October 27, 2022 edition of the Bay Area Reporter

San Francisco Health Officer Dr. Susan Philip

SF to let MPX emergency

expire Oct. 31

by Eric Burkett

Three months after San Francisco declared a state of emergency for the monkeypox outbreak, the first government in the country to do so, it’s now winding down. The San Francisco Department of Health will let the dec laration expire October 31, officials said.

The health department had been renewing the public health emergency monthly since this spring, when the MPX outbreak hit San Fran cisco, primarily affecting men who have sex with men. At that time, there was a scramble for vaccines, which were in short supply from the federal government. The Bay Area Report er and other outlets reported on long lines at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center as men waited hours for the first of two shots of the Jynneos vaccine.

Now, nearly six months later, health depart ment officials said the city’s response, particularly that of the public, had played a major role in San Francisco’s ability to let the declaration expire at the end of the month.

“The overwhelming community support and advocacy for critical resources such as vaccines from the federal government, coupled with early and strong action, drove San Francisco’s success ful public health response and enabled the city to reach this milestone,” read an October 20 state ment from DPH.

MPX cases started to decline about a month ago, according to DPH figures. As of October 11, the department’s seven-day rolling average is at 0.3 cases per day, a remarkable drop from a few months ago when there were between 20 and 30 new cases per day. As of October 20, DPH report ed 830 cumulative cases.

The California Department of Public Health has reported one death that occurred in Septem ber in Los Angeles County.

One aspect of San Francisco’s success in meeting the challenge of the outbreak has been a drop in demand for the vaccine. Two doses are required for maximum prevention, administered about a month apart. In August, the federal government increased vaccine supply by pivoting to split dosing whereby a single dose of Jynneos could be used to im munize five people.

“The reality is the demand has dropped off,” Dr. Susan Philip, San Francisco health officer, told the B.A.R. October 20, but the need for vaccination is still there. “MPX is still with us, and is still a threat to public health.”

Philip acknowledged that this “was sending a complicated message,” particularly as the need for ongoing vaccinations hasn’t ended but “I think as health officer, I always want to be looking at the data to determine that it no longer requires the same levels of recognition.”

That said, and despite the success of outreach efforts by DPH in San Francisco, Philip said MPX is likely to be present for the foreseeable future.

In talking with federal coordinators and White House leaders, she said, “we really have seen that

LGBTQ issues are a flashpoint in California school races

by Matthew S. Bajko

AcrossCalifornia this election season LGBTQ issues have become a flash point in school board races. Policies aimed at fostering a safe environment for LG BTQ students, particularly transgender youth, have come under attack, while out candidates have faced homophobic broadsides.

It is another manifestation of the concerted attack right-wing groups, Republican lawmak ers, and conservative parents have launched across the country to forbid the teaching of LGBTQ curriculums in schools, ban LGBTQ books from libraries, and require trans youth, especially girls, to play on school athletic teams based on the sex they were assigned at birth, contend LGBTQ advocates.

Despite the Golden State’s liberal reputation, and state legislators enacting a host of laws ad dressing the rights of LGBTQ students enrolled in public schools, the national debate over such policies hasn’t bypassed California. And the enactment of the pro-LGBTQ legislation by school district leaders continues to be lackluster.

As the Bay Area Reporter’s online Political Notes column reported this month, of the 118 of the state’s 343 unified school districts that

took part in the Equality California Institute’s 2022 Safe and Supportive Schools Report Card, 48% had yet to adopt LGBTQ+-inclusive text books or other instructional materials for his tory and social studies classes at the high school level. And nearly half (47%) of the districts have schools without a gender neutral restroom facility available for students not located in a nurse’s office or faculty lounge.

Samuel Garrett-Pate, managing director of external affairs for the statewide LGBTQ advo

cacy organization, told the B.A.R. that EQCA is working with the California Teachers Associa tion and the California Federation of Teachers to elect school board leaders “who are going to be champions for all students, including LGBTQ students,” this year and in coming election cycles.

“These folks are running for offices in which they would actually have control over how a school board implements policies related to protecting students from bullying, harassment, and discrimination,” said Garrett-Pate. “This is not something we are gonna be able to deal with overnight. It is not an issue that is going to be resolved in one election.”

Tiffany Woods, a married transgender mom of three school-age children who is the LGBTQ caucus co-chair for the California Democratic Party, told the B.A.R. that more attention needs to be paid to school board races, which are down-ballot contests that often don’t get much media coverage.

“School boards are a battleground,” she said. “We know Republicans have targeted them.”

The attacks against LGBTQ school policies are often cloaked in “parental rights” argu ments, noted Woods. But rarely are the rights of LGBTQ parents considered, she noted.

New leader settles in at LA LGBTQ archival group

by Matthew S. Bajko

Asthe ONE Archives Foundation marks its 70th anniversary in November, making it the oldest continuously op erating LGBTQ organization in the U.S., its new executive director is settling into the role and introducing himself to the local commu nity. Tony Valenzuela is helping the Los Ange les-based LGBTQ archival group rebuild after being impacted by the COVID pandemic and expand the histories it tells to be more diverse.

The health crisis forced it to close its gallery space in the city of West Hollywood, though it now opens to the public when it mounts an exhibition or hosts an event. And although its platinum anniversary is next month, the non profit is planning to host most of its celebra tory events in 2023.

“Part of my vision is to increase our reach regionally in this community and cultivate this organization as one that is deeply engaged with our many communities. That will be re flected more in our programming,” said Valen zuela, who expects to announce the anniversa ry plans early next year. “I think that the ONE Archives Foundation is the authority around LGBTQ history, certainly in Los Angeles, and I want to continue cultivating that.”

Valenzuela is only the second person to be executive director of the foundation, as the first, Jennifer C. Gregg, was hired in 2016. She officially stepped down on September 7, sev eral weeks after Valenzuela began working at the nonprofit August 16.

Speaking to the Bay Area Reporter in ear ly October, at the start of LGBTQ History Month, Valenzuela said he sees the foundation as being a counterweight against the move to erase LGBTQ history from school textbooks and LGBTQ books from public libraries. He was “happy” to see the need to educate young Americans about the country’s LGBTQ history was an integral plot point in the recently re leased gay rom-com “Bros.”

“There is that quote of ‘a people without a history is a people without a future.’ I believe the ONE Archive Foundation is an organization preserving and educating about our rich history so we can secure a just ... so we can work toward a just and secure future for LGBTQ people,” said

Valenzuela, 64, a gay man who has called West Hollywood home since 1998.

He wants to ensure that LGBTQ history takes into account people of color and the diverse communities that makeup the broader LGBTQ community. It is about broadening the story telling, explained Valenzuela, as opposed to erasing certain groups of LGBTQ people.

“I have a vision for this organization, and I think the vision I have certainly is aligned with what this organization is already doing around expanding the narrative, so working across diverse communities and telling sto ries that haven’t yet been told,” he said. “It isn’t about erasing or ignoring or even to stop talking about the contributions of gay men and white gay men in the history of HIV/ AIDS activism. That is not the point, it is to expand the narrative.”

Valenzuela is the second gay Latino in re cent months to be the first hired to lead one of the state’s LGBTQ archival groups. As the B.A.R. reported earlier this month, San Fran cisco’s GLBT Historical Society hired Roberto Ordeñana as its new executive director, mak ing him the first Latino and second person of color to hold the post.

“I am the first Latino executive director and our board chair is the first African American in that position,” Valenzuela said. “Those are im

portant milestones, certainly to me and to many other people in regards to representation and who is in leadership positions.”

Valenzuela said he looked forward to getting to know Ordeñana and his counterparts at the vari ous LGBTQ archival groups across California. The organizations have an informal network among themselves and have banded together in recent years to push for state funding and other support.

“Having just started here, it is on my agenda to do,” said Valenzuela.

Unlike in San Francisco, where plans are in the works to build a large, freestanding LGBTQ museum and archival center, no such project is being discussed in Los Angeles, said Valenzuela. Though he didn’t rule it out becoming a priority in the future.

“Who knows, maybe someday? That is the kind of endeavor that takes a lot of research to see if we are able to raise that kind of money,” he said. “It is not on the table currently. But who knows in the future, certainly there would be room in a city the size of Los Angeles for it.”

The foundation does have its gallery space in West Hollywood where it can mount exhibitions and host events. Its next public programming there is scheduled for December, and it plans to continue hosting hybrid in-person and online events amid the ongoing COVID pandemic.

The nonprofit operates on a calendar year budget between $800,000 to upward of $1 mil lion. It has run deficits in recent years, according to its tax filings compiled by ProPublica, with an operating budget in 2020 of $749,831 but net income falling short by $148,964. In 2019, its expenses were reported as $1,164,448, causing a shortfall of $114,955 in its net income.

Gregg’s salary was $142,000 according to the foundation’s 2019 990 tax filing, while Valenzuela is earning $150,000. He oversees a staff of three fulltime people and is in the process of hiring someone to manage education initiatives for the foundation.

History

The nonprofit traces its founding back to No vember 1952, when members of the early gay rights group the Mattachine Society incorporat ed that month as ONE Inc. in order to publish a magazine. The inaugural issue of ONE magazine

Compton's eyed for historic status

Tony Valenzuela is the new executive director of the ONE Archives Foundation that is based in Los Angeles.

Rick Gerharter

Lisa Disbrow is a candidate for the Contra Costa County Board of Education.

Courtesy the campaign

Courtesy Tony Valenzuela

Castro cultural district elects 4 new board members

by Eric Burkett

O f the seven candidates vying for five seats on the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District advisory board October 15, only four se cured enough votes to win.

Candidates Alfredo Bracamon tes-Ochoa, Diego Gomez, Andrew Gutierrez III, and Braeden Man souri each won seats. Candidates JConr B. Ortega, Adam-Michael Royston, and William Walker, who is also running for a seat on the City College of San Francisco board in the November election, came up short.

Successful candidates had to garner 30% of the total votes cast but, as only four did so, a fifth open board seat remains unoccu pied. How to fill that seat is “cur rently under review by the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District Gover nance Committee in conjunction with its election oversight part ners and will be determined at the soonest possible opportunity,” stated Tina Aguirre, cultural dis trict manager, in an email to the Bay Area Reporter.

Voters cast 128 ballots, said Eliz abeth Lanyon, governance com mittee chair and, outside the cul tural district, the associate director of philanthropy for the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Her term ends this week when the new ly elected members take their seats. Lanyon added that the district had help in organizing the vote.

“We worked with the Harvey Milk and Alice B. Toklas Demo cratic clubs for election oversight and tabulation, and we are grateful for the partnership and experience of these two community organiza tions,” Lanyon said, referring to the two LGBTQ political clubs.

The winners will begin work immediately, as they take their new seats Thursday, October 20.

The incoming board members said that the district faces a num ber of challenges and that they recognized the significance of their service to the Castro com munity.

“As a resident of the Castro, I will continue to support local businesses and identify oppor tunities for engagement to help foster a greater sense of commu nity,” Bracamontes-Ochoa wrote in a statement to the B.A.R., “both within the immediate neighbor hoods that make up this district and in our broader Castro com munity residing in other parts of the world.”

Mansouri, an attorney work ing in land use and environmental law, noted that many of the issues facing the Castro fall squarely in his area of expertise.

“Many of the current challenges

the Castro faces – for example, ren ovations at the Castro Theatre, an abundance of vacant storefronts, and the availability of affordable housing – all involve questions of land use,” he stated in an email to the B.A.R. ”I think my experience has taught me to analyze many of these questions using the tools available to us under federal, state, and local laws. But it has also pre pared me to develop creative solu tions to novel planning problems. I hope to share these skills with the Board in addressing the District’s major concerns, within the scope of CQCD’s duties.”

The B.A.R. reached out to the other two incoming board mem bers, Gomez and Gutierrez, but did not hear back by press time.

Along with that empty seat are three additional seats that district leaders hope to fill with members representing a broader swath of the community. Prior to the elec tion, the district noted on its web

site that women “have been seri ously underrepresented” among the candidates in all three previ ous advisory board elections – one in 2019 and two in 2020.

“I hoped our advisory board would consider prioritizing wom en, trans, and nonbinary individu als for any remaining open seats,” said Lanyon.

Those seats will be filled by the board on an individual basis to balance the group’s diversity and skill sets, according to informa tion from the district.

“Women, trans, nonbinary, and other queer+ identities will be prioritized as will communities of color, elders, youth and other un derrepresented voices in our com munity,” said board co-executive chair Stephen Torres. “Addition ally, as we have in the past, we will put out a public call for nomina tions for appointment to do our best to ensure the most extensive outreach possible.”

Bracamontes-Ochoa and Man souri both agreed widening repre sentation on the board is impor tant.

“Focusing on inclusive and eq uitable representation within our board, it’s important that future opportunities for involvement are widely publicized,” wrote Bracamontes-Ochoa. “As a new member, I look forward to learn ing more about what this process entails, and how I can support efforts to ensure the board is rep resentative of all members of our community.”

Added Mansouri, “It was dis heartening to learn that no women ran for a seat in this recent board election. I understand that CQCD plans to fill the fifth open seat af ter conducting review by a couple

of its committees and also that the board also retains the discretion to make appointments to ensure board diversity. I fully support the board using its authority to appoint women and other under represented groups to the advisory board.”

One important aspect of having a diverse board is the wide range of contacts members have, and how that can improve the efficacy of the organization, said Torres.

“Although a board of 15 can sometimes have its challenges, one of its positives is a wealth of com munity connections that can reach important voices that may not have been inclined or even aware of our community election pro cess,” Torres said. ”Women, trans, nonbinary, and other queer+ identities will be prioritized as will communities of color, elders, youth, and other underrepresent ed voices in our community. Addi tionally, as we have in the past, we will put out a public call for nomi nations for appointment to do our best to ensure the most extensive outreach possible.”

Filling those vacancies is a pri ority, he said, but other concerns are demanding attention, as well. Getting the new board members situated, and finalizing the Cultur al History, Housing, and Econom ic Sustainability Strategies Report, will probably push the search until after the new year, said Torres. The CHHESS report gets presented to the Board of Supervisors, as the B.A.R. previously reported.

