San Francisco Bay Times - June 26, 2025

LGBTQ News & Calendar for the Bay Area

CELEBRATING FOUR DECADES Est . 1978

Tours from the San Francisco Bay Times

Sincere appreciation to Andrew Smith, Nicole Ritthaler, Stacy Marshall, and the entire team of drivers and customer service representatives! The San Francisco Bay Times’ year-round partnership with Big Bus Tours means so much to us and is truly indicative of the company’s commitment to the LGBTQ community.

Please consider enjoying their tours of San Francisco and the Bay Area any time you have guests coming from out of town or if you want to see the sites of our fabulous city while celebrating any occasion. www.bigbustours.com

PHOTO BY MINDY

San Francisco Bay Times contingent members lined up for the start of the 2024 San Francisco Pride Parade.

Sister Merry Peter greeted the San Francisco Bay Times contingent from the judges’ position in front of the viewing stands at the 2024 San Francisco Pride Parade.

San Francisco Bay Times 2025 Pride Parade Contingent to Spotlight Marriage Equality Leaders

June 26, 2025—the date of this publication—marks the tenth anniversary of nationwide marriage equality. On this evening, the San Francisco Bay Times will be holding at The Academy SF an official Pride kickoff party as well as a commemoration of the historic Supreme Court victory. It is all the more important given the decisions handed down by the latest Court concerning gender-affirming care for minors, and the recent threats to same-sex marriage rights.

On June 29, the Bay Times contingent in the San Francisco Pride Parade will present its

flagship open-top for team members and supporters plus street marchers who will include Juan Davila and Carnival dancers as well as Patrick Carney, the leader of the Pink Triangle project, and his husband Hossein Carney. The Bay Times contingent will also include two vehicles showcasing additional spotlighted guests.

The first will feature John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney, two of the most influential and visible leaders of the marriage equality movement both nationally and now internationally. They are also longtime Bay Times columnists. Read more about their work and achievements at: https://bit.ly/3Gateu9

The second will feature Geoff Callan and Mike Shaw, the directors of the 2005 documentary Pursuit of Equality. The film concerns the struggles for marriage equality and focuses on same-sex marriages performed in San Francisco during the Winter of Love from February 12 to March 11, 2004. Callan, who is Governor Gavin Newsom’s brother-in-law, had unprecedented access to the

behind-the-scenes work that helped make the marriages possible. Then San Francisco Mayor Newsom uprooted the status quo by issuing same-sex marriage licenses and emboldened the wider movement that later led to the Supreme Court ruling on June 26, 2015, in Obergefell v. Hodges. It held that state-level bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional, thereby legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.

View the trailer for Pursuit of Equality at https://www.pursuitofequality.com/

All Issues of the San Francisco Bay Times to Be Available Online by the End of 2025

The San Francisco Public Library (SFPL), which is facilitating digitization of past issues of the San Francisco Bay Times, recently confirmed that every issue of the Bay Times published from May 1978–June 2012 will be available to the public by the end of 2025 at https://digitalsf.org/

Since the issues from July 2012 to the present are at the San Francisco Bay Times website ( https://sfbaytimes.com/ ) and ISSUU ( https://issuu.com/sfbt ), this means that every issue of the paper since its inception in 1978 will be freely accessible.

At present, in addition to those more recent papers, the historic issues from May 1978–December 1993 are at California Revealed: https://bit.ly/448YcL7

Federal defunding of the Institute of Museum and Library Services has jeopardized the future of California Revealed. The good news, however, is that, thanks to the efforts of Cristina Mitra and Dee Dee Kramer of the Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the SFPL (Kramer is also the Manager of the SFPL’s DIGI Center), the content will migrate to the Digital SF site in the coming months. This site has improved search and other functions, which will benefit

everyone from historians to educators to all those desiring to read about the past several decades of LGBTQ+ news, events, and more.

Finalizing this project has been a longstanding goal of the present San Francisco Bay Times publishers, who desire both to preserve the materials and to make them as freely accessible as possible. When the original publishers of the Bay Times, Bill

Please also consider marching with the Bay Times contingent—number 22 in the lineup—during the San Francisco Pride Parade, or cheer us and our special guests on! The parade will start with the revving of the Dykes on Bikes engines at 10 am, on Market Street at Embarcadero Plaza, with participants asked to be in the overall parade lineup by at least 9:30 am. ABC7 will be broadcasting the parade, with SF Pride’s theme of “Queer Joy Is Resistance,” live on television and via streaming.

https://sfpride.org/

Hartman and Ronald Schembari, launched the paper back in 1978, most people did not have computers. When they published the Coming Up! events-focused issues, readers used to tape the pages to their refrigerators to keep up with the latest happenings. We still take pride in our hard copy print issues, which are printed by a global leader in environmentally-conscious practices, such as using vegetable-based inks, energy efficient lighting, recycled paper, and more. We also appreciate the convenience and additional features of digitized multimedia, which will help safeguard the near five decades of the San Francisco Bay Times for generations to come.

Cristina Mitra, Hormel LGBTQIA Center

PHOTO BY MARCELLA SANCHEZ

BY

10 YEARS of Marriage Equality

Resist, Celebrate, and Advance—Together With Pride

6/26 and Beyond

Stuart Gaffney and John Lewis

The setting could not have been more iconic: the foot of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., where Dr. Martin Luther King had proclaimed his dream of equality, jobs, and freedom 62 years ago. Once again, our nation stands at a crossroads, and earlier this month at WorldPride, LGBTIQ+ Americans and supporters, joined by people from across the globe, gathered at that sacred spot for the 2025 International Rally + March on Washington for Freedom. At this perilous and pivotal time in American queer history, we declared collectively that “we will not be erased” and that we will never stop dreaming of a better future and doing everything in our power to bring it about.

The previous day, the LGBTIQ+ community had celebrated exuberantly in our own unique and inimitable style.

Hundreds of thousands of people marched and thronged the streets in a gloriously celebratory Pride parade, originating in one of Washington’s heavily LGBTIQ+ neighborhoods, snaking through D.C., then down Pennsylvania Avenue to a festival near the Capitol. The mood was unmistakably joyful, one of the most upbeat queer events in which we have ever participated. Every person who marched was cheered enthusiastically by the crowds. With all that we have been subjected to since January 20, we needed to be together and to affirm, applaud, and celebrate each other. And that’s exactly what we did.

dysphoria when clinically indicated.”

It is what we need to continue to do, as we endure, resist, persist, and indeed advance the LGBTIQ+ movement in the face of the Trump administration and recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Ten days after WorldPride, the conservative Republican super-majority of the U.S. Supreme Court issued an appallingly ignorant and callous ruling upholding states’ ability to deny trans and gender nonbinary youth access to vital gender affirming health care. The decision permits states to impose gross sex stereotypes regarding gender on teens and upheld rigid definitions of sex at odds with scientific understanding and reality.

In a stinging dissent joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the majority of doing “irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause” and “authoriz[ing] without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them.”

Sotomayor outlined how untreated “gender dysphoria can lead to severe anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance abuse, self-harm, and suicidality.”

As such, “the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, and American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry all agree that hormones and puberty blockers are ‘appropriate and medically necessary’ to treat gender

Sadly, the majority’s decision allows states to ban this critical care for trans youth, even when they, their parents, and their medical providers agree that it is needed. Further, the decision to a substantial degree legitimizes cynical transphobic legislation that has swept through Republican-dominated states in recent years and exploits trans youth for raw political gain. As Sotomayor pointedly put it: “the court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims.”

It is imperative for all of us to stand up together unequivocally for trans rights. A central theme of speaker after speaker at the Lincoln Memorial WorldPride rally was the necessity of uniting and standing together for each and every one of us, without exception, regardless of their relative position within society. One speaker proclaimed: “Black, brown, white”—we must not “think that anyone is disposable.”

Collective support for trans people was the most pressing and pervasive message of the march, embraced by all who attended. One sign urged forthrightly: “Stop the Worldwide Assault on TRANS People.”

Another instructed: “LIVE beyond the BINARY.” Another stated the simple truth: “Trans is Beautiful.”

Just as WorldPride embodied protest and celebration, this June also is a time to celebrate a monumental victory for the LGBTIQ+ community: the ten-year anniversary of full nationwide marriage equality. We take pride that hundreds of thousands of queer couples are now married and possess the highest state recognition for their loving relationships, along with the same 1,500-plus rights, responsibilities, and protections under law that other couples have. All Americans, including queer people, have a fundamental right to marry, regardless of who they are or whom they love. Ten years ago, the Court proclaimed in its landmark Obergefell decision that the Constitution guarantees same-sex couples

“equal dignity in the eyes of the law” through marriage equality. Despite the recent adverse ruling regarding trans rights, the 2015 Supreme Court marriage equality victory remains a truly remarkable accomplishment for our community, representing the product of decades of tireless efforts by countless queer people and our supporters and building upon earlier generations’ fearless fighting for our collective rights. By celebrating this achievement, we strengthen our resolve to defend it against those who might try to undermine it, continue to show our love and humanity to the world, and advance the broader LGBTIQ+ movement further.

A speaker at the WorldPride rally observed how “it is often said that strength is the ability to stand on your own, but the greatest strength is to be able to rely on each other.”

A rallygoer, sporting a Keith Haring shirt with figures together holding up a pink heart, carried a sign proclaiming, “We the People MEANS EVERYONE!” A vibrant young woman proudly displayed her own homemade sign that declared: “The Power of The People is STRONGER Than the People in Power – KEEP GOING!!” We agree wholeheartedly. Happy Pride 2025! John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney, together for over three decades, were plaintiffs in the California case for equal marriage rights decided by the California Supreme Court in 2008. Their leadership in the grassroots organization Marriage Equality USA contributed in 2015 to making same-sex marriage legal nationwide.

Photos courtesy of John Lewis & Stuart Gaffney

John Lewis & Stuart Gaffney at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial in D.C.

10 YEARS of Marriage Equality

A Marital Paper Trail Spanning Decades and Continents

If Fernando Proietti Orlandi and I were to mark every milestone in our relationship, we would have a celebration practically every day! We say that we’ve been married as many times as Elizabeth Taylor, just always to the same person.

We became determined to take advantage of every opportunity to legalize our relationship due to a decision by a New York judge that negated a gay man’s claim to his partner’s estate because the judge said they could have registered as domestic partners if they wanted to have their relationship legally recognized. We vowed never to allow anyone the opportunity to make the same judgement about us. We took advantage of every opportunity to register our relationship.

Our paper trail starts in San Francisco on St. Valentine’s Day in 1991, when Domestic

Partners were first recognized, winds through various stages of Domestic Partnerships as recognized by Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and the State of California, and becomes actual marriage in 2004 (later declared null and void by the California Supreme Court)—along with our still legal and binding marriage in 2008. The trail doesn’t stop there. It continues across the Atlantic to Rome, Italy, where our marriage has been recognized as a civil union by both the city of Rome and the Italian state.

Interestingly enough, our paper trail includes two documents signed by Gavin Newsom. In 1999, then District 2 Supervisor Gavin Newsom presided over our Domestic Partner ceremony as part of the larger celebration hosted by Mayor Willie Brown and Board President Tom Ammiano.

As Mayor, Gavin Newsom presided over our wedding ceremony on June 17, 2008. So, we have both a Domestic Partnership Certificate and a marriage license signed by Gavin Newsom.

When Ignazio Marino was campaigning to become the mayor of Rome, he made a campaign stop at a shopping center near where my husband’s parents lived. Fernando was able to ask him about

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Toasting to 10 Years of Marriage Equality and What We Will Fight to Keep

By Sandy Stier

Ten years ago, my wife Kris and I stood on the plaza of the Supreme Court of the United States beaming as we heard the ruling that brought marriage equality to all of the United States. It was also the second anniversary of our legal marriage, which we had fought for in that same court just two years earlier.

Places have a special meaning to us: a school, a home, a ballpark. For us, it was SCOTUS. It was that glistening marble court where we witnessed the ruling that invalidated the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8 in Hollingsworth v. Perry on the same sunny June day in 2013, ensuring that our family had the same legal rights and protections as all California families. And it was that court that ruled 5–4 on Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, establishing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage across all of the United States.

The path to marriage equality was not straightforward or simple. There were detours and dissent, fierce commitment and radical bravery. It was hard-fought and hard-won, and it took everyone to succeed. Here we are, a decade later and a decade older, and very

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By

Remembering Our Pursuit of Equality as Plaintiffs in the Fight for Same-Sex Marriage Rights

By Jeanne Rizzo and Pali Cooper

San Francisco Gay Pride weekend marks the anniversary of our first date—the one and only anniversary we celebrated from 1989 until 2008.

When Gavin Newsom defied DOMA (The Defense of Marriage Act) and started marrying gay couples on Feb 12, 2004, Jeanne was traveling for work. We made an appointment for March 11 and with our son, Christopher, and family and friends we sang “Going to the Chapel” all the way into San Francisco.

As we picked up our marriage license and were headed to the Clerk’s office, news crews were racing into City Hall frantically yelling that the Supreme Court was shutting down the marriages. We raced to the counter in hopes that we could beat the ruling. But as we watched couples leaving in tears, we knew we were too late ... the window was shut.

As cameras flashed and microphones were aimed at us, we sensed our names were on that moment and that we had to

stand in for all the gay and lesbian couples who deserved the right to marry yet were formally denied. We waited as a straight couple had their papers stamped with approval. The Clerk had tears in his eyes as he pointed to the sign: “By Order of the Supreme Court of the State of California ... .” That began a four-year journey of being

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Photos courtesy of Bill Wilson

William “Bill” Francis Wilson

Mayor Gavin Newsom marrying Bill Wilson and Fernando Proietti Orlandi in 2008

Deputy Assessor-Recorder Minna Tao marrying Bill Wilson and Fernando Proietti Orlandi

Fernando Proietti Orlandi, London Breed, and Bill Wilson

Kris Perry and Sandy Stier on their wedding day with Kamala Harris officiating

Jeanne Rizzo and Pali Cooper with then Mayor Gavin Newsom (2008)

Queer Joy Is Resistance: Why Showing Up Matters More Than

Ever

By Suzanne Ford

As we mark the 55th anniversary of San Francisco Pride, I want to extend a heartfelt welcome to our entire LGBTQ+ community— and to our allies, friends, and chosen family—who make this celebration what it is: a revolutionary act of joy.

This year’s theme, Queer Joy Is Resistance, couldn’t be timelier. We are living through an era of increasingly coordinated attacks on our rights—coming from the executive branch, far-right extremists, and those who would rather erase us than see us thrive. The fear is real. The anger is justified. But what’s more powerful than either is our collective refusal to back down.

That’s why this Pride matters. That’s why your presence matters.

When I first joined the board of SF Pride in 2017, I knew the fight for equality wasn’t over, but I didn’t expect we’d be reliving old battles while facing new ones. Nearly four years into my role as Executive Director, I’ve seen firsthand how this community shows up in the face of adversity. We rise. We march. We dance. We organize. And we do it together.

There’s something extraordinary happening this year. A shift is taking place, not just politically, but spiritually. Groups within our community that have historically disagreed are coming together. At San Francisco Pride, we’re proud to be marching in solidarity with the People’s March, and we welcome them to march within our Resistance Contingent. This isn’t just symbolism. It’s a signal. The message is clear: we don’t have to agree on everything to unite against hate.

This year’s Pride celebration isn’t just about sequins, speakers, and Sunday floats—it’s about survival and defiance wrapped in glitter and love. It’s about standing on the shoulders of those who came before us and making damn sure there’s something to stand on for the next generation. It’s about holding joy in one hand and resistance in the other.

So, come as you are. Show up loud. Show up proud. Show up for your younger self, your future self, and for every queer kid wondering if they’ll ever belong.

Because in 2025, showing up to Pride isn’t just a celebration. It’s an act of resistance.

With love and determination, Suzanne Ford Executive Director, San Francisco Pride

https://sfpride.org/

Suzanne Ford at the San Francisco Pride Main Stage

Suzanne Ford

Suzanne Ford with ABC7’s Reggie Aqui ABC7 PHOTO

Joshua Smith, San Francisco Pride Board President, with Suzanne Ford PHOTO BY RINK

Welcome to Pride 2025 in San Francisco

By Mayor Daniel Lurie

Dear Readers of the San Francisco Bay Times,

For generations, San Francisco has been a beacon of hope for the LGBTQ+ community. A place where people have come to live freely, love who they want to love, build families, and live without apology.

Our LGBTQ+ community has shaped this city in ways that touch every corner.

From small business owners who bring life to our neighborhoods, the families that call San Francisco their home, to the public servants who drive change—you make San Francisco stronger.

This month, we recognize the activists who came before us, and uplift the voices of those who continue the fight for dignity and equality today.

We remember those who made history and spoke loudly like Harvey Milk and José Sarria. And we remember the everyday residents, our LGBTQ+ seniors who blazed the trail, our trans neighbors who demand safety, and our young people who deserve to dream big and grow up in a city that protects them.

At a time when LGBTQ+ rights are under attack across the country, San Francisco is sending a different message: You are welcome here. You are seen here. You are safe here. When trans affirming health care is being attacked, we support Lyon Martin’s primary and mental health care.

For our LGBTQ+ immigrant community who find refuge in our city, we are committed to funding immigrant legal services and remain committed to organizations like The LGBTQ Asylum Project and Parivar.

When our trans community is under attack and they seek safety in our city, we support them through organizations like TAJA’s Coalition and TGIJP (the TGI Justice Project).

When our LGBTQ+ youth are scared for their safety, we support them through organizations like LYRIC, which empower and uplift young people.

As the Pride flag flies across the city, let it remind us of how far we’ve come—and how much further we will go when we show up for each other, fight for each other, and care for each other.

Happy Pride, and let’s Go San Francisco!

Sincerely,

Mayor Daniel Lurie

Mayor Daniel Lurie

San Francisco Pride Parade 2024

Patrick Carney received the Mayor’s proclamation commemorating the 30th year of the Pink Triangle installation.

Juneteenth Celebration in the Fillmore

Daniel Lurie with (left to right) Rafael Mandelman, Joel Engardio, Scott Wiener, Elaine Forbes, and Matt Dorsey raising flags at Oracle Park for the Giants Pride Game 2025.

Black History Month 2025 celebration at San Francisco City Hall

Vandalized Pink Triangle Sends a Powerful Message

By Patrick Carney

The vandalism of the Pink Triangle on Twin Peaks last week is an example of the struggles our community has faced throughout time. The damage should remain as is, because that sends a powerful message in and of itself. We will not repair the damage to the Pink Triangle; we will wear this scar as a badge of resilience, courage, and our continuing struggle for equality for the rest of Pride Month.

It is important to let people see where hatred can lead. For the last three decades, the Pink Triangle display has served as a giant warning and reminder of what can happen if hatred is allowed to go unchecked. The graffitied and defaced panels show the point of the Pink Triangle display, which is to remind us of the ongoing discrimination and hatred experienced by many in the community.

