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 lobbyPosts for May, 2014
May 12th, 2014
Among the piles of press that surrounded the selection of Michael Sam during this past weekend’s NFL draft selection, I found this little gem regarding the decision of ESPN to air Sam’s reaction and his kiss with his boyfriend. (Sun Times)
When [ESPN Producer Seth] Markman’s wife explained to their 7-year-old son that dad was busy working on something that was controversial, Sam’s kiss on TV, the boy replied: “Is it because they’re not married?”
May 12th, 2014
Austrian bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst won the 59th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday with a James Bond-inspired entry that had unleashed a wave of protests in eastern Europe before the competition.
The power ballad, “Rise Like a Phoenix,” helped Wurst — the alter ego of 25-year-old Thomas Neuwirth — secure Austria’s second victory in the competition with 290 points. The country also won in 1966.
“This is dedicated to everyone who believes in a future of peace and freedom,” a tearful Wurst said as she accepted the trophy from Denmark’s Emmelie de Forrest, who won the contest last year. “We are unity.”
Russia has been a participant in the European Song Contest since 2000. They won in 2008, which gave then the right to host it in 2009. But today, one Russian pol is spitting bullets over Wurst’s win:
Wurst’s victory prompted an outpouring of anti-gay anger from Russian politicians and stars with deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin tweeting that the result “showed supporters of European integration their European future: a bearded girl”.
Nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky told Rossiya-1 state television: “There’s no limit to our outrage. It’s the end of Europe. It has turned wild. They don’t have men and women any more. They have ‘it’.
“Fifty years ago the Soviet army occupied Austria. We made a mistake in freeing Austria. We should have stayed.”
Russian reaction wasn’t universally negative though:
Flamboyant pop star Filipp Kirkorov, producer of Russia’s Eurovision entry this year, even suggested Wurst’s victory should make Russians reconsider homophobic views.
“Maybe this is a kind of protest against some of our views in Russia. Maybe we should have a think. Maybe we shouldn’t have such a categorical attitude to people of different sexual orientations,” he told Rossiya-1 television.
“In a way it probably is a challenge from Europe to us, but let’s respect the winner. People don’t judge a winner.”
May 12th, 2014
Last Saturday, the court house in Eureka Springs was the only place in Arkansas where same-sex couples could marry following Friday’s decision by an Arkansas judge declaring the state’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. This morning, marriages are taking place at the Pulaski County Court House in Little Rock:
The first Little Rock license went to Shelly Butler, 51, and Susan Barr, 48, of Dallas, who have been together since they met at Southern Arkansas University in 1985.
“When we heard the news in Arkansas, we had to jump in the car to get here,” Butler said shortly before receiving the license. “I’m just excited to marry my best friend of almost 30 years, finally.”
The second couple to receive a license was Thomas Baldwin, 37, and Devin Rudeseal, 24. The Bryant couple quickly married in the courthouse, and Rudeseal planned to take a final at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock later Monday morning.
Most counties in Arkansas will not be issuing licenses, relying on legal guidance that — if the counties were not defendants in the case (only six were) — and absent a direct order to cease discriminatory practices, the state ban remains in place in those counties. At least one county that IS a defendant — Lonoke — apparently has announced it will not issue licenses.
Washington County, one of the defendants, also began issuing licenses to same-sex couples. Justice of the Peace Eva Madison posted a Facebook photo after she signed the first such license in Washington County.
Washington County’s seat is in Fayetteville, in the northwest corner of the state and not far from Eureka Springs. It’s the state’s third largest city and home to the University of Arkansas. Conversely, Benton County (Bentonville), which is immediately to the north of Washington County and is home to Wal-Mart’s headquarters, has announced that it would not be issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The same goes for Faulkner County (Conway), just north of Little Rock.
May 12th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
More Marriages In Arkansas: Some Counties, Not Others. Last Friday, Pulaski County (Little Rock) Circuit Court Judge Christopher Piazza ruled that same-sex marriage ban violates the U.S. Constitution. His decision came late in the day, after the state’s county clerk offices had already closed for the weekend — except for Carroll County in the northwest corner of the state, which is the only county to have Saturday hours, perhaps because Eureka Springs, the county seat, is a very popular wedding destination for that part of the country. Anyway, since Judge Piazza didn’t issue a stay to accompany his ruling, fifteen same-sex couples managed to get hitched before the office closed at 1:00 p.m. Saturday afternoon.
The state’s Attorney General’s announced that it plans to appeal and ask for a stay, which could come at any time in the next few days, but it hasn’t happened yet (as of this writing, which is midnight Central Time Monday morning). On Saturday, county clerks held a conference call with the Association of Arkansas Counties to try to figure out what to do when their offices open this morning. You can read the details of that conference call here. But the upshot is that when clerks’ offices open across the state, some will issue licenses, some will refuse to do so because they weren’t named defendants in the lawsuit, some will blame the software for not being ready to process licenses for same-sex couples or the lack of updated forms (although they somehow managed to work that out in Eureka Springs), and some might drag out typewriters and do it by hand. Who knows? It’s anybody’s guess.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From the Columbia Daily Spectator, May 9, 1967, page 3.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Time Magazine Reports on the First Gay Students Group: 1967. “Equal rights” was a common catchphrase on college campuses in 1967 as students across the country became politically engaged in issues of racial equality and women’s rights. Time magazine reported on another group that had formed to protest discrimination and injustice when Columbia University recognized the Student Homophile League, making the campus the first major university in the country to offer recognition to a gay students group. Getting the group officially recognized was a challenge; in 1967, no gay or lesbians students felt that it was safe to come out:
The University Committee on Student Organizations at first denied the league recognition, since it refused to name its organizers. The dozen interested students then shrewdly enlisted eight officers of other campus organizations, all presumably heterosexual, to sign as sponsors, under a university rule that their names need not be made public. The committee then decided that it had no legal reason not to grant the group official status.
While declining to identify himself or other members by name (“We would be losing jobs for the rest of our lives”), the league’s chairman insists the group is educational, not social, and “plans no mixers with Harvard.” So far, Columbia students seem little interested in joining. Shrugged Sophomore Elliot Stern: “As long as they don’t bother the rest of us, it’s O.K.” The league’s biggest problem will probably be its self-imposed secrecy. As some students asked: How do you treat them equally when you don’t know who they are?
[Source: “Students: Equality for your fellow man.” Time (May 12, 1967). Available online with subscription here.]
California Decriminalizes Homosexuality: 1975. Efforts to repeal California’s Sodomy law began in 1969 when San Francisco Assemblyman Willie Brown introduced what became known as the Brown Bill into the lower House. He reintroduced the bill every year until its passage in 1975. That year, the bill advanced through the House only to run into trouble in the Senate. The vote stood at a 20-20 tie when Senate Majority Leader George Moscone (who later became mayor of San Francisco) locked the chamber’s doors until Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymallyin could fly in from Denver to deliver the tie-breaking vote. Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill into law when it finally reached his desk.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
80 YEARS AGO: Bruce Voeller: 1934-1994. Where to begin? He was a tireless gay rights advocate who co-founded the National Gay Task Force in 1973 and served as its director until 1978. He was a talented biologist, having studied biochemistry, developmental biology and genetics. That put him on the front lines as a researcher for a new disease that others started calling Gay-Related Immune Disorder (GRID), a name that he challenged for its medical inaccuracy. It is Voeller who is credited for giving the new disease the more accurate name of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
Voeller had married Dr. Kytja Scott Voeller, whom he met in grad school. Together they had three children. He came out in 1964 when he was 29, and the resulting divorce was messy. Voeller had to fight all the way up to the Supreme Court to gain child visitation rights. By then, he was heavily involved in the resurgent gay rights movement. He was among the founders of the Gay Activists Alliance in 1969 and served as its third president. But where the GAA was more interested in street activism, he sought to bring gay activism into the mainstream of political discourse. In 1973, he left the GAA and founded NGTF (later, NGLTF), and built it into a nation advocacy organization. As NGTF director, he attended a historic White House meeting in 1977 with thirteen other LGBT advocates to raise awareness about discriminatory laws and policies.
