By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – I will be using the pronouns “they,” “them,” and “their” in this article to refer to Fernando Lopez, Jr., the executive director of San Diego Pride, because Lopez identifies as a non-binary person. Lopez is a leader in the LGBTQ community thanks to the intervention of a stranger 23 years ago whose kindness prevented them from committing suicide in despair over being the subject of so much hate.
Today, Lopez is preparing for the annual Pride celebrations which include the She Fest on Saturday, July 8; the Light Up the Cathedral celebration on Wednesday evening, July 12, at which Rabbi Devorah Marcus of Temple Emanu-El will be the keynote speaker; the Spirit of Stonewall Rally, at which the Pride flag will be raised in commemoration of the 1969 uprising at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village when members of the LGBTQ community protested raids by the New York City police; the Pride Parade on Saturday, July 15; and the culminating Pride Festival on Saturday and Sunday, July 15-16.
Twenty-three years ago, Lopez was living in his car, having become estranged from his parents who, at that time, under the weight of many stresses, had gone through an acrimonious divorce. Lopez’s mother, Ellen Fay (Zweifach) Lopez, had been raised in Brooklyn by an immigrant Orthodox Jewish family; their father, Fernando (Senior), a Mexican Catholic, had arrived at age 10 in the United States as the child of immigrant farmworkers. Lopez’s parents had met in Mexicali and had settled in El Centro in neighboring Imperial County. Neither set of Lopez’s grandparents were pleased with the union of Lopez’s parents, to say the least.
“My father was drafted into Vietnam and was the first in his family to go to college, but still there was this perception that ‘Oh, you are marrying a farmworker person, and this is below your station and outside your faith,’” Lopez related. “My father also experienced rejection from his family: ‘Why are you marrying this gringa, out of your faith?’ My father wasn’t fully disowned; he was a little pushed out from the family. and my mother was never treated very well by my father’s family. My mother, on the other hand, was fully disowned by the Jewish side of her family” until Lopez’s great-uncle, UCSD microbiology professor Benjamin Zweifach and his wife Beatrice, did their best to serve as peacemakers.
“One of the most difficult things to share about my family is that I was really young and hearing really awful things that the Jewish side of my family would say about the Mexican side of my family – things that were very racist and classist—and conversely people on the Mexican side of my family would say very antisemitic things about the Jewish side of my family,” Lopez said. “It was deeply wounding to know that, ‘Hey folks, I am both of these things, and when you are saying all these hurtful things, you are actually talking about the child in the room, who is me.’”
In addition to these stresses, Lopez’s one-year younger brother was diagnosed with leukemia, which later developed into leukoencephalitis that led to him becoming “a quadriplegic who is blind, deaf, and non-verbal.” His constant need for treatment at Children’s Hospital here in San Diego meant either or both parents often were away from their home in El Centro, leading Lopez to become a “couch surfer” at the homes of friends and relatives. Today the brother, who is 42 years old, is under full time care and is facing some serious surgery in a little more than a week.
From the time of kindergarten, Lopez was questioning gender identity. When the children were told by their teacher to line up, Lopez stood on a line with the girls, not comprehending for what possible reason the teacher wanted boys in one line, girls in the other. “Aren’t we all the same?” Lopez demanded.
In 1998, at the age of 18, when Lopez came out as gay, their father, with whom they were then living, was unable to accept the news, although years later he became one of Lopez’s “best friends and fiercest advocates.” Heartbroken, Lopez drove to San Diego, where they enrolled in classes at Grossmont College – no easy thing to do when you don’t have a home address – and found a job as a salesclerk at Casual Corner, a woman’s clothing store at Parkway Plaza in El Cajon.
Not having a home to return to led to dangerous situations. “I found myself in a very abusive relationship just because I was looking for a roof over my head and I had to leave.” At that time, Lopez did not feel welcome at either parent’s home. In deep despair Lopez decided to commit suicide.
