Box Turtle Bulletin

Trailer Trash

From Towleroad comes this photo shot by a Reddit user at the DMV in Salem, Oregon.

“So That Means You Love Each Other”

A smart little boy is surprised at first, but gets it.

Michele Bachmann Says Ex-Gay Therapy Is “Jobs Creation”

Last Friday, we learned that Truth Wins Out’s John Becker had gone undercover as an patient in Marcus Bachmann’s clinic in Minnesota, where he was given at least five sessions of ex-gay therapy. Shortly after, The Nation revealed that a former patient, Andrew Ramirez, had come forward to reveal that he had undergone ex-gay therapy at Bachmann’s clinic in 2004. That would be two years before Bachmann denied offering ex-gay therapy. Marcus’s wife, GOP presidential candidate and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachman spoke to a locak Iowa reporter and described her husband’s ex-gay therapy as “a business that deals with job creation,” adding, “I’m very proud of the business that we created.”

Last June, NBC reported that Bachmann had taken $137,000 in taxpayer-provided Medicaid funds, despite the Bachmann’s opposition to governmental programs. ABC News and NBC News has covered TWO’s undercover investigation of Bachmann’s clinic.  Fox has also covered the story in their own inimitable way:

Just so we’re clear on who the victims are.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, July 12

Van Cliburn's historic performance at the first Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, 19589

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Van Cliburn: 1934. In 1958, the Soviet Union, flush with the technological success of Sputnik, inaugurated the first International Tchaikovsky Competition to showcase the Soviet’s cultural superiority. But twenty-four year old Van Cliburn’s astounding performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 resulted in a standing ovation lasting eight minutes. With an American clearly the crowd favorite to take what was supposed to have been a Soviet showcase, the judges reportedly sought Khrushchev permission. “”Is he the best? Then give him the prize!” so the story goes. Cliburn returned to the U.S. to a hero’s welcome, becoming the first and only classical musician to be treated to a New York ticker-tape parade. His 1958 Grammy-winning recording of Tchaikovsky’s first Piano Concerto became the first classical album to go platinum and was the best-selling classical album for more than a decade. It would eventually go on to go triple platinum and is still available for download in the internet age.

Van Cliburn's return to Moscow, 2011

In 1962, he became the artistic adviser for his own namesake competition, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, held every four years in Ft. Worth, Texas. His own competition now rivals the Tchaikovsky in international stature. He continued performing and recording through the 1960s and 1970s, but after the deaths of his father and manager, he took a hiatus from public life. He came out of retirement in 1987 to perform at the White House for President Ronald Reagan and Soviet president Mikhael Gorbachev. Last June, Van Cliburn returned to the XCI Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, where he served as an honorary juror and was treated like a rock star.

Cheyenne Jackson: 1975. He was named for show business, having been named by his father after a 1950s Western television series. He is a talented actor and singer, working on stage, film and television. His biggest role to date was as gay 9/11 hero Mark Bingham in the 2006 Oscar nominated United 93. He’s appeared in other films since then, along with a shift toward television with recurring roles on NBC’s 30 Rock and Fox’s Glee. In 2009, he released a CD with Michael Feinstein, The Power Of Two. He is an avid LGBT rights supporter and an ambassador for amfAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research).

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).

Nobody Pays Attention To Preambles Anyway

When the Iowa-based Family Leader began asking GOP presidential candidates to sign its anti-gay “Marriage Vow,” it originally contained this statement in the pledge’s preamble:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.

Never mind the abject ignorance of that statement — slave marriages weren’t legally recognized in the south and families were routinely split up and sold, making the likelihood of actually being raised by a mother and a father rather shaky — that part of the preamble was criticized by the left and right alike for its suggestion that African-American children were better off under slavery. Late Saturday night, Family Leader bowed to criticism and quietly removed that statement from its preamble. But by then, Rep. Michele Bachmann had already raced to put her signature on the document, only to be followed a very short time later in a photo finish by Sen. Rick Santorum.

Bachmann’s campaign has been fending off criticisms for signing the racially-offensive document ever since.

A Bachmann spokeswoman said earlier Saturday that reports the congresswoman had signed a vow that contained the slavery language was wrong, noting it was not in the “vow” portion.

