Box Turtle Bulletin

300 Gay Mormons Meet in Salt Lake City Conference

In the same weekend in which about 70 people attended the annual convention for the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) in Phoenix which included a very large contingent of people associated with the Mormon ex-gay group Evergreen International as well as other LDS church members, about 300 people attended a three-day conference in a Salt Lake City church to discuss the issues surrounding gay Mormons. The conference, held at First Baptist Church, featured author and playwright Carol Lynn Pearson, Utah Democratic Party Chair Jim Dabakis, researcher John Dehlin, filmmaker Kendall Wilcox, Faith in Action’s Jimmy Creech, and gay psychologist Lee Beckstead. The conference was organized by Mormon Stories, which is not affiliated with the LDS church, and was intended to “build bridges between all who identify as Mormon,” at task which Beakstead said he found difficult:

During the Saturday morning session, Dr. Lee Beckstead, a Salt Lake therapist whose research has focused on resolving sexual, social and religious conflicts, said Mormons with same-gender attraction often feel torn apart by individuals urging them to “get off the fence — to be gay or be Mormon,” suggesting that one can’t be both.

Beckstead said either choice is painful.

“You can’t cut off a part of yourself and not do harm — even if you’re doing it to please God, or parents, or family or friends,” he said. While Beckstead said that he personally had a hard time being both gay and Mormon, the same may not be true for others.

“My resolution may not be your resolution,” he said, urging conferencegoers to “keep exploring for yourself what your truth is, what is right for you. That is where you will find your happiness.”

The Salt Lake Tribune (no link, although that may change soon) reports that Kevin Kloosterman, an LDS bishop from Illinois described the treatment of gays by the church as “an atrocity” and personally apologized, although he clarified that he was only speaking for himself and not the church. But he added that “straight members of the church have a lot of repenting to do.”

The Daily Agenda for Monday, November 7

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Michele Bachmann to speak at FRC: Washington, D.C. The Family “Research” Council has announced that GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann will give what they’re calling a “‘values speech’ … on critical issues of policy that affect this country and, in particular, the institution of the family in all of its aspects.” She will deliver this speech from FRC headquarters in Washington, D.C. this morning at 10:30 a.m. EST. It will be broadcast on the web.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
José Sarria Runs for San Francisco City Supervisor: 1961. He lost, of course, but he also won by losing. Before throwing his tiara into the ring, Sarria was better known as a drag performer and waiter at San Fransisco’s Black Cat bar, where he regaled audiences with campy versions of Italian opera. He fought constantly against police raids against gay men and gay bars — he himself had been arrested in an entrapment case. One tactic was for police to raid gay bars and arrest everyone dressed in drag for violating a city ordinance that barred men from dressing as women with “an intent to deceive.” He printed up buttons for drag queens to wear on their dresses reading “I am a boy.” That tactic effectively ended the raids on drag queens. When Sarria decided to run for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1961, he became the first openly gay candidate for public office in the United States. The elections that year were for five at-large seats in which the top five vote-getters citywide were seated. Sarria almost won by default until city officials put out a call for more candidates at the last minute when they realized what was up. Thirty-four candidates ended up running for the five slots. Sarria earned nearly 6,000 votes, putting him in ninth place. While he didn’t make it onto the Board of Supervisors, his 6.000 votes effectively defined a significant voting block which could not be ignored in future elections. Sarria’s loss marked a change in San Francisco city politics as a result. As Sarria recalled, “From that day on, nobody ran for anything in San Francisco without knocking on the door of the gay community.”

Prop 6/Briggs Initiative Defeated: 1978. State Sen. John Briggs had been a part of Anita Bryant’s campaign two years earlier to roll back a gay rights ordinance in Miami, Florida. So when he decided to run for the Republican nomination for California Governorship in 1978, he thought he had hit on the perfect campaign platform: the so-called threat posed by gay teachers in the public schools. He lost the Republican nomination, but managed to get placed on the California ballot Proposition 6, which would have banned gays and lesbians as teachers,along with anyone else, whether gay or straight, who defended gays and lesbians whether they did so in the schools or outside. In September, Prop 6 looked like a sure thing, with 61% supporting the proposal. But several events conspired to lead to the measure’s defeat: at San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk’s encouragement, thousands of gays and lesbians emerged from the closet for the first time to their friends, families and co-workers; Log Cabin Republicans organized to become a rallying point for other conservative Republicans to oppose the measure; and former Gov. Ronald Reagan came out against it — going so far as to write an op-ed against Prop 6 for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. “Whatever else it is, he wrote, “homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual’s sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child’s teachers do not really influence this.” Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter also came out against it. When election day came, Prop 6 went down in defeat, 42% to 58%.

