Box Turtle Bulletin

The Daily Agenda for Monday, June 8

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From The Body Politic (Toronto, ON), April 1985, page 10.

Vancouver’s Hotel Dufferin has been in continuous operation as a hotel since it opened in 1911. Since at least the 1970s, the Dufferin has also been an important center of gay life. In 1980, the hotel’s main club was Streets, which was decorated as an indoor streetscape with fake storefronts and two giant stone lions on either side of the dance floor. Streets later became the Dufferin Pub, known simply as the Duff to patrons. Through all of its incarnations, it hosted Canada’s longest running drag shows. The shows came to an end in 2007, after the hotel was sold to developers who gentrified the whole place into the Moda Hotel. “They dropped the axe. They lopped the head off the queen,” said one fan. “It took a great chunk of a lot of people’s hearts out.”

Gov. Reubin Askew

TODAY IN HISTORY:
► Florida Bans Gay Marriage and Adoption: 1977. Florida’s gay community took a triple whammy today. Just one day after Miami voters overwhelmingly sided with Anita Bryant to rescind an anti-discrimination ordinance, Governor Reuben Askew (D) signed into law additional two anti-gay measures affecting gay people statewide. The first banned same-sex marriage and the second banned gay adults from adopting.

State Sen. Curtis Peterson, (D-Eaton Park) sponsored both bills, and said that the new laws tell homosexuals, “We are tired of you and wish you would go back in the closet.” He continued: “The problem in Florida is that homosexuals are surfacing to such an extent that they are infringing on average, normal people who have a few rights, too.” The bills sailed through the legislature with little opposition and became effective immediately upon Askew’s signing.

In 2008, Florida voters made same-sex marriage even more illegaler when they passed Amendment 2. In 2010, a Florida appeals court upheld a lower court ruling that found the adoption ban unconstitutional.

► First Gay Days at Disney World: 1991. It started as a very modest idea: a time for about 3,000 gays and lesbians in central Florida to enjoy a day at Orlando’s top attraction — and to become more visible. “Twenty years ago, there were hardly any visible portrayals of our community other than the pride parades,” Chris Alexander-Manley, president of Gay Days Inc., told Time in 2010. He was also one of the volunteers who helped organize the first event in 1991. He said, that the media tended to show “the drag queens and the extremes, the leather people, but that’s only a small part of the overall community.” To increase their visibility, gay attendees wore read shirts in the park. And it was that very visibility which caught the attention of anti-gay activists. The Southern Baptist Convention launched a boycott of all things Disney, despite the fact that Disney never sanctioned the event. Disney always instructed their employees to treat the first Saturday of June just like any other Saturday, which put the SBC in an odd position of, I guess, demanding that Disney ban red shirts or something.

Gay Days at Disney World has grown from that modest 3,000 assemblage to an estimated 150,000 participants in recent years. And with that growth the nature of the event has changed somewhat. There are still family events taking place catering to LGBT families, but they occur alongside pool parties, dance raves and other circuit party-style activities of a more specifically adult orientation. But within the confines of the park itself, it’s all about Mickey Mouse and Magic Mountain and getting the kids in line for the spinning teacups. And despite ongoing grumbling from social conservatives — Disney typically issues refunds to families offended by the sight of red shirts — Gay Days continues to appeal to the kids in all of us.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
► Peter Jepson-Young: 1957-1992. The Vancouver, BC doctor was known to millions across Canada simply as Dr. Peter, host of a regular segment on the CBC’s news broadcast called The Dr. Peter Diaries. That platform made Dr. Peter the country’s best-known educator for AIDS and HIV awareness. Dr. Peter’s approach was uniquely personal: he documented, on his own program, his experiences both as a doctor and as a person with AIDS. He began his weekly segment in 1990, after he was unable to continue his medical practice because of his deteriorating health. He brought a sense of humor to his weekly video diaries, and his frank discussion of AIDS helped to break down stereotypes and stigma surrounding the disease. His Diaries continued for more than two years, until a few weeks before he died in November 1992. Shortly before he died, Dr. Peter had also established the Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation to provide care for people with HIV/AIDS.

In 1993, the CBC and HBO jointly produced a 45-minute documentary, The Broadcast Tapes of Dr. Peter, which consisted of excerpts from his video diaries. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Today, all 111 episodes are available on the CBC’s website.

► Mary Bonauto: 1961. If you’re in a state where you’re allowed to marry, then you have Mary Bonauto to thank. The civil rights attorney, lauded as “our Thurgood Marshal,” has been working with the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) since 1990, playing key roles in methodically building the legal foundation through a series of court cases which eventually opened the doors, at least part way, to marriage equality for same-sex couples. As Roberta Kaplan told The New York Times in March 2013, “No gay person in this country would be married without Mary Bonauto.”

Bonauto began her work at GLAD by litigating several employment discrimination, custody and free speech cases throughout New England. Seven years later, she was co-counselor for three Vermont couples seeking a marriage license. The goal was full marriage, but at that time it was still difficult to make a legal case. Instead, Baker v. Vermont compelled the Vermont legislature to enact the nation’s first civil union law in 2000. The following year, Bonauto took another crack at marriage as lead counsel for Goodridge v. Department of Public Health. That led to the landmark 2003 decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court which led the Bay State to become the first in the nation in marriage equality. She was also co-counsel in the Connecticut court case which prompted that state legislature to enact a civil union law.

Bonauto next set her sights set on Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act as lead counsel for Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, one of five federal cases which challenged DOMA’s constitutionality. In that case in 2010, a Federal District Court in held that DOMA violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection clause, and the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision. The case then went on to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court chose to hear the appeal for Edith Windsor instead and that case ended up dooming DOMA in June 2013. Two years later, Bonauto was before the Supreme Court again in April, this time urging the court to strike down gay marriage bans nation wide as litigant for Obergefell v. Hodges. The Supreme Court is expected to hand down its decision by the end of this month.

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?