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 lobbyOctober 14th, 2011
TODAY’S AGENDA:
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Atlanta, GA; Austin, TX; Los Angeles; CA; Philadelphia, PA; Tucson, AZ and Watertown, NY.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Bakersfield, CA; Jacksonville, FL; Memphis, TN; Minsk, Belarus; Oklahoma, OK (Black Pride) and Tucson, AZ.
Also This Weekend: Floatilla, Hong Kong and Fort Lauderdale Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
First Gay Rights March on Washington: 1979. About 75,000 people from across the country and around the world marched down Pennsylvania Avenue for a rally at the Washington Monument for the first national gay rights march in U.S. history. Demands included the repeal of sodomy laws, approval of a proposed expansion of the Civil Rights Act to cover sexual orientation, an end to discrimination in child custody cases, and a presidential order ending the ban on gays in the military. Steve Ault, the march’s organizer, declared “This rally marks the first time that the gay constituency has pulled together on a national level and that is a very important political step for us.”
Congress Bans Federal Funds for AIDS Programs that “Promote Homosexuality”: 1987. The U.S. Senate voted 94-2 on an an amendment proposed by Sen. Jesse Helms to restrict federal funds for AIDS education to materials stressing sexual abstinence and which did not “promote homosexuality.” Citing comic books produced by the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York — material that had not been paid for by federal funds — Helms complained, “If the American people saw these books, they would be on the verge of revolt.” He claimed the books showed “graphic detail of a sexual encounter between two homosexual men. The comic books do not encourage a change in that perverted behavior. In fact, the comic books promote sodomy.” The only senators voting against the measure were Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) and Sen. Lowell Weiker (R-CT), who said, “If you’re going to censor that education, you’ve got no solution” to the AIDs crisis. The amendment would later be approved by the House on a 358-47 vote. It would remain the law of the land until 1992, when a federal court ruled that the restrictions were so vague they violated AIDS service organizations’ First and Fifth Amendment rights.
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Kindra Pring
October 14th, 2011
Also this weekend, there is a conference at San Francisco State called “Queer Yo Mind” for LGBT Students. :)
Ben in Atlanta
October 14th, 2011
If it’s allowed here I’d love more sponsors for the Atlanta AIDS Walk this Sunday:
https://www.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=480260&supId=309474545
If you’re in town come and just be present.
Jim Hlavac
October 14th, 2011
I was at that march in 1979 — and I have seen pictures of it, too, and I wrote about it this very day on my blog — and I dispute the figure “75,000” — that’s absurdly low — why, we were as thick and far and wide as the “350,000” Glenn Beck Honor Rally last year; looking at pictures of both events you will see crowds the same size — other sources put “100,000,” and “125,000” — and well, which? Well, I say 1/4 million. And I was there, as a 21 year old (the year after I met Harvey Milk briefly at a “gays under 21” event in SF.) And I saw people thick along the Mall from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol — and those events are always described as “250,000” or more — how can, then, we be so few when we are the same sized crowd? This is just mere under counting for lack of any certainty, lest anyone think too many gays existed.
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