Fight between Riordan and unions upstages L.A. sales tax decision

A ferocious battle between former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and the city's police and civilian unions broke out at City Hall on Tuesday, overshadowing a City Council action to help stabilize municipal finances by putting a sales tax increase on the ballot.

The 82-year-old Riordan strode to the podium Tuesday morning, urging the council to refrain from putting a sales tax hike on the ballot until it exhausts other ways of repairing its chronically underfunded budget.

"What Los Angeles needs is more jobs, not more taxes," Riordan said shortly before the council voted 11 to 4 to place a half-cent sales tax increase before voters during the March 5 primary. "Enough is enough. More and more taxes will not be used properly to bail out our budget problems."

The subtext of the day, however, was taking place behind the scenes. Riordan's camp distributed copies of an email in which a union organizer called on members to sign "fake names/addresses" on a sweeping pension initiative ballot petition being circulated and bankrolled by Riordan.

If roughly 265,000 valid signatures are collected, the measure switching new city workers into 401(k)-style retirements instead of defined-benefit pensions would appear on the May 21 general city election ballot. Riordan called the email a "dirty trick" meant to thwart that effort.

In an interview with The Times, he said changes to the pension system are essential to keeping city government solvent, and that he's ready for a tough campaign.

"I am prepared to make it happen," the multimillionaire businessman said when asked about the potential cost of facing off with unions known to raise large amounts of money for city political campaigns. "A lot of other people will be chipping in. I have the advantage of having a lot of good contacts with a lot people who care about this city as I do and will help."

Signing fictitious names to a voter petition is a felony under the California Elections Code, according to Kimberly Briggs of the city's Election Division. At Riordan's request, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley has agreed to investigate the union email.

Later in the day, events compelled the Service Employees International Union Local 721 to take the embarrassing step of disavowing the organizer's email.

"SEIU 721 in no way recommends that its members or anyone else falsify signatures on any petition," said Ian Thompson, a union spokesman. "We are firmly against that kind of behavior. The email in question was sent without the knowledge of the union's leadership. The person who sent the email has been disciplined for his action." The sender was identified as four-year union employee Paul Kim, a worksite organizer.

The Los Angeles police officers' union in recent days got in its own swipe at Riordan, faulting him for failing to conduct an actuarial study of the potential costs or savings to the city should his pension measure pass. The Police Protective League contends 401(k)-type plans would cost the city even more than the current taxpayer-backed pensions.

Riordan shot that down, saying previous studies conducted in California and nationwide show that retirements that shift risk from the taxpayer, as in a defined benefit pension, to the public employee, as in a 401(k)-style contributory plan, make labor costs more predictable.

"We are doing another study right now mainly for political purposes because the opponents have thrown that at us," he said. "But it's clearly not true."

Meanwhile, a measure to increase the sales tax in the city by half a cent, hiking collections by $215 million a year, won final approval. The council majority has said 5,000 positions have already been cut, furloughs imposed and pensions trimmed to try to control costs.

Now, however, new revenue is needed to stabilize the budget. The only other possibility is more layoffs and service reductions in libraries, parks, street paving and police and fire budgets, some council members say.

Although the sales tax hike does not need support from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to appear on the ballot, the mayor declined to sign the measure, saying that the city should pursue additional workforce reductions before seeking a sales tax hike. The mayor also advocates privatizing the Los Angeles Zoo and the Los Angeles Convention Center, as well as consolidating some departments, to save money.

catherine.saillant@latimes.com

christine.maiduc@latimes.com

Read More..

Hamas Strengthens as Palestinian Authority Weakens

RAMALLAH, West Bank — In the daily demonstrations here of solidarity with Gaza, a mix of sympathy and anguish, there is something else: growing identification with the Islamist fighters of Hamas and derision for the Palestinian Authority, which Washington considers the only viable partner for peace with Israel.

