The Daily Agenda for Saturday, September 27

Jim Burroway

September 27th, 2014

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Belgrade, Serbia; Durham, NC; Ft. Collins, CO; Memphis, TN; Moab, UT; Richmond, VA; Sedona/Cottonwood, AZ; Soweto, South Africa; Sunderland, UK; Willemstad, Curaçao.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Chicago, IL; San Diego, CA; Seattle, WA; Wilmington/Rehoboth, DE.

Other Events This Weekend: Everybody’s Perfect 3 LGBTIQ Film Festival, Geneva, Switzerland; Queer Lisboa 18 Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal.

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From GLC Voice (Minneapolis, MN), December, 1979, page 6.

From GLC Voice (Minneapolis, MN), December, 1979, page 6.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Six Men Pilloried in London for Homosexuality: 1810. In early 19th century Britain, the penalty for homosexuality was death. If a judge felt lenient, he might instead sentence the accused to stand time at the pillory. The September 27, 1810 entry in the Annual Register describes the pillorying of six members of what we might describe today as a gay hangout known as the White Swan on Vere Street. That description goes like this:

Such was the degree of popular indignation excited against these wretches, and such the general eagerness to witness their punishment, that, by ten in the morning, the chief avenues from Clerkenwell Prison and Newgate to the place of punishment were crowded with people; and the multitude assembled in the Haymarket, and all its immediate vicinity, was so great as to render the streets impassible. All the windows and even the very roofs of the houses were crowded with persons of both sexes; and every coach, waggon, hay-cart, dray, and other vehicles which blocked up great part of the street, were crowded with spectators.

The Sheriffs, attended by two City Marshals, with an immense number of constables, accompanied the procession of the Prisoners from Newgate, whence they set out in the transport caravan, and proceeded through Fleet-street and the Strand; and the Prisoners were hooted and pelted the whole way by the populace. At one o- clock four of the culprits were fixed in the pillory, erected for and accommodated to the occasion, with two additional wings, one being allotted for each criminal; and immediately a new torrent of popular vengeance poured upon them from all sides. The day being fine, the streets were dry and free from mud, but the dfect was speedily and amply supplied by the butchers of St. James’s-market. Numerous escorts of whom constantly supplied the party of attack, chiefly consisting of women, with tubs of blood, garbage, and ordure from their slaughter-houses, and with this ammunition, plentifully diversified with dead cats, turnips, potatoes, addled eggs, and other missiles, the criminals were incessantly pelted to the last moment. They walked perpetually round during their hour [the pillory swivelled on a fixed axis]; and although from the four wings of the machine they had some shelter, they were completely encrusted with filth.

Two wings of the Pillory were then taken off to place Cooke and Amos in the two remaining ones, and although they came in only for the second course, they had no reason to complain of short allowance, for they received even a more severe discipline than their predecessors. On their being taken down and replaced in the caravan, they lay flat in the vehicle; but the vengeance of the crowd still pursued them back to Newgate, and the caravan was so filled with mud and ordure as completely to cover them.

No interference from the Sheriffs and Police officers could refrain the popular rage; but notwithstanding the immensity of the multitude, no accident of any note occurred.

The six men were relatively lucky. Depending on the ferocity of the crowd, death at the pillory wasn’t out of the question. The pillory was formally abolished in England in 1837.

Public Enemies Number Three

Public Enemies Number Three (source)

Harris Poll Finds Homosexuals Third Most Harmful to the Nation: 1965. A Harris Poll of 1250 Americans ranked Homosexuals at number three as “more harmful than helpful to American life.” The Harris Poll asked respondents to rank gay people along with Communists, atheists, civil rights demonstrators, anti-war protesters, hippies, bikini wearers and college professors active in unpopular causes. Seventy percent ranked gay people as harmful, behind Communists (89%) and atheists (72%). Another 29% believed that gay people didn’t “help or harm things much one way or the other.” That left only a tiny 1% volunteering the opinion that gay people were more helpful than harmful.

