Say-So

It is not the romantic fog blanketing the hills overlooking the San Francisco bay, or the cafe culture which in truly modernist Parisian way took root here with the Beat generation , nor is it the proximity to highly admired, world class, brilliant and resourceful community of the Silicon Valley . It isn’t the stunning coastal vistas, Victorian “painted ladies” or the murals in the Mission that have left a Cupid’s arrow irretrievably planted in the area of my heart marked by the letters “SF”.
The memory of fog horns breaking through the city’s monotonous traffic hum will forever flood my nervous system with serotonin, generating a pious experience rivaled only by soft snow fall on a winter Friday night in Montreal, when the city is illuminated and silenced while being tucked in by the copious white for the weekend.
The truly significant appreciation of San Francisco is embedded in me thanks to the city’s unrivaled GLBT community.

That strong realization became apparent on one of my usual weekend hunts for street photos last year, first at San Francisco Pride Celebration , and later in the summer at the annual San Francisco Love Fest , where besides the colorful costumes, loud music, alcohol in designated areas, brown bags otherwise, pot cakes and other substances unknown to me and for the most part illegal, the atmosphere was imbued with freedom of self expression in magnitude unprecedented anywhere else in the world. Amongst exhibitionists and fetishists of all possible denominations, were families; a family of two handsome Nordic looking men hand holding a 7 year old boy; a family consisting of two voluptuous black women closely watching over a brood of kids running around. It is at that moment when a transcendent recognition of universality of love as a human experience struck me. The queer and proud community of San Francisco is at the forefront of today’s continuing struggle for civil rights . The emancipation of women and African-Americans is history now, and though there is no national holiday commemorating the 19th amendment , Martin Luther King Day coincides every year with Roe V Wade anniversary, challenged in San Francisco by massive turn outs of anti-abortion activists from the surrounding country side.

This year, the pro-choice activists did more than counter protest. According to indybay.org , they organized a rally of their own. It was a meager gathering. A handful of a couple of hundred San Franciscans vs a healthy few thousand of pro-life attendees, mostly outsiders. I’d like to think that if the United States ever regressed to revoke the legality of women’s right to choose an abortion, the pro-choice attendees would match or outnumber the pro-lifers in head count. As is, the few Roe V Wade supporters, resorted to wonderfully creative tactics to make their voices heard over the repetitive mumblings of prayers of the anti abortion marchers. The “pro-choice” - “pro-life” issue is not isolated or pure in the agenda promoted by either side. Supporting the dichotomy is the massive behemoth of religion and its “anti-” on the opposing side. While the anti abortion slew led by men in long robes, paraded with crosses, Jesuses and images of the Virgin, the counter protesters waving metal coat hangers met them with home fashioned signs saying: “Better aborted than abandoned” and “May the fetus you save be gay”. I was strongly impressed with a very young lesbian couple leading a toddler by hand and carrying a younger baby in a back carrier. They sidelined the politically motivated religious procession along the Embarcadero stretch. At one point the more vocal woman of the couple burst out in random inharmonious vocalizations mimicking the religious chanting of the faithful followers. I thought it was brilliant. The contrast could not have been starker. Ultimately, there is a grand philosophical precipice between the two sides, that of “self-expression” vs. “self-suppression”. Belgian Le Soir in its eurotopics.net english translation speaking of Austrian army recruiting two Imams, used the word “obedience” referring to religious following. Perhaps it was just a slip of a tongue which sometimes plagues multilingual writers. I thought it was very accurate. While the 1000 Genome Project intends to examine and compare 1000 human samples from around the globe in order to help study disease, I hope that in not too far future, genetic sampling can help highlight other pivotal differences between people, such as what makes some of us indiscriminate, blind followers yearning to obey rigid hierarchical structures, and some of us free thinkers and iconoclasts yelling at the top of our lungs in uninhibited self expression.