An Ontario, Canada, court has ruled that a trans woman must pay the travel costs for her two children to move in with their mother in Washington, US.
Increasingly isolated from her family, the upshot of a legal custody battle has seen Darcy feel she is drifting from her children after her former spouse divorced her in 2017.
Her ex is now remarried to a man who works for Microsoft, theOttawa Sunreported. Darcy and her family were then plunged into a custody battle that sowed division and fear, she said, as her former partner wished to relocate to Washington as her new husband’s job is there.
In the judgment released last month, justices ruled that Darcy’s youngest children can move some 4,000 kilometres away to stay with their mother, step-father and half-sibling.
“I’m in shock, just shock,” the 37-year-old told the outlet.
“They’re moving my kids to a place I can’t go and the idea that I somehow should pay their costs to take my children away seems kind of unfair.”
Ontario Superior Court justice David Broad considered that while a joint custody agreement would be in the best interests of the children, they need to be allowed to move with their mother.
It’s a decision that has left Darcy reeling, weary of both the rampaging coronavirus keeping country borders shut as well as a US she feels is unwelcoming of trans folk.
“The likelihood of me seeing my kids now is just so low because of COVID,” she explained, finding little respite in the virtual access judges granted her alongside extended long weekends, four weeks in the summer and a week over Christmas vacation.
To her list of woes, she added that as a trans person she “doesn’t feel comfortable” in the US. “I used to travel there for work and I won’t anymore,” she added, worrying that her children would be exposed to transphobia if raised there.
But Broad disagreed. Writing in his judgement: “It was clear from her testimony that the applicant’s concerns respecting these issues are sincere and strongly held.
“However, no expert evidence was led that would suggest that living in the State of Washington, with exposure to the local culture, would adversely affect the children’s development and best interest.”
The number of coronavirus deaths in Sonoma County is soaring, a grim reminder of rampant virus transmission in the community as the infectious disease infects many more of the county’s most vulnerable residents in senior care homes and the general population.
In just the first seven days of the year, county health officials have reported 22 deaths linked to COVID-19. Ten were reported by county officials on Thursday after eight on Tuesday, boosting pandemic deaths to 214.
The 10 fatalities are the most county officials have revealed in a single day since the pandemic started last March, mirroring California’s record deadly virus trend.
With virus-related deaths clearly mounting, the county Sheriff’s Office recently acquired a refrigeration trailer that can hold 56 bodies if the county morgue gets “bombarded with deaths” and reaches its limit, Sheriff’s spokesman Juan Valencia said.
“We have not peaked in the second wave yet; we haven’t seen the worst of it,” said Dr. Gary Green, an infectious disease specialist at Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital. “I really think that January is going to be, probably, the most deadly month in the pandemic so far.”
Raising the alarm, Green and other health care experts said COVID-19 is spreading in the community at a greater extent now compared with the summer months. That means more residents sick with the virus are being hospitalized, and eventually more people will die, Green said.
Dr. Sundari Mase, the county’s health officer, said the spike of deaths and people hospitalized with the respiratory disease shows how prevalent the virus is in the county. Mase stressed the importance of adhering to public health orders and personal safety rules, including masking, hand-washing and social distancing.
“We have widespread, really widespread community transmission now with a case rate that is three to four times higher than what it was just six to eight weeks ago,” she said.
Mase and other health care experts said a larger share of the local deaths linked to the virus now are occurring in the general population, compared to last summer when COVID-19 fatalities were mainly driven by infections in skilled nursing centers and residential care homes for the elderly. These residents still remain vulnerable to being hospitalized and dying from the virus.
Coronavirus-related deaths among senior care home residents comprised 40% of the 40 fatalities since Dec. 10, showing the dramatic swing from the start of the pandemic to last month when such elderly residents accounted for 65% of virus deaths. Among these 40 latest deaths, 15% originated from household transmission of the virus, 8% were tied to Thanksgiving gatherings, while the virus source is unknown for 35% of these fatalities, local health officials said.
