Stuart Milk, the youngest of Harvey Milk’s two nephews and a teen when his uncle was killed, came out of the closet the night of November 27, 1978 along with thousands of other members of the LGBT community across the US. He has been the Milk family voice and spokesperson on his uncle’s legacy and a frequent participant at memorial and commemorative events for the last several years in San Francisco. Stuart’s talk at USF on his conversations and memories of his uncle can be seen on the extras DVD in the 20th Anniversary edition of the academy award winning documentary, “The Times of Harvey Milk.” 
    Having been inspired by his early conversations with Harvey on public and human service, Stuart has spent the past twenty years working with at-risk youth, the economically disadvantaged, and dislocated workers obtain the skills needed to enter or re-enter the workforce and become self-sufficient. Although based in Wilton Manors Florida, his current work includes supporting the youth at the Treasure Island Job Corps Center here in San Francisco and at dozens of other Youth and Adult workforce assistance programs in the US and around the world. And much like his uncle, Stuart proudly presents a message of providing “hope” to young people and the disenfranchised with his talks at national and international workforce and economic self-sufficiency conferences.

• Founder of the Lower 24th St. Merchant and Neighborhood Association in the Mission

• Member of the advisory committee on safety to the District Attorney

• Past member of the community policing advisory committee for the Mayors office of Criminal Justice.

• Past member of the speaker’s bureau program through Instituto Familiar de La Raza, educating and sharing life experience with other Latinos around HIV/AIDS

• Long term survivor HIV/AIDS since 1987

    Joan Benoît has been the Executive Director of the Native American AIDS Project since 1999, leading NAAP from a small program within a large organization to the only Native American HIV-specific organization in California.  Joan was born into the Eagle Clan of the Anishanaabe Nation and is an enrolled member of the Chippewa of the Thames, First Nation. Joan has been on numerous Boards of Directors for various non-profit organizations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
 

Marvin Burrows

    Marvin Burrows is seventy-two years-old. Marvin and his partner of 51 years, Bill married in San Francisco. Bill died one year later, and since Marvin has been in the marriage movement so that LGBT families don’t have to repeat his experience. Marvin co-founded Gays and Lesbians Organized for Betterment & Equality, Lavender Seniors, and the Lighthouse Community Center. For 16 years, he delivered Meals on Wheels.  His work has been done with the intention of creating positive change, especially for the young and old, and gives LGBTs greater equality.

    From his involvement with the Gay Liberation Front in his home town of Buffalo, New York in the early 1970’s to his recent co-chairing of the Harvey Milk City Hall Memorial Committee, Joey has spent almost 37 years helping to create a radical Queer  movement that celebrates the unique gifts and spirit that LGBT people bring to the world. Throughout the 1980s and 90s he was a creative force in the Radical Fairy movement, organizing gatherings and helping to found Nomenus,  the first state recognized 501c3 “church” to specifically articulate a spiritual tradition of Gay Men. He participated in the White Night Riots, helped organize protests against the closing of Gay Bath houses in San Francisco, fought against the gentrification of San Francisco and picketed week after week in front of Badlands Bar against the owner’s ongoing racist actions.  He served for nearly 10 years, four of them as President, on the Board of the San Francisco Pride Celebration Committee, during which time the organization gained a new political relevancy and extended its community involvement and diversity. He is a long time member of Bound Together Anarchist Collective Book Store and helped co-found the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair.  Recently he helped create the Edward Carpenter Forum, an international group of scholars and enthusiasts dedicated the rediscovery and recognition of this important early radical LGBT thinker, philosopher and poet. He currently serves as co-chair of the Harvey Milk City Hall Memorial Committee and serves on the board of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council. He works for the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics in their Substance Abuse Treatment Program and lives in a collective household with Gay film maker Maher Sabry and John Burnside, long time partner of LGBT movement pioneer Harry Hay.

    Julius Turman, an attorney with Morgan Lewis & Bockius, has fought for the rights of LGBT persons and worked for greater inclusion within the gay community.  Julius was the first African American to head the Alice Club and the Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom.  In 2007 Julius was co-chair of the Bar Association’s committee that produced a groundbreaking report on best practices in the hiring, retention and promotion of LGBT attorneys.  Julius was recently appointed to the Human Rights Commission by Mayor Gavin Newsom.

    Celebrating its 20th year, the San Francisco Gay Asian Pacific Alliance (GAPA) is an organization dedicated to promoting the interests of gay & bisexual Asian/Pacific Islanders by creating awareness, by developing a positive collective identity and by establishing a supportive community. GAPA was formed from the need for an organization to address, through a democratic process, social, cultural and political issues affecting the gay & bisexual Asian/Pacific Islander community.

