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 lobbyJune 15th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations Today: Anchorage, AK; Baltimore, MD; Bisbee, AZ; Blackpool, UK; Boston, MA; Edmonton, AB; Key West, FL; Luleå, Sweden; Memphis, TN (Black Pride); Nanaimo, Vancouver BC; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR; Regina, SK; Shanghai, China; Sitges, Spain; Tel Aviv, Israel; Thunder Bay, ON; Vienna, Austria; Wuppertal, Germany.
Other Events Today: Lesbian and Gay Stadtfest, Berlin, Germany; Cedar Point Gay Days, Cedar Point, OH; Out in the Vineyard Gay Wine Weekend, Sonoma, CA; Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From The (Washington) Blade, December 1976, page 5.
Hagerstown, Maryland’s Colonial Hotel appears to have been built sometime around 1917 as a five-story building with a mansard roof. The top floor was destroyed by a fire sometime in the middle of the 20th century, and the mansard roof was replaced with a flat one and the building shrank to four floors. Records indicate that Charles R. Smith and Billy Lee Anthis bought the building in 1974, and renovated the hotel. This may be when the lounge became the Bull Ring and began attracting a gay clientele from throughout Maryland, southern Pennsylvania, northern Virginia and the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. The building still stands in Hagerstown’s downtown historical district, with the upper floors rented out as low-income apartments.
Sen. Clyde Hoey
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► Senate Committee Orders “Pervert Inquiry”: 1950. The Senate Committee on Expendatures in the Executive Department ordered an investigative subcommittee to investigate Washington D.C. police allegations that an estimated 3,750 gays and lesbians were being employed by the federal government (see May 19). Sen. Clyde R. Hoey (D-NC) was named to head the investigation. “The paramount objective is to protect the Government and the public interest,” he explained, and promised the investigation will make “every effort to obtain all the pertinent facts” but without “subject(ing) any individual to ridicule.
The New York Times reported that Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), who had made numerous allegations concerning Communists and homosexuals in the federal government, agreed to remove himself from the panel, agreed to step down from the inquiry “to avoid being in a position of judging his own allegations. Sen. Andrew F. Schoeppel (R-KS) was named to take his place. Other panel members were Sens. Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME), John McClellan (D-AR), James Eastland (D-MS), Herbert O’Conor (D-MD) and Karl Mundt (R-SD).
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
► Neil Patrick Harris: 1973. NPH has successfully smashed two important acting barriers. A former child actor, he has successfully navigated the difficulties of becoming an adult actor in Broadway, film, and television. And he has also navigated the difficult transition from assumed-straight actor to a highly visible gay one, with partner David Burtka and twin children who were born in 2010. And as a very visible gay actor, he still manages to play straight roles on film and television. In addition, he has been an acclaimed host for the Tony Awards in 2009, 2011, 2012, and 2013. He didn’t host the 2010 Tonys, but that year he did win an Emmy for hosting the 2009 Awards, and he won two more Emmys for hosting the 2011 and 2012 Tonys. His winning ways have continued this years with his performance in the Broadway premiere of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, for which he won a Drama Desk Award and a Tony for Best Actor in a Musical.
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