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 May, 2011
May 13th, 2011
Pro Hockey player Sean Avery, arguably the biggest jerk in professional sports, recorded an advertisement in support of New York’s same-sex marriage campaign. A father-son team of agents stood up for “real marriage” (as opposed to man-man or man-horse marriage) assuming that this was surely the more accepted position in the world of hockey. ESPN’s Johnette Howard looked at the fallout.
It’s hard to gauge who did more to advance the cause of legalizing gay marriage in the past week — New York Rangers forward Sean Avery (the first pro athlete to publicly support New Yorkers for Marriage Equality), or the father-and-son sports agent team of Don and Todd Reynolds, whose swift attacks of Avery’s stance caused a remarkable thing to happen. The Reynolds’ reactions caused thousands of other people to step forward and out themselves as gay rights supporters, too, in a louder, longer show of support for Avery on Twitter and Facebook, radio and TV, in blogs and newspapers and sports fan message boards than Avery’s appearance in a video advertisement for the marriage equality campaign might have generated on its own.
Perhaps it’s time to put to pasture all of the presumptions about sports and homophobia being inextricably related.
May 13th, 2011
Jim,
Politics is a funny animal and the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009 could still raise its head in another form. But it does look very promising at this time that this bill may be finally dead.
And much of the credit goes to Box Turtle Bulletin, and especially to you personally.
This has been a TREMENDOUSLY time consuming effort involving a matter that surely no one here ever considered to be our bailiwick, involving connections that we could not assume we could even develop, and creating allies that were unimaginable. Going into this two years ago we never dreamed of reaching the State Department, much less having statements from the President and many governments around the world.
It has been a lot of work, but you must be feeling tremendous satisfaction. I certainly do for my much less significant role.
Congratulations, my friend and associate. You changed the world.
Timothy
May 13th, 2011
When King and Spaulding announced that they would not be defending DOMA on behalf of the House of Representatives – after partner Paul Clement had announced that they would – anti-gay activists had a field day. Words like “intolerance” and “homosexual activist bullies” screamed across headlines in articles designed to portray the gay community as a collection of thugs who forced a poor defenseless international law firm into following the insidious homosexual agenda.
Even mainstream newspapers and editorial staff immediately assumed that the homosexuals were being too pushy and self-righteously took the opportunity to remind gay people that while gay rights may be worth fighting for, they really are just a “cause”, you see, and not so important that you can’t play nicely. Pointing out to a lawfirm that DOMA hurts gay people is, well, Un-American.
The Washington Post ran an editorial titled King & Spalding and HRC do a disservice to American values in which they declared:
HRC is right to fight vigorously to overturn DOMA, which deprives gays and lesbians of many of the rights enjoyed by their heterosexual counterparts. But it sullies itself and its cause by resorting to bullying tactics.
At the San Francisco Chronicle, a writer indignantly asserted “Case closed. This is intimidation. This is intolerance.”
I do believe that HRC bungled this situation. They behaved like jerks, adopted high-pressure tactics as their first option, and presented our community in about the worst light possible. Threatening to send out letters to K&S clients and then bragging on TV when the case was dropped was about the most stupid course of action that could be imagined.
If there are any of our readers who still contribute to HRC, this might be a good opportunity to look for another organization – one that has a better ear for political tone.
That being said, it is not unreasonable to remind a company – including law firms – that engaging in anti-gay activism or acquiescing to the demands of anti-gay activists will cost them the support of gay people and our friends, family, neighbors, supporters, and all people who value equality. As equality becomes more and more the national favored opinion, companies will find that being “neutral” on matters of sexual orientation equality will be viewed like being “neutral” on racial equality or gender equality. Forward thinking CEO’s may well be receptive to reminders about future image, provided that they aren’t made to be fools in the press.
But as it turns out, neither HRC’s bragging nor anti-gay activists’ shrieking are based in reality. King & Spaulding dropped the DOMA defense because Paul Clement never had it approved in the first place. He signed the case without following procedures or giving the firm an opportunity to measure the benefits or detriments of such a course of action.
The Fulton County Daily Report decided to look into things and found an entirely different chain of events than that which the big papers just assumed had happened. (Via WSJ)
But the Daily Report spoke to two firm lawyers and a third source anonymously who said that the DOMA matter was not fully submitted to King & Spalding”s business review committee, a firm requirement, before Clement signed a contract obligating the firm. They said the committee immediately began reviewing the case the day after the firm learned of the contract—and rejected it the next day, according to the Daily Report.