Of the 18 fatalities reported so far this week, at least nine were residents living in either skilled nursing or residential care sites, while eight were people in the general population. One was disclosed late Thursday night and no information was immediately available about that fatality.
All who were living in senior care homes were 64 or older, as were four of the eight people living at home. Three of the deceased who lived at home were between 50 and 64 and one was between 18 and 49 — a stark reminder the virus can be deadly in young residents.
On Thursday, California public health authorities reported a record two-day total of 1,042 coronavirus deaths, as many hospitals statewide grapple with unprecedented numbers of patients afflicted with the virus.
The state Department of Public Health’s website listed 583 new deaths, after 459 deaths Wednesday. The previous two-day record total was 1,013 deaths at the end of December. California’s death toll since the start of the pandemic has eclipsed 28,000.
It is 20 years today since the age of consent was finally equalised in the UK after a bruising, years-long campaign from LGBT+ activists.
Today, queer people enjoy many of the same rights as their straight counterparts in the UK – but that wasn’t always the case. Homosexuality was illegal in all circumstances up until 1967, and same-sex marriage was once just a distant dream.
Among the many legal hurdles queer people had to overcome was the battle to equalise the age of consent. Gay and bisexual men had been governed by a separate age of consent for decades, pushing them further into the shadows in the process.
On 8 January, 2001, the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act finally came into force after it was passed by parliament on 30 November, 2000, lowering the age of consent for gay and bisexual men to 16 in England, Scotland and Wales, and 17 in Northern Ireland – finally granting queer people the autonomy over their bodies they so desperately craved.
The debate surrounding the age of consent for gay and bisexual men in the UK began as early as 1957, when the Wolfenden Report first recommended that the ban on homosexuality be overturned. Crucially, that same report also recommended that the age of consent for gay and bisexual men be set at 21, a full five years later than for straight people.
A decade on, the recommendations made in that report finally made it into law in the form of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which partially decriminalised homosexuality in England and Wales. As was recommended in the Wolfenden Report, gay and bisexual men would be allowed to have sex, but only in certain circumstances – and only when they were aged over 21.
According to historian Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, this “discriminatory provision” was added to the law to reflect “the longstanding association between homosexuality and corruption, particularly the corruption of the young by the older, supposedly ‘hardened’ homosexuals”.
The House of Lords blocked efforts to equalise the age of consent
In the years that followed, the debate around the age of consent continued – but it wasn’t until 1994 when the law finally started to change. Conservative MP Edwina Currie, joined by more than 40 Tory MPs, proposed an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill to equalise the age of consent in 1994. The amendment was voted down by parliament, but MPs did agree to lower the age of consent for gay and bisexual men to 18.
However, the fight was not yet won, with queer men still not granted the same rights as their straight counterparts.
In 1998, Labour MP Ann Keen introduced an amendment to the Crime and Disorder Bill in an effort to equalise the age of consent, and it passed with a majority of 207 in the House of Commons. But when it went to the House of Lords, it was firmly rejected by a majority of 168.
The government dropped the bill temporarily, but it was revived later that year and once again sailed through the Commons only to be blocked by the Lords. This second rejection prompted the government to invoke the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, which limited the powers of the House of Lords to block acts. Finally, the age of consent was on track to be equalised.
On 30 November, 2000, speaker Michael Martin announced the passage of the act and it received Royal Assent several hours later.
This is a piece of legislation driven by Metropolitan, London attitudes and is completely out of step with the rest of the country.
But the government’s decision to effectively bypass the House of Lords did not pass without controversy. Baroness Young, the former Tory minister who fought tirelessly against equalising the age of consent, said the government’s invoking of the Parliament Acts was a “constitutional outrage”.
As violent white supremacists attacked the US Capitol, and democracy itself, on Wednesday (6 January), Mary Trump called out her uncle for ‘orchestrating’ the insurrection.