If this can happen here in LGBTQ+ friendly San Francisco, think what might happen in other less accepting places in the U.S. and around the world. Their hatred will not dissuade us from being our true selves. We will speak up, and keep living our lives as joyfully as possible. There is no going back in the closet as some would like us to do.

Patrick Carney is the Founder of the Pink Triangle project: www.thepinktriangle.com

by Patrick Carney

Photos

Pride and Joy Everywhere

and have marched with a variety of contingents since then. The parade has grown exponentially throughout the years, and bears different qualities each year, depending on the political climate of the time. But its value to the world as an international symbol of pride, joy, resistance, and community remains unchanged.

From the moment the Dykes on Bikes fill Market Street with the thrilling roar of their motorcycles, to the joy of every young person marching for the very first time, the parade remains a beacon of hope for countless people around the world.

Remembrance of Prides Past

My first SF Pride Parade was in 1988. It was a blazing hot day, and none of us in my group had worn sunscreen. Oops, rookie mistake. The parade was a mixture of fantastical, defiant, colorful, queer pride, and solemn community service, as contingent after contingent of volunteers took to the street to raise awareness and funds for the AIDS pandemic that was devastating our city.

By the next year I was marching, too, with the AIDS Memorial Quilt,

This year I also reached beyond San Francisco to experience Pride Month in other communities, and I’m here to tell you that Pride is alive and well on the Peninsula. Pacifica Pride is worth the visit, just to hang out and enjoy the mellow beach community vibes. And San Mateo Pride was a real treat: a joyful parade, and colorful community fair in beautiful San Mateo Central Park. Get out there and experience Pride wherever you can.

SCOTUS Got it Right

Pride Month also coincides with the end of the U.S. Supreme Court season, so late June tends to

be a tense time as we await important decisions—you may remember June 24, 2022, the day the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade

But ten years ago, on June 26, 2015, a very different Supreme Court got it right, when they ruled 5–4 that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The road to that day was long and hard, especially after the crushing disappointment when Proposition 8 was passed in California in 2008, denying same-sex couples the right to marry.

On June 26, 2015, many of us who had been fighting for this moment for years gathered in Civic Center Plaza at 7 am to await word from Washington, D.C., and were rewarded with joyful news at last. That day, San Francisco City Hall felt like the happiest place on earth, as relieved couples rushed in to celebrate legal marriage at last.

Thousands then gathered on Castro Street that night to celebrate the sweet victory.

Love wins.

…Then SCOTUS Got It Wrong

The news on June 18, 2025, hit hard: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in United States vs.Skrmetti that a Tennessee state law

banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth—while allowing the same treatment for youth who are not trans—does not constitute sex-based discrimination and therefore does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The blowback was damning. In her scathing dissent, Justice Sotomayor pointed out that “it authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta also spoke out, stating, “All Americans regardless of their gender identity have the inalienable right to equal protection under the law.” He added, “In California, we will continue to promote and protect access to healthcare, not restrict it.”

Meanwhile, at the White House

The same day, the administration doubled down on its war against LGBTQ+ youth by announcing it would shut down the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline’s LGBTQ+ Youth Specialized Services program by July 17. What does this mean? Currently, The Trevor Project serves nearly 50% of the calls to the LGBTQ+ option on the Lifeline, which in 2024 meant they directly served more than 231,000 crisis calls. They also trained and supported nearly 250 crisis counselors and other staff for the Lifeline. While The Trevor Project wants everyone to know that they aren’t going anywhere and will continue serving crisis

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In Case You Missed It

Joanie Juster

PHOTO BY JOHN WEBER/FACEBOOK

No Kings Protests on Flag Day 2025

On June 14, 2025, Flag Day, which is also the birthday of President Trump, “No Kings” protests took place in cities across the Bay Area and nation in response to actions of the Trump administration and to a military parade held in Washington, D.C., the same day.

As the organizers wrote, “[R]eal power isn’t staged in Washington. It rises up everywhere else. No Kings is a nationwide day of defiance. From city blocks to small towns, from courthouse steps to community parks, we’re taking action to reject authoritarianism—and show the world what democracy really looks like. We’re not gathering to feed his ego. We’re building a movement that leaves him behind. The flag doesn’t belong to President Trump. It belongs to us. We’re not watching history happen. We’re making it.”

The No Kings protestors did indeed make history, according to several scholars, by becoming what many say was among the largest ever single day protests in U.S. history. It is estimated that up to 6 million people participated nationwide, or nearly 2 percent of the entire U.S. population.

In San Francisco, hundreds helped form a human banner at Ocean Beach that spelled out “No King!” and included an American flag that was turned upside down, symbolizing a nation in distress and also serving as an emblem of protest.

Thousands participated in a march that also took place on June 14. It began at Dolores Park and went to Civic Center Plaza, where Indivisible SF and 50501 SF hosted a rally. https://www.nokings.org/

Photos by Bill Wilson

6th Annual People’s March & Rally

On Sunday, June 22, 2025, activists and community leaders Alex U. Inn and Juanita MORE! led the sixth annual People’s March & Rally. This year, the march helped launch Pride Week—the final week of Pride Month—which culminates with the San Francisco Pride Parade and Festival on Sunday, June 29.

The People’s March began with a rally at the corner of Polk and Washington streets in San Francisco, and featured speakers and entertainers. Marchers then went down Polk Street following the same route as the first Gay Liberation Protest, which occurred on Saturday, June 27, 1970.

This year’s march ended at Civic Center Plaza with a celebration that happened from 12:30 to 4 pm and was shared by celebrants of the Juneteenth Parade. Speakers and entertainers included the organizers as well as San Francisco Pride Executive Director Suzanne Ford, activist/speaker John Weber, and vocalists Ariel Bowser and Cadence. Bowser recently impressed guests with a surprise performance at the Dykes on Bikes fundraiser held during the Mimosa series at Catch in the Castro on June 8.

The People’s March & Rally was created in 2020 by Alex U. Inn and Juanita MORE! to support LGBTQ2SAI+ people and people of color, especially as these vulnerable communities are under increased attacks. Emphasizing the importance of unity within these communities during such challenging times, Ford said, “SF Pride supports the People’s March. We want to honor their work, and we are grateful to be part of their event.”

The People’s March & Rally will also be marching on June 29 in the SF Pride Parade, whose theme this year is “Queer Joy is Resistance.”

During their speech at the No Kings! march on June 14, Alex U. Inn emphasized the need for everyone to do their part in resisting the erosion of our freedoms:

“Freedom isn’t stolen in one dramatic, thunderous coup. It’s eroded by a thousand small concessions, by a gradual normalization of the unthinkable, by a collective hesitation born of exhaustion or disbelief. It’s lost when we wait too long, hoping for someone else to draw the line. We are not waiting for permission. We are not waiting for someone else to draw the line. We are here today, because the hour is now. The decision rests not with them, but with us. This country is us.”

Vigil in the Castro for the 2016 Pulse Nightclub Shooting Victims

The annual vigil in the Castro for the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting victims took place on June 12, 2025. After individuals gathered at Jane Warner Plaza, they went to Hibernia Beach at 18th and Castro streets, where a memorial had been created. San Francisco Bay Times columnist Honey Mahogany, who is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Office of Transgender Initiatives, helped lead the event and gave red roses to participants. After carrying them to the memorial, they thoughtfully placed the roses at the site in remembrance of the 49 people who died and the 53 who were injured in the mass shooting that happened during Pride Month 2016 at the gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, which had been in business since 2004. A list of the victims’ names is at: https://bit.ly/3ZKc9xU

Orlando, Florida (2025)

At the Center of It All: The Heart of The Movement

By Mark Leno

As a founding member of The SF LGBT Center, I’ve had the honor of watching this organization grow from a bold dream into a firmly established beacon of hope. Over the years, it has become a place that offers care, connection, and community to hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ+ people. That kind of transformation doesn’t happen on its own. It takes the vision and dedication of someone like Rebecca Rolfe.

Rebecca has led the SF LGBT Center for 22 years. Her impact is immeasurable. When she joined the Center as Deputy Director in 2003, the organization was just one year old. It was a fragile time, full of uncertainty. Even then, Rebecca brought clarity, tenacity, and a deep commitment to the work. By the time she stepped into the Executive Director role in 2007, she had already helped guide the Center through significant financial challenges. She played a pivotal role in stabilizing the organization and creating the foundation it needed to survive.

Over the last two decades,

Rebecca led the Center’s growth with vision and care. Under her stewardship, the Center expanded its programming to reflect the shifting needs of the community. She spearheaded the development of new services, including employment and financial programs, housing resources, arts and culture initiatives, and dedicated support for youth and trans communities—several of which were the first of their kind in the nation. In 2017, she led a major capital remodel that cemented the Center’s Market Street building as a prominent city landmark and expanded its role as a true multi-service hub for innovative, community-rooted programming.

Rafael Mandelman, President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, put it best, “Rebecca is a little bit like the mayor of our queer community. And that means she hears all the problems, all the criticisms, all the anxieties. And she, even through the toughest of times, just kept pushing forward—pushing all of us forward.”

Throughout all of this, Rebecca never lost sight of what matters most—the people who walked through the Center’s doors every day and their laughter, tears, and deep connections made within its walls. These are the everyday moments of joy, hope, and struggle that define who we are.

Honey Mahogany, Executive Director of the Office of Transgender Initiatives, shared, “Rebecca has shown tremendous strength. A strength that comes from leading with community in mind, focusing on some of the most marginalized in our community. That work is super important right now, in this moment that we are in.”

These are incredibly challenging times. LGBTQ+ people across the country—especially trans people— are facing grave threats to their rights and safety. In moments like this, we need leaders who show up without hesitation. Rebecca has always done that. She’s reminded us how to stay grounded, support one another, and move forward with purpose amid the most trying of times.

Jen Valles, Deputy Director of the SF LGBT Center, echoed this sentiment: “Rebecca has really led from a place that shows the power of community, ensuring that this institution is here and as strong as possible, so that we can all come together and see what we can create with each other.”

When I talk to others about the Center, I often ask: Do you even want to imagine San Francisco without it?

Because we can’t take it for granted. What we’ve built here is extraordinary. It’s ours to protect and nurture. And none of this would be possible without Rebecca. Because of her, we’re in a stronger position to carry the work forward for generations of LGBTQ+ people to come.

Lance Toma, CEO of the San Francisco

Community Health Center, said it beautifully:“She leads with heart, with justice, and with such brilliance. And I just look forward to what she does next, because we’re not going to let her go from our movement, from the work that still needs to be done here in this city.”

I know I speak for so many in our community when I say thank you, Rebecca. Thank you for showing us what’s possible when you lead with sheer love—for your decades of unwavering dedication, grit, and tireless effort to build a world where LGBTQ+ people can truly thrive.

Mark Leno, who co-chaired a committee dedicated to establishing The SF LGBT Center and was critical to its founding, is a former San Francisco Supervisor, California State Assemblymember, and State Senator.

Rebecca Rolfe

Rebecca Rolfe announcing her retirement after 22 years with the SF LGBT Center

Rebecca Rolfe and Mark Leno at a Board Members Reunion (2024)

PHOTO BY RINK

SF Pride 2004 Grand Marshal Rebecca Rolfe and her wife

Rebecca Rolfe and friends at the Divas & Drinks Pride Kickoff Party (2024)

Selisse Berry Legacy Leadership Award

Andy Cramer, Founder, Caregiving Network; Founder, Gay.net

Corporate Pride Award

2025 OUTstanding Voices

Shawn Aaron, Founder, Dem Bois Inc.

Akash Bakshi, CEO, YourChoice Therapeutics

Aaron M. Boot-Haury, Vice President, PNC Bank

Jen Carter, CTO, Google.org

Sean Dowdall, President, Landis Communications Inc.

Andrew Freeman, CEO, af&co

Juan G Herrera, Vice President, Bank of America

Sara Lentz, DPN, MSN, RN, CNL, Director, UCSF Health

Travis Mitchell, Legal Counsel, Benchling

Kevin Parker, CEO, Cartography Biosciences

Disney Petit, CEO, LiquiDonate

Christal Wang, CEO, Shimmer

Supporting Small Businesses in the Castro & Beyond

Assisted Living Locators of San Francisco: Compassionate, Inclusive Guidance for Senior Care Decisions

Navigating senior care can be one of the most emotionally complex and logistically overwhelming experiences a family faces— especially in the fast-paced, high-cost San Francisco Bay Area. For LGBTQ+ older adults and their loved ones, those challenges are often compounded by a lifetime of marginalization, nontraditional family structures, and valid concerns about acceptance in aging communities. That’s where Assisted Living Locators of San Francisco steps in.

Led by local owner Brent Hensley, Assisted Living Locators of San Francisco offers no-cost guidance to individuals and families who are exploring options for home care, assisted living, and memory care. It is a gay-owned business with deep roots in the local LGBTQ+ community, and Hensley and his team bring not only professional expertise but also compassion and advocacy to every client.

“We often meet families and seniors at one of the most vulnerable and stressful points in their lives,” Hensley told the San Francisco Bay Times. “Our goal is to make sure no one has to face important senior care and

“Seniors have such a wealth of lived experience and insight that is often forgotten.”

living decisions alone, especially our LGBTQ+ elders, who deserve safety, dignity, and joy in their later years.”

Now, Assisted Living Locators of San Francisco is proud to welcome Judith Dancer to the team. She is a seasoned professional in the field of senior living who brings both a wealth of experience and a deeply empathetic approach to her work.

Dancer’s arrival marks an exciting new chapter for the business as it expands its reach and deepens its commitment to inclusive, relationship-centered guidance.

A Lifelong Calling

Judith Dancer’s journey into senior care began, not with a job, but with a relationship—with her beloved grandmother, known for her warmth, generosity, and legendary Christmas cookies.

“She was just so nurturing and caring when we visited her,” Dancer recalled. “I always knew she had my back and felt so at home with her.”

That early sense of comfort and connection planted the seed for what would become a calling. As a young woman working in the office of a church, Dancer found herself naturally drawn to the older members of the congregation, particularly the ones who showed up early to fold bulletins or help set up for services.

“I was always drawn to them, wanting to sit down and hear their stories,” she said. “Seniors have such a wealth of lived experience and insight that is often forgotten.”

Her curiosity eventually led her to a new career path in senior living. She started out in HUD housing and over the years moved into roles in assisted living and memory care communities. Along the way, she gathered countless stories—from a real-life Rosie the Riveter who helped build airplanes during World War II, to a passionate activist who had marched through the streets of San Francisco in the days following the assassinations of Harvey Milk and George Moscone.

These stories, Dancer said, have shaped not only her understanding of history, but also her unwavering belief in the humanity of every elder she serves.

“I think the biggest challenge when a senior’s abilities decline is to continue to see them as a whole person in this moment, not just who they were before,” she said. “It’s about meeting them where they are.”

LGBTQ+

Seniors and the Power of Belonging

Now working alongside owner Hensley,

Dancer brings that same philosophy to each family, friend, or senior she supports. Whether she’s guiding someone through the logistics of home care or helping a family identify the right memory care community, her goal is to make the process as clear, empowering, and respectful as possible.

This mission is especially vital for LGBTQ+ older adults, many of whom have experienced discrimination in care settings, are estranged from family, or feel anxious about being open about their identities in senior communities.

Their work is as much about supporting families as it is about supporting elders. Many of their clients are adult children, longtime partners, or close friends stepping into caregiving roles—often for the first time. In a community where chosen family has long been central, that kind of support is invaluable.

“We understand that LGBTQ+ seniors face unique challenges,” explained Hensley. “That’s why it matters so much that our clients know they’re working with people who ‘get it’—who share their values and advocate for environments where they can be fully themselves.”

Dancer echoed that sentiment, recalling one particularly moving experience helping a formerly outgoing gay man with memory loss who had become socially withdrawn.

“He had been so vibrant, but his cognitive changes left him isolated and anxious,” she said. “Once we helped his family find a memory care community with the right kind of environment—supportive staff, engaging programs, and inclusive culture— he really blossomed again.”

That transformation, she said, is at the heart of what makes this work so meaningful.

“It’s not just about medical care or housing,” Dancer said. “It’s about giving people a place where they can feel safe, connected, and seen for who they are.”

(continued on page 32)

Colleagues Brent Hensley and Judith Dancer

Brent Hensley with his husband Frank Christian Marx

Message from Leadership

By Aaron Boot-Haury

Dear GGBA Community,

As we celebrate Pride Month, we do so in a time of growing concern and urgency for our LGBTQ+ business community. The current administration’s policies and executive orders have created significant challenges—particularly for LGBTQ+-owned businesses and the many professionals in our community who have built careers helping companies become more inclusive and equitable.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) consulting, training, and leadership coaching—a niche many of our members have proudly

Pride 2025

developed—is now under scrutiny in ways we haven’t seen in decades. Corporate supplier diversity programs are also being impacted, as companies navigate how to remain in compliance with shifting federal policies while still honoring their commitments to support diverse-owned businesses like ours.

At the GGBA, the oldest LGBTQ+ chamber of commerce in the country, we recognize this moment for what it is: a full-circle point in our history. We have faced adversity before—and emerged stronger. Now is the time for us to double down on what makes this community powerful: supporting each other, giving each other business, and helping one another make meaningful connections. Here’s what we’re doing:

• We’ve planned a strategic retreat with our Board of Directors this July, led by a national expert in LGBTQ+ business development and a former board member of the Greater Seattle Business Association (GSBA)—the largest LGBTQ+ chamber in the country—to help guide our next steps.

• We are actively assessing the kinds of programming and resources our members most need right now.

• We are re-engaging with corporate partners from years past to find meaningful ways to collaborate in this changing environment.

Most importantly, we are listening. I encourage you to reach out to me directly, to any of our Board members, or to join my weekly

open “office hours” for GGBA members and supporters every Friday from 12–1 pm PT. The Zoom link can be found on our Events Page at https://www.ggba.com/ Pride is not only a celebration—it’s a reminder of our resilience and our power when we come together. We are entering a chapter that demands bold leadership, creativity, and connection. I believe with conviction that the GGBA is poised to grow into the biggest and strongest LGBTQ+ chamber in the world, and we will do so together—with you.

With Pride and Purpose, Aaron Boot-Haury, President & CEO Golden Gate Business Association (GGBA) president@ggba.com

https://www.ggba.com/

GGBA Member Spotlight Lloyd Haddad and Keith Wicker of Walter Adams Framing

With over 30 years of combined experience, Lloyd Haddad and Keith Wicker bring expertise, a fresh vision, and expanded offerings to custom framing in San Francisco. They handle everything from individual frames for treasured family portraits, to providing bespoke framing solutions to interior designers, to working on complex art restoration projects. They now own and operate four successful framing shops in San Francisco: Capricorn Framing on Geary Boulevard, and the three locations of Walter Adams Framing in the Fillmore District, Presidio Heights, and West Portal.

GGBA: What led to the expansion of your business to the three locations of Walter Adams Framing you have now?

