Box Turtle Bulletin

Film Review: “This Is What Love In Action Looks Like”

In 2005, 16 year old Zach Stark was sent by his parents, against his will, to the residential ex-gay program Love In Action. Protests and nationwide attention ensued.  It was probably the biggest ex-gay news story since Exodus board member/spokesman John Paulk was caught in a Washington DC gay bar.

Local filmmaker Morgan Jon Fox was there from the start of the protests, capturing it all and has spent the last six years creating his finished product of This Is What Love In Action Looks Like, a new independent film currently on the festival circuit.

I’ve spent years writing for various websites that track and monitor ex-gay issues, and in that time I’ve reviewed a number of films about the ex-gay experience. Too often documentaries consist mainly of head-and-shoulder interviewees talking about their time in ex-gay programs years, if not decades, in the past.  This Is What Love In Action Looks Like is different, filmmaker Fox was there shooting events as they unfolded and shooting interviews with key players while memories and feelings are still fresh.  The finished product is stitched together to tell the story with a logical flow and progression which will allow the general public, unknowledgeable of ex-gay issues, to follow the story.

Head-and-shoulders interviews, a necessary evil, are used sparingly and effectively.  Those scenes are well composed and often set in locations more far dynamic than a subject’s living room sofa.  Keystone interviews are even shot with multiple cameras allowing Fox to cut to tight zooms at appropriately intense moments.

Fox scored some rather crucial interviews, Zach Stark (the 16 year old sent to the program) as well as John Smid (ran Love In Action while Zach was there and has since stepped down).  Since the controversy in 2005 Smid’s views have changed (I won’t reveal how) and shows incredible courage for making himself as open, honest and vulnerable as he does during his interviews.  However I must criticize Fox for not asking Smid challenging questions.  In fact the only person Fox challenges is an anti-gay Alliance Defense Fund lawyer during a sidewalk press conference.  There are a lot of difficult questions interviewers can ask of the ex-gay movement, and Fox fails in this respect.

Zach’s father (who sent him to the program) and Alan Chambers (president of Exodus, a national gay group) declined interviews and so their stories are told with extensive incorporation of broadcast TV footage. The other footage that most contributes to the uniqueness of the film are some very raw feeling shots of the actual street protests outside Love In Action’s facility in 2005.

The film opens with a satisfyingly long interview of Zach talking about coming out to his parents and preparing to be sent off to the program.  As the story and protests unfolded Zach’s life inside the program remained a total mystery to the gay community outside protesting. Fox smartly replicates this feeling by focusing on other details and choosing only to show Zach with long-lens and grainy footage, as if we the film viewer are with protesters on the sidewalk seeing Zach from afar, wondering what is happening to the young man in the program.

My biggest gripe is that when the film is concluding Zach’s “after” interview is frustratingly short.  Zach comes across as having grown into a beautiful, vibrant young man.  After becoming invested in the activists who held a daily vigil outside Love In Action protesting for Zach I don’t feel enough emotional payoff in Fox’s interview with Zach.  I would strongly encourage Fox to revisit his source footage and include more meaningful and satisfying moments in that final interview. (Author’s note: Fox was kind enough to respond to this issue after my review was first posted, see his quote at the bottom of the post)

My remaining criticisms of the film are somewhat minor so I’ll list them here at the end:

• While I adore the MySpace inspired title graphics, graphic styles throughout the body of the film are wildly inconsistent.  Some TV footage is shown in a “streaming internet video” style border, while other footage is shown full screen, sometimes that footage is full color, other times it has a tone/filter applied.  Also printed material (copies of ex-gay program rules and such) shown on screen has no stylistic consistency.

• Insufficient disclosure of people appearing on screen who are involved in the film’s production.  When filmmaker Fox appears on screen his title is simply “filmmaker” which I’m not sure all viewers will take to mean his is the filmmaker for this very film.  Also Peterson Toscano has a producer credit for the film but this is not disclosed at all with on screen titling.

• A couple soundtrack selections are hit or miss during the first half.  The worst tracks sounded like a wind up music box composition from royalty free music websites.  As the movie progresses however the music selection greatly improves and begins to compliment the emotion of the film.

• There are a few instances at the beginning of the film where former clients of Love In Action are dropping bombs about the program.  Insufficient time is left after these things are said for the emotional impact to settle properly.

