Box Turtle Bulletin

Barfing Florida Teacher Is Just Like Jesus

The resemblance is uncanny.

Jerry Buell, the Florida history and American government teacher who was suspended two weeks ago for anti-gay comments posted on his Facebook page, has been reinstated at Mount Dora High School. Buell’s lawyer said that the school district suspended him over concerns that his actions violated the separation of church and state at the taxpayer-supported public high school. Buell was suspended after writing on his Facebook page, “I’m watching the news, eating dinner, when the story about New York okaying same sex unions came on and I almost threw up.”

Jerry Buell returned to the classroom yesterday. School officials refused to comment on whether Buell’s actions violated the separation of church and state, saying only that it had placed a “written directive” in his personnel file. The district removed Buell’s school-hosted web page on which he had written “I try to teach and lead my students as if Lake Co. Schools had hired Jesus Christ himself.” The district also directed him to change his syllabus, which included this statement:

I am a man of God and I try to be like Jesus every day. I teach God’s truth, I make very few compromises. If you believe you may have a problem with that, get your schedule changed, ’cause I ain’t changing!

Last night, Buell spoke at a rally staged by the Liberty Counsel, where he remained defiant:

Fighting back tears, he said: “I’m a social studies teacher, and I knew I what the heck I was doing. “There’s a thing in this country called the First Amendment,” he told the crowd of a few hundred. “I firmly believe in the right to express my opinions passionately.”

The Daily Agenda for Friday, August 26

TODAY’S AGENDA:
HRC “On the Road to Equality”: Kansas City, MO. The Human Rights Campaign’s bus tour stops in Kansas City, Missouri for a fundraiser for the LIKE ME Lighthouse project, the proposal to build an LGBT community center in Kansas City. The benefit takes place tonight at Missie B’s, 805 W. 39th St., beginning at 9:00 p.m.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Boulder, CO; Charlotte, NC; 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.

Richard Tafel and Robert Dole: He's just not that into you.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
GOP Presidential Candidate Returns Donation from Log Cabin Republicans: 1995. Richard L. Tafel, president of LCR, received a letter from John A. Moran, the finance director for the presidential campaign of Sen. Bob Dole. The letter read: “Pre our discussion, I am attaching a list of upcoming Dole for President fund-raising events. Senator Dole and I would appreciate any assistance you could give us in turning out your members at each event. I am looking forward to working with you. With all good wishes. Cordially, John.” The letter seemed to vindicate Tafel’s hard work in getting LCR recognized as a valuable partner in electing a Republican to unseat President Bill Clinton. With Dole, Tafel thought he had someone he could work with. Campaign officials were soliciting his support, and he prominently wore a Log Cabin lapel button as he discussed AIDS police with Sen. Dole during a fundraiser.

And so Tafel donated $1,000 to the Dole campaign to support his quest for the Republican nomination. But after a devastating showing at the Iowa Straw Poll — Dole was expected to win handily, but ended up tying with Texas Sen. Phil Gramm — Dole’s frontrunner status in the Republican field looked to be in jeopardy. And so in August, the Dole campaign decided to tack right, hard. And as part of that direction, they publicly returned LCR’s donation. Nelson Warfield, Dole’s spokesman, said they the only reason they accepted the money in the first place was because of “a financial screw up.” Dole himself told ABC News, “I don’t agree with their agenda — I assume that’s why it was returned.” Campaign manager Scott Reed put the donation in a broader context: “We need to be seen as a consistent conservative — and we will be that.” Dole captured the GOP nomination after his hard turn to the right, but he ultimately lost the general election.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Christopher Isherwood: 1904. Born in Nortt West England to a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, young Christopher moved around a lot as his father was stationed in various towns around England. But after his father was killed in the First World War, Christopher and his mother and brother settled at Wyberslegh. As Christopher grew to adulthood, his life appeared to have taken on some of the wanderings of his father: He studied at Cambridge, but dropped out in 1925. He studied medicine at King’s College Londing in 1928, but left in 1929 when he followed a friend to Berlin. There, he discovered the thriving gay scene in the Weimar Republic, and Isherwood thrived there. He had done some writing in England, but in Germany he came into contact with several other writers, including E.M.Forster who became his mentor.