Lloyd Haddad and Keith Wicker: After starting Capricorn Framing in 2006, we purchased Walter Adams Framing in 2023 as an expansion to our already successful custom framing business. With three additional locations, we knew that Walter Adams Framing would fit our business model with a few modifications. Not only have we upgraded our offerings and products to better fit our

clients’ needs, but we now also specialize in conservation and archival framing. We offer personalized attention and expert design consultation to provide unique solutions for custom art framing. We work closely with designers and clients to provide solutions to their art and framing needs. We have created a diverse workforce and developed a very diverse clientele.

GGBA: Why did you decide to create your business?

Lloyd Haddad and Keith Wicker: When we started in the framing industry in 2006, the idea of archival and conservation framing was still fairly new (only a couple of decades old). During those early years, we encountered many pieces of art that were poorly framed, and the art was being damaged. In an effort to change the industry, we have specialized in preservation framing and building our business around the motto of “Do it right the first time.” With this in mind, we have been working with some of the most well-respected interior

designers in the Bay Area. But our work extends to the general population and nonprofits as well. Everyone has something to frame, and we help you frame it the best you can.

GGBA: Why did you decide to join the GGBA, and how long have you been a member?

Lloyd Haddad and Keith Wicker: This is our second year as a member of the GGBA. We were referred to the organization by Charles Symes of Alegre Heath Care. We were fortunate enough to be attend the Power Connect event last year at San Francisco City Hall.

When starting a business, make sure that you are fulfilling a need for your clients. It’s important to be a solutions provider. Once you have established the business you want to start, make sure you have a sound business plan, specific marketing plan, and enough funding to carry you for a few years while you become established. Consistent marketing and promotion are key to getting your business name and products out to the market. That all being said, be open to change ... change means that we’re paying attention to the needs of the market and functions of the business.

GGBA: Do you go to the GGBA monthly Make Contact networking events? Have they benefited you and your business, and would you recommend them to others?

Lloyd Haddad and Keith Wicker: We have been to a few of the networking events as well as the anniversary party. It is important to frequently attend these types of gatherings to keep your name and face in front of everyone. Also, utilizing the GGBA directory when we need products or services can be a big plus in networking.

GGBA: What other advice would you give to someone who is thinking of starting their own business?

Lloyd Haddad and Keith Wicker:

GGBA: Is there anything else that you would like to share?

Lloyd Haddad and Keith Wicker: We look forward to continuing our participation in GGBA and learning from other businesses. Sharing knowledge is key for everyone to continue to grow. One of the aspects of our business is to educate the public on preservation and proper treatment of documents, artwork, 3-D objects, and collectibles. Keep an eye on our social media posts because, while we like to show off our work, we also post educational tidbits and links to our framing blogs that will inspire you!

Capricorn Framing https://capricornframing.com/ Walter Adams Framing https://walteradamsframing.com/

Lloyd Haddad and Keith Wicker

The GGBA page is sponsored by Anne Sterling Dorman

Lloyd Haddad Keith Wicker

Redefining Values-Aligned Investing for Our LGBTQ+ Community

Money Matters

At Brio, we’ve always believed that financial planning should reflect who you are—not just your goals, but your values, your purpose, and your lived experience. That’s especially true for members of the LGBTQ+ community, who often navigate life on a different roadmap than what the traditional financial world assumes.

So, this Pride Month, I want to talk about something close to my heart: how investing can be a form of activism, identity, and community-building.

We created the Brio Pride Portfolio with this exact mission in mind. In partnership with Ethic, we built a strategy that prioritizes civil rights and social justice—but more than that, we wanted to give clients a platform to invest in ways that are personal and powerful.

Because here’s the truth: your money has a voice. And in today’s world, how you use it matters more than ever.

Investing That Reflects You

At Brio, we see investing as an extension of identity. Some of our clients avoid certain companies—like Big Tobacco or fossil fuels—because of their values. Others actively seek out businesses working to cure cancer, fight climate change, or improve access to education.

One client whose mother passed from lung cancer was adamant: not a dime in tobacco. But biotech firms working on cancer treatments? Absolutely. That’s not just investing; it’s intention in action.

And the beauty of it? Your portfolio can evolve as you do. Life changes, values deepen, and your investments should keep up.

A Pride Portfolio With Purpose

We call it fabulous and fierce for a reason.

The Brio Pride Portfolio doesn’t just check the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) boxes; it reflects the lived experiences of the LGBTQ+ community.

Built using Ethic’s tech and data platform, it prioritizes what matters most to our clients: civil rights, social justice, environmental responsibility, and corporate transparency. And it’s customizable, so you can dial in what resonates most with you.

This isn’t just socially responsible investing— it’s proudly personal investing.

Why Now Matters More Than Ever

We’re living through a time where basic rights and protections are under threat. It can feel overwhelming, but one of the most effective ways to push back is with your dollars.

Values-aligned investing is a way to show up. Not everyone can march or legislate change, but many of us can invest with purpose. That’s how we build the future we want to see—not just for ourselves, but for the generations that follow.

Our Work Is Personal

What makes me proudest about Brio isn’t the portfolios; it’s the people, the clients who come to us wanting to make bold life moves, and leave with the confidence to do exactly that.

We’ve helped people change careers, retire early, fund their chosen families, or simply live more aligned lives. And when someone says, “You told me I could do this—and I did,” I know we’re doing something right.

This work is personal. It’s community. It’s legacy.

So, if you’ve ever wondered whether your money could do more—could mean more— just know: it absolutely can.

This material presented by Brio Financial Group (“Brio”) is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a substitute for personalized investment advice or as a recommendation or

solicitation of any particular security, strategy, or investment product. Facts presented have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, however Brio cannot guarantee the accuracy or completeness of such information, and certain information presented here may have been condensed or summarized from its original source. This information may contain certain statements that may be deemed forward-looking statements. Please note that any such statements are not guarantees of any future performance, and actual results or developments may differ materially from those discussed. No investor should assume future performance will be profitable or equal the previous reflected performance. Any reference to an index is included for illustrative purposes only, as an index is not a security in which an investment can be made. They are unmanaged vehicles that serve as market indicators and do not account for the deduction of management fees and/or transaction costs generally associated with investable products. The S&P 500 Total Return Index represents U.S. stock returns. This includes 500 leading companies in the U.S. and is widely regarded as the best single gauge of largecap U.S. equities, where dividends are reinvested. The holdings and performance of Brio client accounts may vary widely from those of the presented indices. Brio does not provide legal or tax advice, and nothing contained in these materials should

(continued on page 38)

Brandon Miller

Rotary in Motion: Leadership and Renewal Under President Bob Hermann

The past year has been a time of bold momentum for the Rotary Club of San Francisco, the second oldest Rotary Club in the world. Leading the charge: President Bob Hermann, whose steady hand and visionary leadership helped shape one of the Club’s most dynamic years in recent memory.

Bob is part of a proud tradition of strong leadership in the Club. He took office in July 2024 for a year of intense work and engagement to build peace through good works at home in San Francisco and across the globe. His theme for the Rotary year, July 1–June 30, was Tradition, Teaching, and Transformation. (The presidential theme for the year for Rotary International was “The Magic of Rotary.”) He brought clarity to the Club’s mission and an openhearted leadership style that encouraged others to step forward and lead alongside him.

One of the year’s strongest themes was an expanded commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Under Bob’s leadership, the Club embraced a variety of cultural, social, and religious traditions— such as breaking the fast of Ramadan, celebrating Hanukkah, exploring Buddhism, and participating in the San Francisco Pride Parade. These efforts helped deepen the Club’s sense of belonging and connection, both within its membership and with the broader community. That commitment continues.

In the spirit of renewal, Bob also led the creation of Rotary Evenings at MoMo’s—a fresh, informal meeting format that offered an alternative to the traditional lunch meeting in Union Square and provided flexibility for members with busy schedules. The program has quickly become a favorite and is now a model for clubs seeking to reimagine member engagement.

The Club was recognized with six Rotary Club Excellence Awards for outstanding

The membership also grew by approximately 12% in the past year or 15 people— a remarkable achievement that speaks to the health and appeal of the Club under Bob’s tenure.

One of the most impactful service efforts this year was the Annual Bike Build, which provides bicycles to children who wouldn’t otherwise have access. This year’s project was nearly derailed by rising international tariffs, but thanks to smart negotiations by the Bike Build team, the project secured the promised number of bikes within budget. In one powerful image from the day, Bob is pictured guiding youth volunteers as they learn to assemble bikes—just one example of his hands-on style. The effort drew wide community support, including help from public agencies and volunteer organizations. Notably, Gays for Good was the largest non-Rotarian contingent building bikes.

The Club also ran a highly successful fundraising campaign benefiting both the San Francisco Rotary Foundation and The Rotary Foundation (TRF). These funds support projects aligned with Rotary’s global priorities: peace, health, education, and economic opportunity.

In a deeply personal act of philanthropy, Bob and his spouse, Dan Joraanstad, made a major gift to The Rotary Foundation. Their generosity earned them induction into

Reflecting on the year just passed, Bob said: “This year has been nothing short of magical. We’ve reimagined what Rotary can be while holding fast to the values that define us. We’ve built on our legacy, welcomed new leaders, and laid a foundation for transformation that will carry our club into its next century.”

The Rotary Club of San Francisco moves forward into the future with energy, vision, and renewed purpose—thanks to a year shaped by thoughtful leadership and shared commitment.

https://sfrotary.org/

Bob Hermann and Dan Joraanstad with their host at the Rotary International World Headquarters in Evanston, Illinois

The Rotarians Congingent in the San Francisco Pride Parade (2024)

San Francisco Rotary Club President Bob Hermann

Dr. John Newmeyer hosted a party at his home in honor of Bob Hermann to celebrate Hermann’s term as President of the Rotary Club of San Francisco. Newmeyer, in turn, was named a Fellow of

Paul Harris Society of Rotary International in recognition of his longstanding charitable efforts. Video from the event is at:

Pride and Protection: Estate Planning for LGBTQ+ Families in 2025

Trust Essentials

Jay Greene, Esq., CPA

As we celebrate Pride Month 2025, we honor the resilience, love, and achievements of the LGBTQ+ community. While progress continues, legal rights and protections remain under scrutiny in various parts of the country. Now more than ever, safeguarding your family through estate planning is an essential act of love and security. Regardless of marital status, estate planning ensures that your rights—and those of your chosen family—are legally recognized and protected.

This guide explores why estate planning is crucial for LGBTQ+ individuals and couples and outlines key strategies tailored to your unique needs.

Why Estate Planning Matters Now More Than Ever

Estate planning is important for everyone, but for LGBTQ+ families, it is an essential safeguard against evolving legal and political landscapes. Despite the protections granted by the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling and subsequent legal victories, challenges persist. Some states have attempted to roll back LGBTQ+ rights, making proactive planning critical.

Here’s why estate planning should be a priority:

• Legal Recognition of Relationships: If you’re unmarried, state laws may not recognize your partner as your agent and a beneficiary. A well-structured estate plan guarantees that your chosen family is protected.

• Protection for Parental Rights: Legal challenges continue to affect LGBTQ+ parents, particularly those who are not biologically related to their children. Estate planning helps establish guardianship and inheritance rights.

• Preventing Family Disputes: Without a legally binding plan, estranged relatives who may not support your relationships could challenge your estate.

• Financial Security: Proper planning ensures your assets go to the people you trust while minimizing tax burdens, especially for unmarried couples who do not benefit from certain spousal tax deductions. Estate planning provides certainty in an uncertain political climate, ensuring that your loved ones are shielded from potential legal and financial obstacles.

Six Essential Steps for LGBTQ+ Estate Planning

1. Create a Will or Living Trust.

• A will specifies your beneficiaries and guardians for children, ensuring your wishes are respected.

• A living trust allows assets to pass outside of probate, preserving privacy and reducing delays.

2. Update beneficiary designations.

• Review retirement accounts, insurance policies, and bank accounts to ensure your partner or chosen family is listed.

• If you were in a pre-marriage equality relationship, verify that an ex is not still a beneficiary.

3. Establish Powers of Attorney.

• Appoint a trusted individual (such as your partner) to make financial and medical decisions if you become incapacitated.

• This protects against interference from biological relatives who may not respect your wishes.

4. Plan for children.

• Designate guardians for your children in your will to ensure they are cared for by trusted individuals.

• If you are a non-biological parent, consider second-parent adoption to legally secure your parental rights.

5. Implement tax-efficient strategies.

• Married couples can use the unlimited marital deduction, but unmarried couples should explore gifting and trust options to minimize estate taxes.

• With the 2025 federal estate tax exemption at $13.99 million, strategic planning ensures that more of your wealth benefits your loved ones.

6. Regularly review and update your plan.

• Laws change, relationships evolve, and families grow. Reviewing your estate plan regularly ensures it reflects your current wishes and legal landscape.

Take Control of Your Legacy This Pride Month

Pride is about visibility, resilience, and love— and protecting your family through estate planning embodies all three. In a time when LGBTQ+ rights face ongoing political shifts, taking proactive steps now ensures your loved ones are protected, regardless of what happens in the courts or legislatures.

Consult an estate planning attorney to create a plan tailored to your needs, ensuring that your legacy remains secure.

Statements in Compliance with California Rules of Professional Conduct: This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult an estate planning attorney for personalized guidance.

Jay Greene, Esq., CPA, is the founder of Greene Law Firm, P.C., in San Francisco, dedicated to helping LGBTQ+ individuals and families secure their future. For more information, visit: https://assetprotectionbayarea.com

Elaine Viegas (December 24, 1942–April 27, 2025)

Elaine Viegas, Records Manager for several of the most prominent U.S. national leaders of the past five decades, died on April 27, 2025, after a valiant battle against cardiopulmonary disease resulting from rheumatic fever contracted as a child. She was 82. After her retirement, she wrote for the San Francisco Bay Times, which is co-published by her daughter, Jennifer Viegas.

Born on December 24, 1942, in the Hurricane Creek wilderness area of Davenport, Virginia, she was raised in a remote, mountainous part of Appalachia. The region was so treacherous that local Native American tribes such as the Shawnee, Monacan, and Cherokee rejected it for permanent settlement. It was instead part of their hunting grounds and the groups would at times intermarry, such that a few of her distant relatives were Native American. Her ancestors had settled in this region since at least the early 1700s, originating primarily from Scotland and Northeast England.

Her parents, Ezekiel Bernard Farmer and Minnie Lilly Ratliff, both came from longstanding farming families. Her father built the home he and his wife shared by hand with the help of neighbors. To earn extra money, he worked as a coal miner. It was dangerous work with few protections, and he eventually developed coal workers’ pneumoconiosis caused by lung scarring due to inhalation of coal dust.

recognition of her intelligence, beauty, kindness, and sense of humor.

The decline of farming and traditional industries caused many of her generation to leave Appalachia in search of a better life. After graduation she worked office jobs in Washington, D.C., before making a bold leap to move to California.

As was the norm then for many farming families, the couple had several children, 12, with three (Otis, Ralph, and Marlene) dying in childhood. Elaine was the youngest member of the family, which was extremely poor. When she contracted rheumatic fever as a youth, the illness was not properly treated and led to permanent cardiopulmonary problems requiring multiple difficult surgeries throughout her life. She had an extraordinary will to live, however, and possessed tremendous mental fortitude. With her vivid Wedgewood blue eyes, radiant smile, naturally wavy lush hair, and always trim figure, she was renowned for her beauty as well as for her inherent grace and style. Several artists asked to paint her over the years, and at least one work still exists as a treasured family heirloom. She attended the two-room Boyd School in Davenport, where children from grades one through seven were taught and the building was heated solely by a potbelly stove. She next attended Council High School in the nearby town of Council, where as a senior of the Class of 1962 she earned the school’s then highest honor, “Miss Senior,” in

Smart and ambitious, she was among the first in the 1970s to study computer literacy at Vista College, which later became Berkeley City College. She subsequently began what would become three decades of service with the federal government.

to retire and always desired to be of service to others. During her rare downtime moments, she enjoyed spending time with family pets—both dogs and cats gravitated to her and seemed transfixed by her warm, affectionate voice and demeanor— road trips to the central coast of California, reading and watching mysteries (Vera and Poirot on PBS were her favorites), recipe development, drinking Peet’s decaffeinated lattes, going to the Cliff House over the years before it closed and visiting with the talented and welcoming Chef Kevin Weber and his team, viewing films and art exhibit documentaries at the Elmwood Theatre in Berkeley, and listening to music by Elvis Presley, whose Virginia relatives lived in her family’s community. She never forgot the moment when she first saw the charismatic performer who gave hope to her and many others in her region desiring to break out of poverty.

There, her older sister, Hilma, had previously moved after an epic road trip in a Beverly Hillbillies-type car crammed with multiple relatives.

In California she worked as a telephone operator, which required use of a manual switchboard a/la Lily Tomlin’s famous “Ernestine” character. In 1964, she married LeRoy Kenneth Viegas in Reno, Nevada. He was a third generation San Franciscan who then lived in Oakland’s Fruitvale District. Although warned about the risks of pregnancy due to her heart condition, she had always wanted to be a mother and gave birth to one child, her daughter Jennifer.

She was a selfless, caring, and dedicated mother who taught her daughter to read at age 4 and dutifully picked her up from school—from kindergarten through her daughter’s senior year in high school— parked front and center in an enormous Buick handed down from her mother-inlaw. She studied with numerous professional chefs throughout the Bay Area, adding her own unique, elegant touch to dishes and meals that became legendary.

After a difficult divorce in 1990 and positions with the U.S. Coast Guard, Department of the Treasury, and Department of Energy, she capped off her career at the General Services Administration. There, as Records Manager for regions 9, 10, and Laguna Niguel, she managed the records of individuals such as former President Ronald Reagan, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, and Senator Dianne Feinstein. She was closest to Senator Feinstein, who was always kind and complimentary and genuinely committed to supporting other women who were underrepresented in federal positions.

A heart surgery led to epilepsy, which forced her to retire in late 2016. Possessing a strong work ethic, she never wanted

She wrote for the San Francisco Bay Times, often reviewing products featured at the Winter Fancy Food Show that she attended for several years with her daughter.

She is survived by her daughter Jennifer Viegas, her sister Hilma Farmer Stuby (now the family matriarch at age 92), and numerous nieces, nephews, and grands. She was preceded in death by her siblings Arnold Farmer, Darnell “Bill” Farmer, Harold Farmer, Jack “Hillard” Farmer, Mildred Farmer Mitchell, Betty Farmer O’Quinn, and Elden “Lyal” Farmer. Woody “Boone” Farmer, a cousin who later became a professional wrestler, was adopted as a child by her parents. Reflecting the family’s can-do spirit after enduring great challenges, he owned and operated Bay Area Wrestling and in 1983 famously carried a piano on his back up Lombard Street in San Francisco.

