San Francisco Bay Times - July 7, 2016

July 7-20, 2016 | www.sfbaytimes.com

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30th Annual AIDS Walk San Francisco Sunday, July 17th, Golden Gate Park

PHOTO COURTESY OF SAN FRANCISCO AIDS WALK

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Trans March 2016

Dyke March 2016

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“Embracing Our Legacy: We Are Still Here” was the theme of this year’s Trans March held on Friday, June 24. The opening festival at Dolores Park included music and dancing, an information booth and speeches. The event made news when local elected officials were met with boos from the audience and subsequently left the stage. A celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot and an after party at El Rio followed the March.

This year’s Dyke March filled five San Francisco blocks—from Valencia to Market—on Saturday, June 25. Many participants shouted, “Still here, still queer!” while marching, expressing concern over economic and racial injustice. It was announced that there will be a new monthly queer event in the Mission created by the Dyke March organizers. The first event happens this Sunday, July 10, at Beauty Bar. For details: https://www.facebook.com/events/1717600595177684/

In the News

Compiled by Dennis McMillan Lawmakers Seek Emergency Declaration to Rally State Around Homeless Solutions Assemblymember and San Francisco Bay Times columnist Phil Ting (DSan Francisco), along with Assemblymember Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles) recently announced a legislative resolution requesting that the Governor declare a state of emergency on homelessness and urge statewide coordination and leadership from all parts of government to confront the related challenges. “San Francisco has invested billions serving our homeless population at the same time federal funding has been cut,” said Ting, who serves as Chair of the Assembly Budget Committee.

“Homelessness has become a regional and statewide issue and, with other cities not stepping up to the plate, San Francisco has had to shoulder a huge burden. We need a statewide solution to help people get into housing and services rather than have each city go it alone.” There are over 115,000 homeless in California, by far the most of any state. There are nearly 47,000 homeless in Los Angeles and over 7,500 homeless in San Francisco. For updates on this resolution, HR56, as well as other state and assembly bills, visit http://www. leginfo.ca.gov/bilinfo.html Community Co-Op Hopes to Buy The Stud to Prevent Legendary Club’s Closure One of San Francisco’s oldest gay bars, The Stud, has gone through a rollercoaster few weeks given that the recent selling of the building housing the club will lead to a tripling of its rent as of this September. Owner Michael McElhaney, holding back tears, held an emergency community meeting to announce his concerns.

Only recently had the club celebrated its 50th anniversary. There have been fears that it would go the way of Beatbox, which shut down on July 3. 48hills reports that entertainer Mica Sigourney (VivvyAnne ForeverMore!) is forming a community co-op to purchase The Stud. If you would like to join the effort, please contact Sigourney at saveourstud@ gmail.com and join the Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/ groups/1376983338984267/permalink/1377040125645255/

the $2.5 million needed to fund a full complement of prioritized services for the upcoming fiscal year. With this funding, San Francisco will finally be able to move forward comprehensively to implement GTZ and move toward an end to new HIV infections in the City. sfgov.org ISIS Video Specifically Threatens SF A terrifying video was released by ISIS specifically calling out San Francisco as the location of an upcoming attack. The video shows San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, focusing on the supports of the suspension bridge before panning to the cars driving past. It also shows news footage of Pulse, the club that was the location of the recent attack in Orlando, while praising the attacker. It should be noted that the video was released the same day as San Francisco’s Gay Pride Parade, possibly speaking toward the anti-LGBT agenda that the Orlando incident suggested. inquisitr.com Hackers Add Rainbows, Gay Pride Slogans to Islamic State Accounts The Anonymous hacker collective, the WauchulaGhost Twitter account, has launched a campaign to add rainbow flags and gay pride slogans to Islamic State Twitter accounts in response to the Orlando gay dance club attack that left 49 dead. The hackers took over Twitter accounts of those espousing support for the Islamic State, then added rainbow flags, signs proclaiming “I’m Gay and I’m Proud” and other gay-positive imagery. One of the hackers behind the effort says he’s been getting both death threats and kudos since the campaign began. usatoday.com President Obama Establishes First National Monument to LGBT Activism

President Barack Obama designated a new national monument at the historic site of the Stonewall Uprising in New York City to honor the movement for LGBT equality. This is the first national monument to honor the struggle for LGBT rights.

The Stonewall National Monument will protect the area where, on June SF Gay Men’s Chorus Appoints 28, 1969, a community upNew Executive rising sparked the modern Director LGBT civil rights moveSFGMC has appointment in the United States. ed Christopher VerduUnder Obama’s leadergo as their new Executive ship, a number of LGBT Director. Verdugo joins sites have been designated SFGMC in anticipation as national historic landof their 39th Season, and marks or listed on the Natogether with their Artional Register of Historic tistic Director Dr. TimPlaces. whitehouse.gov othy Seelig, will lead the Christopher Verdugo organization to new levels of growth, financial sustainability and artistic excellence. Verdugo brings over 15 years of experience leading nonprofit organizations, and comes to SFGMC after five successful years as Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles (GMCLA). sfgmc.org Supervisor Wiener Obtains HIV Funds to End New Infections in SF Supervisor Scott Wiener, in partnership with the Getting to Zero Consortium (of which Supervisor Wiener is a member) and the HIV/AIDS Providers Network (HAPN), announced that they successfully obtained funding to implement San Francisco’s historic Getting to Zero (GTZ) effort as part of the City’s two-year budget. Supervisor Wiener led the effort on the Board of Supervisors Budget Committee to secure

National Report on Hate Violence Against LGBTQ and HIVAffected Communities Released The National Coalition of AntiViolence Programs (NCAVP) released its annual report, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and HIV-Affected Hate Violence in 2015.” For this report—the most comprehensive of its kind—NCAVP collected data on 1,253 incidents of hate violence against LGBTQ and HIV-affected people from 13 local NCAVP member organizations in 11 states. States reporting were: Texas, Colorado, Vermont, Minnesota, Missouri, Massachusetts, Michigan, California, New York, Ohio, and Arizona. The NCAVP report is being released at a time when sweeping anti-LGBTQ legislation is advancing in the United States and exist(continued on page 26) S AN F R ANC IS C O BAY T IM ES JULY 7, 2016

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New Gun Laws Provide Fitting Tribute to Orlando Victims

Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 1664, which I authored with Assemblymembers Marc Levine (D-Marin County) and David Chiu (DSan Francisco), to prohibit the use of a “bullet button” or other mechanism on military-style assault weapons. These devices allow for rapid reloading of magazines, which enable shooters to shoot and kill many people very quickly.

These guns have been sold through a loophole in California’s assault weapons ban and were used in the San Bernardino mass shooting last year where 14 were killed and 22 seriously injured.

Assemblymember Phil Ting

The Governor also signed bills to:

Orlando has the unfortunate distinction of being the deadliest mass shooting in United States history, with 49 fatalities and 53 injuries.

The fact that it happened at an LGBT nightclub makes it a hate crime.

This tragedy is a shocking reminder that the fight for equality continues. The victims and their families deserve more than our thoughts and prayers. They deserve action on gun safety.

Basic questions surround this shooting. None more disturbing than this: How did the shooter, who was once being watched by the FBI for terrorist activity, obtain military-grade weapons allowing him to kill so many people so quickly?

While Congress dithers, California just enacted the largest gun safety reforms in a generation.

• ban ownership of high capacity magazines holding over ten rounds of ammunition; • crack down on false reports of lost or stolen guns, a common tactic of illegal gun sellers; and • regulate the sale of ammunition to prevent and investigate its use in crime.

Unfortunately, he vetoed my bill to prevent gun tragedies at schools and workplaces. Between 2000 and 2013, 70 percent of active shooter incidents occurred at such locations.

Critics of gun safety say it is not guns but people who kill. My AB 2607 would have allowed educators, mental health professionals, coworkers, and employers to petition the court for gun violence restraining orders (GVROs).

Modeled after domestic violence retraining orders, the GVRO temporarily prohibits persons a court deems a danger to themselves or others from possessing or purchasing a gun or ammunition. This order lasts for up to one year unless renewed or revoked by a court, and it is currently restricted to immediate family and law enforcement.

Because My Attackers Did Not Have Assault Weapons

tion, and every year, time after time, the country is once again “shocked” by the latest mass shooting committed with weapons that are designed to commit mass shootings, and which the USA is bizarrely attached to making widely available.

Out of the Closet and into City Hall Oakland Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan Our nation has been hit with horrific homophobic violence in what is part of a continuing pattern of mass shootings. I find myself thinking how lucky I am to be alive, and why.

I have been subjected to harassment and assault for my sexual orientation starting when I was 16. In the wake of the mass murder in Orlando, I am aware that part of why I am alive today is because none of my attackers had assault weapons. While many hurled nasty words and some hurled rocks or beer bottles, none of the people harassing me had in their hands a weapon designed for war, designed to kill many people quickly.

Yet now, in America, those weapons of war are made widely available in the civilian popula-

In my life, I have been involved in many efforts to help change hearts and minds, and help people overcome prejudice and learn to treat people of all orientations, backgrounds, races and religions with respect. But our concern must be not only for the hate in people’s hearts, but also for the weapons in their hands. It is good to work for a world without hate and without mental illness. We should be able to aspire for a society like almost every other democracy, in which weapons of war are not spread throughout the nation, in which mass murder stops being normal.

This is part of why I fought for, and won, Council support for strengthening gun laws in California. While Republicans continue to obstruct and pretend, Democrats including Senator Chris Murphy are pushing for common sense changes to strengthen our gun laws. Let us urge Congress now to finally take the most basic steps to make it a little bit harder for dangerous weapons to get into the hands of those who would commit mass murder. Mass gun murder is not inevitable. The USA used to have an assault weapons ban, until it was ended in 2004 under George W. Bush. Let us not be divided; hatred towards LGBT people, or towards Muslims or any other group, will not save us.

It is time to pry the weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of murderers, and time to pry our future out of the hands of the NRA.

Assemblymember Phil Ting and a supporter in the Pride Parade on Sunday, June 26.

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By enacting such strong gun safety bills into law, California made a bold and historic statement that mass shootings are not an accepted part of our lives in California. Shooters use military-style weaponry to kill as many people

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PHOTO BY SANDY MORRIS

PHOTO BY RINK

Gun tragedies have become routine. We have seen them occur at our schools, workplaces, churches, movie theaters, and nightclubs.

Enough is enough.

Pamela Rosin and Rebecca Kaplan with the San Francisco Bay Times contingent at the 2016 Pride Parade.

Oakland City Councilmember AtLarge Rebecca Kaplan was elected in 2008 and was re-elected in 2012. She is working for safe neighborhoods, for local jobs and for a fresh start for Oakland. Councilmember Kaplan graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the Massachusetts Institute of Technolog y, obtained a master’s degree from Tufts University and a Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School.

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The Most Important Election of My Lifetime position that, like President Obama’s, evolved—now fully embraces our community. A Hillary Clinton presidency would ensure that the gains we have made will continue.

Leslie R. Katz I am torn between absolute elation and abject terror. Our democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, would not only be the first woman president and an extraordinarily qualified person, but we would also have a supporter of our community in the White House. She recently marched in the New York Pride Parade, becoming the first presidential candidate ever to do so. Her support—admittedly a

Brexit is a warning that people are frightened. The economic recovery has still not reached many in this country, and voters are just plain tired of what they perceive as politics as usual. They fear immigrants will take their jobs, and I even heard a fellow on the radio say: “ISIS is coming to Palo Alto because of all these immigrants. We need our assault rifles.”

Rationality has disappeared from

PHOTO COURTESY OF HILLARY FOR AMERICA

Ready for Her

I am terrified, however, because there is still nearly 43% of the voting population supporting Trump, and this number will tighten as we get closers to November. He has evidenced a disdain for women, communities of color and the LGBT community. He also has a complete disregard for geopolitical nuance, and is utterly ill-prepared.

Hillary Clinton campaigning in Oakland during June when she spoke at the Greater St. Paul Church. She spoke with the congregation briefly, saying that, if elected president, she will ask herself everyday, “What can I do that day to make it possible for every child to live up to their Godgiven potential?”

many corners not only throughout the world, but also here in the U.S. The specter of a Trump presidency is real.

While I am so excited about at least one woman at the top of the Democratic ticket, I am afraid about what might happen if we become complacent. The old adage applies that “those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” Certainly this is the most important election of my lifetime and we cannot sit back for a moment. In-

deed, we need to all come together after the primaries, tone down the vitriol that has taken place between friends and allies, and unite to ensure that we elect Hillary in November.

The two parties will have their conventions later this month. Even a few minutes spent perusing coverage of the two will demonstrate stark and scary differences. On the one side there is a party focused on fear, on closing our doors, targeting “oth-

ers,” and returning to the “good old days.” We know what that means for the LGBT community and for choice, women, immigrants, people of color, Jews, Muslims, and the list goes on.

Conversely, democracy embraces and celebrates our differences, includes us all, and looks at how we can create a better, more inclusive society focusing on bridging the deepening economic chasm between those with means and those without.

I know what party I am proud to side with in this election. I am certainly ready for her!

Leslie R. Katz is a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, was the co-author of the City’s Equal Benefits Ordinance, has served on the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee (as Chair, and as a general member), and serves on the California Democratic Party’s Executive Board. She is an attorney with a government law, policy and strateg y practice, with a focus on emerging technologies.

Freedom Fries and Rollercoasters

Independence Day. America’s birthday. Since my early childhood visiting my dad and aunt in America, July 4th has been one of my favorite holidays. A day when we come together as a family and country, BBQ, eat hotdogs, drink Budweiser (now called a can of “America”), and pledge allegiance to the flag, all ending in a crescendo of fireworks.