An armed, extremist mob of Donald Trump supporters breached the US Capitol, storming the rotunda and breaking into the Senate chamber to fire tear gas at senators in a bid to overturn the US election result as the Electoral College votes were counted by Congress.
The election has now been certified by Congress as a win for Democratic president-elect Joe Biden and his vice president-elect Kamala Harris.
The pro-Trump rioters descended on the Capitol on the president’s instructions, moving from the “March to Save America” to the seat of the legislative branch of the US government, violently breaching the complex while holding Confederate flags, tearing down four layers of security fencing and fighting federal police.
Four people were killed during the riots – one woman was shot by police, while three others died as a result of “medical emergencies”, officials said. Fourteen police officers were injured.
As the terrifying chaos was unfolding, the lame duck president’s lesbian niece Mary Trump took to Twitter to call out her uncle for his role in the attack.
“Make no mistake, the so-called leader of our country, who swore to protect and defend the Constitution, directed a horde of white supremacist domestic terrorists to stage a coup to overturn a legitimately decided election,” she said.
“He isn’t just encouraging them, he IS them.
As the riots continued, she added: “Why are these f**king traitors not being held at gunpoint, handcuffed, and arrested
“It’s not a mystery – this was allowed to happen.”
Hours after the Capitol riots began, the president finally made a video statement via Twitter, which has since been removed by the social media platform, in which he told the extremists: “We love you, you’re very special.
Mary Trump responded: “Pouring gasoline on the fire under the guise of pretending to put it out. None of his statements should be aired.”
As well as criticising her uncle, she denounced the “abject failure of the DC police force” in combatting the riots, and added that “every seditionist House member who supported and encouraged this attempted coup needs to be expelled”.
Christy Holstege, mayor of Palm Springs in California, has slammed the “white privileged people” flocking to resorts for holidays as coronavirus cases surge.
Many queer people have been watching in horror in recent weeks as influencers – many of them white gay men – flocked to resorts such as Puerta Vallarta in Mexico to attend “circuit parties” as COVID-19 spirals out of control in many parts of the world.
One of those high-profile “circuit parties” ended in disaster when the boat the party was taking place on capsized – but many queer people struggled to feel sorry for those on board.
Holstege, who made history when she became the first out bisexual mayor in the United States in December 2020, has hit out at those travelling abroad and jeopardising the health and wellbeing of others.
She shared a screenshot of a post from GaysOverCovid, an anonymous Instagram account dedicated to calling out the gay men travelling abroad for circuit parties during the pandemic, and wrote: “Throwing and attending [a party] in Mexico as an American is super problematic.”
Christy Holstege says it’s ‘unacceptable’ to host ‘massive parties’ right now.
Holstege doubled down on her criticism on her Instagram Stories, sharing a screenshot of a comment she left on another post in which she laid out her views on those travelling abroad.
In the post, Holstege said it was “unacceptable” for people to be holding “massive parties during the height of the global pandemic”.
“It violates the state’s stay at home orders which prohibits non-essential travel, it’s dangerous that people attending will be coming back to our communities, especially considering our LGBTQ community is particularly at risk and traumatised from the HIV pandemic, and it’s especially problematic as [it’s] mostly white privileged people travelling to a lower income country and communities of colour that can’t afford to keep out infected tourists,” she wrote.
“I am hearing from tons of residents of Palm Springs who are extremely concerned about this.”
Holstege went on to praise the GaysOverCovid Instagram account, saying she was “grateful” to them for calling out members of the community who were deliberately flouting coronavirus restrictions.
Many in the LGBT+ community have expressed their shock and dismay at seeing huge numbers of (mostly white) gay men flocking to resorts abroad for parties in recent weeks.
The GaysOverCovid Instagram account has attracted international media attention for calling out those partying through the pandemic, and it has racked up more than 100,000 followers in the process.
Much of the world is currently facing into a huge surge in coronavirus case numbers, with California experiencing a significant rise in the number of people infected with COVID-19.
