Box Turtle Bulletin

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, September 11

TODAY’S AGENDA:

Pride Celebration Today: Peoria, IL.

AIDS Walk Today: Bathurst/Chaleur, NB.

Also Today: Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival, Austin, TX.

Fr. Judge in the WTC lobby, moments before he died

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Most people instinctively flee danger. It’s a natural result of the instinct for self-preservation. But when American Airlines Flight 11, carrying 92 passengers and crew, struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center between the 93rd and 99th floors at 8:46 a.m., Father Mychal Judge ran directly into the crippled building alongside the firemen he served as department chaplain.

The Franciscan friar’s priory was located just across the street from the firehouse on West 31st st., and the firemen there knew him as a “man’s man,” able to swing an axe and bust through doors with the best of them. But when he was in chaplain mode with his simple brown Franciscan robe, he had a very different countenance.  “He could go into the firehouse, have a cup of coffee, have a meal, listen to all the talk, watch the ballgame, hear your problems, talk about anything you want,” Boyle says. “But when he said Mass in the firehouse, I always felt when he got to the Eucharist, he just transformed himself. He became like Christ. He was just so pious.”

A French film crew happened to be in the burning North Tower and caught Fr. Judge on film in what would be some of his final moments of life. His friend, Fr. Michael Duffy, remarked about one scene where the Friar is standing by the lobby’s plate glass windows watching bodies fall onto the pavement from the building’s upper floors. “And if you look closely at that film, you’ll see his lips moving,” Duffy says. “Now, for those of us who know him, he wasn’t one that talked to himself. He was praying. And absolving people as they fell to their death.” When the South Tower collapsed, the force of the implosion shattered the windows and threw Fr. Judge across the lobby. He died from those injuries. He was designated as “victim 001,” the honorary first official victim of the September 11 attacks; his body was the first to be brought to the coroner.

The photo of Fr. Judge's body being carried out of the North Tower became an early iconic image of 9/11.

After his death, it was revealed that Fr. Judge was a gay man who was, as all priests are supposed to be, adherent to his vows of chastity. Fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen said, “I actually knew about his homosexuality when I was in the Uniformed Firefighters Association. I kept the secret, but then he told me when I became commissioner five years ago. He and I often laughed about it, because we knew how difficult it would have been for the other firemen to accept it as easily as I had. I just thought he was a phenomenal, warm, sincere man, and the fact that he was gay just had nothing to do with anything.” Judge was a longtime member of Dignity, a Catholic LGBT organization that advocates for change in the Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality. Judge reportedly often asked, “Is there so much love in the world that we can afford to discriminate against any kind of love?” His life was a testament to that kind of love that knew no bounds.

—–

Ron Gamboa, Dan Brandhorst and their 3-year old son David.

The South Tower’s collapse came about after United Airlines Flight 175 slammed into its southern facade at 9:03. a.m. On board that flight were Ronald Gamboa and Daniel Brandhorst, with their three-year-old son David. They were returning home to Los Angeles after a family trip to Boston. As newly adopted parents in 1998, the two dads had formed the Pop Luck Club, an L.A. support group for gay fathers, prospective fathers, and their children. Said Ken Yood, the group’s president in 2001, “Dan and Ron were gay dads when there were very few of us out there.  We saw a need for a resource for other prospective dads… and the Pop Luck Club was born!”

Ron and Dan were remembered as doting fathers. “I am so proud of the father he became,” said Dan’s sister, Dawn. “Nothing was more important than his family… and Ron was the best brother-in-law anyone could hope for. Sweet, precious, David learned love and compassion from his Poppa and Daddy.”

—–

David Charlebois, doing what he loved

David Charlebois had been born in 1962 in  Morocco during one of his father’s overseas assignments as a U.S. diplomat. His grandfather had been an auto mechanic who taught pioneer aviator Amelia Earhart auto mechanics a year before her attempted around-the-world flight. David graduated from Embry-Riddle aeronautical University in 1984 with a degree in aeronautical sciences, and joined American Airlines in 1991. Friends and family say that he loved flying more than anything else. He was an active member of the National Gay Pilots Association, and worked to change American Airline’s policies to include domestic partner benefits, and to change the company’s culture to one that was more inclusive and respectful.

David and his partner of fourteen years, Tom Hay, were well known in their Dupont Circle neighborhood. They lived the kind of charmed life that many people might envy, except David’s confident and centered manner rarely provoked such negative feelings. The couple had bought a large row hose and transformed it into one of the better houses on the block. When he wasn’t flying, David could be seen landscaping or walking their border collie, Chance.

