April 12th, 2015
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Miami Beach, FL; Phoenix, AZ.
Other Events This Weekend: Boston LGBT Film Festival, Boston, MA; Women’s Fest, Camp Rehoboth, DE; AIDS Walk, New Haven, CT.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► Sixty-Three Arrested in Waco: 1953. The United Press reported that:
A well-planned raid early Sunday morning broke up a statewide “homosexual convention” while a mock wedding was in progress, police reported Monday. Detective Capt. Wiley Stem said 63 men, mostly ranging in ages from 24 to 33 were arrested in the raid of a two-room private residence in South Waco.
Fifteen detectives, a Texas Ranger, and a district attorney working with information furnished by undercover agents, closed in on the small house as the “bride” and “groom” were going through the mock ceremony before 60 invited guests. Police said some of the “guests” had come from as far away as New York, Virginia and California.
Other “guests” were registered from Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Houston, Fort Hood, and Connally Air Force Base just north of Waco. Police said all had received “invitations” to the affair.
The Associated Press put the number arrested at 64. One guest from Ft. Worth was charged with possession of marijuana, and others were charged with vagrancy — they posted $25 bonds (that’s about $220 in today’s money) and were released. All in all, it hardly seems to justify the expense of a reported three-month investigation by fifteen officers and undercover agents. But it apparently was quite spectacular when stacked up against the ordinary goings on in Waco. The AP described “Wigs, women’s dresses, high heeled shoes and corsets were stacked on a table in the detective’s office after the raid… ‘In 30 years of policing I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Police Lt. Bob Van Wie.”
Postscript: One month later on May 11, Waco would be devastated by one of thirty-three confirmed tornados that broke out across the great plans over a three day period. Waco was hit by the deadliest of them all: Of the 144 deaths from all of the storms, 114 died in Waco alone.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
► Amy Ray: 1964. One-half of the folk duo Indigo Girls, Ray met the other Girl, Emily Sailers (see Jul 22), when they attended the same elementary school together in Decatur, Georgia. They began hanging out together while in high school, where they began performing together and recorded their first demo in 1981. They went their separate ways for college, but they met up again a few years later when they both transferred to Emory University. By 1985, they were performing together again as Indigo Girls. They secured a contract with Epic Records in 1988, and in 1990 won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. (They were also nominated for Best New Artist, but they lost out to Milli Vanilli, who later saw the award revoked when it was revealed that they didn’t actually sing on their debut album and lip-synced their way through concerts.) Ray has also been busy with solo work and running an independent record label, Daemon Records, and she’s an activist for multiple causes, including gay rights, women’s rights, indigenous rights, gun control, environmental protection, and abolishing the death penalty. The Indigo Girls released their latest original album, Beauty Queen Sister, in 2011 and a compilation of The Essential Indigo Girls in 2013. Their next studio album, One Lost Day, is due out in June.
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?
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Paul Douglas
April 12th, 2015
The Lard punished Waco for interfering with those April nuptials, as it is plain for all to see. Why can’t the fundagelicals see the signs and wonders of Gawd?
Eric Payne
April 12th, 2015
So Hillary announces… and makes sure to “showcase the gay” in and with her announcement.
It’ll be over a year before the nominee is chosen, and the better part of two years before ballots are cast. Does the pandering have to start already?
Yes, Hillary, we know the Democrats are the political party that doesn’t, openly, loathe gays. Those of us will look at the country as an inclusive unit, to benefit all, would sooner chew our hands off at the wrists, leaving them in a bloody heap in the voting booth, before ever permitting our fingers to cast a vote for the party who believes we are mentally ill, or criminals, or Nazis, or pedophiles or… fill-in-the-blank fear lingering adjective.
So, you’ve got our vote. Just like your lecherous husband did (I wonder, when he was signing DOMA to protect the sanctity of heterosexual marriage… maybe he gave a thought to how Monica’s mouth felt on his married cock?)
Of the two alternatives, gays have to pick the lesser evil.
Funny, though, when the Dems held both Houses and the White House in the first two years of Obama’s first term, ENDA was no longer the priority it had been just months before… funnier, when your hubby was Pres, the promise to end the “gays are unfit for military service,” segued instead into “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” legislation written by a fellow Democrat, Senator Sam Nunn.
So we’re used to the pandering. We know it’s a carefully constructed veil. You’re ass-kissing much too soon.
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