Box Turtle Bulletin

Another Exodus Conference Is Upon Us. Let’s Review.

Jim Burroway

June 18th, 2013

If this post rambles a bit, it’s because Exodus Internatonal’s history has been rambling over the past six years. I’ve been doing a bit of comparing and contrasting of Exodus today with Exodus of yore, when I attended my first  ”Freedom Conference” at Concordia University in Irvine, California in 2007. I also spent part of that weekend attending the very first gathering of ex-gay survivors for a Beyond Ex-Gay conference at the University of Irvine, just a couple of miles down the road. At that time, Exodus was in full culture-war mode. Organizers of the second conference invited Exodus President Alan Chambers and members of the board for a private dinner for dialogue before the conference. But Exodus characterized that gathering of ex-gay survivors as a “protest”, declined to attend, and made an announcement from the main stage at the start of a plenary that if any other ministry leaders or anyone else had received an invitation, they were requested to see Alan Chambers personally. Three ministry leaders did end up meeting for dinner with two ex-gay survivor organizers and two survivors themselves. (It was a private meeting, I wasn’t privy to the details and I don’t know whether they were there with or without Chambers’s blessing.) That weekend was also notable for the fact that three former Exodus-affilated leaders had issued a formal apology to those who were harmed by their participation in ex-gay ministries.

Five years later, I attended another Exodus “Freedom Conference” in St. Paul, Minnesota. That was a tremendous year of transition for the organization, and it showed in some of the confusing unevenness of that conference. On the positive side, the expectation of changing sexual orientation was gone — mostly, although traces of it continued to linger and re-appear here and there. One plenary speaker, Ricky Chelette of Arlington, TX-based Living Hope Ministry, all but proclaimed his heterosexuality in the way he talked about his wife. Executive vice-president Jeff Buchanan’s workshops struck me as particularly hard-nosed, and I recall that one workshop speaker, Marc, Dillworth, gave a rather blistering classic culture-war talk before parents of gay kids before describing his therapeutic techniques for “winning over the prodigal son.”

But I think those examples, in retrospect, can be seen as examples the proverbial exceptions which proved the new rules. It was the way in which they seemed to stick out, somewhat defiantly, that made the contrast to the overall conference all the stronger. It was as if we needed, from time to time, an archaic reminder of the way things used to be. Or, looked at another way, it was also as though a few people either didn’t attend some key pre-conference meetings or came away disagreeing with the requests being made.

But despite those hold-outs, most were on board. The message of change was mostly gone, replaced with a commitment to either living a celibate life or, for those who might be capable, marrying and remaining faithful to an opposite sex spouse — with emphasis on the former being perhaps the more realistic “default” for most people. Change was out, faithfulness to Christ (as they understand him) was in, and we’re all just here to support one another. And there were some rather honest and self-critical examinations, both formally and informally, of the many ways that Exodus has failed in the way that approached gay Christians in particular and gay people generally.

And Randy Thomas and I even declared something of a detente over green smoothies — two things I thought I’d never experience.

And yet, there were still elements of that conference that I found confusing. Even though here were no more talks about changing sexual orientation or methods for developing attractions toward the opposite sex, and books on Reparative Therapy were banned from the Exodus bookstore, a few stubborn vestiges of the old ways remained. The first morning of the conference featured two talks on a topic that was always a mainstay of Exodus conferences: “Understanding Homosexuality & Gender Development In Males” given by Chelette, and a counterpart workshop for women by Living Hope’s D’Ann Davis. Both of those talks hewed closely to developmental theories based on Reparative Therapy, which, without delving into details, poo-poo’ed the idea that there was any sort of biological basis for homosexuality and that it was all dependent in how you were raised.

Now I can write a whole series of blog posts delving into the science of sexual orientation development. There are hints of all kinds of things going on: environmental, in a few cases perhaps, but also genetics, epigenetics (the process by which identical twins have different fingerprints, iris patterns, and even some other features that can make them much less than identical), pre-natal hormones, birth order, bilateral asymmetry in the brain — all sorts of things. The picture that appears to emerge is that there are many contributing factors, and that those factors, in combination and various permutations, can be very different for many different people. What made you gay is probably quite different from what made me gay.

But none of that complexity was present in those workshops. Instead, they insisted that it all about childhood experiences, and that nobody was born gay. To throw more confusion into the mix, “temperament” was recognized as a factor, but that, somehow, was in no way innate, except, I guess, it’s somehow always there. Whatever. Yes, that’s was confusing, but let’s pull out to the bigger question: If changing one’s sexual orientation was no longer a realistic expectation, then what did it matter whether someone was born gay or were, according to their argument, made gay by their parents? What could it possibly matter either way?

Another year has passed, and things continue to change at Exodus. Buchanan left Exodus just three months after last year’s conference, a former Exodus president formally split from the organization in favor of a much more hard-core rival, Restored Hope Network, Exodus announced its withdrawal from the Exodus Global Alliance, and this week, Alan Chambers will appear on Our America, with Lisa Ling where he will listen to several ex-gay survivors and offer an apology.

And they are gathering, once again, at Concordia University in Irvine this week for another annual conference, with this year’s theme being “True Story.” I don’t know whether this conference will mark the completion of a transition, but I strongly suspect it will. Those talks about the development of sexual orientation are gone, for the first time, I suspect, in the history of the ex-gay movement. Instead, the emphasis appears to be on establishing more realistic expectations. I’m told that one workshop , “Let’s Talk: Masculinity,” and it’s counterpart, “Let’s Talk: Femininity,” will take a much more open-ended interactive approach to discussing masculinity and femininity, rather than relying on the imposition of rigid gender roles of old.

That’s not to say that Exodus is suddenly becoming a pro-gay organization, at least not how I would define it and not according to how Exodus’s more conservative detractors now characterize it. Sexual activity outside of a one-man-one-woman marriage is still a sin, although that message is now tempered with the theological understanding that all sinners who accept Jesus and are saved will go to heaven, which might be a very important, life-saving distinction for gay Christian kids if it can sink in. That seems, to me at least, to be a big “if” in light of contemporary conservative Christian culture, but it would at least represent the limits of a best-case scenario. More realistically, however, it still risks being seen as a conditional acceptance of a kind which can still place a huge burden on gay teens and young people — and, let’s be frank, adults also. They suffer, too, even if they aren’t often seen as being so vulnerable.

So this is my way of catching up to where Exodus is today. Once again, I will be attending the Exodus conference this week in Irvine. I really wanted to go to this one because I do believe that it will be a truly historic one for many reasons, including some that I can only speculate about now but hope to go into in further detail as events unfold. I don’t know if this conference will itself be earth-shattering, or wither it’s significance will grow only in retrospect. But I do know it will be like no other, and I want to be a witness to that. Six years ago, Chambers didn’t sit down with ex-gay survivors to hear their stories, but this week we will see him listening and offering an apology. Times really are changing.

For Our Opponents: Talking to Your Kids About Same-Sex Marriage

Rob Tisinai

June 18th, 2013

Deborah Savage is a professor of philosophy and pastoral ministry in the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity at the University of St. Thomas. She writes:

Those of us for whom same-sex marriage has been, until now, almost impossible to contemplate, have some things to figure out. Of those, the most urgent is the question of what we are to tell our children…How is this supposed to work—actually—in the concrete world of a ten-year-old child and her mother? …So I am hoping those who advocate same-sex marriage have given some thought to this, eager as they seem to be to take on the task of parenting themselves.

I’ll give it a try.

---

Dear Deborah,

Thank you for reaching out to same-sex marriage advocates in your search for answers. Too often, opponents of marriage equality would rather assume we have given these issues no thought or, even worse, have little concern for children. In fact, concern for children’s well-being is among our primary concerns.

I have a simple answer for your ten-year-old daughter. Merely tell her this:

Same-sex marriage is now legal because the government has recognized that sometimes two men or two women wish to build life together, promising to have and to hold, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death does them part.

That’s it. Really. I could stop there, and perhaps I should.

However, you have more concerns, so let me address them. Fortunately, you wrote:

For starters, can we agree that, along with her father of course, I am still responsible to her for doing my part to raise her to be the intelligent, responsible young woman she is destined to be? If so, how should I help her grapple with what it means to know the truth about something? Doesn’t any claim to the truth have to begin with a grasp of what is actually so? Should there not be some sort of correspondence between what is so and what she thinks is so? At least, that is what I have been trying to teach her.

Exactly. You put this so well that I’ll coin a term, the Deborah Principle, as shorthand for there should be some sort of correspondence between what is so and what we think is so. We need only stick with the Deborah Principle and all will be well. For instance:

• What you think of gay people and our relationships should correspond to who we are.

• What you think of same-sex marriage laws should correspond to what they are.

And so on.

Now for your questions. We’ll start with this:

Can her efforts to come to grips with reality as something independent of her personal opinions still include the evidence of her senses—or not? Is she now required by law to doubt them?

More excellence. I’ll call this the Deborah Corollary: One’s opinion should include the evidence of one’s senses.

For instance, you’re worried about your daughter’s confusion, but I can assure you that children who know same-sex couples don’t find them confusing at all. My partner has 9 nieces and nephews. We’ve hosted them for overnight stays and for longer. Our relationship doesn’t confuse them — because their opinions include the evidence of their senses.

Now, children who know gay couples may get confused when the Deborah Principle is violated: when adults who oppose same-sex marriage make false claims about gays and lesbians, like “it’s just all about the sex,” or “they really only want to destroy marriage.” Children who hear these things see a gap between what they’re told to think is so and what is so. Fortunately, all they have to do is rely on the evidence of their senses, and they’ll be fine.

