The Billy DeFrank Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center is a non-profit organization that promotes services for and about the gay community of San Jose, California and Santa Clara County. It started on March 3, 1981. The mission statement of the DeFrank Center is to "provide Community, Leadership, Advocacy, Support, and Services to Silicon Valley’s LGBT people and allies."
The DeFrank Center is named after Billy DeFrank, the stage name of William Price (1936–1980), an African-American and prominent 1970s gay rights activist and a member of the Bay Area's drag community. The Billy DeFrank Lesbian and Gay Community Center opened on March 1, 1981, in a two-room storefront on Keyes St. in south downtown San Jose, a year after Santa Clara County residents voted to repeal ordinances extending housing and employment protections to lesbians and gay men. The new DeFrank Center emerged from a desire to respond to that setback.
In the three decades that have passed since those modest beginnings on Keyes Street, the DeFrank Center has expanded to serve a large and diverse community. Each month more than a thousand people visit the DeFrank Center at its current headquarters on The Alameda in San Jose's gay-friendly St Leo neighborhood.
From all around the nine counties of the Bay Area, the DeFrank Center provides resources to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people of all ages and backgrounds that are not available elsewhere. Their online newsletter has over 5,000 subscribers. The Center has events, activities, and support groups every week, and they have more than 90 volunteers. They also provide HIV testing and have library and art exhibits.
LGBT is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT community is a loosely defined grouping of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, LGBT organizations, and subcultures, united by a common culture and social movements. These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality. LGBT activists and sociologists see LGBT community-building as a counterweight to heterosexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, sexualism, and conformist pressures that exist in the larger society. The term pride or sometimes gay pride expresses the LGBT community's identity and collective strength; pride parades provide both a prime example of the use and a demonstration of the general meaning of the term. The LGBT community is diverse in political affiliation. Not all people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender consider themselves part of the LGBT community.
LGBT culture is a culture shared by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals. It is sometimes referred to as queer culture, while the term gay culture may be used to mean "LGBT culture" or to refer specifically to homosexual culture.
The Alameda is a historic district of Central San Jose, California, west of Downtown San Jose. The district is centered on an alameda, a historic portion of El Camino Real connecting Downtown San Jose to Mission Santa Clara de Asís, and includes the smaller, surrounding neighborhoods to the north and east, like College Park and St. Leo's.
The San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Celebration, usually known as San Francisco Pride, is a parade and festival held at the end of June each year in San Francisco, California, to celebrate the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and their allies. The 49th annual parade in 2019 included 289 parade contingents, and is described on the official website as "the largest gathering of LGBT people and allies in the nation".
The Los Angeles LGBT Center is a provider of programs and services for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The organization's work spans four categories, including health, social services, housing, and leadership and advocacy. The Center is the largest facility in the world providing services to LGBT people.
OutNow Newsmagazine, also known as ON and ON Magazine was a monthly lifestyle magazine that targeted lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) members of the gay community in the San Francisco Bay Area. OutNow had been published since 1992 from its headquarters in San Jose, California, in the Silicon Valley.
LGBT movements in the United States comprise an interwoven history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and allied movements in the United States of America, beginning in the early 20th century and influential in achieving social progress for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and transsexual people.
The GLBT Historical Society maintains an extensive collection of archival materials, artifacts and graphic arts relating to the history of LGBT people in the United States, with a focus on the LGBT communities of San Francisco and Northern California.
There are various topics in medicine that particularly relate to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. According to the US Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA), besides HIV/AIDS, issues related to LGBT health include breast and cervical cancer, hepatitis, mental health, substance use disorders, alcohol use, tobacco use, depression, access to care for transgender persons, issues surrounding marriage and family recognition, conversion therapy, refusal clause legislation, and laws that are intended to "immunize health care professionals from liability for discriminating against persons of whom they disapprove."
The history of LGBT residents in California, which includes centuries prior to the 20th, has become increasingly visible recently with the successes of the LGBT rights movement. In spite of the strong development of early LGBT villages in the state, pro-LGBT activists in California have campaigned against nearly 170 years of especially harsh prosecutions and punishments toward gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people.
Victoria Kolakowski is an American lawyer, and, since January 2011, judge of the Alameda County Superior Court. Kolakowski is the first openly transgender person to serve as a trial court judge of general jurisdiction in the United States, the first elected to a judgeship, and the first to serve as any type of judge in California..
Youth pride, an extension of the Gay pride and LGBT social movements, promotes equality amongst young members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, and Queer (LGBTIQ+) community. The movement exists in many countries and focuses mainly on festivals and parades, enabling many LGBTIQ+ youth to network, communicate, and celebrate their gender and sexual identities. Youth Pride organizers also point to the value in building community and supporting young people as they are more likely to get gay bashed and bullied. Schools that have a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) handle issues of discrimination and violence against LGBTIQ+ youth better than schools that do not because they help develop community and coping skills and give students a safe-space to get health and safety information. Sometimes the groups avoid labelling young people and instead let them identify themselves on their own terms "when they feel safe".
Horizon Services, Inc. (HSI) is a nonprofit social service organization providing alcohol and drug treatment and recovery, mental health recovery, and substance abuse prevention services in Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. The executive director is Keith Lewis, who has held the position since 1986. Their programs utilize the Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous models, along with other methods of treatment. HSI is based in Hayward, California, which is a source for some of their funding.
This article addresses the history of bisexuality in the United States. It covers this history beginning in 1892, which is when the first English-language use of the word "bisexual" to refer to sexual orientation occurred.
The David Bohnett Foundation is a global private foundation that gives grants to organizations that focus on its core giving areas – primarily Los Angeles area programs and LGBT rights in the United States, as well as leadership initiatives and voter education, gun violence prevention, and animal language research. As of 2021, the foundation has donated over $120 million to nonprofit organizations and initiatives.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in San Francisco is one of the largest and most prominent LGBT communities in the United States, and is one of the most important in the history of American LGBT rights and activism alongside New York City. The city itself has, among its many nicknames, the nicknames "gay capital of the world" and "the gay Mecca", and has been described as "the original 'gay-friendly city'". LGBT culture is also active within companies that are based in Silicon Valley, which is located within the southern San Francisco Bay Area.
Silicon Valley Pride, also known as San Jose Pride, is an annual LGBT pride celebration in San Jose, California, the largest city in Silicon Valley. Founded in 1975, it is organized by the Billy DeFrank Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center.
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