#bay area gay liberation

[commiepinkofag]

Coors Boycott

Howard Wallace, in sunglasses, is a gay labor and peace activist who is perhaps best known as a co-founder of Pride at Work (PAW), previously named the Lesbian and Gay Labor Alliance. He was one of the founders of Bay Area Gay Liberation (BAGL) in 1975 and, with Harvey Milk, he led the Coors Beer boycott that began the same year. 

Howard's activism in Denver, Colorado and in San Francisco over the last 30 years has centered on equal rights for all regardless of sexual orientation or race. He is a tireless advocate for coalition building between communities in order to forge alliances based on mutually identified goals.

📷 Howard Petrick

[olderthannetfic]

You recently mentioned that you've been out since your teens. As a person who managed to overlook a shitton of signs and only realized she was bi in her early 20s, I am wondering how you realized you were bi and also how you found out bisexuality exists?

Sorry if the phrasing sounds weird, I only noticed I was bi because I stumbled over the term on tumblr in 2016 and was like "oh, that's possible??" and then my earlier identity crises during my teens due to feeling attracted to multiple genders and being like "I'm crushing on [female person]. Am I lesbian? Nah, I've also felt attracted to [male person]. But I can't be straight either because this attraction feels the exact same. Am I broken?" were suddenly resolved with the realization that bi is also an option and that I'm not broken due to zigzagging between heterosexuality and homosexuality, but rather just bisexual. In retrospect, it's absolutely ridiculous that it took me so long, considering that as a kid I had crushes on Anna and Carter and Doctor from Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, and Vitani from Lion King 2, and back in primary school, I used to go to the kids' section in the library and look at the first pages of a sci-fi comic which had one or two women get out of a lab or space station thingy and go bathe in the nude in the first few pages. I don't remember what it was called or what it was about, but tbh I'd love to find it and actually read it properly this time lol.

--

Horniness. The hornier you are, the easier it is to notice.

But also... well...

The 80s were all about combating the AIDS crisis and trying to get basic recognition of the humanity of gay people (at least in the US circles I was familiar with). The 90s saw the rise of a much more organized bi rights movement.

And then we backslid.

In the 2000s and 2010s, interest in bisexuality as a distinct thing fell off a cliff as far as I can tell. The "hey, it's not just cis gays and lesbians" energy moved first to trans topics and then to asexuality but without bisexuality joining the stodgy old guard.

The 90s were different. I was hitting my teens just as Anything That Moves hit its stride. I bought that shit at the bookstore. Yeah, this was the Bay Area, but they carried it at all the regular bookstores, not just the gay ones.

On Usenet where I spent a lot of my tween years, one of the big groups was soc.bi. I even spotted them having an in-person meetup in a restaurant in Berkeley where I happened to be having dinner with my parents. I didn't go say hi because I was like 14.

My big eureka moment, though, was on alt.tv.x-files when two groups were having a satirical argument about who enjoyed The X-Files more: people who got to lust over David Duchovny or people who got to lust over Gillian Anderson. Someone showed up and was like "Hah! I get to enjoy it twice as much as all of you! I'm bi!"

I was like "That's a thing????" I'd grown up with very liberal parents and lesbian neighbors, but like a lot of boomers, my mom was pro-gay and deeply clueless about all other queerness.

--

So the answer is unsupervised internet access in an age with no algorithms plus things like bisexual magazines actually existing.

RIP Anything That Moves.

[haggishlyhagging]

Radical feminism remained the hegemonic tendency within the women's liberation movement until 1973 when cultural feminism began to cohere and challenge its dominance. After 1975, a year of internecine conflicts between radical and cultural feminists, cultural feminism eclipsed radical feminism as the dominant tendency within the women's liberation movement, and, as a consequence, liberal feminism became the recognized voice of the women's movement.

As the preceding chapters have shown, there were prefigurings of cultural feminism within radical feminism, especially by 1970. This nascent cultural feminism, which was sometimes termed ‘female cultural nationalism’ by its critics, was assailed by radical and left feminists alike. For instance, in the December 1970 issue of Everywoman, Ann Fury warned feminists against "retreating into a female culture":

“Like other oppressed [sic], we have our customs and language. But this culture, designed to create the illusion of autonomy, merely indicates fear. Withdraw into it and we take our slavery with us. . . . Furthermore when we retreat into our culture we cover our political tracks with moralism. We say our culture is somehow "better" than male culture. And we trace this supposed superiority to our innate nature, for if we attributed it to our powerlessness, we would have to agree to its dissolution the moment we seize control. . . . When we obtain power, we will take on the characteristics of the powerful. . . . We are not the Chosen people.”