“She signed the ‘candidate vow,’ ” campaign spokeswoman Alice Stewart said, and distanced Bachmann from the preamble language, saying, “In no uncertain terms, Congresswoman Bachmann believes that slavery was horrible and economic enslavement is also horrible.”

Totally understandable when you think about it. I bet almost none of our founding fathers like John Quincy Adams paid much attention to the Preamble to the Constitution before they signed it either.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, July 11

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Newt Gingrich Tours With Family Leader: Pella and Iowa City, Iowa. Former House speaker and GOP presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich will deliver a series of lectures today in events organized by the anti-gay group Family Leader. The tour begins at noon with an invitation-only Leadership Roundtable at Pella Christian High School, followed by a lecture and press event beginning at 1:00. The party then moves to the University of Iowa in Iowa City for another invitation-only Leadership Roundtable followed by a lecture at 5:00 p.m.

Family Leader has led efforts to impeach the state’s Supreme Court and overturn its decision declaring a ban on marriage equality unconstitutional. Bob Vander Plaats, who heads Family Leader, has positioned himself as a gatekeeper between presidential candidates and Iowa “value voters.” Previous GOP candidates who have already participated in lecture tours include former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Reps. Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann, former Sen. Rick Santorum, and Godfather Pizza magnate Herman Cain.

Last week, Vander Plaats began asking candidates to sign an anti-gay pledge calling for the enactment of a federal marriage amendment. It also contains a controversial point claiming that African-American families were better off under slavery than they are under America’s first African-American President. That statement was quietly redacted late Saturday night, but not before Rep. Michele Bachmann and Sen. Rick Santorum had already signed it. The pledge’s requirement that candidates uphold marriage “through my personal fidelity to my spouse” poses a thorn for the thrice-married Gingrich, who was cheating on wife number two while demanding President Bill Clinton’s impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Dorothy Wilde: 1895. She was born in London three months after her uncle Oscar Wilde’s arrest for homosexuality, and she inherited her uncle’s talents for witty conversation and charm, talents which held her in good stead in the salons of Paris between the wars. She first traveled to France in 1914 to serve as an ambulance driver during World War I, and it was during the war that she had an affair with another ambulance driver, Standard Oil heiress Marion “Joe” Carstairs, who after the war become a renowned speedboat racer (“the fastest woman on water”). Her longest relationship though began in 1927 and lasted until her death, with the American writer Natalie Clifford Barney. Dolly was a gifted storyteller and writer, but she never pursued a career in writing. Her drinking and addiction to heroin may have gotten in the way. In 1939, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, but refused surgery. The next year when Germany invaded France, Dolly fled to London, where she died in 1941 of “causes unascertainable,” a probably allusion to a drug overdose or to alternative treatments she sought for her cancer.

Tab Hunter: 1931. Born Arthur Gelien in New York, he was given his stage name by his first agent. His good looks quickly made him a teen idol in the 1950s as he appeared in more than forty films throughout his career. That career was threatened however when, in 1955, Confidential magazine reported Hunter’s 1950 arrest in an innuendo-laden article. But Hunter’s studio-arranged “romances” with Natalie Woods and Debbie Reynolds. In his 2005 memoir, Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star, Hunter talks about his relationships with Anthony Perkins, Rudolph Nureyev and champion figure skater Ronnie Robertson, along with many anecdotes about the stars that he met: Roddy McDowell, Tallulah Bankhead, Robert Mitchum, Fred Astaire, Linda Darnell. But by 1959, his career was on the downhill slope towards spaghetti westerns and dinner theater. But his career was revived when he co-starred with Divine in John Water’s Polyester and my favorite, Lust In the Dust, making him a new kind of icon. “Making out with Divine, that’s beyond the bravery of coming out,” he said. “But he had a sense of humor about the glamour he was caught in. He’s a great sport, and a great star.” He described his work with John Waters and Divine as “a high point in my professional life.” He now lives near Santa Barbera with his longtime partner of more than thirty years.

