Deidre & Kat: Is the Long and Excruciating Wait Finally Over?

To celebrate Valentines Day in February 2011, Castro Courier interviewed three couples about their relationships – one straight, one gay and one lesbian. Deidre Triplett and Kat Sawyer were the female couple, with 15 years together at that time.

To see what a committed lesbian couple were thinking about the current possibilities for same-gender couples before the Supreme Court, we asked Deidre and Kat for their reactions. Their short answer is that while it is “exciting and really heartening” that public opinion is changing, the wait for real legal change and protection is still “excruciating”. “All our hopes are riding on this,” says Kat, though Deidre is “hopeful and cautiously optimistic”.

Growing up in the South and realizing at an early age that she was gay, Kat faced the restrictions and induced shame of a conformist society. Thanks to her inner strength and life experiences however, she realized that what she was being told about gay people was simply not true. Then, as with many others, she moved to San Francisco so she could be herself.

When Deidre and Kat saw Prop 8 coming, they worried about the rights of a minority being put to a vote by the majority, which, they say, “would mean that we wouldn’t have rights.”  So a few days before the election, despite wanting to hold out for federal marriage recognition, they got married “as a defensive move”. “I never thought there should be a discussion of our civil rights,” said Kat. “It’s hard to imagine that something as important as your life gets put to a vote. The personal is political.”  To which Deidre answers, “It’s going to take a little longer, but we are very close.”

They also say they are bored with so much focus of marriage (straight and gay) being about children, and indeed they go on to cite Justice Elena Kagan’s famous rejoinders here. They stress that marriage is about love and partnership, and making plans for the future.  But just as the feminist movement brought out that marriage is much more than the procreation of children, so same-sex marriage is redefining the concept of marriage as more reflective of reality, as well as more equal partnerships.  

The couple believes that now society is seeing the culmination of the sacrifices made by prior generations. Of course there will continue to be bigotry, reminds Deidre, but at least there will be the protection of the law in the precedents that will be set.

Deidre acknowledges thinking that overall some of the questions posed by Justices Kennedy and Roberts last week were valid, and that Roberts’ tone “was a little more thoughtful than what I was expecting.” She again said she was “cautiously optimistic,” pointing to several factors including Robert’s gay cousin who lives with her partner in San Francisco and who had good things to say about the chief justice on a recent local news show.

If there is one thing Kat and Deidre resent and which they will not miss, it is having to pay for expensive legal fees necessary to obtain the same documents and protections as opposite-gender married couples.

“We know we have the understanding, love and support of our fellow citizens,” say the couple, “but hopefully we can soon count on and enjoy the respect of our legal system as well.”

From Castro Courier, April 20123

America 2011 - Bogged Down in No-Nothing Anger

It is amazing and endlessly depressing that a political party so devoid of ideas and anything but the tactic of fear would be successful at communications, and yet for the Republicans that has largely occurred. In this country we do not even know the past much less value and build on it. Thanks to global calamities and omnipresent media opportunities we are at least force-fed geography. But in the rush to accommodate a simplistic and sensationalist shared discourse, much of real value is lost - and has been for over a half century.

Democrats, losing elections means losing our future and the possibility of an intelligent approach to address current and future problems. Wise thinking and experienced people have been driven from office, as our ignorant and no-nothing citizenry asserts its anger. How far we have fallen in the past few generations.

The Changing Geography of San Francisco

If the hills create an immutable geography in their rising and then plunging down to the bay, the changing tides of economic growth and contraction, technological innovation and constant development create a different geography. You can see the city and feel its meaning in this ever changing pattern of economic activity.

Of course there was always the downtown financial district, depending how far back you wish to go with “always”, where banks and the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange ruled supreme. Bank of America put up its iconic granite structure on California and Kearny, back when A.P. Gianinni’s home was still San Francisco, before banking interests in North Carolina spirited away one of our key businesses and left us comparatively powerless and mute.

They also left the large B of A branch network to fend for itself: many ugly visual spaces from yesteryear with an equally ugly carpeting and paint scheme and blow-up photos on the walls featuring California agricultural scenes. This is not to say that the staff are not accommodating and helpful, but I suspect more rapid turnover has taken its toll.

Back to banking branches and financial services headquarters in the city (of course the Transamerica Pyramid stands assertive and tall). There was and still is Wells Fargo headquarters, not far away from Bank of America, with its iconic stagecoach (isn’t San Francisco one big iconic showroom?).

