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Trans seniors share stories
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Vol. 44 • No. 17 • April 24-30, 2014
Critics rip Prop 8 book
O’Connor leaving EQCA
analysis by Lisa Keen
T
o say there’s been a flurry of discussion around the release Tuesday of a new book on the legal case that challenged Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, would be an understatement. Jo Becker The book, Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality, by New York Times reporter Jo Becker, has been thoroughly pilloried by many plugged-in LGBT activists and journalists this week, both publicly and privately. While a few have attempted to cut Becker some slack for documenting some behind-thescenes litigation and political strategies, most fault her for an approach that seems hell-bent on making Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin and high-profile conservative attorney Theodore Olson into the white horse heroes of an upcoming Hollywood docu-drama about How the Marriage Equality Movement was Won. Hollywood movies do have a tendency to skew the historical record for audiences that have not been paying attention to the real world events; and, if it does come to the silver screen, Forcing the Spring will carry an impressive credential – that it was based on a book by a “Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist” (even though Becker co-authored the entry that won in 2008). The intense negative reaction from the LGBT community to Becker’s book indicates the prospect that the marriage equality movement’s real history will be lost is very troubling to many LGBT people who have watched and been part of that movement. It did not begin with the Griffin-Olson lawsuit in 2009, but with individual couples as early as the 1970s and with veteran civil rights legal activists beginning in Hawaii in the 1990s. Conservative gay commentator Andrew Sullivan led the assault on Becker’s book. In an April 16 blog entry for his Daily Dish, Sullivan berated Becker for suggesting Griffin is on par with legendary black civil rights activist Rosa Parks. He dismissed the book as riddled with “jaw-dropping distortion,” such as Becker’s claim that the marriage equality movement “for years had largely languished in obscurity.” Sullivan’s assault was joined quickly by an impressive string of critiques: writer-activist Dan Savage (“a bullshit ‘history’ of the movement for marriage equality”), former New York Times columnist Frank Rich (“For a journalist to claim that marriage equality revolution began in 2008 is as absurd as saying civil rights struggle began with Obama”), and White House strategist Jim Messina. Becker offered a defense against the criticism, explaining to Politico.com that she See page 10 >>
by Seth Hemmelgarn
J
Twerking to victory T
Rick Gerharter
werk It Jesus was the winner of the Hunky Jesus contest at the San Francisco Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’s 35th annual Easter Celebration that took place Sunday, April 20 in Golden Gate Park. Warm weather and several
As health falters, seniors face stark choices
by Matthew S. Bajko
H
aving been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, Bernard Mayes was confronted with a stark choice. Should the fiercely independent gay man move into a senior assisted living facility? Or was it feasible to hire caregivers so he could remain in his home in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood? At the time, he was living with a younger gay male couple he helped introduce while living on the East Coast and later presided over their wedding. “You deteriorate until you become incompetent. My friends and I decided I should be in permanent care,” said Mayes, 84. “I couldn’t go it alone.” One of his former housemates, Matthew Chayt, recalled, “It was a process of several years where we all sort of struggled with what was the right thing to do.” Chayt, 37, first met Mayes when he enrolled at the University of Virginia in 1995 and was assigned Mayes as his faculty adviser. At the time, Mayes chaired the Communications Department at the school, where he was first hired in 1984 to teach English. Years later, while both were living in Washington, D.C., Chayt attended a party Mayes cohosted with his friend, Will Scott. Chayt and Scott ended up falling in love, and when Scott, an Episcopal priest, was hired to work at Grace Cathedral, they convinced Mayes to move west with them.
SAN FRANCISCO BOTANICAL GARDEN SOCIETY 47th ANNUAL
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activities, including the annual 4/20 marijuana celebration, saw a crowded park; the Sisters held their Easter event there due to renovations under way at Dolores Park. For more photos of the Sisters’ party, see the Shooting Stars page in BARtab.
ohn O’Connor is set to leave Equality California a year and a half after he became the statewide LGBT lobbying Rick Gerharter group’s executive director, the organization said in a surprise John O’Connor announcement Tuesday. EQCA board member Rick Zbur, a senior partner with the law firm of Latham and Watkins, will replace O’Connor, who will leave in July. Zbur will begin leading EQCA full time September 1. Courtesy EQCA In an interview, O’Connor, 43, cited personal reasons for Rick Zbur his departure. “Jobs like these, and this job in particular, are exhausting,” said O’Connor, who among other previous posts was the founding director of the California Hall of Fame. “They take me all over the state constantly, with huge amounts of responsibility, so there are pieces of See page 8 >>
SFBotanicalGarden.org
Matthew Chayt, left, and his husband, Will Scott, visited with their longtime friend, Bernard Mayes, near his home in a retirement community in the Marina district. Jane Philomen Cleland
Mayes had lived in San Francisco once before. Shortly after arriving in the U.S. from Britain in the late 1950s, Mayes, an ordained Anglican priest, was hired by the Diocese of California to oversee a parish near the city. He founded San Francisco Suicide Prevention, and later, having worked for the BBC as a journalist, he founded KQED-FM and served as the executive vice president of KQED-TV in San Francisco. He would go on to be a co-
founder and the first working chairman of NPR prior to his academic career. In an interview last fall with the Bay Area Reporter, Mayes acknowledged that he had never planned out his golden years or contemplated being unable to live on his own until later in life. “It is something we hold off for ourselves See page 8 >>
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