December 10 Learning How to Build ResilienceDuring the Long PandemicLet’s take a renewed dive into coping with our need to shelter in place to maintain our safety. We’ll look at strategies to cope with our circumstances and develop creative ways to engage with our lives and each other as we move into winter. Check-in Mondays7 to 8 pm We catch up with each other on how we’re doing and have unstructured conversations focused on listening and deepening community.
The Social Committee has been consistently offering fun events to offset the boredom of the pandemic. They want to celebrate your birthday if you’ll let them know when it is. They offer a women’s coffee plus a number of times to gather on zoom over games and conversation.December events include the birthday celebration, 12/8, the Slogan Game, 12/15, and a holiday scavenger hunt, 12/22.Check out their December flyer here.To sign up for their emails, click here.
Tis the season of hope and connectedness. Tis also, unfortunately, the season of scams – especially those aimed at us seniors. AARP has good advice for ways we can protect ourselves here.
The Spahr Center has a number of tablets, i.e., small mobile computers, available to give to seniors for free!We’re also seeking ways to help teach seniors how to use them. If you would like to receive a tablet, please let Bill know:bblackburn@thespahrcenter.org. 415/450-5339. They would enable you to join our senior groups on zoom with video as well as access other parts of the internet.
Roster of Spahr Seniors FormingRecently, some of our seniors have been asking that we create a roster of contact information – email &/or phone number – so people can get in touch with each other outside the groups. We’re happy to do so and to distribute it among those who want to be on it. Let us know if you would like to be part of it and what information you would like shared. And in the meantime, we can always forward your contact information to someone else you would like to connect with to allow them to get in touch with you.
Also in this email (below):Spahr has skilled therapists ready to work with seniors on a sliding-scale basis.Rental Assistance available.Nutrition ResourcesBisexual Support zoom group forming through The Spahr Center.
Building Community in the Midst of Sheltering-in-PlaceSee old friends and make new ones! Join us!The Spahr Center’s LGBT Senior Discussion Groupscontinue everyMonday, 7 to 8 pm& Thursday, 12:30 to 2 pm on zoom
To Join Group by Video using Computer, Smart Phone or TabletJust click this button at the start time, 6:55 pm Mondays / 12:25 pm Thursdays:Join GroupAlways the same link! Try it, it’s easy!
To Join Group by Phone Call If you don’t have internet connections or prefer joining by phone,call the following number at the start time,6:55 pm Mondays / 12:25 pm Thursdays:1-669-900-6833The Meeting id is 820 7368 6606#(no participant id required)The password, if requested, is 135296# If you want to be called into the group by phone, notify Bill Blackburn 415/450-5339
Spahr’s skilled therapists are available to work with seniors on a sliding-scale basis. Write toinfo@thespahrcenter.org. A Bisexual Support Group is forming with The Spahr Center, facilitated by a therapist. Let Bill Blackburn know if you are interested. Whistlestop, recently renamed Vivalon, provides access to resources including rides for older adults. Please note: there is a 3-week registration process for the ride program so register now if you think you may need rides in the future. They also offer free classes on zoom including zumba, yoga, chair exercises, & ukulele! Click here. Adult and Aging Service’s Information and Assistance Line, providing information and referrals to the full range of services available to older adults, adults with disabilities and their family caregivers, has a new phone number and email address: 415/473-INFO (4636) 8:30 am to 4:30 pm weekdays473INFO@marincounty.org
The Spahr Center is opening its Food Pantryto seniors who need support in meeting their nutrition needs. We want to help! Items such as fresh meats, eggs and dairy, prepared meals, pasta, sauces, and canned goods are delivered weekly to people who sign up. Contact The Spahr Center for more information: info@thespahrcenter.org or 415/457.2487
Trouble paying rent? Check out these short videos from Marin County:1. Marin County Eviction Ban2. If you can’t pay your rent3. Paying the rent that you owe4.Help is available Marin Center for Independent Living is offering various kinds of support to people with disabilities as well as older adults to prepare them for possible Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS).Click here: MarinCIL Has your employment or business been impacted by COVID-19? Check out these local resources…click here: WorkForce Alliance Snap Back Assistance, up to $800 for COVID-19 affected workers:Call: 415/473-3300 Free Covid-19 Testing
Questions? Assistance? We have resources and volunteers for:grocery deliveryfood assistancehelp with technology issues such as using zoomproviding weekly comfort calls to check in on youtherapy with Spahr therapists on a sliding scale basisplus more!