The sources said the firm’s partners were taken by surprise when news broke that Clement had taken the case. “Any matter that is controversial in any way or where there is a discounted rate goes through the business review committee,” one of the sources told the Daily Report, noting that the DOMA engagement was both controversial and had a discounted rate.
The King & Spalding sources, according to the Daily Report, said that there was widespread, adamant opposition to the DOMA case within the firm. “”It sticks a finger in the eye of people,” said one source, referring to the firm’s gay lawyers and staff.
And, a source said, the case did not fit the firm’s business mission. “King & Spalding is a corporate law firm—not a constitutional firm.”
I believe that there could have been a way that Clement could defend DOMA and that Spaulding & King could have worked with our community to craft a statement that did not back K&S into a corner. But Clement did not consider his firm’s interests and it was his arrogance and presumptions about DOMA and public opinion that ultimately embarrassed the firm.
A commentary
May 13th, 2011
This South African hit by Letta Mbulu was released in 1991 during the euphoric days after apartheid. While South Africans celebrated their newly-won freedoms, she sang, “There are some people who look at us as being free, but when you speak with regular folk they say it’s ‘not yet uhuru’.” The phrase “Not yet uhuru” is a mix of English and Swahili — not yet free. Similar to another phrase from Mozambique’s war for independence, “a luta continua” (the struggle continues), “not yet uhuru” reminds us that there is still much work to be done. As an email friend from Uganda reminded me a month ago, “Until equality is reality for every human being… it’s not. It’s not yet uhuru.”
For more than two years now, we have been watching in horror as events spun out of control in Uganda, events that were dangerously inflamed by American Evangelicals seeking to deport their thinly-veiled disgust (if not outright hatred) for LGBT people. From the moment we first learned about the then-pending March 2009 conference put on by three American anti-gay activists — Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, still sitting Exodus International board member (and now treasurer!) Don Schmierer, and International Healing Foundation’s Caleb Lee Brundidge; may their shameful roles never be forgotten — through the connections between the Anti-Homosexuality Bill’s sponsor and the shadowy American evangelical group known as The Family, through other connections between the bill’s godfathers and the American-based College of Prayer, through a supporting Kampala rally featuring Lou Engle and open expressions of unreserved support from Andrew Wommack’s spokesman, WND’s Molotov Mitchell, and Peter Labarbera, it became clear that while homophobia runs rampant in Uganda, it is strongly supported through the active encouragement of American anti-gay extremists.
This looked like a saga without ending. I had begun compiling a list of all of the posts about Uganda and its slide into hatred, but by May of 2010 our blogging software stopped accepting updates to that page; it had gotten too big for it to handle. It was as if WordPress itself had thrown up its hands and shouted, “Enough!” But it wasn’t enough. Events continued to spin out and we kept watching and reporting. (You can follow our posts via this tag.)
And so finally we came to this moment. When I went to bed very late last night, it was already 9:00 a.m. this morning in Kampala. When I put the finishing touches on today’s Daily Agenda, I understood that the chances against the bill becoming law were somewhat in our favor, but the rapid pace with which the bill was suddenly put into play last Friday left me to wonder what forces were impelling its rapid progression in a country where nothing happens quickly. I was, frankly, despondent. Ask my partner. He’ll tell you.
This morning, the sun is very bright here in Tucson. The temperatures are going to be in the upper 90s, which is considered temperate here. The weekend looms, and the only hitch right now is that pollen is in the air and everyone’s sneezing. But that’s a minor hitch. On the other side of the world, nightfall has already descended upon a teeming city of more than two million people, and for many the work week has just ended. Restaurants and nightclubs will soon be hopping, the streets will be noisy, and Ugandans will be celebrating the weekend. Some folks will probably celebrate more than they should, but a few will celebrate with an extra dose of verve. And for some, their celebrations will be muted as they remember those who are no longer around to celebrate.
And tomorrow, a new day will begin, but it will not be much different from the day that just ended. We won’t know for certain whether this evil bill is well and truly dead until Parlaiment constitutionally expires on May 18. Even then we don’t know because there is speculation that there may be some unknown procedure allowing the 9th Parliament to take up the 8th Parliament’s unfinished business. And if it turns out it can’t, we still have the promises of one hate-filled politician who vows to introduce a new bill in the next Parliament.