As a pilot for AA, he flew mostly transcontinental flights out of Washington, D.C.’s Dulles International Airport. The morning of September 11 probably started out very little differently from any other morning. David was first officer for Flight 77, which was one of his standard routes. But thirty-five minutes into this flight, hijackers stormed to cockpit and herded the passengers to the rear of the Boeing 757. The hijackers then turned off the plane’s transponder and made a u-turn near the Ohio/Kentucky/West Virginia border and began heading back to Washington. Limited FAA radar coverage in that area however made tracking the plane difficult until it re-appeared on Dulles’s radar. By then it was making a bee-line for the Pentagon where it crashed into the western side of the Pentagon at 530 miles per hour at 9:38 a.m. All 53 passengers, and six crew members were killed, along with the five hijackers. The crash and fireball penetrated three outer rings of the Pentagon’s western side, and killed 125 people on the ground.

—–

Mark Bingham with this mother

Mark Bingham managed to call his mother, Alice Hoagland, at 9:37, sometime after his plane, United Airlines Flight 93 bound for San Francisco, had been hijacked. He told her that three men who claimed to have a bomb had commandeered the plane.  Hoagland, who had been a flight attendant with United, called back late and left a voice mail message on Bingham’s cell phone telling him about the World Trade Center attacks and urging him to reclaim the aircraft. We don’t know whether he received her message or not, but his seatmate, Tom Burnett, learned from a phone call to his wife that two airliners had crashed into the twin towers. There is substantial that Bingham was among a handful of passengers who stormed the cockpit and brought the aircraft down into a reclaimed coal strip mine outside of Shakesville, Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m. According to reconstructions from the flight recorder and cell phone calls, the passenger rebellion began in Bingham’s section of the plane.

That Bingham was involved with bringing the plane down surprised no one. One former employer remarked that Bingham was a man of actions but few words. “If I know Mark, he would not have said anything about what he intended to do. I remember him coming to work one day with a huge black eye. I asked what had happened, and he said two guys had jumped him and he had fought them off. I said that was dangerous – better to give them the money – but he would have none of it. That would have been him on the plane. He was not someone afraid to act.” A burly 6 feet 4 inches and 225 pounds, the amateur rugby player was in good company with other passengers on the plane: a former college quarterback, a weightlifter and a former paratrooper. Bingham and the other members of Flight 93 changed the history of hijacking forever.

In 2000, Bingham had been an early supporter of Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) primary race against George W. Bush for the GOP nomination. Two weeks after the September 11 attacks, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) flew from Washington, D.C. to San Fransisco to deliver the eulogy for Bingham’s memorial service. “I never knew Mark Bingham. But I wish I had. I know he was a good son and friend, a good rugby player, a good American, and an extraordinary human being. He supported me, and his support now ranks among the greatest honors of my life. I wish I had known before September 11 just how great an honor his trust in me was. I wish I could have thanked him for it more profusely than time and circumstances allowed. But I know it now. And I thank him with the only means I possess, by being as good an American as he was.”

There is a more complete list of LGBT victims of the September 11 attacks here.

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).

Wikileaks: Ugandan First Lady “Ultimately Behind” Anti-Homosexuality Bill

Ugandan First Lady Janet Museveni

Tomorrow’s edition of Sunday Monitor,  Uganda’s largest independent newspaper, cites leaked diplomatic cables to report that Ugandan First Lady, Janet Museveni, was behind the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. According to Sunday Monitor’s reading of Wikileaks cables, Senior Presidential adviser John Nagenda revealed this to U.S. Ambassador to Uganda, Jerry Lanier:

In Mr Lanier’s comments which were leaked on September 1, by whistleblower Wikileaks, Mr Nagenda is quoted to have told the US embassy that President Museveni is “quite intemperate” when it comes to homosexuality, but the First Lady, who he described as ‘a very extreme woman,’ “is ultimately behind the bill.”

Mr Nagenda said [Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba] Buturo is using the anti-homosexuality legislation to redefine himself and “will do anything in his power to be a populist.” He advised the US and other donors to refrain from publicly condemning the Bill as this fuels the anti-homosexual and anti-western rhetoric of the Bill’s proponents.

Mr Nagenda further told the US government that the bill’s most vociferous public supporter, the ex-Ethics and Integrity Minister Nsaba Buturo, was responsible for a campaign of mass arrests – known by the Swahili term ‘panda gari’ – during the Obote II regime.

Mr. Nagenda verified the conversation with a Sunday Monitor reporter. In December of 2009 as the controversy over the Anti-Homosexuality Bill exploded on the international stage, Nagenda published an op-ed in the government-aligned New Vision opposing the bill. The appearance of the op-ed in the pro-government newspaper was seen as a positive development at the time.