“Strike a blow on Tel Aviv!” proclaimed the lyrics of a new hit song blasting from shops and speakers at Monday’s demonstration, in a reference to Hamas rockets that made it nearly to Israel’s economic and cultural capital. “Don’t let the Zionists sleep! We don’t want a truce or a solution! Oh, Palestinians, you can be proud!”

Pop songs everywhere are filled with bravado and aggression. But this one reflects a widespread sentiment that does not augur well for President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority, which is rapidly losing credibility, even relevance. The Gaza truce talks in Cairo, involving Egypt, Turkey and Qatar, offer a telling tableau. The Palestinian leader seen there is not Mr. Abbas, but Khaled Meshal, the leader of the militant group Hamas, who seeks to speak for all Palestinians as his ideological brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood rise to power around the region.

Israel is also threatening Mr. Abbas, even hinting that it may give up on him, as he prepares to go to the United Nations General Assembly on Nov. 29 to try to upgrade the Palestinian status to that of a nonmember state. The Israelis consider this step an act of aggression, and even some Palestinians say it is somewhat beside the point at this stage.

“His people are being killed in Gaza, and he is sitting on his comfortable chair in Ramallah,” lamented Firas Katash, 20, a student who took part in the Ramallah demonstration.

For the United States, as for other countries hoping to promote a two-state solution to this century-old conflict, a more radicalized West Bank with a discredited Palestinian Authority would mean greater insecurity for Israel and increased opportunity for anti-Western forces to take root in a region where Islamism is on the rise.

Since Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in 2006, threw the Fatah-controlled authority out of Gaza a year later, Mr. Abbas has not set foot there. Yet he will be asking the world to recognize the two increasingly distinct entities as a unified state.

Manar Wadi, who works in an office in Ramallah, put the issue this way: “What is happening in Gaza makes the Palestinian Authority left behind and isolated. Now we see the other face of Hamas, and its popularity is rising. It makes us feel that the Palestinian Authority doesn’t offer a path to the future.”

In Cairo on Monday, Mr. Meshal seemed defiant and confident in his new role, daring the Israelis to invade Gaza as a sixth day of Israeli aerial assaults brought the death toll there to more than 100 people, many of them militants of Hamas and its affiliates. Rockets launched from Gaza hit southern Israel, causing some damage and panic, but no casualties, leaving the death toll there at three.

“Whoever started the war must end it,” Mr. Meshal said at a news conference. “If Israel wants a cease-fire brokered through Egypt, then that is possible. Escalation is also possible.”

Officials in the authority have been holding leadership meetings, staying in close touch with the talks in Cairo and issuing statements of solidarity. They have also sent a small medical delegation to Gaza and argue that there is a new opportunity to forge unity between the two feuding movements. But they are acutely aware of their problem.

“The most dangerous thing is the fact that what we could not do in negotiations, Hamas did with one rocket,” one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The people had such excitement seeing the occupiers run in panic. It’s a very dangerous message.”

Mr. Abbas, whose popularity has been on the decline as the Palestinian Authority faces economic difficulty and growing Israeli settlements, also ran into trouble not long before the Gaza fighting began when he seemed to give up on the Palestinian demand of a right of return to what is now Israel.

Many Palestinians believe that Israel launched its latest operation in Gaza to block the Palestinian Authority’s United Nations plans by embarrassing it. Israeli officials say that is ridiculous: the operation’s purpose is to stop the growing number of rockets being fired at their communities, and Israelis interrupted their deliberations over the United Nations bid to wage the military campaign.

But Israel says anything that does not involve direct negotiations is a waste of time. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to take severe retaliatory steps against the Palestinian Authority, including cutting off badly needed tax receipts to Palestinian coffers, should Mr. Abbas go ahead at the United Nations.

In a speech here on Sunday night at a Palestinian leadership meeting, Mr. Abbas repeated his determination to go to New York and ask for a change in status to that of nonmember state. He has chosen the symbolically significant date of Nov. 29, when the General Assembly voted in 1947 to divide this land into two states, one Jewish and the other Palestinian Arab.