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

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, November 6

TODAY’S AGENDA:

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Palm Springs, CA.

Also This Weekend: REELING LGBT Film Festival, Chicago, IL; Invincible Truth, Hong Kong, China.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
West Hollywood Incorporates As A City: 1984. Voters in the an unincorporated area of Los Angeles known as West Hollywood voted to incorporate as a city and elected a city council in a combined election. Attention in the news media focus on the fact that three of the five new council members were gay or lesbian in the new municipality, while many gay leaders hailed the new city with gays making up an estimated 40% of the population  as a “gay Camelot.” But the main issue that ignited the incorporation campaign in a city where 90% were renters was the decision by the County of Los Angeles to significantly reduce its rent-control regulations. Nevertheless, gay leaders saw incorporation as yet another stepping stone toward full acceptance. Valerie Ferrigno, who was selected by the council to serve as mayor for the council-manager city government, became the first known lesbian mayor of an American city. “You don’t have to say avowed lesbian or admitted lesbian,” she said. “I am a lesbian. I won’t deny it.” She then summed up the significance: “We were illegal not too long ago. The first consenting adults bill wasn’t proposed until 1968. Ten years ago I couldn’t have been elected, and not because I was too young. We’ve come a long way in a very short time.”

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

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, November 5

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Living Library for Youth: Moscow, Russia. Here’s an interesting project as reported by the Russian LGBT web site Anti-Dogma. Today and tomorrow, the Russian State Library for Youth in Moscow will be having a “Living Library.” Here’s how they explain it (via Google Translate):

“Living Library” works just like a normal library, “readers” come to fill a library card, choose the “book” and read it for half an hour. After that, return the “book” in the library and if they want to take on another. The only difference is that the “book” in “Living Library” – this is real people, and “reading” – this is conversation. Conversation, “reader” and “books” – is: – free dialogue – an opportunity to ask any question – the opportunity to talk with people, which does not meet in everyday life.

Among the “books” participating are a journalist, foreign expats from Germany and the U.S., a homeless person, a Buddhist monk, a girl who embraced Islam, and many others — including a gay person, a lesbian, a transgender person, and an HIV-positive person. The Living Library takes place today and tomorrow from 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: San Luis Obispo, CA.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Buenos Aries, Argentina and Palm Springs, CA.

Also This Weekend: REELING LGBT Film Festival, Chicago, IL; Invincible Truth, Hong Kong, China.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
First Openly Gay Candidate Elected to State Legislature: 1974. Elaine Noble, an “avowed Lesbian” in the parlance of the day, made history when she became the first openly gay candidate to win a seat in a state legislature. She won her seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives with 59% of the vote. When she decided to run, she was pressured to hide her sexuality. “There was a lot of pressure from some of my supporters in the community not to mention it,” she told reporters after her win. “But I thought it was necessary to state that politically. I mean, we’re not purple, right? … I figured the worst thing that can happen is that I lose.” And so she listed among her qualifications in her campaign literature her master’s degree from Harvard, her membership in the Women’s Political Caucus, and her radio program “Gay Way” on a local FM station. she focused her campaign on neighborhood issues: crime, health care, housing for the district’s many elderly residents, and the neglect in city services. She later described the campaign as “very ugly.” Her windows were shot out, her car was vandalized, and windows were broken out at her campaign headquarters. The harassment continued even after she took office. She had to deal with obscene profanities, and at one time human feces were left in her desk. But when she stood for re-election two years later, she won with almost 90% of the vote.

San Francisco Bans AIDS Discrimination: 1985. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a measure forbidding the firing or eviction of anyone because they had AIDS, and would prohibit others from requiring AIDS tests. The move came after similar bans were enacted in Los Angeles and West Hollywood.