Isherwood wrote several novels throughout the 1930’s, including The Memorial and a collection of shorter novels which were later released as The Berlin Stories. When the Nazis came to power, Isherwood and his German lover moved to Copenhagen. After his lover returned to Germany for a brief visit in 1937 and was arrested as a draft dodger and for committing “reciprocal onanism,” Isherwood and his writing partner, W. H. Auden, traveled to China to collect material for a book they were working on, and stopped in New York on their way back to Britain. That’s when they decided to emigrate to the U.S. Auden remained in New York, while Isherwood took off for Hollywood.

On Valentine’s day at the age of 48, he met nineteen-year-old Don Bachardy, and the two of them began a partnership that lasted until the end of Isherwood’s life. The differences in ages raised quite a few eyebrows among their circle of friends. They had their differences and difficulties, including separations and affairs, but in the end they remained devoted to each other. Their relationship spawned Isherwoods greatest literary triumph, 1964’s A Single Man. Isherwood wrote the novel during one of the couple’s periods of difficulty. Bachardy recalled later, “I was making a lot of trouble and wondering if I shouldn’t be on my own. Chris was going through a very difficult period (as well). So he killed off my character, Jim, in the book and imagined what his life would be without me.” The novel is not just a classic in the cannon of gay literature, but one of the great novels of the 20th century, and it became an award-winning film under the direction of Tom Ford in 2009.  Isherwood died in 1986 of prostate cancer. Bachardy still lives in the home they shared in Santa Monica, California.

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 when we say “we’re everywhere” …

Libyan rebels have ended the 42-year long rule of Moammar Gadhafi. And, as has now become the standard practice for deposing Middle East dictators, the palaces of Gadhafi and his family have been looted.

The rebels and locals alike were shocked at the extravagant and, ahem, esthetically-challenged display of careless wealth. And amidst the ghastly tackiness and excess, there was this (AP)

In an office area in the villa, reporters saw large piles of catalogues for yachts and cars. A catalog by the firm Benetti had a yellow handwritten post-it note attached listing the price for a 30-meter-long yacht as 7 million euros. A DVD with gay porn entitled “Boyz Tracks” slipped out of the stack of documents.

Oh yes, when we say we’re everywhere, that isn’t always a good thing.

Today In Naked Golf

Clicking makes it bigger, but not by much.

All fifteen members of the men’s golf team at Bethany College (Go Swedes!) in Lindsborg, Kansas, were suspended because of the photo you see above. Coach Jon Daniels suspended the team from three tournaments over the men’s failure in “upholding the reputation of the Lutheran college.” I suspect the reputation was harmed because the men were able to hide their privates behind the heads of their golf clubs. Team captain Jack Hiscock — yes, that’s his name — said it was just a bit of fun that got blown out of proportion. He also says they are appealing, and I happen to agree with him.

[Via Band of Thebes]

LaBarbera Meltdown Over Gay Magazine by Fox News Parent

News Corp, the parent company of über-conservative Fox News and the consistently homophobic New York Post, is, more than anything, a media company looking to make a buck. Which might explain why a company that owns a television network that often portrays gay people and causes in a bad light would also launch a magazine celebrating same-sex weddings. Wedding Pride (“The magazine for gay and lesbian wedding planning”) launches in September with an initial printing of 35,000 for the New York City area.  Poor Peter “Porno Pete” LaBarbera thinks Fox News has gotten brain cooties from those icky New Yorkers:

Fox News is too damn lib'ral.

“Conservative and faith-based Americans do not look to Fox to promote sin. And yet, every time Fox promotes homosexuality, that’s exactly what they’re doing; they’re promoting bad morality,” LaBarbera contends.

According to him, that is the network’s trend, as some talk show hosts do not even address the subject. But he argues that neutrality on the issue is not what Fox’s constituency deserves.

