The former chief of staff to Councilmember Charles Lewis, who died suddenly August 2004, won the special runoff election to fill the vacant District 4 seat on Jan. 4. Tony Young garnered 59.42 percent of the vote in a decisive victory over the Rev. George Stevens, who had held the seat prior to Lewis for 11 years. Stevens received 40.58 percent of the vote.

In the special election for the seat held Nov. 16, Young and Stevens beat out six other candidates, including openly gay candidate Dwayne Crenshaw, to compete in the runoff. GLBT community endorsements were largely split between Young and Crenshaw, with GLBT activists loudly decrying the possible election of Stevens, whose anti-gay stances while serving on the council were well known.

The San Diego Rodeo was cancelled for the first time in 16 years due to lack of financial resources. The Greater San Diego Chapter of the Golden State Gay Rodeo Association had hosted the event for the last 16 consecutive years.

The San Diego Rodeo was originally scheduled to take place Sept. 23-25, the International Gay Rodeo Association said.

GSGRA president Jabby Lowe announced the cancellation and said financial constraints made it impractical to produce the rodeo this year. Lowe, who oversees the four chapters within the state of California, said he hopes the San Diego Rodeo will be back in 2006.

San Diego Democratic Club (SDDC) executive vice president Maria Plasencia was found dead at her home in Encinitas by police on Feb. 1. It was estimated that Plasencia died on Jan. 26. According to SDDC president Steve Whitburn, Plasencia took insulin for diabetes, went into insulin shock and drifted into diabetic coma. She was 46.

Plasencia was scheduled to be at a national board meeting for NOW [National Organization for Women] on Jan. 27 and was not expected at the SDDC membership meeting that evening, where she was unanimously re-elected executive vice president.

“I think the greatest tribute to Maria would be for the GLBT community to further strengthen its solidarity with the feminist movement. She was proud that NOW so strongly supported marriage equality, and she wanted the GLBT community to be just as visibly committed to women’s equality,” said Whitburn. “She certainly advanced that coalition, and I think it’s up to our community now to cement it.”

SAN DIEGO (AP) – Last week’s announcement that a San Diego resident tested positive for a possibly aggressive and drug-resistant strain of HIV turned out to be inaccurate, local health officials said Feb. 18.

The test results did not come from San Diego, as investigators reported Feb. 14, according to the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency. The agency does not know where the test results originated.

The results gained attention after a New York City man was found to have an unusually drug-resistant strain of HIV. San Diego County health officials had said a records search indicated an apparently similar strain was found last fall in an unidentified San Diego resident, prompting a search for the patient.

The Campaign for Children and Families (CCF), a leading California-based pro-family organization, ended their week long 15-city “Keep Your Hands Off Marriage” tour in San Diego on Feb. 19 at the San Diego County Administration building. About 30 supporters of the anti-gay marriage group crowded on to the front steps holding signs that read, “One man + one woman = marriage” and “Protect Proposition 22 – the People’s Vote.”

Pro-marriage equality supporters organized by the San Diego chapter of Equality California/Marriage Equality California (EQCA/MECA) showed up in higher numbers in silent protest of the event. A large group of same-sex marriage supporters and activists stood directly across from the CCF contingent holding signs that read “Equal Love = Equal Rights” and “We all deserve the freedom to marry.”

A camp intern was fired from the Cuyamaca Outdoor School in Descanso on Feb. 17 for discussing lesbianism with sixth-grade campers from the Joan MacQueen Middle School in Alpine. The students were on a one-week stay at the campground.

Girls at the campground were calling one another lesbians, prompting a 22-year-old intern to step in, said Jim Esterbrooks, spokesperson for the San Diego County Office of Education, which oversees the outdoor school.

“From the conversations I have had with Brian Swagerty, director of the Outdoor Education Program for San Diego County, the account that is more accurate is she allegedly or reportedly said, ‘prominent leaders are lesbian and a percentage of you, this group here, is going to be lesbian.’”

