Box Turtle Bulletin

UK Denies Visa for Ugandan LGBT Advocate

Britain’s Border Agency (UKBA) has denied a visa for Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG) founder and executive Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, who was scheduled to open a pride celebration in Derry, Northern Ireland later this month. Paul Canning reports that a UKBA spokesperson said that her visa was denied because Immigration officials feared that she might not return home after travelling to Britain. According to that spokesperson:

Each application to enter the UK is considered on its individual merits and in accordance with the immigration rules”.

“The onus is on the applicant to demonstrate that they meet the immigration rules. This may include providing evidence of financial ties to their home country which would indicate that they intend to return home at the end of their proposed visit.”

“Our rules are firm but fair and where insufficient evidence is provided visa applications may be refused, though the individual is able to apply again at any time and any new evidence will be considered.”

UKBA denies that Nabagesera’s LGBT advocacy was a factor in their decision.

Despite UKBA’s decision, Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera has strong ties to the LGBT community in Uganda, and she has travelled abroad numerous times as part of her advocacy, returning every time to her were back home. She spoke last weekend at an international meeting of Amnesty International in Geneva. Earlier this year, she wasawarded the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights by a consortium of ten international organizations. In May, she debated Ugandan MP David Bahati, the sponsor of draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill on Voice of America television. Last week, Nabagesera led a major educational campaign in Uganda to counter the widespread homophobia in that country. In other words, none of this looks like the profile of someone who flees a country at the first opportunity. Nabagesera clearly has ties and commitments in Uganda, and her commitments have been recognized internationally. All of this makes UKBA’s decision very puzzling and troubling.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, August 18

TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):

AIDS Walk This Weekend: Reno, NV.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Allentown, PA; Brooklyn (Bedford Stuyvesant), NY; Copenhagen, Denmark; Derby, UK; Doncaster, UK; Edgewater, MD; Galway, Ireland; Lafayette, IN; London, UK (Black Pride); Madison, WI; Mocton, NB;  Reno, NV and San Jose, CA.

Also This Weekend: Ascension Beach Party, Fire Island, NY; FilmOut San Diego, CA and Munich Streetfest, Germany.

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Sealed Conference: Tucson, AZ. According to organizers, the conference is “for real women with real issues in real life seeking a real God.” Helping them find all that will be “prophet” Cindy “Birds-Are-Falling-From-The-Sky-Because-of-the-Gays” Jacobs and Janet “Christians-Need-To-Take-Over-The-Media” Porter. In this talk, Porter will speak specifically on “Reclaiming the Government.” If you think all of this sounds vaguely seven-mountainish,  you’d be right. Pastor Zane Anderson of Victory Worship Center, where the conference is taking place and who will speak at the conference, is a subscriber to the theonomist theology.

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).

A Bachmann Staffer’s Dominionist Worldview, Gun-Running Charges, and Ties To Ugandan “Kill-The-Gays” Pastor

"The Bible represents the absolute source for the guiding principles and precepts for all governments": Peter E. Waldron

A close associate of Rep. Michele Bachmann who believes that the Congresswoman is fighting for the presidency with “the anointing of God upon her,” has come under scrutiny for his 2006 arrest in Uganda on gun-running charges, and for his close relationship with Ugandan pentecostal pastor Martin Ssempa, a prominent advocate for that nation’s “Kill the Gays” Bill.

Peter E. Waldron, the staffer for Rep. Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign responsible for her faith-based outreach in Iowa and South Carolina, had been arrested in Uganda in 2006 on charges of running illegal guns and ammunition. Garance Franke-Ruta’s profile at The Atlantic resurrected the details. He had been arrested for possession of assault rifles and ammunition just days before Uganda’s first nominally multi-party elections in 20 years. The charges were dropped after Waldron spent more than a month in 2006 in the notorious Luriza Prison outside of Kampala. He was freed, he says, after pressure from the Bush administration. Of course, when it comes to Ugandan police work, the charges should be seen with some measure of skepticism, although newspaper reports (via archive.org) in Kampala at the time are quite detailed. Waldron himself isn’t helpful in clearing up matters. On the one hand, he says that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni operates death squads, and then calls Uganda’s leadership born-again Christians and good friends.