Her burial site, which will also be the site for her daughter’s burial upon her passing, is at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland below the family plot of architect Julia Morgan that is marked on maps of the grounds. Visitors are welcome at this expansive verdant cemetery designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The mother-daughter Viegas plot is located down the cemetery’s main avenue, up the hill past the avenue’s fourth fountain, and at path level below the Morgan marker. The family requests that donations be made to Cat Town in Oakland ( https://www.cattownoakland.org/ ), the Lindsay Wildlife Experience ( https://lindsaywildlife.org/ ), and the American Heart Association ( https://www.heart.org/ ). A celebration of the life of Elaine Viegas is being planned.

Elaine Viegas at The Claremont Hotel toasting with a glass of sparkling apple juice a few months before her passing

Elaine Viegas at Carmel Beach in 2017

Elevating Voices, Awareness, and Support for Transgender Older Californians

By Angela K. Perone, PhD, JD, MSW, MA

In late 2024, my research team at the Center for the Advanced Study of Aging Services (CASAS) at the University of California, Berkeley School of Social Welfare met Chicharita, an older transgender Latina immigrant in California. We were in the middle of a large focus group study to learn about challenges and supports among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, same-gender loving, asexual, and intersex (LGBTQIA+) older adults in California. Building off a recent survey of LGBTQIA+ older Californians, the focus group study aimed to elevate voices of hardto-reach and underserved LGBTQIA+ aging communities.

Chicharita told us that she originally moved to Southern California to escape violence from another country several decades ago where she had worked in a shop from 7 am to 11 pm. She was paid in bus fare and food alone. She did not speak English at the time. When she told her brother she was gay, he kicked her out of his house. She had to sleep on the streets alone. She turned to drugs and alcohol and engaged in survival sex. She subsequently tested positive for HIV. She told us that when she learned she had HIV, she wanted to die. She contemplated suicide several times. In a recent survey of LGBTQIA+ older Californians, more than 18% of transgender and gender expansive older women reported serious thoughts of suicide in the past year (compared to 10% of cisgender LGBQIA+ older adults). A national survey by the National Center for

Transgender Equality found that trans people were nine times more likely to report attempted suicide in their lifetime than the general population (41% versus 4.6%).

But she survived. And with the help of compassionate community organizations, trained healthcare providers, and community connectors, she has thrived. She subsequently got connected with counselors, therapists, psychologists, and doctors who supported her. Nonprofit organizations helped her resolve issues regarding her immigration status, and she is now a proud U.S. citizen. She has become a community leader and supports others who are struggling.

But Chicharita also added a cautionary note: “Our lives are in danger. People insult us as we walk down the street. People tried to bully me a few days ago. Instead of helping me, people attacked me. We are going through a very difficult situation.” In a recent California survey, approximately 15% of transgender older adults reported living in a community that was unsafe for transgender people (compared to 10% of cisgender LGBQIA+ older adults). Transgender older adults had the highest percentages of not reporting abusive or threatening situations compared to any other group in this survey.

Chicharita’s experience is not unique. We talked to 37 transgender older adults throughout California who shared similar stories of challenges regarding their health, housing, safety, and employment. Many also talked about the essential social, economic, and health supports they received from community organizations, gender-affirming providers, and other transgender older adults.

But that’s not enough. Transgender communities are under attack. Currently, 920 anti-

Pride Month Reception for the AIDS Memorial Quilt Exhibit at SFO

Photos by Joanie Juster

San Francisco officials and LGBTQ+ community members gathered on June 20, 2025, at the San Francisco International Airport to introduce the AIDS Memorial Quilt exhibition now on display there.

Cleve Jones, who started the quilt project in 1987, spoke along with several others including Gert McMullin, aka the “Mother of the AIDS Quilt,” who has been helping sew and repair the quilt since its inception.

During his statement, Mayor Daniel Lurie said, in part: “In 1985 at a candlelight vigil held in memory of Harvey Milk, Cleve had a vision, a way to mark the overwhelming loss of life due to AIDS. Two years later, he stitched the very first panel in honor of his friend Marvin Feldman.”

The exhibit is free and open to all visitors, no boarding pass required, in the International Terminal though March 22, 2026. It is located outside of the security check-in in the Departures area, Level 3, Galleries 4B and 4C.

https://www.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/aids-memorial-quilt

trans bills have been introduced across the United States—in 2025 alone. California has six anti-trans bills pending. Policies that limit gender-affirming care impact transgender older adults, many of whom have transitioned later in life. Cuts to the VA (The Department of Veterans Affairs) affect transgender older adults, who are twice as likely as all adults to have served in the U.S. military, according to the Williams Institute. Cuts to Medicaid, Social Security, and HUD (The Department of Housing and Urban Development) dramatically reduce the safety nets for low-income transgender older adults and many nonprofit organizations’ capacity to assist.

Recent federal cuts to social service agencies, support programs, and healthcare for low-income people, immigrants, and older adults are devastating many people across the United States, including transgender older adults. And more are likely coming. California policymakers, however, can make a difference to raise awareness and education about these issues.

Senator John Laird recently formed a Select Committee on Older LGBTQIA+ Californians, which provides an important first step. A Select Committee is a temporary

legislative committee created for a special purpose. It can host hearings that can elevate voices often left unheard. It can spark opportunities to convene transgender older adults, service providers, researchers, and government leaders to discuss important issues that are otherwise left unexamined. It can raise awareness about some of the complex and often deeply troubling challenges facing transgender older Californians—and the solutions to move forward.

We are at an important social, political, and economic moment in California (and throughout the United States) to elevate voices, awareness, and support for transgender older Californians. Let’s not miss this moment.

Note: All comments expressed in this piece reflect those made in the author’s personal capacity and do not represent the views of the University of California.

Angela K. Perone, PhD, JD, MSW, MA, is the Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Aging Services. She is also an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Social Welfare.

Alegre Home Care is proud to support Dr. Marcy Adelman’s Aging in Community column in the San Francisco Bay Times

Dr. Marcy Adelman, a clinical psychologist and LGBTQ+ aging advocate and policy adviser oversees the Aging in Community column. https://tinyurl.com/3me84y6d

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calls to their own number, they currently have the capacity to answer only 50% of the calls that came into 988.

Trevor Project CEO Jaymes Black issued a statement assuring that their support for LGBTQ+ youth will continue 24/7, while calling the timing of this shutdown, halfway through Pride Month, “callous.” He also noted that the administration chose to use the abbreviation “LGB+” in its statement, erasing the T & Q, stating, “Transgender people can never, and will never, be erased.”

The LGBTQ+ Lifeline had been originally funded by bipartisan efforts in Congress. We can still fight to reverse this terrible decision. You know the drill: contact your members of Congress to show overwhelming public support for this life-saving service. Support them with whatever you can afford, and learn more at: https://tinyurl.com/TrevorAct

News From the U.S. Trans Survey

Some good news: Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE) has just released its findings from the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey, A record-breaking 84,170 trans adults across the U.S. completed the survey, providing valuable data on the physical and mental health of trans people, their interactions with healthcare providers, and transition-related care. In comparison, the previous survey in 2015 received 27,715 responses. It is now the largest-ever survey of binary and nonbinary transgender people in the United States.

It is worth reading the entire report, but here, in brief, are four key takeaways, as reported by A4TE: 1. Living out their true identities is crucial to health and wellbeing. 2. Family support is not just important for health; it’s lifesaving. 3. Most trans people are getting the routine and mental care they need. (Note: This is a marked improvement since the previous survey in 2015.) 4. Access to transition-related care is increasing, but gaps in healthcare access and outcomes remain.

Read the entire report here: https://tinyurl.com/USTrans22

Keep Marching, Stay Joyful, Stay Proud

Profound thanks to the millions of people who took to the streets for No Kings Day on June 14, 2025. You all made a huge impact. Please keep marching, keep speaking out— and stay joyful and proud.

Joanie Juster is a long-time community volunteer, activist, and ally.

(continued from page 20)

A Shared Vision

Together, Hensley and Dancer represent a powerful blend of lived experience, professional know-how, and heartfelt dedication. Both believe that good senior care is not just about checking boxes; it’s about relationships, cultural understanding, and helping people maintain dignity through every stage of aging.

As Assisted Living Locators of San Francisco continues to grow, both Hensley and Dancer are excited to deepen their impact, especially within the Bay Area’s LGBTQ+ communities.

“We want people to know we’re here,” said Hensley. “Whether you’re just starting to wonder if it’s time to get educated about senior living, or you’re in crisis and need immediate support, we’re ready to walk that journey with you.”

In a city known for its resilience, diversity, and compassion, Assisted Living Locators of San Francisco is a reminder that aging with dignity—and with pride—is possible, especially when you have the right support.

For more information about Assisted Living Locators of San Francisco and their services, call them directly at 415-766-0361 or visit www.assistedlivinglocators.com/sanfrancisco

GLBT Fortnight in Review

By Ann Rostow

Fall

Goeth Before a Pride Parade

Let’s see now. Pride Sunday is coming up! The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of a Rastafarian who had his head forcibly shaved by prison officials. The Fifth Circuit struck Louisiana’s effort to put the Ten Commandments in public schools in a case that I’m guessing will continue. A group of five senators, John Hickenlooper, Elizabeth Warren, Jacky Rosen, Brian Schatz, and Tammy Baldwin, secretly rented an interior theater in the Kennedy Center and had a Pride sing-along to Broadway shows on June 23. And my cousin sent me a Daily Mail article headlined: “Female tycoon is private jet crazed lesbian who mocked male employee for being old, say ex-colleagues.”

“Something for your column?” my cousin wondered. Hell yes. I’ll take it! On June 18, which was, um, a Wednesday back whenever it was, the U.S. Supreme Court released its ruling in United States v Skrmetti, the one big giant GLBT case on its docket, a decision on whether or not states can outlaw transition treatments for transgender minors. The answer was “yes, sure thing!” So, we are soon headed down a twisty path, full of rock shadows.

But before we head into the darkness, we can fortify ourselves by touching on the madcap shenanigans of Jessica Mah, a venture capitalist who is accused of using millions of investor dollars to fund a “lavish lifestyle” with her business partner Andrea Barrica.

“Business partner?” you ask with a raised eyebrow. I know! The article implies that people in the know believe that the two share more than an interest in venture capital. But Mah claims she and Barrica are just gal pals and she is being unfairly attacked by Justin Caldbeck, a man whom The Daily Mail describes as a “#Metoo disgraced venture capitalist who fell out with Mah over the return on his investment.” In a lawsuit, Caldbeck called Mah “a charlatan living on investors’ funds.” Her portfolio of successful startups can only be called “unicorns,” says Caldbeck, “in the sense that they are also imaginary.”

Google these girls and see what you think.

Dismal Ruling From 6–3 Court

With no further delay, it’s time to face the music. States now have every opportunity to outlaw transition care including puberty blockers and hormones for people under 19, or 18, or however a minor is defined. The 6–3 majority opinion was a fairly short one, written by Roberts to a tight strike zone if you know what I mean. I’m not sure I know what I mean, so don’t sweat it. It’s a narrow decision.

The majority is accompanied by five other comments, a concurrence by Thomas, another concurrence by Alito, another concurrence written by Barrett and joined by Thomas, a dissent by Sotomayor with Jackson and partly with Kagan, and a separate dissent by Kagan. Oh, and Alito only joined the majority opinion with respect to “Parts I and IIB.”

Added to this complexity is this: The case

began with a suit by transgender kids and parents who argued the Tennessee law discriminated on the basis of sex and trampled on constitutionally guaranteed parental rights. Last summer, the Biden administration entered the case as well, challenging the health ban as a sex-based violation of Equal Protection, (while Tennessee bans transgender kids from using puberty blockers and hormones, cis teens are allowed these treatments if they need them). After losing before the Sixth Circuit, the parties appealed to the High Court, which accepted review only for the government’s Equal Protection question. Last November, however, the Biden Administration went bye bye, as did its defense of trans kids in Tennessee and the couple dozen other states that outlaw these therapies.

By the time the Trump administration got going, the case had been briefed and argued. In February, the Trump Justice Department sent a letter to the Court reversing the government’s position on equal protection and effectively withdrawing support for the respondents. However, the letter went on to suggest that the Court decide the matter anyway, given that similar cases were in litigation around the country and many other states had trans-ban laws akin to the Volunteer State.

And here we are.

From what I gather, (because no, I have not read all six briefs with the slicing and dicing and screwing around with logic and precedent that apparently arise within many of them), Roberts tried his usual game of defining things down to the extent that one wonders why the Court decided to “decide” the matter to begin with. On the central issue of whether Tennessee’s law against transgender youth health is a form of sex discrimination—an Equal Rights violation requiring courts to scrutinize the offender—Roberts sidestepped, ruling that the Tennessee law does not discriminate on the basis of gender identity or even sex, but instead makes a legitimate determination based on age. You want to hold off puberty? You’re just a kid! Wait a few years and then you can have your blockers.

Plus, there’s no civil right at stake here, Roberts went on. You’re not being denied blockers because you’re transgender; you’re being denied them because you have been diagnosed with gender identity disorder. If you qualify for puberty blockers due to injury or some non-gender medical problem, you can still get them just like your cis buddy!

For example, hirsutism is the appearance of unwanted facial hair on pre-pubescent children. I guess most girls want something done about this, but I can’t really imagine a transboy would object to extra facial hair as puberty approaches. That said, Roberts notes, if a young transboy had a diagnosis of hirsutism, he would have no problem getting puberty blockers (pronouns mine), but there’s no “right” to specific medical formulations for specific disorders. Those can legally be trusted to the hands of state

(continued on page 40)

HBy Donna Sachet

appy Pride to all our loyal readers! From the Pink Triangle installation atop Twin Peaks to the newly painted rainbow colors adorning Jane Warner Plaza, from the fluttering rainbow flags up and down Market Street to the Rainbow’s End specialty cocktail offered at The Post Room of the Beacon Grand Hotel, this city knows how to show its pride. We hope you have enjoyed many fabulous events so far in June and that your calendar is as full as you wish for the final weeks leading up to the San Francisco Pride Parade & Celebration, June 28 and 29!

The Fifth Annual Wine Fest at The Academy on Saturday, June 14, offered members and guests a great night of local wine samplings, curated by Out in the Vineyard Representatives from more than eight wineries were on hand to share their expertise and attendees enjoyed an evening with friends, sipping, swirling, and savoring. Delicious bites from Chef Tad of Classic Culinaire rounded out the experience.

One of our favorite events during June has become The Richmond/ Ermet Aid Foundation’s Broadway Bares, a fully staged set of vignettes featuring precise choreography with thematic music and colorful costumes that quickly disappear, much to the audience’s amusement. This year’s theme, Hex Appeal, provided a wide range of magical stories and featured talented dancers, as well as local personalities, like Leanne Borghesi and Lady Camden, and 1015 Folsom was an ideal setting, offering amazing technical elements and clear views for the entire audience. This event benefits The Richmond/Ermet Aid Foundation and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Watch for Broadway Bares San Francisco next June!

An essential part of SF Pride month is the Frameline Film Festival, which opened last Wednesday night at a new location, the Toni Rembe Theatre on Geary Street. This prestigious film festival brings a rich variety of movies to San Francisco viewers, as well as welcoming many of the filmmakers, actors, and others. Executive Director of Frameline Allegra Madsen and Director of Partnerships and Development Matthew Ramsey welcomed the crowd, directing their remarks around the Supreme Court decision released that same day, upholding a state law with serious and detrimental effects on transgender youth. Opening night featured the film Jimpa, starring John Lithgow and Olivia Coleman, and Director Sophie Hyde and actress Aud Mason-Hyde were present for a brief, but revealing, onstage interview following the showing. Then VIP guests gathered for the Directors’ Reception, a chance for lively conversation about that night’s film and the entire upcoming festival.

Last Friday’s Castro Night Market brought local residents and many others out into the streets for a boisterous night of shopping, dining, drinking, and entertainment. The Castro was alive! The popular star-studded stage on 18th Street was emceed by Sister Roma and presented lots of local talent, as well as drag sensations Jorgeous, Kylie Sonique, and Willam and a special DJ set by Lady Bunny. This was a block party with something for everyone.

The next day, we hosted a Garden Party benefiting The AIDS Legal Referral Panel at Hot Johnnie’s, offering an open bar, delicious food, a quick auction, and hat contest. Board members, participating attorneys, and their guests enjoyed a well-deserved day-off from their grueling and indispensable work on behalf of clients and the joy of the afternoon was contagious.

That night, we headed to the Curran Theatre with Salvador Tovar for the SF Gay Men’s Chorus Pride Concert, Power, Pride + Pop, Oh My! A Musical Celebration of Trans and Nonbinary Voices. Artistic Director Jake Stensberg announced that all the featured soloists and storytellers that night were from the trans and/or nonbinary community. Special guest and accomplished songwriter Justin Tranter added a welcome element of humor and unabashed gayness to the event. Much of the music was unfamiliar, but definitely topical and moving, showcasing the nearly 300 singing voices, small ensembles, and lively dancers. The audience rose to their feet at the end in an unsurprising standing ovation.

Our weekend wrapped up with a wonderful Juneteenth show and fundraiser for Rafiki Wellness Center at Powerhouse Sunday afternoon, organized by an assembly of Black titleholders led by Emperor XXXVI, After Norton, John Weber. After a powerful, crowd-pleasing lineup of performers, a Soul of Pride talent contest presented four contestants. Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman and State Senator Scott Wiener popped in with congratulations and certificates. The bar was delightfully crowded, the entertainment was first-rate, and $1500

“Equality means more than passing laws. The struggle is really won in the hearts and minds of the community, where it really counts.”

—Barbara Gittings

Thursday, June 26

Divas & Drinks Bay Times Pride Celebration 10 Years of Marriage Equality SF Pride leadership, SF Opera singers Bayard Rustin Coalition & Soul of Pride Awards The Academy SF, 2166 Market Street

6 pm $15

https://bit.ly/3FT3BOx

Friday, June 27

SF Opera Pride Concert Host Sapphira Cristál Pre-show with Suzanne Ford, concert, dance party with Juanita MORE! War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness Avenue 6:30 pm $30 & up www.sfopera.com/pride

Saturday, June 28 Pride Celebration Civic Center Free! www.sfpride.org

Sunday, June 29 SF Pride Parade Market Street Free! www.sfpride.org

was raised in a single event for a worthy organization.

As we enter the final weeks of SF Pride Month, please find your own way to embrace this amazing LGBTQ+ Community that remains a beacon for so much of the world. Never doubt that the world is watching and if we persevere through these troubled times, anything is possible and the future is bright.

Donna Sachet is a celebrated performer, fundraiser, activist, and philanthropist who has dedicated over two decades to the LGBTQ Community in San Francisco. Contact her at empsachet@gmail.com

The Dykes on Bikes’ 49th Year Leading the San Francisco Pride Parade

By Kate Brown, Ph.D.

Dykes on Bikes® Tales

From Two Wheels

San Francisco Dykes on Bikes® has had a full and fantastic Pride Month so far and now we are in Pride Week!

