Box Turtle Bulletin

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, May 21

TODAY’S AGENDA:
The Rapture: The Kingdom of God. Today is the day of the Rapture, according to Harold Camping, who has been plastering billboards all over the place (even in Malawi) announcing the event. The rapture is expected to take place at 6:00 p.m. in whatever time zone you happen to be in. Sort of the way we watched fireworks around the world on New Years’ Eve, 2000.

Now, a lot of people are running around with their hair afire saying that today is supposed to be the end of the world. Relax, people. A little rapture here and there does not mean that it’s the end of the world. All that happens today is that there will be a great earthquake and the remains of the all the believers (and not homosexual (PDF: 380KB/12 pages)) who have ever lived will be instantly transformed into glorified spiritual bodies to be forever with God. The bodies of all the unsaved people (and homosexuals) will be thrown out upon the ground to be shamed. Then the Son of the Living God will save his devoted followers who are spotless and without blemish (and not homosexual) to meet him in heaven in order to protect them from the Great Tribulation.

Now, it may seem like the end of the world when that happen, but it’s not. You see, after the rapture, the One True God will begin executing judgments against unbelievers and homosexuals during a period called the Great Tribulation. At the end of the Tribulation the nations of the New World Order will join together and, possibly led by homosexuals, will attack Israel. But that’s when Jesus Christ will physically return to lead the armies of heaven to a mighty victory at the Battle of Armeggedon, where His armies will destroy all unbelievers and homosexuals. The dead will rise again (and, I’m not clear on this, but I think this includes the bodies that were thrown upon the ground during the rapture) and Christ will judge all who have ever lived, giving rewards to some and punishment to others. Those who are condemned for destruction (i.e., homosexuals, etc.) will be cast into the Lake of Fire. After that, God will destroy heaven and Earth because they have been polluted by sin and homosexuals. He will create a new heaven and a new Earth, put those who were saved (i.e., not homosexuals) on the new Earth, and rule it forever.

That happens on October 21, 2011. So, you know, there’s still time.

Harvey Milk Day: San Francisco. The Harvey Milk Foundation kicks off a two-day celebration today at the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy (19th Street between Collingwood and Diamond). It all starts with a hotcakes breakfast at 10:00 a.m., and continues with at street carnival for the kids and a kid-friendly drag show (That’ll set our opponents to chattering!) beginning at 6:00 p.m.  Yeah, I know. Same time as the rapture. Someone must have forgotten the check the calendar.

Other Harvey Milk Day Observances Today: Austin, TX; Palmdale, CA; Santa Cruz, CA; and Sarasota, FL.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Buffalo, NY and Raleigh/Durham, NC.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Long Beach, CA; Nantes, France, and Tours, France.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
White Night: 1979. On this date, Dan White was found guilty in the shooting  death of San Francisco Supervisor and LGBT advocate Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. Unfortunately, he was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter instead of first-degree murder, and sentenced to a paltry seven years in prison. (He would only serve five.) The jury bought the defense arguments that White was suffering from diminished capacity due to depression and an overload of junk food, a defense that has since been derided as the “twinkie defense.”

The gay community was already angry with the police and fire department, which had raised money for White’s defense. That anger boiled over when the verdict was announced, leading to rioting at City Hall. Police officers — their badges were covered with black tape to prevent identification — broke up the riot. Later that night, San Francisco police staged a retaliatory raid on a gay bar in the Castro, shouting “”dirty cocksuckers” and “sick faggots” while attacking patrons and shattering a large plate glass window. For the next two hours, police officers indiscriminately attacked passers by on the street. Later that night, a freelance reporter overheard a group of police officers celebrating at a downtown bar. “We were at City Hall the day [the killings] happened and we were smiling then,” one officer said. “We were there tonight and we’re still smiling.” Gay leaders refused to apologize for the riot at city hall, and an investigation into police misconduct in the Castro and City Hall ended without any charges being filed.

CT Adds Gender Identity To Hate Crime Law: 2004. Connecticut governor John Rowland signs legislation which adds gender identity to the state’s hate crime law. The act makes Connecticut the eight state in the nation to provide hate crime protections for gender identity.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Raymond Burr: 1917. He started out as a stage actor, landing on Broadway in 1941 for Crazy with the Heat. It didn’t take long for him to switch to the silver screen for the film noir classic Raw Deal. He was adept at playing the heavies, as an aggressive prosecutor in A Place In the Son, and as the murder suspect in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. But he is best know for his two long-running television roles, in Perry Mason(1957-1966) and Ironside (1967 -1975). Like most gay actors, Burr rarely spoke about his private life. His official biography listed three marriages, but later investigations could only verify the second one. What has been verified is that Burr enjoyed a long 35-year relationship with his partner, Robert Benevides, who he met on the set of Perry Mason. Benevides was not only his life-long partner until Burr’s death in 1993, but together they owned an orchid business(orchids were one of Burr’s passions) and then a vineyard. Benevides still operates the the Raymond Burr vineyards.

Frank Kameny: 1925. Easily one of the giants of the American gay rights movement, Frank Kameny fell into it when he was fired from his job as an astronomer with the Army Map Service in 1957 because of his homosexuality. Kameny took on the U.S. Civil Service Commission and argued his appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear his case. They missed out on quite case. Kameny wrote his own petition to the Supreme Court, in which he denounced the government’s ban on hiring gay people as “a stench in the nostrils of decent people, an offense against morality, an abandonment of reason, an affront to human dignity, an improper restraint upon proper freedom and liberty, a disgrace to any civilized society, and a violation of all that this nation stands for.”1925.

Throughout his lifetime, Kameny placed himself in the middle of many first in the gay rights movement. He founded the Washington D.C. chapter of the Mattachine Society in 1961, a group which distinguished itself for its aggressiveness. In 1965. Kameny helped to organize the first gay rights protest in front the White House, the Pentagon, the U.S. Civil Service Commission, and Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. In 1968, he created the slogan“Gay is Good,” and in 1971, he was the first openly gay candidate for Congress. During the same period, he was on the front lines of the battle to get the APA to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. The federal ban on hiring gay people was finally lifted in 1975.

Kameny is now recognized as a national treasure; his papers are now a part of the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian holds several of Kameny’s picket signs and other artifacts in its collection. His home is now recognized as a D.C. Historic Landmark, and in 2009, he received an official apology for his firing from the Office of Personnel Management.

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