Dine In and Give Back on Thursday, December 3rd to support local restaurants and Food For Thought by participating in this year’s Dining IN For Life event!
Participating is easy! Simply…
1. Order takeout from a participating restaurant and enjoy your meal from the comfort of your home!
2. Make a donation to Food For Thought and support our work of providing healing food + love to more than 2,000 people living with HIV, COVID-19 and other serious illnesses in Sonoma County.
Our local restaurant community has been severely impacted by the pandemic. Because of this, we’re not asking our restaurant partners for a donation this year. So your gift to Food For Thought is more important than ever!
Help us spread the word!
Forward this email and invite your friends and family to order takeout and donate to Food For Thought on Thursday, December 3rd. Get involved and volunteer as a virtual ambassador! Create a personal ambassador page and fundraise for Food For Thought.
Food For Thought’s mission is to foster health and healing with food and compassion. Food For Thought | (707) 887-1647 | FFTfoodbank.org
Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who will fight to retain her seat during a Georgia runoffelection in January, donated large portions of her Senate salary to anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ rights organizations.
Among these organizations are several “crisis pregnancy centers” that often pose as abortion clinics in order to dissuade people from getting the procedure, and an adoption agency that has a strong anti-LGBTQ ethos and bans same-sex couples from using it.
Loeffler is the wealthiest member of Congress. She and her husband hold a roughly $500 million stake in the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company, Intercontinental Exchange, Forbes reported, estimating that the couple’s net worth is at least $800 million.
Because of this, Loeffler pledged to donate her $174,000 congressional salary to Georgia charities each quarter. Over the last two financial quarters, she donated $26,600 to seven anti-abortion pregnancy centers, and $3,800 to Covenant Care Adoptions, an anti-LGBTQ agency.
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Covenant Care Adoptions, a nonprofit adoption and counseling agency based in Georgia, requires that all adoptive parents be “husband and wife” who agree to the Statement of Faith listed on its website. The statement says that “the term ‘marriage’ has only one meaning: the uniting of one man and one woman in a single, exclusive union,” and that “any form of sexual immorality (including … homosexual behavior, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, and use of pornography) is sinful and offensive to God.”
The statement also says, “Rejection of one’s biological sex is a rejection of the image of God within that person,” and it is “imperative” that anyone who works for or volunteers with Covenant Care Adoptions or who wants to adopt a child through the organization “share these beliefs.”
Loeffler’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on her choice to donate to Covenant Care Adoptions, or whether she agrees with the organization’s anti-LGBTQ statement.
She has served in the Senate for less than a year, after being appointed to the seat in January, and has been an ally of President Donald Trump’s. She faced a challenge from fellow Republican Rep. Doug Collins as well as Democrat Raphael Warnock in Georgia’s all-party primary in November. Loeffler was forced into a runoff against Warnock, as neither candidate passed the necessary 50% vote threshold they needed to win the seat in November. The runoff will take place Jan. 5.
Of the seven crisis pregnancy centers Loeffler donated to this year, one is the Georgia branch of Obria Medical Clinics, a California-based company that has been embroiled in controversy over the past few years.
In 2019, Obria obtained a $5.1 million federal grant of Title X funding that would be doled out over three years, specifically intended to subsidize clinics providing birth control. Obria does not provide patients with any kind of contraception, instead recommending abstinence or the highly ineffective “rhythm method,” which recommends people only have sex while they are not ovulating in order to not conceive.
Obria’s grant was a part of the Trump administration’s attempt to redistribute Title X money to conservative, anti-abortion organizations instead of Planned Parenthood, which previously received a large portion of the grant. (The money was legally barred from being used for abortions.)