In 1978, Voeller left he NGTF and established the Mariposa Education and Research Foundation to conduct human sexuality research. Among his concerns was that books, papers, and other ephemera on the LGBT movement was easily lost or destroyed, posing a danger that LGBT history itself would vanish. So he created a network of volunteers to search for and gather as much as possible, and that extensive collection was donated to the Cornell University Library in 1988. With the advent of AIDS, Voeller returned to his biologist’s roots and the Foundation shifted its focus to reducing the risks of sexually transmitted diseases. His 1989 study warned that mineral oil lubricants caused rapid deterioration of latex condoms, leading to a shift to water-based sexual lubricants. He pioneered the use of nonoxynol-9 as a spermacide and topical virus-transmission preventative,, and he studied the reliability of various brands of condoms in disease prevention. The results of that study even appeared in Consumer Reports, making the information widely available and accessible to the public. He was conducting studies on viral leakage for the (then) recently approved “female” condom when he passed away in 1994 of an AIDS-related illness.
Jared Polis: 1975. Polis earned his fortune when he founded American Information Systems, an Internet access, web hosting and application service provider. He also co-founded an online greeting card company and an online florist. After selling those companies during the height of the dot-com bubble, he used his wealth to found the Jared Polis Foundation in 2000, with the mission to “create opportunities for success through education and access to technology.” The foundation has refurbished and donated more than 3,500 computers each year to schools and other non-profits. He also founded two charter schools for at-risk students, and another school for older immigrant youths. He founded another school in Denver to serve youth who are homeless or living in unstable conditions.
When he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for Colorado’s Second District in 2008, he was the first openly gay man to be elected as a freshmen (all the other gay Representatives came out while already in office). He is also the first openly gay parent in Congress. As Congressman, he has been a tireless advocate for LGBT equality. In 2011, he launched the Fearless Campaign, dedicated to “empowering our political leaders with the moral courage it takes to vote fearlessly on the politically charged issues of today, regardless of the perceived political risk.”
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?
May 12th, 2014
Michael Sam celebrated his getting drafted by the St. Louis Rams by smashing some cake into his boyfriend’s face before going in for another kiss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoKeP-n6z8gMay 11th, 2014
Mom and me.
Call Your Mother. Today is Mother’s Day. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Darwin, NT; Kraków, Poland; New Hope, PA; São Paulo, Brazil; Tallahassee, FL.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Buffalo, NY; Des Moines, IA.
Other Events This Weekend: Purple Party, Dallas, TX; BeachBear Weekend, Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Houston Splash, Houston, TX; Big Horn Rodeo, Las Vegas, NV; Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Miami, FL.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From Parleé (a gay bar guide for Long Island and New York City), July 1975, page 22.
“Daisy’s don’t tell, and neither do we”: From an era when discretion was an important selling point.
THIS MONTH IN HISTORY:
Frank Kameny Declares “We Are the True Authorities on Homosexuality”: 1965. That was a bold declaration to make in 1965. It’s almost impossible to overstate how much deference that was accorded the mental health profession a half century ago. Psychiatrists — by virtue of their degrees, university affiliations, books and lectures — were the recognized authorities on everything touching on the human condition. When psychiatrists declared someone mentally sick, they more or less had the last word on the matter. Many — though certainly not all — gay activists went along with those pronouncements. If a doctor said someone was sick, they reasoned, then who else had the standing and the credentials to say differently?
This led to some strange arguments in the pages of ONE magazine, the Mattachine Review, and the Daughters of Bilitis’ newsletter, The Ladder. Those who deferred to the psychiatric profession’s belief that gay people were sick developed arguments for why gays and lesbians deserved equal rights (or at the very least, “understanding”) either despite or because of their sickness. Others argued that gay people weren’t sick — and they, too, could count on a number of psychiatrists and psychologists who agreed with them — and they called for even more psychological research which, they reasoned, would prove them right and somehow open the door to “understanding” on the part of the public. While the two sides disagreed over whether gay people were sick, they both agreed on one thing: that psychiatry would ultimately settle the question, and when it did everyone else would fall in line. Early gay activists were so beholden to that belief that almost all of the early gay rights organizations included the sponsorship or promotion of research as part of their mission statements.
In 1965, gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny (see May 21) upended the very foundation on which those arguments rested. In an essay published in Daughters of Bilitis’s The Ladder, Kameny went to the heart of the mental health profession’s exalted reputation by declaring that their pronouncements were not based on science, but prejudice. His declaration of independence from the psychiatric profession was part of a broader shift taking place that year in the gay rights movement, when activists shifted from putting forward “reasonable” discussions on whether gay people deserved equal treatment to staging public protests demanding that America treat gay Americans as full citizens (see Apr 17, Apr 18, Apr 25, May 29, Jun 26, Jul 4, Jul 31, Aug 28, Sep 19,). Kameny’s declaration so clearly crystallizes the debate as it appeared in 1965 that I decided to present it here in full:
Does Research Into Homosexuality Matter?
By Dr. Franklin E. Kameny.
(Franklin E. Kameny, Ph.D., is a physicist and astronomer in private industry. He is founder and former president, and is currently on the Executive Board, of the Mattachine Society of Washington which recently adopted this resolution: “The Mattachine Society of Washington takes the position that in the absence of valid evidence to the contrary, homosexuality is not a sickness, disturbance, or pathology in any sense, but is merely a preference, orientation, or propensity, on par with, and not different in kind from, heterosexuality.”)
PART I: ON SOME ASPECTS OF MILITANCY IN THE HOMOPHILE MOVEMENT
As little as two years ago, “militancy” was something of a dirty word in the homophile movement. Long inculcation in attitudes of cringing meekness had taken its toll among homosexuals, combined with a feeling, still widely prevalent, that reasonable, logical, gentlemanly and ladylike persuation (sic) and presentation of reasonable, logical argument, could not fail to win over those who would deny us our equality and our right to be homosexual and to live as homosexuals without disadvantage. There was — and is — a feeling that given any fair chance to undertake dialogue with such opponents, we would be able to impress them with the basic rightness of our position and bring them into agreement with it.
Unfortunately, by this approach alone we will not prevail, because most people operate not rationally but emotionally on questions of sex in general, and homosexuality in particular, just as they do on racial questions.
It is thus necessary for us to adopt a strongly positive approach, a militant one. It is for us to take the initiative, the offensive — not the defensive — in matters affecting us. It is time that we began to move from endless talk (directed, in the last analysis, by us to ourselves) to firm, vigorous action.
We ARE right; those who oppose us are both factually and morally wrong. We are the true authorities on homosexuality, whether we are accepted as such or not. We must DEMAND our rights, boldly, not beg cringingly for mere privileges, and not be satisfied with crumbs tossed to us. I have been deeply gratified to note in the past year a growing spirit of militancy on the part of an increasing number of members of the homophile organizations.
We would be foolish not to recognize what the Negro rights movement has shown us is sadly so: that mere persuasion, information and education are not going to gain for us in actual practice the rights and equality which are ours in principle.
I have been pleased to see a trend away from weak, wishy-washy compromise positions in our movement, toward ones of strong affirmation of what it is that we believe and want, followed by a drive to take whatever action is needed to obtain our rights. I do not of course favor uncontrolled, unplanned, ill-considered lashing out. Due and careful consideration must always be given to tact and tactics. Within the bounds dictated by such considerations, however, we must be prepared to take firm, positive, definite action — action initiated by us, not merely responding to the initiatives of others. The homophile movement increasingly is adopting this philosophy.
PART II: ON THE HOMOPHILE MOVEMENT AND HOMOSEXUALITY AS A DISEASE
Among the topics to which we are led by the preceding, is that of our approach to the question of homosexuality as a sickness. This is one of the most important issues — probably THE most important single issue — facing our movement today.
