News Archive (2009)

DignityUSA, the nation’s foremost organization of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholics and our friends and families, expressed profound disappointment with California’s Supreme Court decision that upheld Proposition 8’s ban on marriage between gay and lesbian couples. However, the group noted that the Court’s allowing the 18,000-plus same-sex marriages that occurred before the ban took effect to stand was a sign of hope.

Let me tell you about the Parc55 Hotel — site of our 2009 convention! I just spent a weekend there for our April Board meeting. I took Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) from the San Francisco Airport to the Powell Street Station, San Francisco …about a 30-minute ride. BART was a pleasure to ride. It reminded me of Washington, DC’s METRO. When you come out of the Powell Street Station, the Parc 55 Hotel is looming above you! The Hotel has just been renovated from top to bottom. The hotel room was spacious, although storage is scarce.

A scholarship took me from my native Denver to the nation’s capital to start college. I will never forget my first August day in Washington, D.C. It was 98 degrees with 97% humidity. I had never experienced heat like that. I had spent the previous 18 years of my life living in a white,working class suburb of semi-arid Denver, Colorado. “Hot” there seemed downright comfortable compared to the sultry hot of D.C. I landed at National Airport after nightfall. I remember the sights from the taxi. Long blocks of houses all attached to each other. I had never seen that.

With 60 daytime temperatures in Denver the weekend of January 28, 2008 to February 1, 2009, you’d expect that most people would be outside enjoying the promise of spring. However, over 2,500 people spent those glorious days in hotel meeting rooms, immersed in skill-building sessions designed to help them take their place as leaders of the LGBTQ movement in the years to come.