The United States has asked Mr. Abbas not to do so, but instead to resume direct negotiations with Israel, which have essentially been frozen since 2008.

Read More..

Miley Cyrus Celebrates in New York - with Her Entire Family!

11/19/2012 at 07:05 PM EST

From left: Noah, Bill Ray, Tish, Miley, Brandi and Braison Cyrus

Bruce Glikas/Filmmagic

The Cyrus family has a lot to be thankful for this year.

Miley Cyrus is celebrating her 20th birthday on Friday. Her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, is starring as slick lawyer Billy Flynn in the Broadway hit musical Chicago. And it looks like (practically) the whole family is together for the occasions.

Photos show Billy Ray – dressed in a tuxedo – his wife Tish and their kids, Miley, 19, Noah, 12, Brandi, 25, and Braison, 18, all posing together backstage at the Ambassador Theater in New York City on Sunday. (Brother Trace is the only one absent.)

"The whole family had a great time," an observer tells PEOPLE.

They came backstage at intermission to spend time with Billy Ray in his dressing room, and again after the show to meet some of his fellow cast members.

Billy Ray, who began his Broadway run recently, told PEOPLE that his family hadn't come to see him yet partly because he wanted to get comfortable in the role. "I gotta get my legs up [before they see it]," he said. "I think everybody's coming in for Thanksgiving. So we'll see what happens."

Now that they've seen it, it seems his family is giving his performance a thumbs-up. "So glad to be back with my daddy (@billyraycyrus) for the first time in 3 MONTHS!! He was so great on broadway," Noah Tweeted on Monday.

Miley, too, is having a blast in the Big Apple. "What a dope morning. So many fans outside my hotel this a.m. in NYC. If there's this much chaos NOW imagine when I drop this record! #ohsnap," she Tweeted.

As for Billy Ray, whose Chicago run ends Dec. 23, he says taking the part on Broadway has been great fun – and a great challenge.

"I couldn't come up here and do something predictable," he says of the role. "I was offered Rock of Ages, and my instincts said, 'That's a bit predictable for me.' "

But when the role of Billy Flynn came up, Ray explained, "He's the total opposite of me" – and that was just what he wanted.

For more on Billy Ray Cyrus – including what he does (and doesn't) know about Miley's wedding plans – pick up PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday

Read More..

New push for most in US to get at least 1 HIV test

WASHINGTON (AP) — There's a new push to make testing for the AIDS virus as common as cholesterol checks.

Americans ages 15 to 64 should get an HIV test at least once — not just people considered at high risk for the virus, an independent panel that sets screening guidelines proposed Monday.

The draft guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are the latest recommendations that aim to make HIV screening simply a routine part of a check-up, something a doctor can order with as little fuss as a cholesterol test or a mammogram. Since 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has pushed for widespread, routine HIV screening.

Yet not nearly enough people have heeded that call: Of the more than 1.1 million Americans living with HIV, nearly 1 in 5 — almost 240,000 people — don't know it. Not only is their own health at risk without treatment, they could unwittingly be spreading the virus to others.

The updated guidelines will bring this long-simmering issue before doctors and their patients again — emphasizing that public health experts agree on how important it is to test even people who don't think they're at risk, because they could be.

"It allows you to say, 'This is a recommended test that we believe everybody should have. We're not singling you out in any way,'" said task force member Dr. Douglas Owens, of Stanford University and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.

And if finalized, the task force guidelines could extend the number of people eligible for an HIV screening without a copay in their doctor's office, as part of free preventive care under the Obama administration's health care law. Under the task force's previous guidelines, only people at increased risk for HIV — which includes gay and bisexual men and injecting drug users — were eligible for that no-copay screening.

There are a number of ways to get tested. If you're having blood drawn for other exams, the doctor can merely add HIV to the list, no extra pokes or swabs needed. Today's rapid tests can cost less than $20 and require just rubbing a swab over the gums, with results ready in as little as 20 minutes. Last summer, the government approved a do-it-yourself at-home version that's selling for about $40.

