Until There's a Cure turns 20
16
Luxurious Lexus; scrappy Mini
ARTS
2
17
Eisenman's art
The
www.ebar.com
Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971
Vol. 43 • No. 20 • May 16-22, 2013
Pride fires Former Pride GMs speak out staffer by James Patterson
by Cynthia Laird
A
San Francisco Pride staffer has been fired in the latest fallout over the board’s bungled handling of the Bradley Manning grand marshal controversy. In an exclusive interview with the Bay Area Reporter Tuesday, May 14, San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee CEO Earl Plante said that the staff member who handled the electoral college grand marshal selection was terminated from his position last Wednesday. Plante, who was interviewed with Pride board President Lisa Williams, would not name the staffer, calling it a personnel matter. But Pride staff member Joshua Smith had been Cynthia Laird tasked with variPride board ous grand marshalrelated duties and it President Lisa was Smith who sent Williams and the confirmed list of CEO Earl Plante grand marshals to the B.A.R. last month. In a phone interview Wednesday morning, Smith said that he was currently “on leave” from Pride. “I don’t have any comment,” he said. “I made a commitment to Lisa and Earl not to have a conversation about my employment status” Plante and Williams also said that they stand behind the decision to rescind grand marshal honors for Manning, an Army private, but that they are committed to hearing from community members angry with the move. The May 14 interview was a couple days after the board’s latest statement in which it said, “Discussion of this matter is closed for this year.” In a related development gay Supervisor David Campos has called on the board to have “an open community discussion on the matter of Private Manning’s awarding and rescission as grand marshal.” In a May 14 letter to Plante, Williams, and the Pride board, Campos asked that the meeting be held “as soon as possible and before the June Pride festivities.” “We must remember that Pride was born as a tribute to the courage of the LGBT community, and walking away from this discussion is contrary to that legacy,” Campos wrote. During Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting Campos called the Pride board’s decision to “close the discussion” about the manner “disturbing.” See page 7 >>
A
s former grand marshals of the San Francisco LGBT Pride parade vote a second time to select a grand marshal, several spoke out about the clumsy process that led the Pride board to name and then rescind grand marshal honors for WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning. In a May 7 statement the board of the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee said it was reopening the voting by former grand marshals in what’s known as Pride’s electoral college. The voting ends today (Thursday, May 16). The two candidates are drag chanteuse BeBe Sweetbriar and gay Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal James Humes. Manning, is the gay Army private accused of leaking 700,000 classified government documents to WikiLeaks. He was initially named a grand marshal late last month and Pride officials said he was the electoral college’s choice. But the Pride board rescinded the honor two days later, claiming it was a “mistake.” Since then, Manning’s supporters have denounced the Pride board and demanded that Manning be reinstated. Sister Roma, a community grand marshal by public vote in 2012, said in an email she did not vote for Manning the first time.
Rick Gerharter
Jay Lyon, left, speaks to empty chairs representing the missing San Francisco Pride board members during a mock board meeting on the street outside Pride offices Tuesday, May 14. Activists demanding the reinstatement of Bradley Manning as a Pride parade grand marshal hosted the protest.
“The entire [Manning] debacle is the result of poor communication and a lack of leadership,” said Roma, a longtime member of the
Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. “I feel it was a mistake to allow Manning, who is under arrest See page 7 >>
Bay Area celebrates Harvey Milk Day
by Matthew S. Bajko
F
rom book readings to movie screenings, the Bay Area is marking the annual Harvey Milk Day with a variety of events this
year. Begun in 2010, the unofficial state holiday falls each year on May 22, Milk’s birthday. The first openly gay person elected to political office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, Milk had made a name for himself as an outspoken gay rights activist before his historic victory. His death by an assassin’s bullet in November 1978, while tragic, has led to Milk’s status as an international icon for the LGBT community. His life has been turned into two Oscarwinning movies, an opera, choral works, and even children’s books. To mark what would have been Milk’s 83rd birthday, city officials are organizing a reenactment of his famous “You’ve Got To Have Hope” speech Sunday, May 19. Milk gave the speech on June 24, 1977 at the San Francisco Gay Community Center at the campaign kickoff to announce his third bid for supervisor. “What came to be called ‘The Hope Speech’ was initially conceived as a stump address, wherein Milk attempted to embolden a strong GLBTQ nationalism within the Castro, while also appealing for an alliance with other disenfranchised groups and straight folks,” wrote
Dan Nicoletta
The Bay Area will remember Harvey Milk, shown here with Mayor George Moscone, center, and Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver at the January 1978 Imperial Court Coronation, with a variety of events starting this weekend.
Jason Edward Black and Charles E. Morris III in their anthology An Archive of Hope: Harvey Milk’s Speeches and Writings (University of California Press, 2013). Milk would revise the speech and recite it
{ FIRST OF TWO SECTIONS }
several more times at various appearances, according to the introduction written by Black and Morris to the version they included in their book. It was a defiant speech about gay See page 13 >>