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St. James' new home
Strike up the band
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ARTS
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'Help Is on the Way XVII'
Arts events
The
www.ebar.com
Since 1971, the newspaper of record for the San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQ community
Vol. 48 • No. 49 • December 6-12, 2018
LGBT seniors grapple with end-of-life issues by Matthew S. Bajko
W
Rick Gerharter
BART director-elect Janice Li, left, smiled as she received a chrome-plated rail spike from BART official Paula Fraser at a reception Monday.
Li feted at SF event
by Cynthia Laird
J
anice Li, who was elected last month to the board that oversees BART, was celebrated at a reception for LGBTQ leaders and allies and said she is ready to get to work. Li is the first queer Asian-American woman elected to the transit board, and one of only two LGBTQ elected women in San Francisco. (The other is City College board member Shanell Williams, a bisexual woman who announced Monday she is running for District 5 supervisor and was at Li’s event.) Li’s District 8 covers the western neighborhoods of the city and includes the Embarcadero, Montgomery, and Balboa Park BART stations. Li, 31, will be sworn into office December 13 and attend her first board meeting December 20. In a brief interview Monday, December 3, in the Bayside Room at Pier 1, Li, who is advocacy director for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, said that she has been consulting with gay BART director Bevan Dufty, who was a key supporter of her campaign. “I’m shifting from hypothetical campaign mode to now having real conversations about 2019 priorities,” she said, adding that she looks forward to working with lesbian BART director Rebecca Saltzman, who represents portions of Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and Lateefah Simon, a straight ally whose district includes portions of Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco counties. Dufty told the gathering that “transportation is the lifeblood of the Bay Area.” “I’m hopeful the next few years will be incredibly positive,” he added, explaining that with the defeat of the gas tax repeal on the November ballot, transit agencies such as BART won’t see vital revenue lost. He praised Saltzman, who was a Bay Area leader in the campaign to defeat Proposition 6. Suzy Loftus, a former San Francisco police commissioner who is now running for district attorney, told the Bay Area Reporter that she worked with Li on Vision Zero, the city’s plan to eliminate traffic deaths, when she was on the police oversight panel. “The strengths she brings to the BART board are that she collaborates,” Loftus said. “She is See page 5 >>
Jane Philomen Cleland
World Tree of Hope on display
T
he Rainbow World Fund held the lighting ceremony for its World Tree of Hope Monday, December 3, at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral and enlisted the help of drag queen Heklina and others to perform at the festive event. RWF Executive
Director Jeff Cotter told the Bay Area Reporter that the ceremony was “really wonderful.” The tree, which is decorated with origami cranes inscribed with messages of hope and peace, will be up through January 5.
h i l e enjoying her seventh decade on the planet, Donna Personna knows her remaining days are numbered. Yet the prospect of her Jane Philomen Cleland demise doesn’t scare her. Playwright Donna “The end ques- Personna tion. ‘The end.’ It’s not a touchy subject for me. I’m irreverent,” said Personna, a transgender woman who grew up in San Jose and now lives in San Francisco. “I have been on the planet for 72 years. I learned long ago this was going to come.” Personna, a beloved drag performer, playwright, and hairdresser, credits her Mexican heritage with teaching her that death is a part of life. She pointed to the annual Dia de los Muertos holiday – the Day of the Dead in early November – as one example of how, from an early age, she was taught to embrace See page 6 >>
Activists recall Briggs initiative
by David-Elijah Nahmod
Y
ears before states voted to ban same-sex marriage, a California ballot measure that would have barred gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools was soundly defeated at the polls, marking one of the first major victories for the LGBT rights movement. Veteran San Francisco LGBT activists recently recalled the defeat of the anti-gay Briggs initiative 40 years ago last month. “40 Years After the Briggs Initiative: Our Power in Speaking Up and Speaking Out,” was recorded for “The Michelle Meow Show” Thursday, November 29, at the Commonwealth Club. The show was co-hosted and moderated by John Zipperer, who manages the Commonwealth Club’s media and editorial departments. Zipperer pointed out that there was a whole generation of LGBTQ people, as well as allies, who have never heard of the Briggs initiative, which was Proposition 6 on the November 1978 ballot. “I grew up in Wisconsin and did not hear about this until the late 1980s, and that set off a number of questions that I’ve looked into over the years,” Zipperer said, as he introduced the panel. Zipperer read a portion of the initiative. “Anyone who is a public school teacher, a teacher’s aide, an administrator, or a counselor could be fired if they were found to have engaged in, quote, public homosexual activity, end quote, and this was defined as homosexual sex which was not discreet and not practiced in private
Rick Gerharter
Former state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, left, made a point during a panel discussion on the 1978 Briggs initiative fight with activist and former police commissioner Gwenn Craig and historian Sue Englander for the Commonwealth Club’s “The Michelle Meow Show” November 29.
whether or not such an act at the time of its commission constituted a crime,” Zipperer said. “And public homosexual conduct, which was defined as the advocating, soliciting, imposing, encouraging, or promoting of public homosexual activity directed at or likely to come to the attention of school children and/or other employees.” Zipperer then turned the discussion over to the panel, each one of whom shared their thoughts and memories of fighting the initiative.
“We were getting very upset at hearing all the homophobia that was attached to teaching and out gay people,” said gay former state assemblyman, San Francisco supervisor, and school board member Tom Ammiano. “The most serious homophobic remarks I heard were not necessarily on the playground but in the teacher’s lounge.” At the time of the Briggs initiative battle, See page 12 >>
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