But the above listed criticism have no effect on my recommendation to see the film, they are more for Fox’s benefit should the movie hopefully be picked up by a distributor and is re-cut for distribution as independent films regularly are.  The novelness of this film sets it apart from every ex-gay documentary done before it.  When this screens in your city I strongly suggest you go and support it.

—

Filmmaker Fox addressed my criticism of Zach’s seemingly brief interview segment via email the afternoon my review was posted:

When we approached Zach about the interview he made it clear that he was willing to tell his story about what happened during the months that he was in Refuge and during the media firestorm, mostly to lend his account of that, and leave it to rest.

[Fox continued…] So when he requested that his current life not be pried into or pondered over or talked about, I completely understood. He wants his privacy now. Zach is a private person who quite accidentally fell into a huge spotlight and I mostly wanted to document the events of 2005 and how friends of his felt it necessary to stand up and try and make a difference, attempt to help one of their peers. I never felt it was my job to pry to pull things from Zach story and I think it took a lot of courage for him to speak out at all and I’m very grateful he lent his version of the events of that Summer of 2005.

Bachmann Calls Earthquake and Hurricane “Wake Up Calls From God”

GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann campaigned in Florida over the weekend. The St. Petersburg Times reports that Dominionist theologian Peter E. Waldron — they don’t exist, you know — is helping to organize her Florida campaign. Maybe that explains her latest outburst:

“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’

A campaign spokesperson later said, “Obviously she was saying it in jest.” Actually, given her views it’s really not that obvious.

Anti-Gay Pol Resigns Over “Losing Weight”

Weight watcher

Puerto Rican Senator Roberto Arango resigned this weekend after nude photos of him were found on the gay smartphone hook-up app Grindr. Arango had voted for Resolution 99, which would have blocked same-sex marriages, and he helped to block a measure banning discrimination and allowing for adoption rights for gays. In 2004. Arango served as the committee chairman for Puerto Rico for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, and played leadership roles for the Republican Party in Puerto Rico. Arango neither confirmed nor denied the photos were his, but said that he had taken a few photos of himself because he had been “losing weight.”

The Daily Agenda for Monday, August 29

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Federal Court To Hear Arguments Over Release of Prop 8 Trial Tapes: San Francisco, CA. The American Foundation for Equal Rights, which is sponsoring the federal Constitutional challenge to California’s Proposition 8, will appear before Federal District Judge James Ware today to argue for releasing the video recordings of the Prop 8 trial which led to another judge declaring it unconstitutional. Attorneys Ted Olson and Ted Boutrous will argue that the public has a First Amendment right to know what happened in open court, especially since the full trial transcript is already part of the public record. As Ted Olson put it,

“The hearing is whether or not the American public will be able to see with their own eyes and listen with their own ears to the testimony that happened in a trial that effects the constitutional rights of hundreds of thousands of Californians and millions of Americans and people throughout the world. The proponents of Proposition 8 did not want a trial, they did not want testimony of witnesses under oath, they did not want experts testifying about the damage that’s done by discrimination against gay and lesbian individuals, they did not want evidence about the value of marriage and the importance of marriage as a fundamental right in this country, they did not want the public to see the truth. They did not want—and they do not want—the public to see a trial that took place a year and a half ago. They want to keep that in the dark. They want to influence public opinion about these issues through their advertising.

Ironically, Judge Ware has already announced that today’s hearing will not be recorded. It turns out the Yes on 8 people who don’t want you see the debacle that was the original trial also don’t want you to see this hearing either.

Dan Choi’s White House Protest Trial: Washington, D.C. On November 15, 2010, thirteen activists protested at the White House demanding more action in the face of slow progress in repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” All thirteen were arrested for refusing to follow a lawful order the the National Park Service police. The others opted to plead guilty to a “failure to move” charge and pay a fine. Choi instead decided to plead not guilty and demand a court trial. That trial begins today at 9:30 a.m.

