Box Turtle Bulletin

Happy Bicentennial, Mr. President

History has its favorites. Circumstances and personality sometimes meet in such a way as to forever bind a name with world changing events. And time strips away those conflicting realities that may contradict the myth leaving us with an untarnished champion, someone greater than their experiences, a symbol of an ideal.

One such man who stands for an institution greater than he made it is President Abraham Lincoln. Honest Abe is the American Hero, the greatest president that ever presided; a poor boy who though hard work and humble wit advanced to save the nation in its most perilous hour. And although there is a current movement to rehumanize the man, in the minds of most he will be the Great Emancipator, the one who held the Union together and freed the slaves.

Four years ago, C.A. Tripp (posthumously) published The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, in which he argues that Lincoln was primarily same-sex attracted. This book was met with a flood of indignant rebuttals.

I found Tripp’s book to be fascinating, though not necessarily proof. Tripp presented only circumstantial evidence and, though there was a lot of it, there was no smoking gun.

But I found those who argued against Tripp to have but the flimsiest of denials for Tripp’s strongest points (“there was a bed shortage and men often shared beds for years and wrote flowery love notes to each other”), accompanied by an absolute silence on his subsidiary evidence (surely there was no bed shortage in the White House). They seemed more motivated by protecting Lincoln’s image from such a ‘vile slander’ than they did in applying any professional curiosity to the matter.

But there is a lesson to be learned. We all want to own a part of President Lincoln and his legacy. Lincoln – a flawed man all too human – took the right positions on the right issues and transcended his own mortality.

On this, the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, let us all strive to live so that others in distant decades will want to claim us as their own.

Another Cost of Prop 8 Support

The Terrence Caster family gave nearly $700,000 to the Yes on 8 Campaign. And while Californians Against Hate has declared a boycott on the family’s A-1 Self Storage company, Caster has received little publicized impact.

But now he has suffered his first high visibility consequence.

Ion Theatre, a small but well-regarded young theater company, has vacated its performance space in what it calls a protest of the property owner’s personal contributions to Proposition 8, the November ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California.

The theater’s directors were gracious, wishing Caster no harm, but could not find it within themselves to make business decisions that would “funnel money to an organization that was seeking aggressively to prohibit people’s rights”.

Well, it’s hard to argue with that.

Utah Governor Supports Gay Rights

Jon Huntsman, Jr., the Mormon Republican Governor of Utah, has come out in support of gay rights. (Salt Lake Tribune)

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., a spokeswoman said Monday, backs Equality Utah’s Common Ground Initiative, a legislative effort that would provide some rights to gay and transgender Utahns. Even more, the Republican governor favors civil unions.

ABC4

ABC 4 asked Huntsman, “You support civil unions?”

Gov. Jon Huntsman replied, “Well, its something I have given a lot of thought to and the answer is yes.”

“I believe in traditional marriage. I always have. But I also believe there’s more we can do in terms of enhancing those individual rights for others,” said Huntsman.

This is a rather unexpected turn of events. And one that caught many in Utah state politics off guard.

However, Jon Huntsman may be playing to a bigger audience than his neighbors. As a successful and popular governor, Huntsman is considered as a potential Republican Presidential nominee in 2012.

If this is part of Governor Huntsman’s strategy to craft his image for Nominee Huntsman, it tells us something interesting about what a conservative Republican in a conservative state predicts American attitudes towards gay couples will be in four years. But whatever his motivation, Huntsman’s support is very welcome.

Focus On The Closet

Natalie Davis, at the Truth Wins Out blog, found a real gem a poll taking place on the Focus On the Family web site. The question asks, “How do you plan to spend valentine’s Day?” Forty percent answered simply “spending extra time with a loved one,” which she thought was sensible. The second place answer was, well, probably truer than what Focus would normally admit.

North Carolina Targeted For Anti-Gay Amendment

North Carolina is the only Southern state without an anti-gay marriage amendment. The Winston-Salem-based group, Return America, has announced that they will hold a thousands-strong rally at the North Carolina Legislative Building on March 3. The Christian Action League and NC4Marriage are also supporting the rally.