“I think the problem is Fox News is based in New York City, which is a gay Mecca. That’s one of the problems,” he suggests. “But, it’s this idea [of] sort of going with the media, going with the popular culture.”

Dominionism Is Not A Myth, Continued

Last Sunday, I posted my reaction to an incredibly ill-informed op-ed on The Daily Beast by A. Larry Ross claiming that, despite all evidence to the contrary, there is no such thing as Christian Dominionism. It was all a myth, he claimed, made up by  the “East Coast media elite.” While Ross’s op-ed was grossly misinformed, Ross himself is not. His is, in fact, an Evangelical publicist whose client list includes such heavy hitters as Rev. Billy Graham, Rick Warren, and T.D. Jakes. None of those Evangelical clients hew to the particular definitional theologies of Dominionism, although some of them — Rod Parsely, for example — might be said at least to have some Dominion-ish tendencies, and another — Rick Warren — was taught by a Dominionist teacher (Warren denies having had any contact with theologian Peter Wagner since his seminary days).

It would appear that a few folks had a conference call and decided to plant the Dominionism-is-a-myth bug in more than one outlet. A few days before Ross’s piece appeared in the Daily Beast, Lisa Miller wrote a very similar piece for The Washington Post. Like Ross, Miller claimed that concerns over the Dominionist leanings of some GOP candidates and their advisers was exactly the same thing as being paranoid about Evangelicals overall — despite the fact that only a very tiny minority of Evangelicals hold Dominionist views. Critics can tell the difference between mainstream Evangelicalism and Dominionism, but Miller pretends that the word Dominionism is just a pejorative for mainstream Evangelicalism. And to drive the point home, she even puts “Dominionism” in scare quotes:

One piece connects Texas Gov. Rick Perry with a previously unknown Christian group called “The New Apostolic Reformation,” whose main objective is to “infiltrate government.” Another highlights whacko-sounding Christian influences on Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. A third cautions readers to be afraid, very afraid, of “dominionists.”

The stories raise real concerns about the world views of two prospective Republican nominees. But their echo-chamber effect reignites old anxieties among liberals about evangelical Christians. Some on the left seem suspicious that a firm belief in Jesus equals a desire to take over the world. … As Rachel Maddow so sarcastically said of the New Apostolic Reformation on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on Aug. 10 : “Their goal, world domination, blah blah blah.”

Miller emphasizes that mainstream Evangelicals do not want to take over the political world, that mainstream Evangelicals aren’t of one mind, and mainstream Evangelicals aren’t militant. Fine, but a small minority known as Dominionists do and are. And to pretend that Dominionists don’t exist is like saying that since mainstream white people don’t want to bring back Jim Crow, then it follows that “racists” don’t exist and the word belongs in scare quotes. That kind of reasoning is patently absurd.

Rachel Tabachnick, who researchers the political impact of the religious right, appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross on Wednesday. She gave a very succinct description of one version of Dominionist theology promulgated by a movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR):

Tabachnick says the movement currently works with a variety of politicians and has a presence in all 50 states. It also has very strong opinions about the direction it wants the country to take. For the past several years, she says, the NAR has run a campaign to reclaim what it calls the “seven mountains of culture” from demonic influence. The “mountains” are arts and entertainment; business; family; government; media; religion; and education.

“They teach quite literally that these ‘mountains’ have fallen under the control of demonic influences in society,” says Tabachnick. “And therefore, they must reclaim them for God in order to bring about the kingdom of God on Earth. … The apostles teach what’s called ‘strategic level spiritual warfare’ [because they believe that the] reason why there is sin and corruption and poverty on the Earth is because the Earth is controlled by a hierarchy of demons under the authority of Satan. So they teach not just evangelizing souls one by one, as we’re accustomed to hearing about. They teach that they will go into a geographic region or a people group and conduct spiritual-warfare activities in order to remove the demons from the entire population. This is what they’re doing that’s quite fundamentally different than other evangelical groups.”