Similarly, in a May 1970 article on the women's liberation movement in Britain, Juliet Mitchell and Rosalind Delmar contended:

“Re-valuations of feminine attributes accept the results of an exploitative situation by endorsing its concepts. The effects of oppression do not become the manifestations of liberation by changing values, or, for that matter, by changing oneself—but only by challenging the social structure that gives rise to those values in the first place.”

And in April 1970, the Bay Area paper It Ain't Me, Babe carried an editorial urging feminists to create a culture which would foster resistance rather than serve as a sanctuary from patriarchy:

“It is extremely oppressive for us to function in a culture where ideas are male oriented and definitions are male controlled. . . .Yet the creation of a woman's culture must in no way be separated from the political struggles of women for liberation. . . . Our culture cannot be the carving of an enclave in which we can bear the status quo more easily—rather it must crystallize the dreams that will strengthen our rebellion.”

But these warnings had little effect as the movement seemed to drift almost ineluctably toward cultural feminism. Cultural feminism seemed a solution to the movement's impasse—both its schisms and its lack of direction. Whereas parts of the radical feminist movement had become paralyzed by political purism, or what Robin Morgan called "failure vanguardism," cultural feminists promised that constructive changes could be achieved. To cultural feminists, alternative women's institutions represented, in Morgan's words, "concrete moves towards self determination and power" for women. Equally important, cultural feminism with its insistence upon women's essential sameness to each other and their fundamental difference from men seemed to many a way to unify a movement that by 1973 was highly schismatic. In fact, cultural feminism succeeded in large measure because it promised an end to the gay-straight split. Cultural feminism modified lesbian-feminism so that male values rather than men were vilified and female bonding rather than lesbianism was valorized, thus making it acceptable to heterosexual feminists.

Of course, by 1973 the women's movement was also facing a formidable backlash—one which may have been orchestrated by the male-dominated New Right, but was hardly lacking in female support. It is probably not coincidental that cultural feminism emerged at a time of backlash. Even if women's political, economic, and social gains were reversed, cultural feminism held out the possibility that women could build a culture, a space, uncontaminated by patriarchy. Morgan described women's art and spirituality as "the lifeblood for our survival" and maintained that “resilient cultures have kept oppressed groups alive even when economic analyses and revolutionary strategy fizzled.” There may even have been the hope that by invoking commonly held assumptions about women and men, anti-feminist women might experience a change of heart and join their ranks. The shift toward cultural feminism also suggests that feminists themselves were not immune to the growing conservatism of the period. Certainly, cultural feminism's demonization of the left seemed largely rooted in a rejection of the '60s radicalism out of which radical feminism evolved.

-Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America: 1967-75

[mariacallous]

Dianne Feinstein, California’s longest-serving U.S. senator who led San Francisco through its darkest and most violent days as mayor in the 1970s and later authored a federal ban on assault weapons that lasted a decade, died Thursday night, according to multiple reports.

At 90, she was the oldest member of Congress and the longest-serving female in the chamber’s history.

...

At the start of her career, Feinstein was a trailblazer for women and gay rights, and after the 1978 assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, she emerged as a reassuring leader and formidable force who pulled together the city that was still reeling from the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana 10 days earlier, where 900 people connected to the San Francisco-based People’s Temple died.

In what would become known as “The Year of the Woman” in 1992, she shared a historic moment with Barbara Boxer when they were both elected to the U.S. Senate and California became the first state with two women senators. Feinstein won in a special election and was sworn in first.

“She had tenacity. She never gave up,” especially in passing the Assault Weapons Ban in 1994, Boxer said in an interview with the Bay Area News Group. “I will always remember how proud I was when she stood her ground on the floor of the Senate, when some of the men said, ‘Well, you don’t even understand what an AR-15 is,’ and she said, ‘I understand what gun violence is. I had to put my finger through a hole in the wrist (of Harvey Milk).’ It was very emotional.”

Feinstein also pioneered a number of other firsts: first woman mayor of San Francisco, first woman to chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the first woman to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, a watershed moment after public outrage over the handling of Anita Hill’s testimony during the male-dominated Supreme Court nomination hearings of Clarence Thomas in 1991.