It is a question upon which, by rationalization after rationalization, members of the homophile movement have backed away from taking a position. It is a question upon which a clear, definite, unambiguous, no-nonsense stand MUST be taken, must be taken promptly, and must be taken by US, publicly.
There are some who say that WE will not be accepted as authorities, regardless of what we say, or how we say it, or what evidence we present, and that therefore we must take no positions on these matters but must wait for the accepted authorities to come around to our position — if they do. This makes of us a mere passive battlefield across which conflicting “authorities” fight their intellectual battles. I, for one, am not prepared to play a passive role in such controversy, letting others dispose of me as they see fit. I intend to play an active role in the determination of my own fate.
As a scientist by training and by profession, I feel fully and formally competent to judge good and poor scientific work when I see them — and fully qualified to express my conclusions.
In looking over the literature alleging homosexuality as a sickness, one sees, first, abysmally poor sampling technique, leading to clearly biased, atypical samplings, which are then taken as representative of the entire homosexual community. Obviously all persons coming to a psychiatrist’s office are going to have problems of one sort or another, are going to be disturbed or maladjusted or pathological, in some sense, or they wouldn’t be there. To characterize ALL homosexuals as sick, on the basis of such a sampling — as Bieber, Bergler, and others have done — is clearly invalid, and is bad science.
Dr. Daniel Cappon, in his recent appalling book TOWARD AN UNDERSTANDING OF HOMOSEXUALITY (perhaps better named “Away from an Understanding of Homosexuality” or “Toward a Misunderstanding of Homosexuality”) acknowledges at least this non-representative sampling and actually shows some faint signs of suggesting that perhaps there are two classes of homosexuals: patients and non-patients.
Notwithstanding Dr. Bieber’s cavalier dismissal of it, Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s work involving non-clinical homosexual subjects, with its very careful sampling technique and its conclusions of non-sickness, still remains convincing.
One sees secondly, in the literature alleging homosexuality as sickness, a violation of basic laws of logic by the drawing of “conclusions” which were inserted as assumptions. Dr. Bieber does this (and by implication, attributes it to his entire profession) in his statement: “All psychoanalytic theories ASSUME that homosexuality is psychopathological.” Dr. Cappon says: “…homosexuality, BY DEFINITION, is not healthy…” (Emphasis supplied in both quotations.) Obviously, if one assumes homosexuality as pathological or defines it as unhealthy at the outset, one will discover that homosexuals are sick. The “conclusions,” however, can carry no weight outside the self-contained, rather useless logical structure erected upon the assumption or definition. The assumptions must be proven; the definitions must be validated. They have not been.
I am able to speak as a professional scientist when I say that we search in vain for any evidence, acceptable under proper scientific standards, that homosexuality is a sickness or disorder, or that homosexuals per se are disturbed.
On the basis of a disguised moralistic judgement (sometimes not at all disguised, as with Dr. Cappon), mixed both with a teleological approach to sexual matters, and with a classification as sickness of any departure from conformity to the statistical societal norms (on this basis, Dr. Cappon seems to come close to defining left-handedness as sickness), homosexuality has been DEFINED as pathological. We have been defined into sickness.
In logic, the entire burden of proof in this matter rests with those who would call us sick. We do not have to prove health. They have not shouldered their burden or proof of sickness; therefore we are not sick. These are things which it is our duty to point out, and, having pointed them out, to take strong public positions on them.
Then there are those who say that the label appended really doesn’t matter. Let the homosexual be defined as sick, they say, but just get it granted that even if sick, he can function effectively and should therefore be judged only on his individual record and qualifications, and it is that state of being-judged-as-an-individual, regardless of labels, toward which we must work. This unfortunately is a woefully impractical, unrealistic, ivory-tower approach. Homosexuality is looked upon as a psychological question. If it is sickness or disease or illness, it becomes then a mental illness. Properly or improperly, people ARE prejudiced against the mentally ill. Rightly or wrongly, employers will NOT hire them. Morally or immorally, the mentally ill are NOT judged as individuals, but are made pariahs. If we allow the label of sickness to stand, we will then have two battles to fight — that to combat prejudice against homosexuals per se, and that to combat prejudice against the mentally ill — and we will be pariahs and outcasts twice over. One such battle is quite enough.
Finally, as a matter of adopting a unified, coherent, self-consistent philosophy, we MUST argue from a positive position of health. We cannot declare our equality and ask for acceptance and for judgement as whole persons, from a position of sickness. More than that, we argue for our RIGHT to be homosexuals, to remain homosexuals, and to live as homosexuals. In my view and by my moral standards, such an argument is immoral if we are not prepared, at the same time, to take a positive position that homosexuality is not pathological. If homosexuality indeed IS a sickness, then we have no right to remain homosexuals; we have the moral obligation to seek cure, and that only.
When we tell the various arms of organized society that part of our basic position is the request for acceptance as homosexuals, freed from constant pressure for conversion to heterosexuality, we are met with the argument of sickness. This occurred recently at a meeting between Washington Mattachine members and eleven representatives of all three major faiths, at which we asked for such acceptance of the homosexual into the religious community. Our entire position, our entire raison d’etre for such meetings, falls to the ground unless we are prepared to couple our requests with an affirmative, definitive assertion of health — as we in Washington did in that instance.
I feel, therefore, that in the light of fact and logic, the question of sickness is a settled one and will remain so until and unless valid evidence can be brought forth to demonstrate pathology. Further, I feel that for purposes of strategy, we must say this and say it clearly and with no possible room for equivocation or ambiguity.
PART III: ON RESEARCH AND THE HOMOPHILE MOVEMENT
Movements tend to get themselves tied up with certain ideas and concepts, which in time assume the status of revealed and revered truth and cease being subjected to continuing, searching re-examination in the light of changed conditions. As an habitual skeptic, heretic, and iconoclast, I wish here to examine critically if briefly the value and importance to the homophile movement of research into homosexuality, of our commitment to it, and of the role, if any, which such research should play in the movement and in the activities of the homophile organizations.
I recognize that, with the deference granted to science in our culture, it is very respectable and self-reassuring and impressive to call one’s group a research organization or to say that the group’s purpose is research. However, at the outset one fact should be faced directly. For all their pledges of allegiance to the value of research, for all their designation of themselves as research organizations, for all their much-vaunted support and sponsorship of research, NO American homophile organization that I know of has thus far done any effective or meaningful research, has sponsored any research, has supported or participated in any truly significant research. (With the single exception of Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s study, and while I grant that to be a major and important exception, the participation involved nothing more than supplying candidates for experimentation.) The homophile movement’s loss from its failure to contribute to research has been not from that failure, but from the diversion into talking (“maundering” might be a better term) about research — diversion of effort, time, and energy better expended elsewhere.
For purposes of this discussion, we can divide the objectives of relevant research into two loosely delineated classes: research into the origins and causes of homosexuality, and research into collateral aspects of the homosexual and his life and his community.
Almost always, when the homosexual speaks of research on homosexuality, he means the former class in one aspect or another: “What is the nature of homosexuality?” “What are its causes?” “Why am I a homosexual?” “Is homosexuality a sickness?” “Can the homosexual be changed?” Objectionably, “How can homosexuality be prevented?” etc.
A consideration of the rationale behind the homosexual’s interest in such questions will quickly show that they are symptomatic of a thinly-veiled defensive feeling of inferiority, of uncertainty, of inequality, of insecurity — and most important, of lack of comfortable self-acceptance.
I have never heard of a single instance of a heterosexual, whatever problems he may have been facing, inquiring about the nature and origins of heterosexuality, or asking why he was a heterosexual, or considering these matters important, I fail to see why we should make similar inquiry in regard to homosexuality or consider the answers to these questions as being of any great moment to us. The Negro is not engrossed in questions about the origins of his skin color, nor the Jew in questions of the possibility of his conversion to Christianity.