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

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

And who made you gay? Hmmmm? Could it be…. SATAN!?!

One of the cleverest characters to have been created for Saturday Night Live was Dana Carvey’s Church Lady. Enid Strict, as host of show-within-a-show Church Chat, would interview guests focusing on their real or imagined failings and attribute them to … (pause for effect) … SATAN!

Her colorful euphemisms (e.g. “naughty parts all engorged and tingling”) and smug superiority made the Church Lady an instant cultural reference point. But the real success of Carvey’s character was based on the recognizable attitudes she espoused. Yes, Church Lady was way over the top, but only slightly more over the top than the very real people on religious television that she parodied.

And it would seem that the Church Lady’s proclivity to see Satan as the personal instigator of all manner of things is still alive and well. Take, for example, an amusing but real illustration out of Massachusetts.

The Pilot Catholic News is “America’s oldest Catholic newspaper” and the “Official Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston”. And on October 28, the Church shared with us the wisdom of Daniel Avila, a policy adviser at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

I give Avila some credit. He has, after all, accurately articulated the problem that I have with the conservative theology on the matter of sexual orientation.

That is, if God causes same-sex attraction, and yet commands that it not be satisfied, then this is divine cruelty. Or, if God causes same-sex attraction, then it must be the divine will that those with the attraction should act on it and it is the Church that is being cruel in its teaching or at the very least tragically mistaken about what God wants.

Yeah, though I’d use different phrasing, that’s pretty much what I believe. Either the Church is misunderstanding the will of God, or the god they serve is a petty bully delighting in his own cruelty.

But Avila has discovered the flaw in my thinking. As it turns out, sexual orientation is not a naturally occurring phenomenon present in a stable minority of humans and illustrating either God’s intent or His consent. Nope. Avila’s found another culprit.

His logic goes like this: God wants us to be male or female, as evidenced by “male and female genes”. And as same-sex attraction is likely the result of “random imbalances in maternal hormone levels” and “their disruptive prenatal effects on fetal development”, then surely someone is causing those imbalances in order to thwart God’s intent.

And who is it that’s making all those male genes want to design ballgowns and those female genes want to play softball? Hmmmm? Could it be…. SATAN?!?

Why yes. It could.

Catholics do not have the luxury of being materialists. We look for ultimate explanations that transcend the strictly physical world and that stretch beyond our limited ability to mold and reshape reality as we know it. Disruptive imbalances in nature that thwart encoded processes point to supernatural actors who, unlike God, do not have the good of persons at heart.

In other words, the scientific evidence of how same-sex attraction most likely may be created provides a credible basis for a spiritual explanation that indicts the devil. Any time natural disasters occur, we as people of faith look back to Scripture’s account of those angels who rebelled and fell from grace. In their anger against God, these malcontents prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. They continue to do all they can to mar, distort and destroy God’s handiwork.

Therefore, whenever natural causes disturb otherwise typical biological development, leading to the personally unchosen beginnings of same-sex attraction, the ultimate responsibility, on a theological level, is and should be imputed to the evil one, not God.

Well that’s nice. It turns out that you are a product of Satan.

So if you think little Johnny is demon possessed because he’d rather play dolls with his sister than hit her with a toy truck, Avila’s theology is the one for you. And if you beat little Johnny to death because of his demons, well surely the Church can understand your holy stance for righteousness.

And they printed it. Really. The Editors of the Pilot Catholic News (the Official Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston) didn’t notice any problem with an editorial that claimed gay people were created by the devil.

Well, not until those outside the enclave of the faithful read it and either were horrified or laughed their asses off. Then they recalled that the words they were supposed to use in public were “image and likeness of God” and “inviolable dignity”, not “spawn of Satan”.

Ooopsie

And so a “retraction” was issued.

“Statements made in my column, ‘Some fundamental questions on same-sex attraction’ of October 28, do not represent the position of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the column was not authorized for publication as is required policy for staff of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The teaching of Sacred Scripture and of the Catechism of the Catholic Church make it clear that all persons are created in the image and likeness of God and have inviolable dignity. Likewise, the Church proclaims the sanctity of marriage as the permanent, faithful, fruitful union of one man and one woman. The Church opposes, as I do too, all unjust discrimination and the violence against persons that unjust discrimination inspires. I deeply apologize for the hurt and confusion that this column has caused.”

