Rochester Rainbow Union

10/11/2026

Happy National Coming Out Day from the Rochester Rainbow Union! Stop by the Lilac Library before 4 PM today for some cake if you're around! 🎉🎂🏳️‍🌈

10/09/2026

Happy Friday Rochester Rainbow Union friends and family!

Apologies for the pause in our Friday emails, my day job at the Rochester Victory Alliance has kept me busy as we prepare to launch an exciting new generation of studies!

First, The Empty Closet team is hard at work preparing the Fall edition! We’re ensuring that the EC is financially sustainable through personals ($15 for a personal of 150 characters or less) and sponsored promotions. The personals make me think of the newspapers I read as a younger Q***r man!

We had a board retreat this week in lieu of our regular meeting. For the longest time we were in sink or swim mode; now that we are financially sustainable we decided to take the time and plan for the future. We mapped out our organization’s services, identified community needs, areas we currently support, and ways of enhancing our impact. We are still digesting our tome of notes, but we came away with some exciting ideas, such as identifying a theme to focus on each year as we grow our programming and community presence.

In other internal news, we finally have a candidate for a new treasurer. They have Quickbooks experience and are working with our current Treasurer Mary to get up to speed.

Yours in Pride

Andrew Moran
President
[email protected]

P.S. Please help spread the word about SewGreen Rochester’s “Fit to Be You monthly” mending and alteration workshop! We’re excited to partner with them in getting assistance with clothes mending, repair, hemming, and alterations! They’ll have volunteers and equipment available to assist on the first Monday of the month through May 3rd.

10/08/2026

"The future of four large research networks that test vaccines and treatments for H.I.V., tuberculosis and emerging infectious diseases is in limbo after weeks of delays from the Trump administration in launching the process to renew their funding."

Disclosure: Andrew Moran, President of the Rochester Rainbow Union, is an employee of the Rochester Victory Alliance, part of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network and Advancing Clinical Trials Globally networks at URMC

The networks also develop treatments and preventions for other infectious diseases and were instrumental in testing the Covid vaccine.

10/08/2026

Place a classified ad in the Empty Closet for $15! 📰

For $15 you can have your ad in print in the next volume of The Empty Closet. Looking for a new band member? Trying to join a carpool? Selling art commissions? Want to publish your haiku? Write 125 characters to tell the Rochester Community about whatever you want. Find the link in comments for more information.

Personals (or classifieds) are available for individual use. For businesses or organizations interested in sponsoring a spot in The Empty Closet, please email [email protected]

10/07/2026

Join us on Wednesday, October 28th at the Lilac Library for our first Very Gay Book Club! 📖🏳️‍🌈

For October, we will be reading the award winning horror novel, "Bury Your G**s" by Chuck Tingle!

Please sign up using this form to let us know if you'll be there! https://forms.gle/MyQCif4hbWep43Kk8

09/21/2026

Join us this Saturday for Story Time at the Lilac Library! All ages are welcome for stories, songs, and snacks, and you'll be able to check out our children's book section while you're here! 📖🧸

09/21/2026

Happy Monday Roc Rainbow Union friends and family! Apologies for the delay, it’s been a busy workweek.

Last Tuesday we had our quarterly LGBTQ+ community council meeting with over 30 attendees representing dozens of LGBTQ+ and LGBTQ+ serving groups! Lex from the Gandhi Institute led a great Pride season feedback and recap which generated some great discussion. We talked about what we celebrated from Pride, what we can work on, and generated some great ideas for the future! We also had some great conversations about the future direction of the AIDS Memorial Garden, local health research, Trillium’s Trailblazer program, Sewgreen’s “Fit to be you Grant” for alteration/mending workshops for the LGBTQ+ community, upcoming productions of “Boys in the Band,” NGMT’s community needs assessment, LGBTQ+ sexual assault survivor programs, and much more. We haven’t yet planned out dates for 2027 council meetings so stay tuned!

Going back to SewGreen Rochester, we’re excited to partner with them for their monthly mending and alteration workshops running from October 5th to May 3rd on the first Monday of the month. From 5:30-7:30 Sewgreen volunteers will help with sewing basics, hemming, alterations, creative stitching, and mending. We’ll have location information soon.

Finally, we’re excitedly preparing for our board retreat in October. Now that we are financially sustainable we finally have a chance to do some organizational and strategic planning. We’ll be putting governance structures into place to ensure that the Rainbow Union’s organizational capacity grows strong, especially as we work to transition in the next generation of our leadership.

Yours in Pride,

Andrew Moran
President
[email protected]

09/18/2026

Apologies, our weekly update will be delayed until Monday