Tag Archives: San Diego

Although the government is claiming that murdered San Diego sailor August Provost was not the victim of a hate crime, his family feels differently. Provost III, had complained a year before about being harassed for being gay. Roy said she advised Provost to report and document the incidents, but she said the military did little to help. “He went to …

The body of an openly gay sailor was found yesterday in a guard shack outside of Camp Pendleton, a USMC base just outside San Diego. The case may be investigated as a hate crime. The body of Seaman August Provost of Houston, Texas, was discovered about 3:30 a.m. on the western edge of the base, said Doug Sayers, a spokesman …

Congressional candidate Francine Busby was being hosted at the home of a lesbian couple in San Diego, where they and 30 guests raised funds for her campaign. A neighbor of the couple began shouting homophobic slurs over his backyard fence and then apparently called the police to complain about the noise. What happened next is surreal. Cops responded with eight …

Rex Wockner reports that Ron deHarte, the executive director of San Diego LGBT Pride, was attacked by a protester as deHarte took part in the Equality Torch Relay, an 18-city commemoration of the Stonewall Riots. “From sunrise to nearly sundown, we carried the message of equality to every city in San Diego County,” the organization said in a statement. “The …

Several dozen gay activists are occupying the San Diego County Clerk’s office, saying they won’t leave until they get a marriage license. The event, organized in response to the state Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to uphold the state’s gay marriage ban, began around noon at the County Administration Center in downtown San Diego. Michael Anderson, 27, and Brian Baumgardner, 26, …

Maybe I spoke too soon when I predicted scant public disruptions over this widely-expected verdict. San Diego Pride says: “San Diego Pride and its many supporters will continue focusing on public education and coalition-building in a newly energized movement determined to achieve marriage equality for scores of same-sex couples who are unfairly denied the privilege. That means forging the most …

Last week San Diego hotelier Doug Manchester offered the LGBT community a total of $125K in cash and room credits to call off their year-long boycott, which arose over Manchester’s financial backing of Proposition 8. The offer came via famed gay PR king Howard Bragman, whom Manchester had hired for the project. But nobody is biting. The Human Rights Campaign …

Almost a year into what some have called a very effective boycott of his businesses, San Diego hotelier Doug Manchester is preparing to donate an amount to LGBT organizations that equals his $125,000 Prop 8 donation. The donation will likely partially come in the form of hotel credits that local LGBT groups can use for fundraising. Manchester, a devout Catholic, …

San Diego’s very gay friendly Mayor Jerry Sanders announced the engagement of his lesbian daughter from the stage of yesterday’s Eve Of Justice rally. “I want to thank each of you for your dedication, and I see you all over the city and I see you marching and I see you talking to people, I see you lobbying, I see …

Rex Wockner reports a cool moment from San Diego’s Eve Of Justice rally: After the rally, the 600 people in attendance took to the streets of downtown chanting, “Separate church and state.” They marched up to the epicenter of downtown, Fourth and Broadway, then back to the Hall of Justice. At the march’s end, ralliers looked south and saw that …

“The mini-sized payout the jury awarded for emotional distress to the firefighters speaks volumes about the so-called notion that they endured severe or pervasive trauma while wearing earphones, sitting six feet off the ground inside a fire truck with the windows rolled up and a roaring diesel engine powering them along a one-mile parade route. This is the same parade …

San Diego firefighters have finally triumphed in their lawsuit against the city for being forced to work a gay pride parade, where they claim they were sexually harassed by attendees. But the four plaintiffs must share a meager $34,000 settlement. A jury found four San Diego firefighters who sued the city were sexually harassed after being ordered to participate in …

The Missiongathering Church in San Diego has put up a billboard apologizing for the Christian support for Proposition 8. (Tipped by JMG reader Dorothy D.)

Head over to Rex Wockner’s site for his coverage of this weekend’s Prop 8 protests in San Diego and Los Angeles. Rex reports that both cities saw at least 13,000 protesters on the streets.Photos by Rex Wockner and Karen Ocamb.

Describing it as the largest LGBT event to hit San Diego outside of gay Pride, our man Rex Wockner attended a huge anti-Prop 8 rally last night in that city’s biggest gayborhood. Between 7,000 and 10,000 people took to University Avenue in San Diego’s heavily gay Hillcrest district the evening of Nov. 1 to protest Proposition 8, the Nov. 4 …

Yesterday Rex Wockner attended TheCall, a massive pro-Prop 8 rally at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium where Christianists prayed for an end to gay marriage in California. Wockner: The stage featured James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, ex-homosexuals telling their odd stories, a really good Christian rock band, and a barrage of other …

Man, that is one scary voice. From the Mercury-News: For Proposition 8 supporters who feel the ballot measure is a line in the sand defending “traditional marriage” as being only between a man and a woman, the stakes are just as high. “This vote on whether we stop the gay-marriage juggernaut in California is Armageddon,” Charles Colson, the former Nixon …

This should provoke some interesting discussion. In San Diego, gay student associations at two community colleges are clashing with administrators over the acronym for their name: FAGS. Members of gay and lesbian clubs at two San Diego community colleges say campus administrators have violated their free speech rights by repeatedly blocking attempts to advertise their shared acronym: FAGS. Frye stands …

As LGBT and labor groups continue their boycott of Doug Manchester’s hotel properties in San Diego, the CFO of the company has warned executives that the losses may be in the millions. Several large groups have canceled conventions at the hotel since the boycott launched. Officials at the Manchester Financial Group have argued for weeks that a boycott by gay …

According to autopsy results released yesterday, methamphetamine and ketamine were found in the system of Steven Paul Hirschfield, the go-go dancer shot and killed by San Diego Harbor Police last month after he mysteriously jumped overboard during the gay pride cruise where he had performed. The report also shows that Hirschfield was shot in the back with a police-issued hollow-point …