Castro District, Castro San Francisco guide and voice of the gay and lesbian community!

Posted on www.edgesanfrancisco.com
Oct 2, 2011
By Bruce Demara

"None of my friends are around from the beginning, so I want to tell their stories as much as I want to tell my story," artist Daniel Goldstein tells us in We Were Here.

The "beginning" he refers to is in 1981, when a mysterious "gay cancer" — later to be known as AIDS — has begun its decimation of San Francisco's gay community.

Goldstein, a long-term survivor living with HIV who lost two lovers during that devastating first decade, is one of five people who look back at a time of fear, discrimination and hopelessness.

But if there's a lesson to be drawn from We Were Here, it is that AIDS was also a catalyst for hope.

That while men who had flocked to California's gay mecca, San Francisco, were dying in terrifying numbers, the disease also galvanized the community to care for those suffering; that it helped to heal divisions between gay men and lesbians as they struggled for equality; that it sped up the trial process for new drugs and that, in the end, it gave meaning and purpose to people's lives, including the dying.

The documentary also hears from Guy Clark, a street vendor for 28 years in the city's Castro District who long ago last track of how many funerals he provided flowers for; Eileen Glutzer, a registered nurse who was among those who "came out here because we didn't quite fit where we were" and cared for the dying in San Francisco General Hospital's ward 5-B; Ed Wolf, who became a volunteer caregiver for those in their last days; and Paul Boneberg, who became a community activist.

The war-zone stories they tell are heartbreaking but also life-affirming. There are moments throughout when voices break and eyes well with tears as they recall friends and loved ones lost.

The documentary takes us from the heady days of the late 1970s when the gay-rights movement — spurred on by the anti-war and women's movements — began to become more publicly assertive, to the early years of the disease to the first trial of an AIDS drug that only led to terrible suffering, to the mid-1980s when a Los Angeles Times poll find half of the respondents in Ronald Reagan's America wanted to quarantine the infected and prominent fundamentalist Christian leaders declared AIDS a judgment from God.

Throughout the struggle, though, we see people whose lives are united by shared loss but also enriched by camaraderie and the coming together of community. We see people who learn to move past feelings of powerlessness to find peace and personal strength.

With the addition of sometimes-haunting archival images, We Were Here takes us back to a terrible but remarkable time in human history. It is both a testament to the fallen and a series of life lessons from five brave survivors, lessons about finding the best in ourselves in the worst of times.

Posted on www.edgesanfrancisco.com
Sep 4, 2011
By Seth Hemmelgarn

Lyon-Martin Health Services, the San Francisco clinic serving women and transgender people that’s been struggling to remain open, is accepting new patients as of today (Thursday, September 1).

The move could mark a turning point for the nonprofit.

In late January, Lyon-Martin’s board made the surprise announcement that the clinic was more than $500,000 in debt and would close within days. Supporters quickly rallied to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep the agency open, but it stopped accepting new enrollees when the board broke the bad news.

In announcing their milestone last week, clinic officials said their agency has stabilized enough to take in new patients.

When asked what had changed to allow Lyon-Martin to begin accepting new clients, interim Executive Director Dr. Dawn Harbatkin said, "It’s about time that we’re taking new patients."

She added, "For Lyon-Martin, typically, 40 percent of our patients each year are new patients. ... We need to continuously bring in new patients" in order to stay open, she said.

She also said she’s excited for Lyon-Martin "to get back to the work that we are good at."

Stacy Pike Long, a Lyon-Martin patient who joined the board in April, said she knows people who have been waiting to go to the clinic, and she’s "thrilled" it is again accepting new patients.

The criteria for new patients appear to be simple. Harbatkin, who is also the clinic’s medical director, said people who want to receive care from the agency need to identify as a woman or as transgender, and they have to be 18 or older. Lyon-Martin doesn’t consider factors such as insurance or lack of insurance, income, or county of residence, she said.

The nonprofit currently has about 2,300 patients. Harbatkin said the clinic’s lost between 300 and 400 patients in the past several months. Some transferred to other clinics, such as patients who were part of Healthy San Francisco, which assists uninsured residents.

In the past several months, clinic officials have talked about changing the payer mix, noting that many patients are uninsured, which makes it harder for Lyon-Martin to bring in the income it needs.

Harbatkin said last week that that mix "hasn’t changed a lot yet."

She said as of May, 77 percent of their patients were still uninsured. The clinic’s working with the San Francisco Health Plan to get new patients, she said. Having people come in through the insurance program brings more Medi-Cal income into the mix, which is "a very good thing for us," Harbatkin explained.

"When we talk about shifting our payer mix," bringing in third-party revenue such as Medi-Cal "is what we’re talking about," she said, since having Medi-Cal patients can help ensure the clinic will get money.

