Box Turtle Bulletin

Gene Robinson, Obama Inaugural Committee Address Snub

Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson appeared on today’s National Public Radio program “Talk of the Nation” to discuss the omission of his invocation from HBO’s nationwide broadcast of the Inaugural concert. (Audio will be available online at approximately 6:00 p.m. EST.) NPR News also clarified that the reason they didn’t carry the Bishop’s invocation was because they were relying on HBO’s feed.

In remarks to NPR, Bishop Robinson said that he learned that he would be excluded from the broadcast when he saw a copy of the final schedule, which had him speaking at 2:25 and the broadcast starting at 2:30. He didn’t see the schedule until sometime shortly before he went on.

The live broadcast began with the President-elect and vice-President elect ascending the dais, which means they weren’t publicly present when Bishop Robinson delivered his invocation. This gives rise to suspicions that they didn’t want to be seen photographed with Bishop Robinson on the same stage.

Meanwhile, the Presidential Inauguration Committee communications director Josh Earnest sent a statement to Americablog explaining that they “regret the error”:

“We had always intended and planned for Rt. Rev. Robinson’s invocation to be included in the televised portion of yesterday’s program. We regret the error in executing this plan – but are gratified that hundreds of thousands of people who gathered on the mall heard his eloquent prayer for our nation that was a fitting start to our event.”

It seems to me that so many people fully expected to see Bishop Robinson’s very public presence as an acknowledgement that LGBT concerns were being taken seriously by the incoming administration — especially after the seething anger over Rick Warren’s pick to deliver the invocation at the Inauguration just days after he compared gay relationships to incest, child rape and polygamy.

Seeing Bishop onstage with the Obama and Biden would have been a tremendously healing, uniting experience. Instead, the episode did nothing but open old wounds and widen the gulf of mistrust which has emerged between the LGBT community and the incoming administration. Simply saying “we regret the error” doesn’t cut it. Not without a better explanation of how such a terrible tin-ear blunder could have occurred in the first place.

HBO Says They’re Not To Blame For Robinson’s Omission In Inaugural Concert Special

Sunday afternoon, HBO broadcast the “We Are One” Inaugural Celebration live from the Lincoln Memorial. Openly gay bishop Gene Robinson delivered the invocation before the concert, but his prayer was omitted from HBO’s free nationwide broadcast. AfterElton contacted HBO Sunday night to ask about Rev. Robinson’s exclusion:

HBO said via email, “The producer of the concert has said that the Presidential Inaugural Committee made the decision to keep the invocation as part of the pre-show.”

Uncertain as to whether or not that meant that HBO was contractually prevented from airing the pre-show, we followed up, but none of the spokespeople available Sunday night could answer that question with absolute certainty. However, it does seem that the network’s position is that they had nothing to do with the decision. We have also contacted a spokesperson from the Presidential Inauguration Committee (PIC) for their explanation and will post what we learn either from PIC or HBO.

Rev. Robinson’s exclusion was deeply disappointing to millions of LGBT Americans. When Obama’s Inauguration Committee announced that Rev. Robinson would give the invocation for the Inaugural Concert, it was seen as an olive branch to the LGBT community which had been angered over Rick Warren’s selection to lead the invocation during the inauguration itself. The announcement concerning Rick Warren came just days after he compared gay relationships to incest, child rape and polygamy.

Obama’s team needs to come clean on this one. They need to admit either that they didn’t intend for Rev. Robinson to be seen on nationwide television, or that someone severely screwed up. This olive branch came with too many thorns to be ignored and swept under the rug.

The official announcement concerning the concert lineup which included mention of Rev. Robinson’s invocation made no distinction between “pre-show” and the lineup which would be broadcast nationwide. In fact, the announcement instead brags that the event would be “kicking off the most open and accessible Inauguration in history” — right after the HBO programming announcement. LGBT Americans who tuned in to watch the historic moment didn’t learn that Rev. Robinson had already given his invicocation until long after the broadcast had begin. Rev. Robinson’s invocation came at about ten minutes before the start of the broadcast.

Even many of those in attendance missed Robinson’s prayer. As he began to speak, sound was cut off to many of the speakers, making him inaudible to most of the estimated 500,000 people who gathered at Mall.