Get that? This is fundamentally different than other evangelical groups. And Tabachnick’s background allows her to tell the difference:

Tabachnick, who has been researching and writing about the apostles for a decade, says her own religious background has helped her with her research. She grew up as a Southern Baptist and converted to Judaism as an adult.

“Having the Southern Baptist background and growing up in the Deep South has helped me to be able to do this research and has also helped me realize something that might not be apparent to some other people looking at the movement,” she says. “This is quite radically different than the evangelicalism of my youth. The things that we’ve been talking about are not representative of evangelicalism. They’re not representative of conservative evangelicalism. So I think that’s important to keep in mind. This is a movement that’s growing in popularity, and one of the ways they’ve been able to do that [is because] they’re not very identifiable to most people. They’re just presented as nondenominational or just Christian — but it is an identifiable movement now with an identifiable ideology.”

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, August 25

TODAY’S AGENDA:
National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association Annual Convention: Philadelphia, PA.More than 300 journalists, bloggers, publishers, broadcasters, authors, and activists will converge on the City of Brotherly Love for the NLGJA’s annual convention. This year’s theme is “Creating A Media Revolution,” and it all begins this morning at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel and continues through Saturday. The Today Show news anchor Ann Curry will speak during an afternoon plenary session on Friday, and CNN Anchor Don Lemon will talk during the lunchtime session on Saturday to talk about his new memoir Transparent.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Boulder, CO; Charlotte, NC; 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.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Leonard Bernstein: 1918. When he died only five days after announcing his retirement in 1990, the New York Times lionized him as “one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history.” He became instantly famous in 1943 when he stepped in at the last minute — unrehearsed — to conduct the New York Philharmonic when conductor Bruno Walter fell ill. That concert at Carnegie Hall was nationally broadcast, and it led to guest conductor engagements around the country. In 1947 he conducted a complete Boston Symphony concert in Carnegie Hall, the first time that orchestra had allowed a guest to do so in 22 years. In 1953 he became the first American-born conductor to conduct an opera at Milan’s famed La Scala. When he was named the New York Philharmonic’s musical director in 1958, he became the youngest person to fill that role in the orchestra’s history.

Bernstein was also the first conductor to give numerous television lectures on classical music, starting in 1954, continuing until his death. Meanwhile, he also achieved popular success with his many compositions, including three symphonies, ballets and operas; his Mass; and music for such Broadway hits as Candide, On the Town, and most famously, West Side Story.

Bernstein conducting the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, 1970.

Bernstein was known for his highly animated conducting style and punishing schedule. One legendary story has it that at his first rehearsal as guest conductor for the St. Louis Symphony, his initial downbeat was so dramatic that the startled musicians simply stared in amazement and made no sound. In 1982 Bernstein fell off the podium while conducting the Houston Symphony, and he did it again in 1984 while leading the Vienna Philharmonic in Chicago.

Bernstein married Chilean actress Felicia Montealegre Cohn in 1951 and together they had three children. After 25 years, they had a “trial separation,” although they continued to appear together at his performances. She died in 1978. Bernstein’s homosexuality, often rumored throughout his life, became public knowledge with the publication of Joan Peyser’s Bernstein: A Biography. Arthur Laurents, Bernstein’s collaborator in West Side Story, said simply that Bernstein was “a gay man who got married. He wasn’t conflicted about it at all. He was just gay.”

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).

Steve Jobs Resigns As Head of Apple

That normally wouldn’t be much of a gay-related story, except everyone and their mother seems to think the new CEO is gay.

Does Uganda’s Cabinet Ultimately Hold the Key To Anti-Homosexuality Bill’s Passage?

That’s what the South African LGBT blog Behind the Mask says:

Under Uganda’s Parliamentary Rules of Procedure, a Private Member of Parliament can table a bill. However Cabinet ordinarily discusses the bill and associates itself (cabinet) with such a bill. The legislator can then approach the Ministry of Finance to get a Certificate of Financial Implications, indicating how much it will cost government to set up institutions and frameworks for managing the bill if passed into law.