Campaign for Accountability — a progressive watchdog group that sued Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services for information about its use of federal family planning funds — argued in 2019 that Obria is in violation of the requirements for receiving the grant. Before the Trump administration altered the grant requirements (triggering ongoing lawsuits), it included providing contraception and abortion counseling, services Obria does not provide.
In response, an HHS spokesperson said in a statement to Politico that it would not force Obria to comply with the contraception requirements.
Obria also says on its website that it provides “abortion pill reversal,” an unproven idea that suggests that taking a hormone called progesterone can halt the termination of a pregnancy after a pregnant person has taken the first of two pills required for a medication abortion. There is no evidence this is possible, and no clear understanding of possible side effects. Two major studies of abortion reversal were shut down for ethical and safety issues.
Obria CEO Kathleen Eaton Bravo also faced pushback from abortion rights advocates after the Guardian unearthed her 2015 interview with the Catholic World Report, in which she said that Christianity began to “die out” in Europe “when its nations accepted contraception and abortion.”
“With Europeans having no children, immigrant Muslims came in to replace them, and now the culture of Europe is changing,” she said.
Loeffler donated $3,800 of her Senate salary to Obria over the last two financial quarters. Obria did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump will campaign for Loeffler and Republican Sen. David Perdue, who is also in a runoff, in Georgia on Saturday.
A far right anti-LGBTQ “pro-family” lawmaker responsible for drafting Hungary’s pro-Christian constitution that bans same-sex marriage was arrested fleeing an all-gay sex party in Belgium that violated Brussels’ coronavirus lockdown.
Hungarian politician József Szájer, 59, resigned as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Sunday, after his arrest Friday, The Daily Beast reports. According to reports he was carrying a backpack with narcotics – ecstasy – which he denies.
Officers burst into the ground floor of a bar on Rue des Pierres in the Belgian capital on Friday night to discover alcohol, drugs and what has been described as “a party of legs in the air,” Belgian newspaper La Dernière Heure (DH) reported, with a source claiming: “We interrupted a gang bang!”
Reports say about 20 people or more were involved at the event, held above the gay bar and near a police station. Neighbors had called to complain about the noise.
Hungary protects the institution of marriage between man and woman, a matrimonial relationship voluntarily established, as well as the family as the basis for the survival of the nation,” reads the 2011 constitution he co-wrote. It is subtitled, “God Bless Hungarians.”
Szájer has been an elected official for three decades, since 1990. He also once served as party leader of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s far right populist Christian nationalism Fidesz party.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed provided a sobering update on the coronavirus pandemic Tuesday and said the city will need to take “more restrictive action” this week to temper the explosion of coronavirus cases. New health protocols could come as early as tomorrow.
Breed said the city is reviewing a new public health order implemented by Santa Clara County on Monday and is considering similar measures, including limits on retail capacity and a more stringent travel quarantine. Restrictions on gatherings are also in discussion.
“Let me be clear, it’s not good,” the mayor said. “Cases are spiking. Hospitalizations are increasing. Our infection rate is at a higher point than where it was this summer…Our dangerous winter has arrived. The truth is we’re going to have to take more restrictive action. Santa Clara added mandatory travel quarantines. These are things we have to consider.”
Amid a surge, Los Angeles County shuttered outdoor dining and while Mayor Breed said that’s not an immediate step in the city’s plan, it’s not off the table.
“Unfortunately, we can’t rule it out,” she said. “As soon as we see it’s necessary, it could be a possibility, but we can’t say what that would mean in a timeline… We will make sure we provide as much notification as we can as soon as we can.”
The city’s Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax provided an update on the virus spread and said in the last three weeks, daily new cases have tripled with the city now reporting an average of 140 new cases a day.
“We don’t expect this to stabilize any time soon,” Colfax said. “We have more virus circulating than ever before.”
Hospitalizations of COVID patients have doubled in the last 10 days and Colfax said a bed shortage is imminent just before Christmas.
