The Daily Agenda for Saturday, June 7

Jim Burroway

June 7th, 2014

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Marriages Continue in Wisconsin: Milwaukee and Madison. Soon after yesterday’s ruling came down declaring Wisconsin’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, the county courthouses in Madison and Milwaukee stayed open late last night to handle the rush for marriage licenses. This was something of a surprise since Federal District Judge Barbara B. Crabb’s ruling wasn’t accompanied by an injunction ordering the state to make marriage licenses available to everyone everywhere. That’s not expected until sometime after June 16. Yet her decision did say that Wisconsin’s prohibition on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. So that seems to leave county clerks neither required nor prohibited from issuing licenses to same-sex couples. And so 68 couples got married at the Milwaukee County Court House, along with another 61 at the Dane County Court House in Madison. Both courthouses will reopen again this morning at 9:00 a.m.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Albany, NY; Athens, Greece; Bergen, Norway; Boston, MA; Birmingham, AL; Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo, ON; Charleston, WV; Cheyenne, WY; Davenport, IA; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Des Moines, IA; Edmonton, AB; El Paso, TX; Fresno, CA; Hannover, Germany; Honolulu, HI; Indianapolis, IN; Innsbruck, Austria; Lille, France; Los Angeles, CA; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Maplewood/South Orange, NJ; Milwaukee, WI; Oxford, UK; Philadelphia, PA; Plano, TX; Rome, Italy; Salt Lake City, UT; Seoul, South Korea; Söderhamn, Sweden; Spencer, IN; Split, Croatia; Tulsa, OK; Washington, DC; Youngstown, OH.

Other Events This Weekend: Razzle Dazzle Dallas, Dallas, TX; Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Hartford, CT; AIDS Walk, London, UK; Cinépride LGBT Film Festival, Nantes, France; Gay Days Disney, Orlando, FL; AIDS Life Cycle, San Francisco to Los Angeles, CA; Seoul LGBT Film Festival, Seoul, South Korea; Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel.

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From GPU News, June 1977, page 48.

 

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Miami Voters Rescind Gay Rights Ordinance: 1977. The Dade County Commission approved an ordinance in January of 1977 that would outlaw discrimination against gay people in employment, housing and public services (see Jan 18). Miami joined about 40 other communities around the nation had similar anti-discrimination laws in effect.

Reaction from local Christian conservatives was swift. Former beauty queen and Florida Orage Juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant learned about the ordinance when it was denounced from the pulpit at Northwest Baptist Church. She sprang into action, creating a group called “Save Our Children” to overturn the ordinance at the ballot box. Fearmongering about “access to children” would be the group’s main focus. She told one audience, “Some males who would become teachers even want to wear dresses to work and flaunt their homosexuality in front of our children.” To another, she warned,  “When the law requires you to let an admitted homosexual teach your children and serve as a role model for them, it’s time to stop being so tolerant.” She also blamed homosexuals for the weather. “Do you know why California has a drought? Because a Southern California city passed a gay rights ordinance. That’s God’s way of punishing civilizations that are tolerant of homosexuals.”

Bryant’s mean-spiritedness reportedly cost her a planned syndicated television series when producers backed away from the controversial singer. This gave her a chance to reveal her persecution complex. Declaring that “the blacklisting of Anita Bryant has begun,” she claimed that in losing that job, “it destroys the dream that I have had since I was a child.” Gay rights leader and local businessman Bob Kunst relished the irony. “She wants to cause gays to lose their jobs and she complains because she has lost a job. The lady is a hypocrite.”

Days before the vote was to take place, Florida Gov. Ruben Askew was asked about the Miami campaign at a news conference. “If I were in Miami,” he responded, “I would have no difficulty in voting to repeal that ordinance.” He also said that he had no known gay people on his staff, and he wouldn’t hire any. Askew had been seen as being among a new breed of open-minded Southern Democrats, and his name was often mentioned as a potential Presidential contender.

The final vote wasn’t even close. When the special election came around, the final tally was 202,319 to just 89,562. Dade County voted overwhelmingly to jump onto Anita Bryant’s bandwagon. Bryant responded, “The laws of God and the cultural values of man have been vindicated,” and she announced that she would take her campaign to other cities across America.

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?

JakeAZ

June 7th, 2014

Jim, it’s DANE County in Wisconsin. Dade County is in Florida.

Jim Burroway

June 7th, 2014

For obvious reasons, I had Dade County on my mind.

Paul Douglas

June 7th, 2014

I hope divorceé Anita Bryant is looking back with horror on her own rôle in arousing LGBT people & our allies 40 years ago. Marriage equality can thank christianist bigots like her for waking us up!