“I was so tired of fighting, so tired of being homeless, so tired of a lifetime of hate and vitriol from my own family and friends in a world that was not prepared for someone of this mixed cultural identity and this mixed life experience,” Lopez explained. “People saw in me a half-something, and not a whole human being. To not have that love or support from your own family, your own parents, your grandparents, aunts, uncles, or educators, I was just so tired, so done with it.”
Lopez made his way to the Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego, “where I knew there were queer people there. I didn’t have a strong base of support. You don’t make a lot of friends when you are living in your car, going to school, and working. So, I went to Hillcrest, and I just sat with my feet in the gutter, and I was just crying. Thankfully, a complete stranger walked by, said ‘What is wrong? What can I do to help?’ And I just blubbered and cried, ‘I don’t know what to do; I don’t know where to go; I am just done.’”
The stranger was Benjamin Cartwright, who was a student at San Diego State University and a young LGBTQ activist. He told Lopez, “There are a lot of good people in this town. We’re going to find you a place to stay. Tonight, you will stay on my couch and we’re going to figure this out.” Cartwright called his mother, with whom he lived in the Del Cerro neighborhood while he attended nearby SDSU, telling her “There’s this homeless kid who wants to take his life. Can we take him in?” The mother said “yes” and provided a roof over Lopez’s head for a month – long enough for Lopez to get a promotion at work to regional training manager and to find an apartment in City Heights.
During the time Lopez was with the Cartwrights, Benny told Lopez, “Pride is happening, and you should check it out,’” Lopez recalled. “I drove around and saw a group of people who were gathered, so I parked the ca,r and I heard people saying ‘Gay,’ ‘Lesbian,’ ‘Bisexual,’ ‘Transgender,’ and it turned out it was the ‘Spirit of Stonewall rally that we have every Friday before Pride [Parade] and I had never experienced anything like that. I was so taken with this energy and positivity. I stayed and listened until everyone had left because I did not want to lose that feeling. That was the Year 2000 and I haven’t missed a ‘Spirit of Stonewall’ rally in 23 years. Little did I know then that Pride would be so important in my life.”
The following year, Lopez met “someone who would become my husband, Michael Allen Sager, who is also Jewish and gay. He also worked in retail at the time. We met, we fell in love, we got engaged. We knew legally we could not consider ourselves married, so we did a very simple ceremony in our house in late 2002.”
Sager complained of a pain in his side. Fired three times in two years because of his sexual orientation, it was very difficult for him to sustain health insurance. Lopez, meanwhile, went to work at the Disney store at Plaza Bonita, “which had committed to offer domestic partnership insurance, but you had to have documented proof that you had lived together for two years, even though you could be a newlywed straight couple and get health insurance,” Lopez said. “So, Michael collapsed at work, and I got a phone call from his employer. I drove over and didn’t understand why they didn’t take him to the hospital which was literally down the street. I drove him over to the emergency room at UCSD Medical Center, and they took him, and I parked my car. I went rushing to be by his side and someone in scrubs put his hand on my chest and said, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘That is my husband!’ and he said, ‘I’m sorry, we only let family in.’ I argued and I yelled and I swore and I said look at the f—g ring on his finger and the f—g ring on my finger, and if you don’t let me by his side, I will have my lawyer in here tomorrow morning to sue your ass.’”
Lopez at the time was in his early 20s, and had no attorney. “I was just yelling because I wanted to be by my husband’s side. We didn’t know what was going on at first. It turned out to be Epstein-Barr Virus [or EBV, sometimes called the kissing disease because it is caused by the exchange of body fluids.] He eventually recovered while I was by his side for five days. He was unconscious. By the fifth day, they said ‘if you don’t come back to work you are fired’ because we didn’t have medical leave.”
Describing that ordeal, Lopez said: “He couldn’t be on my medical insurance; he was fired from his job; I wasn’t allowed to make medical decisions; they wouldn’t let me into the hospital room until I argued; and my employer was going to fire me – all these really acute issues were happening because of our sexual orientation and gender identity. That really enraged me. I was already doing some research on my own, studying constitutional law as it affects gender equity, particularly insurance discrimination and employment discrimination, because my husband and I were going through so many issues.”
