides adoptive and pre-adoptive families with a centralized
resource for information and support.
Pride Guide Online maintains lists of:
Information and examples of gay symbols are found on the Matt & Andrej Koymasky Home site. You can also find information on gay symbols by using a search engine such as Google.
Check out Pride Guide Online’s HIV / AIDS Support & Services area of our Directory. The page includes resources to find New Jersey testing sites, and links to information on AIDS/HIV from the U.S. government and from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.