On Feb 22, NC4Marriage will urge pastors and churches to participate in special services for “Marriage Sunday”. That day will also be used to inform congregants about the rally a week later.

Equality North Carolina plan a their own rally at the Capital for March 24.

Porno Pete Brings Deliverance To Ohio

Peter LaBarbera called out his minions to protest an S&M conference taking place in the Columbus, Ohio suburb of Worthington. Here’s who turned out:

“Is it a homo paper?” asked a scruffy 50+ man who spoke broken English with an Appalachian twang. In one hand he waved a large sign with the anagram “Gross Anus Yearning Sodomists” (whatever in the world that means) and in the other, he had two naked Ken dolls taped together in the position commonly referred to as “doggy style”.

(Imagine, a grown man buying two Ken dolls, stripping them down, brainstorming the most pornographic position for them, then taping them together. They were taped pretty tightly, too, with clear tape, so you know he spent a lot of time on it. This image would be hilarious if they weren’t so adamant about attributing their opinions to God himself.)

Now for the record, I grew up in Appalachia and I do still enjoy going home whenever I can. I’m not a fan of the stereotypes, and I always thought the movie Deliverance was little more than a 109-minute running cheap shot. But even though I still have something of an Appalachian twang left in me (at least, what hasn’t been corrupted by my fifteen years in Dallas), I’ll let that go this time. Go ahead and cue the banjos. He deserves it. He’s got less sense than God gave fleas.

The reporter continues:

…The two women picketing alongside him swarmed me. “If you hate this then you hate god!” said the first woman, brandishing her sign towards me. She preached the loudest of them all. As she also refused to give her name, and owning to her frazzled grey hair and pious hatred, we’ll call her Carrie’s Mom. (Seriously, her resemblance to the Stephen King character was uncanny.)

The second woman, who looked like your grandma only with a heart full of hate, was more diplomatic in her explanation of the protest. “We don’t hate homos,” she explained, her voice full of pity. “We just don’t like them having a conference here.”

Because The Peter was coy with the facts, his faithful readership had their own facts completely screwed up. The S&M conference full of “homos” they were all upset about? It’s actually being put on and attended mostly by heterosexuals. In other words, it’s mostly straight people who are doing god-knows-what in a closed off wing of the hotel with three layers of security so no wandering innocents could accidentally stumble in  — yet it’s “the homos” who are getting the blame.

Yes, I know. Buried in there somewhere, The Peter belatedly acknowledged that this isn’t “a homo” event. But when all you talk about is homosexuals and you name your keyboard “Americans For Truth About Homosexuality” with no apparent ironic intent, and you talk about this event without actually describing who is putting it on and who is attending it, then you can’t be too surprised if some of your readers draw their own conclusions.

Which may be why “Carrie’s Mom” sees this event as more evidence of the end of days:

“There’s other people who are going to use those conference rooms!” she said, her hysteria almost tangible. “This kind of behavior will bring a civilization to its knees–with the baby killing and the sodomy!” she said, quoting scripture verses and shaking her head at me. She cited the current economic crises as proof that “the homos” were single-handedly responsible for the near-collapse of Capitalism and the global economic system.

Good Lord! As my great-great aunt used to say, these people don’t have one particle bit of sense. From now on, whenever I see The Peter use the word “Deliverance” in connection with homosexuality, it will always have a completely new meaning.

Smart crowd you draw there, Pete. You made ’em madder’n a wet hen. I’d think you’d be proud of yourself for being so influential. So why are you suddenly acting so embarrassed?

My Concerns With Faith-Based Funding

Jennifer Venasco has a well reasoned argument why gay and gay-supportive religious organizations should step up and take our rightful place in the community of faith that is receiving federal assistance for charitable efforts. And while I agree with Venasco that gay men and women of faith should not be excluded from national efforts or programs generally, I hope that such churches and organizations refrain from joining and instead take a lead in resisting the continued intermingling of the political and the divine.

