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 lobbyMay 11th, 2012
Kirk Murphy
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Sissy Boy Experiment to Air on AC360: CNN. Last night, I received an email message from Maris Murphy Ehlers to say that she has learned that CNN has scheduled another airing of The Sissy Boy Experiment, last year’s series on the sexual orientation change therapy that her brother, Kirk Murphy, underwent at UCLA while only four years old. Kirk was treated by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers, who would go on to become a prominent anti-gay activist and proponent of the ex-gay movement — and who fell from grace after returning from a European vacation in the company of a rent-boy who he hired to lift his luggage. We had fun with that for weeks, not knowing all along that Kirk Murphy, who was Reker’s most famous success story and on whose case studies Rekers built his career, had killed himself in 2003.
I don’t have the details of when the series will air, except that it will be sometime during AC360, beginning at 8:00 p.m. EDT. Meanwhile, you can read about Kirk Murphy’s experience of ex-gay therapy at the hands of George Rekers in our original report, What Are Little Boys Made Of?
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Angers, France; Bergen, Norway; Brussels, Belgium; Chisinau, Moldova; Maspalomas, Gran Canaria; New Hope, PA; Northhampton, MA and Uppsala, Sweden.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Ohunquit, ME and Stockton, CA.
Other Events This Weekend: Boston Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Boston, MA; Beach Bear Weekend, Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Big Horn Rodeo, Las Vegas, NV Paradise Festival, Oahu, HI.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Valentino: 1932. The Italian designer set the fashion bar in the 1960s, when he became a favorite designer for such celebrities and taste-makers as Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Jane Fonda, Audrey Hepburn, Cate Blanchett, and Princess Margaret, many of whom were also his personal friends. Jackie Kennedy wore Valentino when she married Aristotle Onassis in 1968, and in a testament to his enduring style, he was the most-worn designer at the 2007 Oscars. It’s likely he would have repeated that achievement in 2008 if he hadn’t chosen to retire that year.
Valentino and his partner, Giancarlo Giammetti, have been the ultimate power couple in the fashion world for more than 50 years, with Giammetti serving as his business partner from very nearly the time they first met in 1960. In the documentary film Valentino: The Last Emperor
Billy Bean: 1964. The former outfielder and left-handed hitter for the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Diego Padres made headlines in 1999 when he became only the second baseball player to publicly come out, three years after his retirement from baseball. It was a long struggle to get there. As a closeted pro athlete, he struggled to juggle his secret and his career. He divorced his wife in 1993 and secretly moved in with his first lover. When his lover died of AIDS, Bean didn’t attend the funeral because he was too frightened that his secret would be revealed. “Why was it so impossible to think that a baseball player could grieve for a man?” he later reflected. “That was a terrible, terrible decision I made.”
His 2003 book, Going the Other Way: Lessons from a Life In and Out of Major League Baseball
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And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?
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In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.
When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.
In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.
On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"
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Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!
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Jay Jonson
May 11th, 2012
Glad to hear that the Sissy Boy Experiment is going to air again.
CPT_Doom
May 11th, 2012
One of my favorite stories comes from Billy Bean’s book. When he finally came out to his family, one of his siblings informed him that they already knew – he had been outed years before by his very young (4 years old IIRC) niece. After visiting Billy and his “roommate” Sam (his first partner) the niece announced that she liked both Uncle Billy and Aunt Sam. From the mouths of babes..
Maris
May 11th, 2012
Hi Jim, I’m not sure if it’s a condensed version or what – you never know with live TV. i did find out today though that Ryan Kendall, who was in the third segment of this story on AC360 will be live on the show tonight.
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