I put retraction in quotes because, to me, if you are taking back some truly evil and vile thing you have just said about people, you don’t use the opportunity to “proclaim the sanctity” of denying those people’s rights. That is neither apology or retraction but rather a smug pat on his own back.

And, while I’m at it, I’m sick of the Catholic Church opposing “unjust discrimination.” Guess what, Avila? The distinction between “unjust” discrimination and “just” discrimination isn’t determined by whether or not you want to engage in it. Justice isn’t defined as “what the Church endorses”.

So you can stop doing your little Superior Dance.

And now the latest word is that Daniel Avila has resigned his advisor position. And the church gratefully accepted his resignation.

Which solves everything, doesn’t it?

Sure, except that behind the pretty-speak about being children of God, we know what they really think. Avila is not alone. His column passed the editorial staff without question and he’s received no rebuke from the church.

And the next time the Roman Catholic Church tries to appeal to their moral values to take away civil rights from you and those you love, remember this: they may say that they love you, but that love is the same love they would feel for any other vile creatures created by Satan himself.

Well now, isn’t that special?

– – – –
thanks to Ned for the links and the copy of the original article

The Pilot pulled the opinion piece (who could blame them) but you can read it after the break
Read the rest of this entry »

Michele Bachmann, Enemy of Religious Freedom

Dear Representative Bachmann,

Why do you oppose religious freedom? And why are you such an enemy of the soldiers who guard our liberty?

I’m referring to your signature on Rep. Todd Akin’s letter to Senate leaders, which calls for rolling back the new policy allowing military chaplains to perform same-sex weddings in states where it’s legal.  The policy’s pretty simple:

A military chaplain may participate in or officiate any private ceremony, whether on or off a military installation, provided that the ceremony is not prohibited by applicable state and local law. Further, a chaplain is not required to participate in or officiate a private ceremony if doing so would be in variance with the tenets of his or her religion or personal beliefs. Finally, a military chaplain’s participation in a private ceremony does not constitute an endorsement of the ceremony by DoD.

(I emphasized a few key phrases for you.)

Some chaplains have worried the military would compromise their religious freedom by forcing them to conduct same-sex weddings. This policy prevents that. In fact, this policy maximizes religious freedom by leaving the decision entirely up to each chaplain’s conscience. Yet you oppose this freedom! You’re eager to let the government dictate religious policy. How and when did you become such a foe of religious liberty?

According to the letter you signed, this policy violates DOMA.  That’s nonsense, of course. DOMA has two main provisions:

• States that ban same-sex marriage will not be forced to recognize such marriages from states that allow them.
• The federal government will not recognize same-sex marriages as marriages.

Nothing in the policy violates either principle. Your letter tries to assert otherwise:

The use of federal property or federal employees to perform anything but opposite-sex ceremonies is a clear contravention of the law.

Do you expect us to believe that? DOMA certainly doesn’t say it. And what a violation of liberty it would be! Consider a federal employee, say a guard for the Border Patrol — or a scientist for the National Institutes of Health, or a geologist with the Department of the Interior — who is also an ordained minister. Are you truly claiming  DOMA prevents these good people from marrying same-sex couples in a private ceremony simply because they happen to be federal employees?

If not, then retract the claim. And if so — again, when did you become such a foe of religious liberty, such an advocate of government control over religion?

The real travesty, though, is your contemptuous treatment of our troops. We ask such sacrifice from them, and you are pointlessly trying to make their lives harder. Hampering their legal right to marry in states that allow it. Restricting their choice of who will preside over the most important ceremony of their lives.

And you’re not just harming gay and lesbian troops.  As your letter acknowledges: “the National Defense Authorization Act is well underway and needed funds for our troops should be expedited without delay.” Yet here you are, trying to delay those funds, because you’ve made restricting the religious freedom of chaplains a higher priority than protecting American soldiers.

Really, Ms. Bachmann, have you no shame?