But for the first time, I am just now beginning to allow myself to believe that this may be a turning point. It took me about three hours after I posted the news this morning before I could give myself permission to believe it. And even now I’ve discovered that giving myself permission and actually believing it are still two separate things. It’s not yet uhuru. A luta continua.
May 13th, 2011
May 13th, 2011
The Order Paper for the Ugandan Parliament this morning has only three items on the agenda:
FRIDAY 13TH MAY 2011, ORDER PAPER
26TH SITTING OF THE 2ND MEETING OF THE 5TH SESSION OF THE 8TH PARLIAMENT OF UGANDA: FRIDAY 13TH MAY 2011 – TIME OF COMMENCEMENT 10.00 A.M.
1. PRAYERS
2. COMMUNICATION FROM THE CHAIR
3. ADJOURNMENT
KAMPALA
13TH MAY 2011
And the following announcement was subsequently posted on Uganda’s web site:
Emotional farewells as Eighth Parliament closes
The term of office for Members of Parliament elected to the Eighth Parliament of Uganda has come to an end. Speaker of Parliament Rt. Hon. Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi announced to MPs, in an emmotional sitting , the end of the term of the Eighth parliament urging MPs to appreciate and embrace the multiparty political system.
“This Parliament was different from all parliaments before it.But my assessment is that people still long for the movement political system other than the multiparty system .The two systems are different and what you must know is that under multiparty system, Mps on the government side came with one manifesto that the executive is trying to implement,”he told MPs.
Speaker Ssekandi announced that the official proclamation for the end of the Eighth Parliament had already been signed and would be gazetted on May 18, the day the ninth Parliament would commence.
The middle paragraph is a bit of ruling party propaganda that can be safely ignored. The important point is that the proclamation for the end of the Parliament “had already been signed.”
Now the Associated Press confirms:
Uganda’s parliament adjourned Friday without acting on a criticized anti-gay bill that would mandate the death sentence in some cases, drawing praise from an advocacy group that said parliament’s failure to act was a “victory for all Ugandans.”
Speaker of Parliament Edward Ssekandi Kiwanuk said there is no time to take up the bill this session, which ends Wednesday, leaving the bill’s future uncertain. Kiwanuk adjourned the parliament Friday and set no date for the body to return.
…Kakoba Onyango, a member of parliament, said the anti-gay bill has taken so long to be acted on because President Yoweri Museveni did not back it and because of the criticism of human rights groups.
AFP adds a hint to the reason why Parliament abruptly adjourned:
David Bahati, the lawmaker behind the anti-gay bill, said that as the cabinet was dissolved following the inauguration of President Yoweri Museveni for a fourth term on Thursday no bills could be passed.
Warren Throckmorton points to this news item (and confirmed through a Parliament spokesperson) indicating that the hitch may have had to do with the Cabinet being dissolved in preparation for yesterday’s swearing in on President Yoweri Museveni for another term. Writes Throckmorton:
According to parliamentary spokeswoman, Helen Kawesa, Parliament is stalled on a “technicality.” She said there is no Cabinet in place because it was dissolved in preparation for the end of the 8th Parliament in advance of yesterday’s Presidential inauguration. It is unclear who raised the issue of the necessity for Cabinet to be place for business to be conducted. However the effect is that the session is winding up, with members discussing how to proceed before the end of the 8th Parliament on 18th.
Ordinarily, all unfinished bills die at the end of Parliament. There may be a procedural move which could allow the Anti-Homosexuality Bill to be carried forward to the next Parliament. It is unclear whether such a move will be made.
There have been so many twists and turns over the past two years that it’s been hard to ever really know (or believe) what the status of the bill really is. That’s why I am not given to celebrate until the 18th of May. But I am more optimistic than I ever have been before that this odious act of evil may well be finished.
UPDATE: Sexual Minority Uganda’s Frank Mugisha is considerably more confident: “Right now I would say that I am almost sure that the bill is not coming,” he told Radio Netherlands Worldwide.
May 13th, 2011
L-R: Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (1971-1979), Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni (1986-), South African Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu.