Free testing is available through various community programs around the country, including a CDC pilot program in drugstores in 24 cities and rural sites.

Monday's proposal also recommends:

—Testing people older and younger than 15-64 if they are at increased risk of HIV infection,

—People at very high risk for HIV infection should be tested at least annually.

—It's not clear how often to retest people at somewhat increased risk, but perhaps every three to five years.

—Women should be tested during each pregnancy, something the task force has long recommended.

The draft guidelines are open for public comment through Dec. 17.

Most of the 50,000 new HIV infections in the U.S. every year are among gay and bisexual men, followed by heterosexual black women.

"We are not doing as well in America with HIV testing as we would like," Dr. Jonathan Mermin, CDC's HIV prevention chief, said Monday.

The CDC recommends at least one routine test for everyone ages 13 to 64, starting two years younger than the task force recommended. That small difference aside, CDC data suggests fewer than half of adults under 65 have been tested.

"It can sometimes be awkward to ask your doctor for an HIV test," Mermin said — the reason making it routine during any health care encounter could help.

But even though nearly three-fourths of gay and bisexual men with undiagnosed HIV had visited some sort of health provider in the previous year, 48 percent weren't tested for HIV, a recent CDC survey found. Emergency rooms are considered a good spot to catch the undiagnosed, after their illnesses and injuries have been treated, but Mermin said only about 2 percent of ER patients known to be at increased risk were tested while there.

Mermin calls that "a tragedy. It's a missed opportunity."

___

Online:

Task force recommendation: http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org

Read More..

Santa Monica may bar Nativity scenes in public areas, judge rules

Santa Monica may bar Nativity and other seasonal displays in public spaces, a federal judge tentatively ruled Monday.

In a case that has drawn national attention, Judge Audrey B. Collins of U.S. District Court in Los Angeles denied a church coalition's request that the court require the city to allow Nativity scenes to be displayed in Palisades Park this year, as it has for nearly 60 years.

"The atheists won on this," said William J. Becker Jr., an attorney for the Santa Monica Nativity Scenes Committee, a coalition of 13 churches and the Santa Monica Police Officers Assn. Standing in front of TV news cameras outside the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building, Becker predicted that the court on Dec. 3 would also grant the city's request that his group's lawsuit be dismissed.

That likely outcome, he said, marked "the erosion of 1st Amendment liberty for religious speech." He compared the city to Pontius Pilate, the judge at Jesus' trial, saying: "It's a shame about Christmas. Pontius Pilate was exactly the same kind of administrator."

Atheist groups praised the judge's ruling as an example of the upholding of the separation of church and state.

"Religion is innately divisive and just doesn't belong in public parks," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis. "There are tax-exempt churches on every other corner. Why isn't that good enough?"

Charles C. Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center and director of the Newseum's Religious Freedom Education Project in Washington, called Collins' decision "consistent with other rulings."

"It's all or nothing in these cases," he said. "If the government opens up and creates a limited forum, it can't practice viewpoint discrimination. But it can say, well, we're not going to have any.... There has to be a level playing field in the public sphere."

Since 1953, the coalition each December has erected a tableau of scenes depicting the birth of Jesus Christ.

A few years ago, the tradition offended Damon Vix, an atheist, who applied to put up a booth next to the Nativity story. Last year, he encouraged other atheists to flood the city with applications, including a satirical homage to the "Pastafarian religion" featuring a representation of the "Flying Spaghetti Monster."

To keep things fair and legal, the city held a lottery to parcel out slots. Atheists won 18 of 21 spaces. A Jewish group won another. The Nativity story that traditionally took up 14 displays was jammed into two.

A flap ensued. Vandals ripped down a banner the Freedom From Religion Foundation had hung at the park. The banner began: "At this season of the winter solstice, may reason prevail."