Sincerely,
Robert Tisinai

The Daily Agenda for Friday, November 4

TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Campus Pride College Fair and Prep Day: New York, NY. Campus Pride’s College Fair is an opportunity for LGBT students and their families to discuss educational opportunities with participating LGBT-affirming colleges and universities. The fair features expert advice about LGBT-friendly colleges, scholarship resources and even effective tips for campus visits. The last one on the calendar for this year takes place today at at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center on 208 W 13th Street in New York, and goes from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. More information can be found here.

Screening of “This Is What Love In Action Looks Like”: Memphis, TN. In June 2005, sixteen-year-old Zach Stark announced on his MySpace blog that his parents were sending him away to an ex-gay youth program. He also posted the program’s rules that he would be forced to live under while participating in the program. Thanks to Zach’s blog posts, Memphis-based Love In Action, an Exodus-affiliated program, became the focus of worldwide controversy and daily protests. “Love In Action” was investigated by the state of Tennessee for child abuse and for operating a separate unlicensed drug and alcohol treatment program. Love In Action eventually settled with the state and shut down their youth program. Morgan Fox’s documentary, This Is What Love in Action Looks Like, chronicles those events and features interviews with Zach, then-LIA director John Smid, other former ex-gay leaders and former LIA clients. Since stepping down as LIA director, Smid has offered a general apology and confirmed that in his more than two decades as a leader in the ex-gay movement, he never met a man who had gone from gay to straight. More needs to be done, but it’s a good first step. Morgan Fox’s documentary will be shown tonight at the Indie Memphis Film Festival beginning at 7:00 p.m at the Playhouse On the Square. Morgan Fox is scheduled to attend.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: San Luis Obispo, CA.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Buenos Aries, Argentina and Palm Springs, CA.

Also This Weekend: REELING LGBT Film Festival, Chicago, IL; Invincible Truth, Hong Kong, China.

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
NARTH’s Annual Convention Begins: Phoenix, AZ. The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) bills itself as a scientific organization dedicating to the non-scientific pursuit of “curing” homosexuality. NARTH claims that because they are a scientific organization, that they don’t engage in advocacy. But that claim doesn’t stack up. Just look at the convention program. Anti-gay firebrand Michael Brown will speak during a plenary on “A Call to Courage,” and Family Watch International’s Sharon Slater will speak in a workshop titled innocuously  “UN/International.” What that title doesn’t betray is that Slater has been very active throughout Africa advocating against relaxing laws against homosexuality and she refused to condemn Uganda’s proposed lifetime imprisonment for gays. (She did oppose the death penalty, as if there was a difference between that an a lifetime in a Ugandan prison.) Another item on the schedule is Christopher Doyle’s presentation of an “Acception (sic) film (bullying).” Ironic, given that in 2006 a member of NARTH’s scientific advisory board endorsed bullying as a way of “reestablishing necessary boundaries” for gender-variant children. Julie Hamilton, President of NARTH, kicks everything off this morning at 8:30 a.m. at the Phoenix Airport Marriott at 1101 N 44th St. NARTH will also sponsor an all-day “Information and Resource Conference” on Saturday for Arizona residents, also at the Airport Marriott, for $35.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
California’s Prop 64 To Quarantine People With AIDS Defeated: 1986. Lyndon LaRouche’s name is all but forgotten today, but in the early 1980s the paranoid perennial Presidential candidate was regarded more as a joke than as a serious political thinker, even though he took himself very seriously. LaRouche typically ran as a self-styled Democrat (much to the consternation of real Democrats) while putting forth elaborate conspiracy theories and bizarre economic platforms. During his 1984 campaign, he managed to purchase 14 television spots in which he called Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale a Soviet KGB agent, and charged that Henry Kissinger and the Queen of England were in charge of worldwide drug cartels. He lost, of course, but didn’t go away.

