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 lobbyJuly 1st, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From Arizona Gay News, June 24, 1977, page 7.
The Last Culture disco opened in Tucson in 1977 over the July 4 weekend. The Arizona Gay News described the new club:
Aztec, Egyptian, Futuristic are apt words to describe the totally remodeled Last Culture disco located at 1455 N. Miracle Mile. Owners Bernie, Joel, and Budd have spared no expense to make this club one of the most up to date discotheques in the West. A complete new computerized sound system. A completely new lighting system. A complete new laser system that will have your head spinning are but three of the innovations that have been installed. There is a new bleacher section for resting between dances.
The Last Culture disco is in conjunction with Dr. Jekyll’s and Mr. Hyde’s Restaurant which makes this facility one of the most complete entertainment centers in the Southwest.
The city of Tucson inadvertently found itself in the gay bar business in November of 1978 when it purchased the Tucson House, a high rise apartment building on 1455 N. Miracle Mile, which the city intended to turn into public housing for senior citizens. City council members were surprised to learn that the strip mall in front of Tucson House, which housed The Last Culture and Jekyll and Hyde’s, happened to be part of the same transaction, making the city the clubs’ new landlord. While Tucson overall was quite gay friendly — the city council would pass a broad anti-discrimination ordinance a month later — anti-gay council member Ricard Amlee was aghast. “I don’t want to use city funds to finance any of their operations,” he said, apparently ignorant of the fact that the two bars were now paying the city “four figures each month” for rent.
At about the same time, the business itself was sold to new owners, and I don’t know what happened after that. I’m still combing through back issues of the Arizona Gay News, which showed that the business continued to advertise as Jekyll’s Last Culture for a few more weeks, as it had been doing through much of 1978, after which it seems to have dropped The Last Culture and advertised itself simply as Jekyll’s. The building is still there (that stretch of Miracle Mile was renamed as the southern portion of Oracle Road to reflect a realignment several blocks to the north), and houses a family and youth counseling non-profit organization.
[Sources: “Jekyll’s Changes Hands, City New Landlord.” Arizona Gay News 3, no. 47 (November 23, 1978): 1.]
L-R: Willem Arondeus, Sjoerd Bakker, and Johan Brouwer.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► Gay Resistance Fighters Shot By Nazis: 1943. Dutch painter and writer Willem Arondeus’s career in art, like that of many artists, was marked by poverty. But his 1938 biography of the Dutch painter Matthijs Maris (1839-1917) not only assured Arondeus of a modest steady income, but Maris’s fight on the barricades in 1871 for the Paris Communards inspired Arondeus to join the Resistance when the Nazis invaded Holland. Arondeus hatched a plot to burn the Bevolkingsregister which housed the citizen registration office in Amsterdam where the Nazis kept copies of all of the identity cards held by Dutch citizens. Late on March 27, 1943, Arondeus and fourteen others, including two young doctors, donned German uniforms, asked the building’s guards to open the building for a special inspection. As soon as they gained entry, the two doctors injected the guards to put them asleep and placed them in the courtyard away from harm while the rest of the crew set fire to the building.
The destroyed Bevolkingsregister, 1943.
Five days later, an unknown infiltrator informed the Nazis, which arrested the group. During the trial, Arondeus took responsibility for the fire. The two doctors were sentenced to life in prison, but the rest were ordered to go before a firing squad. Before he was executed, Arondeus asked his lawyer to make public after the war that he and two others were gay: the tailor Sjoerd Bakker, who made the fake German uniforms, and writer Johan Brouwer. “Tell the people that gays are not cowards,” Arondeus instructed his lawyer. (Bakker, for his part, requested a pink shirt as his last request before his execution.) But despite the Netherlands’ renowned liberal attitudes, Arondeus’s request wasn’t heeded until 1990 when a television documentary by the Dutch filmmaker Toni Bouwmans revealed the full story.
