Latest news with #AnitaBryant
San Francisco Chronicle
03-07-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Letters: Pride Parade is more than flamboyance. Here's why we march every year
As a gay man, I laughed at the Chronicle's print edition headline for its June 30 Pride story: 'Flamboyant show of resistance: Parade takes on political tone with rights threatened.' Flamboyant? Probably. It's our métier. Political? Absolutely. The entire history of the gay rights movement is political. We are the bellwether for everyone's rights. Since 1975, whether I was marching with the Gay Men's Chorus or marching against the religion-based bigotry of Anita Bryant, every step I took was political because there is always someone to dispute my right to exist, lie about my life, debate my full and authentic participation in society or use the coercive power of the state to force us back into the closet. That won't happen unless it's at gunpoint, and we all know this. It's why we march. We stand for our full participation in society. We stand and do our best to protect the rights of gay and trans kids to grow up and live their best lives because we grew up in a world that did its best to make our lives as difficult, unpleasant and dangerous as possible. And we will do it very gaily and flamboyantly. Ben Janken, Oakland Small businesses need Medicaid A recent analysis from Georgetown University and the Small Business Majority found that one-third of Medicaid recipients have some connection to small businesses, including about 11 million children of parents who are self-employed or who work for small businesses. Given the importance of Medicaid to these businesses, it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to make cuts. But that's exactly what's happening in Washington, D.C., where some lawmakers are pushing to gut vital benefits so they can justify tax cuts for the wealthiest businesses and individuals. California small businesses should not be forced to pay for anyone else's tax cuts, particularly if it means losing access to health care. Lawmakers should reject cuts to Medicaid and instead focus on legislation that helps small businesses grow and thrive. Bianca Blomquist, California director, Small Business Majority, San Jose Innovate with AI From my experience, AI significantly boosts developer productivity without threatening jobs. Three areas where AI excels in software development are coding, documentation and test generation. Coding is often the most tedious part of development. AI can handle this by translating a clear design description into code, with fewer bugs than I would typically make. AI also generates the necessary documentation and testing data, which frees developers to focus on refining designs and reducing hard-to-find logic errors. The results can easily cut the work by 50%, supporting Benioff's claim. But the real question for companies like Salesforce is whether to leverage this productivity to speed up innovation or cut costs. Prioritizing innovation is the smarter choice. AI isn't replacing jobs; it's empowering developers to do more meaningful work, leading to better products and faster delivery. David Posner, Napa What counts? In the Chronicle, we read of an innocent man swept up as part of the Trump administration's quota of 1 million deportations by the end of this year ('A farmworker had broken no laws. A California sheriff and ICE took him anyway,' California, June 29). Another story presented the federal government's claim that the University of California is illegally using 'race- and sex-based employment quotas' ('Trump administration announces yet another investigation into the UC system,' Politics, June 26). So, what is worse, a quota that carelessly sweeps up thousands of innocent people and ships them off without a hearing, or a quota meant to pry open old boy networks of white male privilege? If quotas are unfair, don't dream up new ones. Kate Lucchese, Emeryville
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Yahoo
Today in Chicago History: In a scene out of ‘Casino,' Spilotro brothers buried alive in Indiana cornfield
Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on June 14, according to the Tribune's archives. Is an important event missing from this date? Email us. The Chicago flag design: History of every star — including one for the Great Chicago Fire — and stripe Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago) High temperature: 99 degrees (1987) Low temperature: 45 degrees (1997) Precipitation: 2.58 inches (1949) Snowfall: Trace (2002) 1949: One-time Chicago Cub Eddie Waitkus, by then with the Philadelphia Phillies, became the inspiration for 'The Natural' when he was shot in the Edgewater Beach Hotel by Ruth Ann Steinhagen, a 19-year-old fan. 1977: Eight people were arrested during Chicago's first major gay-rights protest. As many as 3,000 people showed up outside Medinah Temple to contest an appearance by Anita Bryant, a singer and orange juice spokesperson who led a successful drive to repeal a gay rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida. 1981: Nobel Peace Prize winner Mother Teresa visited Chicago. The 70-year-old founder of Missionaries of Charity decried abortion, counseled nuns to wear distinctive religious garb and supported the church's ban on the ordination of women to the priesthood. Canonized as a saint by Pope Francis in 2016, Mother Teresa urged Catholics to dedicate themselves to service. 'We need people today to consecrate their lives just to be the touch — just to be the sweetness of Christ,' she told more than 600 people gathered at Good Counsel High School on the Northwest Side. 1986: Anthony Spilotro, 48, and his brother Michael, 41, were beaten with baseball bats then buried alive in a northwest Indiana cornfield. Contrary to what was depicted in the 1995 film 'Casino,' the brothers were driven to a Bensenville home, where Michael thought he was going to become a 'made member' of the Outfit. Instead, they were beaten with fists, knees and feet in the home's basement before they were driven to the cornfield and buried. Dental records were used by their brother Patrick Spilotro, a dentist, to identify the bodies. The details came out during the 2007 'Family Secrets' trial, which Tribune editor Jeff Coen wrote about in the 2009 book, 'Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob.' 1992: The Chicago Bulls won their second NBA championship. They did it at Chicago Stadium, by overcoming a 17-point deficit to defeat the Portland Trail Blazers 97-93 to win the NBA Finals four games to two. 1998: The Bulls won their sixth NBA title. 2016: Chicago-based Johnson Publishing announced the sale of Ebony and Jet magazines to Austin-based Clear View Group. Johnson Publishing filed for bankruptcy in 2016, and sold its extensive archive in 2019, for $30 million. A consortium comprising the Ford Foundation, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution announced in 2022, it transferred ownership of the archive to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and to the Getty Research Institute. Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past. Have an idea for Vintage Chicago Tribune? Share it with Kori Rumore and Marianne Mather at krumore@ and mmather@
