June 27, 2013 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter by Bay Area Reporter

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Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971

Vol. 43 • No. 26 • June 27-July 3, 2013

City to embrace Pride by Seth Hemmelgarn

Rick Gerharter

Members of the Kaiser Permanente contingent enjoyed the sun and music as they headed down Market Street at last year’s Pride parade.

t’s been a rough year for organizers of the 43rd annual San Francisco LGBT Pride parade and celebration, but Pride chief Earl Plante still sounds enthusiastic about this year’s theme, “Embrace, Encourage, Empower.” Plante, CEO of the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee, said that to him, the theme means, “embracing all aspects of our community” and “diversity at all levels.” It also invokes “empowering the broader global LGBT movement.” “San Francisco Pride is a thought leader ... it has been since its inception,” Plante said. This year’s Pride festivities begin Saturday with the festival in Civic Center, from noon to 6 p.m. Sunday, the celebration in Civic Center runs from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. The parade kicks off at 10:30 a.m. at Market and Beale streets and ends at Market and Eighth streets. The Pride festival is free, but a donation of $5 is suggested. There will be jubilation in the streets as well, following Wednesday’s historic victories at the U.S. Supreme Court. See page 22 >>

Phyllis Lyon is escorted down the Rotunda stairs in San Francisco City Hall by Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, left, and Mayor Ed Lee.

Court victories!

Rick Gerharter

by Matthew S. Bajko and Lisa Keen

n a stunning double victory, the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday issued decisions that strike down both a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban. The DOMA decision, a 5-4 split, was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by

the four liberal justices of the court. It strikes DOMA as unconstitutional because it violates the guarantees of equal protection and due process. The DOMA dissent, based largely on matters of standing, was led by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by the court’s three other conservatives. See page 22 >>

Activists to honor Manning at SF parade by Cynthia Laird

ay Army private Bradley Manning was stripped of his grand marshal status and is 3,000 miles away in Maryland at his court-martial but supporters will honor him in Sunday’s San Francisco LGBT Pride parade anyway. The Bradley Manning Support Network contingent, which has marched in San Francisco Pride parades for the last two years, is expected to be teeming with activists, probably a couple politicians, and supporters of the WikiLeaks whistle-blower. In a statement released this week, Manning’s local supporters said in essence that they didn’t care that the San Francisco Pride board refused to honor him – Manning will be their grand marshal. Manning, 25, is accused of leaking some 700,000 classified government documents to WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website. He has confessed to some of the charges against him, but is being court-martialed on other charges. The most serious, aiding the enemy, could send him to prison for life. After initially naming Manning as a grand marshal in late April, the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee board reversed itself two days later. Initially Pride board President Lisa Williams, in a statement, said that it was a “mistake” to name Manning a grand marshal. Later, the board came out with a sec-

The Free Bradley Manning contingent, shown here in last year’s parade, is expected to be larger on Sunday. Rick Gerharter

ond statement that said Manning couldn’t be considered for a community grand marshal slot because he is not local. After a contentious community meeting May 31, the Pride board declined to recognize Manning in any way for the Pride celebration. Joey Cain, a former Pride Committee board president and a former parade grand marshal,

was the person who nominated Manning for the honor. He has been by turns, angry, hurt, and disappointed in how the controversy has played out, and the lack of communication and transparency from Pride officials. “There’s a major leadership problem at Pride that needs to be addressed,” Cain said in a recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter.

{ FIRST OF THREE SECTIONS }

To those who say that even though Manning is gay, what he did was not specifically gay-related, Cain has a different perspective. “The reason I nominated Bradley Manning was because the LGBT community needed to know about him and embrace him,” Cain said. “Bradley Manning is a gay man who did See page 6 >>

2 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

<< Pride 2013

t ‘Dykepocalypse’ coming to SF by Heather Cassell

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he Dyke March will take to the streets of San Francisco Saturday, June 29 for its 21st year of marching through the Castro and Mission neighborhoods before a crowd of screaming fans. For the first time in about a decade the Dyke March will be welcomed into Pink Saturday in the Castro with a dedicated stage at Castro and Market streets, said organizers. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence donated the stage. “I love them. They are part of my first experience of Pink Saturday in the Castro,” said Sister Selma Soul, coordinator of Pink Saturday. “We are happy to get them back up there.” Other additions to this year’s march include a bicycle contingent that will follow a motorcycle contingent. “It’s just an envelopment of the community in all of its different aspects,” said Meredith Crawford, a 47-year-old lesbian, who also joined the march’s committee last year, referring to the addition of the bicycle contingent.

Dyke awakening

This year’s theme is “Dykepocalypse: Our Feminist Awakening,” to reinvigorate the meaning of feminism in the 21st century. “It’s just apparent that a lot of young folks are really not familiar with feminism,” said Mo Kalman, a 60-year-old dyke, who is a longtime committee member of the Dyke March. The reality is that women around

CASTRO/ UPPER MARKET COMMUNITY BENEFIT DISTRICT Presents:

Jane Philomen Cleland

Stella waves her rainbow flag while sitting on the shoulders of her mom, Anne E. Williams, at last year’s San Francisco Dyke March.

the world remain oppressed through labor, sex, marriage, and more, Kalman pointed out, and feminism has gotten a bad rap. Part of feminism is standing up against oppression, as the Dyke March committee did when the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee reneged on granting the honor of grand marshal to gay Army private Bradley Manning, who gained fame as a whistle-blower leaking classified government documents to WikiLeaks. Manning is currently in the midst of his court-martial in Maryland, and if convicted of all counts, could face life in prison. The Dyke March organizing committee issued a statement saying that it was in disagreement with the Pride Committee regarding the Manning decision. Elizabeth Lanyon, a 29-year-old lesbian who joined the committee

last year, saw the theme as elevating the “role of women globally.” Crawford agreed. The theme is a way to encourage “people to reclaim their feminism,” she said. “It’s okay to be a strong woman and not be apologetic for it.” Kalman couldn’t be more pleased about the new 10-member volunteer committee. “They energize me and are truly an inspiration,” said Kalman, who decided not to retire as planned last year. The party will begin in Dolores Park at noon with DJs spinning throughout the afternoon until 5 p.m. A contingent of dykes on motorcycles will kick off the march from 18th and Dolores streets at 6 p.m. To volunteer the day of the Dyke March, contact info@thedykemarch.org. For more information, visit http://thedykemarch.org.t

10th Trans March Friday

by Seth Hemmelgarn

AN EXPANDED PROGRAM THIS SUMMER IN THE JANE WARNER PLAZA (CASTRO & MARKET)

Welcome To

Castro Weekends On weekends the Jane Warner Plaza will be “occupied” by successive non-profit organizations representative of and valuable to this Community. Check out the Plaza and see how the Plaza gets transformed.

Summer

SunSets!

Big Entertainment, every weekend, in Jane Warner Plaza. On both weekend days, through the summer months, unique and exciting entertainment will be featured on the Jane Warner Plaza Stage.

What a RUSH!

During the Morning or Evening Rush, talented young soloists will add their own music to the sounds of traffic, honking horns and revving buses in Jane Warner Plaza (mornings) and Harvey Milk Plaza (evenings).

Schedule is growing! CHECK FOR UPDATED SCHEDULE:

www.castrocbd.org castrocbd visitthecastro The

ARTS &CULTURE The

ransgender people and their allies will mark 10 years of marching and celebrations with the 2013 Trans March. The march, which this year is themed “A Decade of Change,” kicks off San Francisco LGBT Pride weekend Friday, June 28, beginning in Dolores Park. Launched in 2004 in response to the mistrial of the murderers of Gwen Araujo, a young trans woman who lived in Newark, California and was killed at a house party in 2002, the Trans March has grown into a recognized event. The day begins at 1 p.m. with the second annual youth and elder brunch. Performances will begin at 3. Entertainment will include Star Amerasu and TuffNStuff. The march commences at about 6:15 and will make its way up to Turk and Taylor streets. The destination marks a key change, and is a result of the event’s popularity. “We’ve outgrown our space at U.N. Plaza,” where the march had previously ended, said Jamie Rafaela Wolfe, co-vice chair of the Trans March’s board, “so this year we’re ending the march at Turk and Taylor.” There, there will be a block party for about an hour. The location is the site of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot, which included transgender women and others who finally became fed up with routine harassment from the police, that sometimes included arrests for female impersonation. The Compton’s riot took place three years before the better-known Stonewall riots in New York City. “It’s amazing how far we’ve come that now the mayor’s coming, and when we march we’re being supported and secured by the police,”

Rick Gerharter

A group of happy marchers participated in last year’s Trans March.

rather than harassed, Wolfe said. “The world is changing, and we are a part of it,” she added. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee is expected to speak at this year’s Trans March, as he has the previous two years. In 2011, Lee was the first sitting San Francisco mayor to speak at the event. This year’s headlining speaker, Kortney Ryan Zieglar, 32, is the CEO and founder of Who We Know, a 10-month fellowship that incubates transgender-led start-up enterprises. “I plan to speak about using the welcoming space of the Trans March as a celebration of visibility, of strength and of inspiration. I hope that people will walk away feeling empowered with who they are,” Zieglar, who lives in Oakland, said in a Facebook message. The first march drew “a few hundred people,” according to the Trans March website, and this year, organizers are expecting about 5,000 people to gather in the park. Wolfe said organizers “aspire to

have a substance-free event,” with no drugs or alcohol. “Everyone is welcome, trans and allies,” Wolfe said. “It’s a familyfriendly event. It’s amazing fun.” Also this year, Trans March organizers and others are planning an inaugural youth after-party. The party, intended for people 14-24, starts at about 7 at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market Street. After the march and block party, there will be an after-party for adults at El Rio, 3158 Mission Street, benefiting Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project. Doors open at 8. Suggested donations at the El Rio party are $5-$25 but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Wolfe said while organizers “appreciate donations,” there’s no admission fee to the park rally and march. For the march, trolley service will be available for seniors and people with disabilities. To sign up for the trolley, visit http://www.transmarch.org.t

<< Open Forum

4 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Volume 43, Number 26 June 27-July 3, 2013 www.ebar.com PUBLISHER Thomas E. Horn Bob Ross (Founder, 1971 – 2003) NEWS EDITOR Cynthia Laird ARTS EDITOR Roberto Friedman ASSISTANT EDITORS Matthew S. Bajko Seth Hemmelgarn Jim Provenzano CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dan Aiello • Tavo Amador • Erin Blackwell Roger Brigham • Scott Brogan Victoria A. Brownworth • Philip Campbell Heather Cassell • Chuck Colbert Richard Dodds • David Duran Raymond Flournoy • David Guarino Peter Hernandez • Liz Highleyman Brandon Judell • John F. Karr Matthew Kennedy • David Lamble Michael McDonagh • David-Elijah Nahmod Elliot Owen• Paul Parish • James Patterson Lois Pearlman • Tim Pfaff • Jim Piechota Bob Roehr • Philip Ruth • Donna Sachet Adam Sandel • Jason Serinus • Gregg Shapiro Gwendolyn Smith • Ed Walsh • Sura Wood ART DIRECTION T. Scott King ONLINE PRODUCTION Jay Cribas PHOTOGRAPHERS Danny Buskirk Jane Philomen Cleland Marc Geller Rick Gerharter Lydia Gonzales Rudy K. Lawidjaja Steven Underhill Bill Wilson ILLUSTRATORS & CARTOONISTS Paul Berge Christine Smith GENERAL MANAGER Michael M. Yamashita DISPLAY ADVERTISING Colleen Small Scott Wazlowski NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Rivendell Media – 212.242.6863

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News Editor • news@ebar.com Arts Editor • arts@ebar.com Out & About listings • jim@ebar.com Advertising • scott@ebar.com Letters • letters@ebar.com A division of Benro Enterprises, Inc. © 2013 Published weekly. Bay Area Reporter reserves the right to edit or reject any advertisement which the publisher believes is in poor taste or which advertises illegal items which might result in legal action against Bay Area Reporter. Ads will not be rejected solely on the basis of politics, philosophy, religion, race, age, or sexual orientation. Advertising rates available upon request. Our list of subscribers and advertisers is confidential and is not sold. The sexual orientation of advertisers, photographers, and writers published herein is neither inferred nor implied. We are not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.

Report card for SF Pride

ith the 43rd annual LGBT Pride parade weekend upon us, we must address the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee that oversees the event. The board’s inept handling of the Bradley Manning grand marshal nomination resulted in undermining the heart of what the Pride Committee says it is: a group that anyone can join and in which, presumably, all can participate. But what we’ve seen and reported on since late April is anything but a transparent process. We had a photographer booted from an open board meeting, saw the head of the committee lash out at a speaker at a community meeting who was obviously in some sort of distress, and have been met with silence or non-answers to many of our questions. Here is our report card on SF Pride for 2013.

CEO: Financial management B, community relations, D

Earl Plante relocated last December from New York City to become San Francisco Pride’s chief executive officer (a grandiose title that he’s the first to receive), only six months before the parade. In that time, he continued the effort begun by former executive director Brendan Behan to focus on turning around Pride’s finances – for that he deserves a lot of credit. According to a recent SF Pride press release, Plante also achieved the highest sponsorship income in its 43-year history, including $782,199 in cash donations and $1.6 million in secured inkind donations. For the naysayers who want to do away with corporate sponsors: that’s just unrealistic. It’s a priority for Pride to be a free event, and the only way that is possible is by finding funds to cover the costs for 22 stages, entertainment, portable toilets, clean-up, security, medical services, etc., not to mention paying the contractors who oversee every aspect of the festivities, from managing the parade to lining up the live acts. San Francisco is a world-class city that deserves a free world-class Pride, and that’s what the sponsorships provide. Most of the voluntary gate donations and beverage receipts go back to community groups, a tradition that has enabled Pride to grant nearly $2 million to beneficiaries since 1997. After the disastrous tenure of former executive director Amy Andre, who drastically miscalculated the beverage partner percentages, resulting in many groups not getting paid, it’s a welcome relief that the program is back on track. Plante doesn’t deserve all the credit for this, however, as Behan did an admirable job of stabilizing the Pride Committee during his

two-year stint in the top job. Plante’s performance has been poor when it comes to community relations, as the Manning controversy so aptly demonstrated. (Manning, of course, is the Army private who leaked classified government documents to WikiLeaks. He is viewed as a hero or a traitor, and was given the grand marshal honor that was later rescinded by the board.) Plante exhibited little leadership that we could see, and offered no conciliatory statements to Manning supporters or others who may not have supported Manning but were turned off by the heavy handedness of the Pride organization. As CEO, Plante is the public face of SF Pride. Even the courtesy of making introductions at the May 31 community forum were too much to ask of the board and Plante. Another of Plante’s shortcomings had to do with his handling of this year’s selection of grand marshals, which quite frankly, was the worst we’ve seen in decades. The controversy over Manning divided the community because of Pride’s confusing communications and secret process. Adding to its embarrassment, another of Pride’s grand marshals declined the honor. Stranger still was the fact that not all grand marshals were informed before the media was notified, leading to some surprises when a B.A.R. reporter called seeking comment. That’s just unprofessional and the process is in dire need of an overhaul. We are aware that Plante was out for a week on bereavement leave during the critical first days of the Manning announcement and retraction, but he did little to help improve the situation when he returned to work. There was no visible effort that Plante tried to mend fences or reach out to the community and address people’s concerns. Heck, the community meeting wouldn’t have even happened if San Francisco Supervisor David Campos hadn’t intervened and sent a strongly worded letter requesting Pride hold a public forum. In every way, Plante and the board, particularly President Lisa Williams, mismanaged the Manning situation and only ended up angering people. Their press releases were badly written and were not effective communication. Board members and Plante escalated tension by refusing to answer questions from the public. It’s as if they thought the whole matter would disappear if they just shut up. Well, it didn’t. Plante told us in May that he takes “full responsibility” for the Manning mess. So far, he hasn’t taken any steps to repair or correct the fallout.

SF Pride board’s performance: F

Much of the blame for the Manning fiasco falls to the Pride board, the members of which repeatedly failed to understand the depth of community anger with both how the grand marshal process and how Manning’s nomination were handled. From the board’s hard-line “Discussion of this matter is closed for this year” statement to their nearly complete silence at the community meeting, the time has come for new leadership on the board. Only one board member, treasurer David Currie, can be given more than a failing grade. He at least had the decency to acknowledge that “mistakes were made” in the Manning retraction at the community meeting. “If you don’t like us, replace us,” Currie told the audience at that May 31 meeting. We encourage Pride members to attend the annual general meeting in September and do just that. We’re not sure how many board positions will be open, but some new faces are definitely needed.

Pride membership process: F

What was an easy and hassle-free online membership application process to join SF Pride turned into a clunky snail-mail-in system. Whether it was orchestrated by staff and/or the board, it only made it more difficult for new members to join, thus decreasing their numbers and votes at the annual general meeting in September, where board elections will be held. We’ve heard multiple reports of mishandled membership applications from people who signed up, only later to learn their forms were “never received.” The sudden timing of the change raises suspicions and rumor and is just another example that the organization is out of touch with the community. Why is Pride making it harder to join and become part of what Pride itself calls “a celebration of LGBT culture and liberation”? It won’t be good for SF Pride if, in September, all those people who signed up to be members in May and June are not on the membership list and able to vote. After this year’s parade is over, Pride board and staff should hold another meeting, but instead of just listening like they did did last month, they should engage the community and find consensus on some of these issues. The board should develop an oversight policy for grand marshal selections to correct the process and avoid these mistakes. We want to see Pride flourish. It’s an empowering experience for young and old, gay and straight. But the committee must be more transparent in its dealings with the public and be able to handle criticism. Most of all, it should be able to admit errors and work to improve them.t

I have seen this day by Thomas E. Horn, Publisher

really never thought I’d see the day. I knew I was different as a little boy, well before puberty. When I did become an adolescent, I went to the public library to see what I could learn about “homosexuality.” The nice lady said I would need to go into the stacks; to the pathology section. There was no Internet. There were no gaystraight alliances. I was certain I was the only one. Even when I got to law school at UCLA in the 1960s, I was so ashamed that anyone know what I was that I parked my car blocks away from the gay bar I had seen advertised in the adult section of the Los Angeles Times. The Vietnam War was raging, and I was prime draft age. Back then, when you went for your Selective Service physical, there was a box you could check, “homosexual tendencies,” which would mean automatic disqualification from military service. I was sure it would ruin my career to “check the box,” as we called it. So, instead, I did three years of military service in the Air Force National Guard. And I married a woman. Yesterday, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 opinion authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, ruled that the insidious Defense of Marriage act is unconstitutional as a violation of gay peoples’ equal protection rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution; that it served no legitimate purpose and only has the effect of disparaging and injuring same-sex couples whom states had legitimately sought to protect through their marriage laws. Justice Antonin Scalia, in dissent, called the ruling “jaw dropping.” Frankly, no one’s jaw dropped more than my own. I never thought I would see the day. It wasn’t that long ago that intimate relations

Rick Gerharter

Lieutenant Governor (and former mayor) Gavin Newsom and City Attorney Dennis Herrera savor the Prop 8 victory Wednesday at City Hall.

between persons of the same sex would land you in jail. It wasn’t that long ago that a mayor of San Francisco vetoed a domestic partnership ordinance when the Catholic archbishop cried that such legal recognition and protection of homosexuals from employment and housing discrimination would cause the disintegration of the moral fiber of our city. It wasn’t long ago that gay people were prohibited from serving in the armed forces. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was an awkward attempt to improve the situation, but it only made things worse. And the idea that same-sex couples could marry. What a fantasy, I thought.

I’ll never see the day. At the press conference at San Francisco City Hall following the announcement of the Supreme Court decisions in DOMA and Prop 8, Kate Kendell, head of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, correctly observed that San Francisco is “ground zero” in the fight for LGBT equality. And on this jaw-dropping day, let us give thanks. Let us give thanks to a young mayor, Gavin Newsom, who in 2004 said “enough!” and ordered the San Francisco city clerk to issue marriage licenses to all loving couples, a move decried by many from his own political clan. Let us give thanks to all the elected leaders of our city and state who have been solidly behind us in the struggle. Let us give thanks to a courageous city attorney, Dennis Herrera, who has been in the forefront of the fight from the beginning. As he said at City Hall Wednesday: “You gotta do what is right and be moral.” Herrera acknowledged that the decision upholding the bold and courageous opinion of Federal Judge Vaughn Walker in declaring the hateful Prop 8 unconstitutional will, no doubt, lead to additional litigation. But, as he said, “We are ready. We have the motions drafted. And same-sex marriage will resume in California.” I have had a front row seat for 60plus years to watch LGBT evolution in our society. The struggle for dignity, respect, and equality is far from over. Not everyone is impacted by these decisions. And equality is not the same as acceptance. Yet today, by decree of the highest court in our land, we all stand equal before the law, entitled to the same rights and to equal dignity. I never thought I would see the day. I was wrong. I have seen the day.t

Letters >>

June 27-July 3, 2013 • Bay Area Reporter • 5

Shocked not invited to Pride

When I was struggling with my sexuality in the 1990s, Michelle Shocked was an inspiration. With her short hair and big boots, she seemed like a sympathizer, a sister, or even – hopefully! – a lesbian herself. In 1990, MTV nominated “On the Greener Side” for an award alongside two of my other role models, Madonna and Sinead O’Connor (who won), and it seemed to me the world was changing. I especially loved Shocked’s song “Anchorage,” which I read as a love letter from the college friend you had always had a crush on. The one who went on to lead a conventional life while you became a rock star. It’s a song about pride. Like the old friends in that song, Shocked and I also lost touch. Though I still call myself a fan, I didn’t even know she was playing down the street from me at Yoshi’s in March. Then, just like in “Anchorage,” something broke the long silence. But it wasn’t a heartfelt correspondence, like in the song. It was a hate letter. Shocked’s injury won’t be quickly healed over by a TV interview, a public statement, or a free concert [“Shocked show canned,” June 20]. That’s not how she’ll walk across that burning bridge, to paraphrase her lyrics. She’d be wise to realize it will take something more than a wellplaced media moment. Sorry, Michelle, you’re not invited to our Pride this year. Why don’t you do a little soul-searching and write us a new song instead? I’ll be listening for it. Elliott Kennerson San Francisco

Good news on Pride debt

Congratulations to the SF Pride leaders for retiring their debt totaling almost $300,000, and I hope they maintain good fiscal management in the future [“SF Pride retires debt,” June 20]. After this year’s Pride parade and celebration have concluded, I’d like for Supervisor David Campos, who has been in the lead in recent years criticizing the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee board for various issues, to hold a much-needed hearing at City Hall. A few items should be on the hearing agenda starting with how does SF Pride use the city’s annual $58,000 grant, altering the metal barricades policy along the parade route that prevents observers on the sidewalk from joining a passing contingent, a review how city agencies – the police, health, public works, traffic, et al – perform their duties and finally, the overall economic impact of Pride events for city and private business coffers. Given the recent controversies pertaining to SF Pride such as its fiscal problems, partnerships with nonprofits, and the rescinding of a grand marshal honor for WikiLeaks hero Bradley Manning, a hearing at the Board of Supervisors would allow for additional transparency and serve as the first step in moving beyond the controversies. Michael Petrelis San Francisco

New leadership makes a difference

Bravo to San Francisco Pride, both board and staff, for retiring its total outstanding debts. New leadership and talent can make a difference. Being the former treasurer of SF Pride I had hoped this new team would get the job done. Private sector groups, like the Dorian Fund, came to the rescue of the parade and community not because they were bailing out a mismanaged nonprofit but they saw the importance and meaning of keeping the parade alive. What I am baffled about is all the naysayers’ issues with how “corporate” and “expensive” the parade has gotten. Really? You are complaining about how successful we have been in getting the attention of the corporate world? You are upset that we are now seen as a legitimate and lucrative market for corporate America wanting to do business with us? That we are a viable and affirmed part of the country? That the fact our brothers and sisters decades before us fought so hard for us to be in this very exact spot we are today is somehow bad? If somehow, by having corporations sponsor our events makes us sellouts and will make us forget our heritage and where we came from? That is just plain silly and counterproductive and frankly shows an utter lack of understanding of what the equality fight is about. What are these so-called activists who are so anticorporations fighting for? Businesses that finally treat us as equals and give us money to help educate the world on our plight – if not that then what are they fighting for? To remain an isolated minority with little power? I think a lot of them are hanging on to the days of when we were outcasts and “special” and not widely accepted and I think they like to feel that way. They want us kept in the dark ages. If SF Pride is too corporate then where were these activists when SF Pride needed to raise money? Did they help and reach out to their friends to get individual donations so we did not have to turn to corporate America? Did they volunteer their time to help pull off the event?