Last June, concerned that the lottery would become increasingly costly because of the rising tensions, the City Council voted to ban all private, unattended displays in city parks. The city has cited other reasons for the prohibition, including damage to the park's turf and some residents' statements that they would prefer unobstructed ocean views to seasonal displays.

Council members and the city attorney's office said groups wishing to celebrate the Nativity, the winter solstice or Hanukkah had alternatives. They could, for example, erect displays on private property or station a representative at any display on public ground.

In October, the coalition filed suit, seeking to restore the tradition. At the time, Becker said it was "not the government's function to avoid controversy at the cost of fundamental rights."

Barry A. Rosenbaum, with the Santa Monica city attorney's office, said the city was pleased with the ruling. The judge, he said, "understood the government interests."

Becker said he would consult with his "brain trust" to determine what step the coalition would take if the judge grants the city's motion to dismiss. He said he and his clients might consider an appeal, perhaps next year or at some future time when the city government pendulum "would swing back and we'd be back in a sane society where people are tolerant and respect each other for their religious views."

martha.groves@latimes.com

jessica.garrison@latimes.com

Read More..

An Outgunned Hamas Tries to Leverage Rise of Islamists in Region

Bernat Armangue/Associated Press

Smoke rose over Gaza City on Sunday, as Israel widened its range of targets to include buildings used by the news media.

CAIRO — Emboldened by the rising power of Islamists around the region, the Palestinian militant group Hamas demanded new Israeli concessions to its security and autonomy before it halts its rocket attacks on Israel, even as the conflict took an increasing toll on Sunday.

Pavel Wolberg for The New York Times

 A woman and her child took cover in the southern Israeli town of Ashod, which was the target of several missiles on Sunday.

After five days of punishing Israeli airstrikes on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and no letup in the rocket fire in return, representatives of Israel and Hamas met separately with Egyptian officials in Cairo on Sunday for indirect talks about a truce.

The talks came as an Israeli bomb struck a house in Gaza on Sunday afternoon, killing 11 people, in the deadliest single strike since the conflict between Israel and Hamas escalated on Wednesday. The strike, along with several others that killed civilians across the Gaza Strip, signaled that Israel was broadening its range of targets on the fifth day of the campaign.

By the end of the day, Gaza health officials reported that 70 Palestinians had been killed in airstrikes since Wednesday, including 20 children, and that 600 had been wounded. Three Israelis have been killed and at least 79 wounded by unrelenting rocket fire out of Gaza into southern Israel and as far north as Tel Aviv.

Hamas, badly outgunned on the battlefield, appeared to be trying to exploit its increased political clout with its ideological allies in Egypt’s new Islamist-led government. The group’s leaders, rejecting Israel’s call for an immediate end to the rocket attacks, have instead laid down sweeping demands that would put Hamas in a stronger position than when the conflict began: an end to Israel’s five-year-old embargo of the Gaza Strip, a pledge by Israel not to attack again and multinational guarantees that Israel would abide by its commitments.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel stuck to his demand that all rocket fire cease before the air campaign lets up, and Israeli tanks and troops remained lined up outside Gaza on Sunday. Tens of thousands of reserve troops had been called up. “The army is prepared to significantly expand the operation,” Mr. Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting.

Reda Fahmy, a member of Egypt’s upper house of Parliament and of the nation’s dominant Islamist party, who is following the talks, said Hamas’s position was just as unequivocal. “Hamas has one clear and specific demand: for the siege to be completely lifted from Gaza,” he said. “It’s not reasonable that every now and then Israel decides to level Gaza to the ground, and then we decide to sit down and talk about it after it is done. On the Israeli part, they want to stop the missiles from one side. How is that?”

He added: “If they stop the aircraft from shooting, Hamas will then stop its missiles. But violence couldn’t be stopped from one side.”

Hamas’s aggressive stance in the cease-fire talks is the first test of the group’s belief that the Arab Spring and the rise in Islamist influence around the region have strengthened its political hand, both against Israel and against Hamas’s Palestinian rivals, who now control the West Bank with Western backing.

