Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyPosts for June, 2008
June 30th, 2008
I like the way “Tedski” at the Arizona political blog Rum Romanism and Rebellion thinks, probably because I myself in almost perfect agreement with his reaction to Arizona Senate President Tim Bee’s disgraceful performance in the closing hours of the legislative session:
On the other hand, there was the leadership that he applied to the gay marriage referendum. He went back and forth on this one. For example, he was one of the main sponsors of the legislation, but delayed the vote in the hopes that time would run out and it would never actually be presented. This back and forth was so public that it didn’t fool anyone. He even pulled a Marion McClure on this, giving an impassioned speech that seemed to be against the bill then casting the deciding vote for the darned thing.
Apparently, he then disappeared into his office to “compose” himself for about an hour.
Now, that’s leadership.
My take on Bee’s performance is here. Is this the man we’re supposed to send to Congress? If he can’t stand up to Cathi Herrod at the Center for Arizona Policy, how can we expect him to stand up to lobbyists in Washington?
By now it should be obvious to anyone paying attention that his political career is toast. Good thing he has his brother’s Bee Line school bus service to go back to.
Tedski closes with this:
Say, what does Bee’s campaign chair, Jim Kolbe, think of all this?
June 29th, 2008
Gay pride made its presence known in Calcutta, Bangalore and New Delhi today (AP).
While small groups have marched in the eastern city of Calcutta in recent years, Sunday’s events were the first gay pride parades in Bangalore and New Delhi. Several hundred people turned out at each of the three events.
The marches came days before the Delhi High Court is expected to hear arguments on overturning a law against homosexual sex that dates to the British colonial era.
June 28th, 2008
This weekend is the pride celebration for several cities in Europe. And while pride events are a celebration of rights achieved, they did not all go off without a hitch.
At the first pride parade in Brno, Czech Republic
At least 20 persons were hit by tear gas used by anti-gay activists about 20 minutes after the end of Czech homosexuals’ march at the namesti Svobody square and the Masarykova street in Brno today.
The police and neo-Nazis clashed after the end of the homosexuals’ Queer Parade, the first of its type in the Czech Republic.
One militant protester threw a petrol bomb near the marchers, while others hurled eggs and some carried clubs, police and a Reuters eyewitness said.
About 60 people were arrested, police said. No one was hurt.
In contrast, the Jerusalem pride march was significantly less violent than in previous years.
At a counter-protest in one of Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods several hundred men gathered wearing ash on their foreheads and burlap sacks over their black suits in a Biblical ritual of repentance.
Some demonstrators held holy books, rocked back and forth and prayed, while others raised banners in English reading “Shame,” “The Supreme Court is destroying the Holy City” and “Don’t sodomise Jerusalem.”
June 28th, 2008
According to the LA Times, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has taken a step towards full inclusion of gays and lesbians into the church.
Leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) overturned a long-standing ban on the ordination of gays and lesbians Friday, providing yet the latest example of a religious denomination struggling with how, and whether, to incorporate homosexuality into church life.
This change however must be approved by a majority of regions called presbyteries.
The General Assembly voted in favor of the ordination measure 54% to 46%, but its decision must still be approved by a majority of the nation’s 173 regional presbyteries over the next year. Several prominent church leaders predicted it would fail.
Conservatives are predicting that individuals and churches will leave the denomination rather than be part of a body that allows gay ministers. To my way of thinking, gay and lesbian Presbyterians who are willing to fellowship with those who dispise them are far closer to showing the heart and message of Christ than are those who would leave rather than fellowship on an equal status with a gay person.
June 28th, 2008
Jason Cianciotto, Wingspan’s Executive Director, reacted to yesterday’s shameful Senate vote with this statement:
In 2006, Arizona voters became the ï¬rst in the nation to defeat an anti-marriage ballot measure. Today, our State Senate, led by President Tim Bee, rejected that democratic process in an attempt to distract voters from issues that truly have an impact on families, including the rising costs of food, gas, and healthcare.
Senator Bee is grossly mistaken if he thinks he can ride an anti-family agenda to victory in his campaign to unseat Gabrielle Giffords in Congressional District 8 — analysis of voting data from 2006 revealed that voters there rejected the ï¬rst anti-marriage amendment by a 10 point margin, with 54.6% voting against Prop 107 and only 45.4% voting for it. This was an even wider margin than statewide results (51.8% vs. 48.2%).
The time has come for elected representatives and the anti-gay industry in Arizona to be held accountable for harming Arizona families. I came back home to Arizona two months ago ready for this ï¬ght. A political sea change is approaching this November, and our legislature is in store for a rude awakening. Just as we did in 2006, a broad coalition of Arizonans — young and old, men and women, gay and straight — will come together and defeat this ballot measure, again.
