Bio

QUEER4DECADES is the archive (not yet a “repository”– I am still alive and kicking) of Mark Freeman’s unquenched thirst to explore the world of Gay, then LGBT, Trans and full-on Queer Liberation in the historical context of Women’s and Black liberation, as they all evolved over the fifty-odd years since I came out.

If “May you live in interesting times” is a Chinese curse, I‘d beg to differ. It has been a blessing to have been a participant in so many Movements, memorable moments and magical events. To have survived this long as a tongue-in-cheek commentator provides a rather jaundiced outlook, but a hopeful point of view over the long-run.

Those events include getting kicked out of three high schools in the era post-beatnik but pre-hippie, attending a Ken Kesey “Acid Test” while still a drug-virgin adolescent, selling chastity belt keys at the original Renaissance Fair, and in ’67 a scroll I hand-carved of Aldous Huxley’s “Door of Perception” at a Haight Street head shop. Being a C.O. (Conscientious Objector) working as a draft counselor during the Vietnam War, starting free film screenings at the branch library that paired “Black Panther Breakfast Program” with Steve McQueen in “The Blob”, and traveling for a year overland to South America with my girlfriend to witness the socialist Allende era in Chile.

After coming out, fighting against CA Prop 6 (1978) by mobilizing non-gay allies statewide to defend gay and pro-gay teachers under Harvey Milk and Sally Gearhart’s United Front Against Briggs, funding it by organizing with Allan Sawyer the first Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, years before Frameline was a mixed fest; pioneered use of storytelling in pediatric hospital units, then to adult “people living with AIDS and those who care for them” on KALW-FM. Bringing harm reduction via vaccines and abscess care to needle exchanges and SRO hotels plus the un-housed on the streets of SF out of a fish-tackle box and a cold carrier meant for soda or beer.

Starting the first free public health TG clinic in 1993 with Dr. Barry Zevin, and RN Mary Monihan, in collaboration with trans, Black, Asian and Latin activist AIDS groups, changing a restrictive model of trans care to one of informed consent and self-determination. Co-directing the feature documentary “Transgender Tuesdays: A Clinic in the Tenderloin” with editor Nathaniel Walters, and filling SF’s Castro Theatre for its 2012 world premiere.

Travel blogging over the years about Central Asia, Spain during its 500^th year after forcing expulsion of its Moors and Jews, Stonewall Riots’ 25^th anniversary, an inside look at New Orleans’ Jazz Fest, nights in Havana and a contentious International Lesbian and Gay Association confab in Acapulco. Writing cover features, reviews and interviews for the Village Voice, Sierra magazine, Spring: a Journal of Jungian Thought and SF weekly tabloids. Also: the storybook for the anonymous art activist anti-censorship group Boy with Arms Akimbo in 1989; a detailed history in 1994 of the beloved STUD Bar; and “Mr. David” Glamamore’s backstory for Megan Murray’s San Francisco Drag: A Coloring Book in 2015.