“That is a sobering thought,” he said. “San Franciscans sick from COVID-19 around the December holidays with no available beds at our local hospitals. We hope this doesn’t happen, but it’s an increasing likelihood as we see this virus spreads locally like never before.”
In Santa Clara County, a mandatory 14-day quarantine for residents and travelers entering the region from more than 150 miles away went into effect Monday. The new rule limits hotels in the county to only essential travelers. Colfax said a similar requirement could be issued in San Francisco as early as Wednesday.
The San Francisco ACT UP Oral History Project at the GLBT Historical Society collects and documents the unique and diverse history of Bay Area direct-action movements that protested social and governmental inaction in the face of the AIDS crisis during the 1980s and 1990s. ACT UP/San Francisco, ACT/UP Golden Gate, Stop AIDS Now Or Else, AIDS Action Pledge, Citizens for Medical Justice, Enola Gay and related groups were part of a nationwide ACT UP movement that would go on to change the very practice of medicine and speed up the transformation of cultural attitudes about gender and sexuality.
After four years of efforts, I am pleased to share that the San Francisco ACT UP Oral History Project has been completed in time for World AIDS Day this December 1. Composed of interviews with 23 Bay Area activists, this new collection in the society’s Oral History Collection is among the most extensive histories of local AIDS activism in the United States. The interviews, available here, paint a communal portrait of the unique challenges, debates and triumphs of this remarkable movement.
Determined Activism
Historian Joey Plaster launched the San Francisco ACT UP Oral History Project to document the determination and kinds of activism that had defined queer politics during the AIDS crisis. While the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP/New York had already been documented in films such as How to Survive a Plague and United in Anger, the history of the Bay Area’s response to the epidemic had received relatively little attention until the publication of Emily Hobson’s Lavender and Red. In her monograph, Hobson argues that Bay Area activists were the first to confront the epidemic using direct-action tactics — even before Larry Kramer gave the speech that is often regarded as the catalyst for ACT UP in New York.
The San Francisco ACT UP Oral History Project provides new information and context to ACT UP’s work in the Bay Area. Plaster’s conversation with Jack Davis is a prime example. Davis planned the “Blood and Money” ritual protest that Enola Gay performed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1984, during which protestors poured blood on the road at the entrance to the nuclear-weapons laboratory to decry government research priorities emphasizing weaponry over AIDS research. Most accounts suggest that the blood was fake, but Jack clarifies — the blood was real. It was his own. “This was also the period when we didn’t know — we knew that AIDS was transmitted by body fluids, so this blood was dangerous,” Davis explains. “And most of the people watching us knew that as well.” It has been an honor to play a part in bringing these interviews to the public. I want to thank Joey for getting the project off the ground, the volunteers who supported this work over the years, and the interviewees. But the lion’s share of my thanks must go to all those activists who have fought and continue to fight the battle against AIDS.
Daniel Corona drove home from City Hall in West Wendover, Nevada, on a recent Tuesday evening, passing the familiar bright waving hand of “Wendover Will.”
Originally part of a local casino, the 63-foot neon cowboy sign has been a community landmark for 68 years, a brightly lit beacon letting weary travelers know they had almost made it to the city after a long, dark drive through the Great Basin Desert.
“He’s seen it all,” Corona later said. “He’s been here for all of it.”
It had been a week since Election Day, and minutes earlier, Corona had been sworn in as West Wendover’s mayor, marking the beginning of his second term. His first victory in 2016, won by just 100 votes, not only made him the state’s youngest mayor at 25, but also Nevada’s first openly gay, Latino mayor — a win he did not expect in this rural, northeastern Nevada city nestled in Elko County, one of the state’s most conservative regions.
On his drives home, Corona usually slowed to glance up at Wendover Will. Donated to the city in 2004, the sign reminded Corona of the community’s resilience, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, which has hit West Wendover hard, forcing its five casinos to temporarily shutter earlier this year.