Such questions are of academic, intellectual, scientific interest, but they nor NOT — or ought not to be — burning ones for the homophile movement. Despite oft-made statements to the contrary, there is NO great need for research into homosexuality, and our movement is in no important way dependent upon such research or upon its findings.
If we start out — I do, on the basis presented in Part II above — with the premises (1) that the homosexual and his homosexuality are fully and unqualifiedly on par with, and the equal of, the heterosexual and his heterosexuality; and (2) (since others have raised the question) that homosexuality is not an illness -then all these questions recede into unimportance.
We start off with the fact of the homosexual and his homosexuality and his right to remain as he is, and proceed to do all that is possible to make for him -as a homosexual (similarly, in other contexts, as a Negro and as a Jew) -as happy a life, useful to self and to society, as is possible.
Research in these areas therefore is not, in any fundamental sense, particularly needed or particularly important. There is no driving or compelling urgency for us to concern ourselves with it. Those who do allege sickness have created THEIR need for THEIR research; let THEM do it.
In the collateral areas mentioned, well planned and executed research on carefully chosen projects can be of importance, particularly where it will serve to dispel modern folklore. Evelyn Hooker’s research (referred to above) showing no difference outside their homosexuality itself, in its narrowest, denotive sense, between homosexuals and heterosexuals, is one case in point. A study in the Netherlands by a Dr. Tolsma, which showed that the seduction of young boys by homosexuals had no effect upon their adult sexual orientation, is another. The study now under way by the Mattachine Society of Washington to obtain the first meaningful information on the actual susceptibility of homosexuals to blackmail, will probably be a third.
These are all useful projects. Dr. Hooker’s has turned out to be one of our major bulwarks against the barrage of propaganda currently being loosed against us by the agents of organized psychiatry. (However, as I pointed out above, this is a bulwark not needed, in strict logic.) I shall in fact probably be using the .results of all three of these collateral research projects from time to time in my presentations of our case. But these studies are not of the vital importance which could properly lead many of our homophile groups to characterize themselves as research organizations (only one of these projects actually involved a homophile organization to any significant degree) or to divert into research resources better expended elsewhere.
Research does not play the important role in our movement which much lip-service attributes to it. It plays a very useful and occasionally valuable supporting role, but not more than that.
More important than the preceding, however, is the matter of this emphasis upon research, in terms of the evolution of our movement. In the earlier days of the modern homophile movement, allegiance to the alleged importance of research was reasonable. As the philosophy of the movement has formed, crystallized, and matured, and more important, as our society itself has changed — and it has changed enormously in the past fifteen years and even in the past two — the directions and emphases in our movement have changed too. As indicated in Part I of this article, the mainstream has shifted toward a more activist mode of operation.
Continued placing of primary or strong emphasis within our movement upon research w1ll only result in the movement’s loss of the lead which it is taking in the shaping, formation, and formulation of society’s attitudes and policies toward homosexuality and the homosexual.
Thus, while as a scientist I w1ll never derogate the value of research for its own sake in order to provide additional knowledge, as an active member of the homophile movement my position must be quite different. It is time for us to move away from the comfortingly detached respectability of research into the often less pleasant rough-and-tumble of political and social activism.
[Source: Franklin E. Kameny. “Does Research Into Homosexuality Matter?” The Ladder 9, no. 8 (May 1965): 14-20.]
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
Fr. Mychal Judge: 1933-2001. He was born Robert Emmett Judge, to recent Irish immigrants in Brooklyn. His father died when he was only six, and young Robert took to shining shoes at Penn Station to help the family make ends meet. His shoe shine stand was near the Church of St. Francis of Assisi, and while the sandal-wearing friars weren’t didn’t make for lucrative customers, they did become his closest friends.
He was particularly attracted to the Friars’ embrace of poverty. “I realized that I didn’t care for material things… I knew then that I wanted to be a friar.” He spent his freshman year at the St. Frances Preparatory School in Brooklyn and, at the age of fifteen, he began the process of entering the Order of Friars Minor. He began studying for the priesthood in 1954 at St. Joseph’s Seraphic Seminary. He became a novitiate in 1954, and received his habit and professed his first vows the following year. As was customary when professing first vows as a Franciscan, he was given a new name: Fallon Michael, which he later changed to the Gaelic Mychal. He professed his solemn vows in 1958, and was ordained a priest in 1961.
Fr. Mychal then embarked on a satisfying vocation as a simple Franciscan parish priest, with assignments in New Jersey and New York. In the early 1970s, he later said that he became an alcoholic, although nobody knew it at the time. His drinking never interfered with his work, but by 1978 he decided it was time to get a handle on it and enter Alcoholics Anonymous. He attended an AA group composed mainly of gay people. He acknowledged his own homosexuality, while also remaining true to his vow of celibacy, and joined Dignity, the Catholic LGBT group.
He ministered to the homeless, the hungry, recovering alcoholics, immigrants and others who were alienated either by the church or society. When AIDS came along, he ministered to those who were dying, many of them alone and abandoned. His friend, Fr. Michael Duffy, remembered one patient who no one would go near. “”Mychal said to me, ‘You know, no one touches this man. He must be so lonely.’ So he’d go visit him and hold his hand. He told me that even once he bent over and kissed him on the forehead because he felt so bad that no one would come near him.” He also celebrated funeral Masses for those whose own priests were reluctant to do so.
In 1992, he became a chaplain for the New York Fire Department. Whenever a call went out, Fr. Mychal exchanged his brown Franciscan’s habit for firefighting gear and respond to the call. His final call was on September 11, 2001, when two hijacked airliners crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Mychal’s unit was called to Tower One. He immediately began administering Last Rites to some of the bodies lying the streets, and provided aid and prayers from inside the lobby of the North Tower. When the South Tower collapsed, Fr. Mychal was killed, while still in prayer, by flying debris. Fellow firemen and a civilian carried his body out of the North Tower lobby, took him to St. Peter’s Catholic Church and laid him before the altar. Moments later, the North Tower collapsed. Fr. Mychal is officially listed as victim 0001 of the September 11 attacks.
There is a push to have Fr. Mychal declared a saint, although the New York Archdiocese and the Franciscan leadership have been cool to the idea. Several books have been written about this remarkable man, including Father Mychal Judge: An Authentic American Hero
50 YEARS AGO: 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. 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
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?
May 10th, 2014
They took place in scenic Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which is both a gay-friendly enclave (it’s “the Gay Capital of the Ozarks“) and a popular wedding destination. From Freedom to Marry:
The first couple to receive a marriage license was Kristin Seaton and Jennifer Rambo (right, photo by Kendall Wright), who have been together for more than four years. The couple’s witness was Cheryl Maples (center), who filed the Wright v. Arkansas challenge last summer and has worked tirelessly to win marriage in the state.
The couple drove up to Eureka Springs from Little Rock when they learned the Pulaski County courthouse wouldn’t be open today. The AP has more:
Seaton and Rambo slept in their Ford Focus after arriving at 2 a.m. Saturday, waking up every 30 minutes to make sure they were at the head of the line. The moment they saw another couple pull up, Seaton and Rambo bolted to the courthouse.
“I don’t think I ran that fast,” Rambo said.
The Carroll County Courthouse was the only one scheduled to open today for regular hours, and it’s due to close at 1:00 p.m. CDT. Here’s the scene when it opened:
As for the other counties in Arkansas:
The executive director of the Association of Arkansas Counties says county clerks are scrambling to prepare for same-sex couples seeking marriage licenses after the state’s ban on gay marriages was overturned.
Chris Villines says he and his staff will spend Saturday talking with county clerks and attorneys about the ramifications of Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Chris Piazza’s ruling Friday that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.
…Villines says he expects most clerks to be able to issue same-sex marriage licenses starting Monday.
That’s if the decision isn’t stayed before then.