Particularly worrying is the company Waldron keeps. Richard Bartholomew had written about the 2006 arrest, and in the process recalled a 2004 story from The New Republic by Andrew Rice in which Rice describes Waldron as speaking at Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa’s church:

The Sunday I attended Ssempa’s church, after he finished his sermon, the pastor told his audience that he had a special guest to introduce, a visitor from the United States. All eyes fixed on a stocky white man with a thick moustache who wore a gray safari suit. He introduced himself as Dr. Peter Waldron of Wyoming. Waldron told the congregation that he had once been a military man and that he used to travel around Africa a lot in the 1960s. He was vague about the nature of his work. (“I’m not at liberty to say,” he later told me.) But he claimed that, on one occasion, it resulted in some good people getting executed by a firing squad. After that, he contemplated suicide, he told the audience. Then he found Jesus. “When you were born again, you became a new person. You left your tribe,” Waldron said. Now, he said, they were all bound together by their common love of God. The audience reacted enthusiastically, warmly welcoming Waldron’s speech. When Waldron launched into a story about how he’d recently been invited to the real White House in the company of religious rapper MC Hammer, the audience was wowed.

Several days later, I met Waldron at a Kampala hotel. He told me more of his story. At different times in his career, he said, he’d been a syndicated talk-radio host, a lobbyist, and a Republican political consultant. More recently, he had run sports programs for underprivileged youths in Tampa, Florida. Now, he was in Uganda, trying to sell computer software to government ministries while preaching on the weekends. “They embrace Americans here,” he said enthusiastically. Indeed, as we sat together, a steady stream of young admirers who had seen Waldron in church came up to greet him. They made complicated handshakes, the way Ugandans do, and Waldron boasted to me that he had met privately with President Museveni and his born-again wife. It struck me that, for many Americans of faith, Uganda–a country where homosexuality and abortion are outlawed, where politicians freely mix church and state, and where outward displays of religious devotion are the norm–represents a kind of haven. The United States may have a born-again president, but it is far too diverse to ever fully be, as conservatives call it, “a Christian nation.” But Uganda is on its way to becoming one.

Ssempa, of course, was the prominent supporter of Uganda’s draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which calls for the death penalty for LGBT people under certain circumstances. While Ssempa’s theology clearly defends such a practice, it is unclear whether Waldron agrees with Ssempa’s position. But an examination of Waldron’s particular theology isn’t encouraging. Richard Bartholomew also pointed to this 36-page document (via archive.org) which had been stored on Waldron’s web site and was dated 2004, explaining the guiding theology of Waldron’s Cities of Faith Ministries. Waldron’s theology mirrors that of the father of Christian Reconstructionism, R.J. Rushdooney, whom Waldron quoted in one passage. In the introduction, Walrdon wrote:

For generations Christians have wrongly divided all the affairs of their lives into secular matters and spiritual matters. Many of those secular-spiritual divisions and classifications are artificial divisions and heretical in its origins based on humanist philosophy rather than the historic Biblical teachings of the Church.

The modern Evangelical Christian is often a person who has made one’s life a huge set of pigeon holes in which every matter is classified as secular or spiritual. This obvious double-mindedness prevents the blessings of God to overtake one’s testimony – in the spirit, the soul, the body, and/or one’s material possessions.

The whole life of a Christian is spiritual, and everything he does which involves conduct, attitude or one’s role in society or, even, relationships has spiritual significance.

Waldron wrote that “the history of liberty is the history of Christian self-government” — and not just self-government in the sense that all individuals govern the course of their lives through the choices they make. No, Waldron’s concept of self-government is much broader:

A totalitarian form of governance arises when the Word of God is compromised, ignored or denied.  A person will self-destruct from abuse of spirit, soul and body.  A nation will collapse under a “hard” or “soft” form of dictatorship, abuse of public or elected office, and a general denial of human freedom – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – arises.  The source of one’s belief system dictates the conduct whether it be personal or national.   The same goes for the end result.

The Bible represents the absolute source for the guiding principles and precepts for all governments in man (self-government), of families (family government), churches (church government), and for nations (civil government).