Edward Carpenter and George Merrill

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Edward Carpenter: 1844. Britain would be a very different place without him, and so would the LGBT world. Carpenter was a very influential poet, philosopher, anthologist, nudist, feminist, pacifist, and early gay activist. He was as leading proponent of socialism, and helped to found Britain’s Labour Party. Reading Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in the 1860’s was a huge revelation for him, with Whitman’s dreams of “a brotherhood of manly love.” Carpenter’s 1889 book Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure argued that civilization is a form of disease which no society ever survived more than a thousand years before collapsing. His cure involved a closer relationship with the land and a greater sense of our own development as individuals. He very much practiced what he preached, living among tenant farmers and other working class workers. He was relatively open about his homosexuality, which was a remarkable accomplishment. Unlike Oscar Wilde, who was arrested and imprisoned for his “vice,” Carpenter escaped scandal and arrest, even though he had moved in with the man who would be his partner for the rest of his life, George Merrill, in Millthorpe.  Carpenter befriended Walt Whitman, E.M. Forster, Havelock Ellis, John Addington Symonds, and several other early pioneers in the nascent gay community. Carpenter and Merrill’s relationship would serve as the model for Forster’s homoerotic novel, Maurice and, hetersexualized, for D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. His groundbreaking 1908 book, The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women, would become a foundational text for future LGBT movements. He wrote that because “intermediate types” (his preferred term for gay people; he hated “homosexual” because of what he called its “bastardization” of the Latin and Greek) were free of gender limitations, they were uniquely qualified for bringing about greater gender equality and equal rights for women. Carpenter’s writings would later inspire Harry Hay to found the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles, and thus spark a new gay rights movement half a world away.

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).

Uganda’s Ethics Minister Defrocked By Vatican

The Ugandan government-aligned New Vision newspaper reports today that Uganda’s new Ethics and Integrity Minister, Fr. Simon Lokodo, is no long a Catholic priest. According to New Vision, Lokodo violated Roman Catholic canon law which forbids priests from holding political office.

The Vatican’s action was slow in coming. Lokodo had long been a parish priest when in 2006 he became a member of Parliament for Dodoth County after his predecessor had passed away. The Ugandan Catholic hierarchy had already criticized his participation in politics, and he was reportedly suspended from his pastoral duties during the election over “a parish administrative glitch.” From 2009 to May, 2011, he served as State Minister for Industry and Technology, and was appointed Ethics Minister after James Nsaba Buturo, an ardent supporter of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, resigned after losing his seat in chaotic party primaries held in late 2010.

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, August 28

TODAY’S AGENDA:

Pride Celebrations Today: Boulder, CO; Chico, CA; Foyle, Northern Ireland; Manchester, UK; Ottawa, ON and Ventura County, CA.

Also Today: Big Bear Adventure Weekend, Big Bear Lake, CA and SHOUT Film Festival, Birmingham, AL.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: 1825. If anyone can claim the mantle of being the very first gay rights advocate of the modern age, that title would likely go to the native of the Kingdom of Hanover, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. When he was very little, he remembered wanting to be a girl and preferring to play with girls, but as often happens when a very young boy like him hits puberty, his leanings moved toward homosexuality. He went on to study law and theology at Göttingen University and history at Berlin University. He became a legal adviser for a district court in Hanover, but was dismissed when his homosexuality became known. That led him to declare himself an Urning. A word he coined in the 1860’s, he described the Urning as a “male-bodied person with a female psyche” who is sexually attracted to men and not women. He also coined Urningin for a “female-bodied person with a male psyche,” and Urningthum came to mean homosexuality itself.

Ulrichs devised an entire system of classification based on different combinations of attractions and gender roles, and more importantly, he set about to develop a robust argument for the legalization of homosexuality. Between 1864 and 1880, he published a series of twelve tracts which he collectively called, Research on the Riddle of Man-Manly Love, and his writings kept him in trouble with the law. His books were banned and confiscated in Saxony, Prussia, and Berlin. In 1867 after the formation of a united Germany, he became the first homosexual to address the Association of German Jurists in Munich on the need to reform German laws against homosexuality. He was shouted down but remained undeterred. In 1870, he published Araxes: a Call to Free the Nature of the Urning from Penal Law, in which he wrote:

The Urning, too, is a person. He, too, therefore, has inalienable rights. His sexual orientation is a right established by nature. Legislators have no right to veto nature; no right to persecute nature in the course of its work; no right to torture living creatures who are subject to those drives nature gave them.

The Urning is also a citizen. He, too, has civil rights; and according to these rights, the state has certain duties to fulfill as well. The state does not have the right to act on whimsy or for the sheer love of persecution. The state is not authorized, as in the past, to treat Urnings as outside the pale of the law.