I would much rather be in the boat of having one of the top outdoor annual events in San Francisco struggling to figure out how to accommodate the masses that come to celebrate how far we have gotten than not. Bill Hemenger San Francisco

Praising the freedom heroes

A free people living in a free society cannot remain free unless we know what our government is doing secretly in our name. In this sense Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers), Julian Assange (WikiLeaks), Edward Snowden, and Bradley Manning are freedom heroes. Sister Vicious Power Hungry Bitch a.k.a. Ken Bunch Founder of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence San Francisco

In defense of Bradley Manning

What’s with the Bay Area Reporter publishing three letters – all attacking the movement to support Bradley Manning – in last week’s paper? These three individuals do not reflect the overall sentiments of this community, as evidenced by the massive protest against the San Francisco Pride board’s recent decision. As Pride approaches, the B.A.R. published not one letter or article last week in Manning’s defense. Manning was legally elected as a grand marshal, and so many of us in this community do not see being LGBTQ as being separate from the rest of humanity. Thus, we should support Manning as a hero who happens to be gay – and for that we should be proud. Other gay heroes have included Oscar Wilde, Harvey Milk, Walt Whitman, etc., who did not focus only on gay issues but saw our liberation as being connected with the liberation of others on this planet. Manning, among other things, stood up for the senseless murder of innocent civilians by the U.S. military throughout the world. He took a huge risk to do this and now he is paying dearly for that risk. LGBTQ people should care that one of our brothers faces being locked away for the rest of his life for following the dictates of his conscious. Susan Casslan San Francisco

Comparison is apt

Letter-writer Wayne Friday [Mailstrom, June 20] finds it “ridiculous” to compare “leaker” Bradley Manning to “the great Martin Luther King.” But the comparison is anything but ridiculous. Both men publicly opposed war. King identified the U.S. government as the world’s “greatest purveyor of violence,” called its militarism “evil,” and denounced the war in Vietnam. Manning, a U.S. military analyst shocked by the atrocities he viewed in Iraq, released documents and videos like “Collateral Murder,” showing U.S. snipers massacre Iraqi civilians and their rescuers. Both King and Manning were punished. King was locked up in a Birmingham jail, advised in a letter from the FBI to kill himself, and finally assassinated in a conspiracy involving the Memphis police and federal agents. (The court case establishing guilt: King Family v. Jowers and Other Unknown Co-Conspirators, 1999.) Manning, held in military prisons for three years without trial, was kept in solitary confinement, denied a blanket or pillow, stripped naked for inspections, and awakened every five minutes through the night. The two heroes had much in common: opposing a government bent on war, they suffered prison, and in King’s case, death, for their defiance. Jay Lyon San Francisco

No sense in formula retail limits

The formula for success has always stated that the best ratio is keeping the wealthy at 20 percent and rest is 80 percent average Americans. Regarding putting the usage rate of chain stores at 36 percent, all I can say is I remember the Church Street Station days, and when Safeway was a showcase grocery store, unlike today [“Chipotle seeks OK for Castro space,” Political Notebook, June 20]. With all the new higher, out-of-this world apartments and condos going in, the area needs more legal jobs to pay rent, as opposed to illegal ones. One of the reasons Safeway is what it is today and not back then. It would also generate more income for the city in the form of taxes. It would also be like a sentry overlooking Church and Market streets. As to the mom and pops, they are specialized know their service. They may lose a little business, but the job creation and getting Americans back to work is far more important for the overall health and safety of San Francisco. Who knows? Maybe by good example Safeway may once again become a showcase grocery store. It’s just plain good for the economy. Andrew M. Evans San Francisco

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<< Commentary

6 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

A little security by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

or those of us who are American citizens, our Social Security number follows us through life. I got my card as a teenager, prior to hunting up my first above-the-table job. We give it to every employer, we put it on our tax forms, and provide it to military recruiters, banks, college financial aid offices, and more. When you retire or die, that number is still tied to you, providing benefits you paid into the system. Getting a passport in the United States requires a Social Security number. So does getting a driver’s license. The number is at the heart of every paycheck. Even more so, your Social Security number – and all the information the Social Security Administration has on you behind that number – carries over into other government programs, such

as Medicare. With all this in mind, it is important to note a policy change recently enacted by the Social Security Administration. Now a transgender person has four options for updating their Social Security paperwork to reflect a change in gender: they can submit a birth certificate, a passport, a court order or – for the first time – paperwork from a doctor indicating that the bearer has undergone appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition. What is meant by “appropriate” is not defined: it could be surgery, or it could be some other steps. This is easily one of the most significant policy advances for transgender people under the Obama administration, and a 180-degree change from the previous administration. Previously, it was not unheard of for transgender people to go into turmoil in the

Christine Smith

workplace as the Social Security Administration would send so-called gender no match letters to employ-

ers. Supposedly this was to combat fraud, but it definitely led to transgender people being outed at their place of employment, including loss of jobs and workplace harassment. While the change, announced this month, does not mean that there will never be another gender no match letter for a transgender person to deal with, it does mean it’s a whole lot less likely. This is a huge move for the Obama administration, but perhaps not entirely unexpected. This is an administration that has provided protections for transgender people in housing and health care programs, has made it easier for transgender people to get passports, and protected our employment within the federal government. It was under this president that we have seen case law that extends Title VII protections to transgender people, and specific notes that the Affordable Care Act includes trans folks. It is perhaps important to note, too, that changing your gender with the Social Security Administration will not affect benefits. These do not depend on one’s gender. Also important: Social Security gender markers do not matter when it comes to whether or not a person is eligible for marriage-related benefits. As long as one’s marriage is valid under their own state’s law at the time both individuals were wed, then it is valid to Social Security. There is a small chance of it affecting benefits with private health insurance – some insurers have policies that automatically refuse coverage if it seems inconsistent with a gender marker under a person’s plan, but it’s worth noting that most insurers use enrollment form data, not Social Security records.

Manning

From page 1

this,” Cain continued, “and it’s most outrageous that people say, ‘what does this have to do with gay issues?’ It’s absolutely telling the truth about who we are, and I call that coming out. The reason I believe he did what he did was what he went through as a gay person and telling the truth.” Given the months-long controversy, Cain would seem to have achieved at least part of his goal. Bay Area LGBTs likely are more aware of Manning, given that the episode has garnered ongoing media attention, particularly locally. Social media sites have also carried developments and impassioned critiques of the Pride board and Earl Plante, the CEO of the Pride Committee. It’s an open question as to whether the community has embraced Manning. But the story of self-confessed leaker and wanted fugitive

The only major exception to that can happen under cases where one is enrolled in Medicare, or perhaps both Medicaid and SSI programs. All of these are easily trumped by this policy change. This leaves only the armed forces – which in spite of the appeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” does not allow transgender people to serve openly – as the sole holdout continuing to rely on purely arbitrary surgery requirements for records and pension benefits. I certainly expect and hope there are some transgender military veterans and various organizations that are working hard on that change, and it would be a shame to see any agency step back from transgenderrelated work at a time like now, but I digress. With this one change, a transgender person, under the care of their medical practitioner, can easily get their Social Security information updated to reflect their preferred gender. This will mean they won’t need to fear the aforementioned gender no match issue, nor will they likely face any other such issues in the future. As I mentioned, too, Medicare gets their information from the Social Security Administration, meaning that transgender people getting care under Medicare will not be outed at the pharmacy or doctor’s office. This is a policy change that ensures the privacy and security of transgender people, in a world where both privacy and security seem to be in short supply. This will help us to gain and maintain our jobs, help us to gain appropriate driver’s licenses, and ensure that we are properly represented in governmental bureaucracy. There is still a lot of work to be done. As well as the aforementioned issues with the military, we still do not have an Employment Non-Discrimination Act protecting transgender people – or gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. We still have transgender people facing issues with the Transportation Security Agency, too. Beyond the federal government, we still face a patchwork of state and local laws in our daily lives, and the prejudices and misconceptions of our fellow humans. Yet this move is still one of great significance for transgender people, and is yet another big step in seeing American transgender people fully and properly presented legally in this country. This is a great and important development for us all.t Gwen Smith is more social when she is secure. You can find her online at http://www.gwensmith.com.

Edward Snowden, who this month provided media outlets with information about the National Security Agency’s surveillance of Americans’ phone calls, emails, and other information, has certainly drawn parallels to Manning in mainstream coverage, supporters said. “It shines a light on Bradley’s case and I think a lot of people care about transparency,” Michael Thurman, an organizer with the Bradley Manning Support Network, said of the Snowden case. Thurman said that the support group is “disappointed” with the Pride Committee’s actions around Manning this year. He pointed out that some military veterans are also planning to march with the contingent. “I hope we can take back some of the spirit of Pride,” he said. Manning’s supporters noted that one of the prominent people ridSee page 29 >>

Politics>>

June 27-July 3, 2013 • Bay Area Reporter • 9

Takano in SF for Pride by Matthew S. Bajko

Gov. picks acting CA AIDS office chief for post

ith gay Congressman Mark Takano’s high-profile visits to San Francisco this year, one would think the freshman lawmaker represents the city on Capitol Hill. But the Harvard-educated Takano hails from Riverside in southern California. During his campaign last year for the state’s 41st Congressional District seat, Takano, 52, came to town twice to hold relatively low-key fundraising events. According to an analysis of OpenSecrets.org data by MapLight, a nonpartisan research organization that tracks money in politics, Takano raised $55,742 in 2012 from San Francisco donors. Now that he has become the first out member of the Golden State’s congressional delegation, the Democrat has become something of a regular in the city by the bay. He flew into the Bay Area twice in February, once to take part in an annual observance of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Takano’s grandparents and both parents were among those sent to the internment camps. Mayor Ed Lee also feted him during that trip at a Chinatown event. The second time he returned to attend several private fundraisers in San Francisco to bolster his campaign account, and the following night, he was at the annual gala held by Equality California, the statewide LGBT advocacy group. Campaign finance records show Takano has raised $14,000 so far this year from San Francisco donors. Takano, who also has the distinction of being the first LGBT person of color elected to Congress, will be headed back to town this weekend to attend several events. He is the keynote speaker Sunday, June 30, at the annual Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club’s Pride breakfast. Lee has invited Takano to then ride with him in his Pride parade contingent. And the next night, Monday, July 1, Takano will be feted at a fundraiser at the gay-owned Club OMG on Sixth Street in the South of Market neighborhood. “I think it is great that a trailblazer like Mark Takano is willing to come to San Francisco, the capital of thought leadership for the nation’s LGBT community,” gay consultant Julian Chang, who is helping to coordinate the nightclub event, told the Bay Area Reporter via a Facebook message last week while visiting England. “It’s a good match and helps reinforce the need for diversity and inclusion in Congress.” His frequent stopovers in San Francisco are somewhat ironic, considering back in 1994, during Takano’s first attempt at running for Congress, anti-gay mailers were

Courtesy SF Bulls

San Francisco Bulls mascot Rawhide will be marching in Sunday’s Pride parade.

Jane Philomen Cleland

Congressman Mark Takano (DRiverside) will be the keynote speaker at Sunday’s Alice club Pride breakfast.

sent to Riverside County voters that asked if he would be “a congressman for Riverside ... or San Francisco?” During his second congressional bid, Takano turned the homophobic attack on its head and used it to his advantage. As the Political Notebook noted in a profile of Takano last fall, the former educator reminded supporters about the mailers and pledged that, if he were elected, he would be a congressman for both cities. Based on his travel schedule, Takano is making good on his promise. The Alice breakfast begins at 7:45 a.m. at restaurant Yank SingRincon Center, 101 Spear Street at Mission. Tickets cost $95 for the general public, $45 for club members and can be purchased online at http://www.alicebtoklas.org/breakfast/. The event at Club OMG, 43 Sixth Street, will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. Monday night. Tickets cost $100 and can be purchased online at https://secure.actblue.com/page/ takanosf0713.

Sports teams to march

Two Bay Area sports teams plan to march in this year’s Pride parade. The San Francisco Bulls professional minor league hockey team is sending its mascot Rawhide and staffers to the LGBT event for the first time. And Rick Welts, the gay president of the Golden State Warriors basketball team, will also make his first appearance in the parade since being hired in 2011. As noted in March by the Political Notebook, local professional sports teams have been a rare sight at Pride. Until now, none had their own contingent in the parade. Last year, the mayor had invited Welts to march with him but a scheduling conflict left Welts out of town that day. The team did send its community ambassadors and former players Nate Thurmond and Al Attles, who also coached the team to an NBA title win in 1975, to ride in cars as the mayor’s special guests. The invite came after the team announced in May 2012 that it planned to move to the city and construct a new arena on the waterfront. As that plan has met opposition, the Warriors, and Welts in particular, have been courting community support for the project. As for the Bulls, which just ended its inaugural season at the Cow Palace, the team had looked at fielding a float in last year’s parade but found the price cost prohibitive. In its newsletter emailed to fans Monday, June 24 the farm team for the San Jose Sharks invited them to “join the Bulls family as we march in one of the biggest events of the year.”

Sixteen months after being named acting chief of the state Office of AIDS in the California Department of Public Health, Dr. Karen Mark was officially appointed to the position Friday, June 21 by Governor Jerry Brown. Mark, 42, is a registered Democrat and will earn $173,964. The appointment does not require Senate confirmation. The UCSF graduate lives with her partner of 12 years and their three children in Sacramento. The B.A.R.’s request to speak with Mark was not granted by press time. An HIV doctor with stints in San Diego and Seattle, Mark first joined the state AIDS office in 2010 as its chief of the Surveillance, Research, and Evaluation Branch. She was given the top job on an interim basis in October 2011 following the departure of Dr. Michelle Roland, the bisexual cofounder of ACT UP/San Francisco, who resigned in order to work for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Tanzania. AIDS advocates had been critical of the long delay in seeing the AIDS office chief job be permanently filled. They noted that due to her interim status, Mark had been barred from serving on the executive committee of the National State and Territorial AIDS Directors. The national body had recently decided to make an exception to the policy and allow Mark to serve due to the lengthy vacancy. Anne Donnelly, director of health care policy for the San Franciscobased nonprofit Project Inform, said AIDS advocates met with the Brown administration repeatedly to stress how important it was to have a permanent director in place. “We have no idea why it took so long,” she told the B.A.R. last week

following the news of Mark’s appointment. “Personally I think it demonstrates this governor’s lack of commitment to health in general and HIV specifically.” One of the key concerns Mark will face, said Donnelly, is the federal health care reforms set to take place in 2014 and how they will impact HIV care and the prevention delivery system in California. “There are a multitude of areas where the [state AIDS office] can show leadership and be a voice for people with HIV and their providers at the state level and there are also state level program development and implementation issues,” stated Donnelly. While Mark’s office has been taking important steps in those directions, added Donnelly, and is working well with the community, “even more needs to be done given how close we

are to implementation of Medi-Cal expansion and Covered California.” The difficulty that the state AIDS office faces, Donnelly said, is that “it is not staffed, funded, or charged to do these things, which makes it more challenging.”t Got a tip on LGBT politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 861-5019 or e-mail m.bajko@ebar.com.

On the web Online content this week includes the Bay Area Reporter’s online column, Political Notes; the Out in the World column; and articles on Exodus International closing and Netroots Nation. www. ebar.com.

Congratulations California!

Celebrating Pride and 10 Years Benefiting Local Charities & Institutions

h Mike Smit r to c e ir D ash at Executive Martha W a iv D o c 0th and Dis y Fund’s 3 c n e g r e m E the AIDS 2012. ry Gala in a s r e iv n n A

SF Ballet School students. Photo: Erik Tomasson

(Left to right) D onna Sachet, M ayor Ed Lee, Distric t 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, former District 8 Super visor Bevan Dufty, G LBT Historical So ciety Board Co-C hair Amy Suey oshi and District 9 Su pervisor David Campos inaugu rate the openin g of the GLBT Histo ry Museum in 2011.

Since 1984, Lar kin Street Yout h Services has pr ovided homeles s, runaway and at -risk kids betw een the ages of 12 an d 24 with the h elp they need to re build their lives .

Dan Tracer (left) and Eric Esquivel star in New Conservatory Theatre Center’s 2013 production of James Lantz’s “The Bus,” directed by Sara Staley.

Local star chefs receive applause for their contribution to the annual gala for Meals On Wheels San Francisco, which visits homes and delivers meals to seniors’ homes.

Pride 2013 >>

June 27-July 3, 2013 • Bay Area Reporter • 11

Matthew S. Bajko

Drag queen Mutha Chucka reads to children at Books Inc. in the Castro as part of the store’s Pride celebration.

Castro bookstore hosts first drag storytime by Matthew S. Bajko

uinn Baggott had a question for the person set to read to a dozen children at Books Inc. in the Castro. The 5-year-old wanted to know why they were wearing rainbow garb? “It is a special time of year for people like me; we throw a big party. The rainbow flag is related to it, so I decided to wear a rainbow. Plus, it’s fun,” responded the storyteller, drag queen Mutha Chucka. Decked out in rainbow angel wings, a rainbow tie-dye inspired dress, and a rainbow wig that looked plucked from a Dr. Seuss story, Mutha Chucka had come dressed to impress last Saturday for what the Market Street bookstore had billed as “America’s very first drag queen storytime.” “Do you guys like to read?” Mutha Chucka, whose real name is Chuck Gutro, asked her young audience, which replied, “Yeah!!” “Do you like stories?” she next asked, which also received an enthusiastic “Yeah!” reply. The store’s children’s department staff had picked out three books for their drag queen hostess to read. The first two were by Mo Willems, an Emmy-winning former writer and animator for Sesame Street. First up was That is Not a Good Idea, a story about a wolf who lures a duck into the woods. All the while her chicks keep warning her that following the wolf isn’t such a good idea. Next was A Big Guy Took My Ball, about an elephant and whale bonding over their large sizes. The yellow and red polka dot ball in the book looked just like a dress she owns, Mutha Chucka told the kids. When one girl remarked she didn’t think it was nice for the whale to steal the ball from the elephant, Mutha Chucka chimed in, “I don’t think so either.” The final story was And Tango Makes Three, about a male penguin couple given an egg to hatch. The book has garnered international headlines for being banned by several school districts and libraries. Even though several of the children told Mutha Chucka they owned the book, and one girl announced that her mom had read it to her the night before, they enthusiastically asked to hear it be read again. “I love penguins. They never have to worry about what they’re wearing,” said Mutha Chucka. “No polka dots or rainbows; it’s always a tux.” For her turn as a storyteller, Mutha Chucka won rave reviews from the children. “He did wonderful,” said San

Francisco resident Mason Kreis, 10, who will be in fifth grade in the fall. Kreis is himself a budding drag queen and was first introduced to Mutha Chucka a few years ago by his mom, who used to work with Gutro. “My friend Chuck makes dresses for me and we do drag stuff together,” he said. Kim Kreis called the bookstore’s decision to host a drag storytime “wonderful.” “I love it,” she said. “It is so great for the kids to be exposed to the diversity of the community.” Menlo Park resident Amy Baggott, who along with her son brought daughters Jessica, 12, and Roxie, 9, to the reading, has also known Gutro for years and had arranged for him to do a drag performance at her children’s school in the past. “We always try to come to the city for a Pride event,” she explained, “and when we heard Chuck was doing this reading for the first drag storytime we decided to pick this event this year.” Jessica Baggott gave her “Uncle Chuck” two thumbs up when asked what she thought about his storytime performance. Books Inc. also deemed the reading a success and plans to ask Mutha Chucka to come back for a second storytime. “I was nervous no one would show,” said Maggie Tokuda-Hall, director of the company’s children’s department, who was happy with the turnout. “The ratio of kids to grownups was really strong. It was a true children’s event.” “I love this is a part of our job,”

Mark Freeman

Amy Palm, left, and her son, Axel, listen as drag queen Mutha Chucka reads to children during storytime at Books Inc.

added Caitlin Ayer, who oversees school programming for the company, which has several locations around the Bay Area. Asked about returning for another reading, Mutha Chucka told the Bay Area Reporter that she would “absolutely” come back. She joked it was in her interest to read to kids because it was a way to build up her future fan base. Plus, children love drag queens, she said. “To them I am a fairy godmother. They love the wigs, the nails, the jewels,” she said. Ayer and Tokuda-Hall are both fans of drag shows and pitched the idea of hosting a drag storytime to Ken A. White, manager of the Castro Books Inc. Within a week White had lined up Gutro to volunteer. Tokuda-Hall said the concept was a bit of a harder sell to the public, as many people at first thought the store was planning to hold a storytime for drag queens. “We would host that too if folks wanted it,” she said. In late May while attending BookExpo America, the largest annual book convention held in North America, Tokuda-Hall said she also “had to spend a lot of time to explain it to people.” Some were skeptical at first. But once they realized Tokuda-Hall was talking about a bookstore in the heart of San Francisco’s gayborhood, “people said it sounded great,” she said. In February Philadelphia-based drag queen Martha Graham Cracker made headlines after Haddonfield Child Care in New Jersey asked her to read Dr. Seuss titles to its kids but then disinvited her after supervisors at the after-school program deemed her to be inappropriate. The reading ended up taking place in downtown Philadelphia at the historic Christ Church Neighborhood House. The program NewNowNext on Logo last fall posted a video online that featured contestants from the show RuPaul’s Drag Race reading the children’s book Goodnight Moon and followed it up with a second video featuring drag queen Shangela reading Are You My Mother? “Everyone knows that the best bedtime story is one read by a drag queen,” proclaimed the website. The Books Inc. staffers had looked online to see if any other bookseller had invited a drag queen to read to kids but came up empty. Saturday Tokuda-Hall thanked the parents and children at the inaugural event “for joining us for a little bookstore history.”t

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<< Travel

12 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Palm Springs rebounds after recession by Ed Walsh

alm Springs is booming. That seems to be the consensus among many businesses in the city that was hard hit by the recession. Real estate prices have soared and hotel occupancy is up. There is new optimism in the city with construction of a new downtown upscale shopping mall under way. Like most gay resort destinations, Palm Springs is constantly renewing, updating and re-inventing itself. Over the past year, a new gay resort opened, three changed hands, a gay restaurant/ bar closed, and another reopened. The world-famous Fabulous Palm Springs Follies show announced this month that after 23 years, next year will be its last. The city’s newest landmark, the giant Marilyn Monroe sculpture, was scheduled to leave this month but her stay was extended until early September. Later this year, Hotel Zoso in downtown Palm Springs will be converted into a Hard Rock Hotel. The Hard Rock is emblematic of the city’s trend to attracting a younger, hipper crowd. Palm Springs is very much a year-round destination, and if you can travel now during the slower summer season, you can benefit with much lower hotel prices. The area’s Desert Gay Tourism Guild is offering discounts at hotels, bars, restaurants, shopping, tours, and attractions. You need a Splash Pass to get some of the deals and you can get one when you check

into a participating hotel. For more information visit the Summer Splash website at http://www. PalmSpringsSummerSplash.com.

Upcoming events

While San Francisco celebrates Pride this weekend, Palm Springs avoids holding its Pride during the hot summer months. Instead, the desert city’s Pride happens on the first weekend of November. A downtown block party gets under way on Saturday, November 2, with the Pride parade the following day. All the details can be found at http://www.PSPride.org. Palm Springs Leather Pride happens the following weekend, November 7-10. A pass to all events costs $125 and profits benefit community charities. P a l m Springs also does it big for Halloween with an annual block party downtown on Arenas Road, which is home to the biggest concentration of gay bars and shops in the city. A conference of readers and authors of lesbian fiction known as the Left Coast Lesbian conference happens October 9-13. The lesbian resort Casitas Laquita is the host hotel and, if you register there, all the conference events are free. The International Bear Convergence will be held in 2014 in Palm Springs over the Presidents’ Day weekend. If you want to stay at a gay resort that weekend, it would be a good idea to book your room

Ed Walsh

With the large sculpture of Marilyn Monroe in the background, the Villagefest street fair brings people to Palm Canyon Drive in downtown Palm Springs every Thursday night.

now before your favorite hotel is sold out. The biggest gay events happen in the spring, first with Dinah Shore Weekend, which boasts that it is the largest lesbian gathering of its kind in the world. It happens April 2-6. The White Party will be the last weekend of April. It had been tradition for the gay men’s circuit party to happen over the Easter weekend, but organizers decided from now on to hold it the last weekend of April. The later date means warmer weather and even hotter pool parties.

The sights

Some regular visitors to Palm Springs are content to relax by the pool all day but there is much more to do for those who want to be ad-

venturous. The very gay-friendly Desert Adventures offers a wide variety of tours, including the Joshua Tree National Monument, San Andreas Fault, Indian Canyons and other oases in the desert. During the summer months, Desert Adventures offers a full-moon hiking tour. Because of the high temperatures, you will want to avoid hiking in the middle of the day during the summer. But there is an easy alternative. The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway scales the top of Mt. San Jacinto, where you can find an escape from the triple-digit heat. It can be 30-40 degrees cooler at the top. In the winter, you can be sitting by the pool and an hour later be cross-country skiing at the top of Mt. San Jacinto. The Palm Springs Art Museum is a great way to escape the heat in the middle of the day. The museum benefits from the wealthy residents who live in the area and lend the museum art. The museum is poised to be the centerpiece of the city’s new downtown mall. It had been hidden from view from the city’s main drag, Palm Canyon Drive, but the new project will provide an inviting open corridor lined with shops and restaurants where developers hope people will stroll and shop on their way to the museum. Knotts Soak City is Palm Springs’ water park. It is a great way to get cool and get in some exercise and fun. Or if you feel low energy, you can hop in an inner tube and take a lazy float down the stream without having to move a muscle. Villagefest takes over Palm Canyon Drive downtown for a street fair every Thursday night. The Palm Springs Art Museum, just a block from Palm Canyon Drive, is offering free summer movies at 6 p.m. on Thursdays and the mu-

seum is free every Thursday from 4 to 8 p.m., so you can easily combine a stroll through Villagefest and a visit to the museum for a cheap night out. For a unique and very gay workout experience, check out the gay men’s Work Out Gym on North Palm Canyon Drive next to Toucans. Day passes are $12 and coffee and snacks are included. The wellequipped gym is a friendly place to socialize as well as exercise.

Nightlife

Changes to nightlife over the past few months include the closure of the Rainbow Bar and Grill in the East Arenas Road area and the reopening of the Barracks bar in nearby Cathedral City. For the uninitiated, the biggest concentration of gay nightlife in Palm Springs is downtown on East Arenas Road, east of Indian Canyon Drive. That’s where you will find Hunters, StreetBar, Spurline, and Score. Hunters has the biggest gay dance floor in the Palm Springs area. StreetBar is a friendly bar with a lot of local regulars who take advantage of its expansive outdoor patio. Spurline is a video bar and Score is the place for early risers or very late nighters as it opens at 6 a.m. Early birds also save money as Score also has the cheapest drinks in town. The very popular Toucans is on North Palm Canyon Drive, two miles from the East Arenas Road bars. It is famous for its tropical motif and Tuesday night drink specials. You will find Palm Springs’ Levi leather cruise bar, Tool Shed, on the edge of the Warm Sands neighborhood on East Sunny Dunes Road. Fittingly, Gear Leather and Fetish shop is on the same block as See page 14 >>

Ed Walsh

Paris Aguirre shows off the breakfast-flavored vodkas at Score bar, which opens at 6 a.m.

<< Travel

14 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Palm Springs

From page 12

is the expansive gay gift and accessory shop, Q Trading Company. Cathedral City is home to three gay bars, Digs, Studio One 11, and Barracks. Digs is a friendly neighborhood bar famous for its Sunday beer busts, Studio One 11 is a lounge bar featuring live entertainment and karaoke, and Barracks is a leather/bear favorite. With the demise of Delilah’s several years ago, there are no full-time lesbian bars in Palm Springs but Boudoir Entertainment organizes gatherings for women that are held at Georgie’s Alibi in downtown Palm Springs every other Saturday night. For more information visit http://boudoirnightlife.com/. Also, the L Spot Palm Springs website (http://www.lspotpalmsprings. com/) is a good site for overall information on parties for gay women in the Palm Springs area.