[Source: Lutz van Dijk. “Arondeus, Willem” in Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon (eds.) Who’s Who in Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to the Mid-Twentieth Century
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
► Farley Granger: 1925-2011: Despite being one of the best-looking and well-regarded men in Hollywood, Granger didn’t have the kind of prolific a film career one might expect. He is best known for his role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope and Strangers on a Train and for Luchino Visconti’s Senso. In Rope, Granger played a murderer and (implied) lover of an accomplice in a story inspired by the Loeb and Leopold murder.
In real life, Granger enjoyed the attentions of men, and women. According to his 2007 autobiography Include Me Out, he had affairs with Patricia Neal, Arthur Laurents, Shelly Winters, Leonard Bernstein, Barbara Stanwick and Ava Gardner. As for dealing with “liberal” Hollywood’s deeply-entrenched homophobia:
I found it difficult to answer questions about “gay life in Hollywood when I was living and working there. …I was never ashamed, and I never felt the need to explain or apologize for my relationships with anyone. I had many gay friends, but more of my friends were straight and most were married with families. The ratio of my gay to straight friends was probably in direct proportion to that of gay and straight people in general. I have loved men. I have loved women.”
Granger insisted he was never closeted, and he also resisted labeling himself:
Men or women?
“That really depends on the person,” he said impishly. But his follow-up comment left little doubt: “I’ve lived the greater part of my life with a man” — he has been with (Robert) Calhoun in New York since the 1960s — “so obviously that’s the most satisfying to me.”
In the late 1950s, Granger left Hollywood and moved to New York City, where he launched a second career on Broadway. Granger died in 2011 of natural causes in New York at the age of 85.
► Fred Schneider: 1951. The B-52s front man is probably America’s best known practitioner of sprechgesang. (The Free Dictionary: “a type of vocalization between singing and recitation … originated by Arnold Schoenberg, who used it in Pierrot Lunaire (1912)”) The group’s guy-and-gals call-and-response between Schneider and Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson have become a trademark ever since “Rock Lobster” hit the charts in 1978. That sound defined the B-52s as the quintessential party band, inviting everyone to pile into the Chrysler as big as a whale. Schneider was coy about his sexuality throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s, but his reluctance appeared to be more a matter of annoyance than fear. “I’m on the same side the fence as k.d., Elton and Frederick the Great. I just don’t like to share my personal life with the public.” Of course, there wasn’t much sharing needed. His own mother’s reaction when he came out to her probably sums it up for everyone else. “Oh I know, Freddie,” she said, and continued vacuuming without missing a beat.
► Roddy Bottum: 1963. The keyboardist for Faith No More since 1982, Bottum came out as gay in 1993 the year after his father died. It’s easy to imagine that his revelation would have come as quite a shock to the hyper-hetero world of heavy metal, but Bottum described it as “a positive and uplifting experience. I guess I expected some of the fans to burn crosses or throw panties at me, but nothing like that ever happened.” One of his hits with Faith No More was “Be Aggressive,” from their 1992 album Angel Dust. The homoerotic song was about oral sex. “It was a pretty fun thing to write, knowing that (lead singer Mike Patton) was going to have to put himself on the line and go up onstage and sing these vocals.” Bottum’s openness about his sexuality didn’t exactly open the floodgates for other heavy metal rockers to come out. “You’d think there’d be a lot more homosexuality in metal with all the dressing up,” he told The Advocate in 1999. By then he had left Faith No More — and metal — to form the indie boy/girl group Imperial Teen. Since 2005, Bottum has written scores for more than a dozen movies and television shows.
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And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?
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FYoung
July 1st, 2014
Thanks again. This is the first time I hear of the gay Resistance fighters.
I presume you meant to type: “Tell the people that gays are not cowards,â€
Victor
July 1st, 2014
“…Arondeus asked his lawyer to make public after the war that he and two others were gay… ‘Tell the people that gays are now cowards,’ Arondeus instructed his lawyer…”
Yes… “NOT cowards” … BTB has an embarrassingly high number of typos of this nature in virtually every piece you post – some are absolutely cringe-worthy, like this one about Arondeus. It is quite unfortunate because it undermines your otherwise excellent content. I’d volunteer to become your proof reader but I just don’t have the time. Perhaps an intern could be retained? It’s a serious problem, guys.
