Opinion » Guest Opinion
Guest Opinion: Being out at Wells Fargo
I came out to my family when I was 26 years old. Even though I was certain they'd be loving and supportive once they wrapped their heads around the news, for some reason, the idea of saying "I'm gay" was terrifying.
This year, GOP-controlled states throughout our country have advanced an unprecedented number of discriminatory bills targeting our transgender and gender-nonconforming community, particularly TGNC young people.
What queer identity and addiction have in common is that one can choose to be closeted about both.
Oaklawn, Dallas, 1984. Back then, I stopped into the Crossroads Market about once a week to pick up the latest issue of the New York Native, a gay political newsprint magazine where I could get the very latest information about AIDS.
Like every gay man paying attention at the time, I heard about the "new disease" afflicting gay men not long after it was first reported in 1981.
As I prepare for my last day as the executive director of Openhouse on May 31, I am left speechless by the honor it has been to do this job.
GAPA was founded in 1988 by a group of gay and bi Asian and Pacific Islander men who had been meeting as a rap group at the Pacific Center for Human Growth in Berkeley.
So there I was. Standing all by myself in the middle of this fairly large and open lobby in a building that had about a thousand people in it — and no one was around.
As a proud Guadalajara native, or Tapatío as we refer to ourselves locally, I spend my days waxing poetic about all our beautiful city has to offer visitors.
On a hilly residential street in Noe Valley, the small house at 651 Duncan Street gives no hint of its outsized role in influencing over 50 years of LGBTQIA+ civil rights.
COVID-19 has impacted California in many ways, from causing increased job loss to deaths to forcing the closure of countless businesses to increased substance use within many demographics.
At just past the one-year mark of COVID-19, we have seen the devastating consequences of the pandemic in every aspect of society.
For 50 years the Bay Area Reporter has chronicled the development of the LGBT movement in San Francisco.