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Trigger owner paying off fines
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SFGH foundation has 'Hearts'
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SF Ballet's 'Onegin'
The
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Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971
Vol. 41 • No. 04 • February 2-8, 2012
One year later, Lyon-Martin still open
SFPD likely to O promote gays
by Seth Hemmelgarn
by Seth Hemmelgarn
D
espite being known for decades as a haven for gay men, San Francisco doesn’t have any out gay men ranking above sergeant on its police force. But Police Chief Greg Suhr said recently that would change “by the end of the year.” In an interview last week at the Bay Area Reporter’s Rick Gerharter offices, Suhr said that he’s “very proud” Police Chief that Sergeant Peter Greg Suhr Thoshinsky, 52, is expected to be promoted soon to lieutenant. Asked about what being an out gay male lieutenant in the department meant to him, Thoshinsky said he’d hope his fellow officers “would see sexuality as independent of being a good cop, and that being a man and being brave and honest are independent of your sexuality.” Thoshinsky, who’s been with the San Francisco Police Department for 30 years and came out in 2008, said the agency’s “extremely accepting.” Thoshinsky isn’t the only person in the SFPD likely to get promoted to lieutenant. Suhr said that Sergeant Chuck Limbert, the longtime LGBT liaison at Mission Station, is in the top 40 of candidates. Suhr, himself a 30-year veteran of the SFPD, has noted that beginning in the 1980s the force was decimated by AIDS, and many gay men didn’t live to see being promoted to higher ranks. In the next three years, however, there likely will be significant departures due to retirements, the chief said. Besides filling the personnel gaps, Suhr also faces a number of other tasks, including ensuring safety at Pink Saturday this June – which will mark two years since a man was killed there – and cracking down on robberies, among other issues. But one of the looming issues is staffing. The city has 2,000 police officers, but “We’re going to have in the neighborhood of 350 officers leave in the next three years,” Suhr said. “It’s not lost on anybody right now that we need cops,” he said. See page 20 >>
ne year ago, in late January 2011, Lyon-Martin Health Services’ board of directors shocked the city when it announced the clinic was more than $500,000 in debt and would close within days. The board had neither established a transition plan nor informed city health officials, and the San Francisco agency’s closure would have meant the abandonment of about 2,500 patients. Community supporters quickly rallied to save the clinic, and in the months following the near-collapse, fundraising efforts brought in $600,722. One year later, Lyon-Martin is still heavily in debt, and its survival isn’t guaranteed, but there have been some improvements in the financial situation, and officials appear fairly confident about its future. The clinic, at 1748 Market Street, serves women and transgender people, regardless of their ability to pay. The agency, which has a tentative budget of $2.4 million, is named after pioneering lesbians Phyllis Lyon, and her wife, the late Del Martin, who died in August 2008. “The clinic continues to be in demand and we continue to provide excellent services,” Marj Plumb, Lyon-Martin’s board chair, said in a recent interview. “We believe the community needs and wants the clinic to stay alive, and we’re thrilled we’ve had the last 12 months,
Jane Philomen Cleland
Lyon-Martin interim Executive Director Dr. Dawn Harbatkin and board chair Marj Plumb say the agency has improved its financial situation since it nearly closed a year ago, although much work remains.
thanks to the community,” she said. Plumb was once Lyon-Martin’s executive director and returned as board chair last April. No one who was on the board in January 2011 remains. Asked whether there’s still a danger of the clinic closing, Plumb said it’s “a complicated question.” She said they’re going to negotiate
with the people to whom they owe money to give the clinic another year. Dr. Dawn Harbatkin, Lyon-Martin’s interim executive director and medical director, said the near-meltdown last year “has made us more rigorous in the way that we monitor See page 21 >>
Report: Black gays need more than marriage equality by Michael K. Lavers
A
new report from the Center for American Progress suggests that marriage equality alone cannot address systemic inequalities among black gay and transgender people. The report – “Jumping Beyond the Broom: Why Black Gay and Transgender Americans Need More than Marriage Equality” – specifically examines socioeconomic, educational, and health disparities among these populations. Recent statistics paint a sobering picture. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that 34 percent of black trans people have an annual income of less than $10,000. Black LGBT parents have children at twice the rate as white LGBT adults, but they are twice as likely to live in poverty. Only 35 percent of black lesbians had mammograms over the Courtesy Christina DiPasquale last year, compared to 62 percent of Aisha Moodie-Mills of the Center for American Progress discussed white lesbians. the center’s recent report on black gay and transgender people. The Centers for Disease Control
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and Prevention indicate that new HIV infection rates among black men who have sex with men between the ages of 13-29 rose 48 percent between 2006 and 2009. More than 7 percent of black Washingtonians were living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2008, according to statistics from the District of Columbia’s HIV/AIDS Administration. “All of these statistics together show us that we need more than marriage,” said the Center for American Progress’ Aisha Moodie-Mills, who wrote the report, at a forum at the organization’s Washington, D.C., office last month. “We need more than marriage because over the last decade, in spite of the number of gains that we’ve had in the LGBT movement in general and the rights of LGBT people, we haven’t seen very much change in these disparities for black gay and transgender folks. So somehow they’re falling through the cracks and there’s something there that’s missing.” See page 20 >>