January 5, 2023 edition of the Bay Area Reporter

California Supreme Court welcomes 1st queer woman

by Matthew S. Bajko

From humble beginnings growing up in a Denver public housing development reared by her grandmother with limited means, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Kelli Evans is now making history as the first queer woman of color to serve on the Golden State’s highest court. Governor Gavin Newsom Monday afternoon administered her oath of office as an associate justice on the California Supreme Court.

Evan’s January 2 robing ceremony, which was not open to the public, took place at 1:15 p.m. inside the Stanley Mosk Library and Courts Building in downtown Sacramento. Although it wasn’t livestreamed, video of the event was posted shortly afterward to the court’s website.

“The California Supreme Court is a beacon, and I am immensely humbled and proud to be joining the court today. I pledge to serve the people of our beautiful state to the very best of my abilities, doing all I can to help fulfill the promise of equal justice under the law,” said Evans, 53, at the event.

Her UC Davis law school classmate, Stephanie Finelli, recalled during the swearing-in event that “what stood out to us in law school about Kelli was her commitment to justice. She went to law school to make the legal system work for everyone ... and especially those the system had traditionally overlooked, or even mistreated.”

Newsom also swore in Associate Justice Patricia Guerrero as the 29th chief justice of California, having won her retention race for the position on the November 8 ballot. Guerrero succeeds Tani Cantil-Sakauye, whose retirement became official Monday, to become the first Latina presiding over the state supreme court.

“I look forward to protecting the rights of all Californians and ensuring equal access to justice,” said Guerrero. “Just as I did not get here alone, I do not move forward alone, and I look forward to embarking on this exciting new journey with family, friends, and colleagues.”

The governor had nominated the two women for the judicial posts last summer. A Black married mother, Evans doubles out representation on the judicial body. Associate

Engardio readies to take San Francisco supervisor seat

by Matthew S. Bajko

After his stunning victory in the November 8 election, ousting an elected supervisor in San Francisco for the first time in more than two decades, Joel Engardio took a well-deserved vacation with his husband, Lionel Hsu. In mid-December they traveled to Japan for a few days before spending the holidays with Hsu’s parents in Taiwan.

It had been a yearly tradition for the couple to head overseas around Christmas until COVID brought an end to most international travel in 2020. Hsu returned alone in 2021 to see his family for the first time since 2019.

“He endured the quarantine,” recalled Engardio. “I stayed behind.”

The couple, having rung in the new year in Taipei, returned home January 2 to prepare for Engardio taking his oath of office as the new District 4 supervisor representing the Sunset district and the Lakeside neighborhood where they own a house. Engardio is hosting an RSVP-required affair Saturday at the Irish Cultural Center, due to the limited space of the venue.

The pomp will harken back to his marriage to Hsu. Gay state Senator Scott Wiener (DSan Francisco), one of two elected officials in

the city who endorsed Engardio in his race, and former District 4 supervisor Katy Tang, now executive director of the city’s Office of Small Businesses, will make remarks. They had presided over the couple’s 2015 wedding ceremony.

“Scott presided in English and Katy did it in Mandarin so Lionel’s mother – who flew

from Taiwan to San Francisco and knows zero English – could fully experience her son getting married,” noted Engardio, 50, a journalist turned editorial writer and columnist.

Mayor London Breed will also make remarks. City Administrator Carmen Chu, also a former District 4 supervisor, will administer the oath, while Hsu will hold a Bible owned by See page 4 >>

Tullock breaks barriers as San Francisco’s chief adult probation officer

by Eric Burkett

Cristel Tullock recalled a time back in 1990, when on the “Arsenio Hall Show,” gay icon Madonna said she liked hanging out with the Black kids because they got away with more.

“Cause all my girlfriends were Black and it seemed their parents were more lenient than my parents,” the singer told Hall. “And somehow, I had it stuck in my mind that because they were Black, they had more fun. You know, my parents were really strict.”

Madonna probably intended it as a compliment, but not everyone saw it that way.

What Tullock, who started her job as chief adult probation officer for the City and County of San Francisco one year ago in January, remembers most about that interview was the ensuing outcry from Black parents, offended by the implication that they, somehow, didn’t care about their kids.

“And how that had a kind of sense of – we’re just a free-for-all. No, we’re kings and queens,” said Tullock, a San Francisco resident and mother of two children, in a recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter. “The history of Black people and Latino people is so profound, why would you think we don’t want order?”

The fact that that particular celebrity interview has stayed with Tullock, a Black Latina lesbian, and a first-generation American, probably says a lot more about her than it did about Madonna.

Tullock, who declined to state her age, was promoted to chief adult probation officer after 22 years in the adult probation department, and she carries a great deal of that sense of responsibility to her communities with her. She’s the first African American to head up the department and the first Latina, as well as the first lesbian.

In fact, she was also the first such appointment in California, until a month or so later when Tamika Nelson, a Black woman, took the same position in San Diego County. And Tullock brings all those identities with her as she carries out her duties.

According to a study published last year by the

Racial and Identity Profiling Board, San Francisco’s police officers “performed supervision only searches (where supervision status is the only basis for the search) of individuals perceived to be Black at 2.8 times the rate at which they performed supervision only searches of individuals they perceived to be white. Similarly, officers also performed supervision plus searches (where the officer also had some other basis to search the person) of Black individuals at 3.3 times the rate they performed supervision plus searches of white individuals.”

Cristel Tullock will soon mark one year as San Francisco’s chief adult probation officer.

Rick Gerharter

San Francisco District 4 Supervisor-elect Joel Engardio, left, and his husband, Lionel Hsu, visited Japan during a recent holiday vacation to see Hsu’s family.

Courtesy Joel Engardio

Courtesy CA Courts Newsroom

Governor Gavin Newsom embraces California Supreme Court Justice Kelli Evans as she was sworn in January 2.

School board race shocker

Blunder means Resnick didn’t win school board race

by Matthew S. Bajko

F or weeks following his closely contested November 8 race for an Oakland school board seat, Nick Resnick had waited to officially declare himself the winner. Finally, after it appeared his reported firstplace finish wouldn’t change, he did so in a November 22 email to his supporters.

“After nearly two weeks of vote counting, it’s finally clear: Oakland parents and neighbors have given me the honor and the privilege of representing our community,” wrote Resnick, a married father of two sons who formerly worked as a teacher in the East Bay district.

His status as the Oakland Unified School District’s boardmemberelect for the District 4 seat meant Resnick was set to become the first transgender person elected to oversee a K-12 public school district in California. And it made him only the second trans man elected to an education post in the Golden State.

Alameda County Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis had certified the results of Resnick’s race in early December. Yet, it turns out, Resnick didn’t win.

In a surprise announcement on December 28 Dupuis disclosed his office had not properly counted ballots in races decided by rankedchoice voting. While the error didn’t affect any of the other contests, said Dupuis, it did change the result in Oakland’s District 4 school race.

“It should have been configured to advance ballots to the next ranking immediately when no candidate was selected for a particular round,” stated the registrar’s office.

“This means that if no candidate was selected in the first round on the ballot, then the second-round ranking would count as the firstround ranking, the third-round ranking would count as the second round ranking, and so on.”

Yet, per the release, “the county’s equipment counted the RCV ballots in the manner in which the ballot was completed, meaning no vote was registered for those ballots in the first round of counting because those voters did not identify a valid candidate in a particular rank on the ballot.”

It went on to state that “after reviewing the election data and applying the correct configuration, the ROV learned that only one outcome was affected: Oakland School

Director, District 4, for the Oakland Unified School District.”

The office didn’t disclose, however, who the new winning candidate was or what the correct vote tally was for the race. The registrar’s office, as of January 3, still lists Resnick as winning the race after two rounds of RCV tabulations with 51.24% of the vote. His lead over the listed second-place finisher, Pecolia Manigo, is 599 votes.

New winner seeks to be certified

The true winner of the race was apparently Mike Hutchinson, who currently holds the District 5 seat on the Oakland school board. His term for that seat runs through January 6, 2025, meaning if he is seated next month as the District 4 director, there will be a vacancy on the ninemember school board to fill.

“Guess what I just found out ... I won the election!!!!! It turns out there was an error in the ranked choice algorithm and when it was corrected and the results were rerun I won,” Hutchinson disclosed on his Facebook page December 28. “Now I need to find a lawyer and sue to overturn the election certification in the next week. It’s crazy, but I won.”

The revelation has thrown into doubt which of the three candidates will become the next District 4 school boardmember. At this point, even the Oakland school district is unsure.

“The district is waiting for the final decision from the registrar. The swearing in happens the second week of January,” spokesperson John Sasaki told the Bay Area Reporter December 30 in an emailed reply.

As for Resnick, he told the B.A.R. December 30 that he has retained legal counsel to help him navigate through the issues the registrar’s announcement have raised.

“This is a truly unprecedented situation. I have, and I expect other candidates have, concerns about why the Registrar took the actions they did after the official certification of the election. Additionally, there are serious questions about what, if anything, happens next,” stated Resnick in a texted response, as he was out of town celebrating the holidays with his family.

For the time being, he is acting as the school boardmember-elect.

“Setting aside these questions, there is no change to the results of the election without the formal ac-

tion of a court,” noted Resnick. “I remain honored by the opportunity to serve on the Oakland Unified School Board and look forward to representing the residents, families, and students of District 4.”

In a texted reply December 28 to the Oaklandside online news site, he had written, “I have the same questions as everyone else.”

Hutchinson announced December 30 that he had hired a law firm that specializes in election law and next week would file a petition in Alameda County Superior Court to re-certify the election results in the race using the now corrected vote counts showing him as the winner.

“There is no question nor dispute, I won,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “Unfortunately before the error was detected the Registrar certified the election on December 7, and certified Nick Resnick as the winner. Only a judge change or throw out election certifications. Thankfully under the law you have 30 days to challenge certification.”

He noted it will cost tens of thousands of dollars to contest the certified results and was looking into establishing a legal defense fund in order to raise donations to help pay his legal fees. It could take a few weeks for the courts to settle the matter, noted Hutchinson.

“Hopefully Nick Resnick won’t contest us and this can be a smooth process,” he wrote.

Gay man wins

Richmond council race

The situation now makes Resnick’s race the most bizarre 2022 electoral contest with an LGBTQ candidate in the Bay Area. That honor had gone to the race with gay District 4 Richmond City Councilmember-elect Cesar Zepeda.

He initially had ended up in a tie with his opponent, Andrew Butt, with both receiving 1,921 votes. A random draw in early December saw Zepeda be declared the winner.

Butt then requested a recount of the ballots cast in the race, which the Contra Costa County Elections Division undertook. It was

then discovered several people who didn’t live in the council district had cast ballots for Butt, so their three votes were disqualified.

In the end, Zepeda was declared the outright winner December 23 with 1,921 votes. Butt came in second with 1,918 votes.

Outgoing Clerk-Recorder-Registrar for Contra Costa County Debi Cooper, as she opted not to seek reelection this year, noted such a close race is “extremely rare.” It also “should remind voters how important every single vote is,” she stated. t

A ballot count blunder means Nick Resnick, with his sons Jude, left, and Dylan, didn’t win an Oakland school board seat.

Courtesy Nick Resnick

Richmond City Councilmember Cesar Zepeda won his race.

Courtesy Cesar Zepeda

Harassment allegations resurface against Berkeley police chief nominee

by John Ferrannini

A lesbian who has been selected, but not yet confirmed, as Berkeley’s next permanent police chief is asserting sexual harassment allegations made against her “were false.”

Interim Police Chief Jennifer Louis’ attorney Alison Berry Wilkinson issued a statement on her behalf to the Bay Area Reporter on Tuesday saying that Louis was “fully cleared five years ago after a thorough appeal hearing that included presentation of considerable witness evidence the investigator failed to include or obtain during his examination.”

The allegations, which surfaced in the Los Angeles Times last week,

Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín declined to respond to a B.A.R. request for comment for this report. He’d told the San Francisco Chronicle last week, however, that the newly-surfaced harassment allegations were “very concerning” and “can’t be ignored.”

Harassment allegations

Louis has worked for BPD since 1999. In 2016, she became one of four captains on the force. She was named interim chief in 2021.