…. Uranian love is in any instance no real crime. All indications of such are lacking. It is not even shameful, decadent or wicked, simply because it is the fulfillment of a law of nature. It is reckoned as one of the many imagined crimes that have defaced Europe’s law books to the shame of civilized people. To criminalize it appears, therefore, to be an injustice officially perpetrated. Just because Urnings are unfortunate enough to be a small minority, no damage can be done to their inalienable rights and to their civil rights. The law of liberty in the constitutional state also has to consider its minorities.

By 1879, Ulrichs decided that he had done all he could do in Germany and went into self-imposed exile in Italy. He later wrote, “Until my dying day I will look back with pride that I found the courage to come face to face in battle against the spectre which for time immemorial has been injecting poison into me and into men of my nature. Many have been driven to suicide because all their happiness in life was tainted. Indeed, I am proud that I found the courage to deal the initial blow to the hydra of public contempt.”

Nancy Kulp: 1921. Her name is not exactly a household name today, but her character from The Beverly Hillbillies, Miss Jane Hathaway, lives on in re-runs. She began life as a journalist for the Miami Beach Tropics, writing celebrity profiles while studying English and French at the University of Miami. In 1944, she left he academic life to enlist in the U.S. Naval Reserves, and served in World War II as a member of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), where she was highly decorated. She married relatively late for her time (at the age of thirty) and divorced ten years later.

Shortly after she married, she moved to Hollywood and began her career as an actress, appearing in several movies including Shane, A Star Is Born, The Three Faces of Eve, and The Parent Trap. Her characters were what we today would call a geek. On television, she inevitably played the spinster. One reviewer called her the homeliest girl in television and said she had the “face of a shriveled balloon, the figure of a string of spaghetti and the voice of a bullfrog in mating season.” But her straitlaced approach to comedy made her an ideal “straight man,” so to speak, for the other zanier characters around her.

In 1984, she went home to Port Royal, Pennsylvania and ran for Congress as a Democrat. To her great dismay, her opponent, Bud Shuster, picked up the endorsement of Beverly Hillbillies costar Buddy Ebsen, who recorded a radio commercial denouncing her as “too liberal.” Kulp lost, picking up only a third of the vote.

In a 1989 interview, Kulp finally came out as a lesbian in an interview: “As long as you reproduce my reply word for word, and the question, you may use it… I’d appreciate it if you’d let me phrase the question. There is more than one way. Here’s how I would ask it: ‘Do you think that opposites attract?’ My own reply would be that I’m the other sort – I find that birds of a feather flock together. That answers your question.” She died in 1991 of cancer.

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).

Reports: Joe Solmonese To Leave HRC

Pam Spaulding reports that Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, will announce his resignation from the post he’s held since 2005, on Tuesday. She also says that the change will herald the beginnings of a larger staff shakeup at the organization that has been criticized for its timidity and coziness with political leaders. Pam hears that Solmonese’s replacement has already been named, someone from outside the HRC who has worked with the organization as a paid consultant. But another source told Chris Geidner at Metro Weekly that “a full candidate selection process will take place” to find his successor.

Geidner also reports that the HRC’s board had originally scheduled a conference call meeting for August 29, the day before Solmonese’s planned announcement, but moved up the conference call to today after Spaulding broke the news in an exclusive report.

Update: Kevin Naff at The Washington Blade says that the HRC will release a statement later toady, which will reveal that Solmonese is giving six months’ advance notice. Naff also says his sources deny that Solmonese’s resignation will foreshadow a change in direction or staff at HRC. They also deny moving up the announcement because of Spaulding’s report, claiming that they decided to make the announcement later today because of the hurricane.

Linda Harvey: “No Proof” LGBT People Exist

Maybe she's confusing LGBT people with fairies.

Mission America’s Linda Harvey said on her broadcast this weekend that the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network is spinning its wheels with its GLSEN Sports project, aimed at fostering a safe atmosphere for LGBT school athletes and phys-ed students, because there is no such thing as LGBT people:

There’s one big fact that’s not backed up. There is no proof that there’s ever anything like a gay, lesbian or bisexual or transgendered child, or teen or human. One of the other things you’re gonna see as I mentioned is a big campaign GLSEN’s gonna roll out this year calling for ‘respect,’ respect! Not just for people, but for homosexual lifestyle. The PR campaign to hold up gay as a good thing: the lifestyle, not the person, because there are no such humans.

It’s funny how much she obsesses over people who don’t exist, isn’t it?

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, August 27

TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Showing of “This Is What Love In Action Looks Like”: Birmingham, AL. 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.

