Renee Baker, Ph.D.EE, LPC

A Story by Renee Baker, Dallas Voice, June 21, 2010.

OUTstanding Amarillo getting set for its annual gay Pride month party; more than 1,000 expected to attend

AMARILLO — Twenty-six years ago this month in Amarillo, a “heartsick” parent wrote to Ann Landers begging for advice about their daughter, who had just come out as a lesbian.

The parent worried, “Did we raise her wrong?” and “Is it our fault that she is like this?”

They found it impossible to welcome their daughter’s gay lover into the family “as if it was normal.”

Landers replied that no one knows for sure why people are gay, whether nature or nurture, but “unless you accept your daughter … you will lose her forever.”

It is 2010 now, and we can only hope that whole family is still together — and perhaps celebrating at PRIDEfest in the Texas Panhandle.

The festival takes place Saturday, June 26, at Amarillo’s Thompson Park.

Cyndy Walton, president of OUTstanding Amarillo, said anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 people are expected to attend.

“The event is about celebrating our pride as LGBT folks,” Walton said, “in the middle of town.”

OUTstanding is the primary nonprofit resource organization for the LGBT community in the Texas Panhandle area and is celebrating its 12th anniversary this year.

Instead of having a parade, the organization hosts a family-oriented picnic complete with volleyball tournament, music, vendors and food booths. The Amarillo Metropolitan Community Church will be serving ice cream and setting up a dunking booth.

Walton said, “This is a time of year that we see folks we don’t see at any other time.”

The Pride event, she says, is affirming for the community, and it allows the community as a whole to get to know the city’s LGBT residents, Walton said.

The festival has taken place for 15 to 20 years, according to board members.

And during that time, Walton said, “We have come a long ways, being out, being present.”

Amanda Blackshear of Dallas was surprised that Amarillo had progressed so far as to have a festival. She lived in the Panhandle from 1975 to 1980 and moved to Dallas so she could be openly gay.

Blackshear reminisced about the gay bars having no signs out front and about having to enter the barsw through the back alley.
“Many Amarillo folks are still not out,” she said of friends she talked to during a recent visit to the Panhandle. “But it is good to know that the younger gays aren’t so closeted.”

Sandra Dunn, a board member for OUTstanding, said she is expecting Mayor Debra McCart to attend the festival. The mayor’s office was not available for comment.

Dunn said she expects the event to be peaceful and that it gives her a chance to get outside and be with others like herself.
Several off-duty police officers will be at the event to ensure everyone’s safety, Dunn said, noting thatRepent Amarillo, a spiritual warfare group, picketed the PRIDEfest in 2009.

“[While] there are a few people in town who like to cause trouble, for the most part, the community is very accepting, and I’m not aware of a lot of discrimination,” she said.

Dunn said the world is not a scary closet and LGBT people have to learn to believe and be true to themselves.
“The hardest thing is to get over that fear,” she said. “If you get over that, it’s not so bad.”

For more information about PRIDEfest, go online to OUTstandingAmarillo.org.

A Story by Renee Baker, Dallas Voice, Mar. 25, 2010

Trans youth Shawn Tripp wants to find a way to help other LGBT youth who are, as he was, homeless

Shawn Tripp is a lucky man. He says so himself. He says he’s a survivor and it’s a miracle that he’s still alive. And you have to believe him.

Tripp is one of those people who seems to turn every curse into a blessing and unknowingly inspire everyone else.

“It’s no big deal,” he says. “It is just life.”

Tripp, born on Independence Day in 1988, is now 21. Four years ago, his parents kicked him out of their home in Hurst for being a lesbian. He now identifies as a transgender man.

With no money and just the shirt on his back, Tripp, like his grandfather before him, set out by train to find a new home. That new home turned out to be the “Harry Hines Bridge” — right next to the Salvation Army on Inwood Road in Dallas, where he might have gotten some help.

Today, Tripp pokes fun at his earlier naivety. “I thought it had something to do with the military, so I never went in there,” he says of the Salvation Army.

The first night Tripp slept under the bridge, he woke up with cold feet. Someone had stolen his shoes and left him theirs. He values shoes so much today that he’s “hoarded” more than 20 pairs of sneakers.

Tripp’s life on the streets began on a cold, rainy September night when his strict father, a rabbi, told him to leave.

His story is not unique. A 2007 report from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found that between 20 and 40 percent of all homeless youth identify as LGBT.

