by John Ferrannini
The Yes on Proposition 3 campaign is confident California voters will decide November 5 to remove language prohibiting same-sex marriage from the state constitution. While the campaign lacks the big bucks and involvement of religious leaders that the Proposition 8 fight had 16 years ago, attitudes among voters seem to have shifted toward LGBTQ equality.
See page 10 >>
by John Ferrannini
Darcie Bell, a queer woman, asked where the safest place to send her child would be in San Francisco after experiencing bullying behavior elsewhere in the district.
She was told the best place would be Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy in the LGBTQ Castro neighborhood.
Thus, Bell enrolled her child in the K-5 school named after the gay civil rights icon. While they are now in the seventh grade, Bell’s younger child is currently a fourth grader at the school.
So the news last week that the Milk school in the city’s Castro neighborhood was on a list of schools being eyed for closure next year came as a gut punch for Bell. As the Bay Area Reporter previously reported, the elementary school is one of 11 campuses that may be closed as the district grapples with its need to slash $100 million from its budget.
All the schools facing closure have fewer than 300 students. The Milk school has 133 pupils who would be merged with those at Sanchez Elementary School, a few blocks away at 325 Sanchez Street.
The district is also aiming to cut 500 positions from its payroll; the campus closings are expected to result in $22 million in cost savings for the district, which is struggling with declining enrollment. The final list of schools will be announced at the November 12 meeting of the school board and there will be a December 10 vote for the closings to be implemented in fall 2025.
by Matthew S. Bajko
An effort to obtain federal landmarking for the site where a transgender uprising against police harassment took place in San Francisco 58 years ago remains pending two years after state preservationists had supported doing so. Revisions to the initial application requested last year by federal officials have yet to be submitted by the applicant.
While the exact date has been lost to time, one night in August 1966 an angry drag queen patronizing Gene Compton’s Cafeteria at 101 Taylor Street reportedly threw a cup of hot coffee in the face of a police officer as he tried to arrest her without a warrant. It sparked a riot between trans and queer patrons of the 24-hour diner and cops, as detailed in the 2005 documentary “Screaming Queens” by transgender scholar and historian Susan Stryker, Ph.D.
In 2022, San Francisco officials landmarked the intersection of Turk and Taylor in front of the building that had housed the eatery. The city’s 307th landmark also included portions of the structure’s exterior walls containing the commercial space, specifically the lower 11 feet of the facade extending north 52 feet from the corner of Turk Street and 40 feet west from the corner of Taylor Street.
Local leaders were also supportive of seeing 101 Taylor Street be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In October 2022, the California State Historical Resources Commission recommended the Compton’s site be recognized on the federal register.
Yet Sherry A. Frear, the chief and deputy keeper of the National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program for cultural resources, partnerships, and science, determined the application for the Compton’s site was too limited in scope. She requested it be revised to include both the building and the immediate outdoor areas where the protest also took place.
Frear also wanted to see more information about how the incident that took place at Compton’s tied into the fight for LGBTQ rights in the U.S. in order to designate it as having a national level of significance. It occurred three years prior to the more famous riots at New York gay bar the Stonewall Inn considered to have kick-started the modern fight for LGBTQ equality.
Madison Levesque had written the national registry request for Compton’s as part of their thesis project for the master’s in public history they earned in 2022 from California State University, Sacramento. At the time of the submission Levesque had been working as a cultural landscape inventory steward for the National Park Service.
But since last year Levesque, who is queer and uses they/them pronouns, has worked as an architectural historian with the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation. As they had told the Bay Area Reporter last year, Levesque agreed with the suggested changes and had hoped to resubmit the listing request for Compton’s last October.
See page 3 >>
Bell, 49, who lives in the Duboce Triangle neighborhood adjacent to the Castro, isn’t the only parent voicing opposition. David Gordon, a straight ally who lives in the nearby Twin Peaks neighborhood, sends his kindergartener and second grader to the Milk school. The two both claim the school has been targeted and are among the parents speaking out, asking the school board not to follow through on the closure.
“To be honest, I was shocked and overall devastated, to be blunt,” Gordon, 45, said. “I love the school, the community, everything they support. I love that the curriculum is intertwined with Harvey Milk and civil rights – it’s interwoven with what the kids learn on a daily basis, and I love it’s a safe haven for the LGBTQ+ community in the heart of the Castro.”
Milk was the first openly gay person elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Tragically, he and then-mayor George Moscone were assassinated in City Hall in 1978 by disgruntled ex-supervisor Dan White. The school was named for Milk 18 years later, in 1996.
Gordon said that “many kids and families transfer into Milk because they are being bullied for being different – having two moms, having two dads.”
Bell said her family found safety there after a less welcoming experience elsewhere.
Gordon said that “there’s no reason to close these schools,” claiming that the district has spent more on fixing the EMPower payroll system ($40 million, according to Mission Local) than would be saved by the proposed closures. The district’s payroll snafus have been a contentious issue for months.
Gordon and Bell appear to have a new ally in their fight – San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who is embattled in her fight for reelection. She came out Tuesday, October 15, against the school closures as currently proposed.
See page 12 >>
PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT Kamala Harris and Tim Walz
U.S. SENATE Adam Schiff
SF MAYOR London Breed, first choice
Aaron Peskin, second choice
SF BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
Dist. 1: Connie Chan
Dist. 3: Sharon Lai, first choice;
Danny Sauter, second choice
Dist. 5: Dean Preston
Dist. 7: Myrna Melgar
Dist. 9: Roberto Hernandez, first choice
Stephen Torres, second choice
Dist. 11: Ernest “EJ” Jones, first choice
Michael Lai, second choice
SF DISTRICT ATTORNEY
Brooke Jenkins
SF BOARD OF EDUCATION
Matt Alexander
Jaime Huling
John Jersin
Parag Gupta
CITY COLLEGE OF SF Luis Zamora
Alan Wong
Aliya Chisti Heather McCarty
BART BOARD DIST. 9 Joe Sangirardi
5: Erin Armstrong At-Large:
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Yet, in spite of my frustration, I am voting for Harris. In fact, I have already filled out and returned my ballot, on the very day it arrived in my mailbox. That vote was obvious, a no-brainer.
It was years ago, during former President Barack Obama’s first term, that I really began to understand that you do not elect a president per se, but a presidential administration. You elect a president and vice president, whom you trust to make good decisions about who they bring into their cabinet, and let those people do the job of moving the administration forward. The president may set the agenda, yes, but every department and agency under them does
We saw what could happen with a good administration, as Obama’s White House moved forward on trans rights. We also saw different factions in the Trump White House strip away trans and LGBTQ rights after he became president in 2017.
On top of this, you also get to vote for the candidate that the American people can persuade to do good work. Harris – compared to her opponent – can be pushed to be better. We can advocate, and we can likely make her and her administration act on our behalf. At the very least, it would be a possibility.
In a second Trump administration, particularly one that has published its authoritarian playbook, Project 2025, things will get that much worse for transgender and nonbinary people, along with, well, anyone who is not a full-throated supporter of Trump.
This Trump campaign is one that has grown darker and more fascist – especially in the last few weeks. This would not be a presidency that one could convince to do good. Heck, it isn’t one we could plead with not to do evil. Likewise, I think there’s an obvious elephant in the GOP’s room. Trump, at 78, is not looking well. Sure, he’s always seemed a bit off, but lately he has gotten that much worse. The word salad he has often spewed has taken on a rambling cadence, and he often forgets what he’s talking about. His speech has become slow and slurred.
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to these talking points, assuming that by not addressing them, it takes the wind out of them. For me, however, not responding to them is not making me feel all that wanted. If you cannot say something now, how can I be assured you’ll say something when we see trans rights eroded by the U.S. Supreme Court, by Congress, or by another several hundred bills across the country?
Can you really be sure that Trump will last another four months, let alone four years? If not, then you’d best be really sure you would be OK with Ohio Senator JD Vance, Trump’s vice presidential running mate, as president. I may not believe that Trump is in this for more than saving his own skin – even if I’m sure he’ll be happy to let others in his administration push awful, anti-democratic policies – but Vance strikes me as more of a true believer, who will gleefully try to hurt as many people as possible.
I hate that nearly every election I’ve voted in has been about voting against awful people, not about voting for a candidate that fully fits my desires, but here we are. I dearly hope that you, too, will be willing to do your part this year, too. Our lives may literally depend on it. t
Gwen Smith is, like so many others, horrified of what may come. You’ll find her at www.gwensmith. com
by John Ferrannini
S
an Jose’s mayor and members of the City Council called for the resignation of a gay San Jose elected official who is under criminal investigation after he admitted in a text message to performing oral sex on a 17-year-old. District 3 City Councilmember Omar Torres has not been arrested or charged with any crime.
In a joint statement October 16, Mayor Matt Mahan and the nine other councilmembers stated that though “we all live in a nation in which we are innocent until proven guilty,” Torres “has lost the trust of the community and is no longer able to effectively serve the residents of District 3.”
“As his own words call into question his ability to lead and make decisions on the behalf of the community, we are calling on him to resign,” the statement ends.
Torres’ attorney, Nelson McElmurry, didn’t immediately return a request for comment from the Bay Area Reporter.
An email was sent earlier the same day from “your D3 staff” telling recipients “please don’t hesitate to contact us anytime. You can reach us.”
“Our office is, and always will be,
“I was very happy to see it wasn’t fully rejected,” Levesque had told the B.A.R. “I wasn’t familiar with returned nominations.”
A year later, however, Levesque has yet to send a revised listing request to the state preservation office, as the statewide commission needs to review it and possibly revote on it before sending it back to Frear for final approval. Levesque hasn’t responded to the B.A.R.’s interview requests in recent
San Jose City Councilmember Omar Torres
a resource you can rely on,” the email states. “We are ready to listen, assist, and take action on your behalf.”
The B.A.R. called the District 3 office to ask what the meaning of the email was. The person who answered the phone stated “we’re not commenting on anything,” and abruptly hung up the phone.
Torres represents downtown San Jose and the Qmunity District, the city’s LGBTQ neighborhood. Last week, the San Jose Police Department confirmed it was investigating Torres on suspicion of seeking sexually explicit pictures of a minor online. For his part, the councilmember said the allegations were “entirely false” and
months about what their timeframe is for submitting the amended application for listing 101 Taylor Street on the federal register.
The state’s Office of Historic Preservation has told the B.A.R. it is not in receipt of a revised application. Nor does it list the Compton’s site among the pending nominations currently before the statewide commission, which meets quarterly and will hold its last meeting of 2024 on November 7.
District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston, who represents the Tenderloin and its Transgender District where Compton’s
Kamala Harris & Tim Walz
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part of a blackmail scheme waged against him by a Chicago man he had met online.
Then, on October 10, San Jose police released an affidavit. The affidavit is expected to be used to establish probable cause for a search warrant on Torres, reported San Jose Spotlight.
The name of the police officer who signed the affidavit is redacted, but they stated they are currently assigned to the San Jose Police Department Child Exploits Detail/Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. They stated that Torres claimed Terry Beeks, a 21-year-old Chicagoan, had extorted him for $2,500, threatening to release nude photos and videos of the councilmember if he did not pay Beeks, according to the affidavit.
Torres did pay the cash – on that occasion and others, according to investigators. The alleged extortion occurred after Torres made an in-person visit to Beeks during the Democratic National Convention, which was held in Chicago in August, “to discuss their ongoing relationship and find closure.”
A subsequent interview with police revealed Torres and Beeks had a virtual sexual relationship for years, and Torres admitted he’d sent $22,000
had operated, had sponsored the legislation securing the city landmark for the site. He told the B.A.R. this week he remains hopeful of seeing it also receive national recognition as an historic site.
“Although it is disappointing that the Turk and Taylor intersection has not yet been federally recognized, I will continue to support the community in advocating for its inclusion on the National Register,” said Preston, a straight ally. “The events at Compton’s Cafeteria are more than a reflection of the resilience of San Francisco’s queer and trans communities – they are a de-
Brooke Jenkins District Attorney David Chiu
City Attorney
Paul Miyamoto
Sheriff
José Cisneros
Treasurer Victor Flores District 7
Joe Sangirardi District 9
over that time to prevent texts and pictures from being leaked.
“Beeks texts the victim [Torres] ‘How if I send your nudes out’ ‘They see how small your dick is an [sic] really laughing,’” the affidavit states.
In the course of the investigation, the Chicago Police Department executed a search warrant on Beeks, according to the affidavit, which states that Beeks told police he and Torres met on social media three to four years prior, and that Torres “sent him [Beeks] a photo of a younger kid that Torres said was autistic. Beeks stated Torres sent text messages talking about the minor’s penis size and pubic hair. Beeks also stated Torres had asked him about finding minors.”
Another warrant revealed that Beeks and Torres began interacting on Snapchat in 2022, where Torres paid Beeks for masturbation videos. The warrant also revealed text exchanges, such as one on February 24, 2022, when Torres, who does not have a son, sent an image of an 11-year-old who the councilmember stated was his ‘“autistic son” and stated “he is like daddy lol he already has a big penis haha.”
On March 10, 2022, the two were discussing the penis sizes of Black men – “every black I have sucked had
cisive milestone in the broader LGBTQ rights movement.”
Shayne Watson, a lesbian Bay Areabased historian and historic preservation planner, recently told the B.A.R. she had reached out to Levesque over the summer to check in about the Compton’s federal listing and had heard back they’d been swamped with work and hadn’t much time to tackle it.
This month, Watson told the B.A.R. if Levesque needs assistance with it, she or someone else locally would be willing to help them, but she hadn’t made a formal request to Levesque about doing so.
Marjan Philhour
Supervisor District 1
Danny Sauter - Rank #1
Sharon Lai - Rank #2
Supervisor District 3
Bilal Mahmood - Rank #1
Scotty Jacobs - Rank #2
Supervisor District 5
Myrna Melgar Supervisor District 7
Roberto
Ernest
a huge dick,” the councilmember stated, continuing that “when I worked at a site at a college I sucked a student in the control room. Black 17 year old and boom. 9.5 inches at 17,” according to the affidavit.