Cuyamaca’s Principal Greg Schuett learned of the intern’s conversation with the students the following day, questioned the intern and students, and subsequently fired the intern the same day. Esterbrooks said the school’s position is that the conversation was inappropriate to have with students in a school setting.

John McCusker, owner of Club Montage and ReBar, died suddenly of a cardiac arrest on March 13, while visiting Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort with his partner, David Trick, in Mammoth Lakes. He was 31.

Mammoth Lakes Police Department Officer Doug Hornbeck said he arrived to the scene and performed CPR. Paramedics then transported McCusker to Mammoth Hospital where he was pronounced dead. A toxicology report later revealed “drug intoxication” as the cause of death.

Several days later, San Diego Bishop Robert Brom told the McCusker family that because McCusker owned two gay bars, he would not be granted funerary rites in any Catholic church or chapel in the diocese “to avoid public scandal.” Brom deemed McCusker a “manifest sinner” under Canon Law 1184.

After some last-minute arrangements, McCusker’s funeral was held at St. Paul’s Cathedral, an Episcopal church. Over 500 people attended.

At a town hall meeting at The Center eight days after McCusker’s death, held to discuss how the community would react to Brom’s decision, the McCuskers surprised the audience by reading an apology issued by Brom that day.

“I deeply regret that denying a Catholic funeral for John McCusker at the Immaculata [Catholic Church, at the University of San Diego] has resulted in his unjust condemnation and I apologize to the family for the anguish this has caused them,” the statement read. Brom went on to say he would preside at a Mass for the family in memory of John McCusker.

McCusker served on the Greater San Diego Business Association’s board of directors and was co-chair of the program committee responsible for planning GSDBA mixers. He also served as a board member from 2000 to 2004 for the San Diego Human Dignity Foundation, and was the chief auctioneer for their 2004 gala “Springtime in the Park: The Musical.”

“When I think of John McCusker, I think of a friend who energized me, our community, and frankly anyone he came in contact with,” said Michael Mack, McCusker’s friend, ex-partner and previous co-owner of Club Montage. “His high energy and loving spirit will not be forgotten.”

For many high schools and colleges across the country, the Day of Silence, sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), is an annual day of silent protest where students refrain from speaking to represent GLBT students without a voice or representation in their school. On April 13, many students from schools around San Diego County participated peacefully.

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a conservative Christian legal group, responded this year with the Day of Truth, which according to the ADF was initiated to counter the “homosexual agenda” and express an “opposing viewpoint from a Christian perspective.”

At Poway High School a small group of students participated in the Day of Truth on April 14 and distributed information during lunch period. In addition to wearing T-shirts that read “Day of Truth. The Truth Cannot be Silenced,” students distributed flyers that contained anti-gay statements and inaccurate statistics about homosexuality.

The latest round of federal cuts to Ryan White CARE Act Title I/II monies placed considerable strain on the San Diego HIV Planning Council to once again reduce services for HIV/AIDS consumers in the county, this time by $673,376 (approximately 6.6 percent) making the total operating budget $9.5 million for the contract year, which began March 1. Because federal grants in the last several years have been awarded on or after the deadline, the Planning Council has had to adjust for the overage in dollars they spent in the first few months of their contract year in addition to addressing the shortfall in grant monies.

Priority Setting Committee and Planning Council meetings held in the last two weeks had area service providers and consumers debating which programs could feasibly be reduced without crippling them, or cut entirely in an effort to preserve core services.

Core services include primary care, medical specialty, drug and alcohol treatment, psychiatric services and short-term prescriptions and medications, as well as case management and peer advocacy. Countywide/regional case management, which was reduced by $17,887, was the only core service affected by this year’s budget cuts, though peer advocacy training, a case management support service, was cut by almost 78 percent.

Equality California’s San Diego chapter meeting on May 17 at the Exotic Bamboo Tea Shop in Hillcrest discussed their plans of how to persuade voters in 2006 to vote against an impending ballot initiative that would ban same-sex marriage in the California Constitution and roll back existing domestic partnership legislation.

Conservative groups, including the Campaign for Children and Families, announced plans to begin signature gathering to get the proposed amendment put on the June 2006 primary ballot after proposed same-sex marriage bans failed in both the Assembly and the state Senate.