In 2008, a Youth First Texas survey found that 26 percent of youth served by the local agency had been kicked out of their homes due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Tripp says he grew up thinking he was a butch lesbian. He was kicked out of school for kissing girls.

When his parents intercepted a text message from Tripp’s girlfriend, it was the last straw. There would be no lesbians living under the family roof.

He remembers his father screaming, “No child of mine, no child of mine!”

“I was booted out at 17,” Tripp says, “which was actually three years more than my grandfather got” at home. He says his grandfather “got the boot” and was told to “go work like a man” during the Great Depression. He hitched on trains and picked oranges for a living.

When Tripp got kicked out, he walked to Hurst Bell Station and then headed to Dallas by train.

He would be homeless for a year and says he went hungry a lot.

Tripp acknowledges that at 17, he was angry at the world, and too stubborn to admit when he was wrong. But a year on the streets taught him some humility.
“I used to bathe in the creeks,” he says, “and when it rains today, I feel like I’m getting a free shower.”

Tripp lost his mother to a drug overdose when he was just 12, after she’d lost custody of him. It’s still too hard for him to talk about, but he misses her.

When he was 11, the last time he saw her, he recalls that she told him, “Honey, you may not see me for a long time.”  He didn’t know it would be the last time he would see her.

He says she also once told him, “If you were going to be a boy, I was going to name you Shawn.” And so when the time came, he named himself Shawn.

Tripp says he didn’t realize he was transgender until just a few years ago. He had never been exposed to transgenderism until he watched an episode of “The L-Word.”

He says, “When Max came on — a trans guy — this bell goes off in my head, and then, click, ‘Damn, that is me.’”

Tripp spent years beating himself up about being queer. He says his disapproving stepmother called him “stupid, messed up and weird.”

He says his parents tried to give him flowery dresses and makeup to wear, but he refused. Instead, he discovered his dad’s old clothes from the 1980s and wore them instead.

When he was 11, his parents took him to a psychotherapist for being a tomboy. He says he was confused and angry and hated it when people objected to the way he dressed and reprimanded him for not being “girly.”

While he was living on the streets, he was grazed by a stray bullet, and saw it as a result of refusing to fit in. He told himself, “This is what I get for not listening to Mom and Dad.”

Tripp eventually got help from an old family friend, whom he calls “Aunt Sue.” He says she told him he’s a good person and deserves to be loved.

She gave him a fresh start, and he stayed with her in Hurst until he could get a job and pay his own rent.

Other friends pointed Tripp to Youth First Texas, which is situated just down the street from where he once slept. So he bought a bicycle and took the train from Hurst to Dallas, traveling for three hours until he found the LGBT youth center. He is well known now as “that bike-riding guy.”

When Tripp visited the YFT center for the first time, he says he was shocked to find so many outwardly expressing gay youth. He became active in the center’s gender identity group and its writing group. Two of his poems have been published in the YFT Second Anthology Collection.

“I love writing,” he says. “It lets my emotions come out.”

Tripp has bigger dreams now. His year-long experience living on the streets of Dallas has given him a sense of drive and meaning for his life. He now wants to find a way to open a homeless shelter for LGBT youth, so they don’t have go through what we went through.

But that’s not all. With the support of YFT, Tripp completed his GED and is now enrolled at Richland College.

“I want to major in English so I can teach,” he says, “and also minor in small business so I can pursue my dream of starting a homeless shelter.”

Tripp says he wants to fundamentally change “the way people think.”

“We get so caught up in our lives,” he says, “that we don’t appreciate what we have.”

Tripp appreciates the outdoors now. “It brings me back, to remember,” he says, “and I never want to forget where I came from.” He’s a humble young man who feels blessed and grateful because, he says, he knows “what happens to most people” who live on the streets.

Now he just wants to help others find a home and give them the second chance he has found.

For more on this story, see the Dallas Voice.

A Story by Renee Baker, Dallas Voice, Dec. 10, 2009

When family, society reject them for being gay, youth often turn to cutting, using physical pain to cope with distress of coming out

Giancarlo Mossi fell in love with a boy and fell in love with cutting at about the same time.

The more he loved the boy, the more he had to cut. He was ashamed of his sexuality, and cutting took his shame away — or so he once thought.

Most people cringe at the thought of using a razor blade to slice their skin and reveal a letting of blood and a rawness of physical pain.

But the blade was Mossi’s tool of choice because it was more precise. It was more precise than the string he drew back and forth to create a “sawing feeling” on his skin, or the teeth-sharpened plastic pen cap he used crudely in a pinch.