Now Wells puts forth its living-room merchandising face in city branches: welcome, come in, walk past rows of friendly Wells Fargo staff and do your banking at the teller stations deep in the rear. While this is probably a good device to discourage hold-ups since the hapless robber would have an obstacle course to transit on his way out of the banking living room, it also enables multiple customer service opportunities as well. If one person doesn’t help you, including the one currently on duty inside the door, another will. This is reinforced by Wells Fargo’s community activities, from hosting professional receptions in the Castro, for example, to having its officers and agents participate in job fairs and information forums throughout the year.

More to come.

There are innumerable things to say about the geographies of San Francisco, but these will have to wait for a next day. Subjects include the new transportation behemoth at First and Mission currently under construction (and what came before that); the various moves of the usually smaller technology start-ups from around South Beach and Second to now Twitter and others at mid-Market; the whole South of Market and mid-Market phenomena; plans for the World Cup facilities and the comparatively recent advent of gigantic cruise ships; and other ways to slice this delightful town of ours. This leaves out the important cultural and entertainment venues and makes no pretense of mapping the ever-changing and highly sophisticated culinary geography of San Francisco the city.

Perbacco!

My son and I ate here Wednesday night. Delicious! Very professional staff. Enjoyed speaking with the other diners that night.

Be sure to have the pasta tasting! I cannot remember much more but it was fantastic!

How We Hurt One Another

How We Hurt One Another

There are times in life when giving and receiving pain seems unavoidable. I would even suggest that it always seems unavoidable, an emotional outburst, the quick explosion of action and reaction to a sudden synapse of cherished judgments. The reason for the action is always obvious. If it were not obvious, we would have employed caution and deliberately calculated our impact.

It is a common misperception to see everyone’s worlds through our own lenses. How changed relations among people would be if we each took responsibility for
getting into the skin and mind of another and, more importantly, for attempting to respect that perception and those conclusions thereafter.

What passes instead for civil discourse is an isolated intransigence in which
we actually defend remaining closed to others’ worlds, as if announcing a fatal
weakness was enough to affirm its righteousness. When is personal weakness
an acceptable virtue? Why not see it as defining a goal to work towards,
remembering that the mere act of affirming the need to change is the most
important step in achieving change. But hopelessness abounds.

If we did not care about each other, we could not hurt one another. How
powerful is that thought, that you care enough about me to dislike me, to despise
me, to hate me! What you are really saying is that you care for and love me –
but in reverse. The strongest blows come not from strangers and enemies but
from our loved ones, those in the position to do the most damage. The more I
love, the more I can suffer. But if I close myself off to suffering, I close myself off
to love too. Love does not come cheap.

Recovering from a hurt or a wound can be quick or it can be impossible, or
something in between. The common remedy is the quick fix: I’ll forget it if you
forget it – until it happens again, which it invariably will. It is the lazy, ineffective and common way out. Exhaustion leads to resolution, which is merely temporary and not resolution at all.

At critical points in our life we are not disposed to resolving a dispute or
difference. To do so would be too costly to our emotional equilibrium, the
perceived implications of a change of mind too risky and dangerous. What we
know and value, what we have learned largely from childhood, is self-evident and
not up for discussion or contradiction. It is our truth, to which we must cling, or
we have and are nothing at all. How blessed it is to get to the point of such self
confidence and detachment that others’ thoughts and opinions are not threats
to us but differences in human discourse that we can understand, negotiate and
tolerate.

There is no right. There is only what makes each one of us true and free.

Grandma is a Deadbeat

According to the fabulous State of California, not to be confused with the fabulous State of New Jersey, "We believe you [Helen Sywak] need to file a 2009 California income tax return." And why is our State's Franchise Tax Board requesting that "We have no record of your 2009 California income tax return. You must respond by 3/9/2011."?

How do they know granny was a delinquent, at least in 2009? "We received information that you made mortgage payments to BANK OF AMERICA, N.A. during 2009. The amount of mortgage interest you paid indicates that you may have sufficient income to have a filing requirement for the 2009 tax year." Obviously there's a snitch around somewhere. I knew we never should have bailed out B of A. Or maybe granny erroneously reported the senior street income from her New Jersey cannibis patch?

I thought Medeyev only dealt with billionaire industrialists behind bars because they were on the wrong side politically.

So what gives? Without having time to do any checking (this just came in), in 2009 we switched reverse mortgage banks and I think we paid off the old one with the loan from the new one, though it was all done for us, and maybe that's how she appeared on banking's no-fly list.