Another time Torres asked, “U got any homies under 18.” In California, the age of consent for sex is 18.
“I want hella homies u Will see im wild in bed,” Torres continued.
In a statement posted to Instagram October 4, Torres claimed he was “wrongfully detained by detectives regarding baseless accusations” and that “I want to be clear that I am the victim in this matter.”
“While these attempts to discredit me are deeply troubling, they will not deter my commitment to you and our community,” he stated. “Rest assured, I will continue to serve this community with integrity and determination.”
McElmurry issued a statement maintaining his client’s innocence.
“The content referenced in the affidavit pertains solely to private communications between adults of age that involved talk of outrageous fantasy and role play,” McElmurry stated. “Under the guise of eroticism,
Jorge Moreno, a spokesperson for the state’s Office of Historic Preservation, told the B.A.R. anyone other than the original nominator can seek to amend a nomination. If that were to happen with the Compton’s federal listing request, then the agency would ask the original nominator, Levesque, if they are willing to accept the amendments.
“Additionally, at any time, anyone can submit a new nomination for the property, under the same criteria or a new one,” noted Moreno. t
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here are several LGBTQ and straight ally candidates running for municipal seats on the Peninsula and in the South Bay. Significantly, there is also a rare open congressional seat that straddles San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Below are our recommendations.
We endorsed gay Assemblymember Evan Low (D-Cupertino) in the March primary, and since then it’s been a roller coaster of a ride. Weeks after the primary, elections officials were still tabulating votes among Low, former San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo (D), and Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian (D). Liccardo took first place, but amazingly, there was a tie for second place between Low and Simitian. It looked as though all three candidates would advance to the November election. But then, a former Liccardo staffer requested a recount on behalf of Low. Low cried foul, saying he never asked for a recount, and it turned out former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg bankrolled much of the cost. In the end, Low defeated Simitian by five votes and will face Liccardo November 5.
The 16th Congressional District seat is open because Congressmember Anna Eshoo (DPalo Alto) decided not to seek reelection after serving in Congress for 31 years. The unusual open seat means that it’s been a battle between Liccardo and Low, who, if elected, would be the Bay Area’s first out congressional member. Suffice it to say, we continue to support Low during what has become an increasingly bitter fight. As we first reported online Monday, there was a debate October 11 sponsored by several media organizations. The two candidates criticized each other over everything from police staffing levels in San Jose to campaign funding.
We endorse Low because of the legislative experience he will bring to Congress. In the 10 years Low’s served in the Assembly, he’s demonstrated that he can work across the aisle – he noted in the debate that he co-authored the Proposition 3 same-sex marriage legislation that passed with Republican support. Voters will determine next month whether to rid the state constitution of the “zombie” language from Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban Californians approved in 2008. (Prop 8 was eventually found unconstitutional but the language remains embedded in the state’s governing document.)
“I intend to work in a bipartisan manner just as I have in the past to find consensus and build relationships across the aisle that will be critical in delivering results for CA-16,” Low stated in his endorsement questionnaire. “I will prioritize kitchen table issues like building more affordable housing, strengthening public safety, supporting Silicon Valley innovation, and bringing down costs for families. These are types of legislation we should all be able to agree on even in a divided Congress.”
Low would be an effective member of Congress, and residents in the 16th District should vote for him.
Several cities are electing council members. In the races where candidates returned questionnaires, we recommend the following.
There are four seats up for election; five candidates returned our endorsement questionnaire. Of those, we’re recommending Chris Clark, a gay man who previously served on the council; incumbents Pat Showalter and Emily Ann Ramos; and candidate Devon Conley. Clark served for eight years starting in 2012, when he was the youngest person elected. Clark’s been the Peninsula city’s only out councilmember so far and, after sitting out the 2022 cycle because the city’s term limit rule barred him from running again that fall, he decided to run this year, in which there are two open
seats. During his time on the council he served as mayor and vice mayor, which rotate among the members.
Currently, a member of the Mountain View Planning Commission, Clark stated that he was “deeply involved in the development and passage of our Housing Element, which lays out our plans to address the lack of housing at all affordability levels. I’m proud that Mountain View was recently designated by the state of California as the only ‘pro-housing’ city in Santa Clara County.”
While Mountain View is not near a BART station, it has Caltrain, light rail, and VTA bus service. Clark stated that he is supportive of increased density near those locations.
When he was mayor in 2014, Clark led the effort to raise the Pride flag in Mountain View for the first time. A good example of his leadership is that the flag raisings didn’t end when he left. “I subsequently convinced my council colleagues to authorize raising the Pride flag each year thereafter,” he stated. (We should note that it is no small thing for cities and counties to adopt resolutions in support of Pride and flying the rainbow flag. As we have reported, some cities have backed away from the Pride Month acknowledgement or even refused to raise the banner.)
Clark would be an excellent addition to the City Council and has much needed experience. Showalter is currently serving as mayor. “I am serving as a city councilmember, and wish to continue to do so for another term, to use my knowledge of the community and our issues, and my skills as an engineer and a problem-solver to enhance the livability of my community,” she stated. “I have a history of championing housing, sustainability and equity for Mountain View, and wish to continue work on policies and programs that I helped initiate.” She, too, was involved with the passage of the Housing Element.
On homelessness issues, Showalter has been proactive. “I am proud of how Mountain View’s homeless assistance program was strengthened in 2016 when I was mayor the first time, and of the services we have added since that time,” she stated. “We are known for our strong program, which includes over 100 safe parking spots, a Life Moves Interim Housing Program, and an ecosystem of community-based organizations that work together with city and county staff to move our homeless residents toward permanent housing.”
A straight ally, Showalter is supportive of the LGBTQ community; she has supported flying the Pride flag.
Showalter has been a constructive councilmember, and we support her reelection.
Ramos is another straight ally currently serving as a councilmember; she was appointed last year and is seeking a four-year term. She’s the daughter of Filipino immigrants and a lifelong Bay Area resident.
Prior to joining the council, Ramos served on the city’s first Rental Housing Committee, “where I helped implement our rent stabilization program created after the passage of Measure V, the Community Stabilization and Fair Rent Act (CSFRA),” she stated. “My work on the committee deepened my commitment to addressing the housing crisis and ensuring that Mountain View remains a place where people of all backgrounds can thrive.”
On housing, Ramos stated the city is in the process of repurposing land from a closed light rail station on Evelyn Avenue to convert into “an ambitious 12-story affordable housing project.”
Ramos noted that the Pride flag raising did initially generate some controversy when it was made permanent, but that has changed. “It is now widely embraced and not a controversial issue in our city,” she stated. “I fully support continuing this important tradition.”
Voters should reelect Ramos.
Conley is a straight ally who currently serves on the school board. She stated that she wants to join the City Council “because I believe family-friendly urban planning and policy benefits not just children and families, but all of Mountain View.”
“My priorities are creating thriving neighborhoods, prioritizing public safety, and ensuring a healthy community,” Conley added.
“With my unique perspective as a school board member and parent, my expertise in city planning, and my experience getting policies implemented, I know I can serve our community well.”
On homelessness, Conley is interested in establishing a one-stop resource center to support unhoused neighbors.
Conley is also supportive of the Pride flag raising and, on the school board, votes every year for a proclamation supporting the LGBTQ+ community.
Conley would be an effective member of the council.
There are four seats up on the Palo Alto City Council, with two incumbents seeking reelection. Two of the non-incumbent candidates returned our endorsement questionnaire: Katie Causey, who is bisexual, and Anne Cribbs, a straight ally.
We endorsed Causey four years ago when she was running for a seat on the Palo Alto school board. In the end, she missed being elected by just 2% of the vote. This year, she’s seeking a seat on the City Council. Currently, she was appointed by the council to serve on the city’s human relations commission, where she’s been able to get experience in local government and where she oversees what nonprofits serving the unhoused get for funding. She presently works as a community organizer for the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition. She’s also worked with housing nonprofits, and stated that she’s running to continue working on tenant protections and housing.
“We have roughly 300 unhoused community members in Palo Alto that rely on our city services; right now the biggest action our city can take to support these services is building housing and affordable housing for the social workers and individuals in these programs,” she stated.
A lifelong Palo Alto resident, Causey has a solid grasp on housing issues that would serve Palo Alto well.
Cribbs was the president and CEO of the San Francisco bid for the 2012 Olympic Games, which ultimately went to London. She stated in her endorsement questionnaire that during that process, she worked with Gene Dermody, a gay man who was long involved with Golden Gate Wrestling, gay then-San Francisco supervisor Tom Ammiano, and Derek Liecty, a gay man who’s the former director of the Federation of Gay Games. “We created a new positive relationship between the gay community and the Olympic committee, due to the unfair and unjust persecution of late gay athlete Dr. Tom Waddell – a Olympic decathlete, who competed in the 1968 Olympic Games and was the founder of the Gay Games,” Cribbs stated.
Cribbs has also been involved with other Bay Area Olympic bids in 2016 and 2024. She’s co-founder of the American Basketball League, which lasted two seasons before its framework was copied by the NBA for its own women’s league. Cribbs, inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2016, won a gold medal in swimming at the 1960 Rome Olympic Games when she was 15.
by Matthew S. Bajko
W ith her state Senate candidacy the best chance to see the first transgender legislator be elected in California, Palm Springs City Councilmember Lisa Middleton is benefitting from the financial largesse of a statewide LGBTQ political action committee. This year alone, it has funneled nearly $50,000 toward seeing her break through the Golden State pink political ceiling.
Middleton is not the only out legislative candidate on the November 5 ballot benefitting from the funds raised by the Equality California PAC, the political arm of the statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization. Half a dozen candidates running for Southern California Assembly or Senate seats have also been the beneficiaries of the EQCA PAC’s political giving this year.
But it has spent the most money, by far, in 2024 on electing Middleton. Between a maximum donation of $5,500 directly to her campaign account and $40,000 directed toward an independent committee working on her behalf, the EQCA PAC has allocated $45,500 since February toward electing the former San Francisco resident to the state Legislature.
“This is an opportunity to break a rainbow ceiling in Sacramento and elect the first out trans member of the California Legislature,” noted EQCA Managing Director of External Affairs
Tom Temprano, a gay San Francisco resident. “We have had the privilege of working with Lisa for years and have seen the work she has been able to do at a local level and a regional level to deliver results for the people of Palm Springs, but also the broader Riverside County through her serving on a lot of regional bodies.”
With mere weeks away from Election Day, the B.A.R. reviewed the EQCA PAC’s donations over the last 10 months to see which of its endorsed LGBTQ legislative candidates it considers to be in tight general election contests. Unsurprisingly, its second top benefactor has been Middleton’s colleague Palm Springs City Councilmember Christy Holstege, who is seeking the Assembly District 47 seat.
Thus, noted Temprano, “She is exactly the legislator Equality California goes all in on to support and send to Sacramento.”
The EQCA PAC is sponsoring the Communities United for Lisa Middleton For Senate 2024 independent expenditure committee on her behalf. A coalition of progressive groups funding it expect to raise at least $300,000 for it; the LGBTQ Caucus Leadership Fund, the political arm of the affinity group for out legislators in Sacramento, just last week funneled $125,000 into it. Labor unions have given it $125,000 to date.
Asked by the Bay Area Reporter about the support she is receiving via the EQCA PAC, Middleton expressed her gratitude.
“I’m incredibly grateful for the generous support we’ve received from the LGBTQ+ community, Planned Parenthood, labor unions, small business owners, and grassroots donors across Riverside and San Bernardino counties,” stated Middleton. “They all know what’s at stake in this election, for reproductive freedom, for LGBTQ+ equality, for workers’ rights, for our planet, and for democracy.”
Middleton is in a tough race for the 19th Senate District seat spanning Riverside and San Bernardino counties. She is running against Senator Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa), who placed first with 53.8% of the vote in their March 5 primary matchup.
With Ochoa Bogh declining to participate in its endorsement process, the Desert Sun newspaper Wednesday endorsed Middleton. Its editorial board noted Middleton “has the right attitude and demeanor for the job” of being a state Senator.
The bisexual lawmaker received $6,500 directly in her campaign account from the EQCA PAC, $1,000 of which came ahead of her primary race against Assemblymember Greg Wallis (R-Bermuda Dunes), whom she narrowly lost to in 2022. Last week, the EQCA PAC put $15,000 into an independent committee backing Holstege’s bid.
The fund’s third highest amount has gone toward electing gay former Los Angeles County Democratic Party chair Mark Gonzalez to the open Assembly District 54 seat. He placed first in his primary against fellow Democrat John K. Yi
The EQCA PAC gave Gonzalez’s campaign $5,500 over the summer and this month put $15,000 into an independent committee working to elect him.
In another open race in Los Angeles County, the EQCA PAC in June gave a maximum donation to Sade Elhawary, who is running for the Assembly District 57 seat. She came in second place by several hundred votes in the primary behind fellow Democrat Efren Martinez
Elhawary prefers the term fluid over bisexual when it comes to her sexual orientation. If elected, she would be one of the first Black Latinas to serve in the Legislature.
This year, the EQCA PAC has also contributed to independent committees working to elect the Cervantes sisters as the first pair of out siblings to serve together in Sacramento. It gave $5,000 in February toward ensuring lesbian Assemblymember Sabrina Cervantes (D-Corona), a married mom, survived her primary for the open Senate District 31 seat and would face Republican Cynthia Navarro on the fall ballot.
It also gave $6,000 in March to a committee working to elect Cervantes’ younger sister Clarissa, who is queer and bisexual, as her successor in the 58th Assembly District. Also on the fall ballot for the seat in the Legislature’s lower chamber is Republican Leticia Castillo. The EQCA PAC also has given $2,000 this year directly to Clarissa Cervantes’ campaign committee.
Apart from the donations its federal PAC has made on behalf of gay Democratic congressional candidates attorney Will Rollins in the Coachella Valley and Assemblymem-
ber the South Bay, EQCA’s state-based PAC has given $2,500 each to gay Emeryville City Councilmember John Bauters eda County Supervisor District 5 seat and queer tenants’ rights lawyer Ysabel Jurado geles City Council District 14 seat.