Yevgeny Kharitonov: 1941. Born in Novosibirsk, he embarked on a very brief career as an actor, but went from there to playwriting. Although none of his works were published in his lifetime by the Soviet press, he is now recognized as a founder of modern Russian gay literature. His sexuality, which was criminalized at the time, mirrored the Soviet experience in which the mere existence of a lot of people was grounds for state repression. . His dissident writing and his sexuality made him a double target, and he was placed under close surveillance by the KBG. When he was called to the KGB for his first “interview,” he fainted. When he died of a heart attack in 1981, many believed that his death was hastened over the pressure of official scrutiny. When he died, he was carrying a manuscript for “Under House Arrest,” which scattered and blew down the street when he collapsed. Other versions of the manuscript survived and was published several years after his death.

Kharitonov claimed his sexuality as a gift that gave him special insight into the human condition. In his brief gay manifesto, The Leaflet, Kharitonov compares the repression that gay people experienced in Russian society to the anti-Semetism experienced by Russia’s Jews. He also saw the artistry of Russia’s Jews and gays as being the product of that repression. “The best flower of our shallow people is called like no other to dance the dance of impossible love and to sing of it sweetly.”

Vito Russo: 1946. He was an LGBT activist and film historian, best known as the author of the 1981 book The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. The book was the result of a live lecture with film clips that he had presented at colleges, universities and small art-house cinemas throughout the 1970s. His concern over how LGBT people were presented in the popular media led to his becoming a co-founder for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). He died in 1990 but his work continued to gain a wider audience when HBO created a documentary film version of The Celluloid Closet narrated by Lilly Tomlin. Earlier this year, a family-authorized biography by Michael Shiavi, Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

Esera Tuaolo: 1968. The Samoan from Hawaii was an NFL linebacker defensive lineman for nine years, beginning with the Green Bay Packers and the Minnesota Vikings. After a stint with the Jacksonville Jaguars in 1997, he went to Atlanta, where he reached the Super Bowl in 1999. He ended his career the following season with the Carolina Panthers. In 2002, he announced that he is gay on HBO’s Real Sports, making him the third NFL player to come out (after David Kopay and Roy Simmons). In 2006, he released his autobiography, Alone in the Trenches: My Life As a Gay Man in the NFL, and he has actively campaigned on ending homophobia in sports. In 2010, he was arrested on a domestic violence charge with his boyfriend, but those charges were dropped with his boyfriend saying it was all a misunderstanding.

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 Used To Be Ex-Gay, Now He’s Ex-Mormon

That’s the choice a lot of people of faith feel that they are forced to make when they finally confront the fact that they are never going to change from gay to straight. For thirty-eight years, Steve was Mormon and a member of Evergreen, the Mormon ex-gay organization. He also learned that there was a third choice other than being ex-gay or ex-Mormon: out of the fifteen members of his ex-gay group in Colorado, one third committed suicide. Steve says that the organization’s criteria for success was that he was still coming to meetings, still tithing to the church, and still taking on the trappings of being a stereotypical straight man. He shed the first two criteria, but in a few ways he retained at least some of the aspects of the third: he is a gay man who has learned how to change the oil in his car.

Gov. Johnson slams anti-gay pledge

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson has a bit of an unusual position in the candidacy for Republican presidential nominee. Although as a two term governor he is probably the most qualified candidate, he is not as well known as some of his more colorful opponents.

At this point, I do not have high hopes for Johnson’s chances. Were the Tea Party people to actually base their support on fiscal matters, as they tell the media (and themselves), Johnson, known as Governor Veto for his fiscal efforts, would be a shoo-in. But as we’ve come to see, few Republicans and fewer Tea Partiers are actually willing to put their social agenda secondary and Johnson’s relatively supportive position on gay issues combined with his opposition to the costly and counterproductive War on Drugs makes him unacceptable to those who drive the primary season (oh how I hope I’m wrong).

Nevertheless, it is of immense value to have Gov. Johnson respond to the blatantly and unapologetically homophobic “marriage pledge” proposed by anti-gay activist group Family Leader. (Johnson’s campaign site)

“This ‘pledge’ is nothing short of a promise to discriminate against everyone who makes a personal choice that doesn’t fit into a particular definition of ‘virtue’.

While the Family Leader pledge covers just about every other so-called virtue they can think of, the one that is conspicuously missing is tolerance. In one concise document, they manage to condemn gays, single parents, single individuals, divorcees, Muslims, gays in the military, unmarried couples, women who choose to have abortions, and everyone else who doesn’t fit in a Norman Rockwell painting.