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Uganda At The Crossroads: There is no question whatsoever that Uganda stands at a historic turning point as Parliament convenes an extraordinary final session today. When Parliament suspended business on Wednesday, a day which was supposed to be the 8th Parliament’s final day, four contentious bills on the agenda remained unfinished. Women delegates walked out because of a dispute over one of the bills, depriving the House a legitimate quorum. Parliament will meet again beginning this morning at 10:00 a.m. East Africa Time (seven hours ahead of EDT, ten hours ahead of PDT). Parliament usually begins its session at 2:00 p.m.; the early start is seen as an indication that the house intends to leave as much time as possible to get through the entire agenda. Last on the agenda (as of Wednesday) is the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Possibly gone from the plan is the oft-repeated assurance that the death penalty would be dropped. That now appears unlikely. But even if dropping the death penalty were still on the table, the remainder of the bill remains so wide-reaching, so draconian, so “odious” in the words of the U.S. State Department, that anything short of killing the bill altogether would be a huge step backwards towards Uganda’s world-renowned legacy of death and destruction.
The questions that Uganda faces today are momentous. Will Uganda retreat to its blood-soaked past? Will neighbor turn against neighbor, tribe against tribe, and powerful men against innocent minorities and scapegoats as it has before? Or will the nation step away from the brink, break free from its old habits and turn toward a promise of peace?
Today, the civilized world awaits Uganda’s choice.
“Mayday for Marriage” RV Tour: The Family Research Foundation’s RV is touring the state with their message against marriage equality. Today, the hatebus stops again in the greater Rochester area — Fairport, to be exact — at noon at State Sen. Jim Alesi’s District Office (220 Packetts Landing, Fairport) FRF says they “urge concerned citizens to attend these events and remind their elected officials that base voters care deeply about this issue.” If you’re concerned, you’re invited.
Bullying Briefing: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will hold a public briefing in connection with its 2011 statutory enforcement report, Federal Enforcement of Civil Rights Laws to Protect Students Against Bullying, Violence and Harassment at The Washington Marriott at Metro Center, 775 12th St. NW, Junior Ballroom Salons 1 and 2, Washington, DC 20005. The briefing will start at 9:00 a.m. EDT and is expected to continue to 4:30 p.m. EDT. The meeting is open to the public.
The National Youth Advocacy Coalition (NYAC) Closes: The economy is straining everyone’s pocket books, and non-profits are no exception. After more than eighteen years of advocacy on behalf of LGBT youth, the Washington, D.C.-based national organization is closing its doors. In the past few years, more than eighty percent of the group’s funding came from a single federal grant for HIV testing and prevention. Efforts to expand their donor base came to naught, leading to today’s closure.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; and Stockton, CA.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Brussels, Belgium; Charleston, SC; Houston TX (Black Pride); Maspalomas, Canary Islands; New Hope, PA; and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Cambio de Sexo”: 1977. Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s death in 1975 brought a new permissiveness in Spanish film-making, and Catalonia-born director Vicente Aranda probed the limits in what was acceptable in a still-conservative society. Cambio de Sexo (“Change of Sex”), which debuted on May 13, 1977 to critical acclaim, starred Victoria Abril as José Maria, a shy, introverted teenager living in the outskirts of Barcelona. Bullied and harassed by his schoolmates, José is expelled from his school. His father tries everything to “cure” him of his effeminate mannerisms, including, in a pivotal scene, taking him to a strip club in Barcelona. But unbeknownst to his father, one of the acts in the strip club is a pre-operative transgender. The father, clueless to the situation and determined to see his son lose his virginity, insists that José goes home with the stripper. Let’s just say the entire experience is revelatory as José understands that he was actually meant to be a girl. But the movie is more than just a story of the teen’s metamorphosis into a young woman. The transgender theme served as a reflection of the larger social changes which were just beginning to overtake Spain.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Bea Arthur: 1922. After serving thirty months in the Marine Corps as one of the first members of the Women’s Reserve. Her enlistment officer wrote that she was “officious — but probably a good worker — if she had her own way!” That description would be a good description of the characters she would portray on television. After working on and off Broadway, she landed the breakout part as Maude Findlay on Norman Lear’s groundbreaking sit-com All in the Family. The Maude character was Edith Bunker’s cousin who was the polar opposite of bigoted Archie Bunker. That 1971 episode led to her own spin-off in 1972, Maude. As the theme-song said, she was “uncompromisin’, enterprisin’, anything but tranquilizing.” The series tackled women’s liberation, menopause, drug and alcohol addiction, and spousal abuse. In one memorable two-part episode which aired two months before Row v Wade, Maude decided to terminate a late-life pregnancy with an abortion. Maude ended in 1978. After a few other roles in television and the movies, she landed the role of Dorothy Zbornak in the hit series Golden Girls. Between Maude and Golden Girls, Arthur became an LGBT icon. The Advocate in 1999 asked her why she thought that was. “You play strong, honest people,” she said, “and gays buy it because it’s real and it’s slightly anti-establishment.” She was certainly real. Also she was on Broadway in Mame. You can’t forget that.