“We are investing in these races because we think each of them are close races and ones where we have an opportunity to make a real dif ference in the race,” said Temprano. “Each of these are top priority races because of the caliber of the can
didates we have and how close we anticipate these races being in November.”
In the coming days, the EQCA PAC will be making its final donations and spending decisions ahead of when ballots need to be cast early next month.
“We are actually looking at record spending across the board for EQCA on our political work in this electoral cycle,” Temprano told the B.A.R. “By the time the election happens, we will have invested $100,000 into direct candidate contributions for candidates running at the fed
eral, state and local level.”
The independent committees it is a part of, particularly those working to elect Middleton and Gonzalez, is releasing ads this month on digital platforms and connected TV, mean ing streaming services, to convince voters to support them. It is spend ing six-figures each on the media buys for the pair of legislative can didates.
“We are really committed to mak ing sure our endorsed candidates, particularly queer candidates, have the resources in their bank accounts to win in November,” said Tempra no.
Additionally, EQCA is reaching out to its own membership list to encourage them to vote for its en dorsed candidates. It is mailing out its slate cards to households statewide with high propensity voters.
“Getting our endorsements out to them is a big priority,” said Temprano. “We will also be doing direct text outreach to our members in a number of our priority races as well.” t
Web Extra: For more queer political news, be sure to check http:// www.ebar.com Monday mornings for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion. This week’s column reported on SF school board candidates’ positions on keeping the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy open.
Keep abreast of the latest LGBTQ political news by following the Political Notebook on Threads @ https://www.threads.net/@matthewbajko.
by Matthew S. Bajko
Democratic congressional candidates gay state Assemblymember Evan Low and former San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo clashed over ethics and policy during a televised debate hosted by a trio of local news organizations. They are locked in an increasingly contentious contest for the state’s 16th Congressional District.
Their race to succeed Congressmember Anna Eshoo (D-Palo Alto) has been marked by months of accusations between the two campaigns that they violated rules governing financial donations. They also have traded barbs over who is stronger on crime and their records on housing issues.
It was on full display during their 60-minute exchange October 11 cohosted and broadcast by KQED, NBC Bay Area, and Telemundo 48. The first question from NBC Bay Area anchor Raj Mathai for the two candidates was if they are running ethical campaigns.
“We should agree on one basic principle, every vote should be counted. Every vote should be counted, and we can agree on that except Evan Low. He can’t,” said Liccardo, who was first to respond. “We had Evan Low and his attorneys attempting to stop a recount.”
He publicly acknowledged doing so, said Liccardo, “because he thought he might lose if he had a full recount.”
He was referring to Low’s attempt to stop a recount of the March 5 primary race results that saw Liccardo place first and Low tie with Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian (D) for second, which would have meant all three advanced to the general election. But a former aide to Liccardo sought a recount, claiming he was doing so on behalf of Low.
The state legislator cried foul, accusing Liccardo of working behind the scenes to bump him out of the race. In the end, Low emerged victorious over Simitian by five votes, keeping alive his bid to
become the Bay Area’s first LGBTQ congressional member.
Low began his response to Mathai’s question by stating, “Most certainly, we abide by the most ethical standards that is the obligation that we have as public servants.” But he quickly pivoted to attacking Liccardo’s mayoral record and how he “implemented a plan that dismantled public employees and public safety. In fact, 500 police officers left because he instituted his public safety plan.”
His answer prompted Mathai to ask Low for clarification on if he is “running an ethical campaign,” to which Low said, “Absolutely.”
It provided an opening for Liccardo to retort, “I think it is interesting he dodged the question,” and bring up state and federal campaign finance complaints filed against Low. The most recent being by campaign watchdog group Defend the Vote that accused Low of illegally using nearly $600,000 in his state legislative campaign account toward his congressional race.
The money has funded TV ads touting Low’s legislative focus as a state legislator without mentioning his run for the House seat in order to abide by the
rules allowing for such issue advocacy ads. Both Defend the Vote and Liccardo have accused Low’s doing so an attempt to skirt the rules on behalf of his congressional candidacy.
Liccardo noted Low’s state account “is funded by PG&E, Chevron, and private prison corporations. Corporations that can’t donate to any federal campaign.”
Low rebutted that Liccardo had “taken thousands of dollars from PG&E” and was aided by “dark money” donations former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg gave toward funding the recall count in the spring.
Feisty exchanges
It was just one of many feisty exchanges between the two South Bay leaders running to represent the House district that straddles Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. Polling has shown Liccardo with a lead in the race, while LGBTQ advocates this month have stepped up their efforts to see Low potentially triple the number of LGBTQ members in California’s congressional delegation.
The debate had been rescheduled after Liccardo pulled out on the day it was originally to take place due to having
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laryngitis and being ordered at least five days of vocal rest by his doctor. Repeatedly during their hourlong discussion
Low and Liccardo argued they were the better candidate to address such intractable issues as immigration, public safety, and affordable housing in Congress. Each attacked the others’ record on tackling homelessness.
Low pointed to a state audit that questioned how San Jose, when Liccardo was mayor, spent state dollars awarded to it to address the issue and found homelessness had increased 40% on his watch. He contended it was behind why state lawmakers adopted stronger laws to hold cities accountable on constructing new housing.
“He talks about a plan for homelessness and addressing it. Well, his plan failed,” said Low, pledging to champion housing solutions in the House. “We need to be doing better. Enough is enough.”
Liccardo defended his record, saying San Jose saw an 11% reduction in street homelessness during his last year as mayor in 2022 due to the policies he enacted. While he was working to address the issue, Liccardo blasted Low for not taking a lead role on it in the Legislature as an author of housing bills.
“Evan Low has demonstrated absolutely zero leadership on homelessness in the 10 years he’s been in the assembly despite the fact that we’ve had a crisis where homelessness has increased statewide by an even higher rate than it did in the city of San Jose,” said Liccardo.
In another exchange on policing, Low called Liccardo “the original defunder of the police,” alluding to his supporting a measure that cut pension benefits for San Jose firefighters and police officers. Liccardo responded that as mayor he was able to resolve the pension issue with another ballot measure and left office with San Jose having “the lowest homicide rate of any major city in the United States.”
On Congress’ passage of a bill forcing the sale of the social media app TikTok to a non-Chinese owner, Liccardo agreed with its doing so but said, “I don’t think that’s a long-term strategy for solving this challenge.”
Low said it was “the wrong direction” but agreed tech companies should be held to account for their impacts on youth, in particular.
“We need to be able to partner with our tech companies and also where users are. Everyday Californians are utilizing it to get information,” said Low.
There were moments of agreement between the two candidates. They sounded similar stances on immigration, saying they would work to secure the border but also noted the country’s economy needs immigrant labor to thrive.
“It’s important for us to recognize that we can have both a safe, secure border and more immigration. We don’t need to put these objectives against each other,” said Liccardo, noting he was a federal prosecutor at the southern border.
Low called for reforms to the country’s visa programs to allow in more qualified workers. He noted the issue is of particular importance to the tech industry in Silicon Valley.
“We must have comprehensive immigration reform. As you may know, there is a bipartisan bill that’s worked through Congress,” said Low. “Unfortunately, Donald Trump said, ‘Please do not pass this until post election.’ I am working alongside Kamala Harris in making sure that we deliver that bill to her desk and gets that signed into law.”
Another issue the two candidates are in agreement on is calling for an immediate ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and the return of the hostages taken by the terrorist group a little over a year ago.
There were no questions regarding LGBTQ issues, and the only time one was mentioned was during Low’s response to how he would be able to cross the aisle in a divided Congress to work with his Republican colleagues. He noted he led the charge in the Assembly to put Proposition 3 on the November 5 ballot, which aims to strike the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman from the state’s constitution, and it drew no votes against it from any GOP assemblymembers.
The full debate can be viewed online at youtube.com/watch?v=QRbxdAxjZ_M t
by Matthew S. Bajko
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Vehicles traversing Church Street in Noe Valley will soon need to make a complete stop at 28th Street. San Francisco transit officials are turning the intersection into a four-way stop in order to provide additional safety for pedestrians crossing the street.
To ensure their doing so doesn’t slow down the travel times for trains on the J Church Muni line, engineering staff for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency are relocating the subway line’s current stop at 27th and Church streets to the 28th Street intersection. Otherwise, adding the new stop signs there would have resulted in an additional stop J Church trains would need to make as they travel down Church Street.
In addition, the subway line stop for passengers on Church Street at Clipper Street is moving to 26th Street. SFMTA staff contend it will help even out the spacing between the train stops along the thoroughfare.
“It will create a balanced, easy to understand transit stop spacing that will align with the new stop sign,” project manager Jessica Kuo told the transit agency’s oversight body at its meeting October 15.
The SFMTA board voted 6-0 to approve the changes along Church Street. The new stop signs should be installed in the coming weeks, along with the transit stop relocations.
“In general, I think it is going to be an improvement,” said board member Janet Tarlov.
Newly seated gay board member Mike Chen, taking part in his second meeting, had raised concerns about the impacts the changes will have on J Church trains’ travel times. He encouraged SFMTA staff to look at ways to speed up the subway along that portion of the route as they undertake an additional review of the Church Street corridor in 2025 as part of the agency’s Muni Forward plans.
“I want to make sure we are delivering consistent, reliable, fast service for customers,” said Chen.
Residents near the J Church line in Noe Valley near unanimously had supported turning the Church and 28th streets intersection into a four-way stop. Drivers on 28th already must stop there.
But they were largely opposed to seeing the J Church subway stops be moved, arguing the result will be farther distances between the stops and less accessibility for riders. Their calls to split the plan in two and see the SFMTA board only vote Tuesday on approving the new stop signs went unheeded.
“The website says the relocation of the stops will speed up Muni’s J Church, which is silly,” said resident Marc Norton, noting the changes will not result in a reduction of places where the trains must stop.
To learn more about the J Church project and to sign up for emailed updates on future proposals and meetings, visit its website at https://tinyurl.com/ ytv3prt5. t
by John Ferrannini
Like the parade of nations at the Olympic opening ceremonies, the disparate groups of the San Francisco LGBTQ community that Cleve Jones helped forge emerged with banners in their drag, leather, jockstraps, and other queer uniforms from a hallway at the Hibernia event space October 11 to celebrate his 70th birthday.
But though Jones came to cut cake, receive well-wishes, and launch his namesake community fund to help two organizations he co-founded, he also had a stern warning in a brief address reminiscent of those he’s given through a bullhorn on Castro Street for 50 years.
“Are you strong? Are you ready to fight back?” he asked the crowd.
“When I was a little baby homosexual back in Arizona I didn’t want to live because I thought there was no point, there was no purpose, and then I read about gay liberation in Life magazine and I flushed those pills down the toilet and I got the fuck out of Phoenix and I hitch-hiked to San Francisco, California and found a movement of people, a community.”
In San Francisco, Jones became an aide to the slain gay supervisor Harvey Milk, who represented the Castro neighborhood as the first openly gay elected official in California for 11 months before his assassination at City Hall along with then-mayor George Moscone.
“A few years after that I got sick and the government did nothing, and we were all dying and I thought I was dying,” Jones continued, referring to his HIV status. He and others founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the AIDS Memorial Quilt during those dark years. “The drugs released saved my life and many of yours. The movement saved our lives. The movement can save our lives again if we are
strong and bold and ready to fight.”
Still, Jones said it wasn’t fighting alone that led him to reach age 70 – or will lead the community in the future.
“I need to tell you, we can’t do anything: I’ve learned this over the decades – we can’t win, no matter how much money, solidarity, hope – we can’t win without drag queens,” Jones said.
And the drag queens were out in full force for the festivities. Sister Roma led the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence drag nun group in a blessing with a response from the audience, “Blessed be Cleve Jones.”
“When the LGBTQ+ community was claiming our power, Cleve Jones worked side by side with Harvey Milk and became the voice of his generation,” Roma said, followed by the response.
“When our community and allies were mourning the loss of loved ones taken too soon by HIV/AIDS, Cleve Jones wrapped us in a quilt to ease our pain.”
Juanita MORE! also made an appearance, alongside the House of MORE!
“It was an absolute joy celebrating Cleve Jones this past weekend,” MORE! stated October 15. “The event was a big show of love for Cleve, evi-
dent by all the energy in the room. The community came and showered him with admiration and deep affection for everything he had done for the community. I can’t wait for his 80th!”
New fund raising money for HIV organizations
The event, at the Hibernia at 1 Jones Street in downtown San Francisco, was a fundraiser for the new Cleve Jones Community Fund, which will be funding groups he was instrumental in starting: the AIDS foundation and the quilt, which is now administered by the National AIDS Memorial Grove.
Jones told the B.A.R. October 15 he thinks he should have a final figure of how much was raised at the party by October 16.
Tyler TerMeer, Ph.D., a gay Black man who is HIV-positive and CEO of the AIDS foundation, stated to the B.A.R. that, “We are so grateful for our community’s continued support of San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the organization that Cleve co-founded in 1982.”
“More than 40 years later, SFAF continues to be committed to meeting the needs of all of us living with HIV, and doing everything we can to reach
the end of the HIV epidemic,” he continued. “It is thanks to the passion and dedication of our community supporters and activists, including Cleve Jones, that we have come so far in changing the trajectory of this epidemic.”
John Cunningham, a gay man who is CEO of the grove, stated, “We were honored to celebrate Cleve Jones’ 70th birthday and express gratitude for all he has done to uplift those on the margins, including the founding of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. … Cleve Jones is an extraordinary example of what it means to demand and effect change. As he often says, ‘if you take it for granted they will take it away.’” Horizons Foundation is serving as the home of the fund but is not a beneficiary, according to Roger Doughty, a gay man who is president of the grant-making nonprofit.
