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 lobbyAugust 5th, 2016
From GPU News, June 1977, page 13. (Source.)
You’ll have to click on the image to read the details. It was a short cruise, running from 9:00 p.m. to midnight with music, dancing, and a cash bar. The Quad Cities actually consists of five cities straddling the banks of the Mississippi. Davenport, Iowa, with Rock Island and Moline in Illinois, were the original “Tri Cities.” East Moline grew in the 1930s to rival Moline, and the moniker stretched to encompass the Quad Cities. But the name would stretch no further, despite an Alcoa plant bringing massive growth to Bettendorf, Iowa after the war. By then, the area was so well known as the Quad Cities that efforts by the area’s media to popularize “Quint Cities” failed to take hold.
As I’m putting this Agenda together now, I’m back in my hometown of Portsmouth, Ohio, another river city. (It’s why posting may be light on this blog for the next couple of weeks.) I grew up quite literally on the banks of the Ohio River, which would have been off of my family’s back yard if it weren’t for the levee. And so this ad always brings back some really great memories for me.
When I was in high school, the lone bridge crossing the Ohio into Kentucky from Portsmouth was closed for a couple of years’ worth of reconstruction. That closer split the greater Portsmouth community. For thousands of people living in Kentucky and working in the steel plant, the shoe factory, and other industries in Portsmouth, their ten minute commute was now more than an hour since the next nearest bridge was nearly 30 miles away.
The state of Ohio came to the rescue by providing an auto ferry and a stern-wheeler passenger ferry to try to restore at at least a minimum of transportation links to jobs and hospitals. And so for our Junior/Senior Prom, my high school rented the passenger ferry for the night’s after-prom party and set up a casino (with monopoly money), and a bar (with fruit drinks and pop — we called soft drinks “pop”). I didn’t go to the prom (go figure!) but I joined my friends at the after-prom for a cruise that left the Court Street Landing at midnight and returned at 5:00 a.m. What a great time we had, “gambling,” “drinking,” and watching the water glint in the moonlight off the ferry’s sternwheel as we churned our way upriver to Greenup Dam before turning back.
The view from Tower Hill in Kentucky.
A year later, the bridge repairs were complete, and the ferries were retired from service. The night the bridge opened, you could see a line of tail lights trailing up the road to Tower Hill in Kentucky, Ohioans rushing to reclaim their favorite “parking” spots with their phenomenal views across the valley, although, of course, it wasn’t the views they were after.
Latest Posts
Featured Reports
In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.
When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.
In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.
On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"
At last, the truth can now be told.
Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!
And don‘t miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.
Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.
Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.
Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.
The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.
“Google” is a trademark of Google Inc.
© Box Turtle Bulletin. All Rights Reserved.
Posts 
Posts via daily email:
There are no comments for this post.
Leave A Comment