Pride center hires staff
Czechia news, travel
ARTS
6, 10
02
16
23
‘If I Were You’
Up Your Alley
The
www.ebar.com
Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971
Vol. 49 • No. 30 • July 25-31, 2019
Public gets first glimpse of Milk terminal
Meg Elison
Suzanne Ford, left, SF Pride’s treasurer, joined interim Executive Director Fred Lopez at a July 23 news conference.
SF Pride board wants protesters’ charges dropped by Meg Elison
by Matthew S. Bajko
W
alking into the new Harvey Milk Terminal 1 for the first time and seeing the temporary exhibit about its namesake, the first gay person to win elective office in San Francisco and California, was aweinspiring for Oakland resident Maceo Persson.
A queer transgender man who works in the San Francisco Office of Transgender Initiatives, Persson is well aware of Milk’s story and legacy. After winning a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, Milk was tragically gunned down 11 months into his first term. See page 14 >>
S Members of the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, the city’s official band, took part in the free community day at San Francisco International Airport’s Harvey Milk Terminal 1 July 20 to celebrate the first phase of its reopening. Rick Gerharter
an Francisco Pride officials said this week that they want misdemeanor charges dropped against two protesters who were arrested following their alleged involvement in a demonstration that held up last month’s Pride parade for nearly an hour. Reading from a prepared statement at a news conference Tuesday, San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee interim Executive Director Fred Lopez first detailed the incident itself. He acknowledged that the protest was inconveSee page 12 >>
Ex-congressman who sued B.A.R. dies by Meg Elison
W Meg Elison
CDC Director Dr. Robert R. Redfield and Congresswoman Barbara Lee spoke in Oakland Friday.
Lee: AIDS funds coming to E. Bay by Meg Elison
A
lameda County is one of eight in California and 48 in the nation that ranks among those with the highest burden of new HIV infections. Forty-eight counties in the nation ranked poorly enough to make the list for recently-announced federal funding mentioned in President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address outlining a $500 million funding boost for domestic HIV goals. Women Organized to Respond to Life-threatening Diseases, an Oakland organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls affected by HIV, hosted an event Friday, July 19, to discuss how Alameda County-based services can use this funding, and led a short tour of the See page 12 >>
illiam E. Dannemeyer, an arch-conservative former California congressman who advocated quarantining people living with AIDS and once sued the Bay Area Reporter for libel, died July 9. He was 89. The cause of death was complications of dementia, his son told the New York Times. Dannemeyer represented Fullerton, in Orange County, and served seven terms in the House of Representatives. Among LGBTQs and others, he is best remembered for his shocking stances and regressive policies concerning banning abortion, opposing environmentalists, rolling back civil rights protections, declining to tax the rich, and most notably persecuting LGBTQ people and people with AIDS with a ferocity that will define his infamous legacy. Younger voters may not remember a time when Orange County was broadly conservative; a time when affluent white voters loved Ronald Reagan and held on to a red island in their blue state with a wide margin of votes. Dannemeyer won each of his seven elections with at least a 70% margin in neighborhoods that have swung liberal since then, due to demographic shifts and changing social mores on the West Coast. In San Francisco, Dannemeyer drew particular ire for his focused hatred against gays and people living with HIV and AIDS. In 1986, he was the only prominent politician to support convicted fraudster Lyndon LaRouche’s movement to mandate
Rick Gerharter
Former congressman William E. Dannemeyer in 1991
statewide testing for HIV, including tracking of past sexual partners of those infected, full quarantine for those living with the disease, and barring people with AIDS from working in health care. “A staunch anti-gay conservative, in 1986 he was the author of Proposition 109, which was considered far worse than Prop 64, the AIDS quarantine initiative by Lyndon LaRouche two years earlier,” gay former Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken
{ FIRST OF THREE SECTIONS }
Yeager wrote in a Facebook post last week. “Not only would have Prop 109 led to quarantine of HIV/AIDS patients, it would have required doctors to report the names of people they knew or reasonably believed to be infected,” Yeager, now executive director of the BAYMEC Community Foundation, continued. “HIV patients would have been required by law to tell investigators the names of all sexual or drug partners since 1979, and then their past partners would be traced and contacted.” The statewide measure was soundly defeated by a margin of 71% to 29%, according to Wikipedia. In 1989, Dannemeyer read a graphic description on the floor of Congress titled, “What Homosexuals Do,” in order to shock his colleagues into supporting his agenda. The statement describes fisting, rimming, and sex with fruits and vegetables. Hilarious as these extreme antics may seem in retrospect, gay former California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano pointed out to the B.A.R. that this kind of rhetoric put people’s lives at risk. “Oh my god, my boyfriend,” Ammiano mockscreamed when the B.A.R. reached out to him via phone for comment. “You know, when Joan Crawford died first, Bette Davis said, ‘You’re only supposed to speak good of the dead. She’s dead. Good’. That about sums it up where Dannemeyer is concerned,” he said. Ammiano, a former San Francisco supervisor and school board member, also mentioned Dr. Lorraine Day, Dannemeyer’s second wife, who’s See page 12 >>