Box Turtle Bulletin

NY Clerk May Be Sued for Imposing Religious Test for Marriage Licenses

As Rob Tisinai argued, that should be the headline over every article describing the decision of Rose Marie Belforti, the town clerk in Ledyard, New York, to impose her personal religious test on every person who wants to get married in her town. Last month, she sent a letter to the town board announcing her decision not to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples. On August 30, a lesbian couple applied for a license, but were turned away because a deputy who had been assigned the task of doing Belfori’s job for her wasn’t available.

People for the American Way sent a letter to Belforti and town supervisor Mark Jordan demanding that the board direct Belforti to do her job or resign. If they refuse to do that, the town and clerk could face a lawsuit compelling the town and clerk follow New York law:

“Elected officials don’t get to pick and choose what laws they follow,” said PFAW spokesman Drew Courtney. “A county clerk that doesn’t like hunting doesn’t get to not issue hunting licenses. People for the American Way will be the first ones to defend her freedom of conscience, but she signed up to do a job. If she doesn’t want to do that job, she should resign.”

Belforti is an elected official, and it appears the board does not has the authority to force her to resign. Clerks in two other New York counties have already stepped down.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, September 16

TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Cranbrook, BC; Detroit, MI; Edmunton, AB; Hamilton, ON; Hazelton, BC; Kamloops, BC; Kingston, ON; London, ON; Nelson, BC; Niagara, ON; North Bay, ON; Prince George, BC; Rochester, NY; Sacramento, CA; Saskatoon, SK; Sydney, NS; and Vancouver, BC.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Dallas, TX; eKurhuleni, South Africa; Hartford, CT; Honolulu, HI; Las Vegas, NV; Modesto, CA; Rehoboth Beach, DE; Roanoke, VA; Sapporo, Japan; Stratford, ON; and Valdosta, GA.

Also This Weekend: North Louisiana Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Shreveport, LA.

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Exodus International North Atlantic Regional Conference: Auburn, NH. Exodus International will conduct a major three-day conference beginning today and continuing through Sunday. Guest speaker will be Andrew Comiskey of Desert Stream Ministries. Last year, Comiskey posted an admission on his blog that a staffer at DSM had sexually abused at least one teenager under their care. But instead of publicly apologizing for the appalling transgression or expressing anguish over the teen’s abuse, he talked about his own anguish over having been interrogated by police and liability insurers, and he thanked his god that “God spared us” from the humiliation of their story appearing in the newspapers. In 2005, DSM moved to Kansas City where Comiskey announced he was partnering with Dominionist theologian Mike Bickle (organizer of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s crusade in Houston last month) and the International House of Prayer. DSM  reportedly uses “extreme methods that involve forms of exorcism (deliverance/healing prayer) and rely on teachings that believe that people become gay through demonic influences and the sins of ancestors.” Comiskey’s Desert Stream Ministries is one of the leading ex-gay ministries affiliated with Exodus International.The fun in New Hampshire begins this evening at 7:00 p.m. at the First Assembly of God in the Manchester suburb of Auburn. A group of LGBT advocates will be there Saturday morning to greet arrivals.

Eagle Forum Council: Arlington, VA. Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum will gather for their 40th annual Eagle Council beginning this today with citizen lobbying training and a round of visits with congressional staff. The serious conference begins on Saturday at 9:00, with a full day of speakers, including Phyllis’s gay son, John Schlafly, who will give a talk titled, “We Really Need Laws About Marriage?”, which is intended to teach “how to answer the libertarian and gay arguments about marriage.” What a sad spectacle that will be.

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).

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

Uganda LGBT Advocate Receives Human Rights Award

Frank Mugisha

Frank Mugisha, Executive Director of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), has been chosen to receive the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. From the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights:

“Frank Mugisha’s unbending advocacy for gay rights in Uganda in the face of deep-rooted homophobia is a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit,” said RFK Human Rights Award Judge Dean Makau Mutua, Professor of Law and Dean of the University at Buffalo Law School (SUNY).

…”Frank Mugisha has fought courageously in support of the rights of sexual minorities in Uganda, despite death threats and even exile,” said Kerry Kennedy, president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. “He has become a leading advocate for sexual minorities in a country where they are persecuted, jailed, and their lives destroyed. We are proud at the RFK Center to begin our partnership with Mr. Mugisha to advance his invaluable work within this movement.”

