Box Turtle Bulletin

David Benkof’s One Man Anti-Gay Campaign of Lies and Deception

David Benkof has been getting a bit of attention lately.

And at first glace David appears to be a young gay man who believes that there are better options for gay couples than marriage, that the community should join him in prioritizing other more pressing issues, that the marriage discussion is harming the efforts of gay couples in red states to get recognition for their unions, and that he wants to help. We’d also think that he’s a gay columnist, that he speaks for an influential collection of gay thinkers, and that he is part of the gay and lesbian community and shares our goals and dreams.

None of that is true.

David Benkof is an anti-gay activist with strong ties to the ex-gay community that has used a string of lies and deceptions to position himself in the mainstream press as a minority voice within the gay community. His goals are to defeat any efforts that would recognize our unions as being anything other than roommates. His motivation is his desire to conform society to his religious ideals. And he’s willing to lie, defame, and stand the truth on its head to do so.

Read more about it in our latest report, David Benkof: Behind the Mask.

UPDATE

Since the publishing of this report, some of the language on the Gays Defend Marriage website has changed. The site continues, however, to deceptively list as “concerned about defending marriage” those who whole-heartedly support marriage equality.

Love In Action’s New Director Announces Comically High Success Rate

Peterson Toscano served as Grand Martial of the Memphis pride parade this weekend which prompted another round of media coverage on the ex-gay movement there. Check out this passage from the Memphis Commercial Appeal:

But according to [Love In Action], Toscano’s experience differs greatly from those of most other people getting treatment. Of 400 people who have gone through the program, more than 300 have been turned straight, the group says.

“Our success rate is higher than our dropout rate,” said Love In Action director Jim Scott. [pictured above]

“It works for some people, and for some people it doesn’t.”

Perhaps Scott is equating successfully completing and graduating from LIA with “turning straight.” Long term “success rate” isn’t addressed leaving Scott’s claims laughable at best and misleading at worst for those unfamiliar with the contrived working tricks common in the exgay movement.

The Most Effective Campaign

The Fresno Bee ran a human interest story about a local florist who plans on marrying his partner of 16 years. Such stories are filling newspapers throughout the state this weekend. But there is one small part of the story that I must share with you.

Renee DeMusiak, 52, the florist shop employee, grew up with the idea that marriage meant only a man and a woman.

“I just always went by the Bible. Mom is mom and dad is dad. I was never really for gays getting married,” she says.

But in November, she plans to vote against the ban and for same-sex marriage.

She had only worked at Chase Flower Shop for two months when her dog got sick and needed expensive medical care.

“Michael gave me his credit card and told me to take care of her,” she says. “I’d never vote against him.”

She says her own search for a mate has been the stuff of blues songs: cheating men, hurt, and true love never arriving.

“I’m struggling to find someone. I see gay couples come in here all the time who have had better luck than me. It’s so important to have someone love you for who and what you truly are,” she says.

“I know religion is really going to come down on this one, but I just don’t think I can be opposed any more. I vote for people to be happy.”

By far the most effective campaign for equality is to live openly with dignity and kindness.

Calaveras County Joins Kern and Butte

Calaveras County (of Celebrated Jumping Frog fame) has joined Kern County and Butte County in not providing civil marriages. (AP)

“We’ve done them when we can,” said Karen Varni, the clerk-recorder in Calaveras County. “They’ve been squeezed into other things, and due to budget restraints in our county and no actual place to do them, we’re not set up to do them.”

She said they had considered stopping them before the May 15 court decision, but then decided it was necessary with the expected increase.

Calavaras County has about 40,000 residents with less than 3,000 living in the county seat of San Andreas. I find it likely that Varni does not have the resources that Barnett has at her disposal so her protestations seem a bit more sincere.

Smaller rural counties in central California are not so much worried that local residents will swamp them with demands for same-sex marriage.

Local gay couples aren’t lining up to get marriage licenses at the county clerks’ offices in Calaveras and Tuolumne counties, at least not yet, but county employees are still bracing for a stream of applications from outsiders.

That’s because the San Francisco County Clerk’s Office, like some clerk’s offices in large metropolitan areas, has a long waiting list of people seeking marriage licenses. With the May 15 California Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage, the list could get even longer.