May 10th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
A Rush to the Clerk’s Office?: Arkansas. Maybe. Pulaski County (Little Rock, AK) Circuit Court Judge Christopher Piazza ruled yesterday that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage violated the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. The state Attorney General’s office has filed a request to stay the ruling pending an appeal to the state Supreme Court. But until that stay is granted, same-sex marriage is perfectly legal, even though most of the state’s county clerk offices will remain closed until Monday. There is one exception though: the Carroll County Clerk’s Office, located in the tiny gay enclave of Eureka Springs in the northwest corner of the state, will be open today from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. There are no blood tests, and no waiting periods And with Eureka Springs being just a short drive from Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas, there’s no residency requirements.
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Darwin, NT; Kraków, Poland; New Hope, PA; São Paulo, Brazil; Tallahassee, FL.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Buffalo, NY; Des Moines, IA.
Other Events This Weekend: Purple Party, Dallas, TX; BeachBear Weekend, Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Houston Splash, Houston, TX; Big Horn Rodeo, Las Vegas, NV; Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Miami, FL.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From GPU News, April 1973, page 17.
Rodney Scheel was only 21 when he opened his first gay bar in Madison, Wisconsin in December 1972, which went through “its share of experimental phases- bar, restaurant, piano bar, dance club, and home-away-from-home for many of the newly-liberated Gay men and Lesbians and their friends of that era.” The Back Door, located just across the railroad tracks from the University of Wisconsin, remained in business until 1979. Scheel would go on to found a number of gay bars in Madison, including the popular leather/levi bar Rod’s at the Hotel Washington. The area where the Back Door once stood has been redeveloped into student housing.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Book Burning in Berlin: 1933. After raiding the Institute for Sexual Research and looted its vast library and archives (see May 6), the Nazi-affiliated German Student Association (Deutsche Studentenschaft) proclaimed a nationwide “Action against the Un-German Spirit”, which culminated in the “cleansing” (“Säuberung”) by fire on May 10, 1933 of an estimated 25,000 volumes of “un-German” books. Book burnings took place throughout Germany, and the bulk of the books burned in Berlin came from the ISR. About 40,000 people watched in the Opernplatz as propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels declared “No to decadence and moral corruption!” LGBT advocacy, which had developed as a strong scientific and social institution in Germany over the past several decades, was shut down virtually overnight.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Max Lorenz: 1901-1975. The Düsseldorf native’s powerful performances as a heroic tenor (heldentenor, in German) in Wagner’s operas is probably what saved his life in Nazi Germany — or at the very least, the life of his Jewish wife, whom he married in 1932 despite his homosexuality. The very next year, he established his dominance at the Bayreuth Festival, the annual Wagner festival began by Richard Wagner himself, just as the Nazis came to power. Later, when Lorenz was caught “in flagrante” with a young man at Bayreuth, Hitler forbade his future performances at the prestigious festival. Winifred Wagner, the festival’s director, answered that she would would close the festival because without Lorenz, “Bayreuth can’t be done.” Such was Hitler’s love for Wagner’s operas that he backed down and let Lorenz perform. In 1943, when the SS stormed Lorenz’s home while he was away to take his wife and mother-in-law off to the concentration camps, Hermann Göring personally intervened and placed the entire family under his personal protection.
Lorenz’s career lasted almost three decades. He was particularly renowned for his performances as Siegfried (in Siegfried and Götterdämmerung), Tristan (in Tristan und Isolde) and as Walther (in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg) After the war, Lorenz became an Austrian citizen, but his reputation was sullied by the assumption that he had been a Nazi. He died in Salzburg in 1975.
Steve Gunderson: 1951. The first openly gay Republican to serve in Congress, the Wisconsin representative was outed on the floor of the House of Representatives by a fellow Republican, the virulently anti-gay Rep. Bob Dornan of California. The confrontation occurred during a debate on a measure that would have prohibited any school which received federal funding from “promoting homosexuality as a positive lifestyle.” Gunderson objected to some of the defects in how the measure was written, saying it “has the effect of prohibiting school counseling and guidance. It has the effect of prohibiting AIDS education.”
Dornan rose to object, saying that Gunderson has “a revolving door on his closet. He’s on, he’s out, he’s in, he’s out, he’s in. I guess you’re out because you went up and spoke to a huge homosexual dinner, Mr. Gunderson.” Dornan later complained to reporters, “We have a rep on our side who is a homo who goes in and out of the closet. I have just had it with him saying he takes second place to no one in this House … (in) upholding Christian principles.”
That “homosexual dinner” was the annual Human Rights Campaign Fund dinner in Baltimore two weeks earlier, where Gunderson told the gathering about the beach house in Rehoboth that he shared with “Rob” and “our two dogs.” Gunderson also talked about how he and Rob had been touched by the AIDS crisis in the past year. “Two of our closest friends died from AIDS, and while for Rob and I this was the first personal loss from this tragic disease, it makes its impact no less painful to each of us. He also urged gays and lesbians to come out of the closet, saying that “unless a son or brother is gay, a daughter or sister is lesbian, most families will not encounter challenges to their traditional values.”
Despite Gunderson’s urging that more gays and lesbians come out of the closet, Gunderson refused to confirm or deny his sexuality to reporters in the immediate aftermath of Dornan’s outburst, saying that he wouldn’t dignify Dornan’s comments with a response. But in 1994, refusing to deny it was all that was really needed. Rep. Barny Frank (D-MA) sympathized somewhat: “This is not an easy situation he finds himself in. In a perfect world none of this would be necessary.”
Gunderson won re-election later that year, and he became the lone Republican to vote against the Defense of Marriage Act two years later. He chose not to seek re-election in 1996. In January 2010, Gunderson was appointed by President Barack Obama to the President’s Commission on White House Fellows. He is currently the President and CEO of the Council on Foundations, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit membership association of approximately 2,000 grantmaking foundations and corporations.
Michele Van Gorp: 1977. Born in Warren, Michigan, Michele Van Gorp played women’s collegiate basketball at Purdue University for her freshman and sophomore years, then transferred to Duke University, where she led Duke to the school’s first NCAA final for women’s basketball. She was drafted into the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) in 1999. After playing for a year with the Portland Fire, she was traded to the Minnesota Lynx, where she gained a reputation as one of the league’s toughest defenders.
Van Gorp was the only open lesbian in the WNBA from 2002 (when Sue Wicks retired) until 2005, when Sheryl Swoopes and Latasha Byears came out. She missed much of the 2004 season due to a stress fracture in her left foot, and she ended up retiring from the WNBA in 2005. She is currently back at her alma mater, working with the Duke women’s basketball 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?
May 9th, 2014
Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Christopher Piazza has ruled that Arkansas’ laws and constitutional amendment banning marriage for same-sex couples violates the U.S. Constitution. In reaching his conclusion, Judge Piazza found that “same-sex couples fulfill all four factors to be considered a suspect or quasi-suspect classification,” but ultimately he decided it didn’t matter:
Regardless of the level of review required, Arkansas’s marriage laws discriminate against same-sex couples in violation of the Equal Protection Clause because they do not advance any conceivable legitimate state interest necessary to support even a rational basis review. Under this standard, the laws must proscribe conduct in a manner that is rationally related to the achievement of a legitimate governmental purpose. See Vance v. Bradley,440 U.S. 93,97 (L979). “[S]ome objectives … are not legitimate state interests” and, even when a law is justified by an ostensibly legitimate purpose, “[t]he State may not rely on a classification whose relationship to an asserted goal is so attenuated as to render the distinction arbitrary or irrational .” Cleburne,473 U.S. at 44647.
At the most basic level, by requiring that classifications be justified by an independent and legitimate purpose, the Equal Protection Clause prohibits classifications from being drawn for “the purpose of disadvantaging the group burdened by the law.” Romer, 517 U.S. at 633; see also United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. —, 133 S.Ct. 2675 (2013); Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 450; Rational basis review is a deferential standard, but it “is not a toothless one”. Mathews v. Lucas, 427 U.5.495,510 (1976).