Accommodations

Palm Springs is fortunate to have the greatest variety of gay hotel resorts in the world. Most of the more than two-dozen gay resorts are male and clothing optional, but two are lesbian and one of the newest is gay/lesbian mixed and family friendly. The biggest cluster of gay resorts is in the Warm Sands neighborhood, a short walk east of downtown. Another cluster of gay resorts can be found on East San Lorenzo Road, about a half-mile south of Warm Sands. The newest gay resort in town, the Random Haus condominium hotel, is on East San Lorenzo Road and is also one of the most upscale resorts in Palm Springs. The allsuite hotel opened this spring. It is gay/lesbian mixed and is family friendly. Unlike most of the men’s resorts, bathing suits are required. The Triangle Inn is just across the street from Random Haus

Ed Walsh

A gay couple from Pasadena took over the beautiful Century Resort earlier this year, and it features a complimentary cocktail hour.

and is a mid-century modern architectural landmark in the area. The couple who own the hotel, Michael Green and Stephen Boyd, also live on site and it shows in the attention to detail throughout the resort. The resort has nine rooms and suites and a separate detached house with its own pool that is available for rent, which is ideal for groups of friends traveling together. The largest resort in the East San Lorenzo Road area is the luxurious 24-room Santiago Resort. Amenities include not only a complimentary continental breakfast, but a premium boxed deli lunch. The other two gay resorts across the street from the Santiago are Escape Palm Springs and Tortuga del Sol. Both are first rate and have earned a loyal repeat clientele. The Bearfoot Inn opened just six months ago off Indian Canyon Drive near the Canyon Club Hotel on the north end of town. The modern and upscale 11-room resort caters to the bear crowd but everyone is welcome. Its owners estimate that about 80 percent of its customers are bears. It is owned by a gay couple from Toronto. If you are staying somewhere else and want to hang out for the day, day passes are $10. The Warm Sands’ mainstays, Inn Exile and Warm Sands Villas, were sold to a corporation this spring. The company kept the Warm Sands Villas name but changed the name of Inn Exile to La Joya. A manager told the Bay Area Reporter that plans are in the works to extensively remodel the La Joya starting next month. Plans are to put a boutique clothing store where the entrance is now and move the hotel lobby where the old Skivvies restaurant used to be. The manager said both properties will stay gay. A gay couple from Pasadena took over the Century Resort in Warm Sands in March. The 12unit resort was already in good shape but the new owners are busy making it better than ever. Amenities include a continental breakfast with fresh baked goods and French-pressed coffee. A complimentary cocktail hour is also included. The Vista Grande Resort in the heart of Warm Sands gets better every year and is trending to the upscale. The property is three resorts combined into one. The premium Mirage section offers spacious suites and treats guests to a complimentary delivered breakfast and a separate entry and parking area. The Mirage has a huge Jacuzzi, steam room, and a waterfall that cascades into a lagoon. In addition, the 27-unit property offers a dry sauna, two pools, beautifully manicured grounds, and a complimentary continental breakfast. Since buying INNdulge in late 2010, life and business partners

Jon Jackson and Sandy Miller have made the excellent resort even better. They enlarged and modernized the bathrooms and their attention to detail shows in every aspect of the property. The friendly and helpful staff no doubt helps them retain a loyal following as well. The resort has a small gym but offers guests free passes to the gay Work Out Gym on the north side of town. The gym is definitely worth checking out during your visit. The Cathedral City Boys Club, better known by its initials, CCBC, is the largest gay resort in the Palm Springs area and the only gay resort in Cathedral City. It is open to the public for passes 24 hours a day making it one of the cruisiest and sexually charged resorts in the Palm Springs area. The All Worlds Resort in Warm Sands, like the CCBC, offers day passes but night passes are available during the weekends only. The two women’s resorts, Casitas Laquita and Queen of Hearts, are among the finest resorts you will find anywhere in the city. Casitas Laquita has a cool wine cellar and often hosts special events that are open to the public.

Eating out

The gay-owned Trio Restaurant continues to be one of the most popular spots in the city. It is north of downtown in the Uptown Design district. It stays busy even in the slower summer season. Trio’s happy hour brings in locals and tourists alike. Trio is also known for its community spirit and often hosts charity fundraisers. Alicante (formerly the Zini Cafe Med) on Palm Canyon Drive in the heart of downtown is one of Palm Springs’ newest restaurants and it is generating a good buzz. It specializes in Spanish and Mediterranean cuisine. Its official grand opening last month was also an AIDS LifeCycle benefit. Ruben and Ozzy’s Oyster Bar and Grill is less than a year old and is the place to stop if you have a craving for its fish taco specialty. It also serves up some very tasty appetizers and chowders. Wangs in the Desert is another very gay-popular eatery featuring pan Asian cuisine. Its Friday night happy hour is packed even in the slow summer season. Wangs is also well known for its LGBT community fundraising work.t

Correction In the June 20 article, “Pride retires debt,” the accompanying photo caption misspelled the name of San Francisco Chief of Protocol Charlotte Mailliard Shultz. The online version has been corrected.

<< Travel

16 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Courtesy Celebrity Cruises

The Celebrity Solstice class of ships offers many amenities for a fun travel experience.

Cruising just got more luxurious by Cynthia Laird

f you’re looking for a vacation where you don’t need to do a thing – except have fun – a cruise might just be the answer. And for Bay Area residents, cruising just got easier now that there is a terminal in San Francisco. Last month, one of the biggest ships, the Celebrity Solstice, the flagship of the company’s Solstice class, arrived in San Francisco on a wine cruise. While the passengers had disembarked to go to the wine country, Celebrity officials offered a media tour and lunch to show off the luxurious ship that carries 2,850 guests. When our group of about 20 people got onboard, we were offered a glass of champagne, which is what D. Scott Clifton, director of sales for Celebrity, said was standard for guests. Then we took a glass elevator up to the 15th deck where, amazingly, a half-acre of live grass was being carefully watered by staff. I could only imagine playing a game of croquet on the Lawn Club at Sea, as it’s called. As is standard on a cruise, meals are included in the cost and the Solstice, Clifton said, has outstanding food preparation that is a “huge” job. Meals are generally tailored to guests, for example, they bring on local seafood in Alaska, he said, and virtually everything is prepared from scratch. The Solstice has 10 dining venues – five specialty, five non-specialty – including the Grand Epernay Dining Room that has a dramatic two-story wine tower that dominates the room. The galley staff offers an enriching range of culinary experiences, including freshly prepared dishes. Specialty dining options, such as the Asian fusion-themed Silk Harvest Restaurant, require reservations and a surcharge. One of my favorite features about the Solstice is that it has an adultsonly solarium that was gorgeous. There are also pools, hot tubs, and the Aqua Spa by Elemis. (Spa appointments are an additional charge, and there are also staterooms on the Aqua Level.) For those days at sea, what Clifton called “Celebrity life activities” are offered, including wine tastings, food tastings, cooking classes, bingo, and more. The ship also has a casino. Then there’s the fitness center, and sunset yoga on the lawn. There’s also a glass show featuring master glassblowers from the Corning Museum of Class to provide an

intimate, one-of-a-kind experience for guests. Onboard entertainment is a big part of the cruising experience, and the shows run the gamut from comedy to acrobatic performances. “We’re trying to find unique experiences for our guests,” Clifton said, adding that Celebrity has a number of special trips such as the wine cruise, which had stops in Santa Barbara and Oregon in addition to San Francisco. Some ships also have craft beers, he noted, though the Solstice did not. These days, you don’t have to take a gay-specific cruise; most mainstream cruise lines offer opportunities for LGBT passengers to meet others and welcome gay travelers. Celebrity Cruises was named “Most Gay-Friendly Cruise Line” in 2012 by the Meet Me Onboard annual Members’ Choice Awards. “Celebrity Cruises has been a wonderful partner with the LGBT community for more than 10 years,” Ron Gulaskey, Celebrity’s director of corporate, incentive, and charter sales, said in a statement. He noted that the company collaborates with the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association Foundation. The president of Atlantis Events, a leader in all-gay vacations, is regularly consulted on facets such as choosing the right entertainment, dining, and service. Onboard, “Friends of Dorothy” events are held on all of Celebrity’s sailings. These are informal, lowkey gatherings for LGBT passengers to meet and mingle. That makes it easy for LGBT travelers to meet new friends who can join them for drinks, dinner, or shore excursions. During the tour, Clifton said that Celebrity welcomes LGBT travelers. For this year’s San Francisco Pride festivities, Celebrity is a presenting sponsor of a T-dance Pride kickoff party Thursday, June 27 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Harlot, 46 Minna in San Francisco. Tickets are $30 and help support HIV/AIDS services. Cruise lines offer a variety of packages designed to fit most budgets. For example, Celebrity has a seven-night trip to Alaska next May for as low as $899 (per person, double occupancy, for an inside stateroom). Prices increase depending on the deck, stateroom size, and view. It’s best to book early, Clifton said, for the widest selection. For more information, visit http://www.celebritycruises.com.t

<< Community News

22 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Court victories

From page 1

The Prop 8 opinion, a 5-4 vote led by Roberts, vacates a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling. It says Yes on 8 defenders of the law lacked standing, under federal rules, to make the appeal. The decision appears to leave intact the district court decision, a much broader ruling. The dissent was a surprise: Kennedy led two conservative justices plus liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor. They said the court should accept the California Supreme Court’s determination that Yes on 8 had standing. Reaction was euphoric from LGBT legal activists and the thousands of supporters of same-sex marriage gathered outside the Supreme Court building and San Francisco City Hall. “It’s nearly perfect. I’m thrilled,” said Mary Bonauto, civil rights project director for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, the group that launched the first successful lawsuit challenging DOMA and secured the first right to marry from a state supreme court. The DOMA decision, said Bonauto, “not only strikes DOMA but makes clear what we’ve been saying all along – that DOMA is discriminatory and that it is an effort by the federal government to deprive same-sex couples of their rights and to demean them.” “We have won the freedom to marry in California,” said Evan Wolfson, head of the national Freedom to Marriage group, on MSNBC right after the decision was released in the Prop 8 case. Wolfson noted that, with the addition of California, at least a third of the nation’s population now lives in a state with marriage equality. Prior to Wednesday, it was at about 18 percent. National Center for Lesbian Rights Executive Director Kate Kendell summed up the feelings of

Rudy K. Lawidjaja

The plaintiff couples in the Prop 8 case walked down the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court with attorney David Boies, center, after Wednesday’s ruling.

many in California’s LGBT community when she shouted out “Fuck you Prop 8” at a celebration of the rulings in San Francisco City Hall. The remark, carried on live national television broadcasts, was a reflection of the personal anguish Kendell has experienced since losing the battle against Prop 8 in 2008. As one of the main leaders of the No on 8 Campaign, Kendell bore the brunt of much of the post-election criticism for the failed effort to block the anti-gay ballot measure. “We have lived too many years with that stigmatizing piece of crap,” said Kendell, who vowed to give any children in the crowd $1 to put in their “bad word jar” for swearing, “but it was worth it to say that.” The fight over Prop 8 began under the historic dome of City Hall back in February 2004, when thenMayor Gavin Newsom ordered city officials to marry same-sex couples despite California’s anti-gay marriage statutes. Criticized by many Democratic leaders for his decision, Newsom never once apologized. Now the state’s lieutenant governor, Newsom

Pride

From page 1

The court, in a pair of 5-4 decisions, overturned a section of the Defense of Marriage Act that had prevented the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. In the second case, the court ruled that proponents of Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, did not have standing to appeal a trial judge’s decision declaring that law unconstitutional. The ruling is likely to see same-sex marriages going forward in California. Another event that could draw more people is the controversy that’s surrounded Army private first class Bradley Manning. The Pride Committee announced in late April that Manning, the whistle-blower who leaked 700,000 classified government documents to WikiLeaks, was to be recognized as a grand marshal this year. However, Pride’s board soon rescinded the honor and officials have bungled the matter several times and

was back at City Hall Wednesday beaming as he proclaimed it “a special day.” City Attorney Dennis Herrera, whose office has led the legal fight to secure marriage equality, recalled those complaints nine years ago that Newsom’s actions were “too fast, too soon, too much,” referring to a statement made by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California). “To all those people who say it was too fast, too soon, well heck, we now have 12 states with marriage equality and California will have it restored again,” Herrera said. Herrera also joked about Newsom’s famous quote he uttered on the same steps inside City Hall after the state Supreme Court decision in 2008 allowing same-sex couples to marry that was later used by the Yes on 8 campaign in its television ads. “I remember five years ago standing on this same podium. This morning I said to Newsom now you can say whether you like it or not,” said Herrera. The first couple to marry was longtime lesbian activists Phyllis See page 25 >>

officials abruptly ended a meeting where Manning was supposed to be discussed. After a community forum May 31, the board declined to honor Manning in any way. Asked about Pride’s mishandling of the Manning ordeal, Plante said, “These sort of situations obviously are always a learning experience,” but the organization is “moving forward in a positive direction. We think we’ve gone out of our way to try to listen and try to dialogue, and we’re comfortable with the decision that was reached, and we’re moving forward.” Another area of concern has been security. With trouble around the Manning affair a possibility, and increased attendance related to marriage, there have also been fears about safety in the aftermath of April’s Boston Marathon bombings, which killed three people and injured scores more. In a statement, Plante said Pride has hired additional security and is working closely with police. However, he said, “SFPD is still in charge of See page 32 >>

<< Community News

24 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Frameline sends LGBT films to CA schools by Matthew S. Bajko

ebar.com

udiences attending the annual San Francisco LGBT film festival often wonder if the films they are seeing will receive wider distribution. The answer, at least for a few films shown at Frameline, is that they will be distributed for free to hundreds of schools throughout California for teachers and LGBT student groups to screen. The program, known as Youth in Motion, launched in 2008 and has released eight DVDs – five of which are compilations of shorter films – that come with curriculum and action guides that provide suggestions for how to teach or discuss the films. “We try to be very mindful and pick films that are representing a lot of different types of stories and balance culture,” explained Alexis Whitham, Frameline’s educational programming and acquisitions manager. “We are trying to talk to teachers and students to see what they want and need.” One of two selections in 2010 was Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, a 2002 film about the out gay black man who was a close confidante of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and helped organize the 1963 civil rights march on Washington, D.C. One of last year’s releases combined two short films under the title of “Telling Our Stories.” It included the documentary Don’t Erase My History, which featured a group of Bay Area youth on a quest to learn about queer history, and the fictional movie Change, about an African-American teenager struggling with being gay on election night in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected as America’s first

Jane Philomen Cleland

Filmmaker Glenne McElhinney

black president and California voters adopted the same-sex marriage ban known as Proposition 8. Among the first four DVDs released five years ago was one titled “Gender Matters” that featured six short films about transgender and gender non-conforming young adults. In a comment posted online about the films, teacher Jan Speller said she had shown several in her junior college prep English classes. “I’m extremely grateful for your program, the films, and the curriculum and action guides, which were particularly helpful in discussing the meaning of gender before viewing,” stated Speller, identified as a gay-straight alliance adviser at El Camino High School in South San Francisco. “Film is a powerful resource in the classroom, and students’ media literacy is more developed and astute than many adults realize. These shorts make a topic that would be tricky to discuss so much more accessible through the narratives and media.” A joint project between Frameline and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, the two organizations are now rolling out the program nationwide. In July a new collection of short films, likely eight total, will be selected for the next Youth in Motion DVD release that will be sent to schools outside of California for the first time. Until now, said Whitham, “We have had trouble figuring out how to do it nationally.” A private funder has stepped up to help pay for the national rollout, and the plan is to send a copy of the DVD to every school with a GSA. “We find that teachers need resources and development. We are trying to create resources and be a clearinghouse that teachers can use,” GSA Network research manager Hilary Burdge said earlier this year at a program about LGBT films in schools hosted by the San Francisco Library. Frameline has received $100,000 in support since the program started in 2008 from individual donors, the Irvine Foundation, and the Bob Ross Foundation. The latter foun-

dation, named for the Bay Area Reporter’s late founding publisher, is a separate legal entity from the newspaper. The filmmakers whose works are chosen waive the typical compensation they would receive for distributing their work. “They are not getting the same amount of money they would get through typical distribution channels,” said Whitham. “They know the purpose of distributing it this way is not going to make money back from their effort. But it will make such an impact on students, that is the motivation.” Jallen Rix, who directed the documentary Lewd and Lascivious about a 1965 police raid of a gay masquerade-themed fundraiser in San Francisco that premiered at Frameline this year, said he would be honored to have his film be selected for the Youth in Motion program. “It would be a great choice,” said Rix, noting that his film showcases how religious leaders worked with LGBT organizations to host the dance. “There are no naked men or cussing, so it would work really well in schools.” Los Angeles-based filmmaker Glenne McElhinney, whose On These Shoulders We Stand documentary recalls the early days of L.A.’s LGBT community and played at Frameline in 2010, also praised the Youth in Motion program. “I think it is wonderful the films are getting into schools and are being shown,” she said. Plus, the DVDs remain in either the school library or with the GSA adviser so incoming students can access them, noted McElhinney, who is part of a safe schools coalition formed in southern California working with local school districts and county boards of education on how to make sure their curriculum is LGBT inclusive. “It is important for students so they don’t feel so isolated,” she said. McElhinney won a $7,000 Cal Humanities grant for a new web series she is calling Tales of California. It is geared to be an online LGBT curriculum resource for teachers teaching 11th grade civil rights history and 12th grade government classes. “It will be a series of short documentaries geared to California classrooms, about 12 to 18 minutes long, and teachers can teach around the media,” she said. Over a five-year period McElhinney envisions posting several hundred short videos online showcasing a variety of LGBT topics. One of the first ones will focus on the history of the rainbow flag and should be uploaded by late 2013 or early 2014. She is negotiating with OutFest, the Los Angeles LGBT film festival, and Frameline to use their archives of LGBT documentaries. The plan See page 25 >>

t <<

Community News>>

Court victories

From page 22

Lyon and Del Martin. The couple was again the first to marry back in June 2008 when the state began marrying same-sex couples prior to Prop 8’s passage. Martin died two months later. Wednesday morning Lyon once again was at City Hall, this time walking arm-in-arm with Newsom and Mayor Ed Lee down the ornate steps in the Rotunda. She was among the many LGBT leaders and city officials gathered in Room 200 glued to a broadcast of NBC News waiting to learn about Prop 8’s fate. Within minutes of the news that Prop 8 had been dismissed, the civic leaders and government officials came out to join the several hundred people gathered inside City Hall watching a live feed of CNN on one side and the SCOTUS blog on the other. “I was very glad of course. We have come a long way,” Lyon told the Bay Area Reporter, adding that she had expected that the court would side with marriage equality proponents. Having launched in 1955 the Daughters of Bilitis, the country’s first lesbian rights organization, Lyon said no one back then could have anticipated this week’s court rulings. Unlike when she was growing up, Lyon said that today’s gen-

June 27-July 3, 2013 • Bay Area Reporter • 25

Rick Gerharter

Sandee Henry, left, and Jennifer Carlin celebrate the Supreme Court’s actions in overturning a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act and dismissing an appeal in the Prop 8 case.

eration of LGBT youth “can know we are just as good as anybody else.” City officials expect same-sex weddings to resume within 25 days. Shortly after the Prop 8 decision was announced, Governor Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris issued a statement saying that the ruling would apply statewide. Brown said he had directed the California Department of Public Health to advise all county clerks and county registrar/recorders they must comply with the decision. The statement noted that same-sex Californians would not be able to marry until the 9th Circuit confirms the

stay of the injunction against Prop 8, which has been in place throughout the appeals process, is lifted. Asked by Brown for legal advice about the decision, Harris’s office concluded that state officials “can and should” instruct county officials that they “must resume issuing marriage licenses to and recording the marriages of same-sex” couples once the decision takes effect. On that first day San Francisco couple Lisa Dazols and Jenni Chang plan to be in line for a marriage license. The two already held a wedding before family and friends in See page 29 >>

Frameline

From page 24

calls for her to work with the filmmakers to cut them down to a shorter format. Content such as nudity and foul language would also need to be edited out before the film clips could be shown in schools. She hopes to finalize the arrangement by the fall. “We are in discussions about collaborating together and contacting filmmakers and cutting some of the existing films to fit into the curriculum guidelines,” said McElhinney. “It is kind of groundbreaking in terms of trying to get the content into schools. We are paving the way for educators across the country.”

Student teachers create the film guides

To create the curriculum guidelines for some of the selected films in its Youth in Motion collection, Frameline has worked with Dave M. Donahue, an associate provost and professor of education at Mills College in Oakland. The gay San Francisco resident teaches graduate students studying to become certified professional teachers. “One of the projects we work on is learning about developing curriculum not only for their classrooms but other people’s classrooms. We want to prepare teachers to be leaders in the profession,” said Donahue. Due to the adoption in 2011 of the state’s FAIR Act, which stands for Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful Education and mandates that textbooks and instructional materials in California public schools include contributions of LGBT Americans, Donahue said there is a growing need for LGBT curriculum in the state. “There is not a lot of stuff out there,” said Donahue, who moderated a discussion about the FAIR Act last weekend as part of Frameline’s programming this year. The need for LGBT teaching tools is likely to grow as more states follow California’s lead. “As it becomes more the norm, more schools will be looking for curriculum like this,” predicted Donahue. Mills students worked on the accompanying materials for the Brother Outsider film and assisted with the Telling Our Stories DVD

Jane Philomen Cleland

Mills College provost and professor Dave M. Donahue

released in 2012. They also have presented their LGBT curriculum work at various teacher conferences around the state, including at annual meetings of the California Council for the Social Studies and the California Association of Teachers of English. Teachers from what is considered to be the state’s more conservative inland areas have been particularly interested in the materials, said Donahue, as they have been grateful to learn about LGBT curriculum that fits into the context of their American history classes. “When we presented the Brother Outsider DVD two years ago in Sacramento, we had a lot of teachers from the Central Valley, like Merced and Modesto, come up to us,” he said. They also respond positively to the fact that the curriculum is written so that it meets the standards issued by the state department of education, said Donahue. “It gives teachers ammunition in terms of feeling supported if they are unsure how supportive school administrators will be in including LGBT curriculum. If we can say this meets state standards, they can’t get ‘in trouble’ for doing it,” he said. San Francisco resident Rene Pena-Govea, 28, who had been to Frameline with her LGBT friends, worked on the curriculum guide for Change prior to completing the Teachers for Tomorrow’s Schools graduate program at Mills. “I thought it was very powerfully made,” said Pena-Govea, who considers herself to be a straight ally. “And I liked the fact it was address-

ing issues of race and sexuality and the ways in which those intersect and maybe affect each other. What it means to be a person of color and a queer person and how that may divide loyalties.” She was hired last year to teach at the June Jordan School for Equity, the smallest public high school in the city located in the Excelsior district next to McLaren Park, and found herself showing the film to her students, one of whom was an out lesbian. Primarily a Spanish teacher, Pena-Govea was also required to teach a combined English class for 11th and 12th graders. Designed to be a college level course, Pena-Govea selected teaching materials based on the theme “Discourses of Race and Culture.” “We looked at how race and gender oppression intersect and at different kinds of identity,” she said. She used the Frameline film in addition to several other films and pieces of literature that had to do with sexual orientation or gender identity and also people of color. “I think I felt fairly confident in our Frameline curriculum. I haven’t seen a movie like Change ever,” she said. “I would encourage teachers to teach Change and other films like it and not be scared of any reactions they anticipate. I had a great reaction with my class and a really respectful dialogue. I think it brought a lot to their learning.” To learn more about the Frameline films available for use in schools, visit http://frameline.org/ youth-motion/films.t

Community News>>

June 27-July 3, 2013 • Bay Area Reporter • 27

HIV Testing Day observed in SF compiled by Cynthia Laird

hursday (June 27) is National HIV Testing Day and knowing your current status just got easier in San Francisco as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation is launching #testmesf on Twitter so that people can follow the location of its mobile testing van. “This is a fantastic new way that we are helping more people in our community connect with the HIV testing and sexual health services they need,” SFAF CEO Neil Giuliano said in a statement. “Many people in San Francisco rely on Twitter for news and information. We want to make sure that we’re providing them with information to improve their sexual health and let them know when our free, rapid HIV testing van is at a location near them.” The Twitter feed tells followers where the van is headed and reminds them that testing is available in different parts of the city The van provides services four days and evenings per week in the Castro, South of Market, Mission, Bayview, and Tenderloin neighborhoods. Test results are available in about 20 minutes. In addition to free testing and counseling, the van offers condoms and lube, sterile syringes, and referrals for sexually transmitted disease screenings. To follow the hashtag, type in “testmesf ” in Twitter’s search window. In related news, the UCSF Alliance Health Project will unveil its first mobile testing van Thursday at 10 a.m. at its offices at 1930 Market Street.

Spahr to come home to MCC-SF Sunday

If you’re looking for a spiritual message after the craziness of Sunday’s Pride parade and festival, the Reverend Jane Spar will be preach-

ing at Metropolitan Community Church-San Francisco, 150 Eureka Street, at the 7 p.m. service June 30. Spahr, 71, a retired Presbyterian minister, is famous for being tried for misconduct multiple times in the Presbyterian Church (USA) for performing same-sex marriages. Most recently, in May 2012, the Northern California Presbytery, which represents 52 Presbyterian churches, stood up for Spahr in a 74-18 vote against the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission’s rebuke of her in 2010. The decision came after years of church court decisions that mostly went against her. Spahr, who founded Spectrum Center, Marin County’s LGBT community center, began her ministry at MCC-SF in the 1980s. All are welcome to this celebration of living on the right side of history, said the Reverend Victor Floyd, pastor of MCC-SF. For more information, visit http://www.mccsf.org.