Armistead Maupin: 1944. He was born in Washington, D.C. but grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. He began working as a newspaper reported in Charleston, S.C. before he moved to San Francisco in 1971 to work for the Associated Press, In 1976, he released the first installment of his Tails of the City serials. first in a now-defunct Marin County newspaper and later in the San Francisco Chronicle. Those columns were re-worked into a series of books in 1978. In 2007, Maupin married his husband Christopher Turner in Vancouver. During a trip to Australia in 2011, Maupin and his husband were denied the use of a restroom at a saloon in Alice Springs where they were having lunch. The bartender told them to go across the street because their rest room was reserved for “real men.” “So we did what real men do and crossed the street to the visitor’s center where we filed a complaint,” Maupin wrote. “Impressively we received an e-mail apology from the bartender that afternoon. Fair dinkum, mate. Next time don’t [expletive] with the poofters.”
Alan Ball: 1957. Screenwriter, director, actor and producer Alan Ball was born in Atlanta George and graduated from Florida State University with a degree in theater arts. He has written two films, American Beauty (for which he won an Oscar for best original screenplay) and Towelhead. He is more familiar to television audiences for his role as creator, writer and producer of the HBO drama series Six Feet Under (for which he won an Emmy in 2002) and True Blood, a series that has been seen as a paper-thin allegory for the LGBT community. Ball has called the comparison “kind of lazy”, adding “I just hope people can remember that, because it’s a show about vampires, it’s not meant to be taken that seriously. It’s supposed to be fun.”
Ball not only has to contend with critics, but this spring he and his partner, actor Peter Macdissi, got tangled in a legal tussle with their neighbor, Quentin Tarantino, who filed a lawsuit claiming that the pair’s collection of exotic birds constantly emit “blood-curdling” and “pterodactyl-like screams” each day which have disrupted Tarantino’s work as a writer.
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). You’d be surprised how many notices I receive without these vital details. I wish I had the time to hunt them down, but I just don’t.
May 12th, 2011
MP David Bahati
Warren Throckmorton appears to have confirmed what the Human Rights Commission has warned about earlier today, that the report from the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee recommends that in the Clause 3 defining “aggravated homosexuality” and which specifies that “A person who commits the offence of aggravated homosexuality shall be liable on conviction to suffer death,” that the phrase “suffer death” should be replaced with “the penalty provided for aggravated defilement under Section 129 of the Penal Code Act.”
And what is that penalty for “aggravated defilement” (which, by the way, deals with child molestation, a law that is already gender neutral)? That section of the penal code specifies that anyone who “commits a felony called aggravated defilement and is, on conviction by the High Court, liable to suffer death.”
In other words, the death penalty is being replaced with — the death penalty under subterfuge.
Which means that when MP David Bahati, sponsor of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, told NPR just this very morning that the committee had recommended that the death penalty be removed, that he was lying before his god and his country.
Of course, such evil should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention.
May 12th, 2011
“No amendments, no changes, would justify the passage of this odious bill,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters. “Both (President Barack Obama) and (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) publicly said it is inconsistent with universal human rights standards and obligations.”
The State Department, he said, is joining Uganda’s own human rights commissions in calling for the bill’s rejection.
“We are following this legislative process very closely,” Toner said. “Our embassy is closely monitoring the parliament’s proceedings and we also are in close contact with Uganda’s civil rights and civil society leaders, as well as members of the (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community there.”
