Support group ‘illumenates’ local gay men

IU graduate student Samuel Buelow said he was standing in a corner at a crowded Uncle Elizabeth’s bar being “anti-social” on a recent Saturday. Someone dressed as a Star Trek-style space cadet, approached him and said, “I think I’m your neighbor.”

Buelow recognized him.

“I think you are,” he replied.

Then the man went into his routine.

“I’m Major Pleasure,” the man said. “I’m an ‘ass’tronaut sent to discover Uranus.”

The semi-unfamiliar man, Bloomington resident Josh Sanders, was trying to recruit members for an up-and-coming community group for gay, bisexual and transgender men aged 18 to 25 called Illumenate. He was also trying to publicize its space-themed launch party the next week.

Buelow was looking to become more involved in the local gay community.

As a female-to-male transsexual who identifies as a gay man, he was having trouble finding a group with which he felt comfortable.

That group just happened to be, almost literally, next door, he said.

Buelow joined Illumenate and quickly became part of the “core group,” which organizes activities.

“It was exciting to find,” Buelow said. “Especially as they reach out to transgender men.”

Illumenate is a social group and community building project, said coordinator Patrick Battani. Its purpose is to have a safe, open forum for young gay men to get the “real information,” on dating and relationships.

It has events such as soda pop socials, movie nights, dances and a book club.

The launch party for the group was April 18 in the Root Cellar on Kirkwood Avenue. The event, like all of the group’s events, was alcohol free. It was space-themed, with different rooms for “research,” or survey taking, a “training video” and a room for a model search for the group’s advertising material.

The video said the mission of the group was to be south-central Indiana’s preeminent social group. It also said it would provide information “from finding a man to keeping a man.”

Despite the outreach efforts its current members have undertaken, only a few people interested in joining the group showed up. One was graduate student Michael Young. Sanders found him at a costume shop looking for something to wear to an amateur drag contest.

“It’s important to have a community,” Young said. “Students have a lot on their minds.”

Illumenate is run through HIV/AIDS care coordination group Positive Link and Bloomington Hospital. The organization is modeled after and accredited by the MPowerment project in San Francisco. About 80 similar groups have sprouted across the country since the early 1990s.

Battani said it is a place where gay men can just be themselves, and it’s not just for students or Bloomington residents. The group is also open to gay men from seven Indiana counties — Monroe, Bartholomew, Brown, Greene, Johnson, Lawrence and Owen, he said.

While Battani said Bloomington is the fourth gayest city in America, the other counties it serves might not be so open. Bloomington is a central location — people can come to the city for the meetings, and their friends and family won’t know they’re going to some “gay thing,” he said.

And, when they go, they might meet people from their own communities.

“A lot of times, gay and bisexual men don’t know they have a community in their area,” Battani said.