It also puts intense new pressure on President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was known for his fiery speeches defending Hamas and denouncing Israel. Mr. Morsi must now balance the conflicting demands of an Egyptian public that is deeply sympathetic to Hamas and the Palestinian cause against Western pleadings to help broker a peace and Egypt’s need for regional stability to help revive its moribund economy.

Indeed, the Egyptian-led cease-fire talks illustrate the diverging paths of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, a Palestinian offshoot of the original Egyptian Islamist group. Hamas has evolved into a more militant insurgency and is labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel, while the Brotherhood has effectively become Egypt’s ruling party. Mr. Fahmy said in an interview in March that the Brotherhood’s new responsibilities required a step back from its ideological cousins in Hamas, and even a new push to persuade the group to compromise.

Reporting was contributed by Ethan Bronner, Irit Pazner Garshowitz and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem, and Peter Baker from Bangkok.

Read More..

Soccer-Liverpool’s Sterling apologises to Watson over collision

Nov 18 (Reuters) – Liverpool winger Raheem Sterling has wished Wigan Athletic‘s Ben Watson a speedy recovery after a freak collision between the pair on Saturday left Watson with a suspected shin fracture.

Sterling, who made his England debut midweek, used his Twitter account to offer an apology to Watson following the Reds’ 3-0 win at Anfield.

Midfielder Watson was taken from the pitch in the first half when he was struck just above the shin by Sterling‘s knee as both competed in the air for the ball.

“To Ben Watson I didn’t realise it was serious as that ill (sic) be praying for a speedy recovery mate ill (sic) have you in my prayers every day. #sorry,” posted the 17-year-old.

Following the defeat, Wigan manager Roberto Martinez expressed concern for Watson as well as Gary Caldwell who has a problem with his hamstring.

“The injury to Ben Watson is a really nasty blow and what we believe to be a broken leg,” Martinez told Wigan’s official website (www.wiganlatics.com).

“We will have to assess the injury and the treatment that Ben will need before we can judge how long he is going to be missing.

“Ben was starting to have a very strong season and was putting in some commanding performances and it is a real shame to lose him to an injury like that.”

Martinez also accused Liverpool scorer Luis Suarez of stamping on David Jones. (Reporting By Mark Pangallo; Editing by Mark Meadows; mark.meadows@thomsonreuters.com; +44 20 7542 7933; Reuters Messaging:; mark.meadows.reuters.com@reuters.net)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Justin Bieber Brings His Mom to the American Music Awards

By Maggie Coughlan

11/18/2012 at 09:35 PM EST

Pattie Mallette and Justin Bieber

Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters/Landov

Mother knows best!

Despite his recent split from Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber still had a date for the 40th American Music Awards on Sunday: his mother, Pattie Mallette.

Malette – who recently penned Nowhere But Up: The Story of Justin Bieber's Mom – looked thrilled to pose for photographs with her son.

When Bieber won the first award of the night, for favorite pop/rock male artist, his proud mother, 38, beamed.

"I want to say this is for all the haters who thought I was just here for one or two years. I feel like I'm going to be here for a very long time," the singer said as he accepted the award.

The award was a highlight during a rocky week for Bieber, who on Friday reunited with Gomez, 20, for dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Los Angeles. But just five minutes after entering the restaurant, the couple emerged with Gomez looking visibly "mad," says a source.

Later that night, Bieber Tweeted "Things aren't always easy. there is a lot of pressure. im figuring it all out. im trying. but i care, i notice, i still hear u. #Beliebers."

Read More..

EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

Read More..

San Francisco may ban public nudity (with exceptions, of course)

SAN FRANCISCO — A year after passing an ordinance to gently regulate al fresco nudity — requiring that naturists place something between their seats and public seating — city officials are scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to ban public nakedness outright.

Well, almost outright. This being San Francisco, there are exceptions:

The preschool set still could go diaper-less anywhere and everywhere. Fetishists could drop trou for a flogging during the annual Folsom Street Fair, billed as the world's largest leather fest.