“That’s where Mr Bahati will have a technical challenge. The Ministry of Finance can refuse to give him this Certificate. That will mean he cannot reintroduce the bill,” Mr James Mukaga, a Clerk Assistant to the Parliament of Uganda said.

Obviously, one factor that would have to be considered in determining the bill’s cost would be the impact the bill’s passage would have in foreign aid. It is estimated that foreign aid makes up a third of Uganda’s budget. Sweden has already announced that they would cut aid if the Anti-Homosexuality Bill becomes law, and it is believed that many other nations, including the United States, Britain and Canada, may have issued similar warnings privately.

Last weekend, the Ugandan Cabinet announced that they were “throwing out” the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Members of Parliament then responded that the bill, which is a private member’s bill, is the “property” of Parliament and that the Cabinet does not have the authority to kill the bill. If this report from Behind the Mask is true, then the ball may truly be in Cabinet’s court.

However, the bill was already introduced in the Eight Parliament following a similar procedure, presumably including a Certificate from the Finance Minister at the time the bill was introduced in October, 2009. If the bill is simply carried forward from the Eighth Parliament to the Ninth Parliament, it is unclear whether a new certificate would have to be issued.

MP David Bahati

Behind the Mask also includes this background information which shows that M.P. David Bahati, the bill’s sponsor, may see the Anti-Homosexuality Bill as his pathway to becoming Prime Minister:

Mr Bahati has meanwhile been preparing to bring back the bill to fight his own local political battles. He recently formed a local political grouping, the Kabale Parliamentary Forum (KPF) in his home area of Kabale, a town in western Uganda.

The group is seen as a potential political threat to Uganda’s Prime Minister, Mr Amama Mbabazi who also hails from Kabale. Mr Mbabazi is the leader of Government business in Uganda’s Parliament.

Some pundits have hinted that Mr Bahati may be using the bill for his own local political agenda. They claim he wants to show that Mr Mbabazi is the one blocking the Kill the Gays Bill if it is not reintroduced in the ninth Parliament. Bahati would then undercut the premier politically on the home front through trying to link him with the protection of homosexuals.

Bahati’s political star has been rising lately on the strength of his notoriety. He was elevated to the ruling party’s caucus vice chair last June, and he was also named the chairman of the Ugandan Fellowship, a branch of the U.S.-based secretive group known as the C Street Fellowship or The Family. When the Ugandan fellowship held its inaugural dinner for members of the Ninth Parliament at the Sheraton Hotel Kampala in June, first lady Janet Museveni was on hand as guest speaker.

[Hat tip: Paul Canning]

Homosexuality Caused the Earthquake

Rabbi Yehuda Levin asks and answers the question that was on everyone’s lips:

An email went out in my community just a few hours ago: How long will it take Rabbi Yehuda Levin to tie this earthquake in with homosexual marriage? I’d like to answer that tonight: not very long at all. I’m happy to see that people, even if some of them are scoffers, are starting to see the connection.

Last year, Levin predicted natural disasters would occur after New York City instituted domestic partnerships and Congress was preparing to consider repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Later that year, Levin provided a script for New York GOP gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino to read during a media event at a Brooklyn Orthodox community center calling gay people “perverts who seek to target our children and destroy their lives.” Paladino dutifully read it, but was forced to apologize later amid outcry from Democrats and many fellow Republicans.

Update: WorldNetDaily’s Joseph Farah jumps in. He doesn’t name homosexuality specifically, but he does say the earthquake, which caused hundreds of dollars in damage, was a message from God.

Ugandan MPs Reject Cabinet’s “Rejection” of Anti-Homosexuality Bill

Daily Monitor, Uganda’s largest independent newspaper, today reports on reaction from members of Parliament to the weekend’s announcement that the Cabinet has “rejected” the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Daily Monitor reports:

Members of Parliament yesterday accused Cabinet of bowing to pressure and described the Executive’s decision to block the gays Bill as “moral corruption”.