In 1994, the same year she passed the weapons ban, Feinstein wrote the California Desert Protection Act that established Death Valley and Joshua Tree as national parks. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, she publicly released the “Torture Report” that exposed the CIA’s interrogation program that failed to work on terrorist suspects and, along with the late Sen. John McCain, authored legislation outlawing the CIA’s use of torture.

For those old enough to remember the shocking assassinations at San Francisco City Hall in 1978, however, it was her brief videotaped news conference and its aftermath that launched her national political career. Standing outside the supervisors offices, news cameras illuminating her face, she delivered the shocking news: “As president of the board of supervisors, it’s my duty to make this announcement. Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed,” she said as the media erupted in gasps and shouts. “The suspect is Supervisor Dan White.”

She would later detail her actions that morning, that when she heard the shots, she raced into Milk’s office. “I tried to get a pulse,” she said, “and put my finger through a bullet hole.”

Duffy Jennings, a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter who was in the crowd when Feinstein made the announcement, said her leadership through a tumultuous era would come to define Feinstein.

“She was incredibly resilient, strong and decisive,” Jennings said in an interview with the Bay Area News Group. “It wasn’t just Jonestown and Dan White. The ‘70s had the Zodiac killer, Patty Hearst, the SLA, the New World Liberation Front, counterculture extremism. It was a horrific decade in San Francisco and the Bay Area. And politically, she was as strong as anybody in holding the town together.”

At one point, New World Liberation Front – an anti-capitalist terrorist group – planted a bomb on the windowsill of her daughter’s bedroom. It failed to explode.

Born in San Francisco in 1933, Feinstein was the daughter of a prominent surgeon. Feinstein was Jewish but attended the prestigious Convent of the Sacred Heart Catholic girls school, where she acted in plays and – because of her 5-foot-10-inch height – often played male roles. She attended Stanford University in the early 1950s, where she was elected vice president of the student body.

When Feinstein entered San Francisco politics in the late 1960s, “nobody took her seriously,” said Jerry Roberts, the Chronicle’s former executive editor who wrote an early biography called “Never Let Them See You Cry,” named for one of Feinstein’s tips for businesswomen.

Early media reports of her campaigns, he said, were “unbelievably sexist,” and often characterized her as a “raven-haired beauty” with a “slender figure.” Her husband at the time, Dr. Bertram Feinstein, was widely mocked as a “first husband.”

“Just in terms of the cultural obstacles that she had to overcome to be taken seriously and to win is something people don’t think a lot about now,” Roberts said. “She was never a movement feminist, but she was a feminist.”

She kept a firefighter’s turnout jacket and helmet in her trunk to race to fires, and once gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a man she saw collapse in the Tenderloin. She listened to a police scanner in her office.

Although she opposed domestic partnership legislation for the city in 1982, when the AIDS epidemic broke out, Feinstein “got right on it. I mean, instantly,” said Louise Renne, whom Feinstein appointed as San Francisco’s first woman City Attorney. “The folks at San Francisco General were pulled in to deal with the AIDS epidemic, and San Francisco took a leadership role in solving that problem.”

Feinstein was considered moderate politically, supporting environmental causes but also encouraging commercial high rise development in downtown San Francisco. She is credited with completing the Moscone Convention Center project, renovating the city’s cable car system and retrofitting Candlestick Park before the Loma Prieta earthquake struck during the third game of the 1989 World Series.

Feinstein ran for governor of California in 1990 and lost to Republican Pete Wilson, whom she would replace in the Senate. In 1996, she was one of only 14 senators who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act that prevented the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

Feinstein’s leadership opened doors for two San Francisco women who would become the most powerful female politicians in the country – Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House and Kamala Harris as vice president.

...

Looking back, Boxer recalls when she and Feinstein were first elected to the Senate, her colleague sat her down and told her, “You’ve got to stick with this. The longer you stay, the better you’ll feel, the more you’ll get done.”

Feinstein stuck with it on Capitol Hill for three decades, perhaps summing up why in her final acceptance speech before her re-election in 2018, years before the political implications of her frail health in her final years threatened her legacy.

In the speech, she called serving in the Senate “the greatest honor in my life.”

