Luckily Harold Skull and Clay Green’s case turned out alright, but who knows how many other couples have been separated and lost everything they have built because they weren’t allowed to get married?

On April 18, 2010, we posted an article about the county of Sonoma separating an elderly gay couple, Harold Skull and Clay Greene.  To quickly recap, Harold, 88, fell on the porch of their home of 20 years, and required hospitalization.  While there, Harold made accusations of abuse at the hands of his partner, and despite Mr. Skull’s apparent dementia, the County of Sonoma declared him a ward of the county, appointed a conservator, and put him i … Read More

via Queer Visalia

What this means for the rest of us is poorer transit options, higher fares and more headaches. Republicans like to crow about how raising taxes, or even the mere existence of taxes, in a recession would lead to terrible things. Yet the flipside of that is that it is quite often the poor and disadvantaged who are hurt most by bad economic times and things.  Recessions necessarily lead to less revenue for the state as people lose their jobs and pay less in taxes while taking more in government services.

Services, like for example public transit, that often get cut or reduced making things more difficult for people who are already on hard times.

Right now it’s looking like things will go towards arbitration, as a judge ruled today but while it gets resolved – which could take quite a while – AC Transit will continue operating under the new provisions it decided to impose after negotiations fell apart. So buses will continue running for now.

After yesterday’s post regarding the depressing and tragic events surrounding Pride in San Francisco last weekend, I thought I’d share something a little more uplifting from Pride in Chicago: I spent the day at Chicago’s Pride Parade. Some friends and I, with The Marin Foundation, wore shirts with “I’m Sorry” written on it. We had signs that said, “I’m sorry that Christians judge you,” “I’m sorry the way churches have treated you,” “I used to be … Read More

via Can’t Win For Losing

Join the HIV community for this informative dialogue with candidates for the Board of Supervisors.

People with HIV/AIDS have enough votes to elect the next supervisor in District 6 (Tenderloin), District 8 (Castro) and District 10 (Bayview). Come make sure that our concerns are at the top of their agenda, such as: LGBT/HIV friendly shelters and affordable housing, access to medication, dental care, supportive employment, safety in our low-income communities, and much, much more.

HIV Community Panelists: Cecilia Chung – Community Advocate, Tim Durning – President, SF4Democracy, Randy Allgaier – Director, HIV/AIDS Planning Council, Jason Riggs – Deputy Director, Stop AIDS Project, Curtis Moore – Director, Bay Area Young Positives and Brian Basinger – Director, AIDS Housing Alliance/SF.

Sponsored by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, AIDS Housing Alliance/SF, SF4Democracy, Stop AIDS Project, Project Inform, Bay Area Young Positives, AIDS Legal Referral Panel, Shanti, HIV/AIDS Provider Network, and more.

In a move intended to widen our coverage in the U.S. and increase the emphasis on our local web portals we will be going live with both Queer Dallas and Queer Miami next week.  We will be officially launching Queer Dallas on Tuesday, July 6 and Queer Miami on Thursday, July 8.  This expanded operation will be headed up by Vice President David Bishop and will lay the ground work for more specific and targeted growth and development in the surround … Read More

via Queer Networks

Yesterday will forever count as one of the most intense days of my life.  I have never seen so many gay people together having a good time at once!  There were booths, drinks, and half (sometimes wholly) naked people as far as the eye could see.  It was the first time i could really feel comfortable with PDA so naturally i was taking full advantage of that.  I had never danced in public before either, which i also totally did all kinds.  Mike and … Read More

via Queer Visalia

Coming from a town that does its best it ignore the fact that gay people live within its confines, let alone actually celebrate their existence, it’s nice to see a city partaking in and celebrating the diversity that makes it such a vibrant and thriving place to live.

So make sure and show your support at San Francisco’s Pride festivities this weekend and go see a film or two at Frameline this week too.

Happy Pride Everyone!

A possible Taitz victory would work like this.

Republican voters, brought out in sizable numbers by the contested primaries for governor and U.S. senator, fill out the rest of their ballot with progressively less information about their candidates. They know Taitz’s name from… somewhere. And she’s listed first on the ballot, thanks to the state’s randomized ranking system. (Some of these voters, of course, will know and avidly support her.) She’s identified on the ballot as an attorney, while Dunn is a real estate agent. They check off her name, and she wins.

Dunn can pull this off, despite running a fairly low-key campaign. For all we know, he could win by 30 points — nobody polls these races. But it’s not unheard of for a low-visibility office like this to go to the candidate with a little name recognition and the first place on the ballot. Cue: Potential PR disaster and a talking point Democrats could use until the end of time.