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 lobbyJune 17th, 2016
Trump flew to Dallas yesterday for a campaign stop at Gilley’s. Among his many rambling, incoherent statements which have no apparent relationship with reality, Trump made another play for the gay vote. “As far as gays are concerned,” Trump said of Saudi Arabia, “they throw them off buildings.” (Fact check: Saudi’s don’t; that’s ISIS, although Saudi Arabia does have the death penalty for homosexuality.) “They kill gays in these countries. So you tell me: Who is better for the gay community and who is better for women than Donald Trump?”
Yeah. Who’s better?
But wait. Before you answer that question, consider this: later that night, Trump retweeted this:
That’s Robert Jeffries, pastor of Dallas’ notoriously anti-gay First Baptist Church, who said this last February:
“What is happening is that we are becoming desensitized to the persecution of Christians just not globally, but also in our Country. The fact is that we are being told that Christians who refuse to serve a wedding cake to a gay couple, that they are extremists, its OK to take their livelihood and shut down their business,” Jeffress said. “I believe that we are getting desensitized to that, which will pave the way for that future world dictator, the Antichrist, to persecute and martyr Christians without any repercussions what-so-ever.”
That was in February, which, by the way, was at about the same time that Donald Trump promised to overturn the “shocking” Supreme Court decision that struck down bans against marriage equality:
I think they (Evangelicals) can trust me on traditional marriage… and frankly, I was very much in favor of having the court rule that it goes to states, and let the states decide. And that was a shocking decision for you and for me and for a lot of other people, but I was very much in favor of letting the states decide and that’s the way it looked it was going and then all of a sudden out of nowhere came this very massive decision and they took it away. But I was always in favor of state’s rights; states deciding.
And here’s what he tweeted on the day of that Supreme Court Decision:
Once again the Bush appointed Supreme Court Justice John Roberts has let us down. Jeb pushed him hard! Remember!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 26, 2015
June 17th, 2016
Roger Jimenez, from the YouTube video that has since been removed.
Police were still identifying and removing bodies from the Pulse gay night club in Orlando when Sacramento pastor Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church posted a sermon on YouTube equating gay people with pedophiles and wishing that more people were dead. “If we lived in a righteous government, they should round them all up and put them up against a firing wall, and blow their brains out,” he said. “The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die. The tragedy is — I’m kind of upset that he didn’t finish the job!”
The video was removed by YouTube for violating its standards on hate speech. But Jimenez was unrepentant on Tuesday, telling the Sacramento Bee:
All I’m saying is that when people die who deserve to die, it’s not a tragedy,” he added. Jimenez spoke these words in a kind monotone befitting a loan officer discussing interest rates at a local bank branch. …Though he didn’t talk long, he wanted people to know he wasn’t backing down from his words. “There are many people who agree with us,” he said. “In America, you are no longer allowed to have an opinion that goes against mainstream society.”
Jimenez is wrong on so many things, including about whether he’s allowed to have an opinion. Of course he is, and he’s also allowed to express it. And so do the hundred or so protesters who gathered at the Verity Baptist Church parking lot on Wednesday, for what had been planned as a silent protest. It became anything but silent:
Wearing a small LGBT pride heart on her T-shirt, Sakler watched as congregants filed past the crowd of activists and a line of police officers. They were men and women in church outfits, couples holding hands, parents with crying babies, small children giggling – all of them hurrying inside, ignoring the cries of “We are Orlando!” from the protesters.
For some queer protesters, seeing the families in attendance was a painful reminder that people in suburban California share the hateful and violent beliefs of Jimenez – and that the pastor is not just a fringe extremist preaching to anonymous bigots in the dark corners of YouTube.
“We have so far to go,” said Sakler, wiping tears from her eyes while clutching a rainbow candle.
The tense scene that unfolded outside the church – where protesters screamed “Would you kill me?” as the silent parishioners passed by – offered a window into the anguish of LGBT people across the country, who are coming to terms with the unprecedented attack on the queer community less than one year after same-sex marriage became the law of the land in the US.
And by the way, Jimenez has at least one other pastor coming to his defense:
Manly Perry, a Texas pastor who has given a sermon at Jimenez’s church, said in a phone interview on Wednesday that the Sacramento preacher was a “mentor” who is skilled at bringing people into the church – and has a wide reach.