“Horizons Foundation is honored to be a partner with Cleve, as well as with the organizations that will benefit from the Cleve Jones Community Fund – National AIDS Memorial and San Francisco AIDS Foundation,” he stated. “Friday evening celebrated Cleve as the very special leader he has been and is. But it was more, too: a
celebration of our movement, our history, our power, and the mighty challenges ahead.”
The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus performed two songs at the event. The first was “Don’t Take it for Granted,” a piece inspired by a speech Jones gave last year. The second was “The Future of Us,” written by Our Lady J, the first out trans woman to perform at Carnegie Hall and known for her work on “Pose,” and who performed on the piano.
“Cleve was there the night the chorus gave its first public performance on the steps of City Hall, and since that dark day in 1978, he has served as a beacon of light and leadership for the LGBTQ+ community and an avid advocate for the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus,” stated Jacob Stensberg, a gay man who is artistic director of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, referring to the chorus’s inaugural performance the night Milk and Moscone were killed. “We are proud and grateful to be a part of the same family, for every intersection our stories have had through the years, and continue to be
San Franciscans are ending support for the re-election of embattled Mayor London Breed.
Under London Breed, residents, businesses and tourists alike experienced:
• Her defunding $120 million from SFPD, leaving a demoralized and understaffed SFPD and Sheriff’s Depts
Under London Breed, residents, businesses and tourists alike experienced:
• Retail businesses large and small collaps ing, retail cores decimated, thousands of jobs gone
•
• Tourism, convention and hotel industries floundering, barely recovered, tax revenues tanking
•
• Downtown Financial District at record high office vacancies with no viable plans for revival
•
• Failed, multiple crackdowns on drug dealers now roaming freely, preying on addicts 24 hrs. a day
•
• Scandal-ridden and untraceable nonprofit funding which enrich Breed's friends
•
• Insane $16 billion city operating budget we can't afford, which spends taxpayers' money recklessly
•
• Her unlawful race-based initiatives implementing unconstitutional segregation and racial stereotypes
•
•
by Matthew S. Bajko
When Abigail Baer arrived at the Demuth Foundation in Lancaster, Pennsylvania six years ago after being hired as its executive director, she discovered visitors to the historic residence and studio of the late artist Charles Demuth left without learning much about the celebrated master watercolorist. One detail about his life that largely went unmentioned was that Demuth was a gay man.
“When I started, you could come to the Demuth Museum located in the artist’s home and studio and not really learn much about him or see his work,” recalled Baer, a straight ally who had been working in development and programming at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. “We quickly began incorporating that.”
Baer and her team rethought how to make the best use of the narrow 1760 brick row house and its five rooms, which included the artist’s studio. They embarked on a renovation of the spaces that opened to the public in April.
And to help fully detail how Demuth navigated early 20th century life as a gay man, the foundation received a $25,000 grant in 2022 from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. It engaged public historian and researcher, Susan Ferentinos, Ph.D., to examine what evidence there was in Demuth’s archival papers and other sources to confirm his sexual orientation as well as paint a picture of the queer community at that time.
Due to the homoerotic nature of Demuth’s artwork, such as a drawing of two sailors holding out their penises to urinate, many had assumed he was gay. Ferentinos was tasked with either proving or disproving that assumption.
“Susan did a great job dissecting that from a non-art lens,” said Baer, noting that in addition to sailors, Demuth focused on such topics as vaudeville, jazz clubs, and Turkish baths. “These were places where the gay community was present.”
Although Ferentinos didn’t discover any love letters to definitively document Demuth had a male lover, she did discern from his writings signs of a queer relationship. Another obvious clue was the fact Demuth was a lifelong bachelor and never married.
“Interestingly though, Susan in her research found some language in some of the letters, because she knows the terms and tone and how things were expressed and worded in the early 20th century,” said Baer. “We kind of see, oh, there was a relationship here. We don’t know exactly who the person is or was, but there was something happening.”
The foundation posted Ferentinos’ findings to its website, which now clearly states on the biography page found at https://www.demuth.org/ charles-demuth that, “As an artist and a gay man in the early 20th century, Demuth’s social and professional circles included that of the avant-garde art and queer communities.”
The Demuth Foundation’s efforts to “queer up” how it approaches the life story of its namesake and tells that aspect of the artist’s life in its galleries and online caught the attention of Ken Lustbader, 63, a gay man who is codirector of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project.
He reached out to Baer and ended up inviting her to join a panel in June at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture for a discussion about how historic home museums can interpret the LGBTQ history of the occupants of their residences.
“Having this documented helps younger people understand they are part of a natural way of being who they are and can understand they are not alone,” said Lustbader, a historic preservation consultant.
New efforts undertaken
The Demuth Museum’s reinterpretation project is one of a number of such LGBTQ historical efforts being undertaken at similar institutions across the country, noted Lustbader. To help document them and foster connections between the various organizations and local groups doing the work, Lustbader formed the National Committee to Explore LGBTQ+ Site-based History.
Consisting of seven members from across the country, including lesbian Bay Area-based historian and historic preservation planner Shayne Watson, it set out to survey what LGBTQ history projects are being conducted across the U.S. Their aim in doing so is to share best practices and ideas among the people engaged in such work.
“I just don’t want to lose the momentum,” said Watson, who is a lead organizer with the nonprofit Friends of the Lyon-Martin House working to preserve the San Francisco home of the late lesbian pioneering couple Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin. “We are calling for a nationwide LGBTQ preservation group that would keep this momentum going.”
The first step was compiling a list of those individuals working on LGBTQ heritage preservation projects.
“No one knows who is doing what and where,” noted Lustbader.
In December 2021, Lustbader received a $100,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, with the NYC sites project serving as a fiscal sponsor, toward launching a survey with the goal of developing a national network for people engaged in LGBTQ historical efforts.
“The goal is not identifying sites,” explained Lustbader. “We are not looking at counting every site in the U.S. with LGBTQ history. We are more interested in who is doing the work and what are the needs and deficits.”
With the funding it received, the committee created a survey and circulated it as far and wide as it could. It then held four virtual focus groups for the people who had submitted responses to the survey or wanted to participate, the last of which was held over the summer.
“Over 300 people responded to the survey. We thought we were going to get 40 to 50 responses, at most, from around the country,” said Lustbader.
A total of 390 people took part in the survey. It resulted in a list of 160 specific LGBTQ history projects.
“I was moved by those we got from people in rural areas, especially in the southern United States,” said Watson.
“It is easy to think when you are in San Francisco or New York I am the only one doing stuff out here or Ken is the only one doing stuff in New York. That is not the case at all.”
One member of the committee that conducted the survey was Steven Brawley, a gay man who founded and oversees the St. Louis LGBTQ Historic Project. He started it in 2007 and launched its website at stlouislgbthistory.com in 2012.
“My goal has always been to make sure the fly-over cities are not ignored,” said Brawley.
With the national survey, Brawley said a main goal was to have “not just the coast but middle America” represented. The committee also prioritized, he said, “making sure the full spectrum of the alphabet was covered.”
Fascinating outcome
The outcome was fascinating to see, he said, due to the breadth and scope of the LGBTQIA+ history-related activities the survey captured. There were projects in Alaska, Hawaii, and across the 48 continental states, noted Brawley.
“We were just blown away by the breadth of the programs, whether they are one site or multi-faceted like the one I am leading in St. Louis that is a broadbased community thing,” he said. “Our focus now is how to utilize each other to further the cause and how do we help each other out.”
He works pro bono on the St. Louis LGBTQ Historic Project, which partners with institutions and universities in Missouri to preserve and tell the state’s LGBTQ history. One of the first was his alma mater, the University of Missouri, as it had already created a queer archive.
“We started collecting things in the community and donating to that particular archive,” said Brawley, who grew up in the St. Louis region and lives in the suburb of Kirkwood. “They provided trainings to us on how to do oral histories, etc.”
When he began such efforts, Brawley found there was a lot of interest in the local LGBTQ community but he didn’t have any “real game plan” for how to harness it. It also drew the attention of the local press, and the media coverage led to a number of potential partners to reach out to him about ways they could collaborate.
“I am trying to queer up the St. Louis museum and archive community,” said Brawley, who works as an executive vice president of a funding agency that provides state grants to local nonprofits in the region.
One way he aims to achieve his goal is by encouraging museum exhibit designers and curators to think about how to include LGBTQ materials or voices. As one example, Brawley pointed to a show about Route 66 the Missouri History Museum mounted that included a section on guidebooks for travelers who didn’t have the same privileges as white, heterosexual Americans had in the 1950s. Brawley lent it several copies of Damron and Lavender travel guides for LGBTQ vacationers from his personal collection.
by John Ferrannini
Before he became one of San Francisco’s premier press agents, Lee Houskeeper was just another twentysomething in New York City. It was there in the sweltering humidity of the lower Manhattan summer, in 1969, that he witnessed the Stonewall riots.
But as a straight ally, he hasn’t always been recognized as being a “Stonewall survivor,” and his story hasn’t been widely reported until now.
“I said ‘wait a minute,’” he told the Bay Area Reporter, recalling when he saw a Cadillac convertible in the San Francisco Pride parade in recent years carrying people who were at the riot that launched the modern day movement for LGBTQ civil rights. “I thought I was going to be on the float.”
Houskeeper was told he had to be LGBTQ to ride in the Cadillac, his friend, lesbian police commissioner
Debra Walker told the B.A.R., and had to walk next to it.
Houskeeper, 76, though, doesn’t hold that against anyone. After all, he was recognized by Congressmember Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the former House speaker, at this year’s Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club breakfast on Pride Sunday. He wore to the breakfast one of two jackets he made to commemorate the riots. This year marked the 55th anniversary of the uprising in New York City.
“Our diversity is our strength – our unity is our power,” Pelosi said at the June 30 breakfast. “No one has done more to reinforce that ideal, that value than the LGBTQ community as they observe this week what happened at Stonewall –Lee Houskeeper is here with his jacket, on the back of it he says he gave them his garbage can tops to bang away at that – but we have our own observances of justice here as well, and every day you reinforce that, so let’s be very proud.”
One of the jackets that Lee showed the B.A.R. during an August interview states, “On June 28, 1969, I lent my garbage can lids to those brave Stonewall rioters to use as shields against the cops. I was living on Gay Street, NYC, a few doors down from the battle.”
Walker told the B.A.R. that Houskeeper is “determined; he really does feel connected to the thing. Sometimes we forget our allies.”
Lee said in a follow-up phone call that he’s known Walker for “over 10 years.”
“She was on the building commission and so was my client John Konstin from John’s Grill, so we wound up hanging out a lot – that and combined with my being close with [mayor] London Breed, so there’d be these events, these dinners, and we’d meet up,” he said, referring to the building inspection commission post Walker held before becoming a member of the civilian police oversight panel.
The Stonewall riots began on June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. That the event began with someone throwing a brick is mythical, the New York Times reports, but what is agreed on is that it was a response to police harassment of gays, lesbians, transgender people, and other sexual minorities. Homosexuality was illegal in New York state at the time.
“Nobody wanted to admit they were a gay person – there were such consequences,” Houskeeper said, recalling the pre-Stonewall era. “The [Catholic] archdiocese had such a control over the [New York City] police and, so this is the 9th and the 11th precinct, and they were given the marching orders. It took TV cameras to show up, and the New York Times, and European papers and the news media to show up, which didn’t happen for at least a week, for people to go ‘this is looking like our Selma.’”
It was only four years earlier that Alabama Highway Patrol officers attacked Black civil rights demonstrators in Selma, Alabama when they tried to march to Montgomery, the state capital. On March 7, 1965, which came to be called Bloody Sunday, 17 marchers were hos-
pitalized and 50 were treated for lesser injuries. Marchers led by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did reach Montgomery during a second march, and then-President Lyndon B. Johnson used the Bloody Sunday events to push for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, famously making the protest anthem “We shall overcome” into the theme of an address before a joint session of Congress.
‘Everybody was at my house’ Houskeeper, who is now a press agent with clients including former San Francisco Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr., had moved to Manhattan after growing up in Illinois and worked in the music industry of the counterculture, including with Jefferson Airplane and the late Janis Joplin. He had an apartment on Gay Street, near the Stonewall Inn, and on a hot night “the air conditioner wasn’t doing its job,” he recalled, referring to a window fan.
“It’s a June day,” he said. “I’m sitting on my stoop and all of a sudden running down the street a few dozen guys, [in] shirtsleeves … and they come by and they look down at my garbage cans and they say ‘can we use your garbage can lids?’ and I said ‘sure,’ without even saying, ‘What’s going on?,’ and they liked that. I was pleasant. I wasn’t combative. I was curious.”
These were old-school, metal garbage cans with lids. Gay Street – named for a family with the surname Gay who lived there during colonial times – is a very short, angled street between Christopher Street and Waverly Place, which intersect at two different points in the direction heading toward the Hudson River. The Stonewall Inn is farther west.
“So they took the garbage can lids and they came around the other side
because what the police would do is they’d get into their positions,” Houskeeper recalled. “Their position was to stand and look straight ahead at the Stonewall as they are pulling everybody out and throwing them in paddy wagons, and these guys took the garbage can lids and came up on the rear of their [NYPD] positions and knocked the shit out of them, then came running back around, waited till what they thought was an appropriate amount of time.”
Because Gay Street was so hidden, “the cops never found us,” Houskeeper said. (He was still on his stoop at that time.)
“They came up on the rear of them. They started shoving and chanting. And what that would do is – it was more strategic – it would make the cops turn around and reposition themselves. So what these guys would do is wait the appropriate amount of time and then they’d go around Christopher Street and hit them again. It took them five or six times to figure it out, but there were a whole lot of these guys. … I swear I have no memory of any cops going on Gay Street. They were busy.”
The rioters lucked out with Houskeeper in another way than just his garbage can lids – he had three phones due to his music business.
“Somebody asked to use the john [toilet] and I said OK come up I’ll show it to you,” Houskeeper said.
“They ask, ‘Can we use a phone?’ I got three phones because in the music business in doing a record deal I didn’t want to have my phone busy if [record producer] Clive Davis would call … so it became a headquarters of sorts as they [the rioters] were calling one another.”
