Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyApril 14th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour:Perrysburg, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour of Ohio. Today, the tour continues north to the Toledo suburb of Perrysburg for a Tea Party rally at Hood Park on Front Street, along the banks of the Maumee. The Teasters will denounce socialism and Medicare cuts, among other things, from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Protest of FRC Values Bus: Findlay, OH. GetEqual Ohio and Freedom To Marry Ohio will meet that FRC Values Bus rally with a counter rally at the Hood Park. The counter rally goes from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Åódź, Poland; Miami Beach, FL; PiteÃ¥, Sweden
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Des Moines, IA; Honolulu, HI; Laramie, WY; and New Haven, CT.
Other Events This Weekend: Women’s Fest 2012, Camp Rehoboth, DE; International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association’s Annual Global Convention, Florianopolis, Brazil; and Scandinavian Ski Pride, Hemsedal Norway.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Iowa’s Sexual Psychopath Law Goes Into Effect: 1955.The last time anyone saw eight-year-old Jimy Bremmer alive was on the night of August 31, 1954, when the Sioux City youth went to a friend’s house two doors down to play after dinner. He left his friend’s house at around 8:00 to go home, but he didn’t make that short distance. On September 29, his decomposed body was found in a pasture north of town. His crushed skill was several feet away from his decapitated body, and both hands were missing. A man was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. He had confessed after being sent to a mental hospital and injected with Desoxyn and Seconal. (His conviction would be overturned in 1972.)
After several years of the red scare and pink scare dominating the evening news, Iowans became convinced that the state was crawling with sexual psychopaths. On January 31, 1955 Iowa legislators introduced a bill in the Iowa House of Representatives, the purpose of which was “to provide for the confinement of persons who are dangerous criminal sexual psychopaths.” The bill extended to anyone, whether they had been convicted of a crime or not. The bill passed both houses unanimously with very little discussion and went into effect on April 14, 1955.
On the evening of July 10, 1955, two year old Donna Sue Davis was kidnapped from her crib where she was sleeping. The kidnapper had come in through the open bedroom window, and left the house with Donna Sue through that same window. A neighbor saw the kidnapper flee and gave chase, but the kidnapper got away. The next morning her body was found in a cornfield outside of town. An autopsy revealed that the child had been raped and sodomized. Her left jaw was broken and there were several bruises and cigarette burns on her buttocks. She died of a massive brain hemorrhage from a severe blow to the head. One itinerant farm hand was arrested, but investigators quickly ruled out the possibility that he committed the crime. Panic gripped Sioux Falls as hardware stores reported running out of padlocks. The Sioux City Journal on July 12 demanded that the city be made “the most feared town in American for the sex deviate.” With no other firm suspects to investigate, the police chief began a roundup of “known sex perverts.” On July 23, Gov. Leo Hoegh announced that a special ward at the state mental hospital in Mount Pleasant had been established to house them. Most of those “sex perverts,” it would turn out, were gay men who had not been charged with any crime. By the end of the year, thirty-three men had been committed, at least twenty of them from Sioux City. The Sioux City prosecutor declared, “At least word is out that they’re not welcome in Sioux City any more.”
Donna Sue’s killer was never found. The sexual psychopath law was finally repealed in 1977.
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