I still remember the time when an entire movie theater gave a stand6

I always felt very lucky to live in a country that has given me and my family so many opportunities to pursue our life, liberty and happiness.

When I witnessed in person Barack Obama taking the oath of office, I felt a great sense of pride that change has come and I never felt more proud to be American. That being said, lately I am fearful about the future of this country. A country where Trump is President. Where we build a wall to keep “others” out and America comes first. A place where Mus-

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Vietnamese, Chinese, English, and came together dancing to Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling.”

PHOTO CREDIT: AMY BACHARACH

Alex Randolph, Trustee City College of San Francisco

ing ovation screaming “USA! USA!” as Will Smith saved the world from aliens in the 1996 movie Independence Day. This raw display of patriotism was never something I got to experience in Germany. Eleven years ago it got an even more personal meaning when my husband and I, idealistic college students and summer interns, had our first official date at the Capitol’s lawn in Washington, D.C., to watch the national fireworks celebration.

Supporters and elected officials joined City College Trustee Alex Randolph at his re-election launch at Blackbird on June 30th. Left to right: Trustee Steve Ngo, Assemblymember David Chiu, Trustee Alex Randolph, Supervisor Scott Wiener, Trustees Bouchra Simmons, Amy Bacharach, and John Rizzo.

lims are banned but assault rifles are the norm. Where freedom fries make America great again through violence and hate.

I know we are better than that. We are a country where all men and women are created equal. This past

weekend I spent a day at Great America with my family. I am too scared of rollercoasters so I just sat there and people watched. The park was filled with families of all colors, shapes, and configuration. There was excitement in the air. People talked in Spanish,

Initially my niece Joanna was scared of the “Demon” roller coaster ride.

Her anticipation grew the closer she got to the front of the line; it would be her first time riding it. But when she made it through the ride, she couldn’t wait to do it again—and did so again two more times, by herself.

Life is like a rollercoaster. There are ups and downs. We scream, we laugh, we cry, we fear, we overcome. In the end I know that love will trump hate.

Just like the idealistic teenage usher told my niece at the end of the ride: “Let’s have a Great America Day!” Alex Randolph is a Trustee for City College of San Francisco. He previously served in President Obama’s administration and as an LGBT advisor for Mayor Newsom. He lives in the Castro with his partner Trevor.

Follow him on social media: www.twitter.com/adrandolph & www.facebook.com/ AlexDRandolph

Talking About Death Won’t Kill You

Aging in Community Jim Van Buskirk Death is in the Zeitgeist. Everyone is talking about death, or not talking about it, as the case may be. Or, to be yet more precise: many are talking about the social norm of not talking about death.

By embracing our mortality, we can live our lives to their very fullest . A plet hor a of books investigate the subject from a variety of perspectives. Atul Gawande’s powerful Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End offers a physician’s perspective, while Roz Chast’s hi lar iously hear tbrea k i ng g raph ic novel Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? idiosyncratically documents her rollercoaster experience with her aging parents.

Misconceptions about what hospice is, and isn’t, are put to rest by Sheila Himmel and Fran Smith in Changing the Way We Die: Compassionate End-of-Life Care and the Hospice Movement. Increasingly popular are living funerals, like the one held by Morrie Schwartz, made famous by Mitch Albom in the bestselling book and f ilm adaptation Tuesdays with Morrie.

Locally, palliative care expert Judith Redwing Keyssar speaks regularly about the challenges and rewards that face the dying, their loved ones, and the professionals who care for them. Her book Last Acts of Kindness: Lessons for the Living from the Bedsides of the Dying encourages us to consider our own beliefs about the great questions of life and death.

Many organizations are developing public programming as evidenced by the “Embracing the Journey, an End of Life Resource Fair” at JCCSF last fall and being repeated in Fall 2016. The SFBA Net work for End-of-L ife Care hosts monthly meetings (sfeol.org) as does the Bay Area Funeral Consumers Association.

An ongoing series at the San Francisco Public Librar y ent it led “ We’re A l l Terminal: L iv ing w it h Deat h and D ying” has included panels, book discussions, and documentary films

(w w w.sfpl.org). Through Aug ust there will be workshops on writing one’s own obituary, advance directives, and Larry Martel reading from his memoir E mbracing Cancer, Embracing Life: The Guide for the Journey Beyo n d D i a g n os i s.

Also at branches throughout the SF PL system, Stuar t Bronstein offers writing workshops, from which a prepared participant can exit the free, 90-minute session with a legally binding will. Important local organizations include the Seven Ponds and Final Passages.

Following 25 years of efforts, the California End of Life Option Act, closely following Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, is newly in effect. The film “How to Die in Oregon” powerfully documents how our neighbors to the north approach the controversial issue of “authorizing an adult who meets certain qualif ications, and who has been determ i ned by h i s or her attendi ng physicia n t o b e su f fering from a terminal disease, as def ined, to make a request for a drug prescr ibed pursuant to these provisions for t he pur pose of ending his or her life.”

Of course the LGBTQIA community has been dealing with death for decades. Our communities are particularly subject to anti-queer violence and AIDS, in addition to cancers and the many other causes of death felling society at large. That doesn’t mean we’re necessarily more adept at discussing these complex personal issues. Many of us may not be out in all arenas of lives, including our family or friends, our religious leaders, care givers, or other social agencies. Fear of discrimination, past negative experiences, and perceived lack of legal resources contribute to this situation that can create unforeseen complications when the Grim Reaper makes h i s i nev it able appearance.

One safe place to discuss the taboo topic of death is a Death Café, an informal gathering with no agenda, object ives or themes. As a discussion group rather than a grief support or counselling session, Death Cafés

are intended (as its website, DeathCafé.com proclaims) “to increase awa renes s of deat h with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives.”

I n fact , surprisingly, it can be fun. Death Cafés, at least t he ones held monthly at the Potrero Branch Library, are often filled with laughter. Light refreshments, including tea and home-baked cookies, are available to emphasize the corporeality of the participants. Some people attend monthly, others come once or twice, then move on. Their stories are always inspiring and energizing, not macabre or depressing, as some stereotypes might suggest. And the demographics defy expectations as well, with ages ranging from the twentysomethings to octogenarians. Largely, though, it is Baby Boomers dealing with end of life issues for their parents, who are also facing their own mortality.

The f irst Death Café was held by Swiss sociologist and anthropologist Bernard Crettaz in Neuchatel, Switzerland, in 2004, followed by a Paris event in 2010. In September 2011 Jon Underwood and Sue Barsky Reid held a Death Café in London. The social franchise quickly spread across Europe, North America and Australasia and thousands of gatherings have occurred.

Among the possible wide-ranging topics are religious or cultural customs, existential fears, burial options, cremation dispersal, home funerals, advanced care directives and living wills. Stories are shared about deathbed experiences and communications with “the other side”. There are so many resources mentioned during the two-hour discussion that the group has created its own Pinterest page.

To find a convenient Death Café, visit DeathCafé.com Entering a zip code leads you to the closest meeting, either temporally or geographically. Death Cafés are always offered on a not for profit basis, in an accessible, respectful and confidential space, and with no intention of leading people to any conclusion, product or course of action. If you don’t find a convenient Café, consider starting your own. It’s easy to follow the guidelines on the website.

Talking about Death, contrary to popular belief, won’t kill you!

Jim Van Buskirk is a librarian, author, public speaker, group facilitator and collections manager. He co-facilitates monthly Death Cafés and helps develop the San Francisco Public Library’s “We’re All Terminal: Living with Death and Dying.”

Dr. Marcy Adelman oversees the Aging in Community column. For her summary of current LGBT senior challenges and opportunities, please go to: sf baytimes.com/ challenges-and-opportunties

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Charlotte Cushman and Her “Marmorean Flock” rior to any Romeo that has been seen for years,” a “living, breathing, animated, ardent human being.” Others agreed. Her Romeo, wrote one, had all “the warmth of passion, the melancholy, the luxuriant imagination, the glowing yet delicate vitality … of the Italian boy-lover.” For her audiences she “seemed just man enough to be a boy.”

Faces of Our LGBT Past Dr. Bill Lipsky Before Sarah Bernhardt, there was Charlotte Cushman. Before Nazimova and Duse, before Fontanne and Cornell and le Gallienne, there was Cushman. Only Cushman. Critics and audiences said she was the greatest actress of her generation. On stage she played both strong-minded women and conflicted men, appearing with the important talents of her time, including Edwins Forrest and Booth.

Off stage, in a Victorian world, she lived as openly as she could by creating a community of “emancipated females who dwell … in heavenly unity.”

Born in Boston in 1816, Cushman made her professional debut there in 1835. Across her long career she portrayed some 190 different men and women, but her greatest successes were as Lady Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo, and Meg Merrilies in Walter Scott’s Guy Mannerling. Critics, even if they knew or suspected, could not discuss how her love of women infused her interpretations and enabled her to triumph. They often described, however, the ways she used “her powerful, energetic body and her deep resonate voice” to convey the range of a character’s emotions.

What Cushman did better than anyone else, wrote one observer, was to play characters “where, roused by passion or incited by some earnest and long cherished determination, the woman, for the time being, assumes all the power of manhood.” Lady Macbeth was typical, whom she portrayed as “forceful rather feminine.” As another critic noted, her characterization was “more than masculine in ambition, courage and will, more bloody, bold, and resolute than … her husband. She was the source and mainspring of the whole tragedy.”

Cushman went on her first of many farewell tours in 1852. She moved to Rome, where she fostered a group of creative, sexually like-minded women. Henry James dismissed them as “that strange sisterhood of American ‘lady sculptors’ who at one time settled upon the seven hills in a white marmorean f lock,” but with Cushman’s support, they were able to challenge the prevailing biases against women’s talents.

Foremost among them was Harriet Hosmer, who joined Cushman in Rome in 1852. The first woman able to support herself as a sculptor in the nineteenth century, Hosmer was celebrated as one of our country’s finest artists. Those who appreciated her remarkable talents did not necessarily approve of her personal style, though, with many being “shocked” by her “unfeminine” short hair, her taste in

the men’s jackets and ties she wore, and her “flamboyant” behavior.

A not her member of Cushman’s “f lock” was the sculptor Edmonia Lewis. James especially disliked her.

“One of the sisterhood,” he wrote, “was a negress, whose color, picturesquely contrasting with that of her plastic material, was the pleading agent of her fame.” Not so. With what Cushman described as her “praiseworthy efforts,” she became first woman of African American and Native American heritage to achieve international fame as a sculptor, and the only one recognized to any degree by the American artistic mainstream.

Welsh sculptor Mary Lloyd also was one of the group. Through Cushman she met Frances Power Cobbe, an Irish feminist, social reformer, and women’s suffrage campaigner who often wrote about women’s occupations and independence, female artistic genius, and moral, rather than physical, beauty.

The two women lived together from 1864 until Lloyd’s death in 1896. Unlike James, Cobbe thought that “there was a brightness, freedom, and joyousness among these gifted Americans which was quite delightful to see.”

Cushman

Lewis Hosmer

Not all of the expatriot women in Rome’s creative community had a connection with Cushman, but many did. They included cameo cutter Margaret Foley and sculptor Elizabeth Hadwin, who developed a deep, lasting relationship with each other; writer Kate Field; sculptor Anne Whitney and painter Adeline Manning, her life partner; and Isa Blagden, whose novels featured the intensity and primacy of women’s relationships with each other. None ever married, instead finding “exquisite enjoyments” in their intimacies with other women.

The women succeeded, despite James’ assessment of their value. Hosmer’s works are now in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Huntington Library, the Smithsonian American Museum, and others. Sculptures by Lewis can also be found in the Smithsonian, as well as in the Newark Museum, Howard University, and the Walters Art Museum. Whitney’s statue of Samuel Adams is seen by thousands of people

After conquering the United States, Cushman travelled to Great Britain in 1844. As Romeo in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, she created a sensation. No less than The Times (London) described a portrayal “far supe-

Power Cobbe

who annually visit the National Statuary Hall Collection housed in the United States Capitol. As for Cushman, when she died in 1876, honored and revered, she entered legend.

Bill Lipsky, Ph.D., author of “Gay and Lesbian San Francisco” (2006), is a member of the Rainbow Honor Walk board of directors.

Love Embodied: Kryptonite to Hate

6/26 and Beyond John Lewis & Stuart Gaffney At this year’s San Francisco Pride Parade, we had the privilege of marching with a special contingent memorializing all those killed at Pulse nightclub in the early hours of June 12. Organized with lightning speed by Richard Sizemore and many others, 49 of us held individual memorials, featuring the name and a life-size photograph of each of the victims. Hundreds of others wore 8

shirts, stating simply “We Are Orlando.” For the previous dozen years, we had made the trip down Market Street, cheering and chanting wildly for marriage equality. This year we marched in silence, dedicating each step to the memory of the person whose portrait we held. We were a means for them to have a presence in the parade. And instead of raucous cheering, the crowds greeted us predominantly with reverent silence or noble applause for each of those lost. Many fought back tears.

The vast majority of victims were Latinx members of the LGBT community. We wanted to hold the memorials of Christopher “Drew” Leinonen and Juan Ramon Guerrero.

They were the couple that lived together and that news outlets reported hoped to marry someday. But instead, their families contemplated a joint funeral for them. Juan’s sister Aryam described the couple to Time magazine: “They were honestly so in love. They were soul mates. You

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can tell by how they looked at each other.”

We were struck by how much Juan’s family and Drew’s mother, Christine Leinonen, not only accepted but also celebrated Juan and Drew. Aryam described Juan’s family as “really loving and accepting” of Juan when he came out and that Juan “was so much love and light.” Catherine McCarthy, a lifelong friend of Drew, wrote in the Washington Post that Christine’s “not just ‘tolerating’ [Drew’s] sexuality, but truly loving him, all of him, allowed him to exist unfettered and undiluted.”