The revelation that Janet Museveni is one of the driving forces behind the Anti-Homosexuality Bill once again casts a light onto the influence that American-based Dominionist movements such as the New Apostolic Reformation and its Seven Mountains Mandate exerts in Uganda. Janet Museveni has reportedly spoken at several conferences around the world hosted by Ed Silvoso, and CEO of the International Transformation Network (ITN) and an apostle in C. Peter Wagner’s International Coalition of Apostles. Silvoso has also been a guest of the Museveni’s at State House. Video of Museveni speaking at one such gathering can be seen here.

In 2010, Janet Museveni spoke at a youth conference at Kampala’s prestigious Makarere University and said, “In God’s word, homosexuality attracts a curse, but now people are engaging in it and saying they are created that way. It is for money… The devil is stoking fires to destroy our nation and those taking advantage are doing so because our people are poor.” More recently, she was the guest speaker at the inaugural dinner for members of the Ninth Parliament sponsored by the Ugandan Fellowship, a branch of the U.S.-based secretive group known as the C Street Fellowship or The Family. M.P. David Bahati, the author of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, had recent been elevated to chairman of the Ugandan Fellowship as well as caucus Vice Chair for the ruling party.

Janet Museveni is currently a member of Parliament representing Ruhaama County, located in the far southwest of the country near the border with Rwanda. She also holds a cabinet position as Minister for Karamoja Affairs. The restive Karamoja District is located at the opposite corner of Uganda, alongside its border with Kenya.

If this report is correct, it appears to indicate something of a schism within the Museveni family. Other cables posted on Wikileaks last February revealed that President Yoweri Museveni had assured U.S. diplomats that he would not allow the Anti-Homosexuality Bill to become law, and reminded them “that ‘someone in Uganda’, meaning himself, is handling the matter.” He also echoed Nagenda’s advice that too much outside pressure could backfire on his efforts to derail the bill. “Museveni warned outsiders of pushing Africa too hard on this issue, lest it create another hurricane,” the cable read. “Don’t push it, warned Museveni, ‘I’ll handle it’.”

See also:
Feb 17, 2011: Wikileaks Posts Cables from US Embassy in Uganda Concerning Anti-Homosexuality Bill
Feb 17, 2011: More Wikileaks Cables on Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill
Sep 10, 2011: Wikileaks: Ugandan First Lady “Ultimately Behind” Anti-Homosexuality Bill
Sep 11: 2011: More On Ugandan First Lady’s Support For Anti-Homosexuality Bill
Sep 11, 2011: Wikileaks: Vatican Lobbied Against Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill
Sep 12, 2011: Wikileaks on Uganda’s Homosexuality Bill: Museveni “Surprised” and Buturo “Obsessed”
Sep 12, 2011: Ugandan Presidential Aide Confirms Wikileaks Conversation
Sep 23, 2011: Ugandan First Lady Affirms Support For “Kill The Gays” Bill

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, September 10

TODAY’S AGENDA:
“Love Won Out” Ex-Gay Conference and Demonstration: Sugar Land, TX. With Exodus International’s Love Won Out conference takes place today at Sugar Creek Baptist Church in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land, beginning at 8:00 a.m.  A few prospective ex-gays themselves will likely be there as well (some of the younger ones, undoubted dragged there by their parents against their will), although they will be in the minority. The ex-gay conference is mainly an all-day infomercial for the general public, specifically geared toward parents and other family members of gay people, as well as pastors and youth ministry leaders.  Truth Wins Out has teemed with Houston’s Resurrection Metropolitan Community Church for a protest outside of Sugar Creek Baptist Church beginning at 11:30 a.m. Click here for more information.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Grimsby, UK; Humboldt/Eureka, CA; Limerick, Ireland; Mankato, MN; and Peoria, IL.

AIDS Walk This Weekend: Bathurst/Chaleur, NB.

Also This Weekend: Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival, Austin, TX; Folsum Europe, Berlin, Germany; and OUT Film Festival, Nairobi, Kenya.

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).

Plane To Fly “It Gets Better” Banner for Ex-Gay Conference, but Ex-Gays Won’t See It

Exodus International is scheduled to conduct one of its Love Won Out ex-gay infomercial’s tomorrow at a Houston-area church. According to The Advocate, the It Gets Better Project will hire an airplane to fly overhead for an ex-gay conference near Houston tomorrow with a message saying that you can’t simply “pray the gay away.” I think that sounds like a great idea, except:

Exodus International’s Love Won Out conference is taking place this Saturday at the Sugar Creek Baptist Church, located near Houston. The plane is scheduled to fly around downtown Houston at noon Saturday …

Get a map and an alarm clock, fellas. The plane may be headed for downtown Houston, but Sugar Creek Baptist is nearly 25 miles away in Sugar Land. And everyone will already be safely ensconced inside the church at that hour, while nobody will be anywhere close to downtown Houston on a Saturday at noon (the weekend forecast: a “pleasant” 95 degrees and probably 195% humidity, with an air quality alert due to high ozone). If a plane flies a banner over a deserted downtown and nobody sees it, does it still send a message?

