Том Аммиано: Сан-Франциско саяхаты және ЛГБТ құқықтары үшін күрес

American politician and LGBT rights activist

Tom Ammiano (born December 15, 1941) is an American politician and LGBT rights activist from San Francisco, California. Ammiano, a member of the California Legislative LGBT Caucus, served as a member of the California State Assembly from 2008 to November 30, 2014. He had previously been a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and had mounted an unsuccessful bid for mayor of San Francisco in 1999. He was succeeded as California's Assemblyman for District 17 by San Francisco Board of Supervisors President David Chiu on December 1, 2014.

Ammiano grew up in Montclair, New Jersey, part of a working class family of Italian Americans. He attended Immaculate Conception High School, graduating in 1959. Ammiano competed successfully on the school's track team and earned a varsity letter that he never received, apparently because he was perceived to be gay, an experience that he described as "humiliating". After discussing the long time slight on the radio in 2020 while being interviewed about his book Kiss My Gay Ass, a listener reached out to the school and pleaded his case "in the interest of healing old wounds". After confirming his qualifications with a former coach and a team captain, the school relented in 2021 and sent him a letter to mark his accomplishments. Ammiano attended Seton Hall University, earning a bachelor's degree in communication in 1963. Hoping to leave New Jersey as far as possible in the distance

After returning to San Francisco, Ammiano was a special education teacher at Buena Vista Elementary School in the Mission. Ammiano also came out publicly as a gay man in a news conference that year, and became one of the first public school teachers in San Francisco to do so.

Among his accomplishments on the Board of Supervisors is the creation of the San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance, which was passed by a unanimous vote of the Board of Supervisors and signed by Mayor Gavin Newsom on August 7, 2006. This made San Francisco the first city in the nation to provide universal healthcare access. Ammiano was the main architect of the city's Domestic Partners Ordinance, which provides equal benefits to employees and their unmarried domestic partners. It requires companies which do business with the City and County of San Francisco to provide the same benefits. In 1999, Ammiano came into conflict with San Francisco's Roman Catholic community when the Board of Supervisors, at Ammiano's request, granted the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a charity group of drag queen nuns, a street closure permit for Castro Street for their 20th anniversary celebration on Easter Sunday.

In the San Francisco mayoral race of 1999, Ammiano mounted a successful write in campaign in the November election, preventing the incumbent Willie Brown from achieving a victory without a run off. While Ammiano lost that second election in December, Ammiano's campaign galvanized more radical voters in San Francisco, and had a major impact on the composition of the new, more liberal Board of Supervisors the next year. There is a documentary about the 1999 mayoral election, titled See How They Run.

Ammiano introduced Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act, to the California State Assembly. The bill, introduced by Ammiano in February 2009, calling for the legalization of cannabis statewide and provided for regulation of marijuana like alcohol, with people over 21 years old allowed to grow, buy, sell and possess cannabis. With the state's severe budget shortfalls the bill was discussed in light of revenue generation as well as savings from decriminalizing and prosecuting marijuana focused possession crimes. The bill failed the assembly's Public Safety committee by a 3–4 vote on January 12, 2010. Ammiano introduced a bill in a subsequent Assembly to create a new statewide entity within the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to regulate and license medical marijuana in California, arguing that a patchwork of local regulations had led to the proliferation of both "legitimate and illegitimate operations" in the state. The bill failed by a 27–30 vote, with 22 not voting, in May 2014. The legislation passed the California State Legislature in June 2013 and was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown in August 2013. The legislation went into effect on January 1, 2014.

In October 2009, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared at a Democratic Party fundraiser at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel. When former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown introduced the governor, Ammiano shouted "You lie!" in a copy cat of Representative Joe Wilson's remarks during President Obama's congressional address a month earlier. Ammiano walked out yelling that Schwarzenegger could "kiss my gay ass". In a video of the event, an audience member is heard yelling "Kiss my faggot ass!" at Schwarzenegger, leading some to conclude that "faggot" was what Ammiano actually said, and that "gay ass" was a censored version of the quote. However, Ammiano did not use the word "faggot", and the person yelling "kiss my faggot ass" was someone else. Four days after the fundraiser, Schwarzenegger vetoed Assembly Bill 1176, which was authored by Ammiano to help the port of San Francisco with financing issues, and had cleared the State Senate 40–0 and the Assembly 78–0. Schwarzenegger sent a memo to the California State Assembly explaining the veto. The letter contained a hidden message that, when using the first letter of each line along the left margin, spelled out 'fuck you'. Governor Schwarzenegger denied the hidden message was inserted intentionally,

On an October 30, 2019, appearance on The Late, Late Show with James Corden, Schwarzenegger admitted that he had intentionally added the message and later lied about not knowing the message was in the memo.

Ammiano's partner of many years was Tim Curbo, a fellow schoolteacher. Curbo died of complications from AIDS in 1994, days before Ammiano was elected supervisor. Ammiano portrayed himself in a paid cameo appearance in the film Milk (2008), reenacting one of his protests of the Briggs Initiative.