We started strong with Sonoma County Pride and Clayton Pride, and this year we added Pacifica Pride on June 7. It was our second time to participate and we were warmly welcomed. We love seeing Pride celebrated in towns of all sizes, and we’re always happy to bring the rumble of our engines.

On June 8, Dykes on Bikes was celebrated at the San Francisco Bay Times’ Mimosa Brunch held at Catch French Bistro. A special thank you to the Bay Times, as well as to sponsors Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch LLP and Boone Callaway for sponsoring the event; to Brooke Oliver,

Senior Counsel with Procopio and General Counsel for Dykes on Bikes, for the introduction and recap of our historic trademark case; and to Suzanne Ford of San Francisco Pride for helping lead the auction and raffle. It was great food, community, and conversations. Thank you to everyone who showed up and supported us. We participated in Sacramento Pride on June 15 and returned to Sacramento on June 23 for another motorcycle procession

with the California LGBTQ Caucus. Riding through downtown Sacramento with California state legislators and community leaders is always an honor, serving as an important reminder of the power of visibility.

On June 22, we joined the People’s March & Rally, organized by activists and community leaders Alex U. Inn and Juanita MORE!, following the same route as the first Gay Liberation Protest.

Brooke Oliver: Defending Icons, Empowering Communities

On Friday, June 27, Dykes on Bikes will help kick off Pride Weekend by delivering the legendary Rainbow Torch to the base of the R-Evolution statue at Embarcadero Plaza. The torch will light up the world’s largest Pride flag, created from laser space cannons (aka GAYsers!). Like all Illuminate events, this celebration is free and open to all, so come join us at the Embarcadero

For decades, Brooke Oliver has stood at the intersection of justice, art, and activism, earning her place as a respected figure in the LGBTQ+ community. A trailblazing attorney with a global reputation, Oliver has wielded trademark, copyright, and nonprofit law as tools for cultural and social empowerment, protecting the icons of activism and the creative legacies of artists, queer organizations, and marginalized communities.

Oliver is perhaps best known in the LGBTQ+ community as General Counsel to Dykes on Bikes®, where she successfully secured and defended the group’s trademark up to and through the United States Supreme Court, transforming a name once considered “too offensive” into a legally protected symbol of queer pride and visibility. She is also known by her sacred title: Saint Brooke of the Patent Leather Legal Briefs, bestowed by The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for service to the community. Separately, she is trademark and nonprofit counsel for the Sisters. She served for 15 years as General Counsel to San Francisco Pride,

helping shape the largest and most visible LGBTQ+ celebration in the country.

Beyond her legal service in queer circles, Oliver is a cultural force across multiple communities. She is a co-founder of San Francisco’s Latino Cultural District, a model for other cultural districts in San Francisco, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Acción Latina, the nonprofit publisher of El Tecolote. Her legal service to the farmworker movement, and her fierce defense of artistic expression, including in landmark Visual Artists’ Rights Act cases, has earned accolades. She championed the publicity rights of music legends’ estates, created the legal architecture for Burning Man to gain nonprofit status, and protected Black Panther trademarks.

Oliver’s lifelong commitment has been recognized with the Cesar E. Chávez Legacy Award, the Teddy Witherington Award for Outstanding Service to the LGBTQ+ Movement, and Certificates of Honor from the City and County of San Francisco and the State Legislature for her leadership and advocacy.

With every case she argues, trademark she defends, or community she uplifts, Brooke Oliver proves that justice can be an art, and activism a legacy. She is available through her firm Procopio, an AmLaw 200 Firm recognized for its diversity, to help artists,

Photos courtesy of Dykes on Bikes®

Pacifica Sacramento

Brooke Oliver

(continued on page 40)

PERRY/STIER (continued from pg 5)

attached to our rights and our spouses.

We all see what is happening to civil rights in this country, as the current administration continues to degrade and debase LGBTQ+ people, women, immigrants, and other vulnerable members of society. The fight of each of us is the fight of all of us. When we see ourselves in each other, we fight with love. We are so much stronger together. We are who we’ve been waiting for.

On this 10-year anniversary of marriage equality, we toast to what we have and what we will fight to keep! Happy gay marriage anniversary, and happy Pride!

Sandy Stier and Kris Perry, together since 1997, were plaintiffs in the landmark cases Perry v. Schwarzenegger and Hollingsworth v. Perry that helped secure marriage equality in California and were influential in the fight for nationwide same-sex marriage rights. Learn more about them, along with another couple who were plaintiffs in California, at http://afer.org/about/plaintiffs/

RIZZO/COOPER (continued from pg 5)

plaintiffs in the California marriage case. The next morning, after being up all night providing declarations, instead of a “honeymoon” we headed to Court represented by NCLR (the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which is now the National Center for LGBT Rights), the ACLU (The American Civil Liberties Union), Lambda Legal, and scores of pro bono attorneys. We spent the next four years identified very publicly as “plaintiffs,” traveling up and down the state with filmmakers Geoff Callan and Mike Shaw screening their documentary, Pursuit of Equality, as the courts meandered around the issue.

When we finally were able to get legally married in California in 2008, Mayor Newsom. true to his word, married us in his chambers. But Prop 8 put us back in a weird limbo that we called the “marriage island’ where thousands of couples lived between legal and suspect until 2015 when the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled in our favor.

Now, in 2025, 36 years later, as senior citizens with all the rights and responsibilities afforded married couples, we remain deeply grateful for all the activists in the LGBTQ+ movement, the media that covered the stories, and the attorneys who fought for us, sacrificing their time and treasure to back the bold act by then Mayor and now Governor Newsom.

Jeanne Rizzo and Pali Cooper, together as a couple for 36 years, were two of the plaintiffs who sued the State of California for the right to marry. Their four-year struggle was documented by filmmakers Geoff Callan and Mike Shaw in the 2005 film “Pursuit of Equality” https://www.pursuitofequality.com/

WILSON (continued from pg 5)

civil unions. “It’s in the book,” he replied, meaning it was part of his platform. When he became mayor, he followed through and set up a registry for same sex couples. We happened to be in Rome during the time one of the ceremonies was open, but we were told the 20 slots were already filled and we would have to wait because there were already over two hundred people on the waiting list. Fernando tried to reason with the clerk and explain that we weren’t full time residents of Rome. No amount of pleading moved her.

A few days later I found myself standing next to Mayor Marino at a press conference for The Race for the Cure. I asked him if there was any possibility we might be invited to the ceremony. He asked for my information (which I had already printed out!) and said he would look into it. That was a Saturday and the ceremony was scheduled for Thursday. I was hopeful and excited; Fernando told me not to get my hopes up.

On Tuesday afternoon we got a call from the same clerk who had denied us who informed us that there had been a cancellation and there would be room for us at the ceremony. You might think that the whole thing could become stale having been repeated in so many places and so many ways, but the truth is it never gets old or loses any emotional impact for me. Even as I write these words, I can feel tears welling in my eyes and that lump gathering in my throat. I never allowed myself to think that I would be able to find someone to love me, but I did.

William “Bill” Francis Wilson is a photographer who documents events and the struggle for LGBTQ+ civil rights ( https://billwilsonphotos.com/ ). After 22 years of being together as a couple, he and Fernando Proietti Orlandi married on June 17, 2008, after their first marriage in 2004 had been declared null and void by the California Supreme Court. A video of the ceremony performed by Mayor Gavin Newsom is available at Wilson’s website.

MILLER (continued from pg 22)

be taken as legal or tax advice. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Brio and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. No advice may be rendered by Brio Financial Group unless a client service agreement is in place.

Brandon Miller, CFP®, is a financial consultant at Brio Financial Group in San Francisco, specializing in helping LGBT individuals and families plan and achieve their financial goals. For more information: https://www.briofg.com/

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Plaza as we light up the night and help launch Pride Weekend 2025 in style.

And don’t forget, our annual fundraiser is on Saturday, June 28, from 12:30–3:30 pm at The Academy SF (2166 Market Street). We’ll have music from DJ Rockaway, a silent auction featuring an amazing lineup of items donated by local businesses, and plenty of Dykes on Bikes® merch and T-shirts. You can register to ride with us in the San Francisco Pride Parade while you’re there. Our mid-day event puts you right in the heart of the Castro and gives you time to enjoy everything else Pride Saturday has to offer. Proceeds from T-shirt sales will be donated to the San Francisco Transgender District and El/La Para TransLatinas.

This year marks our 49th year leading the San Francisco Pride Parade, and we’d love for you to ride with us. Register now by visiting our website ( www.dykesonbikes.org ) and be part of the iconic roar of engines as Dykes on Bikes kicks off the San Francisco Pride Parade, riding with dignity, visibility, and the fierce belief in this year’s Pride theme: Queer Joy is Resistance!

Before I wrap, I want to acknowledge that Pride doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The recent Supreme Court decision upholding Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth is heartbreaking and dangerous. Alongside hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills across the country, it sends a chilling message to our community, especially to young trans and nonbinary people. We see you. We’re riding for you. And we won’t stop fighting. Thank you to everyone who has shown up, whether that is cheering from the sidewalk, joining our rides, donating, or organizing in your own community.

Let’s keep riding, together.

Kate Brown, Ph.D., is the President of San Francisco Dykes on Bikes® Women’s Motorcycle Contingent. https://www.dykesonbikes.org/

authorities with good scientific rationales.

(In this case, for example, Tennessee lawmakers determined that giving hormones and puberty blockers to teens “can lead to the minor becoming irreversibly sterile, having increased risk of disease and illness, or suffering from adverse and sometimes fatal psychological consequences.” We’ve all read the suicide statistics for trans-kids hitting puberty without support, so I’m wondering what kind of fatal psychological consequences the fellows over in Tennessee have found for those who get blockers.)

In case you’re wondering why Justice Alito didn’t like section IIA, it’s because he believes that transgender bias is never sex discrimination to begin with so there’s no need to hide from the issue like a little scared rabbit.

As for Barrett, her concurrence can be summed up in her own lead sentence: “Because the Court concludes that Tennessee’s Senate Bill 1 does not classify on the basis of transgender status, it does not resolve whether transgender status constitutes a suspect class ... . I write separately to explain why, in my view, it does not.”

Thanks for that, Amy.

Twists of Fate

I did my best just now, but I didn’t have the heart for parsing depressing lawsuits or opinions. To think that Mitch McConnell wouldn’t allow a vote on Merrick Garland for months and months. To think that Jim Comey announced he had found (redundant) emails that sounded bad for Clinton with just days before the 2016 election and handed it to Trump. Imagine what the world would look like if Clinton had served for four (or eight) years and appointed three justices.

In the aftermath of the Tennessee trans case, I’ve read several articles about how the GLBT community “pushed their luck,” or “went too far,” or what have you, which reminded me of the backlash to our fight for marriage equality after the GOP used marriage as a wedge issue in 2004. Yes, we fought for transgender rights, but it wasn’t our efforts that churned up a whirlwind of transphobia and let it race through the American heartland as the 2020 election approached. How were we to fight back for a cause that, unlike marriage equality, has a complicated, multi-faceted

political character?

Our main fault as a community was adopting the all or nothing stance instead of accepting a level of uncertainty and putting some nuance into our politics. I know that, as a news writer/reporter, I often saw talking points from our various allies and activists reminding the reader that scientists have overwhelmingly said X, or studies have proved Y, or [your favorite anti-trans commentator] used bad science, or whatever it might be. However, the most cursory inspection of gender studies shows that the phenomenon of transitioning at an early stage is brand new. Obviously!

We have no idea what hormones and puberty blockers might do in fifty years. But then again, we do know what unsupported trans teens are going through right now, and it’s torture. We must find a way to say that without being accused of promoting untried medical experiments and destroying the human race.

As the majority noted in Skrmetti, several European health agencies have turned cautious in their treatment of trans youth, recognizing that we all lack knowledge. Early researchers have made conclusions based on insignificant numbers of people. Similar studies have contradicted each other. The British and the Norwegians now recommend kids be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. That makes sense to me, but “sensible” is not the American way these days. Not with conservatives in control of the Supreme Court and strongmen running our states. We have not been able to fight evangelical passion with nuance and hesitation. In our defense, it’s not easy to do that.

There are far more trans and non-binary kids today than there were a decade ago, let alone two decades ago, and they are growing up inundated with social media in a fast-changing world. They are still a tiny minority, and it’s unclear where the boundaries lie between those who are just growing up and experimenting with their identities and those who have deep pain over their gender and need professional help. But this increase has been enough to trigger real fear in a silent majority of Americans who know next to nothing about transgender identity. We’re not that far ahead of the rest of the country, but we pretend to be experts in order to stand our ground and, as such, we cannot express anything but certainty.

I Guess We Keep Going, Right?

One of the articles I read was by Nicholas Confessore in The New York Times. Headlined “How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost,” the piece had the demoralizing subhead, “The inside story of the case that could set the movement back a generation.” The Skrmetti case can’t be blamed for a potential quarter century of lost progress looming ahead, and indeed, its contribution to the recent and future decline in GLBT rights is only one factor in our larger community setback. But I was struck by one particular paragraph that traced the recent extremes of our activist fever dreams.

“In the wider culture, concepts of gender were becoming dizzyingly capacious, even confused. Challenging the idea of a rigid male-female binary, academic theorists detached gender from sex entirely, then reimagined it as an infinite spectrum. By the mid-2010s ... a trans person might identify as male, female, or neither. The gender of a ‘gender fluid’ person might shift from month to month, or day to day. The phrase ‘sex assigned at birth’ ... was now employed to suggest that biological sex was arbitrary, even a kind of fiction. Gender, not sex, was the inherent quality.”

Did it get this bad? Maybe. I certainly had little patience for, let’s say those who were insisting on tampons in the men’s room or the trans woman with a penis who complained about not being allowed to join a nude women’s getaway. In my experience, transgender activists themselves were not distracted by micro-discrimination, nor had they abandoned common sense. But maybe I was ignoring the ones who were and had. Maybe we set ourselves up for failure.

When we get our mojo back, will it be so difficult to point out to the country and each other that the difference between male and female is an integral part of all animal life and that the vast majority of people are binary creatures? That doesn’t diminish transgender or non-binary people any more than the heterosexual majority diminishes gay men and lesbians.

On the bright side of this ruling, I no longer have to keep checking the spelling of “Skrmetti,” the Attorney General of Tennessee.

arostow@aol.com

Photos by Kevin Berne

Trans Star Shakina Leads Strong Cast in TheatreWorks Silicon Valley Hit Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean: A New Musical

Just in time for Pride, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley is putting trans stories center stage with the World Premiere of Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean: A New Musical, performing through July 13 in Mountain View.

Based on Ed Graczyk’s cult classic film and play of the same name originally starring Cher, Kathy Bates, Sandy Dennis, and Karen Black, this electrifying new musical follows the 20-year reunion of a James Dean fan club. As the spunky group of women reminisce about when Dean filmed Giant in nearby Marfa, Texas, they’re surprised by the arrival of a mysterious stranger. This story has long offered

groundbreaking positive trans representation for stage and film since the stranger is Joanne, a friend who transitioned in the years they’ve been apart. Though initial reactions vary across the group, they welcome her, and all come to terms with secrets of their past.

Trans actor/activist Shakina (NBC’s Connecting, NBC’s Quantum Leap, Hulu’s Difficult People) writes the lyrics and stars as Joanne onstage at TheatreWorks. “I’m excited to be playing this iconic role created by the great Karen Black. Now I have the honor of bringing Joanne to life authentically as a trans actor.”

As trans rights and freedoms are in jeopardy, revisiting this story feels timely and necessary. “We need more stories that show folks, especially those who think they’ve never met a trans person, just how easy it can be to open their hearts to us,” Shakina told the San Francisco Bay Times. “I also think our musical upholds a kind of sisterhood we need to manifest in today’s world, one that reaches across differences to support economic solidarity and bodily autonomy for all women and gender transgressive folks.”

Trans male actor Ellie Van Amerongen plays a younger version of Shakina’s character Joanne. Shakina pushed for casting a trans male actor as Joe. “What we’re doing here is actually pretty radical in terms of trans storytelling,” Shakina said. “We are ensuring that the character, who is one person between us over time, is always embodied by a person of trans experience. To me, it preserves the integrity of Joanne’s identity

as something essential, deeply connecting the two actors that play her.”

Shakina and Van Amerongen are joined onstage by Broadway actors Lauren Marcus (Be More Chill ) and Stephanie Gibson (Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) as well as talented Bay Area actors Ashley Cowl, Judith Miller, and Hayley Lovgren.

Shakina teams up with playwright/ actor Ashley Robinson (Brokeback Mountain), who wrote the book, and composer/frontman of the band The Feeling, Dan Gillespie Sells (Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Brokeback Mountain), who wrote the music. Robinson loved the movie as a boy in rural

(continued on page 62)

More Queer Films to See Before Frameline49 Ends

have car trouble and encounter both danger and unexpected kindness on the road. But it is the moments when they find common ground, help, and understanding that make the film touching. The siblings share a complicated family history that this trip provides a chance to correct. The performances by Cumming and Creed-Miles are pitch-perfect, and the points made about homophobia ring true.

This year’s Frameline Film Festival ends this weekend, but there is still time to catch a few good films. Here’s a rundown of what to watch.

A Mother Apart is a highly personal documentary about lesbian poet Staceyann Chin seeking out her birthmother, Hazel, who abandoned her as a child. “My mother remains a mystery to me,” she says, late in the film, while trying to learn more about Hazel from others who knew her. Chin even meets Hazel a few times and their encounters are interesting. The poet does not mince words when Hazel has issues with her daughter being gay. But what makes A Mother Apart meaningful is the way Chin’s image of her mother conflicts with the reality of her, and how Chin—a mother herself—works to create a loving relationship with her own daughter.

Inspired by a true story, the respectable Canadian drama, Drive Back Home, set in 1970, is a conventional road movie about two very different brothers. Weldon, nicknamed Wid (Charlie Creed-Miles), has never left his hometown of Stanley, New Brunswick, until a policeman in Toronto calls him to come pick up his gay brother Perley (Alan Cumming) who has been arrested. Borrowing his boss’ truck, Wid reluctantly drives across Canada, but it is the drive back home that forms the core of the story. There are the expected disagreements between the brothers who have nothing in common but their parents. They also

The compelling Filipino import, Some Nights I Feel Like Walking, opens with a fantastic tracking shot that follows Uno (Jamari Angeles) through the streets of Manila. He meets Zion (Miguel Odron) in a bus station bathroom and helps this stranger out of a sticky situation. The guys later, unexpectedly, reconnect performing sex work in a movie theater. There is a palpable attraction between them, but Uno’s buddies, Bay (Argel Saycon) and Rush (Tommy Alejandrino), are wary of the newbie; they sense he “is not one of us.” When the quartet take care of a dicey situation involving a mutual friend, Bay gives Uno an ultimatum about Zion: “us or him.” As a series of dream-like episodes reveal Zion’s backstory, and Uno recounts his childhood bond with Bay, the film emphasizes the heartfelt brotherhood shared by these attractive young men. Some Nights I Feel Like Walking immerses viewers in the gritty world of its characters for a night that is both poignant and inspiring.