San Francisco doesn’t rest on its laurels. Neither do the residents of San Francisco Towers. We’re an inclusive community of doers and thinkers who share an appreciation for arts, culture and social activities. When we’re not taking advantage of the city’s vibrant art scene, we’re painting our own, swimming in our heated pool or gathering with friends on the rooftop terrace. To see how our Life Plan Community can support your interests, schedule a tour.
“Obviously, the polls show a strong majority supporting enshrining freedom to marry in California’s constitution,” Tony Hoang, a gay man who is the executive director of statewide LGBTQ rights group Equality California, told the Bay Area Reporter in an October 15 phone interview.
Indeed, a PPIC statewide survey conducted August 29-September 9 shows 68% of likely voters voting yes on the measure – including 84% of Democrats, 69% of independents, and 37% of Republicans.
Hoang said that the campaign – for which EQCA has raised $2.5 million thus far – has been largely an informative one. (Nathan Click, a gay man who is the spokesperson for Yes on 3, said the goal is to spend $3 million.)
Click stated that California Governor Gavin Newsom will be in digital ads for Prop 3 next week. Newsom had told the B.A.R. earlier this year he’d do “whatever I can do” for the measure. Ads on Instagram featuring happy couples have already started airing.
Prop 3 would excise from the state’s governing document the “zombie” anti-same-sex-marriage language that 2008’s Proposition 8 embedded in it. Prop 8, passed by voters 16 years ago, was ultimately found unconstitutional – same-sex marriage became legal in the Golden State in 2013 – but the ballot language remains.
The Legislature by a bipartisan vote last year passed the constitutional amendment that became Prop 3, the Freedom to Marry initiative, on this year’s fall ballot.
“It’s our job [as voters] to know why it’s on the ballot and what Prop 3 actually does,” Hoang said. “As folks read the ballot language, a strong majority of Californians across the state support enshrining freedom to
marry in the state constitution.”
A 2013 United States Supreme Court decision ended the enforcement of Prop 8. However, concerns the Supreme Court might overturn its 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges – which legalized samesex marriage nationwide – have renewed the need for removing the Prop 8 language from the state constitution to protect same-sex marriage in California.
LGBTQ leaders in California became alarmed following U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ words in a concurrence to the 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion in Roe v. Wade. Thomas, appointed by President George H.W. Bush to the high court, wrote that it “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” Griswold v. Connecticut was a 1965 ruling that people have a constitutional right to access contraceptives; Lawrence v. Texas was a 2003 ruling that overturned laws prohibiting sexual relations between people of the same sex, as well some laws against oral or rectal intercourse between members of the opposite sex; Obergefell is the same-sex marriage case.
In response to Thomas’ warnings at the federal level in 2022, President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats shepherded the Respect for Marriage Act into law later that year with bipartisan support.
The new law repealed the discriminatory so-called Defense of Marriage Act that was passed in 1996 but had key provisions struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 (Section 3, U.S. v. Windsor) and 2015 (Section 2, Obergefell v. Hodges). The law requires the federal government and all states and territories to recognize the validity of same-sex and interracial civil marriages performed anywhere in the U.S. Interracial marriage has
been legal nationwide since a 1967 Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia.
Prop 3 campaign
Prop 3 proponents say the amendment will also protect interracial marriage.
The Prop 3 campaign has had its stumbles. The campaign had featured an opposite-sex, interracial couple as the lead image on its website earlier this year, bringing to mind the unsuccessful Prop 8 campaign that didn’t showcase gay or lesbian couples in its ads. (Subsequent to the B.A.R.’s reporting on the matter, it became one of several images featured on the website alongside same-sex couples.)
Click said that the campaign is working on learning from the mistakes of the No on Prop 8 campaign 16 years ago.
“The Prop 8 campaign wasn’t reaching communities of color and wasn’t showing different communities,” Click said in a phone interview. “Our campaign has been really intentional about showcasing the diversity of California.”
EQCA has taken the lead at connecting with those diverse communities, Hoang said.
“We’ve been working with the [Yes on 3] campaign team to plan and implement a strategy for the campaign,” he said, adding that the strategy has been to inform voters about why Prop 3 is on the ballot through advertising in LGBTQ media and messaging from the over 50 members of the Yes on 3 steering committee, which is seeking to get the word out to the Asian American, Jewish, Latino, and Black communities.
For example, the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area is one of the organizations on the steering committee. Tyler “Tye” Gregory, a gay man who is executive director of the council, spoke on the matter at Sha’ar Zahav, San Francisco’s LGBTQ synagogue in
the Mission Dolores neighborhood. Gregory said, “This is an issue of religious freedom to vote for Prop 3.”
“We’re educating Jewish voters across the state about why this is so important, and we are making sure California voters know there are religious communities like ours that are supporting same-sex marriage,” he said in a phone interview. “There are a lot of lessons to learn from the Prop 8 fight – that many of the detractors were on the other side of that fight. When we talk about religious freedom there are many religious communities, like the Jewish community, that support same-sex marriage.”
Another group on the steering committee is Courage California.
Executive Director Irene Kao, who is queer and based in Oakland, said that it is “helping gather stories and storytellers of people who have of course gotten married since Prop 8 was overturned to help give a human face to this campaign, and we’re making sure a lot of partners and voters know this is on the ballot.”
Kao said that Courage California is sending its members to virtual text banking that the Yes on 3 campaign has set up.
Click explained that text banking is the most “cost effective” way to reach voters.
“That’s been the case in elections for the past 10 years in California,” he said. “Texting is actually the easiest way to get folks together.”
Gregory said the JCRC is also involved in phone and text banking.
“We’re doing a couple phone and text banking weekends, and we’ve been encouraging congregations across the state to talk about the importance of Prop 3 in their local communities,” he said.
Kao said that she hasn’t “heard of any misinformation.”
“There seems to be less visible opposition” to same-sex marriage than in 2008, she said. Still, “I think a lot of people are unaware Prop 8 is still on the books, and people are un -
aware there is a ballot measure about marriage equality this year. … It’s a pretty straightforward campaign, and I’m pretty hopeful it’s going to pass and pass with a wide majority.”
The ballot statement against Prop 3 was written by the California Family Council, whose website states its mission is “advancing God’s design for life, family and liberty through California’s church, capitol and culture.”
The statement reads: “Proposition 3 removes all rules for marriage, opening the door to child marriages, incest, and polygamy. It changes California’s constitution even though same-sex marriage is already legal. By making moms and dads optional, it puts children at risk. This careless measure harms families and society. Vote No on Proposition 3.”
That’s not true, according to Click.
“These are desperate lies from the same groups who have been working for decades to deny marriage rights to LGBTQ+ Californians,” he stated. “Californians won’t be fooled.”
The California Family Council didn’t return a request for comment.
Salvatore Cordileone, San Francisco’s Roman Catholic archbishop, was a leading voice in the campaign to ban same-sex marriage 16 years ago, when he was a prelate in San Diego. Reached for comment October 15, a spokesperson for Cordileone stated, “Rather than offering a counterpoint to a proposition, the bishops in California are pointing people to the comprehensive understanding of marriage and family as articulated in the Radiate Love initiative that is underway across dioceses in California for the next year.”
The initiative is meant to celebrate heterosexual marriage, stating that “the love of husbands and wives images the love between Jesus and his Church, as both spouses are called to lay down their lives for the other and their children.”
People interested in virtual text banking can sign up on the Yes on 3 website. t
compiled by Cynthia
Laird
News is Out, the collaboration of six legacy LGBTQ publications, will hold a free webinar on Project 2025, the right-wing authoritarian playbook that has been developed by the Heritage Foundation for a second Trump administration. While former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate this year, has denied knowledge of the 900-plus page document, several of his former officials have been involved in compiling it.
The webinar will take place Wednesday, October 23, from 3 to 5 p.m. Pacific time. Reporter Christopher Kane from the Washington Blade will moderate. Confirmed participants include Janelle Perez, a lesbian who is executive director of LPAC, which works to elect LGBTQ women and nonbinary candidates; Allen Morris, a gay man who works at the National LGBTQ Task Force; gay Pennsylvania state Representative Malcolm Kenyatta (D); trans social media influencer Charlotte Clymer; Kevin Jennings, a gay man and former Obama administration official who now leads Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund; and trans author and Chicago water commissioner Precious Brady-Davis.
The News is Out publica tions are the Bay Area Reporter, Dallas Voice, Philadelphia Gay News, Tagg magazine, Washington Blade, and the Windy City Times.
The webinar will be livestreamed on News is Out’s Facebook, Instagram, and You Tube pages. To sign up, go to https://tinyurl.com/2fd7nyry
The organization, formally known as Parents Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays, will honor actor Annette Bening, two-time Golden Globe winner and the proud mother of a trans son, for her leadership and support of the LGBTQ+ community, an announcement stated.
Bening to be honored by PFLAG SF PFLAG San Francisco will celebrate its 30th anniversary Thursday, October 17, from 6 to 9 p.m. at Trellis, 981 Mission Street.
Local entrepreneur Becka Robbins of gay-owned Fabulosa Books will also be honored for the “Books Not Bans” project she and store employees started to send books by and about LGBTQ+ people and topics to community groups across the country, the email stated.
The evening will feature performances by Tyler Reese and special guests Suzanne Swan, daughter of the founder of the PFLAG movement Jeanne Manford; gay District 8 San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman; Brian K. Bond, CEO of PFLAG National; representatives from both gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Mayor London Breed’s offices; and PFLAG San Francisco board
members, supporters and friends.
Tickets start at $45 and can be purchased at https://tinyurl.com/mpsm69ca
Vet offers grief companion workshop
Dr. Ken Gorczyca, in-home euthanasia veterinarian (A Gentle Rest) and pet death doula, and Francesca Lynn Arnoldy, community doula, grief researcher, and death literacy author, will hold a special in-person workshop to learn about becoming a grief companion.
The session takes place Sunday, November 17, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the new Muttville Senior Dog Rescue campus, 750 Florida Street in San Francisco.
An email announcement stated that attendees will discuss how to offer compassionate emotional support and practical assistance to the bereaved through any type of loss; and applicable theories and models, including how to use them to understand and normalize the grief journey.
The focus will be on both animal companion and human companion loss.
The workshop is for the veterinary community, animal guardians, and all humans that want to be more empathetic for the loss of our animals and humans, the email stated.
There will be a one-hour lunch break
– people can bring their own meal or dine out nearby; light refreshments will be offered.
Parking is limited; public transportation and ride shares are recommended.
The cost is $125 (10% of proceeds will return to Muttville to help continue its mission of creating better lives for older dogs through rescue, foster, adoption, and hospice.)
The email noted that this is not a mental health training or grief support group – it is a community education event meant to help increase one’s courage, confidence, and connections as human and animal clinicians, staff, neighbors, and loved ones.
For more information, see the event page at https://tinyurl.com/5n7bp9u6
Lee to receive award from ALRP
Outgoing Congressmember Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) will be honored at the AIDS Legal Referral Panel’s 41st annual reception Thursday, October 24, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Grand, 520 Fourth Street in San Francisco.
ALRP provides free or low-cost legal services to people living with HIV/AIDS in seven counties in the Bay Area: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Solano, and Sonoma.
Lee will receive the Clint Hockenberry Leadership Award. She will be honored for her lifelong dedication to achieving an AIDS-free generation, including authoring or co-authoring every major piece of federal HIV/AIDS legislation since she was elected, an announcement stated. Lee is leaving Congress in January after serving as an East Bay representative since 1998. Lee ran for California’s open U.S. Senate seat earlier this year but did not advance out of the primary.
Gay comedian and writer Bruce Vilanch will also be recognized with the inaugural Bill Hirsh Award for his extraordinary record of volunteering his voice, time, and talent in support of organizations serving people living with HIV/ AIDS and the LGBT community, and for unflinchingly and hilariously challenging and lampooning homophobia and political extremism. Vilanch is a two-time Emmy Award winner.
Michael Rooney will receive the Attorney of the Year Award. Rooney joined ALRP as a panel attorney in 2007 and has accepted 36 referrals since that time, often going above and beyond to support clients on multiple matters. In 2023, he contributed over 200 hours of pro bono time to ALRP, including work on two affirmative housing cases for ALRP clients, the announcement stated.
Lesbian comedian Marga Gomez will host the event. Tickets start at $150 and can be purchased at https://tinyurl.com/ ytpr24rh..t
“We want to make sure all institutions embed us in their exhibits, so they include queer voices,” he said, adding the focus shouldn’t solely be on “one-anddone” shows specifically about an LGBTQ topic or theme.
His own LGBTQ historical project is not set up as a nonprofit, because Brawley knows there is only so much funding available for such efforts and doesn’t want to compete with other organizations that rely on grants and donations. Thus, he sees his main job as being a “cheerleader and champion for these institutions to DEI their collections,” using the acronym for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The private Washington University in St. Louis reached out to form a partnership, as it has archival papers from the work begun on campus in the late 1950s by the pioneering human sexuality researchers William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson. It began with Brawley advising students there on collecting LGBTQ community oral histories and grew into a partnership with the school’s library to expand its LGBTQ archive and create an online map of local LGBTQ sites found at https://bit.ly/48gqZze.
“They really brought their academic
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From page 9
Houskeeper added that he called several of his music industry contacts to tell them about the unfolding events.
“So I’m on the phone, they’re on the phone, and I get Laura Nyro and Bette Midler and Janis [Joplin] and a few others [on the phone] and I said, ‘You will not believe what is going on down here,’ and everybody [rioters] was in my house. … I’ve got a crowd at my house now, and so it goes on – it seems to me –it was at least 10 days and it was primarily the weekend.”
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From page 7
inspired by Cleve’s activism and organizing. The chorus, and the world, is better off because of Cleve.”
Gay artist Serge Gay Jr. made pieces of art of scenes from Jones’ life for the event.