Reminder for pink triangle volunteers Saturday

Patrick Carney of Friends of the Pink Triangle wants to remind folks that volunteers are still needed for Saturday’s installation atop Twin Peaks. The pink triangle, once used by the Nazis in concentration camps to identify and shame homosexuals, has since been reclaimed by the gay community and is now a symbol of pride. Carney noted that gay San Francisco Symphony artistic director Michael Tilson Thomas will tell the history of the pink triangle at the start of the ceremony, slated for 10:30 a.m. Saturday, June 29. Before that, however, help is needed installing the large pink canvasses. The installation will See page 32 >>

Mental health at heart of summer music tour by Peter Hernandez

ix years ago, a cash-strapped gay newcomer to San Francisco named Mike Enders had multiple panic attacks in the span of a month and didn’t know where to get mental health services. He also didn’t know that his personal trauma would compel him to start a six-city music tour kicking off next month featuring five bands benefiting five LGBT nonprofit organizations that provide mental health services much like what he needed then. The 41-year old San Francisco resident launched the Accidental Bear Benefit Queer Music Summer Tour, catapulted by the success of his Accidental Bear culture blog that has a daily readership of about 15,000 worldwide. “Think Madonna’s ‘Truth or Dare,’ but with queer bands,” he said during an interview with the Bay Area Reporter. Enders felt a call to action after the recent apparent suicides of San Francisco travel agent Jonathan Klein in April and gay porn stars Arpad Miklos and Wilfried Knight earlier this year. He has raised over $10,000 from Manhunt and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to pay for a portion of the travel costs. Net

Ariel Lin

Mike Enders, founder of the Accidental Bear blog, is organizing a music festival to benefit LGBT mental health services.

proceeds will be evenly donated to LGBT organizations in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York City. In San Francisco, the July 5 show will benefit the Stonewall Project, which provides counseling services from a harm reduction perspective to men who have sex with men. Those services integrate substance See page 32 >>

<< Sports

28 â&#x20AC;˘ Bay Area Reporter â&#x20AC;˘ June 27-July 3, 2013

Anatomy of empowerment by Roger Brigham

his week is one like no other high school basketball coach Anthony Nicodemo has ever known, full of suspense, exhilaration, nervousness, and empowerment. A week of embracing the unknown and shedding the shadows of the past. But throughout this brief period of uncertainty, there is one thing he knows for sure: heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll never have another Pride weekend quite like this one. On Monday, June 24, Nicodemo, a coach at Saunders High School, a public secondary school in Yonkers, New York, met with a room full of his basketball players and some of their parents before a summer practice. He talked about the importance of honesty, a theme he has touched upon in his motivational talks countless times. And then he talked with them about something he had never told them before. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We talk to the kids about how you have to be totally honest,â&#x20AC;? Nicodemo told the Bay Area Reporter. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I told them, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Well, I havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been completely honest with you. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been living a little

bit of a lie. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m gay.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;? Now, some of us have known or suspected our sexuality all of our lives; some, like me, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t clue in until a later age. Nicodemo, 35, would be in the latter group, not acknowledging to himself he was gay until about 10 years ago. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know if thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a point where I can pinpoint when I knew I was gay,â&#x20AC;? he told me. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I definitely think the curiosity was there earlier. I was dating women almost to trick myself; I might have been trying to con myself. But definitely in college I finally started not to be in denial anymore.â&#x20AC;? Over the next few years, he started telling one or two family members at a time. He had a relationship for a while â&#x20AC;&#x201C; â&#x20AC;&#x153;That process certainly helped me mature,â&#x20AC;? he recalled â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and discovered the existence of other gays in sports through Internet outlets such as Outsports.com. Nicodemo, who is also director of the Westchester County Basketball Coaches Association and owns Westchester Elite Basketball, blogged anonymously about â&#x20AC;&#x153;Coaching From the Closetâ&#x20AC;? for a period, and used secret email accounts to correspond with

other sports people about his concerns, never revealing his true identity but always inching closer and closer. Finally, late last year, he joined the confidential Equality Coaching Alliance online network and, in that safe space, for the first time used his true name and started talking with colleagues about their experiences coming out. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was a great resource,â&#x20AC;? he said. When NBA player Jason Collins came out this year, Nicodemo talked with his players about it. â&#x20AC;&#x153;That definitely opened up the conversation a bit,â&#x20AC;? he said. And then, he attended the Nike LGBT Sports Summit in Oregon June 14-15 and for the first time saw rooms full of sports allies and LGBT coaches and athletes. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was the first time for my being around people like you â&#x20AC;&#x201C; people with successful lives and theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re respected,â&#x20AC;? he told me. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I looked around at this group of people and saw that everyone was happy. At the end of the day, it was better to put it out there and not have to answer rumors for 10 more years. I was intrigued and motivated to think maybe I could make a difference.â&#x20AC;? His Twitter account gave the first outward signs of his move toward coming out: not flat-out declarations initially, but little by little dropping bits and piec-

Saunders High School basketball coach Anthony Nicodemo came out to his team this week.

told me. â&#x20AC;&#x153;So far every single reaction has been good.â&#x20AC;? One school administrator told him, â&#x20AC;&#x153;If anyone can handle this, breaking the stereotype, it would be you.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not 6 foot 1 with a six-pack,â&#x20AC;? Nicodemo said. He followed up by meeting with some of his former players, one of whom has two siblings on his current team. â&#x20AC;&#x153;He told me, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;We have your back. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re part of my family,â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;? Nicodemo said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I felt better. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nice to have told 15 people â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 10 more than I told in 35 years. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care what most people think; what I care about is what people close to me think. But I was absolutely exhausted last night; I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to keep having that conversation for 35 more years.â&#x20AC;? I introduced Nicodemo to fellow summit attendee Robert McGarry, director of education at the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network. They spoke the night before Nicodemoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s team meeting to help him prepare for the questions that would follow.Â â&#x20AC;&#x153;Since its founding, Changing the Game â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the GLSEN Sports Project â&#x20AC;&#x201C; has told stories of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;game changers,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; people who take action to make K-12 sports and physical education safe and respectful for LGBT students,â&#x20AC;? McGarry said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Coach Nicodemo is one of those people. His decision to share his story and live, teach, coach, and lead as his true self is certain to have a very positive impact on so many and help us move the conversation about LGBT equality in sports into the K-12 arena. He is truly one of our all-stars.â&#x20AC;? Nicodemo said he was optimistic but nervous going into the Monday meeting. And then ... â&#x20AC;&#x153;It blows my mind,â&#x20AC;? he said after the meeting. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Way better than I thought. The kids were unbelievable. Right away one of the kids stepped up and said, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s never made us feel uncomfortable. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like our father. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like our brother.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m surprised. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m humbled by my kids.â&#x20AC;? Within hours after practice he and the kids were doing what kids and coaches do these days. They were tweeting support to each other. â&#x20AC;&#x153;2day I experienced the most satisfying moment of my basketball career,â&#x20AC;? Nicodemo wrote. â&#x20AC;&#x153;So proud to be the coach at Saunders and love my team unconditionally.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Saunders just became a stronger team love my team,â&#x20AC;? one player wrote back. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Saunders Basketball isnt a team,â&#x20AC;? wrote another. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Its a family. Playing basketball here is a honor and i wouldnt trade it for the world.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;They see this team being brought together,â&#x20AC;? the coach told me after his LouiseLouise McCallion, Executive Director McCallion, Louise McCallion, Executive Director meeting. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think this acceptance Executive Director Executive Director As Executive Director of Reflections, I amLouise McCallion, As Executive Director of Reflections, I am would have been there five years ago. I passionate about my responsibility to ensure passionate about my responsibility to ensure really believe every situation is different. Executive Director of Reflections, I am best-in-class at our facility and toAscreate As service Executive Director of Reflections, I am best-in-class service at our facility and to create passionate about my responsibility to ensure I think everyone [thinking about comthe highest quality experience conducive to the highest quality experience conducive to passionate aboutbest-in-class my responsibility service at our facility to and to create recovery. The team at Reflections will help your ing out] has to judge it on their own sitrecovery. The team at Reflections will help your ensure service at our facility the highest quality experience conducive to clients finally conquerbest-in-class this battle. clients finally conquer this battle. uation. I know I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think this accepLouise McCallion, The team at Reflections will help your Executive Director and to create therecovery. highest quality experitance would have been there five years Contact me directly if you have any questions: Contact me directly if you have any questions: finally conquer battle. at ence conducive toclients recovery. Thethisteam (415) 706-8906 ago. ThereI are (415) 706-8906 As Executive Director of Reflections, amstill going to be bumps in louise@livingatreflections.com Reflections will help clients finally louise@livingatreflections.com Contactyour me directly if you have any questions: the road. But if they feel they have this (800) 611-7316 passionate about my responsibility to ensure 611-7316 conquer this battle. me directly (415) Contact 706-8906 (800) kind of support, then go out there. The louise@livingatreflections.com if you have any questions: best-in-class service at our fear facility to create â&#x20AC;? is ofand the unknown. (800) 611-7316 the highest quality experience conducive to Nicodemoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fears are reduced and (415) 706-8906 now hewill knows recovery. The team at Reflections helpthat yourthis Pride weekend louise@livingatreflections.comclients finally conquer this battle. will truly be his, a weekend like no other before it. to think of it, neither will mine. Contact me directly if you haveCome any questions: Welcome to the team, Anthony. t (415) 706-8906 es of info for those really curious able to check out and come to their own conclusions if so inclined. On June 12 he tweeted, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Heading out to the Nike #betrue summit in Portland. Should be a great experience for the next few days. Wheels up!â&#x20AC;? Two days later he wrote about being at the summit and talking with Athlete Ally about promoting awareness and change. The final day he posted a picture of Collins at the summit and wrote about the empowerment of the discussion to make scholastic programs more inclusive. Then, back home in Yonkers, he started laying the groundwork, meeting first with his school principals and a friend from a local television station. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It started with those three guys,â&#x20AC;? he

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Community News>>

Court victories

From page 25

June and want to register their marriage legally before they head to Alaska in early August on their honeymoon. They were set to already be exploring the state in an RV this week but postponed the trip so they could be at City Hall for the Prop 8 decision. “We feel very lucky to be here in this time and place,” said Chang, wearing her white wedding dress. Oakland couple Tina Phillips and Rachel Johnson, who volunteered on the No on 8 campaign but were not ready to exchange vows that year, now plan to marry this summer in a civil ceremony, mainly in order to secure better medical benefits for Johnson. They then expect to have their “real wedding” with family and friends on May 5, 2014 to coincide with the day they first met seven years ago. “The just getting married part we plan to do as soon as we can,” said Phillips. “The actual production of a wedding we don’t have the money to do right now.” Reaction from LGBT legal experts was also swift. Jon Davidson, legal director for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, called both decisions a “huge victory for married same-sex couples and their families because it will affect almost every facet of life from health care to retirement to taxes.” The two plaintiff couples in the Prop 8 case emerged from the Supreme Court building on the front steps with Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin, who organized the Prop 8 lawsuit when he formed the American Foundation for Equal Rights, and David Boies, one of the two lead attorneys who pressed the challenge. As they did, a chorus sang the national anthem. Boies spoke about both decisions and noted that June 26 is the 10th anniversary of the Lawrence v. Texas decision, striking down sodomy laws. In striking Section 3 of DOMA, said Boies, the court ruled “there was no purpose” in denying samesex couples the right to marry.

Manning

From page 6

ing with the contingent will be Bay Area resident Daniel Ellsberg, 82, who gained fame himself when, in 1971, he leaked the Pentagon papers to the New York Times, which revealed that the Johnson administration was vastly understating Vietnam War casualties and “systematically” lying to the American people. Lisa Geduldig, a lesbian activist who has been a vocal critic of Pride’s handling of the Manning brouhaha, said in a statement this week that Pride parades in Seattle, New York City, and Chicago would feature Manning supporters. Local attorney David Waggoner hadn’t decided whether he will march with the Manning supporters. Waggoner, a former president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, was also critical of the Pride Committee and filed a discrimination complaint with the San Francisco Human Rights Commission over the issue. However, this month the HRC said it would not investigate the claim. The commission offered mediation if both sides agreed, but the Pride Committee notified the HRC that it declined to participate. “Well, I guess my feelings are complicated,” Waggoner said of the Manning matter. “I’m not one of those people who have totally written off [Pride] as a corporatesponsored event, and I’ve heard that

In the Prop 8 case, said Boies, the court ruled that the Yes on 8 defenders of the law did not have standing to press the appeal. But he said the court’s opinion makes clear that “when” a case involving a similar ban comes before the court on merits, it is clear the majority will find it unconstitutional. Plaintiff Kristin Perry emphasized the importance of the Prop 8 decision to the children of samesex parents, children who can now know that their parents are equal to other parents. Her spouse-to-be, Sandra Stier, said the struggle must now continue to secure the right to marry for same-sex couples in states that deny them marriage licenses. President Barack Obama, aboard Air Force One on his way to Africa, called the plaintiffs while they were at the impromptu news conference in front of the Supreme Court building. He said he was “proud” and “so glad for California” and thanked them for their leadership. The White House also posted a Twitter message quoting the president as calling the DOMA ruling an “historic step forward for marriage equality.” Prop 8’s proponents are vowing to defend the anti-gay measure and argued Wednesday that the Supreme Court had not struck it down. “We are pleased that the Supreme Court has reversed the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ misguided decision that sought to invalidate Proposition 8. For the more than seven million Californians who have seen their vote stripped away from them, little by little, over the course of five years, that decision is gratifying,” Prop 8 general counsel Andy Pugno told reporters outside of the court. “While it is unfortunate that the court’s ruling does not directly resolve questions about the scope of the trial court’s order against Prop 8, we will continue to defend Prop 8 and seek its enforcement until such time as there is a binding statewide order that renders Prop 8 unenforceable.”

Prop 8 details and reaction

Roberts wrote the majority decision in the Prop 8 case, and was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan.

a lot from my progressive friends. I still see it as an incredibly important event for the LGBT community.” That said, Waggoner said that in his opinion, the Pride organization “has struggled the last few years with credibility.” “I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt but they won’t even agree to mediation,” he added.

Next steps

Cain and Waggoner would like to see changes next year, notably around the grand marshal selection process. “How they’ve handled this situation with Bradley Manning should never be allowed to happen,” Waggoner said. Cain said that he hoped to meet with Plante after the Pride celebration. “I know he’s swamped,” he said. Cain also expressed hope that new board members would be elected at Pride’s annual general meeting, scheduled for September. “We actively worked to make Pride a leader in transparency and it feels like that was shot to the wind the last few years,” Cain said. Plante was asked in an email if he was willing to sit down with Cain after the parade to talk about the organization. He ducked the question in his response, saying that the Manning contingent is one of “250-plus contingents that will also enjoy the tradition and privilege of free speech and expression in the SF Pride parade.”t

June 27-July 3, 2013 • Bay Area Reporter • 29

The majority decision vacated the 9th Circuit decision with instructions to dismiss the appeal pressed by the Yes on 8 coalition that won passage of Prop 8 in 2008. It said Yes on 8’s “only interest in having the district court order reversed [at the 9th Circuit] was to vindicate the constitutional validity of a generally applicable California law.” Such a “generalized grievance,” said the majority, is “insufficient to confer standing.” “A litigant ‘raising only a generally available grievance about government – claiming only harm to his and every citizen’s interest in proper application of the Constitution and laws, and seeking relief that no more directly and tangibly benefits him than it does the public at large – does not state an Article III case or controversy.’” Once Prop 8 was approved by the voters, said the majority, “the measure became a duly enacted constitutional amendment or statute. Petitioners have no role – special or otherwise – in the enforcement of Proposition 8. ... They therefore have no ‘personal stake’ in defending its enforcement that is distinguishable from the general interest of every citizen of California.” “We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to. We decline to do so for the first time here,” wrote Roberts. “Because petitioners have not satisfied their burden to demonstrate standing to appeal the judgment of the district court, the 9th Circuit was without jurisdiction to consider the appeal,” wrote Roberts. “The judgment of the 9th Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded with instructions to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.” Once the 9th Circuit dismisses Yes on 8’s appeal, the district court

ruling by former Chief Judge Vaughn Walker will remain the law concerning Prop 8. Walker, who came out as gay after retirement, ruled that Prop 8 violated the federal equal protection clause because there was no rational basis for limiting the designation of marriage to straight couples. He also said it violated the federal due process clause because there was no compelling reason for the state to deny same-sex couples the fundamental right to marry. In dissent, Kennedy, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Sonia Sotomayor, said they would have recognized Yes on 8 as having standing because the state supreme court had ruled Yes on 8 did have standing.

DOMA details and reaction

In the majority opinion on the DOMA case, U.S. v. Windsor, Kennedy was joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor. The majority affirmed a 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that found DOMA to violate the guarantees to equal protection and due process. The majority said DOMA went “far” beyond an attempt at providing uniformity in federal policy affecting married persons and was “directed to a class of persons that the laws of New York, and of 11 other states, have sought to protect.” Regulation of marriage licensing, said the majority, “has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the states.” “The federal government uses this state-defined class for the opposite purpose – to impose restrictions and disabilities,” wrote Kennedy. And by doing so, he said, “DOMA seeks to injure the very class New York seeks to protect” and “violates basic due process and equal protection principles applicable to the federal government.” “The Constitution’s guarantee of equality ‘must at the very least

mean that a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot’ justify disparate treatment of that group,” wrote Kennedy, quoting a 1973 decision in USDA v. Moreno, in which the court said the government couldn’t deny food stamps to “hippies” living in communes. Bonauto, who was reached before she had a chance to finish reading the 26-page majority decision, said it’s not clear yet whether or to what extent married samesex couples living in states that ban recognition of marriage licenses for same-sex couples would be able to obtain federal benefits. “Clearly, if they live in a marriage equality state, they’re protected,” said Bonauto. She said many would also be able to obtain benefits related to immigration and the military to the extent those areas recognize marriage licenses regardless of what state they were issued in. She said there may be some additional legal work necessary to secure federal benefits for all married same-sex couples but that the federal government “has the flexibility,” such as with tax returns, “to recognize marriage licenses as soon as they are formed.” “I think we’ll have a patchwork at first but it will become a tighter quilt as time goes on,” said Bonauto. Plaintiff Edith Windsor’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, told reporters, “It is now clear that discrimination against gay people solely because they are gay violates the United States Constitution.” The court issued its decision in the two high-profile marriage cases at 7 a.m. Pacific time on June 26, the last day of its 2012-13 session. The opinions in Hollingsworth v. Perry (concerning Proposition 8) and U.S. v. Windsor (concerning DOMA) can be read in their entirety at http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/slipopinions.aspx.t

<< Community News

32 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

News Briefs

From page 27

take place from 7 to 10 a.m. Saturday morning. Volunteers are asked to bring a hammer and gloves and wear closed-toe shoes. People

Music tour

From page 27

abuse, mental health, and HIV prevention and education. Stonewall Project is part of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. “If someone had the same situation as me, I can understand why they’d feel driven to commit suicide,” Enders said. The tour will feature high-profile gay musicians like Logan Lynn, whose

Pride

From page 22

overall security and any details regarding specifics should be referred to SFPD.” He also said officials couldn’t go into “method planning” or other details, “as we would not want to alert those who might want to hurt our attendees.” He added, “[We] all have a collective stake to act in a catastrophic situation, in short ‘If you see something, say something.’” Sergeant Dennis Toomer, an SFPD spokesman, said that since the Boston bombings, “We’re at a higher level of alert and precaution in general.” He said officers would be monitoring Pride events to “deploy resources wherever we need them.” Toomer said if police develop information regarding “disobedience going on either on the parade route or at the festival, we can deploy resources pretty quickly to help defuse that situation.” “Those discussions are still happening,” Toomer said, but as of Monday afternoon there was “no

The popular Real Bad party that occurs at Folsom Street Fair time will

have a special Reach Pride T-Dance party Sunday, June 30 from 5 to 11 p.m. at City Lights, 715 Harrison Street. Tickets are $40 in advance and $50 at the door. Jonathan Foulk, who’s with Real Bad and its affiliate, Grass Roots Gay

Rights West, said that this year, the Real Bad party will turn 25 and to celebrate, GRGR West is hoping to raise a total of $300,000 from three parties this year. Reach is the first, he said. For ticket information, visit http://www.realbad.org.t

soulful crooning on albums contrasts with his electronic dance performances on stage, and Big Dipper, who is known for his raunchy and provocative hip-hop lyricism and phallic dance moves. Lynn, a 33-year-old musician based in Portland, Oregon, spoke openly about his 16-year addiction. He said he was traumatized by growing up in a Christian cult and also developed his music career alongside indie rock musicians in Portland like

Elliott Smith, who died in 2003. Lynn has been sober since 2008 and volunteers at Q Center in Portland, which is one of the tour’s beneficiaries. “[Addiction] affects all of us. I think everyone on tour would agree with this and would seek help if they needed it,” Lynn said. Lynn and Enders asserted that there is a dearth of services for men between 30 and 50 and said that most services are directed toward youth and the elderly.

“The youth and seniors get attention because they’re so vulnerable. But there’s the rest of us who are just trying to make it as well,” Enders said. Enders was encouraged by the turnout at a two-year anniversary party for his blog at Truck in December 2012, where hundreds of people supported Accidental Bear. Big Dipper also played at that party. Now Enders is hoping that the wide following of his blog, paired with the fan base of the featured

bands, will garner enough funds to offset the cost of flying five bands’ personnel and gear and to generously fund the organizations. Noting the isolation felt by gay men in places like Iran, Enders said he wants to take his tour across the world if it’s successful enough. Tickets for the San Francisco show, which starts at 8 p.m. at Beatbox, 314 11th Street, range from $15 (general) to $75 (VIP). For more information, visit http://tinyurl.com/pwvnyhv.t

special coordinated effort for any possible protest.” Toomer said cameras will go up on Market Street along the parade route and probably in the Civic Center Plaza area, as well. The cameras will be monitored live but only on Sunday during the parade and festival. There will be three cameras altogether. He said the cameras would serve “just like any other eyes and ears,” and police would be watching for “anything out of the ordinary,” including confrontations. The cameras will go up sometime this week and will be taken down early next week, Toomer said. “This is another tool for us” to monitor large crowds and ensure public safety, he said. The intention is not “to be a Big Brother and be the spy,” he said. He also said cameras were used to monitor this year’s Bay to Breakers race.

attending Pride. Headliners will include Peaches and Herb (“Reunited,” “Shake Your Groove Thing”) and Xavier Toscano, a gay San Jose resident whose music is dance-urban pop. Celebrity grand marshals will also be on hand. This year’s honorees include out lesbian Tabatha Coffey, host of the Bravo TV show Tabatha Takes Over and out actor, singer, and songwriter Cheyenne Jackson (Glee, Xanadu). Community grand marshals include Latina DJ Chili D, whose real name is Diane Felix and who has worked in HIV and AIDS education. Perry Lang and his partner, Kenneth Monteiro, are also being honored this year. Lang is the executive director of the Black Coalition on AIDS. Monteiro is dean of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. As part of the celebration, various organizations make a diverse array of gathering spaces available. One of those is Queer Youth Space, which takes place Saturday and Sunday in Civic Center.

“All we want for young people to get out of the Queer Youth Space is to have a great time at Pride,” Jamie Fountain of Larkin Street Youth Services said in an email. “We host the Queer Youth Space to give young people a space that is drug-, alcohol-, and stress-free from them to come hang out, rest, and relax as well as get something to eat and drink, play games and win small Pride-related prizes. We also offer free rapid HIV testing and counseling if needed.” Since 1997, Pride has been able to grant nearly $2 million to beneficiaries thanks to beverage purchases and donations made at event gates. One of this year’s community beneficiaries is Temenos Catholic Worker. River Sims, a gay independent Catholic priest and the group’s director, said, “I believe in Pride,” and people should “be proud of being gay” and “be upfront about who we are.” Sims expects to receive $1,000 in exchange for providing volunteers for Pride. “That pays for socks and pays for food that I serve to people in the

street,” he said. Also this year, Buddhist Church of San Francisco is participating in the parade for the first time. Members “are participating in this parade to showcase its diversity, openness and inclusiveness of anyone who seeks the teachings of the Buddha and Jodo Shinshu, no matter of one’s ethnic or religious background, origin, sexual orientation, disabilities,” or other traits, a news release from the group said. For more information about Pride, visit http://www.sfpride.org.

should bring sunscreen. Carney said “fashionable pink triangle T-shirts will be provided to all who help.” To sign up, visit www.thepinktriangle.org or call Carney at (415) 7264914. The website has detailed driving directions. Additionally, volunteers are

needed the evening of Sunday, June 30 to help take down the installation, for one hour or more from 5 to 8 p.m.

Entertainment

As with every year, Sunday’s main stage should be a big draw for people

Real Bad Pride party

Pink Saturday

The unofficial Pink Saturday street party, organized by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, takes place June 29, following the Dyke March. The Castro event runs from 5:30 to 10:15 p.m. The party features DJs and several food trucks. No alcohol will be permitted. A donation of $10 is suggested, but nobody will be turned away for lack of funds. To learn more about Pink Saturday, go to http://www.thesisters.org.t

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In the matter of the application of: ELLIOT GEORGE SZKUP, for change of name having been filed in Superior Court, and it appearing from said application that petitioner ELLIOT GEORGE SZKUP, is requesting that the name ELLIOT GEORGE SZKUP, be changed to ELLIOT ARIEL RYAN. Now therefore, it is hereby ordered, that all persons interested in said matter do appear before this Court in Dept. 514 on the 1st of August 2013 at 9:00am of said day to show cause why the application for change of name should not be granted.

JUNE 6, 13, 20, 27, 2013 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035136200 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE VISUAL, 1677 BUSH ST. #4, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Jeff Mark Munar. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/28/13.

JUNE 6, 13, 20, 27, 2013 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035133700 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: LUXE SOJOURNS, 771 14TH AVE., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94118. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Susan K. Lukrich. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/28/13.

JUNE 6, 13, 20, 27, 2013 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035141000 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: FILLMORE FLORIST; FILLMORE FLOWERS; 1880 FILLMORE ST., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94115. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Faramarz Tabar. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 07/21/01. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/30/13.

JUNE 6, 13, 20, 27, 2013 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A- 035142100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: PAT CHAN PHOTOGRAPHY, 660 4TH ST. #353, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Pacharin Pisansatherawonge. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 01/01/02. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/30/13.

JUNE 6, 13, 20, 27, 2013

FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A- 035150500 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SOAPS HAIR SALON, 323 IVY ST., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Barbara McLean. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 09/01/12. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/04/13.

JUNE 6, 13, 20, 27, 2013 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035102400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SALON D, 660 MARKET ST. #204, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104. This business is conducted by an individual, and is signed Diane H. Oertwig. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/13/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/13/13.

JUNE 6, 13, 20, 27, 2013 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035134100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: THE RINCON GROUP, 425 1ST ST. #2702, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105. This business is conducted by a corporation, and is signed Tarslin Real Estate (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 05/28/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 05/28/13.

JUNE 6, 13, 20, 27, 2013 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035147100 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: CALIFORNIA IRON WORKS, 1405 EGBERT AVE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94124. This business is conducted by a married couple, and is signed Alfonso Ramirez & Marisela Ramirez. The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on 06/03/13. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/03/13.

JUNE 6, 13, 20, 27, 2013 FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT FILE A-035152400 The following person(s) is/are doing business as: SABAI TEA, 1557 8TH AVE., SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94122. This business is conducted by a limited liability company, and is signed Sabai Tea LLC (CA). The registrant(s) commenced to transact business under the above listed fictitious business name or names on NA. The statement was filed with the City and County of San Francisco, CA on 06/04/13.

JUNE 6, 13, 20, 27, 2013

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iane Felix, who is better known as DJ Chili D in the Latin LGBT club scene, will be dancing down Market Street as a community grand marshal in Sunday’s LGBT Pride parade. The Latina lesbian activist, disc jockey, and club promoter is being honored for her more than four decades of cultural and health activism and bringing Latin beats to LGBT nightlife. “It’s a good feeling to be honored,” said Felix, 60, who has marched in the Pride parade for nearly 40 years. “I’m excited about it and I feel proud of it.” Fighting for human and health rights and celebrating life have always blended together for Felix. “All of the music that was going on all around me [and] the movement, everything is just all one big punch bowl. It’s all in there for me,” said Felix about political activism and music. “It’s always been music and life.” Felix, who was born and raised in Stockton, California, recalled waking up in the morning to Spanish-language radio that her mother would have on before she headed out to school or into the fields during the summer to harvest the crops. In the afternoon Felix returned home to the sounds of Motown that her older brothers tuned into on the radio. “Radio was a really important part of our life, so the music always takes me home,” said Felix. She recalled the neighborhood parties she threw in her garage as a teenager with music from the Beatles and later, the disco era when she moved from the San Joaquin Valley to San Francisco.

Celebrating and fighting for life

From an early age Felix knew working the fields wasn’t going to be her life’s work, she said. The late farmworker organizer Cesar Chavez gave a speech at her high school, which brought attention to the struggles of the farmworkers that she had worked with side-by-side during the summers. At the same time she looked around, becoming aware of the Chicano Student Movement; her personal knowledge that she was a butch lesbian and homophobia in her community; and listening to news about the Vietnam war filtering in through the music on the radio inspired her to action. “It all made sense to me why I was feeling these feelings after listening to him,” said Felix of Chavez. “It just started making sense to me that all of these things all go together. That there is some kind of movement, that there is some kind of social change that needs to happen that people need to be aware of how all of this affects us.” She escaped Stockton as soon as she could, landing in San Jose, where there was a strong Latino LGBT community with an active and vibrant nightlife, but no activism, she said. Having a good job and nightlife wasn’t enough for her. “There was still something lacking for me,” she said.

Military

From page 47

said. It would hurt recruitment, he said, if the public were aware of the extent of sexual assault in the military. “President Obama recognizes what I have been saying for years that sexual assault in the military is a national security problem,” he said. Of Justice Denied Matthews said

Jane Philomen Cleland

Diane Felix, better known as DJ Chili D, has woven a love of music into a life of activism and celebrating nightlife.