If Varni genuinely is concerned about personnel, however, she could call the office of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom as he’s promised to loan staff to those counties that cannot perform marriages.

See also:
Kern Co. Supervisors Reject Anti-Gay Ordinance
Calaveras County Joins Kern and Butte
Barnett Breaks Her Media Silence – Stupidly, of Course
Chad Vegas – Kern Co. School Board Trustee’s Double Standard
Ann Barnett Annoys Local Bakersfield Media
Two More California Counties Stop Officiating at Weddings
CA Anti-Gays Either Completely Idiotic or Shameless Liars
No Non-Religious Marriages in Kern County
A Voice of Reason in Kern Co.
Kern Co. (Bakersfield) Clerk Ann K. Barnett Cancels Straight Weddings
More Bakersfield Bigotry
Bakersfield – Not a Place to Plan Your Wedding

Exactly The Opposite of What The Ex-Gays Told Me

This Father’s Day essay is from Jason Cianciotto, Executive Director of Tucson’s Wingspan LGBT Community Center. You can also read Fathers Day essays from Tony K. and Garrett and Ben. If you’d like to share your Fathers Day memories, please send them to Superdad@boxturtlebulletin.com. The best entry gets a free T-shirt or other gift (up to $35, which is just about everything) from our BTBStore.

I vividly remember sitting in the therapist’s office hearing him slam my dad yet again for “not being there for me” when I was a kid. This was just one of the reasons why these experts determined that I liked boys instead of girls. I was 16, depressed, embarrassed, ashamed, and desperate to be the young man that my Christian family wanted me to be. Among the most incredible destinations in my personal journey of acceptance was that it was ultimately my father who rescued me and provided a safe and welcome space for me to become the man I am today.

My parents divorced when I was 2½ years old, and shortly afterwards my mother became a born again Christian. I saw my father every weekend, but the faith I was raised in created a sharp divided that lasted well into my teenage years. I remember hearing my father and stepmother share how heartbroken they were when they had to bring me back home to my mother one weekend because I was afraid of them after I heard they they were going to hell because they weren’t Christians. Though he doesn’t talk about it, I know that my father held back a lot of frustration and anger against my mother because of how her faith created a separation between us.

Growing up, I remember a lot of fun times with my dad and my “other” family, my stepmom, brother and sister; vacations at the Jersey Shore; wresting matches with my father on the living room floor; boxing matches with me wearing my kid gloves and standing on the bed while he stood on the floor and pretended to be knocked out by my glancing blows. These memories run counter to the reasons I was told why I was gay — a child of divorce with the the distant father who chose not to be a “man of the lord.”

By age 19, I was desperate to find the answer to the questions inside of me. Years of therapy and prayers in the basement of my house with my head covered with a towel in submission to God while listening to contemporary Christian music had failed to divert curious glances at my male classmates from high school through my freshman year of college. My father and siblings had already moved from the east coast to Tucson years before and our time together was relegated to phone calls I don’t really remember. My “new” father, the man my mother married when I was 11 years old, was distant and hardly spent time with me. I remember an awkward conversation with him over pizza at that time in my life. I realized that the man my mother determined the Lord had brought into her life was really just for her, not for me.

That became all too clear the day I came home from work and found most of my personal belongings in black garbage bags on the porch of my house. My mother had found the secret stash of gay porn given to me by a new friend I had made in the LGBT support group at the local community college I was attending. They reached the end of their rope with me and felt that the only way they could protect their family from me was to exorcise me from their lives.

When my father realized the extent to which my life had fallen apart, he invited me to drive cross-country and live with him in Tucson. He encouraged me to go to college at the University of Arizona after establishing state residency. I arrived after my 2,000-mile drive, traumatized by the years before and still thinking I was a straight guy with a gay mental health problem. After I found the youth group at the local gay community center and finally came out to myself and my family, I remember him sharing with me how his only concern was that my life would be harder than others because of the discrimination I would face because of my sexual orientation. This was a sharp contrast to the response of my Christian family, who, after I came out to them via telephone, barely spoke to me for three years.