[transsexual-menace]

hello! there has once again been another update to my queer/gender studies folder!

new additions

1. the ladder by the daughters of bilitis (the ladder was the first nationally distributed magazine in the united states. it ran from 1956 - 1972). (this can be found in the magazines/periodicals folder)

2. anything that moves by the bay area bisexual network (the aim of the magazine was to combat stereotypes of bisexuals and to combat biphobia). (this can be found in the magazine/periodicals folder)

3. dykes, disability, & stuff by catherine odette and sara karon (dd&s was available in six different formats so disabled people could read the magazine. this included large print, braille versions transcribed by ruth lehrer, and cassette tapes read by laura yados). (this can be found in the magazines/periodicals folder)

4. after stonewall: a critical journal of gay liberation (this periodical was published in winnipeg but was for gay men and lesbians in canada and the united states) (this can be found in the magazines/periodicals folder)

5. one magazine by one, inc. (this magazine was part of a landmark supreme court case in 1957 that ruled that homosexual writing was not obscene just because it dealt with homosexuality) (this can be found in magazines/periodicals folder. however, there are some missing issues i could not find)

i got a request from a user to add french queer history which i am planning on doing. however, i do not speak french so if anyone who speaks french would be able to recommend some good french queer history books that are in french, i would be forever grateful. i will be adding books in english because i have found a few good ones. in the future, i am planning on adding books about queer history in germany because it's a huge interest of mine and i think german queer history is so rich and interesting. if anyone has any suggestions for other countries for me to add, feel free to send a dm/ask!

[whatevergreen]

"Milk march boycott poster (still valid in 2008)" - Jamison Wieser

"The gentleman in the center was an original member Bay Area Gay Liberation and carried a boycott sign at the 1977 protest staged for the film "Milk" which tells the story of openly gay SF District Supervisor Harvey Milk."

The boycotts and strike action began locally in Colorado in 1966 and spread nationally (and overseas) within years. The main issues were over Coors unfair employment practises including anti-unionism, and sexism, racism and homophobia, and the support of far-right Republican politics.

"In the late 1970s, the company's market share in California had dropped from a high of over 40 percent to just 14 percent. In the company's home state of Colorado, there was a similar drop from 47 percent in 1977 to 24 percent in 1984."

The company has tried since the 1990s to improve its image, especially in regards to LGBTQ rights, sometimes with the effect of reviving the boycott which has technically never ended.

"In 2019, union and LGBT activist Nancy Wohlforth commented that "to this day, you can't find Coors in a gay bar in San Francisco", a claim backed up by a 2017 article by the Teamsters on the impact of the boycott."

"(Harvey) Milk's work in getting Coors Beer kicked out of so many places was one reason why many labor folks, who were not comfortable with an openly gay supervisor, turned around. He did more in a few months than they had been able to do for years.

I will NEVER forget that interview in the documentary about Harvey and seeing old school folks who were NOT gay-positive turn around, and it was all because of Harvey's work."

Milk march boycott poster (still valid in 2008) | The gentle… | Flickr

[blueiight]

omg your brain right cause 1973 in the bay area was a pivotal time for the black panthers and huey newton had just expressed solidtary with the gay liberation.. interviewing a young black man at a gay bar was just tooooo ripe for daniel, like i don't think he for one second believed the vampire line, but he's like please please please lemme interview you.... huh

yep.. i think he bought into lou being a vamp in the 1973 interview, esp cuz the first interview literally ends w louis attacking daniel & draining him so severely it left a bitemark he carried in old age lolol but this is yet another example of how racebending ldpdl creates an even more engaging narrative :3 im so excited to see more of what happened in sanfran in s2.

[san-sebastienne]

these jokes ring true, but also as someone who grew up in the Bay Area before tech moved in, it makes me so sad to see this beautiful, histroically and culturally rich place being described as a place that "failed humanity so miserably." We weren't failing humanity when we were the cradle of American gay liberation movements, when we were one of the first places where the Black Panthers organized, when Beat poetry was invented. We aren't failing humanity when our drag queens and muralists and writers are making art. Not when there are socialist clown troupes and shoestring genderfucky theaters and first Friday art walks and street fairs and some of the only Diego Rivera pieces in the United States. There is still so much beauty and culture in the Bay Area, even if tech is trying its best to choke it out and commodify it. We are more than the most selfish, greedy, and humanity-hating parts of us.

[ear-worthy]

RIP Current Podcast Premieres: Two Women Who Tried To Kill President Ford

iHeartPodcasts has announced the debut of Rip Current, a new podcast series about the only two times in nearly 250 years of U.S. history that a woman has tried to assassinate the sitting president – and the attempts happened 17 days apart in September 1975.