In 1975, she found the missing piece in an ad for a gay Chicanos gathering in San Francisco. She and a group of girls piled into her car and headed nearly 50 miles north to the city. She was blown away by the more than 150 queer Latina/o activists from different parts of the U.S. at that first meeting. Within days Felix packed up her bags and moved to San Francisco’s Mission-Dolores neighborhood where she co-founded the Gay Latino/a Alliance, the first or second LGBT Latino organization in the U.S., she said. The organization later folded, but she continued working as an activist by day and bartending, DJing, and promoting clubs by night. Felix hooked up with famed feminist activists Angela Davis and Victoria Machado in the late 1970s and began speaking at Stanford and other universities about Chicana homosexuality. She has also been honored with awards and featured in many articles for her activism. Six years later the AIDS epidemic hit San Francisco and she watched as her gay Latino brothers died left and right. She sprung into action co-founding Community United in Response to AIDS/SIDA in 1981. Not ignoring the women, she helped create the program Curanderas, which later became Mujeres Unidas and Activistas, to promote health programs for immigrant women in the Mission that continues today. When CURAS closed she became a founding member of Proyecto ContraSida Por Vida, an organization promoting sex-positive HIV education, in 1993. The organization promoted men and women working together for the community and didn’t stigmatize queer sexualities or genders creating programs, such as addressing Latina lesbian health issues. Felix led the Lesbians and Bisexuals Responding with Sexual Education and Sinverguenza (translated to without shame), a safe-sex performance group, to raise awareness of HIV prevention through her clubs.

Partying for a cause

She spun beats in many of the hidden queer Latin bars in the Mission until AIDS and skyrocketing rents wiped them out, but back in the 1970s it was still difficult to find the queer Latinas in the gay white

it was “pretty raw.” He said the film opens with a warning statement and counselors have been available at screenings. He estimated 98 percent of all military rapes were by heterosexual men with “control” issues. Only 2 percent, he said, were by others, including women and gays.

Trans woman’s story

Wendy May is another subject in

male dominated club scene, said Felix. So she began to create her own clubs for queer women of color. She started with the popular A Little More on Potrero Hill, which had a women of color softball team, Un Poquito Mas. Felix then went on to start Colors in the Mission. Later she hooked up with Club Papi Productions. She’s been DJing at the queer Latino circuit parties for the past 16 years, said Jamie Awad, founder of the Latin stage at San Francisco Pride and owner of Club Papi. She continued throwing the popular Delicious parties at the Cafe, along with Cream and Kandy in the Castro and Octopussy in San Jose under her production company CreamSF. Felix’s parties became important social centers to make friends and network, attracting LGBT politicians, such as former state Senator Carole Migden and current state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco); and former city supervisor Roberta Achtenberg, now an official in the Obama administration. Colors closed in 2000 after more than a decade. Delicious left the Cafe in October 2012. Felix shut down all of her girl parties that operated under CreamSF around that time, she said. Felix’s friends are thrilled she’s being recognized this year. “It’s a great honor for her to represent the Latino community,” said Awad. “She’s done a lot of great work over the years.” And she’ll even find time to DJ on Sunday. After the parade Felix will be spinning salsa beats as DJ Chili D at the Latin stage. “People need community and culturally specific community,” said Felix. “My parties started becoming the hub for networking.” Felix continues spinning Latin beats at the Cafe every Thursday night at club Pan Dulce and DJing for Club Papi’s circuit parties. Recently, she began spinning for KittyKat Entertainment, which launched Venus, a new women’s Tdance at the Cafe every first Saturday of the month, she said. “It’s just been a very natural way of life for me,” said Felix. “It’s just always been music, clubs, and activism all at the same time. Kind of crazy, but actually it’s been a wonderful thing.”t

the film. She is a transgender woman who was living as a man at the time she enlisted in the Army at age 18 in 1980. After a basic training injury at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina, May was chained and “viciously raped over and over again” by four drill sergeants. “I did not see it coming,” May recalled of the assault. She, too, was See page 59 >>

Grand Marshals >>

t Baum honored with Lifetime Achievement Award by Heather Cassell

lvin “Al” Baum’s life story reads as a meandering course of happy accidents and curiosity. He’s enjoyed three high-profile careers and found the time to serve on numerous boards and advisory committees of some of San Francisco’s most prominent organizations. In the late 1990s, Baum created the Alvin H. Baum Endowment Fund at Jewish Family and Children’s Services of San Francisco. The fund supports a number of programs including health education, according to the JFCS. Some might envy Baum, an 82-year-old gay Jewish man, and his accomplishments. It’s also surprising that he’s only received half a dozen awards over the years, including being named Lifetime Achievement grand marshal in this year’s LGBT Pride parade. Yet, he is humbled by the honor and somewhat in awe. When he found out that he was receiving the award from the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee, he sort of downplayed it, questioning “Why me?” and telling friends he was receiving the honor for being around for so long, he told the Bay Area Reporter. He’s still baffled a bit by it, but in his true spirit he’s slowly accepting the honor. “I just did what seemed to me what I could do or should do,” said Baum, about his storied career as an activist and philanthropist working on LGBT rights, Jewish causes, local politics, and much more. He is, however, proud to follow last year’s honoree, former Mayor Willie Brown, in the line of Lifetime Achievement awardees. “I follow in the immediate footsteps of Mayor Willie Brown, which

is great shoes to follow in,” said Baum. “I couldn’t be happier. I hope the 30th is a good day for marching.” Baum will be joined by his partner of nearly a decade, Robert Holgate, a 55-year-old gay man who is an interior designer and a philanthropist too, as well as friends, as his car slowly drives down Market Street. “It will feel wonderful,” he said about being acknowledged by the thousands of paradegoers lining the city’s main street. “Whenever you have a crowd that is happy and is celebrating something, it’s a transforming experience. [Parades] are always uplifting. There is a spirit that runs through a crowd that is very exciting.” Baum is being honored for more than five decades in community service as an activist and philanthropist. The San Francisco community leader still attends events regularly and donates to causes in which he believes.

Accidental philanthropist

Born and raised in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago, Baum discovered his Jewishness serving in the military in Germany in the 1950s. A secular Jew, he attended Shabbat services for the first time in his life to escape boredom. He found a profound connection that manifested throughout his life, mostly with the coming together of LGBT Jews with the Gay and Lesbian Task Force of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco in 1996. (The group later became the LGBT Jewish Alliance at the JCF in 2001.) “It felt like an achievement,” said Baum about merging his gay and Jewish identity. He became a member of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, the city’s LGBT synagogue.

June 27-July 3, 2013 • Bay Area Reporter • 49

Slow emergence

Jane Philomen Cleland

Alvin Baum, shown at his San Francisco home, is this year’s Lifetime Achievement grand marshal.

The federation dissolved the alliance in 2011, replacing it with Keshet Bay Area and A Wider Bridge. Baum wasn’t concerned about changes in the organization that he founded and that was pivotal in his life, he said. “I think some people expected me to be very troubled by the changes, but I wasn’t,” said Baum. “The real question is if the federation continues to care about the LGBTs and it’s obvious to any unbiased person, yes, they do still care.” After his time in the military, Baum moved to San Francisco. He began his public service career in 1962 working as a city planner. He went to law school, became an attorney, and then later returned to school to earn a master’s in social work. He’s had careers as an attorney, psychotherapist, and real estate investor.

For many years, Baum kept the pieces of his life separate. Just as he evolved into his Jewish identity, he took his time realizing his gay identity, coming out when he was 45. By that time the Compton Cafeteria and Stonewall riots happened and the gay liberation movement was exploding into U.S. consciousness. Baum came out to himself in 1971, but it took another four years before he began engaging fully as an out gay man. “I didn’t really come out publicly until I was 45 years old and that happened gradually and largely because the world changed,” said Baum, who was inspired by his friend, the late Jim Foster, who was the first openly gay man to address a Democratic National Convention, and the energy of the gay liberation movement. It happened during an interview for an article about the Lavender University, a continuing education institute, in the San Francisco Chronicle. An interviewee didn’t show up and Baum took his place and was quoted in the article. “After that it just seemed natural to participate in the gay community and I did,” said Baum. He found himself recruited as an out gay man for the boards of the Jewish Family and Children Services of San Francisco, JCF, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. He also served on the boards of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the former New Leaf: Services for Our Community, and was the founding member of the New Israel Fund, among other organizations.

Today, he is very active as a supporter of Openhouse, the LGBT senior organization. “Al’s role in Openhouse has been inspirational,” said Marcy Adelman, Ph.D., founder of the organization. “It takes a very special community leader willing to nurture a grassroots organization with no money and no experience.” “He is fearless, wise, and one hell of a great friend,” she added.

The future

Baum is heartened by the advancements made by the LGBT community in nearly 45 years, particularly recently. “The changes that have occurred within the past two or three years are beyond what anybody thought would happen,” said Baum, referring to the fight for marriage equality and the Supreme Court cases. Advances have also been made in the treatment for HIV/AIDS, and the disease is no longer a death sentence. “It’s wonderful to be here during all of that,” said Baum. “There is one overall community and I have to say it has been and it still is wonderful to be a part of that community.” “We are on the road to the next generation,” said Baum. “Being gay will be a variant, but not something that is looked down upon.” Baum has received awards for his activism, community service, and philanthropy, including: the Silver SPUR Award; the James C. Hormel Community Service Award from the Human Rights Campaign; the Community Service Award from the San Francisco AIDS Foundation; and the Charles M. Holmes Community Service Award from the San Francisco LGBT Community Center.t

<< Grand Marshals

t Group run by youth helps kids combat bullying 54 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

by Elliot Owen

rowing up LGBT in the Bay Area isn’t as easy as some people might think, and Jason Galisatus, a 19-year-old Stanford University sophomore, can attest to that. Middle school, he said, was particularly hard. Teasing was commonplace, bullying was typical, and every insult sliced like a painful “paper cut.” Then, in 2007, Galisatus entered Aragon High School in San Mateo where he discovered the school’s gay-straight alliance. It was the first

time Galisatus, a self-identified mixed-race cisgender gay male, encountered an outlet to explore, expand, and embrace his suppressed identity. (Cisgender is defined on Wikipedia as being when an individual’s self-perception of their gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth, complementing transgender.) He also discovered the meaning of community and since then, has dedicated his every spare moment to developing unprecedented and creative forms of activism that enable other LGBT and allied youth to

make a difference in their local communities. Bay Area Youth Summit is the brainchild of Galisatus and around 10 other high school students that got together in 2010 to make a few changes. Little did they know their LGBT youth empowerment and anti-bullying organization would be selected by public vote as this year’s organizational community grand marshal. “My sophomore year, I’d taken over my school’s GSA,” Galisatus said. “That’s when we called other San Mateo high school GSA leaders and rallied them together at one of our houses. I don’t think we realized the youth-led movement we were initiating.” BAYS is the only completely youth-led LGBT organization in the world, according to its website. Securing 501(c)3 nonprofit status in 2012, BAYS is comprised of an unpaid working board of directors that are college undergraduate age and younger. Currently, its youngest member is 13. In addition, it has an advisory board comprised of adult LGBT community leaders that provide support. “The board of advisers doesn’t have governance over the organization,” Galisatus said, “but the fact remains that we’re young people and don’t know everything. So, we solicit advice from adults who have demonstrated leadership in the LGBT community.”

Three-pronged approach

BAYS uses a comprehensive three-pronged approach to both strengthen community building among LGBT youth, and decrease LGBT bullying in middle and high schools. The first of their programs is called the Summit, a biennial leadership training conference for LGBT

Elliot Owen

Bay Area Youth Summit Executive Director Jason Galisatus believes that the organization helps empower young LGBTs.

and allied youth to learn about antibullying tactics to exercise in their school environments. Empowerment, Galisatus emphasized, is the core purpose of the conference, which is a combination of workshops and speakers. “The speakers inspire, motivate, and provide that pathos that drives people to get involved,” he explained. “The workshops teach how and when one can apply that new activist drive.” Around 250 people attended this year’s summit in May at Aragon High School in San Mateo. Speakers included the Oscar-winning Milk screenwriter, Dustin Lance Black; former chief operating officer and president of ETrade Financial, Kathy Levinson; and founder of Scouts for Equality, Zach Wahls. The event was emceed by Raja Gemini, the season three winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Hillsdale High School senior and BAYS board member Christian Guardado, 16, was tasked to be Gemini’s personal assistant, and remembers how impressed the inspirational speakers were with BAYS. “All the speakers were really fascinated with our work,” Guardado, a self-identified Latino gay man, said. “Raja even tweeted and Facebookposted that BAYS is a group of teenagers that are doing adult jobs. And we’re doing it eloquently and getting a lot of praise. Even though we are young, we are truly making a difference.” All the speakers donated their time to the one-day event, which cost BAYS $4,000 of its annual $10,000 budget. BAYS also organizes a Day of Action, which pairs up Bay Area GSA high school students with LGBT organizations. For one day a year, the students volunteer at assigned LGBT organizations. About 70 youth participated in this year’s Day of Action in February, and had the opportunity to network, learn about specific LGBT causes, and see firsthand how a nonprofit functions internally. Organizations across the state have opened their doors to BAYS’ Day of Action, and have included the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, Equality California’s headquarters in Los Angeles, San Jose’s Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center, Concord’s Rainbow Community Center, the Gay and Lesbian Elderly Home in Los Angeles, and Project Open Hand in San Francisco. A third and currently evolving

facet of BAYS is called the Middle School Safety Initiative. While it hasn’t been implemented yet, the initiative will send local high school students into middle schools to educate and interact with youth in an effort to educate about bullying. “Many recent studies have shown that the average coming-out age is actually 13 – middle school,” Galisatus said. “It’s very much ingrained in middle school culture that ‘gay’ is an insult. We’re hoping to change that culture, improve the lives of students, create safer school environments, and show them they’re not alone.” The program is currently in research and development stages to determine what middle school students know, what resources are available to them, and what kind of curriculum will have maximum impact. Galisatus hopes to have BAYS members assigned to middle schools by the 2014 school year. “One of the beauties of our youth-led model is that this program really came from the board,” he said. “Many of us had difficult experiences in middle school and we’ve recognized there’s not enough being done to support those kids.” Guardado is one of those board members that endured teasing and hopes that BAYS will enable him to make someone else’s middle school experience less traumatic. “I joined BAYS to put down LGBT bullying because I had a very dark time when I was younger,” Guardado said. “I didn’t have any gay youth leaders to look up to. Through BAYS, I can now empower someone else’s life.” Galisatus had always wanted to be involved in San Francisco’s Pride celebration – he just didn’t think it would come so soon, or with such recognition. He remembers seeing the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence when he was younger, never thinking that Sister Roma, who was a Pride grand marshal last year, would one day be on the advisory board of an organization he would co-found and lead. This spring, Galisatus was named best youth activist under 25 in the Bay Area Reporter’s Best of the Gays readers’ poll. “This has been an incredible ride,” he said. “It’s amazing to be recognized for empowering youth to engage with and make a difference in their communities – to really push against and fight the systems of oppression that exists today. It feels overwhelming.”t

Grand Marshals >>

June 27-July 3, 2013 • Bay Area Reporter • 55

For Jang, Pride honor is a long time coming by David-Elijah Nahmod

rystal Jang admits to being astonished that she was asked to serve as one of this year’s community grand marshals in San Francisco’s Pride parade. To those who know Jang’s history as an activist, educator, and youth advocate, it’s an honor that’s been a long time coming. She’s also aware that in accepting the honor from the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee, she runs the risk of becoming embroiled in the local Bradley Manning controversy. Manning, an openly gay Army private, is currently on military trial for leaking 700,000 classified government documents to WikiLeaks. He had been named a Pride grand marshal until the board rescinded the honor last month. Many people in the community remain upset with Pride officials. “Whatever decision the Pride Committee makes, there is going to be backlash,” Jang said in a recent phone interview with the Bay Area Reporter. “It’s okay for people to protest, that’s what America is about.” She emphasized the need for the dialogue to be civil and respectful. Jang herself participated in the anti-war movement of the 1970s, as well as the feminist movement. Jang, 66, lives with her longtime partner, Sydney Yeong. The two have been married three times (legally and otherwise, according to her biography). The couple has a teenage son, Cameron, who starts college in the fall. Much of Jang’s work has been in youth advocacy. She was the

Danny Buskirk

Community grand marshal Crystal Jang

first out Asian Pacific Islander to teach in the San Francisco public school system. She served as the middle school coordinator for Sexual Minority Youth and Families, helping to develop and implement trainings to educate over 3,000 staff on issues affecting LGBT youth and families in schools. She also coordinated the first ever Transgender 101 workshop for San Francisco Unifi ed School District staff. The seeds for these programs were planted when Jang, a third generation San Franciscan, came out at age 13. “I fell in love with a girl in the ninth grade,” she recalled. “I wrote her a letter stating my intentions. She was kind; she didn’t call me names. But she showed the letter

For Sullivan, Pride is a chance to ‘get out’ by Elliot Owen

etty Sullivan knew she was different, but it wasn’t until her mid-20s when she caught a glimpse of television news reports detailing annual LGBT pride events across the country that she knew she was not alone. It was also the moment that Sullivan, co-publisher and co-editor of the San Francisco Bay Times, recognized the importance of accessible and informative media outlets. Sullivan’s hometown of Green-

wood, Mississippi, the self-proclaimed “cotton capital of the world,” was not a particularly inclusive place during the 1970s. It was obvious to her that moving north to find community was necessary. “I was basically isolated,” she said. “There were no people around me who comprised any sort of LGBT community. There was no discussion related to gays and lesbians at all. I decided to leave and take the journey away from home in search of an area without rampant bigotry See page 62 >>

Courtesy Betty Sullivan

Parade grand marshal and Bay Times co-publisher Betty Sullivan, right, with her partner and co-publisher Jennifer L. Viegas.

to her friends, and they asked me if I had written it. They were put off by the letter, so I backed off a bit.” Jang remembers going to the library and looking up homosexuality. “I read the Kinsey report, and I was within the ‘range’ of the 1-10 scale that they used to identify people who are gay,” she said. She recalled the early days of the gay liberation movement. “I came out among white lesbians, because that’s who accepted you,” she said. “It was an adventurous time, but I couldn’t find anyone who represented me.” But not everyone was accepting of her. “The only time I was ever called a ‘slanty-eyed bitch’ was in a gay bar,” she said. And so fighting for Asian LGBT visibility became part of her activist work. Jang is a co-founder of two long-standing organizations: Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women and Transgender Community, and Older Asian Sisters in Solidarity. She was the recipient of APIQWTC’s Phoenix Award earlier this year. “I spent my life as the representative for Asian lesbians, and I’ve met some incredible people,” she said. “As Asians, we’ve fought so hard to be included. It’s important to be recognized.” It’s a very humble Jang who accepted the Pride Committee’s offer. “I had no idea that my name was being considered,” she said. “I was stunned. I feel like I don’t deserve it. There are so many who are more visible and more deserving than me.”t

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<< Grand Marshals

56 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Benton puts soul into Pride by David-Elijah Nahmod

feel that we are all equal,” said Mario Benton, one of the community grand marshals in this year’s Pride parade. “God made us all the same. It’s about having a relationship with God. It’s a blessing to still be here and celebrate.” Benton, 47, grew up in San Francisco, but now lives in Oakland. He’s already a staple in the Pride parade, where his Soul of Pride floats have given visibility to the LGBT African American community. “I’ve been doing Soul of Pride for seven years,” he told the Bay Area Reporter. “It makes me feel good to bring black soul to the parade. I do it for the youth – the youth enjoy being part of Pride.” Youth is a big part of Benton’s work in the world of high fashion. His Mario B Productions participates in and stages fashion shows that are designed to give underprivileged kids the skills and selfconfidence they need to succeed in the often-cutthroat world of high-end modeling. In doing so, he offers them an opportunity toward a better life for themselves. Growing up as a gay, African American kid, Benton knows all too well of the obstacles they might face. “There’s a lot of racism in the gay community,” he said. “And it’s very racist in the fashion industry. It’s still that way. Black models have to work twice as hard. I make these kids understand the challenges. I tell

Danny Buskirk

Fashion show producer Mario Benton

them to put their priorities first and to be on point.” Benton’s work has been instrumental in raising the glass ceiling, but he points out that his goal is to lift up LGBT youth from all walks of life, not just from one community or another. “I did the first national campaign with a black gay man on a billboard,” he said. “It focused on young gay men ages 14-19, to make them more aware of HIV. Other issues we work with are personal transformation: we work with youth of all ages and nationalities. We are about total diversity.” Transgender people hold a special place in Benton’s heart. Though he’s not trans, he understands the pain of isolation.

“I came out at age 13, and was ostracized,” he said. “My heart goes out to the transgender community: they should be a part of Pride.” Benton recently did a fundraiser for the trans community, which focused on HIV and homelessness. As he prepares for his duties as Pride grand marshal, a notable sense of joy came into Benton’s voice. “I’m very excited. It was my turn, and it feels really good to me,” he said. “I grew up in San Francisco and saw my community hard hit by AIDS. I faced a lot of challenges and I’m blessed to still be here in 2013.”t More information on Benton’s work can be found at www. mbsayitloud.com.

LGBT ‘superhero’ uses drag persona to help others by Ilan Moskowitz

ne of this year’s community grand marshals, Bebe Sweetbriar, is somewhat of an LGBT superhero. Sweetbriar uses his drag celebrity, he explained, “to gain access to things that will help propel the LGBT community agenda, politically, socially, and artistically.” And like most superheroes, the alter ego of this larger than life character is no less interesting. Sweetbriar’s real name is Kevin-Lee Junious. He’s 51 and does not get caught up in the pronouns or gender politics of his creation. “I use my birth name in my everyday life,” Junious said, like any costumed crusader of their alter ego. Junious identifies as a gay man, but when he’s BeBe Sweetbriar, he’s in a completely different mode. He said that even when he’s referred to as male when he’s in character, it doesn’t shake him. The need for someone like Sweetbriar in the San Francisco community is too great for that, not to mention his love of the craft. “Others might need that [strict reference to female pronouns] to keep them in that mode. To me it just doesn’t matter,” Junious said. Junious’s introduction to drag happened in 2006 when he saw Mercedez Munro win the Miss Gay San Francisco pageant. “Watching her and knowing of the community service her title required prompted me to begin thinking that doing drag may be a way for me to give back to the community,” he said. Professionally, Junious is a force of nature. As Sweetbriar, his 2011 single, “Free To Be Me,” stayed on Gaydar Radio’s playlist for a whopping 14 weeks. He writes a syndicated celebrity interview column called Fame (interviewing the likes of Lady Gaga) for Edge Media Network, of which the Bay Area Reporter is a media partner.

Rick Gerharter

Drag queen BeBe Sweetbriar belts out a song during a performance in January.

He was chosen to represent Ciroc vodka during its effort to become more involved in the gay community. Rap star and entrepreneur P. Diddy (real name, Sean Combs) has a joint venture with parent company Diageo in the U.S. to market the alcohol. “Just because someone is supportive or trying to market to the LGBT community as a good business move, doesn’t mean that our community is one that they completely believe in. But P. Diddy does,” Junious said. “I wasn’t sure with him being a hip-hop mogul if he would be accepting of my presence. But he went out of his way, I thought, to make me feel welcomed and comfortable. He was very cool.” Gaining the incredible power of celebrity and mass exposure over such a short amount of time (seven years) might have blurred another man’s goals and set his community service on a backburner, but for Junious, his drag persona is a mode of outreach and support to those around him. His first performance was at a fundraiser entitled Dymphna for his church, St. Aidan’s Episcopal in Diamond Heights. “With great exposure in fabulous

dresses comes even greater responsibility,” Peter Parker’s uncle might have said if he was going to become a drag media sensation. But unlike most costumed heroes, Junious is far from being misunderstood in his outspoken support for LGBT equality and an end to discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS. Aside from being a grand marshal in Sunday’s Pride parade, Junious, as Sweetbriar, received a California Senate Certificate of Recognition. He also went on to win Miss Gay San Francisco in 2008 and was Miss Desperate Diva 2008. Junious has raised funds for a variety of nonprofits, including the AIDS Housing Alliance/San Francisco and Larkin Street Youth Services. On top of all this, Junious is readily available to help a worthy cause. He always finds the time to speak with gay youth to discuss issues such as coming out and their future. “I approach the gay community using my drag personality to bridge the gap we have between subgroups in our community,” he said. “They all love a drag queen.”t

Grand Marshals >>

t Trans AIDS activist has pushed for inclusion by Cynthia Laird

ongtime transgender and HIV activist Veronika Fimbres is one of several community grand marshals in this year’s LGBT Pride parade and has long advocated for those who are disenfranchised. A licensed vocational nurse for 30 years, Fimbres, 60, has held several jobs in the medical profession, including staff nurse at Hospice By the Bay and safety nurse at San Quentin State Prison, where she was the first transgender woman to work in that capacity. Fimbres came to San Francisco in 1996. Over the years, she has been involved in public service as a member of the San Francisco HIV Health Services Planning Council and the San Francisco Veterans’ Affairs Commission. She is a long-term HIV/AIDS survivor of 26 years. The planning council is tasked with prioritizing funds granted to San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin counties under the federal Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act. During her time on the council in the late 1990s, Fimbres pushed for the allocation of $80,000 for the first educational symposium to train providers on how to work with trans HIV patients. According to her biography, she also advised the health department AIDS office’s epidemiology and surveillance unit to develop data and statistics on transgender people. Until that time, she noted, health officials were “lumping trans individuals with men.”