May 12th, 2011
Human Rights Watch has issued a press release saying that they have seen the report from Uganda’s Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, which held hearings on Friday and Monday on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Despite denunciations from human rights groups and the U.S. State Department, the committee’s report with its recommendations was forwarded to Parliament Speaker Edward Ssekandi on Tuesday, which allowed the bill to show up on Parliament’s agenda on Wednesday. The bill was scheduled to go through its second and third reading as the last item on the agenda. It would have been during the second reading when the committee’s report would be revealed and recommendations discussed and either adopted or rejected. Once any and all amendments have been considered, then the bill would undergo its third reading in its final form for a vote.
Despite erroneous news reports to the contrary, the bill has not been amended since its introduction in October, 2009. To understand the committee’s recommendations, it’s important to review what the bill would do in its current form. It passed, it would:
There has been much speculation about what the committee’s report recommends. HRW says that the recommendations amount to minimal tweaks, plus a whole new “crime” that wasn’t included before:
The committee proposes amendments to the October 2009 draft bill. Despite the suggestion by the bill’s author, David Bahati, that the death penalty could be deleted from the legislation, the committee recommends retaining it. The committee proposes rewording the provision to align with the current Penal Code provision on “aggravated defilement,” which is punishable by death.
Some recommendations integrate concerns raised by Ugandan and international human rights groups. The committee states that provisions criminalizing “attempted” homosexuality should be removed, rightly stating such allegations would be very difficult to prove, Human Rights Watch said. The committee also recognizes that provisions requiring anyone who knows of homosexual conduct to report to police within 24 hours would create “problems especially to professionals whose ethics include confidentiality in order to be able to carry out their functions like Doctors, Lawyers and Counselors.”
The committee also suggests removing the clauses on extra-territorial prosecution of homosexuality and on nullifying Uganda’s international human rights obligations to the extent that they contradict the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
The committee recommends the creation of an additional crime, “conduct[ing] a marriage ceremony between persons of the same sex,” punishable by three years in prison, which was not in the original draft. It also suggests deleting the crimes of “aiding and abetting homosexuality,” and “conspiracy to commit homosexuality,” but including a penalty of seven years in prison for “procuring homosexuality by threats.” The committee did not comment on the current proposed provision criminalizing the “promotion of homosexuality,” which would jeopardize the legitimate work of national and international activists and organizations working to defend and promote human rights in Uganda.
Warren Throckmorton has looked into Uganda’s constitution and Rules of Procedures to understand what is at stake when Parliament reconvenes tomorrow morning:
Apparently, President Museveni cannot directly veto the AHB. I confirmed this with two sources today and read through their Rules of Procedure and Constitution. He can send it back or refuse to assent to it (although it would be the first time he has ever done so) but he cannot directly stop it. If he refuses to assent to it, Parliament can either turn around and pass it or they can wait 30 days for it to become law. It can either pass or fail tomorrow. If it comes up and fails then it is done in present form. If it doesn’t come up tomorrow, then a MP can make a motion to continue all business forward. In addition, I heard today, but cannot confirm that if no motion is passed to continue all business, then the new incoming Speaker could direct the committees to pick up where they left off with unfinished bills from the last Parliament. We apparently could be monitoring this particular AHB until at least May 19.
May 12th, 2011
A lovely ad, isn’t it? A very simple message. The only spoken words in it are from the pastor: “Welcome, everyone.”
It’s a message that many mainline churches have offered for quite some time. Including Presbyterians, Reformed Jews, Episcopalians, United Church of Christers (?)… this is hardly radical stuff. Just about every progressive religious organization believes in welcoming gay members and families.
To be clear, not all welcoming churches have gay marriage. Not all welcoming churches allow ordination of openly gay people who are not celibate. But all welcoming churches are, by definition, welcoming.
“Welcome, everyone.” If there is a minimum entry criteria for what constitutes “welcoming of diversity,” then it should at least start with that, don’t you think?
At the very minimum?
No so, with so-called Jim Wallis. His organization, Sojourners — ostensibly the leading “progressive” Christian organization — has rejected this ad. An ad that says nothing more than “welcome, everyone.”
Why? Because Wallis said that Sojourners doesn’t want to take any “sides.” Rev. Robert Chase, whose organization Intersections International sponsored the Believe Out Loud project, reacts:
Taking sides? What are the sides here? That young children who have same-gender parents are not welcome in our churches? That “welcome, everyone” (the only two words spoken in the ad) is a controversial greeting from our pulpits? That the stares the young boy and his moms get while walking down the aisle are justified? I can’t imagine Sojourners turning down an ad that called for welcome of poor children into our churches. So why is this boy different?
