S.A.M.E. Rallies Against Hate Crimes, Bullying (tags)
Drawn by several recent hate assaults on Queer people in the Hillcrest and North Park areas, members and supporters of the San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality (S.A.M.E.) rallied at the North Park Community Park Saturday afternoon, March 26. The rally featured speeches by openly Queer elected officials like Assemblymember Toni Atkins and School Board member Kevin Beiser, as well as ministers and others in support of Queer equality, but the most moving statements came from people who’d been on the receiving end of anti-Queer violence or bullying themselves: S.A.M.E. member René Torres, high school student Maya Conti and North Park resident Jacob Harshbarger, who wasn’t at the rally but sent a statement describing not only the attack against him but the lax response of local police and prosecutors. “I felt that the system that was supposed to be there to protect me was treating me as though it was my fault,” Harshbarger said.
Connor Maddocks Teaches "Trans 101" to Queer Marriage Group (tags)
The Queer community is increasingly referred to by the awkward acronym "LGBT" ? which stands for "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender" ? but few Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals really understand the needs, struggles and the rights of Transgender people. To bridge that gap, the San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality (S.A.M.E.) invited Connor Maddocks, facilities manager at the San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center and a female-to-male Transgender person, to make a presentation at their March 8 meeting. Maddocks' talk spanned a number of issues, from the physical aspects of a gender transition to the ways Transgender people are discriminated against and the hostility they sometimes face not only from heterosexuals but other Queers.
San Diego’s Transgender Day of Remembrance (tags)
San Diego hosted its seventh Transgender Day of Remembrance November 20. The event, begun in San Francisco in 1998, honors the people murdered throughout the year because of their actual or perceived Transgender status. A wide range of Queer community activists participated in the march and program. (Program duration: 27 min.)
San Diego Hosts Transgender Day of Remembrance (tags)
San Diego commemorated the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance Nov. 20 with a candlelight march through the streets of Hillcrest and a rally at the LGBT Community Center. The program featured community volunteers (pictured) reading the names of this year's 15 known victims of Trans-related murders and brief accounts of how each died.