Protest in tony Atherton
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Binational couple runites, marries
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Priscilla approaches
The
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Sperm donor bill on hold by Seth Hemmelgarn
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state bill meant to protect some sperm donors’ rights has raised concerns about consequences for same-sex couples, especially lesbians, and is on hold. On Tuesday, August 13, the Assembly JudiJane Philomen Cleland ciary Committee voted Assemblyman 5-2 to hold Senate Bill Tom Ammiano 115, authored by Senator Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo), and not release it to the full chamber for a vote. Hill’s proposal would amend state law to clarify that the rules governing the treatment of a man who donates his semen for use in artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization of a woman other than his wife “was never intended to preclude the opportunity to prove the existence of the presumed father and child relationship” pursuant to other relevant sections of the state’s family code, according to a summary on Hill’s website. “The bill is not dead,” said gay Assemblyman Rich Gordon (D-Menlo Park), who’s not on the committee but chairs the California Legislative LGBT Caucus. “We are in a two-year legislative cycle. Senator Hill could attempt to move the bill” and possibly “get a vote on floor” in January, said Gordon. He said he didn’t know whether Hill would make any changes to the bill to get it out of the committee, which he could do in the interim period from mid-September until January. A spokesman for Hill didn’t respond to a request for comment. In a June 27 letter, gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) asked Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont), who is chair of the judiciary committee, to postpone a hearing on the bill. “The true policy intent appears to really be focused on what should happen with a donor who changes his mind after the conceived child is born and wants parentage rights against the consent of the legal mother and possibly in defiance of the agreement made prior to conception,” Ammiano wrote. He said what he found “most troubling” was that SB 115 “is being pursued by the losing party in a family law dispute that is now going through the normal appellate process. Given that posture alone, I believe it is inappropriate for the Legislature to weigh in now on an ongoing case – as the courts should be given the chance to get this right through the judicial process.” Ammiano was referring to a lawsuit brought by actor Jason Patric, who’s in a custody battle with his ex-girlfriend over the boy to whom she gave birth. Patric donated the sperm through a medical procedure, according to news reports. In his letter, Ammiano also warned of “unintended consequences that could harm parents” and children and raised numerous questions about the bill. “Does this policy affect the thousands of single parent, same-sex parent and infertile families by placing a higher status on biological connection to a child conceived through alternative reproductive technology (ART) over the legal status of the non-biological legal parent?” he asked. See page 5 >>
Vol. 43 • No. 33 • August 15-21, 2013
Castro Street could see rainbow crosswalk San Francisco’s Castro district could see a rainbow crosswalk similar to this one in West Hollywood.
by Matthew S. Bajko
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he city’s gay neighborhood could see a permanent rainbow in it one day. There is a chance that the multi-colored sight could come in the form of a crosswalk painted on the street at one of the Castro district’s busy intersections. Last week the Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District board voted to allocate $28,000 to fund decorative crosswalks at three intersections in the gayborhood. While the design for them has yet to be determined, it is conceivable at least one could be painted rainbow colors.