“In a way,” he added, “that does provide us with more time to perform adequate outreach and ensure as balanced a board as possible.” t

Torres approved for SF entertainment panel

by Cynthia Laird

Queer activist Stephen Torres has been approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to a seat on the city’s entertainment commission.

The 11-0 vote came at the board’s October 25 meeting.

“I’m excited,” Torres told the Bay Area Reporter in a brief phone call after the vote. “I’m very excit ed to be representing the nightlife workers community at this com mission.”

As the B.A.R. previously report ed, Torres was recommended for the post at the October 17 meet ing of the supervisors’ rules com mittee, where he spoke about his qualifications.

Torres is also a member of the advisory board of the Castro LG BTQ Cultural District.

Speaking before the commit tee earlier this month, Torres said, “I am a 22-year veteran of the

San Francisco entertainment and nightlife industry,” and that he had experienced “its challenges and in equities.”

As a member of the commis sion, he said he would represent the city’s nightlife workers and would expand the commission’s focus. Seat 2 on the commission, for which Torres was approved, represents the interests of enter tainment associations or groups.

Torres is a bartender at the historic Twin Peaks Tavern in the Castro, according to his Facebook page.

Torres has a wealth of public service experience on his resume, including work on the executive board of the Harvey Milk LG BTQ Democratic Club, and as an administrative associate with the Drug Policy Alliance, which pro motes alternatives to current drug policy such as harm reduction.

He has also worked as a journal

New Castro LGBTQ Cultural District board members are, from left, Alfredo Bracamontes-Ochoa, Diego Gomez, Andrew Gutierrez III, and Braeden Mansouri.

Courtesy the cultural district

Stephen Torres spoke at the October 17 Board of Supervisors rules committee about serving on the entertainment commission.

Screengrab

by Matthew S. Bajko

Republican California controller candidate Lanhee Chen’s em brace of religious liberty proponents is raising red flags for LGBTQ advocates. They question his sincerity in claiming he supports marriage equality when he has championed those using religious beliefs to litigate against LGBTQ rights.

On his Instagram account June 30 Chen posted an altered image of his campaign logo bathed in the colors of the rainbow flag. It included the slo gan, “Love is Love.”

“As Pride Month draws to a close, we honor the pioneers in the Califor nia LGBTQ+ community who have fought for and created a more inclusive society,” wrote Chen.

Yet LGBTQ advocates point to his past comments in support of religious liberty, which has been used to fight against LGBTQ rights both legislatively and legally. Just last week Kern County Superior Court Judge Eric Bradshaw ruled that a Bakersfield baker can’t be forced to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple if their marriage is counter to her religious beliefs.

The lawsuit stems from 2017, when Tastries Bakery owner Cathy Miller refused to make a wedding cake for couple Eileen and Mireya RodriguezDel Rio. Her attorneys had argued do ing so would have violated Miller’s reli gious beliefs that marriage should only occur between a man and a woman.

Attorneys with the state’s Depart ment of Fair Employment and Hous ing had argued that under California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, Miller could not deny her business services to cus tomers based on their sexual orienta tion. But Bradshaw ruled they had failed to show that her denial of service was rooted in such discrimination.

“The evidence affirmatively showed that Miller’s only intent, her only mo tivation, was fidelity to her sincere

Christian beliefs,” ruled Bradshaw.

On the August 25, 2017 episode of conservative weekend radio show Townhall Review, Chen had argued that while “the voices of white suprem acy and neo-Nazi organizations and the KKK have no place in our society,” there were “other credible voices on the political right and in America today that have been marginalized on college campuses and other venues across our country. I’m thinking of voices and organizations that advocate for the life of the unborn child or for religious liberty, which have been shouted down or categorized as hate groups.”

On the October 22, 2018 episode of the show, Chen had praised Republi can Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, then running for a U.S. Senate seat, for being a fighter “for religious liberty and constitutional conservatism.” Hawley went on to win the race and became a prominent

advocate in Congress for rescinding the national right to an abortion es tablished by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.

The court’s reversal of that ruling in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization issued earlier this year sent the determination about abortion access back to state legislatures. The de cision has LGBTQ advocates worried it could lead to the rolling back of LG BTQ rights, such as marriage equality.

And they worry that should Chen be elected to the open state control ler position, thus becoming the only Republican statewide elected office holder in California, he would have a platform to promote the religious liberty argument while undermining both LGBTQ rights and access to re productive services.

“I don’t know how you reconcile the belief love is love with his support for Josh Hawley, who is not only an anti-LGBTQ extremist and also an anti-abortion extremist but someone who had visibly sided with the Janu ary 6 U.S. Capitol rioters against our own government and democracy,” Samuel Garrett-Pate, managing di rector of external affairs for statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization Equality California, told the Bay Area Re porter. “As we head into the final two weeks of the election, this is the big gest question on voters’ minds: Which Lanhee Chen would we get as our controller? Is it prolife Lanhee Chen who supported far-right Supreme Court justices and who has supported ex tremists like Josh Hawley? Or is it the Lanhee Chen who now says he supports abortion access and abor tion rights, which is entirely opposite from his past record?

Democratic opponent

His Democratic opponent, former San Francisco supervisor Malia Co hen who is an elected member of the state’s tax board, called Chen “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” during an interview with the B.A.R. this week. She hopes voters will realize that Chen “is not this manufactured, made up version of an independent. He is a tried and true Re publican and is a Trump Republican.”

Cohen, who has flooded Bay Area air waves with TV ads attacking Chen over his record on reproductive rights, called Chen “out of step” with California values.

“He supports Josh Hawley. He is crazy,” said Cohen.

Asked about the criticisms lodged against Chen and where he truly stands on same-sex marriage, Chen campaign manager Matt Ciepielowski told the B.A.R. in a texted reply that, “Lanhee supports marriage equality and be lieves that every Californian deserves to be treated with respect, dignity, and equal justice under law.”

Chen does have the support of one prominent LGBTQ elected official, les bian Sacramento County District At torney Anne Marie Shubert, a former

Republican turned independent. She endorsed Chen in July.

“Lanhee Chen is the only candi date for Controller who will ask tough questions of the Sacramento insid ers and ensure accountability for our state’s spending,” stated Schubert, the sister of Frank Schubert, one of the masterminds behind Proposition 8, the now overturned California samesex marriage ban.

All of the state’s major daily newspa pers have endorsed Chen’s candidacy to succeed outgoing Controller Betty Yee, who is termed out of office. But Co hen and others worry that Chen could attempt as controller to withhold the disbursement of state funds for LGBTQ programs and reproductive services.

“Tax dollars fund a large portion of these services, and the controller is in charge of the disbursement of those tax dollars. She writes the checks,” said Cohen. “If she doesn’t believe in some thing, she can make up some excuse and prevent those tax dollars from flowing toward the services that people need. So the controller, with the wrong person with the wrong values, can be an obstructionist and be preventing those dollars from being spent.”

Asked about the contention Chen’s support for religious liberty propo nents could be used as a basis for his blocking state funds for LGBTQ initia tives or abortion services as controller, Ciepielowski pointed to a statement the campaign released in June in re sponse to the Dodds decision.

“As Controller, I will never restrict nor interfere with a woman’s ability to get an abortion or access to abortion services. In fact, the Controller can nei ther lawfully impose such restrictions nor engage in such interference,” stated Chen. “Even if I did have the power to restrict access to abortions or abortion services, I would not. California voters have spoken clearly on this issue.”

State controller candidate

Lanhee Chen

Courtesy the campaign

State controller candidate Malia Cohen

Courtesy the campaign

compiled by Cynthia Laird

Family-friendly trick-or-treating and costume contests are planned in San Francisco and Oakland as Hal loween nears.

“The Great Hauntway” returns to the upper Great Highway Sunday, Oc tober 30, from 1 to 4 p.m. Sponsored by the Friends of the Great Highway, the event takes place between Judah and Taraval streets. It is a free, familyfriendly community Halloween event featuring over a mile of trick-or-treat ing, kids activities, and live music from Carry Nation, a news release stated.

The Great Hauntway debuted in 2021 to thousands of attendees, giv ing kids a safe, car-free, and fun place to celebrate Halloween with a scenic coastal backdrop, the release noted. Community members will be setting up decorated tables for the trick-ortreating, with awards given to the best of them. Other activities include pumpkin decorating, big bubbles, a bounce house, and more.

As this is San Francisco, there’s some politics mixed in as organizers stated that if Proposition I on the No vember 8 ballot passes, reopening the Great Highway to vehicle traffic on weekends, this could be the last Great Hauntway. (The roadway is open to vehicle traffic on weekdays, as part of a compromise that Supervisor Gor don Mar and Mayor London Breed developed, but closed to vehicles on weekends.)

To RSVP for the event, go to https://www.greathauntway.com/.

In the LGBTQ Castro neighbor hood, also on October 30, the Castro Merchants Association is having a family Halloween block party from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Noe and Market streets. Organizers stated in a release that the party will feature costume contests for kids (12:30 p.m.), pets (2 p.m.), and adults (4 p.m.); trickor-treating; drag performances; and other Halloween activities. There will be prizes for the costume contest win ners, ranging from grand prizes of a $100 gift certificate for pets to a $250 gift certificate for kids to $500 in cash for adults. Those interested in the contests should report to the main stage 15 minutes before the start time.

To register for the contests, go to https://bit.ly/3CT97uQ.

Finally, in Oakland it’s Boo at the Zoo daily through October 31. At tendees can grab a program when they enter for a self-guided scavenger hunt to trick-or-treat for animal trad ing cards throughout the zoo. Cos tumes are encouraged, but no inflat able ones because they could scare the animals, an announcement stated.

The Oakland Zoo is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and located at 9777 Golf Links Road. Tickets must be reserved in advance through the online ticket ing program. Attendance is currently limited. There are also suggested cos tume themes that are on the website. For more information on Boo at the Zoo, go to https://bit.ly/3eVi5Qn. To purchase tickets, go to https://www. oaklandzoo.org/tickets

Queer Cultural Center hires new ED

The Queer Cultural Center in San Francisco has named Anand Kalra as its new executive director. Kalra started the position September 26, he told the Bay Area Reporter in a phone interview October 24.

Kalra, who identifies as a trans man who is queer and bi, is a lyricist, song writer, and filmmaker. His arts collec tive, Uncaged Library Arts, has pro duced a live multimedia documusical, accompanying studio soundtrack album, virtual variety series with now over 25 music videos, and is currently in post-production on a follow-up EP from Uncaged’s documusical, “Octa via of Earth,” inspired by the life of sci

ence fiction writer Octavia E. Butler.

“I’m extremely grateful for QCC’s support in this project’s journey, as we workshopped ‘Oc tavia of Earth’ at the 2018 National Queer Arts Festival,” Kalra stated in an email announcement.

Prior to joining QCC, Kalra, 35, stated that he developed his skills as an activist, organizer, and radical librarian in more than two decades of experience in work for peace and justice.

“Over the last six years, I’ve built up a consulting practice that has helped more than 30 social justice organizations ground their systems, practices, and pro cesses in principles of trans parency, justice, and shared power in service of collective liberation,” he stated. “Overall, the approach is about bringing organizations into internal alignment and improving the ef ficiency with which they map their values into practice. The result in each case is a healthier, more sustainable organization.”

QCC promotes social justice and the artistic and financial development of queer art and culture, its website states. Its signature program is its National Queer Arts Festival, an annual multidis ciplinary festival held in June through out the San Francisco Bay Area.

ACatholic fu neral Mass will be held for Garza, a transgender Latina woman who started the House of Garza and did HIV/AIDS outreach for the San Francisco De

Oakland

our offerings to meet the demands of our new hybrid virtual and inperson world.

“As an artist, participant, and now leader of QCC in its next genera tion of programming, I’m commit ted to doing what it takes to keep our beloved communities connected through the power and magic of the arts,” he added.

Kalra succeeds Natalia Vigil, a queer Chicana artist who became executive director in 2020, as the Bay Area Re porter previously reported.

QCC operates on an annual bud get of about $1 million. The board did not disclose Kalra’s salary.

For more information on QCC, go to https://queerculturalcenter.org/

Organ concert at St. Francis Lutheran Church

“I’m really excited and gratified,” Kalra said. He added that next year’s queer arts festival is coming up, along with some new things.

According to his resume, which he shared with the B.A.R., Kalra previously worked as finance and operations manager for Positive Women’s Network USA, a nation wide organization for women living with HIV; and was office manager for Unite HERE Local 2850. He also served as health programs manager at the Trans gender Law Center.

Kalra said that in his first month on the job, he’s been doing a lot of listening.

“I’m asking a bunch of questions,” he said, adding that he hasn’t made “a bunch of changes right away.”

“But there is a need for direction,” he explained.

“My vision for QCC over the next few years is to continue developing powerful, meaningful arts program ming that centers QTBIPOC com munities, and to make our work sustainable over the long term,” Kal ra stated, referring to queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, people of color.

“To do that, we’ll need to ground ourselves in relationships with our longtime partners, as well as expand

partment of Public Health.

Friends said that the Mass will be held Saturday, October 29, at 11 a.m. at Mission Dolores Basilica, 3321 16th Street, in San Francisco.

As the Bay Area Reporter previously reported, Garza, who was widely known by one name, died September 27 at Kaiser Hospital. She was 60.

Garza emigrated from Peru to the

St. Francis Lutheran Church will present its music director and or ganist David Schofield in concert Sunday, November 6, at 3 p.m. at 152 Church Street.

Schofield will present a program of works by J.S. Bach, Buxtehude, De Grigny, and Pachelbel based on the ancient plainsong hymn “Veni Cre ator Spiritus.” Members of St. Francis will sing the hymn in both Latin and German versions.

A release noted that Schofield has performed on some of the country’s most notable organs, including River side Church, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, Grace Cathedral (Episcopal) and St. Mary’s Cathedral (Roman Catholic) in San Francisco, and Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in Los Angeles.