Of course, that means you should let your daughter meet gay couples instead of shunning them, but if you believe in your stated convictions that won’t be a problem.

Still, given our agreement over the Deborah Principle and Corollary, I don’t know why same-sex marriage is making you ask these questions, and your next sentence doesn’t help:

In other words, if she sees a man—or a woman—walking down the street, whether together or alone, is she now required to pause before drawing any conclusions about them?

Don’t you agree children should be taught to pause before drawing conclusions about strangers? You ask if they are “now” required to do so, but I was taught this decades ago by conservative parents as an example of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Your question is actually a bit disturbing, so perhaps you could be more specific.

By the way, while I think people should pause before drawing conclusions, nothing in same-sex marriage law requires them to do so — not that such a provision would be enforceable if it did! Your concern seems to violate the Deborah Principle, a gap between what marriage law is and what you think it to be.

And you go on violating it:

With her child’s natural grasp of real things, she already knows that married people have babies, and she knows it has something to do with mothers and fathers. But since our state has declared that the categories of mother and father are no longer relevant for marriage, that marriage has nothing really to do with children, how shall I explain to her where babies come from? She already knows that little people like her would not even exist in a world where same-sex marriage was the norm. Do I get to make any claims about the fact that only a mommy and a daddy can actually produce one?

A few key points, to bring more correspondence between what is so and what you think is so:

• Some married people have babies, but not all.

• Same-sex marriage doesn’t say “marriage has nothing really to do with children,” certainly no more so than allowing elderly adults to marry.

• Same-sex marriage law still allows for mothers and fathers.

• Many same-sex couples want the right to marry precisely for the welfare of their children.

• “Little people like her” wouldn’t exist if celibate priests and nuns were “the norm” but that hasn’t made you resign your position at a Catholic University, showing that you understand having multiple “norms” does not spell the end of civilization.

But this confounds me:

…how shall I explain to her where babies come from?

Exactly as you did before. The passage of Minnesota’s law does not change the basic mechanics. Any notion to the contrary clashes profoundly with the Deborah Principle.

I’ll skip over your next few paragraphs, which seem to be about transgender people, but are so vague that I don’t know what you’re getting it. Being more specific might help you clarify your concerns, might even answer your questions entirely. As a starting point, I suggest the Deborah Corollary: find some people who are transgender and spend time getting to know them, so that your opinions can begin to include the evidence of your senses.

Then you ask us this:

Oh, and will I now be required by law to sit silently when, a few years from now, I find her school has introduced a module into her sex education class on how homosexual persons go about having sex?

Well, no. No such law exists. No such law would pass Constitutional muster. You seem to be throwing your own Principle and Corollary to the wind.

You continue:

Any suggestions on how I should help her with her homework for that class?

Sure. I can’t speak for lesbians, but when it comes to gay male sex, we don’t do anything that straight people don’t. So you’re fine.

At this point in your piece,you stop asking questions and start making a speech, so I’m not sure what else there is to say, except to point out that again and again your caricature of gay people and what we believe represents a tragic gulf between what is so and what you think is so.

The only way to fix this is to stop learning about gay people through intermediaries. If this issue is so important to you, befriend some of us. Spend time in our homes. Spend time with our families. Confide in us. Let us confide in you. And then you’ll regret writing:

For when you ask my daughter to accept that a man may marry another man, that a woman may marry another woman, you are asking her to suspend her capacity to judge the world around her and judge it truly. You are requiring her to declare that 2 + 2 = 5 as an act of victory over her natural inclination toward the true and the good. You are trying to trap her in a world where nothing is as it seems.

Befriend us and you’ll see that we are asking her to do nothing more than to judge the world around her and judge it truly. Befriend us and you’ll understand why folks who know gays and lesbians, folks whose opinions include the evidence of their own senses, are more likely to support our rights. Befriend us and you’ll recognize that 2 + 2 = 4, along with marriage, along with love, along with family — along with everything else that is true and good — is just as true and good for gay people as it ever was for straights.

Best,

Rob Tisinai

UPDATE: I’ve received a lovely and complimentary reply from Dr. Savage. She promises to give this article further thought and will try to write more about it in July.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, June 18

Jim Burroway

June 18th, 2013

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Daytime Soap Introduces First Gay Teen Character: 1992. The daytime dramas known as soap operas had been a staple of radio, and then television, for some sixty years, but by the 1990s, the genre was looking increasingly tired and outdated thanks to the popularity of daytime talk shows like Jerry Springer, Sally Jesse Rafael and Rikki Lake. With the soaps now competing with real-life drama (or at least a facsimile thereof) from these sensationalistic talk shows, producers understood that they needed to bring their story lines to the 1990s or loose whatever audience they still had.

ABC’s One Life to Live, which had been on the air since 1968 with a story line tackling women’s issues and race, seemed the obvious candidate to run a new story line exploring homophobia and the difficulties of being a gay teen. Billy Douglas (played by Ryan Phillippe), a newcomer to the town of Lianview, was reluctant to tell anyone about his homosexuality, especially his parents. He did, however, confide in the town’s compassionate pastor, Rev. Andrew Carpenter. But a scheming woman who Carpenter scorned (there’s always at least one in a soap opera) began circulating rumors around town that the pastor had been molesting Billy. In a dramatic scene, the entire town, led by Billy’s parents, confronted Carpenter and demanded that he resign, the pastor delivered a riveting sermon against the evils of prejudice and homophobia. This led Billy to take a public stand in support of Carpenter — and to come out to his parents.

In 2010, Phillippe talked about what it was like to play a gay teen in 1992:

Me and the guy who played my boyfriend might’ve held hands once or twice, but that was it. The age of those characters had something to do it, but things also weren’t as liberal in 1992. Still, I felt lucky to play the first gay teenager on television —- not just daytime but television, period. What was so amazing about that for me was the response I got through fan letters that my mother and I would read together. Kids who’d never seen themselves represented on TV or in movies would write to say what a huge support they found it to be. One kid said he’d considered suicide before seeing a character like him being accepted. I also heard from a father, a mechanic, who hadn’t spoken to his son since he came out. When our show came on in his shop, it gave him some insight and understanding as to who his son was, so it opened up communication between them. As much as you can write off how silly the entertainment industry can be, it can affect change and make people see things differently. That’s beautiful.

Phillippe’s character left Lianview to attend Yale later that summer, and Phillippe left One Life to Live for good in 1993. ABC announced One Life to Live’s cancellation in late 2011, with the last episode airing on January 13, 2012.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Agnes Goodsir: 1864. An Australia-born painter, Agness Goodsir joined a mass exodus of artists from down under seeking the artistic stimulation and freedom that had blossomed in Paris in the early 20th century. That’s where Goodsir studied at the Académie Delécluse, the Académie Julian and then the Académie Colarossi.

Her constant companion was Rachel Dunn, who was depicted in several of her paintings, including Morning Tea (1925), Girl with Cigarette (1925), The Letter (1926) and The Chinese Skirt (1933). She was best known for her portraits including, reportedly, one of Mussolini. When she died in 1939, she left her remaining paintings to Rachel Dunn, who sent about forty to Agnes’s family in Australia and others to Australian galleries. The Agnes Goodsir memorial scholarship at the Bendigo Art Gallery, where her work first appeared, is named in her memory.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

The Daily Agenda for Monday, June 17

Jim Burroway

June 17th, 2013

TODAY IN HISTORY:
45 YEARS AGO: Premiere of Documentary of Drag Queen Competition: 1968. The documentary The Queen makes its premiere in a theater in New York City. The film, shot almost entirely with hand-held cameras, is a primitive pre-Stonewall prequel to Paris is Burning, and follows the behind-the-scenes preparations for the Miss All-America Camp Beauty Pageant – a national drag queen competition in New York City. The conversations recorded in the dressing rooms about draft boards, sexual and gender identity, sex reassignment surgery, and being a drag queen captures a very specific time in LGBT history. If you are ever lucky enough to see it, keep a very sharp eye out whenever the camera pans to the audience. You might just get a quick glimpse of Andy Warhol in his trademark platinum wig. The VHS release has long been out of print, but portions from the documentary have been posted on YouTube.

Liberace Wins Libel Case: 1959. Liberace — his real name was Wladziu Valentino Liberace, but like Cher and Madonna he was known by a single name on stage — had become a piano-playing sensation in the U.S. in the 1950s. He started as a classical pianist, but he quickly added schmaltz and elements of Las Vegas showmanship (extravagant costumes, massive diamond rings, and his signature candelabra) to his repertoire of classics, show tunes, film scores and popular songs, all of which took his performances in a decidedly unclassical direction. His curly black hair, long eyelashes and bright smile made him a sex symbol for an odd collection of somewhat nerdy teenage girls, their middle-aged mothers and even their grandmothers — and for not a few gay men who understood what they were seeing. His flamboyance attracted questions about his sexuality, but those questions didn’t do much to dent the popularity of his his hit television series and packed concert halls.

But in 1956, a Daily Mirror columnist who went by the pen name Cassandra (real name: William Connor) wrote a scathing article the day after Liberace’s arrival in London for a live BBC broadcast and a European tour. If everyone else was willing to go along with Liberace’s persona of being sweet, sensitive, sensational and straight, Connor had no intention of playing along:

He is the summit of sex – the pinnacle of masculine, feminine, and neuter. Everything that he, she and it can ever want. I spoke to sad but kindly men on this newspaper who have met every celebrity coming from America for the past 30 years. They say that this deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love has had the biggest reception and impact on London since Charlie Chaplin arrived at the same station, Waterloo, on September 12, 1921.