The Supreme Court invoked this principle most recently in Windsor when it held that the principal provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”) violated equal protection guarantees because the “purpose and practical effect of the law … [was] to impose a disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages.” Windsor,570 U.S. —, 133 S.Ct. at 2693. The case at bar and many around the country have since challenged state laws that ban same-sex marriage as a result of that decision.
As you can see, last year’s Windsor v. U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down portions of the Defense of Marriage Act continues to reverberate through the many challenges of state marriage bans across the country. This case is no different, as Judge Piazza quoted extensively from the Windsor opinion. He also quotes from a statement Mildred Loving made for the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision which struck down anti-miscegenation laws throughout the country.
Judge Piazza also pointed out that the state’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which Arkansas voters passed in 2004 with 75% of the vote, is inconsistent with the rest of the state constitution, which he called “a dangerous precedent”:
Article 2, § 2 of the Arkansas Constitution guarantees Arkansans certain inherent and inalienable rights, including the enjoyment of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
All men are created equally free and independent, and have certain inherent and inalienable rights, amongst which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty; of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and reputation; and of pursuing their own happiness, To secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
ARK. Const., art 2, § 2.
In this case, Article 2 § 2 was left intact by the voters, but in Amendment 83 they singled out sarne-sex couples for the purpose of disparate treatment. This is an unconstitutional attempt to narrow the definition of equalrty. The exclusion of a minority for no rational reason is a dangerous precedent.
Furthermore, the fact that Amendment 83 was popular with voters does not protect it from constitutional scrutiny as to federal rights. “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts.” W.Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624,638 (1943). The Constitution guarantees that all citizens have certain fundamental rights. These rights vest in every person over whom the Constitution has authority and, because they are so important, an individual’s fundamental rights “may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” Id. at 638.
Judge Piazza turned away the state’s arguments against same-sex marriage: that the ban is necessary to promote procreation, that it is a federalism issue, that the voters have a right to uphold tradition. And he also anticipated the complaints about activist judges: “The court is not unmindful of the criticism that judges should not be super legislators. However, the issue at hand is the fundamental right to marry being denied to an unpopular minority. Our judiciary has failed such groups in the past.” He then went into the 110-year history from the 1856 Dredd Scott decision, which held that even a former slave had “no rights or priveleges” of citizenship, to the 1967 Loving decision which recognized that, regardless of racial differences, “the freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.” Drawing on the Loving example, Judge Piazza concluded:
THEREFORE, THIS COURT HEREBY FINDS the Arkansas constitutional and legislative ban on s{Lme-sex marriage through Act 144 of 1997 and Amendment 83 is unconstitutional.
It has been over forty years since Mildred Loving was given the right to marry the person of her choice. The hatred and fears have long since vanished and she and her husband lived full lives together; so it will be for the same-sex couples. It is time to let that beacon of freedom shine brighter on all our brothers and sisters. We will be stronger for it.
Judge Piazza’s order came without a stay. But with it coming down after clerk offices around the state closed for the weekend, marriages may not be available until Monday. Attorney General Dustin McDaniel’s office has announced that they will ask for a stay and they intend to appeal. McDaniel said last week that he supports marriage equality, becoming the first state-wide office holder to do so. He also said however that his office would continue defending the state’s marriage ban in court.
May 9th, 2014
StraightGrandmother posted an update on her condition as a comment to a thread, but as many of you might not see it, I’ll reprint it here:
I can’t find the sweet article where so many of you wished me well on my hip replacement. Your kind thoughts are appreciated.
I wish I could say it went well, but it didn’t. Today is day 10 and the first relatively pain free day. The surgeon was great, did a fine job. But the nursing and patient support staff not so much, shall we say. It’s all a horrid story I would at this point rather not share the details of. Well one, I stiff armed the nurses aid who insisted on rolling me over on my incision the day after surgery, the day which they gave me NO PAIN MEDICATION, the day after my surgery. Nurses aid now claiming workmanship comp, but I did NOT get rolled over. When I say “No” I really mean it.
Today is the BEST day, my primary care stepped in and prescribed me proper pain meds which I took this afternoon, so bottom line I’m better. And I hope every day better. I haven’t decided if I should take the Xanax the Primary care prescribed for me to take tonight. It was a completely traumatizing ordeal. But now, after 10 days, now I have hope and manageable pain.
We’re wishing you the best, SGM. Hope things continue to improve.
May 9th, 2014
A BTB reader in Brazil passes along this fascinating tidbit: the Justice and Peace Commission of the São Paulo Archdiocese has issued a surprisingly supportive statement in advance of the city’s Pride celebration that’s taking place this week. The statement, which was released on April 30 and citing the Second Vatican Council, states, in part:
…[W]e can not remain silent in the face of the reality that is lived by this population: they are the target of prejudice and victims of the systematic violation of their Fundamental Rights, such as those to health, education, work, housing and culture, among others. Besides all this, they face every day an unbearable level of physical and verbal violence, building up to murders which are true crimes of hatred.
Given this, we invite all people of good will, and in particular, all Christians, to reflect on this profoundly unjust reality as lived by LGBT people, and, guided by the supreme principle of Human Dignity, to dedicate themselves actively to overcoming it.
The Justice and Peace Commission’s director told Estadão (via Google Translate, with some cleanups):
The director of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Archdiocese, Geraldo Magela Tardelli, said this is the first time that the commission wrote “formally” in favor of homosexuals. “The committee has a mission, according to Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Ars: ‘we have to give voice to those who have no voice.’ Right now, what we are finding is that there is an increase of violence against homosexuals, so we can not overlook. regarding this violation of human rights,” said the director.
According to him, the realization of the Gay Parade ordered the disclosure of the note.”We think this was the right time to put this note in circulation. We, the Church, are engaged in defending human rights and are not siding with its violation, regardless of color and sexual orientation of people,” said Tardelli.
The full statement is here:
Note from the Justice and Peace Commission of the Archdiocese of São Paulo
Faithful to its mission of announcing and defending the Gospel and civilizing values of Human Rights, the Justice and Peace Commission of São Paulo (CJPSP) wishes to make a public statement on the occasion of the 18th LGBT Pride Parade which is to take place on the Avenida Paulista next Sunday, 4th May 2014.
We base ourselves on the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, approved at the 2nd Vatican Council which says “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts.”
Therefore the defense of the dignity, the citizenship and the safety of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transvestite and Transgender) people is indispensable in the building of a fraternal and just society. For this reason we can not remain silent in the face of the reality that is lived by this population: they are the target of prejudice and victims of the systematic violation of their Fundamental Rights, such as those to health, education, work, housing and culture, among others. Besides all this, they face every day an unbearable level of physical and verbal violence, building up to murders which are true crimes of hatred.
Given this, we invite all people of good will, and in particular, all Christians, to reflect on this profoundly unjust reality as lived by LGBT people, and, guided by the supreme principle of Human Dignity, to dedicate themselves actively to overcoming it.
São Paulo, 30th April 2014
Human Rights Commission of São Paulo
[Special thanks to BTB reader James]
May 9th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Darwin, NT; Kraków, Poland; New Hope, PA; São Paulo, Brazil; Tallahassee, FL.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Buffalo, NY; Des Moines, IA.
Other Events This Weekend: Purple Party, Dallas, TX; BeachBear Weekend, Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Houston Splash, Houston, TX; Big Horn Rodeo, Las Vegas, NV; Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Miami, FL.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From The Los Angeles Advocate, July 1968, page 19.
