The Daily Agenda for Saturday, June 2

Jim Burroway

June 2nd, 2012

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albany, NY (Black & Latino Pride); Birmingham, UK; Boston, MA; Buffalo, NY; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo ON; Davenport, IA; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Dresden, Germany; Gothenburg, Sweden; Honolulu, HI; Kansas City, MO; Karlsruge, Germany; Kiel, Germany; Lille, France; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Los Ranchos, NM; Mexico City, DF; Nantes, France; Pittsburgh, PA; Queens, NY; Riga, Latvia; Sacramento, CA; Salt Lake City, UT; Santa Cruz, CA; Sheffield UK; Sonoma Co, CA; Spencer, IN; Springfield, MA; Staten Island, NY; Tulsa, OKWarsaw, Poland and Winnipeg, MB.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Beaver Lake, NY; Boston, MA; Clinton, NYLong Beach, CA and Syracuse, NY.

Other Events This Weekend: AIDS Lifecycle, San Francisco to Los Angeles; Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hartford, CT; Gay Days at Walt Disney World, Orlando, FL.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
“Mama’s Boys” Deemed Unfit For Military Service: 1942. At a meeting in Boston of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Alexander Simon of St. Elizabeth Hospital in Washington, D.C., described the kinds of people who were more likely to end up in the psych wards after induction in the military: ”

…the chronic A.W.O.L’er; the lad who can’t stand the social gap between a private and Private First Class, the man or officer who can’t stand promotion, and the one who cant stand not to be promoted, the ‘Mama Boys’ who in peacetime (when there is no selective service) chose invariable the Navy and find that though the sea may be ‘Mama’ the Navy is definitely ‘Papa,’ and blow up promptly in the training station with the shock of the discovery; the lonely, the homesick, the timid, the despondent, the one who never took an order in his life; the one who can’t stand teasing, cussing, and dirty jokes, the alcoholic, the bad actor, the unexpectant father who gets a letter from the girl who met the fleet, the boy who didn’t know he was adopted unti lhe went to get his birth certificate and who must find his own mother instead of fighting a war, the boy who wanted to study Diesels, but who was made a sergeant and had to keep drilling others, the Reserve Officer who thought the sergeant knew more than he did, the man with psychotic episodes prior to service and the man whose best friend went down on his sister ship.”

Dr. Simon commended the Boston draft board for being particularly adept at turning down those who he believed would later become troublesome in the military. According to the press report from Science Service, “This board not only turned down obvious mental disorders but also psychopathic personalities, asocial and criminal types, chronic alcoholics and homosexuals. In other words, Boston selectees were turned down if they seemed more likely than the average (1) to break down under strain or (2) to be trouble makers.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Candace Gingrich-Jones: 1966. The lesbian advocate and kid sister to recent GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, Candice has publicly called her brother to task over his support for California’s Prop 8. “What really worries me is that you are always willing to use LGBT Americans as political weapons to further your ambitions,” she wrote. “That’s really so ’90s, Newt. In this day and age, it’s embarrassing to watch you talk like that.” Things haven’t changed much for Newt. He spent much of the past year running like it’s 1994. But Candace is married to her wife, Rebecca, and works as the HRC’s Associate Director for the Youth and Campus Outreach Program.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

gregory brown

June 2nd, 2012

I recall seeing a popular psychology textbook from the mid-late 40’s that included a section on how to determine if a man was unsuitable for military service, mainly because of homosexuality.

After the usual litany of fastidious grooming habits and concern about wearing clothes that were fashionable and clean, the book went on to note that smoking cigars or cigarettes ( the right kinds, of course) was a norm for “manly” men. A man who didn’t smoke was suspect, probably because he lived at home with his Mother, who disapproved of smoking in her house.

That seemed ludicrous when I read it. Now I see that the comment was spot-on.

PJB863

June 3rd, 2012

Fast forward mid-to-late 40’s to mid-to-late 60’s and you’d have guys looking real hard to be disqualified. Prior to the elimination of DADT, I wondered how that would have played out if the draft had been reinstated. Guess it doesn’t matter now.

Timothy Kincaid

June 3rd, 2012

And if reading the litany of unsuitables aloud, please be careful not to leave off the last word. While undoubtedly the sentence would continue to make sense, the meaning would be somewhat different.

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