Week of events celebrates gay community

Penn's LGBT community is painting the campus red with QPenn 2007, Penn's annual celebration of LGBT life at Penn, today.

The week-long event is themed "The RED and The Q," a play on Penn's school colors meant to highlight the LGBT community's presence on campus, said College senior Kellyn Goler, the co-chairwoman of QPenn's planning committee.

"We want to deconstruct the idea that the LGBT community is an 'invisible minority,'" she said. "We want to illustrate that we are active in all facets of life at Penn."

This message is reflected in a number of upcoming events, including a drag show featuring gay and straight student leaders and an appearance by WNBA superstar Sheryl Swoopes, who came out in October 2005.

With Swoopes, "we get the best of both worlds," Goler said. "We will see athletes, the LGBT community and African Americans" at her speech.

College junior Malek Lewis, the chairman of Queer People of Color Task Force and an organizer of the Swoopes event, added that "she is going to be talking about her identity as a lesbian black athlete and her experience coming out."

The "Drag It Out" Benefit, the upcoming drag show, is intended to raise money to fund HIV/AIDS education and research, as well as to spread awareness for gender-related issues.

"The drag show is not so much a statement about the LGBT community as it is a statement about tolerance and respect for transsexuality," said College senior Suhad Babaa, who helped organize the event.

She said there will be 23 performers in the show - about half LGBT students and half straight students.

"We are trying to say that appearance does not matter," Babaa said. "It doesn't matter that I am dressed like a man tonight. I am still Suhad."

The performance will be co-sponsored by various Latino groups on campus who have been combating machismo - the traditionally Latino expectation of being ultra-masculine - within their community, which they say often provokes discrimination against gay Latinos.

QPenn's budget included over $17,000 from various student groups on campus, said Goler, who declined to mention the specific groups that contributed.

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