As I approach my 33rd birthday, I look back in awe — the thing that I needed most to heal and become a whole, healthy human being was exactly the opposite of what the therapists and the faith I was raised in told me. I have a superdad because, in him, I have a friend who was really there for me when I needed him most. Thanks dad, and happy Father’s Day.

Jason Cianciotto
June 13, 2008

Do you have something you want to share for father’s day? Please send it to Superdad@boxturtlebulletin.com.

Barnett Breaks Her Media Silence – Stupidly, of Course

No one wants the opening paragraph of an article in the local media to be

Though County Clerk Ann Barnett has refused numerous interviews by ABC23 and other local media on a recent decision to end civil ceremonies, she has granted an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

I don’t think that ongoing local coverage of Barnett is going to be kind.

Not that the LA Times was fawning.

Barnett initially said her decision to stop the weddings was based on budget constraints and a lack of staff. On Thursday, she said her primary concern was office security because the county’s two wedding chapels are inside the elections division, which Barnett also supervises.

“It’s not roped off or anything, so people could wander into restricted areas,” she said.

But her critics say the facts contradict her explanations.

Her handlers at the Alliance Defense Fund should never have let her speak.

See also:
Kern Co. Supervisors Reject Anti-Gay Ordinance
Calaveras County Joins Kern and Butte
Barnett Breaks Her Media Silence – Stupidly, of Course
Chad Vegas – Kern Co. School Board Trustee’s Double Standard
Ann Barnett Annoys Local Bakersfield Media
Two More California Counties Stop Officiating at Weddings
CA Anti-Gays Either Completely Idiotic or Shameless Liars
No Non-Religious Marriages in Kern County
A Voice of Reason in Kern Co.
Kern Co. (Bakersfield) Clerk Ann K. Barnett Cancels Straight Weddings
More Bakersfield Bigotry
Bakersfield – Not a Place to Plan Your Wedding

Chad Vegas – Kern Co. School Board Trustee’s Double Standard

Chad Vegas is the pastor of Sovereign Grace Church in Bakersfield. He is also a trustee on the board of the Kern High School District.

Two things happened recently that caught Vegas’ attention. One, the County Clerk stopping all civil marriages, you know about. The other is a little local snafu.

It seems at the local highschool, “the outgoing president of the school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes, came up with the idea of giving a Bible to any graduating senior who wanted one. Permission was asked for and received, money raised and Bibles bought.” (the Bakersfield Californian) But a confusion arose and an assistant superintendant ordered that the give-away be stopped.

The official since realized his error and apologized.

“It was not my intent to prohibit or stop the distribution of bibles or to violate anyone’s freedom of expression. My concern was only that the setup for the distribution appeared to be during a school-sponsored activity and not in a common area.”

The kids were denied their rights and appropriate steps are being reviewed to determine the proper action at this time. But that isn’t good enough for Chad Vegas.

The board member [Vegas] said he intends to meet with Superintendent Don Carter next week and will ask the board to publicly apologize to the FCA and agree to train faculty and staff on “free speech and religious rights of students and faculty.”

“I am highly offended that one of our superintendents would violate the U.S. Constitution for personal reasons,” Vegas said. “This kind of behavior is unacceptable.”

Well, I think I’d have to agree with that…

But then there’s the situation with civil marriages.

The Kern Democrats have posted on their site a copy of the June 10th email that Vegas sent out to all the County Supervisors:

Dear County Supervisor,

I am writing to make you aware of my ardent support for Ann Barnett. Please support her. Further, please know that I will work vigorously to remove from office any supervisor that does not support her in this difficult time. There is no more important political issue to the evangelical church. As we face one of the most important constitutional issues in the history of this great Republic, I want to make it clear that nothing short of complete opposition to homosexual marriage will be tolerated! As you consider your options, I remind you of the Apostle Peter in Acts 4 who asked, “should we obey man or God?” The choice is clear! Please don’t hide behind your oath on an issue this important. Your oath was to uphold the constitution, not to uphold every stupid law or judicial decision that comes around. At times, civil disobedience is the only way to keep your oath.

