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Planning panel OKs Sunset pot dispensary
Vol. 47 • No. 29 • July 20-26, 2017
Lynn Fox, center, emeritus faculty at San Francisco State University’s department of secondary education, was one of the opponents of the Apothecarium’s medical cannabis dispensary in the Sunset.
SJ trans woman describes shooting ex by Seth Hemmelgarn
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by Sari Staver
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he Apothecarium is moving full speed ahead to open a new medical marijuana dispensary in the Sunset, following the July 13 San Francisco Planning Commission vote approving its proposal to renovate a former drug store at 2505 Noriega Street. Despite hundreds of opponents attending the five-hour hearing, including dozens
who held a news conference in front of City Hall, the commissioners voted 5-1 to allow the family-owned Castro-based Apothecarium to begin renovations on the storefront it has leased. Commissioner Rodney Fong was absent. Dennis Richards, a gay man who’s the commission’s vice president, was the lone no vote. “I’m totally pro-Apothecarium and have always supported them,” Richards said in a
phone call with the Bay Area Reporter Monday. “But with legislation expected soon that would call for MCDs [medical cannabis dispensaries] to be first in line to be approved to sell cannabis for adult use, I thought it would be preferable to postpone the vote until the Board of Supervisors considered” the legislation regulating recreational use, approved by Proposition 64 last year. See page 14 >>
Sari Staver
LGBT community fights to be counted by Matthew S. Bajko
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he closet door for many LGBT Americans has been wide open for decades, for coming out as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender no longer engenders the social ostracism it once did. Yet the LGBT community largely remains in the dark when it comes to being visible in government data. Because LGBT people have been ignored in the collection of demographic information, their health issues and other needs are unable to be properly addressed, argue LGBT advocates, health officials, and, increasingly, policymakers. The fight to be counted has been gaining more notice within the LGBT community as it has made strides on other equality issues. In California and San Francisco, officials are aiming to make it routine to be asked sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) questions, as the Bay Area Reporter noted in a story last week about LGBT data collection efforts at the local level and statewide. Across the country there is a greater awareness of the need to include SOGI questions on all manner of surveys, studies, and government forms. “There is a growing movement nationally, and at the state and local levels, to have everyone ask these questions in the health care setting,” said Dr. Tri Do, a gay man who is the chief medical officer at the Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center in San Francisco.
Rick Gerharter
The leadership team of the PRIDE Study, Dr. Juno Obedin-Maliver, left, Mitchell Lunn, Carolyn Hunt, and Micah Lubensky met recently to discuss the project’s progress.
During the decade he spent as a Gay and Lesbian Medical Association board member, Do helped develop guidelines on how to ask, and where to ask, patients SOGI questions. “When I was on the board of GLMA, we developed questions providers could ask about sexual orientation and gender identity, the same questions now being used by a lot of these agencies and health organizations,” said Do, who stepped down from the board last year. In a report it released this spring, the Center for Data Innovation repeated a call it initially made in 2015 for Congress to address the LGBT data gap. A bill currently pending in the House, the LGBT Data Inclusion Act, would require
any federal agency that collects demographic data to include SOGI questions on its surveys and forms, though with Republicans in the majority its chances for passage are slim. “The LGBT data gap is one issue that has gotten more traction and more interest among activists,” said Daniel Castro, the center’s director and lead author of its report. “I think it is a very important example of how policy making in terms of what data the government collects can have significant impact on the public. Most Congress members are not thinking about the important role government can play in solving issues through collecting data.”
he transgender San Jose woman who’s in jail for allegedly shooting her ex-partner in a Costco parking lot said that she did it after years of fear and frustration, and that she hadn’t been trying to kill him. “I shot my husCourtesy Santa Clara band,” said Nori County Sheriff’s office Tejero, 44. “He was Nori Tejero my partner of 24 years, and there were multiple reasons why I shot him.” Mostly, though, “I shot him to let him know he was not going to be the one to put a bullet in my head,” she added. Tejero’s been charged with assault with a firearm in the July 5 incident, which left the victim with a non-life threatening gunshot wound to the leg. In an interview last week at Elmwood Correctional Facility in Milpitas, she said that she’d threatened to leave the victim multiple times, but he’d told her he’d shoot her if she did. Tejero said she finally left, but she eventually returned and shot him at the South San Jose Costco where he worked after he failed to return some of her belongings. The victim told police that Tejero had been upset about his new girlfriend and angry that he wanted her to come get her things, according to court records. The Bay Area Reporter hasn’t been able to reach the victim and isn’t publishing his name. Both Tejero and the victim told police that they hadn’t been married. Tejero, who cried while speaking with the B.A.R., said that after fights they had over the years, when she talked about leaving him, “he told me he would put a bullet in my head if I did that.” She also said, “He didn’t beat me, but there were many instances of rape and sexual assault,” and he was “very degrading” toward her. She didn’t want to discuss details of the rapes, and she said she didn’t tell police about them until after her arrest. Court records say that Tejero told police at the time of her arrest that in 2015, the victim had “pointed a gun at her and told her that he would kill her if she ever left him. This incident was not reported before today.” An officer also reported that Tejero said the victim had been “verbally, emotionally, and mentally abusive toward her.” See page 14 >>
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