Ndorwa West MP David Bahati, the architect of the Bill, says Cabinet cannot throw out his Bill because it is now property of Parliament and insists that he is going to push for it.

The lawmakers said it was immoral for government to think that donor funds matter more than traditional values and vowed to push for the Bill and ensure that it is passed even without the support of government. “Whether they want or not, we are going to pass it. For government to come up and throw out such a Bill means we are living in a crazy world,” said Mr Andrew Allen (Bugabula North).

Ugandan lawmakers are particularly sensitive to the perception that they are under the domination of international pressure. Open defiance against foreign (read: rich, white, colonialist, etc.) pressure plays very well politically at home, as does any expression of hatred toward gay people. Adding to that is a third factor, the opportunity for members of Parliament to assert its independence by tweaking a very powerful and entrenched president. With that, support for the bill becomes a three-fer. The first and third elements are illustrated here:

Prior to the move, the international community had put pressure on government by threatening to cut aid if government passes the Bill. Ms Betty Amongi (MP Oyam South) says Cabinet has given Parliament a chance to exercise and prove its independence and not allow donor influence to “also jeopardize its works.”

The Anti-homosexuality Bill is a private members Bill and Shadow Attorney General, Abdu Katuntu (MP Bugweri) said Cabinet cannot throw out a Bill it didn’t bring. “The only option they have is to come and oppose it on the floor of the House,” he said.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, August 24

TODAY’S AGENDA:
LGBT/MLK Memorial Reception: Washington, D.C. District of Columbia Host Committee for the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, in partnership with the National Black Justice Coalition, International Federation of Black Prides and several other LGBT advocacy groups, will host a reception honoring the living legacy of Dr. King. The reception, titled “Building the Dream for LGBT Equality,” is being held in conjunction with the memorial’s dedication this weekend. The reception will take place this evening from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Rayburn House Office Building foyer, in Washington, DC. RSVP is required to attend.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Boulder, CO; Charlotte, NC; 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.

Homosexuals are fit to print.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
New York Times’s “Homosexuals In Revolt”: 1970. On June 28, 1969, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn erupted in revolt when New York City police tried to raid the bar. The New York Times, the city’s newspaper of record, published nary a word about it. But more than a year later, the Grey Lady finally found that the explosion of new gay organizations, along with the successful Gay Pride march and a large gathering in Central Park marking the one-year anniversary of Stonewall a few months earlier, was all too much to ignore. And so on August 24, 1970, the Times printed an exhaustive and (for 1970) relatively balanced exploration of the dynamic shifts that had just occurred within the gay community over the past year, namely its new-found pride and emerging sense of self worth. Of course, not everyone thought those new dynamics were positive:

This new attitude has its critics, both among “straights” and among homosexuals. Many doctors believe that, while homosexuals have full legal rights, “gay is not necessarily “good.” Dr. Lionel Ovesey, ad professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, said: “Homosexuality is a psychiatric or emotional illness. I think it’s a good thing of someone can be cured of it because it’s so difficult for a homosexual to find happiness in our society. It’s possible that this movement could consolidate the illness in some people, especially among young people who are still teetering on the brink.”

Having gotten that out of the way early on however, the rest of the Times article focused mainly on the the emergence of a new attitude and commitment to equality among younger people, in contrast to the timidity that was still common among the older generation. The youth, who were organizing gay advocacy and social groups at an astonishing pace across the country, were inspired particularly by the civil rights movement as well as the women’s movement:

“We are all fighting for equal rights as human beings,” explained (New York Mattachine Society president Michael) Kotis, who had a picture of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. above his desk in the society’s cramped offices on West End Avenue. “The philosophical ideals on which this country was founded have yet to be realized. We owe a great debt to the blacks — they were the pioneers.”

Gays and lesbians were up against a lot of history however, and they were also up against a lot of internalized shame and guilt — even among some of the brave new activists:

“The first job we have to do is to decondition ourselves, to undo that self-contempt we have,” said Don Kilhefner, a graduate student who started a Gay Liberation branch at the University of California at Los Angeles. “We’ve gone through the same kind of conditioning blacks have gone through. We believe the myth society tells about us, consciously or unconsciously.”