AJ Davis, director of public policy at The Center, told a group of about 30 that The Center’s marriage equality project planned a widespread voter ID campaign to combat the initiatives.

“This is going to come down to individual votes. We need to start talking to everyone we know,” she said. “If we don’t get the vote in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, we’re going to lose and that’s all there is to it. We have to get the vote.”

An informative community forum on crystal meth, held at The Center on May 23, drew over 100 people and featured a robust discussion about the drug and the nature of addiction.

Forum leader Dr. Neva Chauppette, a Los Angeles-based licensed psychologist who specializes in methamphetamine abuse, said the HIV epidemic is moving in the wrong direction, with sex addiction merged with crystal-meth addiction, and many major social outlets in the GLBT community perpetuating those addictions.

“In my opinion this drug is cosigned by the circuit scene, the cruise ships and the clubs. If we’re going to get truthful about this and address this, we have to ask ourselves why are we destroying ourselves,” she said. “Why are we engaging in behavior that takes away what we’ve worked so hard to get, which is a validated life existence as a gay or lesbian person?”

Two former Poway High School students were awarded $300,000 by a San Diego Superior Court on June 8 after a 12-member jury deliberated for over a week to determine whether the students were harassed by their classmates because they are gay, and whether the Poway Unified School District failed to take measures to stop the harassment in an immediate and appropriate way.

After the five-week trial, Joseph “Joey” Ramelli was awarded $175,000 and Megan Donovan received $125,000. The students originally sued for $225,000 each.

“These young people were believed. These jurors believed what happened. That kind of vindication is worth more than money can buy,” said Bridget Wilson, Donovan and Ramelli’s attorney.

Poway Superintendent Don Phillips said in a statement following the verdict that he believes the school acted appropriately in handling Donovan and Ramelli’s complaints, and emphasized that the jury “found unanimously that there was no discrimination on the part of the district or any of its employees.”

The San Diego Police Department is searching for Sammia “Angelica” Gonzalez, who is accused of injecting silicone illegally into several transgender women at a University Heights “pumping party” on June 21.

The practice of pumping involves injecting silicone directly into the body, rather than being implanted under the skin in sealed sacs to prevent leaking.

At the party, Gonzalez, who also uses the last name Garcia-Gonzalez, allegedly injected five transgender women with what they believed to be medical-grade silicone to enhance their feminine features. Gonzalez left the party, held in the 4000 block of Florida Street, shortly after two of the women began experiencing breathing difficulties. The two women were rushed to the hospital hours after the injections, believed to be suffering from blood poisoning. Three other women from the party were examined at North Park Family Health Center and given the all-clear.

An arrest warrant was issued for Gonzalez, 39, from Lynwood, Los Angeles, who is described as 5’3”, weighing 165 pounds, with brown eyes and brown hair. Police said she was reportedly driving a red Chrysler PT Cruiser when in San Diego.

One of the two women, Patricio Gonzalez, 45, died early on the morning of July 11 at Scripps Mercy Hospital, police confirmed.

The suspect has still not been apprehended. Anyone with information about the case is urged to call the Homicide Unit at (619) 531-2293, or to call Crime Stoppers anonymously at (888) 580-TIPS.

SAN DIEGO (AP) – A federal jury on July 18 convicted San Diego’s acting mayor and a city council member of taking payoffs from a strip club owner to help repeal a “no-touch” law at nude clubs.

Michael Zucchet, who became interim mayor on July 15, was found guilty of conspiracy, extortion and fraud on his first business day in office. He was immediately suspended from the position, his attorney said. Councilmember Ralph Inzunza, who was convicted of the same charges, was also suspended. Both council members resigned.

The City Council unanimously appointed Councilmember Toni Atkins to serve as mayor pro-tem until the next interim mayor was decided in the July 26 primary and the Nov. 8 special election to replace Mayor Dick Murphy, who resigned and left office July 15 amid mounting problems at City Hall.