Mossi said he cut because it helped him cope with his feelings. “I liked it because it relieved the emotional pain and I got physical pain instead, and that would eventually go away,” he said.

But when he cut himself to the point the wound would not stop bleeding, Mossi was forced to get help. He went to the Timberlawn Trauma Program in Dallas. But, he said, “I kept being gay a secret.”

According to Dr. Reece Manley, a pastoral counselor in Addison who has worked with cutters, “It can be terrifying to grow up LGBT.”

Manley said that our culture is “passively angry at gay culture and expects [young men] to group up and have girlfriends.”

Indeed, Mossi said his mother rejected him when he was outed while in another treatment for cutting at Green Oaks. She told him, “I disown you.”

Mossi said he really beat himself up for being gay. But eventually a friend led him to Youth First Texas, where he was not only able to get some counseling but also find his passion in singing with the musical group Dallas PUMP, conducted by Jonathan Palant, a YFT board member.

Palant has provided emotional support to Mossi and other cutters at both YFT and as a high school teacher. He said that while he wouldn’t profess to know why any one individual cuts, “One can equate cutting to excessive drug use or alcohol.”

Palant said he believes, in part, that cutters and many LGBT youth are simply not given a chance for a free and healthy form of expression and they are led to some form of coping behavior. He believes that Dallas PUMP provides at least one healthy outlet for them.

Mossi said he found real family and acceptance at YFT and with the PUMP group. He said, “This is the chance to accomplish the dreams I never thought that I would have.”

Mossi, 18, had cut himself more than 100 times before he stopped. He said he now knows that he has people that love him and he would be hurting both them and himself if he were to continue.

“With the emotional pain gone, I just stopped,” he said, adding that he told himself, “I don’t need this anymore.”

While Mossi began cutting at age 15, fellow Dallas PUMP singer David Negrete began when he was just 12 years old. The first time was a suicide attempt.

In contrast to Mossi, who cut to cover up internal emotional pain, Negrete originally cut as “a cry for attention” from his mother.

He said, “My family didn’t react in a way that was appropriate. They tried to scare me out of it, so I did it even more.”

Negrete said what he really wanted was for his mother to come and check on him and be concerned, “but she wasn’t.”

Negrete had come out to his mother at age 11 and he said it really hurt when she couldn’t accept his being gay. After he determined that his mother didn’t care, the motivation for cutting changed for Negrete to one of covering up emotion. He said that cutting was his solution for any unwanted feelings.

Negrete, 20, who cut several times a week, said, “From 13 to 17, it completely took on a life of its own. Any feelings — I would cut. And the cuts got worse and worse.”

Negrete cut in places that are not as visible, but would still cause a lot of pain, such as on his inner thigh and underneath his forearm. To increase the amount of pain, Negrete would use a heated razor blade so he could experience simultaneous burning and cutting sensations.

Other cutting tools that he used included ripped soda cans and broken light bulbs.

Negrete said he was “grounded” by his mother for four years so that he would not be influenced by others to embrace his sexuality. But, he said, “She thought she was doing what was best for me.”

Thanks to counseling and support, Negrete hasn’t had a serious cut in more than two years, though he said he had a single relapse a year ago.

“I see this as a disorder, like a drug,” he said, “and it takes every ounce of will power not to cut.”

He said that his mom is coming around now and they recently went on a double date to the Dallas Symphony together: Negrete and his boyfriend, and his mother and her new boyfriend.

Judith Dumont, director of Youth Services at YFT, said that cutting among LGBT youth at the YFT center is quite common. According to a 2008 YFT study of 100 youth, 56 had at some time in their life previously engaged in some form of self-mutilation. Eleven of those youth were still self-mutilating.

In contrast, according to psychotherapist Steven Levenkron, author of the 2006 revised book “Cutting,” about one in 50 adolescents are engaged in a form of self-hurting.

Dumont said that some cutters cut not to exchange emotional pain for physical pain, but so they can “cry and feel again.”

Negrete agreed: “Sometimes I felt empty and void of feelings, so I cut to feel.”

Dumont also said that cutters often live in a trancelike state and “the action of cutting shocks yourself back into your body.”

She said, too, that many cut their own physical matter to see “if they matter or not.”

“For some,” she said, “as they watch themselves heal physically, they understand how resilient they are as a survivor. It becomes a testament that they can get through what is so painful.”