“That church in my opinion has the best-organized program and outreach in the community,” he said. “He’ll be looked at as a hatemonger, but he’s actually the exact opposite … He’s got a genuine love for people. He wants to see people saved.”
Perry also repeated several times: “The Bible is very clear that homosexuals should have the death penalty.”
June 17th, 2016
Rebecca Ruiz at Mashable noticed something odd about the Republican National Committee’s statement about Orlando: a sentence is missing. when the statement was first released on Sunday, it contained an rather awkward sentence that nevertheless acknowledge the attack against the LGBT community. “Violence against any group of people simply for their lifestyle or orientation has no place in America or anywhere else,” it said. Clumsy, sure. A lot of people gagged on the “lifestyle” reference. But at least it was some kind of an acknowledgement, even if it sounded like it was written by Aunt Betty.
But by Monday, the statement was updated with no explanation, and that update obliterates all acknowledgment, klutzy or otherwise, of the attack on the LGBT community. An RNC Spokesman said the revision was meant to be “more inclusive.” Log Cabin Republican president Gregory T. Angelo wasn’t having it.
“Scrubbing an early draft of their press release for any specific mention of gay people or sexual orientation is indicative of the cowardice a lot of Republicans exhibited in the aftermath of the shootings,” Angelo told Mashable.
Gay Republican @ColtonBuckley on Orlando: "That could have been me." https://t.co/uyXMsVsfPv
— LogCabinRepublicans (@LogCabinGOP) June 14, 2016
This is mart of a larger pattern among several Republicans and social conservatives who have refused to mention exactly who was attacked. It’s as if the shooter had attacked a shopping mall or a Denny’s. As Ruiz notes:
The RNC’s decision to remove the sentence from its statement highlights the party’s challenges as it tries to embrace the victims and show solidarity with the LGBT community without alienating Republican voters who often describe so-called identity politics as divisive.
June 17th, 2016
Malik Gillani, a Shia Ismaili Muslim in Chicago who is married to his husband, Jamil Khoury, who is Antiochian Orthodox Christian. Gillani, has a fantasy. In involves the mosques of Chicago inviting gay people to share a meal with them during the holy month of Ramadan:
Come break bread with us, the imams would say, and let us hear your stories. Tell us what it’s like to be two men who love each other. To be two lesbians raising a child. To be a young gay man rejected by his family.
In Gillani’s fantasy, the recent massacre in an Orlando, Fla., gay nightclub would turn into an opportunity for gay people and Muslims to connect with each other through their stories of struggle.
The Orlando massacre has been particularly hard for Gillani:
Gillani was asleep Sunday at home in Chicago when his husband woke him with the Orlando news.
“Oh my God” was his first thought, “Who’s killing gays?”
And then he heard the shooter’s name, Omar Mateen, and he felt too sick even to get out of bed to gather with his gay friends to mourn.
He kept thinking, “Why are we killing gays?”
He felt the “we” of being Muslim as deeply as he felt the “we” of being gay. He identified with the killer and the victims. Guilt blended with sorrow.
“Collective guilt by association,” he says.
He came out to his family, involuntarily, when his brother outed him. His family accepted him. He was lucky. Another brother began driving him to Chicago’s Boystown because he wanted Gillani to be safe. When he married, his family also welcomed his husband. He wrote about all that for the New York Daily News on Tuesday.
June 16th, 2016
We need a better soundtrack than the one we’ve been hearing since Sunday morning. Melissa Ehteridge provides it. From Rolling Stone:
After the horrific shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub that left 49 dead and over 50 injured, people have tried to find a way to cope with the feelings that left them reeling from the senseless killing. Melissa Etheridge was equally heartbroken when she heard the news while on tour, and she told Rolling Stonethat she had to write a song in response.
…The song will be made available for purchase soon and Etheridge says all proceeds will be donated to an LGBT charity.
June 16th, 2016
June 16th, 2016
The independent Marine Corps Times reports that two west coast Marines who posted a threatening photo to a closed Facebook group are now under investigation by the California-based I Marine Expeditionary Force, which is based at Camp Pendleton north of San Diego. A marine posted a photo showing another corporal in uniform holding a rifle and captioned with the message, “Coming to a gay bar new you!”. The person who posted the photo added the message, “Too soon?”
First Lt. Thomas Gray, a spokesman for I MEF, told Marine Corps Times that the command has identified the Marine in the picture and the one who posted it on Facebook.