There was a rather tight cluster of gay bars in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood, where Santa Monica Blvd joins up with Sunset. Connie’s Place was just up the block a little ways (see the ad for Mar 26), and several other gay bars extended for at least two blocks down Sunset. I haven’t been able to find anything about the Joker Inn — when it opened, when it closed, or what kind of clientele it attracted. The bar is gone, but gay men are still turning up at the address which is part of the larger adult bookstore Circus of Books.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Three Hanged for Sodomy: 1726. In July of 1725, Gabriel Lawrence, 43 and “a Papist” — that alone was also a crime in 18th century England — was indicted “for committing, with Thomas Newton, aged 30 years, the heinous and detestable sin of Sodomy, not to be named among Christians.” He was among 40 who were arrested at the famous “molly house” of Margaret Clap, a “place of rendezvous for Sodomites.” Newton, who testified against the defendants in exchange for immunity, described the place: “For the more convenient establishment of her customers, she had provided beds in every room of the house. She usually had 30 or 40 of such Persons there every Night, but more especially on a Sunday. I was conducted up one pair of Stairs, and by the Perswasions of Bavidge (who was present all the Time) I suffer’d the Prisoner to commit the said Crime. He has attempted the same since that Time, but I never would permit him any more.” Newton testified against Lawrence, taking upon himself the role of innocent victim even though he, too, was at the “molly house” and arrested.
Newton claimed that he didn’t know that Claps’s establishment was a molly house. He must have been pretty dumb, because he apparently spent a lot of time there. He not only testified against Lawrence, but also against two others at the house: William Griffin, 43, and Thomas Wright, 32, who “often fetched me to oblige company that way.” All three defendants were found guilty and sentenced to death. On May 9, 1726, Lawrence, Griffin, and Wright were hanged at the infamous gallows known as “the Tyburn Tree,” not far from the present-day location of the Marble Arch. Margaret Clapp was fined, made to stand at the pillory at Smithfield, and sent to prison for two years.
[Sources: Ian McCormick. Secret Sexualities: A Sourcebook of 17th and 18th Century Writings
“Trial of Gabriel Lawrence.” Old Bailey Proceedings Online (April 1726): record t17260420-64.
Historian Rictor Norton has also posted trial records for Lawrence, Griffin and Wright at his web site.]
Ignorance Is Bliss: 1870. Dressed as Lady Stella Clinton and Miss Fanny Winifred Park, Ernest Boulton, 22, and Frederick William Park, 23 both scandalized and titillated Londoners when they attended a performance at the Strand Theatre and were arrested by police. A search of their homes turned up more than a dozen dresses, petticoats, bodices and bonnets. Their landlady described their dresses as very extreme. They were charged with conspiracy to commit sodomy.
The two defendants appeared in court in drag. The whole thing baffled the Attorney General, who testified on May 9, 1871 that the lack of detailed British knowledge on the topic was actually one of the country’s virtues. He thought it “fortunate [that] there is little learning or knowledge upon this subject in this country; there are other countries in which I am told learned treatises are written as to the appearance to be expected in such cases. Fortunately Doctors in England know very little about these matters.” Ignorance reigned, and it was to Boulton and Park’s benefit. Sure, they dressed funny, engaged in “disgraceful behaviour,” and wrote piles of letters describing their exploits — an entire day was spent reading them into the record — but none of that counted as evidence of a conspiracy to commit sodomy. And since wearing dresses itself wasn’t against the law, the jury found them not guilty.
[Source: Ivan Crozier. “Nineteenth-Century British psychiatric writings about homosexuality before Havelock Ellis: The missing story.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 68, no. 1 (Jan 2008): 65-102.]
Wichita Voters Repeal Gay Rights Ordinance: 1978. Anita Bryant’s success in defeating a gay rights ordinance in Miami at the ballot box the year before (see Jun 7) inspired voters in St. Paul to repeal their ordinance the following spring by more than a two-to-one margin (see Apr 25). Two weeks later, the fight moved to Wichita, Kansas, where an ordinance banning discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations due to “sexual or affectional preferences” was the subject of a special repeal election. After Miami voters repealed their anti-discrimination ordinance, Wichita organizers quickly gathered 31,000 signatures, more than three times the needed number, to place the ordinance up for a vote. The City Council decided to short-cut the process, and in a 3-2 vote agreed to place the issue on the ballot for a special May 9 election.
Rev. Richard A. Angwin, who headed the St. Paul repeal effort, traveled to Wichita fresh off of his St. Paul victory and told a Wichita audience that the Minnesota vote proved that “from the conservative Bible-belt of Dade County, Florida, to the liberal progressive north of Minnesota, that the American people are not willing to accept homosexuality as a legitimate intrusion into human rights ordinances.” He also argued that gay people were second-class citizens. “I think anyone who is immoral is a second-class citizen,” he said. “But I don’t say it out of hatred. I love the murderer, but I’m still going to limit his behavior in society.”
Wichita voters apparently agreed. They repealed Wichita’s anti-discrimination ordinance by a nearly five-to-one margin: 47,246 to 10,005. Forty-four percent of the city’s 128,888 registered voters turned out, making it the largest turnout for a city election in a decade. Rev. Ron Adrian, president of Concerned Citizens for Community Standards which campaigned for the repeal, was elated. He had only expected a two-to-one victory margin. “I think God’s using this vote to openly rebuke the pro-homosexual forces,” he said.
Robert Lewis, co-director of the Homophile Alliance, was initially bitter about the results. “Obviously there are a lot of bigots in Wichita,” he told reporters. But later, after cooling off at a local gay bar, Lewis put a better face on the defeat. “It’s like a New Year’s Eve party here. You would never know gay rights had been defeated. Gay people in Wichita are feeling much better about themselves as a result of this campaign.”
Two days later, it was revealed that Miami-based Protect America’s Children, which was linked to another tax exempt organization called “Anita Bryant Ministries,” had poured $20,000 into the Wichita and St. Paul battles. At $74,000 in today’s dollars, it represented big money for city elections in 1978. Their next target was a special election in Eugene, Oregon, to repeal its gay rights ordinance, scheduled for May 23.
Dana Goes International: 1998. The music world is shocked when judges at that year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Birmingham, England choose openly MtF Dana International as their champion. Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Israeli conservatives were shocked and demanded that next year’s telecast not be held in the winning country, as tradition holds, due to the “shame” of her being transsexual. Dana countered, “My victory proves God is on my side. I want to send my critics a message of forgiveness and say to them: try to accept me and the kind of life I lead. I am what I am and this does not mean I don’t believe in God, and I am part of the Jewish Nation.”
Here is how Dana International’s win looked on German television:
President Barack Obama Announces Support for Marriage Equality: 2012. Through much of his presidency, Barack Obama had long opposed the abolition of same-sex marriages via state and federal constitutional amendments, and during his 2008 primary campaign against then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, he distinguished his position from hers by calling for the full repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act in its entirety. (Her position was to repeal the provision barring federal recognition of same-sex marriages while keeping Section 2, which allows states to ignore other states’ marriages.) In 2011, his Justice Department announced that they would no longer defend DOMA in Federal Court, arguing that heightened scrutiny was called for in examining the law’s constitutionality, and that DOMA fails under that standard. But on the critical question of whether Obama supported same-sex marriage itself, he famously said that he was “still evolving” on the issue.
That evolution was completed when, during an interview with ABC News, Obama revealed that he now supported the rights of same-sex couples to marry”
I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.
Obama’s announcement came three days after Vice President Joe Biden told David Gregory on NBC’s Meet the Press that he was “absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights.”
Obama’s announcement made him the first sitting President to announce his support for marriage equality for same-sex couples. Conventional wisdom had held that such a position would be political suicide for national office, but Obama proved that wrong in November when he became the first presidential candidate to win an election on a platform calling for marriage equality. That same election also saw voters in three states — Maryland, Maine and Washington — make history by approving same-sex marriage at the ballot box, and voters in Minnesota turned back an attempt to write discrimination into its state constitution for only the second time in history. In the year following Obama’s announcement, the number of states providing marriage equality nearly doubled from six to eleven, after legislators in Rhode Island and Delaware passed legislation legalizing same-sex marriages.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
80 YEARS AGO: Alan Bennett: 1934. The English performer and playwright is best known for The Madness of George III and the film adaptation, The Madness of King George. He received an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay. In August 1960, he achieved instant fame as a comedy actor at the Edinburgh Festival by appearing in a satirical review with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook. His first play, Forty Years On, debuted in 1968. His critically acclaimed The History Boys won three Lawrence Olivier Awards in 2005 and Six Tony Awards on Broadway in 2006. His memoir, Untold Stories
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May 8th, 2014
When U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Friedmam declared Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional last March, he spilled considerable ink all over the state’s expert witness, Mark Regnerus, whose discredited Witherspoon-funded “study” purported to show that children of gay couples fared worse than other children. The problem was — and this came out in the cross-examination of the state’s star witness — the study included only two children who were actually raised by gay parents, and Regnerus admitted that they came out “Pretty good.” In his written opinion, Judge Friedman blasted “his 2012 ‘study’ (which) was hastily concocted at the behest of a third-party funder” as “flawed on its face.”
