➤ COOK & COHEN, from p.22
or event money might face challenges.
In the last month, we’ve
had donors reach out to us and
say, ‘I want to give you my donation
early.’”
The Task Force has not laid off
any staff and is heavily focused on
campaigns like the coalition Queer
the Census to get people to fi ll out
their Census forms.
“We had planned a whole doorto
door grassroots outreach and
now we’ve moved to virtual, social
media, paid media to get our community
counted,” Carey said. “Every
single organization I know of is
assessing what the future is going
to look like, and there is tremendous
uncertainty.”
Still, the Task Force and the
American Civil Liberties Union are
convening planning calls about the
Title VII employment nondiscrimination
cases that the Supreme
Court is expected to rule on soon,
determining whether discrimination
based on sexual orientation
and gender identity are covered
under the protections for sex in the
Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“We’re also focused on Queer the
Vote,” Carey said of the impending
fall election campaign. “COVID is
revealing the massive disparities
for LGBTQ people.”
The Task Force has a guide to
Planned Giving on its website.
Kelsey Louie, CEO of GMHC,
said, “We’re doing fi ne — able to
quickly transition to providing
most of our services remotely including
counseling, legal, nutrition,
and workforce” programs.
“We can’t do HIV testing,” he
said, “but we’re providing hometesting
kits and found a way to do
groups.”
With a budget of $27 million,
however, Louie acknowledged he
is “concerned about fundraising,”
noting there are “so many additional
expenses trying to cope with
COVID-19. Many of our donors face
job loss and we rely on so many
smaller gifts. But our community
has a history and tradition of giving,”
going back to GMHC’s founding
in 1981.
GMHC has a Legacy Society to
encourage bequests but also “to
educate people on the importance
of having your legal documents in
order,” Louie said.
Veteran trusts and estates attorney
Judith Turkel of Turkel Forman
LLP said that when it comes
to getting your legal affairs in order,
“The message is, ‘Don’t be passive,
be active.’ Take responsibility
for your own life and possible illness
and death planning. Don’t sit
back and do nothing because the
default can be devastating. Your
legally identifi ed ‘next of kin’ will
be making your decisions and that
could be an estranged cousin, sibling,
or parents.”
Turkel started her practice in
1983 “when our community was
devastated by AIDS.” But, she
noted, “at least then lawyers could
go in t hospitals and homes” to get
fi nal documents drawn up and
properly witnessed. “Now — with
social distancing — it is cumbersome
with virtual notarization,
virtual witnessing, and virtual will
execution but not impossible.”
She recommends that everyone
have a will, a health care proxy,
a living will regarding end-of-life
care decisions, HIPAA authorization,
designation of a guardian,
priority visitation, appointment of
an agent to control remains, and a
trusted person given durable power
of attorney. There are additional
documents needed for parents
with minor children, including
guardian and standby guardian
designations.
Turkel said that in the absence
of a will, you can designate benefi -
ciaries for your bank, brokerage,
life insurance, and retirement accounts
either online or with your
banker or broker — and that those
benefi ciaries can be individuals
or charitable organizations. Those
assets then pass to the benefi ciaries
outside your will without going
through probate.
“Passing on real estate is the
challenge,” she said. “Generally,
you can’t change ownership without
a lawyer.”
A will is valid in New York if it is
signed in the presence of two witnesses
who also sign and date it
and may not be your executor, legal
heir, or a benefi ciary of the will
— in fact, no benefi ciary can be in
the room.Doing this without a lawyer
or at least a notary is far from
ideal, but it can be valid.
Turkel recommended a guide
available from the state attorney
general’s offi ce on making advance
directives for your health care. She
also urged pet owners to make
provisions for them — as outlined
by Manhattan’s Animal Medical
Center — if you have a medical
emergency.
New Alternatives for Homeless
LGBTQ Youth, where I’m on the
board, was not a benefi ciary of the
Cohen-Cook estates but is adjusting
to the challenges for its extremely
challenged clients.
“Case management and therapy
are online, but our clients don’t
have great access to the technology
for groups,” explained executive director
Kate Barnhart. “The Sisters
of Perpetual Indulgence are making
phone calls to them from all
over the country. We’re now providing
hot meals daily as opposed to
just Sundays and once during the
week that are packed to go from
the church” — Metro Baptist at 410
West 40th Street, where the group
is headquartered — “or delivered
to the homebound. We’ve doubled
our food budget and had to pay
infl ated prices for PPE supplies to
protect the clients and staff.”
Barnhart added, “We also handing
out masks for clients and hygiene
supplies.”
Some New Alternatives clients
are in the shelter system — where
one contracted COVID-19 —and
others are in youth shelters, on the
street, or sleeping on trains. Six
clients have been diagnosed with
symptoms, which is rare for this
age group but not for the homeless.
Barnhart has been fi ghting to get
the City’s Department of Homeless
Services, which typically does not
serve non-adults, to get them into
isolation beds in hotel room like
the Comfort Inn. The Department
of Youth and Community Development,
which is the agency that
serves homeless youth, “don’t even
have their isolation units open yet,”
she explained.
New Alternatives is losing the
revenue from a variety of small
events that had to be canceled.
“We’ve gotten some COVID money
from groups like the Stonewall
Foundation and Cheer NY, the gay
cheerleaders,” she said.
Cohen and Cook met in 1961
and lived together as a couple long
before Stonewall at a time when
most gay people still felt the need
to either marry different-sex partners
or live very discretely alone
even if they were dating people of
the same sex. In that fi rst decade
together, they became friends with
Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer, who
would go on to make marriage
equality history at the Supreme
Court in 2013, when Windsor’s suit
claiming federal rights for samesex
married couples prevailed in
her challenge to inheritances taxes
levied on her after Spyer’s death.
Cohen and Cook’s active gay
social life included having a summer
cottage in Amagansett at a
time when such pleasures were
still affordable for middle class
people. When they bought a threebedroom
co-op in the Majestic on
Central Park West in 1980, they
had to borrow heavily to close the
$200,000 sale. Their estates ended
up being in the millions because of
the galloping prices of real estate
in New York and in the Hamptons.
The men were very active in Long
Island’s East End Gay Organization
(EEGO), hosting the group’s annual
Memorial Day Weekend party
at their place. And when AIDS
hit in 1981, EEGO raised some of
the fi rst big money for GMHC and
other AIDS groups at a time when
there wasn’t much of a tradition of
philanthropy in the community.
While there were a handful of
groups with paid staff in those
days, most organizations were
strictly grassroots and were funded
by passing the hat. Lambda and
the Task Force got started in 1973,
SAGE in ’79, GMHC in ’81, and the
Center in ’83. Larry Kramer famously
went to Fire Island with a
tin can and raised a total of about
$60 standing on the pier right after
founding GMHC.
Herbert Cohen and Daniel Cook
were grateful to the LGBTQ movement
that allowed them to live
more and more openly and to gain
more and more civil rights protections.
They went to Massachusetts
to marry in 2008 (before New York
made it possible) to protect each
other. They gave back through
their activism and donations during
their long lives. At Cohen’s funeral,
Urvashi Vaid, a former Task
Force executive director, told me, “I
cherished Herb’s optimism, dishiness,
and total honesty. He always
told me the truth and was unbelievably
positive.”
Cohen and Cook’s activism
was born in the AIDS crisis. They
worked out their choices of benefi -
ciaries together and ended up bestowing
them during a new kind of
catastrophe.
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