Liberace replied with at telegram: “What you said hurt me very much. I cried all the way to the bank.” But he also decided to sue for libel. The case finally reached a London courtroom in 1959. On June 6, Liberace took the stand and denied that he was gay. He also denied that he was even a sex symbol. “I consider sex appeal as something possessed by Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot. I certainly do not put myself in their class,” he said, prompting laughter in the court room. When Connor took the stand, he denied trying to imply that Liberace was gay, although he found it difficult to square that claim with his word choices for his column. The most damning phrase, according to news accounts of the day, was his use of “fruit-flavored.” Apparently that was not the phrase to be tossed around at just anyone.

With no proof of actual homosexual activity on Liberace’s part — there were no former lovers to testify, no police arrests to report — the jury returned a verdict of guilty against Connor and the Daily Mirror, and awarded damages of $22,400. But today of course we know what was true all along: that he was actually gay even though he never came out of the closet during his lifetime. His estate and many of his remaining fans continued to deny for many years the numerous reports that when he died in 1987, it was AIDS that killed him.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Carl Van Vechten: 1880. A writer and a photographer, Carl Van Vechten was fascinated with African-American culture and became a patron on the Harlem Renaissance. In 1926, he published his controversial 1926 novel Nigger Heaven, which portrayed the intellectuals, political activists, workers, and others who inhabited the “great black walled city” of Harlem. The book by a white author split Harlem down the middle: Langston Hughes was among the book’s fans and defenders (Hughes even wrote new poems to replace the songs used in the book’s first printing), while W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke condemned it as an “affront to the hospitality of black folks.”

The question of whether a white man could truly know the Black experience lies at the very heart of the controversy surrounding Van Vechten’s life. Some of Van Vechten’s affinity for African-Americans can be traced to his wealthy family while growing up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His father endowed a school for African-Americna children, and he instructed his sons to always address the family’s employees with “Mr.” and “Mrs.”, regardless of their race. After graduating from the University of Chicago, he moved to New York to become the music and dance critic for The New York Times. In 1913, he took a year-long trip to Europe where he met Gertrude Stein and helped to get her work published.

In the 1920s, he began publishing novels himself, many of which containing sly and witty references to homosexuality. His 1923 novel, The Blind Bow-Boy includes a character he called “the Duke of Middlebottom,” whose stationery sported the slogan, “A thing of beauty is a boy forever.” It was about this time that Van Vechten emerged as a notable advocate for Black culture, writing articles in Vanity Fair celebrating the music of the Harleem Renaissance — the blues, jazz and spirituals which he said were the only authentic American musical forms. He also promoted writers of “the New Negro movement”: Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, among others.  In the 1930, Van Vechten took up photography and became known for his portraits of some of the leading artists of the day, including Langston Hughes, Marian Anderson, Pearl Baily, Josephine Baker, Marlon Brando, Truman Capote, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Mahalia Jackson — the list is nearly endless.

Although Van Vechten had married the Russian-born actress Fania Marinoff in 1914, Van Vechten was gay. This was evident when his papers were unsealed twenty-five years after his death in 1964:

As the 25-year mark drew near, scholars assumed they were about to unveil Van Vechten’s diaries. “They said, ‘Of course, this is going to be exciting, and let’s open those journals and have a party,’ and the curator said, ‘Well, I don’t think so…’ It was a good instinct.” The few people who did attend the 1989 opening, including Willis, were shocked by what they found: 18 scrapbooks of graphic homoeroticism, full of mischief and devoid of explanation.

…Van Vechten collected newspaper clippings chronicling Harlem drag balls, early sex-change operations (“GI Who Turned Woman is a Happy Beauty”), court cases for “morals charges,” and abuse incidents. He assembled more restrained, if still theatrical, black and white photographs of male nudes, both Caucasian and African American, which most scholars think are mostly or entirely the work of Van Vechten. Nothing escaped him: Photos of ambiguously homoerotic Greek vases, labeled in childishly rounded handwriting, nestled against newspaper cutouts of male wrestlers locked in combat.

Emily Bernard’s 2012 biography, Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White, explores the contentious racial and sexual intersections between the multiple worlds that Van Vechten inhabited and chronicled.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, June 16

Jim Burroway

June 16th, 2013

Today is Father’s Day. I pull this picture out and post it every Father’s day. It’s my favorite picture of the two of us, partly because it’s a great picture but also because it is one of the very few that I have of Dad and me. Like many fathers of his generation, Dad was always the one behind the camera, not in front of it. Mom almost never picked up the camera. And so while I have many wonderful memories of Dad (he died when I was in college), we actually have very few pictures of him. We have whole albums of vacation pictures where one would think he was never with us. But of course it’s impossible to think of those vacations without him. Here’s wishing a Happy Father’s Day to all of the Dads out there.

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations Today: Baltimore, MD; Bisbee, AZ; Butte, MT; Denver, CO; Kalamazoo, MI; Luleå, Sweden; Memphis, TN (Black Pride); Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR; Saskatoon, SK; Sitges, Spain; Strasbourg, France; Syracuse, NY; Thunder Bay, ON; Toulouse, France; Venice, Italy; Vienna, Austria; Warsaw, Poland.

AIDS Walks Today: London, UK.

Other Events Today: Lesbian and Gay Stadtfest, Berlin, Germany; Seoul LGBT Film Festival, Seoul, South Korea; Out In the Vineyard Gay Wine Weekend: Sonoma, CA; Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel; Bush Garden Gay Days, Williamsburg, VA.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Philadelphia’s Packer Street-Gloucester City Bridge Named for Walt Whitman: 1954. Walt Whitman spent his last nineteen years in Camden, New Jersey, just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. More than sixty years later, the Delaware River Port Authority’s Special Committee on Bridge Names voted unanimously to name a suspension bridge, then under construction connecting nearby Gloucester City, New Jersey to Philadelphia’s Packer Avenue, for Camden’s adopted hometown hero in advance of the centenary of the first publication of Leaves of Grass.

The announcement was made, the Centenary was celebrated in 1956, and the bridge’s construction continued with its opening slated for the spring of 1957. That should have been the end of the matter.

And it would have been, until Father Edward Lucitt, director of the Holy Name Union of the Diocese of Camden, Monsignor Joseph McIntyre, and seven other Holy Name Society leaders in Southern New Jersey wrote to complain that “Whitman himself had neither the noble stature or quality of accomplishment that merits this tremendous honor, and his life and works are personally objectionable to us.”

That letter, from December 16, 1956, was motivated by a series of articles in the Camden diocesan weekly newspapers by Rev. James Ryan, who denounced Whitman as a third-rate poet and a scandal to decency. Other Catholic publications picked up on the controversy and went through Whitman’s published work with a fine tooth comb. They criticized a line in Section 32 of “Song of Myself” where Whitman praises the irreligiosity of animals (“They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God”), and especially, of course, “As I Lay With My Head in Your Lap Camerado.” In January 1957, the Committee received 467 copies of a mimeographed form letter, signed by clerics, nuns and lay people from across Philadelphia and southern New Jersey, which mixed moralizing with then-common red-baiting rhetoric:

Gentlemen:

We oppose the naming of the new $90,000,000 bridge as a memorial to Walt Whitman for the following reasons:

(1) He is not great enough to deserve this honor. In what way has he inspired or influenced American democracy for good?

(2) He boasted of his immoralities and published immorality as a personal experience.

(3) He held Christianity in contempt, and affirmed himself as the new savior of mankind.

(4) He attempted to teach rebellion against the natural law of God, and the right order establisehd by the tortured experience of the centuries.

(5) His political philosophy, dusted off the scrap heap during the depression, as the Voice of the Common Man, has proved alien to Jeffersonian Democracy, and he is now the Poet Laureate of the World Communist Revolution.

Because the naming of the Bridge in his honor would raise him to the status of a national hero, give aid and comfort to the enemies of our established order of morality and democracy, make the teaching of religious concepts difficult, and bring the common stamp of morality in our heritage into contempt, we ask you to drop Whitman’s name from the Bridge.

Not all Catholics were on board with the anti-Whitman campaign. An editorial in The Ave Maria, published at Notre Dame , warned against the foolishness of wasting the moral weight of Catholic opinion on “less important matters” when there were other things to worry about (such as the showing of “obscene movies” and “legislation authorizing the distribution of birth control literature.”) The New York Times picked up on the story, which led to a counter-campaign by those who either supported honoring Whitman or resented Catholic interference in public affairs. For at least one letter writer, Whitman’s sexuality was not an issue. “Michael Angelo was a homosexual,” he wrote to the committee. “Why don’t they destroy the Sistine chapel?” Another letter to The New York Post expanded on that theme:

(They) “want to take Whitman’s name off that bridge because he may have been abnormal sexually. If they succeed, their next job is to remove Michaelangelo’s statues from the Vatican, tear down St. Peter’s Basilica and throw out all copies of Leonordo’s Last Supper. Da Vinci was actually arrested on a charge of perversion and Michaelangelo’s sonnets suggest far more than any of Whitman’s poems.”