I do not support federal funding of religious charitable efforts for a number of reasons – all of them, incidentally, from a pro-religion perspective:

• This sort of program naturally gives preference to those large mega-churches that have the staff and the funding and the political access to go after government grants.
• All faith-based charity is tied to evangelism of that faith. Until such time as they become entirely impersonal (which is rather likely), it is the acting of their faith that motivates believers. They are “letting their light shine” and “living Christ to a hurting world”.

  And while they are doing good, it isn’t right that they receive credit or religious goodwill for spending my money. The government should not be funding any other religion’s evangelism – that is unfair to my religion.

• Churches that meet social needs do so as a form of worship. Part of Christian theology is that giving to the less fortunate provides a blessing to the one that gives. “It’s better to give than receive”, you know.

  But if the Feds are doing the funding, then the local person loses the blessing. God does not reward you for administering the largess of others.

  Or, in a less religion-talk way, being personally invested in the less fortunate around you builds community. You care about whether your money is doing good or ill, you begin to see the lives of the less fortunate, you begin to think about what you can do and how your world impacts that of others. If charity becomes nothing but the job of hired staff paid for by a distant government, social connections break down. Those who provide the caring may soon become no more invested than the most jaded social worker.

• He who pays the bills makes the rules.

  It is a matter of indisputable fact that federal governmental money comes with strings. And it is a matter of absolute certainty that in the future a great many of these strings will not be advantageous to the mission of those religious bodies that are currently lining up at the trough with their bowls out.

  An obvious example is in Venasco’s argument wherein she tells us that that under the Obama administration, those churches who object to homosexuality as a matter of their understanding of their ancient religious wisdom now cannot exclude gay men and women from being the voice and face of their religion-based good works. They must sacrifice their religious principle in order to receive the funds.

  And while some readers may think, “well, its about time”, I would caution that administrations change. In as little as four years, it could be possible that gay-affirming religious charitable efforts would be the ones to choose between upholding their religious principles or closing programs.

• Government does not have a very good history of connecting with the lives of individuals. Even in those institutions that seek to meet the needs of the most vulnerable and helpless, paperwork and procedure seem to rule the day. We all know – and shudder at – the way in which unwanted children get lost in “the system”

  Breaking the barrier between government and religious charity will not make bureaucracy more loving or personal. But it does have the potential of taking what is currently a hands-on caring effort and endowing it with all of the warmth of a DMV office with a cross on the wall.

• And finally, those of us in the gay community have been there before. We have watched community centers – those which at one time provided a common meeting place – turn into administrators of state-funded social programs with no use for gay men and women unless they have program-identified needs.

  We’ve seen AIDS groups morph from being the voice of an outraged people to pill distributors. We’ve seen community replaced with committee and know the dismal consequence of a message and method that is no longer able to see and reach those most at risk.

  We’ve have experience and we should know that there’s something about public money, however needed, that drains the soul from an organization. The best intentioned and most caring of volunteers soon begin to measure the needy against standards and quotas and tick-boxes.

Churches that are excited about this idea need to ask themselves whether they’d rather be churches or part of a defacto government bureaucracy; whether they want to meet the needs of individuals or impersonally process paperwork. Because once you have taxpayer dollars, you have forms and formulae, rules and restrictions.

If you take the public money, you answer to public administrators. And any religious leader that believes that politicians will make choices that are truly moral is deeply deluded or intentionally naive.

So while I know where Venasco is coming from and respect her opinion, I have to disagree. I would caution churches – affirming or rejecting, conservative or liberal – don’t sell your soul. And especially don’t sell your soul to Washington.

Allegations of Sexual Misconduct By Another New Life Pastor

Michelangelo Signorile apparently had another blockbuster program last Friday:

A Colorado Springs bail bondsman and sometime bounty hunter who has been investigating New Life Church and Ted Haggard for several years appeared on my show late on Friday and told me that he now has information on ten more cases of sexual misconduct on the part of Ted Haggard and that three of these involve minors. He also said that New Life Church had suppressed from the media an earlier case of a pastor at the church (which has many pastors under the senior pastor) who was convicted of sexual assault against a child under the age of 15 and got off easy with help from the church, only to later have his probation revoked. The convicted pastor then illegally left the country, he said, and he speculates that New Life Church may have helped him do so.