The Republican Party cannot afford to have a Presidential candidate who condones intolerance, bigotry and the denial of liberty to the citizens of this country. If we nominate such a candidate, we will never capture the White House in 2012. If candidates who sign this pledge somehow think they are scoring some points with some core constituency of the Republican Party, they are doing so at the peril of writing off the vast majority of Americans who want no part of this ‘pledge’ and its offensive language.

I’m impressed. This goes far beyond “i don’t sign pledges” or even “this might be offensive to some”. He even uses the b-word.

(hat tip to Kristie)

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, July 10

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Gay Presbyterians Can Now Be Ordained: Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). New rules go into effect today allowing openly gay men and women in same-sex relationships to be ordained as clergy. In May, the proposed rule changes crossed the crucial threshold for approval when a presbytery in Minnesota became the 87th out of 113 regional presbyteries to approve the change. The new rules, which also apply to elders and deacons, do not require churches to ordain gay candidates, but they remove barriers to their ordination that had added to the church’s constitution in 1997. There are no known ordinations planned for today however. Ordinations typically take place when seminarians are hired by a congregation. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) becomes the fourth mainline Protestant church to allow gay ordination, following the Episcopal and Evangelical Lutheran churches and the United Church of Christ.

Pride Celebrations Today: Cincinnati, OH; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Munich, Germany; Prince George, BC; San Luis Obispo, CA; Sitges, Catalonia (Spain); and Victoria, BC.

And Also: Bear Week, Provincetown, MA.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
A Discovery of a Very Extraordinary Nature: 1766. The following story was reported in the July 10, 1766 issue of London’s Gentleman’s Magazine:

A discovery of a very extraordinary nature was made at Poplar, where two women had lived together for six and thirty years, as man and wife, and kept a public house, without ever being suspected; but the wife happening to fall sick, and die, a few years before she expired, revealed the secret to her relations, made her will, and left legacies to the amount of half what she thought they were worth. On application to the pretended, she at first endeavoured to support her assumed character, but being closely pressed, she at length owed the fact, accommodated all matters amicably, put off the male, and put on the female character, in which she appeared to be a sensible well-bred woman, though in her male character she had always affected the plain plodding alehouse-keeper. It is said they had acquired in business money to the amount of £3000. Both had been crossed in love when young, and had chosen this method to avoid further importunities.

[From Ian McCormick’s Secret Sexualities: A Sourcebook of 17th and 18th Century Writings (p 234-235)]

Texas Editorial: “We’ll Take Gays Over the KKK”: 1985. It all began in 1984, when the Dallas/Ft. Worth suburb of Arlington was having a problem at Randol Mill Park. It seems that the popular park had become a well-known venue for men (often heterosexually married men) to solicit sex with other men among the bushes. After a year’s worth of stepped up patrolling and enforcement by Arlington police, the Mid-Cities Daily News reported, “We have not heard nearly as much about the problem as last year.” But for whatever reason, the Klan was still excited over queers in the park. The Klan’s “exalted cyclops” announced that his group would be holding a picnic at the part — sans white sheets — to send a message that gays weren’t welcome. The Daily News responded, “Given the choice between sharing a park with homosexuals or a bunch of white-sheeted, racist, hate-peddling losers, we thing we would prefer the homosexuals.”

Well sure, given the choice.

When the Klan held their picnic three days later, Scott Patrick, the exalted cyclops of the Garland klavern, sounded disappointed with what he found. ” I expected the situation to be a little more blatant. I’m sure all the publicity kept it out.” That left him with no choice but to complain about other groups. “Would you believe I actually had a Jew ask if a Jew could come to one of our meetings,” he told a reporter. “I said ‘no.’ A Jew would have about as much chance of attending as a nigger. You’ve got to admit they aren’t as intelligent as we are.” The Daily News made a wise choice.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Jerry Herman: 1931. The American composer and lyricists is best known for his scores for the Broadway hits Hello Dolly! (1964), Mame (1966) and La Cage aux Folles (1983). The latter earned Herman a Tony for best musical. His most famous song, “Hello Dolly!”, knocked the Beatles from #1 in 1964 when Louis Armstrong recorded it. “When they passed out talent,” Carol Channing said, “Jerry stood in line twice.”A 2008 PBS documentary about him reported that Herman was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1985 when that diagnosis was an automatic death sentence. He was lucky, and is among of the fortunate few to live to see the lifesaving “cocktail” become available in 1995. The AIDS epidemic wiped out half the original La Cage aux Folles chorus before the show’s final run, but the show’s signature anthem “I Am What I Am” can still bring audiences to their feet with its call for dignity and integrity in the face of bigotry and fear.