…”For me, it is about standing out and speaking in an environment where you are not sure if you will survive the next day; it is this fear that makes me strong, to work hard and fight on to see a better life for LGBTI persons in Uganda,” said Mr. Mugisha. “The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award gives me courage and hope that my work, which may not be accepted and recognized in my own country, is making a change with this international visibility.”

Mugisha has been an LGBT advocate since 2004, when he began advocating for LGBT and HIV/AIDS awareness as a college student. He started a support group, Icebreakers, to help LGBT people who were struggling through the issues of coming out. He had to flee the country when police targeted him for arrest, but he has since returned to continue his advocacy work in the face of death threats and governmental efforts to impose the death penalty on gay people.

The irony of opposing HPV vaccination

As we discussed earlier today, some conservative Christians find Rick Perry, a Southern Baptist politician, an unacceptable choice for president because he supported the vaccination of young Texas women to prevent their possible future infection with the human papillomavirus. Firmly believing that the wages of sin is death – and should damn well stay that way – they oppose any efforts to inoculate for a virus that is spread primarily through sexual behavior.

I believe that much of this opposition is based in a fear that their literalist faith might be losing relevancy. Should a moral code no longer provide an observable service – such as protection from disease and unhappiness – then it becomes an arbitrary set of rules imposed by a capricious deity at his whim. So it is important to them that HPV – and it’s correlation with cancer – remain associated with sinners.

You can sense the desperation in this comment on the American Family Association’s website from Sally in Pennsylvania:

Sorry… Christian or not, I cannot support any candidate who signed an executive order to mandate a series of painful vaccinations for 12 year old girls – FOR AN STD that’s preventable by BEHAVIOR! On top of that, there was no provision to allow parents to opt their child out until enough pressure was put on him and he gave in. That’s a pretty clear indication as to where he stands on the issue of parental authority versus state control on the raising of children. No thanks.

But what Sally hasn’t realized is that she may her way; HPV may well remain associated with a group.

Should sufficient numbers of people refuse vaccination, the virus will continue to have a distinct pool in which to replicate and a strong correlation will become detectable. Soon, should Sally’s thinking prevail, HPV and the correlating cervical cancer rates will come to be associated with conservative Christianity.

The HPV Vaccine Debate Today and Why Preventing Syphilis Was “Immoral” Then

On Monday’s Tea Party/CNN debate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry was blasted for signing an executive order requiring girls in Texas schools to be vaccinated for HPV, a virus which is the leading cause of cervical cancer in women (and, incidentally, the leading cause of anal cancer in men). The order included a parental op-out, but that did not mollify fellow conservatives who blasted him for trying to wipe out a sometimes sexually-transmitted cause of a horrible, painful death.

The argument is as old as the hills. Syphilis once played a similar role in public discourse at the turn of the last century. Untreated, syphilis leads to a slow breakdown of the body and nervous system that ultimately resulted in a premature dementia and death for its victims. And at the turn of the last century, it was not very curable — early cures were about as painful, time-consuming and deadly as the disease itself. In 1907, Dr. Elie Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, published what was later titled in English, The Prolongation of Life, in which he discussed a wide range of medical and moral issues facing society, including the debate about the morality of curing syphilis:

A large number of people, amongst them even men of science, regard as immoral any attempt to prevent to spread of venereal diseases. Recently, in connection with the investigations in the action mercurial ointment as a means of preventing syphilis, members of the Faculty of Medicine in France made a public protest, declaring that it would be “immoral to let people think that they could indulge in sexual vice without danger,” and that it was “wrong to give the public a means of protection in debauch.” None the less, other men of science, equally serious, were convinced that they were performing an absolutely moral work in attempting to find a prophylactic against syphilis which would preserve many people, including children and other innocent persons who, if no preventive measures existed, would suffer from the terrible disease.

…In the question of the prevention of syphilis, the moral problem is still more easy to settle. … The certainty of safety from this disease might render extra-conjugal relations more frequent, but if we compare the evil which might come from that with the immense benefit gained in preventing so many innocent persons from becoming diseased, it is easy to see which side the scale dips. The indignation of those who protest against the discovery of preventive measures can never either arrest the zeal of the investigators or hinder the use of the measures. This example again shows that reasoning is necessary in the solution of most moral questions. (Pages 302 and 304, American 1910 edition.)

