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Sidewalk plan open house
Trans aides come out
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Cinderella
The
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Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971
AIDS Walk grants cut by Seth Hemmelgarn
F
acing a budget gap of $750,000 next year, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation has decided not to distribute grants to partners in this year’s AIDS Walk, set for July 21. The AIDS foundation, the largest HIV/AIDSrelated nonprofit in the city, has been the primary beneficiary of the annual AIDS Walk San Francisco for over 20 years. But MZA Events, which produces the walk, announced late last year that it’s switching JB Higgins to another nonprofit, Project Inform, in SFAF CEO Neil 2014. This year will be Giuliano at last SFAF’s last year as the year’s AIDS Walk walk’s lead agency. SFAF will maintain its community partners program, which encourages teams to raise money on their own and generally provides more funds than the smaller grants. Agencies that responded to the Bay Area Reporter’s inquiries about the change indicated it’s not a huge concern for them. Last year, SFAF distributed about $250,000 through the grants program. “We’re facing a significant hole in next year’s fiscal budget,” James Loduca, the AIDS foundation’s vice president for philanthropy and public affairs said. The foundation, which has a budget of about $25 million, shared months ago that it would take a big hit from losing the AIDS Walk. “We’ve had a lot of conversations” about how to fill the gap “and ensure that none of the services we provide the community that are so important go uninterrupted,” Loduca said. The AIDS foundation provides testing, counseling, and numerous other services. “Our top priority is making sure the services we provide to thousands of people in the community for free aren’t harmed because MZA selected a new beneficiary for the walk,” he said. With the community partnership program, there’s no limit on what groups can raise. All of the money each team raises passes through SFAF and goes directly to each organization. Normally, about 30 groups apply. The AIDS foundation absorbs costs such as credit card and bank fees, which can amount to 6 percent of every dollar raised, so that those expenses aren’t passed on to community partners. “We thought long and hard about this,” Loduca said. “We thought the appropriate balance to strike was to keep the program that has limitless revenue potential for community partners.” SFAF, which is paying MZA Events $212,000 this year, expects to raise about $3 million from the 2013 AIDS Walk. Loduca attributed the deficit solely to MZA Events taking the AIDS Walk away. He said it See page 17 >>
Vol. 43 • No. 19 • May 9-15, 2013
Pride meeting ends amid chaos by James Patterson
T
he San Francisco Pride board of directors faced off against an angry crowd of about 125 Bradley Manning supporters Tuesday evening at a meeting intended to hear public comments on its reversal of Manning as a Pride grand marshal. But the meeting came to an abrupt end after SF Pride CEO Earl Plante, noticeably shaken, said he had been assaulted and ordered his staff to call police for what he called a “riot.” Manning supporters, who gathered at SF Pride’s offices and filled the hallway, were angry about a statement released by the Pride board shortly before the May 7 meeting that explained its “longstanding policy” that defined a community grand marshal as “a local hero (individual) not being a celebrity.” Manning, 25, is the gay soldier who leaked 700,000 classified government documents to WikiLeaks. He has confessed to some of the charges against him but remains in a military prison awaiting a courtmartial. Manning had been named a grand marshal for this year’s Pride parade, and was chosen by the Pride’s electoral college, a
Rick Gerharter
Supporters of honoring Bradley Manning as SF Pride parade grand marshal shout “Let us in” in the lobby of the Pride offices after being locked out of the Pride Committee’s board meeting.
group of former grand marshals. But two days after the April 24 announcement, Pride board President Lisa Williams issued a terse
statement saying that Manning would not be a grand marshal. She attributed his selecSee page 16 >>
Homes sought for foster youth
by Seth Hemmelgarn
M
ay is National Foster Care Month, and Jill Jacobs, the head of an Oakland-based agency that works to find permanent, loving families for youth in the foster care system, says there are plenty of them who need support. “We really need folks to come forward” and “find out if they’re up to this wonderful challenge,” Jacobs, the executive director of Family Builders by Adoption, said, particularly when it comes to LGBT kids in foster care. Family Builders is one of the groups involved with a Saturday, May 11 symposium called “Building Strong Families and Communities of Hope.” The event will include foster care and adoption specialists, and first-hand experience from current parents. “There’s a huge need for families,” especially for LGBT youth, who are “disproportionately represented in the foster care system,” Jacobs, an out lesbian, said. “I think there’s a bias that foster parents wouldn’t be willing to care for an LGBT kid, and that’s not true,” she said. Sometimes, a self-fulfilling prophecy exists where people “assume that parents won’t take LGBT youth, and so they don’t even look for families,” Jacobs added. “They just automatically put LGBT kids in group homes.” Such places “are often not able to provide the care, the supervision, and the nurturing
Jane Philomen Cleland
David Rodgers Jr., who now teaches theater, is a former foster child and plans to be a foster parent.
and support an LGBT youth needs,” Jacobs said. Gay foster youth face harassment, bullying, and abuse in group homes more than they do in families.
Challenging, but rewarding
Being a foster parent “is not for the faint of heart,” Jacobs said. “It’s hard work, and it is challenging, but the rewards are worth it.” David Lytle, 47, agrees. He and his part-
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ner, Brice Gosnell, 43, live in San Francisco’s Duboce Triangle neighborhood with their son, Miguel, who will be 4 1/2 this week. Lytle said he’d tell people entering the process, “You have to expect the unexpected,” but “don’t let the unexpected derail you. There are setbacks that happen. When kids are in foster care, they’re in foster care for a reason, but the government’s main goal is to reunify biological families.” Foster parents don’t have the full set of legal rights of biological or adoptive parents. In some cases, foster parents do adopt their foster child. Lytle and Gosnell’s adoption of Miguel went through in November 2011, just over a year after they became his foster parents. Working with Family Builders, they started the process in October 2009. Among other things they had to do, the couple went through training and a home study, which involved interviews with a social worker. Lytle said he and Gosnell, who both work in publishing, had a “long-term discussion” about having a child and talked about open adoption, finding a surrogate mother, and other possibilities, but decided to take the foster parent and adoption route. “There are kids that need homes, and we had a home to offer a child or children,” Lytle said. The couple is talking about having more children. See page 16 >>