The first attempt was by Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a protégé of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. She pulled a gun on Ford as he walked to the state capital building in Sacramento, CA, but hadn’t chambered a bullet and the gun did not fire. 

17 days later, Sara Jane Moore, a middle-aged housewife, aspiring radical and undercover FBI informant, shot at Ford as he emerged from the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, but missed and was wrestled to the ground by a bystander.  Fromme and Moore had never met.

Sara Jane Moore had been evaluated by the Secret Service earlier in 1975, but agents had concluded that she posed no danger to the president. The 45-year-old was detained by police on an illegal handgun charge the day before the assassination attempt, but was released. The police confiscated her .44-caliber Charter Arms Bulldog revolver and 113 rounds of ammunition.  Moore pleaded guilty to charges of attempted assassination on December 12, 1975. The following month, on January 15, 1976, she was sentenced to life in prison. On December 31, 2007, at the age of 77, Moore was released on parole.

Oliver Sipple was commended at the scene by Secret Service and the San Francisco Police for his actions;the media portrayed him as a national hero. However, all the media publicity about him was not without controversy, however. Upon realizing that Sipple was gay, the media began broadcasting this information. After learning about his sexual orientation, much of his family, including his parents, disowned him, and were subsequently estranged from him, but later were reconciled. Sipple died in 1989.

 This season of “Rip Current” examines how these two women were caught up in the furthest reaches of the radical movements that had emerged from the ‘60s. It asks: What caused them to take to try to kill the president? Why President Gerald Ford? Why California? Why 1975? Why this time and these places? The new series will provide a nuanced look at the tumultuous political climate at the time, their motives and the impact of these random acts of violence.

 In telling their stories, the season will also explore:

 • The Manson cult and what happened after Charles Manson was imprisoned for life;

• California’s radical prison movement;

• The violent radical underground in San Francisco and the Bay Area;

• The kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

  Rip Current is hosted by Toby Ball, the creator and host of iHeartPodcasts’ “Strange Arrivals,” a look at the psychological, social and scientific issues UFOs and exterritorial lore. He is also a panelist on “Crime Writers On...The Original True Crime Review,” and the author of the critically acclaimed crime novels “The Vaults,” “Scorch City” and “Invisible Streets.”

The first episode of “Rip Current” is available, with new episodes every Thursday.  

[pashterlengkap]

A happy marriage at the DNC—coastal liberalism and prairie progressivism

This article first appeared on Mother Jones. It has been republished with the publication’s permission. If you did a word cloud diagram of the Democratic convention in Chicago, the two big words that appear would be “freedom” and “joy.” Less prominent, if it showed up at all, would be “progressive.” Yet the Democrats spent four long nights deploying the attractive concepts of freedom and joy to sell a progressive agenda to voters. Moreover, with the ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the Ds have bolstered this pitch by marrying coastal liberalism with prairie progressivism. This union offers a powerful punch to the party’s core message: Government ought to be proactively deployed to address the problems and challenges Americans face. When Vice President Harris two weeks ago chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her campaign partner, there was much obvious commentary that he provided from-the-heartland balance to her California lineage and that his white-guy-dad-plaid-coach persona complemented her Black-Indian-Jamaican-woman identity. What drew less attention was how Walz’s selection reinforced the ideology and values message of the ticket. He and Harris are both progressive-minded politicians, but they hail from culturally different strains of liberalism. Related Kamala Harris says Trump & GOP are “out of their minds” in closing DNC speech “Donald Trump is an unserious man,” she said, “but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.” Your LGBTQ+ guide to Election 2024 Stay ahead of the 2024 Election with our newsletter that covers candidates, issues, and perspectives that matter. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Harris, more or less, represents what many folks these days think of as a liberal. She’s from the Bay Area. She’s a person of color. She talks about helping marginalized communities and seeking economic justice. She crusades for abortion rights and LGBTQ rights. Her days as a prosecutor have caused some conflict with the left. But in general she fits the familiar mode—a Big City Lib, a Blue State Lib. There’s a reason why Donald Trump and JD Vance believe they can score points by falsely branding her a crazy “communist.” Not a real American, in their view. Walz is not an easy-to-attack caricature. Nebraska-born, he’s a hunter and a former National Guard noncommissioned officer. He ice fishes. He wears flannel shirts. He could be in a truck commercial. And, yes, he coached high school football—and middle-school track and basketball—in a very red district, where he won his first election to Congress in 2006. Yet as governor, Walz has assembled an impressive progressive record. He signed into law a measure that made abortion a “fundamental right” and guaranteed access to contraception, fertility treatments, sterilization, and other reproductive health care. Having been an advocate of gay rights as a high school teacher, he signed an executive order protecting access to gender-affirming care and a “Trans Refuge” bill that banned the enforcement of arrest warrants and extradition requests for those who traveled to Minnesota for such care. He okayed a package of gun safety measures. He approved a law implementing paid family and medical leave. He legalized recreational marijuana. There’s more: He backed drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants. (Advocates, including business leaders, said it would lead to safer roads and a better state economy.) He restored voting rights for former felons. He expanded access to health insurance, took steps to reduce the cost of prescription drugs, imposed stricter regulations on pollutants, and promoted electric vehicles. He signed a measure to provide free breakfast and lunch to all public school children. This is a list that these days might be equated with Blue State politicians. Yet Walz represents a long tradition of prairie progressivism. Long before the nation’s political map ossified into Blue and Red territory, there was a vibrant… http://dlvr.it/TCMXcc