In 2017, however, the Los Angeles law firm Burke, Williams & Sorensen conducted an investigation into Louis and whether she’d made harassing comments to three women, according to the Times’ report.

were not informed of this incident by Williams-Ridley, who selected Louis as the chief-designate in October 2022 after serving a year and a half as interim chief.

(Williams-Ridley also declined to respond to a B.A.R. request for comment for this report.)

Specifically, Berkeley police Officer Heather Haney filed a complaint against Louis after a SWAT team party in May 2017, at which time Haney alleged Louis told her child, whom she’d brought, to throw a water balloon at Haney because “she’s wearing a white tank top.” Haney also claimed Louis made a comment about how when a baby doesn’t latch on during breastfeeding, “she likes to f— around with the nipple,” the

her supervisor sometimes). This included, the Times reported, an incident in which Louis “cornered” her at her locker when she was largely undressed, which she found distressing. When the same woman was interviewed in 2017, she’d said she and Louis were friends and that when Louis asked her on a date, she said no.

In the statement Louis gave through her attorney, she stated unequivocally that “the sexual harassment allegations made against me in 2017 were false. I was fully cleared five years ago after a thorough appeal hearing that included presentation of considerable witness evidence the investigator failed to include or obtain during his examination.”

She further stated she has “never committed sexual harassment. Nor have I ever discriminated or retaliated against any member of the department or the commu -

“The city has a zero tolerance policy against sexual harassment and discrimination,” Louis continued. “It also has a strong antiretaliation policy. I have always fully supported, enforced, and complied with those policies.”

Louis stated she has a long record that includes a commitment to diversity in the department.

“I care deeply for the safety and wellbeing of every member of the police department and the community we serve,” she stated.

“Over the last two years as chief, I have stayed true to my commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. I have also established a long record of transparency and accountability, and have worked extensively with all segments of our diverse community to enhance public safety.” t

From page 1

Engardio’s grandmother, who was raised Protestant but converted to Catholicism after she married an Italian Catholic.

“I thought it would be nice to have that historic passing of the baton, so to speak,” Engardio told the Bay Area Reporter during a virtual interview last month while he was overseas. “I thought it would be nice to have the former supervisors I know well to be there.”

As for his own family members being present, Engardio said they would not be attending. His father abandoned him and his mother when he was 6 years old, and the two have only interacted a few times since.

Engardio did learn his father had another son, and they connected with each other. But his half-sibling doesn’t live in the Bay Area so will not be attending his swearing in.

“There is another brother and sister I have not met yet. I know they exist but haven’t reached out to them,” said Engardio.

His mother will not be at the swearing in. Due to her being a Jehovah’s Witness, she is not allowed to be involved in politics and doesn’t vote. Raised Roman Catholic, she converted when Engardio was a child and they were living in Michigan. He doesn’t belong to any faith, whereas his husband is Buddhist.

“I am spiritual but not religious,” said Engardio, who directed and produced a PBS documentary about the Jehovah’s Witnesses called “Knocking” that came out in 2007 and won several film festival awards.

Right before the pandemic, Engardio moved his mother, now 74, to the

Interim Berkeley Police Chief Jennifer Louis

Courtesy Berkeley Police Department

FDA approves twice-yearly HIV treatment

by Liz Highleyman

There is a new long-acting drug for people with highly resistant HIV who have, until now, had limited medication options. On December 22, the federal Food and Drug Administration approved Gilead Sciences’ Sunlenca (lenacapavir), offering hope for heavily treatmentexperienced individuals.

Sunlenca, the first HIV capsid inhibitor, is indicated for people who are unable to maintain an undetectable viral load on their current antiretroviral regimen due to resistance, intolerance, or safety considerations. This group includes long-term survivors who may have used early HIV drugs one at a time or in suboptimal combinations. This approval does not include first-time HIV treatment, but ongoing studies show Sunlenca also looks promising for that indication.

“Today’s approval ushers in a new class of antiretroviral drugs that may help patients with HIV who have run out of treatment options,” Dr. Debra Birnkrant, director of the Division of Antivirals in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in an agency news release. “The availability of new classes of antiretroviral medications may possibly help these patients live longer, healthier lives.”

Sunlenca, which is administered

by injection every six months after an initial dose of pills, is now the longest-acting antiretroviral medication. Sunlenca injections and tablets are expected to cost $42,250 for the first year and $39,000 per year thereafter, according to Reuters.

Previously, the longest-acting treatment was ViiV Healthcare’s Cabenuva (injectable cabotegravir and rilpivirine), which can be administered every one or two months. However, while Cabenuva is a complete regimen, Sunlenca must be combined with other antiretrovirals. There are currently no other HIV drugs that

University and then from the UC Davis School of Law.

can be taken as infrequently as every six months, so it’s not yet possible to construct a complete twice-yearly regimen. But Gilead and other companies are exploring new long-acting therapies, including broadly neutralizing antibodies.

While HIV treatment requires combination therapy to prevent the development of resistance, a single drug can be adequate for HIV prevention. Sunlenca is being tested as a long-acting PrEP option, with promising results so far. The longest-acting existing PrEP option is ViiV’s Apretude (injectable cabotegravir alone),

which is administered every other month.

The recent approval comes after a delay while Gilead resolved manufacturing issues. The FDA placed a clinical hold on Sunlenca trials late last year due to concerns about the glass vials used for the injectable formulation. But in May, the FDA lifted the hold and allowed trials to resume after Gilead switched to a different type of glass.

Study findings

The approval of Sunlenca is supported by data from the CAPELLA study, which included 72 treatmentexperienced people with highly resistant HIV who were currently on antiretroviral therapy but unable to maintain viral suppression. Nearly two thirds had advanced immune impairment with a low CD4 cell count.

In the first cohort, 36 participants were randomly assigned to add either Sunlenca or placebo pills to their failing regimen for 14 days. At that point, everyone was offered Sunlenca injections every six months plus an optimized background regimen consisting of the most active drugs available to them, selected by resistance testing. Another 36 people in a nonrandomized cohort all started on Sunlenca pills plus an optimized background regimen followed by twice-yearly

Sunlenca injections.

At last year’s Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in February, researchers reported that 83% of participants in the randomized cohort had an undetectable viral load after 52 weeks of treatment. The response rate was highest, at 94%, for people with two or more active drugs in their optimized background regimen. It fell to 67% for those with no other fully active drugs, but this is still an impressive outcome for people with such highly resistant HIV.

CD4 counts increased by an average of 82 cells, and the proportion of people with a CD4 count of 200 or higher rose from 25% to 60%. Sunlenca was safe and well tolerated, and no drug-related serious adverse events were observed. The most common side effect is injection site reactions such as pain, redness or swelling.

“The availability of new classes of antiretroviral drugs is critical for heavily treatment-experienced people with multi-drug resistant HIV,” CAPELLA investigator Dr. Sorana SegalMaurer of Weill Cornell Medicine said in a Gilead press release. “[L]enacapavir helps to fill a critical unmet need for people with complex prior treatment histories and offers physicians a long-awaited twice-yearly option for these patients who otherwise have limited therapy choices.” t

Justice Martin J. Jenkins, a gay Black man, was appointed by Newsom two years ago and won his judicial retention election last month.

Evans, who lives in Oakland with her wife, Terri Shaw, fills the vacancy created by the elevation of Guerrero to chief justice. An avid learner as a child, Evans graduated from Stanford

In her application for the supreme court seat, Evans listed “a steadfast commitment to fairness and impartiality,” “a perpetual learning mindset” and “a clarity of expression” as the three most important qualities required for such a position. She noted she possessed a mindset for learning even at an early age.

“I was an early and voracious

reader and the more I learned, the more I wanted to know about the world around me,” wrote Evans. “My learning mindset is one of the reasons that my legal career has been so satisfying and so diverse. I have not hesitated to jump into different practice areas requiring me to learn entirely new areas of law.”

That legal career took her from the Sacramento County public defender’s office to the American Civil Liberties

Union of Northern California and the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She has worked in private practice and as a federally appointed monitor of the Oakland and Cleveland police departments.

“Kelli certainly has a lot of knowledge as a lawyer, but she also has great judgment in how she applies the combination of her legal, management and human knowledge to a situation,” wrote ACLU of Northern

California Executive Director Abdi Soltani in his letter in support of Evan’s supreme court confirmation. “And in her entire time, while I saw her state her disagreements and hold her ground, I found her to be incredibly independent, measured and thoughtful in how she conducted herself, even when under tremendous pressure.”

Courtesy Gilead Sciences

compiled by Cynthia Laird

On Saturday, January 7, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s T Third line starts its historic new route, providing a direct Metro connection between Sunnydale and Chinatown-Rose Pak Station. Service runs Mondays through Fridays, 6 a.m. to midnight every 10 minutes, and Saturdays and Sundays, 8 a.m. to midnight every 12 minutes.

To help celebrate the occasion, San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton’s office will hold an event that afternoon from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. at Sunnydale Avenue and Bayshore Boulevard.

According to an email announcement from the District 10 supervisor, there will be a ribbon cutting, program, performances, and giveaways.

The new T Third line vastly improves transportation to and from some of San Francisco’s most densely populated areas and major shopping corridors, expanding transit options and new connections, an SFMTA news release stated.

The new T Third route will travel north to the new Central Subway from the Fourth and King platform. It will no longer turn onto King Street or run along the Embarcadero and the Market Street subway. Also, the K Ingleside will now travel between Balboa Park and Embarcadero Station, the release noted.

Customers traveling to stops along the Embar cadero and Oracle Park at Second and King streets should transfer to the N Judah, according to the release. Customers should transfer at Powell Station to Union Square/Market Street Station for the T Third going to Sunnydale.

To transfer to the new T Third at Union Square/Market Street Station from the J Church, K Ingleside, M Ocean View, N Judah or BART at Powell Station, people can connect entirely underground. From the Powell Station platforms, take the elevator or follow signs to concourse level, then follow signs to the Union Square/Market Street Station.

Customers on the T Third connecting to other Muni Metro routes or BART should follow signs on the Union Square/Market Street Station platform toward Stockton/Ellis streets.

The Central Subway stations have many new features, including long escalators – the longest in the United States west of the Mississippi – and two glass elevators at every level for more accessibility, the release stated.

Customers who need to use the elevators to the platform should bypass the fare gates near the street entrances at Union Square/Market Street Station. Instead, use the fare gates in the center of the concourse.

MuniMobile and Lifeline customers may use any fare gate at the Union Square/Market Street Station.

During events at Chase Center, SFMTA will run special event service about every 10 minutes in addition to normal T Third service.

The additional special event trains – with “S Shuttle Mission Bay” head signs – will serve all stops between Chinatown-Rose Pak Station and UCSF/Chase Center. From end to end the ride takes only 20 minutes.

The event ticket is the Muni fare; no additional Muni fare is needed, according to the release.

Customers traveling past Chase Center during this special event service should check train head signs and only board “T Third” trains for a oneseat ride to their destination.

For more information, see the frequently asked questions at https://bit. ly/3QdgLXp.

Horizons opens applications for donor engagement program

Horizons Foundation is now accepting applications for its LGBTQ Donor Engagement Program. According to an email announcement, the program provides support to large LGBTQ-primary organizations (annual budget over $1 million) based within the nine counties of the San Francisco Bay Area. Award funds can be used for annual fundraising events(s), but if an organization does not have an annual fundraising event, it may be eligible for efforts that engage donors through alternative events (e.g., house parties, annual donor thankyou events, etc.).

Horizons, an LGBTQ philanthropic organization, will also consider applications from an LGBTQprimary organization with a budget under $1 million that is celebrating a special anniversary year (e.g. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, etc.). Please contact grants@horizonsfoundation.org before submitting an application for a special anniversary celebration.

The current round of applications is for donor engagement events that take place between February 1 and June 30. Funds are limited; therefore, Horizons encourages organizations to apply as early as possible to allow for application review and

grant processing. Applications will be accepted through January 31. Please note that applications will only be considered from LGBTQprimary organizations whose home office is based in one of the nine counties of the SF Bay Area and whose event will take place within one or more of the nine counties (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma). An LGBTQ-primary organization is defined as an organization whose mission includes the LGBTQ population as the primary focus of the work; whose staff and board predominantly reflect the LGBTQ community; and which primarily serves LGBTQ people.

For more information and to apply, go to https://bit.ly/3i8ND6S.

