For Joey Cain, this year's LGBT Pride Parade marks a homecoming of sorts. Cain served on the LGBT Pride Celebration Committee board for nine years, including four years as president. He knows what makes the parade tick, the festival kick, and how it all comes together for one giant weekend in San Francisco.
This year, though, Cain himself will be in the middle of it all as one of the community grand marshals for the parade. It's an honor that surprised him.
"I was not expecting it," Cain told the Bay Area Reporter during a recent interview. "I was quite moved."
"I'm almost taken aback," he added. "The Pride board is used to appointing folks [for diversity] and they chose a gay white man to bring diversity ... I think it says something about the community and speaks well of the community."
He had nothing but praise for the other grand marshals. "They are a wonderful group of people."
During his tenure on the Pride board, he said that one of his biggest accomplishments was "bringing back political relevancy" to the event "and making the parade mean something."
"George W. Bush helped us tremendously," he said, laughing, referring to the current administration and its hostility toward LGBTs.
He also talked about the diversity of the Pride board, but said he doesn't take credit for it. In recent years, the board has been led by transgender women and people of color. Cain helped groom current president, Mikayla Connell, a trans woman, to take over the leadership position when he stepped down.
The other big thing that happened during Cain's stint as board president was the change in executive directors. Teddy Witherington served in the position for several years, but stepped down a couple years ago; Lindsey Jones took the helm at that time, and had already been working for Pride as a deputy director.
"Teddy was so instrumental in moving Pride to a new level of community involvement," Cain said.
For his part, Witherington, now the executive director of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, had nothing but praise for Cain.
"Amply filling the shoes of Cecilia Chung and, before her, Calvin Gipson, Joey led SF Pride into an era of greater democracy, accountability, and sustainability," Witherington told the B.A.R . "We worked as a team, and in the process, became lifelong friends. Joey was never afraid to illuminate the 'high road' and humble enough to listen with patience and compassion to different opinions. The way in which he helped everyone he came into contact with find consensus around seemingly irreconcilable differences remains a model for our community. He is my hero."
Cain, 53, believes that the LGBT community must maintain its identity; he is not an assimilationist. "Because I do think we're different from straight folks; and I think lesbians are different from gay men."
While personally, Cain is "not a fan of marriage," ("I'm still a dyed-in-the-wool feminist," he laughed), he said that he is a fan of people having legal rights, particularly at the federal level with Social Security. However, while same-sex marriage is now legal in California and Massachusetts, those couples do not enjoy any federal benefits that their heterosexual counterparts receive.
Cain sees a certain irony in the marriage equality movement, since marriage is viewed by many as a mainstream institution.
"It's a radical thing. Advocating for marriage makes you a political radical. I do enjoy that irony," he said.
"I still think the community can be on the cutting edge of new relationships, such as domestic partners �" when straights can do it. That's where the LGBT community can be on the cutting edge, advocating for broader relationships."
And Cain should know. While he is currently single, he is a caretaker for John Burnside, 91, the widower of gay pioneer Harry Hay. There is a small circle of friends who have been helping Burnside for several years; he currently lives with Cain.
Cain is the assistant director of substance abuse treatment services for the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, where he's worked for the last 10 years. He bemoaned the current city budget crisis, which threatens severe cuts for the clinic, as well as numerous other health and social service agencies in the city. He was critical of Mayor Gavin Newsom, who ordered city departments to make the cuts, even as he praised the mayor for his role in helping bring the bust of the late Supervisor Harvey Milk to City Hall (the bust was dedicated in a ceremony last month; major funding for the project came from the Bob Ross Foundation). Cain serves as co-chair of the Harvey Milk City Hall Memorial Committee.
Early days
Cain grew up in Buffalo, New York. He came out at 14 and after becoming estranged from his family, moved out at 18 but stayed in Buffalo. He moved to San Francisco in 1976 when he was 21, arriving here with a gay collective. They settled in the Haight-Ashbury, where Cain still lives.
"When I moved here, the Haight had a large gay neighborhood, and the Polk was still a major gay neighborhood," he said.
He had heard about San Francisco from friends who visited the city and went back to Buffalo with stories.
"It was residual PR from the Summer of Love," he said. "San Francisco was a destination city even before Stonewall, even before the Internet."
"I came out here because in Buffalo, I would walk down the street and everyone would stare. In San Francisco, I could walk down the street and choose whether people would stare at me," he laughed.
Cain recalled there was a vibrant gay community in Buffalo when he lived there, "very developed," he called it, and some of his closest friends were "butch dykes and their femme lovers."
Cain also noted that he has "always had transgender people in my life," and is "disgusted" with the Human Rights Campaign for its actions last year when it reneged on a promise to support only a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that included protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The move brought to the forefront a fissure between the nation's largest and most powerful LGBT group and the trans community and its allies; over 300 local, state, and national LGBT and allied organizations formed the United ENDA coalition. Locally, trans community members and allies have organized a picket at HRC's San Francisco gala next month.
"In fact, I'm going to invite the other grand marshals to join with Theresa [Sparks] at the HRC dinner protest action," Cain said, referring to this year's lifetime achievement grand marshal. "I would like to see all the grand marshals there. It's the whole community's issue, not a transgender issue."