WebMD
20-05-2025
- General
- WebMD
Smear the Queer: A Teenage Memory, a National Warning
There's an event in my life I've rarely shared. Not to friends, not to therapists, and definitely not to family. It's a deeply mortifying memory, and it happened when I was only 17. Even writing this 40 years later, there's a little voice inside me telling me to keep my trap shut, since the whole thing was my fault anyway. The memory of that episode has been coming up, bringing with it the echoes of homophobia that were part of American culture in the 1970s and '80s. Those echoes match perfectly with the rhetoric coming from the current administration, once again demonizing me and my community in ways that I thought were past. But it turns out, otherizing queers (and other strategically underserved and under protected communities) is as American as guns. When I was growing up, negative stuff about gays was everywhere – on television with B-list pop singer and anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant spouting bigoted, religious nonsense; in movies like the comedy Car Wash that were perfectly enjoyable until someone was called 'faggot.' Even on the school playground, there was a game called 'Smear the Queer,' and no one thought it was bad. No one thought it was inappropriate or mean. No one thought a game like that might be training for someone to actually go out and hurt a gay person. It was all fine. When puberty hit, and I started having powerful sexual urges, I didn't know what to do. I'd had no sex education, not from my parents or school. I knew a little about sex from jokes by guys at school. But when it came to the fact that I was interested in guys and not girls, I had no resources. It didn't help that I was an awkward kid: chubby, short, unathletic, and (I thought) very unattractive. Low self-esteem can magnify vulnerability. And I'd been taught by well-meaning churchgoers that homosexuality is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord and those perverts were doomed to eternity in a fiery hell. I first went to an adult bookstore when I was 16 with my friend Cory. No one stopped us when we walked in. We thought it was hilarious, this grimy little place in the middle of a residential neighborhood in Phoenix with dildos and vibrators, metal office shelves of VHS and Beta versions of adult videos, trashy adult novels, graphic sex magazines, and the curtain in the back which lead to the mysterious video booths where shadowy men shuffled. Unknown to Cory, I felt a ping of recognition, of being in a place where I belonged. If I was a pervert, and this was where perverts go, it must be for me, I reasoned. I started sneaking out of my family home at night to drive in my white Ford Thunderbird to visit these stores. At first I'd just sit in my car in the parking lot. Then I got brave and I'd go inside and loiter, every once in a while catching a glance at a fellow pervert. Soon, the glances led to sitting in a car with a fellow perv and kissing, leading to what I now see was pretty innocent petting. This was always followed by terrifying guilt and resolve that I'd never go back to one of those places again. Until I did. One night, I snuck out like I'd done a dozen times before. I remember that I was wearing a new white shirt with paisley designs on it. I bought it at Chess King at the mall. I met this really cute guy, cuter than I thought I deserved. He had caramel skin and dark, wavy hair, dreamy eyes. We went to my car and kissed for a while, then he recommended I drive to a more private alley in the neighborhood. I parked the car in the muddy backstreet, and we went back to making out, starting to explore each other's bodies, feeling the rush of teenage sexual excitement, when all of a sudden … BAM! The guy punched me in the gut. HARD. Then he started clubbing me in the head. I was shocked and panicked and in a lot of pain. He was striking me and we were wrestling as he tried to grab my car keys. He somehow managed to open my door and tried to push me out of the car as he turned over the engine. He pushed me and I screamed, scared to my core. I thought, 'If this guy doesn't kill me, Mom and Dad will.' He started the car and we fought for control. He hit the gas pedal and the car swerved into the back gate of someone's home. I managed to stop the car and grab the keys before jumping out of the car and slogging through the mud of the alley. I slipped and fell, and he yelled at me, 'Come back here, you little faggot! I'm going to kill you!' I managed to stand and run away from him, hoping he wasn't following me. Then I started hearing police sirens and I saw flashing lights. The guy took off in the other direction. The homeowner whose fence my car ran into had called the cops. The cop car pulled into the alleyway. A male officer and a female officer got out of the car. I was muddy, shaking, and crying. The female was especially kind, but all I could think was this was all my fault. I shouldn't have snuck out. I'm an abomination. The cops convinced me to get in their car to drive around the neighborhood to see if we could find the guy. I was relieved when we didn't. Maybe I could just pretend it was a bad dream. What happened afterwards is a hazy memory. I must've driven home, and I probably went straight to bed. Did I have school the next day? Was I obviously beaten up? Was the homeowner's fence damaged? Did I pay for it with money earned as a bus boy? I do remember I was terrified my folks would find out, and I thought my new shirt would never be clean. I was so ashamed. I wonder how that night, the shocking violence, and the painful punishments for my sins affected my relationships, my relationship to sex, and my already delicate ego. Although I now see clearly it wasn't my fault, part of me will always be to blame. I decided to write this story out, not for pity, but to show the kinds of things that happened when queerness was forced into the shadows and darkness, and criminalized – all of that amplified by the panic of the AIDS crisis. The current administration is leading the country back to those days. I don't want any other kid (or adult, for that matter) to be a victim like I was. My attacker went to a place where he knew gay people would be. He chose it on purpose, to find someone like me to victimize, because he'd been taught queers don't matter. He figured me an easy target. We can't go backward. We can't go back to a time when members of the LGBTQ+ community have to hide for safety. We can't let our country become a place where people think it's OK to smear the queer.