The jury also returned guilty verdicts against former Clark County, Nev., Commissioner Lance Malone, who worked for strip club owner Michael Galardi to repeal San Diego’s ban preventing nude dancers and patrons from touching each other. The repeal effort failed.

Zucchet has since been acquitted on seven of the nine charges.

SAN DIEGO (AP) – Donna Frye, a surf shop owner and maverick San Diego City Council member, took a strong lead in the July 26 primary election to replace former Mayor Dick Murphy, who resigned July 15, but didn’t capture the majority of votes needed to win the race outright. Frye advanced to the Nov. 8 runoff against former police chief Jerry Sanders, a Republican who cast himself as a turnaround specialist and survived a late surge by businessman Steve Francis, who poured about $2 million into his bid for mayor.

Results showed Frye with 43 percent of the vote, Sanders at 27 percent and Francis at 24 percent.

Voters also approved a measure seeking to preserve the Mt. Soledad Cross, a Korean War veterans memorial located on a city-owned hilltop, though it still could face a court challenge. Proposition A passed 75.9 to 24.1 percent, meaning that the cross will remain on federal land as a war memorial.

Four days before the kickoff of San Diego’s Pride weekend, San Diego LGBT Pride board members dismissed four men discovered to be convicted child molesters registered under Megan’s Law, the state’s public registry for sex offenders.

Numerous law enforcement officials, politicians and community organizations almost backed out of the parade and festival as Pride wrestled with whether they should dismiss the volunteers, saying their dilemma was over the men’s civil rights.

But one of the men in question, Pride logistics coordinator Jerry Garrett, was spotted on site at the festival grounds helping with festival set-up on July 29 prior to the Spirit of Stonewall rally and an hour into the start of the Pride festival on July 30.

Pride explained that Garrett’s resignation was official as of 12:00 noon on July 30, the day of the parade, and that he was needed to ensure that set-up at the festival was safely completed.

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said she was aware that Garrett’s resignation would be effective July 29, and that the participation of law enforcement officials “was contingent upon this agreement and the word of the Pride board.” She said she would not have marched if she had known Garrett was still working when the festival started.

“The Pride board gave their word to the entire community, including law enforcement,” Dumanis said. “All of us across the county, not just the gay community and not just law enforcement, are disappointed that Pride misled us. We took them at their word.”

The San Diego City Council voted 5-0 on July 19 to approve final financing for a 23-unit transitional housing facility designed to stabilize lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and HIV-positive youth, called the Sunburst Apartments. The facility aims to help youth successfully transition from homelessness, and is reportedly the first of its kind in the nation.

The total financing for the property was approved for 55 years and $4.1 million, with $2.6 million coming from the Centre City Development Corporation.

The youth housing project is a collaborative of The Center, Walden Family Services, YMCA Youth and Family Services, Metropolitan Community Church of San Diego and Children’s Hospital Chadwick Center.

The collaborative estimates of all homeless youth in San Diego County, 30 percent are believed to be GLBT.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – On Aug. 1, the California Supreme Court ruled that country clubs must offer gay members who register as domestic partners the same discounts given to married ones – a decision that could apply to other businesses such as insurance companies and mortgage lenders.

The decision dealt with a policy at the Bernardo Heights Country Club in San Diego that allowed only the children, grandchildren and spouses of married members to golf for free.

Birgit Koebke challenged the policy after being told that her longtime partner, Kendall French, could only play as a guest six times a year while paying up to $70 per round.

The court ruled that the policy constitutes “impermissible marital status discrimination,” basing its decision on AB 205, the domestic partner law that took effect in California on Jan. 1, the court said.

Over 130 people filled The Center’s auditorium Aug. 15 to hear explanations and put forth contrasting opinions concerning the manner in which San Diego LGBT Pride handled the discovery and subsequent resignation of four workers who were registered as sex offenders on the Megan’s Law Web site.

Shouts of disapproval from the audience ensued after newly appointed Pride co-chair Philip Princetta announced that the board had asked for executive director Suanne Pauley’s resignation earlier that day. The request for her resignation was made after a board member from Los Angeles’ Christopher Street West Pride parade told Pride that Martin Ramirez, a clown who had worked in Pride’s Children’s Garden since the 1990s, was also registered as a sex offender under Megan’s Law.