In a live interview on ABC television the morning of June 12, Christine, desperate to learn any news of Drew, told the world how “proud of him” she was for starting the gaystraight alliance at high school over fifteen years before, an accomplishment that won him the Florida Holocaust Museum’s Anne Frank Humanitarian Award “to bring gays and straights together.”As demonstrated by Drew’s founding his high

school’s gay-straight alliance, Drew and Juan’s love was not passive; it was powerful. Catherine McCarthy described Drew as “love, embodied” and explained that “[h]e had all the time for love because he left little time for anything else.” According to the Orlando Sentinel, Drew and Juan’s mutual friend Brandon Wolf, who himself survived the Pulse massacre, memorialized them: “[Drew] and Juan were the love we wish to see in the world, the kind that pulls people together, breaks down walls, the kryptonite to hate.”

Nothing spoke more of the power of their love than Christine’s urgent entreaties to the nation that Sunday morning as she searched for her son: “We’re on this earth for such a short time. Let’s try to get rid of the hatred and the violence, please.” And she spoke of a different “club” from the Pulse nightclub, a “club” that “nobody wants to be in,” that of loved ones of gun violence victims. She appealed to all Americans: “[P]lease could we do something with the as-

sault weapons so that we could stop this club from ever getting any new members. I beg all of you, please.”

When we married at San Francisco City Hall in February 2004 and found our lives transformed by the sense of dignity we experienced for the first time as LGBT people, we vowed to do everything in our power to make the dignity that comes with marriage equality something that all Americans could experience.

We feel a similar urgency now. We cannot fully honor the lives of those lost in Orlando on June 12 unless we do everything in our power not just to reduce hatred but to eliminate access to the firearms that provide the means by which people carry out these types of massacres and other gun violence.

Drew’s close friend Catherine wrote: “There will be a time to change our laws. A time when this sharp grief will shift into a hot and forceful anger. We will not let their deaths go (continued on page 26)

24 New Honorees Selected for San Francisco’s Rainbow Honor Walk

Maurice Sendak

Chavela Vargas

Quentin Crisp

Gladys Bentley

Audre Lorde

José Sarria Josephine Baker We’wha

Lou Sullivan

Vito Russo

Less than two years since 20 historic members of the LGBT community were memorialized by bronze plaques in the sidewalks of San Francisco’s Castro District, the all-volunteer Rainbow Honor Walk (www.rainbowhonorwalk.org) has announced 24 new honorees.

“LGBT history is world history,” said Rainbow Honor Walk Co-Founder and Board President David Perry.

“These 24 individuals represent real battles fought during their lifetimes for equality, equity and justice. They are symbols to hold up to future generations so that we may learn from them and continue their work.”

Alvin Ailey

The Rainbow Honor Walk salutes the groundbreaking achievements of noted LGBT persons throughout history.

Freddie Mercury

The following are the second 24 honorees for inclusion on the Rainbow Honor Walk: Alvin Ailey (1931–1989) Gay American ballet dancer and choreographer credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing AfricanA merican participation in 20thcentury concert dance.

W.H. Auden (19 07–1973) Gay English poet known for love poems such as “Funeral Blues,” poems on political and social themes such as “September 1, 1939,” and poems on cultural and psychological themes such as “The Age of Anxiety.”

Joseph ine Ba ker (19 0 6 –1975) Bisexual A merican-born French dancer, jazz and pop music singer, actress, and world-famous entertainer who refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States. She was the first black woman to star in a major motion picture, Zouzou (1934).

G l a dy s B e nt le y (19 07–19 6 0) Lesbian American pianist, singer,

Fereydoun Farrokhzad

Rikki Streicher

Sally Ride

Gerry Studds

and performer during the Harlem Renaissance whose comical, sweet, and risqué performances included songs about her female lovers.

Glenn Burke (1952–1995) First openly gay major league baseball player who was discriminated against

by Major League Baseball and whose raised hand, after a home run, led to the invention of the high five.

Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) Gay English writer and raconteur whose f lamboyance attracted increasing public interest in his views about social manners and the cultivating of style.

Divine (1945–1988) Gay American singer and actor specializing in female roles made famous by director John Waters.

Marie Equi (1872–1952) Lesbian American physician and political activist devoted to providing care to working-class and poor patients, providing health care information to women, and fighting for civic and economic reforms, women’s right to vote and an eight-hour workday.

Fereydoun Farrokhzad (1938– 1992) Gay Iranian singer, actor, poet, TV and radio host, writer, and iconic opposition political figure who advocated for an open society that accepted all people.

Ba rba ra Jorda n (1936 –199 6) Noted American politician and civil rights leader widely considered to be the first open lesbian elected to Congress, representing Texas in the House of Representatives.

K iyoshi Kuromiya (1943–2000) Japa nese-A mer ica n civ i l r ight s activist, founder of the Critical Path Project, one of the earliest and most comprehensive sources of H I V treatment information.

Kiyoshi Kuromiya

Divine

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) Lesbian American writer, radical feminist, and political activist whose works expressed anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life.

Leonard Matlovich (1943–1988) Decorated American soldier, widely recognized as the first to challenge the U.S. military’s ban on homosexuals serving in the armed forces.

Freddie Mercur y (1946–1991) Bisexual British singer, songwriter, record producer and lead performer with the rock group Queen.

Sally Ride (1951–2012) Lesbian, physicist and first American female astronaut in space.

Sylvia Rivera (1951–2002) American transgender activist and founder of the Gay Activist Alliance.

V it o Ru sso (19 4 6 –19 9 0) Gay American f ilm historian, activist and author of The Celluloid Closet that brought awareness to LGBT characterizations in film.

José Sarria (1922–2013) Political activist; the first openly gay candidate for public office in the United States, and the founder of the Imperial Court system.

W.H. Auden

Glen Burke

Sylvia Rivera

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) Gay A merican illustrator and author of children’s books; best known for Where the Wild Things Are. R i k k i St reic her (1926 –19 9 4) Lesbian American political activist and founder of the Gay Games Federation. (continued on page 26)

Barbara Jordan

Marie Equi

Leonard Matlovich S AN F R ANC IS C O BAY T IM ES JULY 7, 2016

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The Most Destructive Fear Roland Schembari and Bill Hartman, Co-Founders Randy Alfred, Founding News Editor 1978 Kim Corsaro Publisher 1981-2011

2261 Market Street, No. 309 San Francisco CA 94114 Phone: 415-601-2113 525 Bellevue Avenue Oakland CA 94610

The Bay Times was the first newspaper in California, and among the first in the world, to be jointly and equally produced by lesbians and gay men.

We honor our history and the paper’s ability to build and strengthen unity in our community.

The Bay Times is proud to be the only 100% LGBT funded and owned newspaper for the LGBT community in San Francisco.

Dr. Betty L. Sullivan Jennifer L. Viegas Co-Publishers & Co-Editors

Abby Zimberg Beth Greene

Design & Production

Kate Laws Business Manager Jennifer Mullen Calendar Editor

Kit Kennedy Poet-In-Residence J.H. Herren Technology Director Jennifer Mullen Web Coordinator

Mario Ordonez Juan Ordonez Distribution

CONTRIBUTORS Writers Rink, Sister Dana Van Iquity, Ann Rostow, Kirsten Kruse, Kate Kendell, Alex Randolph, Heidi Beeler, Gary M. Kramer, Dennis McMillan, Tom Moon, Tim Seelig, Cinder Ernst. John Chen Rafael Mandelman, Kit Kennedy, Phil Ting, Rebecca Kaplan, Leslie Katz, Philip Ruth, Bill Lipsky, Karen Williams, Donna Sachet, Gary Virginia, Zoe Dunning, Marcy Adelman, Stuart Gaffney & John Lewis Brandon Miller, Jamie Leno Zimron Rebecca Kaplan, Thom Watson, Courtney Lake, Michele Karlsberg Photographers Rink, Phyllis Costa, Jane Higgins Paul Margolis, Chloe Jackman, Bill Wilson, Jo-Lynn Otto, Sandy Morris, Abby Zimberg

ADVERTISING Display Advertising Standard Rate Cards are available online at sfbaytimes.com or calling: 415-503-1375 Custom ad sizes are available. Please inquire! The Bay Times reserves the right to reject any advertising at the discretion of the publishers.

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CALENDAR Event listings for consideration to be included in the Bay Times online or print Calendar section should be sent by e-mail to: calendar@sfbaytimes.com. © 2016 Bay Times Media Company Co-owned by Betty L. Sullivan & Jennifer L. Viegas

Examined Life Tom Moon, MFT Aaron comes into therapy because he is stymied by constant fear. He hates his job, but won’t look for a new one because he is afraid of job interviews.

Whenever he is in a social situation and sees someone he is attracted to, he avoids him completely for fear of being rejected. He wants to join a gym, but will not do it because he is afraid that people there will judge him for being overweight.

As we look closer at his many fears, what becomes clear is that what Aaron is most afraid of is being afraid.

He will not go toward anything that evokes anxiety because he has learned to believe that the expe-

The idea behind this suggestion is that feelings are not emergencies.

Fear signals to us that we are in danger, but most of the time when we experience it, we are not really in imminent danger at all. Our highly evolved forebrains make it possible for us to imagine all kinds of threats which are not immediately present. Our

So we all live with a certain amount of anxiety–a free-f loating dread of the uncertainties and dangers of life.

Most of us are afraid of our anxiety because it is painful and because it leaves us feeling helpless. We have therefore developed strategies for getting away from it–our denial and wishful thinking, our distractions, diversions and entertainment, our alcohol and drugs.

Over time, Aaron begins to learn a new relationship to his fear. The idea of treating it as a normal part of life, even as a welcome companion on the journey is a new one. Gradually, he learns to become a kind of connoisseur of his fear, to pay mindful attention to all the sensations he feels in his body when he is afraid, to breathe into fear, to give it his full attention, and even to treat it with respect.

He finds that when he practices this kind of mindful attention, his fear of fear begins to loosen. Being afraid remains an unpleasant experience, but it is no longer intolerable. He begins to relate to fear rather than from fear. He learns to distinguish between threat responses that are generated in his mind and responses to actual dangers in the world. He also acquires a deeper appreciation of the fact that no experience of fear lasts forever; each one is just temporary discomfort.

Most people are not too different from Aaron. For most of us, our most commonly recurring fear is the fear of fear itself. The simple secret for managing this form of fear is to stop seeing it as the enemy; in fact, get to know it. Courage does not mean fearlessness. It does mean learning not to run from the experience of fear. The more we run from it the more powerful it seems. But when we turn to face it with mindfulness, curiosity and compassion, we find no solid and formidable enemy, only waves of feeling and sensation that, like the changing weather, arise, stay a while, and then move on.

Tom Moon is a psychotherapist in San Francisco. For more information, please visit his website http://tommoon.net/

30th AIDS Walk San Francisco to Take Place on July 17 Since 1987, AIDS Walk San Francisco has raised nearly $86 million for life-saving HIV prevention, testing, and care programs and services. It is the largest AIDS fundraising event in Northern California. AIDS Walk San Francisco has matured into a Bay Area tradition, bringing together tens of thousands of participants and volunteers; hundreds of corporate, community, and friends and family teams; and hundreds of thousands of donors from the Bay Area and across the country.

This year’s event benefits over 40 San Francisco AIDS service agencies, including the following: Project Inform helps to advise research for a cure, promotes HIV prevention, and represents the needs and interests of all people with HIV. Project Inform has received more than 1 million requests for information from people with HIV/AIDS about how and when to treat HIV, how to protect their overall health, and how to access affordable health care. http:// www.projectinform.org/ Project Open Hand prepares 2,500 nutritious meals and provides 200 bags of healthy groceries every day to help sustain those battling serious illnesses, isolation, or the health challenges of aging. Project Open Hand also provides nutrition counseling and education to improve people’s strength and lead to healthier lives. http://www.openhand.org/ San Francisco General Hospital Ward 86 supports the “Getting to Zero” Coalition, which aims to make San Francisco the first city with zero new HIV infections, zero stigma and zero deaths. Funds raised by AIDS Walk San Francisco will benefit a pilot project at Ward 86 on HIV and aging, addressing one of the most critical issues people living with the disease face today. https://hiv.ucsf.edu/ care/locations.html Thanks go to this year’s corporate sponsors: ABC7, Chevron, Bank of the West, Gap Inc., Gilead Sciences, Quest Diagnostics, Macy’s, Union Bank, Wells Fargo and WilliamsSonoma Inc. Thanks also go to the event’s organizers and many volunteers, as well as to the celebrity supporters, elected officials, musicians

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I suggest to him that he practice a new strategy. I tell him, “Instead of avoiding fear, why not accept that it is going to accompany you whenever you take risks or try something new? Why not make friends with it? Why not learn to invite it along for the ride?”

brains are notoriously good at conjuring up dreadful scenarios involving illness, aging, abandonment, loss and rejection. Above all, we fear death.

Imagining these things can evoke the same bodily threat response as a real crisis, but when we are afraid in response to our thoughts, there is not anything we can do to protect ourselves because we are not actually in any real danger.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF AIDS WALK SAN FRANCISCO

E-mail: editor@sfbaytimes.com www.sfbaytimes.com

rience of fear–the sense of being in danger, the heightened awareness, the increased heart rate, the adrenaline surge–is something so painful and unbearable that it must be avoided no matter what the cost. To make matters worse, he is deeply ashamed whenever he is afraid because he has absorbed the male conditioning that to feel fear makes him weak and cowardly. His strategy for handling fear when it comes up is to berate and argue with himself, to tell himself that he is being irrational and stupid and that he should just get over it, and so on. Not surprisingly, this just makes him more anxious.