Notice the debate taking place here, that it is a moral stand to withhold preventative treatment for a sexually transmitted disease, regardless of the consequences to those who do not undertake sexual activity of their own volition or who can acquire the disease non-sexually. HPV — and AIDS for that matter — also fit all of those characteristics. Little girls and women can acquire HPV through rape or molestation, and later develop cervical cancer. HPV, like syphilis and HIV, can also be transmitted prenatally from the mother. There are many routes of transmission, including casual skin contact, in addition to sexual transmission for HPV. But it’s that last aspect — remember how everyone on the debate panel, starting with moderator Wolf Blitzer, repeatedly called HPV a sexually transmitted disease? — which drove the debate on the morality of Rick Perry’s decision. There are similar mandates for vaccinations against measles, whooping cough and polio, but nobody was concerned about those mandates.

More than a hundred years ago, Dr. Metchnikoff found that “reasoning is necessary in the solution of most moral questions,” and that when one applies reasoning, the solution becomes obvious. But reasoning is non-existent among today’s GOP frontrunners. Dan Savage, like the good Dr. Metchnikoff more than 100 years before him, connects the dots:

Religious conservatives loved the HPV virus because it killed women. Here was a potentially fatal STI that condoms couldn’t protect you from. Abstinence educators pointed to HPV and jumped up and down—they loved to overstate HPV’s seriousness and its deadliness—in their efforts to scare kids into saving themselves for marriage. And they fought the introduction of the HPV vaccine tooth-and-nail because vaccinating women against HPV would “undermine” the abstinence message. Given a choice between your wife, daughter, sister, or mom dying of cervical cancer or no longer being to scream “HPV IS GOING TO KILL YOU!” at classrooms full of terrified teenagers, socially conservative abstinence “educators” preferred the former.

The state of scientific knowledge advances, but things never change for those of the earth-is-flat-and-God-is-on-his-throne mentality. If the day should ever come that the medical establishment is ready to role out a safe and effective vaccine against HIV, what you see today hints at the massive convulsion that will take place. If history is any guide (and why shouldn’t it be?) the apoplectic tantrums and scaremongering on the right will be epic, and you can guarantee that they will throw every roadblock imaginable to prevent its wide scale deployment.

NAACP’s North Carolina Chapter Denounces Proposed Marriage Ban

The North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP has issued an open letter denouncing the proposed constitutional amendment banning all same-sex marriages, civil unions and domestic partnerships which goes before voters in May 2012. Says the NAACP:

A vote on the same sex marriage amendment has nothing to do with your personal and religious opinion on same sex marriage but everything to do with whether or not you believe discrimination should be codified and legalized constitutionally. We should never seek to codify discrimination into the very heart and framework of our Constitution.

…The NAACP strongly urges you to reject the so-called same sex amendment and any other present or future proposals of constitutional amendments that would permanently deprive any person in our great state of his or her inalienable rights

List Of Straight Kids Bullied To Death By Gays

There’s been a lot of attention given to gay teens — or teens whose peers believe they are gay — who commit suicide following years of torment and bullying by their classmates. If one wanted to compose a list, there would be far too many to count. But one web site says we should provide some balance to the story, by listing the names of “straight kids who have been bullied by gays and lesbians until they were driven to take their own lives.” Their complete list is here.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, September 15

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus Launches: Washington, D.C. Administration officials, experts and advocates will join Reps. Jim McDermott (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Trent Franks (R-AZ), co-chairs of the Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus, to announce the launch of the Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus at a press conference on this morning 10:30 a.m. at the House Triangle, on the East Front of the U.S. Capital. The purpose of the caucus is “to examine methods by which the United States can maintain global leadership in the response to the epidemic in the U.S. and around the world. The Caucus will also provide opportunities to galvanize new leadership in preparation for the International AIDS Conference to be held in Washington, D.C. in July 2012.” At least fifty house members have signed on to the caucus.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Cranbrook, BC; Detroit, MI; Edmunton, AB; Hamilton, ON; Hazelton, BC; Kamloops, BC; Kingston, ON; London, ON; Nelson, BC; Niagara, ON; North Bay, ON; Prince George, BC; Rochester, NY; Sacramento, CA; Saskatoon, SK; Sydney, NS; and Vancouver, BC.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Dallas, TX; eKurhuleni, South Africa; Hartford, CT; Honolulu, HI; Las Vegas, NV; Modesto, CA; Rehoboth Beach, DE; Roanoke, VA; Sapporo, Japan; Stratford, ON; and Valdosta, GA.