There is an abundance of Black queer strength and joy in Assembly, a marvelous documentary about artist Rashaad Newsome and his stunning 2022 commission for the Park Avenue Armory. Newsome, who codirected the film with Johnny Symons, records the preparation and exhibition of his show, Assembly, which is about reclamation, emancipation, and decolonization. The work features international vogue dancers, opera singers, classrooms, sculpture, poetry, “Being,” a digital AI

Griot, and so much more. Newsome is infectious and a force of nature as he imagines, improvises, and executes his dazzling vision. Seeing him develop Being, or doing research on a trip to Ghana, is fascinating. Moreover, his responses to the reactions towards his work are thoughtful and meaningful. Newsome is incredibly self-aware, but he is also highly empathetic of others—especially when he hugs several of his collaborators to purge them of their negativity. Assembly addresses queer Black visibility and culture with a sidebar on the trans community and how they turn fear into confidence, a theme echoed in Newsome’s masterwork. The film devotes considerable time to documenting the performances, which were staged for only a few weeks. Assembly will make everyone who missed seeing Newsome’s multimedia production in person regretful yet grateful that this fabulous film exists to show them what they missed.

The mysterious, hypnotic Brazilian film, Only Good Things, has Marcelo (Live Carlos) taken in by farmer and cheesemaker Antônio (Lucas Drummond) after he has a motorcycle accident. There is an unspoken attraction between the men that leads to an intimate encounter in a shower that unites them. However, there are threats to their newfound happiness. Antônio fears Marcelo will leave, and Antônio’s homophobic father, Tavares (Norval Berbari), wants Antônio’s land. At the midpoint, Only Good Things jumps ahead in time and to the city where an older Antônio (Fernando Libonati) is dealing with the sudden disappearance of his husband, Marcelo. He is comforted by his hunky assistant, Eduardo (Igor Leoni), but his housekeeper, Helga (Renata Carvalho), suspects something. Writer/director Daniel Nolasco’s film unfolds stylishly, with minimal dialogue and maximum eroticism that allow for narrative ambiguity and explicit sex. What it all means is deliberately left for viewers to determine—it is designed to perplex—but the attractive cast and stunning visuals will keep viewers spellbound. Also from Brazil, and also unapologetically horny, is Night Stage , which has theatre

actors Matias (Gabriel Faryas) and Fabio (Henrique Barreira) competing for the same starring TV role. Their rivalry becomes more complicated when Matias hooks up with Rafael (Cirillo Luna), a mayoral candidate who likes to have sex in public. It would spoil the pleasures of this glossy and ludicrous thriller to reveal more, but the way each man manipulates people and things hoping not to get caught will keep viewers riveted. The actors lean into the juicy material—especially the sex scenes—which makes Night Stage ridiculously entertaining.

© 2025 Gary M. Kramer

Gary M. Kramer is the author of “Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews,” and the co-editor of “Directory of World Cinema: Argentina.” He teaches Short Attention Span Cinema at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute and is the moderator for Cinema Salon, a weekly film discussion group. Follow him on X @garymkramer

Film

Gary M. Kramer

LGBTQ+ Movies for Pride Month Viewing

Off the Wahl

Jan Wahl

Elizabeth Taylor once said, “Without gays and lesbians, there would be no Hollywood.” She was right, and that reality continues on, not just because she was a great actress in explosive films like Suddenly, Last Summer and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. But Taylor championed HIV/AIDS causes and everything else connected to the gay community early on. Her friends, Montgomery Clift, Elton John, and Roddy McDowall, were just a small part of the world that joined her in support of the LGBTQ+ community and tackled homophobia, risking her own reputation.

“There is no gay agenda, there’s a human agenda,” she famously explained.

ever done, including In & Out and Sister Act

Brokeback Mountain is more wellknown and fills us with unconditional love. I was working in television when I saw it, and I got all kinds of weird mail telling me, “Cowboys are not gay.” I always felt like telling them, “Really, honey, what ranch were you on?!”

Carol is a 2015 historical drama based on a romance novel by the great Patricia Highsmith. The story is about a forbidden affair between an aspiring photographer and an older woman going through a divorce. Themes of identity and personal freedom, as well as lesbian rights to live out loud and proud, make this film special. Its visual style, with its muted color palette and exquisite production design, immerses viewers in the period. Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara add to its reality.

Three years after Taylor passed in 2011, one of my favorite LGBTQ movies was released. It is not well known, but I highly recommend it: 2014’s Pride. It takes place in 1984, and concerns London-based gay activists who lent their support to striking miners in Wales. This drives the Margaret Thatcher government, the police, and the conservative press crazy. It stars two of my favorite actors, Bill Nighy and Dominic West.

Another film, unknown but fabulous, is Jeffrey. It’s a 1995 romantic comedy about the quest for love and intimacy in the age of AIDS. One of my favorite writers, Paul Rudnick, wrote the screenplay. I follow everything he has

Happier times are spent with To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, The Birdcage, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Hairspray, and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert I could go on, but let’s finally salute some actors working today who have come out and made our lives better: Cynthia Nixon, Jodie Foster, Neil Patrick Harris, Stephen Fry, and Sir Ian McKellen. Sir Ian was on television with me live, on the 6 o’clock news. His publicist had been very nervous and didn’t want me to ask any questions about

Sir Ian being gay. Naturally, I asked him, “It must have been very exciting to be with the Queen of England?” And he said before God and the world, “Yep, an old queen knighted an old queen!”

So, the end is happy Pride, everyone!

Jan Wahl is a Hollywood historian and film critic on various broadcast outlets. She has two Emmys and many awards for her longtime work on behalf of film buffs and the LGBTQ community. Contact her at www.janwahl.com

RECOMMENDATIONS FROM BOOK PASSAGE

The Poppy Fields (fiction - hardcover) by Nikki Erlick

Nikki Erlick has followed up her hit debut with a speculative fiction novel, The Poppy Fields. Erlick’s novel follows four strangers on their road trip to a controversial research center. The center offers a treatment that allows one to sleep through their pain and wake up healed.

Endling (fiction - hardcover) by Maria Reva

Maria Reva’s debut novel, Endling, is a darkly comedic tale set in Ukraine. Yeva, a scientist, crosses paths with two sisters pretending to be part of the marriage industry that matches bachelors with docile women. They end up embarking on a road trip that takes a turn when Russia invades.

A

Different

Kind of Power

(non-fiction - hardcover) by

Jacinda Ardern

The former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, shares her story in her memoir A Different Kind of Power. Ardern is known for being, at the time, the youngest female head of office and for her empathetic leadership style. Her memoir chronicles her rise to power and provides inspiration for future generations.

Upcoming Events

Monday, June 30 @ 6 pm (ticketed - Corte Madera store) Abraham Verghese, author of Covenant of Water

The Covenant of Water is an epic following three generations of a Christian

(continued on page 60)

Spent: A Comic Novel by Alison Bechdel Alison Bechdel is back! Need we say more? Spent is a comic graphic novel that mirrors Bechdel’s own life with cameos from Dykes to Watch Out For. It’s the fun book we need right now!

Tramps Like Us by Joe Westmoreland

This charming, zippy, fun, sad, and brave novel follows a peripatetic young gay misfit on the loose in the louche, chaotic, now-almosthard-to-believe-it-happened 1970s.

It Rhymes with Takei by George

Takei

Ohhh my! Takei, a beloved cultural icon for his portrayal of Lieutenant Sulu on TV’s Star Trek , delivers a vivid graphic novel detailing his secret (up to the age of 68!) life as a gay man.

https://www.fabulosabooks.com/

REFLECTING PRIDE

Poet in Residence

Kit Kennedy is the Poetin-Residence of the “San Francisco Bay Times” and at herchurch Ebenezer Lutheran ( http://www.herchurch.org/ ). She has published 5 poetry collections, and for several years hosted the poetry series at Gallery Café. For more information, please visit her blog: http://poetrybites.blogspot.com

By Kit Kennedy

No matter what is going on in this world, no matter how cruel, chaotic, we will persist in good action, taking comfort, thriving in each other’s company. It is our nature to be diverse, vibrant, insistent, and, yes, proud. Some of us are rooted and regal as magnolias. Others, strut like a confident oystercatcher—the world our beach. (By the way, did you know, in the bird-world, the oystercatcher is a symbol of resilience and a healthy environment?) Now is the time. Put the world’s woes down. Don your royal purple. Strut like a flamboyant creature. Everyone, everyone is invited to this party.

Kit Kennedy

Photographer

Stacy Boorn

Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag Mural With Yellow Brick Road Unveiled at Jane Warner Plaza

A colorful new mural on the pavement of the Castro’s Jane Warner Plaza was unveiled in a ceremony at the plaza on the afternoon of June 20, 2025. The project, led by long-term HIV/AIDS survivor Harry Breaux, features the intersex-inclusive Progress Pride Flag along with an image of the Yellow Brick Road made famous in the film The Wizard of Oz and symbolizing the path to self-discovery, personal growth, and the fulfillment of one’s desires.

Breaux, who is now 80 years old, spoke at the ceremony, which also included words from Andrea Aiello, who is the Executive Director of the Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District (Castro CBD). LGBTQ+ activist Michael Petrelis, another long-term HIV/AIDS survivor and friend of Breaux, attended, as did Michael Merrigan, former San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin, activist Alex U. Inn, and numerous others. The mural was preceded by another one at the same location that was painted just before June Pride 2024 by Breaux, Petrelis, Daniel Huggy Bear, and Merrigan.

At the end of the ceremony, Breux was seen skipping down the Yellow Brick Road with volunteers and supporters. (Video of one such moment is at https://bit.ly/447F3ZZ ) Creation of the mural took place in phases over several weeks. Partnering with the Castro CBD, Breaux fundraised $3,861, which helped pay for the paint, supplies, and SF Public Works-issued permits.

The mural can be seen via Cam 4 of the 24/7 live-streaming Castro Street Cam: https://sfbaytimes.com/castro-street-cam/

Pouring Pride: A Cocktail of Trans Joy

Cocktails With Dina by Dina Novarr

In the heart of San Francisco’s vibrant nightlife scene, behind the bar where rainbow lights dance across bottles that cost more than most people’s shirts, Sabatino stirs more than just cocktails. He’s mixing hope, community, and decades of hard-won wisdom into every drink he serves all while sporting stubbles of glittery silver that scream, “I survived.”

As Pride Month bathes the city in its annual celebration of authenticity and love (and now losses of corporate sponsorships), Sabatino’s story stands as a beacon for trans youth navigating their own journeys. He is living proof that you can, in fact, make it as a trans person despite what certain politicians would have you believe.

“When I was 13, I started my transition journey,” Sabatino reflects with the calmness of someone who’s survived a lifetime of explaining himself to strangers. “Throughout the decades, what I come back to is not

only the support and love of my family and friends, but also the trans adults who guided me and led the way for me to become my authentic self.”

His sense of calm and strength in occupying his space is pure Pride, the kind that comes from outlasting your critics through sheer “white walker”-like persistence.

Those trans elders who showed him the path forward now live on in his approach to community building. Every young trans person who walks through his bar doors sees in Sabatino what he once desperately needed to see: proof that a future exists beyond the comment sections of news articles.

The cocktail Sabatino has crafted for Pride isn’t just a drink—it’s liquid San Francisco, distilled into something you can swallow and sniff. Meet Sab’s San Francisco Sour. Each ingredient represents a facet of the city that embraced him. San Francisco’s

legendary acceptance of queer, trans, and multi-careered individuals created the perfect environment for someone like Sabatino to build both a life and a legacy, assuming you can afford the rent.

“I’m so grateful for San Francisco nightlife and to be a part of queer and trans joy for a living!” he exclaims, managing to make “joy for a living” sound like the dream job it actually is. “To see smiling faces and glittered dancers, vibrant colors, and unapologetic queerness. My cocktail is a little love letter to this city that allowed me to be me, and to be celebrated for it.”

Beyond his craft behind the bar, Sabatino is also a talented costume designer, and helps bring the art of drag to glittering life, creating garments that allow performers to transform into their most spectacular selves. His workmanship doesn’t just clothe bodies; it armors spirits, providing the visual poetry that makes drag the revolutionary art form.

In an era where drag faces political persecution (because apparently democracy dies in sequins and wigs), Sabatino’s needle and thread become instruments of defiance. Every sequin he sews, every feather he places, every piece he designs stands as a testament to the beauty and importance of gender expression in all its forms. His costumes allow drag artists to take the stage not just as performers, but as living, breathing celebrations of authenticity and joy— which, coincidentally, terrifies fascists. His very existence—successful, celebrated, and surrounded by community—becomes an act of resistance and hope that no amount of legislative tantrum-throwing can erase.

When young trans patrons see those silver hairs behind the bar, they’re not just seeing age. They’re seeing achievement, survival, and the beautiful possibility of a life lived authentically. “I hope that the young trans people that come through my bar feel welcomed and see that trans longevity exists!” he says, because apparently existing past 25 as a trans person is now a political statement. “I hope my gray hairs give them hope for their future in this world, though we still fight tooth and nail for our existence.”

So, let’s raise a glass to Sabatino and the countless trans elders who paved the way, and to the young people bravely carrying the torch forward into an uncertain future. After all, a cocktail tastes better when it’s mixed with decades of earned wisdom and just a hint of righteous indignation.

San Francisco-based Dina Novarr enjoys sharing her passion for fine wines, spirits, non-alcoholic craft beverages, and more with others.

2 oz bourbon (because you need something strong)

1/2 ounce hibiscus simple syrup (pretty and pink, like the city’s politics)

1/2 lemon (for all the sour faces you’ve endured)

1 egg white (frothy like the ocean)

3 dashes peach bitters (life’s bitter, add peaches)

pinot noir float (the Sonoma touch that says, “I’m fancy now”)

In a bar tin with ice, combine bourbon, hibiscus simple syrup, half a squeezed lemon, peach bitters, and one egg white. Shake for 20 seconds like you’re shaking off decades of other people’s opinions. Strain into a rocks glass. With a bar spoon, float pinot noir on top like your dreams floating above reality. Garnish with a lemon peel and serve with a knowing smile.

Sabatino

Sabatino as Lola wearing an ensemble that he designed

Sab’s San Francisco Sour

New Places, New Spaces

The Gay Gourmet

You can feel it in the air. There’s a renewed energy in San Francisco: new ideas, new businesses, and best of all, some new restaurants and bars to sample. The Gay Gourmet has been out and about, finding some of the best new haunts for my loyal readers in our beautiful City by the Bay. Here are just a few. Rikki’s Women’s Sports Bar in the Castro

It’s been a long time since queer women had their own gathering spot in San Francisco. The wait is over! The Gay Gourmet is here to tell you that owners Danielle Thoe and Sara Yergovich have created a beautifully-designed new women’s sports bar and restaurant in the Castro called Rikki’s. It’s named for Rikki Streicher, a founder/ sponsor of the Gay Games and owner of former iconic San Francisco lesbian bars Maud’s and Amelia’s. Dedicated to women’s sports, this new offering is at 2223 Market Street, just doors down from Hi Tops (the men’s sports bar in the Castro), but a world apart. You

enter and are immediately enveloped in a sophisticated environment that is painted in deep purples, the colors of the Golden State Valkyries basketball team. A full bar lines the left side of the establishment, with adjoining high-top tables. The opposite side of Rikki’s has tables with a birdseye view of a dozen+ TV screens, all tuned to women’s sports. The cocktail program is diverse, with a great selection of spirits, beers on tap, and mocktails. Plus, you can order pub-like food (smashburgers, fish and chips, and some healthy salads) from the rear kitchen window lit by one-of-akind basketball hoop sconces. I visited in the afternoon during a weekday with my lesbian pal Linda, whose eyes lit up once inside. Seeing her excited reaction to having a space like this, where folks can meet up, was everything. Co-owner Danielle was quick to tell me that part of the goal wasn’t just to open a bar or restaurant, but to showcase women’s sports in a space that doubles as a community hub. As one of the signs says at Rikki’s, everyone is welcome. It’s time for all of us to support our tribe’s newest venue.

Zingari Italian Steakhouse and Pasta Bar

If you’re headed to one of the many theatres in Union Square, it’s not always easy finding a great place to dine. Zingari, which has been around for a while in the Donatello Hotel at Mason and Post, has just gone through a renovation—and the results are stunning. The restaurant features an intimate “aperitivo” cocktail bar, live jazz on the weekends, a gorgeous private room painted with Italian murals, and a refreshed main dining room with a contemporary vibe. If you’re going to the theatre, just present your ticket and you’ll get 10% off your bill. For cocktails, I ordered a well-balanced classic Negroni (they also

offer three of their own variations of this Italian aperitif), served chilled over a large ice cube to start; my husband had a perfect Tito’s vodka martini. The cicchetti (Italian tapas) items include an aromatic bruschetta with burrata, roasted tomato, olive, balsamic, and extra virgin olive oil. It’s a perfect starter to whet your appetite; the addition of roasted tomato instead of raw tomato ensures that the fruit is sweet and tasty. The night we were there, the chef had a special carpaccio with tonnato (tuna sauce) that was out of this world. We followed with a not-too-spicy but zingy rigatoni con salsiccia pasta. The noodles were topped with ground herb sausage dotted with peas and roasted tomato cream. We selected a lovely dry and earthy Castelvecchi Chianti Classico to accompany our main: grilled, herbed lamb chops with gorgonzola sauce, and large enough to share. I’m usually reticent to order lamb chops for two reasons. First, they can be gamey, and second, they are often overcooked. These chops were perfection: grilled to a delicious medium rare, with a sauce that added another contrasting layer, but didn’t overpower the meat. The accompanying homemade gnocchi were light as a feather. We skipped dessert and opted instead for bartender Tyler’s special espresso martinis. They packed a caffeine punch but also had a creamy sweet flavor profile. Next time, I think I’ll have to try their Brandy Alexander—I haven’t seen that on a menu in years! An added bonus? The restaurant has a happy hour (20% off) from noon until 5 pm, as well as after 9 pm. So, you can grab a nightcap after the theatre, and pocket the savings.

Champagne Billecart-Salmon’s 2012 Vintage of Nicolas François I attended a preview of Champagne Billecart-Salmon’s latest offering, the 2012 vintage of Nicolas François. My husband and I had just visited the winery outside Rheims, France, last fall. I have to say that their rosé Champagne is far and away my favorite. So, when I got an invitation to meet CEO Mathieu Roland-Billecart for a masterclass

celebrating the release of the new Champagne, it took all of two seconds to say, “Yes.” Plus, the event was at the renovated Verjus in Jackson Square, which I had yet to visit. First off, Verjus is a gem: intimate and French, with a gorgeous design set off by tall ceilings. Second, the new Champagne is a winner. According to the winery, it’s “crafted from a selection of great crus from the classified vineyards of Montagne de Reims (pinot noir) and Côte des Blancs (chardonnay). The 2012 vintage stands out for its exceptional growing season, yielding perfectly ripened grapes with both richness and vibrant acidity ... it delivers wines of striking aromatic finesse, seamlessly balancing intensity and depth.” I wholeheartedly agree! Let’s hope those European tariffs don’t get approved, so we can continue to enjoy what I believe to be the best Champagne on the planet.