Santa Clara County unveils new camping reservation system

The Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Department has launched a new online reservation system to help campers search and select a campsite tailored to their preferred outdoor activities.

The site, gooutsideandplay.org, now offers the convenient online reservation system. The newly enhanced website enables visitors to create, modify, and cancel reservations; pay most park fees; and buy day and annual passes.

“We want to provide our custom ers with a frictionless user experi ence when making arrangements to stay at our parks,” Don Rocha, director of the Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Department, stated in a news release. “Our web site, which is available on all mobile devices, streamlines the reservation process and allows customers to choose their ideal campsite in just a few simple steps. Assembling a

tent can be difficult; reserving your campsite should be easy.”

Updates to the website also include a section dedicated to boating, which includes information on vessel launching, inspection, and annual passes for purchase and an enhanced and searchable customer history.

In addition to the new customer features, the Parks and Recreation Department now accepts donations to the Parks Programs online, the release stated. This service allows campers to show their support for the department while helping to maintain and improve the natural -

Anti-trans attacks poised to continue

If 2022 was one of the worst years on record in terms of anti-trans legislation in various state legislatures, the LGBTQ community should prepare for what portends to be an equally bad year in 2023. Not content to go after trans girls and women competing on sports teams or restricting access to gender-affirming care, there are already signs that some conservative lawmakers want to define “woman.” Of course, these politicians are currying favor from their deeply red base, and trying to push back on advances by the Biden administration at the federal level. This also is an early look at one likely GOP contender in the 2024 presidential race: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Politico recently reported that South Carolina Republican state Senator Danny Verdin filed a joint resolution that would amend the South Carolina Constitution to establish that male and female be defined “in the context of reproductive potential ... without regard to an individual’s psychological, chosen or subjective experience of gender.”

If his proposal advances through the Legislature, it could go before Palmetto State voters in 2024. It’s just the kind of divisive ballot measure meant to encourage Republican turnout in a presidential election year, although, of course, South Carolina is already ruby red. The real reason these types of proposals are continuing to percolate is that conservatives, with no real policies of their own, want to exert control over vulnerable populations, including the trans community. They perceive trans people as “other” and don’t want them to have access to medical care and other services they need to live their authentic selves. A similar resolution was filed on Capitol Hill last spring.

And we saw what it’s really about last year during the confirmation hearing for now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson when Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) asked her to define “woman.” Blackburn’s “line of questioning hit on nearly every political hotbutton issue, from critical race theory to teaching children about gender identity in schools to Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer on the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s team,” Politico reported at the time.

House Republicans certainly may reintroduce the measure – if they can ever get the speaker’s election settled so that committees can be formed and work can begin – but such bills are likely doomed in the Democratic-controlled Senate, thankfully.

Meanwhile, the conservative Independent Women’s Forum is going a step further, trying to garner support for its nine-point “Women’s Bill of Rights,” as Politico reported. It would define gender-related words such as “mother” and “father.” Carrie Lukas, president of the group, told

Politico that “this isn’t being anti-anyone.” That’s disingenuous, as it directly relates to trying to erase trans people.

In another scary development, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week ruled that transgender students don’t have the right to use the restroom that matches their preferred gender identity. The divided 7-4 ruling probably sets up the issue for a U.S. Supreme Court case and affects students in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.

“The ruling has wide-reaching implications in the 11th Circuit’s tristate jurisdiction, as the decision broadly found that ‘separating school bathrooms based on biological sex passes constitutional muster’ in public schools,” as the Miami New Times reported.

Finally, the state of Florida is now investigating a drag queen performance that was allegedly attended by children. The probe by the state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation centers on the venue that hosted the show. CBS News reported that the Broward Center for the Performing Arts said in a statement, “Drag Queen Christmas ... was limited to patrons 18 years or older, unless accompanied by a parent.”

This is an aggressive posture on the part of the Sunshine State, similar to how it went after The Walt Disney Company last year for its opposition to the “Don’t Say Gay” law – not only going after the drag show but also trying to shut down the venue that hosted it. It sends a chilling message to other venues, not only in Florida but other red states, which, of course, is exactly what conservatives want.

It’s just another example of the right-wing arguing that drag is obscene, has a sexual component to it, and is bad for kids. This harkens back to the old trope about LGBTQs being “deviants” who must be stopped.

Coordinated effort

But here’s the thing. If men and women are defined a certain way and it’s OK to segregate people out of certain environments, there is no telling where this will end. If governments find drag to be offensive and find trans women to be men and trans men to be women then are trans people, in their eyes, crossdressers? They just don’t want to define away trans people, they want to obliterate trans people and basically punish anybody who supports trans people.

What we’re seeing is a coordinated effort to legally define who trans people are and some of these efforts would require keeping track of trans people too. That’s sort of buried in the Women’s Bill of Rights, as point nine states, “Any public school or school district and any federal/state/local agency, department, or office that collects vital statistics for the purpose of complying with anti-discrimination laws or for the purpose of gathering accurate public health, crime, economic, or other data shall identify each individual who is part of the collected data set as either male or female at birth.”

If the federal government were to do that, it doesn’t matter what California says or how the Golden State defines people.

Here’s the reality: if DeSantis is elected president, everything we see the state of Florida doing would be a blueprint for a DeSantis administration. Right now, he’s the most popular GOP leader mentioned for president. He’s petty, vindictive, and a bully. Donald Trump was a grifter – in it for himself and his family. DeSantis is efficient, organized, and has an agenda. That agenda involves erasing trans people for political gain.

Leading with humanity: Putting the ‘H’

by Griffin Graham

When I think of my life story and the series of events that brought me to where I am today, two words come to mind: adversity and resilience. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York in an impoverished and abusive home environment and in a community where I witnessed devastating trauma. My firsthand experiences with disenfranchisement and difficult life lessons helped me develop a great sense of empathy and inspired a passion for serving.

Rather than be a victim of my circumstances, I used these challenging times as a call to make positive change in the lives of others. I was tired of seeing detrimental suffering taking a toll on people, so I made a commitment to uplift, inspire, enlighten, and support people and communities in need. My story demonstrates that with resilience, people can rise above life’s challenges despite extreme adversity.

In 2016, I founded Community Nest Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles, and today serve as its co-founder and president. The organization honors the legacy of my brother, Allen Graham, who was prejudiced for identifying with the LGBTQ+ community and was a victim of hateful violence at the tender age of 16 years old. Initially, Community Nest Foundation was actualized to provide support to persons who identify as LGBTQ+ and has grown to be equally dedicated to the betterment

of all disenfranchised individuals and communities at large – to the benefit of all humanity.

When people learn I am in the LGBTQ+ space, I am often asked how I identify. Why does it matter what gender we identify as or what our sexual orientation is? We should be focused on the betterment of humanity as a whole, regardless of sexuality, race, color, or any other forms of identification.

I founded Community Nest Foundation, or CNF, with the vision to culminate a society in which everyone is treated with fairness, equality, and respect; a place where individuals can reach their full potential and be able to count on one another to advance forward in life. At CNF, we believe that there will never be equality unless there is an overall focus on uplifting humanity.

By working collaboratively with other nonprofits in the community who vow to provide support and resources to disenfranchised individuals, we hope to put the humanity, or the “H,” back into “LGBTQ+(H).” When you lead with humanity and fight to foster long-lasting relationships, you look at the issues these communities face in a new light, come together with a shared goal, and truly make a difference in your community.

To date, we’ve supported our friends at the Los Angeles LGBT Center and have also worked with Lunch On Me, an LA-Based nonprofit that provides meals to the homeless community. We’ve also collaborated with Helio, whose educational toys were provided to children at CNF’s Engage the Vision event at Martin Luther King Elementary School in Los Angeles.

This past Thanksgiving, we partnered with Los Angeles Mission to hand out 2,000 pairs of leather shoes and socks

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

Washington Blade

Griffin Graham

Courtesy Griffin Graham

On board prez, gay SF Supervisor-elect Engardio is undecided

by Matthew S. Bajko

G ay San Francisco District 4

Supervisor-elect Joel Engardio will face his first test as a new member of the Board of Supervisors shortly after he takes his organizational oath of office Monday, January 9, when he casts a vote for president of the city’s governing body.

As of Tuesday, he remained undecided on which of his colleagues to support. Speaking to the Bay Area Reporter in mid-December, Engardio said he planned to weigh all the options as for who wants to be board president and how they fit in with his own priorities as the supervisor representing the Sunset district.

“We have plenty of time to see where the winds blow on that one,” Engardio said.

It is expected that the first vote will come down to being between District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton , the current board president, and gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman . Both easily won election to second and final four-year terms in November.

While Mandelman’s name had been floated three years ago as a possible contender for board president, Walton emerged as the consensus candidate and was the only person to be nominated when the 11 supervisors met virtually on January 8, 2021. He is the first Black man to serve in the role.

There hasn’t been an LGBTQ president of the board since 2002, when former gay District 9 Supervisor Tom Ammiano passed on the gavel in early January of that year. The only other out member of the board to serve as president was the late gay supervisor Harry Britt, who was elected to the powerful position in 1989 and served through early January 1991.

Walton’s tenure as board president coincided with the ongoing COVID pandemic and surprisingly robust city coffers despite the impacts of the global health crisis. But he also faced criticism last summer for allegedly haranguing with a racist slur a sheriff’s deputy guarding an entrance to City Hall, and he has had a tense relationship with Mayor London Breed the past two years.

Able to vote for himself to be board president again, Walton has yet to lock up the six votes he needs to clinch a second two-year term in the position, according to several sources. It is believed he is short by at least two votes.

Walton didn’t respond to the B.A.R.’s request for comment by the paper’s print deadline Wednesday morning.

Mandelman also has yet to lock up the six votes he would need to become supervisor. It is assumed he has three votes secured ahead of Monday’s board meeting, set to begin at 10:30 a.m. inside the board chambers.

“It’s certainly something I would be open to,” Mandelman told the B.A.R. in terms of serving as board president. “The city is facing big challenges. Trying to bring the mayor and supervisors together to address the challenges would be something I would be interested in.”

But Mandelman acknowledged,

“I think there is a lot of support for the current president to continue. I think it remains unresolved, that is where this is.”

Engardio did tell the B.A.R. he is “open” to supporting Mandelman for board president.

“He has demonstrated good leadership on issues I care about,” said Engardio, pointing to his legislative work on easing the city’s zoning for new housing and trying to make it easier to use conservatorships to get unhoused individuals with mental health and addiction issues into treatment. “Generally, I agree with a lot of his public safety stances.”

Asked what he is most looking for in a board president, Engardio told the B.A.R. a unifying figure.

“It is important that a board president unify the board and be someone who transcends the socalled moderate/progressive divide,” said Engardio.

Both Engardio and Mandelman are considered to be in the moderate camp more aligned with Breed, along with District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani and gay District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey . Walton is in the progressive camp, along with Supervisors Connie Chan (District 1), Aaron Peskin (D3), Dean Preston (D5), and Hillary Ronen (D9).

At one time viewed as a moderate, District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí has grown closer with his progressive colleagues, as has District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar

It was Melgar, at the time a newly sworn in board member, who nominated Walton to be president two years ago. Both have also been floated over the last month as possible board president contenders, as has Chan.

Then there is Dorsey, appointed last year by Breed to fill a vacancy. He could emerge as a candidate for president, as he is seen as someone able to work closely and collegially with the mayor and his board colleagues at a time when the city is projecting steep budget deficits this year and next.

Dorsey told the B.A.R. he is planning to nominate Mandelman on Monday to be board president. He noted Mandelman was the first to endorse his bid for a full term last year and that he had backed Mandelman when he first ran for supervisor but lost his 2010 race.

“Rafael is someone knowledgeable

about the issues and temperamentally well-suited to being a board president. I think he would be excellent,” said Dorsey. “I have put myself out of play as a swing vote right out of the gate; that is who I am supporting. I haven’t entertained a scenario that doesn’t include Rafael Mandelman being president of the Board of Supervisors.”

The board presidency vote is sure to be a focal point of chatter and gossip at this weekend’s community swearing in ceremonies for the winners of the even-numbered supervisor districts in last year’s election.

Walton is hosting his at 11 a.m. Friday, January 6, at the new Southeast Community Center located at 1550 Evans Avenue. He has invited former mayors Willie Brown and Art Agnos, along with his district’s former supervisor, Sophie Maxwell, as his special guests.