SA N FRANCISCO BAY T I ME S J U LY 7 , 2 0 1 6

9:30 am Aerobic Warm-Up 9:45 am Opening Ceremony 10:30 am AIDS Walk San Francisco Begins and the host of HIV/AIDS leaders from across the Bay Area who will appear at the Opening Ceremony (to be announced). You never know who might show up! For example, the late great Robin Williams attended and spoke in 1996, while the cast of the hit Broadway show Wicked performed for participants in 2010.

route winds its way through Golden Gate Park, beginning and ending in Sharon Meadow. If you have never done this fundraising walk before, consider doing so this year. It is so much fun, with delightful, planned surprises around nearly every section of the park. Last year alone, more than $2.2 million was raised.

The real stars of the event, however, are the over 20,000 participants who are expected to attend. Many of us here at the San Francisco Bay Times have gone over the years and have had a great time. The 6.2-mile (10k)

The schedule is as follows: 8:35 am Gold Team Photo Shoot Begins 9:00 am Sign-In and Awards Open

10:30 am KidZone Opens 12:30 pm Post Walk Concert As the above indicates, the walk takes roughly 2 to 3 hours to complete, and is bookended by a lot of good-natured relaxing and socializing in our beautiful landmark park!

We can think of no better way to spend a heart-of-summer day in San Francisco. To register, call 415-615WALK or go to: sf.aidswalk.net

GLBT Fortnight in Review

By Ann Rostow A Little Courage, Folks!

In the course of my deadline day procrastinations this morning, I read every word of my local paper, the Austin American Statesman, from an article bemoaning the departure of Kevin Durant to an interview with an expert in menstruation.

(I remember listening idly to my mother explain that particular phenomenon when I was around ten— blah blah blah blah—and then I remember at the end of her monologue asking how long it would last— several days a month for the next four decades. Uh. Come again? I could not have been more horrified if she had told me I would be obliged to eat a mug of worms every day before breakfast for the rest of my life.)

At any rate, as I slogged through the (physical) edition my eye was caught by the headline: “LGBT picnic cancelled following online threat.” Reading further, it turns out that some woman in Philadelphia noticed some social media posting that referred to a gay picnic near College Station, Texas, with the comment: “Lock and load.

Time to get on the news.” The woman, who is straight, contacted authorities who contacted the picnic people who promptly canceled the entire event.

Does that seem strange to you?

Maybe it’s just Monday morning bravado on my part, but I would have told the authorities that we were going ahead with the picnic and suggest that law enforcement assign a couple of guards to the park. I’ve made light of the expression “don’t let the terrorists win” in the past, but honestly. This is what terrorists do. They kill a few people and get the rest of us to stay home and cancel picnics out of fear.

The Pride Community Center leaders said they “couldn’t take the chance.”

But, of course, they could have. This was a menacing post, that’s all it was.

In other procrastinations, I watched some boaters save a baby raccoon from drowning and clicked on a link that said: “Jockey kicked in face by horse gets run over by ambulance.”

Just something to make me feel better about myself. Yes, I have to write a column. On the other hand, I’m not in a body cast.

And by the way, why couldn’t some whiz kid like Abby on NCIS figure out who posted that threat and send agents over to his house to check him out? (I have to assume it’s a guy, because terroristic threats, as a rule, are a guy thing.)

Good Cops, Bad Cops Looks like a contingent from Black Lives Matter went overboard during Toronto Pride the other day. The group stopped the pride parade with a sit-down and issued a set of demands, all but one of them quite reasonable.

Pride Toronto Director, Mathieu Chantelois, said he would be happy to sign off on pledges to diversify the Pride staff, hire more black transwomen and a half dozen other things, but the demand that raised eyebrows was BLM’s insistence that Pride evict the police parade float that usually joins this, and every other, gay pride parade on our shared continent.

Just as we cannot stereotype Muslims or people of color, nor should we stereotype police, many of whom are gay, many of whom are selfless and heroic or maybe just regular people. I don’t know the percentage of police or other law enforcement types who are prone to abusive and/or murderous behaviors. But I do know it is not a majority.

And I also know that members of that violent faction are not likely to be enjoying the solidarity of one of our pride parades. Those guys and gals in blue marching down Main Street waving rainbow flags and smiling? They

are as much a part of the community of GLBTs and GLBT allies as anyone else.

Further, and most importantly, our entire movement is one of inclusion, not exclusion.

When No News Is Excellent News I have a lot of GLBT legal news for our communal delectation this week.

But one case seems most significant, even though it had no direct gay connection. As June came to an end, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case of a Washington State pharmacy, bent out of shape by a 2007 state law that forced them to carry the morning after pill in violation of their religious opposition to contraception.

By ducking the case, the justices left intact a Ninth Circuit decision in favor of Washington’s policy, and it looks like they flashed a red light to others who suggest that personal faith should trump generally applicable state statutes.

Hey, this is good news, everyone! And to illustrate its significance, Justice Alito wrote a fairly lengthy dissent, joined by Roberts and Thomas. “If this is a sign of how religious liberty claims will be treated in the years ahead,” he warned, “those who value religious freedom have cause for great concern.”

High Court watchers are aware that most rejected cases get a one-liner for the record, so when justices take the time to issue pages and pages of commentary, you know they are molto pissed off. Further, since it takes just four justices to accept a case, what we have here is yet another illustration of the impact of Scalia’s death. We also have additional confirmation that our champion, swing voter Anthony Kennedy, has indeed moved leftward and seemingly swings our way more often than not. Witness the 4–3 vote in favor of affirmative action (with Kagan recused), and the Texas abortion case, where Kennedy joined the 5–3 majority that struck the restrictive Lone Star law.

I have to note here that Donald Trump denounced the abortion ruling, insisting that if he had been President and had been allowed to name a replacement for Scalia, “you wouldn’t have had that OK? It would have been the opposite.” Um, no. Even in the topsyturvy world of President Trump, Texas would still have lost 5–4 instead of 5–3. Not only was Trump unaware of the actual vote count, but he alarmed Christian conservatives by waiting three days to comment on the decision—almost as if he didn’t care about it one way or another!

Where Was the Beef ?

I’m watching people react to news that Clinton will not face criminal charges for mishandling email, and I’m wondering, not for the first time, exactly what most observers think this incident was all about. The only question to be resolved was whether Clinton deliberately mishandled classified information. That was it! Not only was there very little classified information on her server, but there was no evidence she deliberately messed around with it, and it’s likely none of it was marked classified to begin with.

Was email missing? Nothing that couldn’t be located on other accounts, since she sent most of her mail to government recipients. Did she release her personal emails? No, and why should she?

Do people think she was hiding a secret of some sort that she had been emailing around to various people and that had to be “deleted?” It’s hard to tell what crime her opponents think she may have committed other than an ambiguous “crime” of compromising national security, which didn’t happen to begin with. And yet here is Paul

Ryan of all people, announcing that the FBI’s decision “defies explanation,” and “no one should be above the law.” No one is above the law, and the FBI clearly has a good explanation for its no-bill. I’d expect this hyperbole from Donald Trump, but Paul Ryan is sounding kookier by the week.

This Time There Really Is a Wolf Out There I’m becoming particularly protective of Hillary Clinton as the months and weeks until election day dissolve into summer lassitude. My mother was a professor of presidential politics who always advised me not to underestimate the American electorate. But the Republican primary was a shock.

Those were American voters. And while they weren’t American, I certainly overestimated the Brexit voters.

What the hell were they thinking?

So forgive me if I resist the siren song of complacency.

The composition of the High Court for a generation to come rests on this election. Yes, we always say that, don’t we? And it’s always almost true. Bush gave us two justices, Roberts and the odious Sam Alito. Obama came back with two of his own, Sotomayor and Kagan. But now we have a vacancy, and three more justices over the hill— Stephen Breyer pushing 80, Ginsburg and Kennedy already over that mark.

This time, the warning is very real.

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ASSURANCE

I

TAX

I

ADVISORY

And even though we won our big signature victory last summer, history may well see the marriage equality ruling less as a signature victory and more as a penultimate achievement.

Everything we care about seems headed towards a High Court showdown.

That ruling out of the Fourth Circuit in favor of transrights last March? The Virginia school district that lost has announced plans to appeal to the Supremes. Meanwhile, several other trans cases are now entering the federal court system thanks to the North Carolina debacle.

The continuing fight over whether or not gay men and women are protected against workplace bias under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act? Surely headed to the Supreme Court within a couple of years.

“Religious freedom” laws, like the one in Mississippi that was just struck down by a federal court? Also could be headed for the Supreme Court (although in this case we are still waiting to see if the state will appeal to the conservative Fifth Circuit).

And how about the hapless pharmacy we mentioned earlier? How would a Trump-nominated Court receive a similar petition, perhaps one from a Christian wedding venue or bakery?

You know exactly how that would go down.

At the core of all these cases is the question of whether, unlike racism or religious bias, some LGBT discrimination is legitimate in a way. Perhaps there is a little bit of wrong in us. Just a touch. Just enough to say, you know what, Mr. Christian? We understand why you might not want these customers. They have the right to shop somewhere, but they can go shop down the street.

It’s distressing in a way that such a profound question has yet to be definitively answered, not even by the Court that gave us our right to marry. But as long as it lingers, and as long as there are “two sides to the debate” about our fundamental equality as human beings, we will have work to do before the Court. That work will be a lot easier if Hillary Clinton wins this election. It will remain a tedious trek if she does not.

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www.jkzllp.com | www.jkzllp.com/español (continued on page 26) S AN F R ANC IS C O BAY T IM ES JULY 7, 2016

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Pink Triangle Installation & Ceremony Photos courtesy of Patrick and Hossein Carney

More than 300 volunteers joined founder Patrick Carney, his husband Hossein, and supporter Colleen Hodgkins for the installation on Saturday, June 25, and take down, on Sunday, June 26, of the 21st annual Pink Triangle. Created by the staking of pink canvas to the Twin Peaks hillside, the installation commemorates the memory of gay victims who were persecuted and killed in concentration camps in Nazi Germany.

At the annual ceremony held on the morning of “Pink Saturday” during Pride Weekend in San Francisco, the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band and cabaret singer Leanne Borghesi performed Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Speakers at the ceremony included civic and community leaders and Grand Marshals of the 2016 Pride Parade. More photos and information: facebook.com/patrick.carney.904

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SA N FRANCISCO BAY T I ME S J U LY 7 , 2 0 1 6

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Ask your doctor if a medicine made by Gilead is right for you.

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SA N FRANCISCO BAY   T I ME S J U LY 7 , 2 0 1 6

PHOTO BY RINK

PHOTO BY PAUL MARGOLIS

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PHOTO BY SANDY MORRIS

PHOTO BY PAUL MARGOLIS

PHOTO BY PAUL MARGOLIS

PHOTO BY PAUL MARGOLIS

PHOTO BY RINK

PHOTO BY SANDY MORRIS

PHOTO COURTESY OF JENNIFER SHA CHAN

PHOTO BY RINK

PHOTO BY RINK

PHOTO BY RINK

PHOTO BY SANDY MORRIS

PHOTO BY RINK

San Francisco PRIDE 2016 Pride Parade

Dykes on Bikes

PHOTO BY RINK

PHOTO BY RINK

PHOTO BY PAUL MARGOLIS

PHOTO BY PAUL MARGOLIS

PHOTO BY RINK

PHOTO BY RINK

PHOTO BY PAUL MARGOLIS

PHOTO BY PAUL MARGOLIS

PHOTO BY RINK

PHOTO BY SANDY MORRIS

PHOTO BY RINK

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PHOTO BY RINK PHOTO BY RINK

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PHOTO BY RINK

PHOTO BY RINK

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Parade and Festival June 26, 2016

Pride Festival

S AN F R ANC IS C O BAY   T IM ES JULY 7, 2016

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Pride Brunch & Grand Marshals 2016

Photos by RINK

The San Francisco Pride Committee calls them “the public emissaries of Pride.” Each year a mix of individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the LGBT community are honored for the work they have put into furthering the causes of LGBT people.

Selected for 2016: Celebrity Grand Marshals: The Cast of Transcendent, Chef Melissa King and Michael K. Williams; Special Celebrity Guest: Randy Harrison; Community Grand Marshals, Individual: Larry Yang, Fresh White, Mia “Tu Mutch” Satya and Janetta Johnson; Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal: Mike Shriver (individual) Black Lives Matter (organization); Heritage of Pride Awards: St. James Infirmary, Joanie Justice; Heritage of Pride/Creativity: Mercedez Munro; Heritage of Pride/Pride Freedom: Sally Miller Gearhart; Audrey Joseph LGBTQ Entertainment Award: Deana Dawn. Visit sfpride.org/grand-marshals for full bio information.

Grand Marshals are introduced and celebrated at a series of events leading up to Pride Weekend where they are honored at the Pride Brunch, hosted by Gary Virginia and Donna Sachet, on Saturday and in the Pride Parade on Sunday.

Brunch hosts Donna Sachet and Gary Virginia

Stephany Ashley

Shanelle Matthews

Randy Harrison

Joanie Jester

Mike Shriver

Chef Melissa King

San Francisco Bay Times contributor Jamie Leno and pup

Larry Yang

Mercedes Munro and friend

Deana Dawn

Fresh White

A guest (left) with Asia SF’s Larry Hashbarger and the cast of Transcendent

Fresh White

Joanie Jester

Patrik Gallineaux and Skye Patterson

Dixieland Dykes + 3

AIDS Emergency Fund / Breast Cancer Emergency Fund’s Sandra Nathan (left) and friends 16

Michael Williams and China Silk

SA N FRANCISCO BAY T I ME S J U LY 7 , 2 0 1 6

Positive Resource Center’s Brett Andrews and Senator Mark Leno

Janetta Johnson

Mia Satya

Pride Brunch 2016 at Hotel Whitcomb

Eric Bernier and MIke Proctor

From the Coming Up Events Calendar See page 24 Thursday, July 14 - Star Trek - The Ultimate Voyage: 50th Anniversary - 7:30 PM. San Francisco Symphony.