Bobby Brown, reading from what he said was a detective’s affidavit, told me that the pastor, Stephen Evans, was convicted in 1999 of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy and admitted to sexual contact with his own 14-year-old son and his own 15-year-old daughter, in a case that Brown says was somehow kept out of the media and has not been reported until now. Brown says that with the help and backing of New Life Church, Evans served no jail time at all, cutting a plea deal in which he’d agree to a “restoration” at the church – yes, just like the one that Ted Haggard went through to supposedly make him straight! – while serving five years on probation. It is likely that Ted Haggard, as senior pastor at the time, oversaw Evans’ restoration.

It appears that in 2001, Evans’ probation was revoked and he may have skipped the country. He’s believed to be in London now.

Brown also confirms that Christopher Beard, the counselor at New Life Church’s 24/7 program which Grant Haas spoke of, left the church due to sexual misconduct shortly after Haggard’s fall.

DADT Discharges Continue

The Kansas National Guard has discharged its first soldier under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”:

Amy Brian, who served nine years in the Guard, including a stint in Iraq, was investigated and “separated” last month after a civilian co-worker told authorities they had seen her kissing a woman in a Wal-Mart checkout line.

Brian joins almost 12,500 other lesbian, gay and bisexual service members discharged from 1994 to 2007.

Update: In a more detailed article from the Associated Press, Brian joined the Guard in 1991, serving until 1994. She re-enlisted in 2003 and was sent to Iraq.

During her first six months in Iraq, she was part of a maintenance crew at Camp Anaconda at Balad, working 12-hour shifts beside other American troops and civilians from other countries. She later was asked to narrate award ceremonies, write evaluations and do office work. “Everyone I went with (to Iraq) knew I was gay, and no one had a problem with it,” she said.

…But last July another gay Guardsman told Brian “somebody has it in for you” and recommended she delete her MySpace page, which indicated she was a lesbian.

All too often, DADT is nothing more than a weapon for revenge and incrimination. How does that help unit cohesion?

Gays Need Apply

There’s some disappointment that President Obama chose to remake President Bush’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives into the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, instead of dismantling it completely. But Jennifer Vanasco reminds us that faith-based means us, too:

Gays and lesbians have given religion over to the right. This is not good. There are many religions that have denied us our personhood; there are many of us who have been hurt by the religious traditions we grew up in. But gays are a diverse people, and there are many of us who are religious or spiritual — and we should not be ignored by a national program that should serve the whole country.

My hope is that gay religious organizations will approach DuBois’s office about funding their valuable social service programs that assist homeless queer youth, people with AIDS, and other disenfranchised LGBT communities. And that we will all make noise about it until we know that our programs are being treated equally.

There are plenty of gays and lesbians who will disagree with me here. They think that religion is poison, and we are fools to drink it. We shouldn’t want to be part of a club that doesn’t want to grant us membership. They think we should fight the existence of a faith-based anything in the West Wing.

That is a battle we won’t win, not this time around, not with a president who was partly elected through the voter turnout strength of the black church.

But in any case, seeking equity when it comes to this new President’s Council isn’t a referendum on religion. It’s about fairness… If there is a federal conduit for getting funds to religious organizations, then gay religious organizations should be getting equal access to those funds. Any President’s Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships should not only be reaching out to Evangelicals — it should also be reaching out to us.

Miami Hosptital Tries To Block Lawsuit In Hospital Visitation Casell

It’s hard to believe that in this day a hospital will block someone from seeing their partner, especially when  all of the medical powers of attorney paperwork are in place and properly signed and notarized. It’s harder still to believe that such a hospital would continue to defend its inhuman policies.

