The San Francisco Office of Transgender Initiatives recently announced a new campaign alongside the SF Bay Area LGBTQ COVID Relief Coalition to address health disparities, particularly as they concern the pandemic.
The Trans Wellness SF campaign is also seeking to collect more data about the transgender and gender-nonconforming communities, according to Clair Farley, a trans woman who is the executive director of the Office of Transgender Initiatives, in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter February 11. I think what s new with this wellness campaign launch is a connected strategy of doing education about the implications of the pandemic on the community with a public health survey, Farley said.
Gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced Senate Bill 379 February 10. This legislation will expand access to health care for LGBTQ people and will begin to end stigma, Wiener told the Bay Area Reporter February 12. I think a lot of us have strong opinions about major hospitals refusing to provide gender-affirming care and reproductive health, but this isn t even about that. This is about a public university entering contracts where UC physicians are prohibited from providing care to our community. That s just not acceptable.
SB 379 would change current laws where, as Wiener said, you can have a situation where a UC physician is treating a UC patient at a Dignity hospital, for example, and they can t provide a service.
A trans Black man who is a San Francisco Fire Department paramedic is suing the city, alleging he has been discriminated against on the basis of his race and gender identity, harassed, and retaliated against.
Ronnie Jones, 44, has worked for the SFFD since 2006. He came out as transgender in 2015, and things at work have not been the same since, according to his attorney, Angela Alioto, who spoke with the Bay Area Reporter February 11.
Alioto, a past president of the Board of Supervisors, is also representing gay firefighter Keith Baraka in his suit against the city, as the B.A.R. reported January 25. To Alioto, Jones discrimination case is part of the same pattern.
San Francisco Police are seeking the public s help finding a gay man who went missing early last month seemingly without a trace.
The mother of Christopher J. Woitel, 50, last heard from the Guerrero Street resident January 9, according to an SFPD news release February 10.
Having lived in San Francisco since his 1988 graduation from high school in Oak Park, Illinois, just outside Chicago, Woitel is known to frequent Emeryville and Sonora in Tuolumne County, the statement reads, adding that he is a white male, 5 foot, 10 inches tall, 200 pounds and with brown hair and brown eyes.
Mark Guarino, who is handling media relations for the Woitel family, disclosed Woitel s sexual orientation to the Bay Area Reporter February 11 and that his family members are traveling to the Bay Area this week. They plan to distribute fliers outside Woitel s apartment Friday, February 12, at 1 p.m.
Emeryville Police have talked to a person who claims to have knowledge of the whereabouts of a gay San Francisco man who disappeared early this year, according to a family member, as San Francisco Police seek the public s help in finding him.
The mother of Christopher J. Woitel, 50, last heard from the Guerrero Street resident January 9, according to a February 10 SFPD news release.
Woitel s brother Michael Woitel, 45, is one of six siblings and lives in Illinois. He told the Bay Area Reporter February 12 that the Emeryville Police Department is in touch with a homeless man in the East Bay city who claimed to know that Woitel had been murdered.