Carlotta’s Cocktail and Wine Bar at the Hotel Julian

For years, my husband and I frequented the Plush Room at the York Hotel

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David Landis

Rikki’s co-owners Danielle Thoe and Sara Yergovich with David Landis

Pasta at Zingari

to see all the best cabaret acts in town, including Rita Moreno, Karen Mason , and Anita O’Day. When the space closed (and moved to what is now Feinstein’s downtown at the Nikko Hotel), it lay dormant for years. Well, it’s been reborn and the new space, dubbed Carlotta’s Cocktail and Wine Bar, is an eye-opener. It’s named after Carlotta Valdes, a character from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film Vertigo. The bar and restaurant are located within the Hotel Julian , which was formerly the Empire

Hotel (and then the York Hotel). It served as a filming location for the movie, especially room 401. The bar incorporates various nods to the film’s cinematic legacy, including a mosaic behind the front desk depicting Carlotta Valdes, as well as some creative cocktails. The former Plush Room is now Carlotta’s, offering spirits, wines, and small bites. It’s been opened up to the lobby and an interior courtyard. Both spaces serve as an expanded lounge and dining area, with modern touches in bold and vibrant colors. Carlotta’s will start serving a new brunch menu on June 28. The menu features corned beef hash, lobster Benedict, French toast, and a lobster tail Bloody Mary. An official launch party on June 29 (the day of the Pride

Parade) will include sips by Ketel One Botanicals

Erik Piepenburg’s New Book Dining Out

It’s not a new haunt, but it’s all about dining. I had the pleasure of meeting New York Times reporter and author Erik Piepenburg in person about a year ago in San Francisco. At the time, he was researching a book all about great LGBTQ+ restaurants throughout the country, and we had a lively discussion. The book, Dining Out, is now available and I’m pretty sure you’ll find it at Fabulosa Books on Castro Street. The book takes readers on an historical journey that highlights both existing and former important gay restaurants from coast to coast. In his estimation, a gay restaurant isn’t one that is owned or operated by LGBTQ+ individuals, but rather frequented by them. His book is an utter delight, and you’ll be hard-pressed to put it down before you finish all 250-plus pages. Erik is a devotee of diners and so two of the San Francisco institutions he highlights are Orphan Andy’s (whose owners may be selling soon) and the original Hamburger Mary’s at 12th and Folsom. He also chronicles a provocative take on the shuttered Compton’s Cafeteria and its role in LGBTQ history. (Activists are currently trying to secure the former Compton’s venue as a public space for the LGBTQ+ community.) Piepenburg explores how “these and many other gay restaurants, coffee shops, diners, and unconventional eateries have charted queer placemaking and changed the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement for the better.”

David Landis, aka “The Gay Gourmet,” is a foodie, a freelance writer, and a retired PR maven. You can email him at: davidlandissf@gmail.com Or visit him online at: https://gaygourmetsf.com/

Carlotta’s Lobster Bloody Mary PHOTO BY

Erik Piepenburg

San Francisco Bay Times Columnist Leslie Sbrocco Celebrates

20 Years of Check, Please! Bay Area

One of the most well-attended events in the history of the San Francisco Design Center Galleria took place on June 9, 2025, when nearly 1000 guests enjoyed this year’s Taste & Sip. It was a milestone year, since the show behind the event, Check, Please! Bay Area, is now in its 20th season. The program’s host, Leslie Sbrocco, is also a member of the San Francisco Bay Times team and writes the column Sbrocco Sips.

She and Coordinating Producer Cecilia Phillips spoke at the event, which was attended by Bay Times sports columnist Beth Schnitzer and co-publisher Jennifer Viegas.

Participating restaurants included 620 Jones, Bar Crudo, Basque Cultural Center, Bhan Mae Vane, Bull Valley Roadhouse, Cafe Colucci, Cali Caracas, Chef Reina, Creek House Dim Sum, Daughter Thai, Dragon Beaux, Eggy’s Neighborhood Kitchen, Ettan, Farmhouse Kitchen, Gerard’s Paella, Gold Ridge Organic Farms, Hummus Heaven, Kehaulani’s Café, Kusan Uyghur Cuisine, Marnee Thai, Mazra, NUSA, Oeste Bar and Kitchen, Old Skool Café, One Market, Palette Tea House, Pausa Bar & Cookery, Piglet & Co., RÊVE Bistro, Roasted and Raw, Routier, Smelly’s Creole, Smoke Soul Kitchen, Sue’s Kitchen, Tay Ho Oakland Restaurant & Bar, Tostadas, Wild Fish, Wildseed, Yak and Yeti Restaurant and Bar, Yo Soy Ceviche, Yuji Ishikata, and Xies Sushi Rolls.

Drinks were provided by Alma de Cattleya, AVIVO Wines, Bolle Drinks Corp, Cellarmaker Brewing Co., Furthermore Wines, Graham’s Port, Grgich Hills Estate, Griffo Distillery, J. Lohr, Lucy Wines, Mossed Juicery, Mt Beautiful Wines, Peterson Winery, Priest Ranch, Smith-Madrone Vineyards & Winery, and the Summit Lake Vineyards & Winery.

Desserts and snacks were offered by the Big Top Sweet Shop, Chef Sarah Germany, Deux Cranes Chocolates and Confections, Fogg’s Confections, Go To Chocolate, Luv’s Brownies, Mangosay, Marin French Cheese, Nana Joes Granola, NECTAR, Raydiant Vybes, Thatcher’s Gourmet Popcorn, and Z. Cioccolato.

Watch video from the event at https://bit.ly/3ZKM95q

And please consider supporting KQED and NPR at this time when President Trump has asked lawmakers to cease direct funding of these important sources of public media that attempt to present well-researched and unbiased news and other information to all and without charge. The benefits to the community of public media have been immense. Check, Please! Bay Area alone has helped promote thousands of small businesses over its 20-year history, with many owners crediting the show for saving them from closure.

Cheers to another 20 years of Check, Please! and to PBS!

Photos by Alain McLaughlin

Leslie Sbrocco holding up the program of the 2025 Taste & Sip

Cecilia Philips with chefs at the 2025 Taste & Sip

J. Lohr Booth at the 2025 Taste & Sip

Leslie Sbrocco and the OAK Team at Taste & Sip 2025

Visit Taiwan Booth at the 2025 Taste & Sip

Burrata appetizer at the 2025 Taste & Sip

Beth Schnitzer, Jennifer Viegas, Leslie Sbrocco, and Cecilia Phillips at the 2025 Taste & Sip

Graham’s 20-Year Aged Tawny Port featured at the 2025 Taste & Sip

Whistles, Wins, and Women’s Sports Bars: My June Sports Roundup

Honoring a Legacy: The Bette S. Schnitzer Endowed Scholarship

This June marked my second journey back to Union Catholic High School in New Jersey to present the Bette “S.” Schnitzer Endowed Scholarship, a tribute to my mother’s extraordinary legacy as a coach, educator, and pioneer for girls’ sports. I had the honor of making the trip with my sister, Jaimie, herself a proud UC alum. It was an emotional and magical return—reconnecting with my mom’s former colleagues, her principal from the all-girls school era, and stepping into a space that shaped so many lives, including hers.

This year’s recipient, junior Evan Florek (UC Class of 2026), embodies the spirit of our mother’s mission. Evan is a natural leader on campus—the voice behind school pep rallies, an aspiring sports commentator, and someone already committed to a future in sports. His energy, optimism, and drive reflect the very qualities our mom brought to every classroom, track meet, and practice she led.

Our mother, Bette Schnitzer, was a true trailblazer. After earning her degree in physical education from Montclair State, she devoted over 35 years to Union Catholic, launching the school’s track and field program and coaching countless others— gymnastics, cheerleading, pep squad— while championing opportunities for girls in sports long before it was common. She was a director of summer recreation, a chaper-

one for the NJ AAU girls’ basketball team, and founder of the county scholar-athlete awards program. Her accolades include induction into the New Jersey Interscholastic Coaches Hall of Fame and the Union Catholic Hall of Fame for her outstanding contributions to athletics and student life.

We created the scholarship after she passed in 2022 to ensure her legacy would live on—each spring, it’s awarded to a Union Catholic student who exemplifies her passion and is pursuing a future in education, athletics, or coaching. Sitting beside Evan and his family at the ceremony, watching a room full of focused, respectful, and engaged students—not a phone in sight—reminded me of how much impact a teacher, a coach, a mentor can have.

And yes, our mom truly was our biggest cheerleader. She even got to meet the gold medal–winning U.S. women’s gymnastics team—the iconic “Magnificent Seven”— at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, a full-circle moment that reflected her lifelong love for sports and youth development. When I watched Simone Biles capture the allaround gold medal in Paris last summer, it brought back a wave of joyful memories: of me and my mom meeting Dominique Dawes, Shannon Miller, and the rest of that unforgettable 1996 team. It was a moment of then, a celebration of now, and a reminder of how deeply rooted her passion for empowering young athletes truly was.

https://www.unioncatholic.org/

On June 10, 2025, I had the honor of attending the ribbon-cutting ceremony for Rikki’s, San Francisco’s first—and only— sports bar dedicated entirely to celebrating women’s sports. It was a powerful moment for the city and for the national movement to elevate women’s athletics in every arena, including where we gather to watch and cheer.

The event featured remarks from San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, Rikki’s co-owners Sara Yergovich and Danielle Thoe, Brady Stewart, CEO of Bay FC, Kimberly Veale, Senior VP of Marketing and Communications for the Golden State Valkyries, and Rosemary Gardner, with the San Francisco LGBT Center.

Stepping into the bar for the first time was pure magic. Fourteen TVs lit up with WNBA games, and the walls were filled with incredible memorabilia, framed jerseys, and tributes to women athletes. The attention to detail, community pride, and passion for the mission were palpable.

Rikki’s is named in honor of Rikki Streicher, a beloved San Francisco community leader who owned several lesbian bars over the decades and was a proud sportswoman herself. Her legacy lives on in this vibrant, inclusive space. As I took it all in, I couldn’t help but think of my mom—a lifelong coach and sports advocate—and how amazed and proud she would be to see women’s sports bars opening across the country.

Just three years ago, only one such bar existed: The Sports Bra in Portland. Today, it’s gearing up to launch locations in Boston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, and St. Louis—cities chosen for their enthusiastic women’s sports fan bases. Rikki’s now joins that movement, and I can’t wait to see it thrive and expand across California and beyond.

Whether it’s to catch a game, sip one of their signature cocktails, enjoy a bite, or support an LGBTQ+ and women-owned business, visiting Rikki’s is highly recommended as it is a safe, spirited space for fans, friends, and community to come together and celebrate women in sport. I can’t wait to go back to 2223 Market Street to celebrate the power and presence of women’s sports.

https://www.rikkisbarsf.com/

Cricket Fever Hits the Bay and I’m Officially Hooked

In my last column, I previewed the arrival of Major League Cricket (MLC) at the Oakland Coliseum—and this past week, I had the chance to attend my very first MLC cricket match. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was lucky enough to go with my business partner, Raghu Shivaram, a devoted cricket fan originally from India, who offered me a front-row seat and a crash course in Cricket 101.

We watched the Texas Super Kings face off against the Seattle Orcas, and I was completely awed—not just by the match itself, but by the transformation of the Coliseum: a baseball and football stadium retrofitted into a world-class cricket venue, complete with drop-in turf wickets that meet international standards. The setup was impressive, but the atmosphere? Absolutely electric.

Families, longtime fans, newcomers, and cricket lovers of all backgrounds were in the stands, waving team flags, cheering with enthusiasm—and yes, blowing whistles, which I learned are a staple in cricket crowds. Raghu shared that the largest cricket stadium in the world, the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, India, seats a staggering 132,000 fans—and during matches, the noise is deafening. After experiencing the energy in Oakland, I can only imagine what that must feel like.

As for the match itself, the Texas Super Kings crushed the Seattle Orcas, but for me, the win was just understanding the

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Rikki’s Raises the Bar for Women’s Sports

Beth Schnitzer, Former UC Principal Sister Percylee Hart, Jaimie Westley Schnitzer

Beth Schnitzer and Raghu Shivaram at an MLC cricket match

Beth’s Bay Area Sports Beat

Beth Schnitzer

Sister Dana Sez: Words of Wisdumb from a Fun Nun

By Sister Dana Van Iquity

Sister Dana sez, “Welcome to the 55th annual PRIDE CELEBRATION on June 28 and 29—the fantastic climax of PRIDE MONTH! Sister Dana will then gleefully celebrate his 40th Anniversary of taking the veil of Sisterhood on June Pride Parade Day 1985. He’s been an out, loud, and proud queer nun ever since!”

The PRIDE CELEBRATION takes place in San Francisco›s Civic Center and features a Main Stage, many community spaces and stages, an 18+ zone, and an LGBTQ street fair with over 300 artists and exhibitors.

Sunday, June 29, is the annual SF PRIDE PARADE! The theme is “Queer Joy is Resistance!” where the Parade starts at 10 am at Market & Embarcadero Plaza, and ends at Civic Center. The Parade typically has over 250 contingents and lasts around four hours. Contingents step onto Market Street and proceed toward the Pride Celebration, ending around Market and 9th Streets. Sister Dana sez, “At the Parade, this joyful activist rainbow nun will be waving and throwing kisses to the cheerful crowd—as always from atop the SF Bay Times bus. Please feel free to kiss me back!”

As California Attorney General Rob Bonta says, “Pride is a protest, a celebration, and time to recommit for fighting for the rights of LGBTQ+ people!”

This year’s San Francisco Pride Marshals are Tita Aida , named the Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal , and Jahnell Butler is honored as the Public Vote Grand Marshal SAN FRANCISCO COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER is the Public Vote Organizational Grand Marshal

After the Parade, escape the crowds within the cool marble halls of San Francisco’s historic City Hall. Produced by SAN FRANCISCO PRIDE , the SF PRIDE PARTY AT CITY HALL , 400 Van Ness Avenue, 1–5 pm features a hosted bar, delicious bites, and three rooms of ongoing entertainment. Tickets and more info are available now at https://sfpride.org/

When in The Castro District aka Gay Mecca, be sure to view the stunning PROGRESS FLAG MURAL painted on the cement in Jane Warner Plaza at Castro and 17th Streets. Visionary artist

and activist Harry Breaux and his terrific team of volunteers held an official Revealing Ceremony there on June 20. And a special shout-out goes to Diana Sciarretta and Kurt Gibson who created the most beautiful, actually astonishing Yellow Brick Road anyone has ever seen! If you’re unable to witness this marvelous masterpiece in person, be assured that anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world can see it live via the Castro Street Cam

(

https://tinyurl.com/2u5cuwkd ) Camera #4, so scroll down. Catch the action there!

On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges extended marriage equality nationwide. There are an estimated 823,000 married same-sex couples in the U.S. as of June 2025—more than double the number of married same-sex couples in June 2015 when Obergefell was decided. Sister Dana sez, “We’ve got a LOT to celebrate these last days of June. Don’t NOBODY try to take away our rights and our joy!”

The TRANS MARCH happens before the SF Pride Celebration does. So, on June 27, 1 pm at Dolores Park there is an afternoon community fair with entertainment and speakers, followed by a March to City Hall. Like many of the most vulnerable communities in our country, the transgender community is under attack now more than ever—with never-ending legislative assaults and dramatically increasing transphobic violence. On June 18, the Supreme Court conservative majority upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors—clearing the way for 24 states to keep enforcing similar bad bans. Sister Dana sez, “This year, we need our ENTIRE community to turn out for the ‘T’ in LGBTQ!”

Meanwhile the Trump administration is shutting down the LGBTQ YOUTH SUICIDE LIFELINE . A cruel and reprehensible action!

Sister Dana sez, “Did we all jump at the chance to order Grifter-in-Chief DarnOld Trump & Company’s newest money-making scheme? It’s a ‘gold’ mobile phone and wireless service. Well, it sounds pretty phony to me!”

SAN FRANCISCO OPERA has been a proud participant in San Francisco Pride since the 1980s. They are delighted to celebrate our LGBTQ community on June 27, 7:30 pm, 301 Van Ness Avenue with a very special evening of music, immersive projections, and post-show dance party. Runner-up and Miss Congeniality of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Sapphira Cristál , is a superstar drag queen and trained opera singer who will be emceeing this celebratory evening of classical arias and LGBTQ anthems, exploring the music of queer composers, librettists, and songwriters. https://www.sfopera.com/

The 33rd annual DYKE MARCH is on June 28, meeting at Dolores and 18th Streets for a rally at 5 pm. The mission of the San Francisco Dyke March is to bring

the dyke communities together to celebrate unity, raise consciousness, and be visible. https://www.thedykemarch.org/

Get ready to lace up and let loose at ROLLERDISCO, the ultimate rooftop roller skating Pride party! This all-inclusive, disco-drenched celebration is taking over SVN West Rooftop, 10 South Van Ness Avenue, 2–8 pm for an afternoon of glitz, glam, and groove—all in honor of San Francisco Pride and Folsom Street Productions on June 29. Sister Dana sez, “Go pop a wheelie! But whenever I have attempted to skate, I’ve fallen flat on

my ass-pirations!” Tickets and info at: https://briankentproductions.com/

On June 29, Juanita MORE!’s legendary PRIDE PARTY celebrates its 20th year. Held at 620 Jones, noon to 7 pm, the event benefits the TRANSGENDER LAW CENTER , continuing Juanita’s decades-long commitment to uplifting local organizations. Expect a stellar DJ lineup, vibrant crowd, and an unmatched celebration of queer joy and resilience. Since their inception, Juanita’s Pride events have raised over $1 million for LGBTQ nonprofits. https://juanitamore.com/

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Dennis McMillan (aka Sister Dana), second from the right, joined friends at the AIDS Legal Referral Panel Garden Party on June 21, 2025, at Hot Johnnie’s on 18th Street.

family and is set in Kerala, South India. After selling more than 2 million copies, Verghese’s novel is now in paperback. Verghese will be joined in conversation with Tom Barbash.

Tuesday, July 8 @ 5:30 pm (non-ticketed -SF Ferry Building store) Agustín Fuentes, author of Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary Biological anthropologist Agustín Fuentes shares a scientist’s perspective on the misguided binary view of sex and gender. Fuentes shows why human biology is much more than just the elementary categories of

male and female. Fuentes will be joined in conversation with Rose Eveleth.