Mandelman will take his oath Friday at 4 p.m. at LGBTQ senior services provider Openhouse’s campus on Laguna Street. Engardio is hosting an RSVP-required affair Saturday at the Irish Cultural Center, due to the limited space of the venue.

Gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), a former District 8 supervisor, will administer the oath to Mandelman. He will also speak at Engardio’s event, where former District 4 supervisor Carmen Chu, now the city administrator, will administer the oath.

Dorsey and Stefani are both hosting events at 11 a.m. Sunday. He will return to Delancey Street, where he was initially sworn in last year as the appointed supervisor, and has asked Delancey Street Foundation cofounder, President and CEO Mimi Silbert to administer his oath. Due to expected rain, Stefani moved her event from Francisco Park to City Hall and has asked California state Treasurer Fiona Ma to swear her in.

New year brings staff changes

The start of 2023 is also ushering in staff changes in the offices of two city leaders and at statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization Equality California. Longtime EQCA spokesperson Samuel Garrett-Pate, currently managing director of external affairs, is leaving to become vice president at J&Z Strategies, while Tami Martin stepped down last month as EQCA’s legislative director and is now serving in the same position for the state Assembly.

Drew Hammill, longtime spokesperson for former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), is leaving her D.C. office, where he has been serving as her deputy chief of staff. As he told Roll Call, his immediate next plan is to catch up on sleep after working for Pelosi the last 16 years.

And stepping down Friday as Wiener’s communications director is Catie Stewart, who is opening up her own communications consultancy firm focused on the Legislature. Succeeding her at Wiener’s office is Erik Mebust, who had been deputy national press secretary at Climate Power, which focuses on addressing climate change. t

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Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion, will return Monday, January 9. Keep abreast of the latest LGBTQ political news by following the Political Notebook on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/politicalnotes.

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San Francisco Supervisorelect Joel Engardio has not decided whom to support for board president at the body’s organizational meeting Monday, January 9.

Courtesy Joel Engardio

LGBTQ rights at the center of tug-o-war globally in 2022

by Heather Cassell

L GBTQ people around the world faced challenges with ongoing attacks and groundbreaking wins in an action-packed 2022.

Gunmen struck fear in the heart of queer communities in Europe with mass shootings at popular gay bars in the capital cities of Norway and Slovakia.

Nine months into the Russian war in Ukraine, openDemocracy reported Russian soldiers targeted LGBTQ people in occupied territories. Ukrainian LGBTQ soldiers took up arms and wore unicorn badges on their uniforms, fighting against the Russian soldiers while support came from LGBTQ Ukrainians and allies abroad.

Russia and Uganda stripped the countries’ leading LGBTQ organizations – the Sphere Foundation, the parent organization of the Russian LGBT Network, and Sexual Minorities Uganda – of their legal recognition as registered organizations in April and August, respectively. By the end of the year, Russian President Vladimir Putin criminalized all public expression of sexual orientation and gender identity, extending the 2013 Anti-Homosexual Propaganda law from minors to adults. The new law also includes gender identity and expression.

Sports entered the global political arena. Russia imprisoned WNBA star Brittney Griner for 10 months before she was freed. Qatar came under fire leading up to the World Cup for its poor human rights record, especially its suppression of LGBTQ Qataris. Queer and ally soccer fans questioned if

they would be safe at the games in Qatar and San Francisco-based gay Qatari activist Dr. Nasser Mohamed came out to bring attention to LGBTQ Qataris in the Middle Eastern country.

Russia’s top tennis star Daria Kasatkina came out as a lesbian in July.

Some victories

Despite the challenges that made headlines in 2022, the year also brought the LGBTQ community some historical moments and wins.

The U.S. signaled its commitment to LGBTQ people around the world with the passage of the Global Respect Act by the House of Representatives. The bill, how -

ever, stalled and spent 2022 in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It would need to be reintroduced in the new Congress.

In July, the European Commission took Hungary to the European Court of Human Rights for its passage of anti-LGBTQ laws in 2020 and 2021. As the court reviews the case, Hungary’s right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban remains defiant. On December 21, he called for the dissolution of the European Parliament following reports of corruption, reported Radio Free Europe.

An Australian Special Commission of Inquiry began landmark hearings in November reviewing four decades – 1970 to 2010 – of cases of suspected hate crimes

against gay men and transgender people in New South Wales in Sydney. Believed to be the first hearing of its kind in the world, the inquiry heard from LGBTQ experts and victims of hate crimes. The inquiry’s report is expected in June.

South Korea’s high court issued a groundbreaking decision overturning a military court’s conviction of two gay soldiers caught having sex off base.

On November 11, Peru officially apologized to Azul Rojas Marín, a transgender woman who was raped and beaten by a group of police officers in 2008, reported the Washington Blade. The apology was compelled by a 2020 Inter-American Court on Human Rights ruling.

IACHR called upon states in the Americas to protect lesbians from all forms of attempts to change their sexual orientation and expression in April.

Queer scientists Carolyn Bertozzi of the U.S. and Svante Pääbo of Sweden were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2022. Bertozzi won in chemistry while Pääbo received it in physiology.

Hate crimes

Hate crimes against the LGBTQ ticked upward in 2022. Gay bar shootings around the world made the biggest headlines last year. They weren’t the only assaults on LGBTQ activists and the community.

By November, Transgender Europe reported that 327 transgender people were killed globally in 2022. Notable killings of gay men and lesbians also happened in 2022.

Azerbaijani journalist Avaz Shikhmammadov, 24, was slain in February and Palestinian Ahmad Hacham Hamdi Abu Marakhia, 25, was killed in October.

Shikhmammadov’s cousin, Amrulla Gulaliyev, 24, was sentenced to nine years and six months in prison for his murder in August, angering Azerbaijani LGBTQ activists. Authorities arrested Palestinian Abu Murkhiyeh on suspicion of Marakhia’s killing. Police did not release a motive or the relationship between the two men.

Lesbians were also victims of violence and two were sentenced to death in 2022. Mexican lesbian newlyweds, Nohemi Medina Martinez and Tania Montes Hernandez, who was also known as Yulisa Ramirez on social media, were killed in Juarez, a U.S.Mexico border city, on January 15. Authorities arrested David R., 24, and Jacqueline Isela C.R., 25, on January 24. Authorities only identified the suspects by their first names and last initials.

Kenyan nonbinary lesbian Sheila Adhiambo Lumumba, 25, allegedly was gang-raped and killed April 27, which drew a global outcry for justice. By the end of 2022, it was unclear if authorities had identified suspects.

The United Nations called out Iran to stop executing LGBTQ people after the Middle Eastern country sentenced two lesbian Iranian activists to death in September.

Decriminalization

High courts in Antigua and Barbuda (July), St. Kitts and Nevis (August), Singapore (November), and Barbados (December) decriminalized homosexuality, determining the British colonial-era laws were unconstitutional.

Marriage equality

October saw one of the most beautiful same-sex weddings happen in 2022. Former beauty queens Fabiola Valentín of Puerto Rico and Mariana Varela of Argentina tied the knot, announcing the news on Instagram October 28. Same-sex marriage is legal in both Argentina and Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory.

Same-sex marriage became legal in all 32 states in Mexico in 2022. The feat came 13 years after Mexico City first legalized marriage equality in 2009 and Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled bans on same-sex relationships unconstitutional in 2015.

Courts in Andorra (March) and Slovenia (July) ruled bans

Mariana Varela and Fabiola Valentin shared a kiss on their Instagram post announcing their marriage.

Ukrainian soldiers squat during a patrol in a recently retaken village north of Kharkiv in Ukraine on May 15.

Mstyslav Chernov/AP file

on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Andorra also allowed transgender people to self-identify their gender identity. Slovenia is the first Central European and post-communist country to legalize same-sex marriage. The country also granted same-sex adoption rights.

More than two-thirds of Cubans voted “yes” for same-sex marriage and adoption rights in the Caribbean country’s new Family Code in a September referendum. Cuba was the fourth country in the world to grant same-sex marriage through a referendum rather than through the courts. Ireland (2015), Australia (2018), and Switzerland (2021) previously voted for marriage equality.

Liechtenstein’s Constitutional Court and legislature granted adoption rights to same-sex couples while lawmakers voted 23-2 to introduce a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in the small Alpine country in September. The bill is anticipated to be introduced sometime in the spring of 2023.

While there were big and small strides for marriage equality around the world in 2022, in March, the United Kingdom’s Privy Court upheld the British Overseas Territories Bermuda and the Cayman Islands’ bans on same-sex marriage.

Singapore also banned samesex marriage in its constitution at the same time the country decriminalized homosexuality in December.

In 2023, Japan and Thailand will continue their countries’ race to become Asia’s second country to usher in marriage equality. The Asian countries have new competition with India entering the race in December, reported Voice of America.

Japan suffered a setback when a Tokyo court ruled the East Asian country’s ban on same-sex marriage was constitutional November 30, agreeing with an Osaka court ruling in June. Last year, a Sapporo court ruled the ban was unconstitutional. However, the court in Japan’s capital city ruled that not protecting same-sex couples was also unconstitutional. Tokyo started issuing partnership certificates November 1.

Two weeks after the shooting at a gay bar in the country’s capital, Bratislava, Slovakian lawmakers voted against allowing same-sex couples to legally register their relationships October 24. The bill granted fewer rights than civil unions and marriage.

Competing same-sex marriage and civil union and opposition bills in the Czech Republic’s and

Thailand’s respective parliaments will roll over into 2023.

Thailand has two bills that would legalize same-sex marriage and another, the Civil Partnerships Bill, that would grant some rights of marriage to same-sex couples. The bills are currently in committee. It is uncertain if Thailand’s Parliament will vote on any of the bills before it is dissolved ahead of the country’s elections in May.

The Czech Republic’s lower house of parliament approved the same-sex marriage bill introduced in 2018 in April 2022. The bill will move to the upper house of parliament. Czech President Miloš Zeman vowed in June to veto the same-sex marriage bill if it came to his desk. A constitutional amendment limiting marriage to a union between a man and a woman was

introduced in August. The Czech Republic legalized civil unions in 2006.

Ukrainian same-sex couples found unlikely support due to the Russian invasion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded positively to a petition calling for the introduction of marriage equality. Ukraine is attempting to fast-track its membership in the European Union. He saw the need but opted to propose a civil partnership law. The law wasn’t introduced by the end of the year. Ukrainian lawmakers could take it up sometime in 2023.

Georgia and Moldova also applied for E.U. membership, signaling increased LGBTQ rights on the horizon in Europe. One of the requirements to enter the E.U. is to improve human rights records, including LGBTQ rights.

Conversion therapy

At the beginning of 2022, two reports found so-called conversion therapy was thriving online despite recent progress made with various bans made by countries, regions, and cities around the world.

In February 2022, New Zealand and Israel banned conversion therapy for all ages.

The U.K. dropped plans to ban conversion therapy in March, then did an about-face a month later. However, U.K. lawmakers decided to only ban the practice for lesbian and gay people. In November, MPs called on the U.K. government to stop stalling and ban the practice, reported Gay Times.

By the year’s end, Western Australia made moves to ban the practice.

Transgender and gender-variant issues

Spain and Scotland gave hope to the world’s transgender community at the end of the year, passing gender-affirming bills on the same day, December 22.

Spain’s lower house of Parliament passed a bill allowing anyone older than 16 years of age to legally change their gender without medical supervision. Minors aged 14 to 16 years will need parental or guardian supervision, and those 12 and 13 years of age will need a judge’s approval, reported Gay City News.

The Scottish Parliament passed legislation allowing transgender people to legally self-determine their gender and making it easier to update their legal documents without medical approval. It is a first for the U.K., which has been embattled in gender wars in the last two years. t

Got international LGBTQ news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at WhatsApp/Signal: 415517-7239, or oitwnews@gmail.com.

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Olympian Russian tennis star Daria Kasatkina, left, with her girlfriend, figure skater Natalia Zabiiako, posted on Instagram after she came out during an exclusive interview with Russian vlogger Vitya Kravchenko that premiered on YouTube July 18.

Courtesy Instagram

Evans also worked for the California State Bar and as a special assistant to former state attorney general Xavier Becerra. Newsom hired her as his deputy legal affairs secretary for criminal justice at the start of his first term in 2019.

