Tobacco industry documents expose an R.J. Reynolds marketing plan targeting S.F. gays and homeless people. Its name: Project SCUM.

Follow-up article:
Smoked Out

Document reveals new details on how tobacco companies target gays

What’s scariest about ACT UP San Francisco’s message is that people are listening

What nasty business is behind the biggest donation to the new gay and lesbian center?

County Jail No. 3 is a hell hole. Can an ancient form of meditation improve life for the inmates?

Follow-up article
Transcendental Incarceration:
The first San Bruno Jail inmates to take part in an experimental meditation program say it has helped to free their minds, if nothing else

The Bush administration has released the first-ever Army training manual on homosexual policy -- as a comic book

In China, Falun Gong practitioners are beaten and persecuted, so the U.S. is granting them asylum. But is this movement as harmless as it seems?

Follow-up article

Split Personalities:
A new Falun Gong sect is raising a challenge over who is the spiritual movement's True Master

Who the hell is Stan Flouride, and what was he doing on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Joel Engardio picks his way through the political minefield around ITVS, the San Francisco group that Congress created to put the edge back in PBS
 

In a landmark case, Amanda DuValle, allegedly brutalized in Nicaragua because she is a transsexual, escaped deportation from the U.S. by invoking the U.N. Convention Against Torture. But if she won, why is she still in jail?

Follow-up article
Freedom for a Transsexual:
A refugee from torture is finally let out of jail

NOTE: These articles are from 1999 and 2000 and the term "transsexual" is considered outdated and inappropriate as an umbrella term. So is referring to a person as "transgendered" versus the currently preferred "transgender." For a glossary of terms and explanations of how to accurately report on transgender people today, see the GLAAD Media Reference Guide.

How a rare group of spotted patients and a small cadre of persistent doctors could help change the face of cancer research

While traveling in China, our writer explores that country's increasing sexual freedom

A young software engineer has a plan to teach Silicon Valley to change its tightfisted ways

The so-called gene chip could revolutionize the way we treat cancer patients. That is, if biotech firms don't keep it out of doctors' hands.

Pansy Division's all-gay punk was a shocking first. Will fans let the group escape its pioneering role and just make music?

Why is R&B veteran Patti Austin making her comeback singing in Mandarin?

The mindless, endless Mission gang war doesn't have Bernstein music or Sondheim lyrics. Just Surenos, Nortenos, and dead kids.

Long before there was a swing-dancing fad, there were the vintagely correct, who live the 1940s all day, every day, everywhere

Tom Ammiano's mayoral bid: inside the campaign that has become a cause

The gay Betsy Ross adds fuchsia and turquoise to his rainbow flag

When older gay men of means want youthful companionship, they seek out the trophy boys.

So many San Franciscans live in cars, vans, campers, and buses that the city wants to create a "vehicular community" where they could legally park. But if we build it, will the "houseless" come?

The latest price for a free lunch.