A video of Rev. Robinson’s invocation has made it onto YouTube. While we’re grateful that someone in the crowd with a videocam did an excellent job in capturing this moment, we suspect that Warren’s YouTube will come with somewhat better production values.

Gene Robinson’s Invocation Shoved Into HBO’s Closet

When the Obama Inaugural committee announced that the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal Bishop, would deliver the invocation at the “We Are The One” concert at the Lincoln Memorial, it was seen as an olive branch to the gay community, still seething over the selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation for the Inauguration itself.

The announcement that Rick Warren was selected came just days after Warren compared gay relationships to incest, child rape and polygamy. But by pointing out that Rev. Robinson’s invocation would come at the start of the HBO-aired live concert in front of one of America’s best-loved memorials, this high-profile announcement was portrayed as a separate-but-almost-equal bookend to Warren’s invocation at the Capital steps.

Well, except it turned out not to be nearly so equal. In yet another deep insult to injury, HBO did not air Rev. Robinson’s invocation. The salve to the gay community meant to calm the outrage over Warren’s selection was for naught. Hundreds of millions around the world will hear Warren’s invocation on Tuesday. But today, the only ones to hear Rev. Robinson’s prayer were those thousands who were present at the mall. Robinson’s prayer wasn’t aired live, nor was it aired during the 7:00 p.m. rebroadcast.

And guess what else was shoved into the closet?  The D.C. Gay Men’s Chorus singing with Josh Groban. Unlike every other performer, they came and went without being identified.

These snubs are inexcusable. Did HBO cave in the face of conservative outcries over Rev. Robinson’s selection for this event? Did the Inaugural committee rush Rev. Robinson onstage and off before the broadcast was slated to begin? Whatever the case may be, this is a cold slap. HBO has some serious explaining to do, as does the Inaugural committee.

Harvey Milk is screaming in his metaphorical grave right now.

Update: HBO says they’re not to blame for Rev. Robinson’s omission.

Click here to read Rev. Robinson’s invocation.

Irene Monroe on Prop 8 and Black Homophobia

Rev. Irene Monroe, Ford Fellow and doctoral candidate at Harvard Divinity School, has a short guest opinion in the January-February 2009 issue of The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide about  Prop 8 and Black homophobia. This op-ed reworks and consolidates some of the themes she expressed on  November 11 when many in the LGBT community were scapegoating African-Americans for Prop 8’s passage.

Rev. Monroe’s G&LRW opinion piece isn’t available online, but I thought these few short paragraphs were good food for thought. She dismisses religion as a justification for the Black vote, pointing out that “as African Americans we have always been willing to disregard damning passages from scriptures about us, such as those that cursed all people of African ancestry (‘the curse of Ham,’ Genesis 9:18-27) or advocated slavery (Ephesians 6:5-8).” She also acknowledges the issues of racism in the broader LGBT community, but she doesn’t see that as an excuse for Black homophobia either:

While it is true that the whole GLBT community needs to work on its racism, white privilege, and single-issue platforms that thwarts efforts for coalition building with both straight and queer communities of color, the African-American community needs to work on its homophobia. No more excuses.

But there’s something else about Prop 8 she finds troubling:

In the end, much of the blame for the passage of Prop 8 rightly belongs not to the voters themselves, whether black or otherwise, or even to religion, but instead to the government apparatus that allowed a basic civil right to be put to a popular referendum. If my enslaved ancestors had waited for their slaveholders to free them predicated on a ballot vote, we wouldn’t be living in the America we know today. And Barack Obama would not be our new president.

Rev. Irene Monroe is the author of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible Prayers for Not-So-Everyday Moments.

LaBarbera Award: Gregory D. Lee

Never heard of him? Me neither. Gregory D. Lee is one of those “nationally syndicated columnists” that nobody has ever heard of, writing for a syndicate that nobody has ever heard of. I hesitated to give this unknown any attention, but since he’s already been featured on the Huffington Post, I figure this humble blog won’t raise his profile to any dangerous heights. So here goes.

The reason Lee is our latest LaBarbera Award winner is very simple. It all comes down to his very simple reason why gays want to see an end to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”:

[Y]ou need to understand that homosexuals predominantly want to serve in the military in order to have access to people their own age with whom to engage in sex. It’s just that simple. It’s all about sex, and not about serving the nation. It is not unheard of to have a lesbian officer coerce a lower enlisted woman into engaging in lesbian sexual activity. “I’m an officer and you’re a private, who are they going to believe if you tell them I forced you to have sex with me?” Or two male soldiers go out on the town. One has too much to drink, and when they return to the barracks, he passes out in his buddy’s room. When he wakes up, his “buddy” is performing fellatio on him. These are two actual cases, and many more like them have occurred, which prompted the ban to begin with.

Now you see, I never would have thought of that. In fact, the whole reason I didn’t join the military was because I thought basic training, bad haircuts and having to wear drab olive clothing was just way too much trouble to go through just to get laid.

Open Letters to Rick Warren from Faith In America

Spurred on by the Warren controversy, Faith In America has launched a new project, “Can You Understand the Harm?”, which includes videos of founder Mitchell Gold of Hickory, N.C., and Tracey Zoeller of Chicago, IL. The videos and open letters are directed to Rev. Rick Warren and other faith leaders, and they were written to explain the “harm caused to gay Americans by religion-based bigotry, prejudice and discrimination.”

Mitchell Gold is the author of Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America. He is also the founder of Faith In America. Here he is reading his open letter to Rick Warren:

Tracey Zoeller is the author of the young adult novel, The Pastor’s Daughter.

In addition, Faith In America collected more than twenty letters (PDF: 420 KB/19 pages) to send to Warren.

CDC Reports Significant Declines In HIV Infection Rates

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of people living with HIV and AIDS continues to rise as antiretroviral medication continues to prolong lives. In fact, we reported on a study last summer which showed that life-expectancy for those infected with HIV is now approaching normal. While nobody likes to see the number of people living with HIV/AIDS continue to increase, we also noted another CDC study which showed that the number of new HIV infections has remained relatively flat over the past ten years, a finding that is consistent with the fact that new AIDS cases has actually been declining slightly over the same period.

Now the CDC reports some more good news which sheds some light into how the number of HIV infections have remained so flat: The infection rate has been steadily declining since the 1980’s:

Researchers found that the HIV transmission rate has declined dramatically since the early days of the epidemic. In 1980, for example, when the disease was still undetected, the transmission rate was 92 percent, meaning there were 92 transmissions per 100 persons living with HIV at the time. After the identification of AIDS, and later HIV, and the implementation of HIV testing and other prevention efforts, transmission rates began to decline.

Since the peak level of new infections in the mid-1980s, just prior to the introduction of HIV testing, the transmission rate has declined by approximately 89 percent (from 44 transmissions per 100 persons living with HIV in 1984 to five transmissions per 100 persons living with HIV in 2006). Over the last decade, as prevention efforts have been expanded and improved treatments for HIV became available, the transmission rate has declined by 33 percent (from an estimated eight transmissions per 100 persons living with HIV in 1997 to five in 2006). Five transmissions per 100 persons living with HIV in 2006 means more than 95 percent of persons living with HIV did not transmit the infection that year.

The large fluctuations in the graph prior to 1980 are due to the relatively small numbers of persons living with HIV at that time and the limited surveillance structures that were in place.

The analysis, conducted by Drs. David R Holtgrave, H. Irene Hall, Philip H. Rhodes, and Richard J. Wolitski, will be published in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

[Hat tip: Michael Petrelis]

Civil Rights Leader To Rick Warren: I Must Assume You Do Not Care About Religion-Based Bigotry

As a medical student in Nashville from 1957 to 1961, Rodney Powell became a student protest leader in the African-American civil rights movement. Since then, Dr. Powell has continued his activism in support of African-Americans and LGBT Americans.

In this video, Dr. Powell find it “astounding” that Rev. Rick Warren was invited to deliver the keynote address on Sunday at a Martin Luther King Jr. celebration service at King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta: “Mr. Warren, I do not believe that Dr. King would find your spiritual leadership unifying, and I’m certain he would not find it part of his vision for America as a beloved community. … Your pastoral leadership would not please Dr. King, and it certainly does not honor him.”

