San Diego Queers Split Over City Redistricting (tags)
San Diego?s Queer community has split over their response to the redrawing of district lines for the City Council. On one side are the members of the self-styled ?LGBT Redistricting Task Force,? who are pushing a major redesign of the city?s Queer-influenced District 3, pushing out the people of color and less affluent Queers in City Heights and adding more upscale neighborhoods like Mission Hills and Bankers? Hill to the Hillcrest/North Park core of the district. On the other side are Queer residents of the City Heights community of Azalea Park, who bought there because gentrification had priced them out of Hillcrest and North Park and now find themselves threatened that they will no longer be represented by a Queer Councilmember. The current District 3 is San Diego?s most ethnically diverse; the district proposed by the LGBT Redistricting Task Force and the Hillcrest Town Council will be 70 percent white.
Openly Gay Democrat Runs for San Diego County Supervisor, Bucks GOP Trend (tags)
Openly Gay Democrat Stephen Whitburn is challenging 16-year incumbent Republican Ron Roberts for the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. In what's expected to be a “Republican year,” Whitburn is hoping voter disgust with ALL incumbents will boost his campaign. He's already won the endorsement of the San Diego Firefighters' Union — who backed Roberts in all his previous campaigns — largely because the all-Republican Board, out of partisan distaste for the Obama administration, turned down federal stimulus money that could have upgraded the county's ability to deal with San Diego's endemic wildfires.
Marijuana Initiative Could Generate $1.4 Billion (tags)
Proposition 19, the initiative on the November 2 ballot to decriminalize possession of marijuana in California, could bring $1.4 billion or more annually to California's parched coffers — but in advocating for the measure as part of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (L.E.A.P.), Zenger's Newsmagazine associate editor Leo E. Laurence has found some politicians and law enforcement personnel eagerly embracing the idea, while others figuratively and sometimes literally run away from any hint of endorsing the measure.
Former Obama Adviser Attacks Him at Freedom Awards (tags)
Steve Hildebrand has been described as Barack Obama's closest Gay friend and the person he listens to on Gay issues, but at the August 22 Freedom Awards, the main fundraiser for the predominantly Queer San Diego Democratic Club, he bluntly said, “The problem is Obama isn’t listening enough.” At the event, Hildebrand delivered a slashing attack on Obama and the Democrats in Congress -- both the so-called “Blue Dogs” in the House and the “moderates” in the Senate, as well as leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid who are letting them get away with hijacking Obama’s agenda and pushing him to the Right. Hildebrand predicted that the Democrats will lose their Congressional majority if they continue to tack Rightward and fail to do the things they were elected to do.
The controversy surrounding Barack Obama and his long-time minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the speed with which New York governor Elliot Spitzer was forced out of office after he was revealed to be using prostitutes, just shows how screwed-up Americans are about race and sex. Even within the Queer community, bigotry exists, as shown when a board member of a San Diego nonprofit questioned whether her agency should accept donations from the Leather community and referred to Leatherpeople as "those people."
"Father of Gay Leather" Makes Rare Public Appearance (tags)
Larry Townsend, author of "The Leatherman's Handbook" and many other pioneering works about Gay Leather sexuality, made a rare public appearance March 13 in San Diego to honor outgoing Mr. San Diego Leather, Lee Butler. He talked about the ways the Leather community has evolved in his nearly five decades in it, and particularly the responsibility of older Leathermen to steer young people away from drugs and STD's.