Tuesday, July 15 @ 5:30 pm (non-ticketed - SF Ferry Building store) Jeff Weiss, author of Waiting for Britney Spears

Cultural critic Jeff Weiss looks back on his time in the tabloid trenches of Los Angeles during the aughts. His focus centers around one of America’s sweethearts, Britney Spears, and her rise to fame and tragic fall. Weiss will be joined in conversation with Zack Ruskin and Emma Silvers.

https://www.bookpassage.com

We kicked off Pride fabulousness by joining emcee Donna Sachet and the AIDS LEGAL REFERRAL PANEL (ALRP) at Hot Johnnie’s in the Castro on June 21 for a GARDEN PARTY ! This fundraiser for ALRP helped them build on their 40-year history of providing critical legal assistance to those who need it most. Someone (not this nun) won $100 in the contest for Best Summer Hat. Congratulations to Edwin the winner with his gorge, ornate, manytiered chapeau designed by Easter Bonnet fashion genius Miguel Gutierrez! ALRP is protecting the rights, dignity, and health of people living with HIV/AIDS and others. Check out their wonderful work at https://www.alrp.org/

Imperialist Trump went from giving his notice of an in two-weeks decision regarding Iran—to a sudden one-day immediate order: “Evacuate Tehran now!” And our military quickly, illegally, offensively bombed three nuclear energy sites there. So now the U.S. is at war with Iran. Just as sudden, anti-war protests broke out across the nation and entire universe on June 22, 2025, including one held in the largest Iranian community in America, the Westwood District of Los Angeles, and another protest that Sunday afternoon with about 300 energetic demonstrators at SF’s Embarcadero Plaza. Sister Dana sez, “Doesn’t the Constitution demand that Congress be notified and then authorize before declaring any war? Or have we just bombed that document as well?!”

The Good News is that The Food and Drug Administration ( FDA) has approved Yeztugo (aka lenacapavir or LEN ), a twicea-year injection that stops HIV from replicating inside cells—reducing the risk of transmitting the virus to other people by 96%. However, AIDS VACCINE ADVOCACY COALITION (AVAC) said it will take urgent and decisive action to ensure that the drug will reduce global HIV rates. LEN’s current price as an HIV treatment is $3,450 per month, so AVAC has called on Gilead to provide the drug for $100 or below and to allow companies to develop generic forms of the drug. The Bad News is that LEN arrives just as Trump, DOGE

et al. are widely canceling HIV research grants; slashing medical programs benefiting Black, Latino, and LGBTQ people most at-risk for contracting the virus; and also making severe reductions to the U.S. Agency for International Development (which oversaw HIV-prevention programs abroad).

Come celebrate the work of 10 young queer and trans creative writers as they share their writing with the world! QUEER ANCESTORS PROJECT presents a July 1st, 7:15-9pm event at Strut, 470 Castro Street.

https://www.queerancestorsproject.org/ Sister Dana sez, “Happy FOURTH OF JULY to everyone—also known as Independence Day! But will we all feel very independent while the country has become totally theocratic, oligarchic, and autocratic?!”

And while we anticipate Fourth of July celebrations, just how much will Trump’s terrible tariffs affect China’s fireworks ordinarily sent to America?

Vivian Jenna Wilson , the 21-year-old transgender daughter and critic of transphobic billionaire Musk, apparently slayed at her drag debut as “ Vivllainous” during the lineup for “SAVE HER,” an immigrant legal defense fundraiser event hosted by renowned drag queen and activist Pattie Gonia. This awesomeness occurred in Los Angeles on June 13, the day before the “No Kings” protest there and everywhere. When Senator Elissa Slotkin of the Armed Services Committee asked Defense Secretary Hegseth twice on June 18 whether he was given military orders to shoot protestors, he refused to say. Yikes!

I am thrilled to note that the NO KINGS MARCHES on June 14 had more than five million demonstrators all across the nation show up to protest traitor Trump acting like a tyrant. This was the largest march of humanity in all of history. Sister Dana sez, “Let’s keep up the energy and continue nonviolently, non-stop protesting dumpster Trumpster and his awful administration!”

An SF Pride memory? As Heard on the Street

Ed Mah

“Being Out and Proud in the best city”

Glenne McElhinney

“ When parade commitee cochair Carol Hilder invited women’s contingents to march in front of the parade for the first time in 1976 and 1977”

Troy Brunet

“When I was at the parade with my mother and my sister and her girlfriend in 2024”

compiled by Rink

“I was married to my partner”

William Coghill

Founders of Pride: ‘A Celebration of the Community’

Faces from Our LGBT Past

On the evening of March 8, 1972, typical for San Francisco in the spring with its patchy fog and temperatures in the 50s, 41 people gathered at Glide Memorial Church on Ellis Street “to make plans for the first ever Gay Freedom Day Parade and Dance to be held in the City of Queens.” Less than three years after Stonewall, the last Sunday in June had become “Gay Freedom Day in America” and the meeting decided that “we San Franciscans should join in” the celebration.

The meeting was co-chaired by the Reverends Ray Broshears (1935–1982) and Bob Humphries (1934–2002), who was one of the organizers of the Christopher Street West parades in Los Angeles in 1970 and 1971. Representatives from “every possible spectrum of the vast Gay Society of San Francisco” attended, including the Society for Individual Rights, the Metropolitan Community Church, the San Francisco Tavern Guild, and the Emmaus House, which operated a gay switchboard. There also were spokespeople for “the radical lesbians” and even “a biker.”

Those assembled voted 40–0 for having the parade; one representative stated “present.” The San Francisco chapter of the Gay Activists Alliance agreed to manage the project. Founded in 1970 by “Reverend Ray,” as he liked to be called, it was a “street people’s gay organization,” exclusively “dedicated to the eradication of all legal, political and economic oppression of

homosexuals, the unconditional recognition of the basic rights of homosexuals, and the attainment of political power for homosexuals.”

One of San Francisco’s most vocal and controversial activists, Broshears was an early advocate for the marginalized communities of the Tenderloin, where “drag queens, old folk, hustlers, ex-cons, transsexuals, and queers,” he once declared, “see me as their last hope.” 1972 was a busy year for him. In addition to working on the parade, he co-founded the San Francisco Gay Crusader and opened the Helping Hands Community Center at 255 Turk Street to minister to those in need.

Broshears and Humphries became co-chairs of the first parade committee, which included Gary, “the Wicked Witch of the Golden West,” and H.L. Perry, “one of the city’s unsung gay heroes,” who at the same time was co-founding the Grand Ducal Council of San Francisco, where he reigned as Grand Duchess I from 1973 until 1974. While in office he created the Royal Bunny Contest, held in Golden Gate Park; organized an annual food drive; and opened Atlantis House, a half-way house for gay ex-cons.

It was officially named The Christopher Street West-SF Parade, and the newly formed group immediately adopted a non-exclusionary policy, affirming that everyone in the community was welcome to participate. The organizers recognized from the beginning that, for some people, the parade would be controversial, so they willingly listened to different points of view. “If the parade is not to your liking, for any of a variety of reasons,” they stated in an early announcement, “then come to our meetings and discuss the difficulties, present alternatives.”

Ultimately, they made clear, “This is a celebration for the Community. It is a joyous outpouring of our gayness for all the world to see, in whatever form we feel that gayness takes ... . The only people who will be excluded will be the people who exclude themselves.” A few organizations declined to be involved when their requests to keep drag queens and muscle-boys from marching were denied. The committee refused to deny any expression of gayness.

The 1972 parade route took participants from Montgomery and Pine down Montgomery to Post, up Post to Polk, then along Polk to the Civic Center, where they gathered in celebration for the rest of the afternoon. Parade entries represented everyone from gay theatrical groups to the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club, the oldest queer Democratic club in the country, founded the year before. In the evening, merrymakers partied at a dance at Playland, the city’s amusement park on the Great Highway.

The parade was not without its controversies. Perry attended the festivities in high drag, then not to everybody’s liking, and Broshears, according to Humphries, “outdid himself by punching a gay woman and destroying her sign which said ‘Off Prick Power.’” (Apparently, she was objecting to the fact that the organization’s officers that first year were all white men.) She later “rounded up some of her friends and gave Ray a few gay knocks after the parade on the steps of City Hall.”

Neither of the first two grand marshals were San Franciscans. Morris Kight (1919–2003) lived in Southern California. A long-time human rights activist, he was instrumental in organizing 1970’s Christopher Street West Parade in Los Angeles. During an era when the American Psychiatric Association diagnosed homosexuality as a mental disorder, he told celebrants that they “should be more than just proud— they should be ecstatic, for theirs is a natural, evolutionary heritage that at long last is gaining recognition in its natural, beautiful light.”

Grand Marshal Freda Smith (1935–2019) lived in Sacramento. Hers was a life of love, faith, and activism. She knew who she was at an early age, but did not fully accept her sexuality until she came to understand “that God did not want to change her, but wanted to use her passion as she was, to help those like her who were struggling.” She then decided to “devote her full time and talents to the struggle for Human Liberation,” especially “the struggle for Gay and Women’s Liberation.”

In 1972, Smith became the first woman to be ordained a minister of the Metropolitan Community Church, serving initially as Assistant Pastor and then as Pastor of the Sacramento MCC until 2005, when she retired. She also co-chaired the California Committee for Sexual Law Reform, where she worked tirelessly to overturn the statutes that criminalized same-sex intimacy in California. She demonstrated, spoke out about, and lobbied for passage of the Consenting Adults Bill, sponsored by San Francisco Assemblyman Willie Brown, which was finally signed into law in 1975.

The 1972 parade attracted some 2,000 participants and 15,000 spectators, numbers that have increased exponentially every year since. What accounted for this success?

As Reverend Bob wrote on the parade’s 10th anniversary, the parade “is an exercise of Gay community strength, unity, clout, foolishness, diversity, and outrageousness. The parade is the Gay community for all the world to see, and if it doesn’t like what it sees, it can damn well look the other way, because we are beautiful, we are real, and we are not going away!”

Bill Lipsky, Ph.D., author of “LGBTQ+ Trailblazers of San Francisco” (2023) and “Gay and Lesbian San Francisco” (2006), is a member of the Rainbow Honor Walk board of directors.

Dr. Bill Lipsky

Front page of the Gay Voice newspaper

Freda Smith

Reverend Ray Broshears

game. I now know what a wicket is, how a bowler differs from a pitcher, and that a “six” is cricket’s version of a home run. The strategy, precision, and athleticism were thrilling to watch, and as a new fan, I can’t wait to learn more about the roles of spinners, pace bowlers, and match tactics.

And more exciting cricket news: San Ramon is now home to the San Ramon Grizzlies, a Minor League cricket team, and that’s major news for the Tri-Valley area. San Ramon is already a hotbed for youth and adult cricket, and as our agency, Spritz, represents Discover San Ramon, I look forward to exploring how we can amplify and showcase cricket locally, especially with the countdown to LA28, where cricket will officially debut as an Olympic sport.

Cricket is here and I’m all in.

Cricket 101: What You Need to Know

What is cricket? Think baseball’s cousin. It has a flat bat, a hard leather covered ball, an oval shaped field, and a rectangular pitch.

The Basics: Cricket is played between two teams of 11 players. One team bats, aiming to score as many runs as possible, while the other bowls and fields to restrict scoring and dismiss batters.

The Pitch: A 22-yard-long strip in the center of the field where most of the action happens.

Wickets: The three wooden stumps behind the batter. Knocking them over = batter out.

The Format: A fast-paced, action-packed version where each team plays just 20 overs (think: innings), making games last about 3

hours. An over consists of six legal deliveries (or balls) bowled by a single bowler from one end of the pitch.

The Objective: Teams take turns batting and fielding. The batting team tries to score runs by hitting the ball and running between wickets, while the fielding team tries to get them “out.”

Key Positions: Bowlers (pitchers), batters, fielders, and the wicketkeeper (like a catcher).

The Vibe: Loud, colorful, and festive— drums, chants, flags, and face-painted fans in national/team colors. It’s a full-on experience like World Cup soccer.

Cricket combines strategy, patience, and explosive athleticism—and once you get the rhythm, it’s hard not to get hooked.

Major League Cricket: https://www.majorleaguecricket.com/ Minor League Cricket—San Ramon Grizzlies: https://cricclubs.com/ Discover San Ramon: https://discoversanramonca.com/ Spritz: https://spritzsf.com/

From Roland Garros to San Francisco: A Slam Summer of Tennis

As a lifelong tennis fan and player, I try to watch every Slam—either courtside or from the comfort of my couch, always with the same level of passion and awe. Last month’s French Open delivered exactly what we all hope for in sport: history in the making.

For American fans, the women’s final was especially sweet. Coco Gauff broke nearly a decade-long drought for U.S. champions at Roland Garros—the last American woman to win was Serena Williams in 2015. Gauff’s thrilling win over world No.

1 Aryna Sabalenka earned her the prestigious trophy and a $2.9 million check. With Madison Keys also winning the Australian Open earlier this year, American women now hold two of the four major titles in 2025. Next up: Wimbledon, beginning June 30.

Serena was the last American to win there too—back in 2016. I can’t wait for this next chapter in American Tennis.

The men’s final was a true tennis epic. At five hours and 29 minutes, it became the longest French Open final in history and the second-longest Grand Slam final ever, just behind the legendary 2012 Australian Open match between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz and Italy’s Jannik Sinner delivered a match that had everything: power, finesse, nerves, and comebacks. Alcaraz clawed his way back from two sets down, saving multiple championship points before sealing the win and matching Gauff’s $2.9 million payout. It was the kind of final that made me jump, cheer, and hold my breath—the kind you never want to end.

Looking ahead, Wimbledon, beginning June 30, is high on my bucket list to attend in person someday. But closer to home, tennis fans in the Bay Area will have a frontrow opportunity this fall: the Laver Cup is coming to San Francisco’s Chase Center, September 19–21.

The Laver Cup—co-created by 20-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer—pits six of the top men’s players from Europe against six of their counterparts from the rest of the world in a three-day, team-based competition. The event is named for tennis legend Rod Laver, the only man to win

South Carolina, then revisited it as an adult and realized its potential for a musical.

Though hailing from England, Sells has harbored a lifelong love of American country music queens like Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline, and Loretta Lynn. “The storytelling style of these women felt like the perfect inspiration for our characters,” Sells told the San Francisco Bay Times. TheatreWorks Artistic Director Giovanna Sardelli helms the new musical and Jacob Yates (Broadway’s Cabaret ) serves as the music director.

While preparing for this World Premiere production, Robinson took a trip to Marfa, staying in the same room at El Paisano Hotel that James Dean did while filming Giant. He visited the still-standing ruins of the Reata ranch house on the Giant set referenced throughout Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, taking small pieces with him. “This visit allowed me to see ‘it,’” said Robinson. “I stood where James Dean would have been standing. The ghosts of Reata are definitely onstage with us and some of the actual pieces will be onstage with us at the theatre.”

The team have been working on Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean for more than 5 years, with TheatreWorks playing an active role in its development. Shakina performed in The-

two calendar-year Grand Slams, who now resides in San Diego. It rotates annually between European and international cities and takes place two weeks after the U.S. Open.

This will be the eighth edition of the Laver Cup, and with its blend of high-caliber tennis, team spirit, and global talent, it’s set to be one of the most exciting sporting events in San Francisco and a highlight of the Bay Area sports calendar. I’ll be watching—and cheering—all the way through and hope you will be too.

https://lavercup.com/

Wrapping Up: From Cricket Pitches to Center Courts

Whether I was cheering in awe for the tennis finals at Roland Garros, honoring my mom’s legacy in New Jersey, watching the WNBA at Rikki’s, or hearing the cheers and whistles of Oakland’s cricket crowd, this month has been all about the power of sport to connect, inspire, and create community. I’m more excited than ever about the growing visibility of women’s sports, the global stage of tennis coming to San Francisco, and the fresh energy cricket is bringing to the Bay Area and beyond.

From San Ramon to San Francisco, and from Paris to the pitch—the future of sport is bright, diverse, and thrilling. And I’m here for it.

Signing off from the Bay, where passion meets the play. See you next month!

Beth Schnitzer, the former President of WISE (Women in Sports and Events), is the Co-Founder and President of Spritz: https://spritzsf.com/

atreWorks’ 2023 New Works Festival and the show was a 2024 New Works Festival favorite. “TheatreWorks is truly making our dreams come true. This show feels home grown,” Shakina said. Robinson has also enjoyed working with TheatreWorks: “It’s such a wonderful company top to tail—it’s been a joy being here.”

Shakina feels this empowering story of sisterhood will transform and transport audiences. “This is heart-healing musical theatre. There is nothing like it, and only certain shows achieve it,” she said.

“I am so honored that TheatreWorks is partnering with Broadway & Beyond Theatricals to bring this wonderful new musical into the world,” said Sardelli. “It’s the perfect time to tell a story of found family, redemption, forgiveness, and love. I’m excited to offer a fun, meaningful experience in the theater that might restore your faith in what is possible.”

Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean: A New Musical is presented by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in partnership with Broadway & Beyond Theatricals. This World Premiere musical performs through July 13, 2025, at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts (500 Castro Street, Mountain View). Tickets are available at https://theatreworks.org/

BETH SCHNITZER (continued

JIMMY DEAN (continued from pg 43)

SUPER FRIENDS NYC

Rainbow Magic: Pride Eve at Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City

By Fernando Camino

Iconic Pride is the annual series

of Pride programming held at New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine, America’s largest cathedral. This year’s events kicked off with Pride Eve on May 31, 2025, and the evening was by any measure beyond bongga (Filipino for fantabulous)!

Hosted at this all-inclusive house of prayer on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the event featured a cocktail hour, raffle, craft making, costume performance, and culminated in the turning on of the magnificent Pride lights, which will continue to illuminate the cathedral for the entirety of Pride Month.

The brilliant pageant planner and fashion influencer, Greedy Peasant (@greedy. peasant on Instagram), and his “fearless Color Team Leaders” orchestrated a procession of participants in monochromatic costumes collectively representing all the colors of the Pride rainbow. Embellished with tassels, buttons, and festive ornamentations, these ingenious ensembles invoked the Middle Ages and church ceremony, but with a big gay twist. The result was an astonishing explosion of pageantry and color. It was a gleeful gothic show of gay flamboyance, extravagance, and beauty.

TRANScend Ambassadors & Community Chorale, New York’s first trans- and gender-expansive classical vocal ensemble, moved us all with its enchanting music adding so poignantly to the sense of community. But nothing topped the final act: the lighting of St. John the Divine’s immense vaulted ceiling. Slowly, the columns and arches high above us lit up in a rainbow colors. It was breathtaking! In that magical moment, the cathedral embodied the very spirit of Pride.

As a young Filipino boy raised Catholic in Manila, I never would have imagined myself in a cathedral in NYC celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community. But here I was witnessing queerness merge with medieval history and spirituality in a festival of openness and inclusivity unlike any other. Thanks to Iconic Pride at the Cathedral 2025 at St. John the Divine, our queer spirits soared with radiance, love, and pride! Fernando Camino, who is based in New York City, created the YouTube channel SuperFriends NYC and livestreams from Times Square on Saturday nights and on additional days for selected events.

https://tinyurl.com/4jxvumwd