I called the folks at Sojourners and asked what the problem was, what the “sides” in question might be. The first response was that Sojourners has not taken a stance on gay marriage (the ad is not about gay marriage); or on ordination of homosexuals (the ad is about welcome, not ordination); that the decision, made by “the folks in executive” (why such a high level decision?) was made quickly because of the Mother’s Day deadline. The rationale kept shifting. The reasoning made no sense.
Sojourners claims that “We believe that unity in diversity is not only desirable, but essential to fulfilling God’s ultimate desire for God’s people.” (emphasis in the original.) What’s more, in Wallis’s book, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It 
“”The church is going to have to learn to stay together and talk about these things until we find some resolutions together. Many feel that legal protections can and should be extended to same-sex couples, without necessarily changing our whole definition of marriage. But one could argue that gay civil marriage is necessary under “equal protection.” One could also argue for church blessings of gay unions. I think all those are strong points, even if the churches are unlikely to change their whole theology and sacrament of marriage itself. But this is the good and necessary dialogue. And in the meantime, the church must stand up for gay and lesbian people under attack and must welcome them into the community of faith.” [page 334, emphasis added.]
It seems that Wallis has forgotten the words that he wrote in the very book that established his reputation as “welcoming.” What he said in his book is the same thing portrayed in the ad.
I think it’s time for Wallis to go ahead and surrender the title of “welcoming” to someone who can actually live up to the minimum requirements for entry into the club.
May 12th, 2011
TODAY’S AGENDA:
“Mayday for Marriage” RV Tour: The Family Research Foundation’s RV is touring the state with their message against marriage equality. Today, the hatebus stops in Buffalo at 2:00 p.m. at State Sen Mark Grisanti’s District Office (Walter J. Mahoney Building, 65 Court St., Room 213, Buffalo) FRF says they “urge concerned citizens to attend these events and remind their elected officials that base voters care deeply about this issue.” If you deeply care, consider yourself invited.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; and Stockton, CA.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Brussels, Belgium; Charleston, SC; Houston TX (Black Pride); Maspalomas, Canary Islands; New Hope, PA; and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
California Decriminalizes Homosexuality: 1975. Efforts to repeal California’s Sodomy law began in 1969 when San Francisco Assemblyman Willie Brown introduced what became known as the Brown Bill into the lower House. He reintroduced the bill every year until its passage in 1975. That year, the bill advanced through the House only to run into trouble in the Senate. The vote stood at a 20-20 tie when Senate Majority Leader George Moscone (who later became mayor of San Francisco) locked the chamber’s doors until Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymallyin could fly in from Denver to deliver the tie-breaking vote. Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill into law when it finally reached his desk.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Katharine Hepburn: 1907. Star of Morning Glory, The Philadelphia Story, The African Queen, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Lion In Winter, and On Golden Pond among countless others, she holds the record for the most Best Actress Oscar wins — four out of twelve nominations. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the daughter of suffragist Katharine Martha Houghton (who co-founded Planned Parenthood) and Dr. Thomas Hepburn, a urologist from Virginia. He insisted that his daughters learn to play tennis and golf, to ride and to swim, an activity she especially enjoyed. She attended Bryn Mawr College where she earned a degree in history and philosophy. She also earned a suspension for smoking and breaking curfew: after dark, she would swim naked in the college’s “Cloisters” fountain.
He background and drive are what make Hepburn widely admired today, but she were very unconventional and controversial in her day. She disdained makeup and often went to interviews dressed in men’s suits, saying they were more comfortable. She was straightforward, outspoken, and unabashedly intellectual, earning her the nickname, “Katharine of Arrogance.” She was also fearless. While filming The African Queen on location with Humphrey Bogart and director John Houston, she asked to go along when the two went big game hunting. Houston described her as a “Diana of the Hunt” who was able to shoot with the best of them. She recognized no limits. “I can remember when walking as a child, it was not customary to say you were fatigued. It was customary to complete the goal of the expedition.”