Schofield was the director of music for the Catholic Chaplaincy at Columbia University and the Church of Notre Dame on the east campus before moving to San Fran cisco in 1999, the release stated. In the city, he was director of music and liturgy at St Dominic’s Catholic Church in San Francisco from 19992003. He has been the music direc tor at St. Francis since 2005.

The concert is free, and tea and scones will be served afterward.

U.S. in 2002. In Peru, she had trained as a ballet dancer at the National Bal let School of Peru and spent much of her dance career at the Ballet Munici pal de Lima.

To read the B.A.R.’s obituary, go to https://www.ebar.com/story. php?319610. Photo courtesy Pricilla Murray from “Garza”

executive director of the Department of Police Accountability, who each received the 10 Years of Service Award; Bill Hirsh, a gay man who’s executive director of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel, who received the Pride Community Award; Pau Crego, a trans and nonbinary person who’s executive director of the Office of Transgender Initiatives, who received the Gilbert Baker Pride Founder’s Award; drag artist D’Arcy Drollinger, who received the Audrey Joseph LGBTQ Entertainment Award; Greg Cassin, an HIV-positive gay man who received the José Julio Sarria History Maker Award; and Guerilla Pump, a queer DJ, who received the Pride Creativity Award.

Funeral set for Garza

Anand Kalra is the new executive director of the Queer Cultural Center.

Courtesy QCC

People gathered at last year’s “The Great Hauntway” on the upper Great Highway.

SF

Christopher Robledo

by Brian Bromberger

It was a disturbing email notification that was received in June by Miguel H. Díaz, Ph.D., a gay man and former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See and currently the John Courtney Murray, S.J. University Chair in Public Service at Loyola University Chicago.

Sent from the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America Inc. (aka Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers), the June 9 notification ended Díaz’s agreement with Orbis Books to pub lish his book “Queer God de Amor,” which had been scheduled to be re leased in June, having been sent to the printer in mid-February and heralded in the Orbis spring catalog.

Díaz wrote to the Bay Area Re porter, “No reasons were provided for this decision nor was any process identified for coming to this determi nation.”

The B.A.R. contacted Orbis pub lisher Robert Ellsberg, who replied, “On this subject I can only confirm the information that was conveyed to Miguel by the chief operating officer for Maryknoll, that the decision not to publish his book was made by the Maryknoll Society. I am sorry we were not able to publish Miguel’s book. He is a dear friend and author of many years. I’m afraid I can’t really make further comment on this.”

Several attempts were made to get in touch with Maryknoll COO Rob ert Ambrose to ask why it withdrew its offer to publish “Queer God de Amor,” but despite promises to call back, he never did.

Fortunately, less than two weeks later, another Catholic publisher, Fordham University Press, agreed to include Díaz’s book in its Disrup tive Cartographers: Doing Theol ogy Latinamente series, designed “to re-map theology and push it in new directions from varying coordinates across a spectrum of latindad as lived in the U.S.A., publishing boundarybreaking scholarship and supporting underrepresented voices,” it stated. Fordham had previously published “The Word Became Culture,” which Díaz edited.

Jorge Aquino, chair of the Theolo gy and Religious Studies Department at the University of San Francisco, explained why Díaz’s latest book is significant.

“The publication of ‘Queer God de Amor’ will make an important mark on Roman Catholic debates on sexuality in the U.S.,” he said. “Díaz presents a significant theologi

cal argument in favor of a more open church teaching on sexuality. And Díaz’s own story as a sexual subject – a man who came out as gay later in life, having fathering children in a long-standing heterosexual marriage – presents fruitful pathways toward a new thinking in Catholic theology. The fact that Díaz is one of the most prominent public theologians in this country, having served as ambassa dor to the Holy See during the presi dency of Barack Obama, will force more conversation about the need to rethink today’s unsustainable anath emas against non-heterosexual love and queer families.”

Tom Poundstone, Ph.D., associate professor of theology and religious studies at Saint Mary’s College of California, views Díaz’s work in terms of its pastoral implications. “Hearing Díaz read a passage from his book that mentioned shame and wrestling with angels, a student shared that, by virtue of being a lesbian, she couldn’t help but feel that in her very being she was disappointing God,” he said.

“What should we say in response to that pervasive sense of shame and sadness? Does the good news of the gospel extend to her, to all of her? Like this student crying out from the depth of her heart, many in the LGBTQ communities feel the church has no good news message from them, and no sense that Christianity is an invita tion to intimacy with God.”

As ambassador (2009-12), Díaz, 59, launched his Building Bridges initia tive that brought together religious

voices, political leaders, educators, and civil servants to tackle issues such as the climate crisis, human traffick ing, immigration, religious freedom, and poverty. Díaz sees his book as continuing that bridge building initia tive, only now between queer Catho lics and the institutional church.

The B.A.R. interviewed Díaz, 59, when he visited San Francisco to give a September 29 lecture, “A San juanista Queering of the Mystery of God,” based on his book at USF’s Lane Center.

Some controversy

He was asked what inspired him to write the controversial book.

“This book was birthed from numerous queer persons whom I have been privileged to meet and ac company since I started the process of coming out to myself, family, and friends,” he said. “Coming out is not always as liberating as it is oftentimes assumed to be, as anyone who has accompanied LGBTQ+ persons (in particular, Brown and Black queer bodies) knows. Culzban background and to my Catholic faith obstructed my journey of self-discovery and selftransparency.

“As is the case for many queer persons, coming out involves an ongoing wrestling with angels to reject powers and prin cipalities that stand in the way of human flour ishing and our ability to know and unite with God and neighbor,” he added. “Shame-based trauma, often related to ill-conceived religious ideas, theologies, and religious practices, keeps many of us from beginning and continuing this process.”

The book is scholarly and academ ic. Díaz tried to clarify his thesis for a lay, largely secular audience. “Con sistent with other liberating religious perspectives, it outs God from hetero normative closets and restores human sexuality as a resource for theology. This outing of divine queerness – that is, the ineffability of divine life – helps to align reflections on the mystery of God with the faith experiences of queer Christians,” he said.

“My book highlights the sexual experiences of those that have been marginalized and oppressed. My central thesis is that God and queer sexuality belong together,” he said. “Sexuality, broadly understood, en

tails our God-given capacity to relate to others in consensual and life-giving acts. As sexual beings and in our sex ual expressions, we give to and receive from others. Queer sexuality focuses on the specific ways that queer per sons embody and express this act of sexual hospitality. Sadly, one is often hard pressed to find words like God, queer sexuality, and sex used in the same sentence, except in perspec tives that often threaten queer lives. I draw from the writings of John of the Cross, particularly his poems, to offer an alternative interpretation.”

Díaz acknowledged why some may find his book contentious.

“Traditional Christian teaching would hold that God is love and that God is ineffable, that is, incapable of being boxed and limited by any hu man experience, image, or concept,” he said. “It is in this sense that I use the term queer God of love. In particular, I turn to God’s queerness to disrupt heteronormative notions and images associated with the sacred and to let God come out of restrictive closets that stand in the way of God’s ability to speak to queer persons and their sexuality ... and cause narrow-minded understandings of what it means to be human in the image of God.”

Díaz talked about the im plications of his book on Catholic teachings on sexu ality and homosexuality.

“I wrote this book to open new possibili ties of relating divine life and queer lives,” he said. “In this way, the book disrupts Christian theologies that exclude and invites the construc tion of ‘catholic’ that is inclusive understandings of God and humanity. I take very seriously the belief that we are spiritual be ings who thirst for meaningful and life-giving personal encounters in our life. Religious faith matters to me and queering it for the sake of persons that often find themselves excluded has now become a quint essential task for me to undertake.”

“As the ecstatic being par excel lence, I believe God reaches out to find us in the bedroom and in our hu man sexual expressions, just like God encounters us in other places and hu man experiences,” he added. “In this sense we can say that ‘In intimacy is found ecstasy; in ecstasy we find God; and in God, we find others in sexually and culturally embodied ways.’”

Takeaways

There are three things Díaz wants readers to take away after finishing his book.

“First, I want readers to consider the possibility that God is queer, and by queer, I mean, ineffable, disrup tive, and beyond human definitions and categories,” he said. “I want them to embrace the notion that God’s love is ‘catholic.’ Divine love excludes no one and, thereby, also manifests itself in queer persons and in their queer sexual expressions.

Secondly, he wants readers to un derstand that “religious perspectives and theologies matter,” Díaz said.

“I want readers, and in particular queer readers, to take seriously the methodological premise of my book that relates faith and queer experi ences,” he said. “I also would invite them to embrace the theological ar guments I provide as a springboard for further theological explorations, questioning, and conversations around life-issues that affect queer persons and others who suffer mar ginalization on the basis of religion.

And, thirdly, Díaz said, he wants “queer persons of faith who ex perience rejection and religious isolation because of their gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual expressions, to seek the sup port they need to reject and detach themselves from beliefs that under mine their humanity. In solidarity with queer bodies, I pray that our ‘dark nights’ become the seeds of human flourishing so that we may grow in greater love of God, of our selves, and of our neighbors.”

For Díaz, religion can be a force for good as well as undermining fundamental human rights.

“I dream of the day when all LG BTQ+ children of God will not be judged by the ‘color’ of their gender identity or sexual orientation, but by the content of their character, the faith they witness to in the God of life, and the valuable contributions they make to the church and society,” he said.

“Our uncommon faithfulness stems from our firm belief that in spite of the sexism and heterosexism we have en dured – all tied to the abuse of power –we remain proud, queer, and Catholic members of Christ’s body. As mem bers of this universal body, we will continue to stand for the dignity of all LGBTQ+ persons worldwide.” t

A longer version is online at ebar.com.

Miguel H. Díaz, Ph.D., holds a copy of his new book, “Queer God de Amor.”

Brian Bromberger

Retain California justices

Largely flying under the radar on the No vember 8 ballot are the retention elec tions for California Supreme Court and appellate court justices. It’s important that voters retain all of them.

California Supreme Court

The California Supreme Court has defi nitely swung to the moderate/liberal side of the political pendulum since the old days when conservative justices dominated the bench and the LGBTQ community suffered some negative rulings, like during the fight for marriage equality. That has all changed as those justices have retired and gover nors, beginning with moderate Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, replaced them.

Among Schwarzenegger’s appointees was outgoing Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, whom he named in 2010 as the 28th chief justice of the state’s high court. In July, Can til-Sakauye announced that she would not seek another term and planned to retire in January, allowing Governor Gavin Newsom to name her successor.

In August, Newsom nominated state Supreme Court Associ ate Justice Patricia Guerrero to serve as chief justice. A firstgeneration Californian, Guer rero was the first Latina to serve on the California Supreme Court, Newsom’s office stated in a news release. Later that month, the state’s Commission on Judi cial Appointments confirmed Guerrero as the next chief jus tice, and she will likely be ap proved by voters on the No vember 8 ballot; she would then become the first Latina to serve as California’s chief justice. Guerrero’s name is the only one that will appear for chief justice and there is no serious opposition to her elevation. Her time on the high court dates from March but, as a former appellate justice, she is wellqualified to serve as chief justice and the top administrator of the judicial branch.

(When Newsom nominated Guerrero to be chief justice, he also nominated Alameda

County Superior Court Judge Kelli Evans, a Black queer woman, to replace her, but Ev ans has not yet had her confirmation hear ing and will not appear on this year’s ballot. Her hearing is scheduled for November 10, and she is likely to be confirmed.)

In addition to Guerrero, there are three other state Supreme Court justices on the ballot.

Goodwin Liu was appointed by former governor Jerry Brown during his third term and sworn into office in 2011. He was first retained by voters in 2014 and is on the ballot again. Liu had not been a judge before joining the court; he was a law professor and associate dean at UC Berke ley Law. He has been a steady voice on the high court.

Associate Justice Joshua Groban was nominated by Brown at the end of his fourth term in 2018 and began serving on the high court in January 2019. Previously, he advised Brown on judicial appointments, legal policy, and legislative issues. According to the state Supreme Court’s website, Groban advised Brown on the appointment of over 600 judg es. Before joining Brown’s administration, Groban worked in private practice where he

specialized in complex civil litigation.

Finally, Associate Justice Martin Jenkins is facing his first retention vote. Newsom ap pointed Jenkins in 2020, and he is the first openly gay man to serve on the court and the third Black man to do so. Jenkins, a retired state appellate court justice, served as New som’s judicial appointments secretary until the governor tapped him for the vacancy. It was a monumental appointment, as Equal ity California, the statewide LGBTQ rights group, noted at the time. Well-qualified, Jen kins’ sitting on the high court also reflects the state’s values and diversity.

State appellate court

There are several justices from the Cali fornia Court of Appeal, First District, up for retention. The First District serves residents in 12 Northern California counties: Alam eda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Napa, San Fran cisco, San Mateo, Solano, and Sonoma.

In Division 2, there is Therese Stewart, a lesbian who previously was chief deputy city attorney to former city attorney Den nis Herrera and helped defend then-mayor Newsom’s decision to allow same-sex cou

by Kollyn Conrad

Growing up in the South as gay leaves one with the feeling of not merely being different, but undeserv ing of respect and, more recently, in danger. The South is rich with some of the most hospitable, loving people you would ever meet, but Southern culture is deeply rooted in unifor mity. Those who are not intrinsically aligned with their way of life are au tomatically met with strife – and, in some cases, even prosecution. It is an extremely tough journey to overcome the torment of sup pressing who you are. Trying to come out as queer in the South is a lot like playing slots at the casino; the odds are stacked against you.

I remember the thought of an untimely outing as gut-wrenching and terrifying; there were no safe spaces for exploration. Daily torment came in the form of mocking how I looked, spoke, and even carried myself. Merely stepping through the doors of my school was an act of bravery. For protection, I had to silence my feelings out of fear for my safety. While the South is often painted as kind-hearted, relaxed, and hospitable, the reality for queer individuals can be quite the opposite, especially for those wanting to come out.