Davies Symphony Hall (201 Van Ness Ave) sfsymphony.org

Tuesday, July 19 - Mexican Museum Dedication Ceremony - 10:30 AM. Mexican Museum (706 Mission Street) mexicanmuseum.org

Superb Venezuelan Drama From Afar Continues Trilogy About Absent Latin Fathers

Film Gary M. Kramer In Venezuelan writer/director Lorenzo Vigas’ superb drama From Afar, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Armando (Alfredo Castro) is a 50-year-old man who pays young men to bare their bodies for his masturbatory pleasure.

A damaged man–he does not like to be touched–Armando gets more than he bargained for when he meets Elder (Luis Silva), a teenager who beats and robs him. However, Armando becomes intrigued by the young man, and pursues him. Elder, it turns out, finds a kind of father figure and protector in Armando.

Vigas adroitly chronicles the relationship that develops between this odd couple in From Afar. With the camera acting as a voyeur, Vigas uses focus, silence, and probing close-ups as Armando and Elder silently exchange glances that convey deep meanings and emotions. The film slow burns to an intense climax.

Vigas spoke with me for the San Francisco Bay Times about making From Afar.

Gary M. Kramer: You are a straight man, Lorenzo. Can you discuss why you would make such a queer film?

Lorenzo Vigas: I don’t like seeing films made for someone specific. Good films are for everyone. Even though an older man and a younger man are attracted to one another, what attracts them is that they both have deep emotional needs. I come from this macho place that is South America, where you have to be alpha macho to be respected. In Venezuela we have the malandro–a criminal who gets respect. But Elder, the malandro, soon sees that Armando, who is gay, is way more macho than he is. Power is very important in the film. I always thought it was a love story.

Gary M. Kramer: You are very conscious about focus and framing, what is seen and shown. Can you talk about your visual approach to the film and story?

Lorenzo Vigas: I’m the son of a very important painter in South America. I have all of that visual aesthetic in me, and I’m very much into it. When I thought of how to shoot the film, I was driven by the psychology of Armando. I thought of using extreme out of focus to show him in the streets of Caracas physically, but not emotionally. I wanted him to be a ghost in the city–a separation between him and the rest of the people. The framing is important too. The film plays with things you don’t see or hear, and that’s a way to engage the audience.

It fills the gaps with your imagination. It was important for me to leave things out of frame in specific moments so you can imagine it. Ambiguity is important in the film.

Gary M. Kramer: Armando is a son who hates his father, but acts fatherly to Elder; Elder hates his father and acts like a son to Armando, becoming his lover. Can you talk about these father/son relationships?

Lorenzo Vigas: I’ve been working on a trilogy about the absent father in Latin American. The first is Elephants Never Forget, my short, which is on YouTube. This is the second film. In Venezuela, the father is never home.

So father figures in Latin America are leaders who are expected to replace the father who was not home when you were a kid. That’s why people are blind to Chavez. I have no idea why I have this obsession. My relationship with my father was the opposite. He was always home and close to me. But I felt a pressure being the son of someone very important. He never lacked emotion. Sometimes you connect with the archetype.

Gary M. Kramer: How and when Elder displays his body to Armando is important. Can you talk about Elder’s body representing desire, longing, protection, and truth?

Lorenzo Vigas: No one has taken care of Elder, or given him protection, so his body is the only way he can show gratitude. Showing his body is a way that Elder discovers things he has never felt before, as well. This is the first time Elder falls in love in his life–that’s why he shows his body. In

Venezuela, we are very physical. If you have a sexy body, you show it in Venezuela.

Gary M. Kramer: Can you address the issue of shame and sexuality especially in regards to Latino, male culture/ society?

Lorenzo Vigas: In Venezuela, a common way of denigrating a friend is calling him puta. I guess that’s why I like the fact that in the film the gay man takes control of the situation.

It’s a study about that pain in Latin America.

Gary M. Kramer: There has been much in the news about the economic problems in Venezuela. How has this real life situation inf luenced your characters and your film?

Lorenzo Vigas: There is a lack of communication between the government and the people. There is no communication between the classes.

It has been cut off. Armando cannot communicate, so his character works as a metaphor. He cannot communicate, whereas Elder, who is loud, is the opposite. I’m sure the film will be controversial in Venezuela. Peo-

ple will reject the film because they don’t want to be confronted in such a direct way. We are used to soap operas and people like to see films that are soap operas, so this will be the opposite. But I hope the film makes people talk. If it can start dialogues in a country where dialogues have been shut off, that would be great. © 2016 Gary M. Kramer Gary M. Kramer is the author of “Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews,” and the co-editor of “Directory of World Cinema: Argentina.” Follow him on Twitter @garymkramer

S AN F R ANC IS C O BAY T IM ES JULY 7, 2016

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The Real Reasons Why Wedding Rehearsals Are Important

Weddings Howard Steiermann As the old joke goes, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.” Rehearsals are important for weddings too, but probably not for the reasons that you might think.

I have come to understand that the main benefit of wedding rehearsals is that they are often the first time the wedding party meets each other.

It is a relatively low key time for family members and friends who don’t know one another to meet and greet.

Rehearsals are actually not that critical for the practicing aspect, since adults who are participating in a wedding ceremony can gen-erally adapt even if there wasn’t a rehearsal. As for kids who may be involved, they can freeze up even if they have rehearsed dozens of times! The wedding site full of people dressed up and with jitters in the air can throw kids off, and that can happen after successful rehearsals have taken place in an empty venue.

I have read that 60 to 70% of all weddings do not include a rehearsal.

If you do have one, know that it will take longer than the real ceremony since you will repeat everything at

least twice. I start the bridal party as they will stand during the ceremony, practice the recessional (walking out) and then the pro-cessional (walking in) so everyone knows where they should be from the outset. This allows participants to aim for a target.

Next, I have the bridal party do a complete second run through.

The second practice will help people remember what is happening when.

Practicing also helps people understand who is walking down the aisle with whom, who is standing where, and who is sitting where.

It is standard for one or more attendants to miss the rehearsal. I have those standing on either side of the missing person leave space, and ask them to give the missing person their cues, etc.

A rehearsal is sometimes when a couple first considers who will be included in the procession. Will both partners walk down the aisle, will one be situated up front with the officiant, or will the officiant process first to signal the beginning of the ceremony? For most people, walking down an aisle while others are watching, as well as a photographer snapping pictures, creates a nervewracking scenario. To compensate, I remind participants to maintain a natural walking pace, suggesting they walk a tad slower because the natural tendency is to rush down the aisle.

Yes, there are benefits to having a rehearsal. However, the biggest is that it becomes another opportunity to gather on the big weekend.

The rehearsal is also an ideal time to give your officiant the license and final payment (if any), and to assign someone to be responsible for ceremonial objects after the wedding. These can include a wine goblet, glass (or lightbulb) that was stomped on, unity candle, ring bearer’s pillow, etc.

With preparation, your wedding party will understand the flow of the ceremony. Even more importantly, the preparation will allow you to realize you are ready for your wedding, allowing you to relax, breathe and be more present during your special day.

Howard M. Steiermann is an Ordained Ritual Facilitator based in San Francisco.

For more information, please visit www.

SFHoward.com

SF Sketch Randy Coleman Randy Coleman hails from New York, but has lived in San Francisco since 1975.

Coleman shares that before moving to the Bay Area, he studied Art History and Architecture at Boston University while working as a resident artist for architectural rendering at a Massachusetts historical society. “All of my life I’ve been an artist,” Coleman says.

“To know me is to know that I have a passion for art and architecture. I love this project for the San Francisco Bay Times, and hope that you enjoy my sketches.” © Randy Coleman, 2016

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SA N FRANCISCO BAY T I ME S J U LY 7 , 2 0 1 6

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE DE YOUNG AND LEGION OF HONOR

Ed Ruscha and the Great American West Through October 9, 2016, at the de Young The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are pleased to present Ed Ruscha and the Great American West, an exhibition that explores Ed Ruscha’s engagement with the American West and its starring role in our national mythology. This world-premiere exhibition has been organized by the Fine Arts Museums and includes 99 works by one of the world’s most influential and critically acclaimed artists.

The Fine Arts Museums have a long relationship with Ruscha, having acquired the artist’s complete graphic archive in 2000, including all published editions of his prints and a pledge to receive those made in the future. The Museums also commissioned an expanded triptych of the painting A Particular Kind of Heaven for the opening of the de Young’s new building in 2005.

This exhibition draws heavily from the institution’s permanent collections, while reinforcing a commitment to bringing major exhibitions of postwar American art to audiences in the Bay Area.

“Ruscha is adept at using all media, including prints, drawings, photographs, paintings and artist books, to explore different subjects or themes over time,” says Karin Breuer, curator in charge of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and organizing curator of the exhibition. “These can reflect physical changes or his own thinking about them.”

In 1956, at the age of 18, Ruscha left his home in Oklahoma and drove a 1950 Ford sedan to Los Angeles, where he hoped to attend art school. His trip roughly followed the fabled Route 66 through the Southwest, which featured many of the sights–auto repair shops, billboards, and long stretches of roadway punctuated by oil wells and telephone poles–that would provide him with artistic subjects for decades to come.

Nine sections will reveal Ruscha’s fascination with the evolving landscape and iconic character of the “Great American West” in symbolic, evocative, and ironic renditions. These include works that depict the region as it is experienced through the windshield of a car–a vast, wide-open prospect–and others that display Ruscha’s interest in built environments such as tacky buildings like those along the Sunset Strip, or the endless asphalt of urban sprawls.

The gasoline station has long been an important element of Ruscha’s work, and a photograph taken in 1962, Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas, became the basis for several of his best-known paintings and prints. The exhibition also will include works that comment on Los Angeles and its cultural touchstones, including his famous “Technicolor” renditions of the Hollywood sign, and

Ed Ruscha, “Schwab’s Pharmacy, 1976, from “The Sunset Strip,” series published in 1995. Gelatin silver print from altered negative, 20 x 30 in. Published

by Patrick Painter Editions, Vancouver and Hong Kong. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Mrs. Paul L. Wattis Fund, 2000.131.193 © Ed Ruscha

other subjects that symbolize the romantic aura of the film industry as well as its excesses, obsessions and anxieties.

Ruscha is famous for making a word or phrase the sole subject of an artwork, often depicting the same word in a variety of forms such as poured liquids, cut ribbons, spray paint, or a favorite typeface that the artist calls “Boy Scout utility modern.” The exhibition concludes with works that include the words “The End,” possibly alluding to the end of cinematic illusion, the end of a romantic vision of the West, or the literal end of a continent–the edge of the Pacific Ocean, where Route 66 ends.

Ruscha continues to work steadily at the age of 78, and this exhibition will include prints made as recently as 2014.

He maintains a studio in the California desert, and makes regular road trips though the spare, evocative, occasionally absurd landscapes that first inspired him as a young man. Ruscha has now worked in California for more than 50 years, and this exhibition celebrates his long commitment to exploring the American West as both romantic concept and modern reality.

About the Artist

ma, and has lived and worked in Southern California since the late 1950s. Beginning in 1956, road trips across the American Southwest furnished a conceptual trove of themes and motifs that he mined throughout his career. The everyday landscapes of the West, especially as experienced from the automobile–gas stations, billboards, building facades, parking lots, and long stretches of roadway–are the primary motifs of his often deadpan and instantly recognizable paintings and works on paper, as well as his influential artist books.

Renowned artist Ed Ruscha was born in Nebraska in 1937, grew up in Oklaho-

For information about visiting the de Young, please visit: deyoung.famsf.org

Ed Ruscha, “America’s Future,” 1979. Oil on canvas, 22 x 159 in. Collection of Levi Strauss & Co., San Francisco © Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha, “Pepto-Caviar Hollywood,” 1970. Color screenprint, 15 x 42 1/2 in. Published by Cirrus Editions, Los Angeles. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Mrs. Paul L. Wattis Fund, 2000.131.37.1 © Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha, “Pool #7,” 1968, from “Pools,” series published in 1997. Chromogenic print, 20 x 20 in.

Published by Patrick Painter Editions, Vancouver and Hong Kong. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Mrs. Paul L. Wattis Fund, 2000.131.215 © Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha, “Standard Station,” 1966. Color screenprint, 25 5/8 x 40 in. Published by Audrey Sabol, Villanova, PA. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Mrs. Paul L. Wattis Fund, 2000.131.5.1 © Ed Ruscha S AN F R ANC IS C O BAY T IM ES JULY 7, 2016

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LGBTQ and Ethnic Studies Courses Are Needed in All Schools The LGBTQ Studies class at Asawa SOTA, established last year, is the first of its kind in a San Francisco public school, and may well be the first in the country.

Commentary Lyndsey Schlax & Matt Haney A few weeks ago. the legendary Castro Theatre hosted a celebration of the life of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office, on what would have been his 86th birthday, just a block from the camera shop where he ran his historic campaigns.

In the mezzanine, guests viewed a collection of art honoring not only Milk, but also the under-told, dynamic history of San Francisco’s, and the world’s, LGBTQ people and communities. The show had been carefully curated by the students from Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts’ (SOTA) LGBTQ Studies class.