In the end, there appears to have been little desire among River Authority officials to consider changing the name. By the time the Walt Whitman Bridge opened to traffic on May on May 16, 1957, the controversy was over and mostly forgotten. Ten years later when the New Jersey Turnpike Authority renamed one of its service areas for Whitman, no one objected. Today, the Walt Whitman Bridge is a part of Interstate 76, which is known locally in the Philladelphia area as the Schuylkill Expressway.

[Source: Joann P. Krieg. "Democracy in Action: Naming the Bridge for Walt Whitman." Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 12, no. 2 (Fall 1994), 108-114. Available online here.

"Dal McIntire" (Don Slater) "Tangents." ONE Magazine 4, no. 3 (March 1956):7.]

40 YEARS AGO: Rocky Horror Show: 1973. The stage musical The Rocky Horror Show premiered in London at the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs, a tiny 63-seat venue set aside as a project space for new works. Starring Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter — a “sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania” — the musical (set in Ohio!) follows the adventures of young lovers Brad Majors and Janet Weiss who came to the doctor’s castle to call a cab because their car has a flat tire. The production features lots of catchy songs (“Time Warp” and “Science Fiction, Double Feature”), risqué sexuality and of course, lots of makeup. The show was an instant hit, and the cast was signed for a soundtrack album right after the show’s second night. By the time the show closed seven years and four venues later, it has gone through 2,960 performances and picked up several added songs along the way.

The Rocky Horror Show opened on Broadway on March 10, 1975, but critics panned it and the show closed just three weeks later. That same year, the play was adapted for the film and retitled The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It becomes a must-see cult classic that has kept art houses in business for the next 37 years. Because it is still officially in limited release, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the longest-running theatrical release in film history.

15 YEARS AGO: Sen. Lott Likens Gay People to Alcoholics, Sex Addicts, Kleptomaniacs: 1998. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) appeared on Armstrong Williams’s program to talk about abortion, disciplining children (he said he used a belt on his occasionally) and his childhood (growing up in Mississippi in the 1950s and early 1960s was a “good time in America.” And he also spoke on the controversial subject of same-sex marriage, two years after the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act. Williams asked Lott what he thought about homosexuality. Lott replied, “You still love that person and you should not try to mistreat them or treat them as outcasts. You should try to show them a way to deal with that.” He said his own father had had a problem with alcoholism, adding, ”Others have a sex addiction or are kleptomaniacs. There are all kinds of problems and addictions and difficulties and experiences of this kind that are wrong. But you should try to work with that person to learn to control that problem..”

President Bill Clinton’s press secretary Michael D. McCurry blasted Lott’s statement, saying it showed how difficult it was getting things done “when you’re dealing with people who are so backward in their thinking. For over 25 years, it’s been quite clear that sexual orientation is not an affliction, it’s not a disease, it is something that is part of defining one’s sexuality.’” Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) seized on Lott’s remarks to demand that Clintoni’s nomination of openly gay James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg to be brought to the Senate floor, a move that had been blocked by Lott. House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) came to Lott’s defense, adding “I abide by the Bible… I do not quarrel with the Bible on the subject.” The controversy eventually blew over and Lott kept his job as Senate Republican leader until 2002, when at a party honoring the 100th birthday of Sen. Strom Thurmond (S-SC) who had run for President as a segregationist Dixiecrat candidate in 1948, Lott said that if Thurmond had won, “we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years.” Those remarks led to his resignation.

5 YEARS AGO: Longtime Gay Activists Become First Same-Sex Couple to Marry in California: 2008. Phillis Lyon and Del Martin of San Francisco had been together for fifty-five years when they were finally married at city hall. Their wedding capped a lifetime of advocacy for gay equality. In 1955, they and six other women founded the Daughters of Bilitis, the first major lesbian organization in the United States. Phyllis edited the DOB’s newsletter The Ladder beginning in 1956, and Del edited The Ladder from 1960 to 1962. They also took turns as head of the Daughters until 1964, when they helped found the Council on Religion and the Homosexual. Phyllis was also the first open lesbian to serve on the board of the National Organization for Women in 1973. Meanwhile, Del was heavily involved in getting the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.

The California Supreme Court ruled on May 15, 2008, that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional under the state constitution, and issued a temporary stay to give the state time to implement the necessary changes in its forms and procedures. That stay expired at 5:00 p.m. on June 16. San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom selected Phyllis and Del for the honor of being the first same-sex couple in California to marry in a ceremony began at precisely 5:01 p.m.

Phyllis and Del enjoyed two months of wedded bliss until Del passed away in August of that year.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Lou Sullivan: 1951. The pioneering trangender activist had begun identifying as a “female transvestite” in 1973. Two years later, he moved to San Francisco and began identifiying as a female-to-male transgender — and as a gay man. This didn’t sit well with the so-called gender specialists of the day, who saw sexual orientation and gender identity as, more or less, the same thing — gay men really “wanted to be women,” just like male-to-female transgenders, with only the degree of that “want” distinguishing the two. The idea that someone born female who identifies as a male but who also is attracted to other men — that just blew their minds, with many saying it just wasn’t possible.

So when Sullivan sought surgery, he was consistently denied it because he was gay. He was able to obtain hormones from doctors who were not associated with gender clinics, and he began lobbying the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (now known as WPATH, World Professional Association for Transgender Health), to recognize that, despite what the “experts” said, he really did exist. Sullivan wrote the first guidebook for FtM people, and he spent the rest of his life as an advocate and an educator as among the first to argue that there was a clear distinction to be made between sexual orientation and gender identity. His efforts eventually paid off, and in 1986 he was able to undergo genital reconstructive surgery. Later that year, he was diagnosed with AIDS, which exposed him to yet another kind of stigma. Just before he died in 1991, he wrote, ““I took a certain pleasure in informing the gender clinic that even though their program told me that I could not live like a gay man, it looks like I’m going to die like one.” The Lou Sullivan Society continues to serve the FTM community in the San Francisco Bay area.

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The Daily Agenda for Saturday, June 15

Jim Burroway

June 15th, 2013

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Anchorage, AK; Baltimore, MD; Baton Rouge, LA; Bisbee, AZ; Boise, ID; Butte, MT; Chemnitz, Germany; Denver, CO; Edinburgh, UK; Erie, PA; Flagstaff, AZ; Iowa City, IA; Kalamazoo, MI; Lancaster, PA; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Louisville, KY; Luleå, Sweden; Lyon, France; Memphis, TN (Black Pride); Münster, Germany; Nantes, France; Nashville, TN; Oldenburg, Germany; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR; Portland, ME; Providence, RI; Rome, Italy; Sacramento, CA; Saskatoon, SK; Sitges, Spain; Spencer, IN; Strasbourg, France; Syracuse, NY; Thessaloniki, Greece; Thunder Bay, ON; Toulouse, France; Venice, Italy; Vienna, Austria; Warsaw, Poland; Zagreb, Croatia.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: London, UK.

Other Events This Weekend: Lesbian and Gay Stadtfest, Berlin, Germany; Seoul LGBT Film Festival, Seoul, South Korea; Out In the Vineyard Gay Wine Weekend: Sonoma, CA; Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel; Bush Garden Gay Days, Williamsburg, VA.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
40 YEARS AGO: Neil Patrick Harris: 1973. His Doogie Howser days are long over, and since then NPH has been able to cross two important acting barriers. A former child actor, he was able to successfully navigate the difficulties of becoming an adult actor in Broadway, film, and television. And he has also navigated the difficult transition from assumed-straight actor to a highly visible gay one, with partner David Burtka and twin children who were born in 2010. And as a very visible gay actor, he still manages to play straight roles on film and television. And to add just one more difficult accomplishment to his resume, last weekend he singlehandedly made the Tony Awards watchable again. As always, he made that look easy also.

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The Daily Agenda for Friday, June 14

Jim Burroway

June 14th, 2013

TODAY’S AGENDA:
“God Loves Uganda” Documentary Screening: Sheffield, UK. The film documentary God Loves Uganda tells the story that longtime BTB readers know very well: “the role of the American evangelical movement in Uganda, where American missionaries have been credited with both creating schools and hospitals and promoting dangerous religious bigotry. The film follows evangelical leaders in America and Uganda along with politicians and missionaries as they attempt the task of eliminating “sexual sin” and converting Ugandans to fundamentalist Christianity.” I’m very honored to have been able to provide some very small technical assistance to the film makers (as you can see in the film’s credits). Director/Producer Roger Ross Williams had a very personal motivation to tell this particular story:

I grew up in the black church. My father was a religious leader in the community and my sister is a pastor. I went to church every Sunday and sang in the choir. But for all that the church gave me, for all that it represented belonging, love and community, it also shut its doors to me as a gay person. That experience left me with the lifelong desire to explore the power of religion to transform lives or destroy them. Tt desire took a new form when I visited Africa to make my film Music by Prudence. I was struck by how intensely religious and socially conservative Africans were. There was literally a church on every corner. People were praying in the fields. It was like the American evangelical Christianity I had known – but magnified by Africa’s intensity.

David Courier of the Sundance Film Festival said God Loves Uganda “may be the most terrifying film of the year.” It will screen tonight and tomorrow night at the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival. Tickets and information is available here. More screenings are scheduled in the next two weeks in Washington, D.C.; Silver Spring, MD; Provincetown, MA; and Brooklyn and Tonawanda, NY.