Courtesy Veronika Fimbres

Community grand marshal Veronika Fimbres

“The AIDS office has included ‘transgenders’ ever since,” she wrote. In her public service post, Fimbres was a veterans’ affairs commissioner for 14 years, being appointed by the Board of Supervisors and three mayors. She was the first openly transgender person appointed to a board or commission in the city, she noted. It was while on that body that she advocated for the 38-Geary Muni line to display “VA Hospital” on the bus destination signs so that veterans could find out how to get to the hospital. Over the years, Fimbres has been an outspoken activist in the transgender community. She was the organizer of last year’s efforts to get the Castro merchants group to fly the transgender pride flag See page 62 >>

June 27-July 3, 2013 • Bay Area Reporter • 57

<< Grand Marshals

58 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Gay black couple works to empower others by Peter Hernandez

erry Lang and his partner, Kenneth Monteiro, were on vacation this spring when they were phoned by a friend with the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee sharing good news: they had been selected by the Pride board as community grand marshals for this year’s parade. The honor will soon accompany many others for the influential and outspoken couple, who regularly denounce dynamics of white privilege. It’s unusual that the Pride Committee names a couple as grand marshal, but Lang and Monteiro, a gay black couple living in Potrero Hill, make a good observation. “I think Ken and I are uniquely positioned to shed light, build bridges, and make collaborations,” said Lang during an interview at their two-story home decorated with African prints and safari color palettes. Lang is executive director of Black Coalition on AIDS and the affiliated Rafiki Wellness Center. Monteiro is dean of ethnic studies at San Francisco State University. They both provide services to diverse communities of color. They are both 58 and share the same astrological sign, Scorpio. They work to eliminate racial barriers and bring attention to issues that affect the black community of which they are a part. They’re especially motivated by racial tension, economic disparity, and misconceptions about African Americans. “The nomination and vote is an affirmation of our empowering work,” Lang said. Being named grand marshal as a couple is a testament of their similar thinking and shared motivations. As dean of the only college of eth-

Jane Philomen Cleland

Perry Lang, left, and his partner Kenneth Monteiro, attended the recent rainbow flag-raising luncheon at San Francisco City Hall ahead of this weekend’s Pride parade.

nic studies in the country, Monteiro asserts the practicality of the course material among situations and careers for students at SFSU. Lang’s work with BCA and Rafiki Wellness Center provides wellness service and health screenings predominantly to San Francisco’s black community, which has historically seen a dearth of services. “We’re very similar but very different otherwise,” Monteiro said of his and Lang’s shared viewpoints but unique approaches to articulation. When talking to the men, it is common for them to speak with a shared opinion on one subject, one nodding their head while the other speaks, while reinforcing the other’s statement. “What I would add,” or “How I feel about that,” are common pretexts for supportive additions to the other’s statement. “This is a wonderful opportu,nity

for social justice collaborations,” Monteiro said. He and Lang propose more work between BCA and other ethnic LGBT groups with mainstream organizations in order to eliminate barriers and misconceptions. Based on an interview, the collaborations seemed to be a dissemination of ideas. Monteiro and Lang claim that misconceptions about black life run rampant throughout things like lectures, galas, and churches. “Lecturers say that you cannot be gay and black in a church,” Lang said. They added that there is a misconception that there is more of a stigma of homosexuality in the black community. Lang is also director of the Interfaith Circle, a diverse group of religious individuals who practice meditation to new age music and honor various religious practices. An early January 2011 meeting

posted online shows a variety of affirmations in Hebrew, Muslim and Baha’i dialects. “Our truth is that we are surrounded by gay, straight, questioning, black, Asian, Latino men,” Lang said, adding that they are close to people from diverse religious backgrounds, too. Monteiro, who has a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford, was formerly chairman and an assistant professor of SFSU’s psychology department. He bridged the worlds of ethnic studies and psychology and found that there are similar concepts between the two subjects. Introductory psychology textbooks are often heteronormative and seldom use gay anecdotes or situations, he said. “Count the number of pages where race or gender are mentioned,” Monteiro said. BCA, founded in 1986 by community activists, responded to the rise of HIV in San Francisco’s black community. Lang has been executive director since 2003 and has received recognition from the NAACP and Mayor Ed Lee. A press release from SFSU recognizing Lang and BCA with its 2006 Community Service Award states that BCA more than doubled in size in Lang’s first three years as executive director. Prior to his work at BCA, Lang was a seasoned journalist of 20 years who was also vice president of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. He wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle for more than a decade and realized a disparity between the black community and mainstream media. “I wanted to give a voice to the underrepresented. I saw that there was a civil rights struggle, and people like my uncle, a serviceman,

were never quoted. They needed to be included, and someone needed to tell their story,” Lang said. “We need to have a media that’s reflective of the community they cover.” The couple enjoys watching films together in their spare time and vacationing in Palm Springs. Their favorite restaurant is a neo-Ethiopian Bayview restaurant called Radio Africa and Kitchen. “We’re discovering the joy of doing nothing well,” quipped Lang. The couple met at an African American gay bar called Eagle Creek on Market Street on a Sunday afternoon in 1987. It was shortly after Lang’s then-partner’s death. “I charged over because I thought he was hot,” said Monteiro, whose partner also died shortly after he met Lang. Monteiro and Lang fostered a relationship that began in 1989 over their shared interests and respect to their former partners. Their evolution into the recognizable and admired couple that they are today, whose interests are so deeply rooted in their own lives and social justice work, developed out of their own experience as gay black men pitted against the AIDS epidemic. “When I first got here, that you were seeing an African American man stopped the conversation,” Monteiro said. Brett Andrews, a gay African American who has been the executive director of Positive Resource Center for 10 years, said he feels empowered by Lang’s work at BCA. “He’s certainly been a soldier working with HIV-positive people, or people with high blood pressure or asthma,” Andrews said. “I personally feel empowered. There aren’t many African American executive directors around. He’s a section I see inside myself.”t

Grand Marshals >>

June 27-July 3, 2013 • Bay Area Reporter • 59

Harris is a tireless fighter for SF values by James Patterson

n addition to being the “bestlooking attorney general ...” in America, according to President Barack Obama, California Attorney General Kamala Harris might just be the “hardest working attorney general in America,” according to a longtime friend and LGBT community activist. Obama took much criticism when he made those comments about Harris at an April fundraiser in the Bay Area, and he quickly phoned her to apologize, according to media reports. For her part, Harris accepted the president’s apology. Her spokesman Gil Duran told reporters afterwards that Harris and the president have been friends for many years. Harris, a straight ally, is one of the community grand marshals in Sunday’s LGBT Pride parade. Out lesbian Assistant District Attorney Rebecca Prozan, who has known Harris for more than a decade, talked of her dedication to social justice. “She is a tireless fighter for all the issues San Francisco holds dear,” Prozan said in an email. Originally from Oakland, Har-

Military

From page 48

attacked from behind. May said the drill sergeant ripped off her clothes and pulled her underwear down. May “blacked out” during the attack. “It was a power and control issue more than sexuality,” she said, adding that her assailant did not know she was a transgender woman. May said she reported the assault to her commanding officer and he told her, “My men would never do something like this.” May was honorably discharged for personality disorder. She said she has had to fight for her veterans benefits. May was eventually diagnosed with PTSD due to MST. Her symptoms included depression, suicidal ideation, flashbacks, and nightmares. The rape seriously impacted her life, her relationships, and her ability to work. Now living in New Jersey, May, 51, is an online student at Kaplan University where she is pursuing a degree in fire science and emergency management. She is also involved in politics and is a longtime advocate in the LGBT community. For MST survivors, May said it is important to talk with someone about the assault immediately. “We in the MST community know that MST can and does affect a person’s physical and mental health, even many years later,” she said in an email.

Gay man testifies

POD advocacy board member Brain K. Lewis, a Navy veteran who is gay, is another MST survivor featured in Justice Denied. He is also the first male MST survivor to testify before Congress, when he appeared before Gillibrand’s armed services subcommittee on personnel in March. Lewis testified that in August 2000, he “was raped by a superior non-commissioned officer” and “ordered by my command not to report the crime.” A military psychiatrist told Lewis he had a personality disorder and discharged him in August 2001. Later, the VA gave him a 100 percent disability rating for PTSD. “The predator asked me to dinner,” Lewis recalled. He said he was See page 60 >>

Jane Philomen Cleland

California Attorney General Kamala Harris

ris gained an appreciation for civil rights as a child. A graduate of Westmount High School, Harris graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1986. She returned to the Bay Area to graduate from UC Hastings College of the Law. As the first woman, the first African American, and the first South Asian to serve as the state’s top law enforcement officer, Harris, 48,

served seven years as district attorney for the City and County of San Francisco. She left the position in January 2011 when she was elected attorney general. Harris might also be “the most LGBT-friendly attorney general in America,” according to Prozan, 40. “Her unwavering commitment to LGBT equality and justice is unparalleled.” Harris declined to be interviewed. In an email sent through her press secretary, Harris talked about what “empowerment,” one of this year’s Pride themes, means to the community. “Empowerment is having the courage and the ability to pursue what is rightfully yours and refusing to stop until you get it,” Harris said. “For decades, the LGBT community has fought for equal treatment under law and the right to basic human dignity. From Stonewall to the Supreme Court, this march for justice and civil rights has been long and difficult – but I believe we are on the cusp of a breakthrough.” Harris has been working on several issues, including ensuring that California’s medical marijuana dispensaries operate within state guidelines and free from hostile federal interven-

tion, marriage equality, human trafficking, and making law enforcement more efficient with technology. Harris said that she supports California’s medical marijuana law. Federal authorities, however, have taken a dim view in the last two years as many dispensaries around the state, including those in the Bay Area, have been forced to close. “I strongly support medical marijuana because I personally know many people who have benefited from it when they were ill,” Harris said. “My office is providing technical assistance to the legislature as it works to clarify California law.” Harris has also taken on consumer issues. During the foreclosure crisis, Harris went to work for California homeowners and secured a judgment of $20 billion from the nation’s banks as part of the national mortgage settlement. In her inaugural address, Harris pledged to “seek innovative new approaches in tackling the state’s toughest problems.” She’s also using social media to keep the public informed on legal, social, and economic issues. On Harvey Milk Day last month, Harris tweeted, “Hope will never be silent.” On her Facebook page, she

shared a link to Equality California. In a June 14 tweet, Harris, who had 18,244 Twitter followers at press time, said, “Digital piracy is a serious crime that harms one of California’s most important economic engines.” In a rousing February speech to the California Democratic Convention in San Diego, Harris said, “I’ll tell you what’s too big to fail: I say it’s our middle class that is too big to fail. I say it’s the California dream that is too big to fail.” Later she added, “Marriage equality is too big to fail.” (The full speech is at http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=r7dohvbuVpQ) Harris is the author of the 2009 book Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer. Her musical tastes include Red Hot Chili Peppers, Santana, Aretha Franklin, and the Beatles, her Facebook page noted. She also enjoys shopping at farmers markets. Harris, who will be riding in Sunday’s parade, draws inspiration from her mother and recalled her advice, which she shares on Facebook. “You may be the first to do many things, but make sure you are not the last.”t

<< Pride 2013

60 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Domestic violence

From page 40

court records. At the time of the alleged theft, the judge had ordered Gonzales to stay away from the victim. That case is also headed to trial. Gonzales said she didn’t need counseling. “I’m already seeking help at the women’s reentry program,” she said. The program typically helps link people to housing, education, and other assistance. Woods, of the TransVision program, has other things she’d like to see addressed, including help for people who are program supervisors like her. “As somebody who works with transgender women, a majority have been in domestic violence situations,” Woods said. “I’m not trained to handle that.” She spoke of a former employee that she had to let go but is still worried about.

Geena Dabadghav

Domestic violence survivor David Harvey, of San Jose, is now a pastor and conducts services at the Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center.

The former staffer’s boyfriend “has put guns in her face,” Woods said. She and others “honestly have sat around and said, ‘Is he

going to kill her?’ ... We have tried to help her. She’s too afraid to leave in the middle of the night. She doesn’t have any resources.” Woods indicated she couldn’t call the police on the man. Among other reasons, “that’s going to put her in more jeopardy,” she said. For some, being the victim of domestic violence isn’t enough to end their feelings for their partner. A few years ago, David Harvey’s ex busted his eye socket and is now in prison, he said. Harvey, 58, of San Jose, recalled how after the incident, six or seven other gay men came to him and said that similar things had happened to them. He was also part of a counseling group for gay and bisexual domestic violence survivors, but it ended after a couple months when the funding was cut. “I still love him,” Harvey, who’s a church pastor, said of his former partner.t

Courtesy 9 Point Productions

Wendy May is the survivor of a military sexual assault and appears in the film, Justice Denied.

Military

From page 59

attacked and beaten on a remote Naval station and received no medical attention for his injuries. A fellow shipmate reported the assault for Lewis. Though Lewis confirmed the assault, he was ordered not to report it for investigation. As a result of the assault, Lewis had performance issues, including distrustfulness, concerns for his safety, and anger. Lewis received medical care at a Naval hospital in Guam where he was diagnosed with PTSD caused by sexual assault. Such a diagnosis is uncommon, he said. On duty, Lewis said he experienced secondary victimization in the form of abuse from his commanders and fellow officers. He was increasingly isolated from his shipmates and stripped of his qualifications. He called this a “culture of retaliation.” “The current publicity on military sexual assaults is 50 years overdue,” Lewis said. He said he had met MST survivors from World War II, Korea, Vietnam and other conflicts. Of his Senate testimony, Lewis said the hardest part was recalling his secondary victimization by commanders and fellow officers. He noted another important point about his testimony. Gillibrand let the four MST survivors testify before hearing from military officials. This meant the officials had to sit in the hearing room and listen to the sexual assault testimony. Yet no Navy official, Lewis said, has reached out to help him even after being in the same room with the chief of naval operations and the judge advocate general of the Navy. Lewis said his testimony gave him “a renewed purpose” to his work. Still, he said he “labors with the in-

justice” of what happened to him. He said he participated in Justice Denied because male MST survivors had been ignored for too long. “Most resources for recovery are geared for women survivors,” Lewis said in an email. “Even in the VA, men do not have access to all-male residential recovery programs specifically addressing MST.” Lewis said the VA hospital in Baltimore only recently started a male MST outpatient support group. “Not all VA hospitals offer such support,” he said. For those who experience MST, Lewis encouraged survivors to speak out. “There will be help as long as you speak up,” he said. Lewis is also working with other survivors to establish a nonprofit geared specifically for male survivors of MST. The group, Men Recovering from Military Sexual Trauma, has a Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/mrmstorg/. He plans to go to Hamline Univer-

sity School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota next fall. “I hope to practice veterans and military law as a way to give back to the veteran’s community what was freely given to me,” he said. In a statement issued last week to MST survivors and other supporters of her legislation, Boxer said of its defeat, “[T]he pleas from brave [MST] survivors,” were ignored. Of the legislation’s defeat, Lewis said it “is a slap in the face to all survivors.” He is hopeful other legislation will be successful at “removing sex crimes from the military chain of command.” Boxer agrees with Lewis. “We are not backing down in our fight to take these decisions out of the chain of command,” Boxer said. That was good news to Lewis, who said, “Senator Boxer’s determination to do the right thing on behalf of [MST] survivors is heartwarming and very much appreciated.”t

Courtesy Brian K. Lewis

Navy veteran Brian K. Lewis testified before a Senate subcommittee.

<< Pride 2013

62 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Sullivan

From page 55

and discrimination.” Her first stop was Memphis, Tennessee and in 1982, Sullivan marched in her first pride parade with around 100 other people. Since then, she’s participated in pride parades in New York City; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco, where she has been a resident and wellknown LGBT community member since 1995. “Pride parades are very dear to me. It’s once a year that we can make happen an event that echoes throughout the world,” she said. But this year’s Pride celebration is special for Sullivan, 60. In late April, the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee board named her as a community grand marshal. “It’s very exciting,” Sullivan said. “It also feels in many ways like a logical progression.” In the last 13 years, Sullivan’s contributions to the Bay Area LGBT community have been many. In 1996, she founded Betty’s List, a notable email announcement service that compiles Bay Area news and events for thousands of LGBT subscribers. In addition, Betty’s List has sponsored numerous events and groups that include the Ladies Go Biking Group, Parents Are Too Social Group, Betty’s List Book Club, Ladies Night, Saturday Singles Brunch, Outdoor Adventures Series, New Year’s Eve Celebration, Theater Night Out Series, and the Smart Business Network. “Betty’s List is more than just an email list,” Sullivan said. “Thousands of women and men have participated in our events, and hundreds of nonprofits, small and large businesses, and individuals use our services to get the word out about events, products, services, etc.”

Trans AIDS activist

From page 57

for 24 hours around the time of the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance observance. The Merchants of Upper Market and Castro initially refused the request, but Fimbres garnered nearly 1,300 signatures on an online petition. The merchants group, which controls the flagpole, ultimately allowed the flag to be flown. “While we have made many inroads, and been the pioneer in trans studies and research, I find that we are still underserved and marginalized,” Fimbres wrote in

In August 2011, Sullivan and her partner, Jennifer L. Viegas, purchased the Bay Times from former publisher Kim Corsaro for an undisclosed amount. Viegas, 46, a senior correspondent for Discovery Channel News, co-publishes and co-edits the bimonthly publication with Sullivan. They have been together for three years and, depending on the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality, may get married. “We’ve definitely been talking about it,” Sullivan said. Sullivan has served on numerous nonprofit organization boards over the years. They’ve included the Horizons Foundation, Golden Gate Business Association, UCSF AIDS Health Alliance, Bay Area Career Women, the PFLAG National Board of Directors, and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. The recipient of a Distinguished Alumni Award from Columbia University in New York, Sullivan has worked for the Newspaper Association of America Foundation, the New York Times, New York Newsday, USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other local, regional, and national newspapers. As an educator, her newspaper and newspaper-related organization lecture tours have taken her to Japan, Malaysia, and South Africa. In addition, she is a founding member of the World Newspaper Association’s Young Reader’s Committee, and has served on a number of committees for professional media and education organizations. Honored to be recognized at this year’s Pride, Sullivan emphasized the importance of celebrating as a community. “Pride is about getting out to come out,” she said, “and we just want everybody to come and participate.”t

an opinion piece in the Bay Area Reporter last year during the flag flap. She has received numerous awards for her community service, including the Fred Skau Outstanding Volunteer of the Year Award from the AIDS Emergency Fund and the Bobby Campbell AIDS Hero Award from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Fimbres declined to be interviewed for this article, but earlier this year she said she was proud to have been nominated a grand marshal. She was a choice of the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee’s board.t

Out &About

Miss Molly

Mary, May I?

O&A

The

Vol. 43 • No. 26 • June 27-July 3, 2013

www.ebar.com/arts

Frameline wraps up by David Lamble

he final four days of Frameline 37 contain some gems – as well as some clunkers – that can easily be missed in the frenzy leading up to Pride Day. Test This hugely entertaining time capsule, set in San Francisco’s protean modern-dance world, makes both harrowing and playful use of that fateful moment

when the first blood-test for the HIV virus debuted. It’s 1985, and a lithe, downright pretty young male dancer, Frankie, stumbles upon a vicious oxymoron: how to please an ill-tempered choreographer who hates the idea of a queer-acting dancer performing a piece that is swimming in gay visual metaphors. See page 81 >>

On Pride festivities: “My head was exploding with all the freedom and celebration!”

Being Cheyenne Jackson by Adam Sandel

f gay show-biz buffs have their very own Superman, it’s Cheyenne Jackson. The 6’3” dark-haired, blue-eyed, movie-starhandsome actor, singer and songwriter has starred on and Off Broadway in shows including Xanadu, Finian’s Rainbow, Damn Yankees, All Shook Up, The Performers and 8. TV fans know him from his nutty stint as Danny Baker on 30 Rock, as the villainous vocal coach Dustin Goolsby on Glee, and most recently as Liberace’s protégé Billy Leatherwood in HBO’s Behind the Candelabra. But nothing endears him more to LGBT fans than the fact that he’s been out and proud for his entire career – and an outspoken activist for LGBT rights,

Scene from director Chris Mason Johnson’s Test. Courtesy Frameline

Courtesy San Francisco Symphony

marriage equality, and as international ambassador for amfAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research). San Franciscans will get plenty of face time with Jackson, who is now in town as a Pride Celebrity Grand Marshal; singing the role of Tony in the San Francisco Symphony’s West Side Story in Concert (June 27-July 2); and for the release party of his solo CD I’m Blue, Skies at Macy’s Men’s Store on Union Square on Sat., June 29, at 1 p.m. “Being a Pride Grand Marshal is a great honor,” he says. “I vividly remember my first Pride in Spokane, WA [near his hometown of See page 67 >>

Bridging the gay/African American divide by Sura Wood

Where We Are (2013) (fabric, photographs, monofilament), a mixed-media installation by Ramekon O’Arwisters.

Courtesy the artist and the AAACC

or Ramekon O’Arwisters, a San Francisco-based, gay African American artist, racial and gender politics are realities, not abstract constructs, and they are never far from his mind or his work, where he merges his identities. In Sugar in Our Blood: The Spirit of Black and Queer Identity in the Art of Ramekon O’Arwisters, a small autobiographical exhibition now at the African American Art & Culture Complex, he examines the stereotyping of LBGT and African American communities through colorful mixed-media installations that draw on the folk-art tradition of ragrug tapestries. Incorporating intimate apparel, nightgowns, shirts, church hats, family photographs, aprons, and other cultural icons, the rugs are woven by the multi-ethnic, sexually diverse modern equivalent of

{ THIRD OF THREE SECTIONS }

a quilting bee. According to the artist, the finished pieces reflect sexuality, domesticity and spirituality, while conveying society’s stubborn attachment to sexual and racial prejudices. O’Arwisters, who’s also a curator at the SFO Museum, has experimented with a variety of media, including glass, synthetic polymer, and paint, deconstructing the charged subtext of consumer goods that he describes as “stand-ins for race, gender, sexuality and prejudice.” But recently, he has taken a different approach; he has organized weekly Crochet Jams, get-togethers that became an integral component of his residency at the de Young last year, where more than 100 people participated, and contributed to the objects displayed in this show. It’s the collaborative process that intrigues O’Arwisters rather than the final product. “I want these projects to be a springboard for the spirit of See page 74 >>

<< Out There

66 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Thank the LGBT gods we’re gay! by Roberto Friedman

e have to admit, even though this is our 30th SF Pride week, seeing the line of rainbow flags flapping in the breeze down Market St. always gives us goosebumps (or should that be ganderbumps?). Despite all the usual craziness and corporate crapitude, we’ll still say it loud: We’re gay and we’re proud! The gayest days of the gayest

month in the gayest little city in the world are now underway. The San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, Frameline 37’s opening-night film was director Stacie Passon’s daring debut feature Concussion. From the title we thought we’d be getting some insight into the psychology of our dear friend L., who has had several head-first bike accidents, or of our dear friend M., who was dropped on his head when he was but a small Courtesy Frameline

Julie Fain Lawrence (as Kate) and Robin Weigert (as Abby) in writer/director Stacie Passon’s Concussion.

boy. But the concussion suffered by upper-middle-class lesbian housewife Abby (Robin Weigert) when she’s hit in the head by an errant baseball is not dwelled upon. It serves as the jumping-off point for her amorous extramarital activities: she’s soon turning tricks in the big city as a high-priced call girl. Shades of Catherine Deneuve in director Luis Bunuel’s Belle de Jour! This film has more steamy lesbian sex than little old Out There has ever seen, and the writing, acting and cinematography are all firstrate. Even if you’re not in the market for a session with a high-class lesbo housefrau, don’t miss it when it gets a commercial release this fall. At the film fest’s glamorous afterparty held at Terra Gallery, OT and our primo “plus one” Pepi enjoyed cooling our heels on a low-slung divan while the maddening crowd flowed all around us. We also got to meet humpy model Allan Gamboa-Amador, who was rocking a Superman shirt when he wasn’t whipping it off. Photographer Steven Underhill, an expert model wrangler if ever there was one, explained, “He really is a little shy, but when it comes to showing off there is a fearless exhibitionist quality to him, and an interesting personality. Plus he’s in the Masters program in Astrophysics at UC Berkeley!” Well, it isn’t rocket science – no, wait a minute, yes it is!

See & be scene

The night before the Frameline opening, OT and Pepi were delighted to attend the 6th Annual Pride Kick-Off Party 2013 hosted

Steven Underhill

Man of steel, guns of granite: astrophysicist-in-training Allan Gamboa-Amador flexes during Frameline 37’s opening-night party at Terra Gallery.

by Mark Rhoades honoring 400 LGBT leaders, movers and shakers of our community. As usual with a Rhoades event, the setting was glamorous – the Redwood Room in the Clift Hotel San Francisco – and the guest list was a bumper crop of boldface names, including Brandon Hernandez, Joy Bianchi, Ken Fulk, Tom Horn, Jack Calhoun, Tim Wu, Bevan Dufty, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, Eliana Lopez, Riccardo Benavides, Marilyn Cabak, Alan Morrell, Olya Dzilikhova, Edward Dubrovsky and Karen Caldwell. We got to tell Dufty we thought he did the right thing by stepping down as Grand Marshal in light of SF Pride’s complete bungling of the Bradley Manning affair. We got to meet and hang out with Pepi’s hip-

hop dance teacher Sarah Bush, of the Sarah Bush Dance Project. We got our society photograph taken by a Drew Altizer shutterbug. We got to gawk at all the handsome men. Rhoades told us, “I don’t want to toot my our horn, but I do it all. I am the one that came up with the idea, I get the sponsors. I pick the charity, venue, decor, lighting, sound, menu, alcohol sponsors, and it’s my list that I pick and choose to invite. I get the people and the press to cover it. I try to make it all look effortless. On top of it all I still have to look good and be charming!” Mission accomplished, Mark!

Correx box

Our favorite correction from last See page 67 >>

Drew Altizer

Blake Mason, Eric Swoyer, and Nick Stanley at Mark Rhoades’ 6th Annual Pride Kick-Off Party at the Redwood Room.

Music >>

June 27-July 3, 2013 • Bay Area Reporter • 67

Courtesy San Francisco Symphony

On his starring role in the film Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks: “I really get to show all my stuff!”

Cheyenne Jackson

From page 65

Newport]. The dykes on bikes came roaring out, and I thought, ‘Oh my god!’ My head was exploding with all the freedom and celebration.” Jackson hasn’t been to San Francisco in a decade. “That was just a quick weekend with my husband [physicist Monte Lapka], so I’m looking forward to spending a couple of weeks there. My husband is coming with our dog and my mom. I warned her about what she might see at Pride, like some strange clothing – or lack of clothing.” He’s also excited about performing West Side Story in Concert with soprano Alexandra Silber. “I’d met Michael Tilson Thomas before, and it’s hands down the most beautiful score ever written, so I jumped at the chance to do it. I played Tony in a community theatre production when I was 23, but having sung a lot of pop music lately, I’ve gotta get back in practice to do that score.” Jackson just filmed Neil LaBute’s darkly comic miniseries Full Circle, joining an all-star cast including David Boreanaz, Kate Walsh, and Billy Campbell. The gay icon is likely to become even more of a household name next year, having just completed his first major starring role in the film Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks, opposite Gena Rowlands. “I play a Broadway chorus boy who teaches dance to rich older women at a Florida retirement home. I had to get over my worship of Gena, who is one of our greatest actresses, to do it. We shot the exteriors in Florida, but spent three months shooting in Budapest where it’s cheaper to film – including beach scenes on a huge green screen sound-stage. I’m in 142 of the 145 scenes, so I really get to show all my stuff.” Jackson’s turn as Liberace’s bitter, disillusioned protégé in Behind the

Out There

From page 66

week, from The New York Times, June 20: “An article on June 6 about the Bushwick Open Studios event in Brooklyn misinterpreted a statement by the artist Jumper Alcorn in the process of paraphrasing it to eliminate an obscenity. Ms. Alcorn says that the vulgarity in her manifesto means that she is a feminist who messes around, not that she ‘sleeps around.’” Slut-shamed by the Times: that’s gotta hurt! Finally, and we can’t believe we’re doing this, but yes, Out There is going to recommend a cat video. Do not miss the fabulous Meowia

Candelabra is especially memorable since he only speaks six words in the whole film. “I’d been offered a big part in another film when I got the call from [director] Steven Soderbergh, who said, ‘It’s only one line, but it’s an important part.’ I said I don’t care if I have any lines – I wanted to work with him, Michael Douglas, Matt Damon, Dan Ackroyd and Debbie Reynolds. “We shot the interiors at Zsa Zsa Gabor’s house, and the performance scenes in Vegas on the actual stage where Liberace played – on the same pianos! We had hand doubles for the piano-playing, but I learned to play 85% of the music until Soderbergh said, ‘You don’t need a hand double.’ It was a great challenge to create a whole character, who has a history, pain and anger, but doesn’t get to say anything.” With so many projects on film, TV, stage, and in concert, Jackson can’t pinpoint what he’d consider an ideal job. “I’m really in love with the medium of film, with the camera so close. I love the fast pace of TV. On stage there’s nothing like the shared experience of you and the people in that room for one night only. In concert, in front of 100 pieces, it’s like you’re on a wave in the ocean.” He’s also enjoying his recent foray into songwriting and recording, having co-written the songs on his new solo CD I’m Blue, Skies, including the upbeat break-up song “Don’t Wanna Know.” “I’m just an artist who wants to create whatever comes my way. I don’t want to repeat myself, I always want new challenges.”t West Side Story in Concert with the San Francisco Symphony, June 27-July 2. Tickets: www.sfsymphony.org/Buy-Tickets/2012-13/ West-Side-Story-in-Concert I’m Blue, Skies CD release party, Sat., June 29, at 1 p.m., Macy’s Men’s Shop on Union Square.