The announcement in early June that the course would be expanding to three additional high schools was expected to be met with a proud celebration of the work of educators and community leaders in bringing representative and relevant education to the students of San Francisco Unified School District.

Instead, because of hatred, oppression and bigotry, we are mourning.

The attack on the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando was a blow to many, but most especially to the LGBT Latinx community, who lost so many.

As news of the attack spread on social media, many questioned: What can we do to prevent this from happening again? How do we fight back with love and understanding?

Teachers and schools are positioned to help answer one of those questions by taking action in the fight to end discrimination against LGBTQ people and communities.

We can start in the classroom, as individual teachers have been doing,

lesson by lesson, for decades. And we can demand representative education, insist that our schools offer LGBTQ Studies, LGBTQ-infused history, Ethnic Studies, and non-traditional narratives.

Straight, cisgender, and white allies especially—this is what we can and must help do. We have privilege that obligates us to take this risk, to teach in direct opposition to bigotry, because we can, in ways and safety that others sometimes cannot.

The work to branch out beyond erasure and tokenism has begun at San Francisco’s Asawa SOTA. There, students are able to walk into a classroom and intentionally, holistically, learn about this defining part of history and identity in a stand-alone course, covering the stories, writings, contributions, and experiences of members of the LGBTQ community; in many cases, of people like them.

We know that the class has already made a difference. Take, for example, the decline in bullying and homophobic slurs that occurred on the Asawa SOTA campus this year. Students who took the LGBTQ Studies course reported a campus-wide reduction in both experiencing and overhearing (continued on page 26)

Sister Dana Sez: Words of Wisdumb from a Fun Nun

By Sister Dana Van Iquity Sister Dana sez, “Now that Pride is over, are we supposed to feel shame? Just kidding!

Pride is every day!”

Sister Dana thoroughly enjoyed being the rainbow nun in the San Francisco Bay Times contingent #099 of the Parade. Our contingent included board members and volunteers of the RAINBOW HONOR WALK organization, highlighting legendary LGBT community leaders represented in the sidewalk plaques installed in the Castro neighborhood, where Rainbow Honor Walk founder David Perry rode as well. I was on the top of the double-decker bus with the OAKLAND INTERFAITH GOSPEL CHOIR. Joining our team were city officials, such as Oakland City Councilmember at-Large and San Francisco Bay Times columnist Rebecca Kaplan and her wife, Pamela Rosin. Sister Dana loved blowing kisses to the crowd and flashing peace & love signs—and receiving the same back from those loving people! I even got four seconds of fame on the KOFY-TV broadcast!

Just before the City came to dismantle the Orlando victims’ memorial in the Castro, several of us SISTERS OF PERPETUAL INDULGENCE held a CLOSING RITUAL AT THE ORLANDO MEMORIAL on the corner of 18th and Castro—known back in the day as Hibernia Beach. “I hate to see it go, as we are still raw from this act of violence, but the recent accidental fire has made it necessary for it to be dismantled,” said Castro Business District executive director Andrea Aiello. The memorial went up immediately after the shooting two weeks prior, which claimed the lives of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

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SA N FRANCISCO BAY T I ME S J U LY 7 , 2 0 1 6

Sister Merry Peter acted as host for the ceremony, which drew close to a hundred people. Cleansing sage and smudge were distributed by Sisters, ministers, and leaders. As the majority of the Orlando people murdered were Latinx, it was appropriate that Ruben Martinez of INSTITUTO DE LA RAZA open the circle in Spanish, with translation following in English. Rev. Megan Rohrer from Grace Lutheran (wearing a rainbow t-shirt with the punny phrase: “This is the gay that the Lord has made” proudly emblazoned) invited the community to share from their hearts (words, song, movement).

Politicians, community leaders, and ministers were all invited to join in.

The next day, several of us Sisters and our friends assembled in Pink Triangle Park in the Castro to be led by Sister Kitty Catalyst in a First Friday Darshan Parade down Market Street—offering ritual blessing, love, and peace in the gayborhood.

GARY VIRGINIA & DONNA SACHET’s annual PRIDE BRUNCH has grown to be one of the most popular events of Pride weekend. We joined them in their 18th year to honor the 2016 SF LGBT Pride Parade Grand Marshals in the historic grandeur of the Hotel Whitcomb as we helped raise funds for POSITIVE RESOURCE CENTER. Presented by Wells Fargo, the event featured rousing musical entertainment by the Dixieland Dykes+3. The Grand Marshals’ speeches were truly inspirational.

MAN DANCE COMPANY (MDC), America’s premier GLBT Dance Company, performed to an enthusiastic audience in Jane Warner Plaza. Founded in San Francisco, Artistic Director Bryon Heinrich designed MDC for dancers who can express their athleticism, sensuality, and compassion free of restraint. MDC presents inspiring male-themed dance performances, focusing on historically triumphant and GLBT-related stories.

THE LGBT ASYLUM PROJECT is the only Bay Area nonprofit organization exclusively dedicated to providing pro-bono legal representation for LGBT immigrants who are fleeing persecution and seeking asylum

in the United States. The LGBT Asylum Project is a program of the Center for Immigrant Protection. The Project hosted its Official Launch Party at Oasis. The festive Pride week fundraiser featured special musical performances: Juliano Wade and Velocity Circus, as well as Adam Sandel’s song “Give Them Hope” performed by Arthur Scappaticci, accompanied by Alan Choy—all to support our interna um Project is a program of the Center for Immigrant Protection. The Project hosted its Official Launch Party at Oasis. The festive Pride week fundraiser featured special musical performances: Juliano Wade and Velocity Circus, as well as Adam Sandel’s song “Give Them Hope” performed by Arthur Scappaticci, accompanied by Alan Choy—all to support our international LGBT brothers and sisters who need us most. The success rate for legally represented asylum applicants is 75% nationwide. The success rate for the Center for Immigrant Protection— now launching the LGBT Asylum Project, founded by immigration attorneys Okan Sengun & Brooke Westling—is currently 100%. cipsf.org FRAMELINE40: The King of Queer Film Festivals, the SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL, closed its historic 40th anniversary on Pride Sunday with a sold-out World Premiere of Andrew Haigh’s LOOKING, proudly presented by HBO, who gave us the series. Joining Haigh at the Premiere were stars Jonathan Groff (Glee, Broadway’s Hamilton), Russell Tovey (Being Human, The Pass), Murray Bartlett (August), Frankie J. Alvarez, Raúl Castillo, Lauren Weedman, Daniel Franzese (Mean Girls), and producer/writer Michael Lannan. Be sure to catch this movie when it comes out nationwide.

WHAT’S HAPPENING, SISTER DANA? Sister Dana sez, “Just because Pride month is over, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still be proudly supporting these fine upcoming events.”

PEACHES CHRIST PRODUCTIONS presents SHE-DEVIL with (continued on page 26)

Speaking to Your Soul

ARIES (March 21–April 19) Your sexuality gets a recharge. Applying courage toward asking the deeper, more honest questions, can result in greater emotional intimacy.

Astrology Elisa Quinzi The embers that were quietly glowing in recent mont hs burst into f lame as the summer gets a kickstart with fresh energy.

TAURUS (April 20–May 20) What might have felt like stumbling blocks in your relationship life clear away now and hope is rejuvenated.

As is your libido.

GEMINI (May 21–June 20) It’s a great time for a drive forward in work matters. Take that step toward improving your position.

CANCER ( June 21–July 22) Shake up your social life. Get out there and make it happen. Your magnetism is high but it’s up to you to leave the house.

LEO ( July 23–August 22)

You have the drive now to look within and examine what lies beneath your feelings.

You might benefit from some alone time for contemplation.

VIRGO (August 23–Sept. 22) The psychologist in you is apt to analyze those around you right now. This is fine as your assessments are usually accurate, but be sure your probing questions effect an opening in yourself as well.

LIBRA (Sept. 23–Oct. 22) It’s time to take action that is in alignment with your values. All signs say go when you are acting from integrity.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23–Nov. 21) Freedom and independence are the name of the game these days.

What has held you back falls away as you step triumphantly onto the path of a new you.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22–Dec. 21) Fear is a demon on the inside to be slayed. You have the boost of courage now to do just that. Do it so you can begin a fresh cycle on an advantageous note.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22–Jan.19) There are important contributions for you to make to your community. Your hard work is more readily received now.

AQUARIUS ( Jan. 20–Feb. 18) You might want to ask for a promotion, or take a leap of faith in a new career direction. Something wants to happen and it needs you to do it.

PISCES (Feb. 19–March 20) Exposure to that which is outside your comfort zone reveals just how much wider your world can be. Be bold to build momentum in this arena.

Elisa has been enjoying the art of astrological counseling since earning professional certification many years ago. In addition to astrological knowledge, she brings a high degree of conscious presence to her work, and creates a safe, comfortable atmosphere for sessions to unfold organically.

Contact her at futureselfnow@gmail.com or 818-530-3366 or visit www.ElisaQuinzi.com

As Heard on the Street . . . What is your favorite summer song?

compiled by Rink

Julian Marshburn

Khmera Rouge

Sally Canjura

Gil Padia

“Justin Timberlake’s ‘Can’t Stop the Feeling’”

“I’m Coming Out”

“Surfin’ Safari”

“‘Summer’ by Calvin Harris”

Can you keep your lifestyle in retirement?

Let’s talk.

415.623.2450 Brio Financial Group

A private wealth advisory practice of Ameriprise Financial Service, Inc. 44 Montgomery St, Ste 4210 San Francisco, CA 94104-4815 415-623-2450

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S AN F R ANC IS C O BAY T IM ES JULY 7, 2016

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San Francisco Spikes Soccer Club Scores Goals and Friendships Fitness SF Trainer Tip of the Month Marian Low Fitness SF Fillmore Deadlift When performed properly, The Deadlift is an all muscle exercise. This exercise works the core, lower back and glutes. This is good for both men and women. Strong lifts require strong minds.

Sports John Chen Matthew Shambroom has been a competitive soccer player all of his life. He also happens to be gay.

For the longest time, those two qualities could not co-exist at the same time within him, and this mutual exclusivity was a thorn on his side. In other words, he could not be a gay competitive soccer player. In 2001, when Google was just an embryo, Matthew manually searched and found (does anyone remember how to do this?) the San Francisco Spikes, a gay soccer club.

“The day I found the Spikes, it was a transformative day for me,” he says.

“I became Matthew the soccer player and Matthew the gay man. The last 16 years with the Spikes, I’ve traveled all over, and competed against teams and met passionate gay soccer players from all over the world. I’ve made

life-long friendships and established commonalities with other gay soccer communities.”

To Matthew, these experiences are everything: his sense of self, identity and pride.

Now Matthew is the President of the San Francisco Spikes Soccer Club.

Under his leadership, Spikes saw an unprecedented expansion and interest in soccer within our community.

From a once humble and unassuming one-team gay soccer club, Spikes is now a formidable 501(C)3 LGBT sports organization housing five competing teams (Academy, Wreckit, Classics, Vice and Baewatch), with coaches, clinics, tournaments, fundraisers and a host of soccer events.

Matthew genuinely wants to make available to anyone what soccer has given him: that strength and pride of being both a gay person and a soccer player.

With a strong coaching and playing pedigree, Jose Nava currently coaches the Spikes Academy soccer team,

which is a beginner to intermediate Spikes team where players have an invested interest in learning, training and practicing. During practices players can hear Jose’s passion and enthusiasm as he teaches and directs players of varying skill sets and athletic abilities. Jose could play for any team, but chose to join Spikes because of the friendships. He says “Friendships in gay soccer are stronger and much more deeply rooted because we share similar life experiences and struggles as gay men and women.”

The captain of Spikes Academy team, Shiqi Yang, played soccer as a youth in China, but soon found interest in other activities. Now an American, Shiqi circled back to soccer and this time fell in love with the sport he once knew. Shiqi described his first day with the Spikes Academy as “intimidating” because he hadn’t kicked a ball in years, but the guys welcomed him and invited him out for drinks; that helped to close the deal. He (continued on page 26)

Small Steps Rule Troy Macfarland of Fitness SF provides monthly tips he’s learned from his colleagues who are professional trainers at local gyms.

He can be reached at tmacfarland@fitnesssf.com

Inside Out Fitness Cinder Ernst Welcome to Inside Out Fitness, where you can find out how to make your exercise routine safe, effective, easy to do and fun! It is different than traditional fitness programming because you assume responsibility for your own body. You learn to listen to your body and respond accordingly. Today we will look at how you can discern your body’s voice of wisdom.

When it comes to fitness, most people bite off more than they can chew and then give up. Inside Out Fitness paves a completely different exercise pathway by using super effective, small step–yet powerful–exercises.

Day by day, or moment to moment, your only fitness concern should be your next step. Just the next small step.

The problem is that you have been led to believe that you must do certain things to get stronger. For instance: 30 minutes of walking or cardio, tons of leg lifts to help fix your knee, or going to a dreaded gym. None of that is true. In other words, more is not always better. Taking small steps is the key to success!

Not only are small steps great for moving you comfortably along on your inside out fitness path, but also there are benefits to small steps that you cannot get from anything else.

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Small steps: • bring your anxiety down right away because they are easy to do; • allow you to relax while moving, permitting gradual strengthening; • greatly reduce the risk of injury; • and circumvent the “all or nothing” routine that has many of you defeated before you even start.

There is no prize for doing more than what is right for you. There is no benefit to overdoing it. There is no moral high ground in sacrificing yourself to the exercise gods!

Let’s look at some examples of good small steps. You can search YouTube for Cinder Ernst and see many small step exercise videos.

I have a client who decided to increase her walking by taking a lap around the car each morning before she got in.