Neil Tennant: 1954. With bandmate Chris Lowe, he was one half of the electronic dance duo Pet Shop Boys. Their first single, “West End Girls,” was actually recorded twice. The first version was released in 1984 and became a club hit in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Go figure. After the duo signed with EMI, they re-recorded the song, and it became a 1986 number one hit in the U.S. and the U.K. Tennant was coy about rumors over his sexuality throughout the 1980s, but he finally came out in a 1994 interview with a UK gay magazine. Pet Shop Boys are still going strong. On March 14, 2011, they released a double CD of the complete three-act ballet score for The Most Incredible Thing with the WrocÅ‚aw Score Orchestra. At this moment, they are touring Europe with Take That.

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).

Six Atlanta Officers Fired over Eagle Raid

Six Atlanta police officers were fired yesterday for lying about what happened during the 2009 raid on the Atlanta Eagle. Nine other officers were also disciplined, with three more hearings scheduled for next week. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The actions come almost 10 days after the release of 343-page report detailing how 16 officers lied or destroyed evidence when asked about the raid at the Atlanta Eagle bar. The report said 10 of them lied, which usually leads to a termination because those officers can not longer testify.

“Honesty goes to the very heart of a police officer’s credibility,” Chief George Turner said. “The public must be able to trust its police officers and expects them to tell the truth at all times. Failure to be truthful has serious consequences at the Atlanta Police Department. I hope my actions today serve as a reminder to those men and women on the force that dishonesty simply will not be tolerated.”

On September 10, 2009, more than a dozen police officers descended en masse on the Atlanta Eagle. Patrons were forced to lie face down on the floor – many handcuffed – and were frisked by officers looking for drugs. According to one patron, police searched everyone the crowd individually while lying face-down without asking permission, and took everyone’s ID. Once a patron’s ID was cleared, he was asked to leave the building.Some officers were heard laughing and commenting that the raid was “more fun than raiding niggers with crack.” Police gave differing reasons for the raid. First, it was a drug search, but no drugs were found. Then the problem cited was sex taking place at the club, but no one was arrested for engaging in any sexual acts. Six were arrested for various charges, but all charges were either dropped or acquitted in court.

These latest disciplinary actions come after an independent review in late June found widespread abuses during the raid:

According to the Greenberg Traurig report, 10 members of the vice unit and the RED DOG team, including three supervisors, violated APD’s policy regarding truthfulness. Most law enforcement agencies consider lying a firing offense, partly because that officer’s credibility can be challenged in court.

The report also found 24 officers illegally searched patrons, illegally detained them and illegally took their belongings, including cellphones and wallets.

…The internal APD investigation sustained complaints violating police policies against 23 officers, including a major. Their offenses ranged from lack of supervision to lying, to showing bias, to using unnecessary force.

The entire report is available here (PDF: 7.8MB/). The report confirmed that patrons, even those not under suspicion for criminal activity, were unnecessarily forced on the ground while background checks were run. One officer, unit supervisor Sgt. John Brock, defended those actions this way (page 142): “There’s a risk factor involved when you’re dealing with people you don’t know anything about. S&M, that has a stigma of some sort of violence.” He added that gays generally “are very violent.” The report quotes Officer Jeremy Edwards as saying, “Seeing another man have sex with another man in the ass, I would classify that as very violent.”  Brock and Edwards were among the six fired Friday for multiple violations of police department policy.

The city of Atlanta has paid $1,025,000 to 28 people to settle a federal lawsuit. During the lawsuit, it was found that police had destroyed evidence, erased cell phone conversations, and recorded over electronic backups of emails. Some of those actions took place after a judge ordered the evidence preserved. Additional terms for settling the lawsuit included the completion and release of last month’s independent review, and several changes to Atlanta Police Department’s policies. The settlement now prohibits Atlanta officers from “interfering in any way with a citizen’s right to make video, audio, or photographic recordings of police activity, as long as such recording does not physically interfere with the performance of an officer’s duty.” They are also required to wear “a conspicuously visible name tag.”