Memphis-based documentary filmmaker Morgan Fox has spent the past six years working on a documentary about Love In Action, beginning with Zach’s forced commitment into the program. The resulting film, This Is What Love in Action Looks Like, featuring interviews with Zach, then-LIA director John Smid, other former ex-gay leaders and former LIA clients, premiered in San Francisco in June. Today the film today will be screened at the  SHOUT Film Festival in Birmingham, Alabama, at 12:40pm at the Alabama Theatre Loft. Morgan Fox is scheduled to attend. You can see the trailer for Fox’s moving documentary here.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Boulder, CO; Charlotte, NC; Chico, CA; Cornwall, UK; Foyle, Northern Ireland; Manchester, UK; Myrtle Beach, SC; Ottawa, ON; Toledo, OH and Ventura County, CA.

Also This Weekend: Big Bear Adventure Weekend, Big Bear Lake, CA; SHOUT Film Festival, Birmingham, AL and Taste of Provincetown, MA.

Lou Engle protesting Pride in Charlotte, 2009

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Anti-Gay Extremists to Protest Charlotte Pride: Charlotte, NC. On the same day in which Charlotte Pride is scheduled to take place, local anti-gay extremist Michael Brown, former leader of the so-called Brownsville Revival, has organized a counter event he calls, “God Has A Better Way.” The gathering begins at noon at the First Baptist Church in Charlotte, but afterwards they will march to the site of the Pride Festival where they will “either walk through or surround the event to evangelize, sing, pray, hand out water, and reach out with love to those in attendance while resisting the agenda.” Hilarity ensues, I’m sure. A similar event in 2009 featured anti-gay extremist Lou Engle of the International House of Prayer and TheCall. Engle would later travel to Uganda to endorse that nation’s proposed “Kill the Gays” Bill and commend Ugandans for “showing courage to take a stand for righteousness in the earth.” While it appears that Engle won’t be there this year, Matt Barber, associate dean at Liberty University Law School, will be on hand instead. The group will also hold an “outreach concert” later that evening “featuring testimonies from several ex-gays.”

Bachmann To Speak At Florida Family Policy Council: Orlando, FL. GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann will be the keynote speaker tonight at the Florida Family Policy Council’s annual awards dinner at the Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel in Orlando. In 2008, the Florida Family Policy Council was the driving force behind Florida’s Amendment 2, which added a ban on same-sex marriages to the Florida Constitution. Bachmann supports a similar nationwide ban that would strip millions of gays and lesbians the right to marry, even in states where marriage equality is already the law of the land. In March of this year, Bachmann joined former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, and former Arkansas Mike Huckabee for a special Florida Family Policy Council event called “Rediscover God In America,” aimed at revealing “how American history and current events can only be fully understood in light of God and his Word.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Tom Ford: 1961. Just so you know, he was born in the same year I was. And today, the award-winning fashion designer and director of the film A Single Man, turns fifty — just like me. But alas, that’s where the similarities end. I’ve tried growing the perfect stubble, but it just makes me look like a homeless man. Maybe if I stopped wearing underwear…

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).

Hurricane Headed Straight For BTB

Actually, it’s headed for BTB’s servers, that is. I’ve been notified by our web hosting provider that our server, located in Andover, Massachusetts, is kinda-sorta in Hurricane Irene’s path, and will probably hit Massachusetts sometime on Sunday. The web host says they have plenty of back-up power and spare equipment to bring online if needed. But if we have any outages the next few days, you’ll know why.

Bachmann Two Weeks Ago: Nobody Cares About Marriage. Bachmann Now: It’s a Fundamental Issue.

It depends on who's asking.

GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann finally answered a question about same-sex marriage, and her answer went well beyond repeating “I am running for the Presidency of the United States.” At a townhall meeting in South Carolina on Thursday, Bachmann was asked about same-sex marriage. She responded:

“In our coalition we have fiscal conservatives, national security conservatives, the Tea Party movement, and we have social conservatives,”” she said. “You put that team together and there’s no way that we can possibly lose the election in 2012. We need to stick together.”

Bachmann even touted her time as a Minnesota state lawmaker when she introduced a bill to put a gay marriage ban up to a statewide vote. She said her bill, which failed at the time, was inspired by what she saw happen in Massachusetts when the state Supreme Court intervened and same-sex marriage eventually became legal.

