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 27th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: A Coruña, Spain; Augusta, GA; Barcelona, Spain; Baton Rouge, LA; Bend, OR; Bilbao, Spain; Bologna, Italy; Bratislava; Slovakia; Budapest, Hungary; Cartagena, Colombia; Catania, Italy; Chicago, IL; Cleveland, OH; Cloppenburg, Germany; Columbia, SC (Black Pride); Corvallis, OR; Dublin, Ireland; Durban, South Africa; Flagstaff, AZ; Flint, MI; Frederick, MD; Gijón, Spain; Harlem, NY; Helsinki, Finland; Holland, MI; Houston, TX; Istanbul, Turkey; Las Palmas, Gran Canaria; Leamington Spa, UK; Lexington, KY; London, UK; Mexico City, DF; Milan, Italy; Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN; Naples, Italy; New York, NY; Omaha, NE; Oslo, Norway (Europride); Palermo, Italy; Paris, France; Perugia, Italy; Porto, Portugal; Puglia, Italy; Saarbrücken, Germany; St. Louis, MO; St. Petersburg, FL; San Francisco, CA; Santa Fe, NM; Sardinia, Italy; Seville, Spain; Skopje, Macedonia; Seattle, WA; Sheffield, UK; Sundsvall, Sweden; Swansea, UK; Tenerife, Spain; Toledo, Spain; Toronto, ON (WorldPride); Turin, Italy; Valencia, Spain; Valladolid, Spain (Friday only); Vancouver, BC; Västerås, Sweden; Venice, Italy; Vigo, Spain; Yellow Springs, OH.
Other Events This Weekend: LGBT Rainbow Days At Six Flags Over Georgia, Austell, GA; Canadian Rockies International Rodeo, Calgary, AB; Durban Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Durban, South Africa; Frameline International LGBT Film Festival, San Francisco, CA; Midsummer Canal Festival, Utrecht, Netherlands.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From the Advocate, May 12, 1983, page 38.
The Chase was the upstairs disco portion of the three-story Indianapolis complex known collectively as the Hunt and Chase. The Hunt, downstairs, was a brass and hunter green show bar, while the Chase upstairs was Indy’s glamor disco, with stainless steel, mirrors and two-story tall mirrors that stretched up to the ceiling on three sides of the dance floor. It may have been a gay bar, but it also had a reputation for being Indianapolis’s finest dance bar, gay or straight. Being a gay bar didn’t stop Playboy from naming it one of the country’s top ten discos in 1979. After disco’s popularity plummeted in the 1980s, the Chase’s shiny surfaces were blacked out and it became more of an alt-music club. The location today is now a much quieter office building.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► Congress Bars Homosexuals from Immigration: 1952. When Congress passed a major overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, it did so with an eye toward protecting the country from alleged hordes of communists and fellow travelers invading the country. The McCarran-Walter Act, as it was known, removed the previous quotas which excluded immigrants based on the country of origin, and replaced them with a provision barring those who were deemed unlawful, immoral, diseased, or politically suspect. With politicians looking for communists and homosexuals under ever bed and in every closet, few Senators and Representatives dared to vote against it, despite a promised veto by President Harry Truman. After Congress passed the McCarran-Walter Act, Truman kept his word and vetoed it on June 26, calling it “un-American” and an “absurdity.” The very next day, the House overrode his veto in a 278 to 113 vote, and the Senate followed suit on June 27 with a 57 to 26 vote, and the bill became law that very day.
For the next four decades, the U.S. government used the McCarran-Walter Act to prevent hundreds of people each year from visiting the U.S solely because of their political beliefs and associations. Political beliefs however weren’t the only litmus test the government applied. One provision prohibited entry to “aliens afflicted with psychopathic personality, epilepsy, or a mental defect.” Since the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental defect, the Immigration and Naturalization Service took that to mean that gays and lesbians were to be barred from entry into the United States. Even after the APA removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, the INS continued to bar openly gay people from immigrating. As the years wore on, the ban was enforced haphazardly, but gay immigrants remained subject to deportation at the whim of an immigration judge.
That remained the state of affairs until the 1990 Immigration Act finally removed homosexuality as grounds for exclusion (see Nov 29). But three years earlier. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) pushed through a provision to an appropriations bill prohibiting anyone with HIV from entering the country. That ban went beyond prohibiting immigration, and included visits by HIV-positive tourists, health care advocates, business people, or anyone else entering the U.S. for so much as a single day. That ban remained in place until 2010.
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Paul Douglas
June 27th, 2014
I am so grateful that Jesse Helms is dead. Just where he belongs, with his maker.
Victor
June 27th, 2014
Yeah… I danced a jig when Helms died, too. Little did we know that the batshit crazy wing of the GOP Helms once represented as one of a small handful of equally destructive RWNJs would eventually take over the entire party.
Tony Hammock
June 27th, 2014
Do you all still sell “BoxTurtleBulletin” t-shirts?
Thanks much, T
Hue-Man
June 27th, 2014
“First mass gay wedding in Canada draws couples from around the world”
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/06/27/first-mass-gay-wedding-in-canada-draws-couples-from-around-the-world/
“An enlightened approach to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is good for the bottom line, but it’s also the right thing to do, says TD Bank CEO Ed Clark.
Clark gave key speech at the WorldPride Human Rights Conference in Toronto on Wednesday in recognition of TD’s early advocacy of LGBT issues.”
“Clark said he consciously began trying to make the culture at TD inclusive for all employees in 1994 by offering same sex benefits to his employees. He said he was shocked when only 55 signed up, a startlingly low number for an institution with 55,000 employees.
Clark said he was upset to realize that people were afraid to reveal their sexuality to colleagues and began a personal initiative to change the culture inside the bank.
Clark said he learned that in order to change the culture internally, the bank had to also present a public face in support of LGBT issues.” http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/td-bank-ceo-ed-clark-on-embracing-lgbt-issues-1.2688932
Jim Hlavac
June 27th, 2014
Sure, Helms, boo-hiss —
Who are all these fellows? “The very next day, the House overrode his veto in a 278 to 113 vote, and the Senate followed suit on June 27 with a 57 to 26 vote, and the bill became law that very day.”
If we are to excoriate heterosexuals who didn’t like gay men in either 1952 or 1990, or even 2000 for that matter, and seemingly even 2010 … then we shall exclude nearly the lot of them … really now, pick on them all, not just one or two …
Paul Douglas
June 30th, 2014
My persuasion is that we should focus & pick on the leaders of their hypocritical religious crusade. Its far more practical Jim Hlavac, to concentrate our energy on the most egregious bigots and let those less committed to prejudice slip away into the shadows. We must pick and choose our targets.
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