Santorum Signs Iowa Anti-Gay Pledge

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has become the second GOP presidential candidate to sign Iowa’s Family Leader ant-gay pledge, after Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmanm. Which  means you can now officially call Santorum a number two.

More Confirmation: Bachmann’s Clinic Offered Ex-Gay Therapy in 2004

The Nation has the details:

In the summer of 2004, Andrew Ramirez, who was just about to enter his senior year of high school, worked up the nerve to tell his family he was gay. His mother took the news in stride, but his stepfather, a conservative Christian, was outraged. … A few weeks later, his parents marched him into the office of Bachmann & Associates, a Christian counseling center in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, which is owned by Michele Bachmann’s husband, Marcus. From the outset, Ramirez says, his therapist—one of roughly twenty employed at the Lake Elmo clinic—made it clear that renouncing his sexual orientation was the only moral choice. “He basically said being gay was not an acceptable lifestyle in God’s eyes,” Ramirez recalls. According to Ramirez, his therapist then set about trying to “cure” him. Among other things, he urged Ramirez to pray and read the Bible, particularly verses that cast homosexuality as an abomination, and referred him to a local church for people who had given up the “gay lifestyle.” He even offered to set Ramirez up with an ex-lesbian mentor.

This comes on the heels of yesterday’s Truth Wins Out’s exposé in which TWO’s Director of Communications and Development John Becker went undercover and received several sessions of ex-gay counseling.

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, July 9

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Cincinnati, OH; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Green Bay, WI; Munich, Germany; Porto, Portugal; Prince George, BC; San Luis Obispo, CA; Santa Barbara, CA; Sitges, Catalonia (Spain); Tacoma, WA; Vancouver, WA; and Victoria, BC.

And Also: Bear Week, Provincetown, MA.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
David Hockney: 1937.The British artist was born with synesthesia — he brain “sees” colors whenever he hears music. The colors that he sees guides him when he designs stage sets for operatic and ballet productions. In addition to set design, he is a renowned painter, print maker and photographer. While still a student at the Royal College of Art, Hockney’s exhibition Young Contemporariesin 1961, signalled the arrival of British Pop Art. Later that year, he sold two of his prints to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. That same year, he also read the poems of Walt Whitman, which inspired Hockney to paint several paintings on the themes of love and homosexuality, including “We Two Boys Together Clinging,” where the title and some of the text in the painting are lines from the Whitman’s poem of the same name. By the mid 1960s, Hockney moved to Los Angeles, where he made an entire series of paintings of swimming pools rendered in vibrant colors.

In more recent years, Hockney has been exploring the limits of scale. His “A Bigger Grand Canyon” (1998) is actually a series of 60 paintings which, when combined together, produce one enormous painting of 6 3/4 feet by 24 feet.  That painting was bought by the National Gallery of Australia for $4.6 million.In 2007, he produced “Bigger Trees Near Warter,” a series of fifty separate canvases which combine to form a 15 feet by forty feet painting. He donated those canvases to the Tate Gallery in London. “I thought if I’m going to give something to the Tate I want to give them something really good. It’s going to be here for a while.” He described it as a “duty” of successful artists to donate some of their work.

Kelly McGillis: 1957. When the other star of Top Gun came out of the closet in 2009, she said that coming to terms with her sexual orientation had been a long, ongoing process since she was twelve, when she was convinced that God was punishing her for being gay. She now says that it’s much easier to become spiritual now that she knows that “God is okay with you being gay.” She graduated from Julliard’s Drama School in 1983 and began landing acting roles right away. Her breakout role was as an Amish mother in 1985’s Witness with Harrison Ford, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe award. In 1986, she was the flight instructor, Charlie, in Top Gunwith Tom Cruse and Val Kilmer. She continued acting in films and television throughout the 1990s before taking a break in 2001. She resumed acting in 2004, and in 2008 she guest starred on Showtime’s “The L Word,” where she played a closeted Army colonel. In 2010, McGilllis entered into a civl union with her partner, and they make their home in Collingswood, New Jersey where McGillis works full-time at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. “I think one of the gifts that comes with age, if we survive ourselves, is what we created,” she explained.

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).