The difficulty of being queer in the South

Evangelicalism is the driving force behind the South’s value system, and the LGBTQ+ com munity is viewed as something that opposes those values. Incidents of discrimination and hate occur most often in schools, highlighted by examples of how Lee University restricted queer freedoms of identity, or when a Kentucky middle school asked kids in a homework assignment to discourage an imaginary friend from being gay.

These moments make it even more difficult to live in the South as a queer person. Most of the time, closeted queer individuals are just trying to get through each day until they can find refuge.

Some LGBTQ+ people find ways to live in the South and stand proudly in their identity, like PJ

and Thomas, who live in Cleveland, Tennessee – the same town Lee Uni versity calls home. While they provide a good example of how happy a gay couple in the South can be, their jour ney is not the norm. In 2020, Tennes see’s governor passed a bill restricting LGBTQ+ couples’ ability to adopt kids, preventing many couples from adopting children.

The South is a community that’s ex tremely supportive but also one where the slightest act of divergence can be perceived as social hostility. It is a place where het eronormativity is all but forced upon you, which can force an internal interrogation and create a treacherous path for personal liberation. Wherev er we are present, whether in public or in private, Southern society challenges the identities of the LGBTQ+ community merely due to discomfort that isn’t ours to bare.

When you’re trying to come out

Reflecting on my teenage years, I remind my self that owning my identity required the right timing. For those who are still trying to figure out when – or if – they want to come out of the closet, it’s OK to be where you are. People need to understand that LGBTQ+ people growing up in the South are not only fighting an internal battle but also gathering the strength to face their community for daring to be their true selves.

For me, personally, I had to re claim the labels placed on me; own ing myself as a gay man took time beyond the initial hurdle of coming out. Although, with time, the pain of reconciling with the suppression of who I was settled, and I found how to live as my true self. A few years after coming out to my family, I allowed myself to reflect upon my pain. I signed up for a self-love workshop, guided by a close friend, where we were given daily tasks for post ing in a virtual forum. The directions were to purge all the wrong done to us. I dove into the

exercise thinking I remembered my past clearly. Unknowingly, however, I had suppressed a trau matic memory of being sexually assaulted; the workshop had triggered this memory, showing me how my past had played such a large role in shaping my future. It granted my child self the understanding he sought for not being able to accept himself years prior, and allowed me to for give myself for not being able to speak my truth.

Surviving in a less-than-accepting community

First and foremost, if you live in the South and are looking to come out as LGBTQ+, do whatever you need to do to stay safe and protect your men tal and physical health. Concealing your true self from those who wouldn’t make you feel safe is not a form of suppressing or denying who you are. It may not be ideal, but it’s better than knowingly putting yourself in danger. Find a community who will accept you and support your mental health by providing a safe space for you to be yourself.

For allies, respect queer peoples’ decision to re main silent about their identity. Don’t challenge them to come out when they aren’t ready. There are many reasons someone may not feel comfort able, so allow them the time to make the decision for themselves, and encourage them by shoul dering their needs. Remember: you are not responsible for their mental health, but if they trust you to know who they really are, you should do your best to make them feel safe and accepted. t

Kollyn Conrad is the founder and executive director of Publicly Private, a nonprofit organization offering supplies, support and empowerment to the LGBTQIA+ community. Publicly Private was inspired from Conrad’s personal jour ney of growing up as a gay man in the South. He was always passionate about helping and befriending underserved individuals, so he combined his passion and his experience to create Publicly Private and aid LGBTQIA+

in their lifelong journey.

Kollyn Conrad

Courtesy of the author

Incoming California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, left, and Associate Justices Goodwin Liu, Martin Jenkins, and Joshua Groban face retention elections on the November 8 ballot.

Courtesy CA courts

Site of

riot nominated for historic register

by Eric Burkett

years ago, an angry drag queen in Compton’s Cafeteria, a 24-hour diner in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, threw a cup of hot coffee in the face of a police of ficer as he tried to arrest her without a warrant. A riot ensued between the cops and the trans women and drag queens who frequented the diner. The following night, the battle continued. The fighting cost the diner owner two plate glass windows and, whether the incidents’ participants realized it or not, history was being made.

Unfortunately, the exact date for the incident remains a mystery. None theless, the site of that historical event is now on its way to being perma nently memorialized on the National Register of Historic Places.

On October 21, the seven members of the California State Historical Re sources Commission, meeting virtu ally from all over the state, voted 6-0 to nominate the site of the 1966’s Comp ton’s Cafeteria riots for addition to the federal registry. The recommenda tion will next be forwarded to the State Historic Preservation Officer for nomination to the National Register, with a final determination to be made approximately 45 days after its receipt by the Keeper of the National Register in Washington, D.C.

While fitting for the national reg ister, this isn’t the first time the site has been recognized as a landmark. A commemorative sidewalk plaque de noting the Compton’s Cafeteria riot was installed by the city at Turk and Taylor streets outside the former diner in 2006 to commemorate the 40th an niversary of the riot, as the Bay Area Reporter previously reported.

In 2016, the city christened the 100 block of Taylor Street as Gene Comp ton’s Cafeteria Way to honor the 50th anniversary of the historic riots that occurred at the long-gone diner. For mer District 6 supervisor Jane Kim had authored the honorary street re naming proposal, meaning it did not change the postal addresses of the businesses and residences located on that block of Taylor.

Most recently, the San Francisco Historic Preservation Commission on August 17 approved the designa tion of the Tenderloin intersection of Turk and Taylor streets, and 101 Tay lor Street, as an official city landmark, as the B.A.R. previously reported.

The October 21 action by the state panel, however, recognizes the site as one of national significance, “associ ated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history,” according to the website for the California State Parks Office of Historic Preservation.

That’s pretty notable, according to Jay Correia, a state historian with the Cali fornia Office of Historic Preservation.

“The vast majority of National Register nominations designate prop erty at the local level of significance,” Correia wrote to the B.A.R. in an email. “My informed guess is that 95%-98% of our nominations are for designation at the local level of signifi cance.

“If the Keeper of the National Regis ter approves the nomination at National Level of Significance, the building will attain a rare, and highly significant, level of recognition,” he added.

The significance of that space might have been lost, however, were it not for the work of Susan Stryker, Ph.D., a transgender scholar whose academic and historical research fo cuses on sexuality and gender. Stryker also used to be executive director of the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. She’s now a Marta Sutton Weeks External Faculty Fellow at the Stanford University Humanities Cen ter, according to her Twitter profile.

Notably, the marker commemorat ing the riot doesn’t include a date more specific than August 1966. The event had largely been forgotten until Stryk er, poring over materials at the GLBT Historical Society archives in 1991, ran across an item detailing an August 1966 event: “Drag queens protest police ha rassment at Compton’s Cafeteria.”

That launched Stryker on a yearslong venture to uncover the events at the former Gene Compton’s Cafeteria, which took place three years before the better known Stonewall ri ots in New York City. After years of re search, Stryker released her 2005 doc umentary, “Screaming Queens,” with interviews with some of the women who were present at the riot that night, along with other trans people. The exact date of the riot has been lost to history, Stryker has previously said.

Stryker was delighted with the commission’s vote.

“I’m thrilled that research I’ve con ducted over the past 30 years is being used to elevate the profile of trans his tory,” Stryker told the B.A.R. “Given the current political climate, it seems vital to demonstrate that trans people are not a recent fad. We’ve been mak ing history for a long time.”

Also following the commission’s decision was Madison Levesque, a his torian fellow at the cultural resources office in the Pacific West Region of the National Park Service, who uses she/ they pronouns. The Compton’s Caf eteria National Register nomination was the center of Levesque’s master’s thesis focusing on the steps and chal lenges of nominating queer sites for such considerations.

“It has been a pleasure to build off Stryker’s crucial research to ensure the legacy of Compton’s Cafeteria,”

said Levesque. “Placing properties as sociated with the transgender rights movement on the national signifi cance level demonstrates the values and communities the United States wishes to reflect into the future.”

The corner continues to hold sig nificance for queer and transgender communities, Jupiter Peraza, a trans woman and director of social justice initiatives at the Transgender District, told the B.A.R. back in June. The Octo ber 21 decision, she said, memorializes an event that transformed San Francis cans’ perceptions of trans people.

Peraza told the commissioners dur ing public comment following the vote that the trans community needs a na tionally recognized trans monument that portrays how hard transgender people have fought for liberation.

Commissioner Alan Hess, an architect in Irvine, told his fellow commissioners he was “particularly impressed” with the nomination of the Compton’s site. While he’d been aware of events such as the Stonewall riots and the demonstration at the Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles in 1967, the Compton’s Cafeteria riots were new to him. The Southern Cali fornia uprising by patrons of the bar was one of the first demonstrations in the United States protesting police brutality against LGBTQ people.

“This history was always there,” Hess observed. “We’re only really now becoming aware of it.”

Back in San Francisco, Andrew Shaffer, a gay man who’s director of development and communications at the GLBT Historical Society and for merly its interim co-director, told the B.A.R. that the commission’s recogni tion of the significance of the Comp ton’s site would help ensure what hap pened there was not forgotten.

“The National Register of Historic Places is one of the ways we define our national culture – recognizing the places where our collective story has unfolded,” he said. “For far too long, queer people have been left out of these stories, even though we have been integral parts of the American story every step of the way. Including the intersection of Turk and Taylor on the National Register would help to correct this erasure, and highlight just one of the innumerable ways trans folks have shaped our national story.”t

trial. And this was in the 1980s.

American ugly

Thank God for the verdict in Kevin Spac ey’s favor on October 20. Hopefully, this will give the cancel culture lowlifes pause when they’re thinking of accusing someone of a crime. (A civil jury in New York City found Spacey, then 26, not liable for battery on al legations he briefly laid on top of actor An thony Rapp, then 14, in a bed at a party in 1986.)

Even if every word of Rapp’s accusation is factual, Spacey did nothing that made him deserving of being sued or brought to

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who’s been gay since the word meant good-natured, I feel like this sort of thing –

vindictive jealousy – makes us look bad. There are real crimes being commit ted against LGBTQ people all the time that need to be addressed.

How did this generation of gay men get so damn sensitive that they can’t even think straight? It is embarrassing.

Anthony Rhody San Francisco

Volunteers put the finishing touches on a Black Trans Lives Matter mural at the corner of Turk and Taylor streets in August 2020.

Rick Gerharter

Dist.

Nancy Pelosi Dist.

Barbara Lee Dist.

Eric Swalwell Dist.

Kevin Mullin Dist.

Anna Eshoo Dist.

Ro Khanna Dist.

Zoe Lofgren

CA ASSEMBLY Dist.

Matt Haney Dist.

Phil Ting Dist.

Buffy Wicks Dist.

Rebecca Bauer-Kahan Dist.

Mia Bonta Dist.

Shawn Kumagai Dist.

Diane Papan Dist.

Alex Lee Dist.

Evan Low

CA SENATE Dist.

SAN FRANCISCO Board of Supervisors

Catherine Stefani

Gordon Mar

Matt Dorsey, 1st choice, Honey Mahogany, 2nd choice

8: Rafael Mandelman

Shamann Walton District Attorney: Brooke Jenkins Public Defender: Mano Raju City College Board Short Term: Murrell Green 4-year Term: Thea Selby, John Rizzoand William Walker SF Board of Education Lainie Motamedi, Lisa Weissman-Ward Karen Fleshman Assessor-Recorder: Joaquín Torres BART Board, Dist. 9: Janice Li

OTHER RACES

AC Transit At-Large: Alfred Twu

Alameda County Board of Supervisors Dist. 3: Rebecca Kaplan

Alameda City Council: Jim Oddie Alameda School Board: Ryan LaLonde Cabrillo College Board Area 2: Adam Spickler

Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors Dist. 4: Ken Carlson

Cupertino City Council: J.R. Fruen

East Bay MUD Ward 3 Marguerite Young El Cerrito City Council

Gabriel Quinto Oakland City Council Dist 4: Janani Ramachandran

Oakland Mayor (Ranked): 1st Choice - Sheng Thao

2nd Choice - Loren Taylor 3rd Choice: Ignacio De La Fuente

Oakland School Board Dist. 4: Nick Resnick

Redwood City Council

Chris Sturken

Richmond City Council Dist. 2: Cesar Zepeda Dist. 4: Jamin Pursell

San Mateo County Board of Supervisors Dist. 3: Laura Parmer-Lohan

San Mateo City Council

Sarah Fields

San Jose City Council Dist. 3: Omar Torres

San Jose Mayor

Cindy Chavez

San Leandro City Council

Victor Aguilar

San Leandro School Board

James Aguilar

Santa Clara Mayor

Anthony Becker

Sonoma County S

uperintendent of Schools

Amie Carter, Ph.D.

Sunnyvale City Council

Richard Mehlinger

<< Torres

From page 2

ist for a number of San Francisco publications including the old San Francisco Bay Guardian and BrokeAssStuart.com.

At the rules committee meeting, Supervisor Connie Chan (District 1) said she would support Tor res, citing a conversation she had had with one of her constituents, a bar owner. Having asked the bar owner about his feelings about gay state Senator Scott Wiener’s (DSan Francisco) ultimately unsuc cessful effort to extend the city’s bar closing times by two hours to 4 a.m., he told her it wasn’t helpful in the face of the staffing shortages currently dogging many of the city’s restaurants and bars.

Torres’ emphasis on the city’s nightlife workers, Chan said, “would be a unique, much needed perspective on the commission.”

At the committee meeting, gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Man delman had praise for another candidate, Jonathan Larner, whom he commended for his work in keeping the popular Castro music venue Cafe du Nord open despite the challenges of the COVID pan demic, but he had equally high praise for Torres. Mandelman said he had worked extensively with Torres and had “seen his grace under pressure in sometimes very challenging circumstances.”

“I think the balance breaks for Mr. Torres,” said Mandelman, al though he added he hoped Larner would reapply in the future.

Torres’ term is until July 1, 2026. He succeeds Steven Lee who, since his term ended in June, has been appointed by Mayor London Breed to the Port Commission.