“Homosexuality is not an illness; it’s a way of expressing love for someone of the same sex, and any form of love is beautiful and valid,” said Karla, a leader of the Lavender Menace, a lesbian organization in New York, who would not give her full name.

The article went on to discuss some of the discrimination that gay people face, particularly in employment where people were routinely fired if their employers found out they were gay. At that point, the article circled back around to Karla:

As a result, people like Karla, despite her devotion to the movement, are still afraid. “I still face the possibility that I might have to make it in the ‘straight’ world,” she said, in explaining why she would not give her full name. “And there are a lot of things you still can’t do if they know you’re ‘gay’.” In answer to these problems, “gay” organizations provide legal counsel, offer advice on job hunting, and lobby for legislative reforms.

There is much that feels antiquated when reading this article more than forty years later, but there is also much that feels familiar, particularly the tensions between the more established gay rights groups who feared pushing too hard and provoking a backlash (and who, quite visibly in this article, called themselves “homosexuals”), and the younger, more active members of the community who were impatient for change and were more willing to take their complaints to the street — and to proclaim themselves gay:

There are sharp disagreements within the homosexual community. People such as Michael Brown of Gay Liberation in New York identify with a broader radical movement. “The older groups are oriented toward getting accepted by the Establishment,” he said, “but what the Establishment has to offer is not worth my time. …”

On the other side are organizations such as the Tangent Group in Los Angeles, headed by a brisk, middle aged man named Don Slater. He agreed that homosexuals should have pride in themselves, but he added: “People should stop thinking of homosexuals as a class. They’re not. We have spent 20 years convincing people that homosexuals are no different than anyone else, and here these kids come along and reinforce what society’s thought all along — that they’re ‘queer.’ ‘Gay’ is good! To hell with that. Individuals are good.”

The parameters of the argument have changed quite a bit in the past forty years, but the fundamental discussion continues: assimilation vs. queer identity, the establishment vs. the grassroots, Gay, Inc. vs. Act-Up. Some things may never change.

Canada’s Largest Protestant Church Accepts Gay Ordination: 1988. The governing council of the United Church of Canada voted at a meeting in Victoria, British Columbia, to allow gay men and women to be ordained into the clergy. The church, which was formed in 1925 from a merger of Canada’s Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregational churches, decreed: “All persons regardless of their sexual orientation, who profess faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to Him, are welcome to be or become members of the United Church. All members of the church are eligible to be considered for the ministry.” The vote was 205-160.

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).

5.8 Magnitude Earthquake Wipes Out East Coast

TPM surveys the devastation. The US Geological Survey says the earthquake was centered in rural Virginia about midway between Charlottesville and Richmond. But of course residents of Washington D.C. and New York immediately began arguing over which of their two cities was the epicenter. Meanwhile, rumors are swirling that Standard & Poor is threatening to downgrade the earthquake to 5.7.

Anyone got anything else to add?

Bisexuals Exist!!

Shocking, simply shocking! A new study has determined that some men are attracted to both male and female persons. Or, at least, sexually stimulated by watching them have sex.

This new finding contradicts and earlier one which denied evidence of existence of bisexuals, but was flawed in its population selection. (NY Times)

In both studies, men watched videos of male and female same-sex intimacy while genital sensors monitored their erectile responses. While the first study reported that the bisexuals generally resembled homosexuals in their responses, the new one finds that bisexual men responded to both the male and female videos, while gay and straight men in the study did not.

Both studies also found that bisexuals reported subjective arousal to both sexes, notwithstanding their genital responses. “Someone who is bisexual might say, ‘Well, duh!'” said Allen Rosenthal, the lead author of the new Northwestern study and a doctoral student in psychology at the university. “But this will be validating to a lot of bisexual men who had heard about the earlier work and felt that scientists weren’t getting them.”