Why can’t anyone fly the plane over Sugar Land at 7:30 a.m. as people are pulling into the parking lot?

Confused Adults Find Children Confusing

My partner Will has enough nieces and nephews to field a baseball team. They’ve now begun calling me Uncle Rob.

It chokes me up.

It started with the girls. I’d been showing up at family events for a couple years, but Will’s family is very conservative (as was mine) and I’m not sure anyone officially explained who I am.  This summer, though, Will and I hosted  their Father’s Day celebration at our house. It was our first big event after finishing the kitchen remodel. Our home is an embodiment of two lives brought together, and it explained us better than any discussion ever could. A few weeks later, Will and I took his Mom out to a beachside cafe for her birthday. The girls (her grandkids) came along. It was meant to last an hour or two, but we hung out late into the evening.

Next time I saw the nieces, they called me Uncle Rob.

Recently, we joined the clan for Memorial Day.  I started hearing “Uncle Rob” from the nephews. Then as we left, Will’s brother — who opposes same-sex marriage, who disagrees with me on virtually everything, and yet with whom I feel an odd and unexpected bond — said to his boys, “Say goodbye to your uncles.” That was a stunner. Time seemed to stop for the moment I took me to register his words.

All this happened without lectures, debates, speeches, or explanations. A while back, Bill Clinton said something wonderful about America: “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.” That applies to gay people, too. The most devastating argument in the world is trivial next to our simple, open, matter-of-fact presence.

And so I’m aggravated when our opponents say marriage equality will confuse the children. NOM even created a political ad claiming such a thing. It’s called (wait for it): “Confused Children.”

NOM has a terribly low opinion of children. Kids are insatiably curious. They love to learn. They take in new wonders every day they get out of bed:

Clouds are water?

Mommy has a baby insider her?

Uncle Will loves Uncle Rob?

Kids ask questions, but only a cynic conflates being eager to learn with debilitating confusion. And, really, of those three items, which is the least baffling?

The real problem, I think, is that adults are confused. We can add same-sex marriage to the list of things that kids understand easily but many adults do not:  iPods, P2P file sharing, Justin Beiber. But while those grown-ups have to admit iPods do in fact exist, many of them deny same-sex marriage — or even romantic love — can ever happen. So of course kids who find it perfectly natural must be awfully mixed up.

Actually, it’s a nice logical scam: Your kids seem confused by same-sex marriage? That proves it’s confusing! Your kids don’t seem confused by same-sex marriage? That proves it’s confusing! And — bingo!— you’ve just insulated yourself from thinking new thoughts.

A recent Internet ruckus illustrates this perfectly. Stacy Trasancos, “a scientist turned homemaker and joyful convert to Catholicism,” raised a controversy with her complaint that she can’t even go to “normal places” without exposing her kids to immorality.  Some excerpts (with commentary from me):

At the pool this summer there were homosexual couples with children and, while I was polite as my own young daughters doted on the baby with two “mommies”, I also held my breath in anticipation of awkward questions – questions  I’m not ready to answer. My young daughters are all under the age of eight and they are not old enough to understand why a baby would have two women calling themselves “mommies”.

[Sounds to me like your daughters were fine. You were the one freaking out.]

When there were two men relaxing at the side of the pool unnaturally close to each other, effeminately rubbing elbows and exchanging doe-eyes, I was again anxiously watching my children hoping they wouldn’t ask questions. They don’t see Daddy do that with anyone but Mommy. We haven’t been back to the pool for a couple of weeks, except once but it rained. The truth is, now I don’t really want to go back…

[I love this phrase: effeminately rubbing elbows. “Ooo gurrrl — y’all  need to loofa!”  Though the bit about exchanging doe-eyes sounds bloody and gruesome.]

I can’t even go to normal places without having to sit silently and tolerate immorality. We all know what would happen if I asked two men or two women to stop displaying, right in front of me and my children, that they live in sodomy…

[Actually, no one lives in Sodom(y) anymore.  The town was destroyed for arrogance and inhospitality toward strangers.  Oh, the irony!]