[riverdamien]

Day of Silence

Gospel Jn 6:1-15

Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee. A large crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. The Jewish feast of Passover was near. When Jesus raised his eyes and saw that a large crowd was coming to him, he said to Philip, "Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?" One of his disciples, Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, said to him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?" Jesus said, "Have the people recline." Now there was a great deal of grass in that place. So the men reclined, about five thousand in number. Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining, and also as much of the fish as they wanted. When they had had their fill, he said to his disciples, "Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted." So they collected them, and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves that had been more than they could eat. When the people saw the sign he had done, they said, "This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world." Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain alone.

- - -

Today is the Day of  (No)Silence: "Rise Up and Take Action! sponsored by GLSEN (www. GLSEN.org).  It is a day in which we remain silent in protest of discrimination against our GLBT. youth in our school systems, and I include churches as well.

The question I would raise is "Does your church or school your youth attend, even though publicly affirming their acceptance of everyone have any education, groups, or discussion around teens and being GLBTQ? Do they have youth groups just for GLBTQ teens? I venture to say very, and I mean very few, even in the Bay Area.

The "bread" Jesus is having his disciples feed the group of people in our Scripture is literal bread, but I would venture into greater action, in light of the learnings of the past hundred years Jesus would be commanding them to feed people with the bread of non-discrimination, acceptance, and love for everyone, especially GLBT? teens.

Our young friend Paul (photo) was a freshman in high school, and he shared with a friend, his age, a thought of possibly fooling around, wondering if he might like guys. This fifteen-year-old friend rebelled and called Paul a "fag" and the rumors spread around his high school, an open and affirming school.

Paul was isolated, his "straight" teachers uncomfortable and his "gay" teachers, very uncomfortable of saying much to him. Even in this high school that was  "open and affirming", there was an undermining homophobia present. Those were good political words to use.

Paul's parents sent him to a queer therapist, but ultimately he ran away and found himself working as a prostitute on Polk Street, and finally struggling with coming out as transgender, beginning that process. Paul was murdered by a 'john' one night when Paul was talking about now being transgender. Paul is but one of many queer youth I have "hung" out with through the years.

There is presently in many of our schools throughout California this fight among "adults" concerning queer youth, and queer literature, and at times it seems as if the conservative have the upper hand,  let alone throughout the country.

Today, may it be the first of every day, that all of us --"Rise Up, Take Action!" to share the bread of liberation, acceptance, and love with our "Gay/Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Youth!" Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!

------------------------------------------

Post Office Box 642656

San Francisco, CA 94164

www.temenos.org

paypal.com

415-305-2124

Fr. River Sims, D.Min., D.S.T.

Director

Donate to GLSEN at www.GLlSEN.com

Prayer of St. Brendan!

"Help me to journey beyond the familiar

and into the unknown.

Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You. Christ of the mysteries I trust in You to be stronger than each storm within me.

I will trust in the darkness and know that my times, even now, are in Your hands.

Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,

and somehow, make my obedience count for You"

------------------------------------------------

(Temenos and Fr. River seek to remain accessible to everyone. We do not endorse particular causes, political parties, or candidates, or take part in public controversies, whether religious, political or social--Our pastoral ministry is to everyone!