After Sager was discharged from the hospital and found a new job, “I wanted to educate myself so I could be a better advocate,” Lopez said. “He was making enough money to support both of us, and that is how I got connected to Marriage and Equality USA.” As a volunteer, Lopez did such basic tasks as data entry and pledge card gathering, later becoming an event planner for the organization. Eventually Lopez became the group’s cochair.
In 2004, Gavin Newsom, who was then the mayor of San Francisco, invited LGBTQ couples to come to San Francisco and be married. “We just knew that we had to go up there and be part of that,” Lopez said. “We drove up, spent all night in line. We were exhausted, we had no sleep, and we got married in San Francisco, and, of course, those marriages were never fully certified by the State. When we came back, Marriage and Equality USA, Equality California, and the LGBTQ Center were looking for media spokespeople. Not a lot of folks were willing or able to come out and speak to the media for fear of losing their jobs, or family issues, or that the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy was in effect in the military, and we had a lot of folks who would lose their military careers. So, Michael and I said yes—we had already been through something. In 2004, I started doing media relations and then Equality California offered me a paid position as its regional director.” That position led to others as well as campaign work, such as working in the unsuccessful effort to defeat Proposition 8, which defined marriage as legally existing only between a man and a woman. (Although proponents won the election, the measure was subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the courts.) Lopez moved on to become the national director for Marriage & Equality USA, and in 2011, “San Diego Pride reached out and said, ‘You do all this education and advocacy work; will you come and turn us into an advocacy and education organization?’ I became the director of operations and then about 5 ½ years ago, I became the executive director.”
I asked Lopez about preferring a plural pronoun rather than a singular one. Lopez responded that “they” and “them” often are used as singular pronouns “when you don’t know the gender of a person. We use it in every day common language, like, ‘Is your friend coming over?’ ‘Yeah, they are.’ ‘Oh, what’s their name again?’” The reason for preferring it, however, is more complex.
“My (maternal) grandfather was a teacher at his synagogue and was never shy about educating me,” Lopez said. “I remember asking him why G-d is not spelled with a vowel (by some observant Jews.) His explanation to me was that God is all things and God doesn’t have a number or a gender, so we spell God with a hyphen [as G-d] to help us remember and honor that. I remember being taken with that answer. Now I have a different lens on that: If we are all connected to God, and God is connected to all people, then we are part of something that is non-binary. That makes me feel more connected to God, than not.”
While we were on the subject of religion, Lopez told me that the Light Up the Cathedral event, at St. Paul’s [Episcopal] Cathedral at 2728 6th Avenue is “our interfaith celebration. I think we will have 60 faith leaders who will participate, and there are over 100 open and affirming congregations in our region who do a lot of LGBTQ supportive work. It is a way to honor LGBTQ folks who are people of faith. When faith can so often be used as a weapon against our community, it is a way for us to actually see that faith can honor and celebrate our community, that these two things are not discordant with one another.
“Each year we make it a point to highlight different issues of social justice. The year of the Chabad shooting [2019], the focus was on [opposition to] antisemitism. We honored Jewish Family Service that year.” In other years attention focused on indigenous communities, the crisis at the border, and Black Lives Matter.
“In the last year and half, there has been such a dramatic rise in White nationalism, White supremacy, and Christian nationalism. We, and many of us here at Pride, understand how deeply connected that is to antisemitism and anti-LGBTQ sentiment,” Lopez said. “So, this year Rabbi Devorah Marcus will be our keynote speaker and we are honoring Temple Emanu-El because they have done some incredible work highlighting not only the LGBTQ community but also the rise of antisemitic violence, particularly in our region.”
The July 12 “Light Up the Cathedral” event culminates with St. Paul’s being illuminated with the rainbow colors of the LGBTQ Pride movement.
During Lopez’s tenure as the executive director, San Diego Pride has increased its annual budget from $1 million to $6.5 million, and from three employees to 24. The organization has 40 year-round programs and produces approximately 100 events a year, according to Lopez.
No event is more financially important to the organization than the July 15-16 weekend Pride Festival, which draws corporate sponsors, tickets, and beverage sales and has attracted mega crowds.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com