Interesting how Stacy never tells us what her kids actually said or how they felt. This paean of alleged anguished concern for her daughters is actually all about her.

Now some antigays aren’t as frightened of talking to their kids as Stacy. Frank Pastore, for instance. He hosts the biggest Christian talk radio show in the country and advised his listeners on what to say to their kids about transgender Chaz Bono on Dancing With the Stars:

This is how I would approach it.

Because of Original Sin —

Stop. Here’s a good rule: A satisfying explanation can’t be more mysterious than the thing it’s trying to explain. I keep this in mind when people answer, “Where did the Universe come from?” with “God made it.” An explanation like that isn’t necessarily wrong, but it raises more questions than it answers, and it certainly doesn’t settle the issue.

Original Sin confuses me like that. I was never able to see the fairness, justice, or logic of it. Perhaps you have better insight than I do, but surely you’ll admit it’s no easy concept. Anyway, back to Frank:

This is how I would approach it.

Because of Original Sin we are screwed up in terms of our biology — the world is evidence, you know, there’s evidence of it getting worse and worse and declining, right?  We are not a cosmos, a universe, that’s getting better and better and better.  We’re decaying, okay, the whole entropy thing.  And then that Fall is also evidenced biologically:  we have diseases, we have cancers, we have children that are born with, you know, deformities and handicaps, right?

Okay, well in the Fall part of, you know, Satan screwing up with humanity was down to our genetic level and there are people who are born with – that are – you know, some boys look more like a girl, and you know you get the kids to agree that some kids in school like that, and you’ve got some girls who are more like a boy. Well, there’s times in which they want to act on that and so there are some boys who really like boys. And there are girls who really like girls and there are some who are – feel so strongly on that they want to have surgery and become that other gender.

And so that’s what Chastity Bono did and that’s how she became Chaz.  It’s all part of evidence of the Fall.

No wonder your kids are confused!

• Entropy is the reason for our culture’s decline [which nicely demonstrates Pastore’s misunderstanding of entropy].

• When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, He let Satan mess with our genes.

• Some kids look so much like the opposite gender they want to have sex with their own gender.

• Some kids want to have sex with their own gender so much they want surgery to become the other gender.

And that’s the more coherent part of his explanation.  The rest opens the door to questions like:

Is Entropy another name for Satan?

Do Uncle Will and Uncle Rob have cancer?

If kids have deformities because of Satan, just like gay people, do those kids go to Hell, just like gay people?

This all has to be more confusing — more terrifying — than, “”Chaz was born in a girl’s body but felt like a boy on the inside. When he grew up, he thought long and hard and probably prayed, talked about it with the people he loved, got advice from experts who know a lot about this, and finally changed his body to make him a boy on the outside, too.”

I hope no one inflicts Pastore’s explanation on my nieces and nephews. But if they do, it probably won’t matter. None of them will believe that Will and I love each other because we look like girls. If the power of our example achieves anything, it should achieve at least that much.

Barton: God Can’t Hear Prayers From The Senate Side of the U.S. Capital

You know, the evil Democratic side. Bad reception or something. I guess God isn’t so omnipotent or omniscient after all:

David Barton: I’ll tell you one of the things too we’ll never get right until we understand this: it is a spiritual battle. We’re told in Ephesians it’s not flesh and blood.  We’re dealing with spirits. And I’ll tell you out of Daniel, praying, why did that answer get delayed for twenty-one days? Because the Prince of Persia fought against it. There are principalities that sit over certain areas.

And I can tell this in the U.S. Capitol. When I walk from the House side to the Senate side, I cross the middle line of the Capitol, I can feel a different principality because they have jurisdictions over different things. And there are principalities that sit over the top of government entities that cause them to think really goofy. And you can’t get prayers through, they get delayed twenty-one days because the principalities are up there fighting in the Heavenlies.

Because we’re not fighting flesh and blood. And if you don’t understand this is a spiritual battle, and if you don’t understand there are really big principalities and powers sitting over places of power, whether it be banking or education. There’s principalities that sit over schools to keep those kids from getting knowledge, there’s principalities that sit over financial institutions.

Kenneth Copeland: They sit over households.

Barton: They sit over households. That’s why you have principalities and powers, that gradation. You have the corporals, and you have the sergeants, and you have the lieutenants, the captains and the generals. And the generals have a bigger principality and those little corporals may sit over the house but it’s a spiritual battle.

Copeland: It’s a battle, yeah.

Barton: It’s a spiritual battle and we’ll never win until we understand that.

[via Right Wing Watch]

Ever Wonder Whether Those “It Gets Better” Videos Have Ever Helped Anyone?