Debra Self, one of this year’s Pride co-chairs who was stepping down at the end of August as part of the board’s standard bylaws, resigned her position early, saying that Pride wasn’t sticking to their three-point action plan, which they issued Aug. 12 in response to the controversy and included establishing a new volunteer screening policy and appointing new board members.

“Part of that plan was to immediately appoint two new board members,” she said. “And, yesterday I learned that some members of the board have decided not to follow through with that; that they believe now is not the right time…. I could have easily ridden out these last 15 days, but my resignation signifies my loss of confidence in the board to make decisions that are in the best interest of the organization and the community.”

SAN DIEGO – More than 200 hard-core Democratic GLBT activists from 27 states huddled in San Diego Aug. 25-28 at the National Stonewall Democrats 2005 Organizing Convention.

“We still have so much to do,” said lesbian California Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego. “The conservatives and the religious right are a strong force with generous resources and they will fight us every step of the way. They’ll use their money, their political hold they have over supposed Republican moderates like John McCain, and their ties to big business and to numerous right-wing think tanks. They will say our equal rights are special rights.”

In an interview, Kehoe said the Stonewall Democrats are about “strategic organizing, articulating a message and getting GLBT Americans to vote and to be active.”

Keohe continued, “This organization is for the person who is going to give hours and hours to a local campaign, who’s gonna raise money, write checks, go to meeting after meeting. These are the shock troops that go out and raise the interest of the average voter.”

Stonewall Democrats Executive Director Eric Stern said the organization finds itself at a key juncture.

“It’s a critical time to be working within the party because, quite honestly, in a number of states I think there is a resistance by state party chairs to involve our community in party activities,” he said. “We play the role of effectuating change within the party. ... We need to remind the state party chairs around the country that we provide the volunteer energy, we provide the finances, we provide the staff, the ideas, the creativity to so many winning campaigns – and unless we are given a nicer welcome mat, then there’s no reason for us to support state parties.”

The board chair and executive director of Stepping Stone, a local non-profit alcohol and drug recovery agency, confirmed that a former employee threatened a sexual harassment suit against the organization. Four off-the-record sources with close ties to the organization said the allegation was against director of operations, Marc D’Hondt and an out-of-court settlement was negotiated to compensate the former employee, Eric Martin.

Stepping Stone executive director Cheryl Houk said it was the first time the organization had had an allegation “in that direction of sexual harassment.”

Houk said an investigation was inconclusive as to whether or not the sexual harassment did take place between the two individuals. She said she could not confirm that a settlement was paid out to the accuser.

Stepping Stone board chair Craig Knudson confirmed the settlement and said the organization did not want to risk increasing their liability insurance policy premium if a claim had to be made against them.

Former board chair Steven Johnson, who served as chair for three years until he resigned in January of 2004, called the situation “disheartening,” and “an indication of a failure of leadership at the organization.”

“I think that had the situation been handled more professionally, it probably could have avoided litigation and cost to the organization,” he said.

Houk announced in November that she will retire March 31, after 17 years of service with Stepping Stone. Her retirement has nothing to do with the sexual harassment complaint, she said.

ElderHelp of San Diego was awarded $1 million over four years to launch Aging as Ourselves, the nation’s first program to provide health and social services to seniors within the GLBT community.

This community-based program creates a network among San Diego agencies that specialize in senior services and organizations that focus on serving the GLBT community.

ElderHelp of San Diego will lead the program in partnership with Family Health Centers, The Center, ElderLaw and Advocacy, Seniors Active in a Gay Environment (SAGE) and PALS/LINC-age.

Following months of heated debate, former Police Chief Jerry Sanders defeated Councilmember Donna Frye to become San Diego’s 34th mayor.

In the weeks leading up to the Nov. 8 run-off election, the candidates sparred over each other’s plans to solve the city’s estimated $1.4 billion pension liability. Sanders criticized Frye’s proposal to put a half-cent sales tax before the voters as unrealistic, while Frye said Sanders’ plan to issue pension obligation bonds would push the city further into debt.