Torres said that he expected to be sworn in next month and that Mandelman would administer the oath of office.

The nightlife oversight body al ready has three out members: Cyn Wang, a queer lesbian mother who is the chief legal officer at her fam ily’s insurance company; Laura Thomas, a queer woman who is the director of harm reduction policy for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation; and Al Perez, a gay man and marketer who is presi dent of the Filipino American Arts Exposition. t

ples to marry in San Francisco. She has served on the appellate court since 2014 when Brown appointed her. She became the first out fe male appellate justice in the state. Newsom recently announced that he has nominated Stewart to be presiding justice of her division. She is awaiting her confirmation hearing set for November 30, but in the meantime, voters should re tain Stewart for another term.

In the First District’s Division 3, there are four justices on the bal lot. Alison Tucher, Ioana Petrou,

He added that while Cohen “would rather talk about anything other than the dysfunction and mis management in Sacramento, my singular focus as Controller will be on standing up for taxpayers and bringing accountability and fiscal transparency back to California.”

It isn’t merely LGBTQ advocates raising questions about where Chen stands on various issues. Over the weekend Marc Ang, a prominent Asian conservative columnist from Orange County, attacked Chen for what he considers to be the candi

and Victor A. Rodriguez all previ ously served as Alameda County

date’s pandering to voters by tailor ing his positions for various groups.

In a screed he posted to his Face book page under the name Marques Angus, which included an image of Chen’s rainbow campaign logo, Ang called the currently on leave Stan ford University professor “a snob, a core-less political creature and a total joke” who will “take on any po sition to angle for political power.”

Ang is the founder and leader of Asian Industry B2B, a nonprofit business group that he said had backed Chen in the June primary. But he wrote in his post that he now intends to vote for Cohen on his November 8 general election ballot

Superior Court judges. Brown appointed Petrou, while Newsom appointed Tucher and Rodriguez. Justice Carin T. Fujisaki was ap pointed by Brown in 2018 and, prior to that, spent 28 years work ing at the state Supreme Court, where she served as principal at torney to Cantil-Sakauye.

In the First District’s Division 4, Justice Tracie L. Brown is on the ballot. Brown appointed her in 2018. Prior to joining the appel late court, Brown served for five years on the San Francisco Supe rior Court. Jeremy M. Goldman was appointed by Newsom in June and this will be his first retention

and predicted Cohen would win the race by 20 points.

In a phone interview with the B.A.R., Ang said, “Lanhee Chen will say anything basically for political advancement. He doesn’t give a shit about the community.”

Ang told the B.A.R. he is a straight ally but that he agreed with Chen’s past statements about religious lib erty. He explained that he had used Chen’s Pride Instagram post to il lustrate his flip-flopping on issues, questioning what the candidate had previously done to support the LG BTQ community.

But the breaking point personally for Ang, who said he did vote for

election. He previously served as co-chief of appellate litigation and as a deputy city attorney for government litigation at the San Francisco City Attorney’s office.

In Division 5, Teri L. Jackson was appointed by Newsom in 2019 as an associate justice and in 2021 was elevated to presiding justice. She is a former San Francisco Su perior Court judge who was ap pointed by former governor Gray Davis. She was the local court’s first Black woman and served as its presiding judge.

Also in Division 5, Justice Gor don B. Burns is on the ballot. Brown appointed him in 2018.

Chen in the primary, was an inter view Chen gave CalMatters (LINK: https://calmatters.org/newslet ters/whatmatters/2022/07/lanheechen-trump-abortion/) in July. He had told the website that he hadn’t voted for former President Donald Trump in 2016 or 2020 and that he supports “women’s reproductive freedoms. And that includes ac cess to family planning services, to contraceptives and abortions, as al lowed under California law.”

“I am pro-life. How dare Lanhee come out in that interview to bash Trump and walk back that posi tion on abortion. He was going around during the primary and

The court website stated that he spent much of his career as an at torney in the California Depart ment of Justice, where he worked on a variety of matters. In Decem ber 2011, Brown appointed him undersecretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, an agency that employed 6,000 people and had a budget of $4.7 billion.

It’s important that voters not overlook these important judicial retentions on their ballots. t

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22557457

In the matter of the application of MADISON SUZANNE MADDERN, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner MADISON SUZANNE MADDERN is requesting that the name MADISON SUZANNE MADDERN be changed to MADISON TABOR MADDERN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 10th of NOVEMBER 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 06, 13, 20, 27, 2022

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22557458

In the matter of the application of HUNG CHAN TANG, for change of name having been filed in Supe rior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner HUNG CHAN TANG is requesting that the name HUNG CHAN TANG be changed to DAVID HUNG CHAN TANG. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 10th of NOVEMBER 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 06, 13, 20, 27, 2022

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22557460

In the matter of the application of JOE ANTHONY MATA, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner JOE ANTHONY MATA is requesting that the name JOE ANTHONY MATA AKA ANTHONY RAY MATA be changed to ANTHONY RAY MATA. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 10th of NOVEMBER 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 06, 13, 20, 27, 2022

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22557464

In the matter of the application of SHELLEY LYNN O’GRADY BRATTAIN, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner SHELLEY LYNN O’GRADY BRATTAIN is requesting that the name SHELLEY LYNN O’GRADY BRATTAIN be changed to SHELLEY LYNN O’GRADY. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 15th of NOVEMBER 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 06, 13, 20, 27, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT

FILE A-0398280

The following person(s) is/are doing business as STIRRED, NOT SHAKEN, 3334 18TH ST, SAN FRAN CISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed DANIEL PONTICELLO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 04/03/14. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/20/22.

OCT 06, 13, 20, 27, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT

FILE A-0398279

The following person(s) is/are doing business as EMBER AND FOG, 955 PINE ST #11, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed JACLYN HUGHES. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 03/05/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/20/22.

OCT 06, 13, 20, 27, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT

FILE A-0398194

The following person(s) is/are doing business as INTERNATIONAL FLAVORS, 2025 SEA CLIFF WAY, SAN BRUNO, CA 94066. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed ALFREDO ZERMENO.

The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/09/22.

OCT 06, 13, 20, 27, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0398389

The following person(s) is/are doing business as CENOTE, 388 MARKET ST #104, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by a corporation and is signed R VENUE INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/29/22.

OCT 06, 13, 20, 27, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0398419

The following person(s) is/are doing business as SISTERITA, 669 COMMERCIAL ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed SERISTA GROUP LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/24/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/03/22.

OCT 06, 13, 20, 27, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0398414

The following person(s) is/are doing business as MELLOW SESSIONS, 1401 HAIGHT ST, SAN FRAN CISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed AQUA BEAT LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/13/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/03/22.

OCT 06, 13, 20, 27, 2022

NOTICE OF SALE OF ABANDONED PERSONAL PROPERTY

Notice is hereby given that under and pursuant to Section 1993, et. seq., of the California Civil Code, the property listed below believed to be abandoned by C3 Specialty’s Acquisition, LLC, whose last address was 150 Spear Street, Suite 100, San Francisco, California 94105, will be sold at public auction at 150 Spear Street, Suite 100, San Francisco, California 94105 on October 31, 2022 at 8:00 AM.

DESCRIPTION OF PROPERTY:

3 Blodgett Zephaire Stacked Ovens, 1 Baxter Stacked Oven, 1 FWE PHTT-BP-8 Food Warmer, 1 Refrigerated Prep Station with hood (2-sided), 1 Wood Top Prep Table, 1 Stainless Steel 8 ft. Prep Table, 1 Refrigerated Prep Station (1-sided), 2 Dasani

Coolers, 1 Stainless Steel 4 ft. Table, 1 La Marzocco Swift EPSB Coffee Maker, 1 Beverage-Air Under-Counter Refrigerator, 1 Hobart HS6 Meat Slicer, 1 Manitowoc IY0524A-161 Ice Maker, 1 Stainless Steel 6 ft. Prep Table with upper shelves, 11 Four-post shelf sets (2-4

AMENDED NOTICE OF PETITION TO

OF

SAN FRANCISCO:

To

UDDIN

COURT OF CALIFORNIA,

or both, of SALIM UDDIN KHAN. An amended Petition for Probate has been filed by FARUKH SHAZED in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. The amended Petition for Probate requests that FARUKH SHAZED be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent. The petition requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.) The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person files an objection to the petition and shows good cause why the court should not grant the authority. A hearing on the petition will be held in this court as follows: NOVEMBER 08, 2022, 9:00 am, Dept. 204, Superior Court of California, 400 McAllister St., San Francisco, CA 94102. If you object to the granting of the petition, you should appear at the hearing and state your objections or file written

objections with the court before the hearing. Your appearance may be in person or by your attorney. If you are a creditor or contingent creditor of the decedent, you must file your claim with the court and mail a copy to the personal representative appointed by the court within the latter of either (1) four months from the date of first issuance of letters to a general personal representative, as defined by section 58(b) of the California Probate Code, or (2) 60 days from the date of mailing or personal delivery to you of a notice under section 9052 of the California Probate Code. Other California statutes and legal authority may affect your rights as a creditor. You may want to consult with an attorney knowledgeable in California law. You may examine the file kept by the court. If you are a person interested in the estate, you may file with the court a Request for Special Notice (form DE-154) of the filing of an inventory and appraisal of estate assets or of any petition or account as provided in Probate Code section 1250. A Request for Special Notice form is available from the court clerk. Attorney for petitioner: ANNE STEELE (SBN 52956), 456 SAN MATEO AVE #8, SAN BRUNO, CA 94066; Ph. (650) 952-0950. OCT 13, 20, 27, 2022

SUMMONS (PARENTAGE – CUSTODY AND SUPPORT) SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO NOTICE TO RESPONDENT: MARTIN GREGORY SEQUEIRA, YOU ARE BEING SUED. PETITIONER’S NAME IS TANNITH PATTERSON CASE NO. FPT-22-378024

You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this Summons and Petition are served on you to file a Response (form FL-220 or FL-270) at the court and have a copy served on the petitioner. A letter, phone call, or court appearance will not protect you. If you do not file your Response on time, the court may make orders affecting your right to custody of your children. You may be ordered to pay child support and attorney fees and costs. For legal advice, contact a lawyer immediately. Get help finding a lawyer at the California Courts

Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo. ca.gov/selfhelp), at the California Legal Services website (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), or by contacting your local bar association.

NOTICE RESTRAINING ORDERS: The restraining order remains in effect against each parent until the petition is dismissed, a judgment is entered, or the court makes further orders. This order is enforceable anywhere in California by any law enforcement officer who has received or seen a copy of it. FEE WAIVER: If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the clerk for a fee waiver form. The court may order you to pay back all or part of the fees and costs that the court waived for you or the other party.

SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO, FAMILY DIVISION, 400 MCAL LISTER ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102-4515. The name, address, and telephone number of petitioner’s attorney is: MARK C. WATSON, THE LAW OFFICES OF MARK C. WATSON, 533 AIRPORT BLVD #100, BURLINGAME, CA 94010 June 21, 2020. Clerk of the Superior Court by Joshua Mandapat, Deputy.

STANDARD RESTRAINING ORDERS: Starting immediately, you and every other party are restrained from removing from the state, or applying for a passport for, the minor child or children for whom this action seeks to establish a parent-child relationship or a custody order without the prior written consent of every other party or an order of the court. This restraining order takes effect against the petitioner when he or she files the petition and against the respondent when he or she is personally served with the Summons or Petition OR when he or she waives and accepts service. This restraining order remains in effect until the judgment is entered, the petition is dismissed, or the court makes other orders. This order is enforceable anywhere in California by any law enforcement officer who has received or seen a copy of it.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22557436

In the matter of the application of ALFRED SHAW, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner ALFRED SHAW is requesting that the name ALFRED SHAW be changed to KHADER SALEM EL SHAWA. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 3rd of NOVEMBER 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should

trying to act as conservatives’ best friend,” said Ang. t

Web Extra: For more queer politi cal news, be sure to check http:// www.ebar.com Monday mornings for Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion. This week’s col umn reported on the San Francisco supervisor candidates’ plans to preserve the city’s LGBTQ culture. Keep abreast of the latest LGBTQ political news by following the Po litical Notebook on Twitter @ http:// twitter.com/politicalnotes. Got a tip on LGBTQ politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 829-8836 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.

not be granted.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22557463

In the matter of the application of THOMAS DAVID MARTIN, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner THOMAS DAVID MARTIN is requesting that the name THOMAS DAVID MARTIN be changed to THOMAS TOM-TOM MARTIN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 10th of NOVEMBER 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22557478

In the matter of the application of KYLE DE LARA BELAMIDE, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner KYLE DE LARA BELAMIDE is request ing that the name KYLE DE LARA BELAMIDE be changed to KYLE DE LARA. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 17th of NOVEMBER 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22557480

In the matter of the application of ARWEN LEE CURRY & JOHN EDWARD NACKLEY II, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioners KYLE DE LARA BELAMIDE are requesting that the name DESMOND JAMES CURRY be changed to DESMOND JAMES CURRY NACKLEY. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 17th of NOVEMBER 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22557481

In the matter of the application of YONG PING JUDY PAN, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner YONG PING JUDY PAN is requesting that the name YONG PING JUDY PAN AKA YONG PING PAN be changed to JUDY PAN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the 22nd of NOVEMBER 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the applica tion for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME IN SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO FILE CNC-22557488

In the matter of the application of ANTHONY DIVYA SAMINENI, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appears from said application that petitioner ANTHONY DIVYA SAMINENI is requesting that the name ANTHONY DIVYA SAMINENI be changed to DIVYA ANTHONY SAMINENI. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 103N, Rm. 103N on the22nd of NOVEMBER 2022 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0398321

The following person(s) is/are doing business as THE LITTLE BOX CAFÉ, 630 SANSOME ST, SAN FRAN CISCO, CA 94111. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed AUGUSTO P. SEVERINO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/23/22.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0398432

The following person(s) is/are doing business as THIRD EYE ADVISORS, 1555 O’FARRELL ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed PRAVEEN RAO. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 11/01/21. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/05/22.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0398421

The following person(s) is/are doing business as RANI THREADS MAGIC, 2435 MISSION ST #7, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed RAJNI ANAND. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/18. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/04/22.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0398428

The following person(s) is/are doing business as HARMONY GIFT SHOP, 914 GRANT AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed GUO ZHEN PAN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 10/05/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/05/22.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT

FILE A-0398396

The following person(s) is/are doing business as BISS LIST PRESENTS; PB AND JAM; 1159 MASONIC AVE #C, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94117. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed PAMELA GERSTEIN. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/05/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/30/22.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT

FILE A-0398270

The following person(s) is/are doing business as SIERRA SUPPLY CO., 15 SAN ANTONIO PL #103, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed SEAN RUHS. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 09/19/22.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT

FILE A-0398420

The following person(s) is/are doing business as ROUSE RELATIONAL WELLNESS, 4124 18TH ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94114. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed DAVID KHALILI MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPY, INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 08/01/22. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/04/22.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0398425

The following person(s) is/are doing business as IFUN, 1737 POST ST #315, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed JINGCAI INC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on N/A. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/04/22.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-0398450

The following person(s) is/are doing business as LYON STREET APARTMENTS, 2930 LYON ST, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94127. This business is conducted by a limited partnership, and is signed WALDMAN MANAGEMENT GROUP, INC (CA), GENERAL PARTNER OF WALDMAN FAMILY TRUST, LP. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/13/84. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 10/07/22.

