| Gay pride week kicks off Sunday with a blessing
The Jersey City Lesbian and Gay Outreach, Inc. and Grace Church Van Vorst will kick off Jersey City Pride Week Sunday by hosting a ceremonial blessing ceremony for same-sex couples. The Rev. Gregory Perez will conduct the service, which will consist of hymns, songs of praise, scriptural and non-scriptural readings, prayer and a special blessing of relationships. Lesbian and Gay couples, their families and friends are all invited to the blessing. Jersey City Pride Week will culminate with the Jersey City Pride Festival on Aug. 26 from noon to 8 p.m. at Exchange Place. For more information, visit www.jclgo.org or www.gracevanvorst.org or call Grace Van Vorst Church at (201) 659-2211, ext. 4. PATRICK VILLANOVA .
Millionaire to help firefighters
A MILLIONAIRE Christian businessman is to champion the cause of nine firefighters disciplined by their force for refusing to attend a gay pride parade. George Hargreaves, a pop impresario who discovered a string of 1980s acts including Yazz and Five Star as well as penning hits for the disco diva Sinitta, has threatened to take the Strathclyde Fire and Rescue (SFR) service to court. .
'Paper Dolls' cuts below the surface
Like a lot of drag queens, the ones in Tomer Heymann's highly affecting documentary, ``Paper Dolls," don't lead a glamorous life. They've come to a suburb of Tel Aviv from the Philippines and work, mostly, as caregivers to the elderly, some of whom are Orthodox Jews. They do so in their street clothes, as men, and when their weekend shifts end, they change into their costumes (tubby Jan Jan slips into his evening gown in the stairwell of his client's building) and head to a drag show where they perform as an entertainment collective called the Paper Dolls. Heymann's approach to the Dolls -- who, unfortunately, are referred to only by their drag names -- is curious and friendly. He appears in the film, following them to work (the day jobs and the shows) and to a gay pride parade.
Tourism industry seeing a lot of green in pink
As the tourism industry in Canada struggles to maintain ground in the face of high gas prices and U.S. border issues, travel experts are looking to "pink dollars," or money spent by gay and lesbian travelers, as a sure thing. Recent U.S. research shows gay and lesbian travelers represent about 10 per of the overall travel market, but the annual amount spent is estimated at $700 million. This year was also the 20th anniversary of the Pride Week in Ottawa and it's estimated about 300,000 people attended events over the 10-day schedule. It's this combination of spending power and the growing perception of Canada as a gay-friendly country that is making pink dollars a hot commodity. "The numbers prove that the gay/lesbian consumers are one of the most loyal markets and overall less are traveling with children, so they have a larger discretionary income," says R.
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