Uncle Sam Wants YOU

The Pentagon is moving swiftly in accordance with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal’s lifting of its stay, rendering “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” immediately unenforceable. The Defense Department announced today that it will start accepting applications from gay military recruits:

In a memo to the secretaries of the military branches, Clifford L. Stanley, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, directed them to comply with the court injunction immediately.

“It remains the policy of the Department of Defense not to ask service members or applicants about their sexual orientation, to treat all members with dignity and respect, and to ensure maintenance of good order and discipline,” the memorandum read in part. “Further, because the injunction is once again in effect, the department will process applications for enlistment or appointment without regard to sexual orientation.”

The Army Times reports that the Pentagon has also ordered a halt to all discharge proceedings against gay servicemembers.

It’s Confirmed: Marcus Bachmann’s Clinic Practices Ex-Gay Therapy

Michele and Marcus Bachmann on the campaign trail.

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s political adviser and “Godly husband,” Dr. Marcus Bachman, denied in 2006 that his Minnesota clinic, Bachmann and Associates, practices ex-gay therapy — even though he promoted the ex-gay movement at a pastoral conference the year before, and in 2010 he spoke of gay children as “barbarians” that “need to be disciplined.” That last bit of advice — disciplining gay children — is eerily familiar after BTB’s original investigation last month revealing that ex-gay therapist George Rekers’s most famous patient, four-year-old “Kraig”, was actually Kirk Andrew Murphy, who remained gay and committed suicide in 2003. Kirk was also “disciplined” as a very young boy while under Rekers’s direction.

Now we have confirmation that Bachmann and Associates does, in fact, offer ex-gay therapy. John Becker, Truth Wins Out’s Director of Communications and Development, attended five private sessions with Bachmann & Associates counselor Timothy Wiertzema:

During the sessions, Wiertzema claimed that it was possible to change from gay to straight through prayer and therapy. During the third session Wiertzema  said, “…it’s possible to be totally free of [same-sex attraction]. For sure.” and that “It’s happened! It really has happened to people.” In the fifth session, Wiertzema says, “…obviously your goal is not to have any feelings of attraction for men…And I really am going to recommend that we start working on how you can develop your attractions towards women.”

…During session 5, Wiertzema advised Becker to “further develop your own sense of masculinity.” Reparative therapy reinforces strict gender roles and works to erase outward appearances of femininity in men and masculinity in women. Because these programs do not genuinely change sexual orientation, much focus is placed on changing behavior so an individual can “pass” as heterosexual, even if the gay person has not changed on the inside.

“Passing” is all that a substantial number ex-gay programs really care about, simply because it is the best-case scenario anyone can truly hope for. Exodus International president Alan Chambers often says that he struggles daily to keep from doing “what comes naturally to me.” But constantly struggling to pass can carry with it enormous consequences. Again, Kirk Murphy’s case is illustrative. As a very young boy, he was taught that revealing who he really was would have dangerous physical consequences for him, and so as he got older he continued to suppress his emerging sexuality, fully aware that “I can’t act that way or people will know that I’m different.” He suppressed it so successfully that his doctors at UCLA did not notice that Kirk not only wasn’t straight, but also was under tremendous emotional duress.

Today, all major medical, mental health, and counseling organizations oppose ex-gay therapy. In an exhaustive review of the professional peer-reviewed literature, the American Psychological Association concluded (PDF: 816KB/138 pages) that “enduring change to an individual’s sexual orientation is uncommon” and that “there was some evidence to indicate that individuals experienced harm” from such therapies. But of course, patients going into clinics like Bachmann’s will never know it. There is no such thing as informed consent in those kinds of settings:

[Becker] was never informed about possible alternative treatment options such as gay-affirmative therapy. Nobody ever told Becker about the potential for harmful side effects like depression and suicidal thoughts. And although he was asked to sign a treatment plan outlining his problem, desired outcome, and treatment strategy, he was never given nor asked to sign any kind of informed consent document that disclosed the above information about “ex-gay” therapy. As such, we believe Bachmann & Associates to be practicing unethically, even by the standards of the American Association of Christian Counselors. This is particularly disconcerting given the fact that Marcus Bachmann’s clinic has received significant funding from the State of Minnesota and the federal government.

You can read Becker’s first hand account here.