“I was just so honored to do this for Cleve and it was received so well at the event,” the artist stated. “People loved seeing the artwork in person and added to the joyous celebration. The love was in the room, and I hope that Cleve received all that deserving love and more.”
‘Forever twink of the Castro’ Jones received honors from the state Legislature and the San Francisco
“Over the last week since the school closures/merger list was released, I’ve spoken to parents, educators, and staff, and so many in our city who care deeply about our public schools. What I’ve heard over and over is confusion and concern around the proposed school closures/merger list and how it has been communicated and managed,” Breed stated. “This cannot continue.”
Breed stated that “whatever this current proposed school closure process was meant to accomplish, or could have accomplished, is lost” and that she has “lost confidence in the superintendent’s ability to manage the current process and do not believe this current plan will lead to an outcome that will benefit students and the school district in the longterm.”
Breed added that staff at the district office are “doing incredibly difficult work to avoid a state takeover.” That might happen if the district doesn’t get its financial house in order, as media outlets have reported.
Ken Lustbader gives a tour in Christopher Park, which is part of the Stonewall National Monument in New York City.
powerhouse together on it. We are on the second version of it,” said Brawley of the map.
The partnership with the Missouri History Museum led to its launching in June the “Gateway to Pride” exhibit (https://mohistory.org/exhibits/gateway-to-pride) that runs through next July. Also, this year, the museum named an endowment in Brawley’s honor to create a permanent fund to support its LGBTQIA+ collecting initiative.
Houskeeper said he remembers Nyro coming to his apartment after the phone call, that Midler did not, and that Joplin may have but he doesn’t remember with 100% certainty.
The Stonewall riots lasted six days; the next year gay liberation marches were held in Manhattan, Los Angeles, and San Francisco to mark the anniversary. The annual marches have continued since then as the annual LGBTQ Pride parade.
Houskeeper had the jackets made by Debbie Shaffer, an Indianan who sells items on Etsy (https://www.etsy.com/ people/debbieshaffer).
Board of Supervisors at a private event earlier in the day at the Financial District offices of the SWA Group – the group behind the Harvey Milk Plaza redesign. At the same event, Mayor London Breed declared October 11 Cleve Jones Day in San Francisco.
The mayor noted Jones’ birthday falls on National Coming Out Day.
“We are able to celebrate like this and be who we are and love who we love because of trailblazers like Cleve Jones,” Breed said. “You see a new generation of young people growing up, and I’m really proud that some of the work that we are able to do creates the opportunity to ensure that the next generation gets better and better and better because he kicked down those doors.”
Gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael
“It is the first time Missouri has had a stand-alone exhibit on queer history, ever,” said Brawley, who served as a community curator for the exhibit. “It is pretty darn cool, to say the least.”
Working with a local Ph.D. student, the St. Louis LGBTQ Historic Project teamed up with Trinity Episcopal St. Louis to have its church in the city’s West End LGBTQ neighborhood be recognized as an LGBTQ historic site on the National Register of Historic Places. It was listed in 2020.
“The church was an affirming church of its members from the gay and lesbian community way back in the 1950s and 1960s,” said Brawley.
Another collaboration has been with the Griot Museum of Black History, helping it collect items from the local African American LGBTQ community.
“They have done some really innovative programming around the impact of HIV/AIDS on the Black community. That was a big thing for them to do,” noted Brawley, due to the stigmatization surrounding the disease faced especially by those Black men and women living with HIV or AIDS.
New partnerships
Now, because of the national survey on LGBTQ historical projects, Brawley has formed what he dubbed “sister cities” partnerships with the leaders of
“Doesn’t he have an incredible story?” she said in a phone interview with the B.A.R.
Shaffer said she got a request to make the jacket after messaging Houskeeper back after he’d placed an order.
“He starts telling me what he’s thinking, and the moment we talked it seemed it would be best to start from scratch. I use repurposed items to start with,” she said. “That led to a kind of twoday back-and-forth of texts and emails as we worked on the design. It was a very fun process; a little difficult, because he’s halfway across the country from my studio.”
Mandelman, who represents the Castro on the Board of Supervisors, said, “You cannot say enough about how much Cleve Jones has meant to all of the queers. I misspoke and said something about his aging or something a few weeks ago – it wasn’t good – and I tried to make up for it by calling him ‘the forever twink of the Castro.’”
Mandelman said, “it has been a gay couple of months in the Castro, and the mayor has been a big part of that, and Cleve Jones has been a big part of that,” referring to the landmarking of the flagpole and giant rainbow flag at Market and Castro streets, plus the announcement of the new LGBTQ history museum site in the Castro.
“Along the way, when your gay supervisor has wavered and considered spots outside the Castro, this one
auditing internal procedures to restore system health, the mayor stated.
“But they cannot do this under the chaos of this mismanaged school closure process,” Breed added.
The San Francisco Unified School District has not returned multiple requests for comment for this report.
Gay school board commissioner Phil Kim, whom Breed appointed in late August to fill the unexpected vacancy caused by the resignation of former board president Lainie Motamedi, did tell the B.A.R. that Milk’s name needs to be recognized in some fashion if the school is merged with Sanchez.
such efforts in a number of Midwest and Southern cities.
“We have been partnering. Even just knowing who we are on Instagram, we have been sharing stuff with each other,” he said.
Lustbader said the committee’s goal is to now create a website with information about the various LGBTQ history projects across the country to inform the public about them. It will offer people a way to connect locally or regionally with LGBTQ site-based history efforts. He hopes to have it live by Pride Month next June.
“It was really great to see people be enthusiastic about sharing their research and projects,” said Lustbader. “We need to find a way to sustain this network.”
When the Demuth Museum set out to update its displays, it turned to the Alice Austen House on Staten Island in New York for inspiration. As the Bay Area Reporter had noted in a 2021 story about the historic residence, it received designation as a National LGBT Historic Site and updated its exhibits to fully embrace Austin being a lesbian pioneer and photographer who lived in the house with her longtime partner, Gertrude Tate.
“It is incredible, the transformation they have made to that site,” said Baer. “That was really helpful to us as we started thinking about this, the possibility, and the approach.”
Each jacket took about 10 hours, she said.
“It’s a process,” Shaffer said. “It was wonderful. … His was by far the most fun to make. It meant a lot to know the person I was designing it for, and what it meant to him and what he had witnessed and how it really changed the course of history.”
The jackets were variations on a jean jacket that can be ordered through Shaffer’s Etsy page Walker, an artist herself, said, “I love that story.”
“I do think that people, there are people out there who want to be supportive
called me up and read me the freakin’ riot act,” Mandelman revealed. “So, thank you, Cleve.” A feasibility study on an LGBTQ history museum was done in 2019 and concluded that the site should be located in the Castro.
Lesbian state Senator Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) thanked Jones for his work with UNITE HERE Local No. 5.
Atkins is running for governor in 2026.
“The work you do on behalf of working individuals and families I appreciate,” she said.
Atkins also recalled her experience with the quilt.
“My twin sister’s husband died of AIDS in the time right as I got to California and he was not treated with dignity,” she said. “In fact, he was quarantined in Balboa Naval Hospital, and we did a panel for him and we did one
She specifically called out Superintendent Matt Wayne, doctorate in educational leadership, and recent school board appointee Kim. Bell claimed Wayne was hired to preside over school closures and pointed toward Kim’s previous work as senior director of STEM education at KIPP charter schools as evidence he supports that effort, comparing him to a “fox watching the henhouse.” (When Kim was tapped for the school board post, he had been working for the school district. He resigned that position to serve on the board.)
The Demuth staff have now been sharing their own experience with their counterparts, presenting their reinterpretation effort at a state museum conference in April. They have applied to be presenters at several conferences in 2025 to continue to share what they learned with staff from other historic sites about telling queer stories.
They went through a gender and sexuality training offered by their local YMCA so they could comfortably talk about Demuth’s life story and not stumble over LGBTQ terminology. They also discussed why they weren’t “outing” Demuth with the new approach and decided to ask several curators and art historians to select one of his artworks and interpret it through an LGBTQ lens, which is available on its website.
“It boils down to authenticity. We wanted to be genuine in how we talk about Charles Demuth and his life,” said Baer. “It did impact the work; it did impact his social experiences. So, as we talk about him, we want to honor him and his life, and this is a big component of it.”
Baer applauded the work the national LGBTQ historical committee has undertaken to also connect project leaders and institutions across the country.
“We are all for sort of information sharing,” she said. “If we don’t work with one another, it is a lot harder.”t
and they live in places like Indiana where they don’t think they can,” Walker said.
Added Houskeeper of Walker, “She was so excited about this.”
Walker said Houskeeper’s story shows the importance of allies.
“We don’t make change without our allies in any of our struggles of equity,” she said. “People need to feel it personally, and I think that’s how we can expand the reach of our advocacy around advocating for everybody is to really make it personal. A lot of our fights are won because there are allies giving us garbage can lids.” t
for my cousin, and I just want to tell you what that meant to my sister and to her son, my nephew.”
Congressmember Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the former House speaker, sent recorded remarks. She couldn’t make it due to the death of a friend.
“You were a shining light in the dark, building community out of grief and spurring action out of anguish,” she said. “When you pitched me on your idea for an AIDS memorial quilt, I wasn’t quite convinced. I said ‘Cleve, nobody sews. I have five kids and I don’t even sew.’ You were right, and I was wrong. It wasn’t long before I was sewing patches myself. … Cleve, thank you for all that you have done, all that you continue to do. It is a joy to call you my dear friend.” t
inform the hard work we have in front of us to stabilize our district, end our fiscal crisis, and maintain local control.”
Last week, Kim said, “I hope our families and community engage in staff to work toward a solution and I look forward to hearing that recommendation. As a board [member] my job is to listen for that recommendation and take action.”
Gordon claimed that the district was keeping the numbers of students at the Milk school low so that it could close it.
“That work requires balancing the district’s budget by December,” Breed stated. The city’s School Stabilization Team, a group of high-level city officials that Breed sent to the district office a few weeks ago, is working alongside district staff on critical operational issues, including expediting teacher credentialing, providing oversight to special education budget and programs, and
“I have made it clear the district has a responsibility to make sure Harvey Milk’s name must be respected in our portfolio planning,” Kim said in an October 8 phone interview.
Bell said that she believes the school closures are a way to usher in charter schools.
“San Francisco has held off charters more than any other major city,” she said. “It’s been a target for a long time. … This is where we’re going, the writing’s on the wall.”
Kim gave the B.A.R. a response to the assertion.
“I have worked at the school, district, and national levels in education, centered on high quality curriculum and instruction,” Kim stated. “My focus has always been to create the best possible learning experiences for young people. I am grateful for the opportunity to step into the governance role. As commissioner, my focus is centered on student outcomes and experience especially as the district faces difficult but necessary decisions ahead. I am leveraging my leadership experience in the district to
“The district has been handicapping us and punishing us for their decision,” he said, suggesting the district “open up enrollment so we can prove we can meet the magic number of 260 [students].”
Bell said that the district should stop making schools compete against one another for resources.
“Basically, our entire system is so God awful,” she said. “What it does is it pits the schools against each other.”
Ultimately, what they’d both like to see is for the district to renege on its plans.
“It makes me sad because we are one SFUSD community,” Bell said. t
by Jim Gladstone
“Iused to play X-Men with my older brother and the kids in the neighborhood, but I never wanted to be the boy characters,” recalled gay comedian Tim Murray, who will perform at Feinstein’s at the Nikko on October 29.
“I wanted to be a woman with super powers. So I’d be the Wicked Witch of the West. Then, when I was around seven, ‘Hocus Pocus’ came out, and it was huge. Some girls in the neighborhood and I would pretend we were the Sanderson Sisters.
“This older girl was Bette Midler, I was usually Kathy Najimy, and one of the younger girls would be Sara Jessica Parker. We’d pretend our bikes were broomsticks and ride around, like ‘We’re flying! We’re flying! It was so gay, and it was so fun.”
The same can be said about “Witches!,” the seasonal and spicy cabaret act Murray has been touring the country with each October since 2022. It’s a very queer, unabashedly autobiographical romp, complete with musical numbers, in which gay boys and witches share status as “magical outcasts.”
Murray opens the show in full Margaret
Los Angeles Blade covers Los Angeles and California news, politics, opinion, arts and entertainment and features national and international coverage from the Blade’s award-winning reporting team. Be part of this exciting publication serving LGBT Los Angeles from the team behind the Washington Blade, the nation’s first LGBT newspaper. From the freeway to the Beltway we’ve got you covered.
by Victoria A. Brownworth
ABC’s “General Hospital” may have done away with the lesbian pairing of Kristina and Blaze while making way for a front-burner storyline for Kristina, but they have also brought back two gay male characters. Lucas Jones (Van Hansis) and Brad Cooper (Parry Shen) have a complex history. They were married back in 2015. Their tumultuous relationship was such that now that Lucas has returned to Port Charles, soon after the trans woman co-chief of General Hospital, Dr. Terry Randolph (Cassandra Jones) has re-hired Brad in the lab on a trial basis (he was previously fired for switching test results), Lucas confronts Brad and says he wants nothing to do with him.
The role of Brad has been played by Shen, who is straight, since 2013. But the role of Lucas has been played by numerous actors. Hansis is the latest iteration and is openly gay. Hansis, as we wrote about years ago here, made soap history as a young actor on “As the World Turns,” playing Luke Snyder, son of Lily and Holden Snyder, as a gay youth from 2005 until the show ended in 2010. Luke and his boyfriend Noah Mayer (Jake Silbermann) were deemed the first gay supercouple in American soap opera history.
There’s no way to overstate how dramatic the Luke and Noah storyline was, but it was incredible. Twenty years ago, there just was not the queer visibility that there is now on TV. That coupling and all it entailed was intense, which makes the choice of Hansis to play Lucas on “General Hospital” quite powerful.
The Lavender Tube on history, Halloween and more
day listing, but we have some faves, too.
There are gay classics like Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” which is playing on AMC as well as the unbelievably scary “The Perfection,” which is a stunning lesbian horror flick.
