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Bias suit revived
Pelosi rips up speech
ARTS
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Berlin & Beyond
Adam Roberts
The
www.ebar.com
Serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971
Vol. 50 • No. 6 • February 6-12, 2020
B.A.R. Exclusive:
Gay bathhouses could one day return to San Francisco
by Matthew S. Bajko Keri Vaca
Gay civil rights leader Bayard Rustin
Newsom pardons Bayard Rustin by Cynthia Laird
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overnor Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that he has granted a posthumous pardon to gay, black civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, whose 1953 arrest in Pasadena, California on vagrancy charges led to jail time and inclusion on the sex offender registry. According to the Los Angeles Times, which first reported the story, Newsom said that the pardon for Rustin, who died in 1987 at age 75, was part of a broader clemency initiative that will also look at past convictions of other LGBTs who were prosecuted under discriminatory laws. See page 8 >>
Keri Vaca
New SF Pride Executive Director Fred Lopez
Lopez hired as SF Pride’s new ED
by John Ferrannini
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he board that oversees San Francisco Pride hired its permanent executive director three weeks ago but didn’t announce it until more than two weeks later. The news wasn’t a surprise, as the board named Fred Lopez, previously its interim executive director, as its new permanent leader, according to a news release. Lopez, a gay man who began working with the organization as a contractor in 2016 and became a staff member in 2017, takes the helm of the organization as the parade prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary this June. He started in the role January 15, but the board of San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee, Inc., as it’s formally known, only announced the news January 31. See page 14 >>
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early four decades after they shuttered amid a court fight at the height of the AIDS epidemic, gay bathhouses could return to San Francisco under a policy change being sought by gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman. In an exclusive interview with the Bay Area Reporter, Mandelman said he intends to introduce legislation at the February 11 board meeting that would lay the groundwork for how operators of gay bathhouses could reopen such establishments in the city. It would jettison the long-standing prohibition against having locked doors for private rooms rented by bathhouse patrons and rescind the requirement that such venues hire people to monitor the sexual activities of their customers. “I think it is about putting a bookend on a pretty terrible chapter in the history of the queer community in San Francisco,” said Mandelman. “The restrictions went into place in 1984 as gay men were dying and the public health community was desperate to find ways to slow the spread of the epidemic. And I think since that time many folks in the queer community, many people who were around then,
Jane Philomen Cleland
San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman will propose legislation that would allow the city to have gay bathhouses, like the Steamworks, above, in Berkeley.
felt something had been lost and lamented that now in the era of PrEP these restrictions no longer make great sense.” PrEP, the once-a-day pill that prevents the transmission of HIV, is just one of several effective strategies health officials have in their arsenal nowadays that has led to a dramatic
decline in new HIV infections in San Francisco. For years local health officials have also worked to see that people living with HIV are receiving care and on treatment, as those with undetectable HIV viral loads don’t transmit the virus to their sexual partners. See page 10 >>
Lawyers battle for the gavel in SF, Alameda County judicial races
by John Ferrannini
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ix female attorneys – all straight allies – are competing for the three open judicial seats on the San Francisco Superior Court that are on the March 3 primary ballot. Retiring judges are vacating the seats up for election. In the East Bay, three attorneys – two of whom are LGBT – are also on the March ballot. They are vying for one seat on the Alameda County Superior Court being vacated by Judge Carol Brosnahan, 84, who is retiring after 40 years and who runs the county’s behavioral health court. All of the candidates except one completed questionnaires that the Bay Area Reporter sent them as part of the newspaper’s election coverage.
SF Seat 1
Courtesy Maria Evangelista
Maria Evangelista, a deputy public defender, is running for Superior Court judge seat No. 1 against Pang Ly, a commissioner pro tem for the court. This isn’t Evangelista’s first time running for a seat on the bench. As the Bay Area Reporter previously reported, Evangelista was one of four public defenders who challenged sitting judges on the Superior Court two years ago. The quartet charged that the judges should be voted out of office because they were “Republican appointees.” While Republican governors
CA LIC# 10-0000663 SF LIC# P0001 SR
Judicial candidate Maria Evangelista
appointed them, all four of the judges were registered Democrats. All of the judges won their reelection races. David Campos, a gay man who serves as the chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, said in a phone interview that the local party endorsed Evangelista this time, although it did not in 2018 when she was challenging Judge Curtis Karnow.
Courtesy Pang Ly
Judicial candidate Pang Ly
“When I did consider her last time, I thought this was a very impressive person. But for the fact that she was running against a sitting judge, I would’ve voted to endorse,” Campos, a former San Francisco supervisor, said. “For me this time there was no question we’d give her serious consideration.”
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See page 14 >>
This Valentine’ s Day, give fine cannabis goods to your sweetheart. 3989 17th Street at Market (by the Muni F Market turnaround)