    Theresa Sparks is President of Good Vibrations and was the first elected and openly transgender President of the San Francisco Police Commission in 2007.  As a Humans Rights Commissioner, she worked on the historic transgender health initiative and transgender treatment protocols for the SFPD.  She is a Director of the Horizons Foundation and the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, has been chosen as a California Legislature Woman of the Year, awarded the Human Rights Campaign Equality Award and is one of OUT Magazines OUT 100 LGBT Leaders in the United States.  Sparks was also recently sainted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.  In 2008, Theresa received the Equality Leadership Award from Equality California.

    Unlike past recipients, Bill O'Reilly's receipt of this award cannot be attributed to any one stance or event.  His consistent efforts to mislead his viewers and listeners about issues regarding the LGBT community and LGBT people does more than just leave a misleading impression—it reinforces ignorance about and hatred of our community.   While there are many instances to which we might refer, his lesbian gang segment on The O'Reilly Factor on June 21, 2007 epitomizes the way in which O'Reilly has discarded truth in favor of baseless slander and fear-mongering.That segment, which described a supposed surge in LGBT gangs and related violence across the U.S., has been widely criticized—and rightly so—for its many inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims.  That segment described an incident in which a group of lesbian women attacked a man by the name of Wayne Buckle in New York City.
    Not mentioned in this segment on "lesbian gangs" was the fact that there is no evidence that the women involved in the attack on Wayne Buckle were members of any criminal gang. Also unmentioned was the fact that the women were responding to Buckle's unwelcomed sexual advances which resulted in his flicking a cigarette at the women after one of them rebuffed his sexual overtures.
    That segment also featured in the background a highly provocative, looped video of women fighting.  The insinuation was that these women represented the group Dykes Taking Over, which OReillys segment indicated was an example of a lesbian gang.  Had the audio accompanied that video, which is widely available on internet video sites, it would have quickly revealed that these young women were fighting over a boy—so much for violent lesbians.
    Sensationalism trumped truth. The footage was provocative and meant to instill fear and in so doing, to drive up ratings by means of unabashed sensationalism.  It is extremely difficult to conclude from the available evidence that the purpose of the segment was to describe any real trends in gangs across the country when the evidence of which OReilly made use was faulty and misleading. (You can review the video with audio here)
    OReillys reporting about LGBT people amounts to false provocation.  His reach is wide and his audience large, so measuring the impact of his words on hundreds of thousands of listeners and viewers who interact with LGBT people infrequently is difficult to measure, but there are predictable consequences to such fear-mongering.  Hatred against and misunderstandings about LGBT people all too often spill over into violence.  We Californians are bitterly aware of this fact in the wake of the shooting of 15 year-old Lawrence King at his school in Oxnard on February 12 of this year. 

MORE OREILLY
    On air, OReilly challenged SF Prides Board President Mikayla Connell to cite examples of OReillys disrespect for the LGBT community. In the spirit of education and Mikaylas long list of grievances against OReilly, we add the following: OReillys reporting about LGBT people amounts to false provocation.  His reach is wide and his audience large, so measuring the impact of his words on hundreds of thousands of listeners and viewers who interact with LGBT people infrequently is difficult to measure, but there are predictable consequences to such fear-mongering.  Hatred against and misunderstandings about LGBT people all too often spill over into violence.  We Californians are bitterly aware of this fact in the wake of the shooting of 15 year-old Lawrence King at his school in Oxnard on February 12 of this year. 

OReilly expresses outrage over a lesbian teen couple being voted "Cutest Couple" by their classmates.

OReilly expresses outrage over the San Diego Padres Gay Night coinciding with childrens night at the ball park.

OReillys reporting about LGBT people amounts to false provocation.  His reach is wide and his audience large, so measuring the impact of his words on hundreds of thousands of listeners and viewers who interact with LGBT people infrequently is difficult to measure, but there are predictable consequences to such fear-mongering.  Hatred against and misunderstandings about LGBT people all too often spill over into violence.  We Californians are bitterly aware of this fact in the wake of the shooting of 15 year-old Lawrence King at his school in Oxnard on February 12 of this year.  That segment, which described a supposed surge gangs related violence across U.S., has been widely criticized—and rightly so—for its many inaccuracies unsubstantiated claims.  segment an incident group lesbian women attacked man by name Wayne Buckle New York City.