Corona also saw Wendover Will as a reminder to those outside the community of a little more than 4,200 people that the city had its own identity. Elko County is a predominantly white area in whichmining remains the top industry; West Wendover is a casino town in which more than 60 percent of the population is Latino.
This year, while Elko County remained a Republican stronghold,Democratic candidates — from the presidential election to a county commissioner’s race — won in West Wendover, making it the only city in the deep red county to go blue. Though the margin was narrow, residents and city officials believe the results reflect increased voting by the community’s younger Latino residents whose beliefs lean left — similar to other states around the country where that demographic led Democrats to victory.
Corona is only about a month younger than West Wendover, which incorporated in 1991.
Less than 8 square miles, West Wendover sits on the edge of the Utah border, so close that the city runs on Mountain Standard Time instead of Pacific Standard Time like the rest of Nevada. Prior to the pandemic, the dusty, desert city saw about 15,000 to 20,000 tourists, mostly from the Salt Lake City region, coming to its casinos each weekend.
A close-knit community in which everyone knows one another by one to two degrees of separation, West Wendover is a place where neighbors leave groceries on the doorsteps of families struggling financially without being asked, residents said.
When Corona told people in high school that he was gay, he was comforted by how accepting most of his classmates were. He found the same reception during his mayoral campaign in 2016, with few residents focusing on his sexual orientation. If anything, he said, they had more concerns about his age or that he still lived with his mother.
“Or they wanted to know more about how I was a Democrat,” Corona said, laughing.
The city voted for Republican presidential candidates in 2008 and 2012 and has only recently begun to lean more liberal in local and national elections, as the number of registered voters rose from 661 in 2008 to 1,125 in 2020. Residents also say that the city’s younger voters — the median age in West Wendover is 31 — became more active in the political process.
Corona became interested in politics at 16 when he heard a speech by Barack Obama. After high school, he moved to Salt Lake City and then Las Vegas to attend college, but he returned to West Wendover in 2015 to be closer to family.
Tired of casino interests influencing West Wendover’s local government — people in upper management at the casinos often won city council seats — and pledging to diversify the city’s economy, Corona signed up to run for mayor. During his 2016 campaign, residents saw him canvassing the city for months, knocking on almost every door, learning about what the community wanted.
“I’d never seen or heard of anyone really doing anything like that in town before,” Carolyn Santillanez, 51, who was raised in West Wendover, said. “I think a lot of people came out to vote for him because he was actually talking to people.”
Wendover Boulevard, the city’s main strip.Kim Raff / for NBC News
Corona believes he won over the city’s residents with his support for a 2016 state ballot initiative that legalized recreational marijuana, which he promised to bring to West Wendover as a new industry. While the initiative failed in Elko County, it passed in West Wendover with about 56 percent of the vote, and in Nevada as a whole.
By December 2019, Corona helped open the first marijuana dispensary in the county. The dispensary not only created at least 50 new jobs, but it has also generated $500,000 in tax revenue since it opened, even with a two-month Covid-19 closure, city officials said.
Corona also made local government more accessible — posting city news updates on social media — and exposed the community to more liberal viewpoints. In July 2019, Corona invited then-Democratic presidential hopeful Julian Castro to West Wendover, which marked the first visit of a presidential candidate.
In 2017, Corona spearheaded and passed a city resolution that supported the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, better known as DACA, which allowed immigrants who came to the United States as children but later lacked legal status to remain in the country, after President Donald Trump tried to shut it down.
“To me that really meant a lot that Mayor Corona and the city would even just put their support out there,” Alan Rojas, 25, said. A DACA recipient, Rojas was born in Mexico but had lived in West Wendover since he was a year old. “I still couldn’t vote this year, but I made sure that I told everyone I knew here that they should.”
West Wendover City Councilwoman Kathy Durham, who was elected in 2018, believes Corona inspired more civic engagement, especially with the city’s younger Latino voters.
Councilwoman Kathy Durham is also a teacher at West Wendover High School.Kim Raff / for NBC News
“They identify with him and see that he can make changes,” Durham, who teaches U.S. history, government and broadcast journalism at the local high school, said.