Harbatkin said the clinic would continue to take in people who don’t have insurance. She said the only patients who’ve been asked to transfer to other health care providers are those with Healthy San Francisco.

"I don’t anticipate that happening again," she said.

"If you’re here and you’re in care with us, you’re in care with us, and we are your primary care provider unless you choose to leave ... or you do something outrageous," she said.

In terms of cash flow, Harbatkin said if they had to live on only the money coming in during the next month, the clinic would still have enough to make payroll and pay current expenses for at least two months.

"That’s if no other money came in," she said. "I know that’s not going to happen." She said they’re getting income from "lots of different sources," including contracts, grants, patient services, and fundraising efforts.

The agency has been spending down its reserves. Former interim Executive Director Eric Fimbres said in March that Lyon-Martin had about $100,000 in the bank.

Harbatkin said last week that the last information she saw was that that figure was a little over $50,000. She said the money has gone to bring in new staff and continue operations.

Among other new employees, the clinic has added receptionists, and an additional medical assistant, and "we’ll be bringing on at least one, if not two, more social workers," she said.

The clinic’s total debt remains about $1.1 million, Harbatkin said.

Posted on www.365gay.com
Aug 25, 2011
By Joe Kurt

Question:

I am going to be a senior in high school this year, and luckily I'm out of the closet. However...I just moved to another school. While I know that my sexuality is my business, and mine alone, being in the closet sucked. So...should I come out "again" at my new school? Or should I just hold out for the year and keep certain secrets, well, secret? —Anthony

Dear Anthony,

This is a good but tricky question.

While I am always one to lean more toward coming out of the closet, I am also always conscious of safety factors—both emotional and psychological.

I have seen it go both ways in high schools: teenagers come out and are embraced by their peers or they're humiliated and ridiculed.

I often see it work out better for the teens who choose to come out when a gay student has a history with other students in his or her school – they've gone to middle school and elementary school together, for instance. When other youth have known you for a long time and have had many different kinds of experiences with you before knowing that you're gay, it may be easier for them to accept you.

When you come out without your fellow students knowing you at all, all they see is gay and not who you are.

This is the risk you are taking by coming out as a new senior in a school where most of the kids have most likely known each other most of their lives. I like to distinguish between privacy vs. secrecy. People tend to confuse the two and they are very different.

Privacy is a choice you make that considers your boundaries and personal choices and preferences when deciding how much you want to share about yourself . It doesn't involve feelings of shame.

Someone might decide not to expose how much money they make for a living, political views, real hair color, or sexual fantasies and behaviors. No because they are ashamed of these things, but because they want to keep things personal for individual reasons.

Secrecy involves shame and a feeling of being damaged or flawed and tends to come into play when someone is hiding something not by their own choice. Secrets keep us sick, say some 12-step groups, and it's true - the more you hide things about yourself of which you are ashamed, the more you will tend to act out problematic behaviors.

Shameful things often include histories of sexual abuse, weight gain or loss and addictions.

It sounds to me that if you decide not to come out that it will be a matter of privacy and not secrecy – because as you are already out!

So before you come out in your new school, I want you to make sure that you will not be risking your physical safety. Perhaps you could schedule a counseling session with one of the counselors and get a feel for what he or she thinks about the situation based on the students in the school.

But be aware that the counselor may have their own homophobia as well and the advice may be prejudiced, depending on how ga- informed and friendly they are.

Good luck and let me know how it goes!

Posted on www.ebar.com
Aug 25, 2011
By Seth Hemmelgarn

A recent string of incidents in San Francisco, including anti-gay hate crimes, may give the impression that such crimes are on the rise. Other incidents, including armed robberies, have also raised concerns.

But data from the San Francisco Police Department show LGBT-related hate crimes are actually down and levels of other incidents appear fairly stable.

Citywide, there were three anti-gay or lesbian hate crimes through March of this year, with no anti-transgender incidents reported. Through the same time last year, there were eight anti-LGBT hate crimes, police data show. There were 26 such incidents in 2010 altogether.

Even though anti-LGBT hate crime statistics aren't keeping pace with last year, such incidents and other crimes have gained attention. Residents, gay or otherwise, are urged to be careful when they're out in the city.

Police have reported that at 9 p.m. on August 6, near Market and Sanchez streets, three white male teens, ages 13 to 15, beat a 52-year-old Santa Barbara man with a baseball bat while yelling, "Fuck you, faggot."

The name of the man, who declined an interview request made through Park Police Station Captain Denis O'Leary, hasn't been released. Police haven't provided information on any arrests.

Another incident occurred about a week before.

At about 2 a.m., Sunday, July 31, outside Blue Restaurant, 2337 Market Street, a woman called one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence "faggot" and shoved him.

