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 lobbyAugust 12th, 2011
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Political “Soap Box” At Iowa State Fair: Des Moines, IA. . The Des Moines Register is hosting an old-fashioned political soapbox at the Iowa State Fair where presidential candidates can address attendees for up to twenty minutes on any topic they choose. Only one candidate spoke yesterday, but Mitt Romney’s turn on the soap box ended up becoming major news. Members of the Des Moines-based Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement who confronted Romney over proposed cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Romney denounced the alternative of raising revenue from taxes on corporations, saying “Corporations are people too.” Today’s schedule at the soapbox will go like this:
Out In Africa Film Festival: Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa. The 18th Out In Africa South African Gay & Lesbian Film Festival begins today. The lineup includes six feature films, four documentaries, and nine shorts from fourteen countries. On documentary, Getting Out, shows three gay Africans seeking asylum, but find that neither South Africa nor Europe are reliable sanctuaries for them. Another documentary, Waited For, follows a lesbian couple’s difficulties in adopting a child in South Africa. Glitterboys and Ganglands give a behind-the-scenes view of preparations for Miss Gay Western Cape. The festival runs through August 21.
Texas Transgender Nondiscrimination Summit: Houston, TX. After Texas A&M’s student council moved to force a shutdown of the school’s LGBT resource center last spring, organizers of the the statewide transgender conference feared that the campus would be an unsafe venue for their third annual meeting. Consequently, the Texas Transgender Nondiscrimination Summit, has been moved to the University of Houston to protect “the safety for the participants.” The 2011 summit begins today on the campus of the University of Houston and continues through tomorrow.
Australians Rally for Marriage Equality This Weekend: Adelaide, SA; Brisbane, QLD; Canberra, ACT; Melbourne, VIC; Perth, WA and Sydney, NWS.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Brighton, UK; Charleston, SC; Eugene, OR; Fargo, ND; Indianapolis, IN (Black Pride); Irvine, CA; Mannheim, Germany; Montréal, QC; New York, NY (Black Pride); Palouse/Moscow ID; Prague, Czech Rep.; Sligo, Ireland; and Wakefield, UK.
AIDS Walk This Weekend: Denver, CO.
Also This Weekend: Northalstead Market Days, Chicago, IL and Provincetown Carnival, MA.
Click to view the full broadsheet.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Captain Nichols Hanged for “Buggery”: 1833. Yes, that was the actual British legal term for homosexual activity, and it was a capital offense until 1861, when the laws were finally relaxed to allow for life imprisonment. But that change came almost thirty years too late for Captain Henry Nichols. In 1833, the the London Courier printed the following account:
Captain Henry Nicholas Nicholls, who was one of the unnatural gang to which the late Captain Beauclerk belonged, (and which latter gentleman put an end to his existence), was convicted on the clearest evidence at Croydon, on Saturday last, of the capital offence of Sodomy; the prisoner was perfectly calm and unmoved throughout the trial, and even when sentence of death was passed upon him. In performing the duty of passing sentence of death upon the prisoner, Mr. Justice Park told him that it would be inconsistent with that duty if he held out the slightest hope that the law would not be allowed to take its severest course. At 9 o’clock in the morning the sentence was carried into effect. The culprit, who was fifty years of age, was a fine looking man, and had served in the Peninsular war. He was connected with a highly respectable family; but, since his apprehension not a single member of it visited him.
You can also read a different account from a popular broadsheet by clicking the above image.
[via ExecutedToday.com (which proves that there is truly a blog for everything)]
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).
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draNgNon
August 12th, 2011
I read through the broadsheet on the gentleman’s execution. if I am parsing it correctly, he buggered not one but two boys, one of whom died.
that’d get someone executed today too, in many states here in the US.
now, the other sources do not match with the broadsheet on everything that happened, and such things were prone to sensationalism; so perhaps it was just for sodomy as the Courier says, but I just thought I’d point it out.
that post on executedtoday that you linked to, however, is fantastic. also, how you dig up the historical bits for these daily agenda posts, I do not know, but they are truly amazing to read. love it.
Rebecca Ashling
August 12th, 2011
I’d heard about this legal fiction that a corporation is a person. Does this mean that corporations are weird hive-minds or something? What a strange place the USA is! So unlike our own dear United Kingdom. But America is abroad, so what can one expect?
Charles
August 12th, 2011
The archaic writing of this article makes it unclear as to what all really happened. Captain Nichols was convicted of buggery not the murder of the young boy. I don’t read anywhere that he buggered two boys. Then the writer of the broadsheet throws in the piece that a Captsin Beaulerk had been arrested some months earlier and “destroyed” himself.
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