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette appealed the decision, and in a brief filed with the Sixth District Court of Appeals, he quietly omitted all references to Regnerus’s bogus study, and argued instead that same-sex marriage should be banned not because experts believe that same-sex parents are bad parents, but because voters believe it:
In preserving marriage as between a man and a woman, a reasonable voter might have thought that it is beneficial when children are raised in a home with both a mom and a dad. Another reasonable voter might have thought that this definition encourages those couples with the inherent ability to have children (i.e., opposite-sex couples) to enter into a committed, exclusive relationship, for the benefit of any children they might have. …
This appeal is not about approval or disapproval of same-sex relationships or sexual orientation. Nor is this appeal about a gay or lesbian individual’s ability to be a parent. This case is not about single moms’ and dads’ ability to raise children. As a society, we wish that all children had loving parents, no matter what their sexual orientation may be.
Because Judge Friedman wrote that he could not find that Michigan voters acted out of animus when approving the state’s constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage, Schuette’s brief takes as its central argument that striking down the constitutional amendment “demeans democracy,” and cites Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion in a Supreme Court ruling (Schuette vs BAMN) upholding Michigan’s ban on affirmative action. Singling out Kennedy this way is noteworthy. With Kennedy considered the potential swing vote in any upcoming Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, this brief was more or less written to Kennedy, rather than to the judges at the Sixth District Court of Appeals:
Justice Kennedy’s admonition on this point in Schuette is worth repeating: “It is demeaning to the democratic process to presume that the voters are not capable of deciding an issue of this sensitivity on decent and rational grounds.” 572 U.S. __, slip op. 17. To put this in perspective, more than 45 million American voters across the country have voted to retain the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. Respect for the dignity of these millions of voters, who must be presumed to be “decent and rational,” should make courts reluctant to conclude that support for maintaining the definition of marriage is irrational. After all, a decision by this Court that there is no rational basis for Michigan’s voters to have defined marriage as they did necessarily means that not only Michigan’s voters, but more than 42 million other American citizens who have voted the same way, did not have among them a single conceivable rational basis for their votes.
But they’re still not ready to give up their straight-parents-are-the-best argument. They’re just pinning it on voters, and not the experts:
The only question at issue, then, is whether any conceivable reason supports the people’s decision to retain the definition of marriage. Under the governing standards for rational-basis review, the people’s decision must be given the benefit of the doubt—it must be upheld if their policy choice is at least debatable, and even if it is under-inclusive or over-inclusive (or both).
Defining marriage as between one man and one woman satisfies this test. The State has a legitimate interest in marriage precisely because of marriage’s inherent connection to children. The vast majority of children born in Michigan (and the United States and the world) are born as a result of the sexual union of a man and a woman. Promoting marriage as between a man and a woman thus recognizes that every child should have the opportunity to know and have a relationship with his or her biological mother and father, and it increases the likelihood that the most common type of procreation will occur in a long-term, committed relationship. It was reasonable for Michigan voters to think that this is a beneficial setting for children, and thus to link marriage to procreation—the biological fact that every child has a mother and a father.
Michigan isn’t the only state to drop Regnerus like a hot potato. Two weeks after his study went down in flames in the Michigan case, attorneys for the Utah Attorney General’s office filed a special “Supplemental Authority clarifying position re: Regnerus study” with the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, in which the state disavowed its own citing of the Regnerus study in the original appeals brief filed in February. It looks like the word has gone out: Regnerus’s study is radioactive and the nearly $800,000 spent on it was wasted — unless you count its influence in Russia as a success.
May 8th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Darwin, NT; Kraków, Poland; New Hope, PA; São Paulo, Brazil; Tallahassee, FL.
AIDS Walks This Weekend: Buffalo, NY; Des Moines, IA.
Other Events This Weekend: Purple Party, Dallas, TX; BeachBear Weekend, Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Houston Splash, Houston, TX; Big Horn Rodeo, Las Vegas, NV; Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Miami, FL.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From Christopher Street, June 1977, page 47.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Tom of Finland: 1920-1991. Born Touko Laaksonen, Tom of Finland was famous for his stylized homoerotic and fetish art. Over a forty year career, he produced some 3,500 drawings in his unique exaggerated style. If Barbie dolls proportions represent an anatomically impossible ideal for women, Tom of Finland’s hypermasculine characters were portrayed in similarly fantastical idealizations of manly men, although Tom didn’t see it that way. “All my drawings are grounded in reality,” he said. “I use models, whom I initially photograph and then later refer to when I draw. People complain that I exaggerate. My fantasies often take over, of course, but I want to offer the viewer something that he can’t get in a photograph.”
His style was partly influenced by beefcake and physique magazines which skirted on the edges of U.S. censorship codes in the 1950s and 1960s. But as the codes were struck down in the 1960s over First Amendment issues, his drawings became more explicit and more overtly sexual. They became the definitive style guide for leathermen through his portrayal of policemen, lumberjacks, sailors and bikers, and they’ve inspired such artists as Robert Mapplethorpe (see Nov 4), Freddie Mercury (see Sep 5) and the Village People.
He died of a stroke brought on by emphysema on November 7, 1991. Several examples of his “dirty drawings ” — his unabashed description for them — have been acquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art. This past winter, works by Tom of Finland and “physique” photographer Bob Mizer (see Mar 27) were featured in a special exhibit at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. On September 8 of this year, his native Finland will honor him with a set of postage stamps which have been described as ” considerably more erotic than those usually seen on any nation’s envelopes.” A documentary film of his life is in the works and is slated for a 2015 release.
Darren Hayes: 1972. The singer-songwriter was the front man of Savage Garden. Their 1997 album by the same name peaked at #1 in Australia, #2 in the U.K., #3 in the U.S. Their biggest American hit was “Truly Madly Deeply.” Their follow-up album yielded another #1 hit in the U.S. with “I Knew I Loved You.” In 2002, he launched his solo career, and by 2005 it was clear that Savage Garden was through.
Hayes married his “childhood sweetheart” in 1997. They divorced in 2000 after he told her that he was gay. After years of public speculation about his sexuality, Hayes came out on July 18, 2006, when he announced that he had entered a civil partnership with his boyfriend, Richard Cullen, a month earlier. In April, 2007, he told The Advocate, “First of all, it took me a long time to even accept that I was gay. And then it took me a long time to be happy that I was gay.” That summer he headlined London’s Gay Pride at Trafalgar Square. You can see his video for “It Gets Better” here. His fourth solo album, Secret Codes and Battleships, was released in 2011. He and Cullen upgraded their partnership in 2013 to full marriage soon after same-sex marriage resumed in California.
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?
May 7th, 2014
I was (and still am) disturbed by the pressure for Eich’s resignation and yet am thrilled that HGTV has decided not to air a show on flipping houses with the Benham twins.
I clearly do not have all the answers.
I’m tempted to write more on this. Few things are more intellectually stimulating than finding what looks to be a contradiction in your own thoughts and feelings — but that doesn’t mean other people will be as enthralled. And I don’t want to turn this blog into All-Eich-All-the-Time. Let me know if there’s interest and I’ll go there.
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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"
At last, the truth can now be told.
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