Another client with pretty severe back and knee pain decided that she would walk 2 driveways down and back. A block was too much. She found her perfect next small step.

Another client uses get ups from a chair at home when he needs a quick energy boost. Get ups (simply standing up and sitting back down) are one of the best strength and stamina building exercises.

SA N FRANCISCO BAY T I ME S J U LY 7 , 2 0 1 6

One of my favorite small step exercises is a Tush Tilt. It is done in a chair and it strengthens your core and your butt muscles. This laser targeted small step exercise can sometimes help to resolve knee and back pain.

Take Me Home with You!

Try the Tush Tilt now: • Sit tall and straight in your chair, feet flat on the floor, ribcage lifted.

• Do a pelvic tilt by pressing your lower back towards the back of your chair. Think navel to spine.

Keep your ribcage lifted.

• Hold the pelvic tilt and squeeze your butt cheeks together.

• Release, relax and repeat 5 or 10 times.

• Repeat all of the above a few times throughout the day.

Remember that using small steps keeps you safe, motivated and relaxed when you are exercising. Doesn’t that sound nice?

The next time we will address how you can identify and follow your body’s voice of wisdom. In the meantime, if you have related questions, feel free to email coach@cinderernst.com Cinder Ernst, Medical Exercise Specialist and Life Coach Extraordinaire, helps reluctant exercisers get moving with safe, effective and fun programs. Find out more at http:// cinderernst.com

“My name is Izzy! Every Izzy year when the weather gets warmer, cats start going out and about … a few months later, kitten season arrives.

Right now it can be easy for an 8-year-old like me to get overlooked, but I have just as much spunk as any of these youngsters! I’m also mature enough to understand the beauty of a great cat nap. While I love to play, I love to snuggle even more. My motto? Lap time is my pastime! Join me for a cuddle session?”

Izzy is presented to San Francisco Bay Times readers by Dr. Jennifer Scarlett, the SF SPCA’s Co-President. Our thanks also go to Krista Maloney for helping to get the word out about lovable pets like Izzy.

To see Izzy and other pets seeking their forever homes, please visit: San Francisco SPCA Mission Campus 250 Florida St. San Francisco, CA 94103

Dr. Jennifer Scarlett and Pup

415-522-3500 Aside from major holidays, the adoption center is open Mon–Fri: 1–6 pm and Sat–Sun: 10 am–5 pm. Free parking is available for those wishing to adopt!

For more info about Izzy: https://www.sfspca.org/adoptions/pet-details/10467049

Professional Services

LAW OFFICES OF MILES & TORRES Estate Planning 1393 Noe Street, San Francisco, CA 94131 (415) 308-2307 www.milestorreslaw.com

N ewPer spec ti ves Center for Counseling

S AN F R ANC IS C O BAY   T IM ES JULY 7, 2016

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See many more Calendar items @ www.sfbaytimes.com

• 7 : T HURSDAY

Philadelphia Freedom: Queer Responses to the Bicentennial – GLBT Historical Society. $5. 7-9 pm. (4127 18th St.) Historian Marc Stein reveals the significance of a moment in the 1970s when LGBTQ people claimed a place in a national spectacle. facebook.com/events/491331901057046 The Black Woman Is God – SOMArts. Free. 6-10 pm. (934 Brannan St.) Co-curated by Karen Seneferu and Melorra Green, The Black Woman as God celebrates the Black female presence in the highest spiritual form. facebook.com/ events/1105419429516727 Art Against Violence; Art Show and Fundraiser – Dada Bar. 6 pm-2 am. (86 2nd St.) Art opening and fundraiser. facebook. com/events/1552038435102046

• 8 : F RIDAY

Uhaul SF New Location – Oasis. 10 pm- 2am. (298 11th St._ New home for Uhaul; a party for girls who like girls. https://www. facebook.com/events/ 1047895058598752/ SF Gamer Night – The Eagle.

Free. 8 pm. (398 12th St.) Lots of games available to play. facebook. com/events/1742543409347654

• 9 : S ATURDAY

Castro Valley Pride Returns for 2016 - Castro Valley High School Stadium Parking Lot. Free.

12-5 pm. (Redwood and Heyer). An afternoon of performers and speakers, along with over 70 vendor and community group booths and three

food trucks serving meals and desserts. facebook.com/CVPride Between World’s Opening Reception – Arc Studios & Gallery. Free. 7-9 pm. (1246 Folsom St.) An exhibition that responds to the Syrian refugee crisis. facebook. com/events/1175464085818527/ Last Night to See From Piss to Bliss – The Marsh. $20-$100.

5:00 pm. (1062 Valencia St.) Ady Lady performs her new show – a voyage through San Francisco. facebook.com/events/619507901535347 The Real Americans – The Marsh. $25-$100. 8:30 pm. (1062 Valencia St.) Jeff Hoyle’s recollection of his 100-day van trip through small-town and rural America. themarsh.org “Teens and Queens” - James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center in the Koret Auditorium, Main Library.

20th Anniversary of the Center.

Through Aug. 7. facebook.com/ James-C-Hormel-lgbtqia-Center-ofSan-Francisco-PublicLibrary-146487331384/

• 10 : S UNDAY

“Still Queer” – Beauty Bar. 3 pm.

(2299 Mission St.) Monthly event with 100% of proceeds raised go to keeping the Dyke March going. facebook.com/events/ 2nd Misfit Art Auction – 1890 Bryant Street Studios. (3-6 pm). A fundraiser for the AIDS Walk SF. facebook.com/events/ 705143906290834/ Gears Turning Poetry Series – Modern Times. Free. 4 pm. Every second Sunday of the month for poetry, film, gallery installations, and special events.

Binda’s Big Pam and Jerry

San Francisco Symphony celebrates 50 years of “Star Trek” on the 14th Bash – Muir Beach Community Center. $10. 1 pm. (19 Seascape Dr.) Dance in a beautiful setting above the Pacific. Potluck. bindaspjbash. brownpapertickets.com/

5:45 pm. (100 Larkin St.) Hosted by Juliana Delgado Lopera and featuring Mai Doàn, Mari Naomi, Fisayo Adeyeye, and Gina Gold. facebook. com/events/554097924763107/

• 11 : M ONDAY

Butch Stud - A drop-in group for people who identify as Butch, Stud, Masculine-of-Center, Boi, Gender queer and more. Email: butchstudgroup@pacificcenter.org

Broadway Bares SF: Tech Tails – Club Fugazi. 7:30 pm. $30-$75.

(678 Green St.) New York’s AIDS Benefit Show Comes to SF. One night only. Call 415-421-4222 to purchase tickets. Reaf.org Cal Shakes Civic Dialogue Series: “Actualizing Women’s Empowerment” - Impact Hub Oakland. Free. 6-9 pm. (2323 Broadway Ave., Oakland). Examines themes raised in August Wilson’s Fences, playing at the Bruns Amphitheater Through July 31. calshakes.org Conversation with the Queer Tribe with HR Bremner – Flesh and Spirit Community. 5 pm. (924 Valencia St.) A therapist, sex educator and community developer counsels on sexual development and trauma. qt.fleshandspirit.org/index.php/12series3/39-h-r-bremner

• 12 : T UESDAY

July Queer Reading Series – San Francisco Public Library. Free.

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SA N FRANCISCO BAY T I ME S J U LY 7 , 2 0 1 6

Queer Youth Meal Night LGBT Center, Rainbow Room. Free.

5–7 pm. (1300 Market St.) A safe space to meet LGBTQIA friends, have a free dinner and more. facebook.com/sfcenteryouth?_rdr=p

• 13 : W EDNESDAY

Davies Symphony Hall. $25-$99.

7:30 pm. (201 Van Ness Ave.) Celebrate 50 years of Star Trek with iconic film and TV footage. facebook.com/events/ 1790626774499460 Pins of Light, The Birth Defects, and Wild Eyes – Eagle Tavern. 9 pm. (398 12th St.) A trio of bands at the Eagle. facebook. com/events/597577427075358 Our Lady J with Guest Derek Schmidt – Oasis. $20. 8 pm. (298 11th St.) Our Lady J returns to the stage with well-known pop songs through a gospel lens. sfoasis.com/ event.cfm?cart&id=168020

AMP Study: The Next Generation of HIV Research panel – ProArts Gallery. Free. 6 pm. (150 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Oakland). Bridge HIVcommunity forum panel discussion with food. facebook.com/events/ 2509964286 11551

• 15 : F RIDAY

Floor 21: More and RudyPresent a New Downtown Happy Hour Starlight Room. Free. 5 pm. (450 Powell St.) Every Wednesday.

Call to Artists: Leaf and Petal, Root and Seed and Opening Reception – Occidental Center for the Arts.

Free. 5:30-7:30 pm. Artists are invited to submit pieces that exploring how plants sustain human life. Reception is from 5:30-7:30 PM. occidentalcenterforthearts.org/ events/

• 14 : T HURSDAY

Star Trek – The Ultimate Voyage – San Francisco Symphony,

Beast Crawl – Uptown Oakland.

5pm. Annual free literary festival featuring more than 200 writers in multiple locations. beastcrawl.weebly.com/

• 16 : S ATURDAY

Bay Area Derby Tryouts– BAD Headquarters. $35. 2-4 pm.

(2635 Peralta St., Oakland). Join a roller derby team. bayareaderby. com/events/tryouts Atlas Café 20th Anniversary Party – Atlas Café. Free. 2-8 pm.

Celebrate this Mission landmark’s 20th anniversary. atlascafe.net Renegade Craft Fair – Free.

11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (Fort Mason Festival Pavilion, 2 Marina Blvd.).

Renegade is a celebration of DIY spirit and each Fair gathers new and seasoned independent Makers.

Sunday, 17th as well.

PHOTO BY CHARLES MARTIN, 2014.

One Year Anniversary Celebration - Tenderloin Museum. Free. 10 am-9 pm. (398 Eddy St.) facebook.com/ events/1140642605978332/

• 17 : S UNDAY

San Francisco AIDS Walk – Golden Gate Park. Starts at 8:35 am. 10k fundraising walk to raise money for groups working to provide support to people with HIV. sf.aidswalk.net Daytime Realness, Drag from the Depths – El Rio. $10.

2 pm (3158 Mission St.) Party with Heklina hosting. facebook.com/ events/149873378753996

• 18 : M ONDAY

Deep Diving – High Flying – ODC. M-F 12:30 – 4:30 pm. (351 Shotwell). An intensive class addressing skills for all levels and types of dancers. Through July 22. facebook.com/ events/508986245961222 Lawrence/Matt Jaffe & the Distractions – The Rickshaw Stop. $12-$15. 8 pm. (155 Fell St.) The New York-based soul-pop group blends old-school and newschool vibes. facebook.com/ events/124242517990622

• 19 : T UESDAY

LGBTQ Mixer at Lyft – Lyft Headquarters. 5 pm. (568 Brannan St.) To attend, schedule a GiveOUTDay donation. Suggested donation $25. www.facebook.com/ events/1649729105353522 The Mexican Museum Dedication Ceremony – Mexican Museum. 10:30 am. (706 Mission St.) A family-friendly dedication event. eventbrite.com/e/themexican-museum-dedication-ceremony-cornerstone-presentationtickets-25914846002 The Doctor is In: CROI Update - Strut. Free. 6:30-8:30 pm. (470 Castro St.) Twice-monthly opportunities to ask for guidance from HIV specialist Dr. Joanna Eveland and community members.

Email pforce@sfaf.org to RSVP. strutsf.org/event/the-doctor-is-incroi-update/?instance_id=5611

• 20 : W EDNESDAY Food of Love – San Leandro Public Library. 1-3 pm. (300 Estudillo). A film exploring the passage of a young pianist into adulthood and through his first romance. Lavender Film Series.

AIDS LifeCycle Thank You – The Observation Post at the Presidio. 6:30 pm. (211 Lincoln Blvd.) Celebration of the ALC 2016. tofighthiv.org/site/Calendar/7 96056308?view=Detail&id=186044

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NEWS (continued from page 3) ing protections are being rolled back, leaving already vulnerable communities even more susceptible to violence. The year 2015 was once again a deadly year for LGBTQ and HIVaffected communities. There were 24 reported hate violence homicides of LGBTQ people, a 20% increase from the 20 reported anti-LGBTQ homicides in 2014. ncavp.org San Francisco and Oakland Mayors Hold Bay Area Women’s Summit Mayor Ed Lee and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf convened the first ever Bay Area Women’s Summit in

Moscone Center North, 747 Howard Street. Special guests included Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama Valerie Jarrett and Treasurer of the United States Rosie Rios. Keynote speakers included New America President and CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter, National Domestic Workers Alliance Director Ai-jen Poo and PolicyLink President & CEO Angela Glover Blackwell. sfgov.org Castro Patrol Training to be Offered on July 19 Castro Community on Patrol will again be training new volunteers on

July 19 to continue 10 years of looking out for one another. Trained volunteers patrol in teams of three or more, walking in brightly colored orange safety vests throughout the neighborhood. They act as the “eyes and ears” of the neighborhood, providing safety information, distributing free safety whistles, checking in with merchants and chatting with visitors, and, if needed, calling on professional emergency responders as necessary. Activists are urged to reserve a seat for the free training.

More volunteers mean more walking patrols, which mean improved safety for everybody in the Castro and

HONOR WALK (continued from page 9) G e r r y S t u d d s ( 19 3 7 – 2 0 0 6 ) American politician and the f irst openly gay member of the U.S. Congress.

Lou Sullivan (1951–1991) American aut hor, act iv ist, a nd fema le to male transgender pioneer who is w idely cred ited for the modern understanding of sexual orientation and gender identit y as distinct, unrelated concepts.