We are really looking forward to what happens next as Brad seems to think there’s still hope for the two to rekindle their “kindred spirits” relationship, no matter what Lucas said. On the October 11 episode, Lucas sort of made up with his estranged aunt, the often diabolical Ava Jerome (Maura West), so could Brad be next? Or will Brad’s machinations in the lab get in the way?
Hallo-winners
The national queer holiday of Halloween has brought the queers to the kitchens on Food Network yet again in Halloween baking competitions like the “Halloween Baking Championship” and “Halloween Wars,” both of which we watch every year. They are trés gay and lots of fun. “Halloween Wars” is hosted by out gay actor Jonathan Bennett and “Halloween Baking Championship” co-stars out gay chef Zac Young. Halloween also means non-stop scare fests on the tube. There’s a day-to-
In “The Perfection,” Charlotte Willmore (Allison Williams) is a talented cellist who was forced to leave her prestigious music school in Boston, to care for her critically ill mother. She makes a play to return to her school after her mother’s death and gets invited to Shanghai. There with Anton, the school’s administrator, Charlotte sees her competition, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Wells (Logan Browning), Anton’s star pupil. After a night of clubbing, they return to Lizzie’s hotel room and have sex.
That is when the horror begins.
Charlotte offers a hungover Lizzie some ibuprofen, which she takes with alcohol, and the two go on a trip through rural China. On a bus after eating some street food, Lizzie feels sick and Charlotte offers her more ibuprofen. But then Lizzie throws up maggots and she and Charlotte get tossed off the bus.
Terror ensues. We highly recommend this incredible film and
all of its wild queerness, but if you have trouble with the trailer, you will not get through this very intense film. It’s on Netflix through October.
Horror hijinks
FX’s “American Horror Stories: will premiere a five-episode Halloween event on Hulu starting October 15. “Huluween” will feature five new horror stories. The cast includes Debby Ryan, Michael Imperioli, Henry Winkler, Dyllón Burnside, Jessica Barden, and others.
“American Horror Stories” is a spin-off of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s “American Horror Story.” The anthology series features a different horror story in each episode, and some of the stories reference the original series.
Is Halloween truly Halloween without drag? No. So treat yourselves to Shudder TV’s “The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula” in six seasons of wild fun. The show features monster drag artists from around the world competing for a chance to win $100,000 and the title of Dragula, The World’s Next Drag Supermonster.
Each week, the competitors are tasked with horror-based makeup, design and performance challenges meant to test their skills and prove they have what it takes to remain in the competition. For the monsters that fail, grueling mental and physical Extermination Challenges await with horrifying and deadly consequences, until only the strongest finalists remain.
Scary monster
It’s just weeks before the most consequential election of our collective lifetimes and somehow there are people still confused between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
We watched Trump talk about putting his opponents in camps or having the military take care of them in what he means is a military coup on Maria Bartiromo’s show Sunday.
At every rally he’s stoking racial animus and he’s also trying to lure more Black and Latino male voters and squishy suburban women with his anti-gay and anti-trans rhetoric which we wrote about in our different politics hat for Philadelphia Gay News. Meanwhile, we watched Harris’s Univision town hall in which she spoke directly to Latinx voters in an unscripted Q&A and her interview on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” She was so good that Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted that she should be stopped from doing any more interviews.
How is this election a dead heat? And how are there undecided or worse, third-party voters, when every single pollster from MSNBC to CNN to Fox News has explained third party votes are proxy Trump votes? Did people learn nothing from 2016 and the Trump Supreme Court?
As it’s LGBTQ History Month, it’s a good time to look at how prior authoritarianism has harmed the queer community. We wrote about the Lavender Scare here and Trump has already clarified in all these interviews with right-wing talk show hosts that he wants to bring all that back. And
for those who didn’t get the mindwipe about the Trump presidency, it was the most anti-LGBTQ in history. If you’re thinking about LGBTQ History Month and how all these issues intersect, we recommend watching the incredibly compelling Emmy-nominated, “Fellow Travelers,” which is a powerful (and sensual) political love story as well as an indictment of the previously most dangerous periods for LGBTQ people, starring Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey. “Fellow Travelers” was named among the best TV shows
of 2023 by Variety, The Washington Post and The New Yorker.
We also recommend watching the brilliant Colman Domingo as gay Civil Rights icon Bayard Rustin in Netflix’s “Rustin,” produced by the Obamas. Domingo’s performance got a bazillion fabulous reviews as well as nominations for the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award and SAG Award for Best Actor.
So, for the ghouls in real life and just for Halloween scares, you know you really must stay tuned.t
by Jim Provenzano
Oscar-winning actress and award-winning singer Cher will be at the Golden Gate Theatre on December 4, 7:30pm to discuss her new memoir. Her life is so fabulous, this is only part one of two memoirs. Cher will discuss her decades-long career in music, films, and even stage plays, with the SF Chronicle’s music journalist Joel Selvin.
The only woman to top Billboard charts in seven consecutive decades, Cher is also the winner of two Academy Awards, an Emmy, Grammy and a Cannes Fest Festival Award. She’s also been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and was recently lauded at the Kennedy Center Honors.
From her early beginnings as a backup singer, she later became a music sensation with Sonny Bono, whom she married. Their variety show in the 1970s, and the short-lived “Cher Show,” was followed by her acting career, to the surprise of many.
Winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in “Silkwood” in 1984 was followed by winning Best Actress for “Moonstruck” in 1988. Despite growing the attention from numerous tabloids for her many romances with men, she continued to push boundaries and defy criticism as she enjoyed a recent music revival, and the continued adoration of LGBTQ fans, especially with her hit single “Believe.”
And more recently, a biographical musical featuring her music became a hit on Broadway and with a touring production that recently played in San Francisco.
Tickets, which include a copy of her memoir, are still available at www.broadwaysf.com.
For more arts and nightlife events, see Going Out on www.ebar.com.t
by Tim Pfaff
My favorite Charles Ives quote dates from 1931, when the composer was in New York for the first public performance of his “Three Places in New England.” It was hissed and booed, but Ives seemed unperturbed.
But when an audience member shouted his displeasure at “Men and Mountains,” by Ives’ friend Carl Ruggles, Ives stood up and chastised the man: “You goddam sissy…when you hear strong masculine music like this, get up and use your ears like a man!”
The exclamation falls as hard on our present-day ears as Ives’ challenging music did on the ears of the outraged ticket-buyer. The fact that Ives’ rebuke is recorded in a number of ways hints that it might be apocryphal. Fact or fiction, Ives’ point is clear: fully hearing his music requires listeners to stretch their artistic, non-anatomical inner ears.
Today, an Ives piece on the program can be the reason an audience goes to a concert. And no one worth listening to calls anyone a sissy. Now one sure route to Ives’ “masculine music” is the playing of out pianist Jeremy Denk, author of the rightly praised memoir, “Every Good Boy Does Fine.”
In honor of Ives’ 150th birth anniversary, Nonesuch is releasing a twodisc set of Denk’s previous recordings of the Violin Sonatas, with Stefan Jackiw, and, newly re-mastered, his manly 2010 recording of the piano sonatas, climaxing with the fiercely tender “Concord” Sonata.
Cranky Yankee
One of the glories of the set is Denk’s commentary about the pieces. Don’t hold your breath, but the recording industry has promised that henceforth the “booklets” included with CD releases will also become
available on the streaming formats. If Denk’s exemplary essay, written not just as “liner notes” but as an Ives tribute for this year’s celebration of 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, doesn’t make the new cut (it hasn’t so far), a great opportunity will be lost.
These comments on the program come from Denk’s deep experience performing the pieces live and repeatedly over time, with the inevitable new perspectives and changes of interpretive attack.
His insights into the inner workings of the “Concord” Sonata are introduced, sagely, by the response Denk received when he asked the Ives proponent, Gilbert Kalish, to teach him the piece. Kalish said it was “unteachable” because of the infinite number of interpretive possibilities.
That’s in keeping with the climate of these recordings, which offer virtuosic, thought-through performances that never stray far from the seemingly improvisational nature of the music. And if you stick with the essay to the end, you’ll see Denk calling Ives the “cranky Yankee,” which is as usefully explanatory as it is infested with Ives’ own quick, sometimes sardonic rapier wit.
Strings attached
The inclusion of the four violin sonatas, played in reverse order as is the wont of Denk and his colleague, violinist Stefan Jackiw, is more illuminating than album-filling. A paraphrase (and simplification) of Denk’s rationale is that, with the last, Ives demonstrates his capacity to write real, if hardly conventional, “European music,” albeit with piano gestures the Europeans would have found farcical if not outright offensive. By the time the duo arrives at the First Sonata, the halting, then driving manifestations of the sheer, fundamental wildness of Ives are exclaimed.
Ives’ quotes and deliberate misquotes of tunes any knowledgeable American listener would both recognize and be startled by, so characteristic of Ives’ music, abound. His working over of the hymn “Watchman, Tell Us of the Night” in the Third Sonata points to its even more potent deployment in the Fourth Symphony. Here is Denk the commentator at his best: The then-familiar tune “starts out in the guise of ragtime, and visits several styles, before finally becoming itself: an aching, yearning hymn.”
The standard violin sonata is not
where an inquisitive listener would go to hear marches, but they stomp through much of Ives’ music and get some of their earliest orders in these sonatas. The duo wrestles the daunting technical challenges of these bustling pieces while never straying far from their sometimes biting humor.
We come to the river
The solo piano music on the second disc simply astonishes. The thorny, unsettled, restless, rambunctious strains of the First Sonata, with its underlying musical palindrome, is achieved in what has to be called a definitive performance, however many other views of the piece lie hidden.
The Second Sonata, “Concord, Mass., 1840-1860,” which skirts unplayability at times, is itself finally as transcendent as the American transcendentalists, explorers of the “oversoul,” that lend their names to the four movements: Emerson, Hawthorne, The Alcotts, and Thoreau.
Dense and referential as the music is – more folk tunes, hymns, marches, and quotations of “European” works such as Beethoven’s Fifth and Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” peek out of the packed textures – for the listener willing to surrender to it, it’s spellbinding.
Each movement has its distinctive character, with departures and digressions, but it is the second,”Hawthorne” that announces its primacy from the start. Denk calls it “a giant dark joke and prank, with a ghostly aura.”
The music is as weird as the author it salutes, but it moves like ocean swells and testimonials of faith.
The playing is jaw-dropping. Denk juggles musical ideas like a circus performer. To say that he displays independence of the hands is both
accurate and somehow an understatement. What are passing dissonances and even quarter-tones in the violin sonatas here hint at prepared-piano sonorities and provide vivid examples of cluster chords.
It’s a work that benefits greatly from Denk’s verbal guide through its complex, sometimes perplexing strains. But in Denk’s gravity-defying hands, the music is as compelling as it is often overwhelming.
Fringe performances
Denk the pianist is a polyglot. He dispatches Ives as if to the manner born, but his work with more traditional, less outlandish fare demonstrates his own special knack with “European” music. A nearly simultaneous release is of the Mendelssohn piano trios, in which he is kept particularly busy, with longtime collaborators, violinist Joshua Bell and cellist Steven Isserlis (Sony Classical). Throughout their playing has the scope and drive of Mendelssohn’s best chamber music, and the Third Trio will simply sweep you away.
Simone Dinnestein has always gone her own way as a pianist. If there’s music that demands and rewards such individual musicianship it’s the “Concord” Sonata, and she celebrates it on “The Eye Is the First Circle” (Supertrain Records), another acute, absorbing take on the sprawling, deeply moving work.t
Jeremy Denk, “Ives/Denk,” Jeremy Denk, pianist, with violinist Stephan Jackiw, two CDs and streaming, Nonesuch Records. www.nonesuch.com www.jeremydenk.com
Felix Mendelssohn, Piano Trios, Jeremy Denk, Joshua Bell, and Stephen Issleris, one CD and streaming, Sony Classical. www.sonyclassical.com
by Patrick Hoctel
While a slim volume, ‘There at the End: Voices from Final Action Network: A Celebration of 20 Years,’ is chock-full of powerful testimonies from the full spectrum of Final Exit Network (FEN) clients and volunteers: advocates (both personal and professional), regional and phone coordinators, doctors and nurses, exit guides, death (end-of-life) doulas, friends, spouses, adult children and, of course, those who have decided to end their lives on their own terms.
FEN had its beginnings in the Hemlock Society, which was founded in 1980. It evolved from there through various phases and organizations (Caring Friends, End of Life Choices) to its own formation in 2004. Its foundation is the “clear and unwavering belief that mentally competent adults who suffer from a terminal illness, intractable physical pain, chronic or progressive physical disabilities, or who face loss of autonomy and selfhood through dementia have a basic human right to choose to end their lives when they judge their quality of life to be unacceptable.”
Graceful exits
A prevailing theme of these many personal accounts is gratitude, both from clients and FEN volunteers. An anonymous client is thankful that “no tubes connect me to pumps, or drips, or monitors. I’m in no pain. No real discomfort. No distress. I am continuing a loving time with my husband … My death is forty-two days away.”
She is more than happy with her own particular situation and how she has chosen to live life and death according to her own plan, stating, “I have the ultimate luxury of being vividly aware of who I am and how I have lived my life. … Now there is time, an aware time, to be certain our love, affection, appreciation, respect is spoken, is shown.”
Senior guide Fran Schindler is a big booster not only of FEN and the
services it provides but also of what it has done for her. She enthusiastically declares that the “privilege of someone being willing to have me sit with them when they die, when I only just sit with them, is the most meaningful thing I have ever done.”
A common thread for volunteers is the sense of having found themselves, their true calling, through FEN. Longtime coordinator Ann Mandelstamm remembers that pre-FEN, “I felt pretty comfortable, but I never quite fit in anyplace I was in life.” According to her, the best thing about her experience is that “I found my tribe! People laugh at me because I say this, but it’s true. Here’s my tribe. I found it. I love it.”
She adds about her work with over 100 clients, “It’s so valuable to sit and talk with them, to educate and answer their questions about VSED (Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking) or anything else. … This has been a godsend for me. I feel so lucky because FEN just gave me so much in my life.”
Although “There at the End” emphasizes the positive aspects of FEN, it doesn’t shy away from depicting the opposition and dangers you can face in trying to carry out your own death or assist in one. Frequently, pushback can come from family members, especially spouses and adult children. Interestingly, more often than not, these same people come to accept, if not approve of their loved one’s decision once they learn more about FEN and its practices.
The medical establishment is often a hindrance to people who simply want their own wishes followed as regards their chosen end. Doctors and nurses may ignore, sometimes arbitrarily so, legal end-of-life documents to follow their own beliefs about how a patient’s needs should be met or simply follow hospital protocol even when it’s not totally clear.
One husband is haunted by what he sees as his failure to deliver on his
promise to not allow his wife to suffer. As she slips away from dementia, her own home care hospice unit refuses to follow her advance directive, because from their “medical perspective, she was not at the end.”
Eventually, the husband places his wife in a particular dementia facility, as several doctors advise him that “this facility will kill her within days as it is ridden with contagious and fatal diseases.”
In an extreme case, profiled on “60 Minutes,” an adult daughter, Barbara M., found herself under arrest and in custody when she made the mistake of telling her 93-year-old father’s nurse that she had handed him a “small vial of prescribed morphine” at his request. The nurse “called her superiors, who summoned police and EMS.”
Years later, after her nightmare is over, Barbara still has trouble talking about it:
“It does a number on you.”
However, she does say, “I had an opportunity to bring injustices into
Those audiences were not the best for his material.
“I have my tight five, but to be honest, I don’t think that’s really my funniest stuff. So I’d occasionally drop in a couple of what I’d call raunchier gay jokes. And whoa, they fell flat. I could feel the audience’s disgust. Straight audiences do not want to hear about gay sex.”
Murray said, “It’s not overt homophobia, but it is homophobia. It’s like ‘Ewww!’ They’re grossed out. It’s a form of privilege, like they’re living in this other universe, and why would they want to hear about something that doesn’t apply to them. It’s crazy how much I had to adapt and change.”
Sexual innuendo always fares better with a queer crowd.
“I think gay men are usually pretty down to hear about straight sex or any kind of sex,” said Murray. “We talk about it more. We do it more. It’s a much bigger part of our culture. Straight people don’t really talk about sex at lunchtime or their dinner parties. But we do. It’s a little bit hard, mentally, to navigate when I’m playing to that broad general club audience, because I sometimes really feel like I’m neutering myself up there.”
Mirror, mirror
“What I love about ‘Witches!’ is that it’s all me,” says Murray. “When I was a kid, my brother and sister, who are six and eight years older, would babysit me, which is how I got to see a lot of stuff I probably shouldn’t have seen at as young an age as I did. My brother and I would watch stand-up all the time.”
Murray name-dropped his early inspirations.
the public consciousness, and I’m very glad I did that. But, boy, I wish this had never happened, especially for my father. He was tortured at the end.”
The good news is that these various trials and injustices can foster acts of activism that fuel the endof-life movement in positive ways. For instance, Ed Tiryakian’s outrage over how Barbara was treated by the system leads him to create a nonprofit advocacy group, Dying Right NC, to “pursue Medical Aid in Dying legislation in his native state” of North Carolina. So far, bills have been filed in “three legislative sessions,” with the last one in 2019 featuring bipartisan sponsorship for the first time.
The peace of mind Neta receives once she is accepted as a FEN client allows her to then proceed on her own private crusade to “publicly try to improve social issues,” including writing four books. In one, she solicits others for contributions “about dying and how one should have the right to control that important part of life.”
Repeatedly, initial skeptics of FEN and its activities, whether prospective clients, family members or those in the medical and legal communities, become converts. While FEN enjoys its 20th anniversary, it can be proud that it has helped advance a culture and method that make death with dignity more than just a possibility. Many people hope that, as the century progresses, a person’s ability to decide the when, where, and in what circumstances their life concludes is the next great inviolable civil right.t
‘There at the End: Voices from Final Action Network: A Celebration of 20 Years,’ edited by Jim Van Buskirk Final Exit Network, $15 print, $5 e-book. www.finalexitnetwork.org
Jim Van Buskirk and contributors will read and talk at the book’s launch at the San Francisco Public Library main branch, Koret Auditorium, Oct. 22, 6pm, 100 Larkin St. www.sfpl.org
“I loved Margaret Cho, Wanda Sykes, and later, Sandra Bernhard. Also, Norm MacDonald from ‘Saturday Night Live.’ I always liked his specials because he seemed like one of the weirder people. I’ve always liked less accessible, alternative comedy.”
Murray points to Steve Martin, who was considered highly avantgarde in his early years and later incorporated music and playwriting into his career, as a role model. He also acknowledges the wisdom of a more conventional comic.
“In ‘Witches!,’ said Murray, “I’m completely myself. The show is truly balls to the wall.”t
Tim Murray’s “Witches!” Oct. 29, 8pm, $45. Feinstein’s at the Nikko, 222 Mason St. www.feinsteinssf.com www.timmurraycomedian.com
“Jerry Seinfeld once said that the best stand-up involves being yourself to the greatest extent that’s humanly possible, more than in any other art form. In sketch comedy or acting, you’re playing a character. But with stand up, audiences want to know what you think. And how you think.”
by Brian Bromberger
When you read the subtitle of the new memoir, “California Medieval: Nearly A Nun in 1960s San Francisco,” if you’re of a certain age, you might immediately recall The Singing Nun, the Belgian Dominican Sr. Luc Gabriel, who in 1963 had a huge Top 10 hit singing “Dominique,” with her album selling two million copies.
Then there’s Sr. Bertrille, played by Sally Field, in the fantasy TV sitcom (1967-1970) “The Flying Nun,” as the young idealistic novice nun who went airborne when the wind caught her cornette habit, using her “gift” to help others.
The author, Dianne Dugaw, an accomplished classical pianist and singer-musician, has created an intriguing hybrid memoir interweaving poetry, song, and rhapsodic vignettes about the three years in the 1960s spent as a postulant (an aspiring nun) in a cloistered Franciscan convent (Mount Alverno Motherhouse) in the hills of San Jose.
There are definitely aspects of both Sr. Luc and Sr. Bertrille in Dugaw, but she left after three years. But like many former nuns, the experiences and training she received has remained throughout her subsequent life.
Becoming a nun
Dugaw grew up in rural Washington in the Cowlitz Prairie, as the oldest of twelve children. She loved music and decided she wanted to do something different than the women around her.
“No doubt about it, it looked more fun, and more interesting, to be a nun,” she writes. “Most of the nuns laugh a lot more than almost all the mothers and grandmothers I know. Pretty much all the mothers, aunts, and grandmothers I’ve seen on our Pacific Northwest prairie seemed to get stuck helping their husbands and children look clever and interesting.”
Becoming a nun was an opportuni-
The four As Polk Street was once a center of queer life, but now there’s hardly a sign that the community was ever there. Polk isn’t alone, according to Sprockett. He points out that since 2007, fifty percent of all gay bars in the United States have closed. Sprockett explains this by referring to what he calls “the four As.”
“AIDS was of course a devastating disease that really crippled many gayborhoods,” he said. “Because both the Tenderloin and Polk scene had a longstanding connection to sex work, I think these communities were hit especially hard by an often sexually transmitted pandemic. Residents of Polk Street tell me it was like a mushroom cloud. It was an apoca-
ty to escape being imprisoned in standard feminine roles. As an 18-year-old novice, she would learn to play the organ and teach music.
Dugaw gives insight into the regular schedule of her cloistered world, through her “ribbons of time,” praying and chanting the Office through the day plus reading about the saints, all of which structures her day and the monotonous routines. We’re also introduced to her fellow sisters’s eccentricities, such as Sr. Mechtilde, who manages all the chanting and liturgical music, speaking in precisely chiseled consonants (“Do. LeT. YourSelF. iN.”).
Dugaw has a rebellious spirit, writing, “Sometimes I’ve been tickled to share a secretive nip of whiskey with Sister Marietta in the kitchen pantry. She gets me my cigarettes. Don’t ask me how. It’s fun to joke with her, smoke Marlboros, and drink Jack Daniels.”
She even sneaks pot into the convent, hiding the contraband in her habit:
lyptic event that the street never fully recovered from.”
Affluence is the second A, with many gay businesses unable to afford the sky-high rents in neighborhoods they helped popularize. The third A is assimilation, with many young queer people questioning if there’s a need for gayborhoods like the Castro when they can meet other queer people at any bar in the city.
“Gay rights focused on a message of ‘We’re just like you’ for so long that I’m worried we accidentally made an argument against the need for safe, distinctly queer spaces,” said Sprockett.
The final A is apps, with many people feeling that they don’t need to go to bars since they can now jump on a myriad of platforms to connect with others.
“There’s a complexity to the queer community’s connection to bars,”
“My surprising stash, held tightly in one hand, goes first under the scapular of my habit that drapes to my knees, and then upstairs to my cell.”
One wonders how she covered up the smell.
She befriends a doe in the woods outside the convent, using what she learned from dog and horse training at home. She works with prisoners. She takes philosophy classes at the University of San Francisco, enduring the wacky theology of wall-eyed Father Aegidius (who escaped during the 1956 Czech uprising against the Russians) and nobody seems to want to sit near “THE NUN.”
Another excerpt:
“But one day, Father Aegideus produced an inspired symbol: a blue ball of yarn pierced by a knitting needle. The pulled-out string of yarn is time as we experience it, unspooling moment by moment along a line. But curled up, the ball of yarn is all time in its repetitions of hours, days, years, centuries,
Sprockett said. “We feel an ownership of them as common areas but they are also private businesses trying to turn a profit. When I talk to tour guests about this, the ideas raised on how to save bars are often at odds with what bar owners tell me is needed to be profitable. Queer people need a third place, but perhaps in the future it won’t look like the bars of the twentieth century.”
The Valley of the Queens tour will last around 90 minutes and cover a little over a mile of the neighborhood. Highlights of the tour will include a visit to the site of the Compton’s Cafeteria riot, a pre-Stonewall transgender uprising against police harassment, and the site of San Francisco’s first Pride Parade. As the tour stops at important historical sites, Sprockett will share videos, photos and music over his iPad to help tour guests get a feel for the era and its people.
The North Beach tour will also cover important historical events, starting with details about the Ohlone tribe and their relationship with queerness. The tour will continue through to the 20th century and will recall the life of drag artist, and 1961 Board of Supervisors candidate Jose Sarria, who performed at the long-shuttered Black Cat Cafe. During the 1950s and ’60s Sarria mentored many gay youths, telling them, often for the first time, that it was okay to be gay. Sarria was also the founder of the Imperial Court System.
“So few people on the tours have even heard of Jose, and yet his legacy is at least as important and as lasting as Harvey Milk’s,” said Sprockett, who also pointed out that between 1939 and 1949 Broadway was home to seven lesbian bars.
from windows.”
She enters the Flying Fox Bookstore and Teashop, meets the elder hippie owner, Orion, “Sagittarius with moon rising,” spending the afternoon reading funny little poems. She buys and eats her first It’s-It bar, chronicling it as if it was a sacramental act. She hears Fr. Daniel Berrigan speak against the Vietnam War. She’s able not only to recreate the bohemian tumultuous zeitgeist of that era, but imbibe its spirit.
Dugan in her meditations realizes she wants more of that freedom she’s experiencing in San Francisco and decides to leave the convent.
“With my style, I’d be caught doing one irregular thing or another – smoking cigarettes, playing raunchy rock and roll, drinking whisky, kissing women – and get thrown out anyway. I’ve given it my best shot, especially with chanting the Office with sunlight dancing through the stained-glass windows, or mustering little grade schoolers for a rousing chorus of ‘Three Little Piggies.’ But the habit doesn’t fit.”
millennia – the prayers, the saints, the feasts, the ancestors, all of it. Piercing the wound-up ball, the knitting needle, like the eye of God, intersects and links these points – for me an awareness of connection, unity, and presence. Ancient times and today.”
California dreamin’
She discovers the center of San Francisco, Haight Street.
“A bearded flute-player in a turban tootles away near a crimson door. Smells of spicy bread with cinnamon and cloves circle in another doorway.
A bearded man in lime green with a crown of flowers smiles and waves, ‘Howdy-doody, Sister.’ Two women with long grey hair and elaborate jewelry even on their ankles and toes, jaywalk across the street toward me. Exotic swirls of incense join the spices that follow me down the sidewalk. Everything sparkles with mirrors – sides of buildings, displays in shop windows, even people’s clothes. Big and little wind chimes tinkle
“There seemed to be an exceptional queer visibility for a time until McCarthyism and Hoover’s FBI fanned the moral panic in the 1950s that set back a growing queer scene,” he said.t
“California Medieval” is an impressionistic memoir written in poetry. It’s scant on details but rich in a countercultural atmosphere you can visualize, smell, and taste. There’s no afterward about her life as an ex-nun, though she later became a Professor of Music at the University of Oregon, recording two CDs, singing traditional British and American folksongs.
Dugaw hints only once about her love for women, a quick sneak kiss with another nun, but otherwise nothing about being lesbian. There are too many gaps here which can be frustrating, but what is revealed is melodically described, such that having won the Schaffner Award for Music in Literature, I could imagine some of her sentences as lyrics in a song.t
‘California Medieval: Nearly a Nun in 1960s San Francisco’ by Dianne Dugaw. Schaffner Press, $17.95. www.schaffnerpress.com www.diannedugaw.com
Unspeakable Vice presents Fire and Ice: North Beach Walking Tour, Oct. 26, Nov. 23 & Dec. 21 at 11am. Begins outside the San Francisco Historical Society, 608 Commercial St.
Valley of the Queens, Tenderloin and Polk Street Walking Tour, Oct. 27, Nov. 23 & Dec. 21, 2pm. Begins at the Tenderloin Museum, 398 Eddy Street. $35. www.unspeakablevice.tours/
9:45pm)