Waldron co-wrote a book with George Grant titled, Rebuilding the Walls: A Biblical Strategy for Restoring America’s Greatness. Grant is well-known in Christian Reconstructionist circles. In 1987, Grant wrote The Changing of the Guard: Biblical Principles for Political Action, in which he made his call for a theocratic overthrow explicit. “It is dominion we are after,” Grant wrote. “World conquest. …If Jesus Christ is indeed Lord, as the Bible says, and if our commission is to bring the land into subjection to His Lordship, as the Bible says, then all our activities, all our witnessing, all our preaching, all our craftsmanship, all our stewardship, and all our political action will aim at nothing short of that sacred purpose.”

Waldron is the second close associate to Rep. Bachmann whose theology may at least condone remaining silent against the killing of gay people. Bradlee Dean, of Minnesota-based You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Ministries, commended Muslims who call for the execution of gay people for being more righteous than Christians. “This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws,” Dean explained on a local Christian Radio talk show. “They know homosexuality is an abomination.”

Waldron’s “Cities of Faith” web site appears to be gone, but his facebook page is quite active. On August 7, he wrote of Bachmann’s quest for the presidency:

HOW CAN ANYONE STAND ON THE SIDELINE? I am simply amazed that some folks are waiting for Saul-like characters who look everything like a king while Michele fights with the anointing of God upon her. She is fearless, fierce in battle, and focused on winning the nomination and securing the White House. Thinking about running, waiting to throw their hat in the ring – foolishness. The battle rages now and Michele needs an army.

Four minutes later, he added:

JOIN THE BATTLE FOR AMERICA’S FUTURE: I need 300 gallant Christians to stand with me to resist the works of the devil. We must stand like Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae – sheild to shield, shoulder to shoulder – Has not God got an army in the hour of His need? Arise, again I say, Arise lets stand like Christians once again for His glory and praise!

Following Bachmann’s winning of the Iowa Straw Poll, Waltron wrote:

BACHMANN WINS: All the praise and glory goes to the LORD for Michele’s extraordinary win. She was able to do in 5-weeks what other campaigns could not do in 1-year or 4-years. The Hand of the LORD is upon her. Thank you for your prayers. I leave for SC tomorrow. Blessings to all.

In an additional comment on that same thread, Waldron added some more detail. He clearly doesn’t like Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s entry into the race:

I will be in Columbia and travel the entire state extensively. From afar and during prayer I see a Saul and David scenario between Perry and Bachmann. One looks everything like a king while the other is anointed. One has a testimony that is almost 40 years old, walks the talk, and sees through a Biblical World View lens. This will be a true test of “salt” in the nation. I pray that a “Salt Brigade” will arise to affirim God’s blessing on America and to renew the Covenant made by our ancestors with Him in the 17th and 18th centuries.

[via Warren Throckmorton, and then it snowballed from there]

Anti-Gay Christian Athlete Teacher Of The Year

Jerry Buell, a longtime Lake County, Florida American History and Government teacher, has been suspended from classroom teaching after posting on his Facebook account:

I’m watching the news, eating dinner, when the story about New York okaying same sex unions came on and I almost threw up.

Buell, who was voted Jerry Buell, voted Teacher of the Year last year at Mount Dora High School and serves as advisor to that school’s Fellowhip of Christian Athletes (PDF), also called same-sex marriages a “cesspool” and a sin. But don’t hold that against him because, as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, he loves gay people.

It wasn’t out of hatred,” he said in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel. “It was about the way I interpret things.”

…I’ve had kids that I’ve known that have been homosexuals,” he said. “They know that I don’t hate them. I love them.”

Okay then. Say you’re a gay kid, your “sin” makes your teacher puke and he’s tight with the jocks and some sort of God. How confident would you be walking into his classroom?

Update: Just to get a flavor of Buell’s influence among the high school jocks, this cached web page says he had to move his morning meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes from his classroom because it couldn’t accommodate everyone. “We have had to move to the cafeteria because our numbers are growing like crazy!” Feel any better?

Christine O’Donnell Walks Off The Set Of An Interview

They really don’t want to talk about gay people, do they?