Also This Weekend: North Louisiana Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Shreveport, LA.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
President Reagan Mentions AIDS For The First Time: 1985. There is something of an urban legend out there that holds that President Ronald Reagan never mentioned AIDS during his presidency. Another version has it that he did mention it, but not until 1987. The truth is that Reagan didn’t talk much about AIDS during his administration even after many thousands had died, in sharp contrast to the government’s vigorous and immediate response when 34 military veterans (and presumably not homosexual ones) came down with what would be known as Legionellosis — Legionaries Disease — at an American Legion convention in 1975. It was on this date in 1985 when Reagan finaly mentioned AIDS, briefly, during a news conference when he was asked about budget allocation for research:

Q: Mr. President, the Nation’s best-known AIDS scientist says the time has come now to boost existing research into what he called a minor moonshot program to attack this AIDS epidemic that has struck fear into the Nation’s health workers and even its schoolchildren. Would you support a massive government research program against AIDS like the one that President Nixon launched against cancer?

President Reagan: I have been supporting it for more than 4 years now. It’s been one of the top priorities with us, and over the last 4 years, and including what we have in the budget for ’86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS in addition to what I’m sure other medical groups are doing. And we have $100 million in the budget this year; it’ll be 126 million next year. So, this is a top priority with us. Yes, there’s no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer.

The mother of Ryan White, the 13-year-old teen with AIDS who was forced to attend classes via telephone because his Kokomo, Indiana school district prohibited him from attending, was disappointed that Reagan take the opportunity to tell parents they shouldn’t fear that their children could catch AIDS through casual contact. And Rep. Gary Studds (D-MA) disputed Reagan’s statement that AIDS research was a top priority:

“… The president said last night it is one of the top priorities of the last four years,” the Massachusetts Democrat said in an interview Wednesday. “Under those circumstances, it is more than a little difficult to imagine why he has never mentioned it once before in public.”

…At his news conference Tuesday night, Reagan, responding to reporters’ questions, said more than $500 million had been spent to try to find ways of combatting AIDS, a fatal virus which attacks the body’s ability to fight disease. But Studds said Reagan’s requests to Congress for fiscal years 1982 through 1986 were far less than that amount, and the money was appropriated only because Congress went beyond administration requests. “The administration’s request for the five fiscal years in question, ’82, ’83, ’84, ’85 and ’86, adds up to $213.5 million,” Studds said. “The way I read that, it’s less than ‘over half a billion’ by a substantial amount.”

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).

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

Marriage Bans Don’t Make Clint Eastwood’s Day

GQ has an interview with the veteran actor and director Clint Eastwood, whose biopic J. Edgar starring Leonardo DiCaprio is due in theaters soon. Eastwood made it clear to GQ that he sees no reason why same-sex marriage should be so controversial:

“These people who are making a big deal about gay marriage?” Eastwood tells the magazine. “I don’t give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We’re making a big deal out of things we shouldn’t be making a deal out of … Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want.”

…”I was an Eisenhower Republican when I started out at 21, because he promised to get us out of the Korean War,” Eastwood tells the magazine. “And over the years, I realized there was a Republican philosophy that I liked. And then they lost it. And libertarians had more of it. Because what I really believe is, let’s spend a little more time leaving everybody alone.”

J. Edgar, which hits theaters on November 9, was written by Dustin Lance Black of Milk fame. There are already high expectations for the film among Oscar prognosticators.

Role of Herman Cain’s Gay Aide Questioned in Former Staffer’s Quest for Unemployment Benefits

The Iowa Straw Poll coordinator for GOP Presidential Candidate Herman Cain alleges that the campaign tried to cover up the role of a top adviser who had been ousted as the leader of a gay pride group in Wisconsin amid financial scandal. The Associated Press reports that the coordinator, Kevin Hall, made the allegation in a letter while applying for unemployment benefits and in testimony during a hearing last week.

Hall alleged that the campaign sought to cover up the role of Scott Toomey, senior adviser and treasurer of Cains’ PAC once Toomey’s sexual orientation became known, along with his role as treasurer for Madison Pride Board. In 2008, Madison Pride removed Toomey after discovering that bills weren’t being paid along with other “financial discrepancies.” The group folded after a downsized 2008 Pride.

On June 6, Cain said he would have no problem appointing a gay While House staff member as long as the individual was qualified. Cain supporters pointed to Toomey as an example. But Hall alleges that on July 9, campaign staff was told that Toomey was no longer involved in the campaign in any capacity, but Hall said he learned weeks later that Toomey was still “very much involved” as an outside consultant. Hall claims that this exposes Cain to charges of hypocrisy. Here’s his reasoning:

“A conservative candidate, Mr. Cain is on the record as stating that he believes homosexuality is a sin and a choice. And they know that, if his top adviser, his highly paid adviser, is openly gay that it would cast a negative light on Mr. Cain and would cost him in his efforts to become president,” he testified. “Basically the campaign was trying to cover up the fact that Mr. Toomey was still involved. They asked … me to help them cover up that fact.”