Jorge Aguirre, 20, said that the recent changes in the city, from the dispensary to the promise of a dog park, made him excited to vote this year. He organized a Black Lives Matter rally in June with three friends, the first of any kind of protest in the city that residents can remember.
“We really wanted to make our own community aware of what was going around in the rest of the country even if they felt like it didn’t affect them,” Aguirre said.
Jorge Aguirre, 20, helped organize a Black Lives Matter rally in West Wendover.Kim Raff / for NBC News
All of Corona’s other mayoral duties seemed simpler compared to leading West Wendover through the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly 75 percent of the city’s residents are casino employees, and when Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak ordered a shutdown in March, most were furloughed or laid off.
That included Corona, who at the time worked as a poker room manager (the mayor’s position only pays $7,200 per year). He lost his job, like hundreds of his constituents. For months, he waited for his unemployment insurance to come through — making choices on which bills to pay — while helping other residents navigate the same process. Corona visited the local food bank, which had gone from seeing 20 families a week to 300, to ensure it had enough supplies for the community, while also picking up food for himself.
“It was a really humbling experience and in the end I feel like it brought me closer to the community, because we all knew we were going through the same thing,” he said.
The city’s casinos reopened this summer. Most residents complied with Corona’s daily reminders on social media to follow the governor’s mask mandate and social distancing guidance. Some West Wendover residents said that when traveling to other parts of Elko County for groceries or work, they’ve noticed people not taking the same measures. Last week, top state health officials criticized the county for not having clear messaging on Covid-19 safety precautions, noting that cases in the county had quintupled compared to the previous month.
But Elko County commissioners continue to push back on the state’s safety restrictions. After Nevada’s governor limited capacity in casinos and restaurants across the state to 25 percent, Commissioner Jon Karr said in an email that he and the other commissioners were working with the state to come up with a more “reasonable” plan.
The county’s human resources director, Amanda Osborne, told The Associated Press that in Elko County, “local political leadership is very divided. It’s very difficult to have an enforcement plan.”
Since March, the virus has infected more than 300 West Wendover residents, and taken the lives of four.
“Because we’re so small, everyone who passes away is a face, not just a number, and that’s probably been one of the hardest parts of all this,” Corona said.The voters’ choice
When Election Day approached, Corona was nervous. He knew the results would depend largely on how residents believed he’d handled the pandemic.
Corona wound up beating his opponent, Mike Katsonis, by a 387-vote margin, more than triple his margin in 2016. Katsonis, 69, a Republican, said he ran in the nonpartisan mayoral election so that Corona did not go unopposed. He knew that winning would be a long shot because Corona was popular and the city seemed to be leaning blue.
“In fact, I even told him after he won, ‘If I had won, I would’ve demanded a recount,’” Katsonis, a retired pharmacist, said.
The results showed the city still has a strong red contingent: Joe Biden beat Trump in West Wendover, but only by 10 votes, much less than Corona’s margin.
Kris Andersen, 55, who’s lived in the community for 29 years, said she liked Corona and appreciated his efforts to diversify the town’s economy, but did not vote for him.
“I think he’s very, very liberal and I’m much more conservative,” Andersen, a substitute teacher, said. She wanted to make sure that conservative voters remained heard in West Wendover. “I think he’s a good guy, but I just don’t think we have the same political ideas.”
As he drove home after being sworn in as mayor earlier this month, with the casinos’ neon lights in his rearview mirror, Corona worried about the record-setting rise in coronavirus cases in Nevada and the possibility of another shutdown. Corona is not sure if the city’s casinos can survive another closure.
Mayor Daniel Corona in front of City Hall.Kim Raff / for NBC News
But he took heart in the mandate from voters he saw in the election results: He received 620 votes, while Biden received only 427 and Trump received 417 in West Wendover.
“To me that means, a lot of people who voted for Trump also voted for me, which is strange because I think of myself as the opposite of him,” Corona said. “But it also shows me that there’s a lot of people who understand that I’m not just a mayor for one group or party, but working for everyone who lives here.”
