Carl Siciliano On LGBT Teen Suicides

At the Ali Forney Center's annual fundraising dinner on Thursday, executive director Carl Siciliano spoke passionately about the recent rash of LGBT youth suicides and the mission of his organization to create safe spaces for queer kids attempting to escape hopeless (and often brutal) home situations. Watch this.

After his speech, Carl dropped a bit of a bombshell. Last year the single largest private donation to the Ali Forney Center came from the estate of Bea Arthur. Which we knew about. But the second largest amount of private donations came from the readers of JMG via fundraising requests made on this here website thingy. Amazing. Thank you. Immediately after Carl made that revelation, I then had to come up and give my acceptance speech for the Ali Forney Center Advocate Award. Talk about verklempt! Was not ready for that news. The photo below is by Gustavo Monroy, check out his gallery from the evening. Lots of handsome men within, some of whom you'll recognize from a certain brand-new gay reality show.