In 1986, at the height of the hysterical anti-gay backlash that had sprung up in the midst of the growing AIDS epidemic, LaRouche founded his Prevent AIDS Now Initiative Committee (PANIC), which gathered enough signatures to place Proposition 64 onto the ballot. Prop 64, if passed, would have placed AIDS onto California’s list of communicable diseases under the state’s public health law, which would have effectively forced anyone who was HIV-positive out of their jobs and schools and into a quarantine. The LaRouchites said that such measures were required because AIDS was “worse than the Black Death” that devastated 14th-century Europe and Asia, and was “more deadly to mankind than a full-scale thermonuclear war.” They also claimed that AIDS had been created by the Soviets — or maybe the International Monetary Fund or maybe the World Bank — to kill “excess eaters” in Africa, and asserted that it could be spread like the common cold through casual contact or through mosquito bites. “A person with AIDS running around is like a person with a machine gun shooting up a neighborhood,” he told a San Francisco radio program. Health officials denounced LaRouche’s harebrained theories, but LaRouche held his ground. His Biological Holocaust Task Force charged that “AIDS is the first known epidemic which could potentially wipe out the entire human race” and that his detractors were “guilty of one of the most evil cover-ups in medical history.”

Flyer for a LaRouche-sponsored conference in Atlanta, 1992. (Click to enlarge.)

Despite support from Congressman William E. Dannemeyer, Prop 64 lost in a landslide, 71% to 29%. LaRouche brought it back again in 1988 as Prop 69, when it lost by an even wider margin. He also made that AIDS quarantine the centerpiece of his 1988 presidential campaign, but Prop 64 would prove to be his high water mark, such as it was. In October 1986, federal and state agents raided his heavily guarded compound in Loudon County, Virginia and offices in Massachusetts. A federal grand jury indicted LaRouche and several of his associates with credit card fraud and obstruction of justice. In 1988, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, 11 counts of actual mail fraud and a count of conspiring to defraud the IRS, all part of a wider effort to obtain credit card loans in his name and those of his supporters that he had no intention of repaying. LaRouche, true to form, blamed the raid on Raisa Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s First Lady. He served six years in prison, running again for President from prison in 1992. At one time, he shared his cell with televangelist Jim Bakker, who recalled, “to say LaRouche was a little paranoid would be like saying that the Titanic had a little leak.” He still hasn’t gone away. More recently, he posted an image of President Barack Obama as Hitler that began appearing at Tea Party and Town Hall meetings in 2009, and he helped to popularize the fiction that Obama’s health care reform included so-called “death panels.”

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

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

A bus, a kiss, and an all too familiar scenario

Sometimes you read a story that sounds familiar. Not the names necessarily, but the context, the attitudes, the social atmosphere.

Christopher Buchanan, 22, and his boyfriend Derrell Hughes boarded a 146 southbound bus in Lakeview on Oct. 22, after leaving an afternoon program at the Broadway Youth Center, Buchanan said.

“I was holding his hand and kissing and whatnot,” Buchanan told Windy City Times.

As the bus approached downtown, he said, a middle-aged White woman approached the bus driver to complain about the two.

The driver allegedly got up and told Buchanan and Hughes that someone had complained about them and that they needed to get off his bus.

“He was really in my face,” said Buchanan. “He said ‘you bitches need to get off the bus…I can’t stand fags.'”

I don’t know what whatnot the two were up to. But I know this, if the driver’s objection was based on Christoper and Derrell being “bitches” and “fags”, then a simple apology is not enough.

NOM Exploits Supporters with Casual, Offhand Lie

The National Organization “for” Marriage recently issued another one of its regular pleas for money, and this one contains — surprise! — a lie.  In an article about Illinois adoption agencies, NOM president Brian Brown writes:

Now that government is refusing to work with Christian adoption agencies…

This is a lie.

• I called Illinois’ Department of Children & Family Services (312-814-6847).  They still work with Christian adoption agencies.

• I called St. Mary’s Services, an Episcopalian adoption agency (847-870-8181).  The state government still works with them.

• I called Illini Christian Ministries (217-469-7566), which offers adoption services.  The state government still works with them.

• I called Lutheran Social Services of Illinois (847-635-4600), which offers adoptions services.  The state government actually funds them.  (This may also be true of the other agencies, but I have not confirmed it.)

The government is not “refusing to work with Christian adoption agencies.”  If NOM were committed to honesty, it could have written, “Now that government is refusing to work with adoption agencies that violate anti-discrimination law…” but that’s got a pretty low martyr factor.  And NOM needs that martyr factor.