OCT 13, 20, 27, NOV 03, 2022

California Court of Appeal

Justice Therese Stewart

Rick Gerharter

its unlikely MPX will be removed from the U.S. very quickly.”

The city, on the other hand, has plenty of vaccine to continue its drive to inoculate as many people as pos sible, Philip said. The city recently expanded eligibility for the vaccine to include people who received notice from a venue or event of a potential exposure within the past 14 days, as

People can self-select sex on Social Security record

The Social Security Administration has announced that people can now self-select their sex on their Social Se curity record. Kilolo Kijakazi, acting commissioner, made the announce

New leader

From page 1

was released in January 1953 and is credited with being the first nationally distributed LGBT magazine.

In 1956, magazine contributors Jim Kepner and activist W. Dorr Legg, along with Thomas M. Merritt, Ph.D., formed its educational arm, the ONE Institute. While the magazine ceased publication in 1967, the institute continued to be active and became known for issuing advanced degrees in “Homophile Studies.”

Kepner, meanwhile, had amassed a sizeable collection of LGBTQ ma terials he dubbed the Western Gay Archives. It would be displayed in a Hollywood storefront and eventually

<< School races

From page 1

“If my kids decided to come out re gardless as LGBTQ or not, I want them to be educated at school in a safe en vironment. I don’t want them to be in an environment that is anti-LGBTQ,” said Woods. “So why do their parental rights trump my parental rights? That is what they are trying to do.”

LGBTQ leaders in the Sacramento region recently admonished Natomas Unified School District board candi date Megan Allen for using a trans phobic trope at a public forum and claimed providing gender-neutral restrooms at schools make students feel awkward.

At the October 12 candidate forum Allen told the audience that she is “fine with one gender-neutral restroom on campus, but I do not want them across campus, because there are lots of re ports that’s how girls get raped.”

The Stonewall Democratic Club of Greater Sacramento called on Allen to retract her comments and asked her to specify if she supports trans youth re ceiving “justifiable accommodations” on their public school campuses. Ac cording to the club, Allen stated in a re ply to it that her “comments are specifi cally about the safety of young women and how facilities can be exploited, by anyone, in a manner that does not pro mote safety. As a mother of two schoolaged children, it’s very important for this dialog to occur publicly and in a sincere and apolitical manner.”

Stonewall leaders criticized Allen for what they saw as a “non-apology.”

Woods told the B.A.R. her comments not only crossed a line but also are not based on facts.

“Trans people are the ones harmed in bathrooms not cisgender women, not teenage girls. In fact, we have seen videos in which teenage girls are at tacking a trans girl or boy in the bath room,” she said.

In Contra Costa County a can didate for a seat on the countywide Board of Education, Lisa Disbrow, is running on a parental rights platform. On her campaign website she spe cifically calls out schools for teaching children that they can “be trapped in

has long been the case; laboratory workers who routinely perform MPX virus testing; and clinicians who have had a high-risk occupational expo sure (i.e., examined MPX lesions or collected monkeypox specimens without using recommended person al protective equipment).

2nd dose needed

A bigger challenge now is convinc ing the many thousands who have re ceived the first dose of the two-dose

ment in a news release October 19.

“The Social Security Administra tion’s Equity Action Plan includes a commitment to decrease adminis trative burdens and ensure people who identify as gender-diverse or transgender have options in their Social Security Number card ap plication process,” Kijakazi stated.

“This new policy allows people to

renamed as the International Gay & Lesbian Archives.

By the mid-1990s the archives had merged with the ONE Institute then was relocated to the University of Southern California’s campus in 2000. It would again be rebranded, this time as the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, and eventually become an official part of the USC Libraries sys tem in October 2010.

“My job as executive director, in part, is amplifying the collection at the archives,” Valenzuela said. “It is the largest collection of LGBTQ materials in the world.”

The foundation and the USCbased archives “are formal part ners,” he explained. “We act as the community-facing nonprofit orga

regimen to get that vital second dose. For full efficacy, a second dose must be administered no sooner than 28 days after the first dose.

“The data really support a two dose series,” Philip said.

Credit for the success of the city’s response to the outbreak goes to the community, DPH stated in a release.

“First and foremost were San Franciscans themselves, who have been exceedingly proactive about their health and have sought out

self-select their sex in our records without needing to provide docu mentation of their sex designation.”

People who update their sex marker will need to apply for a re placement Social Security card. They will still need to show a cur rent document to prove their iden tity, but they will no longer need to provide medical or legal documen

nization that does LGBTQ history programming while also amplifying the archives.”

The two entities do joint program ming together, noted Valenzuela, while a main priority for the foundation is its educational initiatives. It is a major driver behind the implementation of California’s FAIR ACT, which requires the teaching of LGBT subjects and topics in the state’s public schools, and conducts webinars for educators on how to teach such lessons.

“We also do LGBTQ lesson plans, which we work with educators to de velop,” noted Valenzuela.

Each school semester the founda tion also trains eight youth ambas sadors for queer history. The par ticipants receive a stipend and will go

“And you have people who go, ‘No, male or female only.’ You can pres ent many different ways, unlimited presentations, feelings, thoughts, but the biology is pretty firm,” she con tinued. “So what we are stuck with is very complicated settings regarding children.”

As for the issue of gender-neutral bathrooms in schools, Disbrow said a better solution would be to provide more individual bathrooms that peo ple could use by themselves.

vaccines and taken other steps to become informed and protect themselves and others,” according to the news release. “SFDPH and com munity partners directed resources toward people most impacted by MPX in the gay, bisexual, and trans communities, and with a goal of lowering health disparities and bar riers to care.”

Among the city’s various eth nic and racial groups, whites still make up the largest percentage of

tation of their sex designation now that the policy change is in place, the release stated.

The agency will accept the ap plicant’s self-identified sex desig nation of either male or female, even if it is different from the sex designation shown on identity documents, such as a passport or state-issued driver’s license or ID

on field trips to LGBTQ historic sites while also conducting research in the archives at USC.

“We mentor a number of high school students to act as ambassadors for queer history in their schools and community,” said Valenzuela.

Since 2009, Valenzuela has worked in the arts and culture space; he also is two-thirds through writing a memoir. Starting in 2009 he served as executive director of Lambda Literary, which sup ports and promotes LGBTQ writers.

Between 2018 and 2020 he had led the Foundation for The AIDS Monu ment and helped oversee its effort to construct a memorial to those lost to the disease in West Hollywood Park. The public outdoor space is in the LGBTQ enclave that is its own city

still exists in our community,” said LaLonde, who grew up with lesbian moms and is aiming to become the first out LGBTQ person elected to the school board.

A stay-at-home dad and artist, LaLonde has also been told he should be disqualified from serving on the school board because he has depicted men wearing leather in some of his works. One of his opponents has also spoken out against LGBTQ curricu lums and ethnic studies taught in the classroom.

cases at 46%. Caucasians make up 51% of the city’s population, ac cording to U.S. Census estimates for 2021. However, as noted, Latinx and Black individuals are being par ticularly hard hit with Latinx people accounting for 28% of cases, despite the fact they comprise only 15.7% of the population, while Blacks, at 5.7% of the city’s population, com prised 6% of cases. Asians, who ac count for 37.2% of San Franciscans, made up only 9% of MPX cases. t

card. SSN cards do not include sex markers, the release noted.

Currently, Social Security’s re cord systems are unable to include a nonbinary or unspecified sex des ignation. It is exploring that option, which became one for U.S. pass ports earlier this year.

For more information, go to https://www.ssa.gov/ t

in Los Angeles County and is under going a $100 million renovation. Va lenzuela oversaw the successful capi tal campaign to raise the $5 million needed to build it, with its dedication expected to take place in 2024.

“I feel privileged to be doing this work. So much of the work done in our communities are direct services, which are essential and critical, or civil rights work that has to do with lobby ing and elections,” said Valenzuela. “The arts and culture space, certainly in the queer community, is smaller but the kind of work that connects deeply with people because they see their stories reflected in this work.”

To learn more about the ONE Ar chives Foundation, visit its website at https://www.onearchives.org/ t

blatant lying and it is a much more aggressive attack. These candidates have decided, ‘Oh, if we run on this, we can win.’ They are not outliers anymore. They are really taking on what we have seen across Florida and other conservative states, with the success of the anti-trans legisla tion and attacks on drag queen story hour, and they are going full bore, full throttle.”

the wrong body,” use drugs and sur gery to “change their sex and become another identity,” and that their “sex is not biologically determined at con ception but is fluid.”

“Parents and taxpayers object!” declares Disbrow, a Moraga resident who retired as a kindergarten teacher because of her objections to the CO VID protocols adopted by school offi cials, particularly mask requirements for her students. “Parents of different faiths, backgrounds, and values do not want these views taught to their children. As parents they have the right to oppose the undermining of their family values, their child-parent bonds and beliefs.”

As for the schools, Disbrow contends they should be educating “our diverse student populations” solely in academic matters. In a phone interview with the B.A.R., she said her beliefs are rooted in First Amendment rights.

“I think everybody who wants to speak out and share their thoughts and views should. I am for more speech, not less,” said Disbrow, noting that Americans live in a “pluralistic society” with “many different views on critical and controversial issues. I think we all have a right to our per spective.”

When asked if she believes trans kids don’t exist, as some conserva tive leaders have argued, Disbrow responded that the issue is “compli cated. We have people who believe in unlimited genders and that should be… that is their reality.

“I know people don’t want to have ... dads, moms, kids don’t want to be in a restroom with someone who is trans but physically the other sex,” she said, “so I think we have to have op tions. I think we need to have more individual bathrooms.”

Disbrow acknowledged that par ents “who believe in unlimited gen ders” don’t want to see “their children feeling uncomfortable or slighted. Neither do I.”

Nonetheless, education leaders need to consider “what is the pur pose” of school when it comes to setting policies and adopting instruc tional plans, Disbrow told the B.A.R.

“Is it to deal with the social issues and theories and political ideas or is it to focus on the more academic side of schooling?” she asked. “It is not on these social theories, and parents aren’t willing to give up their rights over their children. So we have to fig ure this out.”

In Alameda County, gay married dad Ryan LaLonde has been targeted with homophobic comments as he seeks a seat on the Alameda Unified School District board. He and his husband, Chris Moody, have their 14-year-old son, Farber MoodyLaLonde, enrolled in the East Bay city’s schools.

LaLonde has prominently featured his family in his campaign, and in an ad running on Facebook. A number of people have left bigoted comments on the ad, from “sorry, I only vote for heterosexual candidates” to “vot ing for someone because they are or are not sucking dick when they have one… is just weird.”

“I leave them on there because I want people to see homophobia

“Having someone in leadership who doesn’t think you should exist as a student or you should be talked about or your history talked about, and for that someone to have a bully pulpit to say that over and over again, can have a negative effect on LGBTQ students,” said LaLonde, who chairs Alameda Unified’s LGBTQ Round Table for parents, students and staff. “We don’t need that type of leadership or policy focus.”

No longer ‘outliers’

Candidates staking out such an ti-LGBTQ positions are no longer “outliers,” said Woods, or relegated to more conservative sections of California. She said they feel em boldened to express such views even in the Bay Area as they have seen candidates and political leaders across the country successfully run on such a platform.

“They are parroting false ideol ogy. We have seen it here in the state and at the national level: trans people are the boogeymen. It is a coordinated national attack,” said Woods. “With school boards there is a whole move to take over school boards and demonize trans kids, de monize gender-affirming care and any LGBTQ education.”

She was critical of national lead ers for not pushing back harder on “the attacks and the lies” that are be ing waged against trans youth and LGBTQ education issues. Media attention to the issue has also been wanting, contended Woods.

What is concerning, said Woods, “for me, for Stonewall, and for ev erybody paying attention, it is this

EQCA’s Garrett-Pate warned. “We can’t afford to sit back and al low these right-wing extremists to spread vile, hateful misinformation about our communities.”

Recent years have seen more LG BTQ parents, educators, and young people seek school board seats and other education elected offices. And the November 8 election could mark significant progress in terms of out representation in such positions.

As the B.A.R. has previously re ported, Amie Carter, Ph.D., is set to become Sonoma County super intendent of schools due to her op ponent dropping his bid. The gay married mom will double the num ber of out county superintendents in the state, as lesbian San Mateo County Superintendent of Schools Nancy Magee was unopposed this year as she sought a second term.