Dumont said that people often conflate suicidal cutting with self-mutilation, but the two are separate issues. She explained, “While sometimes suicide does accidentally happen while cutting, the motivation for cutting is almost the exact opposite. … Cutters sacrifice a part to preserve the whole of their selves.”

Two things are usually common to all cutters, according to Levenkron. They are an inability to think and a feeling of rage, such as toward a parent, that can’t be expressed. He said one of these two things leads to feelings that the cutter feels must be “drowned out.”

“Whitney,” a queer woman who asked their her real name be withheld began seeing a therapist at age 13, but didn’t start cutting until a year later. The cutting continued for seven years until she was 21. Like Negrete, she said she “used cutting to regulate my emotions.”

She said the cutting took place in a mental middle ground between being planned and being impulsive. “I would see an object and want to use it to self-inflict,” she said.

Manley said that while cutters are aware they have cut, the actual moment they cut is largely unconscious. He said there is a “trigger point” of emotion at which they lose self-control and awareness, and they self-mutilate.

To understand the motivation, Manley said it important to “look at feelings before, during, and after the cut. This will open up a big clue and become a rich sample as to where the desire comes from.”

Whitney, who is now 26 and finishing up a college degree, said her motivations are even still fuzzy to her to this day. But she believes it revolved around feeling lonely, empty and rejected.

She said, “I felt like life was out of control, that I was not understood, and I wasn’t getting what I needed from my parents.”

Whitney, like Negrete, kept her cutting a secret. If she told anyone, then they would take away her coping method. But through therapeutic counseling, Whitney was able to learn that she “was only hurting herself,” and so she no longer continued to cut.

Unlike Negrete and Mossi though, Whitney, who identifies as queer, doesn’t believe that her sexuality has had much impact on her desire to cut. But because she has never been able to come out to her mother, it had played a role.

Whatever the root reason is, Manley said, it is important that the cutter get help from mental health centers such as Timberlawn in Dallas. He said in most cases, “you have to intervene with a cutter. … Cutting can be very serious. It can take your life.”

For more information on Youth First Texas, see YouthFirstTexas.org. For more information on Dr. Reece Manley, see MyHorizons.org.

For more on the story, click the Dallas Voice link.

A Story by Renee Baker, Dallas Voice, Oct. 19, 2009

When Marshall Wayne Lee was at his lowest point and suicide seemed the only way out, Antigone the basset hound gave him something to live for. Now he’s giving back

A few years ago, Marshall Wayne Lee almost took his own life. But he couldn’t go through with it, thanks to the love of the basset hound he rescued, the one he named Antigone Puppleupagus.

This past Sunday, Nov. 15, Lee and Antigone pedaled into Dallas on a cross-country bicycle journey intended to raise awareness about the causes they each now champion — suicide prevention and Basset rescue.

On Oct. 1, Lee — with Antigone in pup-trailer tow — set out on their 2,500-mile journey from Chicago to an undecided location along the Pacific Coast.

“We are not sure where we’ll end up,” Lee said, “but when we see the ocean, we are done bicycling.”

Lee, a gay man with a master’s degree in English, was unemployed three years ago. He sent out hundreds of résumés and, over the course of an eight-month period, didn’t receive a single phone call from a potential employer.

He said, “I was depressed and struggled with suicidal thoughts every day.”

Lee said he was afraid to go to sleep — not because of the bad dreams, but because he was afraid he would have to wake up and see another day.

“It was every day that I had about two seconds after I awoke where I was ok, and then, I would crash,” he said.

He said he would progress to spending the next 15 minutes panicking about unemployment, and then the next two hours making suicidal plans.

As an aspiring writer, Lee said his suicidal thoughts would just keep coming: “Why get out of bed. I’ll never get a job. HR won’t help. I’ll never be published. You should just kill yourself.”

So he devised plan after plan to end his life. But each one fell short.

“I would come up with a scenario of how I would do it, but it would always come back to my dog and who would take care of her,” he said, adding that he had no friends with whom he had daily contact. No one would realize he was missing, so no one would come looking for him, and no one would be there to care for Antigone.

He said, “Nobody would notice I was dead.”

Fortunately, Lee never came up with a suicide plan that would work. And he knew that if he just gave Antigone to his parents, the dog would remind them of their suicidal son.

“I always say she is what saved my life,” he said.

After a year of unemployment, and applying for almost everything from jobs folding T-shirts to jobs requiring a master’s in English, Lee finally found a job as a data entry clerk.

At the end of September of this year, though, he found himself unemployed again. But this time it was by choice.

