GULFPORT, Fla. – On Thursday May 14 the Gulfport Library hosted a program entitled “Sunshine and Rainbows” focusing on issues of LGBTQ law with a special emphasis on legal issues surrounding marriage. The program is part of a series of events hosted by the library as it prepares to reopen after weeks of renovation. A main reason for the work was to make room for over a thousand new pieces of fiction and nonfiction work in the facility’s new LGBTQ Resource Center.
“It is the only center of its kind at a public library in the state of Florida and we’re pretty proud of that” said Dave Mather, director of the library. “We’ve had great support putting this collection together. Given the makeup of our community with such a strong LGBTQ presence it only seemed appropriate that we should house such a great collection.” About a third of Gulfport’s 13,000 residents identify as being LGBTQ. Mather pointed out that the library tries to be responsive to the other needs of the Gulfport community as well. He notes the facility has a larger than usual collection of art literature serving the strong artisan presence in Gulfport.
Jerry Notaro is a professor emeritus at the University of South Florida library and learned that Gulfport was assembling the collection through an article in Watermark. He reached out to the city committee in charge of putting the collection together and, while he is not a Gulfport resident, when the city committee learned of his experience they asked him to be part of the efforts. Notaro was an early board member of St. Pete Pride and single handily gathered memorabilia, documents and other important historical artifacts from Pride’s inception in 2003 and throughout the early days in the beginning of the 2000s. The materials are now part of an official historical collection housed at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg Campus library.
“For the Gulfport library we are using a list that is put out by the American Library Association on what literature should be included in an LGBTQ Resource Center,” said Notaro. “As we continue to grow this collection we will be using this as a resource and guide as to what materials we already have and what we still need to add.”
The program on May 14 was conducted by Elizabeth Barnes, a family law attorney who specializes in LGBT issues. Her presentation covered a wide range of issues surrounding marriage, which is a relatively new field brought with the coming of marriage equality in Florida this past January.
“One important thing for people to remember is that there is no such thing as ‘gay marriage’ or ‘straight marriage’, said Barnes. “Marriage is marriage and most importantly it is a legally binding contract between two people. In our excitement to finally get marriage equality I’m seeing people who haven’t really thought that through. That contact can have implications from insurance issues to raising children. It’s really important for two people to fully consider what they are getting into when they get married. It’s something the gay community in Florida has never had to consider before.”
Barnes continued by saying that marriage can have all sorts of unexpected good implications for gay couples too.
“For instance after my wife and I got married we called our insurance agent and were pleasantly surprised to find that our car insurance rates went down. It was a savings we hadn’t expected and I urge every newly married gay couple in Florida to check out those kinds of things. You may be happy to discover there are all sorts of benefits that you may not have even considered.”
She mentions that unfortunately along with gay marriage can come gay divorce, an issue which has had some unexpected hurdles in some rural parts of Florida which has not been as accepting of marriage equality even though it is the law of the land now.
“We’ve seen some judges say that the court ruling only applied to marriage and not to divorce,” said Barnes “Honestly, all they are trying to do is make things difficult for gay people because of their personal biases. If you are going through a divorce I’d highly recommend using courts in more urban areas like Pinellas, Hillsborough or Orlando where we haven’t seen these kinds of problems.”
Barnes also covered issues surrounding the changing legal perspectives on gay adoption in Florida. These issues can be complicated and lead to interesting outcomes. For instance she mentioned a case in south Florida where two lesbians had a child using a male surrogate friend who they wanted to be part of the child’s life. The biological mother is legally married to her wife and they wanted all of them to be a family in the eyes of the law. Eventually the baby had three parents listed on her birth certificate, the mother, her wife and the biological father.
Resources from Barnes office will be included in the LGBTQ Resource materials.
The Resource Center began with a large donation of lesbian fiction by Phyllis Plotnik. Many may remember Plotnick from the women’s festival she founded in Gulfport which helped to raise money for the health needs of gay women. From there a city committee which supports the library became interested in building a true resource center for the gay community at the library. That group started soliciting donations from the community and were pleasantly surprised at the overwhelming support they got. The library’s “Circle of Friends”, who helps with fund raising, donations and support for the library became involved and according to Mather have been very enthusiastic about the project. He says support, including financial resources for purchasing new material, has been strong from the City itself. Not surprising in a gay friendly city like Gulfport Mather says there has been no backlash or concerns expressed by the community.
The expanding group of supporters discovered that the Stonewall Museum in Ft. Lauderdale was receiving more donations of gay literature than they could handle. Members like Daniel Hodge and Roger Turner made several treks to south Florida and brought back literally hundreds of volumes from that archive. Mather says the relationship with the Museum is an ongoing one and they expect continued donations from that facility will swell the Resource Center even more. He says donations from the community are still welcome as well.
In addition to the print versions, much of the material in the LGBTQ Resource Center will also be available online. Mather says they are even beginning to collect gay themed DVDs and hope that as the Resource Center expands these will become an important part of the collection as well.
The ribbon cutting took place at 3 pm on Tuesday, May 18.