This video and this video helped the young man you see below, who says thanks:

Yet Another Poll Shows Young Evangelicals’ Increased Support for Marriage Equality

The Washington Post points to a poll from the Public Religion Research Institute released in late August that found a huge generation gap between young Evangelical Christians and seniors in support for same-sex marriage. PPRI found that there is at least a 20-point gap between Millennials (age 18 to 29) overall regardless of religious affiliation and seniors (age 65 and older) on every public policy position concerning LGBT people. The survey found that 62% of Millennials favor allowing same-sex marriage, 69% are okay with gay couples adopting children, 71% favor civil unions and 79% favor employment anti-discrimination measures. Sixty-nine percent of Millennials overall believe that religious groups are alienating young people by being anti-gay.

The gap persists among Evangelicals as well. Forty-four percent of white Evangelical Millennials favor marriage equality, as opposed to 12% of Evangelical seniors.

Taking religion out of the equation, the same poll also found that 49% of Republican Millennials also favor marriage equality, in contrast to 19% of Republican seniors and 31% of Republicans overall.

The same poll also found that 52% of self-identified Catholics favor allowing gay people to marry, and an identical proportion believe that gay relationships are not a sin. What’s more, 46% of Catholics think the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality is too conservative, 43% think it’s about right, and only 6% think it is too liberal. Among Catholics who attend Mass weekly, 37% overall think the church is too conservative on gay issues while 54% say it is about right. This poll also confirms earlier findings that there is a significant ethnic division among Catholics on this issue, with 55% of Hispanic Catholics believing the church is too conservative on homosexuality, compared to 43% of white non-Hispanic Catholics holding the same view.

The poll’s margins of error: ±2% for the general sample, 3.7% for white Evangelicals, 3.9% for Catholics, 8.3% for Latino Catholics, 4.5% for Millennials, 3.8% for seniors, and 3.5% for Republicans. No margin of error was given for white Evangelicals Millennials or for white Evangelical seniors.

Third Salt Lake-Area Gay Man Attacked In Two Weeks

Police in American Fork, a suburb community south of Salt Lake City, are investigating an attack on a hair salon owner as he was taking out the trash at 12:45 a.m. early Thursday morning. Police say that he was beaten by two or three assailants as they uttered gay slurs. The victim, 32-year-old Cameron Nelson, was treated at a hospital for multiple injuries including a broken nose. Police are investigating.

Two weeks ago, two gay men in Salt Lake City were attacked in separate incidents. One man, Dane Hall, suffered a broken jaw and lost six teeth when his attackers “curb stomped” him. Incredibly, SLC police are refusing to regard either of the attacks as hate crimes.

Could A State’s Refusal To Recognize Same-Sex Marriage Facilitate Polygamy?

A BTB reader at Virginia Tech emailed this thought experiment:

My spouse and I were talking yesterday, and a question came up that I thought you would find interesting—and that I’ve never seen discussed in a public forum.

In our home state (Virginia), recognition of SSM is banned by our Constitution. We could then, at least theoretically, each legally marry a woman of our choice in Virginia since the state won’t recognize our current relationship.

If we left the state on our favorite vacation route, traveling up the eastern seaboard, we would suddenly find ourselves in states where he and I are married twice, once to each other and also each to a woman. In those states that recognize SSM, I’m assuming our second marriages would be deemed null-and-void. Federally and in states banning SSM, the first marriage wouldn’t count, but the second one would.

The question then is, by creating this mishmash of SSM recognition by states, are they actually be default creating a situation where they’ve legalized polygamy?

Interesting question, especially since I would assume that if the guys wanted to get a divorce in Virginia, the courts would turn them down. As an added mindfreak, it gets even messier if the two women had also married each other elsewhere before marrying the guys in Virginia.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, September 9

TODAY’S AGENDA:
What “Love Won Out” Leaves Out: Houston, TX. With Exodus International’s Love Won Out conference heading to the Houston area on Saturday, Truth Wins Out has teemed with Resurrection Metropolitan Community Church for a series of events to educate the local community about ex-gay movement. Tonight, Resurrection MCC will host Ex-Gay Survivor and performance artist Peterson Toscano, who will reprise portions of his one-man play, “Doin’ Time In the Homo No Mo Halfway House,” which is based on his experience as a client at a Memphis-based residential ex-gay program. He will also perform excerpts from “The Re-Education of George W. Bush” and “Queer 101–Now I Know my gAy,B,Cs.” Resurrection MCC is located at 2025 West 11th Street in Houston, and the performance begins tonight at 7:00 p.m. And tomorrow, there will be a protest outside of Sugar Creek Baptist Church in Sugar Land, where the Love Won Out conference will take place. The protest begins at 11:30 a.m. Click here for more information.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Grimsby, UK; Humboldt/Eureka, CA; Limerick, Ireland; Mankato, MN; and Peoria, IL.