At the request of the Sister, who police have said was in full nun drag during the incident, they have not released his name.

In addition to the hate crimes, there have also been several armed robberies around the Castro area in the past month.

At 3 a.m. on Monday, August 1, James Parr, 34, was walking up Noe Street near the 18th Street 7-Eleven when three men surrounded him. One told Parr, "Give me everything you got!" and showed him a semi-automatic handgun, according to the police report.

Parr complied, ultimately handing over his cell phone, credit cards, and other property. (Unlike many crime victims who appear in police reports, Parr had not been talking or texting on his phone while he was walking. It had been in his pocket, he said.)

The first suspect was described as 20 to 25, 5 feet 6 inches, 165 pounds, with black hair. Descriptions of the other two suspects included approximately the same weight and height, but their ages weren't listed. All three were described as Hispanic and were last seen wearing black hooded sweatshirts and pants, and dark shoes.

Police think the robbery may be connected to other recent cases, with suspects and a firearm matching the same description. There have been no arrests.

Parr, a gay Castro resident, said in an interview that the incident has "made me a little bit less comfortable to walk around the neighborhood, especially by myself, but otherwise, the real impact has just been having to replace everything."

Data from the Mission police station, which oversees the Castro and surrounding neighborhoods, show robberies are up slightly, rising 5 percent from 316 cases through mid-August 2010 to 331 during the same period this year.

Overall, however, violent crimes are down a bit, dropping 5 percent from 665 incidents in 2010 to 634 in 2011 through mid-August, according to the Mission police data.

Lieutenant Mark Cota, the officer in charge of the Mission Station investigative team, attributed the drop, in part, to a lack of personnel movement at Mission Station. Officers have been staying longer and becoming more familiar with their beats, he said.

Cota said he didn't have the sense that hate crimes are a growing problem in the area. He said "if there is a slight up-tick in hate crimes," he'd attribute it more to officers being more specific in their reporting and more knowledgeable of the areas they patrol than an actual rise in incidents.

Greg Carey, chair of Castro Community on Patrol, said the recent anti-LGBT incidents "seem to be out of the ordinary, and we want to continue to work with the public on how to protect themselves in situations like that." His tips include staying out of dark areas and carrying a whistle.

Carey said the armed robberies in the neighborhood "could be just the random nature of crime moving through the city."

'This is going to be how I die'

Some say crimes in the city are underreported.

Jason Villalobos, 32, was walking near Folsom and 17th streets at about 2:30 one morning in June, listening to music on his iPhone, which he was carrying in his hand. He heard someone say, "Give me your fucking phone," and saw a gun pressed to his chest.

"This is going to be how I die," he recalled thinking. As Villalobos looked around, "I realized I was in a perfect position to be robbed," he said. There were no streetlights, and no one else was approaching from either direction.

The man took Villalobos's phone and started to leave before pointing his gun at Villalobos again and finally running away.

Villalobos, who lives in the Castro and whose likeness appears on AIDS awareness posters around the city, didn't report the incident to police. "Unfortunately, I thought, 'What could the police do?'" since he had such limited information about the man, he said.

He said that for several reasons, he regrets not telling police. The information could have been dispersed to the community to warn others, and it could have been used to help police know where crimes are occurring. Since then, Villalobos said he has been talking to other people about what happened to him.

Lieutenant Teresa Gracie is head of the San Francisco Police Department's special investigations division, which includes the hate crimes unit. Gracie, an out lesbian, encourages people to report incidents. She said something that could be viewed as minor "could end up being a very large piece of a puzzle, and a person can be caught."

Also, knowing where crimes are occurring is important for police to know when determining where to put resources, she said.

"If people don't tell us, what are we going to do?" she said.

Posted on www.edgesanfrancisco.com
Aug 22, 2011
By Matthew S. Bajko

The state's largest LGBT advocacy group, Equality California, is pondering what action to take, if any, in response to the new political boundaries for California's legislative and congressional districts.

The state's Citizens Redistricting Commission signed off on the redrawn lines Monday, August 15. Shortly after the panel's vote numerous organizations voiced concerns about the panel's decisions and suggested they would take steps to challenge the new boundaries.

One group, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund, issued a statement that afternoon saying it was closely reviewing the maps to determine if they dilute the Latino vote and if "litigation is warranted."

EQCA has also voiced concerns about the new maps in terms of how they impact LGBT voters in several cities around the state. Several organizations have started informal talks with EQCA about joining any legal action against the new maps.

"A lot of minority groups are looking at the maps and weighing in on whether to file legal action. We have been approached and are having those conversations," said Mario Guerrero, EQCA's government affairs director. "We are looking at the maps and looking at what impact they are having on our community and what next steps to take." But Guerrero noted that drawing the lines is a balancing act that calls for some give and take between competing interests.

