Bay Area Reporter Weblogs

Magnet, the gay men’s health center in the Castro, next week will play host to the first town hall with the major candidates running for District 8 supervisor.

All four of the well-known out candidates competing to succeed termed out Supervisor Bevan Dufty in 2010 have agreed to attend the event. Dufty, who is running for mayor in 2011, will also be on hand at the public’s first chance to meet and greet the wannabe supes contenders. The town hall will run from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, October 27.

The get together comes one night after the board of the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club is set to vote on a contentious proposal to suspend its bylaws and do an early dual endorsement for D8 candidates Rebecca Prozan and Scott Wiener.

The idea to split Alice’s nod between the two former co-chairs of the club is roiling the more moderate LGBT political group and has incensed the campaign of Laura Spanjian, another past Alice co-chair.

Along with shutting Spanjian out of the competition for Alice’s endorsement, the proposal would also block former Alice board member Rafael Mandelman from the endorsement process altogether. Wiener’s and Prozan’s backers say they have the votes needed to push through the dual endorsement, but Spanjian’s supporters have been hitting the phone lines to try to stop it in its tracks.

The Alice board meets behind closed doors, so it will be interesting to see if the internal club dispute spills out into the open Tuesday night.

That same evening the more progressive Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club is set to vote on whether to give its endorsement in the D8 race to Mandelman, its current president. Considering none of the other candidates plan to be at the Milk Club meeting, which starts at the same time as the town hall, it is a safe bet that Mandelman has the endorsement locked up.

Magnet is located at 4122 18th Street, while the Milk Club meeting takes place at the Women’s Building at 3543 18th Street.

After the Bay Area Reporter’s Political Notebook reported last week that a gay man who publicly opposed a change to the city’s sanctuary city policy received a homophobic phone message, liberal San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly contacted the paper to denounce the hate speech.

The anonymous caller left the diatribe on the answering machine of Colin Gallagher, who had spoken out against legislation that would restrict city officials from reporting illegal immigrant youth who are arrested to federal immigration authorities until after they are convicted of their crimes.

The unidentified male caller contacted Gallagher at home and left him a message that both attacked Gallagher and praised Daly, who supports the policy change introduced by openly gay Supervisor David Campos.

Following the publication of the column in the October 15 edition of the B.A.R, Daly e-mailed to say he was surprised to see his name come up in the item and denounced the caller for using hate speech in a policy dispute.

“As you know, I have prided myself on my work on behalf of San Francisco’s LGBT community and immigrant communities. I truly believe that peoples’ liberation struggles are interdependent,” wrote Daly. “I also take this opportunity to denounce the homophobic comment reported in your column, as I denounce the many racist and anti-immigrant comments that I have received.”

At their meeting Tuesday, October 20 the Board of Supervisors passed Campos’ legislation by a mayoral-veto-proof majority of 8-2, with Supervisors Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd opposed. Supervisor Michela Alioto Pier was excused to attend a funeral, while openly gay Supervisor Bevan Dufty, a mayoral candidate in 2011, provided the vote needed to block Mayor Gavin Newsom’s veto threat.

But the mayor’s spokesman told the San Francisco Chronicle that the policy change is unenforceable and will be ignored by the mayor.

“The Campos bill isn’t worth the paper it’s written on – it’s unenforceable and he knows that,” Ballard told the daily paper. “We are not going to put our law enforcement officers in legal jeopardy just because the Board of Supervisors wants to make a statement.”

To read the rest of the Chronicle’s coverage of the policy dispute, visit http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/10/21/MNO61A8DTN.DTL.

Just a few days shy of what would have been Harvey Milk’s 79th birthday, the state Senate on Thursday, May 14 passed legislation that creates Harvey Milk Day in California in honor of the state’s first openly gay elected official.

SB 572, authored by state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), cleared the Senate with a 24-14 bipartisan vote. The bill designates May 22, Milk’s birthday, as a day of special significance in California. It would not be a paid holiday.

“Harvey Milk is an inspiration to Californians who believe in fairness and equality,” Leno said in a statement. “He fought for many of the issues we value today, including access to education, public transportation, affordable housing, and the environment. Harvey Milk gave his life for what he believed in.”

Milk, who represented the Castro while on the board, was assassinated along with then-Mayor George Moscone by ex-Supervisor Dan White in November 1978. The City Hall killings shocked the city. Next week, May 21, is the 30th anniversary of the White Night riots, when people angrily took to the streets after a jury convicted White of manslaughter instead of murder.

SB 572 is sponsored by Equality California and co-authored by 22 members of the Legislature, including out lawmakers Senator Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego), and Assemblymen Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) and John Perez (D-Los Angeles).

The bill now goes to the Assembly, where it will be heard in committee.

Go to www.calitics.com for a weekend fundraising challenge for No on 8! Brian Devine will match all contributions up to $1,000.

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin emerged the victor tonight (Wednesday, July 23) in his battle to oust Scott Wiener, the openly gay chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party.

Peskin will now oversee the Democratic County Central Committee, a little noticed panel that exerts control over which candidates receive the local party’s endorsements.

By a vote of 18-16 a majority of DCCC members voted at their meeting to replace Wiener with Peskin, who is termed off the board this year. Peskin won with help from gays on the committee. Susan Leal, former Public Utilities Commission general manager, served as proxy for Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) and voted for Peskin. Supervisor Tom Ammiano also voted for him.

Elected to the DCCC in the June primary, Peskin surged to victory with the help of a progressive majority he helped elect to the local Dem panel. He needed 17 votes to claim the chairmanship.

Supervisor Chris Daly, who also won a seat on the body last month, had threatened to campaign against any members of what was known as the “Hope slate” who did not vote for Peskin in future races.

With control of the board up for grabs this fall, progressives had made the race for DCCC chair a priority, as who the Dem panel endorses usually goes on to win their races. The supervisor races could also be key in who replaces Peskin as board chair next year, and in 2011, who opts to run to replace Mayor Gavin Newsom.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Donna Hitchens has joined the ranks of “Woman of the Year” honorees from the 13th Assembly District. Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) nominated Hitchens for the award in recognition of her groundbreaking work to improve the accessibility of the legal system for low-income families and children.

In a statement Monday, March 10, Leno pointed to Hitchens’s help establishing coordinated youth services and a mandatory training program for juvenile court attorneys as well as her work in helping to establish the court’s Family Law Self-Help Center. He also praised Hitchens for working closely with the Child Trauma Research Project and the University of California, San Francisco forensic psychiatry program to see that such things as neutral custody evaluations are available to families with limited means.

Curiously, the openly gay Leno failed to mention in his release that he had chosen an out lesbian for the award, or that in 1977 – fresh out of Boalt Hall School of Law – Hitchens helped co-found the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

The statement does point to Hitchens working “tirelessly to improve low and moderate income people’s access to the courts and to improve services for at risk youth exposed to violence at home and in the community.”

Leno called Hitchens “one of those extraordinary individuals we rarely come across in our lifetimes,” and added that, “She has put her time and talents to use for those that need them most – foster youth, young people exposed to violence and low-income families. She has touched the lives of so many throughout the Bay Area, I was proud to honor her today.”

Since being elected to the Superior Court in 1990, Hitchens has served as presiding judge, a trial judge in the civil and criminal divisions, and as supervising judge of the Unified Family Court. She is a former member of the Judicial Council and the Advisory Committee on Access and Fairness in the Courts and currently chairs the Science & the Law Education Committee.

For the past seven years, she has chaired the San Francisco Safe Start Initiative, aimed at improving services to young children exposed to violence in the home and in the community. She received the 2001 Benjamin Aranda Access to Justice Award for her efforts to improve access to the courts for low and moderate income people and the 2002 Judicial Officer of the Year Award from the Family Law Section of the State Bar of California.

Hitchens’s partner is San Francisco Superior Court Judge Nancy Davis.

The California Association of Nutrition and Activity Programs has awarded Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken Yeager its inaugural California Advocate for Nutrition Award for his work in fighting obesity.

When Yeager served on the San Jose City Council, he convinced his colleagues to pass a measure that required the city to offer more healthy food options in its city-operated vending machines. Under the policy, vending machines in city libraries are only stocked with snacks and beverages that don’t contain trans fats and that are low in sugar, saturated fat and sodium.

Half of the food and drink choices in all other city-operated vending machines must also be healthy options.

“People regularly underestimate the number of calories they consume on a daily basis,” Yeager said in a release last week announcing he had won the award.

“Having more healthy options in vending machines helps our residents make better choices and prevent obesity, heart disease and diabetes.”

Since being elected to the county board in June 2006, Yeager has continued to battle against the bulge for his constituents. He recently ensured that the county would consider healthy eating options when drawing up new contracts for the vendors operating the county’s several cafeterias.

The cafeterias, which serve thousands of county employees, jurors from the Hall of Justice, and residents each week, are currently in the process of revising their menus.

A transgender woman lost her re-election bid to a city council seat in Georgia Tuesday, December 4, a day after a judge tossed a lawsuit filed by her opponents that claimed she had misled voters by running as a woman.

Michelle Bruce received 223 votes in Tuesday’s runoff election for the Riverdale City Council, but the top vote-getter, Wayne Hall, finished with 308 votes, according to unofficial returns. Bruce told the Associated Press that the lawsuit had served its intended purpose, which was “aimed at getting me out” of office.

Bruce, 46, ran unopposed and won her city council seat four years ago as an openly transgender woman.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama brought his “Countdown to Change” rally to San Francisco Wednesday night (Nov. 14), and mentioned “gays and lesbians” during his speech before about 6,500 people at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.

“Gays and lesbians will have somebody to fight for equal rights,” Obama told a mostly young crowd. He said that he would “make sure gays and lesbians are not discriminated against.”

“I want everyone to feel part of America, regardless of sexual orientation, regardless of race, regardless of station,” the Illinois senator said.

(Continued)

Assemblyman Mark Leno’s (D-San Francisco) gender-neutral marriage bill cleared its first vote in the state Senate Tuesday, July 10, when the judiciary committee approved it on a 3-1 vote.

The bill previously passed in the Assembly. It now goes to another Senate committee before heading to the Senate floor. Its passage is expected, but Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has already gone on record saying he will veto it.

Similar to Leno’s 2005 legislation, which the governor vetoed, AB43, the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, would give same-sex couples the ability to marry. Religious institutions would be able to choose whether they would solemnize marriages between same-sex couples.