In the East Bay transgender dad and educator Nick Resnick could become the first trans member of any school board in the state if he wins election to the District 4 seat on the Oakland Unified School Board. He would also be its first out member and could double the number of trans male elected edu cation officials in California should Cabrillo Community College Board of Trustees member Adam Spickler win his reelection bid in Santa Cruz County.

“Nick is a great leader and some one who brings visibility to the trans community as both a parent and an educator,” said Garrett-Pate. “He has experience not just around making sure our schools are safe and supportive for LGBTQ students but also making sure every child has the ability to succeed and feels wel come in school.” t

Ryan LaLonde is running for a seat on the Alameda school board in the East Bay

Courtesy the candidate

by David-Elijah Nahmod

As the new docuseries “Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror” begins, lesbian icon Lea Delaria points out that horror exists “outside of society,” just as queer people ex ist outside of society. The four-part series can now be seen on Shudder, a streaming service for the discriminating horror fan.

“Queer for Fear” covers a lot of ground. It be gins by harkening back to the early 19th century, when a bisexual polyamorous woman named Mary Shelley wrote “Frankenstein,” a novel which is credited for giving birth to both the horror and science fiction genres.

Through a series of interviews with a variety of queer horror creators, historians, and famous fans, the audience learns that Shelley and her husband Percy may have been engaged in a me nage a trois with their friend Lord Byron. By ron and Percy might also have been having sex with each other. It was in this environment that Shelley wrote “Frankenstein.” There are definite queer elements in the book, such as when the mad doctor chases his male monster around the world.

The series also documents the sad story of Oscar Wilde, the great 19th-century writer who

served hard time in jail for the “crime” of be ing gay. Wilde was the author of “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” considered one of the great horror novels. In that book, a beautiful young man stays youthful as his portrait ages in his stead. Wilde clearly used Dorian Gray as a metaphor for his own queerness.

There’s a lengthy section on Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” considered to be the greatest vampire novel ever written. Stoker was known to have had gay proclivities. He was part of Wilde’s inner circle and wrote love letters to the gay poet Walt Whit man. But Stoker underwent a complete turn around after Wilde was imprisoned, becoming an anti-gay activist who called for all gay writers to be imprisoned.

Was the character of Dracula a metaphor for Stoker’s queerness? According to “Drag Race” alumnus Alaska Thunderfuck, it was.

“The Dracula costume kit is basically drag,” Alaska says. “You have face paint, and then you have blood red lips, and then you slick your hair back. You put on a cape, you put on fancy antique jewels, and then you go live in a castle. And you can turn into a bat. So this, to me, is the experi ence of being a gay man.”

Shudder’s horrific history lesson goes far be yond the literary world. Movies are a big part of the discussion. Episode 2 of “Queer for Fear” fo

Fear’

cuses on the careers of filmmakers James Whale and Alfred Hitchcock.

Whale was a gay man who inserted quite a bit of not-so-subtle gay subtext into his films, like the screaming queen mad scientist Dr. Praetorius (Ernest Thesiger) in the 1935 film “Bride of Fran kenstein.” It was one of two films that Whale and Thesiger made together. In 1932, Thesiger played the somewhat “Nellie” Horace Femm in Whale’s chiller “The Old Dark House,” a film that was so glaringly gay it’s hard to believe that 1930s audi ences didn’t notice this.

Creepshows

In addition to Thesiger’s Femm, there was a definite lesbian undertone to sister Rebecca (Eva Moore). Meanwhile, up in the attic lies 102-yearold family patriarch Sir Roderick Femm, played by actress Elspeth Dudgeon in bearded male drag. Whale could always be counted upon to include gay overtones in his films.

Hitchcock, though not gay, had questionable gay characters in several of his films, such as the male couple who strangles a friend to death in the classic 1948 thriller “Rope.” And Hitchcock’s most famous character, Norman Bates in the 1960 film “Psycho,” showed more than a few gay proclivities as a put-upon mama’s boy who took to murder ing women; not exactly a positive gay role model.

ground. Frayling begins at the beginning, before movies even existed. He writes about what may have been the first vampire novel “The Vampy re” by the poet Lord Byron.

In 200+ pages, Fraylings writes about every significant vampire film ever produced, with few omis sions. Each film gets a page of text, and there are many photographs. After Nos feratu, Frayling’s undead history lesson moves on to “London After Midnight,” now one of the cinema’s most eagerly sought-after lost films. Produced in 1927, “London After Mid night” starred silent screen icon Lon Chaney, known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces.” One of those faces is on display in Frayling’s book.

Perkins’ real-life son Osgood is interviewed in the film, speaking quite candidly about his fa ther’s sexuality and about how his parents tried to hide the truth about how Perkins contracted the AIDS that killed him in 1992.

In 1940 Hitchcock made “Rebecca,” which co-stars Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers, one of cinema’s grand old lesbians. In the film Mrs. Danvers is so clearly in love with her former mis tress it’s a wonder the film got past the censors, whose approval was needed to get a film released in those days.

The series continues across the decades, discussing many films and delving into why queer people relate to them. The interviews are thoughtful, insightful, sometimes funny, and always entertaining. Interviewees include caba ret star Michael Feinstein, TV producer Rober to Aguirre-Sacasa, film historians Mark Gatiss and Harry Benshoff, film directors Kimberly Peirce and Karyn Kusama, and San Francisco’s own Peaches Christ. Their words are interwo ven with a plethora of delightful film clips.

Shudder has done a superb job in putting this series together. It’s must-see viewing for LGBT horror fans.t

www.shudder.com

But when he covers the 1971 Belgian/West German/French co production “Daughters of Darkness” (1971), he fails to mention that the centuries-old Countess Erzebet Bathory (Del phine Seyrig) has a female companion. Frayling does hint at bisexuality when he writes of the Countess’ attempt to seduce a young couple on their honeymoon.

Several pages are devoted to the 1994 screen adaptation of Anne Rice’s “Interview With the Vampire.” Frayling refers to Le stat, played by superstar Tom Cruise, as “a dashing, monstrous, bisexual vampire.” There’s a beau tifully haunting photo of Cruise in full costume, and a full-page image of the film’s theatrical re lease poster. In his text, Frayling delves into what Rice thought of Cruise’s casting, both before and after she saw the film.

by David-Elijah Nahmod

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 100 years since the first vampire film was produced. In 1922 gay di rector F.W. Murnau made “Nosferatu,” an adaptation, or plagiarism, of Bram Stoker’s celebrated 1897 novel “Drac ula.” That the film exists today is a miracle. Murnau felt that by changing all the character names as well as the locale of the story, he could get away

with copying Stoker’s work. But Florence Stoker, the author’s widow, wasn’t having it. She filed suit, and a judge ordered every print of the film destroyed.

Somehow one print survived, and because of that, the film is readily available on DVD and BluRay today.

In his new book “Vampire Cinema: The First One Hun dred Years,” author and film historian Christopher Fray ling recounts this story. The book, an attractive coffee table volume with a considerable amount of text, covers a lot of

Dozens of films are covered in Frayling’s book. There are several titles in the book that are of interest to the LGBT reader. “Dracula’s Daughter” (1936), was a film that starred Gloria Holden as the screen’s first bisexual vam pire, her victims are both male and female. Though he didn’t write The “L” word in his prose, Frayling does refer to the film’s “most celebrated sequence,” when the Countess seduces a young artist’s model (Nan Gray) before biting her.

Frayling does mention les bians when he writes about “The Vampire Lov ers” (1970), an adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella “Carmilla” (1872). Frayling refers to the film as a “mix of lesbians and vampires,” as well as to Carmilla’s vampiric seduction of two girls.

The book concludes with a chapter about vampires on television. Frayling gives men tion to obvious TV favorites like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Dark Shadows,” but it’s his page on the HBO series “True Blood” that would be of most interest to LGBT readers. As did the series, Frayling draws a parallel to vampires “com ing out” and fighting for their rights, not unlike the fight for LGBT rights.

Overall, Frayling has done a remarkable job of docu menting the history of vam pires in the movies. The book is well written, insightful, and great fun to read.t

Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in ‘Interview With the Vampire’

‘Nosferatu,’ ‘Teen Wolf,’ ‘Psycho’ and ‘The Bride of Frankenstein,’ are featured in the docuseries ‘Queer for Fear’

‘

history

Vincent Paterson

by Jim Provenzano

While you may not recognize his name, you definitely know his work. That’s because Vincent Paterson has choreographed some of the most iconic dances for pop music in the 20th century, including for Michael Jackson, Madonna, Bjork and many others. His continued accomplish ments in film, theater, opera and more are shared in behind-the-scenes sto ries of his life in his new book, “Icons and Instincts: Choreographing and Directing Entertainment’s Biggest Stars” (co-written with Amy Tofte).

In his book, Paterson, 72, discusses his difficult upbringing near South Philadelphia, his expansive career, from dancing as a gang leader in Jack son’s “Beat It” to staging Cirque du Soleil extravaganzas, choreographing more than 150 commercials, and get ting a Tony nomination for “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

Along with being the subject of a documentary film, “The Man Behind the Throne,” he’s also been a longtime advocate for dancers and choreogra phers in show business. His journey is a fascinating read, not just for dance fans, but for anyone interested in pop ular culture and the making of art. In a phone interview from his Hollywood Hills home, where he lives with his husband Rene Lamontagne, Paterson shared some of his stories.

Jim Provenzano: Let’s discuss how you got to be a dancing gang leader in “Beat It.”

So, I came in dressed like what I thought was a street guy. I had my jeans on, I had a striped T-shirt on and a little jacket, and I had greased my hair a little bit and had a hanging ear ring and a little growth of beard on my face. And I saw Michael Jackson right away up there talking to Michael Pe ters saying, ‘Who’s that guy over there?’ And of course I danced it fantastically well because it was Michael Peter’s work, and I knew it like the back of my hand. So I got the gig and that began my relationship with Michael Jackson.

It became a kind of event view ing when these new music videos came out. You also were a lead zombie in Jackson’s “Thriller.”

Which Michael Peters did, and again, I assisted him on. It was remark able on many levels. Just to be there at that heyday of MTV and be part of this explosion of dance culture was absolutely remarkable. Being an assis tant choreographer involves cleaning the dancers’ moves, making the piece perfect technically and rhythmically, but also to spend a more intimate time with Michael Jackson. My responsibil ity was to really be sure he knew what he was doing, that he was comfortable with the movement. So I began to ce ment my relationship with Mike.

After working with Madonna on the famous Pepsi commercial, you choreographed the ‘Metrop olis’-inspired “Express Yourself” with…?

…with director David Fincher. She called me to do that. But I had a little run-in with her because I had created a lot of things that choreographers don’t get credit for, like teaching her how to gracefully sit in a chair and hold a ciga rette holder, or crawl across the floor like a cat and pour that bowl of milk down her face. I created the movement where she is in her bedroom. We had rehearsed it; it looked great.

But when the cameras rolled, she started doing her own stuff. It wasn’t that good, to be honest (laughs). I said, ‘Madonna, I gave you movement that I think is very beautiful and sexy on your body, but you’re doing something else. If you don’t need me, I’ll just leave.’ And she said, ‘No, no. Stay, stay. I’ll do it.’ And so she did it and she was quite happy. We got to the shot where she’s in a suit at the top of a long staircase. I gave

her all this choreography to learn, but at the end there was a little musical button where she needed a moment. And she yelled down to me, ‘What do I do with my hands for this last beat?’ I’m standing there with all the crew and I said, ‘Why don’t you grab your crotch? You’ve got bigger balls than anybody in the room!’

She then hired you to replace another choreographer for the ‘Blonde Ambition’ tour to choreo graph and also direct it?

She got this bug and decided she was gonna go a different way, with modern dance, which turned out to be a disaster. Fortunately for me and for her, she asked me to step in. It was down to the first day they had to rehearse and she still hadn’t commit ted to signing the contract. I thought, ‘Shoot, I really wanted this gig, but I’m not gonna do it for free.’

I came home and my answering machine was just bleeping off the ta ble; messages from her manager, from her, and from my agent, all saying, ‘Get down here. You need to be at rehears al!’ I went down and walked into the room, and the first day I put together the entire stage version of “Express Yourself.” So that was the first day. And after that, it was absolute insanity. We had 21 days to do 18 pieces.

For the MTV Awards in 1990, you brilliantly refashioned Madonna’s “Vogue” into a Marie Antoinette court. That came from working with fans in a studio, right?

I almost had a big project with Di ana Ross. I had these fans because I wanted to harken back to the disco era, and I wanted to do a thing with fans. But that project with Diana fell through. So I still had some fans in the closet and I thought, ‘Let me just take these out and see.’ I didn’t know what I was going to do. I started playing with

the fans and thought, ‘Wow, feels like sort of the Marie Antoinette Court.’ And Madonna was always trying to come out with a new image every week that people would remember.

I called her and said, ‘Listen, I got a great idea. You as Marie Antoinette.’ Madonna jokingly said, ‘That sounds like shit!’ But she loved it, and the rest is history.

One of your more innovative works was choreographing danc es in Lars Von Trier’s “Dancer in the Dark,” where you got Bjork, Catherine Deneuve and a full cast dancing in a sink factory and on running train cars. And you played the role of a community theater director.

Lars needed an actor to play the man who runs the little theater, and he hadn’t found one. He watched me in rehearsals and said, ‘Why don’t you do it? You’re exactly what I need.’ So I wound up acting in it. He had decided to do the principal photog raphy himself with one handheld camera, and he wanted the dance sequences filmed with 100 mini-DV cameras that had just come out. A very simplified explanation is that they would all be connected to one recording machine.

So the dancers, and Bjork, Cath erine, and Joel Grey, only had to go through the piece a few times. But those poor editors had to look at all of that footage to come up with what they wound up with!t

Read much more, with several dance videos, on www.ebar.com

Choreographer and author Vincent Paterson

by Brian Bromberger

When the original “Hocus Pocus” was released by Disney in 1993, it was a commercial failure, with the studio losing $16.5 million during its theatrical run. Artistically, critics sav aged it. The story; three wicked witch es, the Sanderson sisters, hanged in 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, are inad vertently resurrected by a teenage boy in contemporary Salem on Halloween night, as they try to gain immortality by killing children, but are outwitted by three adolescents. The film gradu ally became a camp and cult classic.