“We cannot discuss details of an ongoing investigation, but I can tell you the command is taking this incident seriously,” Gray said.
Marine officials have vowed to take “appropriate action” in response to the social media post, according to a statement released by I MEF.
“The Marine Corps does not tolerate discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, gender or religion,” the statement says. “…This type of behavior and mindset will not be allowed, and it is not consistent with the core values of honor, courage and commitment that are demonstrated by the vast majority of Marines on a daily basis.”
June 16th, 2016
Shortly after news broke about the attack on the Pulse gay night club in Orlando, JetBlue announced that they would offer free flights to Orlando to family members of those who were killed and wounded. One JetBlue flight attendant, Kelly Davis Karas, posted this moving account on Facebook of what happened on one of those flights:
Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, , 20 years old.
Today my dear friend Melinda and I had the sad privilege of attending to his grandmother on our flight as she made her journey to Orlando to join her family during this unspeakable time.
Knowing she was making this hard journey alone, JetBlue employees made sure to be at her side every step of the way. Melinda stood quietly by her wheelchair while we waited until it was time to board. Kellie, the gate agent, boarded with her and helped get her settled. Melinda and I gave her a blanket, a pillow, a box of tissues and water so she could be as comfortable as possible. She was understandably distraught, but met us with kindness and gentleness. And gratitude.
But here’s where our flight got truly inspiring. I had the idea to pass around a piece of paper to everyone on board and invite them to sign it for this grieving grandmother. I talked it over with Melinda and she started the process from the back of the plane. As we took beverage orders, we whispered a heads up about the plan as we went.
Halfway through, Melinda called me, “Kel, I think you should start another paper from the front. Folks are writing PARAGRAPHS.” So I did. Then we started one in the middle. Lastly, running out of time on our hour and fifteen minute flight, we handed out pieces of paper to everyone still waiting.
When we gathered them together to present them to her, we didn’t have just a sheet of paper covered in names, which is what I had envisioned. Instead, we had page after page after page after page of long messages offering condolences, peace, love and support. There were even a couple of cash donations, and more than a few tears.
When we landed, I made an announcement that the company had emailed to us earlier in the morning to use as an optional addition to our normal landing announcement, which states “JetBlue stands with Orlando.” Then with her permission and at the request of a couple of passengers, we offered a moment of silence in Omar’s memory.
As we deplaned, EVERY SINGLE PERSON STOPPED TO OFFER HER THEIR CONDOLENCES. Some just said they were sorry, some touched her hand, some hugged her, some cried with her. But every single person stopped to speak to her, and not a single person was impatient at the slower deplaning process.
I am moved to tears yet again as I struggle to put our experience into words. In spite of a few hateful, broken human beings in this world who can all too easily legally get their hands on mass assault weapons – people ARE kind. People DO care. And through our customers’ humanity today, and through the generosity of this wonderful company I am so grateful to work for, I am hopeful that someday soon we can rally together to make the world a safer place for all.
I will never forget today. #Orlandoproud
June 16th, 2016
I can’t decide if the Washington Post was being sarcastic when it described Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) as an “elder Republican statesman.” But if that’s supposed to be some kind of honorific, it’s just one more indication of what statesmanship means in today’s GOP:
McCain made his remarks in a Senate hallway to a small group of reporters, responding to a question about the gun-control debate that has flared on Capitol Hill since the Sunday-morning shooting that left 49 clubgoers and the gunman dead.
He answered the question about the gun debate by citing Obama’s culpability for the attack through his foreign policy.
“Barack Obama is directly responsible for it, because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama’s failures,” McCain said.
He also adopted Trump’s “I called it” line when pressed by reporters:
“He pulled everybody out of Iraq, and I predicted at the time that ISIS would go unchecked, and there would be attacks on the United States of America,” he said. “It’s a matter of record, so he is directly responsible.”
Update: Moments ago, McCain tweeted this out:
To clarify, I was referring to Pres Obama’s national security decisions that have led to rise of #ISIL, not to the President himself
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) June 16, 2016
That doesn’t match his direct statements to reporters: “Barack Obama is directly responsible for it.” His statements to reporters were pretty unambiguous. So I’m gonna call bullshit on this “clarification.”