“Call Me Kuchu” Screening: New York, NY. “Kuchu” is the word LGBT Ugandans use to call themselves, although some think it is derogatory. Sort of like “queer” elsewhere. And as with “queer,” “kuchu” is an all-encompassing term which embraces all of the Ls, Gs, Bs, Ts, and everything in between. Hence the title of the documentary which will open in US theaters today in New York. Call Me Kuchu “explores a community that is at once persecuted and consoled by the Christian faith, and examines the astounding courage and determination required not only to battle an oppressive government, but also to maintain religious conviction in the face of the contradicting rhetoric of a powerful national church.”

The film follows veteran LGBT advocate David Kato as he works to prevent Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill from becoming law. The film shows his own struggles against a vicious public vigilante campaign marking him for death, and a rare legal victory for gay Ugandans against that campaign — just three weeks before Kato’s brutal murder in his home. Call Me Kuchu opens today at the Quad Theaters, with showings at 7:20 and 9:30, with additional screenings through next week. The film will also open in Los Angeles on June 21 at Laemmle Music Hall. Additional showings are scheduled this month for Seoul, South Korea; Zaragosa, Spain; Cambridge, UK; and Montevideo, Uruguay. Check here for more details.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Anchorage, AK; Baltimore, MD; Baton Rouge, LA; Bisbee, AZ; Boise, ID; Butte, MT; Chemnitz, Germany; Denver, CO; Edinburgh, UK; Erie, PA; Flagstaff, AZ; Iowa City, IA; Kalamazoo, MI; Lancaster, PA; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Louisville, KY; Luleå, Sweden; Lyon, France; Memphis, TN (Black Pride); Münster, Germany; Nantes, France; Nashville, TN; Oldenburg, Germany; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR; Portland, ME; Providence, RI; Rome, Italy; Sacramento, CA; Saskatoon, SK; Sitges, Spain; Spencer, IN; Strasbourg, France; Syracuse, NY; Thessaloniki, Greece; Thunder Bay, ON; Toulouse, France; Venice, Italy; Vienna, Austria; Warsaw, Poland; Zagreb, Croatia.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: London, UK.

Other Events This Weekend: Lesbian and Gay Stadtfest, Berlin, Germany; Seoul LGBT Film Festival, Seoul, South Korea; Out In the Vineyard Gay Wine Weekend: Sonoma, CA; Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel; Bush Garden Gay Days, Williamsburg, VA.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Boy George: 1961. George O’Dowd’s first stage name was Lieutenant Lush when he performed with Bow Wow Wow. That tenure was short lived: he was booed off the stage. He then joined up with drummer (and regular boyfriend) Jon Moss (previously of The Damned and Adam and the Ants), bassist Mikey Craig and guitarist/keyboardist Roy Hay. They called their group In Praise of Lemmings and then Sex Gang Children. When they finally realized that they had a androgynous Irish singer, a black bassist, a Jewish drummer and an English keyboardist, they decided to call themselves Culture Club, with Boy George as the frontman. Their debut album Kissing to be Clever was released in 1982, and their single “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” became an international hit. “Time (Clock of Heart)” and “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya,” gave them the distinction of being the first group since the Beatles to have three Top 10 hits in the U.S. from a debut album. Their next album Colour By Numbers, did almost as well, with “Church of the Poison Mind” and “Miss Me Blind” hitting the Top Ten in the U.S. and “Karma Chameleon” holding the #1 spot for three weeks (and for six weeks in the U.K.).

By the late 1980s, Boy George left Culture Club behind when his relationship with Moss soured and he began descending into a nasty heroin addiction. After rehab, he had a few modest hits as a solo artist, including the title song from the movie The Crying Game in 1992. He wrote the musical score for the London musical Taboo, which was based on his life. It earned him a Tony Award for Best Musical Score. But his troubles continued to follow him. In 2005, he was arrested in New York for cocaine possession and filing a false burglary report. The drug charge was dropped and he pleaded guilty to the false report. He was sentenced to five days of community service, fined $1,000 and ordered into drug rehab. In 2008, he was arrested and charged with assault and false imprisonment. He was convicted and sentenced to fifteen months imprisonment. He was released after four months and was placed under home detention. His latest album, Ordinary Alien, was released in 2010 after a more than ten year hiatus.

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South Africa Teen’s Death Shows It’s Time to Ban Ex-gay Therapy Everywhere

Guest commentary

Jim Burroway

June 13th, 2013

The following guest commentary was submitted by Glen Retief, author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood. He teaches creative nonfiction at Susquehanna University. His husband, Peterson Toscano, is co-founder of the ex-gay survivor forum, Beyond Ex-Gay. 

The New Jersey and New York legislatures consider bills banning ex-gay therapy for minors.  Federal courts review California’s law protecting youth against homophobic pseudo-medicine.  And now a new exgay survivor survey details the harm sustained by LGBT people who entered so-called “reparative therapy.”

Such cruelties may not be the same as burn marks or ruptured vital organs.  Yet they can inflict fatal wounds on mental health, resulting in sharply heightened rates of substance abuse, suicide, and self-harm.  They may also result in the reduction of a group or individual’s social vitality—one of scholars’ definitions of genocide.  Mainstream medical bodies sharply critical of sexual orientation conversion therapy today include the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Psychological Association.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, June 13

Jim Burroway

June 13th, 2013

TODAY’S AGENDA:
New Jersey Assembly Committee Hearing on Proposed Conversion Therapy Ban: Trenton, NJ. The New Jersey Assembly’s Women and Children Committee will hear testimony on A3371, which would prohibit licensed therapists in the sate of New Jersey from providing therapies intended to change sexual orientation to minors. The hearing will take place today at 10:00 a.m. in Committee Room 16 in the State House Annex in Trenton.

White House Pride Reception: Washington, D.C. The White House will hold what has turned out to be an annual event lately, a June Pride reception for LGBT advocates, leaders and invited community members. White House officials are being tight-lipped about what President Barack Obama will say, but LGBT leaders have made it clear what they want to hear: an announcement that Obama will sign an Executive Order barring federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT workers. Whether they will get that is anybody’s guess. The reception will take place this afternoon at 5:00 p.m. EDT, and will be webcast live via the White House website.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Anchorage, AK; Baltimore, MD; Baton Rouge, LA; Bisbee, AZ; Boise, ID; Butte, MT; Chemnitz, Germany; Denver, CO; Edinburgh, UK; Erie, PA; Flagstaff, AZ; Iowa City, IA; Kalamazoo, MI; Lancaster, PA; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Louisville, KY; Luleå, Sweden; Lyon, France; Memphis, TN (Black Pride); Münster, Germany; Nantes, France; Nashville, TN; Oldenburg, Germany; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR; Portland, ME; Providence, RI; Rome, Italy; Sacramento, CA; Saskatoon, SK; Sitges, Spain; Spencer, IN; Strasbourg, France; Syracuse, NY; Thessaloniki, Greece; Thunder Bay, ON; Toulouse, France; Venice, Italy; Vienna, Austria; Warsaw, Poland; Zagreb, Croatia.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: London, UK.

Other Events This Weekend: Lesbian and Gay Stadtfest, Berlin, Germany; Seoul LGBT Film Festival, Seoul, South Korea; Out In the Vineyard Gay Wine Weekend: Sonoma, CA; Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel; Bush Garden Gay Days, Williamsburg, VA.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Delaware Police Announce “Morals” Roundup: 1961. A state investigation in a “morals case” ended with the arrest of fifteen men, aged sixteen to twenty-seven years. As The Matachine Review commented, the sixteen-year-old “unfortunately gives authorities a valid reason to conduct the investigations,” although it is unclear from the Wilmington Evening Journal’s article of June 13 whether that was the focus of the investigation or merely something police discovered sometime after it began. The investigation started on April 6 when police officers in Newark arrested Vance H. Middleton, 37, who “admitted participating in immoral acts.” Police went to his home and “seized a mass of obscene pictures and literature and photographic equipment and original photographs. It was through these photographs that the identity of many of those in the investigation was established.” Through a kind of a snowballing operation in which each contact was interrogated in order to obtain the names of other contacts, police surmised that ”The Newark parties drew persons from throughout Delaware, Elkton, Philadelphia and New York” and that ”most of the immoral activity centered in the Newark-Brookside area of week-ends.” One man, James M.F. Short, 31, of Newark and Wilmington, was charged with “63 morals charges by state police” and was being “held for psychiatric treatment on the Newark charges.”

A reader sent a copy of the Wilmington Evening Journal’s article to The Mattachine Review, and added the following details.

Police pressure is terrible throughout the state, they are pressuring homosexuals that are picked up to name and identify all their acquaintances. They even go to the places where they are employed, call them off the job and not even permit them to inform their employers they are leaving. They then are held as long as the police desire to hold them and generally cost the respective employee his job (which the police clearly envision because of their actions). When they are picked up, they are taken to the station for interrogation, subjected to a contingent of police officials’ questioning, and their actions and conversation filmed and tape recorded for the entirety of their stay. Their legal rights are denied on a wholesale basis, and none of them as yet has taken any action against the police.

Of course, in some towns down state, attorneys will not even defend a prospective client against the police even on charges other than homosexuality. (Proof of that statement In the Delaware State News, Dover, Delaware)

Short, one of the defendants in the case, attempt,ed to implicate a State Trooper, so, of course, the numerous charges placed against him clearly indicate how the police plan to handle him.

[Sources: "15 Arrests in Morals Case End State's Investigation." Wilmington (DE) Evening Journal (June 13, 1961). As reprinted in the The Mattachine Review 7. no. 7 (June 1961): 27-28.]

Letter to the editor. The Mattachine Review 7. no. 7 (June 1961): 27.