He took a voluntary layoff with the end goal of relocating and spreading awareness across the country about suicide prevention and basset rescue.

In the last two years, Lee has fostered 13 bassets and he knows how powerful pets can be in our lives.

“Fostering is not just about the dog you are saving, but about the adoptive parent,” he said. “And you don’t know what good you may do for that person.”

One potential adoptive basset parent asked him why a pet owner would give up one of his foster dogs. Lee replied, “I know what Antigone has done for me, and I wouldn’t want someone to miss out on that.”

They said, “Good answer.”

Lee has developed some of the physical endurance he needs for his cross-country ride by participating in the Out of the Darkness Overnight Walkathon, a national fundraiser for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The 20-mile walkathon raised $2 million last year in Chicago for programs designed to understand and prevent suicide.

Lee rides his bicycle anywhere from 8 to 65 miles a day, he said, adding that he averages about 50 miles a day. With at least 1,400 miles to go, he said it will take at least another month to reach his as-yet-undetermined destination.

But Lee, 41, will know his destination when he gets there, and at that point he plans to rent a car and drive on into the Northwest — either Oregon or Washington.

He said his only requirement is that there be gay square dancing in the town he moves to.

He said he is looking for that special place now.

“You can’t be drunk and square dance at the same time,” he said, “and I really don’t like to encourage drinking.”

But Lee does encourage “anyone who is touched by suicide, to do the Out of the Darkness Overnight Walkathon, as it is a healing gift for the walker.”

He said suicide is the 11th-leading cause of death in the nation in general, and it is No. 3 among teenagers. Lee came out at age 19 and he knows it can be difficult.

But it’s not impossible.

“If a teen is out there, struggling with coming out, it’s not worth taking your life for. Know that somebody is there who can help you,” he said.

Lee said LGBT people should trust their families more, and he believes that most of them will come around. He said the ride has transformed his own family.

While Lee is on the phone with his mother, she tells him, “Your father is at it again.” Lee explains that his father has been proudly telling everyone about his son riding across the country for good causes.

Antigone, who is 16, would also like to encourage folks to support the basset rescue cause through the North Texas Basset Rescue in Grapevine.

Her motto is: “Basset rescue is human rescue.” She is maintaining her own bicycle blog at AntigoneBasset.Blogspot.com.

For more information, see the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention online at AFSP.org. Their Hotline number is 1-800-273-TALK begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              1-800-273-TALK      end_of_the_skype_highlighting. The North Texas Basset Hound Rescue is online at BassetRescueDFW.org.

Renee Baker is a licensed orthopedic massage therapist and can be found online at MMTherapeutics.com.

For more on this story, click the Dallas Voice link.

Ethan St. Pierre misses his aunt Deborah Forte everyday, but the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance remains a stark reminder of how Forte was brutally murdered in 1995 because of her gender identity and expression.

“I was called in to identify the body,” St. Pierre recalled to EDGE. “She was unrecognizable.”

November 20 marks the TDOR’s 11th anniversary. And St. Pierre remains passionate about honoring those murdered individuals who identified as transgender.

A man whom Forte met at a bar brought her back to her apartment and stabbed her numerous times. The suspect turned himself into local authorities two weeks after he killed Forte. A judge sentenced him to 15 years in jail, but he has yet to show remorse–and he is up for parole.

“Every bone in her neck was broken,” St. Pierre further recalled.

Gwendolyn Smith founded the TDOR in San Francisco in Nov. 1999 as a way to “memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice.” The vigils have grown in scope to over 200 internationally, and are held in November specifically to coincide with the anniversary of Rita Hester’s murder in her Boston apartment in Nov. 1998.

The exact statistics are not known, but the TDOR database that St. Pierre updates indicates there have been 120 trans murders since last year’s commemorations. St. Pierre added there is approximately one trans murder a month in the United States.

More than 300 domestic trans murders have been recorded since 1970 with 11 recorded so far this year.

California leads in total trans homicides at 57, followed by 36 in New York. Texas and Florida follow with 20 anti-trans murders in each state.

Saint Pierre said he believes the actual numbers of deaths are much higher due to under reporting or misreporting. He added he feels many reports do not include the victim’s gender identity or expression.

“Often times,” he says, “it can be risky to report the victim as transgender because the queer family can be ostracized.”

Saint Pierre further described anti-trans homicides as not just simple murders, but those with a horrid element meant “to obliterate us and make us go away.” He said most victims are tortured or burned before their assailant or assailants kill them. Some are dismembered and decapitated. And others are shot in the face or genitals.