Accomplishments

Among her proudest accomplishments is her role in crafting and implementing Newsom’s 2019 death penalty moratorium, which she noted has been upheld by the courts. It also repealed the state’s lethal injection regulations and dismantled the state’s death chambers.

“Since California has the largest death row in the western hemisphere, the moratorium has had a significant ripple effect. It has provided a justification for prosecutors to take death off of the table in pending cases and, more notably, has inspired several elected district attorneys to announce that they no longer plan to seek the death penalty and will work to resentence individuals with existing death sentences,” noted Evans. “The moratorium is proof that the justice system is able to hold people who commit serious crimes accountable without using an irreversible sanction that has been rejected by most countries across the globe.”

Evans went on to be Newsom’s chief deputy legal affairs secretary until her gubernatorial appointment in 2021 to fill a vacancy on the East Bay trial court. Her time on the local bench led Evans to be named the Alameda County Judge of the Year for 2022 by the Alameda-Contra Costa Trial Lawyers Association.

Last year, Evans also received the Stanford Pride Trailblazer Award, given out by the South Bay university’s LGBTQ group for outstanding contributions during a legal career. In their letter supporting Evans’ confirmation as a supreme court associate justice, the leaders of diverse legal associations in six counties

Studies on San Francisco’s criminal justice system have raised concerns that people of color, particularly Black incarcerated individuals, face discriminatory treatment and longer stays in county jail. A report by the San Francisco Adult Probation Department –the Community Corrections Partnership Plan of 2021-2022 – found, for example, that 45% of people incarcerated in June 2021 were Black and 22% were Latinx. Blacks and Latinx people make up 5.1% and 15.2% of the city’s population, respectively. Whites, who comprise almost 45% of the population, made up for only 22% of the city’s jail population. Asians, at 34.3% of San Franciscans, accounted for 7% of the jail population.

“San Francisco’s jail population was also characterized by racial disparities,

with the per capita incarceration rate of Black people 17 times that of white people,” according to the Safety and Justice Challenge report, issued by the McArthur Foundation earlier this year, “and young men of color also had significantly longer stays in jail compared to white people.”

Part of the system

It’s statistics like these that have convinced Tullock the best way to overcome the challenges of the racial disparities in the city’s criminal justice system is to be part of the system by taking on a role that allows her to directly address the issue. The problem is too often summed up by those who look at the issues from a theoretical perspective, Tullock said.

“What gets overlooked too much is, if I’m directly impacted by something, you need to make a seat for me to help inform where we go,” she said.

from across California contended she would assure all Californians have equal access to justice and serve as a role model for those who’ve felt slighted by the judicial system.

“As a brilliant, Black, gay, woman who has excelled despite adversity beginning in childhood, Judge Evans is someone literally anyone can look to, see something of themselves in her, and greatly admire,” wrote the leaders of the Orange County, Sacramento, Central Valley, Merced County, Kern County, and Yolo County Unity Bars. “Her confirmation will demonstrate to our next generation of leaders that one does not need to grow up with

Tullock calls herself an infiltrator, and it’s a position that, she said, has garnered her a great deal of support from her community. In a field – and a position – that has long been dominated by whites and yet has had a greater impact on people of color, probation provides an opportunity to help keep people of color, as well as others, out of jail. And a big part of that is bringing in people who have experienced the system, who know it, and who have worked their way successfully through it.

Tullock said she hears from people who offer her their prayers, flowers, and words of support. People tell her, “We’re not going to let you fail,” she said.

“The change that people want to see is not complete elimination, it’s ‘treat me like a human being.’ Deliver something to me that I help to inform. That’s what the community wants,” Tullock said.

The Adult Probation Department oversees approximately 6,000 clients on court-ordered supervision, diversion programs, and post-release community supervision. It provides court services, supervision and a large portfolio of reentry services, housing, and support for all currently and formerly justice involved individuals. The department also supports 50 treatment programs and 18 housing programs that are managed by community partners through the Community Assessment and Services Center.

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Much of Tullock’s appreciation for the potential of probation stems from her own experiences as a young woman. A story she frequently shares recalls her less-than-stellar high school career back in Hollywood.

“It’s hard to be in Hollywood and do well in school,” she said.

Bored, she did well in classes she enjoyed – history, for example – but couldn’t be bothered with the rest.

When her high school informed her she wouldn’t be able to pass because she’d had too many absences between ninth and 10th grades, her father – a Panamanian immigrant – was furious. Tullock, however, tried to brush it off as no big deal.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” he asked her. “You’re not going to school!”

A neighbor sees potential

Despite those entreaties from her family, Tullock dropped out in 10th grade. A neighbor who was her friend’s mother, however, wouldn’t let the matter drop, particularly as her own child was on the same path. This also marked Tullock’s first encounter with a

all the traditional advantages to succeed and be of great service to one’s community.”

Evans embodies “the American Dream of having the opportunity to advance as far as one’s talent and hard work will take them,” the Unity Bars leaders added. “Her life story proves that dream is alive and well, even if inequities in our society make that dream more accessible to some and not others.”

Tony Hoang, a gay man who is executive director of the statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization Equality California, echoed that contention in his own letter supporting Evans’ confirmation.

“Beyond her legal qualifications and stellar professional reputation is Judge Evans’ lived experience as a Black lesbian woman raised in public housing and what her service on the bench would mean to our state,” wrote Hoang.

Throughout her career Evans has served on the boards of a number of LGBTQ judicial groups and other organizations that fight for LGBTQ rights. Among them were the Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom, the local LGBTQ bar association; DOJ Pride, the LGBT employee association of the U.S. Department of Justice; the ACLU; and the National Center for Lesbian Rights. She also belonged to the International Association of LGBTQ Judges and Equal Rights Advocates, on whose

probation officer, her friend’s PO.

“One day his probation officer came and was just this horrid person; it was horrible,” said Tullock. “And I never thought, years later, I would be a probation officer.”

Nonetheless, her friend’s mother persisted in challenging her son and Tullock to apply themselves.

“You guys need to be doing something,” she told the kids. An immigrant herself, she had come to California from Mexico, managed to get a college education, and ended up working in a university. Tullock, convinced by her friend’s mother, eventually went back to school and got her equivalency degree.

The next step came when her friend’s mother typed up an application for Tullock for a clerk position at the university. She was hardly enthusiastic about the potential job, recalled Tullock.

“I didn’t want to start going to work,” Tullock said with an exaggerated sigh, “but I did, gratefully, because of her.”

All the while, it wasn’t as if others weren’t encouraging Tullock to get back to school. But, as Tullock said, “You never know who it is who’s going to connect with you – their approach, or just something about it. And because of her, I got this job at the university.”

It was “some low-level clerk job,” Tullock remembered. “I think it was, like, answering phones.”

But university employees, as a perk, were eligible to enroll in classes. She began taking courses in subjects that interested her and, with a promotion to another position, began working in admissions. She kept going, Tullock said, with “things just building and building and building,” until she found herself where she is now.

“I don’t live in ‘I dropped out of school in the 10th grade.’ I’m not 20,” Tullock said. “Having to reflect so much, I do see how I’ve always carried that story with me, that one who wasn’t going to let me go, who saw something really smart in me.”

As it happens, Tullock’s friend ended up in prison, and Tullock used to take his mother to visit him there. But when he got out, he learned coding, she said, “right at the point when it was really booming, and he ended up doing really, really well.”

That experience has shaped how Tullock sees probation, not as a sentence but an opportunity.

“At Probation, we have hired people who have been to prison, who have had substance abuse issues, that have that

board Evans also once served.

The breadth of her professional background, and the experience she gained from her time on the local court, have made her uniquely qualified, argued Evans, to now preside on one of the most closely watched state supreme courts in the country.

“In working to reform troubled institutions, my work has taken me from small, rural jails in the heart of Appalachia, to large women’s prisons, to metropolitan police departments, to meetings with FBI agents and the Attorney General of the United States,” noted Evans. “I am equally comfortable interacting with pro se litigants, diverse community members, youth, government officials, and attorneys as I am in interacting with police officers, people in prison, crime survivors, or the victims of alleged unconstitutional conduct.”

As a member of the supreme court, Evans said she relishes having the opportunity not only “to play a role in helping to decide important questions of law and help ensure the orderly development of law in California,” but also in assisting with “efforts to improve the justice system” in the state.

“When I left the bench, I would hope to be able to say that I played a meaningful role in improving the justice system and making it more accessible to all Californians,” wrote Evans. t

record and that balances so much for us,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons the programming we have challenges us! Bring it! We want to be impactful.”

Probation’s sole purpose, Tullock said, “is for people to not go to jail or prison.”

Both sides of the coin

All of Tullock’s predecessors have been white, except for one person, a Latino who served in the office for a short while, she said. While she speaks highly of all of them, particularly her immediate predecessor, Karen Fletcher, who encouraged Tullock to seek the job, and who retired in 2021 after holding the position for six years, Tullock understands how important it is for others like herself to see her in her current capacity.

“The outcry from the community, just seeing a face that looks like mine, sitting in this seat,” she said. “It’s the face and the perspective, the knowledge you bring, the sincerity you bring, the shared story that you bring. I share a story with a lot of people who have had interactions with law enforcement that haven’t been that great.”

Tullock sees both sides of the coin, she said. When the controversy over the presence of uniformed police in San Francisco’s annual Pride parade was raging last year, Tullock spoke in favor of police participation. The changes that have taken place in the police department over the past decades came about because of the presence of LGBTQ people in the force, she said.

She doesn’t dismiss police officers’ affronts to the community, but she also sees the potential for change.

“By being in the department, by working it day to day, carrying out policies and challenging policies, they’re able to bring about huge changes by being part of the force, because of the work they’ve been doing,” said Tullock.

Banning them from marching in the parade in uniform, she said, denigrates that work.

“It takes a lot of guts to stand as you are,” said Tullock.

And that, in itself, is a victory, she contends. While San Francisco’s incarceration statistics might seem depressing to people with no experience in the criminal justice system, Tullock sees successes.

“What gets overlooked is that incredible opportunity for probation to be that balance that people want. My department’s success is that, when someone completes their probation, they go on their way,” she said. t

New California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, center, is sworn in by Governor Gavin Newsom January 2.

Courtesy CA Courts Newsroom

What we have are two distinct models – California and Florida. The Golden State is open, accepting, diverse, and strongly supports LGBTQ rights. Florida wants to shut down debate about science, quash conversations about LGBTQ people, and rewrite history.

One of the problems with antitrans bills is that they broadly demonize trans people and their families in those red states, especially trans youth. California took a step in trying to combat that last year with Senate

Bill 107, authored by gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco). Signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, SB 107 went into effect January 1. As we reported last week, it is now California policy to reject any out-of-state court judgments removing trans kids from their parents’ custody because they allowed them to receive genderaffirming health care. State health officials will not be allowed to comply with subpoenas seeking health records and any information related to such criminal cases, and public safety officers must make out-of-state criminal arrest warrants for such parents their lowest priority.

Working together to serve others brings about more change and more impact.

Wiener introduced the legislation due to state governments, such as in Alabama, Texas, and Idaho, adopting laws that call for prosecuting parents who allow their trans children to have gender-affirming care. Families in the Lone Star State have already found themselves being investigated by state agencies and facing the possibility of being prosecuted and seeing their trans children placed in foster care.

In Alabama, parents and physicians face being imprisoned for up to 10 years for either allowing their trans kids or providing their trans patients gender-affirming care. Both laws have been put on hold by judges as LGBTQ

to the homeless community at the annual Thanksgiving Celebration. This holiday season, we gathered donations for the Los Angeles Mission Annual Christmas Street Outreach in the heart of skid row. Our collaboration with other nonprofits is what I envision as the future of nonprofit work.

Engardio

From page 4

Bay Area as she is dealing with some health issues, he explained. While she has embraced Hsu as her son-in-law, she did not attend their wedding.

“My mom’s religion doesn’t accept same-sex marriage. She loves Lionel and accepts us, but she drew the line at not attending our official wedding ceremony,” said Engardio.

His mom, who cleaned houses, and his grandmother, who taught piano lessons to make money, co-raised him. He credits his mother bringing him along to knock on people’s doors to proselytize about her newfound faith for teaching him how to doorknock later in life as a political candidate.