Chavela Vargas (1919–2012) Lesbian Costa Rican-born singer known for her rendition of Mexican rancheras and for her contribution to other genres of popular Latin American music.

We’wha (1849–1896) Zuni Native American Two-Spirit/Mixed Gender Tribal Leader who was male-bodied but performed primarily “feminine” tasks as well as serving as a mediator.

ket Street with additional extensions on 18th Street. On Market Street, San Francisco’s main thoroughfare, the Walk will continue to the LGBT Center at Octavia Boulevard.

“Our hope as a board is that people from around the world will walk the Rainbow Honor Walk and take away inspiration and education,” said Perry. “Some of these names are wellknown. Some are barely known. All deserve to be known.”

All funds for manufacture of the Rainbow Honor Walk are raised privately, with each plaque costing approximately $5000. A major source of income comes from the San Francisco Human Rights Campaign Action Center and Store (575 Castro Street) through the sale of commemorative mugs, t-shirts and lapel pins, which has generated over $15,000 for the Rainbow Honor Walk.

The Rainbow Honor Walk will eventually extend from the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy on 19th Street at Diamond down to Castro Street— t he L GBT commun it y’s “ Ma in Street”—and will continue up Mar-

To contact the Rainbow Honor Walk, email info@rainbowhonorwalk.org

CHEN (continued from page 22) happily says, “It’s amazing that I am playing gay soccer in America!”

Michele Cervantes–a free spirit, chef (at Mission Chinese) and philosopher–loves to play soccer and discovered Spikes through happenstance.

Michele’s passion for soccer stems from the cerebral and strategic aspects of the game. “Like chess, soccer is about moving individual pieces collectively as a team, controlling the spaces between players and precisely playing the ball to those spacTING (continued from page 4) as possible as fast as they can. Our smarter gun laws will logically save lives by prohibiting such deadly weapons.

More work needs to be done. All of us have the right to live without the fear of getting shot. We need to focus on the people who commit gun violence and give law abiding people peaceful tools to protect themselves and loved ones.

As we grieve for lives lost in Orlando, we can take some comfort in knowing that the loss of so many innocent lives has been met with meaningful action in California. Tragedy struck, but our state has become safer.

Phil Ting represents the 19th Assembly District.

es,” he says. “If [players] understand how to create and move to open spaces, then they can beat their opponents methodically.”

Although identif ied as not LGBT, Michele found a great community in Spikes soccer. “The guys didn’t care whether I played good or bad, gay or straight,” he explains. “They never put any pressure on me to be someone I wasn’t.” Michele adds that he is very proud of being a Spike and is unabashed about his admiration of

LGBT people. “[They] took a major risk in discovering who they really are and who they want to love. Because of this I believe gay people see things from a deeper level of consciousness.”

San Francisco Spikes Soccer Club invites soccer players of all levels to join them. For more information: write to info@sfspikes.com, check out sfspikes.com or phone 415-350-4139.

John Chen, a UCLA alumnus and an avid sports fan, has competed as well as coached tennis, volleyball, softball and football teams.

6/26 (continued from page 8) unremembered, nor leave any questions unanswered.” The A merican freedom to marry movement ach ieved somet h i ng t hat often seemed unimaginable: nationwide marriage equality. It took millions and millions of us, our friends, families, and strangers doing everything we could and employing every skill we possess for our love, dignity, and common humanity. We never, ever gave up. It’s time to do the same to silence the gunfire. It’s time to embody love to become the kryptonite to hate.

Authors’ Note: The activists who came together to make the We Are Orlando con-

tingent a reality are too numerous to name here individually. However, we want to acknowledge the inspired leadership and dedication of Richard Sizemore, Mason Smith, Richel Desamparado, Tristan Moaveniyan, PSPrint, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and San Francisco Pride.

John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney, together for over three decades, were plaintiffs in the California case for equal marriage rights decided by the California Supreme Court in 2008. Their leadership in the nationwide grassroots organization Marriage Equality USA contributed in 2015 to making samesex marriage legal nationwide.

Duboce Triangle neighborhoods. castropatrol.org CDPH Issues Health Advisory for Meningococcal Disease California Department of Public Health (CDPH) Director and State Public Health Officer Dr. Karen Smith issued a health advisory related to an outbreak of invasive meningococcal disease occurring in Southern California, primarily among adult gay and bisexual men. Meningococcal disease is caused by the bacteria Neisseria meningitidis and can cause meningitis and bloodstream infections (sepsis). Although rare, me-

ningococcal disease is serious and potentially fatal. Since the beginning of May, nine meningococcal disease cases have been identified in men living in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, most of whom were gay or bisexual men. One patient has died.

HIV-infected people are at increased risk of contracting meningococcal disease. Because of this increased risk, the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommend that all HIV-infected persons aged 2 months and older be routinely vaccinated with the meningococcal vaccine. cdph.ca.gov

SCHLAX/HANEY(continued from page 20) ing harassment based on sexuality or gender identity, as well as increases in their sense of belonging, safety, and support.

While SFUSD has long undertaken pioneering work around cultural competence, including being the first district nationally to have a fully integrated Support Services Department for LGBTQ youth, the LGBTQ Studies class has given new momentum to a resurgent LGBTQ education movement.

We must do better; we have an obligation to teach true, comprehensive history in a way that enables students to learn from our mistakes and that ensures that no one is made invisible.

LGBTQ artists and authors, histories and struggles, much like those taught in Ethnic Studies, belong in every school, every day. Students deserve classes that go beyond the textbook,

into identity, advocacy, and a deep understanding of culture and self.

These classes belong in San Francisco, Union City, Atlanta, North Carolina, Florida, and everywhere else that LGBTQ communities and histories exist. They belong everywhere.

Until the day that every school offers classes like LGBTQ and Ethnic Studies, the education we provide to them remains incomplete.

Teacher Lyndsey Schlax of the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts (www. sfsota.org) recently taught a groundbreaking LGBT course as well as a popular new course on Ethnic Studies. She is the coordinator of the “San Francisco Bay Times” column “Student Voices,” and will resume teaching the aforementioned courses in the fall. Matt Haney is the President of the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education.

ROSTOW (continued from page 11) Let’s Mingle!

So, Australia’s a mess. The electorate split so no one has a majority and there’s no clear party in power. That means marriage equality will be further delayed as the Aussies fight for the position of least progressive major country where marriage rights are concerned. The conservatives promised a public vote on equality, while the center left said they’d simply get parliament to pass a marriage bill.

Activists obviously prefer that the lawmakers get it over and done with, but, for now, it looks as if nothing will happen for a while.

And I read that some gay men sued the company that runs Christian Mingle a few years ago, and they just won their case. Now, ChristianMingle and JDate, plus some other romance sites, will have to welcome gays as well as straights. What’s next? Man-

hattanites on Just For Farmers?

Schoolgirls on Grindr? Hey, it’s no skin off my back. Discrimination by public services is wrong and I suppose in time ChristianMingle might drum up a cohort of gay Christians. But wouldn’t it be easier to start your own gay Christian matchmaking business? Isn’t there one out there?

Finally, may I say that I’m sick of the smarmy man who, for months, has been pestering all of us to plan for retirement with his large public charts and giant dominoes? The guy’s a walking guilt trip, and whenever we see him, Mel and I feel so badly for living in the moment all our lives rather than saving money for the future that we have to turn off the TV and fix ourselves a few cocktails. Make him stop. arostow@aol.com

SISTER DANA (continued from page 20) an all-new all-drag preshow parody. The live show will precede a rare screening of the 1989 film, SHEDEVIL. peacheschrist.com Before there was The Birdcage, there was La Cage. Come experience the Broadway musical that made history with two men kissing. BAY AREA MUSICALS presents LA CAGE AUX FOLLES: “The BEST of times is now!” Winning 9 Tony Awards— including Best Musical and Best Revival! Playing July 9 (opening) through July 31 at Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th Street, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 pm, matinee performances: Saturdays and Sundays at 2 pm, Closing: Sunday, July 31 at 2 pm. La Cage Aux Folles is known for having one of Jerry Herman’s best scores, including such songs as “The Best of Times is Now,” “Song In the Sand,” “La Cage Aux Folles,” and “I Am What I Am.” bamsf.org/boxoffice 26

BROADWAY BARES SF: TECH TAILS is not your typical RICHMOND/ERMET AID FOUNDATION benefit show. If you don’t like looking at hot naked bodies, this may not be a show for you. But for everyone else, get ready for a hot, summer night made hotter by these hot, sexy dancer/strippers. Broadway Bares has been a major fundraiser for BROADWAY CARES/EQUITY FIGHTS AIDS in New York for many years now—raising over $1 million annually. They’re starting a little smaller but hope to build their San Francisco version into one of San Francisco’s biggest and most fun benefit shows as well. This special benefit show will take place on Monday, July 11, 7:30 pm at Club Fugazi, home of Beach Blanket Babylon. Tickets are available by calling the Beach Blanket Babylon box office at 415-421-4222 for general admission ($45) or 415-421-4688 for VIP main floor ($65). reaf-sf.org

SA N FRANCISCO BAY T I ME S J U LY 7 , 2 0 1 6

Take a nostalgic trip back to a time when gay men had to sneak peeks at Playgirl magazines, or even earlier, when they had to hide “physique pictorials” under their beds. An era of parting glances, sculpted torsos, erotic wall-art, and very short satin shorts. Come “get physical” at the GLBT HISTORY MUSEUM’s latest exhibition: STROKE: FROM UNDER THE MATTRESS TO THE MUSEUM WALL, July 21– October 16, The GLBT History Museum, 4127 18th Street and Castro.

Opening Reception: July 21, 7–9 pm, $5; members free. glbthistory.org CASTRO STREET ARTSAVESLIVES STUDIO AND GALLERY is presenting CASTRO STREET LOCAL ARTISTS curated by well-known artist Thomasina DeMaio in her spacious gallery at 518 Castro Street on July 8, 6–9 pm. Complimentary wine, beer, food,

and always lively entertainment. facebook.com/sfartslave BACK TO THE PICTURE’s Valencia Street Gallery, 934 Valencia Street, is pleased to present six renown California artists and their commentary on the current political climate in MY BROTHER’S KEEPER? EXPRESSIONS OF OUR WORLD TODAY. Art Hazlewood, Jesse Aguirre, Kathy Aoki, Consuelo-Jimenez Underwood, Mark Harris, and Robyn Kralique will be showing works from July 3–31, with an opening reception with the artists, Saturday, July 9, from 7–10 pm. backtothepicture.com Have a Ball with KREWE DE KINQUE Mardi Gras Club every Third Saturday at The Edge, 4149 18th Street, 4–7 pm. Special Guest Host & Emcees King 2 Mark Paladini & Queen 2 Deana Dawn. $10 Beer Bust with Door Whore

Queen 7 Sister Dana collecting $$$ & many other goodies! There might even be an underwear contest. As they say during N’arlins’ Mardi Gras, “Laissez les bons temps rouler!” or “Let the GOOD TIMES roll” with KDK! sfkinque.com STALE MAGNOLIAS: THE MUSICAL is playing July 21–August 6, every Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 7 pm, Oasis, 298 Eleventh Street @ Folsom.

Imagine a sequel to Steel Magnolias, a Six women in a small town, circa 1985, prove they have the big hair and padded shoulders to overcome any adversity Featuring the drag talents of Marilynn Fowler, Jef Valentine, Robert Molossi, Michael Phillis, ‘Drew Todd and Jerry Navarro, plus showstopping wigs by Jordan L’Moore.

Sister Dana sez, “Did everyone have a nice Independence Day on July 4th? Speaking of which, I would love to see America have independence from plutocracy, oligarchy, and theocracy one day soon! Puh-leeeze!”

San Francisco Bay Times Contingent

We send our gratitude to our additional supporters who made it all come together: A-Town Booking Agency & Events, Budget Signs, Crusin’ the Castro Walking Tours, David Perry, Dixie Horning, DJ Christina, Equator Coffee & Teas, Eric Lynberg, Extreme Pizza, Fitness SF, Gray Line Tours, The Grubstake, Kathy Amendola, Mail Access, Mandy Cartner, Maud’s Reunion, NAPA Cellars Wines, Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, Paul Pendergast, Premium Resources, Rainbow Honor Walk, San Francisco Pride, The Balloon Lady, Tisha Floratos and Trinity Place.

Thanks to our friends from Olivia Travel also for helping us with our booth at the Pride Festival, contributing a Pacific Coast Adventure cruise for two to be won by someone who stopped by to say “Hello!” and “Happy Pride!”

PHOTO BY RINK

PHOTO BY PAUL MARGOLIS

PHOTO BY PAUL MARGOLIS

PHOTO BY PATRICK CARNEY

PHOTO BY SANDY MORRIS

PHOTO BY ABBY ZIMBERG

PHOTO BY SANDY MORRIS

PHOTO BY PAUL MARGOLIS

PHOTO BY HAL MOSS

PHOTO BY SANDY MORRIS

PHOTO BY SANDY MORRIS

PHOTO BY SANDY MORRIS

PHOTO BY CAROL STEINKAMP

PHOTO BY JANET RACHEL

PHOTO BY SANDRA LAWSON-NDU

PHOTO BY PATRICK CARNEY

PHOTO BY SANDY MORRIS

PHOTO BY ABBY ZIMBERG

Our biggest group ever completed the Pride Parade on Sunday, June 26, with a multi-faceted contingent created with support from friends, advertisers, readers and more. First, we thank San Francisco Pride for once again producing the biggest show on Market Street and all who provided for our safety, security and health needs. We also thank our key collaborators, including the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, Maud’s Reunion and the Rainbow Honor Walk!

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