Rodney Powell serves on the board of directors of Faith In America.

LaBarbera Award: Gary Cass

We’ve talked about Gary Cass before. He’s the Christian Reconstructionist who has a computer keyboard he calls the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission. He’s put out another doozy of a press release, warning parents that — gasp! — President-elect Barack Obama’s Inauguration will be among the “most perverted in history”:

Barack Obama’s inauguration will have the dubious distinction of being the most perverted in our nation’s history. Obama is not being subtle about either. One of America’s most radical and destructive homosexual activists, “Bishop” Vickie Eugene Robinson of New Hampshire, in official inaugural activities will be offering the invocation at the Lincoln Memorial.

Oh dear, and the “perversion” doesn’t end there. There’s the parade:

To ensure no one misses the perversion, the Inaugural parade will include a homosexual marching band with their rainbow flags flying proud with millions of our nation’s children watching. This is the same band that proudly advertises that it will march in the homosexual Southern Decadence parade, known for its vulgarity and lewd acts in public.

This is where His Pornstachiness lets his fantasies get the better of him:

“In order to be consistent in using this kind of reasoning, Obama ought to have a stripper lead off the inaugural parade followed by the Hell’s Angel’s Motorcycle Drill Team followed by the Crips Precision Handgun Corp. and the Transvestite Fashion Police. Just because something exists in society does not mean it is good and is to be paraded in front of everyone, especially children,” said Dr. Cass.

Anti-Gay Tennesee Republican Loses Sure-Thing Speaker Position

A funny thing happened on Tuesday in Tennessee.

In the last election the Republican Party took control of the House for the first time in 40 years. And Jason Mumpower went on Tuesday to be annointed as the new Republican Speaker of the House.

But Mumpower’s day didn’t go as well as he imagined it would. To his surprise, all 49 Democrats voted for Republican Kent Williams… and so did Williams, giving him a 50 – 49 majority.

Williams went on to vote with the Democrats to elect Lois DeBerry as speaker pro tempore. Needless to say, this didn’t make Tennessee Republican Party Chairwoman Robin Smith very happy. She’s planning to expel Williams from the Party.

“Action will begin immediately to address the actions of Rep. Kent Williams,” said Smith. “His commitment today was not to Republican principles, but to the blind and shameless pursuit of personal power. He cast his vote for a pro-tax, pro-gay, pro-abortion, anti-gun liberal Democrat to preside in leadership against all 49 of his Republican colleagues.”

Now I don’t know how supportive Williams is of the community, but as for Jason Mumpower, the man he displaced,

One of the first bills Mumpower sponsored after his election was a 1997 measure to prohibit gay couples from becoming foster parents.

His bill didn’t pass in 1997 and now he’s lost his latest play for power but somehow I just can’t bring myself to feel sorry for Mumpower.

Mary Frances Berry On Gay Civil Rights and Homophobia

Dr. Mary Frances Berry has an op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times which is very appropriate to the discussions taking place in this forum these past few weeks. She’s was the chairwoman of the Commission on Civil Rights from 1993 to 2004, and is the author of And Justice for All: The United States Commission on Civil Rights and the Continuing Struggle for Freedom in America.

In her op-ed, Dr. Berry describes the commission she once headed as having been “moribund” ever since the Reagan years when appointed commissioners began to see themselves as “agents of the presidential administration rather than as independent watchdogs.” Which is why she recommends that President-elect Barack Obama disband the commission and replace it with a new one that would address the rights of many groups, including gays:

In the 1950s, race relations in America generated escalating tension and strife. As Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told President Dwight Eisenhower, other nations vilified us for our treatment of “negroes” as less-than-first-class citizens. It was in this context that Congress, in 1957, granted Eisenhower’s request for an independent civil rights commission to “put the facts on top of the table.”

The commission conducted interviews and public hearings, prepared detailed reports and recommended new protections that would ultimately be passed in the form of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These laws embodied the goals of the protestors who marched, went to jail and died to end racial discrimination.