[badethnography]

Gay by the Bay is the 1rst book ever to chronicle the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history of the San Francisco Bay Area. Vividly illustrated and engagingly written, this meticulously compiled volume captures the undisputed capital of queer culture as never before. Gay by the Bay celebrates Northern California's gay history in all its fascinating diversity, beginning with the gender-bending berdache societies of eighteenth-century Native Americans through today's Digital Queers. From the founding of Daughters of Bilitis in the 1950s to the 1rst tentative steps of the gay liberation movement in the '60s, from the election of Harvey Milk and the emergence of thriving community in the exuberant '70s to the creation of the NAMES Project Memorial Quilt and life-and-death realities in the era of AIDS, queer history in the Bay Area encompasses some of the most compelling political and social events of our time.

1940s drag queens pictured in 'gay by the bay: a history of queer culture in the san francisco bay area,' susan stryker.

[runnersnz]

“I run to engage with my past.

I first went for a run 22 years ago while on an exchange program in Germany. Running hadn’t been part of my life growing up in post-Communist Romania up to that point. The way a Bulgarian friend (also a runner) put it, if you were out running people would think you were being chased by someone. Besides, I was the opposite of a sporty kid — nerdy, plump, uncoordinated. Running somehow, barely stuck with me after that first run with my host family through cherry orchards on the Elbe. I would go for a run in my hometown in Romania about once a week throughout high school.

Life and a scholarship took me to an idyllic university, a liberal arts college in the Northeastern US. That’s where I first encountered running on trails – the paved, flat Norwottowuck Trail connecting Amherst, Massachusetts to Northampton. Running became a more common habit as the stress of university accumulated. It was also a way to deal with my coming out as a gay man and to make sense of what had been my past up to that point.

After university I ended up in graduate school in the San Francisco Bay Area, truly an ideal place for runners of all kinds. I picked up running again on the Stanford Dish trail, the first time I encountered any vert. I also ran my first half marathon then, with a magic crossing of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Running ceased for a while in graduate school. First the structure of the first years of graduate school gave way to a hectic interdisciplinary free-for-all in my research career. Then my father, living in Romania, was diagnosed with terminal stage lung cancer. I went back to Romania 13 times that year to witness his inexorable and unrelenting decline. After he passed I felt like an empty shell and running became my coping mechanism. For about 4 months I did a race every week in various parts of the Bay Area. This is when I ran my first trail half marathons, although I had no idea that’s what they were (I was still wearing road shoes and walking the uphills felt like cheating).

Running became an episodic thing throughout my 30s. I didn’t give it up entirely — even ran two road marathons in the process — but I also wasn’t consistent about it. I started running again when I moved to New Zealand a few years ago, but then the pandemic and its ensuing restrictions killed whatever motivation I had left. 

Exactly a year ago, something happened. My partner and I moved back to Wellington, a town which we had missed dearly. I went for a run for the first time in months. Only 3k (or 2 miles — my preferred unit of running measurement) up to Mt Albert and back. I remembered then the long arc of running in my life, which I retold here. I was hooked again and it has stuck since. 

Finding community is a big reason why running stuck with me this time. It started with the WoRM Tuesday Spectaculars up Mt Vic and then progressed to Big Sunday Runs. I have met tens of kind and resilient people, who are both encouraging and inspiring in their embrace of adversity. For there is adversity aplenty on trails in the lower North Island! This time I have not been running through perpetual Californian sunshine and on groomed pathways but through winter gloom, horizontal rain and knee deep mud. And despite this I have been at it for a year — the longest continuous bout of sustained physical activity I have ever done in my life.

This kind of running feels less like athletics and more like the kind of tramping I grew up doing with my rock climbing-obsessed older brother and his friends. I can’t say I loved those trips — I was always the slow and uncoordinated one, but after the WUU2k half I finally understood why my brother had himself gotten into trail running, to the point of organizing events. I have run many races since, including several ultras. After the Tarawera 50k I was able to join my brother and nephew on the UTMB index, which now serves as a kind of friendly family league tables, connecting our achievements on opposite sides of the Earth.

