For Gay Community, Finding Acceptance Is Even More Difficult on the Streets

[xchrom]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/us/for-gay-community-finding-acceptance-is-even-more-difficult-on-the-streets.html?_r=0


Bobbie Ingalls, 50, who is homeless and transgender, at St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco, where people lined up for breakfast.

SAN FRANCISCO — There were times — after he told his parents he was gay, for example, and his mother wept and his father tried to hit him — when Fredy Bolvito curled up on a bench in Union Square here and cried because he had AIDS and no job and no place to stay and he felt, he said, that “my life was over.”


But there were also days when he sat on the bench in the square and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner,” looking up at the flags atop the Westin St. Francis hotel and thinking, “That’s breathtaking, that’s my American dream.” Or when he mingled with tourists, giving them directions to the cable cars, or gazed through the windows at the shoppers in Macy’s and was saddened by how rich and healthy they looked.

He scavenged for meals in garbage bins. He avoided the homeless shelters, where he had heard that gays were taunted, or worse. His “angel,” he said, was in the center of the square: the statue “Victory,” a trident in one hand, a wreath in the other.

“I would look at it at night and think, ‘Oh my God, that’s my hope,’ ” he said.

[Jesus Malverde]

1. The vulnerability is heartbreaking.

I'm not sure the status quo of the castro or the city itself is interested in helping them.

"San Francisco is often viewed as a Mecca for gay people. But the warmth of the city’s welcome can quickly vanish for those who are poor."

San francisco has a reputation as a liberal city, however every year there are less african americans living here, because these "liberal" policies don't do anything for them or the working class.