Engardio told the B.A.R. those early experiences “with slammed doors and people yelling” at him and his mom to get off their porch trained him well for the difficult work he chose as an adult as a journalist, civil rights advocate at the American Civil Liberties Union, and running for elected office. He ended up knocking on 14,000 doors while seeking the supervisor seat last year.

Seen as an underdog

Having lost three prior bids for the Board of Supervisors’ District 7 seat, Engardio found himself redistricted last year into District 4. With the former supervisor, Gordon Mar, up for reelection to a second term on the fall ballot, it offered Engardio a fourth chance to seek a supervisor seat.

Yet, his being white and running in a predominately Asian district against a sitting supervisor, Engardio was initially seen as an underdog in

If we all lead with intentional and impactful action with one main goal – serving humanity – the momentum will start to build. This momentum will lead to productivity and that’s when we’ll see results. My biggest advice for people wanting to make a difference is to seek opportunities to

the race. Then a second Asian candidate was disqualified after questions were raised about her not residing in the district, turning the contest into a two-way matchup between Mar, a progressive, and Engardio, a moderate.

Following his defeat in 2020, Engardio had continued to lay the groundwork for another supervisorial bid. He took on leadership roles in community groups focused on public safety and crime issues, which became a focal point in last year’s local races.

Engardio was also a vocal supporter of the successful recall campaigns last year against three of the city’s elected school board members and former district attorney Chesa Boudin. Those efforts paid off with voters in the more suburban neighborhoods on the city’s westside.

“My campaign activated and energized many residents who volunteered their skills and talents to fix San Francisco. This largely parentpowered effort is about ensuring our city is a safe and joyful place for everyone,” wrote Engardio in a celebratory email he sent to his supporters. “Our best San Francisco is a place where streets are safe from crime and safe for pedestrians and cyclists. Where we make room to house the families, workers, innovators, and artisans that define a city. Where we celebrate the joy already in San Francisco as we fix things.”

His victory means, for the first time in the city’s history, three gay men will be serving as supervisors at the same time. It also marks the first time in a decade that there will be a trio of LGBTQ supervisors on the board.

Engardio will serve alongside gay

make active change by serving humanity. If we all act with kindness and serve each other, life will ebb and flow with beautiful continuity.

If there’s anything I could do differently, I would have spent more time “watering my plants” – metaphorically speaking of course. This advice stems from a time I visited a friend who moved and upon visiting them I noticed there were three plants that

Supervisors Rafael Mandelman and Matt Dorsey, who are moderates like Engardio. They both won election to full four-year terms, Mandelman in District 8 and Dorsey in District 6, in November.

As the B.A.R.’s Political Notebook reports this week, Engardio has yet to come out publicly in support of Mandelman becoming the next board president. Prior to departing on his vacation, Engardio reached out to meet with, or talk by phone, with nine of his soon-to-be colleagues on the board, as he doesn’t know most of them well. (He didn’t speak with District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani since he has known her for some time.)

Working collaboratively

None brought up the board presidency election, said Engardio, adding that he is entering City Hall with a mindset to work collaboratively with his fellow supervisors.

“We need to get beyond this internal strife and focus on making the city better and making things in the city work better,” he said.

One issue he has already addressed via his social media is the future of the Great Highway, a main thoroughfare through his district that runs along Ocean Beach. The defeat of a ballot measure in November means a large stretch of the roadway will remain closed on weekends to serve as a pedestrian promenade but be opened to car traffic during the week.

“I didn’t want the weekend park to go away. It is absolutely reasonable to let people use it to commute on during the week and let it be a park on weekends,” said Engardio. “Now the future of the Great Highway is it being a permanent park. That is where things are headed. We have to acknowledge that and accept that and plan for it.”

Since the city reverted to electing supervisors by district in the early 2000s, there hasn’t been an LGBTQ supervisor from the city’s westside until now. As home prices there had remained more affordable than other parts of San Francisco, the last two decades have seen more LGBTQ people and couples move into that part of the city.

Among his four legislative aides Engardio has hired Jonathan Goldberg, who is gay and worked five years at San Francisco Public Works as a community programs manager.

“There are a lot of LGBTQ people who live in the Sunset, so I obviously will address LGBTQ issues both citywide and for actual residents of the Sunset,” said Engardio. “A lot of samesex couples live in my neighborhood in Lakeshore and throughout the Sunset. I met many while knocking on doors during the campaign.”

He recalled meeting a lesbian in

advocates challenge them in state and federal courts.

As Newsom noted in his signing letter for SB 107, the law signals that California stands “for parental choice” unlike those states that have attacked the rights of parents with trans children.

“We believe that no one should be prosecuted or persecuted for getting the care they need — including gender-affirming care,” wrote Newsom. “Parents know what’s best for their kids, and they should be able to make decisions around the health of their children without fear.”

The effort by lawmakers in red states to define “woman” are rooted

were beyond dead. The lesson is that if you notice something that needs attention, don’t wait. Now is the time to invest. If we see something that is dying or needs attention, we shouldn’t just pass by with indifference and not act. We don’t have any excuses. We can either help disenfranchised communities grow strong or we can watch them wither and become frail. I encourage you, put the labels aside

her early 80s in the Outer Sunset who answered her front door when he knocked and shared her experience of what it was like being a resident of the area for the past 50 years and seeing how it had changed for the better.

in their animus toward trans people. That’s why new laws like Wiener’s are so important. Aside from sending a powerful message, SB 107 is a beacon for trans kids and their families outside of California.

As we watch what happens across the country this year, LGBTQ folks should keep in mind that our allies are more important than ever. LGBTQ statewide and national organizations likely will have a lot of work to do combatting the misinformation and demonization of our community. We will need strong allies and we’ll need to use our loud voices to fight back against this tyranny. t

and look at uplifting all of humanity. Together, we can put the “H” into LGBTQ+(H). t

Griffin Graham, a straight ally, is the co-founder and president of Community Nest Foundation (https://www.cnflgbt.com/), which is based in Beverly Hills, California.

“I saw how happy she was at seeing an openly gay candidate for supervisor who was viable and she could vote for,” recalled Engardio. “And then I won.” t

City workers repair Path of Gold lights

in California as either a: (1) public accountant; (2) real estate broker; (3) attorney; or (4) property appraiser accredited by a nationally recognized organization, or certified by either the Office of Real Estate Appraiser or the State Board of Equalization.

For a full list of current or upcoming Boards, Commission s and Task Forces, please visit https://sfbos.org/vacancy-boards-commissions-task-forces The City and County of San Francisco encourages public outreach. Articles are translated into several

Acrew from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has been out since last month repairing the historic Path of Gold light fixtures, including this one on upper Market Street near 14th Street. As the Bay Area Reporter noted

in a recent article, a number of the distinctive light posts have not been working properly for months. After an inquiry from a reporter, a PUC spokesman had said the agency would work on fixing them in December and that work is continuing.

James LaCroce, Ph.D.

Lionel Hsu, left, and his husband, Joel Engardio, were married in 2015 in a ceremony officiated by state Senator Scott Wiener and then-District 4 supervisor Katy Tang.

Courtesy Joel Engardio

by Laura Moreno

Directed by Kasi Lemmons and written by Academy Award nominee Anthony McCarten, the film “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” strives to be a triumphant celebration of the very special person that was Whitney Houston. So many things about the film are wonderful, including a magnificent all-star cast, but ultimately it does not deliver.

With six Grammy Awards, sales of 170 million records, and a record-breaking seven consecutive #1 hit songs, Whitney Houston’s voice was definitively one of the best voices ever recorded in music history.

But Whitney Houston was much more than that. She was an authentic person, a devoted Christian full of love, regal charm, beauty, and complexity. As a teen, she was already a top model and one of the very first Black cover girls. Her first film (without a single acting lesson) was “The Bodyguard” (1992), another phenomenal success. Her image as the first Black all-American girl, America’s sweetheart, a modern update of a 1950s throwback, was crafted by the label, even if she felt, “That’s not me.”

Audiences cheer Whitney Houston’s soul-stirring performances in the theater as if they were live, even when the pop music itself is not that musically interesting. Whitney Houston’s voice simply captivates.

But fans are disappointed that a person of her stature deserved a bigger, better film than this, with a more beautiful lead actress, kind of a prerequisite. Honestly, the film could have simply strung together her YouTube performances and done better.

But the first real indication that “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” would disappoint, is the amount of screen time allotted to Whitney Houston’s producer, Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci) with his ’70s long-haired bald look. At one point, Da-

‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’

vis even upsets Houston (Naomi Ackie) by dishonoring his own rule never to meddle in artists’ personal lives. In retrospect, this kind of “help” very clearly did not help her.

The scene where Davis discovers Houston in the Sweetwater’s Club in New York City is, however, brilliant. And his line, “You smoking is like leaving a Stradivarius in the rain,” is memorable.

Ironically, Clive Davis came out as bisexual in his 2013 memoir, but the film makes no mention of it, even as it discloses his religion (Jewish) and university (Harvard Law School).

It feels less than honest to tout Houston’s one brief LGBTQ relationship as a teen while ignoring that many people in entertainment are LGBTQ. Whitney never felt compelled to come out since it really was not a part of her life anymore. I dare say, she probably counts as straight.

Today, Davis is Chief Creative Officer of Sony Music and a producer of this film. Davis personally recruited New Zealand native Anthony McCarten to write the film.

But straight screenwriter McCarten also wrote “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which, despite its accolades,

was criticized by many gay fans and reviewers for its gloomy revisionism of Freddie Mercury’s life. He does the same in Houston’s story. McCarten is a great craftsman, but by his own admission, is not a musical guy. He said he doesn’t get “breaking out into song,” as he puts it, as if the very concept were slightly bonkers. He very clearly was not the right person to write this film.

But some scenes really sing, like Houston’s historic singing of the National Anthem at the Super Bowl. Whitney herself insisted that the Florida Orchestra play the anthem slowly and in 4/4 time, even though the Star-Spangled Banner is in 3/4 time, like a waltz. Changing the meter of the song makes it sound infinitely stronger, more firmfooted. That performance, at the start of the first Gulf War, really united and galvanized a reluctant public behind the war effort in a way that politicians can only dream about.

Whitney & Robyn

For years, the tabloids spurred rumors of Houston being in a relationship with her best friend Robyn Crawford (played by Nafessa Wil-

liams). At the time, the topic was scarcely on people’s radar, raising the question of whether the record company already knew, and fed the story to the press. It would not be the first time The Network (the nickname of the particular mafia that firmly controlled the recording industry and its venues in the ’60s and ’70s, and perhaps still does) illegally spied on their artists in this country.

The film leads us to believe the affair was ongoing, when actually their physical relationship lasted just one summer when they first met.

The film omits that when she got her record deal, Whitney gave Robyn a blue Bible and told her they would have to stop their physical relationship because it would make their path more difficult and if anyone found out, it would be used against them. In the Bible they wrote “Unconditional Love” and signed their names under it. The best friends were allegedly never physical again.

Furthermore, Crawford writes that at age 16, Houston told her how important their friendship was now so that later she would know she would

whelming acclaim at the 1990 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Marchetto has since performed his ever-evolving act on five continents, earning an Olivier Award nomination for one of his West End engagements in London. Taking the stage alone in a black bodysuit that leaves only his head, arms and shoulders exposed, he whips through his one-ply wardrobe at an exhausting pace.

The performance requires perfectly timed choreography and split-second shifts in facial expression; Marchetto’s stretchy, bubbling putty-like mug is among the show’s greatest delights.

Marchetto, who is gay and has performed at events including Manchester Pride and an Elton John-hosted AIDS benefit, says that his one-of-akind act is impossible to pigeonhole.

“There’s lip-syncing and it’s a kind of drag, but hard to compare to anything else. I have male and female characters. And children enjoy the show as much as adults.”

Then again, on a tour of Japan in the 1990s, Marchetto was asked to skip his Madonna costume because it was considered too risqué at the time.

by Jim Gladstone

Ennio Marchetto’s father was an espresso machine repairman. And though he didn’t take over the family business, Marchetto has built his own singular, highly caffeinated career on flat whites.

For more than 30 years he’s transformed huge sheets of blank paper into the cleverly drawn, precisely folded costumes that allow him to metamorphosize into more than 60 celebrity and historical characters over the course of his frantic hour-long show “Ennio! The Living Paper Cartoon,” which opens a month-long run at Club Fugazi in North Beach on January 10.