Eric Payne
July 1st, 2014
Victor — As someone who has been victimized by TFFS (Tablet Fat Finger Syndrome), and Apple’s iOS 7 auto-spellcheck, I guess I’m a little more lenient to the typos that crop up on BTB. 99% of the time! a reader has no problem “correcting” the typos, mentally… and in those rare circumstances where the intended word is not easily discernible, Jim uses the Comment Section to note he’s, since posting, caught the mistake and corrected it.
Jim works hard to keep Box Turtle Bulletin‘s “Daily Agenda” both fresh and an “interesting read.” That he can do that, successfully, 365 days a year is one of the reasons I>BTB has jumped to the top position of my daily “must reads,” supplanting both Joe.My.God and Towleroad. Jim’s efforts are to be commended.
Victor
July 1st, 2014
@EricPayne… I had hoped I’d made it clear that I regard BTB content as exceptionally good. I, too, read BTB first thing in the morning before anything else. So let us agree that BTB is great and we are all fans. That being said, if one is to pursue a journalistic aim it is incumbent upon the writer to not allow misspellings, however unintentional and sincerely made, to distract the reader. I do a great deal of writing and have made more than my share of spelling mistakes – so I am not trying to cop an attitude of superiority. I’m just saying that BTB’s extraordinarily great content is undermined by all these typos. It would be different if it was one every once in a while. But there are 3-4 every day that cannot be justified or explained away. There is an epidemic of lousy habits throughout the blogosphere. More and more, people are simply shrugging their shoulders at such sloppiness. I might agree that the content of most blogs isn’t worth the hand-wringing. But not BTB. I think this is the finest LGBT blog – THE FINEST – the only LGBT blog I quote and cite regularly. I don’t want the efforts, intelligence, and journalistic integrity of BTB thwarted by simple typos. If the content was silly, I wouldn’t care so much. I only care because BTB matters to me, personally, not because I am some old troll with nothing better to do. 30 years ago I wrote an editorial that was quite good – except for one glaring typo that made look like an idiot and destroyed my credibility – and I was called out about it by an older, wiser journalist. I was humiliated. That man apologized but said it was an important lesson I would never forget. I never did.
Timothy Kincaid
July 1st, 2014
Victor,
Sadly, ALL of us here at BTB are interns. We do this in our spare time (when we have some) and after our regular jobs. So we aren’t always at our very best when we type up our thoughts or Jim’s excellent Daily Agenda.
I, myself, have barely contributed over the past months due to a heavy workload at my place of employment. So I have much respect for Jim’s commitment to lengthy daily postings.
I understand your concern and your desire that we be even better. I appreciate it. I share it.
But, sadly, I’m not sure there is an easy solution.
cowboy
July 1st, 2014
The most endearing part of BTB are the hosts…or is the hosts? Correct me please.
By the way, are the commenters on BTB held to the same high level of grammar? If so, Victor, you might check your missing “me” in one sentence. Hug,hug.
Eric Payne
July 1st, 2014
Victor,
One thing I’ve noticed about the readers of BTB, at least what I’ve gleaned from comments in the last few months, is a lot of us seem to be (and here, I’m going to use a sexist term, for which I apologize in advance) newspapermen; there’s ink in our blood… there’s always an editor too quick with the blue pencil, even if that editor is only in our minds.
As a former Bay Area newspaperman, I’m something of an elitist, I admit that freely. I view blogs — any blog not associated with some “recognized” news source — almost as if it were the news/opinion equivalent of a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney “Andy Hardy” film: “Hey! Let’s get together and put on a show!” It’s with those expectations I read BTB, and with those expectations! I can easily ignore/mentally replace the typos. It’s easy to ignore the wires suspending the stars from the rafters when talent shines through… and in what, I presume, is BTB”s goal of providing information while also prompting discussion! the guys here are Judy Garlands, belting out their ballads, as he artfully as they can.
Joe.My.God tries to do the same, but always seems to be just one or two notes too shrill for me. Towleroad comes close, but falls short with its insistence that some current Hollywood Hunk with new topless photos is important to me because I’m gay. That attitude is pretty insulting. That insulting attitude is also displayed at Huffington Post’s Gay Voices, despite being under the “editorship” of Michael Signorile, whom I, otherwise, greatly respect.