Dan Savage: It Gets Worse For Kids Before It Gets Better

Dan Savage spoke with Salon’s Kerry Lauerman:

One of the things I like about your podcast so much is you do spend a lot of time talking to people outside urban elite areas — you spent a lot of time last year talking about Constance McMillen, for example – where life for gays hasn’t evolved that quickly.

One of the things that was a wake-up call for me last year before the “It Gets Better” campaign — why we launched it, my husband and I — was when I was sort of unaware how bad it was getting out there. You know, in the Greensburg, Indianas, and the Topachakees, Californias, where Constance McMillen was. What I didn’t realize before those suicides opened my eyes, was that as it was getting better in New York or San Francisco or Seattle, it was getting worse out in the sticks, out in mega-church land. Because those of us who are out and urban and fully integrated into our work lives and families, our existence has made it impossible for queer 14-year-olds to fly under the radar in a Greensburg.

When I was a kid, and I was odd, the default assumption was that I was odd, not that I was gay. Now when a kid is odd in a Greensburg, gay or straight, the default assumption is gay. Because my job requires me to be in constant communication with people all over the country who are writing in to “Savage Love,” calling the podcast, I think I’m a little more conscious of what’s going on out there in the boonies — but even I didn’t see that. And that’s a bitter pill for those of us my age to swallow. Us out there leading our lives and being successful have actually kind of made it worse for 14-year-old gay kids in Greensburg, Ind.

Well, made it worse, but that’s part of progress, right?

Absolutely. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t have lived this way, or we shouldn’t have come out. And the people who are most responsible for making it worse are of course anti-gay politicians and anti-gay preachers, and parents, teachers and peers who are persecuting these kids. But we’ve created a kind of hyper-awareness about sexuality and sexual orientation that has let to hyper-scrutiny about those things, in places where people weren’t on the lookout for it before. Everybody’s on the lookout for it now.

I think this exchange highights two important issues. First is that while it’s impossible to overstate the importance of gay visibility, there is an inevitable backlash element that goes with it, and that backlash is probably disproportionately borne by gay youth. Adults suffer too, but youth typically have far fewer means with which to cope and may not have a supportive network of family and friends to rely on. I think Savage’s observation that the old default of “odd” is now a default of “gay” whether the kid is actually gay or not is very perceptive.

But the other thing here, just below the surface, is that there is something of a divide within the gay community between those living in gay meccas and the rest of us living elsewere.  There is a huge part of me that would love to live in San Francisco, L.A., D.C. or New York. I love visiting those cities, but I also know how easy it is to get caught up in a bubble and loose footing with what’s really going on elsewhere in the country. If people in gay meccas talk about gay communities outside of their bubble — and that is a big if — the talk too often goes in one of two directions: either that of course gays everywhere enjoy the freedoms found in the meccas, or that of course gays everywhere else are being burned out of their homes or cowering in their basements. That’s why I believe that living in a retrograde state like Arizona is actually an advantage to me. I do think that if I were to move to a major gay enclave, that I would develop a sort of laryngitis and lose an important part of my voice that comes from living in an area where we can’t take a lot of things for granted — but also where we aren’t exactly powerless rubes living in constant fear in our semi-closeted existences.

Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign has done more to unite the gay community across all areas of the country than any other project I can think of. Yes, it sucks to be a gay kid in Greensburg, but the downside of increased visibility means that it also sucks to be a gay kid at a prestigious urban university.  There are gay bashings in Greenwich Village, but gay visibility will take yet another step into the spotlight with pride celebrations in Bedford Suyvesant and in Santorum’s back yard in Allentown, PA, this weekend. And in Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin School District, where gay suicides have been met with a collective shrug, three hundred brave souls showed up for the first gay pride event there last weekend. It is getting better, but with each advance there is a backlash and our youth are bearing the brunt of it. And as Savage’s interview demonstrates, part of making it better is for opinion-makers to spend much, much more time outside of the bubble.

Nine

That’s how many couples that have entered into civil unions since Rhode Island began offering them in July. There was a time when news of a new state offering civil unions was loudly cheered. But when marriage equality — which was seen as very doable earlier this year — was ditched in favor of a very pale hint of an imitation, it landed with a thud. And as a result, Rhode Islanders have stayed away in droves:

“If it had been marriage people would have been lining up,” said Dawn Euer, a spokeswoman for Marriage Equality Rhode Island. “People are holding out for marriage. They want true equality, not a made-up, bureaucratic, second-class status.”