Bruce Voeller: 1934. Where to begin? He was a tireless gay rights advocate who co-founded the National Gay Task Force in 1973 and served as its director until 1978. He was a talented biologist, having studied biochemistry, developmental biology and genetics. That put him on the front lines as a researcher for a new disease that others started calling Gay-Related Immune Disorder (GRID), a name that he challenged for its medical inaccuracy. It is Voeller who is credited for giving the new disease the more accurate name of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
Voeller had married Dr. Kytja Scott Voeller, whom he met in grad school. Together they had three children. He came out in 1964 when he was 29, and the resulting divorce was messy. Voeller had to fight all the way up to the Supreme Court to gain child visitation rights. By then, Voeller was heavily involved in the resurgent gay rights movement. He was among the founders of the Gay Activists Alliance in 1969 and served as their third president. But he sought to bring gay activism into the mainstream of political discourse, while the GAA was more interested in street activism. In 1973, he left the GAA and founded NGTF (later, NGLTF), and built it into a nation advocacy organization. As NGTF director, he attended a historic White House meeting in 1977 with thirteen other LGBT advocates to raise awareness about discriminatory laws and policies.
In 1978, Voeller left he NGTF and established the Mariposa Education and Research Foundation to conduct human sexuality research. Among his concerns was that books, papers, and other ephemera on the LGBT movement was easily lost or destroyed, posing a danger that LGBT history itself would vanish. So he created a network of volunteers to search for and gather as much as possible, and that extensive collection was donated to the Cornell University Library in 1988. With the advent of AIDS, Voeller returned to his biologist’s roots and the Foundation shifted its focus towards reducing the risks of sexually transmitted diseases. His 1989 study warned that mineral oil lubricants caused rapid deterioration of latex condoms, leading to a shift to water-based sexual lubricants. He pioneered the use of nonoxynol-9 as a spermacide and topical virus-transmission preventative,, and he studied the reliability of various brands of condoms in disease prevention. The results of that study even appeared in Consumer Reports, making the information widely available and accessible to the public. He was conducting studies on viral leakage for the (then) recently approved “female” condom when he passed away in 1994 of an AIDS-related illness.
Jared Polis: 1975. Polis earned his fortune when he founded American Information Systems, an Internet access, web hosting and application service provider. He also went on to co-found an online greeting card company and an online florist. After selling those companies during the height of the dot-com bubble, he used his wealth to found the Jared Polis Foundation in 2000, whose mission is to “create opportunities for success through education and access to technology.” The foundation has refurbished and donated more than 3,500 computers each year to schools and other non-profits. He also founded two charter schools for at-risk students, and another school for older immigrant youths. He founded another school in Denver to serve youth who are homeless or living in unstable conditions.
When he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for Colorado’s Second District, he was the first openly gay man to be elected as a freshmen (all the others came out while already in office). As congressman, he has been a tireless advocate for LGBT equality. In 2011, he launched the Fearless Campaign, dedicated to “empowering our political leaders with the moral courage it takes to vote fearlessly on the politically charged issues of today, regardless of the perceived political risk.”
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). You’d be surprised how many notices I receive without these vital details.
May 11th, 2011
Headlines like this one in the Los Angeles Times are exasperating, especially considering we’ve spent the entire day chasing down erroneous reports from the Associated Press. So let’s get this straight once and for all: the death penalty has not yet been removed from the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
The opportunity to offer any amendments to the bill comes during the second reading in Parliament, which has not occurred yet. There are those who say the death penalty will be dropped when the measure is brought to the floor for it second reading. There are those who say that a recommendation to drop the death penalty has been included as part of the report from the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee. But the death penalty has not yet been dropped, nor have any other talked-about changes to the bill been implemented. Until the bill comes up for the its second reading and those amendments to the bill are actually proposed and approved, the bill remains as it has been since its introduction.
Mainstream media have been wrongly reporting this for more than a year now. Every time they’ve reported it, they have been wrong. Stop doing it, mainstream media.
May 11th, 2011
Bill Donohue of the Catholic League is mad at the Presbyterians for allowing ordination of gay people. Where’s the Presbyterian League when you need one?
May 11th, 2011
Governor Mack Markell tonight signed Delaware’s civil unions bill into law. The new law gives same-sex couples the same rights and responsibilities at the state level that are granted/imposed on married couples. The bill also recognizes same-sex marriages and civil unions performed in other states. The law takes effect on January 1, 2012.
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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