Thanks, Chad Vegas

Sooooo…. Mr. Vegas, I guess you believe in constitutional rights of students with Bibles, but not the constitutional rights of gays with marriage licenses. Keep the laws that allow Bible distribution, break the laws that allow same-sex couples to marry.

I never thought I’d begin to feel sorry for the residents of Kern County.

See also:
Kern Co. Supervisors Reject Anti-Gay Ordinance
Calaveras County Joins Kern and Butte
Barnett Breaks Her Media Silence – Stupidly, of Course
Chad Vegas – Kern Co. School Board Trustee’s Double Standard
Ann Barnett Annoys Local Bakersfield Media
Two More California Counties Stop Officiating at Weddings
CA Anti-Gays Either Completely Idiotic or Shameless Liars
No Non-Religious Marriages in Kern County
A Voice of Reason in Kern Co.
Kern Co. (Bakersfield) Clerk Ann K. Barnett Cancels Straight Weddings
More Bakersfield Bigotry
Bakersfield – Not a Place to Plan Your Wedding

(hat tip Good As You)

San Diego Journalist Whines About Marriage

San Diego Union-Tribune journalist, Craig Gustafson, just can’t understand why the San Diego County Clerk isn’t joining Ann Barnett in her anti-gay parade. You can almost hear the whine in his voice.

San Diego County, known for decades as a bastion of conservatism, is proceeding with gay marriage ceremonies Tuesday even though officials don’t necessarily have to.

Why, there’ve been 220 complaints!!! And the Clerk is a Republican!!! And the County voted by 63% in 2000 to ban gay marriage!!!

But County Clerk Greg Smith isn’t willing to cut off all marriage to spite gay couples.

Many urge the county to avoid gay nuptials in a similar fashion to Butte and Kern – at least until voters weigh in on a constitutional amendment in November that would ban gay marriage.

Smith, a Republican, has no such plans.

“Absolutely not,” he said.

Someone should punish him. How about “the supervisors – who do control Smith’s budget”?

Charles LiMandri, a Rancho Santa Fe attorney and general counsel to the National Organization for Marriage, said the supervisors should be courageous enough to speak out. LiMandri said they should be trumpeting the people’s will as displayed in Proposition 22.

“I’m disappointed that our leaders aren’t doing their jobs,” he said.

But the Board of Supervisors – all of whom are Republicans!! – aren’t willing to punish him. Why, if they aren’t going to be homophobes, what are they there for?!?

Previously, the San Diego County supervisors have been willing to take stands on social issues.

Sigh. The Supervisors weren’t even willing to scream their opposition to gay marriage. Only one made the obligatory “Personally, I believe that marriage is best defined as being between a man and woman” comment, and the others won’t comment at all. (Their email addresses are included in a sidebox so the outrage can pour in).

Poor Gustufson, it sucks to be anti-gay in San Diego.

Saddleback Church To Welcome Gay Dads?

Not quite. But that’s one half of two conflicting messages coming from Timothy Egan’s New York Times blog. Egan reports that:

This Father’s Day, one of most popular pastors in America will open his megachurch to homosexual dads, an event that would usually signal an extreme weather alert from old guard Republican evangelical leaders.

But by welcoming gay fathers into his Southern California flock, Rick Warren, author of the “The Purpose Driven Life,” is not just living up to the highest standards of Christian fellowship, he’s turning the page on a particularly embarrassing part of our politics.

Which would be great news, if the story were accurate. Egan uses that story to launch a celebration of conservatives generally appearing to abandon the culture wars. But then after he’s done celebrating, Egan has this little postscript appended to the end of his post:

POSTSCRIPT: Following news of the plan by gay fathers to attend Saddleback Church this coming Sunday, the church’s pastor, Rev. Rick Warren, has issued a statement clarifying the church’s role. “We did not invite this group, and I will not be meeting with them,” he said, adding that he had a previous commitment and would not be in church on Sunday.

So much for celebrating.

The First Picture I Ever Took

It’s not too late to submit your essay about what your father means to you. As I said before, you can do it any way you like: It can be an essay, a poem, photos, video, podcast — whatever motivates you. It can be about your father, your grandfather, your neighbor’s father, your stepfather, your kid’s father, or your favorite father figure.

We’ve gotten three so far, from Tony K. and Garrett and Ben. Yours could be next. Just send it to Superdad@boxturtlebulletin.com between now and midnight Sunday night. The best submission gets a T-shirt.

I mentioned earlier that we have very few pictures of my dad, simply because he was always the one taking the pictures. Like this one of me (left, about six years old) and my younger brother (right) playing in the back yard. Who knows why he decided to go outside and take this picture. Maybe he just wanted to finish up a roll and get it developed. Who knows?

But what I do remember is that it was an unusually bright, spring day, and that we were going to move soon to the town that I would eventually regard as my home town. I also remember on that spring day that I didn’t want my picture taken, but I did want to take a picture of my dad.

And so I asked him. “Dad, can I take your picture? Please?”

Now like I said, he took all the pictures. He had a brand new Kodak Instamatic, a fancy jobber with an automatic winder. This baby was his camera. And so I also remember the sense of awesome responsibility I felt as he carefully placed it into my two small hands, wrapped the cord around my wrist so I wouldn’t drop it, and showed me how to slowly, slowly press the shutter so the camera wouldn’t jerk and take a blurry picture.

And so there I was — with my dad’s camera! — ready to take my very first photo.

And there you have it. The very first picture I ever took. That look on his face? I think he’s still worried that I’m going to drop his camera, but he let me take the picture anyway. Because that’s the way he was, worried sometimes but supportive always.

So, what about your dad?

Update: My goodness, I just looked at the calendar. It was twenty-five years ago today that dad passed away. He’s much loved and much missed still.

Ann Barnett Annoys Local Bakersfield Media

Anti-gay Kern County Clerk Ann K. Barnett is making no friends in Bakersfield. She’s royally annoyed the local Channel 29 Eyewitness News by denying them the ability to videotape where they had in the past and then calling the police on them. And she’s infuriating the local County Counsel by stubbornly refusing to follow his legal advice and to cooperate with media.

She’s refering everyone to the Alliance Defense Fund.

There’s no question that Barnett is anti-gay. But she’s also just not very bright. Every time she opens her mouth the local news shows that she’s lying. Check out the articles and the two video Eyewitness News reports.

See also:
Kern Co. Supervisors Reject Anti-Gay Ordinance
Calaveras County Joins Kern and Butte
Barnett Breaks Her Media Silence – Stupidly, of Course
Chad Vegas – Kern Co. School Board Trustee’s Double Standard
Ann Barnett Annoys Local Bakersfield Media
Two More California Counties Stop Officiating at Weddings
CA Anti-Gays Either Completely Idiotic or Shameless Liars
No Non-Religious Marriages in Kern County
A Voice of Reason in Kern Co.
Kern Co. (Bakersfield) Clerk Ann K. Barnett Cancels Straight Weddings
More Bakersfield Bigotry
Bakersfield – Not a Place to Plan Your Wedding

Randy Thomasson Takes his Wackiness to Court

Judges must shudder when they see the Campaign for Children and Families heading their way. Their filings are much more about public display and appeal to donors than they are about the law.

Consider the most recent bit of nonsense.

The Campaign for Children and Families is asking the San Francisco-based 1st District Court of Appeal to block county clerks from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, arguing that the Legislature needs time to change various laws regulating marriages in California.

Say what?

Well here’s the logic of CCF’s Randy Thomasson: because the Supreme Court directed the District Court of Appeal to administer the ruling, then they can just ignore the Supreme Court’s effective date and decide on their own to hold everyone up until they get around to it some time in the distant future.

Ummm. Nope.

The 1st District is bound by Supreme Court precedent, but Randy Thomasson, the campaign’s president, said the appeals court must step in and “prevent the legal chaos of same-sex marriages about to erupt in California.” Any decision from the 1st District can be appealed to the state Supreme Court.

Now Randy isn’t the brightest tool in the shed, but even he should be able to see that District courts don’t rank over Supreme courts.

Civil rights lawyers dismissed the legal move as “frivolous.”

“This is a nonevent,” said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights. “It will have no effect.”