During her concession speech at Golden Hall Nov. 8, Frye professed an affinity for Sanders, vowing to work in concert with him to solve the city’s fiscal problems.

During his victory speech, Sanders said sparring with Frye was “a vigorous and healthy debate.”

Though both candidates received support from within the GLBT community, Frye’s support of same-sex marriage and rejection of the Boy Scouts’ preferential land lease in Balboa Park set the contenders apart on social issues important to the community.

The top contenders vying to fill council vacancies left by former Councilmembers Michael Zucchet and Ralph Inzunza advanced to a Jan. 10 run-off election. In District 2, Lorena Gonzalez, endorsed by the Gay & Lesbian Times and the San Diego Democratic Club, moves on to face Republican Kevin Faulconer. In District 8, top vote recipients Ben Hueso and Luis Acle will face off. GLBT favored candidate Remi Burmudez received only slightly more than 15 percent of the vote in the largely conservative, Latino district.

SAN DIEGO (AP) – A transgender woman died four days after a melee with sheriff’s deputies at the downtown jail.

“There is nothing to indicate that the use of force caused this death,” Sgt. Rick Empson said.

Vanessa Facen, 35, had fought with deputies and medical personnel numerous times since she was found naked and bleeding inside her neighbor’s Spring Valley home on Nov. 17. Facen apparently climbed onto the balcony, dived through a neighbor’s glass door and tumbled down a flight of stairs. Facen, who was “covered with blood from head to toe,” opened the door for deputies, told them she was HIV-positive and appeared to be cooperating, Sgt. Paul Robbins said. But she became enraged en route to a hospital, broke free from her leg restraints and kicked out the window of the ambulance, the sergeant said. She was sedated, treated and released later in the day.

Empson said she became violent again after leaving the hospital and kicked out the window of a patrol car. He said an unknown number of deputies fought with Facen when she was inside the jailhouse and she stopped breathing.

Although Facen had breasts and lived as a woman, the Sheriff’s Department was treating her as a man because she had male genitalia, Lt. Tom Bennett said.

On Dec. 2, a California appellate court ruled that North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group Drs. Christine Brody and Douglas Fenton had the right to refuse to artificially inseminate Guadalupe “Lupita” Benitez on the grounds that it would have violated their religious beliefs because she is an unmarried lesbian.

The doctors were appealing a state Superior Court ruling that prevented them from raising religious freedom as a defense in one of the first discrimination lawsuits in the country to test whether doctors can deny treatment to gays and lesbians.

Instead, the 4th District Court of Appeals panel found that the doctors were within their rights because they based their decision on Benitez’s unmarried status and that discrimination based on marital status is not prohibited by California law.

Benitez’s attorney, Jennifer Pizer of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the appellate ruling would be appealed to the California Supreme Court.

Benitez, who lives in North County, was denied fertility treatment at North Coast Women’s Care in 2001. She sought fertility treatment elsewhere and eventually gave birth to a baby boy, who is now 3 years old.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A promising new oral HIV test that uses fluid swabbed from the mouth to quickly and easily detect the virus that causes AIDS incorrectly diagnosed a quarter of the people who tested positive in San Francisco, city health officials found.

Forty-seven people who tested positive after using the OraQuick Advance HIV test in city clinics were not infected at all, the San Francisco Department of Public Health said. The San Francisco Chronicle reported the findings Dec. 9.

At the same time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which approved the OraQuick test for professional use last year, is now considering a request from drug maker Orasure Technologies, of Bethlehem, Penn., to approve it for home use and over-the-counter sales.

Jeffrey Klausner, San Francisco’s director of sexually transmitted disease prevention and control services, said there are no known instances in which the test missed an HIV infection that a traditional blood screening would have caught.

Dr. Wilma Wooten, deputy health officer with the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency told the Gay & Lesbian Times that out of the 2,010 OraQuick tests administered in San Diego County, 48 returned positive, and two of those were false positives.