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Santa Skivvies run delights Castro
Rick Gerharter
Our Family Coalition Executive Director Mimi Demissew
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here was a break in the rain Sunday, December 11, and people took advantage of it for the annual Santa Skivvies run through the Castro LGBTQ neighborhood. The holiday fun underwear event was a benefit for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and saw plenty of people enjoy the festive atmosphere. For more photos, see the Bay Area Reporter’s BARtab Facebook page. (https://www.facebook. com/lgbtsf.nightlife)
Report details needs of LGBTQ families
by Matthew S. Bajko
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needs assessment of LGBTQ families conducted by a San Francisco-based nonprofit found that many are struggling with mental health issues and feel socially isolated. It also spotlighted that addressing the needs of LGBTQ students and parents in school environments is an ongoing concern, even in the Bay Area. Our Family Coalition, which provides services to local LGBTQ parents and their children, partnered with Kali-Ahset Amen, Ph.D., a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, on the family needs assessment. It included a formal survey people could fill out as well as holding focus groups with a total of 10 parents. Survey responses were collected between October 2020 and April 2021 during several surges of the COVID pandemic and when many school districts conducted classes virtually. While the report was completed last May, it was only widely distributed by the coalition in late October. The document will guide the nonprofit’s work in the coming years. One interesting finding of the survey was how the terminology used for families often doesn’t properly reflect the makeup of LGBTQ households, which in addition to looking like the more traditional nuclear family of two parents with children can also be made up of single parents or families with three or more child-rearing adults in them. “Participants expressed that OFC’s programming was overwhelmingly, and possibly unintentionally, geared toward the nuclear family with two parents. As a result, some respondents felt uncomfortable or unable to find support for their own families within OFC,” noted the report. It was one of the findings that stood out for Mimi Demissew, OFC’s executive director, who has a 4-year-old son with her wife. In an interview with the Bay Area Reporter, she said it brought to her and her staff’s attention that they “were acting heteronormatively” when describing LGBTQ families. “We keep speaking about two-parent households, while the research found parents who said, ‘I am a single parent,’ or ‘we are a poly household.’ We weren’t thinking how our own different personal biases may come in to play,” said Demissew. “Even around disability or centering different abled bodies and neurodiversity in our programming, these things need to be brought to the forefront.” In response to the report findings, OFC launched this year a non-bio, non-gestational parent support group for those parents who have adoptive children or are not the birthparent of their kids. “If one parent is biologically connected to the child and one is not, it creates unique stress in the household,” noted Demissew. Even though Demissew is Black, and most of the nonprofit’s other seven staff people are also people of color, the report found that most people were unaware of the agency’s diverse leadership. Many parents of color also reported concerns about being welcomed in the nonprofit’s programs and support groups. See page 9 >>
Steven Underhill
Vol. 52 • No. 50 • December 15-21, 2022
Screengrab
President Joe Biden signs the Respect for Marriage Act on the South Lawn of the White House during a December 13 ceremony.
Biden signs marriage bill by Cynthia Laird
P
resident Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act Tuesday, marking the first significant piece of LGBTQ rights legislation to become law in a decade. “Today is a good day,” Biden said as 5,300 LGBTQ leaders and allies from across the country gathered on the South Lawn of the White House. “Today we celebrate justice for everyone.” See page 12 >>
Technical Grinch hits Castro area lights by Matthew S. Bajko
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ith the flip of a switch by a city worker Friday, December 9, new uplighting bathed the palm trees in the median of upper Market Street in a red and green glow for the all-important holiday shopping season for merchants in San Francisco’s LGBTQ Castro district. But there is an unseen hitch behind the yuletide luminosity. The 88 LED lights installed near the base of the palm trees will remain on 24/7 throughout the rest of the month. A weak Wi-Fi signal is impeding the technology that can automatically turn the uplighting on and off, the Bay Area Reporter has learned. “The uplighting in the median uses five control cabinets placed along Market Street. Two cabinets are linking up via Wi-Fi, however, three cabinets are encountering a weak signal and are not linking up as expected,” explained Alex M. Murillo, the manager of public affairs and communications for construction at San Francisco Public Works. “The Wi-Fi allows us to sync the timers and the on/ off dates and times. We’re currently in discussions with our colleagues at the Department of Technology to ‘boost’ their Wi-Fi signal in order to sync the remaining three cabinets.” Not all of the uplights are on, as Tuesday night the palm trees on the 2100 block of Market Street were not lit. Meanwhile, the uplights on the 1900 block were set to white. Murillo told the B.A.R. that all five cabinets should be connected via Wi-Fi at some point. “Given that this is a new system, it is not unusual to troubleshoot at this stage, prior to project completion,” he wrote in an emailed reply. Mayor London Breed was initially scheduled to turn on the new lighting the evening of December 8 as part of a celebration to mark the (near) completion of the Upper Market Safety Project. But last week’s rainstorm led city officials to postpone the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the pedestrian improvements along Market Street between Octavia Boulevard and Castro Street to sometime in early 2023. The Castro Community Benefit District,
Matthew S. Bajko
The palm trees in the median along upper Market Street are uplit in red and green for the holidays.
which agreed to pay the electricity bill for the uplighting, had inquired if the lights could still be turned on for the holiday season. After learning about the technological glitch, the CBD agreed to cover the expense of leaving the lights on for the rest of the month so that neither one of its staffers nor a city employee had to manually turn them on and off on a daily basis. Andrea Aiello, the CBD’s executive director, told the B.A.R. she isn’t sure when the uplights would be turned off, nor how much it will cost to run them nonstop through the new year. The neighborhood group has so far raised roughly $1,800 toward its fundraising goal of at least $12,500 to pay for five years worth of the new uplighting. From her office at the intersection of Market and 14th streets Aiello has a clear view of the new uplighting on the 2000 block of Market Street. A photo of the palm trees there aglow in the Christmas colors that she posted to the CBD’s Facebook page Decem-
ber 10 generated an overwhelmingly positive response. “I really am very impressed,” Aiello told the B.A.R. Monday. “I didn’t think they were going to look so good.” People driving by the palm trees at night will barely notice the colored lighting as they approach those blocks of Market Street. The uplighting appears subdued to vehicle passengers. But for pedestrians, they pop, said Aiello. “It is better when you are walking,” she said. “When I first saw them, I thought, ‘Oh, you can hardly see them.’ But when I took a walk down Market Street, I thought, ‘Oh, this looks cool!’ You can tell they are there. They are very noticeable when you are walking. The pedestrian experience is more important.” Once the connectivity problem is fixed, for most of next year the LED lights will be white when they turn on at dusk. But, as the CBD noted in its appeal for donations, the lighting See page 4 >>