As a physician, I make life and death decisions. When I lead a team of trainees, I am at the top of the chain of command. Medical students gather information to make decisions with the interns, who can seek the advice of senior residents, who in turn come to me. They try to limit it…
Trans people are often tagged as either being predators or enabling predators in public restrooms. It seems to always be the one sure thing that will be trotted out when arguing against civil rights for trans people, especially public accommodation protections. Within the last month, Maryland has passed legislation that adds employment, housing and public…
Almost every major city has a Dine Out For Life day when local restaurants and bars give a percentage of their receipts to HIV/AIDS agencies. In the past San Diego’s mayors have participated but Mayor Kevin Faulconer will be the first to actually wait on customers on Thursday April 24 during lunch at Harvey Milk’s…
At first I thought it was a joke when I heard that District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis had endorsed the re-election campaign of County Clerk Ernest Dronenburg, whose one-man effort to halt marriage equality in San Diego made ugly headlines last year. True, Dumanis has a tendency to endorse the candidates the Republican Party wants her…
This June, San Diegans will be voting on the Barrio Logan Community Plan. I’ve seen the map, and it’s complicated. It has Residential Zones, Business Zones, Buffer Zones and seemingly every option in between. I’m still not sure if the blue area is the ocean or another type of land use. Fortunately, I don’t have…
I’ve had a back-and-forth with Nicole Murray Ramirez at LGBT Weekly over RuPaul’s promotion of the term tra**y. We disagree on the pejorative nature of the term, but it says something that the former Tra**y Awards has changed the name of the event to the Transgender Erotic Awards. “When we named the show the ‘Tranny…
By the way, former decorated Marine Captain Jacque Atkinson (co-chair Sheriff’s GLBT Advisory Council) is being heavily mentioned as a possible candidate for Atkins’ Assembly seat in 2016. Bonnie Dumanis and Ernie Dronenburg Long before our county assessor Ernie Dronenburg filed and dropped a petition with the state Supreme Court over gay marriage, District Attorney…
My friend, Nicole Shounder, currently serves on board a Military Sealift Command (MSC) ship out of the Pacific Northwest. She’s a nurse, and when she’s assigned onto any U.S. Navy ship she takes on the equivalent rank of a lieutenant commander (LCDR). She was cited in a document entitled Report of the Transgender Military Service…
When Sean Penn won his best actor Oscar for portraying Harvey Milk one of the very first persons he thanked was Cleve Jones, who was a historical consultant for the movie. Cleve worked with Harvey Milk and they were good friends. But probably, the most famous thing that Cleve Jones is known for is as…
One of my favorite TV moments is the West Wing episode in which President Jed Bartlet meets Dr. Jenna Jacobs, the Dr. Laura proxy, at a reception for talk radio hosts. In response to Jacobs’ claim that “I don’t say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President, the Bible does,” Bartlet unleashes a tirade of questions…