Update: Buzfeed’s Tarini Parti has more:
“When he pulled everybody out of Iraq, then al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS and ISIS were the ones responsible for these attacks. So it’s directly at the doorstep of President Obama, and I intend to tell every American I know about it.”
Update Again:
I misspoke. I did not mean to imply that the President was personally responsible – my full stmt: https://t.co/IhDSefwIzM
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) June 16, 2016
The full statement:
U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) released the following statement today clarifying his earlier remarks regarding President Obama and the Orlando attack:
“I misspoke. I did not mean to imply that the President was personally responsible. I was referring to President Obama’s national security decisions, not the President himself. As I have said, President Obama’s decision to completely withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 led to the rise of ISIL. I and others have long warned that the failure of the President’s policy to deny ISIL safe haven would allow the terrorist organization to inspire, plan, direct or conduct attacks on the United States and Europe as they have done in Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino and now Orlando.”
I don’t see “I apologize” to anyone — the President, victims’ families, survivors, the LGBT community, Orlando — anywhere in that statement.
June 16th, 2016
Barbara Poma, owner of Pulse, appeared on NBC’s The Today Show this morning to speak for the first time about what happened early Sunday morning. She described the club as “a safe, fun place to come be who you are.” And she described that phone call she got that morning:
It was the most surreal phone call I’ve ever received. When my manager called me and told me, and he was just yelling into the phone. He kept saying, “We have a shooter! We have a shooter!” I just kept screaming, “What?” And finally it sunk in and… you can’t wrap your brain around that. You can’t.
… I can’t stop imagining what that was like for them… I don’t think I’ll ever stop that.
She opened Pulse about thirteen years ago in honor of her brother, who had died of AIDS. She chose to name the club Pulse “because it has to do with your heartbeat. It has to do with your life, and we just wanted to keep the heartbeat alive.”
Lauer asked how her mission would change as she goes from honoring one person to now honoring 49:
We just welcome those families into our family. And we just have to move forward and find a way to keep their hearts beating and keep our spirit alive. And we’re not going to let someone take this away from us. …I have to go back to that club.
After the interview, Matt Lauer added that she told him, “It’s important never to let hate win.”
June 16th, 2016
Police arrested a man in Brooklyn for assaulting a bouncer at a gay bar and threatening to “come back Orlando-style.”
At about 11:15 p.m. Monday night, Justin Rice, 40 was escorted out of the Happy Fun Hideaway, a gay bar Bushwick, after getting in a loud argument with his girlfriend. During the scuffle, Rice shouted, “I’m going to shoot this place up and get my 50 just like Orlando, Florida,” according to the police report. “I’m going to come back Orlando-style!”
“F–k you fa—ts, f–k that fa—t, I’ll kill you f—-ts,” he yelled while hurling a metal bucket filled with sand at the 34-year-old bouncer. The bucket hit a glancing blow, and the bouncer scuffled with Rice. The bouncer was able to hold Rice until police arrived. Rice was charged with aggravated harassment and attempted assault. More charges were added, including making a terrorist threat and menacing as a hate crime. Bail has been set for $10,000. He is scheduled to appear in court on Friday.
June 16th, 2016
Yesterday’s Senate filibuster in support of tightening gun control laws ended late last night, and now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) says the Senate will hold votes on the Democrats’ proposals, perhaps as early as this afternoon. I think this top headline at Politico right now sums up the situation nicely:
That’s pretty good. It’s actually quite Onionesque.
June 16th, 2016
On Tuesday, Anderson Cooper held Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi accountable for her years of opposition to marriage equality, and he took particular issue with her argument that allowing gays to marry in Florida would “impose significant public harm”. Bondi’s prominent media presence in the aftermath of the Pulse gay night club massacre presenting herself as a valiant defender of the LGBT community, has raised eyebrows in the LGBT community that remembers her previously strenuous efforts to block same-sex message. Since then, Bondi has been more or less pretending she was never involved in that fight.
Yesterday, Bondi was on WOR’s “Len Berman and Todd Schnitt in the Morning” complaining that she was blindsided by Cooper’s grilling on her same-sex marriage stance and that “completely flipped and got into a constitutional issue of course.” She also said that Cooper’s questions were out of line and that she was asked to speak with him on the air under false pretences. “The interview was supposed to be about helping people’s families, not creating more anger and havoc and hatred yesterday. Yesterday was about unity, about bringing people together, about helping people.”