Indiana’s attorney general has asked the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that allows same-sex couples to both be listed as parents on their child’s birth certificate.
The ruling came after a four-year legal battle fought by two lesbian parents, Ashlee and Ruby Henderson, who sued county health officials when they refused to include them both on their son’s birth certificate.
Their lawsuit argued that it was discriminatory to force one mother from a same-sex marriage to fork over $4,000 to $5,000 to legally adopt their child.
Seven additional couples joined the suit as plaintiffs, and in January 2020 the courts finally ruled that since Indiana law presumes a husband to be the biological father of a child born in wedlock, a same-sex spouse should also be considered a parent on the birth certificate.
Ten months later, Indiana attorney general Curtis Hill is seeking to overturn it all.
He’s submitted a brief asking the Supreme Court to review the landmark decision — a move that had the Hendersons’ attorney wondering why state officials “continue to fight against families headed by same-sex spouses,” Indystar said.
Hill’s 46-page brief argues that upholding the lower court’s decision would violate common sense and throw into jeopardy parental rights based on biology.
“A birth mother’s wife will never be the biological father of the child, meaning that, whenever a birth-mother’s wife gains presumptive ‘parentage’ status, a biological father’s rights and obligations to the child have necessarily been undermined without proper adjudication,” he wrote.
When a similar case from Arkansas came before the Supreme Court in 2017, judges determined that precluding one parent from a birth certificate infringes upon their rights as a married couple. But the courts could reach a very different outcome in Indiana now that Trump has stacked the judiciary in his favour.
It’s among the first cases submitted to the Supreme Court dealing with same-sex marriage since the confirmation of justice Amy Coney Barrett, and is likely to be a test of things to come.
Deb Price, a trailblazing lesbian journalist who helped open America’s eyes to LGBT+ lives, has died aged 62.
Price made history when she started writing a column for the Detroit News in 1992 exclusively focusing on gay issues, becoming the first columnist nationwide to do so.
The legendary journalist died on 20 November in Hong Kong from interstitial pneumonitis, an autoimmune condition that causes damage to the lungs.
Price’s wife, Joyce Murdoch, told the Bay Area Reporter that she was diagnosed with the condition 13-years-ago and that it “gradually diminished her lung capacity”.
Murdoch said Price “lived life fully” and continued working at the South China Morning Post right up until she was hospitalised in September as her condition worsened.
There has been an outpouring of grief after trailblazing lesbian journalist Deb Price died.
There has been an outpouring of grief from those who knew and loved Price, with many former co-workers and editors praising her as a trailblazing figure unafraid to tackle LGBT+ issues in her work.
Bob Giles, the editor and publisher who commissioned Price’s first gay-themed column, told the Detroit News: “She gave us a stack [of columns] that were really well done and they seemed to fit into the idea that it was a changing world and Deb had a capacity for expressing that.”
Reflecting on her incredible legacy, Joshua Benton, founder of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, wrote on Twitter: “I am very sorry to report the death of Deb Price, a tremendous journalist, a Nieman Fellow (Class of 2011), and a real trailblazer for LGBTQ people in newsrooms and around the country.”
Benton said it was “hard to overestimate” how significant her column was.
“This was long before the internet gave Americans a window into any topic or community they wanted. Most people got a huge share of their information about the world from the local daily and local TV news.
“Most Americans in 1992 said they didn’t know a single gay person. Then suddenly there was Deb, on the breakfast table next to the sports section.
“She wasn’t just running in New York City and San Francisco, either – she was reaching people in red states too.”
Your brave work impacted many in ways you might never have imagined. A life well-lived.
Benton shared images of just some of the abuse Price received in letters to the editor written in response to her column, with one reader saying she was “breaking God’s laws”, while another said the newspaper was “morally wrong” to publish her words.
However, he also shared letters written to the editor showing the love LGBT+ readers showed her, while other straight readers thanked the newspaper for educating them on a topic they had not previously understood.