An estimated 1.85 million people have died worldwide with COVID-19 since the virus first appeared in Wuhan, China, in 2019.
The Trump administration has spent the past four years stacking the courts with anti-gay judges, according to a new report from LGBTQ civil rights group Lambda Legal.
Nearly 40 percent of President Donald Trump’s confirmed federal appellate judges have demonstrated anti-LGBTQ bias, the organization claimed, from opposing same-sex marriage and protecting businesses’ rights to reject gay customers to helping implement the military’s transgender ban.
Lambda Legal CEO Kevin Jennings said the report is a “call to action” for President-elect Joe Biden.
“While Donald Trump’s presidency may be coming to end, his devastating impact on our federal courts will take decades to reverse,” Jennings said in a statement. “When the basic human rights of LGBTQ+ Americans are so often challenged in court, we cannot accept a judiciary stacked with judges who would disenfranchise these vulnerable groups.”
The report, Courts, Confirmations & Consequences, also claims that the outgoing administration has seated judges faster than any other in recent history: 54 of Trump’s circuit court nominees were confirmed in four years, while President Barack Obama had only 55 confirmed in his eight years in office.
Of Trump’s 57 nominees for federal appellate judgeships, Lambda Legal opposed 22 because of their anti-LGBTQ records, including three who received lifetime appointments in 2020.
Among them is Andrew Brasher, who was confirmed in February to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Previously, Brasher worked with the Alliance Defending Freedom on an amicus brief that argued that same-sex marriage was “harmful to children.”
In another amicus filing, Brasher claimed that a New Mexico wedding photographer had the right to turn down a gay couple because her involvement would suggest “approval, validation and celebration of the ceremony.”
Lambda Legal senior attorney Sasha Buchert called Brasher’s appointment an “affront to civil rights.”
“Judge Brasher’s record to undermine the rights of LGBTQ people and years of advocacy to suppress voting rights should not have been rewarded with the lifetime promotion that he just received from Republicans in the U.S. Senate,” Buchert said in a statement at the time.
Appeals Judge Cory Wilson testifies during his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on May 20.Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Cory Wilson, who was appointed to the 5th Circuit court in June, called same-sex marriage “a pander to liberal interest groups” in a 2012 op-ed for the Press-Register of Mobile, Alabama. In another piece the same year, he defended Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy’s donations to anti-LGBTQ causes, complaining that private citizens were being “bashed, banned, and bankrupted, simply for expressing their views.”
As a state legislator, Wilson backed Mississippi’s HB 1523, a controversial religious freedom law that allows businesses, state employees and even health care providers to refuse service to LGBTQ people based on “deeply held religious beliefs or moral objections.”
A month before Justin Walker was appointed to the D.C. Circuit court in September, he ruled in favor of a Christian photographer who ran afoul of the Fairness Ordinance in Louisville, Kentucky, when she advertised that she shoots only heterosexual weddings.
“America is wide enough for those who applaud same-sex marriage and those who refuse to,” Walker, then a district judge for western Kentucky, wrote in a 27-page opinion. “The Constitution does not require a choice between gay rights and freedom of speech. It demands both.”
Other confirmed Trump nominees whom Lambda Legal has opposed are D.C. Circuit appeals Judge Gregory Katsas — who, as deputy White House counsel, provided legal advice for the administration’s ban on transgender service members — and 5th Circuit appeals Judge Kyle Duncan, who represented the Virginia school district that tried to ban transgender student Gavin Grimmfrom using the bathroom aligning with his gender identity.
Lambda Legal did not oppose the nomination of Patrick Bumatay, now the first openly gay judge on the 9th Circuit appeals court. In February, Bumatay issued a dissent saying the Idaho Corrections Department was under no obligation to approve a prisoner’s request for gender-affirming surgery.
Patrick BumatayDept. of Justice
The country’s 13 federal appellate courts (12 circuit courts representing different regions across the U.S. and the Federal Circuit Court in Washington, D.C.) sit just one level below the Supreme Court. They are the final arbiters in tens of thousands of cases annually, because the Supreme Court traditionally takes up only a hundred or so.
