Health department officials suggest that anyone who isn't sure whether or not they'll test positive, should come in. The process is simple and involves a mouth swab or a finger prick and 30 minutes later your results are in.

For free testing days and locations, visit the Gay Fresno calendar. The County of Fresno also has listings.

Gay Fresno's Pride Month Winners & Special Thanks to our Sponsors:

Fresno Reel Pride Film Festival
VIP membership pass, two available

Nathan G (1)
Olivia V (1)

Michael Craghead Stables
Certificate for 3 riding lessons

Lydia M

Ficarra Studios
Certificate for Studio Session & 8x10 portrait

Crissy M

Starbucks - Tower district
Tumbler, bag of coffee beans, two starbucks via coffee bags

Jonathan W

Amenities Day Spa & Salon Fig Garden
Certificate for Spa & Salon

Herbert K

Creme de la Cake
One dozen cupcakes

Maria R

Chase Flowers
Certificate for Flowers, valued at $50

Sandra S

RWF Company 
2 sets of three shot/dessert glasses

Apple Lee T

Martini Glass Set
Ashley L

Perfect Blend Fine Cigars 
Two certificates for $20 each

Lathan F (1)
Luna (1)

Richie’s Pizza & Hotdogs 
4 pizza slice coupons

Vicki

It is with regret that Gay Central Valley announces our ceasing operations of the Merced LGBT Community Center. Daily operations will end today, July 1st 2015. We are are seeking someone else to take over the project and keep the Merced LGBT Community Center alive.

The Merced LGBT Center was opened in the fall of 2014. Gay Central Valley entered into an agreement with Merced Full Spectrum, an existing LGBT organization in Merced, to oversee and operate the Community Center.

Gay Central Valley worked with Merced Full Spectrum for over a year before the Merced LGBT Community Center opened. Our goal was to build the foundation of Merced Full Spectrum so that a local group in Merced would be behind the operations of the Center while Gay Central Valley would stand as the nonprofit organization and financial manager of the space. Gay Central Valley's goal, from the beginning, was to get behind Merced and provide the structural foundation to support the local efforts to open, operate and sustain an LGBT Community Center.

Unfortunately, after opening the LGBT Center in Merced, the team we had in place in Merced began to choose other paths. Many involved in Merced Full Spectrum left to pursue other avenues and the group began to lose its members. Merced Full Spectrum has now closed down it's group completely. This left Gay Central Valley in the unfortunate position of trying to operate the Merced Center from a distance, which was never our intention.

Gay Central Valley has always had the goal of establishing a presence across the Central Valley but only in as much as those in the various communities are the ones to staff and sustain those entities. While Merced has willing and able volunteers staffing the space, daily operations were crippled by a lack of local management.

We are an organization of volunteers. No one who works for Gay Central Valley is paid, including the board of directors. This means that everyone has a "day" job and other obligations. When we are unable to find people that have the ability and the passion to support a daily community center while maintaining other obligations, it becomes difficult to keep the doors open. Additionally, we cannot sign annual leases if we are not supported by financial contributions that can sustain those costs.

That being said, we would like to see the Merced LGBT Community Center survive. We are seeking another organization to take over the space. Our lease ends August 1st and the property management company would like to have another tenant take over the space at that time. Three of the current offices are under sub-leases, which helps with monthly operating expenses. We ask that any other organization that would be willing to step up and take over the funding and daily operations contact us as soon as possible. There may be funding sources still available in Merced should a group step up to take over the project. We can connect you with those sources.

We put our heart and souls into this project and were able to establish the first ever LGBT Community Center in Merced. We are very proud of that. While that may be ending, it also gives us hope. It's important that we maintain and expand our presence of community centers across the Central Valley of California. Marriage equality is not the end of our battle, it's just the next step. We need spaces where those rejected and disenfranchised can walk through the door and know they are acknowledged.