Clawas singing the exciting finale to Pawcini’s La Catsca! Go to YouTube, and search for Meowia Clawas. They don’t make opera stars like that any meow. Our Pride week hasn’t ended yet. After press time this week you can find us at the opening night for Beyond Belief at the Contemporary Jewish Museum/SF; at the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus performance of Andrew Lippa’s I Am Harvey Milk at the Nourse Auditorium; at the San Francisco Symphony’s West Side Story concert at Davies Hall; at Frameline 37’s closing-night film G.B.F. at the Castro Theatre; and at queer points in-between. Glad, as always, to be gay.t

<< Music

68 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

The Passion of Mary Magdalene

by Philip Campbell

hen general director of the San Francisco Opera David Gockley expressed surprise recently at the apparent lack of controversy surrounding the world premiere of his third commission from composer Mark Adamo, it sounded a little disingenuous. In a city that celebrates Easter with a hunky Jesus competition and is internationally renowned for a blasé attitude about most alternative thinking, the idea of an operatic revision of the New Testament told with a feminist slant from fragments found in the Gnostic Gospels frankly didn’t sound all that alarming. As a matter of fact, the biggest shock about The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which opened last week at the War Memorial Opera House, is how such a radically provocative concept could result in a work so tame and emotionally uninvolving. It couldn’t all be blamed on the composer, but after receiving such a meticulous, excellently cast and well-mounted production utilizing all the best resources of the SFO, the letdown must primarily be ascribed to the surprising lack of gravitas in the music and the banality of Adamo’s own libretto. At its best, when the music soars (and it often does), the mood is more highfalutin Broadway than contemporary opera, and there is nothing necessarily wrong with that. Couple the catchy tunes to an obvious and simplistic rhyme scheme, and there is more to quibble about. The impact of the story and all the inherent drama is shrunk to a handful of intriguing scenes that are diluted by lengthy and rapturous love duets and weepily agonizing arias. I’m not sure that Adamo was going for easy listening, and again, there should be no harm in that if the points of the story are served. He does rough

Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

Sasha Cooke (Mary Magdalene) in composer Mark Adamo’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

up some of the overall prettiness with an occasional crash of dissonance here and some skittering, slithery strings there, but it still doesn’t match the weight of the tale. What might have been the trend of history had Mary Magdalene been given more voice in telling her version? How influential would her take

on the most analyzed story ever told have proved for the later position and treatment of women in the world? Adamo chooses to focus on her passion rather than her gospel, and so makes his biggest narrative mistake. When it is Mary who ends up literally and figuratively wearing the crown of thorns, we can see what he is getting

Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

Nathan Gunn (Yeshua) in composer Mark Adamo’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

at, but can’t help thinking he has obscured his own intentions. The rivalry between Mary and Peter (best bud and apostle of Jesus) provides a useful tool for making some points about male chauvinism. The imagined bond between Mary and Miriam (formerly known as the Virgin Mary) is cemented by shared

admissions of indiscretions with anonymous men, and gives meaning and motivation to the characters’ actions. It also knocks Jesus off that divinity pedestal and serves Adamo in his quest to bring the story down to earth. He succeeds at that level repeatedly. Sometimes it raises our eyebrows See page 70 >>

<< Theatre

70 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Recalling William Inge: an appreciation

by Tavo Amador

he 1950s were terrible years for gays and lesbians. Institutionalized homophobia was rampant, and many men and women internalized it. Successful, openly gay artists suffered: Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote, for example, were plagued with substance abuse. Gore Vidal avoided that, but was unable to combine sexual and personal intimacy. He conflated male rape and sex. Vidal paid hustlers but lived platonically with his devoted companion, Howard Austen. Less well-remembered today is William Inge (1913-73), who also battled alcoholism and fear of intimacy. His plays gave voice to the sexual anxieties of people living in the American heartland. Born in Independence, Kansas, Inge was a teacher and, in 1943, a drama critic for the St. Louis StarTimes. He met Williams, with whom he may have had a brief affair. Williams encouraged his writing and introduced him to his agent, Audrey Woods. With their support, Inge’s first play, Farther Off from Heaven (1947), was staged by Margo Jones in Dallas. In 1950, Come Back, Little Sheba opened on Broadway with Shirley Booth and Sidney Blackmer giving Tony Award-winning performances. This searing look at a grim, childless marriage centered on Doc Delaney, a chiropractor and recovering alcoholic. He gave up a promising medical career when he had to marry Lola, because she was pregnant. She lost the baby. Lola, once pretty and flirtatious, is now overweight and slovenly. She lives in the past and is obsessed with her dog, Sheba, who has run away. Their already shaky relationship is threatened by Marie, a nubile teenage college student who boards with them. In 1952, Booth

Janna Giacoppo

Playwright William Inge’s life was no picnic.

won an Oscar for the movie version, opposite a powerful Burt Lancaster. In 1953, Inge earned a Pulitzer Prize for Picnic, a moving melodrama about the impact a virile drifter, Hal, has on several women in a small Kansas town during a Labor Day weekend. One of them, Madge, is tired of just being “pretty,” and is drawn to Hal, who represents freedom and danger. Another, Rosemary, a schoolteacher, is desperate to marry, terrified of being an “old maid.” The supporting cast included Paul Newman, and one of the understudies was his future wife, Joanne Woodward. The 1955 film, with a sexy William Holden, Kim Novak in a star-making performance, and Rosalind Russell, was a smash. Bus Stop, starring the legendary Kim Stanley, opened in 1955 to great acclaim. It’s set in a roadside restaurant during a terrible snowstorm that traps passengers on a Greyhound bus heading to Kansas City. Cherie, a no-talent but sweet singer, resists Bo, a loud, well-meaning cowboy who’s determined to marry her. A year later, Joshua Logan, who had di-

rected the play, helmed the successful movie, starring a well-cast Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray. Monroe earned accolades. It remains her finest dramatic performance. In 1957, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, directed by Elia Kazan, gave Inge his fourth straight hit. This reworking of Farther Off from Heaven is perhaps his most autobiographical play. Set in Oklahoma in the 1920s, it features a young, movie star-obsessed mama’s boy who’s bullied by other kids. His virile father, a horse harness salesman, is losing business to automobiles. He loves his wife, but they don’t communicate, so he seeks companionship from another woman. His daughter is going to her first dance. Money is tight. His wife’s insensitive sister and her financially comfortable husband inflame the situation. Outsiders, in this case Roman Catholics and Jews, are treated with suspicion. Delbert Mann directed the memorable 1960 movie version, with Robert Preston, Dorothy Maguire, Shirley Knight, Eve Arden, and Angela Lansbury. A Loss of Roses, starring a young

A scene from a recent Writers’ Theatre production of William Inge’s Picnic in Chicago.

Joan Marcus

Zoe Kazan, S. Epatha Merkerson and Brian Smith in a recent Manhattan Theatre Club revival of William Inge’s Come Back Little Sheba in New York.

Warren Beatty, opened in late 1959, but failed. It would later be filmed as The Stripper (1963) with Woodward, Richard Beymer, and Claire Trevor. When a handsome, small-town youth is seduced by his mother’s friend, it causes a socially unacceptable situation – and is perhaps an allegory for homosexual relationships. Inge won an Oscar for his original screenplay Splendor in the Grass (1961), which starred Natalie Wood and made Beatty a household word. This haunting tale of the consequences of youthful lovers prevented from being together was a major box-office success and garnered Wood an Oscar nomination. Inge adapted James Leo Herlihy’s novel All Fall Down for the screen, and the 1962 movie starred Eva Marie Saint, Beatty, Brandon de Wilde, Karl Malden, and Lansbury. His professional decline was as rapid as his ascent had been. Natural Affection opened on Broadway during a lengthy 1962 newspaper strike, and ran for only 36 performances. He was so displeased with the changes made to his screenplay

Mary Magdalene

From page 68

in amusement. More often, though, we sigh at the missed opportunity of receiving some genuine insight. When Mary and Jesus have their biggest fight, it is over a misconstrued conversation between her fiancé and Peter that almost stops the pending wedding and the chastely staged bed scene that follows. In the first 90 minutes (seems longer) we have met an adulterous rich girl looking for love in all the wrong places saved from stoning by a burly nice-guy rabbi with issues of his own, and who has a guilty and selfdeprecating mother attempting to warn other women away. The spiritually starved girl decides to follow him anyway as long her input is respected. Okay. Did we miss something? Framing the two acts and supplying some needed background exposition is a large chorus of students on an archeological dig. They let us in on the

for Bus Riley’s Back in Town (1965), starring Ann-Margaret and Michael Parks, that he insisted on using a pseudonym, Walter Gage. The Boy in the Basement, written in the 50s but not produced until 1962, is his only work with a gay protagonist. In 1972, The Last Pad opened in Phoenix, Arizona, to strong reviews. It featured homosexual characters. Inge also wrote novels and television stories. For much of his life, the painfully closeted Inge lived with his sister. Suffering from alcoholism and depression, he committed suicide at 60. From 1950 to 1962, Inge was hailed for giving voice to Midwesterners, much as Williams was praised for his evocation of the South. Inge’s characters may be less poetic than Williams’, but they are more grounded. Their dreams are tempered by fewer illusions, making them just as touching. Like Williams, he understood the power of sexual attraction, and he gave it memorable expression in his best work, even if he could not do so in his personal life.t

historical significance of the finding of Mary’s Gospel in the desert in 1945. At times they actually declaim some of Adamo’s footnotes. It might have worked in giving scholarly weight to the libretto if the composer could have refrained himself from dwelling so insistently on the prevailing domestic drama of his own text. The final scene in the tomb (complete with spooky mist) with Mary kneeling by a body double of Jesus might have been more effective had the real Jesus not arisen behind her via stage elevator. This is not the time for a Mel Brooks moment, but it was characteristic of the earnest intentions and missed opportunities of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Jesus tells Mary to go and spread the good news of the work they have done together, and we realize we haven’t got a clue as to what he’s talking about. Was it that stuff about being nice to one another and trying to get along? The whole opera has tried to proSee page 82 >>

<< Music

72 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

The heart of Benjamin Britten by Tim Pfaff

he ongoing wonder of the Benjamin Britten centennial is seeing how much of the music – little of it easy – of one of the great gay composers of the last century has never left the repertory, how much more of it is making a comeback (with indications that it’s back to stay), how eager musicians and audiences are to hear it, and how consistently high in quality it is. The last time a composer anniversary was this influential, as well as celebratory – setting the stage for a new century’s relishing of the music – was that of the probably gay Handel in 1985.

There’s been no going back on the popularity and esteem of Handel since – rather the contrary – and something strikingly similar is happening with Britten and his music. These two eminently practical composers – one on either side of the Romantic divide – wrote music to be performed by musicians whose individual talents and abilities they knew well. In Britten’s case, a lion’s share of it was written for his life partner, tenor Peter Pears. Their having come of age simultaneously with the arrival of the LP and stereophonic recording, and the value of Britten’s music being evident from the

start, they recorded almost all of it, in usually sublime renditions that have naturally become the “reference” recordings. Oddly, that hasn’t made later musicians shy of this music, which most of them need like they need oxygen. Even his admirers will concede that Pears’ was an odd voice, not just comfortable but at its most glorious in that passage between chest and head registers that is the Bermuda Triangle for most tenors, and from the standpoint of aesthetic beauty alone, an acquired taste (but like that for Maria Callas, once acquired, never surrendered). As is clear from his second Britten vocal CD, Still Falls the Rain (Avie), way out tenor Nicholas Phan is one of Pears’ natural heirs. There simply isn’t a more beautiful voice singing Britten these days. Or perhaps a freer one. There’s never a sense of Phan’s trying to do something different from what Pears did. Also, there’s no sense of fussing with a word’s sound, meaning, or color. Word and note are the same organism in Phan’s singing, and the meaning is just there, complete and often startling in its freshness. Here Phan gives us yet more backwater Britten – even Britten collectors are unlikely to have all this music – and makes it seem as essential as Peter Grimes (as Ian Bostridge points out, an atypical Britten work, if his most famous). Maybe The Heart of the Matter, a hybrid work Britten concocted for a particular concert and Pears later shortened and revised, didn’t cry out for a new recording, but when you hear the stunning melisma that opens the Canticle III, Still Falls the Rain, at the heart of it, you know why Phan chose that for his album title. Similarly, I didn’t know that I needed to hear again the Birthday Hansel, another of the weird pieces Britten wrote for Queen Elizabeth (no wonder he never became Sir Ben), but Phan sells it with a captivating blend of fervor, agility, and delicacy. And it’s the first aural glimpse of harpist Sivan Magen, who is Phan’s main musical partner throughout most of the rest of the disc. Their other big piece is the haunting Canticle V, The Death of Saint Narcissus, very late Britten that’s as openly homoerotic as Death in Venice. But as involving on what could be called Phan’s “Scottish CD,” the gems are the eight folksong arrangements, mostly on poems by Robert Burns, that simply spring to life. Phan sings Scottish Gaelic as though it were his mother tongue, and his gifts as a storyteller are at their most acute. Then, after all the strangeness of repertory, he sends us off with achingly simple accounts of “Greensleeves” and “The Holly and the Ivy” with his regular accompanist, Myra Huang. Young British tenor Ben Johnson has recorded all five of The Canticles (Signum) in interpreta-

tions that are, similarly, comfortably outside the Pears shadow. The pieces span most of Britten’s creative life and are frequently jaw-droppingly explicit in their homoeroticism. I have no idea of Johnson’s sexuality, but he sings the works as if to the manner born, and in a voice unafraid of making virile sounds. Johnson’s partners – James Baillieu on piano, Martin Owen on horn, Lucy Wakeford on harp, countertenor Christopher Ainslie, and baritone Benedict Nelson – are even more acute musicians than Phan’s, and there’s a constant sense of these musicians drawing out the best in each other. Johnson’s singing is not as assertive as Phan’s, but no less powerful for that. His Canticle II, Abraham and Isaac, is reason enough to hear this

fine disc. He and Ainslie are positively otherworldly in enacting this familiar Bible story – to the point where you’re transfixed by suspense in a tale whose ending you know all too well. Ian Bostridge is today’s finest Britten interpreter, and his new CD, Britten Songs (EMI Classics), with Antonio Pappano at the piano, in no way disappoints. The tenor’s point as an interpreter is not to deny the homoerotic content of Britten’s music – his singing of the lusty and sexually tortured early-ish Michelangelo Sonnets, as startling in their expression of homosexual passion now as they were in 1952, is positively steamy, even extreme in its emotions – but rather to demonstrate, with deep intellectual conviction and singing of the most acute sort, that there’s a lot more than that in Britten’s music, and that we miss a great deal if we’re merely ferreting out queerness. Bostridge is so fused with the Britten idiom – and so individual with it – that his singing here is, while weathered and deeply considered, at one and the same time canonic and edgy, and keeps you hanging on his every note. The Six Hoelderin Fragments represent German Lieder singing at the limits of what can be tolerated, in terms of emotional expression to be borne by the listener. Bostridge also finds more than others have in the Songs from the Chinese, with Xuefei Yang on guitar, drenched, as the album observes, with “nostalgia for youth and beauty.” Still, the revelation – and the molten core – of the CD is the set of four English songs (there are eight others in the Scots dialect) from Who Are These Children? Only the War Requiem expresses Britten’s deep pacifism and horror of war more deeply than these mournful, sometimes savage, but singularly uncompromising songs. It’s hard to forget Britten’s uncannily masterful work at the piano, but these days there are few others you’d want there more than Pappano. If you prefer your Britten better behaved, James Gilchrist’s My Beloved Is Mine (Linn) should fit the bill. Gilchrist is more switched on in the Serenade and the very early Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal on a must-have Channel Classics CD not inappropriately entitled Britten, on which Candida Thompson, with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, leads a spiffy outing of the seminal Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. But what you’ve got to hear is the vaulting performance of Les Illuminations with Barbara Hannigan, who currently has most favored soprano status with me. This recording marks the beginning of a new chapter in the work’s interpretation. The Rimbaud line Britten repeats most often in the piece says, “Only I have the key to this wild parade.”t

74 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Ramekon O’Arwisters

From page 65

black and queer identity,” he says. “If we can do this art together, what else can we do in other areas of our lives?” His passion for inclusiveness is all the more remarkable when one considers the road he has traveled. A young boy who loved to sew and draw in the family kitchen, he grew up gay and African American during the 1960s in Kernersville, a North Carolina mill town where WinstonSalem and Greensboro converge. He graduated from Duke University in 1986 with a Masters of Divinity, and in 1991, landed in San Francisco, where he shares a studio/condo with his partner, a fellow artist. The following are excerpts from a conversation we had at the AAACC gallery. Sura Wood: After spending your childhood and young adult life in the South, how did it feel to move to San Francisco? Ramekon O’Arwisters: When I first got here, I liked being able to define my sexuality and my identity on my own terms. That would not have been possible in North Carolina when I was coming of age. I knew I had to leave. When did you know you wanted to an artist? When I knew I didn’t want to be a United Methodist minister. What prompted this new direction in your work? I had a realization that I had been spending a lot of time doing social commentary but I wasn’t engaging people to think differently. I was just making statements. So I moved from social commentary to social practice. Instead of making artwork that describes the socio-political conditions of our time, I created a community around me that I want to see. I wanted to bring together the black and queer communities because when I grew up, there was a barrier between the black church

<< Fine Art

and LGBT people, which still exists. I’ve acknowledged that divide in myself and no longer spend my energy keeping those two identities separate. I want to be the bridge that unites. That’s my motto. What was it like for you growing up in a Southern town? Did your parents know you were gay? My mother knew before I did, and I knew by the time I was 5 or 6. My father never mistreated me for being gay. He knew who I was at a very early age. He was a strict authoritarian, but he was also very gentle in a time – the 1960s – when, as a father trying to raise his young gay son into a man, he could have been harsh and cruel. He was very special. What’s the origin of your unusual name? Several years ago, I decided it was time to take myself out of a history that has ties to slavery. I wanted a name that I chose, that wasn’t placed on me like a piece of property, and that sounded great as it rolled off my lips. I wanted to give back the type of care and appreciation my father gave to me by taking his first name, which is Arwisters, as my last. I added the “O” which means “child of.” I originally chose Ramekin as my first name until I realized it’s the name of a serving dish. So I changed it to Ramekon.

Courtesy the artist and the AAACC

The Trinity (2011-13) (fabric, ceramic, glass, metal), a mixed-media installation by Ramekon O’Arwisters.

Where did the show’s title come from? When my father would go downtown, he would sometimes point and say, “That man over there, he has sugar in his shoes,” which was a euphemism for “He’s gay,” or, “He’s sweet.” I changed the phrase to Sugar in our Blood because whatever we are – gay, black, straight, Latino – we’re all more alike than otherwise. I want to move away from stereotypes and labels that prevent us from seeing ourselves as united. We’re much stronger and more powerful as a group.t Sugar in Our Blood runs through Sept. 12 at the AAACC.

Courtesy the artist and the AAACC

A mixed-media installation by Ramekon O’Arwisters (not on display in the exhibit).

<< Out&About

76 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Pepperspray @ SF Eagle

Faetopia @ Former Tower Records

The drag rock cover band performs, with Nectar on the Dewly and She-L-O (ELO cover band) and $5-$10. 9:30pm. 398 12th st. www.sf-eagle.com

The vacant storefront gets another fey-boy makeover, with a wealth of queer performances, live music, discussions, sex playshops, visual art and dayglo spectacle. Thru June 28. 2286 Market St. www.faetopia.com

Swallow Your Pride @ Starlight Room

God of Carnage @ Shelton Theater

Enjoy cocktails, appetizers and a fab view as this year’s grand marshalls are honored at a fundraiser for the Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation; hosts Cassandra Cass, Donna Sachet, Patrick Gallineaux, Michael Pagan; performers Leanne Borghesi, Brian Kent and Kippy Marks. $15-$60. 8pm-12am. 450 Powell St. www.HelpIsOnTheWay.org

Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma @ The Hypnodrome Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Sat 29.

McPride

Peter Liu

by Jim Provenzano

re you lovin’ McPride? Has the Supreme Court yet decided that we’re humans? Has Michelle Shocked shocked yet again? Will the Bradley Manning contingent be spied on by drones? Would someone buy me a frackin’ drink? Along with all the culture-y LGBTIetc events, you’ll notice a few more party and nightclub events this week, because most of those folks didn’t send their info to us weeks ago when the June BARtab was published, which is understandable, since some of us can’t even decide what to wear to these parties, or Pride, until the day of, but some of them actually got it together and sent me factual info, which is nice. So let’s just let it go this week and unfurl the annual Fashion Don’t of wearing pretty much any color in the rainbow, because it’s McPride, er Pride, with extra cheese and a dash of controversy.

Thu 27 99% Gay Comedy Festival @ Esta Noche Comedy Bodega celebrates Pride month with a new weekly series of stand-up acts. This week: Natasha Muse, Portland’s “Lez Stand Up” Comedy Troupe, and Marga Gomez. 8pm-9:30pm. 3079 16th St. at Mission. www.comedybodega.com

Academy of Friends Pre-Pride Party @ Harlot The nonprofit that annually throws its fab Oscar party hosts a pre-Pride reception sponsored by Clear Channel. $30. 5:30pm8:30pm. 46 Minna St. 995-9890. www.AcademyofFriends.org

Bright Light, Slow Knights @ Public Works Folsom Street Events presents a Pride dance event and electro music show with Slow Knights (Derek Gruen of Scissor Sisters) and Bright Light Bright Light (Rod Thomas). $25. 21+. 9pm-2:30am. 161 Erie St. www.eventbrite.com/ event/6419184955

Frameline 37 @ Castro, Roxie, Victoria, Theatres The LGBT International Film Festival continues at the Castro, Roxie, Victoria and other theatres. Daily screenings at several theatres. Fest thru June 30; closing night party at Temple. www.frameline.org

Gay in a Day @ Temple Sinai, Oakland Screening of short films about Israeli LGBTs. Free. 7pm. Webster St. at 28th, Oakland. (510) 318-6453. www.awiderbridge.org

Love: A Deeper Pride @ Abada Capoeira Arts Center Dance and show fundraiser for the arts studio, with Tara Wrist, Timothy Aviance, Miss Beth, DJs Gehno and the Go Bang guys, and performances by The A, Deeva, Abada Caoeira and others. $10-$15. 10pm-2am. 3321 22nd St. www.theadance.com

Pride Parties @ Lexington Club Sapphic celebrations sizzle, with Camp Wild Beaver (June 27, 9pm-2am), an art opening, the Trans March after-party (June 28, 9pm-2am), bottomless mimosas (June 29, 1pm-4pm: $10) and Dyke March afterparty (9pm-2am); continental breakfast with DJ Katie Duck (June 30, 3pm) and a pride after-party (June 30). 3464 19th St. 863-2052. www.LexingtonClub.com

San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus @ Nourse Auditorium I Am Harvey Milk, a special oratorio and choral concert celebrating the life of the gay SF politican and gay rights icon, with works composed and performed by Andrew Lippa, plus Laura Benanti, and special guests. $25-$65. 8pm. Also June 28. 201 Hayes St. 392-4400. www.iamharveymilk.com www.sfgmc.org

Thrillpeddlers performs Scrumbly Koldewyn and Pam Tent’s new, full-length restored version of The Cockettes’ 1971 wacky drag musical comedy on the 42nd anniversary of the original production. $30-$35. Thu-Sat 8pm. Extended thru July 27. 575 10th St. at Bryant. (800) 838-3006. www.thrillpeddlers.com

Gina Yashere at Eden Comedy. Fri 28

Eden Comedy Show @ Brava Theater Get your laugh on with British wit Gina Yashere and Dana Goldberg $25. 7pm– 9pm. 2781 24th St. www.brava.org

New local production of Yasmina Reza’s darkly funny play (translated by Christopher Hampton) about four parents whose negotiations about a bullying child descend into savagry. $26-$38. Thu-Sat 8pm. Thru Sept. 7. 533 Sutter St. (800) 838-3006. www.SheltonTheater.com

Jack Gescheidt @ Open Secret Center, San Rafael Talk and image/video show with the Tree Spirit Project founder, who’s leading efforts to save trees on Mt. Sutro Forest from being decimated by UCSF. $10. 8pm-10pm. 923 C St. at 3rd. www.treespiritproject.com

Fri 28 Abigail's Party @ SF Playhouse Mike Leigh’s biting comedy pokes fun at straight suburban Brits in the ‘70s disco era, where a cocktail party goes overboard. $30-$100. Tue-Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Also Sat 3pm. Thru July 6. 450 Post St. 2nd. floor of Kensington Park Hotel. 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org

Beach Blanket Babylon @ Club Fugazi Musical comedy revue, now in its 35th year, with an ever-changing lineup of political and pop culture icons, all in gigantic wigs. Reg: $25-$130. Wed, Thu, Fri at 8pm. Sat 6:30, 9:30pm. Sun 2pm, 5pm. (Beer/wine served; cash only). 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St.). 4214222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com

Betrayal @ Phoenix Theatre Harold Pinter’s drama gets a local production from Off Broadway West Theatre Company. $40. Thru July 20. 414 Mason St. #601. (800) 838-3006. www.offbroadwaywest.org

Big Gay Birthday @ Old Mint Building The Bold Italic hosts an event celebrating San Francisco 237th birhday, with drinks, food, drag shows and amusement in a beautiful historic building; festive/business attire suggested; DJs Carnita, Brown Amy, Jenna Riot, Pink Lightning. Advance tickets only; none sold at the door. $20. 21+. 8pm-1:30am. Mint Plaza, 5th St. at Mission. www.thebolditalic.com

Blake Tucker @ GLBT Center See the local photographer’s large exhibit of gay-themed prints. 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors. Thru July. 1800 Market St. www.BlakeTucker.com www.sfcenter.org

Bloke @ Truck Enjoy Joy Division, New Order, and similar tunes with DJs Dank and Dirty Knees. No cover. 8pm-2am. 1900 Folsom St. www.TruckSF.com

Chef K Foodie Brunch @ Bisou French Bistro Celesbian Chef K, winner of Season 1 of ABC’s The Taste, teams up with Bisou Bistro’s Chef Nick to serve up a brunch to support LGBTQ youth. Enjoy a relaxing brunch with celebrities and friends in one of the Castro’s best restaurants. You could even be one of the lucky guests sitting with Chef K. $45-$75. 11am–3pm. 2367 Market St. www.Edenfoodie.eventbrite.com