AIDS Walk This Weekend: Bathurst/Chaleur, NB.

Also This Weekend: Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival, Austin, TX; Folsum Europe, Berlin, Germany; and OUT Film Festival, Nairobi, Kenya.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Reuters Reports Government Routinely Spied On Gay Groups: 1982. Information wants to be free, and the Freedom of Information Act uncovered a trove of documents from the FBI and the Pentagon which showed that the government routinely spied on gay rights groups throughout the 1950s through the early 1970s. An FBI spokesman said that surveillance ended in the mid-1970s under new rules requiring evidence of a crime before an investigation can begin. But two members of Congress, Reps. Philip Burton and Henry Waxman (both D-CA) demanded an investigation of the agencies involved. According to Reuters, “Among the documents is a December, 1965, memorandum from the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover titled ‘Homosexual Hangouts Throughout the United States.’ It instructs agents to obtain a copy of ‘The Address Book,’ a publication that lists such hangouts, ‘in order to conduct thorough interviews and for use in getting … leads.’ Another document said a 53-page list of homosexuals and persons ‘identified as having homosexual tendencies (or) as associates of homosexuals’ had been added to the files in the San Francisco FBI office.”

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).

Dominionism Is Not A Myth, Continued

Evangelical Christian Warren Throckmorton has really taken this meme to heart, and he’s the only one I can think of who has. In his latest post on Crosswalk, Throckmorton takes fellow Evangelical opinion makers to task for developing mass amnesia with regard to the very real phenomenon of Christian Dominionism. And he has posted what amounts to a series of readings for Dominionism deniers on his own web site, and lays out why this new phenomenon matters:

The other issue for me is the erosion of the ability to dialogue with people of various viewpoints. The dominionists see their position as dictated by God. Thus, in a policy discussion, the dominionist can’t give up ground since it is holy. Opponents are not just incorrect, they are evil or as I quote in my article, one of the “enemies of God.” Who makes political deals with an enemy of God?

One can also substitute God for “patriotism” and make a damning indictment for the current state of political discourse as well, and I suspect that’s no accident. Dominionists aren’t alone among other Evangelicals more broadly who have conflated God with the Founding Fathers. So if questioning far right principles is heresy and makes one an enemy of God, questioning conservative orthodoxy today also makes one a traitor and an enemy of America. That’s how you reach the point where persistent accusations that the president is a secret Kenyan Muslim socialist hell-bent on destroying America with his terrorist pals is accepted as just another point of view by a major national “news” channel. Dominionists didn’t necessarily create that phenomenon, but they do dovetail quite nicely with the broader paranoia and self-anointing tendencies of the extreme right as keepers of pure American values. And it’s an extreme which is now becoming increasingly mainstream. That may explain why many voices on the political right can’t see Dominionists in their midst. They really don’t stand out anymore like they would have a decade ago.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, September 8

TODAY’S AGENDA:
What “Love Won Out” Leaves Out: Houston, TX. Exodus International will bring its Love Won Out road show to the Houston suburb of Sugar Land on Saturday, but tonight, Truth Wins Out and the good folks at Houston’s Resurrection Metropolitan Community Church will continue their series of events to educate the local community about ex-gay movement. Tonight, Resurrection MCC will play host to a showing of Morgan Fox’s This Is What Love In Action Looks Like, a documentary about the controversy surrounding sixteen-year-old Zach Stark’s committal to the Memphis-based ex-gay program known as “Love In Action” in 2005. Fox and Brandon Tidwell, a former client of the Memphis-based ex-gay residential program run by Love In Action, will be on hand to answer questions after the movie. The screening begins at 7:00 p.m. And tomorrow night, you won’t want to miss Ex-Gay Survivor and performance artist Peterson Toscano, who will reprise portions of his one-man play, “Doin’ Time In the Homo No Mo Halfway House,” along with excerpts from “The Re-Education of George W. Bush” and “Queer 101–Now I Know my gAy,B,Cs.” This week’s activities will wind up with a protest outside of Sugar Creek Baptist Church, host of the Love Won Out conference. Click here for more information. Resurrection MCC is located at 2025 West 11th Street in Houston.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Grimsby, UK; Humboldt/Eureka, CA; Limerick, Ireland; Mankato, MN; and Peoria, IL.

AIDS Walk This Weekend: Bathurst/Chaleur, NB.