“One woman,” he says, “was branded on her breasts with a hot iron while the aggressor told her that she was not real.”

Saint Pierre added he feels this hatred and rage against trans individuals stems from homophobia. He said some individuals find themselves attracted to trans or gender variant people, can’t accept it, and then want to erase the man or woman to whom they are drawn from existence.

“It is really hard to see the pictures of these beautiful people, so smiling and young,” St. Pierre said as he noted those murder victims to which the TDOR Web site pays tribute. “These are people that should not be forgotten.”

Day of Remembrance vigils will take place on Nov. 20-21 around the country. Below are a list of commemorations that will take place in cities EDGE specifically covers.

The Metropolitan Community Church of Las Vegas (1140 Almond Tree Lane) will hold a vigil on Nov. 20 at 7 p.m. Log onto www.mcclv.com for furthe information.

Two vigils will take place on Nov. 20-21 at 6:30 p.m. at the Chapel at MCC Sunshine Cathedral on 1480 SW Ninth St. in Fort Lauderdale. Log onto www.SunshineCathedral.org for further details.

Chicago’s Center on Halsted will hold a vigil on Nov. 21 at 5:30 p.m.

The city of West Hollywood, Calif., will hold a memorial service and march to Matthew Shepard Square on Nov. 20 at 7 p.m. Log onto www.WeHo.org for further information.

San Francisco’s Congregation Sha’ar Zahav (290 Dolores St) will hold a vigil on Nov. 20 at 7:30 p.m. Log onto www.ShaarZahav.org for more information.

A vigil will take place at Baltimore City Hall on Nov. 20 at 6:30 p.m.

Saint Luke’s and St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church (5 St. Luke’s Road) in Allston, Mass., will host a vigil on Nov. 20 at 7 p.m. Log onto www.ForMinistry.com/usmaecusaslase for more information.

Also log onto www.TransgenderDOR.org for further details about additional vigils and other commemorations.

For more on this story, click the EDGE link.

A Story by Renee Baker, Edge Publications, Oct. 14, 2009.

Buju Banton’s scheduled Oct. 20 concert at the Palm Beach Club in Dallas continues to spark outrage among local LGBT activists.

The Resource Center Dallas and Equality March Texas are calling for immediate action to oppose an upcoming performance of reggae artist Buju Banton at the Palm Beach Club in Deep Ellum on Oct. 20.

The Grammy-nominated Banton was previously scheduled to perform at the House of Blues in Dallas on the same evening he is slated to take the Palm Beach Club stage. The House of Blues cancelled Banton locally as well as in Houston and other venues around the country, but the Palm Beach Club booked Banton.

The Jamaican-born Banton is infamous for continuing to perform his 1992 hit Boom Bye-Bye and its subsequent remixes that appears to advocate violence against gays by burning them “like an old tire wheel.”

Rafael McDonnell, spokesperson for the RCD, urged LGBT North Texans and their allies to contact the Palm Beach Club and ask them to reconsider their decision to invite Banton.

“Be respectful, but ask why they are promoting hate by booking this performer and urge them to cancel the show,” McDonnell said.

Equality March Texas has also called upon the club to cancel the concert by Friday. McDonnell said his organization and Equality Texas met yesterday to determine what, if any, actions they will undertake next week.

Daniel Cates, co-founder of Equality March Texas, added if the Palm Beach Club does not respond by that date, he and other activists will picket. He says that the focus of the activism will be “on the club itself as they have a choice of performers.”

EDGE could not reach Banton for comment, but he met with a group of LGBT activists in Larkspur, Calif., yesterday. San Francisco City Supervisors Bevan Dufty and Eric Mar, LGBT Center executive director Rebecca Rolfe, Andrea Shorter of Equality California and gay activist Michael Petrelis were among those who met with Banton.

“I don’t perform the [Boom Bye Bye] song any more,” Banton said as the San Francisco Examiner reported. “The reality is, I’ve gone past that.”

A spokesperson for the Palm Beach Club stressed to EDGE the establishment and its affiliates “do not condone hate of any kind.” She further echoed the sentiments Banton reportedly made during his meeting with California activists.

“This artist is held up in high regards towards bring people together and sings of peace now in his adult life,” the spokesperson continued. “He has changed his understanding of gays and lesbians.”

In spite of this apparent change of heart, McDonnell said his organization continues to lobby for the cancellation of another scheduled Banton concert in Austin on Oct. 21.

For more on the story, click the EDGE link.