Colossus @ 511, Terra Large-scale gay indoor-outdoor circuit party, with DJs Nina Flowers, Carlos Gallardo, Theresa, and ten gogo dancers from Spain. $25-$50. 10pm-4am. 511 Harrison St. After-party next door. Part of a 5-party weekend group of events. www.colossuspride.com

Darling @ CCM Theatre American Conservatory Theatre’s student production of a new jazz-age-themed musical by Brett Ryback and Ryan Scott Oliver, a take on the Peter Pan tale, about a desperate 1929 couple who become involved in crime and the speakeasy underworld of booze and drugs. $20. Fri & Sat 7:30pm. Sun 2pm. Thru June 29. Theater at the Children’s Creativity Museum, 221 4th St. 749-2228. www.act-sf.org

Ethnic Dance Festival. Fri 28

Dear Elizabeth @ Berkeley Repertory Sarah Ruhl and Les Waters’ new play based on the letters between 20th-century poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. $29-$72. Tue, Thu-Sat 8pm. Wed & Sun 7pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Thru July 7. Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 647-2949. www.BerkeleyRep.org

The Divine Sister @ New Conservatory Theatre Charles Busch’s musical comedy parody of every Hollywood nun movie gets a local production, with drag-music stars Joe Wicht (Trauma Flintstone), J. Conrad Frank (Katya Smirnoff-Skky), David Bicha ( Christmas With the Crawfords) and other talents. $25-$45. Wed-Sat 8pm Sun 2pm. Thru June 29. 25 Van Ness Ave., lower level. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

Ethnic Dance Festival @ Various Venues Fourth weekend of the large annual monthlong festival of local and international dance companies. Free/$18-$58. Sat & Sun at Lam Research Theater, YBCA700 Howard St. Thru June 30. www.sfethnicdancefestival.org

Peter Stackpole: Bridging the Bay @ Oakland Museum Exhibit of 1935-36 photos showcasing the original construction of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. Thru Jan 12, 2014. Also, Beth Yarnelle Edwards: Suburban Dreams, a photo exhibit of 22 large-scale evocative portrait/tableaux of California families. Thru June 30. Also, Gallery of California Natural Sciences. Wed-Sun 11am-5pm (Fri til 9pm). Thru June 30. 1000 Oak St. (510) 3188400. www.museumca.org

Migrating Identities @ YBCA Opening night party for a group exhibit of international artists exploring themes of heritage and personal history, from Iran to South Africa. Performances and DJed music by Freakout A Gogo. Free-$12-$15. 6pm-10pm. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St. www.ybca.org

Pansy @ New Conservatory Theatre Evan Johnson’s solo play about a gay teen who discovers the archive of a 1990s San Francisco club kid, and is transported back in time. (Special post-show discussion with SF 90s icons June 28.) $25-$45. Fri & Sat 8pm. Thru June 29. 25 Van Ness Ave, lower level. 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org

Out&About >>

June 27-July 3, 2013 • Bay Area Reporter • 77

Beat Memories: Photographs of Allen Ginsberg @ Contemporary Jewish Museum

Sat 29 The Art of Science Fiction @ Peninsula Museum of Art

Enjoy the new exhibit of vintage prints taken by the gay Beat poet of his friends Jack Kerouac and others. Also, Beyond Belief: 100 Years of the Spiritual in Modern Art, part of the SF MOMA’s off-site collaborative exhibits; thru Oct 27. 2pm-5pm. Free (members)-$12. Thu-Tue 11am-5pm (Thu 1pm-8pm) 736 Mission St. 655-7800. www.thecjm.org

Exhibit of 150 paintings and drawings by members of the Art Directors Guild, creators of scifi imagery in film, includes set pieces and film art from Star Trek, Firefly, Avatar and other films. Free. Wed-Sat 11am-5pm. Thru Aug. 25. 1777 California Drive, Burlingame. (650) 692-2101. www.peninsulamuseum.org

Can You Dig It? @ The Marsh Don Reed’s new solo show about the groovy 1960s. $15-$50. Sat 8:30, Sun 7pm. Thru August 25. 1062 Valencia St. at 22nd. 282-3055. www.themarsh.org

Dark Play, or Stories For Boys @ Exit Theatre Do It Live’s production of Carlos Murillo’s romantic thriller with unusual twists. $15. Fri & Sat 8pm. Thru July 13. 156 Eddy St. at Mason. www.doitliveproductions.com

House of Babes. Sat 29

Pink Saturday @ Castro St. The annual informal ‘Pride Day Eve’ block party, organized by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, lasts from 5pm to 11pm-ish. Donations at the gate. Castro st. from Market to 19th. www.thesisters.org

Into the Woods @ Eureka Theatre Ray of Light Theatre’s new production of the whimsical dramatic fairy tale-gonewrong musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. $15-$36. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm. Thru June 29. 215 Jackson St. at Battery. 788-7469. www.rayoflighttheatre.com

Pride Run @ Golden Gate Park The 34th annual SF FrontRunners Pride Run includes a 5K, 10K and 200-meter kids run (8 and under), and Jason Brock singing a race-start song. Partial proceeds benefit Larkin Street Youth services. $30-$40. 9am. Polo Field, Middle Drive West. www.SFpriderun.org

Richard Diebenkorn @ de Young Museum New exhibit of the painter’s Berkeley Years (1953-1966). Free/$22. Thru Sept 22. Golden gate Park. www.deyoungmuseum.org

Eye Level in Iraq @ de Young Museum Photographs by Kael Alford and Thorne Anderson. Also, From the Exotic to the Mystical: Textile Treasures from the Permanent Collection, thru Aug 4. Also, Objects of Belief from the Vatican, thru Sept 8. Also, artist fellows Andy Diaz Hope and Laurel Roth’s triptych mural, The Conflicts, a contemporary tribute to the historic Unicorn Tapestries. $10-$25. Tue-Sun 9:30am-5:15pm. (til 8:45pm Fridays) Thru Dec. 30. Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. 750-3600. www.famsf.org

Juanita More’s Pride Party @ Jones The ninth annual benefit attracts the cool club kids and fashionistas; always sold out, so get your tix fast. Entertainment includes Horse Meat Disco, Kim Ann Foxman, Princess Diandra and Derek Opperman. Proceeds benefit OutLoud Radio. $30. 12pm-12am. 620 Jones St. at Geary. www.juanitamore.com

Monday Musicals @ The Edge The renovated bar shows fun musicals each week, with Broadway touring performers occasionally stopping by to sing, too. 7pm2am. 2 for 1 cocktail, 5pm-closing. 18th St. at Collingwood. www.edgesf.com

Piano Bar 101 @ Martuni’s Sing-along night with talented locals, and charming accompanist Joe Wicht (aka Trauma Flintstone). 9pm-1:30am. 4 Valencia St. at Market.

Tue 2 Funny Tuesdays @ Harvey's Ronn Vigh hosts the weekly LGBT and gayfriendly comedy night. One drink or menu item minimum. 9pm. 500 Castro St. at 18th. 431-HARV. www.harveyssf.com

Josh Kornbluth @ Ashby Stage, Berkeley The acclaimed thought-provoking solo performer’s Sea of Reeds explores his process of getting bar-mitzvahed in Israel as an adult, despite being an athiest. $20-$35. Wed & Thu 7pm. Fri & Sat 8pm. Sun 5pm. Thru Aug. 18. 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. (510) 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org

Tom Orr @ The Garage Cowboys & Angels: The George Michael Songbook is performed by the local comic singer-actor ( Dirty Little Showtunes), accompanied by The Tom Shaw Trio. $25. 7pm & 9:30pm. Also July 3. 715 Bryant St. 518-1517. www.715bryant.org

SF Hiking Club @ Angel Island Join GLBT hikers for an 8-mile hike around Angel Island. Stops will include a Civil War camp, a rock quarry, the immigration station, the Nike missile site from the Cold War era, Fort McDowell from WWII, and Mt. Livermore. Bring water, lunch, hat, sunscreen, layers, good hiking shoes, money for the ferry trip. Meet at 9am at the Blue & Gold ferry ticket office at Pier 39. 596-1304. www.sfhiking.com

Sylvia @ Fort Mason A.R. Gurney’s family comedy, with a dog played by a human, gets a local run in a few different venues; produced by Independent Cabaret Productions. $20-$45. Thu-Sat 8pm. Sun 7pm. Thru June 30. Bldg C, Room 3900, 3rd floor. Buchanan at Bay streets. 272-7992. www.cabaretsf.wordpress.com

This Is How It Goes @ Aurora Theatre, Berkeley Aurora Theatre Company’s production of Neil LaBute’s edgy comic drama about race, love, and emotional manipulation. $35-$50. Wed-Sat 8pm. Sun 2pm & 7pm. Thru July 21. 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org

We Party: Vogue @ Regency Center Masterbeat and XOXO’s official SF Pride dance party, with DJs Susan Morabito, Brett Henrichsen. $30-$110. 9pm-3am. 1300 Van Ness Ave. www.masterbeat.com

Sun 30 Eden After Party @ Salle

Cosi Fan Tutte @ War Memorial Opera House

George Gershwin Alone @ Berkeley Repertory Theatre

San Francisco Opera’s production of Mozart’s farcical drama, reset in a 1900s Mediterranean resort; in Italian with English subtitles. $22-$340. June 29, 8pm. July 1, 7:30pm. 301 Van Ness Ave. 864-3330. www.sfopera.com

Hershey Felder’s solo show and stage biography tells the composer’s life story as he plays classic songs in this acclaimed theatrical tribute. $29-$77. Tue, Thu-Sat 8pm. Wed & Sun7pm. Sat & Sun 2pm. Extended thru July 7. Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. (510) 647-2917. www.BerkeleyRep.org

Eden Party @ Mezzanine Large dance party produced by the Eden by the Bay women’s DJ and event group. $25-$35. 9pm–3am. 444 Jessie St. www.edeninthebay.com

From Heather’s Mommies to Tango’s Daddies @ SF Public Library Subtitled The Evolution of Family-Affirming Children’s Literature, exhibit curator Randall Tarpey-Schwed shares his unique collection of children’s books that portray gay or lesbian parents. Thru Aug. 1. Hormel Center, 3rd floor. Also, illustrations from Marcus Ewert and Rex Ray’s book 10,000 Dresses on display on the 2nd floor (thru Aug 31). 100 Larkin St. 557-4400. www.sfpl.org

Hedwig and the Angry Inch @ Boxcar Theatre

Be where the women are with celesbians, six DJs, two dance floors, gogo gals, food vendors and an artisan market $10-$15. 6pm–12am. 1632 Market St. www.EdenintheBay.com

Hard French @ Roccapulco Pride party with DJs Carnita, Brown Amy; “jiggalicious” drag babes, and a live show with Seattle’s TheeSatisfaction. $20-$65. 4pm-11pm. 3140 Mission St. hardfrenchpride2013.eventbrite.com

Tom Orr. Tue 2

San Francisco Pride @ Civic Center

Butterflies & Blooms @ Conservatory of Flowers

Sundance Saloon @ Hotel Whitcomb

Classic Films @ Castro Theatre

The popular country western LGBT dance night celebrates Pride with a big party, and dancers from around the country. $5. 5pm10:30pm. Market St. at 8th St. www.sundancesaloon.org

Double features include, on July 3: Jaws (2:15, 7pm) and Rocky (4:35, 9:25). July 5: Midnites for Maniacs presents Josie and the Pussycats (7:30), Velvet Goldmine (9:30) and Wild in the Streets (11:55). July 6: Scary Cow Short Film Festival. 3pm. July 7: Liz Taylor and Richard Burton in Cleopatra (2pm, 7pm). July 11: Night of the Hunter (7pm) and Cape Fear (8:45). $8.50-$12. 429 Castro St. www.CastroTheatre.com

Sunday’s a Drag @ Starlight Room Donna Sachet hosts the weekly fabulous brunch and drag show. $45. 11am, show at noon; 1:30pm, show at 2:30pm. 450 Powell St. in Union Square. 395-8595. www.harrydenton.com

Mon 1 The Bridge Builders @ City Hall New exhibit of Joe Blum’s fascinating large-format photos of the recent construction of the new Bay Bridge. Thru Sept. 27. Weekdays, 9am-5pm. 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, ground floor. www.sfarts.org

Popular exhibit transforms the floral gallery into a fluttering garden with 20 species of butterflies and moths. 10am-4pm. Free-$7. Tue-Sun 10am-4:30pm. Thru Oct. 20. 100 JFK Drive, Golden Gate Park. 8312090. www.conservatoryofflowers.org

Migrating Archives @ GLBT History Museum Migrating Archives: LGBT Delegates From Collections Around the World features historical items from nearly a dozen countries and archives, each showcasing an archive of prominent LGBT persons. $5. Reg hours Mon & Wed-Sat 11am-7pm. Sun 12pm-5pm. 4127 18th St. www.glbthistorymuseum.org

Thu 4 San Francisco Mime Troupe @ Various Venues Oil & Water, two political parody one-act musical plays, are performed at various vnues thru Sept 2. July 4 at Dolores Park, 2pm. 18th St. at Dolores. July 6, Peacock Meadow, 2pm. July 7, Washington Square Park (Columbus St. at Union). www.sfmt.org

The hit local production of John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s popular transgender rock operetta features multiple actor-singers performing the lead, including Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, Jason Brock, Arturo Galster and Trixxie Carr. $25-$40. Wed-Sat 8pm. Also Sat 5pm. Extended with open-ended run. 505 Natoma St. 9672227. www.boxcartheatre.org

Thursday Night Live @ SF Eagle The weekly live rock shows have returned. 9pm-ish. 398 12th St. at Harrison. www.sf-eagle.com

House of Babes @ Public Works Dyke March after-party, with food vendors, multiple cocktail bars, performances by Double Duchess, Micatron, Vogue & Tone, Alotta Boutte, several DJs, gogos, and a wild crowd. $12-$30. 7pm-3am. 161 Erie St. www.thehouseofbabes.com

Wed 3

The annual massive LGBT parade starts at Market St at Spear, then heads west to Civic Center, where performers on the main stage and several side DJed and live area perform from 11am-6pm. Some performances and booths Sat., June 29 as well. Food, drinks, including beer and cocktails (18+ ID required), booths galore. Donations at the gate.www.sfpride.org

Pride Run. Say 29

To submit event listings, email jim@ebar.com. Deadline is each Thursday, a week before publication.

<< Leather

78 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Leather Pride guide

by Scott Brogan

K, so it’s not actually Leather Pride Week, but it is Gay Pride weekend. That means we’ll be inundated with Skittles, rainbows, and Unicorns all weekend. Nothing wrong with that. SF Pride is the biggest and greatest in the world. Yes, it is – forget Australia or that “Big Apple” place back east. SF is the place to be. Period. Pink is the color of the weekend, of course. That doesn’t mean that our black (or gray, or blue, or yellow) leather, rubber, and neoprene should stay in the closet. There are still many events that you can go to that will provide a welcome relief from the festivities. When you’ve had your fill of Pride Pink, check out these leather highlights of the weekend. Information is listed in chronological order. Always reliable for a hot, nasty time, The Powerhouse starts the weekend off with two events tomorrow (Friday) night. At 7 p.m., the Bare Chest Calendar Launch and Investiture begins. Check out the men of the calendar and get your copy, and maybe an inseam measure for raffle tickets! Later, at 9 p.m., the tone switches over to Steam Does Pride with Blaksheep! This is SoMa’s premier bathhouse revival. Blaksheep is the team of Derek Bobus and Ken Woodard presenting multidisciplinary design, music, and marketing. SisterPhyliss Withe-Litaday emcees the Wet Towel Contest (winner takes home $100); Dalton Huckaby Jr. gives “buck-a-minute” massages (he’s a certified CMT); Glistening GoGos, the infamous “Powershower”; Patron Tequila & Ultimat Vodka drink specials; free clothes check and towels; SteamWorks passes and more! The $8 cover helps support the mission of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Wake up fairly early on Saturday and head over to Mr. S Leather (385 8th St.), and check out the Mr. S Leather Locker Room’s third anniversary party. It’s always a good time with hot boys, cold beer and dirty beats. Mr. SF Leather and International Mr. Leather Andy Cross will most likely be there. He’s very approachable and very friendly. Who knows what could happen? DJ Ken Vulsion will keep the party going while the sexy boys will be on hand to keep you lubed up. And there will be giveaways from Nasty Pig and ES/Addicted if you pick up some gear. But get there early

Scott Brogan

Chairman of the Leather Contingent Jay Hemphill corrals the contingent at last year’s Pride Parade.

to take advantage of the giveaways. And stay for the fun. Buy some rubber at the Locker Room party and head over to The Powerhouse for the 5 p.m. Rubber Pride “Come out and Show It” event brought to us by the RMSF (Rubber Men of San Francisco). Doors open at 5 p.m. Sign up for the Rubber Man contest. (Sorry, ladies, it’s a Rubber Man contest, but show your rubber pride anyway!) Gals in rubber get a free Gummi shot. So do the first five contestants. Stick around as the men of GearUp Weekend present the “Black is the New Pink” play party in the upstairs Mr. S Leather playspace. Put some black into Pink Saturday. This will be “the sexiest event this Pride Season [that] puts a kink into Pink Saturday. Join the hottest guys who are looking beyond the borders of the Castro to where

it all began: SoMa.” Wear your leather, rubber, sports, pup – any gear you like. Whether novice or experienced, all are welcome. Get your ass paddled, or tie a guy up and have him serve you. Just bring your desire. 18+ only. $30 cash at the door. Doors open until 11 p.m., play until Midnight. Sunday is the big Pride Parade and festival at Civic Center. If you want to be a part of the parade’s Leather Contingent, show up at the staging area where all the floats and contingents line up. Be there by 11 a.m. to be sure: South of Market on 2nd St. You can’t miss the Leather Contingent. And once at the festival, head over to Leather Alley. It’s fun, and bigger each year. So those are the highlights. Have fun this weekend, and be safe. Always be aware of your surroundings, especially outside the fair. Don’t drift off to side streets you’re unaware of, and be sure to travel with friends. And of course, celebrate your individuality. See you there!t

Courtesy Mr. S Leather

Wrestling fun at the Mr. S Leather Locker Room.

Karrnal >>

June 27-July 3, 2013 • Bay Area Reporter • 79

Gee, Officer Genesis by John F. Karr

gay pride moment struck me a month ago. I’d opened my computer one morning to find a blank screen, except for the notice that my hard drive was being erased, and there was no way I could stop it. I was locked out. I was horrified, and despaired of losing years of content as well as the project I was finishing just short of deadline. But I was also fairly confident of my back-up system. An Apple Genius suspected a hacker had gained entry through the Cloud, where he said it was easier to hack around. After he bypassed the lock imposed by the hacker, it took most of a day for all my programs and files to reload. Disaster averted. Whodunit? I’ll never know. But the vile hacker left a revealing message. At the bottom of the erasure notice was this cryptic line: “ha ha ha homo.” I could only imagine it was some right-wing, born-again, ex-gay doo-dah who’d found my reviews or seen publicity for the exhibit of sex art I was curating. Ha ha ha homo. Imagine harboring the vindictive ill will that made you do such childish damage. When the aggravation this nutso caused had passed, I felt a surge of pride that my identity and my work had provoked it in the first place. Here’s another gay pride story: Jake Genesis. I can’t stop wondering about his abrupt departure from porn a month ago. A doozy of a scene (just about Jake’s last, I guess) from the new LucasEntertainment movie Lovers in Paradise is advertised with the ironic blurb, “Adam Killian Teaches Jake Genesis Deep Love.” Either the lesson didn’t stick, or it came too late. Genesis had a short but sensationally effective sojourn as a sex star. And then he fled into the arms of the Mother Church, from whence he denounced the demon porn, and begged our forgiveness. I think he needs to rout his own demons, and forgive himself. Poor Jake. Most everything about him flagged his implosion. It just didn’t stack up that after attaining a Ph.D. in Philosophy and doing grad work in psychology, he spent three years in a monastery, studying to be a Catholic Priest. But instead of donning a surplice upon graduation, he strapped on a service belt with handcuffs and a gun. From philosopher to priesthood to policeman to porn star – that’s just not your typical career progression. Unless you’re working something out. It says something that all these career choices are about some sort of control. If Jake’s succession of careers doesn’t speak of his confusion, his tattoos loudly proclaim his inner division. The largest faithfully renders Leon Bonnet’s 1876 painting “Joseph Wrestling with the Angel.” Jake explained that, “For me, the tattoo represents the struggle against adversity, the beauty, even sacredness, of homosexual contact, and that it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between a wrestling match and a loving embrace.” Another tattoo is a phrase taken from the Latin Mass, which translates to “This is part of my body.” This wasn’t ecclesiasticism to Jake, but defiance. He told one interviewer that to him it meant, “This is my body, and I will do with it what I want.” And what about this bewildering comment Jake offered an interviewer: “I like to have sex with a girl maybe every three months – to prove that I still can.” I wonder what it could be about heterosexuality

LucasEntertainment

Adam Killian is perhaps the last screen partner of Jake Genesis, here seen in LucasEntertainment’s Lovers in Paradise.

that a self-pronounced gay man has to prove. Jake posted a farewell letter on his blog that vilified porn. But in Jake’s case, I believe it’s selfhate that’s the villain, not pornography. He wrote a truth: “The people in the industry are concerned with making a profit, and not with your well-being.” And he wrote a partial truth: “Pornography does violence to human spirit, and in its effort to display human sexuality openly, pornography perverts it.” Pornography can pervert human sexuality, in reducing it to a salable commodity, while bypassing its deeper emotional truths. But it should be obvious to performers that sexographers don’t sign up to be humanists. Can their business be condemned for offering thrills instead of self-help? Many of the younger and most likely less fully

formed guys entering this sphere could really use emotional and psychological support. Yet the adult industry doesn’t offer them adult supervision, much less lifestyle and career coaching. And the world surrounding the creation of sex movies seems to be quite a bacchanal, with its near-hysterical balls and aggrandized live-sex shows. What about Viagra and Caverjack? And Jake’s not far off when he calls most of the performers whores – isn’t appearance in porn so often the calling card of “escorts?” A guy really needs to be self-directed to negotiate a porn career. So pity Jake when he writes, “I am on a very personal journey of reconciliation.” He’s trying to reconcile the warring parts of his identity, achieve self-integration, and hasn’t yet discovered one of its prime components. I wish he could march in the parade with us, and become armed and safeguarded by our pride.t

Jake Genesis’ blog posting

Real Life, 2010: Jake Genesis is Jake Floyd of the Oakland, CA Police Department.

<< Film

80 • Bay Area Reporter • June 27-July 3, 2013

Champagne plays Garland in film

Filmmaker Trevor Anderson with performer Connie Champagne.

Frameline’s 37th LGBT Film Festival’s Something Real program (Thurs., June 27) features local legend Connie Champagne as – who else? – Judy Garland in the awardwinning musical biography The Man That Got Away. Canadian indie filmmaker Trevor Anderson’s musical documentary tells the true-life story of his great-uncle Jimmy in six original songs. Garland befriended Uncle Jimmy in a rehab stint during the 1950s. The film has been a hit at film fests all over the world, and was awarded the DAAD Short Film Prize 2012 at the Berlin International Film Festival. Fish Griwkowsky

Music >>

Lesbian listening party by Gregg Shapiro

f anyone has a right to sing the blues, it’s queer blues belter Candye Kane. A pancreatic cancer survivor, Kane has traveled a bumpy road personally and professionally. But she is, as her 2000 disc declared, The Toughest Girl in the World. That spirit shines through on her latest disc, Coming Out Swingin’ (Vizztone). Teaming up once again with young guitar wonder Laura Chavez, Kane wails and works her way through a set of 13 tracks, nine of which are original compositions. Knockouts include the anthemic “Rise Up!,” the intoxicating “I’m the Reason Why You Drink” and “Au Revoir Y’All” (sung mostly en francais!), as well as Kane’s swinging interpretation of “Marijuana Boogie.” Women’s music legend Tret Fure is now in her fifth decade as a recording artist. At her most prolific in the 21st century, Fure has released halfa-dozen discs since 2001, the latest being A Piece of the Sky (Tomboy Girl). She uncovers the mysteries of our bodies, souls and hearts on the title cut, and makes an unexpected and lovely reference to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in “Bluebird,” a song about giving love another chance. “The Zen of Being” brings a whole new perspective to calendars and the march of time. “Bucket of Tears” is the tearjerker its title implies. The bouncy “The Artist Way” is the kind of personal career statement that only Fure could make, and “My Best” is the result of speculation one can make having lived a full and creative life. To close the disc, Fure digs into her personal record crates with “That Side of the Moon,” a song that originally appeared on her 1984 Terminal Hold

album. Like Kane and Fure, out singer/ songwriter Michelle Malone has been all over the record-label map, even recording for Arista (the Lenny Kaye-produced Relentless) as well as Walter Yetnikoff ’s Velvel (Beneath the Devil Moon) and Amy Ray’s Daemon. Day 2, released on her own SBS (Strange Bird Songs) label, co-produced by fellow Georgia native Shawn Mullins (of “Lullaby” fame) and Gerry Hansen, finds Malone going deeper into her Southern roots. On “Other Girls,” Malone conjures Lucinda Williams at her most raucous. She proudly displays her political side on “Immigration Game,” and then gets personal on the smoldering “Marlboro Man” and the heavenly “St. Peter.” “The Auditor” and “Wasted on You” are proof that Malone has maintained her sense of humor after all these years. Made in L.A. and produced by Dave Sitek (of TV on the Radio), Planta (SQE Music) by queer, all-female, Brazilian dance outfit CSS won’t

take long to grow on listeners. The sticky “Honey” gets things off to a sweet(heart) start. “Hangover” is drunk on hip-hop, and the radiant “Into the Sun” burns so good. CSS goes “crazy” on the explosive “Dynamite,” and “Too Hot” more than lives up to its title. “The Hangout” borrows from the 1980s, while “Teenage Tiger Cat” sounds like the future. There’s only one thing wrong with the five-song Name Game EP by queer duo We Are/She Is. It’s too short, leaving listeners hanging, desperate to hear what else the pair is capable of doing. No one likes to be teased (or to be called a tease), but if that’s what We Are/She Is intended to do, they have succeeded. It’s safe to say that with only five songs, there’s not a clunker to be found. As exhilarating as the best pop music can be, the delirious anthem “And the World” sets the pace with its fist-pumping energy. “Voices” are the kind you won’t mind having in your head, and “Ricochet” will keep you bouncing off the walls. There’s nothing remotely resembling the sophomore slump on lesbian singer/songwriter Julia Weldon’s awesome second disc, Light Is a Ghost (juliaweldon.com). An exceptional songwriter and musician, Weldon offers new hope for the next generation of queer female performers, writing with a maturity that belies her youth. It’s hard not be effusive after listening (repeatedly) to songs such as “Meadow,” “Went to My Woman,” “Careful in the Dark,” “You Never Know” and “Soon.” Weldon, who doesn’t shy away from queer subject matter in her songs (the amazing “All I Gave Her” and “All the Birds”), is an artist with whom you will want to become well-acquainted, the sooner the better.t

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