Whatever religious reservations Cain may have about gay people, he did say he would have no problem appointing a qualified gay person to his White House staff. It seems that the fact that he has appointed Toomey, first as treasurer and later as an outside consultant, is in line with his June 6 statement. Toomey’s actual qualifications, of course, are subject to debate.

However, on the other hand, Cain’s decision to try to hide Toomey’s role in the campaign would appear to contradict his July 6 statement if his decision to do so were based on fears of fallout from having a gay person on staff. That would indicate that Cain would, in fact, have a problem with a gay person on his staff. And that would be hypocrisy, although I don’t believe it’s the kind of perceived hypocrisy that Hall’s concerned about. What Hall sees as hypocritical and what I see as hypocritical are two very different things.

Either way, instructing staff to say something to the press which they later discover not to be true could, I suppose, negatively impact the staffer’s future employment prospects. That is, if one were to expect campaign staffers to always be truthful.

All of this is came out when Hall petitioned for unemployment benefits, which are not granted to those who resign their jobs voluntarily. And it’s an attempt that was ultimately successful. Hall claimed that he had no choice in resigning, and Administrative Law Judge Bonny Hendricksmeyer agreed with that reasoning:

Hendricksmeyer ruled Hall resigned “due to a change in the contract of hire” and said the alleged cover-up could have damaged his career as a political consultant.

“The presence of the gay person on the campaign was misrepresented to the staff, which caused Mr. Hall and others to inadvertently misrepresent the fact to others,” Hendricksmeyer wrote. “(Hall’s) credibility and his future job prospects would have suffered. It is possible if the situation had been discovered it would have also created a negative impact on (Hall’s) job duties. He felt it was possible the candidate would lose credibility and the straw poll results would be very poor.”

Cain’s campaign did not dispute Hall’s allegations in court.

This incident however does appear to shed light on an exodus of campaign staffers in July in which many of them were accusing each other of affairs, homosexuality and professional misconduct. Hall and others resigned just before Iowa’s critical Straw Poll, in which Cain came in a distant fifth.

Justice Dept: Bullying Complaints On the Rise

From The Washington Blade:

Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said on Tuesday there has been a growing number of reported bullying cases during an oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“The bullying of kids who are LGBT is probably the largest growth area in our docket,” Perez said. “This is about safety — whether it’s kids who are gay, whether it’s kids who are Muslim, whether it’s kids who speak English with an accent, whether it’s kids with disabilities, and we have in Tennessee a case involving bullying of kids with disabilities — this is an emerging growth area, I regret to say.”

Perez made the remarks on bullying in response to questioning from Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who introduced legislation known as the Student Non-Discrimination Act that aims to protect LGBT youth from bullying and harassment in school.

It’s unclear whether the increased reports of bullying are the result if increased awareness or an actual rise in bullying incidents.

Perez voiced his support for the proposed legislation, saying that while current law prohibiting gender discrimination can be interpreted to include discrimination based on conformity to gender stereotypes, “it would obviously be much simpler if you could expand the universe of cases involving people who have been victimized if you were to expand those definitions” to include sexual orientation and gender expression. He compared that with what he called the success of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act, which was passed by Congress in 2009:

“One of the really remarkable and helpful ways that this has transformed our government is that is has facilitated additional cooperation with state and local authorities,” Perez said. “We’ve trained over 4,000 local law enforcement officers. I have participated personally in many of them. Our message is this: this is not a law simply for the feds, this is everyone’s law.”

Perez also reiterated the administration’s support for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, September 14

TODAY’S AGENDA:
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Cranbrook, BC; Detroit, MI; Edmunton, AB; Hamilton, ON; Hazelton, BC; Kamloops, BC; Kingston, ON; London, ON; Nelson, BC; Niagara, ON; North Bay, ON; Prince George, BC; Rochester, NY; Sacramento, CA; Saskatoon, SK; Sydney, NS; and Vancouver, BC.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Dallas, TX; eKurhuleni, South Africa; Hartford, CT; Honolulu, HI; Las Vegas, NV; Modesto, CA; Rehoboth Beach, DE; Roanoke, VA; Sapporo, Japan; Stratford, ON; and Valdosta, GA.

