Issan Dorsey (1933—September 6 1990), born Tommy Dorsey, Jr., was a gay Soto roshi and ex-prostitute/drag queen/drug addict who died of AIDS complications in 1990. Dorsey was the former abbot of Hartford Street Zen Center (HSZC) located in the Castro district of San Francisco, California. He is most remembered for establishing the Maitri Hospice at HSZC for students and friends dying of AIDS during the spread of the epidemic in the 1980s—the first Buddhist hospice of its kind in the United States. Many of his former students and biographers have observed that Dorsey was the embodiment of a bodhisattva.
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