The case began in February, 2007, when Janice Langbehn and her partner Lisa Marie Pond, with three of their four children, were in Miami, Florida preparing for a cruise to celebrate their eighteenth anniversary. But before the cruise could leave port, Lisa Marie suffered a massive stroke and was taken to Jackson Memorial. Hospital personnel refused to let Langbehn into Pond’s hospital room, even after a legal power of attorney was faxed to the hospital. Pond was pronounced dead of a brain aneurysm about eighteen hours after being admitted to the hospital. The only time Langbehn was allowed to see her partner was when a priest was giving her last rites.

At one point, a hospital social worker callously defended the hospital’s actions be saying that Florida is “an anti-gay state.” Anti-human would be more like it.

Janice filed a federal lawsuit against Jackson Memorial charging hospital employees with negligence and “intentional infliction of emotional distress.” The suit seeks damages in excess of $75,000. On Friday, Janice’s attorneys from Lambda Legal were back in Miami federal court to argue against a motion filed by the hospital seeking to dismiss the case

“We are here to ensure that families get the respect they deserve at Jackson Memorial Hospital and to prevent Janice’s tragedy from happening to anyone else,” said Beth Littrell, an attorney for Lambda Legal, a national group that fights for the civil rights of gays. “This family deserves to have it’s day in court.”.

Jackson Memorial Hospital is a public hospital operated by the Public Health Trust on behalf of the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners. It is also affiliated with the University of Miami as a teaching hospital.

A Soapy Wedding

Social change occurs in the living room. And in February, marriage equality will be coming to the living room of at least two million housewives. Bianca, Erica Kane’s lesbian daughter, will be marrying her partner Reese (Out.com)

On February 13 and 16, All My Children’s gay super couple, Reese and Bianca will tie the lesbian knot. It’s a historic milestone for daytime TV as no other gay soap couple has ever walked down the aisle — until now. The story is already getting major coverage and snagged the coveted cover of Soap Opera Digest.

Astonishingly Stupid Comment of the Week

New Hamphire’s legislature is debating whether to allow its same-sex couples to marry. But, of course, to have an effective debate one must at least be within shouting distance of comprehension and logic.

I don’t think Rep. Itse is quite within range:

Republican state Rep. Daniel Itse said gay marriage would cause out-of-wedlock births to rise in New Hampshire, adding that the debate itself and civil unions have already cheapened marriage.

“Young people now see no need to get married,” Itse said. “It just doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

OK. I’m having trouble with this one. But as best I can tell, he’s arguing that heterosexual couples will have out-of-wedlock children if gay people marry. If gay people are trying so very hard to get the right to marry, this will tell children that it has no value. And it’s already too late; due to the debate over the importance of marriage, it just doesn’t mean anything anymore.

Ummmm… yeah. That is definitedly the most astonishingly stupid comment of the week.

Has Marriage Equality Come to New Jersey?

At least for the purpose of divorce, same-sex New Jersey couples who married legally elsewhere will have their marriages recognized (AP)

Gay marriages performed outside New Jersey are recognized in the state for the purpose of divorce, according to a ruling Friday by a judge deciding whether a lesbian couple married in Canada can split.

The wider implications weren’t immediately clear, but Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson said New Jersey has a long history of recognizing marriages that are valid where they were performed.

Ironically, I guess that means that while a marriage may be loved and appreciated, it is not recognized. But once it is no longer held in esteem, then the state miraculously notices it. Ah, you have to love politics.

Let’s hope that this situation illustrates the silliness of having two separate institutions based solely on the sexual composition of the couple and that the legislature in New Jersey estabishes marriage equality without delay.

Vermont Introduces Marriage Bill

A bill allowing for same-sex couples to marry was introduced in the Vermont House today. It enjoys broad support (AP):

The House legislation has 59 sponsors, none of them Republican, though some GOP lawmakers have said they’ll vote for the bill, Larson said.

“I know that there’s broad support in the House,” he said.

Unfortunately, due to the legislature’s focus on the economy, the bill may not get any attention this session. And the Governor has indicated that he does not support marriage equality.