“Circuit court judges exert tremendous influence in shaping our nation’s laws and have a profound impact on the everyday lives of Americans,” the report reads.
Trump appointees account for nearly a third of the 179 circuit judges. In nine of the 13 circuits, his picks are a quarter of the active-duty (i.e., non-senior status) judges. He also appointed 174 of the 644 judges on federal district courts.
White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere praised Trump’s “unmatched record” of appointing judges who believe in applying the Constitution “as written, not legislating from the bench.”
“The President has always been transparent with the American people about the qualifications he considers paramount and who he would consider for a seat on the High Court in order to ensure this exceptional nation built on the rule of law continues for generations to come,” Deere said in an email.
Before he leaves office on Jan. 20, Trump will also have appointed three Supreme Court justices: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
While Lambda opposed all three, Gorsuch issued the majority opinion last year in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, a landmark decision that determined that the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 barred workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
“Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result,” Gorsuch wrote in the ruling in June. “But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands.”
Sharon McGowan, Lambda Legal’s chief strategy officer and legal director, warned that there are many other areas in which Gorsuch has “been much more skeptical about the rights of LGBT people.”
She pointed to his joining Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in the 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop case, in which Thomas argued that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission violated baker Jack Phillips’ right “to freely exercise his religion” by requiring him to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple.
And in a dissenting opinion in Pavan v. Smith, Gorsuch argued in 2017 that the court’s landmark 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which made gay marriage legal nationwide, didn’t guarantee the right of same-sex parents to have both their names appear on their children’s birth certificates.
“While some arguments can reach him … he’s certainly not a reliable vote,” McGowan said.
LGBT+ rights will be “at stake” on Tuesday (5 January), when America elects two Georgia senators in a run-off elections determining which party has control of the US Senate.
Neither of the two Republican senators running for election in Georgia, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, managed to draw a majority on election day (3 November), so they were forced into run-offs against their Democratic challengers, Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
If Republicans win either race in Georgia, they will retain control of the Senate, posing a serious challenge to Joe Biden’s pro-LGBT+ legislative agenda and the Democrat-controlled lower House of Representatives.
If the Democrats win both seats, the Senate will be equally split and vice president-elect Kamala Harris will have a tie-breaking vote.
Georgia Democratic Senate candidates Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff (Getty Images)
Sarah Kate Ellis, president of LGBT+ advocacy group GLAAD, told Reuters that the run-off elections puts everything “at stake” when it comes to US LGBT+ rights.
She said: “These two Senate runoff races in Georgia will be defining for the LGBTQ community and whether or not our rights are moved forward in Congress.”
One big example of LGBT+ rights legislation that could be at risk with a Republican Senate is the Equality Act, which would protect LGBT+ people from discrimination in areas like employment, housing and education by amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The Equality Act has struggled to pass through Congress, and Gabriele Magni, a professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University, said: “Chances that a Republican-controlled Senate will all of a sudden decide to change their minds on this are very, very limited.”
The Democratic and Republican candidates in Georgia are polar opposites when it comes to the Equality Act, as well as trans rights.
While Ossoff and Warnock have been vocal about their support for the trans community and trans rights and have both committed to voting in favour of the Equality Act, Perdue opposes the Equality Act and has voted for bills to undermine LGBT+ discrimination protections, and Loeffler has previously put forward bills seeking to legally erase transgender children.
One of the most talked-about promises that Biden has made when it comes to LGBT+ rights is to overturn Donald Trump’s ban on trans people serving in the US military which, unlike legislation that would require bills to be passed by Congress, he could do using executive powers.
The GaysOverCovid Instagram has sparked a “gay civil war”.
The world is in the midst of the deadliest rise in coronavirus case numbers since the pandemic began – but some gay men are flouting restrictions to party like it’s 2022.×
Much of the gay community has watched in horror in recent days as a number of high-profile “circuit parties” – largely attended by white gay influencers – went ahead in Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, with one, taking place aboard a boat, ending in disaster.