Harold Call. “Calling Shots.” The Mattachine Review  7. no. 7 (June 1961): 4-5.]

LGBT Leaders Welcomed to White House With Rubber Gloves: 1995. Relations between the LGBT community and the Clinton Administration were at a low point in 1995. Instead of repealing the ban against gays in the military, the Clinton Administration negotiated “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” with conservative Democrats and Republicans. Instead of filing a Justice Department brief with the Supreme Court to weigh in on a lawsuit challenging Colorado’s Amendment 2 which would have banned civil rights protections for gay people, Attorney General Janet Reno sat on her hands. But with the White House beginning to cast an eye toward the 1996 elections, they realized that they needed to do something to try to placate a seriously pissed off constituency.

So on June 14, the Clinton Administration invited 40 gay leaders, including state senators and representatives, city council members, judges and other elected officials from around the country, to a special White House meeting. The meeting’s purpose was to announce that Marsha Scott, a deputy assistant to President Clinton, was being named as White House liason officer for gay and lesbian issues. They were also there to learn about a new 30-member presidential advisory council on HIV/AIDS. But before the meeting even got started, things got off on the wrong foot with the sight that greeted the LGBT leaders when they showed: Secret Service agents had put on rubber gloves before granting them access to the White House. The activists were furious when agents told them they were wearing the gloves to protect themselves from HIV. “For that to even happen at the White House shows they haven’t a clue about AIDS,” said Act Up spokesman Steve Michael. “It just shows where they’re at.”

What was supposed to be a grand kiss-and-make-up session quickly turned into yet another embarrasment for the Administration. Secret Service director Eljay Brown issued a statement saying that he regretted “the unfortunate actions” taken by his agents. “It is not the policy of the Secret Service to wear gloves merely based on known sexual preference.” The Treasury Department, which had jurisdiction over the Secret Service, was asked to investigate. White House press secretary Mike McCurry said, “It’s safe to say the chief of staff (Leon Panetta) and others were distressed by that and believe it to be an error of judgment.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Paul Lynde: 1926. He studied drama at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois with fellow students Cloris Leachman, Charlotte Rae, Patricia Neal, Jeffrey Hunter and Claude Akins. Imagine what that class must have been like. After graduating in 1948, he moved to New York and became a stand-up comic and a Broadway actor. In 1960, he appeared in Broadway’s Bye Bye Birdie, as well as in its film adaptation in 1963. But most of his work was in television, where he appeared in numerous sitcoms (he was Uncle Arthur in Bewitched) and lent his voice to animated cartoons. He is probably best known as the “center square” for the game show Hollywood Squares, with host Peter Marshall, where Lynde became famous for his one-liners and double entendres. They say his sexual orientation was an open secret in Hollywood. It’s hard to imagine any secret being more open than his. Especially considering Hollywood Squares answers like these:

Peter Marshall: In the Wizard of Oz, the lion wanted courage and the tin man wanted a heart. What did the scarecrow want?
Paul Lynde: He wanted the tin man to notice him.

Peter Marshall: What do you call a man who gives you diamonds and pearls?
Paul Lynde: I’d call him “darling”!

Peter Marshall: Paul, in what famous book will you read about a talking ass who wonders why it’s being beaten?
Paul Lynde: I read it, “The Joy of Sex.”

Peter Marshall: Paul, why do Hell’s Angels wear leather?
Paul Lynde: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.

Peter Marshall: According to legend, who looks better, a pixie or a fairy?
Paul Lynde (in deeper voice): Well, looks aren’t everything! (laughter) Well, I guess I would say…I would have to go with the fairy. (more laughter)

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NOM’s Hilarious Incompetence

Rob Tisinai

June 12th, 2013

Hi all, I’m home from the AIDS/LifeCycle. Thanks again for all your support. I’ll be writing more about it soon (I’d planned to tweet the event, but discovered — too late — that my backup batteries for my old Galaxy S don’t work in my new Galaxy S3. Sorry.)

Anyway, maybe it’s just the “love bubble” that envelops us during the event, or perhaps it’s just that we’re so clearly winning the fight for our rights, but ridiculous statements from NOM that would have once outraged me now just strike me as hilarious. For instance, this headline:

New Danish Study of 6.5 Million: Health Benefits of Marriage are Unique to Male-Female Unions

NOM earnestly quotes this commentary about the study:

During 2000 to 2011, Danish male-female married couples were the healthiest and least likely to die at various ages compared with individuals who were unmarried, divorced or widowed. In contrast, same-sex married men in Denmark were no healthier than unmarried men. Same-sex married women had much higher mortality rates than other women, including the ones who were unmarried, divorced or widowed.

What were those dates? 2000 to 2011?

Denmark didn’t legalize same-sex marriage until 2012.

Heh. It’s dangerous to underestimate your opponents, but to me right now NOM seems just so damned cute. They’re the little engine that couldn’t.

Of course, Denmark did legalize civil unions in back in 1989. That means this data isn’t a slam against same-sex marriage, but a suggestion that civil unions aren’t a just substitute for the real thing.

Which is what we’ve been saying all along. NOM is just helping us spread the word.

They’re cute, I’m telling you, cute.

Exodus International Withdraws from Exodus Global Alliance

Jim Burroway

June 12th, 2013

Exodus International has issued the following statement:

The Exodus International Board of Directors officially voted to withdraw from the Exodus Global Alliance (EGA) May 28, 2013 after 18 years of membership.  Exodus International was a founding member of EGA in 1995.  This change in relationship releases both ministries to serve the Lord, the Church and their constituents in ways that honor their respective calling.

EGA is the worldwide coalition of “Exodus” ministries, which seek to work together under one umbrella structure.  In 2005 Exodus Europe withdrew from EGA, as well.

Exodus International wishes to thank Bryan Kliewer, the EGA Board and network of ministries for their longstanding partnership and friendship.

There has been longstanding confusion over the relationship between Exodus International and Exodus Global Alliance. Despite having “International” in its name, Exodus International has mainly confined its organizational activities to North America, although several Exodus officers, board members and member ministries have traveled throughout the world to participate in conferences, church missions, and other activities to spread the ex-gay message. Exodus Global Alliance, on the other hand, has operated as an international umbrella organization and resource for ministries around the world, similar to the role that Exodus International has played in North America.

Organizationally, the two organizations are separate, with separate leadership and governing boards, with Exodus International being a member organization of the Exodus Global Announcement But with this announcement of Exodus International’s departure from Exodus Global Alliance, the confusion between the two organizations will undoubtedly be compounded as they both continue to share the Exodus name.

This announcement is the latest in a long string of developments over the past year and a half, in which Exodus International president Alan Chambers has steered the organization through several changes in messaging and tone. The changes began with his acknowledgment in January 2012 that, “the majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9% of them, have not experienced a change in their orientation.” Later that month, Chambers withdrew his organization’s support for the particular from of conversion therapy known as “reparative therapy.” Chambers came under increasing criticism from several key players in the ex-gay movement, and many member ministries have withdrawn from Exodus to form the much more hard-core Restored Hope Network. Joe Dallas, who had led Exodus International from 1991 to 1993 and has been closely identified with Exodus as a conference speaker throughout the past two decades, was one of the founding members of RHN. Last week, he announced that he was leaving Exodus International.

So far, there has been no comment from Exodus Global Alliance.

In related news, it was announced last week that Our America, with Lisa Ling will air an episode on June 20 on Orah Winfrey’s OWN network, in which Chambers will speak with several ex-gay survivors and offer an apology:

The story of Exodus International, the LGBT men and women who have been affected by the organization and the nationwide dialogue that surrounds this topic continues in an Our America special report.

For almost 40 years, Exodus International claimed to offer a “cure” for homosexuality. Alan Chambers, the leader of Exodus, decided last year to stop endorsing the controversial practice of gay-reparative therapy. And now, he has a new message: an apology.

In a special episode, Lisa Ling is joined by a group of survivors of the condemned and damaging practice of “reparative therapy” as they confront Alan Chambers. Chambers recently asked Ling to help orchestrate an opportunity in which he could formally apologize to those who felt deceived and defrauded by Exodus’ practices and to announce that the organization will cease to be an “ex gay” organization.

Tune in Thursday, June 20th at 10/9c for a special presentation of this powerful report.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, June 12

Jim Burroway

June 12th, 2013

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Anchorage, AK; Baltimore, MD; Baton Rouge, LA; Bisbee, AZ; Boise, ID; Butte, MT; Chemnitz, Germany; Denver, CO; Edinburgh, UK; Erie, PA; Flagstaff, AZ; Iowa City, IA; Kalamazoo, MI; Lancaster, PA; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Louisville, KY; Luleå, Sweden; Lyon, France; Memphis, TN (Black Pride); Münster, Germany; Nantes, France; Nashville, TN; Oldenburg, Germany; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR; Portland, ME; Providence, RI; Rome, Italy; Sacramento, CA; Saskatoon, SK; Sitges, Spain; Spencer, IN; Strasbourg, France; Syracuse, NY; Thessaloniki, Greece; Thunder Bay, ON; Toulouse, France; Venice, Italy; Vienna, Austria; Warsaw, Poland; Zagreb, Croatia.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: London, UK.