Their big project now is developing a persecution narrative.  It’s a desperate strategy.  When judges mandated same-sex marriage, NOM decried judges who legislated from the bench. When state legislature passed same-sex marriage, NOM complained about legislators legislating from the legislature (!), and called for referendum by popular vote.  Now that public opinion is turning firmly against them, they’re trying to lay groundwork for judges to legislate from the bench by declaring same-sex marriage an infringement on religious freedom.

Apparently they can’t do that without lying.

What’s even more disturbing, though, is the contempt they show their own supporters.  NOM spread this lie in a fundraising appeal.  They have no compunctions about deceiving their followers in order to extract cash from them.

And of course, it’s not just about the money.  This is another contribution to the anti-gay echo chamber.  By offering this falsehood in a casual, offhand way, their readers accept it as a simple, obvious truth.  They’ll repeat it, not realizing it’s a lie.  Good, innocent folk will repeat it after them.  NOM isn’t just exploiting people’s wallets; it’s exploiting their trust.  And soon enough, once again, a lie will become the “truth.”

I don’t know why I still find it so astonishing when our opponents hold themselves up as moral guardians while lying to the very people them claim to protect.

But, somehow, I always do.

Ugandan TV Reports On UK Threat to Withhold Aid

Uganda’s privately-owned WBS launched a YouTube channel about a year ago. In this report uploaded yesterday, WBS reports on reactions from Ugandan lawmakers to British warnings of aid cuts to countries that persecute LGBT people. As predicted by LGBT activists inside Uganda, those warnings appear to be having the opposite of their desired effect, stirring a backlash in Uganda and stiffening the resolve of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill’s backers.

[Via Joe.My.God]

Another Former Ex-Gay Leader: “Nobody Quit Being Gay”

This time, it’s Sergio Viula, founder of the Movement for Healthy Sexuality (the Portuguese acronym is MOSES), an evangelical ex-gay organization:

But how was this process of ‘abandoning the sin’? Was it like a treatment?

– That didn’t really happen, after all. It was like the so-called discipleship, which happened to be brainwashing, indeed. You have to get isolated from your former circle of friends, start attend church meetings, go through counseling sessions, pray, fast, and stuff like that. When somebody happened to get involved with another homosexual, he had to confess what he’d done. THAT’S FUCKING CRAZY! Sorry, but even nowadays I feel angry when I remember that.

Why anger?

– Nobody really quit being gay. There were relationships even within the group, between an activity and another, they would always find time for that. Can you figure out how much suffering to myself and to all of those who have already worked or been influenced by this kind of ‘ministry’? That’s enraging! And there are people repeating that stupid discourse until today.

He used to call himself ex-gay — and had even married and had two children — but says “Today I know that I was deceiving myself.” He also describes the effect being an ex-gay leader had on him:

[I]t was an act of violence against ourselves, as we had internalized the homophobia that surrounded us from early childhood, as well as against the others, because we reproduced that very homophobia which they had internalized by themselves long before. We just reinforced it even more.

UPDATE: A note from Viula

I’ve just released a translation of my book in English on slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/SergioViula/sergio-viulatranslation Check it out, please, and if you like it, spread the news. ;)

Sergio Viula

How Same Sex Marriage Leads To Incest

Step 1: Pass a law allowing gays to marry.

Step 2: Hold new elections, changing the composition of the state legislature.

Step 3: Propose a ban on same-sex marriages.

Step 4: Drop the proposed ban and go instead for a repeal of same-sex marriage, replacing it with a proposal to institute civil unions for everyone regardless of gender — and regardless of whether they are already related to each other.

So you see? NOM was right. Same-sex marriage does lead to state recognition of incest.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, November 3

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Senate Judiciary Committee to Debate DOMA Repeal: Washington, D.C. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold an Executive Business Meeting this morning to go over a number of items on the agenda, including Senate Bill 598, known as the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.  The committee, chaired by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) will meet at 10:00 a.m. in Dirkson Senate Office Building, room 226, and will be webcast here. The House version of the Respect for Marriage Act has 128 co-sponsors, but because the House is under Republican control, it is extremely unlikely the House will take action on the bill.