"I think no one is going to be 100 percent happy here," he said. "I think the lines generally were beneficial to the communities of interest we identified. However, there are shortcomings."

Republicans are also looking at how to contest the maps, particularly for the state Senate, as they are expected to see their clout be further reduced in the Statehouse. The GOP, in addition to threatening its own legal action, has openly discussed going back to the ballot in order to redraw the lines.

Openly gay state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), who will run for re-election next year for the new, lone San Francisco Senate seat, said the GOP critiques are a case of "sour grapes."

"It is somewhat ironic that the party so eager for an independent citizens commission is now crying they don't like the outcome. The vote on the commission was a resounding 13 to 1," said Leno. "It is a bit of sour grapes."

Expecting that the new maps for the state's 53 congressional, 40 state Senate, 80 state Assembly, and four state Board of Equalization districts will be challenged, the state Supreme Court issued an advisory this week noting that any citizen wishing to legally challenge the boundaries can do so by first submitting a petition online. A hard copy must also be filed with the court by Thursday, September 29.

In a statement Frederick Ohlrich, the court's clerk-administrator, said the justices wanted to address any claims "in an expeditious manner" so that "future statewide elections, including the June 5, 2012 statewide primary election, can proceed as scheduled."

The redistricting process this year marked the first time that California's lawmakers did not have a hand in drawing new political boundaries based on the decennial census count. It also was the first time that LGBT people were considered to be a community of interest that should be given special attention when determining how to carve up the Golden State into the new state Assembly and Senate districts as well as congressional seats.

Nonetheless, some LGBT neighborhoods did not fair as well as others, including in San Jose and Los Angeles County. Already one gay Assembly candidate in West Hollywood, City Councilman Jeff Prang, bowed out due to the redrawn maps, while speculation is building that two gay politicians with eyes on a Silicon Valley Assembly seat, Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken Yeager and Campbell City Councilman Evan Low, will also suspend their campaigns so as not to take on incumbent Assemblyman Paul Fong, who is Low's boss.

One gay Assembly candidate who is hoping to see changes in how the Los Angeles basin was carved up is Luis Lopez. The Latino political activist is running for the new 51st Assembly District even though his Silver Lake home ended up in the new 43rd Assembly District seat.

"I am very close to the border. We are talking less than a block away," said Lopez.

Unless the boundaries are changed, Lopez will have to move into the adjacent district in order to continue his campaign for that seat, opt to run for the other district he now resides in, or bow out entirely. He told the Bay Area Reporter this week he plans to continue campaigning as he waits to see what happens.

"This is still in play. I am keeping my options open," Lopez said.

Prior to the redistricting commission's final meeting this week, EQCA Executive Director Roland Palencia sent the panel a letter thanking it for recognizing the LGBT community "as a unique community of interest." But he also wrote "some concerns remain."

In the August 4 letter Palencia singled out Assembly Districts in the Oakland Hills and northwest San Jose where LGBT neighborhoods "are split." In terms of the Senate, Palencia said EQCA had concerns with how LGBT areas in San Jose and Long Beach's Belmont Shores area ended up in different districts.

And in Pasadena and San Diego, EQCA expressed concerns with how the redistricting panel carved up those cities' gayborhoods into multiple congressional districts. "We urge you to take a look at Assembly, Senate, and congressional districts where LGBT COI have not been kept whole and that you adjust them in order to keep these communities intact," wrote Palencia, using the acronym for communities of interest.

Before it makes a decision on how to proceed, EQCA's Guerrero said the group will first take into account such things as what is the likelihood a legal challenge can win and how much such a fight would cost it. It already is bracing for an expensive campaign to protect a newly enacted state law that requires public schools to teach about LGBT history.

"There is a number of things to be considered, but we are not there yet," said Guerrero.

Asked if he agreed with the concerns EQCA has raised, Leno declined to discuss specific political boundaries he finds questionable. But he did express general agreement with the views expressed by Palencia in his letter.

"Without getting into any detail, I am more pleased with some decisions the commission made than others. But it is a total package," said Leno.

Overall, there is a good chance of seeing the LGBT Legislative Caucus in the statehouse grow next year, predicted Leno. It currently stands at seven members, with all but one up for re-election next year.

"There is a good chance that the caucus may grow and, naturally over time, it will continue to grow," he said.

With lesbians running for Assembly seats in Stockton and Santa Monica, they could bump up the caucus to eight members by December 2012 should they and the incumbents win their races. That number could climb depending on how many additional out candidates end up on the ballot next year.

As of now, it appears the state Senate will have one out member following the 2012 election. Lesbian state Senator Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego) is termed out of her seat next year, and Leno, so far, is the only declared LGBT Senate candidate.