It was rediscovered by Generation X and millennials on the cable Disney Channel. For many younger adults and now their children, watching the film has become a time-honored an nual Halloween tradition.

Despite its many shortcomings, the wacky outrageous antics and sarcastic camaraderie of Bette Midler (buck teeth and imperious call, “Sisters!”), Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Na jimy with their absurd comic banter, along with the autumn/Halloween visual stylishness and rambunctious energy, feeding off the 300th anniver sary of the Salem Witch Trials, had its appeal. It also contained a killer clos ing line: “I had to wait 300 years for a virgin to light a candle.”

At the conclusion of “Hocus Pocus” there were indications the witches could possibly return again. Recog nizing a potential cash cow, 29 years later, Disney has made a live-action comedy sequel, now streaming on Disney Plus.

Once again another virgin has been tricked into lighting the Black Flame Candle that returns the Sanderson sis ters from the dead to seek revenge. Not coincidentally, it’s up to three highschool students to stop the nefarious witches from wreaking more havoc on Salem before dawn on Halloween.

Since the plot is a virtual carbon copy of its 1993 predecessor, “Hocus Pocus 2” could be considered an unimagina tive, repackaged remake.

The only original component is the backstory of how the teen-age Win ifred Sanderson was banished from Salem by Reverend Traske (Tony Hale, “Veep”) after defying the church for re fusing to marry old, ugly John Pritch ett. With her two sisters, they escape to the forbidden forest where they meet the woodland Mother Witch (Hannah Waddington, “Ted Lasso”) who gives Winifred her magic book of spells as a 16th-birthday gift and teaches them

how to be independent.

This is where “Hocus Pocus” begins to go awry. In the 1993 version, it’s the devil who bequeaths Winifred that same book. Coming off the late 1980s/ early ’90s satanic cult panic hoax of witches harming and abusing young children, it was easy to cast the Sand erson sisters as evil.

Today, the three adolescents in “Hocus Pocus” use their natural girl power to combat malevolent magic. We’re given sermonettes against bul lying and bigotry and the virtues of sappy feel-good sisterhood. What there is of a plot includes the Sand erson’s vengeance against the town’s mayor (Hale again), a distant de scendant of the minister who once condemned them. Yet by de-fanging the sisters’ power-hungry villainy and reframing them as misunderstood, the over-the-top fun of witches as baddies strips the film of 1993’s sassy,

Baby Please’ pleases

swers him. Meanwhile, Arthur’s eyes do all the talking as he and Teddy (smoldering Karl Glusman), the “Brando type” gang member, cruise up a sexual storm.

monstrous charm, not to mention clever dialogue.

The movie’s most amusing scene oc curs in a local Walgreens (in a shame less branding plug) where the sisters eat various cosmetic lotions thinking they are potions.

The debt to queer championing of the film is repaid in a hilarious spoof where former “RuPaul Drag Race” stars play the Sanderson sisters in a costume contest and beat the au thentic ones. One can be thankful for the comedic timing and charisma of Midler/Parker/Najimy, despite new bad jokes or repeating stale old ones. What little magic remains is due to the hijinks of this diva trio.

It’s likely audiences who loved

“Hocus Pocus” will watch this listless sequel anyway, though it is doubtful they will view it every year like its pre cursor. There is even talk of a Broad way musical adaptation of the original film in the works.

Yes, we realize this is only a goofy escapist culture clash teen-comedy capitalizing on the holiday, but dared we hope for a movie that didn’t regur gitate the same story? Still, if it makes your Halloween celebration more festive then all power to you. Happy Samhain, but like those contemporary teen witches, you’ve been warned.t

Read the full review on www.ebar.com

by Gregg Shapiro

With an opening that looks like what “West Side Story” might resemble had it been directed by John Waters, Amanda Kramer’s campy and thought-provoking, “Please Baby Please” (Music Box Films) is a sight to behold. Beginning with the loosely cho reographed title sequence featuring the Young Gents, a gang of leather-jacketclad greasers, roaming the alleys and

streets of New York itching for a fight, the mood is as light as it is heavy, man.

Newlywed beatniks Suze (Andrea Riseborough, with teased hair and outrageous eyeliner) and precious, clarinet-playing Arthur (Harry Mel ling) witness the Young Gents brutal ly murder a couple near the entrance to their apartment building. Stunned into silence, Suze is the first to speak when the gang leader asks what their apartment number is, and she an

At a gathering in Suze and Arthur’s apartment with friends Ida (Alisa Tor res), Les (Yedoye Travis), and Baker (Marquis Rodriguez), reveals that Ar thur’s “had his cage rattled,” and Suze is equally fearful of the “hustlers” and “lunatics” who know where they live. After the guests leave, Arthur wanders off to The Blue Angel, while Suze meets Maureen (Demi Moore), her glamor ous, leopard-print adorned neighbor in apartment 10F. A self-described “slum starlet,” Maureen makes it clear she’s “a wife, but no wifey.” She’s in trouble and on her way to Europe, so she enlists Suze to feed her “fussy Burmese cat” Taf feta while she’s away. Suze agrees, partly because she’s fascinated with Maureen’s array of “high-ticket” appliances.

In the meantime, Arthur and Teddy have a moment in the men’s room at The Blue Angel. Same-sex eroticism and attraction is a recurring theme throughout. This leads to the charac ters having philosophical discussions about standards of masculinity, gender identity, queerness, and ultimately “liv ing on a dying planet with impossible obstacles.” The concepts are handled with humor, but with an undertone of seriousness that is sure to give viewers something to think about later.

A smattering of musical and dance numbers (including one with an iron that you have to see to believe), candycolored lighting, many more mur ders, a drag queen singing in a phone booth, a poetry reading, and a raid in a gay porno theater all combine to form a kitschy homage to a simpler, although no less difficult time.

Kramer gets solid performances out of her cast, especially Risebor ough, Melling, Glusman, and Moore. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Mary Lynn Rajskub play old-school butch Lois complete with a men’s suit and slicked-back hair. Rating: Bt

Kathy Najimy, Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker in ‘Hocus Pocus 2’

Andrea Riseborough and cast members in ‘Please Baby Please’

Ultra Naté’s new

by Gregg Shapiro

Every time house and dance music legend Ultra Naté releases a new album it’s a cause for celebration. Her latest, simply titled “Ultra” (Peace Bis cuit), is no exception. Maintaining the house and club vibe we’ve come to as sociate with her, Ultra Naté unfurls a set of irresistible bangers that are sure to have even the most determined wallflowers heading for the dance floor.

More than 30 years into her career, Ultra Naté continues to find ways to speak to us, moving us both physically and emotionally. And her apprecia tion for her LGBTQ fans goes without saying, but it’s nice to hear what she has to say about us nevertheless.

Gregg Shapiro: From the early days of your recording career, you have been a presence in the dance music scene. Who do you con sider to be some of your strongest influences from that world?

Ultra Naté: Oh, wow, there are so many. From my earliest days in the dance music scene, I would say the influences were people like Jody Wat ley and Madonna. I think there were some underground artists that were very influential that I may not even

have known because I kind of ac cidentally fell into the music busi ness.

I was listening to really danceable R&B, as well as the early sounds of house music. Voices like Jomanda and Ten City; those kinds of groups were very influential and what I was dancing to in the clubs. What I was hearing on the radio was Jody Wat ley and Madonna, dance artists like that. I was also very influenced by Chaka (Khan) and Tina (Turner) and Cher; all the women with oneword names [big laugh].

“Miracle,” on “Ultra,” made me think of your popular hit “Free” in that it’s a song with an uplifting message. How im portant is it for you to include a song such as this in your rep ertoire?

It’s extremely important. It’s the center of who I am and how I think. How I live my life. I’m very clear about the things that are not working, that are torturous, that are hurtful, that are detracting from my humanity or hu manity at large.

My own personal mantra is to find the good in all things; to look for, where is the growth in this? What am I pushing past at this moment? What

Stephane Degout

by Tim Pfaff

Before he reached the career peak he now occupies, French baritone Stephane Degout was given to posting the delicious local cuisine he cooked at home. I hope it wasn’t that I called it food porn –which I meant as high praise– that he’s all but stopped his cu linary display.

specialties now are major Baroque roles and liturgical mu sic, French opera and song, and role creation, such as the central role of Edward II in George Benjamin’s “Les sons in Love and Violence.” In any repertoire, he marries a rich, resonant, supremely focused baritone with just enough perfume to identify it as French but never enough to asphyxi ate. Then there’s his piercing intelli gence, worn lightly but often deployed with a touch of danger. Being easy on the eyes and with a killer smile hasn’t upset his fortunes, either.

His latest recording, “Mein Traum,” with Raphael Pichon’s ensemble “Pyg malion,” is a concept album with a brain and a mission that won’t settle for a title like “Passion” or “Souvenirs.” Its subject is interruptions and other breaks in the “natural” order, suggesting attempts at the skirting of death itself.

The Schubert numbers include rarely heard selections from the ora torio “Lazarus” and the opera “Alfonso und Estrella” and some of the larger songs in their orchestral versions or transcriptions. Other orchestrated Schubert songs (one by Liszt) are pa tently dramatic, approaching the op eratic at time, and fertile ground for Degout’s artistry at its most trenchant.

The idea of the “interrupted” is pur sued at depth in Pichon’s searching account of Schubert’s so-called “Un finished” Symphony, passages of it at a pianissimo that verges on inaudibil ity. The two movements are themselves interrupted by an atmospheric except

classic) grooves

it’s the 25th anniversary of the re lease of “Free.” The song is still so resonant and extremely universal. I feel like the trajectory it’s on is still growing and evolving, still affect ing generations. There are so many crazy things going on around us that make it really important, still to this day.

ing in this industry and potentially not. Through hit records, it’s easy to sustain a career. But it’s the times when you’re in the lull or in between those periods, those that are loyal to this sound and this genre, this scene, this movement, that’s what has sustained my career.

is the next level of vibration that I’m working to get to? Because if things are this difficult in this moment, then I must be about the ascend to some thing amazing.

Speaking of ‘Free,’ “Ultra” clos es with a new version of the song. Why did you want to revisit that track?

I thought it was important because

This album is self-titled and en compasses for me, who I am as an artist, but also my story as someone from a marginalized community; ticking all the boxes of being Black, being a woman, being older, being a veteran in this. I’m not a kid any more. It ticks all the boxes of how it could all go wrong and be derailed and be over and been over for a long time. But I’m still here and I’m still doing it on my own terms. All of that is incorporated in this story of what this “Ultra” album is about, and “Free” is a very important piece in that story.

Since the beginning of disco to the present day, the LGBTQ com munity has been one of the big gest supporters of the genre, and in many ways kept it alive over the years. What does your gay fan base mean to you?

Oh, the difference between still be

My career started in the LGBTQ community, in the underground house community, which is a mixed community. Even on a professional level, with people around me that work behind the scenes, in so many facets of my career, have been a part of my story and have brought their art and their vision to my story for so many years in so many different ways.

They gave me the footing and the grace to evolve as an artist. I feel like that’s something a lot of artists don’t have the luxury of; having a commu nity that has grown up with them that was also learning and growing and de veloping. So, we gave each other that license. I feel honored to be a part of this community in that way, to have my art supported in that way.t

Read the full video, with several music videos, on www.ebar.com

www.ultranate.com

from Weber’s “Oberon.” All the mu sicians are at their most expressive and involving in the selections from Schumann’s “Scenes from Faust,” in which Degout proposes some haunting pianissimi of his own.

Degout recordings are rarely of the baritone alone. He participates in an equally rare duet on Devie ilhe’s rightly praised Bach-Handel CD. He and Devielhe both con tribute to the new recording of Bach’s “Saint-Matthew Passion” that just won the Gramophone Choral Award. Degout sings the role of Je sus arrestingly, keenly focused on the drama, and is solo bass in one of the greatest Bach arias, “Mache dich, mein Herze rein.”

The recording as a whole is consummately game-changing, but Degout’s fervid, heart-rending “Mache dich” sits comfortably at the summit of all recorded perfor mances.

In Degout’s recording of Ravel or chestral songs with Francois-Xavier’s Les Siecles (Harmoni Mundi), atten tion favored the revelatory perfor mances of the two piano concertos, with Cedric Tiberghien playing a Pleyel piano. But the songs are no less vivid, and Degout is an ideal exponent of the character Ravel evokes in “Don

Quichotte a Dulcinee.”

“Das Lied von der Erde,” Degout’s with tenor Kevin Amiel may take you as far out of your comfort zone as any. Schoenberg’s orchestration, itself unfinished and completed by Rainer Riehn, gives near equal weight to 13 instruments, including piano, and the result is often jarring –to the point of seeming to trivialize the work at times.

That said, it’s colorful in a truly Mah

lerian sense, and it wins you over to the extent you let it. Degout sings with greater interiority than Amiel –until the concluding “Der Abschied,” among the most cherished move ments in all of Mahler. There he’s more stentorial than transcendent, but, interestingly for a gay singer, particularly keen on the lines about the sad separation of friends.

If it does nothing else, it commu nicates Degout’s penchant for being adventurous, experimental, and unflaggingly interesting.t

Read the full review on www.ebar.com

‘Mein Traum,’ ‘Pygmalion’ un der Raphael Pichon, Harmonia Mundi CD $19.98

‘Ravel Orchestral Songs (with the two piano concertos),’ ‘Les Siecles’ under Francois-Xavier Roth, Harmonia Mundi CD $19.98

Bach, ‘Matthäus-Passion,’ ‘Pygmalion’ under Raphael Pi chon, Harmonic Mundi CD $29.98

Mahler, ‘Das Lied von der Erde’ (Schoenberg chamber version), ‘Le Balcon’ under Maxime Pascal, b-records CD, $18.99

Baritone Stephane Degout

Photo by Dot