Petrelis Files

Time-Limit for A-Gays at SF Prop 8 Forum

Here we are, three days away from the first San Francisco gay community accountability town hall, starting at 6 PM on Thursday at the Civic Center auditorium, and the A-gay organizers have not made the agenda and structure available for public discussion.

Late last week, an announcement went out from the A-gays that omitted anything about an open mic for public comments and questions from D-list gays. Curious omission from leaders who claimed they've changed their non-transparent ways of organizing.

The release boasts of the participation from politicians, profession advocates, nonprofit leaders, religious and labor promoters, and pollsters, but nothing is mentioned about audience participation, other than a cameo reference to a Q&A at some point during the forum.

Efforts to extract information from Andrea Shorter, the forum's lead organizer, about duration of the open mic, rules governing that time, and the meeting's over all agenda have produced vague replies. From Shorter:

Trust that we are doing our best to bring the community together to hear each other, learn, grow, and move on.

Sorry, after the flushing of $43 million gay dollars down the toilet and a losing campaign executed by some of the folks putting on the February 26 town hall, I want more than a request to trust the same people again on something as important as the agenda for an important community gathering.

As we wait for the A-gays to provide the community with the February 26 agenda, I want to raise the matter of time limits being applied to the A-gays who will be on the panel.

Most likely, we will see time restrictions placed on speakers during public comment, something we'll need to keep the meeting moving, but it shouldn't be just the D-list open mic speakers who are held to a few minutes of talk.

I understand that the organizers have granted Robin McGehee, a lesbian leader with the Gay Fresno group, who will be at the forum to promote and recruit for a number of important visibility actions fast approaching in her city, two-minutes measly minutes of prime-time speaking. McGehee will certainly make good use of those 120-seconds, but she should get the same allotment of time as the A-gays who are on the top of the agenda.

We also should apply similar limits on the many invited panelists, to keep them from rambling and taking up too much time. Let's have some, um, equality in the application of speaking time limits on Thursday night.