“Not sure if all will go for the rainbow idea ... we need input,” Andrea Aiello, the CBD’s executive director, told the Bay Area Reporter when asked about the possibility. Rainbow crosswalks, some temporary chalk installations others permanent fixtures, have been popping up in gay neighborhoods around the world, from Sydney, Australia and Vancouver, Canada to Seattle and West Hollywood. Such an idea had been proposed for San Francisco’s gayborhood during the community planning workshops held earlier this year for the Castro Streetscape Improvement Project. Due to budget limitations, though, plan-
Courtesy City of West Hollywood
ning staffers had dropped including specialty crosswalks in their final proposal for the $4 million sidewalk-widening project. With its own budget to fund neighborhood improvements, the Castro CBD decided to take on the crosswalks. It will pay for the installation of the enhanced street striping at four crosswalks that run east to west across Castro Street. The locations are at the intersection of Castro and Market streets from the Muni station entrance to the Twin Peaks Tavern; two at Castro and 18th streets, one from the Walgreens store across to the K Pop eatery and See page 17 >>
Archivists strive to protect gay home movies by Matthew S. Bajko
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he scenes in the cache of home movies at first glance are rather mundane, from a spirited 1957 New Year’s Eve party and a poolside get-together to a summer vacation in the Cape Cod resort town of Provincetown, Massachusetts, circa the 1970s. It is the people, mostly unknown men in their late 30s and 40s, captured on film who make the footage historic and worthy of preservation. Shown are intimate moments in the lives of a group of gay friends during a time when being out of the closet was career suicide for many people. “I’ve been in the film business 46 years and I have never seen footage like this because people didn’t allow these kinds of movies to be shot,” said Ron Merk, a San Francisco-based film producer and director with the Metro Theatre Center Foundation. “There just wasn’t a lot of gay home movies made.” The foundation has been saving and restoring old home movies of particular importance through its initiative the Preservation Project Partnerships with a support grant from Premiere Pictures International Inc. It has discovered a rare home movie of actor Spencer Tracy from 1931 and a color home movie of actor Stan Laurel. It collaborated with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Monaco Film Laboratory, and Nordisk ShorCut digital restoration in Copenhagen to restore the Laurel film, which recently was screened at the Castro Theatre as part of the Kings Of Silent Comedy program. “For the last year and a half we have been acquiring culturally and historically important home movies for a film preservation initiative we are working on,” said Merk. “These are important documents in they capture the zeitgeist of a particular experience in a way most commercially produced movies do not. They are capsules of information on how we lived, what we ate, what we did.” Last year Merk, who is gay, saw a posting on eBay for a batch of old film reels that had belonged to David Eugene Bell, a famous home designer at Bloomingdale’s whose clients included Carol Channing, Lucille Ball, and Joel Grey. In the 1970s he took up needlepoint and became
Courtesy David Eugene Bell Preservation Project
A restored still from one of David Eugene Bell’s home movies shows a parade in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
a celebrated artist. He lived in Connecticut with his partner, Donald Cotter, and died in 2006 in his mid-80s. According to Judith Gura’s book New York Interior Design 1935-1985 Inventors of Tradition, Bell was born Eugene Weir Bell in Pennsylvania in 1921 and served in the U.S. Navy during World Word II. Among the private moments Bell captured on film of himself and his friends dressing in drag, dancing with each other, and frolicking naked on the beach, there was also footage of Robert F. Kennedy marching in the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade in the mid-1960s. Warned that many of Bell’s movies were being eaten away by mold, Merk nonetheless paid more than $1,000 for the 50 reels of 8mm and 16mm film. While some were in rather poor shape, with mold lifting the emulsion off the film, others were in better condition. Estimating that the cost to properly preserve the collection would be $15,000 to $20,000, Merk turned to the crowdfunding site Indiegogo to try to raise the funds. It was the first time the foundation had asked the public to financially contribute to the preservation project. It failed to attract donors, however, and Merk
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is now trying to find a single contributor who can fund the entire restoration work. He recently shared about 10 minutes of footage from Bell’s home movies with the Bay Area Reporter in an attempt to draw attention to the project and raise awareness about the value in home movies, especially those depicting gay life decades ago. “If we lose our history, we lose our future,” said Merk. “This stuff is not going to last a hell of a lot longer in its present condition.” It is a message fellow gay filmmaker Stu Maddux is also trying to bring to the public’s attention. He has been working on a documentary about gay home movies, titled Reel In The Closet, he hopes to premiere in early 2014. “With this film I hope there is a realization for anyone who sees it – and it motivates not just LGBT people to look at their history but everybody – to look at what is in their closet,” he said. “We hope to start a community discussion about saving home movies.” Reading about John Raines, a volunteer who has been digitizing old home movies in the archives of San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society so they are more accessible to researchers, documentarians, and members of the public, See page 5 >>