Badpuppy Gay Today

Tuesday, 15 April 1997

Setting a pace that draws praise from activists, scholars, artists, musicians, film buffs, and visitors from around the world, New York City's Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center is proudly celebrating its accomplishments under enthusiastic Manhattan spotlights.

Hosting over 5,000 weekly visitors, the Center has become an international home base, providing meeting space for an impressive variety of organizations, including the original ACT UP which was founded on its premises ten years ago.

"Its easy for me to tell you what the Center means to me," says Patrick Henriquez, a membership committee spokesperson, "The Center saved my life--its really that simple."

Eight years ago, Henriquez tells how he felt rudderless. Most of his time was spent in the bars. "I'd wake up in the morning," he recalls, "and couldn't remember where I'd been or what I'd done the night before. Everything just seemed to be going downhill fast."

Then, he explains, a friend took him to the Center, "just to look at everything that's going on." Henriquez found a camaraderie and caring that the bars had failed to offer. "One night," he remembers, "the Assembly Hall would be full of AIDS activists." On the next there would be gay men and lesbians in suits heading up to the third floor for a business networking group. He saw gay couples with their kids having fun at birthday parties, gay seniors chatting and telling jokes in the garden, gay teens working on theater performances. "There was even a library," he exults.

"I felt like a whole new world was opening up for me. Something special always seemed to be happening at the Center. Instead of going to the bars, I started going to Center dances, meeting people, having real conversations. I knew I wanted to be part of all this. There were hundreds of gay men and lesbians, people of every color, age and economic situation working on healing themselves, doing business, fighting for our rights, having fun. Where else in New York could I find this?"

Richard Wandel, the Center's archivist, tells how copies of the original GAY, America's first gay weekly newspaper, are carefully stored in the Center's stacks. The Center advertises a National Museum of Lesbian and Gay History.

On May 15, to emphasize its commitment to historic research, the Center will celebrate 100 years of Gay Activism in Germany. The Goethe Institut, co-sponsoring an historic exhibit, will take part in celebrating the birth of The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee which, in May, 1897, petitioned the German government to repeal Paragraph 175, a law prohibiting homosexuality among men. The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was co-founded by a gay psychiatrist, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, making it one of the first modern homosexual organizations.

On May 13, Urvashi Vaid, a prominent activist and author, a former co-chair of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, will speak at the Center's Second Tuesday lecture series. Currently, the Center serves as a nerve center promoting the Boston- New York AIDS Ride, an event expected to attract as many as 3,000 cyclists.

"Wanna take in Lesbian Movie Night?" asks a Center volunteer, "or would you rather go to our May 10 dance fest?"

At present, the Center's membership is longing for a spacious new lobby, modern corridors, and more accessible bathrooms that serve its aging building, located at 208 West 13th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011. A larger auditorium is also needed. Donors, who wish to contribute to the renovation project will help replace an antiquated, coal-burning furnace with an efficient oil and gas furnace, to upgrade plumbing and install a sprinkler system, rewire the building's electrical system and remove asbestos from the Center's basement. Gifts may be made to honor living persons or may be made in memory of those who have passed away. For more information, or to become a Center member from any location, interested parties may call (212) 620-7310, or write The Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center at the aforementioned address.