Now, one anonymous queer person has taken it upon themselves to expose the gay men attending the potential super-spreader events.
An Instagram account, titled GaysOverCovid, was originally set up in the summer to highlight the huge numbers of shirtless, muscular gay men flocking to large parties – but the account took on a life of its own following a huge number of gay circuit parties in Puerto Vallarta, along with other regions.
The account, which was temporarily deactivated following a storm of complaints from gay influencers implicated in the scandal, has sparked a “gay civil war” on social media, with queer people divided on whether it’s right or wrong to shame white gay influencers for flouting restrictions – and for potentially jeopardising people’s lives.
In recent days, the GaysOverCovid Instagram account has joked about the party ship that sank in Puerto Vallarta on New Year’s Eve, and has pleaded with gay influencers to have “empathy” for others.
In one post, the account lashed out at gay men for attending a party in Los Angeles, despite the city’s spiralling coronavirus caseload, writing: “They’re begging people to stay home. And you can’t resist the urge to host and attend a party.
“This is not about you. It’s about the person having a heart attack that’s going to be turned away because there’s no room.”
Controversially, GaysOverCovid has also shared pictures of gay men – some of them frontline healthcare workers – partying on New Year’s Eve, questioning how they could have proceeded with their plans as the pandemic spiralled out of control.
The account has also called out “white privilege”, noting that the vast majority of gay men pictured partying abroad have been white.
GaysOverCovid Instagram sparks reward offer for true identity of whistleblower.
The anonymous curator of the GaysOverCovid Instagram account has faced a wave of backlash from gay influencers embroiled in the controversy, with some even offering financial rewards to anyone who can help unveil their identity.
Some have criticised the account for tracking influencers’ Facebook locations and Venmo transactions in an effort to uncover where they are attending parties – but others have celebrated them for exposing the bad behaviour of gay men.
In one viral Twitter thread, Zack Ford explored some of the reasons why so many gay men are flocking to the likes of Puerto Vallarta at the worst moment of the pandemic.
“This really is a conversation about (mostly white) gay male culture, in group/out-group dynamics, superficiality and body image issues, and what it means to celebrate sexual freedom as gay men,” he wrote.
“It’s actually complicated stuff, and nuance gets lost.”
Ford noted that there was a “massive disconnect” between the gay men who were doing everything in their power to stay safe, and those who are flouting public health guidance.
Queer victims of domestic violence are finally protected by law in all 50 states after a historic court ruling in North Carolina.
North Carolina had been the only state that did not offer equal protection to queer people in same-sex relationships – but that changed in a court ruling delivered Thursday (31 December).
The Court of Appeals of North Carolina ruled that people who are in same-sex relationships should have the same protections as straight people when they report domestic abuse, Jurist.org reports.
The court’s ruling came after a woman, who was in a same-sex relationship, was denied a Domestic Violence Protective Order (DVPO) under the terms of the North Carolina General Statutes (NCGS).
Chapter 50B of the NCGS states that only those in opposite-sex relationships can claim protection from domestic violence – which resulted in a trial court rejecting her appeal.
That court’s decision was appealed, with attorneys arguing that Chapter 50B violated North Carolina’s constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment.
In its ruling on Thursday, the Court of Appeals of North Carolina ruled that Chapter 50B was in violation of the due process clause, and that it violated the woman’s right to personal safety and liberty.
The court also ruled that the clause was in contravention of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Finally, the court said that the NCGS chapter singled out LGBT+ people and served no government interest, and that it failed the lowest level of a scrutiny test.
In its ruling, the Court of Appeals relied on the Supreme Court’s momentous ruling in June 2020, which declared that LGBT+ people are entitled to protection from discrimination based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.
The Court of Appeals’ ruling has been heralded as a victory for LGBT+ rights, meaning that queer people across the United States now have equal protection from domestic violence under the law.
