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Discharge change lifts burdens for gay vet
Courtesy Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa
Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa, left, and Heather Cox
by Matthew S. Bajko
Bias complaint filed against Miami strip club
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he four-page letter arrived shortly before Christmas last year, eight months after Robert “Bob” Fry had learned that his application to have his other than honorable discharge upgraded Emilio Gonzalez to honorable was Robert “Bob” Fry under review. It had been 55 years since he had been tossed out of the Navy due to his confession that he had engaged in gay sex. The Department of the Navy’s Board for Correction of Naval Records, after reviewing Fry’s application, had granted the gay Santa Rosa resident’s request. For Fry, 85, the decision resulted in his accessing myriad benefits provided by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. “This was quite a relief for me,” Fry told the Bay Area Reporter. “People don’t realize what the military does to you when they throw you out under those circumstances. It just shatters you.” The news boosted Fry’s self-worth after decades of feeling ashamed at being drummed out of the armed services for homosexual conduct, which Fry said did not occur during his enlistment. Due to his treatment by the military, Fry suffered bouts of severe depression throughout the years and turned to alcohol to ease his pain. “When you get a less than honorable discharge, your world ends,” said Fry. “You just go day-to-day; I turned to alcohol.” Emilio Gonzalez, 77, a gay man who received an honorable discharge from the Navy in 1964, befriended Fry earlier this year when he heard him speak at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. “At the time we were in the Navy, there were a lot of witch hunts for gay people,” recalled Gonzalez, who has been assisting Fry in putting together his personal archives to submit to the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project, which features stories from LGBT vets under the title “Serving in Silence.” “You didn’t have to be caught doing anything. Someone could just accuse you and then you were interrogated until you confessed.” Those LGBT veterans not given honorable discharges, noted Gonzalez, were barred from receiving VA benefits and could not apply for civilian jobs with the government. Recently, he met a lesbian who was denied a loan because she had a less than honorable discharge from the Army. “That is the kind of thing we need to erase and needs to be changed,” he said. Fry, who grew up in Hayward, had served in the Navy with distinction during the See page 17 >>
Vol. 45 • No. 39 • September 24-30, 2015
by David-Elijah Nahmod
Ushering in Leather Week
Jane Philomen Cleland
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he annual LeatherWalk, held Sunday, September 20 to kick off Leather Week, was infused with new energy this year, as Folsom Street Events marked its first time producing the event. Trevor Black, Mr. SF Leather 2015, left, and Little Bad Daddy, Ms. SF Leather 2015, helped lead the contingent as it left the Castro and headed to several South of Market bars. Demetri Moshoyannis, executive director of Folsom Street Events, told the Bay Area Reporter that the walk
was “quite positive and upbeat.” He said that Sister Roma, Grace Towers, Roxy-Cotten Candy, Raquela Singer, and Mark Paladini “did a fantastic job keeping everyone entertained.” This year 191 people registered for the walk, raising a total of $16,806, he added. After expenses, 25 percent of the funds will be given to the AIDS and Breast Cancer Emergency Funds. For more on Leather Week and Sunday’s Folsom Street Fair, see BARtab, which starts on page 33.
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San Francisco lesbian couple has filed a complaint against a Miami strip club after they said they were denied entrance because they were not accompanied by a man. Heather Cox and Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa, both 39, were vacationing in Florida when, on August 5, they decided to visit Dean’s Gold for happy hour. Described as “the ultimate gentleman’s club,” Dean’s Gold features female strippers. The couple, who’ve been together since 2002 and married three years ago, said they were shocked and degraded when they were denied entry. See page 17 >>
Lecture renews interest in SF bathhouse closure debate by Matthew S. Bajko
By the spring of 1983, two years after the first cases of what became standing-room-only known as AIDS were reported crowd had piled into the among gay men, community leadGLBT History Museum in ers in San Francisco were publicly the Castro to hear a lecture, equal urging gay men to stop going to parts history lesson and nostalgic the bathhouses and to reduce remembrance, of what led to the their number of sexual partners. death of San Francisco’s famed Their pleas were a counterpoint gay bathhouse culture. to those gay men who questioned Once a thriving segment of the the veracity of health officials’ decity’s gay community, with more termination that AIDS was spread than a dozen bathhouses and sex sexually. clubs operating in the 1970s and “We three gay men are conearly 1980s, the providers of sexual vinced that the AIDS epidemic play spaces became ground zero means that we men must – temin the fight over how to stop the porarily, we hope – change our Rick Gerharter spread of AIDS more than three desexual lifestyles in order to save cades ago. Places with names such Reid Condit, right, asks a question during Buzz Bense’s, seated our lives,” wrote a trio of political as The Bulldog Baths, Ritch Street in rear, presentation “Sex Panic: The History of the San Francisco leaders, Cleve Jones, Ron HuberBathhouse Closures” at the GLBT History Museum. Health Club, and The Caldron. man, and the late Bill Kraus, in “How amazing and wonderan open letter to the community talk titled “Sex Panic: The History of the San ful we have a room packed with published in the May 26, 1983 people who want to know about our history Francisco Bathhouse Closures.” issue of the Bay Area Reporter. “It is a complicated story turned sleek like a and the impact AIDS had on our past lives,” Many men heeded their advice, and at some jaguar so we can navigate it,” said Bense, who said Buzz Bense, a former co-owner of sex club establishments, attendance declined by half, Eros, which continues to operate under new zeroed in on the events that occurred between noted Bense. March and December of 1984. “All these changownership in an upper Market Street building. “By mid-1983 the bathhouse business was es and all the politics happened very quickly in More than 50 people, mainly gay men of See page 10 >> this period of time.” various ages, had come to Bense’s August 13
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is proud to be the exclusive LGBT newspaper sponsor of the 2015 Folsom Street Fair.