We would like to thank all former members of Merced Full Spectrum and all the volunteers who have kept the center up and running for the last year. Remember, stay visible and active in your community. You are making a difference!

UPDATE 7/8/15: 

Although the US Supreme court ruled in favor of marriage equality, nationwide, some clerks and state's attorney generals have been a little late to get the news...

Data accurate as of 6/30/2015

In a long-sought victory for the gay rights movement, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Constitution guarantees a nationwide right to same-sex marriage.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in the 5 to 4 decision. He was joined by the court’s four more liberal justices.

Justice Kennedy said gay and lesbian couples had a fundamental right to marry.

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family,” he wrote. “In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.”

When marriages begin? Ruling goes into effect immediately. Some states County clerks (not states that already had marriage equality) need time to update forms and procedures.

Read the decision in full

Events in the Central Valley:
Fresno: SCORE Sports Cafe 737 E Olive Ave, Fresno 6pm to 9pm
Bakersfield: Rally at Outback Corner on Stockdale 5-7pm; then PARTY at the Nile Nightclub
Bakersfield: Gay & Lesbian Center of Bakersfield, 902 18th St, 5pm-9pm

Please consider helping us towards the cost of this website and the thousands of text messages we send out with breaking news alerts, these come at a cost to us and we appreciate any level of support you can provide. Thank you.

It is with great sadness that we share the news of beloved community member Ron Wilson's passing. The following was written by Peter Robertson:

My longtime mentor and a dear friend of our community, Ron Wilson, passed away peacefully last night at Hinds Hospice Home. He was 69 years old. I was fortunate and blessed to be by his side at the time.

Multi-millionaire, Franklin Graham, needs a homophobic bank. The bank can allow gay people to bank there but they [the bank] cannot promote the gay lifestyle. His last attempt to find such a bank failed miserably.

Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, who inherited his father’s multi-million dollar religious empire -- recently decided to take his money out of Wells Fargo. His reasoning: he didn’t want to bank at an institution that “publicly advocates through a national TV advertising campaign for [that kind] of lifestyle.” The ad that he is referring to is a national TV ad by Wells Fargo that features a lesbian couple desperately learning sign language so that they can adopt a deaf child. Graham went on to state at a conservative talk show that he was moving his money from Wells to a “good solid bank” called BB&T.

Here is the twist of irony (and karma). Graham, moves his money from Wells Fargo for being a lesbian loving bank to BB&T – not only a “L”esbian loving bank, but also a GBTQ loving bank.

Among the many philanthropic efforts benefiting the LGBTQ community, BB&T is also platinum sponsor for the Miami Gay Pride. They sponsor an organization called Legacy Couples in which they honor couples that have been together 10 years or more. Cynthia Williams, spokeswoman for BB&T, said publically, “Our mission is to help our clients achieve economic success and financial security regardless of their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity…”

BB&T scored an 80 in HRC’s Corporate Equality Index. This index that ranks businesses on their LGBTQ employee business practices.

This is where Graham needs your help my, LGBTQ, brothers and sisters. Where is he and his ilk going to put their money? There are over 197 banks and or their subsidiaries that have an 80 or higher HRC rating. AND if he is true to his word and wants to extinguish all things with a “gay” agenda he might need to start developing a new social media outlet. Facebook and Twitter are WAY to gay friendly and progressive for them. Then there are those computers that they must use to calculate their millions. The problem here is Microsoft has a 100 percent rating and Apple not only has a 100 percent rating it also has one of them gayzzzz running the company.  HOLY CRAP! What are they going to do about their cell phones that they all undoubtedly have -- Well they can’t go with Verizon or any other major carrier; they too have a 100 percent rating. of course they could go to Virgin Mobile that has a 0 ranking. Oh, poor, poor Franklin, what is a homophobic ass supposed to do?