“When that happened, I knew that my home state of Minnesota could be next,” she said. “Minnesota and Massachusetts have a lot in common. And I was very concerned about that. And so I introduced a bill that would allow the people of Minnesota to define marriage as one man and one woman. In my home state, I was not exactly popular for doing that measure. But I felt that it was right to let the people of Minnesota decide on the definition of marriage, not a plurality of judges.”

Unlike with her appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press where she tried to downplay her stance on marriage, she told the South Carolina gathering that marriage was “a fundamental issue, this issue of marriage, that I think it’s one the people have to vote on.” She also reiterated her support for a federal constitutional ban on marriage equality.

Anti-Gay Puerto Rican Legislator Caught On Grindr

If he quacks like a duck...

Puerto Rico Senator Roberto Arango was spotted posting photos (NSFW) on the gay hook-up smartphone app Grindr. What makes this noteworthy is the anti-gay positions he’s taken over the years. According to a tip at Joe.My.God:

In 2009 he voted in favor of Resolution 99 which would have amended Puerto Rico’s constitution to ban the recognition of same-sex marriages (it didn’t pass). He has been opposed to civil union bills and in 2004 he used a rubber duck and made it quack to make fun of an opponent (in Puerto Rico, the word for duck, “pato”, means faggot.)

Arango was identified partly by the pendant that he was wearing while taking the photo. Another photo allegedly downloaded from Grindr has him wearing a shirt and showing his face. And then, of course, there’s this one (NSFW). The photos were aired last Friday on the Puerto Rican TV show Dando Candela.

Arango, who served as Puerto Rico chair for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign in 2004, neither confirmed nor denied taking the photograph. He told Dando Candela:

You know I’ve been losing weight. As I shed that weight, I’ve been taking pictures. I don’t remember taking this particular picture but I’m not gonna say I didn’t take it. I’d tell you if I remembered taking the picture but I don’t.

Is “losing weight” destined to become another euphemism?

Indiana Legislator Gives A New Meaning To “Talking About Baseball”

New rule: it's not gay when you're talking about sports.

There was a time when hiking the Appalachian trail meant, well, hiking the Appalachian trail. It doesn’t anymore. In today’s adventure in euphemisms, Indiana State Rep. Phillip Hinkle says that when he went trolling on Craiglist’s Casual Encounters section under “m4m” to find an eighteen-year-old man to pay $80 for companionship with the promise of a $50 to $60 tip for a “really good time”  because Hinkle loves “getting and staying naked,” it turns out what he really had in mind was talking about basketball baseball. Which totally makes him not gay.

Update (8/27): Basketball, baseball — they’re the same thing, aren’t they?

Perry Signs NOM’s Anti-Gay Pledge

Pledges allegiance to Maggie Gallagher.

Texas governor and GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry joins Sen. Rick Santorum, Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in signing the National Organizations for Marriage’s anti-gay pledge. The pledge requires candidates to:

• Support the Federal Marriage Amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman,
• Defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court,
• Apply a marriage litmus test for judges and the attorney general,
• Appoint a presidential commission to investigate so-called “harassment” of traditional marriage supporters,
• Demand that marriage be put to a vote in the District of Columbia.

Santorum’s Metaphors About Marriage Are Starting to Sound Pretty Gay

Don't forget the Royal Doulton, Richard.

First, it  was napkins and not paper towels, then it was water and not beer, then it was tea and not basketball. Now GOP presidential candidate Sen. Rick Santorum says that marriage is a tree and not a car:

Burns: You’ve been pretty strong in your opposition to gay marriage. Iowa, of course, does have legalized gay marriage. How does the fact that there are a handful of gay couples married in Carroll affect my heterosexual life and your heterosexual life? How does it hurt other people in Carroll, Iowa, that there are folks among us we may not even know who happen to be gay and happen to be married? How does that hurt my life?

Santorum: Because it changes the definition of an intrinsic element of society in a way that minimizes what that bond means to society.

Marriage is what marriage is. Marriage was around before government said what it was.

It’s like going out and saying, ‘That tree is a car.’ Well, the tree’s not a car. A tree’s a tree. Marriage is marriage.

You can say that tree is something other than it is. It can redefine it. But it doesn’t change the essential nature of what marriage is.

He talks a lot about what he thinks marriage is not. But when he gets around to talking about what marriage is, he goes into napkins, water, tea and trees. Santorum is making marriage sound like an al fresco waterside supper with riparian entertainments. Which if you ask me sounds about as gay as gay could be.