“I haven’t finished choosing all of the characters for San Francisco,” Marchetto told the Bay Area Reporter on a phone call last month from his home, near his native Venice, explaining that there were about 150 in his repertoire pre-pandemic. He’d recently been working on some new personae, including the body-positive pop star he refers to in charmingly accented English as “Leetzo.”

“Most of the costumes transform into two characters, some three,” said Marchetto, who feverishly lip-syncs in each character’s persona.

“There are usually jokes or connections to the transformations. Some are easy, like Leetzo [whose hit “About Damn Time” includes the refrain “I’m comin’ out tonight] who turns into Diana Ross singing “I’m Coming Out,” or when the Queen of England turns into Freddie Mercury from Queen.

Other shifts, he explained, are underpinned by a sophisticated European sensibility that may fly over some audience members’ heads.

“I do Lotte Lenya singing ‘Surabaya Johnny’ transform into Popeye.” Both the Kurt Weill character and the spinach-eating cartoon are sailors by trade.

“It’s a beautiful costume transformation,” said Marchetto, “But it may be difficult for some of the audience to totally understand. But I like that different people get different jokes in the show. It can appeal to old people and to young people. Cultivated people and stupid people!”

In any case, the gags are delivered so fast and

Marchetto,

Japanese culture also figures into one of the most common misperceptions of Marchetto’s act, which has been erroneously referred to as Human Origami.

“It is not at all origami!” he clarifies. “I do think that the Japanese culture appreciates paper crafts of all kinds. But this has nothing to do with origami.”

Over the course of his one-of-a-kind career, Marchetto has played the Bay Area three times, most recently in 2011 at the Napa Valley Opera House. During that visit he had a chance to attend a performance of Club Fugazi’s then-resident production, “Beach Blanket Babylon.”

“With all the different characters and jokes about popular culture I think I am very much in its spirit.”

“And San Francisco is a nice place to play for a month. Some of my friends from Italy will come for a visit and stay with me while I’m there.”t

‘Ennio! The Living Paper Cartoon,’ Jan. 10 – Feb. 5. $35-$69. Club Fugazi, 678 Green St. 415-273-0600. www.clubfugazisf.com

Naomi Ackie as Whitney Houston in ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’

Whitney Houston biopic’s ups and downs

furious that there’s no time to waste worrying over one’s cluelessness.

now 63, had already established himself as a comic cabaret performer in Italy when he began collaborating with Dutch designer Sosthen Hennakam on the deceptively simple paper transformations that he debuted to over-

Ennio Marchetto and some of his paper characters.

Ennio Marchetto at Club Fugazi Hello, Paper Dolly!

Embracing life to its fullest

by Brian Bromberger

Remakes of acknowledged classic films are a risky business. Remakes in English of foreign language films have been common through the decades, though in most cases they’re considered inferior to the source material. Gay South African director Oliver Hermanus (“Body”) and screenwriter Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro had their work cut out in their contemporary reinterpretation –not an English-language copy–of the 1952 revered Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” (Japanese for ‘To Live’). Hermanus and Ishiguro have met the challenge. While their “Living” (Sony Pictures Classics) won’t replace “Ikiru,” it’s a worthy successor with a universal uplifting message.

Relocating the original Tokyo setting to a gloomy 1953 London shattered by World War II, we’re introduced to Mr. Williams (Bill Nighy), staid rigid austere head of the Public Works Department populated by functionaries wearing gray pinstripe suits and bowler hats. This administration is an intransigent bureaucracy embroiled in red tape, shuffling papers and making sure a minimum amount of money is spent, including stonewalling a group of women who want to construct a small children’s playground on a dilapidated Blitz bomb site.

Williams receives a terminal cancer diagnosis, to which he responds with his typical stoic subdued demeanor, “Quite,” yet this death sentence compels him to take stock of his life.

A long-time widower, Williams is unable to tell his stifling son and shrew daughter-in-law his dire news, so he flees to a seaside resort where he meets a local decadent playwright (Tom Burke) who introduces him to a he-

Dance

know she could rely on her as they were touring the world together. And that’s exactly what happened.

As her creative director, Crawford was instrumental in putting together costumes, keeping the ever-vicious press in perspective, and helping Whitney Houston achieve success every step of the way. This is not in the film either.

But the film does give us a real sense of the immense joy of their extraordinary friendship. Fearlessly onscreen at times without makeup, British actress and BAFTA Award winner Naomi Ackie, and American actress-writer Nafessa Williams are superb in the

donist culture. He ultimately rejects it, though not before, in a sublime scene, he sings his mother’s favorite Scottish ballad, “The Rowan Tree,” at a pub.

Parable or satire?

Back in London, he meets his former employee Margaret (the delightful Aimee Lou Wood) who’s found a new career in restaurant management. Her vitality, warmth, and humor kindles a friendship that others misinterpret as a romance. After she reveals her nickname for him as Mr. Zombie, he’s inspired to return to work and –with the help of a new employee Peter Wakeling (Alex Sharp)– become a force of change to establish a legacy that will outlive him and provide meaning for his final days.

On one level, “Living” is a satire on the tedium of civil service and the reserved stiff-upper-lip, cold-blooded manner of the British (similar to Kurosawa’s parody of conformist Japanese culture and subversion of

role of best friends. Their chemistry onscreen feels real.

Nafessa Williams said that reading Robyn Crawford’s memoir was the only way she could prepare for the role, and it changed how she hears Whitney’s music now. “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” “We Almost Had It All” and other songs may be addressed to Robyn.

In the film “Whitney,” Houston recalls that as a teen she’d just been thinking she didn’t have any friends there at the new job “and then here comes Robyn with this beautiful, beautiful afro. She was tall and very statuesque and I was like, ‘Wow, man.’ She stood up for me. I remember thinking, I’ve known this person seems like all my life.”

the status quo) coupled with a rejection of bourgeois stability. But the movie primarily becomes a parable on death affirming life, learning to appreciate the time we’ve been given. It’s not the ‘Check every box off your Bucket List’ version of death, but a philosophy of making the most of every moment in the circumstances you find yourself.

This emphasis on death isn’t morbid and evokes a profound depth of emotion that’s missing from the recent “Spoiler Alert,” about a gay dying spouse.

“Living” argues what gives life meaning is what we do for other people. The loose source material for Kurosawa’s movie was Tolstoy’s novella, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” and its theme of embracing the present as

But Whitney’s family could not accept their friendship, even though everyone knew Robyn always kept Whitney’s interests in mind, and Robyn was the only one Whitney would listen to.

Robyn reports in her 2019 memoir, “A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston” that Whitney’s mother, Cissy Houston, gospel singer and background vocalist for Elvis, told Whitney it wasn’t natural for two women to be so close.

It seems this was a power struggle masquerading as homophobia. Years later, the family similarly rejected Bobbi Kristina’s love of her life Nick Gordon, just as they had rejected Robyn.

Missed Opportunity or Cover Up?

The film ignores the pressing questions of Houston’s death including allegations of murder. But it enters fraudulent territory with the penultimate scene of a tormented Whitney Houston, alone at the hotel, reaching for drugs. Omitted recollections state she was in good spirits at the hotel that night, talking by phone with Dionne Warwick and others. With this one scene, the film irresponsibly attempts to pin the blame on Whitney Houston herself for what happened to her, against the evidence.

This film was an opportunity to address earnest questions that won’t go away. And there are so many questions. Nevertheless, at the premiere, Clive Davis told Entertainment Tonight that the film answers all the questions.

What is the point of making a film that obfuscates what happened on Feb. 11, 2012 to abruptly end Houston’s vibrant life while Davis went on with his pre-Grammy party downstairs in the very same hotel?

Sony Music was caught raising prices on Houston’s music upon the news of her death, furthering the impression that they were not mourning their enormous loss at all, but responded to her death with cold calculation. They

a way of living life to its fullest, serves the same function for “Living.” Are we satisfied with the choices we’ve made in life? If not, can we overcome longing and regret, seize the day, persevering to make the necessary changes and transcend the inevitable obstacles thrown our way?

Actual selves

The other more pertinent theme to queer audiences is repression, about allowing your actual self to emerge and then live it out 24/7. With Ishiguro as scriptwriter, we can’t help but recall the Merchant-Ivory film of his iconic novel “Remains of the Day,” with a similar circumstance of the stoic English butler (Anthony Hopkins) so devoted to his duty, he suppresses any opportunity for a personal love life.

In “Living,” Williams grabs the opportunity to find himself and become the real person liberated from the dictates of work and society. It’s obvious Hermanus saw the connection with queer life in not being able to express who you are and love whom you love. Quashing one’s inhibitions and overthrowing social conventions, which epitomizes Williams, will resonate with LGBTQ audiences.

“Living” wouldn’t be as compelling without the genius of Bill Nighy as Williams, who gives the greatest performance of an already distinguished career. Nighy hails from theless-is-more school of acting, relying on understatement, facial expressions (especially downcast eye gazes), body language (i.e. stiff posture), and softspoken delivery of minimal dialogue. Every reaction, no matter how small, has great import and insight into his multi-layered dissection of this character. Silence is indeed golden here.

“Living” is a period piece, but similar to Merchant-Ivory films, its a meticulous production crew transports you back to a 1953 London as if you were personally experiencing its milieu, aided by Sandy Powell’s historically accurate costumes recreating a ’50s aesthetic. The film never seems remote or nostalgic and while “Ikiru,” shot in black-and-white, gave it a timeless feel, “Living’s” vivid colordrenched palette helps avoid any sense of melancholy and instead promotes an affirmation of life.

Finding joy and purpose in the time we’ve been given reverberates during this holiday season. You will be moved and awed by “Living,” because it profoundly echoes what it means to be human and to face one’s mortality.t

www.sonyclassics.com

even

The film plays into the drug use narrative that hounded Houston in the media, but remained unproven. A key takeaway of the film: any drug use at all, even prescription painkillers, is a ticking time bomb. If nothing else, drug use makes it far too easy for oth-

ers to come in and hijack the narrative. Many people agree with what Bobby Brown told US Weekly: “I really feel that if Robyn was accepted into Whitney’s life, Whitney would still be alive today.”t

‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ is playing at selected theaters through January 5. www.sonypictures.com

released an apology that insulted the intelligence of the public, stating the price hike was an “internal mistake due to an employee error.”

Bill Nighy as Williams in ‘Living’

Bill Nighy and Aimee Lou Wood in ‘Living’

Naomi Ackie as Whitney Houston singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl in ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’

Sony Pictures

Nafessa Williams and Naomi Ackie in ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’

Sony Pictures

Take in our vibrant California Coast exhibit and help us restore biodiversity for a thriving California—and planet. Because every visit supports our mission to regenerate the natural world.

Make a reservation at calacademy.org

‘Tis the Season for Science

Celebrate the season with falling snow, festive activities, and more!

Because of a song

by Heather Cassell

Music is one of the connecting forces for women in the Women’s Movement, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. Women’s music legend Holly Near called the music made by women musicians at the time a lifeline.

“Women were so desperate for this music,” said the 73-year-old lesbian singer-songwriter. “This was survival music. This was lifeline music.”

Recently, the Bay Area Reporter spoke with Near about why she created the archive devoted to the Oakland women of the Women’s Music Movement and its importance.

Oakland was a hotbed of women with drums, guitars, microphones, and lesbian-feminist willpower that made things happen. It drew women from all over the country to the “Sunny Side of the Bay” to make music in the 1970s and 1980s.

It is this burst of musical energy that

Near sought to capture in a new free online archive, “Because of a Song” that debuted November 30 at www. becauseofasong.com

“It was kind of like our own little Paris,” Near said in describing the Oakland scene at the time. Women came from all over and formed collectives and co-ops, shared rides to cultural events and protests, learned trades at school, and more to build community and their lives.

Quoting her friend and co-producer Tess Hoover, Near said, “’Lesbian feminist music may not have been why we came to Oakland, but it is why we stayed.’ It was a kind of glue that allowed women to come and be in a room –whether it was 30 women in a restaurant or 1,000 women in a concert hall– to look around and be surrounded by 99.9% women and probably 98% lesbians. That was an experience back then that no one had ever had before. It might be hard to

Help Wanted Freelance Reporters

The Bay Area Reporter is seeking freelance reporters to write about the diversity of the LGBTQ community –in news, arts, and sports.