But Randy got his name in print again. And now some judge has to read this crap and pretend like it is a legitimate filing.

A Small Story

This Father’s Day message is from Ben. You can also see Father’s Day Messages from Tony K. and Garrett.

This is just a small story.

I was raised by my biological family. My family was (and is) not just a little bit strange — ironically, I think I am the only one of four children that did not come out damaged. My Dad was OK — a good man with strong values and a good mind. He raised me properly, and I think I turned out well. But something was missing with him — I suspect it was what I call the gay Oedipus thing. My Dad recognized that I was very different from him (or entirely too similar to–take your pick) , and so we were perhaps not as close as we could have been, though we certainly had a decent relationship.

When I was 13, I met the boy who became my best friend, and his family became my family. I would escape there every weekend that I could. What a world of difference in how I was perceived and treated! John’s father, Dick, became a second father to me, in many ways, the father I always wanted, though he was far crazier in a lot of ways than my own father. His wife, Virginia, similarly became the mother I always wanted– loving and kind and supportive, not even just a little bit crazy, unlike my mother. They were the ones who showed up for my senior year choral concert– my own parents didn’t like classical music, and couldn’t be bothered. In all ways, Dick and Virginia were great parents to me, as they were with their own children.

Dick and Virginia were also very conservative and Christian. During the Watts riots, he said if “they” came near his house, he’d pull out his shotgun, sit on the front lawn and “pick off his limit”. Yes, THAT conservative.

For this reason, I was very hesitant to tell them I was gay. They were in fact the very last people I told, and I told them because I had made the commitment to myself that there would be no more lies. If I lost them, then I lost lost them.

So, I wrote them a long letter explaining the whole thing. I few weeks later, I received a response. Their words have always been engraved on my heart:

“It makes no difference to us. You are our son and we love you. We’re glad you loved us enough to tell us.”

Do you have something you want to share for father’s day? Please send it to Superdad@boxturtlebulletin.com.

What Is A Young Gay Man’s Life Worth?

About a year and a half, with parole.

That’s the sentence that Stephen Moller received today for the death of Sean Kennedy. Sean, 20, was attacked outside a Greenville County, S.C. bar on May 16, 2007. Witnesses said that Moller shouted anti-gay epithets at Kennedy before attacking him. Sean died of his injuries.

Moller was originally charged with murder, but the grand jury reduced the charge to involuntary manslaughter. Moller pleaded guilty to those reduced charges and was sentenced to five years, reduced to three, minus seven months for time served. Moller’s attorney said that when all is said and done, Moller will probably serve about a year and a half.

In a statement in court today, Moller shirked responsibility for his crime, saying:

“I wish that young people weren’t allowed to be out late at night and the bars were not allowed to serve them alcohol. I think if that hadn’t taken place, we wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t be here today.”

But contrast Moller’s statement to the court with his taunting phone call to a friend of Sean’s fifteen minutes after the assault:

Hey. (laughter) Whoa stop. (laughter) Hey, I was just wondering how your boyfriend’s feeling right about now. (laughter) (??) knocked the f— out. (laughter). The f—— faggot. He ought to never stick his mother-f—— nose (??) Where are you going? Just a minute. (laughter). Yea boy, your boy is knocked out, man. The mother——-. Tell him he owes me $500.00 for breaking my god—- hand on his teeth that f—— bitch”

Involuntary manslaughter. A year and a half.

Elke Kennedy, Sean’s mother, reacted this way:

“There was no justice today for Sean. The sentence that Stephen Moller received, in my opinion, is a joke and a slap on the wrist. Once again, it proves that in South Carolina there is no justice.”

South Carolina has no hate crime law covering sexual orientation. But hey, South Carolina Equality points out that torturing animals can get you five years in prison.

Killing a gay man? Half that.

Ms. Kennedy is right. There is no justice today.

Norway Becomes Sixth Nation to Provide Marriage Equality

According to GayMormonBoy, who happens to read Norwegian, same-sex marriage has now passed the Parliament in Norway.

They join

Netherlands – 2001
Belgium – 2003
Canada – 2005
Spain – 2005
South Africa – 2006

UPDATE

Pink News is confirming the news with an article in English