Yesterday, Cooper responded to Bondi’s allegations:
…She’s either mistaken or she’s not telling the truth. Let’s be real here. Miss Bondi’s big complaint seems to be that I asked in the first place, in the wake of a massacre that targeted gay and lesbian citizens about her new statements about the gay community and about her old ones.
…For the record, my interview was not filled with any anger. I was respectful before the interview, I was respectful during the interview and I was respectful after the interview. I don’t know Pam Bondi personally, she seems like a nice person actually. I don’t think she has hate in her heart.
But what I think doesn’t matter. Its my job to hold people accountable. If on Sunday a politician was talking love and embracing quote “our LGBT community,” I don’t think it’s unfair to look at their record and see if they have actually ever spoken that way publicly before which I never heard her say.
The fact is, Attorney General Bondi signed off on a 2014 federal court brief that claimed married gay people would pose ‘significant public harm’. Harm. She spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money. Gay and straight taxpayers money, trying to keep gays and lesbians from getting the right to marry. Now look, good people can and do disagree on that issue. everyone has a right to their own opinion thank goodness. But Ms. Bondi is championing right now her efforts to help survivors but the very right which allows gay spouses to bury their dead loved ones – that’s a right that would not exist if Ms Bondi had had her way. I think it’s fair to ask her about that. There is an irony in that.
Here is that brief Cooper mentioned (PDF: 131KB/34 pages):
Governor Rick Scott, Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi, State Surgeon General John H. Armstrong, and Secretary Craig J. Nichols (the “State Officials”), pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b), move to dismiss the amended complaints in these consolidated cases. This Court lacks jurisdiction to consider the claims against all but the DMS Secretary, and all claims fail on the merits. The Court should also deny the preliminary injunction motions because there is no likelihood of success on the merits, there is no immediacy requiring a preliminary injunction, and disrupting Florida’s existing marriage laws would impose significant public harm.
…This Court also must balance the alleged harm to the parties against the public interest. An injunction would irreparably harm the State of Florida. Plaintiffs seek to enjoin a duly enacted constitutional amendment and statutory law. Enjoining democratically enacted legislation harms state officials by restraining them from implementing the will of the people that they represent. [Emphasis mine]
And by the way, I still can’t find Bondi’s “rainbow hands” here, here, or here.
June 15th, 2016
Owen Jones walked out of a Sky News panel discussion over panelists’ refusal to acknowledge that the massacre was an attack against the LGBT community.
June 15th, 2016
Chris Barron, who had co-founded the now-defunct gay conservative group GOPround, had been a Donald Trump critic until recently. But now, in the aftermath of the Pulse gay night club massacre, Barron has become a big Trump supporter and thinks you should be too:
“I have no doubt that Donald Trump would be better for LGBT Americans,” Barron said in an interview with CNN. “Hillary Clinton wants to continue a reckless foreign policy that has made the world less safe for all Americans, including LGBT Americans. She can find plenty of time to crucify Christians in the U.S. for perceived anti-gay bias, but when we’ve got ISIS throwing gay people off of buildings, when we have Muslim states that are prescribing the death penalty for people who are gay, I would think this would be something that a friend of the LGBT community would be able to speak out on, and Hillary Clinton finds it unable to do so.”
…Barron declined to share a list of potential signatories to his coalition letter in support of Trump, although other gay Republicans confirmed there was a draft letter circulating.
Barron, however, is an unlikely leader of a pro-Trump movement, and he has a mixed history with the mogul. In 2011, as president of GOProud, Barron coordinated a successful campaign to secure Trump a speaking slot at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the nation’s largest annual gathering of right-wing activists. The address was Trump’s first major speech to the conservative movement, and in many ways launched his political career.
But four years later, when Trump launched his campaign for president, Barron said he regretted ever inviting Trump to speak and giving him such a prominent platform. He staunchly opposed to Trump’s candidacy throughout the Republican primaries. Over a period of several months, Barron posted anti-Trump messages on Twitter, calling his supporters “idiots” and “morons.” He called Trump a “sociopath,” and in one post, Barron compared Trump to Adolf Hitler, writing, “The giant police state Trump supports would make Hitler blush.”
So now, Barron’s cozying up with Hitler. I guess that’s a bit a step up from when GOProud counted Ann Coulter as a strong ally.
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: