Recent polls show Mayor Kevin Faulconer behind Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsome in next year’s California governor’s race. That Faulconer, a Republican, is polling a strong second while expressing no interest in the race continues to have people urge him to run. While I believe our mayor would make an outstanding governor, I do believe it…
This coming Saturday Feb. 4, San Diego’s oldest LGBT organization will be celebrating its 45th anniversary of community service: The Imperial Court de San Diego. In 1972, LGBT San Diegans started to meet and discuss the starting of a local chapter of the International Imperial Court System, which was founded in 1965 in San Francisco…
Having advised and served the last seven mayors of San Diego, and two interim mayors, I have indeed heard many “State of the City” addresses by both Republican and Democratic office holders. The address last week by Mayor Kevin Faulconer was one of the most sincere and down to earth speeches by not a partisan…
This past Saturday, community activists and friends of Will X. Walters gathered at the Rainbow Flag monument in Hillcrest to remember the young activist who took his own life. Will’s recent case against the San Diego Police Department had gotten national attention, especially after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in his favor….
For five years now, young businessman Johan Engman has closed his restaurants (Fig Tree, Breakfast Republic, etc.), on Christmas Day to provide a complimentary gourmet dinner for military veterans through the Wounded Warrior Project. This wonderful event has grown so big that Engman, who has donated the bulk of the costs, needed some help and…
Washington, D.C. Republican political rumors are that former President Bush’s United Nations spokesperson, Ric Grenell (a top foreign policy expert) is still being considered for a top spot in the Trump administration. Openly-gay Grenell, who was a press secretary for Mayor Susan Golding, has a lot of support among some top Republican national leaders. I…
It is a very difficult life to be transgender … dealing with the reality that you were born in the wrong body. The cold hard facts are that not only do a vast majority of Americans not understand our transgender brothers and sisters, sadly many gays, lesbians and bisexuals do not and many do not…
We the LGBT community has survived the McCarthy Era, Anita Bryant, John Briggs and we will survive Donald Trump. We must organize more than ever and support in Washington, D.C., the Human Rights Campaign, the LGBTQ National Task Force and the Victory Fund. And we need to remember that our continuing civil rights movement must…
In the 1960s and ’70s the San Diego Police Department was headed by a racist, homophobic and sexist police chief. Our bars were raided and LGBT people were harassed and treated like second class citizens. People of color and us gays referred to the downtown police station, then on Market Street, as “Gestapo Headquarters.” Recently,…
First San Diego Pride, and now the San Diego Human Dignity Foundation has let go of its executive director. But, unlike Pride, this action by the foundation’s board of directors was long overdue and supported by LGBT community leaders. When the Human Dignity Foundation was established about two decades ago, its founders were some of…