Box Turtle Bulletin gets the mix pretty much “right” most of the time.
Now, I’m going to hit “Post”. And though I’ve proofed the above, I can almost guarantee that in the processing of this comment, iOS 7, or WordPress, is going to autocorrect some “misspelling”… or replace a comma with an exclamation point… or some other “feature” is going to do some sort of auto-foolishness.
Ben in oakland
July 1st, 2014
Eric– I’m 100% in agreement, except a bit moreso, both in my partisanship for BTB and my lack of presence on other sites. JMG is not only a bit shrill, it mostly has wit at the expense of wisdom. Huffpost has pretty much convinced me it’s not going to be informative or useful; the lack of comments and the dearth of new articles pretty much declares it. I’m going, in the next few days, delete my quick access button to HP from my browser. I’m just waiting for the first day that I can’t be bothered to go there at all.
Eric Payne
July 1st, 2014
Cowboy,
How about something along the lines of:
Like I said… there’s always an editor, if only in my (our) mind(s).
Eric Payne
July 1st, 2014
Ben in Oakland,
Not to mention… on what other blog can a discussion of typos on the blog naturally evolve into a discussion of the merits/demerits of other blogs?
cowboy
July 1st, 2014
In the days before e-mail I would send letters to my best friend. He would return them with all my grammatical errors circled in red pencil.
I still have a lot to learn. I never paid much attention in my English classes in my rural High School. Our local vernacular would always influence how I composed report assignments and wrote papers. It was usually wrong.
Hey! Try listening to country/western music for a while and I bet your verbs will tend to get screwed up. It DON’T matter to me… will eventually creep into your writings.
But, I’m forever grateful for my friend. He helped me a lot.
Still does.
cowboy
July 1st, 2014
Breaking news:
— AP
**A ultra-conversative thinktank that has offices directly across the street from the LDS Temple and near the Mormon HQ.
Do I get the feeling the SCOTUS will rule on Utah’s appeal and that’s why they’re coming to Salt Lake City in 2015?
Eric Payne
July 1st, 2014
Cowboy,
As things stand now, the 10th Circuit ruling upholding the finding against Utah would be the first in line to get to SCOTUS. Would it be in the next term, though? Cases have to be submitted by the end of July for consideration in the next term — at least that’s the general rule, though every year, SCOTUS always does “emergency” pick-ups. My guess is Utah will delay filing it’s appeal until the last possible second, hoping there will be another case landing before the 10th Circuit, the decision of which would, probably, also be stayed pending appeal, serving to automatically extend Utah’s appeal. Of those states, Wyoming is probably the next to appear before the 10th.
That strategy could easily backfire — the 10th could simply rule “We’ve already decided this issue,” and dismiss… and if Utah has burnt through the statutory time limit for filing an appeal, the 10th’s ruling becomes final for those states in the 10th Circuit. For Utah, it’s a coin toss… but having two (or more, as Oklahoma legal challenges are progressing) states in a consolidated case, in lawyer-think, always makes for a stronger case. That’s not true of course… or, at least, it didn’t used to be true.
Why do I think Utah might stall? In a separate case, Utah missed the deadline to file a 10th Circuit appeal against it which ruled Utah must recognize those marriages performed after losing the initial case and before the 10th issued a stay halting the marriages. What’s supposed to happen in those instances is the party failing to meet the filing requirements loses. What the 10th did was give Utah an additional 10 calendar days to file.
After Windsor, every lower court at every level has ruled against state DOMA amendments and laws (just today, Kentucky had its ban struck down).
After Hobby Lobby, though! I no longer view Justice Kennedy as a sure vote, in spite of his opinion in Windsor. Just how far, and to what entities besides the individual, would Kennedy grant “deeply held” religious beliefs… and is Utah the state in which we want that question answered?
cowboy
July 2nd, 2014
Thanks Eric.
cowboy
July 3rd, 2014
I know this is off topic but this link is very dear to my heart:
http://videowest.kuer.org/urban-falcons/
It’s the reason I take my lunch to Temple Square at this time of year; just watch.
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