April 7, 2020

With the quarantine happening with no end in sight, people in the queer community have been connecting online with digital drag shows, live streaming things from yoga to drag queen story hour.

Well Phreak N Queer and William Way Community Center has decided to bring the ultimate community experience - DIGITAL PHREAK N QUEER FESTIVAL - that no one has ever experienced before.

WANT TO CONTRIBUTE? FILL OUT THIS FORM BY APRIL 9!

We will present a two to three day telethon style digital experience that fuses all things queer. We are looking for EVERYONE to contribute content, from yoga instructors, performers (drag, burlesque, dance, pole, etc), poets, singers, musicians, knitters, designers, holistic teachers, activists, motivational speakers, and beyond! A portion of proceeds will go to William Way Community Center! QTPOC to the front! Deadline for all proposals April 9th 2020 with a separate deadline for your videos upon admission to participate.

What's ahead:

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Speaking Out for Equality is an online exhibit produced by the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives that tells the courageous story of LGBT civil rights in the courts and in the streets.

Thurs. 4/9, 12pm
Facebook livestream & https://zoom.us/j/626049072

Drawn from presentations given at Lavender Law, the Keystone Conference, Duke Law School and at other educational and legal profession venues, this discussion will focus on the long history of institutional repression of trans men and women that largely rendered them invisible and how, in a short span of years, trans men and women have begun to emerge from the shadows and to live public lives.

Maryellen Madden is a commercial litigation attorney at the Philadelphia law firm of Montgomery McCracken and has litigated cases in 22 states, as well as before domestic and international arbitration panels, special masters, administrative agencies and industry self-regulatory organizations. In addition, she serves or has served as a director of the William Way LGBT Support Center, the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Reading Terminal Market, as well as being a Commissioner of the Pennsylvania Commission on LGBT Affairs.

Mon. 4/13, 12pm
Facebook livestream & https://zoom.us/j/626049072

Started by Dr. Adrienne Shaw in 2015, the LGBTQ Game Archive strives to document all known instances of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer content in digital games from the 1980s to present. As of Spring 2020 the master list for the project lists over 1200 games. This project also served as the underlying basis for Rainbow Arcade, the world’s first exhibit of LGBTQ video game history hosted by the Schwules Museum in Germany. In this presentation, Shaw discusses the archive and the exhibit, what we know about the history of LGBTQ content in digital games, trends that this research has revealed, as well as the limitations inherent in trying to piece together this recent past.

Bio: Adrienne Shaw is games researcher as well as an Associate Professor in Temple University’s Department of Media Studies and Production and a member of the Lew Klein College of Media and Communication graduate faculty.

Thurs. 4/16, 12pm
Facebook livestream & https://zoom.us/j/626049072

We all felt the ground move beneath our feet when the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Obergefell in 2015, legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. But what did LGBTQ+ folks’ interactions with the law look like before same-sex marriage was even a glimmer on the horizon? In this conversation, we’ll explore a history that often gets overlooked: how LGBTQ+ people and families used the law in creative ways to protect themselves and constitute their relationships long before state or federal recognition of their civil rights. We’ll cover topics ranging from how LGBTQ+ people looked after their partners after their death, sought custody of their shared children, and entered into relationship contracts to establish their unions. The hope is to shed light on the persistence and ingenuity of our community—and to share some gems from the William Way Wilcox Archives along the way.

Erik Lampmann is a queer third-year law student at Penn conducting archival research at William Way

Paul Lisicky & Carter Sickels

Thursday, 4/9, 6:30-7:30pm
RSVP on Facebook
Attend on Zoom

Paul Lisicky is the author of five books, including The Narrow Door (a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection). He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts, among others. He teaches in the MFA program at Rutgers University-Camden and lives in Brooklyn.

Carter Sickels is the author of the novel The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury), a Finalist for the 2013 Oregon Book Award and the Lambda Literary Debut Fiction Award. He is the recipient of the 2013 Lambda Literary Emerging Writer Award, a project grant from Oregon’s RACC, and an NEA Fellowship to the Hambidge Center for the Arts. He’s been awarded fellowships or scholarships to Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the MacDowell Colony. He is the editor of the anthology Untangling the Knot: Queer Voices on Marriage, Relationships, and Identity. Carter has taught in Low-Residency MFA programs at Eastern Oregon University and West Virginia Wesleyan College.

Voting from Home

Hey Way Gay, we might be quarantined but our democracy isn’t. Make your voice heard. Exercise your civic duty now by registering to vote online. Then apply for a mail-in ballot so you can vote remotely, without having to go to your polling place. No reasons needed. No questions asked

Raise Your Voice for LGBTQ Health

We are a part of a coalition collecting data for the 2020 PA LGBTQ Needs Assessment. If you identify as LGBTQ and live in PA, we are asking YOU to take the time to raise your voice for LGBTQ health and be entered in a raffle to win a gift card now at http://bit.ly/2020PANA_E. (People can also participate through a Spanish language version here: http://bit.ly/2020PANA_S.) Every person who takes the survey will be helping the PA department of health learn more about how to promote the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ Pennsylvanians.