June 28th, 2008
HIV-1, the prevalent strain of Human Immunodeficiency Virus infecting people around the world was first thought to have entered the human bloodstream at around 1931. Now a second human tissue sample stored at a hospital in Kinshasa in 1960 has pushed the date back more than two decades:
Marlea Gemme… analyzed HIV-1 genetic material obtained from lymph tissue collected in 1960 from the University of Kinshasa pathology department in the Democratic Republic of the Congo–only the second HIV sequence predating 1976 deciphered to date. Thus far, she has sequenced about 1000 DNA bases, which she has compared with the previously reported sequence of HIV-1 extracted from a frozen blood sample from 1959. Since it entered into humans, HIV-1 has been evolving into different substrains–but the 1960 and 1959 sequences were much more divergent than expected, Gemmel reported at the meeting. “It reflects a long past of diversification before 1960,” she said.
By comparing the two sequences with more recent ones, Gemmel was able to show that HIV-1 first entered humans about 1908, not 1931, as earlier analyses with just the 1959 sample found. Her analysis also indicates that the virus existed in low levels in humans until the middle of the 20th century. “That matches the rise of population centers,” Gemmel explained, suggesting that urbanization around that time paved the way for the AIDS epidemic.
There is increasing evidence that AIDS has existed in some very remote parts of Africa for several decades before exploding in Kinshasa and other large cities in the 1970s and in Europe and America in the early 1980s. You can read more about the history of AIDS in our report, Opportunistic Infection, which we will now have to update to include these latest findings.
June 28th, 2008
The Republican-controlled Arizona Senate late yesterday broke its own rules to shut down debate and force a vote to place a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage on the ballot.
According to Equality Arizona and the Arizona Daily Star, Sen Paula Aboud (D-Tucson) was engaged in a debate with Sen. Ken Cheuvront (D-Phoenix) on another tax bill in a move similar to a filibuster according to the Senate rules. During the debate, Majority Leader Thayer Verschoor (R-Gilbert) and Majority Whip John Huppenthal (R-Chandler), among others, devised a scheme with committee chairman Jack Harper (R- rural district 4) to violate the rules of the Senate and the rights of Senators Aboud and Cheuvront.
Barbara McCullough-Jones and Sam Holdren of Arizona Equality describe what happened next:
In the middle of their discussion, Senator Harper turned off the microphones of Senators Paula Aboud (D-28) and Ken Cheuvront (D-15) and called on the Majority Leader to make a motion. Then, when Senators Aboud and Cheuvront loudly called for a Point of Order several times, even walking to the front desk where Senator Harper sat, he deliberately ignored their calls. To add insult to injury, these people attempted to justify their actions, even after the Senate President and other Senators admonished them for deliberately breaking the rules. Tonight’s actions of these and other Senators have forever tainted that body, and it’s important that we all let the people of Arizona know how these individuals acted so unethically.
The chamber broke down into chaos for the next twenty minutes when]the matter was finally brought before Senate President Tim Bee (R-Tucson) for resolution. Bee, who had been trying to keep the proposed amendment off the calendar, lambasted the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), the right-wing lobbying group behind the marriage amendment, for what he described as their divisive tactics, hostility, coercion and threats. He then publicly buckled under the pressure and became the constitutionally-mandated sixteenth vote to placed the measure on the ballot.
Sens. Aboud and Cheuvront are the only two openly gay members of the Arizona Senate. After the shouting was over, Sen. Aboud spoke again to the Senate:
“I just don’t understand how my personal, private relationship between two people affects anyone else in this room?
“Get your love off my back,” Aboud said. “Is your relationship with your family so fragile that you’re threatened by me?”
Today was a shameful day in the Senate’s history under Bee’s weak leadership. Bee is running for Congress to try to replace Gabrielle Giffords (D-Tucson) in a congressional district which voted against the 2006 attempt to write discrimination into the constitution by a wider margin than did voters statewide (45.4% to 54.6% in CD8, versus 48.2% to 51.8% statewide). During his term in the Senate, Bee represented a district which also defeated Prop 107 a margin wider than the statewide tally (47.5% to 52.5%).
Yesterday may well have marked the end of Bee’s political career. And with his shameful display of cowardice under pressure, it is an end well deserved.
June 27th, 2008
“Tim Bee has demonstrated his toughness and his compassion, his ability to lead while at the same time listening to others. These are skills few people in public life have. We need Tim Bee working for us in Congress.” — Jim Kolbe (left), the gay former U.S. Congressman for the district Tim Bee is running in and the campaign’s “Honorary Chairman.”
Tim Bee was the sixteenth vote in the Arizona Senate’s shameless vote to put the anti-marriage amendment on the ballot yet again. Bee is running for the congressional seat that Kolbe once held. Kolbe voted for DOMA in 1996, a vote that led to his outing. I have heard him speak passionately against Prop 107 in 2006.
So what does Kolbe have to say about this? Is he ducking back into the closet again?
[Hat tip: Tucson Observer]
June 27th, 2008
We just received word that late this evening that the Arizona Senate was able to scare up the sixteen votes needed to put a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage onto the ballot.
Tucson’s District 30 Senator and Senate President Tim Bee was the sixteenth vote. He will be running against incumbent Gabrielle Giffords in November for the Congressional District 8 house seat. Voters in CD8 voted against the 2006 Arizona amendment, with 52.5%54.6% voting against Prop 107 and only 47.5%45.4% voting for it. That was a wider margin than the state-wide result of 51.8% against and 48.2% in favor.
Update: I had my figures crossed. I originally posted the results for Sen. Bee’s Senate district, not the Congressional district he is currently running for. As you can see, voters in the Congressional district defeated Prop 107 by a wider margin still. I apologize for the error.
June 27th, 2008
Google’s celebrating along with the rest of us. To see what I mean, just go to Google and search for something gay. It should look something like this:
Do you see the rainbow stripe between the sponsored ads and the search results? And it’s context sensitive. Search for “gay Paris,” and the stripe’s not there. Very clever!
June 27th, 2008
The Republic of Iceland has recognized same-sex civil unions since 1996. Now the Iceland Review reports that churches will now be able to offer services recognizing these unions.
Ãrni Thór Arnthórsson and his American fiancé Paris Prince will be the first gay couple to get married in church in Iceland early next month after a new law on the right of religious associations to confirm cohabitation of gay couples took affect today.
We would welcome any readers familiar with Icelandic law and language to clarify whether these unions may now be identified as marriage or whether that term was simply a translation convenience.
UPDATE:
This article in xtra.ca by Nicholas Little suggests that marriage may be the proper term:
1996.
The Althing grants same-sex registered partnerships equal status with heterosexual marriage, with the exception that neither adoption nor in-vitro fertilisation is permitted.The Althing also amends the general penal code to include sexual orientation as prohibited grounds for discrimination. This makes it illegal to refuse people goods or services on account of their sexual orientation, or to attack a person or group of people publicly with mockery, defamation, abuse or threats because of their sexual orientation.
2006.
The Althing grants same-sex couples full legal rights of marriage, but denies churches and religious groups the authority to perform the legal ceremony.Jun 27, 2008.
Ministers of churches can now join same-sex couples in legal marriage.
As more information is available we’ll let you know whether Iceland has become the Seventh nation to legalize same-sex marriage.
June 27th, 2008
I mentioned earlier this morning that another anti-marriage amendment was introduced in the Senate. What I didn’t know was that these two upright paradigms of traditional “monogamous” heterosexual marriages were co-sponsors: Larry “Tap-Tap” Craig (R-ID), and David “D.C. Madam” Vitter (R-LA).
Of course, they’re only monogamous in that peculiar way in which heterosexuals define monogamy.
Honestly, you just can’t make this stuff up.
June 27th, 2008
What does the US have in comment with Sudan, Russia, Libya and Saudi Arabia? We are among the twelve countries that prohibit HIV-positive non-citizens from traveling to those countries. What’s more, HIV is the only condition that is designated by law as grounds for inadmissibility to the United States. Bird flu, SARS, leprosy and tuberculosis are in the clear, but HIV is banned.
This ban was put in place by President Reagan and Sen. Jesse Helms during the AIDS hysteria of the 1980’s. But now there is widespread support to repeal the ban, support that extends to President George Bush. But the PEPFAR bill (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) has remained bottled up in the Senate by a group of seven Republican Senators, including David Vitter (R-LA), who has admitted to using the services of the so-called “D.C. Madam.”
June 27th, 2008
We’re still not sure what McCain might have told the Log Cabin Republicans during his still-unacknowledged meeting with them, the LCRs are sure to be disappointed by this news. “Protect Marriage,” the California group that is sponsoring the Californian anti-marriage amendment, has announced that John McCain is supporting their efforts to abolish more than 2,000 legal marriages in California. According to McCain’s statement:
“I support the efforts of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution between a man and a woman, just as we did in my home state of Arizona. I do not believe judges should be making these decisions.”
Actually, Arizona defeated an attempt to write a ban on same-sex marriage into the constitution in 2006. Nevertheless, same-sex marriage is explicitly banned in Arizona by state law, and that law has been consistently upheld by the courts.
A vote to put another proposed amendment on the ballot may come up for a vote in the Arizona Senate as early as today. It’s still not too late to contact your Senator. And thanks to Equality Arizona, it only takes about three minutes of your time.
June 27th, 2008
Pink News is reporting that a gay bar in Budapest was fire-bombed last night after its address appeared on a hate group’s website. It’s unclear how heavily the bar, called Action, was damaged.
Gay rights groups have voiced concerns about extreme right-wing violence. They accuse a hate group using a website called kuruc.info for last night’s bombing. The website, a Hungarian site hosted in the United States, is known for posting addresses, phone numbers and other personal information about gay activists. Yesterday, the site post an address list of all the gay bars in Budapest, with Action being the first on the list.
Budapest’s chief of police is anticipating violence during this year’s Pride celebrations slated for July 5th. Last year, gangs of ultranationalists, skinheads and fascists attacked Pride cellebrants. Pride organizers criticised police for failing to take appropriate action during last year’s events.
Featured Reports
In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.
When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.
In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.
On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"
At last, the truth can now be told.
Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!
And don‘t miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.
Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.
Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.
Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.
The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.
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