Ah, but we can’t really be certain, can we? After all, heterosexual attraction in men is determined by response to lesbian porn (hetero porn is inconclusive, as gay men may find the presence of men stimulating).

But what if these are just guys who are attracted only to lesbians and not women in general? Huh? Then what? Maybe bisexuals are really transgender lesbians! What about that?

Okay, enough silliness. But it does strike me as odd that we have to have studies to figure out if the person sitting there in the room with you exists.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, August 23

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TODAY IN HISTORY:
Newsweek’s “The Militant Homosexual”: 1971. It was just a two years after the seminal Stonewall Rebellion, and already that landmark uprising sparked a new burst of gay advocacy which went beyond anything that had gone before. Straight America was scratching its collective head: where did all of these homosexuals come from? They seemed to be everywhere: holding hands in Greenwich Village, running for student president at major universities, and marching in the streets shouting something about “gay pride.” Exactly forty years ago today, Newsweek devoted four pages trying to explain it all to its readers:

To supporters of gay liberation, marching in the streets and holding hands in public are only minor gestures of assertion. They are picketing the Pentagon, testifying at government hearings on discrimination, appearing on TV talk shows, lecturing to Rotary Clubs, organizing their own churches and social organizations and, perhaps most important of all, using their real names. “Two or three years ago, a homosexual who tried to explain what he and the gay movement were all about would have been ridiculed,” says Troy Perry, a homosexual minister who established Los Angeles’s Metropolitan Community Church in 1968 and has been a movement hero ever since.

…What seemed then it relatively minor clash is now enshrined in gay-lib lore as the “Stonewall Rebellion.” Within weeks, the first of scores of militant homosexual groups, the Gay Liberation Front, was formed in New York. The new mood quickly crossed the continent, leading to the creation of similar organizations in Los Angeles and San Francisco. By the first anniversary of the Stonewall incident, the militants were on the march in a dozen cities. By the second anniversary, they were celebrating Gay Pride Week with an elaborate panoply of parades and protests. The movement already has a book-length history in print and some of its more imaginative propagandists have even begun to speak of a “Stonewall Nation.”

Virtually the entire four-page article dealt with the sudden visibility of the gay community — a visibility which had personal, psychological, familial and political aspects. As one measure of the surprise this new openness must have engendered, the word “militant” appeared in the four-page article fifteen times. And what the authors regarded “militant” is revealing: they described “militants” coming out to their friends, families and employers; “militants” wanting acceptance; “militants” refusing to accept the APA’s verdict that they were mentally ill (the APA would set aside that verdict two years later); “militants” demanding an end to the ban on federal employment; “militants” starting gay churches and “militants” getting married in them, and “militants” saying it’s great to be gay. And that last point, according to Newsweek was especially dangerous:

What all this suggests is a central problem that gay liberation usually chooses to ignore: if the movement succeeds in creating an image of “normality” for homosexuals in the society at large, would it encourage more homosexually inclined people — particularly young people — to follow their urges without hesitation? No one really knows for certain. Dr. Paul Gebhard, the distinguished anthropologist who directs the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, believes that gay lib “will not convert heterosexuals into homosexuals but might encourage those who are going in a homosexual direction to feel less guilty about it.” New York sociologist Edward Sagarin takes an even dimmer view. “If the militants didn’t say that it is great to be gay,” Sagarin insists, “more adolescents with homosexual tendencies might seek to change instead of resolving their confusion by accepting the immediate warm security that tells them they are normal.”

Three weeks later, pioneering gay rights advocate Frank Kameny responded to that paragraph with this letter to the editor:

The gay liberation movement has been formulating its positions for some twenty years, has quite “come to grips with all the implications of its own positions” and does not at all “choose to ignore” the “problem” of “more homosexually inclined people-particularly young people -[following] their urges without hesitation.” Not only do we consider this neither a problem nor a danger; we consider it an eminently desirable goal to be worked toward and achieved as soon and as fully as possible. It is the very essence of liberation.

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