Frank Kameny (Washington Blade/Michael Key)

Frank Kameny Memorial: Washington, D.C. Pioneering gay rights advocate Frank Kameny may have died in financial poverty, but he had no poverty of friends. Those friends and others in the community will gather for a “Lying-In-State” for Dr. Kameny in the first floor atrium of the Carnegie Library, located between 7th and 9th Streets NW at Mount Vernon Square, from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. It’s not a memorial service — those plans are still underway — which means that there is no formal program, although local civic leaders are expected to make remarks and local choral groups may sing.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: San Luis Obispo, CA.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Buenos Aries, Argentina and Palm Springs, CA.

Also This Weekend: REELING LGBT Film Festival, Chicago, IL; Invincible Truth, Hong Kong, China.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Aaron McKinney Found Guilty of Matthew Shepard’s Murder: 1999. After ten hours of deliberation, a jury in Laramie, Wyoming found Aaron McKinney guilty of first-degree murder of Matthew Shepard, after having been acquitted of the high charge of premeditated first-degree murder. Testimony would begin the next day for the penalty phase to determine McKinney’s eligibility for the death penalty. The jury would ultimately reject that option and McKinney instead drew two consecutive life terms.

McKinney confessed to his role in beating Matthew Shepard with a .357 magnum and tying him to a fence outside of Laramie. After Shepard died from severe brain damage, McKinney’s attorneys spent the trial fighting for a reduced conviction to escape the death penalty. Co-defendant Russell Henderson plea bargained two life sentences without possibility of parole earlier in the year.

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

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

Anita Bryant “Wants A Gay Best Friend”

Chad Hodge is writing an HBO movie about the famed anti-gay activist. He’s also the first gay person she agreed to talk to in 33 years:

“She was panicked to meet me and I was panicked to meet her,” said Hodge, who most recently was executive producer of The Playboy Club.

The two eventually warmed to each other. “We talked about everything,” Hodge said. “Religion, homosexuality, her life and every detail of her life. I mean, everything! She really opened up to me. It started very standoffish…but then it slowly took a turn and she opened up and cried to me.”

Cried?!

Hodge smiled, “Turns out she wants a gay best friend just like everyone else.”

NH anti-marriage amendment dropped

In New Hampshire, there has been a two-tiered approach to reversing marriage equality. Anti-gay activists sought to have the legislature repeal its decision and also started a process within the legislature to present the voters with an amendment to the state constitution limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples.

The second endeavor has been dropped: (Globe)

The sponsor of a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage has decided not to pursue the measure next year to clear the way for a debate over repealing New Hampshire’s law legalizing the unions.

State Rep. David Bates, the Windham Republican who also is sponsor of the repeal bill, told The Associated Press on Tuesday he wants to let the Legislature consider repealing the law enacted under Democrats two years ago before debating a constitutional change — a process that would take longer to implement.

That, and the fact that polls show that New Hampshire residents don’t want to repeal the marriage law.

And as for that bill winding its way through the legislature, it appears to me to have been crafted with pleasing special interest groups in mind, not for actually becoming law. It claims to replace marriage with civil unions … kinda.

The House Judiciary Committee voted last week to recommend replacing the law legalizing same-sex marriage with civil unions for any unmarried adults, including relatives. The committee recommended killing a bill that simply repealed the law.
…
The bill would not enact the same civil unions law that was in effect before gays were allowed to marry. That law granted gays all the rights and responsibilities of marriage except in name. The proposed civil unions law would be open to any two adults and would let anyone refuse to recognize the unions. It also would allow anyone to discriminate against such couples in employment, housing and public accommodations based on religious or moral beliefs.

My cynical side wonders if maybe the Republican leadership – which has shown reluctance to reverse the marriage law – didn’t deliberately draft this poison pill bill. It’s practically an invitation to vote no.

“Fellow legislators, while I support the age-old institution of marriage as defined by God, I simply cannot vote in favor of legalized incest”

and

“While I believe that civil unions are a better option for New Hampshire, I can’t vote for a bill that introduces a special right to discriminate.”

And should the bill pass the legislature, to override Gov. Lynch’s veto would require two-thirds of those present and voting. I’m fairly sure that a number of legislators, having voted to “protect marriage” once, will be ‘sadly unavailable due to an unexpected family emergency’ when it comes time for a veto override vote. They too have seen the polls.