Dana Nessel, attorney general of Michigan, also mourned Price’s death, writing on Twitter: “I was one of your regular readers. Thank you for making me feel less alone and hopeful for a world that might one day embrace LGBTQ people instead of loathing us.
“Your brave work impacted many in ways you might never have imagined. A life well-lived.”
Nate Hurst, a political journalist, also heaped praise on Price’s legacy, writing: “Deb Price was the first coworker I came out to – before I had the courage to tell my friends and family. She also showed me the ropes on Capitol Hill. Deb was a fierce reporter, a humble trailblazer, and an unstoppable force for good in the world.
“She is very much missed.”
Price and her wife later compiled her columns and published them in a book titled And Say Hi to Joyce. They dedicated the book to “all the gay readers who’ve put 25 cents in a newspaper box and found nothing reflecting their own lives inside.”
Speaking to Associated Press in 1992 about her first column, Price said she asked readers how she should “introduce Joyce” to others. A reader suggested that she should introduce Joyce as her “partner in perversity”.
“I think it’s really important for me to remember (and) for other people to remember that if there weren’t hostility and if there weren’t misunderstandings about gay people, there would be no point in doing this column,” she said at the time.
The autumn COVID-19 surge has now spread not only through major urban areas like Los Angeles but across California and even to the far northern rural reaches of the state, a troubling sign as the state faces its greatest challenge from the pandemic yet.
A Los Angeles Times data analysis found that most California counties are now suffering their worst coronavirus daily case rates of the entire COVID-19 pandemic, surpassing even the summer surge that had forced officials to roll back the state’s first reopening in the late spring.
The data suggest California will face new problems in December if the unprecedented rise in cases continues. In earlier phases of the pandemic, different parts of California could help harder-hit areas, like San Diego County and San Francisco taking in patients from Imperial County. But that could be difficult in this wave, with the pandemic worsening in most places across California simultaneously.
“We can’t depend on our counties next to us because they are under the same stress and strain,” said Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, the Santa Clara County COVID-19 testing officer. “They can’t provide us with beds in their counties. So we are on our own. And our hospitals are hurting at this point.”
The Times analysis also demonstrates how the coronavirus has managed to break free from densely packed neighborhoods in urban areas and farming communities in agricultural valleys, where the virus infected essential workers — many of them Latino — who had no choice but leave home to work.
Now, infections are spreading faster in other communities. In Marin County, health officer Dr. Matt Willis said the pandemic has moved from just hitting predominantly Latino communities. Now, in just the last month, “the majority of cases are among our white residents,” Willis said.
“We’re finding a greater proportion of those cases among people who are gathering indoors, and might have a more reasonable option to avoid those exposures, because they’re based on personal choices,” Willis told the Board of Supervisors. “It’s most discouraging that that’s what is driving it — but also encouraging because we think those are behaviors that people have more control over, because it’s not a matter of economic necessity.”
In just the last week, record average daily coronavirus case rates have hit L.A. and other hot spots like San Bernardino and San Diego counties, the Times’ analysis found, which have already received much attention in recent weeks as hospitals have begun to fill and where, in some cases, the daily death toll has risen. The crisis has only become exponentially worse in recent weeks.
Many other counties are also seeing record highs in their average daily case rate observed just the last week, according to the Times analysis, including Ventura, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, Sacramento, San Mateo, Solano, and Santa Cruz. Counties across Northern California have also posted record highs in recent days, such as Napa County; Yolo County, home of the University of California, Davis; Nevada, Placer and El Dorado counties, which sprawl from the state capital’s suburbs to Lake Tahoe; and sparsely populated Mariposa County, home to Yosemite Valley.
In all, more than 23 million Californians, living in 31 counties, are currently in what’s shaping up to be the worst wave of the pandemic, the Times analysis found.
Across California, the seven-day average of daily coronavirus cases have more than quadrupled since mid-October, from less than 3,000 a day to nearly 14,000 a day as of Wednesday. In just two weeks, average daily deaths have doubled: every day, 74 Californian COVID-19 deaths are reported on average as of Wednesday, up from an average of 38 a day.
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