Also This Weekend: Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival, Austin, TX; Folsum Europe, Berlin, Germany; and OUT Film Festival, Nairobi, Kenya.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Time Magazine’s “The Homosexual In America”: 1975. When Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich’s picture appeared on the cover of Time with the caption announcing “I Am a Homosexual,” he was determined to become a test case challenging the pre-DADT ban on gays serving in the military. As Time reported, he was the perfect test case: “The tall, red-haired sergeant has an impeccable twelve-year military record, no known psychiatric problems, and a Bronze Star and Purple Heart won on one of his three tours in Viet Nam.” A five-member Air Force review board would hear his case the following week. He would lose that case, and he would be excommunicated from the Mormon Church a month later.

But on this date in 1975, he would be the face of the gay community as Time devoted several pages to the rising gay rights movement. By 1975, twelve states had eliminated their laws making homosexuality a crime, and the American Psychiatric Association and American Psychological Association recognized that homosexuality was not a mental disorder. AT&T and the Civil Service Commission had announced that they were willing to hire openly gay employees, and one major educational journal wrote that gay teachers should come out to their students. Time covered the usual ground for stories of this kind: a look at the new gay activism, the problems gay people face, the glimpse into a gay bar for that requisite dose of seediness (New York’s Eagle gets a mention, along with an introduction to a handkerchief code and bathhouses), yet the article manages to present gay people as real people — something quite rare for 1975. The word “gay” is used in about equal measure as “homosexual,” and the word “militant” appears only three times in the 5,400 word article. It did however end on a down note, warning of the dangers that homosexuality might spread if anti-gay discrimination were to end:

Says Psychoanalyst Herbert Hendin: ” ‘Anything goes’ is a legitimate attitude for consenting adults toward each other, but for a culture to declare it as a credo is to miss entirely the stake all of us have in the harmony between the sexes and in the family as the irreplaceable necessity of society. This is a society that is increasingly denying its impotence by calling it tolerance, preaching resignation and naming all this progress.”

It’s worth noting that while both APA’s (the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association) had declared that homosexuality was not a mental disorder, the American Psychoanalytic Association was much slower to reach that conclusion. It wasn’t until 1991 when the APsaA formally declared that homosexuality was no longer a barrier to becoming a psychoanalyst. It’s also worth noting that most conversion therapy today is still rooted in older psychoanalytic theories. And, it’s worth noting further that the argument that increased acceptance for gay people today will create more gay people tomorrow is still a staple of anti-gay and ex-gay rhetoric.

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).

NC Anti-Gay Preacher Channels Hippie Chick from 1971

North Carolina lawmakers held a press conference yesterday to promote a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage that is expected to be introduced into the state legislature shortly. And in the latest installment of the battle of bad marriage metaphors, Rev. Johnny Hunter called same-sex marriage “immoral and unnatural” because only heterosexual acts can be “consummated.” Just goes to show his own ignorance when it comes to sexual matters. Anyway, Hunter then went on to use used a lock and key to try to make his case. 

But unfortunately, when I heard about it, all I could think about was this:

(For you wippersnappers who don’t know what a roller skate key was for, Wikipedia explains: “The rollerskates in question would have been children’s quad skates, which were clamped to the soles of ordinary shoes. The clamps were tightened with a special ‘key’ that basically was a very simple socket wrench. The key was inevitably lost or misplaced, in which case a screwdriver or other tool usually could substitute though at some inconvenience.”)

HHS Strengthens Hospital Visitation And Medical Directives Rules

The Department of Health and Human Services unveiled new guidance this morning to ensure compliance to new HHS policies designed to enhance hospital visitation rights for same-sex couples. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid sent letters to states outlining additional enforcement mechanisms for the new policies announced last year which require that medical facilities accepting Medicare or Medicaid funds allow patients to designate their own visitors during hospital stays and recognize advance directives designating a same-sex partner for making emergency medical decisions. The letter to state auditing agencies outlines guidance on ensuring compliance with the new policies, and marks the last step in implementing the policy change.

The policy change announced last year affected rules and regulations for safety and quality of health care that hospitals must meet before qualifying to receive Medicare and Medicaid funds. Because those rules apply to the hospital’s operating procedures as a whole, the policy change applies to all hospital patients, not just those whose care is paid for by Medicare or Medicaid.

In announcing the new guidance for enforcing the rules, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelious said, “Couples take a vow to be with each other in sickness and in health and it is unacceptable that, in the past, some same-sex partners were denied the right to visit their loved ones in times of need. We are releasing guidance for enforcing new rules that give all patients, including those with same-sex partners, the right to choose who can visit them in the hospital as well as enhancing existing guidance regarding the right to choose who will help make medical decisions on their behalf.”