San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sings final tribute to late Sen. Dianne Feinstein

Late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is being laid to rest today and one of her final tributes came from the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus.

The group sang “The Star -Spangled Banner” in the rotunda of City Hall to honor the senator’s work on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community and their group in particular. She was present at their first performance.

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She is also only the third-ever Black woman to serve in the Senate.

Almost 100 members, both current and former, gathered on the steps to honor the illustrious senator.

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“To send her off in song, in this hallowed building, where so much history has happened… and so much landmark civil rights and human rights legislation started here and reverberated here to the rest of the country and the world, it’s a great honor,” said Tom Paulino, Vice Chair for the Board of Directors of the San Francico Gay Men’s Chorus.

Paulino was an intern for Feinstein and later worked in her San Francisco office.

“Were it not for my time in her office, I would not be where I am today,” he told the local Fox station. “Our lives are incredibly touched by her, and to send her off in this way is a great honor.”

Feinstein had held her seat since 1992. Before then, she famously served as president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors during the 1978 assassinations of gay board member and civil rights activist Harvey Milk and then-Mayor George Moscone. She announced the assassinations to the media.

She became Moscone’s successor as mayor and, in 1990, ran an unsuccessful campaign to become California’s governor before being elected to the U.S. Senate two years later.

“Senator Feinstein stood with our community back when few others did, fighting for funding and action to combat the AIDS crisis when most elected officials chose to look away,” the advocacy group Equality California said in a news release Friday.