The proposed ban would not stop the athletically inclined from jettisoning their shorts during the Bay to Breakers run — the historic, costume-optional race through this city's microclimates (chilly to chillier). And Dykes on Bikes could wear — or not — whatever they wished during the Pride Parade.

But a starkers stroll down Market Street would most emphatically be out if the prohibition passes.

"In its traditional form in San Francisco, public nudity was fine," said Supervisor Scott Wiener, who represents the Castro District and introduced both ordinances. "It was fine to have a random [naked] person walking through the neighborhood once in a while. It was fine at public festivals and parades."

But although many talk about the tolerant "spirit of San Francisco," Wiener said, "what's happening now is … a caricature."

You can thank the "Naked Guys" for that.

Until recently, officials generally had turned the other cheek to questions of public nudity — particularly when the sightings of sandal-clad men with all-body tans around the Castro district, the heart of gay San Francisco, were sporadic.

Then two years ago, when Jane Warner Plaza was dedicated at the intersection of Castro and Market streets, the number of Naked Guys grew. And so did the complaints, from gay men who live in the area and shop owners near the gathering spot eventually dubbed the "Buff Stop."

Wiener's attempt at regulation last year banned nudity in restaurants and established the outdoor seating guidelines. The goal was to bring a little civility back into the practice of urban nudism. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect.

The number of nudists grew, Wiener said, and some apparently accessorized the usual shoes and sun hats with jewelry that cannot be described fully in a family newspaper.

Over the summer, Rob Cox, board secretary of the Castro/Eureka Valley Neighborhood Assn., and other community leaders canvassed business owners in the area. They asked how the influx of Naked Guys had affected commerce.

"Ninety percent of the business owners were furious," Cox said. "I had heard it a lot from neighbors too. So we passed that information on" to Wiener.

In early October, the supervisor proposed the stricter ban, calling it legislation "I was hoping that I would never have to introduce." But the Castro, he pointed out, was known for "its diversity and its vibrance," and that sensibility was under attack.

"Jane Warner Plaza is the only usable public plaza in the Castro," he said during the Board of Supervisors meeting. "It is our town square. And it has become dominated just about every afternoon by one group.... The Castro is not about a group of men exposing themselves every day."

Last week, the naturists struck back.

First, they held a nude-in on the steps of City Hall. Then they filed a federal lawsuit.

To Gypsy Taub, protest organizer and hostess of a local show called "My Naked Truth TV," the proposed ban is proof that officials want to turn the city back into "the Dark Ages of body shame and fear."

To Taub's 9-year-old son, Bunny Gonzalez, who was fully clothed during the protest, nudity "is a good cause. Scott Wiener is trying to make nudity bad."

Placard-waving Web designer Mitch Hightower said the San Francisco clampdown smacked of gentrification: "More and more they're taking away the things that are only-in-San Francisco." Dressed in a T-shirt, sun hat and not much else, even he had to admit: "I'm cold!"

Ckiara Rose, in ballet-style flats and chandelier earrings, said banning public nudity in the city was pure hypocrisy. "San Francisco was founded on the Barbary Coast, full of brothels and saloons," the self-proclaimed sex worker said. "They don't come from Puritan origins."

But that's the way things could be headed if Wiener and his colleagues aren't stopped, said attorney Christina (formerly Christopher) DiEdoardo, who is representing Taub, Hightower and others in the federal lawsuit.

Gripping the legal document in her hand before marching on the federal building, DiEdoardo declared to the variously clad group, "What a gorgeous day for a rally in San Francisco … and for us to return to real San Francisco values!"

And how was DiEdoardo dressed on a breezy autumn afternoon as she struck a blow for the 1st Amendment rights of the naked? She wore a brightly flowered blouse and black slacks.

Because the federal building is not clothing optional.

Even here.

maria.laganga@latimes.com

Read More..