Other Events This Weekend: Lesbian and Gay Stadtfest, Berlin, Germany; Out In the Vineyard Gay Wine Weekend: Sonoma, CA; Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel; Bush Garden Gay Days, Williamsburg, VA.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Loving v. Virginia: 1967. Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving were an unusual couple. They had long crossed the racial barrier as friends in rural Central Point, Virginia: she was Black and Native American, he was white. But friendship turned to dating, and when Mildred became pregnant at the age of 18 in 1958, they decided to go to Washington, D.C. to elope. When they returned home, a group of police officers invaded their house late at night hoping to catch them in the act of having sex (which would have been a crime because of their racial differences). Mildred pointed to the marriage license that they had hung on the wall, hoping that it would protect them. Little did she know, but that license was proof that they had committed another crime. Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 prohibited any “colored” person with so much as one drop of African American or Indian blood from marrying a white person. Miscegenation was a felony, punishable by a prison sentence of between one and five years. The couple pleaded guilty on January 6, 1959, and they were sentenced to one year, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on the condition that they left Virginia.

The Lovings moved to D.C., and in 1963 the ACLU began a series of motions and lawsuits alleging that Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Those lawsuits eventually made their way all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law, along with similar laws in fifteen other states. In the unanimous ruling, the Court held that “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.” Despite this ruling, anti-miscegenation laws remained on the books for several years to come, despite their being unenforceable. In 2000, Alabama voters approved a ballot initiative to repeal its anti-miscegenation law, although even then more than half a million — 40% — voted to keep it.

Mildred and Richard were never political people. After the Supreme Court victory, the couple returned to Virginia and raised three children. Richard died in 1975 at the age of 41 when their car was struck by a drunk driver. Mildred lost her right eye in the accident. She passed away in 2008 of pneumonia at the age of 68. But a year before she died, she issued a statement on the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, in which she saw the fight for the freedom to marry as unfinished business:

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone, they have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the ‘wrong kind of person’ for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Jim Nabors: 1930. The Sylacauga, Alabama, learned to sing at his high school and church, and didn’t get into acting until he attended the University of Alabama. After graduating, he eventually landed his first job in television: cutting film for a television station in Chattanooga. He eventually decided to move to Los Angeles because of his asthma, where he began singing and acting in a local Santa Monica cabaret. That’s where he developed a character similar to the one we would later come to know as Gomer Pyle: a naive, golly-gee southern bumpkin with a high-pitched voice and thick accent would would launch into a nearly operatic baritone when singing. That’s where Andy Griffith discovered him, and signed to play a gas station attendant on The Andy Griffith Show. Nabor’s character was so popular that he soon ended up with his own spin-off, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C, which ran for five seasons from 1964 to 1969.

Nabors was among a handful of actors who were openly gay among friends and co-workers, but who were never put publicly.  “I haven’t ever made a public spectacle of it. Well, I’ve known since I was a child, so, come on.  It’s not that kind of a thing.  I’ve never made a huge secret of it at all,” Nabors said recently.  What made Nabors so unusual is that he never bothered to play the game of “dating” women for publicity’s sake. There was one rumor going around that Nabors had “married” Rock Hudson in the early 1970′s, sparked by a joke invitation that went out among friends which said that Hudson wold take the last name of Nabor’s character and become “Rock Pyle.” When fan magazines found the invitation, they turned the joke into a story, causing embarrassment for both men. It’s also the only time I know of when Nabors gave the standard 1960s response to why he wasn’t married. “I love kids,” he said. “But I’ve been so busy with my career that I really haven’t given marriage much thought.”

After CBS decided to re-vamp its lineup and cancel all of its “cornball” programs (which constituted almost all of the network’s comedic lineup by 1969), Nabors briefly hosted his own variety show and made several guest appearances on other programs, including a few children’s television programs. But by the mid-1970s, he was pretty much done with TV, and move to Hawaii, where he and his longtime partner and now husband, Stan Cadwallader, have made their home.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

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Violence Breaks Out As Russia’s State Duma Bans LGBT Advocacy

Jim Burroway

June 11th, 2013

Russia’s State Duma gave its unanimous approval today to a federal law banning “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” among minors. The law prohibits advocating the moral equivalency of gay relationships to straight ones, as well as the distributing of material advocating for gay rights. The Duma vote was 434-0, with one abstention. Similar bans are already in place in several Russian regions and the city of St. Petersburg. The bill now goes on to the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of Parliament, where passage is expected. As RIA Novosti reported:

There are a total of 450 deputies in the State Duma, and a majority of 226 was needed for the bill to pass.

If the bill is signed into law by Putin, the “promotion of non-traditional sexual relationships” will be punishable by fines from 4,000 ($120) to 5,000 rubles ($160) for individuals, from 40,000 ($1,200) to 50,000 ($1,500) for officials, and from 800,000 ($25,000) to 1 million rubles ($31,000) for organizations.

There will also be tougher fines for promoting such relationships in the media or on the Internet: from 50,000 rubles to 1 million rubles, or even 90 days of arrest for people involved in organizations found guilty of the offense.

Violent clashes broke out between LGBT advocates and Orthodox anti-gay protesters outside the State Duma as the body began considering the bill:

A RIA Novosti reporter at the scene witnessed how the demonstration started peacefully, with a police cordon separating anti-bill LGBT activists from those backing the bill.

When some of the gay couples protesting against the bill to restrict “the promotion of same-sex relationships” started kissing, pro-bill activists responded by hurling eggs and bundles of nettles.

Some anti-bill protesters chanted “Moscow is not Baghdad” (seemingly more of a reference to a generic anti-gay, conservative, religious society, than a specific comment on today’s Iraq) while pro-bill demonstrators shouted: “Moscow is not Sodom.”

…Masha Gessen, a prominent Moscow-based journalist and outspoken defender of gay rights, was one of those taken to a police station. She tweeted that she was detained after a pro-Orthodox Church activist attacked her “physically” but was not detained by riot police.

Reuters reports:

The gay protesters were far outnumbered by around 200 anti-gay activists who surrounded them, chanting “Russia is not Sodom”, singing Orthodox Christian prayers and crossing themselves. They threw rotten eggs at the gay protesters.

After scuffles in which one man was knocked to the ground and kicked by the anti-gay activists, police began detaining the gay protesters and bundling them into waiting buses.

The State Duma will also consider today another bill which would make “insulting religious believers’ feelings” a criminal offense, punishable with finds of up to $15,000, 200 hours of compulsory labor, or up to three years’ imprisonment.

In February, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the proposed ban would not infringe on the human rights of LGBT people in Russia:

We’re not discriminating against anyone, we just don’t want reverse discrimination, when one group of citizens gets the right to aggressively impose their values, unsupported by most of the population, especially on children,” Lavrov said in Moscow.

In April, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated those sentiments and blamed gay people, in part, for Russia’s declining population.

A sad example of internalized homophobia

Timothy Kincaid

June 11th, 2013

I usually hate the term “internalized homophobia”. Far too often it’s flung as a weapon against some gay person who disagrees with whatever the accepted position must be.

(Vote for a Republican? Internalized homophobia! Disapprove of some gay person’s extreme behavior? Internalized homophobia! Refuse to be in an open relationship? Internalized homophobia! Enjoy country music, refuse to watch Partners, go to the gym, avoid the gym, think Rachel Maddow actually does look ‘mannish’, love RuPaul, hate RuPaul, not know who RuPaul is, pretty much anything anyone can think of, and you’re just oozing internalized homophobia!)

But sometimes the description is accurate. Sometimes a person who has a homosexual orientation also has such a so gut-level, knee jerk response, negative about every aspect of gay people and/or their lives that it can only be seen as homophobia.

I’ve mostly tried to avoid discussing the small handful of same-sex attracted people who have captured a moment in the spotlight due to their opposition to civil equality in marriage. There are a good many people, straight and gay, who are not comfortable with the idea of gay marriage not out of malice but due to reasons that are based on their beliefs about marriage and children or even just a lack of good data.

So while it may seem as though by now all such reasons should be transparent to gay people, I still allow that some do not think that marriage is the appropriate venue for same-sex relationships. And I see little value in speculating about their motivations.

I’ve not called Doug Mainwaring names or demeaned Robert Oscar Lopez. Both claim to be gay men and to have some notion of the nature of gay men and use this as a basis for high-profile declarations about the dangers of allowing same-sex couples to be recognized in law. But while I find their choices and their rhetoric to be dishonorable, until now I’ve not assailed their character.

However in the latest piece written for the Witherspoon Institute about what he learned from French opposition to equality, Lopez reveals his own valuation of his character. It isn’t very high.

The French resistance to same-sex marriage has demonstrated that an ostensibly progressive nation that had little issue with homosexuality as a moral question can change its mind, not based on ignorance of reality, but based on knowing more about what same-sex marriage really means.
…
The drop in support for same-sex marriage came with education and broader public debate. As the French knew more gay people individually and learned more about the ramifications of their legalized marriage on the community at large—especially children and poor communities overseas targeted for adoption and surrogacy—they liked the idea of same-sex marriage less and less.

Lopez’ basic assumption in this piece is that the more you get to know gay people, the more you hate them.

I suggest that Lopez does not speak for me or any gay people I know. I’m sure that Lopez would insist that it is the disreputable homosexual activists about which he speaks, but sadly, I think he speaks for himself.

This looks to me like a recurrence of a once-common phenomenon, the gay person who so hates who they are that they overlay their own perceived flaws – their own self-imposed shame – on a gay community populated only by their own imagination.

Yes, I believe that this is a real and all too sad example of internalized homophobia.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, June 11

Jim Burroway

June 11th, 2013

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Life Magazine Opposes Decriminalization: 1965. A year before, Life magazine published a groundbreaking essay on “Homosexuality in America,” (see Jun 26), which was notable for being one of the earliest relatively balanced portrayals of gay life in California. Gay rights advocates had hoped that the article might  portend more positive press for gay issues, at least in the pages of Life, but that hope proved short-lived. In 1965, there was a proposal before the New York legislature to repeal that state’s sodomy law, which banned “deviant sexual intercourse” between unmarried persons. If passed, New York would have become only the second state, after Illinois, to decriminalize consensual sexual behavior between gay adults (see Jul 28). Life, in an unsigned, self-contradictory and illogical editorial in its June 11, 1965 edition, opposed the proposal:

As readers of LIFE’s survey of homosexuality in America will remember, the “gay world” (actually a sad world) is coming increasingly above ground in many big cities and is lobbying for more sympathetic treatment. Homosexuality is frequently curable, but jail is the last place to expect a cure, and the laws restricting it are notoriously ineffective. Enforcement is either nonexistent or unjust and repugnant because of its peep-hole and entrapment methods. …

But the legislative debates have produced some robustious arguments on the other side. In Albany one legislator, who favored lifting the sanctions against adultery but not against homosexuality, explained that “after all, there are more of us than there are of them.”

There are more cogent arguments for retaining the laws against homosexuality. Its practice can and does break up families; and protection of the family is a legitimate area for legislation. Repeal would imply an indifference that society cannot afford. Until it finds a better way of discouraging the practice, a statute at least expresses society’s disapproval.

The proposal failed to make it into law, and New York’s sodomy law would remain on the books until 1980 when the New York Court of Appeals struck it down as unconstitutional.

[Source: "The law and the homosexual problem." Life 58, no. 23. (June 11, 1965): 4.]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Wilma Burgess: 1939. Before Chely Wright came out, there was k.d. lang. But before k.d. lang — before everyone, in fact — there was Wilma Burgess. The difference with Burgess however was that she never really came out. She was always out, throughout her career. She enjoyed recording romantic ballads, but in a break from most “girl singers,” she avoided recording gender-specific songs whenever she could. A southerner from Orlando, Wilma wasn’t much interested in country music when she first began singing professionally. But when she attended an Eddie Arnold concert, she was struck by the emotional honesty of Arnold’s music. She made her way to Nashville in 1962 where she cut her first single. “Confuses” didn’t really go anywhere, but it got her a contract for Decca Records.

After a several singles, she landed pay dirt in 1965 with “Baby,” which peaked at #7 on the country music charts. That same year, she purchased Patsy Cline’s old home in Nashville. In 1966 she recorded two more notable hits, “Don’t Touch Me” and “Misty Blue,” which became her signature song. That song was eventually covered by the man who inspired her to perform country music, Eddie Arnold. She had several more Top Forty country hits, but by the mid-1970s she decided to retire from the music business. She then opened the Hitching Post, Nashville’s first lesbian bar, where she regularly performed. She died suddenly in 2003 of a massive heart attack.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

The Daily Agenda for Monday, June 10

Jim Burroway

June 10th, 2013

TODAY IN HISTORY:
TEN YEARS AGO: Ontario Court of Appeal Strikes Down Canada’s Ban on Same-Sex Marriage: 2003. Nearly a year earlier, on July 22, 2002, the Ontario Superior Court issued a 3-0 ruling in the case of Halpern et al. v. Canada, finding that restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the equality provisions of the Charter of Rights. While also finding that current statutes didn’t prohibit same-sex marriage, the court stayed its ruling for two years to give the federal government time to pass legislation implementing same-sex marriage. The plaintiffs appealed the decision, requesting that the decision take effect immediately. On June 10, 2003, the Court of Appeals for Ontario agreed, and struck down the lower court’s stay. The next day, the Attorney General of Ontario announced that he would comply with the ruling.

While the Ontario Appeals Court ruled on Canadian law, its jurisdiction was limited to Ontario, making the province the first jurisdiction in North America to provide same-sex marriage. (Massachusetts wouldn’t begin marrying until almost a year later: see May 17.) On February 24, the provincial legislature enacted Bill 171, (“An Act to amend various statutes in respect of spousal relationships”) which cleaned up several Ontario laws to bring them into accord with the court rulings. Meanwhile, other provincial courts began issuing similar rulings — British Columbia in 2003; Quebec, Yukon Territory, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador in 2004; and New Brunswick in 2005. By the time Parliament enacted marriage equality nationwide in July of 2005, only Alberta, Prince Edward Island, Nunavut and Northwest Territories had yet to act on marriage equality.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Judy Garland: 1922. A straight friend of mine, shortly after I came out to him, asked me to explain “the Judy Garland thing.” What was I to say? The Rainbow reference seemed obvious to me — Somewhere Over the Rainbow, the rainbow flag — but that didn’t explain why she meant so much to so many generations of gay men. (I would later learn that the rainbow flag was meant to symbolize diversity, not Judy Garland. Silly me.) I then turned to the song’s lyrics, but it turns out they are incredibly simple — almost a throw-away. So it’s not the song itself either. Instead, I think the explanation begins with how she sang about her yearning to find a land of happiness somewhere over there, where “the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.” And if  birds can fly overt there, “why then, oh why can’t I?”

Why can’t I? – that’s the plaintive refrain that every LGBT person has uttered at some of the most painful moments of their lives, at least for those who spent any significant time in the closet. Judy’s life also had its painful moments, including a marriage to the barely-closeted gay director Vincente Minnelli, a nervous breakdown, morphine addiction, alcohol problems, you name it. But her Carnegie Hall comeback concert in 1961 was called by many “the greatest night in show business history.” The resulting two-record recording, Judy At Carnegie Hall, spent thirteen weeks on Billboard’s number one spot and won four Grammies. If you’ve never heard it, you are missing out on a night of mutual love between Judy and a house full of “friends of Judy.” And it’s that resilience which, I think, explains the “Judy Garland thing” more than anything else.

That and those ruby shoes.

85 YEARS AGO: Maurice Sendak: 1928. He was known for more than a dozen books he wrote and illustrated himself, most famously his 1963 best-seller Where the Wild Things Are, which revolutionized the children’s book genre and established his career. But that wasn’t his favorite book. That would be 1981′s Outside Over There. Nor was it his most controversial book. That would be his 1970 award-winning In the Night Kitchen, about a boy who dreams of flying to a magical kitchen. The boy also happens to lose his clothes early in the book, and images of a naked flying boy placed the book on the American Library Association’s list of “frequently challenged and banned books.” In September 2011, HarperCollins published Sendak’s Bumble-Ardy, his first new book in 30 years.

Sendak remained publicly closeted most of his life, despite a fifty year enduring relationship with his partner, psychoanalyst Dr. Eugene Glynn. Sandak wasn’t even out to his parents, Polish Jewish immigrants whose relatives died in the Holocaust. “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy,” he once said. “They never, never, never knew.” Glynn died in May 2007, and Sendak came out in a 2008 interview, saying that the idea of a gay man writing children books would have hurt his career when he was in his 20s and 30s. But when Sendak died in 2012 at the age of 83, he was hailed by The New York Times as “the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century.” Another picture book, My Brother’s Book, was posthumously released last February.

Dustin Lance Black: 1974. Growing up in a Mormon family, Black’s early childhood included fears of going straight to hell. “I had my first crushes on a boy neighbor when I was like six, seven. I knew what was going on, I knew I liked him, but what Texas did and what the culture of growing up Mormon, growing up military [reinforced], was, the very second thought I had, ‘I really like that boy, and it’s not just as a friend,’ the very second thought was, ‘I’m sick, I’m wrong, I’m going to hell. And if I ever admit it, I’ll be hurt, and I’ll be brought down.’” No wonder he became withdrawn, intensely shy, and had thoughts of suicide. “I was a pretty dark kid, because I had an acute awareness of my sexuality, and was absolutely convinced that I was wrong.”

That darkness lifted when he went off to college, coming out during his senior year and graduating with honors from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. Much of his career as a screenwriter, director, and producer has touched on LGBT themes. In 2000, he wrote and directed the gay romance films The Journey of Jared Price and Something Close to Heaven, followed by the documentary, On the Bus, which followed six gay men on a road trip to Burning Man. But his own burning passion was the desire to bring the life of Harvey Milk to the screen. The problem for Black was how to convey the “emotional heartbeat” of the story:

“It was tough. It was clearly, in my mind, a gay movie. I wasn’t so interested in the politics, I wasn’t so interested in Dan White; I was interested in this man who, to me at least, was a father figure to his people — to people who lost their fathers, their parents and their families because of their sexuality. Here was this father figure, and it was something I craved!”

Milk was a critical and commercial success, and Black won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 2009.

Black has turned his writing skills to other topics as well. He leveraged his Mormon background as one of the screenwriters (and the only Mormon writer) for HBO’s Big Love, and he wrote the sceenplay for 2011′s J. Edgar. In 2010, Black narrated the documentary 8: The Mormon Proposition, which portrays the heavy investment made by the LDS church in California’s Proposition 8. In 2011, Black wrote the play 8, which is based on the actual transcripts in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial (now Hollingsworth v. Perry), the federal court challenge against Prop 8, which was declared unconstitutional at the trial court level and also by the Ninth District Court of Appeals and is now awaiting a final decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Black wrote the play after a federal court blocked the release of the trial’s video recordings. Black is a founding board member for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which brought the suit against Prop 8.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?