Also This Weekend: North Louisiana Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Shreveport, LA.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Disgusting Depravity: 1822. The following notice appeared in the September 14, 1822 edition of The Times of London:

DISGUSTING DEPRAVITY — On Monday last Benjamin Candler, late valet to the Duke of Newcastle, was committed to Lincoln Castle by Sir R. Heron, Bart., charged with an unnatural offence. On the same day was committed to the same place by the Alderman of Grantham, William Arden, Esq., of Great Pultney-street, Golden-square, London, charged with the same offence; and on Tuesday was committed to the Castle , by the Alderman of Grantham, John Doughty, of Grantham, joiner, charged with the same. A discovery of the abominable intercourse which had been carried on it, it is stated, was made through the circumstance of a letter from Rantham, intended for the valet at Clumber, but accidentally not addressed on the outside, falling into the hands of the Dike of Newcastle. His Grace, on discovering the nature of the contents, proceeded with due caution for furthering the purposes of justice, and the consequence has been the commitment of the above persons to Lincoln Castle for trial at the next assizes. The person committed as an Esquire, was apprehended in London after the first examination of the others at Grantham, and was brought down in safe custody in one of the mail coaches on Sunday morning. We understand that he had apartments at Grantham during the last hunting season.

The “unnatural offence” was a capital crime, and the three men were hanged at Lincoln Castle on March 21, 1823.

ACT-UP Protests At NY Stock Exchange: 1989. Chaining themselves to a banister at the New York Stock Exchange and unfurling a sign reading “SELL WELLCOME,” five AIDS activists protested the price the Burroughs Wellcome had set for the price of AZT, the only drug that had been approved in the U.S. to fight AIDS. Burroughs Wellcome had been charging from $7,000 to $8,000 per year for the drug, which was far beyond the ability for many people to pay. Four days later, Burroughs Wellcome announced a twenty percent reduction in the wholesale price of the drug. A spokesman denied that the announcement was connected to the high profile protest.

Another one for his fans.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Ben Cohen: 1978. The former England Rugby Union player for Northampton Saints and Sale Sharks, Cohen was already a well-liked gay icon before retiring from professional rugby earlier this year. He often speaks highly of his gay following, a fan base which he has rewarded by almost never wearing a shirt (or so it seems). In 2010, he released this video as part of the “It Gets Better” project, and since retiring, he has devoted his time to the Ben Cohen StandUp Foundation, which he established as the world’s first foundation dedicated to combating anti-gay bulling and homophobia. He was inspired by two things in his life: his father was killed when he stood up for an employee who was being attacked, and Cohen’s clinical deafness (he has about a 33% hearing loss in each ear) has made him keenly aware of how being different can make someone stand out.

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).

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

So What’s Holding Up Jesus’s Return?

Why it’s the Jews, of course.

NC Senate Rushes To Enshrine Marriage Ban In State Constitution

Reflecting the horrendous crisis which must be enveloping the state, the North Carolina Senate rushed through a proposed constitutional amendment to make same-sex marriage even more illegaler, barely twenty-four hours after the previously unseen bill made its debut in the lower house. The bill passed both houses with the required two-thirds three-fifths majority without public notice, debate or input.

State law already bans same-sex marriage, and the 30-16 vote in the Senate, voters will decide to enshrine discrimination in the state’s constitution, along with a wider constitutional ban on civil unions and domestic partnerships. The vote will take place during next May’s primary election. With a hotly contested GOP presidential primary and an uncontested Democratic field, the election will likely boost turnout for the amendment’s supporters, while also give an edge to social conservatives in the GOP primary.

Mexican Lawyer Faces 14 Months Imprisonment For Defending Gay Educator

In 2009, a gay man, Agustín Estrada Negrete, was fired as head of a school for children of disabilities in the state of Mexico, just west of Mexico City. Jaime López Vela, a human rights lawyer with Agenda LGBT,  agreed to help him. They set up a meeting with officials with the state of Mexico in Toluca. A group of supportive parents organized a protest in front if the state offices, when police came in and arrested López and charged him with “insult to police and obstruction on the road.” Other protesters, including, mothers and children, were beaten as they tried to prevent the arrests. López, who would later be the first to be married by the mayor of Mexico City when same-sex marriages became legal, was beaten several times during his detention and is still facing 14 months in prison for that incident. Estrada was also arrested and beaten, and he has since fled to the U.S. and is seeking asylum. And Paul Canning has the gory details.