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 20th, 2013
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Events This Weekend: AIDS Walk, Binghamton, NY; Philadelphia Black Pride; Philadelphia, PA; Christopher Street Day, Potsdam, Germany; Tallahassee Pride, Tallahassee, FL.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
China Removes Homosexuality From List of Mental Disorders: 2001. After consulting with mental health organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere, the Chinese Psychiatric Association published the third edition of the Chinese Standards for Classification and Diagnosis of Mental Disorders, which formally removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. The move came as Chinese psychiatry was coming under international scrutiny for the growing use of mental institutions to detain dissidents and members of the banned Falun Gong sect. The delisting of homosexual was controversial: the Beijing Youth Daily gave prominent space to a senior psychiatrist who called gay people “abnormal.”
via Facebook.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
George Takei: 1937. It’s hard to tell, but the actor best known for his role as Mr. Hikaru Sulu in the Star Trek franchise turns seventy-six today. Oh, my! Born in Los Angeles to two native-born Californians of Japanese descent, Takei nevertheless ended up spending his formative years at a Japanese in internment camp in Rohwer, Arkansas, and then in the Tule Lake camp in California. His first roles in the 1950s was doing voiceover work, dubbing Japanese monster movies. Later, he was able to score a gig with CBS’s award winning Playhouse 90, an episode of The Twilight Zone, and film roles in Hell to Eternity (1960), A Majority of One (1961), and Walk, Don’t Run (1966). When the Star Trek pilot came along in 1965, Takei was cast as helmsman for the USS Enterprise, but he was only able to take part on half of the first season due to a commitment he already had as a South Vietnamese officer in the John Wayne film, The Green Berets. When Takei returned for Star Trek’s second season, he found that he had to share a dressing room, script, and a ship’s helm panel, side-by-side, with Walter Koenig as the starship’s navigator, Ensign Pavel Chekhov.
Star Trek only lasted three seasons on NBC. It struggled to find an audience during its first season, and it was rumored that NBC would cancel it at the end of the second season. A letter-writing campaign saved the program for another year, only to see NBC place it at the dead-end 10:00 time slot on Friday night and slash its production budget. After 79 episodes, NBC canceled the series, in a move which TV Guide in 2011 ranked as the fourth “biggest TV blunders.” Thanks to syndication, Star Trek found a larger audience than it ever had on NBC. Takei has since reprised his role as Captain Sulu in the first six Star Trek movies. He was promoted to Captain Sulu, with his own starship, the USS Excelsior in a Star Trek: Voyager episode, a role he reprised for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
In 2005, Takei came out as gay in an issue of Los Angeles-based Frontiers magazine. “It’s not really coming out, which suggests opening a door and stepping through,” he said. “It’s more like a long, long walk through what began as a narrow corridor that starts to widen.” That corridor included longtime active memberships in various LGBT organizations and a then-eighteen year partnership with Brad Altman. In 2008, Takei and Altman turned that partnership into an honest-to-god marriage just before Prop 8 was approved by California voters, and they were the first same-sex couple to appear in Game Show Network’s revived celebrity edition of The Newlywed Game. Takei is one of the more entertaining stars of Facebook and the Twitterverse (You can send your birthday greetings to @GeorgeTakei), and he also has Asteroid 7307 named in his honor. His Internet-themed memoir, Oh Myyy!: There Goes The Internet
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?
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Steve
April 20th, 2013
“The Undiscovered Country” was released in 1991. Several years before Voyager
Nathaniel
April 20th, 2013
Also, as you mention, he didn’t become “Captain Sulu” until later in the movie franchise, making your first reference to Sulu’s rank of Captain confusing.
Josh
April 20th, 2013
Cross-referencing material from Memory Alpha, Sulu’s rank history is…
Lieutenant, The Original Series, seasons 1-3 (1966-1969)
Lieutenant, The Animated Series, seasons 1-2 (1973-1974)
Lieutenant Commander, The Motion Picture (1979)
Commander, Star Trek 2-5 (1982, 1984, 1986, 1989)
Captain, Star Trek 6 (1991)
Captain, Voyager: Flashback (1996), a third season episode where events of Star Trek 6 are recalled from Tuvok’s perspective
He’s also been featured in many Star Trek books, though I’m not into those, and they probably don’t significantly change the above rank history.
/endnerdrage
Jim Burroway
April 20th, 2013
Shit. I knew this would happen.
Me writing about Star Trek for Star Trek fans is like me writing about sports for sports fans. I’m similarly expert in both fields. ;-)
Steve
April 20th, 2013
The two best Excelsior books are “The Sundered” (from the “Lost Era” miniseries) and “Forged in Fire”
Bose in St. Peter MN
April 20th, 2013
An open thread thought… was Zack Morris recently been reincarnated as a gay Tony Perkins?
I was just watching Happy Endings, episode Un-sabotagable, in which the gay character, Max, believes he is being stalked by Chase (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), an ex with a vendetta.
But check out this monologue by Chase/Zack/Mark-Paul addressed to Max:
“After we spoke on the street, I slipped on that slice of pizza you dropped and I hit my head. I’ve been unconscious for three days… first of all, I’m fine thanks for [not] asking, secondly, no, I wasn’t [trying to sabotage your life]… but I’m so glad you’re here, because I wanted to tell you something. I don’t know where you fall in the existence of an afterlife, but I’m here to tell you there is another place. It’s a spiritual realm ruled by powerful yet merciful beings. I was there, Max, and I was headed for sweet eternal peace. But then I realized I could not transcend to the next plane… until I took care of the unfinished business of this world — the unfinished business of ruining your life… I came back for you. I have looked deep into the abyss of the next world, and it is beautiful. But, before I make that pilgrimage, I will stop at nothing to lay waste to what you so tragically call your life.”
Bose in St. Peter MN
April 20th, 2013
Gawd, I hate flubbing my opening thought:
An open thread thought… was Zack Morris recently
beenreincarnated as a gay Tony Perkins?Hue-Man
April 21st, 2013
George Takei’s birthday also makes me think of another actor who spent his youth in a Japanese internment camp, namely Robert Ito, Vancouver-born Canadian whose family was sent to the Tashme Camp (now Sunshine Valley, BC).
Best known as Sam Fujiyama on Quincy, M.E., he “…was a founding member of the National Ballet of Canada, performing with them for nine years. He also worked regularly as one of the Alan & Glance Lund dancers on CBC TV’s weekly variety programs. He has worked on Broadway and in Las Vegas and has done many years of repertory theatre.” http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Robert-Ito/84377482
We continue to forget the injustices we have perpetrated against our own citizens usually in the name of national security.
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