The LGBTQ community lost a pioneer in April, when LGBTQ activist Phyllis Lyon (1924–2020) passed away at her house in San Francisco. Together with her partner and later wife of over 50 years, Del Martin (1921–2008), Lyon cofounded the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955, the first lesbian-rights organization in the United States. Just a few months after Lyon’s death, the Noe Valley house that Lyon and Martin shared for over five decades was sold and is now threatened with demolition. Community members are organizing to attempt to save this historic structure from erasure, establishing the group Friends of the Lyon-Martin House, for which the GLBT Historical Society, whose archives hold Lyon and Martin’s papers, is serving as fiscal sponsor. On October 19, District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman initiated the process to name the Lyon-Martin House a San Francisco Landmark. With Mayor London Breed’s approval on October 30, the nomination moves to the San Francisco Planning Department and from there to the Historic Preservation Commission. Success in naming the house a landmark will require major support from the LGBTQ community during the series of hearings that accompany the landmarking process. History Happens interviewed architectural historian and preservation planner Shayne Watson, who is spearheading the preservation efforts with Friends of the Lyon-Martin House.
Why is it important to preserve the Lyon-Martin house as a queer historic space in San Francisco?
Connecting our history to the physical places where that history unfolded makes the stories really come to life. Imagine trying to convey the significance of Stonewall without the actual Stonewall Inn, or the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot without that now-iconic building at the corner of Turk and Taylor. A bronze sidewalk plaque just doesn’t cut it. The Lyon-Martin House is a landmark with or without formal designation. Just as Americans claim Independence Hall as a birthplace of American democracy, queer people throughout the world can claim the Lyon-Martin House as a place instrumental in the development and advancement of our fundamental rights — it’s part of our collective experience.
With our Executive Director Terry Beswick, you served as the co-chair of the Arts, Culture and Heritage Committee for the LGBTQ+ Cultural Heritage Strategy, which went to the Board of Supervisors last year. Does it provide guidance on saving sites such as the Lyon-Martin House?
The LGBTQ+ Cultural Heritage Strategy was published in 2020 after three years of engagement with LGBTQ communities in San Francisco. Feedback from queer San Franciscans was clear: as current stewards of our history, we have a responsibility to ensure that San Francisco’s LGBTQ heritage — in all its colorful diversity — is preserved for future generations to experience and celebrate. Our committee developed actions to realize this goal, including the development of a Historic Preservation Advocacy Group composed of experts in the areas of LGBTQ history, historic preservation and related fields. A primary goal of this group would be to fulfill the recommendations outlined in the Citywide Historic Context Statement for LGBTQ History, adopted by the Historic Preservation Commission in 2015, which serves as a guide for the treatment of historic properties associated with LGBTQ history. One of the first recommendations is to landmark sites of significance.
If the Board of Supervisors designates the Lyon-Martin House as a landmark, what protections does this status offer?
The current reality is that the Lyon-Martin House is private property and the new owners have a right to propose demolition. But if the Lyon-Martin House is designated a San Francisco Landmark, any proposed project that would result in demolition or substantive alterations to the building would need to be reviewed and approved by the Historic Preservation Commission at a public hearing. I certainly wouldn’t want to be the person at the hearing trying to demolish or muck up the longtime home of one of the most significant lesbian couples in history. Those who are interested in supporting our efforts to preserve this historic building can join the Friends of Lyon-Martin House by signing the letter of support. And participate in the webinar on January 19 (check the Friends website for information) on the future of the house cohosted by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the California Preservation Foundation, and the GLBT Historical Society. Finally, you can write a letter or speak in support when the Lyon-Martin House Landmark designation is heard by the Historic Preservation Commission (in late February) and the Board of Supervisors (TBD).
Mark Sawchuk is communications manager at the GLBT Historical Society. Shayne Watson is the owner of Watson Heritage Consulting, a Bay Area-based consultancy for architectural history and historic preservation planning.