Running provides a metaphorical trail through a hectic personal history. It connects me to people and places that are part of who I am. Every time I get out I get to explore this trail a bit further.” Bogdan @bogdanstate (Wellington) Photo taken on the Kepler Track, Te Anau – Portraits of Runners + their stories @RunnersNZ

[flotsam-gazette]

In the Shadow of Silicon Valley

by Rebecca Solnit /London Review of Books, February 2024

Long screed about how Silicon Valley ate San Francisco, the affliction that is tech billionaires and their inexhaustible hubris, a murder they blamed on the wrong people, and more — some excerpts:

After a childhood nearby, I moved to San Francisco in 1980 when street life and bar life were vibrant, but cafés were rare outside North Beach’s Italian neighbourhood. They proliferated in the 1980s and 1990s as places to hang out, maybe read, maybe chat to whomever was around or just people-watch.

The port town of Yerba Buena (was renamed) after the Italian saint. It has always been populated by dreamers, eccentrics and bohemians as well as opportunists and profiteers; until recently there was room for all of them.

I used to be proud of being from the San Francisco Bay Area. I thought of this place in terms of liberation and protection; we were where the environmental movement was born; we were the land of experimental poetry and anti-war marches, of Harvey Milk and gay rights, of the occupation of Alcatraz Island that galvanised a nationwide Indigenous rights movement as well as Cesar Chavez’s farmworkers’ movement in San Jose and the Black Panthers in Oakland. We were the left edge of America, a refuge from some of its brutalities and conformities, a sanctuary for dissidents and misfits and a laboratory for new ideas. We’re still that lab, but we’re no longer an edge; we’re a global power centre, and what issues from here – including a new super-elite – shapes the world in increasingly disturbing ways.

[image by Sarah McMenemy)

[influencermagazineuk]

Remembering Barbara May Cameron: A Native American Activist and Trailblazer

Barbara May Cameron, born on May 22, 1954, was a Hunkpapa Lakota from the Fort Yates band of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. She was a multi-talented individual, known for her work as a photographer, poet, writer, and human rights activist. Throughout her life, Cameron left an indelible mark on the world through her passionate writing and impactful speeches, advocating for human rights and social justice. After completing her elementary and secondary education, Barbara pursued her passion for photography and film at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her artistic talents and dedication to her craft earned her recognition and respect within the artistic community. Cameron's journey as an activist began when she came out as a lesbian and relocated to San Francisco in 1973. In the city, she became an advocate for LGBTQIA+ inclusion in the Native American community, addressing issues of racism in queer spaces. Her commitment to human well-being led her to actively participate in various programs and organizations. One of her significant roles was serving as the executive director of Community United Against Violence, where she provided assistance and support to victims of hate crimes and domestic abuse. In 1988, the mayor of San Francisco appointed Cameron to the Citizens Committee on Community Development and the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. Later, the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women welcomed her as a member. Barbara's dedication to fighting AIDS and promoting childhood immunization was evident in her work with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the American Indian AIDS Institute. She collaborated with the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control, contributing to AIDS education and awareness programs. As a pioneer in the intersection of LGBTQIA+ and Native American rights, Cameron co-founded the first gay American Indian liberation organization, Gay American Indians. She also played a key role in leading the Lesbian Gay Freedom Day Parade and Celebration for five years between 1980 and 1985. Throughout her life, Barbara May Cameron received numerous accolades and awards for her outstanding contributions to the community. In 1992, she was honored with the Harvey Milk Award for Community Service, recognizing her exceptional work. She was also the first recipient of the Bay Area Career Women Community Service Award. Additionally, Cameron actively engaged with the International Indigenous AIDS Network to promote AIDS education on Indian reservations across the United States. Her passion for empowering Native American women writers led to the establishment of the Institute on Native American Health and Wellness, with a focus on publishing their works. Sadly, Barbara May Cameron passed away on February 12, 2002, at the age of 47 due to natural causes. Her legacy lives on through her groundbreaking activism and dedication to social justice. Though she may no longer be with us, her impact on the world continues to inspire and ignite positive change. As we remember and celebrate her life and contributions, we honor the remarkable legacy of Barbara May Cameron, a true trailblazer and advocate for a more inclusive and compassionate society. Credit: Wikipedia of Barbara May Cameron Read the full article

[occupyhades]

Fed-up Florida teachers unload on MAGA culture warriors: 'No one is teaching your kids to be gay!' - RawStory.com

Hernando County, Florida, a Gulf Coast area just north of Tampa Bay, is not known for being a liberal place, as it hasn't backed a Democrat for president in over two decades, and Gov. Ron DeSantis carried the county by over 40 points last year.