Pollster Louis Harris commented, “As could be expected, an overwhelming majority of Americans regard Communists, homosexuals, and prostitutes as harmful to the Nation, although three out of every ten Americans think homosexuals and prostitutes are not a matter of serious concern …Eighty-two per cent of the men think homosexuals are harmful to the Nation while only 58 per cent of the women think so.” The gender gap was alive and well, even back then.

Rev. Ray Broshears, Lavender Panthers organizer.

Rolling Stone Reports on San Francisco’s “Lavender Panthers”: 1973. San Francisco in 1973 may have been seen as a tolerant haven for gay people, but that’s was only relatively speaking when compared to much of the rest of the country. For all of its “tolerance,” more than 60 anti-gay assaults and beatings had occurred over the past summer, with two dozen since August 1. Rev. Ray Broshears, a gay Pentecostal evangelist told Rolling Stone about one horrific crime the previous January:

“One of our own [Gay Activist Alliance] members was murdered early this year,” he says. “This boy was beaten and his unconscious body placed on the Sunset Tunnel streetcar tracks. He was left to be hit by a train.” Police records acknowledge that 19-year-old David Hart Winters was struck and killed by a streetcar late one night last January. The coroner’s report shows that he had been beaten before his death.”

Broshears himself was severely beaten by four teenagers outside his church, leaving him with partial nerve control loss in his left arm. That beating occurred on the Fourth of July, after he had called the police to complain about some teenagers who were setting off fireworks in a lot next door. Rather than deal with the problem, police simply told the youths who had ratted them out. Police were indifferent, or worse — often accusing assault victims of sexually soliciting or provoking their attackers. Consequently, most victims didn’t bother to file a report. Add to that, three gay-affirming churches and two gay bars had burned over the summer, with arson either suspected or determined in all of those cases. So Broshears formed the Lavender Panthers and took to streets:

Each evening, several of the Panthers (on a rotating schedule) drive the group’s VW bus to parts of the city that sport a concentration of gay bars, restaurants, baths and clubs. They concentrate on the popular Upper Market-Castro Street area, where most of the beatings have taken place. …

“When we spot trouble, we all jump out of the van and run toward the attackers, blowing police whistles and shouting. Usually, we startle the attackers enough that they take off,” explains one patrol member. “In a couple of situations, we’ve had to hit them over the head and show them a taste of their own medicine. The fact that we’re gay doesn’t mean we can’t and won’t fight back.”

The Lavender Panthers conducted self-defense martial-arts workshops and firearms training, distributed police whistles so people could sound an alarm if they were attacked or saw one in progress, and recommended that gay people carry cans of red spray paint to use as mace. The Lavender Panthers maintained their patrols in San Francisco for about a year before disbanding.

Two weeks after the Rolling Stone article appeared, TIME magazine published its own write-up.

[Source: Bill Sievert. “Lavender Panthers Protect Gays.” Rolling Stone (September 27, 1973): 7.]

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?

Hue-Man

September 27th, 2014

“The governing members of the Law Society of British Columbia have decided to hold a binding referendum to determine the future of a faith-based law school at Trinity Western University.

The board members, who are known as benchers, voted on Friday morning to hold the referendum at the earliest possible date, with the results to be released by the end of October.”

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/law-society-of-b-c-to-hold-binding-referendum-on-trinity-western-law-school-1.2778849

Trinity Western University is claiming religious discrimination while it discriminates against Canada’s largest Christian denomination, the United Church of Canada, and its out gay – and married – Moderator, Gary Paterson. Cafeteria christianists don’t recognize irony…

Ben in oakland

September 27th, 2014

Ironiness is next to godliness, and so of course, a certain class of so called Christian wouldn’t recognize either,

Hue-Man

September 27th, 2014

Glad I checked – I knew I forgot to insert “Protestant” in front of denomination. Sorry to all Catholics, cultural or otherwise.

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