Maybe, just maybe he could practice what he preaches and understand that like Jesus they shouldn’t judge. Maybe, just maybe they should open their bibles -- for the first time in many cases, and read the book of Matthew. Or better yet they could take an example from the lesbians in the Wells Fargo ad and learn compassion towards another human being that all she wanted was to be loved. I am sure that the deaf girl in the ad didn’t care if that love came from two moms, two dads, a single mom or dad, or a mom and dad.

FRANKLIN GRAHAM, you should be ashamed of yourself. Hopefully someday you will actually open that book that you supposedly preach from and learn about love, grace, and compassion instead of using it to amass millions. Oh and there is a story about that in that book too.  

Our annual tradition of filming the Fresno Pride Parade continues, feel free to watch the entire parade, in 1080p HD video, below:

Share your videos and pictures on our facebook & check out our YouTube for past Pride parades and other event videos.

Love. The most elusive and misunderstood emotion. And the one thing that everyone searches for. But, to quote 80s pop star Howard Jones, what is love anyway? We know its a many splendored thing, but what does that even mean? What else are you splendoring these days? Love permeates every cell and pore of our culture, whether its the promise of love that will come with a set of abs and swollen biceps, the subtext of a commercial for expensive perfume, or the glossy, unbelievable cinematic depictions of romance.

In music, love and its foibles are written about more than any other subject. There are over 3.400 songs with the word love in the title. On my iPod alone, there are 78 of them, and this doesn't even include the songs that are about love. Love is a word for any emotions that connect to strong affection. For example, I love my dog, I love Stephen Amell, I love sushi, I love my family and friends and I’m madly in love with my boyfriend.

These are all valid examples of love but they are all wildly different. The diversity of these meanings combined with the intricate workings of the emotions involved makes love nearly impossible to define. We use the word love so loosely when speaking that it's focus and power becomes diluted. Saying that you love this season of Mad Men and saying that you love your mom are two completely different things, right? But the word is still the same. For the sake of this column, however, we are going to deal strictly with the simplest example: romantic love.

Read more: Pecs and the City

The Maids
Playing until November 8th at Dennis & Cheryl Woods Theater
Fresno State University

Written by Jean Genet 
Directed by Ruth Griffin

Show dates:
Thursday, November 6 at 8:00 PM
Friday, November 7 at 8:00 PM
Saturday, November 8 at 8:00 PM

Whoa… not so fast!

As the celebration of marriage equality winds down our community appears poised to pivot toward, and bring the primary focus of our formidable influence, to the fight for passage of the newly introduced Equality Act, which would provide more comprehensive protections against anti-LGBT discrimination than its predecessor the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).  It may seem the obvious course.  After all, as the saying goes, a gay or lesbian person can get married in the morning and fired in the afternoon…or refused a hotel room, be barred from senior housing, declined service in a restaurant, denied a joint auto loan, etc.  However there is a need more urgent, one literally of life and death–namely homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth.  The time is now that they be not just A priority at long last, but THE top priority moving forward.

Fully 20-40 percent of the approximately 1.5 million homeless youths in America identify as LGBTQ, based on numerous studies.  Over the past almost two decades I have been engaged on this issue these dismal statistics have proven stubbornly resistant to change.  Studies also show that a youth’s LGBTQ identity is often a major contributing factor to becoming homeless, if not the cause altogether.  Once homeless, LGBTQ youth face a myriad of risks, including: suicide, violence, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, prostitution, and substance abuse/dependence.

Greater access to LGBTQ specific and LGBTQ- friendly services, with the necessary competencies and experience, are sorely needed.  There are a number of amazing foundations and service organizations around the country, such as Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors Foundation, the Ali Forney Center in NYC and Larkin Street Youth Services in San Francisco attempting to raise awareness and/or directly address the plight of homelessness among our youth.  Yet these organizations have been de facto charged with the responsibility for addressing a crisis that in scope and scale is far beyond their resources and capabilities.

Read more: We Need To Get Our Priorities In Order