For News, this includes local government, LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS nonprofits, LGBTQ community newsmakers, and other matters of interest.

For Arts, we are looking to increase coverage of local arts events and local nightlife, each with an LGBTQ focus.

The B.A.R. also has an opening for a twice-monthly freelance sports columnist. The ideal candidate would focus in part on news leading up to the 2023 Gay Games in Hong Kong. Other issues include the ongoing fights over trans inclusion in sports nationally, and other topics of interest.

Women and people of color and others are strongly encouraged to apply. The B.A.R. is an equal opportunity employer.

For News and the sports columnist freelancers, send a resume and links to previously published articles to Cynthia Laird, News Editor, at c.laird@ebar.com.

For Arts freelancers, send a resume and online links to previously published articles to Jim Provenzano, Arts and Nightlife Editor, at jim@ebar.com

imagine that now, but back then it was just a completely unique experience. It was very, very powerful and the music was a really big part of it.”

Near recalled that women’s music had a similar effect that feminist publishing did on the women’s movement. “Music was a way to articulate feminist and lesbian feminist politics in a nonrhetorical way.”

Oakland was an epicenter for the Women’s Music Movement, but it wasn’t the only place, Near acknowledged. The movement sprouted in many other cities around the world.

“There were people in Germany and in Denmark and in Canada, down in Australia and all over the place doing this, but this at least is a little window into it,” Near said. “If anybody wants to pick it up where I left off and add their own stories to it, that will be great.”

They can’t do it on the website itself, but they can leave a trail or post their stories and photos on Because of a Song’s Facebook group.

Leaving a trail

It all started with curiosity and a realization in 2019. Near was curious about her friends, Linda Tillery and Mary Watkins, two important San Francisco Bay Area women musicians based in Oakland.

Tillery formed the Grammy-nominated Cultural Heritage Choir and has sung and drummed with bigname bands like Huey Lewis and the News and Santana, who also have Bay Area roots.

Watkins’s compositions have influenced not only women’s music but multiple musical genres and crossed over into theater.

Near wanted to hear and capture their perspectives on the Women’s Music Movement that they were all a part of during the 1970s and 1980s.

She also realized that they were all getting older. Unaware of an impending pandemic in 2020 and her own second battle against cancer this year, she sat down with her friends and interviewed them.

Near didn’t know what she would do with the recordings. She just knew their stories needed to be recorded and saved.

“I just felt like I wanted to have a conversation with them about what it meant to be part of women’s music,” she said, “and in particular, ‘What did it mean to contribute to that while living in Oakland?’”

The conversations were so interesting that she ended up interviewing 23 women musicians from Oakland’s women’s music scene.

It was her nephew, Lucas NearVerbrugghe, who was working at an art gallery in Los Angeles at the time, who came up with the idea to create an online archive fashioned in the form of a gallery.

Near liked the idea and started enlisting her friends Susan Frazier, Hoover, and Kate Peterson, who became the core team that created the

online gallery. The project took shape and attracted an anonymous benefactor who financially backed what became, “Because of a Song.”

The result is a treasure trove of the Women’s Music Movement of the era.

It features more than 30 hours of filmed conversation and four short films featuring key figures Linda Tillery, Carolyn Brandy, Mary Watkins, and Melanie DeMore among many others. It also has a curated resource room, a listening room of more than 600 songs in six playlists, a captioned photo gallery of nearly 200 images, and more.

“I wish we had filmed more of ourselves in the early ’70s,” said Near. “I don’t know why we didn’t. There’s not a lot of great footage of early concerts.”

The movement was very much DYI. Near talked about starting her record label, Redwood Records, 50 years ago to release her first album, “Hang In There.” She, like others such as Olivia Records, realized traditional labels wouldn’t produce her music as they did Bob Dylan.

Similarly, Olivia Records was founded by Judy Dlugacz, Ginny Berson, Christian, Kate Winter, and Jennifer Woodul in Washington, D.C. to record and distribute women’s music.

“If you’re wearing blue jeans and a shirt, and your hair is long and you’re gravelly and whatever maybe you can get away with it, but we couldn’t,” she said about singing anti-war songs and other movement music. “We looked at each other and said, ‘We’ll do it ourselves.’ I don’t think they recognized this as being a powerful force. They had no idea that it actually was empowering women and changing people’s lives.”

Near offered an apt reflection: “I look back and I say the Labor Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement that GLBTQ Movement, there is not a movement that happens without song. People start singing when they’re scared.”

“Because of a Song” went live at a time following a resurgence of the Women’s Movement and two books, “An Army of Lovers” (2019) by Jamie Anderson, and “Olivia on the Record,” (2020) by Berson, document women’s music of the period

Said Near, now that “Because of a Song” is live, “I just want to enjoy people discovering it.”t

www.becauseofasong.com www.hollynear.com

Holly Near celebrates Oakland’s women’s music scene with new online archive

Composite photos on the archive website.

Holly Near

Sandy Morris

by Tim Pfaff

Sabrina Imbler’s new book, “How Far the Light Reaches,” has a conventional publisher, Little, Brown. But word has it that a major source of the book’s distribution is friends giving it to friends, as something singular and precious.

The title of this collection of 11 individual essays recognizes Imbler’s fascination with, and knowledge of, creatures of the deep seas. Though not exclusive of creatures from across the spectrum, including humans, their focus is on the inhabitants of the ocean floor, where they live if not always thrive in conditions no human could bear: the crushing weight of water a depth of hundreds of feet, temperatures colder than freezing in Fahrenheit, and darkness the result of being beyond, as the title suggests, regions where the light of the sun does not, cannot, reach, where photosynthesis is not Lord.

Readers who are acquainted with the David Attenborough features on “Life on Earth” or any of an array of other explorations by camera of the sea floor do not need to be told how fascinating these creatures whose essence eludes and often defies human understanding are. And Imbler adds to the cumulative knowledge with keen, observationderived accounts of these critters, most of which do not comport with our standard idea of fishes. Their writing in this vein is thoroughly professional but readily accessible to lay readers.

The human element

But what makes these essays narrative is Imbler’s agility in moving from consideration of scientific matters to reflections on their own personal past, and that of their forebears. Their own, accurate word for the result is “braided” narratives.

Most of these stories address the author’s coming out, twice– as a lesbian and then as trans. Their other preoccupation is with the deeper meaning of being bi-racial.

Imbler’s mother is Chinese and their father a US-native white man.

A Bay Area native, Imbler seems in regular if not constant peregrinations between the east and west coasts, with some stops in middle America on the way.

“There is no turning point, no clear moment when I started feeling good in my body,” they write. “I know when I started dating people who are not cis men, I learned to revel in queer bodies and the endless and inventive ways we create into ourselves.”

There is often startling candor in her accounts of dealing with boyfriends as well as girlfriends and eventually fellow queers with whom they can contemplate, if never quite realize, life partnership. The cis men they recall are in general treated with sympathy, the critical

Poetic Parton

by Gregg Shapiro

I f you ever doubted that Dolly Parton is truly worshipped and adored, you need look no further than “Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology” (Madville Publishing). What I mean is that if 54 emerging and established poets found it fit to write about Saint Dolly, the unofficial Patron Saint of Tennessee, there may be no greater seal of approval, other than, say, being a 2022 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Among the poets praising Parton in poetic form are Pulitzer Prize finalist Dorianne Laux and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Denise Duhamel, as well as the current Poet Laureate of Ohio, multiple National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship recipients, and two Lambda Literary Award recipients, among others.

In fact, there are nearly 30 LGBTQ+ poets (this poet included) in the anthology. Co-editor Dustin Brookshire was generous enough to make time to answer a few questions about “Let Me Say This” shortly before the book was published.

Gregg Shapiro: What was the first Dolly Parton song you recall hearing and when was that?

Dustin Brookshire: “Love Is Like a Butterfly,” when I was five. It’s a memory that is a bit fuzzy, but I recall sitting on the couch beside my mother watching Dolly on TV – she was sitting in a swing singing the song. This had to be a rerun of Dolly’s 1970s show, “Dolly, ” because she opened each episode singing the song. Later “9 to 5” enthralled me after I discovered my parents’ 45 of the song.

Did you realize, at the time, that Dolly would become a lifelong fascination?

High school is when I became a devout Dolly devotee. It makes sense when I think of how I struggled with my sexuality as a Southern Baptist in a conservative small north Georgia town. Dolly’s music spoke to me, but her attitude and philosophy on life really hit deep. Here is this famous person who is deeply religious, never shies away from her love of God and Jesus, and never judges others. In fact, she always speaks out about loving others and reiterating it isn’t her place to judge anyone on this planet.

line being between those who are abusive, in any way, and the rest. There’s no escaping the strange, self-styled comedy of “the first blowjob I gave.”

Throughout there is evidence that the author has learned the hard way all about transcending, not just surviving, life’s tougher trials and passages.

“When I first came out to my mother, they write poignantly, “she asked me if I thought I was a lesbian because so many men had been cruel to me. I knew when she said ‘cruel’ she meant boyfriends who had broken up with me, but instead I thought of these oth-

er men, and for a moment I wondered if she had a point.”

In the essay entitled “Hybrids,” they take discussion of hybrid animals to extend to their own experiences. “And yet –this essay is a spoiler in itself– I have never stopped thinking about my mixed race. My race, or rather my preoccupation with what it means and how I feel about it, is something that may rankle me for the rest of my life.”

Her accounts of a relationship with a partner of the same mixed race rejoice in the relief of not having to apologize or even explain.

An extended reflection on the dinosaur-like Chinese sturgeon addresses the subject of dams and the existential threat they pose to river and sea life. “To swim in the Yangtze now is to bathe in synthetic compounds. Industrial and agricultural pollutants unspool into the river, runoff from city drains and industrial sites.”

Whales, and their endless persecution by humans, elicit some particularly vivid writing. At the other end of the size spectrum, in “Pure Life” they write about microorganisms on the sea floor. In it is a characteristic reframing of the relevance of these creatures to the human populations and forces of nature that threaten them. “These animals eked out an alternative way of life. I prefer to think of it not as a last resort but as a radical act of choosing what nurtures you.

“As queer people,” they continue, “we get to choose our families. Vent bacteria, tube worms and yeti crabs just take it one step further. They choose what nourishes them. They turn away from the sun and toward something more elemental, the inner heat and chemistry of Earth.”t

‘How Far the Light Reaches’ by Sabrina Imbler; Little, Brown, 263 pp., $27; ebook $15. www.littlebrown.com

Read the full review on www.ebar.com.

Dolly was my first experience of a Christian that wasn’t hypocritical and spouting hate.

How did you know that poet Julie E. Bloemeke was the right choice to be your co-editor for “Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology”?

Julie and I’ve been friends for roughly 15 years. We attended Dolly’s “Better Day” tour stop in Georgia in 2011. The second issue of “Limp Wrist,” an online poetry journal that I founded and edit, was a special issue in honor of Dolly’s 75th birthday, so I asked Julie to co-edit the special issue for a few reasons. We admire, respect, and love Dolly. Julie’s a lovely human being and an awesome poet and curating the Dolly issue of “Limp Wrist” together was a load of fun. We realized we needed to produce an anthology before we even finished the issue.

You and Julie have committed to donating all annual royalties from “Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology” to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in honor of the Book Lady.

Dolly has shared on multiple occasions that she is most proud that children call her the Book Lady. Committing our annual editor royalties to an organization that Dolly loves, one that does so much good in this world, feels right. It is also our way to continue to pay tribute to Dolly.

As a gay poet yourself, can you please say something about Dolly’s relationship with the queer community?

Dolly is an ally and advocate. Many of us in the queer community admire Dolly for how she is unapologetically herself, always controlling her narrative, isn’t afraid to say exactly what she’s thinking and is still pretty much universally loved these days.

I have a very complicated relationship with religion, thanks to growing up Southern Baptist, but I love the Christianity that Dolly embraces, practices, and exudes. Sometimes, I wonder how different my life would have been if I had been raised and in-

teracted with Dolly’s brand of Christianity. Can you imagine how different the US would be if most of the people claiming to be Christians, especially the right-wingers, practiced Christianity Dolly-style?t

www.madvillepublishing.com

Read the full interview on www.ebar.com.

Author Sabrina Imbler