New Group Honors LGBT Culture

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Editor:

I am on a mission to see the rich heritage and culture of our LGBT community reflected in Laguna Beach. To be clear, I am not trying to “bring the gay back.” Rather, I want our LGBT community to be honored; to find our life experiences reflected in the policies, businesses, art, culture and celebrations within our city.

To that end, I have created the LGBT Heritage and Culture Committee, whose mission is to do just that. We are comprised of leaders from City Council, Chamber of Commerce, Visit Laguna, Susi Q and other impassioned members from our business and resident community.

For decades, the LGBT community has had a major role in shaping Laguna Beach with world-class arts, culture and overall quality of life that it is today. That is why I specifically want to honor our senior LGBT community for their enormous contribution to our city. Beyond what our Susi Q Senior Center is already providing as home to the largest LGBT senior citizen club in OC, our seniors deserve to be honored by the city through services, celebrations, art and other acknowledgements.

This is happening in ways you may not even know. The Garden of Peace and Love, the final resting place for scores of residents that died of AIDS, is now being saved from literally falling off the cliff thanks to the incomparable Audrey Prosser. And there’s a new public artist bench that is being designed to reflect LGBT history thanks to a private donation.

Artifacts and stories of our LGBT history are being collected for archives at UC Irvine. Time is running out in collecting many of these stories from an aging population that has lived through the golden years of the Boom Boom Room to the devastation of AIDS.

Yes, time marches on. Our LGBT community is evolving. We still have an HIV/AIDS crisis, with fewer deaths, but now with rising diagnoses among young people. There are fewer gay bars, no longer needed as safety respite, but now more for camaraderie. We have more gay parents with children. We have kids coming out in middle school. We have transgender kids coming out in elementary school. Teachers, parents and kids need resources to respond to these changes. Bravo to our school district administrators for doing a phenomenal job in beginning to address these needs.

I invite the city, artists, businesses, and residents alike to join in seeing our rich LGBT heritage and culture honored and reflected throughout our city as it deserves.

 

Chris Tebbutt, Laguna Beach

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