JakeAZ

June 7th, 2014

Jim, I totally get that since I then read the next article!! Sorry if I growled.

Jake
PHX
born-n-bred Badger

enough already

June 7th, 2014

Paul Douglas,
I think it was the sheer hatred, the pure animus motivating the attacks by Christians upon us in the last 35 years which tipped the scales.
Their ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ and ‘but they can get legal contracts to do the same thing as marriage does’ lies were exposed one time too many. I think the horrible case in Florida (which led to even President Obama finally pronouncing an executive order) in which the wife and children of that dying woman were forbidden to see her by good Christians acting on their good Christian conscience was what finally did it for a lot of people.
Anita Bryant is a horrible, horrible person. I’m glad she’s lived long enough to see the evil hatred she has done be turned into justice.

Timothy Kincaid

June 7th, 2014

enough already,

Your own personal animus towards Christians aside, you have no reason to believe that “the wife and children of that dying woman were forbidden to see her by good Christians acting on their good Christian conscience”. Neither you nor I know the religious affiliation of those involved nor, for that matter, of the victims.

For all you know it was Buddhists denying the rights of Christians. Or atheists denying the rights of Wiccans.

It’s fine if you hate Christians. You have the right to hate whomever you wish. You do not have the right to make baseless accusations.

Merv

June 7th, 2014

Yeah, don’t go randomly blaming Christians for anti-gay bigotry, because you’ll be right only 99% of the time.

Timothy Kincaid

June 7th, 2014

Merv,

You are aware, aren’t you, that the VAST majority of people in the US who support marriage equality identify as Christians.

Merv

June 7th, 2014

I’m aware that just over 70% of Americans identify as Christian, yet organized opposition to gay rights is pretty much exclusively Christian. What little Christian support for gay rights there is is poorly organized and muted. I’m aware that if you took Christians out of the equation, support for gay rights in the US would be overwhelming. There is one and only one reason we do not yet have full equality in the US: Organized opposition by Christians.

enough already

June 7th, 2014

Jim,
I don’t hate Christians – I just want them to stop persecuting us.
As to that hospital staff, I suppose it’s possible that some evil Buddhist or White Witch decided to disobey the laws of the land and make those children and poor woman suffer.
Sure, I’ll grant you the possibility.

My husband still has pain in his side where the good Christians in our family kicked him over and over again – after he’d thrown himself on top of me to protect me from their further blows.
They wanted us both dead.
That’s fact, and it’s very hard for me to look at Christian apologists and believe for one second that your religion is even remotely related to the sweetness and light you so often claim.

Again – I don’t hate you Christians, I just want you to stop inflicting the hatred of your religion upon us.

katz

June 8th, 2014

An upcoming thing: June 9-12 there’s a panel in DC to get important GLBT historical sites added to the National Register of Historic Places.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2014/05/28/us/ap-us-lgbt-heritage.html?_r=0

Victor

June 8th, 2014

Religion, or faith if you prefer, is rather like a magnifying glass: it only has the power to enhance what is illuminated. Some people’s inspiration finds greater coherence through that lense and they aspire to bring out the best in themselves and in others: they want a better world. For those with more selfish natures the lense serves to magnify their fears and narrow-mindedness: they want only what is better/safer/more comfortable for them.

The former are nearly always our allies, the latter our adversaries.

enough already

June 8th, 2014

That’s well put Victor.
One of the biggest problems in dealing with Christian groups on any subject of human and civil rights is that they must always accommodate the lowest common denominator of agreement. And that lowest agreement is always set by the most hate-driven.
Look at the whole abortion/contraception situation. Before the Catholics/Mormons/(I’m calling them Christians for the purpose of this argument, they’re not) and the fundigelicals all got together, there was room for women to have domain over there own bodies through contraception, though all three groups were opposed to abortion, regardless of the harm the woman suffered.
Now, the Christian groups are united on ending all abortion and making all contraception (except Vatican Roulette) illegal.
Ditto gay rights – look at the GOP party platform in Texass (why did my spelling checker flag that state name?). It’s now calling for our psychological treatment, reparative therapy and conversion therapy. Before, they just called us a great threat to the family. Now, they are calling for pro-active steps against us.
It’s very dangerous and, given how committed our enemies, the Christians are and how little we queers care to vote, we’re in real danger.

Timothy Kincaid

June 9th, 2014

Merv,

if you “took Christians out of the equation”, you would (as you noted) take out so much of the population as to make your argument meaningless. It’s a bit like railing against people with brown hair.

enough already

The Texas GOP is not “calling for” anything to be done to you. They are defending those who want to undergo ex-gay therapy. It’s not a good statement either way, but there is a difference.

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