…Give it time,” said Rep. Peter Petrarca, D-Lincoln. “It’s summer. I’m sure we’ll see an uptick once people start figuring it out and deciding what they want.”

Uh-huh. Funny, but it was also summer in New York and nobody had to ask anyone there to just “give it time.”

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, August 17

TODAY’S AGENDA:

AIDS Walk This Weekend: Reno, NV.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Allentown, PA; Brooklyn (Bedford Stuyvesant), NY; Copenhagen, Denmark; Derby, UK; Doncaster, UK; Edgewater, MD; Galway, Ireland; Lafayette, IN; London, UK (Black Pride); Madison, WI; Mocton, NB;  Reno, NV and San Jose, CA.

Also This Weekend: Ascension Beach Party, Fire Island, NY; FilmOut San Diego, CA and Munich Streetfest, Germany.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Kurt Hiller: 1885. The German essayist and political journalist was an early influential writer of the German gay rights movement in the first few decades of the twentieth century. In 1922 he published § 175: Die Schmach des Jahrhunderts! (“Paragraph 175: The disgrace of the century!”), the title of which referred to the German penal code which criminalized homosexual activity between men. It was widely distributed, including to members of the Reichstag, during the debates on the sexual penal code in the 1920s. In 1929, Hiller took over as chairman of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, the world’s first organization to advocate for gay rights, after the Committee’s founder, Magnus Hirchfeld, stepped down to focus his attention on the Institute for Sexual Research.

After the Nazis came to power, they banned both the Institute and Committee. Hiller, who was a gay pacifist socialist Jew, had more than enough reasons to land on the Gestapo’s radar. He was arrested and spent time in various concentration camps before being released on the brink of death in April of 1934. He fled to Prague later that year to avoid another arrest. He then fled Czechoslovakia for London in 1938 just ahead of the German armies. While in London, he continued to write for the German exile press. In 1955, he returned to Hamburg, and tried to resurrect the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in 1962. That idea didn’t take root, but Hiller nevertheless continued to write on behalf of the gay rights movement. He published numerous articles and essays in the influential Swiss gay magazine Der Kreis. In 1965, Der Kreis returned the favor with a five-page commemoration for Hiller’s 80th birthday. Hiller died in 1972.

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).

Ugandan Anti-Gay Bill Pushed Back Until November?

All reports like this need to be taken with a huge boulder of salt, but Warren Throckmorton points to a Ugandan blogger who wrote:

However perhaps even matching its own record on the bizarre and grotesque was the so-called “Kill the Gays” Bill that was introduced by arguably one of the more capable Members of Parliament today, the Ndorwa West MP David Bahati. Last time I had a chat with the MP (who I had incidentally advised against the bill precisely because of the storm it may generate and because I considered it a waste of valuable time), he told me the bill would return to the house in November. ” I am winning,” he said.

These days I am sort of resigned to how disagreeable things can become what with an economic storm, a crisis of the Ugandan shilling and real hurt amongst Ugandan families that I consider this bill largely academic. But just like the bail law some people have suggested to me that the bill is intended for political purposes as well. My sources in parliament also add that because of the world wide storm it generated it will come to the House for debate in stealth not reflected in ” the order paper” of the day.

As I said, all such reports should be taken with skepticism, but there are several elements to this one which has important elements of credibility. The “stealth” plan, for example, builds on what appears to be a growing recognition among Ugandan lawmakers that if they want to pass this draconian bill, the best way to do it is on the down low. Such measures that we’ve already heard discussed include slipping various sections of the bill into other otherwise innocuous legislation, and concealing its the death penalty provision by quietly linking it to another law providing for capital punishment. And so why not extend the subterfuge to the methods for passing the bill and not just limit them to the contents of the bill? Throckmorton writes:

I have also heard today from sources I trust that ministers are quietly appealing to MPs to pass the bill via letters and emails. The relevance of this is that the movement to get the bill considered is not as public as during the previous parliament.

The current Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, was an early supporter for the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, and before that for increased penalties for homosexuality. She was Deputy Speaker in 2009, and presided over Parliament in April when MP David Bahati sought approval to submit an Anti-Homosexuality Bill as a private member’s bill. As Throckmorton notes, as speaker she has the authority to revive the bill from the prior Parliament, as was done with the controversial HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Bill just last month.

Ask Our Opponents This Question

I came across this comment on one of the NOM blogs:

Letting lesbians adopt and have children is horrible…Having homosexual male couples is even worse. They are always off and having sex with multiple partners rather than being the parent the child needs.

I’d like to ask this of all opponents of marriage equality who are such experts on what same-sex relationships are like:

How many times have you sat down to dinner with a same-sex couple in their own home?

Obviously, this won’t have much impact on the hopeless tool who wrote the comment above. But it’ll highlight his hopeless toolery to anyone else listening, especially if he gets all puffed up and sputtery.

This approach might be even more useful in less hostile environments, the kind where someone protests, “But I have lots of gay friends!”

See, in my field (instructional design), we focus on measurable (and hopefully quantifiable) results. “Friend” is too vague a term for that. Plus, you won’t get far demanding the names of these “friends” and evaluating the claim for yourself.

But the number of dinners eaten in the home of a same-sex couple? That’s data.

Addendum: And if they turn the question around and ask about our own dinner history with opposite-sexers, those  of us who spent a good chunk of our childhood in homes with two opposite-sex parents can truthfully answer: “Thousands of times.”

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, August 16

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Pierre Seel: 1923.Pierre’s troubles began when his watch was stolen while he was in a public square in his Alsace home in 1939. The watch, a gift from his godmother, had sentimental value, and so he reported the theft to police. The square where the theft occurred was a well-known cruising ground for gay men in the area, but since homosexuality was not illegal in France, there shouldn’t have been much of a problem. But local police added his name to a list of gay men they were maintaining anyway, and when the Germans invaded in 1940, that list fell into Gestapo hands. Seel was picked up in 1941, was beaten, had his fingernails pulled out, and raped with broken rulers. Two weeks later, he was sent to the Schirmeck-Vorbrück camp near Strasbourg, where the beatings, tortures and rapes continued. He wore a blue bar on his uniform instead of the pink triangle — The blue bar was reserved for Catholics and “a-socials” — but the nature of his “crime” was well known. “There was no solidarity for the homosexual prisoners; they belonged to the lowest caste,” he later recalled. “Other prisoners, even when between themselves, used to target them.” His camp was made to stand and watch as his eighteen-year-old boyfriend was stripped naked in the center of the yard and torn apart and devoured by german shepherds. That scene would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life.

After six months of starvation, torture and forced labor, Seen was set free without an explanation. What’s more, he was made a German citizen when Alsace was informally annexed by Germany, and he was drafted into the army. After the war, during which Seel was sent to fight on the Eastern Front, he made his way back to France. He took his family’s advice and went deeply underground about his sexuality, and married in 1950. The marriage was a difficult one, and it finally fell apart in 1978. In 1979, Seel happened to attend a debate in a bookstore for the launch of the French edition of Heinz Heger’s book, The Men with the Pink Triangle. Two years later, Seel publicly told his story when the Bishop of Strasbourg denounced the performance of the French translation of the play Bent, which was based on Heger’s book. From then on, Seel became an advocate for the recognition of gay victims of the Nazis, particularly those from the Alsace and Moselle regions of France. In 1994, Seel published his own memoir, I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual. In 2000, he appeared in the American-made documentary, Paragraph 175. When the documentary premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, Seel traveled to Germany for the first time since the war and received a five-minute standing ovation.

France still has an uneasy don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy where German collaboration is concerned, and Seel’s opening of old wounds didn’t go down easy. In the 1980s and 1990s, he received numerous death threats, and was attacked and beaten by youths shouting homophobic epithets following an appearance on French television. The mayor of Strasbourg refused to shake his hand during a commemoration ceremony. But the distance of time has allowed some recognition of historical realities to take root. Seel received official recognition as a victim of the Holocaust in 2003, and in 2008, three years after his death in Toulouse, his adopted city, renamed a street in his honor. The plaque reads, “Rue Pierre Seel – Déporté Français pour homosexualité – 1923-2005”.

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).

Michele Bachmann Doesn’t Judge Gays

Fresh off of her victory in Iowa’s Straw Poll Saturday, Rep. Muchele Bachmann made the rounds of the Sunday morning talk shows to talk about her run for the GOP’s presidential nomination. Her positions on LGBT issues came up, when she appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press:

David Gregory: I also want to ask you about your interpretation of the Bible, and your feelings about gays and lesbians. You have said in recent years that opposition to same-sex marriage is a defining political debate in this country, you’re opposed to it, you’d like to see a constitutional ban against it in this country. And during a speech you gave in 2004 at an education conference you spoke openly and in detail about gays and lesbians. And I want to play a portion of that speech and have you react to it.

Michele Bachmann: It’s a very sad life. It’s part of Satan, I think, to say that this is “gay.” … It’s anything but gay. I leads to the personal enslavement of individuals. Because if you’re involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it’s bondage. It is personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement. And that’s why this is so dangerous. We need to have profound compassion for people who are dealing with the very real issue of sexual dysfunction in their life and sexual identity disorders.

Gregory: That is the view that President Bachmann would have of gay Americans?

Bachmann: Well I am running for the Presidency of the United States. I’m not running to be anyone’s judge….

Gregory: But you have judged them.

Bachmann: I don’t judge them. I don’t judge them.  I am running for presidency of the United States.

Gregory. Is that the view of gay Americans that President Bachmann would have?

Bachmann: My view on marriage is that I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that’s what I stand for. But I ascribe honor and dignity to every person no matter what their background. They have honor and they have dignity.

Gregory: Do you think gay Americans hearing quotes like that from you would think that that’s honor and dignity coming from you about their circumstance?

Bachmann: I am not anyone’s judge and I am not standing as anyone’s judge.

Gregory: Congresswoman, do you think anybody hears that thinks you haven’t made a judgment about gays and lesbians?

Bachmann: That’s all I can tell you is that I’m not judging.

Gregory: So your words should stand for themselves.

Bachmann: I’m running for the presidency of the United States. That’s what’s important.

Gregory: Would you appoint an openly gay person to your administration? To your cabinet or name them as a judge?

Bachmann: My criteria would be the same, which would be where you stand on the Constitution, are you competent, and do you share my views. That’s my criteria.

Gregory: But those views are pretty clear. As far as a judge you talked about that. An openly gay person is acceptable as matter of your administration? As a member of your administration?

Bachmann: I have my criteria as what my appointments would be based on, it’s whether you uphold the Constitution, if you’re competent and if you share my views.

Gregory: So it would not be a factor?

Bachmann: I am not out asking any other questions.

Gregory: One last one on this. Can a gay couple who adopt children in your mind be considered a family?

Bachmann: When it comes to marriage and family, my opinion is that marriage is between a man and a woman. And I think that’s been my view and…

Gregory: So a gay couple with kids would not be considered a family to you?

Bachmann: You know, all of these kinds of questions really aren’t about what people are concerned about right now.

Gregory: Congresswoman, you said that any candidate for President should be asked about his or her views and their record. This is a record of your statements. These are the defining political issues for you as your political career advanced. You’re the one who said same-sex marriage was a defining political issue of our time. Those were your words back in 2004, so I’m just asking about your views on something that has animated your political life.

Bachmann: I think my views are clear.

Her views are perfectly clear. She believes gays are of Satan and that gay families are not to be discussed. And she believes that she isn’t judging anyone when she says that. And you know what? She really does believe she’s not judging anyone. Bachmann believes that God has rendered that judgment, not her. In her mind, she is simply informing everyone else what she believes to be unshakable proof. Saying that gays are “of Satan,” to her, is no more opinion than observing that the sky is blue on a clear day. o her, these are facts and not judgments. And that’s why she keeps repeating that she is running for the presidency, not for arbiter of the sky’s color.

And with these “facts,” it should come as no surprise that she would tell CNN that she would reimpose “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which a President Bachmann could very easily do under an Executive Order without Congressional approval.

A Same-Sex Marriage In 1877

[Homer Thiel is a Tucson-based historical archeologist, genealogist, and a good friend of mine. An article he wrote, “An 1887 Same-Sex Marriage In Nevada,” appears in this month’s issue of American Ancesters, published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Copies of the magazine can be purchased for $4.95 plus shipping by calling 888-296-3447. And you can check out the day-to-day happenings in Homer’s World at his blog.]

Opponents of same sex marriage would like everyone to think that the desire for gays and lesbians to marry their partners is a very recent phenomenon. A while ago, when I was reading through 19th century Arizona newspapers, I came across a cryptic mention of a same sex marriage that took place in 1877 in Nevada. Further research revealed the fascinating life story of Sarah Maud Pollard, who, as Samuel M. Pollard, married in Tuscarora, Elko County, Nevada Territory to Marancy Hughes on September 29, 1877. An article I prepared on Pollard has just appeared in American Ancestors magazine, published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society. A condensed version of Pollard’s life story is presented here.

Sarah Pollard was born in 1846 in New York, the daughter of a middle class merchant family. After working in a shoe factory in Massachusetts and sewing shirts in New York, she headed west to Colorado in the 1870s. She caused a stir because of her masculine appearance. Around 1876 she moved to Nevada and took up wearing male clothing in order to find work and she started calling herself  “Sam.” She met young Marancy Hughes, born in 1861 in Missouri, and actively courted her. Hughes’ family hated Pollard and the couple eloped on September 28, 1877.

New Orleans Times-Picayune article about the Pollard marriage, June 23, 1878. (Click to enlarge.)

They were happily married for six months, and then Marancy broke the secret. The small silver-mining town of Tuscarora, Nevada was transfixed by the story. The matter ended up in court and after Marancy testified, a dramatic re-union took place. Stories about the troubled marriage were carried in newspapers across the country (even appearing in a New Zealand paper). The couple broke up two more times, before Marancy moved on to a marriage with a man in 1880.

Sarah moved to Minnesota to start a new life by 1883, working by herself on a farm. The story of her successful farming career again made national newspapers, which noted she wore a bloomers-type outfit while plowing. By the 1890s she had met a woman named Helen Stoddard, a schoolteacher who was born in 1864 in Vermont. In later census records Helen was listed as her partner or companion. Sarah died in 1929, and Helen paid for her arrangements at a local funeral home, the owners puzzling over the relationship of the two women.

The stories of gay and lesbian Americans prior to recent times have largely been lost or hidden. Within my own family, a lesbian great aunt has been “straightened up.” Sarah Pollard is an unusual case in that is has been easy to locate information on her unconventional life in late 19th and early 20th century America. Like thousands of modern-day Americans, she wanted to marry her same sex partner. Her first relationship failed, large because she took on a masculine role, a major taboo of the time. Later she returned to feminine attire, while taking up a typically masculine career, and settled into a second, long lasting partnership with Helen Stoddard.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, August 15

TODAY’S AGENDA:
It’s another slow day today. But instead of saying nothing, we have for your edification an interesting article about a same-sex marriage that took place in Tuscarora, Nevada — in 1877.

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).

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, August 14

HIV infections among MSM by race, 2006-2009 (Click to enlarge)

TODAY’S AGENDA:
National HIV Prevention Congress: Atlanta, GA. The theme this year is “The urgency of now,” with an urgency made more immediate with the CDC’s recent report showing that HIV infection rates have remained more or less flat since 2006, there has been an alarming surge in new infections among African-American men. In 2009, African-Americans accounted for 44% of all new HIV infections in 2009, while making up only 14% of the U.S. population. That infection rate is a major driving force behind infections among men who have sex with men, which made up 61% of all infections overall. The conference, which begins today, will focus on three primary goals: 1) reducing the number of people who become infected with HIV; 2) increasing access to care and improving health outcomes for people living with HIV; and 3) reducing HIV-related health disparities. The conference, which will bring together more than 3,000 people working to stop the spread of HIV in the U.S., will continue through Wednesday.

Pride Celebrations Today: Brighton, UK; Charleston, SC; Fargo, ND; Indianapolis, IN (Black Pride); Montréal, QC; New York, NY (Black Pride); Prague, Czech Rep.; Sligo, Ireland and Wakefield, UK.

Also Today: Northalstead Market Days, Chicago, IL and Provincetown Carnival, MA.

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).