The commission became what the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, who was the chairman from 1969 to 1972, called the “conscience of the government” on civil rights issues.

There is no need to analogize the battle for the rights of gay and lesbian people to the struggle of African Americans to overcome slavery, Jim Crow and continued discrimination. But as Coretta Scott King said to me as she tried to imagine what position the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would take on “don’t ask, don’t tell”: “What’s the yardstick by which we should decide that gay rights are less important than other human rights we care about?”

While I was scouring around the Internet looking for a photo of Dr. Berry, I found this from December 2006.  Dr. Berry gave the keynote address at Minnesota’s 23rd Annual Human Rights Day Conference, in which, among many other things, she addressed the problem of homophobia in the Black church:

The judgmentalness is perpetuated by churches and people who are religious and who ought to have compassion, who if you turn on the gospel radio station as I do every morning and when I’m out running I listen to the gospel, and there’s always some preacher coming on talking about people being homosexuals and blah blah blah, and how they should do this, and why AIDS is some of their sin or some dog-gone stupid thing. And all I can think about is that there are two kinds of people that if they didn’t go to church on Sunday morning, the black church would close. … One kind of people — black women. If black women didn’t go to church on Sunday, if we all just decided not to go, church would close. The other is that if gay men didn’t go to church, it would close. There would be nobody singing in the choir, wouldn’t be no music director, and in some cases, wouldn’t be a preacher.

Hitler, Lenin , Mao, and Warren: “Whatever It Takes”

If there’s any question about whether Rick Warren is interested in power rather than faith, just watch this:

Dame Edna Launches Cosmetics Line

She missed the holiday shopping season, but Dame Edna works in a time and fashion all her own. Following in the footsteps of any number of other famous celebrities and fashion trendsetters, Dame Edna now has a line of cosmetics:

“I’m probably the most loved woman in Australia next to Mrs Rudd. I’m a role model. So many women copy me it’s ridiculous.”

The colours of the 17 products in the range are inspired by Dame Edna, with titles like Kanga Rouge and Possum Nose Pink.”The colour on my eyes is Varicose Violet and it’s inspired by my mother’s legs,” Dame Edna said.

Al Sharpton: “We Know You’re Not Preaching The Bible”

Rev. Al Sharpton spoke last Sunday at the launch of the Alliance of Affirming Faith-Based Organizations in Atlanta. During his talk he called out the churches who seemed to be concerned only about one issue:

“It amazes me when I looked at California and saw churches that had nothing to say about police brutality, nothing to say when a young black boy was shot while he was wearing police handcuffs, nothing to say when the they overturned affirmative action, nothing to say when people were being delegated into poverty, yet they were organizing and mobilizing to stop consenting adults from choosing their life partners,” Sharpton told a packed audience on Jan. 11.

“There is something immoral and sick about using all of that power to not end brutality and poverty, but to break into people’s bedrooms and claim that God sent you,” Sharpton added.

… We know you’re not preaching the Bible, because if you were preaching the Bible we would have heard from you,” Sharpton said. “We would have heard from you when people were starving in California, when they deregulated the economy and crashed Wall Street you had nothing to say. When [alleged Ponzi schemer Bernie] Madoff made off with the money, you had nothing to say. When Bush took us to war chasing weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there you had nothing to say. … But all of a sudden when Proposition 8 came out you had so much to say, but since you stepped in the rain, we gonna step in the rain with you.”

Amen to that.

The Alliance was begun by Rev. Dennis Meredith, who recently came out as bisexual. The Alliance also includes Dr. Kenneth Samuel, pastor of Victory for the World Church; Rev. Paul Graetz of First Metropolitan Community Church; Rev. Geoffrey Hoare of All Saints Episcopal Church; and Rabbi Joshua Lesser of Congregation Bet Haverim.

Proof of Mormon Church’s Direct Involvment In Prop 8

The American News Project has prepared a video investigating the the Mormon Church’s lack of disclosure about direct expenditures on Proposition 8. They claim to have only spent a few thousand dollars, but ANP obtained a copy of a telecast in which they promised to perform a number of very expensive services for the Yes on 8 Campaign.

The church is currently under investigation by the California State Fair Elections Commission.